The Fellow Commoner is the biography of a thief; whose
fa- ther was hanged, and whose mother, after a life spent in peccadil- loes and drinking drams, is converted at the eleventh hour by a reli- gious spinster. The old maid adopts the orphan, and duly in- structs him in the Calvinistic doctrines; but the first use he makes of predestination is to sin fearlessly, in the confidence that his " calling and election are sure." After robbing his benefac- tress both living and dead, our author takes to the town and the road ; consorts with gipsies ; accumulates property ; and, smitten with compunction, forsakes the profession. lie then turns mar gler ; goes to Friuli e, and engages in sundry adventures, which end in his being, innocently, bent to the gallies ; whence he ma- nages to e, cape on board a ship that turns out to be a slaver. This gives the author an opportunity of describing what he conceives to be the horrors of the Middle Passage, and introducing a shipwreck and desolate island after Robinson Crusoe. Escaping from his insular monarchy, the hero at last returns to England ; discovers that a gipsy girl to whom he is betrothed, and vv ho accompanied him in many of his adventures, is well born and a coheiress; and, after a due probation to prove his repentance, the Fellow Com- moner marries and is happy.
In the parts of all this there is not much novelty ; and the at- tempt at combining such gross inconsistencies into a connected whole, can of course produce nothing but repulsive improbability. Neither are these faults of the plan redeemed by any excellence in the execution. The characters, incidents, and descriptions of the Fellow Commoner want truth ; his style is wordy, and his jokes balderdash.
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