FIELDING, SMOLLETT, AND THE MASCULINE NOVEL
FIELDING, SMOLLETT, AND THE MASCULINE NOVEL
The English Renaissance.
I have always felt that the English Renaissance was considerably later than that of France or Italy, and happened in the eighteenth century. When we speak of the Italian or the French Renaissance we mean the times in the histories of Italy or France when the peculiar genius of each of these countries showed the most energetic and satisfying efflorescence. In Italy and in France this time was that of the revival of classical learning, when Boccaccio lectured on Dante at Florence and Ronsard gardened and rhymed. In England, although from the time of Chaucer to the time of Shakespeare we were picking continental flowers, and flowering ourselves individually and gorgeously, yet we had no general efflorescence in our national right, no sudden and complete self-portraiture in several arts at once. And this in the eighteenth century was what we had. All our national characteristics were unashamedly on view. Our solidity, our care for matter of fact, our love of oversea adventure, were exhibited in Defoe. Our sturdy spirituality had only recently found expression in Bunyan. Richardson discovered the young person who, rustling her petticoats, sits with so demure an air of permanence on Victorian literature, and represents indeed so real a part of our national character that we shall never be able to forget her blushes altogether. Our serious turn for morality showed itself at once in the aims all our authors professed, and in the pictures of Hogarth who, with courage unknown elsewhere, dared to paint ugliness as ugly. This is the century that represents us in the eyes of the world. If we would think of the Italian spirit we remember the Decameron; if of the French, we remember Ronsard's 'Mignonne, allons voir si la rose,' or Marot's 'Mignonne, je vous donne le bon jour.' But if a Frenchman tries to describe an Englishman his model is not a Chaucer but a Jean Bull, and the only adequate portraits of Jean Bull are to be found in the novels of Fielding and Smollett.
HENRY FIELDING
Two points of view.