SMOLLETT'S ENGLAND.*

ONE wonders, on turning over these pages from the memoir of a rake of the eighteenth century, how much of its similarity

to the great novels of the time is due to a literary convention and how much to the truth of those genial writers whom one has always regarded as creating rather than describing reality.

Something, no doubt, must be attributed to the former cause, for William Hickey, though he does not seem to have had much devotion to literature, was an old Westminster boy, and wrote English both easily and well. " says his father, at a certain crisis in his son's career, " I lament that you should once more have deceived and disappointed me. . . .

But I have observed that plans fondly laid by parents for their children very early in life are seldom or never made effectual. It has pleased an all-wise Providence to heap upon me accumulated afflictions, but God's will be done; it is as much my duty as my inclination humbly to bow to these visitations." Can we believe that our forefathers in moments of such stress were masters of periods so mellifluous P Or, again, can one think that melancholy Mr. Dawson, on seeing our hero the subject of an unfortunate accident, really excused his merriment with the words, " I beg your pardon, Mr. Hickey, but there is to me something so super- latively ridiculous in a man's falling from his horse that I never see it without its exciting my risibility." Then, again, the sailor's talk' brings us straight to Smollett.

"Avast heaving upon that rope, my right one," says a tar to William Hickey, when he is proposing to drive from Deal to London ; "it is a cruel dark night, and you'll not be able to carry sail. Mount a couple of nags, take a pilot to run ahead and steer the proper course, and you'll be in Canterbury in no time." Of the same school is Captain Pritty, Hickey's

host on the same occasion, who addresses his too-prudent guest as a "slip-slop, moll dawdling boy," continuing :- "Damn me if ever I saw such milksop poor devils as ye are. What's got into the present race! There is not an ounce of proper spirit about them, Gad so, when I was your age I'd as soon have hung myself as lost a week in that sink, Deal. No, damn me, I'd have run up to Lunnun at least and made a night on't, but you wishy-washy, soft masters, fresh from mammy's apron strings, have no nous. Damn me, there's nothing in ye. No, nothing in ye."

Needless to say, Hickey took the advice of the tar and the captain, hired two nags, and, leaving the ship on which he had put into Deal in the course of his voyage of exile to the Indies, posted up to London, made a night of it, and drove back

• The Memoirs of William Hickey, 1740-1775. Edited by Alfred Spencer. I•ondon Hurst and Blackett. L128. 6d. net.] venire a terre to catch his boat again. But whether the language is the language of fact or of fiction, poor William

Hickey's life was only too much like that of a Smollett hero. His father was a well-known lawyer, and friend of Reynolds, Burke, and Goldsmith, of whom the latter wrote in his " Retaliation "2—

"Here Hickey reclines, a most blunt pleasant creature,

And slander itself must allow him good nature.

He cherished his friend and he relished a bumper ; Yet one fault he bad, and that one was a thumper.

Then what was his failing ? Come tell it and burn ye.

He was, could he help it ? a special attorney."

It was not surprising that, in spite of Goldsmith's chaff, good Mr. Hickey nourished the ambition that his son should go soberly into the law. But poor William was constitutionally incapable of sobriety. Nor was his early upbringing cal- culated to improve him in this respect. His father, though a sound and honourable man of business, " was of a convivial and expensive turn," and there was an atmosphere of free- dom about his house in St. Albans Street which no doubt encouraged William's constitutional tendencies. Moreover, he was often able to escape, even as a tiny child, to the King's Arms, or into Pall Mall, where, being an exceedingly pretty boy, he was, he tells us, " noticed and caressed by the first people in the kingdom." "By five years old be had earned the nickname of Pickle.' At seven he expressed the wish to be a man, that he might drink two bottles of wine every day.' " At fourteen he joined in the dissipation of a riotous elder brother, with whom he consumed "many a bumper of claret and champagne in the company of the most lovely women of the Metropolis." Soon after this he was removed in disgrace from Westminster, and, after a short and inglorious residence at a school in Streatham, found himself in 1766 (with his hair tied, powdered and pomatumed, turned over his fore- head, and garnished with three curls on each side and

a thick false tail) a dashing clerk in his father's office. Some parts of the attorney's profession our William found pleasant enough. He gives an amusing account of his expedi- tions in pursuit of the great but elusive Mr. Thurlow through

the taverns of Fleet Street and Chancery Lane. "' Well, you young rascal, damn your blood, what do you want? How the devil did you find me out ? " Why, sir,' answered I, heard the master of the house order six bottles of port for Number 3, and I was certain you must be here, so I ran up and entered without ceremony.' This made a great laugh, putting Mr.

Thurlow into high good-humour, who swore I was a damned clever fellow and should do, and, turning to his companions, he said, This is a wicked dog, who does with me as he please3, a son of Joe Hickey.' " William now took to frequenting taverns and billiard-rooms, where he was initiated into the intricacies of the game by a set of wary old sharpers who passed him from one to the other, relieving him regularly of such small sums as the size of his allowance enabled him to afford, at the same time taking a genuine and friendly interest in his progress. A more dangerous step was the joining of a roaring club, which, to avoid the "stupid, formal, ancient prigs" and "horrid perriwig bores" who frequented the

coffee-room, supped daily in the private room of a Bow Street tavern and passed the night in the less creditable houses by which it was surrounded. Another club of which he was a

member frequented a house at Battersea, where they engaged in a strenuous game of " field tennis " (apparently more like Pelota than our lawn tennis) invented by themselves. The sport was generally followed by a debauch, and not the least of the tavern's attractions was the landlord's daughter, familiarly known along the river-side as " Silver-tail " by reason of the extraordinary fairness of her hair. But still Battersea and " Silver-tail " were less dangerous than "Blasted Bet Wilkinson " and her comrades, with whom he went the nightly round from 'Marjoram's' or ' The Dog and Duck' to ' The Soup Shop' and The Finish,' whence (if poor pilgarlic,' as he

quaintly calls himself, was not earlier found lying drunk in the kennel and carried home by good samaritans) he would

creep exhausted to bed at five or six in the morning. In addition to all these dissipations, William kept a boat upon the river, and in 1768 assisted in the notable feat of rowing an eight-oared cutter a hundred and thirty miles in thirteen hours ; and he was also a famous cricketer, taking part in a great Eton and Westminster match in the same year. This match, however, was a fatal one for him. It took place at a time when his family had gone to France and left him alone

in London with the sole care of his father's houses in London and at Twickenham, his cellars, and his horses, and also of a considerable sum of money. This confidence was the more reckless inasmuch as William had but lately been discovered in a most reprehensible course of fraud. His own earnings proving inadequate for the supply of his pleasures, he had for some time past been regularly appropriating the sums entrnsted to him for counsel's fees, Sr.c., to the same purpose. Poor William ! we have his word for it that be intended to go into the strictest training for the match. Unfortunately, when he was actually on the way to Twickenham to spend his last night soberly he was waylaid by three raffish acquaintances, who persuaded him to stay in town and join a snug supper party at the ' Shake- spear.' Evening came, and our hero, despite the warnings of the tavern-keeper, drank himself insensible and woke up next morning at a bagnio in a state of abject misery, and, what was worse, robbed of both his own and his father's money. There was only time to gallop down to Hampton for the match, and, though the Westminsters proved successful, not much of the credit was due to their famous "stop behind the wicket." Of his three genial acquaintances one subsequently broke his neck at Guildford races, one blew out his brains in the Fleet, and the third suffered transportation for highway robbery. As for William, a terrible blow awaited him on reaching St. Albans Street that night. He found his family returned, baying left his poor mother dead in France. This exploit was the end of his career in London, for his father lost no time in procuring him a commission in the military service of the East India Company. William, cheerful to the last, joined the "Euphrates" Lodge of the " Bucks " at the Globe in Craven Street, where he proceeded to air his new regimentals to his own great satisfaction, and at last in December, after giving a grand dinner and "a skinful of wine" to all the destitute ladies of Marjoram's and ' The Dog and Duck,' and receiving a present of a gold toothpick case with a miniature of herself on the inside of the lid from one of the many objects of his more serious affections, who to do her justice had made every effort to keep him out of mischief during the last few months, finally left England in December.

The story of his travels in India and China during the next five years contains much lively anecdote and observation which would have delighted Smollett, but on the whole these chapters lack the freshness of the early life in London. Nor does he recapture the old atmosphere even when he returns to England and comes into contact with the notorious "Mohawks" and their imitators among the young bloods of his day, whose violence and brutality he had the courage and good sense consistently to oppose. Alas! his new sobriety did not extend to the improvement of his own conduct. Before long he was embarked on the old courses, and did not scruple even to have recourse to the same system of misappropriation which had caused his former downfall. His father once more came to the rescue, and the end of the volume leaves him sailing from England a second time (but on this occasion without even the consolation of a red coat), to take up the practice of the law in Jamaica. It is to be hoped that Mr. Spencer will soon give us the remaining volumes of this most entertaining and instructive memoir, which deserves, both for its human and historical interest, to be widely studied.