Part 1 (1/2)

The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves

by Tobias Sreat northern road fro of the , that four travellers were, by a violent shower of rain, driven for shelter into a little public-house on the side of the highway, distinguished by a sign which was said to exhibit the figure of a black lion The kitchen, in which they assembled, was the only room for entertainment in the house, paved with red bricks, remarkably clean, furnished with three or four Windsor chairs, adorned with shi+ning plates of pewter, and copper saucepans, nicely scoured, that even dazzled the eyes of the beholder; while a cheerful fire of sea-coal blazed in the chi for a wholesolish life, than these first two sentences in The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves They are full of coet 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 delightful in reality, and which to generations of readers, have been delightful in fancy

Truly, English fiction, without its inns, were as lish country, without these sas in the world has the so-called ”Anglo-Saxon” race lish inns Finally there is a third pro 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 Random and Strap and the queer people whom they met on their way And so there is the promise that Smollett, after his departure in Count Fathom from the field of personal experience which erstwhile he cultivated so successfully, has returned to see if the ground will yield hih it must be admitted that in Sir Launcelot Greaves his labours were but partially successful, yet the story possesses a good deal of the lively verisie, as we have seen, shows that its inns are going to be real So, too, are hway adventures, and also its portion of those prison scenes of which Smollett seems to have been so fond As for the description of the parliaraphic 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 simplicity Any of his bumpkin audience could understand perfectly his principal points: that he spends his estate of ”vive thousand clear” at holish stock; that he hates all foreigners, not excepting those from Hanover; and that if he is elected, he ”will cross the , as in duty bound”

In the characters, likewise, though less than in the scenes just spoken of, we recognise soh praise to say of Miss Aurelia Darnel that she is more alive, or rather less lifeless, than Sive great praise to the characterisation of Sir Launcelot

Yet if less substantial than S heroes, he is more distinct than de Melvil in Fatho 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 knight-errantry, so well conceived, that the ih, however, though not quite consistently drawn

There is justice in Scott's objection [Tobias Sraphical and Critical Notices of E in the seaman's ”liferenders it at all possible that he should have caught” the baronet's Quixotis fault with the old sailor, we are pleased to see Sht be thought that he would have exhausted the possibilities of this type in Bowling 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 terood deal of the rough char Sure, is the Captain's nephew, the dapper, verbose, tender-hearted lawyer, Toeration, a better portrait of a softish young attorney could hardly be painted Nor, in enu the characters of Sir Launcelot Greaves who fix themselves in a reader's otten, or the malicious Ferret, or that precious pair, Justice and Mrs Gobble, or the Knight's squire, Timothy Crabshaw, or that very individual horse, Gilbert, whose lot is to be one moment caressed, and the next, cursed for a ”hard-hearted, unchristian tuoad”

Barring the Gobbles, all these characters are important in the book fronificant a a reliance upon the personages for interest quite as much as upon the adventures If the author failed in a sih lack of clearly conceived characters, but through failure to make them flesh and blood In that book, however, he put the adventures together more skilfully than in Sir Launcelot Greaves, the plot of which is not only rather re but also far-fetched There see an English Don Quixote of the eighteenth century, except the chance it gave S Cervantes He was evidently hampered from the start by the consciousness that at best the success of such iivings when he makes Ferret exclaim to the hero: ”What!you set up for a modern Don Quixote? The scheant What was awell-tio, willappearinsipid and absurdat this tiland” Whether from the author's half-heartedness or fro 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- 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 Randorine Pickle, but seldom in Count Fathom With it is a new S 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 stately amiable as S in any of its excellences; their lines are always a little blurred Still, it shows that ten years before Clinker, Smollett had learned to co 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 nanificant 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 naht of later Arthurian roure But in 1760, literary taste was changing Roain, as Ss in Count Fathoes and in the reatest of all poetic subjects,” according to Tennyson, the stories of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, which, for the better part of a century, had been deposed from their old-time place of honour These stories, however, were as yet so imperfectly known--and only to a few--that thepopularity and the naht-errant hero is not impossible

Apart fro historically as ending S after the publication of Fathom in 1753 His next as the translation of Don Quixote, which he coested the idea of an English knight, somewhat after the pattern of the Spanish

Be that as itthe idea, Sland, and with the coland, a successful play which at last brought about a reconciliation with his old enemy, Garrick Two years later, in 1759, as editor of the Critical Review, Smollett was led into a criticish to give its author threewhich tian to lish Quixote

The result was that, in 1760 and 1761, Sir Launcelot Greaves caiven his authority to the statereat haste, so 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 testimony to that of his works to the author's extraordinarily facile pen Finally, in 1762, the novel thus hurried off in instalments appeared as a whole This ives Sir Launcelot Greaves still another clailish novels, indeed the earliest froreat writer, published in serial form

G H MAYNADIER

THE ADVENTURES OF SIR LAUNCELOT GREAVES

CHAPTER ONE

IN WHICH CERTAIN PERSONAGES OF THIS DELIGHTFUL HISTORY ARE INTRODUCED TO THE READER'S ACQUAINTANCE

It was on the great northern road fro of the , that four travellers were, by a violent shower of rain, driven for shelter into a little public-house on the side of the highway, distinguished by a sign which was said to exhibit the figure of a black lion The kitchen, in which they assembled, was the only room for entertainment in the house, paved with red bricks, remarkably clean, furnished with three or four Windsor chairs, adorned with shi+ning plates of pewter, and copper saucepans, nicely scoured, that even dazzled the eyes of the' beholder; while a cheerful fire of sea-coal blazed in the chimney Three of the travellers, who arrived on horseback, having seen their cattle properly accoreed to pass the time, until the weather should clear up, over a bowl of ru to join their company, took his station at the opposite side of the chied himself apart At a little distance, on his left hand, there was another group, consisting of the landlady, a decent , her two daughters, the elder of whoe of fifteen, and a country lad, who served both as waiter and ostler

The social triumvirate was coery and midwifery, Captain Crowe, and his nephew Mr Thomas Clarke, an attorney Fillet was a reat deal of experience, shrewd, sly, and sensible Captain Crowe had commanded a merchant shi+p in the Mediterranean trade for ality and traffic He was an excellent seaman, brave, active, friendly in his way, and scrupulously honest; but as little acquainted with the world as a sucking child; whimsical, i in upon the conversation, whatever it ht be, with repeated interruptions, that seemed to burst from him by involuntary impulse When he himself attempted to speak he never finished his period; but made such a number of abrupt transitions, that his discourse seemed to be an unconnected series of unfinished sentences, theof which it was not easy to decipher

His nephew, Tooodness of heart even the exercise of his profession had not been able to corrupt

Before strangers he never owned hih he had no reason to blush for his own practice, for he constantly refused to engage in the cause of any client whose character was equivocal, and was never known to act with such industry as when concerned for theand orphan, or any other object that sued in forma pauperis Indeed, he was so replete with hu story or circu, it overflowed at his eyes Being of a warm complexion, he was very susceptible of passion, and somewhat libertine in his a the practice of the courts, and in private co down the law; but he was an indifferent orator, and tediously circumstantial in his explanations His stature was rather diminutive; but, upon the whole, he had some title to the character of a pretty, dapper, little fellow

The solitary guest had so in his aspect, which was contracted by an habitual frown His eyes were small and red, and so deep set in the sockets, that each appeared like the unextinguished snuff of a farthing candle, gleah the horn of a dark lanthorn His nostrils were elevated in scorn, as if his sense of s had been perpetually offended by some unsavoury odour; and he looked as if he wanted to shrink within himself fro as straight as the pinions of a raven, and this was covered with a hat flapped, and fastened to his head by a speckled handkerchief tied under his chin He rapped in a greatcoat of brown frieze, under which he seemed to conceal a suished by three peculiarities He was never seen to smile; he was never heard to speak in praise of any person whatsoever; and he was never known to give a direct answer to any question that was asked; but seemed, on all occasions, to be actuated by the most perverse spirit of contradiction