as the Travels were out of hand Smollett resolved on a summer journey to Scotland. The society of Edinburgh, then at the apogee of its brilliance, paid due attention to the famous Dr Smollett. He was visited by Hume, Home, Robertson, Adam Smith, Blair, Carlyle, Cullen and the Monros. He went to Glasgow to see Dr Moore (where he patted the head of the future hero of Coruña), and stayed with his cousin, James Smollett, in his newly built mansion of Cameron. His mother, who hardly knew his toil-worn visage until it relaxed into his old roguish smile, died in this autumn, and he was still in a precarious state of health when he proceeded to Bath, spending the Christmas of 1766 in Gay Street, where his complaint at last took 1 turn for the better, and where it is possible that he may have commenced a rough draft of Humphrey Clinker.
In 1 768 he was again in London, and with a return of his vital energy came a recrudescence of the old savagery. The History and Adventures of an Atom is a very clever, but abominably coarse, Rabelaisian satire upon the whole conduct of public affairs in England from the beginning of the Seven Years' War down to the date of publication. He lashes out on all sides without fear or favour. The king, Chatham, Bute and North are bespattered with filth, the acridity of which owes something to Gulliver, with aid as to local colour from the Jesuit and other accounts of Japan which had come under his ken as a compiler of travels. After its publication in 1769, without other serious consequences, Smollett's health completely relapsed, and in December (a consulate in the Mediterranean having been refused him) he left England finally, and settled first at Pisa and then near Antignano, a few miles out of Leghorn. There, during the autumn of 1770, he penned his immortal Humphrey Clinker, in which he reverts to his favourite form of itinerant letters, a rare example of late maturity of literary power and fecundity of humour. The sardonic humour, persistent curiosity and keen faculty of observation shown in the Travels are here combined with the mellow contentment of the voyager who has forgotten the small worries of transport and with the enthusiasm of the veteran who revisits the scenes of his youth. The character drawing, too, though still caustic, seems riper and more matured. Smollett's speculative and informing 18th-century mind is here content for the most part, like Goldsmith's, merely to amuse.
Smollett died at Leghorn aged fifty on the 17th of September 1771, and was buried in the old English cemetery there. Three years later the Smollett obelisk was put up at Renton (it now stands in the parish school-ground), half-way between Dumbarton and Balloch. The best portrait belongs to the Smollett family, Cameron House, Loch Lomond (engraved by Freeman, 1831). The genuineness of the others, if we except that in the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, is doubtful. The novelist has been confused with the Dr Smollett, the contemporary of Dr William Hunter, who figures in Rowlandson's " Dissecting Room " (Royal Coll. of Surgeons Cat., 1900).
Hume said that Smollett was like a coco-nut, rough outside, but full of human kindness within. He was easily ruffled by the rubs of fortune of which he had more than his fair share. Hence the adjectives corrosive and splenetic so often applied to a nature essentially both generous and tender. After Fielding, Smollett counts as the greatest purveyor of comic prose-epic of contemporary life to his generation, if not to his century. Scott and Dickens regarded him as fully Fielding's equal. Hazlitt and Thackeray thought otherwise. Equally rationalist and pagan with Fielding, Smollett is more of a pedagogue and less of the instinctive scholar and wit than his predecessor. His method in its broad outlines is similar, historic and ambulant rather than philosophic or poetic, but he has more potential romance or poetry about his make-up than the mystery-hating Fielding. In the recognized requirements of prose-epic such as plot, character, scene, reflection and diction, Smollett could fairly hold his own. His prose, which carries on the robust tradition from Swift and Defoe to Johnson and Jeffrey, is more modern in tone than that of his great rival. In fictions such as Tom Jones, Roderick Random and the like, England could at length feel that it possessed compositions which might claim kinship and comparison with Cervantes and Le Sage. Much that these writers attempted has been done again in a style better adjusted to the increasing refinement of a later age. But Smollett's great powers of observation and description, his caustic and indignant turn of speech, will long render him an invaluable witness in the century which he so well represents. Much that he did was mere hackwork, but at his best he ranks with the immortals.
The estimate formed of Smollett's work during the past generation has probably been a diminishing one, as we may infer in part from the fact that there is no standard Life and no definitive edition of the works. The chief collective editions are as follows: 6 vols., Edinburgh, 1790; 6 vols., London, 1796, with R. Anderson's Memoir; Works, ed. J. Moore, 1797 (re-edited J. P. Browne, 8 vols., 1872); Works, ed. Henley and Seccombe, Constable (12 vols., 1899–1902). To which must be added a one-volume Miscellaneous Works, ed. Thomas Roscoe (1841); Selected Works (with a careful life by David Herbert) (Edinburgh, 1870); Ballantyne's edition of the Novels with Scott's judicious memoir and criticism (2 vols., 1821); and Professor G. Saintsbury's edition of the Novels (12 vols., 1895). There are short Lives, by Robert Chambers (1867), David Hannay (1887) and O. Smeaton (1897). Additional information of recent date will be found in the' article on Smollett in the Dict. Nat. Biog., Masson's British Novelists (and other books on the development of English Fiction), H. Graham's Scottish Men of Letters in the Eighteenth Century, Blackwood's Mag. for May 1900; and the present writer's introduction to Smollett's Travels through France and Italy (World's Classics, 1907). (T. Se.)
SMUGGLING (O. Eng. smeógan, smūgan, to creep, with the idea
of secrecy) , a breach of the revenue laws either by the importation
or the exportation of prohibited goods or by the evasion of
customs duties on goods liable to duty. Legislation on the subject
in England has been very active from the 14th century downwards.
In the reign of Edward III. the illicit introduction of
base coin from abroad led to the provision of the Statute of
Treasons 1351, making it treason to import counterfeit money
as the money called " Lushburgh." Such importation is still
an offence, though no longer treason. After the Statute of
Treasons a vast number of acts dealing with smuggling, were
passed, most of which will be found recited in the repealing act
of 1825. In the 18th and the early years of the 19th century,
smuggling (chiefly of wine, spirits, tobacco and bullion) was so
generally practised in Great Britain as to become a kind of
national failing. The prevalence of the offence may be judged
from the report of Sir J. Cope's committee in 1732 upon the frauds
on the revenue. The smuggler of the 18th century finds an
apologist in Adam Smith, who writes of him as " a person who,
though no doubt highly blamable for violating the laws of his
country, is frequently incapable of violating those of natural
justice, and would have been in every respect an excellent citizen
had not the laws of his country made that a crime which nature
never meant to be so." The gradual reduction of duties brought
the offence in the United Kingdom into comparative insignificance,
and it is now almost confined to tobacco, though the sugar
duty has led to smuggling of saccharin. Most of the existing
legislation on the subject of smuggling is contained in the Customs
Consolidation Act 1876.
The main provisions are as follows. Vessels engaged in smuggling are liable to forfeiture and their owners and masters to a penalty not exceeding £500. Smuggled and prohibited goods are liable to forfeiture. Officers of customs have a right of search of vessels and persons. Fraudulent evasion or attempted evasion of customs duties renders the offender subject to forfeit either treble the value of the goods or £100 at the election of the commissioners of customs. Heavy penalties are incurred by resistance to officers of customs, rescue of persons or goods, assembling to run goods, signalling smuggling vessels, shooting at vessels, boats, or officers of the naval or revenue service, cutting adrift customs vessels, offering goods for sale under pretence of being smuggled, &c. Penalties may be recovered either by action or information in the superior courts or by summary proceedings. In criminal proceedings the defendant is competent and compellable to give evidence. The Merchant Shipping Act 1894 makes any seaman or apprentice, after conviction for smuggling whereby loss or damage is caused to the master or owner of a ship, liable to pay to such master or owner such a sum as is sufficient to reimburse the master or owner for such loss or damage, and the whole or a proportional part of his wages may be retained in satisfaction of this liability. Additional provisions as to smuggling are also contained in the Customs and Inland Revenue Act 1879, and the Customs and Inland Revenue Act 1881. A smuggling contract is generally illegal. But it may be valid, and the
