they undeniably possess for most of us in a certain immature stage of our mental development.
Filth is the pervading principle—the very essence—of Smollett's novels. Take the filth from them, and what remains? Compare any of his descriptions of the marriage of his hero and heroine with Mr. Tennyson's treatment of the same subject in the concluding section of In Memoriam, where speaking of his sister and her husband, he implores the rising moon to
"— touch with shade the bridal doors,
With tender gloom the roof, the wall;
And breaking let the splendour fall
To spangle all the happy shores
"By which they rest, and ocean sounds,
And star and system rolling past,
A soul shall draw from out the vast
And strike his being into bounds,
"And, moved thro' life of lower phrase,
Result in man, be born and think.
And act and love, a closer link
Betwixt us and the crowning race
"Of those that, eye to eye, shall look
On knowledge, under whose command
Is Earth and Earth's, and in their hand
Is Nature, like an open book."
Contrast, I say, the above noble passage, or any of St. Paul's delicate admonitions regarding marriage, with Smollett's prurient thoughts on that subject, and you will see how what is in itself pure and "honourable" may receive an impure colour from the mind which views it.
Roderick Random, Smollett's first novel, was published in 1748; Peregrine Pickle, in 1751; Humphrey Clinker, his latest, in 1771. Shortly after its appearance, in the same year, "the world," says Sir Walter Scott, "lost Tobias Smollett."
In the meantime another novelist of the same school had arisen in the person of the Reverend Laurence Sterne. Tristram Shandy had been given to the public by occasional instalments, and had gained immense popularity. Sterne was,
