His knowledge of literature, and even what may be called his scholarship, were considerable, and did credit to the public school education of those days.
Smollett (1721-1771) differed from his two predecessors in being a Scotsman: but in family was very much nearer to Fielding than to Richardson, being the grandson of a judge who was a Commissioner of the Union, and a gentleman of birth and property--which last would, had he lived long enough, have come to Smollett himself.

But he suffered in his youth from some indistinctly known family jars, was apprenticed to a Glasgow surgeon, and escaping thence to London with a tragedy in his pocket, was in undoubted difficulties till (and after) he obtained the post of surgeon's mate on board a man-of-war, and took part in the Carthagena expedition.

After coming home he made at least some attempts to practise: but was once more drawn off to literature, though fortunately not to tragedy.

For the rest of his life he was a hard-worked but by no means ill-paid journalist, novelist, and miscellanist, making as much as L2000 by his _History of England_, not ill-written, though now never read.

Like Fielding (though, unlike him, more than once) he went abroad in search of health and died in the quest at Leghorn.