even vulgar in conception; deficient in keeping, and in the due subordination of parts to each other ;. and intimating too much carelessness on the part of the artist. But these faults are redeemed by such richness and brilliancy of colours; such a profusion of imagination-now bodying forth the grand and terrible—now the natural, the easy, and the ludicrous; there is so much of life, action, and bustle, in every group he has painted; so much force and individuality of character,—that we readily grant to Smollett an equal rank with his great rival Fielding, while we place both far above any of their successors in the same line of fictitious composition.

Abbotsford, 1st June, 1821.

APPENDIX.

No. I.

LETTER FROM TOBIAS SMOLLETT TO THE HON. ALEXANDER HUME CAMPBELL.

THIS Letter exists in a rough draught, sent by the author to his friend Mr MacKercher. The consequences are not known, but the letter appeared in the European Magazine, vol. v., from Smollett's handwriting.

"I have waited several days in hope of receiving from you an acknowledgment touching those harsh, unjustifiable, (and, let me add,) unmannerly expressions, which you annexed to my name, in the Court of King's Bench, when you opened the cause depending between me and Peter Gordon; and, as I do not find that you have discovered the least inclination to retract what you said to my prejudice, I have taken this method to refresh your memory, and to demand such satisfaction as a gentleman, injured as I am, has a right to claim.

"The business of a counsellor is, I apprehend, to investigate the truth in behalf of his client; but surely he has no privilege to blacken and asperse the character of the other party, without any regard to veracity or decorum. That you assumed this unwarrantable privilege in commenting upon your brief, I believe you will not pretend to deny, when I remind you of those peculiar flowers of elocution which you poured forth on that notable occasion. First of all, in order to inspire the court with horror and contempt for the defendant, you gave the jury to understand that you did not know this Dr Smollett; and, indeed, his character appeared in such a light, from the facts contained in your brief, that you never should desire to know him. I should be glad to learn of what consequence it could be to the cause whether you did or did not know the defendant, or whether you had or had not an inclination to be acquainted with him? Sir, this was

a pitiful personality, calculated to depreciate the character of a gentleman to whom you was a stranger, merely to gratify the rancour and malice of an abandoned fellow who had feed you to speak in his cause. Did I ever seek your acquaintance, or court your protection? I had been informed, indeed, that you was a lawyer of some reputation, and, when the suit commenced, would have retained you for that reason, had I not been anticipated by the plaintiff; but, far from coveting your acquaintance, I never dreamed of exchanging a word with you on that or any other subject: you might therefore have spared your invidious declaration, until I had put it in your power to mortify me with a repulse, which, upon my honour, would never have been the case, were you a much greater man than you really are. Yet this was not the only expedient you used to prepossess the jury against me. You was hardy enough to represent me as a person devoid of all humanity and remorse; as a barbarous ruffian, who, in a cowardly manner, had, with two associates as barbarous as myself, called a peaceable gentleman out of his lodgings, and assaulted him in the dark, with an intent to murder. Such an horrid imputation, publicly fixed upon a person whose innocence you could hardly miss to know, is an outrage, for which, I believe, I might find reparation from the law itself, notwithstanding your artful manner of qualifying the expression by saying, provided the facts can be proved. This low subterfuge may, for aught I know, screen you from a prosecution at law, but can never acquit you in that court which every man of honour holds in his own breast. I say, you must have known my innocence from the weakness of the evidence which you produced, and with which you either was, or ought to have been previously acquainted, as well as from my general character, and that of my antagonist, which it was your duty to have learned. I will venture to say, you did know my character, and in your heart believed me incapable of such brutality as you laid to my charge. Surely I do not overrate my own importance in affirming, that I am not so obscure in life as to have escaped the notice of Mr Hume Campbell; and I will be bold enough to challenge him and the whole world to prove one instance in which my integrity was called, or at least left, in question. Have not I, therefore, reason to suppose that, in spite of your internal conviction, you undertook the cause of a wretch, whose ingratitude, villany, and rancour, are, I firmly believe, without example in this kingdom; that you magnified a slight correction bestowed by his benefactor, in consequence of the most insolent provocation, into a deliberate and malicious scheme

of assassination; and endeavoured, with all the virulence of defamation, to destroy the character, and even the life, of an injured person, who, as well as yourself, is a gentleman by birth, education, and profession? In favour of whom, and in consequence of what, was all this zeal manifested, all this slander exhausted, and all this scurrility discharged? Your client, whom you dignified with the title of Esquire, and endeavoured to raise to the same footing with one in point of station and character, you knew to be an abject miscreant, whom my compassion and humanity had lifted from the most deplorable scenes of distress; whom I had saved from imprisonment and ruin; whom I had clothed and fed for a series of years; whom I had occasionally assisted with my purse, credit, and influence. You knew, or ought to have known, that, after having received a thousand marks of my benevolence, and prevailed upon me to indorse notes for the support of his credit, he withdrew himself into the verge of the court, and took up his habitation in a paltry alehouse, where he not only set me and the rest of his creditors at defiance, but provoked me by scurrilous and insolent letters and messages, to chastise him in such a manner as gave him a handle for this prosecution, in which you signalized yourself as his champion for a very honourable consideration. There is something so palpably ungrateful, perfidious, and indeed diabolical, in the conduct of the prosecutor, that, even in these degenerate days, I wonder how he could find an attorney

to appear in his behalf. O tempora! O mores! After having

thus sounded the trumpet of obloquy in your preamble, and tortured every circumstance of the plaintiff's evidence to my detriment and dishonour, you attempted to subject me to the ridicule of the Court, by asking a question of my first witness, which had no more relation to the cause, than if you had desired to know the name of his grandmother. What title had you to ask of a tradesman, if he knew me to be an author? What affinity had this question with the circumstances of the assault? Was not this foreign to the purpose ? Was it not impertinent, and proposed with a view to put me out of countenance, and to raise the laugh of the spectators at my expense? There, indeed, you was disappointed, as you frequently are in those little digressive efforts by which you make yourself remarkable. Though I do not pretend to possess that superlative degree of effrontery by which some people make a figure at the bar, I have assurance enough to stand the mention of my works without blushing, especially when I despise the taste, and scorn the principles, of him who would turn them to my disgrace. You succeeded, however, in

one particular; I mean, in raising the indignation of my witness; of which you took all imaginable advantage, puzzling, perplexing, and brow-beating him with such artifice, eagerness, and insult, as overwhelmed him with confusion, and had wellnigh deprived me of the benefit of his evidence. Luckily for me, the next gentleman who was called confirmed what the other had swore, and proved to the satisfaction of the judge and jury, and even to your own conviction, that this terrible deliberate assassination was no more than a simple blow given to a rascal after repeated provocation, and that of the most flagrant kind; that no advantage was taken in point of weapons; and that two drabs, whom they had picked up for the purpose, had affirmed upon oath a downright falsehood, with a view to blast my reputation. You yourself was so conscious of this palpable detection, that you endeavoured to excuse them by a forced explanation, which, you may depend upon it, shall not screen them from a prosecution for perjury. I will not say, that this was like patronising a couple of gipsies who had forsworn themselves, consequently forfeited all title to the countenance, or indeed forbearance of the Court; but this I will say, that your tenderness for them was of a piece with your whole behaviour to me, which I think was equally insolent and unjust; for, granting that you had really supposed me guilty of an intended assassination before the trial began, you saw me in the course of evidence acquitted of that suspicion, and heard the judge insist upon my innocence in his charge to the jury, who brought in their verdict accordingly. Then, sir, you ought in common justice to have owned yourself mistaken, or to have taken some other opportunity of expressing your concern for what you had said to my disadvantage; though even such an acknowledgment would not have been a sufficient reparation, because, before my witnesses were called, many persons left the court with impressions to my prejudice, conceived from the calumnies which they heard you espouse and encourage. On the whole, you opened the trial with such hyperbolical impetuosity, and conducted it with such particular bitterness and rancour, that everybody perceived you was more than ordinarily interested; and I could not divine the mysterious bond of union that attached you to Peter Gordon, Esq., until you furnished me with a key to the whole secret, by that strong emphasis with which you pronounced the words-Ferdinand Count Fathom. Then I discovered the source of your good-will towards me, which is no other than the history of a lawsuit inserted in that performance, where the author takes occasion to observe, that the counsel behaved like