After the testimonies we have cited, it would be useless to seek other approbation of Smollett's merits.
"From higher judgment-seats make no appeal To lower."
Yet, with all his imaginative power and humorous perception, it cannot be gainsaid that there was a great lack of delicacy in the composition of his mind,--a deficiency which, even in his own days, gave just offence to readers of the best taste, and which he himself was sometimes so candid as to acknowledge and to correct. Its existence is too often a sufficient cause to deter any but minds of a certain masculine vigor from the perusal of such a work as "Roderick Random"; and yet this work was an especial favorite with the most refined portion of the public in the latter half of the last century. Burke delighted in it, and would no doubt often read from it aloud to the circle of guests of both sexes that gathered about him at Beaconsfield; and Elia makes his imaginary aunt refer to the pleasure with which in her younger days she had read the story of that unfortunate young nobleman whose adventures make such a figure in "Peregrine Pickle." So great is the change in the habit of thought and expression in less than half a century, that we believe there is not in all America a gentleman who would now venture to read either of these works aloud to a fireside group. Smollett's Muse was free enough herself; in all conscience;--
"High-kirtled was she, As she gaed o'er the lea";--
but in "Peregrine Pickle," beside the natural incidents, there are two long episodes foisted upon the story, neither of which has any lawful connection with the matter in hand, and one of which, indelicate and indecent in the extreme, does not appear to have even been of his own composition. Reference is here made to the "Memoirs of a Lady of Quality," and to the passages respecting young Annesley; and since biographers do not seem to have touched especially on the manner of their introduction into the novel, we will give a word or two to this point.
John Taylor, in the Records of his Life, states that the memoirs of Lady Vane, as they appear in "Peregrine Pickle," were actually written by an Irish gentleman of wealth, a Mr. Denis McKerchier, who at the time entertained relations with that abandoned, shameless woman; so that, if, as was probably the case, she paid Smollett a sum of money to procure their incorporation in his pages, there could have been no other motive to actuate her conduct than a desire to blazon her own fall or to mortify the feelings of her husband. The latter is the more likely alternative, if we are to believe that Lord Vane himself stooped to employ Dr. Hill to prepare a history of Lady Frail, by way of retorting the affront he had received. This Mr. McKerchier in season broke with her Ladyship, and refused her admission to his dying bedside; but, in the mean time, his Memoirs had gone out to the world, and had greatly conduced to the popularity and sale of Smollett's novel. He was also the patron of Annesley, that unfortunate young nobleman whose romantic life has furnished Godwin and Scott with a foundation for their most highly-wrought novels; and it was, we may judge, from his own lips that Smollett received the narrative of his _protégé_'s adventures. Whatever we may think, however, of the introduction of scenes that were of sufficient importance to suggest such books as "Cloudesley" and "Guy Mannering," there can be but one opinion as to the bad taste which governed Smollett, when he consented to overload "Peregrine Pickle" with Lady Vane's memoirs; and if lucre were indeed at the bottom of the business, it assumes a yet graver aspect.