THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
I.--ENGLAND UNDER ANNE AND THE FIRST TWO GEORGES.
II.--SWIFT, ADDISON, DEFOE.
III.--RICHARDSON, FIELDING, SMOLLETT.
I.
The advance of a nation in numbers and civilization is accompanied by
so great a complexity of social conditions that in this volume it is
possible only to attempt to seize such salient characteristics of the
eighteenth century as may serve to throw light on the course of English
fiction. No age presents a more prosaic aspect. If we consider the
condition of England at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the
prevalence of abuses and corruption left by the ignorance or vice of
preceding years, and reflect at the same time upon the progressive
nature of the people, the practical habit of their minds, and the moral
earnestness which they never wholly lost, it is not surprising to find
that the century is one of reforms. Population and wealth had outgrown
the laws and customs which had hitherto served for their control, and
though in the earlier part of the period we find corruption in public
and private life, indifference in religion, inadequate provision for
the education of the young, gross abuses in jurisprudence, and
coarseness of action and taste throughout the social system, there is
also perceptible a solid foundation of good-sense and an earnest
desire for improvement, which gradually, as the century wore on,
introduced one reform after another, until many of those benefits were
attained or made possible which the present century almost
unconsciously enjoys. We should lose one of the most instructive
lessons which history can afford, if, with Carlyle, we should allow the
eighteenth century to lie "massed up in our minds as a disastrous,
wrecked inanity, not useful to dwell upon,"[90] The England of that
century was modern England, but modern England, burdened with a
heritage of corruption and ignorance which it is the glory of the time
to have in large part discarded. It was a time of social and material
progress, and it was also the period of the growth and perfection of
English fiction. To thoroughly understand the one, we must be
acquainted with the other, and it will be the object of the two
following chapters to trace the development of the English novel in
connection with that national development of which it will be shown to
be in great measure the exponent.
That subordination of the imagination to reason, which, after the
Restoration, became so marked in English thought on intellectual,
political, and religious subjects, was continued in the eighteenth
century with results which affected the whole current of national life.
Before the light of physical science, silent but irresistible in its
advances, faded away the remains of dogmatism and superstition.
Astrology was forgotten in astronomy; belief in modern miracles and
witchcraft ceased to take root in minds conscious of a universe too
vast for realization, and governed by laws so regular, that probability
could not attach to arbitrary interference by God or the devil. From
the broadening of the intellectual horizon finally resulted
inestimable benefits; but these benefits were purchased at the price of
much temporary evil. If in religion, the rational tendencies prepared
the way for the liberal and undogmatic Christianity to come, their
effect for many years was to be seen only in scepticism, in a mocking
indifference to religion itself, in a contempt of high moral
aspirations and sentiments. If in politics, the final effect of these
tendencies was to introduce new wisdom into government, they showed for
long no other result than the suppression of all the higher qualities
of a statesman, the disappearance of every sign of patriotism other
than an ignorant hatred of foreign countries, the complete subversion
of public spirit by private rapacity.
The prevailing intellectual characteristics are marked, in literature,
by the great predominance of prose over poetry. It will be no
disparagement to Pope, Prior, Gray, Collins, Akenside, Goldsmith, or
Young, to say that they did not attain in poetry what in prose was
attained by Swift, Defoe, Steele, Addison, Bolingbroke, Richardson,
Fielding, Smollet, Hume, Gibbon, Junius, and Burke; while Goldsmith is
as much valued for his prose as for his verse, Addison, Swift, and
Johnson more so. It is to these men, and to contemporaries of lesser
note, that English literature is indebted for the invention or
perfection of prose forms of the highest importance and beauty. Defoe
stands pre-eminent among the founders of the newspaper, destined to
attain so high a degree of power and utility. Addison, Steele, and
Johnson made the essay one of the most attractive and popular forms of
literature. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Horace Walpole, Chesterfield,
and Junius brought letter-writing to perfection. Defoe, Addison,
Richardson, and Fielding developed the realistic novel. A prosaic and
conventional tone pervaded even the poetry of the period. Appreciation
of poetry was almost extinguished, Addison, writing of the poets of the
past, made no mention of Shakespeare, and found it possible to say of
Chaucer:
In vain he jests in his unpolish'd strain,
And tries to make his readers laugh, in vain.
And of Spenser:
Old Spenser next, warm'd with poetick rage,
In ancient tales amus'd a barb'rous age.
But now the mystick tale that pleas'd of yore
Can charm an understanding age no more.[91]
"If you did amuse yourself with writing any thing in poetry," wrote
Horace Walpole to Sir H. Mann, in 1742, "you know how pleased I should
be to see it; but for encouraging you to it, d'ye see, 'tis an age most
unpoetical! 'Tis even a test of wit to dislike poetry; and though Pope
has half a dozen old friends that he has preserved from the taste of
last century, yet, I assure you the generality of readers are more
diverted with any paltry prose answer to old Marlborough's secret
history of Queen Mary's robes. I do not think an author would be
universally commended for any production in verse, unless it were an
ode to the Secret Committee, with rhymes of liberty and property,
nation and administration."
During the brilliant era of literary activity, known by the name of
Queen Anne, men of letters were encouraged by the government by means
of employment or rewards. They were supported also by the public
through the high social consideration which was freely accorded to men
of talent. Literary success was a passport to the houses and the
intimacy of the great. But under the first two Georges and the
administration of Walpole the government was seconded by the public in
its neglect of authors and their works. In those days the circle of
readers was too small to afford remuneration to authorship. Employment
or help from the government was almost a _sine qua non_ for the
production of works which required time and research. While under Anne,
Swift received a deanery, Addison was Secretary of State, Steele a
prominent member of Parliament, and Newton, Locke, Prior, Gay, Rowe,
Congreve, Tickell, Parnell, and Pope all received direct or indirect
aid from the government, in the reigns of George I and George II,
Steele died in poverty, Savage walked the streets for want of a
lodging, Johnson lived in penury and drudgery. Thomson was deprived of
a small office which formed his sole dependence.[92] This neglect of
authors and of literature was only partially due to an unappreciative
government. It was supported by the indifference of a public in a high
degree material and unintellectual. Conversation in France, said
Chesterfield, "turns at least upon some subject, something of taste,
some point of history, criticism, and even philosophy; which, though
probably not quite so solid as Mr. Locke's, is, however, better and
more becoming rational beings than our frivolous dissertations upon the
weather or upon whist."
In keeping with the unimpassioned and prosaic tone of the time, was the
low state of religious feeling, and the degeneration of the church,
both in its own organization and in public esteem. The upper classes of
society, as a rule, were lukewarm and insincere in any form of belief.
Statesman and nobles in the most prominent positions combined professed
irreligion with open profligacy, while the lower classes were left,
through the indolence and selfishness of the clergy, almost without
religious teaching. Montesquieu found that people laughed when religion
was mentioned in London drawing-rooms. Sir Robert Walpole put the
general feeling in his own coarse way. "Pray, madam," said he to the
Princess Emily, when it was suggested that the archbishop should be
called to the death-bed of Queen Caroline, "let this farce be played;
the archbishop will act it very well. You may bid him be as short as
you will. It will do the queen no hurt, no more than any good; and it
will satisfy all the wise and good fools, who will call us all atheists
if we don't pretend to be as great fools as they are."[93] This low
state of religious sentiment was brought about by much the same causes
which, at a later time, substituted a moral and liberal for the old
dogmatic Christianity. The dislike of theological controversy left by
the civil wars was aided by the Act of Toleration in giving the nation
a religious peace, and in diverting human energy from religious
speculations or emotions. The rational character of the national
intellect was inclined to what was material and tangible, to physical
study or industry. The general desire to submit all questions to the
test of a critical reason, induced the clergy to apply the same test to
theology. But while these tendencies, in their final result, were on
the whole beneficial to religion, their temporary effect was injurious
to it in a high degree. With a few exceptions, such as Butler,
Berkeley, and Wilson, the clergy shared the indifference of their
flocks. The upper ranks were indolent, selfish, often immoral; the
lower, poor, ignorant, and degraded in social position. Bishops and
prominent clergymen, under the system of pluralities, left their
congregations to the care of hungry curates, and sought promotion by
assiduous attendance at ministers' levees, or by paying court to the
king's mistresses. It is not surprising that public respect for them
and for their calling almost died away. Pope wrote sneeringly:[94]
EVEN _in a_ BISHOP _I can spy desert_;
_Seeker is decent, Rundle has a heart_.
A naked Venus hung in the room where prayers were read while Queen
Caroline dressed, which Dr. Madox sarcastically termed "a very proper
altar-piece."[95] Of the High Churchmen Defoe declared that "the spirit
of Christianity is fled from among them." When the Prince of Wales
died, George the Second appointed governors and preceptors for the
prince's children. Horace Walpole's description[96] of one of these is
significant. "The other Preceptor was Hayter, Bishop of Norwich, a
sensible well-bred man, natural son of Blackbourn, the jolly old
Archbishop of York, who had all the manners of a man of quality, though
he had been a Buccaneer and was a Clergyman; but he retained nothing of
his first profession except his seraglio."
While the attention of the upper clergy was largely absorbed by
thoughts of private profit and by the pursuit of worldly advancement,
the lower ranks were left in a position degrading alike to themselves
and to religion. In the country a clergyman was little above a peasant
in social consideration, and seldom equal to him in the comforts of
life. To eke out the sustenance of himself and family, hard labor in
his own garden was by no means the most menial of the services he was
obliged to perform. His wife was usually a servant-maid taken from a
neighboring country house, and the kitchen was his most common resort
when he visited the home of a squire. A private chaplain was little
above a servant. In London, many clergymen fell into the prisons
through debt or crime. From the ranks of the lower clergy were
recruited the "buck-parsons," so long a scandal to the church and to
public morality; and the large body of "Fleet parsons," of infamous
character, in the pay of gin shops and taverns, who, for a trifling
sum, performed what were legal marriages between boys and girls,
drunkards and runaways.
The corruption in political life, begun under the Restoration and
increased during the Revolution, was amplified and reduced to a system
under Walpole until government seemed to be based on bribery.
Ridiculing public spirit and disinterested motives in others, he bribed
George the Second with the promise of a large civil list, bribed Queen
Caroline with a large allowance, bribed members of Parliament with
sinecures, pensions, or with direct payment of money, and paid himself
with wealth and a peerage. Corruption was so firmly rooted as an engine
of power, that no serious discredit attached to it. So low had fallen
the standard of political honor, so widespread had become the spirit of
self-seeking and corruption among the ministers and in Parliament, that
"Love of our country," wrote Browne, "is no longer felt; and except in
a few minds of uncommon greatness, the principle of public spirit
exists not."[97] The dominating idea of political life was well put in
the words of the Marquis of Halifax: "Parties in a state, generally,
like freebooters, hang out false colors; the pretence is public good,
the real business is to catch prizes." Lord Hervey divided the Whig
party in 1727 into "Patriots and Courtiers, which was in plain English,
'Whigs in place,' and 'Whigs out of place.'"[98] The assertion of
disinterestedness met only with ridicule. In an interview with Queen
Caroline, "when Lord Stair talked of his conscience with great
solemnity, the queen (the whole conversation being in French) cried
out: Ah, my Lord, ne me parlez point de conscience, vous me faîtes
évanouir."[99] As personal advancement, and not the public service, was
the ruling aim of statesmen, it is not surprising that for this
advancement no means were regarded as too low. The king's mistresses
were the object of ceaseless attentions from aspirants for office, and
sometimes were the recipients of their bribes. Treachery was the order
of the day. Bolingbroke said to Sir Robert Walpole, "that the very air
he breathed was the gift of his bounty," and then left Sir Robert to
tell the king that Walpole "was the weakest minister any prince ever
employed abroad, and the wickedest that ever had the direction of
affairs at home."[100] The Duke of Newcastle, that "living, moving,
talking caricature," stands out an exaggerated type of the common
statesmen of the time; "hereditary possessors of ennobled folly,"[101]
maintained in offices which they had no capacity to fill by corruption,
the abuse of patronage, and the control of rotten boroughs. Speaking of
the Dukes of Devonshire, Grafton, and Newcastle, Lord Hervey says[102]:
"The two first were mutes, and the last often wished so by those he
spoke for, and always by those he spoke to." George the Second
appreciated the character and objects of his advisers. He had, also, a
frank and pointed way of describing them. In his opinion Sir Robert
Walpole was "a great rogue"; Mr. Horace Walpole, ambassador to France,
was a "dirty buffoon"; Newcastle, an "impertinent fool"; Lord
Townshend, a "choleric blockhead";[103] while Lord Chesterfield was
disposed of as a "tea-table scoundrel."[104] He complained that he was
"obliged to enrich people for being rascals, and buy them not to cut
his throat."[105] "The king and queen," wrote Hervey, "looked upon
human kind as so many commodities in a market, which, without favor or
affection, they considered only in the degree they were useful, and
paid for them in that proportion--Sir Robert Walpole being sworn
appraiser to their Majesties at all these sales."[106]
The cringing subserviency of political men was equal to their
corruption. When George I died, and it was believed that Sir Spencer
Compton would succeed to the power of Sir Robert Walpole, at the king's
reception "Sir Robert walked through these rooms as if they had been
still empty; his presence, that used to make a crowd wherever he
appeared, now emptied every corner he turned to, and the same people
who were officiously a week ago clearing the way to flatter his
prosperity, were now getting out of it to avoid sharing his disgrace.
Everybody looked upon it as sure, and whatever profession of adherence
and gratitude for former favors were made him in private, there were
none among the many his power had obliged (excepting General Churchill
and Lord Hervey) who did not in public as notoriously decline and fear
his notice, as they used industriously to seek and covet it."[107] On
the same occasion, Horace Walpole tells us, "my mother * * * could not
make her way (to pay her respects to the king and queen) between the
scornful backs and elbows of her late devotees, nor could approach
nearer to the queen than the third or fourth row; but no sooner was she
descried by her Majesty, than the queen cried aloud, '_There I am sure
I see a friend!_' The torrent divided and shrunk to either side: 'and
as I came away,' said my mother, 'I might have walked over their heads
if I had pleased.'"[108] The general corruption and wickedness produced
a remarkable misanthropy in the minds of men, which is reflected in the
savage satire of Swift, in the bitter invective of Junius, in the
cynicism of Lord Hervey. Sir Robert Walpole, said the latter, "had more
warmth of affection and friendship for some particular people than one
could have believed it possible for any one who had been so long raking
in the dirt of mankind to be capable of feeling for so worthless a
species of animals. One should naturally have imagined that the
contempt and distrust he must have had for the species in gross, would
have given him at least an indifference and distrust toward every
particular."[109]
The mercenary character of Parliament allowed the first two Georges to
have much their own way as long as the money held out. Liberty of the
subject, if not in great danger, had certainly lost its natural
guardian. Few seats depended on a direct and popular vote. Most of them
were in the gift of noblemen or rich commoners, "rotten boroughs,"
having only "the bare name of a town, of which there remains not so
much as the ruins."[110] Defoe tells us that the market price of a seat
was a thousand guineas. The object of the purchaser was less often the
service of his country, or even an honorable ambition, than the profit
to be made from the sale of his vote. Members not infrequently had
regular salaries from the government. "Sir Robert Walpole and the queen
both told me separately," wrote Lord Hervey, "that it (the victory of
the court) cost the king but 900_l_.--500_l_. to one man, and 400_l_.
to another; and that even those two sums were advanced to two men who
were to have received them at the end of the session had this question
never been moved, and who only took this opportunity to solicit prompt
payment."[111] Lord Chesterfield, in the same letter in which he spoke
of the corrupt influencing of elections as a high crime and
misdemeanor, recommends the Earl of Marchmont to _bribe_ "some of your
venal peers" to confess that they took money to vote for the
court.[112] "Ever since Lord Granville went out," wrote Horace Walpole
in 1744, "all has been in suspense. The leaders of the Opposition
immediately imposed silence upon their party; everything passed without
the least debate, in short, _all were making their bargains_. One has
heard of the corruption of courtiers, but, believe me the impudent
prostitution of patriots, going to market with their honesty, beats it
to nothing. Do but think of two hundred men _of the most consummate
virtue_, setting themselves to sale for three weeks!"[113] The
corruption of Parliament and the indifference, of members to any
interests other than their own, were pointedly expressed by Queen
Caroline in her reply to an address by Lord Stair[114]:--"I must,
therefore, once more ask you, my Lord, how you can have the assurance
to talk to me of your thinking the sense of constituents, their
interests, or their instructions any measure or rule for the conduct of
their representatives in Parliament. * * * To talk, therefore, in the
patriot strain you have done to me on this occasion, can move me, my
Lord, to nothing but laughter."
In the words of Mr. Lecky,[115] the government was "corrupt,
inefficient, and unheroic, but it was free from the gross vices of
continental administrations; it was moderate tolerant, and economical;
it was, with all its faults, a free government, and it contained in
itself the elements of reformation." The national industry and
resolution, particularly in the middle classes, brought about a great
increase of wealth, a remarkable development of manufactures and
commerce, which gave the country the extraordinary prosperity which it
has since, almost without a check, enjoyed. The external appearance of
England presented a new aspect. A fourth part of the whole land was
redeemed from waste and put under cultivation.[116] The advance in
agriculture and manufactures, making necessary better means of
communication, introduced canals and substituted fine highways for the
old muddy, robber-infested roads. The condition of these as late as
1736 may be inferred from that of the road between Kensington and
London: "The road between this place and London is grown so infamously
bad, that we live here in the same solitude as we should do if cast on
a rock in the middle of the ocean, and all the Londoners tell us there
is between them and us a great, impassable gulf of mud. There are two
roads through the Park, but the new one is so convex and the old one so
concave, that by this extreme of faults they agree in the common one of
being, like the high-road, impassable."[117]
Social life was marked by the same corruption, by the same absence of
high aspirations and standards which we have seen in politics. The
nation, especially the higher ranks, had not recovered from the license
of the Restoration, while the agencies which can preserve virtue and
refinement in a society were almost inactive. Religion, partly in
consequence of the reaction which followed the civil wars, and partly
in consequence of the spread of rational tendencies, had lost its hold
on society, and no longer sufficed to keep it in check. Theological
controversy, although it issue in narrowness and persecution, yet has
the merit of keeping alive an appreciation of high moral qualities and
aims. In the absence of strong religious feeling, there is yet in the
human mind a natural preference for what is beautiful and honorable,
usually taking the form of ideals, which may keep up a social tone.
This may be seen in the age of Elizabeth, not a very religious period,
but one in which poetry and elevation of thought overshadow coarseness
and immorality. The nineteenth century, again, is neither marked by
strong religious feelings nor by any great tendency to idealization.
And yet the nineteenth century has its standard, firmly based on public
opinion, made up of a respect for decency and justice, a love of
refinement, and an appreciation of the expediency as well as the
attractiveness of virtue; a standard which influences many minds over
which religion has little control. But in the earlier part of the
eighteenth century, religion had ceased to govern, and had not yet
attained that moral influence which, even in the absence of strong
faith, establishes rectitude of conduct, philanthropy, and purity of
thought in the minds of men. The ideals and aspirations of preceding
centuries had no meaning for what Addison called an "understanding
age," and the standard of order, refinement and taste of the present
had yet to come. The low state of society was realized and revolted
against by the best minds of the time. Gay lampooned it in the
"Beggars' Opera," Swift satirized it in "Gulliver's Travels," Defoe
became by force of circumstances a moral teacher; Addison, Steele, all
the essayists preached lay sermons; the novelists set out with the
object, less to amuse than to instruct, to improve their readers. This
tendency, so marked in the literature of the time, is the evidence of
the reforming influences at work. But many years passed before their
effect was perceptible.
There is nothing attractive about George the First and his two ugly old
mistresses, the "Elephant" and the "Maypole"; nor about his court of
Germans, utilizing their time in England by accumulating money to carry
back to Hanover when the harvest time had passed. George the Second,
brave, but narrow and ill-tempered, embodied in himself the coarseness
of the time. He loved his wife, who was faithful to him through every
outrage and every neglect. He caused one side to be taken out of her
coffin, so that when he should be laid beside her his dust might mingle
with hers. He esteemed her so highly, that in his grief at losing her,
he went so far as to say that if she had not been his wife, he would
have wished her for a mistress. To this wife, whom, in his own way, he
sincerely loved and sincerely mourned, he confided all the details of
his amours with other women. From Hanover, where he was acquiring
Madame Walmoden as his mistress, "he acquainted the queen by letter of
every step he took--of the growth of his passion, the progress of his
applications, and their success, of every word as well as every action
that passed--so minute a description of her person that, had the queen
been a painter, she might have drawn her rival's picture at six hundred
miles' distance. He added, too, the account of his buying her, and what
he gave her, which, considering the rank of the purchaser, and the
merits of the purchase as he set them forth, I think he had no great
reason to brag of, when the first price, according to his report, was
only one thousand ducats--a much greater proof of his economy than his
passion."[118] Among many extraordinary relations and expressions his
letters contained, "there was one in which he desired the queen to
contrive, if she could, that the Prince of Modena, who was to come the
latter end of the year to England, might bring his wife with him; and
the reason he gave for it was, that he heard her Highness was pretty
free of her person, and that he had the greatest inclination imaginable
to pay his addresses to a daughter of the late Regent of France, the
Duke of Orleans--'un plaisir' (for he always wrote in French), 'que je
suis sur, ma chère Caroline, vous serez bien aise de me procurer, quand
je vous dis combien je le souhaite.' Such a request to his wife
respecting a woman he never saw, and during his connection with Madame
Walmoden, speaks much stronger in a bare narrative of the fact, than by
any comment or reflections; and is as incapable of being heightened as
difficult to be credited."[119]
Queen Caroline bore all this without a murmur in order to retain her
political influence with the king. To the power of the queen she
sacrificed the feelings of the woman. With many good qualities and
considerable ability, she shared in the prevailing coarseness. Her son,
the Prince of Wales, was a very disagreeable person. Neither the queen
nor the Princess Caroline "made much ceremony of wishing a hundred
times a day that the prince might drop down dead of an apoplexy--the
queen cursing the hour of his birth, and the Princess Caroline
declaring she grudged him every hour he continued to breathe; and
reproaching Lord Hervey" for ever having believed "the nauseous beast
(those were her words) cared for anybody but his own nauseous
self."[120] The morning after the prince had been ordered to leave the
palace, "the queen, at breakfast, every now and then repeated, 'I hope,
in God, I shall never see him again'; and the king, among many other
paternal _douceurs_ in his valediction to his son, said,'Thank-God,
to-morrow night the puppy will be out of my house.'"[121] "My dear
Lord" said the queen to Hervey, "I will give it to you under my own
hand, if you are in any fear of my relapsing, that my dear first-born
is the greatest ass and the greatest liar and the greatest _canaille_,
and the greatest beast in the whole world, and that I most heartily
wish he was out of it."[122] After the royal family, Sir Robert Walpole
was the most prominent person in the country. He went about publicly
with his mistress, and entertained his friends at his country-seat with
orgies which disturbed the whole neighborhood. When the queen died he
urged the princesses to get their father some new mistress to distract
him. Lord Hervey says that Lady Sundon "had sense enough to perceive
what black and dirty company, by living in a court, she was forced to
keep."[123] Lady Deloraine, who was suspected of being the king's
mistress, "when she spoke seriously to Sir Robert Walpole, pretended
not to have yet yielded; and said 'she was not of an age like a vain or
a loving fool, but that if she did consent, that she would be well
paid.'"[124] "She told Lady Sundon, with whom she was very little
acquainted, that the king had been very importunate these two years;
and had often told her how unkind she was to refuse him; that it was
mere crossness, for that he was sure her husband would not take it at
all ill."[125] The looseness of the marriage tie had been a prevailing
evil ever since the Restoration. Steele wrote in the _Tatler_ in 1710:
"The wits of this island for above fifty years past, instead of
correcting the vices of the age, have done all they could to inflame
them. Marriage has been one of the common topics of ridicule that every
stage scribbler hath found his account in; for whenever there is an
occasion for a clap, an impertinent jest upon matrimony is sure to
raise it. This hath been attended with very pernicious consequences.
Many a country squire, upon his setting up for a man of the town, has
gone home in the gaiety of his heart and beat his wife. A kind husband
hath been looked upon as a clown, and a good wife as a domestic annual
unfit for the company or conversation of the _beau monde_. In short,
separate beds, silent tables, and solitary homes have been introduced
by your men of wit and pleasure of the age."[126]
The prevailing immorality and coarseness were in keeping with the
absence of sympathy with all elevation of thought and sentiment. "If a
man of any delicacy were to attend the discourses of the young fellows
of this age," wrote Steele, "he would believe that there were none but
prostitutes to make the objects of passion."[127] "Every woman is at
heart a rake," thought Pope. Women were generally treated with
disrespect, and distinctively female virtues were almost without
appreciation. It is instructive to contrast the deeds of arms done in
honor of a mistress in the Middle Ages, and the elevated sentiments
held regarding women in what Addison called a "barbarous age," with the
actions by which young men sometimes showed their devotion in the
earlier part of the eighteenth century. The latter were as extravagant
as the former, but extravagant after how different a manner. One young
fellow, distinguished himself by drinking wine strained through his
mistress' chemise; another, by drinking out of her shoe; another, by
having her slipper torn to shreds, cooked, and served up as a dish.
Coarseness of thought naturally brought on coarseness of action. Horace
Walpole wrote in 1737, "'Tis no little inducement, to make me wish
myself in France, that I hear gallantry is not left off there; that you
may be polite, and not be thought awkward for it. You know the pretty
men of the age in England use the women with no more deference than
they do their coach horses, and have not half the regard for them that
they have for themselves."[128]
Against the grosser faults of immorality and indecency Steele and
Addison preached. But even they were insensible to an elevated view of
the relations between men and women. Such a view was, however, taken by
Defoe; a man whom Steele and Addison, as well as the polite world in
general, looked upon as an adventurer, and one whose opinions on social
subjects they disdained. "We reproach the sex every day," wrote Defoe,
"with folly and impertinence, while I am confident, had they the
advantages of education equal to us, they would be guilty of less than
ourselves. * * * I cannot think that God ever made them so delicate, so
glorious creatures, and furnished them with such charms, so agreeable
and so delightful to mankind, with souls capable of the same enjoyments
as men, and all to be only stewards of our houses, cooks, and
slaves."[129] Defoe stands almost alone in his remonstrance against the
neglect of female education. But he stands more isolated still in his
appreciation of womanly virtues, and in the enthusiasm with which he
could speak of them. "A woman well-bred and well-taught, furnished with
the additional accomplishments of knowledge and behavior, is a creature
without comparison. Her society is the emblem of sublimer enjoyments;
she is all softness and sweetness, love, wit, and delight; she is every
way suitable to the sublimest wish; and the man that has such a one to
his portion, has nothing to do but to rejoice in her and be
thankful."[130]
Love was hardly distinguished from mere animal desire. The poets wrote
of it coldly and conventionally, as of a thing which existed only in
name. The lover could only beg his mistress "to ease his pain." But the
conventionality which extended through all thoughts and expressions
relating to the higher emotions of the human soul, had no effect in
diminishing the coarseness of thought and conversation. Men were
conventional as regards the nobler sentiments of life, but they were
not conventional in the spirit which excludes from conversation and
literature the gross and the immoral. Chesterfield wrote to his son of
honor, justice, and so forth, as qualities of which he should know the
names, but of no consequence compared to "manners, good-breeding, and
the graces." If a man blushed, it was not at his own indecency, nor at
his own vice, but at the supposition that he could be so weak as to be
influenced by sentiments of delicacy. Coarseness is, of course, quite
separate from immorality, although the two are usually found together.
In the earlier part of the eighteenth century there was a marked
distinction between them. Swift's Stella, a woman of refinement, was
highly indignant at remarks being made before her of a licentious
character, but she herself used expressions of the grossest description
without a thought of impropriety. The same distinction is seen in the
essays and novels of the time. Swift, Defoe, Fielding, Richardson, all
had a moral object in their fictions--the exposure and condemnation of
vice, the encouragement of virtue. And yet most of these novels,
especially intended to exert a good influence, are of so coarse a
nature, and describe scenes so licentious that no parent would now
allow them in their children's hands. The essayists wrote principally
what we should now look upon as sermons, or moral teachings, and yet
very many of their papers are unfit to be read in a mixed society. Men
and women were made then of coarser stuff than we. Their eyes and ears
were less sensitive. They were, at best, accustomed to think and speak
of things which to us seem disgusting, and of which, therefore, we
think and speak as little as possible. In view of the circumstances
which influenced society in the last century, this condition was a
perfectly natural one. We must bear it in mind in reading contemporary
literature, that we may not mistake an author's intention. But we must
be careful in censuring what was, after all, only one necessary stage
in the development of our own civilization. It must be said, also, that
the coarseness of the eighteenth century was a healthy coarseness, bred
of energetic natures and animal spirits. In our time, and in the midst
of our advanced refinement there lurks a sickly sentimentality, a false
modesty, and an unhealthy delicacy which are in a degree inimical to
morality. We have novels in great numbers, not broadly coarse, as those
of Fielding or Smollett, but insidiously immoral, painting vice and
unbridled passions in an attractive light.
The same rude and physical coarseness controlled the standard of taste,
and introduced boisterousness and violence even into amusements. "The
present grandeur of the British nation might make us expect," wrote
Steele, "that we should rise in our public diversions and manner of
enjoying life, in proportion to our advancement in glory and power.
Instead of that, survey this town, and you will find rakes and
debauchees are your men of pleasure; thoughtless atheists and
illiterate drunkards call themselves free-thinkers; and gamesters,
banterers, biters, swearers, and twenty new-born insects more, are, in
their several species, the modern men of wit."[131] Walpole[132] wrote
in 1744: "The town has been trying all this winter to drive pantomimes
off the stage, very boisterously; for it is the way here to make even
an affair of taste and sense a matter of riot and arms. Fleetwood, the
master of Drury Lane, has omitted nothing to support them, as they
supported his house. About ten days ago he let into the pit great
numbers of bear-garden _bruisers_ (that is the term), to knock down
everybody that hissed. The pit rallied their forces and drove them out.
I was sitting very quietly in the boxes contemplating all this. On a
sudden the curtain flew up, and discovered the whole stage filled with
blackguards armed with bludgeons and clubs, to menace the audience.
This raised the greatest uproar."
Mrs. Delany, whose character has excited so much admiration in her own
and in succeeding generations, left, in her autobiography and letters,
a picture of the society about her as seen by one of the most refined
and cultivated women of the time. Like many others, she was struck with
disgust at the coarseness and immorality which surrounded her. "It is
enough to make one a cynic, to shun the world, and shut oneself up in a
tub as Diogenes did; but I must acknowledge, though the age is very
degenerate, that it is not quite void of perfection. I know some
persons that still reconcile me to the world, and that convince me that
virtue is not fled, though it is confined to a few."[133] "The men have
so despicable an opinion of women, and treat them by their words and
actions so ungenerously and inhumanly."[134] "The women were never so
audacious as now; this may well be called the brazen age."[135] The
material tone of society and its lack of sentiment were largely
responsible for the low estimation in which women were held. Marriages
were almost universally arranged on the simple basis of money, a
circumstance which explains much of the conjugal infidelity and
unhappiness which prevailed. "My Lady A.'s behaviour," wrote Mrs.
Delany,[136] "and some more wives' behaviour of the same stamp, has so
disgraced matrimony that I am not surprised the men are afraid of it;
and if we consider the loose morals of the men, it is strange the women
are so easily won to their own undoing." Mrs. Delany, while a young
married woman, although she was known to be of a virtuous character,
was subjected to licentious attacks which fell little short of
violence. It is hardly necessary to comment on the hard drinking and
the hard swearing which were almost universal characteristics of
gentlemen of fashion. Duelling was still a custom, and gambling was the
favorite amusement at court, at the clubs, and in ladies'
drawing-rooms. The title of gentleman depended on birth, and had
nothing to do with personal conduct. Caste feeling was very strong.
Gentlemen looked upon professional men or men of letters as beneath
them, however superior they might be in manners, morals, or education.
A curious instance of this caste feeling occurred in the case of
Captain Vratz, who said of himself and companions on their way to the
gallows for murder, that "God would show them some respect as they were
gentlemen." When Gay's "Beggar's Opera" was put on the stage, the
fashionable world crowded to see their own coarseness and immorality
exhibited in the persons of thieves and highwaymen, and to laugh at the
truth of the Beggar's words: "Through the whole piece you may observe
such a similitude of manners in high and low life, that it is difficult
to determine whether (in the fashionable vices) the fine gentlemen
imitate the gentlemen of the road, or the gentlemen of the road the
fine gentlemen."
The lower classes of society were as ignorant and brutal as the higher
were coarse and corrupt. Among the other qualities in which the times
were deficient, was philanthropy. The measures which the wisdom and
charity of the present have exerted to diminish crime, and to improve
the condition of the poor, were then represented only by a harsh and
cruel penal code, which had a powerful, though an indirect tendency to
promote pauperism and to multiply criminals. Although population had
greatly increased, no new provision had been made for religious
teaching, and there were no schools but those of Edward and
Elizabeth.[137] Defective poor-laws, which forbade laborers to move
from one parish to another in search of work, made pauperism in many
cases the inevitable fate of the industrious. In the cities there was
no adequate police regulation of the criminal classes; and this, too,
at a time when peaceful habits were fast growing among the people at
large, and police protection was more needed than ever before. At the
same time there came upon the lower classes, the terrible scourge of
gin. Violent and ignorant as these classes were, the effects upon them
of so cheap and maddening a drink were incalculably debasing. "The
drunkenness of the common people," says an eye-witness, "was so
universal by the retailing of a liquor called _gin_, with which they
could get drunk for a groat, that the whole town of London, and many
towns in the country swarmed with drunken people of both sexes from
morning to night, and were more like a scene from a Bacchanal than the
residence of a civil society."[138] The sign which hangs over the
inn-door in Hogarth's picture of Gin Lane, and announces that the
customer can get drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence, and have
straw for nothing, was a copy, not an invention. Attempts to limit the
traffic in gin were met by riots so fierce that the government was
obliged to withdraw its measures. The violent natures of the common
people appeared in their amusements as well as in their crimes. Their
sports were of the most brutal kind, and almost all involved the
sufferings of men or animals. Among other entertainments advertised to
take place in London in 1729 and 1730, were "a mad bull to be dressed
up with fireworks and turned loose in the game place, a dog to be
dressed up with fireworks over him, a bear to be let loose at the same
time, and a cat to be tied to the bull's tail, a mad bull dressed up
with fireworks to be baited."[139] Such amusements were interspersed
with cock-fighting, prize fights, and boxing matches between women. The
same brutality characterised the crimes of the period. Violent riots,
aggravated by the plunder of gin-shops, attended the preaching of the
Methodists, the Gin Act, and even the employment by Garrick of a few
French dancers at Drury Lane Theatre. Piracy and smuggling were
systematically carried on, accompanied by atrocious cruelties and
murders. It was no uncommon practice for the inhabitants of the
sea-coast to lure vessels on shore by false signals in order to plunder
them.
Other causes, as well as the ignorance and brutality in which the lower
classes almost necessarily lived, contributed to the number and
impunity of criminals. It was only in 1736 that the streets of London,
hitherto plunged at night in total darkness, began to be lighted for a
few hours by lamps. The right of sanctuary, which still practically
existed in such quarters as Whitefriars and the Mint afforded to
criminals an easy and safe retreat beyond the reach of the law. The
rougher elements of the upper as well as of the lower classes, made the
streets impassable at night without great danger. They organized
themselves into bands, and committed atrocious and wanton brutalities
on inoffensive passers-by. One band, called the Modocs, indulged in the
amusement called "tipping the lion" which consisted in flattening the
nose of the victim on his face and boring out his eyes with the
fingers. There were also the "dancing masters," who made people dance
by pricking them with swords, the "sweaters," who pricked their victims
with swords till they fell exhausted, and the "tumblers," who set women
on their heads and mutilated their limbs.[140] Others rolled women down
hill in barrels, cut the faces of maid-servants, and slit the noses of
watchmen. The criminal classes became so daring and numerous that the
streets were insecure even in the day-time, "It is shocking to think
what a shambles this country is grown!" wrote Walpole. "Seventeen were
executed this morning, after having murdered the turnkey on Friday
night, and almost forced open Newgate. One is forced to travel even at
noon, as if one were going to battle."[141] It was the custom to go
out at night accompanied by armed servants. Addison gave an amusing
description of the precautions observed when Sir Roger de Coverley was
taken to the theatre. "The Captain, who did not fail to meet me there
at the appointed Hour, bid Sir Roger fear nothing, for that he had put
on the same Sword which he made use of at the Battle of _Steenkirk_.
Sir Roger's Servants, and among the rest my old Friend the Butler, had,
I found, provided themselves with good oaken Plants to attend their
Master upon this occasion. When we had placed him in his Coach, with
myself at his left hand, the Captain before him, and his Butler at the
Head of his Footmen in the Rear, we convoyed him in safety to the
Playhouse."[142] "One night, in the beginning of November, 1749," wrote
Walpole, "as I was returning from Holland House by moonlight, about ten
at night, I was attacked by two highwaymen in Hyde Park, and the pistol
of one of them going off accidentally, razed the skin under my left eye,
left some marks of shot on my face, and stunned me."[143] These men were
taken about a year later. "I have been in town for a day or two, and
heard no conversation but about M'Lean, a fashionable highwayman, who
is just taken, and who robbed me among others. * * * His father was an
Irish Dean; his brother is a Calvinist minister in great esteem at the
Hague. * * * He took to the road with only one companion, Plunkett, a
journeyman apothecary, my other friend. * * * M'Lean had a lodging in
St. James Street, over against White's, and another at Chelsea; Plunkett
one in Jermyn St., and their faces are as well known about St. James' as
any gentleman who lives in that quarter, and who, perhaps, goes upon the
road too. M'Lean had a quarrel at Putney Bowling Green two months ago
with an officer whom he challenged for disputing his rank; but the
captain declined, till M'Lean should produce a certificate of his
nobility, which he has just received. * * * As I conclude he will suffer,
and wish him no ill, I don't care to have his idea, and am almost single
in not having been to see him. Lord Mountford at the head of half White's
went the first day: his aunt was crying over him: as soon as they were
withdrawn she said to him, knowing they were of White's, 'My dear, what
did the lords say to you? Have you ever been concerned with any of
them?'--was not it admirable? What a favorable idea people must have
of White's! and what if White's should not deserve a much better! But
the chief personages who have been to comfort and weep over this fallen
hero are Lady Caroline Petersham and Miss Asche: I call them Polly and
Lucy."[144]
The fact that death was the penalty for almost all serious violations
of the law gave an additional zest to crime. The criminal looked upon
himself, and was looked upon by others, as a brave man, and even those
who abhorred the crime retained a certain admiration for the courage
which they thought involved in its commission. Felons sat erect and
proud in the cart which carried them to execution. Their great ambition
was to die like "gentlemen," and they saw no disgrace in death by "the
ladder and the cord," so long as it was borne with bravado. Criminals
are frequent and prominent characters in contemporary fiction. The
period contributed more than any other to the romance of crime, and a
glamour has been cast over the most infamous careers which has made
them celebrated to the present day. The famous highwayman Dick Turpin,
and one Parsons, the son of a baronet, educated at Eton, attained a
public interest and admiration, in which the greatness of their crimes
was forgotten in the dangers they incurred and the boldness with which
they defied justice. When Jack Sheppard, the burglar, was finally
captured after two remarkable escapes from Newgate,[145] he became a
popular hero. Great numbers of people visited him in prison and gave
him presents of money. Several lives were written of him.
But the most remarkable criminal career, and that which best
illustrates the inefficiency of the law and the impunity and ferocity
of criminals, is that of Johnathan Wild, surnamed the Great.[146] This
man spent some time in Newgate, and having become acquainted with the
secrets and methods of its inhabitants, married a notorious woman who
was well versed in similar knowledge. He then set up an establishment
for receiving stolen goods, and organized thieves into regular bands.
Some were to rob churches, others to pick pockets at theatres and
fairs, others to rob on the streets and highways. He even divided the
country into districts, and appointed a special gang to work in each.
All these thieves were obliged to account to him for what they stole,
and he disposed of it in London, or if that seemed too dangerous, he
sent it abroad in a ship of his own. He attained over lesser criminals
the most rigid authority and absolute power. His lieutenants were
chosen among transported convicts who had returned before the
expiration of their terms. These were legally incapable of giving
evidence against Wild, but he could send them to the gallows at a
moment's notice, if suspicious of their fidelity, by information to the
authorities. Over the common thieves he had nearly the same power.
Those whom he suspected of retaining part of their booty, or whom he
feared as witnesses against himself, were at once sent to the gallows
by private information to the magistrates. On the other hand, a thief
who was in danger of arrest, if useful and faithful, was taken into
Wild's own house, protected, fed, and employed in counterfeiting or
other in-door occupation. When a law was passed making it criminal to
receive stolen goods, Wild opened an intelligence office for the
discovery of missing articles. To that office came the thieves, like so
many workmen, to deliver their booty and receive their wages, and
there, too, came the robbed to describe their losses and name their
rewards. If the reward were sufficient to satisfy Wild, he returned the
article; otherwise he had it made unrecognizable by skilled workmen
whom he employed for the purpose, and presented it to a faithful
follower, or disposed of it in the regular course of business. It is
impossible not to notice a certain resemblance between Johnathan Wild
and Defoe's English Tradesman. The practical turn of mind, the absence
of sentiment so characteristic of the times, are to be seen alike in
the thief, the tradesman, and the gentleman. Conducted on purely
business principles, like a mercer's shop or a marriage between noble
families, without hatred or affection, anger or generosity, the work
went on. Wild dealt in human lives with the same cold, money-making
calculation which directed the disposal of a stolen watch. When public
complaints were made, that although many robberies were committed few
thieves were apprehended, Wild supplied the gallows with thieves who
were useless to him or lukewarm in his interest. When a large reward
was offered for the apprehension of a criminal, Wild was usually able
to deliver the man. If he was unable to do so, or was friendly to the
criminal, he still secured the reward by giving false information
against an innocent person, and supported his assertions by the perjury
of his subordinates. By these methods he soon grew rich. He carried a
silver wand which he asserted to be a badge of office given him by the
government, and entered into secret leagues with corrupt magistrates.
After a time he called himself a gentleman, and wore a sword, the first
use of which was to cut off his wife's ear. At last he was detected in
aiding the escape of a highwayman confined in Newgate, and being
deprived of his power, he was easily convicted. He was hung in 1725,
and on his way to the scaffold was almost pelted to death by the mob.
The impunity with which Wild followed his long career of crime was not
unusual. The authorities were inefficient and corrupt. Fielding,
himself a police justice, makes a magistrate say in "Amelia": "And to
speak my opinion plainly, such are the laws and such the method of
proceeding that one would almost think our laws were made for the
protection of rogues, rather than for the punishment of them." The laws
bore hardly upon the poor and spared the rich. "The parson," complained
Defoe in the "Poor Man's Plea," "preaches a thundering sermon against
drunkenness, and the justice of the peace sets my poor neighbor in the
stocks, and I am like to be much the better for either, when I know
perhaps that this same parson and this same justice were both drunk
together but the night before." The magistrates and constables were as
much in need of reform as the laws. "The greatest criminals in this
town," said Walpole,[147] "are the officers of justice; there is no
tyranny they do not exercise, no villany of which they do not partake."
Many of the magistrates were never impartial, except, as Fielding said:
"when they could get nothing on either side." One class of constables
was described by Fielding in "Amelia."[148] The watchmen intended "to
guard our streets by night from thieves and robbers, an office which at
least requires strength of body, are chosen out of those poor old
decrepit people, who are from their want of bodily strength rendered
incapable of getting a livelihood by work. These men, armed only with a
pole, which some of them are scarce able to lift, are to secure the
persons and houses of his Majesty's subjects from the attacks of young,
bold, stout, desperate, and well-armed villains. If the poor old
fellows should run away from such enemies, no one, I think, can wonder,
unless it be that they were able to make their escape." Defoe's
pickpockets are always more afraid of being mobbed on the spot, than of
being detected and punished by the police. Well known highwaymen not
infrequently rode through the streets of London with armed companions,
although large rewards were offered for their capture. Many of the
constables were of the most villanous character. The following
incident, recorded by Walpole, is only one of many instances of their
brutality which might be mentioned.[149] "There has lately been the
most shocking scene of murder imaginable; a parcel of _drunken_
constables took it into their heads to put the laws in execution
against _disorderly_ persons, and so took up every woman they met till
they had collected five or six and twenty, all of whom they thrust into
St. Martin's round house, where they kept them all night, with doors
and windows closed. The poor creatures, who could not stir or breathe,
screamed as long as they had any breath left, begging at least for
water; one poor wretch said she was worth eighteen-pence, and would
gladly give it for a draught of water, but in vain! So well did they
keep them there, that in the morning four were found stifled to death;
two died soon after, and a dozen more are in a shocking way. In short,
it is horrid to think what the poor creatures suffered. Several of them
were beggars, who, from having no lodging, were necessarily found in
the street, and others honest labouring women. One of the dead was a
poor washer-woman, big with child, who was returning home late from
washing. * * * These same men, the same night, broke into a bagnio in
Covent Garden, and took up Jack Spencer, Mr. Stewart, and Lord George
Graham, and would have thrust them into the round-house with the poor
women if they had not been worth more than eighteen-pence!"
Keepers of prisons bought their places with the distinct purpose of
making money by extortions from the prisoners. The following is an
account of the means pursued by Bainbridge, Warden of the Fleet, to
extort money from one Solas, a poor man, imprisoned for debt[150]:
"Bainbridge caused him to be turned into the dungeon, called the Strong
Room of the Master's side. This place is a vault, like those in which
the dead are interred, and wherein the bodies of persons dying in the
said prison are usually deposited till the coroner's inquest hath
passed upon them; it has no chimney nor fireplace, nor any light but
what comes over the door, or through a hole of about eight inches
square. It is neither paved nor boarded; and the rough bricks appear
both on the sides and top, being neither wainscotted nor plastered;
what adds to the dampness and stench of the place, is its being built
over the common sewer, and adjoining to the sink and dunghill where all
the nastiness of the prison is cast. In this miserable place the poor
wretch was kept by the said Bainbridge manacled and shackled for near
two months. At length on receiving five guineas from Mr. Kemp, a friend
of Solas's, Bainbridge released the prisoner from his cruel
confinement. But though his chains were taken off, his terror still
remained, and the unhappy man was prevailed upon by that terror, not
only to labor _gratis_ for the said Bainbridge, but to swear also at
random all that he hath required of him; and the committee themselves
saw an instance of the deep impression his sufferings had made upon
him; for on his surmising from something said, that Bainbridge was to
return again as Warden of the Fleet, he fainted, and the blood started
out of his mouth and nose." This example is by no means an exceptional
one. It is impossible, within the limits of this volume, to give an
adequate idea of the disease, the squalor, the cruelties and abuses
which existed in the prisons. Their interiors are often described by
the novelists, who were unable to exaggerate the actual circumstances.
Poor prisoners, when acquitted, were dragged back to prison and kept
there till their dues were paid or they were released by death. Richer
men were subjected to all sorts of indignity and danger, even to that
of small-pox, to force them to enrich their jailers.
The social condition of England in the first half of the eighteenth
century presents a material and unattractive aspect. Its most prominent
characteristics are the corruption and coarseness of the upper classes,
and the ignorant brutality of the lower. Still there existed beneath
this exterior, qualities and habits in the highest degree favorable to
civilization and social order. At a later time these qualities brought
about reforms which did away with many of the worst abuses. Among the
middle classes, fast rising to political and social prominence, lived
an earnest morality, which at a later time took form in the great
Methodist revival, and the rise of philanthropy. This persevering
industry of the same classes added enormously to the wealth of the
nation. When reform came, it came as a revolt against existing
conditions, showing at once how bad those conditions were, and how
strongly the popular mind inclined to a better state. A general feeling
of disgust prevailed which left deep traces on contemporary literature,
and produced a widespread misanthropy. The first half of the eighteenth
century was to the period of the Restoration like the morning after a
debauch. Rochester, in the time of Charles II, and Hervey, in the time
of George II were representative men. The difference in the feelings
with which these men looked upon life is significant. Rochester, in the
full tide of dissipation, glories in his sensuality, and writes the
"Maimed Debauchee."
Should some brave youth (worth being drunk) prove nice,
And from his fair inviter meanly shrink,
'T would please the ghost of my departed vice,
If, at my council, he repent and drink.
But Hervey represents the time when dissipation had run a long course,
and disgust, sanctity, and misanthropy were succeeding. To him, as to
Swift, men were "a worthless species of animals," their vices, natural;
their virtues, affectation:
Mankind I know, their nature and their art,
Their vice their own, their virtue but a part
Ill played so oft, that all the cheat can tell,
And dangerous only when 't is acted well,
* * * * *
To such reflections when I turn my mind
_I loathe my being, and abhor mankind._
[Footnote 90: Carlyle, "Frederick the Great," p. 13. vol. i.]
[Footnote 91: Addison, "An Account of the Greatest English Poets."
Quoted by Henry Morley, LL.D., "English Literature in the Reign of
Victoria."]
[Footnote 92: Lecky's "History of England in the 18th Century," vol. i,
p. 502.]
[Footnote 93: Lord Hervey, "Memoirs of George II," v. 3, p. 527.]
[Footnote 94: Hervey's "Mem. of George II," vol. 1, p. 147, note.]
[Footnote 95: Walpole's "Reminiscences"; Hervey's "Mem.," v. 2, p. 103,
note.]
[Footnote 96: Walpole's "Mem. of George II," vol. 1, p. 87.]
[Footnote 97: Browne's "Estimate of the Times"; Lecky, "Hist. of 18th
Century," vol. 1, p. 509.]
[Footnote 98: Lord Hervey, "Mem. of Geo. II," vol. i, p. 5.]
[Footnote 99: _Idem_, vol. i, p. 170.]
[Footnote 100: _Idem_, vol. i, p. 18.]
[Footnote 101: Hervey's "Mem.," i, 20.]
[Footnote 102: _Idem_, vol. 1, p. 208.]
[Footnote 103: Hervey's "Memoirs," 1, 39.]
[Footnote 104: _Idem_, ii, 360.]
[Footnote 105: _Idem_, ii, 31.]
[Footnote 106: _Idem_, vol. i, p. 91.]
[Footnote 107: Hervey's "Memoirs," vol. 1, p. 37.]
[Footnote 108: Hervey, 1, 22-25.]
[Footnote 109: Horace Walpole, "Reminiscences."]
[Footnote 110: Locke "On Civil Government," b. ii, ch. 13; Lecky's
"History of the 18th Century," vol. I, p. 471.]
[Footnote 111: Hervey's "Memoirs," ii, 280.]
[Footnote 112: Chesterfield, "Correspondence," iii, 94.]
[Footnote 113: Walpole to Mann, Dec. 24, 1741.]
[Footnote 114: Hervey's "Memoirs," i, 172.]
[Footnote 115: "History of the Eighteenth Century," vol. 1, p. 512.]
[Footnote 116: Green's "Short History of the English People," pp. 768-9.]
[Footnote 117: Hervey, ii, 189, note.]
[Footnote 118: Hervey's "Memoirs," vol. i, p. 500.]
[Footnote 119: Hervey's "Memoirs," vol. i, p. 502.]
[Footnote 120: Lord Hervey's "Memoirs", ii, 255.]
[Footnote 121: _Idem_, ii, 434.]
[Footnote 122: Hervey's "Memoirs," ii, 472.]
[Footnote 123: Hervey's "Memoirs," ii, 350.]
[Footnote 124: _Idem_, i, 90.]
[Footnote 125: _Idem_, ii, 349.]
[Footnote 126: _Tatler_, No. 159, Saturday, April 15, 1710.]
[Footnote 127: Steele, _Tatler_, No. 5.]
[Footnote 128: Walpole to Montague, March 20, 1737.]
[Footnote 129: Wilson's "Memoirs of Defoe," vol. i, p. 265.]
[Footnote 130: Wilson's "Memoirs of Defoe," vol. i, p. 206.]
[Footnote 131: Steele, _Tatler_, No. 12 May 7, 1709.]
[Footnote 132: Walpole to Mann, Nov. 26, 1711.]
[Footnote 133: Letter to Mrs. Ann Granville, Dec. 5, 1739.]
[Footnote 134: Letter to Mrs. Ann Granville, Jan. 17, 1731-32.]
[Footnote 135: Letter to Mrs. Ann Granville, Nov. 18, 1729.]
[Footnote 136: Letter to Mrs. Ann Granville, Christmas-day, 1729.]
[Footnote 137: Green, "Short History of the English People," p. 717.]
[Footnote 138: Lord Hervey's "Memoirs of George II," vol. ii, p. 139.]
[Footnote 139: Strutt's "Sports and Pastimes," p. 259; Lecky, "History
of England in the 18th Century," vol. i, chap. iv.]
[Footnote 140: Lecky, "History of England in the 18th Century," vol. i,
p. 522.]
[Footnote 141: Walpole to Sir H. Mann, March 23, 1752.]
[Footnote 142: The _Spectator_, "Sir Roger at the Playhouse."]
[Footnote 143: Horace Walpole, "Short Notes of My Life."]
[Footnote 144: Horace Walpole to Sir H. Mann, Aug. 2, 1750.]
[Footnote 145: See the "Newgate Calendar."]
[Footnote 146: See the "Newgate Calendar" and Pike's "History of
Crime," vol. 2, chap. x.]
[Footnote 147: Walpole to Mann, bet. July 14 and 29, 1742.]
[Footnote 148: "Amelia," book i, chap. 2.]
[Footnote 149: Walpole to Mann, bet. July 14 and 29, 1742.]
[Footnote 150: "State Trials;" vol. xvii, p. 298. _Proceedings against
John Higgins, Esq., Warden of the Fleet, Thomas Bainbridge, Esq., Warden of
the Fleet, Richard Corbett, one of the Tipstaffs of the Fleet, and
William Acton, Keeper of the Marshalsea Prison: 3 George II, A.D. 1729.
Report of the Com. of the House of Commons_.]
II.
Lord Hervey's bitter lines introduce us to Jonathan Swift. Nature,
together with the character of his time, made the great Dean a
misanthropist. Physical infirmity, disappointed hopes, and a long
series of humiliations destroyed the happiness which should have
belonged to his rare union of noble gifts,--his tall, commanding
figure, his awe-inspiring countenance, his acute wit, and magnificent
intellect. Naturally proud and sensitive to an abnormal degree, he was
obliged to suffer the most galling slights. From his earliest years he
hated dependence, and yet, until middle life he was forced to be a
dependent. His education was furnished by the charity of relatives,
between whom and himself there was no affection. His college degree was
conferred in a manner which made it a disgrace rather than an honor.
The long years which he passed in the household of Sir William Temple,
subject to the humors and caprices of his master, embittered his temper
at the time of life when it should have been most buoyant and hopeful.
Thus began the melancholy and misanthropy which marred his whole life,
darkening his triumphs, turning such love as he had to give into a
curse to those who received it, producing an eccentricity which often
gave him the appearance of a madman, and finally bringing him to a
terrible end--to die, as he himself foretold, like a blasted elm, first
at the top. He kept his birthday as a day of mourning. He solemnly
regretted his escape when nearly killed by an accident. He habitually
parted from a friend with the wish that they might never meet again.
Cæsar's description of Cassius is wonderfully applicable to Swift:[151]
----He reads much;
He is a great observer, and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men ----
Seldom he smiles; and smiles in such a sort
As if he mocked himself, and scorn'd his spirit
That could be amused to smile at any thing.
The character of Swift presents great apparent contradictions. Although
full of good-will and appreciation for individuals, although exercising
out of a small income the most discriminating and open handed
generosity, there has never lived a man more bitter in his misanthropy,
more fierce in his denunciation of mankind. Although capable of great
and disinterested affection, he was unable to make his affection a
source of happiness to himself or to others. Although he always chose
for companionship the most refined and cultivated women, the wisest and
most honored men, his mind dwelt by preference on the most terrible
examples of human depravity, and he gave permanent form, in his
literary productions, to ideas from which a healthy mind must always
turn with horror and disgust. His misanthropy was founded partly on
observation of the evil and corruption which he saw about him, and
partly on the suspicions and exaggerations of his own imagination. He
gave up writing a history of England, because, in his own words, he
found the characters of history such a pack of rascals that he would
have no more to say to them. He made a "List of Friends," which he
classified as Grateful, Ungrateful, Indifferent, and Doubtful. Of these
friends, forty-four in number, only seventeen were marked with the _g_
which signified that their friendship was trusted. We cannot
disassociate Swift from his own time, nor can we attribute simply to a
melancholy life or to mental aberration the revolting conceptions which
his works contain. The coarseness and corruption which marked the
private and public life of Swift's day had their share in the
production of such poems as The "Lady's Dressing-Room," and such
degrading views of human nature as are expressed in the "Voyage to the
Houyhnhnms."
It is a significant sign of the times that Hogarth, the greatest
English painter, and Swift, the greatest English writer, should have
employed their talents in caricature and in satire. In the wonderful
allegory of the "Tale of a Tub," in which the corruptions and failings
of the English, Roman, and Presbyterian churches were ridiculed in the
persons of Jack, Peter, and Martin, Swift displayed at an early age his
exuberant wit and surpassing satirical power. The "Tale of a Tub" was
succeeded by the "Battle of the Books," an imaginary conflict between
volumes in a library, which exposed the absurdity of the controversy
over the relative merits of the ancients and the moderns. But Swift's
satire became most fierce and brilliant when it was turned from rival
creeds and rival literatures, and directed toward mankind itself.
The "Travels of Lemuel Gulliver" were dropped, said the publisher, at
his house, in the dark, from a hackney-coach. In regard to this work,
the Dean followed his custom of sending out his writings to the world
to make their way on their own merits, without the assistance of his
name. But the authorship of the book could not long remain unknown
before the storm of applause and curiosity which it immediately
excited. It was a production, said Johnson,[152] "so new and strange
that it filled the reader with a mingled emotion of merriment and
amazement. It was received with such avidity, that the price of the
first edition was raised before the second could be made; it was read
by the high and the low, the learned and illiterate. Criticism was for
a while lost in wonder; no rules of judgment were applied to a book
written in open defiance of truth and regularity." Whether read for the
satire or the story, the adventures of Gulliver proved equally
fascinating. They "offered personal and political satire to the readers
in high life, low and coarse incidents to the vulgar, marvels to the
romantic, wit to the young and lively, lessons of morality and policy
to the grave, and maxims of deep and bitter misanthropy to neglected
age and disappointed ambition."[153]
The early part of the eighteenth century offered rich material to the
satirist, and Swift brought to his work unparalleled fierceness and
power. He attacked the corruption of the politician and the minister,
the vanity and vice of the courtier, the folly and extravagance of the
fashionable world, and gathering venom in his course, made his satire
universal and painted the pettiness and deformity of the human race.
But among the follies and vices of mankind, vanity was the fault most
offensive to Swift, and that which he lashed with his most bitter
invective. To ridicule human pride, and to expose its inconsistency
with the imperfection of man, is the ruling object of his great
satirical romance. On Gulliver's return to England from the land of the
Houyhnhnms, where, under the degraded form of Yahoos, he had studied
mankind as they appeared when influenced by all human vices and brutal
instincts unveiled by hypocrisy or civilization, he describes his
horror at observing the existence of vanity among his countrymen who
resembled Yahoos so closely;--
My reconcilement to the Yahoo kind in general might not be so
difficult, if they would be content with those vices and follies
only which nature has entitled them to. I am not in the least
provoked at the sight of a lawyer, a pickpocket, a colonel, a fool,
a lord, a gamester, a politician, a whoremonger, a physician, an
evidence, a suborner, an attorney, a traitor, or the like; this is
all according to the due course of things: but when I behold a lump
of deformity and diseases, both in body and mind, smitten with
pride, it immediately breaks all the measures of my patience;
neither shall I ever be able to comprehend how such an animal, and
such a vice, could tally together.
In the "Voyage to Lilliput" the follies and vanities of individuals and
of parties are ridiculed by the representation of their practice among
diminutive beings. Sir Robert Walpole suffered in the person of Flimnap
the Lilliputian Premier, Tories and Whigs in the High-Heels and
Low-Heels, Catholics and Protestants in the Big-endians and
Small-endians. In the "Voyage to Brobdingnag," where Gulliver finds
himself a pigmy among giants, the general object of the satire is the
same, but its application becomes more bitter and universal.
Characteristics of the human race hardly perceptible in their ordinary
proportions, attain a disgusting and monstrous prominence when seen in
the huge persons of the Brobdingnagians. The king of this gigantic
people is represented as a beneficent monarch, who directs all his
energies toward the peace, prosperity, and material advancement of his
subjects; who seeks with a cold, calculating mind, undisturbed by
passion or prejudice, the greatest good of the greatest number. To this
monarch Gulliver gave a description of his native country: "I artfully
eluded many of his questions, and gave to every point a more favorable
turn, by many degrees, than the strictness of truth would allow; for I
have always borne that laudable partiality to my own country, which
Dionysius Halicarnasseusis, with so much justice, recommends to a
historian; I would hide the frailties and deformities of my political
mother, and place her virtues and beauties in the most advantageous
light." But the impression produced upon the King of Brobdingnag by
Gulliver's relation expressed the widespread sense of evil which
existed in Swift's day, which tinctured literature with misanthropy,
and made Rousseau at a later time argue the superiority of the savage
man over his civilized, but corrupt and hypocritical brother.
He was perfectly astonished with the historical account I gave him
of our affairs during the last century; protesting: "It was only a
heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions,
banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction,
hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy,
lust, malice, and ambition could produce."
His majesty, in another audience, was at the pains to recapitulate
the sum of all I had spoken; compared the questions he made with
the answers I had given; then, taking me into his hands, and
stroking me gently, delivered himself in these words, which I shall
never forget, nor the manner he spoke them in: "My little friend,
Grildrig, you have made a most admirable panegyric upon your
country; you have clearly proved that ignorance, idleness, and vice
are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator; that laws
are best explained, interpreted, and applied by those whose
interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding
them. I observe among you some lines of an institution, which in
its original, might have been tolerable, but these half erased, and
the rest wholly blurred and blotted by corruptions. It does not
appear from all you have said, how any one perfection is required
toward the procurement of any one station among you; much less,
that men are ennobled on account of their virtue; that priests are
advanced for their piety or learning; soldiers for their conduct or
valor; judges for their integrity; senators for the love of their
country; or counsellors for their wisdom. * * * I cannot but
conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of
little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the
surface of the earth!"
In the voyage to Laputa the satire is directed against the vanity of
human wisdom, and the folly of abandoning useful occupations for the
empty schemes of visionaries. The philosophers of Laputa had allowed
their land to run to waste, and their people to fall into poverty in
their attempts to "soften marble for pillows and pin-cushions," to
"petrify the hoofs of a living horse to prevent them from foundering,"
to "sow land with chaff," and to "extract sunbeams from cucumbers,
which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm
the air in raw, inclement summers." The satire cannot be considered
too broad when we consider the folly and credulity which, at the time
of the South Sea mania, led many persons into sinking their whole
fortunes in such enterprises as the company "To Fish up Wrecks on the
Irish Coast," to "Make Salt-Water Fresh," to "Extract Silver from
Lead," and to "Import Jackasses from Spain."