The bulk of his work consists of long moralizing poems, prosy, prolix, often trivial, and to-day largely unreadable. Same of them are in the rimed couplet and others in blank verse.

He made ferociously unqualified attacks on the statesmen of his day, and in spite of much power, the coarseness of his works renders them now almost unreadable. But he performed one definite service; in 'Roderick Random,' drawing on his early experiences as a ship's surgeon, he inaugurated the out-and-out sea story, that is the story which takes place not, like 'Robinson Crusoe,' in small part, but mainly, on board ship.