SOURCE: "Smollett: Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Ferdinand Count Fathom," in his Number and Pattern in the Eighteenth-Century Novel: Defoe, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973, pp. 123-43

I Roderick Random

Form mattered to Fielding. Even in Amelia, its iconographical implications can still be detected, if only faintly. In Smollett's first novel, published in 1748, on the other hand, the overriding impression is one of disorder and fragmentation, in subject-matter and in structure. Robert Alter has justly remarked on the way it reflects the phrenetic and neurotic quality of life in the period;¹ and it does so with a fidelity and awareness of the grotesque and the chaotic that has, once again, its visual counterpart in the middle and late works of Hogarth. But to concentrate on this aspect of Roderick Random is to do Smollett an injustice by ignoring his attempts to impose arithmetical schemes on his material, attempts which make his novels structurally very different from their picaresque antecedents.² I use the word 'impose' advisedly, however: the young Smollett was too much a man of the transitional mid-century to achieve, or even want to achieve, at this stage of his development, the kind of formal complexity manifested in, say, Joseph Andrews. Nevertheless, before writing Roderick Random he had obviously studied Fielding's novel with some care, as the several echoes of it in his own work attest,³ and doubtless one of his reasons for reading Joseph Andrews was to seek guidance on the structuring of a long prose fiction.

Like Joseph Andrews, Roderick Random was published in two volumes. This format obviously assisted Smollett in working out his narrative symmetries, as it assists the reader in grasping them. It should be recorded here, then, that vol. I contains thirty-six chapters, and vol. II, thirty-three chapters. The chapter numbering is continuous (i.e., running from 1 to 69), though in later eighteenth-century editions there seems to have been a tendency to number each volume separately.⁴

The novel's fundamental circularity is announced in chapter I with the sage's interpretation of Roderick's mother's dream as meaning that he 'would be a great traveller, that he would undergo many dangers and difficulties, and at last return to his native land, where he would flourish with great reputation and happiness'. It is also in this first chapter that Roderick's father mysteriously disappears, 'and notwithstanding all imaginable inquiry, could not be heard of, which confirmed most people in the opinion of his having made away with himself in a fit of despair'. Both Roderick and his father return to Scotland and regain the family estate in the final chapter.

Such a balancing of beginning and end is elementary enough. More interesting is the way Smollett prepares us for the rediscovery of Roderick's father. Don Rodrigo is, it will be recalled, encountered in chapter 66, living in Buenos Aires. No sooner have he and his son been reunited than they sail from the Rio de la Plata to Jamaica where they meet Roderick's former shipmate Thomson (ch. 67). Leaving Thomson they set off for England and almost immediately lose a man overboard:

About two hours after this melancholy accident happened … I heard a voice rising, as it were, out of the sea, and calling, 'Ho, the ship, ahoy!' Upon which one of the men upon the forecastle cried, 'I'll be d n'd, if that an't Jack Marlinspike, who went over-board!' Not a little surprized at this event, I jumped into the little boat that lay along-side, with the second mate and four men, and rowing towards the place, from whence the voice (which repeated the hail) seemed to proceed, we perceived something floating upon the water; when we had rowed a little farther, we discerned it to be a man riding upon a hen-coop.…

The man turns out to be from another ship; but this apparent resurrection of the drowned sailor is a clever retrospective analogue to the unexpected discovery of Roderick's father, thought to be dead long since. The incident makes full structural sense, however, only if we remember what happened to Thomson earlier on in the novel. Because of Mackshane's brutality (Thomson mentions Mackshane at the beginning of chapter 67) he had thrown himself overboard from the ship in which he and Roderick were serving together (ch. 29). Nothing more is heard of him (and he is presumed dead) until chapter 36, when Roderick goes ashore at Morant and notices a horseman who turns out to be 'the very person of my lamented friend'. Thomson then explains how he comes to be alive: once in the water he had 'hailed a large vessel' but her crew had not wanted 'to lose time, by bringing to; however, they threw an old chest over-board, for his convenience, and told him that some of the ships a-stern would certainly save him.… '

The parallel could scarcely be closer. And this episode itself has been prepared for by Roderick, who, in chapter 34, after nearly dying of a fever, pretends to be dead and suddenly to come to life in order to startle Morgan. We might say, then, that Roderick Random's basic structure is planned round the disappearance and rediscovery of Don Rodrigo, and that the 'resurrections' noted here, but especially that of Thomson at the very end of the first volume, have a deliberate anticipatory function—a function that is made the more explicit by Thomson's reappearance in chapter 67 immediately after Roderick's reunion with his father, and by the echo of his original plight by the sailor on the hen-coop.

If the end of the first volume looks forward, the first chapter of the second (37) looks back and also marks a new beginning for Roderick. Returning to England with wealth and clothing and seeing himself 'as a gentleman of some consequence' (ch. 36), it is suddenly apparent that his quest for gentility⁵ has reached only a contrived, not a genuine, conclusion. For in chapter 37 there is a storm, and Roderick, who tells us 'I cloathed myself in my best apparel', fights with his enemy Crampley and is left destitute on a Sussex beach, where 'I cursed the hour of my birth, the parents that gave me being', and so on.⁶ This curse is important; for it is clearly intended to take us back to chapter 1. And as a further reminder that the novel is, in a sense, beginning again, Roderick finds himself a surrogate mother in Mrs Sagely (chapter 38; his own mother had died in chapter 1): the old woman 'drew a happy presage of my future life from my past sufferings' (recalling the sage's prediction in chapter 1)⁷ and Roderick 'contract[s] a filial respect for her', but only after he has heard her life history: she had married beneath her and without her parents' consent, and they had disinherited her. The story echoes that of Roderick's own father, who had married 'a poor relation' without parental consent and had again been disinherited. Mrs Sagely then leaves the novel until near the end (chaps 65 and 67);⁸ and in chapter 67 she alludes to her words in chapter 38: 'she thanked heaven that I had not belied the presages she had made, on her first acquaintance with me.…' Beginning, middle, and end of the novel are thus closely bound together as they are also by the disappearance of Roderick's father, the disappearance and reappearance of Thomson, and the reappearance of Don Rodrigo.

Miss Williams provides another link between the two halves of the novel. Roderick, already in his eyes 'a gentleman in reality' (ch. 20), had first encountered her when he pursued her as a supposed heiress, and had met her again as an abandoned prostitute in the following chapter. This hints at a theme that is developed in more detail in vol. II with the courtesan picked up by the deluded Roderick in chapter 45 and Melinda (chaps 47ff.). Miss Williams's function is therefore proleptic: she acts as a warning of the sexual and social temptations that will confront him on his return to London, though the relevance of her 'history' (chaps 22, 23) becomes apparent only after Roderick has met his beloved Narcissa in the second volume. As a girl Miss Williams had been attacked by a drunken squire in a wood and rescued by a young man who 'was the exact resemblance of Roderick. He had seduced her and then 'left [her] without remorse'. The parallel (with a difference) with the main narrative emerges in chapter 41, when Roderick rescues Narcissa from an indecent attack by Sir Timothy Thicket. Moreover, the link thus forged between the two women is strengthened when Miss Williams appears as Narcissa's maid in chapter 55 (acting as a warning to him once more: he had pursued her unsuccessfully as an heiress in Part I and had nearly married her; now she brings Roderick and Narcissa together when he is again on a false trail by chasing another heiress, Miss Snapper). Roderick first met Miss Williams in chapter 20; chapter 55 is the nineteenth chapter of vol. II.

Miss Williams's story is interrupted at the beginning of chapter 23 by her wrongful arrest. She is driven off to the Marshalsea, but is released when the mistake is realized. The interruption is as much a structural matter as anything else; for Roderick hears the second interpolated story, that of Melopoyn, in chapters 62 and 63, when he has been arrested for debt and is himself imprisoned in the Marshalsea. Both narratives last for two chapters, and although the Marshalsea provides the only substantive link between them, and their relative positions in their respective volumes by no means correspond, we have here yet another indication, I think, of Smollett's anxiety to give his first novel all the trappings of formal unity even if, in his treatment of the interpolated narrative, he was unable to live up to the examples of Fielding and Fielding's own model, Cervantes.

The symmetries created by the appearances of Bowling are also worth comment. We last hear from him in the first volume in chapter 6; Roderick then encounters him in France in chapter 41, and he departs in chapter 42 (i.e., the sixth chapter of vol. II), to reappear to rescue his nephew from the Marshalsea in chapter 64 (the sixth chapter from the end of the novel). Strap, too, is involved in analogous symmetries: he and Roderick meet and decide to travel together in chapter 8, and they meet up again in France in chapter 44, the eighth chapter of vol. II.

If we now turn from large-scale patterns to the internal organization of the individual volumes, an interesting contrast is apparent. There is an undeniable arithmetical patterning in vol. I, since its thirty-six chapters are clearly divided into three sets of twelve by Roderick's arrival in London (ch. 13) and his being press-ganged into the navy (after the beginning of chapter 24, which is therefore transitional). Smollett was obviously working to the following scheme:

1-12	Scotland; Journey
13-24	London
25-36	Navy

[Editor's note: the source reproduced this diagram in a linear format. The columnar format of LC did not allow it to be reproduced in the same way.]

While in addition, the following subdivisions may be detected: chapters I to 6, Scotland, and 7 to 12, journey (i.e., the first block falls into two sets of six chapters); chapters 13 to 15, various London matters; 16 to 18, the navy office; 19 to 21, Lavement; 22 to beginning of 24, Miss Williams (four sets of three). The third block is similarly divided: nearly four chapters (24 to 27) are devoted to Roderick's initial experiences on board ship; three chapters (28 to 30) recount events on the voyage to Carthagena, and Carthagena itself takes up three chapters (31 to 33); finally, the last three chapters of the volume (34 to 36) form a single unit centring round Captain Whiffle and Crampley.

But the second volume lacks such a precise individual arithmetical structure, though it does contain the few symmetries already noted. Of Roderick Random as a whole, it can be said that Smollett here reveals no firm sense of structural direction, and that the patterns I have described lack any real iconographical import despite the lip service paid to the power of Providence in the novel.⁹ I suspect, in fact, that they are little more than mere scaffolding.

II Peregrine Pickle

The symmetries in Smollett's much longer second novel, however, possess more symbolic significance. Indeed, we might anticipate a little here, and say that from the structural point of view at least Smollett's development is the exact opposite to that of Defoe and of Fielding, in that it manifests an increasing concern with architectonics and such numerological details as mid-point symbolism. As we shall see, this concern coincides with a move towards greater thematic and moral clarity.

The question of structural schemes in Peregrine Pickle (1751) is complicated by the considerable revisions made for the second edition (1758). For the time being, therefore, I shall consider the first edition, and since the volume divisions once again have an important part to play, I supply the following table:¹⁰

Volume	Chapters	Total
I	1-38	38
II	39-78	40
III	79-93	15
IV	94-114	21

Only with this information before us can we appreciate, for example, how carefully Trunnion's death at the garrison at the beginning of the third volume (ch. 79), together with his warning to Peregrine not to abuse Emilia, is balanced by the death of Peregrine's aunt at the beginning of vol. IV (ch. 94), which again brings Peregrine to the garrison. And chapter 94 can also serve as a useful introduction to the kind of less symmetrical repetitive structuring that we encounter in Peregrine Pickle. For Peregrine here meets Emilia, whom, despite his uncle, he has abused, and with whom he is on bad terms. He asks Sophy to be his advocate with her, and in so doing he draws the parallel with her previous identical role in vol. I (ch. 26) by remembering 'that fond, that happy day, on which the fair, the good, the tender-hearted Sophy became my advocate, though I was a stranger to her acquaintance, and effected a transporting reconciliation between me and that same inchanting beauty, that is now so implacably incensed'. The parallel here has both a moral and a structural function. The first incident, caused by the letter fabricated by Pipes, had been a comic misunderstanding. But the second involves a much more serious alienation between the two, brought about by Peregrine's pride and his failure to recognize and live up to the virtue embodied in Emilia. And just as Pipes, because of the letter, had had a major part in chapter 26, so he does in chapter 94, trying to help Peregrine's case by pretending that his master has 'hanged himself for love'. Again, Peregrine draws the parallel: 'this is the second time I have suffered in the opinion of that lady by your ignorance and presumption; if ever you intermeddle in my affairs for the future, without express order and direction, by all that's sacred! I will put you to death without mercy.'

The parallel deaths of Peregrine's uncle and aunt are not the only way in which Smollett has linked the last two volumes: the third volume, beginning as it does with Trunnion's death, sees Peregrine in possession of his uncle's estate and his initiation into the fashionable world; at the end of vol. IV (ch. 111) Peregrine's father, Gamaliel, dies. Having squandered his first inheritance, Peregrine can handle with temperance the 'more ample' fortune he now receives. The point is made explicitly: Peregrine has 'a stock of ex-perience that [will] steer him clear of all those quick-sands among which he had been formerly wrecked' (ch. 112).

Further instances of such patterning abound. For example, the series of misunderstandings and reconciliations between Peregrine and Godfrey near the end of the first, second, and fourth volumes: in chapter 30 (ninth from the end), chapter 73 (sixth from the end) and chapter 109 (also sixth from the end); or the satirical adventures of the two at the end of the first volume (chaps 34ff.) and of the second volume (chaps 73ff.), where they have a more moral aim and are not mere practical jokes as they were earlier). It is here (ch. 76) that Peregrine becomes acquainted with Crabtree, and near the end of vol. III (chaps 89ff.) occur several satirical exposes in which Peregrine and Crabtree engage together (including Peregrine's unmasking of 'a couple of sharpers' in chapter 92—compare the 'Scheme' in chapter 74 'by which a whole Company of Sharpers is ruined').

Similarly, towards the end of vol. I, in chapter 35, Peregrine's sister Julia is alienated from her family because of her affection for her brother. In a corresponding position in vol. II (ch. 72) she is married to a Mr Clover who, at the end of the fourth volume, is instrumental in seeing that Peregrine gets his rightful inheritance (ch. 111); while a couple of chapters from the end of vol. III Peregrine claims to have seen an apparition of 'the commodore …, in the very cloaths he wore at [Julia's] wedding' (ch. 92). Finally, there is the repetitive pattern created by Godfrey's military promotions: in chapter 33 Trunnion discovers that he knew Godfrey's father, and he and Peregrine give Godfrey money which enables him to purchase an ensigncy; in chapter 73 Peregrine, again unknown to Godfrey, helps him to a lieutenancy, and in chapter 92 he gets him 'a captain's commission'. The sequence is completed when, in the fourth volume, Godfrey is again seeking promotion and discovers who his benefactor has been (ch. 109). At this point Pipes refers Godfrey to the first event in the sequence: 'That same money you received from the commodore, as an old debt, was all a sham, contrived by Pickle for your service.… (In the first, second, and last instances the relevant. event occurs in the sixth chapter from the end of the volume.)

I suggested that Roderick Random begins again, as it were, with the opening of the second volume. We have already seen Defoe (in Robinson Crusoe) and Fielding (in Tom Jones and Amelia) using the centres of their novels in a similar way, and, as I said earlier, I regard this preoccupation with the centre as deriving (in part at least) from the rich tradition of mid-point symbolism in seventeenth-century poetry. Interestingly, though, in Peregrine Pickle Smollett's concern for the thematic possibilities of the centre is much more evident than in his first novel: it is here that we sense him, however tentatively, beginning to explore the iconographical implications of pattern. In fact, he places Trunnion's death exactly in the middle, that is, in the first chapter of vol. III (in Clifford's edition, on p. 394 out of a total of 781). The volume divisions are essential in directing us to the symmetry for we are prepared to take on trust that, as we open the third volume, we have reached the half-way stage in a four-volume work. (Though in terms of chapter-totals, of course, chapter 79 is considerably beyond the mid-point; this is because of the imbalance created by Lady Vane's 'Memoirs', which occupy the greater part of vol. III.) The counting of pages, therefore, merely confirms what the external (i.e., volume) divisions have already made explicit. The death of Trunnion is, of course, crucial to Peregrine's career and moral development. Significantly, then, Smollett underlines the event and its centrality with the traditional image of elevation which is here invoked to affirm Peregrine's pride: 'The possession of such a fortune, of which he was absolute master, did not at all contribute to the humiliation of his spirit, but inspired him with new ideas of grandeur and magnificence, and elevated his hope to the highest pinnacle of expectation.¹¹

Moreover, vols I, II, and IV themselves possess symbolic centres. Of the first volume's thirty-eight chapters, the first nineteen narrate (among other matters) Peregrine's schoolboy pranks and practical jokes. His Winchester rebellion fails in chapter 20, and at this point 'he plunged into a profound reverie that lasted several weeks, during which he shook off his boyish connections, and fixed his view upon objects which he thought more worthy of his attention.' He is, Smollett tells us, 'in the utmost hazard of turning out a most egregious coxcomb', and there are hints of unstable equilibrium and potential fall: 'While his character thus wavered between the ridicule of some, and the regard of others, an accident happened, which, by contracting his view to one object, detached him from those vain pursuits that would in time have plunged him into an abyss of folly and contempt.' This 'accident' is his meeting with Emilia; so that the second half of vol. I is concerned with Peregrine and Emilia, the transition coming in the centre with Peregrine's character change and the appearance of Emilia. An element of chiastic patterning reinforces the symmetry:

17 Trunnion (sends Peregrine away from garrison to Winchester)
   18
      19 Insurrection (leaves school)
         20 Failure of insurrection; Emilia
      21 Elopes from school (because of Emilia)
   22
23 Trunnion (summons Peregrine to garrison)

Like Sophia in Tom Jones, Emilia represents that virtue to which Peregrine is aspiring as he journeys through the novel. He is especially forgetful of her (and hence of her symbolic significance) during his travels in vol. II, and returns from France prepared to violate her. His attempt to do so, which occurs in chapters 80 to 84, is Smollett's profoundest comment on his hero's moral decadence; and, it is essential to note, the episode has been carefully prepared for by the pattern of sexual encounters in the second volume. First of all frustrated in his attempts on Mrs Hornbeck (chaps 40ff.), Peregrine meets up with her again and finally enjoys her 'without restraint' (ch. 64). But this successful amatory adventure frames an unsuccessful one with an unknown girl whom Peregrine dubs his 'Amanda'. The Amanda episode resolves itself into a series of frustrations at the very moment of consummation, the last frustration being the most important for the comment it elicits from Amanda: 'she hoped last night's adventure would be a salutary warning to both their souls; for she was persuaded, that her virtue was protected by the intervention of heaven; that whatever impression it might have made upon him, she was enabled by it to adhere to that duty from which her passion had begun to swerve …' (ch. 62).

In other words, 'the intervention' is to be read as a Providential warning to Peregrine, which he fails to heed.¹² And its function in this respect is reinforced structurally in a way that should by now come as no surprise: for Amanda occupies the centre of the second volume and is thus implicitly contrasted with Emilia, who, as we have seen, is introduced in the centre of vol. I (the central chapters of vol. II are 58 and 59, twentieth and twenty-first out of a total of forty). The whole episode is, in addition, symmetrical in itself: Peregrine meets Amanda in a coach (ch. 56) and parts from her in a coach (62); in the central chapter of the group and of the volume Peregrine arranges a coach accident so that he might seduce her at an inn:

56 A and P meet in coach
   57 A and P interrupted by Jolter and Jew
      58 A and P interrupted by Pallet
         59 Coach accident
      60 A and P interrupted by Pallet
   61 A and P interrupted by Jolter and Pallet
62 A and P part in coach

Two other symmetries in this volume are worth noting. First, in the seventh chapter (45) Peregrine receives a letter from Godfrey and fails 'to honour the correspondence which he himself had sollicited' and also begins 'to conceive hopes of [Emilia] altogether unworthy of his own character and her deserts'; in chapter 71 (eighth from the end) Peregrine, now in England, 'remembred, with shame, that he had neglected the correspondence with her brother, which he himself had sollicited', and we are told that 'Tho' he was deeply enamoured of miss Gauntlet, he was far from proposing her heart as the ultimate aim of his gallantry.…' Second, Peregrine dismisses Pipes in chapter 56 (just before the Amanda affair begins); and in chapter 64—shortly after its conclusion—Pipes reappears.

As I have said, the Amanda episode, far from being a warning to Peregrine, seems rather to act as an incitement. He returns to England intent on seducing Emilia, and, significantly, his attempt on her contains several echoes of the earlier attempts on Amanda. Thus, the failure of his attempted seductions leads to a fit of rage and madness ('he raved like a Bedlamite, and acted a thousand extravagancies' (ch. 82)) which recalls the 'distraction', 'delirious expressions', 'agitation', and 'extasy of madness' that are the result of Amanda's refusal to see him any more (ch. 62); he chases unsuccessfully after Emilia (ch. 84) as he does after Amanda (ch. 66); and, as if to confirm the parallel, Emilia has already been referred to as 'his Amanda' at the beginning of chapter 84. It takes 'a dangerous fever'—the consequence of his passion—to bring 'him to a serious consideration of his conduct' (chaps 84, 85). But again, Smollett's attention to structural detail ensures that the point is made more subtly. For in chapter 85 Peregrine returns to the garrison—always associated with integrity and right thinking in the novel—not only to assist in Hatchway's courtship of Mrs Trunnion but also 'to give orders for erecting a plain marble monument to the memory of his uncle' (the chapter begins with Peregrine writing a letter to Mrs Gauntlet expressing his sense of shame at having abused Emilia). Now immediately before Peregrine's attempt on Emilia, the dying Trunnion had warned his nephew, 'if you run her on board in an unlawful way, I leave my curse upon you …' (ch. 79); and since the actual seduction attempt on Emilia occurs in the central chapter (82) of the group of five devoted to Peregrine's scheme against her (80 to 84), we get the following symmetry: garrison / two chapters 11 attempt on Emilia II two chapters / garrison. Peregrine's involvement in the erection of the commodore's tombstone thus functions as a tacit, symbolic, reminder of his abuse of Emilia and of his uncle's trust, his abandonment of Trunnion's values.

The mid-point of vol. IV has even more obviously iconographical implications than those in the first two volumes. Here, in chapter 104 (eleventh out of twenty-one), we see Peregrine disappointed in his expectations of preferment from Sir Steady Steerwell, and his resultant despair. Just as, at the mid-point of the novel as a whole, Peregrine was 'elevated' in pride and fortune, so now, with that fortune squandered, he has reached his nadir: he has undergone a 'reverse of fortune' and 'such a gush of affliction would sometimes rush upon his thought, as overwhelmed all the ideas of his hope, and sunk him to the very bottom of despondence' (ch. 104)—the inversion of the traditional central image of elevation again. And at the end of the chapter the 'lady of quality' calls upon him to redirect his attentions to Emilia ('it is now high time for you to contract that unbounded spirit of gallantry, which you have indulged so long, into a sincere attachment for the fair Emilia …'), who thus occupies the centre of this last volume as of the first. Moreover, chapter 104 is framed in such a way as to affirm unequivocally its median position. The preceding chapter concludes with a squabble between the fly-fancier and mathematician whom Peregrine has encountered at the virtuoso's public breakfast—a squabble that is announced with a comic balance-image: 'the engineer proceeded to the illustration of his mechanicks, tilting up his hand like a ballance, thrusting it forward by way of lever, embracing the naturalist's nose like a wedge betwixt two of his fingers.…' The function of this as a numerological pointer is reinforced by a complementary passage in chapter 105, where Peregrine is imprisoned in the Fleet and 'in this microcosm' discovers a concern with justice that puts the greater world to shame: 'Justice is here impartially administered, by a court of equity, consisting of a select number of the most respectable inhabitants, who punish all offenders with equal judgment and resolution, after they have been fairly convicted of the crimes laid to their charge.'

And in between we have the blatant injustice of the minister Sir Steady Steerwell, whose name, which graces the heading of the 104th chapter, parodies that ideal of just government which it so manifestly expresses.¹³ Deflated on the one side by the Dunciad world of the college of authors (itself a transparent comment on hierarchy and preferment in the political sphere) and of the virtuosi, Sir Steady is shamed on the other by the just world of the Fleet and—the irony is a manifestly numerological one—by the 'just' division of the volume itself into two equal halves with Sir Steady maintaining the mean.¹⁴

There can be no doubt, it seems to me, that these patterns are deliberate on Smollett's part. And their effectiveness is both a symptom and a result of Peregrine Pickle's moral and thematic clarity. In Roderick Random Narcissa had been introduced too late late to act convincingly as a moral cynosure; but, as Rufus Putney showed long ago,¹⁵ in Smollett's second novel the Emilia-Peregrine relationship is crucial: we measure Peregrine's growth in terms of his attitudes to Emilia, who is thus given the central positions of sovereignty. Peregrine Pickle quite literally revolves round her.

In addition to these exact symmetries, as I have already suggested, Peregrine Pickle reveals the less significant repetitions and episode-parallelisms that we are familiar with from the novels discussed in earlier chapters, and there is no need to cite further examples. But before going on to consider how the revisions for the second edition affected the symmetries outlined above, a word or two should be said about the long interpolated narratives, 'The Memoirs of a Lady of Quality' (ch. 88), and the history of MacKercher and the Annesley case (ch. 106). It is evident from the facts that, although it is possible to detect links between the 'Memoirs' and the story of Peregrine, they were included in the novel for extra-literary reasons. It would be a mistake, therefore, to attempt to isolate every possible parallel; and the Annesley case has only slightly more relevance: together with Peregrine's tale at the end of chapter 106 of a child deprived of an estate which is subsequently restored to him, it obviously anticipates the restoration to Peregrine of his family estate at the end of the novel.¹⁶ Clearly, Smollett's concern for a tighter, symbolic, structure in his second novel did not extend to the interpolated tale, which he had handled with more sensitivity in Roderick Random.

The revisions for the 1758 text have been analysed in detail by Howard S. Buck.¹⁷ In effect, they amount to the omission of various personal attacks (against Fielding and Garrick, etc.) and of episodes regarded by Smollett in retrospect as being in bad taste—the homosexual episode in chapter 49 and Pallet's urinating at the masquerade, the business between Peregrine and the nun in chapter 66, and so on. These changes considerably reduced the length of the novel and entailed the renumbering of chapters, the total now being 106 instead of 114. Inevitably, some of the symmetries that I have noticed in connection with the first edition disappear: looked at from one point of view, they had been the novel's scaffolding which could now be dismantled without incurring structural collapse. Thus, Peregrine's Winchester rebellion is omitted, and with it the chiasmus at the centre of vol. I; but Smollett ensures that Emilia still occupies the volume's mid-point (she is introduced in the seventeenth chapter of a total of thirty-four). And although certain alterations to vol. II mean that the Amanda episode is no longer exactly central in that volume (it is narrated in chapters 52 to 58; chapters 53 and 54 mark the middle of the revised total of thirty-eight), its slight shift in position is a trifling matter and in no way affects its central 'feel'. Moreover, the position of Trunnion's death is unaffected at the beginning of vol. III; and since the chapter-total for the final volume stays at twenty-one, its symmetries, too, remain intact.

III Ferdinand Count Fathom

Ferdinand Count Fathom (1753) manifests a stark simplicity of structure which is a fitting complement to the novel's moral schematism as announced in the Dedication.¹⁸ Smollett here exploits the tradition of mid-point symbolism in which, as we have seen, he had shown increasing interest, with full awareness of its iconographical implications (its association with sovereignty, the midday sun, elevation, and the triumph), and once again utilizes the volume-divisions to direct attention to the novel's symmetries. In addition, the Dedication contains an explicit authorial statement to the effect that this novel—and presumably the others—was conceived of in visual and spatial terms by defining 'A Novel [as] a large diffused picture, comprehending the characters of life, disposed in different groupes, and exhibited in various attitudes, for the purposes of an uniform plan, and general occurrence, to which every individual figure is subservient.… '

The novel, like poetry, is ut pictura. And as we read Ferdinand Count Fathom, taking note of the symbolism of the centre, it is worth recalling Hogarth's preoccupation with the mid-point in the Election (1755-58), which I have discussed above (ch. iv): a glance at the allusive structures which Hogarth incorporated in even his popular prints leaves one in little doubt as to the contemporary reader's ability to detect and interpret spatial schemes of considerable complexity. In the mid-eighteenth century literature and painting were still very much sister arts.

Fathom appeared in two volumes, vol. I containing the first thirty-five chapters and vol. II containing chapters 36 to 67 (i.e., thirty-two chapters). The first volume traces Fathom's rise in fortune and reputation, and the climax occurs in chapter 35 with the heading's explicit allusions to sovereignty and elevation: 'He repairs to Bristol spring, where he reigns Paramount during the whole season.' The opening paragraph of this chapter, by again hinting at centrality ('Fathom, as usual, formed the nucleus or kernel of the beau monde'), confirms that he has built on the success that was his in chapter 32 where, we are told (presumably as an early directive to the iconography of the centre), 'he … shone in the zenith of admiration.'

Fathom arrives at Bristol claiming knowledge of medicine, and this is the beginning of his downfall.¹⁹ For as vol. II opens (ch. 36) he becomes involved with one of his patients, Mrs Trapwell, 'the young wife of an old citizen of London'. He is betrayed by her, prosecuted, and imprisoned: 'Thus, he saw himself, in the course of a few hours, deprived of his reputation, rank, liberty and friends; and his fortune reduced from two thousand pounds, to something less than two hundred, fifty of which he had carried to gaol in his pocket.' And the second half of the novel abounds in references to Fathom's decline, speaking of it specifically in terms of 'eclipse': the heading to chapter 54 announces 'His eclipse, and gradual declination, and in chapter 63 Madame Clement has 'traced him in all the course of his fortune, from his first appearance in the medical sphere to his total eclipse'.

There is, incidentally, an important ironic comment on this imagery in chapter 40, where the just imprisonment of Fathom is contrasted by Smollett with the unjust treatment of the historical figure of Theodore, King of Corsica, whom Fathom meets in gaol. The heading reads: 'He contemplates majesty and its satellites in eclipse', so that for once in the novel the solar imagery is used seriously with the full significance that it had long enjoyed in the iconography of kingship.²⁰ And Smollett's belief in Theodore's rightful sovereignty emerges clearly from the following passage: he 'actually possessed the throne of sovereignty by the best of all titles, namely, the unanimous election of the people over whom he reigned.…' Theodore plays a minimal part in the plot. Nevertheless, this piece of political propaganda functions thematically to illustrate by contrast the villainy of Fathom, who is Theodore's antithesis, and who, as we have seen, 'reigns Paramount' over the beau monde at the structural centre. The contrast is expressed emblematically at the beginning of chapter 40 when Theodore greets Fathom 'with a most princely demeanour' and 'seat[s] him on his right hand, in token of particular regard'.

There can be no doubt, then, that Smollett exploited the numerological device of mid-point symbolism in Fathom to illustrate the rise and fall of the count's fortunes, since the break—from good to bad fortune—comes unequivocally in the centre as marked by the volume divisions. Moreover, the individual volumes are themselves divided exactly into two. In vol. I a change of scene and subject-matter is announced in the heading to chapter 18 (central out of a total of thirty-five): 'Our hero departs from Vienna, and quits the domain of Venus for the rough field of Mars'; and the central chapters of the second volume, 51 and 52 (sixteenth and seventeenth out of a total of thirty-two), echo his moment of triumph at the middle of the novel as a whole. For he is again a physician, and 'Triumphs over a medical rival' (heading to chapter 51); but in chapter 52 he moves to London, becomes well known and (ch. 53) seduces one of his patients, a clergyman's wife, and is prosecuted by her husband (as he was prosecuted by Trapwell at the beginning of the volume). Chapter 50 has already reminded us that his second appearance as a physician, this time not as a nobleman who knows about medicine but as a man who 'professed himself one of the faculty', is an indication of 'the decline of his fortune'. And it is now, once the mid-point of the second volume, with its echoes of his earlier triumph, is past, that the images of decline and overthrow increase apace. Chapter 54—as we have seen—proclaims 'His eclipse, and gradual declination' and tells us that 'our hero was exactly in the situation of a horseman, who, in riding at full speed for the plate, is thrown from the saddle in the middle of the race …' He has a coach accident ('Then was his chariot overturned with a hideous crash …'), and it is finally revealed that he has, all the time, been enlisted under the banner of capricious Fortune: 'Fathom, finding himself descending the hill of fortune, with an acquired gravitation, strove to catch at every twig, in order to stop or retard his descent.'²¹ It is impossible to read these substantive references to physical falls and to being 'thrown… in the middle of the race' without relating them to the novel's physical structure—its observance of mid-point symbolism—especially when we notice that the sentence immediately succeeding the one just quoted ('the hill of fortune', etc.) reminds us of Fathom's former glory in terms that should by now be familiar: 'He now regretted the opportunities he had neglected, of marrying one of several women of moderate fortune, who had made advances to him, in the zenith of his reputation.…'

In chapter 56 he suffers a further 'torrent of misfortunes' which induces him for the first time to recognize his guilt and to invoke Providence: 'Shall the author of these crimes pass with impunity? Shall he hope to prosper in the midst of such enormous guilt? It were an imputation upon providence to suppose it—Ah, no! I begin to feel myself overtaken by the eternal justice of heaven! I totter on the edge of wretchedness and woe, without one friendly hand to save me from the terrible abyss.' And Fathom's fall is complemented, as we might expect, by an increasing number of allusions to Providence, especially in connection with the reappearance of Monimia: 'Mysterious powers of providence! this is no phantome!', etc. (ch. 63).²² However, before we can see how the concepts of Fortune and Providence (the former relating to Fathom, the latter to Renaldo and Monimia) are inter-related in the novel, it is necessary to look at its structure even more closely.

In the foregoing analysis I have regarded the division between volumes I and II as marking the novel's mid-point which, to all intents and purposes, it does. But in fact the arithmetically central chapter is the thirty-fourth (out of a total of sixty-seven), and this, significantly, contains yet another instance of Fathom's iniquity, his seduction of Celinda, whom he leaves an alcoholic. This means, then, that Fathom is only apparently elevated at the centre, because his triumph at Bristol occurs at the centre as marked by the division between the two volumes; and that the exact—arithmetical—centre is dedicated to stripping away appearances and conveying, to quote the chapter heading, 'a true idea of his gratitude and honour'. And with this structural subtlety established, further symmetries are revealed. The Celinda episode harks immediately back to Fathom's treatment of Elinor, whom he has left deranged in the madhouse in chapter 31; and it also has affinities with Don Diego's narrative in chapter 26: just as Fathom destroys Celinda and Elinor, so does Diego think he has killed his wife and daughter. Furthermore, it functions proleptically by anticipating Fathom's most heinous piece of villainy, the alienation of Monimia from Renaldo and his attempted seduction of her, which leads to her illness and apparent death.

If Fathom's symmetries are now reassessed by taking the arithmetical centre (ch. 34) as the starting point, it emerges that they are designed to bring Renaldo and Monimia, the novel's symbols of virtue, into prominence, and, simultaneously, to accentuate the count's vices. For Don Diego's story of his daughter Serafina and her lover Orlando is narrated to Fathom in chapter 26. In chapter 42 Renaldo arrives at the gaol where Fathom is imprisoned, arranges his release, and tells him that

he was captivated by the irresistible charms of a young lady on whose heart he had the good fortune to make a tender impression: that their mutual love had subjected both to many dangers and difficulties, during which they suffered a cruel separation; after the torments of which, he had happily found her in England, where she now lived entirely cut off from her native country and connexions, and destitute of every other resource but his honour, love, and protection …

She is introduced in the next chapter with a clear hint that her real identity will be announced later: 'It was not without reason he had expatiated upon the personal attractions of this young lady, whom (for the present) we shall call Monimia.…' And in chapter 64 we discover, if we haven't guessed already, that Monimia is Serafina; so that Diego's story in chapter 26 and Renaldo's brief resume in chapter 42 are about the same person. I reproduce in diagrammatic form the pattern thus created:

1-25	25 chapters
26	Don Diego, Serafina
27-33	7 chapters
34	Celinda
35-41	7 chapters
42	Reynaldo, Monimia
43-67	25 chapters

[Editor's note: the source reproduced this diagram in a linear format. The columnar format of LC did not allow it to be reproduced in the same way.]

There are, finally, additional symmetries which link the beginning and end of the novel. Chapter 57 is recapitulatory, narrating Renaldo's journey to Vienna and his preparations there for regaining his rightful inheritance from his stepfather, Count Trebasi. Renaldo travels to Vienna in company with a Major Farrel, who had served under the old Count Melvile and who 'owed his promotion' to him. Farrel is a symbol of gratitude as Fathom, who again owes everything to the old count, is an arch-symbol of ingratitude. This journey to Vienna—in chapter 57—occurs in the eleventh chapter from the end of the novel; and it was in chapter 10 that Renaldo had made his first journey to that city, accompanied by Fathom. In chapter 59 Renaldo's sister, Mlle de Melvile, is released from the Viennese convent in which she had been confined by Trebasi, and reveals Fathom's treachery, including his alliance with Teresa, which had been dedicated to systematic theft. Smollett writes: 'She then explained their combination in all the particulars, as we have already recounted them in their proper place.… 'If we turn to the beginning of the novel, we find that the thefts occurred in chapters 9 and 10; and chapter 59 is the ninth from the end. It will be recalled that Fathom had devised the plan for stealing from Renaldo's sister because he had been unsuccessful in his attempts to possess her fortune by marrying her (chaps 6 to 8). Once again there is a structural relationship with, and moral contrast to, Major Farrel, who explains openly to Renaldo in chapter 60 that he has contracted some debts, that he is attracted to Mlle de Melvile, and that he would like to marry her, in part for her fortune. Renaldo agrees and the marriage takes place. The major's frankness contrasts with Fathom's deception; and just as Fathom's last attempt on Mlle de Melvile had occurred in chapter 8, so is chapter 60 the eighth chapter from the end of the novel.

Fathom, then, possesses an elaborate symmetrical structure, which clearly fulfils a symbolic function by exalting the forces of good (Renaldo, Monimia, Farrel, etc.) over Fathom, the embodiment of evil. We do Smollett and the 'uniform plan' of his work a gross injustice if we fail to detect the patterns outlined above and to note how Fathom's rise and fall, with its apparent observance of the mid-point as marked out by the volume divisions, is undercut by the numerically exact symmetries revolving round the story of Celinda in chapter 34. Fathom's story, as Smollett indicates, is that of a child of Fortune; but Monimia's and Renaldo's is just as explicitly Providential. The asymmetry of the one is overridden by the precise balance of the other to create, for the first time in Smollett's fiction, a compelling Providential paradigm.

Notes

¹Rogue's Progress: Studies in the Picaresque Novel (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), pp. 62-3.

² Smollett does, of course, mention his indebtedness to Don Quixote and Gil Blas in the Preface to Roderick Random, though, so far as I can see, the debt is not in any significant sense a formal one. Paul-Gabriel Boucé gives a detailed discussion of the influence of these works on Smollett's novels in Les Romans de Smollett: Etude Critique (Publications de la Sorbonne; Litteratures, I (Paris, 1971)), Pt. II, ch. 1.

³ E.g., the bedroom mix-ups in ch. 11; the business over Roderick's diary (which is written in Greek characters) in ch. 30; and the hospitality given to the destitute Roderick by Mrs Sagely in ch. 38. Compare Joseph Andrews, IV. 14; II. 11 (where Adams's Æschylus is mistaken for 'a Book written … in Ciphers'; a passage added in the second edn), and I. 12 respectively. Tuvia Bloch, 'Smollett's Quest for Form', MP [Modern Philology], 65 (1967-8), 103-13, incidentally, argues for Fielding's formal influence on Smollett. She concentrates mainly on Ferdinand Count Fathom and Launcelot Greaves, however, and her discussion is limited largely to plot patterns and Smollett's attempts to imitate Fielding's detached, ironic, narrator. Her concept of form does not include the kind of structural parallelisms that I am concerned with.

⁴ This is the case with the text printed in The Novelist's Magazine, II (1780). In quoting from the novel I have used the first edn, since Smollett's subsequent revisions had no effect on its structure as outlined in this section. For a collation of textual variants, see 0. M. Brack, Jr, and James B. Davis, 'Smollett's Revisions of Roderick Random, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 64 (1970), 295-311.

⁵ An important theme here as in Colonel Jack, though not so consistently sustained. As early as ch. 20 Roderick has rejected Strap as an unworthy companion and has told us 'I now began to look upon myself as a gentleman in reality.'

⁶ M. A. Goldberg, Smollett and the Scottish School (Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1959), pp. 39-42, detects five main catastrophes or reversals in Roderick Random of which this is the central one, though he fails to note the significance of its position at the novel's approximate structural centre. Also worth mentioning is P.-G. Boucé's analysis of the novel in terms of a capital 'W', with the three top points representing Roderick's birth, encounter with Narcissa at Bath, and marriage, and the two bottom points his shipwreck and fight with Crampley, and his imprisonment in the Marshalsea: see his Les Romans de Smollett, pp. 169 and 193-4. Boucé makes no comment on its arithmetical structure, however.

⁷ Boucé also notices the parallel, ibid., p. 159.

⁸ Where her maternal relationship with Roderick is again insisted on: in ch. 65 Roderick calls her 'Dear mother' and she 'received me with a truly maternal affection'; in ch. 67 her 'maternal affection' is divided between Roderick and Narcissa.

⁹ In ch. 41 (where Mrs Sagely and Bowling mention Providence); ch. 43 ('I could not comprehend the justice of that providence, which after having exposed me to so much wretchedness and danger, left me a prey to famine at last in a foreign country … '); ch. 44 ('providence or destiny acted miracles in their behalf'); ch. 66 (Roderick's father cries out 'Mysterious Providence!', and refers to 'this amazing stroke of providence'); and ch. 67 (Narcissa 'observed that this great and unexpected stroke of fate seemed to have been brought about by the immediate direction of providence').

¹⁰ This has been prepared from a copy of the 4-vol. first edn, though for ease of reference all quotations are from James L. Clifford's OEN edn (1964), which reprints the 1751 text but without indicating the volume divisions.

¹¹ Crabtree, who has made his appearance at the end of the preceding volume, is clearly a replacement for the commodore: Trunnion presides over the more carefree first half of the novel, the misanthrope over the darker second half.

¹² Though he has already been 'almost persuaded, that so many unaccountable disappointments must have proceeded from some supernatural cause, of which the idiot Pallet was no more than the involuntary instrument' (ch. 61).

¹³ The notion, in connection with self-government, recurs in ch. 112, with its reference to Peregrine's 'stock of experience that would steer him clear of all those quicksands among which he had been formerly wrecked'.

¹⁴ In view of the allusion to Fielding in ch. 105 ('I might here, in imitation of some celebrated writers, furnish out a page or two, with the reflections [Peregrine] made upon the instability of human affairs … '), the balance, etc., in vol. IV might, in part, be a parody of the mid-point symbolism in Tom Jones; though Smollett is clearly more interested in its serious, iconographic, function.

¹⁵ Rufus Putney, 'The Plan of Peregrine Pickle', PMLA [Publications of the Modern Language Association], 60 (1945), 1051-65.

¹⁶ The 'Memoirs' are discussed in detail by Howard S. Buck, A Study in Smollett, Chiefly 'Peregrine Pickle' (New Haven, Conn., 1925), ch. 2, and, together with MacKercher, by Lewis M. Knapp in Tobias Smollett: Doctor of Men and Manners (Princeton, N.J., 1949), pp. 121ff. See also Clifford's Introd., pp. xxvi-xxvii, and Boucé, Les Romans de Smollett, pp. 188-90 and 192. On the 'Memoirs' Boucé follows Putney, 'The Plan of Peregrine Pickle', p. 1064, to the effect that they confirm Smollett's 'thesis that the life of the upper classes was often vicious and immoral'.

¹⁷ His A Study in Smollett contains a collation of the first and second edns.

¹⁸ 'That the mind might not be fatigued, nor the imagination disgusted by a succession of vitious objects, I have endeavoured to refresh the attention with occasional incidents of a different nature; and raised up a virtuous character, in opposition to the adventurer, with a view to amuse the fancy, engage the affection, and form a striking contrast which might heighten the expression, and give a Relief to the moral of the whole.' Quotations are from the OEN edn, ed. Damian Grant (1971), which reproduces the text of the first edn, 2 vols, 1753.

¹⁹ Boucé analyses the novel in similar fashion, noting that Fathom enjoys his 'apogee' in ch. 35, from which he then declines (op. cit., p. 210, and cf. p. 239).

²⁰ For a detailed discussion, see Ernst H. Kantorowicz, 'Oriens Augusti—Lever du Roi', Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 17 (1963), 117-77.

²¹ Compare the antithetical image in the first half of the novel, where we are told that Fathom 'surveyed the neighbouring coast of England, with fond and longing eyes, like another Moses reconnoitring the land of Canaan from the top of mount Pisgah' (ch. 27): and cf. also ch. 19, where England is alluded to as 'the Canaan of all able adventurers'.

²² Cf. ch. 61 ('Sure Providence hath still something in reserve for this unfortunate wretch … '; this is Don Diego speaking of himself), and ch. 62, Renaldo on Fathom's treatment of Monimia: 'Sacred heaven! why did providence wink at the triumph of such consummate perfidy?'