ABSTRACT
In Humphry Clinker the journey is at once geographical and metaphorical. As the travellers proceed through England to Scotland and back to England, the three women are in search of (and finally obtain) husbands, and their search parallels Matthew Bramble’s own quest for physical, psychological, and moral health. Humphry Clinker does not resolve itself into what was obviously for Smollett the too easy traditional polarity of town versus country. For we have at this point to consider the role of Scotland, and particularly Edinburgh, in the scheme of the novel. The subject-matter of Humphry Clinker—the concern for decorum, propriety, and temperance over against various kinds of excess; in short, for that virtue which is self-knowledge—is mimed in the novel’s structure. In Humphry Clinker Smollett achieves an almost perfect fusion of form and meaning.
