i.
the great novelists.
the novel, since the days of the mediaeval romances, and the elizabethan prose stories from sidney's "arcadia" to the tales of greene and nash, was never quite unrepresented in england, for example, there were translations and imitations of the huge french "heroic" romances; bunyan's stories are religious and moral novels, and under the restoration mrs. aphra behn (1640-1689) wrote short novels of love which do not quite deserve the bad reputation conferred on them by an anecdote told by sir walter scott. eliza haywood (1693-1756) was prolific in prose tales, and is the author of a little romance of prince charles's adventures in 1749-1750, disguised as "a letter of h— g—," henry goring, the prince's equerry. but in literary circles, the novel was held in as high disdain as it was later, before scott produced "waverley" (1814).
the novel of modern life, manners, and sentiment first came to its own as the universal joy of reading mankind in richardson's "pamela"; advertised as it was, in modern fashion from the pulpits of all denominations.
samuel richardson, the son of a yorkshire joiner, was born in 1689, and after being educated at the charterhouse was apprenticed to a london printer. as a boy he made small sums by writing love-letters for maid-servants and others who were unable to write for themselves; and when, as a middle-aged man, he turned to writing novels, he cast them in the form of letters.[pg 459] "pamela," which he began to publish in 1740, is the story of a girl who is a waiting-maid to a lady and is persecuted by her mistress's son; in the end he marries her and becomes a model husband. it may annoy us from the very strange and unnatural way in which all the characters behave. pamela strikes us less as a being of equal innocence and virtue, mistress of her own passion for "the dear obliger," mr. b. (only the initial is given), than as a young woman who knows her game and plays her cards most adroitly. her snobbishness was, no doubt, in the manner of her class in her day, but we approve of pamela no more than fielding did, when he overwhelmed it with the sturdy laughter of his parody, "joseph andrews," brother of pamela, and as virtuous as that paragon, yet no milksop. but "pamela" was admired beyond "this side idolatry".
"clarissa" (1748) is another novel of virtue in danger and distress, but clarissa is a lady of good family and fortune, and of a pure and heroic spirit. decoyed from her home and friends by the wiles of the professional seducer, lovelace, a rake so brilliant and witty and reckless as to win the hearts, if not of clarissa, of all richardson's lady readers, clarissa is exposed to the last extreme of misery, steadily refuses to marry the scoundrel who has wronged her, and dies slowly among the sobs of the congregation.
"sir charles grandison," whose name has become a proverb in the english language, appeared in 1753, and is one of the longest books that ever was printed. it is very badly constructed too, and contains lengthy episodes which have nothing to do with the story, and only puzzle and confuse the reader. properly speaking it is not so much a novel as a series of incidents, all tending to the glorification of the hero, who is made up of long words, fine sentiments and whalebone. the women of the tale are less exasperating than the men, though they can hardly be considered attractive. the reason of this may be found in the fact that richardson neither sought nor was sought by men, while he was in the habit of reading his manuscripts to a group of enthusiastic young ladies (among whom was the future mrs. chapone) in his garden at fulham. unluckily his audience, who might have been of service to him in pointing out that well-bred people[pg 460] had other manners than those of the characters of richardson, were too deeply engulfed in admiration to be capable of criticism; or possibly they may not have been aware, as lady mary wortley montagu was, that richardson did not know the society which he described. the letters themselves, besides showing a frankness and lack of reticence which it may confidently be said few real letters could ever parallel, are of a length which even on a desert island no one could write. the genuine letters in his correspondence, between him and the unknown but worshipping lady bradshaigh, and their romantic and elaborate arrangements to discover each other in hyde park, are far more amusing reading. richardson has been accused, and justly, of a portentous lack of humour, but if his reader has any of his own, he will not read the novels in vain.
these censures are the candid criticism of the modern reader who finds that he cannot think himself back into the circle of richardson, who finds its virtue and its sentiment hardly intelligible, though he is entirely at home with the society of all degrees that fielding describes, or that lives in boswell's "life of johnson," and in the "letters" of horace walpole and lady mary wortley montagu, expressing themselves like people of this world. but though richardson lived in a kind of moral and sentimental hothouse, where one can scarcely breathe; though he had a more than feminine liking for accumulated minutenesses of details and a more than mediaeval prolixity; yet his full-length pictures of his personages, stippled like a miniature in a ring, delighted not only english but continental, especially french readers. it was an age when people took little exercise, were little in the open air, and passed endless hours in conversation on the ethics and philosophy of love and sentiment. the memoirs of madame d'épinay are partly a romance in the manner of richardson, and to read them is to understand the society which found in him its ideal novelist. "the man would hang himself who tried to read 'clarissa' for its story," said dr. johnson, a friend of the author, partly because the author was the friend of virtue. we, if we please, may detest and disbelieve in lovelace, who was, none the less, the conqueror of the hearts of the ladies of the time, that implored[pg 461] richardson to convert a hero so brilliant, witty and amiable. but for richardson it had been enough to convert mr. b., and he was artist enough to refuse to gratify tastes which, in the manner of charles ii., demanded that all tragedies should end happily. scott, with the resurrection of athelstane; dickens, with the conversion of estella, were more good-naturedly and erroneously amenable to the requests of friends.
there was a blush between charles lamb and the girl who sat down beside him to read "pamela," and, in fact, richardson's way of educating girls in virtue may seem apt to have effects which he did not contemplate. other times, other manners.
henry fielding.
to say anything at once new and true about henry fielding passes the power of man. his defects and his qualities; the good in him and in his work, and the not so good, are so conspicuous that his contemporaries, and later generations down to our own, have passed on them the same remarks. there are the admirers of fielding, who justly see in him one of the three very greatest of english novelists of contemporary life and manners as exhibited in the portions of society which he knew and illustrated. but he did not take all contemporary society for his province. born at sharpham park, in somerset, in 1707, he had far greater advantages of birth than other men of the pen. the house of fielding is ancient and noble, though, unlike gibbon in his monumental compliment to fielding, mr. horace round cannot accept its connexion with the house of hapsburg.
the fieldings had two earldoms, of desmond (in ireland) and of denbigh; fielding's father was of a cadet branch of the family: lady mary wortley montagu was a kind of cousin of the novelist. he was educated at eton and in the law-loving university of leyden; but when he "came upon the town," in 1728, he did not associate himself with the circle of pope and bolingbroke and the wits and the great ladies; he does not draw his characters from that splendid society, though lady bellaston, in "tom jones," is a member thereof.
fielding had to live by his brains, by writing comedies, and by[pg 462] journalism. he showed his genius for parody of the heroic tiresome tragedy that was "such an unconscionable time adying," in "tom thumb the great"; and his dangerous turn for political satire in "the historical register" (1737). but the licensing act, making the lord chamberlain, or his subaltern, licencer of plays, excluded fielding from that course; he was called to the bar (1740), where he did not practise much. he was married in 1735 to the original, it is said, of the exquisite sophia of "tom jones"; he wrote in the press; in 1745 he took the hanoverian side, in "the true patriot," and "the jacobite's journal," in mockery so named; and during all this period he saw a great deal of the world, especially the world of the stage and of light literature.
but of all this he makes little display in his novels. he falls back on the humours of the country: on the country parson, adams; the tory squire, squire western; a neighbour, in character of sir tunbelly clumsey, and so good an englishman that he rejoices when he hears that "twenty thousand honest frenchmen are landed in kent" to back the rightful king, and the landed interest, against hanoverians, financiers, and whigs in general. his excellent allworthy is no townsman; mr. thomas jones, a foundling, is country born and country bred; most of the adventures of joseph andrews take place in the country; in "amelia" we are in town, and in taverns and prisons often, but by no means "in society".
"jonathan wild" is a tale of town villains and rogues; and fielding's minor characters, from postilions to philosophers, like philosopher square, landlords, landladies, serving-men, lawyers, parsons, unfortunate ladies, people on the road, are of ordinary humanity, with a considerable sprinkling of hypocrites. he had heard the chimes at midnight and much later; he had hunted; he had lived the tavern life, the life of debts and expedients, but he "had kept the bird in his bosom," the sterling excellence of his heart; pity for the poor and oppressed; honour, good humour, tolerance, and manly indignation.
to fielding, richardson's "pamela," the text of many a sermon, the snow-pure prudent pamela, with virtue rewarded by the hand of the enterprising mr. b., was even as a red rag to a[pg 463] bull. he did not weep over pamela's tears, these "pearly fugitives". he no more believed in mr. b.'s return to virtue than in that of vanbrugh's loveless. respectability was so far from being his favourite virtue, that, like many very inferior writers, he inclined to identify it, unjustly, with hypocrisy.
consequently he began "joseph andrews" as a parody or burlesque of "pamela". that paragon had a brother, appropriately named joseph; and the virtue of joseph is assailed like that of his sister, but in vain. joseph is invincibly respectable, yet no hypocrite, but a very manly young fellow with an honest love in his own rank. the story soon ceased to be a parody; that grotesque, learned, excellent and extremely muscular christian, parson adams, came into the tale with the egregious mrs. slipslop; and the thing became a "picaresque" novel, a tale of the road and of chance meetings: with the lesson that kind hearts are more than coronets, and a postilion, later guilty of robbing a hen roost, is a better christian than a whole coach-load of pharisees. indeed st. augustine, once at least, robbed an orchard, yet became a shining light, having been misled (as regards the apples and pears) by his sense of humour.
"joseph andrews," though its language is occasionally coarse, as regards its meaning is not obscure, and it is certainly one of the most amusing works in our language: though it is not written for small boys and little girls. we meet pamela and mr. b. (cruelly styled mr. booby), again at the close, and they behave ill in church, when joseph is married.
richardson was very much hurt, of course, and spoke very ill of fielding; if he forgave fielding, he "forgave him as a christian," like rowena in ivanhoe, "'which means,' said wamba, 'that she does not forgive him at all'".
there is an endless discussion about fielding's morality. natural goodness of heart is everything with him. of his tom jones the epitaph might be that devised by joe gargery in "great expectations" for his reprobate of a father,
whatsume'er the failings on his part,
remember reader he were that good in his hart.
thomas was "that good at his heart" and lectures young[pg 464] nightingale very nobly on the infamy of corrupting virtue. but where there is no virtue to corrupt in others, thomas pays no attention to his own. perhaps he could have resisted temptation, in nightingale's circumstances, but he is wisely kept out of it by the author. he does what is thought the very basest thing that a man can do; colonel newcome never forgave him; if we are to pardon tom it must be, as dumas urges in the case of porthos, because, "other times, other manners".
this affair is the dangerous step in "tom jones" (1749), that epic of the eighteenth century. fielding thought of it as an epic in prose; he is fond of burlesquing homer and of quoting aristotle. the plot has been praised by coleridge and justly, as on a level with that of the "?dipus tyrannus" of sophocles. the construction of plots has not been the strong point of most great novelists, but fielding set this good example, not immaculate of course, but admirable.
the real merit of the book lies in its pell-mell of characters, all delineated with exquisite humour, wit, and observation, from the mysterious mother of the hero, and the adorable sophia, to the adroit hypocrite, blifil; the uproarious stupid fox-hunter, the jacobite who drinks healths, squire western; the philanthropic yet really good allworthy; the delightful pedantic partridge, with his tags of latin quotations; the rural ruffian, black george; the harmless vanity of miss western (the aunt), the sternly protestant and anglican, but not immaculately virtuous philosopher square, and all the attendant crowd.
the moral introductory reflections may, of course, be skipped, yet not by wise readers, for they are full of fielding's humour, and display his confidence in the immortality of his book.
fielding was thackeray's master and model; in his too frequent reflections he follows fielding too closely. if all men were equally fortunate, they would all read "tom jones" in the six small volumes of the first edition: but in any edition the book is delightful. charlotte bront? thought it corrupting to such young fellows as her brother, the unhappy branwell, but branwells will go their own way, with or without the aid of the too fortunate foundling.
[pg 465]
fielding was a sturdy hanoverian, but he was mortal and an author. he must have been pleased had he known that the hero of 1745 (the year in which the tale is cast), that prince charles then lurking in a parisian convent, purchased "tom jones," both in french and english.
earlier than "tom jones" is "jonathan wild the great," the romance of a thief-taker and sharer of spoils with thieves, who was gibbeted in 1725. it is customary to speak of this book, a satire of the "greatness" of men like julius c?sar, as a masterpiece of irony, and as a success in the field where thackeray, on the same estimate, failed with "barry lyndon". if irony is to be openly and noisily unveiled in every page, then "jonathan wild" may be a masterpiece of irony. the reader may be left, if he can read "jonathan wild," to compare it with "barry lyndon" for himself, and to draw his own conclusions as to the relative merits of these books. the deliciously absurd adventures of mrs. heartfree, like those of the heroines of late greek romances, are, at all events, intentionally or unintentionally funny. sir walter scott disliked this masterpiece, and after reading it, and the commendations which eminent modern critics bestow upon it, the writer cannot honestly dissent from the disrelish of sir walter. he is said not to have understood fielding's meaning which fielding constantly proclaims and avows, namely that greatness of intellect and ambition without goodness of heart is a mischievous monstrosity. mr. carlyle, in some moods of hero-worship, might have differed, but we can give a general assent without wading through "jonathan wild".
fielding's own heart was as good as steele's. he adored his beautiful wife as steele adored prue. but, while "the greatest blessing is a faithful and beloved wife," says our author in "amelia," "it rather tends to aggravate the misfortune of distressed circumstances from the consideration of the share which she is to bear in them". but the circumstances were distressed because fielding, like amelia's captain booth, was "a good fellow," and, like johnson's friend, savage, was at no time of his life the first to leave any company,—over the punch bowl. and amelia was listening for every footstep, and dreading every accident of the streets, and money was a minus quantity, and a scrag[pg 466] of mutton was a rare festival, because captain booth had every generosity except that of a little self-denial.
by 1749 mr. fielding, as his friendly biographer says, "was a martyr to gout". "he had not stolen it," and we have heard of another sufferer, "a martyr to delirium tremens". by this time his wife was dead; later he married her maid, an excellent woman, mary daniel, probably of an old and ruined jacobite family of daniel. at the end of 1748 fielding had been made a stipendiary magistrate for westminster. unlike his jonathan thrasher, esq., j.p., who was infamously corrupt, and as ignorant of the law as the country justice before whom frank osbaldistone appears in "rob roy," fielding brought to his work his honesty, courage, and sympathy with the poor.
the first chapters of his "amelia" (1751) contain pictures of the contemporary corruption of justice, and the laxity of the prisons. thence came the misfortunes of captain booth, a true lover, but also a young man in the prime of life. from this error of the captain's, who met a circe in prison, and from the greatness of his wife's character, the beautiful amelia, the plot of the novel adroitly develops itself. she was "too good to be true". on the other hand the high spirit and temper of miss matthews make her a kind of shady brynhild; and only coincidences in which captain booth recognized the hand of providence prevent the most tragical catastrophe. "men worship women on their knees; when they get up they go away," says fielding's great successor. they never get up and go away when they worship amelia.
the book, in addition to her and miss matthews, presents the delightfully amusing characters of colonel bath, "old honour and dignity," who fights booth in hyde park from motives of the purest friendship; colonel james, with a philosophy of love rather like lord foppington's; sergeant atkinson, a kind of later great heart; mrs. ellison, a lady "not of the nicest delicacy"; murphy, a jonathan wild as attorney; and a score of other characters worthy of their creator. with "joseph andrews" and "tom jones," "amelia" is an immortal glory of english fiction.
fielding's experiences led him into plans for suppressing lawlessness, and for important social reforms. in 1753 he took the[pg 467] side of elizabeth canning in that unsolved mystery of a girl who, if not a good girl, "has been too hard for me," says fielding. his own behaviour, in the case of miss virtue's examination, is rather startling to the modern student; and whether he ended as a partisan of the gipsy or of elizabeth canning is uncertain (1753-1754). elizabeth made a good marriage, in america, whither she was banished, and lived and died respected.
in his pamphlet on elizabeth's affair, which excited and divided london for more than a year, fielding speaks of his illness and overtaxed strength. he spent what was left of it in his public duties; was advised to voyage to portugal, and his "journal of a voyage to lisbon," written with a dying hand, is the record of his sufferings and reflections. he sailed in the "queen of portugal" (captain veal), had intervals of enjoyment, and sketched, with his usual humour, the events and incidents of the expedition. he died at lisbon on 8 october, 1754.
tobias smollett.
the name of smollett is coupled as familiarly with that of fielding as the name of thackeray with that of dickens. smollett and fielding were contemporaries: both came of ancient families: each had a profession;—smollett was a physician while fielding was a barrister,—but each lived mainly by journalism, literature and fiction. if opinions as to their relative merits were divided in their day, posterity has awarded the crown to fielding. the reason is obvious: fielding is full of good humour; in him there is no rancour; he admires good women almost to adoration, and paints them as only the very greatest poets have done. again, his tales are well constructed, especially "tom jones". on the other hand smollett allows his story to wander in the roads and haunt the inns, and encounter grotesque adventures; he has bitter grudges against all and sundry, especially against his patrons and his kinsfolk. his heroines are regarded by his heroes rather as luxuries than as ladies; his heroes, to be plain, are not merely libertines, but often behave like selfish ruffians; and his relish for odious images and thoughts is hardly surpassed by that of swift. these faults in temper and taste have[pg 468] made smollett unpopular, despite his wide knowledge of life; his irresistible power of compelling laughter, his swaggering vein. but, if he drew roderick random and peregrine pickle from himself, he gave them bad qualities far in excess of his own, and did not endow them with many of his own better attributes. smollett would never have used the loyal strap as roderick random often does; and was incapable of what may be styled the dastardly plot in which peregrine was fain to have imitated richardson's lovelace.
smollett was born in 1721, a younger son of a younger son of the ancient house of smollett of bonhill, on the leven near loch lomond. an ancestor of his, he says, blew up a galleon of the spanish armada in tobermory bay. he did indeed, by an act of suborned treachery. like burns, tobias celebrated in verse his native stream; like burns in boyhood he devoured the truculent romance of "wallace" by blind harry. he was poor, and believed himself to be badly treated by his kinsfolk; after studying at glasgow university he was apprenticed to a surgeon. in 1739 he went to london to push his fortunes, carrying with him a foolish tragedy on the murder of james i, which was the apple of his eye. no manager would accept it, wherefore smollett raged against garrick and lord lyttelton: he puts the story of his woes into "roderick random," where mr. melopoyn, unhappy poet, is the sufferer. he got what chatterton and goldsmith failed to obtain, the post of surgeon's mate in a ship of war; lived through the distresses of the siege of carthagena (1741), and obtained that knowledge of naval squalor and brutality, and of the good qualities of sea-men, which he used in "roderick random" and in the characters of bowling and trunnion. leaving the navy, he married in jamaica, came to town, practised as a physician, and certainly lived in most fashionable quarters. he speaks of bob sawyer's method of advertisement by being hastily called out of church as an old trick; perhaps dickens, a reader of smollett from his childhood, borrowed here from "count fathom". his patriotism was stirred by the fatal disaster of culloden, and he boldly published his "tears of scotland" (1746).
in 1748 he published "roderick random," the history of a[pg 469] meritorious orphan who lives on his servant, cheats his tailor, is a gambler, and enriches himself in the slave trade; but all is to be forgiven to roderick's ebullient vigour and occasional sentimentalism. there are countless changes of scene and varieties of character, from the ocean to the marshalsea prison, to adventures in french service, from strap and bowling to the literary miss snapper and the unfortunate miss williams. lady mary wortley montagu supposed her cousin, fielding, to be the author, which showed little discrimination, though her ladyship's letters are among the wittiest and most brilliantly amusing of her century. smollett had a bitter feud with fielding; we do not know, or care, for what cause. the briskness of the book, and the novelty of the nautical horrors, made smollett's reputation.
going to paris in 1750, smollett found some of the characters who appear in the crowd of "peregrine pickle" (1751), of which the first edition aroused censures on passages later pruned by the author. it is a work of amazingly careless vigour and humour: the irrepressible peregrine is even a less desirable hero than roderick; and an infamous jacobite spy was not ill-advised in choosing pickle for his pseudonym. emilia is more than too good for the rascal to whom she descends in marriage, after escaping plots of his which might have disgusted pamela's mr. b. but cadwallader crabtree, hatchway and pipes, and commander hawser trunnion are immortal characters; it is cruel to call trunnion caricatured; he is a comic masterpiece.
the "ferdinand, count fathom" (1753), the adventurous son of a suttler and murderess, is not a much worse man than peregrine, but, in place of trunnion and pipes, we are entertained with a queer attempt at romance in the loves of rinaldo and monimia, who meets her lover as he weeps over her empty tomb. "sir lancelot greaves," a modern don quixote, armour and all, was preferred by scott to "jonathan wild," and, despite the patent absurdity of the armed knight, is really a much more agreeable story. in 1763 smollett visited italy, and his grumbling hypochondriacal narrative of his tour was ridiculed by that more sentimental traveller, sterne. his "adventures of an atom" (1769) is a scurrilous political satire. on the other hand his "humphry[pg 470] clinker" (1771), a narrative, in letters, of a journey by english travellers in scotland, is both more good-humoured and more amusing than any of his other stories—matthew bramble is a favourable study of his later self; lieutenant lismahago is a kind of dugald dalgetty, born more than a century later than the laird of drumthwacket, and the spelling and innocent good-hearted absurdity of winifred jenkins endear her to every reader, as a contrast to tabitha bramble, a bad kind of old maid. here we meet ferdinand, count fathom, as a sincerely converted character!
smollett is not only remarkable for variety, humour, vigour, as a social observer: he strongly influenced both fanny burney and dickens. his history of england has been justly described by sir pitt crawley as less interesting but less dangerous than that by hume. smollett, revisiting italy, died at monte nero, near leghorn, in the early autumn of 1771.
