For the sake of pleasure, or of new experiences, or of economy, Smollett went to Paris in 1750, where he met Dr. Moore, later his biographer, the poetical Dr. Akenside, and an affected painter. He introduced the poet and painter into "Peregrine Pickle"; and makes slight use of a group of exiled Jacobites, including Mr. Hunter of Burnside. In 1750, there were Jacobites enough in the French capital, all wondering very much where Prince Charles might be, and quite unconscious that he was their neighbour in a convent in the Rue St. Dominique. Though Moore does not say so (he is provokingly economical of detail), we may presume that Smollett went wandering in Flanders, as does Peregrine Pickle. It is curious that he should introduce a Capucin, a Jew, and a black-eyed damsel, all in the Ghent diligence, when we know that Prince Charles did live in Ghent, with the black-eyed Miss Walkenshaw, did go about disguised as a Capucin, and was tracked by a Jewish spy, while the other spy, Young Glengarry, styled himself "Pickle." But all those events occurred about a year after the novel was published in 1751. Before that date Smollett had got an M.D. degree from Aberdeen University, and, after returning from France, he practised for a year or two at Bath. But he could not expect to be successful among fashionable invalids, and, in "Humphrey Clinker," he make Matthew Bramble give such an account of the Bath waters as M. Zola might envy. He was still trying to gain ground in his profession, when, in March 1751, Mr. D. Wilson published the first edition of "Peregrine Pickle" "for the Author," unnamed. I have never seen this first edition, which was "very curious and disgusting." Smollett, in his preface to the second edition, talks of "the art and industry that were used to stifle him in the birth, by certain booksellers and others." He now "reformed the manners, and corrected the expressions," removed or modified some passages of personal satire, and held himself exempt from "the numerous shafts of envy, rancour, and revenge, that have lately, both in private and public, been levelled at his reputation." Who were these base and pitiless dastards? Probably every one who did not write favourably about the book. Perhaps Smollett suspected Fielding, whom he attacks in several parts of his works, treating him as a kind of Jonathan Wild, a thief-taker, and an associate with thieves. Why Smollett thus misconducted himself is a problem, unless he was either "meanly jealous," or had taken offence at some remarks in Fielding's newspaper. Smollett certainly began the war, in the first edition of "Peregrine Pickle." He made a kind of palinode to the "trading justice" later, as other people of his kind have done.