Vienna – they had strange names: Whether Humphry Clinker, Peregrine Pickle, Ferdinand Fathom or Roderick Random, the latter can be freely translated as “Zacharias Chance”. The Englishman Tobias Smollett had them all promenade, roll and fall through the crooked, hollow flat world in satirical novels in the 18th century. They were historical epics in which, as in the books of his contemporary Henry Fielding, the present appeared sharp.
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