Lewis in "The Monk," and Maturin in "The Family of Montorio," carried the principles of the Radcliffe school beyond the verge of absurdity. Their novels are wild melodramas, the product of distorted imaginations, in which endless horrors are mingled with gross violations of decency. "The Monk" and "The Family of Montorio" had a great reputation in their day, and in contemporary criticism we find their praise sung and their immortality predicted. But, while they illustrate, on the one hand, the temporary vogue an author may acquire by highly-wrought clap-trap and flashy flights of imagination, they show very plainly, in the oblivion which has overtaken them, how little such characteristics avail in the race for enduring fame.
[201] "The Mysteries of Udolpho," chap. xix.
[202] "The Mysteries of Udolpho," ch. iv.
V.
At the end of the eighteenth century, the novel had become established as a popular form of literature, and the number of its votaries had begun to assume the proportions which have since made novelists by far the most numerous literary body. Some writers, perhaps, have been omitted who deserved mention as much as some who have been commented upon. But all have been spoken of, it is believed, who contributed any new ideas or methods to the art of fictitious composition.
The novel had, indeed, taken the place of the stage to a very great extent. If we compare the productions of the dramatist with those of the novelist, as regards both quantity and merit, during the last hundred and fifty years, we shall perceive a great preponderance in favor of the writer of fiction. Although there are some respects in which the novel cannot compete with the drama, there are obvious reasons why the former should be much better adapted than the latter to modern requirements. Great changes have come over the audience. With the progress of civilization, life has become less and less dramatic, and affords fewer striking scenes and violent ebullitions of passion. It not only furnishes far less material for stage effects, but also supplies little of that sympathy which the dramatist must find in the minds of his audience. While life has become less dramatic, it has become far more complex, and requires a broader treatment in its delineation than the restrictions of the stage can allow.
As we look back upon the fiction of the eighteenth century it is evident that the novel, like the play, is capable of great uses and of great abuses, according to the spirit in which it is written. In the hands of Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Goldsmith, and Miss Burney, it reached a high position as a work of art. It retained, indeed, much of the manner of the story of adventure, inasmuch as the interest was more commonly made to depend on the fortunes of a chosen hero than on the development of a well constructed plot. But "Robinson Crusoe," "Tom Jones," "The Vicar of Wakefield," and "Evelina," are works which deserve and possess the interest of the present time. Such books as these are to be cherished as precious legacies from the years that have gone before. They have given, in the course of their long active circulation, an incalculable amount of pleasure. They have supplied posterity with a picturesque view of the life and manners of their ancestors which could not be acquired from any other source. But while the fiction of the eighteenth century includes much that is valuable from a literary and from a historical point of view, it includes also a great quantity of worthless and injurious writing. By far the larger number of novels published were of a kind likely to exert an evil influence on their readers. Their coarseness and licentiousness had a strong tendency to disseminate the morbid thoughts and unregulated passions which dictated their production. So general was the feeling that a work of fiction would probably contain immoral and debasing views of life, that the novel and the novelist, were both looked upon askance. "In the republic of letters," said Miss Burney, "there is no member of such inferior rank, or who is so much disdained by his brethren of the quill, as the humble novelist; nor is his fate less hard in the world at large, since, among the whole class of writers perhaps not one can be named of which the votaries are more numerous but less respectable." Miss Edgeworth, in the beginning of the present century, felt it necessary to call her first novel "a moral tale," because so much folly, error, and vice are disseminated in books classed "under the denomination of novels." A great part of the fiction of the last century, as indeed of our own time, possesses neither the value of a work of art nor that belonging to the description and preservation of contemporary manners. Nor could the excuse of the amusement they afforded be called up in their favor. No amusement is worth having which is not healthy and innocent. The general prejudice which formerly existed against novels very much lessened their circulation, and lessened the evil done by licentious productions. Careful parents did not allow a novel in their children's hands which had not passed an examination—a precaution now too generally neglected.
But notwithstanding all the trash, and worse than trash, which has gone into circulation under the broad and attractive term of novel, it is evident that the English speaking public on both sides of the Atlantic demand purity in the works of fiction which are submitted to its judgment. While no literary work can present a greater claim to permanent favor than a really good novel, none is more certain to be quite ephemeral than a bad one, whether its badness consist in the manner or the matter. For more than a hundred years "The Vicar of Wakefield" has held its own, while hundreds of novels which created more sensation at the time of their appearance have fallen into everlasting oblivion. And this triumph is not only due to literary excellence, but to the human excellence of the conception which Goldsmith gave to the world.