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PRINCIPLES OF
Chap. XII.
Smollet inherited from nature a strong sense of ridicule, a great fund of original humour, and a happy versatility of talent, by which he could accommodate his style to almost every species of writing. He could adopt alternately the solemn, the lively, the sarcastic, the burlesque, and the vulgar. To these qualifications he joined an inventive genius, and a vigorous imagination. As he possessed talents equal to the composition of original works of the same species with the novel of Cervantes; so it is not perhaps possible to conceive a writer more completely qualified to give a perfect translation of that novel.
Motteux, with no great abilities as an original writer, appears to me to have been endowed with a strong perceptionof
