Yet, throughout, Smollett
regarded himself as a moralist, a writer of improving tendencies; one who
"lashed the vices of the age." He was by no means wholly mistaken, but
we should probably wrong the eighteenth century if we accepted all
Smollett's censures as entirely deserved. The vices which he lashed are
those which he detected, or fancied that he detected, in people who
regarded a modest and meritorious Scottish orphan with base indifference.
Unluckily the greater part of mankind was guilty of this crime, and
consequently was capable of everything.
Enough has probably been said about the utterly distasteful figure of
Smollett's hero. In Chapter LX. we find him living on the resources of
Strap, then losing all Strap's money at play, and then "I bilk my
taylor." That is, Roderick orders several suits of new clothes, and
sells them for what they will fetch. Meanwhile Strap can live honestly
anywhere, while he has his ten fingers. Roderick rescues himself from
poverty by engaging, with his uncle, in the slave trade. We are apt to
consider this commerce infamous. But, in 1763, the Evangelical director
who helped to make Cowper "a castaway," wrote, as to the slaver's
profession: "It is, indeed, accounted a genteel employment, and is
usually very profitable, though to me it did not prove so, the Lord
seeing that a large increase of wealth could not be good for me." The
reverend gentleman had, doubtless, often sung--
"_Time for us to go_,
_Time for us to go_,
_And when we'd got the hatches down_,
'_Twas time for us to go_!"
Roderick, apart from "black ivory," is aided by his uncle and his long
lost father.
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