BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE THE present (twelfth and last) volume of this edition of Smollett's Works contains the Poems and Plays, the Expedition against Carthagena, and the History and Adventures of an Atom, together with two rare and comparatively little known pieces—Smollett's Prophecy and A Faithful Narrative of the Base and Inhuman Arts that were lately practised upon the Brain of Habbakkuk Hilding . . . by Drawcansir Alexander (1752). The reader will thus, it is hoped, be placed in "possession" of all that is of permanent interest in Smollett's work, a mere fraction though it be of the total literary output of one who, during the interregnum between Pope and Johnson, might fairly have advanced claims to the title of literary dictator. Excluded are his Letters, few and of little interest apart from his life, and the Essay on the External Use of Water (London, 1752, 4to), in addition to a vast amount of periodical and other compilation, generally speaking very efficiently done, though of purely transitory interest. Priority of place is granted to the two short satires, naive imitations of Juvenal, whose stamp they bear, not in the text, but on the title pages, in the form of epigraphs: Advice: A Satire (London, printed for M. Cooper at the Globe in Paternoster Row, 1746; price one shilling) and Reproof: A Satire, the Sequel to Advice (London, 1747). Both were first issued anonymously in folio, but were reprinted together in a more convenient form in 1748. Thrown into the form of dialogues between a poet and his friend, the satires are written in heroic verse, and have much more of Pope than of Juvenal about them. Their fearlessness attracted an amount of attention which would have been denied to their merit; but it must be admitted that the ferocity of the invective with which some well known names are assailed1 is too suggestive of the methods of the blackmailer. Published in July, 1746, Advice was probably the first work by Smollett to enjoy the distinction of print. It was 1 e.g. Sir John Cope, Sir William Yonge, John (“Lun”) Rich and "Brush" Warren. |