Sir Walter Scott lamented, early in the present century, the neglect into which the works of Richardson had fallen. That neglect has not since been diminished, for obvious reasons. "Surely, sir," said Erskine to Johnson, "Richardson is very tedious." "Why, sir," was the lexicographer's reply, "if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself, but you must read him for the sentiment, and consider the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment." But the reader of today will agree with Erskine in thinking that Richardson is tedious. We have so many good novels which do not require the attention and labor exacted by him. We live so fast that we cannot spare the time for so much sentiment. These novels, like the elaborate embroideries of the last century, belong to a period when life was less full, and books less abundant. Samuel Richardson will take his place among the great authors who are much admired and little read, whose works every educated person should have heard of, but upon which very few would like to be examined.
With Richardson's novels English fiction took a long step forward; but it made a still greater advance in the hands of Henry Fielding. The latter was peculiarly well fitted by his talents and experience to carry the novel to a high position of importance and artistic merit. He united a considerable dramatic, and a great narrative power with an exuberant wit and an extensive knowledge of men. Allied to a noble family, but oppressed by poverty, Fielding mingled during his life with all classes of society. The Hon. George Lyttleton was his friend and protector, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was his cousin. On the other hand, his poverty and improvidence constantly kept him, as Lady Mary put it, "raking in the lowest rinks of vice and misery." Richardson, who always denounced Fielding's works as "wretchedly low and dirty," said sneeringly: "his brawls, his jars, his jails, his spunging-houses are all drawn from what he has seen and known." But in this ungenerous sneer lay a substantial compliment. Fielding did describe what he had seen and known, and the variety of his experience gave him a breadth and power in describing human nature which the confined life of Richardson could not afford. The two novelists cannot be fairly compared, nor should they be considered as rivals. They pursued different methods, and aimed at opposite effects. Each has a high place in English literature, which the greatness of the other cannot depress. Richardson is best able to make his reader weep, and Fielding to make him laugh.
Fielding was a tall, handsome fellow, so full of life and spirits that "his happy disposition," to quote Lady Mary, "made him forget every evil when he was before a venison-pastry, or over a flask of champagne." This rollicking, careless joyousness is the tone of his books. Whether taken to a prison, an inn, or a lady's boudoir, whether watching the breaking of heads, the blackening of eyes, or the making of love, the reader is always kept smiling.
Fielding is often censured by moralists for the coarseness of his novels. But had he not been coarse he would not have been true. He described life as it was in the eighteenth century, as he had seen it in the ups and downs of a checkered career. His characters were taken from the higher ranks and the lower. He placed the house, the amusements, the habits of a country gentleman before the reader with the faithfulness of a man who had hunted, feasted, and got drunk with country-gentlemen. He described the miserable prisons of his time as he only could who had mingled with their degraded inmates, and had exerted his power as a police magistrate to break up the gangs of ruffians who infested the streets. Thus Fielding's novels have a high historical, as well as a literary value. Mr. Lecky has testified to their importance in a reconstruction of the past by placing "Amelia" among his authorities. Squire Allworthy, Squire Western, Tom Jones, Parson Adams, are characters to be studied by whoever would understand social life in the eighteenth century. The lovely Sophia, the modest Fanny, and above all Amelia, whom Thackeray considered "the most charming character in English fiction," are portraits in the gallery of history.[172]
As Fielding set out to describe truth and nature as he saw them, the reader must put away his notions of refinement and delicacy. He must be prepared to be entertained by blows, licentious assaults, a tub of hog's blood thrown by a clergyman, coarse practical jokes, foul talk, all put before him without disguise or circumlocution. As he follows Parson Adams, Joseph, and Fanny in their journey, he must always be ready for a fight. Here is a specimen:
"The captain * * * drew forth his hanger as Adams approached him, and was levelling a blow at his head which would probably have silenced the preacher forever, had not Joseph in that instant lifted up a certain huge stone pot of the chamber with one hand, which six beaux could not have lifted with both, and discharged it, together with the contents, full in the captain's face. The uplifted hanger dropped from his hand, and he fell prostrate on the floor with a lumpish noise, and his half-pence rattled in his pocket: the red liquor which his veins contained, and the white liquor which the pot contained, ran in one stream down his face and his clothes. Nor had Adams quite escaped, some of the water having in its passage shed its honors on his head, and begun to trickle down the wrinkles, or rather furrows, of his cheeks; when one of the servants snatching a mop out of a pail of water, which had already done its duty in washing the house, pushed it in the parson's face; yet could he not bear him down; for the parson wresting the mop from the fellow with one hand, with the other brought his enemy as low as the earth."[173]
To obtain any adequate idea of the range of Fielding's pictures of human nature, the reader must consult the novels themselves. Propriety forbids the insertion here of quotations which could convey an impression of the happy dissoluteness of Tom Jones, the brutal coarseness of Squire Western, or the scenes of unblushing license which pervade the novels of Henry Fielding. But a sample of the witty, jovial tone which has made these novels so popular may be of interest to readers who are not inclined to open "Tom Jones" itself. The following scene was occasioned by the appearance of Molly Seagrim in church, in unaccustomed and ostentatious finery, and is described in the Homeric style, which Fielding sometimes adopted with such humorous effect.
As a vast herd of cows in a rich farmer's yard, if, while they are milked, they hear their calves at a distance, lamenting the robbery which is then committing, roar and bellow: so roared forth the Somersetshire mob an halloloo, made up of almost as many squalls, screams, and other different sounds, as there were persons, or indeed passions, among them. Some were inspired by rage, others alarmed by fear, and others had nothing in theirs heads but the love of fun; but chiefly Envy, the sister of Satan and his constant companion, rushed among the crowd and blew up the fury of the women; who no sooner came up to Molly than they pelted her with dirt and rubbish.
Molly, having endeavored in vain to make a handsome retreat, faced about; and laying hold of ragged Bess, who advanced in the front of the enemy, she at one blow felled her to the ground. The whole army of the enemy (though near a hundred in number), seeing the fate of their general, gave back many paces, and retired beyond a new dug grave; for the church-yard was the field of battle, where there was to be a funeral that very evening. Molly pursued her victory, and catching up a skull which lay on the side of the grave, discharged it with such fury, that having hit a tailor on the head, the two skulls sent equally forth a hollow sound at their meeting, and the tailor took presently measure of his length on the ground, where the skulls lay side by side, and it was doubtful which was the more valuable of the two. Molly, then taking a thigh bone in her hand, fell in among the flying ranks, and dealing her blows with great liberality on either side, overthrew the carcass of many a mighty hero and heroine. Recount, O muse, the names of those who fell on this fatal day. First Jemmy Tweedle felt on his hinder head the direful bone. Him the pleasant banks of sweetly winding Stour had nourished, where he first learnt the vocal art, with which, wandering up and down at wakes and fairs, he cheered the rural nymphs and swains, when upon the green they interweaved the sprightly dance; while he himself stood fiddling and jumping to his own music. How little now avails his fiddle! He thumps the verdant floor with his carcass. Next old Echepole, the sow-gelder, received a blow in his forehead from our Amazonian heroine, and immediately fell to the ground. He was a swinging fat fellow, and fell with almost as much noise as a house. His tobacco-box dropt at the same time from his pocket, which Molly took up as lawful spoils. Then Kate of the Mill tumbled unfortunately over a tombstone, which catching hold of her ungartered stocking, inverted the order of nature, and gave her heels the superiority to her head. Betty Pippin, with young Roger her lover, fell both to the ground; where, O Perverse Fate! she salutes the earth, and he the sky.[174]
Fielding had shown more than any predecessor the possibilities of fiction in the study of character and the illustration of manners, and to the art of the narrator, he had added that of the dramatist. The falling of the rug in Molly Seagrim's bedroom[175] is one of the happiest incidents ever devised, and no doubt suggested to Sheridan the falling of the screen in the "School for Scandal." But the chief distinction of Fielding lies in his having carried the novel to a high point as a work of art. It was the opinion of Coleridge that the "Oedipus Tyrannus," "The Alchemist," and "Tom Jones," were the three most perfect plots ever planned.[176] It is to this excellence of plot—the subordination of each minor circumstance to the general aim, the skill with which all events are made to lead up to the final dénouement—that Fielding, if any one, deserves the title of the founder of the English novel. But to give this title to any individual is a manifest injustice. The novel was developed, not created; and in that development many minds took part. Short love stories had been made familiar in England by the Italian writers. Such, also, had been produced by Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley, and Mrs. Heywood. Defoe had written novels of adventure, in one of which, at least, is found the combination of a character well drawn and a plot well executed. In the number of his characters and the complication of his plot, Richardson had surpassed Defoe. It is the merit of Fielding to have combined in a far greater degree than those who had gone before the characteristic qualities of the novel. In others we see the promise, in him the fulfilment.
And this was in no respect the result of an accident. Fielding looked upon his first work as a new attempt in English literature. "Joseph Andrews" was first intended to be merely a satire on "Pamela." But study and reflection on the nature of his work determined Fielding to produce a "prose epic." "The epic as well as the drama," he said in the preface, "is divided into tragedy and comedy." Now, he continued, "when any kind of writing contains all the other parts (of the epic), such as fable, action, characters, sentiments, and diction, and is deficient in metre only; it seems, I think, reasonable to refer it to the epic." Such, too, was the opinion of the Chevalier Bunsen. "The romance of modern times," he says in his preface to "Soll und Haben" * * * "represents the latest stadium of the epic. Every romance is intended, or ought to be, a new Iliad or Odyssey; in other words, a poetic representation of a course of events consistent with the highest laws of moral government, whether it delineate the general history of a people, or narrate the fortunes of a chosen hero. * * * The excellence of a romance, like that of an epic or a drama, lies in the apprehension and truthful exhibition of the course of human things."[177] Lord Byron expressed his opinion that Fielding had realized this view of the nature of the novel by calling him the prose Homer of human nature.