She continues thus:
"'This, Clary, is a pretty pattern enough. But this is quite charming?—And this, were I you, should be my wedding nightgown. But, Clary, won't you have a velvet suit? It would cut a great figure in a country church, you know. Crimson velvet, suppose! Such a fine complexion as yours, how it would be set off by it!—And do you sigh, love? Black velvet, so fair as you are, with those charming eyes, gleaming through a wintry cloud, like an April sun. Does not Lovelace tell you they are charming eyes?'"[771]
Then, when Arabella is reminded that, three months ago, she did not find Lovelace so worthy of scorn, she nearly chokes with passion; she wants to beat her sister, cannot speak, and says to her aunt, "with great violence": "Let us go, madam; let us leave the creature so swell till she burst with her own poison."[772] It reminds us of a pack of hounds in full cry after a deer, which is caught, and wounded; whilst the pack grow more eager and more ferocious, because they have tasted blood.
At the last moment, when she thinks to escape them, a new chase begins, more dangerous than the other. Lovelace has all the evil passions of Harlowe, and in addition a genius which sharpens and aggravates them. What; a character! How English! how different from the Don Juan of Mozart or of Molière! Before everything he wishes to have the cruel fair one in his power: then come the desire to bend others, a combative spirit, a craving for triumph; only after all these come the senses. He spares an innocent, young girl, because he knows she is easy to conquer, and the grandmother "has besought him to be merciful to her. The Debellare superbos should be my motto,"[773] he writes to his friend Belford; and in another letter he says, "I always considered opposition and resistance as a challenge to do my worst."[774] At bottom, pride', infinite, insatiable, senseless, is the mainspring, the only motive of all his actions. He acknowledges "that he only wanted Cæsar's outsetting to make a figure among his contemporaries,"[775] and that he only stoops to private conquests out of mere whim. He declares that he would not marry the first princess on earth, if he but thought she balanced a minute in her choice of him or of an emperor. He is held to be gay, brilliant, conversational; but this petulance of animal vigor is only external; he is cruel, jests savagely, in cool blood, like a hangman, about the harm which he has done or means to do. He reassures a poor servant who is troubled at having given up Clarissa to him in the following words: "The affair of Miss Betterton was a youthful frolick.... I went into mourning for her, though abroad at the time—a distinction I have ever paid to those worthy creatures who died in child-bed by me.... Why this squeamishness, then, honest Joseph?"[776] The English roisterers of those days threw the human body in the sewers. One gentleman, a friend of Lovelace, "tricked a farmer's daughter, a pretty girl, up to town,... drank her light-hearted,... then to the play... then to the bagnio, ruined her; kept her on a fortnight or three weeks; then left her to the mercy of the people of the bagnio (never paying for anything), who stript her of all her cloaths, and because she would not take on, threw her into prison, where she died in want and in despair."[777] The rakes in France were only rascals,[778] here they were villains; wickedness with them poisoned love. Lovelace hates Clarissa even more than he loves her. He has a book in which he sets down, he says, "all the family faults and the infinite trouble she herself has given me. When my heart is soft, and all her own, I can but turn to memoranda, and harden myself at once."[779] He is angry because she dares to defend herself, says that he'll teach her to vie with him in inventions, to make plots against and for her conqueror. It is a struggle between them without truce or halting. Lovelace says of himself: "What an industrious spirit have I! Nobody can say that I eat the bread of idleness;... certainly, with this active soul, I should have made a very great figure in whatever station I had filled."[780] He assaults and besieges her, spends whole nights outside her house, gives the Harlowes servants of his own, invents stories, introduces personages under a false name, forges letters. There is no expense, fatigue, plot, treachery which he will not undertake. All weapons are the same to him. He digs and plans even when away, ten, twenty, fifty saps, which all meet in the same mine. He provides against everything; he is ready for everything; divines, dares everything, against all duty, humanity, common-sense, in spite of the prayers of his friends, the entreaties of Clarissa, his own remorse. Excessive will, here as with the Harlowes, becomes an iron wheel, which twists out of shape and breaks to pieces what it ought to bend, so that at last, by blind impetuosity, it is broken by its own impetus, over the ruins it has made.
Against such assaults what resources has Clarissa? A will as determined as Lovelace's. She also is armed for war, and admits that she has as much of her father's spirit as of her mother's gentleness. Though gentle, though readily driven into Christian humility, she has pride; she "had hoped to be an example to young persons" of her sex; she possesses the firmness of a man, and above all a masculine reflection.[781] What self-scrutiny! what vigilance! what minute and indefatigable observation of her conduct, and that of others![782] No action, or word, involuntary or other gesture of Lovelace is unobserved by her, uninterpreted, unjudged, with the perspicacity and clearness of mind of a diplomatist and a moralist! We must read these long conversations, in which no word is used without calculation, genuine duels daily renewed, with death, nay, with dishonor before her. She knows it, is not disturbed, remains ever mistress of herself, never exposes herself, is not dazed, defends every inch of ground, feeling that all the world is on his side, no one for her, that she loses ground, and will lose more, that she will fall, that she is falling. And yet she bends not. What a change since Shakespeare! Whence comes this new and original idea of woman? Who has encased these yielding and tender innocents with such heroism and calculation? Puritanism transferred to the laity. Clarissa "never looked upon any duty, much less a voluntary vowed one, with indifference." She has passed her whole life in looking at these duties. She has placed certain principles before her, has reasoned upon them, applied them to the various circumstances of life, has fortified herself on every point with maxims, distinctions, and arguments. She has set round her, like bristling and multiplied ramparts, a numberless army of inflexible precepts. We can only reach her by turning over her whole mind and her whole past. This is her force, and also her weakness; for she is so carefully defended by her fortifications, that she is a prisoner; her principles are a snare to her, and her virtue destroys her. She wishes to preserve too much decorum. She refuses to apply to a magistrate, for it would make public the family quarrels. She does not resist her father openly; that would be against filial humility. She does not repel Solmes violently, like a hound, as he is; it would be contrary to feminine delicacy. She will not leave home with Miss Howe; that might injure the character of her friend. She reproves Lovelace when he swears,[783] a good Christian ought to protest against scandal. She is argumentative and pedantic, a politician and a preacher; she wearies us, she does not act like a woman. When a room is on fire, a young girl flies barefooted, and does not do what Miss Clarissa does—ask for her slippers. I am very sorry for it, but I say it with bated breath, the sublime Clarissa had a little mind; her virtue is like the piety of devotees, literal and over-nice. She does not carry us away, she has always her guide of deportment in her hand; she does not discover her duties, but follows instructions; she has not the audacity of great resolutions, she possesses more conscience and firmness than enthusiasm and genius.[784] This is the advantage of morality pushed to an extreme, no matter what the school or the aim is. By dint of regulating man, we narrow him.
Poor Richardson, unsuspiciously, has been at pains to set the thing forth in broad light, and has created Sir Charles Grandison "a man of true honor." I cannot say whether this model has converted many. There is nothing so insipid as an edifying hero. This Sir Charles is as correct as an automaton; he passes his life in weighing his duties, and "with an air of gallantry."[785] When he goes to visit a sick person, he has scruples about going on a Sunday, but reassures his conscience by saying; "I am afraid I must borrow of the Sunday some hours on my journey; but visiting the sick is an act of mercy."[786] Would anyone believe that such a man could fall in love? Such is the case, however, but in a manner of his own. Thus he writes to his betrothed: "And now, loveliest and dearest of women, allow me to expect the honour of a line, to let me know how much of the tedious month from last Thursday you will be so good to abate.... My utmost gratitude will ever be engaged by the condescension, whenever you shall distinguish the day of the year, distinguished as it will be to the end of my life that shall give me the greatest blessing of it and confirm me—forever yours, Charles Grandison."[787] A wax figure could not be more proper. All is in the same taste. There are eight wedding-coaches, each with four horses; Sir Charles is attentive to old people; at table, the gentlemen, each with a napkin under his arm, wait upon the ladies; the bride is ever on the point of fainting; he throws himself at her feet with the utmost politeness: "What, my love! In compliment to the best of parents resume your usual presence of mind. I, else, who shall glory before a thousand witnesses in receiving the honor of your hand, shall be ready to regret that I acquiesced so cheerfully with the wishes of those parental friends for a public celebration."[788] Courtesies begin, compliments fly about; a swarm of proprieties flutters around, like a troop of little love-cherubs, and their devout wings serve to sanctify the blessed tendernesses of the happy couple. Tears abound; Harriet bemoans the fate of Sir Hargrave Pollexfen, whilst Sir Charles, "in a soothing, tender, and respectful manner, put his arm round me, and taking my own handkerchief, unresisted, wiped away the tears as they fell on my cheek. Sweet humanity! Charming sensibility! Check not the kindly gush. Dewdrops of heaven! (wiping away my tears, and kissing the handkerchief), dewdrops of heaven, from a mind like that heaven mild and gracious!"[789] It is too much; we are surfeited, we say to ourselves that these phrases should be accompanied by a mandoline. The most patient of mortals feels himself sick at heart when he has swallowed a thousand pages of his sentimental twaddle, and all the milk and water of love. To crown all, Sir Charles, seeing Harriet embrace her rival, sketches the plan of a little temple, dedicated to Friendship, to be built on the very spot; it is the triumph of mythological bad taste. At the end, bouquets shower down as at the opera; all the characters sing in unison a chorus in praise of Sir Charles, and his wife says: "But could he be otherwise than the best of husbands, who was the most dutiful of sons, who is the most affectionate of brothers; the most faithful of friends: who is good upon principle in every relation of life!"[790] He is great, he is generous, delicate, pious, irreproachable; he has never done a mean action, nor made a wrong gesture. His conscience and his wig are unsullied. Amen! Let us canonize him, and stuff him with straw.
Nor, my dear Richardson, have you, great as you are, exactly all the wit which is necessary in order to have enough. By seeking to serve morality, you prejudice it. Do you know the effect of these edifying advertisements which you stick on at the beginning or end of your books? We are repelled, feel our emotion diminish, see the black-gowned preacher come snuffling out of the worldly dress which he had assumed for an hour; we are annoyed by the deceit. Insinuate morality, but do not inflict it. Remember there is a substratum of rebellion in the human heart, and that if we too openly set ourselves to wall it up with discipline, it escapes and looks for free air outside. You print at the end of "Pamela" the catalogue of the virtues of which she is an example; the reader yawns, forgets his pleasure, ceases to believe, and asks himself if the heavenly heroine was not an ecclesiastical puppet, trotted out to give him a lesson. You relate at the end of "Clarissa Harlowe" the punishment of all the wicked, great and small, sparing none; the reader laughs, says that things happen otherwise in this world, and bids you put in here like Arnolphe,[791] a description "of the cauldrons in which the souls of those who have led evil lives are to boil in the infernal regions. We are not such fools as you take us for. There is no need that you should shout to make us afraid; that you should write out the lesson by itself, and in capitals, in order to distinguish it. We love art, and you have a scant amount of it; we want to be pleased, and you don't care to please us. You copy all the letters, detail the conversations, tell everything, prune nothing; your novels fill many volumes; spare us, use the scissors; be a skilled literary workman, not a registrar of the Rolls office. Do not pour out your library of documents on the high-road. Art is different from nature; the latter draws out, the first condenses. Twenty letters of twenty pages do not display a character; but one brilliant saying does. You are weighed down by your conscience, which compels you to move step by step and slow; you are afraid of your genius; you rein it in; you dare not use loud cries and free speech at the very moment when passion is most virulent; you flounder into emphatic and well-written phrases;[792] you will not show nature as it is, as Shakespeare shows it, when, stung by passion as by a hot iron, it cries out, rears, and bounds over your barriers. You cannot love it, and your punishment is that you cannot see it."[793]
[Section V.—Henry Fielding]
Fielding protests on behalf of nature; and certainly, to see his actions and his persons, we think him made expressly for that purpose, a robust, strongly built man, above six feet high, sanguine, with an excess of good humor and animal spirits, loyal, generous, affectionate, and brave, but imprudent, extravagant, a drinker, a roisterer, ruined as his father was before him, having seen the ups and downs of life, not always clean, but always jolly. Lady Wortley Montague says of him: "His happy constitution made him forget everything when he was before a venison pasty, or over a flask of champagne."[794] Natural impulse, somewhat coarse but generous, sways him. It does not restrain itself, it flows freely, it follows its own bent, not choice in its course, not confining itself to banks, miry but copious, and in a broad channel. From the outset an abundance of health and physical impetuosity plunges Fielding into gross jovial excess, and the immoderate sap of youth bubbles up in him until he marries and becomes ripe in years. He is gay, and seeks gayety; he is careless, and has not even literary vanity. One day Garrick begged him to cut down an awkward scene, and told him "that a repulse would flurry him so much, he should not be able to do justice to the part. If the scene is not a good one, let them find that out," said Fielding; just as was foreseen, the house made a violent uproar, and the performer tried to quell it by retiring to the green-room, where the author was supporting his spirits with a bottle of champagne. "What is the matter, Garrick? are they hissing me now? Yes, just the same passage that I wanted you to retrench. Oh," replied the author, "I did not give them credit for it: they have found it out, have they?"[795] In this easy manner he took all mischances. He went ahead without feeling the bruises much, like a confident man, whose heart expands and whose skin is thick. When he inherited some money he feasted, gave dinners to his neighbors, kept a pack of hounds and a lot of magnificent lackeys in yellow livery. In three years he had spent it all; but courage remained, he finished his law studies, prepared a voluminous Digest of the Statutes at Large, in two folio volumes, which remained unpublished, became a magistrate, destroyed bands of robbers, and earned in the most insipid of labors "the dirtiest money upon earth." Disgust, weariness did not affect him; he was too solidly made to have the nerves of a woman. Force, activity, invention, tenderness, all overflowed in him. He had a mother's fondness for his children, adored his wife, became almost mad when he lost her, found no other consolation than to weep with his maid-servant, and ended by marrying that good and honest girl, that he might give a mother to his children; the last trait in the portrait of this valiant plebeian heart, quick in telling all, having no dislikes, but all the best parts of man except delicacy. We read his books as we drink a pure, wholesome, and rough wine, which cheers and fortifies us, and which wants nothing but bouquet.