Part 14

Now, to put the whole moral effect of this book into a nutshell--Richardson had gravely announced it as a warning to young servant-girls, but why might he not as well have announced it as an encouragement to old villains? The virtue of Pamela, it is true, is duly rewarded: but Mr. B., with all his villainy, certainly fares better than Pamela: for he not only receives to himself a paragon of a wife, but the sole operation of his previous villainy towards her is to make his neighbors extol him to the skies as a saint, when he turns from it; so that, considering the enormous surplus of Mr. B.'s rewards as against Pamela's, instead of the title _Pamela; or, The Reward of Virtue_, ought not the book to have been called _Mr. B.; or, The Reward of Villainy_?

It was expressly to ridicule some points of Richardson's Pamela that the second English novel was written. This was Henry Fielding's _Joseph Andrews_, which appeared in 1742. It may be that the high birth of Fielding--his father was great-grandson of the Earl of Denbigh, and a lieutenant-general in the army--had something to do with his opposition to Richardson, who was the son of a joiner; at any rate, he puts forth a set of exactly opposite characters to those in Pamela, takes a footman for his virtuous hero, and the footman's mistress for his villainous heroine, names the footman Joseph Andrews, explaining that he was the brother of Richardson's Pamela, who, you remember, was the daughter of Goodman Andrews, makes principal figures of two parsons, Parson Adams and Parson Trulliber, the former of whom is set up as a model of clerical behavior, and the latter the reverse; and with these main materials, together with an important peddler, he gives us the book still called by many the greatest English novel, originally entitled: _The Adventures of Joseph Andrews and His Friend Abraham Adams_.

I will not, because I cannot, here cite any of the vital portions of _Joseph Andrews_ which produce the real moral effect of the book upon a reader. I can only say, that it is not different in essence from the moral effect of Richardson's book just described, though the tone is more clownish. But for particular purposes of comparison with Dickens and George Eliot hereafter, let me recall to you in the briefest way two of the comic scenes. That these are fair samples of the humorous atmosphere of the book I may mention that they are both among the number which were selected by Thackeray, who was a keen lover of Fielding generally, and of his Joseph Andrews particularly, for his own illustrations upon his own copy of this book.

In the first scene Joseph Andrews is riding along the road upon a very untrustworthy horse who has already given him a lame leg by a fall, attended by his friend Parson Adams. They arrive at an inn, dismount, and ask for lodging: the landlord is surly, and presently behaves uncivilly to Joseph Andrews; whereupon Parson Adams, in defence of his lame friend, knocks the landlord sprawling upon the floor of his own inn; the landlord, however, quickly receives reinforcements, and his wife, seizing a pan of hog's blood which stood on the dresser, discharged it with powerful effect into the good parson's face. While the parson is in this condition, enters Mrs. Slipshod--a veritable Grendel's mother--

"Terrible termagant, mindful of mischief,"

and attacks the landlady, with fearsome results of uprooted hair and defaced feature. In scene second, Parson Adams being in need of a trifling loan, goes to see his counter parson Trulliber, who was noted, among other things, for his fat hogs. Unfortunately Parson Adams meets Mrs. Trulliber first, and is mistakenly introduced by her to her husband as "a man come for some of his hogs." Trulliber immediately begins to brag of the fatness of his swine, and drags Parson Adams to his stye, insisting upon examination in proof of his praise. Parson Adams complies; they reach the stye, and by way of beginning his examination, Parson Adams lays hold of the tail of a very high-fed, capricious hog; the beast suddenly springs forward, and throws Parson Adams headlong into the deep mire. Trulliber bursts into laughter, and contemptuously cries: "Why, dost not know how to handle a hog?"

It is impossible for lack of space to linger over further characteristics of these writers. It has been very fairly said, that Fielding tells us what o'clock it is, while Richardson shows us how the watch is made; and this, as characterizing the highly analytic faculty of Richardson in contrast to the more synthetic talent of Fielding, is good as far as it goes.

In 1748 appears Richardson's _Clarissa Harlowe_ in eight volumes, which, from your present lecturer's point of view, is quite sufficiently described as a patient analysis of the most intolerable crime in all history or fiction, watered with an amount of tears and sensibility as much greater than that in Pamela as the cube of eight volumes is greater than the cube of four volumes.

In 1753 Richardson's third and last novel, _Sir Charles Grandison_, appeared; a work differing in motive, but not in moral tone, from the other two, though certainly less hideous than _Clarissa Harlowe_.

Returning to bring up Fielding's novels, in 1743 appeared his _History of the Life of the late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great_, in which the hero Jonathan Wild was a taker of thieves, or detective, who ended his own career by being hung; the book being written professedly as "an exposition of the motives that actuate the unprincipled great, in every walk and sphere of life, and which are common alike to the thief or murderer on the small scale and to the mighty villain and reckless conqueror who invades the rights or destroys the liberties of nations." In 1749 Fielding prints his _Tom Jones_, which some consider his greatest book. The glory of _Tom Jones_ is Squire Allworthy, whom we are invited to regard as the most miraculous product of the divine creation so far in the shape of man; but to your present lecturer's way of thinking, the kind of virtue represented by Squire Allworthy is completely summed in the following sentence of the work introducing him in the midst of nature: it is a May morning, and Squire Allworthy is pacing the terrace in front of his mansion before sunrise; "when," says Fielding, "in the full blaze of his majesty up rose the sun, than which one object alone in this lower creation could be more glorious, and that Mr. Allworthy himself presented--a human being replete with benevolence meditating in what manner he might render himself most acceptable to his Creator by doing most good to his creatures;" that is, in plain commercial terms, how he might obtain the largest possible amount upon the letter of credit which he found himself forced to buy against the inevitable journey into the foreign parts lying beyond the waters of death.

Out of Fielding's numerous other writings, dramatic and periodical, it is perhaps necessary to mention farther only his _Amelia_, belonging to the year 1751, in which he praised his first wife and satirized the jails of his time.

We must now hastily pass to the third so-called classic writer in English fiction, Tobias Smollett, who, after being educated as a surgeon, and having experiences of life as surgeon's mate on a ship of the line in the expedition to Carthagena, spent some time in the West Indies, returned to London, wrote some satire, an opera, &c., and presently when he was still only twenty-seven years old captivated England with his first novel, _Roderick Random_, which appeared, in 1748, the same year with _Clarissa Harlowe_. In 1751 came Smollett's _Peregrine Pickle_, famous for its bright fun and the caricature it contains of Akenside--_Pleasures of Imagination._ Akenside, who is represented as the host in a very absurd entertainment after the ancient fashion. In 1752 Smollett's _Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom_ gave the world a new and very complete study in human depravity. In 1769, appeared his _Adventures of an Atom_; a theme which one might suppose it difficult to make indecorous; and which was really a political satire; but the unfortunate liberty of locating his atom as an organic particle in various parts of various successive human bodies gave Smollett a field for indecency which he cultivated to its utmost yield. A few months before his death in 1771 appeared his _Expedition of Humphrey Clinker_, certainly his best novel. It is worth while noticing that in Humphrey Clinker the veritable British woman, poorly-educated and poor-spelling, begins to express herself in the actual dialect of the species; and in the letters of Mrs. Winifred Jenkins to her fellow-maid-servant Mrs. Mary Jones at Brambleton Hall, during a journey made by the family to the North we have some very worthy and strongly-marked originals not only of Mrs. Malaprop and Mrs. Partington, but of the immortal Sairey Gamp and of scores of other descendants in Thackeray and Dickens, here and there.

I can quote but a few lines from the last letter of Mrs. Winifred Jenkins concluding the _Expedition of Humphrey Clinker_, which by the way is told entirely through letters from one character to another, like Richardson's.

"To Mrs. Mary Jones at Brambleton Hall,

Mrs. Jones,:--

Providence has bin pleased to make great halteration in the pasture of our affairs. We were yesterday three kiple chined by the grease of God in the holy bands of matter-money."

(The novel winds up with a general marriage of pretty much all parties concerned, mistress, maid, master and man); "and I now subscribe myself Loyd, at your sarvice." Here she of course describes the wedding. "As for Madam Lashmiheygo, you nose her picklearities--her head to be sure was fantastical; and her spouse had wrapped her with a long ... clock from the land of the selvedges.... Your humble servant had on a plain pea-green tabby sack, with my runnela cap, ruff toupee, and side-curls. They said I was the very moral of Lady Rickmanstone but not so pale--that may well be, for her ladyship is my elder by seven good years or more. Now, Mrs. Mary, our satiety is to suppurate; and we are coming home"--which irresistibly reminds us of the later Mrs. Malaprop's famous explanation in _The Rivals_:--"I was putrefied with astonishment."--"Present my compliments to Mrs. Gwillim, and I hope she and I will live upon dissent terms of civility. Being by God's blessing removed to a higher spear you'll excuse my being familiar with the lower sarvints of the family, but as I trust you will behave respectful and keep a proper distance you may always depend on the good will and protection of

Yours, W. LOYD."

To these I have now only to add the name of Lawrence Sterne, whose _Tristram Shandy_ appeared in 1759, in order to complete a group of novel writers whose moral outcome is much the same, and who are still reputed in all current manuals as the classic founders of English fiction. I need give no characterization of Sterne's book, which is probably best known of all the three. Every one recalls the Chinese puzzle of humor in _Tristram Shandy_, which pops something grotesque or indecent at us in every crook. As to its morality, I know good people who love the book; but to me, when you sum it all up, its teaching is that a man may spend his life in low, brutish, inane pursuits, and may have a good many little private sins on his conscience, but will, nevertheless, be perfectly sure of heaven if he can have retained the ability to weep a maudlin tear over a tale of distress; or, in short, that a somewhat irritable state of the lachrymal glands will be cheerfully accepted by the Deity as a substitute for saving grace or a life of self-sacrifice. As I have said, these four writers still maintain their position as the classic novelists, and their moral influence is still copiously extolled; but I cannot help believing that much of this praise is simply well meaning ignorance. I protest that I can read none of these books without feeling as if my soul had been in the rain, draggled, muddy, miserable. In other words, they play upon life as upon a violin without a bridge, in the deliberate endeavor to get the most depressing tones possible from the instrument. This is done under pretext of showing us vice.

In fine, and this is the characterization I shall use in contrasting this group with that much sweeter group led by George Eliot, the distinctive feature of these first novelists is to show men with microscopic detail how bad men may be. I shall presently illustrate with the George Eliot group how much larger the mission of the novel is than this; meantime, I cannot leave this matter without recording, in the plainest terms, that, for far deeper reasons than those which Roger Bacon gave for sweeping away the works of Aristotle, if I had my way with these classic books I would blot them from the face of the earth. One who studies the tortuous behaviors of men in history soon ceases to wonder at any human inconsistency; but, so far as I _can_ marvel, I _do_ daily that we regulate by law the sale of gunpowder, the storage of nitro-glycerine, the administration of poison--all of which can hurt but our bodies--but are absolutely careless of these things--so-called classic books, which wind their infinite insidiousnesses about the souls of our young children, and either strangle them or cover them with unremovable slime under our very eyes, working in a security of fame and so-called classicism that is more effectual for this purpose than the security of the dark. Of this terror it is the sweetest souls who know most.

In the beginning of _Aurora Leigh_, Mrs. Browning speaks this matter so well that I must clinch my opinion with her words. Aurora Leigh says, recalling her own youthful experience:

"Sublimest danger, over which none weep, When any young wayfaring soul goes forth Alone, unconscious of the perilous road, The day-sun dazzling in his limpid eyes, To thrust his own way, he an alien, through The world of books! Ah, you!--you think it fine, You clap hands--'A fair day!'--you cheer him on As if the worst could happen, were to rest Too long beside a fountain. Yet behold, Behold!--the world of books is still the world; And worldlings in it are less merciful And more puissant. For the wicked there Are winged like angels. Every knife that strikes Is edged from elemental fire to assail Our spiritual life. The beautiful seems right By force of beauty, and the feeble wrong Because of weakness.... ... In the book-world, true, There's no lack, neither, of God's saints and kings... True, many a prophet teaches in the roads ... But stay--who judges?... ... The child there? Would you leave That child to wander in a battle-field And push his innocent smile against the guns? Or even in the catacombs--his torch Grown ragged in the fluttering air, and all The dark a-mutter round him? not a child!"

But to return to our sketch of English fiction, it is now delightful to find a snow-drop springing from this muck of the classics. In the year 1766 appeared Goldsmith's _Vicar of Wakefield_.

One likes to recall the impression which the purity of this charming book made upon the German Goethe. Fifty years after Goethe had read it--or rather after Herder read to him a translation of the _Vicar of Wakefield_ while he was a law-student at Strasburg--the old poet mentions in one of his letters to Zelter the strong and healthy influence of this story upon him, just at the critical point of his mental development; and yesterday while reading the just published _Reminiscences of Thomas Carlyle_ I found a pleasant pendant to this testimony of Goethe's in favor of Goldsmith's novel in an entry of the rugged old man in which he describes the far outlook and new wisdom which he managed to conquer from Goethe's _Wilhelm Meister_, after many repulsions.

"Schiller done, I began _Wilhelm Meister_, a task I liked perhaps rather better, too scanty as my knowledge of the element, and even of the language, still was. Two years before I had at length, after some repulsion, got into the heart of _Wilhelm Meister_, and eagerly read it through; my sally out, after finishing, along the vacant streets of Edinburgh, a windless, Scotch-misty morning, is still vivid to me. 'Grand, serenely, harmoniously built together, far-seeing, wise and true. Where, for many years, or in my whole life before, have I read such a book?' Which I was now, really in part as a kind of duty, conscientiously translating for my countrymen, if they would read it--as a select few of them have ever since kept doing."

Of the difference between the moral effect of Goldsmith's _Vicar of Wakefield_ and the classical works just mentioned I need not waste your time in speaking. No great work in the English novel appears until we reach Scott whose _Waverley_ astonished the world in 1814; and during the intervening period from this book to the _Vicar of Wakefield_ perhaps there are no works notable enough to be mentioned in so rapid a sketch as this unless it be the society novels of Miss Burney, _Evelina_ and _Cecilia_, the dark and romantic stories of Mrs. Radcliffe, the _Caleb Williams_ of William Godwin--with which he believed he was making an epoch because it was a novel without love as a motive--Miss Edgeworth's moral tales and the quiet and elegant narratives of Jane Austen.

But I cannot help mentioning here a book which occurs during this period, and which attaches itself by the oddest imaginable ties to what was said in a previous lecture, of The Novel, as the true meeting-ground where the poetic imagination and the scientific imagination come together and incorporate themselves. Now, to make the true novel--the work which takes all the miscellaneous products of scientific observation and carries them up into a higher plane and incarnates them into the characters (as we call them) of a book, and makes them living flesh and blood like ourselves--to effect this, there must be a true incorporation and merger of the scientific and poetic faculties into one: it is not sufficient if they work side by side like two horses abreast, they must work like a man and wife with one soul; or to change the figure, their union must not be mechanical, it must be chemical, producing a thing better than either alone; or to change the figure again, the union must be like that which Browning has noticed as existing among the ingredients of a musical chord, when, as he says, out of three tones, we make not a fourth, but a star.

Now the book I mean shows us the scientific faculty, and the poetic faculty--and no weak faculties either--working along together, _not_ merged, _not_ chemically united, _not_ lighting up matter like a star,--with the result, as seems to me, of producing the very drollest earnest book in our language. It is _The Loves of the Plants_, by Dr. Erasmus Darwin, grandfather, I believe, to our own grave and patient Charles Darwin. _The Loves of the Plants_ is practically a series of little novels in which the heroes and heroines belong to the vegetable world. Linnaeus had announced the sexuality of plants, and so had made this idea a principle of classification, the one-stamen class, _Monandria_, two stamen class, _Diandria_, etc., etc. Now all this the diligent and truly loving Doctor framed into poetry, and poetry which so far as technical execution goes is quite as good as the very best of the Pope school which it follows. Here are a few specimens of the poem:

"Descend, ye hovering sylphs! aerial quires, And sweep with little hands your silver lyres; With fairy footsteps print your grassy rings, Ye Gnomes! accordant to the tinkling strings: While in soft notes I tune to oaten reed Gay hopes, and amorous sorrows of the mead;-- From giant Oaks, that wave their branches dark, To the dwarf Moss that clings upon their bark, What Beaux and Beauties crowd the gaudy groves, And woo and win their vegetable Loves.

* * * * *

"First the tall Canna lifts his curled brow Erect to heaven, and plights his nuptial vow; The virtuous pair, in milder regions born, Dread the rude blast of Autumn's icy morn; Round the chill fair he folds his crimson vest, And clasps the timorous beauty to his breast!"

Here, however, a serious case presents itself; in _Canna_ there was one stamen to one pistil, and this was comfortable; but in the next flower he happened to reach--the _Genista_ or Wild Broom--there were ten stamens to one pistil; that is, ten lovers to one lady; but the intrepid Doctor carries it through, all the same, managing the whole point simply by airy swiftness of treatment:

"Sweet blooms Genista[A] in the myrtle shade, And ten fond brothers woo the haughty maid."

But sometimes our botanist comes within a mere ace of beautiful poetry, as for example:

"When o'er the cultured lawns and dreary wastes, Retiring Autumn flings her howling blasts, Bends in tumultuous waves the struggling woods, And showers their leafy honors on the floods; In withering heaps collects the flowery spoil; And each chill insect sinks beneath the soil: Quick flies fair Tulipa the loud alarms, And folds her infant closer in her arms; In some lone cave, secure pavilion, lies, And waits the courtship of serener skies."

This book has what it calls Interludes between the parts, in which the Bookseller and the Poet discuss various points arising in it; and its oddity is all the more increased when one finds here a number of the most just, incisive, right-minded and large views not only upon the mechanism of poetry, but upon its essence and its relations to other arts.[B]

[Footnote A: Genista, or _Planta Genista_, origin of "Plantagenet," from the original name-giver's habit of wearing a tuft of his native heath or broom in his bonnet.]

[Footnote B: Carlyle's opinion of the book is given with a comical grimness in his Reminiscences _a propos_ of the younger Erasmus Darwin, who used much to visit the Carlyles after they settled in London: "Erasmus Darwin, a most diverse kind of mortal, came to seek us out very soon ('had heard of Carlyle in Germany,' &c.), and continues ever since to be a quiet home-friend, honestly attached; though his visits latterly have been rarer and rarer, health so poor, I so occupied, etc., etc. He had something of original and sarcastically ingenious in him; one of the sincerest, naturally honest, and most modest of men; elder brother of Charles Darwin (the famed Darwin on Species of these days), to whom I rather prefer him for intellect, had not his health quite doomed him to silence and patient idleness--grandsons, both, of the first famed Erasmus ('Botanic Garden,' etc.), who also seems to have gone upon 'species' questions, '_omnia ex conchis_' (all from oysters), being a dictum of his (even a stamp he sealed with still extant), as this present Erasmus once told me, many long years before this of Darwin on Species came up among us. Wonderful to me, as indicating the capricious stupidity of mankind: never could read a page of it, or waste the least thought upon it."]