Part 3

Much of his satire was meant to set off certain follies of his own time, but to us the most valuable part of it is that which portrays the general frailties of humanity. He holds up to nature a mirror which, while it distorts the features a little, still makes the caricature extremely lifelike. Even where the Lilliputians are most absurd we recognize their similarity to ourselves. The quarrels between the partisans of low and high heeled shoes, the revolution and obstinate war concerning the proper manner of opening an egg, are not a whit more nonsensical than some of our own social and theological controversies. The Lilliputians bury their dead with the head down in order that the body may be in the right position for the resurrection, just as the Mahometan faces Mecca in his prayers, the Christian builds his church according to certain points of the compass, and the ritualist makes his genuflexions in carefully prescribed forms, for reasons quite as cogent and unanswerable.

The “little people” well knew there were no other regions of the earth than Lilliput and Blefuscu, and here, too, we are like them. Most of us consider that all there is of importance in the universe is that which falls within our own spheres of observation.

No one can read Swift’s story without reflecting that our own little world must seem much like Lilliput to the great eye which looks upon this planet as only one among the islands of the firmament.

In Laputa we see ourselves even more clearly. We can find counterparts of the great lord of wide attainments and eminent services, who was accounted ignorant and stupid because he had so ill an ear for music that he beat time in the wrong place. The philosophers who moved about the earth with one eye turned inward and the other upward toward the zenith, and who constantly required a flapper to bring them to their senses, are old and familiar acquaintances.

The proposition to impose a tax upon men’s vices has been put into practice many a time, and the scheme of a general raffle to secure the prizes of patronage would seem to be a tolerable refuge from our former system of political appointments.

But all through “Gulliver’s Travels” the folly and wickedness of men is greatly overdrawn, and in the final voyage to the country of the Houyhnhnms the colors are quite too dark to be truthful. This part of the book is not a mere satire, but a malignant invective against humanity, so bitter that it ceases to be either attractive or convincing. The lawyers sell out to the highest bidder, the doctors kill their patients to justify their own prognostications; all mankind is vile--worse than the beasts,--until we begin to feel an aversion for an author whose judgment has been so greatly distorted by his own malevolence. We can not help inferring that he who attributes such qualities to his fellow-creatures must himself have a large share of them; and it is not surprising to find great irregularities and scandals in the life of Swift, nor to learn that at last his mind flickered out in imbecility.

MANON LESCAUT THE ABBÉ PRÉVOST

What is the subtle charm of “Manon Lescaut” which has given it the place of a classic in French fiction, and which causes it to be read at the present time with the same delight as when it was written? It does not sparkle with wit, nor is it filled with wisdom. The heroine is far from being an estimable character, and the poor hero, the Chevalier des Grieux, is admirable only in one thing--in his constant and self-sacrificing devotion to the unworthy object of his passion.

He meets her in the courtyard of an inn at Passy. It is a case of love at first sight. They flee from the inn together, and Manon becomes his mistress. The youth is ardent but inexperienced, while the girl, though no older in years, is far maturer, more subtle and self-asserting. It is not many weeks before she forsakes him for a more advantageous connection. For a long time he is in despair at her faithlessness. At last he enters upon a regular life, and becomes a student in a theological seminary. On the day of his graduation she comes to him again. In a moment all his good resolutions are flung to the winds and he falls at once under her influence. They live for a time upon the money she has acquired from a more opulent lover, but it is stolen, and he betakes himself to the gambler’s expedients to restore their shattered fortunes. She leads him into evil courses, and many are the tricks they play upon her other admirers. Twice they are thrown into prison, and on the last occasion, to gratify the revenge of a defrauded and disappointed suitor, Manon is sent with a chain gang to the French settlement at New Orleans. Her lover goes with her, and after they are established in their distant abode they decide to invoke the aid of the church upon their union and to become man and wife. But the governor of the province has other views for Manon, and desires to marry her to his nephew. A duel follows, and the Chevalier des Grieux is forced to flee. Manon accompanies him to the wilderness, but, unable to endure the fatigues and perils of such a life, she expires in the arms of her lover.

This sounds like rather poor material for a novel, yet so charmingly and simply is the story told, so deep and so natural is the Chevalier’s passion, that he invests his wayward mistress in our eyes with the same charms that he sees in her himself, until we pardon the infidelities of the beautiful creature almost as readily as he.

TOM JONES HENRY FIELDING

There are some who insist that Fielding’s “Tom Jones” has not been surpassed by the work of any of the later novelists.

I confess that on the second reading of this story I failed to find in either plot or portraiture that excellence which would entitle the book to take a preëminent rank among works of fiction. In the succession of adventures which compose the tale there is a recurrence of incidents which resemble each other so closely that they cease to be novel or attractive. Conversations are usually interrupted by the unexpected appearance of some one not desired, or else by an “uproar” followed by a fight, until the repetition becomes monotonous. There is not a character in the book capable of arousing any strong feeling of admiration or sympathy.

Sophia Western is intended to be amiable and attractive, though she gives little evidence of any remarkable or alluring qualities in what she says or does. Her sufferings are hardly great enough to cause distress to the reader, and the manner in which she finally agrees to wed her scapegrace of a lover, without waiting for the probationary year which she had first required, does not betoken any great constancy or strength of purpose.

Tom Jones himself is not beset by those overpowering temptations and strong passions which might in a way excuse his scandalous behavior. He is indeed warm-hearted, courageous, and fond of his benefactor, Mr. Allworthy, and he is apparently somewhat attached even to the young woman to whom he is continually unfaithful. If he has other excellences, they do not appear, while his vices are conspicuous and repulsive. A thoroughly interesting character can not be made out of such material.

On the other hand, hypocrisy becomes living flesh and blood in the person of the discreet, pious, treacherous, cold-blooded Blifil, who “visited his friend Jones but seldom, and never alone,” and “cautiously avoided any intimacy lest it might contaminate the sobriety of his own character.”

The most picturesque person in the book is undoubtedly Squire Western, with his senseless prejudices and his wild outbreaks of passion.

But if we leave the characters and incidents out of the question, there is a good deal of delightful reading in the book. The author is a consummate master of English. I began “Tom Jones” just after finishing “David Copperfield,” and the transition from the style of Dickens to that of Fielding was a refreshing surprise. The chapters which are introductory to each of the so-called “books” of the novel are intended, as the author tells us, to set off the rest by reason of their dulness. Some of them are in fact a little tedious, but many are pleasant excursions into fields of criticism and satire which mark the author as an essayist of the first order. The mock-heroic manner in which he describes the methods of his own work, the burlesque praises which he bestows upon it, and his contempt for his critics, are very amusing.

“This work,” he says, “may indeed be considered as a great creation of our own, and for a little reptile of a critic to presume to find fault with any of its parts without knowing the manner in which the whole is connected, and before he comes to the final catastrophe, is a most presumptuous absurdity.”

In another place he gives a comic justification of plagiarism from classical authors:

“The ancients,” he says, “may be considered as a rich common where every person who has the smallest tenement in Parnassus hath a free right to fatten his muse.” “The writers of antiquity were so many wealthy squires from whom the poor might claim an immemorial custom of taking whatever they could come at, so long as they maintained strict honesty among themselves.”

His use of epic diction in the description of the commonplace is sometimes irresistibly comic,--for example, the following on the fight of Mollie Seagrim in the churchyard:

“Recount, O Muse, the names of those who fell on this fatal day. First, Jemmy Tweedle felt on his hinder head the direful bone. Him the pleasant banks of sweetly winding Stour had nourished, where he first learnt the vocal art, with which, wandering up and down at wakes and fairs, he cheered the rural nymphs and swains, when upon the green they interweaved the sprightly dance, while he himself stood fiddling and jumping to his own music. How little now avails his fiddle! He thumps the verdant floor with his carcass.”

Contrary to the general opinion, I think that Fielding is entitled to far more praise for the literary quality which pervades his novel than for its “realism” and “fidelity to nature” which are the claims of most of its admirers.

RASSELAS DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON

Dr. Johnson is one of the few men whose reputation is due, not so much to his writings (which are generally the source of all permanent renown in a literary man) as to his conversation and his peculiarities as recorded by his wonderful biographer--things which in most men are the source of a very limited and evanescent fame.

It is not intended here to dispute the conclusions of Macaulay that he was both a great and a good man, but merely to point out how little good work he has put forth to justify his prodigious reputation. For instance, he compiled a dictionary; and although it was never a very good dictionary, and is now quite obsolete, yet the memory of the tremendous stir it made has lasted down to the present time. He wrote some annotations of Shakespeare’s plays, which show that he had a very limited understanding of their meaning, yet his observations have been more generally quoted than those of commentators far more accurate and discerning. He entered the field of fiction and wrote “Rasselas,” and there are very few novels (if “Rasselas” can be called a novel at all) which upon their intrinsic merits less deserve an extravagant reputation as one of the classics of our literature.

The plot is the slenderest possible. Rasselas, the fourth son of the emperor of Abyssinia, is confined within the “Happy Valley,” from which exit is impossible, and, wanting nothing, naturally suffers from _ennui_. He spends twenty months in fruitless imaginings, and then four months more in resolving to lose no more time in idle resolves, when he is awakened to more vigorous exertion by hearing a maid who had broken a porcelain cup remark, “What cannot be repaired is not to be regretted.” Then for a few hours he “regretted his regret,” and from that time bent his whole mind to the means of escape. He spent ten months trying to find a way out (a job which would be laughed at by an able-bodied member of the Alpine Club) then he betook himself to an inventor of a flying machine, who of course came to grief. Finally a poet, named Imlac, told Rasselas of his extensive travels, and they received from the conies, who had “dug holes tending upwards in an oblique line,” a hint as to the means of escape, of which Dr. Johnson gives the following rather foggy description: “By piercing the mountain in the same direction, we will begin where the summit hangs over the middle part and labor upwards till we issue up behind the prominence.” The two now proceed to tunnel the mountain, and Nekayah, the prince’s sister, with her favorite maid, Pekuah, accompany them to the outside world. They journey to Cairo, where they engage in the search for happiness,--philosophy, the pastoral life, material prosperity, solitude, the life led “according to nature,” the splendor of courts, the modesty of humble life, marriage, and celibacy, all being successively examined and found wanting. They visit the pyramids, and here Pekuah is carried away by a band of Arabs, but she is afterwards ransomed and relates her adventures (which are not interesting) at considerable length. They admire the learning and happiness of a certain astronomer, but Imlac finds out that he is crazy; they consult an old man whose wisdom has deeply impressed them, but who can give them little comfort; they discuss the merits of conventual life; finally they visit the catacombs, where Imlac discourses on the nature of the soul; and at “the conclusion in which nothing is concluded” (for this is the title of the last chapter), Pekuah thinks she would like to be the prioress of a convent, Nekayah wants to learn all the sciences and found a college, Rasselas desires a little kingdom where he can administer justice, while Imlac and the astronomer (who has now recovered his right mind) “were contented to be driven along the stream of life without directing their course to any particular port.” They all know that none of their wishes can be gratified, so they resolve to go home. This conclusion might have been inserted almost anywhere else in the book with equal propriety.

The story is a mere thread upon which is hung a succession of reflections and homilies, some of which are shallow, many commonplace and trite, and only a few are at the same time striking, original, and worthy of remembrance.

The author maintains the existence of ghosts because belief in them is supported by the “concurrent and unvaried testimony of all ages and of all nations,” and such an opinion “could become universal only by its truth!”

There is very little humor to be found in the ponderous moralizing of this book. There is, however, a touch of quaint satire upon the theories of contemporary French philosophy, that deserves to be remembered. Rasselas is listening to a philosopher who advises his hearers to “throw away the incumbrance of precepts” and carry with them “this simple and intelligible maxim that ‘deviation from nature is deviation from happiness.’” He asks what it is to live according to nature, and the philosopher answers:

“‘To live according to nature is to act always with due regard to the fitness arising from the relations and qualities of causes and effects; to concur with the great and unchangeable scheme of universal felicity; to cooperate with the general disposition and tendency of the present system of things.’

“The prince soon found that this was one of the sages whom he should understand less as he heard him longer. He therefore bowed and was silent; and the philosopher, supposing him satisfied, and the rest vanquished, rose up and departed with the air of a man that had coöperated with the present system.”

The style of “Rasselas” (like that of everything Dr. Johnson wrote) is stilted and affected. In the Happy Valley “every blast shook spices from the rocks and every month dropped fruits.” Its inhabitants “wandered in the gardens of fragrance and slept in the fortresses of security.” When Rasselas reaches Cairo he tells us of the gilded youth of that metropolis, that “their mirth was without images, their laughter without motive.... The frown of power dejected and the eye of wisdom abashed them.”

Of a professor who there lectured on philosophy, Rasselas declares: “He speaks, and attention watches his lips. He reasons, and conviction closes his periods.” This might do in an oration, but it is pretty poor for a novel. But worst of all, Dr. Johnson puts into the mouth of the young and innocent Nekayah the following words upon the subject of marriage:

“When I see and reckon the various forms of connubial infelicity, the unexpected causes of lasting discord, the diversities of temper, the oppositions of opinion, the rude collisions of contrary desire where both are urged by violent impulses, the obstinate contests of disagreeable virtues where both are supported by consciousness of good intention, I am sometimes disposed to think with the severer casuists of most nations, that marriage is rather permitted than approved, and that none, but by the instigation of a passion too much indulged, entangle themselves with indissoluble compacts.”

Readers who think that this sort of conversation is natural and beautiful ought to be fond of “Rasselas,” but those who do not will inevitably feel that it was too bad that the author of the great Dictionary had so intimate an acquaintance with so many words.

CANDIDE FRANÇOIS VOLTAIRE

In the same year that “Rasselas” appeared (1759), Voltaire published his “Candide.” While the coarseness and irreverent merriment of the French philosopher are quite unlike the ponderous Sunday-school didacticism of Dr. Johnson, still there are points of remarkable resemblance in these two works, written as they were by the two literary autocrats of that generation. The Happy Valley of Abyssinia finds its counterpart in El Dorado, and the object of each book was to illustrate the same truths--the uncertainties and vicissitudes of life and the vanity of human wishes, although the moral drawn from these truths is very different in the two cases.

Saintsbury considers “Candide”, from a literary point of view, “unsurpassable,” while some of Voltaire’s critics and commentators seem to regard it as scarcely worthy of notice. The truth lies somewhere between these estimates. “Candide” can hardly be classed as a novel, for it is in no sense a just portraiture of life or of human nature. It is essentially a burlesque written in ridicule of philosophic optimism, and of the orthodox contention that all which happens is the result of a wise and beneficent design. It is a work thoroughly characteristic of Voltaire, and sparkles everywhere with his wit and laughing mockery.

Candide, the hero, is brought up in the castle of the Baron of Thunder-Ten-Tronckh, where Master Pangloss, the instructor who teaches meta-physico-theologo-cosmolo-ingology, is the oracle of the family. “It is demonstrable,” says this great philosopher, “that things cannot be otherwise than they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end. Observe, for instance, the nose is formed for spectacles; therefore we wear spectacles. The legs are visibly designed for stockings; accordingly we wear stockings,” etc. The book is a commentary on this text. Candide is kicked out of the castle for falling in love with the baron’s daughter. After sad wanderings, he is impressed by the Bulgarians, flogged nearly to death, takes part in the war with the Abares, in which some thirty thousand souls are massacred, escapes to Holland, meets the sage Pangloss, who is dying of a loathsome disease and who tells him that the castle has been destroyed and its inmates put to death. But Pangloss recovers and they start for Portugal, encountering a tempest, a shipwreck, the earthquake of Lisbon, (where 30,000 people were destroyed,) and finally the Inquisition and an _auto-da-fé_, where Candide receives a hundred lashes and Pangloss is hanged. Here Candide finds that his inamorata Cunegund is alive, having escaped the slaughter at Thunder-Ten-Tronckh, though she has encountered calamities equal to his own, and though at that time the Grand Inquisitor and one Issachar, a Jew, are holding her as their prisoner and slave. Candide slays them one after the other, and escapes with his Cunegund to Cadiz, whence they set sail for Buenos Aires. But here things are as bad as in Europe. Cunegund is again torn from her lover, who, with his servant, Cacambo, wanders through Paraguay; fights with her brother the baron, who has turned Jesuit and become one of the rulers of that country; escapes again, and discovers the hitherto inaccessible and unknown country of El Dorado in the heart of the mountains, where the clay is yellow gold, the pebbles are precious stones, where there are no priests, nor monks, nor courts, nor prisons, and where the people lead lives of innocence and ideal happiness. Upon his departure he takes with him a flock of sheep laden with treasure, but as soon as he reaches the haunts of men the wickedness of the world begins again. His treasure is stolen and he returns to Europe, meeting with marvellous adventures in France, in England, in Venice, and finally in Turkey, where he again encounters his Cunegund, ransoms her from slavery, and weds her, after she has become a hideous and ill-favored scold. The sage Pangloss, although he has been hanged, dissected, enslaved and flogged, turns up again, still maintaining that everything goes on as well as possible, because as a philosopher it would be unbecoming in him to retract!

At every turn of the kaleidoscope some new scene of fraud, lust, rapine, slaughter, sacrilege, or inevitable calamity, comes into view, generally linked with some ridiculous accessory such as only the mind of Voltaire could conceive, and yet with each grotesque apparition there comes also a sort of conviction that the author has not greatly overdrawn the picture, but has merely grouped together in startling juxtaposition the things which actually happen in the world.

At last Candide settles in a small farm in the Propontis, and from a neighbor, an old man, quite ignorant of philosophy and public affairs, he learns the real secret of happiness,--to cultivate his little patch of land, and by labor to keep off the three great evils, idleness, vice, and want. The moral is thus expressed in the concluding sentences:

“‘There is a concatenation of all events in the best of possible worlds; for, in short, had you not been kicked out of a fine castle for the love of Miss Cunegund, had you not been put into the Inquisition, had you not traveled over America on foot, had you not run the baron through the body, and had you not lost all your sheep which you brought from the good country of El Dorado, you would not have been here to eat preserved citrons and pistachio nuts.’ ‘Excellently observed,’ answered Candide, ‘but let us take care of our garden.’”