Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754)

by Unknown

But seen too oft, familiar with her face,

We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

The truth of this is confirmed, both by experience and the nature of things. The hearts of men are very corruptible, especially where there is an incitement from a natural passion; when they hear an unexampled piece of villainy, they are at first shocked, but if they dwell much upon it, they are at last familiarized to it, they are ingenious at inventing excuses for that to which they find an inclination, and at last feel less remorse at the actual commission, than they had conceived horror at the bare recital. But Mr. Pope is a Poet, and as you entertain no great affection for the tuneful tribe, perhaps his authority may have little weight; you are, however, a staunch believer, and an excellent Bible-scholar; I shall therefore try the efficacy of a scriptural inference. Moses, in his celebrated apologue of the fall, has introduced a fanciful imaginary scene, which he calls paradise; he has placed there a human couple, under the name of Adam and Eve; he supposes them created in a state of innocence and happiness, and prohibited to eat of one tree in the garden, which he calls the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, under the penalty of being subjected to death and misery; but that, being tempted by the serpent, they eat of this tree, and are driven out of Paradise. Many and various allegorical interpretations have been given of this fable, but the following, which has been adopted by some of the most eminent of the primitive fathers, and our modern divines, pleases me best, and seems most agreeable to the intention of the author. It is said, that by Adam we are to understand the mind or reason of man; by Eve, the flesh or outward senses; and by the serpent, lust or pleasure. This allegory, we are told, clearly explains the true causes of man’s fall and degeneracy, when his mind, through the weakness and treachery of his senses, became captivated and seduced by the allurements of lust and pleasure, he was driven by God out of Paradise; that is, lost and forfeited the happiness and prosperity which he had enjoyed in his innocence. This interpretation is certainly very ingenious, and conveys a noble and a beautiful moral; but I am of opinion, that, without straining it in the least, it may be carried a good deal farther, and that Moses, by prohibiting his imaginary pair to taste of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, intended to warn men against, and shew them the dangerous consequences of, an idle curiosity and researches into vain and useless Things, and to make them sensible, that all they could acquire thereby would be pain and misery, the necessary consequences of the loss of virtue and innocence, and a shameful sense of their own nakedness; that is, the corruption and depravity of human nature. This interpretation is not only deducible in a very obvious manner from the fable itself, but is likewise agreeable to experience. It is certain, that an ignorance of vice is, with great numbers, the best, and sometimes the only preservative against it, and that a simple and rural life is the proper soil wherein every virtue flourishes. Neither is such a state incompatible with the improvement of mankind in natural and moral philosophy, or their advancement in all the valuable arts and sciences.

The application of this doctrine to you is very obvious. Not to mention many faulty scenes in your Grandison and Pamela, several volumes of your Clarissa contain nothing else but a minute and circumstantial detail of the most shocking vices and villainous contrivances, transacted in the most infamous of places, and by the most infamous characters, and all to satisfy the brutal and the sensual appetite. Thus you act the part of the serpent, and not only throw out to men the tempting suggestions of lust and pleasure, but likewise instruct the weak head and the corrupt heart in the methods how to proceed to their gratification. That is, you tempt them to swallow the forbidden fruit of the tree which they were commanded not to eat; I mean the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This is a heavy, and indeed the principal charge against you; and I shall now condemn, or, if you please, judge you out of your own mouth. Lady G. in the letter she wrote to Harriet, just as she was setting out for Northamptonshire, to witness her happy nuptials with Grandison, has this remarkable passage.

Let me whisper you Harriet—sure you proud maiden minxes think—But I did once—I wonder in my heart oftentimes—But men and women are cheats to one another. But we may in a great measure thank the poetical tribe for the fascination. I hate them all. Are they not inflamers of the worst passions? With regard to Epics, would Alexander, madman as he was, have been so much a madman had it not been for Homer? Of what violences, murders, depredations, have not the Epic Poets been the occasion, by propagating false honour, false glory, and false religion? Those of the amorous class ought in all ages (could their future geniuses for tinkling sound and measure have been known) to have been strangled in their cradles. Abusers of talents given them for better purposes (for all this time I put sacred poesy out of the question) and avowedly claiming a right to be licentious, and to overleap the bounds of decency, truth and nature.

What a rant! (a rant indeed, Charlotte) how came these fellows into my rambling head? O I remember my whisper to you led me into all this stuff.

Well, and you at last recollect the trouble you have given my brother about you. Good Girl! Had I remembered that, I would have spared you my reflections on the poets and poetasters of all ages, the truly inspired ones (who are these, my dear) excepted. And yet I think the others should have been banished our commonwealth as well as Plato’s. So it seems we are to have a female republic, of which I suppose these Varletesses Harriet and Charlotte will be Consulesses.

There is good reason to believe that her lively ladyship speaks here your own sentiments, but what you can understand by sacred poesy is, I confess, above my comprehension. Does it consist in celestial ballads, holy madrigals, spiritual garlands, or bellmen’s verses? for I hardly know any other species of sacred poesy in our language, our religion being the most unpoetical in the world; so that a sacred subject can never appear with any grace, dignity, or beauty in a poem. I have already declared my opinion very explicitely about amorous writers, whether in prose or verse; but if the sentence which the dear flighty creature passes upon them all, without distinction, could have been executed, what must have become of her good friend Mr. Samuel Richardson. He too is a poet, for though he does not write in verse, yet he draws characters, and deals in fiction, and is besides one of the most amorous poets in the world; he does not indeed paint a Chloe or a Sachurissa in an ivy bower, or a shady grove, there is something of delicacy in that; but he represents all the preparations to the good work, and the good work itself, going forward, in a downright honest manner, among whores and rakes, in brothels and bagnios. He not only raises the passions, but kindly points out the readiest and the easiest way to lay them. That man must have a very philosophical constitution, indeed, who does not find himself moved by several descriptions, particularly that luscious one, which Bob Lovelace gives of Clarissa’s person, when he makes the attempt on her virtue, after the adventure of the fire. Not that I think any genius is required for such an atchievement; nature, with the least hint, is more than sufficient for the purpose; few good writers have attempted such things, and the very worst have succeeded. However, the passions of the reader being now raised, his next business is to satisfy them; and he cannot but reflect that this virtuous scene passes in a brothel, where, though Clarissa may be impregnable, unless a dose of opium be first administered, there are such girls as Sally Martin and Polly Horton; but they not being every man’s girls, as Bob Lovelace tells us, and our adventurer, perhaps, not having money, address, or patience, to come to the ultimatum with those first-rate ladies of pleasure, he very sagely concludes, that one woman is as good as another, especially as the same Bob Lovelace, so experienced in the ways of women, informs him, that that prime gift differs only in its external customary visibles, and that the skull of Philip is no better than another man’s, he very contentedly resolves to take up with Dorcas Wykes, or the first ready non-apparent he can meet with in the outer house. Accordingly our amorous youth sallies forth, fully bent to enjoy Clarissa in imagination; but before he has got half way to mother Sinclair’s, he meets a pretty girl in the streets, who invites him to a glass of wine, and the next tavern stands open for their reception. This is the natural catastrophe of a serious perusal of the fire-adventure; and I believe it has ended this way much oftener than in any good way. Thus if her flighty Ladyship would be impartial in the execution of her sentence, we may easily conjecture what would become of Samuel Richardson, at least of his works.

Let me whisper you, Charlotte.—Ought not this writer of the amorous class (could his future genius for loose and lascivious description have been known) to have been strangled in his cradle?—I see the charming archness rising in your eyes, which makes one both love you and fear you.—Yet you look meditatingly—Tell me, thou dear flighty creature—Am I not right?—Very right, Sir.—Huzzah, Sam.—well said—that’s a good girl—give me a buss for that, Hussy—Heyday, SIRR—Who allows you these liberties, SIRR!—I take them, Charlotte.—Do not think you have wemmell’d me quite—so none of your scrupulosities with me Varletess—but oh! what an eye-beam was there,—she has soul-harrow’d me by her frowns,—yet her anger may slide off on its own ice.—Then hey for lady Goosecap,—O Jack, the charmingest bosom, ever mine eyes beheld. ************

This is a small specimen of the manner and stile Richardsonian, that is my word, so greatly and so justly admired by the present age, with which, no less than eighteen large volumes are stuffed from beginning to end. But to return to our argument.