It is pretty certain that most of Smollett's most successful things, from _Roderick Random_ to _Humphry Clinker_, and in those two capital books, perhaps, most of all, kept very close to actual experience, and sometimes merely reported it.
This, however, is only a comparative drawback; it is in a sense a positive merit; and it is connected, in a very intimate way, with the general character of Smollett's novel-method.

This is, to a great extent, a reaction or relapse towards the picaresque style.

Smollett may have translated both Cervantes and Le Sage; he certainly translated the latter: and it was Le Sage who in any case had the greatest influence over him.

Now the picaresque method is not exactly untrue to ordinary life: on the contrary, as we have seen, it was a powerful schoolmaster to bring the novel thereto.

But it subjects the scenes of ordinary life to a peculiar process of sifting: and when it has got what it wants, it proceeds to heighten them and "touch them up" in its own peculiar manner of decoration.