OTHER NOVELISTS
1. Tobias Smollett (1721–71). Smollett was a Scotsman, being born in Dumbartonshire. Though he came of a good family, from an early age he had to work for a living. He was apprenticed to a surgeon, and, becoming a surgeon’s mate on board a man-of-war, saw some fighting and much of the world. He thus stored up abundant raw material for the novels that were to follow. When he published Roderick Random (1748) the book was so successful that he settled in London; and the remainder of his life is mainly the chronicle of his works.
Roderick Random is an example of the “picaresque” novel: the hero is a roving dog, of little honesty and considerable roguery; he traverses many lands, undergoing many tricks of fortune, both good and bad. The story lacks symmetry, but it is nearly always lively, though frequently coarse, and the minor characters, such as the seaman Tom Bowling, are of considerable interest. His other novels are Peregrine Pickle (1751), Ferdinand, Count Fathom (1753), Sir Launcelot Greaves (1762), and The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker (1771).
The later books follow the plan of the first with some fidelity. Most of the characters are disreputable; the plots are as a rule formless narratives of travel and adventure; and a coarse and brutal humor is present all through. Smollett, however, brings variety into his novels by the endless shifting of the scenes, which cover nearly all the globe, by his wide knowledge and acute perception of local manners and customs, and by his use of a plain and vigorous narrative style. His characters, especially his female characters, are crudely managed, but his naval men—comprising Commodore Trunnion, Lieutenant Hatchway, and Boatswain Pipes—form quite a considerable gallery of figures. Smollett is the first of our novelists to introduce the naval type.
2. Laurence Sterne (1713–68). Sterne was born at Clonmel, was educated at Cambridge, took orders, and obtained a living in Yorkshire (1740). His habits were decidedly unclerical, even though we judge them by the easy standard of the time. He temporarily left his living for London to publish Tristram Shandy (1759). Then he toured abroad, returned to England to write his second novel, and died in London while visiting the city on business connected with the production of his book.
His two novels are Tristram Shandy (1759–67) and A Sentimental Journey (1768). The first made him famous, and rather turned his head, confirming him in some of his worst mannerisms. Both novels are bundles of episodes and digressions, often irritatingly prolonged. The characters are elaborately handled, caressed, and bewept. Perhaps the most famous of them is “my uncle Toby,” with his Corporal Trim. Both books are saturated with a sentiment that modern taste can only call sloppiness. This sentiment, however, does not prevent a sniggering indecency from appearing in the narrative. The style is distinguished by many antics, such as exclamation, inversion, and unfinished sentences. These mannerisms have long made Sterne distasteful to all but highly trained palates, but no one can deny him great ingenuity and industry, which can gradually unswathe characters and incidents from their trappings of talk and digression, an acute perception of character, and an immense opinion of his own importance.
The following is an exciting incident that occurred just after the birth of Tristram Shandy. Susannah, the serving-maid, rouses Mr. Shandy with the news that the child is in a fit. Observe the staccato dialogue and the ingenious variation of the paragraph. The humor is typical of Sterne.
“Bless me, sir,” said Susannah, “the child’s in a fit”—“And where’s Mr Yorick?”—“Never where he should be,” said Susannah, “but his curate’s in the dressing-room, with the child upon his arm, waiting for the name—and my mistress bid me run as fast as I could to know, as Captain Shandy is the godfather, whether it should not be called after him.”
“Were one sure,” said my father to himself, scratching his eyebrow, “that the child was expiring, one might as well compliment my brother Toby as not—and ’t would be a pity in such a case, to throw away so great a name as Trismegistus upon him—But he may recover.”
“No, no”—said my father to Susannah, “I’ll get up”—“There’s no time,” cried Susannah, “the child’s as black as my shoe.” “Trismegistus,” said my father—“But stay—thou art a leaky vessel, Susannah,” added my father; “can’st thou carry Trismegistus in thy head the length of the gallery without scattering?”—“Can I?” cried Susannah, shutting the door in a huff—“If she can, I’ll be shot,” said my father, bouncing out of bed in the dark, and groping for his breeches.
Susannah ran with all speed along the gallery.
My father made all possible speed to find his breeches.
3. Horace Walpole (1717–97). Walpole was the son of Sir Robert Walpole, the famous Whig minister. He touched upon several kinds of literature, his letters being among the best of their kind. His one novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764), is of importance, for it was the first of the productions of a large school (sometimes called the “terror school”) of novelists who dealt with the grisly and supernatural as their subject. Walpole’s novel, which he published almost furtively, saying, like Chatterton, that the work was of medieval origin, described a ghostly castle, in which we have walking skeletons, pictures that move out of their frames, and other blood-curdling incidents. The ghostly machinery is often cumbrous, but the work is creditably done, and as a return to the romantic elements of mystery and fear the book is noteworthy.
4. Other Terror Novelists. (a) William Beckford (1759–1844). The one novel now associated with Beckford’s name is Vathek (1784). Beckford, who was a man of immense wealth and crazy habits, drew largely upon The Arabian Nights for material for the book. The central figure of the novel is a colossal creature, something like a vampire in disposition, who preys upon mankind and finally meets his doom with suitable impressiveness. Beckford had a wild, almost staggering, magnificence of imagination, and his story, though crude and violent in places, does not lack a certain reality.
(b) Mrs. Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823). This lady was the most popular of the terror novelists, and published quite a large number of books that followed a fairly regular plan. Among such were her A Sicilian Romance (1790), The Romance of the Forest (1791), and the most popular of them all, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). Her stories took on almost a uniform plot, involving mysterious manuscripts, haunted castles, clanking chains, and cloaked and saturnine strangers. At the end of all the horrors Mrs. Radcliffe rather spoils the effect by giving away the secrets of them, and revealing the fact that the terrors were only illusions after all. Nowadays the novels appear tame, but they showed the way to a large number of other writers, for they were fresh to the public of their time.
(c) Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775–1818). Lewis is perhaps the crudest of the terror school, and only one book of his, The Monk (1795), is worth recording. Lewis, who is lavish with his horrors, does not try to explain them. His imagination is grimmer and fiercer than that of any of the other writers of the same class, and his book is probably the “creepiest” of its kind.
5. Henry Mackenzie (1745–1831). This novelist is the most considerable of the sentimental school, who took Sterne for their master. His best-known work is The Man of Feeling (1771), in which maudlin sentiment has free play. To his contemporaries Mackenzie was known as “the Man of Feeling.”
6. Frances Burney (1752–1840), whose married name was Madame d’Arblay, is rather an important figure, for she exercised a considerable influence on her age. Her diaries and letters are clever and informative, and her two best novels, Evelina (1778) and Cecilia (1782), are lively and acute representations of fashionable society. Johnson, with his heavy jocularity, called her a “character-monger,” meaning that her chief effects were obtained in the portraying of character. In the construction of Evelina she returns to the clumsy letter-method of Richardson, but she has a wit of an agreeably acid flavor. She is no mean predecessor of Jane Austen. (See p. 354.)