“If fielding had superior taste,” declared Sir Walter Scott, “the palm of more brilliancy of genius, more inexhaustible riches of invention, must in justice be awarded to Smollett. In comparison with his sphere, that in which Fielding walked was limited; and compared with the wealthy profusion of varied character and incident which Smollett has scattered through his works, there is a poverty of composition about his rival. . . . It is chiefly in his profusion, which amounts almost to prodigality, that we recognize the superior richness of Smollett's fancy. He never shows the least desire to make the most either of a character, or a situation, or an adventure, but throws them together with a carelessness which argues unlimited confidence in his own powers.” Few critical verdicts have been received with more general dissent. Apart from what most readers feel to be the injustice done to Fielding, the affirmations respecting Smollett have not gone unchallenged. Thackeray, although perhaps without having Scott in mind, has expressed an opinion almost diametrically opposite:
His [Smollett's] novels are recollections of his own adventures, his characters drawn, as I should think, from personages with whom he became acquainted in his own career of life. Strange companions he must have had; queer acquaintances he made in the Glasgow college, in the country apothecary's shop, in the gun-room of the man-of-war where he served as a surgeon, and in the hard life on shore where the sturdy adventurer struggled for fortune. He did not invent much, as I fancy, but had the keenest perceptive faculty, and described what he saw with wonderful relish and delightful broad humor.