"Held the universe to be a large suit of clothes, which invests

everything: that the earth is invested by the air; the air is invested

by the stars, and the stars are invested by the primum mobile.... What

is that which some call land, but a fine coat faced with green? or the

sea, but a waistcoat of water-tabby?... You will find how curious

journeyman Nature has been, to trim up the vegetable beaux: observe how

sparkish a periwig adorns the head of a beech, and what a fine doublet

of white sattin is worn by the birch.... Is not religion a cloak;

honesty a pair of shoes worn out in the dirt; self-love a surtout;

vanity a shirt; and conscience a pair of breeches; which, though a cover

for lewdness as well as nastiness, is easily slipt down for the service

of both?... If certain ermines and furs be placed in a certain position,

we style them a judge; and so an apt conjunction of lawn and black

sattin, we entitle a bishop."[714]

Others held also "that the soul was the outward, and the body the inward

clothing.... This last they proved by Scripture, because in them we

live, and move, and have our being." Thus our three brothers, having

only very simple clothes, were embarrassed. For instance, the fashion at

this time was for shoulder-knots,[715] and their father's will expressly

forbade them to "add to or diminish from their coats one thread":

"In this unhappy case they went immediately to consult their father's

will, read it over and over, but not a word of the Shoulder-knot....

After much thought, one of the brothers, who happened to be more

book-learned than the other two, said, he had found an expedient. 'It is

true,' said he, 'there is nothing in this will, _totidem verbis_, making

mention of Shoulder-Knots; but I dare conjecture, we may find them

inclusive, or _totidem syllabis._' This distinction was immediately

approved by all; and so they fell again to examine;[716] but their evil

star had so directed the matter, that the first syllable was not to be

found in the whole writings. Upon which disappointment, he, who found

the former evasion, took heart and said: 'Brothers, there are yet hopes,

for though we cannot find them _totidem verbis_, nor _totidem syllabis_,

I dare engage we shall make them out _tertio modo_ or _totidem

litteris._' This discovery was also highly commended; upon which they

fell once more to the scrutiny, and picked out S, H, O, U, L, D, E, R,

when the same planet, enemy to their repose, had wonderfully contrived

that a K was not to be found. Here was a weighty difficulty; but the

distinguishing brother... now his hand was in, proved by a very good

argument, that K was a modern illegitimate letter, unknown to the

learned ages, nor anywhere to be found in ancient manuscripts.... Upon

this all farther difficulty vanished; shoulder-knots were made clearly

out to be _jure paterno_, and our three gentlemen swaggered with as

large and flaunting ones as the best."[717]

Other interpretations admitted gold lace, and a codicil authorized

flame colored satin linings:[718]

"Next winter a player, hired for the purpose by the corporation of

fringe-makers, acted his part in a new comedy, all covered with silver

fringe, and according to the laudable custom gave rise to that fashion.

Upon which the brothers consulting their father's will, to their great

astonishment found these words: 'Item, I charge and command my said

three sons to wear no sort of silver fringe upon or about their said

coats,' etc.... However, after some pause, the brother so often

mentioned for his erudition, who was well skilled in criticisms, had

found in a certain author, which he said should be nameless, that the

same word, which in the will is called fringe, does also signify a

broomstick: and doubtless ought to have the same interpretation in this

paragraph. This another of the brothers disliked, because of that

epithet silver, which could not, he humbly conceived, in propriety of

speech, be reasonably applied to a broomstick; but it was replied upon

him that this epithet was understood in a mythological and allegorical

sense. However, he objected again, why their father should forbid them

to wear a broomstick on their coats, a caution that seemed unnatural and

impertinent; upon which he was taken up short, as one who spoke

irreverently of a mystery, which doubtless was very useful and

significant, but ought not to be over-curiously pried into, or nicely

reasoned upon."[719]

In the end the scholastic brother grew weary of searching further

"evasions," locked up the old will in a strong box,[720] authorized by

tradition the fashions which became him, and having contrived to be left

a legacy, styled himself My Lord Peter. His brothers, treated like

servants, were discarded from his house; they reopened the will of their

father, and began to understand it. Martin (Luther), to reduce his

clothes to the primitive simplicity, brought off a large handful of

points, stripped away ten dozen yards of fringe, rid his coat of a huge

quantity of gold-lace, but kept a few embroideries, which could not "be

got away without damaging the cloth." Jack (Calvin) tore off all in his

enthusiasm, and was found in tatters, besides being envious of Martin,

and half mad. He then joined the Æolists, or inspired admirers of the

wind, who pretend that the spirit, or breath, or wind, is heavenly, and

contains all knowledge:

"First, it is generally affirmed or confessed that learning puffeth men

up; and secondly they proved it by the following syllogism: words are

but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo learning is nothing

but wind.... This, when blown up to its perfection, ought not to be

covetously hoarded up, stifled, or hid under a bushel, but freely

communicated to mankind. Upon these reasons, and others of equal weight,

the wise Æolists affirm the gift of belching to be the noblest act of a

rational creature.... At certain seasons of the year, you might behold

the priests among them in vast number... linked together in a circular

chain, with every man a pair of bellows applied to his neighbour's

breech, by which they blew each other to the shape and size of a tun;

and for that reason with great propriety of speech, did usually call

their bodies their vessels."[721]

After this explanation of theology, religious quarrels, and mystical

inspirations, what is left, even of the Anglican Church? She is a

sensible, useful, political cloak, but what else? Like a stiff brush

used with too strong a hand, the buffoonery has carried away the cloth

as well as the stain. Swift has put out a fire, I allow; but, like

Gulliver at Liliput, the people saved by him must hold their nose, to

admire the right application of the liquid, and the energy of the engine

that saves them.

Religion being drowned, Swift turns against science; for the digressions

with which he interrupts his story to imitate and mock the modern sages

are most closely connected with his tale. The book opens with

introductions, prefaces, dedications, and other appendices generally

applied to swell books--violent caricatures heaped up against the vanity

and prolixity of authors. He professes himself one of them, and

announces their discoveries. Admirable discoveries! The first of their

commentaries will be on

"'Tom Thumb,' whose author was a Pythagorean philosopher. This dark

treatise contains the whole scheme of the Metempsychosis, deducing the

progress of the soul through all her stages. 'Whittington and his Cat'

is the work of that mysterious rabbi Jehuda Hannasi, containing a

defence of the gemara of the Jerusalem misna, and its just preference to

that of Babylon, contrary to the vulgar opinion."[722]

He himself announces that he is going to publish "A Panegyrical Essay

upon the Number Three"; a "General History of Ears"; a "Modest Defence

of the Proceedings of the Rabble in all Ages"; an "Essay on the Art of

Canting, Philosophically, Physically, and Musically Considered"; and he

engages his readers to try by their entreaties to get from him these

treatises, which will change the appearance of the world. Then, turning

against the philosophers and the critics, sifters of texts, he proves to

them, according to their own fashion, that the ancients mentioned them.

Can we find anywhere a more biting parody on forced interpretations:

[Illustration: CHOICE EXAMPLES OF EARLY PRINTING AND ENGRAVING.

Fac-similes from Rare and Curious Books.

_PAGE FROM THE CHRONICLES OF HUNGARY._

This fine work was printed by Ratdolt after his return from Venice to

his native Augsburg in 1488. The page before us is not only beautiful,

but highly original in conception. The infantry fight, which is the

subject of the illustration, shows how a master's hand can, by the

simplest means, produce an effect full of life and expression. The form

of the type is bold and clear. Our illustration is from the unique copy

in the British Museum.]

"The types are so apposite and the applications so necessary and

natural, that it is not easy to conceive how any reader of a modern eye

or taste could overlook them.... For first; Pausanias is of opinion,

that the perfection of writing correct was entirely owing to the

institution of critics; and, that he can possibly mean no other than the

true critic, is, I think, manifest enough from the following

description. He says, they were a race of men, who delighted to nibble

at the superfluities and excrescences of books; which the learned at

length observing, took warning, of their own accord, to lop the

luxuriant, the rotten, the dead, the sapless, and the overgrown branches

from their works. But now, all this he cunningly shades under the

following allegory; that the Nauplians in Argos learned the art of

pruning their vines, by observing that when an _ass_ had browsed upon

one of them, it thrived the better and bore fairer fruits. But

Herodotus, holding the very same hieroglyph, speaks much plainer, and

almost in _terminis._ He has been so bold as to tax the true critics of

ignorance and malice; telling us openly, for I think nothing can be

plainer, that in the western part of Libya there were asses with

horns."[723]

Then follow a multitude of pitiless sarcasms. Swift has the genius of

insult; he is an inventor of irony, as Shakespeare of poetry; and as

beseems an extreme force, he goes to extremes in his thought and art. He

lashes reason after science, and leaves nothing of the whole human mind.

With a medical seriousness he establishes that vapors are exhaled from

the whole body, which, "getting possession of the brain," leave it

healthy if they are not abundant, but excite it if they are; that in the

first case they make peaceful individuals, in the second great

politicians, founders of religions, and deep philosophers, that is,

madmen, so that madness is the source of all human genius and all the

institutions of the universe. This is why it is very wrong to keep men

shut up in Bedlam, and a commission appointed to examine them would find

in this academy many imprisoned geniuses "which might produce admirable

instruments for the several offices in a state ecclesiastical, civil,

and military."

"Is any student tearing his straw in piece-meal, swearing and

blaspheming, biting his grate, foaming at the mouth?... let the right

worshipful commissioners of inspection give him a regiment of dragoons,

and send him into Flanders among the rest.... You will find a third

gravely taking the dimensions of his kennel; a person of foresight and

insight, though kept quite in the dark.... He walks duly in one pace...

talks much of hard times and taxes and the whore of Babylon; bars up the

wooden window of his cell constantly at eight o'clock, dreams of

fire.... Now what a figure would all those acquirements amount to if the

owner were sent into the city among his brethren?... Now is it not

amazing to think the society of Warwick-lane should have no more concern

for the recovery of so useful a member?... I shall not descend so

minutely, as to insist upon the vast number of beaux, fiddlers, poets,

and politicians that the world might recover by such a reformation....

Even I myself, the author of these momentous truths, am a person whose

imaginations are hard-mouthed, and exceedingly disposed to run away with

his reason, which I have observed, from long experience, to be a very

light rider, and easily shaken off; upon which account my friends will

never trust me alone, without a solemn promise to vent my speculations

in this, or the like manner, for the universal benefit of mankind."[724]

What a wretched man is he who knows himself and mocks himself! What

madman's laughter, and what a sob in this hoarse gayety! What remains

for him but to slaughter the remainder of human invention? Who does not

see here the despair from which sprang the academy of Lagado? Is there

not here a foretaste of madness in this intense meditation of absurdity?

His mathematician, who, to teach geometry, makes his pupils swallow

wafers on which he writes his theorems; his moralist, who, to reconcile

political parties, proposes to saw off the occiputs and brain of each

"opposite party-man," and "to let the occiputs thus cut off be

interchanged"; his economist again, who tries "to reduce human excrement

to its original food." Swift is akin to these, and is the most wretched

of all, because he nourishes his mind, like them, on filth and folly,

and because he possesses what they have not, knowledge and disgust.

It is sad to exhibit human folly, it is sadder to exhibit human

perversity: the heart is more a part of ourselves than reason: we suffer

less in seeing extravagance and folly than wickedness or baseness, and I

find Swift more agreeable in his "Tale of a Tub" than in "Gulliver."

All his talent and all his passions are assembled in this book; the

positive mind has impressed upon it its form and force. There is nothing

agreeable in the fiction or the style. It is the diary of an ordinary

man, a surgeon, then a captain, who describes coolly and sensibly the

events and objects which he has just seen, but who has no feeling for

the beautiful, no appearance of admiration or passion, no delivery. Sir

Joseph Banks and Captain Cook relate thus. Swift only seeks the natural,

and he attains it. His art consists in taking an absurd supposition, and

deducing seriously the effects which it produces. It is the logical and

technical mind of a mechanician, who, imagining the decrease or increase

in a wheelwork, perceives the result of the changes, and writes down the

record. His whole pleasure is in seeing these results clearly, and by a

solid reasoning. He marks the dimensions, and so forth, like a good

engineer and a statistician, omitting no trivial and positive detail,

explaining cookery, stabling, politics: in this he has no equal but De

Foe. The lodestone machine which sustains the flying island, the

entrance of Gulliver into Liliput, and the inventory of his property,

his arrival and maintenance among the Yahoos, carry us with them; no

mind knew better the ordinary laws of nature and human life; no mind

shut itself up, more strictly in this knowledge; none was ever more

exact or more limited.

But what a vehemence underneath this aridity! How ridiculous our

interests and passions seem, degraded to the littleness of Liliput, or

compared to the vastness of Brobdignag? What is beauty, when the

handsomest body, seen with piercing eyes, seems horrible? What is our

power, when an insect, king of an ant-hill, can be called, like our

princes, "sublime majesty, delight and terror of the universe"? What is

our homage worth, when a pygmy "is taller, by almost the breadth of a

nail, than any of his court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into

his beholders"? Three-fourths of our sentiment are follies, and the

weakness of our organs is the only cause of our veneration or love.

Society repels us still more than man. At Laputa, at Liliput, amongst

the horses and giants, Swift rages against it, and is never tired of

abusing and reviling it. In his eyes, "ignorance, idleness, and vice are

the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator; laws are best

explained, interpreted, and applied by those whose interest and

abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them."[725] A

noble is a wretch, corrupted body and soul, "combining in himself all

the diseases and vices transmitted by ten generations of rakes and

rascals. A lawyer is a hired liar, wont by twenty years of roguery to

pervert the truth if he is an advocate, and to sell it if he is a judge.

A minister of state is a go-between, who, having disposed of his wife,"

or brawled for the public good, is master of all offices; and who, in

order better to rob the money of the nation, buys members of the House

of Commons with the same money. A king is a practiser of all the vices,

unable to employ or love an honest man, persuaded that "the royal throne

could not be supported without corruption, because that positive,

confident, restive temper, which virtue infused into a man, was a

perpetual clog to public business."[726] At Liliput the king chooses as

his ministers those who dance best upon the tight-rope. At Luggnagg he

compels all those, who are presented to him, to crawl on their bellies

and lick the dust.

"When the king has a mind to put any of his nobles to death in a gentle,

indulgent manner, he commands the floor to be strewed with a certain

brown powder of a deadly composition, which, being licked up, infallibly

kills him in twenty-four hours. But in justice to this prince's great

clemency, and the care he has of his subjects' lives (wherein it were

much to be wished that the monarchs of Europe would imitate him), it

must be mentioned for his honour, that strict orders are given to have

the infected parts of the floor well washed after every such

execution.... I myself heard him give directions that one of his pages

should be whipped, whose turn it was to give notice about washing the

floor after an execution, but maliciously had omitted it; by which

neglect, a young lord of great hopes coming to an audience, was

unfortunately poisoned, although the King at that time had no design

against his life. But this good prince was so gracious as to forgive the

poor page his whipping, upon promise that he would do so no more,

without special orders."[727]

All these fictions of giants, pygmies, flying islands, are means for

depriving human nature of the veils with which habit and imagination

cover it, to display it in its truth and its ugliness. There is still

one cloak to remove, the most deceitful and familiar. Swift must take

away that appearance of reason in which we deck ourselves. He must

suppress the sciences, arts, combinations of society, inventions of

industries, whose brightness dazzles us. He must discover the Yahoo in

man. What a spectacle!

"At last I beheld several animals in a field, and one or two of the same

kind sitting in trees. Their shape was very singular and deformed....

Their heads and breasts were covered with a thick hair, some frizzled,

and others lank; they had beards like goats, and a long ridge of hair

down their backs, and the forepart of their legs and feet; but the rest

of their bodies was bare, so that I might see their skins, which were of

a brown buff colour.... They climbed high trees as nimbly as a squirrel,

for they had strong extended claws before and behind, terminating in

sharp points and hooked.... The females... had long lank hair on their

head, but none on their faces, nor anything more than a sort of down on

the rest of their bodies. ... Upon the whole I never beheld in all my

travels so disagreeable an animal, or one against which I naturally

conceived so great an antipathy."[728]

According to Swift, such are our brothers. He finds in them all our

instincts. They hate each other, tear each other with their talons, with

hideous contortions and yells! such is the source of our quarrels. If

they find a dead cow, although they are but five, and there is enough

for fifty, they strangle and wound each other: such is a picture of our

greed and our wars. They dig up precious stones and hide them in their

kennels, and watch them "with great caution," pining and howling when

robbed: such is the origin of our love of gold. They devour

indifferently "herbs, berries, roots, the corrupted flesh of animals,"

preferring "what they could get by rapine or stealth," gorging

themselves till they vomit or burst: such is the portrait of our

gluttony and injustice. They have a kind of juicy and unwholesome root,

which they "would suck with great delight," till they "howl, and grin,

and chatter," embracing or scratching each other, then reeling,

hiccoughing, wallowing in the mud: such is a picture of our drunkenness.

"In most herds there was a sort of ruling Yahoo, who was always more

deformed in body, and mischievous in disposition, than any of the rest:

that this leader had usually a favourite as like himself as he could

get, whose employment was to lick his master's feet,... and drive the

female Yahoos to his kennel; for which he was now and then rewarded with

a piece of ass's flesh.... He usually continues in office till a worse

can be found."[729]

Such is an abstract of our government. And yet he gives preference to

the Yahoos over men, saying that our wretched reason has aggravated and

multiplied these vices, and concluding with the king of Brobdignag that

our species is "the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that

nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth."[730]

Five years after this treatise on man, he wrote in favor of unhappy

Ireland a pamphlet which is like the last effort of his despair and his

genius.[731] I give it almost whole; it deserves it. I know nothing like

it in any literature:

"It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town, or

travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and

cabin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three,

four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for

an alms.... I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious

number of children... is, in the present deplorable state of the

kingdom, a very great additional grievance; and therefore, whoever could

find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound,

useful members of the Commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public,

as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation. . . I shall

now, therefore, humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be

liable to the least objection."[732]

When we know Swift, such a beginning frightens us:

"I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in

London, that a young healthy child, well nursed, is, at a year old, a

most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted,

baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a

fricassee or a ragout.

"I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration, that of the

hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand

may be reserved for breed, whereof only one-fourth part to be males;...

that the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in

sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always

advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so

as to render them plump and fat for a good table. A child will make two

dishes at an entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone,

the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with

a little pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day,

especially in winter."

"I have reckoned, upon a medium, that a child just born will weigh

twelve pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, will increase

to twenty-eight pounds.

"I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's child (in

which list I reckon all cottagers, labourers, and four-fifths of the

farmers), to be about two shillings per annum, rags included; and I

believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass

of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of

excellent nutritive meat.

"Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times require), may

flay the carcass; the skin of which, artificially dressed, will make

admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen.

"As to our city of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose in

the most convenient parts of it; and butchers we may be assured will not

be wanting; although I rather recommend buying the children alive, than

dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs....

"I think the advantages by the proposal which I have made, are obvious

and many, as well as of the highest importance. For first, as I have

already observed, it would greatly lessen the number of Papists, with

whom we are yearly overrun, being the principal breeders of the nation,

as well as our most dangerous enemies.... Thirdly, whereas the

maintenance of a hundred thousand children, from two years old and

upward, cannot be computed at less than ten shillings a piece per annum,

the nation's stock will be thereby increased fifty thousand pounds per

annum, beside the profit of a new dish introduced to the tables of all

gentlemen of fortune in the kingdom, who have any refinement in taste.

And the money will circulate among ourselves, the goods being entirely

of our own growth and manufacture.... Sixthly, this would be a great

inducement to marriage, which all wise nations have either encouraged by

rewards, or enforced by laws and penalties. It would increase the care

and tenderness of mothers toward their children, when they were sure of

a settlement for life to the poor babes, provided in some sort by the

public, to their annual profit or expense. ... Many other advantages

might be enumerated, for instance, the addition of some thousand

carcasses in our exportation of barrelled beef; the propagation of

swine's flesh, and the improvement in the art of making good bacon....

But this, and many others, I omit, being studious of brevity.

"Some persons of desponding spirit are in great concern about that vast

number of poor people who are aged, diseased, or maimed; and I have been

desired to employ my thoughts, what course may be taken to ease the

nation of so grievous an encumbrance. But I am not in the least pain

upon that matter; because it is very well known, that they are every day

dying and rotting, by cold and famine, and filth and vermin, as fast as

can be reasonably expected. And as to the young labourers, they are now

in almost as hopeful a condition; they cannot get work, and consequently

pine away for want of nourishment, to a degree, that, if at any time

they are accidentally hired to common labour, they have not strength to

perform it; and thus the country and themselves are happily delivered

from the evils to come."[733]

Swift ends with the following ironic lines, worthy of a cannibal:

"I profess, in the sincerity of my heart that I have not the least

personal interest in endeavouring to promote this necessary work, having

no other motive than the public good of my country, by advancing our

trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some

pleasure to the rich. I have no children by which I can propose to get a

single penny; the youngest being nine years old and my wife past

child-bearing."[734]

Much has been said of unhappy great men, Pascal, for instance. I think

that his cries and his anguish are faint compared to this calm treatise.

Such was this great and unhappy genius, the greatest of the classical

age, the most unhappy in history, English throughout, whom the excess of

his English qualities inspired and consumed, having this intensity of

desires, which is the main feature of the race, the enormity of pride

which the habit of liberty, command, and success has impressed upon the

nation, the solidity of the positive mind which habits of business have

established in the country; precluded from power and action by his

unchecked passions and his intractable pride; excluded from poetry and

philosophy by the clear-sightedness and narrowness of his common-sense;

deprived of the consolations offered by contemplative life, and the

occupation furnished by practical life; too superior to embrace heartily

a religious sect or a political party, too narrow-minded to rest in the

lofty doctrines which conciliate all beliefs, or in the wide sympathies

which embrace all parties; condemned by his nature and surroundings to

fight without loving a cause, to write without taking a liking to

literature, to think without feeling the truth of any dogma, warring as

a _condottiere_ against all parties, a misanthrope disliking all men, a

sceptic denying all beauty and truth. But these very surroundings, and

this very nature, which expelled him from happiness, love, power, and

science, raised him, in this age of French imitation and classical

moderation, to a wonderful height, where, by the originality and power

of his inventions, he is the equal of Byron, Milton, and Shakespeare,

and shows pre-eminently the character and mind of his nation.

Sensibility, a positive mind, and pride, forged for him a unique style,

of terrible vehemence, withering calmness, practical effectiveness,

hardened by scorn, truth and hatred, a weapon of vengeance and war which

made his enemies cry out and die under its point and its poison. A

pamphleteer against opposition and government, he tore or crushed his

adversaries with his irony or his sentences, with the tone of a judge, a

sovereign, and a hangman. A man of the world and a poet, he invented a

cruel pleasantry, funereal laughter, a convulsive gayety of bitter

contrasts; and whilst dragging the mythological trappings, as if it were

rags he was obliged to wear, he created a personal poetry by painting

the crude details of trivial life, by the energy of a painful

grotesqueness, by the merciless revelation of the filth we conceal. A

philosopher against all philosophy, he created a realistic poem, a grave

parody, deduced like geometry, absurd as a dream, credible as a law

report, attractive as a tale, degrading as a dishclout placed like a

crown on the head of a divinity. These were his miseries and his

strength: we quit such a spectacle with a sad heart, but full of

admiration; and we say that a palace is beautiful even when it is on

fire. Artists will add: especially when it is on fire.

[Footnote 648: In Swift's Works, ed. W. Scott, 19 vols. 1814; "Journal to

Stella," II. February 13 (1710-11). He says also (February 6 and 7): "I

will not see him (Mr. Harley) till he makes amends.... I was deaf to all

entreaties, and have desired Lewis to go to him, and let him know that I

expect farther satisfaction. If we let these great ministers pretend too

much, there will be no governing them."]

[Footnote 649: Ibid. April 3, 1711.]

[Footnote 650: Ibid. May 19, 1711.]

[Footnote 651: Ibid. October 7, 1711.]

[Footnote 652: "Journal to Stella," XVII. p. 352.]

[Footnote 653: Ibid. III. March 27, 1711-12.]

[Footnote 654: Letter to Bolingbroke, Dublin, April 5, 1729.]

[Footnote 655: "Journal to Stella," II. September 9, 1710.]

[Footnote 656: Ibid. September 30, 1710.]

[Footnote 657: Ibid. November 8, 1710.]

[Footnote 658: "Swift's Life," by Roscoe, I. 56.]

[Footnote 659: "Swift's Life," by W. Scott, I. 379.]

[Footnote 660: Sheridan's "Life of Swift."]

[Footnote 661: W. Scott's "Life of Swift," I. 477.]

[Footnote 662: At that time he had already begun the "Tale of a Tub."]

[Footnote 663: He addresses his muse thus, in "Verses occasioned by Sir

William Temple's late illness and recovery," XIV. 45:

"Wert thou right woman, thou should'st

scorn to look

On an abandoned wretch by hopes

forsook;

Forsook by hopes, ill fortune's last

relief.

Assign'd for life to unremitting grief;

"To thee I owe that fatal bent of mind

Still to unhappy restless thoughts

inclined;

To thee, what oft I vainly strive to

hide,

That scorn of fools, by fools mistook

for pride."]

[Footnote 664: These assertions have been denied. See Roscoe's "Life of

Swift," I. 14.—-Tr.]

[Footnote 665: "Don't you remember how I used to be in pain when Sir

William Temple would look cold and out of humour for three or four days,

and I used to suspect a hundred reasons? I have plucked up my spirit

since then, faith; he spoiled a fine gentleman."--"Journal to Stella,"

April 4, 1710-11.]

[Footnote 666: "Directions to Servants," XII. ch. III. 434.]

[Footnote 667: "Mrs. Harris's Petition," XIV. 52.]

[Footnote 668: By the "Tale of a Tub" with the clergy, and by the

"Prophecy of Windsor" with the Queen.]

[Footnote 669: "The Drapier's Letters, Gulliver's Travels, Rhapsody on

Poetry, A modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of poor People in

Ireland from being a Burden to their Parents or Country, and for Making

them beneficial to the Public," and several pamphlets on Ireland.]

[Footnote 670: Letter to Lord Bolingbroke, Dublin. March 21, 1728. XVII.

274.]

[Footnote 671: Letter of Miss Vanhomrigh, Dublin, 1714, XIX. 421.]

[Footnote 672: These words are taken from a letter to Miss Vanhomrigh,

July 8, 1713, and cannot refer to her death, which took place in

1721.--Tr.]

[Footnote 673: Letter to Bolingbroke, Dublin, March 21, 1728, XVII. 276.]

[Footnote 674: Roscoe's "Life of Swift," I. 80.]

[Footnote 675: In his "Thoughts on Religion" (VIII. 173) he says: "The

want of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed, when it cannot be

overcome. I look upon myself, in the capacity of a clergyman, to be one

appointed by Providence for defending a post assigned me, and for gaining

over as many enemies as I can."]

[Footnote 676: Whatever has been said, I do not think that he wrote the

"Drapier's Letters," whilst thinking the introduction of small copper

coin an advantage for Ireland. It was possible, for Swift more than for

another, to believe in a ministerial job. He seems to me to have been at

bottom an honest man.]

[Footnote 677: "Drapier's Letters," VII; Letter I, 97.]

[Footnote 678: Ibid. VII; Letter 2, 114.]

[Footnote 679: Ibid, VII; Letter 2, 115.]

[Footnote 680: "Drapier's Letters," VII; Letter 2, 114.]

[Footnote 681: Ibid. VII; Letter 1, 101.]

[Footnote 682: "The Public Spirit of the Whigs," IV. 405. See also in

the "Examiner" the pamphlet against Marlborough under the name of Crassus,

and the comparison between Roman generosity and English meanness.]

[Footnote 683: Swift's Works, IV. 148.]

[Footnote 684: "An Argument to prove that the Abolishing of Christianity

might be attended with some Inconveniences," VIII. 184. The Whigs were

herein attacked as the friends of freethinkers.]

[Footnote 685: Ibid. 188.]

[Footnote 686: "An Argument," etc., VIII. 192.]

[Footnote 687: Ibid. 196.]

[Footnote 688: Ibid. 200; final words of the Argument.]

[Footnote 689: VI. 415.--Arbuthnot is said to have written the whole or at

least part of it.--Tr.]

[Footnote 690: "The Rape of the Lock."]

[Footnote 691: XIII. 17.--Pope, Arbuthnot, and Swift wrote it, together.]

[Footnote 692: "Predictions for the Year 1708 by Isaac Bickerstaff," IX.

156.]

[Footnote 693: These quotations are taken from a humorous pamphlet,

"Squire Bickerstaff Detected," written by Dr. Yalden. See Swift's Works,

IX. 176.--Tr.]

[Footnote 694: "A Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff," IX. 186.]

[Footnote 695: "Letter to a Very Young Lady on her Marriage," IX.

420-422.]

[Footnote 696: "Cadenus and Vanessa," XIV. 441.]

[Footnote 697: "Cadenus and Vanessa," XIV. 441.]

[Footnote 698: "Baucis and Philemon," XIV. 83.]

[Footnote 699: "Cadenus and Vanessa," XIV. 448.]

[Footnote 700: "Verses on Stella's Birthday," March 13, 1718-19, XIV.

469.]

[Footnote 701: Ovids, Plutarchs, Homers.]

[Footnote 702: "The Grand Question Debated," XV. 153.]

[Footnote 703: "On the Death of Dr. Swift," XIV. 331.]

[Footnote 704: Swift's Works, XIV. 93.]

[Footnote 705: "A Description of a City Shower," XIV. 94.]

[Footnote 706: "The Lady's Dressing-room."]

[Footnote 707: "Strephon and Chloe."]

[Footnote 708: "A Love Poem from a Physician."]

[Footnote 709: "The Progress of Beauty."]

[Footnote 710: "The Problem," and "The Examination of Certain Abuses."]

[Footnote 711: Christian truth.]

[Footnote 712: Persecutions and contests of the primitive church.]

[Footnote 713: Covetousness, ambition, and pride; the three vices that

the ancient fathers inveighed against.]

[Footnote 714: "A Tale of a Tub," IX. sec. 2, 79, 81.]

[Footnote 715: Innovations.]

[Footnote 716: The Will.]

[Footnote 717: "A Tale of a Tub," XI. sec. 2, 83.]

[Footnote 718: Purgatory.]

[Footnote 719: "A Tale of a Tub," 88.]

[Footnote 720: The prohibition of the laity's reading the Scriptures.]

[Footnote 721: "A Tale of a Tub," sec. 8, 146.]

[Footnote 722: Ibid. Introduction, 72.]

[Footnote 723: "A Tale of a Tub," sec. 3; "A Digression concerning

Critics," 97.]

[Footnote 724: "A Tale of a Tub; A Digression concerning Madness,"

sec. 2, 167.]

[Footnote 725: Swift's Works, XII. "Gulliver's Travels," Part 2, ch. 6,

p. 171.]

[Footnote 726: "Gulliver's Travels," Part 3, ch. 8, p. 258.]

[Footnote 727: Ibid. Part 3, ch. 9, p. 264.]

[Footnote 728: "Gulliver's Travels," Part 4, ch. 1, p. 286.]

[Footnote 729: Ibid. Part 4, ch. 7, p. 337.]

[Footnote 730: "Gulliver's Travels," Part 2, ch. 6, p. 172.]

[Footnote 731: "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of the

poor People in Ireland from being a Burden to their Parents or Country,

and for Making them Beneficial to the Public," 1729.]

[Footnote 732: Ibid. VII. 454.]

[Footnote 733: "A Modest Proposal," etc., 461.]

[Footnote 734: "A Modest Proposal," etc., 466.]

CHAPTER SIXTH

The Novelists

Section I.--The Anti-Romantic Novel

Amidst these finished and perfect writings a new kind makes its

appearance, suited to the public tendencies and circumstances of the

time, the anti-romantic novel, the work and the reading of positive

minds, observers and moralists, not intended to exalt and amuse the

imagination, like the novels of Spain and the Middle Ages, not to

reproduce or embellish conversation, like the novels of France and the

seventeenth century, but to depict real life, to describe characters, to

suggest plans of conduct, and judge motives of action. It was a strange

apparition, and like the voice of a people buried underground, when,

amidst the splendid corruption of high life, this severe emanation of

the middle class welled up, and when the obscenities of Mrs Aphra Behn,

still the diversion of ladies of fashion, were found on the same table

with De Foe's "Robinson Crusoe."

Section II.--Daniel De Foe

De Foe, a dissenter, a pamphleteer, a journalist, a novel-writer,

successively a hosier, a tile-maker, an accountant, was one of those

indefatigable laborers and obstinate combatants, who, ill-treated,

calumniated, imprisoned, succeeded by their uprightness, common-sense,

and energy, in gaining England over to their side. At twenty-three,

having taken arms for Monmouth, he was fortunate in not being hung or

sent out of the country. Seven years later he was ruined and obliged to

hide. In 1702, for a pamphlet not rightly understood, he was condemned

to pay a fine, was set in the pillory, imprisoned two years in Newgate,

and only the charity of Godolphin prevented his wife and six children

from dying of hunger. Being released and sent as a commissioner to

Scotland to treat about the union of the two countries, he narrowly

escaped being stoned. Another pamphlet, which was again misconstrued,

sent him to prison, compelled him to pay a fine of eight hundred pounds,

and only just in time he received the Queen's pardon. His works were

copied, he was robbed, and slandered. He was obliged to protest against

the plagiarists, who printed and altered his works for their benefit;

against the neglect of the Whigs, who did not find him tractable enough;

against the animosity of the Tories, who saw in him the chief champion

of the Whigs. In the midst of his self-defence he was struck with

apoplexy, and continued to defend himself from his bed. Yet he lived on,

but with great difficulty; poor and burdened with a family, he turned,

at fifty-five, to fiction, and wrote successively "Moll Flanders,"

"Captain Singleton, Duncan Campbell, Colonel Jack," the "History of

the Great Plague in London," and many others. This vein exhausted, he

diverged and tried another--the "Complete English Tradesman, A Tour

through Great Britain." Death came; poverty remained. In vain had he

written in prose, in verse, on all subjects political and religious,

accidental or moral, satires and novels, histories and poems, travels

and pamphlets, commercial essays and statistical information, in all two

hundred and ten works, not of verbiage, but of arguments, documents, and

facts crowded and piled one upon another with such prodigality, that the

memory, thought, and application of one man seemed too small for such a

labor; he died penniless, in debt. However we regard his life, we see

only prolonged efforts and persecutions. Joy seems to be wanting; the

idea of the beautiful never enters. When he comes to fiction, it is like

a Presbyterian and a plebeian, with low subjects and moral aims, to

treat of the adventures, and reform the conduct of thieves and

prostitutes, workmen and sailors. His whole delight was to think that he

had a service to perform and that he was performing it: "He that opposes

his own judgment against the current of the times ought to be backed

with unanswerable truth; and he that has truth on his side is a fool as

well as a coward if he is afraid to own it, because of the multitude of

other men's opinions. 'Tis hard for a man to say, all the world is

mistaken but himself. But if it be so, who can help it?" Nobody can help

it, but then a man must walk straight ahead, and alone, amidst blows and

throwing of mud. De Foe is like one of those brave, obscure, and useful

soldiers who, with empty belly and burdened shoulders, go through their

duties with their feet in the mud, pocket blows, receive the whole day

long the fire of the enemy, and sometimes that of their friends into the

bargain, and die sergeants, happy if it has been their good fortune to

get hold of the Legion of Honor.

De Foe had the kind of mind suitable to such a hard service, solid,

exact, entirely destitute of refinement, enthusiasm, agreeableness.[735]

His imagination was that of a man of business, not of an artist, crammed

and, as it were, jammed down with facts. He tells them as they come to

him, without arrangement or style, like a conversation, without dreaming

of producing an effect, or composing a phrase, employing technical terms

and vulgar forms, repeating himself at need, using the same thing two or

three times, not seeming to imagine that there are methods of amusing,

touching, engrossing, or pleasing, with no desire but to pour out on

paper the fulness of the information with which he is charged. Even in

fiction his information is as precise as in history. He gives dates,

year, month, and day; notes the wind, north-east, south-west,

north-west; he writes a logbook, an invoice, attorneys' and shopkeepers'

bills, the number of moidores, interest, specie payments, payments in

kind, cost and sale prices, the share of the king, of religious houses,

partners, brokers, net totals, statistics, the geography and hydrography

of the island, so that the reader is tempted to take an atlas and draw

for himself a little map of the place, to enter into all the details of

the history, and to see the objects as clearly and fully as the author.

It seems as though our author had performed all Crusoe's labors, so

exactly does he describe them, with numbers, quantities, dimensions,

like a carpenter, potter, or an old tar. Never was such a sense of the

real before or since. Our realists of to-day, painters, anatomists, who

enter deliberately on their business, are very far from this

naturalness; art and calculation crop out amidst their too minute

descriptions. De Foe creates illusion; for it is not the eye which

deceives us, but the mind, and that literally: his account of the great

plague has more than once passed for true; and Lord Chatham mistook his

"Memoirs of a Cavalier" for an authentic narrative. This was his aim. In

the preface to the old edition of "Robinson Crusoe" it is said: "The

story is told... to the instruction of others by this example, and to

justify and honour the wisdom of Providence. The editor believes the

thing to be a just history of facts; neither is there any appearance of

fiction in it." All his talents lie in this, and thus even his

imperfections aid him; his lack of art becomes a profound art; his

negligence, repetitions, prolixity, contribute to the illusion: we

cannot imagine that such and such a detail, so minute, so dull, is

invented; an inventor would have suppressed it; it is too tedious to

have been put in on purpose; art chooses, embellishes, interests; art,

therefore, cannot have piled up this heap of dull and vulgar accidents;

it is the truth.

Read, for instance, "A True Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs Veal,

the next Day after her Death, to one Mrs Bargrave, at Canterbury, the

8th of September 1705; which Apparition recommends the perusal of

Drelincourt's Book of Consolation against the Fear of Death."[736] The

old little chap books, read by aged needlewomen, are not more

monotonous. There is such an array of circumstantial and guaranteed

details, such a file of witnesses quoted, referred to, registered,

compared, such a perfect appearance of tradesman-like honesty, plain,

vulgar common-sense, that a man would take the author for an honest

retired hosier, with too little brains to invent a story; no writer

careful of his reputation would have printed such nonsense. In fact, it

was not his reputation that De Foe cared for; he had other motives in

his head; we literary men of the present time cannot guess them, being

literary men only. But he wanted to sell a pious book of Drelincourt,

which would not sell of itself, and in addition, to confirm people in

their religious belief by advocating the appearance of ghosts. It was

the grand proof then brought to bear on sceptics. Grave Dr Johnson

himself tried to see a ghost, and no event of that time was more suited

to the belief of the middle class. Here, as elsewhere, De Foe, like

Swift, is a man of action; effect, not noise touches him; he composed

"Robinson Crusoe" to warn the impious, as Swift wrote the life of the

last man hung to inspire thieves with terror! In that positive and

religious age, amidst these political and puritanic citizens, practice

was of such importance as to reduce art to the condition of its tool.

Never was art the tool of a more moral or more thoroughly English work.

Robinson Crusoe is quite a man of his race, and might instruct it even

in the present day. He has that force of will, inner enthusiasm, hidden

ferment of a violent imagination; which formerly produced the sea-kings,

and now produces emigrants and squatters. The misfortunes of his two

brothers, the tears of his relatives, the advice of his friends, the

remonstrances of his reason, the remorse of his conscience, are all

unable to restrain him: there was "a something fatal in his nature"; he

had conceived the idea, he must go to sea. To no purpose is he seized

with repentance during the first storm; he drowns in punch these "fits"

of conscience. To no purpose is he warned by shipwreck and a narrow

escape from death; he is hardened, and grows obstinate. To no purpose

captivity among the Moors and the possession of a fruitful plantation

invite repose; the indomitable instinct returns; he was born to be his

own destroyer, and embarks again. The ship goes down; he is cast alone

on a desert island; then his native energy found its vent and its

employment; like his descendants, the pioneers of Australia and America,

he must recreate and remaster one by one the inventions and acquisitions

of human industry; one by one he does so. Nothing represses his effort;

neither possession nor weariness:

"I had the biggest magazine of all kinds now that ever was laid up, I

believe, for one man; but I was not satisfied still; for, while the ship

sat upright in that posture, I thought I ought to get everything out of

her that I could.... I got most of the pieces of cable ashore, and some

of the iron, though with infinite labour; for I was fain to dip for it

into the water; a work which fatigued me very much.... I believe,

verily, had the calm weather held, I should have brought away the whole

ship, piece by piece."[737]

In his eyes, work is natural. When, in order "to barricade himself, he

goes to cut the piles in the woods, and drives them into the earth,

which cost a great deal of time and labour," he says:

"A very laborious and tedious work. But what need I have been concerned

at the tediousness of anything I had to do, seeing I had time enough to

do it in?... My time or labor was little worth, and so it was as well

employed one way as another."[738] Application and fatigue of head and

arms give occupation to his superfluous activity and force; the

mill-stone must find grist to grind, without which, turning round empty,

it would wear itself away. He works, therefore, all day and night, at

once carpenter, oarsman, porter, hunter, tiller of the ground, potter,

tailor, milkman, basketmaker, grinder, baker, invincible in

difficulties, disappointments, expenditure of time and toil. Having but

a hatchet and an adze, it took him forty-two days to make a board. He

occupied two months in making his first two jars; five months in making

his first boat; then, "by dint of hard labour," he levelled the ground

from his timber-yard to the sea, then, not being able to bring his boat

to the sea, he tried to bring the sea up to his boat, and began to dig a

canal; then, reckoning that he would require ten or twelve years to

finish the task, he builds another boat at another place, with another

canal half a mile long, four feet deep, six wide. He spends two years

over it; "I bore with this.... I went through that by dint of hard

labour.... Many a weary stroke it had cost.... This will testify that I

was not idle.... As I had learned not to despair of anything I never

grudged my labour." These strong expressions of indomitable patience are

ever recurring. These stout-hearted men are framed for labor, as their

sheep are for slaughter and their horses for racing. Even now we may

hear their mighty hatchet and pickaxe sounding in the claims of

Melbourne and in the log-houses of the Salt Lake. The reason of their

success is the same there as here; they do everything with calculation

and method; they rationalize their energy, which is like a torrent they

make a canal for. Crusoe sets to work only after deliberate calculation

and reflection. When he seeks a spot for his tent, he enumerates the

four conditions of the place he requires. When he wishes to escape

despair, he draws up impartially, "like debtor and creditor," the list

of his advantages and disadvantages, putting them in two columns, active

and passive, item for item, so that the balance is in his favor. His

courage is only the servant of his common-sense: "By stating and

squaring everything by reason, and by making the most rational judgment

of things, every man may be in time master of every mechanic art. I had

never handled a tool in my life, and yet in time, by labour,

application, and contrivance, I found at last that I wanted nothing but

I could have made, especially if I had had tools."[739] There is a grave

and deep pleasure in this painful success, and in this personal

acquisition. The squatter, like Crusoe, takes pleasure in things, not

only because they are useful, but because they are his work. He feels

himself a man, whilst finding everywhere about him the sign of his labor

and thought; he is pleased: "I had everything so ready at my hand, that

it was a great pleasure to me to see all my goods in such order, and

especially to find my stock of all necessaries so great."[740] He

returns to his home willingly, because he is there a master and creator

of all the comforts he has around him; he takes his meals there gravely

and "like a king."

Such are the pleasures of home. A guest enters there to fortify these

natural inclinations by the ascendancy of duty. Religion appears, as it

must, in emotions and visions: for this is not a calm soul; imagination

breaks out into it at the least shock, and carries it to the threshold

of madness. On the day when Robinson Crusoe saw the "print of a man's

naked foot on the shore," he stood "like one thunderstruck," and fled

"like a hare to cover"; his ideas are in a whirl, he is no longer master

of them; though he is hidden and barricaded, he thinks himself

discovered; he intends "to throw down the enclosures, turn all the tame

cattle wild into the woods, dig up the corn-fields." He has all kinds of

fancies; he asks himself if it is not the devil who has left this

footmark; and reasons upon it:

"I considered that the devil might have found out abundance of other

ways to have terrified me;... that, as I lived quite on the other side

of the island, he would never have been so simple to leave a mark in a

place, where it was ten thousand to one whether I should ever see it or

not, and in the sand too, which the first surge of the sea upon a high

wind would have defaced entirely. All this seemed inconsistent with the

thing itself, and with all notions we usually entertain of the subtlety

of the devil."[741]

In this impassioned and uncultivated mind, which for eight years had

continued without a thought, and as it were stupid, engrossed in manual

labor and bodily wants, belief took root, fostered by anxiety and

solitude. Amidst the risks of all-powerful nature, in this great

uncertain upheaving, a Frenchman, a man bred as we are, would cross his

arms gloomily, like a Stoic, or would wait like an Epicurean for the

return of physical cheerfulness. As for Crusoe, at the sight of the ears

of barley which have suddenly made their appearance, he weeps, and

thinks at first "that God had miraculously caused this grain to grow."

Another day he has a terrible vision: in a fever of excitement he

repents of his sins; he opens the Bible, and finds these words, which

"were very apt to his case": "Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will

deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me."[742] Prayer then rises to his

lips, true prayer, the converse of the heart with a God who answers, and

to whom we listen. He also read the words: "I will never leave thee nor

forsake thee."[743] "Immediately it occurred that these words were to

me. Why else should they be directed in such a manner, just at the

moment when I was mourning over my condition, as one forsaken of God and

man?"[744] Thenceforth spiritual life begins for him. To reach its very

foundation, the squatter needs only his Bible; with it he carries about

his faith, his theology, his worship; every evening he finds in it some

application to his present condition: he is no longer alone: God speaks

to him, and provides for his energy matter for a second labor to sustain

and complete the first. For he now undertakes against his heart the

combat which he has maintained against nature; he wants to conquer,

transform, ameliorate, pacify the one as he has done with the other.

Robinson Crusoe fasts, observes the Sabbath, three times a day he reads

the Scripture, and says: "I gave humble and hearty thanks... that he

(God) could fully make up to me the deficiencies of my solitary state,

and the want of human society by his presence, and the communication of

his grace to my soul, supporting, comforting, and encouraging me to

depend upon his providence, and hope for his eternal presence

hereafter."[745] In this disposition of mind there is nothing a man

cannot endure or do; heart and hand come to the assistance of the arms;

religion consecrates labor, piety feeds patience; and man, supported on

one side by his instincts, on the other by his belief, finds himself

able to clear the land, to people, to organize and civilize continents.

Section III--The Evolution of the Eighteenth Century Novel

It was by chance that De Foe, like Cervantes, lighted on a novel of

character: as a rule, like Cervantes, he only wrote novels of adventure;

he knew life better than the soul, and the general course of the world

better than the idiosyncrasies of an individual. But the impulse was

given, nevertheless, and now the rest followed. Chivalrous manners had

been blotted out, carrying with them the poetical and picturesque drama.

Monarchical manners had been blotted out, carrying with them the witty

and licentious drama. Citizen manners had been established, bringing

with them domestic and practical reading. Like society, literature

changed its course. Books were needed to read by the fireside, in the

country, amongst the family: invention and genius turn to this kind of

writing. The sap of human thought, abandoning the old dried-up branches,

flowed into the unseen boughs, which it suddenly made to grow and turn

green, and the fruits which it produced bear witness at the same time to

the surrounding temperature and the native stock. Two features are

common and proper to them. All these novels are character novels.

Englishmen, more reflective than others, more inclined to the melancholy

pleasure of concentrated attention and inner examination, find around

them human medals more vigorously struck, less worn by friction with the

world, whose uninjured face is more visible than that of others. All

these novels are works of observation, and spring from a moral design.

The men of this time, having fallen away from lofty imagination, and

being immersed in active life, desire to cull from books solid

instruction, just examples, powerful emotions, feelings of practical

admiration, and motives of action.

We have but to look around; the same inclination begins on all sides the

same task. The novel springs up everywhere, and shows the same spirit

under all forms. At this time[746] appear the "Tatler, Spectator,

Guardian," and all those agreeable and serious essays which, like the

novel, look for readers at home, to supply them with examples and

provide them with counsels; which, like the novel, describe manners,

paint characters, and try to correct the public which, finally, like the

novel, turn spontaneously to fiction and portraiture. Addison, like a

delicate amateur of moral curiosities, complacently follows the amiable

oddities of his darling Sir Roger de Coverley, smiles, and with discreet

hand guides the excellent knight through all the awkward predicaments

which may bring out his rural prejudices and his innate generosity;

whilst by his side the unhappy Swift, degrading man to the instincts of

the beast of prey and beast of burden, tortures humanity by forcing it

to recognize itself in the execrable portrait of the Yahoo. Although

they differ, both authors are working at the same task. They only employ

imagination in order to study characters, and to suggest plans of

conduct. They bring down philosophy to observation and application. They

only dream of reforming or chastising vice. They are only moralists and

psychologists. They both confine themselves to the consideration of vice

and virtue; the one with calm benevolence, the other with savage

indignation. The same point of view produces the graceful portraits of

Addison and the slanderous pictures of Swift. Their successors do the

like, and all diversities of mood and talent do not hinder their works

from acknowledging a similar source, and concurring in the same effect.

Two principal ideas can rule, and have ruled, morality in England. Now

it is conscience which is accepted as a sovereign; now it is instinct

which is taken for a guide. Now they have recourse to grace; now they

rely on nature. Now they wholly enslave everything to rule; now they

give everything up to liberty. The two opinions have successively

reigned in England; and the human frame, at once too vigorous and too

unyielding, successively justifies their ruin and their success. Some,

alarmed by the fire of an over-fed temperament, and by the energy of

unsocial passions, have regarded nature as a dangerous beast, and placed

conscience with all its auxiliaries, religion, law, education,

proprieties, as so many armed sentinels to repress its least outbreaks.

Others, repelled by the harshness of an incessant constraint, and by the

minuteness of a morose discipline, have overturned guards and barriers,

and let loose captive nature to enjoy the free air and sun, deprived of

which it was being choked. Both by their excesses have deserved their

defeats and raised up their adversaries. From Shakespeare to the

Puritans, from Milton to Wycherley, from Congreve to De Foe, from

Sheridan to Burke, from Wilberforce to Lord Byron, irregularity has

provoked constraint and tyranny revolt. This great contest of rule and

nature is developed again in the writings of Fielding and Richardson.

Section IV.--Samuel Richardson

"Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded: in a series of familiar letters from a

beautiful young damsel to her parents, published in order to cultivate

the principles of virtue and religion in the minds of the youth of both

sexes; a narrative which has its foundation in truth and at the same

time that it agreeably entertains by a variety of curious and affecting

incidents, is entirely divested of all those images which, in too many

pieces calculated for amusement only, tend to inflame the minds they

should instruct."[747] We can make no mistake, the title is clear. The

preachers rejoiced to see assistance coming to them from the very spot

where there was danger; and Dr. Sherlock, from his pulpit, recommended

the book. Men inquired about the author. He was a printer and

bookseller, a joiner's son, who, at the age of fifty, and in his leisure

moments, wrote in his shop parlor: a laborious man, who, by work and

good conduct, had raised himself to a competency and had educated

himself; delicate moreover, gentle, nervous, often ill, with a taste for

the society of women, accustomed to correspond for and with them, of

reserved and retired habits, whose only fault was a timid vanity. He was

severe in principles, and had acquired perspicacity by his rigor. In

reality, conscience is a lamp; a moralist is a psychologist; Christian

casuistry is a sort of natural history of the soul. He who through

anxiety of conscience busies himself in drawing out the good or evil

motives of his manifest actions, who sees vices and virtues at their

birth, who follows the gradual progress of culpable thoughts, and the

secret confirmation of good resolves, who can mark the force, nature,

and moment of temptation and resistance, 'holds in his hand almost all

the moving strings of humanity, and has only to make them vibrate

regularly to draw from them the most powerful harmonies. In this

consists the art of Richardson; he combines whilst he observes; his

meditation develops the ideas of the moralist. No one in this age has

equalled him in these detailed and comprehensive conceptions, which,

grouping to a single end the passions of thirty characters, twine and

color the innumerable threads of the whole canvas, to bring out a

figure, an action, or a lesson.

This first novel is a flower--one of those flowers which only bloom in

a virgin imagination, at the dawn of original invention, whose charm and

freshness surpass all that the maturity of art and genius can afterwards

cultivate or arrange. Pamela is a child of fifteen, brought up by an old

lady, half servant and half favorite, who, after the death of her

mistress, finds herself exposed to the growing seductions and

persecutions of the young master of the house. She is a genuine child,

frank and artless as Goethe's Margaret, and of the same family. After

twenty pages, we involuntarily see this fresh rosy face, always

blushing, and her laughing eyes, so ready with tears. At the smallest

kindness she is confused; she knows not what to say; she changes color,

casts down her eyes, as she makes a curtsy; the poor innocent heart is

troubled or melts.[748] No trace of the bold vivacity, the nervous

coolness, which are the elements of the French girl. She is "a lambkin,"

loved, loving, without pride, vanity, bitterness; timid, always humble.

When her master tries forcibly to kiss her, she is astonished; she will

not believe that the world is so wicked. "This gentleman has degraded

himself to offer freedoms to his poor servant."[749] She is afraid of

being too free with him; reproaches herself, when she writes to her

relatives, with saying too often _he_ and _him_ instead of His Honor;

"but it is his fault if I do, for why did he lose all his dignity with

me?"[750] No outrage exhausts her submissiveness: he has kissed her, and

took hold of her arm so rudely that it was "black and blue"; he has

tried worse, he has behaved like a ruffian and a knave. To cap all, he

slanders her circumstantially before the servants; he insults her

repeatedly, and provokes her to speak; she does not speak, will not fail

in her duty to her master. "It is for you, sir, to say what you please,

and for me only to say, God bless your honor!"[751] She falls on her

knees, and thanks him for sending her away. But in so much submission

what resistance! Everything is against her; he is her master; he is a

justice of the peace, secure against all intervention--a sort of

divinity to her, with all the superiority and authority of a feudal

prince. Moreover, he has the brutality of the times; he rates her,

speaks to her like a slave, and yet thinks himself very kind. He shuts

her up alone for several months, with "a wicked creature," his

housekeeper, who beats and threatens her. He tries on her influence of

fear, loneliness, surprise, money, gentleness. And what is more

terrible, her own heart is against her: she loves him secretly; her

virtues injure her; she dare not lie, when she most needs it;[752] and

piety keeps her from suicide, when that seems her only resource. One by

one the issues close around her, so that she loses hope, and the readers

of her adventures think her lost and ruined. But this native innocence

has been strengthened by Puritanic faith. She sees temptations in her

weaknesses; she knows that "Lucifer always is ready to promote his own

work and workmen";[753] she is penetrated by the great Christian idea,

which makes all souls equal before the common salvation and the final

judgment. She says: "My soul is of equal importance to the soul of a

princess, though my quality is inferior to that of the meanest

slave."[754] Wounded, stricken, abandoned, betrayed, still the knowledge

and thought of a happy or unhappy eternity are two defences which no

assault can carry. She knows it well; she has no other means of

explaining vice than to suppose them absent. She considers that wicked

Mrs Jewkes is an atheist. Belief in God, the heart's belief--not the

wording of the catechism, but the inner feeling, the habit of picturing

justice as ever living and ever present--this is the fresh blood which

the Reformation caused to flow into the veins of the old world, and

which alone could give it a new life and a new youth.

She is, as it were, animated by this feeling; in the most perilous as in

the sweetest moments, this grand sentiment returns to her, so much is it

entwined with all the rest, so much has it multiplied its tendrils and

buried its roots in the innermost folds of her heart. Her young master

thinks of marrying her now, and wishes to be sure that she loves him.

She dares not say so, being afraid to give him a hold upon her. She is

greatly troubled by his kindness, and yet she must answer. Religion

comes to veil love in a sublime half-confession: "I fear not, sir, the

grace of God supporting me, that any acts of kindness would make me

forget what I owe to my virtue; but... my nature is too frank and open

to make me wish to be ungrateful; and if I should be taught a lesson I

never yet learnt, with what regret should I descend to the grave, to

think that I could not hate my undoer; and that, at the last great day,

I must stand up as an accuser of the poor unhappy soul, that I could

wish it in my power to save!"[755] He is softened and vanquished,

descends from that vast height where aristocratic customs placed him,

and thenceforth, day by day, the letters of the happy child record the

preparations for their marriage. Amidst this triumph and happiness she

continues humble, devoted, and tender; her heart is full, and gratitude

fills it from every source: "This foolish girl must be, after twelve

o'clock this day, as much his wife as if he were to marry a

duchess."[756] She "had the boldness to kiss his hand."[757] "My heart

is so wholly yours, that I am afraid of nothing but that I may be

forwarder than you wish."[758] Shall the marriage take place Monday, or

Tuesday, or Wednesday? She dare not say yes; she blushes and trembles:

there is a delightful charm in this timid modesty, these restrained

effusions. For a wedding present she obtains the pardon of the wicked

creatures who have ill-treated her: "I clasped my arms about his neck,

and was not ashamed to kiss him once, and twice, and three times, once

for each forgiven person."[759] Then they talk over their plans: she

shall remain at home; she will not frequent grand parties; she is not

fond of cards; she will keep the "family accounts," and distribute her

husband's charities; she will help the housekeeper in "the making

jellies, comfits, sweetmeats, marmalades, cordials, and to pot, and

candy, and preserve,"[760] to get up the linen; she will look after the

breakfast and dinner, especially when there are guests; she knows how to

carve; she will wait for her husband, who perhaps will be so good as now

and then to give her an hour or two of his "agreeable conversation,"

"and will be indulgent to the impertinent overflowings of my grateful

heart."[761] In his absence she will read--"that will help to polish my

mind, and make me worthier of your company and conversation";[762] and

she will pray to God, she says, in order "that I may be enabled to

discharge my duty to my husband."[763] Richardson has sketched here the

portrait of the English wife--a good housekeeper and sedentary, studious

and obedient, loving and pious--and Fielding will finish it in his

"Amelia."

Pamela's adventures describe a contest: the novel of Clarissa Harlowe

represents one still greater. Virtue, like force of every kind, is

proportioned according to its power of resistance; and we have only to

subject it to more violent tests, to give it its greatest prominence.

Let us look in passions of the English for foes capable of assailing

virtue, calling it forth, and strengthening it. The evil and the good of

the English character is a too strong will.[764] When tenderness and

lofty reason fail, the native energy becomes sternness, obstinacy,

inflexible tyranny, and the heart a den of malevolent passions, eager to

rave and tear each other. Against a family, having such passions,

Clarissa Harlowe has to struggle. Her father never would be "controlled,

nor yet persuaded."[765] He never "did give up one point he thought he

had a right to carry."[766] He has broken down the will of his wife, and

degraded her to the part of a dumb servant: he wishes to break down the

will of his daughter, and to give her for a husband a coarse and

heartless fool. He is the head of the family, master of all his people,

despotic and ambitious as a Roman patrician, and he wishes to found a

house. He is stern in these two harsh resolves, and inveighs against the

rebellious daughter. Above the outbursts of his voice we hear the loud

wrath of his son, a sort of plethoric, over-fed bull-dog, excited by his

greed, his youth, his fiery temper, and his premature authority; the

shrill outcry of the eldest daughter, a coarse, plain-looking girl, with

"a plump, high-fed face," exactingly jealous, prone to hate, who, being

neglected by Lovelace, revenges herself on her beautiful sister; the

churlish growling of the two uncles, narrow-minded old bachelors,

vulgar, pigheaded, through their notions of male authority; the grievous

importunities of the mother, the aunt, the old nurse, poor timid slaves,

reduced one by one to become instruments of persecution. The whole

family have bound themselves to favor Mr. Solmes's proposal to marry

Clarissa. They do not reason, they simply express their will. By dint of

repetition, only one idea has fixed itself in their brain, and they

become furious when anyone endeavors to oppose it. "Who at the long run

must submit?" asks her mother; "all of us to you, or you to all of

us?"[767] Clarissa offers to remain single, never to marry at all; she

consents to give up her property. But her family answered: "They had a

right to her obedience upon their own terms; her proposal was an

artifice, only to gain time; nothing but marrying Mr. Solmes should

do;... they should not be at rest till it was done."[768] It must be

done, they have promised it; it is a point of honor with them. A girl, a

young, inexperienced, insignificant girl, to resist men, old men, people

of position and consideration, nay, her whole family--monstrous! So they

persist, like brutes as they are, blindly, putting on the screw with all

their stupid hands together, not seeing that at every turn they bring

the child nearer to madness, dishonor, or death. She begs them, implores

them, one by one, with every argument and prayer; racks herself to

discover concessions, goes on her knees, faints, makes them weep. It is

all useless. The indomitable, crushing will oppresses her with its daily

increasing mass. There is no example of such a varied moral torture, so

incessant, so obstinate. They persist in it, as if it were a task, and

are vexed to find that she makes their task so long. They refuse to see

her, forbid her to write, are afraid of her tears. Her sister Arabella,

with the venomous bitterness of an offended, ugly woman, tries to make

her insults more stinging:

"'The _witty_, the _prudent_, nay the _dutiful_ and pious (so she

sneeringly pronounced the word) Clarissa Harlowe, should be so strangely

fond of a profligate man, that her parents were forced to lock her up,

in order to hinder her from running into his arms.' 'Let me ask you, my

dear,' said she, 'how you now keep your account of the disposition of

your time? How many hours in the twenty-four do you devote to your

needle? How many to your prayers? How many to letter-writing? And how

many to love? I doubt, I doubt, my little dear, the latter article is

like Aaron's rod, and swallows up all the rest.... You must therefore

bend or break, that is all, child.'[769]...

"'What, not speak yet? Come, my sullen, silent dear, speak one word to

me. You must say two very soon to Mr. Solmes, I can tell you that....

Well, well (insultingly wiping my averted face with her handkerchief)...

Then you think you may be brought to speak the two words.'"[770]

She continues thus:

"'_This_, Clary, is a pretty pattern enough. But _this_ is quite

charming?--And _this_, were I you, should be my wedding nightgown. But,

Clary, won't you have a velvet suit? It would cut a great figure in a

country church, you know. Crimson velvet, suppose! Such a fine

complexion as yours, how it would be set off by it!--And do you sigh,

love? Black velvet, so fair as you are, with those charming eyes,

gleaming through a wintry cloud, like an April sun. Does not Lovelace

tell you they are charming eyes?'"[771]

Then, when Arabella is reminded that, three months ago, she did not find

Lovelace so worthy of scorn, she nearly chokes with passion; she wants

to beat her sister, cannot speak, and says to her aunt, "with great

violence": "Let us go, madam; let us leave the creature so swell till she

burst with her own poison."[772] It reminds us of a pack of hounds in

full cry after a deer, which is caught, and wounded; whilst the pack

grow more eager and more ferocious, because they have tasted blood.

At the last moment, when she thinks to escape them, a new chase begins,

more dangerous than the other. Lovelace has all the evil passions of

Harlowe, and in addition a genius which sharpens and aggravates them.

What; a character! How English! how different from the Don Juan of

Mozart or of Molière! Before everything he wishes to have the cruel

fair one in his power: then come the desire to bend others, a combative

spirit, a craving for triumph; only after all these come the senses. He

spares an innocent, young girl, because he knows she is easy to conquer,

and the grandmother "has besought him to be merciful to her. The

_Debellare superbos_ should be my motto,"[773] he writes to his friend

Belford; and in another letter he says, "I always considered opposition

and resistance as a challenge to do my worst."[774] At bottom, pride',

infinite, insatiable, senseless, is the mainspring, the only motive of

all his actions. He acknowledges "that he only wanted Cæsar's

outsetting to make a figure among his contemporaries,"[775] and that he

only stoops to private conquests out of mere whim. He declares that he

would not marry the first princess on earth, if he but thought she

balanced a minute in her choice of him or of an emperor. He is held to

be gay, brilliant, conversational; but this petulance of animal vigor is

only external; he is cruel, jests savagely, in cool blood, like a

hangman, about the harm which he has done or means to do. He reassures a

poor servant who is troubled at having given up Clarissa to him in the

following words: "The affair of Miss Betterton was a youthful

frolick.... I went into mourning for her, though abroad at the time--a

distinction I have ever paid to those worthy creatures who died in

child-bed by me.... Why this squeamishness, then, honest Joseph?"[776]

The English roisterers of those days threw the human body in the sewers.

One gentleman, a friend of Lovelace, "tricked a farmer's daughter, a

pretty girl, up to town,... drank her light-hearted,... then to the

play... then to the bagnio, ruined her; kept her on a fortnight or three

weeks; then left her to the mercy of the people of the bagnio (never

paying for anything), who stript her of all her cloaths, and because she

would not take on, threw her into prison, where she died in want and in

despair."[777] The rakes in France were only rascals,[778] here they

were villains; wickedness with them poisoned love. Lovelace hates

Clarissa even more than he loves her. He has a book in which he sets

down, he says, "all the family faults and the infinite trouble she

herself has given me. When my heart is soft, and all her own, I can but

turn to memoranda, and harden myself at once."[779] He is angry because

she dares to defend herself, says that he'll teach her to vie with him

in inventions, to make plots against and for her conqueror. It is a

struggle between them without truce or halting. Lovelace says of

himself: "What an industrious spirit have I! Nobody can say that I eat

the bread of idleness;... certainly, with this active soul, I should

have made a very great figure in whatever station I had filled."[780] He

assaults and besieges her, spends whole nights outside her house, gives

the Harlowes servants of his own, invents stories, introduces personages

under a false name, forges letters. There is no expense, fatigue, plot,

treachery which he will not undertake. All weapons are the same to him.

He digs and plans even when away, ten, twenty, fifty saps, which all

meet in the same mine. He provides against everything; he is ready for

everything; divines, dares everything, against all duty, humanity,

common-sense, in spite of the prayers of his friends, the entreaties of

Clarissa, his own remorse. Excessive will, here as with the Harlowes,

becomes an iron wheel, which twists out of shape and breaks to pieces

what it ought to bend, so that at last, by blind impetuosity, it is

broken by its own impetus, over the ruins it has made.

Against such assaults what resources has Clarissa? A will as determined

as Lovelace's. She also is armed for war, and admits that she has as

much of her father's spirit as of her mother's gentleness. Though

gentle, though readily driven into Christian humility, she has pride;

she "had hoped to be an example to young persons" of her sex; she

possesses the firmness of a man, and above all a masculine

reflection.[781] What self-scrutiny! what vigilance! what minute and

indefatigable observation of her conduct, and that of others![782] No

action, or word, involuntary or other gesture of Lovelace is unobserved

by her, uninterpreted, unjudged, with the perspicacity and clearness of

mind of a diplomatist and a moralist! We must read these long

conversations, in which no word is used without calculation, genuine

duels daily renewed, with death, nay, with dishonor before her. She

knows it, is not disturbed, remains ever mistress of herself, never

exposes herself, is not dazed, defends every inch of ground, feeling

that all the world is on his side, no one for her, that she loses

ground, and will lose more, that she will fall, that she is falling. And

yet she bends not. What a change since Shakespeare! Whence comes this

new and original idea of woman? Who has encased these yielding and

tender innocents with such heroism and calculation? Puritanism

transferred to the laity. Clarissa "never looked upon any duty, much

less a voluntary vowed one, with indifference." She has passed her whole

life in looking at these duties. She has placed certain principles

before her, has reasoned upon them, applied them to the various

circumstances of life, has fortified herself on every point with maxims,

distinctions, and arguments. She has set round her, like bristling and

multiplied ramparts, a numberless army of inflexible precepts. We can

only reach her by turning over her whole mind and her whole past. This

is her force, and also her weakness; for she is so carefully defended by

her fortifications, that she is a prisoner; her principles are a snare

to her, and her virtue destroys her. She wishes to preserve too much

decorum. She refuses to apply to a magistrate, for it would make public

the family quarrels. She does not resist her father openly; that would

be against filial humility. She does not repel Solmes violently, like a

hound, as he is; it would be contrary to feminine delicacy. She will not

leave home with Miss Howe; that might injure the character of her

friend. She reproves Lovelace when he swears,[783] a good Christian

ought to protest against scandal. She is argumentative and pedantic, a

politician and a preacher; she wearies us, she does not act like a

woman. When a room is on fire, a young girl flies barefooted, and does

not do what Miss Clarissa does--ask for her slippers. I am very sorry

for it, but I say it with bated breath, the sublime Clarissa had a

little mind; her virtue is like the piety of devotees, literal and

over-nice. She does not carry us away, she has always her guide of

deportment in her hand; she does not discover her duties, but follows

instructions; she has not the audacity of great resolutions, she

possesses more conscience and firmness than enthusiasm and genius.[784]

This is the advantage of morality pushed to an extreme, no matter what

the school or the aim is. By dint of regulating man, we narrow him.

Poor Richardson, unsuspiciously, has been at pains to set the thing

forth in broad light, and has created Sir Charles Grandison "a man of

true honor." I cannot say whether this model has converted many. There

is nothing so insipid as an edifying hero. This Sir Charles is as

correct as an automaton; he passes his life in weighing his duties, and

"with an air of gallantry."[785] When he goes to visit a sick person, he

has scruples about going on a Sunday, but reassures his conscience by

saying; "I am afraid I must borrow of the Sunday some hours on my

journey; but visiting the sick is an act of mercy."[786] Would anyone

believe that such a man could fall in love? Such is the case, however,

but in a manner of his own. Thus he writes to his betrothed: "And now,

loveliest and dearest of women, allow me to expect the honour of a line,

to let me know how much of the tedious month from last Thursday you will

be so good to abate.... My utmost gratitude will ever be engaged by the

condescension, whenever you shall distinguish the day of the year,

distinguished as it will be to the end of my life that shall give me the

greatest blessing of it and confirm me--forever yours, Charles

Grandison."[787] A wax figure could not be more proper. All is in the

same taste. There are eight wedding-coaches, each with four horses; Sir

Charles is attentive to old people; at table, the gentlemen, each with a

napkin under his arm, wait upon the ladies; the bride is ever on the

point of fainting; he throws himself at her feet with the utmost

politeness: "What, my love! In compliment to the best of parents resume

your usual presence of mind. I, else, who shall glory before a thousand

witnesses in receiving the honor of your hand, shall be ready to regret

that I acquiesced so cheerfully with the wishes of those parental

friends for a public celebration."[788] Courtesies begin, compliments

fly about; a swarm of proprieties flutters around, like a troop of

little love-cherubs, and their devout wings serve to sanctify the

blessed tendernesses of the happy couple. Tears abound; Harriet bemoans

the fate of Sir Hargrave Pollexfen, whilst Sir Charles, "in a soothing,

tender, and respectful manner, put his arm round me, and taking my own

handkerchief, unresisted, wiped away the tears as they fell on my cheek.

Sweet humanity! Charming sensibility! Check not the kindly gush.

Dewdrops of heaven! (wiping away my tears, and kissing the

handkerchief), dewdrops of heaven, from a mind like that heaven mild and

gracious!"[789] It is too much; we are surfeited, we say to ourselves

that these phrases should be accompanied by a mandoline. The most

patient of mortals feels himself sick at heart when he has swallowed a

thousand pages of his sentimental twaddle, and all the milk and water of

love. To crown all, Sir Charles, seeing Harriet embrace her rival,

sketches the plan of a little temple, dedicated to Friendship, to be

built on the very spot; it is the triumph of mythological bad taste. At

the end, bouquets shower down as at the opera; all the characters sing

in unison a chorus in praise of Sir Charles, and his wife says: "But

could he be otherwise than the best of husbands, who was the most

dutiful of sons, who is the most affectionate of brothers; the most

faithful of friends: who is good upon principle in every relation of

life!"[790] He is great, he is generous, delicate, pious,

irreproachable; he has never done a mean action, nor made a wrong

gesture. His conscience and his wig are unsullied. Amen! Let us canonize

him, and stuff him with straw.

Nor, my dear Richardson, have you, great as you are, exactly all the wit

which is necessary in order to have enough. By seeking to serve

morality, you prejudice it. Do you know the effect of these edifying

advertisements which you stick on at the beginning or end of your books?

We are repelled, feel our emotion diminish, see the black-gowned

preacher come snuffling out of the worldly dress which he had assumed

for an hour; we are annoyed by the deceit. Insinuate morality, but do

not inflict it. Remember there is a substratum of rebellion in the human

heart, and that if we too openly set ourselves to wall it up with

discipline, it escapes and looks for free air outside. You print at the

end of "Pamela" the catalogue of the virtues of which she is an example;

the reader yawns, forgets his pleasure, ceases to believe, and asks

himself if the heavenly heroine was not an ecclesiastical puppet,

trotted out to give him a lesson. You relate at the end of "Clarissa

Harlowe" the punishment of all the wicked, great and small, sparing

none; the reader laughs, says that things happen otherwise in this

world, and bids you put in here like Arnolphe,[791] a description "of

the cauldrons in which the souls of those who have led evil lives are to

boil in the infernal regions. We are not such fools as you take us for.

There is no need that you should shout to make us afraid; that you

should write out the lesson by itself, and in capitals, in order to

distinguish it. We love art, and you have a scant amount of it; we want

to be pleased, and you don't care to please us. You copy all the

letters, detail the conversations, tell everything, prune nothing; your

novels fill many volumes; spare us, use the scissors; be a skilled

literary workman, not a registrar of the Rolls office. Do not pour out

your library of documents on the high-road. Art is different from

nature; the latter draws out, the first condenses. Twenty letters of

twenty pages do not display a character; but one brilliant saying does.

You are weighed down by your conscience, which compels you to move step

by step and slow; you are afraid of your genius; you rein it in; you

dare not use loud cries and free speech at the very moment when passion

is most virulent; you flounder into emphatic and well-written

phrases;[792] you will not show nature as it is, as Shakespeare shows

it, when, stung by passion as by a hot iron, it cries out, rears, and

bounds over your barriers. You cannot love it, and your punishment is

that you cannot see it."[793]

Section V.--Henry Fielding

Fielding protests on behalf of nature; and certainly, to see his actions

and his persons, we think him made expressly for that purpose, a robust,

strongly built man, above six feet high, sanguine, with an excess of

good humor and animal spirits, loyal, generous, affectionate, and brave,

but imprudent, extravagant, a drinker, a roisterer, ruined as his father

was before him, having seen the ups and downs of life, not always clean,

but always jolly. Lady Wortley Montague says of him: "His happy

constitution made him forget everything when he was before a venison

pasty, or over a flask of champagne."[794] Natural impulse, somewhat

coarse but generous, sways him. It does not restrain itself, it flows

freely, it follows its own bent, not choice in its course, not confining

itself to banks, miry but copious, and in a broad channel. From the

outset an abundance of health and physical impetuosity plunges Fielding

into gross jovial excess, and the immoderate sap of youth bubbles up in

him until he marries and becomes ripe in years. He is gay, and seeks

gayety; he is careless, and has not even literary vanity. One day

Garrick begged him to cut down an awkward scene, and told him "that a

repulse would flurry him so much, he should not be able to do justice to

the part. If the scene is not a good one, let them find that out,"

said Fielding; just as was foreseen, the house made a violent uproar,

and the performer tried to quell it by retiring to the green-room, where

the author was supporting his spirits with a bottle of champagne. "What

is the matter, Garrick? are they hissing me now? Yes, just the same

passage that I wanted you to retrench. Oh," replied the author, "I did

not give them credit for it: they have found it out, have they?"[795] In

this easy manner he took all mischances. He went ahead without feeling

the bruises much, like a confident man, whose heart expands and whose

skin is thick. When he inherited some money he feasted, gave dinners to

his neighbors, kept a pack of hounds and a lot of magnificent lackeys in

yellow livery. In three years he had spent it all; but courage remained,

he finished his law studies, prepared a voluminous Digest of the

Statutes at Large, in two folio volumes, which remained unpublished,

became a magistrate, destroyed bands of robbers, and earned in the most

insipid of labors "the dirtiest money upon earth." Disgust, weariness

did not affect him; he was too solidly made to have the nerves of a

woman. Force, activity, invention, tenderness, all overflowed in him. He

had a mother's fondness for his children, adored his wife, became almost

mad when he lost her, found no other consolation than to weep with his

maid-servant, and ended by marrying that good and honest girl, that he

might give a mother to his children; the last trait in the portrait of

this valiant plebeian heart, quick in telling all, having no dislikes,

but all the best parts of man except delicacy. We read his books as we

drink a pure, wholesome, and rough wine, which cheers and fortifies us,

and which wants nothing but bouquet.

Such a man was sure to dislike Richardson. He who loves expansive and

liberal nature, drives from him like foes the solemnity, sadness, and

pruderies of the Puritans. His first literary work was to caricature

Richardson. His first hero, Joseph, is the brother of Pamela, and

resists the proposals of his mistress, as Pamela does those of her

master. The temptation, touching in the case of a girl, becomes comical

in that of a young man, and the tragic turns into the grotesque.

Fielding laughs heartily, like Rabelais, or Scarron. He imitates the

emphatic style; ruffles the petticoats and bobs the wigs; upsets with

his rude jests all the seriousness of conventionality. If we are

refined, or simply well dressed, don't let us go along with him. He will

take us to prisons, inns, dunghills, the mud of the roadside; he will

make us flounder among rollicking, scandalous, vulgar adventures, and

crude pictures. He has plenty of words at command, and his sense of

smell is not delicate. Mr. Joseph Andrews, after leaving Lady Booby, is

felled to the ground, left naked, in a ditch, for dead; a stage-coach

came by; a lady objects to receive a naked man inside; and the

gentlemen, "though there were several greatcoats about the coach," could

not spare them; the coachman, who had two greatcoats spread under him,

refused to lend either, lest they should be made bloody.[796] This is

but the outset, judge of the rest. Joseph and his friend, the good

Parson Adams, give and receive a vast number of cuffs; blows resound;

cans of pig's blood are thrown at their heads; dogs tear their clothes

to pieces; they lose their horse. Joseph is so good-looking, that he is

assailed by the maid-servant, "obliged to take her in his arms and to

shut her out of the room";[797] they have never any money; they are

threatened with being sent to prison. Yet they go on in a merry fashion,

like their brothers in Fielding's other novels, Captain Booth and Tom

Jones. These hailstorms of blows, these tavern brawls, this noise of

broken warming-pans and basins flung at heads, this medley of incidents

and down-pouring of mishaps, combine to make the most joyous music. All

these honest folk fight well, walk well, eat well, drink still better.

It is a pleasure to observe these potent stomachs; roast-beef goes down

into them as to its natural place. Let us not say that these good arms

practise too much on their neighbors' skins: the neighbors' hides are

tough, and always heal quickly. Decidedly life is a good thing, and we

will go along with Fielding, smiling by the way, with a broken head and

a bellyful.

Shall we merely laugh? There are many things to be seen on our journey:

the sentiment of nature is a talent, like the understanding of certain

rules; and Fielding, turning his back on Richardson, opens up a domain

as wide as that of his rival. What we call nature is this brood of

secret passions, often malicious, generally vulgar, always blind, which

tremble and fret within us, ill-covered by the cloak of decency and

reason under which we try to disguise them; we think we lead them, and

they lead us; we think our actions our own, they are theirs. They are so

many, so strong, so interwoven, so ready to rise, break forth, be

carried away, that their movements elude all our reasoning and our

grasp. This is Fielding's domain; his art and pleasure, like Molière's

are in lifting a corner of the cloak; his characters parade with a

rational air, and suddenly, through a vista, the reader perceives the

inner turmoil of vanities, follies, lusts, and secret rancors which make

them move. Thus, when Tom Jones's arm is broken, philosopher Square

comes to console him by an application of stoical maxims; but in proving

to him that "pain was the most contemptible thing in the world," he

bites his tongue, and lets slip an oath or two; whereupon Parson

Thwackum, his opponent and rival, assures him that his mishap is a

warning of Providence, and both in consequence are nearly coming to

blows.[798] In the "Life of Mr. Jonathan Wild," the prison chaplain

having aired his eloquence, and entreated the condemned man to repent,

accepts from him a bowl of punch, because "it is nowhere spoken against

in Scripture"; and after drinking, repeats his last sermon against the

pagan philosophers. Thus unveiled, natural impulse has a grotesque

appearance; the people advance gravely, cane in hand, but in our eyes

they are all naked. Understand, they are every whit naked; and some of

their attitudes are very lively. Ladies will do well not to enter here.

This powerful genius, frank and joyous, loves boorish feasts like

Rubens; the red faces, beaming with good humor, sensuality, and energy,

move about his pages, flutter hither and thither, and jostle each other,

and their overflowing instincts break forth in violent actions. Out of

such he creates his chief characters. He has none more lifelike than

these, more broadly sketched in bold and dashing outline, with a more

wholesome color. If sober people like Allworthy remain in a corner of

his vast canvas, characters full of natural impulse, like Western, stand

out with a relief and brightness, never seen since Falstaff. Western is

a country squire, a good fellow in the main, but a drunkard, always in

the saddle, full of oaths, ready with coarse language, blows, a sort of

dull carter, hardened and excited by the brutality of the race, the

wildness of a country life, by violent exercise, by abuse of coarse food

and strong drink, full of English and rustic pride and prejudice, having

never been disciplined by the constraint of the world, because he lives

in the country; nor by that of education, since he can hardly read; nor

of reflection, since he cannot put two ideas together; nor of authority,

because he is rich and a justice of the peace, and given up, like a

noisy and creaking weathercock, to every gust of passion. When

contradicted, he grows red, foams at the mouth, wishes to thrash

someone. "Doff thy clothes." They are even obliged to stop him by main

force. He hastens to go to Allworthy to complain of Tom Jones, who has

dared to faff in love with his daughter: "It's well for un I could not

get at un: I'd a licked un; I'd a spoiled his caterwauling; I'd a taught

the son of a whore to meddle with meat for his master. He shan't ever

have a morsel of meat of mine, or a varden to buy it. If she will ha un,

one smock shall be her portion. I'd sooner give my estate to the sinking

fund, that it may be sent to Hanover, to corrupt our nation with."[799]

Allworthy says he is very sorry for it: "Pox o' your sorrow. It will do

me abundance of good, when I have lost my only child, my poor Sophy that

was the joy of my heart, and all the hope and comfort of my age. But I

am resolved I will turn her out o' doors; she shall beg, and starve, and

rot in the streets. Not one hapenny, not a hapenny shall she ever hae o'

mine. The son of a bitch was always good at finding a hare sitting and

be rotted to'n; I little thought what puss he was looking after. But it

shall be the worst he ever vound in his life. She shall be no better

than carrion; the skin o'er it is all he shall ha, and zu you may tell

un."[800] His daughter tries to reason with him; he storms. Then she

speaks of tenderness and obedience; he leaps about the room for joy, and

tears come to his eyes. Then she recommences her prayers; he grinds his

teeth, clenches his fist, stamps his feet; "I am determined upon this

match, and ha him[801] you shall, damn me, if shat unt. Damn me, if shat

unt, though dost hang thyself the next morning."[802] He can find no

reason; he can only tell her to be a good girl. He contradicts himself,

defeats his own plans; is like a blind bull, which butts to right and

left, doubles on his path, touches no one, and paws the ground. At the

least sound he rushes head foremost, offensively, not knowing why. His

ideas are only starts or transports of flesh and blood. Never has the

animal so completely covered and absorbed the man. It makes him

grotesque; he is so natural and so brute-like: he allows himself to be

led, and speaks like a child. He Says: "I don't know how 'tis, but,

Allworthy, you make me do always just as you please; and yet I have as

good an estate as you, and am in the commission of the peace just as

yourself."[803] Nothing holds or lasts with him; he is impulsive in

everything; he lives but for the moment. Rancor, interest, no passions

of long continuance affect him. He embraces people whom he just before

wanted to knock down. Everything with him disappears in the fire of the

momentary passion, which floods his brain, as it were, in sudden waves,

and drowns the rest. Now that he is reconciled to Tom Jones, he cannot

rest until Tom marries his daughter: "To her, boy, to her, go to her.

That's it, little honeys, O that's it. Well, what, is it all over? Hath

she appointed the day, boy? What, shall it be to-morrow or next day? I

shan't be put off a minute longer than next day; I am resolved.... I

tell thee it is all flimflam. Zoodikers! she'd have the wedding to-night

with all her heart. Would'st not, Sophy?... Where the devil is

Allworthy;... Harkee, Allworthy, I'll bet thee five pounds to a crown,

we have a boy to-morrow nine months. But prithee, tell me what wut ha?

Burgundy, champagne, or what? For please Jupiter, we'll make a night

on't."[804] And when he becomes a grandfather, he spends his time in the

nursery, "where he declares the tattling of his little granddaughter,

who is above a year and a half old, is sweeter music than the finest cry

of dogs in England."[805] This is pure nature, and no one has displayed

it more free, more impetuous, ignoring all rule, more abandoned to

physical passions than Fielding.

It is not because he loves it like the great impartial artists,

Shakespeare and Goethe; on the contrary, he is eminently a moralist; and

it is one of the great marks of the age, that reformatory designs are as

decided with him as with others. He gives his fictions a practical aim,

and commends them by saying that the serious and tragic tone sours,

whilst the comic style disposes men to be "more full of good humour and

benevolence."[806] Moreover, he satirizes vice; he looks upon the

passions not as simple forces, but as objects of approbation or blame.

At every step he suggests moral conclusions; he wants us to take sides;

he discusses, excuses, or condemns. He writes an entire novel in an

ironical style,[807] to attack and destroy rascality and treason. He is

more than a painter, he is a judge, and the two parts agree in him. For

a psychology produces a morality: where there is an idea of man, there

is an ideal of man; and Fielding, who has seen in man nature as opposed

to rule, praises in man nature as opposed to rule; so that, according to

him, virtue is but an instinct. Generosity in his eyes is, like all

sources of action, a primitive inclination; like all sources of action,

it flows on receiving no good from catechisms and phrases; like all

sources of action, it flows at times too copious and quick. Take it as

it is, and do not try to oppress it under a discipline, or to replace it

by an argument. Mr. Richardson, your heroes, so correct, constrained, so

carefully made up with their impedimenta of maxims, are cathedral

vergers, of use but to drone in a procession. Square or Thwackum, your

tirades on philosophical or Christian virtue are mere words, only fit to

be heard after dinner. Virtue is in the mood and the blood; a gossipy

education and cloistral severity do not assist it. Give me a man, not a

show-manikin or a mere machine, to spout phrases. My hero is the man who

is born generous, as a dog is born affectionate, and a horse brave. I

want a living heart, full of warmth and force, not a dry pedant, bent on

squaring all his actions. This ardent and impulsive character will

perhaps carry the hero too far; I pardon his escapades. He will get

drunk unawares; he will pick up a girl on his way; he will hit out with

a zest; he will not refuse a duel; he will suffer a fine lady to

appreciate him, and will accept her purse; he will be imprudent, will

injure his reputation, like Tom Jones; he will be a bad manager, and

will get into debt, like Captain Booth. Pardon him for having muscles,

nerves, senses, and that overflow of anger or ardor which urges forward

animals of a noble breed. But he will let himself be beaten till the

blood flows, before he betrays a poor gamekeeper. He will pardon his

mortal enemy readily, from sheer kindness, and will send him money

secretly. He will be loyal to his mistress, and will be faithful to her,

spite of all offers, in the worst destitution, and without the least

hope of winning her. He will be liberal with his purse, his trouble, his

sufferings, his blood; he will not boast of it; he will have neither

pride, vanity, affectation, nor dissimulation; bravery and kindness will

abound in his heart, as good water in a good spring. He may be stupid

like Captain Booth, a gambler even, extravagant, unable to manage his

affairs, liable one day through temptation to be unfaithful to his wife;

but he will be so sincere in his repentance, his error will be so

involuntary, he will be so carefully, genuinely tender, that she will

love him exceedingly,[808] and in good truth he will deserve it. He will

be a nurse to her when she is ill, behave as a mother to her; he will

himself see to her lying-in; he will feel towards her the adoration of a

lover, always, before all the world, even before Miss Matthews, who

seduced him. He says, "If I had the world, I was ready to lay it at my

Amelia's feet; and so, heaven knows, I would ten thousand worlds."[809]

He weeps like a child on thinking of her; he listens to her like a

little child. "I believe I am able to recollect much the greatest part

(of what she uttered); for the impression is never to be effaced from my

memory."[810] He dressed himself "with all the expedition imaginable,

singing, whistling, hurrying, attempting by every method to banish

thought,"[811] and galloped away, whilst his wife was asleep, because he

cannot endure her tears. In this soldier's body, under this brawler's

thick breastplate, there is a true woman's heart, which melts, which a

trifle disturbs, when she whom he loves is in question; timid in its

tenderness, inexhaustible in devotion, in trust, in self-denial, in the

communication of its feelings. When a man possesses this, overlook the

rest; with all his excesses and his follies, he is better than your

well-dressed devotees.

To this we reply: You do well to defend nature, but let it be on

condition that you suppress nothing. One thing is wanting in your

strongly built folks--refinement; delicate dreams, enthusiastic

elevation, and trembling delicacy exist in nature equally with coarse

vigor, noisy hilarity, and frank kindness. Poetry is true, like prose;

and if there are eaters and boxers, there are also knights and artists.

Cervantes, whom you imitate, and Shakespeare, whom you recall, had this

refinement, and they have painted it; in this abundant harvest, which

you have gathered so plentifully, you have forgotten the flowers. We

tire at last of your fisticuffs and tavern bills. You flounder too

readily in cow-houses, among the ecclesiastical pigs of Parson

Trulliber. We would fain see you have more regard for the modesty of

your heroines; wayside accidents raise their tuckers too often; and

Fanny, Sophia, Mrs. Heartfree, may continue pure, yet we cannot help

remembering the assaults which have lifted their petticoats. You are so

coarse yourself, that you are insensible to what is atrocious. You

persuade Tom Jones falsely, yet for an instant, that Mrs. Waters, whom

he has made his mistress, is his own mother, and you leave the reader

during a long time buried in the shame of this supposition. And then you

are obliged to become unnatural in order to depict love; you can give

but constrained letters; the transports of your Tom Jones are only the

author's phrases. For want of ideas he declaims odes. You are only aware

of the impetuosity of the senses, the upwelling of the blood, the

effusion of tenderness, but you are unacquainted with nervous exaltation

and poetic rapture. Man, such as you conceive him, is a good buffalo;

and perhaps he is the hero required by a people which gives itself the

nickname "John Bull."

Section VI.--Tobias Smollett