Picaresque novel can simply refer to an episodic recounting of the adventures of an anti-hero on the road. Laurence Sterne's "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" (1761-1767) and "A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy" (1768) each have strong picaresque elements. Voltaire's French novel "Candide" (1759) contains elements of the picaresque. An interesting variation on the tradition of the picaresque is "The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan" (1824), a satirical view on early 19th-century Persia, written by a British diplomat, James Morier. Elements of the picaresque novel are found in Charles Dickens’s "The Pickwick Papers" (1836–37). Gogol occasionally used
John Hall-Stevenson the result that in 1760 Hall-Stevenson abused Smollett and his associates in "A Nosegay and a Simile for the Reviewers" and "Two Lyrical Epistles, or Margery the Cook Maid, to the Critical Reviewers". Hall-Stevenson's "A Sentimental Dialogue between two Souls in the palpable Bodies of an English Lady of Quality and an Irish Gentleman" (1768) was seen as a parody of his friend Sterne's "Tristram Shandy". Hall-Stevenson also wrote on politics. He denounced the Earl of Bute and all politicians, whether Whig or Tory, with such works as "A Pastoral Cordial; or an Anodyne Sermon, preached before their Graces Newcastle