A History of English Prose Fiction Part 10

The general desire for reform is not more clearly to be seen in Acts of Parliament than in the works of Swift and Addison. The earlier part of the century was marked by a strong realization of evil, and by a constantly growing inclination to suppress it. The first condition is ill.u.s.trated by the fierce satire of "Gulliver's Travels," the second by the earnest admonitions of the _Spectator_. The two great authors make a striking contrast. Swift, misanthropic, miserable, bitter; Addison, happy, loving mankind, admired alike by ally and opponent, Swift, dying mad; Addison, calm, conscious, employing his last moments to ask pardon of one he had offended. The same contrast is in their works. Swift dwelt and gloated on the evil about him, exposed it in more than its own deformity, and left his reader to reflect on his own degradation. Addison, to whom that evil was almost equally apparent, but who turned from its contemplation with horror, exerted all his talents to correct it. "The great and only end of these speculations,"

he tells the reader of the _Spectator_, "is to banish vice and ignorance out of the territories of Great Britain."

With solemn reproof and delicate raillery, Addison urged women to lay aside coa.r.s.eness and folly, and preached against the licentiousness, swearing, gambling, duelling, and drunkenness of the men. He attacked with both argument and ridicule the idea so prevalent since the Restoration, that vice was necessarily a.s.sociated with pleasure and elegance, virtue with Puritanism and vulgarity. To teach people to be witty without being indecent, gay without being vicious, such was the object of Addison. As M. Taine says, he made morality fas.h.i.+onable. To do this he exposed the folly and ugliness of vice. But he did more. He held up to the public view characters who exemplified his teachings, and were calculated to attract imitation. In the creation and delineation of these characters he unconsciously began the English novel.

We should look in vain in the pages of Fielding, of Scott, or of George Eliot, for a more perfect sketch of character than that of Sir Roger de Coverley. And the minor personages are little less delicately and naturally drawn. There is the Bachelor of the Inner-Temple, "an excellent critick," to whom "the time of the play is his hour of business"; Sir Andrew Freeport, the typical merchant; Captain Sentry, "a gentleman of great courage, good understanding, but invincible modesty"; Will Honeycomb, "an honest, worthy man where women are not concerned"; the clergyman, who has ceased to have "interests in this world, as one who is hastening to the object of all his wishes, and conceives hope from his decays and infirmities." "These are my ordinary companions," says the _Spectator_, whom we soon learn to know very well too.

Addison's knowledge of human nature, and his skill in delineating it in single touches, place him in the front rank of writers of fiction, notwithstanding the limit of his contributions to this department of literature. In a few words we are made to see and know the Quaker who reproves the insolent captain on the stage-coach: "Thy mirth, friend, savoureth of folly; thou art a person of a light mind; thy drum is a type of thee, it soundeth because it is empty." There is nothing wanting to the reader's perfect acquaintance with Will Wimble, the poor relation. All who know Worcesters.h.i.+re, says the _Spectator_, "are very well acquainted with the parts and merits of Sir Roger." His fame has spread from Worcesters.h.i.+re throughout the English-speaking world, where he has been loved and admired for more than a hundred and fifty years.

Sir Roger de Coverley is not to be described by any pen but that of Addison. He exhibits, joined to a perfect simplicity, the qualities of a just, honest, useful man, and delightful companion. Our acquaintance with him is a personal one. We know how he appears at his country-house, surrounded by admiring tenants and servants, and how he occupies himself in London, and whom he meets there. We know his ancestry, the extent and management of his estate, his long standing love affair with the beautiful widow, all his thoughts, opinions, and surroundings. All who read about Sir Roger remember him with affection.

Addison dwelt with tenderness on every detail regarding him, and finally described Sir Roger's death to prevent any less reverential pen from trifling with his hero.

Previous to the publication of the papers of the _Spectator_ relating to Sir Roger de Coverley, there had been no attempt at what is a necessary const.i.tuent of the modern novel--the study of character.

There had been the romance and the allegory. There had been the short love story. But with Addison, nature becomes the subject of fiction, and the novel is begun.

In a review of the remarkable life of Daniel Defoe, he appears to us under the varied aspects of a tradesman, a pamphleteer, a politician, a novelist, and, through it all, a reformer. It is in his character as a novelist that he is now known, and that he is to be considered here.

But there are few among the millions to whom "Robinson Crusoe" has brought pleasure, who know that the composition of that work was only one event in a long life of ceaseless labor, political and literary, and that its author's fame among his contemporaries was a.s.sured independently of it. Defoe's career was so full that both his chief biographers[155] have found three large volumes to be necessary to do it justice. And yet it was not until near the end of that busy life, when the author was fifty-eight years old, feeling the approach of age and infirmity, and looking about for means to provide for a large family, that he added the writing of novels to his multifarious occupations.

There is probably no writer with whose works his life and personality are more intimately connected. It is impossible to consider the one separate from the other. Defoe began to write novels as a tradesman, as a literary hack, and as a reformer. Being dependent on his pen for his bread, he wrote what was likely to bring in the most immediate return.

He calculated exactly the value and quality of his wares. He gave to his fictions the same moral object which inspired his own life. His novels followed naturally on his other labors, and partook of their character. It was his custom, on the death of any celebrated person, to write his life immediately, and to send it to the world while public interest was still fresh. But being often unable to obtain complete or authentic information concerning the subject of his biography, he supplemented facts and rumors by plausible inventions. Fiction entered into his biographies, just as biography afterward entered into his novels. But in writing the lives of real individuals Defoe recognized the necessity of impressing his reader with a sense of the truth and exact.i.tude of the narrative. This effect he attained by the use of a literary faculty which he possessed in a degree unequalled by any other writer--that of circ.u.mstantial invention. By the multiplication of small, unimportant details, each one of which is carefully dwelt upon, and by the insertion of uninteresting personal incidents and moral reflections, seeming true from their very dulness, he gave to his work a remarkable verisimilitude. He did not even issue the book under his own name, but invented an authors.h.i.+p which would attract attention and credibility. Thus the "History of Charles XII" was announced on the t.i.tle-page as "written by a Scot's gentleman in the Swedish service"; and the "Life of Count Patkul" was "written by a Lutheran minister who a.s.sisted him in his last home, and faithfully translated out of a High Dutch ma.n.u.script."[156] The same characteristics appear in all Defoe's works. He invents freely, giving the most elaborate details to support his a.s.sertions, and attains to an extraordinary degree the art of "lying like truth." In the "Journal of the Plague Year," Defoe a.s.sumed with his accustomed ease and skill the character of a plain, blunt London shopkeeper. He described with such apparent accuracy the observations of a man who had lived in the scene of that terrible calamity, giving curious incidents, anecdotes, statistics, after so methodical a manner, that it was long before any doubts were cast on the authenticity of the journal. It was a work of imagination, but so matter-of-fact, that it is difficult to believe the author had any imagination, and that he had not actually witnessed every occurrence he so calmly related. It is the same with the "Memoirs of a Cavalier." The civil wars are described by a young officer who took part in them, who gives a detailed account of his own opinions, his wardrobe, his horse, his lodgings. Lord Chatham quoted these memoirs as the true account of an eye-witness. From writing the life of a well known individual, Defoe had advanced to writing the life of a fict.i.tious person placed amidst historical scenes. His next step was to write the life of a fict.i.tious person amidst fict.i.tious scenes.[157]

The "Journal of the Plague Year" had been issued to satisfy a popular interest excited by the appearance of the plague in France and the consequent fear of it in England. A similar public demand occasioned the composition of "Robinson Crusoe." A sailor named Alexander Selkirk had been "marooned" on the uninhabited island of Juan Fernandez, and after living there alone for more than four years, had been taken off by the same captain who had abandoned him. The interest taken in England in the narrative of this event revealed to Defoe's acute mind a great literary opportunity. But if he was indebted to the adventure of Selkirk for the fundamental idea of his novel, he was not the less original. Never has a greater individuality been given to a fict.i.tious character, or a more vivid impression of life and reality to the circ.u.mstances surrounding him. The combination of ingenuity and simplicity which distinguishes the work, has, for a century and a half, had a peculiar fascination for children, and has awakened the wonder and admiration of men. There are three works of English fiction of imperishable interest, all of which have attained in a high degree the quality of reality, and have charmed alike all cla.s.ses and ages. In the allegory of "The Pilgrim's Progress," the sense of reality was produced by the intense realization of the subject by the author, una.s.sisted by any literary device. In "Gulliver's Travels" the effect was attained by a skilful observation of exact proportions, added to a circ.u.mstantial and personal method of narration, which Swift probably owed in some measure to Defoe. If the reader can accept the possible existence of pigmies and giants, his credulity is put to no further strain. Defoe had no difficulty of the supernatural to overcome. He had a power almost as great as that of Bunyan of identifying himself with his hero; and he surpa.s.sed Swift in the power of circ.u.mstantial invention.

The story of "Robinson Crusoe" is too intimately known to require comment. His over-mastering desire to go to sea, his being cast up by the breakers on the island, his endless labors, and the resolute determination which overcame them, his dangers, fears, and the consolation of religion, the foot-print on the sand, the companions.h.i.+p with Friday, and the final release, are recollections of our childhood too familiar to be dwelt upon. But in this very familiarity with Robinson himself, in the brightness and endurance of our idea of him, in our acquaintance with the inmost workings of his mind and heart, is contained the evidence that Defoe not only wrote a novel of adventure, as he had intended, but that he wrote also a novel of character.

If the author of "Robinson Crusoe" could realize so thoroughly the difficulties and expedients of a man living on a desert island, he could deal yet more easily with the adventures and s.h.i.+fts of thieves and abandoned women which formed the subject of his other tales. In these minor works, now little known, Defoe displayed equal talents, but did not attain equal results. The enduring interest which must ever attach to the central idea of "Robinson Crusoe" the complete isolation of the man--gave that work a very exceptional claim to the attention of posterity. But it had other merits, which are not apparent in the same perfection in Defoe's lesser novels. Its design was single and concentrated, its chief character natural and strongly marked, its plot coherent and complete. Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack are indeed well-drawn and real persons, and the design of the works which bear their names is clear, but in both cases the plot is merely a series of independent adventures, and the characters themselves could not, from their nature, long attract the attention of readers. "Colonel Jack,"

"Captain Singleton," "Moll Flanders," and "Roxana," have been surpa.s.sed, and are neglected. "Robinson Crusoe" is, of its kind, perfect, and therefore enduring.

But the works of Defoe have a historical, almost equal to their literary, interest. Whoever would attain a correct idea of the condition of the lower cla.s.ses in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, should consult "Moll Flanders" and "Colonel Jack," as much as the "Newgate Calendar," and histories of crime and labor. What the author has described, he had seen.

Defoe was throughout his life a reformer; a large proportion of the many pamphlets and occasional writings which fell from his pen have for their object the reformation or exposure of some abuse. Yet a large number of his fict.i.tious characters are thieves and harlots. The criminal cla.s.ses occupied the public mind in the first half of the eighteenth century to a remarkable degree, and Defoe was not mistaken in thinking that novels concerning those cla.s.ses would interest and sell. He knew that the public taste was low, and his business was to cater to public taste. He said, in "More Reformation":[158]

Let this describe the nation's character.

One man reads Milton, forty Rochester; The cause is plain, the temper of the time.

One wrote the lewd, the other the sublime.

To satisfy the forty who read Rochester, Defoe described the lives and occupations of pirates, pickpockets, highwaymen, and women of abandoned character. The t.i.tle-pages of some of these novels cannot with decency be quoted, and the novels themselves are filled with criminal and licentious scenes. But the reforming inclination of Defoe himself, and that which we find in the general literature of the time, induced him to turn these scenes into a moral account. Moll Flanders is a low, cunning, thoroughly bad woman, and her life is placed quite bare before the reader. Yet Defoe a.s.serts that the book is designed to teach a good lesson.[159] "There is not a superlative villain brought upon the stage, but either he is brought to an unhappy end, or brought to be a penitent. There is not an ill thing mentioned, but it is condemned even in the relation; nor a virtuous, just thing, but it carries its praise along with it. * * * Upon this foundation the book is recommended to the reader, as a work from every part of which something may be learned, and some just and religious inference is drawn." Defoe, thoroughly a man of his time, thought he could put the coa.r.s.est and most vicious matter before his reader, and reasonably expect him to profit by the moral, without being hurt by contact with the vice. "All possible care," he says, "has been taken to give no lewd ideas, no immodest turns in the dressing up of this story. * * * To this purpose some of the vicious part of her life, which could not be modestly told, is quite left out, and several other parts very much shortened. What is left, 'tis hoped will not offend the chastest reader, or the modestest hearer." To any one acquainted with "Moll Flanders" this seems a strange statement. It exhibits the standard of the age. Mrs. Behn said almost the same thing about her novels and plays. To make up for the low, vicious life unrolled before us, it is not enough that Moll at last "grew rich, lived honest, and died penitent."

The aim of "Roxana, or the Fortunate Mistress," like that of "Moll Flanders," is to describe the gradual corruption of a woman, who is influenced by some conscientious scruples and misgivings, but the heroine is placed in a higher station of life. We have a curious commentary on the times in comparing the body of the work with the preface. "Roxana" is among the coa.r.s.est records of vice in English fiction. But yet it is to impart moral instruction. "In the manner she has told the story it is evident she does not insist upon her justification in any part of it; much less does she recommend her conduct, or, indeed, any part of it, except her repentance, to our imitation. On the contrary, she makes frequent excursions, in a just censuring and condemning her own practice. How often does she reproach herself in the most pa.s.sionate manner, and guide us to make just reflections in the like cases?" The modern reader is astonished to find "that all imaginable care has been taken to keep clear of indecencies and immodest expressions; and, it is hoped, you will find nothing to prompt a vicious mind, but everywhere much to discourage and expose it."

Defoe is much more successful in teaching a moral lesson in "Colonel Jack." The aim of this novel is to describe the course of a street-boy who takes to thieving before he knows that it is not a legitimate business, and who being possessed naturally of a good character is brought to repentance and reform when subjected to better influences.

Defoe's preface has great significance when we consider the deplorable condition of the lower cla.s.ses and no better idea can be gained of the usual fate of the children of the poor than is afforded by this novel.

Here is room for just and copious observations on the blessings and advantages of a sober and well-governed education, and the ruin of so many thousands of all ranks in this Nation for want of it; here also we may see how much public schools and charities might be improved, to prevent the destruction of so many unhappy children, as, in this town, are every year bred up for the executioner.

The miserable condition of mult.i.tudes of youth, many of whose natural tempers are docible, and would lead them to learn the best things, rather than the worst, is truly deplorable, and is abundantly seen in the history of this man's childhood; where, though circ.u.mstances formed him by necessity to be a thief, surprising rect.i.tude of principles remained with him, and made him early abhor the worst part of his trade, and at length to forsake the whole of it. Had he come into the world with the advantage of a virtuous education, and been instructed how to improve the generous principles he had in him, what a figure might he not have made, either as a man or a Christian.

The promise of the preface is fulfilled. The whole work is a protest against the neglect of the education and training of the youth of the lower cla.s.ses; and the life of Colonel Jack would be apt to have a good effect on youthful readers of the time. In Chapter X, when Jack has risen by his industry and humanity from being a slave on a Virginia plantation to the rank of an overseer, and finally to that of an independent planter, he makes a long digression to rejoice in his change of condition and character:

It was an inexpressible joy to me, that I was now like to be not only a man, but an honest man; and it yielded me a greater pleasure, that I was ransomed from being a vagabond, a thief, and a criminal, as I had been from a child, than that I was delivered from slavery, and the wretched state of a Virginia sold servant; I had notion enough in my mind of the hards.h.i.+p of the servant or slave, because I had felt it, and worked through it; I remembered it as a state of labour and servitude, hards.h.i.+p and suffering. But the other shocked my very nature, chilled my blood, and turned the very soul within me; the thought of it was like reflections upon h.e.l.l and the d.a.m.ned spirits; it struck me with horror, it was odious and frightful to look back on, and it gave me a kind of fit, a convulsion or nervous disorder, that was very uneasy to me.

These reflections remind us of the self-communings of Bunyan in "Grace Abounding in the Chief of Sinners." They express the feelings of remorse and the longings for a better state arising in the mind of a rough but conscientious man. They are the promptings of a strong moral nature, and ill.u.s.trate those national qualities which brought about the reforms which distinguish the latter half of the eighteenth century.

Colonel Jack took advantage of every opportunity for improvement. When a vagabond in Scotland, he learned with infinite pains to read and write. When a planter in Virginia, he took for his schoolmaster a transported felon, who knew Latin. This spirit of self-advancement by patient labor, by invincible resolution, is the spirit of Defoe's writings; it is the English characteristic which has raised the nation to all its prosperity and greatness.

When "Robinson Crusoe" had attained celebrity, Defoe claimed that it was an allegory of his own life. A parallel might easily be drawn between the isolation of the solitary sailor on his island, and that of the persecuted author in the heart of a great city. All the world, and particularly his literary brethren, had been against Defoe. Pope had put him into the "Dunciad," Swift had spoken of him as "the fellow who was pilloried, I forget his name," He had known oppression and poverty, the pillory and the prison. He has left us his own view of the aim of "Robinson Crusoe."[160] "Here is invincible patience recommended under the worst of misery; indefatigable application and undaunted resolution under the greatest and most discouraging circ.u.mstances." And such is the moral of Defoe's own life.

Mrs. Heywood had written a number of stories[161] resembling, in the licentiousness of their character and the flimsiness of their construction, the novels of Mrs. Behn. Toward the end of her life she wrote "Miss Betsey Thoughtless," which is believed to have suggested to Miss Burney some of the incidents in "Evelina." This novel was exceedingly popular, and had some merit, considering the period of its composition. It is among the earliest specimens of a domestic novel; the plot has interest, and the characters are life-like. It ill.u.s.trates, if any ill.u.s.tration were needed, the prevailing absence of any elevated view, either of love, or of the relations between men and women. The book is made up of easy seductions and licentious talk, and represents its youthful characters as very familiar with dissolute scenes and thoughts.

[Footnote 151: "Julius Caesar," Act. I, sc. 2. Quoted in Scott's "Life of Swift." For Swift, see also "Life" by Sheridan, by Roscoe, and by Forster.]

[Footnote 152: "Life of Swift."]

[Footnote 153: Sir W. Scott. "Life of Swift."]

[Footnote 154: See "Life of Swift," by Scott.]

[Footnote 155: Wilson "Life of Defoe." Lee, "Life of Defoe."]

[Footnote 156: See "Daniel Defoe," by William Minto, p. 135. American edition.]

[Footnote 157: William Minto, "Life of Defoe," p. 134:--"From writing biographies with real names attached to them, it was but a short step to writing biographies with fict.i.tious names."]

[Footnote 158: "Memoir of Defoe," William Hazlitt, p. 30.]

[Footnote 159: See the preface to "Moll Flanders."]

[Footnote 160: Preface to the "Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe."]

[Footnote 161: "Love in Excess," "The British Recluse," "The Injured Husband," "Jenny and Jemmy Bessamy," "The Fortunate Foundling."]

III.

Samuel Richardson might have stood for Hogarth's "Industrious Apprentice." When a printer's boy, young Samuel stole from his hours of rest and relaxation the time to improve his mind. He was careful not to tire himself by sitting up too late at night over his books, and purchased his own candles, so that his master, who called him the "pillar of his house," might suffer no injury from his servant's improvement.[162] Thus Richardson persevered in the path of virtue, until, like the "Industrious Apprentice," himself, he married his master's daughter, succeeded to his business, and lived happy and respected, surrounded by all the blessings which should fall to the lot of the truly good.

"I was not fond of play, as other boys," says the author of "Pamela"; "my school-fellows used to call me _Serious_ and _Gravity_; and five of them particularly, delighted to single me out, either for a walk, or at their fathers' houses, or at mine, to tell them stories, as they phrased it. Some I told them from my reading, as true; others from my head, as mere invention; of which they would be most fond. * * * _All my stories carried with them, I am bold to say, an useful moral._"[163]

In such a manner, and with such an intention, Richardson began his career as a novelist.

The life of the stout, vain little printer was already well advanced, his fortune was a.s.sured, and he was surrounded by a group of affectionate relatives and admiring female friends, when he was asked by a publisher to write "a little book of familiar letters on the useful concerns in common life." While thinking over this proposal, be recollected a story once told him of a young servant-girl, whose honor was long attempted by a dissolute master, and who, by her resolute chast.i.ty, finally conquered his vicious intentions, and was rewarded by honorable marriage with her thwarted seducer. And then it occurred to Richardson, that this story, "if written in an easy and natural manner, suitable to the simplicity of it, might possibly introduce a new species of writing, that might possibly turn young people into a course of reading different from the pomp and parade of romance writing, and, dismissing the improbable and marvellous, with which novels generally abound, might tend to promote the cause of religion and virtue." Such was the origin of a novel destined to make a new era in English fiction. It is evident that Richardson placed before himself two aims: to promote the cause of religion and virtue, and to introduce a new species of writing, and in both he succeeded.

The name, "Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded," sounds like a tract, and "Pamela" is, indeed, a very long tract. The contrast is curious between the moral object of the work and its contents. In the preface we are told that "Pamela" is to inculcate religion and morality in an easy and agreeable manner; it is to make vice odious, to make virtue truly lovely, and to give practical examples, "worthy to be followed, in the most critical cases, by the modest virgin, the chaste bride, and the obliging wife." Moreover, all this is to be done, "without raising a single idea throughout the whole, that shall shock the exactest purity." Yet, "Pamela" contains not a few scenes likely to inflame the imagination, and its subject, kept continually before the reader's mind, is the licentious pursuit of a young girl. This story would not now do for a tract. But it answered the purpose very well in the eighteenth century. Richardson had no fear his book would give the youthful reader any new knowledge of evil, or that the long account of Pamela's attempted seduction would shock the "exactest purity" of his time. He simply described the dangers to which every attractive young woman was more or less subject by the prevailing looseness of morals, while, by the pathetic and resolute resistance of Pamela's chast.i.ty, he undoubtedly enlisted the sympathies of his reader on the side of virtue. The perusal of the book was recommended by Dr. Sherlock from the pulpit. One critic declared that it would do more good than twenty volumes of sermons; another, that if all other books were to be burnt, "Pamela" and the Bible should be preserved. A gentleman said that he would give it to his son as soon as he could read, that he might have an early impression of virtue.[164]

The moral of "Pamela" was virtue rewarded. That of "Clarissa,"

Richardson's second novel, was virtue triumphant, even in disgrace and ruin. The heroine, to escape the tyranny of her parents who wished to force her into a marriage she abhors, throws herself on the protection of a lover, the famous Lovelace, who, failing to seduce her by any other means, lures her into a brothel, and there violates her person while she is rendered insensible by opiates. Lovelace offers to make reparation for his crime by marriage, but in refusing this offer, and in dying of a broken heart, Clarissa carries out the moral of the story.

Richardson was blamed for making the libertine hero, Lovelace, more attractive than was consistent with moral effect. And to remedy this mistake, he undertook in "Sir Charles Grandison," his last novel, to draw the portrait of a man of _true honor_; "acting uniformly well through a variety of trying scenes, because all his actions are regulated by one steady principle: a man of religion and virtue; of liveliness and spirit; accomplished and agreeable; happy in himself, and a blessing to others." Sir Charles then is not a man, but a model.

"Pamela" and "Clarissa" remained virtuous through temptation and trial.

But Grandison is a good man because he has no inducement to be otherwise. He can afford to be generous, because he is rich; he can afford to decline a duel, his reputation for skill in swordsmans.h.i.+p is so well established that he runs no danger of being called a coward; he is free from licentiousness, because his pa.s.sions are under perfect control. The name of Sir Charles Grandison has pa.s.sed into a proverb, and its mention calls up to the mind a man of the most dignified deportment, of the most delicate consideration for women, and of the most elaborate manners. But it must be remembered that in Sir Charles, our author drew the portrait of what a gentleman should be, and not of what a gentleman was. Even the most punctilious men of the time did not, like Grandison, hesitate to visit a sick person, because it would involve travelling on Sunday; nor did they, as he, refuse to have their horses' tails docked, because nature had humanely given those tails as a protection against flies. The Grandisonian manners are not to be taken as a picture of contemporary fas.h.i.+on. Richardson was unacquainted with aristocratic habits, and his high-flown love scenes were purely ideal. When he goes into high life, said Chesterfield, "he mistakes the modes." Not long before Sir Charles was making his formal and courtly addresses to Miss Byron, Walpole had written to George Montagu: "'Tis no little inducement to wish myself in France, that I hear gallantry is not left off there; that you may be polite, and not be thought awkward for it. You know the pretty men of the age in England use the women with no more deference than they do their coach horses." Such was the state of things which the example of Sir Charles Grandison was intended to remedy.