use the standard in such matters has
changed, and not because the novels were purposely made dissolute.
Their coarseness was adapted to the lack of refinement in thought and
speech characteristic of that time. Fielding wished to "laugh mankind
out of their follies and vices." In his coarseness there is always an
open, frank laughter. There is none of that veiled pruriency which
lurks underneath the more conventionally expressed, but really vicious
sentiments that are to be found in too many novels of our own day.

The novel was well defined in character and well established in
popularity when Smollett entered the field so well occupied by
Richardson and Fielding. On this account his works have a less
important place in the history of fiction than those of his
predecessors. While he added greatly to the store of fictitious
writing, he developed no new ideas concerning it. Fielding had
announced at the outset of his career as a novelist that he had taken
Cervantes as a prototype, and the influence of the great Spanish writer
is plainly visible in "Joseph Andrews." But in the literary workmanship
of his two later novels, Fielding's entire originality is undeniable.
Smollett, however, is plainly an imitator of Le Sage. He did not aim at
that artistic construction of plot, which is Fielding's chief merit.
The novel, in his hands, became rather a series of adventures, linked
together by their occurrence to the same individuals. "A novel," he
said, "is a large, diffused picture, comprehending the characters of
life, disposed in different groups, and exhibited in various attitudes,
for the purposes of a uniform plan and general occurrence, to which
every individual figure is subservient. But this plan cannot be
executed with propriety, probability, or success, without a principal
personage to attract the attention, unite the incidents, unwind the
clue of the labyrinth, and at last close the scene by virtue of his
importance."[178] But Smollett presents the "different groups" and
"various attitudes" of his "diffused picture" with a luxuriance of
imagination, a fidelity to nature, and an exuberance of broad humor
which inspire interest even when they occasion disgust. If he added
nothing new to the novel from a purely literary point of view, his
works have an exceptional historical value.

His life was well adapted to educate him as an observer and student of
human nature. Of a good Scotch family, but obliged by poverty to rely