place, to any one interested in Smollett's personality it
supplies an unrivalled key. It is, moreover, the work of a
scholar, an observer of human nature, and, by election, a
satirist of no mean order. It gives us some characteristic social
vignettes, some portraits of the road of an unsurpassed freshness
and clearness. It contains some historical and geographical
observations worthy of one of the shrewdest and most sagacious
publicists of the day. It is interesting to the etymologist for
the important share it has taken in naturalising useful foreign
words into our speech. It includes (as we shall have occasion to
observe) a respectable quantum of wisdom fit to become
proverbial, and several passages of admirable literary quality.
In point of date (1763-65) it is fortunate, for the writer just
escaped being one of a crowd. On the whole, I maintain that it is
more than equal in interest to the Journey to the Hebrides, and
that it deserves a very considerable proportion of the praise
that has hitherto been lavished too indiscriminately upon the
Voyage to Lisbon. On the force of this claim the reader is
invited to constitute himself judge after a fair perusal of the
following pages. I shall attempt only to point the way to a
satisfactory verdict, no longer in the spirit of an advocate, but
by means of a few illustrations and, more occasionally,
amplifications of what Smollett has to tell us.

III

As was the case with Fielding many years earlier, Smollett was
almost broken down with sedentary toil, when early in June 1763
with his wife, two young ladies ("the two girls") to whom she
acted as chaperon, and a faithful servant of twelve years'