The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle: Smollett's Collection
About this ebook
In a certain county of England, bounded on one side by the sea, and at the distance of one hundred miles from the metropolis, lived Gamaliel Pickle, esq.; the father of that hero whose fortunes we propose to record. He was the son of a merchant in London, who, like Rome, from small beginnings had raised himself to the highest honours of the city, and acquired a plentiful fortune, though, to his infinite regret, he died before it amounted to a plum, conjuring his son, as he respected the last injunction of a parent, to imitate his industry, and adhere to his maxims, until he should have made up the deficiency, which was a sum considerably less than fifteen thousand pounds.
This pathetic remonstrance had the desired effect upon his representative, who spared no pains to fulfil the request of the deceased: but exerted all the capacity with which nature had endowed him, in a series of efforts, which, however, did not succeed; for by the time he had been fifteen years in trade, he found himself five thousand pounds worse than he was when he first took possession of his father's effects; a circumstance that affected him so nearly, as to detach his inclinations from business, and induce him to retire from the world to some place where he might at leisure deplore his misfortunes, and, by frugality, secure himself from want, and the apprehensions of a jail, with which his imagination was incessantly haunted. He was often heard to express his fears of coming upon the parish; and to bless God, that, on account of his having been so long a housekeeper, he was entitled to that provision.
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About the author
Tobias George Smollett (19 March 1721 – 17 September 1771) was a Scottish poet and author. He was best known for his picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748) and The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751), which influenced later novelists such as Charles Dickens. His novels were amended liberally by printers; a definitive edition of each of his works was edited by Dr. O. M. Brack, Jr. to correct variants.
In George Eliot's Middlemarch, Mr. Brooke says to Mr. Casaubon: "Or get Dorothea to read you light things, Smollett – Roderick Random, Humphrey Clinker. They are a little broad, but she may read anything now she's married, you know. I remember they made me laugh uncommonly — there's a droll bit about a postilion's breeches."
In W. M. Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Rebecca Sharp and Miss Rose Crawley read Humphrey Clinker: "Once, when Mr. Crawley asked what the young people were reading, the governess replied "Smollett." "Oh, Smollett," said Mr. Crawley, quite satisfied. "His history is more dull, but by no means so dangerous as that of Mr. Hume. It is history you are reading?" "Yes," said Miss Rose; without, however, adding that it was the history of Mr. Humphrey Clinker."
Charles Dickens's David Copperfield mentions its titular young hero to count Smollett's works as among his favourites as a child.
John Bellairs referenced Smollett's works in his Johnny Dixon series, wherein Professor Roderick Random Childermass reveals that his late father Marcus, an English professor, had named all of his sons after characters in Smollett's works: Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, and even "Ferdinand Count Fathom", who usually signed his name F. C. F. Childermass.
George Orwell praised him as "Scotland's best novelist".
In Hugh Walpole's "Fortitude", the protagonist Peter references "Peregrine Pickle" as a text that inspires him to document his own memoirs.
