While Urquhart's original version of Rabelais has sometimes been acclaimed as a masterpiece in itself, critics have had reservations about Motteux's continuation.
In part, Motteux suffered for frankly rendering the vulgarity of Rabelais, to a generation of readers less prepared to tolerate it than Urquhart's had been.
[4] Motteux translated other works as well, one example being The Present State of the Empire of Morocco (1695) by French diplomat François Pidou de Saint-Olon.
As its subtitle indicates, The Novelty was an anthology of five short plays in different genres, comedy, tragedy, pastoral, masque, and farce.
The Journal published "News, History, Philosophy, Poetry, Musick, Translations, &c." It covered a wider range of topics than other periodicals of its era like John Dunton's The Athenian Gazette, giving it some claim as the first "general interest" magazine in English.
Motteux reviewed plays by John Dryden (a personal friend) and William Congreve among others; he published verse by the poets of the era, including Matthew Prior and Charles Sedley; he covered the musical career of Henry Purcell and printed several of his songs.
[7] (Classicists have attempted to trace possible sources for the motto, ranging from Vergil to Aristotle to Horace to Cicero to St.