beast.”  As to characterization, if a genius for it means the creation of figures which linger in the familiar memory of mankind, Smollett must perforce be granted the faculty; here in his first book are Tom Bowling and Strap—­to name two—­the one (like Richardson’s Lovelace) naming a type:  the other standing for the country innocent, the meek fidus Achates, both as good as anything of the same class in Fielding.  The Welsh mate, Mr. Morgan, for another of the sailor sort, is also excellent.  The judgment may be eccentric, but for myself the character parts in Smollett’s dramas seem for variety and vividness often superior to those of Fielding.  The humor at its best is very telling.  The portraits, or caricatures, of living folk added to the story’s immediate vogue, but injure it as a permanent contribution to fiction.

A fair idea of the nature of the attractions offered (and at the same time a clear indication of the sort of fiction manufactured by the doughty doctor) may be gleaned from the following precis—­Smollett’s own—­of Chapter XXXVIII:  “I get up and crawl into a barn where I am in danger of perishing through the fear of the country people.  Their inhumanity.  I am succored by a reputed witch.  Her story.  Her advice.  She recommends me as a valet to a single lady whose character she explains.”  This promises pretty fair reading:  of course, we wish to read on and to learn more of that single lady and the hero’s relation to her.  Such a motive, which might be called, “The Mistakes of a Night,” with details too crude and physical to allow of discussion, is often overworked by Smollett (as, in truth, it is by Fielding, to modern taste):  the eighteenth century had not yet given up the call of the Beast in its fiction—­an element of bawdry was still welcome in the print offered reputable folk.

The style of Smollett in his first fiction, and in general, has marked dramatic flavor:  his is a gift of forthright phrase, a plain, vernacular smack characterizes his diction.  To go back to him now is to be surprised perhaps at the racy vigor of so faulty a writer and novelist.  A page or so of Smollett, after a course in present-day popular fiction, reads very much like a piece of literature.  In this respect, he seems full of flavor, distinctly of the major breed:  there is an effect of passing from attenuated parlor tricks into the open, when you take him up.  Here, you can but feel, is a masculine man of letters, even if it is his fate to play second fiddle to Fielding.

Smollett’s initial story was a pronounced success with the public—­and he aired an arrogant joy and pooh-poohed insignificant rivals like Fielding.  His hand was against every man’s when it came to the question of literary prowess; and like many authors before and since, one of his first acts upon the kind reception of “Roderick Random,” was to get published his worthless blank-verse tragedy, “The Regicide,” which, refused by Garrick, had till then languished in manuscript and was an ugly