The customer has been served with a sufficient amount of the commodity he demands: and the scissors are applied, the canister shut up, the tap turned off.

It almost results--it certainly coincides--that some of the minor characters, and some of the minor scenes, are much more vivid than the hero (the heroine is almost an absolute nonentity) and the whole story.

The curate and the exciseman in the ninth chapter are, by common consent, among Smollett's greatest triumphs; but the curate might be excommunicated and the exciseman excised without anybody who read the book perceiving the slightest gap or missing link, as far as the story is concerned.
Smollett's second venture, _Peregrine Pickle_ (1751), was more ambitious, perhaps rose higher in parts, but undoubtedly contained even more doubtful and inferior matter.

No one can justly blame him, though any one may most justly refrain from praising, from the general point of view, as regards the "insets" of Miss Williams's story in _Roderick_ and of that of Lady Vane here.

From that point of view they range with the "Man of the Hill" in _Tom Jones_, and in the first case at least, though most certainly not in the second, have more justification of connection with the central story.