Let all avoid the path
and shun the example of Ferdinand, Count Fathom!"
Such is Smollett's sermon, but, after all, Ferdinand is hardly worse than
Roderick or Peregrine. The son of a terrible old sutler and
camp-follower, a robber and slayer of wounded men, Ferdinand had to live
by his wits, and he was hardly less scrupulous, after all, than Peregrine
and Roderick. The daubs of casual generosity were not laid on, and that
is all the difference. As Sophia Western was mistaken for Miss Jenny
Cameron, so Ferdinand was arrested as Prince Charles, who, in fact,
caused much inconvenience to harmless travellers. People were often
arrested as "The Pretender's son" abroad as well as in England.
The life and death of Ferdinand's mother, shot by a wounded hussar in her
moment of victory, make perhaps the most original and interesting part of
this hero's adventures. The rest is much akin to his earlier novels, but
the history of Rinaldo and Monimia has a passage not quite alien to the
vein of Mrs. Radcliffe. Some remarks in the first chapter show that
Smollett felt the censures on his brutality and "lowness," and he
promises to seek "that goal of perfection where nature is castigated
almost even to still life . . . where decency, divested of all substance,
hovers about like a fantastic shadow."
Smollett never reached that goal, and even the shadow of decency never
haunted him so as to make him afraid with any amazement.
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