" _He_ was not given to
"booing" (in the sense of bowing), but had, of all known Scots, the most
"canty conceit o' himsel'." These qualities, with a violence of temper
which took the form of beating people when on his travels, cannot have
made Smollett a popular character. He knew his faults, as he shows in
the dedication of "Ferdinand, Count Fathom," to himself. "I have known
you trifling, superficial, and obstinate in dispute; meanly jealous and
awkwardly reserved; rash and haughty in your resentment; and coarse and
lowly in your connections."
He could, it is true, on occasion, forgive (even where he had not been
wronged), and could compensate, in milder moods, for the fierce attacks
made in hours when he was "meanly jealous." Yet, in early life at least,
he regarded his own Roderick Random as "modest and meritorious,"
struggling nobly with the difficulties which beset a "friendless orphan,"
especially from the "selfishness, envy, malice, and base indifference of
mankind." Roderick himself is, in fact, the incarnation of the basest
selfishness. In one of his adventures he is guilty of that extreme
infamy which the d'Artagnan of "The Three Musketeers" and of the
"Memoirs" committed, and for which the d'Artagnan of _Le Vicomte de
Bragelonne_ took shame to himself. While engaged in a virtuous passion,
Roderick not only behaves like a vulgar debauchee, but pursues the
meanest arts of the fortune-hunter who is ready to marry any woman for
her money.
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