That he had a powerful imagination is not a surprise.

Any one versed in Smollett has already seen it in the remarkable situations which he has put before us in his earlier works.

These do not indicate, however, that Smollett possessed the imagination which could excite romantic interest; for in Roderick Random and in Peregrine Pickle, the wonderful situations serve chiefly to amuse.

In Fathom, however, there are some designed to excite horror; and one, at least, is eminently successful.

The hero's night in the wood between Bar-le-duc and Chalons was no doubt more blood-curdling to our eighteenth-century ancestors than it is to us, who have become acquainted with scores of similar situations in the small number of exciting romances which belong to literature, and in the greater number which do not.