Smollett never reached that goal, and even the shadow of decency never haunted him so as to make him afraid with any amazement.  Smollett avers that he “has had the courage to call in question the talents of a pseudo-patron,” and so is charged with “insolence, rancour, and scurrility.”  Of all these things, and of worse, he had been guilty; his offence had never been limited to “calling in question the talents” of persons who had been unsuccessful in getting his play represented.  Remonstrance merely irritated Tobias.  His new novel was but a fainter echo of his old novels, a panorama of scoundrelism, with the melodramatic fortunes of the virtuous Monimia for a foil.  If read to-day, it is read as a sketch of manners, or want of manners.  The scene in which the bumpkin squire rooks the accomplished Fathom at hazard, in Paris, is prettily conceived, and Smollett’s indignation at the British system of pews in church is edifying.  But when Monimia appears to her lover as he weeps at her tomb, and proves to be no phantom, but a “warm and substantial” Monimia, capable of being “dished up,” like any other Smollettian heroine, the reader is sensibly annoyed.  Tobias as un romantique is absolutely too absurd; “not here, oh Tobias, are haunts meet for thee.”

Smollett’s next novel, “Sir Launcelot Greaves,” was not published till 1761, after it had appeared in numbers, in The British Magazine.  This was a sixpenny serial, published by Newbery.  The years between 1753 and 1760 had been occupied by Smollett in quarrelling, getting imprisoned for libel, editing the Critical Review, writing his “History of England,” translating (or adapting old translations of) “Don Quixote,” and driving a team of literary hacks, whose labours he superintended, and to whom he gave a weekly dinner.  These exploits are described by Dr. Carlyle, and by Smollett himself, in “Humphrey Clinker.”  He did not treat his vassals with much courtesy or consideration; but then they expected no such treatment.  We have no right to talk of his doings as “a blood-sucking method, literary sweating,” like a recent biographer of Smollett.  Not to speak of the oddly mixed metaphor, we do not know what Smollett’s relations to his retainers really were.  As an editor he had to see his contributors.  The work of others he may have recommended, as “reader” to publishers.  Others may have made transcripts for him, or translations.  That Smollett “sweated” men, or sucked their blood, or both, seems a crude way of saying that he found them employment.  Nobody says that Johnson “sweated” the persons who helped him in compiling his Dictionary; or that Mr. Jowett “sweated” the friends and pupils who aided him in his translation of Plato.  Authors have a perfect right to procure literary assistance, especially in learned books, if they pay for it, and acknowledge their debt to their allies.  On the second point, Smollett was probably not in advance of his age.