Chapter 2

Another thing in which I humbly conceive you have been in the wrong, is this: you constantly express a great virulence against those whom you call sentimental unbelievers, and take all opportunities to render them the objects of public odium and detestation. You cannot but be sensible, that such a conduct is contrary to the first and great duties of social virtue. Ought you to quarrel with any man because he is taller or shorter, fairer or blacker than yourself? And yet we can no more help our differing in speculative opinions than in stature or complexion. If you happen to feel the knowledge and perception of divine things supernaturally implanted on your mind, rejoice and be happy, but let not your Wrath arise against those who are not blest with the same sensations. Would you be angry with any man because his eye-sight cannot distinguish objects at such a great distance as yours? Why then quarrel with another for a deficiency of the same kind in spiritual optics? No doubt you will assert, that the truth of the present religious system may be proved by a long connected chain of demonstrative arguments. But if I might be allowed, without offence, to give my opinion in this matter, as far as you are concerned, I should say, that such an assertion is in you unbecoming, as well as the conduct you observe in consequence unjust and imprudent. The assertion is in you unbecoming, because, whatever you may think, the question, whether there was ever a divine revelation given, or a miracle wrought, or whether, supposing such things done, they can be proved to the conviction of a rational unprejudiced man, by moral evidence, and human testimony, requires more learning and judgment than you are possessed of, to determine with any precision. It requires, indeed, the greatest and most universal skill and knowledge in nature and her philosophy, which has not come to your share, as appears from your writings, where, as may easily be perceived, you retail all that little you have pickt up. The more knowledge a man has, he will always be the less assuming; and a positive stiffness, especially in commonly-received opinions, is a certain sign and constant attendant of ignorance. Socrates, the wisest man among the wisest people, after all his researches declared, that all that he knew was, that he knew nothing. Cicero, the greatest master of reason that ever lived, was a professed academic or sceptist. And a learned and virtuous modern, whom I forbear to name, in a letter to an intimate friend, confessed, that the more he thought, he found the more reason to doubt, and had always been more successful in discovering what was false, than what was true. Those illustrious three, learned, virtuous, and lovers of their country, to whom it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to add a fourth, were all sentimental unbelievers, and all at the same time inculcated a reverence and regard to the established religions of their respective countries. Nay, all sentimental unbelievers, had they not been provoked by the ill-judged bigotry of their adversaries, would have adhered unanimously to the same maxims. If their unbelief proceeds from a consciousness of the weakness and limited state of the human understanding, the constant result of true learning and philosophy, they will be the more firmly convinced of the great utility and absolute necessity of a public form of worship, and a religious corporation, and uniformly square their conduct accordingly. It was therefore unjust, as well as imprudent, in you, Sir, who are a popular writer, and whose works are read by every body, to endeavour to render sceptical free-thinkers, from their own principles the fastest and sincerest friends to religion in general, the objects of odium and detestation to the believers in that particular religion, which happens to be at present established by law. This, Sir, and I shall say no more, I hope may be said, from general principles, without offence to any party, without determining or declaring my own sentiments, which are in the right, and which in the wrong, with respect to the truth of their opinions.

I now proceed to the last thing proposed in these remarks, to examine how far your compositions have a natural tendency to advance virtue. They are all strictly dramatical, and therefore, whether they have a good or a bad tendency, they must exert themselves with a stronger influence on the minds of those who are affected by them. In all works of this kind, in order to make them truly valuable and useful, all, at least one of these three things ought to be done. First, by the constitution of the plot or the fable, some great and useful moral ought to be enforced and recommended. In the second place, the characters which are introduced ought to be so contrived, that the readers should be induced to imitate their virtues, or avoid their vices. Or, lastly, some one great moral virtue ought to be inculcated, by making it the characteristic of the Hero, or the chief person in the dramatic work. In these, as in every other species of poetry and composition, the divine Homer has excelled all other writers, he reigns unrivalled in them all, and will for ever be without a competitor; insomuch, that one certain way of judging the merit or demerit of all other authors, is, to enquire how near they have approached, or how far they have fallen short of this standard of perfection in writing. I shall now examine how far you, in your several performances, have succeeded, with respect to these articles, in the same order wherein they are set down. I have perused your late work, Grandison, carefully, and I hope impartially, with this view, and for my Heart I cannot so much as perceive the least shadow of either plot, fable, or action. If there are any, they certainly lie far out of the reach of my gross observation. Obvious they are not, which they ought to be to the most common reader. It may, indeed, be said, that no certain judgment can be formed of it, in that respect, till the whole is compleated. But it is no difficult matter to make probable conjectures about the contents of the volume still in embrio. We shall probably be entertained with a description of the nuptials between Lady Clementina and the Count de Belvedere; that happy couple, with Signor Jeronymo, and the rest of the Porretta family, will certainly pay a visit to Grandison and his admired Harriet; Beauchamp will be married to _that rogue_ Emily, in whom he already _meditates his future wife_; _the good doctor_ Bartlet may possibly pick up the dowager Lady Beauchamp; but if the dowager Lady should chuse a younger bedfellow, a match may be made up between him and _old aunt_ Nell; or if _old aunt_ Nell should continue obstinately determined against matrimony, the _good doctor_ and _grandmama_ Shirley may go to church together. And now, Sir, though all these desirable events should be happily accomplished, I should still be of the same opinion; nor can I see any moral that could be drawn from them, unless it be this, that men and women, old and young, after a certain ceremony is performed, may go to bed together, without shame or scandal, or any fear of being called to account for so doing by the churchwardens. The plot and fable of your Pamela may indeed be easily enough discovered. They consist in Mr. B.'s attempts to debauch his beautiful waiting-maid; in her resistance, and their happy nuptials. If we look for a moral, we shall find the only one that can be extracted out of it to be very ridiculous, useless, and impertinent; it appears to be this, that when a young gentleman of fortune cannot obtain his ends of a handsome servant girl, he ought to marry her; and that the said girl ought to resist him, in expectation of that event. Thus it is manifest, that these two compositions are equally below criticism, in this article, and, to do you justice, it must be confessed, that your Clarissa is as much above it. When considered in this light, it seems to be entirely Homerical. That divine poet, in his Iliad, has inculcated by one fable, and in the continuation of one action, two great and noble morals. The first is, that discord among chiefs or allies engaged in a confederacy, ruins their common designs, and renders them unsuccessful; and the second, that concord and agreement secure them prosperity in all their undertakings. In the same manner, in the first part of Clarissa, we find the bad consequences of the cruel treatment of parents towards their children, and forcing their inclinations in marriage; and in the second part, we see a fine example of the pernicious effects of a young lady's reposing confidence or engaging in correspondence with a man of profligate and debauched principles. I do not at present recollect any composition which, view'd in this light, can be compared with the Iliad and Clarissa. The morals of the first are of the utmost importance in public life, and those of the last in private life. If the little states and republicks of Greece, for whom Homer's poems were originally calculated, had adhered uniformly to their maxims, they would have been invincible, and must have subsisted to this day in all their glory and splendor. In the same manner, if the morals contained, and so admirably enforced by example, in your Clarissa, had their due weight, a vast variety of mischiefs and miseries in private life would be prevented. There is nothing in which parents are apter to stretch their authority too far, than in the article of marriage; there is nothing in which they pay less regard to the happiness of their children; nothing in which they allow less to the influence of passion and inclination in them; and nothing in which they are more sway'd by the dirty grovling passions of vanity, pride, and avarice, themselves. On the other hand, there is nothing in which young ladies, even of the greatest modesty and discretion, more readily fall into errors. It is pretty certain, that where they are allowed freely to follow their own biass, they generally prefer either real or reputed rakes, to men of a regular life and more sober deportment. I have often been puzzled in endeavouring to account for this conduct in the female world, so entirely contrary to what all of them think their real and most valuable interests. I have sometimes been tempted to impute it to the truth of this satyrical maxim in the poet,

That _every woman is at heart a rake_,

and that, custom and education having deterred them from the practice, they cannot help loving the theory in themselves, and preferring the practice in others. But I rather incline to attribute it to a cruel and unjust policy in the other sex, who have deceived and bubbled them in this, as well as several other articles, and have persuaded them of the truth of this notable maxim, that rakes make the best husbands, than which, as experience abundantly testifies, nothing can be more false. A rake, indeed, may be a good husband while the honey-moon lasts, for so long, perhaps, may novelty have a charm; but when that is ended, the lust of variety, the distinguishing characteristic of a rake, haunts him incessantly, like a ghost, and soon extinguishes all his principles of love, justice, and generosity. It is true, indeed, the proverb goes, that a reformed rake makes the best husband. It may be so, but then it is a truth of equal importance with this, that a pick-pocket going to the gallows is an honest man. His hands are tied behind him, and he has it not in his power to be otherwise; in the same manner a reformed rake is honest, because he has lost the ability to be otherwise, and he naturally fondles and doats upon his wife, that she may overlook deficiencies in more essential articles. He acts entirely from the same principles with those profuse and liberal old keepers, who are said to pay for what they cannot do.

Should we now examine how you have succeeded in contriving your characters, so as to be fit objects of imitation, if virtuous, and if vicious, so as to be proper examples for deterring others from the like practices, we shall find the principal ones extremely faulty, generally quite destitute of poetical probability, and in a word, far short of the Homeric standard. Homer's characters are for the most part drawn beyond the life; but the art with which he has reduced them to truth, and probability, is surprising. He has prodigiously exaggerated the bodily strength of Ajax, but then he has rendered all probable, by representing him of dull and heavy intellects. For it is a fact, that, with bulky unwieldy force, we generally connect the idea of a slow understanding. How consistently prudent is Ulysses, thro' the whole of his character; we never see him err thro' rashness, but rather commit faults, thro' an over caution. How wonderfully are we reconciled to the great garrulity of the venerable Nestor, which would be inexcusable, did we not reflect, at the same time, on his extreme old age, of which the poet never fails to remind us? How readily do we excuse the ferocity of Achilles, when we reflect that the generous youth prefers a short life, with fame and reputation, to a length of days, with peace and happiness? How artfully are we prevented from being shocked at his cruelty, in slaughtering without distinction, or remorse, all who come in his way? When we are told that he himself is acting under the certainty of meeting his death before the Trojan Wall? In short, Homer is possessed of this peculiar secret, to contrive and add such circumstances that render all his characters probable, and to blend vices and virtues of a similar quality so together, as to render them all uniformly consistent. And now tho' I confess, with pleasure, that you are far from being destitute of merit, in some of the characters you draw, yet you seem to be intirely unacquainted with this secret. In order to illustrate my assertion, I shall run thro' your principal characters in a cursory and desultory manner.

In Grandison, you have endeavoured to give an example of universal goodness and benevolence. But I am afraid you have strained and stretched that character too far; you have furnished him with too great a variety of accomplishments, some of them destructive, at least not so consistent with the principal and most shining virtue. _The man is every thing_, as Lucy or Harriet says; which no man ever was, or will be. Homer in the Odyssey, and in the character of Euemaeus, has given an example of universal benevolence; but then he represents him an entire rustic, living constantly in the country, shunning all public concourse of men, the court especially, and never going thither, but when obliged to supply the riotous luxury and extravagance of the suitors. Mr. Fielding has imitated these circumstances, as far as was consistent with our manners, in the character of Allworthy, and has with admirable judgment denied him an university education, made him a great lover of retirement, seldom absent from his country seat, never at the metropolis but when called by business, and constantly leaving it, when that was over. The ingenious authoress of David Simple, perhaps the best moral romance that we have, in which there is not one loose expression, one impure, one unchaste idea; from the perusal of which, no man can rise unimproved, has represented, her hero, a character likewise of universal benevolence, agreeably to the part he was to act; of tender years, quite unimproved by education, unexperienced, and ignorant of the ways of the world. Should we now consider the matter a little deeply, we shall find a reason in nature for the practice of these just painters of men and manners. A human creature, in a simple unimproved state, is naturally generous and benevolent; but when he comes abroad into the world, and observes the universal depravity of morals, and the narrow selfishness that every where prevail, according to his particular temper or circumstances, he is either contaminated by the example, or contracts a misanthropical disposition, and hates or despises the greatest part of his species. There may be, and no doubt there are, men who have seen the world, who have been conversant, even in courts, during their whole lives, who yet have retained and exercised humane and benevolent dispositions; but such characters are very rare, and, for the reasons above specified, never can be poetically probable. Such, Sir, is your Grandison; he seems never to have enjoyed retirement, to have been abroad almost all his life-time, to have seen all the courts in Europe, and been conversant, with the great, rich, and powerful, in all nations. You represent him likewise to be a man universally learned, and tell us, at the same time, in capital letters, that SIR CH. GRAN. is a CHRISTIAN; and that too, in the strictest and most bigotted sense of the word; for he refuses the woman he loves, for a difference in religious principles. This, in my humble opinion, is likewise an inconsistency, for universal learning naturally leads to scepticism, and the most useful, as well as solid branch of human knowledge, consists in knowing how little can be known. There are several other inconsistencies in his character, particularly in some of his duelling stories; besides, at any rate, his benevolence has something showy and ostentatious in it; nothing in short of that graceful and beautiful nature which appears in Fielding's Allworthy.

The character of Lovelace is yet more inconsistent, still more deficient in poetical probability, and indeed intirely contradictory to Homer and nature. In all Homer's works, there are not two characters between whom there is a greater contrast and opposition, than between those of Achilles and Ulysses. They enjoy no quality in common, but that of valour; and the valour of the one is as different from that of the other, as can well be imagin'd; for they all along partake of their general characters, and are consistent with them. But you, Sir, who, in the mouth of Harriet Byron and that _dear flighty creature_ Lady G. sometimes take upon you to criticize that great master of nature, shew that you have either never studied him, or profited very little by him; for in this one character of Lovelace, you have united these two dissimilar and discordant characters of Achilles and Ulysses; you have given him all the fierceness, cruelty, and contempt of laws, impetuosity, rashness, in short, all the furious ungovernable passions of the one, and have at the same time provided him with all the cunning, craft, dissimulation, and command over his passions, which so much distinguish the other. How to reconcile to probability, or even to possibility, the existence of such opposite and contradictory qualities in one human bosom, is a task which I leave to you.

The fine, or rather the _naughty gentleman_, in your Pamela, to whom Mr. Fielding very properly gives the sirname of Booby, is indeed one of the greatest bubbles, and blunderers that one can meet withal. You have informed us, that he had been a great rake, and had debauched several women; 'tis well you have done so, but he certainly had made little proficiency in that laudable science, for, from his whole behaviour towards his Pamela, one should be apt to think him the meerest novice in the world. He opens trenches before her properly enough, by giving her silk stockings and fine cloaths to feed her pride and vanity; but when he comes to make a more direct attack in the summer-house, how sheepishly does he act, and what blunders does he not commit? He attempts to kiss her, the girl, as is natural, struggles, and grows angry; he lets her go, and bribes her, with five guineas, to keep the secret. This was knocking his project in the head at once; and had he been guilty of no other blunders, as he was of innumerable, was sufficient to ruin his cause with her for ever. He was not to expect, that a girl, piously educated, would surrender at the very first, especially to a summons given in so blunt and indelicate a manner; on the contrary, he ought to have laid his account with meeting a good deal of anger and resistance; to have born all, with patience, and laughed off his attempt for an innocent frolic; and if she threatened to inform Mrs. Jervis, to have bidden her do so, and told her, that he would kiss Mrs. Jervis and her both. In which case she never would have opened her lips about the matter; in every succeeding attempt, he would have met with less and less resistance, till at last he might have accomplished his desires, before Miss Pamela had certainly known what he would be at. But by his offering to bribe her to silence, he betrayed all his designs, and informed her she had a secret to keep, which unless she had been constitutionally vicious, it was imposible for her not to disclose. Mr. Booby shews likewise the utmost ignorance of human nature, in thinking to gain his ends with a young and innocent girl by the force of money. All young girls are taught to put a value on their virginity, and unless debauched by their own sex, they never will part with it, but to those they like. None but well-disciplin'd ladies of the town are to be gained upon by meer money; and Mr. Booby, by the whole of his conduct, appears to be nothing but a downright Covent-garden rake. He was resolved to have Pamela, and marriage was indeed the only way left for him. This your first performance concludes with that happy event, and having sold well, I imagine you was induced to continue the story. But had I undertaken that task, without violating the probability or the consistency of the characters, I should have introduced Parson Williams very fairly making a cuckold of Booby, and providing him with an heir to his estate, which is the way all such Boobies ought to be treated, and a proper catastrophe for all such preposterous matches.