prevent his being assailed by the evening effluvia of Edinburgh.
. . . As we marched along he grumbled in my ear, 'I smell you in
the dark!'"] And then lest the southrons should escape we have a
reference to the "beastly habit of drinking from a tankard in
which perhaps a dozen filthy mouths have slabbered as is the
custom in England." With all his coarsenesses this blunt Scot was
a pioneer and fugleman of the niceties. Between times most
nations are gibbetted in this slashing epistle. The ingenious
boasting of the French is well hit off in the observation of the
chevalier that the English doubtless drank every day to the
health of the Marquise de Pompadour. The implication reminded
Smollett of a narrow escape from a duello (an institution he
reprobates with the utmost trenchancy in this book) at Ghent in
1749 with a Frenchman who affirmed that Marlborough's battles
were purposely lost by the French generals in order to mortify
Mme. de Maintenon. Two incidents of some importance to Smollett
occurred during the three months' sojourn at Boulogne. Through
the intervention of the English Ambassador at Paris (the Earl of
Hertford) he got back his books, which had been impounded by the
Customs as likely to contain matter prejudicial to the state or
religion of France, and had them sent south by shipboard to
Bordeaux. Secondly, he encountered General Paterson, a friendly
Scot in the Sardinian service, who confirmed what an English
physician had told Smollett to the effect that the climate of
Nice was infinitely preferable to that of Montpellier "with
respect to disorders of the breast." Smollett now hires a berline
and four horses for fourteen louis, and sets out with rather a
heavy heart for Paris. It is problematic, he assures his good
friend Dr. Moore, whether he will ever return. "My health is very
precarious."