less of that largeness which sees the world from an unimplicated coign of vantage, whence the open-eyed, wise-minded spectator finds it a comedy breeding laughter under thoughtful brows.  We seem to be getting not so much scenes of life as an author’s setting of the scene for his own private reasons.  Such is at least the occasional effect of Smollett.  Also is there more of bitterness, of savagery in him:  and where Fielding was broad and racily frank in his handling of delicate themes, this fellow is indecent with a kind of hardness and brazenness which are amazing.  The difference between plain-speaking and unclean speaking could hardly be better illustrated.  It should be added, in justice, that even Smollett is rarely impure with the alluring saliency of certain modern fiction.

In the first story, “The Adventures of Roderick Random” (the cumbrous full titles of earlier fiction are for apparent reasons frequently curtailed in the present treatment), published when the author was twenty-seven, he avails himself of a residence of some years in Jamaica to depict life in that quarter of the world at a time when the local color had the charm of novelty.  The story is often credited with being autobiographic, as a novelist’s first book is likely to be; since, by popular belief, there is one story in all of us, namely, our own.  Its description of the hero’s hard knocks does, indeed, suggest the fate of a man so stormily quarrelsome throughout his days:  for this red-headed Scot, this “hack of genius,” as Henley picturesquely calls him, was naturally a fighting man and, whether as man or author, attacks or repels sharply:  there is nothing uncertain in the effect he makes.  His loud vigor is as pronounced as that of a later Scot like Carlyle; yet he stated long afterward that the likeness between himself and Roderick was slight and superficial.  The fact that the tale is written in the first person also helps the autobiographic theory:  that method of story-making always lends a certain credence to the narrative.  The scenes shift from western Scotland to the streets of London, thence to the West Indies:  and the interest (the remark applies to all Smollett’s work) lies in just three things—­adventure, diversity of character, and the realistic picture of contemporary life—­especially that of the navy on a day when, if Smollett is within hailing distance of the facts, it was terribly corrupt.  Too much credit can hardly be given him for first using, so effectively too, the professional sea-life of his country:  a motive so richly productive since through Marryat down to Dana, Herman Melville, Clark Russell and many other favorite writers, both British and American.  In Smollett’s hands, it is a strange muddle of religion, farce and smut, but set forth with a vivid particularity and a gusto f high spirits which carry the reader along, willy-nilly.  Such a book might be described by the advertisement of an old inn:  “Here is entertainment for man and