A History of English Prose Fiction

by Bayard Tuckerman

Fielding's novels are now considered unfit for general perusal. In considering the coarseness and immorality of a writer, the intention and the result must be separated. That Fielding's works are coarse, and that they contain scenes and characters of a dissolute nature, is neither to be denied nor to be regretted. If they were more pure, they would be less valuable from a historical point of view; less true to nature, and therefore less artistic. That the author's intention was far from the production of works with an evil tendency, is evident. He was careful to say in the preface to "Joseph Andrews": "It may be objected to me that I have against my own rules introduced vices, and of a very black kind, in this work. To which I shall answer first, that it is very difficult to pursue a series of human actions, and keep clear from them. Secondly, that the vices to be found here are rather the accidental consequences of some human frailty or foible, than causes habitually existing in the mind. Thirdly, that they are never set forth as the objects of ridicule, but detestation. Fourthly, that they are never the principal figure at that time on the scene; and lastly, they never produce the intended evil." And again, still more strongly, Fielding claims the merit of purity and moral effect for "Tom Jones," "I hope my reader will be convinced, at his very entrance on this work, that he will find, in the whole course of it, nothing prejudicial to the cause of religion and virtue; nothing inconsistent with the strictest rules of decency, nor which can offend the chastest eye in the perusal. On the contrary, I declare, that to recommend goodness and innocence hath been my sincere endeavor in this history. * * * Besides displaying that beauty of virtue which may attract the admiration of mankind, I have attempted to engage a stronger motive to human action in her favor, by convincing men that their true interest directs them to a pursuit of her. For this purpose I have shown, that no acquisitions of guilt can compensate the loss of that solid inward comfort of mind, which is the sure companion of innocence and virtue; nor can in the least balance the evil of that horror and anxiety which, in their room, guilt introduced into our bosoms."

Thus, it is evident, that Fielding had no desire to write what might be harmful. The contrast between his promise and his fulfilment is simply an illustration of the standard of his time. His novels are coarse to a degree which may nullify their merits in the eyes of some readers of the present day, and may unfit them for the perusal of very young people. But this is simply because the standard in such matters has changed, and not because the novels were purposely made dissolute. Their coarseness was adapted to the lack of refinement in thought and speech characteristic of that time. Fielding wished to "laugh mankind out of their follies and vices." In his coarseness there is always an open, frank laughter. There is none of that veiled pruriency which lurks underneath the more conventionally expressed, but really vicious sentiments that are to be found in too many novels of our own day.

The novel was well defined in character and well established in popularity when Smollett entered the field so well occupied by Richardson and Fielding. On this account his works have a less important place in the history of fiction than those of his predecessors. While he added greatly to the store of fictitious writing, he developed no new ideas concerning it. Fielding had announced at the outset of his career as a novelist that he had taken Cervantes as a prototype, and the influence of the great Spanish writer is plainly visible in "Joseph Andrews." But in the literary workmanship of his two later novels, Fielding's entire originality is undeniable. Smollett, however, is plainly an imitator of Le Sage. He did not aim at that artistic construction of plot, which is Fielding's chief merit. The novel, in his hands, became rather a series of adventures, linked together by their occurrence to the same individuals. "A novel," he said, "is a large, diffused picture, comprehending the characters of life, disposed in different groups, and exhibited in various attitudes, for the purposes of a uniform plan and general occurrence, to which every individual figure is subservient. But this plan cannot be executed with propriety, probability, or success, without a principal personage to attract the attention, unite the incidents, unwind the clue of the labyrinth, and at last close the scene by virtue of his importance."[178] But Smollett presents the "different groups" and "various attitudes" of his "diffused picture" with a luxuriance of imagination, a fidelity to nature, and an exuberance of broad humor which inspire interest even when they occasion disgust. If he added nothing new to the novel from a purely literary point of view, his works have an exceptional historical value.

His life was well adapted to educate him as an observer and student of human nature. Of a good Scotch family, but obliged by poverty to rely on his own efforts for a living, he mixed familiarly with varied classes of men. As a surgeon in London, he came in contact with the middle and lower ranks of the city, from which many of his best characters are taken. As surgeon's mate on board a man-of-war, he obtained that acquaintance with a seafaring life which was afterward turned to such excellent account.

Of Smollett's works, "Humphrey Clinker" is the most humorous, "Roderick Random" the simplest and most natural, "Perigrine Pickle," the most elaborate and brilliant. The reader is conducted from adventure to adventure with an unfailing interest, sustained by the distinctness of the picture and the brightness of the coloring. The characters met with are natural and well studied. Trunnion, Hatchway, Pipes, Lieutenant Bowling, and Jack Rattlin are all distinctly seamen, and yet each has a marked individuality of his own. Matthew Bramble and Winifred Jenkins are among the best-drawn and most entertaining of fictitious personages. Smollett's humor is usually of the broadest and most elementary kind. It consists largely of hard blows, a-propos knockdowns, and practical jokes. More than any novelist, he illustrates the coarseness of his time. His pages are filled with cruelties and blackguardism. Many of his principal characters are dissolute without enjoyment, and brutal without good nature. Modern taste is shocked by the succession of repulsive scenes and degrading representations of vice which are often intended to amuse, and always to entertain. But it is because life in the eighteenth century had so many repulsive features, that the novels of the time often repel the modern reader, There is nothing strained or uncommon in the experiences of Miss Williams while in prison:

There I saw nothing but rage, anguish, and impiety; and heard nothing but groans, curses, and blasphemy. In the midst of this hellish crew, I was subjected in the tyranny of a barbarian, who imposed upon me tasks that I could not possibly perform, and then punished my incapacity with the utmost rigor and inhumanity. I was often whipped into a swoon, and lashed out of it, during which miserable intervals I was robbed by my fellow-prisoners of every thing about me, even to my cap, shoes, and stockings; I was not only destitute of necessaries, but even of food, so that my wretchedness was extreme. Not one of my acquaintance, to whom I imparted my situation, would grant me the least succor or regard, on pretence of my being committed for theft; and my landlord refused to part with some of my own clothes, which I sent for, because I was indebted to him for a week's lodging. Overwhelmed with calamity, I grew desperate, and resolved to put an end to my grievances and life together; for this purpose I got up in the middle of the night, when I thought everybody around me asleep, and fixing one end of my handkerchief to a large hook in the ceiling that supported the scales on which the hemp is weighed, I stood upon a chair, and making a noose on the other end, put my neck into it with an intention to hang myself; but before I could adjust the knot, I was surprised and prevented by two women who had been awake all the while, and suspected my design. In the morning my attempt was published among the prisoners, and punished with thirty stripes, the pain of which co-operating with my disappointment and disgrace, bereft me of my senses, and threw me into an ecstasy of madness, during which I tore the flesh from my bones with my teeth, and dashed my head against the pavement.[179]

While Smollett mingled such scenes of misery with coarse adventures and coarse humor, he is yet always true to nature and always picturesque. He keeps the reader's attention even when he offends his taste. He impaired the literary merit of "Perigrine Pickle," but at the same time added to its dissolute character and its immediate popularity by the forced insertion of the licentious "Memoirs of a Lady of Quality." Now a serious blemish, these memoirs formed at the time an added attraction to the book. They were eagerly read as the authentic account of Lady Vane, a notorious woman of rank, and were furnished to Smollett by herself, in the hope, fully gratified, that her infamous career might be known to future generations.[180]

That the standard of public taste was rising, would appear from the fact that in the second edition of "Perigrine Pickle," Smollett found it advisable to "reform the manners and correct the expression" of the first; but when "he flatters himself that he has expunged every adventure, phrase, and insinuation that could be construed by the most delicate reader into a trespass upon the rules of decorum," he does not give a high idea of the standard of the "most delicate reader." But Smollett has left an account of his own views regarding the moral effect of the pictures of vice and degradation which his works contain, and that account is a striking statement of contemporary feeling upon the subject:

The same principle by which we rejoice at the remuneration of merit, will teach us to relish the disgrace and discomfiture of vice, which is always an example of extensive use and influence, because it leaves a deep impression of terror upon the minds of those who were not confirmed in the pursuit of morality and virtue, and, while the balance wavers, enables the right scale to preponderate. * * * The impulses of fear, which is the most violent and interesting of all the passions, remain longer than any other upon the memory; and for one that is allured to virtue by the contemplation of that peace and happiness which it bestows, an hundred are deterred from the practice of vice, by the infamy and punishment to which it is liable from the laws and regulations of mankind. Let me not, therefore, be condemned for having chosen my principal character from the purlieus of treachery and fraud, when I declare that my purpose is to set him up as a beacon for the benefit of the inexperienced and the unwary, who, from the perusal of these memoirs, may learn to avoid the manifold snares with which they are continually surrounded in the paths of life; while those who hesitate on the brink of iniquity may he terrified from plunging into that irremediable gulph, by surveying the deplorable fate of Ferdinand Count Fathom.[181]

This passage illustrates with remarkable fidelity the attitude, not only of Smollett, but of the other novelists and the general public of the first half of the eighteenth century, toward vice and crime. The consciousness of evil and the desire for reformation were prominent features of the time. But to deter men from wrong-doing, fear was the only recognized agent. There was absolutely no feeling of philanthropy. There was no effort to prevent crime through the education or regulation of the lower classes; there was no attempt to reform the criminal when convicted. The public fear of the criminal classes was expressed in the cruel and ineffective code which punished almost every offense with death. The corruptions which pervaded the administration of justice made it almost impossible to punish the wealthy and influential. When Smollett declared that the miserable fate of Count Fathom would deter his reader from similar courses by a fear of similar punishment, when Defoe urged the moral usefulness of "Moll Flanders" and "Roxana," the two novelists simply expressed the general feeling that the sight of a malefactor hanging on the gallows was the most effective recommendation to virtue. In the same spirit in which justice exposed the offender in the stocks to public view, the novelist described his careers of vice ending in misery, and Hogarth conducted his Idle Apprentice from stage to stage till Tyburn Hill is reached. The same moral end is always in view, but the lesson is illustrated by the ugliness of vice, and not by the beauty of virtue. In our time we have reason to be thankful for a criminal legislation tempered by mercy and philanthropy. We have attained, too, a standard of taste and of humanity which has banished the degrading exhibitions of public punishments, which has largely done away with coarseness and brutality, and has added much to the happiness of life. In fiction, the writer who wishes to serve a moral purpose attains his end by the more agreeable method of holding up examples of merit to be imitated, rather than of vice to be shunned.