Did He who made the lamb make thee?
4. Robert Fergusson (1750–74). Fergusson was born in Edinburgh, and received his education at the university of that city, but soon fell into loose and disreputable habits. He contributed much to the local press, and acquired some reputation as a poet of the vernacular. His irregular habits led to the madhouse, in which he died at the early age of twenty-four.
Fergusson is chiefly notable as the forerunner of Burns, who was generous in his praise of the earlier poet. His best poems are short descriptive pieces dealing with Scottish life, such as The King’s Birthday, To the Tron Kirk, and The Farmer’s Ingle. This last poem perhaps suggested Burns’s Cotter’s Saturday Night. Fergusson gives clear and accurate descriptions, and his use of the vernacular Scots tongue is vigorous and natural, thus providing Burns with a model for his best style. (See p. [346].)
SAMUEL RICHARDSON (1689–1761)
1. His Life. Richardson was born in Derbyshire, the son of a joiner, by whom he was apprenticed to a London printer. Richardson was an industrious youth, and in the course of time rose high in the pursuit of his occupation. He became a master-printer, produced the journals of the House of Commons, and became printer to the King. He was a man of retiring and almost effeminate habits, but was generous and well liked.
2. His Novels. Richardson’s first attempts at writing fiction began at the age of thirteen, when he was the confidant of three illiterate young women, for whom he wrote love-letters. This practice afterward stood him in good stead. He was over fifty years old before he printed a novel of his own, called Pamela (1740). The book, which takes the form of a series of fictitious letters, deals with the fortunes of Pamela, a poor and virtuous maid of low degree, who marries and afterward reforms her wicked master. The work was instantly successful, exhausting five editions during the first year of its issue. The characters, especially the chief female character, slowly but accurately fabricated during the gradual evolution of the simple plot, were new to the readers of the time, and mark a great step forward in the history of the English novel. Richardson’s next novel, which was also constructed in the form of letters, was Clarissa Harlowe (1749). This treats of characters higher in the social scale, with indifferent success, and the end is made tragical. The heroine is a young lady of rank and fortune who is persecuted by a villain called Lovelace, and who dies finally of a broken heart. His third and last novel, also in letter-form, was Sir Charles Grandison (1753), dealing chiefly with persons still higher in the social world. Richardson contemplated calling the book A Good Man, for he intended the hero to be the perfection of the manly virtues. But Sir Charles is too good, and succeeds only in being tedious and unreal. The character of the social milieu in which the action is cast also weighs heavily upon Richardson, with the result that this book, which he intended to be his masterpiece, is the hollowest of the three.
3. Features of his Novels. Richardson’s works are largely the reflection of the man himself, and, in spite of their faults and limitations, are of immense importance in the development of the novel.
(a) Their most prominent feature is their immense length. In the last two works this is most noticeable.
(b) In spite of the great length of the books, the plots have little complexity; the length is due to an enormous accumulation of detail, both of character and incident, which is ingenious, but clogs the course of the story. He is really an adept in the minute analysis of motive and emotion, which gradually evolves a character that is entire and convincing, and he fills in his sketch with a multitude of tiny strokes.
(c) His novels convey the general impression of a certain kind of bloodlessness—a literary anemia—that is due to several causes. His themes are those of love-making; they are handled with a great parade of morality, but have nevertheless a simpering prudishness that conveys a stealthy suggestion of immorality. Then his good people are laboriously virtuous; his villains are stuffily vile; he is devoid of humor; the action is too frequently indoors; the sentiment is protracted and sickly. After a spell of reading such work one is glad to escape into the open air.