Common sense and abstruse metaphysics: Smollett’s “answer” to Hume’s Treatise [Draft 2.0 – December 2022] 1 The anonymous letter published in the 5 July 1740 issue of the Common sense (hereinafter: 1740 Letter) is not a review, but rather an “answer” – as its author dubs it – to Hume’s Treatise2. It focuses on two main topics: human free-will (against Hume’s purported determinism, or even necessitarianism) and the infinite divisibility of space (against Hume’s psychological atomism). Common sense, or the Englishman’s Journal (1737-1744), was a pugnacious – albeit short-lived – political review linked to the antiWalpole opposition 3 , and generally did not host metaphysical debates. However, the political reason that the author might have had in mind for choosing this periodical is explained at the end of the letter: metaphysics, according to him, can be the basis of “social liberty” when “handled in a natural an concise manner”, but “it does infinite Mischief, when, by departing from Nature, it is rendered obscure, perplex’d and contemptible, as it has designedly been for many Ages by those who were, and still are, endeavouring to rob Mankind of their Liberities, both religious and civil, by rendering every Man an implicit Believer in whatever Opinions they may think fit to propagate, and an abject Slave to whatever Commands they may have a Mind to impose”4. Mossner, who discovered this text5, acknowledges that its author has “the distinction of having written what is probably the first answer to David Hume's Treatise of Human Nature”. While not interested in identifying the unknown writer, Mossner rightly remarks that “it may very well have been the review of the Treatise in [the History of the Work of 1 [This is a section of a wider project by Angela Coventry, Emilio Mazza and Gianluca Mori, covering all the first reactions (1739-1741) to Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature. We warmly thank Antony McKenna and Don Shelton for their support and suggestions]. 2 For a recent edition, see James Fieser, Early Responses to Hume, vol. 3, Early Responses to Hume’s Metaphysical and Epistemological Writings, Thoemmes Press, 2004, p. 85-91. 3 Cf. Thomas Lockwood (1993) “The life and death of Common sense”, Prose Studies, 16:1, 78-93, DOI: 10.1080/01440359308586488; M. Harris, London Newspapers in the Age of Walpole A Study of the Origins of the Modern English Press, by 1987; George Hilton Jones, “The Jacobites, Charles Molloy, And Common Sense”, The Review of English Studies, Volume IV, Issue 14, April 1953, Pages 144-147, https://doi.org/10.1093/res/IV.14.144); Sophia Rosenfeld, Common Sense: A Political History, 2014. 4 1740 Letter, p. 90 (in J. Fieser, Early Responses to Hume, vol. 3). 5 E.C. Mossner, “The First Answer to Hume’s Treatise: An Unnoticed Item of 1740”, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Apr., 1951), pp. 291-294. 1 the Learned] that attracted [his] attention […]”. As we have seen, the question of Hume’s denial of human free-will was indeed at the core of Warburton’s review. According to Mossner, “it is abundantly clear that the Treatise did not pass unnoticed, as has generally been thought – not even by the zealots, for the author of the letter to Common Sense is surely to be termed such”. As we shall see, the sender of the letter was not exactly a “zealot”, if by this term one indicates a bigot, or possibly a Christian fundamentalist fighting again free-thought. He is also less naïve than Mossner thought, notwithstanding his young age and limited experience as a philosopher. But everything will be clearer when his identity is revealed. Let us start with the main hint offered by the 1740 Letter: the author claims, at the very beginning of the text, to have recently published an Essay towards demonstrating the immateriality and free-agency of the soul (London, Shuckburgh, 1760 [i.e. 1740]). Thus, the issue of the authorship of the 1740 Letter becomes immediately that of the attribution of the 1740 Essay. The latter work is a 154-page pamphlet written in a simple, nonacademic style by an anonymous Newtonian writer, who is opposed to the determinist materialism of Antony Collins and Samuel Strutt. The arguments adopted by the author seem very close to those that Andrew Baxter had successfully suggested a few years earlier6. In fact, the author of the letter argues for the perfect passiveness of matter7, and considers every event in the natural world as resulting from the action of an “over-ruling spirit” (God). Yet, the author of the Essay goes even further, placing himself in a position very close to Malebranche's occasionalism8. He maintains, in fact, against Baxter, that in matter there is no “vis inertiae” at all, since resistance is something positive and therefore cannot be ascribed to matter9. Resistance is “not essential” to matter but only an accidental quality, depending entirely on the action of the “universal spirit” on matter. 6 See especially A. Baxter, Enquiry Into the Nature of the Human Soul Wherein the Immateriality of the Soul is Evinced from the Principles of Reason and Philosophy, 1st ed. 1733. 7 “No Part of Matter is of itself active, or can of itself begin to Act upon any other Part of Matter: Whereas one of the first we discover, and one of the most essential Qualities of Spirit, is that of its being in itself Active, or capable of itself to begin to Act upon some Part or Parts of Matter” (1740 Essay, p. 70). 8 For other examples of occasionalist Newtonianism, see Yolton, Thinking Matter, p. 95-100, with a quotation from the Essay (p. 99) erroneously dated 1760 (which is the faulty date to be found on the title-page of the 1740 edition). 9 “We must conclude that, though Matter is commonly said to have a vis Inertia, or Propensity to continue its state of Motion or Rest, til some external Force acts upon it, yet it cannot be properly said, that Matter has really in itself, and from its own Nature, any Vis, or any Propensity, either to continue at Rest or in Motion” (1740 Essay, p. 85). 2 The authorship of the 1740 Essay has remained unknown for the last three centuries, and no attempt has been made to link it to other texts of the same period. Yet it is not difficult to ascertain that the 1740 Essay is, in turn, strongly connected to many similar works by the same author, equally anonymous, published in the years 1737-40: the 1740 Letter addressed to Common sense thus turns out to be the last link in a chain of anonymous writings: 1) The main themes of the 1740 Essay can be found in another short text sent to Common Sense, published on 1st March 1740, but bearing the date “January 23, 173940”, entitled The First Principles of Religion Necessary to the Preservation of Liberty. This text was immediately republished in the London Magazine and in the Gentleman's Magazine of the same month, and later in the Scots Magazine of December 1740 (p. 553). The similarities between The First principles and the 1740 Essay are obvious and there is no need to prove here that they come from the same hand. The First principles are also cited allusively in the 1740 Letter: after mentioning his 1740 Essay, the author of the letter reminds to the editor of the Common sense that “one of your Correspondents [i.e. himself] has already taken notice of [it]”). 2) The same writer is also the author of a precocious and panegyrical review of the 1740 Essay, published in December 1739 in the History of the Works of the Learned (which had already hosted, in November, Warburton’s review of the Treatise). This selfreview is indeed a preliminary or abridged version of the (above-mentioned) First Principles of Religion Necessary to the Preservation of Liberty. 3) The 1740 Essay is advertised in Common sense on 8 December 1739, as published that day (notwithstanding the date 1740 on the title page – but publishers often postdated their products, especially those printed in December). The author of the Essay is obviously the best candidate for the role of the sender of this notice. 4) The main themes of the Essay are anticipated by their author in the Proceedings of the Political Club published in the London Magazine of May 1739, p. 210 ff.: “without entering into the Dispute about the Truth of the fundamental Points of natural 3 religion, which I take to be: the Existence of a supreme and over ruling Spirit, the Immateriality and consequently the Immortality of the Soul of Man, and the Certainty of the future State of Happiness of Man, I shall lay it down as a Maxim that it is the Business of every well-regulated Society and of every wise and honest Magistrate to promote and establish a Belief in these three fundamental Points and to discourage or even punish every Attempt to shake this Belief in any Member of the Society” (N.B.: these “three points” become “four” in the 1740 Essay, but are basically the same) 5) On 11 April 1739, an anonymous letter (to be ascribed, with the utmost probability, to the same author of the 1740 Letter and of the 1740 Essay) was published in the Daily Gazetteer (and later in the Gentleman's Magazine, April 1739, p. 203, and in the Political State of Great Britain, April 1739, p. 323), mentioning the recent expulsion from the University of Cambridge of Tinkler Ducket, a student accused of atheism10, and at the same time making public “the true copy” of Ducket’s letter to his friend Gibbs, in which the former revealed his “progress in atheism”. The author of the 1740 Essay will later explicitly refer to the publication of this letter as the reason for writing his text. 6) Finally, the anonymous Dissertation on the Gin-Act, published in the London Magazine of January 1737, is the common ancestor of all the works mentioned so far, and it surely originates from the same hand. In the incipit of the text, the author announces that he will “communicate” further remarks “as a memorial of my having once existed”. The main tenets of our author’s political credo (“social virtue” and “social liberty”) are rapidly summarized in the 1737 Dissertation: “To establish or preserve social Virtue and social Liberty has always been the benevolent Study of some Men; to corrupt and enslave has been the inhuman Occupation of others: But as Patriots and Philosophers are the only Friends to social Virtue, without which social Liberty cannot subsist, and Kings and Rulers have generally been its secret, sometimes its declared Enemies […] etc.” (“social liberty” is mentioned also at the beginning of 1740 Letter: “the establishing of these Doctrines [human free-will and immateriality of the soul] is, in my Opinion necessary for 10 Cf. Robert Ingram, Reformation without End. Religion, Politics and the Past in post-revolutionary England, Manchester University Press, 2018, p. 25-40. The evidence shows Duckett was expelled, but the evidence, as to whether the 1734 letter was genuine, or a clever fake, remains unclear. 4 the Establishment of Religion, Virtue, and Morality, […] and even of social Liberty itself”). And now comes the first turning point. According to Don Shelton, the 1737 Dissertation on the Gin-Act (6), the April 1739 letter to the Daily Gazetteer (5), and the 1739-40 Proceedings of the Political Club (4), are all attributable to Tobias George Smollett, the celebrated Scottish novelist and journalist (1721-1771). According to Shelton, Smollett was a very precocious writer and began collaborating with British magazines in 1733 – when he was twelve. Shelton is the editor of a large Smollett blog on the web (“The Lost Works of Tobias Smollett and the War of the Satirists”, http://tobiassmollett.blogspot.com), and has recently attributed to Smollett a great number of pamphlets and satirical writings (but without taking into account the 1740 Letter or the 1740 Essay)11. Smollett could indeed be the missing link between the six periodicals involved in the plot, i.e. the Gentleman's Magazine, the London Magazine, Common sense, the History of the Works of the Learned, the Daily Gazetteer and the Scots Magazine. According to Shelton, Smollett collaborated with all six of these periodicals around 1739-40 (the History of the works of the Learned was published in London by T. Cooper – who was Smollett’s favourite printer)12. This would allow us to explain some apparently paradoxical data, such as the publication of three identical texts in three (rival) journals at the same time, and the highly favourable and blatantly biased judgment passed by the History of the Works of the Learned on the not-so-original 1740 Essay. Furthermore, all this would be consistent with a biographical detail concerning Smollett’s departure from London: the 1740 Letter was printed in July, three months before Smollett’s embarkment on a military ship as an apprentice surgeon (which caused the temporary interruption of his collaboration with British magazines). 11 12 See also D. Shelton, Beneath the Varnish: Conventional Wisdom on Trial, ebook, 2022. Shelton, Beneath the Varnish, p. 235. 5 Don Shelton has developed a sort of genetic test that would enable us to detect Smollett's hand in anonymous works of the years 1733-1750. Stripped of three entries which are not applicable to the 1740 Letter, the basic literary “fingerprints” of Smollett’s hand defined by Shelton are the following (we quote from Shelton’s blog: http://tobiassmollett.blogspot.com/2015/01/smollett-literary-collections.html): 1. One or many pleas to publish: “if you think proper to print, it will oblige… ”. 2. A reference to a “school-boy”, probably drawing on his own [recent] experiences at school. 3. A salutation, “your constant reader”, used on numerous occasions. 4. Multiple and repeated use of polemic terms, such as: ‘in a word’; ‘to be short’; ‘nay’; ‘indeed’; ‘methinks’; and similar words. All these fingerprints can be found in the 1740 Letter and/or in the other texts mentioned above as coming from the same author: 1) (pleas to publish: if you think proper to print…) if you think proper to give this a Place in your next Magazine I shall from Time to Time communicate to you my Remarks upon Politicks and Manners of this Age such a Way as may I hope be useful as well as agreeable to Readers [“Dissertation on the Gin-Act”, London Magazine, January 1737, p. 19.] As I published lately An Essay towards demonstrating the Immateriality and Free Agency of the Soul […] I must beg you'll give what follows a Place in your Paper [1740 Letter] 2) (experiences “at school") if I remember any Thing of the old Philosophy I learned at School, the Definition of Extension was, Quod habet Partes extra partes [1740 Letter] 3) (salutation: “your constant reader ") I am, Sir, Your constant Reader and humble Servant [1740 Letter] 4) (polemic terms) Nay (once in the 1740 Letter to Common sense, 13 times in the 1740 Essay) 6 Thus, there is little doubt that, if the attributions proposed by Shelton are valid, then Smollett is the author of the 1740 Letter, where Hume’s Treatise is reviewed and harshly refuted. It is necessary, nevertheless, to test the degree of reliability of Don Shelton's attribution to Smollett of many anonymous texts. Shelton’s arguments are certainly intriguing and could shed a light on Smollett’s early years, in which, according to his official biographers, he did not write anything – a real oddity for such a prolific and inexhaustible writer. But there is a weak point: Shelton does not extract his collection of literary fingerprints from texts officially signed by Smollett (there are none, before 1746), but assumes hypothetically, basing himself on some literary and biographical clues, that Smollett is the anonymous author of a cluster of writings of the years 1733-174013, and then ascribes assertively to him any other text which resembles these writings. There is only one way to overcome this epistemological fragility: to verify the existence of a link between the large corpus of anonymous texts published apparently by the same author from 1736-37 onward (in particular the 1740 Essay and the 1740 Letter), and the works signed by Smollett from 1746 onward. In this research we are helped by the fact that the 1740 Essay, acknowledged by the author of the 1740 Letter as being his own work, is not only preceded by many preparatory texts (listed above, n. 2-6), but is also followed by a plethora of other writings – unnoticed so far – that further develop its arguments. The main themes of the 1740 Essay return first in a short paper “On the Nature of the Soul”, published in the London Magazine, 1751, p. 507-510, and later in the equally succinct “Remarks upon the Late Essays in [Shaftesbury's] Characteristicks”, published in the London Magazine, 1752, p. 323-25 (in both of these writings there are explicit references to the 1740 Essay)14. The same writer could also be the author of another letter published in the London Magazine, 1755, p. 459, dealing with the latest “electrical 13 For further attributions (including John English’s Travels through Scotland, 1763), see D.C. Shelton, “Lost in the Scotch Mist – New Attributions to Tobias Smollett”, Athens Journal of Philology, 9, (2022), p. 77-116. 14 See also “The Whimsical Philosopher”, a series of essays published in the Scots Magazine, London Magazine, and Gentleman’s Magazine between 1749 and 1750, and ascribed to Smollett by Shelton. (http://tobiassmollett.blogspot.com/2015/01/smollett-and-philalethes.html). 7 experiences” made by Euler and Nollet. Above all, the same author published in 1756 a complete rewriting of the 1740 Essay, with considerable additions and some backpedalling (the lengthy analysis of “necessity” is entirely suppressed, as is the doctrine of the “moral certainty” of human actions), under the title of A New Method of Demonstrating from Reason and Philosophy the Four Fundamental Points of Religion. The 1756 New Method – printed in London by Smollett’s “friend”, the Scottish publisher Andrew Millar 15 – allows us to compare the literary and philosophical canon of the anonymous author of the 1740 Letter to the whole of Smollett’s 1746-1771 production, including his novels and his work as a literary critic (since 1756, Smollett was the editorin-chief and “proprietor” 16 of the Critical review). As we shall see, the result of this comparison is entirely positive and shows – with a high degree of probability – that Smollett was the author of the 1740 Letter to Common sense in which Hume’s Treatise is analysed and refuted. At the very beginning of the 1756 New Method, the author proposes his (Lockean) philosophy of mind, arguing that memory is a “retentive faculty” (p. 6). The same expression is to be found, as a synonym of “memory”, in Smollett’s Adventures of an Atom: “the immoderate use of this potation was likewise said to have greatly impaired his retentive faculty” (see also The Adventures of Humphrey Clinker: “he is very intelligent, and his memory is surprisingly retentive”) 17 . Moreover, the mental process of memorizing an idea is illustrated in the New Method by an example (the idea of “John Brown”, p. 6-7), which corresponds to the alias chosen by Roderick Random, the first of Smollett’s literary heroes (“and then asked my name, which I thought proper to conceal under that of John Brown”). On another occasion (p. 118), the author of the New Method modifies the famous anecdote of the painter Zeuxis (told by Pliny and by Erasmus), setting it in Antwerp and taking Rubens as its main protagonist18. He was possibly an admirer of Rubens, just as one of Smollett’s characters, Mr. Pallet, who “arrived about 15 See The Letters of Tobias Smollett, ed. by Lewis M. Knapp, Oxford, Clarendon, 1979, p. 64. See The Letters of Tobias Smollett, p. 108. 17 “Retentive” occurs once in Locke (in the Essay), and never in the whole of Hume’s writings. 18 “The Painter at Antwerp was so much deceived by a Butterfly ingeniously painted, in his Absence, upon the Nose of the principal Figure in one of his capital Pieces by the famous Mr. Rubens, then his Servant, that he flung his Hat at it to frighten it away”. 16 8 eight in the evening at the venerable city of Antwerp […] with the prospect of seeing the birthplace of Rubens, for whom he professed an enthusiastic admiration” (The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle). Among the other faculties of the mind, the author of the 1756 New Method mentions a “recollective faculty”, which he also labels “recollection”. “Recollection” is, according to him, the “most proper name” for what is generally called “reflection”, or the capability of “recalling [an] Idea, and placing it again in my View”. “Memory” and “recollection” work together: “the oftener I do recollect any Idea, the more firmly will it be rooted in my Memory”. This is why “People of lively Imaginations […] have but short Memories, […] because they have every instant new Ideas occurring to them, and therefore have not time to recollect very often any former Idea or Set of Ideas.” The substance of this theory lies also behind a remark to be found in one of Smollett’s reviews, published – like the New Method – in 1756, where some “painful” descriptions of scientific experiences are harshly criticised: “The experiments […] succeed one another in such a manner as leaves no pause for recollection, no mark of distinction for the memory” (for “mark of distinction”, understood as the criterion for the diversity of two ideas, see New Method, p. 193, p. 196). In a passage which we will quote later, Smollett associates again the two faculties of the mind: “[…] the river Lethe, so famed of old for washing away all traces of memory and recollection”. The author of the New Method then wonders about the material texture of the human body and imagines reaching the “first atom, or primary constituent part of the matter of which my body is formed”. This is also the starting point of Smollett’s late satirical pamphlet, The Adventures of an Atom: “I am one of those atoms, or constituent particles of matter, which can neither be annihilated, divided, nor impaired: the different arrangements of us, atoms, compose all the variety of objects and essences which nature exhibits, or art can obtain”. Among the many things – some of which are unmentionable – that happen to Smollett’s atom, there is also his participation in a flow of “odoriferous” particles that find their way through “the olfactory nerve” and produce the sensation of 9 smell19. This is exactly the same mechanical explication of smell adopted in the first version of the New Method (i.e. the 1740 Essays): “the minute particles that are constantly emitted from odoriferous bodies, by making an impulse upon the nerves within the nose, communicate various sorts of motion to those nerves […] by which means an infinite variety of natural ideas are communicated to the mind, which, by abstracting, we rank under the general idea called Smell” (1740 Essay, p. 83). In addressing the question of the existence of an immaterial spirit, the author of the New Method argues that one can at least offer a “negative demonstration” of it, claiming that the existence of an immaterial sprit is proved by the fact than its qualities cannot be inherent in space and hence must be formed by an unextended and immaterial substance (New Method, p. 61). The locution “negative demonstration” is extremely rare in eighteenth-century English (only 5 occurrences, all taken from dictionary entries, are listed by ECCO for the years 1740-70)20. The same locution is to be found, with a satirical undertone, in one of Smollett’s reviews for the Critical Review, published in 175921: “If any person conceives he has made a material improvement in science, he may surely communicate it to the public, for the benefit of his fellow-creatures, without compiling a synopsis of al the authors to whom this improvement was unknown. This, indeed, is a kind of negative demonstration in his own favour […]”22. The scientific background of the author of the New Method is also worth considering. In the first version of the text (the 1740 Essay), the author exhibits a second-hand knowledge of early modern natural philosophy, borrowing literally – but silently – from two famous textbooks: Rohault's System of Natural Philosophy, illustrated with Samuel Clarke’s notes (1st. ed. 1723, cf. 1740 Essay, p. 90-91) and Keill’s Introduction to Natural Philosophy (cf. 1740 Essay, p. 90). These are exactly the textbooks used in Glasgow University in the years between 1720 and 1740 (Smollett was there in 1733-35) by both Gershom Carmichael (until his death in 1729) and Robert Dick. Moreover, the author of 19 “Even now, ten millions of atoms were dispersed in the air by that odoriferous gale which the commotion of thy fear produced; and I can foresee that one of them will be consolidated in a fiber of the olfactory nerve, belonging to a celebrated beauty, whose nostril is excoriated by the immoderate use of plain Spanish [tobacco]”. 20 See, for instance, Chambers’ Cyclopaedia, s.v.: “Negative demonstration is that, whereby we shew a thing to be such from some absurdity that would follow if it were otherwise”. Two other occurrences are listed by Google.books. 21 See J.G. Basker, Tobias Smollett, Critic and Journalist, Newark 1988. 22 Critical Review, 1759, p. 000. 10 the 1740 Essay seems to have attended experiments made with an “air-pump” (see p. 8: “a man who has made, or has heard of experiments made by means of the air-pump […]”, etc.), as Smollett probably did during his college years in Glasgow, since “air-pumps” are included in an inventory made in 172723. Moreover, in a later text to which we will return, Smollett mentions himself the air-pump and the experiments related to it (see below, p. 000). In the 1756 New Method, the author shows an updated knowledge – compared to the 1740 Essay – of physical sciences. He quotes recent research by Euler and Nollet (as in the above-mentioned 1755 letter to the London Magazine) and engages in a discussion on new discoveries in the field of electricity. But it is above all the long discussion on the “electrical fluid” that pervades nature, discovered thanks to the recent “electrical experiments”, that once again reveals the proximity between the New Method and Smollett. Let us compare the relevant passages of the 1756 New Method with a review published in the month of July of the same year (i.e. a few months after the publishing of the New Method)24 in Smollett’s Critical Review: There is a very fine fluid of the same nature with air but extremely more subtle […] that fills all space and pervades all bodies however dense. And from a course of reasoning which seems natural and solid upon the [electrical] experiments here described it appears that there is actually such a fluid in nature and that what has since some late discoveries passed under the name of the electrical fluid is that very Element whose existence Sir Isaac Newton had supposed […] The existence of an electrical fluid considered […] From the many late electrical Experiments, there seems really, in my Opinion, to be some Foundation for supposing, that the Universe is replete with, and that all Bodies are more or less pervaded by a Fluid much more subtle than, and of a very different Nature from, Air. (New Method, p. 170-71) (Critical Review, July 1756). In his History of England, Smollett does not fail to remark that, during the reign of George II, “Natural philosophy became a general study and the new doctrine of electricity grew into fashion”25. 23 Cf. David B. Wilson, Seeking Nature's Logic. Natural Philosophy in the Scottish Enlightenment, 2009, p. 75: “An inventory of instruments from 1727 included air pumps, glass globes for electrical experiments, a hydrostatical balance, prisms, telescopes, microscopes, an instrument “for observing the Laws of Motion in the Collision of Bodies”, and (recently purchased from Francis Hauksbee in London) a collection of loadstones and compasses.” 24 The New Method is reviewed in the March 1756 issue of the Monthly Review (which is possibly the only public reaction to it). 25 T. Smollett, The Complete History of England, p. 000. 11 Finally, the 1756 New Method specifies in greater detail some physiological characteristics of the human body, a sign that the author had made progress in the study of medicine and anatomy. The maintenance of life in an organic body is in fact traced back to the “elasticity of air” in the lungs: “it may be supposed, that the Motion of my Body, Hand, or Finger, proceeds from the Elasticity of the Air within my Body […], or rather the successive rarefaction| and Condensation of the Air in the Lungs, caused by Expiration and Inspiration […]”. This is the same position that Smollett holds in one of his reviews of medical works, based on his experience with the air-pump: “The reason why animals do not live in the receiver of the air pump even before any air is extracted is because it has lost its pressure and consequently its elasticity […] the animal grows fainter just in proportion to the loss of pressure or elasticity in the air, from which it appears evident to us that merely the want of elasticity in the air he inspires is the cause of his death, which ensues a few minutes after he betrays marks of faintness” . Many other phraseological correspondences and verbal associations, of variable importance, can be found between the 1756 New Method and Smollett’s official texts. Some of them, tested on the whole of English literary production of the years 1740-1770 (source: ECCO – Eighteenth Century Collections Online) offer important and possibly definitive confirmation of our hypothesis. Here is a first selection: 1. I have prepared a drench for it, which, like Lethe, washes away the remembrance of what is past, and takes away all sense of its own condition We must with the Ancients suppose, that the whole will be entirely forgot, or washed away by the River Lethe, because we daily observe, that the Memories of some Men are entirely destroyed, and the Remembrance of their whole past Life wiped clean out; even long before their Death, by old Age, or by some Disease or Casualty. (T. Smollett, The Adventures of an Atom) One would imagine these mineral waters were so many streams issuing from the river Lethe, so famed of old for washing away all traces of memory and recollection New Method, London 1756, p. 250 (T. Smollett, The Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom) ECCO: “River Lethe” n6 “away” gives as results only the 1756 New Method and Smollett’s Adventures of Count Fathom 12 2. Pallet fervently joined in this supplication […] and Pickle having looked out at the window withdrew his head in seeming confusion and exclaimed Lord have mercy upon us […] an affection or law of the animal nature, which, for want of another name, I shall call submission, or rather supplication, by which we are prompted to submit to whatever is about to hurt us, and […] to beseach its having mercy upon us (T. Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle) New Method, p. 274 Christ have mercy upon us ! and repeated this supplication as it were mechanically (T. Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle) 3. The human Mind at least is indued with two remarkable affections, which we call Benevolence and Compassion. He mimicked that compassion and benevolence which his heart had never felt (T. Smollett, The Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom) There is no Man, how selfish or brutish soever, but finds a Satisfaction in contributing to the Happiness of another […] that benevolence of heart which disposes you to promote the happiness of your fellow-creatures […] even among our Fellow-Creatures we cannot avoid having a Fear of offending, and a Veneration and Affection for a Man whom we know […] (T. Smollett, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker) His misfortunes , however , excited the compassion of the conqueror […] Compassion again, is an Affection which makes us feel a Pain in the Distress or Misfortune of another man, (T. Smollett, The Complete History of England) New Method, p. 275-76, 290-91 These exhibitions of extreme distress soon attracted the notice and compassion of our company (T. Smollett, The Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom) 4. When this passion [Love] is mutually sincere, it adds raptures to the Pleasures of Friendship, and when accompanied with a comfortable Subsistence, is really a Sort of Heaven upon Earth [He] breathed the softest expressions which the most delicate love could suggest. “I know, resumed the mother , that your passion is mutually sincere” (T. Smollett, The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves) New Method, p. 278 [ECCO lists two more occurences of “mutually sincere” from 1740 to 1770, but neither of them is associated with the words “passion” and “love” as in 1756 New Method and in Smollett’s Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves] 13 5. The Torments of the Wicked in a future State are represented by utter Darkness and burning in Fire and Brimstone: No person whatever was so righteous as to be exempted entirely from punishment in a future state; […] the most pious Christian upon earth might think himself very happy to get off for a fast of seven or eight thousand years in the midst of fire and brimstone New Method, p. 121-22 (T. Smollett, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker) 6. I detest coquetry, and have all the constancy as well as affection of a turtle-dove [je hais la coquetterie […] je suis une tourturelle pour la fidélité] Wild-fowl of most Kinds are certainly very constant to one another during the Breeding Season; but whether the same Mates, if both alive, chuse one another the next Season, has not, I think, been as yet determined. Something of this Kind, I know, is supposed of the turtle-dove (A.R. Le Sage, The Adventures of Gil Blas, English translation by T. Smollett) New Method, p. 278 7. Indeed, we find that, by the Wisdom of the Author of Nature, every Brute Creature is indued with instincts proper for its own Preservation, […] and some of these Instincts regularly cease and return at their proper Time and Season; by which means most Brute Creatures act more consistently than some Men do; for there are too many Men so whimsical in their Behaviour, that they cannot be said to act either by instinct or by Reason. New Method, p. 289 Ye’ll please to observe, ladies, there are two independent principles that actuate our nature — One is instinct, which we have in common with the brute creation, and the other is reason — Noo, in certain great emergencies, when the faculty of reason is suspended, instinct takes the lead, and when this predominates, having no affinity with reason, it pays no sort of regard to its connections; it only operates for the preservation of the individual, and that by the most expeditious and effectual means (T. Smollett, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker) 8. An unintelligible jargon, invented by philosophers and metaphysicians [They] published their predictions, composed of unintelligible jargon New Method, p. 299 (T. Smollett, The Complete History of England) Captain Crowe, whose appearance is sometimes disgusting, and whose sea jargon is absolutely unintelligible to a land reader […] (T. Smollett, The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves) 14 9. The many glorious Examples daily seen of Men’s running into the most imminent Perils and Dangers, and sacrificing with Alacrity their Ease and Quiet, yea even Life itself, for the Sake of their Country, in order thereby to acquire the Esteem of Mankind, and a Place in the Records of Fame, He seemed to change his disposition and became conspicuous for his justice piety and moderation so as to acquire […] the esteem of mankind (T. Smollett, History of England) ECCO: “acquire” n6 “the esteem of mankind” gives as results (before 1770) only Smollett’s History of England New Method, p. 283 10. My conscience will not allow me to plunge into eternity without unburdening my mind, and, by an ingenuous confession, making all the atonement in my power for the ingratitude I have been guilty of, and the wrongs I have committed against a virtuous husband, who never gave me cause of complaint […] this Increase of Sorrow does continue until we find that, by our sincere Repentance, making all the atonement in our power, we have been forgiven by, and are reconciled to that Person. New Method, p. 309 (T. Smollett, The Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom) I have offered all the atonement which the most perfect and sincere penitence could suggest , and she rejects my humility and repentance (T. Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle) ECCO lists only two occurrences of “making all the atonement in [my/our] power” in the whole of English Eighteenth-century literature: Smollett’s Adventures of Count Fathom, and the satirical writing The Eunuch (published in 1752 by Smollett’s publisher, M. Cooper, and possibly authored by Smollett himself) One more question must be raised: was Smollett a philosopher? Was he interested in metaphysics and in morals? Did he have enough scientific competence to understand Newtonian physics and the mathematical foundations of the laws of nature? It would not seem so, at least prima facie. Yet some evidence can be found by digging into his intellectual biography. In an autobiographical text of 1736 (attributed to Smollett by Shelton), the writer recalls his student years: 15 After I had gone thro' my Classical Learning, without being a whit the wiser for it, I was sent to a famous University to finish my Studies: As my Parents design'd me for a Clergyman, I now devoted some idle Hours to Thinking and Reading […] And because I would be a proficient, instead of carefully perusing that little Book call'd the Bible, I read over a whole Library of Systematical Divinity Writers (The Old Whig, n. 61, 1736 [reprint: London 1739, vol. 2, p. 9899]) In the 1740 Essay and in the 1756 New Method there are no quotations from “that little book call’d the Bible”, and Jesus Christ is mentioned only once. The rationalist and possibly deist orientation of Smollett's convictions (and his critical attitude towards the Hebraic and Christian tradition) is confirmed in the very first page of the 1740 Essay: As [the ancient Greeks and Romans] despised and contemned the Jews, and consequently could have no revealed Religion among them, I from thence concluded, that these four fundamental Points might be deduced from the Principles of Reason and Philosophy, without the assistance of Revelation (Preface, p. iii). Who were the “systematical divinity writers” read by Smollett in his early years? Given Smollett’s disdain for revealed sources, this should be interpreted as referring to earlymodern philosophers dealing with theological issues. Another (possibly) autobiographical sketch – to be found in one of Smollett’s novels – runs like this: So inordinate was his desire of making speedy advances in the paths of learning, that within the compass of three months, he diligently perused the writings of Locke and Malebranche, and made himself master of the first six and of the eleventh and twelfth books of Euclid's Elements. He considered Puffendorf and Grotius with uncommon care, acquired a tolerable degree of knowledge in the French language, and his imagination was so captivated with the desire of learning, that, seeing no prospect of a war, or views of being provided for in the service, he quitted the army, and went through a regular course of university education. (T. Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle) The mention of “Locke and Malebranche” is worth noticing, since they are (with Newton) the basic sources of the 1740 Letter and above all of the 1740 Essay, where the complete passiveness of matter and the “over-ruling” causality of God are boldly affirmed. As to Pufendorf and Grotius, they are possible sources for the theory of a moral natural law to be found in the latter text and in the 1756 New Method. The strange couple, Locke and Malebranche, returns in a late anonymous pamphlet which must be attributed to Smollett (it is a defence of the Critical Review against the rival Monthly Review): “I will allow with Locke and Father Malebranche, that one man may think as much in half an hour as another in a hundred years” (The Battle of the Reviews, London [1760], p. 33), and in an 16 article for the Critical Review (August 1759), where Smollett maintains that the reason why Locke is generally more esteemed than Malebranche is that the public “measure[s] esteem by interest”. But Malebranche would certainly prevail if public should “measure its esteem of an art by its difficulty” (p. 125-26). Most of all, Smollett is the author of many reviews of philosophical and scientific volumes, which are published in the Critical Review from 1756 until his death (with a progressive slowdown in production due to his travels in France and Italy). Smollett reviews many works of mathematics and physics, demonstrating full competence in the subject – as it is confirmed by the 1756 New Method26. In the past, scholars have been very cautious in attributing to him articles concerning philosophical books, but more recently, thanks mostly to Valerie Wainwright, the legend of Smollett as a writer and journalist unfamiliar with philosophical issues has crumbled. According to Wainwright, Smollett is the author of the reviews of Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (sometimes wrongly attributed to Hume) and of Helvetius’ De l’Esprit, published in the Critical Review in 1758-5927. In these reviews, many echoes of the 1756 New Method can be found. For instance, in the review of Helvetius, Smollett argues that there is no connection between a man's “exterior” and his intellectual faculties: a monkey, who has “a human face, hands, fingers, and even feet” is “inferior even to many insects […] in point of ingenuity, sagacity, and industry”. Analogously, in the New Method, he contests the “general conclusion, that all the creatures of a human shape have spirits indued with the same qualities or faculties that mine is” (p. 189-90). Yet the main common character of all of Smollett’s philosophical works – from the 1740 Letter to his contributions to the Critical Review – is constituted by the conception of philosophy which emerges from them. Smollett hates abstruse philosophies, written in unintelligible jargon that no one can understand. “Common sense” and “experience” are his watchwords. He highly praises Smith’s philosophical style: “[…] he talks like a man of the world and […] illustrates his argument every moment by appeals to common sense and experience”. The same watchwords are to be found in the 1756 New Method: “my 26 On Smollett and Newton, see Don Shelton’s Blog: “Philalethes Cantabrigiensis, Fluxions, and Tar-water 1733-46”. Valerie Wainwright, "Reviewing Moral Philosophy for the Critical Review: Issues of Authorship and Orientation for Tobias Smollett and David Hume." Philological Quarterly, vol. 99, no. 1, winter 2020, pp. 43+. 27 17 Reasoning has throughout been Consequence founded upon the common Sense of Mankind, or upon what we know by Experience of the Qualities of the human Spirit, and therefore may be called a Sort of experimental Metaphysics” (p. 309). In 1763, the Critical Review published an enthusiastic review of Rousseau’s Émile (p. 416-40), praising precisely Rousseau’s ability to write for everyone, and not only for the most learned: “No writer ever rendered metaphysics more rational or agreeable to the standard of common sense than Mr. Rousseau” (p. 416). The reviewer particularly loves the “profession of faith of the Savoyard vicar”, which “is alone worth whole libraries of crabbed theological jargon” (p. 426). The Vicar argues indeed in favour of the same philosophical points that Smollett had made first in the 1740 Essay and then in the 1756 New Method: the “free-agency” of man, the passivity of matter (“no material being can be self-active”). The reviewer exclaims: “This is true philosophy, which reconciles man to himself, makes him happy, and inspires him with sentiments of gratitude and reverence for the wise and benevolent author of his Being; which applies directly to the judgment, and triumphs not in silencing without convincing the adversary” (p. 430). At the beginning of the second Enquiry, Hume notoriously distinguishes between two “species” of philosophers: those who “[treat] their subject in an easy and obvious manner”, making us “feel the difference between vice and virtue”, and bending “our hearts to the love of probity and true honour”, and those who assume the “arduous task” of getting to the “first principles” of human actions through “speculations” that may seem “abstract, and even unintelligible to common readers”, but aim “at the approbation of the learned and the wise” and seek to “contribute to the instruction of posterity”. Smollett belongs assuredly to the first “species”. His philosophical inclination often degenerates into self-conviction and intuitive certainty: man is free, God is good, spirit moves matter and is eternal, the soul will survive after death, religion – true or false – is good for the maintenance of states. When he does not understand a philosophical position, or when he does not like its conclusions, Smollett denounces it as “abstruse”, and therefore harmful or even malicious. 18 One could say that Smollett assumes Hume’s distinction between the two species of philosophies, but inverts Hume’s value judgment28 . And if Rousseau is, for him, the perfect “common-sense philosopher”, Hume is the obvious champion of the second “species” of thinkers. As Valerie Wainwright has rightly concluded (even without knowing that Smollett was the author of the 1740 Letter on the Treatise), Hume is the direct object of Smollett’s polemical strains against “abstruse” philosophy in the Critical Review years: “The reviewer’s [Smollett’s] satisfaction on finding that Adam Smith’s ‘illustrations’ fall ‘more within the reach of ordinary reason’ […] constitutes a response to Hume's point: Adam Smith had demonstrated that it was possible for a philosopher to be a profound reasoner on topics relating to morality and at the same time suit the comprehension of those of ‘ordinary capacity.’ Though [Smith] penetrates into the depths of philosophy, he still talks like a man of the world: his ‘illustrations’, being ‘more within the reach of ordinary reason, fall under the apprehension of every reader’”29. We may add that the link between this text (dated 1758) and Smollett’s 1740 Letter on Hume’s Treatise is patent: “the Author [Hume] will, I believe, be of my Opinion, if he will but descend from those Clouds where he now seems to wander, and deign to tread upon the Low, but solid Surface of common Apprehension.” In other words, from the beginning to the end of his intellectual career, Smollett always considered Hume as the prototype of the abstruse philosopher. What is less known is that he tried himself, long before Reid30, to be a “common sense philosopher”, hoping that the “public” would praise his efforts to bring philosophy to “the solid surface of common apprehension”. In 1740, he had declared that “If this my first Essay proves acceptable to the Publick, I may possibly soon begin a regular Course of Essays, […] But, if I find that my manner of treating the Subject is not agreeable, […] I fall forbear troubling the World with any farther Publication” (1740 Essay, Preface, p. v). Unfortunately, the 1740 Essay went completely unnoticed – if one excepts Smollett’s panegyrical self-review in the History of the Works of the Learned. Yet he did not keep his promise to remain silent. Thanks to his friendship with Andrew Millar – or, more probably, in exchange for his 28 On Hume’s peculiar reappraisal of philosophical abstruseness, cf. E. Mazza, La peste in fondo al pozzo. L’anatomia astrusa di David Hume, Milano, Mimesis, 2012. 29 Wainwright, Valerie. "Reviewing Moral Philosophy for the Critical Review”, p. 000. 30 We are tempted to attribute to Smollett a review of Reid’s book published in 1764 in the Critical Review, but Smollett was abroad at that time and scholars tend to deny that he wrote anything for the Critical Review during his stay in France and Italy. 19 efforts to rapidly prepare a History of England to rival Hume’s 31 – he had a second chance. But the 1756 New Method did not have any impact on the intellectual debate either (apart from an anodyne review published by the rival Monthly Review in April 1756). No further philosophical essays from Smollett have been found after 1756. He devoted himself entirely to literature, journalism, history, and travels, keeping to himself his harsh judgment of Hume’s thought. In the chapter of Smollett’s History of England concerning the reign of George II, readers can meet “the ingenious, penetrating and comprehensive Hume, whom we rank among the first writers of the age both as an historian and philosopher”. This was simply a diplomatic declaration, which masked a very different attitude. But this is not surprising anymore: as recent research has confirmed, Smollett concealed much of his intellectual work, not only his satirical writings but also his more serious, albeit completely neglected, philosophical efforts. 31 Cf. E.C. Mossner, Harry Ransom, and Gavin Hamilton. “Hume And The ‘Conspiracy of The Booksellers’: The Publication and Early Fortunes of the History of England.” The University of Texas Studies in English 29 (1950): 162– 82, especially 178-182 (http://www.jstor.org/stable/20776018). 20