A History of English Prose Fiction

by Bayard Tuckerman

Thus Swift himself, from the vividness with which he realized, and the intensity with which he hated, the vices and failings of humanity, was unable to duly appreciate the good, which, in some measure, always accompanies the evil.

It was the habit of the great Dean to utter the witticisms which caused the continual delight or terror of all who approached him with the most stern composure. Such was the manner of the "Travels." The solemn and circumstantial narrative style, imitated from the old English explorers added verisimilitude to the incidents and point to the sarcasm. Trifles, personal to the traveller and of no consequence to the course of the story, gave an appearance of truth to the whole work. Thus Gulliver keeps the reader informed of the most minute details interesting to himself. "I took part of a small house in the Old Jewry; and being advised to alter my condition, I married Mrs. Mary Burton, second daughter to Mr. Edmund Burton, hosier, in Newgate Street, with whom I received four hundred pounds for a portion." In the same way he informs us carefully that the date of his sailing on the first voyage was May 4, 1699, from Bristol, and the storm which destroyed the ship arose when in the latitude of 30 degrees 2 minutes south. In a work of fiction only such events are expected as have a direct bearing upon the development of the plot, and when immaterial details are introduced, the reader is likely to be impressed with their truth. In this way the personality of Gulliver is kept up, and he remains, through whatever strange scenes he passes, the same honest, blunt English sailor.

Yet more remarkable is the skill of the author in maintaining the probability of the allegory. When living among the Lilliputians, Gulliver insensibly adopts their ideas of size. He admires as much as they the prowess of the horseman who clears his shoe at a single leap. When the committee of the Lilliputian king examine Gulliver's pockets, they describe his handkerchief as a "great piece of coarse cloth, large enough to be a foot-cloth to your majesty's chief room of state"; his purse is "a net, almost large enough for a fisherman," containing "several massy pieces of yellow metal, which, if they be real gold, must be of immense value." The same almost mathematical accuracy of proportion is kept up in the visit to Brobdingnag, and on Gulliver's return to his native country he experiences as much trouble in reaccustoming his mind to the ordinary standard as he had met with in adopting that of pigmies or giants. There was a country clergyman living in Ireland, who declared there were some things in Gulliver's Travels he could not quite believe. His difficulty probably occurred in the "Voyage to the Houyhnhnms." In the latter part of the work Swift allowed the fiction to yield to the exigencies of the satire. So long as we can imagine the existence of giants and pigmies, it is easy to realize all the circumstances connected with Gulliver's existence among them, but it is impossible to feel the same sense of reality in regard to horses who live in houses they could not build, and who eat oats they could not harvest.[154]

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 illustrated 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 coarseness 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 associated 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 fashionable. 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 Worcestershire, says the Spectator, "are very well acquainted with the parts and merits of Sir Roger." His fame has spread from Worcestershire 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 constituent 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 assured 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 exactitude 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 circumstantial 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 authorship which would attract attention and credibility. Thus the "History of Charles XII" was announced on the title-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 assisted him in his last home, and faithfully translated out of a High Dutch manuscript."[156] The same characteristics appear in all Defoe's works. He invents freely, giving the most elaborate details to support his assertions, and attains to an extraordinary degree the art of "lying like truth." In the "Journal of the Plague Year," Defoe assumed 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 fictitious person placed amidst historical scenes. His next step was to write the life of a fictitious person amidst fictitious scenes.[157]