A History of English Prose Fiction

by Bayard Tuckerman

But now the mystick tale that pleas'd of yore

Can charm an understanding age no more.[91]

"If you did amuse yourself with writing any thing in poetry," wrote Horace Walpole to Sir H. Mann, in 1742, "you know how pleased I should be to see it; but for encouraging you to it, d'ye see, 'tis an age most unpoetical! 'Tis even a test of wit to dislike poetry; and though Pope has half a dozen old friends that he has preserved from the taste of last century, yet, I assure you the generality of readers are more diverted with any paltry prose answer to old Marlborough's secret history of Queen Mary's robes. I do not think an author would be universally commended for any production in verse, unless it were an ode to the Secret Committee, with rhymes of liberty and property, nation and administration."

During the brilliant era of literary activity, known by the name of Queen Anne, men of letters were encouraged by the government by means of employment or rewards. They were supported also by the public through the high social consideration which was freely accorded to men of talent. Literary success was a passport to the houses and the intimacy of the great. But under the first two Georges and the administration of Walpole the government was seconded by the public in its neglect of authors and their works. In those days the circle of readers was too small to afford remuneration to authorship. Employment or help from the government was almost a sine qua non for the production of works which required time and research. While under Anne, Swift received a deanery, Addison was Secretary of State, Steele a prominent member of Parliament, and Newton, Locke, Prior, Gay, Rowe, Congreve, Tickell, Parnell, and Pope all received direct or indirect aid from the government, in the reigns of George I and George II, Steele died in poverty, Savage walked the streets for want of a lodging, Johnson lived in penury and drudgery. Thomson was deprived of a small office which formed his sole dependence.[92] This neglect of authors and of literature was only partially due to an unappreciative government. It was supported by the indifference of a public in a high degree material and unintellectual. Conversation in France, said Chesterfield, "turns at least upon some subject, something of taste, some point of history, criticism, and even philosophy; which, though probably not quite so solid as Mr. Locke's, is, however, better and more becoming rational beings than our frivolous dissertations upon the weather or upon whist."

In keeping with the unimpassioned and prosaic tone of the time, was the low state of religious feeling, and the degeneration of the church, both in its own organization and in public esteem. The upper classes of society, as a rule, were lukewarm and insincere in any form of belief. Statesman and nobles in the most prominent positions combined professed irreligion with open profligacy, while the lower classes were left, through the indolence and selfishness of the clergy, almost without religious teaching. Montesquieu found that people laughed when religion was mentioned in London drawing-rooms. Sir Robert Walpole put the general feeling in his own coarse way. "Pray, madam," said he to the Princess Emily, when it was suggested that the archbishop should be called to the death-bed of Queen Caroline, "let this farce be played; the archbishop will act it very well. You may bid him be as short as you will. It will do the queen no hurt, no more than any good; and it will satisfy all the wise and good fools, who will call us all atheists if we don't pretend to be as great fools as they are."[93] This low state of religious sentiment was brought about by much the same causes which, at a later time, substituted a moral and liberal for the old dogmatic Christianity. The dislike of theological controversy left by the civil wars was aided by the Act of Toleration in giving the nation a religious peace, and in diverting human energy from religious speculations or emotions. The rational character of the national intellect was inclined to what was material and tangible, to physical study or industry. The general desire to submit all questions to the test of a critical reason, induced the clergy to apply the same test to theology. But while these tendencies, in their final result, were on the whole beneficial to religion, their temporary effect was injurious to it in a high degree. With a few exceptions, such as Butler, Berkeley, and Wilson, the clergy shared the indifference of their flocks. The upper ranks were indolent, selfish, often immoral; the lower, poor, ignorant, and degraded in social position. Bishops and prominent clergymen, under the system of pluralities, left their congregations to the care of hungry curates, and sought promotion by assiduous attendance at ministers' levees, or by paying court to the king's mistresses. It is not surprising that public respect for them and for their calling almost died away. Pope wrote sneeringly:[94]

EVEN in a BISHOP I can spy desert;

Seeker is decent, Rundle has a heart.

A naked Venus hung in the room where prayers were read while Queen Caroline dressed, which Dr. Madox sarcastically termed "a very proper altar-piece."[95] Of the High Churchmen Defoe declared that "the spirit of Christianity is fled from among them." When the Prince of Wales died, George the Second appointed governors and preceptors for the prince's children. Horace Walpole's description[96] of one of these is significant. "The other Preceptor was Hayter, Bishop of Norwich, a sensible well-bred man, natural son of Blackbourn, the jolly old Archbishop of York, who had all the manners of a man of quality, though he had been a Buccaneer and was a Clergyman; but he retained nothing of his first profession except his seraglio."

While the attention of the upper clergy was largely absorbed by thoughts of private profit and by the pursuit of worldly advancement, the lower ranks were left in a position degrading alike to themselves and to religion. In the country a clergyman was little above a peasant in social consideration, and seldom equal to him in the comforts of life. To eke out the sustenance of himself and family, hard labor in his own garden was by no means the most menial of the services he was obliged to perform. His wife was usually a servant-maid taken from a neighboring country house, and the kitchen was his most common resort when he visited the home of a squire. A private chaplain was little above a servant. In London, many clergymen fell into the prisons through debt or crime. From the ranks of the lower clergy were recruited the "buck-parsons," so long a scandal to the church and to public morality; and the large body of "Fleet parsons," of infamous character, in the pay of gin shops and taverns, who, for a trifling sum, performed what were legal marriages between boys and girls, drunkards and runaways.

The corruption in political life, begun under the Restoration and increased during the Revolution, was amplified and reduced to a system under Walpole until government seemed to be based on bribery. Ridiculing public spirit and disinterested motives in others, he bribed George the Second with the promise of a large civil list, bribed Queen Caroline with a large allowance, bribed members of Parliament with sinecures, pensions, or with direct payment of money, and paid himself with wealth and a peerage. Corruption was so firmly rooted as an engine of power, that no serious discredit attached to it. So low had fallen the standard of political honor, so widespread had become the spirit of self-seeking and corruption among the ministers and in Parliament, that "Love of our country," wrote Browne, "is no longer felt; and except in a few minds of uncommon greatness, the principle of public spirit exists not."[97] The dominating idea of political life was well put in the words of the Marquis of Halifax: "Parties in a state, generally, like freebooters, hang out false colors; the pretence is public good, the real business is to catch prizes." Lord Hervey divided the Whig party in 1727 into "Patriots and Courtiers, which was in plain English, 'Whigs in place,' and 'Whigs out of place.'"[98] The assertion of disinterestedness met only with ridicule. In an interview with Queen Caroline, "when Lord Stair talked of his conscience with great solemnity, the queen (the whole conversation being in French) cried out: Ah, my Lord, ne me parlez point de conscience, vous me faîtes évanouir."[99] As personal advancement, and not the public service, was the ruling aim of statesmen, it is not surprising that for this advancement no means were regarded as too low. The king's mistresses were the object of ceaseless attentions from aspirants for office, and sometimes were the recipients of their bribes. Treachery was the order of the day. Bolingbroke said to Sir Robert Walpole, "that the very air he breathed was the gift of his bounty," and then left Sir Robert to tell the king that Walpole "was the weakest minister any prince ever employed abroad, and the wickedest that ever had the direction of affairs at home."[100] The Duke of Newcastle, that "living, moving, talking caricature," stands out an exaggerated type of the common statesmen of the time; "hereditary possessors of ennobled folly,"[101] maintained in offices which they had no capacity to fill by corruption, the abuse of patronage, and the control of rotten boroughs. Speaking of the Dukes of Devonshire, Grafton, and Newcastle, Lord Hervey says[102]: "The two first were mutes, and the last often wished so by those he spoke for, and always by those he spoke to." George the Second appreciated the character and objects of his advisers. He had, also, a frank and pointed way of describing them. In his opinion Sir Robert Walpole was "a great rogue"; Mr. Horace Walpole, ambassador to France, was a "dirty buffoon"; Newcastle, an "impertinent fool"; Lord Townshend, a "choleric blockhead";[103] while Lord Chesterfield was disposed of as a "tea-table scoundrel."[104] He complained that he was "obliged to enrich people for being rascals, and buy them not to cut his throat."[105] "The king and queen," wrote Hervey, "looked upon human kind as so many commodities in a market, which, without favor or affection, they considered only in the degree they were useful, and paid for them in that proportion—Sir Robert Walpole being sworn appraiser to their Majesties at all these sales."[106]