The Sir Roger de Coverley papers are often said to be the precursor of
the modern English novel. And in a very real sense they are. There are,
to be sure, crude specimens of prose fiction in the preceding century
that may perhaps dispute this title, though most of them, like the
long-winded romances that found place in the library of Sir Roger's
lady friend, were of French origin or pattern. But these romances,
while they supply the element of plot and adventure most liberally,
were deficient in genuine characters. There are no real men and women
in them. Moreover, they made no attempt to depict contemporary life as
it was. But Sir Roger de Coverley is no personage of romance. He is a
hearty, red-blooded, Tory gentleman who lives in Worcestershire. And he
has no adventures more striking than might naturally befall a country
squire who comes up to London for the season once a year. There were
scores of just such men in every shire in England. His speech, his
habits, his prejudices, are all shown us with simple truth. And yet
this is done with so much art and humour that Sir Roger is one of the
most living persons in our literature. He is as immortal as Hamlet or
Julius Cæsar. We know him as well as we know our nearest neighbour; and
we like him quite as well as we like most of our neighbours.
Now this was something new in English literature. Sir Roger is the
earliest person in English imaginative prose that is really still
alive. There are men and women in our poetry before his day--in
the drama there is, of course, a great host of them; but in prose
literature Sir Roger is the first. Furthermore, the men and women of
the drama, even in that comedy of manners which professed to reflect
most accurately contemporary society, were almost always drawn with
some romantic or satiric exaggeration; but there is no exaggeration
in the character of Sir Roger. Here was the beginning of a healthy
realism. It was only necessary for Richardson and Fielding, thirty
years later, to bring together several such genuine characters into a
group, and to show how the incidents of their lives naturally ran into
plot or story--and we have a novel.
The original suggestion for the character of Sir Roger seems to
have come from Steele, who wrote that account of the Spectator Club
(_Spectator_, No. 2) in which the knight first appears. But it is
to Addison's keener perception and nicer art that we owe most of
those subtle and humorous touches of characterization which make the
portrait so real and so human. There is more of movement and incident
in Steele's papers, and there is more of sentiment. It is Steele, for
example, who tells the story of the Journey to London, and recounts the
adventures of the Coverley ancestry; it is Steele, too, who has most to
say of the widow. But in the best papers by Addison, like the Visit to
the Abbey or the Evening at the Theater, there is hardly a line that
does not reveal, in speech, or manner, or notion, some peculiarity
of the kindly gentleman we know and love so well. If Steele outlined
the portrait, it was left for Addison to elaborate it. Moreover, a
careful reading of the papers will show that Steele's conception of the
character was slightly different from Addison's. Steele's Sir Roger is
whimsical and sentimental, but a man of good sense; not only beloved
but respected. Addison dwells rather upon the old knight's rusticity,
his old-fashioned, patriarchal notions of society, his ignorance of
the town, his obsolete but kindly prejudices. The truth is that in
Addison's portrait there is always a trace of covert satire upon the
narrow conservatism of the Tory country gentleman of his day. Addison's
Sir Roger is amiable and humorous; but he does not represent the party
of intelligence and progress--he is not a Whig.
Yet there are no real inconsistencies in the character of Sir Roger.
His whimsical humor, his sentiment, his credulity, his benevolence, his
amiable though obstinate temper, are all combined in a personality so
convincing that we must always think of him as an actual contemporary
of the men who created him. He is the typical conservative English
country gentleman of the Queen Anne time, not taking kindly to new
ideas, but sturdy, honest, order-loving, of large heart and simple
manners. To such men as he England owes the permanence of much that
is best in her institutions and her national life. As one walks
through Westminster Abbey to-day, listening to the same chattering
verger that conducted Sir Roger--he has been going his rounds ever
since--one almost expects to see again the knight sitting down in the
coronation chair, or leaning on Edward Third's sword while he tells the
discomfited guide the whole story of the Black Prince out of Baker's
Chronicle. If, indeed, we try in any way to bring back to imagination
the life of that bygone age, Sir Roger is sure to come to mind at
once, at the assizes, at Vauxhall, or, best of all, at home in the
country. He is part of that life; as real to our thought as Swift or
Marlborough, or as Steele or Addison themselves.