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Smollett was born of a good family in Dunbartonshire, Scotland, on March 19, 1721,

the third child of Archibald and Barbara Smollett. He studied medicine at the

University of Glasgow during the 1730s, but he did not receive his formal medical

degree from Marischal College, Aberdeen, until 1750. After a brief term as an

apprentice surgeon in Glasgow in 1739, Smollett moved to London in order to

pursue his literary ambitions. Financial necessity led him to take a post as surgeon's

mate aboard H.M.S. Chichester in 1740. His grim exposure to life in the Royal Navy

provided him with many of the vivid scenes of life at sea that he later incorporated

into Roderick Random and other novels.

Smollett returned to London from the West Indies briefly in 1742, but he soon sailed

back to Jamaica, where he married Anne Lassalls, an heiress, probably in 1743. In

1744, at the same time that he was trying to establish a medical practice in London,

Smollett began to publish a series of minor poems and attempted unsuccessfully to

have his first play, an ill-starred tragedy entitled The Regicide, produced. Of the

occasional odes that Smollett published between 1744 and 1747, the best was his

movingly patriotic The Tears of Scotland (1746). The most noteworthy of his

Juvenalian verse satires, Advice (1746) and Reproof (1747), merely furthered his

growing reputation as a quarrelsome Scotsman outraged by the refined vices of

London.

His first novel, "Roderick Random," published in 1748, embodies Smollett's own

experiences in the navy and elsewhere. If his picture of life afloat in those times is a

faithful one, it is small wonder that Smollett left the service in disgust. His novels

generally seem to bear the impression of one who has lived in a brutal and heartless

world. "Roderick Random" was a decided success, and so also was "Peregrine

Pickle," in 1751, another novel in very similar strain. Both novels abound in rollicking

humour, often excessively coarse. The characterization is especially good in

"Peregrine Pickle." During the next few years appeared a number of translations and

a "History of England." Smollett was no historian. But his lively style made his history

exceedingly readable and it enjoyed quite a vogue.

His health breaking down, he was ordered abroad and ultimately settled at Leghorn,

where he wrote "The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker," published in 1771. It is in an

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epistolary style and is undoubtedly the best of his novels, quieter in tone and less

brutal in its interpretation of life than his earlier works.

Smollett died at Leghorn aged fifty on the 17th of September 1771, and was buried

in the old English cemetery there. Three years later the Smollett obelisk was put up

at Renton (it now stands in the parish school-ground), half-way between Dumbarton

and Balloch.

One of the word sayings by Smollet was make wisdom your provision for the

journey from youth to old age, for it is a more certain support than all other

possessions. The phrase show about wisdom.

Besides that, the other pharase was "Thy spirit, Independence, let me share, Lord of

the lion-heart and eagle-eye. Thy steps I follow with my bosom bare, Nor heed the

storm that howls along the sky. .The phrase is about leader and leadership.

The other phrase said by Smollet was Writing is all a lottery -- I have been a loser

by the works of the greatest men of the age." It was about marriage.

http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Cemeteryhttp://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Obeliskhttp://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Rentonhttp://www.iwise.com/G45Qyhttp://www.iwise.com/G45Qyhttp://www.iwise.com/G45Qyhttp://www.iwise.com/eFPoHhttp://www.iwise.com/eFPoHhttp://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Obeliskhttp://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Rentonhttp://www.iwise.com/G45Qyhttp://www.iwise.com/G45Qyhttp://www.iwise.com/G45Qyhttp://www.iwise.com/eFPoHhttp://www.iwise.com/eFPoHhttp://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Cemetery