[From _The Quarterly Review_, July, 1814]
_Waverley; or, 'tis Sixty Years since_. 3 vols. 12mo. Edinburgh, 1814.
We have had so many occasions to invite our readers' attention to that
species of composition called Novels, and have so often stated our
general views of the principles of this very agreeable branch of
literature, that we shall venture on the consideration of our present
subject with but a few observations, and those applicable to a class of
novels, of which it is a favourable specimen.
The earlier novelists wrote at periods when society was not perfectly
formed, and we find that their picture of life was an embodying of their
own conceptions of the "_beau idéal_."--Heroes all generosity and ladies
all chastity, exalted above the vulgarities of society and nature,
maintain, through eternal folios, their visionary virtues, without the
stain of any moral frailty, or the degradation of any human necessities.
But this high-flown style went out of fashion as the great mass of
mankind became more informed of each other's feelings and concerns, and
as a nearer intercourse taught them that the real course of human life
is a conflict of duty and desire, of virtue and passion, of right and
wrong; in the description of which it is difficult to say whether
uniform virtue or unredeemed vice would be in the greater degree tedious
and absurd.
The novelists next endeavoured to exhibit a general view of society. The
characters in Gil Blas and Tom Jones are not individuals so much as
specimens of the human race; and these delightful works have been, are,
and ever will be popular, because they present lively and accurate
delineations of the workings of the human soul, and that every man who
reads them is obliged to confess to himself, that in similar
circumstances with the personages of Le Sage and Fielding, he would
probably have acted in the way in which they are described to have done.
From this species the transition to a third was natural. The first class
was theory--it was improved into a _generic_ description, and that again
led the way to a more particular classification--a copying not of man in
general, but of men of a peculiar nation, profession, or temper, or, to
go a step further--of _individuals_.
Thus Alcander and Cyrus could never have existed in human society--they
are neither French, nor English, nor Italian, because it is only
allegorically that they are _men_. Tom Jones might have been a
Frenchman, and Gil Blas an Englishman, because the essence of their
characters is human nature, and the personal situation of the individual
is almost indifferent to the success of the object which the author
proposed to himself: while, on the other hand, the characters of the
most popular novels of later times are Irish, or Scotch, or French, and
not in the abstract, _men_.--The general operations of nature are
circumscribed to her effects on an individual character, and the modern
novels of this class, compared with the broad and noble style of the
earlier writers, may be considered as Dutch pictures, delightful in
their vivid and minute details of common life, wonderfully entertaining
to the close observer of peculiarities, and highly creditable to the
accuracy, observation and humour of the painter, but exciting none of
those more exalted feelings, giving none of those higher views of the
human soul which delight and exalt the mind of the spectator of Raphael,
Correggio, or Murillo.
But as in a gallery we are glad to see every style of excellence, and
are ready to amuse ourselves with Teniers and Gerard Dow, so we derive
great pleasure from the congenial delineations of Castle Rack-rent and
Waverley; and we are well assured that any reader who is qualified to
judge of the illustration we have borrowed from a sister art, will not
accuse us of undervaluing, by this comparison, either Miss Edgeworth or
the ingenious author of the work now under consideration. We mean only
to say, that the line of writing which they have adopted is less
comprehensive and less sublime, but not that it is less entertaining or
less useful than that of their predecessors. On the contrary, so far as
utility constitutes merit in a novel, we have no hesitation in
preferring the moderns to their predecessors. We do not believe that any
man or woman was ever improved in morals or manners by the reading of
Tom Jones or Peregrine Pickle, though we are confident that many have
profited by the Tales of Fashionable Life, and the Cottagers of
Glenburnie.
We have heard Waverley called a Scotch Castle Rack-rent; and we have
ourselves alluded to a certain resemblance between these works; but we
must beg leave to explain that the resemblance consists only in this,
that the one is a description of the peculiarities of Scottish manners
as the other is of those of Ireland; and that we are far from placing on
the same level the merits and qualities of the works. Waverley is of a
much higher strain, and may be safely placed far above the amusing
vulgarity of Castle Rack-rent, and by the side of Ennui or the Absentee,
the best undoubtedly of Miss Edgeworth's compositions.
* * * * *
We shall conclude this article, which has grown to an immoderate length,
by observing what, indeed, our readers must have already discovered,
that Waverley, who gives his name to the story, is far from being its
hero, and that in truth the interest and merit of the work is derived,
not from any of the ordinary qualities of a novel, but from the truth of
its facts, and the accuracy of its delineations.
We confess that we have, speaking generally, a great objection to what
may be called historical romance, in which real and fictitious
personages, and actual and fabulous events are mixed together to the
utter confusion of the reader, and the unsettling of all accurate
recollections of past transactions; and we cannot but wish that the
ingenious and intelligent author of Waverley had rather employed himself
in recording _historically_ the character and transactions of his
countrymen _Sixty Years since_, than in writing a work, which, though it
may be, in its facts, almost true, and in its delineations perfectly
accurate, will yet, in sixty years _hence_, be regarded, or rather,
probably, _disregarded_, as a _mere_ romance, and the gratuitous
invention of a facetious fancy.