STANDARD NOVELS AND ROMANCES
Vol. xxiv.] [February 1815.
There is an exclamation in one of Gray’s letters—‘Be mine to read eternal new romances of Marivaux and Crebillon!’ If we did not utter a similar aspiration at the conclusion of the Wanderer, it was not from any want of affection for the class of writing to which it belongs; for, without going quite so far as the celebrated French philosopher, who thought that more was to be learnt from good novels and romances, than from the gravest treatises on history and morality, we must confess, that there are few works to which we oftener turn for profit or delight, than to the standard productions in this species of composition. With the exception of the violently satirical, and the violently sentimental specimens of the art, we find there the closest imitation of men and manners; and are admitted to examine the very web and texture of society, as it really exists, and as we meet with it when we come into the world. If the style of poetry has ‘something more divine in it,’ this savours more of humanity. We are brought acquainted with an infinite variety of characters—all a little more amusing, and, for the greater part, more true to general nature than those which we meet with in actual life—and have our moral impressions far more frequently called out, and our moral judgments exercised, than in the busiest career of existence. As a record of past manners and opinions, too, such writings afford both more minute and more abundant information than any other. To give one example only:—We should really be at a loss where to find, in any authentic documents of the same period, so satisfactory an account of the general state of society, and of moral, political and religious feeling, in the reign of George II. as we meet with in the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and his friend Mr. Abraham Adams. This work, indeed, we take to be a perfect piece of statistics in its kind; and do not know from what other quarter we could have acquired the solid information it contains, even as to this comparatively recent period. What a thing it would be to have such a work of the age of Pericles or Alexander! and how much more would it teach us as to the true character and condition of the people among whom it was produced, than all the tragedies and histories, and odes and orations, that have been preserved of their manufacture! In looking into such grave and ostentatious performances, we see little but the rigid skeleton of public transactions—exaggerations of party zeal, and vestiges of literary ambition; and if we wish really to know what was the state of manners and of morals, and in what way, and into what forms, principles and institutions were actually moulded in practice, we cannot do better than refer to the works of those writers, who, having no other object than to imitate nature, could only hope for success from the fidelity of their pictures; and were bound (in their own defence) to reduce the boasts of vague theorists, and the exaggerations of angry disputants, to the mortifying standard of reality.
We will here confess however, that we are a little prejudiced on the point in question; and that the effect of many fine speculations has been lost upon us, from an early familiarity with the most striking passages in the little work to which we have just alluded. Thus, nothing can be more captivating than the description somewhere given by Mr. Burke, of the indissoluble connexion between learning and nobility; and of the respect universally paid by wealth to piety and morals. But the effect of this splendid representation has always been spoiled to us, by our recollection of Parson Adams sitting over his cup of ale in Sir Thomas Booby’s kitchen. Echard ‘On the Contempt of the Clergy,’ in like manner, is certainly a very good book, and its general doctrine more just and reasonable; but an unlucky impression of the reality of Parson Trulliber always checks, in us, the respectful emotions to which it should give rise: while the lecture which Lady Booby reads to Lawyer Scout on the expulsion of Joseph and Fanny from the parish, casts an unhappy shade over the splendid pictures of practical jurisprudence that are to be found in the works of Blackstone or De Lolme. The most moral writers, after all, are those who do not pretend to inculcate any moral: The professed moralist almost unavoidably degenerates into the partisan of a system; and the philosopher warps the evidence to his own purpose. But the painter of manners gives the facts of human nature, and leaves us to draw the inference: If we are not able to do this, or do it ill, at least it is our own fault.
The first-rate writers in this class are of course few; but those few we may reckon, without scruple, among the greatest ornaments and the best benefactors of our kind. There is a certain set of them, who, as it were, take their rank by the side of reality, and are appealed to as evidence on all questions concerning human nature. The principal of these are Cervantes and Le Sage; and, among ourselves, Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, and Sterne.[[1]] As this is a department of criticism which deserves more attention than we have ever yet bestowed on it, we shall venture to treat it a little in detail; and endeavour to contribute something towards settling the standard of excellence, both as to degree and kind, in these several writers.
We shall begin with the renowned history of Don Quixote; who always presents something more stately, more romantic, and at the same time more real to our imagination, than any other hero upon record. His lineaments, his accoutrements, his pasteboard visor, are familiar to us, as the recollections of our early home. The spare and upright figure of the hero paces distinctly before our eyes; and Mambrino’s helmet still glitters in the sun! We not only feel the greatest love and veneration for the knight himself, but a certain respect for all those connected with him—the Curate, and Master Nicolas the barber—Sancho and Dapple—and even for Rosinante’s leanness and his errors! Perhaps there is no work which combines so much originality with such an air of truth. Its popularity is almost unexampled; and yet its real merits have not been sufficiently understood. The story is the least part of them; though the blunders of Sancho, and the unlucky adventures of his master, are what naturally catch the attention of ordinary readers. The pathos and dignity of the sentiments are often disguised under the ludicrousness of the subject; and provoke laughter when they might well draw tears. The character of Don Quixote itself is one of the most perfect disinterestedness. He is an enthusiast of the most amiable kind—of a nature equally open, gentle and generous; a lover of truth and justice, and one who had brooded over the fine dreams of chivalry and romance, till the dazzling visions cheated his brain into a belief of their reality. There cannot, in our opinion, be a greater mistake than to consider Don Quixote as a merely satirical work, or an attempt to explode, by coarse raillery, ‘the long forgotten order of chivalry.’ There could be no need to explode what no longer existed. Besides, Cervantes himself was a man of the most sanguine and enthusiastic temperament; and even through the crazed and battered figure of the knight, the spirit of chivalry shines out with undiminished lustre; and one might almost imagine that the author had half-designed to revive the example of past ages, and once more ‘witch the world with noble horsemanship’; and had veiled the design, in scorn of the degenerate age to which it was addressed, under this fantastic and imperfect disguise of romantic and ludicrous exaggeration. However that may be, the spirit which the book breathes, to those who relish and understand it best, is unquestionably the spirit of chivalry: nor perhaps is it too much to say, that, if ever the flame of Spanish liberty is destined to break forth, wrapping the tyrant and the tyranny in one consuming blaze, it is owing to Cervantes and his knight of La Mancha, that the spark of generous sentiment and romantic enterprise from which it must be kindled, has not been quite extinguished.
The character of Sancho is not more admirable in the execution, than in the conception, as a relief to that of the knight. The contrast is as picturesque and striking as that between the figures of Rosinante and Dapple. Never was there so complete a partie quarrée;—they answer to one another at all points. Nothing can surpass the truth of physiognomy in the description of the master and man, both as to body and mind;—the one lean and tall, the other round and short;—the one heroical and courteous, the other selfish and servile;—the one full of high-flown fancies, the other a bag of proverbs;—the one always starting some romantic scheme, the other always keeping to the safe side of tradition and custom. The gradual ascendancy, too, obtained by Don Quixote over Sancho, is as finely managed as it is characteristic. Credulity, and a love of the marvellous, are as natural to ignorance as selfishness and cunning. Sancho by degrees becomes a kind of lay-brother of the order; acquires a taste for adventures in his own way, and is made all but an entire convert, by the discovery of the hundred crowns in one of his most comfortless journeys. Towards the end, his regret at being forced to give up the pursuit of knight-errantry, almost equals his master’s; and he seizes the proposal of Don Quixote to turn shepherds, with the greatest avidity,—still applying it, however, in his own fashion; for while the Don is ingeniously torturing the names of his humble acquaintance into classical terminations, and contriving scenes of gallantry and song, Sancho exclaims, ‘Oh, what delicate wooden spoons shall I carve! what crumbs and cream shall I devour!’—forgetting, in his milk and fruits, the pullets and geese at Camacho’s wedding.
This intuitive perception of the hidden analogies of things, or, as it may be called, this instinct of imagination, is what stamps the character of genius on the productions of art, more than any other circumstance: for it works unconsciously, like nature, and receives its impressions from a kind of inspiration. There is more of this unconscious power in Cervantes, than in any other author, except Shakespeare. Something of the same kind extends itself to all the subordinate parts and characters of the work. Thus we find the curate confidentially informing Don Quixote, that if he could get the ear of the government, he has something of considerable importance to propose for the good of the state; and the knight afterwards meets with a young gentleman, who is a candidate for poetical honours, with a mad lover, a forsaken damsel, &c.—all delineated with the same inimitable force, freedom, and fancy. The whole work breathes that air of romance,—that aspiration after imaginary good,—that longing after something more than we possess, that in all places, and in all conditions of life,
——‘still prompts the eternal sigh,
For which we wish to live, or dare to die!’
The characters in Don Quixote are strictly individuals; that is, they do not belong to, but form a class of themselves. In other words, the actions and manners of the chief dramatis personæ do not arise out of the actions and manners of those around them, or the condition of life in which they are placed, but out of the peculiar dispositions of the persons themselves, operated upon by certain impulses of imagination and accident: Yet these impulses are so true to nature, and their operation so truly described, that we not only recognize the fidelity of the representation, but recognize it with all the advantages of novelty superadded. They are unlike any thing we have actually seen—may be said to be purely ideal—and yet familiarize themselves more readily with our imagination, and are retained more strongly in memory, than perhaps any others:—they are never lost in the crowd. One test of the truth of this ideal painting, is the number of allusions which Don Quixote has furnished to the whole of civilized Europe—that is to say of appropriate cases, and striking illustrations of the universal principles of our nature. The common incidents and descriptions of human life are, however, quite familiar and natural; and we have nearly the same insight given us here, into the characters of inn-keepers, bar-maids, ostlers, and puppet-show men, as in Fielding himself. There is a much greater mixture, however, of sentiment with naïveté, of the pathetic with the quaint and humorous, than there ever is in Fielding. We might instance the story of the country man, whom Don Quixote and Sancho met in their search after Dulcinea, driving his mules to plough at break of day, and ‘singing the ancient ballad of Roncesvalles!’ The episodes which are introduced, are excellent; but have, upon the whole, been overrated. Compared with the serious tales in Boccacio, they are trifling. That of Marcella, the fair shepherdess, is the best. We will only add, that Don Quixote is an entirely original work in its kind, and that the author has the highest honour which can belong to one, that of being the founder of a new style of writing.
There is another Spanish novel, Gusman d’Alfarache, nearly of the same age as Don Quixote, and of great genius, though it can hardly be ranked as a novel, or a work of imagination. It is a series of strange adventures, rather drily told, but accompanied by the most severe and sarcastic commentary. The satire, the wit, the eloquence, and reasoning, are of the most powerful kind; but they are didactic, rather than dramatic. They would suit a sermon or a pasquinade better than a romance. Still there are in this extraordinary book, occasional sketches of character, and humorous descriptions, to which it would be difficult to produce any thing superior. This work, which is hardly known in this country except by name, has the credit, without any reason, of being the original of Gil Blas. There is only one incident the same, that of the supper at the inn. In all other respects, these two works are the very reverse of each other, both in their excellencies and defects.
Gil Blas is, next to Don Quixote, more generally read and admired than any other novel—and, in one sense, deservedly so: for it is at the head of its class, though that class is very different from, and inferior to the other. There is very little individual character in Gil Blas. The author is a describer of manners, and not of character. He does not take the elements of human nature, and work them up into new combinations, (which is the excellence of Don Quixote); nor trace the peculiar and striking combinations of folly and knavery as they are to be found in real life, (like Fielding); but he takes off, as it were, the general, habitual impression, which circumstances make on certain conditions of life, and moulds all his characters accordingly. All the persons whom he introduces, carry about with them the badge of their profession; and you see little more of them than their costume. He describes men as belonging to certain classes in society—the highest, generally, and the lowest, and such as are found in great cities—not as they are in themselves, or with the individual differences which are always to be found in nature. His hero, in particular, has no character but that of the accidental circumstances in which he is placed. His priests are only described as priests: his valets, his players, his women, his courtiers and his sharpers, are all the same. Nothing can well exceed the monotony of the work in this respect;—at the same time that nothing can exceed the truth and precision with which the general manners of these different characters are preserved, nor the felicity of the particular traits by which their leading foibles are brought out to notice. Thus, the Archbishop of Grenada will remain an everlasting memento of the weakness of human vanity; and the account of Gil Blas’s legacy, of the uncertainty of human expectations. This novel is as deficient in the fable as in the characters. It is not a regularly constructed story; but a series of adventures told with equal gaiety and good sense, and in the most graceful style possible.
It has been usual to class our great novelists as imitators of one or other of these two writers. Fielding, no doubt, is more like Don Quixote than Gil Blas; Smollett is more like Gil Blas than Don Quixote: but there is not much resemblance in either case. Sterne’s Tristram Shandy is a more direct instance of imitation. Richardson can scarcely be called an imitator of any one; or, if he is, it is of the sentimental refinement of Marivaux, or the verbose gallantry of the writers of the seventeenth century.
There is very little to warrant the common idea, that Fielding was an imitator of Cervantes,—except his own declaration of such an intention, in the title-page of Joseph Andrews,—the romantic turn of the character of Parson Adams (the only romantic character in his works),—and the proverbial humour of Partridge, which is kept up only for a few pages. Fielding’s novels are, in general, thoroughly his own; and they are thoroughly English. What they are most remarkable for, is neither sentiment, nor imagination, nor wit, nor humour, though there is a great deal of this last quality; but profound knowledge of human nature—at least of English nature—and masterly pictures of the characters of men as he saw them existing. This quality distinguishes all his works, and is shown almost equally in all of them. As a painter of real life, he was equal to Hogarth: As a mere observer of human nature, he was little inferior to Shakespeare, though without any of the genius and poetical qualities of his mind.—His humour is less rich and laughable than Smollett’s; his wit as often misses as hits;—he has none of the fine pathos of Richardson or Sterne:—But he has brought together a greater variety of characters in common life,—marked with more distinct peculiarities, and without an atom of caricature, than any other novel writer whatever. The extreme subtility of observation on the springs of human conduct in ordinary characters, is only equalled by the ingenuity of contrivance in bringing those springs into play in such a manner as to lay open their smallest irregularity. The detection is always complete—and made with the certainty and skill of a philosophical experiment, and the ease and simplicity of a casual observation. The truth of the imitation is indeed so great, that it has been argued that Fielding must have had his materials ready-made to his hands, and was merely a transcriber of local manners and individual habits. For this conjecture, however, there seems to be no foundation. His representations, it is true, are local and individual; but they are not the less profound and natural. The feeling of the general principles of human nature operating in particular circumstances, is always intense, and uppermost in his mind: and he makes use of incident and situation, only to bring out character.
It is perhaps scarcely necessary to give any illustration of these remarks. Tom Jones is full of them. The moral of this book has been objected to, and not altogether without reason—but a more serious objection has been made to the want of refinement and elegance in the two principal characters. We never feel this objection, indeed, while we are reading the book: but at other times, we have something like a lurking suspicion that Jones was but an awkward fellow, and Sophia a pretty simpleton. We do not know how to account for this effect, unless it is that Fielding’s constantly assuring us of the beauty of his hero, and the good sense of his heroine, at last produces a distrust of both. The story of Tom Jones is allowed to be unrivalled: and it is this circumstance, together with the vast variety of characters, that has given the history of a Foundling so decided a preference over Fielding’s other novels. The characters themselves, both in Amelia and Joseph Andrews, are quite equal to any of those in Tom Jones. The account of Miss Mathews and Ensign Hibbert—the way in which that lady reconciles herself to the death of her father—the inflexible Colonel Bath, the insipid Mrs. James, the complaisant Colonel Trent—the demure, sly, intriguing, equivocal Mrs. Bennet—the lord who is her seducer, and who attempts afterwards to seduce Amelia by the same mechanical process of a concert-ticket, a book, and the disguise of a great-coat—his little fat short-nosed, red-faced, good-humoured accomplice the keeper of the lodging-house, who having no pretensions to gallantry herself, has a disinterested delight in forwarding the intrigues and pleasures of others, (to say nothing of honest Atkinson, the story of the miniature-picture of Amelia, and the hashed mutton, which are in a different style), are masterpieces of description. The whole scene at the lodging-house, the masquerade, &c. in Amelia, is equal in interest to the parallel scenes in Tom Jones, and even more refined in the knowledge of character. For instance, Mrs. Bennet is superior to Mrs. Fitzpatrick in her own way. The uncertainty in which the event of her interview with her former seducer is left, is admirable. Fielding was a master of what may be called the double entendre of character, and surprises you no less by what he leaves in the dark, (hardly known to the persons themselves), than by the unexpected discoveries he makes of the real traits and circumstances in a character with which, till then, you find you were unacquainted. There is nothing at all heroic, however, in the style of any of his delineations. He never draws lofty characters or strong passions;—all his persons are of the ordinary stature as to intellect; and none of them trespass on the angelic nature, by elevation of fancy, or energy of purpose. Perhaps, after all, Parson Adams is his finest character. It is equally true to nature, and more ideal than any of the others. Its unsuspecting simplicity makes it not only more amiable, but doubly amusing, by gratifying the sense of superior sagacity in the reader. Our laughing at him does not once lessen our respect for him. His declaring that he would willingly walk ten miles to fetch his sermon on vanity, merely to convince Wilson of his thorough contempt of this vice, and his consoling himself for the loss of his Æschylus, by suddenly recollecting that he could not read it if he had it, because it is dark, are among the finest touches of naïveté. The night-adventures at Lady Booby’s with Beau Didapper, and the amiable Slipslop, are the most ludicrous; and that with the huntsman, who draws off the hounds from the poor Parson, because they would be spoiled by following vermin, the most profound. Fielding did not often repeat himself: but Dr. Harrison, in Amelia, may be considered as a variation of the character of Adams: so also is Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield; and the latter part of that work, which sets out so delightfully, an almost entire plagiarism from Wilson’s account of himself, and Adams’s domestic history.
Smollett’s first novel, Roderick Random, which is also his best, appeared about the same time as Fielding’s Tom Jones; and yet it has a much more modern air with it: But this may be accounted for, from the circumstance that Smollett was quite a young man at the time, whereas Fielding’s manner must have been formed long before. The style of Roderick Random, though more scholastic and elaborate, is stronger and more pointed than that of Tom Jones; the incidents follow one another more rapidly, (though it must be confessed they never come in such a throng, or are brought out with the same dramatic facility); the humour is broader, and as effectual; and there is very nearly, if not quite, an equal interest excited by the story. What then is it that gives the superiority to Fielding? It is the superior insight into the springs of human character, and the constant development of that character through every change of circumstance. Smollett’s humour often arises from the situation of the persons, or the peculiarity of their external appearance, as, from Roderick Random’s carrotty locks, which hung down over his shoulders like a pound of candles, or Strap’s ignorance of London, and the blunders that follow from it. There is a tone of vulgarity about all his productions. The incidents frequently resemble detached anecdotes taken from a newspaper or magazine; and, like those in Gil Blas, might happen to a hundred other characters. He exhibits only the external accidents and reverses to which human life is liable—not ‘the stuff’ of which it is composed. He seldom probes to the quick, or penetrates beyond the surface of his characters: and therefore he leaves no stings in the minds of his readers, and in this respect is far less interesting than Fielding. His novels always enliven, and never tire us: we take them up with pleasure, and lay them down without any strong feeling of regret. We look on and laugh, as spectators of an amusing though inelegant scene, without closing in with the combatants, or being made parties in the event. We read Roderick Random as an entertaining story; for the particular accidents and modes of life which it describes, have ceased to exist: but we regard Tom Jones as a real history; because the author never stops short of those essential principles which lie at the bottom of all our actions, and in which we feel an immediate interest;—intus et in cute.—Smollett excels most as the lively caricaturist: Fielding as the exact painter and profound metaphysician. We are far from maintaining, that this account applies uniformly to the productions of these two writers; but we think that, as far as they essentially differ, what we have stated is the general distinction between them. Roderick Random is the purest of Smollett’s novels; we mean in point of style and description. Most of the incidents and characters are supposed to have been taken from the events of his own life; and are therefore truer to nature. There is a rude conception of generosity in some of his characters, of which Fielding seems to have been incapable; his amiable persons being merely good-natured. It is owing to this, we think, that Strap is superior to Partridge; and there is a heartiness and warmth of feeling in some of the scenes between Lieutenant Bowling and his nephew, which is beyond Fielding’s power of impassioned writing. The whole of the scene on ship-board is a most admirable and striking picture, and, we imagine, very little, if at all exaggerated, though the interest it excites is of a very unpleasant kind. The picture of the little profligate French friar, who was Roderick’s travelling companion, and of whom he always kept to the windward, is one of Smollett’s most masterly sketches. Peregrine Pickle is no great favourite of ours, and Launcelot Greaves was not worthy of the genius of the author.
Humphry Clinker and Count Fathom are both equally admirable in their way. Perhaps the former is the most pleasant gossipping novel that ever was written—that which gives the most pleasure with the least effort to the reader. It is quite as amusing as going the journey could have been, and we have just as good an idea of what happened on the road, as if we had been of the party. Humphry Clinker himself is exquisite; and his sweetheart, Winifred Jenkins, nearly as good. Matthew Bramble, though not altogether original, is excellently supported, and seems to have been the prototype of Sir Anthony Absolute in the Rivals. But Lismahago is the flower of the flock. His tenaciousness in argument is not so delightful as the relaxation of his logical severity, when he finds his fortune mellowing with the wintry smiles of Mrs. Tabitha Bramble. This is the best preserved, and most original of all Smollett’s characters. The resemblance of Don Quixote is only just enough to make it interesting to the critical reader, without giving offence to any body else. The indecency and filth in this novel, are what must be allowed to all Smollett’s writings. The subject and characters in Count Fathom are, in general, exceedingly disgusting: the story is also spun out to a degree of tediousness in the serious and sentimental parts; but there is more power of writing occasionally shown in it than in any of his works. We need only refer to the fine and bitter irony of the Count’s address to the country of his ancestors on landing in England; to the robber-scene in the forest, which has never been surpassed; to the Parisian swindler, who personates a raw English country squire, (Western is tame in the comparison); and to the story of the seduction in the west of England. We should have some difficulty to point out, in any author, passages written with more force and nature than these.
It is not, in our opinion, a very difficult attempt to class Fielding or Smollett;—the one as an observer of the characters of human life, the other as a describer of its various eccentricities: But it is by no means so easy to dispose of Richardson, who was neither an observer of the one, nor a describer of the other; but who seemed to spin his materials entirely out of his own brain, as if there had been nothing existing in the world beyond the little shop in which he sat writing. There is an artificial reality about his works, which is nowhere to be met with. They have the romantic air of a pure fiction, with the literal minuteness of a common diary. The author had the strangest matter-of-fact imagination that ever existed, and wrote the oddest mixture of poetry and prose. He does not appear to have taken advantage of any thing in actual nature, from one end of his works to the other: and yet, throughout all his works (voluminous as they are—and this, to be sure, is one reason why they are so), he sets about describing every object and transaction, as if the whole had been given in on evidence by an eyewitness. This kind of high finishing from imagination is an anomaly in the history of human genius; and certainly nothing so fine was ever produced by the same accumulation of minute parts. There is not the least distraction, the least forgetfulness of the end: every circumstance is made to tell. We cannot agree that this exactness of detail produces heaviness; on the contrary, it gives an appearance of truth, and a positive interest to the story; and we listen with the same attention as we should to the particulars of a confidential communication. We at one time used to think some parts of Sir Charles Grandison rather trifling and tedious, especially the long description of Miss Harriet Byron’s wedding clothes, till we met with two young ladies who had severally copied out the whole of that very description for their own private gratification. After this, we could not blame the author.
The effect of reading this work, is like an increase of kindred: you find yourself all of a sudden introduced into the midst of a large family, with aunts and cousins to the third and fourth generation, and grandmothers both by the father’s and mother’s side,—and a very odd set of people too, but people whose real existence and personal identity you can no more dispute than your own senses,—for you see and hear all that they do or say. What is still more extraordinary, all this extreme elaborateness in working out the story, seems to have cost the author nothing: for it is said, that the published works are mere abridgments. We have heard (though this, we suppose, must be a pleasant exaggeration), that Sir Charles Grandison was originally written in eight and twenty volumes.
Pamela is the first of his productions, and the very child of his brain. Taking the general idea of the character of a modest and beautiful country girl, and of the situation in which she is placed, he makes out all the rest, even to the smallest circumstance, by the mere force of a reasoning imagination. It would seem as if a step lost would be as fatal here as in a mathematical demonstration. The development of the character is the most simple, and comes the nearest to nature that it can do, without being the same thing. The interest of the story increases with the dawn of understanding and reflection in the heroine. Her sentiments gradually expand themselves, like opening flowers. She writes better every time, and acquires a confidence in herself, just as a girl would do, writing such letters in such circumstances; and yet it is certain that no girl would write such letters in such circumstances. What we mean is this. Richardson’s nature is always the nature of sentiment and reflection, not of impulse or situation. He furnishes his characters, on every occasion, with the presence of mind of the author. He makes them act, not as they would from the impulse of the moment, but as they might upon reflection, and upon a careful review of every motive and circumstance in their situation. They regularly sit down to write letters: and if the business of life consisted in letter-writing, and was carried on by the post (like a Spanish game at chess), human nature would be what Richardson represents it. All actual objects and feelings are blunted and deadened by being presented through a medium which may be true to reason, but is false in nature. He confounds his own point of view with that of the immediate actors in the scene; and hence presents you with a conventional and factitious nature, instead of that which is real. Dr. Johnson seems to have preferred this truth of reflection to the truth of nature, when he said that there was more knowledge of the human heart in a page of Richardson than in all Fielding. Fielding, however, saw more of the practical results, and understood the principles as well; but he had not the same power of speculating upon their possible results, and combining them in certain ideal forms of passion and imagination, which was Richardson’s real excellence.
It must be observed, however, that it is this mutual good understanding, and comparing of notes between the author and the persons he describes; his infinite circumspection, his exact process of ratiocination and calculation, which gives such an appearance of coldness and formality to most of his characters,—which makes prudes of his women, and coxcombs of his men. Every thing is too conscious in his works. Every thing is distinctly brought home to the mind of the actors in the scene, which is a fault undoubtedly: but then, it must be confessed, every thing is brought home in its full force to the mind of the reader also; and we feel the same interest in the story as if it were our own. Can any thing be more beautiful or affecting than Pamela’s reproaches to her ‘lumpish heart’ when she is sent away from her master’s at her own request—its lightness, when she is sent for back—the joy which the conviction of the sincerity of his love diffuses in her heart, like the coming-on of spring—the artifice of the stuff gown—the meeting with lady Davers after her marriage—and the trial scene with her husband? Who ever remained insensible to the passion of Lady Clementina, except Sir Charles Grandison himself, who was the object of it? Clarissa is, however, his masterpiece, if we except Lovelace. If she is fine in herself, she is still finer in his account of her. With that foil, her purity is dazzling indeed: and she who could triumph by her virtue, and the force of her love, over the regality of Lovelace’s mind, his wit, his person, his accomplishments and his spirit, conquers all hearts. We should suppose that never sympathy more deep or sincere was excited than by the heroine of Richardson’s romance, except by the calamities of real life. The links in this wonderful chain of interest are not more finely wrought, than their whole weight is overwhelming and irresistible. Who can forget the exquisite gradations of her long dying scene, or the closing of the coffin-lid, when Miss Howe comes to take her last leave of her friend; or the heart-breaking reflection that Clarissa makes on what was to have been her wedding-day? Well does a modern writer exclaim—
‘Books are a real world, both pure and good,
Round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness may grow!’
Richardson’s wit was unlike that of any other writer;—his humour was so too. Both were the effect of intense activity of mind;—laboured, and yet completely effectual. We might refer to Lovelace’s reception and description of Hickman, when he calls out Death in his ear, as the name of the person with whom Clarissa had fallen in love; and to the scene at the glove shop. What can be more magnificent than his enumeration of his companions—‘Belton so pert and so pimply—Tourville so fair and so foppish,’ etc.? In casuistry, he is quite at home; and, with a boldness greater even than his puritanical severity, has exhausted every topic on virtue and vice. There is another peculiarity in Richardson, not perhaps so uncommon, which is, his systematically preferring his most insipid characters to his finest, though both were equally his own invention, and he must be supposed to have understood something of their qualities. Thus he preferred the little, selfish, affected, insignificant Miss Byron, to the divine Clementina; and again, Sir Charles Grandison, to the nobler Lovelace. We have nothing to say in favour of Lovelace’s morality; but Sir Charles is the prince of coxcombs,—whose eye was never once taken from his own person, and his own virtues; and there is nothing which excites so little sympathy as his excessive egotism.
It remains to speak of Sterne;—and we shall do it in few words. There is more of mannerism and affectation in him, and a more immediate reference to preceding authors;—but his excellencies, where he is excellent, are of the first order. His characters are intellectual and inventive, like Richardson’s—but totally opposite in the execution. The one are made out by continuity, and patient repetition of touches; the others, by rapid and masterly strokes, and graceful apposition. His style is equally different from Richardson’s:—it is at times the most rapid,—the most happy,—the most idiomatic of any of our novel writers. It is the pure essence of English conversational style. His works consist only of morceaux,—of brilliant passages. His wit is poignant, though artificial;—and his characters (though the groundwork has been laid before), have yet invaluable original differences;—and the spirit of the execution, the master-strokes constantly thrown into them, are not to be surpassed. It is sufficient to name them—Yorick, Dr. Slop, Mr. Shandy, my Uncle Toby, Trim, Susanna, and the Widow Wadman: and in these he has contrived to oppose, with equal felicity and originality, two characters,—one of pure intellect, and the other of pure good nature, in my Father and my Uncle Toby. There appears to have been in Sterne a vein of dry, sarcastic humour, and of extreme tenderness of feeling;—the latter sometimes carried to affectation, as in the tale of Maria, and the apostrophe to the recording angel;—but at other times pure, and without blemish. The story of Le Febre is perhaps the finest in the English language. My Father’s restlessness, both of body and mind, is inimitable. It is the model from which all those despicable performances against modern philosophy ought to have been copied, if their authors had known any thing of the subject they were writing about. My Uncle Toby is one of the finest compliments ever paid to human nature. He is the most unoffending of God’s creatures; or, as the French express it—un tel petit bon homme! Of his bowling-green,—his sieges,—and his amours, who would say or think any thing amiss?
It is remarkable that our four best novel writers belong nearly to the same age. We also owe to the same period, (the reign of George II.), the inimitable Hogarth, and some of our best writers of the middle style of comedy. If we were called upon to account for this coincidence, we should wave the consideration of more general causes, (as, that imagination naturally descends with the progress of civilization), and ascribe it at once to the establishment of the Protestant ascendancy, and the succession of the House of Hanover. These great events appear to have given a more popular turn to our literature and genius, as well as to our Government. It was found high time that the people should be represented in books as well as in parliament. They wished to see some account of themselves in what they read, and not to be confined always to the vices, the miseries and frivolities of the great. Our domestic tragedy, and our earliest periodical works, appeared a little before the same period. In despotic countries, human nature is not of sufficient importance to be studied or described. The canaille are objects rather of disgust than curiosity; and there are no middle classes. The works of Racine and Moliere are little else than imitations of the verbiage of the court, before which they were represented; or fanciful caricatures of the manners of the lowest of the people. But in the period of our history in question, a security of person and property, and a freedom of opinion had been established, which made every man feel of some consequence to himself, and appear an object of some curiosity to his neighbours; our manners became more domesticated; there was a general spirit of sturdiness and independence, which made the English character more truly English than perhaps at any other period—that is, more tenacious of its own opinions and purposes. The whole surface of society appeared cut out into square enclosures and sharp angles, which extended to the dresses of the time, their gravel walks, and clipped hedges. Each individual had a certain ground-plot of his own to cultivate his particular humours in, and let them shoot out at pleasure; and a most plentiful crop they have produced accordingly.
The reign of George II. was, in a word, in an eminent degree, the age of hobby-horses. But since that period, things have taken a different turn. His present Majesty, during almost the whole of his reign, has been constantly mounted on a great War-horse; and has fairly driven all competitors out of the field. Instead of minding our own affairs, or laughing at each other, the eyes of all his faithful subjects have been fixed on the career of the Sovereign, and all hearts anxious for the safety of his person and government. Our pens and our swords have been drawn alike in their defence; and the returns of killed and wounded, the manufacture of newspapers and parliamentary speeches, have exceeded all former example. If we have had little of the blessings of peace, we have had enough of the glories and calamities of war. His Majesty has indeed contrived to keep alive the greatest public interest ever known, by his determined manner of riding his hobby for half a century together, with the aristocracy—the democracy—the clergy—the landed and monied interest—and the rabble, in full cry after him! and at the end of his career, most happily and unexpectedly succeeded—amidst empires lost and won—kingdoms overturned and created—and the destruction of an incredible number of lives—in restoring the divine right of Kings,—and thus preventing any further abuse of the example which seated his family on the throne!
It is not to be wondered, if, amidst the tumult of events crowded into this period, our literature has partaken of the disorder of the time; if our prose has run mad, and our poetry grown childish. Among those few persons who ‘have kept the even tenor of their way,’ the author of Evelina, Cecilia, and Camilla, holds a distinguished place. Mrs. Radcliffe’s ‘enchantments drear’ and mouldering castles, derived a part of their interest, we suppose, from the supposed tottering state of all old structures at the time; and Mrs. Inchbald’s ‘Nature and Art’ would not have had the same popularity, but that it fell in (in its two main characters) with the prevailing prejudice of the moment, that judges and bishops were not pure abstractions of justice and piety. Miss Edgeworth’s tales, again, are a kind of essence of common sense, which seemed to be called for by the prevailing epidemics of audacious paradox and insane philosophy. The author of the present novel is, however, quite of the old school, a mere common observer of manners,—and also a very woman. It is this last circumstance which forms the peculiarity of her writings, and distinguishes them from those masterpieces which we have before mentioned. She is unquestionably a quick, lively, and accurate observer of persons and things; but she always looks at them with a consciousness of her sex, and in that point of view in which it is the particular business and interest of women to observe them. We thus get a kind of supplement and gloss to our original text, which we could not otherwise have obtained. There is little in her works of passion or character, or even manners, in the most extended sense of the word, as implying the sum-total of our habits and pursuits; her forte is in describing the absurdities and affectations of external behaviour, or the manners of people in company. Her characters, which are all caricatures, are no doubt distinctly marked, and perfectly kept up; but they are somewhat superficial, and exceedingly uniform. Her heroes and heroines, almost all of them, depend on the stock of a single phrase or sentiment; or at least have certain mottoes or devices by which they may always be known. They are such characters as people might be supposed to assume for a night at a masquerade. She presents not the whole length figure, nor even the face, but some prominent feature. In the present novel, for example, a lady appears regularly every ten pages, to get a lesson in music for nothing. She never appears for any other purpose; this is all you know of her; and in this the whole wit and humour of the character consists. Meadows is the same, who has always the same cue of being tired, without any other idea, etc. It has been said of Shakespeare, that you may always assign his speeches to the proper characters:—and you may infallibly do the same thing with Madame D’Arblay’s; for they always say the same thing. The Branghtons are the best. Mr. Smith is an exquisite city portrait.—Evelina is also her best novel, because it is shortest; that is, it has all the liveliness in the sketches of character, and exquisiteness of comic dialogue and repartee, without the tediousness of the story, and endless affectation of the sentiments.
Women, in general, have a quicker perception of any oddity or singularity of character than men, and are more alive to every absurdity which arises from a violation of the rules of society, or a deviation from established custom. This partly arises from the restraints on their own behaviour, which turn their attention constantly on the subject, and partly from other causes. The surface of their minds, like that of their bodies, seems of a finer texture than ours; more soft, and susceptible of immediate impression. They have less muscular power,—less power of continued voluntary attention,—of reason—passion and imagination: But they are more easily impressed with whatever appeals to their senses or habitual prejudices. The intuitive perception of their minds is less disturbed by any general reasonings on causes or consequences. They learn the idiom of character and manner, as they acquire that of language, by rote merely, without troubling themselves about the principles. Their observation is not the less accurate on that account, as far as it goes; for it has been well said, that ‘there is nothing so true as habit.’
There is little other power in Miss Burney’s novels, than that of immediate observation: her characters, whether of refinement or vulgarity, are equally superficial and confined. The whole is a question of form, whether that form is adhered to, or violated. It is this circumstance which takes away dignity and interest from her story and sentiments, and makes the one so teazing and tedious, and the other so insipid. The difficulties in which she involves her heroines are indeed ‘Female Difficulties;’—they are difficulties created out of nothing. The author appears to have no other idea of refinement than that it is the reverse of vulgarity; but the reverse of vulgarity is fastidiousness and affectation. There is a true, and a false delicacy. Because a vulgar country Miss would answer ‘yes’ to a proposal of marriage in the first page, Mad. d’Arblay makes it a proof of an excess of refinement, and an indispensable point of etiquette in her young ladies, to postpone the answer to the end of five volumes, without the smallest reason for their doing so, and with every reason to the contrary. The reader is led every moment to expect a denouement, and is as constantly disappointed on some trifling pretext. The whole artifice of her fable consists in coming to no conclusion. Her ladies stand so upon the order of their going, that they do not go at all. They will not abate an ace of their punctilio in any circumstances, or on any emergency. They would consider it as quite indecorous to run down stairs though the house were in flames, or to move off the pavement though a scaffolding was falling. She has formed to herself an abstract idea of perfection in common behaviour, which is quite as romantic and impracticable as any other idea of the sort: and the consequence has naturally been, that she makes her heroines commit the greatest improprieties and absurdities in order to avoid the smallest. In contradiction to a maxim in philosophy, they constantly act from the weakest motive, or rather from pure affectation.
Thus L. S.—otherwise Ellis, in the present novel, actually gives herself up to the power of a man who has just offered violence to her person, rather than return to the asylum of a farm-house, at which she has left some friends, because, as she is turning her steps that way, ‘she hears the sounds of rustic festivity and vulgar merriment proceed from it.’ That is, in order that her exquisite sensibility may not be shocked by the behaviour of a number of honest country-people making merry at a dance, this model of female delicacy exposes herself to every species of insult and outrage from a man whom she hates. In like manner, she runs from her honourable lover into the power of a ruffian and an assassin, who claims a right over her person by a forced marriage. The whole tissue of the fable is, in short, more wild and chimerical than any thing in Don Quixote, without having any thing of poetical truth or elevation. Madame D’Arblay has woven a web of difficulties for her heroine, something like the green silken threads in which the shepherdess entangled the steed of Cervantes’s hero, who swore, in his fine enthusiastic way, that he would sooner cut his passage to another world than disturb the least of those beautiful meshes. The Wanderer raises obstacles, lighter than ‘the gossamer that idles in the wanton summer air,’ into insurmountable barriers; and trifles with those that arise out of common sense, reason, and necessity. Her conduct never arises directly out of the circumstances in which she is placed, but out of some factitious and misplaced refinement on them. It is a perpetual game at cross-purposes. There being a plain and strong motive why she should pursue any course of action, is a sufficient reason for her to avoid it; and the perversity of her conduct is in proportion to its levity—as the lightness of the feather baffles the force of the impulse that is given to it, and the slightest breath of air turns it back on the hand from which it is launched. We can hardly consider this as an accurate description of the perfection of the female character!
We are sorry to be compelled to speak so disadvantageously of the work of an excellent and favourite writer; and the more so, as we perceive no decay of talent, but a perversion of it. There is the same admirable spirit in the dialogues, and particularly in the characters of Mrs. Ireton, Sir Jasper Herrington, and Mr. Giles Arbe, as in her former novels. But these do not fill a hundred pages of the work; and there is nothing else good in it. In the story, which here occupies the attention of the reader almost exclusively, Madame D’Arblay never excelled.