I--for in passing through Florence, I had heard he had fallen
foul upon the goddess, and used her worse than a common strumpet,
without the least provocation in nature. I popp'd upon Smelfungus
again at Turin, in his return home, and a sad tale of sorrowful
adventures had he to tell, 'wherein he spoke of moving accidents
by flood and field, and of the cannibals which each other eat,
the Anthropophagi'; he had been flayed alive, and bedevil'd, and
used worse than St. Bartholomew, at every stage he had come at.
'I'll tell it,' cried Smelfungus, 'to the world.' 'You had better
tell it,' said I, 'to your physician.'"

To counteract the ill effects of "spleen and jaundice" and
exhibit the spirit of genteel humour and universal benevolence in
which a man of sensibility encountered the discomforts of the
road, the incorrigible parson Laurence brought out his own
Sentimental Journey. Another effect of Smollett's book was to
whet his own appetite for recording the adventures of the open
road. So that but for Travels through France and Italy we might
have had neither a Sentimental Journey nor a Humphry Clinker. If
all the admirers of these two books would but bestir themselves
and look into the matter, I am sure that Sterne's only too clever
assault would be relegated to its proper place and assessed at
its right value as a mere boutade. The borrowed contempt of
Horace Walpole and the coterie of superficial dilettanti, from
which Smollett's book has somehow never wholly recovered, could
then easily be outflanked and the Travels might well be in
reasonable expectation of coming by their own again.

II