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Smollett's Pamphleteering Foe Shebbeare

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

James R. Foster
James R. Foster*
Affiliation:
Long Island University
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Extract

On November 28, 1760, when Smollett entered the King's Bench Prison, he must have looked forward with some misgiving to spending a period of three months in the same gaol with his old enemy “Doctor” Shebbeare, who on that day had served two years of his three-year term. These two writers had been at loggerheads ever since Smollett's vitriolic reviews of the “Letters to the People of England” began to appear in the Critical Review. And now Smollett had offended again by putting a caricature of Shebbeare in The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves, the novel that had been running in the 1760 numbers of the British Magazine. Thomas Seccombe's placing of Smollett's imprisonment in the early summer of 1759, which will now have to be given up, encouraged the view that the first part of Sir Launcelot Greaves was written in the King's Bench. Seccombe believed that it was on one of his visits to Smollett in prison that Newbery engaged his services for the British Magazine. That Shebbeare, the model of Ferret in Sir Launcelot Greaves, was at hand to be observed, seemed to strengthen this assumption and to lead one to suppose that perhaps Smollett had let fall a hint about the nature of the novel he was writing and received from his fellow prisoner a response as crabbed as the remarks with which Ferret greeted Sir Launcelot. But these are false assumptions. By putting imaginary objections in the mouth of Ferret, who never spoke well of anything, Smollett merely hoped to forestall criticism of his novel. Only the last installments of the narrative could have been written in prison.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 57 , Issue 4-Part1 , December 1942 , pp. 1053 - 1100
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1942

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References

Note 1 in page 1053 D. N. B. “Smollett.”

Note 2 in page 1053 Harold Stein, “Smollett's Imprisonment,” LTLS, May 5, 1927 establishes the exact date of the trial as Nov. 24, 1760. This is supported by Sir William Blackstone, Reports of Cases determined in the Several Courts of Westminster-Hall from 1746 to 1779 (London, 1828), i, 268, who lists Smollett's trial as the last in the Michaelmas term of 1760. Claude E. Jones, in his recent Smollett Studies, University of California Publications in English, Vol. 9, No. 2 (1942), prints Blackstone's report of the case, but (failing to note the date) is led to the false conclusion that Smollett served his term in the interval between his letter from Chelsea, dated Oct. 12, 1759 and Feb. 21, 1760, the date (according to Jones) of William Huggins's letter congratulating him on the “Restoration to his dear Liberty” (see pp. 87–88). But Smollett could not have been in the Southwark gaol at this period, for he wrote from Chelsea on Oct. 30, 1759, Dec. 14, 1759 and Feb. 4, 1760. Moreover, the Huggins letter, which is printed in L. F. Powell's “William Huggins and Tobias Smollett,” MP, Nov., 1936, xxxiv, is actually dated Feb. 21, 1761. Smollett's answer to it (also printed by Powell) is from Chelsea, is dated Feb. 25, 1761, and has this postscript: “I offer may best Respects to Mrs. Gatehouse, not forgetting our kind Landlord of Wallop, whose Generosity made the Bells of Chelsea ring at my Deliverance.” The last two dates reveal the interesting fact that Smollett did not have to serve out his full term, but was released some time before Feb. 28, 1761, when his three months would have been completed.

Jones, ibid., p. 93, refers twice to Shebbeare as Thomas Shebbeare, but in the appendix he appears with his correct given name, John.

Note 3 in page 1053 Ch. ii. “What! … you set up for a modern Don Quixote? The scheme is rather stale and extravagant. What was a humorous romance and well-timed satire in Spain near two hundred years ago, will make but a sorry jest, and appear equally insipid and absurd when really acted upon affectation, at this time of day, in a country like England.”

Note 4 in page 1054 Seccombe, ibid., “Scott relates that Smollett while engaged upon this work was at Paxton in Berwickshire on a visit to George Home. When post time drew near he retired for an hour to scribble off the necessary amount of copy.” This must refer to the first part of the novel only.

Note 5 in page 1054 He tried to vindicate his conduct in An Answer to the Queries contained in a Letter to Dr. Shebbeare, printed in the Public Ledger, Aug. 10, 1774, which was reviewed in the Monthly Review, Jan. 1775; 31–35, lii. Here he promised “not to die” until his history was completed.

Note 6 in page 1055 The most authoritative and complete biographical sketch is the article written by Gerald Le Grys Norgate for the Dictionary of National Biography. Some of the material for this sketch came from An Account of the Life and Writings of Dr. John Shebbeare, European Magazine, Aug., 1788; 83–87; 167–168, xiv, which was written at the time of Shebbeare's death by an unknown author. Further Particulars Concerning Dr. J. Shebbeare, from a correspondent, in the same volume of the European (pp. 244–245), also anonymous, throws some light on Shebbeare's youth. The author of Allibone's article on Shebbeare states that the first European Magazine sketch was published separately and was “practically transferred” to Chalmer's Biographical Dictionary. References to sources other than these listed in this footnote will be indicated.

Note 7 in page 1055 The fortunes of the family declined with the death of the father, who left his son but a slender sum. For a while the mother carried on the corn-factoring business, but this at length failed and the widow was removed to King's Bench Prison, where she died. Later one of Shebbeare's sisters died in London. Another died at Bideford in great poverty, it is said.

Note 8 in page 1055 The marriage must have been in 1733, when Shebbeare was twenty-four, if his own account of the years he gave to Mrs. Burney was correct. In the Early Diary of Frances Burney, Feb. 20, 1774, he said of his wife, “I think I have been yoked for one and forty years, and i have wished my wife under ground any time since.” The marriage was an unhappy one, although there was a son and two daughters. Shebbeare posed as a woman hater being in this respect like Dr. Akenside.

Note 9 in page 1056 Cf. the doggerel verses in “abuse of the Scotch nation” that Jerry Melford pointed out to Lismahago and Matthew Bramble in Humphrey Clinker.

Note 10 in page 1056 Ch. ci.

Note 11 in page 1056 The subject of this description was probably not Bideford, but the old family seat in South Devon where a hundred and a village bear the name of Shebbeare. The description is somewhat like Smollett's picture of the House of Cameron on Loch Lomond in Humphrey Clinker.

Note 12 in page 1056 Ch. iv.

Note 13 in page 1056 “Epitaph in Memory of Thomas Coster, member for Bristol,” printed in the European Magazine, Aug., 1788.

Note 14 in page 1056 1740. Second ed. 1760.

Note 15 in page 1057 In 1755 he dedicated Lydia to Mr. William Borrow, merchant of Bristol. It is said that the Monitor, a paper for which Shebbeare wrote, was originally planned by Richard Beckford, late member for Bristol. The Monitor was an Anti-Whig paper. See the Critical Review, Nov., 1756; 343–348, ii.

Note 16 in page 1057 Just after this, Dr. S—– was called in the night to attend to one of Lady Vane's lovers, Lord B—–, whom he found “almost suffocated.”

Note 17 in page 1057 Probably a doctor would be more likely to know Sangredo than Lady Vane.

Note 18 in page 1058 This sentence was added in the revised edition of Peregrine Pickle (1758), which was the work of Lady Vane and Smollett. Shebbeare was in the toils of the law at that time.

Note 19 in page 1058 Howard S. Buck, A Study in Smollett, chiefly Peregrine Pickle (1925), p. 47, writes, “The Memoirs themselves make it almost certain that Dr. Shebbeare was in fact Lady Vane's physician.” Buck suggests that Lady Vane may be the patron mentioned in the preface of the Regicide (1749) and the lady of fashion in Melopyn's story in Roderick Random. She had interceded for Mr. Hunter of Burnsyde, a Scotch refugee Smollett saw in France in 1750. But it is not likely that Smollett fell in love with her, or, like Peregrine in the novel, thought of falling in love with her. Yet Peregrine's reason for not doing so, the fate of her former lovers, “who seemed to have been wound up to a degree of enthusiasm, that looked more like the effect of enchantment than the inspiration of human attractions: an ecstasy of passion he durst not venture to undergo,” might well have been what held Smollett back.

Note 20 in page 1058 Lewis Melville [Lewis S. Benjamin], The Life and Letters of T. Smollett (1721–1771), (1926), p. 60. “If, however, as it is said, Lady Vane in the composition of the Memoirs was assisted by Dr. John Shebbeare, that very pedestrian political writer, then, as Smollett knew Shebbeare, perhaps the mystery [about the authorship of the Memoirs] is explained.

Note 21 in page 1059 Howard S. Buck, op. cit., shows that the evidence supports the view that Lady Vane wrote the Memoirs, paid Shebbeare for editorial advice and paid Smollett for inserting them in Peregrine Pickle. Lewis Melville and E. A. Baker both follow Buck.

Note 22 in page 1059 I.e., Gentleman's Magazine, May, 1788; 379. lviii. Pt. i. This refers to the article in the April number and asserts that Lady Vane actually wrote the Memoirs herself and “superintended the press” while they were printing. The writer evidently confuses Lady Vane with Teresia Constantia Phillips, who printed her Apology (1748) herself. His assertion that “in beauty of composition” the Memoirs are “superior to the rest of the work” is merely an echo of an advertisement which had appeared in the Royal Magazine and Quarterly Bee, 1751; 466, ii, “The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle. In which are included Memoirs of a Lady of Quality (supposed to be Lady Vane) which are most elegantly wrote, and, greatly outshine the rest of the work.” It is not unlikely that Shebbeare had a hand in this advertisement.

Note 23 in page 1059 Ralph Griffiths, who published this, must have known that Hill wrote the Adventures of Lady Frail and that the pamphlet helped Hill in his quarrel with Smollett. Griffiths published a collection of Hill's “Inspectors.” Isaac Disraeli, Calamities and Quarrels of Authors, 192, ii, remarks that the Monthly Reviewer “writes with the tenderness of a brother of whatever relates to our hero” (i.e., Hill).

The author of A Parallel, etc. mentions a “Lady who in a manner lays claim to the whole merit of, at least, one of these two noble performances” and thinks that the world may conclude from the similarity of the two stories “that it can be only Modesty that prevents her declaring she has an equal Right to both.” The reference, of course, is to Lady Vane. Her cause was championed by An Apology for the Conduct of a Lady of Quality, lately traduced under the name of Lady Frail, an anonymous pamphlet which the Monthly Review, July, 1751; 157, v, calls “a low, trifling, catch-penny performance.”

Note 24 in page 1060 No. 14 in the collection of “Inspectors” published in 1751.

Note 25 in page 1060 The reference seems to be to Lady Vane, who wrote the Memoirs (1751), Teresia Constantia Phillips, who wrote and printed An Apology for the Conduct of Mrs. Teresia Constantia Phillips (1748) and Laetitia Pilkington, who wrote her Memoirs (1748). Hill's disdain was hypocritical for he wrote his Letters from the Inspector to a Lady, with the genuine Answers (1752) in imitation. The letters in the novel are supposed to be genuine and to picture a real love affair between Hill himself and a Mrs. D—–. A lady who was supposed to be this Mrs. D—– advertised in the papers that the letters were not hers.

Note 26 in page 1060 No. 24 in the collection printed in 1753.

Note 27 in page 1061 E.g., the apostrophe to Envy beginning, “O baleful Envy” is in his vein, as is also the odd sketch of Lord Vane on his first appearance. Lady Vane's sense of humor must have been very masculine or certain scenes are Shebbeare's: e.g. the scene in which Lady Vane locks her husband in a room at Bath. When he screams in fright she remarks that she cannot imagine the cause of his panic unless “he thought I designed to ravish him; an insult, than which nothing was further from my intention.”

Note 28 in page 1061 Lewis Melville, op. cit.

Note 29 in page 1061 Peregrine Pickle, Lord—–'s reply to Lady Vane's question about her motives for publishing the Memoirs.

Note 30 in page 1061 See the Gentleman's Magazine, May, 1788; 461, lviii.

Note 31 in page 1061 H. S. Buck, op. cit., p. 44.

Note 32 in page 1062 There is a reference in Lydia to this and to one of the main contentions of The Marriage Act: that is, that the Act encourages immortality. Shebbeare describes the notorious Mother Douglas as defending prostitution in these words. “Who speaks against it, but a parson or two, and a novel writer, who is so simple a fellow, as to wish there were no w—–s in the world. A fine fellow to judge of laws, indeed! But our wise —–y [Ministry] knew the good consequence of having a great number of girls upon the town; and therefore that fellow who wrote the Marriage Act, is punished for writing against it, by shewing his face twice a term amongst the greatest scoundrels of the city, who are brought there also for other notorious crimes. A fit punishment for his daring to speak against the propagation of fine girls, and so wise an adm—–tion!” [administration].

Note 33 in page 1062 Matthew Bramble's letter of June 2 from London.

Note 34 in page 1062 Charles Johnstone in Crysal; or, the Adventures of a Guinea (1760–65), iii, Ch.xlvi, had both Shebbeare and these conditions in mind when he has Churchill's publisher say, “Fools may be frightened at the thoughts of a cart's-tail or a pillory, I know better things. When they come in a popular cause, nothing sets a man's name up to such advantage; and that is the first step toward making a fortune; as for the danger, it is a mere bug-bear, while the mob is on my side. And, therefore I will go on without fear, if I am not bought off. A pension or a pillory is the word.” “Former occasions,” in iii, ch. lii, p. 204, refers to Shebbeare's trial before Pratt.

Note 35 in page 1063 Letters on the English Nation: by Batista Angeloni, a Jesuit who resided many years in London. Translated from the original Italian, by the author of the Marriage Act, a Novel. 2v. (1755). The reviewer in the Monthly Review, Monthly Catalogue for April and May, 1755; 387–388, xii, calls this book a piratical or counterfeit imitation of Voltaire's and LeBlanc's letters concerning the English nation, and declares that it is no translation. He believes that the heart of the author was as instrumental as his head in choosing a Jesuit for his title and adds that the author's “rancourous, insolent dogmatical turn” disgusts the most candid reader.

Note 36 in page 1063 The Practice of Physic: Founded on principles in physiology and pathology, hitherto unapplied in physical enquiries. By John Shebbeare, M.D. reg. acad. scient. Paris soc. In two volumes. 1755.

Note 37 in page 1063 Monthly Review, May, 1755; 401–402, xii. This article is not listed in Benjamin C. Nangle's The Monthly Review. First Series, 1749–89, Indexes of Contributors and Articles (Oxford, 1934). There are only three Shebbeare items in this book. They are The Occasional Critic, Oct. 1757; 367–374, xvii, by Owen Ruffhead; Answer to the Queries, Jan. 1775; 31–35, lii, by Andrew Kippis; and Letter to the People of England, March, 1760; 235–239, xxii, by Owen Ruffhead. The last pamphlet is so different from the other “Letters to the People of England” that attribution to Shebbeare is questionable. Nowhere else is it listed as his. If it is his he must have written it in the King's Bench. Yet it is not likely that he would have had the pamphlet printed, as it was, by Ralph Griffiths, who was at that time his enemy. However the chief idea set forth in the work, that England should put an immediate end to the war and obtain an advantageous peace by making payments to the Court of Vienna, the Elector of Saxony, and perhaps the French, resembles in some respects Shebbeare's opinion in the matter.

Note 38 in page 1064 The reviewer adds that there is much unquoted borrowing in the book, that the author parades his learning in medicine and his taste in painting and statuary and “… in brief, like Bayes, with his thunder and lightning, is for terrifying the town into their applause of himself, and himself only.” Indeed the book “… contains the least self-knowledge, the least candor, or good-manners, of any treatise that has lately fallen under our consideration.”

Note 39 in page 1064 The dedication of Lydia; or, Filial Piety is dated May 30, 1755. It was reviewed in the Monthly Review, June, 1755; 478, xii. In the May number Griffiths gave brief notices of two pamphlets written in defense of Richard Blacow, who is attacked in Lydia as one of the Monthly Reviewers.

Note 40 in page 1064 Lydia; or, Filial Piety, Ch. lxxxix.

Note 41 in page 1064 The cardinal principle of the Review, according to the French doctor, is that writers who send copies of their books to the editor are good, and those who do not are fools. The doctor himself, however, writes the reviews for his journal without reading any books.

Note 42 in page 1065 The French doctor is Dr. Matthew Maty (1718–76), physician, author of the Journal Britannique, editor of Chesterfield's Miscellaneous Works (1777), librarian of the British Museum, and foreign secretary of the Royal Society. He frequented a club of physicians, was a friend of Sloane, and helped Gibbon with his Essay on the Study of Literature. Although his articles in the Journal were just and fair, some of them aroused the anger of Dr. Johnson. When Maty was proposed as a suitable assistant in a projected literary journal, Johnson exclaimed, “The little black dog! I'd throw him in the Thames first.” In his review of the Rambler (Journal Britannique, April, 1751; 363) Maty wrote:

On ne change point le talent
Qu'on reçut du Ciel en partage
Jamais C-bb-r ne sera sage,
Ni J-hns-n ne sera plaisant.

He added that perhaps a little more vivacity and “d'enjouement” would help the Rambler. Although he praised the Dictionary (Journal Brittannique, July–August, 1755; 218 ff.) he thought that if Johnson had used the old dedication he would have saved himself the trouble of writing a new one, which “on est tenté de regarder comme destinée à faire perdre de vue quelques unes des obligations que M. Johnson avoit contractées, et le Mécène qu'il s'étoit choisi.”

Note 43 in page 1065 B—–w is Richard Blacow, M.A.F.R.S. (1723?–60). He aroused Shebbeare's enmity when in 1747 he helped bring to trial some rioting Jacobite gownsmen of Oxford. When in 1755 he was made Canon of Windsor, his enemies charged that his preferment was due to his activities as an informer. In the Monthly Review, May, 1755; 395–396, xii, there are brief notices of two pamphlets, one by Blacow himself, defending his conduct. The only other writing he did for Griffiths, a review of a translation from the Hebrew, appeared in the June number of this year. The reviewer of a pamphlet attacking Blacow, An Answer to Mr. B—–w's Apology, etc. By a Student of Oxford (Monthly Review, Aug. 1755; 150–151, xiii), defends him.

Note 44 in page 1065 The “others” are Ralph Griffiths and his wife. Shebbeare hated Griffiths because of the reviews his books received in the Monthly, and because he was a Whig and a Dissenter.

Note 45 in page 1066 After Maty's death in 1776, an account of his illness and the appearance of his dead body was written by Drs. Hunter and Henry Watson and published in the Philosophical Transactions.

Note 46 in page 1066 With this inscription:

Semiviro immortali
Here continues to stand
In his original perfection
J. M—–y,
Doctor in physick
Doctor in philosophy
Fellow of the Royal Society of London,
And of Berlin;
That being so marvellously favoured
By Providence
Selected
From all the race of the creation,
To be the distinguished link
In the great chain
Of Nature
That does so amazingly join
the Monkey
and the
Man.

Note 47 in page 1066 There is an engraving of the doctor's being tossed on page 200 of the Novelist's Magazine, Vol. xxii, 1786.

Note 48 in page 1066 P. 389, xii.

Note 49 in page 1066 Dr. Maty wrote and published a memoir of the life of Dr. Mead in 1755.

Note 50 in page 1066 1755; 211.

Note 51 in page 1067 The laws of England offer less hope of satisfaction for defamatory libels than for any other crime, writes Dr. Maty. Consequently there is nothing more common. Under pretext of assuring the liberty of the press, one must tolerate these venomous stinging insects who slander without fear of punishment. Their precaution of omitting some letters in the names or designations of those whose characters they wound without shame, frees them from the necessity of proving their calumnies or making good the damage they have done. Let these writers whose writings and style smell of baseness and sterile malignity learn that those they attack, sustained by the feeling of their innocence, abandon them to the execration of the public and their own consciences.

Note 52 in page 1067 The Practice of Physic was signed as by John Shebbeare, M.D. Reg. Acad. Scient. Paris, Soc.

Note 53 in page 1067 Byng's Minorca misadventure came about a year after Lydia.

Note 54 in page 1067 This must be the Duke of Newcastle. The essay is in Ch. xx.

Note 55 in page 1067 George Washington.

Note 56 in page 1068 Perhaps this is Fanny Hill of Cleland's Fanny Hill, or the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, which Griffiths published in 1750.

Note 57 in page 1068 Teresia Constantia Phillips, whose Apology inspired Lady Vane.

Note 58 in page 1068 Dick's friend, the London rider, wants to attack the French, “but the cowardly M—–y suffer everything to be done that the French rascals please. That damned Hanover ruins us all; there lies the mischief.”

Note 59 in page 1068 The soul and body of the bad Quaker Aminadab is described as “a monstrous union—like that of Scotland with this Kingdom, something poor and scurvy with something fat and saucy.” See p. 120, ed. 1786.

Note 60 in page 1068 Lydia, p. 70, ed. 1786, condemns the “singular” methods used by the Scotch to advance themselves.

Note 61 in page 1069 See Macaulay's Walpole's Letters to Sir Horace Mann for famous satires of the Duke of Newcastle. The satire in Lydia is not mentioned here, however.

Note 62 in page 1069 The idea for this situation came from Ferdinand, Count Fathom. In this novel a smuggler, hoping for a reward, denounces Fathom as the Pretender's eldest son.

Note 63 in page 1069 They charge Popkins to give out that the Pretender's son had been lately in England. As a reward Popkins was made supervisor in Wales. He could not be made Canon of Windsor because “that place is always given to an informer.” Shebbeare's enemy Richard Blacow was made Canon of Windsor in 1755.

Note 64 in page 1069 Compare this with the Newcastle in Humphrey Clinker and the Adventures of an Atom. Benjamin Bissell, The American Indian in English Literature of the Eighteenth Century, New Haven, 1925, quotes this passage but does not identify the minister.

Note 65 in page 1069 Lydia, Ch. xxxiv.

Note 66 in page 1070 The Germans and the German subsidies are bitterly attacked here and on p. 107, ed. 1786. Flatterwood writes that the King's journey to Hanover shows “true paternal impartiality,” as he risks his life to “secure and fortify the feeble; whilst he leaves the strong, at the eve of the war, to the care of Providence, and the Duke of —–.” [Newcastle]

“With what joyful eyes must he be beheld by his subjects,” the ironic Flatterwood observes, “[he] who is ever propagating arts and sciences, rewarding, encouraging, and preferring men of learning and genius, from his own private munificence: whilst the King of Prussia, France, and Spain, are depressing merit, wherever it dares to shew its head.” In another passage Flimsy's mother is advised not to educate her son. “Besides, madam,” the adviser said, “the m—–r has made it a constant rule, never to promote men of letters. There is an aversion at present in the ad—–n to all men of great sense and learning.” In the Marriage Act, i, 84, Shebbeare remarks that it has been out of fashion to reward ingenuity at court “ever since Mr. Hogarth received that ample Reward of Five Shillings, for a Print of his ‘March to Finchley-Common,‘ after having Exhibited the Picture, which Sum may be supposed to have quite exhausted the Fund for that Purpose.”

Note 67 in page 1070 Early Diary of Frances Burney, i, 283 ff. Fanny Burney closed her entry for Feb. 20, 1774 with these words: “… and so, Adieu, sweet Doctor Shebbeare,” and added as a conscientious afterthought, “I must read the Marriage Act and Lydia, nevertheless.” That she did read them seems to be indicated by the caricatural touch in the portraits of some of her more abnoxious lordlings. Probit's story of Dr. De Carte's daughter in Lydia tells of a nurse who sends her own daughter in place of the foster child to the parents who have employed her. This, of course, is the situation in Evelina and may have been the source. Rev. Arthur Villars is somewhat like the good parson who reared Eliza Barter in the Marriage Act.

Note 68 in page 1070 Ibid., p. 289, Note 2. Mrs. Ellis remembered Shebbeare's name because “when a girl, she was sharply rebuked for reading one of them [i.e., one of the 34 novels which Mrs. Ellis mistakenly attributes to Shebbeare in this note. He wrote only two novels] of which she can recall neither the name, or the plot; but this conversation brings back its dulness.” The novel was certainly Lydia, for Mrs. Ellis read the book in “a dear and delightful collection, never to be forgotten.” This was, of course, the Novelist's Magazine.

Note 69 in page 1071 Nineteen years before this he had attacked them in Lydia (Ch. v) for employing writers to collect scraps from old works and to tack these together “like rags gathered by old women” to form a “new manufacture.”

Note 70 in page 1071 This is not exactly accurate. The first edition of the Marriage Act, in two volumes, was printed for J. Hodges and B. Collins in 1754. In a reissue (1755) the title was changed to Matrimony, a Novel. A third edition was printed for T. Lowndes in 1766. Lydia; or, Filial Piety, 1755, in four volumes. The second edition, in two volumes, was of 1769, and it was reprinted in 1786 in volume xxii of the Novelist's Magazine. The D.N.B. lists the last item as another edition.

Note 71 in page 1071 Monthly Review, Nov. 1754; 395, xi. The subtitle runs: “In which the ruin of female honour, the contempt of the clergy, the destruction of private and public liberty, with other fatal consequences, are considered.” Shebbeare dedicated the novel to the Duke of Bedford, but did not sign the dedication. The reviewer calls Shebbeare “a writer of some parts, but more virulence, stimulated by party prejudice against the present admiration, as we are led to conclude from many passages of this work …”

Note 72 in page 1071 See Citizen of the World, letters 72 and 114. Smollett took the opposite side. In the review of the Continuation of his History (Critical Review, Oct. 1761; 283–295, xii) the writer (not Smollett) remarks that the opponents of the Act “foresaw a great number of evils in the train of this bill, which have not yet been realized. A part of the History dealing with the Marriage Act is printed here as an excerpt.

Note 73 in page 1071 See Ernest A. Baker, History of the English Novel, v, 47. “The style is an amalgam of Fielding and Smollett; the sentiment, as the ill-connected stories proceed, becomes more and more an affectation of Richardson's sensibility.”

Note 74 in page 1072 In the Marriage Act he refers to Fielding as “an author whom we adore.” This “adoration” was due as much to Fielding's political beliefs as to his literary achievements.

Note 75 in page 1072 Mrs. Barter is the first of Shebbeare's monstrous viragoes which he modeled after Laetitia Snap. She is repulsive, immoral and lusty. Her husband was a Presbyterian who “had learnt the true Cant to a miracle.” By unscrupulous methods they disinherit a tobacconist's heir and accumulate a fortune.

Note 76 in page 1072 Molly's husband knows that he is not the father of her child. He suspects the valet, who argues himself out of an awkward situation by the use of Lucina Sine Concubitu, “written by the author of Pompey the Little,” wherein “it is proved that a lady may be breeding without the Knowledge of Man.” The pamphlet is by John Hill and not Francis Coventry, as Shebbeare thought.

Note 77 in page 1073 While the curate is in prison, a cowardly captain sets on Ensign Firebrace to seduce the curate's wife, a situation much like Mrs. Heartfree's in Jonathan Wild. A valorous Welsh squire challenges the captain, and to show him that he is of rank to fight flourishes a pedigree in the coward's face. This Welshman, Squire Gam, is much like Morgan of Roderick Random. Gam speaks dialect and swears “Cotdamochée.”

Note 78 in page 1073 Rachael is a grotesque and rude caricature. She, like Molly Barter in the Marriage Act, is after Fielding's Laetitia Snap. She is described as being distorted both physically and morally. “Her waist was round and round, six times as substantial as Peg Woffingtons, and much shorter.” Her breasts were like kettle drums; “… her teeth stood like the old palisadoes of a court in shape and colour, with here and there one wanting, where the dogs creep through.” Presbyterianism “like horse dung in a hot-bed” had brought forth lust in her. At the age of forty she is got with child by a Presbyterian teacher, Maultext, and accompanies Lydia to London where she hopes to be relieved of her “dropsy.” She needed no Crab to persuade her, like the maid in Roderick Random, “that she was not with child, but only afflicted with a disorder.” (Roderick Random, Ch. v.) Rachael dotes “on the divine hymns of the Rev. Mr. Watts,” but secretly reads Rochester's verses.

Note 79 in page 1074 At this point Shebbeare inserted an essay on chastity. Lydia's virtue he writes, will reclaim the honor of her sex. Chastity has not reached down on the feminine side to modern times, but some men are still virtuous since men are “nearer the original simplicity of human virtue than women.” As an instance of male chastity Shebbeare cites Lord George Anson's honorable treatment of some female natives he had taken on board his ship. Anson's expedition had returned in 1753. Although Shebbeare does not name Anson here, the reference is clear. See Lydia, p. 66, ed. 1786.

Note 80 in page 1074 This is Shebbeare's second allusion to Mother Douglas in Lydia. There is another in the Marriage Act. Smollett in Ferdinand, Count Fathom (Ch. xxiii) describes a French madame in a brothel squabble thus: “… and I question whether the celebrated Mother Douglas herself could have made such a figure in an extemporaneous altercation.” It is said that the convulsed figure in the left-hand quarter of Hogarth's print “Enthusiasm Delineated” (1761) is Mother Douglas. She also appears at the window of the King's Arms in the “March to Finchley.”

Note 81 in page 1074 Frank is much like Sergeant Jenkinson in Amelia.

Note 82 in page 1075 Benjamin Bissell, op. cit., writes that after “many adventures” the Chief meets Lydia and Probit again. However, it is precisely the inadequacy of the two or three situations (adventures is not the word) in which the Indian plays a part that makes Lydia disappointing to those whose expectations were raised by the first chapters of the novel. Yet Bissell correctly remarks that “in no other novel of the century does the Indian figure so conspicuously or so heroicially as in Lydia; elsewhere he appears only as a subordinate character, introduced to add a touch of local color or picturesque adventure.” Bissell thinks that Cannassatego is more fully and consistently developed than Oroonoko.

George Saintsbury, The English Novel (1924), p. 140, writes: “Shebbeare, who was a journalist, had the journalistic faculty of ‘letting everything go in‘—of taking as much as he could from Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, etc., up to date (1755), and throwing back to Aphra for an interesting Indian, Cannassatego.” E. A. Baker, op. cit., p. 47 also seems to think that the Indian is related to Oroonoko. He refers to Cannassatego as being “a nearer relation of Mrs. Behn's Oroonoko than of the noble savage of Rousseau and his tribe …” However, there is little or no evidence that Shebbeare had ever heard of Aphra Behn. Montesquieu and his imitators, versions of the Yariko and Inkle story, and his own imagination are more likely sources.

E. A. Baker, op. cit., p. 108, calls Cannassatego a “preposterous creation.” H. N. Fairchild, The Noble Savage, A Study in Romantic Naturalism (1928), p. 93, thinks both the Indian and his Yariko “idealized out of all relation to humanity.” Indeed, it is hard to believe, as Shebbeare would have us, that nature should so purify these lovers as to enable them to sleep together “uncontaminated.” Yariko's sister-in-law, although subject to the purifying effects of the same environment, does not believe it possible, and says so. “But alas!” cries Shebbeare, “so unlike is the frame of woman through the whole creation; the forests of America contain females as different from each other, as the Ephesian matron from Penelope.”

Note 83 in page 1075 E. A. Baker, op. cit., p. 47, criticizes the loose structure of Lydia but admits that some of the author's “caricatures are galvanized into life by dint of sheer acrimony,” that sometimes he shows real feeling, and that his airs of righteous indignation are not all affected even though “his manner did tend to alienate sympathy.” Saintsbury, op. cit., p. 140, declares that “the irony is factitious and forced; the sentiment unappealing; its coarseness quite destitute of Rabelaisian geniality. … I believe Shebbeare was once pilloried for his politics. If it had been for Lydia, I should not have protested.”

Note 84 in page 1076 Humphrey Clinker, Jerry Melford's letter from Morpeth, July 13.

Note 85 in page 1076 This passage is, of course, ironic. The Indians had just been described as shockingly cruel and cannibalistic. Lady Susan Overstay belongs to the man-hungry tribe of Lady Booby and Mrs. Grizzle.

Note 86 in page 1076 Lydia was reviewed in the Monthly Review, June, 1755; 478, xii. The critic wrote: “To his old scurrility and malignant extravagance, the author has here joined the most ridiculous trifling, and extreme absurdity; he seems to have left his plan unfinished, with a view, as we suppose, of indulging his public with a sequel.” The novel was in four volumes; perhaps the reviewer had received only the first one or two.

Note 87 in page 1076 Monthly Review, Sept., 1755; 283, xiii.

Note 88 in page 1077 Monthly Review, Nov., 1755; 400, xiii.

Note 89 in page 1077 Critical Review, Jan.–Feb., 1756; 88–89, i.

Note 90 in page 1077 The opinions in this review are similar to those expressed concerning Ferret in Sir Launcelot Greaves. The style seems to be Smollett's. Although positive evidence is lacking, it is extremely probable that Smollett wrote this and the subsequent reviews of Shebbeare's pamphlets appearing in the Critical Review before 1760. This was the period of Smollett's greatest activity as a contributor to the Critical. All these articles are so consistently alike in style, ideas and attitude that it seems reasonable to assume that they were by the same author. One of his favorite devices is analogy. Shebbeare is likened to an old woman, a strutting player, a plague, etc. In this review he is compared to a madman in Soho who cries “fire” when the only fire is in his brain. The following passage seems to hint that the author knew that Shebbeare was a contributor to the Monitor. “Perhaps there is some truth in what ‘this monitor’ advances.” The truths in his Letters are hackneyed truths, continues the critic, and he, and such as he, have made them so. Moreover, Shebbeare is not as patriotic or as sincere as he pretends to be, but is “a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.” His calculations about the reduction of taxes are wrong; he betrays his weakheadedness in attempting to prove too much. Probably his purpose is to attract the attention of the ministry, but even here he may be disappointed.

Note 91 in page 1077 Monthly Review, March, 1756; 260, xiv. The critic, having heard a false rumor, writes that Shebbeare has succeeded in being noticed since for a second time he has been taken into custody. Differences will at last be decided in court, he adds, although some think Shebbeare's ravings indicate the necessity for a different sort of treatment.

Note 92 in page 1078 An Answer to a Pamphlet called a ‘Third Letter to the People of England.‘ This was reviewed in the Monthly Review, March, 1756; 26, xiv. The critic cites the most insulting passage: “Such confusion and dread dwell on the dastard faces of all, who, sold to the H—–n [Hanoverian] interest, stand branded in the forehead with the White Horse, the ignominius mark of slavery!” The reference is to the figure of a white horse embroidered on the caps of his Majesty's grenadiers. In the Gentleman's Magazine, April, 1756; 195, xxvi, there is a review of a pamphlet attacking this same Third Letter. The critic believes Shebbeare's invective less harmful than his opponent's interpreting a passage concerning a white horse in Revelations as a prophecy favorable to the King. The critic felt that to identify George II with God was excessive.

Note 93 in page 1078 Shebbeare answered this writer in An Answer to a Pamphlet called ‘The Conduct of the Ministry impartially Examined,‘ etc., which was reviewed in the Monthly Review, Dec., 1756; 673, xv. Here the critic writes, “As it has been the rule with the Reviewers not to bestow any particular attention to the productions of this Intemperate writer, so nothing particular will be said about this.” But the critic hopes that Shebbeare will cease exposing the nakedness of his country with the “air of a satyr.”

Note 94 in page 1078 The spurious Fourth Letter was reviewed in the Monthly Review, March, 1756; 261, xiv, and the spurious Sixth Letter in the same journal of Nov., 1756; 532, xv.

Note 95 in page 1078 Monthly Review, Sept., 1756; 292–293, xv.

Note 96 in page 1078 Critical Review, Aug., 1756; 35–14, ii.

Note 97 in page 1078 Smollett (for it is certainly he) took exception to expressions like “seen-service,” “posspolite” and “parallelarity,” which indicate, he says, that the author is an empiric in language as well as in politics. He declares that Shebbeare has plagiarized a story in Joseph Andrews and given it in mangled form as the story of the thief in this pamphlet.

Note 98 in page 1078 Smollett believed that the turbulence and avarice of some New England adventurers forced the nation into this war. According to him, these men had expected the Government to furnish them with large sums of money and to leave the management of the war to them.

Note 99 in page 1079 John Campbell, fourth Earl of Loudon, was made commander-in-chief of the British forces in America on March 20, 1756. His dilatory tactics suggested to an American the comparison with the figure of King George upon the signposts, “always on horseback but never advancing.” As he was Scotch Shebbeare was eager to attack him and Smollett eager to defend him. To a correspondent who wrote saying that the statement in the Fourth Letter referring to Lord Loudon could be taken in two ways, the answer was made in the Critical Review, Sept., 1756; 192, ii, that because of the “peculiar virulence of the author, his ridiculous enmity to the natives of North Britain, and the palpable design of the work, which was to kindle the animosity of the nation against all those who are employed under the G—–t, the Critical Reviewers thought that they had a right, to understand it, as a malicious sarcasm against that nobleman.”

On page 121 of this number of the Critical a pamphlet supporting the ministry receives praise, the reviewer declaring that it would do more service to the country than “the loud bawlings of the Monitor, or the raucous invectives of a Letter to the People of England.”

Note 100 in page 1079 A Full and Particular Answer to all the Calumnies, Misrepresentations, and Falsehoods, contained in a Pamphlet, called ‘A Fourth Letter to the People of England.‘ This was reviewed in the Critical Review, Oct., 1756; 279, ii. Smollett adds to the above-mentioned remarks the admonition to remember the fate of the ass of the fable that affected the air, manners and familiarity of the favorite spaniel. “Every author is not animal risible; There is some difference between laughing and braying.”

Note 101 in page 1080 See the Monthly Review, Dec., 1756; 673, xv. Smollett's review is in the Critical Review, Dec., 1756; 474–475, ii. As instances of the author's sophistry and arrogance Smollett cites the bringing in of French memorials to refute an English ambassador, and the calling of Washington a confessed assassin and the King of Prussia a superb thief. “We expect to see this author with an urinal instead of a pen in his hand, running a muck like a frantic Malayan.”

Note 102 in page 1080 Reviewed in the Monthly Review, May, 1757; 280–281, xvi. The critic points out that the purpose of the pamphlet, to produce proofs that the constitution is being subverted, is promptly forgotten. He laughs at Shebbeare's pose as the sole defender of the English people.

Note 103 in page 1080 Arnold Whitridge, Tobias Smollett A Study of his Miscellaneous Works, Columbia University diss. (c. 1925), p. 29, gives a good description of this pamphlet. However, he mentions only one of the Critical Review articles (the review of the Third Letter) that caused Shebbeare to write the Occasional Critic. Edward S. Noyes, The Letters of Tobias Smollett (1926) p. 150, refers to this pamphlet as The Occasional Critic, or the Decrees of the Scotch Tribunal Reviewed. The last word in the subtitle should be “rejudged.” Noyes's dating of Smollett's answer to the Occasional Critic in the Critical as September, 1757 should be October, 1757.

Note 104 in page 1081 Critical Review, Oct., 1757; 332–338, iv.

Note 105 in page 1081 In an article in the Critical Review, Jan., 1758; 28 ff., v, on the History of Miss Sally Sable the critic reminds the Messrs Noble that he had taken pains to analyze “this flimsy and miserable performance” because of their complaints, but they must not expect him to go to such trouble in the future.

Note 106 in page 1081 Noyes, Letters of Tobias Smollett, Letter 43, Jan. 2, 1758.

Note 107 in page 1081 Critical Review, Oct., 1757; 332–338, iv. This article is described by Arnold Whitridge, op. cit. As an example of the typical coarseness of journalistic polemics of that day the following is cited. As Shebbeare's lungs rival the herald of Grubstreet and Tyburn, writes Smollett in this article, he would have made more money if he had printed his pamphlets on half-penny slips of brown paper and hawked them on the streets in person. Smollett printed in the Critical Review, Oct., 1757; 376, iv, a letter signed Philalethes, a person who was delighted by the discovery of such a comfortable use for the Occasional Critic's lucubrations. He preferred them “to the neck of a goose so warmly recommended by Pantagruel.” There is a similar joke in Shebbeare's lampoon of Dr. Maty in Lydia.

Note 108 in page 1082 Shebbeare criticized his translation of a fragment of Polibius.

Note 109 in page 1082 No doubt a reference to Dr. William Smellie. In the Occasional Critic Shebbeare pretended to believe that Smellie's Treatise on Midwifery, which Smollett saw through the press, was really Smollett's work.

Note 110 in page 1082 It must have been published in November, 1757.

Note 111 in page 1082 Both H. S. Buck, op. cit., and Arnold Whitridge, op. cit., print this. It runs as follows:

“To be lett and entered upon immediately
An empty author

He is equally qualified to write tragedy, comedy, farces, history, novels, voyages, treatises on midwifery, in physic, and in all kinds of polite letters … He will undertake to praise all works, be they ever so bad … in the Critical Review, for very small gratuities … Besides himself he has under him several journeymen authors, so that all who chuse to have a subject fitted up … may be commodiously furnished at his house … N.B. He chuses to work for those who have never employed him before: and you may enquire after his character of most booksellers, except R—–n and A. M—–r.“ It seems that Smollett and Millar were not friendly, but there is nothing to show that there was ill-feeling between Smollett and Rivington at this time.

Note 112 in page 1082 Critical Review, Dec., 1757; 552, iv. The Appendix asserts an impudent falsehood, writes the Cambridge scholar, who could have been one of the editors of the Critical, Dr. Thomas Franklin, professor of Greek at Cambridge. He did not help Smollett with the article “being much better employed than in useless controversies with so abusive and scurrilous a writer as Dr. S—–; who is hereby called upon publickly to recant his Lye, or to prove the truth of his assertion.”

Note 113 in page 1083 Monthly Review, Dec., 1757; 562–563, xvii.

Note 114 in page 1083 Monthly Review, Oct., 1757; 367–374, xvii. Ruffhead wrote reviews for both the Monthly Review and the Gentleman's Magazine. Griffiths may have given him some hints for the review of Shebbeare's pamphlet, and doubtless the review received the editor's approval before it was printed. Ruffhead's paper, the Con-test, supported the government.

Note 115 in page 1083 Yet Ruffhead is not exactly refined. To the Occasional Critic's quip addressed to the Critical, “Pray, like your countrymen, the Highlanders, have you not shown your backsides, in stooping to become critics?” Ruffhead replies, “Here we will only observe that if Buckhorse was to answer this elegant question, he would probably reply, with the same spirit of St. Giles—Ask mine a-e. And, perhaps, such an answer might not be altogether unsuitable to such a question.” Buckhorse was a hawker and an “underboxer at Broughton's” who was put in a novel, Memoirs of the Noted Buckhorse (1756).

Note 116 in page 1083 Shebbeare had defended his Fourth Letter in the Occasional Critic. Ruffhead declares here that he would not collect instances of false grammar, etc., but does not keep his word. He points out the bad French in Shebbeare's Le peuple instruit; ou les alliances dans lesquelles les ministres de la Grande Bretagne ont engagé la nation, etc., considérés dans une Quatrième lettre au peuple d'Angleterre (Paris? 1756), a translation of the Fourth Letter or a part of it, which was defended in the Occasional Critic. Ruffhead declares that not even a hare-brained Frenchman would call himself, as Shebbeare does here, an Athenian orator addressing the people of England. He is more like “a Demosthenes of Moorfields haranguing a holiday crowd, through an iron grate.” Unless his friends can keep him from pen and ink, “his exuberant spleen and folly may, one day, reduce him to this wretched state of declaration.”

Note 117 in page 1084 Without the decorum or restraint of gentlemen or scholars “these invective altercators, who presume to enter into literary disputes, with the genius and phraseology of Rag-Fair, ought to be whipt through the Republic of Letters, and driven among the herd whose manners they assimilate: for if their ideas are low, their reflections mean, and their language indecent, where is the difference between them and the mob? … Such mean, envirious, and illiberal competitors have brought Letters into disgrace; and have made the name of Author so disreputable that we have seen men of genius and merit creep into a Bookseller's shop with as much caution and secrecy as a married man would steal into a brothel.”

Note 118 in page 1084 This passage, which is from the brave declaration of independence and defiance, the Letter to the Public, Critical Review, April, 1756; 287–288, i, is cited by Arnold Whitridge, op. cit., as an “unprovoked thrust” against Griffiths. Smollett knew or suspected that the offending article mentioned in the Letter (an attack on the Critical and its very first article, Gentleman's Magazine, March, 1756; 141–142, xxvi) was by Ruffhead or another who wrote for the Monthly.

Note 119 in page 1085 Critical Review, Nov., 1757; 469, iv. Goldsmith, who had just left the Monthly to write for the Critical, complained that Griffiths and his wife had tampered with his work. Perhaps this complaint suggested the inclusion of Mrs. Griffiths in the attack on the Monthly. See Benjamin C. Nangle, op. cit., on the Griffiths' reaction to Smollett's article.

Note 120 in page 1085 Before this the Monthly had given Smollett's works very fair and in general very favorable reviews. A very sudden change in attitude may be seen by comparing the review of the first three volumes of the History (Monthly Review, June, 1757; 530–536, xvi, by Goldsmith) and the review of volume four (April, 1758; 289–305, xviii, by Ruffhead).

Note 121 in page 1085 Comber's A Vindication of the Great Revolution in England, etc., was reviewed in the Critical Review, Sept., 1758; 226–239, vi.

Note 122 in page 1085 Smollett states that the “respectable characters” whom Comber claims the Critical had “treated with indencency” are Shebbeare, Hill and Griffiths. He imagines them “sitting in close divan, animated with double pots, encouraged with double pay, by the right worshipful the proprietors of R—–n (Rivington) to review their attacks against the Complete History of England.” Smollett had reason to suspect some connection between Griffiths and Hill. In 1751 Griffiths printed a collection of Hill's “Inspectors,” among them No. 14, which was very offensive to Smollett.

Note 123 in page 1085 Smollett's reply to Grainger is in the Critical Review, Feb., 1759; 141–158, vii.

Note 124 in page 1086 The quarrel between the Monthly and the Critical was so widely known that a pamphleteer made it the subject of a Battle of the Reviews, which was printed about the time of Smollett's trial for libel against Admiral Knowles. In the pamphlet Rheoboam Gruffy is Griffiths, Sampson MacJackson is (perhaps) William Rose, Paddy Fitzpatrick is Goldsmith and Sawney MacSmallhead is Smollett.

Note 125 in page 1086 Monthly Review, March, 1759; 273–274, xx.

Note 126 in page 1086 Monthly Review, March, 1758; 274, xviii.

Note 127 in page 1086 The subtitle of the Occasional Critic ends thus: “… in which the … impartiality, abilities, pretentions, performances, designs, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., of the Gentleman authors of that work are placed in a true light.”

Note 128 in page 1086 Critical Review, April, 1758; 350, v. After Shebbeare had served his prison term a second spurious Seventh Letter appeared. The Critical Reviewer (Dec., 1761; 477, xii) calls it a florid rhapsody inflated with bombast. “The attention paid to certain inflammatory pamphlets under this title, during a disgraceful period of the Ad—–n, hath encouraged other authors to hang up the same sign to the public. Of the Seventh Letter we may say in the words of Shakespeare, ‘Oldcastle died of sweat; but this is not the man’.”

Note 129 in page 1087 W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century, ii, 442, in commenting on the Sixth Letter declares that it really represented the common sentiment of the English people and army in their resentment at the preference given the Hanoverian. He refers to the ill-feeling between the English and the Hanoverians at the battle of Dettingen. In Vol. iii, 64, Lecky notes the punishment for the “virulent libel against the House of Hanover” and states that Shebbeare later was “pensioned by Bute in order that he should defend the peace.” The pension was obtained by George Grenville and John Phillips, not Bute.

Note 130 in page 1087 Arnold Whitridge, op. cit., p. 27, gives the impression that the Seventh rather than the Sixth Letter caused the arrest. Likewise W. Tooke, editor of the Aldine edition of Charles Churchill (1866), in a note on “The Author” (verses 293–366) writes that the Seventh Letter caused the prosecution of Shebbeare.

Note 131 in page 1087 Critical Review, Jan., 1758; 79, v. The critic's final remark is, “By the blessing of heaven, and the care of Dr. Battie, [who had just written a book on insanity] he may yet become good for something in his day and generation.”

Note 132 in page 1088 Monthly Review, Jan., 1758; 93, xviii. The critic thoughtfully appended to his article a list of the Monthly's reviews of the preceding five letters. Curiosity about Shebbeare was at such a pitch that a hungry garreteer published a Review of the Sixth Letter to the People of England, wherein the principal passages of that malignant piece are quoted at large and refuted. This was reviewed in the Critical Review, April, 1758; 350, v, and in the Monthly Review, May, 1758; 486, xviii. The first reviewer points out that the author and publisher concealed their names for fear of being called seditious and derides the author's “schoolboy” comments that are “anything but refutations.” The second reviewer thinks that the author shows proper abhorrence of the “licentiousness” of Shebbeare.

Note 133 in page 1088 “The Author” 1763. Verses 293–306 are a scathing indictment of Shebbeare. Beardmore for his part in this fiasco had to serve two months in prison and pay a fine of fifty pounds. Of course, he was no Whig. Churchill in calling him one is ironic.

Note 134 in page 1089 William Mason in “An Epistle to Dr. Shebbeare” (1777) writes:

“O for a thousand tongues! and every tongue
Like Johnson's, arm'd with words of six feet long,
Then should my Tory numbers, old Shebbeare,
Tickle the tattered fragment of thy ear!“

In a note referring to this passage in relation to the Churchill verses quoted above, Mason declares that the Doctor has only to show his ears in public to prove Churchill wrong in saying that his ears were not harmed. Mason refers again to the Doctor's ears in the beginning of “An Heroic Epistle.”

“Witness ye Hills, ye Johnsons, Scotts, Sheabbears (?)
Hark to my call, for some of you have ears.“

Note 135 in page 1089 Dr. Johnson, like Teague, thought that dishonor clung to the pillory. In opposition to Boswell he maintained that Shebbeare “could not mouth and strut about as he used to do, after he had been there. People are not willing to ask a man to their table who has stood in the pillory.” Allibone's Dictionary, “Shebbeare.”

Note 136 in page 1089 Memoirs of the Pillory: being a consolatory Epistle to Dr. Shebbeare, etc., 2nd ed. 1759, seems to be a similar effusion. The Letter of Consolation attacks the Sixth Letter and declares that Shebbeare under former kings, such as his beloved Stuarts, would have come off much worse. The Critical Review, Dec., 1758; 518, vi, in its article on this pamphlet states that “the person to whom this is addressed has no occasion for volatiles; or, if he had, he would find no flavour in this vapid performance,” and believes that not the King but the people “who retrenched the dangerous prerogatives of the crown” are to be accredited with the humanity shown Shebbeare. The review in the Monthly Review, Dec., 1758; 583–584, xix, remarks that the instances of severe punishment given state libellers in the reigns of the Stuarts are intended to show the Doctor that he lives in milder and happier days.

Note 137 in page 1090 Sir Launcelot Greaves, Ch. xx. Shebbeare may have suggested Crabshaw although Crabshaw is brave enough to fight while Ferret is cowardly and furtive.

Note 138 in page 1090 An Answer to a Letter to a late Noble Commander of the British forces, etc. (1759). An attack on this pamphlet was reviewed in the Critical Review, Nov., 1759; 410–411. Shebbeare's pamphlet is here referred to as “the production of the far-famed Dr. Sh—–re, who has engaged in his lordship's vindication, either as a volunteer, or upon other motives perhaps more interesting.”

Note 139 in page 1090 The whole title is The History of the Excellence and Decline of the Constitution, religion, laws, manners, and genius of the Sumatrans, and the Restoration thereof in the reign of Amurath the Third. Norgate in the D.N.B. article on Shebbeare gives the date for this as 1763, but there was a two-volume edition printed by G. Kearsley as early as 1760. Shebbeare took more pains than usual with this work but as usual followed Bolingbroke in style and ideas. It is an attack on Whig policy and administration, and a panegyric of George III and his ministers. A review of Volume ii appeared in the Monthly Review, March, 1763; 245, xxviii. The critic believes that the picture painted here of the happiness of the Sumatrans [British] during the reign of Amurath [George III] exaggerates. “The scene … is, we fear, too desirable to be real: indeed, we have more reasons than one to conceive, this writer to be no Prophet. But whatever his pretensions to prophecy, he certainly hath very little to panegyric; which, it must be allowed, is not the Doctor's talent: this volume being one of the most insipid and unentertaining of all his literary performances.”

Note 140 in page 1091 “An Epistle to his Grace, the Duke of N—–e, on his Resignation, By an Independent Whig,” 1762. Reviewed in the Critical Review, July, 1762; 77, xiv.

Note 141 in page 1091 In “The Author” Churchill calls Smollett a pensioner, saying that what makes Smollett write makes Johnson dumb. Possibly one of Smollett's motives for refusing the pension was his indignation at Shebbeare's being granted one. Another may have been the smallness of the grant.

Note 142 in page 1091 See Macaulay's The Earl of Chatham.

Note 143 in page 1091 D.N.B. “Shebbeare.” Here Norgate also notes that Shebbeare engaged with the solicitor of the treasury in writing against Lord Chief Justice Pratt in a paper, The Moderator.

Note 144 in page 1092 Arnold Whitridge, op. cit., Ch. iv, points out that Seccombe identified the apothecary as Shebbeare. Whitridge is right in taking him as Dr. John Hill, whose Lucina sine Concubitu is glanced at in a near-by passage describing how Pitt had blown the people up until they believed that “food was not necessary to the support of life; nor an intercourse of the sexes required for the propagation of species.” Bute obtained for Hill the management of the Royal Gardens, worth 2000 pounds a year, but it is believed that the grant was not confirmed.

Note 145 in page 1092 E.g., E. A. Baker, op. cit., v, 46, “… for Shebbeare, in spite of the apparent frankness of his views and fearlessness in asserting them, seems to have ratted, and made a suspiciously quick transit from pillory to pension.” Also Arnold Whitbridge, op. cit., p. 27. “After emerging from prison Shebbeare changed his tactics and devoted himself to the Court, even going so far as to attack his old hero, Pitt, for which abject tergiversation he was granted a pension of 400 pounds.” But the pension was only 200 pounds a year.

Note 146 in page 1093 E.g., he defended the American policy of George III in the Public Advertiser and elsewhere. In 1774 he wrote a pamphlet attacking Burke, whom he did not like because of his parody of Bolingbroke and opposition to North.

Note 147 in page 1093 E.g., Critical Review, Dec., 1762; 380, xiv. In reviewing One More Letter to the People of England. By their old Friend, the critic remarks, “What can be expected from a copy of such an original as the patriot S—–[Shebbeare], but scurrility, raving, and sedition.” Allibone's cites the Monthly Reviewer's criticism of Shebbeare's An Answer to the Printed Speech of Edmund Burke, Esq., April 19, 1774. This was, according to the reviewer, composed of “slanderous invectives, coarse witticisms, vulgar obscene allusions, and scandalous epithets.”

Note 148 in page 1093 An Answer to the Queries contained in a Letter to Dr. Shebbeare, printed in the Public Ledger, Aug. 10, etc., etc. (1774). Monthly Review, Jan., 1775; 31–35, lii. Kippis grants that the Doctor makes a good excuse for disappointing the subscribers to his history, but states that the “scurrility to which he descends with respect to Mr. Townshend is disgraceful to any writer of tolerable talents; and as to Mr. Lee, Dr. Shebbeare's pious and charitable wish is, that his exit may be like that of Algernon Sidney.” Kippis concludes with the observation that no Prince or administration of the Brunswick line, “if lunacy hath not possessed them, can approve of the raving positions, and the bitter spirit of this writer.”

Note 149 in page 1093 The treatment of William here was resented by so many that Shebbeare hurt his cause much more than he helped it. Hugh Baillie's answer to this pamphlet was reviewed in the Monthly Review, Jan., 1775; 35–36, lii.

In 1774 Fox protested in the House of Commons against the Whigs' coupling of the names of Johnson and Shebbeare together, saying that the government had pensioned a He-bear and a She-bear. In 1776 Wilkes spoke of them as “two famous doctors” who were the “state hirelings called pensioners,” and whose names “disgraced the civil list.”

Note 150 in page 1093 An Essay on the Origin, Progress, and Establishment of National Society, in which … Dr. Price's Observations, etc., are fairly examined and reflected. This was reviewed in the Monthly Review, Sept., 1776; 240–241, lv. The critic notes many tenets repugnant to the principles of all free governments expressed here. Also examples of faulty reasoning, low coarse humor, and foul, intemperate, opprobrious language.

Note 151 in page 1094 Only about a score of lines in this poem refer to Shebbeare. His name in the title shows that Mason counted on the notoriety of the Doctor to attract the attention of a large public. The poem was written in 1777, as by Malcolm MacGreggor, a name to irritate the Scotch baiter Shebbeare, who is called by Mason in a prefatory note “a hackney scribbler of a newspaper,” “a pensioner,” and a “broken apothecary.” The Monthly Review Dec., 1777; (488; lvii) thought “The Epistle” “a keen, acute, spirited satire on court connections, in which poor old Shebbeare comes in for ‘stripes he was not formed to feel’.”

Note 152 in page 1094 D.N.B. “Shebbeare.” Norgate gives the amalgamated Hume and Smollett History of England (1855), x, 186, as his reference.

Note 153 in page 1094 Early Diary (ed. 1889), Feb. 20, 1774, i, 285.

Note 154 in page 1094 Op. cit., p. 75.

Note 155 in page 1094 In this context here is ambiguous. It should be taken to mean ‘in the History,’ but not ‘in this passage.’ Smollett never could have considered the Doctor important or even respectable enough to be listed with this distinguished group.

Note 156 in page 1095 Op. cit., v, 47.

Note 157 in page 1095 Continuation of the Complete History of England, 3v. 1760. ii, 408.

Note 158 in page 1096 Lewis M. Knapp, The Publication of Smollett's Complete History … and Continuation, The Library, Fourth Series, xvi, 293–308, notes that in the amalgamation of Hume's and Smollett's histories (e.g., Cadell's edition in 1785) Anderson found “several omissions, transpositions and additions, for which no reason is assigned.” It seems reasonable to suppose that the good was inserted at this time.

Note 159 in page 1096 There are contemptuous allusions to Shebbeare and his pillory-or-post opportunism in Davis's letter to Rev. Dustwich, in Jerry's letter to Sir Watkin Phillips concerning Dick Ivy, and in Matthew Bramble's letter about literary conditions in London. In the last the dogmatic, arrogant and presumptuous critic who, using politics as a criterion, “rejudged” writers of the past and called his contemporaries “dunces, pedants, plagiaries, quacks, and imposters,” seems to refer to Shebbeare's opinions as set forth in the Letters of Batista Angeloni and the Occasional Critic.

Note 160 in page 1096 European Magazine, Aug., 1788, ii, 83–87.

Note 161 in page 1097 Cited by Allibone's from Boswell's Johnson, year 1783. Boswell, who was introduced to Shebbeare by General Oglethorpe, thought the Doctor's “knowledge and abilities much above the class of ordinary writers.” Boswell admired Angeloni's Letters, and for some reason did not seem to be irritated in the least by Shebbeare's Scotch baiting.

Note 162 in page 1097 Early Diary, Feb. 20, 1774.

Note 163 in page 1097 Ch. x. Part of this passage is an echo of Smollett's review of Shebbeare's Third Letter (1756).

Note 164 in page 1097 Monthly Review, March, 1758; 274, xviii.

Note 165 in page 1097 It is in the issue of Oct., 1788, pp. 283–286. It had probably been prepared for the edition of Clarendon's History that Shebbeare was not allowed to publish.

Note 166 in page 1098 Early Diary, Feb. 20, 1774.

Note 167 in page 1098 Dissertation on Parties. Shebbeare had a hand in the Monitor, which he and his associates must have regarded as carrying on the work of the Craftsman.

Note 168 in page 1098 For instance, the sweeping eyebrows pulled down in a half-frown, one of the most striking features of the Bromley engraving of Shebbeare, are easily recognizable in Smollett's description. The engraving was printed in the European Magazine, Aug., 1788; 83. Here Shebbeare is represented as a plump Englishman in the late fifties, posing in a fez and loose coat. The finely curved upper lip, the small round chin and chubby cheeks give the lower part of the face a boyish look, but the long retreating forehead, with the fez, gives the upper part a hard Oriental cast.

In Ch. ii Ferret is described as being so frightened that “his eyes retired within their sockets” and “his complexion, which was naturally of a copper hue,” as shifting to a leaden color. Mason in his “Epistle to Dr. Shebbeare” assumes in the following that his face is bronzed.

“Enough of souls unless we waste a line
Shebbeare, to pay a compliment to thine:
Which forg'd, of old, of strong Hibernian brass,
Shines through the Paris plaister of thy face,
And bronzes it, secure from shame, or sense,
To the flat glare of finish'd impudence.“

Note 169 in page 1099 When Ferret finds himself in debt he indulges in the following high-sounding sophistry: “I have been oppressed and persecuted by the government for speaking truth; your omnipotent laws have reconciled contradictions. That which is acknowledged to be truth in fact, is construed falsehood in law; and great reason we have to boast of a constitution founded on the basis of absurdity.”

Note 170 in page 1100 Eugene Joliat, Smollett et la France (1935), p. 206, in writing of the reception of Sir Launcelot Greaves in France, observes that Le Drapeau Blanc, June 10, 1824, gave the novel a favorable review because the Toryism of Smollett was pleasing to the ultra-royalists of that time. Mr. Joliat adds, “Le critique remarque surtout, dans le roman, le personnage de Ferret, un ‘coureur de l'opposition,‘ un agitateur politique d'avant-garde, allant de ville en ville invectiver le gouvernement.”