In which several objections that have been made, as well to the
catastrophe, as to different parts of the preceding history,
are briefly considered.
The foregoing work having been published at three different periods of
time, the author, in the course of its publication, was favoured with
many anonymous letters, in which the writers differently expressed their
wishes with regard to the apprehended catastrophe.
Most of those directed to him by the gentler sex, turned in favour of
what they called a fortunate ending. Some of the fair writers,
enamoured, as they declared, with the character of the heroine, were
warmly solicitous to have her made happy; and others, likewise of their
mind, insisted that poetical justice required that it should be so. And
when, says one ingenious lady, whose undoubted motive was good-nature and
humanity, it must be concluded that it is in an author's power to make
his piece end as he pleases, why should he not give pleasure rather than
pain to the reader whom he has interested in favour of his principal
characters?
Others, and some gentlemen, declared against tragedies in general, and in
favour of comedies, almost in the words of Lovelace, who was supported in
his taste by all the women at Mrs. Sinclair's and by Sinclair herself.
'I have too much feeling, said he.* There is enough in the world to make
our hearts sad, without carrying grief into our diversions, and making
the distresses of others our own.'
* See Vol. IV. Letter XL.
And how was this happy ending to be brought about? Why, by this very
easy and trite expedient; to wit, by reforming Lovelace, and marrying him
to Clarissa--not, however, abating her one of her trials, nor any of her
sufferings, [for the sake of the sport her distresses would give to the
tender-hearted reader, as she went along,] the last outrage excepted:
that, indeed, partly in compliment to Lovelace himself, and partly for
her delicacy-sake, they were willing to spare her.
But whatever were the fate of his work, the author was resolved to take a
different method. He always thought that sudden conversions, such,
especially, as were left to the candour of the reader to suppose and make
out, has neither art, nor nature, nor even probability, in them; and that
they were moreover of a very bad example. To have a Lovelace, for a
series of years, glory in his wickedness, and think that he had nothing
to do, but as an act of grace and favour to hold out his hand to receive
that of the best of women, whenever he pleased, and to have it thought
that marriage would be a sufficient amends for all his enormities to
others as well as to her--he could not bear that. Nor is reformation, as
he has shown in another piece, to be secured by a fine face; by a passion
that has sense for its object; nor by the goodness of a wife's heart, nor
even example, if the heart of the husband be not graciously touched by
the Divine finger.
It will be seen, by this time, that the author had a great end in view.
He had lived to see the scepticism and infidelity openly avowed, and even
endeavoured to be propagated from the press; the greatest doctrines of
the Gospel brought into question; those of self-denial and mortification
blotted out of the catalogue of christian virtues; and a taste even to
wantonness for out-door pleasure and luxury, to the general exclusion of
domestic as well as public virtue, industriously promoted among all ranks
and degrees of people.
In this general depravity, when even the pulpit has lost great part of
its weight, and the clergy are considered as a body of interested men,
the author thought he should be able to answer it to his own heart, be
the success what it would, if he threw in his mite towards introducing a
reformation so much wanted: and he imagined, that if in an age given up
to diversion and entertainment, if he could steal in, as may be said, and
investigate the great doctrines of Christianity under the fashionable
guise of an amusement; he should be most likely to serve his purpose,
remembering that of the Poet:--
A verse may find him who a sermon flies,
And turn delight into a sacrifice.
He was resolved, therefore, to attempt something that never yet had been
done. He considered that the tragic poets have as seldom made their
heroes true objects of pity, as the comics theirs laudable ones of
imitation: and still more rarely have made them in their deaths look
forward to a future hope. And thus, when they die, they seem totally to
perish. Death, in such instances, must appear terrible. It must be
considered as the greatest evil. But why is death set in such shocking
lights, when it is the universal lot?
He has, indeed, thought fit to paint the death of the wicked, as terrible
as he could paint it. But he has endeavoured to draw that of the good in
such an amiable manner, that the very Balaams of the world should not
forbear to wish that their latter end might be like that of the heroine.
And after all, what is the poetical justice so much contended for by
some, as the generality of writers have managed it, but another sort of
dispensation than that with which God, by revelation, teaches us, He has
thought fit to exercise mankind; whom placing here only in a state of
probation, he hath so intermingled good and evil, as to necessitate us to
look forward for a more equal dispensation of both?
The Author of the History (or rather Dramatic Narrative) of Clarissa, is
therefore well justified by the christian system, in deferring to
extricate suffering virtue to the time in which it will meet with the
completion of its reward.
But not absolutely to shelter the conduct observed in it under the
sanction of Religion, [an authority, perhaps, not of the greatest weight
with some of our modern critics,] it must be observed, that the Author is
justified in its catastrophe by the greatest master of reason, and best
judge of composition, that ever lived. The learned reader knows we must
mean ARISTOTLE; whose sentiments in this matter we shall beg leave to
deliver in the words of a very amiable writer of our own country:
'The English writers of Tragedy,' says Mr. Addison,* 'are possessed with
a notion, that when they represent a virtuous or innocent person in
distress, they ought not to leave him till they have delivered him out of
his troubles, or made him triumph over his enemies.
* Spectator, Vol. I. No. XL.
'This error they have been led into by a ridiculous doctrine in modern
criticism, that they are obliged to an equal distribution of rewards and
punishments, and an impartial execution of poetical justice.
'Who were the first that established this rule, I know not; but I am sure
it has no foundation in NATURE, in REASON, or in the PRACTICE OF THE
ANTIENTS.
'We find that good and evil happen alike unto ALL MEN on this side the
grave: and as the principal design of tragedy is to raise commiseration
and terror in the minds of the audience, we shall defeat this great end,
if we always make virtue and innocence happy and successful.
'Whatever crosses and disappoints a good man suffers in the body of the
tragedy, they will make but small impression on our minds, when we know,
that, in the last act, he is to arrive at the end of his wishes and
desires.
'When we see him engaged in the depth of his afflictions, we are apt to
comfort ourselves, because we are sure he will find his way out of them,
and that his grief, however great soever it may be at present, will soon
terminate in gladness.
'For this reason, the antient writers of tragedy treated men in their
plays, as they are dealt with in the world, by making virtue sometimes
happy and sometimes miserable, as they found it in the fable which they
made choice of, or as it might affect their audience in the most
agreeable manner.
'Aristotle considers the tragedies that were written in either of those
kinds; and observes, that those which ended unhappily had always pleased
the people, and carried away the prize, in the public disputes of the
state, from those that ended happily.
'Terror and commiseration leave a pleasing anguish in the mind, and fix
the audience in such a serious composure of thought, as is much more
lasting and delightful, than any little transient starts of joy and
satisfaction.
'Accordingly, we find, that more of our English tragedies have succeeded,
in which the favourites of the audience sink under their calamities, than
those in which they recover themselves out of them.
'The best plays of this kind are The Orphan, Venice Preserved, Alexander
the Great, Theodosius, All for Love, Oedipus, Oroonoko, Othello, &c.
'King Lear is an admirable tragedy of the same kind, as Shakespeare wrote
it: but as it is reformed according to the chimerical notion of POETICAL
JUSTICE, in my humble opinion it has lost half its beauty.
'At the same time I must allow, that there are very noble tragedies which
have been framed upon the other plan, and have ended happily; as indeed
most of the good tragedies which have been written since the starting of
the above-mentioned criticism, have taken this turn: The Mourning Bride,
Tamerlane,* Ulysses, Phædra and Hippolitus, with most of Mr. Dryden's. I
must also allow, that many of Shakespeare's, and several of the
celebrated tragedies of antiquity, are cast in the same form. I do not,
therefore, dispute against this way of writing tragedies; but against the
criticism that would establish this as the only method; and by that means
would very much cramp the English tragedy, and perhaps give a wrong bent
to the genius of our writers.'
* Yet, in Tamerlane, two of the most amiable characters, Moneses and
Arpasia, suffer death.