Sucks books

Historically, his
delineations are valuable; for he describes a period in the annals of the
British marine which has happily passed away,--a hard life in little
stifling holds or forecastles, with hard fare,--a base life, for the
sailor, oppressed on shipboard, was the prey of vile women and land-sharks
when on shore. What pictures of prostitution and indecency! what obscenity
of language! what drunken infernal orgies! We may shun the book as we
would shun the company, and yet the one is the exact portraiture of the
other.
Roderick Random was followed, in 1751, by _Peregrine Pickle_, a book in
similar taste, but the characters in which are even more striking. The
forms of Commodore Trunnion, Lieutenant Hatchway, Pipes the boatswain, and
Ap Morgan the choleric Welsh surgeon, are as familiar to us now as at the
first.
Smollett had now retired to Chelsea, where his facile pen was still hard
at work. In 1753 appeared his _Ferdinand Count Fathom_, the portraiture of
a complete villain, corresponding in character with Fielding's _Jonathan
Wild_, but with a better moral.


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