Smollett, Dr. Tobias George, a distinguished novelist and historian, was born in 1721, at the old house of Dalquhurn, in Dumbartonshire.  He was the youngest of three children of Archibald Smollett and Barbara Cunningham, daughter of Cunningham of Gilbertfield near Glasgow... He died October 21, 1774, at a village called Moute Nuovo, near Leghorn, where he had taken up his abode... His "Ode to Leven Water," and his "Ode to Independence," with "The Tears of Scotland," written on hearing of the barbarities inflicted by the army of the duke of Cumberland in the north of Scotland in 1746, contain much of the feeling and inspiration of real genius, and cause regret that he did not cultivate his talents for poetry.  Three years after his death a lofty Trajan column, with a Latin inscription, was erected to his memory by his cousin, Smollett of Bonhill, on the banks of the Leven, near the house in which he was born. (The Scottish Nation, Anderson, 1877)