It would be hard to find a better beginning for a wholesome7 novel of English life, than these first two sentences in The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves. They are full of comfort and promise. They promise that we shall get rapidly into the story; and so we do. They give us the hope, in which we are not to be disappointed, that we shall see a good deal of those English inns which to this day are delightful8 in reality, and which to generations of readers, have been delightful in fancy. Truly, English fiction, without its inns, were as much poorer as the English country, without these same hostelries, were less comfortable. For few things in the world has the so-called “Anglo-Saxon” race more reason to be grateful than for good old English inns. Finally there is a third promise in these opening sentences of Sir Launcelot Greaves. “The great northern road!” It was that over which the youthful Smollett made his way to London in 1739; it was that over which, less than nine years later, he sent us travelling in company with Random9 and Strap10 and the queer people whom they met on their way. And so there is the promise that Smollett, after his departure in Count Fathom11 from the field of personal experience which erstwhile he cultivated so successfully, has returned to see if the ground will yield him another rich harvest. Though it must be admitted that in Sir Launcelot Greaves his labours were but partially12 successful, yet the story possesses a good deal of the lively verisimilitude which Fathom lacked. The very first page, as we have seen, shows that its inns are going to be real. So, too, are most of its highway adventures, and also its portion of those prison scenes of which Smollett seems to have been so fond. As for the description of the parliamentary election, it is by no means the least graphic13 of its kind in the fiction of the last two centuries. The speech of Sir Valentine Quickset, the fox-hunting Tory candidate, is excellent, both for its brevity and for its simplicity14. Any of his bumpkin audience could understand perfectly15 his principal points: that he spends his estate of “vive thousand clear” at home in old English hospitality; that he comes of pure old English stock; that he hates all foreigners, not excepting those from Hanover; and that if he is elected, he “will cross the ministry16 in everything, as in duty bound.”
In the characters, likewise, though less than in the scenes just spoken of, we recognise something of the old Smollett touch. True, it is not high praise to say of Miss Aurelia Darnel that she is more alive, or rather less lifeless, than Smollett’s heroines have been heretofore. Nor can we give great praise to the characterisation of Sir Launcelot. Yet if less substantial than Smollett’s roystering heroes, he is more distinct than de Melvil in Fathom, the only one of our author’s earlier young men, by the way, (with the possible exception of Godfrey Gauntlet) who can stand beside Greaves in never failing to be a gentleman. It is a pity, when Greaves’s character is so lovable, and save for his knight17-errantry, so well conceived, that the image is not more distinct. Crowe is distinct enough, however, though not quite consistently drawn18. There is justice in Scott’s objection [Tobias Smollett in Biographical and Critical Notices of Eminent19 Novelists] that nothing in the seaman’s “life . . . renders it at all possible that he should have caught” the baronet’s Quixotism. Otherwise, so far from finding fault with the old sailor, we are pleased to see Smollett returning in him to a favourite type. It might be thought that he would have exhausted20 the possibilities of this type in Bowling21 and Trunnion and Pipes and Hatchway. In point of fact, Crowe is by no means the equal of the first two of these. And yet, with his heart in the right place, and his application of sea terms to land objects, Captain Samuel Crowe has a good deal of the rough charm of his prototypes. Still more distinct, and among Smollett’s personages a more novel figure, is the Captain’s nephew, the dapper, verbose22, tender-hearted lawyer, Tom Clarke. Apart from the inevitable23 Smollett exaggeration, a better portrait of a softish young attorney could hardly be painted. Nor, in enumerating24 the characters of Sir Launcelot Greaves who fix themselves in a reader’s memory, should Tom’s inamorata, Dolly, be forgotten, or the malicious25 Ferret, or that precious pair, Justice and Mrs. Gobble, or the Knight’s squire26, Timothy Crabshaw, or that very individual horse, Gilbert, whose lot is to be one moment caressed27, and the next, cursed for a “hard-hearted, unchristian tuoad.”
Barring the Gobbles, all these characters are important in the book from first to last. Sir Launcelot Greaves, then, is significant among Smollett’s novels, as indicating a reliance upon the personages for interest quite as much as upon the adventures. If the author failed in a similar intention in Fathom, it was not through lack of clearly conceived characters, but through failure to make them flesh and blood. In that book, however, he put the adventures together more skilfully28 than in Sir Launcelot Greaves, the plot of which is not only rather meagre but also far-fetched. There seems to be no adequate reason for the baronet’s whim29 of becoming an English Don Quixote of the eighteenth century, except the chance it gave Smollett for imitating Cervantes. He was evidently hampered30 from the start by the consciousness that at best the success of such imitation would be doubtful. Probably he expresses his own misgivings31 when he makes Ferret exclaim to the hero: “What! . . . you set up for a modern Don Quixote? The scheme is rather too stale and extravagant32. What was a . . . well-timed satire33 in Spain near two hundred years ago, will . . . appear . . . insipid34 and absurd . . . at this time of day, in a country like England.” Whether from the author’s half-heartedness or from some other cause, there is no denying that the Quixotism in Sir Launcelot Greaves is flat. It is a drawback to the book rather than an aid. The plot could have developed itself just as well, the high-minded young baronet might have had just as entertaining adventures, without his imitation of the fine old Spanish Don.
I have remarked on the old Smollett touch in Sir Launcelot Greaves,—the individual touch of which we are continually sensible in Roderick Random and Peregrine Pickle35, but seldom in Count Fathom. With it is a new Smollett touch, indicative of a kindlier feeling towards the world. It is commonly said that the only one of the writer’s novels which contains a sufficient amount of charity and sweetness is Humphry Clinker. The statement is not quite true. Greaves is not so strikingly amiable36 as Smollett’s masterpiece only because it is not so striking in any of its excellences37; their lines are always a little blurred38. Still, it shows that ten years before Clinker, Smollett had learned to combine the contradictory39 elements of life in something like their right proportions. If obscenity and ferocity are found in his fourth novel, they are no longer found in a disproportionate degree.
There is little more to say of Sir Launcelot Greaves, except in the way of literary history. The given name of the hero may or may not be significant. It is safe to say that if a Sir Launcelot had appeared in fiction one or two generations earlier, had the fact been recognised (which is not indubitable) that he bore the name of the most celebrated40 knight of later Arthurian romance, he would have been nothing but a burlesque41 figure. But in 1760, literary taste was changing. Romanticism in literature had begun to come to the front again, as Smollett had already shown by his romantic leanings in Count Fathom. With it there came interest in the Middle Ages and in the most popular fiction of the Middle Ages, the “greatest of all poetic42 subjects,” according to Tennyson, the stories of Arthur and his Knights43 of the Round Table, which, for the better part of a century, had been deposed44 from their old-time place of honour. These stories, however, were as yet so imperfectly known—and only to a few—that the most to be said is that some connection between their reviving popularity and the name of Smollett’s knight-errant hero is not impossible.
Apart from this, Sir Launcelot Greaves is interesting historically as ending Smollett’s comparatively long silence in novel-writing after the publication of Fathom in 1753. His next work was the translation of Don Quixote, which he completed in 1755, and which may first have suggested the idea of an English knight, somewhat after the pattern of the Spanish. Be that as it may, before developing the idea, Smollett busied himself with his Complete History of England, and with the comedy, The Reprisal45: or the Tars46 of Old England, a successful play which at last brought about a reconciliation47 with his old enemy, Garrick. Two years later, in 1759, as editor of the Critical Review, Smollett was led into a criticism of Admiral Knowles’s conduct that was judged libellous enough to give its author three months in the King’s Bench prison, during which time, it has been conjectured48, he began to mature his plans for the English Quixote. The result was that, in 1760 and 1761, Sir Launcelot Greaves came out in various numbers of the British Magazine. Scott has given his authority to the statement that Smollett wrote many of the instalments in great haste, sometimes, during a visit in Berwickshire, dashing off the necessary amount of manuscript in an hour or so just before the departure of the post. If the story is true, it adds its testimony49 to that of his works to the author’s extraordinarily50 facile pen. Finally, in 1762, the novel thus hurried off in instalments appeared as a whole. This method of its introduction to the public gives Sir Launcelot Greaves still another claim to interest. It is one of the earliest English novels, indeed the earliest from the pen of a great writer, published in serial51 form.
G. H. MAYNADIER.
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1 distinguished | |
adj.卓越的,杰出的,著名的 | |
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2 remarkably | |
ad.不同寻常地,相当地 | |
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3 adorned | |
[计]被修饰的 | |
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4 copper | |
n.铜;铜币;铜器;adj.铜(制)的;(紫)铜色的 | |
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5 scoured | |
走遍(某地)搜寻(人或物)( scour的过去式和过去分词 ); (用力)刷; 擦净; 擦亮 | |
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6 beholder | |
n.观看者,旁观者 | |
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7 wholesome | |
adj.适合;卫生的;有益健康的;显示身心健康的 | |
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8 delightful | |
adj.令人高兴的,使人快乐的 | |
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9 random | |
adj.随机的;任意的;n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
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10 strap | |
n.皮带,带子;v.用带扣住,束牢;用绷带包扎 | |
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11 fathom | |
v.领悟,彻底了解 | |
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12 partially | |
adv.部分地,从某些方面讲 | |
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13 graphic | |
adj.生动的,形象的,绘画的,文字的,图表的 | |
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14 simplicity | |
n.简单,简易;朴素;直率,单纯 | |
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15 perfectly | |
adv.完美地,无可非议地,彻底地 | |
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16 ministry | |
n.(政府的)部;牧师 | |
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17 knight | |
n.骑士,武士;爵士 | |
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18 drawn | |
v.拖,拉,拔出;adj.憔悴的,紧张的 | |
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19 eminent | |
adj.显赫的,杰出的,有名的,优良的 | |
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20 exhausted | |
adj.极其疲惫的,精疲力尽的 | |
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21 bowling | |
n.保龄球运动 | |
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22 verbose | |
adj.用字多的;冗长的;累赘的 | |
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23 inevitable | |
adj.不可避免的,必然发生的 | |
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24 enumerating | |
v.列举,枚举,数( enumerate的现在分词 ) | |
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25 malicious | |
adj.有恶意的,心怀恶意的 | |
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26 squire | |
n.护卫, 侍从, 乡绅 | |
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27 caressed | |
爱抚或抚摸…( caress的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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28 skilfully | |
adv. (美skillfully)熟练地 | |
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29 whim | |
n.一时的兴致,突然的念头;奇想,幻想 | |
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30 hampered | |
妨碍,束缚,限制( hamper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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31 misgivings | |
n.疑虑,担忧,害怕;疑虑,担心,恐惧( misgiving的名词复数 );疑惧 | |
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32 extravagant | |
adj.奢侈的;过分的;(言行等)放肆的 | |
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33 satire | |
n.讽刺,讽刺文学,讽刺作品 | |
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34 insipid | |
adj.无味的,枯燥乏味的,单调的 | |
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35 pickle | |
n.腌汁,泡菜;v.腌,泡 | |
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36 amiable | |
adj.和蔼可亲的,友善的,亲切的 | |
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37 excellences | |
n.卓越( excellence的名词复数 );(只用于所修饰的名词后)杰出的;卓越的;出类拔萃的 | |
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38 blurred | |
v.(使)变模糊( blur的过去式和过去分词 );(使)难以区分;模模糊糊;迷离 | |
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39 contradictory | |
adj.反驳的,反对的,抗辩的;n.正反对,矛盾对立 | |
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40 celebrated | |
adj.有名的,声誉卓著的 | |
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41 burlesque | |
v.嘲弄,戏仿;n.嘲弄,取笑,滑稽模仿 | |
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42 poetic | |
adj.富有诗意的,有诗人气质的,善于抒情的 | |
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43 knights | |
骑士; (中古时代的)武士( knight的名词复数 ); 骑士; 爵士; (国际象棋中)马 | |
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44 deposed | |
v.罢免( depose的过去式和过去分词 );(在法庭上)宣誓作证 | |
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45 reprisal | |
n.报复,报仇,报复性劫掠 | |
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46 tars | |
焦油,沥青,柏油( tar的名词复数 ) | |
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47 reconciliation | |
n.和解,和谐,一致 | |
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48 conjectured | |
推测,猜测,猜想( conjecture的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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49 testimony | |
n.证词;见证,证明 | |
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50 extraordinarily | |
adv.格外地;极端地 | |
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51 serial | |
n.连本影片,连本电视节目;adj.连续的 | |
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