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

men of consummate abilities in their profession; exerting themselves with equal industry, eloquence, and erudition, in their endeavours to perplex the truth, brow-beat the evidence, puzzle the judge, and mislead the jury. Did any part of this character come home to your own conscience? or did you resent it as a sarcasm levelled at the whole bench without distinction? I take it for granted, that this must have been the origin of your enmity to me; because I can recollect no other circumstance in my conduct, by which I could incur the displeasure of a man whom I scarce knew by sight, and with whom I never had the least dispute, or indeed concern. If this was the case, you pay a very scurvy compliment to your own integrity, by fathering a character which is not applicable to any honest man, and give the world a handle to believe, that our courts of justice stand greatly in need of reformation. Indeed, the petulance, license, and buffoonery of some lawyers in the exercise of their function, a reproach upon decency, and a scandal to the nation; and it is surprising that the Judge, who represents his Majesty's person, should suffer such insults upon the dignity of the place. But whatever liberties of this kind are granted to counsel, no sort of freedom, it seems, must be allowed to the evidence, who, by the by, are of much more consequence to the cause. You will take upon you to divert the audience at the expense of a witness, by impertinent allusions to some parts of his private character and affairs; but if he pretends to retort the joke, you insult, abuse, and bellow against him, as an impudent fellow, who fails in his respect to the Court. It was in this manner you behaved to my first witness, whom you first provoked into a passion by your injurious insinuations; then you took an advantage of the confusion which you had entailed upon him; and, lastly, you insulted him, as a person who had shuffled in his evidence. This might have been an irreparable injury to the character of a tradesman, had not he been luckily known to the whole jury, and many other persons in Court, as a man of unquestionable probity and credit. witness has as good a title as you have to the protection of the Court; and ought to have more, because evidence is absolutely necessary for the investigation of truth; whereas, the aim of a lawyer is often to involve it in doubt and obscurity. Is it for this purpose you so frequently deviate from the point, and endeavour to raise the mirth of the audience with flat jokes and insipid similes? or have you really so miserably mistaken your own talents, as to set up for the character of a man of humour? For my own part, were I disposed to be merry, I should never desire a more

Sir, a

pregnant subject of ridicule, than your own appearance and behaviour; but, as I am at present in a very serious mood, I shall content myself with demanding adequate reparation for the injurious treatment I have received at your hands; otherwise, I will in four days put this letter in the press, and you shall hear in another manner-not from a ruffian and an assassin-but from an injured gentleman, who is not ashamed of subscribing himself," &c.

No. II.

CONTROVERSY WITH SHEBBEARE AND GRAINGER.

[AMONG others, he incurred at this time the resentment of Dr Shebbeare, a well-known political and miscellaneous writer, who had been chastised in the Review, for his insolent and seditious publications; and severely punished by the government for his arrogance and abuse, in stigmatizing some great names with all the virulence of censure, and even assailing the throne itself, with oblique insinuation and ironical satire. The incensed author suspected Smollett, and retaliated in a pamphlet, entitled The Occasional Critic, or the Decrees of the Scots Tribunal in the Critical Review rejudged, 8vo, 1757, written with all the presumption of Dennis without his learning, with all his rage without his integrity.

Although the "Occasional Critic" in many instances stumbled on the truth, the whole animation of the performance arose from the vivacity and virulence with which the enraged writer maintained that the authors of the Critical Review were Scots scrubs, and rascals, barbers, tailors, apothecaries, and surgeons' mates, who understood neither Greek, Latin, French, nor English, nor any other language; and that Scotland never produced any one man of genius, learning, or integrity.

The acrimony of Dr Shebbeare's retaliation was greater than Smollett's patience, which was not his most shining virtue, could bear, without resistance or reply; and it immediately drew from him, or one of his literary associates, the following observations:

"Whatever regard we may have for our fellow-subjects in North Britain, and surely we do regard them, not only as our brethren, but also as a people distinguished by their learning and capacity, we have no call to enter the lists as their champions, against an antagonist whom they themselves would hardly deign to oppose.

"We cannot help, however, taking this opportunity of declaring, that of five persons concerned in writing the Critical Review, one only is a native of Scotland; so that our hypercritic's national rancour against that kingdom seems to have mistaken its object; unless he levelled the whole at one member of our society, whom indeed he has reviled, bespattered, and belied with all the venom of low, invidious malice, and all the filth of vulgar abuse. These attacks, however, we forgive, as the natural effect of resentment. That person has occasionally checked and chastised him, as an ignorant and presumptuous quack in politics, an enemy to his king and country, and a desperate incendiary, who, by misrepresenting facts, and aspersing characters, endeavoured to raise a ferment in the nation, at a time when a concurrence of unfortunate incidents had produced a spirit of discontent among the people."—Critical Review, 1757.

He had no sooner repelled the illiberal abuse of a writer, whose injustice he reprobated, and whose resentment he despised, than he was thrown into a more vexatious, and less creditable dispute with Dr Grainger, a man of genius, and a poet, who suspected him to be the writer of the article in the Critical Review, in which his "Translation of Tibullus" had been treated with unjustifiable severity. Whether Dr Grainger's suspicions were well or ill founded, he thought his translation had been criticised in the Review with malignity, and published an angry "Letter to Tobias Smollett, M.D., occasioned by his Criticism upon a late Translation of Tibullus," 8vo, 1758; in which, after refuting the criticisms of the reviewer, he proves, by examples principally taken from the article on his own work, that the authors of the Critical Review had broken, in every particular, their promises solemnly made to the public, in the plan of their journal: mentions Smollett in contemptuous terms, and indulges himself in some ludicrous reflections on the unlucky diminutive of his Christian name.

These personal reflections and pleasantries, which mingled in the controversy between the poet and the critic, who mutually respected each other's talents and character, were not forgotten when Dr Grainger's "Letter" fell under the animadversions of Smollett, or one of his associates, in the Critical Review, who, in ridiculing that playful species of vengeance, was guilty of injustice, if he meant to insinuate that his antagonist could be classed among the dunces of the age.

The writer of the article observes, that "Dr Grainger had