Count Fathom, part 1 | Page 4

have
persuaded him to disappoint. The clock struck twelve, the owl
screeched from the ruined battlement, the door was opened by the
sexton, who, by the light of a glimmering taper, conducted the
despairing lover to a dreary aisle, and stamped upon the ground with
his foot, saying, 'Here the young lady lies interred.'"
We have here such an amount of the usual romantic machinery of the
"grave-yard" school of poets--that school of which Professor W. L.
Phelps calls Young, in his Night Thoughts, the most "conspicuous
exemplar"-- that one is at first inclined to think Smollett poking fun at
it. The context, however, seems to prove that he was perfectly serious.
It is interesting, then, as well as surprising, to find traces of the
romantic spirit in his fiction over ten years before Walpole's Castle of
Otranto. It is also interesting to find so much melodramatic feeling in
him, because it makes stronger the connection between him and his
nineteenth-century disciple, Dickens.
From all that I have said, it must not be thought that the usual Smollett
is always, or almost always, absent from Count Fathom. I have spoken
of the dedication and of the opening chapters as what we might expect
from his pen. There are, besides, true Smollett strokes in the scenes in

the prison from which Melvil rescues Fathom, and there is a good deal
of the satirical Smollett fun in the description of Fathom's ups and
downs, first as the petted beau, and then as the fashionable doctor. In
chronicling the latter meteoric career, Smollett had already observed
the peculiarity of his countrymen which Thackeray was fond of harping
on in the next century--"the maxim which universally prevails among
the English people . . . to overlook, . . . on their return to the metropolis,
all the connexions they may have chanced to acquire during their
residence at any of the medical wells. And this social disposition is so
scrupulously maintained, that two persons who live in the most
intimate correspondence at Bath or Tunbridge, shall, in
four-and-twenty hours . . . meet in St. James's Park, without betraying
the least token of recognition." And good, too, is the way in which, as
Dr. Fathom goes rapidly down the social hill, he makes excuses for his
declining splendour. His chariot was overturned "with a hideous crash"
at such danger to himself, "that he did not believe he should ever
hazard himself again in any sort of wheel carriage." He turned off his
men for maids, because "men servants are generally impudent, lazy,
debauched, or dishonest." To avoid the din of the street, he shifted his
lodgings into a quiet, obscure court. And so forth and so on, in the true
Smollett vein.
But, after all, such of the old sparks are struck only occasionally. Apart
from its plot, which not a few nineteenth-century writers of
detective-stories might have improved, The Adventures of Ferdinand
Count Fathom is less interesting for itself than any other piece of
fiction from Smollett's pen. For a student of Smollett, however, it is
highly interesting as showing the author's romantic, melodramatic
tendencies, and the growth of his constructive technique.
G. H. MAYNADIER

THE ADVENTURES OF FERDINAND COUNT FATHOM

TO DOCTOR ------

You and I, my good friend, have often deliberated on the difficulty of
writing such a dedication as might gratify the self-complacency of a
patron, without exposing the author to the ridicule or censure of the
public; and I think we generally agreed that the task was altogether
impracticable.--Indeed, this was one of the few subjects on which we
have always thought in the same manner. For, notwithstanding that
deference and regard which we mutually pay to each other, certain it is,
we have often differed, according to the predominancy of those
different passions, which frequently warp the opinion, and perplex the
understanding of the most judicious.
In dedication, as in poetry, there is no medium; for, if any one of the
human virtues be omitted in the enumeration of the patron's good
qualities, the whole address is construed into an affront, and the writer
has the mortification to find his praise prostituted to very little purpose.
On the other hand, should he yield to the transports of gratitude or
affection, which is always apt to exaggerate, and produce no more than
the genuine effusions of his heart, the world will make no allowance for
the warmth of his passion, but ascribe the praise he bestows to
interested views and sordid adulation.
Sometimes too, dazzled by the tinsel of a character which he has no
opportunity to investigate, he pours forth the homage of his admiration
upon some false Maecenas, whose future conduct gives the lie to his
eulogium, and involves him in shame and confusion of face. Such