" The scenes in the Marshalsea must have been familiar to
Dickens. The terrible history of Miss Williams is Hogarth's Harlot's
Progress done into unsparing prose. Smollett guides us at a brisk pace
through the shady and brutal side of the eighteenth century; his vivacity
is as unflagging as that of his disagreeable rattle of a hero. The
passion usually understood as love is, to be sure, one of which he seems
to have no conception; he regards a woman much as a greedy person might
regard a sirloin of beef, or, at least, a plate of ortolans. At her
marriage a bride is "dished up;" that is all.
Thus this "gay writing" no longer makes us gay. In reading "Peregrine
Pickle" and "Humphrey Clinker," a man may find himself laughing aloud,
but hardly in reading "Roderick Random." The fun is of the cruel
primitive sort, arising merely from the contemplation of somebody's
painful discomfiture. Bowling and Rattlin may be regarded with
affectionate respect; but Roderick has only physical courage and vivacity
to recommend him. Whether Smollett, in Flaubert's deliberate way,
purposely abstained from moralising on the many scenes of physical
distress which he painted; or whether he merely regarded them without
emotion, has been debated. It seems more probable that he thought they
carried their own moral. It is the most sympathetic touch in Roderick's
character, that he writes thus of his miserable crew of slaves: "Our ship
being freed from the disagreeable lading of negroes, _to whom indeed I
had been a miserable slave since our leaving the coast of Guinea_, I
began to enjoy myself.
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