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For a useful survey, see Francesco Cordasco, "Smollett and the Translation of the 'Don Quixote'--A Critical Bibliography," Notes & Queries, 193 (4 September 1948), 383-84.
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).
See, for example, Lewis M. Knapp's authoritative edition, The Letters of Tobias Smollett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 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: The University Press, 1971), 2: 964.
Diccionario de la Lengua Castellana . . . Por la Real Academia Española, 6 vols. (Madrid, 1726-39).
Windham conceded that "the enchanter Orlando" might well be a printer's error for "the enchanted Orlando"; he was understandably more severe with the footnote in which Smollett, disregarding the comments of three previous translators (Stevens, Ozell, and Jarvis), turns the French traitor "Galalon" into a Spaniard (Windham, pp. 15-16). Both these errors are corrected in the 2d edition.
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 [1757].
The Eighteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue (CD-ROM, 1992) cites the following editions and reprints of these three translations from 1755 to 1799. Smollett: 1755, 1755 (Dublin: Henshall), 1761 (2nd edn.), 1765 (3rd edn.), 1766 (Dublin: Ewing), 1770 (4th edn.), 1782 (5th edn.), 1782 (Harrison), 1783 (Dublin: Price et al), 1784 (Harrison). 1786 (Longman et al), 1792 (6th edn.), 1792 (Harrison), 1793 (York?: Law et al.), 1794? (Hogg), 1795, 1795? (Dublin: Henshall), 1796 (Dublin: Chambers), 1799?. Jarvis: 1756 (3rd edn.), 1766 (4th edn.), 1788 (5th edn.). Motteux: 1757 (Glasgow: Foulis), 1766 (Edinburgh: Donaldson), 1771, 1771 (Glasgow: Foulis). The National Union Catalogue Pre-1956 Imprints, 101 (1970), p. 529 (col. 3) lists an additional imprint for Jarvis--1776.
One cause of the numerous printer's errors in this edition--errors including the elevation of an entire footnote into the text (page 83, lines 18-30)--was the compositor's inability to distinguish the long "s" ( ?) of the copy-text from an "f": e.g. "seat" > "feat" (21. 9); "slapped" > "flapped" (23. 8); "honey-seeds" > "honey-feeds" (74. 6); "sight" > "fight" (107. 26); "slipp'd" > "flipp'd" (143. 39); "Mr. Tonsor" > "Mr. Tonfor" (151. 18); "sabæan" > "fabæan" (246. 28); "savoured" > "favoured" (250. 32, 564. 20); "savours" > "favours" (261. 35, 483. 10); "same" > "fame" (309. 3); "sire" > "fire" (375. 36, 627. 30); "sailing" > "failing" (383. 14); "unsound" > "unfound" (406. 35); "sort" > "fort" (480. 27); "Nisus" > "Nifus" (486. 1); "sound" > "found" (522. 27); "the . . . savour" > "the . . . favour" (534. 31); "savourest" > "favourest" (587. 21); "wise" > "wife" (631. 11); "sounded" > "founded" (669. 26); "Asuera" > "Afuera" (686. 40); "similar" > "familiar" (835. 11). References are to the Noonday Press edition of Cervantes' The Adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha, trans. Tobias Smollett, intro. Carlos Fuentes (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1988).
Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee, Essays on the Principles of Translation (1791), p. 223.
Cervantes, The Ingenious Knight, Don Quixote de la Mancha, trans. Alexander James Duffield, 3 vols. (London, 1881), 1: xlviii-xlix.
Cervantes, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, trans. John Ormsby, 4 vols. (London, 1885), 4: 420.
Cervantes, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, trans. Henry Edward Watts, 5 vols. (London, 1888), 1: 12-13, 285.
See the following: Carmine Rocco Linsalata, "Tobias Smollett and Charles Jarvis: Translators of Don Quijote," unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Texas, Austin, 1949; "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: Stanford University Press, 1956).
Francesco Cordasco, "Smollett and the Translation of the 'Don Quixote': Important Unpublished Letters," N&Q, 193 (21 August 1948), 363-64.
Cordasco later announced that a correspondent, Charles Rockfort, had replied to his query, suggesting that the mysterious author of Smollett's translation "may have been Isaiah Pettigrew (1724-1793), who in 1758 aided in the revision of the translation of Antonio 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.
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), 289-91. 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 Language Quarterly, 14 (1953), 228.
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), 553-55, and John Orr, "Did Smollett Know Spanish?" Modern Language Review, 45 (1950), 218.
The Autobiography of Dr. Alexander Carlyle of Inveresk 1722-1805, ed. John Hill Burton (London and Edinburgh, 1910), p. 355.
See "Jery Melford to Watkin Phillips, London, June 10," The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, ed. Thomas R. Preston and O M Brack, Jr. (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1990), pp. 122-31.
The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, ed. James L. Clifford (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 637.
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 September 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).
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 tonalité 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" version so superior in vitality, and so much more faithful to the spirit of the original, that, he remarked, the differences "prouvent que l'équipe, se défiant de Jarvis, travaille aussi sur quelque autre texte, peut-êre même l'original espagnol." (See C. Aubrun, "Smollett et Cervantès," Études Anglaise, 15 [1962], 122-29.)
Lewis Mansfield Knapp, Tobias Smollett: Doctor of Men and Manners (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949), pp. 8-9.
Smollett, Letter 11, Travels through France and Italy, ed. Frank Felsenstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 90-92, 99-100.
Mémoires de littérature, tirés des registres de l'Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, depuis l'année M.DCCXLIV, jusques & compris l'année M.DCCXLVI, vol. 20 (Paris, 1753), pp. 597-847.
Henry Fielding, Preface to Sarah Fielding's Adventures of David Simple, ed. Malcolm Kelsall (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 6.
Fielding to John Fielding (c. 10-14 September 1754); Martin C. Battestin and Clive T. Probyn, ed. The Correspondence of Henry and Sarah Fielding (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 112.
John Moore, "The Life of T. Smollett, M.D.," in Smollett's Works, ed. Moore, 8 vols. (London, 1797), 1: cxxxiv-cxxxv.
See A.C. Hunter, "Les Livres de Smollett détenus par la douane àBoulogne en 1763," Revue de Littérature Comparée, 11 (1931) 763-67; also Eugène Joliat, Smollett et la France (Paris: Librairie ancienne Honoré Champion, 1935), pp. 249-53.
Throughout this essay references to Don Quixote will be to the Smollett translation (1755) and will take the following form: II.iv.7, indicating Part II, Book iv, Chapter 7; followed by 2: 374-75, indicating the volume and page number(s).
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, or the printer, however, mistakes the form of the original: "Comeme, comeme."
See Cervantes, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha, trans. Samuel Putnam, 2 vols. (New York: Viking Press, 1949), 1: xiii-xiv.
Woodhouselee (pp. 185-223) adduced ten passages comparing Smollett and Motteux in order to substantiate his preference for the latter. Duffield (1: l-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.
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: Clarendon Press, 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: Clarendon Press, 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 the accuracy of Jarvis's translation, remarking cryptically that it was "supervis'd by the learn'd and polite Dr. O---d, and Mr. P---" (7th edition [1743], 4: 238 n.). In his Life of Samuel Johnson Sir John Hawkins asserted on the authority of a friend of Tonson the publisher, that the translation appearing under Jarvis's name was actually the work of Thomas Broughton (1704-74), reader at the Temple church and the author of miscellaneous works (2nd edition [1787], p. 216).
Edwin B. Knowles, "A Note on Smollett's Don Quixote," Modern Language Quarterly, 16 (1955), 29-31.
Linsalata's references are to Cervantes, El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha, trans. Francisco Rodríguez Marín, 8 vols. (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, S.A., 1928); and to the translations of Jarvis, 2 vols. (1742) and Smollett, 2 vols. (1755).
Lund, "From Oblivion to Dulness: Pope and the Poetics of Appropriation," British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 14 (1991), 171-89.
This virtue of Jarvis's translation was immediately acknowledged by Ozell, who, in a footnote in the 7th edition (1743) of his revision of Motteux, owned that he admired Jarvis's work "for it's Accuracy" (4: 96 n.).
Recorded in full in his dissertation (Appendix A), Linsalata's 472 examples together comprise 56,250 words of the novel's 401,000 words--or 14 per cent of the text, excluding Smollett's footnotes.
Quoted in Lewis Melville, The Life and Letters of Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) (London, 1926), p. 121.
For Hannay's opinion, see his Life of Tobias George Smollett (London, 1887), p. 137. For Rodríguez Marín's, see Cordasco, Modern Language Quarterly, 13 (1952), 36 n. 60.
Both volumes of the 1673 edition (1: sig. ††2v; 2: sig. *8v) carry the notice that on 5 September 1669 the heirs of Juan Mommarte transferred the rights to the Brussels edition to Geronymo and Juanbautista Verdussen. Of this text only the three editions cited above include the spelling "Cetina" followed by Smollett. All three of these editions also lack the phrase "dixo el Cura" found in Pineda ed. (I.iv.37; 2: 146) and followed by Jarvis, "said the priest" (I.iv. 10; 1: 250), but omitted by Smollett. In the present essay quotations from the original are from the 1697 Antwerp edition.
There is little evidence that Smollett used Pineda's Nuevo Dicionario (London, 1740), also in Spanish and English. The great majority of Pineda's entries are taken verbatim from Stevens. It is possible, however, that Smollett's note defining "Salpicon" as "cold beef sliced" was suggested by Pineda's definition "cold beef cut in slices" (Stevens has "pieces"); and that his explanation of "Mosqueo" as signifying "flagellation at the cart's tail" was also suggested by Pineda, who alone offers a similar alternative definition and cites the specific passage in question: "a Whipping by the Minister of Justice; vid. Quix. vol. 2. cap. 35." For these references in Smollett, see I.i.1; 1: 1 n. and II.iii.3; 2: 226 n..
In the original the housekeeper, not well read in romances, mishears aventuras (adventures) as venturas (good luck), and, well aware that Don Quixote has invariably returned from his sallies abroad in a miserable state, is puzzled by what she has heard. Smollett in the first edition has the housekeeper say that her master plans to go "'searching up and down the world for what he calls ventures, tho' I cannot imagine why they should have that name . . .'" (II.i.7; 2: 35). In the 2nd edition, misled by Jarvis's translation and note, Smollett substituted "adventures" for "ventures", and repeated Jarvis's explanation: "The original, ventura, signifies good luck as well as adventures" (3: 51 n.).
See the following notes: I.iii.13; 1: 181 n. [on "Bamba 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"].
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: University of California Press, 1989), 20: 226-27. On the influence of Dryden, see John W. Draper, "The Theory of Translation in the Eighteenth Century," Neophilologus, 6 (1921), 241-54.
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" (II.iii.2; 2: 217); and in place of a Spanish ballad the narrator substitutes 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).
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