Chapter 4

Many, Sir, share equally in this guilt with you; however, it is not the less for being divided; but if this were all, you might pass undistinguished in the general censure. There is one species of iniquity, for so I must call it, in which you so much excel, in which you have acquired a pre-eminence so conspicuous, that all other writers, when you appear, must hide their diminished heads, like stars before the sun: that consists in drawing characters the most shockingly vicious, and giving examples of villainy the most infamous, and by that means instructing the ignorant and innocent in the theory of crimes, which, without a thorough knowledge of the town, they could never have suspected human nature to have been capable of. Any one who remembers the correspondence between Lovelace and Belford, and what passes in that infernal brothel, to which Clarissa was conducted, will at once perceive what I have in view. Equally admirable and just is this aphorism of our noble and inimitable poet.

_Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,_ _As to be hated needs but to be seen;_ _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.

You have been already found fault with for the shocking description Jack Belford gives of that levy of damsels who attended mother Sinclair on her death-bed, such a scene must certainly be shocking enough, yet could not be near so much on the part of the ladies as is represented; but it must be remembered, that Jackey had then _got into his Horribles_, as Bob terms it, and, as Bays has it, he rounded it off egad. I have one great objection to all such descriptions which is implied in the verses above cited from Mr. Pope, but there is another and a greater against this, that it is contrary to truth. Few, or none of our English ladies of pleasure exercise the mystery of painting, and bating the odoriferous particles of gin, which sometimes exhale from their breaths, there are many of them, without any disparagement, as little slatternly in their persons, as most other fine ladies in a morning; indeed, if such descriptions had the same effect on the minds of youth, that raw-head and bloody-bones have upon children, to frighten them from the objects they ought to shun they might be of some service, but when upon trial they find them better than they have been taught to believe them, they are apt to imagine them not so bad as they really are.

Let us now return to _the dear flighty creature_, and the sentence which she passes upon the Poets. She has a fling at Homer, whom the beauteous Harriet, in her dispute with the university pedant, had before criticized upon in a masterly manner, and like a good Englishwoman, from the authority of her godfather Deane, concluded, that our Milton has excelled him in the sublimity of his images, this, is a controversy which I shall not enter into, with so lovely a disputant, whose eyes, whatever her lips may be, are always in the right. We are asked, _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?_ These remarks are, I suppose, occasioned by the great veneration which the Macedonian hero professed for Homer's writings, and by his famous imitation, or rather improvement, on the cruelty of Achilles, in dragging round the walls of a conquered city its brave defender. But may it not be asked with equal, if not greater propriety, would many profligate and abandoned, as they naturally are, be so very profligate and abandoned, were it not for Richardson? And, of what rapes, violences, and debaucheries, have not the Romance writers been the occasion, by propagating false love, false chastity, and false, I shall not add religion, 'till you, who are so well qualified, have demonstrated which is the true one? If Alexander exceeded Achilles in cruelty, may not many go beyond Lovelace in that, as well as in debauchery? None but such as Alexander have ever proposed to imitate Achilles, but every man of a moderate fortune may set up Lovelace for a pattern, by whom to model his conduct. Should it be said, that in Lovelace, Richardson gives the example of a man, who brought ruin and destruction on himself by his vices, and that he constantly expresses the utmost abhorrence of his bad morals, with equal, nay, with greater justice, must not the same be said of Homer? Nay, as it happens, he expresses in his own person a thing not usual with him, his disapprobation in the strongest terms, of Achilles's barbarous usage of Heistor's dead Body, that piece of cruelty which Alexander particularly imitated.

+Hektora dion aeikea medeto erga+ are his words, when he introduces the narration of that event. No doubt Homer's writings have been, and may be abused, and so may the best and most useful of all human inventions; religion itself has not escaped, and its abuse has been ever attended with the most pernicious and destructive consequences. But surely they are not so liable to be abused as your compositions; Homer, indeed, describes vicious characters, but all their viciousness consists in the natural passions being carried to a blameable excess, he paints no improvement, no refinement, no elaborate contrivance in villany, this is what you excell in, above all the authors antient or modern, I remember to have read. The anger of Achilles was raised by a most provoking insult which he received from Agamemnon. He thus expresses himself:

_My maid, my black-ey'd maid he forc'd away,_ _Due to the toils of many a dreadful Day,_ _From me he forc'd her, me, the bold and brave,_ _Disgrac'd, dishonour'd, like the vilest slave._

What could be more natural than a resentment on such an occasion? And what could be more natural, than for a man of Achilles's temper to carry that resentment too far? Both he and Agamemnon suffer severely for the errors they commit; and what renders the fable still more beautiful, and the moral still more instructive, is this consideration, that their sufferings appear to be the unavoidable and necessary consequences of their errors; of course, nothing can more effectually deter others in similar circumstances from being guilty of the like faults for the future. But the oeconomy of your plot, and the disposition of your characters, are entirely different. Lovelace determines on the ruin of Clarissa, from motives and passions altogether unnatural, which could subsist no where, but in a heart debauched of itself, initiated in all the mysteries of villany, and regularly educated in an academy of wickedness; his motives and passions are an aversion to marriage, a resentment against Clarissa's family, an infamous resolution to wreak his revenge on the only person in it, who loved him; a ridiculous doubt of her virtue, and a vain-glorious pride, in having a reputation for intrigue, and adding an honourable name to a list, which it seems he kept, of the credulous fools he had already ruined, and the tricks which he put in practice, to bring about that diabolical end, are all uniformly of a piece with the motives and passions which inspired them; nor is the matter in the least mended by the catastrophe which ensues; for it is not the necessary and unavoidable consequence of his committed crimes, you are at the greatest pains to let us know so much out of his own mouth: _Who could have thought it_, says he to his friend Belford, _I have said it a thousand times, surely there never can be such another woman_; thus, you must be sensible you have entirely destroyed the moral, and any good effect that could be expected from the example; for, if there never can be such another woman as Clarissa, and such a catastrophe is not again to be dreaded, there is nothing to deter another Rake from putting in practice the same infamous schemes, upon any other woman he may happen to have in his power.

Thus far, Sir, have I carried the parallel between Homer and you, with respect to the moral tendency of your works, a parallel in any other view, you yourself must be sensible would be ridiculous. Were I to extend it farther, it would still conclude more to your disadvantage, but I think enough is said to convince any impartial person, that if the one, with the smallest appearance of justice, was denied an admission into the Platonic commonwealth, the other would have been kick'd out of it with shame and disgrace; yet, you have very pleasantly contrived to find a place there for yourself, in Homer's room. You have adopted and inserted in your Clarissa the four following verses, of a poetical encomium which was made upon it.

_Even Plato in Lyceum's awful shade,_ _Th' instructive page, with transport had survey'd,_ _And own'd its author, to have well supplied,_ _The place, his laws, to Homer's self denied._

Under these lines we have this note. By the laws of Plato's commonwealth, Homer was denied a place there, on account of the bad tendency of the morals he ascribes to his Gods and his Heroes; but from the short parallel I have drawn, let the impartial determine whose writings have the worst tendency. I know nothing of your poet Laureate, therefore shall say as little of him, but I cannot tell which most to wonder at, your own ignorance or vanity, the last is conspicuous in numberless other places as well as this, the first is scarce less so. Tho' you have mention'd Plato's commonwealth oftener than once in your works, yet, it appears that you know nothing of its nature or constitution, by which it was rendered impossible, for such characters as you describe, to have either an existence, or an admission into that imaginary republic. The pride of wealth in the Harlow family, and the pride of titles and descent in the Lovelace family, can no where be found, save, in a monarchial and commercial state, where there is a hereditary noblesse, and a great inequality among the fortunes of the citizens. Neither can such characters as Lovelace and his associates, or mother Sinclair and her nymphs, display themselves, or such a place as the mother's brothel, subsist any where but in a city like London, the overgrown metropolis of a powerful Empire, and an extensive commerce; all these corruptions, are the necessary and unavoidable consequences of such a constitution of things. In order to prevent which, Plato made the basis of his republic consist in a perfect equality of the citizens, both with respect to honours and estates, and to banish commerce, in his opinion, the other great corrupter of the morals of a people, forever from the state; he supposes that his city is built in an inland country, at a distance from the Ocean or Sea-ports. I shall not pretend to justify Plato in all his whims; but it is certain, that if such an establishment were practicable, every public and private virtue would have a better chance to flourish there, than in any other State, where different principles prevail. From these circumstances it is manifest, that if we could suppose a Platonic citizen, entirely unacquainted with what passes in the world, beyond the verges of his own republic, he would imagine, if such a book as Clarissa was recommended to his perusal, that the characters described in it were monsters, not men, and existed no where, except in the depraved fancy of its author.

Here, Sir, I put a period to my general remarks on your compositions; I cannot say they are thrown altogether into a regular order, but they may do well enough in a loose essay, as this is intended to be. It would require a bulky volume to contain remarks on all the passages which deserve it, whether it were to point out innumerable faults, or some few shining beauties. I am not equal to the task, and, though I were, should not undertake it. Had you wrote nothing else, Pamela would have been consigned, long before now, to utter neglect and oblivion. Such soon will be the fate of Grandison, admired and sought after as it is at present. People must some time or other tire of conning over such quantities of flimzy stuff. I wonder at their present patience and perseverance, and can never sufficiently admire the contexture of that brain which can weave with unwearied toil such immense webs of idle tittle-tattle, and gossipping nonsense. Clarissa perhaps deserves a better fate.

_Great are its faults, but glorious is its flame_, may not improperly be said of it, as has been said of Shakespear's Othello.