Battestin, M. C. - Authorship of Smollett's Don Quixote (1997)

Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia
The Authorship of Smollett's "Don Quixote"

Author(s): Martin C. Battestin
Source: Studies in Bibliography, Vol. 50 (1997), pp. 295-321
Published by: Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia
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AUTHORSHIP OF SMOLLETT'S DON QUIXOTE 2%
THE AUTHORSHIP OF SMOLLETT'S DON QUIXOTE
by
Martin C. Battestin
the two hundred years from its publication in 1755 to the appear
Carmine Rocco Linsalata's monograph Smollett's Hoax in 1956, th
sion of Cervantes' Don Quixote that bears Smollett's name was the ta
more damaging, not to say malignant, criticism than he could have b
for - more, certainly, than the work deserves.1 And nothing has been do
the past forty years to rescue Smollett's reputation, in this instance,
formidable battery of charges ranging from plain ignorance to dec
plagiarism. As a consequence of this criticism, for example, no less an
ity than the British Library Catalogue (1975) prefaces the section on Smo
translations with a caveat casting doubt on his authorship of the wo
Smollett scholars have continued to deal with the problem not (
therapists would advise) by talking about it, but by ignoring it: wi
cautionary word, the work remains in all the standard sources simply
lett's translation."3
Three days after the work was published on 25 February 1755, the at-
tacks began in earnest with an anonymous pamphlet entitled, Remarks on
the Proposals lately published for a new translation of Don Quixote - the
author, Colonel William Windham, basing his criticism on the specimen
(consisting of the first Chapter) that Smollett had published a year earlier
as a lure to subscribers. To Windham, the specimen plainly revealed Smol-
lett's ignorance of the Spanish language and Spanish customs, as well as his
"unpardonable" (p. 10) negligence in ignoring the two principal "helps"
available to him: namely, the Royal "Madrid" Dictionary4 and Charles Jar-
vis's more exact translation (1742). After heaping scorn on Smollett's render-
ing of the phrase "duelos y quebrantos" (the meal Don Quixote eats on Sat-
urdays) as "gripes and grumblings" and the long, arch footnote in which
1. For a useful survey, see Francesco Cordasco, "Smollett and the Translation of the
'Don Quixote' - A Critical Bibliography," Notes & Queries, 193 (4 September 1948), 383-384.
2. The headnote to the section advises readers that the translation of Don Quixote
purporting to be the work of Smollett [is] sometimes thought to be a paraphrase of the
versions of Charles Jarvis and others made by writers in Smollett's employ" (BLC to 1975,
306: 248).
3. See, for example, Lewis M. Knapp's authoritative edition, The Letters of Tobias
Smollett (Oxford, 1970), pp. 8 n. 2, 32 n. 7, 41 n. 3, as well as Professor Knapp's entry on
Smollett in the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, ed. George Watson
(Cambridge, 1971), 2: 964.
4. Diccionario de la Lengua Caste liana . . . Por la Real Academia Espanola, 6 vols.
(Madrid, 1726-39).
296 STUDIES IN BIBLIOGRAPHY
Smollett burlesques the pedantry of previous translators who

to find an English equivalent for the expression, Windham com
lett's understanding of the original to that of a Frenchman who w
"a Welch rabbet" as "un lapin du pai's de Galles." In the Royal
he continues, Smollett would have found "Duelos y Quebranto
Spanish, as "a name peculiar to La Mancha, signifying a kind o
of eggs and brains of beasts" (p. 11). Windham's criticisms may
po-faced and trifling, but they are often just. For whatever rea
Windham grants, a "dear" set of volumes), Smollett chose to ign
Dictionary, preferring instead to rely on that of Captain Joh
Spanish and English.5 In two other instances, indeed, he ackn
lently, the justice of Windham's censures by correcting the errors
On the evidence of the specimen, Windham doubted that Sm
mand of Spanish was adequate to the exacting task of translati
masterpiece - a work whose linguistic range and richness is c
English only to the canon of Shakespeare. But he did not carry
as far as Smollett's enemy, John Shebbeare would do, who in
that Smollett was "extremely ignorant" of the languages he p
translate, not Spanish only but French as well7 (the latter accu
be said, doing little for Shebbeare's credibility, for French is a
Smollett certainly knew). It was Shebbeare who started th
Smollett at the time he contracted to translate Don Quixote "d
stand Spanish": such, he claimed, was the objection put to the
Andrew Millar, by a fellow Scot - to which Millar replied that
been a full six Weeks to study that Language amongst the nativ
Brussels"8 As I will suggest later, this anecdote, if true, can m
taken as evidence of Smollett's impressive facility with langua
symptom of his ignorance of Spanish.
The slurs of Windham and Shebbeare had little effect on th
of Smollett's Don Quixote, which, buoyed by Ralph Griffith'
Monthly Review,9 continued to be preferred by most readers over
English version until the end of the century: from 1755 to 17
lished in various editions and reprints no fewer than nineteen t
the versions of his chief rivals, Jarvis and Motteux, were reiss
5. Stevens, A New Dictionary, Spanish and English, and English and Sp

1706, 1726).
6. Windham conceded that "the enchanter Orlando" might well be a p
for "the enchanted Orlando"; he was understandably more severe with t
which Smollett, disregarding the comments of three previous translators (St
Jarvis), turns the French traitor "Galalon" into a Spaniard (Windham, p
these errors are corrected in the 2nd edition.
7. The Occasional Critic, or, The Decrees of the Scotch Tribunal in the Critical Review
Rejudged (1757), p. 63. Shebbeare continued his attacks in An Appendix to the Occasional
Critic ri757l.
8. Occasional Critic, d. 61 n.
9. Monthly Review, 13 (September 1755), 196-202.
AUTHORSHIP OF SMOLLETT'S DON QUIXOTE 2Q7
same period just four times each.10 Not long after the turn of the cen
however, the balance began shifting against him, the reputation of Sm
translation declining to the point where, after 1858, it ceased to be rep
for almost 130 years, until, in 1986, Farrar, Straus and Giroux publi
new (but very imperfect)11 edition, with an Introduction by Carlos Fu
The turning point in the fortunes of Smollett's work would seem t
the publication in 1791 of Lord Woodhouselee's Essay on the Principl
Translation. In an influential chapter on the "Difficulty of translating
Quixote," Woodhouselee discusses and compares what he considers
"the best Translations" of the novel, reaching the eccentric conclusion
Motteux's version is "by far the best we have yet seen." 12 Though Woodho
lee makes what I take to be the essential point when, with Smollett in
he doubts that it is "possible to conceive a writer more completely qua
to give a perfect translation" of Cervantes' masterpiece (p. 178), he de
his disappointment with Smollett's performance, expressing for the first t
the criticism that would prove to be most damaging: Smollett, he state
merely Jarvis's "copiest and improver" (p. 184); he gave us "little else
an improved edition" (pp. 181-182) of Jarvis's dull, but faithful, trans
By the 1880s this criticism, together with the conviction that Smo
was incompetent to translate Cervantes' Spanish, became authoritative
it was reiterated by two eminent Cervantists who, in promoting their
translations, found it necessary to depreciate those that came before. I
Alexander James Duffield accused Smollett of ignoring the original
following Jarvis "servilely"; his translation "is only redeemed from the we
10. The Eighteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue (CD-ROM, 1992) cites the fol
editions and reprints of these three translations from 1755 to 1799. Smollett: 175
(Dublin: Henshall), 1761 (2nd edn.), 1765 (3rd edn.), 1766 (Dublin: Ewing), 1770 (4th
1782 (5th edn.), 1782 (Harrison), 1783 (Dublin: Price et al), 1784 (Harrison), 1786
man et al), 1792 (6th edn.), 1792 (Harrison), 1793 (York?: Law et ah), 1794? (Hogg)
1795? (Dublin: Henshall), 1796 (Dublin: Chambers), 1799?. Jarvis: 1756 (3rd edn.), 17
edn.), 1788 (5th edn.). Motteux: 1757 (Glasgow: Foulis), 1766 (Edinburgh: Donaldson)
1771 (Glasgow: Foulis). The National Union Catalogue Pre- 19 56 Imprints, 101 (1970),
(col. 3) lists an additional imprint for Jarvis - 1776.
11. One cause of the numerous printer's errors in this edition - errors includin
elevation of an entire footnote into the text (page 83, lines 18-30) - was the comp
inability to distinguish the long "s" (f) of the copy-text from an "f": e.g. "seat"
(21. 9); "slapped" > "flapped" (23. 8); "honey-seeds" > "honey-feeds" (74. 6); "sig
"fight" (107. 26); "slipp'd" > "flipp'd" (143. 39); "Mr. Tonsor" > "Mr. Tonfor" (15
"sabaean" > "fabaean" (246. 28); "savoured" > "favoured" (250. 32, 564. 20); "savo
"favours" (261. 35, 483. 10); "same" > "fame" (309. 3); "sire" > "fire" (375. 36, 6
"sailing" > "failing" (383. 14); "unsound" > "unfound" (406. 35); "sort" > "fort" (4
"Nisus" > "Nifus" (486. 1); "sound" > "found" (522. 27); "the . . . savour" > "th
favour" (534. 31); "savourest" > "favourest" (587. 21); "wise" > "wife" (631. 11); "soun
"founded" (669. 26); "Asuera" > "Afuera" (686. 40); "similar" > "familiar" (835. 11).
ences are to the Noonday Press edition of Cervantes' The Adventures of Don Quix
la Mancha, trans. Tobias Smollett, intro. Carlos Fuentes (New York: Farrar, Straus,
iq88).
12. Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee, Essays on the Principles of Tr
tion (1791), p. 223.
ness of plagiarism by the occasional use of choice and special words, t

Duffield at least allows, "all future translators must stand inde
1885 John Ormsby, author of the best of the new translations
Smollett's out of hand, asserting that it "has no value, being, in
more than a rifacimento of Jervas's, made without any regard t
inal."14 In 1888 Henry Edward Watts, author of the third import
tion of Don Quixote to appear in the decade, was no less severe. H
that "[t]he author of Humphrey [sic] Clinker was gifted with a
without affinity to that of Cervantes, but unfortunately he knew no
Watts, though he did not accuse Smollett of stealing from Jarv
wilder surmise of his own, supposing he had "done his book
French . . ."; the book was, in any case, "altogether worthless."15
Though unsubstantiated, the opinions of Duffield, Onnsby, a
all three able hispanists, carried weight in helping to sink the
of Smollett's translation; but it remained for Carmine Rocco Linsalata to
mount the only attack on the work that need trouble us today. In his doctoral
dissertation of 1949 - and subsequently in a pair of articles and the mono-
graph Smollett's Hoax based on the dissertation16 - Linsalata subjected Smol-
lett's translation to an anatomy that, he believed, proved empirically the
work had been cribbed wholesale from Jarvis. The simplest explanation for
the plagiarism was clear to him: "As for Smollett's knowledge of Spanish,"
he declared, "I am convinced he had none."17 Indeed, Linsalata carried spec-
ulation still farther: he could not allow that Smollett himself was author of
so shabby a production as this, preferring to suppose instead that he had
jobbed it out in pieces to a "school" of hacks in his employ. To the transla-
tion that bears Smollett's name he allows just one, dubious, virtue: it is, he
concludes, "a gem in the realm of fraudulent acts." 18
We will return to Linsalata's case against Smollett in a moment; but
before we do, another - and easily the most extraordinary - episode in the
long chronicle of abuse directed at Smollett's Don Quixote remains to be
told. At the time Linsalata was accusing him of fraud, Smollett himself be-
came the intended victim of one of the most audacious literary hoaxes of our
time - a wonderfully impudent attempt to deprive him of any credit for the
translation by adducing what purported to be the hardest evidence of all:
nothing less than his own written confession. In 1948, as Linsalata toiled at
13. Cervantes, The Ingenious Knight, Don Quixote de la Mancha, trans. Alexander
James Duffield, 3 vols. (London, 1881), 1: xlviii-xlix.
14. Cervantes, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, trans. John
Ormsby, 4 vols. (London, 1885), 4: 420.
15. Cervantes, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, trans. Henry
Edward Watts, k vols. (London, 1888), 1: 12-13, 285.
16. See the following: Carmine Rocco Linsalata, "Tobias Smollett and Charles Jarvis:
Translators of Don Quijote," unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Texas, Austin,
X949» "Tobias Smollett's Translation of Don Quixote," Library Chronicle of the University
of Texas, 3 (1948), 55-68; "Smollett's Indebtedness to Jarvis' Translation of Don Quixote,"
Symposium, 4 (1950), 84-106; and Smollett's Hoax: Don Quixote in English (Stanford, iq*6).
17. Smollett's Hoax, p. 22.
18. Smollett's Hoax, p. vii.
AUTHORSHIP OF SMOLLETT'S DON QUIXOTE 299
his dissertation in Austin, Texas, Professor Francesco Cordasco of

Island University, New York, made a surprising announcement in the p
of Notes & Queries.19 "[TJhrough the kindness of [his] kinsman, Don M
Madorma of Madrid," he had acquired "a considerable body" of the
respondence of Ricardo Wall, Spanish Ambassador to London from 174
October 1752, and the person to whom Smollett dedicated the translat
From this trove of letters, Cordasco published three which, he declared
of extreme importance for the revelation they make of the part Smo
played in the translation of Don Quixote which appeared in 1755 in Lon
under his name, and which has enjoyed such [a] contentious claim sin
the Smollett canon." These letters, he explained, were "precipitated by S
lett's efforts in the late 1750's to secure the Consulship at Madrid."
The earliest of the three (dated Casa Junqueira, Madrid, 2 Septemb
1759) was Ricardo Wall's querulous reply to the Duchess of Hamilton,
had recommended Smollett for the consulship - an office, Wall assured
for which he was not at all suited: for one thing, he was "not a perso
importance & position"; for another, he had been in Wall's company j
once at his London residence, and Wall had found him "unable to answe
in the Language when I addressed questions," even though he was then
gaged in the Translation." As for the translation itself, Wall despised
What is more, he had reason to believe it was not Smollett's work at all
had notice," he assured the Duchess, "when this work appeared that [Smo
had not executed it; but it was the task of one Mr Pettigrew, whom I d
know." To this on 22 October 1759 Lady Hamilton replied that sh
informed Smollett he would not be appointed to the consulship, and th
had confirmed Wall's suspicions: "I have tendered him [Smollett] regr
she writes, "and he fully affirms poor knowledge of the Language, and acco
Mr Pettigrew of Bone St the Translation inscribed to you." Cordasco's
was a fortunate one indeed, for the third and final letter removed any
sibility of doubt about the truth of these revelations. From Chelsea o
November, Smollett himself wrote to Wall as follows:
The Translation of Quixotte was not undertaken with anticipation of exacting

but its inscription was for the illustrious Place you hold in our nations' Aff
own that my knowledge of the Language is modest, & that the work was largel
of Isaiah Pettigrew; and so does the art of Translation flourish in the fair metr
Having thus effectually removed the translation from the Smollett canon o
for all, Cordasco remained puzzled by one remaining problem: "Who w
Isaiah Pettigrew of Bone Street? Enquiry and research," he regrets, "
proved futile thus far."
As well they might, for Isaiah Pettigrew never existed, nor was there ev
a Bone Street in London before the nineteenth century.20 The authent
19. Francesco Cordasco, "Smollett and the Translation of the 'Don Quixote': Impo
Unpublished Letters," N&Q, 193 (21 August 1948), 363-364.
20. Cordasco later announced that a correspondent, Charles Rockfort, had replied t
query, suggesting that the mysterious author of Smollett's translation "may have
Isaiah Pettigrew (1724-1793), who in 1758 aided in the revision of the translation of A
of the three letters - and of two other "finds" of the same kind - was chal-
lenged by Lewis Knapp and Lillian de la Torre in their review of Cordasco's
edition of Smollett's correspondence (1950). At their instance a committee
of experts was formed to examine the evidence, the members being Allen T.
Hazen, Frederick B. Adams, Jr., and Louis A. Landa. Professor Cordasco could
furnish them with just one of the "original" letters, which was judged a
forgery. Cordasco publicly accepted this verdict, declaring that he was now
convinced all five letters were forgeries, but denying that he had forged
them. He had been himself an innocent dupe in this - a "Smollett Hoax" of
quite another stripe.21
By the middle decades of our century, Smollett's ghost might be pardoned
for developing a persecution complex in the matter of the translation of Don
Quixote. Though, thanks to the alertness of his guardians in the academy,
the mischief of the forged letters has been nullified, Professor Linsalata's
charges are less easily refuted.22 These are as follows: (1) that the translation
published under his name was in all probability the production not of Smol-
lett himself, but of a "school" of hackney scribblers; (2) that Smollett knew
no Spanish; and (3) that, in any case, the work is nothing more than a plag-
iarism or close paraphrase of Jarvis's version. What credence do these accusa-
tions deserve?
1. Smollett's "Hack School"

As we have seen, Isaiah Pettigrew of Bone Street, Cordasco's candidate
for the authorship of Smollett's Don Quixote, proved to be an insubstantial
ghost - his name and local habitation returned to airy nothing by the ex-
posure of the forged letters. Linsalata, however - convinced that Smollett
knew no Spanish and therefore at a loss to explain the occurrence of passages
in the translation that correct Jarvis's inaccuracies - solved the puzzle to his
own satisfaction by attributing the work to an entire workshop of phantom
scribblers whom he supposed to be in Smollett's employ.23
Given the contradiction between Smollett's alleged incompetence and
the frequent felicities of the translation as he found it, Linsalata's hypothesis
was perhaps not unreasonable - especially in light of the fact that Smollett,
in the late 1750s, is known to have supported just such a band of hackney
authors whose company amused him and whose small talents he put to use
Solis's Historia de la conquista de Mexico (London, 1758)." (See Cordasco, "Smollett and the
Translation of the Don Quixote*' Modern Language Quarterly, 13 [1952], 31 n. 51.) I have
found no trace of such a person or of an edition of Solis's Historia dated 1758.
21. For Knapp and de la Torre's review of Cordasco's edition, Letters of Tobias George
Smollett: A Supplement to the Noyes Collection (Madrid, 1950), see Philological Quarterly,
30 (1951), 289-291. For the report of the Hazen Committee and Cordasco's acceptance of its
verdict, see PQ, 31 (1952), 299-300. See also "Correspondence," Modern Language Notes, 67
(1952), 69-71, 360; and Knapp and de la Torre, "Forged 'Smollett' Letter," Modern Lan-
guage Quarterly, 14 (1953), 228.
22. For two relevant, but insufficient, replies to Linsalata see Lewis M. Knapp's review
of Smollett's Hoax, in Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 57 (1958), 553-555; and
John Orr, "Did Smollett Know Spanish?" Modern Language Review, 45 (1950), 218.
23. See Smollett's Hoax, chapter 3.
in the various, often volumin
such as his Complete Histo
Continuation in 5 volumes
who first mentions his "hack school" in a mock-advertisement dated from
Smollett's house in Chelsea, 26 November 1757:
Besides himself he has under him several journeymen-authors, so that all those who
chuse to have a subject fitted up from the most sublime down to a common advertise-
ment, may be commodiously furnished at his house, where specimens of his works
may be seen every day. . . ,24
More reliable testimony of the scribbling satellites that circled round Smollett
at this time comes from his friend Alexander Carlyle, who, in his autobiog-
raphy, recalls meeting Smollett for dinner at Forrest's Coffeehouse, Chelsea,
in 1758:
He was now become a great man, and being much of a humorist, was not to be put
out of his way. Home and Robertson and Smith and I met him there, when he had
several of his minions about him, to whom he prescribed tasks of translation, com-
pilation, or abridgment, which, after he had seen, he recommended to the book-
sellers.^
This may well be the same circle of literary "myrmidons," as Carlyle calls
them - they were five in number, all "curious characters" - whom Smollett
himself would later immortalize in Humphry Clinker.26
There is, however, no evidence connecting Smollett with this club of
hireling authors until well after publication of his Don Quixote early in
1755. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that he produced that
work on his own. Since Smollett did not gather his authors around him until
some time after he moved to Chelsea from the Strand in June of 1750, Lin-
salata (who mistakenly placed the move in 1752) assumed that "no serious
work was done on Don Quixote" until after that date.27 Smollett himself,
however, points to a different period of composition. In advertisements for
the translation that ran in the Public Advertiser during March 1754, he
assured potential subscribers that "the Work was begun and the greatest
Part actually finished four Years ago."28 By this reckoning the bulk of the
translation must have been written during the period from the latter months
of 1748 to March 1750, before Smollett established himself in Chelsea. It
was in June 1748 that he contracted to produce the work, and before the year
was out he had made substantial progress on it. This seems a reasonable
inference from the publisher's announcement in November 1748 that the
translation was "Preparing for the PRESS'9 - an announcement repeated
24. Shebbeare, An Appendix to the Occasional Critic [1757], p. 25.

25. The Autobiography of Dr. Alexander Carlyle of Inveresk 1722-1805, ed. John Hill
Burton (London and Edinburgh, 1910), p. 355.
26. See "Jery Melford to Watkin Phillips, London, June 10," The Expedition of Hum-
phry Clinker, ed. Thomas R. Preston and O M Brack, Jr. (Athens and London: University of
Georgia Press, iqqo), pp. 122-131.
27. Smollett's Hoax, p. 17.
28. See the Public Advertiser (14-16, 18-19 March 1754).
gO2 STUDIES IN BIBLIOGRAPHY
nearly a year later, in September 1749.29 Other busine

he needed money, prevented Smollett from keeping u
with which he began the work; and, since he had bee
it, there was no urgency about finishing.30
During the six years and more that passed between h
the translation and its publication, Smollett engaged h
ing number of other projects of every description: tr
Gil Bias (October 1748) and The Devil upon Crutches (
taire's Micromegas (1752); an opera Alceste (c. 1748-49
icide (1749), a comedy The Absent Man (1750); the no
(1751), and Ferdinand Count Fathom (1753); a medical
ternal Use of Water (1752), as well as two volumes of
Treatise on midwifery (1751, 1754) which Smollett p
These productions, and much more besides, attest to t
lett's straitened circumstances during this period. It
money, even if we suppose he had the inclination, to farm
of Don Quixote for others to make a hash of. Not unt
when he published his proposals to subscribers, did he
put all else aside and finish the work. This is the situ
Dr. Macaulay in a letter of 11 December 1754:
For my own part, I never was reduced to such a dilemma as
for I have promised to pay away tradesmens' bills, to a co
Christmas; and my credit absolutely depends upon my pu
to very great straits for present subsistence as I have done
mer but worked upon Don Quixotte, for which I was paid fi
The spectacle of Smollett's frenetic literary activity

accounts readily enough for the delay in completion of
obviously was not being carried forward by other hands.
ments point to what actually happened. Having been
the translation, he worked at it more or less steadily unt
he had completed "the greater Part" of it. Then, in nee
translation aside to undertake fresh projects; not unti
is there evidence of his resuming the work in earnest to
with his publishers made six years earlier.
Two passages from Peregine Pickle (1751), chapters
relevant to the theory of Smollett's "hack school." In the
with scorn precisely the kind of figure Linsalata woul
the literary entrepreneur who resorts to the cynical e
books - and translations in particular - by job lot:
[Pickle] had, in his affluence, heard of several authors, who,
to genius, or human literature, earned a very genteel subsi
work for booksellers, in which reputation was not at all co
ple) professed all manner of translation, at so much per she
29. See the General Advertiser (19, 21 November 1748; 7-8 Se
30. See his letter to Dr. George Macaulay (11 December 1754);
31. Letters, ed. Knapp, p. 41.
or six amanuenses continually
by which means, he was enable
ambitious of no other charact
A few pages later in the

different character, thoug
soon after he declared his
announcement that promp
competing translations by
. . . another gentleman exhib
to translate into English a cer
by former attempts; and tha
miserable translations had en
sinuations, contrary to truth
one word of the language wh
Smollett, as we will see, had reason to resent the insinuation that he

neither knew Spanish nor wrote the translation of Don Quixote that appeared
under his name in 1755. That he was ready enough, in producing that work,
to avail himself silently of a variety of printed sources will also become clear,
and will surprise no one who is acquainted with authorial practice of the
period. But by the standards of his day the work was his own, not that of a
"hack school/'34 In 1763 Smollett obliged Richard Smith of New Jersey by
sending him a brief account of his life. Prominent in what he called "a
genuine List of my Productions" included in the letter is "A Translation of
Don Quixote." Notable, too, is the indignation with which he denied the
charge that was levelled at him in his own time and in ours: "I am much
mortified to find it is believed in America that I have lent my name to Book-
sellers; that is a species of Prostitution of which I am altogether incapable."35
32. The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, ed. James L. Clifford (London, 1964), p. 637.
33. A few days after John Osborn announced that Smollett's translation was preparing
for the press, J. and R. Tonson announced the publication of the second edition of Jarvis's
version: "The Whole carefully Revis'd and Corrected, with a new Translation of the
Poetical Parts by another Hand" (General Advertiser, 23, 25 November 1748). On 6 Sep-
tember 1749, the day before Osborn repeated his announcement that Smollett's translation
was in preparation, another group of booksellers began announcing publication of the
eighth edition of Motteux's version, revised by Ozell (General Advertiser, 6-9, 11-16, 18-23,
25-28 September 1749).
34. The narrative of Smollett's translation reads so smoothly and so well - is so much
of a piece from beginning to end - that it is hard to understand how it could be taken
for the production of a "school" of hireling scribblers: the camel, it is well said, is the
creation of a committee that tried to design the horse. Professor Aubrun of the Sorbonne
could accept Linsalata's hypothesis only by supposing that "Smollett leur donna le 'la' et
fixa, pour les plumitifs, la tonality du style." In the last three chapters of Part I, which
struck even Linsalata as original work, Aubrun detected Smollett's controlling hand. After
comparing the rival translations of a specimen passage, Aubrun found the "Smollett" ver-
sion so superior in vitality, and so much more faithful to the spirit of the original, that, he
remarked, the differences "prouvent que l'equipe, se defiant de Jarvis, travaille aussi sur
quelque autre texte, peut-etre m£me l'original espagnol." (See C. Aubrun, "Smollett et
Cervantes," Etudes Anglaise, 15 [1962], 122-129.)
35. Smollett to Richard Smith (8 May 1763); Letters, ed. Knapp, p. 113.
304
2. Smollett's
The charge that
confidence. The
studied Don Quix
Simply consider
guages, there is
petence in Spanis
by John Love, h
respected as a cla
lectures but the d
if a boy slipped i
learned his lesson
friend William H
of writing, entir
the eminent phy
answer him only
only from his tr
the notes to his
Mor£ri's Grand d
sively) of M. de
erie,"39 in which
From his corresp
and Dante, we als
to be able to read Francesco Berni's Orlando innamorato as well as Ariosto's
Orlando furioso in the original: "Since I parted from you in the Country/'
Smollett wrote Huggins in November 1759, "I have read Berni and the or-
lando furioso in the Italian from one end to the other, and was indeed become
a sort of a Knight errant in Imagination. . . ."40 Later, anticipating his jour-
ney to Italy, he wrote William Hunter that he was "giving my whole attention
to the Italian Language which I think I shall be able to speak tolerably in
six months."41
Linguistic facility such as this, at least in the romance languages, did not
seem particularly extraordinary to the educated class of Great Britain in the
eighteenth century, most of whom attended schools where, as Fielding put it,
a boy had Latin "inoculated into his Tail."42 Fielding, for one, considered
36. Lewis Mansfield Knapp, Tobias Smollett: Doctor of Men and Manners (Princeton,
1949), pp. 8-9.
37. Smollett to William Huggins (20 June 1757): Letters, ed. Knapp, p. 61.
38. Smollett, Letter 11, Travels through France and Italy, ed. Frank Felsenstein (Ox-
ford, 1979), pp. 90-92, 99-100.
39. Memoires de litterature, tires des registres de I'Academie Royale des Inscriptions
et Belles-Lettres, depuis Vannee MJ>CCXLIV, jusques & compris Vannee M.DCCXLVI,
vol. 20 (Paris. i7K*V dd. KQ'7-8ii'7.
41. Smollett to William Hunter (6 February 1764); Letters, ed. Knapp, p. 123.
42. Henry Fielding, Preface to Sarah Fielding's Adventures of David Simple, ed. Mal-
colm Kelsall (London, 1969), p. 6.
this sort of aptitude for languages completely unremarkable. From Lis

where he planned to write a history of Portugal, he wrote his half-bro
John asking that he send him "a conversible Man," someone of learnin
good humor, to be his companion and amanuensis: it would be an advan
of course, if the man understood Portuguese or Spanish, "which," how
Fielding assured his brother, "if he doth not, he may easily, if he hath
Latin Grammatical Rudiments, learn. . . Z'43
It is not unlikely, then, that Smollett could have acquired a competence
in Spanish without great difficulty. But the case for his knowledge of the
language need not rest on probabilities alone. In letters to friends Smollett
expressly stated his qualifications both to undertake the translation of Don
Quixote and to serve as British consul at Madrid. In June 1748, before begin-
ning the work, he wrote Alexander Carlyle: "I have contracted with two
Booksellers to translate Don Quixote from the Spanish Language, which I
have studied some time."44 How long, one wonders, was "some time"? If
Shebbeare's story is true that Smollett had studied Spanish in Brussels for six
weeks, the period in question - to judge from what we know of his move-
ments - would probably have been a time in the early 1740s. Later, in a letter
of December 1762, Smollett informed John Home that "[i]n the last ministry"
(probably in the autumn of 1759) he had "made some advances towards the
Consulship of Madrid for which I thought myself in some respects qualified,
as I understood the Spanish Language and was personally known to Mr.
Wall, the minister of his catholic majesty."45 That he did not mean to de-
ceive his friends by pretending to knowledge he did not have is certain from
the testimony of John Moore, one of Smollett's closest friends and the editor
of his Works (1797). In his biographical sketch of Smollett, Moore takes up
the question of his competence to undertake the translation of Don Quixote;
his observations on the subject are eminently sane and to our purpose:
[Smollett] has been accused [Moore writes] of not having had a sufficient knowledge
of the Spanish language when he undertook that task. To perform it perfectly, it
would be requisite that the translator had lived some years in Spain; that he had
obtained not only a knowledge of the language of the court and polite society, but
an acquaintance also with the vulgar idioms, the proverbs in use among the populace,
and the various customs of the country to which allusions are made. It would like-
wise be requisite that the translator of Cervantes should be a man of genius, of a
great native fund of humour, of a complete knowledge of his own language, and
the power of adopting the solemn, the familiar, the ironical, and the burlesque
phraseology as they suited the occasion. It will probably be long before all those
requisites are united in one man, and that he shall be inclined to translate Don
Quixote. Dr. Smollett possessed, in an eminent degree, the qualities last mentioned;
and although he never was in Spain, he certainly had a very considerable knowledge
of the language; that he had been at pains to inform himself of many of the obsolete
customs of the country appears by the notes to his translation.46
43. Fielding to John Fielding (c. 10-14 September 1754); The Correspondence of Henry
and Sarah Fielding, ed. Martin C. Battestin and Clive T. Probyn (Oxford, 1993), p. 112.
46. John Moore, "The Life of T. Smollett, M.D., m Smollett's Works, ed. Moore, «
vols. (London, 1797), 1: cxxxiv-cxxxv.
306
To the testimony o
language of Cervant
of the translation i
perhaps with some d
books seized by the
travels in 1763 are t
of Don Quixote in f
version [1761]); the
carried with him fiv
Spanish.47 Incidenta
suggest that he wa
understood, for ins
he could recall at will some of Cervantes' more colorful locutions in Don
Quixote. In Italy on his travels Smollett commented on "the pronunciation
of the Tuscans," which he found "disagreeably guttural: the letters C and G
they pronounce with an aspiration, which hurts the ear of an Englishman;
and is, I think, rather rougher than that of the X, in Spanish. It sounds as
if the speaker had lost his palate."48 In Adventures of an Atom the mob,
"like the cow-heel in Don Quixote [II.iv.7; 2: 374-375] 49 . . ♦ seemed to cry,
Comenme, comenme; Come eat me, come eat me."50 And, chiding his friend
Huggins for complaining that he was oppressed with business, Smollett re-
called one of Cervantes' favorite expressions ("tortas y pan pintado") that
recurs in Don Quixote (e.g. I.iii.3; 1: 94): "You talk of the Pistrinum or
Cart's Tail; that is, according to the Spanish Proverb, no more than pan-
pintado, Cakes and Gingerbread to what I undergo"51 - it is worth noting
moreover, that Smollett's translation of pan pintado is a closer English
equivalent than any previous attempt (e.g. Jarvis: "tarts and cheese-cakes"),
and was adopted by Putnam.
Later, we will consider what the translation itself reveals about Smollett's
command of the language of Cervantes. For now it should be clear that, as h
claimed, he had studied Spanish and was entirely capable of reading it.
3. Jarvis and the Question of Plagiarism
The third charge against Smollett's Don Quixote - namely, that the
work is a plagiarism of Jarvis's version - brings its place in the canon into
question no less surely than if it had been written by committee, as Linsalat
supposed. The charge originated in 1791 with Lord Woodhouselee, who called
47. See A. C. Hunter, "Les Livres de Smollett detenus par la douane a Boulogne en
1763," Revue de Litterature Comparee, 11 (1931) 763-767; also Eugene Joliat, Smollett et l
France (Paris: Librairie andenne Honore Champion, 1935), pp. 249-253.
48. Travels, Letter 27; ed. Felsenstein, p. 231.
49. Throughout this essay references to Don Quixote will be to the Smollett transla-
tion (1755) and will take the following form: II.iv.7, indicating Part II, Book iv, Chapter 7
followed by 2: 374-375, indicating the volume and page number(s).
50. Smollett, Adventures of an Atom, ed. Robert Adams Day and O M Brack, Jr.
(Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1989), pp. 57-58, 186 n. 638. Smollett, o
the printer, however, mistakes the form of the original: "Comeme, comeme."
51. Smollett to William Huggins (20 June 1757); Letters, ed. Knapp, p. 61.
the work "little else than an improved edition" of Jarvis, whose own v
though faithful to the literal sense of the original, he found "heavy
aukward."52 Confirmed, as we earlier remarked, by Duffield and Orm
the next century, and more recently by Samuel Putnam,53 this rema
orthodox verdict on both authors.
No one before Linsalata, however, was willing to undertake the drudgery
of attempting to prove by collation the extent of Smollett's dependence on
Jarvis5*--or, indeed, of his dependence on other possible models in English
and in French. By comparing a dozen selected passages from Smollett with
the corresponding passages in the translations by Thomas Shelton (1612-20),
John Philips (1687), Peter Motteux (1700), and John Stevens (1700) - and by
similarly comparing twenty-eight short excerpts from Smollett and the French
of Oudin-Rosset - Linsalata was satisfied he had sufficiently demonstrated
the improbability that Smollett had followed any of these versions in pro-
ducing his own.55 What these collations actually reveal, however, is the de-
pendence of Stevens on Shelton (whose work he revised) and the closeness of
Smollett's phraseology to that of Stevens - the reason for this being that
Jarvis, who served as Smollett's guide through the difficulties of Cervantes'
Castillian, wrote with his own eye on Shelton. In this period, threading
labyrinths to the source of a translation is, generally speaking, no simple task.
The version called Motteux's, for example, was not written, but published,
by him - the work itself being, as the title-page declares, a pastiche executed
"by several Hands." There is reason, moreover, to doubt that the version
published under the name of Charles "Jarvis" was in fact wholly written by
Pope's friend, the portrait painter Charles Jervas (the name itself being
garbled on the title-page): Jervas died in 1739, three years before the work
was published in 1742; he was not, except for this one ambitious work, an
author at all; and Pope, who knew him well, declared to Warburton that he
had no Spanish.56
52. Essay on the Principles of Translation, pp. 178, 181-182.

53. See Cervantes, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha, trans. Samuel
Putnam, 2 vols. (New York, 1949), 1: xiii-xiv.
54. Woodhouselee (pp. 185-223) adduced ten passages comparing Smollett and Motteux
in order to substantiate his preference for the latter. Duffield (1: 1-lvii) similarly compared
parallel passages from Shelton, Philips, Motteux, Jarvis, and Smollett (as revised by Thomas
Roscoe) in order to highlight the inaccuracies of all five. Before Linsalata, only Gustav
Becker had at all seriously attempted to use this method to demonstrate that Smollett
paraphrased Jarvis and committed inaccuracies in the process; but Becker's sampling of a
dozen brief examples was insufficient to make the case: see Die Aufnahme des Don Quijote
in die englische Literatur (1605-c. 1770) (Berlin, 1906), pp. 13-23.
55. See Smollett's Hoax, Appendices E and F.
56. Pope's comments on Jervas's connection with the translation of Don Quixote are
puzzling: in a letter of 14 December 1725 he remarked that "Jervas and his Don Quixot
are both finish'd" - meaning, apparently, that his friend had completed the translation and
was exhausted (Correspondence, ed. George Sherburn [Oxford, 1956], 2: 350 and n. 3); yet
later he told Warburton that Jervas was proud of having completed "the translation of
Don Quixote without Spanish" (see Johnson's life of Pope, Lives of the English Poets, ed.
George Birkbeck Hill [Oxford, 1905], 3: 107 n. 3; however, Hill's reference [Warburton,
Works (1811), 7: 232 n.] is inaccurate.) In a note to his revision of Motteux, Ozell praised
What concerns us, however, is not the authorship of the tra

lished under Jarvis's name, but the extent to which Smollett d
for his own. For the answer to this question, we are chiefly in
salata, who alone has performed the task of comparing, page
two versions of Cervantes' novel - a work of more than 400,00
result of his collation, however, is more ambiguous than it appe
Linsalata or his champion, Professor Knowles, who believed th
had "demonstrate[d] beyond any reasonable doubt that the bulk
lett translation was a poorly disguised theft from that of Jarv
umentation to which Knowles refers consists of 472 parallel pas
in size from two to sixty- two typewritten lines) which Linsala
four distinct categories of literary theft: namely, to use his own t
iarism," "paraphrasing," "rewriting," and "inversion." In Smo
(pp. 14-15) he illustrates these techniques with the following e
paring the original with the versions of Jarvis and Smollett:
Plagiarism
Cervantes: Y diciendo esto, puso las espuelas a Rocinante y, puesta la lanza

ristre, baj6 de la costezuela como un rayo. (II, 88)58
Jarvis: And saying this he clapped spurs to Rocinante, setting his lance in
and darted down the hillock like lightning. (I, 90)
Smollett: So saying, he clapped spurs to Rozinante, and putting his lance in t
darted down from the hillock like lightning. (I, 104)
Cervantes: En tanto que Sancho Panza y su mujer Teresa Cascajo pasaro
pertinente referida platica, no estaban ociosas la sobrina y el ama de don Q
que por mil senales iban coligiendo que su tio y sefior queria desgarrarse la
cera, y volver al ejercicio de su, para ellas, mal andante caballeria: procura
todas las vias posibles apartarle de tan mal pensamiento; pero todo era pre
desierto y majar en hierro frio. (V, 113)
Jarvis: While Sancho Panza and his wife Teresa Cascajo were holding t
going impertinent conversation, Don Quixote's niece and housekeeper were
who guessing from a thousand signs that their uncle and master would bre
the third time, and return to the exercise of his unlucky knight-errantry, end
by all possible means to divert him from so foolish a design; but it was all p
in the desert, and hammering cold iron. (II, 27)
Smollett: While this impertinent conversation passed between Sancho Pan
his wife Teresa Cascajo, Don Quixote's niece and housekeeper were not idle
collecting from a thousand symptoms, that their master wanted to give th
slip a third time, and return to the exercise of his unlucky knight-errantr
endeavoured, by all possible means, to divert him from his extravagant desi
all they could say, was like preaching to the desert, or hammering cold iron
the accuracy of Jarvis's translation, remarking cryptically that it was "supervis

learn'd and polite Dr. O
Life of Samuel Johnson Sir John H

the publisher, that the translation
Thomas Broughton (1704-74), re
laneous works (2nd edition [1787], p
57. Edwin B. Knowles, "A Note o
terly, 16 (1955), 29-31.
58. Linsalata s references are to Cervantes, El Ingentoso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la
Mancha, trans. Francisco Rodriguez Marin, 8 vols. (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, S.A., 1928); and
to the translations of Jarvis, 2 vols. (1742) and Smollett, 2 vols. (1755).
Paraphrasing
Cervantes: Hecho esto, dieron orden en que los tres companeros nuestros se r
catasen, por facilitar la salida del bafio, y porque vie*ndome a mi rescatado, y a
no, pues habia dinero, no se alborotasen y les persuadiese el diablo que hic
alguna cosa en perjuicio de Zoraida. . . . (IV, 53)
Jarvis: When this was done, means were concerted for redeeming our three
panions, and getting them out of the bath, lest, seeing me ransomed and thems
not, knowing there was money sufficient, they should be uneasy, and the devil sh
tempt them to do something to the prejudice of Zoraida. (I, 274)
Smollett: This affair being transacted, means were concerted for ransoming my th
companions; lest, seeing me at liberty and themselves confined, since I had mo
enough to procure their freedom, they should be chagrined, and tempted by
devil, to do something to the prejudice of Zorayda. ... (I, 313)
Cervantes: . . . es un lazo que si una vez le echais al cuello, se vuelve en el
gordiano, que si no le corta la guadana de la muerte, no hay desatarle. Muchas
cosas pudiera decir en esta materia, si no lo estorbara el deseo que tengo de saber
queda mas que decir al senor licenciado acerca de la historia de Basilio. (VI, 16)
Jarvis: . . . she is a noose which, when once thrown about the neck, turns to a
Gordian knot, and cannot be loosed till cut asunder by the scythe of death. I could
say much more upon this subject, were I not prevented by the desire I have to know
whether Signor the licentiate has any thing more to say concerning the history of
Basilius. (II, 97)
Smollett: Marriage is a noose, into which, if the neck should happen to [s]lip, it be-
comes inexplicable as the gordian knot, and cannot be undone till cut asunder by
the scythe of death. Much more could I add upon the subject, if I were not pre-
vented by the desire I have to know, whether Mr. licentiate has any thing further
to entertain us with relative to the history of Basilius. (II, 112-113)
Rewriting
Cervantes: - Eso fuera- respondid Sancho- cuando faltaran por estos prados las yer
bas que vuestra merced dice que conoce, con que suelen suplir semejantes faltas l
tan malaventurados andantes caballeros como vuestra merced es. (II, 96)
Jarvis: "It would be so," answered Sancho, "if these fields did not produce those
herbs you say you know with which such unlucky knights-errant as your worship are
wont to supply the like necessities." (I, 92)
Smollett: "That would certainly be the case, answered the squire, if the meadow
did not furnish those herbs you say, you know, with which, unfortunate knights lik
your worship, are wont to make up such losses." (I, 107)
Cervantes: jHeroica resolution del gran Filipo Tercero, y inaudita prudencia
haberla encargado el tal don Bernardino de Velasco! (VIII, 203)
Jarvis: Heroic resolution of the great Philip the Third, and unheard of wisdom
committing this charge to Don Bernardino de Valasco. (II, 350)
Smollett: . . . heroic resolution of the great Philip III, who has, at the same time
displayed the most consummate wisdom, in committing the execution of the schem
to the courage and ability of Don Bernardino de Velasco. (II, 42 1)
Inversion
Cervantes: - Bien estd eso- dijo don Quijote- ; pero yo se" lo que ahora conviene que
sahaga. (II, 223)
Jarvis: "It is well/' said Don Quixote; "but I know what is now expedient to be
done." (1, 122)
Smollett: "That may be a very good expedient, said the knight; but I know what is
proper for me to do at present/' (I, 141)
310
In making his case against the int

salata presumably considered these
definitive and damning of the 472
this reason - and recalling the axiom
Hercules from the dimensions of hi
What do they in fact reveal about S
- to borrow that useful term from
Pope?59 We can agree, I believe, tha
vis's text to four distinct "techniqu
point does plagiarism shade into pa
come rewriting, or rewriting, inve
of terms, not all the examples above
the last two passages show nothing
sense of a line or two of the origina
in the period to which he explicitly
two passages, moreover, remind us
allow himself in order to convey the s
to render as faithfully as possible
synonymous locutions in his own la
fore, that both Jarvis and Smollett
for example, "Heroica resoluci6n de
ton, who was first to translate Don
constraint, inherent in the nature o
quent translator of the work will be h
more of his predecessors. This being
doubt to Jarvis, author of the mos
him,60 may be seen as a virtue; it im
lation as he set about meeting the gre
vitality of Cervantes' masterpiece.
Linsalata has adduced enough unq
the extent of Smollett's dependence on
claim that Smollet's translation was
to Smollett's having written the gre
vantes, not on Jarvis. Even if we gr
472 examples of Smollett's alleged b
figure being inflated, as we have s
which Smollett's rendering of the
curate than that of Jarvis61 - it will
yield passages to his purpose.62 Inde
59. Lund, "From Oblivion to Dulness: Pop
Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 14
60. This virtue of Jarvis's translation w
in a footnote in the 7th edition (1743) of
Jarvis's work "for it's Accuracy" (4: 96 n.).
6i. See John Orr, "Did Smollett Know S
218.
62. Recorded in full in his dissertation
AUTHORSHIP OF SMOLLETT'S DON QUIXOTE 31 1
pared the two versions without suspecting Smollett of plagiarism sup

the view that the offending passages are relatively few and far between. W
ham - though, to be sure, he had examined only the specimen of Smoll
translation and not the whole work - was so little inclined to make this
ticular complaint that he could "scarcely suppose [Smollett] ever could
seen" Jarvis's more accurate version; and Griffiths, the first actually to
pare the rival versions of the same passage from the original, was in no dou
that Smollett's "genius (notwithstanding some things that appear to be r
inaccuracies than defects in judgment) comes nearest the great origin
Far more impressive is the verdict of Charles Duff, an able linguist and tran
lator of numerous Spanish authors, including Quevedo. At the request
Smollett's biographer, Lewis Melville, Duff compared Smollett's trans
with other "standard" translations and came to the following conclusio
Whilst "cribbing" much of the meanings from Jarvis's translation . . . Smol
may be called, in spite of criticisms to the contrary, very much his own work. It
more smoothly than all other translations; the inaccuracies are not fatal to
work as a whole; and my view is that it deserves to be reprinted. . . ,64
Sixty years would pass before the Noonday Press took this hint, pub
ing in 1986 a reprint of the first edition with an Introduction by Ca
Fuentes. In his Foreword, Fuentes declared his preference for Smollett
Quixote over all other English versions. In this, he was not alone a
readers whose native language is the language of Cervantes. Francisco
riguez Marin, perhaps the preeminent Cervantist of our century (whose
tion of Don Quixote Linsalata himself regards as authoritative), was o
same opinion. When told by Cordasco of David Hannay's opinion that Sm
lett was sufficiently in sympathy with his author to have produced a tr
tion having "an original literary value of its own," Rodriguez Marin re
that "he heartily approved" that judgment: "of all English translation
entertained a particular fondness for that of Smollett."65
4. Smollett and the Question of Originality

The qualities that make Smollett's version of Don Quixote the m
readable in our language are chiefly attributable, of course, to his own powe
as a novelist and to his command of the full stylistic range of English
course; he had a "genius," as his contemporaries would call it, unmatc
by his competitors in this particular work of translation before or si
Smollett's voice is distinctive, and we hear it plainly throughout the w
In this sense the translation indeed is very much his own. And it is his
as well in a number of formal features that originated with him - such as t
gether comprise 56,250 words of the novel's 401,000 words - or 14 per cent of the
excluding Smollett's footnotes.
63. Windham, Remarks, p. 17; Griffiths, Monthly Review, 13 (1755), 197.
64. Quoted in Lewis Melville, The Life and Letters of Tobias Smollett (iyii-iyji)
don, 1026), p. 121.
65. For Hannay's opinion, see his Life of Tobias George Smollett (London, 1887), p. 1
For Rodriguez Marin's, see Cordasco, Modern Language Quarterly, 13 (1952), 36 n. 6
introductory "Life of Cervantes," the official prel

novel, and many of the explanatory annotations to th
however, Smollett often depended for these innovatio
none of which he chose to acknowledge. It is time to c
question of Smollett's originality in the translation
That Smollett had a sufficient understanding of
work directly from the original ought to have bee
fact that no translation before his own included th
Part II of the novel: immediately following Cervan
these are the "Approbation" of the Licentiate Mar
inary Licence" of Doctor Gutierrez de Cetina; and t
of Joseph de Valdivielso. Only the first of these, t
of Marques Torres, was already available to Smolle
quoted in full in Ozell's translation of Gregorio's
even so, the version in Smollett's translation is entire
second of the three preliminaries the variant spelli
- "Cetina" rather than "Centina" - serves to ident
of the original used by Smollett; for this spelling is f
of Don Quixote printed for Juan Mommarte at B
quently reissued by the Verdussens of Antwerp in 167
noting that this text - though not equal in authori
Pineda (London: J. and R. Tonson, 1738) - was
superior to all other Spanish editions published fro
As for English sources, though Jarvis was Smolle
clear from collation of editions available to him at
that he also consulted Ozell's revision of Motteu
[1743] or eighth [1749] edition), as well as Stevens
either the first [1700] or second [1706] edition). A
importance only to Jarvis, was Stevens' Spanish-E
and 1726).68 Without naming them, Smollett at t
quotes all four of these works in an elaborate foot
66. Both volumes of the 1673 edition (1: sig. ft2V» 2: S*S-
5 September 1669 the heirs of Juan Mommarte transferred th
to Geronymo and Juanbautista Verdussen. Of this text only
include the spelling "Cetina" followed by Smollett. All thre
phrase "dixo el Cura" found in Pineda ed. (I.iv.37; 2: 146) an
priest" (I.iv.10; 1: 250), but omitted by Smollett. In the pre
original are from the 1697 Antwerp edition.
67. Ormsby, trans., 1 : 53.
68. There is little evidence that Smollett used Pineda's
1740), also in Spanish and English. The great majority of P
batim from Stevens. It is possible, however, that Smollett's n
beef sliced" was suggested by Pineda's definition "cold b
"pieces"); and that his explanation of "Mosqueo" as signify
tail" was also suggested by Pineda, who alone offers a similar
the specific passage in question: "a Whipping by the Minist
cap. 35." For these references in Smollett, see I.i.i; 1: 1 n. an
seen, by Windham) mocking the haplessness of "former translators"

struggled to find an English equivalent for "duelos y quebrantos
Quixote's meal on Saturdays), his own no less hapless solution being
and grumblings." That Smollett consulted these sources throughout the
lation is clear from many passages in both the text itself and in his fo
to the text; these passages, too numerous to list here, will be identified in
explanatory annotations to the forthcoming Georgia edition.
Smollett's "originality" in this work - in the particular sense in w
that term seems appropriate here - can perhaps best be seen both in
"Life of Cervantes" prefixed to Part I of the novel and in the footn
the text. The "Life" was obviously written by Smollett, and at first g
would appear to be the product of considerable impressive research in
mary sources. In his footnotes Smollett cites works by the Spanish sc
Tomas Tamayo de Vargas (1588-1641), Don Nicolas Antonio (161
author of Bibliotheca Hispania (Rome, 1672), and Fr. Diego de Hae
1608), author of Topographia e Historia general de Argel (Valladolid,
and he appears as well to be acquainted with the entire canon of Cerv
In truth, however, these were all sources cited by the two authors on
Smollett entirely depended for the substantive detail of the "Life."
important of these was Don Gregorio Mayans y Siscar (1699-1781), ke
the Royal Library at Madrid and Cervantes' first biographer. Gregorio
de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Briga-Real, 1737) was translated int
lish by John Ozell (1738), the translation being reissued subsequently
of Jarvis's translation of Don Quixote (1742); it is clear from numero
respondences in phrasing that Smollett's source was not the Spanish o
gorio, but the English of Ozell.
That Gregorio's biography was a likely source for Smollett's "Lif
not gone unnoticed.69 His other principal source, however, was o
enough to have been overlooked not only by Gregorio, but also - as W
Windham remarked before he had read Smollett's translation - "by
writers which I have seen, that mention Cervantes. . . ."70 This was J
Morgan's Complete History of Algiers (1728-29) in which Smollett fou
account of Cervantes' captivity in Algiers based on Haedo - a stroke o
that enabled him to become the first of Cervantes' biographers to tre
interesting episode.71 Smollett's "Life," then, must lay its claim to ori
not on the facts it rehearses, but on its author's presentation and inte
tion of the facts, an interpretation colored throughout by Smollett's
personal sympathy with his subject.
In the footnotes to the translation this same pattern obtains: Smo
practice is to abridge and paraphrase a variety of sources, always wi
acknowledgment. In Smollett's Hoax, Linsalata charged that no fewe
seventy-one of Jarvis's notes were "copied" by Smollett - or rather by
69. See Cordasco, MLQ, 13 (1952), 24.
70. Remarks, p. 30.
71. See Morgan's Complete History, 2 vols. (1728-29), 2: 563-565.
3H STUDIES IN BIBLIOGRAPHY
lett's phantom "journeymen."72 But besides ignor

of improving on Jarvis's prose by reducing his pr
an elegant conciseness, Linsalata, by focussing ex
search for Smollett's sources, failed to see that in a t
lett drew either on a source he and Jarvis were inde
a source unknown to Jarvis. In twenty-four of the s
Smollett's debts were to others besides Jarvis, a
Spanish-English Dictionary - thirteen examples; to
translators, especially Stevens' revision of Shelto
Motteux - seven examples; to sources not consulte
Mor&i's Grand dictionnaire historique and Andre
les vies et sur les ouvrages des plus excellens pei
two examples. Jarvis was certainly an important
notating Don Quixote, but he was one among man
the first edition (1755), forty-seven were based on J
footnotes Smollett added to the second edition (1
vis's influence - and in that one Smollett, following
his own preferable translation for the worse.73
In its final form, Smollett's translation include
text of the novel, 203 footnotes. These are chiefly of
majority explain problematic Spanish words, prov
sions and offer reasons for Smollett's rendering them
in solving these specifically textual and linguistic
principally on Stevens' Dictionary - and, of cour
predecessors. (2) Of the other notes, twenty-thr
based on Smollett's close reading of the text, call
in Cervantes' plot and characterization. (3) Twen
about one tenth of the total, comment on the cu
all these, though representing a unique contributi
he abridged without acknowledgment from the Fr
oires sur l'ancienne chevalerie," published in Mem
des registres de VAcademie Roy ale des Inscriptio
Vannee M.DCCXLIV, jusques compris Vannie
(Paris, 1753). Of a similar kind is another note o
Catholic "disciplinants" (II.ii.15; 2: 204 n.) whic
Blainville's Travels through Holland, Germany, Sw
of Europe, translated by William Guthrie and ot
(4) For information on certain historical figures
72. Smollett's Hoax, Appendix C, and p. 69 n.

73. In the original the housekeeper, not well read in roma
ventures) as Venturas (good luck), and, well aware that Don
from his sallies abroad in a miserable state, is puzzled by wh
first edition has the housekeeper say that her master plans
the world for what he calls ventures, tho' I cannot imag
name . . .' " (II.i.7; 2: 35). In the 2nd edition, misled by
Smollett substituted "adventures" for "ventures", and rep
original, ventura, signifies good luck as well as adventures
Smollett turned four times
once, for a colorful anecdo
Augsburg (II.ii.6; 2: 144 n.),
sur les ouvrages des plus exc
(5) Finally, no fewer than fi
tion were doubtless inspired
gins, translator of Ariosto:
lando romances - Boiardo's and Berni's Orlando innamorato and Ariosto's
Orlando furioso.
Among the triumphs of Smollett's translation is his skillful rendering of
Cervantes' poetry. Through the long narrative of his hero's adventures Cer-
vantes scattered some forty poems. These are written on a variety of subjects
evoking a range of mood from the pathetic to the ludicrous, and they differ
widely in length and form. Indeed, with regard to its formal features the verse
is often metrically irregular and dependent for its musical effects on assonant
rhymes- features difficult to duplicate in English at any time, and in the age
of Pope unthinkable. In this respect, as in the translation as a whole, Smollett
succeeded remarkably well in suggesting the qualities of the original without
attempting to reproduce them literally: for example, he renders the goatherd
Antonio's doric "ditty" to Olalla in seventeen numbered quatrains in an
irregular meter alternating between eight and nine syllables (Lii.g; 1: 56-58);
for Chrysostom's "Song of Despair" he chose ten twelve-line stanzas, each
rhyming ababcdcdefef (I.ii.[6]; 1: 72-74); for Cardenio's lament, three num-
bered stanzas of five couplets, metrically very complex - in each, lines 1, 3, 5,
7-10 are tetrameter, lines 2 and 4 dimeter, and line 6 trimeter (I.iii.ig; 1:
183); the bogus ghost of Merlin addresses the horrified hero and his squire in
forty-nine lugubrious lines of blank verse (II.iii.3; 2: 221-222). And Don
Quixote's two comic attempts to sing his imaginary mistress's virtues are, in
the first instance, confined to three stanzas of nine lines, in which her name
in the refrain "Dulcinea / del Toboso" is made to rhyme with "be a", "de-
fray a" and "to play a" (I.iii.12; 1: 175-176); his later song on the same subject
consists of sixteen couplets in lame feet of seven syllables (II.iii.14; 2: 282-
283).
These examples suggest the care Smollett took to convey the spirit of his
great original in the idioms and literary conventions of his own language. In
a footnote to the first of these poems, he made clear that he took this respon-
sibility seriously. It is important, I believe, to the question of Smollett's
authorship of the translation that he should focus his remarks (though with-
out naming him) on Jarvis; for Smollett well knew that Jarvis's translation,
even by Ozell's admission, had already established itself as the most literally
exact of previous versions of Don Quixote. Smollett's criticism, supported by
his own literal translation of the verses in question, suggests the confidence
with which he was prepared to challenge his rival's claims to a superior un-
74. See the following notes: I.iii.13; 1: 181 n. [on "Batnba or Wamba"]; I.iv.14; 1: 322 n.
[on "Cava or Caba"]; II.iv.10; 2: 396 n. [on "Michael Scot"]; and, added in the 2nd edition,
II.i.3 [on "Alphonsus Tostatus"].
derstanding of both Cervantes' language and the subtleties o

Commenting on Stanza XI of the goatherd's song, Smollett w
The reader will perceive that I have endeavoured to adapt the
the plainness and rusticity of the sentiment, which are preserved
of this ballad; though all the other translators seem to have been
the poetry at variance with the pastoral simplicity of the thoughts.
would ever dream of a goatherd's addressing his mistress in these t
With rapture on each charm I dwell,
And daily spread thy beauty's fame;
And still my tongue thy praise shall tell,
Though envy swell, or malice blame.
The original sentiments which this courtly stanza is designed
literally these:
"I do not mention the praises I have spoke of your beauty, which, though true
in fact, are the occasion of my being hated by some other women." [No cuento las
alaban^as, / Que de tu belleza he dicho, / Que aunque verdaderas, hazen / Ser yo
de algunas mal quisto.] (I.ii.3; 1: 58 n.)
What, finally, does Smollett's rendering of Cervantes' narrative reveal
about the qualities of the translation? The answer to the basic question of his
competence in Spanish is not, certainly, as unambiguously negative as we have
been led to believe. Though Smollett at times misread the text, in a surprising
number of instances he is actually more accurate than any of his predecessors.
Far from following Jarvis "servilely," as Duffield put it, Smollett's errors
are often owing to a misplaced confidence in his own command of Spanish.
Perhaps the most egregious example is his rendering of the expression "en dos
paletos," which, as all his predecessors understood, means simply "briefly,
instantly": apparently mistaking pelotas (balls) for paletas (trowels or paint-
ers' palettes), Smollett unwisely tried to make literal sense of the phrase,
twice translating it as "in the twinkling of two balls" (II.iii.19; 2: 319) and
"in the turning of two balls" (II.iv.8; 2: 388). Other examples are less hilari-
ous, but no less to the point.
• (I.iv.14; 1: 315) The Captive relates that as he talked with her father, "salio
de la casa del jardin la bella Zorayda, la qual ya avia mucho que me avia visto" ("the
lovely Zoraida came out of the garden house. She had caught sight of me some while
before" [Putnam]). Smollett alone found this passage confusing: "the fair Zorayda
came out into the garden. She had already perceived me from a window of the
house. . . ." Jarvis has: "the fair Zoraida, who had espied me some time before, came
out of the house."
• (Il.i.i; 2: 9) The page whom Smollett describes as "yellow-haired" is in fact
"beardless" (barbiluzio), as all Smollett's predecessors have it. In this he may have
been misled by Stevens: "Barbiluzio, one that has a red beard"; "Luzio [from lucio]
. . . bright, shining or transparent."
• (II.ii.10; 2: 170) When Don Quixote uses the proverbial expression, "quando la
colera sale de madre, no tiene la lengua padre," Smollett alone renders it, "When
choler once is born, the tongue all curb doth scorn," providing in a footnote what he
takes to be the literal sense: "When choler quits the mother, the tongue has then no
father." In this, however, though he gained a rhyme ("born/scorn"), he missed the
meaning. The idiom, "salir de madre," denotes a river's overflowing its banks
(Stevens: Salir). Jarvis has, "when choler overflows its dam," which ingeniously pre-
serves the double meaning of madre.
• (II.ii.11; 2: 174) Sancho speaks sarcastically of the hardships of his lot as Don
Quixote's squire, using the expression, "en vuestra mano esta escudillar" (li
"the ladling [of the stew] is in your own hand"). Both Jarvis and Shelton
stood the metaphor, Jarvis translating the phrase lamely, but accurately
"it is in your own power to dish up the mess"; Smollett makes nonsense of
saddle is in your own hand."
• (II.iii.15; 2: 292) In bringing a scene of Sancho's indignation to a quiet
the narrator says, "andese la paz en el corro." Smollett, apparently confusing
(career) with corro (company), renders the phrase, "peace attend him in his
Jarvis has "peace be with him and company."
• (II.iv.7; 2: 372) When Don Quixote and his squire sit down to a me
narrator ironically remarks that Sancho holds back, "su Senor hiziesse la s
reference to the custom of the nobility's employing "tasters" who sample th
to be sure it is safe to eat. Stevens (s.v. Sdlva) glossed the expression hazir l
and Jarvis, following Shelton, got it right: "his master should first be his
Smollett, however, disregarding these helps, missed the irony: Sancho "wait
until his master should begin."
Smollett's translation is not free from errors such as these - errors, it
worth noting, which would not have occurred if he had been tracking
as closely as we have assumed. Much more remarkable, however, are th
ber of passages in which he caught the sense of the original more convinc
than Jarvis and other translators. Besides his telling criticism of Jarvis's
dering of the goatherd's song, already cited, consider the following ex
• (I.i.2; 1: 10) When Don Quixote calls him "Senor Castellano," the la
thinks he means one of "los sanos de Castilla." Smollett alone understood the allu-
sion: "Mine host imagining that he called him Castellano*, because he looked like
a hypocritical rogue," commenting in his note: "Sano de Castella, signifies a crafty
knave." He was presumably indebted to Stevens: "Sdno . . . Sdno de Castilla, in
cant, a dissembling thief." Jarvis echoes all previous translators in rendering the
passage: "The host thought he called him Castellano because he took him for an
honest Castilian** commenting: "Castellano in Spanish signifies both a governour
of a castle, and a native of Castile."
• (I.i.8; 1: 42) The Biscainer, blustering threats at Don Quixote, inverts a pro-
verbial phrase: "el agua quan presto veras que al gato llevas." Smollett paraphrased
this in a Somerset dialect simulating the Biscainer's rude speech: " 'die will soon zee
which be the better man*' ", and, in a footnote probably indebted to Stevens (Gdto),
became the first translator to gloss the passage: "The literal meaning of the Spanish
is, Thou shalt soon see who is to carry the cat to the water; or rather, in the corrupted
Biscayan phrase, 'The water how soon thou wilt see, that thou earnest to the cat/ "
Jarvis, following Motteux and Ozell, has simply, "I will make no more of thee than
a cat does a mouse."
• (I.ii.4; 1: 61) Referring to Ghrysostom, a young man of unimpeachable char-
acter and sole heir of his father who has died, Pedro the goatherd calls him "Senor
desoluto" of all his father's wealth. Smollett translates this "desolate lord and master";
all previous translators, as well as Ormsby and Watts, have "dissolute"- an adjective
entirely inappropriate in context and unlikely in the old spelling of the Spanish,
dissoluto rather than the modern disoluto (see Stevens and the Royal Dictionary
[1732]). Putnam silently translates it "absolute," desoluto being a barbarism for
absoluto (see C. Fernandez Gomes, Vocabulario de Cervantes [Madrid, 1962]). But
Smollett's "desolate"- desoluto suggesting desolar (Stevens: "Desoldr ... to make
desolate")- also preserves the malapropism as well as being appropriate to Chry-
sostom's grief.
• (I.iii.7; 1: 126) Soon after Don Quixote mistakes the beat of the fulling-mill
hammers for the terrible sound of giants, he prepares to assault a stranger whom he
believes to be wearing Mambrino's helmet. Afraid of another painful misadventure,
3l8 STUDIES IN BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sancho says, "mas quiera Dios . . . que oregano sea, y no batanes"- a

present purpose the proverbial expression, "a Dios plega que oregano
vuelva alcarabea" ("please God it be marjoram, and not turn car
[Watts]). Smollett alone understood the original: he translates, "God
this may turn out a *melon rather than a milling," commenting in t
"Oregano . . . signifies sweet marjoram, as if Sancho had wished h
find a nosegay, rather than a bloody nose." His predecessors either
on the proverb or get it wrong: "I pray ... it may not prove anoth
adventure" (Jarvis); "I wish this may'nt prove another blue Bout, an
than the Fulling-Mills" (Motteux and Ozell); "I wish ... it prove a g
and not a Fulling-Mill" (Stevens' revision of Shelton).
• (I.iv.2; 1: 209) In his footnote on the mythical "kingdom o
("Reyno de Micomicon") Smollett was first to propose that Cervantes
on mico: "As if he had said Ape land: Mico signifying an ape."
• (I.iv.4; 1: 232) Andrew takes his leave of Don Quixote "and as t
took his foot in his *hand." Smollett in his note was first to gloss
"Literally, Took the road in his hands [tomo el camino en las mano
sion is not in Stevens or Pineda, and Jarvis and Ozell, without com
have, "and marched off."
• (I.iv.7; 1: 259) Leonola credits Lothario with "a whole alphab
plishments," and proceeds to name a virtue beginning with every
Spanish alphabet, which has no k and w. Smollett followed the ori
words beginning with k and w; only Shelton before him had prese
liarity of the original, and Smollett seems not to have known She
Stevens' revision.
• (I.iv.15; 1: 332) As the curate tells the story of Zoraida and the captive, Cer-
vantes writes: "A todo lo qual estava tan a ten to el Oydor, que ninguna vez avia sido
tan Oydor como entonces," which Smollett renders: "to which the judge listened
with more attention than ever he had yielded on the bench*." In annotating the
passage, he became the first translator to note Cervantes' play on oidor: "*A judge in
Spanish is called Oydor, i.e. Hearer, and the original literally translated, is 'The
hearer was never so much a hearer before.' "
• (H.i.3; 2: 16) Sancho recalls a time when Rozinante lusted after the mares, or,
as he puts it, " '*longed for green peas in December.' " Smollett alone, probably
referring to Stevens (Cotufas), glosses this proverbial expression: "*Pedir cotufas en
el golfo, signifies to look for tartuffles in the sea, a proverb applicable to those who
are too sanguine in their expectations, and unreasonable in their desires." Jarvis, fol-
lowing Shelton, ignores the literal meaning, writing that Rozinante "had a longing
after the forbidden fruit."
• (II.i.4; 2: 23) Sancho, though he avoids all fighting, will look after his master's
needs gladly: "yo le baylare el agua delante." Smollett renders this expression, " 'I
will fjig it away, with pleasure.' " In his note, probably derived from Stevens
(Agua), he alone glosses the original: "Baylar el agua delante, is a phrase applicable
to those who do their duty with alacrity, taken from the practice of watering the
courts in Spain, an office which the maids perform with a motion that resembles
dancing." Without comment Jarvis, following Motteux and Ozell, renders this, "I
will fetch and carry like any water-spaniel."
• (II.i.8; 2: 43) Sancho fears that in the spurious continuation of Don Quixote,
"andar mi honra k coche aca cinchado," a proverbial expression which Smollett alone
preserves: " 'my reputation goes like a jolting hackney-coach.' "
• (Il.i.g; 2: 47) At midnight Don Quixote and Sancho "dexaron el monte" and
enter Toledo. Before Smollett, only Stevens in his revision of Shelton had seen that
the context requires the secondary meaning of monte (Stevens: "Monte, a hill, a
mountain, a wood"). Smollett has "leaving their covert"; Stevens, "left the Wood."
Jarvis, following Shelton, has "left the mountain"; Motteux and Ozell, "descended
from a Hill."
• (II.i.10; 2: 55) Annoyed at Sancho's representing her to Don Quixote as his
Dulcinea, the country wench uses a proverbial expression that peasants say to
wives when they beat them: "Mas yo que te estr[i]ego burra de mi suegro"- w
Stevens (Burra) renders, "Stand still while I curry you, my father-in-law's ass."
lett was first to render this in the text (" 'Would I had the currying that ass'
of thine' "); and he was first to understand that the woman speaks it not to
ass she rides on (as in Jarvis's note), but to Sancho.
• (II.i.13; 2: 71) Sancho compliments Don Quixote with a proverbial express
referring to him as "moliente, y corriente." Smollett's vivid rendering of th
"well dammed and gristed," comes nearest to the full sense of the original, which
erally refers to a mill working well, the water running and the sails going,
metaphorically signifies "anything that is in good order, and no way defect
(Stevens: Moliente, y corriente). Jarvis has merely, "wanting for nothing"; all oth
"round and sound."
• (H.ii.i; 2: 108) After hearing Don Lorenzo's sonnet, Don Quixote compli-
ments him with a play on words: "entre los infinitos Poetas consumidos que ay, he
visto un consumado Poeta." Smollett renders this, " 'amidst the infinite number of
consumptive poets that now exist, I have found one consummate.' " Only Shelton
had previously attempted to translate this word-play, preferring, however, the com-
bination "consumed . . . consummate." Watts and Putnam follow Shelton in render-
ing consumidos as "consumed"; but Smollett's "consumptive" (Stevens: "Consumo,
consumption") is funnier and makes better sense.
• (II.iii.2; 2: 216) The duke advises Sancho, when he becomes governor of the
island, to take up hunting, "y vereys como os vale un pan por ciento." All translators
resort to a loose paraphrase of this puzzling expression, Smollett rendering it, " 'which
you will find of incredible *service' "; but in his footnote Smollett was first to at-
tempt a literal translation: "And you shall see it will be worth a loaf that will serve
an hundred."
• (II.iii.15; 2: 289) Annoyed at the intrusion of a stranger with a petition,
Sancho threatens: "yo ponga en pretina a mas de un negociante"- which Smollett
renders, " 'I will sit upon * the skirts of more than one of these men of business/ "
In his note, Smollett alone offered a literal translation of this expression, which
only the Royal Dictionary (1737) glossed (s.v. Pretina): "*The original Ponga en
pretina, signifies, I will put in my girdle."
• (II.iii.15; 2: 289) The page describes the honest peasant as "una alma de can-
taro" (literally, "a soul of a pitcher")- an expression usually used pejoratively to sig-
nify a stupid person (as in II.i.13; 2: 71, where Smollett renders it "dull as a beetle").
Smollett was first to see that in context the expression is here meant positively:
Shelton has "a very dull Soule"; Jarvis, "a pitcher-soul'd fellow." Smollett's transla-
tion, "a simple soul," was indeed adopted by Putnam.
• (II.iv.fi 8]; 2: 447) Sancho pities Altisidora, whom Don Quixote has rejected:
"Mandote yo, dixo Sancho, pobre Donzella, mandote (digo) mala ventura." Smollett
alone preserves the repetition of "mandote" (which, following Stevens [Manddr], he
renders "bequeath"), as well as the repetition "dixo . . . (digo)": " 'Poor damsel!
cried he, I can bequeath, bequeath thee nothing, I say, but bad luck.' " Jarvis, for
example, has simply, "Poor damsell Quoth Sancho, I forebode thee ill luck."
• (II.iv.f19]; 2: 447) In the opening paragraph of the chapter, Smollett's ren-
dering of the obscure expression, "y catalo cantusado," as "and so the farce is acted"
anticipates the sense favored by both Ormsby ("and, there, his labour is over") and
Watts ("and lo, it is done").
• (II.iv.f19]; 2: 450) Insisting that he will keep his promise to scourge himself
with three thousand lashes, Sancho quotes a proverb: "a dineros pagados, braoos
quebrados" ("The money paid, the arms broken"). Smollett alone preserves both the
rhyming and the full sense of the proverb: " 'When money's paid before it's due, a
broken limb will straight ensue.' " Jarvis has, "The money paid, the work delayed";
Stevens, revising Shelton, has the following, which Motteux also adopted: "having
received Money before hand, I thought much to work for a dead Horse."
*****
320
The year follow

carries Smollett's
him a complimen
Smollett returned the favor:
Dear Sir,
I send my Spaniard to return the Compliment I have received by your Italian.
Cervantes was a warm Admirer of Ariosto, and therefore Don Quixote cannot be
disagreeable to a Lover of Orlando furioso. Though I do not pretend to compare
my Prose with your Poetry, I beg you will accept of my Translation as a mark of
that Perfect Esteem with which I have the Honour to be
Sir,
Your most obedt. humble servt.,
T». Smollett75
Smollett, as we have seen, had indeed made Cervantes' masterpiece his

own; it is, as he declared it to be, his translation written in his prose (and,
as we have seen, his poetry). By the standards of the day, certainly, he had
played the game fairly and well. Here, we should remember, is Dryden in a
famous passage that defined the theory of translation for a hundred years:
The Qualification of a Translator worth Reading must be a Mastery of the

Language he Translates out of, and that he Translates into; but if a deficience be
to be allow'd in either, it is in the Original, since if he be but Master enough of the
Tongue of his Author, as to be Master of his Sense, it is possible for him to express
that Sense, with Eloquence, in his own, if he have a through Command of that. But
without the Latter, he can never Arive at the Useful and the Delightful; without
which, Reading is a Penance and Fatigue.
'Tis true, that there will be a great many Beautys, which in every Tongue depend
on the Diction, that will be lost in the Version of a Man, not skiU'd in the Original
Language of the Author: But then on the other side, First it is impossible to render
all those little Ornaments of Speech in any two Languages; and if he have a Mastery
in the Sense and Spirit of his Author, and in his own Language have a Stile and Hap-
piness of Expression, he will easily supply all that is lost by that defect.
A Translator, that wou'd write with any Force or Spirit of an Original, must
never dwell on the Words of his Author: He ought to possess himself entirely, and
perfectly comprehend the Genius and Sense of his Author, the Nature of the Sub-
ject, and the Terms of the Art or Subject treated of; and then he will express him-
self as justly, and with as much Life, as if he wrote an Original: Whereas, he who
copies Word for Word, loses all the Spirit in the tedious Transfusion.76
Smollett saw the art of translation in this same light. He believed he

understood the character of Cervantes' hero and the humor of his squire. He
believed, too, that he understood the spirit of the novel and the idiom that
defined its essential character as a literary work. After some years spent in the
writing, and in reflecting on what he meant to do and what he had achieved,
he addressed his readers in a brief preface:
75. Smollett to Huggins (7 December 1756); Letters, ed. Knapp, pp. 50-51.
76. Dryden s Life of Lucian, in The Works of John Dryden: Prose 1691-1698, vol. 20,
ed. A. E. Wallace Maurer and George R. Guffey (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1989), 20:
226-227. On the influence of Dryden, see John W. Draper, "The Theory of Translation in
the Eighteenth Century," Neophilologus, 6 (1921), 241-254.
The Translator's aim in this undertaking, was to maintain that ludicrous sole
and self-importance by which the inimitable Cervantes has distinguished the
acter of Don Quixote, without raising him to the insipid rank of a dry philos
or debasing him to the melancholy circumstances and unentertaining caprice
ordinary madman; and to preserve the native humour of Sancho Panza, fro
generating into mere proverbial phlegm, or affected buffoonry.
He has endeavoured to retain the spirit and ideas, without servilely adher
the literal expression, of the original; from which, however, he has not so f
viated, as to destroy that formality of idiom, so peculiar to the Spaniards,
essential to the character of the work.
Smollett achieved his aim of fidelity to the spirit of his great original. At
the same time, for the particular enjoyment of his countrymen, he may be
said to have translated it in another sense, bringing the work home to them
from another time and another country, and making of it, as Dryden recom-
mended, "an Original" in its own right. As Pope in his Iliad adapted Homer
to the expectations of readers in England's Augustan Age, so Smollett suc-
ceeded in making Cervantes his contemporary. His gruff Biscainer speaks the
Somerset dialect of Fielding's Squire Western; and Cervantes' narrator not
only writes Smollett's mid-Georgian prose but at times echoes the phrases of
Shakespeare and Milton, or recalls a song from The Beggar's Opera.11 The
narrative is colored by homely locutions that would make the plains of La
Mancha seem a familiar place to an Englishman - and often more especially
to readers of Smollett's native Scotland: Sancho stuffs his budget with good
things to eat, and his stomach wambles; waits strike up tunes, and a skinker
pours the wine; hare-hunters search in vain for a scut; desperadoes discharge
their fusils; mariners worry about ships that steer athwart their hause.
In writing his translation of Don Quixote, Smollett, as he predicted in
his preface, did indeed subject himself "to the most invidious comparison"
with his rivals - and even, as he could not have predicted, to criticism in our
own century designed to abstract him from his work altogether. My purpose
in this essay has been to affirm his authorship of the translation and to offer
an opinion of its merit. Samuel Johnson, Mrs. Piozzi tells us, considered
Don Quixote second only to the Iliad as "the greatest" work of entertainment
in the world.78 As Johnson credited Pope with having produced in his trans-
lation of the Iliad "the noblest version" of poetry the world had seen,79 we
may at least, with Carlos Fuentes and Rodriguez Marin, allow that Smollett
in his translation of Don Quixote not only succeeded in capturing the spirit
of the original for English readers, as he aimed to do, but gave us as well the
most entertaining version of Cervantes' masterpiece in our language.
77. For the Biscainer's speech, see I.i.8; 1: 42. In the dark Don Quixote takes the duenna
for a phantom, "a perturbed spirit" recalling the ghost of Hamlet's father (II.iii.16; 2: 294);
the duke and duchess's masquerading "devils" appear in a scene described in Milton's phrase
of "darkness visible*1 (II.iii.2; 2: 217); and in place of a Spanish ballad the narrator substi-
tutes the opening verses of Macheath's song on false friendship: "The modes of the court,
so common are grown, that a true friend can hardly be met" (II.i.12; 2: 65).
78. Hesther Lynch Piozzi, Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, in Johnsonian Mts-
cellanies, ed. G. B. Hill (Oxford, 1897), 1: 332-333.
79. Johnson, "Pope," Lives of the English Poets, ed. G. B. Hill, 3: 119.

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Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia

The Authorship of Smollett's "Don Quixote"

Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,

THE AUTHORSHIP OF SMOLLETT'S DON QUIXOTE

Smollett burlesques the pedantry of previous translators who

5. Stevens, A New Dictionary, Spanish and English, and English and Sp

ness of plagiarism by the occasional use of choice and special words, t

his dissertation in Austin, Texas, Professor Francesco Cordasco of

The Translation of Quixotte was not undertaken with anticipation of exacting

1. Smollett's "Hack School"

24. Shebbeare, An Appendix to the Occasional Critic [1757], p. 25.

nearly a year later, in September 1749.29 Other busine

The spectacle of Smollett's frenetic literary activity

A few pages later in the

Smollett, as we will see, had reason to resent the insinuation that he

this sort of aptitude for languages completely unremarkable. From Lis

52. Essay on the Principles of Translation, pp. 178, 181-182.

What concerns us, however, is not the authorship of the tra

Cervantes: Y diciendo esto, puso las espuelas a Rocinante y, puesta la lanza

the accuracy of Jarvis's translation, remarking cryptically that it was "supervis

Life of Samuel Johnson Sir John H

In making his case against the int

62. Recorded in full in his dissertation

pared the two versions without suspecting Smollett of plagiarism sup

4. Smollett and the Question of Originality

introductory "Life of Cervantes," the official prel

seen, by Windham) mocking the haplessness of "former translators"

lett's phantom "journeymen."72 But besides ignor

72. Smollett's Hoax, Appendix C, and p. 69 n.

derstanding of both Cervantes' language and the subtleties o

Sancho says, "mas quiera Dios . . . que oregano sea, y no batanes"- a

The year follow

Smollett, as we have seen, had indeed made Cervantes' masterpiece his

The Qualification of a Translator worth Reading must be a Mastery of the

Smollett saw the art of translation in this same light. He believed he

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Battestin, M. C. - Authorship of Smollett's Don Quixote (1997)

Battestin, M. C. - Authorship of Smollett's Don Quixote (1997)