Smollett, for variety of powers, and indefatigable industry, has seldom been surpassed. He was a politician, a poet, a physician, a historian, a translator, a writer of travels, a dramatist, a novelist, a writer on medical subjects, and a miscellaneous author. It is only, however, as a novelist and a poet that he has any claims to the admiration of posterity. His history survives solely because it is usually bound up with Hume's. His translation of "Don Quixote" has been eclipsed by after and more accurate versions. His "Tour to Italy" is a succession of asthmatic gasps and groans. His "Regicide", and other plays, are entirely forgotten. So also are his critical, medical, political, and miscellaneous effusions. In fiction he is undoubtedly a great original. He had no model, and has had no imitator. His qualities as a novel-writer are rapidity of narrative, variety of incident, ease of style, graphic description, and an exquisite eye for the humours, peculiarities, and absurdities of character and life. In language he is generally careless, but whenever a great occasion occurs, he rises to meet it, and writes with dignity, correctness, and power. His sea-characters, such as Bowling, and his characters of low-life, such as Strap, have never been excelled. His tone of morals is always low, and often offensively coarse. In wit, constructiveness, and general style, he is inferior to Fielding; but surpasses him in interest, ease, variety, and humour, "Roderick Random" is the most popular and bustling of his tales. "Peregrine Pickle" is the filthiest and least agreeable; its humours are forced and exaggerated, and the sea-characters seem caricatures of those in "Roderick Random;" just as Norna of the Fitful Head, and Magdalene Graeme, are caricatures of Meg Merriless. "Sir Lancelot Greaves" is a tissue of trash, redeemed only here and there by traits of humour. "The Adventures of an Atom" we never read. "Humphrey Clinker" is the most delightful novel, with the exception of the Waverley series, in the English language. "Ferdinand, Count Fathom," contains much that is disgusting, but parts of it surpass all the rest in originality and profundity. We refer especially to the description of the pretended English Squire in Paris, who _bubbles_ the great _bubbler_ of the tale; to Count Fathom's address to Britain, when he reaches her shores,--a piece of exquisite mock-heroic irony; to the narrative of the seduction in the west of England; and to the matchless robber-scene in the forest,--a passage in which one knows not whether more to admire the thrilling interest of the incidents, or the eloquence and power of the language. It is a scene which Scott has never surpassed, nor, except in the cliff-scene in the "Antiquary," and, perhaps, the barn-scene in the "Heart of Midlothian," ever equalled.