Tobias Smollett and the unknown unknowns.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)

THE OTHER DAY I read a review of a biography of Tobias Smollett. I have not read any Smollett and I was curious to find out more about him (and perhaps pick up some hints on what is his best work). It was a good review, learned and full of information about Smollett and his times. But what struck me was an error of interpretation on a matter that I, as a lawyer, understood, and the reviewer (Paddy Bullard, reviewing Jeremy Lewis, Tobias Smollett (Cape), in the Times Literary Supplement, October 10, 2003), presumably not a lawyer, did not understand.

Smollett lived in the eighteenth century and after a short time as a surgeon's mate in the Royal Navy he settled down to what Bullard called a life of literary drudgery interspersed with the publication of several novels. Bullard noted that Smollett's novels and characters display an extraordinary amount of violence. So much so, indeed, that it might be said that one of Smollett's heroes, Peregrine Pickle, would be today labelled a psychopath. Bullard then suggests that violence affected Smollett's own life and relates one episode to highlight the role of violence in Smollett's life and work.

In 1752 Smollett found himself, to quote Bullard:

    before the Court of King's Bench, charged with  assault and trespass by an impecunious scribbler    and literary  dependant named Peter Gordon.  

      
   Smollett had been charitable to Gordon in the past,    and the  hack tried to extort further loans from the    novelist ...  Gordon's statement to the court ...    describes how an outraged  Smollett, "with force  

      
   and arms, that is to say with swords staves stones    knives clubs  fists sticks and whips made an assault    upon him the said Peter--and  so ill treated him that    his life was despaired of ..."  

Bullard comments: "The testimony has an authentic ring of Smollettian paranoia and excess about it."

Well, it may, and Smollett may have been the sort of violent person that Bullard suggests he was. But the above testimony from the court case cannot support Bullard's claims because, far from having anything to do with the assault, it was a formulaic technicality that had evolved from earlier attempts to attract the jurisdiction of the royal courts.

In medieval times England did not have a centralised judicial system similar to the one it has today. There was a multiplicity of courts and the royal courts were reserved for important cases, especially where there was a breach of the peace. So, to attract the jurisdiction of the royal courts in a trespass case one had to allege violence. In later times this allegation ...