In “Count Fathom” he makes his adventurer “purchase an old chariot, which was new painted for the occasion, and likewise hire a footman . . .  This equipage, though much more expensive than his finances could bear, he found absolutely necessary to give him a chance of employment . . .  A walking physician was considered as an obscure pedlar.”  A chariot, Smollett insists, was necessary to “every raw surgeon”; while Bob Sawyer’s expedient of “being called from church” was already vieux jeu, in the way of advertisement.  Such things had been “injudiciously hackneyed.”  In this passage of Fathom’s adventures, Smollett proclaims his insight into methods of getting practice.  A physician must ingratiate himself with apothecaries and ladies’ maids, or “acquire interest enough” to have an infirmary erected “by the voluntary subscriptions of his friends.”  Here Smollett denounces hospitals, which “encourage the vulgar to be idle and dissolute, by opening an asylum to them and their families, from the diseases of poverty and intemperance.”  This is odd morality for one who suffered from “the base indifference of mankind.”  He ought to have known that poverty is not a vice for which the poor are to be blamed; and that intemperance is not the only other cause of their diseases.  Perhaps the unfeeling passage is a mere paradox in the style of his own Lismahago.

With or without a chariot, it is probable that Tobias had not an insinuating style, or “a good bedside manner”; friends to support a hospital for his renown he had none; but, somehow, he could live in May Fair, and, in 1746, could meet Dr. Carlyle and Stewart, son of the Provost of Edinburgh, and other Scots, at the Golden Ball in Cockspur Street.  There they were enjoying “a frugal supper and a little punch,” when the news of Culloden arrived.  Carlyle had been a Whig volunteer:  he, probably, was happy enough; but Stewart, whose father was in prison, grew pale, and left the room.  Smollett and Carlyle then walked home through secluded streets, and were silent, lest their speech should bewray them for Scots.  “John Bull,” quoth Smollett, “is as haughty and valiant to-day, as he was abject and cowardly on the Black Wednesday when the Highlanders were at Derby.”

“Weep, Caledonia, weep!” he had written in his tragedy.  Now he wrote “Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn.”  Scott has quoted, from Graham of Gartmore, the story of Smollett’s writing verses, while Gartmore and others were playing cards.  He read them what he had written, “The Tears of Scotland,” and added the last verse on the spot, when warned that his opinions might give offence.

   “Yes, spite of thine insulting foe,
   My sympathising verse shall flow.”