A History of English Prose Fiction

by Bayard Tuckerman

It was suggested very sensibly to Mackenzie, that the interest of most works of fiction depended on the designing villainy of one or more characters, and that in actual life calamities were more often brought about by the innocent errors of the sufferers. To place this view before his readers, Mackenzie wrote "Julia de Roubigné," in which a wife brings death upon herself and her husband by indiscreetly, though innocently, arousing his jealousy. Sir Walter Scott ranked this novel among the "most heart-wringing histories" that ever were written—a description which justly becomes it. Mackenzie's aim was less to weave a complicated plot, than to study and move the heart; and to the lover of sentiment his novels may still be attractive.

The "Fool of Quality," by Henry Brooke, has had a singular history. The author was a young Irishman of a fine figure, a well-stored mind, and a disposition of particular gentleness. He was loved by Pope and Lyttleton, caressed by the Prince of Wales, and honored by the friendly interest of Jonathan Swift. Married before he was twenty-one to a young girl who presented him with three children before she was eighteen, his life was a constant struggle to provide for a family which increased with every year. After a long period of active life, passed in literary occupations, he retired to an obscure part of Ireland, and there died, attended by a daughter, the only survivor of twenty-two children, who remembered nothing of her father "previous to his retirement from the world; and knew little of him, save that he bore the infirmities and misfortunes of his declining years with the heroism of true Christianity, and that he was possessed of virtues and feelings which shone forth to the last moment of his life, unimpaired by the distractions of pain, and unshaken amid the ruins of genius."[194]

The "Fool of Quality" was first published in 1766, and received a moderate share of public attention. Its narrative was extremely slight. Harry, the future Earl of Moreland, was stolen from his parents by an uncle in disguise; and the five volumes of the work consist almost entirely of an account of the education of the child, and the various incidents which affected or illustrated his mental growth. One day John Wesley chanced to meet with it, and although he required his followers "to read only such books as tend to the knowledge and love of God," he was tempted to look into this particular novel. The "whimsical title" at first offended him, but as he proceeded, he became so enthusiastic over the moral excellence of the work, that he expunged some offensive passages it contained, and republished it for the benefit of the Methodists. "I now venture to recommend the following treatise," said Wesley to his people, "as the most excellent in its kind that I have seen either in the English or any other language. * * * It perpetually aims at inspiring and increasing every right affection; at the instilling gratitude to God and benevolence to man. And it does this not by dry, dull, tedious, precepts, but by the liveliest examples that can be conceived; by setting before your eyes one of the most beautiful pictures that ever was drawn in the world. The strokes of this are so delicately fine, the touches so easy, natural, and affecting, that I know not who can survey it with tearless eyes, unless he has a heart of stone. I recommend it, therefore, to all those who are already, or who desire to be, lovers of God and man." It was not as a good novel that Wesley either enjoyed or republished the "Fool of Quality." He recommended it for the excellence of its moral, and the "Fool of Quality" would have been allowed to slumber forever on Methodist book-shelves, had it not been revived by a man who was an equally good judge of a moral and a work of fiction.

But, in regard to this novel, it must be admitted that Charles Kingsley's judgment was seriously at fault. He saw both its qualities and its faults, but he did not realize that a good purpose will not make up for a poor execution. The causes of the neglect of the book, said the Canon in his preface, are to be found "in its deep and grand ethics, in its broad and genial humanity, in the divine value which it attaches to the relations of husband and wife, father and child, and to the utter absence, both of that sentimentalism and that superstition which have been alternately debauching of late years the minds of the young. And if he shall have arrived at this discovery, he will be able possibly to regard at least with patience those who are rash enough to affirm that they have learnt from this book more which is pure, sacred, and eternal, than from any which has been published since Spenser's 'Fairy Queen.'"[195] On the testimony of Wesley and of Kingsley, all the merits of a moral nature which they claim for the "Fool of Quality" will readily be accorded to it. But it is very doubtful that such qualities would necessarily interfere with the success of a work of fiction. The real reason why very few who can help it will read this novel, lies in those characteristics which Kingsley himself admitted would appear to the average reader. "The plot is extravagant as well as ill-woven, and broken, besides, by episodes as extravagant as itself. The morality is quixotic, and practically impossible. The sermonizing, whether theological or social, is equally clumsy and obtrusive. Without artistic method, without knowledge of human nature and the real world, the book can never have touched many hearts and can touch none now."[196]

It is singular that Kingsley should have expected that a book with so many and so evident faults could have remained popular simply because its moral was a good one. If he had sat down to warn the world against Henry Brooke's novel, he could hardly have expressed himself with more effect. Whatever merit it may have is buried under a mass of dulness almost impossible to penetrate, and a silliness pervades the characters and the conversations which makes even the lighter portions unreadable. The "Fool of Quality" has all the drawbacks of a novel of purpose in an exaggerated form. The improvement of his reader is a laudable object for a novelist. But it is an object which can be successfully carried out in a work of art, only very indirectly. An author may have a great influence for good, but that influence can be obtained, not by deliberate sermonizing, but only by tone of healthy sentiment which insensibly elevates the reader's mind.

Toward the end of the eighteenth century, the number and variety of works of fiction rapidly increased. William Beckford, whom Byron calls in "Childe Harold," "Vathek, England's wealthiest son," wrote in his twentieth year the oriental romance "Vathek," which excited great attention at the time. It was composed in three days and two nights, during which the author never took off his clothes. Byron considered this tale superior to "Rasselas." It represented the downward career of an oriental prince, who had given himself up to sensual indulgence, and who is allured by a Giaour into the commission of crimes which lead him to everlasting and horrible punishments. "Vathek" gives evidence of a familiarity with oriental customs, and a vividness of imagination which are remarkable in so youthful an author. The descriptions of the Caliph and of the Hall of Eblis are full of power. But in depth of meaning, and in that intrinsic worth which gives endurance to a literary work, it bears no comparison to "Rasselas." The one affords an hour's amusement; the other retains its place among those volumes which are read and re-read with constant pleasure and satisfaction.

The novels of Richard Cumberland, "Henry," "Arundel," and "John de Lancaster," contain some well-drawn characters and readable sketches of life. But Cumberland had little originality. He aimed without success at Fielding's constructive excellence, and imitated that great master's humor, only to reproduce his coarseness. The character of Ezekiel Daw, the Methodist, in "Henry," is fair and just, and contrasts very favorably with the libellous representations of the Methodist preachers in Graves' "Spiritual Quixote," and other contemporary novels. Another writer of fiction of considerable prominence in his day, but of none in ours, was Dr. Moore, whose "Zeluco" contained some very lively "Views of human nature, taken from life and manners, foreign and domestic," but also some very disagreeable exhibitions of human degradation and vice.

The influence of the French Revolution in England is apparent in the works of several novelists who wrote at the end of the eighteenth century. Thomas Holcroft embodied radical views in novels now quite forgotten.[197] Robert Bage has left four works containing opinions of a revolutionary character—"Barham Downs," "James Wallace," "The Fair Syrian," and "Mount Henneth." These novels are written in the form of a series of letters and have little narrative interest. The author has striven, sometimes successfully, at a powerful delineation of character, but his works are too evidently a vehicle for his political and philosophical opinions. He represents with unnatural consistency the upper classes as invariably corrupt and tyrannical, and the lower as invariably honest and deserving. His theories are not only inartistically prominent, but are worthless and immoral. He looks upon a tax-gatherer as a thief, and condones feminine unchastity as a trivial and unimportant offence.

The novelist most deeply embued with the doctrines of the French Revolution was William Godwin—a man of great literary ambition, and less literary capacity. His "Life of Chaucer" has the merits of a compilation, but not those of an original literary work. His political and social writings were merely reproductions of French revolutionary views, and were entirely discredited by Malthus' attacks upon them. The same lack of originality and of independent power characterized Godwin's novels. They all have a patch-work effect, and in all may be found the traces of imitation. "St. Leon" and "Mandeville"[198] are dull attempts in the direction of the historical novel. "Fleetwood, or the New Man of Feeling" embodies some of the author's social views, and contains evidence of an imitation of Fielding and Smollett, in which only their coarseness is successfully copied.

But Godwin gave one book to the world which has acquired a notoriety which entitles it to a more extended notice than its intrinsic merits would otherwise justify. "Caleb Williams" was first published in 1794, and was widely read. Lord Byron is said to have threatened his wife that he would treat her as Falkland had treated Caleb Williams, and this fact brought the novel into prominence with the Byron controversy, and occasioned its republication in the present century. The author tells us that his object was "to comprehend a general review of the modes of domestic and unrecorded despotism by which man becomes the destroyer of man." And this was to be done "without subtracting from the interest and passion by which a performance of this sort (a novel) ought to be characterized." In both his didactic and his artistic purpose the author must be said to have failed. The story is briefly as follows: Falkland, who is represented as a man whose chief thought and consideration consist in guarding his honor from stain, stabs Tyrrel, his enemy, in the back, at night. He then allows two innocent men to suffer for the murder on the gallows. His aim, during the remainder of his life, is to prevent the discovery of his crime and the consequent disgrace to his name. Caleb Williams enters his employment as a secretary, discovers the secret with the greatest ease, and promises never to betray his patron. Williams soon becomes weary of his position, and attempts to escape. He is accused by Falkland of robbery and is imprisoned. He escapes from prison, and wanders about the country, always pursued by the hirelings of his master who use every means to render his life miserable. Finally he openly accuses Falkland of his crime, who confesses it and dies. The story is full of the most evident inconsistencies. There is no adequate reason for Tyrrel's hatred of Falkland, which leads to the murder. It is inconceivable that a man of Falkland's worship of honor should commit so dastardly a crime, and should suffer two innocent men to pay its penalty. The facility with which Falkland allows his secretary to discover a secret which would bring him to the gallows is entirely inconsistent with the strength of mind which the author imputes to his hero. Finally, the confession of crime, after so many years of secrecy, and when conscience must have been blunted by time and habit, is without adequate cause. The characters are very slightly sketched, and excite neither interest nor sympathy. Emily Melville resembles Pamela too closely, and Tyrrel is a poor reproduction of Squire Western.