Part 4

While the story as a whole is a wild phantasmagoria, calling to mind the works of Rabelais by its grossness and inextricable confusion, it contains also, like “Gargantua,” passages of exquisite irony and masterly satire. For instance, the Venetian senator Pococurante, who by despising and condemning the great works of art and literature proved his superiority to all and passed for a prodigious genius, is vividly drawn, and it makes us wonder whether Voltaire’s own great reputation had not a source which was essentially the same as that of his Pococurante.

TRISTRAM SHANDY LAURENCE STERNE

I was for some time in doubt whether “Tristram Shandy” ought to be in my list of masterpieces. In one sense it is hardly a work of fiction at all, for a few rather trifling incidents are made the basis of such endless digressions and ruminations that it is in fact not so much a story as a medley of satire, philosophy, and humor. But the ear-marks of Cervantes and Rabelais appear in it very plainly, and perhaps it is as much entitled to a place here as the burlesques of the celebrated Frenchman.

I began “Tristram Shandy” several times, and read the greater part of it on disconnected occasions; yet the poor hero had such a hard time, through so many hundreds of pages, in getting into the world at all, that I always gave up without reading the book to the end. And, to say the truth, nobody ought to read it consecutively. A part of the humor consists in the endless prolixity with which trifling events are narrated, and a joke thus lengthened out into the enormous dimensions of several volumes becomes too huge to handle all at once. Another part of the humor is displayed in the jumble with which the events and observations upon them are thrown together. The preface, for instance (and a very amusing preface it is), is pitched into the middle of the book. Whole chapters are omitted and their places supplied by stars, and the subsequent chapters (which tell the whole story) are given to explaining why these omissions were made, namely, that the parts left out were too fine for the rest of the story. The author appropriately asks us, after several volumes of this confusion, how our heads feel!

The style, which is generally conversational and highly idiomatic, is sometimes purposely involved, and gives us a picturesque, vague impression, which is often vivid, though upon analysis it represents nothing in particular. Evidently Carlyle, who was a great admirer of Sterne, imitated his manner in places, though he lacked much of the wit and lightness of fancy of the author of “Tristram Shandy.” There are indeed passages in which the style of the two authors is almost indistinguishable.

Naturally, in such a book a good part of the fun has to be dug out with considerable labor; and this is not always the way in which humor is most attractive. To the reader who is anxious for a _denouement_, “Tristram Shandy” is a most exasperating work, for there is no _denouement_ at all. You never get anywhere, and the book ends, like the Sentimental Journey, right at the midst of perhaps the most interesting part of it.

It improves a good deal, however, upon a second reading, when you no longer care how anything is going to turn out, and when the choice morsels are more easily extracted. It contains a great many observations which go well in a commonplace book, containing as they do a humorous epitome of matters of universal knowledge. Sterne has the Shakespearean quality of filching from others and then transforming his plunder into gold by a striking originality of his own. The actual facts described are very few. Tristram’s birth, with all its accessories, his broken nose, his christening, his father’s odd philosophy and scheme of education, so elaborate that the boy’s actual training had to be abandoned while the father was writing his great Tristrapaedia,--these things, together with the history of Uncle Toby, wounded in the groin at the siege of Namur, and of his faithful servant Corporal Trim, and finally the episode of the Widow Wadman, who laid siege to Uncle Toby’s heart, an episode broken off in the middle at the end of the book, are pretty much all. But the descriptions of character are admirable. The dear, simple-minded, modest Uncle Toby, with his hobby, to wit: his fortifications and his military science,--Uncle Toby, who continually interrupts the emanations of Shandean philosophy by inapposite remarks, will always be a type in literature.

The coarseness of “Tristram Shandy” excludes the book from indiscriminate reading at the present time, but its coarseness, although in places very great, is, on the whole, of a rather innocent character, and the work will keep its place as a classic among the lovers of genuine humor.

It contains occasional passages of singular beauty. Witness the following.

“Time wastes too fast; every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity life follows my pen; the days and hours of it more precious, my dear Jenny, than the rubies about thy neck, are flying over our heads like light clouds of a windy day, never to return more; everything presses on,--whilst thou art twisting that lock, see! it grows gray; and every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, and every absence which follows it, are preludes to that eternal separation which we are shortly to make.”

THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD OLIVER GOLDSMITH

I was forcibly reminded of the fact that our estimate of a work of literature depends largely upon our mood and upon surrounding circumstances after my last reading of “The Vicar of Wakefield.” Upon a former reading I had been filled with great admiration for Goldsmith’s novel. The plot seemed admirably constructed, the characters well drawn, and the literary charm of the book inexpressibly attractive. On the subsequent perusal the work did not come up to the standard I had imagined. Both the style and the plot appeared somewhat artificial, and the combination of incidents improbable. The literary charm was there, but even that was not so great as I had supposed. I can not altogether account for this change of view. Perhaps it is due to the fact that my earlier reading was just after my perusal of “Tom Jones,” and followed a certain disappointment and disgust at Fielding’s work, whereas the final reading followed the perusal of Manzoni’s masterpiece, “The Betrothed,” by the side of which even “The Vicar of Wakefield” shines with a lustre that is somewhat dim. It is perhaps also due to the fact that the sudden alternations of fortune described in Goldsmith’s novel are more startling, and therefore more attractive on a fresh impression than they are when they are anticipated.

“The Vicar of Wakefield” begins with a delightful description of the family of the good man who tells the story,--of his wife, “chosen for the qualities that would wear well,” but whose conduct, I thought, did not altogether justify such a selection; of his two daughters, Olivia and Sophia, with romantic names in which the father had no choice; and of his younger sons. Among these, he says, a family likeness prevailed, and “properly speaking, they had but one character, that of being all equally generous, credulous, simple, and inoffensive.” He describes the part he took in the Whistonian controversy, maintaining that it was unlawful for a priest of the church of England, after the death of his first wife, to take another,--a controversy which led to a difference with a neighboring clergyman, Mr. Wilmot, the father of Arabella, to whom the vicar’s son George was betrothed, and ended in the breaking off of the engagement, after it was also found that the vicar’s fortune had been lost. Then follows a description of the removal of the family to a new parish; of the departure of George to seek his fortune; of the straightened circumstances and simple life of the others; of the love of finery displayed by the wife and daughters; of their efforts at gentility and their attempts to attract Squire Thornhill, their dissolute landlord, and to secure him as a husband for Olivia. The squire brings from London two women of abandoned character, whom he introduces as ladies of high rank, and who seek to induce the daughters of the honest clergyman to return with them to the town.

Two attractive episodes are here introduced. In order to defray the expenses necessary to keep up appearances and to send the girls to London, the boy Moses is sent to a fair to sell the colt, and an amusing account is given of his return with a gross of worthless green spectacles, which a sharper had palmed off upon him. Then the vicar himself goes to sell the other horse, and the same man, one Ephraim Jenkinson, who appeared to be a pious and venerable gentleman, and displayed great learning about Sanchoniathon, Manetho, Berosus, Ocellus Lucanus, and the cosmogony of the world, gives him a worthless draft upon one of his neighbors in payment. These two episodes call to mind some of the adventures of Gil Blas.

Upon his return home the vicar finds that the two great ladies from London have departed, without his daughters, being dissuaded from taking them by a letter of one Mr. Burchell, a friend of the family, a gentleman in reduced circumstances, as was supposed, whose attentions to Sophia have caused her father much anxiety. A letter of Burchell is discovered, containing some dark insinuations, which are erroneously thought to apply, not to the two women, but to the vicar’s own family, and great is the indignation at Burchell for his scandalous interference. Squire Thornhill continues his attentions to the vicar’s eldest daughter, and is included with the family in a huge picture, which is inadvertently made so large that it will not go into any of the rooms of the vicar’s cottage, but has to stand against the kitchen wall. Instead of pressing his suit openly, however, the squire elopes with Olivia, upon whom he imposes a fictitious marriage, and then, after a time, abandons her. The poor clergyman starts upon a vain pursuit of his daughter, believing that Burchell is responsible for her abduction. In his wanderings he comes upon his son George, who is attached to a company of strolling players, and the young man gives him an account of his adventures; of his travels in Holland, whither he has gone to teach the Dutch English, without reflecting that for this purpose it was necessary that he should first learn Dutch; of his induction into the art of a connoisseur of pictures at Paris, where he learns that the whole secret of it consists in a strict adherence to two rules,--“the one, always to observe the picture might have been better if the painter had taken more pains; and the other, to praise the works of Pietro Perugino.” The squire arrives during the vicar’s interview with his son, and agrees to purchase for George a commission in a West India regiment, taking from the father a bond for a hundred pounds, the purchase money.

But shortly afterwards the vicar comes upon his daughter Olivia, who is in great distress, and he learns from her that it is the squire, and not Burchell, who has betrayed her. When the good man returns home he finds his dwelling in flames, and rescues his two little boys, but is seriously burned in the conflagration, and shortly afterwards he has an altercation with the squire, who thereupon arrests him for non-payment of the hundred pounds, and throws him into jail. One of his fellow-prisoners begins to talk about cosmogony, Sanchoniathon, etc., and he recognizes the rogue Jenkinson, who now, however, becomes his friend. A simple and pathetic account is given of the scenes in the prison; of his exhortations to his fellow-prisoners to reform their evil courses; of their laughter, the pranks they play on him, and the ultimate respect and love which he awakens. So long as his daughter lives, the vicar will not seek to secure his release from prison by making his submission to the squire; but he soon learns from Jenkinson that the poor girl is dead. His second daughter, Sophia, is suddenly abducted, and George unexpectedly comes into the prison in fetters, prosecuted by the squire for sending a challenge and for injuring one of his servants. At this point the climax of human wretchedness would seem to be reached. But here everything changes. Burchell, who has just rescued Sophia and brought her back in safety, now comes upon the scene and discloses himself as the uncle of Squire Thornhill and the real owner of the estate which the young squire has been enjoying. Thornhill arrives, and his villainies are one after another unmasked. Miss Wilmot, whom he is about to marry, learns of his infidelities, renounces him, and again accepts her former suitor, George. The squire impudently insists on keeping her fortune, according to the marriage contract, but Jenkinson now reveals the fact that Thornhill is already wedded to Olivia, since the priest who married them was a true priest, and it was he and not the girl who had been imposed upon. Olivia herself now appears; she is not dead, Jenkinson having declared that she was for the purpose of inducing the good vicar to make his submission to the squire and get out of prison. Burchell, now Sir William Thornhill, seeks the hand of Sophia, the vicar’s property is restored to him, and the story concludes with two weddings and universal happiness. The conclusion is more satisfactory than that of the book of Job, to which the story bears some slight resemblance, for in Goldsmith’s novel even the dead are restored to life.

It is quite evident, from the foregoing outline of the plot, that there is decidedly too much machinery in it to be altogether natural; and this artificiality, which seems characteristic rather of the age than of the author, is also found in the diction of the book, in which Johnsonian antitheses sometimes appear, although these were used by Goldsmith with more restraint and with better taste than by any other writer of the period. For instance, in the author’s Advertisement, speaking of the vicar, it is said:

“He is drawn as ready to teach, and ready to obey; as simple in affluence, and majestic in adversity.”

Describing the early prosperous days of the family, the vicar says:

“We had no revolutions to fear, nor fatigues to undergo; all our adventures were by the fire-side, and all our migrations from the blue bed to the brown.”

Again:

“My children, the offspring of temperance, as they were educated without softness, so they were at once well-formed and healthy; my sons hardy and active, my daughters beautiful and blooming.... The one entertained me with her vivacity when I was gay, the other with her sense when I was serious,” etc., etc.

Of course the language of the book is elegant and beautiful,--nothing that Goldsmith ever wrote was otherwise; but I think that our present era is to be congratulated upon the fact that however great its defects of style in other particulars such formalism is now mostly obsolete.

Two of the characters in the book are extremely well drawn,--the good vicar himself, with his simplicity, kindness, and religious reverence; his patience, however, on two or three occasions interrupted by most natural outbreaks of indignation; and his wife, motherly and foolish, with her shallow schemes for the advancement of her daughters.

The three poems introduced into the story,--“The Hermit,” the “Elegy on a Mad Dog,” and last and most beautiful of all, the verses beginning--

“When lovely woman stoops to folly, And finds, too late, that men betray,”

will long be known and admired in English literature. They are models of purity and simplicity, though Goldsmith, as well as Wordsworth, sometimes comes dangerously near the line which separates that which is delicately beautiful from that which is sentimental and commonplace.

THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

Many of the lovers of Goethe will no doubt say that his longer works, “Wilhelm Meister” or “Elective Affinities,” are his most important productions in the field of fiction; but it always seemed to me that, as a portrait of actual life, his earliest and simplest story is entitled to the highest rank. The first part of “Werther” is one of the most charming bits of idyllic literature extant. The character of the hero appears very clearly and naturally from his letters to his friend. He has a sensitive, impressionable, sympathetic, unaffected, lovable, and simple nature, subject to sudden transitions from joy to wretchedness. He loves children; he is interested in the lowly. To his eyes, at this time, the world and the people in it are all good. His descriptions of natural scenery are filled with a lively and poetic charm, and so, too, are his accounts of those he meets. Most attractive of all is his portrait of Charlotte, when he first sees her, cutting bread for her little brothers and sisters, then at the dance, and afterwards, on almost every page in which her name appears. The incidents of this story, except the concluding portion of it, are taken largely from the author’s own experience, and Goethe, inconstant as he was in his affections, knew not only how to love passionately, but how to describe the object of his passion as she appeared to him; and he has given us here a girl so attractive that we become enamored of the portrait. Her outbursts of merriment, her constant cheerfulness, her deep, sympathetic nature, the delicate home touches in her conduct of the household, all go to make up a character the charm of which is irresistible. But she is engaged to be married. Werther knows this from the time he has first seen her; yet, like a moth, he flits around the candle; and when Albert, her betrothed, arrives,--a character whose cool temper and sound understanding are a sharp antithesis to his own passionate and volatile nature,--life in his eyes suddenly changes. We see this even in the changing views with which he regards Nature. The universe, instead of being the source of universal joy, has grown to be a fearful monster, forever devouring its own offspring. His buoyant spirits become depressed; he broods over the one thought of his love for Charlotte, until he resolves to flee. He takes service under an ambassador, whom he describes as “the most punctilious blockhead under heaven.” He writes with utter contempt of the hollow society by which he is surrounded, with its meaningless gradations; and when at last he inadvertently remains at a reception at which his rank does not entitle him to be present, and is asked to leave, whereupon scandal arises, he resigns his place in disgust.

In the meantime, Albert and Charlotte have become married, but the one great passion of Werther’s life brings him back to her. He recognizes his folly, but he can not resist it. His thoughts circle around her alone, and his imaginations become morbid and feverish. “If Albert should die!” “How much better fitted am I to be her husband!” Her pity for him, and the tenderness with which she treats his hopeless passion, inflame him all the more.

Werther’s letters to his friend are now interrupted, and the editor fills in the gaps with a narrative and observations of his own. Werther becomes gloomy, morose, unbalanced, and finally resolves upon suicide. Charlotte asks him not to visit her, but in spite of this he goes, and reads to her some melancholy passages from Ossian, not very apposite in the facts they describe, but quite in tune with his feelings in their mournful and melancholy character. When he sees her sympathy with his affliction, a passionate outbreak ensues, and she parts from him, declaring that she can never see him again. He wanders distraught at night over the crags, and, returning home, makes his preparations for death. He sends to Albert, asking to borrow his pistols for a journey. Albert directs Charlotte to give them to the messenger, which she does. A long letter from Werther to Charlotte and a simple description of the final catastrophe end the narrative.

There is a great inconsistency between Werther’s character as it appears in the last part of the book and that shown by his earlier letters, an inconsistency which it seems to me is not wholly due to the transformation in his feelings caused by his hopeless love. The last letter which Werther writes to Charlotte is of a most compromising character, telling her that he knows she loves him, and that she is to be his in that curious future world which he pictures to himself, where it would seem that passion rather than virtue is to be rewarded. He insists on describing the harrowing details of his contemplated suicide, reminding her that it is from her hand that he has received the pistol, and throwing upon her the responsibility, all this accompanied by the most tender endearments. Is this love? Is it even a tolerable form of insanity? It may be said that no course of action is unreasonable for a madman, yet to me the final pages seem inartistic. In this part of the book the author evidently had to rely upon his unaided imagination rather than upon the memory of his own experience, and Werther’s frame of mind after he had resolved upon suicide is one which I think Goethe had felt very imperfectly in his own consciousness.

But whatever the incongruities of the story so far as the hero is concerned, it must be said that fiction has rarely, if ever, drawn a character more womanly, in the best sense of the word, than Charlotte. She is one of the most attractive types in literature.

PAUL AND VIRGINIA BERNARDIN DE ST. PIERRE

Were it not for the immense reputation of “Paul and Virginia,” a reputation which has lasted for more than a century, that book should find no place in a list of the great works of fiction.

Saint Pierre considered his work a picture of nature, a sort of prose pastoral, modelled after Theocritus; but to many it will seem rather the picture of a counterfeit or fiat nature, which was greatly in vogue at the time in an extremely artificial society and among those who had little knowledge of the genuine article. I do not mean by this to criticise the author’s description of natural scenery or natural phenomena. His picture of the Isle-de-France, and of the surroundings of the little cabins in which the events of the story occur, is beautiful and lifelike; his account of the hurricane in which Virginia perishes is realistic, and impressive; but his portrait of what human life would be in a condition of Arcadian simplicity is far from convincing. The author tells us in his preface that he intends to show that our happiness consists in living according to nature and virtue. When a definite thesis is thus proposed at the outset, the truthfulness of the portrait may easily be overlooked and the _dramatis personæ_ may even become impossibilities.

Here are two amiable children who grow up together in two neighboring cabins “according to nature,”--that is, they can not read and write,--and yet they devote themselves to amateur theatricals and to landscape gardening. In decorating the tropical surroundings of their humble homes they make these almost as artificial as the park of Versailles. The names which they give to the choice spots are stilted and unnatural. A certain rock is called “The Discovery of Friendship.” A circle of orange trees and bananas around a small grass-plat, where Paul and Virginia go and dance, is called “Concord.” Another tree where their respective mothers meet to tell their griefs is christened “Tears Wiped Away.” A neighboring hermit (the man who afterwards tells the story) scatters appropriate Latin verses in divers other localities.