Cope is "a courtier Ape,
appointed General."
"Then Pug, aghast, fled faster than the wind,
Nor deign'd, in three-score miles, to look behind;
While every band for orders bleat in vain,
And fall in slaughtered heaps upon the plain,"--
of Preston Pans.
Nothing could be more remote from the truth, or more unjustly cruel.
Smollett had not here even the excuse of patriotism. Sir John Cope was
no Butcher Cumberland. In fact the poet's friend is not wrong, when, in
"Reproof," he calls Smollett "a flagrant misanthrope." The world was out
of joint for the cadet of Bonhill: both before and after his very trying
experiences as a ship surgeon the managers would not accept "The
Regicide." This was reason good why Smollett should try to make a little
money and notoriety by penning satires. They are fierce, foul-mouthed,
and pointless. But Smollett was poor, and he was angry; he had the
examples of Pope and Swift before him; which, as far as truculence went,
he could imitate. Above all, it was then the fixed belief of men of
letters that some peer or other ought to aid and support them; and, as no
peer did support Smollett, obviously they were "varnished ruffians." He
erred as he would not err now, for times, and ways of going wrong, are
changed. But, at best, how different are his angry couplets from the
lofty melancholy of Johnson's satires!
Smollett's "small sum of money" did not permit him long to push the
fortunes of his tragedy, in 1739; and as for his "very large assortment
of letters of recommendation," they only procured for him the post of
surgeon's mate in the _Cumberland_ of the line.
Pages:
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184