. . . meet in St. James’s Park, without betraying
the least token of recognition.” And good,
too, is the way in which, as Dr. Fathom goes rapidly
down the social hill, he makes excuses for his declining
splendour. His chariot was overturned “with
a hideous crash” at such danger to himself,
“that he did not believe he should ever hazard
himself again in any sort of wheel carriage.”
He turned off his men for maids, because “men
servants are generally impudent, lazy, debauched, or
dishonest.” To avoid the din of the street,
he shifted his lodgings into a quiet, obscure court.
And so forth and so on, in the true Smollett vein.
But, after all, such of the old sparks are struck
only occasionally. Apart from its plot, which
not a few nineteenth-century writers of detective-stories
might have improved, The Adventures of Ferdinand Count
Fathom is less interesting for itself than any other
piece of fiction from Smollett’s pen.
For a student of Smollett, however, it is highly interesting
as showing the author’s romantic, melodramatic
tendencies, and the growth of his constructive technique.
THE ADVENTURES OF FERDINAND COUNT FATHOM
To doctor ------
You and I, my good friend, have often deliberated
on the difficulty of writing such a dedication as
might gratify the self-complacency of a patron, without
exposing the author to the ridicule or censure of the
public; and I think we generally agreed that the task
was altogether impracticable.—Indeed, this
was one of the few subjects on which we have always
thought in the same manner. For, notwithstanding
that deference and regard which we mutually pay to
each other, certain it is, we have often differed,
according to the predominancy of those different passions,
which frequently warp the opinion, and perplex the
understanding of the most judicious.
In dedication, as in poetry, there is no medium; for,
if any one of the human virtues be omitted in the
enumeration of the patron’s good qualities,
the whole address is construed into an affront, and
the writer has the mortification to find his praise
prostituted to very little purpose.
On the other hand, should he yield to the transports
of gratitude or affection, which is always apt to
exaggerate, and produce no more than the genuine effusions
of his heart, the world will make no allowance for
the warmth of his passion, but ascribe the praise he
bestows to interested views and sordid adulation.
Sometimes too, dazzled by the tinsel of a character
which he has no opportunity to investigate, he pours
forth the homage of his admiration upon some false
Maecenas, whose future conduct gives the lie to his
eulogium, and involves him in shame and confusion of
face. Such was the fate of a late ingenious
author [the Author of the “Seasons"], who was
so often put to the blush for the undeserved incense
he had offered in the heat of an enthusiastic disposition,
misled by popular applause, that he had resolved to
retract, in his last will, all the encomiums which
he had thus prematurely bestowed, and stigmatise the
unworthy by name—a laudable scheme of poetical
justice, the execution of which was fatally prevented
by untimely death.
