Part 2

Richardson on the other hand had his quiver full of new ideas; he had his face to the east; he was no mere inheritor, he was a progenitor. He is, in short, as has been often said, our Rousseau; his characters were not stock characters. Think of Fielding's characters, his Tom Joneses and Booths, his Amelias and Sophias. They are stage properties as old as the Plantagenets. They are quite unidea'd, if I may use a word which, as applied to girls, has the authority of Dr. Johnson. Fielding's men are either good fellows with large appetites, which they gratify openly, or sneaks with equally large appetites, which they gratify on the sly; whilst the characters of his women are made to hinge solely upon their willingness or unwillingness to turn a blind eye. If they are ready to do this, they are angels; Sophia comes upon the stage in a chapter headed 'A short hint of what we can do in the sublime, and a description of Miss Sophia Western.' Poor neglected Amelia, whenever she is forgiving her husband, is described as 'all one blaze of beauty;' but if they are not willing to play this _rôle_, why then they are unsexed and held up to the ridicule and reprobation of all good fellows and pretty women. This sort of thing was abhorrent to the soul of the little printer; he hated Fielding's boisterous drunkards with an entire hatred. I believe he would have hated them almost as much if Fielding had not been a rival of his fame. He said he was not able to read any more than the first volume of _Amelia_, and as for _Tom Jones_, in the year 1750, he was audacious enough to say that its run was over. Regarded merely as writers, there can, I suppose, be no real rivalry between Fielding and Richardson. The superiority of Fielding is apparent on every page. Wit, good-humour, a superb lusty style which carries you along like a pair of horses over a level moorland road, incidents, adventures, inns, and all the glory of motion, high spirits, huge appetites, pretty women--what a catalogue it makes of things no doubt smacking of this world and the kingdom thereof, but none the less delightful on that account! No wonder _Tom Jones_ is still running; where, I should like to know, is the man bold enough to stop him. But for all this, Richardson was the more remarkable and really interesting man of the two; and for the reason that he was the evangel of the new sentimentalism, that word which so puzzled one of his most charming correspondents that she wrote to ask him what it meant--this new word sentimental which was just beginning to be in everybody's mouth. We have heard a good deal of it since.

_Clarissa Harlowe_ has a place not merely amongst English novels, but amongst English women.

It was a new thing for a woman to be described as being not only in herself but by herself commendable and altogether lovely, as triumphing in her own right over the cruelest dishonour, and rejecting, with a noble scorn new to literature, the hand in marriage of the villain who had done her wrong. The book opened the flood-gates of human tears. The waters covered the earth. We cannot weep as they used to do in 'the brave days of old.'

Listen to the wife of a Lancashire baronet: 'I verily believe I have shed a pint of tears, my heart is still bursting though they cease not to flow at this moment, nor will I fear for some time.... Had you seen me I surely should have moved your pity. When alone in agonies would I lay down the book, take it up again, walk about the room, let fall a flood of tears, wipe my eyes, read again, perhaps not three lines, throw away the book, crying out: "Excuse me, good Mr. Richardson, I cannot go on, it is your fault, you have done more than I can bear;" threw myself upon my couch to compose; again I read, again I acted the same part, sometimes agreeably interrupted by my dear man, who was at that time labouring through the sixth volume with a heart capable of impressions equal to my own--tho' the effects shown in a more justifiable manner--which I believe may be compared to what Mr. Belfort felt when he found the beauteous sufferer in her prison-room. Something rose in my throat, I knew not what, which made me guggle as it were for speech.'

Nor did the men escape; a most grave and learned man writes:

'That _Pamela_ and _Clarissa_ have again "obtained the _honour_ of my perusal," do you say, my dear Mr. Richardson. I assure you I think it an _honour_ to be able to say I have read, and as long as I have eyes will read, all your three most excellent _pieces_ at least once a year, that I am capable of doing it with increasing pleasure which is perpetually doubled by the reflection, that this good man, this charming author, is _my friend_. I have been this day weeping over the seventh volume of _Clarissa_ as if I had attended her dying bed and assisted at her funeral procession. Oh may my latter end be like hers!'

It is no wonder the author of _Clarissa_ had soon a great correspondence with ladies, married and single, young and old, virtuous and the reverse. Had he not written seven volumes, all about a girl? had he not made her beautiful, wise and witty and learned withal? had he not depicted with extraordinary skill the character of the fascinating--the hitherto resistless Lovelace, who, though accomplishing Clarissa's ruin does thereby but establish her triumph and confound himself? It is no doubt unhappily the case that far too many of Richardson's fair correspondents lacked the splendid courage of their master, and to his infinite annoyance fell in love with his arch-scamp, and prayed his creator that Lovelace might first be led to see the error of his ways, and then to the altar with the divine Clarissa. But the heroic printer was adamant to their cries, and he was right if ever man was. As well might _King Lear_ end happily as _Clarissa Harlowe_.

The seven volumes caused immense talk and discussion, and it was all Clarissa, Clarissa, Clarissa. Sophia Western was, as we have seen, a comely girl enough, but she was as much like Clarissa as a ship in dock is like a ship at sea and on fire. What can you find to say of her or to her?[3] When you have dug Tom Jones in the ribs, and called him a lucky dog, and wished her happy, you turn away with a yawn; but Clarissa is immense. Do you remember Thackeray's account in the _Roundabout Papers_ of Macaulay's rhapsody in the Athenæum Club? 'I spoke to him once about _Clarissa_. "Not read _Clarissa_?" he cried out. "If you have once thoroughly entered on _Clarissa_ and are infected by it, you can't leave off. When I was in India I passed one hot season at the hills, and there were the governor-general, the secretary of government, the commander-in-chief and their wives. I had _Clarissa_ with me, and as soon as they began to read the whole station was in a passion of excitement about Miss Harlowe and her misfortunes, and her scoundrelly Lovelace. The governor's wife seized the book, and the secretary waited for it, and the chief justice could not read it for tears." He acted the whole scene, he paced up and down the Athenæum Library. I dare say he could have spoken pages of the book, of that book, and of what countless piles of others.'

I must be permitted to observe that lawyers have been great Richardsonians. The Rev. Mr. Loftus, writing to our author from Ireland, says: 'I will tell you a story about your sweet girl Pamela. Our late lord chancellor,[4] who was a man more remarkable for the goodness of his heart than even for the abilities of his head, which were of the most exalted kind, was so struck with her history that he sat up reading it the whole night, although it was then the middle of term, and declared to his family he could not find it in his heart to quit his book, nor imagined it to be so late by many hours.'

The eminent Sergeant Hill, though averse to literature, used to set Clarissa's will before his pupils, and bid them determine how many of its uses and trusts could be supported in court. I am sorry to have to add that in the learned sergeant's opinion, poor Clarissa, in addition to all her other misfortunes, died intestate.

All this commotion and excitement and Clarissa-worship meant that something was brewing, and that good Mr. Richardson, with his fat, round face flushed with the fire, had his ladle in the pan and was busy stirring it about. What is called the correspondence of Samuel Richardson, which was edited by that admirable woman, Mrs. Barbauld, and published in six volumes in 1804, is mostly made up, not of letters from, but to, the author of _Clarissa_. All the more effectually on that account does it let us into the manufactory of his mind. The letters a man receives are perhaps more significant of his real character than those he writes. People did not write to Mr. Richardson about themselves or about their business, or about literature, unless it were to say they did not like _Tom Jones_, or about politics, or other sports, but they wrote to him about himself and his ideas, his good woman, Clarissa, his good man, Sir Charles, and the true relation between the sexes. They are immense fun, these letters, but they ought also to be taken seriously; Mr. Richardson took them as seriously as he always took himself. There was, perhaps, only one subject Richardson regarded as of equal importance with himself, and that was the position of woman. This is why he hated Fielding, the triumphant, orthodox Fielding, to whom man was a rollicking sinner, and woman a loving slave. He pondered on this subject, until the anger within him imparts to his style a virility and piquancy not usually belonging to it. The satire in the following extract from a letter he wrote to the good lady who shed a pint of tears over _Clarissa_, is pungent: 'Man is an animal that must bustle in the world, go abroad, converse, fight battles, encounter other dangers of seas, winds, and I know not what, in order to protect, provide for, maintain in ease and plenty, women. Bravery, anger, fierceness are made familiar to them. They buffet and are buffeted by the world; are impatient and uncontrollable; they talk of honour, run their heads against stone walls to make good their pretensions to it, and often quarrel with one another and fight duels upon any other silly thing that happens to raise their choler--their shadows if you please; while women are meek, passive, good creatures, who used to stay at home, set their maids at work, and formerly themselves, get their houses in order to receive, comfort, oblige, give joy to their fierce, fighting, bustling, active protectors, providers, maintainers, divert him with pretty pug's tricks, tell him soft tales of love, and of who and who's together, what has been done in his absence, bring to him little master, so like his own dear papa, and little pretty miss, a soft, sweet, smiling soul, with her sampler in her hand, so like what her meek mamma was at her years.'

You cannot, indeed, lay hold of many specific things which Richardson advocated. Ignorant of the classics himself, he was by no means disposed to advocate the teaching of them to women. Clarissa, indeed, knew Latin, but Harriet Byron did not. The second Mrs. Richardson was just a little bit too much for her husband, and he was consequently led to hold what may be called 'high doctrine' as to the duty of wives obeying their husbands. Though never was man less of a revolutionary than Richardson, still he was on the side of the revolution. He had an ethical system different from that which stood beside him. This did not escape the notice of a keen-witted contemporary, the great Smollett, whose own Roderick Randoms and Peregrine Pickles are such unmitigated, high-coloured ruffians as to induce Sir Walter Scott to call him the Rubens of fiction, but who none the less had an eye for the future; he in his history speaks in terms of high admiration of the sublime code of ethics of the author of _Clarissa_. Richardson was fierce against duelling, and also against corporal punishment. He had the courage to deplore the evil effects produced by the works of Homer, 'that fierce, fighting _Iliad_,' as he called it. We may be sure his children were never allowed to play with tin soldiers, at least, not with their father's consent.

Having written _Clarissa_ it became inevitable that Richardson should proceed further and write _Grandison_. In reading his correspondence we hail Sir Charles afar off. Richardson had deeply grieved to see how many of his ladies had fallen in love with the scoundrelly Lovelace. It wounded him to the quick, for he could not but feel that he was not in the least like Lovelace himself. He turns almost savagely upon some of his fair correspondents and upbraids them, telling them indeed plainly that he feared they were no better than they should be. They had but one answer: 'Ah, dear Mr. Richardson, in _Clarissa_ you have shown us the good woman we all would be. Now show us the good man we all should love.' And he set about doing so seriously, aye and humbly, too. He writes with a sad sincerity a hundred years cannot hide:

'How shall a man obscurely situated, never in his life delighting in public entertainments, nor in his youth able to frequent them from narrowness of fortune; one of the most attentive of men to the calls of business--his situation for many years producing little but prospects of a numerous family--a business that seldom called him abroad when he might in the course of it see and know a little of the world, as some employments give opportunities to do--naturally shy and sheepish, and wanting more encouragement by smiles to draw him out than anybody thought it worth their while to give him--and blest (in this he will say blest) with a mind that set him above dependence, and making an absolute reliance on Providence and his own endeavours--how I say, shall such a man pretend to describe and enter into characters in upper life?'

However, he set about it, and in 1754 produced _Sir Charles Grandison_, or as he had originally intended to call it, the _Good Man_, in six octavo volumes.

I am not going to say he entirely succeeded with his good man, who I know has been called an odious prig. I have read _Sir Charles Grandison_ once--I cannot promise ever to read it again, and yet who knows what may happen? Sir Walter Scott, in his delightful, good-humoured fashion, tells a tale of a venerable lady of his acquaintance, who, when she became subject to drowsy fits, chose to have _Sir Charles_ read to her as she sat in her elbow chair in preference to any other work; because, said she, 'should I drop asleep in the course of the reading, I am sure when I awake I shall have lost none of the story, but shall find the party where I left them, conversing in the cedar-parlour.'

After _Sir Charles_, Richardson wrote no more. Indeed, there was nothing to write about, unless he had taken the advice of a morose clerical friend who wrote to him: 'I hope you intend to give us a bad woman--expensive, imperious, lewd, and, at last, a drammer. This is a fruitful and necessary subject which will strike and entertain to a miracle.' Mr. Richardson replied jocosely that if the Rev. Mr. Skelton would only sketch the she-devil for him, he would find room for her somewhere, and the subject dropped. The wife of the celebrated German poet, Klopstock, wrote to him in her broken English: 'Having finished your _Clarissa_ (oh, the heavenly book!) I would prayed you to write the history of a manly _Clarissa_, but I had not courage enough at that time. I should have it no more to-day, as this is only my first English letter; but I am now Klopstock's wife, and then I was only the single young girl. You have since written the manly _Clarissa_ without my prayer. Oh, you have done it to the great joy and thanks of all your happy readers! Now you can write no more. You must write the history of an Angel.'

The poor lady died the following year under melancholy circumstances, but her prophecy proved true. Richardson wrote no more. He died in 1761, seventy-two years of age. His will, after directing numerous mourning-rings to be given to certain friends, proceeds as follows: 'Had I given rings to all the ladies who have honoured me with their correspondence, and whom I sincerely venerate for their amiable qualities, it would even in this last solemn act appear like ostentation.'

It now only remains to say two or three words about Richardson's great popularity abroad. Until quite recently, he and Sterne may be said to have been the only popular English authors abroad; perhaps Goldsmith should be added to the party. Foreigners never felt any difficulty about him or about the tradition he violated. The celebrated author of _Manon Lescaut_ translated _Clarissa_ into French, though it was subsequently better done by a less famous hand. She was also turned into German and Dutch. Foreigners, of course, could not be expected to appreciate the hopeless absurdity of a man who lived at Parson's Green attempting to describe the upper classes. Horace Walpole when in Paris did his best to make this plain, but he failed. Say what he might, _Clarissa_ lay on the toilet tables of the French Princesses, and everybody was raving about her. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was also very angry. 'Richardson,' says she, writing to the Countess of Bute, 'has no idea of the manners of high life. Such liberties as pass between Mr. Lovelace and his cousins are not to be excused by the relation. I should have been much astonished if Lord Denbigh should have offered to kiss me; and, I dare swear Lord Trentham never attempted such impertinence to you.' To the English reader these criticisms of Lady Mary's have immense value; but the French sentimentalist, with his continental insolence, did not care a sou what impertinences Lord Denbigh and Lord Trentham might or might not have attempted towards their female cousins. He simply read his _Clarissa_ and lifted up his voice and wept: and so, to do her justice, did Lady Mary herself. 'This Richardson,' she writes, 'is a strange fellow. I heartily despise him and eagerly read him, nay, sob over his works in a most scandalous manner.'

The effect produced upon Rousseau by Richardson is historical. Without _Clarissa_ there would have been no _Nouvelle Heloïse_, and had there been no _Nouvelle Heloïse_ everyone of us would have been somewhat different from what we are.

The elaborate eulogy of Diderot is well-known, and though extravagant in parts is full of true criticism. One sentence only I will quote: 'I have observed,' he says, 'that in a company where the works of Richardson were reading either privately or aloud the conversation at once became more interesting and animating.' This, surely, is a legitimate test to which to submit a novel. You sometimes hear people say of a book, 'Oh, it is not worth talking about! I was only reading it.'

The great Napoleon was a true Richardsonian. Only once did he ever seem to take any interest in an Englishman. It was whilst he was first consul and when he was introduced to an officer called Lovelace, 'Why,' he exclaimed with emotion, 'that is the name of the man in _Clarissa_!' When our own great critic, Hazlitt, heard of this incident he fell in love with Napoleon on the spot, and subsequently wrote his life in numerous volumes.

In Germany _Clarissa_ had a great sale, and those of you who are acquainted with German sentiment, will have no difficulty in tracing a good deal of it to its original fountain in Fleet Street.

As a man, Richardson had perhaps only two faults. He was very nervous on the subject of his health and he was very vain. His first fault gave a great deal of trouble to his wives and families, his second afforded nobody anything but pleasure. The vanity of a distinguished man, if at the same time he happens to be a good man, is a quality so agreeable in its manifestations that to look for it and not to find it would be to miss a pleasure. When the French poet Boileau was invited to Versailles by Louis Quatorze, he was much annoyed by the vanity of that monarch. 'Whenever,' said he, 'the conversation left the king's doings'--and, let us guess, just approached the poet's verses--'his majesty always had a yawning-fit, or suggested a walk on the terrace.' The fact is, it is not vanity, but contending vanities, that give pain.

As for those of you who cannot read Richardson's nineteen volumes, it can only be said you are a large and intelligent class of persons. You number amongst you poets like Byron--for I presume Byron is still among the poets--and philosophers like d'Alembert, who, when asked whether Richardson was not right in imitating Nature, replied, 'Yes, but not to the point of ennui.' We must not bear you malice or blacken your private characters. On the other hand, you must not sneer at us or call us milksops. There is nothing to be proud of, I can assure you, in not being able to read _Clarissa Harlowe_, or to appreciate the genius which created Lovelace.

A French critic, M. Scherer, has had the audacity to doubt whether _Tristram Shandy_ is much read in England, and it is commonly asserted in France that _Clarissa_ is too good for us. Tristram may be left to his sworn admirers who could at any moment take the field with all the pomp and circumstance of war, but with Clarissa it is different. Her bodyguard is small and often in need of recruits. This indeed is my apology for the trouble I have put you to.

EDWARD GIBBON

A LECTURE

'It was at Rome, on the 15th of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed fryars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter that the idea of writing the Decline and Fall of the City first started to my mind.

'It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen I took several turns in a _berceau_, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on recovery of my freedom and perhaps of the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatever might be the future date of my history, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.'

Between these two passages lies the romance of Gibbon's life--a romance which must be looked for, not, indeed, in the volumes, whether the original quartos or the subsequent octavos, of his history--but in the elements which went to make that history what it is: the noble conception, the shaping intellect, the mastered learning, the stately diction and the daily toil.

Mr. Bagehot has declared that the way to reverence Gibbon is not to read him at all, but to look at him, from outside, in the bookcase, and think how much there is within; what a course of events, what a muster-roll of names, what a steady solemn sound. All Mr. Bagehot's jokes have a kernel inside them. The supreme merit of Gibbon's history is not to be found in deep thoughts, or in wide views, or in profound knowledge of human nature, or prophetic vision. Seldom was there an historian less well-equipped with these fine things than he. Its glory is its architecture, its structure, its organism. There it is, it is worth looking at, for it is invulnerable, indispensable, immortal. The metaphors which have been showered upon it, prove how fond people have been of looking at it from outside. It has been called a Bridge, less obviously an Aqueduct, more prosaically a Road. We applaud the design and marvel at the execution.