ABSTRACT
The larger view is ours as readers. From the first Smollett forces us to move out of a particular consciousness and into another. In the Richardsonian novel one usually identifies with or sympathizes with the chief letter-writer. In a sense we are made the confidant whoever the actual recipients of the letters are, as any reader of Pamela or Clarissa can attest. Yet, though we sympathize with Matt Bramble, Smollett, by his presentation of all five letter-writers in a row, does more than make an ensemble introduction of his characters. Our movement in and out of their consciousnesses enables us to see their selfhood as comically limited, and leads us to encompass all their views in a tolerant and embracing vision which prepares us for the
accommodation of their various views in one social vision of the good life at the novel's end. This interplay of perspectives within the framework of a broader vision, over and above some of the greatest characters in literature, gives the novel its comic vitality. It is as though Smollett, having explored the uses of first-person narration in Roderick Random and focused mainly on the hero in most of his other novels, had come to see the limitations as well as the value of his technique. Humphry Clinker is not a farewell to the picaresque, but a transcendence of it. It is a work of full maturity.
