own bigotry, to take some arbitrary step that may be extremely
disagreable to all those communities, without having spirit to exert the
violence of his power for the support of his measures, he will become
equally detested and despised, and the influence of the Commons will
insensibly encroach upon the pretensions of the crown." (Travels through
France and Italy, c. xxxvi. Smollett's Works, vol. v. p. 536.) This
presentiment deserves to be classed with that prophecy of Harrington in
his Oceana, of which some were fond enough to hope the speedy fulfilment
at the beginning of the revolution. Smollett passed the greater part of
his time abroad at Nice, but proceeded also to Rome and Florence.

About a year after he had returned from the continent (in June, 1766,)
he again visited his native country, where he had the satisfaction to
find his mother and sister still living. At Edinburgh he met with the
two Humes, Robertson, Adam Smith, Blair, and Ferguson; but the bodily
ailments, under which he was labouring, left him little power of
enjoying the society of men who had newly raised their country to so
much eminence in literature. To his friend, Dr. Moore, then a chirurgeon
at Glasgow, who accompanied him from that place, to the banks of Loch
Lomond, he wrote, in the February following, that his expedition into
Scotland had been productive of nothing but misery and disgust, adding,
that he was convinced his brain had been in some measure affected; for
that he had had a kind of _coma vigil_ upon him from April to November,
without intermission. He was at this time at Bath, where two
chirurgeons, whom he calls the most eminent in England, and whose names
were Middleton and Sharp, had so far relieved him from some of the most
painful symptoms of his malady, particularly an inveterate ulcer in the
arm, that he pronounced himself to be better in health and spirits than
during any part of the seven preceding years. But the flattering
appearance which his disorder assumed was not of long continuance. A