defend the policy which invites the youth of our country to study such
writers as Theocritus and Catullus, we were to set up a cry against a
new edition of the Country Wife or the Way of the World. The immoral
English writers of the seventeenth century are indeed much less
excusable than those of Greece and Rome. But the worst English writings
of the seventeenth century are decent, compared with much that has been
bequeathed to us by Greece and Rome. Plato, we have little doubt, was a
much better man than Sir George Etherege. But Plato has written things
at which Sir George Etherege would have shuddered. Buckhurst and Sedley,
even in those wild orgies at the Cock in Bow Street for which they were
pelted by the rabble and fined by the Court of King's Bench, would never
have dared to hold such discourse as passed between Socrates and Phaedrus
on that fine summer day under the plane tree, while the fountain warbled
at their feet, and the cicadas chirped overhead. If it be, as we think
it is, desirable that an English gentleman should be well informed
touching the government and the manners of little commonwealths which
both in place and time are far removed from us, whose independence has
been more than two thousand years extinguished, whose language has not
been spoken for ages, and whose ancient magnificence is attested only by
a few broken columns and friezes, much more must it be desirable that he
should be intimately acquainted with the history of the public mind of
his own country, and with the causes, the nature, and the extent of
those revolutions of opinion and feeling which, during the last two
centuries, have alternately raised and depressed the standard of our
national morality. And knowledge of this sort is to be very sparingly
gleaned from parliamentary debates, from state papers, and from the
works of grave historians. It must either not be acquired at all, or it
must be acquired by the perusal of the light literature which has at
various periods been fashionable. We are therefore by no means disposed
to condemn this publication, though we certainly cannot recommend the
handsome volume before us as an appropriate Christmas present for young
ladies.
We have said that we think the present publication perfectly
justifiable. But we can by no means agree with Mr. Leigh Hunt, who
seems to hold that there is little or no ground for the charge of
immorality so often brought against the literature of the Restoration.
We do not blame him for not bringing to the judgment-seat the merciless
rigor of Lord Angelo; but we really think that such flagitious and
impudent offenders as those who are now at the bar deserved at least the
gentle rebuke of Escalus. Mr. Leigh Hunt treats the whole matter a
little too much in the easy style of Lucio; and perhaps his exceeding
lenity disposes us to be somewhat too severe.
And yet it is not easy to be too severe. For in truth this part of our
literature is a disgrace to our language and our national character. It
is clever, indeed, and very entertaining; but it is, in the most
emphatic sense of the words, "earthly, sensual, devilish." Its
indecency, though perpetually such as is condemned not less by the rules
of good taste than by those of morality, is not, in our opinion, so
disgraceful a fault as its singularly inhuman spirit. We have here
Belial, not as when he inspired Ovid and Ariosto, "graceful and humane,"
but with the iron eye and cruel sneer of Mephistopheles. We find
ourselves in a world, in which the ladies are like very profligate,
impudent, and unfeeling men, and in which the men are too bad for any
place but Pandaemonium or Norfolk Island. We are surrounded by foreheads
of bronze, hearts like the nether millstone, and tongues set on fire of
hell.
Dryden defended or excused his own offences and those of his
contemporaries by pleading the example of the earlier English
dramatists; and Mr. Leigh Hunt seems to think that there is force in the
plea. We altogether differ from this opinion. The crime charged is not
mere coarseness of expression. The terms which are delicate in one age
become gross in the next. The diction of the English version of the
Pentateuch is sometimes such as Addison would not have ventured to
imitate; and Addison, the standard of moral purity in his own age, used
many phrases which are now proscribed. Whether a thing shall be
designated by a plain noun substantive or by a circumlocution is mere
matter of fashion. Morality is not at all interested in the question.
But morality is deeply interested in this, that what is immoral shall
not be presented to the imagination of the young and susceptible in
constant connection with what is attractive. For every person who has
observed the operation of the law of association in his own mind and in
the minds of others knows that whatever is constantly presented to the
imagination in connection with what is attractive will itself become
attractive. There is undoubtedly a great deal of indelicate writing in
Fletcher and Massinger, and more than might be wished even in Ben Jonson
and Shakespeare, who are comparatively pure. But it is impossible to
trace in their plays any systematic attempt to associate vice with those
things which men value most and desire most, and virtue with everything
ridiculous and degrading. And such a systematic attempt we find in the
whole dramatic literature of the generation which followed the return of
Charles the Second. We will take as an instance of what we mean, a
single subject of the highest importance to the happiness of mankind,
conjugal fidelity. We can at present hardly call to mind a single
English play, written before the Civil War, in which the character of a
seducer of married women is represented in a favorable light. We
remember many plays in which such persons are baffled, exposed, covered
with derision, and insulted by triumphant husbands. Such is the fate of
Falstaff, with all his wit and knowledge of the world. Such is the fate
of Brisac in Fletcher's Elder Brother, and of Ricardo and Ubaldo in
Massinger's Picture. Sometimes, as in the Fatal Dowry and Love's
Cruelty, the outraged honor of families is repaired by a bloody revenge.
If now and then the lover is represented as an accomplished man, and
the husband as a person of weak or odious character, this only makes the
triumph of female virtue the more signal, as in Jonson's Celia and Mrs.
Fitzdottrel, and in Fletcher's Maria. In general we will venture to say
that the dramatists of the age of Elizabeth and James the First either
treat the breach of the marriage vow as a serious crime, or, if they
treat it as matter for laughter, turn the laugh against the gallant.
On the contrary, during the forty years which followed the Restoration,
the whole body of the dramatists invariably represent adultery, we do
not say as a peccadillo, we do not say as an error which the violence of
passion may excuse, but as the calling of a fine gentleman, as a grace
without which his character would be imperfect. It is as essential to
his breeding and to his place in society that he should make love to the
wives of his neighbors as that he should know French, or that he should
have a sword at his side. In all this there is no passion, and scarcely
anything that can be called preference. The hero intrigues just as he
wears a wig; because, if he did not, he would be a queer fellow, a city
prig, perhaps a Puritan. All the agreeable qualities are always given to
the gallant. All the contempt and aversion are the portion of the
unfortunate husband. Take Dryden for example; and compare Woodall with
Brainsick, or Lorenzo with Gomez. Take Wycherley; and compare Horner
with Pinchwife. Take Vanbrugh; and compare Constant with Sir John Brute.
Take Farquhar; and compare Archer with Squire Sullen. Take Congreve; and
compare Bellmour with Fondlewife, Careless with Sir Paul Plyant, or
Scandal with Foresight. In all these cases, and in many more which might
be named, the dramatist evidently does his best to make the person who
commits the injury graceful, sensible, and spirited, and the person who
suffers it a fool, or a tyrant, or both.
Mr. Charles Lamb, indeed, attempted to set up a defence for this way of
writing. The dramatists of the latter part of the seventeenth century
are not, according to him, to be tried by the standard of morality which
exists, and ought to exist, in real life. Their world is a conventional
world. Their heroes and heroines belong, not to England, not to
Christendom, but to an Utopia of gallantry, to a Fairyland, where the
Bible and Burn's Justice are unknown, where a prank which on this earth
would be rewarded with the pillory is merely matter for a peal of elvish
laughter. A real Horner, a real Careless, would, it is admitted, be
exceedingly bad men. But to predicate morality or immorality of the
Horner of Wycherley and the Careless of Congreve is as absurd as it
would be to arraign a sleeper for his dreams. "They belong to the
regions of pure comedy, where no cold moral reigns. When we are among
them we are among a chaotic people. We are not to judge them by our
usages. No reverend institutions are insulted by their proceedings, for
they have none among them. No peace of families is violated, for no
family ties exist among them. There is neither right nor wrong,
gratitude or its opposite, claim or duty, paternity or sonship."
This is, we believe, a fair summary of Mr. Lamb's doctrine. We are sure
that we do not wish to represent him unfairly. For we admire his genius;
we love the kind nature which appears in all his writings; and we
cherish his memory as much as if we had known him personally. But we
must plainly say that his argument, though ingenious, is altogether
sophistical.
Of course we perfectly understand that it is possible for a writer to
create a conventional world in which things forbidden by the Decalogue
and the Statute Book shall be lawful, and yet that the exhibition may be
harmless, or even edifying. For example, we suppose, that the most
austere critics would not accuse Fenelon of impiety and immorality on
account of his Telemachus and his Dialogues of the Dead. In Telemachus
and the Dialogues of the Dead we have a false religion, and
consequently a morality which is in some points incorrect. We have a
right and a wrong differing from the right and the wrong of real life.
It is represented as the first duty of men to pay honor to Jove and
Minerva. Philocles, who employs his leisure in making graven images of
these deities, is extolled for his piety in a way which contrasts
singularly with the expressions of Isaiah on the same subject. The dead
are judged by Minos, and rewarded with lasting happiness for actions
which Fenelon would have been the first to pronounce splendid sins. The
same may be said of Mr. Southey's Mahommedan and Hindoo heroes and
heroines. In Thalaba, to speak in derogation of the Arabian impostor is
blasphemy; to drink wine is a crime; to perform ablutions and to pay
honor to the holy cities are works of merit. In the Curse of Kehama,
Kailyal is commended for her devotion to the statue of Mariataly, the
goddess of the poor. But certainly no person will accuse Mr. Southey of
having promoted or intended to promote either Islamism or Brahminism.
It is easy to see why the conventional worlds of Fenelon and Mr. Southey
are unobjectionable. In the first place, they are utterly unlike the
real world in which we live. The state of society, the laws even of the
physical world, are so different from those with which we are familiar,
that we cannot be shocked at finding the morality also very different.
But in truth the morality of these conventional worlds differs from the
morality of the real world only in points where there is no danger that
the real world will ever go wrong. The generosity and docility of
Telemachus, the fortitude, the modesty, the filial tenderness of
Kailyal, are virtues of all ages and nations. And there was very little
danger that the Dauphin would worship Minerva, or that an English damsel
would dance, with a bucket on her head, before the statue of Mariataly.
The case is widely different with what Mr. Charles Lamb calls the
conventional world of Wycherley and Congreve. Here the garb, the
manners, the topics of conversation, are those of the real town and of
the passing day. The hero is in all superficial accomplishments exactly
the fine gentleman whom every youth in the pit would gladly resemble.
The heroine is the fine lady whom every youth in the pit would gladly
marry. The scene is laid in some place which is as well known to the
audience as their own houses, in St. James's Park, or Hyde Park, or
Westminster Hall. The lawyer bustles about with his bag, between the
Common Pleas and the Exchequer. The Peer calls for his carriage to go to
the House of Lords on a private bill. A hundred little touches are
employed to make the fictitious world appear like the actual world. And
the immorality is of a sort which never can be out of date, and which
all the force of religion, law, and public opinion united can but
imperfectly restrain.
In the name of art, as well as in the name of virtue, we protest against
the principle that the world of pure comedy is one into which no moral
enters. If comedy be an imitation, under whatever conventions, of real
life, how is it possible that it can have no reference to the great rule
which directs life, and to feelings which are called forth by every
incident of life? If what Mr. Charles Lamb says were correct, the
inference would be that these dramatists did not in the least understand
the very first principles of their craft. Pure landscape-painting into
which no light or shade enters, pure portrait-painting into which no
expression enters, are phrases less at variance with sound criticism
than pure comedy into which no moral enters.
But it is not the fact that the world of these dramatists is a world
into which no moral enters. Morality constantly enters into that world,
a sound morality and an unsound morality: the sound morality to be
insulted, derided, associated with everything mean and hateful; the
unsound morality to be set off to every advantage, and inculcated by all
methods, direct and indirect. It is not the fact that none of the
inhabitants of this conventional world feel reverence for sacred
institutions and family ties. Fondlewife, Pinchwife, every person in
short of narrow understanding and disgusting manners, expresses that
reverence strongly. The heroes and heroines, too, have a moral code of
their own, an exceedingly bad one, but not, as Mr. Charles Lamb seems to
think, a code existing only in the imagination of dramatists. It is, on
the contrary, a code actually received and obeyed by great numbers of
people. We need not go to Utopia or Fairyland to find them. They are
near at hand. Every night some of them cheat at the hells in the
Quadrant, and others pace the Piazza in Covent Garden. Without flying to
Nephelococcygia or to the Court of Queen Mab, we can meet with sharpers,
bullies, hardhearted impudent debauchees, and women worthy of such
paramours. The morality of the Country Wife and the Old Bachelor is the
morality, not, as Mr. Charles Lamb maintains, of an unreal world, but of
a world which is a great deal too real. It is the morality, not of a
chaotic people, but of low town-rakes, and of those ladies whom the
newspapers call "dashing Cyprians." And the question is simply this,
whether a man of genius who constantly and systematically endeavors to
make this sort of character attractive, by uniting it with beauty,
grace, dignity, spirit, a high social position, popularity, literature,
wit, taste, knowledge of the world, brilliant success in every
undertaking, does or does not make an ill use of his powers. We own that
we are unable to understand how this question can be answered in any way
but one.
It must, indeed, be acknowledged, in justice to the writers of whom we
have spoken thus severely, that they were, to a great extent, the
creatures of their age. And if it be asked why that age encouraged
immorality which no other age would have tolerated, we have no
hesitation in answering that this great depravation of the national
taste was the effect of the prevalence of Puritanism under the
Commonwealth.
To punish public outrages on morals and religion is unquestionably
within the competence of rulers. But when a government, not content with
requiring decency, requires sanctity, it oversteps the bounds which mark
its proper functions. And it may be laid down as a universal rule that a
government which attempts more than it ought will reform less. A
lawgiver who, in order to protect distressed borrowers, limits the rate
of interest, either makes it impossible for the objects of his care to
borrow at all, or places them at the mercy of the worst class of
usurers. A lawgiver who, from tenderness for laboring men, fixes the
hours of their work and the amount of their wages, is certain to make
them far more wretched than he found them. And so a government which,
not content with repressing scandalous excesses, demands from its
subjects fervent and austere piety, will soon discover that, while
attempting to render an impossible service to the cause of virtue, it
has in truth only promoted vice.
For what are the means by which a government can effect its ends? Two
only, reward and punishment; powerful means, indeed, for influencing the
exterior act, but altogether impotent for the purpose of touching the
heart. A public functionary who is told that he will be promoted if he
is a devout Catholic, and turned out of his place if he is not, will
probably go to mass every morning, exclude meat from his table on
Fridays, shrive himself regularly, and perhaps let his superiors know
that he wears a hair shirt next his skin. Under a Puritan government, a
person who is apprised that piety is essential to thriving in the world
will be strict in the observance of the Sunday, or, as he will call it,
Sabbath, and will avoid a theatre as if it were plague-stricken. Such a
show of religion as this the hope of gain and the fear of loss will
produce, at a week's notice, in any abundance which a government may
require. But under this show, sensuality, ambition, avarice, and hatred
retain unimpaired power, and the seeming convert has only added to the
vices of a man of the world all the still darker vices which are
engendered by the constant practice of dissimulation. The truth cannot
be long concealed. The public discovers that the grave persons who are
proposed to it as patterns are more utterly destitute of moral principle
and of moral sensibility than avowed libertines. It sees that these
Pharisees are farther removed from real goodness than publicans and
harlots. And, as usual, it rushes to the extreme opposite to that which
it quits. It considers a high religious profession as a sure mark of
meanness and depravity. On the very first day on which the restraint of
fear is taken away, and on which men can venture to say what they think,
a frightful peal of blasphemy and ribaldry proclaims that the
short-sighted policy which aimed at making a nation of saints has made a
nation of scoffers.
It was thus in France about the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Louis the Fourteenth in his old age became religious: he determined that
his subjects should be religious, too: he shrugged his shoulders and
knitted his brows if he observed at his levee or near his dinner-table
any gentleman who neglected the duties enjoined by the Church, and
rewarded piety with blue ribbons, invitations to Marli, governments,
pensions, and regiments. Forthwith Versailles became, in everything but
dress, a convent. The pulpits and confessionals were surrounded by
swords and embroidery. The Marshals of France were much in prayer; and
there was hardly one among the Dukes and Peers who did not carry good
little books in his pocket, fast during Lent, and communicate at Easter.
Madame de Maintenon, who had a great share in the blessed work, boasted
that devotion had become quite the fashion. A fashion indeed it was; and
like a fashion it passed away. No sooner had the old king been carried
to St. Denis than the whole court unmasked. Every man hastened to
indemnify himself, by the excess of licentiousness and impudence, for
years of mortification. The same persons who, a few months before, with
meek voices and demure looks, had consulted divines about the state of
their souls now surrounded the midnight table, where, amidst the
bounding of champagne corks, a drunken prince, enthroned between Dubois
and Madame de Parabere, hiccoughed out atheistical arguments and obscene
jests. The early part of the reign of Louis the Fourteenth had been a
time of license; but the most dissolute men of that generation would
have blushed at the orgies of the Regency.
It was the same with our fathers in the time of the Great Civil War. We
are by no means unmindful of the great debt which mankind owes to the
Puritans of that time, the deliverers of England, the founders of the
American commonwealths. But in the day of their power, those men
committed one great fault, which left deep and lasting traces in the
national character and manners. They mistook the end and overrated the
force of government. They determined, not merely to protect religion and
public morals from insult,--an object for which the civil sword, in
discreet hands, may be beneficially employed,--but to make the people
committed to their rule truly devout. Yet, if they had only reflected on
events which they had themselves witnessed and in which they had
themselves borne a great part, they would have seen what was likely to
be the result of their enterprise. They had lived under a government
which, during a long course of years, did all that could be done, by
lavish bounty and by rigorous punishment, to enforce conformity to the
doctrine and discipline of the Church of England. No person suspected of
hostility to that church had the smallest chance of obtaining favor at
the court of Charles. Avowed dissent was punished by imprisonment, by
ignominious exposure, by cruel mutilations, and by ruinous fines. And
the event had been that the Church had fallen, and had, in its fall,
dragged down with it a monarchy which had stood six hundred years. The
Puritan might have learned, if from nothing else, yet from his own
recent victory, that governments which attempt things beyond their reach
are likely not merely to fail, but to produce an effect directly the
opposite of that which they contemplate as desirable.