Note 231 — Chapter XII
Reading edition
Dr. Smollet, originally a ship-surgeon, was an abusive Jacobite writer, author of a compilation of the History of England, in which he had spoken most scurrilously of the Duke of Cumberland for suppressing the Rebellion, and had been punished by the King’s Bench for slandering Admiral Knowles. [His “genius,” however, to use the words of Walter Scott, “has raised an imperishable monument to his memory,” in the poems and novels which Walpole does not deign to notice in this allusion to his works. Nor is the criticism just in other respects. Smollet’s tracts are not more virulent than most publications of a similar character of that day. His censure of the Duke of Cumberland has been confirmed by subsequent historians, and his punishment for the libel on Admiral Knowles reflects discredit on the Admiral rather than on himself.—See Walter Scott’s Lives of the Novelists, vol. i. p. 143.—E.]