Thus, it is evident, that Fielding had no desire to write what might be harmful.  The contrast between his promise and his fulfilment is simply an illustration of the standard of his time.  His novels are coarse to a degree which may nullify their merits in the eyes of some readers of the present day, and may unfit them for the perusal of very young people.  But this is simply because 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 on his own efforts for a living, he mixed familiarly with varied classes of men.  As a surgeon in London, he came in contact with the middle and lower ranks of the city, from which many of his best characters are taken.  As surgeon’s mate on board a man-of-war, he obtained that acquaintance with a seafaring life which was afterward turned to such excellent account.