Smollett
TOBIAS GEORGE, an English novelist, born in March, 1721, the son of Archibald Smollett, of Dalquhurn, Dumbartonshire, Scotland, and his wife, Barbara Cunningham. He was educated in Dumbarton and at Glasgow University, where he studied medicine. After some years of an apprenticeship with a Dr.
John Gordon, he went to London, where he sought to find patronage for a tragedy his, he shipped as surgeon on H.M.S. Cumberland, and served in the operations against Carthagena. He accompanied the fleet to Jamaica, where he met Nancy Lascelles, a creole beauty, whom he married in England about 1747. Leaving the navy, he settled as a surgeon in Westminster, and became a favorite of the taverns and coffee-houses on account of his talent for story-telling. But he made little of his practice, and, turning to literature, he published in 1758 "Roderick Random," a picaresque novel, modeled on "Gil Blas" and including a good deal of autobiography. It was well received, and its profits enabled him to publish his youthful tragedy, "The Regicide." His second novel, "The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle," appeared in 1751, and was even more successful, though it was disfigured by many coarse attacks on his personal enemies, and had an unsympathetic hero.
He now made another unsuccessful at-