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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/20459-8.txt b/20459-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..48370a7 --- /dev/null +++ b/20459-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11092 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.), by +Leslie Stephen + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) + +Author: Leslie Stephen + +Release Date: January 27, 2007 [EBook #20459] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOURS IN A LIBRARY *** + + + + +Produced by Thierry Alberto, Henry Craig and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + * * * * * + +------------------------------------------------------------+ + | Transcriber's Note: | + | | + | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in | + | this text. For a complete list, please see the bottom of | + | this document. | + | | + +------------------------------------------------------------+ + + * * * * * + +HOURS IN A LIBRARY + +VOL. I. + +HOURS IN A LIBRARY + +BY + +LESLIE STEPHEN + +_NEW EDITION, WITH ADDITIONS_ + +IN THREE VOLUMES. + +VOL. I. + +LONDON SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 1892 + +[_All rights reserved_] + + + + +CONTENTS + +OF + +THE FIRST VOLUME + + + PAGE +DE FOE'S NOVELS 1 + +RICHARDSON'S NOVELS 47 + +POPE AS A MORALIST 94 + +SIR WALTER SCOTT 137 + +NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 169 + +BALZAC'S NOVELS 199 + +DE QUINCEY 237 + +SIR THOMAS BROWNE 269 + +JONATHAN EDWARDS 300 + +HORACE WALPOLE 345 + + + + +_OPINIONS OF AUTHORS_ + + + Libraries are as the shrines where all the relics of the + ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without + delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed.--BACON, + _Advancement of Learning_. + + + We visit at the shrine, drink in some measure of the + inspiration, and cannot easily breathe in other air less + pure, accustomed to immortal fruits.--HAZLITT'S _Plain + Speaker_. + + + What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though + all the souls of all the writers that have bequeathed their + labours to the Bodleian were reposing here as in some + dormitory or middle state. I seem to inhale learning, + walking amid their foliage; and the odour of their old + moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of the + sciential apples which grew around the happy + orchard.--CHARLES LAMB, _Oxford in the Long Vacation_. + + + My neighbours think me often alone, and yet at such times I + am in company with more than five hundred mutes, each of + whom communicates his ideas to me by dumb signs quite as + intelligibly as any person living can do by uttering of + words; and with a motion of my hand I can bring them as near + to me as I please; I handle them as I like; they never + complain of ill-usage; and when dismissed from my presence, + though ever so abruptly, take no offence.--STERNE, + _Letters_. + + + In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear + friends imprisoned by an enchanter in paper and leathern + boxes,--EMERSON, _Books, Society, and Solitude_. + + + Nothing is pleasanter than exploring in a library.--LANDOR, + _Pericles and Aspasia_. + + + I never come into a library (saith Heinsius) but I bolt the + door to me, excluding lust, ambition, avarice, and all such + vices whose nurse is idleness, the mother of ignorance and + melancholy herself; and in the very lap of eternity, among + so many divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty a spirit + and sweet content that I pity all our great ones and rich + men that know not their happiness.--BURTON, _Anatomy of + Melancholy_. + + + I do not know that I am happiest when alone; but this I am + sure of, that I am never long even in the society of her I + love without a yearning for the company of my lamp and my + utterly confused and tumbled-over library.--BYRON, _Moore's + Life_. + + + Montesquieu used to say that he had never known a pain or a + distress which he could not soothe by half an hour of a good + book.--JOHN MORLEY, _On Popular Culture_. + + + There is no truer word than that of Solomon: 'There is no + end of making books'; the sight of a great library verifies + it; there is no end--indeed, it were pity there should + be.--BISHOP HALL. + + + You that are genuine Athenians, devour with a golden + Epicurism the arts and sciences, the spirits and extractions + of authors.--CULVERWELL, _Light of Nature_. + + + He hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; + he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink; + his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only + sensible in the duller parts.--SHAKESPEARE, _Love's Labour's + Lost_. + + + I have wondered at the patience of the antediluvians; their + libraries were insufficiently furnished; how then could + seven or eight hundred years of life be + supportable?--COWPER, _Life and Letters by Southey_. + + + Unconfused Babel of all tongues! which e'er + The mighty linguist Fame or Time the mighty traveller, + That could speak or this could hear! + Majestic monument and pyramid! + Where still the shapes of parted souls abide + Embalmed in verse; exalted souls which now + Enjoy those arts they wooed so well below, + Which now all wonders plainly see + That have been, are, or are to be + In the mysterious Library, + The beatific Bodley of the Deity! + + COWLEY, _Ode on the Bodleian_. + + + This to a structure led well known to fame, + And called, 'The Monument of Vanished Minds,' + Where when they thought they saw in well-sought books + The assembled souls of all that men thought wise, + It bred such awful reverence in their looks, + As if they saw the buried writers rise. + Such heaps of written thought; gold of the dead, + Which Time does still disperse but not devour, + Made them presume all was from deluge freed + Which long-lived authors writ ere Noah's shower. + + DAVENANT, _Gondibert_. + + + Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a + progeny of life in them, to be as active as that soul whose + progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the + purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that + bred them.--MILTON, _Areopagitica_. + + + Nor is there any paternal fondness which seems to savour + less of absolute instinct, and which may be so well + reconciled to worldly wisdom, as this of authors for their + books. These children may most truly be called the riches of + their father, and many of them have with true filial piety + fed their parent in his old age; so that not only the + affection but the interest of the author may be highly + injured by those slanderers whose poisonous breath brings + his book to an untimely end.--FIELDING, _Tom Jones_. + + + We whom the world is pleased to honour with the title of + modern authors should never have been able to compass our + great design of everlasting remembrance and never-dying fame + if our endeavours had not been so highly serviceable to the + general good of mankind.--SWIFT, _Tale of a Tub_. + + + A good library always makes me melancholy, where the best + author is as much squeezed and as obscure as a porter at a + coronation.--SWIFT. + + + In my youth I never entered a great library but my + predominant feeling was one of pain and disturbance of + mind--not much unlike that which drew tears from Xerxes on + viewing his immense army, and reflecting that in one hundred + years not one soul would remain alive. To me, with respect + to books, the same effect would be brought about by my own + death. Here, said I, are one hundred thousand books, the + worst of them capable of giving me some instruction and + pleasure; and before I can have had time to extract the + honey from one-twentieth of this hive in all likelihood I + shall be summoned away.--DE QUINCEY, _Letter to a young + man_. + + + A man may be judged by his library.--BENTHAM. + + + I ever look upon a library with the reverence of a + temple.--EVELYN, _to Wotton_. + + + 'Father, I should like to learn to make gold.' 'And what + would'st thou do if thou could'st make it?' 'Why, I would + build a great house and fill it with books.'--SOUTHEY, + _Doctor_. + + + What would you have more? A wife? That is none of the + indispensable requisites of life. Books? That is one of + them, and I have more than I can use.--DAVID HUME, _Burton's + 'Life_.' + + + Talk of the happiness of getting a great prize in the + lottery! What is that to opening a box of books? The joy + upon lifting up the cover must be something like that which + we shall feel when Peter the porter opens the door upstairs, + and says, 'Please to walk in, Sir.'--SOUTHEY, _Life_. + + + I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of + books than a king who did not love reading.--MACAULAY. + + + Our books ... do not our hearts hug them, and quiet + themselves in them even more than in God?--BAXTER'S _Saint's + Rest_. + + + It is our duty to live among books.--NEWMAN, _Tracts for the + Times, No. 2_. + + + What lovely things books are!--BUCKLE, _Life by Huth_. + + + (Query) Whether the collected wisdom of all ages and nations + be not found in books?--BERKELEY, _Querist_. + + + Read we must, be writers ever so indifferent.--SHAFTESBURY, + _Characteristics_. + + + It's mighty hard to write nowadays without getting something + or other worth listening to into your essay or your volume. + The foolishest book is a kind of leaky boat on a sea of + wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyhow.--O. W. + HOLMES, _Poet at the Breakfast Table_. + + + I adopted the tolerating measure of the elder Pliny--'nullum + esse librum tam malum ut non in aliqua parte + prodesset.'--GIBBON, _Autobiography_. + + + A book's a book, although there's nothing in't.--BYRON, + _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_. + + + While you converse with lords and dukes, + I have their betters here, my books; + Fixed in an elbow chair at ease + I choose companions as I please. + I'd rather have one single shelf + Than all my friends, except yourself. + For, after all that can be said, + Our best companions are the dead. + + SHERIDAN _to Swift_. + + + We often hear of people who will descend to any servility, + submit to any insult for the sake of getting themselves or + their children into what is euphemistically called good + society. Did it ever occur to them that there is a select + society of all the centuries to which they and theirs can be + admitted for the asking?--LOWELL, _Speech at Chelsea_. + + + On all sides are we not driven to the conclusion that of all + things which men can do or make here below, by far the most + momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call + books? For, indeed, is it not verily the highest act of + man's faculty that produces a book? It is the thought of + man. The true thaumaturgic virtue by which man marks all + things whatever. All that he does and brings to pass is the + vesture of a book.--CARLYLE, _Hero Worship_. + + + Yet it is just + That here in memory of all books which lay + Their sure foundations in the heart of man, + ... + That I should here assert their rights, assert + Their honours, and should, once for all, pronounce + Their benediction, speak of them as powers + For ever to be hallowed; only less + For what we are and what we may become + Than Nature's self, which is the breath of God, + Or His pure word by miracle revealed. + + WORDSWORTH, _Prelude_. + + + Take me to some lofty room, + Lighted from the western sky, + Where no glare dispels the gloom, + Till the golden eve is nigh; + Where the works of searching thought, + Chosen books, may still impart + What the wise of old have taught, + What has tried the meek of heart; + Books in long dead tongues that stirred + Loving hearts in other climes; + Telling to my eyes, unheard, + Glorious deeds of olden times: + Books that purify the thought, + Spirits of the learned dead, + Teachers of the little taught, + Comforters when friends are fled. + + BARNES, _Poems of Rural Life_. + + + A library is like a butcher's shop; it contains plenty of + meat, but it is all raw; no person living can find a meal in + it till some good cook comes along and says, 'Sir, I see by + your looks that you are hungry; I know your taste; be + patient for a moment and you shall be satisfied that you + have an excellent appetite!'--G. ELLIS, Lockhart's + '_Scott_.' + + + A library is itself a cheap university.--H. SIDGWICK, + _Political Economy_. + + + O such a life as he resolved to live + Once he had mastered all that books can give! + + BROWNING. + + + I will bury myself in my books and the devil may pipe to his + own.--TENNYSON. + + + Words! words! words!--SHAKESPEARE. + + +HOURS IN A LIBRARY + + + + +_DE FOE'S NOVELS_ + + +According to the high authority of Charles Lamb, it has sometimes +happened 'that from no inferior merit in the rest, but from some +superior good fortune in the choice of a subject, some single work' (of +a particular author) 'shall have been suffered to eclipse, and cast into +the shade, the deserts of its less fortunate brethren.' And after +quoting the case of Bunyan's 'Holy War' as compared with the 'Pilgrim's +Progress,' he adds that, 'in no instance has this excluding partiality +been exerted with more unfairness than against what may be termed the +secondary novels or romances of De Foe.' He proceeds to declare that +there are at least four other fictitious narratives by the same +writer--'Roxana,' 'Singleton,' 'Moll Flanders,' and 'Colonel +Jack'--which possess an interest not inferior to 'Robinson +Crusoe'--'except what results from a less felicitous choice of +situation.' Granting most unreservedly that the same hand is perceptible +in the minor novels as in 'Robinson Crusoe,' and that they bear at every +page the most unequivocal symptoms of De Foe's workmanship, I venture to +doubt the 'partiality' and the 'unfairness' of preferring to them their +more popular rival. The instinctive judgment of the world is not really +biassed by anything except the intrinsic power exerted by a book over +its sympathies; and as in the long run it has honoured 'Robinson +Crusoe,' in spite of the critics, and has comparatively neglected +'Roxana' and the companion stories, there is probably some good cause +for the distinction. The apparent injustice to books resembles what we +often see in the case of men. A. B. becomes Lord Chancellor, whilst C. +D. remains for years a briefless barrister; and yet for the life of us +we cannot tell but that C. D. is the abler man of the two. Perhaps he +was wanting in some one of the less conspicuous elements that are +essential to a successful career; he said, 'Open, wheat!' instead of +'Open, sesame!' and the barriers remained unaffected by his magic. The +secret may really be simple enough. The complete success of such a book +as 'Robinson' implies, it may be, the precise adaptation of the key to +every ward of the lock. The felicitous choice of situation to which Lamb +refers gave just the required fitness; and it is of little use to plead +that 'Roxana,' 'Colonel Jack,' and others might have done the same trick +if only they had received a little filing, or some slight change in +shape: a shoemaker might as well argue that if you had only one toe less +his shoes wouldn't pinch you. + +To leave the unsatisfactory ground of metaphor, we may find out, on +examination, that De Foe had discovered in 'Robinson Crusoe' precisely +the field in which his talents could be most effectually applied; and +that a very slight alteration in the subject-matter might change the +merit of his work to a disproportionate extent. The more special the +idiosyncrasy upon which a man's literary success is founded, the +greater, of course, the probability that a small change will disconcert +him. A man who can only perform upon the drum will have to wait for +certain combinations of other instruments before his special talent can +be turned to account. Now, the talent in which De Foe surpasses all +other writers is just one of those peculiar gifts which must wait for a +favourable chance. When a gentleman, in a fairy story, has a power of +seeing a hundred miles, or covering seven leagues at a stride, we know +that an opportunity will speedily occur for putting his faculties to +use. But the gentleman with the seven-leagued boots is useless when the +occasion offers itself for telescopic vision, and the eyes are good for +nothing without the power of locomotion. To De Foe, if we may imitate +the language of the 'Arabian Nights,' was given a tongue to which no one +could listen without believing every word that he uttered--a +qualification, by the way, which would serve its owner far more +effectually in this commonplace world than swords of sharpness or cloaks +of darkness, or other fairy paraphernalia. In other words, he had the +most marvellous power ever known of giving verisimilitude to his +fictions; or, in other words again, he had the most amazing talent on +record for telling lies. We have all read how the 'History of the +Plague,' the 'Memoirs of a Cavalier,' and even, it is said, 'Robinson +Crusoe,' have succeeded in passing themselves off for veritable +narratives. The 'Memoirs of Captain Carleton' long passed for De Foe's, +but the Captain has now gained admission to the biographical dictionary +and is credited with his own memoirs. In either case, it is as +characteristic that a genuine narrative should be attributed to De Foe, +as that De Foe's narrative should be taken as genuine. An odd testimony +to De Foe's powers as a liar (a word for which there is, unfortunately, +no equivalent that does not imply some blame) has been mentioned. Mr. +M'Queen, quoted in Captain Burton's 'Nile Basin,' names 'Captain +Singleton' as a genuine account of travels in Central Africa, and +seriously mentions De Foe's imaginary pirate as 'a claimant for the +honour of the discovery of the sources of the White Nile.' Probably, +however, this only proves that Mr. M'Queen had never read the book. + +Most of the literary artifices to which De Foe owed his power of +producing this illusion are sufficiently plain. Of all the fictions +which he succeeded in palming off for truths none is more instructive +than that admirable ghost, Mrs. Veal. Like the sonnets of some great +poets, it contains in a few lines all the essential peculiarities of his +art, and an admirable commentary has been appended to it by Sir Walter +Scott. The first device which strikes us is his ingenious plan for +manufacturing corroborative evidence. The ghost appears to Mrs. +Bargrave. The story of the apparition is told by a 'very sober and +understanding gentlewoman, who lives within a few doors of Mrs. +Bargrave;' and the character of this sober gentlewoman is supported by +the testimony of a justice of the peace at Maidstone, 'a very +intelligent person.' This elaborate chain of evidence is intended to +divert our attention from the obvious circumstance that the whole story +rests upon the authority of the anonymous person who tells us of the +sober gentlewoman, who supports Mrs. Bargrave, and is confirmed by the +intelligent justice. Simple as the artifice appears, it is one which is +constantly used in supernatural stories of the present day. One of those +improving legends tells how a ghost appeared to two officers in Canada, +and how, subsequently, one of the officers met the ghost's twin brother +in London, and straightway exclaimed, 'You are the person who appeared +to me in Canada!' Many people are diverted from the weak part of the +story by this ingenious confirmation, and, in their surprise at the +coherence of the narrative, forget that the narrative itself rests upon +entirely anonymous evidence. A chain is no stronger than its weakest +link; but if you show how admirably the last few are united together, +half the world will forget to test the security of the equally essential +links which are kept out of sight. De Foe generally repeats a similar +trick in the prefaces of his fictions. ''Tis certain,' he says, in the +'Memoirs of a Cavalier,' 'no man could have given a description of his +retreat from Marston Moor to Rochdale, and thence over the moors to the +North, in so apt and proper terms, unless he had really travelled over +the ground he describes,' which, indeed, is quite true, but by no means +proves that the journey was made by a fugitive from that particular +battle. He separates himself more ostentatiously from the supposititious +author by praising his admirable manner of relating the memoirs, and the +'wonderful variety of incidents with which they are beautified;' and, +with admirable impudence, assures us that they are written in so +soldierly a style, that it 'seems impossible any but the very person who +was present in every action here related was the relater of them.' In +the preface to 'Roxana,' he acts, with equal spirit, the character of an +impartial person, giving us the evidence on which he is himself +convinced of the truth of the story, as though he would, of all things, +refrain from pushing us unfairly for our belief. The writer, he says, +took the story from the lady's own mouth: he was, of course, obliged to +disguise names and places; but was himself 'particularly acquainted with +this lady's first husband, the brewer, and with his father, and also +with his bad circumstances, and knows that first part of the story.' +The rest we must, of course, take upon the lady's own evidence, but less +unwillingly, as the first is thus corroborated. We cannot venture to +suggest to so calm a witness that he has invented both the lady and the +writer of her history; and, in short, that when he says that A. says +that B. says something, it is, after all, merely the anonymous 'he' who +is speaking. In giving us his authority for 'Moll Flanders,' he ventures +upon the more refined art of throwing a little discredit upon the +narrator's veracity. She professes to have abandoned her evil ways, but, +as he tells us with a kind of aside, and as it were cautioning us +against over-incredulity, 'it seems' (a phrase itself suggesting the +impartial looker-on) that in her old age 'she was not so extraordinary a +penitent as she was at first; it seems only' (for, after all, you +mustn't make _too_ much of my insinuations) 'that indeed she always +spoke with abhorrence of her former life.' So we are left in a qualified +state of confidence, as if we had been talking about one of his patients +with the wary director of a reformatory. + +This last touch, which is one of De Foe's favourite expedients, is most +fully exemplified in the story of Mrs. Veal. The author affects to take +us into his confidence, to make us privy to the pros and cons in regard +to the veracity of his own characters, till we are quite disarmed. The +sober gentlewoman vouches for Mrs. Bargrave; but Mrs. Bargrave is by no +means allowed to have it all her own way. One of the ghost's +communications related to the disposal of a certain sum of 10_l._ a +year, of which Mrs. Bargrave, according to her own account, could have +known nothing, except by this supernatural intervention. Mrs. Veal's +friends, however, tried to throw doubt upon the story of her appearance, +considering that it was disreputable for a decent woman to go abroad +after her death. One of them, therefore, declared that Mrs. Bargrave was +a liar, and that she had, in fact, known of the 10_l._ beforehand. On +the other hand, the person who thus attacked Mrs. Bargrave had himself +the 'reputation of a notorious liar.' Mr. Veal, the ghost's brother, was +too much of a gentleman to make such gross imputations. He confined +himself to the more moderate assertion that Mrs. Bargrave had been +crazed by a bad husband. He maintained that the story must be a mistake, +because, just before her death, his sister had declared that she had +nothing to dispose of. This statement, however, may be reconciled with +the ghost's remarks about the 10_l._, because she obviously mentioned +such a trifle merely by way of a token of the reality of her appearance. +Mr. Veal, indeed, makes rather a better point by stating that a certain +purse of gold mentioned by the ghost was found, not in the cabinet where +she told Mrs. Bargrave that she had placed it, but in a comb-box. Yet, +again, Mr. Veal's statement is here rather suspicious, for it is known +that Mrs. Veal was very particular about her cabinet, and would not have +let her gold out of it. We are left in some doubts by this conflict of +evidence, although the obvious desire of Mr. Veal to throw discredit on +the story of his sister's appearance rather inclines us to believe in +Mrs. Bargrave's story, who could have had no conceivable motive for +inventing such a fiction. The argument is finally clenched by a decisive +coincidence. The ghost wears a silk dress. In the course of a long +conversation she incidentally mentioned to Mrs. Bargrave that this was a +scoured silk, newly made up. When Mrs. Bargrave reported this remarkable +circumstance to a certain Mrs. Wilson, 'You have certainly seen her,' +exclaimed that lady, 'for none knew but Mrs. Veal and myself that the +gown had been scoured.' To this crushing piece of evidence it seems that +neither Mr. Veal nor the notorious liar could invent any sufficient +reply. + +One can almost fancy De Foe chuckling as he concocted the refinements of +this most marvellous narrative. The whole artifice is, indeed, of a +simple kind. Lord Sunderland, according to Macaulay, once ingeniously +defended himself against a charge of treachery, by asking whether it was +possible that any man should be so base as to do that which he was, in +fact, in the constant habit of doing. De Foe asks us in substance, Is it +conceivable that any man should tell stories so elaborate, so complex, +with so many unnecessary details, with so many inclinations of evidence +this way and that, unless the stories were true? We instinctively +answer, that it is, in fact, inconceivable; and, even apart from any +such refinements as those noticed, the circumstantiality of the stories +is quite sufficient to catch an unworthy critic. It is, indeed, +perfectly easy to tell a story which shall be mistaken for a _bonā fide_ +narrative, if only we are indifferent to such considerations as making +it interesting or artistically satisfactory. + +The praise which has been lavished upon De Foe for the verisimilitude of +his novels seems to be rather extravagant. The trick would be easy +enough, if it were worth performing. The story-teller cannot be +cross-examined; and if he is content to keep to the ordinary level of +commonplace facts, there is not the least difficulty in producing +conviction. We recognise the fictitious character of an ordinary novel, +because it makes a certain attempt at artistic unity, or because the +facts are such as could obviously not be known to, or would not be told +by, a real narrator, or possibly because they are inconsistent with +other established facts. If a man chooses to avoid such obvious +confessions of unreality, he can easily be as life-like as De Foe. I do +not suppose that foreign correspondence of a newspaper is often composed +in the Strand; but it is only because I believe that the honesty of +writers in the press is far too great to allow them to commit a crime +which must be speedily detected by independent evidence. Lying is, after +all, the easiest of all things, if the liar be not too ambitious. A +little clever circumstantiality will lull any incipient suspicion; and +it must be added that De Foe, in adopting the tone of a _bonā fide_ +narrator, not unfrequently overreaches himself. He forgets his dramatic +position in his anxiety to be minute. Colonel Jack, at the end of a long +career, tells us how one of his boyish companions stole certain articles +at a fair, and gives us the list, of which this is a part: '5thly, a +silver box, with 7_s._ in small silver; 6, a pocket-handkerchief; 7, +_another_; 8, a jointed baby, and a little looking-glass.' The +affectation of extreme precision, especially in the charming item +'another,' destroys the perspective of the story. We are listening to a +contemporary, not to an old man giving us his fading recollections of a +disreputable childhood. + +The peculiar merit, then, of De Foe must be sought in something more +than the circumstantial nature of his lying, or even the ingenious +artifices by which he contrives to corroborate his own narrative. These, +indeed, show the pleasure which he took in simulating truth; and he may +very probably have attached undue importance to this talent in the +infancy of novel-writing, as in the infancy of painting it was held for +the greatest of triumphs when birds came and pecked at the grapes in a +picture. It is curious, indeed, that De Foe and Richardson, the +founders of our modern school of fiction, appear to have stumbled upon +their discovery by a kind of accident. As De Foe's novels are simply +history _minus_ the facts, so Richardson's are a series of letters +_minus_ the correspondents. The art of novel-writing, like the art of +cooking pigs in Lamb's most philosophical as well as humorous apologue, +first appeared in its most cumbrous shape. As Hoti had to burn his +cottage for every dish of pork, Richardson and De Foe had to produce +fiction at the expense of a close approach to falsehood. The division +between the art of lying and the art of fiction was not distinctly +visible to either; and both suffer to some extent from the attempt to +produce absolute illusion, where they should have been content with +portraiture. And yet the defect is balanced by the vigour naturally +connected with an unflinching realism. That this power rested, in De +Foe's case, upon something more than a bit of literary trickery, may be +inferred from his fate in another department of authorship. He twice got +into trouble for a device exactly analogous to that which he afterwards +practised in fiction. On both occasions he was punished for assuming a +character for purposes of mystification. In the latest instance, it is +seen, the pamphlet called 'What if the Pretender Comes?' was written in +such obvious irony, that the mistake of his intentions must have been +wilful. The other and better-known performance, 'The Shortest Way with +the Dissenters,' seems really to have imposed upon some of his readers. +It is difficult in these days of toleration to imagine that any one can +have taken the violent suggestions of the 'Shortest Way' as put forward +seriously. To those who might say that persecuting the Dissenters was +cruel, says De Foe, 'I answer, 'tis cruelty to kill a snake or a toad +in cold blood, but the poison of their nature makes it a charity to our +neighbours to destroy those creatures, not for any personal injury +received, but for prevention.... Serpents, toads, and vipers, &c., are +noxious to the body, and poison the sensitive life: these poison the +soul, corrupt our posterity, ensnare our children, destroy the vital of +our happiness, our future felicity, and contaminate the whole mass.' And +he concludes: 'Alas, the Church of England! What with Popery on the one +hand, and schismatics on the other, how has she been crucified between +two thieves! _Now let us crucify the thieves!_ Let her foundations be +established upon the destruction of her enemies: the doors of mercy +being always open to the returning part of the deluded people; let the +obstinate be ruled with a rod of iron!' It gives a pleasant impression +of the spirit of the times, to remember that this could be taken for a +genuine utterance of orthodoxy; that De Foe was imprisoned and +pilloried, and had to write a serious protestation that it was only a +joke, and that he meant to expose the nonjuring party by putting their +secret wishes into plain English. ''Tis hard,' he says, 'that this +should not be perceived by all the town; that not one man can see it, +either Churchman or Dissenter.' It certainly was very hard; but a +perusal of the whole pamphlet may make it a degree more intelligible. +Ironical writing of this kind is in substance a _reductio ad absurdum_. +It is a way of saying the logical result of your opinions is such or +such a monstrous error. So long as the appearance of logic is preserved, +the error cannot be stated too strongly. The attempt to soften the +absurdity so as to take in an antagonist is injurious artistically, if +it may be practically useful. An ironical intention which is quite +concealed might as well not exist. And thus the unscrupulous use of the +same weapon by Swift is now far more telling than De Foe's comparatively +guarded application of it. The artifice, however, is most skilfully +carried out for the end which De Foe had in view. The 'Shortest Way' +begins with a comparative gravity to throw us off our guard; the author +is not afraid of imitating a little of the dulness of his supposed +antagonists, and repeats with all imaginable seriousness the very taunts +which a High Church bigot would in fact have used. It was not a sound +defence of persecution to say that the Dissenters had been cruel when +they had the upper hand, and that penalties imposed upon them were +merely retaliation for injuries suffered under Cromwell and from +Scottish Presbyterians; but it was one of those topics upon which a +hot-headed persecutor would naturally dwell, though De Foe gives him +rather more forcible language than he would be likely to possess. It is +only towards the end that the ironical purpose crops out in what we +should have thought an unmistakable manner. Few writers would have +preserved their incognito so long. The caricature would have been too +palpable, and invited ridicule too ostentatiously. An impatient man soon +frets under the mask and betrays his real strangeness in the hostile +camp. + +De Foe in fact had a peculiarity at first sight less favourable to +success in fiction than in controversy. Amongst the political writers of +that age he was, on the whole, distinguished for good temper and an +absence of violence. Although a party man, he was by no means a man to +swallow the whole party platform. He walked on his own legs, and was not +afraid to be called a deserter by more thoroughgoing partisans. The +principles which he most ardently supported were those of religious +toleration and hatred to every form of arbitrary power. Now, the +intellectual groundwork upon which such a character is formed has +certain conspicuous merits, along with certain undeniable weaknesses. +Amongst the first may be reckoned a strong grasp of facts--which was +developed to an almost disproportionate degree in De Foe--and a +resolution to see things as they are without the gloss which is +contracted from strong party sentiment. He was one of those men of +vigorous common-sense who like to have everything down plainly and +distinctly in good unmistakable black and white, and indulge a voracious +appetite for facts and figures. He was, therefore, able--within the +limits of his vision--to see things from both sides, and to take his +adversaries' opinions as calmly as his own, so long, at least, as they +dealt with the class of considerations with which he was accustomed to +deal; for, indeed, there are certain regions of discussion to which we +cannot be borne on the wings of statistics, or even of common-sense. And +this, the weak side of his intellect, is equally unmistakable. The +matter-of-fact man may be compared to one who suffers from +colour-blindness. Perhaps he may have a power of penetrating, and even +microscopic vision; but he sees everything in his favourite black and +white or gray, and loses all the delights of gorgeous, though it may be +deceptive, colouring. One man sees everything in the forcible light and +shade of Rembrandt: a few heroes stand out conspicuously in a focus of +brilliancy from a background of imperfectly defined shadows, clustering +round the centre in strange but picturesque confusion. To another, every +figure is full of interest, with singular contrasts and sharply-defined +features; the whole effect is somewhat spoilt by the want of perspective +and the perpetual sparkle and glitter; yet when we fix our attention +upon any special part, it attracts us by its undeniable vivacity and +vitality. To a third, again, the individual figures become dimmer, but +he sees a slow and majestic procession of shapes imperceptibly +developing into some harmonious whole. Men profess to reach their +philosophical conclusions by some process of logic; but the imagination +is the faculty which furnishes the raw material upon which the logic is +employed, and, unconsciously to its owners, determines, for the most +part, the shape into which their theories will be moulded. Now, De Foe +was above the ordinary standard, in so far as he did not, like most of +us, see things merely as a blurred and inextricable chaos; but he was +below the great imaginative writers in the comparative coldness and dry +precision of his mental vision. To him the world was a vast picture, +from which all confusion was banished; everything was definite, clear, +and precise as in a photograph; as in a photograph, too, everything +could be accurately measured, and the result stated in figures; by the +same parallel, there was a want of perspective, for the most distant +objects were as precisely given as the nearest; and yet further, there +was the same absence of the colouring which is caused in natural objects +by light and heat, and in mental pictures by the fire of imaginative +passion. The result is a product which is to Fielding or Scott what a +portrait by a first-rate photographer is to one by Vandyke or Reynolds, +though, perhaps, the peculiar qualifications which go to make a De Foe +are almost as rare as those which form the more elevated artist. + +To illustrate this a little more in detail, one curious proof of the +want of the passionate element in De Foe's novels is the singular +calmness with which he describes his villains. He always looks at the +matter in a purely business-like point of view. It is very wrong to +steal, or break any of the commandments: partly because the chances are +that it won't pay, and partly also because the devil will doubtless get +hold of you in time. But a villain in De Foe is extremely like a +virtuous person, only that, so to speak, he has unluckily backed the +losing side. Thus, for example, Colonel Jack is a thief from his youth +up; Moll Flanders is a thief, and worse; Roxana is a highly immoral +lady, and is under some suspicion of a most detestable murder; and +Captain Singleton is a pirate of the genuine buccaneering school. Yet we +should really doubt, but for their own confessions, whether they have +villainy enough amongst them to furnish an average pickpocket. Roxana +occasionally talks about a hell within, and even has unpleasant dreams +concerning 'apparitions of devils and monsters, of falling into gulphs, +and from off high and steep precipices.' She has, moreover, excellent +reasons for her discomfort. Still, in spite of a very erroneous course +of practice, her moral tone is all that can be desired. She discourses +about the importance of keeping to the paths of virtue with the most +exemplary punctuality, though she does not find them convenient for her +own personal use. Colonel Jack is a young Arab of the streets--as it is +fashionable to call them now-a-days--sleeping in the ashes of a +glasshouse by night, and consorting with thieves by day. Still the +exemplary nature of his sentiments would go far to establish Lord +Palmerston's rather heterodox theory of the innate goodness of man. He +talks like a book from his earliest infancy. He once forgets himself so +far as to rob a couple of poor women on the highway instead of picking +rich men's pockets; but his conscience pricks him so much that he cannot +rest till he has restored the money. Captain Singleton is a still more +striking case: he is a pirate by trade, but with a strong resemblance to +the ordinary British merchant in his habits of thought. He ultimately +retires from a business in which the risks are too great for his taste, +marries, and settles down quietly on his savings. There is a certain +Quaker who joins his ship, really as a volunteer, but under a show of +compulsion, in order to avoid the possible inconveniences of a capture. +The Quaker always advises him in his difficulties in such a way as to +avoid responsibility. When they are in action with a Portuguese +man-of-war, for example, the Quaker sees a chance of boarding, and, +coming up to Singleton, says very calmly, 'Friend, what dost thou mean? +why dost thou not visit thy neighbour in the ship, the door being open +for thee?' This ingenious gentleman always preserves as much humanity as +is compatible with his peculiar position, and even prevents certain +negroes from being tortured into confession, on the unanswerable ground +that, as neither party understands a word of the other's language, the +confession will not be to much purpose. 'It is no compliment to my +moderation,' says Singleton, 'to say, I was convinced by these reasons; +and yet we had all much ado to keep our second lieutenant from murdering +some of them to make them tell.' + +Now, this humane pirate takes up pretty much the position which De Foe's +villains generally occupy in good earnest. They do very objectionable +things; but they always speak like steady, respectable Englishmen, with +an eye to the main chance. It is true that there is nothing more +difficult than to make a villain tell his own story naturally; in a way, +that is, so as to show at once the badness of the motive and the excuse +by which the actor reconciles it to his own mind. De Foe is entirely +deficient in this capacity of appreciating a character different from +his own. His actors are merely so many repetitions of himself placed +under different circumstances and committing crimes in the way of +business, as De Foe might himself have carried out a commercial +transaction. From the outside they are perfect; they are evidently +copied from the life; and Captain Singleton is himself a repetition of +the celebrated Captain Kidd, who indeed is mentioned in the novel. But +of the state of mind which leads a man to be a pirate, and of the +effects which it produces upon his morals, De Foe has either no notion, +or is, at least, totally incapable of giving us a representation. All +which goes by the name of psychological analysis in modern fiction is +totally alien to his art. He could, as we have said, show such dramatic +power as may be implied in transporting himself to a different position, +and looking at matters even from his adversary's point of view; but of +the further power of appreciating his adversary's character he shows not +the slightest trace. He looks at his actors from the outside, and gives +us with wonderful minuteness all the details of their lives; but he +never seems to remember that within the mechanism whose working he +describes there is a soul very different from that of Daniel De Foe. +Rather, he seems to see in mankind nothing but so many million Daniel De +Foes; they are in all sorts of postures, and thrown into every variety +of difficulty, but the stuff of which they are composed is identical +with that which he buttons into his own coat; there is variety of form, +but no colouring, in his pictures of life. + +We may ask again, therefore, what is the peculiar source of De Foe's +power? He has little, or no dramatic power, in the higher sense of the +word, which implies sympathy with many characters and varying tones of +mind. If he had written 'Henry IV.,' Falstaff, and Hotspur, and Prince +Hal would all have been as like each other as are generally the first +and second murderer. Nor is the mere fact that he tells a story with a +strange appearance of veracity sufficient; for a story may be truth-like +and yet deadly dull. Indeed, no candid critic can deny that this is the +case with some of De Foe's narratives; as, for example, the latter part +of 'Colonel Jack,' where the details of management of a plantation in +Virginia are sufficiently uninteresting in spite of the minute financial +details. One device, which he occasionally employs with great force, +suggests an occasional source of interest. It is generally reckoned as +one of his most skilful tricks that in telling a story he cunningly +leaves a few stray ends, which are never taken up. Such is the +well-known incident of Xury, in 'Robinson Crusoe.' This contrivance +undoubtedly gives an appearance of authenticity, by increasing the +resemblance to real narratives; it is like the trick of artificially +roughening a stone after it has been fixed into a building, to give it +the appearance of being fresh from the quarry. De Foe, however, +frequently extracts a more valuable piece of service from these loose +ends. The situation which has been most praised in De Foe's novels is +that which occurs at the end of 'Roxana.' Roxana, after a life of +wickedness, is at last married to a substantial merchant. She has saved, +from the wages of sin, the convenient sum of 2,056_l._ a year, secured +upon excellent mortgages. Her husband has 17,000_l._ in cash, after +deducting a 'black article of 8,000 pistoles,' due on account of a +certain lawsuit in Paris, and 1,320_l._ a year in rent. There is a +satisfaction about these definite sums which we seldom receive from the +vague assertions of modern novelists. Unluckily, a girl turns up at this +moment who shows great curiosity about Roxana's history. It soon becomes +evident that she is, in fact, Roxana's daughter by a former and long +since deserted husband; but she cannot be acknowledged without a +revelation of her mother's subsequently most disreputable conduct. Now, +Roxana has a devoted maid, who threatens to get rid, by fair means or +foul, of this importunate daughter. Once she fails in her design, but +confesses to her mistress that, if necessary, she will commit the +murder. Roxana professes to be terribly shocked, but yet has a desire to +be relieved at almost any price from her tormentor. The maid thereupon +disappears again; soon afterwards the daughter disappears too; and +Roxana is left in terrible doubt, tormented by the opposing anxieties +that her maid may have murdered her daughter, or that her daughter may +have escaped and revealed the mother's true character. Here is a telling +situation for a sensation novelist; and the minuteness with which the +story is worked out, whilst we are kept in suspense, supplies the place +of the ordinary rant; to say nothing of the increased effect due to +apparent veracity, in which certainly few sensation novelists can even +venture a distant competition. The end of the story differs still more +widely from modern art. Roxana has to go abroad with her husband, still +in a state of doubt. Her maid after a time joins her, but gives no +intimation as to the fate of the daughter; and the story concludes by a +simple statement that Roxana afterwards fell into well-deserved misery. +The mystery is certainly impressive; and Roxana is heartily afraid of +the devil and the gallows, to say nothing of the chance of losing her +fortune. Whether, as Lamb maintained, the conclusion in which the +mystery is cleared up is a mere forgery, or was added by De Foe to +satisfy the ill-judged curiosity of his readers, I do not profess to +decide. Certainly it rather spoils the story; but in this, as in some +other cases, one is often left in doubt as to the degree in which De Foe +was conscious of his own merits. + +Another instance on a smaller scale of the effective employment of +judicious silence, is an incident in 'Captain Singleton.' The Quaker of +our acquaintance meets with a Japanese priest who speaks a few words of +English, and explains that he has learnt it from thirteen Englishmen, +the only remnant of thirty-two who had been wrecked on the coast of +Japan. To confirm his story, he produces a bit of paper on which is +written, in plain English words: 'We came from Greenland and from the +North Pole.' Here are claimants for the discovery of a North-west +Passage, of whom we would gladly hear more. Unluckily, when Captain +Singleton comes to the place where his Quaker had met the priest, the +ship in which he was sailing had departed; and this put an end to an +inquiry, and perhaps 'may have disappointed mankind of one of the most +noble discoveries that ever was made or will again be made, in the +world, for the good of mankind in general; but so much for that.' + +In these two fragments, which illustrate a very common device of De +Foe's, we come across two elements of positive power over our +imaginations. Even De Foe's imagination recognised and delighted in a +certain margin of mystery to this harsh world of facts and figures. He +is generally too anxious to set everything before us in broad daylight; +there is too little of the thoughts and emotions which inhabit the +twilight of the mind; of those dim half-seen forms which exercise the +strongest influence upon the imagination, and are the most tempting +subjects for the poet's art. De Foe, in truth, was little enough of a +poet. Sometimes by mere force of terse idiomatic language he rises into +real poetry, as it was understood in the days when Pope and Dryden were +our lawgivers. It is often really vigorous. The well-known verses-- + + Wherever God erects a house of prayer, + The devil always builds a chapel there-- + +which begin the 'True-born Englishman,' or the really fine lines which +occur in the 'Hymn to the Pillory,' that 'hieroglyphic state machine, +contrived to punish fancy in,' and ending-- + + Tell them that placed him here, + They're scandals to the times, + Are at a loss to find his guilt, + _And can't commit his crimes_-- + +may stand for specimens of his best manner. More frequently he +degenerates into the merest doggerel, _e.g._-- + + No man was ever yet so void of sense, + As to debate the right of self-defence, + A principle so grafted in the mind, + With nature born, and does like nature bind; + Twisted with reason, and with nature too, + As neither one nor t'other can undo-- + +which is scarcely a happy specimen of the difficult art of reasoning in +verse. His verse is at best vigorous epigrammatic writing, such as would +now be converted into leading articles, twisted with more or less +violence into rhyme. And yet there is a poetical side to his mind, or at +least a susceptibility to poetical impressions of a certain order. And +as a novelist is on the border-line between poetry and prose, and novels +should be as it were prose saturated with poetry, we may expect to come +in this direction upon the secret of De Foe's power. Although De Foe for +the most part deals with good tangible subjects, which he can weigh and +measure and reduce to moidores and pistoles, the mysterious has a very +strong though peculiar attraction for him. It is indeed that vulgar kind +of mystery which implies nothing of reverential awe. He was urged by a +restless curiosity to get away from this commonplace world, and reduce +the unknown regions beyond to scale and measure. The centre of Africa, +the wilds of Siberia, and even more distinctly the world of spirits, had +wonderful charms for him. Nothing would have given him greater pleasure +than to determine the exact number of the fallen angels and the date of +their calamity. In the 'History of the Devil' he touches, with a +singular kind of humorous gravity, upon several of these questions, and +seems to apologise for his limited information. 'Several things,' he +says, 'have been suggested to set us a-calculating the number of this +frightful throng of devils who, with Satan the master-devil, was thus +cast out of heaven.' He declines the task, though he quotes with a +certain pleasure the result obtained by a grave calculator, who found +that in the first line of Satan's army there were a thousand times a +hundred thousand million devils, and more in the other two. He gives a +kind of arithmetical measure of the decline of the devil's power by +pointing out that 'he who was once equal to the angel who killed eighty +thousand men in one night, is not able now, without a new commission, to +take away the life of one Job.' He is filled with curiosity as to the +proceedings of the first parliament (p--------t as he delicately puts +it) of devils; he regrets that as he was not personally present in that +'black divan'--at least, not that he can remember, for who can account +for his pre-existent state?--he cannot say what happened; but he adds, +'If I had as much personal acquaintance with the devil as would admit +it, and could depend upon the truth of what answer he would give me, the +first question would be, what measures they (the devils) resolved on at +their first assembly?' and the second how they employed the time between +their fall and the creation of the man? Here we see the instinct of the +politician; and we may add that De Foe is thoroughly dissatisfied with +Milton's statements upon this point, though admiring his genius; and +goes so far as to write certain verses intended as a correction of, or +interpolation into, 'Paradise Lost.' + +Mr. Ruskin, in comparing Milton's Satan with Dante's, somewhere remarks +that the vagueness of Milton, as compared with the accurate measurements +given by Dante, is so far a proof of less activity of the imaginative +faculty. It is easier to leave the devil's stature uncertain than to say +that he was eighteen feet high. Without disputing the proposition as Mr. +Ruskin puts it, we fancy that he would scarcely take De Foe's poetry as +an improvement in dignity upon Milton's. We may, perhaps, guess at its +merits from this fragment of a speech in prose, addressed to Adam by +Eve: 'What ails the sot?' says the new termagant. 'What are you afraid +of?... Take it, you fool, and eat.... Take it, I say, or I will go and +cut down the tree, and you shall never eat any of it at all; and you +shall still be a fool, and be governed by your wife for ever.' This, and +much more gross buffoonery of the same kind, is apparently intended to +recommend certain sound moral aphorisms to the vulgar; but the cool +arithmetical method by which De Foe investigates the history of the +devil, his anxiety to pick up gossip about him, and the view which he +takes of him as a very acute and unscrupulous politician--though +impartially vindicating him from some of Mr. Milton's aspersions--is +exquisitely characteristic. + +If we may measure the imaginative power of great poets by the relative +merits of their conceptions of Satan, we might find a humbler gauge for +inferior capacities in the power of summoning awe-inspiring ghosts. The +difficulty of the feat is extreme. Your ghost, as Bottom would have +said, is a very fearful wild-fowl to bring upon the stage. He must be +handled delicately, or he is spoilt. Scott has a good ghost or two; but +Lord Lytton, almost the only writer who has recently dealt with the +supernatural, draws too freely upon our belief, and creates only +melodramatic spiritual beings, with a strong dash of the vulgarising +element of modern 'spiritualism.' They are scarcely more awful beings +than the terrible creations of the raw-head-and-bloody-bones school of +fiction. + +Amongst this school we fear that De Foe must, on the whole, be reckoned. +We have already made acquaintance with Mrs. Veal, who, in her ghostly +condition, talks for an hour and three-quarters with a gossip over a cup +of tea; who, indeed, so far forgets her ghostly condition as to ask for +a cup of the said tea, and only evades the consequences of her blunder +by one of those rather awkward excuses which we all sometimes practise +in society; and who, in short, is the least ethereal spirit that was +ever met with outside a table. De Foe's extraordinary love for +supernatural stories of the gossiping variety found vent in 'A History +of Apparitions,' and his 'System of Magic.' The position which he takes +up is a kind of modified rationalism. He believes that there are genuine +apparitions which personate our dead friends, and give us excellent +pieces of advice on occasion; but he refuses to believe that the spirits +can appear themselves, on account 'of the many strange inconveniences +and ill consequences which would happen if the souls of men and women, +unembodied and departed, were at liberty to visit the earth.' De Foe is +evidently as familiar with the habits of spirits generally as of the +devil. In that case, for example, the feuds of families would never die, +for the injured person would be always coming back to right himself. He +proceeds upon this principle to account for many apparitions, as, for +example, one which appeared in the likeness of a certain J. O. of the +period, and strongly recommended his widow to reduce her expenses. He +won't believe that the Virgin appeared to St. Francis, because all +stories of that kind are mere impostures of the priests; but he thinks +it very likely that he was haunted by the devil, who may have sometimes +taken the Virgin's shape. In the 'History of Witchcraft' De Foe tells us +how, as he was once riding in the country, he met a man on the way to +inquire of a certain wizard. De Foe, according to his account, which may +or may not be intended as authentic, waited the whole of the next day at +a public-house in a country town, in order to hear the result of the +inquiry; and had long conversations, reported in his usual style, with +infinite 'says he's' and 'says I's,' in which he tried to prove that the +wizard was an impostor. This lets us into the secret of many of De Foe's +apparitions. They are the ghosts that frighten villagers as they cross +commons late at night, or that rattle chains and display lights in +haunted houses. Sometimes they have vexed knavish attorneys by +discovering long-hidden deeds. Sometimes they have enticed highwaymen +into dark corners of woods, and there the wretched criminal finds in +their bags (for ghosts of this breed have good substantial luggage) +nothing but a halter and a bit of silver (value exactly 13-1/2_d._) to +pay the hangman. When he turns to the owner, he has vanished. +Occasionally, they are the legends told by some passing traveller from +distant lands--probably genuine superstitions in their origin, but +amplified by tradition into marvellous exactitude of detail, and +garnished with long gossiping conversations. Such a ghost, which, on the +whole, is my favourite, is the mysterious Owke Mouraski. This being, +whether devil or good spirit no man knows, accompanied a traveller for +four years through the steppes of Russia, and across Norway, Turkey, and +various other countries. On the march he was always seen a mile to the +left of the party, keeping parallel with them, in glorious indifference +to roads. He crossed rivers without bridges, and the sea without ships. +Everywhere, in the wild countries, he was known by name and dreaded; for +if he entered a house, some one would die there within a year. Yet he +was good to the traveller, going so far, indeed, on one occasion, as to +lend him a horse, and frequently treating him to good advice. Towards +the end of the journey Owke Mouraski informed his companion that he was +'the inhabitant of an invisible region,' and afterwards became very +familiar with him. The traveller, indeed, would never believe that his +friend was a devil, a scepticism of which De Foe doubtfully approves. +The story, however, must be true, because, as De Foe says, he saw it in +manuscript many years ago; and certainly Owke is of a superior order to +most of the pot-house ghosts. + +De Foe, doubtless, had an insatiable appetite for legends of this kind, +talked about them with infinite zest in innumerable gossips, and +probably smoked pipes and consumed ale in abundance during the process. +The ghosts are the substantial creations of the popular fancy, which no +longer nourished itself upon a genuine faith in a more lofty order of +spiritual beings. It is superstition become gross and vulgar before it +disappears for ever. Romance and poetry have pretty well departed from +these ghosts, as from the witches of the period, who are little better +than those who still linger in our country villages and fill corners of +newspapers, headed 'Superstition in the nineteenth century.' In his +novels De Foe's instinct for probability generally enables him to employ +the marvellous moderately, and, therefore, effectively; he is specially +given to dreams; they are generally verified just enough to leave us the +choice of credulity or scepticism, and are in excellent keeping with the +supposed narrator. Roxana tells us how one morning she suddenly sees her +lover's face as though it were a death's-head, and his clothes covered +with blood. In the evening the lover is murdered. One of Moll Flanders' +husbands hears her call him at a distance of many miles--a superstition, +by the way, in which Boswell, if not Johnson, fully believed. De Foe +shows his usual skill in sometimes making the visions or omens fail of a +too close fulfilment, as in the excellent dream where Robinson Crusoe +hears Friday's father tell him of the sailors' attempt to murder the +Spaniards: no part of the dream, as he says, is specifically true, +though it has a general truth; and hence we may, at our choice, suppose +it to have been supernatural, or to be merely a natural result of +Crusoe's anxiety. This region of the marvellous, however, only affects +De Foe's novels in a subordinate degree. The Owke Mouraski suggests +another field in which a lover of the mysterious could then find room +for his imagination. The world still presented a boundless wilderness +of untravelled land. Mapped and explored territory was still a bright +spot surrounded by chaotic darkness, instead of the two being in the +reverse proportions. Geographers might fill up huge tracts by writing +'here is much gold,' or putting 'elephants instead of towns.' De Foe's +gossiping acquaintance, when they were tired of ghosts, could tell of +strange adventures in wild seas, where merchantmen followed a narrow +track, exposed to the assaults of pirates; or of long journeys over +endless steppes, in the days when travelling was travelling indeed; when +distances were reckoned by months, and men might expect to meet +undiscovered tribes and monsters unimagined by natural historians. +Doubtless he had listened greedily to the stories of seafaring men and +merchants from the Gold Coast or the East. 'Captain Singleton,' to omit +'Robinson Crusoe' for the present, shows the form into which these +stories moulded themselves in his mind. Singleton, besides his other +exploits, anticipated Livingstone in crossing Africa from sea to sea. De +Foe's biographers rather unnecessarily admire the marvellous way in +which his imaginary descriptions have been confirmed by later +travellers. And it is true that Singleton found two great lakes, which +may, if we please, be identified with those of recent discoverers. His +other guesses are not surprising. As a specimen of the mode in which he +filled up the unknown space we may mention that he covers the desert +'with a kind of thick moss of a blackish dead colour,' which is not a +very impressive phenomenon. It is in the matter of wild beasts, however, +that he is strongest. Their camp is in one place surrounded by +'innumerable numbers of devilish creatures.' These creatures were as +'thick as a drove of bullocks coming to a fair,' so that they could not +fire without hitting some; in fact, a volley brought down three tigers +and two wolves, besides one creature 'of an ill-gendered kind, between a +tiger and a leopard.' Before long they met an 'ugly, venomous, deformed +kind of a snake or serpent,' which had 'a hellish, ugly, deformed look +and voice;' indeed, they would have recognised in it the being who most +haunted De Foe's imaginary world--the devil--except that they could not +think what business the devil could have where there were no people. The +fauna of this country, besides innumerable lions, tigers, leopards, and +elephants, comprised 'living creatures as big as calves, but not of that +kind,' and creatures between a buffalo and a deer, which resembled +neither; they had no horns, but legs like a cow, with a fine head and +neck, like a deer. The 'ill-gendered' beast is an admirable specimen of +De Foe's workmanship. It shows his moderation under most tempting +circumstances. No dog-headed men, no men with eyes in their breasts, or +feet that serve as umbrellas, will suit him. He must have something new, +and yet probable; and he hits upon a very serviceable animal in this +mixture between a tiger and a leopard. Surely no one could refuse to +honour such a moderate draft upon his imagination. In short, De Foe, +even in the wildest of regions, where his pencil might have full play, +sticks closely to the commonplace, and will not venture beyond the +regions of the easily conceivable. + +The final element in which De Foe's curiosity might find a congenial +food consisted of the stories floating about contemporary affairs. He +had talked with men who had fought in the Great Rebellion, or even in +the old German wars. He had himself been out with Monmouth, and taken +part in the fight at Sedgemoor. Doubtless that small experience of +actual warfare gave additional vivacity to his descriptions of battles, +and was useful to him, as Gibbon declares that his service with the +militia was of some assistance in describing armies of a very different +kind. There is a period in history which has a peculiar interest for all +of us. It is that which lies upon the border-land between the past and +present; which has gathered some romance from the lapse of time, and yet +is not so far off but that we have seen some of the actors, and can +distinctly realise the scenes in which they took part. Such to the +present generation is the era of the Revolutionary wars. 'Old men still +creep among us' who lived through that period of peril and excitement, +and yet we are far enough removed from them to fancy that there were +giants in those days. When De Foe wrote his novels the battles of the +great Civil War and the calamities of the Plague were passing through +this phase; and to them we owe two of his most interesting books, the +'Memoirs of a Cavalier' and the 'History of the Plague.' + +When such a man spins us a yarn the conditions of its being interesting +are tolerably simple. The first condition obviously is, that the plot +must be a good one, and good in the sense that a representation in +dumb-show must be sufficiently exciting, without the necessity of any +explanation of motives. The novel of sentiment or passion or character +would be altogether beyond his scope. He will accumulate any number of +facts and details; but they must be such as will speak for themselves +without the need of an interpreter. For this reason we do not imagine +that 'Roxana,' 'Moll Flanders,' 'Colonel Jack,' or 'Captain Singleton' +can fairly claim any higher interest than that which belongs to the +ordinary police report, given with infinite fulness and vivacity of +detail. In each of them there are one or two forcible situations. Roxana +pursued by her daughter, Moll Flanders in prison, and Colonel Jack as a +young boy of the streets, are powerful fragments, and well adapted for +his peculiar method. He goes on heaping up little significant facts, +till we are able to realise the situation powerfully, and we may then +supply the sentiment for ourselves. But he never seems to know his own +strength. He gives us at equal length, and with the utmost +plain-speaking, the details of a number of other positions, which are +neither interesting nor edifying. He is decent or coarse, just as he is +dull or amusing, without knowing the difference. The details about the +different connections formed by Roxana and Moll Flanders have no atom of +sentiment, and are about as wearisome as the journal of a specially +heartless lady of the same character would be at the present day. He has +been praised for never gilding objectionable objects, or making vice +attractive. To all appearance, he would have been totally unable to set +about it. He has only one mode of telling a story, and he follows the +thread of his narrative into the back-slums of London, or lodging-houses +of doubtful character, or respectable places of trade, with the same +equanimity, at a good steady jog-trot of narrative. The absence of any +passion or sentiment deprives such places of the one possible source of +interest; and we must confess that two-thirds of each of these novels +are deadly dull; the remainder, though exhibiting specimens of his +genuine power, is not far enough from the commonplace to be specially +attractive. In short, the merit of De Foe's narrative bears a direct +proportion to the intrinsic merit of a plain statement of the facts; +and, in the novels already mentioned, as there is nothing very +surprising, certainly nothing unique, about the story, his treatment +cannot raise it above a very moderate level. + +Above these stories comes De Foe's best fragment of fictitious +history.[1] The 'Memoirs of a Cavalier' is a very amusing book, though +it is less fiction than history, interspersed with a few personal +anecdotes. In it there are some exquisite little bits of genuine Defoe. +The Cavalier tells us, with such admirable frankness, that he once left +the army a day or two before a battle, in order to visit some relatives +at Bath, and excuses himself so modestly for his apparent neglect of +military duty, that we cannot refuse to believe in him. A novelist, we +say, would have certainly taken us to the battle, or would, at least, +have given his hero a more heroic excuse. The character, too, of the old +soldier, who has served under Gustavus Adolphus, who is disgusted with +the raw English levies, still more disgusted with the interference of +parsons, and who has a respect for his opponents--especially Sir Thomas +Fairfax--which is compounded partly of English love of fair play, and +partly of the indifference of a professional officer--is better +supported than most of De Foe's personages. An excellent Dugald Dalgetty +touch is his constant anxiety to impress upon the Royalist commanders +the importance of a particular trick which he has learned abroad of +mixing foot soldiers with the cavalry. We must leave him, however, to +say a few words upon the 'History of the Plague,' which seems to come +next in merit to 'Robinson Crusoe.' Here De Foe has to deal with a story +of such intrinsically tragic interest that all his details become +affecting. It needs no commentary to interpret the meaning of the +terrible anecdotes, many of which are doubtless founded on fact. There +is the strange superstitious element brought out by the horror of the +sudden visitation. The supposed writer hesitates as to leaving the +doomed city. He is decided to stay at last by opening the Bible at +random and coming upon the text, 'He shall deliver thee from the snare +of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.' He watches the comets: +the one which appeared before the Plague was 'of a dull, languid colour, +and its motion heavy, solemn, and slow;' the other, which preceded the +Great Fire, was 'bright and sparkling, and its motion swift and +furious.' Old women, he says, believed in them, especially 'the +hypochondriac part of the other sex,' who might, he thinks, be called +old women too. Still he half-believes himself, especially when the +second appears. He does not believe that the breath of the +plague-stricken upon a glass would leave shapes of 'dragons, snakes, and +devils, horrible to behold;' but he does believe that if they breathed +on a bird they would kill it, or 'at least make its eggs rotten.' +However, he admits that no experiments were tried. Then we have the +hideous, and sometimes horribly grotesque, incidents. There is the poor +naked creature, who runs up and down, exclaiming continually, 'Oh, the +great and the dreadful God!' but would say nothing else, and speak to no +one. There is the woman who suddenly opens a window and 'calls out, +"Death, death, death!" in a most inimitable tone, which struck me with +horror and chillness in the very blood.' There is the man who, with +death in his face, opens the door to a young apprentice sent to ask him +for money: 'Very well, child,' says the living ghost; 'go to Cripplegate +Church, and bid them ring the bell for me;' and with those words shuts +the door, goes upstairs, and dies. Then we have the horrors of the +dead-cart, and the unlucky piper who was carried off by mistake. De Foe, +with his usual ingenuity, corrects the inaccurate versions of the +story, and says that the piper was not blind, but only old and silly; +and that he does not believe that, as 'the story goes,' he set up his +pipes while in the cart. After this we cannot refuse to admit that he +was really carried off and all but buried. Another device for cheating +us into acceptance of his story is the ingenious way in which he +imitates the occasional lapses of memory of a genuine narrator, and +admits that he does not precisely recollect certain details; and still +better is the conscientious eagerness with which he distinguishes +between the occurrences of which he was an eye-witness and those which +he only knew by hearsay. + +This book, more than any of the others, shows a skill in selecting +telling incidents. We are sometimes in doubt whether the particular +details which occur in other stories are not put in rather by good luck +than from a due perception of their value. He thus resembles a savage, +who is as much pleased with a glass bead as with a piece of gold; but in +the 'History of the Plague' every detail goes straight to the mark. At +one point he cannot help diverging into the story of three poor men who +escape into the fields, and giving us, with his usual relish, all their +rambling conversations by the way. For the most part, however, he is +less diffusive and more pointed than usual; the greatness of the +calamity seems to have given more intensity to his style; and it leaves +all the impression of a genuine narrative, told by one who has, as it +were, just escaped from the valley of the shadow of death, with the awe +still upon him, and every terrible sight and sound fresh in his memory. +The amazing truthfulness of the style is here in its proper place; we +wish to be brought as near as may be to the facts; we want good +realistic painting more than fine sentiment. The story reminds us of +certain ghastly photographs published during the American War, which had +been taken on the field of battle. They gave a more forcible impression +of the horrors of war than the most thrilling pictures drawn from the +fancy. In such cases we only wish the narrator to stand as much as +possible on one side, and just draw up a bit of the curtain which +conceals his gallery of horrors. + +It is time, however, to say enough of 'Robinson Crusoe' to justify its +traditional superiority to De Foe's other writings. The charm, as some +critics say, is difficult to analyse; and I do not profess to +demonstrate mathematically that it must necessarily be, what it is, the +most fascinating boy's book ever written, and one which older critics +may study with delight. The most obvious advantage over the secondary +novels lies in the unique situation. Lamb, in the passage from which I +have quoted, gracefully evades this point. 'Are there no solitudes,' he +says, 'out of the cave and the desert? or cannot the heart, in the midst +of crowds, feel frightfully alone?' Singleton, he suggests, is alone +with pirates less merciful than the howling monsters, the devilish +serpents, and ill-gendered creatures of De Foe's deserts. Colonel Jack +is alone amidst the London thieves when he goes to bury his treasures in +the hollow tree. This is prettily said; but it suggests rather what +another writer might have made of De Foe's heroes, than what De Foe made +of them himself. Singleton, it is true, is alone amongst the pirates, +but he takes to them as naturally as a fish takes to the water, and, +indeed, finds them a good, honest, respectable, stupid sort of people. +They stick by him and he by them, and we are never made to feel the real +horrors of his position. Colonel Jack might, in other hands, have become +an Oliver Twist, less real perhaps than De Foe has made him, but +infinitely more pathetic. De Foe tells us of his unpleasant +sleeping-places; and his occasional fears of the gallows; but of the +supposed mental struggles, of the awful solitude of soul, we hear +nothing. How can we sympathise very deeply with a young gentleman whose +recollections run chiefly upon the exact numbers of shillings and pence +captured by himself and his pocket-picking 'pals'? Similarly Robinson +Crusoe dwells but little upon the horrors of his position, and when he +does is apt to get extremely prosy. We fancy that he could never have +been in want of a solid sermon on Sunday, however much he may have +missed the church-going bell. But in 'Robinson Crusoe,' as in the +'History of the Plague,' the story speaks for itself. To explain the +horrors of living among thieves, we must have some picture of internal +struggles, of a sense of honour opposed to temptation, and a pure mind +in danger of contamination. De Foe's extremely straightforward and +prosaic view of life prevents him from setting any such sentimental +trials before us; the lad avoids the gallows, and in time becomes the +honest master of a good plantation; and there's enough. But the horrors +of abandonment on a desert island can be appreciated by the simplest +sailor or schoolboy. The main thing is to bring out the situation +plainly and forcibly, to tell us of the difficulties of making pots and +pans, of catching goats and sowing corn, and of avoiding audacious +cannibals. This task De Foe performs with unequalled spirit and +vivacity. In his first discovery of a new art he shows the freshness so +often conspicuous in first novels. The scenery was just that which had +peculiar charms for his fancy; it was one of those half-true legends of +which he had heard strange stories from seafaring men, and possibly from +the acquaintances of his hero himself. He brings out the shrewd +vigorous character of the Englishman thrown upon his own resources with +evident enjoyment of his task. Indeed, De Foe tells us very emphatically +that in Robinson Crusoe he saw a kind of allegory of his own fate. He +had suffered from solitude of soul. Confinement in his prison is +represented in the book by confinement in an island; and even a +particular incident, here and there, such as the fright he receives one +night from something in his bed, 'was word for word a history of what +happened.' In other words, this novel too, like many of the best ever +written, has in it the autobiographical element which makes a man speak +from greater depths of feeling than in a purely imaginary story. + +It would indeed be easy to show that the story, though in one sense +marvellously like truth, is singularly wanting as a psychological study. +Friday is no real savage, but a good English servant without plush. He +says 'muchee' and 'speakee,' but he becomes at once a civilised being, +and in his first conversation puzzles Crusoe terribly by that awkward +theological question, why God did not kill the devil--for +characteristically enough Crusoe's first lesson includes a little +instruction upon the enemy of mankind. He found, however, that it was +'not so easy to imprint right notions in Friday's mind about the devil, +as it was about the being of a God.' This is comparatively a trifle; but +Crusoe himself is all but impossible. Steele, indeed, gives an account +of Selkirk, from which he infers that 'this plain man's story is a +memorable example that he is happiest who confines his wants to natural +necessities;' but the facts do not warrant this pet doctrine of an +old-fashioned school. Selkirk's state of mind may be inferred from two +or three facts. He had almost forgotten to talk; he had learnt to catch +goats by hunting them on foot; and he had acquired the exceedingly +difficult art of making fire by rubbing two sticks. In other words, his +whole mind was absorbed in providing a few physical necessities, and he +was rapidly becoming a savage--for a man who can't speak and can make +fire is very near the Australian. We may infer, what is probable from +other cases, that a man living fifteen years by himself, like Crusoe, +would either go mad or sink into the semi-savage state. De Foe really +describes a man in prison, not in solitary confinement. We should not be +so pedantic as to call for accuracy in such matters; but the difference +between the fiction and what we believe would have been the reality is +significant. De Foe, even in 'Robinson Crusoe,' gives a very inadequate +picture of the mental torments to which his hero is exposed. He is +frightened by a parrot calling him by name, and by the strangely +picturesque incident of the footmark on the sand; but, on the whole, he +takes his imprisonment with preternatural stolidity. His stay on the +island produces the same state of mind as might be due to a dull Sunday +in Scotland. For this reason, the want of power in describing emotion as +compared with the amazing power of describing facts, 'Robinson Crusoe' +is a book for boys rather than men, and, as Lamb says, for the kitchen +rather than for higher circles. It falls short of any high intellectual +interest. When we leave the striking situation and get to the second +part, with the Spaniards and Will Atkins talking natural theology to his +wife, it sinks to the level of the secondary stories. But for people who +are not too proud to take a rather low order of amusement 'Robinson +Crusoe' will always be one of the most charming of books. We have the +romantic and adventurous incidents upon which the most unflinching +realism can be set to work without danger of vulgarity. Here is +precisely the story suited to De Foe's strength and weakness. He is +forced to be artistic in spite of himself. He cannot lose the thread of +the narrative and break it into disjointed fragments, for the limits of +the island confine him as well as his hero. He cannot tire us with +details, for all the details of such a story are interesting; it is made +up of petty incidents, as much as the life of a prisoner reduced to +taming flies, or making saws out of penknives. The island does as well +as the Bastille for making trifles valuable to the sufferer and to us. +The facts tell the story of themselves, without any demand for romantic +power to press them home to us; and the efforts to give an air of +authenticity to the story, which sometimes make us smile, and sometimes +rather bore us, in other novels are all to the purpose; for there is a +real point in putting such a story in the mouth of the sufferer, and in +giving us for the time an illusory belief in his reality. It is one of +the exceptional cases in which the poetical aspect of a position is +brought out best by the most prosaic accuracy of detail; and we imagine +that Robinson Crusoe's island, with all his small household torments, +will always be more impressive than the more gorgeously coloured island +of Enoch Arden. When we add that the whole book shows the freshness of a +writer employed on his first novel--though at the mature age of +fifty-eight; seeing in it an allegory of his own experience embodied in +the scenes which most interested his imagination, we see some reasons +why 'Robinson Crusoe' should hold a distinct rank by itself amongst his +works. As De Foe was a man of very powerful but very limited +imagination--able to see certain aspects of things with extraordinary +distinctness, but little able to rise above them--even his greatest book +shows his weakness, and scarcely satisfies a grown-up man with a taste +for high art. In revenge, it ought, according to Rousseau, to be for a +time the whole library of a boy, chiefly, it seems, to teach him that +the stock of an ironmonger is better than that of a jeweller. We may +agree in the conclusion without caring about the reason; and to have +pleased all the boys in Europe for near a hundred and fifty years is, +after all, a remarkable feat. + +One remark must be added, which scarcely seems to have been sufficiently +noticed by Defoe's critics. He cannot be understood unless we remember +that he was primarily and essentially a journalist, and that even his +novels are part of his journalism. He was a pioneer in the art of +newspaper writing, and anticipated with singular acuteness many later +developments of his occupation. The nearest parallel to him is Cobbett, +who wrote still better English, though he could hardly have written a +'Robinson Crusoe.' Defoe, like Cobbett, was a sturdy middle-class +Englishman, and each was in his time the most effective advocate of the +political views of his class. De Foe represented the Whiggism, not of +the great 'junto' or aristocratic ring, but of the dissenters and +tradesmen whose prejudices the junto had to turn to account. He would +have stood by Chatham in the time of Wilkes and of the American War; he +would have demanded parliamentary reform in the time of Brougham and +Bentham, and he would have been a follower of the Manchester school in +the time of Bright and Cobden. We all know the type, and have made up +our minds as to its merits. When De Foe came to be a subject of +biography in this century, he was of course praised for his +enlightenment by men of congenial opinions. He was held up as a model +politician, not only for his creed but for his independence. The +revelations of his last biographer, Mr. Lee, showed unfortunately that +considerable deductions must be made from the independence. He was, as +we now know, in the pay of Government for many years, while boasting of +his perfect purity; he was transferred, like a mere dependent, from the +Whigs to the Tories and back again. In the reign of George I. he +consented to abandon his character in order to act as a spy upon unlucky +Jacobite colleagues. It is to the credit of Harley's acuteness that he +was the first English minister to make a systematic use of the press and +was the patron both of Swift and De Foe. But to use the press was then +to make a mere tool of the author. De Foe was a journalist, living, and +supporting a family, by his pen, in the days when a journalist had to +choose between the pillory and dependence. He soon had enough of the +pillory and preferred to do very dirty services for his employer. Other +journalists, I fear, since his day have consented to serve masters whom +in their hearts they disapproved. It may, I think, be fairly said on +behalf of De Foe that in the main he worked for causes of which he +really approved; that he never sacrificed the opinions to which he was +most deeply attached; that his morality was, at worst, above that of +many contemporary politicians; and that, in short, he had a conscience, +though he could not afford to obey it implicitly. He says himself, and I +think the statement has its pathetic side, that he made a kind of +compromise with that awkward instinct. He praised those acts only of the +Government which he really approved, though he could not afford to +denounce those from which he differed. Undoubtedly, as many respectable +moralists have told us, the man who endeavours to draw such lines will +get into difficulties and probably emerge with a character not a little +soiled in the process. But after all as things go, it is something to +find that a journalist has really a conscience, even though his +conscience be a little too open to solid arguments. He was still capable +of blushing. Let us be thankful that in these days our journalists are +too high-minded to be ever required to blush. Here, however, I have only +to speak of the effect of De Foe's position upon his fictions. He had +early begun to try other than political modes of journalism. His account +of the great storm of 1703 was one of his first attempts as a reporter; +and it is characteristic that, as he was in prison at the time, he had +already to report things seen only by the eye of faith. He tried at an +early period to give variety to his 'Review' by some of the 'social' +articles which afterwards became the staple of the 'Tatler' and +'Spectator.' When, after the death of Queen Anne, there was a political +lull he struck out new paths. It was then that he wrote lives of +highwaymen and dissenting divines, and that he patched up any narratives +which he could get hold of, and gave them the shape of authentic +historical documents. He discovered the great art of interviewing, and +one of his performances might still pass for a masterpiece. Jack +Sheppard, when already in the cart beneath the gallows, gave a paper to +a bystander, of which the life published by De Foe on the following day +professed to be a reproduction. Nothing that could be turned into copy +for the newspaper or the sixpenny pamphlet of the day came amiss to this +forerunner of journalistic enterprise. This is the true explanation of +'Robinson Crusoe' and its successors. 'Robinson Crusoe,' in fact, is +simply an application on a larger scale of the device which he was +practising every day. It is purely and simply a masterly bit of +journalism. It affects to be a true story, as, of course, every story +in a newspaper affects to be true; though De Foe had made the not very +remote discovery that it is often easier to invent the facts than to +investigate them. He is simply a reporter _minus_ the veracity. Like any +other reporter, he assumes that the interest of his story depends +obviously and entirely upon its verisimilitude. He relates the +adventures of the genuine Alexander Selkirk, only elaborated into more +detail, just as a modern reporter might give us an account of Mr. +Stanley's African expedition if Mr. Stanley had been unable to do so for +himself. He is always in the attitude of mind of the newspaper +correspondent, who has been interviewing the hero of an interesting +story and ventures at most a little safe embroidery. This explains a +remark made by Dickens, who complained that the account of Friday's +death showed an 'utter want of tenderness and sentiment,' and says +somewhere that 'Robinson Crusoe' is the only great novel which never +moves either to laughter or to tears. The creator of Oliver Twist and +Little Nell was naturally scandalised by De Foe's dry and matter-of-fact +narrative. But De Foe had never approached the conception of his art +which afterwards became familiar. He had nothing to do with sentiment or +psychology; those elements of interest came in with Richardson and +Fielding; he was simply telling a true story and leaving his readers to +feel what they pleased. It never even occurred to him, more than it +occurs to the ordinary reporter, to analyse character or describe +scenery or work up sentiment. He was simply a narrator of plain facts. +He left poetry and reflection to Mr. Pope or Mr. Addison, as your +straightforward annalist in a newspaper has no thoughts of rivalling +Lord Tennyson or Mr. Froude. His narratives were fictitious only in the +sense that the facts did not happen; but that trifling circumstance was +to make no difference to the mode of writing them. The poetical element +would have been as much out of place as it would have been in a +merchant's ledger. He could not, indeed, help introducing a little +moralising, for he was a typical English middle-class dissenter. Some of +his simple-minded commentators have even given him credit, upon the +strength of such passages, for lofty moral purpose. They fancy that his +lives of criminals, real or imaginary, were intended to be tracts +showing that vice leads to the gallows. No doubt, De Foe had the same +kind of solid homespun morality as Hogarth, for example, which was not +in its way a bad thing. But one need not be very cynical to believe that +his real object in writing such books was to produce something that +would sell, and that in the main he was neither more nor less moral than +the last newspaper writer who has told us the story of a sensational +murder. + +De Foe, therefore, may be said to have stumbled almost unconsciously +into novel-writing. He was merely aiming at true stories, which happened +not to be true. But accidentally, or rather unconsciously, he could not +help presenting us with a type of curious interest; for he necessarily +described himself and the readers whose tastes he understood and shared +so thoroughly. His statement that 'Robinson Crusoe' was a kind of +allegory was truer than he knew. In 'Robinson Crusoe' is De Foe, and +more than De Foe, for he is the typical Englishman of his time. He is +the broad-shouldered, beef-eating John Bull, who has been shouldering +his way through the world ever since. Drop him in a desert island, and +he is just as sturdy and self-composed as if he were in Cheapside. +Instead of shrieking or writing poetry, becoming a wild hunter or a +religious hermit, he calmly sets about building a house and making +pottery and laying out a farm. He does not accommodate himself to his +surroundings; they have got to accommodate themselves to him. He meets a +savage and at once annexes him, and preaches him such a sermon as he had +heard from the exemplary Dr. Doddridge. Cannibals come to make a meal of +him, and he calmly stamps them out with the means provided by +civilisation. Long years of solitude produce no sort of effect upon him +morally or mentally. He comes home as he went out, a solid keen +tradesman, having, somehow or other, plenty of money in his pockets, and +ready to undertake similar risks in the hope of making a little more. He +has taken his own atmosphere with him to the remotest quarters. Wherever +he has set down his solid foot, he has taken permanent possession of the +country. The ancient religions of the primęval East or the quaint +beliefs of savage tribes make no particular impression upon him, except +a passing spasm of disgust at anybody having different superstitions +from his own; and, being in the main a good-natured animal in a stolid +way of his own, he is able to make use even of popish priests if they +will help to found a new market for his commerce. The portrait is not +the less effective because the artist was so far from intending it that +he could not even conceive of anybody being differently constituted from +himself. It shows us all the more vividly what was the manner of man +represented by the stalwart Englishman of the day; what were the men who +were building up vast systems of commerce and manufacture; shoving their +intrusive persons into every quarter of the globe; evolving a great +empire out of a few factories in the East; winning the American +continent for the dominant English race; sweeping up Australia by the +way as a convenient settlement for convicts; stamping firmly and +decisively on all toes that got in their way; blundering enormously and +preposterously, and yet always coming out steadily planted on their +feet; eating roast beef and plum-pudding; drinking rum in the tropics; +singing 'God Save the King' and intoning Watts's hymns under the nose of +ancient dynasties and prehistoric priesthoods; managing always to get +their own way, to force a reluctant world to take note of them as a +great if rather disagreeable fact, and making it probable that, in long +ages to come, the English of 'Robinson Crusoe' will be the native +language of inhabitants of every region under the sun. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] Defoe may have had some materials for this story; but there seems to +be little doubt that it is substantially his own. + + + + +_RICHARDSON'S NOVELS_ + + +The literary artifice, so often patronised by Lord Macaulay of +describing a character by a series of paradoxes, is of course, in one +sense, a mere artifice. It is easy enough to make a dark grey black and +a light grey white, and to bring the two into unnatural proximity. But +it rests also upon the principle which is more of a platitude than a +paradox, that our chief faults often lie close to our chief merits. The +greatest man is perhaps one who is so equably developed that he has the +strongest faculties in the most perfect equilibrium, and is apt to be +somewhat uninteresting to the rest of mankind. The man of lower eminence +has some one or more faculties developed out of all proportion to the +rest, with the natural result of occasionally overbalancing him. +Extraordinary memories with weak logical faculties, wonderful +imaginative sensibility with a complete absence of self-control, and +other defective conformations of mind, supply the raw materials for a +luminary of the second order, and imply a predisposition to certain +faults, which are natural complements to the conspicuous merits. + +Such reflections naturally occur in speaking of one of our greatest +literary reputations, whose popularity is almost in an inverse ratio to +his celebrity. Every one knows the names of Sir Charles Grandison and +Clarissa Harlowe. They are amongst the established types which serve to +point a paragraph; but the volumes in which they are described remain +for the most part in undisturbed repose, sleeping peacefully amongst +Charles Lamb's _biblia a-biblia_, books which are no books, or, as he +explains, those books 'which no gentleman's library should be without.' +They never enjoy the honours of cheap reprints; the modern reader +shudders at a novel in eight volumes, and declines to dig for amusement +in so profound a mine; when some bold inquirer dips into their pages he +generally fancies that the sleep of years has been somehow absorbed into +the paper; a certain soporific aroma exhales from the endless files of +fictitious correspondence. This contrast, however, between popularity +and celebrity is not so rare as to deserve special notice. Richardson's +slumber may be deeper than that of most men of equal fame, but it is not +quite unprecedented. The string of paradoxes, which it would be easy to +apply to Richardson, would turn upon a different point. The odd thing +is, not that so many people should have forgotten him, but that he +should have been remembered by people at first sight so unlike him. Here +is a man, we might say, whose special characteristic it was to be a +milksop--who provoked Fielding to a coarse hearty burst of ridicule--who +was steeped in the incense of useless adulation from a throng of +middle-aged lady worshippers--who wrote his novels expressly to +recommend little unimpeachable moral maxims, as that evil courses lead +to unhappy deaths, that ladies ought to observe the laws of propriety, +and generally that it is an excellent thing to be thoroughly +respectable; who lived an obscure life in a petty coterie in fourth-rate +London society, and was in no respect at a point of view more exalted +than that of his companions. What greater contrast can be imagined in +its way than that between Richardson, with his second-rate +eighteenth-century priggishness and his twopenny-tract morality, and the +modern school of French novelists, who are certainly not prigs, and +whose morality is by no means that of tracts? We might have expected _ą +priori_ that they would have summarily put him down, as a hopeless +Philistine. Yet Richardson was idolised by some of their best writers; +Balzac, for example, and George Sand, speak of him with reverence; and a +writer who is, perhaps, as odd a contrast to Richardson as could well be +imagined--Alfred de Musset--calls 'Clarissa' _le premier roman du +monde_. What is the secret which enables the steady old printer, with +his singular limitation to his own career of time and space, to impose +upon the Byronic Parisian of the next century? Amongst his +contemporaries Diderot expresses an almost fanatical admiration of +Richardson for his purity and power, and declares characteristically +that he will place Richardson's works on the same shelf with those of +Moses, Homer, Euripides, and other favourite writers; he even goes so +far as to excuse Clarissa's belief in Christianity on the ground of her +youthful innocence. To continue in the paradoxical vein, we might ask +how the quiet tradesman could create the character which has stood ever +since for a type of the fine gentleman of the period; or how from the +most prosaic of centuries should spring one of the most poetical of +feminine ideals? We can hardly fancy a genuine hero with a pigtail, or a +heroine in a hoop and high-heeled shoes, nor believe that persons who +wore those articles of costume could possess any very exalted virtues. +Perhaps our grandchildren may have the same difficulty about the race +which wears crinolines and chimney-pot hats. + +It is a fact, however, that our grandfathers, in spite of their belief +in pigtails, and in Pope's poetry, and other matters that have gone out +of fashion, had some very excellent qualities, and even some genuine +sentiment, in their compositions. Indeed, now that their peculiarities +have been finally packed away in various lumber-rooms, and the revolt +against the old-fashioned school of thought and manners has become +triumphant instead of militant, we are beginning to see the picturesque +side of their character. They have gathered something of the halo that +comes with the lapse of years; and social habits that looked prosaic +enough to contemporaries, and to the generation which had to fight +against them, have gained a touch of romance. Richardson's characters +wear a costume and speak a language which are indeed queer and +old-fashioned, but are now far enough removed from the present to have a +certain piquancy; and it is becoming easier to recognise the real genius +which created them, as the active aversion to the forms in which it was +necessarily clothed tends to disappear. The wigs and the high-heeled +shoes are not without a certain pleasing quaintness; and when we have +surmounted this cause of disgust, we can see more plainly what was the +real power which men of the most opposite schools in art have +recognised. Readers whose appetite for ancient fiction is insufficient +to impel them to a perusal of 'Clarissa' may yet find some amusement in +turning over the curious collection of letters published with a life by +Mrs. Barbauld in 1804. Nowhere can we find a more vivid picture of the +social stratum to which Richardson belonged. We take a seat in the old +gentleman's shop, or drop in to take a dish of tea with him at North +End, in Hammersmith. We learn to know them almost as well as we know the +literary circle of the next generation from Boswell or the higher social +sphere from Horace Walpole--and it is a pleasant relief, after reading +the solemn histories which recall the struggles of Walpole and +Chesterfield and their like, to drop in upon this quiet little coterie +of homely commonplace people leading calm domestic lives and amusingly +unconscious of the political and intellectual storms which were raging +outside. Richardson himself was the typical industrious apprentice. He +was the son of a London tradesman who had witnessed with due horror the +Popish machinations of James II. Richardson, born just after the +Revolution, had been apprenticed to a printer, married his master's +daughter, set up a fairly successful business, was master of the +Stationers' Company in 1754, and was prosperous enough to have his +country box, first at North End and afterwards at Parson's Green. He +never learned any language but his own. He had taken to writing from his +infancy; he composed little stories of an edifying tendency and had +written love-letters for young women of his acquaintance. From his +experience in these departments he acquired the skill which was +afterwards displayed in 'Pamela' and his two later and superior novels. +We hear dimly of many domestic trials: of the loss of children, some of +whom had lived to be 'delightful prattlers,' of 'eleven affecting deaths +in two years.' Who were the eleven remains unknown. His sorrows have +long passed into oblivion, unless so far as the sentiment was transmuted +into his writings. We do not know whether it was from calamity or +constitutional infirmity that he became a very nervous and tremulous +little man. He never dared to ride, but exercised himself on a +'chamber-horse,' one of which apparently wooden animals he kept at each +of his houses. For years he could not raise a glass to his lips without +help. His dread of altercations prevented him from going often among +his workmen. He gave his orders in writing that he might not have to +bawl to a deaf foreman. He gave up 'wine and flesh and fish.' He drew a +capital portrait of himself, for the benefit of a lady still unknown to +him, who recognised him by its help at a distance of 'above three +hundred yards.' His description is minute enough: 'Short; rather plump +than emaciated, notwithstanding his complaints; about 5 foot 5 inches; +fair wig, lightish cloth coat, all black besides; one hand generally in +his bosom, the other, a cane in it, which he leans upon under the skirts +of his coat usually, that it may imperceptibly serve him as a support +when attacked by sudden tremors or startings and dizziness, which too +frequently attack him, but, thank God, not so often as formerly; looking +directly foreright, as passers by would imagine, but observing all that +stirs on either hand of him without moving his short neck; hardly ever +turning back; of a light-brown complexion; teeth not yet failing him; +smoothish-faced and ruddy cheeked; at some times looking to be about +sixty-five, at others much younger' (really sixty); 'a regular even pace +stealing away ground rather than seeming to rid it; a grey eye, too +often overclouded by mistinesses from the head; by chance lively--very +lively it will be if he have hopes of seeing a lady whom he loves and +honours; his eye always on the ladies; if they have very large hoops, he +looks down and supercilious and as if he would be thought wise, but +perhaps the sillier for that; as he approaches a lady his eye is never +fixed first upon her face, but upon her feet and thence he raises it up +pretty quickly for a dull eye; and one would think (if we thought him at +all worthy of observation) that from her air and the last beheld (her +face) he sets her down in his mind as _so_ and _so_, and then passes on +to the next object he meets; only then looking back, if he greatly +likes or dislikes, as if he would see if the lady appear to be all of a +piece in the one light or the other.' After this admirable likeness we +can appreciate better the two coloured engravings in the letters. +Richardson looks like a plump white mouse in a wig, at once vivacious +and timid. We see him in one picture toddling along the Pantiles at +Tunbridge-Wells, in the neighbourhood of the great Mr. Pitt and Speaker +Onslow and the bigamous Duchess of Kingston and Colley Cibber and the +cracked and shrivelled-up Whiston and a (perhaps not the famous) Mr. +Johnson in company with a bishop. In the other, he is sitting in his +parlour with its stiff old-fashioned furniture and a glimpse into the +garden, reading 'Sir Charles Grandison' to the admirable Miss Mulso, +afterwards Mrs. Chapone, and a small party, inclusive of the artist, +Miss Highmore, to whom we owe sincere gratitude for this peep into the +past. Richardson sits in his 'usual morning dress,' a kind of brown +dressing-gown with a skull-cap on his head, filling the chair with his +plump little body, and raising one foot (or has the artist found +difficulties in planting both upon the ground?) to point his moral with +an emphatic stamp. + +Many eminent men of his time were polite to Richardson after he had won +fame at the mature age of fifty. He was not the man to presume on his +position. He was 'very shy of obtruding himself on persons of +condition.' He never rose like Pope, whose origin was not very +dissimilar, to speak to princes and ministers as an equal. He was always +the obsequious and respectful shopkeeper. The great Warburton wrote a +letter to his 'good sir'--a phrase equivalent to the two fingers of a +dignified greeting--suggesting, in Pope's name and his own, a plan for +continuing 'Pamela.' She was to be the ingenuous young person shocked at +the conventionalities of good society. Richardson sensibly declined a +plan for which he was unfitted; and in 1747 Warburton condescended to +write a preface to 'Clarissa Harlowe,' pointing out (very +superfluously!) the nature of the intended moral. Warburton afterwards +took offence at a passage in the same book which he took to glance at +Pope; and Richardson was on friendly terms with two authors, Edwards, of +the 'Canons of Criticism,' and Aaron Hill, who were among the +multitudinous enemies of Warburton and his patron Pope. Hill's letters +in the correspondence are worth reading as illustrations of the old +moral of literary vanity. He expresses with unusual _naļveté_ the +doctrine, so pleasant to the unsuccessful, that success means the +reverse of merit. Pope's fame was due to personal assiduities, and 'a +certain bladdery swell of management.' It is already passing away. He +does not speak from jealousy, for nobody ever courted fame 'with less +solicitude than I.' But for all that, there will come a time! He knows +it on a surer ground than vanity. Let us hope that this little salve to +self-esteem never lost its efficacy. Surely of all prayers the most +injudicious was that of Burns, that we might see ourselves as others see +us. What would become of us? Richardson, as we might expect, was highly +esteemed by Young of the 'Night Thoughts,' and by Johnson, to both of +whom he seems to have given substantial proofs of friendship. He wrote +the only number of the 'Rambler' which had a good sale, and helped +Johnson when under arrest for debt; Johnson repaid him by the phrase, +which long passed for the orthodox decision, that Richardson taught the +passions to move at the command of virtue. But the most delightful of +Richardson's friends was the irrepressible Colley Cibber. Mrs. +Pilkington, a disreputable adventuress, faintly remembered by her +relations to Swift, describes Cibber's reception of the unpublished +'Clarissa.' 'The dear gentleman did almost rave. When I told him that +she (Clarissa) must die, he said G---- d---- him if she should, and that +he should no longer believe Providence or eternal wisdom or goodness +governed the world if merit and innocence and beauty were to be so +destroyed. "Nay," added he, "my mind is so hurt with the thought of her +being violated, that were I to see her in heaven, sitting on the knees +of the blessed Virgin and crowned with glory, her sufferings would still +make me feel horror, horror distilled." These were his strongly +emphatical impressions.' Cibber's own letters are as lively as Mrs. +Pilkington's report of his talk. 'The delicious meal I made off Miss +Byron on Sunday last,' he says, 'has given me an appetite for another +slice of her, off from the spit, before she is served up to the public +table; if about five o'clock to-morrow afternoon be not inconvenient, +Mrs. Brown and I will come and nibble upon a bit more of her! And we +have grace after meat as well as before.' 'The devil take the insolent +goodness of your imagination!' exclaims the lively old buck, now past +eighty, and as well preserved as if he had never encountered Pope's +'scathing satire' (does satire ever 'scathe'?) or Fielding's rough +horseplay. One of Richardson's lady admirers saw Cibber flirting with +fine ladies at Tunbridge Wells in 1754 (he was born in 1671), and +miserable when he was neglected for a moment by the greatest _belle_ in +the society. He professed to be only seventy-seven! + +Perhaps even Cibber was beaten in flattery by the 'minister of the +gospel' who thought that if some of Clarissa's letters had been found in +the Bible they would have been regarded as manifest proofs of divine +inspiration. But the more delightful incense came from the circle of +admiring young ladies who called him their dear papa; who passed long +days at his feet at Parson's Green; allowed him to escape to his +summer-house to add a letter to the growing volumes, and after an early +dinner persuaded him to read it aloud. Their eager discussions as to the +fate of the characters and the little points of morality which arose are +continued in his gossiping letters. When a child he had been the +confidant of tender-hearted maidens, and now he became a kind of +spiritual director. He was, as Miss Collier said, the 'only champion and +protector' of her sex. Women, and surely they must be good judges, +thought that he understood the feminine heart, as their descendants +afterwards attributed the same power to Balzac. The most attractive of +his feminine correspondents was Mrs. Klopstock, wife of the 'German +Milton,' who tells her only little love story with charming simplicity, +and thus lays her homage at the feet of Richardson. 'Honoured sir, will +you permit me to take this opportunity, in sending a letter to Dr. +Young, to address myself to you? It is very long that I wished to do it. +Having finished your "Clarissa" (oh, the heavenly book!), I would have +prayed you to write the history of a _manly_ Clarissa, but I had not +courage enough at that time. I should have it no more to-day, as this is +only my first English letter; but I have it! It may be because I am now +Klopstock's wife (I believe you know my husband by Mr. Hohorst), and +then I was only the single young girl. You have since written the manly +Clarissa without my prayer; oh, you have done it to the great joy and +thanks of all your happy readers! Now you can write no more, you must +write the history of an angel!' + +Mrs. Klopstock died young; having had the happiness to find that +Richardson did not resent her intrusion, great author as he was. Another +correspondent, Lady Bradshaigh, wife of a Lancashire country gentleman, +took precautions which show what a halo then surrounded the author in +the eyes of his countrywomen. It was worth while to be an author then! +Lady Bradshaigh was a good housewife, it seems, but, having no children, +was able to devote some time to reading. She obtained a portrait of +Richardson, but altered the name to Dickenson, in order that no one +might suspect her of corresponding with an author. After reading the +first four volumes of 'Clarissa' (which were separately published), she +wrote under a feigned name to beg the author to alter the impending +catastrophe. She spoke as the mouthpiece of a 'multitude of admirers' +who desired to see Lovelace reformed and married to Clarissa. 'Sure you +will think it worth your while, sir, to save his soul!' she exclaims. +Richardson was too good an artist to spoil his tragedy; and was rewarded +by an account of her emotions on reading the last volumes. She laid the +book down in agonies, took it up again, shed a flood of tears, and threw +herself upon her couch to compose her mind. Her husband, who was +plodding after her, begged her to read no more. But she had promised +Richardson to finish the book. She nerved herself for the task; her +sleep was broken, she woke in tears during the night, and burst into +tears at her meals. Charmed by her delicious sufferings, she became +Richardson's friend for life, though it was long before she could muster +up courage to meet him face to face. + +Yet Lady Bradshaigh seems to have been a sensible woman, and shows +vivacity and intelligence in some of her discussions with Richardson. If +he was not altogether spoilt by the flattery of so many excellent +women, we can only explain it by remembering that he did not become +famous till he was past fifty, and therefore past spoiling. One +peculiarity, indeed, is rather unpleasant in these letters. Richardson's +worshippers evidently felt that their deity was jealous, and made no +scruple of offering the base sacrifice of abuse of rival celebrities. +Richardson adopts their tone; he is always gibing at Fielding. '_I could +not help telling his sister_', he observes--a sister, too, whose merits +Fielding had praised with his usual generosity--'that I was equally +surprised at and concerned for his continuous lowness. Had your brother, +said I, been born in a stable or been a runner at a sponging-house we +should have thought him a genius,' but now! So another great writer came +just in time to be judged by Richardson. A bishop asked him, 'Who is +this Yorick,' who has, it seems, been countenanced by an 'ingenious +dutchess.' Richardson briefly replies that the bishop cannot have looked +into the books, 'execrable I cannot but call them.' Their only merit is +that they are 'too gross to be inflaming.' The history of the mutual +judgments upon each other of contemporary authors would be more amusing +than edifying. + +Richardson should not have been so hard upon Sterne, for Sterne was in +some degree following Richardson's lead. 'What is the meaning,' asks +Lady Bradshaigh (about 1749) 'of the word _sentimental_, so much in +vogue among the polite both in town and country? Everything clever and +agreeable is comprehended in that word; but I am convinced a wrong +interpretation is given, because it is impossible everything clever and +agreeable can be so common as that word.' She has heard of a sentimental +man; a sentimental party, and a sentimental walk; and has been applauded +for calling a letter sentimental. I hope that the philological +dictionary may tell us what was the first appearance of a word which, in +this sense, marks an epoch in literature, and, indeed, in much else. I +find the word used in the old sense in 1752 in a pamphlet upon +'_Sentimental_ differences in point of faith,' that is, differences of +sentiment or opinion. When, a few years later, Sterne published his +'Sentimental Journey,' Wesley asks in his journal what is the meaning of +the new phrase, and observes (the illustration has lost its point) that +you might as well say _continental_. The appearance of the phrase +coincides with the appearance of the thing; for Richardson was the first +sentimentalist. We may trace the same movement elsewhere, though we need +not here speculate upon the cause. Pope's 'Essay on Man' is the +expression in verse of the dominant theology of the Deists and their +opponents, which was beginning to be condemned as dry and frigid. A +desire for something more 'sentimental' shows itself in Young's 'Night +Thoughts,' in Hervey's 'Meditations,' and appears in the religious +domain as Methodism. The literary historian has to trace the rise of the +same tendency in various places. In Germany, as we see from Mrs. +Klopstock's enthusiasm, the flame was only waiting for the spark. +Goethe, in his 'Wahrheit und Dichtung,' notices the influence of +Richardson's novels in Germany. They were among the predisposing causes +of Wertherism. In France, as I have said, Richardson found congenial +hearers, and Clarissa's soul doubtless transmigrated into the heroine of +the 'Nouvelle Héloļse.' Even in stubborn England, where Fielding's +masculine contempt for the whinings of 'Pamela' was more congenial, the +students of Richardson were prepared to receive 'Ossian' with +enthusiasm, and to be ecstatic over 'Tristram Shandy.' That Richardson +would have agreed with Johnson in regarding Rousseau as fit only for a +penal settlement, and that he actually considered Sterne to be +'execrable,' does not relieve him of the responsibility or deprive him +of the glory. He is not the only writer who has helped to evoke a spirit +which he would be the last to sanction. When he encouraged his admirably +proper young ladies to indulge in 'sentimentalism,' he could not tell +where so vague an impulse would ultimately land them. He was a sound +Tory, and an accepter of all established creeds. Sentimentalism with him +was merely a delight in cultivating the emotions, without any thought of +consequences; or, later, of cultivating them with the assumption that +they would continue to move, as he bade them, 'at the command of +virtue.' Once set in motion, they chose to take paths of their own; they +revolted against conventions, even those which he held most sacred; and +by degrees set up 'Nature' as an idol, and admired the ingenuous savage +instead of the respectable Clarissa, and denounced all corruption, +including, alas, the British constitution, and even the Thirty-nine +Articles, and put themselves at the disposal of all manner of +revolutionary audacities. But the little printer was safe in his grave, +and knew not of what strange developments he had been the ignorant +accomplice. + +To return, however, it must be granted that Richardson's sympathy with +women gives a remarkable power to his works. Nothing is more rare than +to find a great novelist who can satisfactorily describe the opposite +sex. Women's heroes are women in disguise, or mere lay-figures, walking +gentlemen who parade tolerably through their parts, but have no real +vitality. On the other hand, the heroines of male writers are for the +most part unnaturally strained or quite colourless; male hands are too +heavy for the delicate work required. Milton could draw a majestic +Satan, but his Eve is no better than a good-managing housekeeper who +knows her place. It is, therefore, remarkable that Richardson's greatest +triumph should be in describing a woman, and that most of his feminine +characters are more life-like and more delicately discriminated than his +men. Unluckily, his conspicuous faults result from the same cause. His +moral prosings savour of the endless gossip over a dish of chocolate in +which his heroines delight; we can imagine the applause with which his +admiring feminine circle would receive his demonstration of the fact, +that adversity is harder to bear than prosperity, or the sentiment that +'a man of principle, whose love is founded in reason, and whose object +is mind rather than person, must make a worthy woman happy.' These are +admirable sentiments, but they savour of the serious tea-party. If 'Tom +Jones' has about it an occasional suspicion of beer and pipes at the +bar, 'Sir Charles Grandison' recalls an indefinite consumption of tea +and small-talk. In short, the feminine part of Richardson's character +has a little too much affinity to Mrs. Gamp--not that he would ever be +guilty of putting gin in his cup, but that he would have the same +capacity for spinning out indefinite twaddle of a superior kind. And, of +course, he fell into the faults which beset the members of mutual +admiration societies in general, but especially those which consist +chiefly of women. Men who meet for purposes of mutual flattery become +unnaturally solemn and priggish; they never free themselves from the +suspicion that the older members of the coterie may be laughing at them +behind their backs. But the flattery of women is so much more delicate, +and so much more sincere, that it is far more dangerous. It is a +poultice which in time softens the hardest outside. Richardson yielded +as entirely as any curate exposed to a shower of slippers. He evidently +wrote under the impression that he was not merely an imaginative writer +of the highest order, but also a great moralist. He was reforming the +world, putting down vice, sending duelling out of fashion, and +inculcating the lessons of the pulpit in a far more attractive form. A +modern novelist is half-ashamed of his art; he disclaims earnestly any +serious purpose; his highest aim is to amuse his readers, and his +greatest boast that he amuses them by honourable or at least by harmless +means. There are, indeed, novelists who write to inculcate High-Church +or Low-Church principles, or to prove that society at large is out of +joint; but a direct intention to prove that men ought not to steal or +get drunk, or commit any other atrocities, is generally considered to be +beside the novelist's function, and its introduction to be a fault of +art. Indeed, there is much to be said against it. In our youth we used +to read a poem about a cruel little boy who went out to fish and was +punished by somehow becoming suspended by his chin from a hook in the +larder. It never produced much effect upon us, because we felt that the +accident was, to say the least, rather exceptional; at most, we fished +on, and were careful about the larder. The same principle applies to the +poetic justice distributed by most novelists. When Richardson kills off +his villains by violent deaths, we know too well that many villains live +to a good old age, leave handsome fortunes, and are buried under the +handsomest of tombstones, with the most elegant of epitaphs. This very +rough device for inculcating morality is of course ineffectual, and +produces some artistic blemishes. The direct exhortations to his +readers to be good are still more annoying; no human being can long +endure a mixture of preaching and story-telling. For Heaven's sake, we +exclaim, tell us what happens to Clarissa, and don't stop to prove that +honesty is the best policy! In a wider sense, however, the seriousness +of Richardson's purpose is of high value. He is so keenly in earnest, so +profoundly interested about his characters, so determined to make us +enter into their motives, that we cannot help being carried away; if he +never spares an opportunity of giving us a lecture, at least his zeal in +setting forth an example never flags for an instant. The effort to give +us an ideally perfect character seems to stimulate his imagination, and +leads to a certain intensity of realisation which we are apt to miss in +the purposeless school of novelists. He is always, as it were, writing +at high-pressure and under a sense of responsibility. + +The method which he adopts lends itself very conveniently to heighten +this effect. Richardson's feminine delight in letter-writing was, as we +have seen, the immediate cause of his plunge into authorship. +Richardson's novels, indeed, are not so much novels put for convenience +under the form of letters, as letters expanded till they become novels. +A genuine novelist who should put his work into the unnatural shape of a +correspondence would probably find it a very awkward expedient; but +Richardson gradually worked up to the novel from the conception of a +collection of letters; and his method, therefore, came spontaneously to +him. He started from the plan of writing letters to illustrate a certain +point of morality, and to make them more effective attributed them to a +fictitious character. The result was the gigantic tract called +'Pamela'--distinctly the worst of his works--of which it is enough to +say at present that it succeeds neither in being moral nor in amusing. +It shows, however, a truly amazing fertility in a specially feminine +art. We have all suffered from the propensity of some female minds (the +causes of which we will not attempt to analyse) for pouring forth +indefinite floods of correspondence. We know the heartless fashion in +which some ladies, even in these days of penny postage, will fill a +sheet of note-paper and proceed to cross their writing till the page +becomes a chequer-work of unintelligible hieroglyphics. But we may feel +gratitude in looking back to the days when time hung heavier, and +letter-writing was a more serious business. The letters of those times +may recall the fearful and wonderful labours of tapestry in which ladies +employed their needles by way of killing time. The monuments of both +kinds are a fearful indication of the _ennui_ from which the +perpetrators must have suffered. We pity those who endured the toil as +we pity the prisoners whose patient ingenuity has carved a passage +through a stone wall with a rusty nail. Richardson's heroines, and his +heroes too, for that matter, would have been portents at any time. We +will take an example at hazard. Miss Byron, on March 22, writes a letter +of fourteen pages (in the old collective edition). The same day she +follows it up by two of six and of twelve pages respectively. On the +23rd she leads off with a letter of eighteen pages, and another of ten. +On the 24th she gives us two, filling together thirty pages, at the end +of which she remarks that she is _forced_ to lay down her pen, and then +adds a postscript of six more; on the 25th she confines herself to two +pages; but after a Sunday's rest she makes another start of equal +vigour. In three days, therefore, she covers ninety-six pages. Two of +the pages are about equal to three in this volume. Consequently, in +three days' correspondence, referring to the events of the day, she +would fill something like a hundred and forty-four of these pages--a +task the magnitude of which may be appreciated by anyone who will try +the experiment. We should say that she must have written for nearly +eight hours a day, and are not surprised at her remark, that she has on +one occasion only managed two hours' sleep. + +It would, of course, be the height of pedantry to dwell upon this, as +though a fictitious personage were to be in all respects bounded by the +narrow limits of human capacity. It is not the object of a really good +novelist, nor does it come within the legitimate means of high art in +any department, to produce an actual illusion. Showmen in some foreign +palaces call upon us to admire paintings which we cannot distinguish +from bas-reliefs; the deception is, of course, a mere trick, and the +paintings are simply childish. On the stage we do not require to believe +that the scenery is really what it imitates, and the attempt to +introduce scraps of real life is a clear proof of a low artistic aim. +Similarly a novelist is not only justified in writing so as to prove +that his work is fictitious, but he almost necessarily hampers himself, +to the prejudice of his work, if he imposes upon himself the condition +that his book shall be capable of being mistaken for a genuine +narrative. Every good novelist lets us into secrets about the private +thoughts of his characters which it would be impossible to obtain in +real life. We do not, therefore, blame Richardson because his characters +have a power of writing which no mortal could ever attain. His fault, +indeed, is exactly the contrary. He very erroneously fancies that he is +bound to convince us of the possibility of all his machinery, and often +produces the very shock to our belief which he seeks to avoid. He is +constantly trying to account by elaborate devices for the fertile +correspondence of his characters, when it is perfectly plain that they +are simply writing a novel. We should never have asked a question as to +the authenticity of the letters, if he did not force the question upon +us; and no art can induce us for a moment to accept the proffered +illusion. For example, Miss Byron gives us a long account of +conversations between persons whom she did not know, which took place +ten years before. It is much better that the impossibility should be +frankly accepted, on the clear ground that authors of novels, and +consequently their creatures, have the prerogative of omniscience. At +least, the slightest account of the way in which she came by the +knowledge would be enough to satisfy us for all purposes of fiction. +Richardson is not content with this, and elaborately demonstrates that +she might have known a number of minute details which it is perfectly +plain that a real Miss Byron could never have known, and thus dashes +into our faces an improbability which we should have been quite content +to pass unnoticed. + +The method, however, of telling the story by the correspondence of the +actors produces more important effects. The hundred and forty-four pages +in question are all devoted to the proceedings of three days. They are +filled, for the most part, with interminable conversations. The story +advances by a very few steps; but we know all that every one of the +persons concerned has to say about the matter. We discover what was Sir +Charles Grandison's relation at a particular time to a certain Italian +lady, Clementina. We are told exactly what view he took of his own +position; what view Clementina took of it; what Miss Byron had to say to +Sir Charles on the subject, and what advice her relations bestowed upon +Miss Byron. Then we have all the sentiments of Sir Charles Grandison's +sisters, and of his brothers-in-law, and of his reverend old tutor; and +the sentiments of all the Lady Clementina's family, and the incidental +remarks of a number of subordinate actors. In short, we see the +characters all round in all their relations to each other, in every +possible variation and permutation; we are present at all the +discussions which take place before every step, and watch the gradual +variation of all the phases of the positions. We get the same sort of +elaborate familiarity with every aspect of affairs that we should +receive from reading a blue-book full of some prolix diplomatic +correspondence; indeed, Sir Charles Grandison closely resembles such a +blue-book, for the plot is carried on mainly by elaborate negotiations +between three different families, with proposals, and counter-proposals, +and amended proposals, and a final settlement of the very complicated +business by a deliberate signing of two different sets of articles. One +of them, we need hardly say, is a marriage settlement; the other is a +definite treaty between the lady who is not married and her family, the +discussion of which occupies many pages. The extent to which we are +drawn into the minutest details may be inferred from the fact that +nearly a volume is given to marrying Sir Charles Grandison to Miss +Byron, after all difficulties have been surmounted. We have at full +length all the discussions by which the day is fixed, and all the +remarks of the unfortunate lovers of both parties, and all the +criticisms of both families, and finally an elaborate account of the +ceremony, with the names of the persons who went in the separate +coaches, the dresses of the bride and bridesmaids, and the sums which +Sir Charles gave away to the village girls who strewed flowers on the +pathway. Surely the feminine element in Richardson's character was a +little in excess. + +The result of all this is a sort of Dutch painting of extraordinary +minuteness. The art reminds us of the patient labour of a line-engraver, +who works for days at making out one little bit of minute stippling and +cross-hatching. The characters are displayed to us step by step and line +by line. We are gradually forced into familiarity with them by a process +resembling that by which we learn to know people in real life. We are +treated to few set analyses or summary descriptions, but by constantly +reading their letters and listening to their talk we gradually form an +opinion of the actors. We see them, too, all round; instead of, as is +usual in modern novels, regarding them steadily from one point of view; +we know what each person thinks of everyone else, and what everyone else +thinks of him; they are brought into a stereoscopic distinctness by +combining the different aspects of their character. Of course, a method +of this kind involves much labour on the part both of writer and reader. +It is evident that Richardson did not think of amusing a stray half-hour +in a railway-carriage or in a club smoking-room; he counted upon readers +who would apply themselves seriously to a task, in the hope of improving +their morals as much as of gaining some harmless amusement. This theory +is explicitly set forth in Warburton's preface to 'Clarissa.' But it +must also be said that, considering the cumbrous nature of the process, +the spirit with which it is applied is wonderful. Richardson's own +interest in his actors never flags. The distinct style of every +correspondent is faithfully preserved with singular vivacity. When we +have read a few letters we are never at a loss to tell, from the style +alone of any short passage, who is the imaginary author. Consequently, +readers who can bear to have their amusement diluted, who are content +with an imperceptibly slow development of plot, and can watch without +impatience the approach of a foreseen incident through a couple of +volumes, may find the prolixity less intolerable than might be expected. +If they will be content to skip when they are bored, even less patient +students may be entertained with a series of pictures of character and +manners skilfully contrasted and brilliantly coloured, though with a +limited allowance of incident. Within his own sphere, no writer exceeds +him in clearness and delicacy of conception. + +In another way, the machinery of a fictitious correspondence is rather +troublesome. As the author never appears in his own person, he is often +obliged to trust his characters with trumpeting their own virtues. Sir +Charles Grandison has to tell us himself of his own virtuous deeds; how +he disarms ruffians who attack him in overwhelming numbers, and converts +evil-doers by impressive advice; and, still more awkwardly, he has to +repeat the amazing compliments which everybody is always paying him. +Richardson does his best to evade the necessity; he couples all his +virtuous heroes with friendly confidants, who relieve the virtuous +heroes of the tiresome task of self-adulation; he supplies the heroes +themselves with elaborate reasons for overcoming their modesty, and +makes them apologise profusely for the unwelcome task. Still, ingenious +as his expedients may be, and willing as we are to make allowance for +the necessities of his task, we cannot quite free ourselves from an +unpleasant suspicion as to the simplicity of his characters. 'Clarissa' +is comparatively free from this fault, though Clarissa takes a +questionable pleasure in uttering the finest sentiments and posing +herself as a model of virtue. But in 'Sir Charles Grandison' the +fulsome interchange of flattery becomes offensive even in fiction. The +virtuous characters give and receive an amount of eulogy enough to turn +the strongest stomachs. How amiable is A! says B; how virtuous is C, and +how marvellously witty is D! And then A, C, and D go through the same +performance, adding a proper compliment to B in place of the exclamation +appropriate to themselves. The only parallel in modern times is to be +found at some of the public dinners, where every man proposes his +neighbour's health with a tacit understanding that he is himself to +furnish the text for a similar oration. But then at dinners people have +the excuse of a state of modified sobriety. + +This fault is, as we have said, aggravated by the epistolary method. +That method makes it necessary that each person should display his or +her own virtues, as in an exhibition of gymnastics the performers walk +round and show their muscles. But the fault lies a good deal deeper. +Every writer, consciously or unconsciously, puts himself into his +novels, and exhibits his own character even more distinctly than that of +his heroes. And Richardson, the head of a little circle of conscientious +admirers of each other's virtues, could not but reproduce on a different +scale the tone of his own society. The Grandisons, and the families of +Miss Byron and Clementina, merely repeat a practice with which he was +tolerably familiar at home; whilst his characters represent to some +extent the idealised Richardson himself;--and this leads us to the most +essential characteristic of his novels. The greatest woman in France, +according to Napoleon's brutal remark, was the woman who had the most +children. In a different sense, the saying may pass for truth. The +greatest writer is the one who has produced the largest family of +immortal children. Those of whom it can be said that they have really +added a new type to the fictitious world are indeed few in number. +Cervantes is in the front rank of all imaginative creators, because he +has given birth to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Richardson's literary +representatives are far indeed below these; but Richardson too may boast +that, in his narrower sphere of thought, he has invented two characters +that have still a strong vitality. They show all the weaknesses +inseparable from the age and country of their origin. They are far +inferior to the highest ideals of the great poets of the world; they are +cramped and deformed by the conventionalities of their century and the +narrow society in which they move and live. But for all that they stir +the emotions of a distant generation with power enough to show that +their author must have pierced below the surface into the deeper and +more perennial springs of human passion. These two characters are, of +course, Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison; and I may endeavour shortly +to analyse the sources of their enduring interest. + +Sir Charles Grandison has passed into a proverb. When Carlyle calls +Lafayette a Grandison-Cromwell, he hits off one of those admirable +nicknames which paint a character for us at once. Sir Charles Grandison +is the model fine gentleman of the eighteenth century--the master of +correct deportment, the unimpeachable representative of the old school. +Richardson tells us with a certain _naļveté_ that he has been accused of +describing an impossible character; that Sir Charles is a man absolutely +without a fault, or at least with faults visible only on a most +microscopic observation. In fact, the only fault to which Sir Charles +himself pleads guilty, in seven volumes, is that he once rather loses +his temper. Two ruffians try to bully him in his own house, and even +draw their swords upon him. Sir Charles so far forgets himself as to +draw his own sword, disarm both of his opponents and turn them out of +doors. He cannot forgive himself, he says, that he has been 'provoked by +two such men to violate the sanctity of his own house.' His only excuse +is, 'that there were two of them; and that tho' I drew, yet I had the +command of myself so far as only to defend myself, when I might have +done with them what I pleased.' According to Richardson, this venial +offence is the worst blot on Sir Charles's character. We certainly do +not blame him for the attempt to draw an ideally perfect hero. It is a +perfectly legitimate aim in fiction, and the only question can be +whether he has succeeded: for Richardson's own commendation cannot be +taken as quite sufficient, neither can we quite accept the ingenious +artifice by which all the secondary characters perform as decoy-birds to +attract our admiration. They do their very best to induce us to join in +their hymns of praise. 'Grandison,' says a Roman Catholic bishop, 'were +he one of us, might expect canonisation.' 'How,' exclaims his uncle, +after a conversation with his paragon of a nephew, 'how shall I bear my +own littleness?' A party of reprobates about town have a long dispute +with him, endeavouring to force him into a duel. At the end of it one of +them exclaims admiringly, 'Curse me, if I believe there is such another +man in the world!' 'I never saw a hero till now,' says another. 'I had +rather have Sir C. Grandison for my friend than the greatest prince on +earth,' says a third. 'I had rather,' replies his friend, 'be Sir C. +Grandison for this one past hour than the Great Mogul all my life.' And +the general conclusion is, 'What poor toads are we!' 'This man shows +us,' as a lady declares, 'that goodness and greatness are synonymous +words;' and when his sister marries, she complains that her brother 'has +long made all other men indifferent to her. Such an infinite +difference!' In the evening, according to custom, she dances a minuet +with her bridegroom, but whispers a friend that she would have performed +better had she danced with her brother. + +The structure, however, of the story itself is the best illustration of +Sir Charles's admirable qualities. The plot is very simple. He rescues +Miss Byron from an attempt at a forcible abduction. Miss Byron, +according to her friends, is the queen of her sex, and is amongst women +what Sir Charles is amongst men. Of course, they straightway fall in +love. Sir Charles, however, shows symptoms of a singular reserve, which +is at last explained by the fact that he is already half-engaged to a +noble Italian lady, Clementina. He has promised, in fact, to marry her +if certain objections on the score of his country and religion can be +surmounted. The interest lies chiefly in the varying inclinations of the +balance, at one moment favourable to Miss Byron, and at another to the +'saint and angel' Clementina. When Miss Byron thinks that Sir Charles +will be bound in honour to marry Clementina, she begins to pine; 'she +visibly falls away; and her fine complexion fades;' her friends 'watch +in silent love every turn of her mild and patient eye, every change of +her charming countenance; for they know too well to what to impute the +malady which has approached the best of hearts; they know that the cure +cannot be within the art of the physician.' When Clementina fears that +the scruples of her relatives will separate her from Sir Charles, she +takes the still more decided step of going mad; and some of her madness +would be very touching, if it were not a trifle too much after the +conventional pattern of the mad women in Sheridan's 'Critic.' Whilst +these two ladies are breaking their hearts about Sir Charles they do +justice to each other's merits. Harriet will never be happy unless she +knows that the admirable Clementina has reconciled herself to the loss +of her adored; when Clementina finds herself finally separated from her +lover, she sincerely implores Sir Charles to marry her more fortunate +rival. Never was there such a display of fine feeling and utter absence +of jealousy. Meanwhile a lovely ward of Sir Charles finds it necessary +to her peace of mind to be separated from her guardian; and another +beautiful, but rather less admirable, Italian actually follows him to +England to persuade him to accept her hand. Four ladies--all of them +patterns of physical, moral, and intellectual excellence--are breaking +their hearts; and though they are so excellent that they overcome their +natural jealousy, they can scarcely look upon any other man after having +known this model of all his sex. Indeed, every woman who approaches him +falls desperately in love with him, unless she is his sister or old +enough to be his grandmother. The plot of the novel depends upon an +attraction for the fair sex which is apparently irresistible; and the +men, if they are virtuous, rejoice to sit admiringly at his feet, and if +they are vicious retire abashed from his presence, to entreat his good +advice when they are upon their deathbeds. + +All this is easy enough. A novelist can make his women fall in love with +his hero as easily as, with a stroke of the pen, he can endow him with +fifty thousand a year, or bestow upon him every virtue under heaven. +Neither has he any difficulty in making him the finest dancer in +England, or giving him such marvellous skill with the small-sword that +he can avoid the sin of duelling by instantaneously disarming his most +formidable opponents. The real question is, whether he can animate this +conglomerate of all conceivable virtues with a real human soul, set him +before us as a living and breathing reality, and make us feel that, if +we had known him, we too should have been ready to swell the full chorus +of admiration. It is rather more difficult to convey the impression +which a perusal of his correspondence and conversation leaves upon an +unprejudiced mind. Does Sir Charles, when we come to know him +intimately--for, with the ample materials provided, we really seem to +know him--fairly support the amazing burden thrown upon him? Do we feel +a certain disappointment when we meet the man whom all ladies love, and +in whom every gentleman confesses a superior nature. + +Two anecdotes about Sir Charles may suggest the answer. Voltaire, we +know, ridiculed the proud English, who with the same scissors cut off +the heads of their kings and the tails of their horses. To this last +weakness Sir Charles was superior. His horses, says Miss Byron, 'are not +docked; their tails are only tied up when they are on the road.' She +would wish to find some fault with him, but as she forcibly says, 'if he +be of opinion that the tails of these noble animals are not only a +natural ornament, but of real use to defend them from the vexatious +insects that in summer are so apt to annoy them, how far from a +dispraise is this humane consideration!' The other anecdote is of a +different kind. When Sir Charles goes to church he does not, like some +other gentlemen, bow low to the ladies of his acquaintance, and then to +others of the gentry. No! 'Sir Charles had first other devoirs to pay. +He paid us his second compliments.' From these two exemplary actions we +must infer his whole character. It should have been inscribed on his +tombstone, 'He would not dock his horses' tails.' That is the most +trifling details of his conduct are regulated on the most serious +considerations. He is one of those solemn beings who can't shave +themselves without implicitly asserting a great moral principle. He +finds sermons in his horses' tails; he could give an excellent reason +for the quantity of lace on his coat, which was due, it seems, to a +sentiment of filial reverence; and he could not fix his hour for dinner +without an eye to the reformation of society. In short, he was a prig of +the first water; self-conscious to the last degree; and so crammed with +little moral aphorisms that they drop out of his mouth whenever he opens +his lips. And then his religion is in admirable keeping. It is +intimately connected with the excellence of his deportment; and is, in +fact, merely the application of the laws of good society to the loftiest +sphere of human duty. He pays his second compliments to his lady, and +his first to the object of his adoration. He very properly gives the +precedence to the being he professes to adore. As he carries his +solemnity into the pettiest trifles of life, so he considers religious +duties to be simply the most important part of social etiquette. He +would shrink from blasphemy even more than from keeping on his hat in +the presence of ladies; but the respect which he owes in one case is of +the same order with that due in the other: it is only a degree more +important. + +We feel, indeed, a certain affection for Sir Charles Grandison. He is +pompous and ceremonious to an insufferable degree; but there is really +some truth in his sister's assertion, that his is the most delicate of +human minds; through the cumbrous formalities of his century there +shines a certain quickness and sensibility; he even condescends to be +lively after a stately fashion, and to indulge in a little 'raillying,' +only guarding himself rather too carefully against unbecoming levity. +Indeed, though a man of the world at the present day would be as much +astonished at his elaborate manners as at his laced coat and sword, he +would admit that Sir Charles was by no means wanting in tact; his talk +is weighted with more elaborate formulę than we care to employ, but it +is good vigorous conversation in the main, and, if rather overlaid with +sermonising, can at times be really amusing. His religion is not of a +very exalted character; he rises to no sublime heights of emotion, and +would simply be puzzled by the fervours or the doubts of a more modern +generation. In short, it seems to be compounded of common-sense and a +regard for decorum--and those are not bad things in their way, though +not the highest. He is not a very ardent reformer; he doubts whether the +poor should be taught to read, and is very clear that everyone should be +made to know his station; but still he talks with sense and moderation, +and even gets so far as to suggest the necessity of reformatories. He is +not very romantic, and displays an amount of self-command in judicially +settling the claims of the various ladies who are anxious to marry him, +which is almost comic; he is perfectly ready to marry the Italian lady, +if she can surmount her religious scruples, though he is in love with +Miss Byron; and his mind is evidently in a pleasing state of +equilibrium, so that he will be happy with either dear charmer. Indeed, +for so chivalric a gentleman, his view of love and marriage is far less +enthusiastic than we should now require. One of his benevolent actions, +which throws all his admirers into fits of eulogy, is to provide one of +his uncles with a wife. The gentleman is a peer, but has hitherto been +of disreputable life. The lady, though of good family and education, is +above thirty, and her family have lost their estate. The match of +convenience which Sir Charles patches up between them has obvious +prudential recommendations; and of course it turns out admirably. But +one is rather puzzled to know what special merits Sir Charles can claim +for bringing it to pass. + +Such a hero as this may be worthy and respectable, but is not a very +exalted ideal. Neither do his circumstances increase our interest. It +would be rather a curious subject of inquiry why it should be so +impossible to make a virtuous hero interesting in fiction. In real life, +the men who do heroic actions are certainly more attractive than the +villains. Domestic affection, patriotism, piety, and other good +qualities are pleasant to contemplate in the world; why should they be +so often an unspeakable bore in novels? Principally, no doubt, because +our conception of a perfect man is apt to bring the negative qualities +into too great prominence; we are asked to admire men because they have +not passions--not because they overcome them. But there are further +difficulties; for example, in a novel it is generally so easy to see +what is wrong and what is right--the right-hand path branches off so +decidedly from the left, that we give a man little credit for making the +proper choice. Still more is it difficult to let us sufficiently into a +man's interior to let us see the struggle and the self-sacrifice which +ought to stir our sympathies. We witness the victories, but it is hard +to make us feel the cost at which they are won. Now, Richardson has, as +we shall directly remark, overcome this difficulty to a great extent in +Clarissa; but in Sir Charles Grandison he has entirely shirked it; he +has made everything too plain and easy for his hero. 'I think I could be +a good woman,' says Becky Sharp, 'if I had five thousand a year,'--and +the history of Sir Charles Grandison might have suggested the remark. To +be young, handsome, healthy, active, with a fine estate and a grand old +house; to be able, by your eloquence, to send a sinner into a fit (as +Sir Charles did once); to be the object of a devoted passion from three +or four amiable, accomplished, and beautiful women--each of whom has a +fine fortune, and only begs you to throw your handkerchief towards her, +whilst she promises to bear no grudge if you throw it to her +neighbour--all these are favourable conditions for virtue--especially if +you mean the virtues of being hospitable, generous, a good landlord and +husband, and in every walk of life thoroughly gentlemanlike in your +behaviour. But the whole design is rather too much in accordance with +the device in enabling Sir Charles to avoid duels by having a marvellous +trick of disarming his adversaries. 'What on earth is the use of my +fighting with you,' says King Padella to Prince Giglio, 'if you have got +a fairy sword and a fairy horse?' And what merit is there in winning the +battle of life, when you have every single circumstance in your favour? +We are more attracted by Fielding's rather questionable hero, Captain +Booth, though he does get into a sponging-house, and is anything but a +strict moralist, than by this prosperous young Sir Charles, rich with +every gift the gods can give him, and of whom the most we can say is +that the possession of all those gifts, if it has made him rather +pompous and self-conscious, has not made him close-fisted or +hard-hearted. Sir Charles, then, represents a rather carnal ideal; he +suggest to us those well-fed, almost beefy and corpulent angels, whom +the contemporary school of painters sometimes portray. No doubt they are +angels, for they have wings and are seated in the clouds; but there is +nothing ethereal in their whole nature. We have no love for asceticism; +but a few hours on the column of St. Simon Stylites, or a temporary diet +of locusts and wild honey, might have purified Sir Charles's exuberant +self-satisfaction. For all this, he is not without a certain solid +merit, and the persons by whom he is surrounded--on whom we have not +space to dwell--have a large share of the vivacity which amuses us in +the real men and women of their time. Their talk may not be equal to +that in Boswell's 'Johnson;' but it is animated and amusing, and they +compose a gallery of portraits which would look well in a solid +red-brick mansion of the Georgian era. + +We must, however, leave Sir Charles, to say a few words upon that which +is Richardson's real masterpiece, and which, in spite of a full share of +the defects apparent in 'Grandison,' will always command the admiration +of persons who have courage enough to get through eight volumes of +correspondence. The characters of the little world in which the reader +will pass his time are in some cases the same who reappear in +'Grandison.' The lively Lady G. in the last is merely a new version of +Miss Howe in the former. Clarissa herself is Miss Byron under altered +circumstances, and receives from her friends the same shower of +superlatives, whenever they have occasion to touch upon her merits. +Richardson's ideal lady is not at first sight more prepossessing than +his gentleman. After Clarissa's death, her friend Miss Howe writes a +glowing panegyric on her character. It will be enough to give the +distribution of her time. To rest it seems she allotted six hours only. +Her first three morning hours were devoted to study and to writing those +terribly voluminous letters which, as one would have thought, must have +consumed a still longer period. Two hours more were given to domestic +management; for, as Miss Howe explains, 'she was a perfect mistress of +the four principal rules of arithmetic.' Five hours were spent in music, +drawing, and needlework, this last especially, and in conversation with +the venerable parson of the parish. Two hours she devoted to breakfast +and dinner; and as it was hard to restrict herself to this allowance, +she occasionally gave one hour more to dinner-time conversation. One +hour more was spent in visiting the neighbouring poor, and the remaining +four hours to supper and conversation. These periods, it seems, were not +fixed for every day; for she kept a kind of running account, and +permitted herself to have an occasional holiday by drawing upon the +reserved fund of the four hours for supper. + +Setting aside the fearfully systematic nature of this arrangement--the +stern determination to live by rule and system--it must be admitted that +Miss Harlowe was what in outworn phrase was called a very 'superior' +person. She would have made an excellent housekeeper, or even a +respectable governess. We feel a certain gratitude to her for devoting +four hours to supper; and, indeed, Richardson's characters are always +well cared for in the victualling department. They always take their +solid three meals, with a liberal intercalation of dishes of tea and +chocolate. Miss Harlowe, we must add, knew Latin, although her +quotations of classical authors are generally taken from translations. +Her successor, Miss Byron, was not allowed this accomplishment, +Richardson's doubts of its suitability to ladies having apparently +gathered strength in the interval. Notwithstanding this one audacious +excursion into the regions of manly knowledge, Miss Harlowe appears to +us as, in the main, a healthy, sensible country girl, with sound sense, +the highest respect for decorum, and an exaggerated regard for +constituted, especially paternal, authority. We cannot expect, from her, +any of the outbreaks against the laws of society customary with George +Sand's heroines. If she had changed places with Maggie Tulliver, she +would have accepted the society of the 'Mill on the Floss' with perfect +contentment, respected all the family of aunts and uncles, and never +repined against the tyranny of her brother Tom. She would have been +conscious of no vague imaginative yearnings, nor have beaten herself +against the narrow bars of stolid custom. She would have laid up a vast +store of linen, and walked thankfully in the path chalked out for her. +Certainly she would never have run away with Mr. Stephen Guest without +tyranny of a much more tangible kind than that which acts only through +the finer spiritual tissues. When Clarissa went off with Lovelace, it +was not because she had unsatisfied aspirations after a higher order of +life, but because she had been locked up in her room, as a solitary +prisoner, and her family had tried to force her into marriage with a man +whom she had excellent reasons for hating and despising. The worst point +about Clarissa is one which was keenly noticed by Johnson. There is +always something, he said, which she prefers to truth. She is a little +too anxious to keep up appearances, and we desire to see more of the +natural woman. + +Yet the long tragedy in which Clarissa is the victim is not the less +affecting because the torments are of an intelligible kind, and require +no highly-strung sensibility to give them keenness. The heroine is first +bullied and then deserted by her family, cut off from the friends who +have a desire to help her, and handed over to the power of an +unscrupulous libertine. When she dies of a broken heart, the most +callous and prosaic of readers must feel that it is the only release +possible for her. And in the gradual development of his plot, the slow +accumulation of horrors upon the head of a virtuous victim, Richardson +shows the power which places him in the front rank of novelists, and +finds precisely the field in which his method is most effective and its +drawbacks least annoying. In the first place, in spite of his enormous +prolixity, the interest is throughout concentrated upon one figure. In +'Sir Charles Grandison' there are episodes meant to illustrate the +virtues of the 'next-to-divine man' which have nothing to do with the +main narrative. In 'Clarissa' every subordinate plot--and they +abound--bears immediately upon the central action of the story, and +produces a constant alternation of hope and foreboding. The last +volumes, indeed, are dragged out in a way which is injurious in several +respects. Clarissa, to use Charles II.'s expression about himself, takes +an unconscionable time about dying. But until the climax is reached, we +see the clouds steadily gathering, and yet with an increasing hope that +they may be suddenly cleared up. The only English novel which produces a +similar effect, and impresses us with the sense of an inexorable fate, +slowly but steadily approaching, is the 'Bride of Lammermoor'--in some +respects the best and most artistic of Scott's novels. Superior as is +Scott's art in certain directions, we scarcely feel the same interest in +his chief characters, though there is the same unity of construction. We +cannot feel for the Master of Ravenswood the sympathy which Clarissa +extorts. For in Clarissa's profound distress we lose sight of the +narrow round of respectabilities in which her earlier life is passed; +the petty pompousness, the intense propriety which annoy us in 'Sir +Charles Grandison' disappear or become pathetic. When people are dying +of broken hearts we forget their little absurdities of costume. A more +powerful note is sounded, and the little superficial absurdities are +forgotten. We laugh at the first feminine description of her dress--a +Brussels-lace cap, with sky-blue ribbon, pale crimson-coloured paduasoy, +with cuffs embroidered in a running pattern of violets and their leaves; +but we are more disposed to cry (if many novels have not exhausted all +our powers of weeping) when we come to the final scene. 'One faded cheek +rested upon the good woman's bosom, the kindly warmth of which had +overspread it with a faint but charming flush; the other paler and +hollow, as if already iced over by death. Her hands, white as the lily, +with her meandering veins more transparently blue than ever I had seen +even hers, hanging lifelessly, one before her, the other grasped by the +right hand of the kindly widow, whose tears bedewed the sweet face which +her motherly bosom supported, though unfelt by the fair sleeper; and +either insensibly to the good woman, or what she would not disturb her +to wipe off or to change her posture. Her aspect was sweetly calm and +serene; and though she started now and then, yet her sleep seemed easy; +her breath indeed short and quick, but tolerably free, and not like that +of a dying person.' Allowing for the queer grammar, this is surely a +touching and simple picture. The epistolary method, though it has its +dangers, lends itself well to heighten our interest. Where the object is +rather to appeal to our sympathies than to give elaborate analyses of +character, or complicated narratives of incident, it is as well to let +the persons speak for themselves. A hero cannot conveniently say, like +Sir Charles Grandison, 'See how virtuous and brave and modest I am;' nor +is it easy to make a story clear when it has to be broken up and +distributed amongst people speaking from different points of view; it is +hard to make the testimonies of the different witnesses fit into each +other neatly. But a cry of agony can come from no other quarter so +effectively as from the sufferer's own mouth. 'Clarissa Harlowe' is in +fact one long lamentation, passing gradually from a tone of indignant +complaint to one of despair, and rising at the end to Christian +resignation. So prolonged a performance in every key of human misery is +indeed painful from its monotony; and we may admit that a limited +selection from the correspondence, passing through more rapid +gradations, would be more effective. We might be spared some of the +elaborate speculations upon various phases of the affair which pass away +without any permanent effect. Richardson seems to be scarcely content +even with drawing his characters as large as life; he wishes to apply a +magnifying-glass. Yet, even in this incessant repetition there is a +certain element of power. We are forced to drain every drop in the cup, +and to appreciate every ingredient which adds bitterness to its flavour. +We are annoyed and wearied at times; but as we read we not only wonder +at the number of variations performed upon one tune, but feel that he +has succeeded in thoroughly forcing upon our minds, by incessant +hammering, the impression which he desires to produce. If the blows are +not all very powerful, each blow tells. There is something impressive in +the intensity of purpose which keeps one end in view through so +elaborate a process, and the skill which forms such a multitudinous +variety of parts into one artistic whole. The proportions of this +gigantic growth are preserved with a skill which would be singular even +in the normal scale; a respect in which most giants, whether human or +literary, are apt to break down. + +To make the story complete, the plot should have been as effectively +conceived as Clarissa herself, and the other characters should be +equally worthy of their position. Here there are certain drawbacks. The +plot, it might easily be shown, is utterly incredible. Richardson has +the greatest difficulty in preventing his heroine from escaping, and at +times we must not look too closely for fear of detecting the flimsy +nature of her imaginary chains. There is, indeed, no reason for looking +closely; so long as the situations bring out the desired sentiment, we +may accept them for the nonce, without asking whether they could +possibly have occurred. It is of more importance to judge of the +consistency of the chief agent in the persecution. Lovelace is by far +the most ambitious character that Richardson has attempted. To heap +together a mass of virtues, and christen the result Clarissa Harlowe or +Charles Grandison, is comparatively easy; but it is a harder task to +compose a villain, who shall be by nature a devil, and yet capable of +imposing upon an angel. Some of Richardson's judicious critics declared +that he must have been himself a man of vicious life or he could never +have described a libertine so vividly. This is one of the smart sayings +which are obviously the proper thing to say, but which, notwithstanding, +are little better than silly. Lovelace is evidently a fancy +character--if we may use the expression. He bears not a single mark of +being painted from life, and is formed by the simple process of putting +together the most brilliant qualities which his creator could devise to +meet the occasion. We do not say that the result is psychologically +impossible; for it would be very rash to dogmatise on any such question. +No one can say what strange amalgams of virtue and vice may have +sufficient stability to hold together during a journey through this +world. But it is plain that Lovelace is not a result of observation, but +an almost fantastic mixture of qualities intended to fit him for the +difficult part he has to play. To exalt Clarissa, for example, +Lovelace's family are represented as all along earnestly desirous of a +marriage between them; and Lovelace has every conceivable motive, +including the desire to avoid hanging, for agreeing to the match. His +refusal is unintelligible, and Richardson has to supply him with a +reason so absurd and so diabolical that we cannot believe in it; it +reminds us of Hamlet's objecting to killing his uncle whilst at prayers, +on the ground that it would be sending him straight to heaven. But we +may, if we please, consider Hamlet's conceit as a mere pretext invented +to excuse his irresolution to himself; whereas Lovelace speculates so +long and so seriously upon the marriage, that we are bound to consider +his far-fetched arguments as sincere. And the supposition makes his +wickedness gratuitous, if we believe in his sanity. Lovelace suffers, +again, from the same necessity which injures Sir Charles Grandison; as +the virtuous hero has to be always expatiating on his own virtues, the +vicious hero has to boast of his own vices; it is true that this is, in +an artistic sense, the least repulsive habit of the two; for it gives +reason for hating not a hero but a villain; unluckily it is also a +reason for refusing to believe in his existence. The improbability of a +thoroughpaced scoundrel writing daily elaborate confessions of his +criminality to a friend, even when the friend condemns him, expatiating +upon atrocities that deserved hanging, and justifying his vices on +principle, is rather too glaring to be admissible. And by another odd +inconsistency, Lovelace is described as being all the time a steady +believer in eternal punishment and a rebuker of sceptics--Richardson +being apparently of opinion that infidelity would be too bad to be +introduced upon the stage, though a vice might be described in detail. A +man who has broken through all moral laws might be allowed a little +free-thinking. We might add that Lovelace, in spite of the cleverness +attributed to him, is really a most imbecile schemer. The first +principle of a villain should be to tell as few lies as will serve his +purpose; but Lovelace invents such elaborate and complicated plots, +presenting so many chances of detection and introducing so many persons +into his secrets, that it is evident that in real life he would have +broken down in a week. + +Granting the high improbability of Lovelace as a real living human +being, it must be admitted that he has every merit but that of +existence. The letters which he writes are the most animated in the +voluminous correspondence. The respectable domestic old printer, who +boasted of the perfect purity of his own life, seems to have thrown +himself with special gusto into the character of a heartless reprobate. +He must have felt a certain piquancy in writing down the most atrocious +sentiments in his own respectable parlour. He would show that the quiet +humdrum old tradesman could be on paper as sprightly and audacious as +the most profligate man about town. As quiet people are apt to do, he +probably exaggerated the enormities which such men would openly avow; he +fancied that the world beyond his little circle was a wilderness of wild +beasts who could gnash their teeth and show their claws after a terribly +ostentatious fashion in their own dens; they doubtless gloated upon all +the innocent sheep whom they had devoured without any shadow of +reticence. And he had a fancy that, in their way, they were amusing +monsters too; Lovelace is a lady's villain, as Grandison is a lady's +hero; he is designed by a person inexperienced even in the observation +of vice. Indeed, he would exaggerate the charm a good deal more than the +atrocity. We must also admit that when the old printer was put upon his +mettle he could be very lively indeed. Lovelace, like everybody else, is +at times unmercifully prolix; he never leaves us to guess any detail for +ourselves; but he is spirited, eloquent, and a thoroughly fine gentleman +after the Chesterfield type. 'The devil take such fine gentlemen!' +exclaims somebody; and if he does not, I see little use (to quote the +proverbial old lady) in keeping a devil. But, as Johnson observed, a man +may be very wicked and 'very genteel.' Richardson lectures us very +seriously on the evil results which are sure to follow bad courses; but +he evidently holds in his heart that, till the Nemesis descends, the +libertines are far the most amusing part of the world. In Sir Charles +Grandison's company, we should be treated to an intolerable deal of +sermonising, with an occasional descent into the regions of humour--but +the humour is always admitted under protest. With Lovelace we might hear +some very questionable morality, but there would be a never-ceasing flow +of sparkling witticisms. The devil's advocate has the laugh distinctly +on his side, whatever may be said of the argument. Finally, we may say +that Lovelace, if too obviously constructed to work the plot, certainly +works it well. When we coolly dissect him and ask whether he could ever +have existed, we may be forced to reply in the negative. But whilst we +read we forget to criticise; he seems to possess more vitality than +most living men; he is so full of eloquent brag, and audacious +sophistry, and unblushing impudence, that he fascinates us as he is +supposed to have bewildered Clarissa. The dragon who is to devour the +maiden comes with all the flash and glitter and overpowering whirl of +wings that can be desired. He seems to be irresistible--we admire him +and hate him, and some time elapses before we begin to suspect that he +is merely a stage dragon, and not one of those who really walk this +earth. + +Richardson's defects are, of course, obvious enough. He cares nothing, +for example, for what we call the beauties of nature. There is scarcely +throughout his books one description showing the power of appealing to +emotions through scenery claimed by every modern scribbler. In passing +the Alps, the only remark which one of his characters has to make, +beyond describing the horrible dangers of the Mont Cenis, is that 'every +object which here presents itself is excessively miserable.' His ideal +scenery is a 'large and convenient country-house, situated in a spacious +park,' with plenty of 'fine prospects,' which you are expected to view +from a 'neat but plain villa, built in the rustic taste.' And his views +of morality are as contracted as his taste in landscapes. The most +distinctive article of his creed is that children should have a +reverence for their parents which would be exaggerated in the slave of +an Eastern despot. We can pardon Clarissa for refusing to die happy +until her stupid and ill-tempered old father has revoked a curse which +he bestowed upon her. But we cannot quite excuse Sir Charles Grandison +for writing in this fashion to his disreputable old parent, who has +asked his consent to a certain family arrangement in which he had a +legal right to be consulted:-- + +'As for myself,' he says, 'I cannot have one objection; but what am I in +this case? My sister is wholly my father's; I also am his. The +consideration he gives me in this instance confounds me. It binds me to +him in double duty. It would look like taking advantage of it, were I so +much as to offer my humble opinion, unless he were pleased to command it +from me.' + +Even one of Richardson's abject lady-correspondents was revolted by this +exaggerated servility. But narrow as his vision might be in some +directions, his genius is not the less real. He is a curious example of +the power which a real artistic insight may exhibit under the most +disadvantageous forms. To realise his characteristic power, we should +take one of the great French novelists whom we admire for the exquisite +proportions of his story, the unity of the interest and the skill--so +unlike our common English clumsiness--with which all details are duly +subordinated. He should have, too, the comparative weakness of French +novelists, a defective perception of character, a certain unwillingness +in art as in politics to allow individual peculiarities to interfere +with the main flow of events; for, admitting the great excellence of his +minor performers, Richardson's most elaborately designed characters are +so artificial that they derive their interest from the events in which +they play their parts, rather than give interest to them--little as he +may have intended it. Then we must cause our imaginary Frenchman to +transmigrate into the body of a small, plump, weakly printer of the +eighteenth century. We may leave him a fair share of his vivacity, +though considerably narrowing his views of life and morality; but we +must surround him with a court of silly women whose incessant flatteries +must generate in him an unnatural propensity to twaddle. It is curious, +indeed, that he describes himself as writing without a plan. He compares +himself to a poor woman lying down upon the hearth to blow up a wretched +little fire of green sticks. He had to live from hand to mouth. But the +absence of an elaborate scheme is not fatal to the unity of design. He +watches, rather than designs, the development of his plot. He has so +lively a faith in his characters that, instead of laying down their +course of action, he simply watches them to see how they will act. This +makes him deliberate a little too much; they move less by impulse than +from careful reflection upon all the circumstances. Yet it also implies +an evolution of the story from the necessity of the characters in a +given situation, and gives an air of necessary deduction to the whole +scheme of his stories. All the gossiping propensities of his nature will +grow to unhealthy luxuriance, and the fine edge of his wit will be +somewhat dulled in the process. He will thus become capable of being a +bore--a thing which is impossible to any unsophisticated Frenchman. In +this way we might obtain a literary product so anomalous in appearance +as 'Clarissa'--a story in which a most affecting situation is drawn with +extreme power, and yet so overlaid with twaddle, so unmercifully +protracted and spun out as to be almost unreadable to the present +generation. But to complete Richardson, we must inoculate him with the +propensities of another school: we must give him a liberal share of the +feminine sensitiveness and closeness of observation of which Miss Austen +is the great example. And perhaps, to fill in the last details, he +ought, in addition, to have a dash of the more unctuous and offensive +variety of the dissenting preacher--for we know not where else to look +for the astonishing and often ungrammatical fluency by which he is +possessed, and which makes his best passages remind us of the marvellous +malleability of some precious metals. + +Anyone who will take the trouble to work himself fairly into the story +will end by admitting Richardson's power. Sir George Trevelyan records +and corroborates a well-known anecdote told by Thackeray from Macaulay's +lips. A whole station was infected by the historian's zeal for +'Clarissa.' It worked itself up into a 'passion of excitement,' and all +the great men and their wives fought for the book, and could hardly read +it for tears. The critic must observe that Macaulay had a singular taste +for reading even the trashiest novels; and, that probably an Indian +station at that period was in respect of such reading like a thirsty +land after a long drought. For that reason it reproduced pretty +accurately the state of society in which 'Clarissa' was first read, when +there were as yet no circulating libraries, and the winter evenings were +long in the country and the back parlours of tradesmen's shops. +Probably, a person eager to enjoy Richardson's novels now would do well +to take them as his only recreation for a long holiday in a remote place +and pray for steady rain. On those conditions, he may enter into the old +spirit. And the remark may suggest one moral, for one ought not to +conclude an article upon Richardson without a moral. It is that a +purpose may be a very dangerous thing for a novelist in so far as it +leads him to try means of persuasion not appropriate to his art; but +when, as with Richardson, it implies a keen interest in an imaginary +world, a desire to set forth in the most forcible way what are the great +springs of action of human beings by showing them under appropriate +situations, then it may be a source of such power of fascination as is +exercised by the greatest writers alone. + + + + +_POPE AS A MORALIST_ + + +The vitality of Pope's writings, or at least of certain fragments of +them, is remarkable. Few reputations have been exposed to such perils at +the hands of open enemies or of imprudent friends. In his lifetime 'the +wasp of Twickenham' could sting through a sevenfold covering of pride or +stupidity. Lady Mary and Lord Hervey writhed and retaliated with little +more success than the poor denizens of Grub Street. But it is more +remarkable that Pope seems to be stinging well into the second century +after his death. His writings resemble those fireworks which, after they +have fallen to the ground and been apparently quenched, suddenly break +out again into sputtering explosions. The waters of a literary +revolution have passed over him without putting him out. Though much of +his poetry has ceased to interest us, so many of his brilliant couplets +still survive that probably no dead writer, with the solitary exception +of Shakespeare, is more frequently quoted at the present day. It is in +vain that he is abused, ridiculed, and often declared to be no poet at +all. The school of Wordsworth regarded him as the embodiment of the +corrupting influence in English poetry; and it is only of late that we +are beginning to aim at a more catholic spirit in literary criticism. It +is not our business simply to revile or to extol the ideals of our +ancestors, but to try to understand them. The passionate partisanship +of militant schools is pardonable in the apostles of a new creed, but +when the struggle is over we must aim at saner judgments. Byron was +impelled by motives other than the purely judicial when he declared Pope +to be the 'great moral poet of all times, of all climes, of all +feelings, and of all stages of existence;' and it is not less +characteristic that Byron was at the same time helping to dethrone the +idol before which he prostrated himself. A critic whose judgments, +however wayward, are always keen and original, has more recently spoken +of Pope in terms which recall Byron's enthusiasm. 'Pope,' says Mr. +Ruskin, in one of his Oxford lectures, 'is the most perfect +representative we have since Chaucer of the true English mind;' and he +adds that his hearers will find, as they study Pope, that he has +expressed for them, 'in the strictest language, and within the briefest +limits, every law of art, of criticism, of economy, of policy, and +finally of a benevolence, humble, rational, and resigned, contented with +its allotted share of life, and trusting the problem of its salvation to +Him in whose hand lies that of the universe.' These remarks are added by +way of illustrating the relation of art to morals, and enforcing the +great principle that a noble style can only proceed from a sincere +heart. 'You can only learn to speak as these men spake by learning what +these men were.' When we ask impartially what Pope was, we may possibly +be inclined to doubt the complete soundness of the eulogy upon his +teaching. Meanwhile, however, Byron and Mr. Ruskin agree in holding up +Pope as an instance, almost as the typical instance, of that kind of +poetry which is directly intended to enforce a lofty morality. Though we +can never take either Byron or Mr. Ruskin as the representative of sweet +reasonableness, their admiration is some proof that Pope possessed great +merits as a poetical interpreter of morals. Without venturing into the +wider ocean of poetical criticism, I will endeavour to consider what was +the specific element in Pope's poetry which explains, if it does not +justify, this enthusiastic praise. + +I shall venture to assume, indeed, that Pope was a genuine poet. +Perhaps, as M. Taine thinks, it is a proof of our British grossness that +we still admire the 'Rape of the Lock,' yet I must agree with most +critics that it is admirable after its kind. Pope's sylphs, as Mr. Elwin +says, are legitimate descendants from Shakespeare's fairies. True, they +have entered into rather humiliating bondage. Shakespeare's Ariel has to +fetch the midnight dew from the still-vexed Bermoothes; he delights to +fly-- + + To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride + On the curl'd clouds-- + +whereas the 'humbler province' of Pope's Ariel is 'to tend the fair'-- + + To steal from rainbows, ere they drop in showers, + A brighter wash; to curl their waving hairs, + Assist their blushes, and inspire their airs. + Nay, oft in dreams invention we bestow + To change a flounce or add a furbelow. + +Prospero, threatening Ariel for murmuring, says 'I will + + rend an oak + And peg thee in his knotty entrails, until + Thou hast howled away twelve winters.' + +The fate threatened to a disobedient sprite in the later poem is that he +shall + + Be stuff'd in vials, or transfixed with pins, + Or plunged in lakes of bitter washes lie, + Or wedged whole ages in a bodkin's eye. + +Pope's muse--one may use the old-fashioned word in such a +connection--had left the free forest for Will's Coffee-house, and +haunted ladies' boudoirs instead of the brakes of the enchanted island. +Her wings were clogged with 'gums and pomatums,' and her 'thin essence' +had shrunk 'like a rivel'd flower.' But a delicate fancy is a delicate +fancy still, even when employed about the paraphernalia of modern life; +a truth which Byron maintained, though not in an unimpeachable form, in +his controversy with Bowles. We sometimes talk as if our ancestors were +nothing but hoops and wigs; and forget that they had a fair allowance of +human passions. And consequently we are very apt to make a false +estimate of the precise nature of that change which fairly entitles us +to call Pope's age prosaic. In showering down our epithets of +artificial, sceptical, and utilitarian, we not seldom forget what kind +of figure we are ourselves likely to make in the eyes of our own +descendants. + +Whatever be the position rightly to be assigned to Pope in the British +Walhalla, his own theory has been unmistakably expressed. He boasts + + That not in fancy's maze he wandered long, + But stooped to truth and moralised his song. + +His theory is compressed into one of the innumerable aphorisms which +have to some degree lost their original sharpness of definition, because +they have passed, as current coinage, through so many hands. + + The proper study of mankind is man. + +The saying is in form nearly identical with Goethe's remark that man is +properly the only object which interests man. The two poets, indeed, +understood the doctrine in a very different way. Pope's interpretation +strikes the present generation as narrow and mechanical. He would place +such limitations upon the sphere of human interest as to exclude, +perhaps, the greatest part of what we generally mean by poetry. How +much, for example, would have to be suppressed if we sympathised with +Pope's condemnation of the works in which + + Pure description holds the place of sense. + +Nearly all the works of such poets as Thomson and Cowper would +disappear, Wordsworth's pages would show fearful gaps, and Keats would +be in risk of summary suppression. We may doubt whether much would be +left of Spenser, from whom both Keats and Pope, like so many other of +our poets, drew inspiration in their youth. Fairyland would be deserted, +and the poet condemned to working upon ordinary commonplaces in broad +daylight. The principle which Pope proclaimed is susceptible of the +inverse application. Poetry, as it proves, may rightly concern itself +with inanimate nature, with pure description, or with the presentation +of lovely symbols not definitely identified with any cut-and-dried saws +of moral wisdom; because there is no part of the visible universe to +which we have not some relation, and the most ethereal dreams that ever +visited a youthful poet 'on summer eve by haunted stream' are in some +sense reflections of the passions and interests that surround our daily +life. Pope, however, as the man more fitted than any other fully to +interpret the mind of his own age, inevitably gives a different +construction to a very sound maxim. He rightly assumes that man is his +proper study; but then by man he means not the genus, but a narrow +species of the human being. 'Man' means Bolingbroke, and Walpole, and +Swift, and Curll, and Theobald; it does not mean man as the product of a +long series of generations and part of the great universe of +inextricably involved forces. He cannot understand the man of distant +ages; Homer is to him not the spontaneous voice of the heroic age, but a +clever artist whose gods and heroes are consciously-constructed parts of +an artificial 'machinery.' Nature has, for him, ceased to be inhabited +by sylphs and fairies, except to amuse the fancies of fine ladies and +gentlemen, and has not yet received a new interest from the fairy tales +of science. The old ideal of chivalry merely suggests the sneers of +Cervantes, or even the buffoonery of Butler's wit, and has not undergone +restoration at the hands of modern romanticists. Politics are not +associated in his mind with any great social upheaval, but with a series +of petty squabbles for places and pensions, in which bribery is the +great moving force. What he means by religion is generally not so much +the existence of a divine element in the world as a series of bare +metaphysical demonstrations too frigid to produce enthusiasm or to +stimulate the imagination. And, therefore, he inevitably interests +himself chiefly in what is certainly a perennial source of interest--the +passions and thoughts of the men and women immediately related to +himself; and it may be remarked, in passing, that if this narrows the +range of Pope's poetry, the error is not so vital as a modern delusion +of the opposite kind. Because poetry should not be brought into too +close a contact with the prose of daily life, we sometimes seem to think +that it must have no relation to daily life at all, and consequently +convert it into a mere luxurious dreaming, where the beautiful very +speedily degenerates into the pretty or the picturesque. Because poetry +need not be always a point-blank fire of moral platitudes, we +occasionally declare that there is no connection at all between poetry +and morality, and that all art is good which is for the moment +agreeable. Such theories must end in reducing all poetry and art to be +at best more or less elegant trifling for the amusement of the indolent; +and to those who uphold them Pope's example may be of some use. If he +went too far in the direction of identifying poetry with preaching, he +was not wrong in assuming that poetry should involve preaching, though +by an indirect method. Morality and art are not independent, though not +identical. Both, as Mr. Ruskin urges in the passage just quoted, are +only admirable when the expression of healthful and noble natures. But, +without discussing that thorny problem and certainly without committing +myself to an approval of Mr. Ruskin's solution, I am content to look at +it for the time from Pope's stand-point. + +Taking Pope's view of his poetical office, there remain considerable +difficulties in estimating the value of the lesson which he taught with +so much energy. The difficulties result both from that element which was +common to his contemporaries and from that which was supplied by Pope's +own idiosyncrasies. The commonplaces in which Pope takes such infinite +delight have become very stale for us. Assuming their perfect sincerity, +we cannot understand how anybody should have thought of enforcing them +with such amazing emphasis. We constantly feel a shock like that which +surprises the reader of Young's 'Night Thoughts' when he finds it +asserted, in all the pomp of blank verse, that + + Procrastination is the thief of time. + +The maxim has rightly been consigned to copy-books. And a great deal of +Pope's moralising is of the same order. We do not want denunciations of +misers. Nobody at the present day keeps gold in an old stocking. When +we read the observation, + + 'Tis strange the miser should his cares employ + To gain the riches he can ne'er enjoy, + +we can only reply that we have heard something like it before. In fact, +we cannot place ourselves in the position of men at the time when modern +society was first definitely emerging from the feudal state, and +everybody was sufficiently employed in gossiping about his neighbours. +We are perplexed by the extreme interest with which they dwell upon the +little series of obvious remarks which have been worked to death by +later writers. Pope, for example, is still wondering over the first +appearance of one of the most familiar of modern inventions. He +exclaims, + + Blest paper credit! last and best supply! + That lends corruption lighter wings to fly! + +He points out, with an odd superfluity of illustration, that bank-notes +enable a man to be bribed much more easily than of old. There is no +danger, he says, that a patriot will be exposed by a guinea dropping out +of his pocket at the end of an interview with the minister; and he shows +how awkward it would be if a statesman had to take his bribes in kind, +and his servants should proclaim, + + Sir, Spain has sent a thousand jars of oil; + Huge bales of British cloth blockade the door; + A hundred oxen at your levees roar. + +This, however, was natural enough when the South Sea scheme was for the +first time illustrating the powers and the dangers of extended credit. +To us, who are beginning to fit our experience of commercial panics into +a scientific theory, the wonder expressed by Pope sounds like the +exclamations of a savage over a Tower musket. And in the sphere of +morals it is pretty much the same. All those reflections about the +little obvious vanities and frivolities of social life which supplied +two generations of British essayists, from the 'Tatler' to the +'Lounger,' with an inexhaustible fund of mild satire, have lost their +freshness. Our own modes of life have become so complex by comparison, +that we pass over these mere elements to plunge at once into more +refined speculations. A modern essayist starts where Addison or Johnson +left off. He assumes that his readers know that procrastination is an +evil, and tries to gain a little piquancy by paradoxically pointing out +the objections to punctuality. Character, of course, becomes more +complex, and requires more delicate modes of analysis. Compare, for +example, the most delicate of Pope's delineations with one of Mr. +Browning's elaborate psychological studies. Remember how many pages of +acute observation are required to set forth Bishop Blougram's peculiar +phase of worldliness, and then turn to Pope's descriptions of Addison, +or Wharton, or Buckingham. Each of those descriptions is, indeed, a +masterpiece in its way; the language is inimitably clear and pointed; +but the leading thought is obvious, and leads to no intricate problems. +Addison--assuming Pope's Addison to be the real Addison--might be +cold-blooded and jealous; but he had not worked out that elaborate +machinery for imposing upon himself and others which is required in a +more critical age. He wore a mask, but a mask of simple construction; +not one of those complex contrivances of modern invention which are so +like the real skin that it requires the acuteness and patience of a +scientific observer to detect the difference and point out the nature of +the deception. The moral difference between an Addison and a Blougram +is as great as the difference between an old stage-coach and a +steam-engine, or between the bulls and bears which first received the +name in Law's time and their descendants on the New York Stock Exchange. + +If, therefore, Pope gains something in clearness and brilliancy by the +comparative simplicity of his art, he loses by the extreme obviousness +of its results. We cannot give him credit for being really moved by such +platitudes. We have the same feeling as when a modern preacher employs +twenty minutes in proving that it is wrong to worship idols of wood and +stone. But, unfortunately, there is a reason more peculiar to Pope which +damps our sympathy still more decidedly. Recent investigations have +strengthened those suspicions of his honesty which were common even +amongst his contemporaries. Mr. Elwin was (very excusably) disgusted by +the revelations of his hero's baseness, till his indignation became a +painful burden to himself and his readers. Speaking bluntly, indeed, we +admit that lying is a vice, and that Pope was in a small way one of the +most consummate liars that ever lived. He speaks himself of +'equivocating pretty genteelly' in regard to one of his peccadilloes. +Pope's equivocation is to the equivocation of ordinary men what a +tropical fern is to the stunted representatives of the same species in +England. It grows until the fowls of the air can rest on its branches. +His mendacity in short amounts to a monomania. That a man with intensely +irritable nerves, and so fragile in constitution that his life might, +without exaggeration, be called a 'long disease,' should defend himself +by the natural weapons of the weak, equivocation and subterfuge, when +exposed to the brutal horseplay common in that day, is indeed not +surprising. But Pope's delight in artifice was something unparalleled. +He could hardly drink tea without 'a stratagem,' or, as Lady Bolingbroke +put it, was a politician about cabbages and turnips; and certainly he +did not despise the arts known to politicians on a larger stage. Never, +surely, did all the arts of the most skilful diplomacy give rise to a +series of intrigues more complex than those which attended the +publication of the 'P. T. Letters.' An ordinary man says that he is +obliged to publish by request of friends, and we regard the transparent +device as, at most, a venial offence. But in Pope's hands this simple +trick becomes a complex apparatus of plots within plots, which have only +been unravelled by the persevering labours of most industrious literary +detectives. The whole story was given for the first time at full length +in Mr. Elwin's edition of Pope, and the revelation borders upon the +incredible. How Pope became for a time two men; how in one character he +worked upon the wretched Curll through mysterious emissaries until the +piratical bookseller undertook to publish the letters already privately +printed by Pope himself; how Pope in his other character protested +vehemently against the publication and disavowed all complicity in the +preparations; how he set the House of Lords in motion to suppress the +edition; and how, meanwhile, he took ingenious precautions to frustrate +the interference which he provoked; how in the course of these +manoeuvres his genteel equivocation swelled into lying on the most +stupendous scale--all this story, with its various ins and outs, may be +now read by those who have the patience. The problem may be suggested to +casuists how far the iniquity of a lie should be measured by its +immediate purpose, or how far it is aggravated by the enormous mass of +superincumbent falsehoods which it inevitably brings in its train. We +cannot condemn very seriously the affected coyness which tries to +conceal a desire for publication under an apparent yielding to +extortion; but we must certainly admit that the stomach of any other +human being of whom a record has been preserved would have revolted at +the thought of wading through such a waste of falsification to secure so +paltry an end. Moreover, this is only one instance, and by no means the +worst instance, of Pope's regular practice in such matters. Almost every +publication of his life was attended with some sort of mystification +passing into downright falsehood, and, at times, injurious to the +character of his dearest friends. We have to add to this all the cases +in which Pope attacked his enemies under feigned names and then +disavowed his attacks; the malicious misstatements which he tried to +propagate in regard to Addison; and we feel it a positive relief when we +are able to acquit him, partially at least, of the worst charge of +extorting 1,000_l._ from the Duchess of Marlborough for the suppression +of a satirical passage. + +Whatever minor pleas may be put forward in extenuation, it certainly +cannot be denied that Pope's practical morality was defective. Genteel +equivocation is not one of the Christian graces; and a gentleman +convicted at the present day of practices comparable to those in which +Pope indulged so freely might find it expedient to take his name off the +books of any respectable club. Now, if we take literally Mr. Ruskin's +doctrine that a noble morality must proceed from a noble nature, the +inference from Pope's life to his writings is not satisfactory. + +We may, indeed, take it for demonstrated that Pope was not one of those +men who can be seen from all points of view. There are corners of his +nature which will not bear examination. We cannot compare him with such +men as Milton, or Cowper, or Wordsworth, whose lives are the noblest +commentary on their works. Rather he is one of the numerous class in +whom the excessive sensibility of genius has generated very serious +disease. In more modern days we may fancy that his views would have +taken a different turn, and that Pope would have belonged to the Satanic +school of writers, and instead of lying enormously, have found relief +for his irritated nerves in reviling all that is praised by ordinary +mankind. But we must hesitate before passing from his acknowledged vices +to a summary condemnation of the whole man. Human nature (the remark is +not strictly original) is often inconsistent; and, side by side with +degrading tendencies, there sometimes lie not only keen powers of +intellect, but a genuine love for goodness, benevolence, and even for +honesty. Pope is one of those strangely mixed characters which can only +be fully delineated by a masterly hand, and Mr. Courthope in the life +which concludes the definitive edition of the works has at last +performed the task with admirable skill and without too much shrouding +his hero's weaknesses. Meanwhile our pleasure in reading him is much +counterbalanced by the suspicion that those pointed aphorisms which he +turns out in so admirably polished a form may come only from the lips +outwards. Pope, it must be remembered, is essentially a parasitical +writer. He was a systematic appropriator--I do not say plagiarist, for +the practice seems to be generally commendable--of other men's thoughts. +His brilliant gems have often been found in some obscure writer, and +have become valuable by the patient care with which he has polished and +mounted them. We doubt their perfect sincerity because, when he is +speaking in his own person, we can often prove him to be at best under +a curious delusion. Take, for example, the 'Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot,' +which is his most perfect work. Some of the boasts in it are apparently +quite justified by the facts. But what are we to say to such a passage +as this?-- + + I was not born for courts or great affairs; + I pay my debts, believe, and say my prayers; + Can sleep without a poem in my head, + Nor know if Dennis be alive or dead. + +Admitting his independence, and not inquiring too closely into his +prayers, can we forget that the gentleman who could sleep without a poem +in his head called up a servant four times in one night of 'the dreadful +winter of Forty' to supply him with paper, lest he should lose a +thought? Or what is the value of a professed indifference to Dennis from +the man distinguished beyond all other writers for the bitterness of his +resentment against all small critics; who disfigured his best poems by +his petty vengeance for old attacks; and who could not refrain from +sneering at poor Dennis, even in the Prologue which he condescended to +write for the benefit of his dying antagonist? Or, again, one can hardly +help smiling at his praises of his own hospitality. The dinner which he +promises to his friend is to conclude with-- + + Cheerful healths (your mistress shall have place), + And, what's more rare, a poet shall say grace. + +The provision made for the 'cheerful healths,' as Johnson lets us know, +consisted of the remnant of a pint of wine, from which Pope had taken a +couple of glasses, divided amongst two guests. There was evidently no +danger of excessive conviviality. And then a grace in which Bolingbroke +joined could not have been a very impressive ceremony. + +Thus, we are always pursued, in reading Pope, by disagreeable +misgivings. We don't know what comes from the heart, and what from the +lips: when the real man is speaking, and when we are only listening to +old commonplaces skilfully vamped. There is always, if we please, a bad +interpretation to be placed upon his finest sentiments. His indignation +against the vicious is confused with his hatred of personal enemies; he +protests most loudly that he is honest when he is 'equivocating most +genteelly;' his independence may be called selfishness or avarice; his +toleration simple indifference; and even his affection for his friends a +decorous fiction, which will never lead him to the slightest sacrifice +of his own vanity or comfort. A critic of the highest order is provided +with an Ithuriel spear, which discriminates the sham sentiments from the +true. As a banker's clerk can tell a bad coin by its ring on the +counter, without need of a testing apparatus, the true critic can +instinctively estimate the amount of bullion in Pope's epigrammatic +tinsel. But criticism of this kind, as Pope truly says, is as rare as +poetical genius. Humbler writers must be content to take their weights +and measures, or, in other words, to test their first impressions, by +such external evidence as is available. They must proceed cautiously in +these delicate matters, and instead of leaping to the truth by a rapid +intuition, patiently enquire what light is thrown upon Pope's sincerity +by the recorded events of his life, and a careful cross-examination of +the various witnesses to his character. They must, indeed, keep in mind +Mr. Ruskin's excellent canon--that good fruit, even in moralising, can +only be borne by a good tree. Where Pope has succeeded in casting into +enduring form some valuable moral sentiment, we may therefore give him +credit for having at least felt it sincerely. If he did not always act +upon it, the weakness is not peculiar to Pope. Time, indeed, has partly +done the work for us. In Pope, more than in almost any other writer, the +grain has sifted itself from the chaff. The jewels have remained after +the flimsy embroidery in which they were fixed has fallen into decay. +Such a result was natural from his mode of composition. He caught at +some inspiration of the moment; he cast it roughly into form; brooded +over it; retouched it again and again; and when he had brought it to the +very highest polish of which his art was capable, placed it in a +pigeon-hole to be fitted, when the opportunity offered, into an +appropriate corner of his mosaic-work. We can see him at work, for +example, in the passage about Addison and the celebrated concluding +couplet. The epigrams in which his poetry abounds have obviously been +composed in the same fashion, for that 'masterpiece of man,' as South is +made to call it in the 'Dunciad,' is only produced in perfection when +the labour which would have made an ode has been concentrated upon a +couple of lines. There is a celebrated recipe for dressing a lark, if we +remember rightly, in which the lark is placed inside a snipe, and the +snipe in a woodcock, and so on till you come to a turkey, or, if +procurable, to an ostrich; then, the mass having been properly stewed, +the superincumbent envelopes are all thrown away, and the essences of +the whole are supposed to be embodied in the original nucleus. So the +perfect epigram, at which Pope is constantly aiming, should be the +quintessence of a whole volume of reflection. Such literary cookery, +however, implies not only labour, but an unwearied vividness of thought +and feeling. The poet must put his soul into the work as well as his +artistic power. Thus, if we may take Pope's most vigorous expressions as +an indication of his strongest convictions, and check their conclusions +by his personal history and by the general tendency of his writings, we +might succeed in putting together something like a satisfactory +statement of the moral system which he expressed forcibly because he +believed in it sincerely. + +Without following the proofs in detail, let us endeavour to give some +statement of the result. What, in fact, did Pope learn by his study of +man, such as it was? What does he tell us about the character of human +beings and their position in the universe which is either original or +marked by the freshness of independent thought? Perhaps the most +characteristic vein of reflection is that which is embodied in the +'Dunciad.' There, at least, we have Pope speaking energetically and +sincerely. He really detests, abjures, and abominates as impious and +heretical, without a trace of mental reservation, the worship of the +great goddess Dulness. The 'Dunciad' does not show the quality in which +Pope most excels, that which makes his best satires resemble the +quintessence of the most brilliant thought of his most brilliant +contemporaries. But it has more energy and continuity than most of his +other poetry. The 'Dunciad' often flows in a continuous stream of +eloquence, instead of dribbling out in little jets of epigram. If there +are fewer points, there are more frequent gushes of sustained rhetoric. +Even when Pope condescends--and he condescends much too often--to pelt +his antagonists with mere filth, he does it with a touch of boisterous +vigour. He laughs out. He catches something from his patron Swift when +he + + Laughs and shakes in Rabelais's easy chair. + +His lungs seem to be fuller and his voice to lose for the time its +tricks of mincing affectation. Here, indeed, there can be no question of +insincerity. Pope's scorn of folly is to be condemned only so far as it +was connected with too bitter a hatred of fools. He has suffered, as +Swift foretold, by the insignificance of the enemies against whom he +rages with superfluous vehemence. But for Pope, no one in this +generation would have heard of Arnall and Moore and Breval and Bezaleel +Morris and fifty more ephemeral denizens of Grub Street. The fault is, +indeed, inherent in the plan. It is in some degree creditable to Pope +that his satire was on the whole justified, so far as it could be +justified, by the correctness of his judgment. The only great man whom +he has seriously assaulted is Bentley; and to Pope, Bentley was of +necessity not the greatest of classical critics, but the tasteless +mutilator of Milton, and, as we must perhaps add, the object of the +hatred of Pope's particular friends, Atterbury and Warburton. The +misfortune is that the more just his satire, the more perishable is its +interest; and if we regard the 'Dunciad' simply as an assault upon the +vermin who then infested literature, we must consider him as a man who +should use a steam-hammer to crack a flea. Unluckily for ourselves, +however, it cannot be admitted so easily that Curll and Dennis and the +rest had a merely temporary interest. Regarded as types of literary +nuisances--and Pope does not condescend in his poetry, though the want +is partly supplied in the notes, to indulge in much personal +detail--they may be said by cynics to have a more enduring vitality. Of +course there is at the present day no such bookseller as Curll, living +by piratical invasions of established rights, and pandering to the worst +passions of ignorant readers; no writer who could be fitly called, like +Concanen, + + A cold, long-winded native of the deep, + +and fitly sentenced to dive where Fleet Ditch + + Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames; + +and most certainly we must deny the present applicability of the note +upon 'Magazines' compiled by Pope, or rather by Warburton, for the +episcopal bludgeon is perceptible in the prose description. They are not +at present 'the eruption of every miserable scribbler, the scum of every +dirty newspaper, or fragments of fragments picked up from every dirty +dunghill ... equally the disgrace of human wit, morality, decency, and +common sense.' But if the translator of the 'Dunciad' into modern +phraseology would have some difficulty in finding a head for every cap, +there are perhaps some satirical stings which have not quite lost their +point. The legitimate drama, so theatrical critics tell us, has not +quite shaken off the rivalry of sensational scenery and idiotic +burlesque, though possibly we do not produce absurdities equal to that +which, as Pope tells us, was actually introduced by Theobald, in which + + Nile rises, Heaven descends, and dance on earth + Gods, imps, and monsters, music, rage, and mirth, + A fire, a jig, a battle and a ball, + Till one wide conflagration swallows all. + +There is still facetiousness which reminds us too forcibly that + + Gentle Dulness ever loves a joke, + +and even sermons, for which we may apologise on the ground that + + Dulness is sacred in a sound divine. + +Here and there, too, if we may trust certain stern reviewers, there are +writers who have learnt the principle that + + Index learning turns no student pale, + Yet holds the eel of Science by the tail. + +And the first four lines, at least, of the great prophecy at the +conclusion of the third book is thought by the enemies of muscular +Christianity to be possibly approaching its fulfilment: + + Proceed, great days! till learning fly the shore, + Till birch shall blush with noble blood no more, + Till Thames see Eton's sons for ever play, + Till Westminster's whole year be holiday, + Till Isis' elders reel, their pupils sport, + And Alma Mater lies dissolved in Port! + +No! So far as we can see, it is still true that + + Born a goddess, Dulness never dies. + +Men, we know it on high authority, are still mostly fools. If Pope be in +error, it is not so much that his adversary is beneath him, as that she +is unassailable by wit or poetry. Weapons of the most ethereal temper +spend their keenness in vain against the 'anarch old' whose power lies +in utter insensibility. It is fighting with a mist, and firing +cannon-balls into a mudheap. As well rave against the force of +gravitation, or complain that our gross bodies must be nourished by +solid food. If, however, we should be rather grateful than otherwise to +a man who is sanguine enough to believe that satire can be successful +against stupidity, and that Grub Street, if it cannot be exterminated, +can at least be lashed into humility, we might perhaps complain that +Pope has taken rather too limited a view of the subject. Dulness has +other avatars besides the literary. In the last and finest book, Pope +attempts to complete his plan by exhibiting the influence of dulness +upon theology and science. The huge torpedo benumbs every faculty of +the human mind, and paralyses all the Muses, except 'mad Mathesis,' +which, indeed, does not carry on so internecine a war with the general +enemy. The design is commendable, and executed, so far as Pope was on a +level with his task, with infinite spirit. But, however excellent the +poetry, the logic is defective, and the description of the evil +inadequate. Pope has but a vague conception of the mode in which dulness +might become the leading force in politics, lower religion till it +became a mere cloak for selfishness, and make learning nothing but +laborious and pedantic trifling. Had his powers been equal to his +goodwill, we might have had a satire far more elevated than anything +which he has attempted; for a man must be indeed a dull student of +history who does not recognise the vast influence of dulness-worship on +the whole period which has intervened between Pope and ourselves. Nay, +it may be feared that it will yet be some time before education bills +and societies for university extension will have begun to dissipate the +evil. A modern satirist, were satire still alive, would find an ample +occupation for his talents in a worthy filling out of Pope's incomplete +sketch. But though I feel, I must endeavour to resist the temptation of +indicating some of the probable objects of his antipathy. + +Pope's gallant assault on the common enemy indicates, meanwhile, his +characteristic attitude. Pope is the incarnation of the literary spirit. +He is the most complete representative in our language of the +intellectual instincts which find their natural expression in pure +literature, as distinguished from literature applied to immediate +practical ends, or enlisted in the service of philosophy or science. The +complete antithesis to that spirit is the evil principle which Pope +attacks as dulness. This false goddess is the literary Ahriman; and +Pope's natural antipathies, exaggerated by his personal passions and +weaknesses to extravagant proportions, express themselves fully in his +great mock-epic. His theory may be expressed in a parody of Nelson's +immortal advice to his midshipmen: 'Be an honest man and hate dulness as +you do the devil.' Dulness generates the asphyxiating atmosphere in +which no true literature can thrive. It oppresses the lungs and +irritates the nerves of men whose keen brilliant intellects mark them as +the natural servants of literature. Seen from this point of view, there +is an honourable completeness in Pope's career. Possibly a modern +subject of literature may, without paradox, express a certain gratitude +to Pope for a virtue which he would certainly be glad to imitate. Pope +was the first man who made an independence by literature. First and +last, he seems to have received over 8,000_l._ for his translation of +Homer, a sum then amply sufficient to enable him to live in comfort. No +sum at all comparable to this was ever received by a poet or novelist +until the era of Scott and Byron. Now, without challenging admiration +for Pope on the simple ground that he made his fortune, it is difficult +to exaggerate the importance of this feat at the time. A contemporary +who, whatever his faults, was a still more brilliant example than Pope +of the purely literary qualities, suggests a curious parallel. Voltaire, +as he tells us, was so weary of the humiliations that dishonour letters, +that to stay his disgust he resolved to make 'what scoundrels call a +great fortune.' Some of Voltaire's means of reaching this end appear to +have been more questionable than Pope's. But both of these men of genius +early secured their independence by raising themselves permanently above +the need of writing for money. It may be added in passing that there is +a curious similarity in intellect and character between Pope and +Voltaire which would on occasion be worth fuller exposition. The use, +too, which Pope made of his fortune was thoroughly honourable. We +scarcely give due credit, as a rule, to the man who has the rare merit +of distinctly recognising his true vocation in life, and adhering to it +with unflinching pertinacity. Probably the fact that such virtue +generally brings a sufficient personal reward in this world seems to +dispense with the necessity of additional praise. But call it a virtuous +or merely a useful quality, we must at least admit that it is the +necessary groundwork of a thoroughly satisfactory career. Pope, who from +his infancy had + + Lisped in numbers, for the numbers came, + +gained by his later numbers a secure position, and used his position to +go on rhyming to the end of his life. He never failed to do his very +best. He regarded the wealth which he had earned as a retaining fee, not +as a discharge from his duties. Comparing him with his contemporaries, +we see how vast was the advantage. Elevated above Grub Street, he had no +temptation to manufacture rubbish or descend to actual meanness like De +Foe. Independent of patronage, he was not forced to become a 'tame cat' +in the hands of a duchess, like his friend Gay. Standing apart from +politics, he was free from those disappointed pangs which contributed to +the embitterment of the later years of Swift, dying 'like a poisoned rat +in a hole;' he had not, like Bolingbroke, to affect a philosophical +contempt for the game in which he could no longer take a part; nor was +he even, like Addison and Steele, induced to 'give up to party what was +meant for mankind.' He was not a better man than some of these, and +certainly not better than Goldsmith and Johnson in the succeeding +generation. Yet, when we think of the amount of good intellect that ran +to waste in the purlieus of Grub Street, or in hunting for pensions in +ministerial ante-chambers, we feel a certain gratitude to the one +literary magnate of the century, whose devotion, it is true, had a very +tangible reward, but whose devotion was yet continuous, and free from +any distractions but those of a constitutional irritability. Nay, if we +compare Pope to some of the later writers who have wrung still +princelier rewards from fortune, the result is not unfavourable. If +Scott had been as true to his calling, his life, so far superior to +Pope's in most other respects, would not have presented the melancholy +contrast of genius running to waste in desperate attempts to win money +at the cost of worthier fame. + +Pope, as a Roman Catholic, and as the adherent of a defeated party, had +put himself out of the race for pecuniary reward. His loyal adherence to +his friends, though, like all his virtues, subject to some deduction, is +really a touching feature in his character. His Catholicism was of the +most nominal kind. He adhered in name to a depressed Church chiefly +because he could not bear to give pain to the parents whom he loved with +an exquisite tenderness. Granting that he would not have had much chance +of winning tangible rewards by the baseness of a desertion, he at least +recognised his true position; and instead of being soured by his +exclusion from the general competition, or wasting his life in frivolous +regrets, he preserved a spirit of tolerance and independence, and had a +full right to the boasts in which he certainly indulged a little too +freely:-- + + Not Fortune's worshipper, nor Fashion's fool, + Not Lucre's madman, nor Ambition's tool; + Not proud, nor servile--be one poet's praise + That, if he pleased, he pleased by manly ways; + That flattery, even to kings, he held a shame, + And thought a lie in prose or verse the same. + +Admitting that the last line suggests a slight qualm, the portrait +suggested in the rest is about as faithful as one can expect a man to +paint from himself. + +And hence we come to the question, what was the morality which Pope +dispensed from this exalted position? Admitting his independence, can we +listen to him patiently when he proclaims himself to be + + Of virtue only, and her friends, the friend; + +or when he boasts in verses noble if quite sincere-- + + Yes, I am proud; I must be proud to see + Men not afraid of God, afraid of me; + Safe from the Bar, the Pulpit, and the Throne, + Yet touched and shamed by ridicule alone. + +Is this guardian of virtue quite immaculate, and the morality which he +preaches quite of the most elevated kind? We must admit, of course, that +he does not sound the depths, or soar to the heights, in which men of +loftier genius are at home. He is not a mystic, but a man of the world. +He never, as we have already said, quits the sphere of ordinary and +rather obvious maxims about the daily life of society, or quits it at +his peril. His independence is not like Milton's, that of an ancient +prophet, consoling himself by celestial visions for a world given over +to baseness and frivolity; nor like Shelley's, that of a vehement +revolutionist, who has declared open war against the existing order; it +is the independence of a modern gentleman, with a competent fortune, +enjoying a time of political and religious calm. And therefore his +morality is in the main the expression of the conclusions reached by +supreme good sense, or, as he puts it, + + Good sense, which only is the gift of heaven, + And though no science, fairly worth the seven. + +Good sense is one of the excellent qualities to which we are scarcely +inclined to do justice at the present day; it is the guide of a time of +equilibrium, stirred by no vehement gales of passion, and we lose sight +of it just when it might give us some useful advice. A man in a passion +is never more irritated than when advised to be sensible; and at the +present day we are permanently in a passion, and therefore apt to assert +that, not only for a moment, but as a general rule, men do well to be +angry. Our art critics, for example, are never satisfied with their +frame of mind till they have lashed themselves into a fit of rhetoric. +Nothing more is wanted to explain why we are apt to be dissatisfied with +Pope, both as a critic and a moralist. In both capacities, however, Pope +is really admirable. Nobody, for example, has ridiculed more happily the +absurdities of which we sometimes take him to be a representative. The +recipe for making an epic poem is a perfect burlesque upon the +pseudo-classicism of his time. He sees the absurdity of the contemporary +statues, whose grotesque medley of ancient and modern costume is +recalled in the lines-- + + That livelong wig, which Gorgon's self might own, + Eternal buckle takes in Parian stone. + +The painters and musicians come in for their share of ridicule, as in +the description of Timon's Chapel, where + + Light quirks of music, broken and uneven, + Make the soul dance upon a jig to heaven; + On painted ceilings you devoutly stare, + Where sprawl the saints of Verrio and Laguerre. + +Pope, again, was one of the first, by practice and precept, to break +through the old formal school of gardening, in which + + No pleasing intricacies intervene, + No artful wildness to perplex the scene; + Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother, + And half the platform just reflects the other. + The suffering eye inverted Nature sees, + Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees, + With here a fountain never to be played, + And there a summer-house that knows no shade; + Here Amphitrite sails through myrtle bowers, + There gladiators fight or die in flowers; + Unwatered see the drooping sea-horse mourn, + And swallows roost in Nilus' dusty urn. + +It would be impossible to hit off more happily the queer formality which +annoys us, unless its quaintness makes us smile, in the days of good +Queen Anne, when Cato still appeared with a + + Long wig, flowered gown, and lacquered chair. + +Pope's literary criticism, too, though verging too often on the +commonplace, is generally sound as far as it goes. If, as was +inevitable, he was blind to the merits of earlier schools of poetry, he +was yet amongst the first writers who helped to establish the rightful +supremacy of Shakespeare. + +But in what way does Pope apply his good sense to morality? His +favourite doctrine about human nature is expressed in the theory of the +'ruling passion' which is to be found in all men, and which, once known, +enables us to unravel the secret of every character. As he says in the +'Essay on Man'-- + + On life's vast ocean diversely we sail, + Reason the card, but passion is the gale. + +Right reason, therefore, is the power which directs passions to the +worthiest end; and its highest lesson is to enforce + + The truth (enough for man to know) + Virtue alone is happiness below. + +The truth, though admirable, may be suspected of commonplace; and Pope +does not lay down any propositions unfamiliar to other moralists, nor, +it is to be feared, enforce them by preaching of more than usual +effectiveness. His denunciations of avarice, of corruption, and of +sensuality were probably of little more practical use than his +denunciation of dulness. The 'men not afraid of God' were hardly likely +to be deterred from selling their votes to Walpole by fear of Pope's +satire. He might + + Goad the Prelate slumbering in his stall + +sufficiently to produce the episcopal equivalent for bad language; but +he would hardly interrupt the bishop's slumbers for many moments; and, +on the whole, he might congratulate himself, rather too cheaply, on +being animated by + + The strong antipathy of good to bad. + +Without exaggerating its importance, however, we may seek to define the +precise point on which Pope's morality differed from that of many other +writers who have expressed their general approval of the ten +commandments. A healthy strain of moral feeling is useful, though we +cannot point to the individuals whom it has restrained from picking +pockets. + +The defective side of the morality of good sense is, that it tends to +degenerate into cynicism, either of the indolent variety which commended +itself to Chesterfield, or of the more vehement sort, of which Swift's +writings are the most powerful embodiment. A shrewd man of the world, +of placid temperament, accepts placidly the conclusion that as he can +see through a good many people, virtue generally is a humbug. If he has +grace enough left to be soured by such a conclusion, he raves at the +universal corruption of mankind. Now Pope, notwithstanding his petty +spite, and his sympathy with the bitterness of his friends, always shows +a certain tenderness of nature which preserves him from sweeping +cynicism. He really believes in nature, and values life for the power of +what Johnson calls reciprocation of benevolence. The beauty of his +affection for his father and mother, and for his old nurse, breaks +pleasantly through the artificial language of his letters, like a sweet +spring in barren ground. When he touches upon the subject in his poetry, +one seems to see tears in his eyes, and to hear his voice tremble. There +is no more beautiful passage in his writings than the one in which he +expresses the hope that he may be spared + + To rock the cradle of reposing age, + With lenient arts extend a mother's breath, + Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death; + Explore the thought, explain the asking eye, + And keep awhile one parent from the sky. + +Here at least he is sincere beyond suspicion; and we know from +unimpeachable testimony that the sentiment so perfectly expressed was +equally exemplified in his life. It sounds easy, but unfortunately the +ease is not always proved in practice, for a man of genius to be +throughout their lives an unmixed comfort to his parents. It is +unpleasant to remember that a man so accessible to tender emotions +should jar upon us by his language about women generally. Byron +countersigns the opinion of Bolingbroke that he knew the sex well; but +testimony of that kind hardly prepossesses us in his favour. In fact, +the school of Bolingbroke and Swift, to say nothing of Wycherley, was +hardly calculated to generate a chivalrous tone of feeling. His +experience of Lady Mary gave additional bitterness to his sentiments. +Pope, in short, did not love good women-- + + Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear, + And best distinguished as black, brown, or fair, + +as he impudently tells a lady--as a man of genius ought; and women have +generally returned the dislike. Meanwhile the vein of benevolence shows +itself unmistakably in Pope's language about his friends. Thackeray +seizes upon this point of his character in his lectures on the English +Humourists, and his powerful, if rather too favourable, description +brings out forcibly the essential tenderness of the man who, during the +lucid intervals of his last illness, was 'always saying something kindly +of his present or absent friends.' Nobody, as has often been remarked, +has paid so many exquisitely turned compliments. There is something +which rises to the dog-like in his affectionate admiration for Swift and +for Bolingbroke, his rather questionable 'guide, philosopher, and +friend.' Whenever he speaks of a friend, he is sure to be felicitous. +There is Garth, for example-- + + The best good Christian he, + Although he knows it not. + +There are beautiful lines upon Arbuthnot, addressed as-- + + Friend to my life, which did not you prolong, + The world had wanted many an idle song. + +Or we may quote, though one verse has been spoilt by familiarity, the +lines in which Bolingbroke is coupled with Peterborough:-- + + There St. John mingles with my friendly bowl + The feast of reason and the flow of soul; + And he whose lightning pierced the Iberian lines + Now farms my quincunx, and now ranks my vines, + And tames the genius of the stubborn plain + Almost as quickly as he conquered Spain. + +Or again, there are the verses in which he anticipates the dying words +attributed to Pitt:-- + + And you, brave Cobham, to the latest breath, + Shall feel the ruling passion strong in death; + Such in those moments, as in all the past, + 'Oh, save my country, Heaven!' shall be your last. + +Cobham's name, again, suggests the spirited lines-- + + Spirit of Arnall! aid me while I lie, + Cobham's a coward, Polwarth is a slave, + And Lyttelton a dark, designing knave; + St. John has ever been a wealthy fool-- + But let me add Sir Robert's mighty dull, + Has never made a friend in private life, + And was, besides, a tyrant to his wife. + +Perhaps the last compliment is ambiguous, but Walpole's name again +reminds us that Pope could on occasion be grateful even to an opponent. +'Go see Sir Robert,' suggests his friend in the epilogue to the Satires; +and Pope replies-- + + Seen him I have; but in his happier hour + Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power; + Seen him uncumbered with the venal tribe + Smile without art, and win without a bribe; + Would he oblige me? Let me only find + He does not think me what he thinks mankind; + Come, come; at all I laugh, he laughs no doubt; + The only difference is, I dare laugh out. + +But there is no end to the delicate flattery which may be set off +against Pope's ferocious onslaughts upon his enemies. If one could have +a wish for the asking, one could scarcely ask for a more agreeable +sensation than that of being titillated by a man of equal ingenuity in +caressing one's pet vanities. The art of administering such consolation +is possessed only by men who unite such tenderness to an exquisitely +delicate intellect. This vein of genuine feeling sufficiently redeems +Pope's writings from the charge of a commonplace worldliness. Certainly +he is not one of the 'genial' school, whose indiscriminate benevolence +exudes over all that they touch. There is nothing mawkish in his +philanthropy. Pope was, if anything, too good a hater; 'the portentous +cub never forgives,' said Bentley; but kindliness is all the more +impressive when not too widely diffused. Add to this his hearty contempt +for pomposities, humbugs, and stupidities of all kinds, and above all +the fine spirit of independence, in which we have again the real man, +and which expresses itself in such lines as these: + + Oh, let me live my own, and die so too! + (To live and die is all I have to do); + Maintain a poet's dignity and ease, + And see what friends and read what books I please. + +And we may admit that Pope, in spite of his wig and his stays, his +vanities and his affectations, was in his way as fair an embodiment as +we would expect of that 'plain living and high thinking' of which +Wordsworth regretted the disappearance. The little cripple, diseased in +mind and body, spiteful and occasionally brutal, had in him the spirit +of a man. The monarch of the literary world was far from immaculate; but +he was not without a dignity of his own. + +We come, however, to the question, what had Pope to say upon the deepest +subjects with which human beings can concern themselves? The most +explicit answer must be taken from the 'Essay on Man,' and the essay +must be acknowledged to have more conspicuous faults than any of Pope's +writings. The art of reasoning in verse is so difficult that we may +doubt whether it is in any case legitimate, and must acknowledge that it +has been never successfully practised by any English writer. Dryden's +'Religio Laici' may be better reasoning, but it is worse poetry than +Pope's Essay. It is true, again, that Pope's reasoning is intrinsically +feeble. He was no metaphysician, and confined himself to putting +together incoherent scraps of different systems. Some of his arguments +strike us as simply childish, as, for example, the quibble derived from +the Stoics, that + + The blest to-day is as completely so + As who began a thousand years ago. + +Nobody, we may safely say, was ever much comforted by that reflection. +Nor, though the celebrated argument about the scale of beings, which +Pope but half-understood, was then sanctioned by the most eminent +contemporary names, do we derive any deep consolation from the remark +that + + in the scale of reasoning life, 'tis plain, + There must be somewhere such a rank as man. + +To say no more of these frigid conceits, as they now appear to us, Pope +does not maintain the serious temper which befits a man pondering upon +the deep mysteries of the universe. Religious meditation does not +harmonise with epigrammatical satire. Admitting the value of the +reflection that other beings besides man are fitting objects of the +Divine benevolence, we are jarred by such a discord as this: + + While man exclaims, See all things for my use! + See man for mine! replies a pampered goose. + +The goose is appropriate enough in Charron or Montaigne, but should be +kept out of poetry. Such a shock, too, follows when Pope talks about the +superior beings who + + Showed a Newton as we show an ape. + +Did anybody, again, ever complain that he wanted 'the strength of bulls, +the fur of bears?'[2] Or could it be worth while to meet his complaints +in a serious poem? Pope, in short, is not merely a bad reasoner, but he +wants that deep moral earnestness which gives a profound interest to +Johnson's satires--the best productions of his school--and the deeply +pathetic religious feeling of Cowper. + +Admitting all this, however, and more, the 'Essay on Man' still contains +many passages which not only testify to the unequalled skill of this +great artist in words, but show a certain moral dignity. In the Essay, +more than in any of his other writings, we have the difficulty of +separating the solid bullion from the dross. Pope is here pre-eminently +parasitical, and it is possible to trace to other writers, such as +Montaigne, Pascal, Leibniz, Shaftesbury, Locke, and Wollaston, as well +as to the inspiration of Bolingbroke, nearly every argument which he +employs. He unfortunately worked up the rubbish as well as the gems. +When Mr. Ruskin says that his 'theology was two centuries in advance of +his time,' the phrase is curiously inaccurate. He was not really in +advance of the best men of his own time; but they, it is to be feared, +were considerably in advance of the average opinion of our own. What may +be said with more plausibility is, that whilst Pope frequently wastes +his skill in gilding refuse, he is really most sensitive to the noblest +sentiments of his contemporaries, and that, when he has good materials +to work upon, his verse glows with unusual fervour, often to sink with +unpleasant rapidity into mere quibbling or epigrammatic pungency. The +real truth is that Pope precisely expresses the position of the best +thinkers of his day. He did not understand the reasoning, but he fully +shared the sentiments of the philosophers among whom Locke and Leibniz +were the great lights. Pope is to the deists and semi-deists of his time +what Milton was to the Puritans or Dante to the Schoolmen. At times he +writes like a Pantheist, and then becomes orthodox, without a +consciousness of the transition; he is a believer in universal +predestination, and saves himself by inconsistent language about +'leaving free the human will;' his views about the origin of society are +an inextricable mass of inconsistency; and he may be quoted in behalf of +doctrines which he, with the help of Warburton, vainly endeavoured to +disavow. But, leaving sound divines to settle the question of his +orthodoxy, and metaphysicians to crush his arguments, if they think it +worth while, we are rather concerned with the general temper in which he +regards the universe, and the moral which he draws for his own +edification. The main doctrine which he enforces is, of course, one of +his usual commonplaces. The statement that 'whatever is, is right,' may +be verbally admitted, and strained to different purposes by half-a-dozen +differing schools. It may be alleged by the cynic, who regards virtue +as an empty name; by the mystic, who is lapped in heavenly contemplation +from the cares of this troublesome world; by the sceptic, whose whole +wisdom is concentrated in the duty of submitting to the inevitable; or +by the man who, abandoning the attempt of solving inscrutable enigmas, +is content to recognise in everything the hand of a Divine ordainer of +all things. Pope, judging him by his most forcible passages, prefers to +insist upon the inevitable ignorance of man in presence of the Infinite: + + 'Tis but a part we see, and not the whole; + +and any effort to pierce the impenetrable gloom can only end in +disappointment and discontent: + + In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies. + +We think that we can judge the ways of the Almighty, and correct the +errors of His work. We are as incapable of accounting for human +wickedness as for plague, tempest, and earthquake. In each case our +highest wisdom is an humble confession of ignorance; or, as he puts it, + + In both, to reason right is to submit. + +This vein of thought might, perhaps, have conducted him to the +scepticism of his master, Bolingbroke. He unluckily fills up the gaps of +his logical edifice with the untempered mortar of obsolete metaphysics, +long since become utterly uninteresting to all men. Admitting that he +cannot explain, he tries to manufacture sham explanations out of the +'scale of beings,' and other scholastic rubbish. But, in a sense, too, +the most reverent minds will agree most fully with Pope's avowal of the +limitation of human knowledge. He does not apply his scepticism or his +humility to stimulate to vain repining against the fetters with which +our minds are bound, or an angry denunciation, like that of Bolingbroke, +of the solutions in which other souls have found a sufficient refuge. +The perplexity in which he finds himself generates a spirit of +resignation and tolerance. + + Hope humbly, then; with trembling pinions soar; + Wait the great teacher, Death, and God adore. + +That is the pith of his teaching. All optimism is apt to be a little +irritating to men whose sympathies with human suffering are unusually +strong; and the optimism of a man like Pope, vivacious rather than +profound in his thoughts and his sympathies, annoys us at times by his +calm complacency. We cannot thrust aside so easily the thought of the +heavy evils under which all creation groans. But we should wrong him by +a failure to recognise the real benevolence of his sentiment. Pope +indeed becomes too pantheistic for some tastes in the celebrated +fragment--the whole poem is a conglomerate of slightly connected +fragments--beginning, + + All are but parts of one stupendous whole, + Whose body Nature is, and God the soul. + +But his real fault is that he is not consistently pantheistic. Pope was +attacked both for his pantheism and fatalism and for having borrowed +from Bolingbroke. It is curious enough that it was precisely these +doctrines which he did not borrow. Bolingbroke, like most feeble +reasoners, believed firmly in Free Will; and though a theist after a +fashion, his religion had not emotional depth or logical coherence +enough to be pantheistic. Pope, doubtless, did not here quit his +master's guidance from any superiority in logical perception. But he did +occasionally feel the poetical value of the pantheistic conception of +the universe. Pantheism, in fact, is the only poetical form of the +metaphysical theology current in Pope's day. The old historical theology +of Dante, or even of Milton, was too faded for poetical purposes; and +the 'personal Deity,' whose existence and attributes were proved by the +elaborate reasonings of the apologists of that day, was unfitted for +poetical celebration by the very fact that his existence required proof. +Poetry deals with intuitions, not with remote inferences, and therefore +in his better moments Pope spoke not of the intelligent moral Governor +discovered by philosophical investigation, but of the Divine Essence +immanent in all nature, whose 'living raiment' is the world. The finest +passages in the 'Essay on Man,' like the finest passages in Wordsworth, +are an attempt to expound that view, though Pope falls back too quickly +into epigram, as Wordsworth into prose. It was reserved for Goethe to +show what a poet might learn from the philosophy of Spinoza. Meanwhile +Pope, uncertain as is his grasp of any philosophical conceptions, shows, +not merely in set phrases, but in the general colouring of his poem, +something of that width of sympathy which should result from the +pantheistic view. The tenderness, for example, with which he always +speaks of the brute creation is pleasant in a writer so little +distinguished as a rule by an interest in what we popularly call nature. +The 'scale of being' argument may be illogical, but we pardon it when it +is applied to strengthen our sympathies with our unfortunate dependants +on the lower steps of the ladder. The lamb who + + Licks the hand just raised to shed his blood + +is a second-hand lamb, and has, like so much of Pope's writing, acquired +a certain tinge of banality, which must limit quotation; and the same +must be said of the poor Indian, who + + thinks, admitted to that equal sky, + His faithful dog will bear him company. + +But the sentiment is as right as the language (in spite of its +familiarity we can still recognise the fact) is exquisite. Tolerance of +all forms of faith, from that of the poor Indian upwards, is so +characteristic of Pope as to have offended some modern critics who might +have known better. We may pick holes in the celebrated antithesis + + For forms of government let fools contest: + Whate'er is best administered is best; + For forms of faith let graceless zealots fight, + He can't be wrong whose life is in the right. + +Certainly, they are not mathematically accurate formulę; but they are +generous, if imperfect, statements of great truths, and not unbecoming +in the mouth of the man who, as the member of an unpopular sect, learnt +to be cosmopolitan rather than bitter, and expressed his convictions in +the well-known words addressed to Swift: 'I am of the religion of +Erasmus, a Catholic; so I live, so I shall die; and hope one day to meet +you, Bishop Atterbury, the younger Craggs, Dr. Garth, Dean Berkeley, and +Mr. Hutchinson in heaven.' Who would wish to shorten the list? And the +scheme of morality which Pope deduced for practical guidance in life is +in harmony with the spirit which breathes in those words just quoted. A +recent dispute in a court of justice shows that even our most cultivated +men have forgotten Pope so far as to be ignorant of the source of the +familiar words-- + + What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards? + Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards. + +It is therefore necessary to say explicitly that the poem where they +occur, the fourth epistle of the 'Essay on Man,' not only contains +half-a-dozen other phrases equally familiar--_e.g._, 'An honest man's +the noblest work of God;'[3] 'Looks through nature up to nature's God;' +'From grave to gay, from lively to severe'--but breathes throughout +sentiments which it would be credulous to believe that any man could +express so vigorously without feeling profoundly. Mr. Ruskin has quoted +one couplet as giving 'the most complete, the most concise, and the most +lofty expression of moral temper existing in English words'-- + + Never elated, while one man's oppressed; + Never dejected, whilst another's blessed. + +The passage in which they occur is worthy of this (let us admit, just a +little over-praised) sentiment; and leads not unfitly to the conclusion +and summary of the whole, that he who can recognise the beauty of +virtue knows that + + Where Faith, Law, Morals, all began, + All end--in love of God and love of man. + +I know but too well all that may be said against this view of Pope's +morality. He is, as Ste.-Beuve says, the easiest of all men to +caricature; and it is equally easy to throw cold water upon his +morality. We may count up his affectations, ridicule his platitudes, +make heavy deductions for his insincerity, denounce his too frequent +indulgence in a certain love of dirt, which he shares with, and in which +indeed he is distanced by, Swift; and decline to believe in the virtue, +or even in the love of virtue, of a man stained by so many vices and +weaknesses. Yet I must decline to believe that men can gather grapes off +thorns, or figs off thistles, or noble expressions of moral truth from a +corrupt heart thinly varnished by a coating of affectation. Turn it how +we may, the thing is impossible. Pope was more than a mere literary +artist, though he was an artist of unparalleled excellence in his own +department. He was a man in whom there was the seed of many good +thoughts, though choked in their development by the growth of +innumerable weeds. And I will venture, in conclusion, to adduce one more +proof of the justice of a lenient verdict. I have had already to quote +many phrases familiar to everyone who is tinctured in the slightest +degree with a knowledge of English literature; and yet have been haunted +by a dim suspicion that some of my readers may have been surprised to +recognise their author. Pope, we have seen, is recognised even by judges +of the land only through the medium of Byron; and therefore the +'Universal Prayer' may possibly be unfamiliar to some readers. If so, it +will do them no harm to read over again a few of its verses. Perhaps, +after that experience, they will admit that the little cripple of +Twickenham, distorted as were his instincts after he had been stretched +on the rack of this rough world, and grievous as were his offences +against the laws of decency and morality, had yet in him a noble strain +of eloquence significant of deep religious sentiment. A phrase in the +first stanza may shock us as bordering too closely on the epigrammatic; +but the whole poem from which I take these stanzas must, I think, be +recognised as the utterance of a tolerant, reverent, and kindly heart: + + Father of all! in every age, + In every clime adored, + By saint, by savage, and by sage-- + Jehovah, Jove, or Lord! + + Thou great First Cause, least understood, + Who all my sense confined + To know but this, that thou art good, + And that myself am blind. + + ... + + What conscience dictates to be done, + Or warns me not to do, + This, teach me more than hell to shun; + That, more than heaven pursue. + + What blessings thy free bounty gives + Let me not cast away; + For God is paid when man receives-- + To enjoy is to obey. + + Yet not to earth's contracted span + Thy goodness let me bound, + Or think thee Lord alone of man, + When thousand worlds are round. + + Let not this weak, unknowing hand + Presume thy bolts to throw, + Or deal damnation round the land + On each I judge thy foe. + + If I am right, thy grace impart + Still in the right to stay: + If I am wrong, oh, teach my heart + To find that better way. + + ... + +These stanzas, I am well aware, do not quite conform to the modern taste +in hymns, nor are they likely to find favour with admirers of the +'Christian Year.' Another school would object to them on a very +different ground. The deism of Pope's day was not a stable form of +belief; but in the form in which it was held by the pure deists of the +Toland and Tindal school, or by the disguised deists who followed Locke +or Clarke, it was the highest creed then attainable; and Pope's prayer +is an adequate impression of its best sentiment. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[2] The remark was perhaps taken from Sir Thomas Browne: 'Thus have we +no just quarrel with nature for leaving us naked; or to envy the horns, +hoofs, skins, and furs of other creatures; being provided with reason +that can supply them all.'--_Religio Medici_, Part I. sec. 18. + +[3] This sentiment, by the way, was attacked by Darnley, in his edition +of Beaumont and Fletcher, as 'false and degrading to man, derogatory to +God.' As I have lately seen the remark quoted with approbation, it is +worth noticing the argument by which Darnley supports it. He says that +an honest able man is nobler than an honest man, and Aristides with the +genius of Homer nobler than Aristides with the dulness of a clown. +Undoubtedly! But surely a man might say that English poetry is the +noblest in the world, and yet admit that Shakespeare was a nobler poet +than Tom Moore. Because honesty is nobler than any other quality, it +does not follow that all honest men are on a par. This bit of cavilling +reminds one of De Quincey's elaborate argument against the lines: + + Who would not laugh, if such a man there be? + Who would not weep, if Atticus were he? + +De Quincey says that precisely the same phenomenon is supposed to make +you laugh in one line and weep in the other; and that therefore the +thought is inaccurate. As if it would not be a fit cause for tears to +discover that one of our national idols was a fitting subject for +laughter! + + + + +_SIR WALTER SCOTT_ + + +The question has begun to be asked about Scott which is asked about +every great man: whether he is still read or still read as he ought to +be read. I have been glad to see in some statistics of popular +literature that the Waverley Novels are still among the books most +frequently bought at railway stations, and scarcely surpassed even by +'Pickwick,' or 'David Copperfield.' A writer, it is said, is entitled to +be called a classic when his books have been read for a century after +his death. The number of books which fairly satisfies that condition is +remarkably small. There are certain books, of course, which we are all +bound to read if we make any claim to be decently educated. A modern +Englishman cannot afford to confess that he has not read Shakespeare or +Milton; if he talks about philosophy, he must have dipped at least into +Bacon and Hobbes and Locke; if he is a literary critic, he must know +something of Spenser and Donne and Dryden and the early dramatists; but +how many books are there of the seventeenth century which are still read +for pleasure by other than specialists? To speak within bounds, I fancy +that it would be exceedingly difficult to make out a list of one hundred +English books which after publication for a century are still really +familiar to the average reader. Something like ninety-nine of those have +in any case lost the charm of novelty, and are read, if read at all, +from some vague impression that the reader is doing a duty. It takes a +very powerful voice and a very clear utterance to make a man audible to +the fourth generation. If something of the mildew of time is stealing +over the Waverley Novels, we must regard that as all but inevitable. +Scott will have succeeded beyond any but the very greatest, perhaps even +as much as the very greatest, if, in the twentieth century, now so +unpleasantly near, he has a band of faithful followers, who still read +because they like to read and not because they are told to read. +Admitting that he must more or less undergo the universal fate, that the +glory must be dimmed even though it be not quenched, we may still ask +whether he will not retain as much vitality as the conditions of +humanity permit: Will our posterity understand at least why he was once +a luminary of the first magnitude, or wonder at their ancestors' +hallucination about a mere will-o'-the-wisp? Will some of his best +performances stand out like a cathedral amongst ruined hovels, or will +they all sink into the dust together, and the outlines of what once +charmed the world be traced only by Dryasdust and historians of +literature? It is a painful task to examine such questions impartially. +This probing a great reputation, and doubting whether we can come to +anything solid at the bottom, is especially painful in regard to Scott. +For he has, at least, this merit, that he is one of those rare natures +for whom we feel not merely admiration but affection. We may cherish the +fame of some writers in spite of, not on account of, many personal +defects; if we satisfied ourselves that their literary reputations were +founded on the sand, we might partly console ourselves with the thought +that we were only depriving bad men of a title to genius. But for Scott +most men feel in even stronger measure that kind of warm fraternal +regard which Macaulay and Thackeray expressed for the amiable, but, +perhaps, rather cold-blooded, Addison. The manliness and the sweetness +of the man's nature predispose us to return the most favourable verdict +in our power. And we may add that Scott is one of the last great English +writers whose influence extended beyond his island, and gave a stimulus +to the development of European thought. We cannot afford to surrender +our faith in one to whom, whatever his permanent merits, we must trace +so much that is characteristic of the mind of the nineteenth century. +Whilst, finally, if we have any Scotch blood in our veins, we must be +more or less than men to turn a deaf ear to the promptings of +patriotism. When Shakespeare's fame decays everywhere else, the +inhabitants of Stratford-on-Avon, if it still exist, should still revere +their tutelary saint; and the old town of Edinburgh should tremble in +its foundation when a sacrilegious hand is laid upon the glory of Scott. + +Let us, however, take courage, and, with such impartiality as we may +possess, endeavour to sift the wheat from the chaff. And, by way of +following an able guide, let us dwell for a little on the judgment +pronounced upon Scott by one whose name I would never mention without +profound respect, and who has a special claim to be heard in this case. +Carlyle is (I must now say was) both a man of genius and a Scotchman. +His own writings show in every line that he comes of the same strong +Protestant race from which Scott received his best qualities. 'The +Scotch national character,' says Carlyle himself, 'originates in many +circumstances. First of all, the Saxon stuff there was to work on; but +next, and beyond all else except that, in the Presbyterian gospel of +John Knox. It seems a good national character, and, on some sides, not +so good. Let Scott thank John Knox, for he owed him much, little as he +dreamed of debt in that quarter! No Scotchman of his time was more +entirely Scotch than Walter Scott: the good and the not so good, which +all Scotchmen inherit, ran through every fibre of him.' Nothing more +true; and the words would be as strikingly appropriate if for Walter +Scott we substitute Thomas Carlyle. And to this source of sympathy we +might add others. Who in this generation could rival Scott's talent for +the picturesque, unless it be Carlyle? Who has done so much to apply the +lesson which Scott, as he says, first taught us--that the 'bygone ages +of the world were actually filled by living men, not by protocols, +state-papers, controversies, and abstractions of men'? If Scott would in +old days--I still quote his critic--have harried cattle in Tynedale or +cracked crowns in Redswire, would not Carlyle have thundered from the +pulpit of John Knox his own gospel, only in slightly altered +phraseology--that shams should not live but die, and that men should do +what work lies nearest to their hands, as in the presence of the +eternities and the infinite silences? + +That last parallel reminds us that if there are points of similarity, +there are contrasts both wide and deep. The rugged old apostle had +probably a very low opinion of moss-troopers, and Carlyle has a message +to deliver to his fellow-creatures, which is not quite according to +Scott. And thus we see throughout his interesting essay a kind of +struggle between two opposite tendencies--a genuine liking for the man, +tempered by a sense that Scott dealt rather too much in those same shams +to pass muster with a stern moral censor. Nobody can touch Scott's +character more finely. There is a charming little anecdote which every +reader must remember: how there was a 'little Blenheim cocker' of +singular sensibility and sagacity; how the said cocker would at times +fall into musings like those of a Wertherean poet, and lived in +perpetual fear of strangers, regarding them all as potentially +dog-stealers; how the dog was, nevertheless, endowed with 'most amazing +moral tact,' and specially hated the genus _quack_, and, above all, that +of _acrid-quack_. 'These,' says Carlyle, 'though never so +clear-starched, bland-smiling, and beneficent, he absolutely would have +no trade with. Their very sugar-cake was unavailing. He said with +emphasis, as clearly as barking could say it, "Acrid-quack, avaunt!"' +But once when 'a tall, irregular, busy-looking man came halting by,' +that wise, nervous little dog ran towards him, and began 'fawning, +frisking, licking at the feet' of Sir Walter Scott. No reader of reviews +could have done better, says Carlyle; and, indeed, that canine +testimonial was worth having. I prefer that little anecdote even to +Lockhart's account of the pig, which had a romantic affection for the +author of 'Waverley.' Its relater at least perceived and loved that +unaffected benevolence, which invested even Scott's bodily presence with +a kind of natural aroma, perceptible, as it would appear, to very +far-away cousins. But Carlyle is on his guard, and though his sympathy +flows kindly enough, it is rather harshly intercepted by his sterner +mood. He cannot, indeed, but warm to Scott at the end. After touching on +the sad scene of Scott's closing years, at once ennobled and embittered +by that last desperate struggle to clear off the burden of debt, he +concludes with genuine feeling. 'It can be said of Scott, when he +departed he took a man's life along with him. No sounder piece of +British manhood was put together in that eighteenth century of time. +Alas, his fine Scotch face, with its shaggy honesty, sagacity, and +goodness, when we saw it latterly on the Edinburgh streets, was all worn +with care, the joy all fled from it, ploughed deep with labour and +sorrow. We shall never forget it--we shall never see it again. Adieu, +Sir Walter, pride of all Scotchmen; take our proud and sad farewell.' + +If even the Waverley Novels should lose their interest, the last +journals of Scott, recently published by a judicious editor, can never +lose their interest as the record of one of the noblest struggles ever +carried on by a great man to redeem a lamentable error. It is a book to +do one good. + +And now it is time to turn to the failings which, in Carlyle's opinion, +mar this pride of all Scotchmen, and make his permanent reputation +doubtful. The faults upon which he dwells are, of course, those which +are more or less acknowledged by all sound critics. Scott, says Carlyle, +had no great gospel to deliver; he had nothing of the martyr about him; +he slew no monsters and stirred no deep emotions. He did not believe in +anything, and did not even disbelieve in anything: he was content to +take the world as it came--the false and the true mixed +indistinguishably together. One Ram-dass, a Hindoo, 'who set up for +god-head lately,' being asked what he meant to do with the sins of +mankind, replied that 'he had fire enough in his belly to burn up all +the sins in the world.' Ram-dass had 'some spice of sense in him.' Now, +of fire of that kind we can detect few sparks in Scott. He was a +thoroughly healthy, sound, vigorous Scotchman, with an eye for the main +chance, but not much of an eye for the eternities. And that unfortunate +commercial element, which caused the misery of his life, was equally +mischievous to his work. He cared for no results of his working but such +as could be seen by the eye, and in one sense or other, 'handled, +looked at, and buttoned into the breeches' pocket.' He regarded +literature rather as a trade than an art; and literature, unless it is a +very poor affair, should have higher aims than that of 'harmlessly +amusing indolent, languid men.' Scott would not afford the time or the +trouble to go to the root of the matter, and is content to amuse us with +mere contrasts of costume, which will lose their interest when the +swallow-tail is as obsolete as the buff-coat. And then he fell into the +modern sin of extempore writing, and deluged the world with the first +hasty overflowings of his mind, instead of straining and refining it +till he could bestow the pure essence upon us. In short, his career is +summed up in the phrase that it was 'writing impromptu novels to buy +farms with'--a melancholy end, truly, for a man of rare genius. Nothing +is sadder than to hear of such a man 'writing himself out;' and it is +pitiable indeed that Scott should be the example of that fate which +rises most naturally to our minds. 'Something very perfect in its kind,' +says Carlyle, 'might have come from Scott, nor was it a low kind--nay, +who knows how high, with studious self-concentration, he might have +gone: what wealth nature implanted in him, which his circumstances, most +unkind while seeming to be kindest, had never impelled him to unfold?' + +There is undoubtedly some truth in the severer criticisms to which some +more kindly sentences are a pleasant relief; but there is something too +which most persons will be apt to consider as rather harsher than +necessary. Is not the moral preacher intruding a little too much on the +province of the literary critic? In fact we fancy that, in the midst of +these energetic remarks, Carlyle is conscious of certain half-expressed +doubts. The name of Shakespeare occurs several times in the course of +his remarks, and suggests to us that we can hardly condemn Scott whilst +acquitting the greatest name in our literature. Scott, it seems, wrote +for money; he coined his brains into cash to buy farms. Did not +Shakespeare do pretty much the same? As Carlyle himself puts it, 'beyond +drawing audiences to the Globe Theatre, Shakespeare contemplated no +result in those plays of his.' Shakespeare, as Pope puts it, + + Whom you and every playhouse bill + Style the divine, the matchless, what you will, + For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving flight, + And grew immortal in his own despite. + +To write for money was long held to be disgraceful; and Byron, as we +know, taunted Scott because his publishers combined + + To yield his muse just half-a-crown per line; + +whilst Scott seems half to admit that his conduct required +justification, and urges that he sacrificed to literature very fair +chances in his original profession. Many people might, perhaps, be +disposed to take a bolder line of defence. Cut out of English fiction +all that which has owed its birth more or less to a desire of earning +money honourably, and the residue would be painfully small. The truth, +indeed, seems to be simple. No good work is done when the one impelling +motive is the desire of making a little money; but some of the best work +that has ever been done has been indirectly due to the impecuniosity of +the labourers. When a man is empty he makes a very poor job of it, in +straining colourless trash from his hardbound brains; but when his mind +is full to bursting he may still require the spur of a moderate craving +for cash to induce him to take the decisive plunge. Scott illustrates +both cases. The melancholy drudgery of his later years was forced from +him in spite of nature; but nobody ever wrote more spontaneously than +Scott when he was composing his early poems and novels. If the precedent +of Shakespeare is good for anything, it is good for this. Shakespeare, +it may be, had a more moderate ambition; but there seems to be no reason +why the desire of a good house at Stratford should be intrinsically +nobler than the desire of a fine estate at Abbotsford. But then, it is +urged, Scott allowed himself to write with preposterous haste. And +Shakespeare, who never blotted a line! What is the great difference +between them? Mr. Carlyle feels that here too Scott has at least a very +good precedent to allege; but he endeavours to establish a distinction. +It was right, he says, for Shakespeare to write rapidly, 'being ready to +do it. And herein truly lies the secret of the matter; such swiftness of +writing, after due energy of preparation, is, doubtless, the right +method; the hot furnace having long worked and simmered, let the pure +gold flow out at one gush.' Could there be a better description of Scott +in his earlier years? He published his first poem of any pretensions at +thirty-four, an age which Shelley and Keats never reached, and which +Byron only passed by two years. 'Waverley' came out when he was +forty-three--most of our modern novelists have written themselves out +long before they arrive at that respectable period of life. From a child +he had been accumulating the knowledge and the thoughts that at last +found expression in his work. He had been a teller of stories before he +was well in breeches; and had worked hard till middle life in +accumulating vast stores of picturesque imagery. The delightful notes +to all his books give us some impression of the fulness of mind which +poured forth a boundless torrent of anecdote to the guests at +Abbotsford. We only repine at the prodigality of the harvest when we +forget the long process of culture by which it was produced. And, more +than this, when we look at the peculiar characteristics of Scott's +style--that easy flow of narrative never heightening into epigram, and +indeed, to speak the truth, full of slovenly blunders and amazing +grammatical solecisms, but also always full of a charm of freshness and +fancy most difficult to analyse--we may well doubt whether much labour +would have improved or injured him. No man ever depended more on the +perfectly spontaneous flow of his narratives. Carlyle quotes Schiller +against him, amongst other and greater names. We need not attempt to +compare the two men; but do not Schiller's tragedies smell rather +painfully of the lamp? Does not the professor of ęsthetics pierce a +little too distinctly through the exterior of the poet? And, for one +example, are not Schiller's excellent but remarkably platitudinous +peasants in 'William Tell' miserably colourless alongside of Scott's +rough border dalesmen, racy of speech, and redolent of their native soil +in every word and gesture? To every man his method according to his +talent. Scott is the most perfectly delightful of story-tellers, and it +is the very essence of story-telling that it should not follow +prescribed canons of criticism, but be as natural as the talk by +firesides, and, it is to be feared, over many gallons of whisky-toddy, +of which it is, in fact, the refined essence. Scott skims off the cream +of his varied stores of popular tradition and antiquarian learning with +strange facility; but he had tramped through many a long day's march, +and pored over innumerable ballads and forgotten writers, before he had +anything to skim. Had he not--if we may use the word without +offence--been cramming all his life, and practising the art of +story-telling every day he lived? Probably the most striking incidents +of his books are in reality mere modifications of anecdotes which he had +rehearsed a hundred times before, just disguised enough to fit into his +story. Who can read, for example, the inimitable legend of the blind +piper in 'Redgauntlet' without seeing that it bears all the marks of +long elaboration as clearly as one of those discourses of Whitfield, +which, by constant repetition, became marvels of dramatic art? He was an +impromptu composer, in the sense that when his anecdotes once reached +paper, they flowed rapidly, and were little corrected; but the +correction must have been substantially done in many cases long before +they appeared in the state of 'copy.' + +Let us, however, pursue the indictment a little further. Scott did not +believe in anything in particular. Yet once more, did Shakespeare? There +is surely a poetry of doubt as well as a poetry of conviction, or what +shall we say to 'Hamlet'? Appearing in such an age as the end of the +last and the beginning of this century, Scott could but share the +intellectual atmosphere in which he was born, and at that day, whatever +we may think of this, few people had any strong faith to boast of. Why +should not a poet stand aside from the chaos of conflicting opinions, so +far as he was able to extricate himself from the unutterable confusion +around them, and show us what was beautiful in the world as he saw it, +without striving to combine the office of prophet with his more +congenial occupation? Carlyle did not mean to urge so feeble a criticism +as that Scott had no very uncompromising belief in the Thirty-nine +Articles; for that is a weakness which he would share with his critic +and with his critic's idol, Goethe. The meaning is partly given by +another phrase. 'While Shakespeare works from the heart outwards, +Scott,' says Carlyle, 'works from the skin inwards, never getting near +the heart of men.' The books are addressed entirely to the everyday +mind. They have nothing to do with emotions or principles, beyond those +of the ordinary country gentleman; and, we may add, of the country +gentleman with his digestion in good order, and his hereditary gout +still in the distant future. The more inspiring thoughts, the deeper +passions, are seldom roused. If in his width of sympathy, and his vivid +perception of character within certain limits, he reminds us of +Shakespeare, we can find no analogy in his writings to the passion of +'Romeo and Juliet,' or to the intellectual agony of 'Hamlet.' The charge +is not really that Scott lacks faith, but that he never appeals, one way +or the other, to the faculties which make faith a vital necessity to +some natures, or lead to a desperate revolt against established faiths +in others. If Byron and Scott could have been combined; if the energetic +passions of the one could have been joined to the healthy nature and +quick sympathies of the other, we might have seen another Shakespeare in +the nineteenth century. As it is, both of them are maimed and imperfect +on different sides. It is, in fact, remarkable how Scott fails when he +attempts a flight into the regions where he is less at home than in his +ordinary style. Take, for instance, a passage from 'Rob Roy,' where our +dear friend, the Bailie, Nicol Jarvie, is taken prisoner by Rob Roy's +amiable wife, and appeals to her feelings of kinship. '"I dinna ken," +said the undaunted Bailie, "if the kindred has ever been weel redd out +to you yet, cousin--but it's kenned, and can be proved. My mother, +Elspeth Macfarlane (otherwise Macgregor), was the wife of my father, +Denison Nicol Jarvie (peace be with them baith), and Elspeth was the +daughter of Farlane Macfarlane (or MacGregor), at the shielding of Loch +Sloy. Now this Farlane Macfarlane (or Macgregor), as his surviving +daughter, Maggy Macfarlane, wha married Duncan Macnab of +Stuckavrallachan, can testify, stood as near to your gudeman, Robin +MacGregor, as in the fourth degree of kindred, fur----" + +'The virago lopped the genealogical tree by demanding haughtily if a +stream of rushing water acknowledged any relation with the portion +withdrawn from it for the mean domestic uses of those who dwelt on its +banks?' + +The Bailie is as real a human being as ever lived--as the present Lord +Mayor, or Dandie Dinmont, or Sir Walter himself; but Mrs. Macgregor has +obviously just stepped off the boards of a minor theatre, devoted to the +melodrama. As long as Scott keeps to his strong ground, his figures are +as good flesh and blood as ever walked in the Saltmarket of Glasgow; +when once he tries his heroics, he too often manufactures his characters +from the materials used by the frequenters of masked balls. Yet there +are many such occasions on which his genius does not desert him. Balfour +of Burley may rub shoulders against genuine Covenanters and west-country +Whigs without betraying his fictitious origin. The Master of Ravenswood +attitudinises a little too much with his Spanish cloak and his slouched +hat; but we feel really sorry for him when he disappears in the Kelpie's +Flow. And when Scott has to do with his own peasants, with the +thoroughbred Presbyterian Scotchman, he can bring intense tragic +interest from his homely materials. Douce Davie Deans, distracted +between his religious principles and his desire of saving his daughter's +life, and seeking relief even in the midst of his agonies by that +admirable burst of spiritual pride: 'Though I will neither exalt myself +nor pull down others, I wish that every man and woman in this land had +kept the true testimony and the middle and straight path, as it were on +the ridge of a hill, where wind and water steals, avoiding right-hand +snare and extremes, and left-hand way-slidings, as well as Johnny Dodds +of Farthy's acre and ae man mair that shall be nameless'--Davie is as +admirable a figure as ever appeared in fiction. It is a pity that he was +mixed up with the conventional madwoman, Madge Wildfire, and that a +story most touching in its native simplicity, was twisted and tortured +into needless intricacy. The religious exaltation of Balfour, or the +religious pigheadedness of Davie Deans, are indeed given from the point +of view of the kindly humourist, rather than of one who can fully +sympathise with the sublimity of an intense faith in a homely exterior. +And though many good judges hold the 'Bride of Lammermoor' to be Scott's +best performance, in virtue of the loftier passions which animate the +chief actors in the tragedy, we are, after all, called upon to +sympathise as much with the gentleman of good family who can't ask his +friends to dinner without an unworthy device to hide his poverty, as +with the passionate lover whose mistress has her heart broken. In truth, +this criticism as to the absence of high passion reminds us again that +Scott was a thorough Scotsman, and--for it is necessary, even now, to +avoid the queer misconception which confounds together the most distinct +races--a thorough Saxon. He belonged, that is, to the race which has in +the most eminent degree the typical English qualities. Especially his +intellect had a strong substratum of downright dogged common sense; his +religion, one may conjecture, was pretty much that of all men of sense +in his time. It was that of the society which had produced and been +influenced by Hume and Adam Smith; which had dropped its old dogmas +without becoming openly sceptical, but which emphatically took 'common +sense' for the motto of its philosophy. It was equally afraid of bigotry +and scepticism and had manufactured a creed out of decent compromises +which served well enough for ordinary purposes. Even Hume, a sceptic in +theory, was a Tory and a Scottish patriot in politics. Scott, who cared +nothing for abstract philosophy, did not bother himself to form any +definite system of opinions; he shared Hume's political prejudices +without inquiring into his philosophy. He thoroughly detested the +dogmatism of the John Knox variety, and considered the Episcopal Church +to offer the religion for a gentleman. But his common sense in such +matters was chiefly shown by not asking awkward questions and adopting +the creed which was most to his taste without committing himself to any +strong persuasion as to abstract truth. He would, on the whole, leave +such matters alone, an attitude of mind which was not to Carlyle's +taste. In the purely artistic direction, this common sense is partly +responsible for the defect which has been so often noticed in Scott's +heroes. Your genuine Scot is indeed as capable of intense passion as any +human being in the world. Burns is proof enough of the fact if anyone +doubted it. But Scott was a man of more massive and less impulsive +character. If he had strong passions, they were ruled by his common +sense; he kept them well in hand, and did not write till the period of +youthful effervescence was over. His heroes always seem to be described +from the point of view of a man old enough to see the folly of youthful +passion or too old fully to sympathise with it. They are chiefly +remarkable for a punctilious pride which gives their creator some +difficulty in keeping them out of superfluous duels. When they fall in +love, they always seem to feel themselves as Lovel felt himself in the +'Antiquary,' under the eye of Jonathan Oldbuck, who was himself once in +love but has come to see that he was a fool for his pains. Certainly, +somehow or other, they are apt to be terribly wooden. Cranstoun in the +'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' Graeme in the 'Lady of the Lake,' or Wilton +in 'Marmion,' are all unspeakable bores. Waverley himself, and Lovel in +the 'Antiquary,' and Vanbeest Brown in 'Guy Mannering,' and Harry Morton +in 'Old Mortality,' and, in short, the whole series of Scott's pattern +young men, are all chips of the same block. They can all run, and ride, +and fight, and make pretty speeches, and express the most becoming +sentiments; but somehow they all partake of one fault, the same which +was charged against the otherwise incomparable horse, namely, that they +are dead. And we must confess that this is a considerable drawback from +Scott's novels. To take the passion out of a novel is something like +taking the sunlight out of a landscape; and to condemn all the heroes to +be utterly commonplace is to remove the centre of interest in a manner +detrimental to the best intents of the story. When Thackeray endeavoured +to restore Rebecca to her rightful place in 'Ivanhoe,' he was only doing +what is more or less desirable in all the series. We long to dismount +these insipid creatures from the pride of place, and to supplant them by +some of the admirable characters who are doomed to play subsidiary +parts. There is, however, another reason for this weakness which seems +to be overlooked by many of Scott's critics. We are often referred to +Scott as a master of pure and what is called 'objective' story-telling. +Certainly I don't deny that Scott could be an admirable story-teller: +'Ivanhoe' and the 'Bride of Lammermoor' would be sufficient to convict +me of error if I did. But as mere stories, many of his novels--and +moreover his masterpieces--are not only faulty, but distinctly bad. +Taking him purely and simply from that point of view, he is very +inferior, for example, to Alexandre Dumas. You cannot follow the thread +of most of his narratives with any particular interest in the fate of +the chief actors. In the 'Introductory Epistle' prefixed to the +'Fortunes of Nigel' Scott himself gives a very interesting account of +his method. He has often, he says in answer to an imaginary critic, +begun by laying down a plan of his work and tried to construct an ideal +story, evolving itself by due degrees and ending by a proper +catastrophe. But, a demon seats himself on his pen, and leads it astray. +Characters expand; incidents multiply; the story lingers while the +materials increase; Bailie Jarvie or Dugald Dalgetty leads him astray, +and he goes many a weary mile from the regular road and has to leap +hedge and ditch to get back. If he resists the temptation, his +imagination flags and he becomes prosy and dull. No one can read his +best novels without seeing the truth of this description. 'Waverley' +made an immense success as a description of new scenes and social +conditions: the story of Waverley himself is the least interesting part +of the book. Everybody who has read 'Guy Mannering' remembers Dandie +Dinmont and Meg Merrilies and Pleydell and Dominie Sampson; but how many +people could explain the ostensible story--the love affair of Vanbeest +Brown and Julia Mannering? We can see how Scott put the story together. +He was pouring out the most vivid and interesting recollections of the +borderers whom he knew so well, of the old Scottish gentry and smugglers +and peasants, and the old-fashioned lawyers who played high jinks in the +wynds of Edinburgh. No more delightful collection of portraits could be +brought together. But he had to get a story as a thread. He started with +the legend about an astrological prediction told of Dryden and one of +his sons, and mixed it up with the Annesley case, where a claimant +turned up with more plausibility than the notorious Orton. This +introduced of necessity an impossible and conventional bit of lovemaking +and a recognition of a long-lost heir. He is full of long-lost heirs. +Equally conventional and impossible stories are introduced in the +'Antiquary,' the 'Heart of Midlothian,' and the 'Legend of Montrose' and +elsewhere. Nobody cares about them, and the characters which ostensibly +play the chief part serve merely to introduce us to the subordinate +actors. 'Waverley,' for example, gives a description drawn with +unsurpassable spirit of the state of the Highland clans in 1745; and +poor Waverley's love affair passes altogether out of sight during the +greatest and most interesting part of the narrative. When Moore said of +the poems that Scott intended to illustrate all the gentlemen's seats +between Edinburgh and London, he was not altogether wide of the mark. +The novels are all illustrations--not of 'gentlemen's seats' indeed, but +of various social states; and it is only by a kind of happy accident +when this interest in the surroundings does not put the chief characters +out of focus. Nobody has created a greater number of admirable types, +but when we run over their names we perceive that in most cases they are +the secondary performers who are ousting the nominal heroes and heroines +from their places. Dugald Dalgetty, for example, becomes so attractive +that he squeezes all the other actors into a mere corner of the canvas. +Perhaps nothing more is necessary to explain why Scott failed as a +dramatist. With him, Hamlet would have been a mere peg to show us how +Rosencrantz and Guildenstern amused themselves at the royal drinking +parties. + +For this reason, again, Scott bestows an apparently disproportionate +amount of imagination upon the mere scene-painting, the external +trappings, the clothes, or dwelling-places of his performers. A +traveller into a strange country naturally gives us the external +peculiarities which strike him. Scott has to tell us what 'completed the +costume' of his Highland chiefs or medięval barons. He took, in short, +to that 'buff-jerkin' business of which Carlyle speaks so +contemptuously, and fairly carried away the hearts of his contemporaries +by a lavish display of medięval upholstery. Lockhart tells us that Scott +could not bear the commonplace daubings of walls with uniform coats of +white, blue, and grey. All the roofs at Abbotsford 'were, in appearance +at least, of carved oak, relieved by coats-of-arms duly blazoned at the +intersections of beams, and resting on cornices, to the eye of the same +material, but composed of casts in plaster of Paris, after the foliage, +the flowers, the grotesque monsters and dwarfs, and sometimes the +beautiful heads of nuns and confessors, on which he had doated from +infancy among the cloisters of Melrose Abbey.' The plaster looks as well +as the carved oak for a time; but the day speedily comes when the sham +crumbles into ashes, and Scott's knights and nobles, like his carved +cornices, became dust in the next generation. It is hard to say it, and +yet we fear it must be admitted, that many of those historical novels, +which once charmed all men, and for which we have still a lingering +affection, are rapidly converting themselves into mere débris of plaster +of Paris. Sir F. Palgrave says somewhere that 'historical novels are +mortal enemies to history,' and we are often tempted to add that they +are mortal enemies to fiction. There maybe an exception or two, but as a +rule the task is simply impracticable. The novelist is bound to come so +near to the facts that we feel the unreality of his portraits. Either +the novel becomes pure cram, a dictionary of antiquities dissolved in a +thin solution of romance, or, which is generally more refreshing, it +takes leave of accuracy altogether and simply takes the plot and the +costume from history, but allows us to feel that genuine moderns are +masquerading in the dress of a bygone century. Even in the last case, it +generally results in a kind of dance in fetters and a comparative +breakdown under self-imposed obligations. 'Ivanhoe' and 'Kenilworth' and +'Quentin Durward,' and the rest are of course audacious anachronisms for +the genuine historian. Scott was imposed upon by his own fancy. He was +probably not aware that his Balfour of Burley was real flesh and blood, +because painted from real people round him, while his Claverhouse is +made chiefly of plumes and jackboots. Scott is chiefly responsible for +the odd perversion of facts, which reached its height, as Macaulay +remarks, in the marvellous performance of our venerated ruler, George +IV. That monarch, he observes, 'thought that he could not give a more +striking proof of his respect for the usages which had prevailed in +Scotland before the Union than by disguising himself in what, before the +Union, was considered by nine Scotchmen out of ten as the dress of a +thief.' The passage recalls the too familiar anecdote about Scott and +the wine-glass consecrated by the sacred lips of his king. At one of +the portrait exhibitions in South Kensington was hung up a +representation of George IV., with the body of a stalwart highlander in +full costume, some seven or eight feet high; the face formed from the +red puffy cheeks developed by innumerable bottles of port and burgundy +at Carlton House; and the whole surmounted by a bonnet with waving +plumes. Scott was chiefly responsible for disguising that elderly London +debauchee in the costume of a wild Gaelic cattle-stealer, and was +apparently insensible of the gross absurdity. We are told that an air of +burlesque was thrown over the proceedings at Holyrood by the apparition +of a true London alderman in the same costume as his master. An alderman +who could burlesque such a monarch must indeed have been a credit to his +turtle-soup. Let us pass by with a brief lamentation that so great and +good a man laid himself open to Carlyle's charge of sham worship. We +have lost our love of buff jerkins and other scraps from medięval +museums, and Scott is suffering from having preferred working in stucco +to carving in marble. We are perhaps inclined to saddle Scott +unconsciously with the sins of a later generation. Borrow, in his +delightful 'Lavengro,' meets a kind of Jesuit in disguise in that +sequestered dell where he beats 'the Blazing Tinman.' The Jesuit, if I +remember rightly, confides to him that Scott was a tool of that +diabolical conspiracy which has infected our old English Protestantism +with the poison of modern Popery. And, though the evil may be traced +further back, and was due to more general causes than the influence of +any one writer, Scott was clearly responsible in his degree for certain +recent phenomena. The buff jerkin became the lineal ancestor of various +copes, stoles, and chasubles which stink in the nostrils of honest +dissenters. Our modern revivalists profess to despise the flimsiness of +the first attempts in this direction. They laugh at the carpenter's +Gothic of Abbotsford or Strawberry Hill, and do not ask themselves how +their own more elaborate blundering will look in the eyes of a future +generation. What will our posterity think of our masquerading in old +clothes? Will they want a new Cromwell to sweep away nineteenth-century +shams, as his ancestors smashed medięval ruins, or will they, as we may +rather hope, be content to let our pretentious rubbish find its natural +road to ruin? One thing is pretty certain, and in its way comforting; +that, however far the rage for revivalism may be pushed, nobody will +ever want to revive the nineteenth century. But for Scott, in spite of +his complicity in this wearisome process, there is something still to be +said. 'Ivanhoe' cannot be given up. The vivacity of the description--the +delight with which Scott throws himself into the pursuit of his +knicknacks and antiquarian rubbish, has something contagious about it. +'Ivanhoe,' let it be granted, is no longer a work for men, but it still +is, or still ought to be, delightful reading for boys. The ordinary boy, +indeed, when he reads anything, seems to choose descriptions of the +cricket-matches and boat-races in which his soul most delights. But +there must still be some unsophisticated youths who can relish 'Robinson +Crusoe' and the 'Arabian Nights' and other favourites of our own +childhood, and such at least should pore over the 'Gentle and free +passage of arms at Ashby,' admire those incredible feats with the +long-bow which would have enabled Robin Hood to meet successfully a +modern volunteer armed with the Martini-Henry, and follow the terrific +head-breaking of Front-de-Boeuf, Bois-Guilbert, the holy clerk of +Copmanshurst, and the _Noir Fainéant_, even to the time when, for no +particular reason beyond the exigencies of the story, the Templar +suddenly falls from his horse, and is discovered, to our no small +surprise, to be 'unscathed by the lance of the enemy,' and to have died +a victim to the violence of his own contending passions. If 'Ivanhoe' +has been exploded by Professor Freeman, it did good work in its day. If +it were possible for a critic to weigh the merits of a great man in a +balance, and to decide precisely how far his excellences exceed his +defects, we should have to set off Scott's real services to the spread +of a genuine historical spirit against the encouragement which he +afforded to its bastard counterfeit. To enable us rightly to appreciate +our forefathers, to recognise that they were living men, and to feel our +close connection with them, is to put a vivid imagination to one of its +worthiest uses. It was perhaps inevitable that we should learn to +appreciate our ancestors by paying them the doubtful compliment of +external mimicry; and that only by slow degrees, and at the price of +much humiliating experience, should we learn the simple lesson that a +childish adult has not the grace of childhood. Even in his errors, +however, Scott had the merit of unconsciousness, which is fast +disappearing from our more elaborate affectations; and, therefore, +though we regret, we are not irritated by his weakness and deficiency in +true insight. He really enjoys his playthings too naļvely for the +pleasure not to be a little contagious, when we can descend from our +critical dignity. In his later work, indeed, the effort becomes truly +painful, tending more to the provocation of sadness than of anger. But +that work is best forgotten except as an occasional warning. + +Scott, however, understood, and nobody has better illustrated by +example, the true mode of connecting past and present. Mr. Palgrave, +whose recognition of the charm of Scott's lyrics merits our gratitude, +observes in the notes to the 'Golden Treasury' that the songs about +Brignall banks and Rosabelle exemplify 'the peculiar skill with which +Scott employs proper names;' nor, he adds, 'is there a surer sign of +high poetical genius.' The last remark might possibly be disputed; if +Milton possessed the same talent, so did Lord Macaulay, whose ballads, +admirable as they are, are not first-rate poetry; but the conclusion to +which the remark points is one which is illustrated by each of these +cases. The secret of the power is simply this, that a man whose mind is +full of historical associations somehow communicates to us something of +the sentiment which they awake in himself. Scott, as all who saw him +tell us, could never see an old tower, or a bank, or a rush of a stream +without instantly recalling a boundless collection of appropriate +anecdotes. He might be quoted as a case in point by those who would +explain all poetical imagination by the power of associating ideas. He +is the poet of association. A proper name acts upon him like a charm. It +calls up the past days, the heroes of the '41, or the skirmish of +Drumclog, or the old Covenanting times, by a spontaneous and +inexplicable magic. When the barest natural object is taken into his +imagination, all manner of past fancies and legends crystallise around +it at once. + +Though it is more difficult to explain how the same glow which ennobled +them to him is conveyed to his readers, the process somehow takes place. +We catch the enthusiasm. A word, which strikes us as a bare abstraction +in the report of the Censor General, say, or in a collection of poor law +returns, gains an entirely new significance when he touches it in the +most casual manner. A kind of mellowing atmosphere surrounds all +objects in his pages, and tinges them with poetical hues. Even the +Scottish dialect, repulsive to some ignorant Southrons, becomes musical +to his true admirers. In this power lies one secret of Scott's most +successful writing. Thus, for example, I often fancy that the second +title of 'Waverley'--''Tis Sixty Years Since'--indicates precisely the +distance of time at which a romantic novelist should place himself from +his creations. They are just far enough from us to have acquired a +certain picturesque colouring, which conceals the vulgarity, and yet +leaves them living and intelligible beings. His best stories might be +all described as 'Tales of a Grandfather.' They have the charm of +anecdotes told to the narrator by some old man who had himself been part +of what he describes. Scott's best novels depend, for their deep +interest, upon the scenery and society with which he had been familiar +in his early days, more or less harmonised by removal to what we may +call, in a different sense from the common one, the twilight of history; +that period, namely, from which the broad glare of the present has +departed, and which we can yet dimly observe without making use of the +dark lantern of ancient historians, and accepting the guidance of +Dryasdust. Dandie Dinmont, though a contemporary of Scott's youth, +represented a fast perishing phase of society; and Balfour of Burley, +though his day was past, had yet left his mantle with many spiritual +descendants who were scarcely less familiar. Between the times so fixed +Scott seems to exhibit his genuine power; and within these limits we +should find it hard to name any second, or indeed any third. + +Indeed, when we have gone as far as we please in denouncing shams, +ridiculing men in buff-jerkins, and the whole Wardour Street business of +gimcrack and Brummagem antiquities, it still remains true that Scott's +great service was what we may call the vivification of history. He made +us feel, it is generally said, as no one had ever made us feel before, +that the men of the past were once real human beings; and I can agree if +I am permitted to make a certain distinction. His best service, I should +say, was not so much in showing us the past as it was when it was +present; but in showing us the past as it is really still present. His +knights and crusaders and feudal nobles are after all unreal, and the +best critics felt even in his own day that his greatest triumphs were in +describing the Scottish peasantry of his time. Dandie Dinmont and Jeanie +Deans and their like are better than many Front de Boeufs and Robin +Hoods. It is in dealing with his own contemporaries that he really shows +the imaginative insight which entitles him to be called a great creator +as well as an amusing story-teller. But this, rightly stated, is not +inconsistent with the previous statement. For the special characteristic +of Scott as distinguished from his predecessors is precisely his clear +perception that the characters whom he loved so well and described so +vividly were the products of a long historical evolution. His patriotism +was the love of a country in which everything had obvious roots in its +previous history. The stout farmer Dinmont was the descendant of the old +borderers; the Deanses were survivals from the days of the Covenanters +or of John Knox; every peculiarity upon which he delighted to dwell was +invested with all the charm of descent from a long and picturesque +history. When Fielding describes the squires or lawyers of the +eighteenth century, he says nothing to show that he was even aware of +the existence of a seventeenth, or still less of a sixteenth century. +Scott can describe no character without assigning to it its place in +the social organism which has been growing up since the earliest dawn of +history. This was, of course, no accident. He came at the time when the +little provincial centres were just feeling the first invasion of the +great movements from without. Edinburgh, whether quite comparable to +Athens or not, had been for two or three generations a remarkable centre +of intellectual cultivation. Hume and Adam Smith were only the most +conspicuous members of a society which monopolised pretty well all the +philosophy which existed in the island and a great deal of the history +and criticism. In Scott's time the patriotic feeling which had been a +blind instinct was becoming more or less self-conscious. The literary +society in which Scott was leader of the Tories, and Jeffrey of the +Whigs, included a large proportion of the best intellect of the time and +was sufficiently in contact with the outside world to be conscious of +its own characteristics. When the crash of the French Revolution came in +Scott's youth, Burke denounced its _ą priori_ abstract reasonings in the +name of prescription. A traditional order and belief were essential, as +he urged, to the well-being of every human society. What Scott did +afterwards was precisely to show by concrete instances, most vividly +depicted, the value and interest of a natural body of traditions. Like +many other of his ablest contemporaries, he saw with alarm the great +movement, of which the French Revolution was the obvious embodiment, +sweeping away all manner of local traditions and threatening to engulf +the little society which still retained its specific character in +Scotland. He was stirred, too, in his whole nature when any sacrilegious +reformer threatened to sweep away any part of the true old Scottish +system. And this is, in fact, the moral implicitly involved in Scott's +best work. Take the beggar, for example, Edie Ochiltree, the old +'bluegown.' Beggars, you say, are a nuisance and would be sentenced to +starvation by Mr. Malthus in the name of an abstract principle of +population. But look, says Scott, at the old-fashioned beggar as he +really was. He had his place in society; he was the depository of the +legends of the whole country-side: chatting with the lairds, the +confidential friend of fishermen, peasants, and farmers; the oracle in +all sports and ruler of village feasts; repaying in friendly offices far +more than the value of the alms which he took as a right; a respecter of +old privileges, because he had privileges himself; and ready when the +French came to take his part in fighting for the old country. There can +be no fear for a country, says Scott, where even the beggar is as ready +to take up arms as the noble. The bluegown, in short, is no waif and +stray, no product of social corruption, or mere obnoxious parasite, but +a genuine member of the fabric, who could respect himself and scorn +servility as much as the highest members of the social hierarchy. Scott, +as Lockhart tells us, was most grievously wounded by the insults of the +Radical mob in Selkirk, who cried 'Burke Sir Walter!' in the place where +all men had loved and honoured him. It was the meeting of the old and +new, and the revelation to Scott in brutal terms of the new spirit which +was destroying all the old social ties. Scott and Wordsworth and +Coleridge and Southey and their like saw in fact the approach of that +industrial revolution, as we call it now, which for good or evil has +been ever since developing. The Radicals denounced them as mere +sentimentalists; the solid Whigs, who fancied that the revolution was +never to get beyond the Reform Bill of 1832, laughed at them as mere +obstructives; by us, who, whatever our opinions, speak with the +advantage of later experience, it must be admitted that such +Conservatism had its justification, and that good and far-seeing men +might well look with alarm at changes whose far-reaching consequences +cannot yet be estimated. Scott, meanwhile, is the incomparable painter +of the sturdy race which he loved so well--a race high-spirited, loyal +to its principles, surpassingly energetic, full of strong affections and +manly spirits, if crabbed, bigoted, and capable of queer perversity and +narrow self-conceit. Nor, if we differ from his opinions, can anyone who +desires to take a reasonable view of history doubt the interest and +value of the conceptions involved. Scott was really the first +imaginative observer who saw distinctly how the national type of +character is the product of past history, and embodies all the great +social forces by which it has slowly shaped itself. That is the new +element in his portraiture of human life; and we may pardon him if he +set rather too high a value upon the picturesque elements which he had +been the first to recognise. One of the acutest of recent writers upon +politics, the late Mr. Bagehot, has insisted upon the immense value of +what he called a 'solid cake of customs,' and the thought is more or +less familiar to every writer of the evolutionist way of thinking. +Scott, without any philosophy to speak of, political or otherwise, saw +and recognised intuitively a typical instance. He saw how much the +social fabric had been woven out of ancient tradition; and he made +others see it more clearly than could be done by any abstract reasoner. + +When naturalists wish to preserve a skeleton, they bury an animal in an +ant-hill and dig him up after many days with all the perishable matter +fairly eaten away. That is the process which great men have to undergo. +A vast multitude of insignificant, unknown, and unconscious critics +destroy what has no genuine power of resistance, and leave the remainder +for posterity. Much disappears in every case, and it is a question, +perhaps, whether the firmer parts of Scott's reputation will be +sufficiently coherent to resist after the removal of the rubbish. We +must admit that even his best work is of more or less mixed value, and +that the test will be a severe one. Yet we hope, not only for reasons +already suggested, but for one which remains to be expressed. The +ultimate source of pleasure derivable from all art is that it brings you +into communication with the artist. What you really love in the picture +or the poem is the painter or the poet whom it brings into sympathy with +you across the gulf of time. He tells you what are the thoughts which +some fragment of natural scenery, or some incident of human life, +excited in a mind greatly wiser and more perceptive than your own. A +dramatist or a novelist professes to describe different actors on his +little scene, but he is really setting forth the varying phases of his +own mind. And so Dandie Dinmont, or the Antiquary, or Balfour of Burley, +is merely the conductor through which Scott's personal magnetism affects +our own natures. And certainly, whatever faults a critic may discover in +the work, it may be said that no work in our literature places us in +communication with a manlier or more lovable nature. Scott, indeed, +setting up as the landed proprietor at Abbotsford, and solacing himself +with painted plaster of Paris instead of carved oak, does not strike us, +any more than he does Carlyle, as a very noble phenomenon. But luckily +for us, we have also the Scott who must have been the most charming of +all conceivable companions; the Scott who was idolised even by a +judicious pig; the Scott, who, unlike the irritable race of literary +magnates in general, never lost a friend, and whose presence diffused an +equable glow of kindly feeling to the farthest limits of the social +system which gravitated round him. He was not precisely brilliant; +nobody, so far as we know, who wrote so many sentences has left so few +that have fixed themselves upon us as established commonplaces; beyond +that unlucky phrase about 'my name being MacGregor and my foot being on +my native heath'--which is not a very admirable sentiment--I do not at +present remember a single gem of this kind. Landor, I think, said that +in the whole of Scott's poetry there was only one good line, that, +namely, in the poem about Helvellyn referring to the dog of the lost +man-- + + When the wind waved his garments, how oft didst thou start! + +Scott is not one of the coruscating geniuses, throwing out epigrams at +every turn, and sparkling with good things. But the poetry, which was +first admired to excess and then rejected with undue contempt, is now +beginning to find its due level. It is not poetry of the first order. It +is not the poetry of deep meditation or of rapt enthusiasm. Much that +was once admired has now become rather offensive than otherwise. And yet +it has a charm, which becomes more sensible the more familiar we grow +with it, the charm of unaffected and spontaneous love of nature; and not +only is it perfectly in harmony with the nature which Scott loved so +well, but it is still the best interpreter of the sound healthy love of +wild scenery. Wordsworth, no doubt, goes deeper; and Byron is more +vigorous; and Shelley more ethereal. But it is, and will remain, a good +thing to have a breath from the Cheviots brought straight into London +streets, as Scott alone can do it. When Washington Irving visited +Scott, they had an amicable dispute as to the scenery: Irving, as became +an American, complaining of the absence of forests; Scott declaring his +love for 'his honest grey hills,' and saying that if he did not see the +heather once a year he thought he should die. Everybody who has +refreshed himself with mountain and moor this summer should feel how +much we owe, and how much more we are likely to owe in future, to the +man who first inoculated us with his own enthusiasm, and who is still +the best interpreter of the 'honest grey hills.' Scott's poetical +faculty may, perhaps, be more felt in his prose than his verse. The fact +need not be decided; but as we read the best of his novels we feel +ourselves transported to the 'distant Cheviot's blue;' mixing with the +sturdy dalesmen, and the tough indomitable puritans of his native land; +for their sakes we can forgive the exploded feudalism and the faded +romance which he attempted with less success to galvanise into life. The +pleasure of that healthy open-air life, with that manly companion, is +not likely to diminish; and Scott as its exponent may still retain a +hold upon our affections which would have been long ago forfeited if he +had depended entirely on his romantic nonsense. We are rather in the +habit of talking about a healthy animalism, and try most elaborately to +be simple and manly. When we turn from our modern professors in that +line, who affect a total absence of affectation, to Scott's Dandie +Dinmonts and Edie Ochiltrees, we see the difference between the sham and +the reality, and fancy that Scott may still have a lesson or two to +preach to this generation. Those to come must take care of themselves. + + + + +_NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE_ + + +The most obvious fact about Hawthorne is that he gave one solution of +the problem what elements of romance are discoverable amongst the harsh +prose of this prosaic age. How is the novelist who, by the inevitable +conditions of his style, is bound to come into the closest possible +contact with facts, who has to give us the details of his hero's +clothes, to tell us what he had for breakfast, and what is the state of +the balance at his banker's--how is he to introduce the ideal element +which must, in some degree, be present in all genuine art? What +precisely is meant by 'ideal' is a question which for the moment I +pretermit. Anyhow a mere photographic reproduction of this muddy, +money-making, bread-and-butter-eating world would be intolerable. At the +very lowest, some effort must be made at least to select the most +promising materials, and to strain out the coarse or the simply prosaic +ingredients. Various attempts have been made to solve the problem since +De Foe founded the modern school of English novelists, by giving us what +is in one sense a servile imitation of genuine narrative, but which is +redeemed from prose by the unique force of the situation. De Foe +painting mere everyday pots and pans is as dull as a modern blue-book; +but when his pots and pans are the resource by which a human being +struggles out of the most appalling conceivable 'slough of despond,' +they become more poetical than the vessels from which the gods drink +nectar in epic poems. Since he wrote, novelists have made many voyages +of discovery, with varying success, though they have seldom had the +fortune to touch upon so marvellous an island as that still sacred to +the immortal Crusoe. They have ventured far into cloud-land, and, +returning to _terra firma_, they have plunged into the trackless and +savage-haunted regions which are girdled by the Metropolitan Railway. +They have watched the magic coruscations of some strange 'Aurora +Borealis' of dim romance, or been content with the domestic gaslight of +London streets. Amongst the most celebrated of all such adventurers were +the band which obeyed the impulse of Sir Walter Scott. For a time it +seemed that we had reached a genuine Eldorado of novelists, where solid +gold was to be had for the asking, and visions of more than earthly +beauty rewarded the labours of the explorer. Now, alas! our opinion is a +good deal changed; the fairy treasures which Scott brought back from his +voyages have turned into dead leaves according to custom; and the +curiosities, upon which he set so extravagant a price, savour more of +Wardour Street than of the genuine medięval artists. Nay, there are +scoffers, though I am not of them, who think that the tittle-tattle +which Miss Austen gathered at the country-houses of our grandfathers is +worth more than the showy but rather flimsy eloquence of the 'Ariosto of +the North.' Scott endeavoured at least, if with indifferent success, to +invest his scenes with something of + + The light that never was on sea or land, + The consecration and the poet's dream. + +If he too often indulged in mere theatrical devices, and mistook the +glare of the footlights for the sacred glow of the imagination, he +professed, at least, to introduce us to an ideal world. Later novelists +have generally abandoned the attempt, and are content to reflect our +work-a-day life with almost servile fidelity. They are not to be blamed; +and doubtless the very greatest writers are those who can bring their +ideal world into the closest possible contact with our sympathies, and +show us heroic figures in modern frock-coats and Parisian fashions. The +art of story-telling is manifold, and its charm depends greatly upon the +infinite variety of its applications. And yet, for that very reason, +there are moods in which one wishes that the modern story-teller would +more frequently lead us away from the commonplace region of newspapers +and railways to regions where the imagination can have fair play. +Hawthorne is one of the few eminent writers to whose guidance we may in +such moods most safely entrust ourselves; and it is tempting to ask, +what was the secret of his success? The effort, indeed, to investigate +the materials from which some rare literary flavour is extracted is +seldom satisfactory. We are reminded of the automaton chess-player who +excited the wonder of the last generation. The showman, like the critic, +laid bare his inside, and displayed all the cunning wheels and cogs and +cranks by which his motions were supposed to be regulated. Yet, after +all, the true secret was that there was a man inside the machine. Some +such impression is often made by the most elaborate demonstrations of +literary anatomists. We have been mystified, not really entrusted with +any revelation. And yet, with this warning as to the probable success of +our examination, let us try to determine some of the peculiarities to +which Hawthorne owes this strange power of bringing poetry out of the +most unpromising materials. + +In the first place, then, he had the good fortune to be born in the most +prosaic of all countries--the most prosaic, that is, in external +appearance, and even in the superficial character of its inhabitants. +Hawthorne himself reckoned this as an advantage, though in a very +different sense from that in which we are speaking. It was as a patriot, +and not as an artist, that he congratulated himself on his American +origin. There is a humorous struggle between his sense of the rawness +and ugliness of his native land and the dogged patriotism befitting a +descendant of the genuine New England Puritans. Hawthorne the novelist +writhes at the discords which torture his delicate sensibilities at +every step; but instantly Hawthorne the Yankee protests that the very +faults are symptomatic of excellence. He is like a sensitive mother, +unable to deny that her awkward hobbledehoy of a son offends against the +proprieties, but tacitly resolved to see proofs of virtues present or to +come even in his clumsiest tricks. He forces his apologies to sound like +boasting. 'No author,' he says, 'can conceive of the difficulty of +writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no +antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but +a commonplace prosperity, as is happily' (it must and shall be happily!) +'the case with my dear native land. It will be very long, I trust, +before romance-writers may find congenial and easily-handled themes +either in the annals of our stalwart republic, or in any characteristic +and probable events of our individual lives. Romance and poetry, ivy, +lichens, and wallflowers need ruins to make them grow.' If, that is, I +am forced to confess that poetry and romance are absent, I will +resolutely stick to it that poetry and romance are bad things, even +though the love of them is the strongest propensity of my nature. To my +thinking, there is something almost pathetic in this loyal +self-deception; and therefore I have never been offended by certain +passages in 'Our Old Home' which appear to have caused some irritation +in touchy Englishmen. There is something, he says by way of apology, +which causes an American in England to take up an attitude of +antagonism. 'These people think so loftily of themselves, and so +contemptuously of everybody else, that it requires more generosity than +I possess to keep always in perfectly good humour with them.' That may +be true; for, indeed, I believe that all Englishmen, whether +ostentatiously cosmopolitan or ostentatiously patriotic, have a peculiar +type of national pride at least as offensive as that of Frenchmen, +Germans, or Americans; and, to a man of Hawthorne's delicate +perceptions, the presence of that sentiment would reveal itself through +the most careful disguises. But that which really caused him to cherish +his antagonism was, I suspect, something else: he was afraid of loving +us too well; he feared to be tempted into a denial of some point of his +patriotic creed; he is always clasping it, as it were, to his bosom, and +vowing and protesting that he does not surrender a single jot or tittle +of it. Hawthorne in England was like a plant suddenly removed to a rich +soil from a dry and thirsty land. He drinks in at every pore the +delightful influences of which he has had so scanty a supply. An old +cottage, an ivy-grown wall, a country churchyard with its quaint +epitaphs, things that are commonplace to most Englishmen and which are +hateful to the sanitary inspector, are refreshing to every fibre of his +soul. He tries in vain to take the sanitary inspector's view. In spite +of himself he is always falling into the romantic tone, though a sense +that he ought to be sternly philosophical just gives a humorous tinge +to his enthusiasm. Charles Lamb could not have improved his description +of the old hospital at Leicester, where the twelve brethren still wear +the badge of the Bear and Ragged Staff. He lingers round it, and gossips +with the brethren, and peeps into the garden, and sits by the cavernous +archway of the kitchen fireplace, where the very atmosphere seems to be +redolent with aphorisms first uttered by ancient monks, and jokes +derived from Master Slender's note-book, and gossip about the wrecks of +the Spanish Armada. No connoisseur could pore more lovingly over an +ancient black-letter volume, or the mellow hues of some old painter's +masterpiece. He feels the charm of our historical continuity, where the +immemorial past blends indistinguishably with the present, to the +remotest recesses of his imagination. But then the Yankee nature within +him must put in a sharp word or two; he has to jerk the bridle for fear +that his enthusiasm should fairly run away with him. 'The trees and +other objects of an English landscape,' he remarks, or, perhaps we +should say, he complains, 'take hold of one by numberless minute +tendrils as it were, which, look as closely as we choose, we never find +in an American scene;' but he inserts a qualifying clause, just by way +of protest, that an American tree would be more picturesque if it had an +equal chance; and the native oak of which we are so proud is summarily +condemned for 'John Bullism'--a mysterious offence common to many things +in England. Charlecote Hall, he presently admits, 'is a most delightful +place.' Even an American is tempted to believe that real homes can only +be produced by 'the slow ingenuity and labour of many successive +generations,' when he sees the elaborate beauty and perfection of a +well-ordered English abode. And yet he persuades himself that even here +he is the victim of some delusion. The impression is due to the old man +which stills lurks even in the polished American, and forces him to look +through his ancestor's spectacles. The true theory, it appears, is that +which Holgrave expresses for him in the 'Seven Gables,' namely, that we +should free ourselves of the material slavery imposed upon us by the +brick-and-mortar of past generations, and learn to change our houses as +easily as our coats. We ought to feel--only we unfortunately can't +feel--that a tent or a wigwam is as good as a house. The mode in which +Hawthorne regards the Englishman himself is a quaint illustration of the +same theory. An Englishwoman, he admits reluctantly and after many +protestations, has some few beauties not possessed by her American +sisters. A maiden in her teens has 'a certain charm of half-blossom and +delicately folded leaves, and tender womanhood shielded by maidenly +reserves, with which, somehow or other, our American girls often fail to +adorn themselves during an appreciable moment.' But he revenges himself +for this concession by an almost savage onslaught upon the full-blown +British matron with her 'awful ponderosity of frame ... massive with +solid beef and streaky tallow,' and apparently composed 'of steaks and +sirloins.' He laments that the English violet should develop into such +an overblown peony, and speculates upon the whimsical problem, whether a +middle-aged husband should be considered as legally married to all the +accretions which have overgrown the slenderness of his bride. Should not +the matrimonial bond be held to exclude the three-fourths of the wife +that had no existence when the ceremony was performed? A question not to +be put without a shudder. The fact is, that Hawthorne had succeeded only +too well in misleading himself by a common fallacy. That pestilent +personage, John Bull, has assumed so concrete a form in our +imaginations, with his top-boots and his broad shoulders and vast +circumference, and the emblematic bulldog at his heels, that for most +observers he completely hides the Englishman of real life. Hawthorne had +decided that an Englishman must and should be a mere mass of transformed +beef and beer. No observation could shake his preconceived impression. +At Greenwich Hospital he encountered the mighty shade of the +concentrated essence of our strongest national qualities; no truer +Englishman ever lived than Nelson. But Nelson was certainly not the +conventional John Bull, and, therefore, Hawthorne roundly asserts that +he was not an Englishman. 'More than any other Englishman he won the +love and admiration of his country, but won them through the efficacy of +qualities that are not English.' Nelson was of the same breed as +Cromwell, though his shoulders were not so broad; but Hawthorne insists +that the broad shoulders, and not the fiery soul, are the essence of +John Bull. He proceeds with amusing unconsciousness to generalise this +ingenious theory, and declares that all extraordinary Englishmen are +sick men, and therefore deviations from the type. When he meets another +remarkable Englishman in the flesh, he applies the same method. Of Leigh +Hunt, whom he describes with warm enthusiasm, he dogmatically declares, +'there was not an English trait in him from head to foot, morally, +intellectually, or physically.' And the reason is admirable. 'Beef, ale, +or stout, brandy or port-wine, entered not at all into his +constitution.' All Englishmen are made of those ingredients, and if not, +why, then, they are not Englishmen. By the same method it is easy to +show that all Englishmen are drunkards, or that they are all +teetotalers; you have only to exclude as irrelevant every case that +contradicts your theory. Hawthorne, unluckily, is by no means solitary +in his mode of reasoning. The ideal John Bull has hidden us from +ourselves as well as from our neighbours, and the race which is +distinguished above all others for the magnificent wealth of its +imaginative literature is daily told--and, what is more, tells +itself--that it is a mere lump of prosaic flesh and blood, with scarcely +soul enough to keep it from stagnation. If we were sensible we should +burn that ridiculous caricature of ourselves along with Guy Fawkes; but +meanwhile we can hardly complain if foreigners are deceived by our own +misrepresentations. + +Against Hawthorne, as I have said, I feel no grudge, though a certain +regret that his sympathy with that deep vein of poetical imagination +which underlies all our 'steaks and sirloins' should have been +intercepted by this detestable lay-figure. The poetical humorist must be +allowed a certain license in dealing with facts; and poor Hawthorne, in +the uncongenial atmosphere of the Liverpool Custom-house, had doubtless +much to suffer from a thick-skinned generation. His characteristic +shyness made it a hard task for him to penetrate through our outer +rind--which, to say the truth, is often elephantine enough--to the +central core of heat; and we must not complain if he was too apt to deny +the existence of what to him was unattainable. But the problem +recurs--for everybody likes to ask utterly unanswerable +questions--whether Hawthorne would not have developed into a still +greater artist if he had been more richly supplied with the diet so dear +to his inmost soul? Was it not a thing to weep over, that a man so +keenly alive to every picturesque influence, so anxious to invest his +work with the enchanted haze of romantic association, should be confined +till middle age amongst the bleak granite rocks and the half-baked +civilisation of New England? 'Among ourselves,' he laments, 'there is no +fairy land for the romancer.' What if he had been brought up in the +native home of the fairies--if there had been thrown open to him the +gates through which Shakespeare and Spenser caught their visions of +ideal beauty? Might we not have had an appendix to the 'Midsummer +Night's Dream,' and might not a modern 'Faerie Queen' have brightened +the prosaic wilderness of this nineteenth century? The question, as I +have said, is rigidly unanswerable. We have not yet learnt how to breed +poets, though we have made some progress in regard to pigs. Nobody can +tell, and perhaps, therefore, it is as well that nobody should guess, +what would have been the effect of transplanting Shakespeare to modern +Stratford, or of exiling him to the United States. And yet--for it is +impossible to resist entirely the pleasure of fruitless speculation--we +may guess that there are some reasons why there should be a risk in +transplanting so delicate a growth as the genius of Hawthorne. There are +more ways, so wise men tell us, of killing a cat than choking it with +cream; but it is a very good way. Over-feeding produces atrophy of some +of the vital functions in higher animals than cats, and the imagination +may be enfeebled rather than strengthened by an over-supply of +materials. Hawthorne, if his life had passed where the plough may turn +up an antiquity in every furrow, and the whole face of the country is +enamelled with ancient culture, might have wrought more gorgeous hues +into his tissues, but he might have succumbed to the temptation of +producing mere upholstery. The fairy land for which he longed is full of +dangerous enchantments, and there are many who have lost in it the +vigour which comes from breathing the keen air of everyday life. From +that risk Hawthorne was effectually preserved in his New England home. +Having to abandon the poetry which is manufactured out of mere external +circumstances, he was forced to draw it from deeper sources. With easier +means at hand of enriching his pages, he might have left the mine +unworked. It is often good for us to have to make bricks without straw. +Hawthorne, who was conscious of the extreme difficulty of the problem, +and but partially conscious of the success of his solution of it, +naturally complained of the severe discipline to which he owed his +strength. We who enjoy the results may feel how much he owed to the very +sternness of his education and the niggard hand with which his +imaginative sustenance was dealt out to him. The observation may sound +paradoxical at the first moment, and yet it is supported by analogy. Are +not the best cooks produced just where the raw material is the worst, +and precisely because it is there worst? Now, cookery is the art by +which man is most easily distinguished from beasts, and it requires +little ingenuity to transfer its lessons to literature. At the same time +it may be admitted that some closer inquiry is necessary in order to +make the hypothesis probable, and I will endeavour from this point of +view to examine some of Hawthorne's exquisite workmanship. + +The story which perhaps generally passes for his masterpiece is +'Transformation,' for most readers assume that a writer's longest book +must necessarily be his best. In the present case, I think that this +method, which has its conveniences, has not led to a perfectly just +conclusion. In 'Transformation,' Hawthorne has for once the advantage of +placing his characters in a land where 'a sort of poetic or fairy +precinct,' as he calls it, is naturally provided for them. The very +stones of the streets are full of romance, and he cannot mention a name +that has not a musical ring. Hawthorne, moreover, shows his usual tact +in confining his aims to the possible. He does not attempt to paint +Italian life and manners; his actors belong by birth, or by a kind of +naturalisation, to the colony of the American artists in Rome; and he +therefore does not labour under the difficulty of being in imperfect +sympathy with his creatures. Rome is a mere background, and surely a +most felicitous background, to the little group of persons who are +effectually detached from all such vulgarising associations with the +mechanism of daily life in less poetical countries. The centre of the +group, too, who embodies one of Hawthorne's most delicate fancies, could +have breathed no atmosphere less richly perfumed with old romance. In +New York he would certainly have been in danger of a Barnum's museum, +beside Washington's nurse and the woolly horse. It is a triumph of art +that a being whose nature trembles on the very verge of the grotesque +should walk through Hawthorne's pages with such undeviating grace. In +the Roman dreamland he is in little danger of such prying curiosity, +though even there he can only be kept out of harm's way by the admirable +skill of his creator. Perhaps it may be thought by some severe critics +that, with all his merits, Donatello stands on the very outside verge of +the province permitted to the romancer. But without cavilling at what is +indisputably charming, and without dwelling upon certain defects of +construction which slightly mar the general beauty of the story, it has +another weakness which it is impossible quite to overlook. Hawthorne +himself remarks that he was surprised, in re-writing his story, to see +the extent to which he had introduced descriptions of various Italian +objects. 'Yet these things,' he adds, 'fill the mind everywhere in +Italy, and especially in Rome, and cannot be kept from flowing out upon +the page when one writes freely and with self-enjoyment.' The +associations which they called up in England were so pleasant, that he +could not find it in his heart to cancel. Doubtless that is the precise +truth, and yet it is equally true that they are artistically out of +place. There are passages which recall the guide-book. To take one +instance--and, certainly, it is about the worst--the whole party is +going to the Coliseum, where a very striking scene takes place. On the +way they pass a baker's shop. + +'"The baker is drawing his loaves out of the oven," remarked Kenyon. "Do +you smell how sour they are? I should fancy that Minerva (in revenge for +the desecration of her temples) had slyly poured vinegar into the batch, +if I did not know that the modern Romans prefer their bread in the +acetous fermentation."' + +The instance is trivial, but it is characteristic. Hawthorne had +doubtless remarked the smell of the sour bread, and to him it called up +a vivid recollection of some stroll in Rome; for, of all our senses, the +smell is notoriously the most powerful in awakening associations. But +then what do we who read him care about the Roman taste for bread 'in +acetous fermentation?' When the high-spirited girl is on the way to meet +her tormentor, and to receive the provocation which leads to his murder, +why should we be worried by a gratuitous remark about Roman baking? It +somehow jars upon our taste, and we are certain that, in describing a +New England village, Hawthorne would never have admitted a touch which +has no conceivable bearing upon the situation. There is almost a +superabundance of minute local colour in his American Romances, as, for +example, in the 'House of the Seven Gables;' but still, every touch, +however minute, is steeped in the sentiment and contributes to the +general effect. In Rome the smell of a loaf is sacred to his +imagination, and intrudes itself upon its own merits, and, so far as we +can discover, without reference to the central purpose. If a baker's +shop impresses him unduly because it is Roman, the influence of ancient +ruins and glorious works of art is of course still more distracting. The +mysterious Donatello, and the strange psychological problem which he is +destined to illustrate, are put aside for an interval, whilst we are +called upon to listen to descriptions and meditations, always graceful, +and often of great beauty in themselves, but yet, in a strict sense, +irrelevant. Hawthorne's want of familiarity with the scenery is of +course responsible for part of this failing. Had he been a native Roman, +he would not have been so preoccupied with the wonders of Rome. But it +seems that for a romance bearing upon a spiritual problem, the scenery, +however tempting, is not really so serviceable as the less prepossessing +surroundings of America. The objects have too great an intrinsic +interest. A counter-attraction distorts the symmetry of the system. In +the shadow of the Coliseum and St. Peter's you cannot pay much attention +to the troubles of a young lady whose existence is painfully ephemeral. +Those mighty objects will not be relegated to the background, and +condescend to act as mere scenery. They are, in fact, too romantic for a +romance. The fountain of Trevi, with all its allegorical marbles, may be +a very picturesque object to describe, but for Hawthorne's purposes it +is really not equal to the town-pump at Salem; and Hilda's poetical +tower, with the perpetual light before the Virgin's image, and the doves +floating up to her from the street, and the column of Antoninus looking +at her from the heart of the city, somehow appeals less to our +sympathies than the quaint garret in the House of the Seven Gables, from +which Phoebe Pyncheon watched the singular idiosyncrasies of the +superannuated breed of fowls in the garden. The garret and the pump are +designed in strict subordination to the human figures: the tower and the +fountain have a distinctive purpose of their own. Hawthorne, at any +rate, seems to have been mastered by his too powerful auxiliaries. A +human soul, even in America, is more interesting to us than all the +churches and picture-galleries in the world; and, therefore, it is as +well that Hawthorne should not be tempted to the too easy method of +putting fine description in place of sentiment. + +But how was the task to be performed? How was the imaginative glow to be +shed over the American scenery, so provokingly raw and deficient in +harmony? A similar problem was successfully solved by a writer whose +development, in proportion to her means of cultivation, is about the +most remarkable of recent literary phenomena. Miss Brontė's bleak +Yorkshire moors, with their uncompromising stone walls, and the valleys +invaded by factories, are at first sight as little suited to romance as +New England itself, to which, indeed, both the inhabitants and the +country have a decided family resemblance. Now that she has discovered +for us the fountains of poetic interest, we can all see that the region +is not a mere stony wilderness; but it is well worth while to make a +pilgrimage to Haworth, if only to discover how little the country +corresponds to our preconceived impressions, or, in other words, how +much depends upon the eye which sees it, and how little upon its +intrinsic merits. Miss Brontė's marvellous effects are obtained by the +process which enables an 'intense and glowing mind' to see everything +through its own atmosphere. The ugliest and most trivial objects seem, +like objects heated by the sun, to radiate back the glow of passion with +which she has regarded them. Perhaps this singular power is still more +conspicuous in 'Villette,' where she had even less of the raw material +of poetry. An odd parallel may be found between one of the most striking +passages in 'Villette' and one in 'Transformation.' Lucy Snowe in one +novel, and Hilda in the other, are left to pass a summer vacation, the +one in Brussels and the other in pestiferous Rome. Miss Snowe has no +external cause of suffering but the natural effect of solitude upon a +homeless and helpless governess. Hilda has to bear about with her the +weight of a terrible secret, affecting, it may be, even the life of her +dearest friend. Each of them wanders into a Roman Catholic church, and +each, though they have both been brought up in a Protestant home, seeks +relief at the confessional. So far the cases are alike, though Hilda, +one might have fancied, has by far the strongest cause for emotion. And +yet, after reading the two descriptions--both excellent in their +way--one might fancy that the two young ladies had exchanged burdens. +Lucy Snowe is as tragic as the innocent confidante of a murderess; +Hilda's feelings never seem to rise above that weary sense of melancholy +isolation which besieges us in a deserted city. It is needless to ask +which is the best bit of work artistically considered. Hawthorne's style +is more graceful and flexible; his descriptions of the Roman Catholic +ceremonial and its influence upon an imaginative mind in distress are +far more sympathetic, and imply a wider range of intellect. But Hilda +scarcely moves us like Lucy. There is too much delicate artistic +description of picture-galleries and of the glories of St. Peter's to +allow the poor little American girl to come prominently to the surface. +We have been indulging with her in some sad but charming speculations, +and not witnessing the tragedy of a deserted soul. Lucy Snowe has very +inferior materials at her command; but somehow we are moved by a +sympathetic thrill: we taste the bitterness of the awful cup of despair +which, as she tells us, is forced to her lips in the night-watches; and +are not startled when so prosaic an object as the row of beds in the +dormitory of a French school suggests to her images worthy rather of +stately tombs in the aisles of a vast cathedral, and recall dead dreams +of an elder world and a mightier race long frozen in death. Comparisons +of this kind are almost inevitably unfair; but the difference between +the two illustrates one characteristic--we need not regard it as a +defect--of Hawthorne. His idealism does not consist in conferring +grandeur upon vulgar objects by tinging them with the reflection of deep +emotion. He rather shrinks than otherwise from describing the strongest +passions, or shows their working by indirect touches and under a +side-light. An excellent example of his peculiar method occurs in what +is in some respects the most perfect of his works, the 'Scarlet Letter.' +There, again, we have the spectacle of a man tortured by a life-long +repentance. The Puritan Clergyman, reverenced as a saint by all his +flock, conscious of a sin which, once revealed, will crush him to the +earth, watched with a malignant purpose by the husband whom he has +injured, unable to summon up the moral courage to tear off the veil, and +make the only atonement in his power, is a singularly striking figure, +powerfully conceived and most delicately described. He yields under +terrible pressure to the temptation of escaping from the scene of his +prolonged torture with the partner of his guilt. And then, as he is +returning homewards after yielding a reluctant consent to the flight, we +are invited to contemplate the agony of his soul. The form which it +takes is curiously characteristic. No vehement pangs of remorse, or +desperate hopes of escape, overpower his faculties in any simple and +straightforward fashion. The poor minister is seized with a strange +hallucination. He meets a venerable deacon, and can scarcely restrain +himself from uttering blasphemies about the Communion-supper. Next +appears an aged widow, and he longs to assail her with what appears to +him to be an unanswerable argument against the immortality of the soul. +Then follows an impulse to whisper impure suggestions to a fair young +maiden, whom he has recently converted. And, finally, he longs to greet +a rough sailor with a 'volley of good, round, solid, satisfactory, and +heaven-defying oaths.' The minister, in short, is in that state of mind +which gives birth in its victim to a belief in diabolical possession; +and the meaning is pointed by an encounter with an old lady, who, in the +popular belief, was one of Satan's miserable slaves and dupes, the +witches, and is said--for Hawthorne never introduces the supernatural +without toning it down by a supposed legendary transmission--to have +invited him to meet her at the blasphemous Sabbath in the forest. The +sin of endeavouring to escape from the punishment of his sins had +brought him into sympathy with wicked mortals and perverted spirits. + +This mode of setting forth the agony of a pure mind, tainted by one +irremovable blot, is undoubtedly impressive to the imagination in a high +degree; far more impressive, we may safely say, than any quantity of +such rant as very inferior writers could have poured out with the +utmost facility on such an occasion. Yet it might possibly be mentioned +that a poet of the highest order would have produced the effect by more +direct means. Remorse overpowering and absorbing does not embody itself +in these recondite and, one may almost say, over-ingenious fancies. +Hawthorne does not give us so much the pure passion as some of its +collateral effects. He is still more interested in the curious +psychological problem than moved by sympathy with the torture of the +soul. We pity poor Mr. Dimmesdale profoundly, but we are also interested +in him as the subject of an experiment in analytical psychology. We do +not care so much for his emotions as for the strange phantoms which are +raised in his intellect by the disturbance of his natural functions. The +man is placed upon the rack, but our compassion is aroused, not by +feeling our own nerves and sinews twitching in sympathy, but by +remarking the strange confusion of ideas produced in his mind, the +singularly distorted aspect of things in general introduced by such an +experience, and hence, if we please, inferring the keenness of the pangs +which have produced them. This turn of thought explains the real meaning +of Hawthorne's antipathy to poor John Bull. That worthy gentleman, we +will admit, is in a sense more gross and beefy than his American cousin. +His nerves are stronger, for we need not decide whether they should be +called coarser or less morbid. He is not, in the proper sense of the +word, less imaginative, for a vigorous grasp of realities is rather a +proof of a powerful than a defective imagination. But he is less +accessible to those delicate impulses which are to the ordinary passions +as electricity to heat. His imagination is more intense and less mobile. +The devils which haunt the two races partake of the national +characteristics. John Bunyan, Dimmesdale's contemporary, suffered under +the pangs of a remorse equally acute, though with apparently far less +cause. The devils who tormented him whispered blasphemies in his ears; +they pulled at his clothes; they persuaded him that he had committed the +unpardonable sin. They caused the very stones in the streets and tiles +on the houses, as he says, to band themselves together against him. But +they had not the refined and humorous ingenuity of the American fiends. +They tempted him, as their fellows tempted Dimmesdale, to sell his soul; +but they were too much in earnest to insist upon queer breaches of +decorum. They did not indulge in that quaint play of fancy which tempts +us to believe that the devils in New England had seduced the 'tricksy +spirit,' Ariel, to indulge in practical jokes at the expense of a nobler +victim than Stephano or Caliban. They were too terribly diabolical to +care whether Bunyan blasphemed in solitude or in the presence of human +respectabilities. Bunyan's sufferings were as poetical, but less +conducive to refined speculation. His were the fiends that haunt the +valley of the shadow of death; whereas Hawthorne's are to be encountered +in the dim regions of twilight, where realities blend inextricably with +mere phantoms, and the mind confers only a kind of provisional existence +upon the 'airy nothings' of its creation. Apollyon does not appear armed +to the teeth and throwing fiery darts, but comes as an unsubstantial +shadow threatening vague and undefined dangers, and only half-detaching +himself from the background of darkness. He is as intangible as Milton's +Death, not the vivid reality which presented itself to medięval +imaginations. + +This special attitude of mind is probably easier to the American than to +the English imagination. The craving for something substantial, whether +in cookery or in poetry, was that which induced Hawthorne to keep John +Bull rather at arm's length. We may trace the working of similar +tendencies in other American peculiarities. Spiritualism and its +attendant superstitions are the gross and vulgar form of the same phase +of thought as it occurs in men of highly-strung nerves but defective +cultivation. Hawthorne always speaks of these modern goblins with the +contempt they deserve, for they shocked his imagination as much as his +reason; but he likes to play with fancies which are not altogether +dissimilar, though his refined taste warns him that they become +disgusting when grossly translated into tangible symbols. Mesmerism, for +example, plays an important part in the 'Blithedale Romance' and the +'House of the Seven Gables,' though judiciously softened and kept in the +background. An example of the danger of such tendencies may be found in +those works of Edgar Poe, in which he seems to have had recourse to +strong stimulants to rouse a flagging imagination. What is exquisitely +fanciful and airy in Hawthorne is too often replaced in his rival by an +attempt to overpower us by dabblings in the charnel-house and prurient +appeals to our fears of the horribly revolting. After reading some of +Poe's stories one feels a kind of shock to one's modesty. We require +some kind of spiritual ablution to cleanse our minds of his disgusting +images; whereas Hawthorne's pure and delightful fancies, though at times +they may have led us too far from the healthy contact of everyday +interests, never leave a stain upon the imagination, and generally +succeed in throwing a harmonious colouring upon some objects in which we +had previously failed to recognise the beautiful. To perform that duty +effectually is perhaps the highest of artistic merits; and though we +may complain of Hawthorne's colouring as too evanescent, its charm +grows upon us the more we study it. + +Hawthorne seems to have been slow in discovering the secret of his own +power. The 'Twice-Told Tales,' he tells us, are only a fragmentary +selection from a great number which had an ephemeral existence in +long-forgotten magazines, and were sentenced to extinction by their +author. Though many of the survivors are very striking, no wise reader +will regret that sentence. It could be wished that other authors were as +ready to bury their innocents, and that injudicious admirers might +always abstain from acting as resurrection-men. The fragments which +remain, with all their merits, are chiefly interesting as illustrating +the intellectual development of their author. Hawthorne, in his preface +to the collected edition (all Hawthorne's prefaces are remarkably +instructive) tells us what to think of them. The book, he says, +'requires to be read in the clear brown twilight atmosphere in which it +was written; if opened in the sunshine it is apt to look exceedingly +like a volume of blank pages.' The remark, with deductions on the score +of modesty, is more or less applicable to all his writings. But he +explains, and with perfect truth, that though written in solitude, the +book has not the abstruse tone which marks the written communications of +a solitary mind with itself. The reason is that the sketches 'are not +the talk of a secluded man with his own mind and heart, but his attempts +... to open an intercourse with the world.' They may, in fact, be +compared to Brummel's failures; and, though they do not display the +perfect grace and fitness which would justify him in presenting himself +to society, they were well worth taking up to illustrate the skill of +the master's manipulation. We see him trying various experiments to hit +off that delicate mean between the fanciful and the prosaic, which +shall satisfy his taste and be intelligible to the outside world. +Sometimes he gives us a fragment of historical romance, as in the story +of the stern old regicide who suddenly appears from the woods to head +the colonists of Massachusetts in a critical emergency; then he tries +his hand at a bit of allegory, and describes the search for the mythical +carbuncle which blazes by its inherent splendour on the face of a +mysterious cliff in the depths of the untrodden wilderness, and lures +old and young, the worldly and the romantic, to waste their lives in the +vain effort to discover it--for the carbuncle is the ideal which mocks +our pursuit, and may be our curse or our blessing. Then perhaps we have +a domestic piece--a quiet description of a New England country scene +touched with a grace which reminds us of the creators of Sir Roger de +Coverley or the Vicar of Wakefield. Occasionally there is a fragment of +pure _diablerie_, as in the story of the lady who consults the witch in +the hollow of the three hills; and more frequently he tries to work out +one of those strange psychological problems which he afterwards treated +with more fulness of power. The minister who, for an unexplained reason, +puts on a black veil one morning in his youth, and wears it until he is +laid with it in his grave--a kind of symbolical prophecy of Dimmesdale; +the eccentric Wakefield (whose original, if I remember rightly, is to be +found in 'King's Anecdotes'), who leaves his house one morning for no +particular reason, and though living in the next street, does not reveal +his existence to his wife for twenty years; and the hero of the 'Wedding +Knell,' the elderly bridegroom whose early love has jilted him, but +agrees to marry him when she is an elderly widow and he an old bachelor, +and who appals the marriage party by coming to the church in his +shroud, with the bell tolling as for a funeral--all these bear the +unmistakable stamp of Hawthorne's mint, and each is a study of his +favourite subject, the border-land between reason and insanity. In many +of these stories appears the element of interest, to which Hawthorne +clung the more closely both from early associations and because it is +the one undeniably poetical element in the American character. +Shallow-minded people fancy Puritanism to be prosaic, because the laces +and ruffles of the Cavaliers are a more picturesque costume at a masked +ball than the dress of the Roundheads. The Puritan has become a grim and +ugly scarecrow, on whom every buffoon may break his jest. But the +genuine old Puritan spirit ceases to be picturesque only because of its +sublimity: its poetry is sublimed into religion. The great poet of the +Puritans fails, as far as he fails, when he tries to transcend the +limits of mortal imagination-- + + The living throne, the sapphire blaze, + Where angels tremble as they gaze, + He saw: but blasted with excess of light, + Closed his eyes in endless night. + +To represent the Puritan from within was not, indeed, a task suitable to +Hawthorne's powers. Carlyle has done that for us with more congenial +sentiment than could have been well felt by the gentle romancer. +Hawthorne fancies the grey shadow of a stern old forefather wondering at +his degenerate son. 'A writer of story-books! What kind of business in +life, what mode of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in +his day and generation, may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as +well have been a fiddler!' And yet the old strain remains, though +strangely modified by time and circumstance. In Hawthorne it would seem +that the peddling element of the old Puritans had been reduced to its +lowest point; the more spiritual element had been refined till it is +probable enough that the ancestral shadow would have refused to +recognise the connection. The old dogmatical framework to which he +attached such vast importance had dropped out of his descendant's mind, +and had been replaced by dreamy speculation, obeying no laws save those +imposed by its own sense of artistic propriety. But we may often +recognise, even where we cannot express in words, the strange family +likeness which exists in characteristics which are superficially +antagonistic. The man of action may be bound by subtle ties to the +speculative metaphysician; and Hawthorne's mind, amidst the most obvious +differences, had still an affinity to his remote forefathers. Their +bugbears had become his playthings; but the witches, though they have no +reality, have still a fascination for him. The interest which he feels +in them, even in their now shadowy state, is a proof that he would have +believed in them in good earnest a century and a half earlier. The +imagination, working in a different intellectual atmosphere, is unable +to project its images upon the external world; but it still forms them +in the old shape. His solitary musings necessarily employ a modern +dialect, but they often turn on the same topics which occurred to +Jonathan Edwards in the woods of Connecticut. Instead of the old Puritan +speculations about predestination and free-will, he dwells upon the +transmission by natural laws of an hereditary curse, and upon the +strange blending of good and evil, which may cause sin to be an +awakening impulse in a human soul. The change which takes place in +Donatello in consequence of his crime is a modern symbol of the fall of +man and the eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. As an +artist he gives concrete images instead of abstract theories; but his +thoughts evidently delight to dwell in the same regions where the daring +speculations of his theological ancestors took their origin. Septimius, +the rather disagreeable hero of his last romance, is a peculiar example +of a similar change. Brought up under the strict discipline of New +England, he has retained the love of musing upon insoluble mysteries, +though he has abandoned the old dogmatic guide-posts. When such a man +finds that the orthodox scheme of the universe provided by his official +pastors has somehow broken down with him, he forms some audacious theory +of his own, and is perhaps plunged into an unhallowed revolt against the +Divine order. Septimius, under such circumstances, develops into a kind +of morbid and sullen Hawthorne. He considers--as other people have +done--that death is a disagreeable fact, but refuses to admit that it is +inevitable. The romance tends to show that such a state of mind is +unhealthy and dangerous, and Septimius is contrasted unfavourably with +the vigorous natures who preserve their moral balance by plunging into +the stream of practical life. Yet Hawthorne necessarily sympathises with +the abnormal being whom he creates. Septimius illustrates the dangers of +the musing temperament, but the dangers are produced by a combination of +an essentially selfish nature with the meditative tendency. Hawthorne, +like his hero, sought refuge from the hard facts of commonplace life by +retiring into a visionary world. He delights in propounding much the +same questions as those which tormented poor Septimius, though, for +obvious reasons, he did not try to compound an elixir of life by means +of a recipe handed down from Indian ancestors. The strange mysteries in +which the world and our nature are shrouded are always present to his +imagination; he catches dim glimpses of the laws which bring out strange +harmonies, but, on the whole, tend rather to deepen than to clear the +mysteries. He loves the marvellous, not in the vulgar sense of the word, +but as a symbol of perplexity which encounters every thoughtful man in +his journey through life. Similar tenants at an earlier period might, +with almost equal probability, have led him to the stake as a dabbler in +forbidden sciences, or have caused him to be revered as one to whom a +deep spiritual instinct had been granted. + +Meanwhile, as it was his calling to tell stories to readers of the +English language in the nineteenth century, his power is exercised in a +different sphere. No modern writer has the same skill in so using the +marvellous as to interest without unduly exciting our incredulity. He +makes, indeed, no positive demands on our credulity. The strange +influences which are suggested rather than obtruded upon us are kept in +the background, so as not to invite, nor indeed to render possible, the +application of scientific tests. We may compare him once more to Miss +Brontė, who introduces, in 'Villette,' a haunted garden. She shows us a +ghost who is for a moment a very terrible spectre indeed, and then, very +much to our annoyance, rationalises him into a flesh-and-blood lover. +Hawthorne would neither have allowed the ghost to intrude so forcibly, +nor have expelled him so decisively. The garden in his hands would have +been haunted by a shadowy terror of which we could render no precise +account to ourselves. It would have refrained from actual contact with +professors and governesses; and as it would never have taken bodily +form, it would never have been quite dispelled. His ghosts are confined +to their proper sphere, the twilight of the mind, and never venture into +the broad glare of daylight. We can see them so long as we do not gaze +directly at them; when we turn to examine them they are gone, and we are +left in doubt whether they were realities or an ocular delusion +generated in our fancy by some accidental collocation of half-seen +objects. So in the 'House of the Seven Gables' we may hold what opinion +we please as to the reality of the curse which hangs over the Pyncheons +and the strange connection between them and their hereditary +antagonists; in the 'Scarlet Letter' we may, if we like, hold that there +was really more truth in the witch legends which colour the imaginations +of the actors than we are apt to dream of in our philosophy; and in +'Transformation' we are left finally in doubt as to the great question +of Donatello's ears, and the mysterious influence which he retains over +the animal world so long as he is unstained by bloodshed. In 'Septimius' +alone, it seems to me that the supernatural is left in rather too +obtrusive a shape in spite of the final explanations; though it might +possibly have been toned down had the story received the last touches of +the author. The artifice, if so it may be called, by which this is +effected--and the romance is just sufficiently dipped in the shadow of +the marvellous to be heightened without becoming offensive--sounds, like +other things, tolerably easy when it is explained; and yet the +difficulty is enormous, as may appear on reflection as well as from the +extreme rarity of any satisfactory work in the same style by other +artists. With the exception of a touch or two in Scott's stories, such +as the impressive Bodach Glas, in 'Waverley,' and the apparition in the +exquisite 'Bride of Lammermoor,' it would be difficult to discover any +parallel. + +In fact Hawthorne was able to tread in that magic circle only by an +exquisite refinement of taste, and by a delicate sense of humour, which +is the best preservative against all extravagance. Both qualities +combine in that tender delineation of character which is, after all, one +of his greatest charms. His Puritan blood shows itself in sympathy, not +with the stern side of the ancestral creed, but with the feebler +characters upon whom it weighed as an oppressive terror. He resembles, +in some degree, poor Clifford Pyncheon, whose love of the beautiful +makes him suffer under the stronger will of his relatives and the prim +stiffness of their home. He exhibits the suffering of such a character +all the more effectively because, with his kindly compassion there is +mixed a delicate flavour of irony. The more tragic scenes affect us, +perhaps, with less sense of power; the playful, though melancholy, fancy +seems to be less at home when the more powerful emotions are to be +excited; and yet once, at least, he draws one of those pictures which +engrave themselves instantaneously on the memory. The grimmest or most +passionate of writers could hardly have improved the scene where the +body of the magnificent Zenobia is discovered in the river. Every touch +goes straight to the mark. The narrator of the story, accompanied by the +man whose coolness has caused the suicide, and the shrewd, unimaginative +Yankee farmer, who interprets into coarse, downright language the +suspicions which they fear to confess to themselves, are sounding the +depths of the river by night in a leaky punt with a long pole. Silas +Foster represents the brutal, commonplace comments of the outside world, +which jar so terribly on the more sensitive and closely interested +actors in the tragedy. 'Heigho!' he soliloquises, with offensive +loudness, 'life and death together make sad work for us all. Then I was +a boy, bobbing for fish; and now I'm getting to be an old fellow, and +here I be, groping for a dead body! I tell you what, lads, if I thought +anything had really happened to Zenobia, I should feel kind o' +sorrowful.' That is the discordant chorus of the gravediggers in +'Hamlet.' At length the body is found, and poor Zenobia is brought to +the shore with her knees still bent in the attitude of prayer, and her +hands clenched in immitigable defiance. Foster tries in vain to +straighten the dead limbs. As the teller of the story gazes at her, the +grimly ludicrous reflection occurs to him that if Zenobia had foreseen +all 'the ugly circumstances of death--how ill it would become her, the +altogether unseemly aspect which she must put on, and especially old +Silas Foster's efforts to improve the matter--she would no more have +committed the dreadful act than have exhibited herself to a public +assembly in a badly-fitting garment.' + + + + +_BALZAC'S NOVELS_ + + +Balzac exacts more attention than most novel-readers are inclined to +give; he is often repulsive, and not unfrequently dull; but the student +who has once submitted to his charm becomes spell-bound. Disgusted for a +moment, he returns again and again to the strange, hideous, grotesque, +but most interesting world to which Balzac alone can introduce him. Like +the opium-eater, he acquires a taste for the visions that are conjured +up before him with so vivid a colouring, that he almost believes in +their objective existence. There are perhaps greater novelists than +Balzac; there are many who preach a purer morality; and many who give a +far greater impression of general intellectual force; but in this one +quality of intense realisation of actors and scenery he is unique. + +Balzac, indeed, was apparently himself almost incapable of +distinguishing his dreams from realities. Great wits, we know, are +allied to madness; and the boundaries seem in his case to have been most +shadowy and indistinct. Indeed, if the anecdotes reported of him be +accurate--some of them are doubtless rather overcharged--he must have +lived almost in a state of permanent hallucination. This, for example, +is a characteristic story. He inhabited for some years a house called +_les Jardies_, in the neighbourhood of Paris. He had a difficulty in +providing material furniture, owing to certain debts, which, as some +sceptics insinuated, were themselves a vast mystification. He habitually +ascribed his poverty to a certain 'deficit Kessner,' a loss which +reposed on some trifling foundation of facts, but which assumed +monstrous proportions in his imagination, and recurred perpetually as +the supposed cause of his poverty. In sober reality, however, he was +poor, and found compensation in creating a vast credit, as imaginary as +his liabilities. Upon that bank he could draw without stint. He +therefore inscribed in one place upon the bare walls of his house, 'Ici +un revźtement de marbre de Paros;' in another, 'Ici un plafond peint par +Eugčne Delacroix;' in a third, 'Ici des portes, faēon Trianon;' and, in +short, revelled in gorgeous decorations made of the same materials as +the dishes of the Barmecides' feast. A minor source of wealth was the +single walnut-tree which really grew in his gardens, and which increased +his dream-revenue by 60_l._ a year. This extraordinary result was due, +not to any merit in the nuts, but to an ancient and imaginary custom of +the village which compelled the inhabitants to deposit round its foot a +material defined by Victor Hugo as 'du guano moins les oiseaux.' The +most singular story, however, and which we presume is to be received +with a certain reserve, tells how he roused two of his intimate friends +at two o'clock one morning, and urged them to start for India without an +hour's delay. The cause of this journey was that a certain German +historian had presented Balzac with a seal, valued by the thoughtless at +the sum of six sous. The ring, however, had a singular history in +Balzac's dreamland. It was impressed with the seal of the Prophet, and +had been stolen by the English from the Great Mogul. Balzac had or had +not been informed by the Turkish ambassador that that potentate would +repurchase it with tons of gold and diamonds, and was benevolent enough +to propose that his friend should share in the stores which would exceed +the dreams of Aladdin. + +How far these and other such fancies were a merely humorous protest +against the harsh realities of life, may be a matter of speculation; but +it is less doubtful that the fictitious personages with whom Balzac +surrounded himself lived and moved in his imagination as distinctly as +the flesh-and-blood realities who were treading the pavement of Paris. +He did not so much invent characters and situations as watch his +imaginary world, and compile the memories of its celebrities. All +English readers are acquainted with the little circle of clergymen and +wives who inhabit the town of Barchester. Balzac has carried out the +same device on a gigantic scale. He has peopled not a country town but a +metropolis. There is a whole society, with the members of which we are +intimate, whose family secrets are revealed to us, and who drop in, as +it were, in every novel of a long series, as if they were old friends. +When, for example, young Victurnien d'Esgrignon comes to Paris he makes +acquaintance, we are told, with De Marsay, Maxime de Trailles, Les +Lupeaulx, Rastignac, Vandenesse, Ajuda-Pinto, the Duchesses de +Grandlieu, de Carigliano, de Chaulieu, the Marquises d'Espard, +d'Aiglemont, and De Listomčre, Madame Firmiani, the Comtesse de Sérizy, +and various other heads of the fashionable world. Every one of these +special characters has a special history. He or she appears as the hero +or heroine of one story, and plays subsidiary parts in a score of +others. They recall to us innumerable scandalous episodes, with which +anybody who lives in the imaginary society of Balzac's Paris feels it a +duty to be as familiar as a back-stairs politician with the gossip of +the House of Commons. The list just given is a mere fragment of the +great circle to which Balzac introduces us. The history of their +performances is intimately connected with the history of the time; nay, +it is sometimes essential to a full comprehension of recent events. +Bishop Proudie, we fear, would scarcely venture to take an active part +in the Roman Catholic emancipation; he would be dissolved into thin air +by contact with more substantial forms; but if you would appreciate the +intrigues which were going on at Paris during the campaign of Marengo, +you must study the conversations which took place between Talleyrand, +Fouché, Sieyčs, Carnot, and Malin, and their relations to that prince of +policemen, the well-known Corentin. De Marsay, we are told, with +audacious precision of time and place, was President of the Council in +1833. There is no tendency on the part of these spectres to shrink from +the light. They rub shoulders with the most celebrated statesmen, and +mingle in every event of the time. One is driven to believe that Balzac +really fancied the banker Nucingen to be as tangible as a Rothschild, +and was convinced that the conversations of Louis XVIII. with Vandenesse +were historic facts. His sister tells us that he discussed the behaviour +of his own creations with the utmost gravity, and was intensely +interested in discovering their fate, and getting the earliest +information as to the alliances which they were about to form. It is a +curious question, upon which I cannot profess to speak positively, +whether this voluminous story ever comes into hopeless conflict with +dates. I have some suspicions that the brilliant journalist, Blondet, +was married and unmarried at the same period; but, considering his very +loose mode of life, the suspicion, if true, is susceptible of +explanation. Such study as I have made has not revealed any case of +inconsistency; and Balzac evidently has the whole secret (for it seems +harsh to call it fictitious) history of the time so completely at his +fingers' ends, that the effect upon the reader is to produce an +unhesitating confidence. If a blunder occurs one would rather believe in +a slip of the pen, such as happens to real historians, not in the +substantial inaccuracy of the narrative. Sir A. Alison, it may be +remembered, brings Sir Peregrine Pickle to the Duke of Wellington's +funeral, which must have occurred after Sir Peregrine's death; and +Balzac's imaginary narrative may not be perfectly free from anachronism. +But, if so, I have not found him out. Everybody must sympathise with the +English lady who is said to have written to Paris for the address of +that most imposing physician, Horace Bianchion. + +The startling realisation may be due in part to a mere literary trick. +We meet with artifices like those by which De Foe cheats us into +forgetfulness of his true character. One of the best known is the +insertion of superfluous bits of information, by way of entrapping his +readers into the inference that they could only have been given because +they were true. The snare is more worthy of a writer of begging-letters +than of a genuine artist. Balzac occasionally indulges in somewhat +similar devices; little indirect allusions to his old characters are +thrown in with a calculated nonchalance; we have bits of antiquarian +information as to the history of buildings; superfluous accounts of the +coats-of-arms of the principal families concerned, and anecdotes as to +their ancestry; and, after he has given us a name, he sometimes takes +care to explain that the pronunciation is different from the spelling. +As a rule, however, these irrelevant minutię seem to be thrown in, not +by way of tricking us, but because he has so genuine an interest in his +own personages. He is as anxious to set De Marsay or the Pčre Goriot +distinctly before us, as Carlyle to make us acquainted with Frederick or +Cromwell. Our most vivid painter of historical portraits is not more +charmed to discover a characteristic incident in the life of his heroes, +or to describe the pimples on his face, or the specks of blood on his +collar, than Balzac to do the same duty for the creations of his fancy. +De Foe may be compared to those favourites of showmen who cheat you into +mistaking a flat-wall painting for a bas-relief. Balzac is one of the +patient Dutch artists who exhaust inconceivable skill and patience in +painting every hair on the head and every wrinkle on the face till their +work has a photographic accuracy. The result, it must be confessed, is +sometimes rather trying to the patience. Balzac's artistic instinct, +indeed, renders every separate touch more or less conducive to the +general effect; but he takes an unconscionable time in preparing his +ground. Instead of launching boldly into his story, and leaving his +characters to speak for themselves, he begins, as it were, by taking his +automatons carefully to pieces, and pointing out all their wires and +springs. He leaves nothing unaccounted for. He explains the character of +each actor as he comes upon the stage; and, not content with making +general remarks, he plunges with extraordinary relish into the minutest +personal details. In particular, we know just how much money everybody +has got, and how he has got it. Balzac absolutely revels in elaborate +financial statements. And constantly, just as we hope that the action is +about to begin, he catches us, as it were, by the button-hole, and begs +us to wait a minute to listen to a few more preparatory remarks. In one +or two of the stories, as, for example, in the 'Maison Nucingen,' the +introduction seems to fill the whole book. After expecting some +catastrophe, we gradually become aware that Balzac has thought it +necessary to give us a conscientious explanation of some very dull +commercial intrigues, in order to fill up gaps in other stories of the +cycle. Some one might possibly ask, what was the precise origin of this +great failure of which we hear so much, and Balzac resolves that he +shall have as complete an answer as though he were an accountant drawing +up a balance-sheet. It is said, I know not on what authority, that his +story of 'César Birotteau' has, in fact, been quoted in French courts as +illustrating the law of bankruptcy; and the details given are so ample, +and, to English readers at least, so wearisome, that it really reads +more like a legal statement of a case than a novel. As another example +of this elaborate workmanship I may quote the remarkable story of 'Les +Paysans.' It is intended to illustrate the character of the French +peasant, his profound avarice and cunning, and his bitter jealousy, +which forms a whole district into a tacit conspiracy against the rich, +held together by closer bonds than those of a Fenian lodge. Balzac +resolves that we shall have the whole scene and all the actors +distinctly before us. We have a description of a country-house more +poetical, but far more detailed, than one in an auctioneer's circular; +then we have a photograph of the neighbouring _cabaret_; then a minute +description of its inhabitants, and a detailed statement of their ways +and means. The story here makes a feeble start; but Balzac recollects +that we don't quite know the origin of the quarrel on which it depends, +and, therefore, elaborately describes the former proprietor, points out +precisely how she was cheated by her bailiff, and precisely to what +amount, and throws in descriptions of two or three supplementary +persons. We now make another start in the history of the quarrel; but +this immediately throws us back into a minute description of the old +bailiff's family circumstances, of the characters of several of his +connections, and of the insidious villain who succeeds him. Then we have +a careful financial statement of the second proprietor's losses, and the +commercial system which favours them; this leads to some antiquarian +details concerning the bailiff's house, and to detailed portraits of +each of the four guards who are set to watch over the property. Then +Balzac remarks that we cannot possibly understand the quarrel without +understanding fully the complicated family relations, owing to which the +officials of the department form what in America would be called a +'ring.' By this time we are half-way through the volume, and the +promised story is still in its infancy. Even Balzac makes an apology for +his _longueurs_, and tries to set to work in greater earnest. He is so +much interrupted, however, by the necessity of elaborately introducing +every new actor, and all his or her relations, and the houses in which +they live, and their commercial and social position, that the essence of +the story has at last to be compressed into half-a-dozen pages. In +short, the novel resolves itself into a series of sketches; and reading +it is like turning over a set of photographs, with letterpress +descriptions at intervals. Or we may compare it to one of those novels +of real life, so strange to the English mind, in which a French +indictment sums up the whole previous history of the persons accused, +accumulates every possible bit of information which may or may not throw +light upon the facts, and diverges from the point, as English lawyers +would imagine, into the most irrelevant considerations. + +Balzac, it is plain, differs widely from our English authors, who +generally slightly despise their own art, and think that, in providing +amusement for our idle hours, they are rather derogating from their +dignity. Instead of claiming our attention as a right, they try to +entice us into interest by every possible artifice: they give us +exciting glimpses of horrors to come; they are restlessly anxious to get +their stories well under way. Balzac is far more confident in his +position. He never doubts that we shall be willing to study his works +with the seriousness due to a scientific treatise. And occasionally, +when he is seized by a sudden and most deplorable fit of morality, he +becomes as dull as a sermon. The gravity with which he sets before us +all the benevolent schemes of the _médecin de campagne_, and describes +the whole charitable machinery of the district, makes his performance as +dismal as a gigantic religious tract. But when, in his happier and +wickeder moods, he turns this amazing capacity of graphic description to +its true account, the power of his method makes itself manifest. Every +bit of elaborate geographical and financial information has its meaning, +and tells with accumulated force on the final result. I may instance, +for example, the descriptions of Paris, which form the indispensable +background to the majority of his stories, and contribute in no +inconsiderable share to their tragic effect. Balzac had to deal with the +Paris of the Restoration, full of strange tortuous streets and +picturesque corners, of swinging lanterns and defective drainage; the +Paris which inevitably suggested barricades and street massacres, and +was impregnated to the core with old historical associations. It had not +yet lowered itself to the comprehension of New Yorkers, and still +offered such scenery as Gustave Doré has caught in his wonderful +illustrations of the 'Contes Drolatiques.' Its mysterious and not +over-cleanly charm lives in the pages of Balzac, and harmonises with the +strange society which he has created to people its streets. Thus, in one +of his most audacious stories, where the horribly grotesque trembles on +the verge of the ridiculous, he strikes the key-note by an elegant +apostrophe to Paris. There are, he tells us, a few connoisseurs who +enjoy the Parisian flavour like the bouquet of some delicate wine. To +all Paris is a marvel; to them it is a living creature; every man, every +fragment of a house, is 'part of the cellular tissue of this great +courtesan, whose head, heart, and fantastic manners are thoroughly known +to them.' They are lovers of Paris; to them it is a costly luxury to +travel in Paris. They are incessantly arrested before the dramas, the +disasters, the picturesque accidents, which assail one in the midst of +this moving queen of cities. They start in the morning to go to its +extremities, and find themselves still unable to leave its centre at +dinner-time. It is a marvellous spectacle at all times; but, he +exclaims, 'O Paris! qui n'a pas admiré tes sombres paysages, tes +échappées de lumičre, tes culs-de-sac profonds et silencieux; qui n'a +pas entendu tes murmures entre minuit et deux heures du matin, ne +connait encore rien de ta vraie poésie, ni de tes bizarres et larges +contrastes.' + +In the scenes which follow, we are introduced to a lover watching the +beautiful and virtuous object of his adoration as she descends an +infamous street late in the evening, and enters one of the houses +through a damp, moist, and fetid passage, feebly lighted by a trembling +lamp, beneath which are seen the hideous face and skinny fingers of an +old woman, as fitly placed as the witches in the blasted heath in +'Macbeth.' In this case, however, Balzac is in one of his wildest moods, +and the hideous mysteries of a huge capital become the pretext for a +piece of rather ludicrous melodrama. Paris is full enough of tragedies +without the preposterous beggar Ferragus, who appears at balls as a +distinguished diplomat, and manages to place on a young gentleman's head +of hair a slow poison (invented for the purpose), which brings him to an +early grave. More impressive, because less extravagant, is that Maison +Vauquer, every hole and corner of which is familiar to the real student +of Balzac. It is situated, as everybody should know, in the Rue Neuve +St.-Genevičve, just where it descends so steeply towards the Rue de +l'Arbalčte that horses have some trouble in climbing it. We know its +squalid exterior, its creaking bell, the wall painted to represent an +arcade in green marble, the crumbling statue of Cupid, with the +half-effaced inscription-- + + 'Qui que tu sois, voici ton maītre,-- + Il l'est, le fut, ou le doit źtre.' + +We have visited the wretched garden with its scanty pot-herbs and +scarecrow beds, and the green benches in the miserable arbour, where the +lodgers who are rich enough to enjoy such a luxury indulge in a cup of +coffee after dinner. The salon, with its greasy and worn-out furniture, +every bit of which is catalogued, is as familiar as our own studies. We +know the exact geography even of the larder and the cistern. We catch +the odour of the damp, close office, where Madame Vauquer lurks like a +human spider. She is the animating genius of the place, and we know the +exact outline of her figure, and every article of her dress. The +minuteness of her portrait brings out the horrors of the terrible +process by which poor Goriot gradually sinks from one step to another +of the social ladder, and simultaneously ascends from the first floor to +the garrets. We can track his steps and trace his agony. Each station of +that melancholy pilgrimage is painted, down to the minutest details, +with unflinching fidelity. + +Paris, says Balzac, is an ocean; however painfully you explore it and +sound its depths, there are still virgin corners, unknown caves with +their flowers, pearls, and monsters, forgotten by literary divers. The +Maison Vauquer is one of these singular monstrosities. No one, at any +rate, can complain that Balzac has not done his best to describe and +analyse the character of the unknown social species which it contains. +It absorbs our interest by the contrast of its vulgar and intensely +commonplace exterior with the terrible passions and sufferings of which +it is the appropriate scene. + +The horrors of a great metropolis, indeed, give ample room for tragedy. +Old Sandy Mackaye takes Alton Locke to the entrance of a London alley, +and tells the sentimental tailor to write poetry about that. 'Say how ye +saw the mouth o' hell, and the twa pillars thereof at the entry, the +pawnbroker's shop on the one side and the gin-palace at the other--two +monstrous deevils, eating up men, women, and bairns, body and soul. Look +at the jaws o' the monsters, how they open and open to swallow in +anither victim and anither. Write about that!' The poor tailor complains +that it is unpoetical, and Mackaye replies, 'Hah! is there no the heaven +above them here and the hell beneath them? and God frowning and the +deevil grinning? No poetry there! Is no the verra idee of the classic +tragedy defined to be--man conquered by circumstances? Canna ye see it +here?' But the quotation must stop, for Mackaye goes on to a moral not +quite according to Balzac. Balzac, indeed, was anything but a Christian +socialist, or a Radical reformer; we don't often catch sight in his +pages of God frowning or the devil grinning; his world seems to be +pretty well forgotten by the one, and its inhabitants to be quite able +to dispense with the services of the other. Paris, he tells us in his +most outrageous story, is a hell, which one day may have its Dante. The +prolétaire lives in its lowest circle, and seldom comes into Balzac's +pages except as representing the half-seen horrors of the gulf reserved +for that corrupt and brilliant society whose vices he loves to describe. +A summary of his creed is given by a queer contrast to Mackaye, the +accomplished and able De Marsay. People speak, he says, of the +immorality of certain books; here is a horrible, foul, and corrupt book, +always open and never to be shut; the great book of the world; and +beyond that is another book a thousand times more dangerous, which +consists of all that is whispered by one man to another, or discussed +under ladies' fans at balls. Balzac's pages are flavoured, rather to +excess, with this diabolical spice, composed of dark allusions to, or +audacious revelations of these hideous mysteries. If he is wanting in +the moral elevation necessary for a Dante, he has some of the sinister +power which makes him a fit guide to the horrors of our modern Inferno. + + * * * * * + +Before accepting Balzac's guidance into these mysterious regions, I must +touch upon another peculiarity. Balzac's genius for skilfully-combined +photographic detail explains his strange power of mystification. A word +is wanting to express that faint acquiescence or mimic belief which we +generally grant to a novelist. Dr. Newman has constructed a scale of +assent according to its varying degrees of intensity; and we might, +perhaps, assume that to each degree there corresponds a mock assent +accorded to different kinds of fiction. If Scott, for example, requires +from his readers a shadow of that kind of belief which we grant to an +ordinary historian, Balzac requires a shadow of the belief which Dr. +Pusey gives to the Bible. This still remains distinctly below any +genuine assent; for Balzac never wishes us really to forget, though he +occasionally forgets himself, that his most lifelike characters are +imaginary. But in certain subordinate topics he seems to make a higher +demand on our faith. He is full of more or less fanciful heresies, and +labours hard to convince us either that they are true or that he +seriously holds them. This is what I mean by mystification, and one +fears to draw a line as to which he was probably far from clear himself. +Thus, for example, he is a devout believer in physiognomy, and not only +in its obvious sense; he erects it into an occult science. Lavater and +Gall, he says, 'prove incontestably' that ominous signs exist in our +heads. Take, for example, the chasseur Michu, his white face injected +with blood and compressed like a Calmuck's; his ruddy, crisp hair; his +beard cut in the shape of a fan; the noble forehead which surmounts and +overhangs his sunburnt, sarcastic features; his ears well detached, and +possessing a sort of mobility, like those of a wild animal; his mouth +half open, and revealing a set of fine but uneven teeth; his thick and +glossy whiskers; his hair, close in front, long on the sides and behind, +with its wild, ruddy hue throwing into relief the strange and fatal +character of the physiognomy; his short, thick neck, designed to tempt +the hatchet of the guillotine: these details, so accurately +photographed, not only prove that M. Michu was a resolute, faithful +servant, capable of the profoundest secresy and the most disinterested +attachment, but for the really skilful reader of mystic symbols foretell +his ultimate fate--namely, that he will be the victim of a false +accusation. Balzac, however, ventures into still more whimsical +extremes. He accepts, in all apparent seriousness, the theory of his +favourite, Mr. Shandy, that a man's name influences his character. Thus, +for example, a man called Minoret-Levrault must necessarily be 'un +éléphant sans trompe et sans intelligence,' and the occult meaning of Z. +Marcas requires a long and elaborate commentary. Repeat the word Marcas, +dwelling on the first syllable, and dropping abruptly on the second, and +you will see that the man who bears it must be a martyr. The zigzag of +the initial implies a life of torment. What ill wind, he asks, has blown +upon this letter, which in no language (Balzac's acquaintance with +German was probably limited) commands more than fifty words? The name is +composed of seven letters, and seven is most characteristic of +cabalistic numbers. If M. Gozlan's narrative be authentic, Balzac was +right to value this name highly, for he had spent many hours in seeking +for it by a systematic perambulation of the streets of Paris. He was +rather vexed at the discovery that the Marcas of real life was a tailor. +'He deserved a better fate!' said Balzac pathetically; 'but it shall be +my business to immortalise him.' + +Balzac returns to this subject so often and so emphatically that one +half believes him to be the victim of his own mystification. Perhaps he +was the one genuine disciple of Mr. Shandy and Slawkenbergius, and +believed sincerely in the occult influence of names and noses. In more +serious matters it is impossible to distinguish the point at which his +feigned belief passes into real superstition; he stimulates conviction +so elaborately, that his sober opinions shade off imperceptibly into +his fanciful dreamings. For a time he was attracted by mesmerism, and in +the story of Ursule Mirouet he labours elaborately to infect his readers +with a belief in what he calls 'magnetism, the favourite science of +Jesus, and one of the powers transmitted to the apostles.' He assumes +his gravest airs in adducing the cases of Cardan, Swedenborg, and a +certain Duke of Montmorency, as though he were a genuine historical +inquirer. He almost adopts the tone of a pious missionary in describing +how his atheist doctor was led by the revelations of a _clairvoyante_ to +study Pascal's 'Pensées' and Bossuet's sublime 'Histoire des +Variations,' though what those works have to do with mesmerism is rather +difficult to see. He relates the mysterious visions caused by the +converted doctor after his death, not less minutely, though more +artistically, than De Foe described the terrible apparition of Mrs. +Veal, and, it must be confessed, his story illustrates with almost equal +force the doctrine, too often forgotten by spiritualists, that ghosts +should not make themselves too common. When once they begin to mix in +general society, they become intolerably prosaic. + +The ostentatious belief which is paraded in this instance is turned to +more artistic account in the wonderful story of the 'Peau de Chagrin.' +Balzac there tries as conscientiously as ever to surmount the natural +revolt of our minds against the introduction of the supernatural into +life. The _peau de chagrin_ is the modern substitute for the +old-fashioned parchment on which contracts were signed with the devil. +M. Valentin, its possessor, is a Faust of the boulevards; but our +prejudices are softened by the circumstance that the _peau de chagrin_ +has a false air of scientific authenticity. It is discovered by a +gentleman who spends a spare half-hour before committing suicide in an +old curiosity shop, which occupies a sort of middle standing-ground +between a wizard's laboratory and the ordinary Wardour Street shop. +There is no question of signing with one's blood, but simply of +accepting a curious substance with the property--rather a startling one, +it is true--that its area diminishes in proportion to the amount of +wishes gratified, and vanishes with the death of the possessor. The +steady flesh-and-blood men of science treat it just as we feel certain +that they would do. After smashing a hydraulic press in the attempt to +compress it, and exhausting the power of chemical agents, they agree to +make a joke of it. It is not so much more wonderful than some of those +modern miracles, which leave us to hesitate between the two incredible +alternatives that men of science are fallible, or that mankind in +general, like Sir Walter Scott's grandmother, are 'awfu' leears.' Every +effort is made to reduce the strain upon our credulity to that moderate +degree of intensity which may fairly be required from the reader of a +wild fiction. When the first characteristic wish of the +proprietor--namely, that he may be indulged in a frantic orgie--has been +gratified without any apparent intervention of the supernatural, we are +left just in that proper equilibrium between scepticism and credulity +which is the right mental attitude in presence of a marvellous story. +Balzac, it is true, seems rather to flag in continuing his narrative. +The symbolical meaning begins to part company with the facts. Stories of +this kind require the congenial atmosphere of an ideal world, and the +effort of interpreting such a poetical legend into terms of ordinary +life is perhaps too great for the powers of any literary artist. At any +rate M. Valentin drops after a time from the level of Faust to become +the hero of a rather commonplace Parisian story. The opening scenes, +however, are an admirable specimen of the skill by which our +irrepressible scepticism may be hindered from intruding into a sphere +where it is out of place; or rather--for one can hardly speak of belief +in such a connection--of the skill by which the discord between the +surroundings of the nineteenth century and a story of grotesque +supernaturalism can be converted into a pleasant harmony. A similar +effect is produced in one of Balzac's finest stories, the 'Recherche de +l'Absolu.' Every accessory is provided to induce us, so long as we are +under the spell, to regard the discovery of the philosopher's stone as a +reasonable application of human energy. We are never quite clear whether +Balthazar Claes is a madman or a commanding genius. We are kept +trembling on the verge of a revelation till we become interested in +spite of our more sober sense. A single diamond turns up in a crucible +which was unluckily produced in the absence of the philosopher, so that +he cannot tell what are the necessary conditions of repeating the +process. He is supposed to discover the secret just as he is struck by a +paralysis, which renders him incapable of revealing it, and dies whilst +making desperate efforts to communicate the crowning success to his +family. Balzac throws himself into the situation with such energy that +we are irresistibly carried away by his enthusiasm. The impossibility +ceases to annoy us, and merely serves to give additional dignity to the +story. + + * * * * * + +One other variety of mystification may introduce us to some of Balzac's +most powerful stories. He indulges more frequently than could be wished +in downright melodrama, or what is generally called sensational writing. +In the very brilliant sketch of Nathan in 'Une Fille d'Eve,' he remarks +that 'the mission of genius is to search, through the accidents of the +true, for that which must appear probable to all the world.' The common +saying, that truth is stranger than fiction, should properly be +expressed as an axiom that fiction ought not to be so strange as truth. +A marvellous event is interesting in real life, simply because we know +that it happened. In a fiction we know that it did not happen; and +therefore it is interesting only as far as it is explained. Anybody can +invent a giant or a genius by the simple process of altering figures or +piling up superlatives. The artist has to make the existence of the +giant or the genius conceivable. Balzac, however, often enough forgets +this principle, and treats us to purely preposterous incidents, which +are either grotesque or simply childish. The history of the marvellous +'Thirteen,' for example, that mysterious band which includes statesmen, +beggars, men of fortune, and journalists, and goes about committing the +most inconceivable crimes without the possibility of discovery, becomes +simply ludicrous. Balzac, as usual, labours to reconcile our minds to +the absurdity; but the effort is beyond his powers. The amazing disease +which he invents for the benefit of the villains in the 'Cousine Bette' +can only be accepted as a broad joke. At times, as in the story of the +'Grande Bretźche,' where the lover is bricked up by the husband in the +presence of the wife, he reminds us of Edgar Poe's worst extravagances. +There is, indeed, this much to be said for Balzac in comparison with the +more recent school, who have turned to account all the most refined +methods of breaking the ten commandments and the criminal code; the +fault of the so-called sensation writer is, not that he deals in murder, +bigamy, or adultery--every great writer likes to use powerful +situations--but that he relies upon our interest in startling crimes to +distract our attention from feebly-drawn characters and conventional +details. Balzac does not often fall into that weakness. If his criminals +are frequently of the most outrageous kind, and indulge even in +practices unmentionable, the crime is intended at least to be of +secondary interest. He tries to fix our attention on the passions by +which they are caused, and to attract us chiefly by the legitimate +method of analysing human nature--even, it must be confessed, in some of +its most abnormal manifestations. Macbeth is not interesting because he +commits half-a-dozen murders; but the murders are interesting because +they are committed by Macbeth. We may generally say as much for Balzac's +villains; and it is the only justification for a free use of blood and +brutality. In applying these remarks, we come to the real secret of +Balzac's power, which will demand a fuller consideration. + +It is common to say of all great novelists, and of Balzac in particular, +that they display a wonderful 'knowledge of the human heart.' The chief +objection to the phrase is that such knowledge does not exist. Nobody +has as yet found his way through the complexities of that intricate +machine, and described the springs and balances by which its movement is +originated and controlled. Men of vivid imagination are in some respects +less competent for such a work than their neighbours. They have not the +cool, hard, and steady hand required for psychological dissection. +Balzac gave a queer specimen of his own incapacity in an attempt to +investigate the true history of a real murder, celebrated in its day, +and supposed by everybody but Balzac to have been committed by one +Peytel, who was put to death in spite of his pleading. His skill in +devising motives for imaginary atrocities was a positive +disqualification for dealing with facts and legal evidence. The greatest +poet or novelist describes only one person, and that is himself; and he +differs from his inferiors, not necessarily in having a more systematic +knowledge, but in having wider sympathies, and so to speak, possessing a +great number of characters. Cervantes was at once Don Quixote and Sancho +Panza; Shakespeare was Hamlet and Mercutio and Othello and Falstaff; +Scott was at once Dandie Dinmont and the Antiquary and the Master of +Ravenswood; and Balzac embodies his different phases of feeling in +Eugénie Grandet and Vautrin and the Pčre Goriot. The assertion that he +knew the human heart must be interpreted to mean that he could +sympathise with, and give expression to, a wide range of human passions; +as his supposed knowledge of the world implies merely that he was deeply +impressed by certain phenomena of the social medium in which he was +placed. Nobody, I should be inclined to think, would have given a more +unsound judgment than Balzac as to the characters of the men whom he +met, or formed a less trustworthy estimate of the real condition of +society. He was totally incapable of stripping the bare facts given by +observation of the colouring which they received from his own +idiosyncrasy. But nobody, within certain points, could express more +vividly in outward symbols the effect produced upon keen sympathies and +a powerful imagination by the aspect of the world around him. + +The characteristic peculiarities of Balzac's novels may be described as +the intensity with which he expresses certain motives, and the vigour +with which he portrays the real or imaginary corruption of society. Upon +one particular situation, or class of situations, favourable to this +peculiar power, he is never tired of dwelling. He repeats himself +indeed, in a certain sense, as a man must necessarily repeat himself who +writes eighty-five stories, besides doing other work, in less than +twenty years. In this voluminous outpouring of matter the machinery is +varied with wonderful fertility of invention, but one sentiment recurs +very frequently. The great majority of Balzac's novels, including all +the most powerful examples, may thus be described as variations on a +single theme. Each of them is in fact the record of a martyrdom. There +is always a virtuous hero or heroine who is tortured, and most +frequently, tortured to death, by a combination of selfish intrigues. +The commonest case is, of course, that which has become the staple plot +of French novelists, where the interesting young woman is sacrificed to +the brutality of a dull husband: that, for example, is the story of the +'Femme de Trente Ans,' of 'Le Lys dans la Vallée,' and of several minor +performances; then we have the daughter sacrificed to the avaricious +father, as in 'Eugénie Grandet;' the woman sacrificed to the imperious +lover in the 'Duchesse de Langeais;' the immoral beauty sacrificed to +the ambition of her lover in the 'Splendeurs et Misčres des +Courtisanes;' the mother sacrificed to the dissolute son in the 'Ménage +de Garēon;' the woman of political ambition sacrificed to the +contemptible intriguers opposed to her in 'Les Employés;' and, indeed, +in one way or other, as subordinate character or as heroine, this figure +of a graceful feminine victim comes into nearly every novel. Virtuous +heroes fare little better. Poor Colonel Chabert is disowned and driven +to beggary by the wife who has committed bigamy; the luckless curé, +Birotteau, is cheated out of his prospects and doomed to a broken heart +by the successful villainy of a rival priest and his accomplices; the +Comte de Manerville is ruined and transported by his wife and his +detestable mother-in-law; Pčre Goriot is left to starvation by his +daughters; the Marquis d'Espard is all but condemned as a lunatic by the +manoeuvres of his wife; the faithful servant Michu comes to the +guillotine; the devoted notary Chesnel is beggared in the effort to save +his scape-grace of a master; Michaud, another devoted adherent, is +murdered with perfect success by the brutal peasantry, and his wife dies +of the news; Balthazar Claes is the victim of his devotion to science; +and Z. Marcas dies unknown and in the depths of misery as a reward for +trying to be a second Colbert. The old-fashioned canons of poetical +justice are inverted; and the villains are dismissed to live very +happily ever afterwards, whilst the virtuous are slain outright or +sentenced to a death by slow torture. Thackeray, in one or two of his +minor stories, has touched the same note. The history of Mr. Deuceace, +and especially its catastrophe, is much in Balzac's style; but, as a +rule, our English novelists shrink from anything so unpleasant. + +Perhaps the most striking example of this method is the 'Pčre Goriot.' +The general situation may be described in two words, by saying that +Goriot is the modern King Lear. Mesdames de Restaud and de Nucingen are +the representatives of Regan and Goneril; but the Parisian Lear is not +allowed the consolation of a Cordelia; the cup of misery is measured out +to him drop by drop, and the bitterness of each dose is analysed with +chemical accuracy. We watch the poor old broken-down merchant, who has +impoverished himself to provide his daughters' dowries, and has +gradually stripped himself, first of comfort, and then of the +necessaries of life to satisfy the demands of their folly and luxury, +as we might watch a man clinging to the edge of a cliff and gradually +dropping lower and lower, catching feebly at every point of support till +his strength is exhausted, and the inevitable catastrophe follows. The +daughters, allowed to retain some fragments of good feeling and not +quite irredeemably hateful, are gradually yielding to the demoralising +influence of a heartless vanity. They yield, it is true, pretty +completely at last; but their wickedness seems to reveal the influence +of a vague but omnipotent power of evil in the background. There is not +a more characteristic scene in Balzac than that in which Rastignac, the +lover of Madame de Nucingen, overhears the conversation between the +father in his wretched garret and the modern Goneril and Regan. A gleam +of good fortune has just encouraged old Goriot to anticipate an escape +from his troubles. On the morning of the day of expected release Madame +Goneril de Nucingen rushes up to her father's garret to explain to him +that her husband, the rich banker, having engaged all his funds in some +diabolical financial intrigues, refuses to allow her the use of her +fortune; whilst, owing to her own misconduct, she is afraid to appeal to +the law. They have a hideous tacit compact, according to which the wife +enjoys full domestic liberty, whilst the husband may use her fortune to +carry out his dishonest plots. She begs her father to examine the facts +in the light of his financial experience, though the examination must be +deferred, that she may not look ill with the excitement when she meets +her lover at the ball. As the poor father is tormenting his brains, +Madame Regan de Restaud appears in terrible distress. Her lover has +threatened to commit suicide unless he can meet a certain bill, and to +save him she has pledged certain diamonds which were heirlooms in her +husband's family. Her husband has discovered the whole transaction, +and, though not making an open scandal, imposes some severe conditions +upon her future. Old Goriot is raving against the brutality of her +husband, when Regan adds that there is still a sum to be paid, without +which her lover, to whom she has sacrificed everything, will be ruined. +Now old Goriot had employed just this sum--all but the very last +fragment of his fortune--in the service of Goneril. A desperate quarrel +instantly takes place between the two fine ladies over this last scrap +of their father's property. They are fast degenerating into Parisian +Billingsgate, when Goriot succeeds in obtaining silence and proposes to +strip himself of his last penny. Even the sisters hesitate at such an +impiety, and Rastignac enters with some apology for listening, and hands +over to the countess a certain bill of exchange for a sum which he +professes himself to owe to Goriot, and which will just save her lover. +She accepts the paper, but vehemently denounces her sister for having, +as she supposes, allowed Rastignac to listen to their hideous +revelations, and retires in a fury, whilst the father faints away. He +recovers to express his forgiveness, and at this moment the countess +returns, ostensibly to throw herself on her knees and beg her father's +pardon. She apologises to her sister, and a general reconciliation takes +place. But before she has again left the room she has obtained her +father's endorsement to Rastignac's bill. Even her most genuine fury had +left coolness enough for calculation, and her burst of apparent +tenderness was a skilful bit of comedy for squeezing one more drop of +blood from her father and victim. That is a genuine stroke of Balzac. + +Hideous as the performance appears when coolly stated, it must be +admitted that the ladies have got into such terrible perplexities from +tampering with the seventh commandment, that there is some excuse for +their breaking the fifth. Whether such an accumulation of horrors is a +legitimate process in art, and whether a healthy imagination would like +to dwell upon such loathsome social sores, is another question. The +comparison suggested with 'King Lear' may illustrate the point. In +Balzac all the subordinate details which Shakespeare throws in with a +very slovenly touch are elaborately drawn, and contribute powerfully to +the total impression. On the other hand, we never reach the lofty +poetical heights of the grandest scenes in 'King Lear.' But the +situation of the two heroes offers an instructive contrast. Lear is +weak, but is never contemptible; he is the ruin of a gallant old king, +is guilty of no degrading compliance, and dies like a man, with his +'good biting falchion' still grasped in his feeble hand. To change him +into Goriot we must suppose that he had licked the hand which struck +him, that he had helped on the adulterous intrigues of Goneril and Regan +from sheer weakness, and that all his fury had been directed against +Cornwall and Albany for objecting to his daughters' eccentric views of +the obligation of the marriage vow. Paternal affection leading a man to +the most trying self-sacrifice is a worthy motive for a great drama or +romance; but Balzac is so anxious to intensify the emotion, that he +makes even paternal affection morally degrading. Everything must be done +to heighten the colouring. Our sympathies are to be excited by making +the sacrifice as complete, and the emotion which prompts it as +overpowering, as possible; until at last the love of children becomes a +monomania. Goriot is not only dragged through the mud of Paris, but he +grovels in it with a will. In short, Balzac wants that highest power +which shows itself by moderation, and commits a fault like that of an +orator who emphasizes every sentence. With less expenditure of horrors, +he would excite our compassion more powerfully. But after all, Goriot +is, perhaps, more really affecting even than King Lear. + +Situations of the 'Pčre Goriot' kind are, in some sense, more +appropriate for heroines than for heroes. Self-sacrifice is, for the +present at least, considered by a large part of mankind as the complete +duty of woman. The feminine martyr can indulge without loss of our +esteem in compliances which would be degrading in a man. Accordingly +Balzac finds the amplest materials for his favourite situation in the +torture of innocent women. The great example of his skill in this +department is Eugénie Grandet, in which the situation of the Pčre Goriot +is inverted. Poor Eugénie is the victim of a domestic tyrant, who is, +perhaps, Balzac's most finished portrait of the cold-blooded and cunning +miser. The sacrifice of a woman's life to paternal despotism is +unfortunately even commoner in real life than in fiction; and when the +lover, from whom the old miser has divided her during his life, deserts +her after his death, we feel that the mournful catastrophe is demanded +by the sombre prologue. The book may indeed justify, to some extent, one +of the ordinary criticisms upon Balzac, that he showed a special +subtlety in describing the sufferings of women. The question as to the +general propriety of that criticism is rather difficult for a male +critic. I confess to a certain scepticism, founded partly on the general +principle that hardly any author can really describe the opposite sex, +and partly on an antipathy which I cannot repress to Balzac's most +ambitious feminine portraits. + +Eugénie Grandet is perhaps the purest of his women; but then Eugénie +Grandet is simply stupid, and interesting from her sufferings rather +than her character. She reminds us of some patient animal of the +agricultural kind, with bovine softness of eyes and bovine obstinacy +under suffering. His other women, though they are not simply courtesans, +after the fashion of some French writers, seem, as it were, to have a +certain perceptible taint; they breathe an unwholesome atmosphere. In +one of his extravagant humours, he tells us that the most perfect +picture of purity in existence is the Madonna of the Genoese painter, +Piola, but that even that celestial Madonna would have looked like a +Messalina by the side of the Duchesse de Manfrigneuse. If the duchess +resembled either personage in character, it was certainly not the +Madonna. And Balzac's best women give us the impression that they are +courtesans acting the character of virgins, and showing admirable +dramatic skill in the performance. They may keep up the part so +obstinately as to let the acting become earnest; but even when they +don't think of breaking the seventh commandment, they are always +thinking about not breaking it. When he has done his best to describe a +thoroughly pure woman, such as Henrietta in the 'Lys dans la Vallée,' he +cannot refrain from spoiling his performance by throwing in a hint at +the conclusion that, after all, she had a strong disposition to go +wrong, which was only defeated by circumstances. Indeed, the ladies who +in his pages have broken loose from all social restraints, differ only +in external circumstances from their more correct sisters. Coralie, in +the 'Illusions Perdues,' is not so chaste in her conduct as the +immaculate Henriette, but is not a whit less delicate in her tastes. +Madame de la Baudraye deserts her husband, and lives for some years with +her disreputable lover at Paris, and does not in the least forfeit the +sympathies of her creator. Balzac's feminine types may be classified +pretty easily. At bottom they are all of the sultana variety--playthings +who occasionally venture into mixing with the serious affairs of life, +but then only on pain of being ridiculous (as in the 'Employés,' or the +'Muse du Département'); but properly confined to their drawing-rooms, +with delicate cajoleries for their policy, and cunning instead of +intellect. Sometimes they are cold-hearted and selfish, and then they +are vicious, making victims of lovers, husbands, or fathers, consuming +fortunes, and spreading ill-will by cunning intrigues; sometimes they +are virtuous, and therefore according to Balzac's logic, pitiable +victims of the world. But their virtue, when it exists, is the effect, +not of lofty principle, but of a certain delicacy of taste corresponding +to a fine organisation. They object to vice, because it is apt to be +coarse; and are perfectly ready to yield, if it can be presented in such +graceful forms as not to shock their sensibilities. Marriage is +therefore a complicated intrigue in which one party is always deceived, +though it may be for his or her good. If you will be loved, says the +judicious lady in the 'Mémoires de Deux Jeunes Mariées,' the secret is +not to love; and the rather flimsy epigram is converted into a great +moral truth. The justification of the lady is, that love is only made +permanent by elaborate intrigue. The wife is to be always on the footing +of a mistress who can only preserve her lover by incessant and +infinitely varied caresses. To do this, she must be herself cool. The +great enemy of matrimonial happiness is satiety, and we are constantly +presented with an affectionate wife boring her husband to death, and +alienating him by over-devotion. If one party is to be cheated, the one +who is freest from passion will be the winner of the game. As a maxim, +after the fashion of Rochefoucauld, this doctrine may have enough truth +to be plausible; but when seriously accepted and made the substantive +moral of a succession of stories, one is reminded less of a really acute +observer than of a lad fresh from college who thinks that wisdom +consists in an exaggerated cynicism. When ladies of this variety break +their hearts, they either die or retire in a picturesque manner to a +convent. They are indeed the raw material of which the genuine _dévote_ +is made. The morbid sentimentality directed to the lover passes without +perceptible shock into a religious sentimentality, the object of which +is at least ostensibly different. The graceful but voluptuous mistress +of the Parisian salon is developed without any violent transition into +the equally graceful and ascetic nun. The connection between the +luxurious indulgence of material flirtations and religious mysticism is +curious, but unmistakable. + +Balzac's reputation in this respect is founded, not on his little hoard +of cynical maxims, which, to say the truth, are not usually very +original, but on the vivid power of describing the details and scenery +of the martyrdom, and the energy with which he paints the emotion, of +the victim. Whether his women are very lifelike, or very varied in +character, may be doubted; but he has certainly endowed them with an +admirable capacity for suffering, and forces us to listen +sympathetically to their cries of anguish. The peculiar cynicism implied +in this view of feminine existence must be taken as part of his +fundamental theory of society. When Rastignac has seen Goriot buried, +the ceremony being attended only by his daughters' empty carriages, he +climbs to the highest part of the cemetery, and looks over Paris. As he +contemplates the vast buzzing hive, he exclaims solemnly, 'ą nous deux +maintenant!' The world is before him; he is to fight his way in future +without remorse. Accordingly, Balzac's view of society is, that it is a +masquerade of devils, engaged in tormenting a few wandering angels. That +society is not what Balzac represents it to be is sufficiently proved by +the fact that society exists; as indeed he is profoundly convinced that +its destruction is only a question of time. It is rotten to the core. +Lust and avarice are the moving forms of the world, while profound and +calculating selfishness has sapped the base of all morality. The type of +a successful statesman is De Marsay, a kind of imaginary Talleyrand, who +rules because he has recognised the intrinsic baseness of mankind, and +has no scruples in turning it to account. Vautrin, who is an open enemy +of society, is simply De Marsay in revolt. The weapons with which he +fights are distinguished from those of greater men, not in their +intrinsic wickedness, but in their being accidentally forbidden by law. +He is less of a hypocrite, and scarcely a greater villain than his more +prosperous rivals. He ultimately recognises the futility of the strife, +agrees to wear a mask like his neighbours, and accepts the congenial +duties of a police agent. The secret of success in all ranks of life is +to be without scruples of morality, but exceedingly careful of breaking +the law. The bankers, Nucingen and Du Tillet, are merely cheats on a +gigantic scale. They ruin their enemies by financiering instead of +picking pockets. Be wicked if you would be successful; if possible let +your wickedness be refined; but, at all events, be wicked. + +There is, indeed, a class of unsuccessful villains, to be found chiefly +amongst journalists, for whom Balzac has a special aversion; they live, +he tells us, partly on extortion, and partly on the prostitution of +their talents to gratify political or personal animosities, and are at +the mercy of the longest purse. They fail in life, not because they are +too immoral, but because they are too weak. They are the victims instead +of the accomplices of more resolute evil-doers. Lucien de Rubempré is +the type of this class. Endowed with surpassing genius and personal +beauty, he goes to Paris to make his fortune, and is introduced to the +world as it is. On the one hand is a little knot of virtuous men, called +the _cénacle_, who are working for posterity and meanwhile starving. On +the other is a vast mass of cheats and dupes. After a brief struggle +Lucien yields to temptation, and joins in the struggle for wealth and +power. But he has not strength enough to play his part. His head is +turned by the flattery of pretty actresses and scheming publishers: he +is enticed into thoughtless dissipation, and, after a brilliant start, +finds that he is at the mercy of the cleverer villains who surround him; +that he has been bought and sold like a sheep; that his character is +gone, and his imagination become sluggish; and, finally, he has to +escape from utter ruin by scarcely describable degradation. He writes a +libel on one of his virtuous friends, who is forgiving enough to improve +it and correct it for the press. In order to bury his mistress, who has +been ruined with him, he has to raise money by grovelling in the foulest +depths of literary sewerage. He at last succeeds in crawling back to his +relations in the country, morally and materially ruined. He makes +another effort to rise, backed up by the diabolical arts of Vautrin, and +relying rather on his beauty than his talents. The world is again too +strong for him, and, after being accomplice in the most outrageous +crimes, he ends appropriately by hanging himself in prison. Vautrin, as +we have seen, escapes from the fate of his partner because he retains +coolness enough to practise upon the vices of the governing classes. +The world, in short, is composed of three classes--consistent and, +therefore, successful villains; inconsistent and, therefore, +unsuccessful villains; and virtuous persons, who never have a chance of +success, and enjoy the honours of starvation. + +The provinces differ from Paris in the nature of the social warfare, but +not in its morality. Passions are directed to meaner objects; they are +narrower, and more intense. The whole of a man's faculties are +concentrated upon one object; and he pursues it for years with +relentless and undeviating ardour. To supplant a rival, to acquire a few +more acres, to gratify jealousy of a superior, he will labour for a +lifetime. The intensity of his hatred supplies his want of intellect; he +is more cunning, if less far-sighted; and in the contest between the +brilliant Parisian and the plodding provincial we generally have an +illustration of the hare and the tortoise. The blind, persistent hatred +gets the better in the long run of the more brilliant, but more +transitory, passion. The lower nature here, too, gets the better of the +higher; and Balzac characteristically delights in the tragedy produced +by genius which falls before cunning, as virtue almost invariably yields +to vice. It is only when the slow provincial obstinacy happens to be on +the side of virtue that stupidity, doubled with virtue, as embodied for +example in two or three French Caleb Balderstons, generally gets the +worst of it. There are exceptions to this general rule. Even Balzac +sometimes relents. A reprieve is granted at the last moment, and the +martyr is unbound from the stake. But those catastrophes are not only +exceptional, but rather annoying. We have been so prepared to look for a +sacrifice that we are disappointed instead of relieved. If Balzac's +readers could be consulted during the last few pages of a novel, I feel +sure that most thumbs would be turned upwards, and the lions allowed to +have their will of the Christians. Perhaps our appetites have been +depraved; but we are not in the cue for a happy conclusion. + +I know not whether it was the cause or the consequence of this sentiment +that Balzac was a thorough legitimist. He does not believe in the +vitality of the old order, any more than he believes in the truth of +Catholicism. But he regrets the extinction of the ancient faiths, which +he admits to be unsuitable; and sees in their representatives the only +picturesque and really estimable elements that still survived in French +society. He heartily despises the modern medięvalists, who try to spread +a thin varnish over a decaying order; the world is too far gone in +wickedness for such a futile remedy. The old chivalrous sentiments of +the genuine noblesse are giving way to the base chicanery of the +bourgeois who supplant them: the peasantry are mean, avaricious, and +full of bitter jealousy; but they are triumphantly rooting out the last +vestiges of feudalism. Democracy and communism are the fine names put +forward to justify the enmity of those who have not, against those who +have. Their success means merely an approaching 'descent of Niagara,' +and the growth of a more debasing and more materialist form of +despotism. But it would be a mistake to assume that this view of the +world implies that Balzac is in a state of lofty moral indignation. +Nothing can be further from the case. The world is wicked; but it is +fascinating. Society is very corrupt, it is true; but intensely and +permanently amusing. Paris is a hell; but hell is the only place worth +living in. The play of evil passions gives infinite subjects for +dramatic interests. The financial warfare is more diabolical than the +old literal warfare, but quite as entertaining. There is really as much +romance connected with bills of exchange as with swords and lances, and +rigging the market is nothing but the modern form of lying in ambush. +Goneril and Regan are triumphant; but we may admire the grace of their +manners and the dexterity with which they cloak their vices. Iago not +only poisons Othello's peace of mind, but, in the world of Balzac, he +succeeds to Othello's place, and is universally respected. The story +receives an additional flavour. In a characteristic passage, Balzac +regrets that Moličre did not continue 'Tartufe.' It would then have +appeared how bitterly Orgon regretted the loss of the hypocrite, who, it +is said, made love to his wife, but who, at any rate, had an interest in +making things pleasant. Your conventional catastrophe is a mistake in +art, as it is a misrepresentation of facts. Tartufe has a good time of +it in Balzac: instead of meeting with an appropriate punishment, he +flourishes and thrives, and we look on with a smile not altogether +devoid of complacency. Shall we not take the world as it is, and be +amused at the 'Comédie Humaine,' rather than fruitlessly rage against +it? It will be played out whether we like it or not, and we may as well +adapt our tastes to our circumstances. + +Ought we to be shocked at this extravagant cynicism; to quote it, as +respectable English journalists used to do, as a proof of the awful +corruption of French society, or to regard it as semi-humorous +exaggeration? I can't quite sympathise with people who take Balzac +seriously. I cannot talk about the remorseless skill with which he tears +off the mask from the fearful corruptions of modern society, and +penetrates into the most hidden motives of the human heart; nor can I +infer from his terrible pictures of feminine suffering that for every +one of those pictures a woman's heart had been tortured to death. This, +or something like this, I have read; and I can only say that I don't +believe a word of it. Balzac, indeed, as compared with our respectable +romancers, has the merit of admitting passions whose existence we +scrupulously ignore; and the further merit that he takes a far wider +range of sentiment, and does not hold by the theory that the life of a +man or a woman closes at the conventional end of a third volume. But he +is above all things a dreamer, and his dreams resemble nightmares. +Powerfully as his actors are put upon the stage, they seem to me to be, +after all, 'such stuff as dreams are made of.' A genuine observer of +life does not find it so highly spiced, and draws more moderate +conclusions. Balzac's characters run into typical examples of particular +passions rather than genuine human beings; they are generally +monomaniacs. Balthazar Claes, who gives up his life to search for the +philosopher's stone, is closely related to them all; only we must +substitute for the philosopher's stone some pet passion, in which the +whole nature is absorbed. They have the unnatural strain of mind which +marks the approach to madness. It is not ordinary daylight which +illuminates Balzac's dreamland, but some fantastic combination of +Parisian lamps, which tinges all the actors with an unearthly glare, and +distorts their features into extravagant forms. The result has, as I +have said, a strange fascination; but one is half-ashamed of yielding, +because one feels that it is due to the use of rather unholy drugs. The +vapours that rise from his magic caldron and shape themselves into human +forms smell unpleasantly of sulphur, or perhaps of Parisian sewers. + +The highest poetry, like the noblest morality, is the product of a +thoroughly healthy mind. A diseased tendency in one respect is certain +to make itself manifest in the other. Now Balzac, though he shows some +powers which are unsurpassed or unequalled, possessed a mind which, to +put it gently, was not exactly well regulated. He took a pleasure in +dwelling upon horrors from which a healthy imagination shrinks, and +rejoiced greatly in gloating over the mysteries of iniquity. I do not +say that this makes his work immoral in the ordinary sense. Probably few +people who are likely to read Balzac would be any the worse for the +study. But, from a purely artistic point of view, he is injured by his +morbid tendencies. The highest triumph of style is to say what everybody +has been thinking in such a way as to make it new; the greatest triumph +of art is to make us see the poetical side of the commonplace life +around us. Balzac's ambition was, doubtless, aimed in that direction. He +wished to show that life in Paris or at Tours was as interesting to the +man of real insight as any more ideal region. In a certain sense, he has +accomplished his purpose. He has discovered food for a dark and powerful +imagination in the most commonplace details of daily life. But he falls +short in so far as he is unable to represent things as they are, and has +a taste for impossible horrors. There are tragedies enough all round us +for him who has eyes to see. Balzac is not content with the materials at +hand, or rather he has a love for the more exceptional and hideous +manifestations. Therefore the 'Comédie Humaine,' instead of being an +accurate picture of human life, and appealing to the sympathies of all +human beings, is a collection of monstrosities, whose vices are +unnatural, and whose virtues are rather like their vices. One feels that +there is something narrow and artificial about his work. It is intensely +powerful, but it is not the highest kind of power. He makes the utmost +of the gossip of a club smoking-room, or the scandal of a drawing-room, +or perhaps of a country public-house; but he represents a special phase +of manners, and that not a particularly pleasant one, rather than the +more fundamental and permanent sentiments of mankind. When shall we see +a writer who can be powerful without being spasmodic, and pierce through +the surface of society without seeking for interest in its foulest +abysses? + + + + +_DE QUINCEY_ + + +Little more than fourteen years ago there passed from among us a man who +held a high and very peculiar position in English literature. In 1821 De +Quincey first published the work with which his name is most commonly +associated, and at uncertain intervals he gave tokens to mankind of his +continued presence on earth. What his life may have been in the +intervals seems to have been at times unknown even to his friends. He +began by disappearing from school and from his family, and seems to have +fallen into the habit of temporary eclipses. At one moment he dropped +upon his acquaintance from the clouds; at another he would vanish into +utter darkness for weeks or months together. One day he came to dine +with Christopher North--so we are told in the professor's life--was +detained for the night by a heavy storm of rain, and prolonged his +impromptu visit for a year. During that period his habits must have been +rather amazing to a well-regulated household. His wants, indeed, were +simple, and, in one sense, regular; a particular joint of mutton, cut +according to a certain mathematical formula, and an ounce of laudanum, +made him happy for a day. But in the hours when ordinary beings are +awake he was generally to be found stretched in profound opium-slumbers +upon a rug before the fire, and it was only about two or three in the +morning that he gave unequivocal symptoms of vitality, and suddenly +gushed forth in streams of wondrous eloquence to the supper parties +detained for the purpose of witnessing the display. Between these +irregular apparitions we are lastly given to understand that his life +was so strange that its details would be incredible. What these +incredible details may have been, I have no means of knowing. It is +enough that he was a strange unsubstantial being, flitting uncertainly +about in the twilight regions of society, emerging by fits and starts +into visibility, afflicted with a general vagueness as to the ordinary +duties of mankind, and generally taking much more opium than was good +for him. He tells us, indeed, that he broke off his over-mastering habit +by vigorous efforts; as he also tells us that opium is a cure for most +grievous evils, and especially saved him from an early death by +consumption. It is plain enough, however, that he never really refrained +for any length of time; and perhaps we should congratulate ourselves on +a propensity, unfortunate it may be, for its victim, but leading to the +Confessions as one collateral result. + +The life of De Quincey by "H. A. Page," published since this was +written, has removed much of the mystery; and it has also done much to +raise in some respects our estimate of his character. With all his +weaknesses De Quincey undoubtedly was a man who could excite love as +well as pity. Incapable, to a grotesque degree, of anything like +business, he did his best to discharge domestic duties: he had a +punctilious sense of honour, and got himself into difficulties by a +generosity which was certainly not corrected by the virtue of prudence. +But I will not attempt to sum up the facts, for which, as for a higher +estimate than I can subscribe of his intellectual position, I gladly +refer to his biography. I have only to do with the De Quincey of books +which have a singular fascination. De Quincey himself gives thanks for +four circumstances. He rejoices that his lot was cast in a rustic +solitude; that that solitude was in England: that his 'infant feelings +were moulded by the gentlest of sisters,' instead of 'horrid pugilistic +brothers;' and that he and his were members of 'a pure, holy, and' (the +last epithet should be emphasized) 'magnificent Church.' The +thanksgiving is characteristic, for it indicates his naļve conviction +that his admiration was due to the intrinsic merits of the place and +circumstances of his birth, and not to the accident that they were his +own. It would be useless to inquire whether a more bracing atmosphere +and a less retired spot might have been more favourable to his talents; +but we may trace the influence of these conditions of his early life +upon his subsequent career. + + * * * * * + +De Quincey implicitly puts forward a claim which has been accepted by +all competent critics. They declare, and he tacitly assumes, that he is +a master of the English language. He claims a sort of infallibility in +deciding upon the precise use of words and the merits of various styles. +But he explicitly claims something more. He declares that he has used +language for purposes to which it has hardly been applied by any prose +writers. The 'Confessions of an Opium-eater' and the 'Suspiria de +Profundis' are, he tells us, 'modes of impassioned prose, ranging under +no precedents that I am aware of in any literature.' The only +confessions that have previously made any great impression upon the +world are those of St. Augustine and of Rousseau; but, with one short +exception in St. Augustine, neither of those compositions contains any +passion, and, therefore, De Quincey stands absolutely alone as the +inventor and sole performer on a new musical instrument--for such an +instrument is the English language in his hands. He belongs to a genus +in which he is the only individual. The novelty and the difficulty of +the task must be his apology if he fails, and causes of additional glory +if he succeeds. He alone of all human beings who have written since the +world began, has entered a path, which the absence of rivals proves to +be encumbered with some unusual obstacles. The accuracy and value of so +bold a claim require a short examination. After all, every writer, +however obscure, may contrive by a judicious definition to put himself +into a solitary class. He has some peculiarities which distinguish him +from all other mortals. He is the only journalist who writes at a given +epoch from a particular garret in Grub Street, or the only poet who is +exactly six feet high and measures precisely forty-two inches round the +chest. Any difference whatever may be applied to purposes of +classification, and the question is whether the difference is, or is +not, of much importance. By examining, therefore, the propriety of De +Quincey's view of his own place in literature, we shall be naturally led +to some valuation of his distinctive merits. In deciding whether a bat +should be classed with birds or beasts, we have to determine the nature +of the beast and the true theory of his wings. And De Quincey, if the +comparison be not too quaint, is like the bat, an ambiguous character, +rising on the wings of prose to the borders of the true poetical region. + +De Quincey, then, announces himself as an impassioned writer, as a +writer in impassioned prose, and, finally, as applying impassioned prose +to confessions. The first question suggested by this assertion concerns +the sense of the word 'impassioned.' There is very little of what one +ordinarily means by passion in the Confessions or elsewhere. There are +no explosions of political wrath, such as animate the 'Letters on a +Regicide Peace,' or of a deep religious emotion, which breathes through +many of our greatest prose writers. The language is undoubtedly a +vehicle for sentiments of a certain kind, but hardly of that burning and +impetuous order which we generally indicate by impassioned. It is deep, +melancholy reverie, not concentrated essence of emotion; and the epithet +fails to indicate any specific difference between himself and many other +writers. The real peculiarity is not in the passion expressed, but in +the mode of expressing it. De Quincey resembles the story-tellers +mentioned by some Eastern travellers. So extraordinary is their power of +face, and so skilfully modulated are the inflections of their voices, +that even a European, ignorant of the language, can follow the narrative +with absorbing interest. One may fancy that if De Quincey's language +were emptied of all meaning whatever, the mere sound of the words would +move us, as the lovely word Mesopotamia moved Whitefield's hearer. The +sentences are so delicately balanced, and so skilfully constructed, that +his finer passages fix themselves in the memory without the aid of +metre. Humbler writers are content if they can get through a single +phrase without producing a decided jar. They aim at keeping up a steady +jog-trot, which shall not give actual pain to the jaws of the reader. +They no more think of weaving whole paragraphs or chapters into complex +harmonies, than an ordinary pedestrian of 'going to church in a galliard +and coming home in a coranto.' Even our great writers generally settle +down to a stately but monotonous gait, after the fashion of Johnson or +Gibbon, or are content with adopting a style as transparent and +inconspicuous as possible. Language, according to the common phrase, is +the dress of thought; and that dress is the best, according to modern +canons of taste, which attracts least attention from its wearer. De +Quincey scorns this sneaking maxim of prudence, and boldly challenges +our admiration by indulgence in what he often calls 'bravura.' His +language deserves a commendation sometimes bestowed by ladies upon rich +garments, that it is capable of standing up by itself. The form is so +admirable that, for purposes of criticism, we must consider it as +something apart from the substance. The most exquisite passages in De +Quincey's writings are all more or less attempts to carry out the idea +expressed in the title of the dream fugue. They are intended to be +musical compositions, in which words have to play the part of notes. +They are impassioned, not in the sense of expressing any definite +sentiment, but because, from the structure and combination of the +sentences, they harmonise with certain phases of emotion. + +Briefly, De Quincey is doing in prose what every great poet does in +verse. The specific mark thus indicated is still insufficient to give +him a solitary position among writers. All great rhetoricians, as De +Quincey defines and explains the term, rise to the borders of poetry, +and the art which has recently been cultivated among us under the name +of word-painting may be more fitly described as an attempt to produce +poetical effects without the aid of metre. From most of the writers +described under this rather unpleasant phrase he differs by the +circumstance, that his art is more nearly allied to music than to +painting. Or, if compared to any painters, it must be to those who care +comparatively little for distinct portraiture or dramatic interest. He +resembles rather the school which is satisfied by contemplating +gorgeous draperies, and graceful limbs and long processions of imposing +figures, without caring to interpret the meaning of their works, or to +seek for more than the harmonious arrangement of form and colour. In +other words, his prose-poems should be compared to the paintings which +aim at an effect analogous to that of stately pieces of music. Milton is +the poet whom he seems to regard with the sincerest admiration; and he +apparently wishes to emulate the majestic rhythm of the 'God-gifted +organ-voice of England.' Or we may, perhaps, admit some analogy between +his prose and the poetry of Keats, though it is remarkable that he +speaks with very scant appreciation of his contemporary. The 'Ode to a +Nightingale,' with its marvellous beauty of versification and the dim +associations half-consciously suggested by its language, surpasses, +though it resembles, some of De Quincey's finest passages; and the +'Hyperion' might have been translated into prose as a fitting companion +for some of the opium dreams. It is in the success with which he +produces such effects as these that De Quincey may fairly claim to be +unsurpassed in our language. Pompous (if that word may be used in a good +sense) declamation in prose, where the beauty of the thought is lost in +the splendour of the style, is certainly a rare literary product. Of the +great rhetoricians whom De Quincey quotes in the Essay on Rhetoric just +noticed, such men as Burke and Jeremy Taylor lead us to forget the means +in the end. They sound the trumpet as a warning, not for the mere +delight in its volume of sound. Perhaps his affinity to Sir Thomas +Browne is more obvious; and one can understand the admiration which he +bestows upon the opening bar of a passage in the Urn-burial:--'Now since +these bones have rested quietly in the grave under the drums and +tramplings of three conquests,' &c. 'What a melodious ascent,' he +exclaims, 'as of a prelude to some impassioned requiem breathing from +the pomps of earth and from the sanctities of the grave! What a _fluctus +decumanus_ of rhetoric! Time expounded, not by generations or centuries, +but by vast periods of conquests and dynasties; by cycles of Pharaohs +and Ptolemies, Antiochi and Arsacides! And these vast successions of +time distinguished and figured by the uproars which revolve at their +inaugurations; by the drums and tramplings rolling overhead upon the +chambers of forgotten dead--the trepidations of time and mortality +vexing, at secular intervals, the everlasting sabbaths of the grave!' + +The commentator is seeking to eclipse the text, and his words are at +once a description and an example of his own most characteristic +rhetoric. Wordsworth once uttered an aphorism which De Quincey repeats +with great admiration: that language is not, as I have just said, the +dress, but 'the incarnation of thought.' But though accepting and +enforcing the doctrine by showing that the 'mixture is too subtle, the +intertexture too ineffable' to admit of expression, he condemns the +style which is the best illustration of its truth. He is very angry with +the admirers of Swift; De Foe and 'many hundreds' of others wrote +something quite as good; it only wanted 'plain good sense, natural +feeling, unpretendingness, some little scholarly practice in putting +together the clockwork of sentences, and, above all, the advantage of an +appropriate subject.' Could Swift, he asks, have written a pendant to +passages in Sir W. Raleigh, or Sir Thomas Browne, or Jeremy Taylor? He +would have cut the same figure as 'a forlorn scullion from a greasy +eating-house at Rotterdam, if suddenly called away in vision to act as +seneschal to the festival of Belshazzar the King, before a thousand of +his lords.' And what, we may retort, would Taylor, or Browne, or De +Quincey himself, have done, had one of them been wanted to write down +the project of Wood's halfpence in Ireland? He would have resembled a +king in his coronation robes compelled to lead a forlorn hope up the +scaling ladders. The fact is, that Swift required for his style not only +the plain good sense and other rare qualities enumerated, but pungent +humour, quick insight, deep passion, and general power of mind, such as +is given to few men in a century. But, as in his case the thought is +really incarnated in the language we cannot criticise the style +separately from the thoughts, or we can only assign, as its highest +merit, its admirable fitness for producing the desired effect. It would +be wrong to invert De Quincey's censure, and blame him because his +gorgeous robes are not fitted for more practical purposes. To everything +there is a time; for plain English, and for De Quincey's highly-wrought +passages. + +It would be difficult or impossible, and certainly it would be +superfluous, to define with any precision the peculiar flavour of De +Quincey's style. A few specimens would do more than any description; and +De Quincey is too well known to justify quotation. It may be enough to +notice that most of his brilliant performances are variations on the +same theme. He appeals to our terror of the infinite, to the shrinking +of the human mind before astronomical distances and geological periods +of time. He paints vast perspectives, opening in long succession, till +we grow dizzy in the contemplation. The cadence of his style suggests +sounds echoing each other, and growing gradually fainter, till they die +away into infinite distance. Two great characteristics, he tells us, of +his opium dreams were a deep-seated melancholy and an exaggeration of +the things of space and time. Nightly he descended 'into chasms and +sunless abysses, depths below depths, from which it seemed hopeless that +he could ever reascend.' He saw buildings and landscapes 'in proportion +so vast as the human eye is not fitted to receive.' He seemed to live +ninety or a hundred years in a night, and even to pass through periods +far beyond the limits of human existence. Melancholy and an awe-stricken +sense of the vast and vague are the emotions which he communicates with +the greatest power; though the melancholy is too dreamy to deserve the +name of passion, and the terror of the infinite is not explicitly +connected with any religious emotion. It is a proof of the fineness of +his taste, that he scarcely ever falls into bombast; we tremble at his +audacity in accumulating gorgeous phrases; but we confess that he is +justified by the result. The only exception that I can remember is the +passage in 'The English Mailcoach,' where his exaggerated patriotism +leads him into what strikes me at least as a rather vulgar bit of +claptrap. If any reader will take the trouble to compare De Quincey's +account of a kind of anticipation of the Balaclava charge at the battle +of Talavera, with Napier's description of the same facts, he will be +amused at the distortion of history; but whatever the accuracy of the +statements, one is a little shocked at finding 'the inspiration of God' +attributed to the gallant dragoons who were cut to pieces on that +occasion, as other gallant men have been before and since. The phrase is +overcharged, and inevitably suggests a cynical reaction of mind. The +ideas of dragoons and inspiration do not coalesce so easily as might be +wished; but, with this exception, I think that his purple patches are +almost irreproachable, and may be read and re-read with increasing +delight. I know of no other modern writer who has soared into the same +regions with so uniform and easy a flight. + +The question is often raised how far the attempt to produce by one art +effects specially characteristic of another can be considered as +legitimate; whether, for example, a sculptor, when encroaching upon the +province of the painter, or a prose writer attempting to rival poets, +may not be summarily condemned. The answer probably would be that a +critic who lays down such rules is erecting himself into a legislator, +when he should be a simple observer. Success justifies itself; and when +De Quincey obtains, without the aid of metre, graces which few other +writers have won by the same means, it is all the more creditable to De +Quincey. A certain presumption, however, remains in such cases, that the +failure to adopt the ordinary methods implies a certain deficiency of +power. If we ask why De Quincey, who trenched so boldly upon the +peculiar province of the poet, yet failed to use the poetical form, +there is one very obvious answer. He has one intolerable fault, a fault +which has probably done more than any other to diminish his popularity, +and which is, of all faults, most diametrically opposed to poetical +excellence. He is utterly incapable of concentration. He is, from the +very principles on which his style is constructed, the most diffuse of +writers. Other men will pack half-a-dozen distinct propositions into a +sentence, and care little if they are somewhat crushed and distorted in +the process. De Quincey insists upon putting each of them separately, +smoothing them out elaborately, till not a wrinkle disturbs their +uniform surface, and then presenting each of them for our acceptance +with a placid smile. His commendable desire for lucidity of expression +makes him nervously anxious to avoid any complexity of thought. Each +step of his argument, each shade of meaning, and each fact in his +narrative, must have its own separate embodiment; and every joint and +connecting link must be carefully and accurately defined. The clearness +is won at a price. There is some advantage in this elaborate method of +dissecting out every distinct fibre and ramification of an argument. +But, on the whole, one is apt to remember that life is limited, and that +there are some things in this world which must be taken for granted. If +a man's boyhood fill two volumes, and if one of these (though under +unfavourable circumstances) took six months to revise, it seems probable +that in later years he would have taken longer to record events than to +live them. No autobiography written on such principles could ever reach +even the middle life of the author. Take up, for example, the first +volume of his collected works. Why, on the very first page, having +occasion to mention Christendom in the fifteenth century, should he +provide against some eccentric misconception by telling us that it did +not, at that time, include any part of America? Why should it take +considerably more than a page to explain that when a schoolmaster begins +lessons punctually, and leaves off too late, there will be an +encroachment on the hours of play? Or two pages to describe how a porter +dropped a portmanteau on a flight of stairs, and didn't waken a +schoolmaster? Or two more to account for the fact that he asked a woman +the meaning of the noise produced by the 'bore' in the Dee, instead of +waiting till she spoke to him? Impassioned prose may be a very good +thing; but when its current is arrested by such incessant stoppages, and +the beauty of the English language displayed by showing how many +faultless sentences may be expended on an exhaustive description of +irrelevant trifles, the human mind becomes recalcitrant. A man may +become prolix from the fulness or fervency of his mind; but prolixity +produced by this finical minuteness of language, ends by distressing +one's nerves. It is the same sense of irritation as is produced by +waiting for the tedious completion of an elaborate toilette, and one is +rather tempted to remember Artemus Ward's description of the Fourth of +July oration, which took four hours 'to pass a given point.' + +This peculiarity of his style is connected with other qualities upon +which a great deal of eulogy has been bestowed. There are two faculties +in which, so far as my experience goes, no man, woman, or child ever +admits his or her own deficiency. The driest of human beings will boast +of their sense of humour; and the most perplexed, of their logical +acuteness. De Quincey has been highly praised, both as a humorist and as +a logician. He believed in his own powers, and exhibits them rather +ostentatiously. He says, pleasantly enough, but not without a substratum +of real conviction, that he is 'a _doctor seraphicus_, and also +_inexpugnabilis_ upon quillets of logic.' I confess that I am generally +sceptical as to the merits of infallible dialecticians, because I have +observed that a man's reputation for inexorable logic is generally in +proportion to the error of his conclusions. A logician, in popular +estimation, seems to be one who never shrinks from a _reductio ad +absurdum_. His merits are measured, not by the accuracy of his +conclusions, but by the distance which separates them from his +premisses. The explanation doubtless lies in the general impression that +logic is concerned with words and not with things. There is a vague +belief that by skilfully linking syllogisms you can form a chain +sufficiently strong to cross the profoundest abyss, and which will need +no test of observation and verification. A dexterous performer, it is +supposed, might pass from one extremity of the universe to the other +without ever touching ground; and people do not observe that the refusal +to draw an inference may be just as great a proof of logical skill as +ingenuity in drawing it. Now De Quincey's claim to infallibility would +be plausible, if we still believed that to define words accurately is +the same thing as to discover facts, and that binding them skilfully +together is equivalent to reasoning securely. He is a kind of rhetorical +Euclid. He makes such a flourish with his apparatus of axioms and +definitions that you do not suspect any lurking fallacy. He is careful +to show you the minutest details of his argumentative mechanism. Each +step in the process is elaborately and separately set forth; you are not +assumed to know anything, or to be capable of supplying any links for +yourself; it shall not even be taken for granted without due notice that +things which are equal to a third thing are equal to each other; and the +consequence is, that few people venture to question processes which seem +to be so plainly set forth, and to advance by such a careful +development. + +When, indeed, De Quincey has a safe guide, he can put an argument with +admirable clearness. The expositions of political economy, for example, +are clear and ingenious, though even here I may quote Mr. Mill's remark, +that he should have imagined a certain principle--obvious enough when +once stated--to have been familiar to all economists, 'if the instance +of Mr. De Quincey did not prove that the complete non-recognition and +implied denial of it are compatible with great intellectual ingenuity +and close intimacy with the subject-matter.'[4] Upon this question, Mr. +Shadworth Hodgson has maintained that De Quincey was in the right as +against Mill, and I cannot here argue the point. I think, however, that +all economists would admit that De Quincey's merits were confined to an +admirable exposition of another man's reasoning, and included no +substantial addition to the inquiry. Certainly he does not count as one +of those whose writings marked any epoch in the development of the +science--if it be a science. Admirable skill of expression is, indeed, +no real safeguard against logical blunders; and I will venture to say +that De Quincey rarely indulges in this ostentatious logical precision +without plunging into downright fallacies. I will take two instances. +The first is trifling, but characteristic. Poor Dr. Johnson used to +reproach himself, as De Quincey puts it, 'with lying too long in bed.' +How absurd! is the comment. The doctor got up at eleven because he went +to bed at three. If he had gone to bed at twelve, could he not easily +have got up at eight? The remark would have been sound in form, though a +quibble in substance, if Johnson had complained of lying in bed 'too +late;' but as De Quincey himself speaks of 'too long' instead of 'too +late,' it is an obvious reply that eight hours are of the same length at +every period of the day. The great logician falls into another +characteristic error in the same paragraph. Dr. Johnson, he says, was +not 'indolent;' but he adds that Johnson 'had a morbid predisposition to +decline labour from his scrofulous habit of body,' which was increased +by over-eating and want of exercise. It is a cruel mode of vindication +to say that you are not indolent, but only predisposed by a bad +constitution and bad habits to decline labour; but the advantage of +accurate definition is, that you can knock a man down with one hand, and +pick him up with the other. + +To take a more serious case. De Quincey undertakes to refute Hume's +memorable argument against miracles. There are few better arenas for +intellectual combats, and De Quincey has in it an unusual opportunity +for display. He is obviously on his mettle. He comes forward with a +whole battery of propositions, carefully marshalled in strategical +order, and supported by appropriate 'lemmas.' One of his arguments, +whether cogent or not, is that Hume's objection will not apply to the +evidence of a multitude of witnesses. Now, a conspicuous miracle, he +says, can be produced resting on such evidence, to wit, that of the +thousands fed by a few loaves and fishes. The simplest infidel will, of +course, reply that as these thousands of witnesses cannot be produced, +the evidence open to us reduces itself to that of the Evangelists. De +Quincey recollects this, and replies to it in a note. 'Yes,' he says, +'the Evangelists certainly; and, let us add, all those contemporaries to +whom the Evangelists silently appealed. These make up the "multitude" +contemplated in the case' under consideration. That is, to make up the +multitude, you have to reckon as witnesses all those persons who did not +contradict the 'silent appeal,' or whose contradiction has not reached +us. With such canons of criticism it is hard to say what might not be +proved. When a man with a great reputation for learning and logical +ability tries to put us off with these wretched quibbles, one is fairly +bewildered. He shows an ignorance of the real strength and weakness of +the position, which, but for his reputation, one would summarily explain +by incapacity for reasoning. As it is, we must suppose that, living +apart from the daily battle of life, he had lost that quick instinct +possessed by all genuine logicians for recognising the vital points of +an argument. A day in a court of justice would have taught him more +about evidence than a month spent over Aristotle. He had become fitter +for the parade of the fencing-room than for the real thrust and parry of +a duel in earnest. The mere rhetorical flourish pleases him as much as a +blow at his antagonist's heart. Another glaring instance in the same +paper is his apparent failure to perceive that there is a difference +between proving that such a prophecy as that announcing the fall of +Babylon was fulfilled, and proving that it was supernaturally inspired. +Hume, without a tenth part of the logical apparatus, would have exposed +the fallacy in a sentence. Paley, whom he never tires of treating to +contemptuous abuse, was incapable of such feeble sophistry. De Quincey, +in short, was a very able expositor; but he was not, though under better +discipline he might probably have become, a sound original thinker. He +is an interpreter, not an originator of thought. His skill in setting +forth an argument blinds him to its most palpable defects. If language +is a powerful weapon in his hands, it is only when the direction of the +blow is dictated by some more manly, if less ingenious, understanding. + +Let us inquire, and it is a more delicate question, whether he is better +qualified to use it as a plaything. He has a reputation as a humorist. +The Essay on Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts is probably the +most popular of his writings. The conception is undoubtedly meritorious, +and De Quincey returns to it more than once in his other works. The +description of the Williams murders is inimitable, and the execution +even in the humorous passages is frequently good. We may praise +particular sentences: such as the well-known remark that 'if a man once +indulges himself in murder, he comes to think little of robbing; and +from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking; and from +that to incivility and procrastination.' One laughs at this whimsical +inversion; but I don't think one laughs very heartily; and certainly one +does not find, as in really deep humour, that the paradox is pregnant +with further meaning, and the laugh a prelude to a more melancholy +smile. Many of the best things ever said are couched in a similar form: +the old remark that the use of language is the concealment of thought; +the saying that the half is greater than the whole, and that two and two +don't always make four, are familiar instances; but each of them really +contains a profound truth expressed in a paradoxical form, which is a +sufficient justification of their extraordinary popularity. But if every +inversion of a commonplace were humorous, we should be able to make +jokes by machinery. There is no humour that I can see in the statement +that honesty is the worst policy, or that procrastination saves time; +and De Quincey's phrase, though I admit that it is amusing as a kind of +summary of his essay, seems to me to rank little higher than an +ingenious pun. It is a clever trick of language, but does not lead any +further. + +Here, too, and elsewhere, the humour gives us a certain impression of +thinness. It is pressed too far, and spun out too long. Compare De +Quincey's mode of beating out his one joke through pages of laboured +facetiousness, with Swift's concentrated and pungent irony, as in the +proposal for eating babies, or the argument to prove that the abolition +of Christianity may be attended with some inconveniences. It is the +difference between the stiffest of nautical grogs and the negus provided +by thoughtful parents for a child's evening party. In some parts of the +essay De Quincey sinks far lower. I do not believe that in any English +author of reputation there is a more feeble piece of forced fun, than in +the description of the fight of the amateur in murder with the baker at +Munich. One knows by a process of reasoning that the man is joking; but +one feels inclined to blush, through sympathy with a very clear man so +exposing himself. A blemish of the same kind makes itself unpleasantly +obvious at many points of his writings. He seems to fear that we shall +find his stately and elaborate style rather too much for our nerves. He +is conscious that, as a great master of language, he can play what +tricks he pleases, without danger of remonstrance. And therefore, he +every now and then plunges into slang, not irreverently, as a vulgar +writer might do, but of malice prepense. The shock is almost as great as +if an organist performing a solemn tune should suddenly introduce an +imitation of the mewing of a cat. Now, he seems to say, you can't accuse +me of being dull and pompous. Let me quote an instance or two from his +graver writings. He wishes to argue, in defence of Christianity, that +the ancients were insensible to ordinary duties of humanity. 'Our wicked +friend Kikero, for instance, who _was_ so bad, but _wrote_ so well, who +_did_ such naughty things, but _said_ such pretty things, has himself +noticed in one of his letters, with petrifying coolness, that he knew of +destitute old women in Rome who went without tasting food for one, two, +or even three days. After making such a statement, did Kikero not tumble +downstairs and break at least three of his legs in his hurry to call a +public meeting,' &c., &c. What delicate humour! The grave apologist of +Christianity actually calls Cicero, Kikero, and talks about 'three of +his legs!' Do we not all explode with laughter? A parallel case occurs +in his argument about the Essenes; where he grows so irrepressibly +funny as to call Josephus 'Mr. Joe,' and addresses him as +follows:--'Wicked Joseph, listen to me: you've been telling us a fairy +tale; and for my part, I've no objection to a fairy tale in any +situation, because if one can make no use of it oneself, always one +knows that a child will be thankful for it. But this tale, Mr. Joseph, +happens also to be a lie; secondly, a fraudulent lie; thirdly, a +malicious lie.' I have seen this stuff described as 'scholarlike +badinage;' but the only effect of such exquisite foolery, within my +mind, is to persuade one that a writer assailed by such weapons, and +those weapons used by a man who has the whole resources of the English +language at his command, must probably have been encountering an +inconvenient truth. I will simply refer to the story of Sir Isaac Newton +sitting all day with one stocking on and one off, in the Casuistry of +Roman Meals, as an illustration of the way in which a story ought not to +be told. Its most conspicuous, though not its worst fault, its extreme +length, protects it from quotation. + +It is strange to find that a writer, pre-eminently endowed with delicacy +of ear, and boasting of the complex harmonies of his style, should +condescend to such an irritating defect. De Quincey says of one of the +greatest masters of the humorous:--'The gyration within which his +(Lamb's) sentiment wheels, no matter of what kind it may be, is always +the shortest possible. It does not prolong itself, it does not repeat +itself, it does not propagate itself.' And he goes on to connect the +failing with Lamb's utter insensibility to music, and indifference to +'the rhythmical in prose composition.' The criticism is a fine one in +its way, but it may perhaps explain some of De Quincey's shortcomings in +Lamb's peculiar sphere. De Quincey's jokes are apt to repeat and +prolong and propagate themselves, till they become tiresome; and the +delicate touch of the true humorist, just indicating a half-comic, +half-pathetic thought, is alien to De Quincey's more elaborate style. +Yet he had a true and peculiar sense of humour. That faculty may be +predominant or latent; it may form the substance of a whole book, as in +the case of Sterne: or it may permeate every sentence, as in Carlyle's +writings; or it may simply give a faint tinge, rather perceived by +subsequent analysis than consciously felt at the time; and in this +lowest degree it frequently gives a certain charm to De Quincey's +writing. When he tries overt acts of wit, he becomes simply vulgar; when +he directly aims at the humorous, we feel his hand to be rather heavy; +but he is occasionally very happy in that ironical method, of which the +Essay on Murder is the most notorious specimen. The best example, in my +opinion, is the description of his elder brother in the Autobiographical +Sketches. The account of the rival kingdoms of Gombroon and +Tigrasylvania; of poor De Quincey's troubles in getting rid of his +subjects' tails; of his despair at the suggestion that by making them +sit down for six hours a day they might rub them off in the course of +several centuries; of his ingenious plan of placing his unlucky island +at a distance of 75 degrees of latitude from his brother's capital; and +of his dismay at hearing of the 'vast horns and promontories' which run +down from all parts of the hostile dominions towards his unoffending +little territory, are touched with admirable skill. The grave, elaborate +detail of the perplexities of his childish imagination is pleasant, and +at the same time pathetic. When, in short, by simply applying his usual +stateliness of manner to a subject a little beneath it in dignity, he +can produce the desired effect, he is eminently successful. The same +rhetoric which would be appropriate (to use his favourite illustration) +in treating the theme of 'Belshazzar the King giving a great feast to a +thousand of his lords,' has a certain piquancy, when for Belshazzar we +substitute a schoolboy playing at monarchy. He is indulging in a +whimsical masquerade, and the pomp is assumed in sport instead of in +earnest. Nobody can do a little mock majesty so well as he who on +occasion can be seriously majestic. Yet when he altogether abandons his +strong ground, and chooses to tumble and make grimaces before us, like +an ordinary clown, he becomes simply offensive. The great tragedian is +capable on due occasion of pleasant burlesque; but sheer unadulterated +comedy is beyond his powers. De Quincey, in short, can parody his own +serious writing better than anybody, and the capacity is a proof that he +had the faculty of humour; but for a genuine substantive joke--a joke +which, resting on its own merits, instead of being the shadow of his +serious writing, is to be independently humorous--he seems, to me at +least, to be generally insufferable. + +De Quincey's final claim to a unique position rests on the fact that his +'impassioned prose' was applied to confessions. He compares himself, as +I have said, to Rousseau and Augustine. The analogy with the last of +these two writers would, I should imagine, be rather difficult to carry +beyond the first part of resemblance; but it is possible to make out a +somewhat closer affinity to Rousseau. In both cases, at least, we have +to deal with men of morbid temperament, ruined or seriously injured by +their utter incapacity for self-restraint. So far, however, as their +confessions derive an interest from the revelation of character, +Rousseau is more exciting almost in the same proportion as he confesses +greater weaknesses. The record of such errors by their chief actor, and +that actor a man of such singular ability, presents us with a strangely +attractive problem. De Quincey has less to confess, and is less anxious +to lay bare his own morbid propensities. His story excites compassion; +and, as in the famous episode of 'Anne,' attracts us by the genuine +tenderness and delicacy of feeling. He was free from the errors which +make some of Rousseau's confessions loathsome, but he was also not the +man to set fire, like Rousseau, to the hearts of a whole generation. His +narrative is a delight to literary students; not a volcanic outburst to +shake the foundations of society. Nearly all that he has to tell us is +that he ran away from school, spent some time in London, for no very +assignable reason, in a semi-starving condition, and then, equally +without reason, surrendered at discretion to the respectabilities and +went to Oxford like an ordinary human being. It is no doubt a proof of +extraordinary literary power that the facts told with De Quincey's +comment of rich meditative eloquence become so fascinating. +Unfortunately, though he managed to write recollections which are, in +their way, unique, he never achieved anything at all comparable to his +autobiographic revelations. Vague thoughts passed through his mind of +composing a great work on Political Economy, or of writing a still more +wonderful treatise on the Emendation of the Human Intellect. But he +never seems to have made any decided steps towards the fulfilment of +such dreams, and remained to the end of his days a melancholy specimen +of wasted force. There is nothing, unfortunately, very uncommon in the +story, except so far as its hero was a man of genius. The history of +Coleridge exemplifies a still higher ambition, resulting, it is true, in +a much greater influence upon the thought of the age, but almost +equally sad. Their lives might be put into tracts for the use of +opium-eaters; and whilst there was still hope of redeeming them, it +might have been worth while to condemn them with severity. Indignation +is now out of place, and we can only grieve and pass by. When thousands +of men are drinking themselves to death every year, there is nothing +very strange or dramatic in the history of one ruined by opium instead +of by gin. + +From De Quincey's writings we get the notion of a man amiable, but with +an uncertain temper; with fine emotions, but an utter want of moral +strength; and, in short, of a nature of much delicacy and tenderness +retreating into opium and the Lake district, from a world which was too +rough for him. He uttered in many fragmentary ways his views of +philosophy and politics. Whatever their value, De Quincey has of course +no claim to be an originator. He not only had not strength to stand +alone, but he belonged to a peculiar side-current of English thought. He +was the adjective of which Coleridge was the substantive; and if +Coleridge himself was an unsatisfactory and imperfect thinker, his +imperfections are greatly increased in his friend and disciple. He +shared that belief which some people have not yet abandoned, that the +answer to all our perplexities is to be found in some of the mysteries +of German metaphysics. If we could only be taught to distinguish between +the reason and the understanding, the scales would fall from our eyes, +and we should see that the Thirty-nine Articles contained the plan on +which the universe was framed. He had an acquaintance, which, if his own +opinion were correct, was accurate and profound with Kant's writings, +and had studied Schelling, Fichte, and Hegel. He could talk about +concepts and categories and schematisms without losing his head amongst +those metaphysical heights. He knew how by the theoretic reason to +destroy all proofs of the existence of God, and then, by introducing the +practical reason, to set the existence of God beyond a doubt. He fancied +that he was able to translate the technicalities of Kant into plain +English; and he believed that when so translated, they would prove to +have a real and all important meaning. If German metaphysics be a +science, and not a mere edifice of moonshine; and if De Quincey had +really penetrated the secrets of that science, we have missed a chance +of enlightenment. As it is, we have little left except a collection of +contemptuous prejudices. De Quincey thought himself entitled to treat +Locke as a shallow pretender. The whole eighteenth century was, with one +or two exceptions, a barren wilderness to him. He aspersed its +reasoners, from Locke to Paley; he scorned its poets with all the +bitterness of the school which first broke loose from the rule of Pope; +and its prose-writers, with the exception of Burke, were miserable +beings in his eyes. He would have seen with little regret a holocaust of +all the literature produced in England between the death of Milton and +the rise of Wordsworth. Naturally, he hated an infidel with that kind of +petulant bitterness which possesses an old lady in a country village, +who has just heard that some wicked people dispute the story of Balaam's +ass. And, as a corollary, he combined the whole French people in one +sweeping censure, and utterly despised their morals, manners, +literature, and political principles. He was a John Bull, as far as a +man can be who is of weakly, nervous temperament, and believes in Kant. + +One or two illustrations may be given of the force of these effeminate +prejudices; and it is to be remarked with regret that they are +specially injurious in a department where he otherwise had eminent +merits, that, namely, of literary criticism. Any man who lived in the +eighteenth century was _primā facie_ a fool; if a free thinker, his case +was all but hopeless; but if a French free thinker, it was desperate +indeed. He lets us into the secret of his prejudices, which, indeed, is +tolerably transparent in his statement that he found it hard to +reverence Coleridge when he supposed him to be a Socinian. Now, though a +'liberal man,' he could not hold a Socinian to be a Christian; nor could +he 'think that any man, though he make himself a marvellously clever +disputant, ever could tower upwards into a very great philosopher, +unless he should begin or end with Christianity.' The canon may be +sound, but it at once destroys the pretensions of such men as Hobbes, +Spinoza, Hume, and even, though De Quincey considers him 'a dubious +exception,' Kant. Even heterodoxy is enough to alienate his sympathies. +'Think of a man,' he exclaims about poor Whiston, 'who had brilliant +preferment within his reach, dragging his poor wife and daughter for +half a century through the very mire of despondency and destitution, +because he disapproved of Athanasius, or because the "Shepherd of +Hermas" was not sufficiently esteemed by the Church of England.' To do +him justice, De Quincey admits, in another passage, that this ridicule +of a poor man for sacrificing his interests to his principles was not +quite fair; but then Whiston was only an Arian. When Priestley, who was +a far worse heretic, had his house sacked by a mob and his life +endangered, De Quincey can scarcely restrain his exultation. He admits +in terms that Priestley ought to be pitied, but adds that the fanaticism +of the mob was 'much more reasonable' than the fanaticism of Priestley; +and that those who play at bowls must look out for rubbers. Porson is to +be detested for his letters to Travis, though De Quincey does not dare +to defend the disputed text. He has, however, a pleasant insinuation at +command. Porson, he says, stung like a hornet; 'it may chance that on +this subject Master Porson will get stung through his coffin, before he +is many years deader.' What scholarlike badinage! Political heretics +fare little better. Fox's eloquence was 'ditch-water,' with a shrill +effervescence of 'imaginary gas.' Burnet was a 'gossiper, slanderer, and +notorious falsifier of facts.' That one of his sermons was burnt is 'the +most consolatory fact in his whole worldly career;' and he asks, 'would +there have been much harm in tying his lordship to the sermon?' Junius +was not only a knave who ought to have been transported, but his +literary success rested upon an utter delusion. He had neither +'sentiment, imagination, nor generalisation.' Johnson, though the best +of Tories, lived in the wrong century, and unluckily criticised Milton +with foolish harshness. Therefore 'Johnson, viewed in relation to +Milton, was a malicious, mendacious, and dishonest man.' + +Let us turn to greater names. Goethe's best work was 'Werther,' and De +Quincey is convinced that his reputation 'must decline for the next +generation or two, until it reaches its just level.' His merits have +been exaggerated for three reasons--first, his great age; secondly, 'the +splendour of his official rank at the court of Weimar;' thirdly, 'his +enigmatical and unintelligible writing.' But 'in Germany his works are +little read, and in this country not at all.' 'Wilhelm Meister' is +morally detestable, and, artistically speaking, rubbish. Of the author +of the Philosophical Dictionary, of the 'Essai sur les Moeurs,' of +'Candide,' and certain other trifles, his judgment is that Horace +Walpole's reputation is the same in kind, as the _genuine_ reputation of +Voltaire: 'Both are very splendid memoir writers, and of the two, Lord +Orford is the more brilliant.' In the same tone he compares Gibbon to +Southey, giving the advantage to the latter on the score of his poetical +ability; and his view of another great infidel may be inferred from the +following phrase. One of Rousseau's opinions is only known to us through +Cowper, 'for in the unventilated pages of its originator it would have +lurked undisturbed down to this hour of June, 1819.' + +Voltaire and Rousseau have the double title to hatred of being Frenchmen +and freethinkers. But even orthodox Frenchmen fare little better. 'The +French Bossuets, Bourdaloues, Fénelons, &c., whatever may be thought of +their meagre and attenuated rhetoric, are one and all the most +commonplace of thinkers.' In fact, the mere mention of France acts upon +him like a red rag on a bull. The French, 'in whom the lower forms of +passion are constantly bubbling up, from the shallow and superficial +character of their feelings,' are incapable of English earnestness. +Their taste is 'anything but good in all that department of wit and +humour'--the department, apparently, of anecdotes--'and the ground lies +in their natural want of veracity;' whereas England bases upon its +truthfulness a well-founded claim to 'a moral pre-eminence among the +nations.' Belgians, French, and Italians attract the inconsiderate by +'facile obsequiousness,' which, however, is a pendent of 'impudence and +insincerity. Want of principle and want of moral sensibility compose the +original _fundus_ of southern manners.' Our faults of style, such as +they are, proceed from our manliness. In France there are no unmarried +women at the age which amongst us gives the insulting name of old maid. +'What striking sacrifices of sexual honour does this one fact argue!' +The French style is remarkable for simplicity--'a strange pretension for +anything French;' but on the whole the intellectual merits of their +style are small, 'chiefly negative,' and 'founded on the accident of +their colloquial necessities.' They are amply compensated, too, by 'the +prodigious defects of the French in all the higher qualities of prose +composition.' Even their handwriting is the 'very vilest form of +scribbling which exists in Europe,' and they and the Germans are 'the +two most gormandising races in Europe.' They display a brutal +selfishness in satisfying their appetites, whereas Englishmen at all +public meals are remarkably conspicuous for 'a spirit of mutual +attention and self-sacrifice.' It is enough to show the real degradation +of their habits, that they use the 'odious gesture' of shrugging their +shoulders, and are fond of the 'vile ejaculation "bah!"' which is as bad +as to puff the smoke of a tobacco-pipe into your companion's face. They +have neither self-respect nor respect for others. French masters are +never dignified, though sometimes tyrannical; French servants are +always, even without meaning it, disrespectfully familiar. Many of their +manners and usages are 'essentially vulgar, and their apparent +affability depends not on kindness of heart, but love of talking.' + +The impudence of the assertions is really amusing, though one cannot but +regret that the vulgar prejudice of the old-fashioned John Bull should +have been embodied in the pages of a master of our language. They are +worth notice because they were not special to De Quincey, but +characteristic of one very intelligible tendency of his generation. De +Quincey's prejudices are chiefly the reflection of those of the +Coleridge school in general, though he added to them a few pet aversions +of his own. At times his genuine acuteness of mind raises him above the +teaching of his masters, or at least enables him to detect their +weaknesses. He discovers Coleridge's plagiarisms, though he believes +and, indeed, speaks in the most exaggerated terms of his philosophical +pretensions; whilst, in treating of Wordsworth, he points out with great +skill the fallacy of some of his theories and the inconsistency of his +practice. But whilst keenly observant of some of the failings of his +friends, he reproduces others in even an exaggerated type. He shows to +the full their narrow-minded hatred of the preceding century, of all +forms of excellence which did not correspond to their favourite types, +and of all speculation which did not lead to, or start from their +characteristic doctrines. The error is fully pardonable. We must not +look to men who are leading a revolt against established modes of +thought for a full appreciation of the doctrines of their antagonists; +and if De Quincey could recognise no merit in Voltaire or Rousseau, in +Locke, Paley, or Jeremy Bentham, their followers were quite prepared to +retaliate in kind. One feels, however, that such prejudices are more +respectable when they are the foibles of a strong mind engaged in active +warfare. We can pardon the old campaigner, who has become bitter in an +internecine contest. It is not quite so pleasant to discover the same +bitterness in a gentleman who has looked on from a distance, and never +quite made up his mind to buckle on his armour. De Quincey had not +earned the right of speaking evil of his enemies. If a man chances to be +a Hedonist, he should show the good temper which is the best virtue of +the indolent. To lie on a bed of roses, and snarl at everybody who +contradicts your theories, seems to imply rather testiness of temper +than strength of conviction. De Quincey is a Christian on Epicurean +principles. He dislikes an infidel because his repose is disturbed by +the arguments of freethinkers. He fears that he will be forced to think +conscientiously, and to polish his logical weapons afresh. He mutters +that the man is a fool, and could be easily thrashed if it were worth +while, and then turns back to his opium and his rhetoric and his beloved +Church of England. There is no pleasanter institution for a gentleman +who likes magnificent historical associations, and heartily hates the +rude revolutionists who would turn the world upside down, and thereby +disturb the rest of dreamy metaphysicians. + +He is quite pathetic, too, about the British Constitution. 'Destroy the +House of Lords,' he exclaims, 'and henceforward, for people like you and +me, England will be no habitable land.' Here, he seems to say, is one +charming elysium, where no rude hand has swept away the cobwebs or +replaced the good old-fashioned machinery; here we may find rest in the +'pure, holy, and magnificent Church,' whose Articles, interpreted by +Coleridge, may guide us through the most wondrous of metaphysical +labyrinths, and dwell in a grand constitutional edifice, rich in +picturesque memories, and blending into one complex harmony elements +contributed by a long series of centuries. And you, wretched French +revolutionists, with your love of petty precision, and irreverent +radicals and utilitarians, with your grovelling material notions, +propose to level, and destroy, and break in upon my delicious reveries. +No old Hebrew prophet could be more indignant with the enemy who +threatened to break down the carved work of his temples with axes and +hammers. But his complaint is, after all, the voice of the sluggard. Let +me dream a little longer; for much as I love my country and its +institutions, I cannot rouse myself to fight for them. It is enough if I +call their assailants an ugly name or so, and at times begin to write +what might be the opening pages of the preface to some very great work +of the future. Alas! the first digression diverts the thread of the +discourse; the task becomes troublesome, and the labour is abruptly +broken off. And so in a life of seventy-three years De Quincey read +extensively and thought acutely by fits, ate an enormous quantity of +opium, wrote a few pages which revealed new capacities in the language, +and provided a good deal of respectable padding for magazines. It +sounds, and many people will say that it is, a harsh and, perhaps they +will add, a stupid judgment. If so, they may find plenty of admirers who +will supply the eulogistic side here too briefly indicated. I will only +say two things: first, that there are very few writers who have revealed +new capacities in the language, and in English literature they might +almost be counted on the fingers. Secondly, I must confess that I have +often consulted De Quincey in regard to biographic and critical +questions, and that though I have generally found something to admire, I +have always found gross inaccuracies and almost always effeminate +prejudices and mere flippancies draped in elaborate rhetoric. I take +leave, therefore, to insist upon faults which are passed over too easily +by writers of more geniality than I claim to possess. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[4] It is curious that De Quincey, in his Essay on Style, explains that +political economy, and especially the doctrine of value, is one of those +subjects which cannot be satisfactorily treated in dialogue--the very +form which he chose to adopt for that particular purpose. + + + + +_SIR THOMAS BROWNE_ + + +'Let me not injure the felicity of others,' says Sir Thomas Browne in a +suppressed passage of the 'Religio Medici,' 'if I say that I am the +happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty into +riches, adversity into prosperity, and I am more invulnerable than +Achilles; fortune hath not one place to hit me.' Perhaps on second +thoughts, Sir Thomas felt that the phrase savoured of that presumption +which is supposed to provoke the wrath of Nemesis; and at any rate, he, +of all men, is the last to be taken too literally at his word. He is a +humorist to the core, and is here writing dramatically. There are many +things in this book, so he tells us, 'delivered rhetorically, many +expressions therein merely tropical,... and therefore also many things +to be taken in a soft and flexible sense, and not to be called unto the +rigid test of reason.' We shall hardly do wrong in reckoning amongst +them this audacious claim to surpassing felicity, as we may certainly +include his boast that he 'could lose an arm without a tear, and with +few groans be quartered into pieces.' And yet, if Sir Thomas were to be +understood in the most downright literal earnest, perhaps he could have +made out as good a case for his assertion as almost any of the troubled +race of mankind. For, if we set aside external circumstances of life, +what qualities offer a more certain guarantee of happiness than those +of which he is an almost typical example? A mind endowed with an +insatiable curiosity as to all things knowable and unknowable; an +imagination which tinges with poetical hues the vast accumulation of +incoherent facts thus stored in a capacious memory; and a strangely +vivid humour that is always detecting the quaintest analogies, and, as +it were, striking light from the most unexpected collocations of +uncompromising materials: such talents are by themselves enough to +provide a man with work for life, and to make all his work delightful. +To them, moreover, we must add a disposition absolutely incapable of +controversial bitterness; 'a constitution,' as he says of himself, 'so +general that it consorts and sympathises with all things;' an absence of +all antipathies to loathsome objects in nature--to French 'dishes of +snails, frogs, and toadstools,' or to Jewish repasts on 'locusts or +grasshoppers;' an equal toleration--which in the first half of the +seventeenth century is something astonishing--for all theological +systems; an admiration even of our natural enemies, the French, the +Spaniards, the Italians, and the Dutch; a love of all climates, of all +countries; and, in short, an utter incapacity to 'absolutely detest or +hate any essence except the devil.' Indeed, his hatred even for that +personage has in it so little of bitterness, that no man, we may be +sure, would have joined more heartily in the Scotch minister's petition +for 'the puir de'il'--a prayer conceived in the very spirit of his +writings. A man so endowed--and it is not only from his explicit +assertions, but from his unconscious self-revelation, that we may credit +him with closely approaching his own ideal--is admirably qualified to +discover one great secret of human happiness. No man was ever better +prepared to keep not only one, but a whole stableful of hobbies, nor +more certain to ride them so as to amuse himself, without loss of temper +or dignity, and without rude collisions against his neighbours. That +happy art is given to few, and thanks to his skill in it, Sir Thomas +reminds us strongly of the two illustrious brothers Shandy combined in +one person. To the exquisite kindliness and simplicity of Uncle Toby he +unites the omnivorous intellectual appetite and the humorous pedantry of +the head of the family. The resemblance, indeed, may not be quite +fortuitous. Though it does not appear that Sterne, amidst his +multifarious pilferings, laid hands upon Sir Thomas Browne, one may +fancy that he took a general hint or two from so congenial an author. + +The best mode of approaching so original a writer is to examine the +intellectual food on which his mind was nourished. He dwelt by +preference in strange literary pastures; and their nature will let us +into some secrets as to his taste and character. We will begin, +therefore, by examining the strange furniture of his mind, as described +in his longest, though not his most characteristic book--the 'Inquiry +into Vulgar Errors.' When we turn over its quaint pages, we feel as +though we were entering one of those singular museums of curiosities +which existed in the pre-scientific ages. Every corner is filled with a +strange, incoherent medley, in which really valuable objects are placed +side by side with what is simply grotesque and ludicrous. The modern man +of science may find some objects of interest; but they are mixed +inextricably with strange rubbish that once delighted the astrologer, +the alchemist, or the dealer in apocryphal relics. And the possessor of +this miscellaneous collection accompanies us with an unfailing flow of +amusing gossip: at one moment pouring forth a torrent of out-of-the-way +learning; at another, making a really passable scientific remark; and +then lapsing into an elaborate discussion of some inconceivable +absurdity; affecting the air of a grave inquirer, and to all appearance +fully believing in his own pretensions, and yet somehow indulging +himself in a half-suppressed smile, which indicates that the humorous +aspect of a question can never be far removed from his mind. Mere +curiosity is not yet differentiated from scientific thirst for +knowledge; and a quaint apologue is as good a reward for the inquirer as +the discovery of a law of nature. The numerous class which insists upon +a joke being as unequivocal as a pistol-shot, and a serious statement as +grave as a Blue-book, should therefore keep clear of Sir Thomas Browne. +His most congenial readers are those who take a simple delight in +following out any quaint train of reflections, careless whether it may +culminate in a smile or a sigh, or in some thought in which the two +elements of the sad and the ludicrous are inextricably blended. Sir +Thomas, however, is in the 'Inquiry' content generally with bringing out +the strange curiosities of his museum, and does not care to draw any +explicit moral. The quaintness of the objects unearthed seems to be a +sufficient recompense for the labour of the search. Fortunately for his +design, he lived in the time when a poet might have spoken without +hyperbole of the 'fairy tales of science.' To us, who have to plod +through an arid waste of painful observation, and slow piecing together +of cautious inferences before reaching the promised land of wondrous +discoveries, the expression sometimes appears to be ironical. Does not +science, we may ask with a _primā facie_ resemblance of right, destroy +as much poetry as it generates? To him no such doubts could present +themselves, for fairyland was still a province of the empire of science. +Strange beings moved through the pages of natural history, which were +equally at home in the 'Arabian Nights' or in poetical apologues. The +griffin, the phoenix, and the dragon were not yet extinct; the +salamander still sported in flames; and the basilisk slew men at a +distance with his deadly glance. More commonplace animals indulged in +the habits which they had learnt in fables, and of which only some +feeble vestiges now remain in the eloquence of strolling showmen. The +elephant had no joints, and was caught by felling the tree against which +he rested his stiff limbs in sleep; the pelican pierced its breast for +the good of its young; ostriches were regularly painted with a horseshoe +in their bills, to indicate their ordinary diet; storks refused to live +except in republics and free states; the crowing of a cock put lions to +flight, and men were struck dumb in good sober earnest by the sight of a +wolf. The curiosity-hunter, in short, found his game still plentiful, +and, by a few excursions into Aristotle, Pliny, and other more recondite +authors, was able still to display a rich bag for the edification of his +readers. Sir Thomas Browne sets out on that quest with all imaginable +seriousness. He persuaded himself, and he has persuaded some of his +editors, that he was a genuine disciple of Bacon, by one of whose +suggestions the 'Inquiry' is supposed to have been prompted. +Accordingly, as Bacon describes the idols by which the human mind is +misled, Sir Thomas sets out with investigating the causes of error; but +his introductory remarks immediately diverge into strange paths, from +which it is obvious that the discovery of true scientific method was a +very subordinate object in his mind. Instead of telling us by what means +truth is to be attained, his few perfunctory remarks on logic are lost +in an historical narrative given with infinite zest, of the earliest +recorded blunders. The period of history in which he most delighted was +the antediluvian--probably because it afforded the widest field for +speculation. His books are full of references to the early days of the +world. He takes a keen personal interest in our first parents. He +discusses the unfortunate lapse of Adam and Eve from every possible +point of view. It is not without a visible effort that he declines to +settle which of the two was the more guilty, and what would have been +the result if they had tasted the fruit of the Tree of Life before +applying to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Then he passes +in review every recorded speech before the Flood, shows that in each of +them, with one exception, there is a mixture of falsehood and error, and +settles to his own satisfaction that Cain showed less 'truth, wisdom, +and reverence' than Satan under similar circumstances. Granting all +which to be true, it is impossible to see how we are advanced in +settling, for example, whether the Ptolemaic or the Copernican system of +astronomy is to be adopted, or in extracting the grains of truth that +may be overlaid by masses of error in the writings of alchemists. Nor do +we really learn much by being told that ancient authorities sometimes +lie, for he evidently enjoys accumulating the fables, and cares little +for showing how to discriminate their degree of veracity. He tells us, +indeed, that Medea was simply a predecessor of certain modern artists, +with an excellent 'recipe to make white hair black;' and that Actęon was +a spirited master of hounds, who, like too many of his ancestors, went +metaphorically, instead of literally, to the dogs. He points out, +moreover, that we must not believe on authority that the sea is the +sweat of the earth, that the serpent, before the Fall, went erect like +man, or that the right eye of a hedgehog, boiled in oil, and preserved +in a brazen vessel, will enable us to see in the dark. Such stories, he +moderately remarks, being 'neither consonant unto reason nor +correspondent unto experiment,' are unto us 'no axioms.' But we may +judge of his scepticism by his remarks on 'Oppianus, that famous +Cilician poet.' Of this writer he says that 'abating the annual mutation +of sexes in the hyęna, the single sex of the rhinoceros, the antipathy +between two drums of a lamb's and a wolf's skin, the informity of cubs, +the venation of centaurs, and some few others, he may be read with +delight and profit.' Obviously we shall find in Sir Thomas Browne no +inexorably severe guide to truth! he will not too sternly reject the +amusing because it happens to be slightly improbable, or doubt an +authority because he sometimes sanctions a mass of absurd fables. Satan, +as he argues at great length, is at the bottom of most errors, from +false religions down to a belief that there is another world in the +moon; but Sir Thomas takes little trouble to provide us with an +Ithuriel's spear, and, indeed, we have a faint suspicion that he will +overlook at times the diabolic agency in sheer enthusiasm at the +marvellous results. The logical design is little more than ostensible; +and Sir Thomas, though he knew it not himself, is really satisfied with +any line of inquiry that will bring him in sight of some freak of nature +or of opinion suitable to his museum of curiosities. + +Let us, however, pass from the anteroom, and enter this queer museum. We +pause in sheer bewilderment on the threshold, and despair of classifying +its contents intelligibly within any moderate space. This much, indeed, +is obvious at first sight--that the title 'vulgar errors' is to some +extent a misnomer. It is not given to vulgar brains to go wrong by such +complex methods. There are errors which require more learning and +ingenuity than are necessary for discovering truths; and it is in those +queer freaks of philosophical minds that Sir Thomas specially delights. +Though far, indeed, from objecting to any absurdity which lies on the +common highroad, he rejoices in the true spirit of a collector when he +can discover some grotesque fancy by rambling into less frequented paths +of inquiry. Perhaps it will be best to take down one or two specimens, +pretty much at random, and mark their nature and mode of treatment. +Here, for example, is that quaint old wonder, the phoenix, 'which, after +many hundred years, burneth itself, and from the ashes thereof ariseth +up another.' Sir Thomas carefully discusses the pros and cons of this +remarkable legend. In favour of the phoenix, it may be alleged that he +is mentioned 'not only by human authors,' but also by such 'holy +writers' as Cyril, Epiphanius, and Ambrose. Moreover, allusions are made +to him in Job and the Psalms. 'All which notwithstanding,' the following +grave reasons may be alleged against his existence: First, nobody has +ever seen a phoenix. Secondly, those who mention him speak doubtfully, +and even Pliny, after telling a story about a particular phoenix which +came to Rome in the censorship of Claudius, unkindly turns round and +declares the whole story to be a palpable lie. Thirdly, the name phoenix +has been applied to many other birds, and those who speak unequivocally +of the genuine phoenix contradict each other in the most flagrant way as +to his age and habitat. Fourthly, many writers, such as Ovid, only speak +poetically, and others, as Paracelsus, only mystically, whilst the +remainder speak rhetorically, emblematically, or hieroglyphically. +Fifthly, in the Scriptures, the word translated phoenix means a palm +tree. Sixthly, his existence, if we look closely, is implicitly denied +in the Scriptures, because all fowls entered the ark in pairs, and +animals were commanded to increase and multiply, neither of which +statements is compatible with the solitary nature of the phoenix. +Seventhly, nobody could have known by experience whether the phoenix +actually lived for a thousand years, and, therefore, 'there may be a +mistake in the compute.' Eighthly, and finally, no animals really +spring, or could spring, from the ashes of their predecessors and it is +impossible to believe that they could enter the world in such a fashion. +Having carefully summed up this negative evidence--enough, one would +have fancied, to blow the poor phoenix into summary annihilation--Sir +Thomas finally announces his grave conclusion in these words--'How far +to rely on this tradition we refer unto consideration.' And yet he feels +impelled to add a quaint reflection on the improbability of a statement +made by Plutarch, that 'the brain of a phoenix is a pleasant bit, but +that it causeth the headache.' Heliogabalus, he observes, could not have +slain the phoenix, for it must of necessity be 'a vain design to destroy +any species, or mutilate the great accomplishment of six days.' To which +it is added, by way of final corollary, that after Cain had killed Abel, +he could not have destroyed Eve, supposing her to have been the only +woman in existence; for then there must have been another creation, and +a second rib of Adam must have been animated. + +We must not, however, linger too long with these singular speculations, +for it is probable that phoenix-fanciers are becoming rare. It is enough +to say briefly, that if anyone wishes to understand the natural history +of the basilisk, the griffin, the salamander, the cockatrice, or the +amphisboena--if he wishes to know whether a chameleon lives on air, and +an ostrich on horseshoes--whether a carbuncle gives light in the dark, +whether the Glastonbury thorn bore flowers on Christmas-day, whether the +mandrake 'naturally groweth under gallowses,' and shrieks 'upon +eradication,'--on these and many other such points he may find grave +discussions in Sir Thomas Browne's pages. He lived in the period when it +was still held to be a sufficient proof of a story that it was written +in a book, especially if the book were Latin; and some persons, such as +Alexander Ross, whose memory is preserved only by the rhyme in +'Hudibras,' argued gravely against his scepticism.[5] For Sir Thomas, in +spite of his strange excursions into the marvellous, inclines for the +most part to the sceptical side of the question. He was not insensible +to the growing influence of the scientific spirit, though he believed +implicitly in witchcraft, spoke with high respect of alchemy and +astrology, and refused to believe that the earth went round the sun. He +feels that his favourite creatures are doomed to extinction, and though +dealing lovingly with them, speaks rather like an attached mourner at +their funerals than a physician endeavouring to maintain their +flickering vitality. He tries experiments and has a taste for +dissection. He proves by the evidence of his senses, and believes them +in spite of the general report, that a dead kingfisher will not turn its +breast to the wind. He convinced himself that if two magnetic needles +were placed in the centre of rings marked with the alphabet (an odd +anticipation of the electric telegraph, _minus_ the wires), they would +not point to the same letter by an occult sympathy. His arguments are +often to the point, though overlaid with a strange accretion of the +fabulous. In discussing the question of the blackness of negroes, he +may remind benevolent readers of some of Mr. Darwin's recent +speculations. He rejects, and on the same grounds which Mr. Darwin +declares to be conclusive, the hypothesis that the blackness is the +immediate effect of the climate; and he points out, what is important in +regard to 'sexual selection,' that a negro may admire a flat nose as we +admire an aquiline; though, of course, he diverges into extra-scientific +questions when discussing the probable effects of the curse of Ham, and +rather loses himself in a 'digression concerning blackness.' We may +fancy that this problem pleased Sir Thomas rather because it appeared to +be totally insoluble than for any other reason; and in spite of his +occasional gleams of scientific observation, he is always most at home +when on the border-land which divides the purely marvellous from the +region of ascertainable fact. In the last half of his book, indeed, +having exhausted natural history, he plunges with intense delight into +questions which bear the same relation to genuine antiquarianism that +his phoenixes and salamanders bear to scientific inquiry: whether the +sun was created in Libra; what was the season of the year in Paradise; +whether the forbidden fruit was an apple; whether Methuselah was the +longest-lived of all men (a main argument on the other side being that +Adam was created at the perfect age of man, which in those days was +fifty or sixty, and thus had a right to add sixty to his natural years); +what was the nature of St. John the Baptist's camel's-hair garment; what +were the secret motives of the builders of the Tower of Babel; whether +the three kings really lived at Cologne,--these and many other profound +inquiries are detailed with all imaginable gravity, and the interest of +the inquirer is not the less because he generally comes to the +satisfactory and sensible conclusion that we cannot possibly know +anything whatever about it. + +The 'Inquiry into Vulgar Errors' was published in 1646, and Sir Thomas's +next publication appeared in 1658. The dates are significant. Whilst all +England was in the throes of the first civil war, Sir Thomas had been +calmly finishing his catalogue of intellectual oddities. This book was +published soon after the crushing victory of Naseby. King, Parliament, +and army, illustrating a very different kind of vulgar error, continued +to fight out their quarrel to the death. Whilst Milton, whose genius was +in some way most nearly akin to his own, was raising his voice in favour +of the liberty of the press, good Sir Thomas was meditating profoundly +on quincunxes. Milton hurled fierce attacks at Salmasius, and meanwhile +Sir Thomas, in his quiet country town, was discoursing on 'certain +sepulchral urns lately found in Norfolk.' In the year of Cromwell's +death, the result of his labours appeared in a volume containing 'The +Garden of Cyrus' and the 'Hydriotaphia.' + +The first of these essays illustrates Sir Thomas's peculiar mysticism. +The external world was not to him the embodiment of invariable forces, +and therefore capable of revealing a general law in a special instance; +but rather a system of symbols, signatures of the Plastic Nature, to +which mysterious truths were arbitrarily annexed. A Pythagorean doctrine +of numbers was therefore congenial to his mind. He ransacks heaven and +earth, he turns over all his stores of botanical knowledge, he searches +all sacred and profane literature to discover anything that is in the +form of an X, or that reminds him in any way of the number five. From +the garden of Cyrus, where the trees were arranged in this order, he +rambles through the universe, stumbling over quincunxes at every step. +To take, for example, his final, and, of course, his fifth chapter, we +find him modestly disavowing an 'inexcusable Pythagorism,' and yet +unable to refrain from telling us that five was anciently called the +number of justice: that it was also called the divisive number; that +most flowers have five leaves; that feet have five toes; that the cone +has a 'quintuple division;' that there were five wise and five foolish +virgins; that the 'most generative animals' were created on the fifth +day; that the cabalists discovered strange meanings in the number five; +that there were five golden mice; that five thousand persons were fed +with five barley-loaves; that the ancients mixed five parts of water +with wine; that plays have five acts; that starfish have five points; +and that if anyone inquire into the causes of this strange repetition, +'he shall not pass his hours in vulgar speculations.' We, however, must +decline the task, and will content ourselves with a few characteristic +phrases from his peroration. 'The quincunx of heaven,' he says, +referring to the _Hyades_, 'runs low, and 'tis time to close the five +parts of knowledge. We are unwilling to spin out our awaking thoughts +into the phantasms of sleep, which often continueth precogitations, +making cables of cobwebs, and wildernesses of handsome groves.... Night, +which Pagan theology could make the daughter of chaos, affords no +advantage to the description of order; although no lower than that mass +can we derive its genealogy. All things began in order, so shall they +end, and so shall they begin again; according to the admirer of order +and mystical mathematics of the City of Heaven. Although Somnus, in +Homer, be sent to rouse up Agamemnon, I find no such effects in these +drowsy approaches of night. To keep our eyes open longer were but to +act with our Antipodes. The huntsmen are up in America, and they are +already past their first sleep in Persia. But who can be drowsy at that +hour, which roused us from everlasting sleep? Or have slumbering +thoughts at that hour, when sleep itself must end, and, as some +conjecture, all shall wake again?' + +'Think you,' asks Coleridge, commenting upon this passage, 'that there +ever was such a reason given for going to bed at midnight, to wit, that +if we did not, we should be acting the part of our Antipodes?' In truth, +Sir Thomas finishes his most whimsical work whimsically enough. The +passage is a good specimen of the quaint and humorous eloquence in which +he most delights--snatching fine thought from sheer absurdities, and +putting the homeliest truth into a dress of amusing oddity. It may +remind us that it is time to touch upon those higher qualities, which +have led one of the acutest of recent critics[6] to call him 'our most +imaginative mind since Shakspeare.' Everywhere, indeed, his imaginative +writing is, if we may so speak, shot with his peculiar humour. It is +difficult to select any eloquent, passage which does not show this +characteristic interweaving of the two elements. Throw the light from +one side, and it shows nothing but quaint conceits; from the other, and +we have a rich glow of poetic colouring. His humour and his melancholy +are inextricably blended; and his melancholy itself is described to a +nicety in the words of Jaques:--'It is a melancholy of his own, +compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and, indeed, +the sundry contemplation of his travels, in which his often rumination +wraps him in a most humorous sadness.' That most marvellous Jaques, +indeed, is rather too much of a cynic, and shows none of the religious +sentiment of Sir Thomas Browne; but if they could have talked together +in the forest, poor Jaques would have excited a far closer sympathy than +he receives from his very unappreciative companions. The book in which +this 'humorous sadness' finds the fullest expression is the 'Religio +Medici.' The conception of the book apparently resulted from the 'sundry +contemplation of his travels,' and it is written throughout in his +characteristic strain of thought. From his travels he had learnt the +best lesson of a lofty toleration. The furious controversies of that +age, in which the stake, the prison, and the pillory were the popular +theological arguments, produced a characteristic effect on his +sympathies. He did not give in to the established belief, like his +kindly natured contemporary Fuller, who remarks, in a book published +about the same time with the 'Religio Medici,' that even 'the mildest +authors' agree in the propriety of putting certain heretics to death. +Nor, on the other hand, does he share the glowing indignation which +prompted the great protests of Chillingworth and Taylor against the +cruelties practised in the name of religion. Browne has a method of his +own in view of such questions. He shrinks from the hard, practical world +into spiritual meditation. He regards all opinions less as a philosopher +than as a poet. He asks, not whether a dogma is true, but whether it is +amusing or quaint. If his imagination or his fancy can take pleasure in +contemplating it, he is not curious to investigate its scientific +accuracy. And therefore he catches the poetical side of creeds which +differ from his own, and cannot even understand why anybody should grow +savage over their shortcomings. He never could be angry with a man's +judgment 'for not agreeing with me in that from which, perhaps, within +a few days, I should dissent myself.' Travelling in this spirit through +countries where the old faith still prevailed, he felt a lively sympathy +for the Catholic modes of worship. Holy water and crucifixes do not +offend him. He is willing to enter the churches and to pray with the +worshippers of other persuasions. He is naturally inclined, he says, 'to +that which misguided zeal terms superstition,' and would show his +respect rather than his unbelief. In an eloquent passage, which might +teach a lesson to some modern tourists, he remarks:--'At the sight of a +cross or crucifix I can dispense with my hat, but scarce with the +thought and memory of my Saviour. I cannot laugh at, but rather pity, +the fruitless journeys of pilgrims, or contemn the miserable condition +of friars; for though misplaced in circumstances, there is something in +it of devotion. I could never hear the Ave Mary bell without an +elevation; or think it a sufficient warrant, because they erred in one +circumstance, for me to err in all--that is, in silence and dumb +contempt. Whilst, therefore, they directed their devotions to her, I +offered mine to God, and rectified the errors of their prayers by +rightly ordering my own. At a solemn procession I have wept abundantly, +while my consorts, blind with opposition and prejudice, have fallen into +an excess of laughter and scorn.' + +Very characteristic, from this point of view, are the heresies into +which he confesses that he has sometimes fallen. Setting aside one +purely fantastical theory, they all imply a desire for toleration even +in the next world. He doubted whether the damned would not ultimately be +released from torture. He felt great difficulty in giving up prayers for +the dead, and thought that to be the object of such prayers, was 'a good +way to be remembered by posterity, and far more noble than a history.' +These heresies, he says, as he never tried to propagate them, or to +dispute over them, 'without additions of new fuel, went out insensibly +of themselves.' Yet he still retained, in spite of its supposed +heterodoxy, some hope for the fate of virtuous heathens. 'Amongst so +many subdivisions of hell,' he says, 'there might have been one limbo +left for these.' With a most characteristic turn, he softens the horror +of the reflection by giving it an almost humorous aspect. 'What a +strange vision will it be,' he exclaims, 'to see their poetical fictions +converted into verities, and their imagined and fancied furies into real +devils! How strange to them will sound the history of Adam, when they +shall suffer for him they never heard of!' + +The words may remind us of an often-quoted passage from Tertullian; but +the Father seems to gloat over the appalling doctrines from which the +philosophical humorist shrinks, even though their very horror has a +certain strange fascination for his fancy. Heresies such as these will +not be harshly condemned at the present day. From others of a different +kind, Sir Thomas is shielded by his natural love of the marvellous. He +loves to abandon his thoughts to mysterious contemplations; he even +considers it a subject for complaint that there are 'not impossibilities +enough in religion for an active faith.' 'I love,' he says, 'to lose +myself in a mystery; to pursue my reason to an _O altitudo_! 'Tis my +solitary recreation to pose my apprehension with those involved enigmas +and riddles of the Trinity, incarnation, and resurrection. I can answer +all the objections of Satan and my rebellious reason with that odd +resolution I learnt of Tertullian, _certum est quia impossibile est_.' +He rejoices that he was not an Israelite at the passage of the Red Sea, +or an early Christian in the days of miracles; for then his faith, +supported by his senses, would have had less merit. He loves to puzzle +and confound his understanding with the thoughts that pass the limits of +our intellectual powers: he rejoices in contemplating eternity, because +nobody can 'speak of it without a solecism,' and to plunge his +imagination into the abysses of the infinite. 'When I cannot satisfy my +reason,' he says, 'I love to recreate my fancy.' He recreates it by +soaring into the regions where the most daring metaphysical logic breaks +down beneath us, and delights in exposing his reason to the rude test of +believing both sides of a contradiction. Here, as everywhere, the +strangest freaks of fancy intrude themselves into his sublime +contemplations. A mystic, when abasing reason in the presence of faith, +may lose sight of earthly objects in the splendour of the beatific +vision. But Sir Thomas, even when he enters the holiest shrine, never +quite loses his grasp of the grotesque. Wonder, whether produced by the +sublime or the simply curious, has equal attraction for him. His mind is +distracted between the loftiest mysteries of Christianity and the +strangest conceits of Talmudists or schoolmen. Thus, for example, whilst +eloquently descanting on the submissiveness of his reason, he informs us +(obviously claiming credit for the sacrifice of his curiosity) that he +can read of the raising of Lazarus, and yet refrain from raising a 'law +case whether his heir might lawfully detain his inheritance bequeathed +unto him by his death, and he, though restored to life, have no plea or +title unto his former possessions.' Or we might take the inverse +transition from the absurd to the sublime, in his meditations upon hell. +He begins by inquiring whether the everlasting fire is the same with +that of our earth. 'Some of our chymicks,' it appears, 'facetiously +affirm that, at the last fire, all shall be crystallised and +reverberated into glass,' but, after playing for some time with this and +other strange fancies, he says in a loftier strain, though still with +his odd touch of humour, 'Men speak too popularly who place it in those +flaming mountains, which, to grosser apprehensions, represent hell. The +heart of men is the place the devils dwell in. I feel sometimes a hell +within myself; Lucifer keeps his courts in my breast; Legion is revived +in me. There was more than one hell in Magdalene, when there were seven +devils; for every devil is a hell unto himself; he holds enough of +torture in his own _ubi_, and needs not the misery of circumference to +afflict him; and thus a distracted conscience here is a shadow or +introduction into hell hereafter.' + +Sir Thomas's witticisms are like the grotesque carvings in a Gothic +cathedral. It is plain that in his mind they have not the slightest +tinge of conscious irreverence. They are simply his natural mode of +expression; forbid him to be humorous, and you might as well forbid him +to speak at all. If the severity of our modern taste is shocked at an +intermixture which seemed natural enough to his contemporaries, we may +find an unconscious apology in a singularly fine passage of the 'Religio +Medici.' Justifying his love of church music, he says, 'Even that vulgar +and tavern music, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me +a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the first +composer.' That power of extracting deep devotion from 'vulgar tavern +music' is the great secret of Browne's eloquence. It is not wonderful, +perhaps, that, with our associations, the performance seems of +questionable taste; and that some strains of tavern music mix +unpleasantly in the grander harmonies which they suggest. Few people +find their religious emotions stimulated by the performance of a nigger +melody, and they have some difficulty in keeping pace with a mind which +springs in happy unconsciousness, or rather in keen enjoyment, of the +contrast from the queer or commonplace to the most exalted objects of +human thought. + +One other peculiarity shows itself chiefly in the last pages of the +'Religio Medici.' His worthy commentators have laboured to defend Sir +Thomas from the charge of vanity. He expatiates upon his own universal +charity; upon his inability to regard even vice as a fitting object for +satire; upon his warm affection to his friend, whom he already loves +better than himself, and whom yet in a few months he will regard with a +love which will make his present feelings seem indifference; upon his +absolute want of avarice or any kind of meanness; and, which certainly +seems a little odd in the midst of these self-laudations, upon his +freedom from the 'first and father sin, not only of man, but of the +devil, pride.' Good Dr. Watts was shocked at this 'arrogant temerity,' +and Dr. Johnson appears rather to concur in the charge. And certainly, +if we are to interpret his language in a matter-of-fact spirit, it must +be admitted that a gentleman who openly claims for himself the virtues +of charity, generosity, courage, and modesty, might be not unfairly +accused of vanity. To no one, as we have already remarked, is such a +matter-of-fact criticism less applicable. If a humorist was to be denied +the right of saying with a serious face what he does not quite think, we +should make strange work of some of the most charming books in the +world. The Sir Thomas Browne of the 'Religio Medici' is by no means to +be identified with the everyday flesh-and-blood physician of Norwich. +He is the ideal and glorified Sir Thomas, and represents rather what +ought to have been than what was. We all have such doubles who visit us +in our day-dreams and sometimes cheat us into the belief that they are +our real selves, but most of us luckily hide the very existence of such +phantoms; for few of us, indeed, could make them agreeable to our +neighbours. And yet the apology is scarcely needed. Bating some few +touches, Sir Thomas seems to have claimed little that he did not really +possess. And if he was a little vain, why should we be angry? Vanity is +only offensive when it is sullen or exacting. When it merely amounts to +an unaffected pleasure in dwelling on the peculiarities of a man's own +character, it is rather an agreeable literary ingredient. Sir Thomas +defines his point of view with his usual felicity. 'The world that I +regard,' he says in the spirit of the imprisoned Richard II., 'is +myself: it is the microcosm of my own frame that I cast mine eye on; for +the other, I use it but like my globe, and turn it round sometimes for +my recreation.' That whimsical inversion of the natural order is the key +to the 'Religio Medici.' We, for the nonce, are to regard Sir Thomas +Browne as a world, and to study the marvels of his microcosm instead of +the outside wonders. And no one can deny that it is a good and kindly +world--a world full of the strangest combinations, where even the most +sacred are allied with the oddest objects. Yet his imagination +everywhere diffuses a solemn light such as that which falls through +painted windows, and which somehow harmonises the whole quaint +assemblage of images. The sacred is made more interesting instead of +being degraded by its association with the quaint; and on the whole, +after a stay in this microcosm, we feel better, calmer, more tolerant, +and a good deal more amused than when we entered it. + +Passing from the portrait to the original, we may recognise, or fancy +that we recognise, the same general features. Sir Thomas assures us that +his life, up to the period of the 'Religio Medici,' was a 'miracle of +thirty years, which to relate were not a history, but a piece of poetry, +and would sound to common ears like a fable.' Johnson, with his usual +sense, observes that it is rather difficult to detect the miraculous +element in any part of the story open to our observation. 'Surely,' he +says, 'a man may visit France and Italy, reside at Montpelier and Padua, +and at last take his degree at Leyden, without anything miraculous.' And +although Southey endeavours to maintain that the miracle consisted in +Browne's preservation from infidelity, it must be admitted that to the +ordinary mind that result seems explicable by natural causes. We must be +content with Johnson's explanation, that, in some sense, 'all life is +miraculous;' and, in short, that the strangeness consists rather in +Browne's view of his own history, than in any unusual phenomena. +Certainly, no man seems on the whole to have slipped down the stream of +life more smoothly. After his travels he settled quietly at Norwich, and +there passed forty-five years of scarcely interrupted prosperity. In the +'Religio Medici' he indulges in some disparaging remarks upon marriage. +'The whole world,' he says, 'was made for man; but the twelfth part of +man for woman. Man is the whole world and the breath of God; woman the +rib and crooked part of man.' He wishes, after the fashion of Montaigne, +that we might grow like the trees, and avoid this foolish and trivial +ceremony; and therefore--for such inferences are perfectly legitimate in +the history of a humorist--he married a lady, of whom it is said that +she was so perfect that 'they seemed to come together by a kind of +natural magnetism,' had ten children, and lived very happily ever +afterwards. It is not difficult, from the fragmentary notices that have +been left to us, to put together some picture of his personal +appearance. He was a man of dignified appearance, with a striking +resemblance, as Southey has remarked, to Charles I., 'always cheerful, +but never merry,' given to unseasonable blushing, little inclined to +talk, but strikingly original when once launched in conversation; sedate +in his dress, and obeying some queer medical crotchets as to its proper +arrangement; always at work in the intervals of his 'drudging practice;' +and generally a sober and dignified physician. From some letters which +have been preserved we catch a view of his social demeanour. He was +evidently an affectionate and liberal father, with good old orthodox +views of the wide extent of the paternal prerogative. One of his sons +was a promising naval officer, and sends home from beyond the seas +accounts of such curiosities as were likely to please the insatiable +curiosity of his parent. In his answers, the good Sir Thomas quotes +Aristotle's definition of fortitude for the benefit of his gallant +lieutenant, and argues elaborately to dissuade him from a practice which +he believes to prevail in 'the king's shipps, when, in desperate cases, +they blow up the same.' He proves by most excellent reasons, and by the +authority of Plutarch, that such self-immolation is an unnecessary +strain of gallantry; yet somehow we feel rather glad that Sir Thomas +could not be a witness to the reception of this sensible, but perhaps +rather superfluous, advice, in the messroom of the 'Marie Rose.' It is +more pleasant to observe the carefulness with which he has treasured up +and repeats all the compliments to the lieutenant's valour and wisdom +which have reached him from trustworthy sources. This son appears to +have died at a comparatively early age; but with the elder son, +Edward--who, like his father, travelled in various parts of Europe, and +then became a distinguished physician--he maintained a long +correspondence, full of those curious details in which his soul +delighted. His son, for example, writes from Prague that 'in the mines +at Brunswick is reported to be a spirit; and another at the tin mine at +Stackenwald, in the shape of a monke, which strikes the miners, playeth +on the bagpipe, and many such tricks.' They correspond, however, on more +legitimate inquiries, and especially on the points to be noticed in the +son's medical lectures. Sir Thomas takes a keen interest in the fate of +an unlucky 'oestridge' which found its way to London in 1681, and was +doomed to illustrate some of the vulgar errors. The poor bird was +induced to swallow a piece of iron weighing two and a-half ounces, +which, strange to say, it could not digest. It soon afterwards died 'of +a soden,' either from the severity of the weather or from the peculiar +nature of its diet. + +In one well-known case Sir Thomas's peculiar theories received a more +unfortunate application; he contributed by his evidence to the death of +the witches tried by Hale in 1664; and one could wish that in this case +his love of the wonderful had been more checked by his sense of humour. + +The fact that he was knighted by Charles II. in 1671 is now memorable +only for Johnson's characteristic remark. The lexicographer's love of +truth and loyalty to his pet monarch struggle with each other in the +equivocal compliment to Charles's virtue in rewarding excellence 'with +such honorary distinctions at least as cost him nothing.' The good +doctor died in 1682, in the seventy-seventh year of age, and met his +end, as we are assured, in the spirit of his own writings. 'There is,' +he admirably says, 'but one comfort left, that, though it be in the +power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest +to deprive us of death.' Most men, for one reason or another, have at +times been 'half in love with easeful death.' Sir Thomas gives his view +more fully in another passage, in which he says, with his usual quaint +and eloquent melancholy, 'When I take a full view and circle of myself, +without this reasonable moderator and equal piece of justice, death, I +do conceive myself the miserablest person extant. Were there not another +life that I hope for, all the vanities of this world should not entreat +a moment's breath from me. Could the devil work my belief to imagine I +could never die, I could not outlive that very thought. I have so abject +a conceit of this common way of existence, this retaining to the sun and +elements, I cannot think this to be a man, or to have according to the +dignity of humanity. In expectation of a better, I can with patience +embrace this life, yet, in my best meditations, do often defy death.' + +What, after all, one is inclined to ask, is the secret of the strange +charm of Sir Thomas's style? Will you be kind enough to give us the old +doctor's literary prescription, that we may produce the same effects at +will? In what proportions shall we mingle humour, imagination, and +learning? How are we to select the language which will be the fittest +vehicle for the thought? or rather, for the metaphor is a little too +mechanical, what were the magic spells with which he sways our +imaginative moods? Like other spells, we must reply, it is +incommunicable: no real answer can be given even by critics who, like +Coleridge and De Quincey, show something of the same power. Coarser +observers can only point to such external peculiarities as the Latinisms +in which he indulges even more freely than most of his contemporaries. +To Johnson they seemed 'pedantic;' to most modern readers they have an +old-world charm; but in any case we know little more of Sir Thomas when +we have observed that he is capable of using for 'hanging' the +periphrasis 'illaqueation or pendulous suffocation.' The perusal of a +page will make us recognise what could not be explained in a whole +volume of analysis. One may, however, hazard a remark upon the special +mood which is clothed or incarnated in his stately rhetoric. The +imagination of Sir Thomas, of course, shows the generic qualities +roughly described as Northern, Gothic, Teutonic, or romantic. He writes +about tombs, and all Englishmen, as M. Taine tells us, like to write +about tombs. When we try to find the specific differences which +distinguish it from other imaginations of similar quality, we should be +inclined to define him as belonging to a very rare intellectual family. +He is a mystic with a sense of humour, or rather, his habitual mood is +determined by an attraction towards the two opposite poles of humour and +mysticism. He concludes two of his treatises (the 'Christian Morals' and +'Urn Burial') in words expressive of one of these tendencies: 'If any +have been so happy as personally to understand Christian annihilation, +ecstacy, exolution, transformation, the kiss of the spouse, and +ingression into the divine shadow according to mystical theology, they +have already had an handsome anticipation of heaven; the world is in a +manner over, and the earth in ashes unto them.' Many of Sir Thomas's +reflections, his love in spiritualising external emblems, as, for +example, in the reflections on the quincunx, and the almost sensuous +delight in the contemplation of a mystery, show the same bent. The +fully-developed mystic loses sight of the world and its practical duties +in the rapture of formless meditations; facts become shadows, and +emotions the only realities. But the presence of a mystical element is +the mark of all lofty imaginations. The greatest poet is he who feels +most deeply and habitually that our 'little lives are rounded with a +sleep;' that we are but atoms in the boundless abysses of space and +time; that the phenomenal world is but a transitory veil, to be valued +only as its contemplation arouses or disciplines our deepest emotions. +Capacity for passing from the finite to the infinite, for interpreting +the high instincts before which our mortal nature + + 'Doth tremble like a guilty thing surprised,' + +is the greatest endowment of the Shakespeares and Dantes. Mysticism +proper is the abuse of this tendency, which prompts to the impossible +feat of soaring altogether beyond the necessary base of concrete +realities. The mystic temperament is balanced in some great men, as in +Shakespeare, by their intense interest in human passion; in others, as +in Wordsworth, by their profound sense of the primary importance of the +moral law; and in others, as in Jeremy Taylor, by their hold upon the +concrete imagery of a traditional theology; whilst to some, the mystic +vision is strangely blended with an acceptance of the epicurean precept, +Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. Sir Thomas Browne seems to +be held back from abandoning himself to the ecstasies of abstract +meditation, chiefly by his peculiar sense of humour. There is a closer +connection than we are always willing to admit between humour and +profanity. Humour is the faculty which always keeps us in mind of the +absurdity which is the shadow of sublimity. It is naturally allied to +intellectual scepticism, as in Rabelais or Montaigne; and Sir Thomas +shared the tendency sufficiently to be called atheist by some wiseacres. +But his humour was too gentle to suggest scepticism of the aggressive +kind. It is almost too free from cynicism. He cannot adopt any dogma +unreservedly, but neither does any dogma repel him. He revels in the +mental attitude of hopeless perplexity, which is simply unendurable to +the commonplace and matter-of-fact intellects. He likes to be balanced +between opposing difficulties; to play with any symbol of worship +without actually worshipping it; to prostrate himself sincerely at many +shrines, and yet with a half smile on his lips. He cannot be a +rhetorician in the ordinary sense of the word; he would have been +hopelessly out of place on the floor of the senate, stirring men's +patriotism or sense of right; for half his sympathy would always be with +the Opposition. He could not have moved the tears or the devotional +ecstasies of a congregation, for he has too vivid a sense that any and +every dogma is but one side of an inevitable antinomy. Strong +convictions are needed for the ordinary controversial successes, and his +favourite point of view is the centre from which all convictions radiate +and all look equally probable. But then, instead of mocking at all, he +sympathises with all, and expresses the one sentiment which may be +extracted from their collision--the sentiment of reverence blended with +scepticism. It is a contradictory sentiment, one may say, in a sense, +but the essence of humour is to be contradictory. The language in which +he utters himself was determined by his omnivorous appetite for every +quaint or significant symbol to be discovered in the whole field of +learning. With no prejudices, nothing comes amiss to him; and the +signature of some mysterious principle may be found in every object of +art or nature. Science in its infancy was still half mystic, and the +facts which he gathered were all tinged with the semi-mythical fancies +of the earliest explorers of the secrets of nature. In an old relic, +recalling 'the drums and tramplings of three conquests,' in a queer +annual, or an ancient fragment of history might be the appropriate +emblem, or something more than the emblem of a truth equally impressive +to the scientific and the poetical imagination. He would have been happy +by the midnight lamp in Milton's 'high lonely tower;' but his humour +would look at the romances which Milton loved rather with the eyes of +Cervantes than of Milton. Their tone of sentiment would be too strained +and highflown; and he would prefer to read of the spirits that are found + + 'In fire, air, flood, or underground,' + +or to try to penetrate the secret of + + 'Every star that heaven doth show, + And every herb that sips the dew,' + +by reading all the nonsense that had been written about them in the dawn +of inquiry. He should be read in a corresponding spirit. One should +often stop to appreciate the full flavour of some quaint allusion, or +lay down the book to follow out some diverging line of thought. So read +in a retired study, or beneath the dusty shelves of an ancient library, +a page of Sir Thomas seems to revive the echoes as of ancient chants in +college chapels, strangely blended with the sonorous perorations of +professors in the neighbouring schools, so that the interferences +sometimes produce a note of gentle mockery and sometimes heighten +solemnity by quaintness. + +That, however, is not the spirit in which books are often read in these +days. We have an appetite for useful information, and an appetite for +frivolous sentiment or purely poetical musing. We cannot combine the two +after the quaint fashion of the old physician. And therefore these +charming writings have ceased to suit our modern taste; and Sir Thomas +is already passing under that shadow of mortality which obscures all, +even the greatest, reputations, and with which no one has dwelt more +pathetically or graphically than himself. + +If we are disposed to complain, Sir Thomas shall himself supply the +answer, in a passage from the 'Hydriotaphia,' which, though described by +Hallam as the best written of his treatises, is not to my taste so +attractive as the 'Religio Medici.' The concluding chapter, however, is +in his best style, and here are some of his reflections on posthumous +fame. The end of the world, he says, is approaching, and 'Charles V. can +never hope to live within two Methuselahs of Hector.' 'And, therefore, +restless inquietude for the diuturnity of our memories with present +considerations seems a vanity out of date, and a superannuated piece of +folly. We cannot hope to live as long in our names as some have done in +their persons. One face of Janus holds no proportion to the other. 'Tis +too late to be ambitious. The great mutations of the world are acted, or +time may be too short for our designs. To extend our memories by +monuments, whose death we daily pray for, and whose duration we cannot +hope without injury to our expectations in the advent of the last day, +were a contradiction to our beliefs. We, whose generations are ordained +in this setting part of time, are providentially taken off from such +imaginations; and being necessitated to eye the remaining particle of +futurity, are naturally constituted into thoughts of the next world, and +cannot excusably decline the consideration of that duration, which +maketh pyramids pillars of snow, and all that's past a moment.' + +If the argument has now been vulgarised in the hands of Dr. Cumming and +his like, the language and the sentiment are worthy of any of our +greatest masters. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[5] Ross, for example, urges that the invisibility of the phoenix is +sufficiently accounted for by the natural desire of a unique animal to +keep out of harm's way. + +[6] Mr. Lowell, in 'Shakspeare Once More,' 'Among My Books.' + + + + +_JONATHAN EDWARDS_[7] + + +Two of the ablest thinkers whom America has yet produced were born in +New England at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The theorists +who would trace all our characteristics to inheritance from some remote +ancestor might see in Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin normal +representatives of the two types from which the genuine Yankee is +derived. Though blended in various proportions, and though one may exist +almost to the exclusion of the other, an element of shrewd mother-wit +and an element of transcendental enthusiasm are to be detected in all +who boast a descent from the pilgrim fathers. Franklin, born in 1706, +represents in its fullest development the more earthly side of this +compound. A thoroughbred utilitarian, full of sagacity, and carrying +into all regions of thought that strange ingenuity which makes an +American the handiest of all human beings, Franklin is best embodied in +his own poor Richard. Honesty is the best policy: many a little makes a +mickle: the second vice is lying, the first is running in debt; and-- + + 'Get what you can, and what you get hold; + 'Tis the stone that will turn all your lead into gold.' + +These and a string of similar maxims are the pith of Franklin's message +to the world. Franklin, however, was not merely a man in whom the +practical intelligence was developed in a very remarkable degree, but +was fortunate in coming upon a crisis admirably suited to his abilities, +and in being generally in harmony with the spirit of his age. He +succeeded, as we know, in snatching lightning from the heavens, and the +sceptre from tyrants; and had his reward in the shape of much +contemporary homage from French philosophers, and lasting renown amongst +his countrymen. Meanwhile, Jonathan Edwards, his senior by three years, +had the fate common to men who are unfitted for the struggles of daily +life, and whose philosophy does not harmonise with the dominant current +of the time. A speculative recluse, with little faculty of literary +expression, and given to utter opinions shocking to the popular mind, he +excited little attention during his lifetime, except amongst the sharers +of his own religious persuasions; and, when noticed after his death, the +praise of his intellectual acuteness has generally been accompanied with +an expression of abhorrence for his supposed moral obtuseness. Mr. +Lecky, for example, whilst speaking of Edwards as 'probably the ablest +defender of Calvinism,' mentions his treatise on Original Sin as 'one of +the most revolting books that have ever proceeded from the pen of man' +('Rationalism,' i. 404). That intense dislike, which is far from +uncommon, for severe reasoning has even made a kind of reproach to +Edwards of what is called his 'inexorable logic.' To condemn a man for +being honestly in the wrong is generally admitted to be unreasonable; +but people are even more unforgiving to the sin of being honestly in the +right. The frankness with which Edwards avowed opinions, not by any +means peculiar to himself, has left a certain stain upon his reputation. +He has also suffered in general repute from a cause which should really +increase our interest in his writings. Metaphysicians, whilst admiring +his acuteness, have been disgusted by his adherence to an outworn +theology; and theologians have cared little for a man who was primarily +a philosophical speculator, and has used his philosophy to bring into +painful relief the most terrible dogmas of the ancient creeds. Edwards, +however, is interesting just because he is a connecting link between two +widely different phases of thought. He connects the expiring Calvinism +of the old Puritan theocracy with what is called the transcendentalism +embodied in the writings of Emerson and other leaders of young America. +He is remarkable, too, as illustrating, at the central point of the +eighteenth century, those speculative tendencies which were most vitally +opposed to the then dominant philosophy of Locke and Hume. And, finally, +there is a still more permanent interest in the man himself, as +exhibiting in high relief the weak and the strong points of the teaching +of which Calvinism represents only one embodiment. His life, in striking +contrast to that of his more celebrated contemporary, ran its course far +away from the main elements of European activity. With the exception of +a brief stay at New York, he lived almost exclusively in the interior of +what was then the thinly-settled colony of Massachusetts.[8] His father +was for nearly sixty years minister of a church in Connecticut, and his +mother's father, the 'celebrated Solomon Stoddard,' for about an equal +time minister of a church at Northampton, Massachusetts. Young Jonathan, +brought up at the feet of these venerable men, after the strictest sect +of the Puritans, was sent to Yale at the age of twelve, took his B.A. +degree at the age of seventeen, and two years afterwards became a +preacher at New York. Thence he returned to a tutorship at Yale, but in +his twenty-fourth year was ordained as colleague of his grandfather +Stoddard, and spent at Northampton the next twenty-three years of his +life. It may be added that he married early a wife of congenial temper, +and had eleven children.[9] One of his daughters,--it is an odd +combination,--was the mother of Aaron Burr, the duellist who killed +Hamilton, and afterwards became the prototype of all Southern +secessionists. The external facts, however, of Edwards' life are of +little interest, except as indicating the influences to which he was +exposed. Puritanism, though growing faint, was still powerful in New +England; it was bred in his bones, and he was drilled from his earliest +years into its sternest dogmas. Some curious fragments of his early life +and letters indicate the nature of his spiritual development. Whilst +still almost a boy, he writes down solemn resolutions, and practises +himself in severe self-inspection. He resolves 'never to do, be, or +suffer anything in soul or body, more or less, but what tends to the +glory of God;' to 'live with all my might while I do live;' 'never to +speak anything that is ridiculous or matter of laughter on the Lord's +Day' (a resolution which we might think rather superfluous, even though +extended to other days); and, 'frequently to renew the dedication of +myself to God, which was made at my baptism, which I solemnly renewed +when I was received into the communion of the Church, and which I have +solemnly ratified this 12th day of January 1723' (i. 18). He pledges +himself, in short, to a life of strict self-examination and absolute +devotion to what he takes for the will of God. Similar resolutions have +doubtless been made by countless young men, brought up under the same +conditions, and diaries of equal value have been published by the +authors of innumerable saintly biographies. In Edwards' mouth, however, +they really had a meaning, and bore corresponding results. An +interesting paper gives an account of those religious 'experiences' to +which his sect attaches so tremendous an importance. From his childhood, +he tells us, his mind had been full of objections to the doctrine of +God's sovereignty. It appeared to him to be a 'horrible doctrine' that +God should choose whom He would, and reject whom He pleased, 'leaving +them eternally to perish and be tormented eternally in hell.' The whole +history of his intellectual development is involved in the process by +which he became gradually reconciled to this appalling dogma. In the +second year of his collegiate course, we are told, which would be about +the fourteenth of his age, he read Locke's Essay with inexpressible +delight. The first glimpse of metaphysical inquiry, it would seem, +revealed to him the natural bent of his mind, and opened to him the path +of speculation in which he ever afterwards delighted. Locke, though +Edwards always mentions him with deep respect, was indeed a thinker of a +very different school. The disciple owed to his master, not a body of +doctrine, but the impulse to intellectual activity. He succeeded in +working out for himself a satisfactory answer to the problem by which he +had been perplexed. His cavils ceased as his reason strengthened. 'God's +absolute sovereignty and justice' seemed to him to be as clear as +anything he saw with his eyes; 'at least,' he adds, 'it is so at times.' +Nay, he even came to rejoice in the doctrine and regard it as +'infinitely pleasant, bright, and sweet' (i. 33). The Puritan +assumptions were so ingrained in his nature that the agony of mind which +they caused never led him to question their truth, though it animated +him to discover a means of reconciling them to reason; and the +reconciliation is the whole burden of his ablest works. The effect upon +his mind is described in terms which savour of a less stern school of +faith. God's glory was revealed to him throughout the whole creation, +and often threw him into ecstasies of devotion (i. 33). 'God's +excellency, His wisdom, His purity, and love seemed to appear in +everything: in the sun, moon, and stars: in the clouds and blue sky; in +the grass, flowers, and trees; in the water and all nature, which used +greatly to fix my mind. I often used to sit and view the moon for +continuance, and in the day spent much time in viewing the clouds and +sky, to behold the sweet glory of God in these things; in the meantime +singing forth, with a low voice, my contemplations of the Creator and +Redeemer.' Thunder, he adds, had once been terrible to him; 'now scarce +anything in all the works of nature' was so sweet (i. 36). It seemed as +if the 'majestic and awful voice of God's thunder' was in fact the voice +of its Creator. Thunder and lightning, we know, suggested +characteristically different contemplations to Franklin. Edwards' +utterances are as remarkable for their amiability as for their +non-scientific character. We see in him the gentle mystic rather than +the stern divine who consigned helpless infants to eternal torture +without a question of the goodness of their Creator. This vein of +meditation, however, continued to be familiar to him. He spent most of +his time reflecting on Divine things, and often walking in solitary +places and woods to enjoy uninterrupted soliloquies and converse with +God. At New York he often retired to a quiet spot--now, one presumes, +seldom used for such purposes--on the banks of the Hudson river, to +abandon himself to his quiet reveries, or to 'converse on the things of +God' with one Mr. John Smith. To the end of his life he indulged in the +same habit. His custom was to rise at four o'clock in the morning, to +spend thirteen hours daily in his study, and to ride out after dinner to +some lonely grove, where he dismounted and walked by himself, with a +notebook ready at hand for the arrest of stray thoughts. Evidently he +possessed one of those rare temperaments to which the severest +intellectual exercise is a source of the keenest enjoyment; and though +he must often have strayed in to the comparatively dreary labyrinths of +metaphysical puzzles, his speculations had always an immediate reference +to what he calls 'Divine things.' Once, he tells us, as he rode into the +woods, in 1737, and alighted according to custom 'to walk in Divine +contemplation and prayer,' he had so extraordinary a view of the glory +of the Son of God, and His wonderful grace, that he remained for about +an hour 'in a flood of tears and weeping aloud.' This intensity of +spiritual vision was frequently combined with a harrowing sense of his +own corruption. 'My wickedness,' he says, 'as I am in myself has long +appeared to me perfectly ineffable; like an infinite deluge or mountains +over my head.' Often, for many years, he has had in his mind and his +mouth the words 'Infinite upon infinite!' His heart looks to him like +'an abyss infinitely deeper than hell;' and yet, he adds, it seems to +him that 'his conviction of sin is exceedingly small.' Whilst weeping +and crying for his sins, he seemed to know that 'his repentance was +nothing to his sin' (i. 41). Extravagant expressions of this kind are +naturally rather shocking to the outsider; and, to those who are +incapable of sympathising, they may even appear to be indications of +hypocrisy. Nobody was more alive than Edwards himself to the danger of +using such phrases mechanically. When you call yourself the worst of +men, he says, be careful that you do not think highly of yourself just +because you think so meanly. And if you reply, 'No, I have not a high +opinion of my humility; it seems to me I am as proud as the devil;' ask +again, 'whether on this very account that you think yourself as proud as +the devil, you do not think yourself to be very humble' (iv. 282). That +is a characteristic bit of subtilising, and it indicates the danger of +all this excessive introspection. Edwards would not have accepted the +moral that the best plan is to think about yourself as little as +possible; for from his point of view this constant cross-examination of +all your feelings, this dissection of emotion down to its finest and +most intricate convolutions, was of the very essence of religion. No +one, however, can read his account of his own feelings, even when he +runs into the accustomed phraseology, without perceiving the ring of +genuine feeling. He is morbid, it may be, but he is not insincere; and +even his strained hyperboles are scarcely unintelligible when considered +as the expression of the sentiment produced by the effort of a human +being to live constantly in presence of the absolute and the infinite. + +The event which most powerfully influenced Edwards' mind during his life +at Northampton was one of those strange spiritual storms which then, as +now, swept periodically across the Churches. Protestants generally call +them revivals; in Catholic countries they impel pilgrims to some +devotional shrine; Edwards and his contemporaries described such a +phenomenon as 'a remarkable outpouring of God's Holy Spirit.' He has +carefully described the symptoms of one such commotion, in which he was +a main agent; and two or three later treatises, discussing some of the +problems suggested by the scenes he witnessed, testify to the +profoundness of the impression upon his mind. In fact, as we shall +presently see, Edwards' whole philosophical system was being put to a +practical test by these events. Was the excitement, as modern observers +would say, due to a mere moral epidemic, or was it actually produced by +the direct interposition in human affairs of the Almighty Ruler? +Unhesitatingly recognising the hand of the God the very thought of whom +crushed him into self-annihilation, Edwards is unconsciously troubled by +the strange contrast between the effect and the stupendous cause +assigned for it. When the angel of the Lord comes down to trouble the +waters, one would expect rather to see oceans upheaved than a trifling +ripple in an insignificant pond. There is something almost pathetic in +his eagerness to magnify the proportions of the event. He boasts that in +six months 'more than three hundred souls were savingly brought home to +Christ in this town' (iii. 23). The town itself, it may be observed, +though then one of the most populous in the country, was only of +eighty-two years' standing, and reckoned about two hundred families, the +era of Chicagos not having yet dawned upon the world. The conversion, +however, of this village appeared to some 'divines and others' to herald +the approach of the 'conflagration' (iii. 59); and though Edwards +disavows this rash conjecture, he anticipates with some confidence the +approach of the millennium. The 'isles and ships of Tarshish,' +mentioned in Isaiah, are plainly meant for America, which is to be 'the +firstfruits of that glorious day' (iii. 154); and he collects enough +accounts of various revivals of an analogous kind which had taken place +in Salzburg, Holland, and several of the British Colonies, to justify +the anticipation 'that these universal commotions are the forerunners of +something exceeding glorious approaching' (iii. 414). The limited area +of the disturbance perhaps raised less difficulty than the equivocal +nature of many of the manifestations. In Edwards' imagination, Satan was +always on the watch to produce an imitation, and, it would seem, a +curiously accurate imitation, of the Divine impulses. As De Foe says, in +a different sense-- + + Wherever God erects a house of prayer, + The devil always builds a chapel there. + +And some people were unkind enough to trace in the diseases and other +questionable products of the revival a distinct proof of the 'operation +of the evil spirit' (iii. 96). Edwards felt the vital importance of +distinguishing between the two classes of supernatural agency, so +different in their source, and yet so thoroughly similar in their +effects. There is something rather touching, though at times our +sympathy is not quite unequivocal, in the simplicity with which he +traces distinct proofs of the Divine hand in the familiar phenomena of +religious conversions. The stories seem stale and profitless to us which +he accepted with awe-stricken reverence as a demonstrative testimony to +the Divinity of the work. He gives, for example, an anecdote of a young +woman, who, being jealous of another conversion, resolved to bring about +her own by the rather naļf expedient of reading the Bible straight +through. Having begun her task on Monday, the desired effect was +produced on Thursday, and she felt it possible to skip at once to the +New Testament. The crisis ran through its usual course, ending in a +state of rapture, during which she enjoyed for days 'a kind of beatific +vision of God.' The poor girl was very ill, and expressed 'great +longings to die.' When her brother read in Job about worms feeding on +the dead body, she 'appeared with a pleasant smile, and said it was +sweet to her to think of her being in such circumstances' (iii. 69). The +longing was speedily gratified, and she departed, perhaps not to find in +another world that the universe had been laid out precisely in +accordance with the theories of Mr. Jonathan Edwards, but at least +leaving behind her--so we are assured--memories of touching humility and +spirituality. If Abigail Hutchinson strikes us as representing, on the +whole, rather a morbid type of human excellence, what are we to say to +Phebe Bartlet, who had just passed her fourth birthday in April 1735? +(iii. 70). This infant of more than Yankee precocity was converted by +her brother, who had just gone through the same process at the age of +eleven. She took to 'secret prayer,' five or six times a day, and would +never suffer herself to be interrupted. Her experiences are given at +great length, including a refusal to eat plums, 'because it was sin;' +her extreme interest in a thought suggested to her by a text from the +Revelation, about 'supping with God;' and her request to her father to +replace a cow which a poor man had lost. She took great delight in +'private religious meetings,' and was specially edified by the sermons +of Mr. Edwards, for whom she professed, as he records, with perhaps some +pardonable complacency, the warmest affection. The grotesque side of the +story of this detestable infant is, however, blended with something more +shocking. The poor little wretch was tormented by the fear of +hell-fire; and her relations and pastor appear to have done their best +to stimulate this, as well as other religious sentiments. Edwards boasts +at a subsequent period that 'hundreds of little children' had testified +to the glory of God's work (iii. 146). He afterwards remarks +incidentally that many people had considered as 'intolerable' the +conduct of the ministers in 'frightening poor innocent little children +with talk of hell-fire and eternal damnation' (iii. 200). And indeed we +cannot deny that when reading some of the sermons to which poor Phebe +Bartlet must have listened, and remembering the nature of the audience, +the fingers of an unregenerate person clench themselves involuntarily as +grasping an imaginary horsewhip. The answer given by Edwards does not +diminish the impression. Innocent as children may seem to be, he +replies, 'yet if they are out of Christ, they are not so in God's sight, +but are young vipers, and are infinitely more hateful than vipers, and +are in a most miserable condition as well as grown persons; and they are +naturally very senseless and stupid, being _born as the wild ass's +colt_, and need much to awaken them' (iii. 200). Doubtless they got it, +and if we will take Edwards' word for it, the awakening process never +did harm in any one instance. Here we are touching the doctrines which +naturally excite a fierce revolt of the conscience against the most +repulsive of all theological dogmas, though unfortunately a revolt which +is apt to generate an indiscriminating hostility. + +The revival gradually spent its force; and, as usual, the more +unpleasant symptoms began to assume greater prominence as the more +spiritual impulse decayed. In Edwards' phraseology, 'it began to be very +sensible that the Spirit of God was gradually withdrawing from us, and +after this time Satan seemed to be set more loose, and raged in a +dreadful manner' (iii. 77). From the beginning of the excitement, the +usual physical manifestation, leapings, and roarings and convulsions +(iii. 131, 205), had shown themselves; and Edwards labours to show that +in this case they were genuine marks of a Divine impulse, and not of +mere enthusiasm, as in the externally similar cases of the Quakers, the +French prophets, and others (iii. 109). Now, however, more startling +phenomena presented themselves. Satan persuaded a highly respectable +citizen to cut his throat. Others saw visions, and had fancied +inspirations; whilst from some hints it would seem probable that grosser +outrages on morality resulted from indiscriminate gatherings of frenzied +enthusiasts (iii. 284). Finally, people's minds were diverted by the +approach of his Excellency the Governor to settle an Indian treaty, and +the building of a new meeting-house altered the channel of enthusiasm +(iii. 79). Northampton settled down into its normal tranquillity. + +Some years passed, and, as religious zeal cooled, Edwards became +involved in characteristic difficulties. The pastor, it may easily be +supposed, was not popular with the rising generation. He had, as he +confesses with his usual candour, 'a constitution in many respects +peculiarly unhappy, attended with flaccid solids; vapid, sizy, and +scarce fluids; and a low tide of spirits; often occasioning a kind of +childish weakness and contemptibleness of speech, presence and +demeanour; with a disagreeable dulness and stiffness, much unfitting me +for conversation, but more especially for the government of a college,' +which he was requested to undertake (i. 86). He was, says his admiring +biographer, 'thorough in the government of his children,' who +consequently 'reverenced, esteemed, and loved him.' He adopted the +plan, less popular now than then, and even more decayed in America than +in England, of 'thoroughly subduing' his children as soon as they showed +any tendency to self-will. He was a 'great enemy' to all 'vain +amusements;' and even after his children had grown up, he enforced their +abstinence from such 'pernicious practice,' and never allowed them to be +out after nine at night. Any gentleman, we are happy to add, was given +proper opportunities for courting his daughters after consulting their +parents, but on condition of conforming strictly to the family +regulations (i. 52, 53). This Puritan discipline appears to have +succeeded with Edwards' own family; but a gentleman with flaccid solids, +vapid fluids, and a fervent belief in hell-fire is seldom appreciated by +the youth even of a Puritan village. + +Accordingly, Edwards got into trouble by endeavouring to force his own +notions of discipline amongst certain young people, belonging to +'considerable families,' who were said to indulge in loose conversation +and equivocal books. They possibly preferred 'Pamela,' which had then +just revealed a new source of amusement to the world, to awakening +sermons; and Edwards' well-meant efforts to suppress the evil set the +town 'in a blaze' (i. 64). A more serious quarrel followed. Edwards +maintained the doctrine, which had been gradually dying out amongst the +descendants of the Puritans, that converted persons alone should be +admitted to the Lord's Supper. The practice had been different at +Northampton; and when Edwards announced his intention of enforcing the +test of professed conversion, a vigorous controversy ensued. The dispute +lasted for some years, with much mutual recrimination. A kind of +ecclesiastical council, formed from the neighbouring churches, decided +by a majority of one that he should be dismissed if his people desired +it; and the people voted for his dismissal by a majority of more than +200 to 20 (i. 69). + +Edwards was thus a martyr to his severe sense of discipline. His +admirers have lamented over the sentence by which the ablest of American +thinkers was banished in a kind of disgrace. Impartial readers will be +inclined to suspect that those who suffered under so rigorous a +spiritual ruler had perhaps some reason on their side. However that may +be, and I do not presume to have any opinion upon a question involving +such complex ecclesiastical disputes, the result to literature was +fortunate. In 1751 Edwards was appointed to a mission for Indians, +founded at Stockbridge, in the remotest corner of Massachusetts, where a +few remnants of the aborigines were settled on a township granted by the +colony. There were great hopes, we are told, of the probable influence +of the mission, which were destined to frustration from accidental +causes. The hopes can hardly have rested on the character of the +preacher. It is difficult to imagine a more grotesque relation between a +minister and his congregation than that which must have subsisted +between Edwards and his barbarous flock. He had remarked pathetically in +one of his writings on the very poor prospect open to the Houssatunnuck +Indians, if their salvation depended on the study of the evidences of +Christianity (iv. 245). And if Edwards preached upon the topics of which +his mind was fullest, their case would have been still harder. For it +was in the remote solitudes of this retired corner that he gave himself +up to those abstruse meditations on free-will and original sin which +form the substance of his chief writings. A sermon in the Houssatunnuck +language, if Edwards ever acquired that tongue, upon predestination, the +differences between the Arminian and the Calvinist schemes, Liberty of +Indifference, and other such doctrines, would hardly be an improving +performance. If, however, his labours in this department 'were attended +with no remarkable visible success' (i. 83), he thought deeply and wrote +much. The publication of his treatise on the Freedom of the Will +followed in 1754, and upon the strength of the reputation which it won +for him, he was appointed President of New Jersey College in the end of +1757, only to die of small-pox in the following March. His death cut +short some considerable literary schemes, not, however, of a kind +calculated to add to his reputation. Various remains were published +after his death, and we have ample materials for forming a comprehensive +judgment of his theories. In one shape or another he succeeded in giving +utterance to his theory upon the great problems of life; and there is +little cause for regret that he did not succeed in completing that +'History of the Work of Redemption' which was to have been his _opus +magnum_. He had neither the knowledge nor the faculties for making much +of a Puritan view of universal history, and he has left a sufficient +indication of his general conception of such a book. + +The book upon the Freedom of the Will, which is his main title to +philosophical fame, bears marks of the conditions under which it was +composed, and which certainly did not tend to confer upon an abstruse +treatise any additional charm. Edwards' style is heavy and languid; he +seldom indulges in an illustration, and those which he gives are far +from lively; it is only at rare intervals that his logical ingenuity in +stating some intricate argument clothes his thought in language of +corresponding neatness. He has, in fact, the faults natural to an +isolated thinker. He gives his readers credit for being familiar with +the details of the labyrinth in which he had wandered till every +intricacy was plainly mapped out in his own mind, and frequently dwells +at tiresome length upon some refinement which probably never occurred to +anyone but himself. A writer who, like Hume, is at once an acute thinker +and a great literary artist, is content to aim a decisive blow at the +vital points of the theory which he is opposing, and leaves to his +readers the task of following out more remote consequences; Edwards, +after winning the decisive victory, insists upon attacking his adversary +in every position in which he might conceivably endeavour to entrench +himself. It seems to be his aim to answer every objection which could +possibly be suggested, and, of course, he answers many objections which +no one would raise, whilst probably omitting others of which no +forethought could warn him. The book reads like a verbatim report of +those elaborate dialogues which he was in the habit of holding with +himself in his solitary ramblings. There is some truth in Goldsmith's +remark upon the ease of gaining an argumentative victory when you are at +once opponent and respondent. It must be added, however, that any man +who is at all fond of speculation finds in his second self the most +obstinate and perplexing of antagonists. No one else raises such a +variety of empty and vexatious quibbles, and splits hairs with such +surprising versatility. It is true that your double often shows a +certain discretion, and whilst obstinately defending certain untenable +positions contrives to glide over some weak places, which come to light +with provoking unexpectedness when you are encountered by an external +enemy. Edwards, indeed, guards himself with extreme care by an elaborate +system of logical divisions and subdivisions against the possibility of +so unpleasant a surprise; but no man can dispense with the aid of a +living antagonist, free from all suspicion of being a man of straw. The +opponents against whom he labours most strenuously were unfortunately +very feeble creatures for the most part; such as poor Chubb, the Deist, +and the once well-known Dr. Whitby, who had changed sides in more than +one controversy with more credit to his candour than to his force of +mind. Certain difficulties may, therefore, have evaded the logical +network in which he tried to enclose them; but, on the whole, he is +rather over than under anxious to stop every conceivable loophole. +Condensation, with a view to placing the vital points of his doctrine in +more salient relief, would have greatly improved his treatise. But the +fault is natural in a philosophical recluse, more intent upon thorough +investigation than upon lucid exposition. + +Without following his intricate reasonings, the main position may be +indicated in a few words. The doctrine, in fact, which Edwards asserted +may be said to be simply that everything has a cause, and that human +volitions are no more an exception to this universal law than any other +class of phenomena. This belief in the universality of causation rests +with him upon a primary intuition (v. 55), and not upon experience; and +his whole argument pursues the metaphysical method instead of appealing, +as a modern school would appeal, to the results of observation. The +Arminian opponent of necessity must, as he argues, either deny this +self-evident principle, or be confined to statements purely irrelevant +to the really important question. The book is occupied in hunting down +all the evasions by which these conclusions may be escaped, and in +showing that the true theory, when rightly understood, is obnoxious to +no objections on the score of morality. The ordinary mode of meeting +the argument is by appealing to consciousness. We know that we are free, +as Dr. Johnson said, and there's an end on't. Edwards argues at great +length, and in many forms, that this summary reply involves a confusion +between the two very different propositions: 'We can do what we will,' +and 'We can will what we will.' Consciousness really testifies that, if +we desire to raise our right hand, our right hand will rise in the +absence of external compulsion. It does not show that the desire itself +may either exist or not exist, independently of any preceding causes +either external or internal. The ordinary definition of free-will +assumes an infinite series of volitions, each determining all that has +gone before; or, to let Edwards speak for himself, and it will be a +sufficient specimen of his style, he says in a passage which sums up the +whole argument, that the assertion of free-will either amounts to the +merely verbal proposition that you have power to will what you have +power to will; 'or the meaning must be that a man has power to will as +he pleases or chooses to will; that is, he has power by one act of +choice to choose another; by an antecedent act of will to choose a +consequent act, and therein to execute his own choice. And if this be +their meaning, it is nothing but shuffling with those they dispute with, +and baffling their own reason. For still the question returns, wherein +lies man's liberty in that antecedent act of will which chose the +consequent act? The answer, according to the same principle, must be, +that his liberty lies also in his willing as he would, or as he chose, +or agreeably to another act of choice preceding that. And so the +question returns _in infinitum_ and again _in infinitum_. In order to +support their opinion there must be no beginning, but free acts of the +will must have been chosen by foregoing acts of will in the soul of +every man without beginning, and so before he had a beginning.' + +The heads of most people begin to swim when they have proceeded but a +short way into such argumentation; but Edwards delights in applying +similar logical puzzles over and over again to confute the notions of a +'self-determining power in the will,' or of a 'liberty of indifferency;' +of the power of suspending the action even if the judgment has +pronounced its verdict; of Archbishop King's ingenious device of putting +the cart before the horse, and declaring that our delight is not the +cause but the consequence of our will; or Clarke's theory of liberty, as +consisting in agency which seems to erect an infinite number of +subsidiary first causes in the wills of all created beings. A short cut +to the same conclusions consists in simply denying the objective reality +of chance or contingency; but Edwards has no love of short cuts in such +matters, or rather cannot refuse himself the pleasure of following the +circuitous route as well as explaining the more direct method. + +This main principle established, Edwards has of course no difficulty in +showing that the supposed injury to morality rests on a misconception of +the real doctrine. If volitions, instead of being caused, are the +products of arbitrary chance, morality becomes meaningless. We approve +or disapprove of an action precisely because it implies the existence of +motives, good or bad. Punishment and reward would be useless if actions +were after all a matter of chance; and if merit implied the existence of +free-will, the formation of virtuous habits would detract from a man's +merit in so far as they tend to make virtue necessary. So far, in short, +as you admit the existence of an element of pure chance, you restrict +the sphere of law; and therefore morality, so far from excluding, +necessarily involves an invariable connection between motives and +actions. + +Arguments of this kind, sufficiently familiar to all students of the +subject, are combined with others of a more doubtful character. Edwards +has no hesitation about dealing with the absolute and the infinite. He +dwells, for example, with great ingenuity upon the difficulty of +reconciling the Divine prescience with the contingency of human actions, +and has no scruple in inferring the possibility of reconciling virtue +with necessity from the fact that God is at once the type of all +perfection, and is under a necessity to be perfect. If such arguments +would be rejected as transcending the limits of human intelligence by +many who agree with his conclusions, others, equally characteristic, are +as much below the dignity of a metaphysician. Edwards draws his proofs +with the same equanimity from the most abstruse speculations as from a +child-like belief in the literal inspiration of the Scriptures. He +'proves,' for example, God's foreknowledge of human actions from such +facts as Micaiah's prophecy of Ahab's sin, and Daniel's acquaintance +with the 'horrid wickedness' about to be committed by Antiochus +Epiphanes. It is a pleasant supposition that a man who did not believe +that God could foretell events, would be awed by the authority of a +text; but Edwards' polemic is almost exclusively directed against the +hated Arminians, and he appears to be unconscious of the existence of a +genuine sceptic. He observes that he has never read Hobbes (v. 260); and +though in another work he makes a brief allusion to Hume, he never +refers to him in these speculations, whilst covering the same ground as +one of the admirable _Essays_. + +This simplicity is significant of Edwards' unique position. The doctrine +of Calvinism, by whatever name it may be called, is a mental tonic of +tremendous potency. Whether in its theological dress, as attributing all +events to the absolute decrees of the Almighty, or in its metaphysical +dress, as declaring that some abstract necessity governs the world, or +in the shape more familiar to modern thinkers, in which it proclaims the +universality of what has been called the reign of law, it conquers or +revolts the imagination. It forces us to conceive of all phenomena as so +many links + + In the eternal chain + Which none can break, nor slip, nor overreach; + +and can, therefore, be accepted only by men who possess the rare power +of combining their beliefs into a logical whole. Most people contrive to +shirk the consequences, either by some of those evasions which, as +Edwards showed, amount to asserting the objective existence of chance, +or more commonly by forbidding their reason to follow the chain of +inferences through more than a few links. The axiom that the cause of a +cause is also the cause of the thing caused, though verbally admitted, +is beyond the reach of most intellects. People are willing to admit that +A is irrevocably joined to B, B to C, and so on to the end of the +alphabet, but they refuse to realise the connection between A and Z. The +annoyance excited by Mr. Buckle's enunciation of some very familiar +propositions, is a measure of the reluctance of the popular imagination +to accept a logical conclusion. When the dogma is associated with a +belief in eternal damnation, the consequences are indeed terrible; and +therefore it was natural that Calvinism should have become an almost +extinct creed, and the dogma have been left to the freethinkers who had +not that awful vision before their eyes. Hobbes, Collins, and Hume, the +three writers with whom the opinion was chiefly associated in English +literature, were also the three men who were regarded as most +emphatically the devil's advocates. In the latter part of the eighteenth +century, it was indeed adopted by Hartley, by his disciple Priestley, +and by Abraham Tucker, all of whom were Christians after a fashion. But +they reconciled themselves to the belief by peculiar forms of optimism. +Tucker maintained the odd fancy that every man would ultimately receive +a precisely equal share of happiness, and thought that a few thousand +years of damnation would be enough for all practical purposes. If I +remember rightly, he roughly calculated the amount of misery to be +endured by human beings at about two minutes' suffering in a century. +Hartley maintained the still more remarkable thesis that, in some +non-natural sense, 'all individuals are always and actually infinitely +happy.' But Edwards, though an optimist in a very different sense, was +alone amongst contemporary writers of any speculative power in asserting +at once the doctrine that all events are the result of the Divine will, +and the doctrine of eternal damnation. His mind, acute as it was, yet +worked entirely in the groove provided for it. The revolting +consequences to which he was led by not running away from his premisses, +never for an instant suggested to him that the premisses might +conceivably be false. He accepts a belief in hell-fire, interpreted +after the popular fashion, without a murmur, and deduces from it all +those consequences which most theologians have evaded or covered with a +judicious veil. + +Edwards was luckily not an eloquent man, for his sermons would in that +case have been amongst the most terrible of human compositions. But if +ever he warms into something like eloquence, it is when he is +endeavouring to force upon the imaginations of his hearers the horrors +of their position. Perhaps the best specimen of his powers in this +department is a sermon which we are told produced a great effect at the +time of revivals, and to which, we may as well remember, Phebe Bartlet +may probably have listened. Read that sermon (vol. vii., sermon xv.) and +endeavour to picture the scene of its original delivery. Imagine the +congregation of rigid Calvinists, prepared by previous scenes of frenzy +and convulsion, and longing for the fierce excitement which was the only +break in the monotony of their laborious lives. And then imagine Edwards +ascending the pulpit, with his flaccid solids and vapid fluids, and the +pale drawn face, in which we can trace an equal resemblance to the stern +Puritan forefathers and to the keen sallow New Englander of modern +times. He gives out as his text, 'Sinners shall slide in due time,' and +the title of his sermon is, 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.' For +a full hour he dwells with unusual vehemence on the wrath of the Creator +and the sufferings of the creature. His sentences, generally languid and +complex, condense themselves into short, almost gasping asseverations. +God is angry with the wicked; as angry with the living wicked as 'with +many of those miserable creatures that He is now tormenting in hell.' +The devil is waiting: the fire is ready; the furnace is hot; the +'glittering sword is whet and held over them, and the pit hath opened +her mouth to receive them.' The unconverted are walking on a rotten +covering, where there are innumerable weak places, and those places not +distinguishable. The flames are 'gathering and lashing about' the +sinner, and all that preserves him for a moment is 'the mere arbitrary +will and uncovenanted unobliged forbearance of an incensed God.' But +does not God love sinners? Hardly in a comforting sense. 'The God that +holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some +other loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully +provoked; He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast +into the fire;... you are ten thousand times as abominable in His eyes +as the most hateful and venomous serpent is in ours.' The comparison of +man to a loathsome viper is one of the metaphors to which Edwards most +habitually recurs (_e.g._ vii. 167, 179, 182, 198, 344, 496). No relief +is possible; Edwards will have no attempt to explain away the eternity +of which he speaks; there will be no end to the 'exquisite horrible +misery' of the damned. You, when damned, 'will know certainly that you +must wear out long ages, millions of millions of ages, in wrestling and +conflicting with this Almighty merciless vengeance: and then when you +have so done, when so many ages have actually been spent by you in this +manner, you will know that all is but a point to what remains.' Nor +might his hearers fancy that, as respectable New England Puritans, they +had no personal interest in the question. It would be awful, he says, if +we could point to one definite person in this congregation as certain to +endure such torments. 'But, alas! instead of one, how many is it likely +will remember this discourse in hell? It would be a wonder if some that +are now present should not be in hell in a very short time, before this +year is out. And it would be no wonder if some persons that now sit here +in some seats of this meeting-house in health, and quiet and secure, +should be there before to-morrow morning.' + +With which blessing he dismissed the congregation to their dinners, with +such appetites as might be left to them. The strained excitement which +marks this pleasing production could not be maintained; but Edwards +never shrank in cold blood from the most appalling consequences of his +theories. He tells us, with superlative coolness, that the 'bulk of +mankind do throng' to hell (vii. 226). He sentences infants to hell +remorselessly. The imagination, he admits, may be relieved by the +hypothesis that infants suffer only in this world, instead of being +doomed to eternal misery. 'But it does not at all relieve one's reason;' +and that is the only faculty which he will obey (vi. 461). Historically +the doctrine is supported by the remark that God did not save the +children in Sodom, and that He actually commanded the slaughter of the +Midianitish infants. 'Happy shall he be,' it is written of Edom, 'that +taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones' (vi. 255). +Philosophically he remarks that 'a young viper has a malignant nature, +though incapable of doing a malignant action' (vi. 471), and quotes with +approval the statement of a Jewish Rabbi, that a child is wicked as soon +as born, 'for at the same time that he sucks the breasts he follows his +lust' (vi. 482), which is perhaps the superlative expression of the +theory that all natural instincts are corrupt. Finally, he enforces the +only doctrine which can equal this in horror, namely, that the saints +rejoice in the damnation of the wicked. In a sermon called 'Wicked Men +useful in their Destruction only' (vol. viii., sermon xxi.), he declares +that 'the view of the doleful condition of the damned will make them +(the saints in heaven) more prize their own blessedness.' They will +realise the wonderful grace of God, who has made so great a difference +between them and others of the same species, 'who are no worse by nature +than they, and have deserved no worse of God than they.' 'When they +shall look upon the damned,' he exclaims, 'and see their misery, how +will heaven ring with the praises of God's justice towards the wicked, +and His grace towards the saints! And with how much greater enlargement +of heart will they praise Jesus Christ their Redeemer, that ever He was +pleased to set His love upon them, His dying love!' + +Was the man who could utter such blasphemous sentiments--for so they +undoubtedly appear to us--a being of ordinary flesh and blood? One would +rather have supposed his solids to be of bronze, and his fluids of +vitriol, than have attributed to them the character which he describes. +That he should have been a gentle, meditative creature, around whose +knees had clung eleven 'young vipers' of his own begetting, is certainly +an astonishing reflection. And yet, to do Edwards justice, we must +remember two things. In the first place, the responsibility for such +ghastly beliefs cannot be repudiated by anyone who believes in the +torments of hell. Catholics and Protestants must share the opprobrium +due to the assertion of this tremendous doctrine. Nor does Arminianism +really provide more than a merely verbal escape from the difficulty. +Jeremy Taylor, for example, draws a picture of hell quite as fearful and +as material as Edwards', and, if animated by a less fanatical spirit, +adorned by an incomparably more vivid fancy. He specially improves upon +Edwards' description by introducing the sense of smell. The tyrant who +fastened the dead to the living invented an exquisite torment; 'but what +is this in respect of hell, when each body of the damned is more +loathsome and unsavoury than a million of dead dogs, and all those +pressed and crowded together in so strait a compass? Bonaventure goes so +far as to say that if one only of the damned were brought into this +world, it were sufficient to infect the whole earth. Neither shall the +devils send forth a better smell; for, although they are spirits, yet +those fiery bodies unto which they are fastened and confined shall be of +a more pestilential flavour.' It is vain to attempt an extenuation of +the horror, by relieving the Almighty from the responsibility of this +fearful prison-house. The dogma of free-will is a transparent mockery. +It simply enables the believer to retain the hideous side of his creed +by abandoning the rational side. To pass over the objection that by +admitting the existence of chance it really destroys all intelligible +measures of merit and of justice, the really awful dogma remains. You +still believe that God has made man too weak to stand alone, that He has +placed him amidst temptations where his fall, if not rigidly certain in +a given case, is still inevitable for the mass, and then torments him +eternally for his wickedness. Whether a man is slain outright, or merely +placed without help to wander at random through innumerable pitfalls, +makes no real difference in the character of the action. Theologians +profess horror at the doctrine of infantile damnation, though they +cannot always make up their minds to disavow it explicitly, but they +will find it easier to condemn the doctrine than effectually to +repudiate all responsibility. To the statement that it follows logically +from the dogma of original sin, they reply that logic is out of place in +such questions. But, if this be granted, do they not maintain doctrines +as hideous, when calmly examined? It is blasphemous, we are told, to say +with Edwards, that God holds the 'little vipers,' whom we call 'helpless +innocents,' suspended over the pit of hell, and drops millions of them +into ruthless torments. Certainly it is blasphemous. But is an infant +really more helpless than the poor savage of Australia or St. Giles, +surrounded from his birth with cruel and brutal natures, and never +catching one glimpse of celestial light? Nay, when the question is +between God and man, does not the difference between the infant and the +philosopher or the statesman vanish into nothing? All, whatever figment +of free-will may be set up, are equally helpless in face of the +surrounding influences which mould their characters and their fate. +Young children, the heterodox declare, are innocent. But the theologian +replies with unanswerable truth, that God looks at the heart and not at +the actions, and that science and theology are at one in declaring that +in the child are the germs of the adult man. If human nature is corrupt +and therefore hateful to God, Edwards is quite right in declaring that +the bursting bud must be as hateful as the full-grown tree. To beings of +a loftier order, to say nothing of a Being of infinite power and wisdom, +the petty race of man would appear as helpless as insects appear to us, +and the distinction between the children or the ignorant, and the wise +and full-grown, an irrelevant refinement. + +It is of course true that the patient reception of this and similar +doctrines would indicate at the present day a callous heart or a +perverted intellect. Though, in the sphere of abstract speculation, we +cannot draw any satisfactory line between the man and the infant, there +is a wide gap to the practical imagination. A man ought to be shocked +when confronted with this fearfully concrete corollary to his theories. +But the blame should be given where it is due. The Calvinist is not to +blame for the theory of universal law which he shares with the +philosopher, but for the theory of damnation which he shares with the +Arminian. The hideous dogma is the existence of the prison-house, not +the belief that its inmates are sent there by God's inscrutable decree, +instead of being drafted into it by lot. And here we come to the second +fact which must be remembered in Edwards' favour. The living truths in +his theory are chained to dead fancies, and the fancies have an odour as +repulsive as Taylor's 'million of dead dogs.' But on the truths is +founded a religious and moral system which, however erroneous it may +appear to some thinkers, is conspicuous for its vigour and loftiness. +Edwards often shows himself a worthy successor of the great men who led +the moral revolt of the Reformation. Amongst some very questionable +metaphysics and much outworn--sometimes repulsive--superstition, he +grasps the central truths on which all really noble morality must be +based. The mode in which they presented themselves to his mind may be +easily traced. Calvinism, logically developed, leads to Pantheism. The +absolute sovereignty of God, the doctrine to which Edwards constantly +returns, must be extended over all nature as well as over the fate of +the individual human soul. The peculiarity of Edwards' mind was, that +the doctrine had thus expanded along particular lines of thought, +without equally affecting others. He is a kind of Spinoza-Mather; he +combines, that is, the logical keenness of the great metaphysician with +the puerile superstitions of the New England divine; he sees God in all +nature, and yet believes in the degrading supernaturalism of the Salem +witches. The object of his faith, in short, is the 'infinite Jehovah' +(vi. 170), the God to whose all-pervading power none can set a limit, +and who is yet the tutelary deity of a petty clan; and there is +something almost bewildering in the facility with which he passes from +one conception to the other without the smallest consciousness of any +discontinuity. Of his coincidence in the popular theories, and +especially in the doctrine of damnation, I have already given instances. +His utterances derived from a loftier source are given with equal +emphasis. At the age of fifteen or sixteen he had said 'God and real +existence are the same; God is, and there is none else.'[10] The same +doctrine is the foundation of the theories expounded in his treatises on +Virtue and on the End of God in Creation. In the last of these, for +example, he uses the argument (depending upon a conception familiar to +the metaphysicians of the previous age), that benevolence, consisting in +regard to 'Being in general,' must be due to any being in proportion to +the degree of existence (ii. 401). Now 'all other being is as nothing in +comparison of the Divine Being.' God is 'the foundation and fountain of +all being and all perfection, from whom all is perfectly derived, and on +whom all is most absolutely and perfectly dependent; whose being and +beauty is, as it were, the sum and comprehension of all existence and +excellence, much more than the sun is the fountain and summary +comprehension of all the light and brightness of the day' (ii. 405). As +he says in the companion treatise, 'the eternal and infinite Being is, +in effect, being in general, and comprehends universal existence' (vi. +59). The only end worthy of God must, therefore, be his own glory. This +is not to attribute selfishness to God, for 'in God, the love of Himself +and the love of the public are not to be distinguished as in man, +because God's being, as it were, comprehends all' (vi. 53). In +communicating His fulness to His creatures, He is of necessity the +ultimate end; but it is a fallacy to make God and the creature in this +affair of the emanation of the Divine fulness, 'the opposite parts of a +disjunction' (vi. 55). The creature's love of God and complacence in the +Divine perfections are the same thing as the manifestation of the Divine +glory. 'They are all but the emanations of God's glory, or the excellent +brightness and fulness of the Divinity diffused, overflowing, and, as it +were, enlarged; or, in one word, existing _ad extra_' (vi. 117). In more +familiar dialect, our love to God is but God's goodness making itself +objective. The only knowledge which deserves the name is the knowledge +of God, and virtue is but the knowledge of God under a different name. + +Without dwelling upon the relations of this doctrine to modern forms of +Pantheism, I must consider this last proposition, which is of vital +importance in Edwards' system, and of which the theological and the +metaphysical element is curiously blended. God is to the universe--to +use Edwards' own metaphor--what the sun is to our planet; and the +metaphor would have been more adequate if he had been acquainted with +modern science. The sun's action is the primary cause of all the +infinitely complex play of forces which manifest themselves in the fall +of a raindrop or in the operations of a human brain. But as some bodies +may seem to resist the action of the sun's rays, so may some created +beings set themselves in opposition to the Divine Will. To a +thoroughgoing Pantheist, indeed, such an opposition must appear to be +impossible if we look deep enough, and sin, in this sense, be merely an +illusion, caused by our incapacity of taking in the whole design of the +Almighty. Edwards, however, though dimly aware of the difficulty, is not +so consistent in his Pantheism as to be much troubled with it. He admits +that, by some mysterious process, corruption has intruded itself into +the Divine universe. The all-pervading harmony is marred by a discord +due, in his phraseology, to the fall of man. Over the ultimate cause of +this discord lies a veil which can never be withdrawn to mortal +intelligence. Assuming its existence, however, virtue consists, if one +may so speak, in that quality which fits a man to be a conducting +medium, and vice in that which makes him a non-conducting medium to the +solar forces. This proposition is confounded in Edwards' mind, as in +that of most metaphysicians, with the very different proposition that +virtue consists in recognising the Divine origin of those forces. It is +characteristic, in fact, of his metaphysical school, to identify the +logical with the causal connection, and to assume that the definition of +a thing necessarily constitutes its essence. 'Virtue,' says Edwards, 'is +the union of heart to being in general, or to God, the Being of beings' +(ii. 421), and thus consists in the intellectual apprehension of Deity, +and in the emotion founded upon and necessarily involving the +apprehension. The doctrine that whatever is done so as to promote the +glory of God is virtuous, is with him identified with the doctrine that +whatever is done consciously in order to promote the glory of God is +virtuous. The major premiss of the syllogism which proves an action to +be virtuous must be actually present to the mind of the agent. This, in +utilitarian phraseology, is to confound between the criterion and the +motive. If it is, as Edwards says, the test of a virtuous action that it +should tend to 'the highest good of being in general,' it does not +follow that an action is only virtuous when done with a conscious +reference to that end. But Edwards overlooks or denies the distinction, +and assumes, for example, as an evident corollary, that a love of +children or friends is only virtuous in so far as it is founded on a +desire for the general good, which, in his sense, is a desire for the +glory of God (ii. 428). He judges actions, that is, not by their +tendency, but by their nature; and their nature is equivalent to their +logic. + +His metaphysical theory coincides precisely with his theological view, +and is generally expressed in theological language. The love of 'Being +in general' is the love of God. The intellectual intuition is the +reflection of the inward light, and the recognition of a mathematical +truth is but a different phase of the process which elsewhere produces +conversion. Intuition is a kind of revelation and revelation is a +special intuition. + +One of his earliest published sermons is devoted to prove the existence +of 'a Divine and supernatural light, immediately imparted to the soul by +the Spirit of God' (vol. viii., sermon xxvii.). On that fundamental +doctrine his whole theological system is based; as his metaphysical +system rests on the existence of absolute _ą priori_ truths. The +knowledge of God sums up all true beliefs, and justifies all virtuous +emotions, as the power of God supports all creation at every instant. +'It is by a Divine influence that the laws of nature are upheld, and a +constant concurrence of Divine power is necessary in order to our being, +moving, or having a being' (v. 419). To be constantly drawing sustenance +from the eternal power which everywhere underlies the phenomena of the +world is the necessary condition of spiritual life, as to breathe the +air is the condition of physical life. The force which this conception, +whether true or false, exercises over the imagination, and the depth +which it gives to Edwards' moral views, are manifest at every turn. +Edwards rises far above those theories, recurring in so many different +forms, which place the essence of religion in some outward observances, +or in a set of propositions not vitally connected with the spiritual +constitution. Edwards' contemporaries, such as Lardner or Sherlock, +thought that to be a Christian was to accept certain results of +antiquarian research. With a curious _naļveté_ they sometimes say that a +ploughman or a cobbler could summarily answer the problems which have +puzzled generations of critics. Edwards sees the absurdity of hoping +that a genuine faith can ever be based on such balancing of historical +probabilities. The cobbler was to be awed by the learned man; but how +could he implicitly trust a learned man when his soul was at stake, and +when learned men differed? To convince the ignorant or the Houssatunnuck +Indian, God's voice must speak through a less devious channel. The +transcendent glory of Divine things proves their Divinity intuitively; +the mind does not indeed discard argument, but it does not want any +'long chain of argument; the argument is but one and the evidence +direct; the mind ascends to the truth of the Gospel but by one step, and +that is its Divine glory.' The moral theory of the contemporary +rationalists was correlative to their religious theory. To be religious +was to believe that certain facts had once happened; to be moral was to +believe that under certain circumstances you would at some future time +go to hell. Virtue of that kind was not to Edwards' taste, though few +men have been less sparing in using the appeal to damnation. But threats +of hell-fire were only meant to startle the sinner from his repose. His +morality could be framed from no baser material than love to the Divine +perfections. 'What thanks are due to you for not loving your own misery, +and for being willing to take some pains to escape burning in hell to +all eternity? There is ne'er a devil in hell but would gladly do the +same' (viii. 145). + +The strength, however, and the weakness of Edwards as a moralist are +best illustrated from the two treatises on the Religious Affections and +on Original Sin. The first, which was the fruit of his experiences at +Northampton, may be described as a system of religious diagnostics. By +what symptoms are you to distinguish--that was the problem which forced +itself upon him--the spiritual state produced by the Divine action from +that which is but a hollow mockery? After his mode of judging in +concrete cases, as already indicated, we are rather surprised by the +calm and sensible tone of his argument. The deep sense of the vast +importance of the events to which he was a witness makes him the more +scrupulous in testing their real character. He resists the temptation to +dwell upon those noisy and questionable manifestations in which the +vulgar thirst for the wonderful found the most appropriate testimony to +the work. Roman Catholic archbishops at the present day can exhort their +hearers to put their faith in a silly story of a vision, on the express +ground that the popularity of the belief amongst Catholics proves its +Divine origin. That is wonderfully like saying that a successful lie +should be patronised so long as it is on the side of the Church. +Edwards, brought up in a manlier school, deals with such phenomena in a +different spirit. Suppose, he says, that a person terrified by threats +of hell-fire has a vision 'of a person with a beautiful countenance, +smiling on him with arms open and with blood dropping down,' whom he +supposes to be Christ come to promise him eternal life, are we to assume +that this vision and the consequent transports infallibly indicate +supernatural agency? No, he replies, with equal sense and honesty; 'he +must have but slightly considered human nature who thinks such things +cannot arise in this manner without any supernatural excitement of +Divine power' (iv. 72). Many mischievous delusions have their origin in +this error. 'It is a low, miserable notion of spiritual sense' to +suppose that these 'external ideas' (ideas, that is, such as enter by +the senses) are proofs of Divine interference. Ample experience has +shown that they are proofs not of the spiritual health which comes from +communion with God, but of 'weakness of body and mind and distempers of +body' (iv. 143). Experience has supplied exemplary confirmations of +Edwards' wisdom. Neither bodily convulsions, nor vehement excitement of +mind, nor even revelations of things to come (iv. 158), are sufficient +proofs of that mysterious change of soul which is called conversion. No +external test, in fact, can be given. Man cannot judge decisively, but +the best symptoms are such proofs as increased humility, a love of +Christ for His own sake, without reference to heaven or hell, a sense of +the infinite beauty of Divine things, a certain 'symmetry and +proportion' between the affections themselves (iv. 314), a desire for +higher perfection, and a rich harvest of the fruit of Christian +practice. + +So far, Edwards is unassailable from his own point of view. Our theory +of religion may differ from his; but at least he fully realises how +profound is the meaning of the word, and aims at conquering all human +faculties, not at controlling a few external manifestations. But his +further applications of the theory lead him into more doubtful +speculations. That Being, a union with whom constitutes true holiness, +is not only to be the ideal of perfect goodness, but He must be the God +of the Calvinists, who fulfils the stipulations of a strange legal +bargain, and the God of the Jews, who sentences whole nations to +massacre for the crimes of their ancestors. Edwards has hitherto been +really protesting against that lower conception of God which is latent +in at least the popular versions of Catholic or Arminian theology, and +to which Calvinism opposes a loftier view. God, on this theory, is not +really almighty, for the doctrine of free-will places human actions and +their results beyond His control. He is scarcely omniscient, for, like +human rulers, He judges by actions, not by the intrinsic nature of the +soul, and therefore distributes His rewards and punishments on a system +comparable to that of mere earthly jurisprudence. He is at most the +infallible judge of actions, not the universal ordainer of events and +distributor of life and happiness. Edwards' profound conviction of the +absolute sovereignty of God leads him to reject all such feeble +conceptions. But he has now to tell us where the Divine influence has +actually displayed itself; and his view becomes strangely narrowed. +Instead of confessing that all good gifts come from God, he infers that +those which do not come from his own God must be radically vicious. +Already, as we have seen, in virtue of his leading principle, he has +denied to all natural affections the right to be truly virtuous. Unless +they involve a conscious reference to God, they are but delusive +resemblances of the reality. He admits that the natural man can in +various ways produce very fair imitations of true virtue. By help of +association of ideas, for example, or by the force of sympathy, it is +possible that benevolence may become pleasing and malevolence +displeasing, even when our own interest is not involved (ii. 436). Nay, +there is a kind of moral sense natural to man, which consists in a +certain preception of the harmony between sin and punishment, and which +therefore does not properly spring from self-love. This moral sense may +even go so far as to recognise the propriety of yielding all to the God +from whom we receive everything (ii. 443), and the justice of the +punishment of sinners. And yet this natural conscience does not imply +the existence of a 'truly virtuous taste or determination of the mind to +relish and delight in the essential beauty of true virtue, arising from +a virtuous benevolence of the heart' (ii. 445). God has bestowed such +instincts upon men for their preservation here; but they will disappear +in the next world, where no such need for them exists. He is driven, +indeed, to make some vague concessions (against which his enlightened +commentators protest), to the effect that 'these things [the natural +affections] have something of the general nature of virtue, which is +love' (ii. 456); but no such uncertain affinity can make them worthy to +be reckoned with that union with God which is the effect of the Divine +intervention alone. + +Edwards is thus in the singular position of a Pantheist who yet regards +all nature as alienated from God; and in the treatise on Original Sin he +brings out the more revolting consequences of that view by help of the +theological dogma of corruption. He there maintains in its fullest sense +the terrible thesis, that all men are naturally in a state of which the +inevitable issue is their 'utter eternal perdition, as being finally +accursed of God and the subjects of His remediless wrath through sin' +(vi. 137). The evidence of this appalling statement is made up, with a +simplicity which would be amusing if employed in a less fearful cause, +of various texts from Scripture, quoted, of course, after the most +profoundly unhistorical fashion; of inferences from the universality of +death, regarded as the penalty incurred by Adam; of general reflections +upon the heathen world and the idolatry of the Jews; and of the +sentences pronounced by Jehovah against the Canaanites. In one of his +sermons, of portentous length and ferocity (vol. vii., sermon iii.), he +expands the doctrine that natural men--which includes all men who have +not gone through the mysterious process of conversion--are God's +enemies. Their heart, he says, 'is like a viper, hissing and spitting +poison at God;' and God requites their ill-will with undying enmity and +never-ceasing torments. Their unconsciousness of that enmity, and even +their belief that they are rightly affected towards God, is no proof +that the enmity does not exist. The consequences may be conceived. 'God +who made you has given you a capacity to bear torment; and He has that +capacity in His hands; and He can enlarge it and make you capable of +more misery, as much as He will. If God hates anyone and sets Himself +against him as His enemy, what cannot He do with him? How dreadful it +must be to fall into the hands of such an enemy!' (vii. 201). How +dreadful, we add, is the conception of the universe which implies that +God is such an enemy of the bulk of His creatures; and how strangely it +combines with the mild Pantheism which traces and adores the hand of God +in all natural objects! The doctrine, it is to be observed, which is +expanded through many pages of the book on Original Sin, is not merely +that men are legally guilty, as being devoid of 'true virtue,' though +possessed of a certain factitious moral sense, but that they are +actually for the most part detestably wicked. One illustration of his +method may be sufficient. The vileness of man is proved by the remark +(not peculiar to Edwards), that men who used to live 1,000 years now +live only 70; whilst throughout Christendom their life does not average +more than 40 or 50 years; so that 'sensuality and debauchery' have +shortened our days to a twentieth part of our former allowance. + +Thus the Divine power, which is in one sense the sole moving force of +the universe, is limited, so far as its operation upon men's hearts is +concerned, to that small minority who have gone through the process of +conversion as recognised by Edwards' sect. All others, heathens, +infants, and the great mass of professed Christians, are sentenced to +irretrievable perdition. The simplicity with which he condemns all other +forms even of his own religion is almost touching. He incidentally +remarks, for example, that external exercises may not show true virtue, +because they have frequently proceeded from false religion. Members of +the Romish Church and many ancient 'hermits and anchorites' have been +most energetic in such exercises, and Edwards once lived next to a Jew +who appeared to him 'the devoutest person that he ever saw in his life' +(iv. 90); but, as he quietly assumes, all such appearances must of +course be delusive. + +Once more, then, we are brought back to the question, How could any man +hold such doctrines without going mad? or, as experience has reconciled +us to that phenomenon, How could a man with so many elevated conceptions +of the truth reconcile these ghastly conclusions to the nobler part of +his creed? Edwards' own explanations of the difficulty--such as they +are--do not help us very far. The argument by which he habitually +defends the justice of the Almighty sounds very much like a poor quibble +in his mouth, though it is not peculiar to him. Our obligation towards +God, he says, must be in proportion to His merits; therefore it is +infinite. Now there is no merit in paying a debt which we owe; and hence +the fullest discharge of our duty deserves no reward. On the other hand, +there is demerit in refusing to pay a debt; and therefore any +short-coming deserves an infinite penalty (vi. 155). Without examining +whether our duty is proportional to the perfection of its object, and is +irrespective of our capacities, there is one vital objection to this +doctrine, which Edwards had adopted from less coherent reasoners. His +theory, as I have said, so far from destroying virtue, gives it the +fullest possible meaning. There can be no more profound distinction than +between the affections which harmonise with the Divine will and those +which are discordant, though it might puzzle a more consistent Pantheist +to account for the existence of the latter. That, however, is a primary +doctrine with Edwards. But if virtue remains, it is certain that his +theory seems to be destructive both of merit and demerit as between man +and God. If we are but clay in the hands of the potter, there is no +intelligible meaning in our deserving from him either good or evil. We +are as He has made us. Edwards explains, indeed, that the sense of +desert implies a certain natural congruity between evil-doing and +punishment (ii. 430). But the question recurs, how in such a case the +congruity arises? It is one of the illusions which should disappear when +we rise to the sphere of the absolute and infinite. The metaphor about a +debt and its payment, though common in vulgar Calvinism, is quite below +Edwards' usual level of thought. And, if we try to restate the argument +in a more congenial form, its force disappears. The love of God, even +though imperfect, should surely imply some conformity to His nature; and +even an imperfect love should hardly be confounded, one might fancy, +with an absolute enmity to the Creator. Though the argument, which is +several times repeated, appears to have satisfied Edwards, it would have +been more in harmony with his principles to declare that, as between man +and his God, there could be no question of justice. The absolute +sovereignty of the Creator is the only, and to him it should be the +conclusive, answer to such complaints. But, whatever may be the fate of +this apology, the one irremovable difficulty remains behind. If God be +the one universal cause of all things, is He not the cause of evil as +well as good? Do you not make God, in short, the author of sin? + +With this final difficulty, which, indeed, besets all such theories, +Edwards struggles long and with less than his usual vigour. He tries to +show, and perhaps successfully, that the difficulty concerns his +opponents as much as himself. They can, at least, escape only by +creating a new kind of necessity, under the name of contingency; for God +is, on this theory, like a mariner who has constantly to shape his +course to meet unforeseen and uncontrollable gusts of wind (v. 298); and +to make the best of it. He insists upon the difference, not very +congenial to his scheme, between ordering and permitting evil. The sun, +he says (v. 293), causes light, but is only the occasion of darkness. +If, however, the sun voluntarily retired from the world, it could +scarcely evade the responsibility of its absence. And, finally, he makes +the ordinary distinction, and that which is perhaps the best answer to +be made to an unanswerable difficulty. Christ's crucifixion, he says, +was so far bad as it was brought about by malignant murderers: but as +considered by God, with a view to all its glorious consequences, it was +not evil, but good (v. 297). And thus any action may have two aspects; +and that which appears to us, whose view is necessarily limited, as +simply evil, may, when considered by an infinite intelligence, as part +of the general order of things, be absolutely good. God does not will +sin as sin, but as a necessary part of a generally perfect system. + +Here, however, in front of that ultimate mystery which occurs in all +speculation, I must take leave of this singular thinker. In a +frequently-quoted passage, Mackintosh speaks of his 'power of subtle +argument, perhaps unmatched, certainly unsurpassed amongst men.' The +eulogy seems to be rather overstrained, unless we measure subtlety of +thought rather by the complexity and elaboration of its embodiment than +by the keenness of the thought itself. But that Edwards possessed +extraordinary acuteness is as clear as it is singular that so acute a +man should have suffered his intellectual activity to be restrained +within such narrow fetters. Placed in a different medium, under the same +circumstances, for example, as Hume or Kant, he might have developed a +system of metaphysics comparable in its effect upon the history of +thought to the doctrines of either of those thinkers. He was, one might +fancy, formed by nature to be a German professor, and accidentally +dropped into the American forests. Far away from the main currents of +speculation, ignorant of the conclusions reached by his most cultivated +contemporaries, and deriving his intellectual sustenance chiefly from an +obsolete theology, with some vague knowledge of the English followers of +Locke, his mind never expanded itself freely. Yet, even after making +allowance for his secluded life, we are astonished at the powerful grasp +which Calvinism, in its expiring age, had laid upon so penetrating an +intellect. The framework of dogma was so powerful, that the explosive +force of Edwards' speculations, instead of destroying his early +principles by its recoil, expended its whole energy along the line in +which orthodox opinion was not injured. Most bold speculators, indeed, +suffer from a kind of colour-blindness, which conceals from them a whole +order of ideas, sufficiently familiar to very inferior minds. Edwards' +utter unconsciousness of the aspect which his doctrines would present to +anyone who should have passed beyond the charmed circle of orthodox +sentiment is, however, more surprising than the similar defect in any +thinker of nearly equal acuteness. In the middle of the eighteenth +century, he is still in bondage to the dogmas of the Pilgrim Fathers; he +is as indifferent to the audacious revolt of the deists and Hume as if +the old theological dynasty were still in full vigour; and the fact, +whatever else it may prove, proves something for the enduring vitality +of the ideas which had found an imperfect expression in Calvinism. +Clearing away the crust of ancient superstition, we may still find in +Edwards' writings a system of morality as ennobling, and a theory of the +universe as elevated, as can be discovered in any theology. That the +crust was thick and hard, and often revolting in its composition, is, +indeed, undeniable; but the genuine metal is there, no less unmistakably +than the refuse. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[7] The Works of President Edwards. Worcester (Mass.), 1808. + +[8] The population of Massachusetts is stated at 164,000 inhabitants in +1742, and 240,000 in 1761.--_See_ Holmes' Annals. + +[9] These early New England patriarchs were blessed with abundant +families. Edwards' father had eleven children, his paternal grandfather +thirteen, and his maternal grandfather had twelve children by a lady who +had already three children by a previous marriage. + +[10] See an interesting article in the 'American Cyclopedia,' which has, +however, this odd peculiarity, that it never mentions hell in discussing +the theories of Edwards. + + + + +_HORACE WALPOLE_ + + +The history of England, throughout a very large segment of the +eighteenth century, is simply a synonym for the works of Horace Walpole. +There are, indeed, some other books upon the subject. Some good stories +are scattered up and down the 'Annual Register,' the 'Gentleman's +Magazine,' and Nichols' 'Anecdotes.' There is a speech or two of Burke's +not without merit, and a readable letter may be disinterred every now +and then from beneath the piles of contemporary correspondence. When the +history of the times comes to be finally written in the fashion now +prevalent, in which some six portly octavos are allotted to a year, and +an event takes longer to describe than to occur, the industrious will +find ample mines of waste paper in which they may quarry to their +heart's content. Though Hansard was not, and newspapers were in their +infancy, the shelves of the British Museum and other repositories groan +beneath mountains of State papers, law reports, pamphlets, and chaotic +raw materials, from which some precious ore may be smelted down. But +these amorphous masses are attractive chiefly to the philosophers who +are too profound to care for individual character, or to those +praiseworthy students who would think the labour of a year well rewarded +by the discovery of a single fact tending to throw a shade of additional +perplexity upon the secret of Junius. Walpole's writings belong to the +good old-fashioned type of history, which aspires to be nothing more +than the quintessence of contemporary gossip. If the opinion be +pardonable in these days, history of that kind has not only its charm, +but its serious value. If not very profound or comprehensive, it +impresses upon us the fact--so often forgotten--that our grandfathers +were human beings. The ordinary historian reduces them to mere +mechanical mummies; in Walpole's pages they are still living flesh and +blood. Turn over any of the proper decorous history books, mark every +passage where, for a moment, we seem to be transported to the past--to +the thunders of Chatham, the drivellings of Newcastle, or the prosings +of George Grenville, as they sounded in contemporary ears--and it will +be safe to say that, on counting them up, a good half will turn out to +be reflections from the illuminating flashes of Walpole. Excise all that +comes from him, and the history sinks towards the level of the solid +Archdeacon Coxe; add his keen touches, and, as in the 'Castle of +Otranto,' the portraits of our respectable old ancestors, which have +been hanging in gloomy repose upon the wall, suddenly step from their +frames, and, for some brief space, assume a spectral vitality. + +It is only according to rule that a writer who has been so useful should +have been a good deal abused. No one is so amusing and so generally +unpopular as a clever retailer of gossip. Yet it does seem rather hard +that Walpole should have received such hard measure from Macaulay, +through whose pages so much of his light has been transfused. The +explanation, perhaps, is easy. Macaulay dearly loved the paradox that a +man wrote admirably precisely because he was a fool, and applied it to +the two greatest portrait painters of the times--Walpole and Boswell. +There is something which hurts our best feelings in the success of a +man whom we heartily despise. It seems to imply, which is intolerable, +that our penetration has been at fault, or that merit--that is to say, +our own conspicuous quality--is liable to be out-stripped in this world +by imposture. It is consoling if we can wrap ourselves in the belief +that good work can be extracted from bad brains, and that shallowness, +affectation, and levity can, by some strange chemistry, be transmuted +into a substitute for genius. Do we not all, if we have reached middle +age, remember some idiot (of course he was an idiot!) at school or +college who has somehow managed to slip past us in the race of life, and +revenge ourselves by swearing that he is an idiot still, and that idiocy +is a qualification for good fortune? Swift somewhere says that a +paper-cutter does its work all the better when it is blunt, and converts +the fact into an allegory of human affairs showing that decorous dulness +is an over-match for genius. Macaulay was incapable, both in a good and +bad sense, of Swift's trenchant misanthropy. His dislike to Walpole was +founded not so such upon posthumous jealousy--though that passion is not +so rare as absurd--as on the singular contrast between the character and +intellect of the two men. The typical Englishman, with his rough, strong +sense, passing at times into the narrowest insular prejudice, detested +the Frenchified fine gentleman who minced his mother tongue and piqued +himself on cosmopolitan indifference to patriotic sentiment: the +ambitious historian was irritated by the contempt which the dilettante +dabbler in literature affected for their common art; and the +thoroughgoing Whig was scandalised by the man who, whilst claiming that +sacred name, and living face to face with Chatham and Burke and the +great Revolution families in all their glory, ventured to intimate his +opinion that they, like other idols, had a fair share of clay and +rubbish in their composition, and who, after professing a kind of sham +republicanism, was frightened by the French Revolution into a paroxysm +of ultra-Toryism. 'You wretched fribble!' exclaims Macaulay; 'you +shallow scorner of all that is noble! You are nothing but a heap of +silly whims and conceited airs! Strip off one mask of affectation from +your mind, and we are still as far as ever from the real man. The very +highest faculty that can be conceded to you is a keen eye for oddities, +whether in old curiosity shops or in Parliament; and to that you owe +whatever just reputation you have acquired.' Macaulay's fervour of +rebuke is amusing, though, by righteous Nemesis, it includes a species +of blindness as gross as any that he attributes to Walpole. The summary +decision that the chief use of France is to interpret England to Europe, +is a typical example of that insular arrogance for which Matthew Arnold +popularised the name of Philistinism. + +Yet criticism of this one-sided kind has its value. At least it suggests +a problem. What is the element left out of account? Folly is never the +real secret of a literary reputation, or what noble harvests of genius +we should produce! If we patiently take off all the masks we must come +at last to the animating principle beneath. Even the great clothes +philosophers did not hold that a mere Chinese puzzle of mask within mask +could enclose sheer vacancy; there must be some kernel within, which may +be discovered by sufficient patience. And in the first place, it may be +asked, why did poor Walpole wear a mask at all? The answer seems to be +obvious. The men of that age may be divided by a line which, to the +philosophic eye, is of far more importance than that which separated +Jacobites from loyal Whigs or Dissenters from High Churchmen. It +separated the men who could drink two bottles of port after dinner from +the men who could not. To men of delicate digestions the test imposed by +the jovial party in ascendency must have been severer than those due to +political or ecclesiastical bigotry. They had to choose between social +disabilities on the one side, and on the other indigestion for +themselves and gout for their descendants. Thackeray, in a truly +pathetic passage, partly draws the veil from their sufferings. Almost +all the wits of Queen Anne's reign, he observes, were fat: 'Swift was +fat; Addison was fat; Gay and Thomson were preposterously fat; all that +fuddling and punch-drinking, that club and coffee-house boosing, +shortened the lives and enlarged the waistcoats of men of that age.' +Think of the dinner described, though with intentional exaggeration, in +Swift's 'Polite Conversation,' and compare the bill of fare with the +_menu_ of a modern London dinner. The very report of such +conviviality--before which Christopher North's performances in the +'Noctes Ambrosianę' sink into insignificance--is enough to produce +nightmares in the men of our degenerate times, and may help us to +understand the peevishness of feeble invalids such as Pope and Lord +Hervey in the elder generation, or Walpole in that which was rising. +Amongst these Gargantuan consumers, who combined in one the attributes +of 'gorging Jack and guzzling Jemmy,' Sir Robert Walpole was celebrated +for his powers, and seems to have owed to them no small share of his +popularity. Horace writes piteously from the paternal mansion, to which +he had returned in 1743, not long after his tour in Italy, to one of his +artistic friends: 'Only imagine,' he exclaims, 'that I here every day +see men who are mountains of roast beef, and only seem just roughly +hewn out into outlines of human form, like the giant rock at Pratolino! +I shudder when I see them brandish their knives in act to carve, and +look on them as savages that devour one another. I should not stare at +all more than I do if yonder alderman at the lower end of the table were +to stick his fork into his neighbour's jolly cheek, and cut a brave +slice of brown and fat. Why, I'll swear I see no difference between a +country gentleman and a sirloin; whenever the first laughs or the second +is cut, there run out just the same streams of gravy! Indeed, the +sirloin does not ask quite so many questions.' What was the style of +conversation at these tremendous entertainments had better be left to +the imagination. Sir R. Walpole's theory on that subject is upon record; +and we can dimly guess at the feelings of a delicate young gentleman who +had just learnt to talk about Domenichinos and Guidos, and to buy +ancient bronzes, when plunged into the coarse society of these mountains +of roast beef. As he grew up manners became a trifle more refined, and +the customs described so faithfully by Fielding and Smollett belonged to +a lower social stratum. Yet we can fancy Walpole's occasional visit to +his constituents, and imagine him forced to preside at one of those +election feasts which still survive on Hogarth's canvas. Substitute him +for the luckless fine gentleman in a laced coat, who represents the +successful candidate in the first picture of the series. A drunken voter +is dropping lighted pipe ashes upon his wig; a hideous old hag is +picking his pockets; a boy is brewing oceans of punch in a mash-tub; a +man is blowing bagpipes in his ear; a fat parson close by is gorging the +remains of a haunch of venison; a butcher is pouring gin on his +neighbour's broken head; an alderman--a very mountain of roast beef--is +sinking back in a fit, whilst a barber is trying to bleed him; brickbats +are flying in at the windows; the room reeks with the stale smell of +heavy viands and the fresh vapours of punch and gin, whilst the very air +is laden with discordant howls and thick with oaths and ribald songs. +Only think of the smart young candidate's headache next morning in the +days when soda-water was not invented! And remember too that the +representatives were not entirely free from sympathy with the coarseness +of their constituents. Just at the period of Hogarth's painting, +Walpole, when speaking of the feeling excited by a Westminster election, +has occasion to use this pleasing 'new fashionable proverb'--'We spit in +his hat on Thursday, and wiped it off on Friday.' It owed its origin to +a feat performed by Lord Cobham at an assembly given at his own house. +For a bet of a guinea he came behind Lord Hervey, who was talking to +some ladies, and made use of his hat as a spittoon. The point of the +joke was that Lord Hervey--son of Pope's 'mere white curd of asses' +milk,' and related, as the scandal went, rather too closely to Horace +Walpole himself--was a person of effeminate appearance, and therefore +considered unlikely--wrongly, as it turned out--to resent the insult. We +may charitably hope that the assailants, who thus practically +exemplified the proper mode of treating milksops, were drunk. The +two-bottle men who lingered till our day were surviving relics of the +type which then gave the tone to society. Within a short period there +was a prime minister who always consoled himself under defeats and +celebrated triumphs with his bottle; a chancellor who abolished evening +sittings on the ground that he was always drunk in the evening; and even +an archbishop--an Irish archbishop, it is true--whose jovial habits +broke down his constitution. Scratch those jovial toping aristocrats, +and you everywhere find the Squire Western. A man of squeamish tastes +and excessive sensibility jostled amongst that thick-skinned, +iron-nerved generation, was in a position with which anyone may +sympathise who knows the sufferings of a delicate lad at a public school +in the old (and not so very old) brutal days. The victim of that tyranny +slunk away from the rough horseplay of his companions to muse, like +Dobbin, over the 'Arabian Nights' in a corner, or find some amusement +which his tormentors held to be only fit for girls. So Horace Walpole +retired to Strawberry Hill and made toys of Gothic architecture, or +heraldry, or dilettante antiquarianism. The great discovery had not then +been made, we must remember, that excellence in field-sports deserved to +be placed on a level with the Christian virtues. The fine gentlemen of +the Chesterfield era speak of fox-hunting pretty much as we speak of +prize-fighting and bull-baiting. When all manly exercises had an +inseparable taint of coarseness, delicate people naturally mistook +effeminacy for refinement. When you can only join in male society on +pain of drinking yourself under the table, the safest plan is to retire +to tea-tables and small talk. For many years, Walpole's greatest +pleasure seems to have been drinking tea with Lady Suffolk, and +carefully piecing together bits of scandal about the Courts of the first +two Georges. He tells us, with all the triumph of a philosopher +describing a brilliant scientific induction, how he was sometimes able, +by adding his bits of gossip to hers, to unravel the secret of some +wretched intrigue which had puzzled two generations of quidnuncs. The +social triumphs on which he most piqued himself were of a congenial +order. He sits down to write elaborate letters to Sir Horace Mann, at +Florence, brimming over with irrepressible triumph when he has +persuaded some titled ladies to visit his pet toy, the printing-press, +at Strawberry Hill, and there, of course to their unspeakable surprise, +his printer draws off a copy of verses composed in their honour in the +most faded style of old-fashioned gallantry. He is intoxicated by his +appointment to act as poet-laureate on the occasion of a visit of the +Princess Amelia to Stowe. She is solemnly conducted to a temple of the +Muses and Apollo, and there finds one of his admirable effusions,-- + + T'other day with a beautiful frown on her brow, + To the rest of the gods said the Venus of Stowe: + +and so on. 'She was really in Elysium,' he declares, and visited the +arch erected in her honour three or four times a day. + +It is not wonderful, we must confess, that burly ministers and jovial +squires laughed horse-laughs at this mincing dandy, and tried in their +clumsy fashion to avenge themselves for the sarcasms which, as they +instinctively felt, lay hid beneath this mask of affectation. The enmity +between the lapdog and the mastiff is an old story. Nor, as we must +confess again, were these tastes redeemed by very amiable qualities +beneath the smooth external surface. There was plenty of feminine spite +as well as feminine delicacy. To the marked fear of ridicule natural to +a sensitive man Walpole joined a very happy knack of quarrelling. He +could protrude a feline set of claws from his velvet glove. He was a +touchy companion and an intolerable superior. He set out by quarrelling +with Gray, who, as it seems, could not stand his dandified airs of +social impertinence, though it must be added in fairness that the bond +which unites fellow travellers is, perhaps, the most trying known to +humanity. He quarrelled with Mason after twelve years of intimate +correspondence; he quarrelled with Montagu after a friendship of some +forty years; he always thought that his dependants, such as Bentley, +were angels for six months, and made their lives a burden to them +afterwards; he had a long and complex series of quarrels with all his +near relations. Sir Horace Mann escaped any quarrel during forty-five +years of correspondence; but Sir Horace never left Florence and Walpole +never reached it. Conway alone remained intimate and immaculate to the +end, though there is a bitter remark or two in the Memoirs against the +perfect Conway. With ladies, indeed, Walpole succeeded better; and +perhaps we may accept, with due allowance for the artist's point of +view, his own portrait of himself. He pronounces himself to be a +'boundless friend, a bitter but placable enemy.' Making the necessary +corrections, we should translate this into 'a bitter enemy, a warm but +irritable friend.' Tread on his toes, and he would let you feel his +claws, though you were his oldest friend; but so long as you avoided his +numerous tender points, he showed a genuine capacity for kindliness and +even affection; and in his later years he mellowed down into an amiable +purring old gentleman, responding with eager gratitude to the caresses +of the charming Miss Berrys. Such a man, skinless and bilious, was ill +qualified to join in the rough game of politics. He kept out of the +arena where the hardest blows were given and taken, and confined his +activity to lobbies and backstairs, where scandal was to be gathered and +the hidden wires of intrigue to be delicately manipulated. He chuckles +irrepressibly when he has confided a secret to a friend, who has let it +out to a minister, who communicates it to a great personage, who +explodes into inextinguishable wrath, and blows a whole elaborate plot +into a thousand fragments. To expect deep and settled political +principle from such a man would be to look for grapes from thorns and +figs from thistles; but to do Walpole justice, we must add that it would +be equally absurd to exact settled principle from any politician of that +age. We are beginning to regard our ancestors with a strange mixture of +contempt and envy. We despise them because they cared nothing for the +thoughts which for the last century have been upheaving society into +strange convulsions; we envy them because they enjoyed the delicious +calm which was the product of that indifference. Wearied by the +incessant tossing and boiling of the torrent which carries us away, we +look back with fond regret to the little backwater so far above Niagara, +where scarcely a ripple marks the approaching rapids. There is a charm +in the great solid old eighteenth-century mansions, which London is so +rapidly engulfing, and even about the old red brick churches with +'sleep-compelling' pews. We take imaginary naps amongst our grandfathers +with no railways, no telegraphs, no mobs in Trafalgar Square, no +discussions about ritualism or Dr. Colenso, and no reports of +parliamentary debates. It is to our fancies an 'island valley of +Avilion,' or, less magniloquently, a pleasant land of Cockaine, where we +may sleep away the disturbance of battle, and even read through +'Clarissa Harlow.' We could put up with an occasional highwayman in Hyde +Park, and perhaps do not think that our comfort would be seriously +disturbed by a dozen executions in a morning at Tyburn. In such +visionary glances through the centuries we have always the advantage of +selecting our own position in life, and perhaps there are few that for +such purposes we should prefer to Walpole's. We should lap ourselves +against eating cares in the warm folds of a sinecure of 6,000_l._ a year +bestowed because our father was a Prime Minister. There are many +immaculate persons at the present day to whom truth would be truth even +when seen through such a medium. There are--we have their own authority +for believing it--men who would be republicans, though their niece was +married to a royal duke. Walpole, we must admit, was not of the number. +He was an aristocrat to the backbone. He was a gossip by nature and +education, and had lived from infancy in the sacred atmosphere of court +intrigue; every friend he possessed in his own rank either had a place, +or had lost a place, or was in want of a place, and generally combined +all three characters; professed indifference to place was only a cunning +mode of angling for a place, and politics was a series of +ingeniously-contrived manoeuvres in which the moving power of the +machinery was the desire of sharing the spoils. Walpole's talk about +Magna Charta and the execution of Charles I. could, it is plain, imply +but a skin-deep republicanism. He could not be seriously displeased with +a state of things of which his own position was the natural out-growth. +His republicanism was about as genuine as his boasted indifference to +money--a virtue which is not rare in bachelors who have more than they +can spend. So long as he could buy as much bric-a-brac, as many +knicknacks, and old books and bronzes and curious portraits and odd +gloves of celebrated characters as he pleased; add a new tower and a set +of battlements to Strawberry Hill every few years; keep a comfortable +house in London, and have a sufficiency of carriages and horses; treat +himself to an occasional tour, and keep his press steadily at work; he +was not the man to complain of poverty. He was a republican, too, as +long as that word implied that he and his father and uncles and cousins +and connections by marriage and their intimate friends were to have +everything precisely their own way; but if a vision could have shown him +the reformers of a coming generation who would inquire into civil lists +and object to sinecures--to say nothing of cutting off the heads of the +first families--he would have prayed to be removed before the evil day. +Republicanism in his sense was a word exclusive of revolution. Was it, +then, a mere meaningless mask intended only to conceal the real man? +Before passing such a judgment we should remember that the names by +which people classify their opinions are generally little more than +arbitrary badges; and even in these days, when practice treads so +closely on the heels of theory, some persons profess to know extreme +radicals who could be converted very speedily by a bit of riband. +Walpole has explained himself with unmistakable frankness, and his +opinion was at least intelligible. He was not a republican after the +fashion of Robespierre, or Jefferson, or M. Gambetta; but he had some +meaning. When a duke in those days proposed annual parliaments and +universal suffrage, we may assume that he did not realise the probable +effect of those institutions upon dukes; and when Walpole applauded the +regicides, he was not anxious to send George III. to the block. He +meant, however, that he considered George III. to be a narrow-minded and +obstinate fool. He meant, too, that the great Revolution families ought +to distribute the plunder and the power without interference from the +Elector of Hanover. He meant, again, that as a quick and cynical +observer, he found the names of Brutus and Algernon Sidney very +convenient covers for attacking the Duke of Newcastle and the Earl of +Bute. But beyond all this, he meant something more, which gives the +real spice to his writings. It was something not quite easy to put into +formulas; but characteristic of the vague discomfort of the holders of +sinecures in those halcyon days arising from the perception that the +ground was hollow under their feet. To understand him we must remember +that the period of his activity marks precisely the lowest ebb of +political principle. Old issues had been settled, and the new ones were +only just coming to the surface. He saw the end of the Jacobites and the +rise of the demagogues. His early letters describe the advance of the +Pretender to Derby; they tell us how the British public was on the whole +inclined to look on and cry, 'Fight dog, fight bear;' how the Jacobites +who had anything to lose left their battle to be fought by half-starved +cattle-stealers, and contented themselves with drinking to the success +of the cause; and how the Whig magnates, with admirable presence of +mind, raised regiments, appointed officers, and got the expenses paid by +the Crown. His later letters describe the amazing series of blunders by +which we lost America in spite of the clearest warnings from almost +every man of sense in the kingdom. The interval between these +disgraceful epochs is filled--if we except the brief episode of +Chatham--by a series of struggles between different connections--one +cannot call them parties--which separate and combine, and fight and make +peace, till the plot of the drama becomes too complicated for human +ingenuity to unravel. Lads just crammed for a civil service examination +might possibly bear in mind all the shifting combinations which resulted +from the endless intrigues of Pelhams and Grenvilles and Bedfords and +Rockinghams; yet even those omniscient persons could hardly give a +plausible account of the principles which each party conceived itself +to be maintaining. What, for example, were the politics of a Rigby, or a +Bubb Dodington? The diary in which the last of these eminent persons +reveals his inmost soul is perhaps the most curious specimen of +unconscious self-analysis extant. His utter baseness and venality, his +disgust at the 'low venal wretches' to whom he had to give bribes; his +creeping and crawling before those from whom he sought to extract +bribes; his utter incapacity to explain a great man except on the +hypothesis of insanity; or to understand that there is such a thing as +political morality, derive double piquancy from the profound conviction +that he is an ornament to society, and from the pious aspirations which +he utters with the utmost simplicity. Bubb wriggled himself into a +peerage, and differed from innumerable competitors only by superior +frankness. He is the fitting representative of an era from which +political faith has disappeared, as Walpole is its fitting satirist. All +political virtue, it is said, was confined, in Walpole's opinion, to +Conway and the Marquis of Hertford. Was he wrong? or, if he was wrong, +was it not rather in the exception than the rule? The dialect in which +his sarcasms are expressed is affected, but the substance is hard to +dispute. The world, he is fond of saying, is a tragedy to those who +feel, a comedy to those who think. He preferred the comedy view. 'I have +never yet seen or heard,' he says, 'anything serious that was not +ridiculous. Jesuits, Methodists, philosophers, politicians, the +hypocrite Rousseau, the scoffer Voltaire, the encyclopędists, the Humes, +the Lytteltons, the Grenvilles, the atheist tyrant of Prussia, and the +mountebank of history, Mr. Pitt, are all to me but impostors in their +various ways. Fame or interest is their object, and after all their +parade, I think a ploughman who sows, reads his almanack, and believes +that the stars are so many farthing candles created to prevent his +falling into a ditch as he goes home at night, a wiser and more rational +being, and I am sure an honester, than any of them. Oh! I am sick of +visions and systems that shove one another aside, and come again like +figures in a moving picture.' Probably Walpole's belief in the ploughman +lasted till he saw the next smock-frock; but the bitterness clothed in +the old-fashioned cant is serious and is justifiable enough. Here is a +picture of English politics in the time of Wilkes. 'No government, no +police, London and Middlesex distracted, the colonies in rebellion, +Ireland ready to be so, and France arrogant and on the point of being +hostile! Lord Bute accused of all, and dying in a panic; George +Grenville wanting to make rage desperate; Lord Rockingham and the +Cavendishes thinking we have no enemies but Lord Bute, and that five +mutes and an epigram can set everything to rights; the Duke of Grafton +(then Prime Minister) like an apprentice, thinking the world should be +postponed to a horse-race; and the Bedfords not caring what disgraces we +undergo while each of them has 3,000_l._ a year and three thousand +bottles of claret and champagne!' And every word of this is true--at +least, so far as epigrams need be true. It is difficult to put into more +graphic language the symptoms of an era just ripe for revolution. If +frivolous himself, Walpole can condemn the frivolity of others. 'Can one +repeat common news with indifference,' he asks, just after the surrender +of Yorktown, 'while our shame is writing for future history by the pens +of all our numerous enemies? When did England see two whole armies lay +down their arms and surrender themselves prisoners?... These are +thoughts I cannot stifle at the moment that expresses them; and, though +I do not doubt that the same dissipation that has swallowed up all our +principles will reign again in ten days with its wonted sovereignty, I +had rather be silent than vent my indignation. Yet I cannot talk, for I +cannot think, on any other subject. It was not six days ago that, in the +height of four raging wars (with America, France, Spain, and Holland), I +saw in the papers an account of the opera and of the dresses of the +company, and hence the town, and thence, of course, the whole nation, +were informed that Mr. Fitzpatrick had very little powder in his hair.' +Walpole sheltered himself behind the corner of a pension to sneer at the +tragi-comedy of life; but if his feelings were not profound, they were +quick and genuine, and, affectation for affectation, his cynical +coxcombry seems preferable to the solemn coxcombry of the men who +shamelessly wrangled for plunder, while they talked solemn platitudes +about sacred Whig principles and the thrice blessed British +Constitution. + +Walpole, in fact, represents a common creed amongst comfortable but +clear-headed men of his time. It was the strange mixture of scepticism +and conservatism which is exemplified in such men as Hume and Gibbon. He +was at heart a Voltairian, and, like his teacher, confounded all +religions and political beliefs under the name of superstition. Voltaire +himself did not anticipate the Revolution to which he, more than any +man, had contributed. Walpole, with stronger personal reasons than +Voltaire for disliking a catastrophe, was as furious as Burke when the +volcano burst forth. He was a republican so far as he disbelieved in the +divine right of kings, and hated enthusiasm and loyalty generally. He +wished the form to survive and the spirit to disappear. Things were +rotten, and he wished them to stay rotten. The ideal to which he is +constantly recurring was the pleasant reign of his father, when nobody +made a fuss or went to war, or kept principles except for sale. He +foresaw, however, far better than most men, the coming crash. If +political sagacity be fairly tested by a prophetic vision of the French +Revolution, Walpole's name should stand high. He visited Paris in 1765, +and remarks that laughing is out of fashion. 'Good folks, they have no +time to laugh. There is God and the King to be pulled down first, and +men and women, one and all, are devoutly employed in the demolition. +They think me quite profane for having any belief left.' Do you know, he +asks presently, who are the philosophers? 'In the first place, it +comprehends almost everybody, and in the next it means men who, avowing +war against Papacy, aim, many of them, at the destruction of regal +power. The philosophers,' he goes on, 'are insupportable, superficial, +overbearing, and fanatic. They preach incessantly, and their avowed +doctrine is atheism--you could not believe how openly. Don't wonder, +therefore, if I should return a Jesuit. Voltaire himself does not +satisfy them. One of their lady devotees said of him, "_Il est bigot, +c'est un déiste!_"' French politics, he professes a few years +afterwards, must end in 'despotism, a civil war, or assassination,' and +he remarks that the age will not, as he had always thought, be an age of +abortion, but rather 'the age of seeds that are to produce strange crops +hereafter.' The next century, he says at a later period, 'will probably +exhibit a very new era, which the close of this has been, and is, +preparing.' If these sentences had been uttered by Burke, they would +have been quoted as proofs of remarkable sagacity. As it is, we may +surely call them shrewd glances for a frivolous coxcomb. + +Walpole regarded these symptoms in the true epicurean spirit, and would +have joined in the sentiment, _aprčs moi le déluge_. He was on the whole +for remedying grievances, and is put rather out of temper by cruelties +which cannot be kept out of his sight. He talks with disgust of the old +habit of stringing up criminals by the dozen; he denounces the +slave-trade with genuine fervour; there is apparent sincerity in his +platitudes against war; and he never took so active a part in politics +as in the endeavour to prevent the judicial murder of Byng. His +conscience generally discharged itself more easily by a few pungent +epigrams, and though he wished the reign of reason and humanity to dawn, +he would rather that it should not come at all than be ushered in by a +tempest. His whole theory is given forcibly and compactly in an answer +which he once made to the republican Mrs. Macaulay, and was fond of +repeating:--'Madam, if I had been Luther, and could have known that for +the _chance_ of saving a million of souls I should be the cause of a +million of lives, at least, being sacrificed before my doctrines could +be established, it must have been a most palpable angel, and in a most +heavenly livery, before he should have set me at work.' We will not ask +what angel would have induced him to make the minor sacrifice of six +thousand a year to establish any conceivable doctrine. Whatever may be +the merit of these opinions, they contain Walpole's whole theory of +life. I know, he seems to have said to himself, that loyalty is folly, +that rank is contemptible, that the old society in which I live is +rotten to the core, and that explosive matter is accumulating beneath +our feet. Well! I am not made of the stuff for a reformer: I am a bit of +a snob, though, like other snobs, I despise both parties to the bargain. +I will take the sinecures the gods provide me, amuse myself with my +toys at Strawberry Hill, despise kings and ministers, without +endangering my head by attacking them, and be over-polite to a royal +duke when he visits me on condition of laughing at him behind his back +when he is gone. Walpole does not deserve a statue; he was not a +Wilberforce or a Howard, and as little of a Burke or a Chatham. But his +faults, as well as his virtues, qualified him to be the keenest of all +observers of a society unconsciously approaching a period of tremendous +convulsions. + +To claim for him that, even at his best, he is a profound observer of +character, or that he gives any consistent account of his greatest +contemporaries, would be too much. He is full of whims, and moreover, +full of spite. He cannot be decently fair to anyone who deserted his +father, or stood in Conway's light. He reflects at all times the +irreverent gossip current behind the scenes. To know the best and the +worst that can be said of any great man, the best plan is to read the +leading article of his party newspaper, and then to converse in private +with its writer. The eulogy and the sarcasm may both be sincere enough; +only it is pleasant, after puffing one's wares to the public, to glance +at their seamy side in private. Walpole has a decided taste for that +last point of view. The littleness of the great, the hypocrisy of the +virtuous, and the selfishness of statesmen in general, is his ruling +theme, illustrated by an infinite variety of brilliant caricatures +struck off at the moment with a quick eye and a sure hand. Though he +elaborates no grand historical portrait, like Burke or Clarendon, he has +a whole gallery of telling vignettes which are often as significant as +far more pretentious works. Nowhere, for example, can we find more +graphic sketches of the great man who stands a head and shoulders above +the whole generation of dealers in power and place. Most of Chatham's +contemporaries repaid his contempt with intense dislike. Some of them +pronounced him mad, and others thought him a knave. Walpole, who at +times calls him a mountebank and an impostor, does not go further than +Burke, who, in a curious comment, speaks of him as the 'grand artificer +of fraud,' who never conversed but with 'a parcel of low toad-eaters;' +and asks whether all this 'theatrical stuffing' and these 'raised heels' +could be necessary to the character of a great man. Walpole, of course, +has a keen eye to the theatrical stuffing. He takes the least +complimentary view of the grand problem, which still puzzles some +historians, as to the genuineness of Chatham's gout. He smiles +complacently when the great actor forgets that his right arm ought to be +lying helpless in a sling and flourishes it with his accustomed vigour. +But Walpole, in spite of his sneers and sarcasms, can recognise the +genuine power of the man. He is the describer of the striking scene +which occurred when the House of Commons was giggling over some +delicious story of bribery and corruption--the House of Commons was +frivolous in those benighted days; he tells how Pitt suddenly stalked +down from the gallery and administered his thundering reproof; how +Murray, then Attorney-General, 'crouched, silent and terrified,' and the +Chancellor of the Exchequer faltered out an humble apology for the +unseemly levity. It is Walpole who best describes the great debate when +Pitt, 'haughty, defiant, conscious of injury and supreme abilities,' +burst out in that tremendous speech--tremendous if we may believe the +contemporary reports, of which the only tolerably preserved fragment is +the celebrated metaphor about the confluence of the Rhōne and the +Saōne. Alas! Chatham's eloquence has all gone to rags and tatters; +though, to say the truth, it has only gone the way of nine-tenths of our +contemporary eloquence. We have, indeed, what are called accurate +reports of spoken pamphlets, dried specimens of rhetoric from which the +life has departed as completely as it is strained out of the specimens +in a botanical collection. If there is no Walpole amongst us, we shall +know what our greatest living orator has said; but how he said it, and +how it moved his audience, will be as obscure as if the reporters' +gallery were still unknown. Walpole--when he was not affecting +philosophy, or smarting from the failure of an intrigue, or worried by +the gout, or disappointed of a bargain at a sale--could throw electric +flashes of light on the figure he describes which reveal the true man. +He errs from petulancy, but not from stupidity. He can appreciate great +qualities by fits, though he cannot be steadily loyal to their +possessor. And if he wrote down most of our rulers as knaves and fools, +we have only to lower those epithets to selfish and blundering, to get a +very fair estimate of their characters. To the picturesque historian his +services are invaluable; though no single statement can be accepted +without careful correction. + +Walpole's social, as distinguished from his political, anecdotes do in +one sense what Leech's drawings have done for this generation. But the +keen old man of the world puts a far bitterer and deeper meaning into +his apparently superficial scratches than the kindly modern artist, +whose satire was narrowed, if purified, by the decencies of modern +manners. Walpole reflects in a thousand places that strange combination +of brutality and polish which marked the little circle of fine ladies +and gentlemen who then constituted society, and played such queer +pranks in quiet unconsciousness of the revolutionary elements that were +seething below. He is the best of commentators on Hogarth, and gives us +'Gin Lane' on one side and the 'Marriage ą la mode' on the other. As we +turn over the well-known pages we come at every turn upon characteristic +scenes of the great tragi-comedy that was being played out. In one page +a highwayman puts a bullet through his hat, and on the next we read how +three thousand ladies and gentlemen visited the criminal in his cell, on +the Sunday before his execution, till he fainted away twice from the +heat; then we hear how Lord Lovat's buffooneries made the whole +brilliant circle laugh as he was being sentenced to death; and how +Balmerino pleaded 'not guilty,' in order that the ladies might not be +deprived of their sport; how the House of Commons adjourned to see a +play acted by persons of quality, and the gallery was hung round with +blue ribands; how the Gunnings had a guard to protect them in the park; +what strange pranks were played by the bigamous Miss Chudleigh; what +jokes--now, alas! very faded and dreary--were made by George Selwyn, and +how that amiable favourite of society went to Paris in order to see the +cruel tortures inflicted upon Damiens, and was introduced to the chief +performer on the scaffold as a distinguished amateur in executions. One +of the best of all these vignettes portrays the funeral of George II., +and is a worthy pendant to Lord Hervey's classic account of the Queen's +death. It opens with the solemn procession to the torch-lighted Abbey, +whose 'long-drawn aisles and fretted vault' excite the imagination of +the author of the 'Castle of Otranto.' Then the comic element begins to +intrude; the procession jostles and falls into disorder at the entrance +of Henry the Seventh's Chapel; the bearers stagger under the heavy +coffin and cry for help; the bishop blunders in the prayers, and the +anthem, as fit, says Walpole, for a wedding as a funeral, becomes +immeasurably tedious. Against this tragi-comic background are relieved +two characteristic figures. The 'butcher' Duke of Cumberland, the hero +of Culloden, stands with the obstinate courage of his race gazing into +the vault where his father is being buried, and into which he is soon to +descend. His face is distorted by a recent stroke of paralysis, and he +is forced to stand for two hours on a bad leg. To him enters the +burlesque Duke of Newcastle, who begins by bursting into tears and +throwing himself back in a stall whilst the Archbishop 'hovers over him +with a smelling-bottle.' Then curiosity overcomes him, and he runs about +the chapel with a spyglass in one hand to peer into the faces of the +company, and mopping his eyes with the other. 'Then returned the fear of +catching cold; and the Duke of Cumberland, who was sinking with heat, +felt himself weighed down, and turning round found it was the Duke of +Newcastle standing upon his train to avoid the chill of the marble.' +What a perch to select! Imagine the contrast of the two men, and +remember that the Duke of Newcastle was for an unprecedented time the +great dispenser of patronage, and so far the most important personage in +the government. Walpole had reason for some of his sneers. + +The literary power implied in these brilliant sketches is remarkable, +and even if Walpole's style is more Gallicised than is evident to me, it +must be confessed that with a few French idioms he has caught something +of that unrivalled dexterity and neatness of touch in which the French +are our undisputed masters. His literary character is of course marked +by an affectation analogous to that which debases his politics. Walpole +was always declaring with doubtful sincerity--(that is one of the +matters in which a man is scarcely bound to be quite sincere)--that he +has no ambition for literary fame, and that he utterly repudiates the +title of 'learned gentleman.' There is too much truth in his disavowals +to allow us to write them down as mere mock-modesty; but doubtless his +principal motive was a dislike to entering the arena of open criticism. +He has much of the feeling which drove Pope into paroxysms of unworthy +fury on every mention of Grub Street. The anxiety of men in that day to +disavow the character of professional authors must be taken with the +fact that professional authors were then an unscrupulous, scurrilous, +and venal race. Walpole feared collision with them as he feared +collision with the 'mountains of roast beef.' Though literature was +emerging from the back lanes and alleys, the two greatest potentates of +the day, Johnson and Warburton, had both a decided cross of the bear in +their composition. Walpole was nervously anxious to keep out of their +jurisdiction, and to sit at the feet of such refined lawgivers as Mason +and Gray, or the feebler critics of polite society. In such courts there +naturally passes a good deal of very flimsy flattery between persons who +are alternately at the bar or on the bench. We do not quite believe that +Lady Di Beauclerk's drawings were unsurpassable by 'Salvator Rosa and +Guido,' or that Lady Ailesbury's 'landscape in worsteds' was a work of +high art; and we doubt whether Walpole believed it; nor do we fancy that +he expected Sir Horace Mann to believe that when sitting in his room at +Strawberry Hill, he was in the habit of apostrophising the setting sun +in such terms as these: 'Look at yon sinking beams! His gaudy reign is +over; but the silver moon above that elm succeeds to a tranquil +horizon,' &c. Sweeping aside all this superficial rubbish, as a mere +concession to the faded taste of the age of hoops and wigs, Walpole has +something to say for himself. He has been condemned for the absurdity of +his criticisms, and it is undeniable that he sometimes blunders +strangely. It would, indeed, be easy to show, were it worth while, that +he is by no means so silly in his contemporary verdicts as might be +supposed from scattered passages in his letters. But what are we to say +to a man who compares Dante to 'a Methodist parson in Bedlam'? The first +answer is that, in this instance, Walpole was countenanced by greater +men. Voltaire, with all his faults the most consummate literary artist +of the century, says with obvious disgust that there are people to be +found who force themselves to admire 'feats of imagination as stupidly +extravagant and barbarous' as those of the 'Divina Commedia.' Walpole +must be reckoned as belonging both in his faults and his merits to the +Voltairian school of literature, and amongst other peculiarities common +to the master and his disciple, may be counted an incapacity for +reverence and an intense dislike to being bored. For these reasons he +hates all epic poets, from Dante to Blackmore; he detests all didactic +poems, including those of Thomson and Akenside; and he is utterly +scandalised by the French enthusiasm for Richardson. In these last +judgments, at least nine-tenths of the existing race of mankind agree +with him; though few people have the courage to express their agreement +in print. We may be thankful that Walpole is as incapable of boring as +of enduring bores. He is one of the few Englishmen who share the quality +sometimes ascribed to the French as a nation, and certainly enjoyed by +his teacher, Voltaire; namely, that though they may be frivolous, +blasphemous, indecent, and faulty in every other way, they can never +for a single moment be dull. His letters show that crisp, sparkling +quality of style which accompanies this power, and which is so +unattainable to most of his countrymen. The quality is less conspicuous +in the rest of his works, and the light verses and essays in which we +might expect him to succeed are disappointingly weak. Xoho's letter to +his countrymen is now as dull as the work of most imaginary travellers, +and the essays in 'The World' are remarkably inferior to the +'Spectator,' to say nothing of the 'Rambler.'[11] Yet Walpole's place in +literature is unmistakable, if of equivocal merit. Byron called him the +author of the last tragedy and the first romance in our language. The +tragedy, with Byron's leave, is revolting (perhaps the reason why Byron +admired it), and the romance passes the borders of the burlesque. And +yet the remark hits off a singular point in Walpole's history. A +thorough child of the eighteenth century, we might have expected him to +share Voltaire's indiscriminating contempt for the Middle Ages. One +would have supposed that in his lips, as in those of all his generation, +Gothic would have been synonymous with barbaric, and the admiration of +an ancient abbey as ridiculous as admiration of Dante. So far from +which, Walpole is almost the first modern Englishman who found out that +our old cathedrals were really beautiful. He discovered that a most +charming toy might be made of medięvalism. Strawberry Hill, with all its +gimcracks, its pasteboard battlements, and stained-paper carvings, was +the lineal ancestor of the new law-courts. The restorers of churches, +the manufacturers of stained glass, the modern decorators and +architects of all vanities, the Ritualists and the High Church party, +should think of him with kindness. It cannot be said that they should +give him a place in their calendar, for he was not of the stuff of which +saints are made. It was a very thin veneering of medięvalism which +covered his modern creed; and the mixture is not particularly edifying. +Still he undoubtedly found out that charming plaything which, in other +hands, has been elaborated and industriously constructed till it is all +but indistinguishable from the genuine article. We must hold, indeed, +that it is merely a plaything, when all has been said and done, and +maintain that when the root has once been severed, the tree can never +again be made to grow. Walpole is so far better than some of his +successors, that he did not make a religion out of these flimsy +materials. However that may be, Walpole's trifling was the first +forerunner of much that has occupied the minds of much greater artists +ever since. And thus his initiative in literature has been as fruitful +as his initiative in art. The 'Castle of Otranto' and the 'Mysterious +Mother' were the progenitors of Mrs. Radcliffe's romances, and probably +had a strong influence upon the author of 'Ivanhoe.' Frowning castles +and gloomy monasteries, knights in armour, and ladies in distress, and +monks and nuns and hermits, all the scenery and the characters that have +peopled the imagination of the romantic school, may be said to have had +their origin on the night when Walpole lay down to sleep, his head +crammed full of Wardour Street curiosities, and dreamt that he saw a +gigantic hand in armour resting on the banister of his staircase. In +three months from that time he had elaborated a story, the object of +which, as defined by himself, was to combine the charms of the old +romance and the modern novel, and which, to say the least, strikes us +now like an exaggerated caricature of the later school. Scott criticises +'The Castle of Otranto' seriously, and even Macaulay speaks of it with a +certain respect. Absurd as the burlesque seems, our ancestors found it +amusing, and, what is stranger, awe-inspiring. Excitable readers +shuddered when a helmet of more than gigantic size fell from the clouds, +in the first chapter, and crushed the young baron to atoms on the eve of +his wedding, as a trap smashes a mouse. This, however, was merely a +foretaste of a series of unprecedented phenomena. At one moment the +portrait of Manfred's grandfather, without the least premonitory +warning, utters a deep sigh, and heaves its breast, after which it +descends to the floor with a grave and melancholy air. Presently the +menials catch sight of a leg and foot in armour to match the helmet, and +apparently belonging to a ghost which has lain down promiscuously in the +picture gallery. Most appalling, however, of all is the adventure which +happened to Count Frederick in the oratory. Kneeling before the altar +was a tall figure in a long cloak. As he approached it rose, and, +turning round, disclosed to him the fleshless jaws and empty eye-sockets +of a skeleton. The ghost disappeared, as ghosts generally do, after +giving a perfectly unnecessary warning and the catastrophe is soon +reached by the final appearance of the whole suit of armour with the +ghost inside it, who bursts the castle to bits like an egg-shell, and, +towering towards the sky, exclaims, 'Theodore is the true heir of +Alphonso!' This proceeding fortunately made a lawsuit unnecessary, and +if the castle was ruined at once, it is not quite impossible that the +same result might have been attained more slowly by litigation. The +whole machinery strikes us as simply babyish, unless we charitably +assume the whole to be intentionally burlesque. The intention is pretty +evident in the solemn scene in the chapel, which closes thus:--'As he +spake these words, three drops of blood fell from the nose of Alphonso's +statue' (Alphonso is the spectre in armour). 'Manfred turned pale, and +the princess sank on her knees. "Behold!" said the friar, "mark this +miraculous indication that the blood of Alphonso will never mix with +that of Manfred!"' Nor can we think that the story is rendered much more +interesting by Walpole's simple expedient of introducing into the midst +of these portents a set of waiting-maids and peasants, who talk in the +familiar style of the smart valets in Congreve's or Sheridan's comedies. + +Yet, babyish as this mass of nursery tales may appear to us, it is +curious that the theory which Walpole advocated has been exactly carried +out. He wished to relieve the prosaic realism of the school of Fielding +and Smollett by making use of romantic associations, without altogether +taking leave of the language of common life. He sought to make real men +and women out of medięval knights and ladies, or, in other words, he +made a first experimental trip into the province afterwards occupied by +Scott. The 'Mysterious Mother' is in the same taste; and his interest in +Ossian, in Chatterton, and in Percy's Relics, is another proof of his +anticipation of the coming change of sentiment. He was an arrant +trifler, it is true; too delicately constituted for real work in +literature and politics, and inclined to take a cynical view of his +contemporaries generally, he turned for amusement to antiquarianism, and +was the first to set modern art and literature masquerading in the +antique dresses. That he was quite conscious of the necessity for more +serious study, appears in his letters, in one of which, for example, he +proposes a systematic history of Gothic architecture, such as has since +been often enough executed. It does not, it may be said, require any +great intellect, or even any exquisite taste, for a fine gentleman to +strike out a new line of dilettante amusement. In truth Walpole has no +pretensions whatever to be regarded as a great original creator, or even +as one of the few infallible critics. The only man of his time who had +some claim to that last title was his friend Gray, who shared his Gothic +tastes with greatly superior knowledge. But he was indefinitely superior +to the great mass of commonplace writers, who attain a kind of bastard +infallibility by always accepting the average verdict of the time; +which, on the principle of the _vox populi_, is more often right than +that of any dissenter. There is an intermediate class of men who are +useful as sensitive barometers to foretell coming changes of opinion. +Their intellects are mobile if shallow; and, perhaps, their want of +serious interest in contemporary intellects renders them more accessible +to the earliest symptoms of superficial shiftings of taste. They are +anxious to be at the head of the fashions in thought as well as in +dress, and pure love of novelty serves to some extent in place of +genuine originality. Amongst such men Walpole deserves a high place; and +it is not easy to obtain a high place even amongst such men. The people +who succeed best at trifles are those who are capable of something +better. In spite of Johnson's aphorism, it is the colossus who, when he +tries, can cut the best heads upon cherry-stones, as well as hew statues +out of rock. Walpole was no colossus; but his peevish anxiety to affect +even more frivolity than was really natural to him, has blinded his +critics to the real power of a remarkably acute, versatile, and original +intellect. We cannot regard him with much respect, and still less with +much affection; but the more we examine his work, the more we shall +admire his extreme cleverness. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[11] It is odd that in one of these papers Walpole proposes, in jest, +precisely our modern system of postage cards, only charging a penny +instead of a halfpenny. + + +END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. + +PRINTED BY +SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE +LONDON + + * * * * * + + +------------------------------------------------------------+ + | Transcriber's Notes: | + | | + | Page 8: Closing quote added | + | Page 145: Shakspeare amended to Shakespeare | + | Page 181: Mismatched single and double quotes amended | + | Page 215: orgie _sic_ | + | Page 295: Shakspeares amended to Shakespeares | + | Page 301: comtemporary amended to contemporary | + | Page 333: Full stop added after parentheses (vol. viii., | + | sermon xxvii.) | + | Page 349: boosing _sic_ | + | Page 373: helmit amended to helmet | + | | + | Italicisation and hyphenation have been standardised. | + | However, where there is an equal number of instances of | + | a hyphenated and unhyphenated word, both have been | + | retained: back-stairs/backstairs; life-like/lifelike; | + | note-book/notebook; now-a-days/nowadays. | + | | + +------------------------------------------------------------+ + + * * * * * + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Hours in a Library, Volume I. 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(of III.), by +Leslie Stephen + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) + +Author: Leslie Stephen + +Release Date: January 27, 2007 [EBook #20459] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOURS IN A LIBRARY *** + + + + +Produced by Thierry Alberto, Henry Craig and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<div class="transnote"><h3>Transcriber's Note:</h3> + +Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in +this text. For a complete list, please see <a href="#TN">the bottom of +this document</a>.</div> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<h3>HOURS IN A LIBRARY</h3> + +<h4>VOL. I.</h4> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + + +<h1>HOURS IN A LIBRARY</h1> + +<h4>BY</h4> + +<h2>LESLIE STEPHEN</h2> + +<h3><i>NEW EDITION, WITH ADDITIONS</i></h3> + +<h3>IN THREE VOLUMES.</h3> + +<h2>VOL. I.</h2> + +<p class="frontend">LONDON<br /> +SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE<br /> +1892<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +[<i>All rights reserved</i>]</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>CONTENTS<br /> +OF<br /> +THE FIRST VOLUME</h2> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="TOC"> +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='right'><span class="smcap">page</span></td></tr> +<tr><td class="chh">De Foe's Novels</td><td class="pns"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="chh">Richardson's Novels</td><td class="pns"><a href="#Page_47">47</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="chh">Pope as a Moralist</td><td class="pns"><a href="#Page_94">94</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="chh">Sir Walter Scott</td><td class="pns"><a href="#Page_137">137</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="chh">Nathaniel Hawthorne</td><td class="pns"><a href="#Page_169">169</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="chh">Balzac's Novels</td><td class="pns"><a href="#Page_199">199</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="chh">De Quincey</td><td class="pns"><a href="#Page_237">237</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="chh">Sir Thomas Browne</td><td class="pns"><a href="#Page_269">269</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="chh">Jonathan Edwards</td><td class="pns"><a href="#Page_300">300</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="chh">Horace Walpole</td><td class="pns"><a href="#Page_345">345</a></td></tr> +</table></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">vii</a></span></p> +<h2><i>OPINIONS OF AUTHORS</i></h2> + + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Libraries are as the shrines where all the relics of the +ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without +delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed.—<span class="smcap">Bacon</span>, +<i>Advancement of Learning</i>.</p> + +<p>We visit at the shrine, drink in some measure of the +inspiration, and cannot easily breathe in other air less +pure, accustomed to immortal fruits.—<span class="smcap">Hazlitt's</span> <i>Plain +Speaker</i>.</p> + +<p>What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though +all the souls of all the writers that have bequeathed their +labours to the Bodleian were reposing here as in some +dormitory or middle state. I seem to inhale learning, +walking amid their foliage; and the odour of their old +moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of the +sciential apples which grew around the happy +orchard.—<span class="smcap">Charles Lamb</span>, <i>Oxford in the Long Vacation</i>.</p> + +<p>My neighbours think me often alone, and yet at such times I +am in company with more than five hundred mutes, each of +whom communicates his ideas to me by dumb signs quite as +intelligibly as any person living can do by uttering of +words; and with a motion of my hand I can bring them as near +to me as I please; I handle them as I like; they never +complain of ill-usage; and when dismissed from my presence, +though ever so abruptly, take no offence.—<span class="smcap">Sterne</span>, +<i>Letters</i>.</p> + +<p>In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear +friends imprisoned by an enchanter in paper and leathern +boxes,—<span class="smcap">Emerson</span>, <i>Books, Society, and Solitude</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">viii</a></span></p> + +<p>Nothing is pleasanter than exploring in a library.—<span class="smcap">Landor</span>, +<i>Pericles and Aspasia</i>.</p> + +<p>I never come into a library (saith Heinsius) but I bolt the +door to me, excluding lust, ambition, avarice, and all such +vices whose nurse is idleness, the mother of ignorance and +melancholy herself; and in the very lap of eternity, among +so many divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty a spirit +and sweet content that I pity all our great ones and rich +men that know not their happiness.—<span class="smcap">Burton</span>, <i>Anatomy of +Melancholy</i>.</p> + +<p>I do not know that I am happiest when alone; but this I am +sure of, that I am never long even in the society of her I +love without a yearning for the company of my lamp and my +utterly confused and tumbled-over library.—<span class="smcap">Byron</span>, <i>Moore's +Life</i>.</p> + +<p>Montesquieu used to say that he had never known a pain or a +distress which he could not soothe by half an hour of a good +book.—<span class="smcap">John Morley</span>, <i>On Popular Culture</i>.</p> + +<p>There is no truer word than that of Solomon: 'There is no +end of making books'; the sight of a great library verifies +it; there is no end—indeed, it were pity there should +be.—<span class="smcap">Bishop Hall</span>.</p> + +<p>You that are genuine Athenians, devour with a golden +Epicurism the arts and sciences, the spirits and extractions +of authors.—<span class="smcap">Culverwell</span>, <i>Light of Nature</i>.</p> + +<p>He hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; +he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink; +his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only +sensible in the duller parts.—<span class="smcap">Shakespeare</span>, <i>Love's Labour's +Lost</i>.</p> + +<p>I have wondered at the patience of the antediluvians; their +libraries were insufficiently furnished; how then could +seven or eight hundred years of life be +supportable?—<span class="smcap">Cowper</span>, <i>Life and Letters by Southey</i>.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Unconfused Babel of all tongues! which e'er<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The mighty linguist Fame or Time the mighty traveller,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">ix</a></span> +<span class="i3">That could speak or this could hear!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Majestic monument and pyramid!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where still the shapes of parted souls abide<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Embalmed in verse; exalted souls which now<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Enjoy those arts they wooed so well below,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Which now all wonders plainly see<br /></span> +<span class="i3">That have been, are, or are to be<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In the mysterious Library,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The beatific Bodley of the Deity!<br /></span> +<div class="attrib"><span class="smcap">Cowley</span>, <i>Ode on the Bodleian</i>.</div> +</div></div> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">This to a structure led well known to fame,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">And called, 'The Monument of Vanished Minds,'<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where when they thought they saw in well-sought books<br /></span> +<span class="i3">The assembled souls of all that men thought wise,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">It bred such awful reverence in their looks,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">As if they saw the buried writers rise.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Such heaps of written thought; gold of the dead,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Which Time does still disperse but not devour,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Made them presume all was from deluge freed<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Which long-lived authors writ ere Noah's shower.<br /></span> +<div class="attrib"><span class="smcap">Davenant</span>, <i>Gondibert</i>.</div> +</div></div> + + +<p>Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a +progeny of life in them, to be as active as that soul whose +progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the +purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that +bred them.—<span class="smcap">Milton</span>, <i>Areopagitica</i>.</p> + +<p>Nor is there any paternal fondness which seems to savour +less of absolute instinct, and which may be so well +reconciled to worldly wisdom, as this of authors for their +books. These children may most truly be called the riches of +their father, and many of them have with true filial piety +fed their parent in his old age; so that not only the +affection but the interest of the author may be highly +injured by those slanderers whose poisonous breath brings +his book to an untimely end.—<span class="smcap">Fielding</span>, <i>Tom Jones</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">x</a></span></p> + +<p>We whom the world is pleased to honour with the title of +modern authors should never have been able to compass our +great design of everlasting remembrance and never-dying fame +if our endeavours had not been so highly serviceable to the +general good of mankind.—<span class="smcap">Swift</span>, <i>Tale of a Tub</i>.</p> + +<p>A good library always makes me melancholy, where the best +author is as much squeezed and as obscure as a porter at a +coronation.—<span class="smcap">Swift</span>.</p> + +<p>In my youth I never entered a great library but my +predominant feeling was one of pain and disturbance of +mind—not much unlike that which drew tears from Xerxes on +viewing his immense army, and reflecting that in one hundred +years not one soul would remain alive. To me, with respect +to books, the same effect would be brought about by my own +death. Here, said I, are one hundred thousand books, the +worst of them capable of giving me some instruction and +pleasure; and before I can have had time to extract the +honey from one-twentieth of this hive in all likelihood I +shall be summoned away.—<span class="smcap">De Quincey</span>, <i>Letter to a young +man</i>.</p> + +<p>A man may be judged by his library.—<span class="smcap">Bentham</span>.</p> + +<p>I ever look upon a library with the reverence of a +temple.—<span class="smcap">Evelyn</span>, <i>to Wotton</i>.</p> + +<p>'Father, I should like to learn to make gold.' 'And what +would'st thou do if thou could'st make it?' 'Why, I would +build a great house and fill it with books.'—<span class="smcap">Southey</span>, +<i>Doctor</i>.</p> + +<p>What would you have more? A wife? That is none of the +indispensable requisites of life. Books? That is one of +them, and I have more than I can use.—<span class="smcap">David Hume</span>, <i>Burton's +'Life</i>.'</p> + +<p>Talk of the happiness of getting a great prize in the +lottery! What is that to opening a box of books? The joy +upon lifting up the cover must be something like that which +we shall feel when Peter the porter opens the door upstairs, +and says, 'Please to walk in, Sir.'—<span class="smcap">Southey</span>, <i>Life</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">xi</a></span></p> + +<p>I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of +books than a king who did not love reading.—<span class="smcap">Macaulay</span>.</p> + +<p>Our books ... do not our hearts hug them, and quiet +themselves in them even more than in God?—<span class="smcap">Baxter's</span> <i>Saint's +Rest</i>.</p> + +<p>It is our duty to live among books.—<span class="smcap">Newman</span>, <i>Tracts for the +Times, No. 2</i>.</p> + +<p>What lovely things books are!—<span class="smcap">Buckle</span>, <i>Life by Huth</i>.</p> + +<p>(Query) Whether the collected wisdom of all ages and nations +be not found in books?—<span class="smcap">Berkeley</span>, <i>Querist</i>.</p> + +<p>Read we must, be writers ever so indifferent.—<span class="smcap">Shaftesbury</span>, +<i>Characteristics</i>.</p> + +<p>It's mighty hard to write nowadays without getting something +or other worth listening to into your essay or your volume. +The foolishest book is a kind of leaky boat on a sea of +wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyhow.—<span class="smcap">O. W. +Holmes</span>, <i>Poet at the Breakfast Table</i>.</p> + +<p>I adopted the tolerating measure of the elder Pliny—'nullum +esse librum tam malum ut non in aliqua parte +prodesset.'—<span class="smcap">Gibbon</span>, <i>Autobiography</i>.</p> + +<p>A book's a book, although there's nothing in't.—<span class="smcap">Byron</span>, +<i>English Bards and Scotch Reviewers</i>.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">While you converse with lords and dukes,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I have their betters here, my books;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Fixed in an elbow chair at ease<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I choose companions as I please.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I'd rather have one single shelf<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Than all my friends, except yourself.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For, after all that can be said,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Our best companions are the dead.<br /></span> +<div class="attrib"><span class="smcap">Sheridan</span> <i>to Swift</i>.</div> +</div></div> + + +<p>We often hear of people who will descend to any servility, +submit to any insult for the sake of getting themselves or +their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">xii</a></span> children into what is euphemistically called good +society. Did it ever occur to them that there is a select +society of all the centuries to which they and theirs can be +admitted for the asking?—<span class="smcap">Lowell</span>, <i>Speech at Chelsea</i>.</p> + +<p>On all sides are we not driven to the conclusion that of all +things which men can do or make here below, by far the most +momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call +books? For, indeed, is it not verily the highest act of +man's faculty that produces a book? It is the thought of +man. The true thaumaturgic virtue by which man marks all +things whatever. All that he does and brings to pass is the +vesture of a book.—<span class="smcap">Carlyle</span>, <i>Hero Worship</i>.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i10">Yet it is just<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That here in memory of all books which lay<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Their sure foundations in the heart of man,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">...<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That I should here assert their rights, assert<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Their honours, and should, once for all, pronounce<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Their benediction, speak of them as powers<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For ever to be hallowed; only less<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For what we are and what we may become<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Than Nature's self, which is the breath of God,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Or His pure word by miracle revealed.<br /></span> +<div class="attrib"><span class="smcap">Wordsworth</span>, <i>Prelude</i>.</div> +</div></div> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Take me to some lofty room,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Lighted from the western sky,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where no glare dispels the gloom,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Till the golden eve is nigh;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where the works of searching thought,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Chosen books, may still impart<br /></span> +<span class="i2">What the wise of old have taught,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">What has tried the meek of heart;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Books in long dead tongues that stirred<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Loving hearts in other climes;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Telling to my eyes, unheard,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Glorious deeds of olden times:<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">xiii</a></span> +<span class="i2">Books that purify the thought,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Spirits of the learned dead,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Teachers of the little taught,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Comforters when friends are fled.<br /></span> +<div class="attrib"><span class="smcap">Barnes</span>, <i>Poems of Rural Life</i>.</div> +</div></div> + + +<p>A library is like a butcher's shop; it contains plenty of +meat, but it is all raw; no person living can find a meal in +it till some good cook comes along and says, 'Sir, I see by +your looks that you are hungry; I know your taste; be +patient for a moment and you shall be satisfied that you +have an excellent appetite!'—<span class="smcap">G. Ellis</span>, Lockhart's +'<i>Scott</i>.'</p> + +<p>A library is itself a cheap university.—<span class="smcap">H. Sidgwick</span>, +<i>Political Economy</i>.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">O such a life as he resolved to live<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Once he had mastered all that books can give!<br /></span> +<div class="attrib"><span class="smcap">Browning</span>.</div> +</div></div> + + +<p>I will bury myself in my books and the devil may pipe to his +own.—<span class="smcap">Tennyson</span>.</p> + +<p>Words! words! words!—<span class="smcap">Shakespeare</span>.</p></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">1</a></span></p> + +<h1>HOURS IN A LIBRARY</h1> + + + + +<h2><i>DE FOE'S NOVELS</i></h2> + + +<p>According to the high authority of Charles Lamb, it has sometimes +happened 'that from no inferior merit in the rest, but from some +superior good fortune in the choice of a subject, some single work' (of +a particular author) 'shall have been suffered to eclipse, and cast into +the shade, the deserts of its less fortunate brethren.' And after +quoting the case of Bunyan's 'Holy War' as compared with the 'Pilgrim's +Progress,' he adds that, 'in no instance has this excluding partiality +been exerted with more unfairness than against what may be termed the +secondary novels or romances of De Foe.' He proceeds to declare that +there are at least four other fictitious narratives by the same +writer—'Roxana,' 'Singleton,' 'Moll Flanders,' and 'Colonel +Jack'—which possess an interest not inferior to 'Robinson +Crusoe'—'except what results from a less felicitous choice of +situation.' Granting most unreservedly that the same hand is perceptible +in the minor novels as in 'Robinson Crusoe,' and that they bear at every +page the most unequivocal symptoms of De Foe's workmanship, I venture to +doubt the 'partiality' and the 'unfairness' of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">2</a></span> preferring to them their +more popular rival. The instinctive judgment of the world is not really +biassed by anything except the intrinsic power exerted by a book over +its sympathies; and as in the long run it has honoured 'Robinson +Crusoe,' in spite of the critics, and has comparatively neglected +'Roxana' and the companion stories, there is probably some good cause +for the distinction. The apparent injustice to books resembles what we +often see in the case of men. A. B. becomes Lord Chancellor, whilst C. +D. remains for years a briefless barrister; and yet for the life of us +we cannot tell but that C. D. is the abler man of the two. Perhaps he +was wanting in some one of the less conspicuous elements that are +essential to a successful career; he said, 'Open, wheat!' instead of +'Open, sesame!' and the barriers remained unaffected by his magic. The +secret may really be simple enough. The complete success of such a book +as 'Robinson' implies, it may be, the precise adaptation of the key to +every ward of the lock. The felicitous choice of situation to which +Lamb refers gave just the required fitness; and it is of little use to +plead that 'Roxana,' 'Colonel Jack,' and others might have done the same +trick if only they had received a little filing, or some slight change +in shape: a shoemaker might as well argue that if you had only one toe +less his shoes wouldn't pinch you.</p> + +<p>To leave the unsatisfactory ground of metaphor, we may find out, on +examination, that De Foe had discovered in 'Robinson Crusoe' precisely +the field in which his talents could be most effectually applied; and +that a very slight alteration in the subject-matter might change the +merit of his work to a disproportionate extent. The more special the +idiosyncrasy upon which a man's literary success is founded, the +greater, of course, the probability that a small<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">3</a></span> change will disconcert +him. A man who can only perform upon the drum will have to wait for +certain combinations of other instruments before his special talent can +be turned to account. Now, the talent in which De Foe surpasses all +other writers is just one of those peculiar gifts which must wait for a +favourable chance. When a gentleman, in a fairy story, has a power of +seeing a hundred miles, or covering seven leagues at a stride, we know +that an opportunity will speedily occur for putting his faculties to +use. But the gentleman with the seven-leagued boots is useless when the +occasion offers itself for telescopic vision, and the eyes are good for +nothing without the power of locomotion. To De Foe, if we may imitate +the language of the 'Arabian Nights,' was given a tongue to which no one +could listen without believing every word that he uttered—a +qualification, by the way, which would serve its owner far more +effectually in this commonplace world than swords of sharpness or cloaks +of darkness, or other fairy paraphernalia. In other words, he had the +most marvellous power ever known of giving verisimilitude to his +fictions; or, in other words again, he had the most amazing talent on +record for telling lies. We have all read how the 'History of the +Plague,' the 'Memoirs of a Cavalier,' and even, it is said, 'Robinson +Crusoe,' have succeeded in passing themselves off for veritable +narratives. The 'Memoirs of Captain Carleton' long passed for De Foe's, +but the Captain has now gained admission to the biographical dictionary +and is credited with his own memoirs. In either case, it is as +characteristic that a genuine narrative should be attributed to De Foe, +as that De Foe's narrative should be taken as genuine. An odd testimony +to De Foe's powers as a liar (a word for which there is, unfortunately, +no equivalent that does not imply<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">4</a></span> some blame) has been mentioned. Mr. +M'Queen, quoted in Captain Burton's 'Nile Basin,' names 'Captain +Singleton' as a genuine account of travels in Central Africa, and +seriously mentions De Foe's imaginary pirate as 'a claimant for the +honour of the discovery of the sources of the White Nile.' Probably, +however, this only proves that Mr. M'Queen had never read the book.</p> + +<p>Most of the literary artifices to which De Foe owed his power of +producing this illusion are sufficiently plain. Of all the fictions +which he succeeded in palming off for truths none is more instructive +than that admirable ghost, Mrs. Veal. Like the sonnets of some great +poets, it contains in a few lines all the essential peculiarities of his +art, and an admirable commentary has been appended to it by Sir Walter +Scott. The first device which strikes us is his ingenious plan for +manufacturing corroborative evidence. The ghost appears to Mrs. +Bargrave. The story of the apparition is told by a 'very sober and +understanding gentlewoman, who lives within a few doors of Mrs. +Bargrave;' and the character of this sober gentlewoman is supported by +the testimony of a justice of the peace at Maidstone, 'a very +intelligent person.' This elaborate chain of evidence is intended to +divert our attention from the obvious circumstance that the whole story +rests upon the authority of the anonymous person who tells us of the +sober gentlewoman, who supports Mrs. Bargrave, and is confirmed by the +intelligent justice. Simple as the artifice appears, it is one which is +constantly used in supernatural stories of the present day. One of those +improving legends tells how a ghost appeared to two officers in Canada, +and how, subsequently, one of the officers met the ghost's twin brother +in London, and straightway exclaimed, 'You are the person who appeared<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">5</a></span> +to me in Canada!' Many people are diverted from the weak part of the +story by this ingenious confirmation, and, in their surprise at the +coherence of the narrative, forget that the narrative itself rests upon +entirely anonymous evidence. A chain is no stronger than its weakest +link; but if you show how admirably the last few are united together, +half the world will forget to test the security of the equally essential +links which are kept out of sight. De Foe generally repeats a similar +trick in the prefaces of his fictions. ''Tis certain,' he says, in the +'Memoirs of a Cavalier,' 'no man could have given a description of his +retreat from Marston Moor to Rochdale, and thence over the moors to the +North, in so apt and proper terms, unless he had really travelled over +the ground he describes,' which, indeed, is quite true, but by no means +proves that the journey was made by a fugitive from that particular +battle. He separates himself more ostentatiously from the supposititious +author by praising his admirable manner of relating the memoirs, and the +'wonderful variety of incidents with which they are beautified;' and, +with admirable impudence, assures us that they are written in so +soldierly a style, that it 'seems impossible any but the very person who +was present in every action here related was the relater of them.' In +the preface to 'Roxana,' he acts, with equal spirit, the character of an +impartial person, giving us the evidence on which he is himself +convinced of the truth of the story, as though he would, of all things, +refrain from pushing us unfairly for our belief. The writer, he says, +took the story from the lady's own mouth: he was, of course, obliged to +disguise names and places; but was himself 'particularly acquainted with +this lady's first husband, the brewer, and with his father, and also +with his bad circumstances, and knows that first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">6</a></span> part of the story.' +The rest we must, of course, take upon the lady's own evidence, but less +unwillingly, as the first is thus corroborated. We cannot venture to +suggest to so calm a witness that he has invented both the lady and the +writer of her history; and, in short, that when he says that A. says +that B. says something, it is, after all, merely the anonymous 'he' who +is speaking. In giving us his authority for 'Moll Flanders,' he ventures +upon the more refined art of throwing a little discredit upon the +narrator's veracity. She professes to have abandoned her evil ways, but, +as he tells us with a kind of aside, and as it were cautioning us +against over-incredulity, 'it seems' (a phrase itself suggesting the +impartial looker-on) that in her old age 'she was not so extraordinary a +penitent as she was at first; it seems only' (for, after all, you +mustn't make <i>too</i> much of my insinuations) 'that indeed she always +spoke with abhorrence of her former life.' So we are left in a qualified +state of confidence, as if we had been talking about one of his patients +with the wary director of a reformatory.</p> + +<p>This last touch, which is one of De Foe's favourite expedients, is most +fully exemplified in the story of Mrs. Veal. The author affects to take +us into his confidence, to make us privy to the pros and cons in regard +to the veracity of his own characters, till we are quite disarmed. The +sober gentlewoman vouches for Mrs. Bargrave; but Mrs. Bargrave is by no +means allowed to have it all her own way. One of the ghost's +communications related to the disposal of a certain sum of 10<i>l.</i> a +year, of which Mrs. Bargrave, according to her own account, could have +known nothing, except by this supernatural intervention. Mrs. Veal's +friends, however, tried to throw doubt upon the story of her appearance, +considering that it was disreputable for a decent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">7</a></span> woman to go abroad +after her death. One of them, therefore, declared that Mrs. Bargrave was +a liar, and that she had, in fact, known of the 10<i>l.</i> beforehand. On +the other hand, the person who thus attacked Mrs. Bargrave had himself +the 'reputation of a notorious liar.' Mr. Veal, the ghost's brother, was +too much of a gentleman to make such gross imputations. He confined +himself to the more moderate assertion that Mrs. Bargrave had been +crazed by a bad husband. He maintained that the story must be a mistake, +because, just before her death, his sister had declared that she had +nothing to dispose of. This statement, however, may be reconciled with +the ghost's remarks about the 10<i>l.</i>, because she obviously mentioned +such a trifle merely by way of a token of the reality of her appearance. +Mr. Veal, indeed, makes rather a better point by stating that a certain +purse of gold mentioned by the ghost was found, not in the cabinet where +she told Mrs. Bargrave that she had placed it, but in a comb-box. Yet, +again, Mr. Veal's statement is here rather suspicious, for it is known +that Mrs. Veal was very particular about her cabinet, and would not have +let her gold out of it. We are left in some doubts by this conflict of +evidence, although the obvious desire of Mr. Veal to throw discredit on +the story of his sister's appearance rather inclines us to believe in +Mrs. Bargrave's story, who could have had no conceivable motive for +inventing such a fiction. The argument is finally clenched by a decisive +coincidence. The ghost wears a silk dress. In the course of a long +conversation she incidentally mentioned to Mrs. Bargrave that this was a +scoured silk, newly made up. When Mrs. Bargrave reported this remarkable +circumstance to a certain Mrs. Wilson, 'You have certainly seen her,' +exclaimed that lady, 'for none knew<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">8</a></span> but Mrs. Veal and myself that the +gown had been scoured.' To this crushing piece of evidence it seems that +neither Mr. Veal nor the notorious liar could invent any sufficient +reply.</p> + +<p>One can almost fancy De Foe chuckling as he concocted the refinements of +this most marvellous narrative. The whole artifice is, indeed, of a +simple kind. Lord Sunderland, according to Macaulay, once ingeniously +defended himself against a charge of treachery, by asking whether it was +possible that any man should be so base as to do that which he was, in +fact, in the constant habit of doing. De Foe asks us in substance, Is +it conceivable that any man should tell stories so elaborate, so +complex, with so many unnecessary details, with so many inclinations of +evidence this way and that, unless the stories were true? We +instinctively answer, that it is, in fact, inconceivable; and, even +apart from any such refinements as those noticed, the circumstantiality +of the stories is quite sufficient to catch an unworthy critic. It is, +indeed, perfectly easy to tell a story which shall be mistaken for a +<i>bonâ fide</i> narrative, if only we are indifferent to such considerations +as making it interesting or artistically satisfactory.</p> + +<p>The praise which has been lavished upon De Foe for the verisimilitude of +his novels seems to be rather extravagant. The trick would be easy +enough, if it were worth performing. The story-teller cannot be +cross-examined; and if he is content to keep to the ordinary level of +commonplace facts, there is not the least difficulty in producing +conviction. We recognise the fictitious character of an ordinary novel, +because it makes a certain attempt at artistic unity, or because the +facts are such as could obviously not be known to, or would not be told +by, a real<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">9</a></span> narrator, or possibly because they are inconsistent with +other established facts. If a man chooses to avoid such obvious +confessions of unreality, he can easily be as life-like as De Foe. I do +not suppose that foreign correspondence of a newspaper is often composed +in the Strand; but it is only because I believe that the honesty of +writers in the press is far too great to allow them to commit a crime +which must be speedily detected by independent evidence. Lying is, after +all, the easiest of all things, if the liar be not too ambitious. A +little clever circumstantiality will lull any incipient suspicion; and +it must be added that De Foe, in adopting the tone of a <i>bonâ fide</i> +narrator, not unfrequently overreaches himself. He forgets his dramatic +position in his anxiety to be minute. Colonel Jack, at the end of a long +career, tells us how one of his boyish companions stole certain articles +at a fair, and gives us the list, of which this is a part: '5thly, a +silver box, with 7<i>s.</i> in small silver; 6, a pocket-handkerchief; 7, +<i>another</i>; 8, a jointed baby, and a little looking-glass.' The +affectation of extreme precision, especially in the charming item +'another,' destroys the perspective of the story. We are listening to a +contemporary, not to an old man giving us his fading recollections of a +disreputable childhood.</p> + +<p>The peculiar merit, then, of De Foe must be sought in something more +than the circumstantial nature of his lying, or even the ingenious +artifices by which he contrives to corroborate his own narrative. These, +indeed, show the pleasure which he took in simulating truth; and he may +very probably have attached undue importance to this talent in the +infancy of novel-writing, as in the infancy of painting it was held for +the greatest of triumphs when birds came and pecked at the grapes in a +picture. It is curious,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">10</a></span> indeed, that De Foe and Richardson, the +founders of our modern school of fiction, appear to have stumbled upon +their discovery by a kind of accident. As De Foe's novels are simply +history <i>minus</i> the facts, so Richardson's are a series of letters +<i>minus</i> the correspondents. The art of novel-writing, like the art of +cooking pigs in Lamb's most philosophical as well as humorous apologue, +first appeared in its most cumbrous shape. As Hoti had to burn his +cottage for every dish of pork, Richardson and De Foe had to produce +fiction at the expense of a close approach to falsehood. The division +between the art of lying and the art of fiction was not distinctly +visible to either; and both suffer to some extent from the attempt to +produce absolute illusion, where they should have been content with +portraiture. And yet the defect is balanced by the vigour naturally +connected with an unflinching realism. That this power rested, in De +Foe's case, upon something more than a bit of literary trickery, may be +inferred from his fate in another department of authorship. He twice got +into trouble for a device exactly analogous to that which he afterwards +practised in fiction. On both occasions he was punished for assuming a +character for purposes of mystification. In the latest instance, it is +seen, the pamphlet called 'What if the Pretender Comes?' was written in +such obvious irony, that the mistake of his intentions must have been +wilful. The other and better-known performance, 'The Shortest Way with +the Dissenters,' seems really to have imposed upon some of his readers. +It is difficult in these days of toleration to imagine that any one can +have taken the violent suggestions of the 'Shortest Way' as put forward +seriously. To those who might say that persecuting the Dissenters was +cruel, says De Foe, 'I answer, 'tis cruelty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">11</a></span> to kill a snake or a toad +in cold blood, but the poison of their nature makes it a charity to our +neighbours to destroy those creatures, not for any personal injury +received, but for prevention.... Serpents, toads, and vipers, &c., are +noxious to the body, and poison the sensitive life: these poison the +soul, corrupt our posterity, ensnare our children, destroy the vital of +our happiness, our future felicity, and contaminate the whole mass.' And +he concludes: 'Alas, the Church of England! What with Popery on the one +hand, and schismatics on the other, how has she been crucified between +two thieves! <i>Now let us crucify the thieves!</i> Let her foundations be +established upon the destruction of her enemies: the doors of mercy +being always open to the returning part of the deluded people; let the +obstinate be ruled with a rod of iron!' It gives a pleasant impression +of the spirit of the times, to remember that this could be taken for a +genuine utterance of orthodoxy; that De Foe was imprisoned and +pilloried, and had to write a serious protestation that it was only a +joke, and that he meant to expose the nonjuring party by putting their +secret wishes into plain English. ''Tis hard,' he says, 'that this +should not be perceived by all the town; that not one man can see it, +either Churchman or Dissenter.' It certainly was very hard; but a +perusal of the whole pamphlet may make it a degree more intelligible. +Ironical writing of this kind is in substance a <i>reductio ad absurdum</i>. +It is a way of saying the logical result of your opinions is such or +such a monstrous error. So long as the appearance of logic is preserved, +the error cannot be stated too strongly. The attempt to soften the +absurdity so as to take in an antagonist is injurious artistically, if +it may be practically useful. An ironical intention which is quite +concealed might as well not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">12</a></span> exist. And thus the unscrupulous use of the +same weapon by Swift is now far more telling than De Foe's comparatively +guarded application of it. The artifice, however, is most skilfully +carried out for the end which De Foe had in view. The 'Shortest Way' +begins with a comparative gravity to throw us off our guard; the author +is not afraid of imitating a little of the dulness of his supposed +antagonists, and repeats with all imaginable seriousness the very taunts +which a High Church bigot would in fact have used. It was not a sound +defence of persecution to say that the Dissenters had been cruel when +they had the upper hand, and that penalties imposed upon them were +merely retaliation for injuries suffered under Cromwell and from +Scottish Presbyterians; but it was one of those topics upon which a +hot-headed persecutor would naturally dwell, though De Foe gives him +rather more forcible language than he would be likely to possess. It is +only towards the end that the ironical purpose crops out in what we +should have thought an unmistakable manner. Few writers would have +preserved their incognito so long. The caricature would have been too +palpable, and invited ridicule too ostentatiously. An impatient man soon +frets under the mask and betrays his real strangeness in the hostile +camp.</p> + +<p>De Foe in fact had a peculiarity at first sight less favourable to +success in fiction than in controversy. Amongst the political writers of +that age he was, on the whole, distinguished for good temper and an +absence of violence. Although a party man, he was by no means a man to +swallow the whole party platform. He walked on his own legs, and was not +afraid to be called a deserter by more thoroughgoing partisans. The +principles which he most ardently supported were those of religious +toleration<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">13</a></span> and hatred to every form of arbitrary power. Now, the +intellectual groundwork upon which such a character is formed has +certain conspicuous merits, along with certain undeniable weaknesses. +Amongst the first may be reckoned a strong grasp of facts—which was +developed to an almost disproportionate degree in De Foe—and a +resolution to see things as they are without the gloss which is +contracted from strong party sentiment. He was one of those men of +vigorous common-sense who like to have everything down plainly and +distinctly in good unmistakable black and white, and indulge a voracious +appetite for facts and figures. He was, therefore, able—within the +limits of his vision—to see things from both sides, and to take his +adversaries' opinions as calmly as his own, so long, at least, as they +dealt with the class of considerations with which he was accustomed to +deal; for, indeed, there are certain regions of discussion to which we +cannot be borne on the wings of statistics, or even of common-sense. And +this, the weak side of his intellect, is equally unmistakable. The +matter-of-fact man may be compared to one who suffers from +colour-blindness. Perhaps he may have a power of penetrating, and even +microscopic vision; but he sees everything in his favourite black and +white or gray, and loses all the delights of gorgeous, though it may be +deceptive, colouring. One man sees everything in the forcible light and +shade of Rembrandt: a few heroes stand out conspicuously in a focus of +brilliancy from a background of imperfectly defined shadows, clustering +round the centre in strange but picturesque confusion. To another, every +figure is full of interest, with singular contrasts and sharply-defined +features; the whole effect is somewhat spoilt by the want of perspective +and the perpetual sparkle and glitter; yet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">14</a></span> when we fix our attention +upon any special part, it attracts us by its undeniable vivacity and +vitality. To a third, again, the individual figures become dimmer, but +he sees a slow and majestic procession of shapes imperceptibly +developing into some harmonious whole. Men profess to reach their +philosophical conclusions by some process of logic; but the imagination +is the faculty which furnishes the raw material upon which the logic is +employed, and, unconsciously to its owners, determines, for the most +part, the shape into which their theories will be moulded. Now, De Foe +was above the ordinary standard, in so far as he did not, like most of +us, see things merely as a blurred and inextricable chaos; but he was +below the great imaginative writers in the comparative coldness and dry +precision of his mental vision. To him the world was a vast picture, +from which all confusion was banished; everything was definite, clear, +and precise as in a photograph; as in a photograph, too, everything +could be accurately measured, and the result stated in figures; by the +same parallel, there was a want of perspective, for the most distant +objects were as precisely given as the nearest; and yet further, there +was the same absence of the colouring which is caused in natural objects +by light and heat, and in mental pictures by the fire of imaginative +passion. The result is a product which is to Fielding or Scott what a +portrait by a first-rate photographer is to one by Vandyke or Reynolds, +though, perhaps, the peculiar qualifications which go to make a De Foe +are almost as rare as those which form the more elevated artist.</p> + +<p>To illustrate this a little more in detail, one curious proof of the +want of the passionate element in De Foe's novels is the singular +calmness with which he describes his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">15</a></span> villains. He always looks at the +matter in a purely business-like point of view. It is very wrong to +steal, or break any of the commandments: partly because the chances are +that it won't pay, and partly also because the devil will doubtless get +hold of you in time. But a villain in De Foe is extremely like a +virtuous person, only that, so to speak, he has unluckily backed the +losing side. Thus, for example, Colonel Jack is a thief from his youth +up; Moll Flanders is a thief, and worse; Roxana is a highly immoral +lady, and is under some suspicion of a most detestable murder; and +Captain Singleton is a pirate of the genuine buccaneering school. Yet we +should really doubt, but for their own confessions, whether they have +villainy enough amongst them to furnish an average pickpocket. Roxana +occasionally talks about a hell within, and even has unpleasant dreams +concerning 'apparitions of devils and monsters, of falling into gulphs, +and from off high and steep precipices.' She has, moreover, excellent +reasons for her discomfort. Still, in spite of a very erroneous course +of practice, her moral tone is all that can be desired. She discourses +about the importance of keeping to the paths of virtue with the most +exemplary punctuality, though she does not find them convenient for her +own personal use. Colonel Jack is a young Arab of the streets—as it is +fashionable to call them now-a-days—sleeping in the ashes of a +glasshouse by night, and consorting with thieves by day. Still the +exemplary nature of his sentiments would go far to establish Lord +Palmerston's rather heterodox theory of the innate goodness of man. He +talks like a book from his earliest infancy. He once forgets himself so +far as to rob a couple of poor women on the highway instead of picking +rich men's pockets; but his conscience pricks him so much that he cannot +rest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">16</a></span> till he has restored the money. Captain Singleton is a still more +striking case: he is a pirate by trade, but with a strong resemblance to +the ordinary British merchant in his habits of thought. He ultimately +retires from a business in which the risks are too great for his taste, +marries, and settles down quietly on his savings. There is a certain +Quaker who joins his ship, really as a volunteer, but under a show of +compulsion, in order to avoid the possible inconveniences of a capture. +The Quaker always advises him in his difficulties in such a way as to +avoid responsibility. When they are in action with a Portuguese +man-of-war, for example, the Quaker sees a chance of boarding, and, +coming up to Singleton, says very calmly, 'Friend, what dost thou mean? +why dost thou not visit thy neighbour in the ship, the door being open +for thee?' This ingenious gentleman always preserves as much humanity as +is compatible with his peculiar position, and even prevents certain +negroes from being tortured into confession, on the unanswerable ground +that, as neither party understands a word of the other's language, the +confession will not be to much purpose. 'It is no compliment to my +moderation,' says Singleton, 'to say, I was convinced by these reasons; +and yet we had all much ado to keep our second lieutenant from murdering +some of them to make them tell.'</p> + +<p>Now, this humane pirate takes up pretty much the position which De Foe's +villains generally occupy in good earnest. They do very objectionable +things; but they always speak like steady, respectable Englishmen, with +an eye to the main chance. It is true that there is nothing more +difficult than to make a villain tell his own story naturally; in a way, +that is, so as to show at once the badness of the motive and the excuse +by which the actor reconciles <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">17</a></span>it to his own mind. De Foe is entirely +deficient in this capacity of appreciating a character different from +his own. His actors are merely so many repetitions of himself placed +under different circumstances and committing crimes in the way of +business, as De Foe might himself have carried out a commercial +transaction. From the outside they are perfect; they are evidently +copied from the life; and Captain Singleton is himself a repetition of +the celebrated Captain Kidd, who indeed is mentioned in the novel. But +of the state of mind which leads a man to be a pirate, and of the +effects which it produces upon his morals, De Foe has either no notion, +or is, at least, totally incapable of giving us a representation. All +which goes by the name of psychological analysis in modern fiction is +totally alien to his art. He could, as we have said, show such dramatic +power as may be implied in transporting himself to a different position, +and looking at matters even from his adversary's point of view; but of +the further power of appreciating his adversary's character he shows not +the slightest trace. He looks at his actors from the outside, and gives +us with wonderful minuteness all the details of their lives; but he +never seems to remember that within the mechanism whose working he +describes there is a soul very different from that of Daniel De Foe. +Rather, he seems to see in mankind nothing but so many million Daniel De +Foes; they are in all sorts of postures, and thrown into every variety +of difficulty, but the stuff of which they are composed is identical +with that which he buttons into his own coat; there is variety of form, +but no colouring, in his pictures of life.</p> + +<p>We may ask again, therefore, what is the peculiar source of De Foe's +power? He has little, or no dramatic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">18</a></span> power, in the higher sense of the +word, which implies sympathy with many characters and varying tones of +mind. If he had written 'Henry IV.,' Falstaff, and Hotspur, and Prince +Hal would all have been as like each other as are generally the first +and second murderer. Nor is the mere fact that he tells a story with a +strange appearance of veracity sufficient; for a story may be truth-like +and yet deadly dull. Indeed, no candid critic can deny that this is the +case with some of De Foe's narratives; as, for example, the latter part +of 'Colonel Jack,' where the details of management of a plantation in +Virginia are sufficiently uninteresting in spite of the minute financial +details. One device, which he occasionally employs with great force, +suggests an occasional source of interest. It is generally reckoned as +one of his most skilful tricks that in telling a story he cunningly +leaves a few stray ends, which are never taken up. Such is the +well-known incident of Xury, in 'Robinson Crusoe.' This contrivance +undoubtedly gives an appearance of authenticity, by increasing the +resemblance to real narratives; it is like the trick of artificially +roughening a stone after it has been fixed into a building, to give it +the appearance of being fresh from the quarry. De Foe, however, +frequently extracts a more valuable piece of service from these loose +ends. The situation which has been most praised in De Foe's novels is +that which occurs at the end of 'Roxana.' Roxana, after a life of +wickedness, is at last married to a substantial merchant. She has saved, +from the wages of sin, the convenient sum of 2,056<i>l.</i> a year, secured +upon excellent mortgages. Her husband has 17,000<i>l.</i> in cash, after +deducting a 'black article of 8,000 pistoles,' due on account of a +certain lawsuit in Paris, and 1,320<i>l.</i> a year in rent. There is a +satisfaction about these definite sums<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">19</a></span> which we seldom receive from the +vague assertions of modern novelists. Unluckily, a girl turns up at this +moment who shows great curiosity about Roxana's history. It soon becomes +evident that she is, in fact, Roxana's daughter by a former and long +since deserted husband; but she cannot be acknowledged without a +revelation of her mother's subsequently most disreputable conduct. Now, +Roxana has a devoted maid, who threatens to get rid, by fair means or +foul, of this importunate daughter. Once she fails in her design, but +confesses to her mistress that, if necessary, she will commit the +murder. Roxana professes to be terribly shocked, but yet has a desire to +be relieved at almost any price from her tormentor. The maid thereupon +disappears again; soon afterwards the daughter disappears too; and +Roxana is left in terrible doubt, tormented by the opposing anxieties +that her maid may have murdered her daughter, or that her daughter may +have escaped and revealed the mother's true character. Here is a telling +situation for a sensation novelist; and the minuteness with which the +story is worked out, whilst we are kept in suspense, supplies the place +of the ordinary rant; to say nothing of the increased effect due to +apparent veracity, in which certainly few sensation novelists can even +venture a distant competition. The end of the story differs still more +widely from modern art. Roxana has to go abroad with her husband, still +in a state of doubt. Her maid after a time joins her, but gives no +intimation as to the fate of the daughter; and the story concludes by a +simple statement that Roxana afterwards fell into well-deserved misery. +The mystery is certainly impressive; and Roxana is heartily afraid of +the devil and the gallows, to say nothing of the chance of losing her +fortune. Whether, as Lamb maintained, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">20</a></span>the conclusion in which the +mystery is cleared up is a mere forgery, or was added by De Foe to +satisfy the ill-judged curiosity of his readers, I do not profess to +decide. Certainly it rather spoils the story; but in this, as in some +other cases, one is often left in doubt as to the degree in which De Foe +was conscious of his own merits.</p> + +<p>Another instance on a smaller scale of the effective employment of +judicious silence, is an incident in 'Captain Singleton.' The Quaker of +our acquaintance meets with a Japanese priest who speaks a few words of +English, and explains that he has learnt it from thirteen Englishmen, +the only remnant of thirty-two who had been wrecked on the coast of +Japan. To confirm his story, he produces a bit of paper on which is +written, in plain English words: 'We came from Greenland and from the +North Pole.' Here are claimants for the discovery of a North-west +Passage, of whom we would gladly hear more. Unluckily, when Captain +Singleton comes to the place where his Quaker had met the priest, the +ship in which he was sailing had departed; and this put an end to an +inquiry, and perhaps 'may have disappointed mankind of one of the most +noble discoveries that ever was made or will again be made, in the +world, for the good of mankind in general; but so much for that.'</p> + +<p>In these two fragments, which illustrate a very common device of De +Foe's, we come across two elements of positive power over our +imaginations. Even De Foe's imagination recognised and delighted in a +certain margin of mystery to this harsh world of facts and figures. He +is generally too anxious to set everything before us in broad daylight; +there is too little of the thoughts and emotions which inhabit the +twilight of the mind; of those dim half-seen forms which exercise the +strongest influence upon the imagination, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">21</a></span> are the most tempting +subjects for the poet's art. De Foe, in truth, was little enough of a +poet. Sometimes by mere force of terse idiomatic language he rises into +real poetry, as it was understood in the days when Pope and Dryden were +our lawgivers. It is often really vigorous. The well-known verses—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Wherever God erects a house of prayer,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The devil always builds a chapel there—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>which begin the 'True-born Englishman,' or the really fine lines which +occur in the 'Hymn to the Pillory,' that 'hieroglyphic state machine, +contrived to punish fancy in,' and ending—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Tell them that placed him here,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They're scandals to the times,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Are at a loss to find his guilt,<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>And can't commit his crimes</i>—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>may stand for specimens of his best manner. More frequently he +degenerates into the merest doggerel, <i>e.g.</i>—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">No man was ever yet so void of sense,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As to debate the right of self-defence,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A principle so grafted in the mind,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With nature born, and does like nature bind;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Twisted with reason, and with nature too,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As neither one nor t'other can undo—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>which is scarcely a happy specimen of the difficult art of reasoning in +verse. His verse is at best vigorous epigrammatic writing, such as would +now be converted into leading articles, twisted with more or less +violence into rhyme. And yet there is a poetical side to his mind, or at +least a susceptibility to poetical impressions of a certain order. And +as a novelist is on the border-line between poetry and prose, and novels +should be as it were prose saturated with poetry,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">22</a></span> we may expect to come +in this direction upon the secret of De Foe's power. Although De Foe for +the most part deals with good tangible subjects, which he can weigh and +measure and reduce to moidores and pistoles, the mysterious has a very +strong though peculiar attraction for him. It is indeed that vulgar kind +of mystery which implies nothing of reverential awe. He was urged by a +restless curiosity to get away from this commonplace world, and reduce +the unknown regions beyond to scale and measure. The centre of Africa, +the wilds of Siberia, and even more distinctly the world of spirits, had +wonderful charms for him. Nothing would have given him greater pleasure +than to determine the exact number of the fallen angels and the date of +their calamity. In the 'History of the Devil' he touches, with a +singular kind of humorous gravity, upon several of these questions, and +seems to apologise for his limited information. 'Several things,' he +says, 'have been suggested to set us a-calculating the number of this +frightful throng of devils who, with Satan the master-devil, was thus +cast out of heaven.' He declines the task, though he quotes with a +certain pleasure the result obtained by a grave calculator, who found +that in the first line of Satan's army there were a thousand times a +hundred thousand million devils, and more in the other two. He gives a +kind of arithmetical measure of the decline of the devil's power by +pointing out that 'he who was once equal to the angel who killed eighty +thousand men in one night, is not able now, without a new commission, to +take away the life of one Job.' He is filled with curiosity as to the +proceedings of the first parliament (p————t as he delicately puts +it) of devils; he regrets that as he was not personally present in that +'black divan'—at least, not that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">23</a></span> he can remember, for who can account +for his pre-existent state?—he cannot say what happened; but he adds, +'If I had as much personal acquaintance with the devil as would admit +it, and could depend upon the truth of what answer he would give me, the +first question would be, what measures they (the devils) resolved on at +their first assembly?' and the second how they employed the time between +their fall and the creation of the man? Here we see the instinct of the +politician; and we may add that De Foe is thoroughly dissatisfied with +Milton's statements upon this point, though admiring his genius; and +goes so far as to write certain verses intended as a correction of, or +interpolation into, 'Paradise Lost.'</p> + +<p>Mr. Ruskin, in comparing Milton's Satan with Dante's, somewhere remarks +that the vagueness of Milton, as compared with the accurate measurements +given by Dante, is so far a proof of less activity of the imaginative +faculty. It is easier to leave the devil's stature uncertain than to say +that he was eighteen feet high. Without disputing the proposition as Mr. +Ruskin puts it, we fancy that he would scarcely take De Foe's poetry as +an improvement in dignity upon Milton's. We may, perhaps, guess at its +merits from this fragment of a speech in prose, addressed to Adam by +Eve: 'What ails the sot?' says the new termagant. 'What are you afraid +of?... Take it, you fool, and eat.... Take it, I say, or I will go and +cut down the tree, and you shall never eat any of it at all; and you +shall still be a fool, and be governed by your wife for ever.' This, and +much more gross buffoonery of the same kind, is apparently intended to +recommend certain sound moral aphorisms to the vulgar; but the cool +arithmetical method by which De Foe investigates the history of the +devil, his anxiety to pick<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">24</a></span> up gossip about him, and the view which he +takes of him as a very acute and unscrupulous politician—though +impartially vindicating him from some of Mr. Milton's aspersions—is +exquisitely characteristic.</p> + +<p>If we may measure the imaginative power of great poets by the relative +merits of their conceptions of Satan, we might find a humbler gauge for +inferior capacities in the power of summoning awe-inspiring ghosts. The +difficulty of the feat is extreme. Your ghost, as Bottom would have +said, is a very fearful wild-fowl to bring upon the stage. He must be +handled delicately, or he is spoilt. Scott has a good ghost or two; but +Lord Lytton, almost the only writer who has recently dealt with the +supernatural, draws too freely upon our belief, and creates only +melodramatic spiritual beings, with a strong dash of the vulgarising +element of modern 'spiritualism.' They are scarcely more awful beings +than the terrible creations of the raw-head-and-bloody-bones school of +fiction.</p> + +<p>Amongst this school we fear that De Foe must, on the whole, be reckoned. +We have already made acquaintance with Mrs. Veal, who, in her ghostly +condition, talks for an hour and three-quarters with a gossip over a cup +of tea; who, indeed, so far forgets her ghostly condition as to ask for +a cup of the said tea, and only evades the consequences of her blunder +by one of those rather awkward excuses which we all sometimes practise +in society; and who, in short, is the least ethereal spirit that was +ever met with outside a table. De Foe's extraordinary love for +supernatural stories of the gossiping variety found vent in 'A History +of Apparitions,' and his 'System of Magic.' The position which he takes +up is a kind of modified rationalism. He believes that there are genuine +apparitions which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">25</a></span> personate our dead friends, and give us excellent +pieces of advice on occasion; but he refuses to believe that the spirits +can appear themselves, on account 'of the many strange inconveniences +and ill consequences which would happen if the souls of men and women, +unembodied and departed, were at liberty to visit the earth.' De Foe is +evidently as familiar with the habits of spirits generally as of the +devil. In that case, for example, the feuds of families would never die, +for the injured person would be always coming back to right himself. He +proceeds upon this principle to account for many apparitions, as, for +example, one which appeared in the likeness of a certain J. O. of the +period, and strongly recommended his widow to reduce her expenses. He +won't believe that the Virgin appeared to St. Francis, because all +stories of that kind are mere impostures of the priests; but he thinks +it very likely that he was haunted by the devil, who may have sometimes +taken the Virgin's shape. In the 'History of Witchcraft' De Foe tells us +how, as he was once riding in the country, he met a man on the way to +inquire of a certain wizard. De Foe, according to his account, which may +or may not be intended as authentic, waited the whole of the next day at +a public-house in a country town, in order to hear the result of the +inquiry; and had long conversations, reported in his usual style, with +infinite 'says he's' and 'says I's,' in which he tried to prove that the +wizard was an impostor. This lets us into the secret of many of De Foe's +apparitions. They are the ghosts that frighten villagers as they cross +commons late at night, or that rattle chains and display lights in +haunted houses. Sometimes they have vexed knavish attorneys by +discovering long-hidden deeds. Sometimes they have enticed highwaymen +into dark corners of woods, and there the wretched<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">26</a></span> criminal finds in +their bags (for ghosts of this breed have good substantial luggage) +nothing but a halter and a bit of silver (value exactly 13-1/2<i>d.</i>) to +pay the hangman. When he turns to the owner, he has vanished. +Occasionally, they are the legends told by some passing traveller from +distant lands—probably genuine superstitions in their origin, but +amplified by tradition into marvellous exactitude of detail, and +garnished with long gossiping conversations. Such a ghost, which, on the +whole, is my favourite, is the mysterious Owke Mouraski. This being, +whether devil or good spirit no man knows, accompanied a traveller for +four years through the steppes of Russia, and across Norway, Turkey, and +various other countries. On the march he was always seen a mile to the +left of the party, keeping parallel with them, in glorious indifference +to roads. He crossed rivers without bridges, and the sea without ships. +Everywhere, in the wild countries, he was known by name and dreaded; for +if he entered a house, some one would die there within a year. Yet he +was good to the traveller, going so far, indeed, on one occasion, as to +lend him a horse, and frequently treating him to good advice. Towards +the end of the journey Owke Mouraski informed his companion that he was +'the inhabitant of an invisible region,' and afterwards became very +familiar with him. The traveller, indeed, would never believe that his +friend was a devil, a scepticism of which De Foe doubtfully approves. +The story, however, must be true, because, as De Foe says, he saw it in +manuscript many years ago; and certainly Owke is of a superior order to +most of the pot-house ghosts.</p> + +<p>De Foe, doubtless, had an insatiable appetite for legends of this kind, +talked about them with infinite zest in innumerable gossips, and +probably smoked pipes and consumed ale<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">27</a></span> in abundance during the process. +The ghosts are the substantial creations of the popular fancy, which no +longer nourished itself upon a genuine faith in a more lofty order of +spiritual beings. It is superstition become gross and vulgar before it +disappears for ever. Romance and poetry have pretty well departed from +these ghosts, as from the witches of the period, who are little better +than those who still linger in our country villages and fill corners of +newspapers, headed 'Superstition in the nineteenth century.' In his +novels De Foe's instinct for probability generally enables him to employ +the marvellous moderately, and, therefore, effectively; he is specially +given to dreams; they are generally verified just enough to leave us the +choice of credulity or scepticism, and are in excellent keeping with the +supposed narrator. Roxana tells us how one morning she suddenly sees her +lover's face as though it were a death's-head, and his clothes covered +with blood. In the evening the lover is murdered. One of Moll Flanders' +husbands hears her call him at a distance of many miles—a superstition, +by the way, in which Boswell, if not Johnson, fully believed. De Foe +shows his usual skill in sometimes making the visions or omens fail of a +too close fulfilment, as in the excellent dream where Robinson Crusoe +hears Friday's father tell him of the sailors' attempt to murder the +Spaniards: no part of the dream, as he says, is specifically true, +though it has a general truth; and hence we may, at our choice, suppose +it to have been supernatural, or to be merely a natural result of +Crusoe's anxiety. This region of the marvellous, however, only affects +De Foe's novels in a subordinate degree. The Owke Mouraski suggests +another field in which a lover of the mysterious could then find room +for his imagination. The world still presented a boundless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">28</a></span> wilderness +of untravelled land. Mapped and explored territory was still a bright +spot surrounded by chaotic darkness, instead of the two being in the +reverse proportions. Geographers might fill up huge tracts by writing +'here is much gold,' or putting 'elephants instead of towns.' De Foe's +gossiping acquaintance, when they were tired of ghosts, could tell of +strange adventures in wild seas, where merchantmen followed a narrow +track, exposed to the assaults of pirates; or of long journeys over +endless steppes, in the days when travelling was travelling indeed; when +distances were reckoned by months, and men might expect to meet +undiscovered tribes and monsters unimagined by natural historians. +Doubtless he had listened greedily to the stories of seafaring men and +merchants from the Gold Coast or the East. 'Captain Singleton,' to omit +'Robinson Crusoe' for the present, shows the form into which these +stories moulded themselves in his mind. Singleton, besides his other +exploits, anticipated Livingstone in crossing Africa from sea to sea. De +Foe's biographers rather unnecessarily admire the marvellous way in +which his imaginary descriptions have been confirmed by later +travellers. And it is true that Singleton found two great lakes, which +may, if we please, be identified with those of recent discoverers. His +other guesses are not surprising. As a specimen of the mode in which he +filled up the unknown space we may mention that he covers the desert +'with a kind of thick moss of a blackish dead colour,' which is not a +very impressive phenomenon. It is in the matter of wild beasts, however, +that he is strongest. Their camp is in one place surrounded by +'innumerable numbers of devilish creatures.' These creatures were as +'thick as a drove of bullocks coming to a fair,' so that they could not +fire without hitting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">29</a></span> some; in fact, a volley brought down three tigers +and two wolves, besides one creature 'of an ill-gendered kind, between a +tiger and a leopard.' Before long they met an 'ugly, venomous, deformed +kind of a snake or serpent,' which had 'a hellish, ugly, deformed look +and voice;' indeed, they would have recognised in it the being who most +haunted De Foe's imaginary world—the devil—except that they could not +think what business the devil could have where there were no people. The +fauna of this country, besides innumerable lions, tigers, leopards, and +elephants, comprised 'living creatures as big as calves, but not of that +kind,' and creatures between a buffalo and a deer, which resembled +neither; they had no horns, but legs like a cow, with a fine head and +neck, like a deer. The 'ill-gendered' beast is an admirable specimen of +De Foe's workmanship. It shows his moderation under most tempting +circumstances. No dog-headed men, no men with eyes in their breasts, or +feet that serve as umbrellas, will suit him. He must have something new, +and yet probable; and he hits upon a very serviceable animal in this +mixture between a tiger and a leopard. Surely no one could refuse to +honour such a moderate draft upon his imagination. In short, De Foe, +even in the wildest of regions, where his pencil might have full play, +sticks closely to the commonplace, and will not venture beyond the +regions of the easily conceivable.</p> + +<p>The final element in which De Foe's curiosity might find a congenial +food consisted of the stories floating about contemporary affairs. He +had talked with men who had fought in the Great Rebellion, or even in +the old German wars. He had himself been out with Monmouth, and taken +part in the fight at Sedgemoor. Doubtless that small experience of +actual warfare gave additional vivacity to his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">30</a></span> descriptions of battles, +and was useful to him, as Gibbon declares that his service with the +militia was of some assistance in describing armies of a very different +kind. There is a period in history which has a peculiar interest for all +of us. It is that which lies upon the border-land between the past and +present; which has gathered some romance from the lapse of time, and yet +is not so far off but that we have seen some of the actors, and can +distinctly realise the scenes in which they took part. Such to the +present generation is the era of the Revolutionary wars. 'Old men still +creep among us' who lived through that period of peril and excitement, +and yet we are far enough removed from them to fancy that there were +giants in those days. When De Foe wrote his novels the battles of the +great Civil War and the calamities of the Plague were passing through +this phase; and to them we owe two of his most interesting books, the +'Memoirs of a Cavalier' and the 'History of the Plague.'</p> + +<p>When such a man spins us a yarn the conditions of its being interesting +are tolerably simple. The first condition obviously is, that the plot +must be a good one, and good in the sense that a representation in +dumb-show must be sufficiently exciting, without the necessity of any +explanation of motives. The novel of sentiment or passion or character +would be altogether beyond his scope. He will accumulate any number of +facts and details; but they must be such as will speak for themselves +without the need of an interpreter. For this reason we do not imagine +that 'Roxana,' 'Moll Flanders,' 'Colonel Jack,' or 'Captain Singleton' +can fairly claim any higher interest than that which belongs to the +ordinary police report, given with infinite fulness and vivacity of +detail. In each of them there are one or two forcible situations. Roxana +pursued by her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">31</a></span> daughter, Moll Flanders in prison, and Colonel Jack as a +young boy of the streets, are powerful fragments, and well adapted for +his peculiar method. He goes on heaping up little significant facts, +till we are able to realise the situation powerfully, and we may then +supply the sentiment for ourselves. But he never seems to know his own +strength. He gives us at equal length, and with the utmost +plain-speaking, the details of a number of other positions, which are +neither interesting nor edifying. He is decent or coarse, just as he is +dull or amusing, without knowing the difference. The details about the +different connections formed by Roxana and Moll Flanders have no atom of +sentiment, and are about as wearisome as the journal of a specially +heartless lady of the same character would be at the present day. He has +been praised for never gilding objectionable objects, or making vice +attractive. To all appearance, he would have been totally unable to set +about it. He has only one mode of telling a story, and he follows the +thread of his narrative into the back-slums of London, or lodging-houses +of doubtful character, or respectable places of trade, with the same +equanimity, at a good steady jog-trot of narrative. The absence of any +passion or sentiment deprives such places of the one possible source of +interest; and we must confess that two-thirds of each of these novels +are deadly dull; the remainder, though exhibiting specimens of his +genuine power, is not far enough from the commonplace to be specially +attractive. In short, the merit of De Foe's narrative bears a direct +proportion to the intrinsic merit of a plain statement of the facts; +and, in the novels already mentioned, as there is nothing very +surprising, certainly nothing unique, about the story, his treatment +cannot raise it above a very moderate level.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">32</a></span></p> + +<p>Above these stories comes De Foe's best fragment of fictitious +history.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The 'Memoirs of a Cavalier' is a very amusing book, though +it is less fiction than history, interspersed with a few personal +anecdotes. In it there are some exquisite little bits of genuine Defoe. +The Cavalier tells us, with such admirable frankness, that he once left +the army a day or two before a battle, in order to visit some relatives +at Bath, and excuses himself so modestly for his apparent neglect of +military duty, that we cannot refuse to believe in him. A novelist, we +say, would have certainly taken us to the battle, or would, at least, +have given his hero a more heroic excuse. The character, too, of the old +soldier, who has served under Gustavus Adolphus, who is disgusted with +the raw English levies, still more disgusted with the interference of +parsons, and who has a respect for his opponents—especially Sir Thomas +Fairfax—which is compounded partly of English love of fair play, and +partly of the indifference of a professional officer—is better +supported than most of De Foe's personages. An excellent Dugald Dalgetty +touch is his constant anxiety to impress upon the Royalist commanders +the importance of a particular trick which he has learned abroad of +mixing foot soldiers with the cavalry. We must leave him, however, to +say a few words upon the 'History of the Plague,' which seems to come +next in merit to 'Robinson Crusoe.' Here De Foe has to deal with a story +of such intrinsically tragic interest that all his details become +affecting. It needs no commentary to interpret the meaning of the +terrible anecdotes, many of which are doubtless founded on fact. There +is the strange superstitious element brought out by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">33</a></span> horror of the +sudden visitation. The supposed writer hesitates as to leaving the +doomed city. He is decided to stay at last by opening the Bible at +random and coming upon the text, 'He shall deliver thee from the snare +of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.' He watches the comets: +the one which appeared before the Plague was 'of a dull, languid colour, +and its motion heavy, solemn, and slow;' the other, which preceded the +Great Fire, was 'bright and sparkling, and its motion swift and +furious.' Old women, he says, believed in them, especially 'the +hypochondriac part of the other sex,' who might, he thinks, be called +old women too. Still he half-believes himself, especially when the +second appears. He does not believe that the breath of the +plague-stricken upon a glass would leave shapes of 'dragons, snakes, and +devils, horrible to behold;' but he does believe that if they breathed +on a bird they would kill it, or 'at least make its eggs rotten.' +However, he admits that no experiments were tried. Then we have the +hideous, and sometimes horribly grotesque, incidents. There is the poor +naked creature, who runs up and down, exclaiming continually, 'Oh, the +great and the dreadful God!' but would say nothing else, and speak to no +one. There is the woman who suddenly opens a window and 'calls out, +"Death, death, death!" in a most inimitable tone, which struck me with +horror and chillness in the very blood.' There is the man who, with +death in his face, opens the door to a young apprentice sent to ask him +for money: 'Very well, child,' says the living ghost; 'go to Cripplegate +Church, and bid them ring the bell for me;' and with those words shuts +the door, goes upstairs, and dies. Then we have the horrors of the +dead-cart, and the unlucky piper who was carried off by mistake. De Foe, +with his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">34</a></span> usual ingenuity, corrects the inaccurate versions of the +story, and says that the piper was not blind, but only old and silly; +and that he does not believe that, as 'the story goes,' he set up his +pipes while in the cart. After this we cannot refuse to admit that he +was really carried off and all but buried. Another device for cheating +us into acceptance of his story is the ingenious way in which he +imitates the occasional lapses of memory of a genuine narrator, and +admits that he does not precisely recollect certain details; and still +better is the conscientious eagerness with which he distinguishes +between the occurrences of which he was an eye-witness and those which +he only knew by hearsay.</p> + +<p>This book, more than any of the others, shows a skill in selecting +telling incidents. We are sometimes in doubt whether the particular +details which occur in other stories are not put in rather by good luck +than from a due perception of their value. He thus resembles a savage, +who is as much pleased with a glass bead as with a piece of gold; but in +the 'History of the Plague' every detail goes straight to the mark. At +one point he cannot help diverging into the story of three poor men who +escape into the fields, and giving us, with his usual relish, all their +rambling conversations by the way. For the most part, however, he is +less diffusive and more pointed than usual; the greatness of the +calamity seems to have given more intensity to his style; and it leaves +all the impression of a genuine narrative, told by one who has, as it +were, just escaped from the valley of the shadow of death, with the awe +still upon him, and every terrible sight and sound fresh in his memory. +The amazing truthfulness of the style is here in its proper place; we +wish to be brought as near as may be to the facts; we want good +realistic painting more than fine sentiment. The story<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">35</a></span> reminds us of +certain ghastly photographs published during the American War, which had +been taken on the field of battle. They gave a more forcible impression +of the horrors of war than the most thrilling pictures drawn from the +fancy. In such cases we only wish the narrator to stand as much as +possible on one side, and just draw up a bit of the curtain which +conceals his gallery of horrors.</p> + +<p>It is time, however, to say enough of 'Robinson Crusoe' to justify its +traditional superiority to De Foe's other writings. The charm, as some +critics say, is difficult to analyse; and I do not profess to +demonstrate mathematically that it must necessarily be, what it is, the +most fascinating boy's book ever written, and one which older critics +may study with delight. The most obvious advantage over the secondary +novels lies in the unique situation. Lamb, in the passage from which I +have quoted, gracefully evades this point. 'Are there no solitudes,' he +says, 'out of the cave and the desert? or cannot the heart, in the midst +of crowds, feel frightfully alone?' Singleton, he suggests, is alone +with pirates less merciful than the howling monsters, the devilish +serpents, and ill-gendered creatures of De Foe's deserts. Colonel Jack +is alone amidst the London thieves when he goes to bury his treasures in +the hollow tree. This is prettily said; but it suggests rather what +another writer might have made of De Foe's heroes, than what De Foe made +of them himself. Singleton, it is true, is alone amongst the pirates, +but he takes to them as naturally as a fish takes to the water, and, +indeed, finds them a good, honest, respectable, stupid sort of people. +They stick by him and he by them, and we are never made to feel the real +horrors of his position. Colonel Jack might, in other hands, have become +an Oliver Twist, less real perhaps than De Foe has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">36</a></span> made him, but +infinitely more pathetic. De Foe tells us of his unpleasant +sleeping-places; and his occasional fears of the gallows; but of the +supposed mental struggles, of the awful solitude of soul, we hear +nothing. How can we sympathise very deeply with a young gentleman whose +recollections run chiefly upon the exact numbers of shillings and pence +captured by himself and his pocket-picking 'pals'? Similarly Robinson +Crusoe dwells but little upon the horrors of his position, and when he +does is apt to get extremely prosy. We fancy that he could never have +been in want of a solid sermon on Sunday, however much he may have +missed the church-going bell. But in 'Robinson Crusoe,' as in the +'History of the Plague,' the story speaks for itself. To explain the +horrors of living among thieves, we must have some picture of internal +struggles, of a sense of honour opposed to temptation, and a pure mind +in danger of contamination. De Foe's extremely straightforward and +prosaic view of life prevents him from setting any such sentimental +trials before us; the lad avoids the gallows, and in time becomes the +honest master of a good plantation; and there's enough. But the horrors +of abandonment on a desert island can be appreciated by the simplest +sailor or schoolboy. The main thing is to bring out the situation +plainly and forcibly, to tell us of the difficulties of making pots and +pans, of catching goats and sowing corn, and of avoiding audacious +cannibals. This task De Foe performs with unequalled spirit and +vivacity. In his first discovery of a new art he shows the freshness so +often conspicuous in first novels. The scenery was just that which had +peculiar charms for his fancy; it was one of those half-true legends of +which he had heard strange stories from seafaring men, and possibly from +the acquaintances of his hero himself. He brings out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">37</a></span> the shrewd +vigorous character of the Englishman thrown upon his own resources with +evident enjoyment of his task. Indeed, De Foe tells us very emphatically +that in Robinson Crusoe he saw a kind of allegory of his own fate. He +had suffered from solitude of soul. Confinement in his prison is +represented in the book by confinement in an island; and even a +particular incident, here and there, such as the fright he receives one +night from something in his bed, 'was word for word a history of what +happened.' In other words, this novel too, like many of the best ever +written, has in it the autobiographical element which makes a man speak +from greater depths of feeling than in a purely imaginary story.</p> + +<p>It would indeed be easy to show that the story, though in one sense +marvellously like truth, is singularly wanting as a psychological study. +Friday is no real savage, but a good English servant without plush. He +says 'muchee' and 'speakee,' but he becomes at once a civilised being, +and in his first conversation puzzles Crusoe terribly by that awkward +theological question, why God did not kill the devil—for +characteristically enough Crusoe's first lesson includes a little +instruction upon the enemy of mankind. He found, however, that it was +'not so easy to imprint right notions in Friday's mind about the devil, +as it was about the being of a God.' This is comparatively a trifle; but +Crusoe himself is all but impossible. Steele, indeed, gives an account +of Selkirk, from which he infers that 'this plain man's story is a +memorable example that he is happiest who confines his wants to natural +necessities;' but the facts do not warrant this pet doctrine of an +old-fashioned school. Selkirk's state of mind may be inferred from two +or three facts. He had almost forgotten to talk; he had learnt to catch +goats by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">38</a></span> hunting them on foot; and he had acquired the exceedingly +difficult art of making fire by rubbing two sticks. In other words, his +whole mind was absorbed in providing a few physical necessities, and he +was rapidly becoming a savage—for a man who can't speak and can make +fire is very near the Australian. We may infer, what is probable from +other cases, that a man living fifteen years by himself, like Crusoe, +would either go mad or sink into the semi-savage state. De Foe really +describes a man in prison, not in solitary confinement. We should not be +so pedantic as to call for accuracy in such matters; but the difference +between the fiction and what we believe would have been the reality is +significant. De Foe, even in 'Robinson Crusoe,' gives a very inadequate +picture of the mental torments to which his hero is exposed. He is +frightened by a parrot calling him by name, and by the strangely +picturesque incident of the footmark on the sand; but, on the whole, he +takes his imprisonment with preternatural stolidity. His stay on the +island produces the same state of mind as might be due to a dull Sunday +in Scotland. For this reason, the want of power in describing emotion as +compared with the amazing power of describing facts, 'Robinson Crusoe' +is a book for boys rather than men, and, as Lamb says, for the kitchen +rather than for higher circles. It falls short of any high intellectual +interest. When we leave the striking situation and get to the second +part, with the Spaniards and Will Atkins talking natural theology to his +wife, it sinks to the level of the secondary stories. But for people who +are not too proud to take a rather low order of amusement 'Robinson +Crusoe' will always be one of the most charming of books. We have the +romantic and adventurous incidents upon which the most unflinching +realism can be set to work<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">39</a></span> without danger of vulgarity. Here is +precisely the story suited to De Foe's strength and weakness. He is +forced to be artistic in spite of himself. He cannot lose the thread of +the narrative and break it into disjointed fragments, for the limits of +the island confine him as well as his hero. He cannot tire us with +details, for all the details of such a story are interesting; it is made +up of petty incidents, as much as the life of a prisoner reduced to +taming flies, or making saws out of penknives. The island does as well +as the Bastille for making trifles valuable to the sufferer and to us. +The facts tell the story of themselves, without any demand for romantic +power to press them home to us; and the efforts to give an air of +authenticity to the story, which sometimes make us smile, and sometimes +rather bore us, in other novels are all to the purpose; for there is a +real point in putting such a story in the mouth of the sufferer, and in +giving us for the time an illusory belief in his reality. It is one of +the exceptional cases in which the poetical aspect of a position is +brought out best by the most prosaic accuracy of detail; and we imagine +that Robinson Crusoe's island, with all his small household torments, +will always be more impressive than the more gorgeously coloured island +of Enoch Arden. When we add that the whole book shows the freshness of a +writer employed on his first novel—though at the mature age of +fifty-eight; seeing in it an allegory of his own experience embodied in +the scenes which most interested his imagination, we see some reasons +why 'Robinson Crusoe' should hold a distinct rank by itself amongst his +works. As De Foe was a man of very powerful but very limited +imagination—able to see certain aspects of things with extraordinary +distinctness, but little able to rise above them—even his greatest book +shows his weakness,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">40</a></span> and scarcely satisfies a grown-up man with a taste +for high art. In revenge, it ought, according to Rousseau, to be for a +time the whole library of a boy, chiefly, it seems, to teach him that +the stock of an ironmonger is better than that of a jeweller. We may +agree in the conclusion without caring about the reason; and to have +pleased all the boys in Europe for near a hundred and fifty years is, +after all, a remarkable feat.</p> + +<p>One remark must be added, which scarcely seems to have been sufficiently +noticed by Defoe's critics. He cannot be understood unless we remember +that he was primarily and essentially a journalist, and that even his +novels are part of his journalism. He was a pioneer in the art of +newspaper writing, and anticipated with singular acuteness many later +developments of his occupation. The nearest parallel to him is Cobbett, +who wrote still better English, though he could hardly have written a +'Robinson Crusoe.' Defoe, like Cobbett, was a sturdy middle-class +Englishman, and each was in his time the most effective advocate of the +political views of his class. De Foe represented the Whiggism, not of +the great 'junto' or aristocratic ring, but of the dissenters and +tradesmen whose prejudices the junto had to turn to account. He would +have stood by Chatham in the time of Wilkes and of the American War; he +would have demanded parliamentary reform in the time of Brougham and +Bentham, and he would have been a follower of the Manchester school in +the time of Bright and Cobden. We all know the type, and have made up +our minds as to its merits. When De Foe came to be a subject of +biography in this century, he was of course praised for his +enlightenment by men of congenial opinions. He was held up as a model +politician, not only for his creed but for his independence. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">41</a></span>The +revelations of his last biographer, Mr. Lee, showed unfortunately that +considerable deductions must be made from the independence. He was, as +we now know, in the pay of Government for many years, while boasting of +his perfect purity; he was transferred, like a mere dependent, from the +Whigs to the Tories and back again. In the reign of George I. he +consented to abandon his character in order to act as a spy upon unlucky +Jacobite colleagues. It is to the credit of Harley's acuteness that he +was the first English minister to make a systematic use of the press and +was the patron both of Swift and De Foe. But to use the press was then +to make a mere tool of the author. De Foe was a journalist, living, and +supporting a family, by his pen, in the days when a journalist had to +choose between the pillory and dependence. He soon had enough of the +pillory and preferred to do very dirty services for his employer. Other +journalists, I fear, since his day have consented to serve masters whom +in their hearts they disapproved. It may, I think, be fairly said on +behalf of De Foe that in the main he worked for causes of which he +really approved; that he never sacrificed the opinions to which he was +most deeply attached; that his morality was, at worst, above that of +many contemporary politicians; and that, in short, he had a conscience, +though he could not afford to obey it implicitly. He says himself, and I +think the statement has its pathetic side, that he made a kind of +compromise with that awkward instinct. He praised those acts only of the +Government which he really approved, though he could not afford to +denounce those from which he differed. Undoubtedly, as many respectable +moralists have told us, the man who endeavours to draw such lines will +get into difficulties and probably emerge with a character not a little +soiled in the process. But after all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">42</a></span> as things go, it is something to +find that a journalist has really a conscience, even though his +conscience be a little too open to solid arguments. He was still capable +of blushing. Let us be thankful that in these days our journalists are +too high-minded to be ever required to blush. Here, however, I have only +to speak of the effect of De Foe's position upon his fictions. He had +early begun to try other than political modes of journalism. His account +of the great storm of 1703 was one of his first attempts as a reporter; +and it is characteristic that, as he was in prison at the time, he had +already to report things seen only by the eye of faith. He tried at an +early period to give variety to his 'Review' by some of the 'social' +articles which afterwards became the staple of the 'Tatler' and +'Spectator.' When, after the death of Queen Anne, there was a political +lull he struck out new paths. It was then that he wrote lives of +highwaymen and dissenting divines, and that he patched up any narratives +which he could get hold of, and gave them the shape of authentic +historical documents. He discovered the great art of interviewing, and +one of his performances might still pass for a masterpiece. Jack +Sheppard, when already in the cart beneath the gallows, gave a paper to +a bystander, of which the life published by De Foe on the following day +professed to be a reproduction. Nothing that could be turned into copy +for the newspaper or the sixpenny pamphlet of the day came amiss to this +forerunner of journalistic enterprise. This is the true explanation of +'Robinson Crusoe' and its successors. 'Robinson Crusoe,' in fact, is +simply an application on a larger scale of the device which he was +practising every day. It is purely and simply a masterly bit of +journalism. It affects to be a true story, as, of course, every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">43</a></span> story +in a newspaper affects to be true; though De Foe had made the not very +remote discovery that it is often easier to invent the facts than to +investigate them. He is simply a reporter <i>minus</i> the veracity. Like any +other reporter, he assumes that the interest of his story depends +obviously and entirely upon its verisimilitude. He relates the +adventures of the genuine Alexander Selkirk, only elaborated into more +detail, just as a modern reporter might give us an account of Mr. +Stanley's African expedition if Mr. Stanley had been unable to do so for +himself. He is always in the attitude of mind of the newspaper +correspondent, who has been interviewing the hero of an interesting +story and ventures at most a little safe embroidery. This explains a +remark made by Dickens, who complained that the account of Friday's +death showed an 'utter want of tenderness and sentiment,' and says +somewhere that 'Robinson Crusoe' is the only great novel which never +moves either to laughter or to tears. The creator of Oliver Twist and +Little Nell was naturally scandalised by De Foe's dry and matter-of-fact +narrative. But De Foe had never approached the conception of his art +which afterwards became familiar. He had nothing to do with sentiment or +psychology; those elements of interest came in with Richardson and +Fielding; he was simply telling a true story and leaving his readers to +feel what they pleased. It never even occurred to him, more than it +occurs to the ordinary reporter, to analyse character or describe +scenery or work up sentiment. He was simply a narrator of plain facts. +He left poetry and reflection to Mr. Pope or Mr. Addison, as your +straightforward annalist in a newspaper has no thoughts of rivalling +Lord Tennyson or Mr. Froude. His narratives were fictitious only in the +sense that the facts did not happen;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">44</a></span> but that trifling circumstance was +to make no difference to the mode of writing them. The poetical element +would have been as much out of place as it would have been in a +merchant's ledger. He could not, indeed, help introducing a little +moralising, for he was a typical English middle-class dissenter. Some of +his simple-minded commentators have even given him credit, upon the +strength of such passages, for lofty moral purpose. They fancy that his +lives of criminals, real or imaginary, were intended to be tracts +showing that vice leads to the gallows. No doubt, De Foe had the same +kind of solid homespun morality as Hogarth, for example, which was not +in its way a bad thing. But one need not be very cynical to believe that +his real object in writing such books was to produce something that +would sell, and that in the main he was neither more nor less moral than +the last newspaper writer who has told us the story of a sensational +murder.</p> + +<p>De Foe, therefore, may be said to have stumbled almost unconsciously +into novel-writing. He was merely aiming at true stories, which happened +not to be true. But accidentally, or rather unconsciously, he could not +help presenting us with a type of curious interest; for he necessarily +described himself and the readers whose tastes he understood and shared +so thoroughly. His statement that 'Robinson Crusoe' was a kind of +allegory was truer than he knew. In 'Robinson Crusoe' is De Foe, and +more than De Foe, for he is the typical Englishman of his time. He is +the broad-shouldered, beef-eating John Bull, who has been shouldering +his way through the world ever since. Drop him in a desert island, and +he is just as sturdy and self-composed as if he were in Cheapside. +Instead of shrieking or writing poetry, becoming a wild hunter or a +religious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">45</a></span> hermit, he calmly sets about building a house and making +pottery and laying out a farm. He does not accommodate himself to his +surroundings; they have got to accommodate themselves to him. He meets a +savage and at once annexes him, and preaches him such a sermon as he had +heard from the exemplary Dr. Doddridge. Cannibals come to make a meal of +him, and he calmly stamps them out with the means provided by +civilisation. Long years of solitude produce no sort of effect upon him +morally or mentally. He comes home as he went out, a solid keen +tradesman, having, somehow or other, plenty of money in his pockets, and +ready to undertake similar risks in the hope of making a little more. He +has taken his own atmosphere with him to the remotest quarters. Wherever +he has set down his solid foot, he has taken permanent possession of the +country. The ancient religions of the primæval East or the quaint +beliefs of savage tribes make no particular impression upon him, except +a passing spasm of disgust at anybody having different superstitions +from his own; and, being in the main a good-natured animal in a stolid +way of his own, he is able to make use even of popish priests if they +will help to found a new market for his commerce. The portrait is not +the less effective because the artist was so far from intending it that +he could not even conceive of anybody being differently constituted from +himself. It shows us all the more vividly what was the manner of man +represented by the stalwart Englishman of the day; what were the men who +were building up vast systems of commerce and manufacture; shoving their +intrusive persons into every quarter of the globe; evolving a great +empire out of a few factories in the East; winning the American +continent for the dominant English race; sweeping up Australia by the +way as a convenient settlement for convicts; stamping firmly and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">46</a></span> +decisively on all toes that got in their way; blundering enormously and +preposterously, and yet always coming out steadily planted on their +feet; eating roast beef and plum-pudding; drinking rum in the tropics; +singing 'God Save the King' and intoning Watts's hymns under the nose of +ancient dynasties and prehistoric priesthoods; managing always to get +their own way, to force a reluctant world to take note of them as a +great if rather disagreeable fact, and making it probable that, in long +ages to come, the English of 'Robinson Crusoe' will be the native +language of inhabitants of every region under the sun.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Defoe may have had some materials for this story; but there +seems to be little doubt that it is substantially his own.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">47</a></span></p> +<h2><i>RICHARDSON'S NOVELS</i></h2> + + +<p>The literary artifice, so often patronised by Lord Macaulay of +describing a character by a series of paradoxes, is of course, in one +sense, a mere artifice. It is easy enough to make a dark grey black and +a light grey white, and to bring the two into unnatural proximity. But +it rests also upon the principle which is more of a platitude than a +paradox, that our chief faults often lie close to our chief merits. The +greatest man is perhaps one who is so equably developed that he has the +strongest faculties in the most perfect equilibrium, and is apt to be +somewhat uninteresting to the rest of mankind. The man of lower eminence +has some one or more faculties developed out of all proportion to the +rest, with the natural result of occasionally overbalancing him. +Extraordinary memories with weak logical faculties, wonderful +imaginative sensibility with a complete absence of self-control, and +other defective conformations of mind, supply the raw materials for a +luminary of the second order, and imply a predisposition to certain +faults, which are natural complements to the conspicuous merits.</p> + +<p>Such reflections naturally occur in speaking of one of our greatest +literary reputations, whose popularity is almost in an inverse ratio to +his celebrity. Every one knows the names of Sir Charles Grandison and +Clarissa Harlowe. They are amongst the established types which serve to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">48</a></span> +point a paragraph; but the volumes in which they are described remain +for the most part in undisturbed repose, sleeping peacefully amongst +Charles Lamb's <i>biblia a-biblia</i>, books which are no books, or, as he +explains, those books 'which no gentleman's library should be without.' +They never enjoy the honours of cheap reprints; the modern reader +shudders at a novel in eight volumes, and declines to dig for amusement +in so profound a mine; when some bold inquirer dips into their pages he +generally fancies that the sleep of years has been somehow absorbed into +the paper; a certain soporific aroma exhales from the endless files of +fictitious correspondence. This contrast, however, between popularity +and celebrity is not so rare as to deserve special notice. Richardson's +slumber may be deeper than that of most men of equal fame, but it is not +quite unprecedented. The string of paradoxes, which it would be easy to +apply to Richardson, would turn upon a different point. The odd thing +is, not that so many people should have forgotten him, but that he +should have been remembered by people at first sight so unlike him. Here +is a man, we might say, whose special characteristic it was to be a +milksop—who provoked Fielding to a coarse hearty burst of ridicule—who +was steeped in the incense of useless adulation from a throng of +middle-aged lady worshippers—who wrote his novels expressly to +recommend little unimpeachable moral maxims, as that evil courses lead +to unhappy deaths, that ladies ought to observe the laws of propriety, +and generally that it is an excellent thing to be thoroughly +respectable; who lived an obscure life in a petty coterie in fourth-rate +London society, and was in no respect at a point of view more exalted +than that of his companions. What greater contrast can be imagined in +its way than that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">49</a></span> between Richardson, with his second-rate +eighteenth-century priggishness and his twopenny-tract morality, and the +modern school of French novelists, who are certainly not prigs, and +whose morality is by no means that of tracts? We might have expected <i>à +priori</i> that they would have summarily put him down, as a hopeless +Philistine. Yet Richardson was idolised by some of their best writers; +Balzac, for example, and George Sand, speak of him with reverence; and a +writer who is, perhaps, as odd a contrast to Richardson as could well be +imagined—Alfred de Musset—calls 'Clarissa' <i>le premier roman du +monde</i>. What is the secret which enables the steady old printer, with +his singular limitation to his own career of time and space, to impose +upon the Byronic Parisian of the next century? Amongst his +contemporaries Diderot expresses an almost fanatical admiration of +Richardson for his purity and power, and declares characteristically +that he will place Richardson's works on the same shelf with those of +Moses, Homer, Euripides, and other favourite writers; he even goes so +far as to excuse Clarissa's belief in Christianity on the ground of her +youthful innocence. To continue in the paradoxical vein, we might ask +how the quiet tradesman could create the character which has stood ever +since for a type of the fine gentleman of the period; or how from the +most prosaic of centuries should spring one of the most poetical of +feminine ideals? We can hardly fancy a genuine hero with a pigtail, or a +heroine in a hoop and high-heeled shoes, nor believe that persons who +wore those articles of costume could possess any very exalted virtues. +Perhaps our grandchildren may have the same difficulty about the race +which wears crinolines and chimney-pot hats.</p> + +<p>It is a fact, however, that our grandfathers, in spite of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">50</a></span> their belief +in pigtails, and in Pope's poetry, and other matters that have gone out +of fashion, had some very excellent qualities, and even some genuine +sentiment, in their compositions. Indeed, now that their peculiarities +have been finally packed away in various lumber-rooms, and the revolt +against the old-fashioned school of thought and manners has become +triumphant instead of militant, we are beginning to see the picturesque +side of their character. They have gathered something of the halo that +comes with the lapse of years; and social habits that looked prosaic +enough to contemporaries, and to the generation which had to fight +against them, have gained a touch of romance. Richardson's characters +wear a costume and speak a language which are indeed queer and +old-fashioned, but are now far enough removed from the present to have a +certain piquancy; and it is becoming easier to recognise the real genius +which created them, as the active aversion to the forms in which it was +necessarily clothed tends to disappear. The wigs and the high-heeled +shoes are not without a certain pleasing quaintness; and when we have +surmounted this cause of disgust, we can see more plainly what was the +real power which men of the most opposite schools in art have +recognised. Readers whose appetite for ancient fiction is insufficient +to impel them to a perusal of 'Clarissa' may yet find some amusement in +turning over the curious collection of letters published with a life by +Mrs. Barbauld in 1804. Nowhere can we find a more vivid picture of the +social stratum to which Richardson belonged. We take a seat in the old +gentleman's shop, or drop in to take a dish of tea with him at North +End, in Hammersmith. We learn to know them almost as well as we know the +literary circle of the next generation from Boswell or the higher social +sphere from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">51</a></span> Horace Walpole—and it is a pleasant relief, after reading +the solemn histories which recall the struggles of Walpole and +Chesterfield and their like, to drop in upon this quiet little coterie +of homely commonplace people leading calm domestic lives and amusingly +unconscious of the political and intellectual storms which were raging +outside. Richardson himself was the typical industrious apprentice. He +was the son of a London tradesman who had witnessed with due horror the +Popish machinations of James II. Richardson, born just after the +Revolution, had been apprenticed to a printer, married his master's +daughter, set up a fairly successful business, was master of the +Stationers' Company in 1754, and was prosperous enough to have his +country box, first at North End and afterwards at Parson's Green. He +never learned any language but his own. He had taken to writing from his +infancy; he composed little stories of an edifying tendency and had +written love-letters for young women of his acquaintance. From his +experience in these departments he acquired the skill which was +afterwards displayed in 'Pamela' and his two later and superior novels. +We hear dimly of many domestic trials: of the loss of children, some of +whom had lived to be 'delightful prattlers,' of 'eleven affecting deaths +in two years.' Who were the eleven remains unknown. His sorrows have +long passed into oblivion, unless so far as the sentiment was transmuted +into his writings. We do not know whether it was from calamity or +constitutional infirmity that he became a very nervous and tremulous +little man. He never dared to ride, but exercised himself on a +'chamber-horse,' one of which apparently wooden animals he kept at each +of his houses. For years he could not raise a glass to his lips without +help. His dread of altercations prevented him from going often<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">52</a></span> among +his workmen. He gave his orders in writing that he might not have to +bawl to a deaf foreman. He gave up 'wine and flesh and fish.' He drew a +capital portrait of himself, for the benefit of a lady still unknown to +him, who recognised him by its help at a distance of 'above three +hundred yards.' His description is minute enough: 'Short; rather plump +than emaciated, notwithstanding his complaints; about 5 foot 5 inches; +fair wig, lightish cloth coat, all black besides; one hand generally in +his bosom, the other, a cane in it, which he leans upon under the skirts +of his coat usually, that it may imperceptibly serve him as a support +when attacked by sudden tremors or startings and dizziness, which too +frequently attack him, but, thank God, not so often as formerly; looking +directly foreright, as passers by would imagine, but observing all that +stirs on either hand of him without moving his short neck; hardly ever +turning back; of a light-brown complexion; teeth not yet failing him; +smoothish-faced and ruddy cheeked; at some times looking to be about +sixty-five, at others much younger' (really sixty); 'a regular even pace +stealing away ground rather than seeming to rid it; a grey eye, too +often overclouded by mistinesses from the head; by chance lively—very +lively it will be if he have hopes of seeing a lady whom he loves and +honours; his eye always on the ladies; if they have very large hoops, he +looks down and supercilious and as if he would be thought wise, but +perhaps the sillier for that; as he approaches a lady his eye is never +fixed first upon her face, but upon her feet and thence he raises it up +pretty quickly for a dull eye; and one would think (if we thought him at +all worthy of observation) that from her air and the last beheld (her +face) he sets her down in his mind as <i>so</i> and <i>so</i>, and then passes on +to the next object he meets; only then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">53</a></span> looking back, if he greatly +likes or dislikes, as if he would see if the lady appear to be all of a +piece in the one light or the other.' After this admirable likeness we +can appreciate better the two coloured engravings in the letters. +Richardson looks like a plump white mouse in a wig, at once vivacious +and timid. We see him in one picture toddling along the Pantiles at +Tunbridge-Wells, in the neighbourhood of the great Mr. Pitt and Speaker +Onslow and the bigamous Duchess of Kingston and Colley Cibber and the +cracked and shrivelled-up Whiston and a (perhaps not the famous) Mr. +Johnson in company with a bishop. In the other, he is sitting in his +parlour with its stiff old-fashioned furniture and a glimpse into the +garden, reading 'Sir Charles Grandison' to the admirable Miss Mulso, +afterwards Mrs. Chapone, and a small party, inclusive of the artist, +Miss Highmore, to whom we owe sincere gratitude for this peep into the +past. Richardson sits in his 'usual morning dress,' a kind of brown +dressing-gown with a skull-cap on his head, filling the chair with his +plump little body, and raising one foot (or has the artist found +difficulties in planting both upon the ground?) to point his moral with +an emphatic stamp.</p> + +<p>Many eminent men of his time were polite to Richardson after he had won +fame at the mature age of fifty. He was not the man to presume on his +position. He was 'very shy of obtruding himself on persons of +condition.' He never rose like Pope, whose origin was not very +dissimilar, to speak to princes and ministers as an equal. He was always +the obsequious and respectful shopkeeper. The great Warburton wrote a +letter to his 'good sir'—a phrase equivalent to the two fingers of a +dignified greeting—suggesting, in Pope's name and his own, a plan for +continuing 'Pamela.' She was to be the ingenuous young person shocked at +the conventionalities <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">54</a></span>of good society. Richardson sensibly declined a +plan for which he was unfitted; and in 1747 Warburton condescended to +write a preface to 'Clarissa Harlowe,' pointing out (very +superfluously!) the nature of the intended moral. Warburton afterwards +took offence at a passage in the same book which he took to glance at +Pope; and Richardson was on friendly terms with two authors, Edwards, of +the 'Canons of Criticism,' and Aaron Hill, who were among the +multitudinous enemies of Warburton and his patron Pope. Hill's letters +in the correspondence are worth reading as illustrations of the old +moral of literary vanity. He expresses with unusual <i>naïveté</i> the +doctrine, so pleasant to the unsuccessful, that success means the +reverse of merit. Pope's fame was due to personal assiduities, and 'a +certain bladdery swell of management.' It is already passing away. He +does not speak from jealousy, for nobody ever courted fame 'with less +solicitude than I.' But for all that, there will come a time! He knows +it on a surer ground than vanity. Let us hope that this little salve to +self-esteem never lost its efficacy. Surely of all prayers the most +injudicious was that of Burns, that we might see ourselves as others see +us. What would become of us? Richardson, as we might expect, was highly +esteemed by Young of the 'Night Thoughts,' and by Johnson, to both of +whom he seems to have given substantial proofs of friendship. He wrote +the only number of the 'Rambler' which had a good sale, and helped +Johnson when under arrest for debt; Johnson repaid him by the phrase, +which long passed for the orthodox decision, that Richardson taught the +passions to move at the command of virtue. But the most delightful of +Richardson's friends was the irrepressible Colley Cibber. Mrs. +Pilkington, a disreputable adventuress, faintly remembered <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">55</a></span>by her +relations to Swift, describes Cibber's reception of the unpublished +'Clarissa.' 'The dear gentleman did almost rave. When I told him that +she (Clarissa) must die, he said G—— d—— him if she should, and that +he should no longer believe Providence or eternal wisdom or goodness +governed the world if merit and innocence and beauty were to be so +destroyed. "Nay," added he, "my mind is so hurt with the thought of her +being violated, that were I to see her in heaven, sitting on the knees +of the blessed Virgin and crowned with glory, her sufferings would still +make me feel horror, horror distilled." These were his strongly +emphatical impressions.' Cibber's own letters are as lively as Mrs. +Pilkington's report of his talk. 'The delicious meal I made off Miss +Byron on Sunday last,' he says, 'has given me an appetite for another +slice of her, off from the spit, before she is served up to the public +table; if about five o'clock to-morrow afternoon be not inconvenient, +Mrs. Brown and I will come and nibble upon a bit more of her! And we +have grace after meat as well as before.' 'The devil take the insolent +goodness of your imagination!' exclaims the lively old buck, now past +eighty, and as well preserved as if he had never encountered Pope's +'scathing satire' (does satire ever 'scathe'?) or Fielding's rough +horseplay. One of Richardson's lady admirers saw Cibber flirting with +fine ladies at Tunbridge Wells in 1754 (he was born in 1671), and +miserable when he was neglected for a moment by the greatest <i>belle</i> in +the society. He professed to be only seventy-seven!</p> + +<p>Perhaps even Cibber was beaten in flattery by the 'minister of the +gospel' who thought that if some of Clarissa's letters had been found in +the Bible they would have been regarded as manifest proofs of divine +inspiration.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">56</a></span> But the more delightful incense came from the circle of +admiring young ladies who called him their dear papa; who passed long +days at his feet at Parson's Green; allowed him to escape to his +summer-house to add a letter to the growing volumes, and after an early +dinner persuaded him to read it aloud. Their eager discussions as to the +fate of the characters and the little points of morality which arose are +continued in his gossiping letters. When a child he had been the +confidant of tender-hearted maidens, and now he became a kind of +spiritual director. He was, as Miss Collier said, the 'only champion and +protector' of her sex. Women, and surely they must be good judges, +thought that he understood the feminine heart, as their descendants +afterwards attributed the same power to Balzac. The most attractive of +his feminine correspondents was Mrs. Klopstock, wife of the 'German +Milton,' who tells her only little love story with charming simplicity, +and thus lays her homage at the feet of Richardson. 'Honoured sir, will +you permit me to take this opportunity, in sending a letter to Dr. +Young, to address myself to you? It is very long that I wished to do it. +Having finished your "Clarissa" (oh, the heavenly book!), I would have +prayed you to write the history of a <i>manly</i> Clarissa, but I had not +courage enough at that time. I should have it no more to-day, as this is +only my first English letter; but I have it! It may be because I am now +Klopstock's wife (I believe you know my husband by Mr. Hohorst), and +then I was only the single young girl. You have since written the manly +Clarissa without my prayer; oh, you have done it to the great joy and +thanks of all your happy readers! Now you can write no more, you must +write the history of an angel!'</p> + +<p>Mrs. Klopstock died young; having had the happiness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">57</a></span> to find that +Richardson did not resent her intrusion, great author as he was. Another +correspondent, Lady Bradshaigh, wife of a Lancashire country gentleman, +took precautions which show what a halo then surrounded the author in +the eyes of his countrywomen. It was worth while to be an author then! +Lady Bradshaigh was a good housewife, it seems, but, having no children, +was able to devote some time to reading. She obtained a portrait of +Richardson, but altered the name to Dickenson, in order that no one +might suspect her of corresponding with an author. After reading the +first four volumes of 'Clarissa' (which were separately published), she +wrote under a feigned name to beg the author to alter the impending +catastrophe. She spoke as the mouthpiece of a 'multitude of admirers' +who desired to see Lovelace reformed and married to Clarissa. 'Sure you +will think it worth your while, sir, to save his soul!' she exclaims. +Richardson was too good an artist to spoil his tragedy; and was rewarded +by an account of her emotions on reading the last volumes. She laid the +book down in agonies, took it up again, shed a flood of tears, and threw +herself upon her couch to compose her mind. Her husband, who was +plodding after her, begged her to read no more. But she had promised +Richardson to finish the book. She nerved herself for the task; her +sleep was broken, she woke in tears during the night, and burst into +tears at her meals. Charmed by her delicious sufferings, she became +Richardson's friend for life, though it was long before she could muster +up courage to meet him face to face.</p> + +<p>Yet Lady Bradshaigh seems to have been a sensible woman, and shows +vivacity and intelligence in some of her discussions with Richardson. If +he was not altogether<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">58</a></span> spoilt by the flattery of so many excellent +women, we can only explain it by remembering that he did not become +famous till he was past fifty, and therefore past spoiling. One +peculiarity, indeed, is rather unpleasant in these letters. Richardson's +worshippers evidently felt that their deity was jealous, and made no +scruple of offering the base sacrifice of abuse of rival celebrities. +Richardson adopts their tone; he is always gibing at Fielding. '<i>I could +not help telling his sister</i>', he observes—a sister, too, whose merits +Fielding had praised with his usual generosity—'that I was equally +surprised at and concerned for his continuous lowness. Had your brother, +said I, been born in a stable or been a runner at a sponging-house we +should have thought him a genius,' but now! So another great writer came +just in time to be judged by Richardson. A bishop asked him, 'Who is +this Yorick,' who has, it seems, been countenanced by an 'ingenious +dutchess.' Richardson briefly replies that the bishop cannot have looked +into the books, 'execrable I cannot but call them.' Their only merit is +that they are 'too gross to be inflaming.' The history of the mutual +judgments upon each other of contemporary authors would be more amusing +than edifying.</p> + +<p>Richardson should not have been so hard upon Sterne, for Sterne was in +some degree following Richardson's lead. 'What is the meaning,' asks +Lady Bradshaigh (about 1749) 'of the word <i>sentimental</i>, so much in +vogue among the polite both in town and country? Everything clever and +agreeable is comprehended in that word; but I am convinced a wrong +interpretation is given, because it is impossible everything clever and +agreeable can be so common as that word.' She has heard of a sentimental +man; a sentimental party, and a sentimental walk; and has been applauded +for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">59</a></span> calling a letter sentimental. I hope that the philological +dictionary may tell us what was the first appearance of a word which, in +this sense, marks an epoch in literature, and, indeed, in much else. I +find the word used in the old sense in 1752 in a pamphlet upon +'<i>Sentimental</i> differences in point of faith,' that is, differences of +sentiment or opinion. When, a few years later, Sterne published his +'Sentimental Journey,' Wesley asks in his journal what is the meaning of +the new phrase, and observes (the illustration has lost its point) that +you might as well say <i>continental</i>. The appearance of the phrase +coincides with the appearance of the thing; for Richardson was the first +sentimentalist. We may trace the same movement elsewhere, though we need +not here speculate upon the cause. Pope's 'Essay on Man' is the +expression in verse of the dominant theology of the Deists and their +opponents, which was beginning to be condemned as dry and frigid. A +desire for something more 'sentimental' shows itself in Young's 'Night +Thoughts,' in Hervey's 'Meditations,' and appears in the religious +domain as Methodism. The literary historian has to trace the rise of the +same tendency in various places. In Germany, as we see from Mrs. +Klopstock's enthusiasm, the flame was only waiting for the spark. +Goethe, in his 'Wahrheit und Dichtung,' notices the influence of +Richardson's novels in Germany. They were among the predisposing causes +of Wertherism. In France, as I have said, Richardson found congenial +hearers, and Clarissa's soul doubtless transmigrated into the heroine of +the 'Nouvelle Héloïse.' Even in stubborn England, where Fielding's +masculine contempt for the whinings of 'Pamela' was more congenial, the +students of Richardson were prepared to receive 'Ossian' with +enthusiasm, and to be ecstatic over 'Tristram Shandy.' That Richardson<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">60</a></span> +would have agreed with Johnson in regarding Rousseau as fit only for a +penal settlement, and that he actually considered Sterne to be +'execrable,' does not relieve him of the responsibility or deprive him +of the glory. He is not the only writer who has helped to evoke a spirit +which he would be the last to sanction. When he encouraged his admirably +proper young ladies to indulge in 'sentimentalism,' he could not tell +where so vague an impulse would ultimately land them. He was a sound +Tory, and an accepter of all established creeds. Sentimentalism with him +was merely a delight in cultivating the emotions, without any thought of +consequences; or, later, of cultivating them with the assumption that +they would continue to move, as he bade them, 'at the command of +virtue.' Once set in motion, they chose to take paths of their own; they +revolted against conventions, even those which he held most sacred; and +by degrees set up 'Nature' as an idol, and admired the ingenuous savage +instead of the respectable Clarissa, and denounced all corruption, +including, alas, the British constitution, and even the Thirty-nine +Articles, and put themselves at the disposal of all manner of +revolutionary audacities. But the little printer was safe in his grave, +and knew not of what strange developments he had been the ignorant +accomplice.</p> + +<p>To return, however, it must be granted that Richardson's sympathy with +women gives a remarkable power to his works. Nothing is more rare than +to find a great novelist who can satisfactorily describe the opposite +sex. Women's heroes are women in disguise, or mere lay-figures, walking +gentlemen who parade tolerably through their parts, but have no real +vitality. On the other hand, the heroines of male writers are for the +most part unnaturally strained or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">61</a></span> quite colourless; male hands are too +heavy for the delicate work required. Milton could draw a majestic +Satan, but his Eve is no better than a good-managing housekeeper who +knows her place. It is, therefore, remarkable that Richardson's greatest +triumph should be in describing a woman, and that most of his feminine +characters are more life-like and more delicately discriminated than his +men. Unluckily, his conspicuous faults result from the same cause. His +moral prosings savour of the endless gossip over a dish of chocolate in +which his heroines delight; we can imagine the applause with which his +admiring feminine circle would receive his demonstration of the fact, +that adversity is harder to bear than prosperity, or the sentiment that +'a man of principle, whose love is founded in reason, and whose object +is mind rather than person, must make a worthy woman happy.' These are +admirable sentiments, but they savour of the serious tea-party. If 'Tom +Jones' has about it an occasional suspicion of beer and pipes at the +bar, 'Sir Charles Grandison' recalls an indefinite consumption of tea +and small-talk. In short, the feminine part of Richardson's character +has a little too much affinity to Mrs. Gamp—not that he would ever be +guilty of putting gin in his cup, but that he would have the same +capacity for spinning out indefinite twaddle of a superior kind. And, of +course, he fell into the faults which beset the members of mutual +admiration societies in general, but especially those which consist +chiefly of women. Men who meet for purposes of mutual flattery become +unnaturally solemn and priggish; they never free themselves from the +suspicion that the older members of the coterie may be laughing at them +behind their backs. But the flattery of women is so much more delicate, +and so much more sincere, that it is far<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">62</a></span> more dangerous. It is a +poultice which in time softens the hardest outside. Richardson yielded +as entirely as any curate exposed to a shower of slippers. He evidently +wrote under the impression that he was not merely an imaginative writer +of the highest order, but also a great moralist. He was reforming the +world, putting down vice, sending duelling out of fashion, and +inculcating the lessons of the pulpit in a far more attractive form. A +modern novelist is half-ashamed of his art; he disclaims earnestly any +serious purpose; his highest aim is to amuse his readers, and his +greatest boast that he amuses them by honourable or at least by harmless +means. There are, indeed, novelists who write to inculcate High-Church +or Low-Church principles, or to prove that society at large is out of +joint; but a direct intention to prove that men ought not to steal or +get drunk, or commit any other atrocities, is generally considered to be +beside the novelist's function, and its introduction to be a fault of +art. Indeed, there is much to be said against it. In our youth we used +to read a poem about a cruel little boy who went out to fish and was +punished by somehow becoming suspended by his chin from a hook in the +larder. It never produced much effect upon us, because we felt that the +accident was, to say the least, rather exceptional; at most, we fished +on, and were careful about the larder. The same principle applies to the +poetic justice distributed by most novelists. When Richardson kills off +his villains by violent deaths, we know too well that many villains live +to a good old age, leave handsome fortunes, and are buried under the +handsomest of tombstones, with the most elegant of epitaphs. This very +rough device for inculcating morality is of course ineffectual, and +produces some artistic blemishes. The direct exhortations to his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">63</a></span> +readers to be good are still more annoying; no human being can long +endure a mixture of preaching and story-telling. For Heaven's sake, we +exclaim, tell us what happens to Clarissa, and don't stop to prove that +honesty is the best policy! In a wider sense, however, the seriousness +of Richardson's purpose is of high value. He is so keenly in earnest, so +profoundly interested about his characters, so determined to make us +enter into their motives, that we cannot help being carried away; if he +never spares an opportunity of giving us a lecture, at least his zeal in +setting forth an example never flags for an instant. The effort to give +us an ideally perfect character seems to stimulate his imagination, and +leads to a certain intensity of realisation which we are apt to miss in +the purposeless school of novelists. He is always, as it were, writing +at high-pressure and under a sense of responsibility.</p> + +<p>The method which he adopts lends itself very conveniently to heighten +this effect. Richardson's feminine delight in letter-writing was, as we +have seen, the immediate cause of his plunge into authorship. +Richardson's novels, indeed, are not so much novels put for convenience +under the form of letters, as letters expanded till they become novels. +A genuine novelist who should put his work into the unnatural shape of a +correspondence would probably find it a very awkward expedient; but +Richardson gradually worked up to the novel from the conception of a +collection of letters; and his method, therefore, came spontaneously to +him. He started from the plan of writing letters to illustrate a certain +point of morality, and to make them more effective attributed them to a +fictitious character. The result was the gigantic tract called +'Pamela'—distinctly the worst of his works—of which it is enough to +say at present that it succeeds <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">64</a></span>neither in being moral nor in amusing. +It shows, however, a truly amazing fertility in a specially feminine +art. We have all suffered from the propensity of some female minds (the +causes of which we will not attempt to analyse) for pouring forth +indefinite floods of correspondence. We know the heartless fashion in +which some ladies, even in these days of penny postage, will fill a +sheet of note-paper and proceed to cross their writing till the page +becomes a chequer-work of unintelligible hieroglyphics. But we may feel +gratitude in looking back to the days when time hung heavier, and +letter-writing was a more serious business. The letters of those times +may recall the fearful and wonderful labours of tapestry in which ladies +employed their needles by way of killing time. The monuments of both +kinds are a fearful indication of the <i>ennui</i> from which the +perpetrators must have suffered. We pity those who endured the toil as +we pity the prisoners whose patient ingenuity has carved a passage +through a stone wall with a rusty nail. Richardson's heroines, and his +heroes too, for that matter, would have been portents at any time. We +will take an example at hazard. Miss Byron, on March 22, writes a letter +of fourteen pages (in the old collective edition). The same day she +follows it up by two of six and of twelve pages respectively. On the +23rd she leads off with a letter of eighteen pages, and another of ten. +On the 24th she gives us two, filling together thirty pages, at the end +of which she remarks that she is <i>forced</i> to lay down her pen, and then +adds a postscript of six more; on the 25th she confines herself to two +pages; but after a Sunday's rest she makes another start of equal +vigour. In three days, therefore, she covers ninety-six pages. Two of +the pages are about equal to three in this volume. Consequently, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">65</a></span> +three days' correspondence, referring to the events of the day, she +would fill something like a hundred and forty-four of these pages—a +task the magnitude of which may be appreciated by anyone who will try +the experiment. We should say that she must have written for nearly +eight hours a day, and are not surprised at her remark, that she has on +one occasion only managed two hours' sleep.</p> + +<p>It would, of course, be the height of pedantry to dwell upon this, as +though a fictitious personage were to be in all respects bounded by the +narrow limits of human capacity. It is not the object of a really good +novelist, nor does it come within the legitimate means of high art in +any department, to produce an actual illusion. Showmen in some foreign +palaces call upon us to admire paintings which we cannot distinguish +from bas-reliefs; the deception is, of course, a mere trick, and the +paintings are simply childish. On the stage we do not require to believe +that the scenery is really what it imitates, and the attempt to +introduce scraps of real life is a clear proof of a low artistic aim. +Similarly a novelist is not only justified in writing so as to prove +that his work is fictitious, but he almost necessarily hampers himself, +to the prejudice of his work, if he imposes upon himself the condition +that his book shall be capable of being mistaken for a genuine +narrative. Every good novelist lets us into secrets about the private +thoughts of his characters which it would be impossible to obtain in +real life. We do not, therefore, blame Richardson because his characters +have a power of writing which no mortal could ever attain. His fault, +indeed, is exactly the contrary. He very erroneously fancies that he is +bound to convince us of the possibility of all his machinery, and often +produces the very shock to our belief which he seeks to avoid.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">66</a></span> He is +constantly trying to account by elaborate devices for the fertile +correspondence of his characters, when it is perfectly plain that they +are simply writing a novel. We should never have asked a question as to +the authenticity of the letters, if he did not force the question upon +us; and no art can induce us for a moment to accept the proffered +illusion. For example, Miss Byron gives us a long account of +conversations between persons whom she did not know, which took place +ten years before. It is much better that the impossibility should be +frankly accepted, on the clear ground that authors of novels, and +consequently their creatures, have the prerogative of omniscience. At +least, the slightest account of the way in which she came by the +knowledge would be enough to satisfy us for all purposes of fiction. +Richardson is not content with this, and elaborately demonstrates that +she might have known a number of minute details which it is perfectly +plain that a real Miss Byron could never have known, and thus dashes +into our faces an improbability which we should have been quite content +to pass unnoticed.</p> + +<p>The method, however, of telling the story by the correspondence of the +actors produces more important effects. The hundred and forty-four pages +in question are all devoted to the proceedings of three days. They are +filled, for the most part, with interminable conversations. The story +advances by a very few steps; but we know all that every one of the +persons concerned has to say about the matter. We discover what was Sir +Charles Grandison's relation at a particular time to a certain Italian +lady, Clementina. We are told exactly what view he took of his own +position; what view Clementina took of it; what Miss Byron had to say to +Sir Charles on the subject, and what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">67</a></span> advice her relations bestowed upon +Miss Byron. Then we have all the sentiments of Sir Charles Grandison's +sisters, and of his brothers-in-law, and of his reverend old tutor; and +the sentiments of all the Lady Clementina's family, and the incidental +remarks of a number of subordinate actors. In short, we see the +characters all round in all their relations to each other, in every +possible variation and permutation; we are present at all the +discussions which take place before every step, and watch the gradual +variation of all the phases of the positions. We get the same sort of +elaborate familiarity with every aspect of affairs that we should +receive from reading a blue-book full of some prolix diplomatic +correspondence; indeed, Sir Charles Grandison closely resembles such a +blue-book, for the plot is carried on mainly by elaborate negotiations +between three different families, with proposals, and counter-proposals, +and amended proposals, and a final settlement of the very complicated +business by a deliberate signing of two different sets of articles. One +of them, we need hardly say, is a marriage settlement; the other is a +definite treaty between the lady who is not married and her family, the +discussion of which occupies many pages. The extent to which we are +drawn into the minutest details may be inferred from the fact that +nearly a volume is given to marrying Sir Charles Grandison to Miss +Byron, after all difficulties have been surmounted. We have at full +length all the discussions by which the day is fixed, and all the +remarks of the unfortunate lovers of both parties, and all the +criticisms of both families, and finally an elaborate account of the +ceremony, with the names of the persons who went in the separate +coaches, the dresses of the bride and bridesmaids, and the sums which +Sir Charles gave away to the village girls who strewed flowers on the +pathway.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">68</a></span> Surely the feminine element in Richardson's character was a +little in excess.</p> + +<p>The result of all this is a sort of Dutch painting of extraordinary +minuteness. The art reminds us of the patient labour of a line-engraver, +who works for days at making out one little bit of minute stippling and +cross-hatching. The characters are displayed to us step by step and line +by line. We are gradually forced into familiarity with them by a process +resembling that by which we learn to know people in real life. We are +treated to few set analyses or summary descriptions, but by constantly +reading their letters and listening to their talk we gradually form an +opinion of the actors. We see them, too, all round; instead of, as is +usual in modern novels, regarding them steadily from one point of view; +we know what each person thinks of everyone else, and what everyone else +thinks of him; they are brought into a stereoscopic distinctness by +combining the different aspects of their character. Of course, a method +of this kind involves much labour on the part both of writer and reader. +It is evident that Richardson did not think of amusing a stray half-hour +in a railway-carriage or in a club smoking-room; he counted upon readers +who would apply themselves seriously to a task, in the hope of improving +their morals as much as of gaining some harmless amusement. This theory +is explicitly set forth in Warburton's preface to 'Clarissa.' But it +must also be said that, considering the cumbrous nature of the process, +the spirit with which it is applied is wonderful. Richardson's own +interest in his actors never flags. The distinct style of every +correspondent is faithfully preserved with singular vivacity. When we +have read a few letters we are never at a loss to tell, from the style +alone of any short passage, who is the imaginary author. Consequently, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">69</a></span>readers who can bear to have their amusement diluted, who are content +with an imperceptibly slow development of plot, and can watch without +impatience the approach of a foreseen incident through a couple of +volumes, may find the prolixity less intolerable than might be expected. +If they will be content to skip when they are bored, even less patient +students may be entertained with a series of pictures of character and +manners skilfully contrasted and brilliantly coloured, though with a +limited allowance of incident. Within his own sphere, no writer exceeds +him in clearness and delicacy of conception.</p> + +<p>In another way, the machinery of a fictitious correspondence is rather +troublesome. As the author never appears in his own person, he is often +obliged to trust his characters with trumpeting their own virtues. Sir +Charles Grandison has to tell us himself of his own virtuous deeds; how +he disarms ruffians who attack him in overwhelming numbers, and converts +evil-doers by impressive advice; and, still more awkwardly, he has to +repeat the amazing compliments which everybody is always paying him. +Richardson does his best to evade the necessity; he couples all his +virtuous heroes with friendly confidants, who relieve the virtuous +heroes of the tiresome task of self-adulation; he supplies the heroes +themselves with elaborate reasons for overcoming their modesty, and +makes them apologise profusely for the unwelcome task. Still, ingenious +as his expedients may be, and willing as we are to make allowance for +the necessities of his task, we cannot quite free ourselves from an +unpleasant suspicion as to the simplicity of his characters. 'Clarissa' +is comparatively free from this fault, though Clarissa takes a +questionable pleasure in uttering the finest sentiments and posing +herself <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">70</a></span>as a model of virtue. But in 'Sir Charles Grandison' the +fulsome interchange of flattery becomes offensive even in fiction. The +virtuous characters give and receive an amount of eulogy enough to turn +the strongest stomachs. How amiable is A! says B; how virtuous is C, and +how marvellously witty is D! And then A, C, and D go through the same +performance, adding a proper compliment to B in place of the exclamation +appropriate to themselves. The only parallel in modern times is to be +found at some of the public dinners, where every man proposes his +neighbour's health with a tacit understanding that he is himself to +furnish the text for a similar oration. But then at dinners people have +the excuse of a state of modified sobriety.</p> + +<p>This fault is, as we have said, aggravated by the epistolary method. +That method makes it necessary that each person should display his or +her own virtues, as in an exhibition of gymnastics the performers walk +round and show their muscles. But the fault lies a good deal deeper. +Every writer, consciously or unconsciously, puts himself into his +novels, and exhibits his own character even more distinctly than that of +his heroes. And Richardson, the head of a little circle of conscientious +admirers of each other's virtues, could not but reproduce on a different +scale the tone of his own society. The Grandisons, and the families of +Miss Byron and Clementina, merely repeat a practice with which he was +tolerably familiar at home; whilst his characters represent to some +extent the idealised Richardson himself;—and this leads us to the most +essential characteristic of his novels. The greatest woman in France, +according to Napoleon's brutal remark, was the woman who had the most +children. In a different sense,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">71</a></span> the saying may pass for truth. The +greatest writer is the one who has produced the largest family of +immortal children. Those of whom it can be said that they have really +added a new type to the fictitious world are indeed few in number. +Cervantes is in the front rank of all imaginative creators, because he +has given birth to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Richardson's literary +representatives are far indeed below these; but Richardson too may boast +that, in his narrower sphere of thought, he has invented two characters +that have still a strong vitality. They show all the weaknesses +inseparable from the age and country of their origin. They are far +inferior to the highest ideals of the great poets of the world; they are +cramped and deformed by the conventionalities of their century and the +narrow society in which they move and live. But for all that they stir +the emotions of a distant generation with power enough to show that +their author must have pierced below the surface into the deeper and +more perennial springs of human passion. These two characters are, of +course, Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison; and I may endeavour shortly +to analyse the sources of their enduring interest.</p> + +<p>Sir Charles Grandison has passed into a proverb. When Carlyle calls +Lafayette a Grandison-Cromwell, he hits off one of those admirable +nicknames which paint a character for us at once. Sir Charles Grandison +is the model fine gentleman of the eighteenth century—the master of +correct deportment, the unimpeachable representative of the old school. +Richardson tells us with a certain <i>naïveté</i> that he has been accused of +describing an impossible character; that Sir Charles is a man absolutely +without a fault, or at least with faults visible only on a most +microscopic observation. In fact, the only fault to which Sir Charles +himself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">72</a></span> pleads guilty, in seven volumes, is that he once rather loses +his temper. Two ruffians try to bully him in his own house, and even +draw their swords upon him. Sir Charles so far forgets himself as to +draw his own sword, disarm both of his opponents and turn them out of +doors. He cannot forgive himself, he says, that he has been 'provoked by +two such men to violate the sanctity of his own house.' His only excuse +is, 'that there were two of them; and that tho' I drew, yet I had the +command of myself so far as only to defend myself, when I might have +done with them what I pleased.' According to Richardson, this venial +offence is the worst blot on Sir Charles's character. We certainly do +not blame him for the attempt to draw an ideally perfect hero. It is a +perfectly legitimate aim in fiction, and the only question can be +whether he has succeeded: for Richardson's own commendation cannot be +taken as quite sufficient, neither can we quite accept the ingenious +artifice by which all the secondary characters perform as decoy-birds to +attract our admiration. They do their very best to induce us to join in +their hymns of praise. 'Grandison,' says a Roman Catholic bishop, 'were +he one of us, might expect canonisation.' 'How,' exclaims his uncle, +after a conversation with his paragon of a nephew, 'how shall I bear my +own littleness?' A party of reprobates about town have a long dispute +with him, endeavouring to force him into a duel. At the end of it one of +them exclaims admiringly, 'Curse me, if I believe there is such another +man in the world!' 'I never saw a hero till now,' says another. 'I had +rather have Sir C. Grandison for my friend than the greatest prince on +earth,' says a third. 'I had rather,' replies his friend, 'be Sir C. +Grandison for this one past hour than the Great Mogul all my life.' And +the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">73</a></span> general conclusion is, 'What poor toads are we!' 'This man shows +us,' as a lady declares, 'that goodness and greatness are synonymous +words;' and when his sister marries, she complains that her brother 'has +long made all other men indifferent to her. Such an infinite +difference!' In the evening, according to custom, she dances a minuet +with her bridegroom, but whispers a friend that she would have performed +better had she danced with her brother.</p> + +<p>The structure, however, of the story itself is the best illustration of +Sir Charles's admirable qualities. The plot is very simple. He rescues +Miss Byron from an attempt at a forcible abduction. Miss Byron, +according to her friends, is the queen of her sex, and is amongst women +what Sir Charles is amongst men. Of course, they straightway fall in +love. Sir Charles, however, shows symptoms of a singular reserve, which +is at last explained by the fact that he is already half-engaged to a +noble Italian lady, Clementina. He has promised, in fact, to marry her +if certain objections on the score of his country and religion can be +surmounted. The interest lies chiefly in the varying inclinations of the +balance, at one moment favourable to Miss Byron, and at another to the +'saint and angel' Clementina. When Miss Byron thinks that Sir Charles +will be bound in honour to marry Clementina, she begins to pine; 'she +visibly falls away; and her fine complexion fades;' her friends 'watch +in silent love every turn of her mild and patient eye, every change of +her charming countenance; for they know too well to what to impute the +malady which has approached the best of hearts; they know that the cure +cannot be within the art of the physician.' When Clementina fears that +the scruples of her relatives will separate her from Sir Charles, she +takes the still more decided step of going mad;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">74</a></span> and some of her madness +would be very touching, if it were not a trifle too much after the +conventional pattern of the mad women in Sheridan's 'Critic.' Whilst +these two ladies are breaking their hearts about Sir Charles they do +justice to each other's merits. Harriet will never be happy unless she +knows that the admirable Clementina has reconciled herself to the loss +of her adored; when Clementina finds herself finally separated from her +lover, she sincerely implores Sir Charles to marry her more fortunate +rival. Never was there such a display of fine feeling and utter absence +of jealousy. Meanwhile a lovely ward of Sir Charles finds it necessary +to her peace of mind to be separated from her guardian; and another +beautiful, but rather less admirable, Italian actually follows him to +England to persuade him to accept her hand. Four ladies—all of them +patterns of physical, moral, and intellectual excellence—are breaking +their hearts; and though they are so excellent that they overcome their +natural jealousy, they can scarcely look upon any other man after having +known this model of all his sex. Indeed, every woman who approaches him +falls desperately in love with him, unless she is his sister or old +enough to be his grandmother. The plot of the novel depends upon an +attraction for the fair sex which is apparently irresistible; and the +men, if they are virtuous, rejoice to sit admiringly at his feet, and if +they are vicious retire abashed from his presence, to entreat his good +advice when they are upon their deathbeds.</p> + +<p>All this is easy enough. A novelist can make his women fall in love with +his hero as easily as, with a stroke of the pen, he can endow him with +fifty thousand a year, or bestow upon him every virtue under heaven. +Neither has he any difficulty in making him the finest dancer in +England,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">75</a></span> or giving him such marvellous skill with the small-sword that +he can avoid the sin of duelling by instantaneously disarming his most +formidable opponents. The real question is, whether he can animate this +conglomerate of all conceivable virtues with a real human soul, set him +before us as a living and breathing reality, and make us feel that, if +we had known him, we too should have been ready to swell the full chorus +of admiration. It is rather more difficult to convey the impression +which a perusal of his correspondence and conversation leaves upon an +unprejudiced mind. Does Sir Charles, when we come to know him +intimately—for, with the ample materials provided, we really seem to +know him—fairly support the amazing burden thrown upon him? Do we feel +a certain disappointment when we meet the man whom all ladies love, and +in whom every gentleman confesses a superior nature.</p> + +<p>Two anecdotes about Sir Charles may suggest the answer. Voltaire, we +know, ridiculed the proud English, who with the same scissors cut off +the heads of their kings and the tails of their horses. To this last +weakness Sir Charles was superior. His horses, says Miss Byron, 'are not +docked; their tails are only tied up when they are on the road.' She +would wish to find some fault with him, but as she forcibly says, 'if he +be of opinion that the tails of these noble animals are not only a +natural ornament, but of real use to defend them from the vexatious +insects that in summer are so apt to annoy them, how far from a +dispraise is this humane consideration!' The other anecdote is of a +different kind. When Sir Charles goes to church he does not, like some +other gentlemen, bow low to the ladies of his acquaintance, and then to +others of the gentry. No! 'Sir Charles had first other devoirs to pay. +He paid us his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">76</a></span> second compliments.' From these two exemplary actions we +must infer his whole character. It should have been inscribed on his +tombstone, 'He would not dock his horses' tails.' That is the most +trifling details of his conduct are regulated on the most serious +considerations. He is one of those solemn beings who can't shave +themselves without implicitly asserting a great moral principle. He +finds sermons in his horses' tails; he could give an excellent reason +for the quantity of lace on his coat, which was due, it seems, to a +sentiment of filial reverence; and he could not fix his hour for dinner +without an eye to the reformation of society. In short, he was a prig of +the first water; self-conscious to the last degree; and so crammed with +little moral aphorisms that they drop out of his mouth whenever he opens +his lips. And then his religion is in admirable keeping. It is +intimately connected with the excellence of his deportment; and is, in +fact, merely the application of the laws of good society to the loftiest +sphere of human duty. He pays his second compliments to his lady, and +his first to the object of his adoration. He very properly gives the +precedence to the being he professes to adore. As he carries his +solemnity into the pettiest trifles of life, so he considers religious +duties to be simply the most important part of social etiquette. He +would shrink from blasphemy even more than from keeping on his hat in +the presence of ladies; but the respect which he owes in one case is of +the same order with that due in the other: it is only a degree more +important.</p> + +<p>We feel, indeed, a certain affection for Sir Charles Grandison. He is +pompous and ceremonious to an insufferable degree; but there is really +some truth in his sister's assertion, that his is the most delicate of +human minds;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">77</a></span> through the cumbrous formalities of his century there +shines a certain quickness and sensibility; he even condescends to be +lively after a stately fashion, and to indulge in a little 'raillying,' +only guarding himself rather too carefully against unbecoming levity. +Indeed, though a man of the world at the present day would be as much +astonished at his elaborate manners as at his laced coat and sword, he +would admit that Sir Charles was by no means wanting in tact; his talk +is weighted with more elaborate formulæ than we care to employ, but it +is good vigorous conversation in the main, and, if rather overlaid with +sermonising, can at times be really amusing. His religion is not of a +very exalted character; he rises to no sublime heights of emotion, and +would simply be puzzled by the fervours or the doubts of a more modern +generation. In short, it seems to be compounded of common-sense and a +regard for decorum—and those are not bad things in their way, though +not the highest. He is not a very ardent reformer; he doubts whether the +poor should be taught to read, and is very clear that everyone should be +made to know his station; but still he talks with sense and moderation, +and even gets so far as to suggest the necessity of reformatories. He is +not very romantic, and displays an amount of self-command in judicially +settling the claims of the various ladies who are anxious to marry him, +which is almost comic; he is perfectly ready to marry the Italian lady, +if she can surmount her religious scruples, though he is in love with +Miss Byron; and his mind is evidently in a pleasing state of +equilibrium, so that he will be happy with either dear charmer. Indeed, +for so chivalric a gentleman, his view of love and marriage is far less +enthusiastic than we should now require. One of his benevolent actions, +which throws<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">78</a></span> all his admirers into fits of eulogy, is to provide one of +his uncles with a wife. The gentleman is a peer, but has hitherto been +of disreputable life. The lady, though of good family and education, is +above thirty, and her family have lost their estate. The match of +convenience which Sir Charles patches up between them has obvious +prudential recommendations; and of course it turns out admirably. But +one is rather puzzled to know what special merits Sir Charles can claim +for bringing it to pass.</p> + +<p>Such a hero as this may be worthy and respectable, but is not a very +exalted ideal. Neither do his circumstances increase our interest. It +would be rather a curious subject of inquiry why it should be so +impossible to make a virtuous hero interesting in fiction. In real life, +the men who do heroic actions are certainly more attractive than the +villains. Domestic affection, patriotism, piety, and other good +qualities are pleasant to contemplate in the world; why should they be +so often an unspeakable bore in novels? Principally, no doubt, because +our conception of a perfect man is apt to bring the negative qualities +into too great prominence; we are asked to admire men because they have +not passions—not because they overcome them. But there are further +difficulties; for example, in a novel it is generally so easy to see +what is wrong and what is right—the right-hand path branches off so +decidedly from the left, that we give a man little credit for making the +proper choice. Still more is it difficult to let us sufficiently into a +man's interior to let us see the struggle and the self-sacrifice which +ought to stir our sympathies. We witness the victories, but it is hard +to make us feel the cost at which they are won. Now, Richardson has, as +we shall directly remark, overcome this difficulty to a great extent in +Clarissa;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">79</a></span> but in Sir Charles Grandison he has entirely shirked it; he +has made everything too plain and easy for his hero. 'I think I could be +a good woman,' says Becky Sharp, 'if I had five thousand a year,'—and +the history of Sir Charles Grandison might have suggested the remark. To +be young, handsome, healthy, active, with a fine estate and a grand old +house; to be able, by your eloquence, to send a sinner into a fit (as +Sir Charles did once); to be the object of a devoted passion from three +or four amiable, accomplished, and beautiful women—each of whom has a +fine fortune, and only begs you to throw your handkerchief towards her, +whilst she promises to bear no grudge if you throw it to her +neighbour—all these are favourable conditions for virtue—especially if +you mean the virtues of being hospitable, generous, a good landlord and +husband, and in every walk of life thoroughly gentlemanlike in your +behaviour. But the whole design is rather too much in accordance with +the device in enabling Sir Charles to avoid duels by having a marvellous +trick of disarming his adversaries. 'What on earth is the use of my +fighting with you,' says King Padella to Prince Giglio, 'if you have got +a fairy sword and a fairy horse?' And what merit is there in winning the +battle of life, when you have every single circumstance in your favour? +We are more attracted by Fielding's rather questionable hero, Captain +Booth, though he does get into a sponging-house, and is anything but a +strict moralist, than by this prosperous young Sir Charles, rich with +every gift the gods can give him, and of whom the most we can say is +that the possession of all those gifts, if it has made him rather +pompous and self-conscious, has not made him close-fisted or +hard-hearted. Sir Charles, then, represents a rather carnal ideal; he +suggest to us those well-fed, almost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">80</a></span> beefy and corpulent angels, whom +the contemporary school of painters sometimes portray. No doubt they are +angels, for they have wings and are seated in the clouds; but there is +nothing ethereal in their whole nature. We have no love for asceticism; +but a few hours on the column of St. Simon Stylites, or a temporary diet +of locusts and wild honey, might have purified Sir Charles's exuberant +self-satisfaction. For all this, he is not without a certain solid +merit, and the persons by whom he is surrounded—on whom we have not +space to dwell—have a large share of the vivacity which amuses us in +the real men and women of their time. Their talk may not be equal to +that in Boswell's 'Johnson;' but it is animated and amusing, and they +compose a gallery of portraits which would look well in a solid +red-brick mansion of the Georgian era.</p> + +<p>We must, however, leave Sir Charles, to say a few words upon that which +is Richardson's real masterpiece, and which, in spite of a full share of +the defects apparent in 'Grandison,' will always command the admiration +of persons who have courage enough to get through eight volumes of +correspondence. The characters of the little world in which the reader +will pass his time are in some cases the same who reappear in +'Grandison.' The lively Lady G. in the last is merely a new version of +Miss Howe in the former. Clarissa herself is Miss Byron under altered +circumstances, and receives from her friends the same shower of +superlatives, whenever they have occasion to touch upon her merits. +Richardson's ideal lady is not at first sight more prepossessing than +his gentleman. After Clarissa's death, her friend Miss Howe writes a +glowing panegyric on her character. It will be enough to give the +distribution of her time. To rest it seems she allotted six<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">81</a></span> hours only. +Her first three morning hours were devoted to study and to writing those +terribly voluminous letters which, as one would have thought, must have +consumed a still longer period. Two hours more were given to domestic +management; for, as Miss Howe explains, 'she was a perfect mistress of +the four principal rules of arithmetic.' Five hours were spent in music, +drawing, and needlework, this last especially, and in conversation with +the venerable parson of the parish. Two hours she devoted to breakfast +and dinner; and as it was hard to restrict herself to this allowance, +she occasionally gave one hour more to dinner-time conversation. One +hour more was spent in visiting the neighbouring poor, and the remaining +four hours to supper and conversation. These periods, it seems, were not +fixed for every day; for she kept a kind of running account, and +permitted herself to have an occasional holiday by drawing upon the +reserved fund of the four hours for supper.</p> + +<p>Setting aside the fearfully systematic nature of this arrangement—the +stern determination to live by rule and system—it must be admitted that +Miss Harlowe was what in outworn phrase was called a very 'superior' +person. She would have made an excellent housekeeper, or even a +respectable governess. We feel a certain gratitude to her for devoting +four hours to supper; and, indeed, Richardson's characters are always +well cared for in the victualling department. They always take their +solid three meals, with a liberal intercalation of dishes of tea and +chocolate. Miss Harlowe, we must add, knew Latin, although her +quotations of classical authors are generally taken from translations. +Her successor, Miss Byron, was not allowed this accomplishment, +Richardson's doubts of its suitability to ladies having apparently +gathered strength in the interval.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">82</a></span> Notwithstanding this one audacious +excursion into the regions of manly knowledge, Miss Harlowe appears to +us as, in the main, a healthy, sensible country girl, with sound sense, +the highest respect for decorum, and an exaggerated regard for +constituted, especially paternal, authority. We cannot expect, from her, +any of the outbreaks against the laws of society customary with George +Sand's heroines. If she had changed places with Maggie Tulliver, she +would have accepted the society of the 'Mill on the Floss' with perfect +contentment, respected all the family of aunts and uncles, and never +repined against the tyranny of her brother Tom. She would have been +conscious of no vague imaginative yearnings, nor have beaten herself +against the narrow bars of stolid custom. She would have laid up a vast +store of linen, and walked thankfully in the path chalked out for her. +Certainly she would never have run away with Mr. Stephen Guest without +tyranny of a much more tangible kind than that which acts only through +the finer spiritual tissues. When Clarissa went off with Lovelace, it +was not because she had unsatisfied aspirations after a higher order of +life, but because she had been locked up in her room, as a solitary +prisoner, and her family had tried to force her into marriage with a man +whom she had excellent reasons for hating and despising. The worst point +about Clarissa is one which was keenly noticed by Johnson. There is +always something, he said, which she prefers to truth. She is a little +too anxious to keep up appearances, and we desire to see more of the +natural woman.</p> + +<p>Yet the long tragedy in which Clarissa is the victim is not the less +affecting because the torments are of an intelligible kind, and require +no highly-strung sensibility to give them keenness. The heroine is first +bullied and then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">83</a></span> deserted by her family, cut off from the friends who +have a desire to help her, and handed over to the power of an +unscrupulous libertine. When she dies of a broken heart, the most +callous and prosaic of readers must feel that it is the only release +possible for her. And in the gradual development of his plot, the slow +accumulation of horrors upon the head of a virtuous victim, Richardson +shows the power which places him in the front rank of novelists, and +finds precisely the field in which his method is most effective and its +drawbacks least annoying. In the first place, in spite of his enormous +prolixity, the interest is throughout concentrated upon one figure. In +'Sir Charles Grandison' there are episodes meant to illustrate the +virtues of the 'next-to-divine man' which have nothing to do with the +main narrative. In 'Clarissa' every subordinate plot—and they +abound—bears immediately upon the central action of the story, and +produces a constant alternation of hope and foreboding. The last +volumes, indeed, are dragged out in a way which is injurious in several +respects. Clarissa, to use Charles II.'s expression about himself, takes +an unconscionable time about dying. But until the climax is reached, we +see the clouds steadily gathering, and yet with an increasing hope that +they may be suddenly cleared up. The only English novel which produces a +similar effect, and impresses us with the sense of an inexorable fate, +slowly but steadily approaching, is the 'Bride of Lammermoor'—in some +respects the best and most artistic of Scott's novels. Superior as is +Scott's art in certain directions, we scarcely feel the same interest in +his chief characters, though there is the same unity of construction. We +cannot feel for the Master of Ravenswood the sympathy which Clarissa +extorts. For in Clarissa's profound distress we lose sight of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">84</a></span> +narrow round of respectabilities in which her earlier life is passed; +the petty pompousness, the intense propriety which annoy us in 'Sir +Charles Grandison' disappear or become pathetic. When people are dying +of broken hearts we forget their little absurdities of costume. A more +powerful note is sounded, and the little superficial absurdities are +forgotten. We laugh at the first feminine description of her dress—a +Brussels-lace cap, with sky-blue ribbon, pale crimson-coloured paduasoy, +with cuffs embroidered in a running pattern of violets and their leaves; +but we are more disposed to cry (if many novels have not exhausted all +our powers of weeping) when we come to the final scene. 'One faded cheek +rested upon the good woman's bosom, the kindly warmth of which had +overspread it with a faint but charming flush; the other paler and +hollow, as if already iced over by death. Her hands, white as the lily, +with her meandering veins more transparently blue than ever I had seen +even hers, hanging lifelessly, one before her, the other grasped by the +right hand of the kindly widow, whose tears bedewed the sweet face which +her motherly bosom supported, though unfelt by the fair sleeper; and +either insensibly to the good woman, or what she would not disturb her +to wipe off or to change her posture. Her aspect was sweetly calm and +serene; and though she started now and then, yet her sleep seemed easy; +her breath indeed short and quick, but tolerably free, and not like that +of a dying person.' Allowing for the queer grammar, this is surely a +touching and simple picture. The epistolary method, though it has its +dangers, lends itself well to heighten our interest. Where the object is +rather to appeal to our sympathies than to give elaborate analyses of +character, or complicated narratives of incident, it is as well<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">85</a></span> to let +the persons speak for themselves. A hero cannot conveniently say, like +Sir Charles Grandison, 'See how virtuous and brave and modest I am;' nor +is it easy to make a story clear when it has to be broken up and +distributed amongst people speaking from different points of view; it is +hard to make the testimonies of the different witnesses fit into each +other neatly. But a cry of agony can come from no other quarter so +effectively as from the sufferer's own mouth. 'Clarissa Harlowe' is in +fact one long lamentation, passing gradually from a tone of indignant +complaint to one of despair, and rising at the end to Christian +resignation. So prolonged a performance in every key of human misery is +indeed painful from its monotony; and we may admit that a limited +selection from the correspondence, passing through more rapid +gradations, would be more effective. We might be spared some of the +elaborate speculations upon various phases of the affair which pass away +without any permanent effect. Richardson seems to be scarcely content +even with drawing his characters as large as life; he wishes to apply a +magnifying-glass. Yet, even in this incessant repetition there is a +certain element of power. We are forced to drain every drop in the cup, +and to appreciate every ingredient which adds bitterness to its flavour. +We are annoyed and wearied at times; but as we read we not only wonder +at the number of variations performed upon one tune, but feel that he +has succeeded in thoroughly forcing upon our minds, by incessant +hammering, the impression which he desires to produce. If the blows are +not all very powerful, each blow tells. There is something impressive in +the intensity of purpose which keeps one end in view through so +elaborate a process, and the skill which forms such a multitudinous +variety of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">86</a></span> parts into one artistic whole. The proportions of this +gigantic growth are preserved with a skill which would be singular even +in the normal scale; a respect in which most giants, whether human or +literary, are apt to break down.</p> + +<p>To make the story complete, the plot should have been as effectively +conceived as Clarissa herself, and the other characters should be +equally worthy of their position. Here there are certain drawbacks. The +plot, it might easily be shown, is utterly incredible. Richardson has +the greatest difficulty in preventing his heroine from escaping, and at +times we must not look too closely for fear of detecting the flimsy +nature of her imaginary chains. There is, indeed, no reason for looking +closely; so long as the situations bring out the desired sentiment, we +may accept them for the nonce, without asking whether they could +possibly have occurred. It is of more importance to judge of the +consistency of the chief agent in the persecution. Lovelace is by far +the most ambitious character that Richardson has attempted. To heap +together a mass of virtues, and christen the result Clarissa Harlowe or +Charles Grandison, is comparatively easy; but it is a harder task to +compose a villain, who shall be by nature a devil, and yet capable of +imposing upon an angel. Some of Richardson's judicious critics declared +that he must have been himself a man of vicious life or he could never +have described a libertine so vividly. This is one of the smart sayings +which are obviously the proper thing to say, but which, notwithstanding, +are little better than silly. Lovelace is evidently a fancy +character—if we may use the expression. He bears not a single mark of +being painted from life, and is formed by the simple process of putting +together the most brilliant qualities which his creator could devise to +meet the occasion. We<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">87</a></span> do not say that the result is psychologically +impossible; for it would be very rash to dogmatise on any such question. +No one can say what strange amalgams of virtue and vice may have +sufficient stability to hold together during a journey through this +world. But it is plain that Lovelace is not a result of observation, but +an almost fantastic mixture of qualities intended to fit him for the +difficult part he has to play. To exalt Clarissa, for example, +Lovelace's family are represented as all along earnestly desirous of a +marriage between them; and Lovelace has every conceivable motive, +including the desire to avoid hanging, for agreeing to the match. His +refusal is unintelligible, and Richardson has to supply him with a +reason so absurd and so diabolical that we cannot believe in it; it +reminds us of Hamlet's objecting to killing his uncle whilst at prayers, +on the ground that it would be sending him straight to heaven. But we +may, if we please, consider Hamlet's conceit as a mere pretext invented +to excuse his irresolution to himself; whereas Lovelace speculates so +long and so seriously upon the marriage, that we are bound to consider +his far-fetched arguments as sincere. And the supposition makes his +wickedness gratuitous, if we believe in his sanity. Lovelace suffers, +again, from the same necessity which injures Sir Charles Grandison; as +the virtuous hero has to be always expatiating on his own virtues, the +vicious hero has to boast of his own vices; it is true that this is, in +an artistic sense, the least repulsive habit of the two; for it gives +reason for hating not a hero but a villain; unluckily it is also a +reason for refusing to believe in his existence. The improbability of a +thoroughpaced scoundrel writing daily elaborate confessions of his +criminality to a friend, even when the friend condemns him, expatiating +upon atrocities that deserved<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">88</a></span> hanging, and justifying his vices on +principle, is rather too glaring to be admissible. And by another odd +inconsistency, Lovelace is described as being all the time a steady +believer in eternal punishment and a rebuker of sceptics—Richardson +being apparently of opinion that infidelity would be too bad to be +introduced upon the stage, though a vice might be described in detail. A +man who has broken through all moral laws might be allowed a little +free-thinking. We might add that Lovelace, in spite of the cleverness +attributed to him, is really a most imbecile schemer. The first +principle of a villain should be to tell as few lies as will serve his +purpose; but Lovelace invents such elaborate and complicated plots, +presenting so many chances of detection and introducing so many persons +into his secrets, that it is evident that in real life he would have +broken down in a week.</p> + +<p>Granting the high improbability of Lovelace as a real living human +being, it must be admitted that he has every merit but that of +existence. The letters which he writes are the most animated in the +voluminous correspondence. The respectable domestic old printer, who +boasted of the perfect purity of his own life, seems to have thrown +himself with special gusto into the character of a heartless reprobate. +He must have felt a certain piquancy in writing down the most atrocious +sentiments in his own respectable parlour. He would show that the quiet +humdrum old tradesman could be on paper as sprightly and audacious as +the most profligate man about town. As quiet people are apt to do, he +probably exaggerated the enormities which such men would openly avow; he +fancied that the world beyond his little circle was a wilderness of wild +beasts who could gnash their teeth and show their claws after a terribly +ostentatious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">89</a></span> fashion in their own dens; they doubtless gloated upon all +the innocent sheep whom they had devoured without any shadow of +reticence. And he had a fancy that, in their way, they were amusing +monsters too; Lovelace is a lady's villain, as Grandison is a lady's +hero; he is designed by a person inexperienced even in the observation +of vice. Indeed, he would exaggerate the charm a good deal more than the +atrocity. We must also admit that when the old printer was put upon his +mettle he could be very lively indeed. Lovelace, like everybody else, is +at times unmercifully prolix; he never leaves us to guess any detail for +ourselves; but he is spirited, eloquent, and a thoroughly fine gentleman +after the Chesterfield type. 'The devil take such fine gentlemen!' +exclaims somebody; and if he does not, I see little use (to quote the +proverbial old lady) in keeping a devil. But, as Johnson observed, a man +may be very wicked and 'very genteel.' Richardson lectures us very +seriously on the evil results which are sure to follow bad courses; but +he evidently holds in his heart that, till the Nemesis descends, the +libertines are far the most amusing part of the world. In Sir Charles +Grandison's company, we should be treated to an intolerable deal of +sermonising, with an occasional descent into the regions of humour—but +the humour is always admitted under protest. With Lovelace we might hear +some very questionable morality, but there would be a never-ceasing flow +of sparkling witticisms. The devil's advocate has the laugh distinctly +on his side, whatever may be said of the argument. Finally, we may say +that Lovelace, if too obviously constructed to work the plot, certainly +works it well. When we coolly dissect him and ask whether he could ever +have existed, we may be forced to reply in the negative. But whilst we +read we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">90</a></span> forget to criticise; he seems to possess more vitality than +most living men; he is so full of eloquent brag, and audacious +sophistry, and unblushing impudence, that he fascinates us as he is +supposed to have bewildered Clarissa. The dragon who is to devour the +maiden comes with all the flash and glitter and overpowering whirl of +wings that can be desired. He seems to be irresistible—we admire him +and hate him, and some time elapses before we begin to suspect that he +is merely a stage dragon, and not one of those who really walk this +earth.</p> + +<p>Richardson's defects are, of course, obvious enough. He cares nothing, +for example, for what we call the beauties of nature. There is scarcely +throughout his books one description showing the power of appealing to +emotions through scenery claimed by every modern scribbler. In passing +the Alps, the only remark which one of his characters has to make, +beyond describing the horrible dangers of the Mont Cenis, is that 'every +object which here presents itself is excessively miserable.' His ideal +scenery is a 'large and convenient country-house, situated in a spacious +park,' with plenty of 'fine prospects,' which you are expected to view +from a 'neat but plain villa, built in the rustic taste.' And his views +of morality are as contracted as his taste in landscapes. The most +distinctive article of his creed is that children should have a +reverence for their parents which would be exaggerated in the slave of +an Eastern despot. We can pardon Clarissa for refusing to die happy +until her stupid and ill-tempered old father has revoked a curse which +he bestowed upon her. But we cannot quite excuse Sir Charles Grandison +for writing in this fashion to his disreputable old parent, who has +asked his consent to a certain family arrangement in which he had a +legal right to be consulted:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">91</a></span>—</p> + +<p>'As for myself,' he says, 'I cannot have one objection; but what am I in +this case? My sister is wholly my father's; I also am his. The +consideration he gives me in this instance confounds me. It binds me to +him in double duty. It would look like taking advantage of it, were I so +much as to offer my humble opinion, unless he were pleased to command it +from me.'</p> + +<p>Even one of Richardson's abject lady-correspondents was revolted by this +exaggerated servility. But narrow as his vision might be in some +directions, his genius is not the less real. He is a curious example of +the power which a real artistic insight may exhibit under the most +disadvantageous forms. To realise his characteristic power, we should +take one of the great French novelists whom we admire for the exquisite +proportions of his story, the unity of the interest and the skill—so +unlike our common English clumsiness—with which all details are duly +subordinated. He should have, too, the comparative weakness of French +novelists, a defective perception of character, a certain unwillingness +in art as in politics to allow individual peculiarities to interfere +with the main flow of events; for, admitting the great excellence of his +minor performers, Richardson's most elaborately designed characters are +so artificial that they derive their interest from the events in which +they play their parts, rather than give interest to them—little as he +may have intended it. Then we must cause our imaginary Frenchman to +transmigrate into the body of a small, plump, weakly printer of the +eighteenth century. We may leave him a fair share of his vivacity, +though considerably narrowing his views of life and morality; but we +must surround him with a court of silly women whose incessant flatteries +must generate in him an unnatural propensity to twaddle.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">92</a></span> It is curious, +indeed, that he describes himself as writing without a plan. He compares +himself to a poor woman lying down upon the hearth to blow up a wretched +little fire of green sticks. He had to live from hand to mouth. But the +absence of an elaborate scheme is not fatal to the unity of design. He +watches, rather than designs, the development of his plot. He has so +lively a faith in his characters that, instead of laying down their +course of action, he simply watches them to see how they will act. This +makes him deliberate a little too much; they move less by impulse than +from careful reflection upon all the circumstances. Yet it also implies +an evolution of the story from the necessity of the characters in a +given situation, and gives an air of necessary deduction to the whole +scheme of his stories. All the gossiping propensities of his nature will +grow to unhealthy luxuriance, and the fine edge of his wit will be +somewhat dulled in the process. He will thus become capable of being a +bore—a thing which is impossible to any unsophisticated Frenchman. In +this way we might obtain a literary product so anomalous in appearance +as 'Clarissa'—a story in which a most affecting situation is drawn with +extreme power, and yet so overlaid with twaddle, so unmercifully +protracted and spun out as to be almost unreadable to the present +generation. But to complete Richardson, we must inoculate him with the +propensities of another school: we must give him a liberal share of the +feminine sensitiveness and closeness of observation of which Miss Austen +is the great example. And perhaps, to fill in the last details, he +ought, in addition, to have a dash of the more unctuous and offensive +variety of the dissenting preacher—for we know not where else to look +for the astonishing and often ungrammatical fluency by which he is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">93</a></span> +possessed, and which makes his best passages remind us of the marvellous +malleability of some precious metals.</p> + +<p>Anyone who will take the trouble to work himself fairly into the story +will end by admitting Richardson's power. Sir George Trevelyan records +and corroborates a well-known anecdote told by Thackeray from Macaulay's +lips. A whole station was infected by the historian's zeal for +'Clarissa.' It worked itself up into a 'passion of excitement,' and all +the great men and their wives fought for the book, and could hardly read +it for tears. The critic must observe that Macaulay had a singular taste +for reading even the trashiest novels; and, that probably an Indian +station at that period was in respect of such reading like a thirsty +land after a long drought. For that reason it reproduced pretty +accurately the state of society in which 'Clarissa' was first read, when +there were as yet no circulating libraries, and the winter evenings were +long in the country and the back parlours of tradesmen's shops. +Probably, a person eager to enjoy Richardson's novels now would do well +to take them as his only recreation for a long holiday in a remote place +and pray for steady rain. On those conditions, he may enter into the old +spirit. And the remark may suggest one moral, for one ought not to +conclude an article upon Richardson without a moral. It is that a +purpose may be a very dangerous thing for a novelist in so far as it +leads him to try means of persuasion not appropriate to his art; but +when, as with Richardson, it implies a keen interest in an imaginary +world, a desire to set forth in the most forcible way what are the great +springs of action of human beings by showing them under appropriate +situations, then it may be a source of such power of fascination as is +exercised by the greatest writers alone.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">94</a></span></p> +<h2><i>POPE AS A MORALIST</i></h2> + + +<p>The vitality of Pope's writings, or at least of certain fragments of +them, is remarkable. Few reputations have been exposed to such perils at +the hands of open enemies or of imprudent friends. In his lifetime 'the +wasp of Twickenham' could sting through a sevenfold covering of pride or +stupidity. Lady Mary and Lord Hervey writhed and retaliated with little +more success than the poor denizens of Grub Street. But it is more +remarkable that Pope seems to be stinging well into the second century +after his death. His writings resemble those fireworks which, after they +have fallen to the ground and been apparently quenched, suddenly break +out again into sputtering explosions. The waters of a literary +revolution have passed over him without putting him out. Though much of +his poetry has ceased to interest us, so many of his brilliant couplets +still survive that probably no dead writer, with the solitary exception +of Shakespeare, is more frequently quoted at the present day. It is in +vain that he is abused, ridiculed, and often declared to be no poet at +all. The school of Wordsworth regarded him as the embodiment of the +corrupting influence in English poetry; and it is only of late that we +are beginning to aim at a more catholic spirit in literary criticism. It +is not our business simply to revile or to extol the ideals of our +ancestors, but to try to understand them. The passionate partisanship +of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">95</a></span> militant schools is pardonable in the apostles of a new creed, but +when the struggle is over we must aim at saner judgments. Byron was +impelled by motives other than the purely judicial when he declared Pope +to be the 'great moral poet of all times, of all climes, of all +feelings, and of all stages of existence;' and it is not less +characteristic that Byron was at the same time helping to dethrone the +idol before which he prostrated himself. A critic whose judgments, +however wayward, are always keen and original, has more recently spoken +of Pope in terms which recall Byron's enthusiasm. 'Pope,' says Mr. +Ruskin, in one of his Oxford lectures, 'is the most perfect +representative we have since Chaucer of the true English mind;' and he +adds that his hearers will find, as they study Pope, that he has +expressed for them, 'in the strictest language, and within the briefest +limits, every law of art, of criticism, of economy, of policy, and +finally of a benevolence, humble, rational, and resigned, contented with +its allotted share of life, and trusting the problem of its salvation to +Him in whose hand lies that of the universe.' These remarks are added by +way of illustrating the relation of art to morals, and enforcing the +great principle that a noble style can only proceed from a sincere +heart. 'You can only learn to speak as these men spake by learning what +these men were.' When we ask impartially what Pope was, we may possibly +be inclined to doubt the complete soundness of the eulogy upon his +teaching. Meanwhile, however, Byron and Mr. Ruskin agree in holding up +Pope as an instance, almost as the typical instance, of that kind of +poetry which is directly intended to enforce a lofty morality. Though we +can never take either Byron or Mr. Ruskin as the representative of sweet +reasonableness, their admiration is some proof that Pope possessed great +merits<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">96</a></span> as a poetical interpreter of morals. Without venturing into the +wider ocean of poetical criticism, I will endeavour to consider what was +the specific element in Pope's poetry which explains, if it does not +justify, this enthusiastic praise.</p> + +<p>I shall venture to assume, indeed, that Pope was a genuine poet. +Perhaps, as M. Taine thinks, it is a proof of our British grossness that +we still admire the 'Rape of the Lock,' yet I must agree with most +critics that it is admirable after its kind. Pope's sylphs, as Mr. Elwin +says, are legitimate descendants from Shakespeare's fairies. True, they +have entered into rather humiliating bondage. Shakespeare's Ariel has to +fetch the midnight dew from the still-vexed Bermoothes; he delights to +fly—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On the curl'd clouds—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>whereas the 'humbler province' of Pope's Ariel is 'to tend the fair'—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">To steal from rainbows, ere they drop in showers,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A brighter wash; to curl their waving hairs,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Assist their blushes, and inspire their airs.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nay, oft in dreams invention we bestow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To change a flounce or add a furbelow.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Prospero, threatening Ariel for murmuring, says 'I will</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i12">rend an oak<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And peg thee in his knotty entrails, until<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou hast howled away twelve winters.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The fate threatened to a disobedient sprite in the later poem is that he +shall</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Be stuff'd in vials, or transfixed with pins,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or plunged in lakes of bitter washes lie,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or wedged whole ages in a bodkin's eye.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Pope's muse—one may use the old-fashioned word in such a +connection—had left the free forest for Will's Coffee-house, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">97</a></span>and +haunted ladies' boudoirs instead of the brakes of the enchanted island. +Her wings were clogged with 'gums and pomatums,' and her 'thin essence' +had shrunk 'like a rivel'd flower.' But a delicate fancy is a delicate +fancy still, even when employed about the paraphernalia of modern life; +a truth which Byron maintained, though not in an unimpeachable form, in +his controversy with Bowles. We sometimes talk as if our ancestors were +nothing but hoops and wigs; and forget that they had a fair allowance of +human passions. And consequently we are very apt to make a false +estimate of the precise nature of that change which fairly entitles us +to call Pope's age prosaic. In showering down our epithets of +artificial, sceptical, and utilitarian, we not seldom forget what kind +of figure we are ourselves likely to make in the eyes of our own +descendants.</p> + +<p>Whatever be the position rightly to be assigned to Pope in the British +Walhalla, his own theory has been unmistakably expressed. He boasts</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">That not in fancy's maze he wandered long,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But stooped to truth and moralised his song.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>His theory is compressed into one of the innumerable aphorisms which +have to some degree lost their original sharpness of definition, because +they have passed, as current coinage, through so many hands.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The proper study of mankind is man.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The saying is in form nearly identical with Goethe's remark that man is +properly the only object which interests man. The two poets, indeed, +understood the doctrine in a very different way. Pope's interpretation +strikes the present generation as narrow and mechanical. He would place<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">98</a></span> +such limitations upon the sphere of human interest as to exclude, +perhaps, the greatest part of what we generally mean by poetry. How +much, for example, would have to be suppressed if we sympathised with +Pope's condemnation of the works in which</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Pure description holds the place of sense.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Nearly all the works of such poets as Thomson and Cowper would +disappear, Wordsworth's pages would show fearful gaps, and Keats would +be in risk of summary suppression. We may doubt whether much would be +left of Spenser, from whom both Keats and Pope, like so many other of +our poets, drew inspiration in their youth. Fairyland would be deserted, +and the poet condemned to working upon ordinary commonplaces in broad +daylight. The principle which Pope proclaimed is susceptible of the +inverse application. Poetry, as it proves, may rightly concern itself +with inanimate nature, with pure description, or with the presentation +of lovely symbols not definitely identified with any cut-and-dried saws +of moral wisdom; because there is no part of the visible universe to +which we have not some relation, and the most ethereal dreams that ever +visited a youthful poet 'on summer eve by haunted stream' are in some +sense reflections of the passions and interests that surround our daily +life. Pope, however, as the man more fitted than any other fully to +interpret the mind of his own age, inevitably gives a different +construction to a very sound maxim. He rightly assumes that man is his +proper study; but then by man he means not the genus, but a narrow +species of the human being. 'Man' means Bolingbroke, and Walpole, and +Swift, and Curll, and Theobald; it does not mean man as the product of a +long series of generations and part of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">99</a></span> the great universe of +inextricably involved forces. He cannot understand the man of distant +ages; Homer is to him not the spontaneous voice of the heroic age, but a +clever artist whose gods and heroes are consciously-constructed parts of +an artificial 'machinery.' Nature has, for him, ceased to be inhabited +by sylphs and fairies, except to amuse the fancies of fine ladies and +gentlemen, and has not yet received a new interest from the fairy tales +of science. The old ideal of chivalry merely suggests the sneers of +Cervantes, or even the buffoonery of Butler's wit, and has not undergone +restoration at the hands of modern romanticists. Politics are not +associated in his mind with any great social upheaval, but with a series +of petty squabbles for places and pensions, in which bribery is the +great moving force. What he means by religion is generally not so much +the existence of a divine element in the world as a series of bare +metaphysical demonstrations too frigid to produce enthusiasm or to +stimulate the imagination. And, therefore, he inevitably interests +himself chiefly in what is certainly a perennial source of interest—the +passions and thoughts of the men and women immediately related to +himself; and it may be remarked, in passing, that if this narrows the +range of Pope's poetry, the error is not so vital as a modern delusion +of the opposite kind. Because poetry should not be brought into too +close a contact with the prose of daily life, we sometimes seem to think +that it must have no relation to daily life at all, and consequently +convert it into a mere luxurious dreaming, where the beautiful very +speedily degenerates into the pretty or the picturesque. Because poetry +need not be always a point-blank fire of moral platitudes, we +occasionally declare that there is no connection at all between poetry +and morality,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">100</a></span> and that all art is good which is for the moment +agreeable. Such theories must end in reducing all poetry and art to be +at best more or less elegant trifling for the amusement of the indolent; +and to those who uphold them Pope's example may be of some use. If he +went too far in the direction of identifying poetry with preaching, he +was not wrong in assuming that poetry should involve preaching, though +by an indirect method. Morality and art are not independent, though not +identical. Both, as Mr. Ruskin urges in the passage just quoted, are +only admirable when the expression of healthful and noble natures. But, +without discussing that thorny problem and certainly without committing +myself to an approval of Mr. Ruskin's solution, I am content to look at +it for the time from Pope's stand-point.</p> + +<p>Taking Pope's view of his poetical office, there remain considerable +difficulties in estimating the value of the lesson which he taught with +so much energy. The difficulties result both from that element which was +common to his contemporaries and from that which was supplied by Pope's +own idiosyncrasies. The commonplaces in which Pope takes such infinite +delight have become very stale for us. Assuming their perfect sincerity, +we cannot understand how anybody should have thought of enforcing them +with such amazing emphasis. We constantly feel a shock like that which +surprises the reader of Young's 'Night Thoughts' when he finds it +asserted, in all the pomp of blank verse, that</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Procrastination is the thief of time.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The maxim has rightly been consigned to copy-books. And a great deal of +Pope's moralising is of the same order. We do not want denunciations of +misers. Nobody at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">101</a></span> present day keeps gold in an old stocking. When +we read the observation,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Tis strange the miser should his cares employ<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To gain the riches he can ne'er enjoy,<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>we can only reply that we have heard something like it before. In fact, +we cannot place ourselves in the position of men at the time when modern +society was first definitely emerging from the feudal state, and +everybody was sufficiently employed in gossiping about his neighbours. +We are perplexed by the extreme interest with which they dwell upon the +little series of obvious remarks which have been worked to death by +later writers. Pope, for example, is still wondering over the first +appearance of one of the most familiar of modern inventions. He +exclaims,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Blest paper credit! last and best supply!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That lends corruption lighter wings to fly!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He points out, with an odd superfluity of illustration, that bank-notes +enable a man to be bribed much more easily than of old. There is no +danger, he says, that a patriot will be exposed by a guinea dropping out +of his pocket at the end of an interview with the minister; and he shows +how awkward it would be if a statesman had to take his bribes in kind, +and his servants should proclaim,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Sir, Spain has sent a thousand jars of oil;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Huge bales of British cloth blockade the door;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A hundred oxen at your levees roar.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This, however, was natural enough when the South Sea scheme was for the +first time illustrating the powers and the dangers of extended credit. +To us, who are beginning to fit our experience of commercial panics into +a scientific theory, the wonder expressed by Pope sounds like the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">102</a></span> +exclamations of a savage over a Tower musket. And in the sphere of +morals it is pretty much the same. All those reflections about the +little obvious vanities and frivolities of social life which supplied +two generations of British essayists, from the 'Tatler' to the +'Lounger,' with an inexhaustible fund of mild satire, have lost their +freshness. Our own modes of life have become so complex by comparison, +that we pass over these mere elements to plunge at once into more +refined speculations. A modern essayist starts where Addison or Johnson +left off. He assumes that his readers know that procrastination is an +evil, and tries to gain a little piquancy by paradoxically pointing out +the objections to punctuality. Character, of course, becomes more +complex, and requires more delicate modes of analysis. Compare, for +example, the most delicate of Pope's delineations with one of Mr. +Browning's elaborate psychological studies. Remember how many pages of +acute observation are required to set forth Bishop Blougram's peculiar +phase of worldliness, and then turn to Pope's descriptions of Addison, +or Wharton, or Buckingham. Each of those descriptions is, indeed, a +masterpiece in its way; the language is inimitably clear and pointed; +but the leading thought is obvious, and leads to no intricate problems. +Addison—assuming Pope's Addison to be the real Addison—might be +cold-blooded and jealous; but he had not worked out that elaborate +machinery for imposing upon himself and others which is required in a +more critical age. He wore a mask, but a mask of simple construction; +not one of those complex contrivances of modern invention which are so +like the real skin that it requires the acuteness and patience of a +scientific observer to detect the difference and point out the nature of +the deception. The moral difference between<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">103</a></span> an Addison and a Blougram +is as great as the difference between an old stage-coach and a +steam-engine, or between the bulls and bears which first received the +name in Law's time and their descendants on the New York Stock Exchange.</p> + +<p>If, therefore, Pope gains something in clearness and brilliancy by the +comparative simplicity of his art, he loses by the extreme obviousness +of its results. We cannot give him credit for being really moved by such +platitudes. We have the same feeling as when a modern preacher employs +twenty minutes in proving that it is wrong to worship idols of wood and +stone. But, unfortunately, there is a reason more peculiar to Pope which +damps our sympathy still more decidedly. Recent investigations have +strengthened those suspicions of his honesty which were common even +amongst his contemporaries. Mr. Elwin was (very excusably) disgusted by +the revelations of his hero's baseness, till his indignation became a +painful burden to himself and his readers. Speaking bluntly, indeed, we +admit that lying is a vice, and that Pope was in a small way one of the +most consummate liars that ever lived. He speaks himself of +'equivocating pretty genteelly' in regard to one of his peccadilloes. +Pope's equivocation is to the equivocation of ordinary men what a +tropical fern is to the stunted representatives of the same species in +England. It grows until the fowls of the air can rest on its branches. +His mendacity in short amounts to a monomania. That a man with intensely +irritable nerves, and so fragile in constitution that his life might, +without exaggeration, be called a 'long disease,' should defend himself +by the natural weapons of the weak, equivocation and subterfuge, when +exposed to the brutal horseplay common in that day, is indeed not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">104</a></span> +surprising. But Pope's delight in artifice was something unparalleled. +He could hardly drink tea without 'a stratagem,' or, as Lady Bolingbroke +put it, was a politician about cabbages and turnips; and certainly he +did not despise the arts known to politicians on a larger stage. Never, +surely, did all the arts of the most skilful diplomacy give rise to a +series of intrigues more complex than those which attended the +publication of the 'P. T. Letters.' An ordinary man says that he is +obliged to publish by request of friends, and we regard the transparent +device as, at most, a venial offence. But in Pope's hands this simple +trick becomes a complex apparatus of plots within plots, which have only +been unravelled by the persevering labours of most industrious literary +detectives. The whole story was given for the first time at full length +in Mr. Elwin's edition of Pope, and the revelation borders upon the +incredible. How Pope became for a time two men; how in one character he +worked upon the wretched Curll through mysterious emissaries until the +piratical bookseller undertook to publish the letters already privately +printed by Pope himself; how Pope in his other character protested +vehemently against the publication and disavowed all complicity in the +preparations; how he set the House of Lords in motion to suppress the +edition; and how, meanwhile, he took ingenious precautions to frustrate +the interference which he provoked; how in the course of these +manœuvres his genteel equivocation swelled into lying on the most +stupendous scale—all this story, with its various ins and outs, may be +now read by those who have the patience. The problem may be suggested to +casuists how far the iniquity of a lie should be measured by its +immediate purpose, or how far it is aggravated by the enormous mass of +superincumbent falsehoods<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">105</a></span> which it inevitably brings in its train. We +cannot condemn very seriously the affected coyness which tries to +conceal a desire for publication under an apparent yielding to +extortion; but we must certainly admit that the stomach of any other +human being of whom a record has been preserved would have revolted at +the thought of wading through such a waste of falsification to secure so +paltry an end. Moreover, this is only one instance, and by no means the +worst instance, of Pope's regular practice in such matters. Almost every +publication of his life was attended with some sort of mystification +passing into downright falsehood, and, at times, injurious to the +character of his dearest friends. We have to add to this all the cases +in which Pope attacked his enemies under feigned names and then +disavowed his attacks; the malicious misstatements which he tried to +propagate in regard to Addison; and we feel it a positive relief when we +are able to acquit him, partially at least, of the worst charge of +extorting 1,000<i>l.</i> from the Duchess of Marlborough for the suppression +of a satirical passage.</p> + +<p>Whatever minor pleas may be put forward in extenuation, it certainly +cannot be denied that Pope's practical morality was defective. Genteel +equivocation is not one of the Christian graces; and a gentleman +convicted at the present day of practices comparable to those in which +Pope indulged so freely might find it expedient to take his name off the +books of any respectable club. Now, if we take literally Mr. Ruskin's +doctrine that a noble morality must proceed from a noble nature, the +inference from Pope's life to his writings is not satisfactory.</p> + +<p>We may, indeed, take it for demonstrated that Pope was not one of those +men who can be seen from all points of view. There are corners of his +nature which will not bear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">106</a></span> examination. We cannot compare him with such +men as Milton, or Cowper, or Wordsworth, whose lives are the noblest +commentary on their works. Rather he is one of the numerous class in +whom the excessive sensibility of genius has generated very serious +disease. In more modern days we may fancy that his views would have +taken a different turn, and that Pope would have belonged to the Satanic +school of writers, and instead of lying enormously, have found relief +for his irritated nerves in reviling all that is praised by ordinary +mankind. But we must hesitate before passing from his acknowledged vices +to a summary condemnation of the whole man. Human nature (the remark is +not strictly original) is often inconsistent; and, side by side with +degrading tendencies, there sometimes lie not only keen powers of +intellect, but a genuine love for goodness, benevolence, and even for +honesty. Pope is one of those strangely mixed characters which can only +be fully delineated by a masterly hand, and Mr. Courthope in the life +which concludes the definitive edition of the works has at last +performed the task with admirable skill and without too much shrouding +his hero's weaknesses. Meanwhile our pleasure in reading him is much +counterbalanced by the suspicion that those pointed aphorisms which he +turns out in so admirably polished a form may come only from the lips +outwards. Pope, it must be remembered, is essentially a parasitical +writer. He was a systematic appropriator—I do not say plagiarist, for +the practice seems to be generally commendable—of other men's thoughts. +His brilliant gems have often been found in some obscure writer, and +have become valuable by the patient care with which he has polished and +mounted them. We doubt their perfect sincerity because, when he is +speaking in his own person,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">107</a></span> we can often prove him to be at best under +a curious delusion. Take, for example, the 'Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot,' +which is his most perfect work. Some of the boasts in it are apparently +quite justified by the facts. But what are we to say to such a passage +as this?—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I was not born for courts or great affairs;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I pay my debts, believe, and say my prayers;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Can sleep without a poem in my head,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor know if Dennis be alive or dead.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Admitting his independence, and not inquiring too closely into his +prayers, can we forget that the gentleman who could sleep without a poem +in his head called up a servant four times in one night of 'the dreadful +winter of Forty' to supply him with paper, lest he should lose a +thought? Or what is the value of a professed indifference to Dennis from +the man distinguished beyond all other writers for the bitterness of his +resentment against all small critics; who disfigured his best poems by +his petty vengeance for old attacks; and who could not refrain from +sneering at poor Dennis, even in the Prologue which he condescended to +write for the benefit of his dying antagonist? Or, again, one can hardly +help smiling at his praises of his own hospitality. The dinner which he +promises to his friend is to conclude with—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Cheerful healths (your mistress shall have place),<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And, what's more rare, a poet shall say grace.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The provision made for the 'cheerful healths,' as Johnson lets us know, +consisted of the remnant of a pint of wine, from which Pope had taken a +couple of glasses, divided amongst two guests. There was evidently no +danger of excessive conviviality. And then a grace in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">108</a></span> which Bolingbroke +joined could not have been a very impressive ceremony.</p> + +<p>Thus, we are always pursued, in reading Pope, by disagreeable +misgivings. We don't know what comes from the heart, and what from the +lips: when the real man is speaking, and when we are only listening to +old commonplaces skilfully vamped. There is always, if we please, a bad +interpretation to be placed upon his finest sentiments. His indignation +against the vicious is confused with his hatred of personal enemies; he +protests most loudly that he is honest when he is 'equivocating most +genteelly;' his independence may be called selfishness or avarice; his +toleration simple indifference; and even his affection for his friends a +decorous fiction, which will never lead him to the slightest sacrifice +of his own vanity or comfort. A critic of the highest order is provided +with an Ithuriel spear, which discriminates the sham sentiments from the +true. As a banker's clerk can tell a bad coin by its ring on the +counter, without need of a testing apparatus, the true critic can +instinctively estimate the amount of bullion in Pope's epigrammatic +tinsel. But criticism of this kind, as Pope truly says, is as rare as +poetical genius. Humbler writers must be content to take their weights +and measures, or, in other words, to test their first impressions, by +such external evidence as is available. They must proceed cautiously in +these delicate matters, and instead of leaping to the truth by a rapid +intuition, patiently enquire what light is thrown upon Pope's sincerity +by the recorded events of his life, and a careful cross-examination of +the various witnesses to his character. They must, indeed, keep in mind +Mr. Ruskin's excellent canon—that good fruit, even in moralising, can +only be borne by a good tree. Where Pope has succeeded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">109</a></span> in casting into +enduring form some valuable moral sentiment, we may therefore give him +credit for having at least felt it sincerely. If he did not always act +upon it, the weakness is not peculiar to Pope. Time, indeed, has partly +done the work for us. In Pope, more than in almost any other writer, the +grain has sifted itself from the chaff. The jewels have remained after +the flimsy embroidery in which they were fixed has fallen into decay. +Such a result was natural from his mode of composition. He caught at +some inspiration of the moment; he cast it roughly into form; brooded +over it; retouched it again and again; and when he had brought it to the +very highest polish of which his art was capable, placed it in a +pigeon-hole to be fitted, when the opportunity offered, into an +appropriate corner of his mosaic-work. We can see him at work, for +example, in the passage about Addison and the celebrated concluding +couplet. The epigrams in which his poetry abounds have obviously been +composed in the same fashion, for that 'masterpiece of man,' as South is +made to call it in the 'Dunciad,' is only produced in perfection when +the labour which would have made an ode has been concentrated upon a +couple of lines. There is a celebrated recipe for dressing a lark, if we +remember rightly, in which the lark is placed inside a snipe, and the +snipe in a woodcock, and so on till you come to a turkey, or, if +procurable, to an ostrich; then, the mass having been properly stewed, +the superincumbent envelopes are all thrown away, and the essences of +the whole are supposed to be embodied in the original nucleus. So the +perfect epigram, at which Pope is constantly aiming, should be the +quintessence of a whole volume of reflection. Such literary cookery, +however, implies not only labour, but an unwearied<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">110</a></span> vividness of thought +and feeling. The poet must put his soul into the work as well as his +artistic power. Thus, if we may take Pope's most vigorous expressions as +an indication of his strongest convictions, and check their conclusions +by his personal history and by the general tendency of his writings, we +might succeed in putting together something like a satisfactory +statement of the moral system which he expressed forcibly because he +believed in it sincerely.</p> + +<p>Without following the proofs in detail, let us endeavour to give some +statement of the result. What, in fact, did Pope learn by his study of +man, such as it was? What does he tell us about the character of human +beings and their position in the universe which is either original or +marked by the freshness of independent thought? Perhaps the most +characteristic vein of reflection is that which is embodied in the +'Dunciad.' There, at least, we have Pope speaking energetically and +sincerely. He really detests, abjures, and abominates as impious and +heretical, without a trace of mental reservation, the worship of the +great goddess Dulness. The 'Dunciad' does not show the quality in which +Pope most excels, that which makes his best satires resemble the +quintessence of the most brilliant thought of his most brilliant +contemporaries. But it has more energy and continuity than most of his +other poetry. The 'Dunciad' often flows in a continuous stream of +eloquence, instead of dribbling out in little jets of epigram. If there +are fewer points, there are more frequent gushes of sustained rhetoric. +Even when Pope condescends—and he condescends much too often—to pelt +his antagonists with mere filth, he does it with a touch of boisterous +vigour. He laughs out. He catches something from his patron Swift when +he</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Laughs and shakes in Rabelais's easy chair.<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">111</a></span></div></div> + +<p>His lungs seem to be fuller and his voice to lose for the time its +tricks of mincing affectation. Here, indeed, there can be no question of +insincerity. Pope's scorn of folly is to be condemned only so far as it +was connected with too bitter a hatred of fools. He has suffered, as +Swift foretold, by the insignificance of the enemies against whom he +rages with superfluous vehemence. But for Pope, no one in this +generation would have heard of Arnall and Moore and Breval and Bezaleel +Morris and fifty more ephemeral denizens of Grub Street. The fault is, +indeed, inherent in the plan. It is in some degree creditable to Pope +that his satire was on the whole justified, so far as it could be +justified, by the correctness of his judgment. The only great man whom +he has seriously assaulted is Bentley; and to Pope, Bentley was of +necessity not the greatest of classical critics, but the tasteless +mutilator of Milton, and, as we must perhaps add, the object of the +hatred of Pope's particular friends, Atterbury and Warburton. The +misfortune is that the more just his satire, the more perishable is its +interest; and if we regard the 'Dunciad' simply as an assault upon the +vermin who then infested literature, we must consider him as a man who +should use a steam-hammer to crack a flea. Unluckily for ourselves, +however, it cannot be admitted so easily that Curll and Dennis and the +rest had a merely temporary interest. Regarded as types of literary +nuisances—and Pope does not condescend in his poetry, though the want +is partly supplied in the notes, to indulge in much personal +detail—they may be said by cynics to have a more enduring vitality. Of +course there is at the present day no such bookseller as Curll, living +by piratical invasions of established rights, and pandering to the worst +passions of ignorant readers; no writer who could be fitly called, like +Concanen,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">112</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">A cold, long-winded native of the deep,<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and fitly sentenced to dive where Fleet Ditch</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames;<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and most certainly we must deny the present applicability of the note +upon 'Magazines' compiled by Pope, or rather by Warburton, for the +episcopal bludgeon is perceptible in the prose description. They are not +at present 'the eruption of every miserable scribbler, the scum of every +dirty newspaper, or fragments of fragments picked up from every dirty +dunghill ... equally the disgrace of human wit, morality, decency, and +common sense.' But if the translator of the 'Dunciad' into modern +phraseology would have some difficulty in finding a head for every cap, +there are perhaps some satirical stings which have not quite lost their +point. The legitimate drama, so theatrical critics tell us, has not +quite shaken off the rivalry of sensational scenery and idiotic +burlesque, though possibly we do not produce absurdities equal to that +which, as Pope tells us, was actually introduced by Theobald, in which</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Nile rises, Heaven descends, and dance on earth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Gods, imps, and monsters, music, rage, and mirth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A fire, a jig, a battle and a ball,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till one wide conflagration swallows all.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>There is still facetiousness which reminds us too forcibly that</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Gentle Dulness ever loves a joke,<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and even sermons, for which we may apologise on the ground that</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Dulness is sacred in a sound divine.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Here and there, too, if we may trust certain stern reviewers, there are +writers who have learnt the principle that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">113</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Index learning turns no student pale,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet holds the eel of Science by the tail.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And the first four lines, at least, of the great prophecy at the +conclusion of the third book is thought by the enemies of muscular +Christianity to be possibly approaching its fulfilment:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Proceed, great days! till learning fly the shore,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till birch shall blush with noble blood no more,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till Thames see Eton's sons for ever play,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till Westminster's whole year be holiday,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till Isis' elders reel, their pupils sport,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Alma Mater lies dissolved in Port!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>No! So far as we can see, it is still true that</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Born a goddess, Dulness never dies.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Men, we know it on high authority, are still mostly fools. If Pope be in +error, it is not so much that his adversary is beneath him, as that she +is unassailable by wit or poetry. Weapons of the most ethereal temper +spend their keenness in vain against the 'anarch old' whose power lies +in utter insensibility. It is fighting with a mist, and firing +cannon-balls into a mudheap. As well rave against the force of +gravitation, or complain that our gross bodies must be nourished by +solid food. If, however, we should be rather grateful than otherwise to +a man who is sanguine enough to believe that satire can be successful +against stupidity, and that Grub Street, if it cannot be exterminated, +can at least be lashed into humility, we might perhaps complain that +Pope has taken rather too limited a view of the subject. Dulness has +other avatars besides the literary. In the last and finest book, Pope +attempts to complete his plan by exhibiting the influence of dulness +upon theology and science. The huge torpedo benumbs every faculty of +the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">114</a></span> human mind, and paralyses all the Muses, except 'mad Mathesis,' +which, indeed, does not carry on so internecine a war with the general +enemy. The design is commendable, and executed, so far as Pope was on a +level with his task, with infinite spirit. But, however excellent the +poetry, the logic is defective, and the description of the evil +inadequate. Pope has but a vague conception of the mode in which dulness +might become the leading force in politics, lower religion till it +became a mere cloak for selfishness, and make learning nothing but +laborious and pedantic trifling. Had his powers been equal to his +goodwill, we might have had a satire far more elevated than anything +which he has attempted; for a man must be indeed a dull student of +history who does not recognise the vast influence of dulness-worship on +the whole period which has intervened between Pope and ourselves. Nay, +it may be feared that it will yet be some time before education bills +and societies for university extension will have begun to dissipate the +evil. A modern satirist, were satire still alive, would find an ample +occupation for his talents in a worthy filling out of Pope's incomplete +sketch. But though I feel, I must endeavour to resist the temptation of +indicating some of the probable objects of his antipathy.</p> + +<p>Pope's gallant assault on the common enemy indicates, meanwhile, his +characteristic attitude. Pope is the incarnation of the literary spirit. +He is the most complete representative in our language of the +intellectual instincts which find their natural expression in pure +literature, as distinguished from literature applied to immediate +practical ends, or enlisted in the service of philosophy or science. The +complete antithesis to that spirit is the evil principle which Pope +attacks as dulness. This false goddess is the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">115</a></span> literary Ahriman; and +Pope's natural antipathies, exaggerated by his personal passions and +weaknesses to extravagant proportions, express themselves fully in his +great mock-epic. His theory may be expressed in a parody of Nelson's +immortal advice to his midshipmen: 'Be an honest man and hate dulness as +you do the devil.' Dulness generates the asphyxiating atmosphere in +which no true literature can thrive. It oppresses the lungs and +irritates the nerves of men whose keen brilliant intellects mark them as +the natural servants of literature. Seen from this point of view, there +is an honourable completeness in Pope's career. Possibly a modern +subject of literature may, without paradox, express a certain gratitude +to Pope for a virtue which he would certainly be glad to imitate. Pope +was the first man who made an independence by literature. First and +last, he seems to have received over 8,000<i>l.</i> for his translation of +Homer, a sum then amply sufficient to enable him to live in comfort. No +sum at all comparable to this was ever received by a poet or novelist +until the era of Scott and Byron. Now, without challenging admiration +for Pope on the simple ground that he made his fortune, it is difficult +to exaggerate the importance of this feat at the time. A contemporary +who, whatever his faults, was a still more brilliant example than Pope +of the purely literary qualities, suggests a curious parallel. Voltaire, +as he tells us, was so weary of the humiliations that dishonour letters, +that to stay his disgust he resolved to make 'what scoundrels call a +great fortune.' Some of Voltaire's means of reaching this end appear to +have been more questionable than Pope's. But both of these men of genius +early secured their independence by raising themselves permanently above +the need of writing for money. It may be added in passing that there is +a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">116</a></span> curious similarity in intellect and character between Pope and +Voltaire which would on occasion be worth fuller exposition. The use, +too, which Pope made of his fortune was thoroughly honourable. We +scarcely give due credit, as a rule, to the man who has the rare merit +of distinctly recognising his true vocation in life, and adhering to it +with unflinching pertinacity. Probably the fact that such virtue +generally brings a sufficient personal reward in this world seems to +dispense with the necessity of additional praise. But call it a virtuous +or merely a useful quality, we must at least admit that it is the +necessary groundwork of a thoroughly satisfactory career. Pope, who from +his infancy had</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Lisped in numbers, for the numbers came,<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>gained by his later numbers a secure position, and used his position to +go on rhyming to the end of his life. He never failed to do his very +best. He regarded the wealth which he had earned as a retaining fee, not +as a discharge from his duties. Comparing him with his contemporaries, +we see how vast was the advantage. Elevated above Grub Street, he had no +temptation to manufacture rubbish or descend to actual meanness like De +Foe. Independent of patronage, he was not forced to become a 'tame cat' +in the hands of a duchess, like his friend Gay. Standing apart from +politics, he was free from those disappointed pangs which contributed to +the embitterment of the later years of Swift, dying 'like a poisoned rat +in a hole;' he had not, like Bolingbroke, to affect a philosophical +contempt for the game in which he could no longer take a part; nor was +he even, like Addison and Steele, induced to 'give up to party what was +meant for mankind.' He was not a better man than some of these, and +certainly not better than Goldsmith and Johnson in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">117</a></span> succeeding +generation. Yet, when we think of the amount of good intellect that ran +to waste in the purlieus of Grub Street, or in hunting for pensions in +ministerial ante-chambers, we feel a certain gratitude to the one +literary magnate of the century, whose devotion, it is true, had a very +tangible reward, but whose devotion was yet continuous, and free from +any distractions but those of a constitutional irritability. Nay, if we +compare Pope to some of the later writers who have wrung still +princelier rewards from fortune, the result is not unfavourable. If +Scott had been as true to his calling, his life, so far superior to +Pope's in most other respects, would not have presented the melancholy +contrast of genius running to waste in desperate attempts to win money +at the cost of worthier fame.</p> + +<p>Pope, as a Roman Catholic, and as the adherent of a defeated party, had +put himself out of the race for pecuniary reward. His loyal adherence to +his friends, though, like all his virtues, subject to some deduction, is +really a touching feature in his character. His Catholicism was of the +most nominal kind. He adhered in name to a depressed Church chiefly +because he could not bear to give pain to the parents whom he loved with +an exquisite tenderness. Granting that he would not have had much chance +of winning tangible rewards by the baseness of a desertion, he at least +recognised his true position; and instead of being soured by his +exclusion from the general competition, or wasting his life in frivolous +regrets, he preserved a spirit of tolerance and independence, and had a +full right to the boasts in which he certainly indulged a little too +freely:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Not Fortune's worshipper, nor Fashion's fool,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not Lucre's madman, nor Ambition's tool;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not proud, nor servile—be one poet's praise<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That, if he pleased, he pleased by manly ways;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">118</a></span><br /></span> +<span class="i0">That flattery, even to kings, he held a shame,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And thought a lie in prose or verse the same.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Admitting that the last line suggests a slight qualm, the portrait +suggested in the rest is about as faithful as one can expect a man to +paint from himself.</p> + +<p>And hence we come to the question, what was the morality which Pope +dispensed from this exalted position? Admitting his independence, can we +listen to him patiently when he proclaims himself to be</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Of virtue only, and her friends, the friend;<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>or when he boasts in verses noble if quite sincere—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Yes, I am proud; I must be proud to see<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Men not afraid of God, afraid of me;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Safe from the Bar, the Pulpit, and the Throne,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet touched and shamed by ridicule alone.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Is this guardian of virtue quite immaculate, and the morality which he +preaches quite of the most elevated kind? We must admit, of course, that +he does not sound the depths, or soar to the heights, in which men of +loftier genius are at home. He is not a mystic, but a man of the world. +He never, as we have already said, quits the sphere of ordinary and +rather obvious maxims about the daily life of society, or quits it at +his peril. His independence is not like Milton's, that of an ancient +prophet, consoling himself by celestial visions for a world given over +to baseness and frivolity; nor like Shelley's, that of a vehement +revolutionist, who has declared open war against the existing order; it +is the independence of a modern gentleman, with a competent fortune, +enjoying a time of political and religious calm. And therefore his +morality is in the main the expression of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">119</a></span> the conclusions reached by +supreme good sense, or, as he puts it,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Good sense, which only is the gift of heaven,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And though no science, fairly worth the seven.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Good sense is one of the excellent qualities to which we are scarcely +inclined to do justice at the present day; it is the guide of a time of +equilibrium, stirred by no vehement gales of passion, and we lose sight +of it just when it might give us some useful advice. A man in a passion +is never more irritated than when advised to be sensible; and at the +present day we are permanently in a passion, and therefore apt to assert +that, not only for a moment, but as a general rule, men do well to be +angry. Our art critics, for example, are never satisfied with their +frame of mind till they have lashed themselves into a fit of rhetoric. +Nothing more is wanted to explain why we are apt to be dissatisfied with +Pope, both as a critic and a moralist. In both capacities, however, Pope +is really admirable. Nobody, for example, has ridiculed more happily the +absurdities of which we sometimes take him to be a representative. The +recipe for making an epic poem is a perfect burlesque upon the +pseudo-classicism of his time. He sees the absurdity of the contemporary +statues, whose grotesque medley of ancient and modern costume is +recalled in the lines—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">That livelong wig, which Gorgon's self might own,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Eternal buckle takes in Parian stone.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The painters and musicians come in for their share of ridicule, as in +the description of Timon's Chapel, where</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Light quirks of music, broken and uneven,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Make the soul dance upon a jig to heaven;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On painted ceilings you devoutly stare,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where sprawl the saints of Verrio and Laguerre.<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">120</a></span></div></div> + +<p>Pope, again, was one of the first, by practice and precept, to break +through the old formal school of gardening, in which</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">No pleasing intricacies intervene,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No artful wildness to perplex the scene;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And half the platform just reflects the other.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The suffering eye inverted Nature sees,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With here a fountain never to be played,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And there a summer-house that knows no shade;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here Amphitrite sails through myrtle bowers,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There gladiators fight or die in flowers;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Unwatered see the drooping sea-horse mourn,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And swallows roost in Nilus' dusty urn.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It would be impossible to hit off more happily the queer formality which +annoys us, unless its quaintness makes us smile, in the days of good +Queen Anne, when Cato still appeared with a</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Long wig, flowered gown, and lacquered chair.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Pope's literary criticism, too, though verging too often on the +commonplace, is generally sound as far as it goes. If, as was +inevitable, he was blind to the merits of earlier schools of poetry, he +was yet amongst the first writers who helped to establish the rightful +supremacy of Shakespeare.</p> + +<p>But in what way does Pope apply his good sense to morality? His +favourite doctrine about human nature is expressed in the theory of the +'ruling passion' which is to be found in all men, and which, once known, +enables us to unravel the secret of every character. As he says in the +'Essay on Man'—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">On life's vast ocean diversely we sail,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Reason the card, but passion is the gale.<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">121</a></span></div></div> + +<p>Right reason, therefore, is the power which directs passions to the +worthiest end; and its highest lesson is to enforce</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">The truth (enough for man to know)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Virtue alone is happiness below.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The truth, though admirable, may be suspected of commonplace; and Pope +does not lay down any propositions unfamiliar to other moralists, nor, +it is to be feared, enforce them by preaching of more than usual +effectiveness. His denunciations of avarice, of corruption, and of +sensuality were probably of little more practical use than his +denunciation of dulness. The 'men not afraid of God' were hardly likely +to be deterred from selling their votes to Walpole by fear of Pope's +satire. He might</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Goad the Prelate slumbering in his stall<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>sufficiently to produce the episcopal equivalent for bad language; but +he would hardly interrupt the bishop's slumbers for many moments; and, +on the whole, he might congratulate himself, rather too cheaply, on +being animated by</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The strong antipathy of good to bad.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Without exaggerating its importance, however, we may seek to define the +precise point on which Pope's morality differed from that of many other +writers who have expressed their general approval of the ten +commandments. A healthy strain of moral feeling is useful, though we +cannot point to the individuals whom it has restrained from picking +pockets.</p> + +<p>The defective side of the morality of good sense is, that it tends to +degenerate into cynicism, either of the indolent variety which commended +itself to Chesterfield, or of the more vehement sort, of which Swift's +writings are the most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">122</a></span> powerful embodiment. A shrewd man of the world, +of placid temperament, accepts placidly the conclusion that as he can +see through a good many people, virtue generally is a humbug. If he has +grace enough left to be soured by such a conclusion, he raves at the +universal corruption of mankind. Now Pope, notwithstanding his petty +spite, and his sympathy with the bitterness of his friends, always shows +a certain tenderness of nature which preserves him from sweeping +cynicism. He really believes in nature, and values life for the power of +what Johnson calls reciprocation of benevolence. The beauty of his +affection for his father and mother, and for his old nurse, breaks +pleasantly through the artificial language of his letters, like a sweet +spring in barren ground. When he touches upon the subject in his poetry, +one seems to see tears in his eyes, and to hear his voice tremble. There +is no more beautiful passage in his writings than the one in which he +expresses the hope that he may be spared</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">To rock the cradle of reposing age,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And keep awhile one parent from the sky.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Here at least he is sincere beyond suspicion; and we know from +unimpeachable testimony that the sentiment so perfectly expressed was +equally exemplified in his life. It sounds easy, but unfortunately the +ease is not always proved in practice, for a man of genius to be +throughout their lives an unmixed comfort to his parents. It is +unpleasant to remember that a man so accessible to tender emotions +should jar upon us by his language about women generally. Byron +countersigns the opinion of Bolingbroke that he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">123</a></span> knew the sex well; but +testimony of that kind hardly prepossesses us in his favour. In fact, +the school of Bolingbroke and Swift, to say nothing of Wycherley, was +hardly calculated to generate a chivalrous tone of feeling. His +experience of Lady Mary gave additional bitterness to his sentiments. +Pope, in short, did not love good women—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And best distinguished as black, brown, or fair,<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>as he impudently tells a lady—as a man of genius ought; and women have +generally returned the dislike. Meanwhile the vein of benevolence shows +itself unmistakably in Pope's language about his friends. Thackeray +seizes upon this point of his character in his lectures on the English +Humourists, and his powerful, if rather too favourable, description +brings out forcibly the essential tenderness of the man who, during the +lucid intervals of his last illness, was 'always saying something kindly +of his present or absent friends.' Nobody, as has often been remarked, +has paid so many exquisitely turned compliments. There is something +which rises to the dog-like in his affectionate admiration for Swift and +for Bolingbroke, his rather questionable 'guide, philosopher, and +friend.' Whenever he speaks of a friend, he is sure to be felicitous. +There is Garth, for example—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">The best good Christian he,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Although he knows it not.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>There are beautiful lines upon Arbuthnot, addressed as—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Friend to my life, which did not you prolong,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The world had wanted many an idle song.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Or we may quote, though one verse has been spoilt by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">124</a></span> familiarity, the +lines in which Bolingbroke is coupled with Peterborough:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">There St. John mingles with my friendly bowl<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The feast of reason and the flow of soul;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And he whose lightning pierced the Iberian lines<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now farms my quincunx, and now ranks my vines,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And tames the genius of the stubborn plain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Almost as quickly as he conquered Spain.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Or again, there are the verses in which he anticipates the dying words +attributed to Pitt:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And you, brave Cobham, to the latest breath,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall feel the ruling passion strong in death;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such in those moments, as in all the past,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Oh, save my country, Heaven!' shall be your last.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Cobham's name, again, suggests the spirited lines—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Spirit of Arnall! aid me while I lie,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cobham's a coward, Polwarth is a slave,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Lyttelton a dark, designing knave;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">St. John has ever been a wealthy fool—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But let me add Sir Robert's mighty dull,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Has never made a friend in private life,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And was, besides, a tyrant to his wife.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Perhaps the last compliment is ambiguous, but Walpole's name again +reminds us that Pope could on occasion be grateful even to an opponent. +'Go see Sir Robert,' suggests his friend in the epilogue to the Satires; +and Pope replies—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Seen him I have; but in his happier hour<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Seen him uncumbered with the venal tribe<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Smile without art, and win without a bribe;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Would he oblige me? Let me only find<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He does not think me what he thinks mankind;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Come, come; at all I laugh, he laughs no doubt;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The only difference is, I dare laugh out.<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">125</a></span></div></div> + +<p>But there is no end to the delicate flattery which may be set off +against Pope's ferocious onslaughts upon his enemies. If one could have +a wish for the asking, one could scarcely ask for a more agreeable +sensation than that of being titillated by a man of equal ingenuity in +caressing one's pet vanities. The art of administering such consolation +is possessed only by men who unite such tenderness to an exquisitely +delicate intellect. This vein of genuine feeling sufficiently redeems +Pope's writings from the charge of a commonplace worldliness. Certainly +he is not one of the 'genial' school, whose indiscriminate benevolence +exudes over all that they touch. There is nothing mawkish in his +philanthropy. Pope was, if anything, too good a hater; 'the portentous +cub never forgives,' said Bentley; but kindliness is all the more +impressive when not too widely diffused. Add to this his hearty contempt +for pomposities, humbugs, and stupidities of all kinds, and above all +the fine spirit of independence, in which we have again the real man, +and which expresses itself in such lines as these:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Oh, let me live my own, and die so too!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">(To live and die is all I have to do);<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Maintain a poet's dignity and ease,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And see what friends and read what books I please.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And we may admit that Pope, in spite of his wig and his stays, his +vanities and his affectations, was in his way as fair an embodiment as +we would expect of that 'plain living and high thinking' of which +Wordsworth regretted the disappearance. The little cripple, diseased in +mind and body, spiteful and occasionally brutal, had in him the spirit +of a man. The monarch of the literary world was far from immaculate; but +he was not without a dignity of his own.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">126</a></span></p> + +<p>We come, however, to the question, what had Pope to say upon the deepest +subjects with which human beings can concern themselves? The most +explicit answer must be taken from the 'Essay on Man,' and the essay +must be acknowledged to have more conspicuous faults than any of Pope's +writings. The art of reasoning in verse is so difficult that we may +doubt whether it is in any case legitimate, and must acknowledge that it +has been never successfully practised by any English writer. Dryden's +'Religio Laici' may be better reasoning, but it is worse poetry than +Pope's Essay. It is true, again, that Pope's reasoning is intrinsically +feeble. He was no metaphysician, and confined himself to putting +together incoherent scraps of different systems. Some of his arguments +strike us as simply childish, as, for example, the quibble derived from +the Stoics, that</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The blest to-day is as completely so<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As who began a thousand years ago.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Nobody, we may safely say, was ever much comforted by that reflection. +Nor, though the celebrated argument about the scale of beings, which +Pope but half-understood, was then sanctioned by the most eminent +contemporary names, do we derive any deep consolation from the remark +that</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i3">in the scale of reasoning life, 'tis plain,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There must be somewhere such a rank as man.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>To say no more of these frigid conceits, as they now appear to us, Pope +does not maintain the serious temper which befits a man pondering upon +the deep mysteries of the universe. Religious meditation does not +harmonise with epigrammatical satire. Admitting the value of the +reflection that other beings besides man are fitting objects of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">127</a></span> +Divine benevolence, we are jarred by such a discord as this:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">While man exclaims, See all things for my use!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">See man for mine! replies a pampered goose.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The goose is appropriate enough in Charron or Montaigne, but should be +kept out of poetry. Such a shock, too, follows when Pope talks about the +superior beings who</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Showed a Newton as we show an ape.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Did anybody, again, ever complain that he wanted 'the strength of bulls, +the fur of bears?'<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Or could it be worth while to meet his complaints +in a serious poem? Pope, in short, is not merely a bad reasoner, but he +wants that deep moral earnestness which gives a profound interest to +Johnson's satires—the best productions of his school—and the deeply +pathetic religious feeling of Cowper.</p> + +<p>Admitting all this, however, and more, the 'Essay on Man' still contains +many passages which not only testify to the unequalled skill of this +great artist in words, but show a certain moral dignity. In the Essay, +more than in any of his other writings, we have the difficulty of +separating the solid bullion from the dross. Pope is here pre-eminently +parasitical, and it is possible to trace to other writers, such as +Montaigne, Pascal, Leibniz, Shaftesbury, Locke, and Wollaston, as well +as to the inspiration of Bolingbroke, nearly every argument which he +employs. He unfortunately worked up the rubbish as well as the gems. +When Mr. Ruskin says that his 'theology was two centuries in advance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">128</a></span> of +his time,' the phrase is curiously inaccurate. He was not really in +advance of the best men of his own time; but they, it is to be feared, +were considerably in advance of the average opinion of our own. What may +be said with more plausibility is, that whilst Pope frequently wastes +his skill in gilding refuse, he is really most sensitive to the noblest +sentiments of his contemporaries, and that, when he has good materials +to work upon, his verse glows with unusual fervour, often to sink with +unpleasant rapidity into mere quibbling or epigrammatic pungency. The +real truth is that Pope precisely expresses the position of the best +thinkers of his day. He did not understand the reasoning, but he fully +shared the sentiments of the philosophers among whom Locke and Leibniz +were the great lights. Pope is to the deists and semi-deists of his time +what Milton was to the Puritans or Dante to the Schoolmen. At times he +writes like a Pantheist, and then becomes orthodox, without a +consciousness of the transition; he is a believer in universal +predestination, and saves himself by inconsistent language about +'leaving free the human will;' his views about the origin of society are +an inextricable mass of inconsistency; and he may be quoted in behalf of +doctrines which he, with the help of Warburton, vainly endeavoured to +disavow. But, leaving sound divines to settle the question of his +orthodoxy, and metaphysicians to crush his arguments, if they think it +worth while, we are rather concerned with the general temper in which he +regards the universe, and the moral which he draws for his own +edification. The main doctrine which he enforces is, of course, one of +his usual commonplaces. The statement that 'whatever is, is right,' may +be verbally admitted, and strained to different purposes by half-a-dozen +differing schools. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">129</a></span> may be alleged by the cynic, who regards virtue +as an empty name; by the mystic, who is lapped in heavenly contemplation +from the cares of this troublesome world; by the sceptic, whose whole +wisdom is concentrated in the duty of submitting to the inevitable; or +by the man who, abandoning the attempt of solving inscrutable enigmas, +is content to recognise in everything the hand of a Divine ordainer of +all things. Pope, judging him by his most forcible passages, prefers to +insist upon the inevitable ignorance of man in presence of the Infinite:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Tis but a part we see, and not the whole;<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and any effort to pierce the impenetrable gloom can only end in +disappointment and discontent:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>We think that we can judge the ways of the Almighty, and correct the +errors of His work. We are as incapable of accounting for human +wickedness as for plague, tempest, and earthquake. In each case our +highest wisdom is an humble confession of ignorance; or, as he puts it,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">In both, to reason right is to submit.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This vein of thought might, perhaps, have conducted him to the +scepticism of his master, Bolingbroke. He unluckily fills up the gaps of +his logical edifice with the untempered mortar of obsolete metaphysics, +long since become utterly uninteresting to all men. Admitting that he +cannot explain, he tries to manufacture sham explanations out of the +'scale of beings,' and other scholastic rubbish. But, in a sense, too, +the most reverent minds will agree most fully with Pope's avowal of the +limitation of human knowledge. He does not apply his scepticism or his +humility to stimulate to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">130</a></span> vain repining against the fetters with which +our minds are bound, or an angry denunciation, like that of Bolingbroke, +of the solutions in which other souls have found a sufficient refuge. +The perplexity in which he finds himself generates a spirit of +resignation and tolerance.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Hope humbly, then; with trembling pinions soar;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wait the great teacher, Death, and God adore.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>That is the pith of his teaching. All optimism is apt to be a little +irritating to men whose sympathies with human suffering are unusually +strong; and the optimism of a man like Pope, vivacious rather than +profound in his thoughts and his sympathies, annoys us at times by his +calm complacency. We cannot thrust aside so easily the thought of the +heavy evils under which all creation groans. But we should wrong him by +a failure to recognise the real benevolence of his sentiment. Pope +indeed becomes too pantheistic for some tastes in the celebrated +fragment—the whole poem is a conglomerate of slightly connected +fragments—beginning,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">All are but parts of one stupendous whole,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But his real fault is that he is not consistently pantheistic. Pope was +attacked both for his pantheism and fatalism and for having borrowed +from Bolingbroke. It is curious enough that it was precisely these +doctrines which he did not borrow. Bolingbroke, like most feeble +reasoners, believed firmly in Free Will; and though a theist after a +fashion, his religion had not emotional depth or logical coherence +enough to be pantheistic. Pope, doubtless, did not here quit his +master's guidance from any superiority in logical perception. But he did +occasionally feel the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">131</a></span> poetical value of the pantheistic conception of +the universe. Pantheism, in fact, is the only poetical form of the +metaphysical theology current in Pope's day. The old historical theology +of Dante, or even of Milton, was too faded for poetical purposes; and +the 'personal Deity,' whose existence and attributes were proved by the +elaborate reasonings of the apologists of that day, was unfitted for +poetical celebration by the very fact that his existence required proof. +Poetry deals with intuitions, not with remote inferences, and therefore +in his better moments Pope spoke not of the intelligent moral Governor +discovered by philosophical investigation, but of the Divine Essence +immanent in all nature, whose 'living raiment' is the world. The finest +passages in the 'Essay on Man,' like the finest passages in Wordsworth, +are an attempt to expound that view, though Pope falls back too quickly +into epigram, as Wordsworth into prose. It was reserved for Goethe to +show what a poet might learn from the philosophy of Spinoza. Meanwhile +Pope, uncertain as is his grasp of any philosophical conceptions, shows, +not merely in set phrases, but in the general colouring of his poem, +something of that width of sympathy which should result from the +pantheistic view. The tenderness, for example, with which he always +speaks of the brute creation is pleasant in a writer so little +distinguished as a rule by an interest in what we popularly call nature. +The 'scale of being' argument may be illogical, but we pardon it when it +is applied to strengthen our sympathies with our unfortunate dependants +on the lower steps of the ladder. The lamb who</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Licks the hand just raised to shed his blood<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>is a second-hand lamb, and has, like so much of Pope's writing, acquired +a certain tinge of banality, which must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">132</a></span> limit quotation; and the same +must be said of the poor Indian, who</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">thinks, admitted to that equal sky,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His faithful dog will bear him company.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But the sentiment is as right as the language (in spite of its +familiarity we can still recognise the fact) is exquisite. Tolerance of +all forms of faith, from that of the poor Indian upwards, is so +characteristic of Pope as to have offended some modern critics who might +have known better. We may pick holes in the celebrated antithesis</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">For forms of government let fools contest:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whate'er is best administered is best;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For forms of faith let graceless zealots fight,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He can't be wrong whose life is in the right.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Certainly, they are not mathematically accurate formulæ; but they are +generous, if imperfect, statements of great truths, and not unbecoming +in the mouth of the man who, as the member of an unpopular sect, learnt +to be cosmopolitan rather than bitter, and expressed his convictions in +the well-known words addressed to Swift: 'I am of the religion of +Erasmus, a Catholic; so I live, so I shall die; and hope one day to meet +you, Bishop Atterbury, the younger Craggs, Dr. Garth, Dean Berkeley, and +Mr. Hutchinson in heaven.' Who would wish to shorten the list? And the +scheme of morality which Pope deduced for practical guidance in life is +in harmony with the spirit which breathes in those words just quoted. A +recent dispute in a court of justice shows that even our most cultivated +men have forgotten Pope so far as to be ignorant of the source of the +familiar words—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards.<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">133</a></span></div></div> + +<p>It is therefore necessary to say explicitly that the poem where they +occur, the fourth epistle of the 'Essay on Man,' not only contains +half-a-dozen other phrases equally familiar—<i>e.g.</i>, 'An honest man's +the noblest work of God;'<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> 'Looks through nature up to nature's God;' +'From grave to gay, from lively to severe'—but breathes throughout +sentiments which it would be credulous to believe that any man could +express so vigorously without feeling profoundly. Mr. Ruskin has quoted +one couplet as giving 'the most complete, the most concise, and the most +lofty expression of moral temper existing in English words'—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Never elated, while one man's oppressed;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Never dejected, whilst another's blessed.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The passage in which they occur is worthy of this (let us admit, just a +little over-praised) sentiment; and leads not unfitly to the conclusion +and summary of the whole,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">134</a></span> that he who can recognise the beauty of +virtue knows that</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Where Faith, Law, Morals, all began,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All end—in love of God and love of man.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I know but too well all that may be said against this view of Pope's +morality. He is, as Ste.-Beuve says, the easiest of all men to +caricature; and it is equally easy to throw cold water upon his +morality. We may count up his affectations, ridicule his platitudes, +make heavy deductions for his insincerity, denounce his too frequent +indulgence in a certain love of dirt, which he shares with, and in which +indeed he is distanced by, Swift; and decline to believe in the virtue, +or even in the love of virtue, of a man stained by so many vices and +weaknesses. Yet I must decline to believe that men can gather grapes off +thorns, or figs off thistles, or noble expressions of moral truth from a +corrupt heart thinly varnished by a coating of affectation. Turn it how +we may, the thing is impossible. Pope was more than a mere literary +artist, though he was an artist of unparalleled excellence in his own +department. He was a man in whom there was the seed of many good +thoughts, though choked in their development by the growth of +innumerable weeds. And I will venture, in conclusion, to adduce one more +proof of the justice of a lenient verdict. I have had already to quote +many phrases familiar to everyone who is tinctured in the slightest +degree with a knowledge of English literature; and yet have been haunted +by a dim suspicion that some of my readers may have been surprised to +recognise their author. Pope, we have seen, is recognised even by judges +of the land only through the medium of Byron; and therefore the +'Universal Prayer' may possibly be unfamiliar to some readers. If so, it +will do them no harm to read<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">135</a></span> over again a few of its verses. Perhaps, +after that experience, they will admit that the little cripple of +Twickenham, distorted as were his instincts after he had been stretched +on the rack of this rough world, and grievous as were his offences +against the laws of decency and morality, had yet in him a noble strain +of eloquence significant of deep religious sentiment. A phrase in the +first stanza may shock us as bordering too closely on the epigrammatic; +but the whole poem from which I take these stanzas must, I think, be +recognised as the utterance of a tolerant, reverent, and kindly heart:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Father of all! in every age,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">In every clime adored,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By saint, by savage, and by sage—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Thou great First Cause, least understood,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Who all my sense confined<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To know but this, that thou art good,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And that myself am blind.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">...<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">What conscience dictates to be done,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Or warns me not to do,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This, teach me more than hell to shun;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">That, more than heaven pursue.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">What blessings thy free bounty gives<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Let me not cast away;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For God is paid when man receives—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">To enjoy is to obey.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Yet not to earth's contracted span<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Thy goodness let me bound,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or think thee Lord alone of man,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">When thousand worlds are round.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Let not this weak, unknowing hand<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Presume thy bolts to throw,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or deal damnation round the land<br /></span> +<span class="i1">On each I judge thy foe.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">136</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">If I am right, thy grace impart<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Still in the right to stay:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If I am wrong, oh, teach my heart<br /></span> +<span class="i1">To find that better way.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">...<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>These stanzas, I am well aware, do not quite conform to the modern taste +in hymns, nor are they likely to find favour with admirers of the +'Christian Year.' Another school would object to them on a very +different ground. The deism of Pope's day was not a stable form of +belief; but in the form in which it was held by the pure deists of the +Toland and Tindal school, or by the disguised deists who followed Locke +or Clarke, it was the highest creed then attainable; and Pope's prayer +is an adequate impression of its best sentiment.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The remark was perhaps taken from Sir Thomas Browne: 'Thus +have we no just quarrel with nature for leaving us naked; or to envy the +horns, hoofs, skins, and furs of other creatures; being provided with +reason that can supply them all.'—<i>Religio Medici</i>, Part I. sec. 18.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> This sentiment, by the way, was attacked by Darnley, in his +edition of Beaumont and Fletcher, as 'false and degrading to man, +derogatory to God.' As I have lately seen the remark quoted with +approbation, it is worth noticing the argument by which Darnley supports +it. He says that an honest able man is nobler than an honest man, and +Aristides with the genius of Homer nobler than Aristides with the +dulness of a clown. Undoubtedly! But surely a man might say that English +poetry is the noblest in the world, and yet admit that Shakespeare was a +nobler poet than Tom Moore. Because honesty is nobler than any other +quality, it does not follow that all honest men are on a par. This bit +of cavilling reminds one of De Quincey's elaborate argument against the +lines: +</p> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Who would not laugh, if such a man there be?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?<br /></span> +</div></div> +<p> +De Quincey says that precisely the same phenomenon is supposed to make +you laugh in one line and weep in the other; and that therefore the +thought is inaccurate. As if it would not be a fit cause for tears to +discover that one of our national idols was a fitting subject for +laughter!</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">137</a></span></p> +<h2><i>SIR WALTER SCOTT</i></h2> + + +<p>The question has begun to be asked about Scott which is asked about +every great man: whether he is still read or still read as he ought to +be read. I have been glad to see in some statistics of popular +literature that the Waverley Novels are still among the books most +frequently bought at railway stations, and scarcely surpassed even by +'Pickwick,' or 'David Copperfield.' A writer, it is said, is entitled to +be called a classic when his books have been read for a century after +his death. The number of books which fairly satisfies that condition is +remarkably small. There are certain books, of course, which we are all +bound to read if we make any claim to be decently educated. A modern +Englishman cannot afford to confess that he has not read Shakespeare or +Milton; if he talks about philosophy, he must have dipped at least into +Bacon and Hobbes and Locke; if he is a literary critic, he must know +something of Spenser and Donne and Dryden and the early dramatists; but +how many books are there of the seventeenth century which are still read +for pleasure by other than specialists? To speak within bounds, I fancy +that it would be exceedingly difficult to make out a list of one hundred +English books which after publication for a century are still really +familiar to the average reader. Something like ninety-nine of those have +in any case lost the charm of novelty, and are read, if read<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">138</a></span> at all, +from some vague impression that the reader is doing a duty. It takes a +very powerful voice and a very clear utterance to make a man audible to +the fourth generation. If something of the mildew of time is stealing +over the Waverley Novels, we must regard that as all but inevitable. +Scott will have succeeded beyond any but the very greatest, perhaps even +as much as the very greatest, if, in the twentieth century, now so +unpleasantly near, he has a band of faithful followers, who still read +because they like to read and not because they are told to read. +Admitting that he must more or less undergo the universal fate, that the +glory must be dimmed even though it be not quenched, we may still ask +whether he will not retain as much vitality as the conditions of +humanity permit: Will our posterity understand at least why he was once +a luminary of the first magnitude, or wonder at their ancestors' +hallucination about a mere will-o'-the-wisp? Will some of his best +performances stand out like a cathedral amongst ruined hovels, or will +they all sink into the dust together, and the outlines of what once +charmed the world be traced only by Dryasdust and historians of +literature? It is a painful task to examine such questions impartially. +This probing a great reputation, and doubting whether we can come to +anything solid at the bottom, is especially painful in regard to Scott. +For he has, at least, this merit, that he is one of those rare natures +for whom we feel not merely admiration but affection. We may cherish the +fame of some writers in spite of, not on account of, many personal +defects; if we satisfied ourselves that their literary reputations were +founded on the sand, we might partly console ourselves with the thought +that we were only depriving bad men of a title to genius. But for Scott +most men feel in even stronger measure that kind of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">139</a></span> warm fraternal +regard which Macaulay and Thackeray expressed for the amiable, but, +perhaps, rather cold-blooded, Addison. The manliness and the sweetness +of the man's nature predispose us to return the most favourable verdict +in our power. And we may add that Scott is one of the last great English +writers whose influence extended beyond his island, and gave a stimulus +to the development of European thought. We cannot afford to surrender +our faith in one to whom, whatever his permanent merits, we must trace +so much that is characteristic of the mind of the nineteenth century. +Whilst, finally, if we have any Scotch blood in our veins, we must be +more or less than men to turn a deaf ear to the promptings of +patriotism. When Shakespeare's fame decays everywhere else, the +inhabitants of Stratford-on-Avon, if it still exist, should still revere +their tutelary saint; and the old town of Edinburgh should tremble in +its foundation when a sacrilegious hand is laid upon the glory of Scott.</p> + +<p>Let us, however, take courage, and, with such impartiality as we may +possess, endeavour to sift the wheat from the chaff. And, by way of +following an able guide, let us dwell for a little on the judgment +pronounced upon Scott by one whose name I would never mention without +profound respect, and who has a special claim to be heard in this case. +Carlyle is (I must now say was) both a man of genius and a Scotchman. +His own writings show in every line that he comes of the same strong +Protestant race from which Scott received his best qualities. 'The +Scotch national character,' says Carlyle himself, 'originates in many +circumstances. First of all, the Saxon stuff there was to work on; but +next, and beyond all else except that, in the Presbyterian gospel of +John Knox. It seems a good<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">140</a></span> national character, and, on some sides, not +so good. Let Scott thank John Knox, for he owed him much, little as he +dreamed of debt in that quarter! No Scotchman of his time was more +entirely Scotch than Walter Scott: the good and the not so good, which +all Scotchmen inherit, ran through every fibre of him.' Nothing more +true; and the words would be as strikingly appropriate if for Walter +Scott we substitute Thomas Carlyle. And to this source of sympathy we +might add others. Who in this generation could rival Scott's talent for +the picturesque, unless it be Carlyle? Who has done so much to apply the +lesson which Scott, as he says, first taught us—that the 'bygone ages +of the world were actually filled by living men, not by protocols, +state-papers, controversies, and abstractions of men'? If Scott would in +old days—I still quote his critic—have harried cattle in Tynedale or +cracked crowns in Redswire, would not Carlyle have thundered from the +pulpit of John Knox his own gospel, only in slightly altered +phraseology—that shams should not live but die, and that men should do +what work lies nearest to their hands, as in the presence of the +eternities and the infinite silences?</p> + +<p>That last parallel reminds us that if there are points of similarity, +there are contrasts both wide and deep. The rugged old apostle had +probably a very low opinion of moss-troopers, and Carlyle has a message +to deliver to his fellow-creatures, which is not quite according to +Scott. And thus we see throughout his interesting essay a kind of +struggle between two opposite tendencies—a genuine liking for the man, +tempered by a sense that Scott dealt rather too much in those same shams +to pass muster with a stern moral censor. Nobody can touch Scott's +character more finely. There is a charming little anecdote which every +reader must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">141</a></span> remember: how there was a 'little Blenheim cocker' of +singular sensibility and sagacity; how the said cocker would at times +fall into musings like those of a Wertherean poet, and lived in +perpetual fear of strangers, regarding them all as potentially +dog-stealers; how the dog was, nevertheless, endowed with 'most amazing +moral tact,' and specially hated the genus <i>quack</i>, and, above all, that +of <i>acrid-quack</i>. 'These,' says Carlyle, 'though never so +clear-starched, bland-smiling, and beneficent, he absolutely would have +no trade with. Their very sugar-cake was unavailing. He said with +emphasis, as clearly as barking could say it, "Acrid-quack, avaunt!"' +But once when 'a tall, irregular, busy-looking man came halting by,' +that wise, nervous little dog ran towards him, and began 'fawning, +frisking, licking at the feet' of Sir Walter Scott. No reader of reviews +could have done better, says Carlyle; and, indeed, that canine +testimonial was worth having. I prefer that little anecdote even to +Lockhart's account of the pig, which had a romantic affection for the +author of 'Waverley.' Its relater at least perceived and loved that +unaffected benevolence, which invested even Scott's bodily presence with +a kind of natural aroma, perceptible, as it would appear, to very +far-away cousins. But Carlyle is on his guard, and though his sympathy +flows kindly enough, it is rather harshly intercepted by his sterner +mood. He cannot, indeed, but warm to Scott at the end. After touching on +the sad scene of Scott's closing years, at once ennobled and embittered +by that last desperate struggle to clear off the burden of debt, he +concludes with genuine feeling. 'It can be said of Scott, when he +departed he took a man's life along with him. No sounder piece of +British manhood was put together in that eighteenth century of time. +Alas, his fine Scotch face, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">142</a></span> its shaggy honesty, sagacity, and +goodness, when we saw it latterly on the Edinburgh streets, was all worn +with care, the joy all fled from it, ploughed deep with labour and +sorrow. We shall never forget it—we shall never see it again. Adieu, +Sir Walter, pride of all Scotchmen; take our proud and sad farewell.'</p> + +<p>If even the Waverley Novels should lose their interest, the last +journals of Scott, recently published by a judicious editor, can never +lose their interest as the record of one of the noblest struggles ever +carried on by a great man to redeem a lamentable error. It is a book to +do one good.</p> + +<p>And now it is time to turn to the failings which, in Carlyle's opinion, +mar this pride of all Scotchmen, and make his permanent reputation +doubtful. The faults upon which he dwells are, of course, those which +are more or less acknowledged by all sound critics. Scott, says Carlyle, +had no great gospel to deliver; he had nothing of the martyr about him; +he slew no monsters and stirred no deep emotions. He did not believe in +anything, and did not even disbelieve in anything: he was content to +take the world as it came—the false and the true mixed +indistinguishably together. One Ram-dass, a Hindoo, 'who set up for +god-head lately,' being asked what he meant to do with the sins of +mankind, replied that 'he had fire enough in his belly to burn up all +the sins in the world.' Ram-dass had 'some spice of sense in him.' Now, +of fire of that kind we can detect few sparks in Scott. He was a +thoroughly healthy, sound, vigorous Scotchman, with an eye for the main +chance, but not much of an eye for the eternities. And that unfortunate +commercial element, which caused the misery of his life, was equally +mischievous to his work. He cared for no results of his working but such +as could be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">143</a></span> seen by the eye, and in one sense or other, 'handled, +looked at, and buttoned into the breeches' pocket.' He regarded +literature rather as a trade than an art; and literature, unless it is a +very poor affair, should have higher aims than that of 'harmlessly +amusing indolent, languid men.' Scott would not afford the time or the +trouble to go to the root of the matter, and is content to amuse us with +mere contrasts of costume, which will lose their interest when the +swallow-tail is as obsolete as the buff-coat. And then he fell into the +modern sin of extempore writing, and deluged the world with the first +hasty overflowings of his mind, instead of straining and refining it +till he could bestow the pure essence upon us. In short, his career is +summed up in the phrase that it was 'writing impromptu novels to buy +farms with'—a melancholy end, truly, for a man of rare genius. Nothing +is sadder than to hear of such a man 'writing himself out;' and it is +pitiable indeed that Scott should be the example of that fate which +rises most naturally to our minds. 'Something very perfect in its kind,' +says Carlyle, 'might have come from Scott, nor was it a low kind—nay, +who knows how high, with studious self-concentration, he might have +gone: what wealth nature implanted in him, which his circumstances, most +unkind while seeming to be kindest, had never impelled him to unfold?'</p> + +<p>There is undoubtedly some truth in the severer criticisms to which some +more kindly sentences are a pleasant relief; but there is something too +which most persons will be apt to consider as rather harsher than +necessary. Is not the moral preacher intruding a little too much on the +province of the literary critic? In fact we fancy that, in the midst of +these energetic remarks, Carlyle is conscious of certain half-expressed +doubts. The name of Shakespeare occurs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">144</a></span> several times in the course of +his remarks, and suggests to us that we can hardly condemn Scott whilst +acquitting the greatest name in our literature. Scott, it seems, wrote +for money; he coined his brains into cash to buy farms. Did not +Shakespeare do pretty much the same? As Carlyle himself puts it, 'beyond +drawing audiences to the Globe Theatre, Shakespeare contemplated no +result in those plays of his.' Shakespeare, as Pope puts it,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">Whom you and every playhouse bill<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Style the divine, the matchless, what you will,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving flight,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And grew immortal in his own despite.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>To write for money was long held to be disgraceful; and Byron, as we +know, taunted Scott because his publishers combined</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">To yield his muse just half-a-crown per line;<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>whilst Scott seems half to admit that his conduct required +justification, and urges that he sacrificed to literature very fair +chances in his original profession. Many people might, perhaps, be +disposed to take a bolder line of defence. Cut out of English fiction +all that which has owed its birth more or less to a desire of earning +money honourably, and the residue would be painfully small. The truth, +indeed, seems to be simple. No good work is done when the one impelling +motive is the desire of making a little money; but some of the best work +that has ever been done has been indirectly due to the impecuniosity of +the labourers. When a man is empty he makes a very poor job of it, in +straining colourless trash from his hardbound brains; but when his mind +is full to bursting he may still require the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">145</a></span> spur of a moderate craving +for cash to induce him to take the decisive plunge. Scott illustrates +both cases. The melancholy drudgery of his later years was forced from +him in spite of nature; but nobody ever wrote more spontaneously than +Scott when he was composing his early poems and novels. If the precedent +of Shakespeare is good for anything, it is good for this. Shakespeare, +it may be, had a more moderate ambition; but there seems to be no reason +why the desire of a good house at Stratford should be intrinsically +nobler than the desire of a fine estate at Abbotsford. But then, it is +urged, Scott allowed himself to write with preposterous haste. And +Shakespeare, who never blotted a line! What is the great difference +between them? Mr. Carlyle feels that here too Scott has at least a very +good precedent to allege; but he endeavours to establish a distinction. +It was right, he says, for Shakespeare to write rapidly, 'being ready to +do it. And herein truly lies the secret of the matter; such swiftness of +writing, after due energy of preparation, is, doubtless, the right +method; the hot furnace having long worked and simmered, let the pure +gold flow out at one gush.' Could there be a better description of Scott +in his earlier years? He published his first poem of any pretensions at +thirty-four, an age which Shelley and Keats never reached, and which +Byron only passed by two years. 'Waverley' came out when he was +forty-three—most of our modern novelists have written themselves out +long before they arrive at that respectable period of life. From a child +he had been accumulating the knowledge and the thoughts that at last +found expression in his work. He had been a teller of stories before he +was well in breeches; and had worked hard till middle life in +accumulating vast stores of picturesque <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">146</a></span>imagery. The delightful notes +to all his books give us some impression of the fulness of mind which +poured forth a boundless torrent of anecdote to the guests at +Abbotsford. We only repine at the prodigality of the harvest when we +forget the long process of culture by which it was produced. And, more +than this, when we look at the peculiar characteristics of Scott's +style—that easy flow of narrative never heightening into epigram, and +indeed, to speak the truth, full of slovenly blunders and amazing +grammatical solecisms, but also always full of a charm of freshness and +fancy most difficult to analyse—we may well doubt whether much labour +would have improved or injured him. No man ever depended more on the +perfectly spontaneous flow of his narratives. Carlyle quotes Schiller +against him, amongst other and greater names. We need not attempt to +compare the two men; but do not Schiller's tragedies smell rather +painfully of the lamp? Does not the professor of æsthetics pierce a +little too distinctly through the exterior of the poet? And, for one +example, are not Schiller's excellent but remarkably platitudinous +peasants in 'William Tell' miserably colourless alongside of Scott's +rough border dalesmen, racy of speech, and redolent of their native soil +in every word and gesture? To every man his method according to his +talent. Scott is the most perfectly delightful of story-tellers, and it +is the very essence of story-telling that it should not follow +prescribed canons of criticism, but be as natural as the talk by +firesides, and, it is to be feared, over many gallons of whisky-toddy, +of which it is, in fact, the refined essence. Scott skims off the cream +of his varied stores of popular tradition and antiquarian learning with +strange facility; but he had tramped through many a long day's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">147</a></span> march, +and pored over innumerable ballads and forgotten writers, before he had +anything to skim. Had he not—if we may use the word without +offence—been cramming all his life, and practising the art of +story-telling every day he lived? Probably the most striking incidents +of his books are in reality mere modifications of anecdotes which he had +rehearsed a hundred times before, just disguised enough to fit into his +story. Who can read, for example, the inimitable legend of the blind +piper in 'Redgauntlet' without seeing that it bears all the marks of +long elaboration as clearly as one of those discourses of Whitfield, +which, by constant repetition, became marvels of dramatic art? He was an +impromptu composer, in the sense that when his anecdotes once reached +paper, they flowed rapidly, and were little corrected; but the +correction must have been substantially done in many cases long before +they appeared in the state of 'copy.'</p> + +<p>Let us, however, pursue the indictment a little further. Scott did not +believe in anything in particular. Yet once more, did Shakespeare? There +is surely a poetry of doubt as well as a poetry of conviction, or what +shall we say to 'Hamlet'? Appearing in such an age as the end of the +last and the beginning of this century, Scott could but share the +intellectual atmosphere in which he was born, and at that day, whatever +we may think of this, few people had any strong faith to boast of. Why +should not a poet stand aside from the chaos of conflicting opinions, so +far as he was able to extricate himself from the unutterable confusion +around them, and show us what was beautiful in the world as he saw it, +without striving to combine the office of prophet with his more +congenial occupation? Carlyle did not mean to urge so feeble a criticism +as that Scott had no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">148</a></span> very uncompromising belief in the Thirty-nine +Articles; for that is a weakness which he would share with his critic +and with his critic's idol, Goethe. The meaning is partly given by +another phrase. 'While Shakespeare works from the heart outwards, +Scott,' says Carlyle, 'works from the skin inwards, never getting near +the heart of men.' The books are addressed entirely to the everyday +mind. They have nothing to do with emotions or principles, beyond those +of the ordinary country gentleman; and, we may add, of the country +gentleman with his digestion in good order, and his hereditary gout +still in the distant future. The more inspiring thoughts, the deeper +passions, are seldom roused. If in his width of sympathy, and his vivid +perception of character within certain limits, he reminds us of +Shakespeare, we can find no analogy in his writings to the passion of +'Romeo and Juliet,' or to the intellectual agony of 'Hamlet.' The charge +is not really that Scott lacks faith, but that he never appeals, one way +or the other, to the faculties which make faith a vital necessity to +some natures, or lead to a desperate revolt against established faiths +in others. If Byron and Scott could have been combined; if the energetic +passions of the one could have been joined to the healthy nature and +quick sympathies of the other, we might have seen another Shakespeare in +the nineteenth century. As it is, both of them are maimed and imperfect +on different sides. It is, in fact, remarkable how Scott fails when he +attempts a flight into the regions where he is less at home than in his +ordinary style. Take, for instance, a passage from 'Rob Roy,' where our +dear friend, the Bailie, Nicol Jarvie, is taken prisoner by Rob Roy's +amiable wife, and appeals to her feelings of kinship. '"I dinna ken," +said the undaunted Bailie, "if the kindred has ever been weel redd<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">149</a></span> out +to you yet, cousin—but it's kenned, and can be proved. My mother, +Elspeth Macfarlane (otherwise Macgregor), was the wife of my father, +Denison Nicol Jarvie (peace be with them baith), and Elspeth was the +daughter of Farlane Macfarlane (or MacGregor), at the shielding of Loch +Sloy. Now this Farlane Macfarlane (or Macgregor), as his surviving +daughter, Maggy Macfarlane, wha married Duncan Macnab of +Stuckavrallachan, can testify, stood as near to your gudeman, Robin +MacGregor, as in the fourth degree of kindred, fur——"</p> + +<p>'The virago lopped the genealogical tree by demanding haughtily if a +stream of rushing water acknowledged any relation with the portion +withdrawn from it for the mean domestic uses of those who dwelt on its +banks?'</p> + +<p>The Bailie is as real a human being as ever lived—as the present Lord +Mayor, or Dandie Dinmont, or Sir Walter himself; but Mrs. Macgregor has +obviously just stepped off the boards of a minor theatre, devoted to the +melodrama. As long as Scott keeps to his strong ground, his figures are +as good flesh and blood as ever walked in the Saltmarket of Glasgow; +when once he tries his heroics, he too often manufactures his characters +from the materials used by the frequenters of masked balls. Yet there +are many such occasions on which his genius does not desert him. Balfour +of Burley may rub shoulders against genuine Covenanters and west-country +Whigs without betraying his fictitious origin. The Master of Ravenswood +attitudinises a little too much with his Spanish cloak and his slouched +hat; but we feel really sorry for him when he disappears in the Kelpie's +Flow. And when Scott has to do with his own peasants, with the +thoroughbred Presbyterian Scotchman, he can bring intense tragic +interest from his homely materials. Douce Davie<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">150</a></span> Deans, distracted +between his religious principles and his desire of saving his daughter's +life, and seeking relief even in the midst of his agonies by that +admirable burst of spiritual pride: 'Though I will neither exalt myself +nor pull down others, I wish that every man and woman in this land had +kept the true testimony and the middle and straight path, as it were on +the ridge of a hill, where wind and water steals, avoiding right-hand +snare and extremes, and left-hand way-slidings, as well as Johnny Dodds +of Farthy's acre and ae man mair that shall be nameless'—Davie is as +admirable a figure as ever appeared in fiction. It is a pity that he was +mixed up with the conventional madwoman, Madge Wildfire, and that a +story most touching in its native simplicity, was twisted and tortured +into needless intricacy. The religious exaltation of Balfour, or the +religious pigheadedness of Davie Deans, are indeed given from the point +of view of the kindly humourist, rather than of one who can fully +sympathise with the sublimity of an intense faith in a homely exterior. +And though many good judges hold the 'Bride of Lammermoor' to be Scott's +best performance, in virtue of the loftier passions which animate the +chief actors in the tragedy, we are, after all, called upon to +sympathise as much with the gentleman of good family who can't ask his +friends to dinner without an unworthy device to hide his poverty, as +with the passionate lover whose mistress has her heart broken. In truth, +this criticism as to the absence of high passion reminds us again that +Scott was a thorough Scotsman, and—for it is necessary, even now, to +avoid the queer misconception which confounds together the most distinct +races—a thorough Saxon. He belonged, that is, to the race which has in +the most eminent degree the typical English qualities. Especially his +intellect had a strong substratum<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">151</a></span> of downright dogged common sense; his +religion, one may conjecture, was pretty much that of all men of sense +in his time. It was that of the society which had produced and been +influenced by Hume and Adam Smith; which had dropped its old dogmas +without becoming openly sceptical, but which emphatically took 'common +sense' for the motto of its philosophy. It was equally afraid of bigotry +and scepticism and had manufactured a creed out of decent compromises +which served well enough for ordinary purposes. Even Hume, a sceptic in +theory, was a Tory and a Scottish patriot in politics. Scott, who cared +nothing for abstract philosophy, did not bother himself to form any +definite system of opinions; he shared Hume's political prejudices +without inquiring into his philosophy. He thoroughly detested the +dogmatism of the John Knox variety, and considered the Episcopal Church +to offer the religion for a gentleman. But his common sense in such +matters was chiefly shown by not asking awkward questions and adopting +the creed which was most to his taste without committing himself to any +strong persuasion as to abstract truth. He would, on the whole, leave +such matters alone, an attitude of mind which was not to Carlyle's +taste. In the purely artistic direction, this common sense is partly +responsible for the defect which has been so often noticed in Scott's +heroes. Your genuine Scot is indeed as capable of intense passion as any +human being in the world. Burns is proof enough of the fact if anyone +doubted it. But Scott was a man of more massive and less impulsive +character. If he had strong passions, they were ruled by his common +sense; he kept them well in hand, and did not write till the period of +youthful effervescence was over. His heroes always seem to be described +from the point of view of a man old enough to see the folly of youthful +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">152</a></span>passion or too old fully to sympathise with it. They are chiefly +remarkable for a punctilious pride which gives their creator some +difficulty in keeping them out of superfluous duels. When they fall in +love, they always seem to feel themselves as Lovel felt himself in the +'Antiquary,' under the eye of Jonathan Oldbuck, who was himself once in +love but has come to see that he was a fool for his pains. Certainly, +somehow or other, they are apt to be terribly wooden. Cranstoun in the +'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' Graeme in the 'Lady of the Lake,' or Wilton +in 'Marmion,' are all unspeakable bores. Waverley himself, and Lovel in +the 'Antiquary,' and Vanbeest Brown in 'Guy Mannering,' and Harry Morton +in 'Old Mortality,' and, in short, the whole series of Scott's pattern +young men, are all chips of the same block. They can all run, and ride, +and fight, and make pretty speeches, and express the most becoming +sentiments; but somehow they all partake of one fault, the same which +was charged against the otherwise incomparable horse, namely, that they +are dead. And we must confess that this is a considerable drawback from +Scott's novels. To take the passion out of a novel is something like +taking the sunlight out of a landscape; and to condemn all the heroes to +be utterly commonplace is to remove the centre of interest in a manner +detrimental to the best intents of the story. When Thackeray endeavoured +to restore Rebecca to her rightful place in 'Ivanhoe,' he was only doing +what is more or less desirable in all the series. We long to dismount +these insipid creatures from the pride of place, and to supplant them by +some of the admirable characters who are doomed to play subsidiary +parts. There is, however, another reason for this weakness which seems +to be overlooked by many of Scott's critics. We are often referred to +Scott as a master of pure and what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">153</a></span> is called 'objective' story-telling. +Certainly I don't deny that Scott could be an admirable story-teller: +'Ivanhoe' and the 'Bride of Lammermoor' would be sufficient to convict +me of error if I did. But as mere stories, many of his novels—and +moreover his masterpieces—are not only faulty, but distinctly bad. +Taking him purely and simply from that point of view, he is very +inferior, for example, to Alexandre Dumas. You cannot follow the thread +of most of his narratives with any particular interest in the fate of +the chief actors. In the 'Introductory Epistle' prefixed to the +'Fortunes of Nigel' Scott himself gives a very interesting account of +his method. He has often, he says in answer to an imaginary critic, +begun by laying down a plan of his work and tried to construct an ideal +story, evolving itself by due degrees and ending by a proper +catastrophe. But, a demon seats himself on his pen, and leads it astray. +Characters expand; incidents multiply; the story lingers while the +materials increase; Bailie Jarvie or Dugald Dalgetty leads him astray, +and he goes many a weary mile from the regular road and has to leap +hedge and ditch to get back. If he resists the temptation, his +imagination flags and he becomes prosy and dull. No one can read his +best novels without seeing the truth of this description. 'Waverley' +made an immense success as a description of new scenes and social +conditions: the story of Waverley himself is the least interesting part +of the book. Everybody who has read 'Guy Mannering' remembers Dandie +Dinmont and Meg Merrilies and Pleydell and Dominie Sampson; but how many +people could explain the ostensible story—the love affair of Vanbeest +Brown and Julia Mannering? We can see how Scott put the story together. +He was pouring out the most vivid and interesting recollections of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">154</a></span> +borderers whom he knew so well, of the old Scottish gentry and smugglers +and peasants, and the old-fashioned lawyers who played high jinks in the +wynds of Edinburgh. No more delightful collection of portraits could be +brought together. But he had to get a story as a thread. He started with +the legend about an astrological prediction told of Dryden and one of +his sons, and mixed it up with the Annesley case, where a claimant +turned up with more plausibility than the notorious Orton. This +introduced of necessity an impossible and conventional bit of lovemaking +and a recognition of a long-lost heir. He is full of long-lost heirs. +Equally conventional and impossible stories are introduced in the +'Antiquary,' the 'Heart of Midlothian,' and the 'Legend of Montrose' and +elsewhere. Nobody cares about them, and the characters which ostensibly +play the chief part serve merely to introduce us to the subordinate +actors. 'Waverley,' for example, gives a description drawn with +unsurpassable spirit of the state of the Highland clans in 1745; and +poor Waverley's love affair passes altogether out of sight during the +greatest and most interesting part of the narrative. When Moore said of +the poems that Scott intended to illustrate all the gentlemen's seats +between Edinburgh and London, he was not altogether wide of the mark. +The novels are all illustrations—not of 'gentlemen's seats' indeed, but +of various social states; and it is only by a kind of happy accident +when this interest in the surroundings does not put the chief characters +out of focus. Nobody has created a greater number of admirable types, +but when we run over their names we perceive that in most cases they are +the secondary performers who are ousting the nominal heroes and heroines +from their places. Dugald Dalgetty, for example, becomes so attractive +that he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">155</a></span> squeezes all the other actors into a mere corner of the canvas. +Perhaps nothing more is necessary to explain why Scott failed as a +dramatist. With him, Hamlet would have been a mere peg to show us how +Rosencrantz and Guildenstern amused themselves at the royal drinking +parties.</p> + +<p>For this reason, again, Scott bestows an apparently disproportionate +amount of imagination upon the mere scene-painting, the external +trappings, the clothes, or dwelling-places of his performers. A +traveller into a strange country naturally gives us the external +peculiarities which strike him. Scott has to tell us what 'completed the +costume' of his Highland chiefs or mediæval barons. He took, in short, +to that 'buff-jerkin' business of which Carlyle speaks so +contemptuously, and fairly carried away the hearts of his contemporaries +by a lavish display of mediæval upholstery. Lockhart tells us that Scott +could not bear the commonplace daubings of walls with uniform coats of +white, blue, and grey. All the roofs at Abbotsford 'were, in appearance +at least, of carved oak, relieved by coats-of-arms duly blazoned at the +intersections of beams, and resting on cornices, to the eye of the same +material, but composed of casts in plaster of Paris, after the foliage, +the flowers, the grotesque monsters and dwarfs, and sometimes the +beautiful heads of nuns and confessors, on which he had doated from +infancy among the cloisters of Melrose Abbey.' The plaster looks as well +as the carved oak for a time; but the day speedily comes when the sham +crumbles into ashes, and Scott's knights and nobles, like his carved +cornices, became dust in the next generation. It is hard to say it, and +yet we fear it must be admitted, that many of those historical novels, +which once charmed all men, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">156</a></span> for which we have still a lingering +affection, are rapidly converting themselves into mere débris of plaster +of Paris. Sir F. Palgrave says somewhere that 'historical novels are +mortal enemies to history,' and we are often tempted to add that they +are mortal enemies to fiction. There maybe an exception or two, but as a +rule the task is simply impracticable. The novelist is bound to come so +near to the facts that we feel the unreality of his portraits. Either +the novel becomes pure cram, a dictionary of antiquities dissolved in a +thin solution of romance, or, which is generally more refreshing, it +takes leave of accuracy altogether and simply takes the plot and the +costume from history, but allows us to feel that genuine moderns are +masquerading in the dress of a bygone century. Even in the last case, it +generally results in a kind of dance in fetters and a comparative +breakdown under self-imposed obligations. 'Ivanhoe' and 'Kenilworth' and +'Quentin Durward,' and the rest are of course audacious anachronisms for +the genuine historian. Scott was imposed upon by his own fancy. He was +probably not aware that his Balfour of Burley was real flesh and blood, +because painted from real people round him, while his Claverhouse is +made chiefly of plumes and jackboots. Scott is chiefly responsible for +the odd perversion of facts, which reached its height, as Macaulay +remarks, in the marvellous performance of our venerated ruler, George +IV. That monarch, he observes, 'thought that he could not give a more +striking proof of his respect for the usages which had prevailed in +Scotland before the Union than by disguising himself in what, before the +Union, was considered by nine Scotchmen out of ten as the dress of a +thief.' The passage recalls the too familiar anecdote about Scott and +the wine-glass consecrated by the sacred lips of his king. At one of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">157</a></span> +the portrait exhibitions in South Kensington was hung up a +representation of George IV., with the body of a stalwart highlander in +full costume, some seven or eight feet high; the face formed from the +red puffy cheeks developed by innumerable bottles of port and burgundy +at Carlton House; and the whole surmounted by a bonnet with waving +plumes. Scott was chiefly responsible for disguising that elderly London +debauchee in the costume of a wild Gaelic cattle-stealer, and was +apparently insensible of the gross absurdity. We are told that an air of +burlesque was thrown over the proceedings at Holyrood by the apparition +of a true London alderman in the same costume as his master. An alderman +who could burlesque such a monarch must indeed have been a credit to his +turtle-soup. Let us pass by with a brief lamentation that so great and +good a man laid himself open to Carlyle's charge of sham worship. We +have lost our love of buff jerkins and other scraps from mediæval +museums, and Scott is suffering from having preferred working in stucco +to carving in marble. We are perhaps inclined to saddle Scott +unconsciously with the sins of a later generation. Borrow, in his +delightful 'Lavengro,' meets a kind of Jesuit in disguise in that +sequestered dell where he beats 'the Blazing Tinman.' The Jesuit, if I +remember rightly, confides to him that Scott was a tool of that +diabolical conspiracy which has infected our old English Protestantism +with the poison of modern Popery. And, though the evil may be traced +further back, and was due to more general causes than the influence of +any one writer, Scott was clearly responsible in his degree for certain +recent phenomena. The buff jerkin became the lineal ancestor of various +copes, stoles, and chasubles which stink in the nostrils of honest +dissenters. Our modern revivalists profess <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">158</a></span>to despise the flimsiness of +the first attempts in this direction. They laugh at the carpenter's +Gothic of Abbotsford or Strawberry Hill, and do not ask themselves how +their own more elaborate blundering will look in the eyes of a future +generation. What will our posterity think of our masquerading in old +clothes? Will they want a new Cromwell to sweep away nineteenth-century +shams, as his ancestors smashed mediæval ruins, or will they, as we may +rather hope, be content to let our pretentious rubbish find its natural +road to ruin? One thing is pretty certain, and in its way comforting; +that, however far the rage for revivalism may be pushed, nobody will +ever want to revive the nineteenth century. But for Scott, in spite of +his complicity in this wearisome process, there is something still to be +said. 'Ivanhoe' cannot be given up. The vivacity of the description—the +delight with which Scott throws himself into the pursuit of his +knicknacks and antiquarian rubbish, has something contagious about it. +'Ivanhoe,' let it be granted, is no longer a work for men, but it still +is, or still ought to be, delightful reading for boys. The ordinary boy, +indeed, when he reads anything, seems to choose descriptions of the +cricket-matches and boat-races in which his soul most delights. But +there must still be some unsophisticated youths who can relish 'Robinson +Crusoe' and the 'Arabian Nights' and other favourites of our own +childhood, and such at least should pore over the 'Gentle and free +passage of arms at Ashby,' admire those incredible feats with the +long-bow which would have enabled Robin Hood to meet successfully a +modern volunteer armed with the Martini-Henry, and follow the terrific +head-breaking of Front-de-Bœuf, Bois-Guilbert, the holy clerk of +Copmanshurst, and the <i>Noir Fainéant</i>, even to the time when, for no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">159</a></span> +particular reason beyond the exigencies of the story, the Templar +suddenly falls from his horse, and is discovered, to our no small +surprise, to be 'unscathed by the lance of the enemy,' and to have died +a victim to the violence of his own contending passions. If 'Ivanhoe' +has been exploded by Professor Freeman, it did good work in its day. If +it were possible for a critic to weigh the merits of a great man in a +balance, and to decide precisely how far his excellences exceed his +defects, we should have to set off Scott's real services to the spread +of a genuine historical spirit against the encouragement which he +afforded to its bastard counterfeit. To enable us rightly to appreciate +our forefathers, to recognise that they were living men, and to feel our +close connection with them, is to put a vivid imagination to one of its +worthiest uses. It was perhaps inevitable that we should learn to +appreciate our ancestors by paying them the doubtful compliment of +external mimicry; and that only by slow degrees, and at the price of +much humiliating experience, should we learn the simple lesson that a +childish adult has not the grace of childhood. Even in his errors, +however, Scott had the merit of unconsciousness, which is fast +disappearing from our more elaborate affectations; and, therefore, +though we regret, we are not irritated by his weakness and deficiency in +true insight. He really enjoys his playthings too naïvely for the +pleasure not to be a little contagious, when we can descend from our +critical dignity. In his later work, indeed, the effort becomes truly +painful, tending more to the provocation of sadness than of anger. But +that work is best forgotten except as an occasional warning.</p> + +<p>Scott, however, understood, and nobody has better illustrated by +example, the true mode of connecting past<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">160</a></span> and present. Mr. Palgrave, +whose recognition of the charm of Scott's lyrics merits our gratitude, +observes in the notes to the 'Golden Treasury' that the songs about +Brignall banks and Rosabelle exemplify 'the peculiar skill with which +Scott employs proper names;' nor, he adds, 'is there a surer sign of +high poetical genius.' The last remark might possibly be disputed; if +Milton possessed the same talent, so did Lord Macaulay, whose ballads, +admirable as they are, are not first-rate poetry; but the conclusion to +which the remark points is one which is illustrated by each of these +cases. The secret of the power is simply this, that a man whose mind is +full of historical associations somehow communicates to us something of +the sentiment which they awake in himself. Scott, as all who saw him +tell us, could never see an old tower, or a bank, or a rush of a stream +without instantly recalling a boundless collection of appropriate +anecdotes. He might be quoted as a case in point by those who would +explain all poetical imagination by the power of associating ideas. He +is the poet of association. A proper name acts upon him like a charm. It +calls up the past days, the heroes of the '41, or the skirmish of +Drumclog, or the old Covenanting times, by a spontaneous and +inexplicable magic. When the barest natural object is taken into his +imagination, all manner of past fancies and legends crystallise around +it at once.</p> + +<p>Though it is more difficult to explain how the same glow which ennobled +them to him is conveyed to his readers, the process somehow takes place. +We catch the enthusiasm. A word, which strikes us as a bare abstraction +in the report of the Censor General, say, or in a collection of poor law +returns, gains an entirely new significance when he touches it in the +most casual manner. A kind of mellowing atmosphere <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">161</a></span>surrounds all +objects in his pages, and tinges them with poetical hues. Even the +Scottish dialect, repulsive to some ignorant Southrons, becomes musical +to his true admirers. In this power lies one secret of Scott's most +successful writing. Thus, for example, I often fancy that the second +title of 'Waverley'—''Tis Sixty Years Since'—indicates precisely the +distance of time at which a romantic novelist should place himself from +his creations. They are just far enough from us to have acquired a +certain picturesque colouring, which conceals the vulgarity, and yet +leaves them living and intelligible beings. His best stories might be +all described as 'Tales of a Grandfather.' They have the charm of +anecdotes told to the narrator by some old man who had himself been part +of what he describes. Scott's best novels depend, for their deep +interest, upon the scenery and society with which he had been familiar +in his early days, more or less harmonised by removal to what we may +call, in a different sense from the common one, the twilight of history; +that period, namely, from which the broad glare of the present has +departed, and which we can yet dimly observe without making use of the +dark lantern of ancient historians, and accepting the guidance of +Dryasdust. Dandie Dinmont, though a contemporary of Scott's youth, +represented a fast perishing phase of society; and Balfour of Burley, +though his day was past, had yet left his mantle with many spiritual +descendants who were scarcely less familiar. Between the times so fixed +Scott seems to exhibit his genuine power; and within these limits we +should find it hard to name any second, or indeed any third.</p> + +<p>Indeed, when we have gone as far as we please in denouncing shams, +ridiculing men in buff-jerkins, and the whole Wardour Street business of +gimcrack and Brummagem <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">162</a></span>antiquities, it still remains true that Scott's +great service was what we may call the vivification of history. He made +us feel, it is generally said, as no one had ever made us feel before, +that the men of the past were once real human beings; and I can agree if +I am permitted to make a certain distinction. His best service, I should +say, was not so much in showing us the past as it was when it was +present; but in showing us the past as it is really still present. His +knights and crusaders and feudal nobles are after all unreal, and the +best critics felt even in his own day that his greatest triumphs were in +describing the Scottish peasantry of his time. Dandie Dinmont and Jeanie +Deans and their like are better than many Front de Bœufs and Robin +Hoods. It is in dealing with his own contemporaries that he really shows +the imaginative insight which entitles him to be called a great creator +as well as an amusing story-teller. But this, rightly stated, is not +inconsistent with the previous statement. For the special characteristic +of Scott as distinguished from his predecessors is precisely his clear +perception that the characters whom he loved so well and described so +vividly were the products of a long historical evolution. His patriotism +was the love of a country in which everything had obvious roots in its +previous history. The stout farmer Dinmont was the descendant of the old +borderers; the Deanses were survivals from the days of the Covenanters +or of John Knox; every peculiarity upon which he delighted to dwell was +invested with all the charm of descent from a long and picturesque +history. When Fielding describes the squires or lawyers of the +eighteenth century, he says nothing to show that he was even aware of +the existence of a seventeenth, or still less of a sixteenth century. +Scott can describe no character without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">163</a></span> assigning to it its place in +the social organism which has been growing up since the earliest dawn of +history. This was, of course, no accident. He came at the time when the +little provincial centres were just feeling the first invasion of the +great movements from without. Edinburgh, whether quite comparable to +Athens or not, had been for two or three generations a remarkable centre +of intellectual cultivation. Hume and Adam Smith were only the most +conspicuous members of a society which monopolised pretty well all the +philosophy which existed in the island and a great deal of the history +and criticism. In Scott's time the patriotic feeling which had been a +blind instinct was becoming more or less self-conscious. The literary +society in which Scott was leader of the Tories, and Jeffrey of the +Whigs, included a large proportion of the best intellect of the time and +was sufficiently in contact with the outside world to be conscious of +its own characteristics. When the crash of the French Revolution came in +Scott's youth, Burke denounced its <i>à priori</i> abstract reasonings in the +name of prescription. A traditional order and belief were essential, as +he urged, to the well-being of every human society. What Scott did +afterwards was precisely to show by concrete instances, most vividly +depicted, the value and interest of a natural body of traditions. Like +many other of his ablest contemporaries, he saw with alarm the great +movement, of which the French Revolution was the obvious embodiment, +sweeping away all manner of local traditions and threatening to engulf +the little society which still retained its specific character in +Scotland. He was stirred, too, in his whole nature when any sacrilegious +reformer threatened to sweep away any part of the true old Scottish +system. And this is, in fact, the moral implicitly involved in Scott's +best work.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">164</a></span> Take the beggar, for example, Edie Ochiltree, the old +'bluegown.' Beggars, you say, are a nuisance and would be sentenced to +starvation by Mr. Malthus in the name of an abstract principle of +population. But look, says Scott, at the old-fashioned beggar as he +really was. He had his place in society; he was the depository of the +legends of the whole country-side: chatting with the lairds, the +confidential friend of fishermen, peasants, and farmers; the oracle in +all sports and ruler of village feasts; repaying in friendly offices far +more than the value of the alms which he took as a right; a respecter of +old privileges, because he had privileges himself; and ready when the +French came to take his part in fighting for the old country. There can +be no fear for a country, says Scott, where even the beggar is as ready +to take up arms as the noble. The bluegown, in short, is no waif and +stray, no product of social corruption, or mere obnoxious parasite, but +a genuine member of the fabric, who could respect himself and scorn +servility as much as the highest members of the social hierarchy. Scott, +as Lockhart tells us, was most grievously wounded by the insults of the +Radical mob in Selkirk, who cried 'Burke Sir Walter!' in the place where +all men had loved and honoured him. It was the meeting of the old and +new, and the revelation to Scott in brutal terms of the new spirit which +was destroying all the old social ties. Scott and Wordsworth and +Coleridge and Southey and their like saw in fact the approach of that +industrial revolution, as we call it now, which for good or evil has +been ever since developing. The Radicals denounced them as mere +sentimentalists; the solid Whigs, who fancied that the revolution was +never to get beyond the Reform Bill of 1832, laughed at them as mere +obstructives;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">165</a></span> by us, who, whatever our opinions, speak with the +advantage of later experience, it must be admitted that such +Conservatism had its justification, and that good and far-seeing men +might well look with alarm at changes whose far-reaching consequences +cannot yet be estimated. Scott, meanwhile, is the incomparable painter +of the sturdy race which he loved so well—a race high-spirited, loyal +to its principles, surpassingly energetic, full of strong affections and +manly spirits, if crabbed, bigoted, and capable of queer perversity and +narrow self-conceit. Nor, if we differ from his opinions, can anyone who +desires to take a reasonable view of history doubt the interest and +value of the conceptions involved. Scott was really the first +imaginative observer who saw distinctly how the national type of +character is the product of past history, and embodies all the great +social forces by which it has slowly shaped itself. That is the new +element in his portraiture of human life; and we may pardon him if he +set rather too high a value upon the picturesque elements which he had +been the first to recognise. One of the acutest of recent writers upon +politics, the late Mr. Bagehot, has insisted upon the immense value of +what he called a 'solid cake of customs,' and the thought is more or +less familiar to every writer of the evolutionist way of thinking. +Scott, without any philosophy to speak of, political or otherwise, saw +and recognised intuitively a typical instance. He saw how much the +social fabric had been woven out of ancient tradition; and he made +others see it more clearly than could be done by any abstract reasoner.</p> + +<p>When naturalists wish to preserve a skeleton, they bury an animal in an +ant-hill and dig him up after many days with all the perishable matter +fairly eaten away. That is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">166</a></span> the process which great men have to undergo. +A vast multitude of insignificant, unknown, and unconscious critics +destroy what has no genuine power of resistance, and leave the remainder +for posterity. Much disappears in every case, and it is a question, +perhaps, whether the firmer parts of Scott's reputation will be +sufficiently coherent to resist after the removal of the rubbish. We +must admit that even his best work is of more or less mixed value, and +that the test will be a severe one. Yet we hope, not only for reasons +already suggested, but for one which remains to be expressed. The +ultimate source of pleasure derivable from all art is that it brings you +into communication with the artist. What you really love in the picture +or the poem is the painter or the poet whom it brings into sympathy with +you across the gulf of time. He tells you what are the thoughts which +some fragment of natural scenery, or some incident of human life, +excited in a mind greatly wiser and more perceptive than your own. A +dramatist or a novelist professes to describe different actors on his +little scene, but he is really setting forth the varying phases of his +own mind. And so Dandie Dinmont, or the Antiquary, or Balfour of Burley, +is merely the conductor through which Scott's personal magnetism affects +our own natures. And certainly, whatever faults a critic may discover in +the work, it may be said that no work in our literature places us in +communication with a manlier or more lovable nature. Scott, indeed, +setting up as the landed proprietor at Abbotsford, and solacing himself +with painted plaster of Paris instead of carved oak, does not strike us, +any more than he does Carlyle, as a very noble phenomenon. But luckily +for us, we have also the Scott who must have been the most charming of +all conceivable companions; the Scott who was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">167</a></span> idolised even by a +judicious pig; the Scott, who, unlike the irritable race of literary +magnates in general, never lost a friend, and whose presence diffused an +equable glow of kindly feeling to the farthest limits of the social +system which gravitated round him. He was not precisely brilliant; +nobody, so far as we know, who wrote so many sentences has left so few +that have fixed themselves upon us as established commonplaces; beyond +that unlucky phrase about 'my name being MacGregor and my foot being on +my native heath'—which is not a very admirable sentiment—I do not at +present remember a single gem of this kind. Landor, I think, said that +in the whole of Scott's poetry there was only one good line, that, +namely, in the poem about Helvellyn referring to the dog of the lost +man—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">When the wind waved his garments, how oft didst thou start!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Scott is not one of the coruscating geniuses, throwing out epigrams at +every turn, and sparkling with good things. But the poetry, which was +first admired to excess and then rejected with undue contempt, is now +beginning to find its due level. It is not poetry of the first order. It +is not the poetry of deep meditation or of rapt enthusiasm. Much that +was once admired has now become rather offensive than otherwise. And yet +it has a charm, which becomes more sensible the more familiar we grow +with it, the charm of unaffected and spontaneous love of nature; and not +only is it perfectly in harmony with the nature which Scott loved so +well, but it is still the best interpreter of the sound healthy love of +wild scenery. Wordsworth, no doubt, goes deeper; and Byron is more +vigorous; and Shelley more ethereal. But it is, and will remain, a good +thing to have a breath from the Cheviots brought straight into London +streets, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">168</a></span> Scott alone can do it. When Washington Irving visited +Scott, they had an amicable dispute as to the scenery: Irving, as became +an American, complaining of the absence of forests; Scott declaring his +love for 'his honest grey hills,' and saying that if he did not see the +heather once a year he thought he should die. Everybody who has +refreshed himself with mountain and moor this summer should feel how +much we owe, and how much more we are likely to owe in future, to the +man who first inoculated us with his own enthusiasm, and who is still +the best interpreter of the 'honest grey hills.' Scott's poetical +faculty may, perhaps, be more felt in his prose than his verse. The fact +need not be decided; but as we read the best of his novels we feel +ourselves transported to the 'distant Cheviot's blue;' mixing with the +sturdy dalesmen, and the tough indomitable puritans of his native land; +for their sakes we can forgive the exploded feudalism and the faded +romance which he attempted with less success to galvanise into life. The +pleasure of that healthy open-air life, with that manly companion, is +not likely to diminish; and Scott as its exponent may still retain a +hold upon our affections which would have been long ago forfeited if he +had depended entirely on his romantic nonsense. We are rather in the +habit of talking about a healthy animalism, and try most elaborately to +be simple and manly. When we turn from our modern professors in that +line, who affect a total absence of affectation, to Scott's Dandie +Dinmonts and Edie Ochiltrees, we see the difference between the sham and +the reality, and fancy that Scott may still have a lesson or two to +preach to this generation. Those to come must take care of themselves.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">169</a></span></p> +<h2><i>NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE</i></h2> + + +<p>The most obvious fact about Hawthorne is that he gave one solution of +the problem what elements of romance are discoverable amongst the harsh +prose of this prosaic age. How is the novelist who, by the inevitable +conditions of his style, is bound to come into the closest possible +contact with facts, who has to give us the details of his hero's +clothes, to tell us what he had for breakfast, and what is the state of +the balance at his banker's—how is he to introduce the ideal element +which must, in some degree, be present in all genuine art? What +precisely is meant by 'ideal' is a question which for the moment I +pretermit. Anyhow a mere photographic reproduction of this muddy, +money-making, bread-and-butter-eating world would be intolerable. At the +very lowest, some effort must be made at least to select the most +promising materials, and to strain out the coarse or the simply prosaic +ingredients. Various attempts have been made to solve the problem since +De Foe founded the modern school of English novelists, by giving us what +is in one sense a servile imitation of genuine narrative, but which is +redeemed from prose by the unique force of the situation. De Foe +painting mere everyday pots and pans is as dull as a modern blue-book; +but when his pots and pans are the resource by which a human being +struggles out of the most appalling conceivable 'slough of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">170</a></span> despond,' +they become more poetical than the vessels from which the gods drink +nectar in epic poems. Since he wrote, novelists have made many voyages +of discovery, with varying success, though they have seldom had the +fortune to touch upon so marvellous an island as that still sacred to +the immortal Crusoe. They have ventured far into cloud-land, and, +returning to <i>terra firma</i>, they have plunged into the trackless and +savage-haunted regions which are girdled by the Metropolitan Railway. +They have watched the magic coruscations of some strange 'Aurora +Borealis' of dim romance, or been content with the domestic gaslight of +London streets. Amongst the most celebrated of all such adventurers were +the band which obeyed the impulse of Sir Walter Scott. For a time it +seemed that we had reached a genuine Eldorado of novelists, where solid +gold was to be had for the asking, and visions of more than earthly +beauty rewarded the labours of the explorer. Now, alas! our opinion is a +good deal changed; the fairy treasures which Scott brought back from his +voyages have turned into dead leaves according to custom; and the +curiosities, upon which he set so extravagant a price, savour more of +Wardour Street than of the genuine mediæval artists. Nay, there are +scoffers, though I am not of them, who think that the tittle-tattle +which Miss Austen gathered at the country-houses of our grandfathers is +worth more than the showy but rather flimsy eloquence of the 'Ariosto of +the North.' Scott endeavoured at least, if with indifferent success, to +invest his scenes with something of</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The light that never was on sea or land,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The consecration and the poet's dream.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>If he too often indulged in mere theatrical devices, and mistook the +glare of the footlights for the sacred glow of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">171</a></span> imagination, he +professed, at least, to introduce us to an ideal world. Later novelists +have generally abandoned the attempt, and are content to reflect our +work-a-day life with almost servile fidelity. They are not to be blamed; +and doubtless the very greatest writers are those who can bring their +ideal world into the closest possible contact with our sympathies, and +show us heroic figures in modern frock-coats and Parisian fashions. The +art of story-telling is manifold, and its charm depends greatly upon the +infinite variety of its applications. And yet, for that very reason, +there are moods in which one wishes that the modern story-teller would +more frequently lead us away from the commonplace region of newspapers +and railways to regions where the imagination can have fair play. +Hawthorne is one of the few eminent writers to whose guidance we may in +such moods most safely entrust ourselves; and it is tempting to ask, +what was the secret of his success? The effort, indeed, to investigate +the materials from which some rare literary flavour is extracted is +seldom satisfactory. We are reminded of the automaton chess-player who +excited the wonder of the last generation. The showman, like the critic, +laid bare his inside, and displayed all the cunning wheels and cogs and +cranks by which his motions were supposed to be regulated. Yet, after +all, the true secret was that there was a man inside the machine. Some +such impression is often made by the most elaborate demonstrations of +literary anatomists. We have been mystified, not really entrusted with +any revelation. And yet, with this warning as to the probable success of +our examination, let us try to determine some of the peculiarities to +which Hawthorne owes this strange power of bringing poetry out of the +most unpromising materials.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">172</a></span></p> + +<p>In the first place, then, he had the good fortune to be born in the most +prosaic of all countries—the most prosaic, that is, in external +appearance, and even in the superficial character of its inhabitants. +Hawthorne himself reckoned this as an advantage, though in a very +different sense from that in which we are speaking. It was as a patriot, +and not as an artist, that he congratulated himself on his American +origin. There is a humorous struggle between his sense of the rawness +and ugliness of his native land and the dogged patriotism befitting a +descendant of the genuine New England Puritans. Hawthorne the novelist +writhes at the discords which torture his delicate sensibilities at +every step; but instantly Hawthorne the Yankee protests that the very +faults are symptomatic of excellence. He is like a sensitive mother, +unable to deny that her awkward hobbledehoy of a son offends against the +proprieties, but tacitly resolved to see proofs of virtues present or to +come even in his clumsiest tricks. He forces his apologies to sound like +boasting. 'No author,' he says, 'can conceive of the difficulty of +writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no +antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but +a commonplace prosperity, as is happily' (it must and shall be happily!) +'the case with my dear native land. It will be very long, I trust, +before romance-writers may find congenial and easily-handled themes +either in the annals of our stalwart republic, or in any characteristic +and probable events of our individual lives. Romance and poetry, ivy, +lichens, and wallflowers need ruins to make them grow.' If, that is, I +am forced to confess that poetry and romance are absent, I will +resolutely stick to it that poetry and romance are bad things, even +though the love of them is the strongest propensity of my nature. To my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">173</a></span> +thinking, there is something almost pathetic in this loyal +self-deception; and therefore I have never been offended by certain +passages in 'Our Old Home' which appear to have caused some irritation +in touchy Englishmen. There is something, he says by way of apology, +which causes an American in England to take up an attitude of +antagonism. 'These people think so loftily of themselves, and so +contemptuously of everybody else, that it requires more generosity than +I possess to keep always in perfectly good humour with them.' That may +be true; for, indeed, I believe that all Englishmen, whether +ostentatiously cosmopolitan or ostentatiously patriotic, have a peculiar +type of national pride at least as offensive as that of Frenchmen, +Germans, or Americans; and, to a man of Hawthorne's delicate +perceptions, the presence of that sentiment would reveal itself through +the most careful disguises. But that which really caused him to cherish +his antagonism was, I suspect, something else: he was afraid of loving +us too well; he feared to be tempted into a denial of some point of his +patriotic creed; he is always clasping it, as it were, to his bosom, and +vowing and protesting that he does not surrender a single jot or tittle +of it. Hawthorne in England was like a plant suddenly removed to a rich +soil from a dry and thirsty land. He drinks in at every pore the +delightful influences of which he has had so scanty a supply. An old +cottage, an ivy-grown wall, a country churchyard with its quaint +epitaphs, things that are commonplace to most Englishmen and which are +hateful to the sanitary inspector, are refreshing to every fibre of his +soul. He tries in vain to take the sanitary inspector's view. In spite +of himself he is always falling into the romantic tone, though a sense +that he ought to be sternly philosophical just gives a humorous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">174</a></span> tinge +to his enthusiasm. Charles Lamb could not have improved his description +of the old hospital at Leicester, where the twelve brethren still wear +the badge of the Bear and Ragged Staff. He lingers round it, and gossips +with the brethren, and peeps into the garden, and sits by the cavernous +archway of the kitchen fireplace, where the very atmosphere seems to be +redolent with aphorisms first uttered by ancient monks, and jokes +derived from Master Slender's note-book, and gossip about the wrecks of +the Spanish Armada. No connoisseur could pore more lovingly over an +ancient black-letter volume, or the mellow hues of some old painter's +masterpiece. He feels the charm of our historical continuity, where the +immemorial past blends indistinguishably with the present, to the +remotest recesses of his imagination. But then the Yankee nature within +him must put in a sharp word or two; he has to jerk the bridle for fear +that his enthusiasm should fairly run away with him. 'The trees and +other objects of an English landscape,' he remarks, or, perhaps we +should say, he complains, 'take hold of one by numberless minute +tendrils as it were, which, look as closely as we choose, we never find +in an American scene;' but he inserts a qualifying clause, just by way +of protest, that an American tree would be more picturesque if it had an +equal chance; and the native oak of which we are so proud is summarily +condemned for 'John Bullism'—a mysterious offence common to many things +in England. Charlecote Hall, he presently admits, 'is a most delightful +place.' Even an American is tempted to believe that real homes can only +be produced by 'the slow ingenuity and labour of many successive +generations,' when he sees the elaborate beauty and perfection of a +well-ordered English abode. And yet he persuades himself that even here +he is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">175</a></span> the victim of some delusion. The impression is due to the old man +which stills lurks even in the polished American, and forces him to look +through his ancestor's spectacles. The true theory, it appears, is that +which Holgrave expresses for him in the 'Seven Gables,' namely, that we +should free ourselves of the material slavery imposed upon us by the +brick-and-mortar of past generations, and learn to change our houses as +easily as our coats. We ought to feel—only we unfortunately can't +feel—that a tent or a wigwam is as good as a house. The mode in which +Hawthorne regards the Englishman himself is a quaint illustration of the +same theory. An Englishwoman, he admits reluctantly and after many +protestations, has some few beauties not possessed by her American +sisters. A maiden in her teens has 'a certain charm of half-blossom and +delicately folded leaves, and tender womanhood shielded by maidenly +reserves, with which, somehow or other, our American girls often fail to +adorn themselves during an appreciable moment.' But he revenges himself +for this concession by an almost savage onslaught upon the full-blown +British matron with her 'awful ponderosity of frame ... massive with +solid beef and streaky tallow,' and apparently composed 'of steaks and +sirloins.' He laments that the English violet should develop into such +an overblown peony, and speculates upon the whimsical problem, whether a +middle-aged husband should be considered as legally married to all the +accretions which have overgrown the slenderness of his bride. Should not +the matrimonial bond be held to exclude the three-fourths of the wife +that had no existence when the ceremony was performed? A question not to +be put without a shudder. The fact is, that Hawthorne had succeeded only +too well in misleading himself by a common fallacy. That pestilent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">176</a></span> +personage, John Bull, has assumed so concrete a form in our +imaginations, with his top-boots and his broad shoulders and vast +circumference, and the emblematic bulldog at his heels, that for most +observers he completely hides the Englishman of real life. Hawthorne had +decided that an Englishman must and should be a mere mass of transformed +beef and beer. No observation could shake his preconceived impression. +At Greenwich Hospital he encountered the mighty shade of the +concentrated essence of our strongest national qualities; no truer +Englishman ever lived than Nelson. But Nelson was certainly not the +conventional John Bull, and, therefore, Hawthorne roundly asserts that +he was not an Englishman. 'More than any other Englishman he won the +love and admiration of his country, but won them through the efficacy of +qualities that are not English.' Nelson was of the same breed as +Cromwell, though his shoulders were not so broad; but Hawthorne insists +that the broad shoulders, and not the fiery soul, are the essence of +John Bull. He proceeds with amusing unconsciousness to generalise this +ingenious theory, and declares that all extraordinary Englishmen are +sick men, and therefore deviations from the type. When he meets another +remarkable Englishman in the flesh, he applies the same method. Of Leigh +Hunt, whom he describes with warm enthusiasm, he dogmatically declares, +'there was not an English trait in him from head to foot, morally, +intellectually, or physically.' And the reason is admirable. 'Beef, ale, +or stout, brandy or port-wine, entered not at all into his +constitution.' All Englishmen are made of those ingredients, and if not, +why, then, they are not Englishmen. By the same method it is easy to +show that all Englishmen are drunkards, or that they are all +teetotalers; you have only to exclude as irrelevant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">177</a></span> every case that +contradicts your theory. Hawthorne, unluckily, is by no means solitary +in his mode of reasoning. The ideal John Bull has hidden us from +ourselves as well as from our neighbours, and the race which is +distinguished above all others for the magnificent wealth of its +imaginative literature is daily told—and, what is more, tells +itself—that it is a mere lump of prosaic flesh and blood, with scarcely +soul enough to keep it from stagnation. If we were sensible we should +burn that ridiculous caricature of ourselves along with Guy Fawkes; but +meanwhile we can hardly complain if foreigners are deceived by our own +misrepresentations.</p> + +<p>Against Hawthorne, as I have said, I feel no grudge, though a certain +regret that his sympathy with that deep vein of poetical imagination +which underlies all our 'steaks and sirloins' should have been +intercepted by this detestable lay-figure. The poetical humorist must be +allowed a certain license in dealing with facts; and poor Hawthorne, in +the uncongenial atmosphere of the Liverpool Custom-house, had doubtless +much to suffer from a thick-skinned generation. His characteristic +shyness made it a hard task for him to penetrate through our outer +rind—which, to say the truth, is often elephantine enough—to the +central core of heat; and we must not complain if he was too apt to deny +the existence of what to him was unattainable. But the problem +recurs—for everybody likes to ask utterly unanswerable +questions—whether Hawthorne would not have developed into a still +greater artist if he had been more richly supplied with the diet so dear +to his inmost soul? Was it not a thing to weep over, that a man so +keenly alive to every picturesque influence, so anxious to invest his +work with the enchanted haze of romantic association, should be confined +till middle age amongst the bleak granite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">178</a></span> rocks and the half-baked +civilisation of New England? 'Among ourselves,' he laments, 'there is no +fairy land for the romancer.' What if he had been brought up in the +native home of the fairies—if there had been thrown open to him the +gates through which Shakespeare and Spenser caught their visions of +ideal beauty? Might we not have had an appendix to the 'Midsummer +Night's Dream,' and might not a modern 'Faerie Queen' have brightened +the prosaic wilderness of this nineteenth century? The question, as I +have said, is rigidly unanswerable. We have not yet learnt how to breed +poets, though we have made some progress in regard to pigs. Nobody can +tell, and perhaps, therefore, it is as well that nobody should guess, +what would have been the effect of transplanting Shakespeare to modern +Stratford, or of exiling him to the United States. And yet—for it is +impossible to resist entirely the pleasure of fruitless speculation—we +may guess that there are some reasons why there should be a risk in +transplanting so delicate a growth as the genius of Hawthorne. There are +more ways, so wise men tell us, of killing a cat than choking it with +cream; but it is a very good way. Over-feeding produces atrophy of some +of the vital functions in higher animals than cats, and the imagination +may be enfeebled rather than strengthened by an over-supply of +materials. Hawthorne, if his life had passed where the plough may turn +up an antiquity in every furrow, and the whole face of the country is +enamelled with ancient culture, might have wrought more gorgeous hues +into his tissues, but he might have succumbed to the temptation of +producing mere upholstery. The fairy land for which he longed is full of +dangerous enchantments, and there are many who have lost in it the +vigour which comes from breathing the keen air of everyday life. From +that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">179</a></span> risk Hawthorne was effectually preserved in his New England home. +Having to abandon the poetry which is manufactured out of mere external +circumstances, he was forced to draw it from deeper sources. With easier +means at hand of enriching his pages, he might have left the mine +unworked. It is often good for us to have to make bricks without straw. +Hawthorne, who was conscious of the extreme difficulty of the problem, +and but partially conscious of the success of his solution of it, +naturally complained of the severe discipline to which he owed his +strength. We who enjoy the results may feel how much he owed to the very +sternness of his education and the niggard hand with which his +imaginative sustenance was dealt out to him. The observation may sound +paradoxical at the first moment, and yet it is supported by analogy. Are +not the best cooks produced just where the raw material is the worst, +and precisely because it is there worst? Now, cookery is the art by +which man is most easily distinguished from beasts, and it requires +little ingenuity to transfer its lessons to literature. At the same time +it may be admitted that some closer inquiry is necessary in order to +make the hypothesis probable, and I will endeavour from this point of +view to examine some of Hawthorne's exquisite workmanship.</p> + +<p>The story which perhaps generally passes for his masterpiece is +'Transformation,' for most readers assume that a writer's longest book +must necessarily be his best. In the present case, I think that this +method, which has its conveniences, has not led to a perfectly just +conclusion. In 'Transformation,' Hawthorne has for once the advantage of +placing his characters in a land where 'a sort of poetic or fairy +precinct,' as he calls it, is naturally provided for them. The very +stones of the streets are full of romance, and he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">180</a></span> cannot mention a name +that has not a musical ring. Hawthorne, moreover, shows his usual tact +in confining his aims to the possible. He does not attempt to paint +Italian life and manners; his actors belong by birth, or by a kind of +naturalisation, to the colony of the American artists in Rome; and he +therefore does not labour under the difficulty of being in imperfect +sympathy with his creatures. Rome is a mere background, and surely a +most felicitous background, to the little group of persons who are +effectually detached from all such vulgarising associations with the +mechanism of daily life in less poetical countries. The centre of the +group, too, who embodies one of Hawthorne's most delicate fancies, could +have breathed no atmosphere less richly perfumed with old romance. In +New York he would certainly have been in danger of a Barnum's museum, +beside Washington's nurse and the woolly horse. It is a triumph of art +that a being whose nature trembles on the very verge of the grotesque +should walk through Hawthorne's pages with such undeviating grace. In +the Roman dreamland he is in little danger of such prying curiosity, +though even there he can only be kept out of harm's way by the admirable +skill of his creator. Perhaps it may be thought by some severe critics +that, with all his merits, Donatello stands on the very outside verge of +the province permitted to the romancer. But without cavilling at what is +indisputably charming, and without dwelling upon certain defects of +construction which slightly mar the general beauty of the story, it has +another weakness which it is impossible quite to overlook. Hawthorne +himself remarks that he was surprised, in re-writing his story, to see +the extent to which he had introduced descriptions of various Italian +objects. 'Yet these things,' he adds, 'fill the mind everywhere in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">181</a></span> +Italy, and especially in Rome, and cannot be kept from flowing out upon +the page when one writes freely and with self-enjoyment.' The +associations which they called up in England were so pleasant, that he +could not find it in his heart to cancel. Doubtless that is the precise +truth, and yet it is equally true that they are artistically out of +place. There are passages which recall the guide-book. To take one +instance—and, certainly, it is about the worst—the whole party is +going to the Coliseum, where a very striking scene takes place. On the +way they pass a baker's shop.</p> + +<p>'"The baker is drawing his loaves out of the oven," remarked Kenyon. "Do +you smell how sour they are? I should fancy that Minerva (in revenge for +the desecration of her temples) had slyly poured vinegar into the batch, +if I did not know that the modern Romans prefer their bread in the +acetous fermentation."'</p> + +<p>The instance is trivial, but it is characteristic. Hawthorne had +doubtless remarked the smell of the sour bread, and to him it called up +a vivid recollection of some stroll in Rome; for, of all our senses, the +smell is notoriously the most powerful in awakening associations. But +then what do we who read him care about the Roman taste for bread 'in +acetous fermentation?' When the high-spirited girl is on the way to meet +her tormentor, and to receive the provocation which leads to his murder, +why should we be worried by a gratuitous remark about Roman baking? It +somehow jars upon our taste, and we are certain that, in describing a +New England village, Hawthorne would never have admitted a touch which +has no conceivable bearing upon the situation. There is almost a +superabundance of minute local colour in his American Romances, as, for +example, in the 'House of the Seven Gables;' but still,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">182</a></span> every touch, +however minute, is steeped in the sentiment and contributes to the +general effect. In Rome the smell of a loaf is sacred to his +imagination, and intrudes itself upon its own merits, and, so far as we +can discover, without reference to the central purpose. If a baker's +shop impresses him unduly because it is Roman, the influence of ancient +ruins and glorious works of art is of course still more distracting. The +mysterious Donatello, and the strange psychological problem which he is +destined to illustrate, are put aside for an interval, whilst we are +called upon to listen to descriptions and meditations, always graceful, +and often of great beauty in themselves, but yet, in a strict sense, +irrelevant. Hawthorne's want of familiarity with the scenery is of +course responsible for part of this failing. Had he been a native Roman, +he would not have been so preoccupied with the wonders of Rome. But it +seems that for a romance bearing upon a spiritual problem, the scenery, +however tempting, is not really so serviceable as the less prepossessing +surroundings of America. The objects have too great an intrinsic +interest. A counter-attraction distorts the symmetry of the system. In +the shadow of the Coliseum and St. Peter's you cannot pay much attention +to the troubles of a young lady whose existence is painfully ephemeral. +Those mighty objects will not be relegated to the background, and +condescend to act as mere scenery. They are, in fact, too romantic for a +romance. The fountain of Trevi, with all its allegorical marbles, may be +a very picturesque object to describe, but for Hawthorne's purposes it +is really not equal to the town-pump at Salem; and Hilda's poetical +tower, with the perpetual light before the Virgin's image, and the doves +floating up to her from the street, and the column of Antoninus looking +at her from the heart of the city, somehow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">183</a></span> appeals less to our +sympathies than the quaint garret in the House of the Seven Gables, from +which Phœbe Pyncheon watched the singular idiosyncrasies of the +superannuated breed of fowls in the garden. The garret and the pump are +designed in strict subordination to the human figures: the tower and the +fountain have a distinctive purpose of their own. Hawthorne, at any +rate, seems to have been mastered by his too powerful auxiliaries. A +human soul, even in America, is more interesting to us than all the +churches and picture-galleries in the world; and, therefore, it is as +well that Hawthorne should not be tempted to the too easy method of +putting fine description in place of sentiment.</p> + +<p>But how was the task to be performed? How was the imaginative glow to be +shed over the American scenery, so provokingly raw and deficient in +harmony? A similar problem was successfully solved by a writer whose +development, in proportion to her means of cultivation, is about the +most remarkable of recent literary phenomena. Miss Brontë's bleak +Yorkshire moors, with their uncompromising stone walls, and the valleys +invaded by factories, are at first sight as little suited to romance as +New England itself, to which, indeed, both the inhabitants and the +country have a decided family resemblance. Now that she has discovered +for us the fountains of poetic interest, we can all see that the region +is not a mere stony wilderness; but it is well worth while to make a +pilgrimage to Haworth, if only to discover how little the country +corresponds to our preconceived impressions, or, in other words, how +much depends upon the eye which sees it, and how little upon its +intrinsic merits. Miss Brontë's marvellous effects are obtained by the +process which enables an 'intense and glowing mind' to see everything +through its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">184</a></span> own atmosphere. The ugliest and most trivial objects seem, +like objects heated by the sun, to radiate back the glow of passion with +which she has regarded them. Perhaps this singular power is still more +conspicuous in 'Villette,' where she had even less of the raw material +of poetry. An odd parallel may be found between one of the most striking +passages in 'Villette' and one in 'Transformation.' Lucy Snowe in one +novel, and Hilda in the other, are left to pass a summer vacation, the +one in Brussels and the other in pestiferous Rome. Miss Snowe has no +external cause of suffering but the natural effect of solitude upon a +homeless and helpless governess. Hilda has to bear about with her the +weight of a terrible secret, affecting, it may be, even the life of her +dearest friend. Each of them wanders into a Roman Catholic church, and +each, though they have both been brought up in a Protestant home, seeks +relief at the confessional. So far the cases are alike, though Hilda, +one might have fancied, has by far the strongest cause for emotion. And +yet, after reading the two descriptions—both excellent in their +way—one might fancy that the two young ladies had exchanged burdens. +Lucy Snowe is as tragic as the innocent confidante of a murderess; +Hilda's feelings never seem to rise above that weary sense of melancholy +isolation which besieges us in a deserted city. It is needless to ask +which is the best bit of work artistically considered. Hawthorne's style +is more graceful and flexible; his descriptions of the Roman Catholic +ceremonial and its influence upon an imaginative mind in distress are +far more sympathetic, and imply a wider range of intellect. But Hilda +scarcely moves us like Lucy. There is too much delicate artistic +description of picture-galleries and of the glories of St. Peter's to +allow the poor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">185</a></span> little American girl to come prominently to the surface. +We have been indulging with her in some sad but charming speculations, +and not witnessing the tragedy of a deserted soul. Lucy Snowe has very +inferior materials at her command; but somehow we are moved by a +sympathetic thrill: we taste the bitterness of the awful cup of despair +which, as she tells us, is forced to her lips in the night-watches; and +are not startled when so prosaic an object as the row of beds in the +dormitory of a French school suggests to her images worthy rather of +stately tombs in the aisles of a vast cathedral, and recall dead dreams +of an elder world and a mightier race long frozen in death. Comparisons +of this kind are almost inevitably unfair; but the difference between +the two illustrates one characteristic—we need not regard it as a +defect—of Hawthorne. His idealism does not consist in conferring +grandeur upon vulgar objects by tinging them with the reflection of deep +emotion. He rather shrinks than otherwise from describing the strongest +passions, or shows their working by indirect touches and under a +side-light. An excellent example of his peculiar method occurs in what +is in some respects the most perfect of his works, the 'Scarlet Letter.' +There, again, we have the spectacle of a man tortured by a life-long +repentance. The Puritan Clergyman, reverenced as a saint by all his +flock, conscious of a sin which, once revealed, will crush him to the +earth, watched with a malignant purpose by the husband whom he has +injured, unable to summon up the moral courage to tear off the veil, and +make the only atonement in his power, is a singularly striking figure, +powerfully conceived and most delicately described. He yields under +terrible pressure to the temptation of escaping from the scene of his +prolonged torture with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">186</a></span> partner of his guilt. And then, as he is +returning homewards after yielding a reluctant consent to the flight, we +are invited to contemplate the agony of his soul. The form which it +takes is curiously characteristic. No vehement pangs of remorse, or +desperate hopes of escape, overpower his faculties in any simple and +straightforward fashion. The poor minister is seized with a strange +hallucination. He meets a venerable deacon, and can scarcely restrain +himself from uttering blasphemies about the Communion-supper. Next +appears an aged widow, and he longs to assail her with what appears to +him to be an unanswerable argument against the immortality of the soul. +Then follows an impulse to whisper impure suggestions to a fair young +maiden, whom he has recently converted. And, finally, he longs to greet +a rough sailor with a 'volley of good, round, solid, satisfactory, and +heaven-defying oaths.' The minister, in short, is in that state of mind +which gives birth in its victim to a belief in diabolical possession; +and the meaning is pointed by an encounter with an old lady, who, in the +popular belief, was one of Satan's miserable slaves and dupes, the +witches, and is said—for Hawthorne never introduces the supernatural +without toning it down by a supposed legendary transmission—to have +invited him to meet her at the blasphemous Sabbath in the forest. The +sin of endeavouring to escape from the punishment of his sins had +brought him into sympathy with wicked mortals and perverted spirits.</p> + +<p>This mode of setting forth the agony of a pure mind, tainted by one +irremovable blot, is undoubtedly impressive to the imagination in a high +degree; far more impressive, we may safely say, than any quantity of +such rant as very inferior writers could have poured out with the +utmost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">187</a></span> facility on such an occasion. Yet it might possibly be mentioned +that a poet of the highest order would have produced the effect by more +direct means. Remorse overpowering and absorbing does not embody itself +in these recondite and, one may almost say, over-ingenious fancies. +Hawthorne does not give us so much the pure passion as some of its +collateral effects. He is still more interested in the curious +psychological problem than moved by sympathy with the torture of the +soul. We pity poor Mr. Dimmesdale profoundly, but we are also interested +in him as the subject of an experiment in analytical psychology. We do +not care so much for his emotions as for the strange phantoms which are +raised in his intellect by the disturbance of his natural functions. The +man is placed upon the rack, but our compassion is aroused, not by +feeling our own nerves and sinews twitching in sympathy, but by +remarking the strange confusion of ideas produced in his mind, the +singularly distorted aspect of things in general introduced by such an +experience, and hence, if we please, inferring the keenness of the pangs +which have produced them. This turn of thought explains the real meaning +of Hawthorne's antipathy to poor John Bull. That worthy gentleman, we +will admit, is in a sense more gross and beefy than his American cousin. +His nerves are stronger, for we need not decide whether they should be +called coarser or less morbid. He is not, in the proper sense of the +word, less imaginative, for a vigorous grasp of realities is rather a +proof of a powerful than a defective imagination. But he is less +accessible to those delicate impulses which are to the ordinary passions +as electricity to heat. His imagination is more intense and less mobile. +The devils which haunt the two races partake of the national +characteristics. John Bunyan, Dimmesdale's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">188</a></span>contemporary, suffered under +the pangs of a remorse equally acute, though with apparently far less +cause. The devils who tormented him whispered blasphemies in his ears; +they pulled at his clothes; they persuaded him that he had committed the +unpardonable sin. They caused the very stones in the streets and tiles +on the houses, as he says, to band themselves together against him. But +they had not the refined and humorous ingenuity of the American fiends. +They tempted him, as their fellows tempted Dimmesdale, to sell his soul; +but they were too much in earnest to insist upon queer breaches of +decorum. They did not indulge in that quaint play of fancy which tempts +us to believe that the devils in New England had seduced the 'tricksy +spirit,' Ariel, to indulge in practical jokes at the expense of a nobler +victim than Stephano or Caliban. They were too terribly diabolical to +care whether Bunyan blasphemed in solitude or in the presence of human +respectabilities. Bunyan's sufferings were as poetical, but less +conducive to refined speculation. His were the fiends that haunt the +valley of the shadow of death; whereas Hawthorne's are to be encountered +in the dim regions of twilight, where realities blend inextricably with +mere phantoms, and the mind confers only a kind of provisional existence +upon the 'airy nothings' of its creation. Apollyon does not appear armed +to the teeth and throwing fiery darts, but comes as an unsubstantial +shadow threatening vague and undefined dangers, and only half-detaching +himself from the background of darkness. He is as intangible as Milton's +Death, not the vivid reality which presented itself to mediæval +imaginations.</p> + +<p>This special attitude of mind is probably easier to the American than to +the English imagination. The craving<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">189</a></span> for something substantial, whether +in cookery or in poetry, was that which induced Hawthorne to keep John +Bull rather at arm's length. We may trace the working of similar +tendencies in other American peculiarities. Spiritualism and its +attendant superstitions are the gross and vulgar form of the same phase +of thought as it occurs in men of highly-strung nerves but defective +cultivation. Hawthorne always speaks of these modern goblins with the +contempt they deserve, for they shocked his imagination as much as his +reason; but he likes to play with fancies which are not altogether +dissimilar, though his refined taste warns him that they become +disgusting when grossly translated into tangible symbols. Mesmerism, for +example, plays an important part in the 'Blithedale Romance' and the +'House of the Seven Gables,' though judiciously softened and kept in the +background. An example of the danger of such tendencies may be found in +those works of Edgar Poe, in which he seems to have had recourse to +strong stimulants to rouse a flagging imagination. What is exquisitely +fanciful and airy in Hawthorne is too often replaced in his rival by an +attempt to overpower us by dabblings in the charnel-house and prurient +appeals to our fears of the horribly revolting. After reading some of +Poe's stories one feels a kind of shock to one's modesty. We require +some kind of spiritual ablution to cleanse our minds of his disgusting +images; whereas Hawthorne's pure and delightful fancies, though at times +they may have led us too far from the healthy contact of everyday +interests, never leave a stain upon the imagination, and generally +succeed in throwing a harmonious colouring upon some objects in which we +had previously failed to recognise the beautiful. To perform that duty +effectually is perhaps the highest of artistic merits; and though we +may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">190</a></span> complain of Hawthorne's colouring as too evanescent, its charm +grows upon us the more we study it.</p> + +<p>Hawthorne seems to have been slow in discovering the secret of his own +power. The 'Twice-Told Tales,' he tells us, are only a fragmentary +selection from a great number which had an ephemeral existence in +long-forgotten magazines, and were sentenced to extinction by their +author. Though many of the survivors are very striking, no wise reader +will regret that sentence. It could be wished that other authors were as +ready to bury their innocents, and that injudicious admirers might +always abstain from acting as resurrection-men. The fragments which +remain, with all their merits, are chiefly interesting as illustrating +the intellectual development of their author. Hawthorne, in his preface +to the collected edition (all Hawthorne's prefaces are remarkably +instructive) tells us what to think of them. The book, he says, +'requires to be read in the clear brown twilight atmosphere in which it +was written; if opened in the sunshine it is apt to look exceedingly +like a volume of blank pages.' The remark, with deductions on the score +of modesty, is more or less applicable to all his writings. But he +explains, and with perfect truth, that though written in solitude, the +book has not the abstruse tone which marks the written communications of +a solitary mind with itself. The reason is that the sketches 'are not +the talk of a secluded man with his own mind and heart, but his attempts +... to open an intercourse with the world.' They may, in fact, be +compared to Brummel's failures; and, though they do not display the +perfect grace and fitness which would justify him in presenting himself +to society, they were well worth taking up to illustrate the skill of +the master's manipulation. We see him trying various experiments to hit +off that delicate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">191</a></span> mean between the fanciful and the prosaic, which +shall satisfy his taste and be intelligible to the outside world. +Sometimes he gives us a fragment of historical romance, as in the story +of the stern old regicide who suddenly appears from the woods to head +the colonists of Massachusetts in a critical emergency; then he tries +his hand at a bit of allegory, and describes the search for the mythical +carbuncle which blazes by its inherent splendour on the face of a +mysterious cliff in the depths of the untrodden wilderness, and lures +old and young, the worldly and the romantic, to waste their lives in the +vain effort to discover it—for the carbuncle is the ideal which mocks +our pursuit, and may be our curse or our blessing. Then perhaps we have +a domestic piece—a quiet description of a New England country scene +touched with a grace which reminds us of the creators of Sir Roger de +Coverley or the Vicar of Wakefield. Occasionally there is a fragment of +pure <i>diablerie</i>, as in the story of the lady who consults the witch in +the hollow of the three hills; and more frequently he tries to work out +one of those strange psychological problems which he afterwards treated +with more fulness of power. The minister who, for an unexplained reason, +puts on a black veil one morning in his youth, and wears it until he is +laid with it in his grave—a kind of symbolical prophecy of Dimmesdale; +the eccentric Wakefield (whose original, if I remember rightly, is to be +found in 'King's Anecdotes'), who leaves his house one morning for no +particular reason, and though living in the next street, does not reveal +his existence to his wife for twenty years; and the hero of the 'Wedding +Knell,' the elderly bridegroom whose early love has jilted him, but +agrees to marry him when she is an elderly widow and he an old bachelor, +and who appals the marriage party by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">192</a></span> coming to the church in his +shroud, with the bell tolling as for a funeral—all these bear the +unmistakable stamp of Hawthorne's mint, and each is a study of his +favourite subject, the border-land between reason and insanity. In many +of these stories appears the element of interest, to which Hawthorne +clung the more closely both from early associations and because it is +the one undeniably poetical element in the American character. +Shallow-minded people fancy Puritanism to be prosaic, because the laces +and ruffles of the Cavaliers are a more picturesque costume at a masked +ball than the dress of the Roundheads. The Puritan has become a grim and +ugly scarecrow, on whom every buffoon may break his jest. But the +genuine old Puritan spirit ceases to be picturesque only because of its +sublimity: its poetry is sublimed into religion. The great poet of the +Puritans fails, as far as he fails, when he tries to transcend the +limits of mortal imagination—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The living throne, the sapphire blaze,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where angels tremble as they gaze,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He saw: but blasted with excess of light,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Closed his eyes in endless night.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>To represent the Puritan from within was not, indeed, a task suitable to +Hawthorne's powers. Carlyle has done that for us with more congenial +sentiment than could have been well felt by the gentle romancer. +Hawthorne fancies the grey shadow of a stern old forefather wondering at +his degenerate son. 'A writer of story-books! What kind of business in +life, what mode of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in +his day and generation, may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as +well have been a fiddler!' And yet the old strain remains, though +strangely modified by time and circumstance. In Hawthorne<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">193</a></span> it would seem +that the peddling element of the old Puritans had been reduced to its +lowest point; the more spiritual element had been refined till it is +probable enough that the ancestral shadow would have refused to +recognise the connection. The old dogmatical framework to which he +attached such vast importance had dropped out of his descendant's mind, +and had been replaced by dreamy speculation, obeying no laws save those +imposed by its own sense of artistic propriety. But we may often +recognise, even where we cannot express in words, the strange family +likeness which exists in characteristics which are superficially +antagonistic. The man of action may be bound by subtle ties to the +speculative metaphysician; and Hawthorne's mind, amidst the most obvious +differences, had still an affinity to his remote forefathers. Their +bugbears had become his playthings; but the witches, though they have no +reality, have still a fascination for him. The interest which he feels +in them, even in their now shadowy state, is a proof that he would have +believed in them in good earnest a century and a half earlier. The +imagination, working in a different intellectual atmosphere, is unable +to project its images upon the external world; but it still forms them +in the old shape. His solitary musings necessarily employ a modern +dialect, but they often turn on the same topics which occurred to +Jonathan Edwards in the woods of Connecticut. Instead of the old Puritan +speculations about predestination and free-will, he dwells upon the +transmission by natural laws of an hereditary curse, and upon the +strange blending of good and evil, which may cause sin to be an +awakening impulse in a human soul. The change which takes place in +Donatello in consequence of his crime is a modern symbol of the fall of +man and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">194</a></span> eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. As an +artist he gives concrete images instead of abstract theories; but his +thoughts evidently delight to dwell in the same regions where the daring +speculations of his theological ancestors took their origin. Septimius, +the rather disagreeable hero of his last romance, is a peculiar example +of a similar change. Brought up under the strict discipline of New +England, he has retained the love of musing upon insoluble mysteries, +though he has abandoned the old dogmatic guide-posts. When such a man +finds that the orthodox scheme of the universe provided by his official +pastors has somehow broken down with him, he forms some audacious theory +of his own, and is perhaps plunged into an unhallowed revolt against the +Divine order. Septimius, under such circumstances, develops into a kind +of morbid and sullen Hawthorne. He considers—as other people have +done—that death is a disagreeable fact, but refuses to admit that it is +inevitable. The romance tends to show that such a state of mind is +unhealthy and dangerous, and Septimius is contrasted unfavourably with +the vigorous natures who preserve their moral balance by plunging into +the stream of practical life. Yet Hawthorne necessarily sympathises with +the abnormal being whom he creates. Septimius illustrates the dangers of +the musing temperament, but the dangers are produced by a combination of +an essentially selfish nature with the meditative tendency. Hawthorne, +like his hero, sought refuge from the hard facts of commonplace life by +retiring into a visionary world. He delights in propounding much the +same questions as those which tormented poor Septimius, though, for +obvious reasons, he did not try to compound an elixir of life by means +of a recipe handed down from Indian ancestors. The strange<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">195</a></span> mysteries in +which the world and our nature are shrouded are always present to his +imagination; he catches dim glimpses of the laws which bring out strange +harmonies, but, on the whole, tend rather to deepen than to clear the +mysteries. He loves the marvellous, not in the vulgar sense of the word, +but as a symbol of perplexity which encounters every thoughtful man in +his journey through life. Similar tenants at an earlier period might, +with almost equal probability, have led him to the stake as a dabbler in +forbidden sciences, or have caused him to be revered as one to whom a +deep spiritual instinct had been granted.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, as it was his calling to tell stories to readers of the +English language in the nineteenth century, his power is exercised in a +different sphere. No modern writer has the same skill in so using the +marvellous as to interest without unduly exciting our incredulity. He +makes, indeed, no positive demands on our credulity. The strange +influences which are suggested rather than obtruded upon us are kept in +the background, so as not to invite, nor indeed to render possible, the +application of scientific tests. We may compare him once more to Miss +Brontë, who introduces, in 'Villette,' a haunted garden. She shows us a +ghost who is for a moment a very terrible spectre indeed, and then, very +much to our annoyance, rationalises him into a flesh-and-blood lover. +Hawthorne would neither have allowed the ghost to intrude so forcibly, +nor have expelled him so decisively. The garden in his hands would have +been haunted by a shadowy terror of which we could render no precise +account to ourselves. It would have refrained from actual contact with +professors and governesses; and as it would never have taken bodily +form, it would never have been quite dispelled. His ghosts are confined<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">196</a></span> +to their proper sphere, the twilight of the mind, and never venture into +the broad glare of daylight. We can see them so long as we do not gaze +directly at them; when we turn to examine them they are gone, and we are +left in doubt whether they were realities or an ocular delusion +generated in our fancy by some accidental collocation of half-seen +objects. So in the 'House of the Seven Gables' we may hold what opinion +we please as to the reality of the curse which hangs over the Pyncheons +and the strange connection between them and their hereditary +antagonists; in the 'Scarlet Letter' we may, if we like, hold that there +was really more truth in the witch legends which colour the imaginations +of the actors than we are apt to dream of in our philosophy; and in +'Transformation' we are left finally in doubt as to the great question +of Donatello's ears, and the mysterious influence which he retains over +the animal world so long as he is unstained by bloodshed. In 'Septimius' +alone, it seems to me that the supernatural is left in rather too +obtrusive a shape in spite of the final explanations; though it might +possibly have been toned down had the story received the last touches of +the author. The artifice, if so it may be called, by which this is +effected—and the romance is just sufficiently dipped in the shadow of +the marvellous to be heightened without becoming offensive—sounds, like +other things, tolerably easy when it is explained; and yet the +difficulty is enormous, as may appear on reflection as well as from the +extreme rarity of any satisfactory work in the same style by other +artists. With the exception of a touch or two in Scott's stories, such +as the impressive Bodach Glas, in 'Waverley,' and the apparition in the +exquisite 'Bride of Lammermoor,' it would be difficult to discover any +parallel.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">197</a></span></p> + +<p>In fact Hawthorne was able to tread in that magic circle only by an +exquisite refinement of taste, and by a delicate sense of humour, which +is the best preservative against all extravagance. Both qualities +combine in that tender delineation of character which is, after all, one +of his greatest charms. His Puritan blood shows itself in sympathy, not +with the stern side of the ancestral creed, but with the feebler +characters upon whom it weighed as an oppressive terror. He resembles, +in some degree, poor Clifford Pyncheon, whose love of the beautiful +makes him suffer under the stronger will of his relatives and the prim +stiffness of their home. He exhibits the suffering of such a character +all the more effectively because, with his kindly compassion there is +mixed a delicate flavour of irony. The more tragic scenes affect us, +perhaps, with less sense of power; the playful, though melancholy, fancy +seems to be less at home when the more powerful emotions are to be +excited; and yet once, at least, he draws one of those pictures which +engrave themselves instantaneously on the memory. The grimmest or most +passionate of writers could hardly have improved the scene where the +body of the magnificent Zenobia is discovered in the river. Every touch +goes straight to the mark. The narrator of the story, accompanied by the +man whose coolness has caused the suicide, and the shrewd, unimaginative +Yankee farmer, who interprets into coarse, downright language the +suspicions which they fear to confess to themselves, are sounding the +depths of the river by night in a leaky punt with a long pole. Silas +Foster represents the brutal, commonplace comments of the outside world, +which jar so terribly on the more sensitive and closely interested +actors in the tragedy. 'Heigho!' he soliloquises, with offensive +loudness, 'life and death together<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">198</a></span> make sad work for us all. Then I was +a boy, bobbing for fish; and now I'm getting to be an old fellow, and +here I be, groping for a dead body! I tell you what, lads, if I thought +anything had really happened to Zenobia, I should feel kind o' +sorrowful.' That is the discordant chorus of the gravediggers in +'Hamlet.' At length the body is found, and poor Zenobia is brought to +the shore with her knees still bent in the attitude of prayer, and her +hands clenched in immitigable defiance. Foster tries in vain to +straighten the dead limbs. As the teller of the story gazes at her, the +grimly ludicrous reflection occurs to him that if Zenobia had foreseen +all 'the ugly circumstances of death—how ill it would become her, the +altogether unseemly aspect which she must put on, and especially old +Silas Foster's efforts to improve the matter—she would no more have +committed the dreadful act than have exhibited herself to a public +assembly in a badly-fitting garment.'</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">199</a></span></p> +<h2><i>BALZAC'S NOVELS</i></h2> + + +<p>Balzac exacts more attention than most novel-readers are inclined to +give; he is often repulsive, and not unfrequently dull; but the student +who has once submitted to his charm becomes spell-bound. Disgusted for a +moment, he returns again and again to the strange, hideous, grotesque, +but most interesting world to which Balzac alone can introduce him. Like +the opium-eater, he acquires a taste for the visions that are conjured +up before him with so vivid a colouring, that he almost believes in +their objective existence. There are perhaps greater novelists than +Balzac; there are many who preach a purer morality; and many who give a +far greater impression of general intellectual force; but in this one +quality of intense realisation of actors and scenery he is unique.</p> + +<p>Balzac, indeed, was apparently himself almost incapable of +distinguishing his dreams from realities. Great wits, we know, are +allied to madness; and the boundaries seem in his case to have been most +shadowy and indistinct. Indeed, if the anecdotes reported of him be +accurate—some of them are doubtless rather overcharged—he must have +lived almost in a state of permanent hallucination. This, for example, +is a characteristic story. He inhabited for some years a house called +<i>les Jardies</i>, in the neighbourhood of Paris. He had a difficulty in +providing material<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">200</a></span> furniture, owing to certain debts, which, as some +sceptics insinuated, were themselves a vast mystification. He habitually +ascribed his poverty to a certain 'deficit Kessner,' a loss which +reposed on some trifling foundation of facts, but which assumed +monstrous proportions in his imagination, and recurred perpetually as +the supposed cause of his poverty. In sober reality, however, he was +poor, and found compensation in creating a vast credit, as imaginary as +his liabilities. Upon that bank he could draw without stint. He +therefore inscribed in one place upon the bare walls of his house, 'Ici +un revêtement de marbre de Paros;' in another, 'Ici un plafond peint par +Eugène Delacroix;' in a third, 'Ici des portes, façon Trianon;' and, in +short, revelled in gorgeous decorations made of the same materials as +the dishes of the Barmecides' feast. A minor source of wealth was the +single walnut-tree which really grew in his gardens, and which increased +his dream-revenue by 60<i>l.</i> a year. This extraordinary result was due, +not to any merit in the nuts, but to an ancient and imaginary custom of +the village which compelled the inhabitants to deposit round its foot a +material defined by Victor Hugo as 'du guano moins les oiseaux.' The +most singular story, however, and which we presume is to be received +with a certain reserve, tells how he roused two of his intimate friends +at two o'clock one morning, and urged them to start for India without an +hour's delay. The cause of this journey was that a certain German +historian had presented Balzac with a seal, valued by the thoughtless at +the sum of six sous. The ring, however, had a singular history in +Balzac's dreamland. It was impressed with the seal of the Prophet, and +had been stolen by the English from the Great Mogul. Balzac had or had +not been informed by the Turkish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">201</a></span> ambassador that that potentate would +repurchase it with tons of gold and diamonds, and was benevolent enough +to propose that his friend should share in the stores which would exceed +the dreams of Aladdin.</p> + +<p>How far these and other such fancies were a merely humorous protest +against the harsh realities of life, may be a matter of speculation; but +it is less doubtful that the fictitious personages with whom Balzac +surrounded himself lived and moved in his imagination as distinctly as +the flesh-and-blood realities who were treading the pavement of Paris. +He did not so much invent characters and situations as watch his +imaginary world, and compile the memories of its celebrities. All +English readers are acquainted with the little circle of clergymen and +wives who inhabit the town of Barchester. Balzac has carried out the +same device on a gigantic scale. He has peopled not a country town but a +metropolis. There is a whole society, with the members of which we are +intimate, whose family secrets are revealed to us, and who drop in, as +it were, in every novel of a long series, as if they were old friends. +When, for example, young Victurnien d'Esgrignon comes to Paris he makes +acquaintance, we are told, with De Marsay, Maxime de Trailles, Les +Lupeaulx, Rastignac, Vandenesse, Ajuda-Pinto, the Duchesses de +Grandlieu, de Carigliano, de Chaulieu, the Marquises d'Espard, +d'Aiglemont, and De Listomère, Madame Firmiani, the Comtesse de Sérizy, +and various other heads of the fashionable world. Every one of these +special characters has a special history. He or she appears as the hero +or heroine of one story, and plays subsidiary parts in a score of +others. They recall to us innumerable scandalous episodes, with which +anybody who lives in the imaginary society of Balzac's Paris feels it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">202</a></span> a +duty to be as familiar as a back-stairs politician with the gossip of +the House of Commons. The list just given is a mere fragment of the +great circle to which Balzac introduces us. The history of their +performances is intimately connected with the history of the time; nay, +it is sometimes essential to a full comprehension of recent events. +Bishop Proudie, we fear, would scarcely venture to take an active part +in the Roman Catholic emancipation; he would be dissolved into thin air +by contact with more substantial forms; but if you would appreciate the +intrigues which were going on at Paris during the campaign of Marengo, +you must study the conversations which took place between Talleyrand, +Fouché, Sieyès, Carnot, and Malin, and their relations to that prince of +policemen, the well-known Corentin. De Marsay, we are told, with +audacious precision of time and place, was President of the Council in +1833. There is no tendency on the part of these spectres to shrink from +the light. They rub shoulders with the most celebrated statesmen, and +mingle in every event of the time. One is driven to believe that Balzac +really fancied the banker Nucingen to be as tangible as a Rothschild, +and was convinced that the conversations of Louis XVIII. with Vandenesse +were historic facts. His sister tells us that he discussed the behaviour +of his own creations with the utmost gravity, and was intensely +interested in discovering their fate, and getting the earliest +information as to the alliances which they were about to form. It is a +curious question, upon which I cannot profess to speak positively, +whether this voluminous story ever comes into hopeless conflict with +dates. I have some suspicions that the brilliant journalist, Blondet, +was married and unmarried at the same period; but, considering his very +loose mode of life,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">203</a></span> the suspicion, if true, is susceptible of +explanation. Such study as I have made has not revealed any case of +inconsistency; and Balzac evidently has the whole secret (for it seems +harsh to call it fictitious) history of the time so completely at his +fingers' ends, that the effect upon the reader is to produce an +unhesitating confidence. If a blunder occurs one would rather believe in +a slip of the pen, such as happens to real historians, not in the +substantial inaccuracy of the narrative. Sir A. Alison, it may be +remembered, brings Sir Peregrine Pickle to the Duke of Wellington's +funeral, which must have occurred after Sir Peregrine's death; and +Balzac's imaginary narrative may not be perfectly free from anachronism. +But, if so, I have not found him out. Everybody must sympathise with the +English lady who is said to have written to Paris for the address of +that most imposing physician, Horace Bianchion.</p> + +<p>The startling realisation may be due in part to a mere literary trick. +We meet with artifices like those by which De Foe cheats us into +forgetfulness of his true character. One of the best known is the +insertion of superfluous bits of information, by way of entrapping his +readers into the inference that they could only have been given because +they were true. The snare is more worthy of a writer of begging-letters +than of a genuine artist. Balzac occasionally indulges in somewhat +similar devices; little indirect allusions to his old characters are +thrown in with a calculated nonchalance; we have bits of antiquarian +information as to the history of buildings; superfluous accounts of the +coats-of-arms of the principal families concerned, and anecdotes as to +their ancestry; and, after he has given us a name, he sometimes takes +care to explain that the pronunciation is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">204</a></span> different from the spelling. +As a rule, however, these irrelevant minutiæ seem to be thrown in, not +by way of tricking us, but because he has so genuine an interest in his +own personages. He is as anxious to set De Marsay or the Père Goriot +distinctly before us, as Carlyle to make us acquainted with Frederick or +Cromwell. Our most vivid painter of historical portraits is not more +charmed to discover a characteristic incident in the life of his heroes, +or to describe the pimples on his face, or the specks of blood on his +collar, than Balzac to do the same duty for the creations of his fancy. +De Foe may be compared to those favourites of showmen who cheat you into +mistaking a flat-wall painting for a bas-relief. Balzac is one of the +patient Dutch artists who exhaust inconceivable skill and patience in +painting every hair on the head and every wrinkle on the face till their +work has a photographic accuracy. The result, it must be confessed, is +sometimes rather trying to the patience. Balzac's artistic instinct, +indeed, renders every separate touch more or less conducive to the +general effect; but he takes an unconscionable time in preparing his +ground. Instead of launching boldly into his story, and leaving his +characters to speak for themselves, he begins, as it were, by taking his +automatons carefully to pieces, and pointing out all their wires and +springs. He leaves nothing unaccounted for. He explains the character of +each actor as he comes upon the stage; and, not content with making +general remarks, he plunges with extraordinary relish into the minutest +personal details. In particular, we know just how much money everybody +has got, and how he has got it. Balzac absolutely revels in elaborate +financial statements. And constantly, just as we hope that the action is +about to begin, he catches us, as it were, by the button-hole, and begs +us to wait a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">205</a></span> minute to listen to a few more preparatory remarks. In one +or two of the stories, as, for example, in the 'Maison Nucingen,' the +introduction seems to fill the whole book. After expecting some +catastrophe, we gradually become aware that Balzac has thought it +necessary to give us a conscientious explanation of some very dull +commercial intrigues, in order to fill up gaps in other stories of the +cycle. Some one might possibly ask, what was the precise origin of this +great failure of which we hear so much, and Balzac resolves that he +shall have as complete an answer as though he were an accountant drawing +up a balance-sheet. It is said, I know not on what authority, that his +story of 'César Birotteau' has, in fact, been quoted in French courts as +illustrating the law of bankruptcy; and the details given are so ample, +and, to English readers at least, so wearisome, that it really reads +more like a legal statement of a case than a novel. As another example +of this elaborate workmanship I may quote the remarkable story of 'Les +Paysans.' It is intended to illustrate the character of the French +peasant, his profound avarice and cunning, and his bitter jealousy, +which forms a whole district into a tacit conspiracy against the rich, +held together by closer bonds than those of a Fenian lodge. Balzac +resolves that we shall have the whole scene and all the actors +distinctly before us. We have a description of a country-house more +poetical, but far more detailed, than one in an auctioneer's circular; +then we have a photograph of the neighbouring <i>cabaret</i>; then a minute +description of its inhabitants, and a detailed statement of their ways +and means. The story here makes a feeble start; but Balzac recollects +that we don't quite know the origin of the quarrel on which it depends, +and, therefore, elaborately describes the former proprietor, points out +precisely how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">206</a></span> she was cheated by her bailiff, and precisely to what +amount, and throws in descriptions of two or three supplementary +persons. We now make another start in the history of the quarrel; but +this immediately throws us back into a minute description of the old +bailiff's family circumstances, of the characters of several of his +connections, and of the insidious villain who succeeds him. Then we have +a careful financial statement of the second proprietor's losses, and the +commercial system which favours them; this leads to some antiquarian +details concerning the bailiff's house, and to detailed portraits of +each of the four guards who are set to watch over the property. Then +Balzac remarks that we cannot possibly understand the quarrel without +understanding fully the complicated family relations, owing to which the +officials of the department form what in America would be called a +'ring.' By this time we are half-way through the volume, and the +promised story is still in its infancy. Even Balzac makes an apology for +his <i>longueurs</i>, and tries to set to work in greater earnest. He is so +much interrupted, however, by the necessity of elaborately introducing +every new actor, and all his or her relations, and the houses in which +they live, and their commercial and social position, that the essence of +the story has at last to be compressed into half-a-dozen pages. In +short, the novel resolves itself into a series of sketches; and reading +it is like turning over a set of photographs, with letterpress +descriptions at intervals. Or we may compare it to one of those novels +of real life, so strange to the English mind, in which a French +indictment sums up the whole previous history of the persons accused, +accumulates every possible bit of information which may or may not throw +light upon the facts, and diverges from the point, as English<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">207</a></span> lawyers +would imagine, into the most irrelevant considerations.</p> + +<p>Balzac, it is plain, differs widely from our English authors, who +generally slightly despise their own art, and think that, in providing +amusement for our idle hours, they are rather derogating from their +dignity. Instead of claiming our attention as a right, they try to +entice us into interest by every possible artifice: they give us +exciting glimpses of horrors to come; they are restlessly anxious to get +their stories well under way. Balzac is far more confident in his +position. He never doubts that we shall be willing to study his works +with the seriousness due to a scientific treatise. And occasionally, +when he is seized by a sudden and most deplorable fit of morality, he +becomes as dull as a sermon. The gravity with which he sets before us +all the benevolent schemes of the <i>médecin de campagne</i>, and describes +the whole charitable machinery of the district, makes his performance as +dismal as a gigantic religious tract. But when, in his happier and +wickeder moods, he turns this amazing capacity of graphic description to +its true account, the power of his method makes itself manifest. Every +bit of elaborate geographical and financial information has its meaning, +and tells with accumulated force on the final result. I may instance, +for example, the descriptions of Paris, which form the indispensable +background to the majority of his stories, and contribute in no +inconsiderable share to their tragic effect. Balzac had to deal with the +Paris of the Restoration, full of strange tortuous streets and +picturesque corners, of swinging lanterns and defective drainage; the +Paris which inevitably suggested barricades and street massacres, and +was impregnated to the core with old historical associations. It had not +yet lowered itself to the comprehension of New<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">208</a></span> Yorkers, and still +offered such scenery as Gustave Doré has caught in his wonderful +illustrations of the 'Contes Drolatiques.' Its mysterious and not +over-cleanly charm lives in the pages of Balzac, and harmonises with the +strange society which he has created to people its streets. Thus, in one +of his most audacious stories, where the horribly grotesque trembles on +the verge of the ridiculous, he strikes the key-note by an elegant +apostrophe to Paris. There are, he tells us, a few connoisseurs who +enjoy the Parisian flavour like the bouquet of some delicate wine. To +all Paris is a marvel; to them it is a living creature; every man, every +fragment of a house, is 'part of the cellular tissue of this great +courtesan, whose head, heart, and fantastic manners are thoroughly known +to them.' They are lovers of Paris; to them it is a costly luxury to +travel in Paris. They are incessantly arrested before the dramas, the +disasters, the picturesque accidents, which assail one in the midst of +this moving queen of cities. They start in the morning to go to its +extremities, and find themselves still unable to leave its centre at +dinner-time. It is a marvellous spectacle at all times; but, he +exclaims, 'O Paris! qui n'a pas admiré tes sombres paysages, tes +échappées de lumière, tes culs-de-sac profonds et silencieux; qui n'a +pas entendu tes murmures entre minuit et deux heures du matin, ne +connait encore rien de ta vraie poésie, ni de tes bizarres et larges +contrastes.'</p> + +<p>In the scenes which follow, we are introduced to a lover watching the +beautiful and virtuous object of his adoration as she descends an +infamous street late in the evening, and enters one of the houses +through a damp, moist, and fetid passage, feebly lighted by a trembling +lamp, beneath which are seen the hideous face and skinny fingers of an +old woman,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">209</a></span> as fitly placed as the witches in the blasted heath in +'Macbeth.' In this case, however, Balzac is in one of his wildest moods, +and the hideous mysteries of a huge capital become the pretext for a +piece of rather ludicrous melodrama. Paris is full enough of tragedies +without the preposterous beggar Ferragus, who appears at balls as a +distinguished diplomat, and manages to place on a young gentleman's head +of hair a slow poison (invented for the purpose), which brings him to an +early grave. More impressive, because less extravagant, is that Maison +Vauquer, every hole and corner of which is familiar to the real student +of Balzac. It is situated, as everybody should know, in the Rue Neuve +St.-Geneviève, just where it descends so steeply towards the Rue de +l'Arbalète that horses have some trouble in climbing it. We know its +squalid exterior, its creaking bell, the wall painted to represent an +arcade in green marble, the crumbling statue of Cupid, with the +half-effaced inscription—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Qui que tu sois, voici ton maître,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0"> Il l'est, le fut, ou le doit être.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>We have visited the wretched garden with its scanty pot-herbs and +scarecrow beds, and the green benches in the miserable arbour, where the +lodgers who are rich enough to enjoy such a luxury indulge in a cup of +coffee after dinner. The salon, with its greasy and worn-out furniture, +every bit of which is catalogued, is as familiar as our own studies. We +know the exact geography even of the larder and the cistern. We catch +the odour of the damp, close office, where Madame Vauquer lurks like a +human spider. She is the animating genius of the place, and we know the +exact outline of her figure, and every article of her dress. The +minuteness of her portrait brings out the horrors of the terrible +process by which poor Goriot gradually sinks from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">210</a></span> one step to another +of the social ladder, and simultaneously ascends from the first floor to +the garrets. We can track his steps and trace his agony. Each station of +that melancholy pilgrimage is painted, down to the minutest details, +with unflinching fidelity.</p> + +<p>Paris, says Balzac, is an ocean; however painfully you explore it and +sound its depths, there are still virgin corners, unknown caves with +their flowers, pearls, and monsters, forgotten by literary divers. The +Maison Vauquer is one of these singular monstrosities. No one, at any +rate, can complain that Balzac has not done his best to describe and +analyse the character of the unknown social species which it contains. +It absorbs our interest by the contrast of its vulgar and intensely +commonplace exterior with the terrible passions and sufferings of which +it is the appropriate scene.</p> + +<p>The horrors of a great metropolis, indeed, give ample room for tragedy. +Old Sandy Mackaye takes Alton Locke to the entrance of a London alley, +and tells the sentimental tailor to write poetry about that. 'Say how ye +saw the mouth o' hell, and the twa pillars thereof at the entry, the +pawnbroker's shop on the one side and the gin-palace at the other—two +monstrous deevils, eating up men, women, and bairns, body and soul. Look +at the jaws o' the monsters, how they open and open to swallow in +anither victim and anither. Write about that!' The poor tailor complains +that it is unpoetical, and Mackaye replies, 'Hah! is there no the heaven +above them here and the hell beneath them? and God frowning and the +deevil grinning? No poetry there! Is no the verra idee of the classic +tragedy defined to be—man conquered by circumstances? Canna ye see it +here?' But the quotation must stop, for Mackaye goes on to a moral not +quite according to Balzac. Balzac, indeed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">211</a></span> was anything but a Christian +socialist, or a Radical reformer; we don't often catch sight in his +pages of God frowning or the devil grinning; his world seems to be +pretty well forgotten by the one, and its inhabitants to be quite able +to dispense with the services of the other. Paris, he tells us in his +most outrageous story, is a hell, which one day may have its Dante. The +prolétaire lives in its lowest circle, and seldom comes into Balzac's +pages except as representing the half-seen horrors of the gulf reserved +for that corrupt and brilliant society whose vices he loves to describe. +A summary of his creed is given by a queer contrast to Mackaye, the +accomplished and able De Marsay. People speak, he says, of the +immorality of certain books; here is a horrible, foul, and corrupt book, +always open and never to be shut; the great book of the world; and +beyond that is another book a thousand times more dangerous, which +consists of all that is whispered by one man to another, or discussed +under ladies' fans at balls. Balzac's pages are flavoured, rather to +excess, with this diabolical spice, composed of dark allusions to, or +audacious revelations of these hideous mysteries. If he is wanting in +the moral elevation necessary for a Dante, he has some of the sinister +power which makes him a fit guide to the horrors of our modern Inferno.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Before accepting Balzac's guidance into these mysterious regions, I must +touch upon another peculiarity. Balzac's genius for skilfully-combined +photographic detail explains his strange power of mystification. A word +is wanting to express that faint acquiescence or mimic belief which we +generally grant to a novelist. Dr. Newman has constructed a scale of +assent according to its varying degrees of intensity;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">212</a></span> and we might, +perhaps, assume that to each degree there corresponds a mock assent +accorded to different kinds of fiction. If Scott, for example, requires +from his readers a shadow of that kind of belief which we grant to an +ordinary historian, Balzac requires a shadow of the belief which Dr. +Pusey gives to the Bible. This still remains distinctly below any +genuine assent; for Balzac never wishes us really to forget, though he +occasionally forgets himself, that his most lifelike characters are +imaginary. But in certain subordinate topics he seems to make a higher +demand on our faith. He is full of more or less fanciful heresies, and +labours hard to convince us either that they are true or that he +seriously holds them. This is what I mean by mystification, and one +fears to draw a line as to which he was probably far from clear himself. +Thus, for example, he is a devout believer in physiognomy, and not only +in its obvious sense; he erects it into an occult science. Lavater and +Gall, he says, 'prove incontestably' that ominous signs exist in our +heads. Take, for example, the chasseur Michu, his white face injected +with blood and compressed like a Calmuck's; his ruddy, crisp hair; his +beard cut in the shape of a fan; the noble forehead which surmounts and +overhangs his sunburnt, sarcastic features; his ears well detached, and +possessing a sort of mobility, like those of a wild animal; his mouth +half open, and revealing a set of fine but uneven teeth; his thick and +glossy whiskers; his hair, close in front, long on the sides and behind, +with its wild, ruddy hue throwing into relief the strange and fatal +character of the physiognomy; his short, thick neck, designed to tempt +the hatchet of the guillotine: these details, so accurately +photographed, not only prove that M. Michu was a resolute, faithful +servant, capable of the profoundest secresy and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">213</a></span> the most disinterested +attachment, but for the really skilful reader of mystic symbols foretell +his ultimate fate—namely, that he will be the victim of a false +accusation. Balzac, however, ventures into still more whimsical +extremes. He accepts, in all apparent seriousness, the theory of his +favourite, Mr. Shandy, that a man's name influences his character. Thus, +for example, a man called Minoret-Levrault must necessarily be 'un +éléphant sans trompe et sans intelligence,' and the occult meaning of Z. +Marcas requires a long and elaborate commentary. Repeat the word Marcas, +dwelling on the first syllable, and dropping abruptly on the second, and +you will see that the man who bears it must be a martyr. The zigzag of +the initial implies a life of torment. What ill wind, he asks, has blown +upon this letter, which in no language (Balzac's acquaintance with +German was probably limited) commands more than fifty words? The name is +composed of seven letters, and seven is most characteristic of +cabalistic numbers. If M. Gozlan's narrative be authentic, Balzac was +right to value this name highly, for he had spent many hours in seeking +for it by a systematic perambulation of the streets of Paris. He was +rather vexed at the discovery that the Marcas of real life was a tailor. +'He deserved a better fate!' said Balzac pathetically; 'but it shall be +my business to immortalise him.'</p> + +<p>Balzac returns to this subject so often and so emphatically that one +half believes him to be the victim of his own mystification. Perhaps he +was the one genuine disciple of Mr. Shandy and Slawkenbergius, and +believed sincerely in the occult influence of names and noses. In more +serious matters it is impossible to distinguish the point at which his +feigned belief passes into real superstition; he stimulates conviction +so elaborately, that his sober opinions shade off<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">214</a></span> imperceptibly into +his fanciful dreamings. For a time he was attracted by mesmerism, and in +the story of Ursule Mirouet he labours elaborately to infect his readers +with a belief in what he calls 'magnetism, the favourite science of +Jesus, and one of the powers transmitted to the apostles.' He assumes +his gravest airs in adducing the cases of Cardan, Swedenborg, and a +certain Duke of Montmorency, as though he were a genuine historical +inquirer. He almost adopts the tone of a pious missionary in describing +how his atheist doctor was led by the revelations of a <i>clairvoyante</i> to +study Pascal's 'Pensées' and Bossuet's sublime 'Histoire des +Variations,' though what those works have to do with mesmerism is rather +difficult to see. He relates the mysterious visions caused by the +converted doctor after his death, not less minutely, though more +artistically, than De Foe described the terrible apparition of Mrs. +Veal, and, it must be confessed, his story illustrates with almost equal +force the doctrine, too often forgotten by spiritualists, that ghosts +should not make themselves too common. When once they begin to mix in +general society, they become intolerably prosaic.</p> + +<p>The ostentatious belief which is paraded in this instance is turned to +more artistic account in the wonderful story of the 'Peau de Chagrin.' +Balzac there tries as conscientiously as ever to surmount the natural +revolt of our minds against the introduction of the supernatural into +life. The <i>peau de chagrin</i> is the modern substitute for the +old-fashioned parchment on which contracts were signed with the devil. +M. Valentin, its possessor, is a Faust of the boulevards; but our +prejudices are softened by the circumstance that the <i>peau de chagrin</i> +has a false air of scientific authenticity. It is discovered by a +gentleman<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">215</a></span> who spends a spare half-hour before committing suicide in an +old curiosity shop, which occupies a sort of middle standing-ground +between a wizard's laboratory and the ordinary Wardour Street shop. +There is no question of signing with one's blood, but simply of +accepting a curious substance with the property—rather a startling one, +it is true—that its area diminishes in proportion to the amount of +wishes gratified, and vanishes with the death of the possessor. The +steady flesh-and-blood men of science treat it just as we feel certain +that they would do. After smashing a hydraulic press in the attempt to +compress it, and exhausting the power of chemical agents, they agree to +make a joke of it. It is not so much more wonderful than some of those +modern miracles, which leave us to hesitate between the two incredible +alternatives that men of science are fallible, or that mankind in +general, like Sir Walter Scott's grandmother, are 'awfu' leears.' Every +effort is made to reduce the strain upon our credulity to that moderate +degree of intensity which may fairly be required from the reader of a +wild fiction. When the first characteristic wish of the +proprietor—namely, that he may be indulged in a frantic orgie—has been +gratified without any apparent intervention of the supernatural, we are +left just in that proper equilibrium between scepticism and credulity +which is the right mental attitude in presence of a marvellous story. +Balzac, it is true, seems rather to flag in continuing his narrative. +The symbolical meaning begins to part company with the facts. Stories of +this kind require the congenial atmosphere of an ideal world, and the +effort of interpreting such a poetical legend into terms of ordinary +life is perhaps too great for the powers of any literary artist. At any +rate M. Valentin drops after a time from the level of Faust to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">216</a></span> become +the hero of a rather commonplace Parisian story. The opening scenes, +however, are an admirable specimen of the skill by which our +irrepressible scepticism may be hindered from intruding into a sphere +where it is out of place; or rather—for one can hardly speak of belief +in such a connection—of the skill by which the discord between the +surroundings of the nineteenth century and a story of grotesque +supernaturalism can be converted into a pleasant harmony. A similar +effect is produced in one of Balzac's finest stories, the 'Recherche de +l'Absolu.' Every accessory is provided to induce us, so long as we are +under the spell, to regard the discovery of the philosopher's stone as a +reasonable application of human energy. We are never quite clear whether +Balthazar Claes is a madman or a commanding genius. We are kept +trembling on the verge of a revelation till we become interested in +spite of our more sober sense. A single diamond turns up in a crucible +which was unluckily produced in the absence of the philosopher, so that +he cannot tell what are the necessary conditions of repeating the +process. He is supposed to discover the secret just as he is struck by a +paralysis, which renders him incapable of revealing it, and dies whilst +making desperate efforts to communicate the crowning success to his +family. Balzac throws himself into the situation with such energy that +we are irresistibly carried away by his enthusiasm. The impossibility +ceases to annoy us, and merely serves to give additional dignity to the +story.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>One other variety of mystification may introduce us to some of Balzac's +most powerful stories. He indulges more frequently than could be wished +in downright melodrama, or what is generally called sensational writing. +In the very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">217</a></span> brilliant sketch of Nathan in 'Une Fille d'Eve,' he remarks +that 'the mission of genius is to search, through the accidents of the +true, for that which must appear probable to all the world.' The common +saying, that truth is stranger than fiction, should properly be +expressed as an axiom that fiction ought not to be so strange as truth. +A marvellous event is interesting in real life, simply because we know +that it happened. In a fiction we know that it did not happen; and +therefore it is interesting only as far as it is explained. Anybody can +invent a giant or a genius by the simple process of altering figures or +piling up superlatives. The artist has to make the existence of the +giant or the genius conceivable. Balzac, however, often enough forgets +this principle, and treats us to purely preposterous incidents, which +are either grotesque or simply childish. The history of the marvellous +'Thirteen,' for example, that mysterious band which includes statesmen, +beggars, men of fortune, and journalists, and goes about committing the +most inconceivable crimes without the possibility of discovery, becomes +simply ludicrous. Balzac, as usual, labours to reconcile our minds to +the absurdity; but the effort is beyond his powers. The amazing disease +which he invents for the benefit of the villains in the 'Cousine Bette' +can only be accepted as a broad joke. At times, as in the story of the +'Grande Bretêche,' where the lover is bricked up by the husband in the +presence of the wife, he reminds us of Edgar Poe's worst extravagances. +There is, indeed, this much to be said for Balzac in comparison with the +more recent school, who have turned to account all the most refined +methods of breaking the ten commandments and the criminal code; the +fault of the so-called sensation writer is, not that he deals in murder, +bigamy, or adultery<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">218</a></span>—every great writer likes to use powerful +situations—but that he relies upon our interest in startling crimes to +distract our attention from feebly-drawn characters and conventional +details. Balzac does not often fall into that weakness. If his criminals +are frequently of the most outrageous kind, and indulge even in +practices unmentionable, the crime is intended at least to be of +secondary interest. He tries to fix our attention on the passions by +which they are caused, and to attract us chiefly by the legitimate +method of analysing human nature—even, it must be confessed, in some of +its most abnormal manifestations. Macbeth is not interesting because he +commits half-a-dozen murders; but the murders are interesting because +they are committed by Macbeth. We may generally say as much for Balzac's +villains; and it is the only justification for a free use of blood and +brutality. In applying these remarks, we come to the real secret of +Balzac's power, which will demand a fuller consideration.</p> + +<p>It is common to say of all great novelists, and of Balzac in particular, +that they display a wonderful 'knowledge of the human heart.' The chief +objection to the phrase is that such knowledge does not exist. Nobody +has as yet found his way through the complexities of that intricate +machine, and described the springs and balances by which its movement is +originated and controlled. Men of vivid imagination are in some respects +less competent for such a work than their neighbours. They have not the +cool, hard, and steady hand required for psychological dissection. +Balzac gave a queer specimen of his own incapacity in an attempt to +investigate the true history of a real murder, celebrated in its day, +and supposed by everybody but Balzac to have been committed by one +Peytel, who was put to death in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">219</a></span> spite of his pleading. His skill in +devising motives for imaginary atrocities was a positive +disqualification for dealing with facts and legal evidence. The greatest +poet or novelist describes only one person, and that is himself; and he +differs from his inferiors, not necessarily in having a more systematic +knowledge, but in having wider sympathies, and so to speak, possessing a +great number of characters. Cervantes was at once Don Quixote and Sancho +Panza; Shakespeare was Hamlet and Mercutio and Othello and Falstaff; +Scott was at once Dandie Dinmont and the Antiquary and the Master of +Ravenswood; and Balzac embodies his different phases of feeling in +Eugénie Grandet and Vautrin and the Père Goriot. The assertion that he +knew the human heart must be interpreted to mean that he could +sympathise with, and give expression to, a wide range of human passions; +as his supposed knowledge of the world implies merely that he was deeply +impressed by certain phenomena of the social medium in which he was +placed. Nobody, I should be inclined to think, would have given a more +unsound judgment than Balzac as to the characters of the men whom he +met, or formed a less trustworthy estimate of the real condition of +society. He was totally incapable of stripping the bare facts given by +observation of the colouring which they received from his own +idiosyncrasy. But nobody, within certain points, could express more +vividly in outward symbols the effect produced upon keen sympathies and +a powerful imagination by the aspect of the world around him.</p> + +<p>The characteristic peculiarities of Balzac's novels may be described as +the intensity with which he expresses certain motives, and the vigour +with which he portrays the real or imaginary corruption of society. Upon +one particular situation, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">220</a></span>or class of situations, favourable to this +peculiar power, he is never tired of dwelling. He repeats himself +indeed, in a certain sense, as a man must necessarily repeat himself who +writes eighty-five stories, besides doing other work, in less than +twenty years. In this voluminous outpouring of matter the machinery is +varied with wonderful fertility of invention, but one sentiment recurs +very frequently. The great majority of Balzac's novels, including all +the most powerful examples, may thus be described as variations on a +single theme. Each of them is in fact the record of a martyrdom. There +is always a virtuous hero or heroine who is tortured, and most +frequently, tortured to death, by a combination of selfish intrigues. +The commonest case is, of course, that which has become the staple plot +of French novelists, where the interesting young woman is sacrificed to +the brutality of a dull husband: that, for example, is the story of the +'Femme de Trente Ans,' of 'Le Lys dans la Vallée,' and of several minor +performances; then we have the daughter sacrificed to the avaricious +father, as in 'Eugénie Grandet;' the woman sacrificed to the imperious +lover in the 'Duchesse de Langeais;' the immoral beauty sacrificed to +the ambition of her lover in the 'Splendeurs et Misères des +Courtisanes;' the mother sacrificed to the dissolute son in the 'Ménage +de Garçon;' the woman of political ambition sacrificed to the +contemptible intriguers opposed to her in 'Les Employés;' and, indeed, +in one way or other, as subordinate character or as heroine, this figure +of a graceful feminine victim comes into nearly every novel. Virtuous +heroes fare little better. Poor Colonel Chabert is disowned and driven +to beggary by the wife who has committed bigamy; the luckless curé, +Birotteau, is cheated out of his prospects and doomed to a broken heart +by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">221</a></span> successful villainy of a rival priest and his accomplices; the +Comte de Manerville is ruined and transported by his wife and his +detestable mother-in-law; Père Goriot is left to starvation by his +daughters; the Marquis d'Espard is all but condemned as a lunatic by the +manœuvres of his wife; the faithful servant Michu comes to the +guillotine; the devoted notary Chesnel is beggared in the effort to save +his scape-grace of a master; Michaud, another devoted adherent, is +murdered with perfect success by the brutal peasantry, and his wife dies +of the news; Balthazar Claes is the victim of his devotion to science; +and Z. Marcas dies unknown and in the depths of misery as a reward for +trying to be a second Colbert. The old-fashioned canons of poetical +justice are inverted; and the villains are dismissed to live very +happily ever afterwards, whilst the virtuous are slain outright or +sentenced to a death by slow torture. Thackeray, in one or two of his +minor stories, has touched the same note. The history of Mr. Deuceace, +and especially its catastrophe, is much in Balzac's style; but, as a +rule, our English novelists shrink from anything so unpleasant.</p> + +<p>Perhaps the most striking example of this method is the 'Père Goriot.' +The general situation may be described in two words, by saying that +Goriot is the modern King Lear. Mesdames de Restaud and de Nucingen are +the representatives of Regan and Goneril; but the Parisian Lear is not +allowed the consolation of a Cordelia; the cup of misery is measured out +to him drop by drop, and the bitterness of each dose is analysed with +chemical accuracy. We watch the poor old broken-down merchant, who has +impoverished himself to provide his daughters' dowries, and has +gradually stripped himself, first of comfort, and then of the +necessaries of life to satisfy the demands of their folly and luxury, +as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">222</a></span> we might watch a man clinging to the edge of a cliff and gradually +dropping lower and lower, catching feebly at every point of support till +his strength is exhausted, and the inevitable catastrophe follows. The +daughters, allowed to retain some fragments of good feeling and not +quite irredeemably hateful, are gradually yielding to the demoralising +influence of a heartless vanity. They yield, it is true, pretty +completely at last; but their wickedness seems to reveal the influence +of a vague but omnipotent power of evil in the background. There is not +a more characteristic scene in Balzac than that in which Rastignac, the +lover of Madame de Nucingen, overhears the conversation between the +father in his wretched garret and the modern Goneril and Regan. A gleam +of good fortune has just encouraged old Goriot to anticipate an escape +from his troubles. On the morning of the day of expected release Madame +Goneril de Nucingen rushes up to her father's garret to explain to him +that her husband, the rich banker, having engaged all his funds in some +diabolical financial intrigues, refuses to allow her the use of her +fortune; whilst, owing to her own misconduct, she is afraid to appeal to +the law. They have a hideous tacit compact, according to which the wife +enjoys full domestic liberty, whilst the husband may use her fortune to +carry out his dishonest plots. She begs her father to examine the facts +in the light of his financial experience, though the examination must be +deferred, that she may not look ill with the excitement when she meets +her lover at the ball. As the poor father is tormenting his brains, +Madame Regan de Restaud appears in terrible distress. Her lover has +threatened to commit suicide unless he can meet a certain bill, and to +save him she has pledged certain diamonds which were heirlooms in her +husband's family.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">223</a></span> Her husband has discovered the whole transaction, +and, though not making an open scandal, imposes some severe conditions +upon her future. Old Goriot is raving against the brutality of her +husband, when Regan adds that there is still a sum to be paid, without +which her lover, to whom she has sacrificed everything, will be ruined. +Now old Goriot had employed just this sum—all but the very last +fragment of his fortune—in the service of Goneril. A desperate quarrel +instantly takes place between the two fine ladies over this last scrap +of their father's property. They are fast degenerating into Parisian +Billingsgate, when Goriot succeeds in obtaining silence and proposes to +strip himself of his last penny. Even the sisters hesitate at such an +impiety, and Rastignac enters with some apology for listening, and hands +over to the countess a certain bill of exchange for a sum which he +professes himself to owe to Goriot, and which will just save her lover. +She accepts the paper, but vehemently denounces her sister for having, +as she supposes, allowed Rastignac to listen to their hideous +revelations, and retires in a fury, whilst the father faints away. He +recovers to express his forgiveness, and at this moment the countess +returns, ostensibly to throw herself on her knees and beg her father's +pardon. She apologises to her sister, and a general reconciliation takes +place. But before she has again left the room she has obtained her +father's endorsement to Rastignac's bill. Even her most genuine fury had +left coolness enough for calculation, and her burst of apparent +tenderness was a skilful bit of comedy for squeezing one more drop of +blood from her father and victim. That is a genuine stroke of Balzac.</p> + +<p>Hideous as the performance appears when coolly stated, it must be +admitted that the ladies have got into such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">224</a></span> terrible perplexities from +tampering with the seventh commandment, that there is some excuse for +their breaking the fifth. Whether such an accumulation of horrors is a +legitimate process in art, and whether a healthy imagination would like +to dwell upon such loathsome social sores, is another question. The +comparison suggested with 'King Lear' may illustrate the point. In +Balzac all the subordinate details which Shakespeare throws in with a +very slovenly touch are elaborately drawn, and contribute powerfully to +the total impression. On the other hand, we never reach the lofty +poetical heights of the grandest scenes in 'King Lear.' But the +situation of the two heroes offers an instructive contrast. Lear is +weak, but is never contemptible; he is the ruin of a gallant old king, +is guilty of no degrading compliance, and dies like a man, with his +'good biting falchion' still grasped in his feeble hand. To change him +into Goriot we must suppose that he had licked the hand which struck +him, that he had helped on the adulterous intrigues of Goneril and Regan +from sheer weakness, and that all his fury had been directed against +Cornwall and Albany for objecting to his daughters' eccentric views of +the obligation of the marriage vow. Paternal affection leading a man to +the most trying self-sacrifice is a worthy motive for a great drama or +romance; but Balzac is so anxious to intensify the emotion, that he +makes even paternal affection morally degrading. Everything must be done +to heighten the colouring. Our sympathies are to be excited by making +the sacrifice as complete, and the emotion which prompts it as +overpowering, as possible; until at last the love of children becomes a +monomania. Goriot is not only dragged through the mud of Paris, but he +grovels in it with a will. In short, Balzac wants that highest power<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">225</a></span> +which shows itself by moderation, and commits a fault like that of an +orator who emphasizes every sentence. With less expenditure of horrors, +he would excite our compassion more powerfully. But after all, Goriot +is, perhaps, more really affecting even than King Lear.</p> + +<p>Situations of the 'Père Goriot' kind are, in some sense, more +appropriate for heroines than for heroes. Self-sacrifice is, for the +present at least, considered by a large part of mankind as the complete +duty of woman. The feminine martyr can indulge without loss of our +esteem in compliances which would be degrading in a man. Accordingly +Balzac finds the amplest materials for his favourite situation in the +torture of innocent women. The great example of his skill in this +department is Eugénie Grandet, in which the situation of the Père Goriot +is inverted. Poor Eugénie is the victim of a domestic tyrant, who is, +perhaps, Balzac's most finished portrait of the cold-blooded and cunning +miser. The sacrifice of a woman's life to paternal despotism is +unfortunately even commoner in real life than in fiction; and when the +lover, from whom the old miser has divided her during his life, deserts +her after his death, we feel that the mournful catastrophe is demanded +by the sombre prologue. The book may indeed justify, to some extent, one +of the ordinary criticisms upon Balzac, that he showed a special +subtlety in describing the sufferings of women. The question as to the +general propriety of that criticism is rather difficult for a male +critic. I confess to a certain scepticism, founded partly on the general +principle that hardly any author can really describe the opposite sex, +and partly on an antipathy which I cannot repress to Balzac's most +ambitious feminine portraits.</p> + +<p>Eugénie Grandet is perhaps the purest of his women;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">226</a></span> but then Eugénie +Grandet is simply stupid, and interesting from her sufferings rather +than her character. She reminds us of some patient animal of the +agricultural kind, with bovine softness of eyes and bovine obstinacy +under suffering. His other women, though they are not simply courtesans, +after the fashion of some French writers, seem, as it were, to have a +certain perceptible taint; they breathe an unwholesome atmosphere. In +one of his extravagant humours, he tells us that the most perfect +picture of purity in existence is the Madonna of the Genoese painter, +Piola, but that even that celestial Madonna would have looked like a +Messalina by the side of the Duchesse de Manfrigneuse. If the duchess +resembled either personage in character, it was certainly not the +Madonna. And Balzac's best women give us the impression that they are +courtesans acting the character of virgins, and showing admirable +dramatic skill in the performance. They may keep up the part so +obstinately as to let the acting become earnest; but even when they +don't think of breaking the seventh commandment, they are always +thinking about not breaking it. When he has done his best to describe a +thoroughly pure woman, such as Henrietta in the 'Lys dans la Vallée,' he +cannot refrain from spoiling his performance by throwing in a hint at +the conclusion that, after all, she had a strong disposition to go +wrong, which was only defeated by circumstances. Indeed, the ladies who +in his pages have broken loose from all social restraints, differ only +in external circumstances from their more correct sisters. Coralie, in +the 'Illusions Perdues,' is not so chaste in her conduct as the +immaculate Henriette, but is not a whit less delicate in her tastes. +Madame de la Baudraye deserts her husband, and lives for some years with +her disreputable lover at Paris, and does not in the least forfeit the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">227</a></span> +sympathies of her creator. Balzac's feminine types may be classified +pretty easily. At bottom they are all of the sultana variety—playthings +who occasionally venture into mixing with the serious affairs of life, +but then only on pain of being ridiculous (as in the 'Employés,' or the +'Muse du Département'); but properly confined to their drawing-rooms, +with delicate cajoleries for their policy, and cunning instead of +intellect. Sometimes they are cold-hearted and selfish, and then they +are vicious, making victims of lovers, husbands, or fathers, consuming +fortunes, and spreading ill-will by cunning intrigues; sometimes they +are virtuous, and therefore according to Balzac's logic, pitiable +victims of the world. But their virtue, when it exists, is the effect, +not of lofty principle, but of a certain delicacy of taste corresponding +to a fine organisation. They object to vice, because it is apt to be +coarse; and are perfectly ready to yield, if it can be presented in such +graceful forms as not to shock their sensibilities. Marriage is +therefore a complicated intrigue in which one party is always deceived, +though it may be for his or her good. If you will be loved, says the +judicious lady in the 'Mémoires de Deux Jeunes Mariées,' the secret is +not to love; and the rather flimsy epigram is converted into a great +moral truth. The justification of the lady is, that love is only made +permanent by elaborate intrigue. The wife is to be always on the footing +of a mistress who can only preserve her lover by incessant and +infinitely varied caresses. To do this, she must be herself cool. The +great enemy of matrimonial happiness is satiety, and we are constantly +presented with an affectionate wife boring her husband to death, and +alienating him by over-devotion. If one party is to be cheated, the one +who is freest from passion will be the winner of the game. As a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">228</a></span> maxim, +after the fashion of Rochefoucauld, this doctrine may have enough truth +to be plausible; but when seriously accepted and made the substantive +moral of a succession of stories, one is reminded less of a really acute +observer than of a lad fresh from college who thinks that wisdom +consists in an exaggerated cynicism. When ladies of this variety break +their hearts, they either die or retire in a picturesque manner to a +convent. They are indeed the raw material of which the genuine <i>dévote</i> +is made. The morbid sentimentality directed to the lover passes without +perceptible shock into a religious sentimentality, the object of which +is at least ostensibly different. The graceful but voluptuous mistress +of the Parisian salon is developed without any violent transition into +the equally graceful and ascetic nun. The connection between the +luxurious indulgence of material flirtations and religious mysticism is +curious, but unmistakable.</p> + +<p>Balzac's reputation in this respect is founded, not on his little hoard +of cynical maxims, which, to say the truth, are not usually very +original, but on the vivid power of describing the details and scenery +of the martyrdom, and the energy with which he paints the emotion, of +the victim. Whether his women are very lifelike, or very varied in +character, may be doubted; but he has certainly endowed them with an +admirable capacity for suffering, and forces us to listen +sympathetically to their cries of anguish. The peculiar cynicism implied +in this view of feminine existence must be taken as part of his +fundamental theory of society. When Rastignac has seen Goriot buried, +the ceremony being attended only by his daughters' empty carriages, he +climbs to the highest part of the cemetery, and looks over Paris. As he +contemplates the vast buzzing hive, he exclaims solemnly, 'à nous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">229</a></span> deux +maintenant!' The world is before him; he is to fight his way in future +without remorse. Accordingly, Balzac's view of society is, that it is a +masquerade of devils, engaged in tormenting a few wandering angels. That +society is not what Balzac represents it to be is sufficiently proved by +the fact that society exists; as indeed he is profoundly convinced that +its destruction is only a question of time. It is rotten to the core. +Lust and avarice are the moving forms of the world, while profound and +calculating selfishness has sapped the base of all morality. The type of +a successful statesman is De Marsay, a kind of imaginary Talleyrand, who +rules because he has recognised the intrinsic baseness of mankind, and +has no scruples in turning it to account. Vautrin, who is an open enemy +of society, is simply De Marsay in revolt. The weapons with which he +fights are distinguished from those of greater men, not in their +intrinsic wickedness, but in their being accidentally forbidden by law. +He is less of a hypocrite, and scarcely a greater villain than his more +prosperous rivals. He ultimately recognises the futility of the strife, +agrees to wear a mask like his neighbours, and accepts the congenial +duties of a police agent. The secret of success in all ranks of life is +to be without scruples of morality, but exceedingly careful of breaking +the law. The bankers, Nucingen and Du Tillet, are merely cheats on a +gigantic scale. They ruin their enemies by financiering instead of +picking pockets. Be wicked if you would be successful; if possible let +your wickedness be refined; but, at all events, be wicked.</p> + +<p>There is, indeed, a class of unsuccessful villains, to be found chiefly +amongst journalists, for whom Balzac has a special aversion; they live, +he tells us, partly on extortion, and partly on the prostitution of +their talents to gratify<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">230</a></span> political or personal animosities, and are at +the mercy of the longest purse. They fail in life, not because they are +too immoral, but because they are too weak. They are the victims instead +of the accomplices of more resolute evil-doers. Lucien de Rubempré is +the type of this class. Endowed with surpassing genius and personal +beauty, he goes to Paris to make his fortune, and is introduced to the +world as it is. On the one hand is a little knot of virtuous men, called +the <i>cénacle</i>, who are working for posterity and meanwhile starving. On +the other is a vast mass of cheats and dupes. After a brief struggle +Lucien yields to temptation, and joins in the struggle for wealth and +power. But he has not strength enough to play his part. His head is +turned by the flattery of pretty actresses and scheming publishers: he +is enticed into thoughtless dissipation, and, after a brilliant start, +finds that he is at the mercy of the cleverer villains who surround him; +that he has been bought and sold like a sheep; that his character is +gone, and his imagination become sluggish; and, finally, he has to +escape from utter ruin by scarcely describable degradation. He writes a +libel on one of his virtuous friends, who is forgiving enough to improve +it and correct it for the press. In order to bury his mistress, who has +been ruined with him, he has to raise money by grovelling in the foulest +depths of literary sewerage. He at last succeeds in crawling back to his +relations in the country, morally and materially ruined. He makes +another effort to rise, backed up by the diabolical arts of Vautrin, and +relying rather on his beauty than his talents. The world is again too +strong for him, and, after being accomplice in the most outrageous +crimes, he ends appropriately by hanging himself in prison. Vautrin, as +we have seen, escapes from the fate of his partner because he retains +coolness enough<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">231</a></span> to practise upon the vices of the governing classes. +The world, in short, is composed of three classes—consistent and, +therefore, successful villains; inconsistent and, therefore, +unsuccessful villains; and virtuous persons, who never have a chance of +success, and enjoy the honours of starvation.</p> + +<p>The provinces differ from Paris in the nature of the social warfare, but +not in its morality. Passions are directed to meaner objects; they are +narrower, and more intense. The whole of a man's faculties are +concentrated upon one object; and he pursues it for years with +relentless and undeviating ardour. To supplant a rival, to acquire a few +more acres, to gratify jealousy of a superior, he will labour for a +lifetime. The intensity of his hatred supplies his want of intellect; he +is more cunning, if less far-sighted; and in the contest between the +brilliant Parisian and the plodding provincial we generally have an +illustration of the hare and the tortoise. The blind, persistent hatred +gets the better in the long run of the more brilliant, but more +transitory, passion. The lower nature here, too, gets the better of the +higher; and Balzac characteristically delights in the tragedy produced +by genius which falls before cunning, as virtue almost invariably yields +to vice. It is only when the slow provincial obstinacy happens to be on +the side of virtue that stupidity, doubled with virtue, as embodied for +example in two or three French Caleb Balderstons, generally gets the +worst of it. There are exceptions to this general rule. Even Balzac +sometimes relents. A reprieve is granted at the last moment, and the +martyr is unbound from the stake. But those catastrophes are not only +exceptional, but rather annoying. We have been so prepared to look for a +sacrifice that we are disappointed instead of relieved. If Balzac's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">232</a></span> +readers could be consulted during the last few pages of a novel, I feel +sure that most thumbs would be turned upwards, and the lions allowed to +have their will of the Christians. Perhaps our appetites have been +depraved; but we are not in the cue for a happy conclusion.</p> + +<p>I know not whether it was the cause or the consequence of this sentiment +that Balzac was a thorough legitimist. He does not believe in the +vitality of the old order, any more than he believes in the truth of +Catholicism. But he regrets the extinction of the ancient faiths, which +he admits to be unsuitable; and sees in their representatives the only +picturesque and really estimable elements that still survived in French +society. He heartily despises the modern mediævalists, who try to spread +a thin varnish over a decaying order; the world is too far gone in +wickedness for such a futile remedy. The old chivalrous sentiments of +the genuine noblesse are giving way to the base chicanery of the +bourgeois who supplant them: the peasantry are mean, avaricious, and +full of bitter jealousy; but they are triumphantly rooting out the last +vestiges of feudalism. Democracy and communism are the fine names put +forward to justify the enmity of those who have not, against those who +have. Their success means merely an approaching 'descent of Niagara,' +and the growth of a more debasing and more materialist form of +despotism. But it would be a mistake to assume that this view of the +world implies that Balzac is in a state of lofty moral indignation. +Nothing can be further from the case. The world is wicked; but it is +fascinating. Society is very corrupt, it is true; but intensely and +permanently amusing. Paris is a hell; but hell is the only place worth +living in. The play of evil passions gives infinite subjects for +dramatic interests. The financial warfare is more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">233</a></span> diabolical than the +old literal warfare, but quite as entertaining. There is really as much +romance connected with bills of exchange as with swords and lances, and +rigging the market is nothing but the modern form of lying in ambush. +Goneril and Regan are triumphant; but we may admire the grace of their +manners and the dexterity with which they cloak their vices. Iago not +only poisons Othello's peace of mind, but, in the world of Balzac, he +succeeds to Othello's place, and is universally respected. The story +receives an additional flavour. In a characteristic passage, Balzac +regrets that Molière did not continue 'Tartufe.' It would then have +appeared how bitterly Orgon regretted the loss of the hypocrite, who, it +is said, made love to his wife, but who, at any rate, had an interest in +making things pleasant. Your conventional catastrophe is a mistake in +art, as it is a misrepresentation of facts. Tartufe has a good time of +it in Balzac: instead of meeting with an appropriate punishment, he +flourishes and thrives, and we look on with a smile not altogether +devoid of complacency. Shall we not take the world as it is, and be +amused at the 'Comédie Humaine,' rather than fruitlessly rage against +it? It will be played out whether we like it or not, and we may as well +adapt our tastes to our circumstances.</p> + +<p>Ought we to be shocked at this extravagant cynicism; to quote it, as +respectable English journalists used to do, as a proof of the awful +corruption of French society, or to regard it as semi-humorous +exaggeration? I can't quite sympathise with people who take Balzac +seriously. I cannot talk about the remorseless skill with which he tears +off the mask from the fearful corruptions of modern society, and +penetrates into the most hidden motives of the human heart; nor can I +infer from his terrible pictures of feminine suffering <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">234</a></span>that for every +one of those pictures a woman's heart had been tortured to death. This, +or something like this, I have read; and I can only say that I don't +believe a word of it. Balzac, indeed, as compared with our respectable +romancers, has the merit of admitting passions whose existence we +scrupulously ignore; and the further merit that he takes a far wider +range of sentiment, and does not hold by the theory that the life of a +man or a woman closes at the conventional end of a third volume. But he +is above all things a dreamer, and his dreams resemble nightmares. +Powerfully as his actors are put upon the stage, they seem to me to be, +after all, 'such stuff as dreams are made of.' A genuine observer of +life does not find it so highly spiced, and draws more moderate +conclusions. Balzac's characters run into typical examples of particular +passions rather than genuine human beings; they are generally +monomaniacs. Balthazar Claes, who gives up his life to search for the +philosopher's stone, is closely related to them all; only we must +substitute for the philosopher's stone some pet passion, in which the +whole nature is absorbed. They have the unnatural strain of mind which +marks the approach to madness. It is not ordinary daylight which +illuminates Balzac's dreamland, but some fantastic combination of +Parisian lamps, which tinges all the actors with an unearthly glare, and +distorts their features into extravagant forms. The result has, as I +have said, a strange fascination; but one is half-ashamed of yielding, +because one feels that it is due to the use of rather unholy drugs. The +vapours that rise from his magic caldron and shape themselves into human +forms smell unpleasantly of sulphur, or perhaps of Parisian sewers.</p> + +<p>The highest poetry, like the noblest morality, is the product of a +thoroughly healthy mind. A diseased tendency<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">235</a></span> in one respect is certain +to make itself manifest in the other. Now Balzac, though he shows some +powers which are unsurpassed or unequalled, possessed a mind which, to +put it gently, was not exactly well regulated. He took a pleasure in +dwelling upon horrors from which a healthy imagination shrinks, and +rejoiced greatly in gloating over the mysteries of iniquity. I do not +say that this makes his work immoral in the ordinary sense. Probably few +people who are likely to read Balzac would be any the worse for the +study. But, from a purely artistic point of view, he is injured by his +morbid tendencies. The highest triumph of style is to say what everybody +has been thinking in such a way as to make it new; the greatest triumph +of art is to make us see the poetical side of the commonplace life +around us. Balzac's ambition was, doubtless, aimed in that direction. He +wished to show that life in Paris or at Tours was as interesting to the +man of real insight as any more ideal region. In a certain sense, he has +accomplished his purpose. He has discovered food for a dark and powerful +imagination in the most commonplace details of daily life. But he falls +short in so far as he is unable to represent things as they are, and has +a taste for impossible horrors. There are tragedies enough all round us +for him who has eyes to see. Balzac is not content with the materials at +hand, or rather he has a love for the more exceptional and hideous +manifestations. Therefore the 'Comédie Humaine,' instead of being an +accurate picture of human life, and appealing to the sympathies of all +human beings, is a collection of monstrosities, whose vices are +unnatural, and whose virtues are rather like their vices. One feels that +there is something narrow and artificial about his work. It is intensely +powerful, but it is not the highest kind of power. He makes the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">236</a></span> utmost +of the gossip of a club smoking-room, or the scandal of a drawing-room, +or perhaps of a country public-house; but he represents a special phase +of manners, and that not a particularly pleasant one, rather than the +more fundamental and permanent sentiments of mankind. When shall we see +a writer who can be powerful without being spasmodic, and pierce through +the surface of society without seeking for interest in its foulest +abysses?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">237</a></span></p> +<h2><i>DE QUINCEY</i></h2> + + +<p>Little more than fourteen years ago there passed from among us a man who +held a high and very peculiar position in English literature. In 1821 De +Quincey first published the work with which his name is most commonly +associated, and at uncertain intervals he gave tokens to mankind of his +continued presence on earth. What his life may have been in the +intervals seems to have been at times unknown even to his friends. He +began by disappearing from school and from his family, and seems to have +fallen into the habit of temporary eclipses. At one moment he dropped +upon his acquaintance from the clouds; at another he would vanish into +utter darkness for weeks or months together. One day he came to dine +with Christopher North—so we are told in the professor's life—was +detained for the night by a heavy storm of rain, and prolonged his +impromptu visit for a year. During that period his habits must have been +rather amazing to a well-regulated household. His wants, indeed, were +simple, and, in one sense, regular; a particular joint of mutton, cut +according to a certain mathematical formula, and an ounce of laudanum, +made him happy for a day. But in the hours when ordinary beings are +awake he was generally to be found stretched in profound opium-slumbers +upon a rug before the fire, and it was only about two or three in the +morning that he gave unequivocal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">238</a></span> symptoms of vitality, and suddenly +gushed forth in streams of wondrous eloquence to the supper parties +detained for the purpose of witnessing the display. Between these +irregular apparitions we are lastly given to understand that his life +was so strange that its details would be incredible. What these +incredible details may have been, I have no means of knowing. It is +enough that he was a strange unsubstantial being, flitting uncertainly +about in the twilight regions of society, emerging by fits and starts +into visibility, afflicted with a general vagueness as to the ordinary +duties of mankind, and generally taking much more opium than was good +for him. He tells us, indeed, that he broke off his over-mastering habit +by vigorous efforts; as he also tells us that opium is a cure for most +grievous evils, and especially saved him from an early death by +consumption. It is plain enough, however, that he never really refrained +for any length of time; and perhaps we should congratulate ourselves on +a propensity, unfortunate it may be, for its victim, but leading to the +Confessions as one collateral result.</p> + +<p>The life of De Quincey by "H. A. Page," published since this was +written, has removed much of the mystery; and it has also done much to +raise in some respects our estimate of his character. With all his +weaknesses De Quincey undoubtedly was a man who could excite love as +well as pity. Incapable, to a grotesque degree, of anything like +business, he did his best to discharge domestic duties: he had a +punctilious sense of honour, and got himself into difficulties by a +generosity which was certainly not corrected by the virtue of prudence. +But I will not attempt to sum up the facts, for which, as for a higher +estimate than I can subscribe of his intellectual position, I gladly +refer to his biography.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">239</a></span> I have only to do with the De Quincey of books +which have a singular fascination. De Quincey himself gives thanks for +four circumstances. He rejoices that his lot was cast in a rustic +solitude; that that solitude was in England: that his 'infant feelings +were moulded by the gentlest of sisters,' instead of 'horrid pugilistic +brothers;' and that he and his were members of 'a pure, holy, and' (the +last epithet should be emphasized) 'magnificent Church.' The +thanksgiving is characteristic, for it indicates his naïve conviction +that his admiration was due to the intrinsic merits of the place and +circumstances of his birth, and not to the accident that they were his +own. It would be useless to inquire whether a more bracing atmosphere +and a less retired spot might have been more favourable to his talents; +but we may trace the influence of these conditions of his early life +upon his subsequent career.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>De Quincey implicitly puts forward a claim which has been accepted by +all competent critics. They declare, and he tacitly assumes, that he is +a master of the English language. He claims a sort of infallibility in +deciding upon the precise use of words and the merits of various styles. +But he explicitly claims something more. He declares that he has used +language for purposes to which it has hardly been applied by any prose +writers. The 'Confessions of an Opium-eater' and the 'Suspiria de +Profundis' are, he tells us, 'modes of impassioned prose, ranging under +no precedents that I am aware of in any literature.' The only +confessions that have previously made any great impression upon the +world are those of St. Augustine and of Rousseau; but, with one short +exception in St. Augustine, neither of those compositions contains any +passion, and, therefore, De<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">240</a></span> Quincey stands absolutely alone as the +inventor and sole performer on a new musical instrument—for such an +instrument is the English language in his hands. He belongs to a genus +in which he is the only individual. The novelty and the difficulty of +the task must be his apology if he fails, and causes of additional glory +if he succeeds. He alone of all human beings who have written since the +world began, has entered a path, which the absence of rivals proves to +be encumbered with some unusual obstacles. The accuracy and value of so +bold a claim require a short examination. After all, every writer, +however obscure, may contrive by a judicious definition to put himself +into a solitary class. He has some peculiarities which distinguish him +from all other mortals. He is the only journalist who writes at a given +epoch from a particular garret in Grub Street, or the only poet who is +exactly six feet high and measures precisely forty-two inches round the +chest. Any difference whatever may be applied to purposes of +classification, and the question is whether the difference is, or is +not, of much importance. By examining, therefore, the propriety of De +Quincey's view of his own place in literature, we shall be naturally led +to some valuation of his distinctive merits. In deciding whether a bat +should be classed with birds or beasts, we have to determine the nature +of the beast and the true theory of his wings. And De Quincey, if the +comparison be not too quaint, is like the bat, an ambiguous character, +rising on the wings of prose to the borders of the true poetical region.</p> + +<p>De Quincey, then, announces himself as an impassioned writer, as a +writer in impassioned prose, and, finally, as applying impassioned prose +to confessions. The first question suggested by this assertion concerns +the sense of the word 'impassioned.' There is very little of what one +ordinarily<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">241</a></span> means by passion in the Confessions or elsewhere. There are +no explosions of political wrath, such as animate the 'Letters on a +Regicide Peace,' or of a deep religious emotion, which breathes through +many of our greatest prose writers. The language is undoubtedly a +vehicle for sentiments of a certain kind, but hardly of that burning and +impetuous order which we generally indicate by impassioned. It is deep, +melancholy reverie, not concentrated essence of emotion; and the epithet +fails to indicate any specific difference between himself and many other +writers. The real peculiarity is not in the passion expressed, but in +the mode of expressing it. De Quincey resembles the story-tellers +mentioned by some Eastern travellers. So extraordinary is their power of +face, and so skilfully modulated are the inflections of their voices, +that even a European, ignorant of the language, can follow the narrative +with absorbing interest. One may fancy that if De Quincey's language +were emptied of all meaning whatever, the mere sound of the words would +move us, as the lovely word Mesopotamia moved Whitefield's hearer. The +sentences are so delicately balanced, and so skilfully constructed, that +his finer passages fix themselves in the memory without the aid of +metre. Humbler writers are content if they can get through a single +phrase without producing a decided jar. They aim at keeping up a steady +jog-trot, which shall not give actual pain to the jaws of the reader. +They no more think of weaving whole paragraphs or chapters into complex +harmonies, than an ordinary pedestrian of 'going to church in a galliard +and coming home in a coranto.' Even our great writers generally settle +down to a stately but monotonous gait, after the fashion of Johnson or +Gibbon, or are content with adopting a style as transparent and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">242</a></span> +inconspicuous as possible. Language, according to the common phrase, is +the dress of thought; and that dress is the best, according to modern +canons of taste, which attracts least attention from its wearer. De +Quincey scorns this sneaking maxim of prudence, and boldly challenges +our admiration by indulgence in what he often calls 'bravura.' His +language deserves a commendation sometimes bestowed by ladies upon rich +garments, that it is capable of standing up by itself. The form is so +admirable that, for purposes of criticism, we must consider it as +something apart from the substance. The most exquisite passages in De +Quincey's writings are all more or less attempts to carry out the idea +expressed in the title of the dream fugue. They are intended to be +musical compositions, in which words have to play the part of notes. +They are impassioned, not in the sense of expressing any definite +sentiment, but because, from the structure and combination of the +sentences, they harmonise with certain phases of emotion.</p> + +<p>Briefly, De Quincey is doing in prose what every great poet does in +verse. The specific mark thus indicated is still insufficient to give +him a solitary position among writers. All great rhetoricians, as De +Quincey defines and explains the term, rise to the borders of poetry, +and the art which has recently been cultivated among us under the name +of word-painting may be more fitly described as an attempt to produce +poetical effects without the aid of metre. From most of the writers +described under this rather unpleasant phrase he differs by the +circumstance, that his art is more nearly allied to music than to +painting. Or, if compared to any painters, it must be to those who care +comparatively little for distinct portraiture or dramatic interest. He +resembles rather the school which is satisfied by contemplating<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">243</a></span> +gorgeous draperies, and graceful limbs and long processions of imposing +figures, without caring to interpret the meaning of their works, or to +seek for more than the harmonious arrangement of form and colour. In +other words, his prose-poems should be compared to the paintings which +aim at an effect analogous to that of stately pieces of music. Milton is +the poet whom he seems to regard with the sincerest admiration; and he +apparently wishes to emulate the majestic rhythm of the 'God-gifted +organ-voice of England.' Or we may, perhaps, admit some analogy between +his prose and the poetry of Keats, though it is remarkable that he +speaks with very scant appreciation of his contemporary. The 'Ode to a +Nightingale,' with its marvellous beauty of versification and the dim +associations half-consciously suggested by its language, surpasses, +though it resembles, some of De Quincey's finest passages; and the +'Hyperion' might have been translated into prose as a fitting companion +for some of the opium dreams. It is in the success with which he +produces such effects as these that De Quincey may fairly claim to be +unsurpassed in our language. Pompous (if that word may be used in a good +sense) declamation in prose, where the beauty of the thought is lost in +the splendour of the style, is certainly a rare literary product. Of the +great rhetoricians whom De Quincey quotes in the Essay on Rhetoric just +noticed, such men as Burke and Jeremy Taylor lead us to forget the means +in the end. They sound the trumpet as a warning, not for the mere +delight in its volume of sound. Perhaps his affinity to Sir Thomas +Browne is more obvious; and one can understand the admiration which he +bestows upon the opening bar of a passage in the Urn-burial:—'Now since +these bones have rested quietly in the grave under the drums and +tramplings<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">244</a></span> of three conquests,' &c. 'What a melodious ascent,' he +exclaims, 'as of a prelude to some impassioned requiem breathing from +the pomps of earth and from the sanctities of the grave! What a <i>fluctus +decumanus</i> of rhetoric! Time expounded, not by generations or centuries, +but by vast periods of conquests and dynasties; by cycles of Pharaohs +and Ptolemies, Antiochi and Arsacides! And these vast successions of +time distinguished and figured by the uproars which revolve at their +inaugurations; by the drums and tramplings rolling overhead upon the +chambers of forgotten dead—the trepidations of time and mortality +vexing, at secular intervals, the everlasting sabbaths of the grave!'</p> + +<p>The commentator is seeking to eclipse the text, and his words are at +once a description and an example of his own most characteristic +rhetoric. Wordsworth once uttered an aphorism which De Quincey repeats +with great admiration: that language is not, as I have just said, the +dress, but 'the incarnation of thought.' But though accepting and +enforcing the doctrine by showing that the 'mixture is too subtle, the +intertexture too ineffable' to admit of expression, he condemns the +style which is the best illustration of its truth. He is very angry with +the admirers of Swift; De Foe and 'many hundreds' of others wrote +something quite as good; it only wanted 'plain good sense, natural +feeling, unpretendingness, some little scholarly practice in putting +together the clockwork of sentences, and, above all, the advantage of an +appropriate subject.' Could Swift, he asks, have written a pendant to +passages in Sir W. Raleigh, or Sir Thomas Browne, or Jeremy Taylor? He +would have cut the same figure as 'a forlorn scullion from a greasy +eating-house at Rotterdam, if suddenly called away in vision to act as +seneschal to the festival of Belshazzar the King, before a thousand <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">245</a></span>of +his lords.' And what, we may retort, would Taylor, or Browne, or De +Quincey himself, have done, had one of them been wanted to write down +the project of Wood's halfpence in Ireland? He would have resembled a +king in his coronation robes compelled to lead a forlorn hope up the +scaling ladders. The fact is, that Swift required for his style not only +the plain good sense and other rare qualities enumerated, but pungent +humour, quick insight, deep passion, and general power of mind, such as +is given to few men in a century. But, as in his case the thought is +really incarnated in the language we cannot criticise the style +separately from the thoughts, or we can only assign, as its highest +merit, its admirable fitness for producing the desired effect. It would +be wrong to invert De Quincey's censure, and blame him because his +gorgeous robes are not fitted for more practical purposes. To everything +there is a time; for plain English, and for De Quincey's highly-wrought +passages.</p> + +<p>It would be difficult or impossible, and certainly it would be +superfluous, to define with any precision the peculiar flavour of De +Quincey's style. A few specimens would do more than any description; and +De Quincey is too well known to justify quotation. It may be enough to +notice that most of his brilliant performances are variations on the +same theme. He appeals to our terror of the infinite, to the shrinking +of the human mind before astronomical distances and geological periods +of time. He paints vast perspectives, opening in long succession, till +we grow dizzy in the contemplation. The cadence of his style suggests +sounds echoing each other, and growing gradually fainter, till they die +away into infinite distance. Two great characteristics, he tells us, of +his opium dreams were a deep-seated melancholy and an exaggeration<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">246</a></span> of +the things of space and time. Nightly he descended 'into chasms and +sunless abysses, depths below depths, from which it seemed hopeless that +he could ever reascend.' He saw buildings and landscapes 'in proportion +so vast as the human eye is not fitted to receive.' He seemed to live +ninety or a hundred years in a night, and even to pass through periods +far beyond the limits of human existence. Melancholy and an awe-stricken +sense of the vast and vague are the emotions which he communicates with +the greatest power; though the melancholy is too dreamy to deserve the +name of passion, and the terror of the infinite is not explicitly +connected with any religious emotion. It is a proof of the fineness of +his taste, that he scarcely ever falls into bombast; we tremble at his +audacity in accumulating gorgeous phrases; but we confess that he is +justified by the result. The only exception that I can remember is the +passage in 'The English Mailcoach,' where his exaggerated patriotism +leads him into what strikes me at least as a rather vulgar bit of +claptrap. If any reader will take the trouble to compare De Quincey's +account of a kind of anticipation of the Balaclava charge at the battle +of Talavera, with Napier's description of the same facts, he will be +amused at the distortion of history; but whatever the accuracy of the +statements, one is a little shocked at finding 'the inspiration of God' +attributed to the gallant dragoons who were cut to pieces on that +occasion, as other gallant men have been before and since. The phrase is +overcharged, and inevitably suggests a cynical reaction of mind. The +ideas of dragoons and inspiration do not coalesce so easily as might be +wished; but, with this exception, I think that his purple patches are +almost irreproachable, and may be read and re-read with increasing +delight. I know of no other modern writer who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">247</a></span> has soared into the same +regions with so uniform and easy a flight.</p> + +<p>The question is often raised how far the attempt to produce by one art +effects specially characteristic of another can be considered as +legitimate; whether, for example, a sculptor, when encroaching upon the +province of the painter, or a prose writer attempting to rival poets, +may not be summarily condemned. The answer probably would be that a +critic who lays down such rules is erecting himself into a legislator, +when he should be a simple observer. Success justifies itself; and when +De Quincey obtains, without the aid of metre, graces which few other +writers have won by the same means, it is all the more creditable to De +Quincey. A certain presumption, however, remains in such cases, that the +failure to adopt the ordinary methods implies a certain deficiency of +power. If we ask why De Quincey, who trenched so boldly upon the +peculiar province of the poet, yet failed to use the poetical form, +there is one very obvious answer. He has one intolerable fault, a fault +which has probably done more than any other to diminish his popularity, +and which is, of all faults, most diametrically opposed to poetical +excellence. He is utterly incapable of concentration. He is, from the +very principles on which his style is constructed, the most diffuse of +writers. Other men will pack half-a-dozen distinct propositions into a +sentence, and care little if they are somewhat crushed and distorted in +the process. De Quincey insists upon putting each of them separately, +smoothing them out elaborately, till not a wrinkle disturbs their +uniform surface, and then presenting each of them for our acceptance +with a placid smile. His commendable desire for lucidity of expression +makes him nervously anxious to avoid any complexity of thought. Each<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">248</a></span> +step of his argument, each shade of meaning, and each fact in his +narrative, must have its own separate embodiment; and every joint and +connecting link must be carefully and accurately defined. The clearness +is won at a price. There is some advantage in this elaborate method of +dissecting out every distinct fibre and ramification of an argument. +But, on the whole, one is apt to remember that life is limited, and that +there are some things in this world which must be taken for granted. If +a man's boyhood fill two volumes, and if one of these (though under +unfavourable circumstances) took six months to revise, it seems probable +that in later years he would have taken longer to record events than to +live them. No autobiography written on such principles could ever reach +even the middle life of the author. Take up, for example, the first +volume of his collected works. Why, on the very first page, having +occasion to mention Christendom in the fifteenth century, should he +provide against some eccentric misconception by telling us that it did +not, at that time, include any part of America? Why should it take +considerably more than a page to explain that when a schoolmaster begins +lessons punctually, and leaves off too late, there will be an +encroachment on the hours of play? Or two pages to describe how a porter +dropped a portmanteau on a flight of stairs, and didn't waken a +schoolmaster? Or two more to account for the fact that he asked a woman +the meaning of the noise produced by the 'bore' in the Dee, instead of +waiting till she spoke to him? Impassioned prose may be a very good +thing; but when its current is arrested by such incessant stoppages, and +the beauty of the English language displayed by showing how many +faultless sentences may be expended on an exhaustive description of +irrelevant trifles, the human<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">249</a></span> mind becomes recalcitrant. A man may +become prolix from the fulness or fervency of his mind; but prolixity +produced by this finical minuteness of language, ends by distressing +one's nerves. It is the same sense of irritation as is produced by +waiting for the tedious completion of an elaborate toilette, and one is +rather tempted to remember Artemus Ward's description of the Fourth of +July oration, which took four hours 'to pass a given point.'</p> + +<p>This peculiarity of his style is connected with other qualities upon +which a great deal of eulogy has been bestowed. There are two faculties +in which, so far as my experience goes, no man, woman, or child ever +admits his or her own deficiency. The driest of human beings will boast +of their sense of humour; and the most perplexed, of their logical +acuteness. De Quincey has been highly praised, both as a humorist and as +a logician. He believed in his own powers, and exhibits them rather +ostentatiously. He says, pleasantly enough, but not without a substratum +of real conviction, that he is 'a <i>doctor seraphicus</i>, and also +<i>inexpugnabilis</i> upon quillets of logic.' I confess that I am generally +sceptical as to the merits of infallible dialecticians, because I have +observed that a man's reputation for inexorable logic is generally in +proportion to the error of his conclusions. A logician, in popular +estimation, seems to be one who never shrinks from a <i>reductio ad +absurdum</i>. His merits are measured, not by the accuracy of his +conclusions, but by the distance which separates them from his +premisses. The explanation doubtless lies in the general impression that +logic is concerned with words and not with things. There is a vague +belief that by skilfully linking syllogisms you can form a chain +sufficiently strong to cross the profoundest abyss, and which will need +no test of observation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">250</a></span> and verification. A dexterous performer, it is +supposed, might pass from one extremity of the universe to the other +without ever touching ground; and people do not observe that the refusal +to draw an inference may be just as great a proof of logical skill as +ingenuity in drawing it. Now De Quincey's claim to infallibility would +be plausible, if we still believed that to define words accurately is +the same thing as to discover facts, and that binding them skilfully +together is equivalent to reasoning securely. He is a kind of rhetorical +Euclid. He makes such a flourish with his apparatus of axioms and +definitions that you do not suspect any lurking fallacy. He is careful +to show you the minutest details of his argumentative mechanism. Each +step in the process is elaborately and separately set forth; you are not +assumed to know anything, or to be capable of supplying any links for +yourself; it shall not even be taken for granted without due notice that +things which are equal to a third thing are equal to each other; and the +consequence is, that few people venture to question processes which seem +to be so plainly set forth, and to advance by such a careful +development.</p> + +<p>When, indeed, De Quincey has a safe guide, he can put an argument with +admirable clearness. The expositions of political economy, for example, +are clear and ingenious, though even here I may quote Mr. Mill's remark, +that he should have imagined a certain principle—obvious enough when +once stated—to have been familiar to all economists, 'if the instance +of Mr. De Quincey did not prove that the complete non-recognition and +implied denial of it are compatible with great intellectual ingenuity +and close intimacy with the subject-matter.'<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> Upon this question,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">251</a></span> Mr. +Shadworth Hodgson has maintained that De Quincey was in the right as +against Mill, and I cannot here argue the point. I think, however, that +all economists would admit that De Quincey's merits were confined to an +admirable exposition of another man's reasoning, and included no +substantial addition to the inquiry. Certainly he does not count as one +of those whose writings marked any epoch in the development of the +science—if it be a science. Admirable skill of expression is, indeed, +no real safeguard against logical blunders; and I will venture to say +that De Quincey rarely indulges in this ostentatious logical precision +without plunging into downright fallacies. I will take two instances. +The first is trifling, but characteristic. Poor Dr. Johnson used to +reproach himself, as De Quincey puts it, 'with lying too long in bed.' +How absurd! is the comment. The doctor got up at eleven because he went +to bed at three. If he had gone to bed at twelve, could he not easily +have got up at eight? The remark would have been sound in form, though a +quibble in substance, if Johnson had complained of lying in bed 'too +late;' but as De Quincey himself speaks of 'too long' instead of 'too +late,' it is an obvious reply that eight hours are of the same length at +every period of the day. The great logician falls into another +characteristic error in the same paragraph. Dr. Johnson, he says, was +not 'indolent;' but he adds that Johnson 'had a morbid predisposition to +decline labour from his scrofulous habit of body,' which was increased +by over-eating and want of exercise. It is a cruel mode of vindication +to say that you are not indolent, but only predisposed by a bad +constitution and bad habits to decline labour; but the advantage<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">252</a></span> of +accurate definition is, that you can knock a man down with one hand, and +pick him up with the other.</p> + +<p>To take a more serious case. De Quincey undertakes to refute Hume's +memorable argument against miracles. There are few better arenas for +intellectual combats, and De Quincey has in it an unusual opportunity +for display. He is obviously on his mettle. He comes forward with a +whole battery of propositions, carefully marshalled in strategical +order, and supported by appropriate 'lemmas.' One of his arguments, +whether cogent or not, is that Hume's objection will not apply to the +evidence of a multitude of witnesses. Now, a conspicuous miracle, he +says, can be produced resting on such evidence, to wit, that of the +thousands fed by a few loaves and fishes. The simplest infidel will, of +course, reply that as these thousands of witnesses cannot be produced, +the evidence open to us reduces itself to that of the Evangelists. De +Quincey recollects this, and replies to it in a note. 'Yes,' he says, +'the Evangelists certainly; and, let us add, all those contemporaries to +whom the Evangelists silently appealed. These make up the "multitude" +contemplated in the case' under consideration. That is, to make up the +multitude, you have to reckon as witnesses all those persons who did not +contradict the 'silent appeal,' or whose contradiction has not reached +us. With such canons of criticism it is hard to say what might not be +proved. When a man with a great reputation for learning and logical +ability tries to put us off with these wretched quibbles, one is fairly +bewildered. He shows an ignorance of the real strength and weakness of +the position, which, but for his reputation, one would summarily explain +by incapacity for reasoning. As it is, we must suppose that, living +apart from the daily battle of life, he had lost that quick instinct<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">253</a></span> +possessed by all genuine logicians for recognising the vital points of +an argument. A day in a court of justice would have taught him more +about evidence than a month spent over Aristotle. He had become fitter +for the parade of the fencing-room than for the real thrust and parry of +a duel in earnest. The mere rhetorical flourish pleases him as much as a +blow at his antagonist's heart. Another glaring instance in the same +paper is his apparent failure to perceive that there is a difference +between proving that such a prophecy as that announcing the fall of +Babylon was fulfilled, and proving that it was supernaturally inspired. +Hume, without a tenth part of the logical apparatus, would have exposed +the fallacy in a sentence. Paley, whom he never tires of treating to +contemptuous abuse, was incapable of such feeble sophistry. De Quincey, +in short, was a very able expositor; but he was not, though under better +discipline he might probably have become, a sound original thinker. He +is an interpreter, not an originator of thought. His skill in setting +forth an argument blinds him to its most palpable defects. If language +is a powerful weapon in his hands, it is only when the direction of the +blow is dictated by some more manly, if less ingenious, understanding.</p> + +<p>Let us inquire, and it is a more delicate question, whether he is better +qualified to use it as a plaything. He has a reputation as a humorist. +The Essay on Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts is probably the +most popular of his writings. The conception is undoubtedly meritorious, +and De Quincey returns to it more than once in his other works. The +description of the Williams murders is inimitable, and the execution +even in the humorous passages is frequently good. We may praise +particular sentences: such as the well-known remark that 'if a man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">254</a></span> once +indulges himself in murder, he comes to think little of robbing; and +from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking; and from +that to incivility and procrastination.' One laughs at this whimsical +inversion; but I don't think one laughs very heartily; and certainly one +does not find, as in really deep humour, that the paradox is pregnant +with further meaning, and the laugh a prelude to a more melancholy +smile. Many of the best things ever said are couched in a similar form: +the old remark that the use of language is the concealment of thought; +the saying that the half is greater than the whole, and that two and two +don't always make four, are familiar instances; but each of them really +contains a profound truth expressed in a paradoxical form, which is a +sufficient justification of their extraordinary popularity. But if every +inversion of a commonplace were humorous, we should be able to make +jokes by machinery. There is no humour that I can see in the statement +that honesty is the worst policy, or that procrastination saves time; +and De Quincey's phrase, though I admit that it is amusing as a kind of +summary of his essay, seems to me to rank little higher than an +ingenious pun. It is a clever trick of language, but does not lead any +further.</p> + +<p>Here, too, and elsewhere, the humour gives us a certain impression of +thinness. It is pressed too far, and spun out too long. Compare De +Quincey's mode of beating out his one joke through pages of laboured +facetiousness, with Swift's concentrated and pungent irony, as in the +proposal for eating babies, or the argument to prove that the abolition +of Christianity may be attended with some inconveniences. It is the +difference between the stiffest of nautical grogs and the negus provided +by thoughtful parents for a child's evening party. In some parts of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">255</a></span> +essay De Quincey sinks far lower. I do not believe that in any English +author of reputation there is a more feeble piece of forced fun, than in +the description of the fight of the amateur in murder with the baker at +Munich. One knows by a process of reasoning that the man is joking; but +one feels inclined to blush, through sympathy with a very clear man so +exposing himself. A blemish of the same kind makes itself unpleasantly +obvious at many points of his writings. He seems to fear that we shall +find his stately and elaborate style rather too much for our nerves. He +is conscious that, as a great master of language, he can play what +tricks he pleases, without danger of remonstrance. And therefore, he +every now and then plunges into slang, not irreverently, as a vulgar +writer might do, but of malice prepense. The shock is almost as great as +if an organist performing a solemn tune should suddenly introduce an +imitation of the mewing of a cat. Now, he seems to say, you can't accuse +me of being dull and pompous. Let me quote an instance or two from his +graver writings. He wishes to argue, in defence of Christianity, that +the ancients were insensible to ordinary duties of humanity. 'Our wicked +friend Kikero, for instance, who <i>was</i> so bad, but <i>wrote</i> so well, who +<i>did</i> such naughty things, but <i>said</i> such pretty things, has himself +noticed in one of his letters, with petrifying coolness, that he knew of +destitute old women in Rome who went without tasting food for one, two, +or even three days. After making such a statement, did Kikero not tumble +downstairs and break at least three of his legs in his hurry to call a +public meeting,' &c., &c. What delicate humour! The grave apologist of +Christianity actually calls Cicero, Kikero, and talks about 'three of +his legs!' Do we not all explode with laughter? A parallel case occurs +in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">256</a></span> his argument about the Essenes; where he grows so irrepressibly +funny as to call Josephus 'Mr. Joe,' and addresses him as +follows:—'Wicked Joseph, listen to me: you've been telling us a fairy +tale; and for my part, I've no objection to a fairy tale in any +situation, because if one can make no use of it oneself, always one +knows that a child will be thankful for it. But this tale, Mr. Joseph, +happens also to be a lie; secondly, a fraudulent lie; thirdly, a +malicious lie.' I have seen this stuff described as 'scholarlike +badinage;' but the only effect of such exquisite foolery, within my +mind, is to persuade one that a writer assailed by such weapons, and +those weapons used by a man who has the whole resources of the English +language at his command, must probably have been encountering an +inconvenient truth. I will simply refer to the story of Sir Isaac Newton +sitting all day with one stocking on and one off, in the Casuistry of +Roman Meals, as an illustration of the way in which a story ought not to +be told. Its most conspicuous, though not its worst fault, its extreme +length, protects it from quotation.</p> + +<p>It is strange to find that a writer, pre-eminently endowed with delicacy +of ear, and boasting of the complex harmonies of his style, should +condescend to such an irritating defect. De Quincey says of one of the +greatest masters of the humorous:—'The gyration within which his +(Lamb's) sentiment wheels, no matter of what kind it may be, is always +the shortest possible. It does not prolong itself, it does not repeat +itself, it does not propagate itself.' And he goes on to connect the +failing with Lamb's utter insensibility to music, and indifference to +'the rhythmical in prose composition.' The criticism is a fine one in +its way, but it may perhaps explain some of De Quincey's shortcomings in +Lamb's peculiar sphere. De Quincey's jokes are apt to repeat <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">257</a></span>and +prolong and propagate themselves, till they become tiresome; and the +delicate touch of the true humorist, just indicating a half-comic, +half-pathetic thought, is alien to De Quincey's more elaborate style. +Yet he had a true and peculiar sense of humour. That faculty may be +predominant or latent; it may form the substance of a whole book, as in +the case of Sterne: or it may permeate every sentence, as in Carlyle's +writings; or it may simply give a faint tinge, rather perceived by +subsequent analysis than consciously felt at the time; and in this +lowest degree it frequently gives a certain charm to De Quincey's +writing. When he tries overt acts of wit, he becomes simply vulgar; when +he directly aims at the humorous, we feel his hand to be rather heavy; +but he is occasionally very happy in that ironical method, of which the +Essay on Murder is the most notorious specimen. The best example, in my +opinion, is the description of his elder brother in the Autobiographical +Sketches. The account of the rival kingdoms of Gombroon and +Tigrasylvania; of poor De Quincey's troubles in getting rid of his +subjects' tails; of his despair at the suggestion that by making them +sit down for six hours a day they might rub them off in the course of +several centuries; of his ingenious plan of placing his unlucky island +at a distance of 75 degrees of latitude from his brother's capital; and +of his dismay at hearing of the 'vast horns and promontories' which run +down from all parts of the hostile dominions towards his unoffending +little territory, are touched with admirable skill. The grave, elaborate +detail of the perplexities of his childish imagination is pleasant, and +at the same time pathetic. When, in short, by simply applying his usual +stateliness of manner to a subject a little beneath it in dignity, he +can produce the desired effect, he is eminently<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">258</a></span> successful. The same +rhetoric which would be appropriate (to use his favourite illustration) +in treating the theme of 'Belshazzar the King giving a great feast to a +thousand of his lords,' has a certain piquancy, when for Belshazzar we +substitute a schoolboy playing at monarchy. He is indulging in a +whimsical masquerade, and the pomp is assumed in sport instead of in +earnest. Nobody can do a little mock majesty so well as he who on +occasion can be seriously majestic. Yet when he altogether abandons his +strong ground, and chooses to tumble and make grimaces before us, like +an ordinary clown, he becomes simply offensive. The great tragedian is +capable on due occasion of pleasant burlesque; but sheer unadulterated +comedy is beyond his powers. De Quincey, in short, can parody his own +serious writing better than anybody, and the capacity is a proof that he +had the faculty of humour; but for a genuine substantive joke—a joke +which, resting on its own merits, instead of being the shadow of his +serious writing, is to be independently humorous—he seems, to me at +least, to be generally insufferable.</p> + +<p>De Quincey's final claim to a unique position rests on the fact that his +'impassioned prose' was applied to confessions. He compares himself, as +I have said, to Rousseau and Augustine. The analogy with the last of +these two writers would, I should imagine, be rather difficult to carry +beyond the first part of resemblance; but it is possible to make out a +somewhat closer affinity to Rousseau. In both cases, at least, we have +to deal with men of morbid temperament, ruined or seriously injured by +their utter incapacity for self-restraint. So far, however, as their +confessions derive an interest from the revelation of character, +Rousseau is more exciting almost in the same proportion as he confesses<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">259</a></span> +greater weaknesses. The record of such errors by their chief actor, and +that actor a man of such singular ability, presents us with a strangely +attractive problem. De Quincey has less to confess, and is less anxious +to lay bare his own morbid propensities. His story excites compassion; +and, as in the famous episode of 'Anne,' attracts us by the genuine +tenderness and delicacy of feeling. He was free from the errors which +make some of Rousseau's confessions loathsome, but he was also not the +man to set fire, like Rousseau, to the hearts of a whole generation. His +narrative is a delight to literary students; not a volcanic outburst to +shake the foundations of society. Nearly all that he has to tell us is +that he ran away from school, spent some time in London, for no very +assignable reason, in a semi-starving condition, and then, equally +without reason, surrendered at discretion to the respectabilities and +went to Oxford like an ordinary human being. It is no doubt a proof of +extraordinary literary power that the facts told with De Quincey's +comment of rich meditative eloquence become so fascinating. +Unfortunately, though he managed to write recollections which are, in +their way, unique, he never achieved anything at all comparable to his +autobiographic revelations. Vague thoughts passed through his mind of +composing a great work on Political Economy, or of writing a still more +wonderful treatise on the Emendation of the Human Intellect. But he +never seems to have made any decided steps towards the fulfilment of +such dreams, and remained to the end of his days a melancholy specimen +of wasted force. There is nothing, unfortunately, very uncommon in the +story, except so far as its hero was a man of genius. The history of +Coleridge exemplifies a still higher ambition, resulting, it is true, in +a much greater influence upon the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">260</a></span> thought of the age, but almost +equally sad. Their lives might be put into tracts for the use of +opium-eaters; and whilst there was still hope of redeeming them, it +might have been worth while to condemn them with severity. Indignation +is now out of place, and we can only grieve and pass by. When thousands +of men are drinking themselves to death every year, there is nothing +very strange or dramatic in the history of one ruined by opium instead +of by gin.</p> + +<p>From De Quincey's writings we get the notion of a man amiable, but with +an uncertain temper; with fine emotions, but an utter want of moral +strength; and, in short, of a nature of much delicacy and tenderness +retreating into opium and the Lake district, from a world which was too +rough for him. He uttered in many fragmentary ways his views of +philosophy and politics. Whatever their value, De Quincey has of course +no claim to be an originator. He not only had not strength to stand +alone, but he belonged to a peculiar side-current of English thought. He +was the adjective of which Coleridge was the substantive; and if +Coleridge himself was an unsatisfactory and imperfect thinker, his +imperfections are greatly increased in his friend and disciple. He +shared that belief which some people have not yet abandoned, that the +answer to all our perplexities is to be found in some of the mysteries +of German metaphysics. If we could only be taught to distinguish between +the reason and the understanding, the scales would fall from our eyes, +and we should see that the Thirty-nine Articles contained the plan on +which the universe was framed. He had an acquaintance, which, if his own +opinion were correct, was accurate and profound with Kant's writings, +and had studied Schelling, Fichte, and Hegel. He could talk about +concepts and categories and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">261</a></span> schematisms without losing his head amongst +those metaphysical heights. He knew how by the theoretic reason to +destroy all proofs of the existence of God, and then, by introducing the +practical reason, to set the existence of God beyond a doubt. He fancied +that he was able to translate the technicalities of Kant into plain +English; and he believed that when so translated, they would prove to +have a real and all important meaning. If German metaphysics be a +science, and not a mere edifice of moonshine; and if De Quincey had +really penetrated the secrets of that science, we have missed a chance +of enlightenment. As it is, we have little left except a collection of +contemptuous prejudices. De Quincey thought himself entitled to treat +Locke as a shallow pretender. The whole eighteenth century was, with one +or two exceptions, a barren wilderness to him. He aspersed its +reasoners, from Locke to Paley; he scorned its poets with all the +bitterness of the school which first broke loose from the rule of Pope; +and its prose-writers, with the exception of Burke, were miserable +beings in his eyes. He would have seen with little regret a holocaust of +all the literature produced in England between the death of Milton and +the rise of Wordsworth. Naturally, he hated an infidel with that kind of +petulant bitterness which possesses an old lady in a country village, +who has just heard that some wicked people dispute the story of Balaam's +ass. And, as a corollary, he combined the whole French people in one +sweeping censure, and utterly despised their morals, manners, +literature, and political principles. He was a John Bull, as far as a +man can be who is of weakly, nervous temperament, and believes in Kant.</p> + +<p>One or two illustrations may be given of the force of these effeminate +prejudices; and it is to be remarked with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">262</a></span> regret that they are +specially injurious in a department where he otherwise had eminent +merits, that, namely, of literary criticism. Any man who lived in the +eighteenth century was <i>primâ facie</i> a fool; if a free thinker, his case +was all but hopeless; but if a French free thinker, it was desperate +indeed. He lets us into the secret of his prejudices, which, indeed, is +tolerably transparent in his statement that he found it hard to +reverence Coleridge when he supposed him to be a Socinian. Now, though a +'liberal man,' he could not hold a Socinian to be a Christian; nor could +he 'think that any man, though he make himself a marvellously clever +disputant, ever could tower upwards into a very great philosopher, +unless he should begin or end with Christianity.' The canon may be +sound, but it at once destroys the pretensions of such men as Hobbes, +Spinoza, Hume, and even, though De Quincey considers him 'a dubious +exception,' Kant. Even heterodoxy is enough to alienate his sympathies. +'Think of a man,' he exclaims about poor Whiston, 'who had brilliant +preferment within his reach, dragging his poor wife and daughter for +half a century through the very mire of despondency and destitution, +because he disapproved of Athanasius, or because the "Shepherd of +Hermas" was not sufficiently esteemed by the Church of England.' To do +him justice, De Quincey admits, in another passage, that this ridicule +of a poor man for sacrificing his interests to his principles was not +quite fair; but then Whiston was only an Arian. When Priestley, who was +a far worse heretic, had his house sacked by a mob and his life +endangered, De Quincey can scarcely restrain his exultation. He admits +in terms that Priestley ought to be pitied, but adds that the fanaticism +of the mob was 'much more reasonable' than the fanaticism of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">263</a></span> Priestley; +and that those who play at bowls must look out for rubbers. Porson is to +be detested for his letters to Travis, though De Quincey does not dare +to defend the disputed text. He has, however, a pleasant insinuation at +command. Porson, he says, stung like a hornet; 'it may chance that on +this subject Master Porson will get stung through his coffin, before he +is many years deader.' What scholarlike badinage! Political heretics +fare little better. Fox's eloquence was 'ditch-water,' with a shrill +effervescence of 'imaginary gas.' Burnet was a 'gossiper, slanderer, and +notorious falsifier of facts.' That one of his sermons was burnt is 'the +most consolatory fact in his whole worldly career;' and he asks, 'would +there have been much harm in tying his lordship to the sermon?' Junius +was not only a knave who ought to have been transported, but his +literary success rested upon an utter delusion. He had neither +'sentiment, imagination, nor generalisation.' Johnson, though the best +of Tories, lived in the wrong century, and unluckily criticised Milton +with foolish harshness. Therefore 'Johnson, viewed in relation to +Milton, was a malicious, mendacious, and dishonest man.'</p> + +<p>Let us turn to greater names. Goethe's best work was 'Werther,' and De +Quincey is convinced that his reputation 'must decline for the next +generation or two, until it reaches its just level.' His merits have +been exaggerated for three reasons—first, his great age; secondly, 'the +splendour of his official rank at the court of Weimar;' thirdly, 'his +enigmatical and unintelligible writing.' But 'in Germany his works are +little read, and in this country not at all.' 'Wilhelm Meister' is +morally detestable, and, artistically speaking, rubbish. Of the author +of the Philosophical Dictionary, of the 'Essai sur les Mœurs,' of +'Candide,' and certain other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">264</a></span> trifles, his judgment is that Horace +Walpole's reputation is the same in kind, as the <i>genuine</i> reputation of +Voltaire: 'Both are very splendid memoir writers, and of the two, Lord +Orford is the more brilliant.' In the same tone he compares Gibbon to +Southey, giving the advantage to the latter on the score of his poetical +ability; and his view of another great infidel may be inferred from the +following phrase. One of Rousseau's opinions is only known to us through +Cowper, 'for in the unventilated pages of its originator it would have +lurked undisturbed down to this hour of June, 1819.'</p> + +<p>Voltaire and Rousseau have the double title to hatred of being Frenchmen +and freethinkers. But even orthodox Frenchmen fare little better. 'The +French Bossuets, Bourdaloues, Fénelons, &c., whatever may be thought of +their meagre and attenuated rhetoric, are one and all the most +commonplace of thinkers.' In fact, the mere mention of France acts upon +him like a red rag on a bull. The French, 'in whom the lower forms of +passion are constantly bubbling up, from the shallow and superficial +character of their feelings,' are incapable of English earnestness. +Their taste is 'anything but good in all that department of wit and +humour'—the department, apparently, of anecdotes—'and the ground lies +in their natural want of veracity;' whereas England bases upon its +truthfulness a well-founded claim to 'a moral pre-eminence among the +nations.' Belgians, French, and Italians attract the inconsiderate by +'facile obsequiousness,' which, however, is a pendent of 'impudence and +insincerity. Want of principle and want of moral sensibility compose the +original <i>fundus</i> of southern manners.' Our faults of style, such as +they are, proceed from our manliness. In France there are no unmarried<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">265</a></span> +women at the age which amongst us gives the insulting name of old maid. +'What striking sacrifices of sexual honour does this one fact argue!' +The French style is remarkable for simplicity—'a strange pretension for +anything French;' but on the whole the intellectual merits of their +style are small, 'chiefly negative,' and 'founded on the accident of +their colloquial necessities.' They are amply compensated, too, by 'the +prodigious defects of the French in all the higher qualities of prose +composition.' Even their handwriting is the 'very vilest form of +scribbling which exists in Europe,' and they and the Germans are 'the +two most gormandising races in Europe.' They display a brutal +selfishness in satisfying their appetites, whereas Englishmen at all +public meals are remarkably conspicuous for 'a spirit of mutual +attention and self-sacrifice.' It is enough to show the real degradation +of their habits, that they use the 'odious gesture' of shrugging their +shoulders, and are fond of the 'vile ejaculation "bah!"' which is as bad +as to puff the smoke of a tobacco-pipe into your companion's face. They +have neither self-respect nor respect for others. French masters are +never dignified, though sometimes tyrannical; French servants are +always, even without meaning it, disrespectfully familiar. Many of their +manners and usages are 'essentially vulgar, and their apparent +affability depends not on kindness of heart, but love of talking.'</p> + +<p>The impudence of the assertions is really amusing, though one cannot but +regret that the vulgar prejudice of the old-fashioned John Bull should +have been embodied in the pages of a master of our language. They are +worth notice because they were not special to De Quincey, but +characteristic of one very intelligible tendency of his generation. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">266</a></span>De +Quincey's prejudices are chiefly the reflection of those of the +Coleridge school in general, though he added to them a few pet aversions +of his own. At times his genuine acuteness of mind raises him above the +teaching of his masters, or at least enables him to detect their +weaknesses. He discovers Coleridge's plagiarisms, though he believes +and, indeed, speaks in the most exaggerated terms of his philosophical +pretensions; whilst, in treating of Wordsworth, he points out with great +skill the fallacy of some of his theories and the inconsistency of his +practice. But whilst keenly observant of some of the failings of his +friends, he reproduces others in even an exaggerated type. He shows to +the full their narrow-minded hatred of the preceding century, of all +forms of excellence which did not correspond to their favourite types, +and of all speculation which did not lead to, or start from their +characteristic doctrines. The error is fully pardonable. We must not +look to men who are leading a revolt against established modes of +thought for a full appreciation of the doctrines of their antagonists; +and if De Quincey could recognise no merit in Voltaire or Rousseau, in +Locke, Paley, or Jeremy Bentham, their followers were quite prepared to +retaliate in kind. One feels, however, that such prejudices are more +respectable when they are the foibles of a strong mind engaged in active +warfare. We can pardon the old campaigner, who has become bitter in an +internecine contest. It is not quite so pleasant to discover the same +bitterness in a gentleman who has looked on from a distance, and never +quite made up his mind to buckle on his armour. De Quincey had not +earned the right of speaking evil of his enemies. If a man chances to be +a Hedonist, he should show the good temper which is the best virtue of +the indolent. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">267</a></span>To lie on a bed of roses, and snarl at everybody who +contradicts your theories, seems to imply rather testiness of temper +than strength of conviction. De Quincey is a Christian on Epicurean +principles. He dislikes an infidel because his repose is disturbed by +the arguments of freethinkers. He fears that he will be forced to think +conscientiously, and to polish his logical weapons afresh. He mutters +that the man is a fool, and could be easily thrashed if it were worth +while, and then turns back to his opium and his rhetoric and his beloved +Church of England. There is no pleasanter institution for a gentleman +who likes magnificent historical associations, and heartily hates the +rude revolutionists who would turn the world upside down, and thereby +disturb the rest of dreamy metaphysicians.</p> + +<p>He is quite pathetic, too, about the British Constitution. 'Destroy the +House of Lords,' he exclaims, 'and henceforward, for people like you and +me, England will be no habitable land.' Here, he seems to say, is one +charming elysium, where no rude hand has swept away the cobwebs or +replaced the good old-fashioned machinery; here we may find rest in the +'pure, holy, and magnificent Church,' whose Articles, interpreted by +Coleridge, may guide us through the most wondrous of metaphysical +labyrinths, and dwell in a grand constitutional edifice, rich in +picturesque memories, and blending into one complex harmony elements +contributed by a long series of centuries. And you, wretched French +revolutionists, with your love of petty precision, and irreverent +radicals and utilitarians, with your grovelling material notions, +propose to level, and destroy, and break in upon my delicious reveries. +No old Hebrew prophet could be more indignant with the enemy who +threatened to break down the carved work of his temples with axes and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">268</a></span> +hammers. But his complaint is, after all, the voice of the sluggard. Let +me dream a little longer; for much as I love my country and its +institutions, I cannot rouse myself to fight for them. It is enough if I +call their assailants an ugly name or so, and at times begin to write +what might be the opening pages of the preface to some very great work +of the future. Alas! the first digression diverts the thread of the +discourse; the task becomes troublesome, and the labour is abruptly +broken off. And so in a life of seventy-three years De Quincey read +extensively and thought acutely by fits, ate an enormous quantity of +opium, wrote a few pages which revealed new capacities in the language, +and provided a good deal of respectable padding for magazines. It +sounds, and many people will say that it is, a harsh and, perhaps they +will add, a stupid judgment. If so, they may find plenty of admirers who +will supply the eulogistic side here too briefly indicated. I will only +say two things: first, that there are very few writers who have revealed +new capacities in the language, and in English literature they might +almost be counted on the fingers. Secondly, I must confess that I have +often consulted De Quincey in regard to biographic and critical +questions, and that though I have generally found something to admire, I +have always found gross inaccuracies and almost always effeminate +prejudices and mere flippancies draped in elaborate rhetoric. I take +leave, therefore, to insist upon faults which are passed over too easily +by writers of more geniality than I claim to possess.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> It is curious that De Quincey, in his Essay on Style, +explains that political economy, and especially the doctrine of value, +is one of those subjects which cannot be satisfactorily treated in +dialogue—the very form which he chose to adopt for that particular +purpose.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">269</a></span></p> +<h2><i>SIR THOMAS BROWNE</i></h2> + + +<p>'Let me not injure the felicity of others,' says Sir Thomas Browne in a +suppressed passage of the 'Religio Medici,' 'if I say that I am the +happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty into +riches, adversity into prosperity, and I am more invulnerable than +Achilles; fortune hath not one place to hit me.' Perhaps on second +thoughts, Sir Thomas felt that the phrase savoured of that presumption +which is supposed to provoke the wrath of Nemesis; and at any rate, he, +of all men, is the last to be taken too literally at his word. He is a +humorist to the core, and is here writing dramatically. There are many +things in this book, so he tells us, 'delivered rhetorically, many +expressions therein merely tropical,... and therefore also many things +to be taken in a soft and flexible sense, and not to be called unto the +rigid test of reason.' We shall hardly do wrong in reckoning amongst +them this audacious claim to surpassing felicity, as we may certainly +include his boast that he 'could lose an arm without a tear, and with +few groans be quartered into pieces.' And yet, if Sir Thomas were to be +understood in the most downright literal earnest, perhaps he could have +made out as good a case for his assertion as almost any of the troubled +race of mankind. For, if we set aside external circumstances of life, +what qualities offer a more certain guarantee of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">270</a></span> happiness than those +of which he is an almost typical example? A mind endowed with an +insatiable curiosity as to all things knowable and unknowable; an +imagination which tinges with poetical hues the vast accumulation of +incoherent facts thus stored in a capacious memory; and a strangely +vivid humour that is always detecting the quaintest analogies, and, as +it were, striking light from the most unexpected collocations of +uncompromising materials: such talents are by themselves enough to +provide a man with work for life, and to make all his work delightful. +To them, moreover, we must add a disposition absolutely incapable of +controversial bitterness; 'a constitution,' as he says of himself, 'so +general that it consorts and sympathises with all things;' an absence of +all antipathies to loathsome objects in nature—to French 'dishes of +snails, frogs, and toadstools,' or to Jewish repasts on 'locusts or +grasshoppers;' an equal toleration—which in the first half of the +seventeenth century is something astonishing—for all theological +systems; an admiration even of our natural enemies, the French, the +Spaniards, the Italians, and the Dutch; a love of all climates, of all +countries; and, in short, an utter incapacity to 'absolutely detest or +hate any essence except the devil.' Indeed, his hatred even for that +personage has in it so little of bitterness, that no man, we may be +sure, would have joined more heartily in the Scotch minister's petition +for 'the puir de'il'—a prayer conceived in the very spirit of his +writings. A man so endowed—and it is not only from his explicit +assertions, but from his unconscious self-revelation, that we may credit +him with closely approaching his own ideal—is admirably qualified to +discover one great secret of human happiness. No man was ever better +prepared to keep not only one, but a whole stableful of hobbies, nor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">271</a></span> +more certain to ride them so as to amuse himself, without loss of temper +or dignity, and without rude collisions against his neighbours. That +happy art is given to few, and thanks to his skill in it, Sir Thomas +reminds us strongly of the two illustrious brothers Shandy combined in +one person. To the exquisite kindliness and simplicity of Uncle Toby he +unites the omnivorous intellectual appetite and the humorous pedantry of +the head of the family. The resemblance, indeed, may not be quite +fortuitous. Though it does not appear that Sterne, amidst his +multifarious pilferings, laid hands upon Sir Thomas Browne, one may +fancy that he took a general hint or two from so congenial an author.</p> + +<p>The best mode of approaching so original a writer is to examine the +intellectual food on which his mind was nourished. He dwelt by +preference in strange literary pastures; and their nature will let us +into some secrets as to his taste and character. We will begin, +therefore, by examining the strange furniture of his mind, as described +in his longest, though not his most characteristic book—the 'Inquiry +into Vulgar Errors.' When we turn over its quaint pages, we feel as +though we were entering one of those singular museums of curiosities +which existed in the pre-scientific ages. Every corner is filled with a +strange, incoherent medley, in which really valuable objects are placed +side by side with what is simply grotesque and ludicrous. The modern man +of science may find some objects of interest; but they are mixed +inextricably with strange rubbish that once delighted the astrologer, +the alchemist, or the dealer in apocryphal relics. And the possessor of +this miscellaneous collection accompanies us with an unfailing flow of +amusing gossip: at one moment pouring forth a torrent of out-of-the-way +learning; at another, making a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">272</a></span> really passable scientific remark; and +then lapsing into an elaborate discussion of some inconceivable +absurdity; affecting the air of a grave inquirer, and to all appearance +fully believing in his own pretensions, and yet somehow indulging +himself in a half-suppressed smile, which indicates that the humorous +aspect of a question can never be far removed from his mind. Mere +curiosity is not yet differentiated from scientific thirst for +knowledge; and a quaint apologue is as good a reward for the inquirer as +the discovery of a law of nature. The numerous class which insists upon +a joke being as unequivocal as a pistol-shot, and a serious statement as +grave as a Blue-book, should therefore keep clear of Sir Thomas Browne. +His most congenial readers are those who take a simple delight in +following out any quaint train of reflections, careless whether it may +culminate in a smile or a sigh, or in some thought in which the two +elements of the sad and the ludicrous are inextricably blended. Sir +Thomas, however, is in the 'Inquiry' content generally with bringing out +the strange curiosities of his museum, and does not care to draw any +explicit moral. The quaintness of the objects unearthed seems to be a +sufficient recompense for the labour of the search. Fortunately for his +design, he lived in the time when a poet might have spoken without +hyperbole of the 'fairy tales of science.' To us, who have to plod +through an arid waste of painful observation, and slow piecing together +of cautious inferences before reaching the promised land of wondrous +discoveries, the expression sometimes appears to be ironical. Does not +science, we may ask with a <i>primâ facie</i> resemblance of right, destroy +as much poetry as it generates? To him no such doubts could present +themselves, for fairyland was still a province of the empire of science. +Strange beings moved<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">273</a></span> through the pages of natural history, which were +equally at home in the 'Arabian Nights' or in poetical apologues. The +griffin, the phœnix, and the dragon were not yet extinct; the +salamander still sported in flames; and the basilisk slew men at a +distance with his deadly glance. More commonplace animals indulged in +the habits which they had learnt in fables, and of which only some +feeble vestiges now remain in the eloquence of strolling showmen. The +elephant had no joints, and was caught by felling the tree against which +he rested his stiff limbs in sleep; the pelican pierced its breast for +the good of its young; ostriches were regularly painted with a horseshoe +in their bills, to indicate their ordinary diet; storks refused to live +except in republics and free states; the crowing of a cock put lions to +flight, and men were struck dumb in good sober earnest by the sight of a +wolf. The curiosity-hunter, in short, found his game still plentiful, +and, by a few excursions into Aristotle, Pliny, and other more recondite +authors, was able still to display a rich bag for the edification of his +readers. Sir Thomas Browne sets out on that quest with all imaginable +seriousness. He persuaded himself, and he has persuaded some of his +editors, that he was a genuine disciple of Bacon, by one of whose +suggestions the 'Inquiry' is supposed to have been prompted. +Accordingly, as Bacon describes the idols by which the human mind is +misled, Sir Thomas sets out with investigating the causes of error; but +his introductory remarks immediately diverge into strange paths, from +which it is obvious that the discovery of true scientific method was a +very subordinate object in his mind. Instead of telling us by what means +truth is to be attained, his few perfunctory remarks on logic are lost +in an historical narrative given with infinite zest, of the earliest +recorded blunders.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">274</a></span> The period of history in which he most delighted was +the antediluvian—probably because it afforded the widest field for +speculation. His books are full of references to the early days of the +world. He takes a keen personal interest in our first parents. He +discusses the unfortunate lapse of Adam and Eve from every possible +point of view. It is not without a visible effort that he declines to +settle which of the two was the more guilty, and what would have been +the result if they had tasted the fruit of the Tree of Life before +applying to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Then he passes +in review every recorded speech before the Flood, shows that in each of +them, with one exception, there is a mixture of falsehood and error, and +settles to his own satisfaction that Cain showed less 'truth, wisdom, +and reverence' than Satan under similar circumstances. Granting all +which to be true, it is impossible to see how we are advanced in +settling, for example, whether the Ptolemaic or the Copernican system of +astronomy is to be adopted, or in extracting the grains of truth that +may be overlaid by masses of error in the writings of alchemists. Nor do +we really learn much by being told that ancient authorities sometimes +lie, for he evidently enjoys accumulating the fables, and cares little +for showing how to discriminate their degree of veracity. He tells us, +indeed, that Medea was simply a predecessor of certain modern artists, +with an excellent 'recipe to make white hair black;' and that Actæon was +a spirited master of hounds, who, like too many of his ancestors, went +metaphorically, instead of literally, to the dogs. He points out, +moreover, that we must not believe on authority that the sea is the +sweat of the earth, that the serpent, before the Fall, went erect like +man, or that the right eye of a hedgehog, boiled in oil, and preserved +in a brazen vessel,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">275</a></span> will enable us to see in the dark. Such stories, he +moderately remarks, being 'neither consonant unto reason nor +correspondent unto experiment,' are unto us 'no axioms.' But we may +judge of his scepticism by his remarks on 'Oppianus, that famous +Cilician poet.' Of this writer he says that 'abating the annual mutation +of sexes in the hyæna, the single sex of the rhinoceros, the antipathy +between two drums of a lamb's and a wolf's skin, the informity of cubs, +the venation of centaurs, and some few others, he may be read with +delight and profit.' Obviously we shall find in Sir Thomas Browne no +inexorably severe guide to truth! he will not too sternly reject the +amusing because it happens to be slightly improbable, or doubt an +authority because he sometimes sanctions a mass of absurd fables. Satan, +as he argues at great length, is at the bottom of most errors, from +false religions down to a belief that there is another world in the +moon; but Sir Thomas takes little trouble to provide us with an +Ithuriel's spear, and, indeed, we have a faint suspicion that he will +overlook at times the diabolic agency in sheer enthusiasm at the +marvellous results. The logical design is little more than ostensible; +and Sir Thomas, though he knew it not himself, is really satisfied with +any line of inquiry that will bring him in sight of some freak of nature +or of opinion suitable to his museum of curiosities.</p> + +<p>Let us, however, pass from the anteroom, and enter this queer museum. We +pause in sheer bewilderment on the threshold, and despair of classifying +its contents intelligibly within any moderate space. This much, indeed, +is obvious at first sight—that the title 'vulgar errors' is to some +extent a misnomer. It is not given to vulgar brains to go wrong by such +complex methods. There are errors which require more learning and +ingenuity than are necessary for discovering <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">276</a></span>truths; and it is in those +queer freaks of philosophical minds that Sir Thomas specially delights. +Though far, indeed, from objecting to any absurdity which lies on the +common highroad, he rejoices in the true spirit of a collector when he +can discover some grotesque fancy by rambling into less frequented paths +of inquiry. Perhaps it will be best to take down one or two specimens, +pretty much at random, and mark their nature and mode of treatment. +Here, for example, is that quaint old wonder, the phœnix, 'which, +after many hundred years, burneth itself, and from the ashes thereof +ariseth up another.' Sir Thomas carefully discusses the pros and cons of +this remarkable legend. In favour of the phœnix, it may be alleged +that he is mentioned 'not only by human authors,' but also by such 'holy +writers' as Cyril, Epiphanius, and Ambrose. Moreover, allusions are made +to him in Job and the Psalms. 'All which notwithstanding,' the following +grave reasons may be alleged against his existence: First, nobody has +ever seen a phœnix. Secondly, those who mention him speak doubtfully, +and even Pliny, after telling a story about a particular phœnix which +came to Rome in the censorship of Claudius, unkindly turns round and +declares the whole story to be a palpable lie. Thirdly, the name +phœnix has been applied to many other birds, and those who speak +unequivocally of the genuine phœnix contradict each other in the most +flagrant way as to his age and habitat. Fourthly, many writers, such as +Ovid, only speak poetically, and others, as Paracelsus, only mystically, +whilst the remainder speak rhetorically, emblematically, or +hieroglyphically. Fifthly, in the Scriptures, the word translated +phœnix means a palm tree. Sixthly, his existence, if we look closely, +is implicitly denied in the Scriptures, because all fowls entered the +ark in pairs,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">277</a></span> and animals were commanded to increase and multiply, +neither of which statements is compatible with the solitary nature of +the phœnix. Seventhly, nobody could have known by experience whether +the phœnix actually lived for a thousand years, and, therefore, +'there may be a mistake in the compute.' Eighthly, and finally, no +animals really spring, or could spring, from the ashes of their +predecessors and it is impossible to believe that they could enter the +world in such a fashion. Having carefully summed up this negative +evidence—enough, one would have fancied, to blow the poor phœnix +into summary annihilation—Sir Thomas finally announces his grave +conclusion in these words—'How far to rely on this tradition we refer +unto consideration.' And yet he feels impelled to add a quaint +reflection on the improbability of a statement made by Plutarch, that +'the brain of a phœnix is a pleasant bit, but that it causeth the +headache.' Heliogabalus, he observes, could not have slain the +phœnix, for it must of necessity be 'a vain design to destroy any +species, or mutilate the great accomplishment of six days.' To which it +is added, by way of final corollary, that after Cain had killed Abel, he +could not have destroyed Eve, supposing her to have been the only woman +in existence; for then there must have been another creation, and a +second rib of Adam must have been animated.</p> + +<p>We must not, however, linger too long with these singular speculations, +for it is probable that phœnix-fanciers are becoming rare. It is +enough to say briefly, that if anyone wishes to understand the natural +history of the basilisk, the griffin, the salamander, the cockatrice, or +the amphisbœna—if he wishes to know whether a chameleon lives on +air, and an ostrich on horseshoes—whether a carbuncle gives<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">278</a></span> light in +the dark, whether the Glastonbury thorn bore flowers on Christmas-day, +whether the mandrake 'naturally groweth under gallowses,' and shrieks +'upon eradication,'—on these and many other such points he may find +grave discussions in Sir Thomas Browne's pages. He lived in the period +when it was still held to be a sufficient proof of a story that it was +written in a book, especially if the book were Latin; and some persons, +such as Alexander Ross, whose memory is preserved only by the rhyme in +'Hudibras,' argued gravely against his scepticism.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> For Sir Thomas, in +spite of his strange excursions into the marvellous, inclines for the +most part to the sceptical side of the question. He was not insensible +to the growing influence of the scientific spirit, though he believed +implicitly in witchcraft, spoke with high respect of alchemy and +astrology, and refused to believe that the earth went round the sun. He +feels that his favourite creatures are doomed to extinction, and though +dealing lovingly with them, speaks rather like an attached mourner at +their funerals than a physician endeavouring to maintain their +flickering vitality. He tries experiments and has a taste for +dissection. He proves by the evidence of his senses, and believes them +in spite of the general report, that a dead kingfisher will not turn its +breast to the wind. He convinced himself that if two magnetic needles +were placed in the centre of rings marked with the alphabet (an odd +anticipation of the electric telegraph, <i>minus</i> the wires), they would +not point to the same letter by an occult sympathy. His arguments are +often to the point, though overlaid with a strange accretion of the +fabulous. In discussing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">279</a></span> the question of the blackness of negroes, he +may remind benevolent readers of some of Mr. Darwin's recent +speculations. He rejects, and on the same grounds which Mr. Darwin +declares to be conclusive, the hypothesis that the blackness is the +immediate effect of the climate; and he points out, what is important in +regard to 'sexual selection,' that a negro may admire a flat nose as we +admire an aquiline; though, of course, he diverges into extra-scientific +questions when discussing the probable effects of the curse of Ham, and +rather loses himself in a 'digression concerning blackness.' We may +fancy that this problem pleased Sir Thomas rather because it appeared to +be totally insoluble than for any other reason; and in spite of his +occasional gleams of scientific observation, he is always most at home +when on the border-land which divides the purely marvellous from the +region of ascertainable fact. In the last half of his book, indeed, +having exhausted natural history, he plunges with intense delight into +questions which bear the same relation to genuine antiquarianism that +his phœnixes and salamanders bear to scientific inquiry: whether the +sun was created in Libra; what was the season of the year in Paradise; +whether the forbidden fruit was an apple; whether Methuselah was the +longest-lived of all men (a main argument on the other side being that +Adam was created at the perfect age of man, which in those days was +fifty or sixty, and thus had a right to add sixty to his natural years); +what was the nature of St. John the Baptist's camel's-hair garment; what +were the secret motives of the builders of the Tower of Babel; whether +the three kings really lived at Cologne,—these and many other profound +inquiries are detailed with all imaginable gravity, and the interest of +the inquirer is not the less because he generally comes to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">280</a></span> +satisfactory and sensible conclusion that we cannot possibly know +anything whatever about it.</p> + +<p>The 'Inquiry into Vulgar Errors' was published in 1646, and Sir Thomas's +next publication appeared in 1658. The dates are significant. Whilst all +England was in the throes of the first civil war, Sir Thomas had been +calmly finishing his catalogue of intellectual oddities. This book was +published soon after the crushing victory of Naseby. King, Parliament, +and army, illustrating a very different kind of vulgar error, continued +to fight out their quarrel to the death. Whilst Milton, whose genius was +in some way most nearly akin to his own, was raising his voice in favour +of the liberty of the press, good Sir Thomas was meditating profoundly +on quincunxes. Milton hurled fierce attacks at Salmasius, and meanwhile +Sir Thomas, in his quiet country town, was discoursing on 'certain +sepulchral urns lately found in Norfolk.' In the year of Cromwell's +death, the result of his labours appeared in a volume containing 'The +Garden of Cyrus' and the 'Hydriotaphia.'</p> + +<p>The first of these essays illustrates Sir Thomas's peculiar mysticism. +The external world was not to him the embodiment of invariable forces, +and therefore capable of revealing a general law in a special instance; +but rather a system of symbols, signatures of the Plastic Nature, to +which mysterious truths were arbitrarily annexed. A Pythagorean doctrine +of numbers was therefore congenial to his mind. He ransacks heaven and +earth, he turns over all his stores of botanical knowledge, he searches +all sacred and profane literature to discover anything that is in the +form of an X, or that reminds him in any way of the number five. From +the garden of Cyrus, where the trees were arranged in this order, he +rambles through the universe, stumbling over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">281</a></span> quincunxes at every step. +To take, for example, his final, and, of course, his fifth chapter, we +find him modestly disavowing an 'inexcusable Pythagorism,' and yet +unable to refrain from telling us that five was anciently called the +number of justice: that it was also called the divisive number; that +most flowers have five leaves; that feet have five toes; that the cone +has a 'quintuple division;' that there were five wise and five foolish +virgins; that the 'most generative animals' were created on the fifth +day; that the cabalists discovered strange meanings in the number five; +that there were five golden mice; that five thousand persons were fed +with five barley-loaves; that the ancients mixed five parts of water +with wine; that plays have five acts; that starfish have five points; +and that if anyone inquire into the causes of this strange repetition, +'he shall not pass his hours in vulgar speculations.' We, however, must +decline the task, and will content ourselves with a few characteristic +phrases from his peroration. 'The quincunx of heaven,' he says, +referring to the <i>Hyades</i>, 'runs low, and 'tis time to close the five +parts of knowledge. We are unwilling to spin out our awaking thoughts +into the phantasms of sleep, which often continueth precogitations, +making cables of cobwebs, and wildernesses of handsome groves.... Night, +which Pagan theology could make the daughter of chaos, affords no +advantage to the description of order; although no lower than that mass +can we derive its genealogy. All things began in order, so shall they +end, and so shall they begin again; according to the admirer of order +and mystical mathematics of the City of Heaven. Although Somnus, in +Homer, be sent to rouse up Agamemnon, I find no such effects in these +drowsy approaches of night. To keep our eyes open longer were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">282</a></span> but to +act with our Antipodes. The huntsmen are up in America, and they are +already past their first sleep in Persia. But who can be drowsy at that +hour, which roused us from everlasting sleep? Or have slumbering +thoughts at that hour, when sleep itself must end, and, as some +conjecture, all shall wake again?'</p> + +<p>'Think you,' asks Coleridge, commenting upon this passage, 'that there +ever was such a reason given for going to bed at midnight, to wit, that +if we did not, we should be acting the part of our Antipodes?' In truth, +Sir Thomas finishes his most whimsical work whimsically enough. The +passage is a good specimen of the quaint and humorous eloquence in which +he most delights—snatching fine thought from sheer absurdities, and +putting the homeliest truth into a dress of amusing oddity. It may +remind us that it is time to touch upon those higher qualities, which +have led one of the acutest of recent critics<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> to call him 'our most +imaginative mind since Shakspeare.' Everywhere, indeed, his imaginative +writing is, if we may so speak, shot with his peculiar humour. It is +difficult to select any eloquent, passage which does not show this +characteristic interweaving of the two elements. Throw the light from +one side, and it shows nothing but quaint conceits; from the other, and +we have a rich glow of poetic colouring. His humour and his melancholy +are inextricably blended; and his melancholy itself is described to a +nicety in the words of Jaques:—'It is a melancholy of his own, +compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and, indeed, +the sundry contemplation of his travels, in which his often rumination +wraps him in a most humorous sadness.' That most marvellous Jaques, +indeed, is rather too much of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">283</a></span> cynic, and shows none of the religious +sentiment of Sir Thomas Browne; but if they could have talked together +in the forest, poor Jaques would have excited a far closer sympathy than +he receives from his very unappreciative companions. The book in which +this 'humorous sadness' finds the fullest expression is the 'Religio +Medici.' The conception of the book apparently resulted from the 'sundry +contemplation of his travels,' and it is written throughout in his +characteristic strain of thought. From his travels he had learnt the +best lesson of a lofty toleration. The furious controversies of that +age, in which the stake, the prison, and the pillory were the popular +theological arguments, produced a characteristic effect on his +sympathies. He did not give in to the established belief, like his +kindly natured contemporary Fuller, who remarks, in a book published +about the same time with the 'Religio Medici,' that even 'the mildest +authors' agree in the propriety of putting certain heretics to death. +Nor, on the other hand, does he share the glowing indignation which +prompted the great protests of Chillingworth and Taylor against the +cruelties practised in the name of religion. Browne has a method of his +own in view of such questions. He shrinks from the hard, practical world +into spiritual meditation. He regards all opinions less as a philosopher +than as a poet. He asks, not whether a dogma is true, but whether it is +amusing or quaint. If his imagination or his fancy can take pleasure in +contemplating it, he is not curious to investigate its scientific +accuracy. And therefore he catches the poetical side of creeds which +differ from his own, and cannot even understand why anybody should grow +savage over their shortcomings. He never could be angry with a man's +judgment 'for not agreeing with me in that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">284</a></span> from which, perhaps, within +a few days, I should dissent myself.' Travelling in this spirit through +countries where the old faith still prevailed, he felt a lively sympathy +for the Catholic modes of worship. Holy water and crucifixes do not +offend him. He is willing to enter the churches and to pray with the +worshippers of other persuasions. He is naturally inclined, he says, 'to +that which misguided zeal terms superstition,' and would show his +respect rather than his unbelief. In an eloquent passage, which might +teach a lesson to some modern tourists, he remarks:—'At the sight of a +cross or crucifix I can dispense with my hat, but scarce with the +thought and memory of my Saviour. I cannot laugh at, but rather pity, +the fruitless journeys of pilgrims, or contemn the miserable condition +of friars; for though misplaced in circumstances, there is something in +it of devotion. I could never hear the Ave Mary bell without an +elevation; or think it a sufficient warrant, because they erred in one +circumstance, for me to err in all—that is, in silence and dumb +contempt. Whilst, therefore, they directed their devotions to her, I +offered mine to God, and rectified the errors of their prayers by +rightly ordering my own. At a solemn procession I have wept abundantly, +while my consorts, blind with opposition and prejudice, have fallen into +an excess of laughter and scorn.'</p> + +<p>Very characteristic, from this point of view, are the heresies into +which he confesses that he has sometimes fallen. Setting aside one +purely fantastical theory, they all imply a desire for toleration even +in the next world. He doubted whether the damned would not ultimately be +released from torture. He felt great difficulty in giving up prayers for +the dead, and thought that to be the object of such prayers, was 'a good +way to be remembered by posterity,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">285</a></span> and far more noble than a history.' +These heresies, he says, as he never tried to propagate them, or to +dispute over them, 'without additions of new fuel, went out insensibly +of themselves.' Yet he still retained, in spite of its supposed +heterodoxy, some hope for the fate of virtuous heathens. 'Amongst so +many subdivisions of hell,' he says, 'there might have been one limbo +left for these.' With a most characteristic turn, he softens the horror +of the reflection by giving it an almost humorous aspect. 'What a +strange vision will it be,' he exclaims, 'to see their poetical fictions +converted into verities, and their imagined and fancied furies into real +devils! How strange to them will sound the history of Adam, when they +shall suffer for him they never heard of!'</p> + +<p>The words may remind us of an often-quoted passage from Tertullian; but +the Father seems to gloat over the appalling doctrines from which the +philosophical humorist shrinks, even though their very horror has a +certain strange fascination for his fancy. Heresies such as these will +not be harshly condemned at the present day. From others of a different +kind, Sir Thomas is shielded by his natural love of the marvellous. He +loves to abandon his thoughts to mysterious contemplations; he even +considers it a subject for complaint that there are 'not impossibilities +enough in religion for an active faith.' 'I love,' he says, 'to lose +myself in a mystery; to pursue my reason to an <i>O altitudo</i>! 'Tis my +solitary recreation to pose my apprehension with those involved enigmas +and riddles of the Trinity, incarnation, and resurrection. I can answer +all the objections of Satan and my rebellious reason with that odd +resolution I learnt of Tertullian, <i>certum est quia impossibile est</i>.' +He rejoices that he was not an Israelite at the passage of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">286</a></span> Red Sea, +or an early Christian in the days of miracles; for then his faith, +supported by his senses, would have had less merit. He loves to puzzle +and confound his understanding with the thoughts that pass the limits of +our intellectual powers: he rejoices in contemplating eternity, because +nobody can 'speak of it without a solecism,' and to plunge his +imagination into the abysses of the infinite. 'When I cannot satisfy my +reason,' he says, 'I love to recreate my fancy.' He recreates it by +soaring into the regions where the most daring metaphysical logic breaks +down beneath us, and delights in exposing his reason to the rude test of +believing both sides of a contradiction. Here, as everywhere, the +strangest freaks of fancy intrude themselves into his sublime +contemplations. A mystic, when abasing reason in the presence of faith, +may lose sight of earthly objects in the splendour of the beatific +vision. But Sir Thomas, even when he enters the holiest shrine, never +quite loses his grasp of the grotesque. Wonder, whether produced by the +sublime or the simply curious, has equal attraction for him. His mind is +distracted between the loftiest mysteries of Christianity and the +strangest conceits of Talmudists or schoolmen. Thus, for example, whilst +eloquently descanting on the submissiveness of his reason, he informs us +(obviously claiming credit for the sacrifice of his curiosity) that he +can read of the raising of Lazarus, and yet refrain from raising a 'law +case whether his heir might lawfully detain his inheritance bequeathed +unto him by his death, and he, though restored to life, have no plea or +title unto his former possessions.' Or we might take the inverse +transition from the absurd to the sublime, in his meditations upon hell. +He begins by inquiring whether the everlasting fire is the same with +that of our earth. 'Some of our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">287</a></span> chymicks,' it appears, 'facetiously +affirm that, at the last fire, all shall be crystallised and +reverberated into glass,' but, after playing for some time with this and +other strange fancies, he says in a loftier strain, though still with +his odd touch of humour, 'Men speak too popularly who place it in those +flaming mountains, which, to grosser apprehensions, represent hell. The +heart of men is the place the devils dwell in. I feel sometimes a hell +within myself; Lucifer keeps his courts in my breast; Legion is revived +in me. There was more than one hell in Magdalene, when there were seven +devils; for every devil is a hell unto himself; he holds enough of +torture in his own <i>ubi</i>, and needs not the misery of circumference to +afflict him; and thus a distracted conscience here is a shadow or +introduction into hell hereafter.'</p> + +<p>Sir Thomas's witticisms are like the grotesque carvings in a Gothic +cathedral. It is plain that in his mind they have not the slightest +tinge of conscious irreverence. They are simply his natural mode of +expression; forbid him to be humorous, and you might as well forbid him +to speak at all. If the severity of our modern taste is shocked at an +intermixture which seemed natural enough to his contemporaries, we may +find an unconscious apology in a singularly fine passage of the 'Religio +Medici.' Justifying his love of church music, he says, 'Even that vulgar +and tavern music, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me +a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the first +composer.' That power of extracting deep devotion from 'vulgar tavern +music' is the great secret of Browne's eloquence. It is not wonderful, +perhaps, that, with our associations, the performance seems of +questionable taste; and that some strains of tavern music mix +unpleasantly in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">288</a></span> the grander harmonies which they suggest. Few people +find their religious emotions stimulated by the performance of a nigger +melody, and they have some difficulty in keeping pace with a mind which +springs in happy unconsciousness, or rather in keen enjoyment, of the +contrast from the queer or commonplace to the most exalted objects of +human thought.</p> + +<p>One other peculiarity shows itself chiefly in the last pages of the +'Religio Medici.' His worthy commentators have laboured to defend Sir +Thomas from the charge of vanity. He expatiates upon his own universal +charity; upon his inability to regard even vice as a fitting object for +satire; upon his warm affection to his friend, whom he already loves +better than himself, and whom yet in a few months he will regard with a +love which will make his present feelings seem indifference; upon his +absolute want of avarice or any kind of meanness; and, which certainly +seems a little odd in the midst of these self-laudations, upon his +freedom from the 'first and father sin, not only of man, but of the +devil, pride.' Good Dr. Watts was shocked at this 'arrogant temerity,' +and Dr. Johnson appears rather to concur in the charge. And certainly, +if we are to interpret his language in a matter-of-fact spirit, it must +be admitted that a gentleman who openly claims for himself the virtues +of charity, generosity, courage, and modesty, might be not unfairly +accused of vanity. To no one, as we have already remarked, is such a +matter-of-fact criticism less applicable. If a humorist was to be denied +the right of saying with a serious face what he does not quite think, we +should make strange work of some of the most charming books in the +world. The Sir Thomas Browne of the 'Religio Medici' is by no means to +be identified with the everyday flesh-and-blood<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">289</a></span> physician of Norwich. +He is the ideal and glorified Sir Thomas, and represents rather what +ought to have been than what was. We all have such doubles who visit us +in our day-dreams and sometimes cheat us into the belief that they are +our real selves, but most of us luckily hide the very existence of such +phantoms; for few of us, indeed, could make them agreeable to our +neighbours. And yet the apology is scarcely needed. Bating some few +touches, Sir Thomas seems to have claimed little that he did not really +possess. And if he was a little vain, why should we be angry? Vanity is +only offensive when it is sullen or exacting. When it merely amounts to +an unaffected pleasure in dwelling on the peculiarities of a man's own +character, it is rather an agreeable literary ingredient. Sir Thomas +defines his point of view with his usual felicity. 'The world that I +regard,' he says in the spirit of the imprisoned Richard II., 'is +myself: it is the microcosm of my own frame that I cast mine eye on; for +the other, I use it but like my globe, and turn it round sometimes for +my recreation.' That whimsical inversion of the natural order is the key +to the 'Religio Medici.' We, for the nonce, are to regard Sir Thomas +Browne as a world, and to study the marvels of his microcosm instead of +the outside wonders. And no one can deny that it is a good and kindly +world—a world full of the strangest combinations, where even the most +sacred are allied with the oddest objects. Yet his imagination +everywhere diffuses a solemn light such as that which falls through +painted windows, and which somehow harmonises the whole quaint +assemblage of images. The sacred is made more interesting instead of +being degraded by its association with the quaint; and on the whole, +after a stay in this microcosm, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">290</a></span>we feel better, calmer, more tolerant, +and a good deal more amused than when we entered it.</p> + +<p>Passing from the portrait to the original, we may recognise, or fancy +that we recognise, the same general features. Sir Thomas assures us that +his life, up to the period of the 'Religio Medici,' was a 'miracle of +thirty years, which to relate were not a history, but a piece of poetry, +and would sound to common ears like a fable.' Johnson, with his usual +sense, observes that it is rather difficult to detect the miraculous +element in any part of the story open to our observation. 'Surely,' he +says, 'a man may visit France and Italy, reside at Montpelier and Padua, +and at last take his degree at Leyden, without anything miraculous.' And +although Southey endeavours to maintain that the miracle consisted in +Browne's preservation from infidelity, it must be admitted that to the +ordinary mind that result seems explicable by natural causes. We must be +content with Johnson's explanation, that, in some sense, 'all life is +miraculous;' and, in short, that the strangeness consists rather in +Browne's view of his own history, than in any unusual phenomena. +Certainly, no man seems on the whole to have slipped down the stream of +life more smoothly. After his travels he settled quietly at Norwich, and +there passed forty-five years of scarcely interrupted prosperity. In the +'Religio Medici' he indulges in some disparaging remarks upon marriage. +'The whole world,' he says, 'was made for man; but the twelfth part of +man for woman. Man is the whole world and the breath of God; woman the +rib and crooked part of man.' He wishes, after the fashion of Montaigne, +that we might grow like the trees, and avoid this foolish and trivial +ceremony; and therefore—for such inferences are perfectly legitimate in +the history of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">291</a></span> humorist—he married a lady, of whom it is said that +she was so perfect that 'they seemed to come together by a kind of +natural magnetism,' had ten children, and lived very happily ever +afterwards. It is not difficult, from the fragmentary notices that have +been left to us, to put together some picture of his personal +appearance. He was a man of dignified appearance, with a striking +resemblance, as Southey has remarked, to Charles I., 'always cheerful, +but never merry,' given to unseasonable blushing, little inclined to +talk, but strikingly original when once launched in conversation; sedate +in his dress, and obeying some queer medical crotchets as to its proper +arrangement; always at work in the intervals of his 'drudging practice;' +and generally a sober and dignified physician. From some letters which +have been preserved we catch a view of his social demeanour. He was +evidently an affectionate and liberal father, with good old orthodox +views of the wide extent of the paternal prerogative. One of his sons +was a promising naval officer, and sends home from beyond the seas +accounts of such curiosities as were likely to please the insatiable +curiosity of his parent. In his answers, the good Sir Thomas quotes +Aristotle's definition of fortitude for the benefit of his gallant +lieutenant, and argues elaborately to dissuade him from a practice which +he believes to prevail in 'the king's shipps, when, in desperate cases, +they blow up the same.' He proves by most excellent reasons, and by the +authority of Plutarch, that such self-immolation is an unnecessary +strain of gallantry; yet somehow we feel rather glad that Sir Thomas +could not be a witness to the reception of this sensible, but perhaps +rather superfluous, advice, in the messroom of the 'Marie Rose.' It is +more pleasant to observe the carefulness with which he has treasured up +and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">292</a></span> repeats all the compliments to the lieutenant's valour and wisdom +which have reached him from trustworthy sources. This son appears to +have died at a comparatively early age; but with the elder son, +Edward—who, like his father, travelled in various parts of Europe, and +then became a distinguished physician—he maintained a long +correspondence, full of those curious details in which his soul +delighted. His son, for example, writes from Prague that 'in the mines +at Brunswick is reported to be a spirit; and another at the tin mine at +Stackenwald, in the shape of a monke, which strikes the miners, playeth +on the bagpipe, and many such tricks.' They correspond, however, on more +legitimate inquiries, and especially on the points to be noticed in the +son's medical lectures. Sir Thomas takes a keen interest in the fate of +an unlucky 'oestridge' which found its way to London in 1681, and was +doomed to illustrate some of the vulgar errors. The poor bird was +induced to swallow a piece of iron weighing two and a-half ounces, +which, strange to say, it could not digest. It soon afterwards died 'of +a soden,' either from the severity of the weather or from the peculiar +nature of its diet.</p> + +<p>In one well-known case Sir Thomas's peculiar theories received a more +unfortunate application; he contributed by his evidence to the death of +the witches tried by Hale in 1664; and one could wish that in this case +his love of the wonderful had been more checked by his sense of humour.</p> + +<p>The fact that he was knighted by Charles II. in 1671 is now memorable +only for Johnson's characteristic remark. The lexicographer's love of +truth and loyalty to his pet monarch struggle with each other in the +equivocal compliment to Charles's virtue in rewarding excellence 'with +such honorary distinctions at least as cost him nothing.' The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">293</a></span> good +doctor died in 1682, in the seventy-seventh year of age, and met his +end, as we are assured, in the spirit of his own writings. 'There is,' +he admirably says, 'but one comfort left, that, though it be in the +power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest +to deprive us of death.' Most men, for one reason or another, have at +times been 'half in love with easeful death.' Sir Thomas gives his view +more fully in another passage, in which he says, with his usual quaint +and eloquent melancholy, 'When I take a full view and circle of myself, +without this reasonable moderator and equal piece of justice, death, I +do conceive myself the miserablest person extant. Were there not another +life that I hope for, all the vanities of this world should not entreat +a moment's breath from me. Could the devil work my belief to imagine I +could never die, I could not outlive that very thought. I have so abject +a conceit of this common way of existence, this retaining to the sun and +elements, I cannot think this to be a man, or to have according to the +dignity of humanity. In expectation of a better, I can with patience +embrace this life, yet, in my best meditations, do often defy death.'</p> + +<p>What, after all, one is inclined to ask, is the secret of the strange +charm of Sir Thomas's style? Will you be kind enough to give us the old +doctor's literary prescription, that we may produce the same effects at +will? In what proportions shall we mingle humour, imagination, and +learning? How are we to select the language which will be the fittest +vehicle for the thought? or rather, for the metaphor is a little too +mechanical, what were the magic spells with which he sways our +imaginative moods? Like other spells, we must reply, it is +incommunicable: no real answer can be given even by critics who, like +Coleridge and De Quincey,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">294</a></span> show something of the same power. Coarser +observers can only point to such external peculiarities as the Latinisms +in which he indulges even more freely than most of his contemporaries. +To Johnson they seemed 'pedantic;' to most modern readers they have an +old-world charm; but in any case we know little more of Sir Thomas when +we have observed that he is capable of using for 'hanging' the +periphrasis 'illaqueation or pendulous suffocation.' The perusal of a +page will make us recognise what could not be explained in a whole +volume of analysis. One may, however, hazard a remark upon the special +mood which is clothed or incarnated in his stately rhetoric. The +imagination of Sir Thomas, of course, shows the generic qualities +roughly described as Northern, Gothic, Teutonic, or romantic. He writes +about tombs, and all Englishmen, as M. Taine tells us, like to write +about tombs. When we try to find the specific differences which +distinguish it from other imaginations of similar quality, we should be +inclined to define him as belonging to a very rare intellectual family. +He is a mystic with a sense of humour, or rather, his habitual mood is +determined by an attraction towards the two opposite poles of humour and +mysticism. He concludes two of his treatises (the 'Christian Morals' and +'Urn Burial') in words expressive of one of these tendencies: 'If any +have been so happy as personally to understand Christian annihilation, +ecstacy, exolution, transformation, the kiss of the spouse, and +ingression into the divine shadow according to mystical theology, they +have already had an handsome anticipation of heaven; the world is in a +manner over, and the earth in ashes unto them.' Many of Sir Thomas's +reflections, his love in spiritualising external emblems, as, for +example, in the reflections on the quincunx, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">295</a></span> almost sensuous +delight in the contemplation of a mystery, show the same bent. The +fully-developed mystic loses sight of the world and its practical duties +in the rapture of formless meditations; facts become shadows, and +emotions the only realities. But the presence of a mystical element is +the mark of all lofty imaginations. The greatest poet is he who feels +most deeply and habitually that our 'little lives are rounded with a +sleep;' that we are but atoms in the boundless abysses of space and +time; that the phenomenal world is but a transitory veil, to be valued +only as its contemplation arouses or disciplines our deepest emotions. +Capacity for passing from the finite to the infinite, for interpreting +the high instincts before which our mortal nature</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Doth tremble like a guilty thing surprised,'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>is the greatest endowment of the Shakespeares and Dantes. Mysticism +proper is the abuse of this tendency, which prompts to the impossible +feat of soaring altogether beyond the necessary base of concrete +realities. The mystic temperament is balanced in some great men, as in +Shakespeare, by their intense interest in human passion; in others, as +in Wordsworth, by their profound sense of the primary importance of the +moral law; and in others, as in Jeremy Taylor, by their hold upon the +concrete imagery of a traditional theology; whilst to some, the mystic +vision is strangely blended with an acceptance of the epicurean precept, +Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. Sir Thomas Browne seems to +be held back from abandoning himself to the ecstasies of abstract +meditation, chiefly by his peculiar sense of humour. There is a closer +connection than we are always willing to admit between humour and +profanity. Humour is the faculty which always keeps us<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">296</a></span> in mind of the +absurdity which is the shadow of sublimity. It is naturally allied to +intellectual scepticism, as in Rabelais or Montaigne; and Sir Thomas +shared the tendency sufficiently to be called atheist by some wiseacres. +But his humour was too gentle to suggest scepticism of the aggressive +kind. It is almost too free from cynicism. He cannot adopt any dogma +unreservedly, but neither does any dogma repel him. He revels in the +mental attitude of hopeless perplexity, which is simply unendurable to +the commonplace and matter-of-fact intellects. He likes to be balanced +between opposing difficulties; to play with any symbol of worship +without actually worshipping it; to prostrate himself sincerely at many +shrines, and yet with a half smile on his lips. He cannot be a +rhetorician in the ordinary sense of the word; he would have been +hopelessly out of place on the floor of the senate, stirring men's +patriotism or sense of right; for half his sympathy would always be with +the Opposition. He could not have moved the tears or the devotional +ecstasies of a congregation, for he has too vivid a sense that any and +every dogma is but one side of an inevitable antinomy. Strong +convictions are needed for the ordinary controversial successes, and his +favourite point of view is the centre from which all convictions radiate +and all look equally probable. But then, instead of mocking at all, he +sympathises with all, and expresses the one sentiment which may be +extracted from their collision—the sentiment of reverence blended with +scepticism. It is a contradictory sentiment, one may say, in a sense, +but the essence of humour is to be contradictory. The language in which +he utters himself was determined by his omnivorous appetite for every +quaint or significant symbol to be discovered in the whole field of +learning. With no prejudices, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">297</a></span>nothing comes amiss to him; and the +signature of some mysterious principle may be found in every object of +art or nature. Science in its infancy was still half mystic, and the +facts which he gathered were all tinged with the semi-mythical fancies +of the earliest explorers of the secrets of nature. In an old relic, +recalling 'the drums and tramplings of three conquests,' in a queer +annual, or an ancient fragment of history might be the appropriate +emblem, or something more than the emblem of a truth equally impressive +to the scientific and the poetical imagination. He would have been happy +by the midnight lamp in Milton's 'high lonely tower;' but his humour +would look at the romances which Milton loved rather with the eyes of +Cervantes than of Milton. Their tone of sentiment would be too strained +and highflown; and he would prefer to read of the spirits that are found</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'In fire, air, flood, or underground,'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>or to try to penetrate the secret of</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Every star that heaven doth show,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And every herb that sips the dew,'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>by reading all the nonsense that had been written about them in the dawn +of inquiry. He should be read in a corresponding spirit. One should +often stop to appreciate the full flavour of some quaint allusion, or +lay down the book to follow out some diverging line of thought. So read +in a retired study, or beneath the dusty shelves of an ancient library, +a page of Sir Thomas seems to revive the echoes as of ancient chants in +college chapels, strangely blended with the sonorous perorations of +professors in the neighbouring schools, so that the interferences +sometimes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">298</a></span> produce a note of gentle mockery and sometimes heighten +solemnity by quaintness.</p> + +<p>That, however, is not the spirit in which books are often read in these +days. We have an appetite for useful information, and an appetite for +frivolous sentiment or purely poetical musing. We cannot combine the two +after the quaint fashion of the old physician. And therefore these +charming writings have ceased to suit our modern taste; and Sir Thomas +is already passing under that shadow of mortality which obscures all, +even the greatest, reputations, and with which no one has dwelt more +pathetically or graphically than himself.</p> + +<p>If we are disposed to complain, Sir Thomas shall himself supply the +answer, in a passage from the 'Hydriotaphia,' which, though described by +Hallam as the best written of his treatises, is not to my taste so +attractive as the 'Religio Medici.' The concluding chapter, however, is +in his best style, and here are some of his reflections on posthumous +fame. The end of the world, he says, is approaching, and 'Charles V. can +never hope to live within two Methuselahs of Hector.' 'And, therefore, +restless inquietude for the diuturnity of our memories with present +considerations seems a vanity out of date, and a superannuated piece of +folly. We cannot hope to live as long in our names as some have done in +their persons. One face of Janus holds no proportion to the other. 'Tis +too late to be ambitious. The great mutations of the world are acted, or +time may be too short for our designs. To extend our memories by +monuments, whose death we daily pray for, and whose duration we cannot +hope without injury to our expectations in the advent of the last day, +were a contradiction to our beliefs. We, whose generations are ordained +in this setting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">299</a></span> part of time, are providentially taken off from such +imaginations; and being necessitated to eye the remaining particle of +futurity, are naturally constituted into thoughts of the next world, and +cannot excusably decline the consideration of that duration, which +maketh pyramids pillars of snow, and all that's past a moment.'</p> + +<p>If the argument has now been vulgarised in the hands of Dr. Cumming and +his like, the language and the sentiment are worthy of any of our +greatest masters.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Ross, for example, urges that the invisibility of the +phœnix is sufficiently accounted for by the natural desire of a +unique animal to keep out of harm's way.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Mr. Lowell, in 'Shakspeare Once More,' 'Among My Books.'</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">300</a></span></p> +<h2><i>JONATHAN EDWARDS</i><a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></h2> + + +<p>Two of the ablest thinkers whom America has yet produced were born in +New England at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The theorists +who would trace all our characteristics to inheritance from some remote +ancestor might see in Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin normal +representatives of the two types from which the genuine Yankee is +derived. Though blended in various proportions, and though one may exist +almost to the exclusion of the other, an element of shrewd mother-wit +and an element of transcendental enthusiasm are to be detected in all +who boast a descent from the pilgrim fathers. Franklin, born in 1706, +represents in its fullest development the more earthly side of this +compound. A thoroughbred utilitarian, full of sagacity, and carrying +into all regions of thought that strange ingenuity which makes an +American the handiest of all human beings, Franklin is best embodied in +his own poor Richard. Honesty is the best policy: many a little makes a +mickle: the second vice is lying, the first is running in debt; and—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Get what you can, and what you get hold;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Tis the stone that will turn all your lead into gold.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>These and a string of similar maxims are the pith of Franklin's message +to the world. Franklin, however, was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">301</a></span> not merely a man in whom the +practical intelligence was developed in a very remarkable degree, but +was fortunate in coming upon a crisis admirably suited to his abilities, +and in being generally in harmony with the spirit of his age. He +succeeded, as we know, in snatching lightning from the heavens, and the +sceptre from tyrants; and had his reward in the shape of much +contemporary homage from French philosophers, and lasting renown amongst +his countrymen. Meanwhile, Jonathan Edwards, his senior by three years, +had the fate common to men who are unfitted for the struggles of daily +life, and whose philosophy does not harmonise with the dominant current +of the time. A speculative recluse, with little faculty of literary +expression, and given to utter opinions shocking to the popular mind, he +excited little attention during his lifetime, except amongst the sharers +of his own religious persuasions; and, when noticed after his death, the +praise of his intellectual acuteness has generally been accompanied with +an expression of abhorrence for his supposed moral obtuseness. Mr. +Lecky, for example, whilst speaking of Edwards as 'probably the ablest +defender of Calvinism,' mentions his treatise on Original Sin as 'one of +the most revolting books that have ever proceeded from the pen of man' +('Rationalism,' i. 404). That intense dislike, which is far from +uncommon, for severe reasoning has even made a kind of reproach to +Edwards of what is called his 'inexorable logic.' To condemn a man for +being honestly in the wrong is generally admitted to be unreasonable; +but people are even more unforgiving to the sin of being honestly in the +right. The frankness with which Edwards avowed opinions, not by any +means peculiar to himself, has left a certain stain upon his reputation. +He has also suffered in general repute from a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">302</a></span> cause which should really +increase our interest in his writings. Metaphysicians, whilst admiring +his acuteness, have been disgusted by his adherence to an outworn +theology; and theologians have cared little for a man who was primarily +a philosophical speculator, and has used his philosophy to bring into +painful relief the most terrible dogmas of the ancient creeds. Edwards, +however, is interesting just because he is a connecting link between two +widely different phases of thought. He connects the expiring Calvinism +of the old Puritan theocracy with what is called the transcendentalism +embodied in the writings of Emerson and other leaders of young America. +He is remarkable, too, as illustrating, at the central point of the +eighteenth century, those speculative tendencies which were most vitally +opposed to the then dominant philosophy of Locke and Hume. And, finally, +there is a still more permanent interest in the man himself, as +exhibiting in high relief the weak and the strong points of the teaching +of which Calvinism represents only one embodiment. His life, in striking +contrast to that of his more celebrated contemporary, ran its course far +away from the main elements of European activity. With the exception of +a brief stay at New York, he lived almost exclusively in the interior of +what was then the thinly-settled colony of Massachusetts.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> His father +was for nearly sixty years minister of a church in Connecticut, and his +mother's father, the 'celebrated Solomon Stoddard,' for about an equal +time minister of a church at Northampton, Massachusetts. Young Jonathan, +brought up at the feet of these venerable men, after the strictest sect +of the Puritans, was sent to Yale at the age of twelve,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">303</a></span> took his B.A. +degree at the age of seventeen, and two years afterwards became a +preacher at New York. Thence he returned to a tutorship at Yale, but in +his twenty-fourth year was ordained as colleague of his grandfather +Stoddard, and spent at Northampton the next twenty-three years of his +life. It may be added that he married early a wife of congenial temper, +and had eleven children.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> One of his daughters,—it is an odd +combination,—was the mother of Aaron Burr, the duellist who killed +Hamilton, and afterwards became the prototype of all Southern +secessionists. The external facts, however, of Edwards' life are of +little interest, except as indicating the influences to which he was +exposed. Puritanism, though growing faint, was still powerful in New +England; it was bred in his bones, and he was drilled from his earliest +years into its sternest dogmas. Some curious fragments of his early life +and letters indicate the nature of his spiritual development. Whilst +still almost a boy, he writes down solemn resolutions, and practises +himself in severe self-inspection. He resolves 'never to do, be, or +suffer anything in soul or body, more or less, but what tends to the +glory of God;' to 'live with all my might while I do live;' 'never to +speak anything that is ridiculous or matter of laughter on the Lord's +Day' (a resolution which we might think rather superfluous, even though +extended to other days); and, 'frequently to renew the dedication of +myself to God, which was made at my baptism, which I solemnly renewed +when I was received into the communion of the Church, and which I have +solemnly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">304</a></span> ratified this 12th day of January 1723' (i. 18). He pledges +himself, in short, to a life of strict self-examination and absolute +devotion to what he takes for the will of God. Similar resolutions have +doubtless been made by countless young men, brought up under the same +conditions, and diaries of equal value have been published by the +authors of innumerable saintly biographies. In Edwards' mouth, however, +they really had a meaning, and bore corresponding results. An +interesting paper gives an account of those religious 'experiences' to +which his sect attaches so tremendous an importance. From his childhood, +he tells us, his mind had been full of objections to the doctrine of +God's sovereignty. It appeared to him to be a 'horrible doctrine' that +God should choose whom He would, and reject whom He pleased, 'leaving +them eternally to perish and be tormented eternally in hell.' The whole +history of his intellectual development is involved in the process by +which he became gradually reconciled to this appalling dogma. In the +second year of his collegiate course, we are told, which would be about +the fourteenth of his age, he read Locke's Essay with inexpressible +delight. The first glimpse of metaphysical inquiry, it would seem, +revealed to him the natural bent of his mind, and opened to him the path +of speculation in which he ever afterwards delighted. Locke, though +Edwards always mentions him with deep respect, was indeed a thinker of a +very different school. The disciple owed to his master, not a body of +doctrine, but the impulse to intellectual activity. He succeeded in +working out for himself a satisfactory answer to the problem by which he +had been perplexed. His cavils ceased as his reason strengthened. 'God's +absolute sovereignty and justice' seemed to him to be as clear as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">305</a></span> +anything he saw with his eyes; 'at least,' he adds, 'it is so at times.' +Nay, he even came to rejoice in the doctrine and regard it as +'infinitely pleasant, bright, and sweet' (i. 33). The Puritan +assumptions were so ingrained in his nature that the agony of mind which +they caused never led him to question their truth, though it animated +him to discover a means of reconciling them to reason; and the +reconciliation is the whole burden of his ablest works. The effect upon +his mind is described in terms which savour of a less stern school of +faith. God's glory was revealed to him throughout the whole creation, +and often threw him into ecstasies of devotion (i. 33). 'God's +excellency, His wisdom, His purity, and love seemed to appear in +everything: in the sun, moon, and stars: in the clouds and blue sky; in +the grass, flowers, and trees; in the water and all nature, which used +greatly to fix my mind. I often used to sit and view the moon for +continuance, and in the day spent much time in viewing the clouds and +sky, to behold the sweet glory of God in these things; in the meantime +singing forth, with a low voice, my contemplations of the Creator and +Redeemer.' Thunder, he adds, had once been terrible to him; 'now scarce +anything in all the works of nature' was so sweet (i. 36). It seemed as +if the 'majestic and awful voice of God's thunder' was in fact the voice +of its Creator. Thunder and lightning, we know, suggested +characteristically different contemplations to Franklin. Edwards' +utterances are as remarkable for their amiability as for their +non-scientific character. We see in him the gentle mystic rather than +the stern divine who consigned helpless infants to eternal torture +without a question of the goodness of their Creator. This vein of +meditation, however, continued to be familiar to him. He spent most of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">306</a></span> +his time reflecting on Divine things, and often walking in solitary +places and woods to enjoy uninterrupted soliloquies and converse with +God. At New York he often retired to a quiet spot—now, one presumes, +seldom used for such purposes—on the banks of the Hudson river, to +abandon himself to his quiet reveries, or to 'converse on the things of +God' with one Mr. John Smith. To the end of his life he indulged in the +same habit. His custom was to rise at four o'clock in the morning, to +spend thirteen hours daily in his study, and to ride out after dinner to +some lonely grove, where he dismounted and walked by himself, with a +notebook ready at hand for the arrest of stray thoughts. Evidently he +possessed one of those rare temperaments to which the severest +intellectual exercise is a source of the keenest enjoyment; and though +he must often have strayed in to the comparatively dreary labyrinths of +metaphysical puzzles, his speculations had always an immediate reference +to what he calls 'Divine things.' Once, he tells us, as he rode into the +woods, in 1737, and alighted according to custom 'to walk in Divine +contemplation and prayer,' he had so extraordinary a view of the glory +of the Son of God, and His wonderful grace, that he remained for about +an hour 'in a flood of tears and weeping aloud.' This intensity of +spiritual vision was frequently combined with a harrowing sense of his +own corruption. 'My wickedness,' he says, 'as I am in myself has long +appeared to me perfectly ineffable; like an infinite deluge or mountains +over my head.' Often, for many years, he has had in his mind and his +mouth the words 'Infinite upon infinite!' His heart looks to him like +'an abyss infinitely deeper than hell;' and yet, he adds, it seems to +him that 'his conviction of sin is exceedingly small.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">307</a></span> Whilst weeping +and crying for his sins, he seemed to know that 'his repentance was +nothing to his sin' (i. 41). Extravagant expressions of this kind are +naturally rather shocking to the outsider; and, to those who are +incapable of sympathising, they may even appear to be indications of +hypocrisy. Nobody was more alive than Edwards himself to the danger of +using such phrases mechanically. When you call yourself the worst of +men, he says, be careful that you do not think highly of yourself just +because you think so meanly. And if you reply, 'No, I have not a high +opinion of my humility; it seems to me I am as proud as the devil;' ask +again, 'whether on this very account that you think yourself as proud as +the devil, you do not think yourself to be very humble' (iv. 282). That +is a characteristic bit of subtilising, and it indicates the danger of +all this excessive introspection. Edwards would not have accepted the +moral that the best plan is to think about yourself as little as +possible; for from his point of view this constant cross-examination of +all your feelings, this dissection of emotion down to its finest and +most intricate convolutions, was of the very essence of religion. No +one, however, can read his account of his own feelings, even when he +runs into the accustomed phraseology, without perceiving the ring of +genuine feeling. He is morbid, it may be, but he is not insincere; and +even his strained hyperboles are scarcely unintelligible when considered +as the expression of the sentiment produced by the effort of a human +being to live constantly in presence of the absolute and the infinite.</p> + +<p>The event which most powerfully influenced Edwards' mind during his life +at Northampton was one of those strange spiritual storms which then, as +now, swept periodically across the Churches. Protestants generally call +them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">308</a></span> revivals; in Catholic countries they impel pilgrims to some +devotional shrine; Edwards and his contemporaries described such a +phenomenon as 'a remarkable outpouring of God's Holy Spirit.' He has +carefully described the symptoms of one such commotion, in which he was +a main agent; and two or three later treatises, discussing some of the +problems suggested by the scenes he witnessed, testify to the +profoundness of the impression upon his mind. In fact, as we shall +presently see, Edwards' whole philosophical system was being put to a +practical test by these events. Was the excitement, as modern observers +would say, due to a mere moral epidemic, or was it actually produced by +the direct interposition in human affairs of the Almighty Ruler? +Unhesitatingly recognising the hand of the God the very thought of whom +crushed him into self-annihilation, Edwards is unconsciously troubled by +the strange contrast between the effect and the stupendous cause +assigned for it. When the angel of the Lord comes down to trouble the +waters, one would expect rather to see oceans upheaved than a trifling +ripple in an insignificant pond. There is something almost pathetic in +his eagerness to magnify the proportions of the event. He boasts that in +six months 'more than three hundred souls were savingly brought home to +Christ in this town' (iii. 23). The town itself, it may be observed, +though then one of the most populous in the country, was only of +eighty-two years' standing, and reckoned about two hundred families, the +era of Chicagos not having yet dawned upon the world. The conversion, +however, of this village appeared to some 'divines and others' to herald +the approach of the 'conflagration' (iii. 59); and though Edwards +disavows this rash conjecture, he anticipates with some confidence the +approach of the millennium. The 'isles and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">309</a></span> ships of Tarshish,' +mentioned in Isaiah, are plainly meant for America, which is to be 'the +firstfruits of that glorious day' (iii. 154); and he collects enough +accounts of various revivals of an analogous kind which had taken place +in Salzburg, Holland, and several of the British Colonies, to justify +the anticipation 'that these universal commotions are the forerunners of +something exceeding glorious approaching' (iii. 414). The limited area +of the disturbance perhaps raised less difficulty than the equivocal +nature of many of the manifestations. In Edwards' imagination, Satan was +always on the watch to produce an imitation, and, it would seem, a +curiously accurate imitation, of the Divine impulses. As De Foe says, in +a different sense—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Wherever God erects a house of prayer,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The devil always builds a chapel there.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And some people were unkind enough to trace in the diseases and other +questionable products of the revival a distinct proof of the 'operation +of the evil spirit' (iii. 96). Edwards felt the vital importance of +distinguishing between the two classes of supernatural agency, so +different in their source, and yet so thoroughly similar in their +effects. There is something rather touching, though at times our +sympathy is not quite unequivocal, in the simplicity with which he +traces distinct proofs of the Divine hand in the familiar phenomena of +religious conversions. The stories seem stale and profitless to us which +he accepted with awe-stricken reverence as a demonstrative testimony to +the Divinity of the work. He gives, for example, an anecdote of a young +woman, who, being jealous of another conversion, resolved to bring about +her own by the rather naïf expedient of reading the Bible straight +through. Having begun her task on Monday, the desired effect was +produced on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">310</a></span> Thursday, and she felt it possible to skip at once to the +New Testament. The crisis ran through its usual course, ending in a +state of rapture, during which she enjoyed for days 'a kind of beatific +vision of God.' The poor girl was very ill, and expressed 'great +longings to die.' When her brother read in Job about worms feeding on +the dead body, she 'appeared with a pleasant smile, and said it was +sweet to her to think of her being in such circumstances' (iii. 69). The +longing was speedily gratified, and she departed, perhaps not to find in +another world that the universe had been laid out precisely in +accordance with the theories of Mr. Jonathan Edwards, but at least +leaving behind her—so we are assured—memories of touching humility and +spirituality. If Abigail Hutchinson strikes us as representing, on the +whole, rather a morbid type of human excellence, what are we to say to +Phebe Bartlet, who had just passed her fourth birthday in April 1735? +(iii. 70). This infant of more than Yankee precocity was converted by +her brother, who had just gone through the same process at the age of +eleven. She took to 'secret prayer,' five or six times a day, and would +never suffer herself to be interrupted. Her experiences are given at +great length, including a refusal to eat plums, 'because it was sin;' +her extreme interest in a thought suggested to her by a text from the +Revelation, about 'supping with God;' and her request to her father to +replace a cow which a poor man had lost. She took great delight in +'private religious meetings,' and was specially edified by the sermons +of Mr. Edwards, for whom she professed, as he records, with perhaps some +pardonable complacency, the warmest affection. The grotesque side of the +story of this detestable infant is, however, blended with something more +shocking. The poor little wretch was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">311</a></span> tormented by the fear of +hell-fire; and her relations and pastor appear to have done their best +to stimulate this, as well as other religious sentiments. Edwards boasts +at a subsequent period that 'hundreds of little children' had testified +to the glory of God's work (iii. 146). He afterwards remarks +incidentally that many people had considered as 'intolerable' the +conduct of the ministers in 'frightening poor innocent little children +with talk of hell-fire and eternal damnation' (iii. 200). And indeed we +cannot deny that when reading some of the sermons to which poor Phebe +Bartlet must have listened, and remembering the nature of the audience, +the fingers of an unregenerate person clench themselves involuntarily as +grasping an imaginary horsewhip. The answer given by Edwards does not +diminish the impression. Innocent as children may seem to be, he +replies, 'yet if they are out of Christ, they are not so in God's sight, +but are young vipers, and are infinitely more hateful than vipers, and +are in a most miserable condition as well as grown persons; and they are +naturally very senseless and stupid, being <i>born as the wild ass's +colt</i>, and need much to awaken them' (iii. 200). Doubtless they got it, +and if we will take Edwards' word for it, the awakening process never +did harm in any one instance. Here we are touching the doctrines which +naturally excite a fierce revolt of the conscience against the most +repulsive of all theological dogmas, though unfortunately a revolt which +is apt to generate an indiscriminating hostility.</p> + +<p>The revival gradually spent its force; and, as usual, the more +unpleasant symptoms began to assume greater prominence as the more +spiritual impulse decayed. In Edwards' phraseology, 'it began to be very +sensible that the Spirit of God was gradually withdrawing from us, and +after this time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">312</a></span> Satan seemed to be set more loose, and raged in a +dreadful manner' (iii. 77). From the beginning of the excitement, the +usual physical manifestation, leapings, and roarings and convulsions +(iii. 131, 205), had shown themselves; and Edwards labours to show that +in this case they were genuine marks of a Divine impulse, and not of +mere enthusiasm, as in the externally similar cases of the Quakers, the +French prophets, and others (iii. 109). Now, however, more startling +phenomena presented themselves. Satan persuaded a highly respectable +citizen to cut his throat. Others saw visions, and had fancied +inspirations; whilst from some hints it would seem probable that grosser +outrages on morality resulted from indiscriminate gatherings of frenzied +enthusiasts (iii. 284). Finally, people's minds were diverted by the +approach of his Excellency the Governor to settle an Indian treaty, and +the building of a new meeting-house altered the channel of enthusiasm +(iii. 79). Northampton settled down into its normal tranquillity.</p> + +<p>Some years passed, and, as religious zeal cooled, Edwards became +involved in characteristic difficulties. The pastor, it may easily be +supposed, was not popular with the rising generation. He had, as he +confesses with his usual candour, 'a constitution in many respects +peculiarly unhappy, attended with flaccid solids; vapid, sizy, and +scarce fluids; and a low tide of spirits; often occasioning a kind of +childish weakness and contemptibleness of speech, presence and +demeanour; with a disagreeable dulness and stiffness, much unfitting me +for conversation, but more especially for the government of a college,' +which he was requested to undertake (i. 86). He was, says his admiring +biographer, 'thorough in the government of his children,' who +consequently 'reverenced, esteemed, and loved him.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">313</a></span> He adopted the +plan, less popular now than then, and even more decayed in America than +in England, of 'thoroughly subduing' his children as soon as they showed +any tendency to self-will. He was a 'great enemy' to all 'vain +amusements;' and even after his children had grown up, he enforced their +abstinence from such 'pernicious practice,' and never allowed them to be +out after nine at night. Any gentleman, we are happy to add, was given +proper opportunities for courting his daughters after consulting their +parents, but on condition of conforming strictly to the family +regulations (i. 52, 53). This Puritan discipline appears to have +succeeded with Edwards' own family; but a gentleman with flaccid solids, +vapid fluids, and a fervent belief in hell-fire is seldom appreciated by +the youth even of a Puritan village.</p> + +<p>Accordingly, Edwards got into trouble by endeavouring to force his own +notions of discipline amongst certain young people, belonging to +'considerable families,' who were said to indulge in loose conversation +and equivocal books. They possibly preferred 'Pamela,' which had then +just revealed a new source of amusement to the world, to awakening +sermons; and Edwards' well-meant efforts to suppress the evil set the +town 'in a blaze' (i. 64). A more serious quarrel followed. Edwards +maintained the doctrine, which had been gradually dying out amongst the +descendants of the Puritans, that converted persons alone should be +admitted to the Lord's Supper. The practice had been different at +Northampton; and when Edwards announced his intention of enforcing the +test of professed conversion, a vigorous controversy ensued. The dispute +lasted for some years, with much mutual recrimination. A kind of +ecclesiastical council, formed from the neighbouring churches, decided +by a majority of one that he should be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">314</a></span> dismissed if his people desired +it; and the people voted for his dismissal by a majority of more than +200 to 20 (i. 69).</p> + +<p>Edwards was thus a martyr to his severe sense of discipline. His +admirers have lamented over the sentence by which the ablest of American +thinkers was banished in a kind of disgrace. Impartial readers will be +inclined to suspect that those who suffered under so rigorous a +spiritual ruler had perhaps some reason on their side. However that may +be, and I do not presume to have any opinion upon a question involving +such complex ecclesiastical disputes, the result to literature was +fortunate. In 1751 Edwards was appointed to a mission for Indians, +founded at Stockbridge, in the remotest corner of Massachusetts, where a +few remnants of the aborigines were settled on a township granted by the +colony. There were great hopes, we are told, of the probable influence +of the mission, which were destined to frustration from accidental +causes. The hopes can hardly have rested on the character of the +preacher. It is difficult to imagine a more grotesque relation between a +minister and his congregation than that which must have subsisted +between Edwards and his barbarous flock. He had remarked pathetically in +one of his writings on the very poor prospect open to the Houssatunnuck +Indians, if their salvation depended on the study of the evidences of +Christianity (iv. 245). And if Edwards preached upon the topics of which +his mind was fullest, their case would have been still harder. For it +was in the remote solitudes of this retired corner that he gave himself +up to those abstruse meditations on free-will and original sin which +form the substance of his chief writings. A sermon in the Houssatunnuck +language, if Edwards ever acquired that tongue, upon predestination, the +differences between the Arminian and the Calvinist<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">315</a></span> schemes, Liberty of +Indifference, and other such doctrines, would hardly be an improving +performance. If, however, his labours in this department 'were attended +with no remarkable visible success' (i. 83), he thought deeply and wrote +much. The publication of his treatise on the Freedom of the Will +followed in 1754, and upon the strength of the reputation which it won +for him, he was appointed President of New Jersey College in the end of +1757, only to die of small-pox in the following March. His death cut +short some considerable literary schemes, not, however, of a kind +calculated to add to his reputation. Various remains were published +after his death, and we have ample materials for forming a comprehensive +judgment of his theories. In one shape or another he succeeded in giving +utterance to his theory upon the great problems of life; and there is +little cause for regret that he did not succeed in completing that +'History of the Work of Redemption' which was to have been his <i>opus +magnum</i>. He had neither the knowledge nor the faculties for making much +of a Puritan view of universal history, and he has left a sufficient +indication of his general conception of such a book.</p> + +<p>The book upon the Freedom of the Will, which is his main title to +philosophical fame, bears marks of the conditions under which it was +composed, and which certainly did not tend to confer upon an abstruse +treatise any additional charm. Edwards' style is heavy and languid; he +seldom indulges in an illustration, and those which he gives are far +from lively; it is only at rare intervals that his logical ingenuity in +stating some intricate argument clothes his thought in language of +corresponding neatness. He has, in fact, the faults natural to an +isolated thinker. He gives his readers credit for being familiar with +the details of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">316</a></span> labyrinth in which he had wandered till every +intricacy was plainly mapped out in his own mind, and frequently dwells +at tiresome length upon some refinement which probably never occurred to +anyone but himself. A writer who, like Hume, is at once an acute thinker +and a great literary artist, is content to aim a decisive blow at the +vital points of the theory which he is opposing, and leaves to his +readers the task of following out more remote consequences; Edwards, +after winning the decisive victory, insists upon attacking his adversary +in every position in which he might conceivably endeavour to entrench +himself. It seems to be his aim to answer every objection which could +possibly be suggested, and, of course, he answers many objections which +no one would raise, whilst probably omitting others of which no +forethought could warn him. The book reads like a verbatim report of +those elaborate dialogues which he was in the habit of holding with +himself in his solitary ramblings. There is some truth in Goldsmith's +remark upon the ease of gaining an argumentative victory when you are at +once opponent and respondent. It must be added, however, that any man +who is at all fond of speculation finds in his second self the most +obstinate and perplexing of antagonists. No one else raises such a +variety of empty and vexatious quibbles, and splits hairs with such +surprising versatility. It is true that your double often shows a +certain discretion, and whilst obstinately defending certain untenable +positions contrives to glide over some weak places, which come to light +with provoking unexpectedness when you are encountered by an external +enemy. Edwards, indeed, guards himself with extreme care by an elaborate +system of logical divisions and subdivisions against the possibility of +so unpleasant a surprise; but no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">317</a></span> man can dispense with the aid of a +living antagonist, free from all suspicion of being a man of straw. The +opponents against whom he labours most strenuously were unfortunately +very feeble creatures for the most part; such as poor Chubb, the Deist, +and the once well-known Dr. Whitby, who had changed sides in more than +one controversy with more credit to his candour than to his force of +mind. Certain difficulties may, therefore, have evaded the logical +network in which he tried to enclose them; but, on the whole, he is +rather over than under anxious to stop every conceivable loophole. +Condensation, with a view to placing the vital points of his doctrine in +more salient relief, would have greatly improved his treatise. But the +fault is natural in a philosophical recluse, more intent upon thorough +investigation than upon lucid exposition.</p> + +<p>Without following his intricate reasonings, the main position may be +indicated in a few words. The doctrine, in fact, which Edwards asserted +may be said to be simply that everything has a cause, and that human +volitions are no more an exception to this universal law than any other +class of phenomena. This belief in the universality of causation rests +with him upon a primary intuition (v. 55), and not upon experience; and +his whole argument pursues the metaphysical method instead of appealing, +as a modern school would appeal, to the results of observation. The +Arminian opponent of necessity must, as he argues, either deny this +self-evident principle, or be confined to statements purely irrelevant +to the really important question. The book is occupied in hunting down +all the evasions by which these conclusions may be escaped, and in +showing that the true theory, when rightly understood, is obnoxious to +no objections on the score of morality. The ordinary mode of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">318</a></span> meeting +the argument is by appealing to consciousness. We know that we are free, +as Dr. Johnson said, and there's an end on't. Edwards argues at great +length, and in many forms, that this summary reply involves a confusion +between the two very different propositions: 'We can do what we will,' +and 'We can will what we will.' Consciousness really testifies that, if +we desire to raise our right hand, our right hand will rise in the +absence of external compulsion. It does not show that the desire itself +may either exist or not exist, independently of any preceding causes +either external or internal. The ordinary definition of free-will +assumes an infinite series of volitions, each determining all that has +gone before; or, to let Edwards speak for himself, and it will be a +sufficient specimen of his style, he says in a passage which sums up the +whole argument, that the assertion of free-will either amounts to the +merely verbal proposition that you have power to will what you have +power to will; 'or the meaning must be that a man has power to will as +he pleases or chooses to will; that is, he has power by one act of +choice to choose another; by an antecedent act of will to choose a +consequent act, and therein to execute his own choice. And if this be +their meaning, it is nothing but shuffling with those they dispute with, +and baffling their own reason. For still the question returns, wherein +lies man's liberty in that antecedent act of will which chose the +consequent act? The answer, according to the same principle, must be, +that his liberty lies also in his willing as he would, or as he chose, +or agreeably to another act of choice preceding that. And so the +question returns <i>in infinitum</i> and again <i>in infinitum</i>. In order to +support their opinion there must be no beginning, but free acts of the +will must have been chosen by foregoing acts of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">319</a></span> will in the soul of +every man without beginning, and so before he had a beginning.'</p> + +<p>The heads of most people begin to swim when they have proceeded but a +short way into such argumentation; but Edwards delights in applying +similar logical puzzles over and over again to confute the notions of a +'self-determining power in the will,' or of a 'liberty of indifferency;' +of the power of suspending the action even if the judgment has +pronounced its verdict; of Archbishop King's ingenious device of putting +the cart before the horse, and declaring that our delight is not the +cause but the consequence of our will; or Clarke's theory of liberty, as +consisting in agency which seems to erect an infinite number of +subsidiary first causes in the wills of all created beings. A short cut +to the same conclusions consists in simply denying the objective reality +of chance or contingency; but Edwards has no love of short cuts in such +matters, or rather cannot refuse himself the pleasure of following the +circuitous route as well as explaining the more direct method.</p> + +<p>This main principle established, Edwards has of course no difficulty in +showing that the supposed injury to morality rests on a misconception of +the real doctrine. If volitions, instead of being caused, are the +products of arbitrary chance, morality becomes meaningless. We approve +or disapprove of an action precisely because it implies the existence of +motives, good or bad. Punishment and reward would be useless if actions +were after all a matter of chance; and if merit implied the existence of +free-will, the formation of virtuous habits would detract from a man's +merit in so far as they tend to make virtue necessary. So far, in short, +as you admit the existence of an element of pure chance, you restrict +the sphere of law; and therefore morality, so far<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">320</a></span> from excluding, +necessarily involves an invariable connection between motives and +actions.</p> + +<p>Arguments of this kind, sufficiently familiar to all students of the +subject, are combined with others of a more doubtful character. Edwards +has no hesitation about dealing with the absolute and the infinite. He +dwells, for example, with great ingenuity upon the difficulty of +reconciling the Divine prescience with the contingency of human actions, +and has no scruple in inferring the possibility of reconciling virtue +with necessity from the fact that God is at once the type of all +perfection, and is under a necessity to be perfect. If such arguments +would be rejected as transcending the limits of human intelligence by +many who agree with his conclusions, others, equally characteristic, are +as much below the dignity of a metaphysician. Edwards draws his proofs +with the same equanimity from the most abstruse speculations as from a +child-like belief in the literal inspiration of the Scriptures. He +'proves,' for example, God's foreknowledge of human actions from such +facts as Micaiah's prophecy of Ahab's sin, and Daniel's acquaintance +with the 'horrid wickedness' about to be committed by Antiochus +Epiphanes. It is a pleasant supposition that a man who did not believe +that God could foretell events, would be awed by the authority of a +text; but Edwards' polemic is almost exclusively directed against the +hated Arminians, and he appears to be unconscious of the existence of a +genuine sceptic. He observes that he has never read Hobbes (v. 260); and +though in another work he makes a brief allusion to Hume, he never +refers to him in these speculations, whilst covering the same ground as +one of the admirable <i>Essays</i>.</p> + +<p>This simplicity is significant of Edwards' unique position. The doctrine +of Calvinism, by whatever name it may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">321</a></span> be called, is a mental tonic of +tremendous potency. Whether in its theological dress, as attributing all +events to the absolute decrees of the Almighty, or in its metaphysical +dress, as declaring that some abstract necessity governs the world, or +in the shape more familiar to modern thinkers, in which it proclaims the +universality of what has been called the reign of law, it conquers or +revolts the imagination. It forces us to conceive of all phenomena as so +many links</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i10">In the eternal chain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Which none can break, nor slip, nor overreach;<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and can, therefore, be accepted only by men who possess the rare power +of combining their beliefs into a logical whole. Most people contrive to +shirk the consequences, either by some of those evasions which, as +Edwards showed, amount to asserting the objective existence of chance, +or more commonly by forbidding their reason to follow the chain of +inferences through more than a few links. The axiom that the cause of a +cause is also the cause of the thing caused, though verbally admitted, +is beyond the reach of most intellects. People are willing to admit that +A is irrevocably joined to B, B to C, and so on to the end of the +alphabet, but they refuse to realise the connection between A and Z. The +annoyance excited by Mr. Buckle's enunciation of some very familiar +propositions, is a measure of the reluctance of the popular imagination +to accept a logical conclusion. When the dogma is associated with a +belief in eternal damnation, the consequences are indeed terrible; and +therefore it was natural that Calvinism should have become an almost +extinct creed, and the dogma have been left to the freethinkers who had +not that awful vision before their eyes. Hobbes, Collins, and Hume, the +three writers with whom the opinion was chiefly associated in English<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">322</a></span> +literature, were also the three men who were regarded as most +emphatically the devil's advocates. In the latter part of the eighteenth +century, it was indeed adopted by Hartley, by his disciple Priestley, +and by Abraham Tucker, all of whom were Christians after a fashion. But +they reconciled themselves to the belief by peculiar forms of optimism. +Tucker maintained the odd fancy that every man would ultimately receive +a precisely equal share of happiness, and thought that a few thousand +years of damnation would be enough for all practical purposes. If I +remember rightly, he roughly calculated the amount of misery to be +endured by human beings at about two minutes' suffering in a century. +Hartley maintained the still more remarkable thesis that, in some +non-natural sense, 'all individuals are always and actually infinitely +happy.' But Edwards, though an optimist in a very different sense, was +alone amongst contemporary writers of any speculative power in asserting +at once the doctrine that all events are the result of the Divine will, +and the doctrine of eternal damnation. His mind, acute as it was, yet +worked entirely in the groove provided for it. The revolting +consequences to which he was led by not running away from his premisses, +never for an instant suggested to him that the premisses might +conceivably be false. He accepts a belief in hell-fire, interpreted +after the popular fashion, without a murmur, and deduces from it all +those consequences which most theologians have evaded or covered with a +judicious veil.</p> + +<p>Edwards was luckily not an eloquent man, for his sermons would in that +case have been amongst the most terrible of human compositions. But if +ever he warms into something like eloquence, it is when he is +endeavouring to force upon the imaginations of his hearers the horrors +of their position.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">323</a></span> Perhaps the best specimen of his powers in this +department is a sermon which we are told produced a great effect at the +time of revivals, and to which, we may as well remember, Phebe Bartlet +may probably have listened. Read that sermon (vol. vii., sermon xv.) and +endeavour to picture the scene of its original delivery. Imagine the +congregation of rigid Calvinists, prepared by previous scenes of frenzy +and convulsion, and longing for the fierce excitement which was the only +break in the monotony of their laborious lives. And then imagine Edwards +ascending the pulpit, with his flaccid solids and vapid fluids, and the +pale drawn face, in which we can trace an equal resemblance to the stern +Puritan forefathers and to the keen sallow New Englander of modern +times. He gives out as his text, 'Sinners shall slide in due time,' and +the title of his sermon is, 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.' For +a full hour he dwells with unusual vehemence on the wrath of the Creator +and the sufferings of the creature. His sentences, generally languid and +complex, condense themselves into short, almost gasping asseverations. +God is angry with the wicked; as angry with the living wicked as 'with +many of those miserable creatures that He is now tormenting in hell.' +The devil is waiting: the fire is ready; the furnace is hot; the +'glittering sword is whet and held over them, and the pit hath opened +her mouth to receive them.' The unconverted are walking on a rotten +covering, where there are innumerable weak places, and those places not +distinguishable. The flames are 'gathering and lashing about' the +sinner, and all that preserves him for a moment is 'the mere arbitrary +will and uncovenanted unobliged forbearance of an incensed God.' But +does not God love sinners? Hardly in a comforting sense. 'The God that +holds you over the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">324</a></span> pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some +other loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully +provoked; He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast +into the fire;... you are ten thousand times as abominable in His eyes +as the most hateful and venomous serpent is in ours.' The comparison of +man to a loathsome viper is one of the metaphors to which Edwards most +habitually recurs (<i>e.g.</i> vii. 167, 179, 182, 198, 344, 496). No relief +is possible; Edwards will have no attempt to explain away the eternity +of which he speaks; there will be no end to the 'exquisite horrible +misery' of the damned. You, when damned, 'will know certainly that you +must wear out long ages, millions of millions of ages, in wrestling and +conflicting with this Almighty merciless vengeance: and then when you +have so done, when so many ages have actually been spent by you in this +manner, you will know that all is but a point to what remains.' Nor +might his hearers fancy that, as respectable New England Puritans, they +had no personal interest in the question. It would be awful, he says, if +we could point to one definite person in this congregation as certain to +endure such torments. 'But, alas! instead of one, how many is it likely +will remember this discourse in hell? It would be a wonder if some that +are now present should not be in hell in a very short time, before this +year is out. And it would be no wonder if some persons that now sit here +in some seats of this meeting-house in health, and quiet and secure, +should be there before to-morrow morning.'</p> + +<p>With which blessing he dismissed the congregation to their dinners, with +such appetites as might be left to them. The strained excitement which +marks this pleasing production could not be maintained; but Edwards +never shrank in cold blood from the most appalling consequences of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">325</a></span> +theories. He tells us, with superlative coolness, that the 'bulk of +mankind do throng' to hell (vii. 226). He sentences infants to hell +remorselessly. The imagination, he admits, may be relieved by the +hypothesis that infants suffer only in this world, instead of being +doomed to eternal misery. 'But it does not at all relieve one's reason;' +and that is the only faculty which he will obey (vi. 461). Historically +the doctrine is supported by the remark that God did not save the +children in Sodom, and that He actually commanded the slaughter of the +Midianitish infants. 'Happy shall he be,' it is written of Edom, 'that +taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones' (vi. 255). +Philosophically he remarks that 'a young viper has a malignant nature, +though incapable of doing a malignant action' (vi. 471), and quotes with +approval the statement of a Jewish Rabbi, that a child is wicked as soon +as born, 'for at the same time that he sucks the breasts he follows his +lust' (vi. 482), which is perhaps the superlative expression of the +theory that all natural instincts are corrupt. Finally, he enforces the +only doctrine which can equal this in horror, namely, that the saints +rejoice in the damnation of the wicked. In a sermon called 'Wicked Men +useful in their Destruction only' (vol. viii., sermon xxi.), he declares +that 'the view of the doleful condition of the damned will make them +(the saints in heaven) more prize their own blessedness.' They will +realise the wonderful grace of God, who has made so great a difference +between them and others of the same species, 'who are no worse by nature +than they, and have deserved no worse of God than they.' 'When they +shall look upon the damned,' he exclaims, 'and see their misery, how +will heaven ring with the praises of God's justice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">326</a></span> towards the wicked, +and His grace towards the saints! And with how much greater enlargement +of heart will they praise Jesus Christ their Redeemer, that ever He was +pleased to set His love upon them, His dying love!'</p> + +<p>Was the man who could utter such blasphemous sentiments—for so they +undoubtedly appear to us—a being of ordinary flesh and blood? One would +rather have supposed his solids to be of bronze, and his fluids of +vitriol, than have attributed to them the character which he describes. +That he should have been a gentle, meditative creature, around whose +knees had clung eleven 'young vipers' of his own begetting, is certainly +an astonishing reflection. And yet, to do Edwards justice, we must +remember two things. In the first place, the responsibility for such +ghastly beliefs cannot be repudiated by anyone who believes in the +torments of hell. Catholics and Protestants must share the opprobrium +due to the assertion of this tremendous doctrine. Nor does Arminianism +really provide more than a merely verbal escape from the difficulty. +Jeremy Taylor, for example, draws a picture of hell quite as fearful and +as material as Edwards', and, if animated by a less fanatical spirit, +adorned by an incomparably more vivid fancy. He specially improves upon +Edwards' description by introducing the sense of smell. The tyrant who +fastened the dead to the living invented an exquisite torment; 'but what +is this in respect of hell, when each body of the damned is more +loathsome and unsavoury than a million of dead dogs, and all those +pressed and crowded together in so strait a compass? Bonaventure goes so +far as to say that if one only of the damned were brought into this +world, it were sufficient to infect the whole earth. Neither shall the +devils send forth a better smell; for, although<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">327</a></span> they are spirits, yet +those fiery bodies unto which they are fastened and confined shall be of +a more pestilential flavour.' It is vain to attempt an extenuation of +the horror, by relieving the Almighty from the responsibility of this +fearful prison-house. The dogma of free-will is a transparent mockery. +It simply enables the believer to retain the hideous side of his creed +by abandoning the rational side. To pass over the objection that by +admitting the existence of chance it really destroys all intelligible +measures of merit and of justice, the really awful dogma remains. You +still believe that God has made man too weak to stand alone, that He has +placed him amidst temptations where his fall, if not rigidly certain in +a given case, is still inevitable for the mass, and then torments him +eternally for his wickedness. Whether a man is slain outright, or merely +placed without help to wander at random through innumerable pitfalls, +makes no real difference in the character of the action. Theologians +profess horror at the doctrine of infantile damnation, though they +cannot always make up their minds to disavow it explicitly, but they +will find it easier to condemn the doctrine than effectually to +repudiate all responsibility. To the statement that it follows logically +from the dogma of original sin, they reply that logic is out of place in +such questions. But, if this be granted, do they not maintain doctrines +as hideous, when calmly examined? It is blasphemous, we are told, to say +with Edwards, that God holds the 'little vipers,' whom we call 'helpless +innocents,' suspended over the pit of hell, and drops millions of them +into ruthless torments. Certainly it is blasphemous. But is an infant +really more helpless than the poor savage of Australia or St. Giles, +surrounded from his birth with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">328</a></span> cruel and brutal natures, and never +catching one glimpse of celestial light? Nay, when the question is +between God and man, does not the difference between the infant and the +philosopher or the statesman vanish into nothing? All, whatever figment +of free-will may be set up, are equally helpless in face of the +surrounding influences which mould their characters and their fate. +Young children, the heterodox declare, are innocent. But the theologian +replies with unanswerable truth, that God looks at the heart and not at +the actions, and that science and theology are at one in declaring that +in the child are the germs of the adult man. If human nature is corrupt +and therefore hateful to God, Edwards is quite right in declaring that +the bursting bud must be as hateful as the full-grown tree. To beings of +a loftier order, to say nothing of a Being of infinite power and wisdom, +the petty race of man would appear as helpless as insects appear to us, +and the distinction between the children or the ignorant, and the wise +and full-grown, an irrelevant refinement.</p> + +<p>It is of course true that the patient reception of this and similar +doctrines would indicate at the present day a callous heart or a +perverted intellect. Though, in the sphere of abstract speculation, we +cannot draw any satisfactory line between the man and the infant, there +is a wide gap to the practical imagination. A man ought to be shocked +when confronted with this fearfully concrete corollary to his theories. +But the blame should be given where it is due. The Calvinist is not to +blame for the theory of universal law which he shares with the +philosopher, but for the theory of damnation which he shares with the +Arminian. The hideous dogma is the existence of the prison-house, not +the belief that its inmates are sent there by God's inscrutable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">329</a></span> decree, +instead of being drafted into it by lot. And here we come to the second +fact which must be remembered in Edwards' favour. The living truths in +his theory are chained to dead fancies, and the fancies have an odour as +repulsive as Taylor's 'million of dead dogs.' But on the truths is +founded a religious and moral system which, however erroneous it may +appear to some thinkers, is conspicuous for its vigour and loftiness. +Edwards often shows himself a worthy successor of the great men who led +the moral revolt of the Reformation. Amongst some very questionable +metaphysics and much outworn—sometimes repulsive—superstition, he +grasps the central truths on which all really noble morality must be +based. The mode in which they presented themselves to his mind may be +easily traced. Calvinism, logically developed, leads to Pantheism. The +absolute sovereignty of God, the doctrine to which Edwards constantly +returns, must be extended over all nature as well as over the fate of +the individual human soul. The peculiarity of Edwards' mind was, that +the doctrine had thus expanded along particular lines of thought, +without equally affecting others. He is a kind of Spinoza-Mather; he +combines, that is, the logical keenness of the great metaphysician with +the puerile superstitions of the New England divine; he sees God in all +nature, and yet believes in the degrading supernaturalism of the Salem +witches. The object of his faith, in short, is the 'infinite Jehovah' +(vi. 170), the God to whose all-pervading power none can set a limit, +and who is yet the tutelary deity of a petty clan; and there is +something almost bewildering in the facility with which he passes from +one conception to the other without the smallest consciousness of any +discontinuity. Of his coincidence in the popular theories, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">330</a></span> +especially in the doctrine of damnation, I have already given instances. +His utterances derived from a loftier source are given with equal +emphasis. At the age of fifteen or sixteen he had said 'God and real +existence are the same; God is, and there is none else.'<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> The same +doctrine is the foundation of the theories expounded in his treatises on +Virtue and on the End of God in Creation. In the last of these, for +example, he uses the argument (depending upon a conception familiar to +the metaphysicians of the previous age), that benevolence, consisting in +regard to 'Being in general,' must be due to any being in proportion to +the degree of existence (ii. 401). Now 'all other being is as nothing in +comparison of the Divine Being.' God is 'the foundation and fountain of +all being and all perfection, from whom all is perfectly derived, and on +whom all is most absolutely and perfectly dependent; whose being and +beauty is, as it were, the sum and comprehension of all existence and +excellence, much more than the sun is the fountain and summary +comprehension of all the light and brightness of the day' (ii. 405). As +he says in the companion treatise, 'the eternal and infinite Being is, +in effect, being in general, and comprehends universal existence' (vi. +59). The only end worthy of God must, therefore, be his own glory. This +is not to attribute selfishness to God, for 'in God, the love of Himself +and the love of the public are not to be distinguished as in man, +because God's being, as it were, comprehends all' (vi. 53). In +communicating His fulness to His creatures, He is of necessity the +ultimate end; but it is a fallacy to make God and the creature in this +affair of the emanation of the Divine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">331</a></span> fulness, 'the opposite parts of a +disjunction' (vi. 55). The creature's love of God and complacence in the +Divine perfections are the same thing as the manifestation of the Divine +glory. 'They are all but the emanations of God's glory, or the excellent +brightness and fulness of the Divinity diffused, overflowing, and, as it +were, enlarged; or, in one word, existing <i>ad extra</i>' (vi. 117). In more +familiar dialect, our love to God is but God's goodness making itself +objective. The only knowledge which deserves the name is the knowledge +of God, and virtue is but the knowledge of God under a different name.</p> + +<p>Without dwelling upon the relations of this doctrine to modern forms of +Pantheism, I must consider this last proposition, which is of vital +importance in Edwards' system, and of which the theological and the +metaphysical element is curiously blended. God is to the universe—to +use Edwards' own metaphor—what the sun is to our planet; and the +metaphor would have been more adequate if he had been acquainted with +modern science. The sun's action is the primary cause of all the +infinitely complex play of forces which manifest themselves in the fall +of a raindrop or in the operations of a human brain. But as some bodies +may seem to resist the action of the sun's rays, so may some created +beings set themselves in opposition to the Divine Will. To a +thoroughgoing Pantheist, indeed, such an opposition must appear to be +impossible if we look deep enough, and sin, in this sense, be merely an +illusion, caused by our incapacity of taking in the whole design of the +Almighty. Edwards, however, though dimly aware of the difficulty, is not +so consistent in his Pantheism as to be much troubled with it. He admits +that, by some mysterious process, corruption has intruded itself into +the Divine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">332</a></span> universe. The all-pervading harmony is marred by a discord +due, in his phraseology, to the fall of man. Over the ultimate cause of +this discord lies a veil which can never be withdrawn to mortal +intelligence. Assuming its existence, however, virtue consists, if one +may so speak, in that quality which fits a man to be a conducting +medium, and vice in that which makes him a non-conducting medium to the +solar forces. This proposition is confounded in Edwards' mind, as in +that of most metaphysicians, with the very different proposition that +virtue consists in recognising the Divine origin of those forces. It is +characteristic, in fact, of his metaphysical school, to identify the +logical with the causal connection, and to assume that the definition of +a thing necessarily constitutes its essence. 'Virtue,' says Edwards, 'is +the union of heart to being in general, or to God, the Being of beings' +(ii. 421), and thus consists in the intellectual apprehension of Deity, +and in the emotion founded upon and necessarily involving the +apprehension. The doctrine that whatever is done so as to promote the +glory of God is virtuous, is with him identified with the doctrine that +whatever is done consciously in order to promote the glory of God is +virtuous. The major premiss of the syllogism which proves an action to +be virtuous must be actually present to the mind of the agent. This, in +utilitarian phraseology, is to confound between the criterion and the +motive. If it is, as Edwards says, the test of a virtuous action that it +should tend to 'the highest good of being in general,' it does not +follow that an action is only virtuous when done with a conscious +reference to that end. But Edwards overlooks or denies the distinction, +and assumes, for example, as an evident corollary, that a love of +children or friends is only virtuous in so far as it is founded on a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">333</a></span> +desire for the general good, which, in his sense, is a desire for the +glory of God (ii. 428). He judges actions, that is, not by their +tendency, but by their nature; and their nature is equivalent to their +logic.</p> + +<p>His metaphysical theory coincides precisely with his theological view, +and is generally expressed in theological language. The love of 'Being +in general' is the love of God. The intellectual intuition is the +reflection of the inward light, and the recognition of a mathematical +truth is but a different phase of the process which elsewhere produces +conversion. Intuition is a kind of revelation and revelation is a +special intuition.</p> + +<p>One of his earliest published sermons is devoted to prove the existence +of 'a Divine and supernatural light, immediately imparted to the soul by +the Spirit of God' (vol. viii., sermon xxvii.). On that fundamental +doctrine his whole theological system is based; as his metaphysical +system rests on the existence of absolute <i>à priori</i> truths. The +knowledge of God sums up all true beliefs, and justifies all virtuous +emotions, as the power of God supports all creation at every instant. +'It is by a Divine influence that the laws of nature are upheld, and a +constant concurrence of Divine power is necessary in order to our being, +moving, or having a being' (v. 419). To be constantly drawing sustenance +from the eternal power which everywhere underlies the phenomena of the +world is the necessary condition of spiritual life, as to breathe the +air is the condition of physical life. The force which this conception, +whether true or false, exercises over the imagination, and the depth +which it gives to Edwards' moral views, are manifest at every turn. +Edwards rises far above those theories, recurring in so many different +forms, which place<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">334</a></span> the essence of religion in some outward observances, +or in a set of propositions not vitally connected with the spiritual +constitution. Edwards' contemporaries, such as Lardner or Sherlock, +thought that to be a Christian was to accept certain results of +antiquarian research. With a curious <i>naïveté</i> they sometimes say that a +ploughman or a cobbler could summarily answer the problems which have +puzzled generations of critics. Edwards sees the absurdity of hoping +that a genuine faith can ever be based on such balancing of historical +probabilities. The cobbler was to be awed by the learned man; but how +could he implicitly trust a learned man when his soul was at stake, and +when learned men differed? To convince the ignorant or the Houssatunnuck +Indian, God's voice must speak through a less devious channel. The +transcendent glory of Divine things proves their Divinity intuitively; +the mind does not indeed discard argument, but it does not want any +'long chain of argument; the argument is but one and the evidence +direct; the mind ascends to the truth of the Gospel but by one step, and +that is its Divine glory.' The moral theory of the contemporary +rationalists was correlative to their religious theory. To be religious +was to believe that certain facts had once happened; to be moral was to +believe that under certain circumstances you would at some future time +go to hell. Virtue of that kind was not to Edwards' taste, though few +men have been less sparing in using the appeal to damnation. But threats +of hell-fire were only meant to startle the sinner from his repose. His +morality could be framed from no baser material than love to the Divine +perfections. 'What thanks are due to you for not loving your own misery, +and for being willing to take some pains to escape burning in hell to +all eternity?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">335</a></span> There is ne'er a devil in hell but would gladly do the +same' (viii. 145).</p> + +<p>The strength, however, and the weakness of Edwards as a moralist are +best illustrated from the two treatises on the Religious Affections and +on Original Sin. The first, which was the fruit of his experiences at +Northampton, may be described as a system of religious diagnostics. By +what symptoms are you to distinguish—that was the problem which forced +itself upon him—the spiritual state produced by the Divine action from +that which is but a hollow mockery? After his mode of judging in +concrete cases, as already indicated, we are rather surprised by the +calm and sensible tone of his argument. The deep sense of the vast +importance of the events to which he was a witness makes him the more +scrupulous in testing their real character. He resists the temptation to +dwell upon those noisy and questionable manifestations in which the +vulgar thirst for the wonderful found the most appropriate testimony to +the work. Roman Catholic archbishops at the present day can exhort their +hearers to put their faith in a silly story of a vision, on the express +ground that the popularity of the belief amongst Catholics proves its +Divine origin. That is wonderfully like saying that a successful lie +should be patronised so long as it is on the side of the Church. +Edwards, brought up in a manlier school, deals with such phenomena in a +different spirit. Suppose, he says, that a person terrified by threats +of hell-fire has a vision 'of a person with a beautiful countenance, +smiling on him with arms open and with blood dropping down,' whom he +supposes to be Christ come to promise him eternal life, are we to assume +that this vision and the consequent transports infallibly indicate +supernatural agency? No, he replies, with equal sense and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">336</a></span> honesty; 'he +must have but slightly considered human nature who thinks such things +cannot arise in this manner without any supernatural excitement of +Divine power' (iv. 72). Many mischievous delusions have their origin in +this error. 'It is a low, miserable notion of spiritual sense' to +suppose that these 'external ideas' (ideas, that is, such as enter by +the senses) are proofs of Divine interference. Ample experience has +shown that they are proofs not of the spiritual health which comes from +communion with God, but of 'weakness of body and mind and distempers of +body' (iv. 143). Experience has supplied exemplary confirmations of +Edwards' wisdom. Neither bodily convulsions, nor vehement excitement of +mind, nor even revelations of things to come (iv. 158), are sufficient +proofs of that mysterious change of soul which is called conversion. No +external test, in fact, can be given. Man cannot judge decisively, but +the best symptoms are such proofs as increased humility, a love of +Christ for His own sake, without reference to heaven or hell, a sense of +the infinite beauty of Divine things, a certain 'symmetry and +proportion' between the affections themselves (iv. 314), a desire for +higher perfection, and a rich harvest of the fruit of Christian +practice.</p> + +<p>So far, Edwards is unassailable from his own point of view. Our theory +of religion may differ from his; but at least he fully realises how +profound is the meaning of the word, and aims at conquering all human +faculties, not at controlling a few external manifestations. But his +further applications of the theory lead him into more doubtful +speculations. That Being, a union with whom constitutes true holiness, +is not only to be the ideal of perfect goodness, but He must be the God +of the Calvinists, who fulfils the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">337</a></span> stipulations of a strange legal +bargain, and the God of the Jews, who sentences whole nations to +massacre for the crimes of their ancestors. Edwards has hitherto been +really protesting against that lower conception of God which is latent +in at least the popular versions of Catholic or Arminian theology, and +to which Calvinism opposes a loftier view. God, on this theory, is not +really almighty, for the doctrine of free-will places human actions and +their results beyond His control. He is scarcely omniscient, for, like +human rulers, He judges by actions, not by the intrinsic nature of the +soul, and therefore distributes His rewards and punishments on a system +comparable to that of mere earthly jurisprudence. He is at most the +infallible judge of actions, not the universal ordainer of events and +distributor of life and happiness. Edwards' profound conviction of the +absolute sovereignty of God leads him to reject all such feeble +conceptions. But he has now to tell us where the Divine influence has +actually displayed itself; and his view becomes strangely narrowed. +Instead of confessing that all good gifts come from God, he infers that +those which do not come from his own God must be radically vicious. +Already, as we have seen, in virtue of his leading principle, he has +denied to all natural affections the right to be truly virtuous. Unless +they involve a conscious reference to God, they are but delusive +resemblances of the reality. He admits that the natural man can in +various ways produce very fair imitations of true virtue. By help of +association of ideas, for example, or by the force of sympathy, it is +possible that benevolence may become pleasing and malevolence +displeasing, even when our own interest is not involved (ii. 436). Nay, +there is a kind of moral sense natural to man, which consists in a +certain preception of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">338</a></span> the harmony between sin and punishment, and which +therefore does not properly spring from self-love. This moral sense may +even go so far as to recognise the propriety of yielding all to the God +from whom we receive everything (ii. 443), and the justice of the +punishment of sinners. And yet this natural conscience does not imply +the existence of a 'truly virtuous taste or determination of the mind to +relish and delight in the essential beauty of true virtue, arising from +a virtuous benevolence of the heart' (ii. 445). God has bestowed such +instincts upon men for their preservation here; but they will disappear +in the next world, where no such need for them exists. He is driven, +indeed, to make some vague concessions (against which his enlightened +commentators protest), to the effect that 'these things [the natural +affections] have something of the general nature of virtue, which is +love' (ii. 456); but no such uncertain affinity can make them worthy to +be reckoned with that union with God which is the effect of the Divine +intervention alone.</p> + +<p>Edwards is thus in the singular position of a Pantheist who yet regards +all nature as alienated from God; and in the treatise on Original Sin he +brings out the more revolting consequences of that view by help of the +theological dogma of corruption. He there maintains in its fullest sense +the terrible thesis, that all men are naturally in a state of which the +inevitable issue is their 'utter eternal perdition, as being finally +accursed of God and the subjects of His remediless wrath through sin' +(vi. 137). The evidence of this appalling statement is made up, with a +simplicity which would be amusing if employed in a less fearful cause, +of various texts from Scripture, quoted, of course, after the most +profoundly unhistorical fashion; of inferences from the universality of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">339</a></span> +death, regarded as the penalty incurred by Adam; of general reflections +upon the heathen world and the idolatry of the Jews; and of the +sentences pronounced by Jehovah against the Canaanites. In one of his +sermons, of portentous length and ferocity (vol. vii., sermon iii.), he +expands the doctrine that natural men—which includes all men who have +not gone through the mysterious process of conversion—are God's +enemies. Their heart, he says, 'is like a viper, hissing and spitting +poison at God;' and God requites their ill-will with undying enmity and +never-ceasing torments. Their unconsciousness of that enmity, and even +their belief that they are rightly affected towards God, is no proof +that the enmity does not exist. The consequences may be conceived. 'God +who made you has given you a capacity to bear torment; and He has that +capacity in His hands; and He can enlarge it and make you capable of +more misery, as much as He will. If God hates anyone and sets Himself +against him as His enemy, what cannot He do with him? How dreadful it +must be to fall into the hands of such an enemy!' (vii. 201). How +dreadful, we add, is the conception of the universe which implies that +God is such an enemy of the bulk of His creatures; and how strangely it +combines with the mild Pantheism which traces and adores the hand of God +in all natural objects! The doctrine, it is to be observed, which is +expanded through many pages of the book on Original Sin, is not merely +that men are legally guilty, as being devoid of 'true virtue,' though +possessed of a certain factitious moral sense, but that they are +actually for the most part detestably wicked. One illustration of his +method may be sufficient. The vileness of man is proved by the remark +(not peculiar to Edwards), that men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">340</a></span> who used to live 1,000 years now +live only 70; whilst throughout Christendom their life does not average +more than 40 or 50 years; so that 'sensuality and debauchery' have +shortened our days to a twentieth part of our former allowance.</p> + +<p>Thus the Divine power, which is in one sense the sole moving force of +the universe, is limited, so far as its operation upon men's hearts is +concerned, to that small minority who have gone through the process of +conversion as recognised by Edwards' sect. All others, heathens, +infants, and the great mass of professed Christians, are sentenced to +irretrievable perdition. The simplicity with which he condemns all other +forms even of his own religion is almost touching. He incidentally +remarks, for example, that external exercises may not show true virtue, +because they have frequently proceeded from false religion. Members of +the Romish Church and many ancient 'hermits and anchorites' have been +most energetic in such exercises, and Edwards once lived next to a Jew +who appeared to him 'the devoutest person that he ever saw in his life' +(iv. 90); but, as he quietly assumes, all such appearances must of +course be delusive.</p> + +<p>Once more, then, we are brought back to the question, How could any man +hold such doctrines without going mad? or, as experience has reconciled +us to that phenomenon, How could a man with so many elevated conceptions +of the truth reconcile these ghastly conclusions to the nobler part of +his creed? Edwards' own explanations of the difficulty—such as they +are—do not help us very far. The argument by which he habitually +defends the justice of the Almighty sounds very much like a poor quibble +in his mouth, though it is not peculiar to him. Our obligation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">341</a></span> towards +God, he says, must be in proportion to His merits; therefore it is +infinite. Now there is no merit in paying a debt which we owe; and hence +the fullest discharge of our duty deserves no reward. On the other hand, +there is demerit in refusing to pay a debt; and therefore any +short-coming deserves an infinite penalty (vi. 155). Without examining +whether our duty is proportional to the perfection of its object, and is +irrespective of our capacities, there is one vital objection to this +doctrine, which Edwards had adopted from less coherent reasoners. His +theory, as I have said, so far from destroying virtue, gives it the +fullest possible meaning. There can be no more profound distinction than +between the affections which harmonise with the Divine will and those +which are discordant, though it might puzzle a more consistent Pantheist +to account for the existence of the latter. That, however, is a primary +doctrine with Edwards. But if virtue remains, it is certain that his +theory seems to be destructive both of merit and demerit as between man +and God. If we are but clay in the hands of the potter, there is no +intelligible meaning in our deserving from him either good or evil. We +are as He has made us. Edwards explains, indeed, that the sense of +desert implies a certain natural congruity between evil-doing and +punishment (ii. 430). But the question recurs, how in such a case the +congruity arises? It is one of the illusions which should disappear when +we rise to the sphere of the absolute and infinite. The metaphor about a +debt and its payment, though common in vulgar Calvinism, is quite below +Edwards' usual level of thought. And, if we try to restate the argument +in a more congenial form, its force disappears. The love of God, even +though imperfect, should surely imply some conformity to His nature; and +even an imperfect love<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">342</a></span> should hardly be confounded, one might fancy, +with an absolute enmity to the Creator. Though the argument, which is +several times repeated, appears to have satisfied Edwards, it would have +been more in harmony with his principles to declare that, as between man +and his God, there could be no question of justice. The absolute +sovereignty of the Creator is the only, and to him it should be the +conclusive, answer to such complaints. But, whatever may be the fate of +this apology, the one irremovable difficulty remains behind. If God be +the one universal cause of all things, is He not the cause of evil as +well as good? Do you not make God, in short, the author of sin?</p> + +<p>With this final difficulty, which, indeed, besets all such theories, +Edwards struggles long and with less than his usual vigour. He tries to +show, and perhaps successfully, that the difficulty concerns his +opponents as much as himself. They can, at least, escape only by +creating a new kind of necessity, under the name of contingency; for God +is, on this theory, like a mariner who has constantly to shape his +course to meet unforeseen and uncontrollable gusts of wind (v. 298); and +to make the best of it. He insists upon the difference, not very +congenial to his scheme, between ordering and permitting evil. The sun, +he says (v. 293), causes light, but is only the occasion of darkness. +If, however, the sun voluntarily retired from the world, it could +scarcely evade the responsibility of its absence. And, finally, he makes +the ordinary distinction, and that which is perhaps the best answer to +be made to an unanswerable difficulty. Christ's crucifixion, he says, +was so far bad as it was brought about by malignant murderers: but as +considered by God, with a view to all its glorious consequences, it was +not evil, but good (v. 297). And thus any action may have two aspects;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">343</a></span> +and that which appears to us, whose view is necessarily limited, as +simply evil, may, when considered by an infinite intelligence, as part +of the general order of things, be absolutely good. God does not will +sin as sin, but as a necessary part of a generally perfect system.</p> + +<p>Here, however, in front of that ultimate mystery which occurs in all +speculation, I must take leave of this singular thinker. In a +frequently-quoted passage, Mackintosh speaks of his 'power of subtle +argument, perhaps unmatched, certainly unsurpassed amongst men.' The +eulogy seems to be rather overstrained, unless we measure subtlety of +thought rather by the complexity and elaboration of its embodiment than +by the keenness of the thought itself. But that Edwards possessed +extraordinary acuteness is as clear as it is singular that so acute a +man should have suffered his intellectual activity to be restrained +within such narrow fetters. Placed in a different medium, under the same +circumstances, for example, as Hume or Kant, he might have developed a +system of metaphysics comparable in its effect upon the history of +thought to the doctrines of either of those thinkers. He was, one might +fancy, formed by nature to be a German professor, and accidentally +dropped into the American forests. Far away from the main currents of +speculation, ignorant of the conclusions reached by his most cultivated +contemporaries, and deriving his intellectual sustenance chiefly from an +obsolete theology, with some vague knowledge of the English followers of +Locke, his mind never expanded itself freely. Yet, even after making +allowance for his secluded life, we are astonished at the powerful grasp +which Calvinism, in its expiring age, had laid upon so penetrating an +intellect. The framework of dogma was so powerful, that the explosive +force of Edwards' speculations,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">344</a></span> instead of destroying his early +principles by its recoil, expended its whole energy along the line in +which orthodox opinion was not injured. Most bold speculators, indeed, +suffer from a kind of colour-blindness, which conceals from them a whole +order of ideas, sufficiently familiar to very inferior minds. Edwards' +utter unconsciousness of the aspect which his doctrines would present to +anyone who should have passed beyond the charmed circle of orthodox +sentiment is, however, more surprising than the similar defect in any +thinker of nearly equal acuteness. In the middle of the eighteenth +century, he is still in bondage to the dogmas of the Pilgrim Fathers; he +is as indifferent to the audacious revolt of the deists and Hume as if +the old theological dynasty were still in full vigour; and the fact, +whatever else it may prove, proves something for the enduring vitality +of the ideas which had found an imperfect expression in Calvinism. +Clearing away the crust of ancient superstition, we may still find in +Edwards' writings a system of morality as ennobling, and a theory of the +universe as elevated, as can be discovered in any theology. That the +crust was thick and hard, and often revolting in its composition, is, +indeed, undeniable; but the genuine metal is there, no less unmistakably +than the refuse.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> The Works of President Edwards. Worcester (Mass.), 1808.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> The population of Massachusetts is stated at 164,000 +inhabitants in 1742, and 240,000 in 1761.—<i>See</i> Holmes' Annals.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> These early New England patriarchs were blessed with +abundant families. Edwards' father had eleven children, his paternal +grandfather thirteen, and his maternal grandfather had twelve children +by a lady who had already three children by a previous marriage.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> See an interesting article in the 'American Cyclopedia,' +which has, however, this odd peculiarity, that it never mentions hell in +discussing the theories of Edwards.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">345</a></span></p> +<h2><i>HORACE WALPOLE</i></h2> + + +<p>The history of England, throughout a very large segment of the +eighteenth century, is simply a synonym for the works of Horace Walpole. +There are, indeed, some other books upon the subject. Some good stories +are scattered up and down the 'Annual Register,' the 'Gentleman's +Magazine,' and Nichols' 'Anecdotes.' There is a speech or two of Burke's +not without merit, and a readable letter may be disinterred every now +and then from beneath the piles of contemporary correspondence. When the +history of the times comes to be finally written in the fashion now +prevalent, in which some six portly octavos are allotted to a year, and +an event takes longer to describe than to occur, the industrious will +find ample mines of waste paper in which they may quarry to their +heart's content. Though Hansard was not, and newspapers were in their +infancy, the shelves of the British Museum and other repositories groan +beneath mountains of State papers, law reports, pamphlets, and chaotic +raw materials, from which some precious ore may be smelted down. But +these amorphous masses are attractive chiefly to the philosophers who +are too profound to care for individual character, or to those +praiseworthy students who would think the labour of a year well rewarded +by the discovery of a single fact tending to throw a shade of additional +perplexity upon the secret of Junius. Walpole's writings belong<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">346</a></span> to the +good old-fashioned type of history, which aspires to be nothing more +than the quintessence of contemporary gossip. If the opinion be +pardonable in these days, history of that kind has not only its charm, +but its serious value. If not very profound or comprehensive, it +impresses upon us the fact—so often forgotten—that our grandfathers +were human beings. The ordinary historian reduces them to mere +mechanical mummies; in Walpole's pages they are still living flesh and +blood. Turn over any of the proper decorous history books, mark every +passage where, for a moment, we seem to be transported to the past—to +the thunders of Chatham, the drivellings of Newcastle, or the prosings +of George Grenville, as they sounded in contemporary ears—and it will +be safe to say that, on counting them up, a good half will turn out to +be reflections from the illuminating flashes of Walpole. Excise all that +comes from him, and the history sinks towards the level of the solid +Archdeacon Coxe; add his keen touches, and, as in the 'Castle of +Otranto,' the portraits of our respectable old ancestors, which have +been hanging in gloomy repose upon the wall, suddenly step from their +frames, and, for some brief space, assume a spectral vitality.</p> + +<p>It is only according to rule that a writer who has been so useful should +have been a good deal abused. No one is so amusing and so generally +unpopular as a clever retailer of gossip. Yet it does seem rather hard +that Walpole should have received such hard measure from Macaulay, +through whose pages so much of his light has been transfused. The +explanation, perhaps, is easy. Macaulay dearly loved the paradox that a +man wrote admirably precisely because he was a fool, and applied it to +the two greatest portrait painters of the times—Walpole and Boswell. +There is something<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">347</a></span> which hurts our best feelings in the success of a +man whom we heartily despise. It seems to imply, which is intolerable, +that our penetration has been at fault, or that merit—that is to say, +our own conspicuous quality—is liable to be out-stripped in this world +by imposture. It is consoling if we can wrap ourselves in the belief +that good work can be extracted from bad brains, and that shallowness, +affectation, and levity can, by some strange chemistry, be transmuted +into a substitute for genius. Do we not all, if we have reached middle +age, remember some idiot (of course he was an idiot!) at school or +college who has somehow managed to slip past us in the race of life, and +revenge ourselves by swearing that he is an idiot still, and that idiocy +is a qualification for good fortune? Swift somewhere says that a +paper-cutter does its work all the better when it is blunt, and converts +the fact into an allegory of human affairs showing that decorous dulness +is an over-match for genius. Macaulay was incapable, both in a good and +bad sense, of Swift's trenchant misanthropy. His dislike to Walpole was +founded not so such upon posthumous jealousy—though that passion is not +so rare as absurd—as on the singular contrast between the character and +intellect of the two men. The typical Englishman, with his rough, strong +sense, passing at times into the narrowest insular prejudice, detested +the Frenchified fine gentleman who minced his mother tongue and piqued +himself on cosmopolitan indifference to patriotic sentiment: the +ambitious historian was irritated by the contempt which the dilettante +dabbler in literature affected for their common art; and the +thoroughgoing Whig was scandalised by the man who, whilst claiming that +sacred name, and living face to face with Chatham and Burke and the +great Revolution families in all their glory,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">348</a></span> ventured to intimate his +opinion that they, like other idols, had a fair share of clay and +rubbish in their composition, and who, after professing a kind of sham +republicanism, was frightened by the French Revolution into a paroxysm +of ultra-Toryism. 'You wretched fribble!' exclaims Macaulay; 'you +shallow scorner of all that is noble! You are nothing but a heap of +silly whims and conceited airs! Strip off one mask of affectation from +your mind, and we are still as far as ever from the real man. The very +highest faculty that can be conceded to you is a keen eye for oddities, +whether in old curiosity shops or in Parliament; and to that you owe +whatever just reputation you have acquired.' Macaulay's fervour of +rebuke is amusing, though, by righteous Nemesis, it includes a species +of blindness as gross as any that he attributes to Walpole. The summary +decision that the chief use of France is to interpret England to Europe, +is a typical example of that insular arrogance for which Matthew Arnold +popularised the name of Philistinism.</p> + +<p>Yet criticism of this one-sided kind has its value. At least it suggests +a problem. What is the element left out of account? Folly is never the +real secret of a literary reputation, or what noble harvests of genius +we should produce! If we patiently take off all the masks we must come +at last to the animating principle beneath. Even the great clothes +philosophers did not hold that a mere Chinese puzzle of mask within mask +could enclose sheer vacancy; there must be some kernel within, which may +be discovered by sufficient patience. And in the first place, it may be +asked, why did poor Walpole wear a mask at all? The answer seems to be +obvious. The men of that age may be divided by a line which, to the +philosophic eye, is of far more importance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">349</a></span> than that which separated +Jacobites from loyal Whigs or Dissenters from High Churchmen. It +separated the men who could drink two bottles of port after dinner from +the men who could not. To men of delicate digestions the test imposed by +the jovial party in ascendency must have been severer than those due to +political or ecclesiastical bigotry. They had to choose between social +disabilities on the one side, and on the other indigestion for +themselves and gout for their descendants. Thackeray, in a truly +pathetic passage, partly draws the veil from their sufferings. Almost +all the wits of Queen Anne's reign, he observes, were fat: 'Swift was +fat; Addison was fat; Gay and Thomson were preposterously fat; all that +fuddling and punch-drinking, that club and coffee-house boosing, +shortened the lives and enlarged the waistcoats of men of that age.' +Think of the dinner described, though with intentional exaggeration, in +Swift's 'Polite Conversation,' and compare the bill of fare with the +<i>menu</i> of a modern London dinner. The very report of such +conviviality—before which Christopher North's performances in the +'Noctes Ambrosianæ' sink into insignificance—is enough to produce +nightmares in the men of our degenerate times, and may help us to +understand the peevishness of feeble invalids such as Pope and Lord +Hervey in the elder generation, or Walpole in that which was rising. +Amongst these Gargantuan consumers, who combined in one the attributes +of 'gorging Jack and guzzling Jemmy,' Sir Robert Walpole was celebrated +for his powers, and seems to have owed to them no small share of his +popularity. Horace writes piteously from the paternal mansion, to which +he had returned in 1743, not long after his tour in Italy, to one of his +artistic friends: 'Only imagine,' he exclaims, 'that I here every day +see men who are mountains of roast<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">350</a></span> beef, and only seem just roughly +hewn out into outlines of human form, like the giant rock at Pratolino! +I shudder when I see them brandish their knives in act to carve, and +look on them as savages that devour one another. I should not stare at +all more than I do if yonder alderman at the lower end of the table were +to stick his fork into his neighbour's jolly cheek, and cut a brave +slice of brown and fat. Why, I'll swear I see no difference between a +country gentleman and a sirloin; whenever the first laughs or the second +is cut, there run out just the same streams of gravy! Indeed, the +sirloin does not ask quite so many questions.' What was the style of +conversation at these tremendous entertainments had better be left to +the imagination. Sir R. Walpole's theory on that subject is upon record; +and we can dimly guess at the feelings of a delicate young gentleman who +had just learnt to talk about Domenichinos and Guidos, and to buy +ancient bronzes, when plunged into the coarse society of these mountains +of roast beef. As he grew up manners became a trifle more refined, and +the customs described so faithfully by Fielding and Smollett belonged to +a lower social stratum. Yet we can fancy Walpole's occasional visit to +his constituents, and imagine him forced to preside at one of those +election feasts which still survive on Hogarth's canvas. Substitute him +for the luckless fine gentleman in a laced coat, who represents the +successful candidate in the first picture of the series. A drunken voter +is dropping lighted pipe ashes upon his wig; a hideous old hag is +picking his pockets; a boy is brewing oceans of punch in a mash-tub; a +man is blowing bagpipes in his ear; a fat parson close by is gorging the +remains of a haunch of venison; a butcher is pouring gin on his +neighbour's broken head; an alderman—a very mountain of roast beef—is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">351</a></span> +sinking back in a fit, whilst a barber is trying to bleed him; brickbats +are flying in at the windows; the room reeks with the stale smell of +heavy viands and the fresh vapours of punch and gin, whilst the very air +is laden with discordant howls and thick with oaths and ribald songs. +Only think of the smart young candidate's headache next morning in the +days when soda-water was not invented! And remember too that the +representatives were not entirely free from sympathy with the coarseness +of their constituents. Just at the period of Hogarth's painting, +Walpole, when speaking of the feeling excited by a Westminster election, +has occasion to use this pleasing 'new fashionable proverb'—'We spit in +his hat on Thursday, and wiped it off on Friday.' It owed its origin to +a feat performed by Lord Cobham at an assembly given at his own house. +For a bet of a guinea he came behind Lord Hervey, who was talking to +some ladies, and made use of his hat as a spittoon. The point of the +joke was that Lord Hervey—son of Pope's 'mere white curd of asses' +milk,' and related, as the scandal went, rather too closely to Horace +Walpole himself—was a person of effeminate appearance, and therefore +considered unlikely—wrongly, as it turned out—to resent the insult. We +may charitably hope that the assailants, who thus practically +exemplified the proper mode of treating milksops, were drunk. The +two-bottle men who lingered till our day were surviving relics of the +type which then gave the tone to society. Within a short period there +was a prime minister who always consoled himself under defeats and +celebrated triumphs with his bottle; a chancellor who abolished evening +sittings on the ground that he was always drunk in the evening; and even +an archbishop—an Irish archbishop, it is true—whose jovial habits +broke down his constitution.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">352</a></span> Scratch those jovial toping aristocrats, +and you everywhere find the Squire Western. A man of squeamish tastes +and excessive sensibility jostled amongst that thick-skinned, +iron-nerved generation, was in a position with which anyone may +sympathise who knows the sufferings of a delicate lad at a public school +in the old (and not so very old) brutal days. The victim of that tyranny +slunk away from the rough horseplay of his companions to muse, like +Dobbin, over the 'Arabian Nights' in a corner, or find some amusement +which his tormentors held to be only fit for girls. So Horace Walpole +retired to Strawberry Hill and made toys of Gothic architecture, or +heraldry, or dilettante antiquarianism. The great discovery had not then +been made, we must remember, that excellence in field-sports deserved to +be placed on a level with the Christian virtues. The fine gentlemen of +the Chesterfield era speak of fox-hunting pretty much as we speak of +prize-fighting and bull-baiting. When all manly exercises had an +inseparable taint of coarseness, delicate people naturally mistook +effeminacy for refinement. When you can only join in male society on +pain of drinking yourself under the table, the safest plan is to retire +to tea-tables and small talk. For many years, Walpole's greatest +pleasure seems to have been drinking tea with Lady Suffolk, and +carefully piecing together bits of scandal about the Courts of the first +two Georges. He tells us, with all the triumph of a philosopher +describing a brilliant scientific induction, how he was sometimes able, +by adding his bits of gossip to hers, to unravel the secret of some +wretched intrigue which had puzzled two generations of quidnuncs. The +social triumphs on which he most piqued himself were of a congenial +order. He sits down to write elaborate letters to Sir Horace Mann, at +Florence, brimming over with irrepressible <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">353</a></span>triumph when he has +persuaded some titled ladies to visit his pet toy, the printing-press, +at Strawberry Hill, and there, of course to their unspeakable surprise, +his printer draws off a copy of verses composed in their honour in the +most faded style of old-fashioned gallantry. He is intoxicated by his +appointment to act as poet-laureate on the occasion of a visit of the +Princess Amelia to Stowe. She is solemnly conducted to a temple of the +Muses and Apollo, and there finds one of his admirable effusions,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">T'other day with a beautiful frown on her brow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To the rest of the gods said the Venus of Stowe:<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and so on. 'She was really in Elysium,' he declares, and visited the +arch erected in her honour three or four times a day.</p> + +<p>It is not wonderful, we must confess, that burly ministers and jovial +squires laughed horse-laughs at this mincing dandy, and tried in their +clumsy fashion to avenge themselves for the sarcasms which, as they +instinctively felt, lay hid beneath this mask of affectation. The enmity +between the lapdog and the mastiff is an old story. Nor, as we must +confess again, were these tastes redeemed by very amiable qualities +beneath the smooth external surface. There was plenty of feminine spite +as well as feminine delicacy. To the marked fear of ridicule natural to +a sensitive man Walpole joined a very happy knack of quarrelling. He +could protrude a feline set of claws from his velvet glove. He was a +touchy companion and an intolerable superior. He set out by quarrelling +with Gray, who, as it seems, could not stand his dandified airs of +social impertinence, though it must be added in fairness that the bond +which unites fellow travellers is, perhaps, the most trying known<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">354</a></span> to +humanity. He quarrelled with Mason after twelve years of intimate +correspondence; he quarrelled with Montagu after a friendship of some +forty years; he always thought that his dependants, such as Bentley, +were angels for six months, and made their lives a burden to them +afterwards; he had a long and complex series of quarrels with all his +near relations. Sir Horace Mann escaped any quarrel during forty-five +years of correspondence; but Sir Horace never left Florence and Walpole +never reached it. Conway alone remained intimate and immaculate to the +end, though there is a bitter remark or two in the Memoirs against the +perfect Conway. With ladies, indeed, Walpole succeeded better; and +perhaps we may accept, with due allowance for the artist's point of +view, his own portrait of himself. He pronounces himself to be a +'boundless friend, a bitter but placable enemy.' Making the necessary +corrections, we should translate this into 'a bitter enemy, a warm but +irritable friend.' Tread on his toes, and he would let you feel his +claws, though you were his oldest friend; but so long as you avoided his +numerous tender points, he showed a genuine capacity for kindliness and +even affection; and in his later years he mellowed down into an amiable +purring old gentleman, responding with eager gratitude to the caresses +of the charming Miss Berrys. Such a man, skinless and bilious, was ill +qualified to join in the rough game of politics. He kept out of the +arena where the hardest blows were given and taken, and confined his +activity to lobbies and backstairs, where scandal was to be gathered and +the hidden wires of intrigue to be delicately manipulated. He chuckles +irrepressibly when he has confided a secret to a friend, who has let it +out to a minister, who communicates it to a great personage, who +explodes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">355</a></span> into inextinguishable wrath, and blows a whole elaborate plot +into a thousand fragments. To expect deep and settled political +principle from such a man would be to look for grapes from thorns and +figs from thistles; but to do Walpole justice, we must add that it would +be equally absurd to exact settled principle from any politician of that +age. We are beginning to regard our ancestors with a strange mixture of +contempt and envy. We despise them because they cared nothing for the +thoughts which for the last century have been upheaving society into +strange convulsions; we envy them because they enjoyed the delicious +calm which was the product of that indifference. Wearied by the +incessant tossing and boiling of the torrent which carries us away, we +look back with fond regret to the little backwater so far above Niagara, +where scarcely a ripple marks the approaching rapids. There is a charm +in the great solid old eighteenth-century mansions, which London is so +rapidly engulfing, and even about the old red brick churches with +'sleep-compelling' pews. We take imaginary naps amongst our grandfathers +with no railways, no telegraphs, no mobs in Trafalgar Square, no +discussions about ritualism or Dr. Colenso, and no reports of +parliamentary debates. It is to our fancies an 'island valley of +Avilion,' or, less magniloquently, a pleasant land of Cockaine, where we +may sleep away the disturbance of battle, and even read through +'Clarissa Harlow.' We could put up with an occasional highwayman in Hyde +Park, and perhaps do not think that our comfort would be seriously +disturbed by a dozen executions in a morning at Tyburn. In such +visionary glances through the centuries we have always the advantage of +selecting our own position in life, and perhaps there are few that for +such purposes we should prefer to Walpole's. We<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">356</a></span> should lap ourselves +against eating cares in the warm folds of a sinecure of 6,000<i>l.</i> a year +bestowed because our father was a Prime Minister. There are many +immaculate persons at the present day to whom truth would be truth even +when seen through such a medium. There are—we have their own authority +for believing it—men who would be republicans, though their niece was +married to a royal duke. Walpole, we must admit, was not of the number. +He was an aristocrat to the backbone. He was a gossip by nature and +education, and had lived from infancy in the sacred atmosphere of court +intrigue; every friend he possessed in his own rank either had a place, +or had lost a place, or was in want of a place, and generally combined +all three characters; professed indifference to place was only a cunning +mode of angling for a place, and politics was a series of +ingeniously-contrived manœuvres in which the moving power of the +machinery was the desire of sharing the spoils. Walpole's talk about +Magna Charta and the execution of Charles I. could, it is plain, imply +but a skin-deep republicanism. He could not be seriously displeased with +a state of things of which his own position was the natural out-growth. +His republicanism was about as genuine as his boasted indifference to +money—a virtue which is not rare in bachelors who have more than they +can spend. So long as he could buy as much bric-a-brac, as many +knicknacks, and old books and bronzes and curious portraits and odd +gloves of celebrated characters as he pleased; add a new tower and a set +of battlements to Strawberry Hill every few years; keep a comfortable +house in London, and have a sufficiency of carriages and horses; treat +himself to an occasional tour, and keep his press steadily at work; he +was not the man to complain of poverty. He was a republican, too, as +long as that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">357</a></span> word implied that he and his father and uncles and cousins +and connections by marriage and their intimate friends were to have +everything precisely their own way; but if a vision could have shown him +the reformers of a coming generation who would inquire into civil lists +and object to sinecures—to say nothing of cutting off the heads of the +first families—he would have prayed to be removed before the evil day. +Republicanism in his sense was a word exclusive of revolution. Was it, +then, a mere meaningless mask intended only to conceal the real man? +Before passing such a judgment we should remember that the names by +which people classify their opinions are generally little more than +arbitrary badges; and even in these days, when practice treads so +closely on the heels of theory, some persons profess to know extreme +radicals who could be converted very speedily by a bit of riband. +Walpole has explained himself with unmistakable frankness, and his +opinion was at least intelligible. He was not a republican after the +fashion of Robespierre, or Jefferson, or M. Gambetta; but he had some +meaning. When a duke in those days proposed annual parliaments and +universal suffrage, we may assume that he did not realise the probable +effect of those institutions upon dukes; and when Walpole applauded the +regicides, he was not anxious to send George III. to the block. He +meant, however, that he considered George III. to be a narrow-minded and +obstinate fool. He meant, too, that the great Revolution families ought +to distribute the plunder and the power without interference from the +Elector of Hanover. He meant, again, that as a quick and cynical +observer, he found the names of Brutus and Algernon Sidney very +convenient covers for attacking the Duke of Newcastle and the Earl of +Bute. But beyond all this, he meant something<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">358</a></span> more, which gives the +real spice to his writings. It was something not quite easy to put into +formulas; but characteristic of the vague discomfort of the holders of +sinecures in those halcyon days arising from the perception that the +ground was hollow under their feet. To understand him we must remember +that the period of his activity marks precisely the lowest ebb of +political principle. Old issues had been settled, and the new ones were +only just coming to the surface. He saw the end of the Jacobites and the +rise of the demagogues. His early letters describe the advance of the +Pretender to Derby; they tell us how the British public was on the whole +inclined to look on and cry, 'Fight dog, fight bear;' how the Jacobites +who had anything to lose left their battle to be fought by half-starved +cattle-stealers, and contented themselves with drinking to the success +of the cause; and how the Whig magnates, with admirable presence of +mind, raised regiments, appointed officers, and got the expenses paid by +the Crown. His later letters describe the amazing series of blunders by +which we lost America in spite of the clearest warnings from almost +every man of sense in the kingdom. The interval between these +disgraceful epochs is filled—if we except the brief episode of +Chatham—by a series of struggles between different connections—one +cannot call them parties—which separate and combine, and fight and make +peace, till the plot of the drama becomes too complicated for human +ingenuity to unravel. Lads just crammed for a civil service examination +might possibly bear in mind all the shifting combinations which resulted +from the endless intrigues of Pelhams and Grenvilles and Bedfords and +Rockinghams; yet even those omniscient persons could hardly give a +plausible account of the principles which each party conceived <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">359</a></span>itself +to be maintaining. What, for example, were the politics of a Rigby, or a +Bubb Dodington? The diary in which the last of these eminent persons +reveals his inmost soul is perhaps the most curious specimen of +unconscious self-analysis extant. His utter baseness and venality, his +disgust at the 'low venal wretches' to whom he had to give bribes; his +creeping and crawling before those from whom he sought to extract +bribes; his utter incapacity to explain a great man except on the +hypothesis of insanity; or to understand that there is such a thing as +political morality, derive double piquancy from the profound conviction +that he is an ornament to society, and from the pious aspirations which +he utters with the utmost simplicity. Bubb wriggled himself into a +peerage, and differed from innumerable competitors only by superior +frankness. He is the fitting representative of an era from which +political faith has disappeared, as Walpole is its fitting satirist. All +political virtue, it is said, was confined, in Walpole's opinion, to +Conway and the Marquis of Hertford. Was he wrong? or, if he was wrong, +was it not rather in the exception than the rule? The dialect in which +his sarcasms are expressed is affected, but the substance is hard to +dispute. The world, he is fond of saying, is a tragedy to those who +feel, a comedy to those who think. He preferred the comedy view. 'I have +never yet seen or heard,' he says, 'anything serious that was not +ridiculous. Jesuits, Methodists, philosophers, politicians, the +hypocrite Rousseau, the scoffer Voltaire, the encyclopædists, the Humes, +the Lytteltons, the Grenvilles, the atheist tyrant of Prussia, and the +mountebank of history, Mr. Pitt, are all to me but impostors in their +various ways. Fame or interest is their object, and after all their +parade, I think a ploughman who sows, reads<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">360</a></span> his almanack, and believes +that the stars are so many farthing candles created to prevent his +falling into a ditch as he goes home at night, a wiser and more rational +being, and I am sure an honester, than any of them. Oh! I am sick of +visions and systems that shove one another aside, and come again like +figures in a moving picture.' Probably Walpole's belief in the ploughman +lasted till he saw the next smock-frock; but the bitterness clothed in +the old-fashioned cant is serious and is justifiable enough. Here is a +picture of English politics in the time of Wilkes. 'No government, no +police, London and Middlesex distracted, the colonies in rebellion, +Ireland ready to be so, and France arrogant and on the point of being +hostile! Lord Bute accused of all, and dying in a panic; George +Grenville wanting to make rage desperate; Lord Rockingham and the +Cavendishes thinking we have no enemies but Lord Bute, and that five +mutes and an epigram can set everything to rights; the Duke of Grafton +(then Prime Minister) like an apprentice, thinking the world should be +postponed to a horse-race; and the Bedfords not caring what disgraces we +undergo while each of them has 3,000<i>l.</i> a year and three thousand +bottles of claret and champagne!' And every word of this is true—at +least, so far as epigrams need be true. It is difficult to put into more +graphic language the symptoms of an era just ripe for revolution. If +frivolous himself, Walpole can condemn the frivolity of others. 'Can one +repeat common news with indifference,' he asks, just after the surrender +of Yorktown, 'while our shame is writing for future history by the pens +of all our numerous enemies? When did England see two whole armies lay +down their arms and surrender themselves prisoners?... These are +thoughts I cannot stifle at the moment that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">361</a></span> expresses them; and, though +I do not doubt that the same dissipation that has swallowed up all our +principles will reign again in ten days with its wonted sovereignty, I +had rather be silent than vent my indignation. Yet I cannot talk, for I +cannot think, on any other subject. It was not six days ago that, in the +height of four raging wars (with America, France, Spain, and Holland), I +saw in the papers an account of the opera and of the dresses of the +company, and hence the town, and thence, of course, the whole nation, +were informed that Mr. Fitzpatrick had very little powder in his hair.' +Walpole sheltered himself behind the corner of a pension to sneer at the +tragi-comedy of life; but if his feelings were not profound, they were +quick and genuine, and, affectation for affectation, his cynical +coxcombry seems preferable to the solemn coxcombry of the men who +shamelessly wrangled for plunder, while they talked solemn platitudes +about sacred Whig principles and the thrice blessed British +Constitution.</p> + +<p>Walpole, in fact, represents a common creed amongst comfortable but +clear-headed men of his time. It was the strange mixture of scepticism +and conservatism which is exemplified in such men as Hume and Gibbon. He +was at heart a Voltairian, and, like his teacher, confounded all +religions and political beliefs under the name of superstition. Voltaire +himself did not anticipate the Revolution to which he, more than any +man, had contributed. Walpole, with stronger personal reasons than +Voltaire for disliking a catastrophe, was as furious as Burke when the +volcano burst forth. He was a republican so far as he disbelieved in the +divine right of kings, and hated enthusiasm and loyalty generally. He +wished the form to survive and the spirit to disappear. Things were +rotten, and he wished them to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">362</a></span> stay rotten. The ideal to which he is +constantly recurring was the pleasant reign of his father, when nobody +made a fuss or went to war, or kept principles except for sale. He +foresaw, however, far better than most men, the coming crash. If +political sagacity be fairly tested by a prophetic vision of the French +Revolution, Walpole's name should stand high. He visited Paris in 1765, +and remarks that laughing is out of fashion. 'Good folks, they have no +time to laugh. There is God and the King to be pulled down first, and +men and women, one and all, are devoutly employed in the demolition. +They think me quite profane for having any belief left.' Do you know, he +asks presently, who are the philosophers? 'In the first place, it +comprehends almost everybody, and in the next it means men who, avowing +war against Papacy, aim, many of them, at the destruction of regal +power. The philosophers,' he goes on, 'are insupportable, superficial, +overbearing, and fanatic. They preach incessantly, and their avowed +doctrine is atheism—you could not believe how openly. Don't wonder, +therefore, if I should return a Jesuit. Voltaire himself does not +satisfy them. One of their lady devotees said of him, "<i>Il est bigot, +c'est un déiste!</i>"' French politics, he professes a few years +afterwards, must end in 'despotism, a civil war, or assassination,' and +he remarks that the age will not, as he had always thought, be an age of +abortion, but rather 'the age of seeds that are to produce strange crops +hereafter.' The next century, he says at a later period, 'will probably +exhibit a very new era, which the close of this has been, and is, +preparing.' If these sentences had been uttered by Burke, they would +have been quoted as proofs of remarkable sagacity. As it is, we may +surely call them shrewd glances for a frivolous coxcomb.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">363</a></span></p> + +<p>Walpole regarded these symptoms in the true epicurean spirit, and would +have joined in the sentiment, <i>après moi le déluge</i>. He was on the whole +for remedying grievances, and is put rather out of temper by cruelties +which cannot be kept out of his sight. He talks with disgust of the old +habit of stringing up criminals by the dozen; he denounces the +slave-trade with genuine fervour; there is apparent sincerity in his +platitudes against war; and he never took so active a part in politics +as in the endeavour to prevent the judicial murder of Byng. His +conscience generally discharged itself more easily by a few pungent +epigrams, and though he wished the reign of reason and humanity to dawn, +he would rather that it should not come at all than be ushered in by a +tempest. His whole theory is given forcibly and compactly in an answer +which he once made to the republican Mrs. Macaulay, and was fond of +repeating:—'Madam, if I had been Luther, and could have known that for +the <i>chance</i> of saving a million of souls I should be the cause of a +million of lives, at least, being sacrificed before my doctrines could +be established, it must have been a most palpable angel, and in a most +heavenly livery, before he should have set me at work.' We will not ask +what angel would have induced him to make the minor sacrifice of six +thousand a year to establish any conceivable doctrine. Whatever may be +the merit of these opinions, they contain Walpole's whole theory of +life. I know, he seems to have said to himself, that loyalty is folly, +that rank is contemptible, that the old society in which I live is +rotten to the core, and that explosive matter is accumulating beneath +our feet. Well! I am not made of the stuff for a reformer: I am a bit of +a snob, though, like other snobs, I despise both parties to the bargain. +I will take the sinecures the gods<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">364</a></span> provide me, amuse myself with my +toys at Strawberry Hill, despise kings and ministers, without +endangering my head by attacking them, and be over-polite to a royal +duke when he visits me on condition of laughing at him behind his back +when he is gone. Walpole does not deserve a statue; he was not a +Wilberforce or a Howard, and as little of a Burke or a Chatham. But his +faults, as well as his virtues, qualified him to be the keenest of all +observers of a society unconsciously approaching a period of tremendous +convulsions.</p> + +<p>To claim for him that, even at his best, he is a profound observer of +character, or that he gives any consistent account of his greatest +contemporaries, would be too much. He is full of whims, and moreover, +full of spite. He cannot be decently fair to anyone who deserted his +father, or stood in Conway's light. He reflects at all times the +irreverent gossip current behind the scenes. To know the best and the +worst that can be said of any great man, the best plan is to read the +leading article of his party newspaper, and then to converse in private +with its writer. The eulogy and the sarcasm may both be sincere enough; +only it is pleasant, after puffing one's wares to the public, to glance +at their seamy side in private. Walpole has a decided taste for that +last point of view. The littleness of the great, the hypocrisy of the +virtuous, and the selfishness of statesmen in general, is his ruling +theme, illustrated by an infinite variety of brilliant caricatures +struck off at the moment with a quick eye and a sure hand. Though he +elaborates no grand historical portrait, like Burke or Clarendon, he has +a whole gallery of telling vignettes which are often as significant as +far more pretentious works. Nowhere, for example, can we find more +graphic sketches of the great man who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">365</a></span> stands a head and shoulders above +the whole generation of dealers in power and place. Most of Chatham's +contemporaries repaid his contempt with intense dislike. Some of them +pronounced him mad, and others thought him a knave. Walpole, who at +times calls him a mountebank and an impostor, does not go further than +Burke, who, in a curious comment, speaks of him as the 'grand artificer +of fraud,' who never conversed but with 'a parcel of low toad-eaters;' +and asks whether all this 'theatrical stuffing' and these 'raised heels' +could be necessary to the character of a great man. Walpole, of course, +has a keen eye to the theatrical stuffing. He takes the least +complimentary view of the grand problem, which still puzzles some +historians, as to the genuineness of Chatham's gout. He smiles +complacently when the great actor forgets that his right arm ought to be +lying helpless in a sling and flourishes it with his accustomed vigour. +But Walpole, in spite of his sneers and sarcasms, can recognise the +genuine power of the man. He is the describer of the striking scene +which occurred when the House of Commons was giggling over some +delicious story of bribery and corruption—the House of Commons was +frivolous in those benighted days; he tells how Pitt suddenly stalked +down from the gallery and administered his thundering reproof; how +Murray, then Attorney-General, 'crouched, silent and terrified,' and the +Chancellor of the Exchequer faltered out an humble apology for the +unseemly levity. It is Walpole who best describes the great debate when +Pitt, 'haughty, defiant, conscious of injury and supreme abilities,' +burst out in that tremendous speech—tremendous if we may believe the +contemporary reports, of which the only tolerably preserved fragment is +the celebrated metaphor about the confluence of the Rhône<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">366</a></span> and the +Saône. Alas! Chatham's eloquence has all gone to rags and tatters; +though, to say the truth, it has only gone the way of nine-tenths of our +contemporary eloquence. We have, indeed, what are called accurate +reports of spoken pamphlets, dried specimens of rhetoric from which the +life has departed as completely as it is strained out of the specimens +in a botanical collection. If there is no Walpole amongst us, we shall +know what our greatest living orator has said; but how he said it, and +how it moved his audience, will be as obscure as if the reporters' +gallery were still unknown. Walpole—when he was not affecting +philosophy, or smarting from the failure of an intrigue, or worried by +the gout, or disappointed of a bargain at a sale—could throw electric +flashes of light on the figure he describes which reveal the true man. +He errs from petulancy, but not from stupidity. He can appreciate great +qualities by fits, though he cannot be steadily loyal to their +possessor. And if he wrote down most of our rulers as knaves and fools, +we have only to lower those epithets to selfish and blundering, to get a +very fair estimate of their characters. To the picturesque historian his +services are invaluable; though no single statement can be accepted +without careful correction.</p> + +<p>Walpole's social, as distinguished from his political, anecdotes do in +one sense what Leech's drawings have done for this generation. But the +keen old man of the world puts a far bitterer and deeper meaning into +his apparently superficial scratches than the kindly modern artist, +whose satire was narrowed, if purified, by the decencies of modern +manners. Walpole reflects in a thousand places that strange combination +of brutality and polish which marked the little circle of fine ladies +and gentlemen who then constituted society, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">367</a></span> played such queer +pranks in quiet unconsciousness of the revolutionary elements that were +seething below. He is the best of commentators on Hogarth, and gives us +'Gin Lane' on one side and the 'Marriage à la mode' on the other. As we +turn over the well-known pages we come at every turn upon characteristic +scenes of the great tragi-comedy that was being played out. In one page +a highwayman puts a bullet through his hat, and on the next we read how +three thousand ladies and gentlemen visited the criminal in his cell, on +the Sunday before his execution, till he fainted away twice from the +heat; then we hear how Lord Lovat's buffooneries made the whole +brilliant circle laugh as he was being sentenced to death; and how +Balmerino pleaded 'not guilty,' in order that the ladies might not be +deprived of their sport; how the House of Commons adjourned to see a +play acted by persons of quality, and the gallery was hung round with +blue ribands; how the Gunnings had a guard to protect them in the park; +what strange pranks were played by the bigamous Miss Chudleigh; what +jokes—now, alas! very faded and dreary—were made by George Selwyn, and +how that amiable favourite of society went to Paris in order to see the +cruel tortures inflicted upon Damiens, and was introduced to the chief +performer on the scaffold as a distinguished amateur in executions. One +of the best of all these vignettes portrays the funeral of George II., +and is a worthy pendant to Lord Hervey's classic account of the Queen's +death. It opens with the solemn procession to the torch-lighted Abbey, +whose 'long-drawn aisles and fretted vault' excite the imagination of +the author of the 'Castle of Otranto.' Then the comic element begins to +intrude; the procession jostles and falls into disorder at the entrance +of Henry the Seventh's Chapel; the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">368</a></span> bearers stagger under the heavy +coffin and cry for help; the bishop blunders in the prayers, and the +anthem, as fit, says Walpole, for a wedding as a funeral, becomes +immeasurably tedious. Against this tragi-comic background are relieved +two characteristic figures. The 'butcher' Duke of Cumberland, the hero +of Culloden, stands with the obstinate courage of his race gazing into +the vault where his father is being buried, and into which he is soon to +descend. His face is distorted by a recent stroke of paralysis, and he +is forced to stand for two hours on a bad leg. To him enters the +burlesque Duke of Newcastle, who begins by bursting into tears and +throwing himself back in a stall whilst the Archbishop 'hovers over him +with a smelling-bottle.' Then curiosity overcomes him, and he runs about +the chapel with a spyglass in one hand to peer into the faces of the +company, and mopping his eyes with the other. 'Then returned the fear of +catching cold; and the Duke of Cumberland, who was sinking with heat, +felt himself weighed down, and turning round found it was the Duke of +Newcastle standing upon his train to avoid the chill of the marble.' +What a perch to select! Imagine the contrast of the two men, and +remember that the Duke of Newcastle was for an unprecedented time the +great dispenser of patronage, and so far the most important personage in +the government. Walpole had reason for some of his sneers.</p> + +<p>The literary power implied in these brilliant sketches is remarkable, +and even if Walpole's style is more Gallicised than is evident to me, it +must be confessed that with a few French idioms he has caught something +of that unrivalled dexterity and neatness of touch in which the French +are our undisputed masters. His literary character is of course marked +by an affectation analogous to that which debases<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">369</a></span> his politics. Walpole +was always declaring with doubtful sincerity—(that is one of the +matters in which a man is scarcely bound to be quite sincere)—that he +has no ambition for literary fame, and that he utterly repudiates the +title of 'learned gentleman.' There is too much truth in his disavowals +to allow us to write them down as mere mock-modesty; but doubtless his +principal motive was a dislike to entering the arena of open criticism. +He has much of the feeling which drove Pope into paroxysms of unworthy +fury on every mention of Grub Street. The anxiety of men in that day to +disavow the character of professional authors must be taken with the +fact that professional authors were then an unscrupulous, scurrilous, +and venal race. Walpole feared collision with them as he feared +collision with the 'mountains of roast beef.' Though literature was +emerging from the back lanes and alleys, the two greatest potentates of +the day, Johnson and Warburton, had both a decided cross of the bear in +their composition. Walpole was nervously anxious to keep out of their +jurisdiction, and to sit at the feet of such refined lawgivers as Mason +and Gray, or the feebler critics of polite society. In such courts there +naturally passes a good deal of very flimsy flattery between persons who +are alternately at the bar or on the bench. We do not quite believe that +Lady Di Beauclerk's drawings were unsurpassable by 'Salvator Rosa and +Guido,' or that Lady Ailesbury's 'landscape in worsteds' was a work of +high art; and we doubt whether Walpole believed it; nor do we fancy that +he expected Sir Horace Mann to believe that when sitting in his room at +Strawberry Hill, he was in the habit of apostrophising the setting sun +in such terms as these: 'Look at yon sinking beams! His gaudy reign is +over; but the silver moon above that elm succeeds<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">370</a></span> to a tranquil +horizon,' &c. Sweeping aside all this superficial rubbish, as a mere +concession to the faded taste of the age of hoops and wigs, Walpole has +something to say for himself. He has been condemned for the absurdity of +his criticisms, and it is undeniable that he sometimes blunders +strangely. It would, indeed, be easy to show, were it worth while, that +he is by no means so silly in his contemporary verdicts as might be +supposed from scattered passages in his letters. But what are we to say +to a man who compares Dante to 'a Methodist parson in Bedlam'? The first +answer is that, in this instance, Walpole was countenanced by greater +men. Voltaire, with all his faults the most consummate literary artist +of the century, says with obvious disgust that there are people to be +found who force themselves to admire 'feats of imagination as stupidly +extravagant and barbarous' as those of the 'Divina Commedia.' Walpole +must be reckoned as belonging both in his faults and his merits to the +Voltairian school of literature, and amongst other peculiarities common +to the master and his disciple, may be counted an incapacity for +reverence and an intense dislike to being bored. For these reasons he +hates all epic poets, from Dante to Blackmore; he detests all didactic +poems, including those of Thomson and Akenside; and he is utterly +scandalised by the French enthusiasm for Richardson. In these last +judgments, at least nine-tenths of the existing race of mankind agree +with him; though few people have the courage to express their agreement +in print. We may be thankful that Walpole is as incapable of boring as +of enduring bores. He is one of the few Englishmen who share the quality +sometimes ascribed to the French as a nation, and certainly enjoyed by +his teacher, Voltaire; namely, that though they may be frivolous, +blasphemous,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">371</a></span> indecent, and faulty in every other way, they can never +for a single moment be dull. His letters show that crisp, sparkling +quality of style which accompanies this power, and which is so +unattainable to most of his countrymen. The quality is less conspicuous +in the rest of his works, and the light verses and essays in which we +might expect him to succeed are disappointingly weak. Xoho's letter to +his countrymen is now as dull as the work of most imaginary travellers, +and the essays in 'The World' are remarkably inferior to the +'Spectator,' to say nothing of the 'Rambler.'<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> Yet Walpole's place in +literature is unmistakable, if of equivocal merit. Byron called him the +author of the last tragedy and the first romance in our language. The +tragedy, with Byron's leave, is revolting (perhaps the reason why Byron +admired it), and the romance passes the borders of the burlesque. And +yet the remark hits off a singular point in Walpole's history. A +thorough child of the eighteenth century, we might have expected him to +share Voltaire's indiscriminating contempt for the Middle Ages. One +would have supposed that in his lips, as in those of all his generation, +Gothic would have been synonymous with barbaric, and the admiration of +an ancient abbey as ridiculous as admiration of Dante. So far from +which, Walpole is almost the first modern Englishman who found out that +our old cathedrals were really beautiful. He discovered that a most +charming toy might be made of mediævalism. Strawberry Hill, with all its +gimcracks, its pasteboard battlements, and stained-paper carvings, was +the lineal ancestor of the new law-courts. The restorers of churches, +the manufacturers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">372</a></span> of stained glass, the modern decorators and +architects of all vanities, the Ritualists and the High Church party, +should think of him with kindness. It cannot be said that they should +give him a place in their calendar, for he was not of the stuff of which +saints are made. It was a very thin veneering of mediævalism which +covered his modern creed; and the mixture is not particularly edifying. +Still he undoubtedly found out that charming plaything which, in other +hands, has been elaborated and industriously constructed till it is all +but indistinguishable from the genuine article. We must hold, indeed, +that it is merely a plaything, when all has been said and done, and +maintain that when the root has once been severed, the tree can never +again be made to grow. Walpole is so far better than some of his +successors, that he did not make a religion out of these flimsy +materials. However that may be, Walpole's trifling was the first +forerunner of much that has occupied the minds of much greater artists +ever since. And thus his initiative in literature has been as fruitful +as his initiative in art. The 'Castle of Otranto' and the 'Mysterious +Mother' were the progenitors of Mrs. Radcliffe's romances, and probably +had a strong influence upon the author of 'Ivanhoe.' Frowning castles +and gloomy monasteries, knights in armour, and ladies in distress, and +monks and nuns and hermits, all the scenery and the characters that have +peopled the imagination of the romantic school, may be said to have had +their origin on the night when Walpole lay down to sleep, his head +crammed full of Wardour Street curiosities, and dreamt that he saw a +gigantic hand in armour resting on the banister of his staircase. In +three months from that time he had elaborated a story, the object of +which, as defined by himself, was to combine the charms of the old +romance and the modern<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">373</a></span> novel, and which, to say the least, strikes us +now like an exaggerated caricature of the later school. Scott criticises +'The Castle of Otranto' seriously, and even Macaulay speaks of it with a +certain respect. Absurd as the burlesque seems, our ancestors found it +amusing, and, what is stranger, awe-inspiring. Excitable readers +shuddered when a helmet of more than gigantic size fell from the clouds, +in the first chapter, and crushed the young baron to atoms on the eve of +his wedding, as a trap smashes a mouse. This, however, was merely a +foretaste of a series of unprecedented phenomena. At one moment the +portrait of Manfred's grandfather, without the least premonitory +warning, utters a deep sigh, and heaves its breast, after which it +descends to the floor with a grave and melancholy air. Presently the +menials catch sight of a leg and foot in armour to match the helmet, and +apparently belonging to a ghost which has lain down promiscuously in the +picture gallery. Most appalling, however, of all is the adventure which +happened to Count Frederick in the oratory. Kneeling before the altar +was a tall figure in a long cloak. As he approached it rose, and, +turning round, disclosed to him the fleshless jaws and empty eye-sockets +of a skeleton. The ghost disappeared, as ghosts generally do, after +giving a perfectly unnecessary warning and the catastrophe is soon +reached by the final appearance of the whole suit of armour with the +ghost inside it, who bursts the castle to bits like an egg-shell, and, +towering towards the sky, exclaims, 'Theodore is the true heir of +Alphonso!' This proceeding fortunately made a lawsuit unnecessary, and +if the castle was ruined at once, it is not quite impossible that the +same result might have been attained more slowly by litigation. The +whole machinery strikes us as simply babyish, unless we charitably +assume<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">374</a></span> the whole to be intentionally burlesque. The intention is pretty +evident in the solemn scene in the chapel, which closes thus:—'As he +spake these words, three drops of blood fell from the nose of Alphonso's +statue' (Alphonso is the spectre in armour). 'Manfred turned pale, and +the princess sank on her knees. "Behold!" said the friar, "mark this +miraculous indication that the blood of Alphonso will never mix with +that of Manfred!"' Nor can we think that the story is rendered much more +interesting by Walpole's simple expedient of introducing into the midst +of these portents a set of waiting-maids and peasants, who talk in the +familiar style of the smart valets in Congreve's or Sheridan's comedies.</p> + +<p>Yet, babyish as this mass of nursery tales may appear to us, it is +curious that the theory which Walpole advocated has been exactly carried +out. He wished to relieve the prosaic realism of the school of Fielding +and Smollett by making use of romantic associations, without altogether +taking leave of the language of common life. He sought to make real men +and women out of mediæval knights and ladies, or, in other words, he +made a first experimental trip into the province afterwards occupied by +Scott. The 'Mysterious Mother' is in the same taste; and his interest in +Ossian, in Chatterton, and in Percy's Relics, is another proof of his +anticipation of the coming change of sentiment. He was an arrant +trifler, it is true; too delicately constituted for real work in +literature and politics, and inclined to take a cynical view of his +contemporaries generally, he turned for amusement to antiquarianism, and +was the first to set modern art and literature masquerading in the +antique dresses. That he was quite conscious of the necessity for more +serious study, appears in his letters, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">375</a></span> one of which, for example, he +proposes a systematic history of Gothic architecture, such as has since +been often enough executed. It does not, it may be said, require any +great intellect, or even any exquisite taste, for a fine gentleman to +strike out a new line of dilettante amusement. In truth Walpole has no +pretensions whatever to be regarded as a great original creator, or even +as one of the few infallible critics. The only man of his time who had +some claim to that last title was his friend Gray, who shared his Gothic +tastes with greatly superior knowledge. But he was indefinitely superior +to the great mass of commonplace writers, who attain a kind of bastard +infallibility by always accepting the average verdict of the time; +which, on the principle of the <i>vox populi</i>, is more often right than +that of any dissenter. There is an intermediate class of men who are +useful as sensitive barometers to foretell coming changes of opinion. +Their intellects are mobile if shallow; and, perhaps, their want of +serious interest in contemporary intellects renders them more accessible +to the earliest symptoms of superficial shiftings of taste. They are +anxious to be at the head of the fashions in thought as well as in +dress, and pure love of novelty serves to some extent in place of +genuine originality. Amongst such men Walpole deserves a high place; and +it is not easy to obtain a high place even amongst such men. The people +who succeed best at trifles are those who are capable of something +better. In spite of Johnson's aphorism, it is the colossus who, when he +tries, can cut the best heads upon cherry-stones, as well as hew statues +out of rock. Walpole was no colossus; but his peevish anxiety to affect +even more frivolity than was really natural to him, has blinded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">376</a></span> his +critics to the real power of a remarkably acute, versatile, and original +intellect. We cannot regard him with much respect, and still less with +much affection; but the more we examine his work, the more we shall +admire his extreme cleverness.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> It is odd that in one of these papers Walpole proposes, in +jest, precisely our modern system of postage cards, only charging a +penny instead of a halfpenny.</p></div></div> + + +<p class="center">END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.</p> + +<p class="frontend">PRINTED BY<br /> +SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE<br /> +LONDON</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<div class="transnote"> +<a name="TN" id="TN"></a><h3>Transcriber's Notes:</h3> +<p>Page <a href="#Page_8">8</a>: Closing quote added</p> +<p>Page <a href="#Page_145">145</a>: Shakspeare amended to Shakespeare</p> +<p>Page <a href="#Page_181">181</a>: Mismatched single and double quotes amended</p> +<p>Page <a href="#Page_215">215</a>: orgie <i>sic</i></p> +<p>Page <a href="#Page_295">295</a>: Shakspeares amended to Shakespeares</p> +<p>Page <a href="#Page_301">301</a>: comtemporary amended to contemporary</p> +<p>Page <a href="#Page_333">333</a>: Full stop added after parentheses (vol. viii., sermon xxvii.)</p> +<p>Page <a href="#Page_349">349</a>: boosing <i>sic</i></p> +<p>Page <a href="#Page_373">373</a>: helmit amended to helmet</p> +<p>Italicisation and hyphenation have been standardised. +However, where there is an equal number of instances of +a hyphenated and unhyphenated word, both have been +retained: back-stairs/backstairs; life-like/lifelike; +note-book/notebook; now-a-days/nowadays.</p></div> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Hours in a Library, Volume I. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) + +Author: Leslie Stephen + +Release Date: January 27, 2007 [EBook #20459] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOURS IN A LIBRARY *** + + + + +Produced by Thierry Alberto, Henry Craig and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + * * * * * + +------------------------------------------------------------+ + | Transcriber's Note: | + | | + | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in | + | this text. For a complete list, please see the bottom of | + | this document. | + | | + +------------------------------------------------------------+ + + * * * * * + +HOURS IN A LIBRARY + +VOL. I. + +HOURS IN A LIBRARY + +BY + +LESLIE STEPHEN + +_NEW EDITION, WITH ADDITIONS_ + +IN THREE VOLUMES. + +VOL. I. + +LONDON SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 1892 + +[_All rights reserved_] + + + + +CONTENTS + +OF + +THE FIRST VOLUME + + + PAGE +DE FOE'S NOVELS 1 + +RICHARDSON'S NOVELS 47 + +POPE AS A MORALIST 94 + +SIR WALTER SCOTT 137 + +NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 169 + +BALZAC'S NOVELS 199 + +DE QUINCEY 237 + +SIR THOMAS BROWNE 269 + +JONATHAN EDWARDS 300 + +HORACE WALPOLE 345 + + + + +_OPINIONS OF AUTHORS_ + + + Libraries are as the shrines where all the relics of the + ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without + delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed.--BACON, + _Advancement of Learning_. + + + We visit at the shrine, drink in some measure of the + inspiration, and cannot easily breathe in other air less + pure, accustomed to immortal fruits.--HAZLITT'S _Plain + Speaker_. + + + What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though + all the souls of all the writers that have bequeathed their + labours to the Bodleian were reposing here as in some + dormitory or middle state. I seem to inhale learning, + walking amid their foliage; and the odour of their old + moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of the + sciential apples which grew around the happy + orchard.--CHARLES LAMB, _Oxford in the Long Vacation_. + + + My neighbours think me often alone, and yet at such times I + am in company with more than five hundred mutes, each of + whom communicates his ideas to me by dumb signs quite as + intelligibly as any person living can do by uttering of + words; and with a motion of my hand I can bring them as near + to me as I please; I handle them as I like; they never + complain of ill-usage; and when dismissed from my presence, + though ever so abruptly, take no offence.--STERNE, + _Letters_. + + + In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear + friends imprisoned by an enchanter in paper and leathern + boxes,--EMERSON, _Books, Society, and Solitude_. + + + Nothing is pleasanter than exploring in a library.--LANDOR, + _Pericles and Aspasia_. + + + I never come into a library (saith Heinsius) but I bolt the + door to me, excluding lust, ambition, avarice, and all such + vices whose nurse is idleness, the mother of ignorance and + melancholy herself; and in the very lap of eternity, among + so many divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty a spirit + and sweet content that I pity all our great ones and rich + men that know not their happiness.--BURTON, _Anatomy of + Melancholy_. + + + I do not know that I am happiest when alone; but this I am + sure of, that I am never long even in the society of her I + love without a yearning for the company of my lamp and my + utterly confused and tumbled-over library.--BYRON, _Moore's + Life_. + + + Montesquieu used to say that he had never known a pain or a + distress which he could not soothe by half an hour of a good + book.--JOHN MORLEY, _On Popular Culture_. + + + There is no truer word than that of Solomon: 'There is no + end of making books'; the sight of a great library verifies + it; there is no end--indeed, it were pity there should + be.--BISHOP HALL. + + + You that are genuine Athenians, devour with a golden + Epicurism the arts and sciences, the spirits and extractions + of authors.--CULVERWELL, _Light of Nature_. + + + He hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; + he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink; + his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only + sensible in the duller parts.--SHAKESPEARE, _Love's Labour's + Lost_. + + + I have wondered at the patience of the antediluvians; their + libraries were insufficiently furnished; how then could + seven or eight hundred years of life be + supportable?--COWPER, _Life and Letters by Southey_. + + + Unconfused Babel of all tongues! which e'er + The mighty linguist Fame or Time the mighty traveller, + That could speak or this could hear! + Majestic monument and pyramid! + Where still the shapes of parted souls abide + Embalmed in verse; exalted souls which now + Enjoy those arts they wooed so well below, + Which now all wonders plainly see + That have been, are, or are to be + In the mysterious Library, + The beatific Bodley of the Deity! + + COWLEY, _Ode on the Bodleian_. + + + This to a structure led well known to fame, + And called, 'The Monument of Vanished Minds,' + Where when they thought they saw in well-sought books + The assembled souls of all that men thought wise, + It bred such awful reverence in their looks, + As if they saw the buried writers rise. + Such heaps of written thought; gold of the dead, + Which Time does still disperse but not devour, + Made them presume all was from deluge freed + Which long-lived authors writ ere Noah's shower. + + DAVENANT, _Gondibert_. + + + Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a + progeny of life in them, to be as active as that soul whose + progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the + purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that + bred them.--MILTON, _Areopagitica_. + + + Nor is there any paternal fondness which seems to savour + less of absolute instinct, and which may be so well + reconciled to worldly wisdom, as this of authors for their + books. These children may most truly be called the riches of + their father, and many of them have with true filial piety + fed their parent in his old age; so that not only the + affection but the interest of the author may be highly + injured by those slanderers whose poisonous breath brings + his book to an untimely end.--FIELDING, _Tom Jones_. + + + We whom the world is pleased to honour with the title of + modern authors should never have been able to compass our + great design of everlasting remembrance and never-dying fame + if our endeavours had not been so highly serviceable to the + general good of mankind.--SWIFT, _Tale of a Tub_. + + + A good library always makes me melancholy, where the best + author is as much squeezed and as obscure as a porter at a + coronation.--SWIFT. + + + In my youth I never entered a great library but my + predominant feeling was one of pain and disturbance of + mind--not much unlike that which drew tears from Xerxes on + viewing his immense army, and reflecting that in one hundred + years not one soul would remain alive. To me, with respect + to books, the same effect would be brought about by my own + death. Here, said I, are one hundred thousand books, the + worst of them capable of giving me some instruction and + pleasure; and before I can have had time to extract the + honey from one-twentieth of this hive in all likelihood I + shall be summoned away.--DE QUINCEY, _Letter to a young + man_. + + + A man may be judged by his library.--BENTHAM. + + + I ever look upon a library with the reverence of a + temple.--EVELYN, _to Wotton_. + + + 'Father, I should like to learn to make gold.' 'And what + would'st thou do if thou could'st make it?' 'Why, I would + build a great house and fill it with books.'--SOUTHEY, + _Doctor_. + + + What would you have more? A wife? That is none of the + indispensable requisites of life. Books? That is one of + them, and I have more than I can use.--DAVID HUME, _Burton's + 'Life_.' + + + Talk of the happiness of getting a great prize in the + lottery! What is that to opening a box of books? The joy + upon lifting up the cover must be something like that which + we shall feel when Peter the porter opens the door upstairs, + and says, 'Please to walk in, Sir.'--SOUTHEY, _Life_. + + + I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of + books than a king who did not love reading.--MACAULAY. + + + Our books ... do not our hearts hug them, and quiet + themselves in them even more than in God?--BAXTER'S _Saint's + Rest_. + + + It is our duty to live among books.--NEWMAN, _Tracts for the + Times, No. 2_. + + + What lovely things books are!--BUCKLE, _Life by Huth_. + + + (Query) Whether the collected wisdom of all ages and nations + be not found in books?--BERKELEY, _Querist_. + + + Read we must, be writers ever so indifferent.--SHAFTESBURY, + _Characteristics_. + + + It's mighty hard to write nowadays without getting something + or other worth listening to into your essay or your volume. + The foolishest book is a kind of leaky boat on a sea of + wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyhow.--O. W. + HOLMES, _Poet at the Breakfast Table_. + + + I adopted the tolerating measure of the elder Pliny--'nullum + esse librum tam malum ut non in aliqua parte + prodesset.'--GIBBON, _Autobiography_. + + + A book's a book, although there's nothing in't.--BYRON, + _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_. + + + While you converse with lords and dukes, + I have their betters here, my books; + Fixed in an elbow chair at ease + I choose companions as I please. + I'd rather have one single shelf + Than all my friends, except yourself. + For, after all that can be said, + Our best companions are the dead. + + SHERIDAN _to Swift_. + + + We often hear of people who will descend to any servility, + submit to any insult for the sake of getting themselves or + their children into what is euphemistically called good + society. Did it ever occur to them that there is a select + society of all the centuries to which they and theirs can be + admitted for the asking?--LOWELL, _Speech at Chelsea_. + + + On all sides are we not driven to the conclusion that of all + things which men can do or make here below, by far the most + momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call + books? For, indeed, is it not verily the highest act of + man's faculty that produces a book? It is the thought of + man. The true thaumaturgic virtue by which man marks all + things whatever. All that he does and brings to pass is the + vesture of a book.--CARLYLE, _Hero Worship_. + + + Yet it is just + That here in memory of all books which lay + Their sure foundations in the heart of man, + ... + That I should here assert their rights, assert + Their honours, and should, once for all, pronounce + Their benediction, speak of them as powers + For ever to be hallowed; only less + For what we are and what we may become + Than Nature's self, which is the breath of God, + Or His pure word by miracle revealed. + + WORDSWORTH, _Prelude_. + + + Take me to some lofty room, + Lighted from the western sky, + Where no glare dispels the gloom, + Till the golden eve is nigh; + Where the works of searching thought, + Chosen books, may still impart + What the wise of old have taught, + What has tried the meek of heart; + Books in long dead tongues that stirred + Loving hearts in other climes; + Telling to my eyes, unheard, + Glorious deeds of olden times: + Books that purify the thought, + Spirits of the learned dead, + Teachers of the little taught, + Comforters when friends are fled. + + BARNES, _Poems of Rural Life_. + + + A library is like a butcher's shop; it contains plenty of + meat, but it is all raw; no person living can find a meal in + it till some good cook comes along and says, 'Sir, I see by + your looks that you are hungry; I know your taste; be + patient for a moment and you shall be satisfied that you + have an excellent appetite!'--G. ELLIS, Lockhart's + '_Scott_.' + + + A library is itself a cheap university.--H. SIDGWICK, + _Political Economy_. + + + O such a life as he resolved to live + Once he had mastered all that books can give! + + BROWNING. + + + I will bury myself in my books and the devil may pipe to his + own.--TENNYSON. + + + Words! words! words!--SHAKESPEARE. + + +HOURS IN A LIBRARY + + + + +_DE FOE'S NOVELS_ + + +According to the high authority of Charles Lamb, it has sometimes +happened 'that from no inferior merit in the rest, but from some +superior good fortune in the choice of a subject, some single work' (of +a particular author) 'shall have been suffered to eclipse, and cast into +the shade, the deserts of its less fortunate brethren.' And after +quoting the case of Bunyan's 'Holy War' as compared with the 'Pilgrim's +Progress,' he adds that, 'in no instance has this excluding partiality +been exerted with more unfairness than against what may be termed the +secondary novels or romances of De Foe.' He proceeds to declare that +there are at least four other fictitious narratives by the same +writer--'Roxana,' 'Singleton,' 'Moll Flanders,' and 'Colonel +Jack'--which possess an interest not inferior to 'Robinson +Crusoe'--'except what results from a less felicitous choice of +situation.' Granting most unreservedly that the same hand is perceptible +in the minor novels as in 'Robinson Crusoe,' and that they bear at every +page the most unequivocal symptoms of De Foe's workmanship, I venture to +doubt the 'partiality' and the 'unfairness' of preferring to them their +more popular rival. The instinctive judgment of the world is not really +biassed by anything except the intrinsic power exerted by a book over +its sympathies; and as in the long run it has honoured 'Robinson +Crusoe,' in spite of the critics, and has comparatively neglected +'Roxana' and the companion stories, there is probably some good cause +for the distinction. The apparent injustice to books resembles what we +often see in the case of men. A. B. becomes Lord Chancellor, whilst C. +D. remains for years a briefless barrister; and yet for the life of us +we cannot tell but that C. D. is the abler man of the two. Perhaps he +was wanting in some one of the less conspicuous elements that are +essential to a successful career; he said, 'Open, wheat!' instead of +'Open, sesame!' and the barriers remained unaffected by his magic. The +secret may really be simple enough. The complete success of such a book +as 'Robinson' implies, it may be, the precise adaptation of the key to +every ward of the lock. The felicitous choice of situation to which Lamb +refers gave just the required fitness; and it is of little use to plead +that 'Roxana,' 'Colonel Jack,' and others might have done the same trick +if only they had received a little filing, or some slight change in +shape: a shoemaker might as well argue that if you had only one toe less +his shoes wouldn't pinch you. + +To leave the unsatisfactory ground of metaphor, we may find out, on +examination, that De Foe had discovered in 'Robinson Crusoe' precisely +the field in which his talents could be most effectually applied; and +that a very slight alteration in the subject-matter might change the +merit of his work to a disproportionate extent. The more special the +idiosyncrasy upon which a man's literary success is founded, the +greater, of course, the probability that a small change will disconcert +him. A man who can only perform upon the drum will have to wait for +certain combinations of other instruments before his special talent can +be turned to account. Now, the talent in which De Foe surpasses all +other writers is just one of those peculiar gifts which must wait for a +favourable chance. When a gentleman, in a fairy story, has a power of +seeing a hundred miles, or covering seven leagues at a stride, we know +that an opportunity will speedily occur for putting his faculties to +use. But the gentleman with the seven-leagued boots is useless when the +occasion offers itself for telescopic vision, and the eyes are good for +nothing without the power of locomotion. To De Foe, if we may imitate +the language of the 'Arabian Nights,' was given a tongue to which no one +could listen without believing every word that he uttered--a +qualification, by the way, which would serve its owner far more +effectually in this commonplace world than swords of sharpness or cloaks +of darkness, or other fairy paraphernalia. In other words, he had the +most marvellous power ever known of giving verisimilitude to his +fictions; or, in other words again, he had the most amazing talent on +record for telling lies. We have all read how the 'History of the +Plague,' the 'Memoirs of a Cavalier,' and even, it is said, 'Robinson +Crusoe,' have succeeded in passing themselves off for veritable +narratives. The 'Memoirs of Captain Carleton' long passed for De Foe's, +but the Captain has now gained admission to the biographical dictionary +and is credited with his own memoirs. In either case, it is as +characteristic that a genuine narrative should be attributed to De Foe, +as that De Foe's narrative should be taken as genuine. An odd testimony +to De Foe's powers as a liar (a word for which there is, unfortunately, +no equivalent that does not imply some blame) has been mentioned. Mr. +M'Queen, quoted in Captain Burton's 'Nile Basin,' names 'Captain +Singleton' as a genuine account of travels in Central Africa, and +seriously mentions De Foe's imaginary pirate as 'a claimant for the +honour of the discovery of the sources of the White Nile.' Probably, +however, this only proves that Mr. M'Queen had never read the book. + +Most of the literary artifices to which De Foe owed his power of +producing this illusion are sufficiently plain. Of all the fictions +which he succeeded in palming off for truths none is more instructive +than that admirable ghost, Mrs. Veal. Like the sonnets of some great +poets, it contains in a few lines all the essential peculiarities of his +art, and an admirable commentary has been appended to it by Sir Walter +Scott. The first device which strikes us is his ingenious plan for +manufacturing corroborative evidence. The ghost appears to Mrs. +Bargrave. The story of the apparition is told by a 'very sober and +understanding gentlewoman, who lives within a few doors of Mrs. +Bargrave;' and the character of this sober gentlewoman is supported by +the testimony of a justice of the peace at Maidstone, 'a very +intelligent person.' This elaborate chain of evidence is intended to +divert our attention from the obvious circumstance that the whole story +rests upon the authority of the anonymous person who tells us of the +sober gentlewoman, who supports Mrs. Bargrave, and is confirmed by the +intelligent justice. Simple as the artifice appears, it is one which is +constantly used in supernatural stories of the present day. One of those +improving legends tells how a ghost appeared to two officers in Canada, +and how, subsequently, one of the officers met the ghost's twin brother +in London, and straightway exclaimed, 'You are the person who appeared +to me in Canada!' Many people are diverted from the weak part of the +story by this ingenious confirmation, and, in their surprise at the +coherence of the narrative, forget that the narrative itself rests upon +entirely anonymous evidence. A chain is no stronger than its weakest +link; but if you show how admirably the last few are united together, +half the world will forget to test the security of the equally essential +links which are kept out of sight. De Foe generally repeats a similar +trick in the prefaces of his fictions. ''Tis certain,' he says, in the +'Memoirs of a Cavalier,' 'no man could have given a description of his +retreat from Marston Moor to Rochdale, and thence over the moors to the +North, in so apt and proper terms, unless he had really travelled over +the ground he describes,' which, indeed, is quite true, but by no means +proves that the journey was made by a fugitive from that particular +battle. He separates himself more ostentatiously from the supposititious +author by praising his admirable manner of relating the memoirs, and the +'wonderful variety of incidents with which they are beautified;' and, +with admirable impudence, assures us that they are written in so +soldierly a style, that it 'seems impossible any but the very person who +was present in every action here related was the relater of them.' In +the preface to 'Roxana,' he acts, with equal spirit, the character of an +impartial person, giving us the evidence on which he is himself +convinced of the truth of the story, as though he would, of all things, +refrain from pushing us unfairly for our belief. The writer, he says, +took the story from the lady's own mouth: he was, of course, obliged to +disguise names and places; but was himself 'particularly acquainted with +this lady's first husband, the brewer, and with his father, and also +with his bad circumstances, and knows that first part of the story.' +The rest we must, of course, take upon the lady's own evidence, but less +unwillingly, as the first is thus corroborated. We cannot venture to +suggest to so calm a witness that he has invented both the lady and the +writer of her history; and, in short, that when he says that A. says +that B. says something, it is, after all, merely the anonymous 'he' who +is speaking. In giving us his authority for 'Moll Flanders,' he ventures +upon the more refined art of throwing a little discredit upon the +narrator's veracity. She professes to have abandoned her evil ways, but, +as he tells us with a kind of aside, and as it were cautioning us +against over-incredulity, 'it seems' (a phrase itself suggesting the +impartial looker-on) that in her old age 'she was not so extraordinary a +penitent as she was at first; it seems only' (for, after all, you +mustn't make _too_ much of my insinuations) 'that indeed she always +spoke with abhorrence of her former life.' So we are left in a qualified +state of confidence, as if we had been talking about one of his patients +with the wary director of a reformatory. + +This last touch, which is one of De Foe's favourite expedients, is most +fully exemplified in the story of Mrs. Veal. The author affects to take +us into his confidence, to make us privy to the pros and cons in regard +to the veracity of his own characters, till we are quite disarmed. The +sober gentlewoman vouches for Mrs. Bargrave; but Mrs. Bargrave is by no +means allowed to have it all her own way. One of the ghost's +communications related to the disposal of a certain sum of 10_l._ a +year, of which Mrs. Bargrave, according to her own account, could have +known nothing, except by this supernatural intervention. Mrs. Veal's +friends, however, tried to throw doubt upon the story of her appearance, +considering that it was disreputable for a decent woman to go abroad +after her death. One of them, therefore, declared that Mrs. Bargrave was +a liar, and that she had, in fact, known of the 10_l._ beforehand. On +the other hand, the person who thus attacked Mrs. Bargrave had himself +the 'reputation of a notorious liar.' Mr. Veal, the ghost's brother, was +too much of a gentleman to make such gross imputations. He confined +himself to the more moderate assertion that Mrs. Bargrave had been +crazed by a bad husband. He maintained that the story must be a mistake, +because, just before her death, his sister had declared that she had +nothing to dispose of. This statement, however, may be reconciled with +the ghost's remarks about the 10_l._, because she obviously mentioned +such a trifle merely by way of a token of the reality of her appearance. +Mr. Veal, indeed, makes rather a better point by stating that a certain +purse of gold mentioned by the ghost was found, not in the cabinet where +she told Mrs. Bargrave that she had placed it, but in a comb-box. Yet, +again, Mr. Veal's statement is here rather suspicious, for it is known +that Mrs. Veal was very particular about her cabinet, and would not have +let her gold out of it. We are left in some doubts by this conflict of +evidence, although the obvious desire of Mr. Veal to throw discredit on +the story of his sister's appearance rather inclines us to believe in +Mrs. Bargrave's story, who could have had no conceivable motive for +inventing such a fiction. The argument is finally clenched by a decisive +coincidence. The ghost wears a silk dress. In the course of a long +conversation she incidentally mentioned to Mrs. Bargrave that this was a +scoured silk, newly made up. When Mrs. Bargrave reported this remarkable +circumstance to a certain Mrs. Wilson, 'You have certainly seen her,' +exclaimed that lady, 'for none knew but Mrs. Veal and myself that the +gown had been scoured.' To this crushing piece of evidence it seems that +neither Mr. Veal nor the notorious liar could invent any sufficient +reply. + +One can almost fancy De Foe chuckling as he concocted the refinements of +this most marvellous narrative. The whole artifice is, indeed, of a +simple kind. Lord Sunderland, according to Macaulay, once ingeniously +defended himself against a charge of treachery, by asking whether it was +possible that any man should be so base as to do that which he was, in +fact, in the constant habit of doing. De Foe asks us in substance, Is it +conceivable that any man should tell stories so elaborate, so complex, +with so many unnecessary details, with so many inclinations of evidence +this way and that, unless the stories were true? We instinctively +answer, that it is, in fact, inconceivable; and, even apart from any +such refinements as those noticed, the circumstantiality of the stories +is quite sufficient to catch an unworthy critic. It is, indeed, +perfectly easy to tell a story which shall be mistaken for a _bona fide_ +narrative, if only we are indifferent to such considerations as making +it interesting or artistically satisfactory. + +The praise which has been lavished upon De Foe for the verisimilitude of +his novels seems to be rather extravagant. The trick would be easy +enough, if it were worth performing. The story-teller cannot be +cross-examined; and if he is content to keep to the ordinary level of +commonplace facts, there is not the least difficulty in producing +conviction. We recognise the fictitious character of an ordinary novel, +because it makes a certain attempt at artistic unity, or because the +facts are such as could obviously not be known to, or would not be told +by, a real narrator, or possibly because they are inconsistent with +other established facts. If a man chooses to avoid such obvious +confessions of unreality, he can easily be as life-like as De Foe. I do +not suppose that foreign correspondence of a newspaper is often composed +in the Strand; but it is only because I believe that the honesty of +writers in the press is far too great to allow them to commit a crime +which must be speedily detected by independent evidence. Lying is, after +all, the easiest of all things, if the liar be not too ambitious. A +little clever circumstantiality will lull any incipient suspicion; and +it must be added that De Foe, in adopting the tone of a _bona fide_ +narrator, not unfrequently overreaches himself. He forgets his dramatic +position in his anxiety to be minute. Colonel Jack, at the end of a long +career, tells us how one of his boyish companions stole certain articles +at a fair, and gives us the list, of which this is a part: '5thly, a +silver box, with 7_s._ in small silver; 6, a pocket-handkerchief; 7, +_another_; 8, a jointed baby, and a little looking-glass.' The +affectation of extreme precision, especially in the charming item +'another,' destroys the perspective of the story. We are listening to a +contemporary, not to an old man giving us his fading recollections of a +disreputable childhood. + +The peculiar merit, then, of De Foe must be sought in something more +than the circumstantial nature of his lying, or even the ingenious +artifices by which he contrives to corroborate his own narrative. These, +indeed, show the pleasure which he took in simulating truth; and he may +very probably have attached undue importance to this talent in the +infancy of novel-writing, as in the infancy of painting it was held for +the greatest of triumphs when birds came and pecked at the grapes in a +picture. It is curious, indeed, that De Foe and Richardson, the +founders of our modern school of fiction, appear to have stumbled upon +their discovery by a kind of accident. As De Foe's novels are simply +history _minus_ the facts, so Richardson's are a series of letters +_minus_ the correspondents. The art of novel-writing, like the art of +cooking pigs in Lamb's most philosophical as well as humorous apologue, +first appeared in its most cumbrous shape. As Hoti had to burn his +cottage for every dish of pork, Richardson and De Foe had to produce +fiction at the expense of a close approach to falsehood. The division +between the art of lying and the art of fiction was not distinctly +visible to either; and both suffer to some extent from the attempt to +produce absolute illusion, where they should have been content with +portraiture. And yet the defect is balanced by the vigour naturally +connected with an unflinching realism. That this power rested, in De +Foe's case, upon something more than a bit of literary trickery, may be +inferred from his fate in another department of authorship. He twice got +into trouble for a device exactly analogous to that which he afterwards +practised in fiction. On both occasions he was punished for assuming a +character for purposes of mystification. In the latest instance, it is +seen, the pamphlet called 'What if the Pretender Comes?' was written in +such obvious irony, that the mistake of his intentions must have been +wilful. The other and better-known performance, 'The Shortest Way with +the Dissenters,' seems really to have imposed upon some of his readers. +It is difficult in these days of toleration to imagine that any one can +have taken the violent suggestions of the 'Shortest Way' as put forward +seriously. To those who might say that persecuting the Dissenters was +cruel, says De Foe, 'I answer, 'tis cruelty to kill a snake or a toad +in cold blood, but the poison of their nature makes it a charity to our +neighbours to destroy those creatures, not for any personal injury +received, but for prevention.... Serpents, toads, and vipers, &c., are +noxious to the body, and poison the sensitive life: these poison the +soul, corrupt our posterity, ensnare our children, destroy the vital of +our happiness, our future felicity, and contaminate the whole mass.' And +he concludes: 'Alas, the Church of England! What with Popery on the one +hand, and schismatics on the other, how has she been crucified between +two thieves! _Now let us crucify the thieves!_ Let her foundations be +established upon the destruction of her enemies: the doors of mercy +being always open to the returning part of the deluded people; let the +obstinate be ruled with a rod of iron!' It gives a pleasant impression +of the spirit of the times, to remember that this could be taken for a +genuine utterance of orthodoxy; that De Foe was imprisoned and +pilloried, and had to write a serious protestation that it was only a +joke, and that he meant to expose the nonjuring party by putting their +secret wishes into plain English. ''Tis hard,' he says, 'that this +should not be perceived by all the town; that not one man can see it, +either Churchman or Dissenter.' It certainly was very hard; but a +perusal of the whole pamphlet may make it a degree more intelligible. +Ironical writing of this kind is in substance a _reductio ad absurdum_. +It is a way of saying the logical result of your opinions is such or +such a monstrous error. So long as the appearance of logic is preserved, +the error cannot be stated too strongly. The attempt to soften the +absurdity so as to take in an antagonist is injurious artistically, if +it may be practically useful. An ironical intention which is quite +concealed might as well not exist. And thus the unscrupulous use of the +same weapon by Swift is now far more telling than De Foe's comparatively +guarded application of it. The artifice, however, is most skilfully +carried out for the end which De Foe had in view. The 'Shortest Way' +begins with a comparative gravity to throw us off our guard; the author +is not afraid of imitating a little of the dulness of his supposed +antagonists, and repeats with all imaginable seriousness the very taunts +which a High Church bigot would in fact have used. It was not a sound +defence of persecution to say that the Dissenters had been cruel when +they had the upper hand, and that penalties imposed upon them were +merely retaliation for injuries suffered under Cromwell and from +Scottish Presbyterians; but it was one of those topics upon which a +hot-headed persecutor would naturally dwell, though De Foe gives him +rather more forcible language than he would be likely to possess. It is +only towards the end that the ironical purpose crops out in what we +should have thought an unmistakable manner. Few writers would have +preserved their incognito so long. The caricature would have been too +palpable, and invited ridicule too ostentatiously. An impatient man soon +frets under the mask and betrays his real strangeness in the hostile +camp. + +De Foe in fact had a peculiarity at first sight less favourable to +success in fiction than in controversy. Amongst the political writers of +that age he was, on the whole, distinguished for good temper and an +absence of violence. Although a party man, he was by no means a man to +swallow the whole party platform. He walked on his own legs, and was not +afraid to be called a deserter by more thoroughgoing partisans. The +principles which he most ardently supported were those of religious +toleration and hatred to every form of arbitrary power. Now, the +intellectual groundwork upon which such a character is formed has +certain conspicuous merits, along with certain undeniable weaknesses. +Amongst the first may be reckoned a strong grasp of facts--which was +developed to an almost disproportionate degree in De Foe--and a +resolution to see things as they are without the gloss which is +contracted from strong party sentiment. He was one of those men of +vigorous common-sense who like to have everything down plainly and +distinctly in good unmistakable black and white, and indulge a voracious +appetite for facts and figures. He was, therefore, able--within the +limits of his vision--to see things from both sides, and to take his +adversaries' opinions as calmly as his own, so long, at least, as they +dealt with the class of considerations with which he was accustomed to +deal; for, indeed, there are certain regions of discussion to which we +cannot be borne on the wings of statistics, or even of common-sense. And +this, the weak side of his intellect, is equally unmistakable. The +matter-of-fact man may be compared to one who suffers from +colour-blindness. Perhaps he may have a power of penetrating, and even +microscopic vision; but he sees everything in his favourite black and +white or gray, and loses all the delights of gorgeous, though it may be +deceptive, colouring. One man sees everything in the forcible light and +shade of Rembrandt: a few heroes stand out conspicuously in a focus of +brilliancy from a background of imperfectly defined shadows, clustering +round the centre in strange but picturesque confusion. To another, every +figure is full of interest, with singular contrasts and sharply-defined +features; the whole effect is somewhat spoilt by the want of perspective +and the perpetual sparkle and glitter; yet when we fix our attention +upon any special part, it attracts us by its undeniable vivacity and +vitality. To a third, again, the individual figures become dimmer, but +he sees a slow and majestic procession of shapes imperceptibly +developing into some harmonious whole. Men profess to reach their +philosophical conclusions by some process of logic; but the imagination +is the faculty which furnishes the raw material upon which the logic is +employed, and, unconsciously to its owners, determines, for the most +part, the shape into which their theories will be moulded. Now, De Foe +was above the ordinary standard, in so far as he did not, like most of +us, see things merely as a blurred and inextricable chaos; but he was +below the great imaginative writers in the comparative coldness and dry +precision of his mental vision. To him the world was a vast picture, +from which all confusion was banished; everything was definite, clear, +and precise as in a photograph; as in a photograph, too, everything +could be accurately measured, and the result stated in figures; by the +same parallel, there was a want of perspective, for the most distant +objects were as precisely given as the nearest; and yet further, there +was the same absence of the colouring which is caused in natural objects +by light and heat, and in mental pictures by the fire of imaginative +passion. The result is a product which is to Fielding or Scott what a +portrait by a first-rate photographer is to one by Vandyke or Reynolds, +though, perhaps, the peculiar qualifications which go to make a De Foe +are almost as rare as those which form the more elevated artist. + +To illustrate this a little more in detail, one curious proof of the +want of the passionate element in De Foe's novels is the singular +calmness with which he describes his villains. He always looks at the +matter in a purely business-like point of view. It is very wrong to +steal, or break any of the commandments: partly because the chances are +that it won't pay, and partly also because the devil will doubtless get +hold of you in time. But a villain in De Foe is extremely like a +virtuous person, only that, so to speak, he has unluckily backed the +losing side. Thus, for example, Colonel Jack is a thief from his youth +up; Moll Flanders is a thief, and worse; Roxana is a highly immoral +lady, and is under some suspicion of a most detestable murder; and +Captain Singleton is a pirate of the genuine buccaneering school. Yet we +should really doubt, but for their own confessions, whether they have +villainy enough amongst them to furnish an average pickpocket. Roxana +occasionally talks about a hell within, and even has unpleasant dreams +concerning 'apparitions of devils and monsters, of falling into gulphs, +and from off high and steep precipices.' She has, moreover, excellent +reasons for her discomfort. Still, in spite of a very erroneous course +of practice, her moral tone is all that can be desired. She discourses +about the importance of keeping to the paths of virtue with the most +exemplary punctuality, though she does not find them convenient for her +own personal use. Colonel Jack is a young Arab of the streets--as it is +fashionable to call them now-a-days--sleeping in the ashes of a +glasshouse by night, and consorting with thieves by day. Still the +exemplary nature of his sentiments would go far to establish Lord +Palmerston's rather heterodox theory of the innate goodness of man. He +talks like a book from his earliest infancy. He once forgets himself so +far as to rob a couple of poor women on the highway instead of picking +rich men's pockets; but his conscience pricks him so much that he cannot +rest till he has restored the money. Captain Singleton is a still more +striking case: he is a pirate by trade, but with a strong resemblance to +the ordinary British merchant in his habits of thought. He ultimately +retires from a business in which the risks are too great for his taste, +marries, and settles down quietly on his savings. There is a certain +Quaker who joins his ship, really as a volunteer, but under a show of +compulsion, in order to avoid the possible inconveniences of a capture. +The Quaker always advises him in his difficulties in such a way as to +avoid responsibility. When they are in action with a Portuguese +man-of-war, for example, the Quaker sees a chance of boarding, and, +coming up to Singleton, says very calmly, 'Friend, what dost thou mean? +why dost thou not visit thy neighbour in the ship, the door being open +for thee?' This ingenious gentleman always preserves as much humanity as +is compatible with his peculiar position, and even prevents certain +negroes from being tortured into confession, on the unanswerable ground +that, as neither party understands a word of the other's language, the +confession will not be to much purpose. 'It is no compliment to my +moderation,' says Singleton, 'to say, I was convinced by these reasons; +and yet we had all much ado to keep our second lieutenant from murdering +some of them to make them tell.' + +Now, this humane pirate takes up pretty much the position which De Foe's +villains generally occupy in good earnest. They do very objectionable +things; but they always speak like steady, respectable Englishmen, with +an eye to the main chance. It is true that there is nothing more +difficult than to make a villain tell his own story naturally; in a way, +that is, so as to show at once the badness of the motive and the excuse +by which the actor reconciles it to his own mind. De Foe is entirely +deficient in this capacity of appreciating a character different from +his own. His actors are merely so many repetitions of himself placed +under different circumstances and committing crimes in the way of +business, as De Foe might himself have carried out a commercial +transaction. From the outside they are perfect; they are evidently +copied from the life; and Captain Singleton is himself a repetition of +the celebrated Captain Kidd, who indeed is mentioned in the novel. But +of the state of mind which leads a man to be a pirate, and of the +effects which it produces upon his morals, De Foe has either no notion, +or is, at least, totally incapable of giving us a representation. All +which goes by the name of psychological analysis in modern fiction is +totally alien to his art. He could, as we have said, show such dramatic +power as may be implied in transporting himself to a different position, +and looking at matters even from his adversary's point of view; but of +the further power of appreciating his adversary's character he shows not +the slightest trace. He looks at his actors from the outside, and gives +us with wonderful minuteness all the details of their lives; but he +never seems to remember that within the mechanism whose working he +describes there is a soul very different from that of Daniel De Foe. +Rather, he seems to see in mankind nothing but so many million Daniel De +Foes; they are in all sorts of postures, and thrown into every variety +of difficulty, but the stuff of which they are composed is identical +with that which he buttons into his own coat; there is variety of form, +but no colouring, in his pictures of life. + +We may ask again, therefore, what is the peculiar source of De Foe's +power? He has little, or no dramatic power, in the higher sense of the +word, which implies sympathy with many characters and varying tones of +mind. If he had written 'Henry IV.,' Falstaff, and Hotspur, and Prince +Hal would all have been as like each other as are generally the first +and second murderer. Nor is the mere fact that he tells a story with a +strange appearance of veracity sufficient; for a story may be truth-like +and yet deadly dull. Indeed, no candid critic can deny that this is the +case with some of De Foe's narratives; as, for example, the latter part +of 'Colonel Jack,' where the details of management of a plantation in +Virginia are sufficiently uninteresting in spite of the minute financial +details. One device, which he occasionally employs with great force, +suggests an occasional source of interest. It is generally reckoned as +one of his most skilful tricks that in telling a story he cunningly +leaves a few stray ends, which are never taken up. Such is the +well-known incident of Xury, in 'Robinson Crusoe.' This contrivance +undoubtedly gives an appearance of authenticity, by increasing the +resemblance to real narratives; it is like the trick of artificially +roughening a stone after it has been fixed into a building, to give it +the appearance of being fresh from the quarry. De Foe, however, +frequently extracts a more valuable piece of service from these loose +ends. The situation which has been most praised in De Foe's novels is +that which occurs at the end of 'Roxana.' Roxana, after a life of +wickedness, is at last married to a substantial merchant. She has saved, +from the wages of sin, the convenient sum of 2,056_l._ a year, secured +upon excellent mortgages. Her husband has 17,000_l._ in cash, after +deducting a 'black article of 8,000 pistoles,' due on account of a +certain lawsuit in Paris, and 1,320_l._ a year in rent. There is a +satisfaction about these definite sums which we seldom receive from the +vague assertions of modern novelists. Unluckily, a girl turns up at this +moment who shows great curiosity about Roxana's history. It soon becomes +evident that she is, in fact, Roxana's daughter by a former and long +since deserted husband; but she cannot be acknowledged without a +revelation of her mother's subsequently most disreputable conduct. Now, +Roxana has a devoted maid, who threatens to get rid, by fair means or +foul, of this importunate daughter. Once she fails in her design, but +confesses to her mistress that, if necessary, she will commit the +murder. Roxana professes to be terribly shocked, but yet has a desire to +be relieved at almost any price from her tormentor. The maid thereupon +disappears again; soon afterwards the daughter disappears too; and +Roxana is left in terrible doubt, tormented by the opposing anxieties +that her maid may have murdered her daughter, or that her daughter may +have escaped and revealed the mother's true character. Here is a telling +situation for a sensation novelist; and the minuteness with which the +story is worked out, whilst we are kept in suspense, supplies the place +of the ordinary rant; to say nothing of the increased effect due to +apparent veracity, in which certainly few sensation novelists can even +venture a distant competition. The end of the story differs still more +widely from modern art. Roxana has to go abroad with her husband, still +in a state of doubt. Her maid after a time joins her, but gives no +intimation as to the fate of the daughter; and the story concludes by a +simple statement that Roxana afterwards fell into well-deserved misery. +The mystery is certainly impressive; and Roxana is heartily afraid of +the devil and the gallows, to say nothing of the chance of losing her +fortune. Whether, as Lamb maintained, the conclusion in which the +mystery is cleared up is a mere forgery, or was added by De Foe to +satisfy the ill-judged curiosity of his readers, I do not profess to +decide. Certainly it rather spoils the story; but in this, as in some +other cases, one is often left in doubt as to the degree in which De Foe +was conscious of his own merits. + +Another instance on a smaller scale of the effective employment of +judicious silence, is an incident in 'Captain Singleton.' The Quaker of +our acquaintance meets with a Japanese priest who speaks a few words of +English, and explains that he has learnt it from thirteen Englishmen, +the only remnant of thirty-two who had been wrecked on the coast of +Japan. To confirm his story, he produces a bit of paper on which is +written, in plain English words: 'We came from Greenland and from the +North Pole.' Here are claimants for the discovery of a North-west +Passage, of whom we would gladly hear more. Unluckily, when Captain +Singleton comes to the place where his Quaker had met the priest, the +ship in which he was sailing had departed; and this put an end to an +inquiry, and perhaps 'may have disappointed mankind of one of the most +noble discoveries that ever was made or will again be made, in the +world, for the good of mankind in general; but so much for that.' + +In these two fragments, which illustrate a very common device of De +Foe's, we come across two elements of positive power over our +imaginations. Even De Foe's imagination recognised and delighted in a +certain margin of mystery to this harsh world of facts and figures. He +is generally too anxious to set everything before us in broad daylight; +there is too little of the thoughts and emotions which inhabit the +twilight of the mind; of those dim half-seen forms which exercise the +strongest influence upon the imagination, and are the most tempting +subjects for the poet's art. De Foe, in truth, was little enough of a +poet. Sometimes by mere force of terse idiomatic language he rises into +real poetry, as it was understood in the days when Pope and Dryden were +our lawgivers. It is often really vigorous. The well-known verses-- + + Wherever God erects a house of prayer, + The devil always builds a chapel there-- + +which begin the 'True-born Englishman,' or the really fine lines which +occur in the 'Hymn to the Pillory,' that 'hieroglyphic state machine, +contrived to punish fancy in,' and ending-- + + Tell them that placed him here, + They're scandals to the times, + Are at a loss to find his guilt, + _And can't commit his crimes_-- + +may stand for specimens of his best manner. More frequently he +degenerates into the merest doggerel, _e.g._-- + + No man was ever yet so void of sense, + As to debate the right of self-defence, + A principle so grafted in the mind, + With nature born, and does like nature bind; + Twisted with reason, and with nature too, + As neither one nor t'other can undo-- + +which is scarcely a happy specimen of the difficult art of reasoning in +verse. His verse is at best vigorous epigrammatic writing, such as would +now be converted into leading articles, twisted with more or less +violence into rhyme. And yet there is a poetical side to his mind, or at +least a susceptibility to poetical impressions of a certain order. And +as a novelist is on the border-line between poetry and prose, and novels +should be as it were prose saturated with poetry, we may expect to come +in this direction upon the secret of De Foe's power. Although De Foe for +the most part deals with good tangible subjects, which he can weigh and +measure and reduce to moidores and pistoles, the mysterious has a very +strong though peculiar attraction for him. It is indeed that vulgar kind +of mystery which implies nothing of reverential awe. He was urged by a +restless curiosity to get away from this commonplace world, and reduce +the unknown regions beyond to scale and measure. The centre of Africa, +the wilds of Siberia, and even more distinctly the world of spirits, had +wonderful charms for him. Nothing would have given him greater pleasure +than to determine the exact number of the fallen angels and the date of +their calamity. In the 'History of the Devil' he touches, with a +singular kind of humorous gravity, upon several of these questions, and +seems to apologise for his limited information. 'Several things,' he +says, 'have been suggested to set us a-calculating the number of this +frightful throng of devils who, with Satan the master-devil, was thus +cast out of heaven.' He declines the task, though he quotes with a +certain pleasure the result obtained by a grave calculator, who found +that in the first line of Satan's army there were a thousand times a +hundred thousand million devils, and more in the other two. He gives a +kind of arithmetical measure of the decline of the devil's power by +pointing out that 'he who was once equal to the angel who killed eighty +thousand men in one night, is not able now, without a new commission, to +take away the life of one Job.' He is filled with curiosity as to the +proceedings of the first parliament (p--------t as he delicately puts +it) of devils; he regrets that as he was not personally present in that +'black divan'--at least, not that he can remember, for who can account +for his pre-existent state?--he cannot say what happened; but he adds, +'If I had as much personal acquaintance with the devil as would admit +it, and could depend upon the truth of what answer he would give me, the +first question would be, what measures they (the devils) resolved on at +their first assembly?' and the second how they employed the time between +their fall and the creation of the man? Here we see the instinct of the +politician; and we may add that De Foe is thoroughly dissatisfied with +Milton's statements upon this point, though admiring his genius; and +goes so far as to write certain verses intended as a correction of, or +interpolation into, 'Paradise Lost.' + +Mr. Ruskin, in comparing Milton's Satan with Dante's, somewhere remarks +that the vagueness of Milton, as compared with the accurate measurements +given by Dante, is so far a proof of less activity of the imaginative +faculty. It is easier to leave the devil's stature uncertain than to say +that he was eighteen feet high. Without disputing the proposition as Mr. +Ruskin puts it, we fancy that he would scarcely take De Foe's poetry as +an improvement in dignity upon Milton's. We may, perhaps, guess at its +merits from this fragment of a speech in prose, addressed to Adam by +Eve: 'What ails the sot?' says the new termagant. 'What are you afraid +of?... Take it, you fool, and eat.... Take it, I say, or I will go and +cut down the tree, and you shall never eat any of it at all; and you +shall still be a fool, and be governed by your wife for ever.' This, and +much more gross buffoonery of the same kind, is apparently intended to +recommend certain sound moral aphorisms to the vulgar; but the cool +arithmetical method by which De Foe investigates the history of the +devil, his anxiety to pick up gossip about him, and the view which he +takes of him as a very acute and unscrupulous politician--though +impartially vindicating him from some of Mr. Milton's aspersions--is +exquisitely characteristic. + +If we may measure the imaginative power of great poets by the relative +merits of their conceptions of Satan, we might find a humbler gauge for +inferior capacities in the power of summoning awe-inspiring ghosts. The +difficulty of the feat is extreme. Your ghost, as Bottom would have +said, is a very fearful wild-fowl to bring upon the stage. He must be +handled delicately, or he is spoilt. Scott has a good ghost or two; but +Lord Lytton, almost the only writer who has recently dealt with the +supernatural, draws too freely upon our belief, and creates only +melodramatic spiritual beings, with a strong dash of the vulgarising +element of modern 'spiritualism.' They are scarcely more awful beings +than the terrible creations of the raw-head-and-bloody-bones school of +fiction. + +Amongst this school we fear that De Foe must, on the whole, be reckoned. +We have already made acquaintance with Mrs. Veal, who, in her ghostly +condition, talks for an hour and three-quarters with a gossip over a cup +of tea; who, indeed, so far forgets her ghostly condition as to ask for +a cup of the said tea, and only evades the consequences of her blunder +by one of those rather awkward excuses which we all sometimes practise +in society; and who, in short, is the least ethereal spirit that was +ever met with outside a table. De Foe's extraordinary love for +supernatural stories of the gossiping variety found vent in 'A History +of Apparitions,' and his 'System of Magic.' The position which he takes +up is a kind of modified rationalism. He believes that there are genuine +apparitions which personate our dead friends, and give us excellent +pieces of advice on occasion; but he refuses to believe that the spirits +can appear themselves, on account 'of the many strange inconveniences +and ill consequences which would happen if the souls of men and women, +unembodied and departed, were at liberty to visit the earth.' De Foe is +evidently as familiar with the habits of spirits generally as of the +devil. In that case, for example, the feuds of families would never die, +for the injured person would be always coming back to right himself. He +proceeds upon this principle to account for many apparitions, as, for +example, one which appeared in the likeness of a certain J. O. of the +period, and strongly recommended his widow to reduce her expenses. He +won't believe that the Virgin appeared to St. Francis, because all +stories of that kind are mere impostures of the priests; but he thinks +it very likely that he was haunted by the devil, who may have sometimes +taken the Virgin's shape. In the 'History of Witchcraft' De Foe tells us +how, as he was once riding in the country, he met a man on the way to +inquire of a certain wizard. De Foe, according to his account, which may +or may not be intended as authentic, waited the whole of the next day at +a public-house in a country town, in order to hear the result of the +inquiry; and had long conversations, reported in his usual style, with +infinite 'says he's' and 'says I's,' in which he tried to prove that the +wizard was an impostor. This lets us into the secret of many of De Foe's +apparitions. They are the ghosts that frighten villagers as they cross +commons late at night, or that rattle chains and display lights in +haunted houses. Sometimes they have vexed knavish attorneys by +discovering long-hidden deeds. Sometimes they have enticed highwaymen +into dark corners of woods, and there the wretched criminal finds in +their bags (for ghosts of this breed have good substantial luggage) +nothing but a halter and a bit of silver (value exactly 13-1/2_d._) to +pay the hangman. When he turns to the owner, he has vanished. +Occasionally, they are the legends told by some passing traveller from +distant lands--probably genuine superstitions in their origin, but +amplified by tradition into marvellous exactitude of detail, and +garnished with long gossiping conversations. Such a ghost, which, on the +whole, is my favourite, is the mysterious Owke Mouraski. This being, +whether devil or good spirit no man knows, accompanied a traveller for +four years through the steppes of Russia, and across Norway, Turkey, and +various other countries. On the march he was always seen a mile to the +left of the party, keeping parallel with them, in glorious indifference +to roads. He crossed rivers without bridges, and the sea without ships. +Everywhere, in the wild countries, he was known by name and dreaded; for +if he entered a house, some one would die there within a year. Yet he +was good to the traveller, going so far, indeed, on one occasion, as to +lend him a horse, and frequently treating him to good advice. Towards +the end of the journey Owke Mouraski informed his companion that he was +'the inhabitant of an invisible region,' and afterwards became very +familiar with him. The traveller, indeed, would never believe that his +friend was a devil, a scepticism of which De Foe doubtfully approves. +The story, however, must be true, because, as De Foe says, he saw it in +manuscript many years ago; and certainly Owke is of a superior order to +most of the pot-house ghosts. + +De Foe, doubtless, had an insatiable appetite for legends of this kind, +talked about them with infinite zest in innumerable gossips, and +probably smoked pipes and consumed ale in abundance during the process. +The ghosts are the substantial creations of the popular fancy, which no +longer nourished itself upon a genuine faith in a more lofty order of +spiritual beings. It is superstition become gross and vulgar before it +disappears for ever. Romance and poetry have pretty well departed from +these ghosts, as from the witches of the period, who are little better +than those who still linger in our country villages and fill corners of +newspapers, headed 'Superstition in the nineteenth century.' In his +novels De Foe's instinct for probability generally enables him to employ +the marvellous moderately, and, therefore, effectively; he is specially +given to dreams; they are generally verified just enough to leave us the +choice of credulity or scepticism, and are in excellent keeping with the +supposed narrator. Roxana tells us how one morning she suddenly sees her +lover's face as though it were a death's-head, and his clothes covered +with blood. In the evening the lover is murdered. One of Moll Flanders' +husbands hears her call him at a distance of many miles--a superstition, +by the way, in which Boswell, if not Johnson, fully believed. De Foe +shows his usual skill in sometimes making the visions or omens fail of a +too close fulfilment, as in the excellent dream where Robinson Crusoe +hears Friday's father tell him of the sailors' attempt to murder the +Spaniards: no part of the dream, as he says, is specifically true, +though it has a general truth; and hence we may, at our choice, suppose +it to have been supernatural, or to be merely a natural result of +Crusoe's anxiety. This region of the marvellous, however, only affects +De Foe's novels in a subordinate degree. The Owke Mouraski suggests +another field in which a lover of the mysterious could then find room +for his imagination. The world still presented a boundless wilderness +of untravelled land. Mapped and explored territory was still a bright +spot surrounded by chaotic darkness, instead of the two being in the +reverse proportions. Geographers might fill up huge tracts by writing +'here is much gold,' or putting 'elephants instead of towns.' De Foe's +gossiping acquaintance, when they were tired of ghosts, could tell of +strange adventures in wild seas, where merchantmen followed a narrow +track, exposed to the assaults of pirates; or of long journeys over +endless steppes, in the days when travelling was travelling indeed; when +distances were reckoned by months, and men might expect to meet +undiscovered tribes and monsters unimagined by natural historians. +Doubtless he had listened greedily to the stories of seafaring men and +merchants from the Gold Coast or the East. 'Captain Singleton,' to omit +'Robinson Crusoe' for the present, shows the form into which these +stories moulded themselves in his mind. Singleton, besides his other +exploits, anticipated Livingstone in crossing Africa from sea to sea. De +Foe's biographers rather unnecessarily admire the marvellous way in +which his imaginary descriptions have been confirmed by later +travellers. And it is true that Singleton found two great lakes, which +may, if we please, be identified with those of recent discoverers. His +other guesses are not surprising. As a specimen of the mode in which he +filled up the unknown space we may mention that he covers the desert +'with a kind of thick moss of a blackish dead colour,' which is not a +very impressive phenomenon. It is in the matter of wild beasts, however, +that he is strongest. Their camp is in one place surrounded by +'innumerable numbers of devilish creatures.' These creatures were as +'thick as a drove of bullocks coming to a fair,' so that they could not +fire without hitting some; in fact, a volley brought down three tigers +and two wolves, besides one creature 'of an ill-gendered kind, between a +tiger and a leopard.' Before long they met an 'ugly, venomous, deformed +kind of a snake or serpent,' which had 'a hellish, ugly, deformed look +and voice;' indeed, they would have recognised in it the being who most +haunted De Foe's imaginary world--the devil--except that they could not +think what business the devil could have where there were no people. The +fauna of this country, besides innumerable lions, tigers, leopards, and +elephants, comprised 'living creatures as big as calves, but not of that +kind,' and creatures between a buffalo and a deer, which resembled +neither; they had no horns, but legs like a cow, with a fine head and +neck, like a deer. The 'ill-gendered' beast is an admirable specimen of +De Foe's workmanship. It shows his moderation under most tempting +circumstances. No dog-headed men, no men with eyes in their breasts, or +feet that serve as umbrellas, will suit him. He must have something new, +and yet probable; and he hits upon a very serviceable animal in this +mixture between a tiger and a leopard. Surely no one could refuse to +honour such a moderate draft upon his imagination. In short, De Foe, +even in the wildest of regions, where his pencil might have full play, +sticks closely to the commonplace, and will not venture beyond the +regions of the easily conceivable. + +The final element in which De Foe's curiosity might find a congenial +food consisted of the stories floating about contemporary affairs. He +had talked with men who had fought in the Great Rebellion, or even in +the old German wars. He had himself been out with Monmouth, and taken +part in the fight at Sedgemoor. Doubtless that small experience of +actual warfare gave additional vivacity to his descriptions of battles, +and was useful to him, as Gibbon declares that his service with the +militia was of some assistance in describing armies of a very different +kind. There is a period in history which has a peculiar interest for all +of us. It is that which lies upon the border-land between the past and +present; which has gathered some romance from the lapse of time, and yet +is not so far off but that we have seen some of the actors, and can +distinctly realise the scenes in which they took part. Such to the +present generation is the era of the Revolutionary wars. 'Old men still +creep among us' who lived through that period of peril and excitement, +and yet we are far enough removed from them to fancy that there were +giants in those days. When De Foe wrote his novels the battles of the +great Civil War and the calamities of the Plague were passing through +this phase; and to them we owe two of his most interesting books, the +'Memoirs of a Cavalier' and the 'History of the Plague.' + +When such a man spins us a yarn the conditions of its being interesting +are tolerably simple. The first condition obviously is, that the plot +must be a good one, and good in the sense that a representation in +dumb-show must be sufficiently exciting, without the necessity of any +explanation of motives. The novel of sentiment or passion or character +would be altogether beyond his scope. He will accumulate any number of +facts and details; but they must be such as will speak for themselves +without the need of an interpreter. For this reason we do not imagine +that 'Roxana,' 'Moll Flanders,' 'Colonel Jack,' or 'Captain Singleton' +can fairly claim any higher interest than that which belongs to the +ordinary police report, given with infinite fulness and vivacity of +detail. In each of them there are one or two forcible situations. Roxana +pursued by her daughter, Moll Flanders in prison, and Colonel Jack as a +young boy of the streets, are powerful fragments, and well adapted for +his peculiar method. He goes on heaping up little significant facts, +till we are able to realise the situation powerfully, and we may then +supply the sentiment for ourselves. But he never seems to know his own +strength. He gives us at equal length, and with the utmost +plain-speaking, the details of a number of other positions, which are +neither interesting nor edifying. He is decent or coarse, just as he is +dull or amusing, without knowing the difference. The details about the +different connections formed by Roxana and Moll Flanders have no atom of +sentiment, and are about as wearisome as the journal of a specially +heartless lady of the same character would be at the present day. He has +been praised for never gilding objectionable objects, or making vice +attractive. To all appearance, he would have been totally unable to set +about it. He has only one mode of telling a story, and he follows the +thread of his narrative into the back-slums of London, or lodging-houses +of doubtful character, or respectable places of trade, with the same +equanimity, at a good steady jog-trot of narrative. The absence of any +passion or sentiment deprives such places of the one possible source of +interest; and we must confess that two-thirds of each of these novels +are deadly dull; the remainder, though exhibiting specimens of his +genuine power, is not far enough from the commonplace to be specially +attractive. In short, the merit of De Foe's narrative bears a direct +proportion to the intrinsic merit of a plain statement of the facts; +and, in the novels already mentioned, as there is nothing very +surprising, certainly nothing unique, about the story, his treatment +cannot raise it above a very moderate level. + +Above these stories comes De Foe's best fragment of fictitious +history.[1] The 'Memoirs of a Cavalier' is a very amusing book, though +it is less fiction than history, interspersed with a few personal +anecdotes. In it there are some exquisite little bits of genuine Defoe. +The Cavalier tells us, with such admirable frankness, that he once left +the army a day or two before a battle, in order to visit some relatives +at Bath, and excuses himself so modestly for his apparent neglect of +military duty, that we cannot refuse to believe in him. A novelist, we +say, would have certainly taken us to the battle, or would, at least, +have given his hero a more heroic excuse. The character, too, of the old +soldier, who has served under Gustavus Adolphus, who is disgusted with +the raw English levies, still more disgusted with the interference of +parsons, and who has a respect for his opponents--especially Sir Thomas +Fairfax--which is compounded partly of English love of fair play, and +partly of the indifference of a professional officer--is better +supported than most of De Foe's personages. An excellent Dugald Dalgetty +touch is his constant anxiety to impress upon the Royalist commanders +the importance of a particular trick which he has learned abroad of +mixing foot soldiers with the cavalry. We must leave him, however, to +say a few words upon the 'History of the Plague,' which seems to come +next in merit to 'Robinson Crusoe.' Here De Foe has to deal with a story +of such intrinsically tragic interest that all his details become +affecting. It needs no commentary to interpret the meaning of the +terrible anecdotes, many of which are doubtless founded on fact. There +is the strange superstitious element brought out by the horror of the +sudden visitation. The supposed writer hesitates as to leaving the +doomed city. He is decided to stay at last by opening the Bible at +random and coming upon the text, 'He shall deliver thee from the snare +of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.' He watches the comets: +the one which appeared before the Plague was 'of a dull, languid colour, +and its motion heavy, solemn, and slow;' the other, which preceded the +Great Fire, was 'bright and sparkling, and its motion swift and +furious.' Old women, he says, believed in them, especially 'the +hypochondriac part of the other sex,' who might, he thinks, be called +old women too. Still he half-believes himself, especially when the +second appears. He does not believe that the breath of the +plague-stricken upon a glass would leave shapes of 'dragons, snakes, and +devils, horrible to behold;' but he does believe that if they breathed +on a bird they would kill it, or 'at least make its eggs rotten.' +However, he admits that no experiments were tried. Then we have the +hideous, and sometimes horribly grotesque, incidents. There is the poor +naked creature, who runs up and down, exclaiming continually, 'Oh, the +great and the dreadful God!' but would say nothing else, and speak to no +one. There is the woman who suddenly opens a window and 'calls out, +"Death, death, death!" in a most inimitable tone, which struck me with +horror and chillness in the very blood.' There is the man who, with +death in his face, opens the door to a young apprentice sent to ask him +for money: 'Very well, child,' says the living ghost; 'go to Cripplegate +Church, and bid them ring the bell for me;' and with those words shuts +the door, goes upstairs, and dies. Then we have the horrors of the +dead-cart, and the unlucky piper who was carried off by mistake. De Foe, +with his usual ingenuity, corrects the inaccurate versions of the +story, and says that the piper was not blind, but only old and silly; +and that he does not believe that, as 'the story goes,' he set up his +pipes while in the cart. After this we cannot refuse to admit that he +was really carried off and all but buried. Another device for cheating +us into acceptance of his story is the ingenious way in which he +imitates the occasional lapses of memory of a genuine narrator, and +admits that he does not precisely recollect certain details; and still +better is the conscientious eagerness with which he distinguishes +between the occurrences of which he was an eye-witness and those which +he only knew by hearsay. + +This book, more than any of the others, shows a skill in selecting +telling incidents. We are sometimes in doubt whether the particular +details which occur in other stories are not put in rather by good luck +than from a due perception of their value. He thus resembles a savage, +who is as much pleased with a glass bead as with a piece of gold; but in +the 'History of the Plague' every detail goes straight to the mark. At +one point he cannot help diverging into the story of three poor men who +escape into the fields, and giving us, with his usual relish, all their +rambling conversations by the way. For the most part, however, he is +less diffusive and more pointed than usual; the greatness of the +calamity seems to have given more intensity to his style; and it leaves +all the impression of a genuine narrative, told by one who has, as it +were, just escaped from the valley of the shadow of death, with the awe +still upon him, and every terrible sight and sound fresh in his memory. +The amazing truthfulness of the style is here in its proper place; we +wish to be brought as near as may be to the facts; we want good +realistic painting more than fine sentiment. The story reminds us of +certain ghastly photographs published during the American War, which had +been taken on the field of battle. They gave a more forcible impression +of the horrors of war than the most thrilling pictures drawn from the +fancy. In such cases we only wish the narrator to stand as much as +possible on one side, and just draw up a bit of the curtain which +conceals his gallery of horrors. + +It is time, however, to say enough of 'Robinson Crusoe' to justify its +traditional superiority to De Foe's other writings. The charm, as some +critics say, is difficult to analyse; and I do not profess to +demonstrate mathematically that it must necessarily be, what it is, the +most fascinating boy's book ever written, and one which older critics +may study with delight. The most obvious advantage over the secondary +novels lies in the unique situation. Lamb, in the passage from which I +have quoted, gracefully evades this point. 'Are there no solitudes,' he +says, 'out of the cave and the desert? or cannot the heart, in the midst +of crowds, feel frightfully alone?' Singleton, he suggests, is alone +with pirates less merciful than the howling monsters, the devilish +serpents, and ill-gendered creatures of De Foe's deserts. Colonel Jack +is alone amidst the London thieves when he goes to bury his treasures in +the hollow tree. This is prettily said; but it suggests rather what +another writer might have made of De Foe's heroes, than what De Foe made +of them himself. Singleton, it is true, is alone amongst the pirates, +but he takes to them as naturally as a fish takes to the water, and, +indeed, finds them a good, honest, respectable, stupid sort of people. +They stick by him and he by them, and we are never made to feel the real +horrors of his position. Colonel Jack might, in other hands, have become +an Oliver Twist, less real perhaps than De Foe has made him, but +infinitely more pathetic. De Foe tells us of his unpleasant +sleeping-places; and his occasional fears of the gallows; but of the +supposed mental struggles, of the awful solitude of soul, we hear +nothing. How can we sympathise very deeply with a young gentleman whose +recollections run chiefly upon the exact numbers of shillings and pence +captured by himself and his pocket-picking 'pals'? Similarly Robinson +Crusoe dwells but little upon the horrors of his position, and when he +does is apt to get extremely prosy. We fancy that he could never have +been in want of a solid sermon on Sunday, however much he may have +missed the church-going bell. But in 'Robinson Crusoe,' as in the +'History of the Plague,' the story speaks for itself. To explain the +horrors of living among thieves, we must have some picture of internal +struggles, of a sense of honour opposed to temptation, and a pure mind +in danger of contamination. De Foe's extremely straightforward and +prosaic view of life prevents him from setting any such sentimental +trials before us; the lad avoids the gallows, and in time becomes the +honest master of a good plantation; and there's enough. But the horrors +of abandonment on a desert island can be appreciated by the simplest +sailor or schoolboy. The main thing is to bring out the situation +plainly and forcibly, to tell us of the difficulties of making pots and +pans, of catching goats and sowing corn, and of avoiding audacious +cannibals. This task De Foe performs with unequalled spirit and +vivacity. In his first discovery of a new art he shows the freshness so +often conspicuous in first novels. The scenery was just that which had +peculiar charms for his fancy; it was one of those half-true legends of +which he had heard strange stories from seafaring men, and possibly from +the acquaintances of his hero himself. He brings out the shrewd +vigorous character of the Englishman thrown upon his own resources with +evident enjoyment of his task. Indeed, De Foe tells us very emphatically +that in Robinson Crusoe he saw a kind of allegory of his own fate. He +had suffered from solitude of soul. Confinement in his prison is +represented in the book by confinement in an island; and even a +particular incident, here and there, such as the fright he receives one +night from something in his bed, 'was word for word a history of what +happened.' In other words, this novel too, like many of the best ever +written, has in it the autobiographical element which makes a man speak +from greater depths of feeling than in a purely imaginary story. + +It would indeed be easy to show that the story, though in one sense +marvellously like truth, is singularly wanting as a psychological study. +Friday is no real savage, but a good English servant without plush. He +says 'muchee' and 'speakee,' but he becomes at once a civilised being, +and in his first conversation puzzles Crusoe terribly by that awkward +theological question, why God did not kill the devil--for +characteristically enough Crusoe's first lesson includes a little +instruction upon the enemy of mankind. He found, however, that it was +'not so easy to imprint right notions in Friday's mind about the devil, +as it was about the being of a God.' This is comparatively a trifle; but +Crusoe himself is all but impossible. Steele, indeed, gives an account +of Selkirk, from which he infers that 'this plain man's story is a +memorable example that he is happiest who confines his wants to natural +necessities;' but the facts do not warrant this pet doctrine of an +old-fashioned school. Selkirk's state of mind may be inferred from two +or three facts. He had almost forgotten to talk; he had learnt to catch +goats by hunting them on foot; and he had acquired the exceedingly +difficult art of making fire by rubbing two sticks. In other words, his +whole mind was absorbed in providing a few physical necessities, and he +was rapidly becoming a savage--for a man who can't speak and can make +fire is very near the Australian. We may infer, what is probable from +other cases, that a man living fifteen years by himself, like Crusoe, +would either go mad or sink into the semi-savage state. De Foe really +describes a man in prison, not in solitary confinement. We should not be +so pedantic as to call for accuracy in such matters; but the difference +between the fiction and what we believe would have been the reality is +significant. De Foe, even in 'Robinson Crusoe,' gives a very inadequate +picture of the mental torments to which his hero is exposed. He is +frightened by a parrot calling him by name, and by the strangely +picturesque incident of the footmark on the sand; but, on the whole, he +takes his imprisonment with preternatural stolidity. His stay on the +island produces the same state of mind as might be due to a dull Sunday +in Scotland. For this reason, the want of power in describing emotion as +compared with the amazing power of describing facts, 'Robinson Crusoe' +is a book for boys rather than men, and, as Lamb says, for the kitchen +rather than for higher circles. It falls short of any high intellectual +interest. When we leave the striking situation and get to the second +part, with the Spaniards and Will Atkins talking natural theology to his +wife, it sinks to the level of the secondary stories. But for people who +are not too proud to take a rather low order of amusement 'Robinson +Crusoe' will always be one of the most charming of books. We have the +romantic and adventurous incidents upon which the most unflinching +realism can be set to work without danger of vulgarity. Here is +precisely the story suited to De Foe's strength and weakness. He is +forced to be artistic in spite of himself. He cannot lose the thread of +the narrative and break it into disjointed fragments, for the limits of +the island confine him as well as his hero. He cannot tire us with +details, for all the details of such a story are interesting; it is made +up of petty incidents, as much as the life of a prisoner reduced to +taming flies, or making saws out of penknives. The island does as well +as the Bastille for making trifles valuable to the sufferer and to us. +The facts tell the story of themselves, without any demand for romantic +power to press them home to us; and the efforts to give an air of +authenticity to the story, which sometimes make us smile, and sometimes +rather bore us, in other novels are all to the purpose; for there is a +real point in putting such a story in the mouth of the sufferer, and in +giving us for the time an illusory belief in his reality. It is one of +the exceptional cases in which the poetical aspect of a position is +brought out best by the most prosaic accuracy of detail; and we imagine +that Robinson Crusoe's island, with all his small household torments, +will always be more impressive than the more gorgeously coloured island +of Enoch Arden. When we add that the whole book shows the freshness of a +writer employed on his first novel--though at the mature age of +fifty-eight; seeing in it an allegory of his own experience embodied in +the scenes which most interested his imagination, we see some reasons +why 'Robinson Crusoe' should hold a distinct rank by itself amongst his +works. As De Foe was a man of very powerful but very limited +imagination--able to see certain aspects of things with extraordinary +distinctness, but little able to rise above them--even his greatest book +shows his weakness, and scarcely satisfies a grown-up man with a taste +for high art. In revenge, it ought, according to Rousseau, to be for a +time the whole library of a boy, chiefly, it seems, to teach him that +the stock of an ironmonger is better than that of a jeweller. We may +agree in the conclusion without caring about the reason; and to have +pleased all the boys in Europe for near a hundred and fifty years is, +after all, a remarkable feat. + +One remark must be added, which scarcely seems to have been sufficiently +noticed by Defoe's critics. He cannot be understood unless we remember +that he was primarily and essentially a journalist, and that even his +novels are part of his journalism. He was a pioneer in the art of +newspaper writing, and anticipated with singular acuteness many later +developments of his occupation. The nearest parallel to him is Cobbett, +who wrote still better English, though he could hardly have written a +'Robinson Crusoe.' Defoe, like Cobbett, was a sturdy middle-class +Englishman, and each was in his time the most effective advocate of the +political views of his class. De Foe represented the Whiggism, not of +the great 'junto' or aristocratic ring, but of the dissenters and +tradesmen whose prejudices the junto had to turn to account. He would +have stood by Chatham in the time of Wilkes and of the American War; he +would have demanded parliamentary reform in the time of Brougham and +Bentham, and he would have been a follower of the Manchester school in +the time of Bright and Cobden. We all know the type, and have made up +our minds as to its merits. When De Foe came to be a subject of +biography in this century, he was of course praised for his +enlightenment by men of congenial opinions. He was held up as a model +politician, not only for his creed but for his independence. The +revelations of his last biographer, Mr. Lee, showed unfortunately that +considerable deductions must be made from the independence. He was, as +we now know, in the pay of Government for many years, while boasting of +his perfect purity; he was transferred, like a mere dependent, from the +Whigs to the Tories and back again. In the reign of George I. he +consented to abandon his character in order to act as a spy upon unlucky +Jacobite colleagues. It is to the credit of Harley's acuteness that he +was the first English minister to make a systematic use of the press and +was the patron both of Swift and De Foe. But to use the press was then +to make a mere tool of the author. De Foe was a journalist, living, and +supporting a family, by his pen, in the days when a journalist had to +choose between the pillory and dependence. He soon had enough of the +pillory and preferred to do very dirty services for his employer. Other +journalists, I fear, since his day have consented to serve masters whom +in their hearts they disapproved. It may, I think, be fairly said on +behalf of De Foe that in the main he worked for causes of which he +really approved; that he never sacrificed the opinions to which he was +most deeply attached; that his morality was, at worst, above that of +many contemporary politicians; and that, in short, he had a conscience, +though he could not afford to obey it implicitly. He says himself, and I +think the statement has its pathetic side, that he made a kind of +compromise with that awkward instinct. He praised those acts only of the +Government which he really approved, though he could not afford to +denounce those from which he differed. Undoubtedly, as many respectable +moralists have told us, the man who endeavours to draw such lines will +get into difficulties and probably emerge with a character not a little +soiled in the process. But after all as things go, it is something to +find that a journalist has really a conscience, even though his +conscience be a little too open to solid arguments. He was still capable +of blushing. Let us be thankful that in these days our journalists are +too high-minded to be ever required to blush. Here, however, I have only +to speak of the effect of De Foe's position upon his fictions. He had +early begun to try other than political modes of journalism. His account +of the great storm of 1703 was one of his first attempts as a reporter; +and it is characteristic that, as he was in prison at the time, he had +already to report things seen only by the eye of faith. He tried at an +early period to give variety to his 'Review' by some of the 'social' +articles which afterwards became the staple of the 'Tatler' and +'Spectator.' When, after the death of Queen Anne, there was a political +lull he struck out new paths. It was then that he wrote lives of +highwaymen and dissenting divines, and that he patched up any narratives +which he could get hold of, and gave them the shape of authentic +historical documents. He discovered the great art of interviewing, and +one of his performances might still pass for a masterpiece. Jack +Sheppard, when already in the cart beneath the gallows, gave a paper to +a bystander, of which the life published by De Foe on the following day +professed to be a reproduction. Nothing that could be turned into copy +for the newspaper or the sixpenny pamphlet of the day came amiss to this +forerunner of journalistic enterprise. This is the true explanation of +'Robinson Crusoe' and its successors. 'Robinson Crusoe,' in fact, is +simply an application on a larger scale of the device which he was +practising every day. It is purely and simply a masterly bit of +journalism. It affects to be a true story, as, of course, every story +in a newspaper affects to be true; though De Foe had made the not very +remote discovery that it is often easier to invent the facts than to +investigate them. He is simply a reporter _minus_ the veracity. Like any +other reporter, he assumes that the interest of his story depends +obviously and entirely upon its verisimilitude. He relates the +adventures of the genuine Alexander Selkirk, only elaborated into more +detail, just as a modern reporter might give us an account of Mr. +Stanley's African expedition if Mr. Stanley had been unable to do so for +himself. He is always in the attitude of mind of the newspaper +correspondent, who has been interviewing the hero of an interesting +story and ventures at most a little safe embroidery. This explains a +remark made by Dickens, who complained that the account of Friday's +death showed an 'utter want of tenderness and sentiment,' and says +somewhere that 'Robinson Crusoe' is the only great novel which never +moves either to laughter or to tears. The creator of Oliver Twist and +Little Nell was naturally scandalised by De Foe's dry and matter-of-fact +narrative. But De Foe had never approached the conception of his art +which afterwards became familiar. He had nothing to do with sentiment or +psychology; those elements of interest came in with Richardson and +Fielding; he was simply telling a true story and leaving his readers to +feel what they pleased. It never even occurred to him, more than it +occurs to the ordinary reporter, to analyse character or describe +scenery or work up sentiment. He was simply a narrator of plain facts. +He left poetry and reflection to Mr. Pope or Mr. Addison, as your +straightforward annalist in a newspaper has no thoughts of rivalling +Lord Tennyson or Mr. Froude. His narratives were fictitious only in the +sense that the facts did not happen; but that trifling circumstance was +to make no difference to the mode of writing them. The poetical element +would have been as much out of place as it would have been in a +merchant's ledger. He could not, indeed, help introducing a little +moralising, for he was a typical English middle-class dissenter. Some of +his simple-minded commentators have even given him credit, upon the +strength of such passages, for lofty moral purpose. They fancy that his +lives of criminals, real or imaginary, were intended to be tracts +showing that vice leads to the gallows. No doubt, De Foe had the same +kind of solid homespun morality as Hogarth, for example, which was not +in its way a bad thing. But one need not be very cynical to believe that +his real object in writing such books was to produce something that +would sell, and that in the main he was neither more nor less moral than +the last newspaper writer who has told us the story of a sensational +murder. + +De Foe, therefore, may be said to have stumbled almost unconsciously +into novel-writing. He was merely aiming at true stories, which happened +not to be true. But accidentally, or rather unconsciously, he could not +help presenting us with a type of curious interest; for he necessarily +described himself and the readers whose tastes he understood and shared +so thoroughly. His statement that 'Robinson Crusoe' was a kind of +allegory was truer than he knew. In 'Robinson Crusoe' is De Foe, and +more than De Foe, for he is the typical Englishman of his time. He is +the broad-shouldered, beef-eating John Bull, who has been shouldering +his way through the world ever since. Drop him in a desert island, and +he is just as sturdy and self-composed as if he were in Cheapside. +Instead of shrieking or writing poetry, becoming a wild hunter or a +religious hermit, he calmly sets about building a house and making +pottery and laying out a farm. He does not accommodate himself to his +surroundings; they have got to accommodate themselves to him. He meets a +savage and at once annexes him, and preaches him such a sermon as he had +heard from the exemplary Dr. Doddridge. Cannibals come to make a meal of +him, and he calmly stamps them out with the means provided by +civilisation. Long years of solitude produce no sort of effect upon him +morally or mentally. He comes home as he went out, a solid keen +tradesman, having, somehow or other, plenty of money in his pockets, and +ready to undertake similar risks in the hope of making a little more. He +has taken his own atmosphere with him to the remotest quarters. Wherever +he has set down his solid foot, he has taken permanent possession of the +country. The ancient religions of the primaeval East or the quaint +beliefs of savage tribes make no particular impression upon him, except +a passing spasm of disgust at anybody having different superstitions +from his own; and, being in the main a good-natured animal in a stolid +way of his own, he is able to make use even of popish priests if they +will help to found a new market for his commerce. The portrait is not +the less effective because the artist was so far from intending it that +he could not even conceive of anybody being differently constituted from +himself. It shows us all the more vividly what was the manner of man +represented by the stalwart Englishman of the day; what were the men who +were building up vast systems of commerce and manufacture; shoving their +intrusive persons into every quarter of the globe; evolving a great +empire out of a few factories in the East; winning the American +continent for the dominant English race; sweeping up Australia by the +way as a convenient settlement for convicts; stamping firmly and +decisively on all toes that got in their way; blundering enormously and +preposterously, and yet always coming out steadily planted on their +feet; eating roast beef and plum-pudding; drinking rum in the tropics; +singing 'God Save the King' and intoning Watts's hymns under the nose of +ancient dynasties and prehistoric priesthoods; managing always to get +their own way, to force a reluctant world to take note of them as a +great if rather disagreeable fact, and making it probable that, in long +ages to come, the English of 'Robinson Crusoe' will be the native +language of inhabitants of every region under the sun. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] Defoe may have had some materials for this story; but there seems to +be little doubt that it is substantially his own. + + + + +_RICHARDSON'S NOVELS_ + + +The literary artifice, so often patronised by Lord Macaulay of +describing a character by a series of paradoxes, is of course, in one +sense, a mere artifice. It is easy enough to make a dark grey black and +a light grey white, and to bring the two into unnatural proximity. But +it rests also upon the principle which is more of a platitude than a +paradox, that our chief faults often lie close to our chief merits. The +greatest man is perhaps one who is so equably developed that he has the +strongest faculties in the most perfect equilibrium, and is apt to be +somewhat uninteresting to the rest of mankind. The man of lower eminence +has some one or more faculties developed out of all proportion to the +rest, with the natural result of occasionally overbalancing him. +Extraordinary memories with weak logical faculties, wonderful +imaginative sensibility with a complete absence of self-control, and +other defective conformations of mind, supply the raw materials for a +luminary of the second order, and imply a predisposition to certain +faults, which are natural complements to the conspicuous merits. + +Such reflections naturally occur in speaking of one of our greatest +literary reputations, whose popularity is almost in an inverse ratio to +his celebrity. Every one knows the names of Sir Charles Grandison and +Clarissa Harlowe. They are amongst the established types which serve to +point a paragraph; but the volumes in which they are described remain +for the most part in undisturbed repose, sleeping peacefully amongst +Charles Lamb's _biblia a-biblia_, books which are no books, or, as he +explains, those books 'which no gentleman's library should be without.' +They never enjoy the honours of cheap reprints; the modern reader +shudders at a novel in eight volumes, and declines to dig for amusement +in so profound a mine; when some bold inquirer dips into their pages he +generally fancies that the sleep of years has been somehow absorbed into +the paper; a certain soporific aroma exhales from the endless files of +fictitious correspondence. This contrast, however, between popularity +and celebrity is not so rare as to deserve special notice. Richardson's +slumber may be deeper than that of most men of equal fame, but it is not +quite unprecedented. The string of paradoxes, which it would be easy to +apply to Richardson, would turn upon a different point. The odd thing +is, not that so many people should have forgotten him, but that he +should have been remembered by people at first sight so unlike him. Here +is a man, we might say, whose special characteristic it was to be a +milksop--who provoked Fielding to a coarse hearty burst of ridicule--who +was steeped in the incense of useless adulation from a throng of +middle-aged lady worshippers--who wrote his novels expressly to +recommend little unimpeachable moral maxims, as that evil courses lead +to unhappy deaths, that ladies ought to observe the laws of propriety, +and generally that it is an excellent thing to be thoroughly +respectable; who lived an obscure life in a petty coterie in fourth-rate +London society, and was in no respect at a point of view more exalted +than that of his companions. What greater contrast can be imagined in +its way than that between Richardson, with his second-rate +eighteenth-century priggishness and his twopenny-tract morality, and the +modern school of French novelists, who are certainly not prigs, and +whose morality is by no means that of tracts? We might have expected _a +priori_ that they would have summarily put him down, as a hopeless +Philistine. Yet Richardson was idolised by some of their best writers; +Balzac, for example, and George Sand, speak of him with reverence; and a +writer who is, perhaps, as odd a contrast to Richardson as could well be +imagined--Alfred de Musset--calls 'Clarissa' _le premier roman du +monde_. What is the secret which enables the steady old printer, with +his singular limitation to his own career of time and space, to impose +upon the Byronic Parisian of the next century? Amongst his +contemporaries Diderot expresses an almost fanatical admiration of +Richardson for his purity and power, and declares characteristically +that he will place Richardson's works on the same shelf with those of +Moses, Homer, Euripides, and other favourite writers; he even goes so +far as to excuse Clarissa's belief in Christianity on the ground of her +youthful innocence. To continue in the paradoxical vein, we might ask +how the quiet tradesman could create the character which has stood ever +since for a type of the fine gentleman of the period; or how from the +most prosaic of centuries should spring one of the most poetical of +feminine ideals? We can hardly fancy a genuine hero with a pigtail, or a +heroine in a hoop and high-heeled shoes, nor believe that persons who +wore those articles of costume could possess any very exalted virtues. +Perhaps our grandchildren may have the same difficulty about the race +which wears crinolines and chimney-pot hats. + +It is a fact, however, that our grandfathers, in spite of their belief +in pigtails, and in Pope's poetry, and other matters that have gone out +of fashion, had some very excellent qualities, and even some genuine +sentiment, in their compositions. Indeed, now that their peculiarities +have been finally packed away in various lumber-rooms, and the revolt +against the old-fashioned school of thought and manners has become +triumphant instead of militant, we are beginning to see the picturesque +side of their character. They have gathered something of the halo that +comes with the lapse of years; and social habits that looked prosaic +enough to contemporaries, and to the generation which had to fight +against them, have gained a touch of romance. Richardson's characters +wear a costume and speak a language which are indeed queer and +old-fashioned, but are now far enough removed from the present to have a +certain piquancy; and it is becoming easier to recognise the real genius +which created them, as the active aversion to the forms in which it was +necessarily clothed tends to disappear. The wigs and the high-heeled +shoes are not without a certain pleasing quaintness; and when we have +surmounted this cause of disgust, we can see more plainly what was the +real power which men of the most opposite schools in art have +recognised. Readers whose appetite for ancient fiction is insufficient +to impel them to a perusal of 'Clarissa' may yet find some amusement in +turning over the curious collection of letters published with a life by +Mrs. Barbauld in 1804. Nowhere can we find a more vivid picture of the +social stratum to which Richardson belonged. We take a seat in the old +gentleman's shop, or drop in to take a dish of tea with him at North +End, in Hammersmith. We learn to know them almost as well as we know the +literary circle of the next generation from Boswell or the higher social +sphere from Horace Walpole--and it is a pleasant relief, after reading +the solemn histories which recall the struggles of Walpole and +Chesterfield and their like, to drop in upon this quiet little coterie +of homely commonplace people leading calm domestic lives and amusingly +unconscious of the political and intellectual storms which were raging +outside. Richardson himself was the typical industrious apprentice. He +was the son of a London tradesman who had witnessed with due horror the +Popish machinations of James II. Richardson, born just after the +Revolution, had been apprenticed to a printer, married his master's +daughter, set up a fairly successful business, was master of the +Stationers' Company in 1754, and was prosperous enough to have his +country box, first at North End and afterwards at Parson's Green. He +never learned any language but his own. He had taken to writing from his +infancy; he composed little stories of an edifying tendency and had +written love-letters for young women of his acquaintance. From his +experience in these departments he acquired the skill which was +afterwards displayed in 'Pamela' and his two later and superior novels. +We hear dimly of many domestic trials: of the loss of children, some of +whom had lived to be 'delightful prattlers,' of 'eleven affecting deaths +in two years.' Who were the eleven remains unknown. His sorrows have +long passed into oblivion, unless so far as the sentiment was transmuted +into his writings. We do not know whether it was from calamity or +constitutional infirmity that he became a very nervous and tremulous +little man. He never dared to ride, but exercised himself on a +'chamber-horse,' one of which apparently wooden animals he kept at each +of his houses. For years he could not raise a glass to his lips without +help. His dread of altercations prevented him from going often among +his workmen. He gave his orders in writing that he might not have to +bawl to a deaf foreman. He gave up 'wine and flesh and fish.' He drew a +capital portrait of himself, for the benefit of a lady still unknown to +him, who recognised him by its help at a distance of 'above three +hundred yards.' His description is minute enough: 'Short; rather plump +than emaciated, notwithstanding his complaints; about 5 foot 5 inches; +fair wig, lightish cloth coat, all black besides; one hand generally in +his bosom, the other, a cane in it, which he leans upon under the skirts +of his coat usually, that it may imperceptibly serve him as a support +when attacked by sudden tremors or startings and dizziness, which too +frequently attack him, but, thank God, not so often as formerly; looking +directly foreright, as passers by would imagine, but observing all that +stirs on either hand of him without moving his short neck; hardly ever +turning back; of a light-brown complexion; teeth not yet failing him; +smoothish-faced and ruddy cheeked; at some times looking to be about +sixty-five, at others much younger' (really sixty); 'a regular even pace +stealing away ground rather than seeming to rid it; a grey eye, too +often overclouded by mistinesses from the head; by chance lively--very +lively it will be if he have hopes of seeing a lady whom he loves and +honours; his eye always on the ladies; if they have very large hoops, he +looks down and supercilious and as if he would be thought wise, but +perhaps the sillier for that; as he approaches a lady his eye is never +fixed first upon her face, but upon her feet and thence he raises it up +pretty quickly for a dull eye; and one would think (if we thought him at +all worthy of observation) that from her air and the last beheld (her +face) he sets her down in his mind as _so_ and _so_, and then passes on +to the next object he meets; only then looking back, if he greatly +likes or dislikes, as if he would see if the lady appear to be all of a +piece in the one light or the other.' After this admirable likeness we +can appreciate better the two coloured engravings in the letters. +Richardson looks like a plump white mouse in a wig, at once vivacious +and timid. We see him in one picture toddling along the Pantiles at +Tunbridge-Wells, in the neighbourhood of the great Mr. Pitt and Speaker +Onslow and the bigamous Duchess of Kingston and Colley Cibber and the +cracked and shrivelled-up Whiston and a (perhaps not the famous) Mr. +Johnson in company with a bishop. In the other, he is sitting in his +parlour with its stiff old-fashioned furniture and a glimpse into the +garden, reading 'Sir Charles Grandison' to the admirable Miss Mulso, +afterwards Mrs. Chapone, and a small party, inclusive of the artist, +Miss Highmore, to whom we owe sincere gratitude for this peep into the +past. Richardson sits in his 'usual morning dress,' a kind of brown +dressing-gown with a skull-cap on his head, filling the chair with his +plump little body, and raising one foot (or has the artist found +difficulties in planting both upon the ground?) to point his moral with +an emphatic stamp. + +Many eminent men of his time were polite to Richardson after he had won +fame at the mature age of fifty. He was not the man to presume on his +position. He was 'very shy of obtruding himself on persons of +condition.' He never rose like Pope, whose origin was not very +dissimilar, to speak to princes and ministers as an equal. He was always +the obsequious and respectful shopkeeper. The great Warburton wrote a +letter to his 'good sir'--a phrase equivalent to the two fingers of a +dignified greeting--suggesting, in Pope's name and his own, a plan for +continuing 'Pamela.' She was to be the ingenuous young person shocked at +the conventionalities of good society. Richardson sensibly declined a +plan for which he was unfitted; and in 1747 Warburton condescended to +write a preface to 'Clarissa Harlowe,' pointing out (very +superfluously!) the nature of the intended moral. Warburton afterwards +took offence at a passage in the same book which he took to glance at +Pope; and Richardson was on friendly terms with two authors, Edwards, of +the 'Canons of Criticism,' and Aaron Hill, who were among the +multitudinous enemies of Warburton and his patron Pope. Hill's letters +in the correspondence are worth reading as illustrations of the old +moral of literary vanity. He expresses with unusual _naivete_ the +doctrine, so pleasant to the unsuccessful, that success means the +reverse of merit. Pope's fame was due to personal assiduities, and 'a +certain bladdery swell of management.' It is already passing away. He +does not speak from jealousy, for nobody ever courted fame 'with less +solicitude than I.' But for all that, there will come a time! He knows +it on a surer ground than vanity. Let us hope that this little salve to +self-esteem never lost its efficacy. Surely of all prayers the most +injudicious was that of Burns, that we might see ourselves as others see +us. What would become of us? Richardson, as we might expect, was highly +esteemed by Young of the 'Night Thoughts,' and by Johnson, to both of +whom he seems to have given substantial proofs of friendship. He wrote +the only number of the 'Rambler' which had a good sale, and helped +Johnson when under arrest for debt; Johnson repaid him by the phrase, +which long passed for the orthodox decision, that Richardson taught the +passions to move at the command of virtue. But the most delightful of +Richardson's friends was the irrepressible Colley Cibber. Mrs. +Pilkington, a disreputable adventuress, faintly remembered by her +relations to Swift, describes Cibber's reception of the unpublished +'Clarissa.' 'The dear gentleman did almost rave. When I told him that +she (Clarissa) must die, he said G---- d---- him if she should, and that +he should no longer believe Providence or eternal wisdom or goodness +governed the world if merit and innocence and beauty were to be so +destroyed. "Nay," added he, "my mind is so hurt with the thought of her +being violated, that were I to see her in heaven, sitting on the knees +of the blessed Virgin and crowned with glory, her sufferings would still +make me feel horror, horror distilled." These were his strongly +emphatical impressions.' Cibber's own letters are as lively as Mrs. +Pilkington's report of his talk. 'The delicious meal I made off Miss +Byron on Sunday last,' he says, 'has given me an appetite for another +slice of her, off from the spit, before she is served up to the public +table; if about five o'clock to-morrow afternoon be not inconvenient, +Mrs. Brown and I will come and nibble upon a bit more of her! And we +have grace after meat as well as before.' 'The devil take the insolent +goodness of your imagination!' exclaims the lively old buck, now past +eighty, and as well preserved as if he had never encountered Pope's +'scathing satire' (does satire ever 'scathe'?) or Fielding's rough +horseplay. One of Richardson's lady admirers saw Cibber flirting with +fine ladies at Tunbridge Wells in 1754 (he was born in 1671), and +miserable when he was neglected for a moment by the greatest _belle_ in +the society. He professed to be only seventy-seven! + +Perhaps even Cibber was beaten in flattery by the 'minister of the +gospel' who thought that if some of Clarissa's letters had been found in +the Bible they would have been regarded as manifest proofs of divine +inspiration. But the more delightful incense came from the circle of +admiring young ladies who called him their dear papa; who passed long +days at his feet at Parson's Green; allowed him to escape to his +summer-house to add a letter to the growing volumes, and after an early +dinner persuaded him to read it aloud. Their eager discussions as to the +fate of the characters and the little points of morality which arose are +continued in his gossiping letters. When a child he had been the +confidant of tender-hearted maidens, and now he became a kind of +spiritual director. He was, as Miss Collier said, the 'only champion and +protector' of her sex. Women, and surely they must be good judges, +thought that he understood the feminine heart, as their descendants +afterwards attributed the same power to Balzac. The most attractive of +his feminine correspondents was Mrs. Klopstock, wife of the 'German +Milton,' who tells her only little love story with charming simplicity, +and thus lays her homage at the feet of Richardson. 'Honoured sir, will +you permit me to take this opportunity, in sending a letter to Dr. +Young, to address myself to you? It is very long that I wished to do it. +Having finished your "Clarissa" (oh, the heavenly book!), I would have +prayed you to write the history of a _manly_ Clarissa, but I had not +courage enough at that time. I should have it no more to-day, as this is +only my first English letter; but I have it! It may be because I am now +Klopstock's wife (I believe you know my husband by Mr. Hohorst), and +then I was only the single young girl. You have since written the manly +Clarissa without my prayer; oh, you have done it to the great joy and +thanks of all your happy readers! Now you can write no more, you must +write the history of an angel!' + +Mrs. Klopstock died young; having had the happiness to find that +Richardson did not resent her intrusion, great author as he was. Another +correspondent, Lady Bradshaigh, wife of a Lancashire country gentleman, +took precautions which show what a halo then surrounded the author in +the eyes of his countrywomen. It was worth while to be an author then! +Lady Bradshaigh was a good housewife, it seems, but, having no children, +was able to devote some time to reading. She obtained a portrait of +Richardson, but altered the name to Dickenson, in order that no one +might suspect her of corresponding with an author. After reading the +first four volumes of 'Clarissa' (which were separately published), she +wrote under a feigned name to beg the author to alter the impending +catastrophe. She spoke as the mouthpiece of a 'multitude of admirers' +who desired to see Lovelace reformed and married to Clarissa. 'Sure you +will think it worth your while, sir, to save his soul!' she exclaims. +Richardson was too good an artist to spoil his tragedy; and was rewarded +by an account of her emotions on reading the last volumes. She laid the +book down in agonies, took it up again, shed a flood of tears, and threw +herself upon her couch to compose her mind. Her husband, who was +plodding after her, begged her to read no more. But she had promised +Richardson to finish the book. She nerved herself for the task; her +sleep was broken, she woke in tears during the night, and burst into +tears at her meals. Charmed by her delicious sufferings, she became +Richardson's friend for life, though it was long before she could muster +up courage to meet him face to face. + +Yet Lady Bradshaigh seems to have been a sensible woman, and shows +vivacity and intelligence in some of her discussions with Richardson. If +he was not altogether spoilt by the flattery of so many excellent +women, we can only explain it by remembering that he did not become +famous till he was past fifty, and therefore past spoiling. One +peculiarity, indeed, is rather unpleasant in these letters. Richardson's +worshippers evidently felt that their deity was jealous, and made no +scruple of offering the base sacrifice of abuse of rival celebrities. +Richardson adopts their tone; he is always gibing at Fielding. '_I could +not help telling his sister_', he observes--a sister, too, whose merits +Fielding had praised with his usual generosity--'that I was equally +surprised at and concerned for his continuous lowness. Had your brother, +said I, been born in a stable or been a runner at a sponging-house we +should have thought him a genius,' but now! So another great writer came +just in time to be judged by Richardson. A bishop asked him, 'Who is +this Yorick,' who has, it seems, been countenanced by an 'ingenious +dutchess.' Richardson briefly replies that the bishop cannot have looked +into the books, 'execrable I cannot but call them.' Their only merit is +that they are 'too gross to be inflaming.' The history of the mutual +judgments upon each other of contemporary authors would be more amusing +than edifying. + +Richardson should not have been so hard upon Sterne, for Sterne was in +some degree following Richardson's lead. 'What is the meaning,' asks +Lady Bradshaigh (about 1749) 'of the word _sentimental_, so much in +vogue among the polite both in town and country? Everything clever and +agreeable is comprehended in that word; but I am convinced a wrong +interpretation is given, because it is impossible everything clever and +agreeable can be so common as that word.' She has heard of a sentimental +man; a sentimental party, and a sentimental walk; and has been applauded +for calling a letter sentimental. I hope that the philological +dictionary may tell us what was the first appearance of a word which, in +this sense, marks an epoch in literature, and, indeed, in much else. I +find the word used in the old sense in 1752 in a pamphlet upon +'_Sentimental_ differences in point of faith,' that is, differences of +sentiment or opinion. When, a few years later, Sterne published his +'Sentimental Journey,' Wesley asks in his journal what is the meaning of +the new phrase, and observes (the illustration has lost its point) that +you might as well say _continental_. The appearance of the phrase +coincides with the appearance of the thing; for Richardson was the first +sentimentalist. We may trace the same movement elsewhere, though we need +not here speculate upon the cause. Pope's 'Essay on Man' is the +expression in verse of the dominant theology of the Deists and their +opponents, which was beginning to be condemned as dry and frigid. A +desire for something more 'sentimental' shows itself in Young's 'Night +Thoughts,' in Hervey's 'Meditations,' and appears in the religious +domain as Methodism. The literary historian has to trace the rise of the +same tendency in various places. In Germany, as we see from Mrs. +Klopstock's enthusiasm, the flame was only waiting for the spark. +Goethe, in his 'Wahrheit und Dichtung,' notices the influence of +Richardson's novels in Germany. They were among the predisposing causes +of Wertherism. In France, as I have said, Richardson found congenial +hearers, and Clarissa's soul doubtless transmigrated into the heroine of +the 'Nouvelle Heloise.' Even in stubborn England, where Fielding's +masculine contempt for the whinings of 'Pamela' was more congenial, the +students of Richardson were prepared to receive 'Ossian' with +enthusiasm, and to be ecstatic over 'Tristram Shandy.' That Richardson +would have agreed with Johnson in regarding Rousseau as fit only for a +penal settlement, and that he actually considered Sterne to be +'execrable,' does not relieve him of the responsibility or deprive him +of the glory. He is not the only writer who has helped to evoke a spirit +which he would be the last to sanction. When he encouraged his admirably +proper young ladies to indulge in 'sentimentalism,' he could not tell +where so vague an impulse would ultimately land them. He was a sound +Tory, and an accepter of all established creeds. Sentimentalism with him +was merely a delight in cultivating the emotions, without any thought of +consequences; or, later, of cultivating them with the assumption that +they would continue to move, as he bade them, 'at the command of +virtue.' Once set in motion, they chose to take paths of their own; they +revolted against conventions, even those which he held most sacred; and +by degrees set up 'Nature' as an idol, and admired the ingenuous savage +instead of the respectable Clarissa, and denounced all corruption, +including, alas, the British constitution, and even the Thirty-nine +Articles, and put themselves at the disposal of all manner of +revolutionary audacities. But the little printer was safe in his grave, +and knew not of what strange developments he had been the ignorant +accomplice. + +To return, however, it must be granted that Richardson's sympathy with +women gives a remarkable power to his works. Nothing is more rare than +to find a great novelist who can satisfactorily describe the opposite +sex. Women's heroes are women in disguise, or mere lay-figures, walking +gentlemen who parade tolerably through their parts, but have no real +vitality. On the other hand, the heroines of male writers are for the +most part unnaturally strained or quite colourless; male hands are too +heavy for the delicate work required. Milton could draw a majestic +Satan, but his Eve is no better than a good-managing housekeeper who +knows her place. It is, therefore, remarkable that Richardson's greatest +triumph should be in describing a woman, and that most of his feminine +characters are more life-like and more delicately discriminated than his +men. Unluckily, his conspicuous faults result from the same cause. His +moral prosings savour of the endless gossip over a dish of chocolate in +which his heroines delight; we can imagine the applause with which his +admiring feminine circle would receive his demonstration of the fact, +that adversity is harder to bear than prosperity, or the sentiment that +'a man of principle, whose love is founded in reason, and whose object +is mind rather than person, must make a worthy woman happy.' These are +admirable sentiments, but they savour of the serious tea-party. If 'Tom +Jones' has about it an occasional suspicion of beer and pipes at the +bar, 'Sir Charles Grandison' recalls an indefinite consumption of tea +and small-talk. In short, the feminine part of Richardson's character +has a little too much affinity to Mrs. Gamp--not that he would ever be +guilty of putting gin in his cup, but that he would have the same +capacity for spinning out indefinite twaddle of a superior kind. And, of +course, he fell into the faults which beset the members of mutual +admiration societies in general, but especially those which consist +chiefly of women. Men who meet for purposes of mutual flattery become +unnaturally solemn and priggish; they never free themselves from the +suspicion that the older members of the coterie may be laughing at them +behind their backs. But the flattery of women is so much more delicate, +and so much more sincere, that it is far more dangerous. It is a +poultice which in time softens the hardest outside. Richardson yielded +as entirely as any curate exposed to a shower of slippers. He evidently +wrote under the impression that he was not merely an imaginative writer +of the highest order, but also a great moralist. He was reforming the +world, putting down vice, sending duelling out of fashion, and +inculcating the lessons of the pulpit in a far more attractive form. A +modern novelist is half-ashamed of his art; he disclaims earnestly any +serious purpose; his highest aim is to amuse his readers, and his +greatest boast that he amuses them by honourable or at least by harmless +means. There are, indeed, novelists who write to inculcate High-Church +or Low-Church principles, or to prove that society at large is out of +joint; but a direct intention to prove that men ought not to steal or +get drunk, or commit any other atrocities, is generally considered to be +beside the novelist's function, and its introduction to be a fault of +art. Indeed, there is much to be said against it. In our youth we used +to read a poem about a cruel little boy who went out to fish and was +punished by somehow becoming suspended by his chin from a hook in the +larder. It never produced much effect upon us, because we felt that the +accident was, to say the least, rather exceptional; at most, we fished +on, and were careful about the larder. The same principle applies to the +poetic justice distributed by most novelists. When Richardson kills off +his villains by violent deaths, we know too well that many villains live +to a good old age, leave handsome fortunes, and are buried under the +handsomest of tombstones, with the most elegant of epitaphs. This very +rough device for inculcating morality is of course ineffectual, and +produces some artistic blemishes. The direct exhortations to his +readers to be good are still more annoying; no human being can long +endure a mixture of preaching and story-telling. For Heaven's sake, we +exclaim, tell us what happens to Clarissa, and don't stop to prove that +honesty is the best policy! In a wider sense, however, the seriousness +of Richardson's purpose is of high value. He is so keenly in earnest, so +profoundly interested about his characters, so determined to make us +enter into their motives, that we cannot help being carried away; if he +never spares an opportunity of giving us a lecture, at least his zeal in +setting forth an example never flags for an instant. The effort to give +us an ideally perfect character seems to stimulate his imagination, and +leads to a certain intensity of realisation which we are apt to miss in +the purposeless school of novelists. He is always, as it were, writing +at high-pressure and under a sense of responsibility. + +The method which he adopts lends itself very conveniently to heighten +this effect. Richardson's feminine delight in letter-writing was, as we +have seen, the immediate cause of his plunge into authorship. +Richardson's novels, indeed, are not so much novels put for convenience +under the form of letters, as letters expanded till they become novels. +A genuine novelist who should put his work into the unnatural shape of a +correspondence would probably find it a very awkward expedient; but +Richardson gradually worked up to the novel from the conception of a +collection of letters; and his method, therefore, came spontaneously to +him. He started from the plan of writing letters to illustrate a certain +point of morality, and to make them more effective attributed them to a +fictitious character. The result was the gigantic tract called +'Pamela'--distinctly the worst of his works--of which it is enough to +say at present that it succeeds neither in being moral nor in amusing. +It shows, however, a truly amazing fertility in a specially feminine +art. We have all suffered from the propensity of some female minds (the +causes of which we will not attempt to analyse) for pouring forth +indefinite floods of correspondence. We know the heartless fashion in +which some ladies, even in these days of penny postage, will fill a +sheet of note-paper and proceed to cross their writing till the page +becomes a chequer-work of unintelligible hieroglyphics. But we may feel +gratitude in looking back to the days when time hung heavier, and +letter-writing was a more serious business. The letters of those times +may recall the fearful and wonderful labours of tapestry in which ladies +employed their needles by way of killing time. The monuments of both +kinds are a fearful indication of the _ennui_ from which the +perpetrators must have suffered. We pity those who endured the toil as +we pity the prisoners whose patient ingenuity has carved a passage +through a stone wall with a rusty nail. Richardson's heroines, and his +heroes too, for that matter, would have been portents at any time. We +will take an example at hazard. Miss Byron, on March 22, writes a letter +of fourteen pages (in the old collective edition). The same day she +follows it up by two of six and of twelve pages respectively. On the +23rd she leads off with a letter of eighteen pages, and another of ten. +On the 24th she gives us two, filling together thirty pages, at the end +of which she remarks that she is _forced_ to lay down her pen, and then +adds a postscript of six more; on the 25th she confines herself to two +pages; but after a Sunday's rest she makes another start of equal +vigour. In three days, therefore, she covers ninety-six pages. Two of +the pages are about equal to three in this volume. Consequently, in +three days' correspondence, referring to the events of the day, she +would fill something like a hundred and forty-four of these pages--a +task the magnitude of which may be appreciated by anyone who will try +the experiment. We should say that she must have written for nearly +eight hours a day, and are not surprised at her remark, that she has on +one occasion only managed two hours' sleep. + +It would, of course, be the height of pedantry to dwell upon this, as +though a fictitious personage were to be in all respects bounded by the +narrow limits of human capacity. It is not the object of a really good +novelist, nor does it come within the legitimate means of high art in +any department, to produce an actual illusion. Showmen in some foreign +palaces call upon us to admire paintings which we cannot distinguish +from bas-reliefs; the deception is, of course, a mere trick, and the +paintings are simply childish. On the stage we do not require to believe +that the scenery is really what it imitates, and the attempt to +introduce scraps of real life is a clear proof of a low artistic aim. +Similarly a novelist is not only justified in writing so as to prove +that his work is fictitious, but he almost necessarily hampers himself, +to the prejudice of his work, if he imposes upon himself the condition +that his book shall be capable of being mistaken for a genuine +narrative. Every good novelist lets us into secrets about the private +thoughts of his characters which it would be impossible to obtain in +real life. We do not, therefore, blame Richardson because his characters +have a power of writing which no mortal could ever attain. His fault, +indeed, is exactly the contrary. He very erroneously fancies that he is +bound to convince us of the possibility of all his machinery, and often +produces the very shock to our belief which he seeks to avoid. He is +constantly trying to account by elaborate devices for the fertile +correspondence of his characters, when it is perfectly plain that they +are simply writing a novel. We should never have asked a question as to +the authenticity of the letters, if he did not force the question upon +us; and no art can induce us for a moment to accept the proffered +illusion. For example, Miss Byron gives us a long account of +conversations between persons whom she did not know, which took place +ten years before. It is much better that the impossibility should be +frankly accepted, on the clear ground that authors of novels, and +consequently their creatures, have the prerogative of omniscience. At +least, the slightest account of the way in which she came by the +knowledge would be enough to satisfy us for all purposes of fiction. +Richardson is not content with this, and elaborately demonstrates that +she might have known a number of minute details which it is perfectly +plain that a real Miss Byron could never have known, and thus dashes +into our faces an improbability which we should have been quite content +to pass unnoticed. + +The method, however, of telling the story by the correspondence of the +actors produces more important effects. The hundred and forty-four pages +in question are all devoted to the proceedings of three days. They are +filled, for the most part, with interminable conversations. The story +advances by a very few steps; but we know all that every one of the +persons concerned has to say about the matter. We discover what was Sir +Charles Grandison's relation at a particular time to a certain Italian +lady, Clementina. We are told exactly what view he took of his own +position; what view Clementina took of it; what Miss Byron had to say to +Sir Charles on the subject, and what advice her relations bestowed upon +Miss Byron. Then we have all the sentiments of Sir Charles Grandison's +sisters, and of his brothers-in-law, and of his reverend old tutor; and +the sentiments of all the Lady Clementina's family, and the incidental +remarks of a number of subordinate actors. In short, we see the +characters all round in all their relations to each other, in every +possible variation and permutation; we are present at all the +discussions which take place before every step, and watch the gradual +variation of all the phases of the positions. We get the same sort of +elaborate familiarity with every aspect of affairs that we should +receive from reading a blue-book full of some prolix diplomatic +correspondence; indeed, Sir Charles Grandison closely resembles such a +blue-book, for the plot is carried on mainly by elaborate negotiations +between three different families, with proposals, and counter-proposals, +and amended proposals, and a final settlement of the very complicated +business by a deliberate signing of two different sets of articles. One +of them, we need hardly say, is a marriage settlement; the other is a +definite treaty between the lady who is not married and her family, the +discussion of which occupies many pages. The extent to which we are +drawn into the minutest details may be inferred from the fact that +nearly a volume is given to marrying Sir Charles Grandison to Miss +Byron, after all difficulties have been surmounted. We have at full +length all the discussions by which the day is fixed, and all the +remarks of the unfortunate lovers of both parties, and all the +criticisms of both families, and finally an elaborate account of the +ceremony, with the names of the persons who went in the separate +coaches, the dresses of the bride and bridesmaids, and the sums which +Sir Charles gave away to the village girls who strewed flowers on the +pathway. Surely the feminine element in Richardson's character was a +little in excess. + +The result of all this is a sort of Dutch painting of extraordinary +minuteness. The art reminds us of the patient labour of a line-engraver, +who works for days at making out one little bit of minute stippling and +cross-hatching. The characters are displayed to us step by step and line +by line. We are gradually forced into familiarity with them by a process +resembling that by which we learn to know people in real life. We are +treated to few set analyses or summary descriptions, but by constantly +reading their letters and listening to their talk we gradually form an +opinion of the actors. We see them, too, all round; instead of, as is +usual in modern novels, regarding them steadily from one point of view; +we know what each person thinks of everyone else, and what everyone else +thinks of him; they are brought into a stereoscopic distinctness by +combining the different aspects of their character. Of course, a method +of this kind involves much labour on the part both of writer and reader. +It is evident that Richardson did not think of amusing a stray half-hour +in a railway-carriage or in a club smoking-room; he counted upon readers +who would apply themselves seriously to a task, in the hope of improving +their morals as much as of gaining some harmless amusement. This theory +is explicitly set forth in Warburton's preface to 'Clarissa.' But it +must also be said that, considering the cumbrous nature of the process, +the spirit with which it is applied is wonderful. Richardson's own +interest in his actors never flags. The distinct style of every +correspondent is faithfully preserved with singular vivacity. When we +have read a few letters we are never at a loss to tell, from the style +alone of any short passage, who is the imaginary author. Consequently, +readers who can bear to have their amusement diluted, who are content +with an imperceptibly slow development of plot, and can watch without +impatience the approach of a foreseen incident through a couple of +volumes, may find the prolixity less intolerable than might be expected. +If they will be content to skip when they are bored, even less patient +students may be entertained with a series of pictures of character and +manners skilfully contrasted and brilliantly coloured, though with a +limited allowance of incident. Within his own sphere, no writer exceeds +him in clearness and delicacy of conception. + +In another way, the machinery of a fictitious correspondence is rather +troublesome. As the author never appears in his own person, he is often +obliged to trust his characters with trumpeting their own virtues. Sir +Charles Grandison has to tell us himself of his own virtuous deeds; how +he disarms ruffians who attack him in overwhelming numbers, and converts +evil-doers by impressive advice; and, still more awkwardly, he has to +repeat the amazing compliments which everybody is always paying him. +Richardson does his best to evade the necessity; he couples all his +virtuous heroes with friendly confidants, who relieve the virtuous +heroes of the tiresome task of self-adulation; he supplies the heroes +themselves with elaborate reasons for overcoming their modesty, and +makes them apologise profusely for the unwelcome task. Still, ingenious +as his expedients may be, and willing as we are to make allowance for +the necessities of his task, we cannot quite free ourselves from an +unpleasant suspicion as to the simplicity of his characters. 'Clarissa' +is comparatively free from this fault, though Clarissa takes a +questionable pleasure in uttering the finest sentiments and posing +herself as a model of virtue. But in 'Sir Charles Grandison' the +fulsome interchange of flattery becomes offensive even in fiction. The +virtuous characters give and receive an amount of eulogy enough to turn +the strongest stomachs. How amiable is A! says B; how virtuous is C, and +how marvellously witty is D! And then A, C, and D go through the same +performance, adding a proper compliment to B in place of the exclamation +appropriate to themselves. The only parallel in modern times is to be +found at some of the public dinners, where every man proposes his +neighbour's health with a tacit understanding that he is himself to +furnish the text for a similar oration. But then at dinners people have +the excuse of a state of modified sobriety. + +This fault is, as we have said, aggravated by the epistolary method. +That method makes it necessary that each person should display his or +her own virtues, as in an exhibition of gymnastics the performers walk +round and show their muscles. But the fault lies a good deal deeper. +Every writer, consciously or unconsciously, puts himself into his +novels, and exhibits his own character even more distinctly than that of +his heroes. And Richardson, the head of a little circle of conscientious +admirers of each other's virtues, could not but reproduce on a different +scale the tone of his own society. The Grandisons, and the families of +Miss Byron and Clementina, merely repeat a practice with which he was +tolerably familiar at home; whilst his characters represent to some +extent the idealised Richardson himself;--and this leads us to the most +essential characteristic of his novels. The greatest woman in France, +according to Napoleon's brutal remark, was the woman who had the most +children. In a different sense, the saying may pass for truth. The +greatest writer is the one who has produced the largest family of +immortal children. Those of whom it can be said that they have really +added a new type to the fictitious world are indeed few in number. +Cervantes is in the front rank of all imaginative creators, because he +has given birth to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Richardson's literary +representatives are far indeed below these; but Richardson too may boast +that, in his narrower sphere of thought, he has invented two characters +that have still a strong vitality. They show all the weaknesses +inseparable from the age and country of their origin. They are far +inferior to the highest ideals of the great poets of the world; they are +cramped and deformed by the conventionalities of their century and the +narrow society in which they move and live. But for all that they stir +the emotions of a distant generation with power enough to show that +their author must have pierced below the surface into the deeper and +more perennial springs of human passion. These two characters are, of +course, Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison; and I may endeavour shortly +to analyse the sources of their enduring interest. + +Sir Charles Grandison has passed into a proverb. When Carlyle calls +Lafayette a Grandison-Cromwell, he hits off one of those admirable +nicknames which paint a character for us at once. Sir Charles Grandison +is the model fine gentleman of the eighteenth century--the master of +correct deportment, the unimpeachable representative of the old school. +Richardson tells us with a certain _naivete_ that he has been accused of +describing an impossible character; that Sir Charles is a man absolutely +without a fault, or at least with faults visible only on a most +microscopic observation. In fact, the only fault to which Sir Charles +himself pleads guilty, in seven volumes, is that he once rather loses +his temper. Two ruffians try to bully him in his own house, and even +draw their swords upon him. Sir Charles so far forgets himself as to +draw his own sword, disarm both of his opponents and turn them out of +doors. He cannot forgive himself, he says, that he has been 'provoked by +two such men to violate the sanctity of his own house.' His only excuse +is, 'that there were two of them; and that tho' I drew, yet I had the +command of myself so far as only to defend myself, when I might have +done with them what I pleased.' According to Richardson, this venial +offence is the worst blot on Sir Charles's character. We certainly do +not blame him for the attempt to draw an ideally perfect hero. It is a +perfectly legitimate aim in fiction, and the only question can be +whether he has succeeded: for Richardson's own commendation cannot be +taken as quite sufficient, neither can we quite accept the ingenious +artifice by which all the secondary characters perform as decoy-birds to +attract our admiration. They do their very best to induce us to join in +their hymns of praise. 'Grandison,' says a Roman Catholic bishop, 'were +he one of us, might expect canonisation.' 'How,' exclaims his uncle, +after a conversation with his paragon of a nephew, 'how shall I bear my +own littleness?' A party of reprobates about town have a long dispute +with him, endeavouring to force him into a duel. At the end of it one of +them exclaims admiringly, 'Curse me, if I believe there is such another +man in the world!' 'I never saw a hero till now,' says another. 'I had +rather have Sir C. Grandison for my friend than the greatest prince on +earth,' says a third. 'I had rather,' replies his friend, 'be Sir C. +Grandison for this one past hour than the Great Mogul all my life.' And +the general conclusion is, 'What poor toads are we!' 'This man shows +us,' as a lady declares, 'that goodness and greatness are synonymous +words;' and when his sister marries, she complains that her brother 'has +long made all other men indifferent to her. Such an infinite +difference!' In the evening, according to custom, she dances a minuet +with her bridegroom, but whispers a friend that she would have performed +better had she danced with her brother. + +The structure, however, of the story itself is the best illustration of +Sir Charles's admirable qualities. The plot is very simple. He rescues +Miss Byron from an attempt at a forcible abduction. Miss Byron, +according to her friends, is the queen of her sex, and is amongst women +what Sir Charles is amongst men. Of course, they straightway fall in +love. Sir Charles, however, shows symptoms of a singular reserve, which +is at last explained by the fact that he is already half-engaged to a +noble Italian lady, Clementina. He has promised, in fact, to marry her +if certain objections on the score of his country and religion can be +surmounted. The interest lies chiefly in the varying inclinations of the +balance, at one moment favourable to Miss Byron, and at another to the +'saint and angel' Clementina. When Miss Byron thinks that Sir Charles +will be bound in honour to marry Clementina, she begins to pine; 'she +visibly falls away; and her fine complexion fades;' her friends 'watch +in silent love every turn of her mild and patient eye, every change of +her charming countenance; for they know too well to what to impute the +malady which has approached the best of hearts; they know that the cure +cannot be within the art of the physician.' When Clementina fears that +the scruples of her relatives will separate her from Sir Charles, she +takes the still more decided step of going mad; and some of her madness +would be very touching, if it were not a trifle too much after the +conventional pattern of the mad women in Sheridan's 'Critic.' Whilst +these two ladies are breaking their hearts about Sir Charles they do +justice to each other's merits. Harriet will never be happy unless she +knows that the admirable Clementina has reconciled herself to the loss +of her adored; when Clementina finds herself finally separated from her +lover, she sincerely implores Sir Charles to marry her more fortunate +rival. Never was there such a display of fine feeling and utter absence +of jealousy. Meanwhile a lovely ward of Sir Charles finds it necessary +to her peace of mind to be separated from her guardian; and another +beautiful, but rather less admirable, Italian actually follows him to +England to persuade him to accept her hand. Four ladies--all of them +patterns of physical, moral, and intellectual excellence--are breaking +their hearts; and though they are so excellent that they overcome their +natural jealousy, they can scarcely look upon any other man after having +known this model of all his sex. Indeed, every woman who approaches him +falls desperately in love with him, unless she is his sister or old +enough to be his grandmother. The plot of the novel depends upon an +attraction for the fair sex which is apparently irresistible; and the +men, if they are virtuous, rejoice to sit admiringly at his feet, and if +they are vicious retire abashed from his presence, to entreat his good +advice when they are upon their deathbeds. + +All this is easy enough. A novelist can make his women fall in love with +his hero as easily as, with a stroke of the pen, he can endow him with +fifty thousand a year, or bestow upon him every virtue under heaven. +Neither has he any difficulty in making him the finest dancer in +England, or giving him such marvellous skill with the small-sword that +he can avoid the sin of duelling by instantaneously disarming his most +formidable opponents. The real question is, whether he can animate this +conglomerate of all conceivable virtues with a real human soul, set him +before us as a living and breathing reality, and make us feel that, if +we had known him, we too should have been ready to swell the full chorus +of admiration. It is rather more difficult to convey the impression +which a perusal of his correspondence and conversation leaves upon an +unprejudiced mind. Does Sir Charles, when we come to know him +intimately--for, with the ample materials provided, we really seem to +know him--fairly support the amazing burden thrown upon him? Do we feel +a certain disappointment when we meet the man whom all ladies love, and +in whom every gentleman confesses a superior nature. + +Two anecdotes about Sir Charles may suggest the answer. Voltaire, we +know, ridiculed the proud English, who with the same scissors cut off +the heads of their kings and the tails of their horses. To this last +weakness Sir Charles was superior. His horses, says Miss Byron, 'are not +docked; their tails are only tied up when they are on the road.' She +would wish to find some fault with him, but as she forcibly says, 'if he +be of opinion that the tails of these noble animals are not only a +natural ornament, but of real use to defend them from the vexatious +insects that in summer are so apt to annoy them, how far from a +dispraise is this humane consideration!' The other anecdote is of a +different kind. When Sir Charles goes to church he does not, like some +other gentlemen, bow low to the ladies of his acquaintance, and then to +others of the gentry. No! 'Sir Charles had first other devoirs to pay. +He paid us his second compliments.' From these two exemplary actions we +must infer his whole character. It should have been inscribed on his +tombstone, 'He would not dock his horses' tails.' That is the most +trifling details of his conduct are regulated on the most serious +considerations. He is one of those solemn beings who can't shave +themselves without implicitly asserting a great moral principle. He +finds sermons in his horses' tails; he could give an excellent reason +for the quantity of lace on his coat, which was due, it seems, to a +sentiment of filial reverence; and he could not fix his hour for dinner +without an eye to the reformation of society. In short, he was a prig of +the first water; self-conscious to the last degree; and so crammed with +little moral aphorisms that they drop out of his mouth whenever he opens +his lips. And then his religion is in admirable keeping. It is +intimately connected with the excellence of his deportment; and is, in +fact, merely the application of the laws of good society to the loftiest +sphere of human duty. He pays his second compliments to his lady, and +his first to the object of his adoration. He very properly gives the +precedence to the being he professes to adore. As he carries his +solemnity into the pettiest trifles of life, so he considers religious +duties to be simply the most important part of social etiquette. He +would shrink from blasphemy even more than from keeping on his hat in +the presence of ladies; but the respect which he owes in one case is of +the same order with that due in the other: it is only a degree more +important. + +We feel, indeed, a certain affection for Sir Charles Grandison. He is +pompous and ceremonious to an insufferable degree; but there is really +some truth in his sister's assertion, that his is the most delicate of +human minds; through the cumbrous formalities of his century there +shines a certain quickness and sensibility; he even condescends to be +lively after a stately fashion, and to indulge in a little 'raillying,' +only guarding himself rather too carefully against unbecoming levity. +Indeed, though a man of the world at the present day would be as much +astonished at his elaborate manners as at his laced coat and sword, he +would admit that Sir Charles was by no means wanting in tact; his talk +is weighted with more elaborate formulae than we care to employ, but it +is good vigorous conversation in the main, and, if rather overlaid with +sermonising, can at times be really amusing. His religion is not of a +very exalted character; he rises to no sublime heights of emotion, and +would simply be puzzled by the fervours or the doubts of a more modern +generation. In short, it seems to be compounded of common-sense and a +regard for decorum--and those are not bad things in their way, though +not the highest. He is not a very ardent reformer; he doubts whether the +poor should be taught to read, and is very clear that everyone should be +made to know his station; but still he talks with sense and moderation, +and even gets so far as to suggest the necessity of reformatories. He is +not very romantic, and displays an amount of self-command in judicially +settling the claims of the various ladies who are anxious to marry him, +which is almost comic; he is perfectly ready to marry the Italian lady, +if she can surmount her religious scruples, though he is in love with +Miss Byron; and his mind is evidently in a pleasing state of +equilibrium, so that he will be happy with either dear charmer. Indeed, +for so chivalric a gentleman, his view of love and marriage is far less +enthusiastic than we should now require. One of his benevolent actions, +which throws all his admirers into fits of eulogy, is to provide one of +his uncles with a wife. The gentleman is a peer, but has hitherto been +of disreputable life. The lady, though of good family and education, is +above thirty, and her family have lost their estate. The match of +convenience which Sir Charles patches up between them has obvious +prudential recommendations; and of course it turns out admirably. But +one is rather puzzled to know what special merits Sir Charles can claim +for bringing it to pass. + +Such a hero as this may be worthy and respectable, but is not a very +exalted ideal. Neither do his circumstances increase our interest. It +would be rather a curious subject of inquiry why it should be so +impossible to make a virtuous hero interesting in fiction. In real life, +the men who do heroic actions are certainly more attractive than the +villains. Domestic affection, patriotism, piety, and other good +qualities are pleasant to contemplate in the world; why should they be +so often an unspeakable bore in novels? Principally, no doubt, because +our conception of a perfect man is apt to bring the negative qualities +into too great prominence; we are asked to admire men because they have +not passions--not because they overcome them. But there are further +difficulties; for example, in a novel it is generally so easy to see +what is wrong and what is right--the right-hand path branches off so +decidedly from the left, that we give a man little credit for making the +proper choice. Still more is it difficult to let us sufficiently into a +man's interior to let us see the struggle and the self-sacrifice which +ought to stir our sympathies. We witness the victories, but it is hard +to make us feel the cost at which they are won. Now, Richardson has, as +we shall directly remark, overcome this difficulty to a great extent in +Clarissa; but in Sir Charles Grandison he has entirely shirked it; he +has made everything too plain and easy for his hero. 'I think I could be +a good woman,' says Becky Sharp, 'if I had five thousand a year,'--and +the history of Sir Charles Grandison might have suggested the remark. To +be young, handsome, healthy, active, with a fine estate and a grand old +house; to be able, by your eloquence, to send a sinner into a fit (as +Sir Charles did once); to be the object of a devoted passion from three +or four amiable, accomplished, and beautiful women--each of whom has a +fine fortune, and only begs you to throw your handkerchief towards her, +whilst she promises to bear no grudge if you throw it to her +neighbour--all these are favourable conditions for virtue--especially if +you mean the virtues of being hospitable, generous, a good landlord and +husband, and in every walk of life thoroughly gentlemanlike in your +behaviour. But the whole design is rather too much in accordance with +the device in enabling Sir Charles to avoid duels by having a marvellous +trick of disarming his adversaries. 'What on earth is the use of my +fighting with you,' says King Padella to Prince Giglio, 'if you have got +a fairy sword and a fairy horse?' And what merit is there in winning the +battle of life, when you have every single circumstance in your favour? +We are more attracted by Fielding's rather questionable hero, Captain +Booth, though he does get into a sponging-house, and is anything but a +strict moralist, than by this prosperous young Sir Charles, rich with +every gift the gods can give him, and of whom the most we can say is +that the possession of all those gifts, if it has made him rather +pompous and self-conscious, has not made him close-fisted or +hard-hearted. Sir Charles, then, represents a rather carnal ideal; he +suggest to us those well-fed, almost beefy and corpulent angels, whom +the contemporary school of painters sometimes portray. No doubt they are +angels, for they have wings and are seated in the clouds; but there is +nothing ethereal in their whole nature. We have no love for asceticism; +but a few hours on the column of St. Simon Stylites, or a temporary diet +of locusts and wild honey, might have purified Sir Charles's exuberant +self-satisfaction. For all this, he is not without a certain solid +merit, and the persons by whom he is surrounded--on whom we have not +space to dwell--have a large share of the vivacity which amuses us in +the real men and women of their time. Their talk may not be equal to +that in Boswell's 'Johnson;' but it is animated and amusing, and they +compose a gallery of portraits which would look well in a solid +red-brick mansion of the Georgian era. + +We must, however, leave Sir Charles, to say a few words upon that which +is Richardson's real masterpiece, and which, in spite of a full share of +the defects apparent in 'Grandison,' will always command the admiration +of persons who have courage enough to get through eight volumes of +correspondence. The characters of the little world in which the reader +will pass his time are in some cases the same who reappear in +'Grandison.' The lively Lady G. in the last is merely a new version of +Miss Howe in the former. Clarissa herself is Miss Byron under altered +circumstances, and receives from her friends the same shower of +superlatives, whenever they have occasion to touch upon her merits. +Richardson's ideal lady is not at first sight more prepossessing than +his gentleman. After Clarissa's death, her friend Miss Howe writes a +glowing panegyric on her character. It will be enough to give the +distribution of her time. To rest it seems she allotted six hours only. +Her first three morning hours were devoted to study and to writing those +terribly voluminous letters which, as one would have thought, must have +consumed a still longer period. Two hours more were given to domestic +management; for, as Miss Howe explains, 'she was a perfect mistress of +the four principal rules of arithmetic.' Five hours were spent in music, +drawing, and needlework, this last especially, and in conversation with +the venerable parson of the parish. Two hours she devoted to breakfast +and dinner; and as it was hard to restrict herself to this allowance, +she occasionally gave one hour more to dinner-time conversation. One +hour more was spent in visiting the neighbouring poor, and the remaining +four hours to supper and conversation. These periods, it seems, were not +fixed for every day; for she kept a kind of running account, and +permitted herself to have an occasional holiday by drawing upon the +reserved fund of the four hours for supper. + +Setting aside the fearfully systematic nature of this arrangement--the +stern determination to live by rule and system--it must be admitted that +Miss Harlowe was what in outworn phrase was called a very 'superior' +person. She would have made an excellent housekeeper, or even a +respectable governess. We feel a certain gratitude to her for devoting +four hours to supper; and, indeed, Richardson's characters are always +well cared for in the victualling department. They always take their +solid three meals, with a liberal intercalation of dishes of tea and +chocolate. Miss Harlowe, we must add, knew Latin, although her +quotations of classical authors are generally taken from translations. +Her successor, Miss Byron, was not allowed this accomplishment, +Richardson's doubts of its suitability to ladies having apparently +gathered strength in the interval. Notwithstanding this one audacious +excursion into the regions of manly knowledge, Miss Harlowe appears to +us as, in the main, a healthy, sensible country girl, with sound sense, +the highest respect for decorum, and an exaggerated regard for +constituted, especially paternal, authority. We cannot expect, from her, +any of the outbreaks against the laws of society customary with George +Sand's heroines. If she had changed places with Maggie Tulliver, she +would have accepted the society of the 'Mill on the Floss' with perfect +contentment, respected all the family of aunts and uncles, and never +repined against the tyranny of her brother Tom. She would have been +conscious of no vague imaginative yearnings, nor have beaten herself +against the narrow bars of stolid custom. She would have laid up a vast +store of linen, and walked thankfully in the path chalked out for her. +Certainly she would never have run away with Mr. Stephen Guest without +tyranny of a much more tangible kind than that which acts only through +the finer spiritual tissues. When Clarissa went off with Lovelace, it +was not because she had unsatisfied aspirations after a higher order of +life, but because she had been locked up in her room, as a solitary +prisoner, and her family had tried to force her into marriage with a man +whom she had excellent reasons for hating and despising. The worst point +about Clarissa is one which was keenly noticed by Johnson. There is +always something, he said, which she prefers to truth. She is a little +too anxious to keep up appearances, and we desire to see more of the +natural woman. + +Yet the long tragedy in which Clarissa is the victim is not the less +affecting because the torments are of an intelligible kind, and require +no highly-strung sensibility to give them keenness. The heroine is first +bullied and then deserted by her family, cut off from the friends who +have a desire to help her, and handed over to the power of an +unscrupulous libertine. When she dies of a broken heart, the most +callous and prosaic of readers must feel that it is the only release +possible for her. And in the gradual development of his plot, the slow +accumulation of horrors upon the head of a virtuous victim, Richardson +shows the power which places him in the front rank of novelists, and +finds precisely the field in which his method is most effective and its +drawbacks least annoying. In the first place, in spite of his enormous +prolixity, the interest is throughout concentrated upon one figure. In +'Sir Charles Grandison' there are episodes meant to illustrate the +virtues of the 'next-to-divine man' which have nothing to do with the +main narrative. In 'Clarissa' every subordinate plot--and they +abound--bears immediately upon the central action of the story, and +produces a constant alternation of hope and foreboding. The last +volumes, indeed, are dragged out in a way which is injurious in several +respects. Clarissa, to use Charles II.'s expression about himself, takes +an unconscionable time about dying. But until the climax is reached, we +see the clouds steadily gathering, and yet with an increasing hope that +they may be suddenly cleared up. The only English novel which produces a +similar effect, and impresses us with the sense of an inexorable fate, +slowly but steadily approaching, is the 'Bride of Lammermoor'--in some +respects the best and most artistic of Scott's novels. Superior as is +Scott's art in certain directions, we scarcely feel the same interest in +his chief characters, though there is the same unity of construction. We +cannot feel for the Master of Ravenswood the sympathy which Clarissa +extorts. For in Clarissa's profound distress we lose sight of the +narrow round of respectabilities in which her earlier life is passed; +the petty pompousness, the intense propriety which annoy us in 'Sir +Charles Grandison' disappear or become pathetic. When people are dying +of broken hearts we forget their little absurdities of costume. A more +powerful note is sounded, and the little superficial absurdities are +forgotten. We laugh at the first feminine description of her dress--a +Brussels-lace cap, with sky-blue ribbon, pale crimson-coloured paduasoy, +with cuffs embroidered in a running pattern of violets and their leaves; +but we are more disposed to cry (if many novels have not exhausted all +our powers of weeping) when we come to the final scene. 'One faded cheek +rested upon the good woman's bosom, the kindly warmth of which had +overspread it with a faint but charming flush; the other paler and +hollow, as if already iced over by death. Her hands, white as the lily, +with her meandering veins more transparently blue than ever I had seen +even hers, hanging lifelessly, one before her, the other grasped by the +right hand of the kindly widow, whose tears bedewed the sweet face which +her motherly bosom supported, though unfelt by the fair sleeper; and +either insensibly to the good woman, or what she would not disturb her +to wipe off or to change her posture. Her aspect was sweetly calm and +serene; and though she started now and then, yet her sleep seemed easy; +her breath indeed short and quick, but tolerably free, and not like that +of a dying person.' Allowing for the queer grammar, this is surely a +touching and simple picture. The epistolary method, though it has its +dangers, lends itself well to heighten our interest. Where the object is +rather to appeal to our sympathies than to give elaborate analyses of +character, or complicated narratives of incident, it is as well to let +the persons speak for themselves. A hero cannot conveniently say, like +Sir Charles Grandison, 'See how virtuous and brave and modest I am;' nor +is it easy to make a story clear when it has to be broken up and +distributed amongst people speaking from different points of view; it is +hard to make the testimonies of the different witnesses fit into each +other neatly. But a cry of agony can come from no other quarter so +effectively as from the sufferer's own mouth. 'Clarissa Harlowe' is in +fact one long lamentation, passing gradually from a tone of indignant +complaint to one of despair, and rising at the end to Christian +resignation. So prolonged a performance in every key of human misery is +indeed painful from its monotony; and we may admit that a limited +selection from the correspondence, passing through more rapid +gradations, would be more effective. We might be spared some of the +elaborate speculations upon various phases of the affair which pass away +without any permanent effect. Richardson seems to be scarcely content +even with drawing his characters as large as life; he wishes to apply a +magnifying-glass. Yet, even in this incessant repetition there is a +certain element of power. We are forced to drain every drop in the cup, +and to appreciate every ingredient which adds bitterness to its flavour. +We are annoyed and wearied at times; but as we read we not only wonder +at the number of variations performed upon one tune, but feel that he +has succeeded in thoroughly forcing upon our minds, by incessant +hammering, the impression which he desires to produce. If the blows are +not all very powerful, each blow tells. There is something impressive in +the intensity of purpose which keeps one end in view through so +elaborate a process, and the skill which forms such a multitudinous +variety of parts into one artistic whole. The proportions of this +gigantic growth are preserved with a skill which would be singular even +in the normal scale; a respect in which most giants, whether human or +literary, are apt to break down. + +To make the story complete, the plot should have been as effectively +conceived as Clarissa herself, and the other characters should be +equally worthy of their position. Here there are certain drawbacks. The +plot, it might easily be shown, is utterly incredible. Richardson has +the greatest difficulty in preventing his heroine from escaping, and at +times we must not look too closely for fear of detecting the flimsy +nature of her imaginary chains. There is, indeed, no reason for looking +closely; so long as the situations bring out the desired sentiment, we +may accept them for the nonce, without asking whether they could +possibly have occurred. It is of more importance to judge of the +consistency of the chief agent in the persecution. Lovelace is by far +the most ambitious character that Richardson has attempted. To heap +together a mass of virtues, and christen the result Clarissa Harlowe or +Charles Grandison, is comparatively easy; but it is a harder task to +compose a villain, who shall be by nature a devil, and yet capable of +imposing upon an angel. Some of Richardson's judicious critics declared +that he must have been himself a man of vicious life or he could never +have described a libertine so vividly. This is one of the smart sayings +which are obviously the proper thing to say, but which, notwithstanding, +are little better than silly. Lovelace is evidently a fancy +character--if we may use the expression. He bears not a single mark of +being painted from life, and is formed by the simple process of putting +together the most brilliant qualities which his creator could devise to +meet the occasion. We do not say that the result is psychologically +impossible; for it would be very rash to dogmatise on any such question. +No one can say what strange amalgams of virtue and vice may have +sufficient stability to hold together during a journey through this +world. But it is plain that Lovelace is not a result of observation, but +an almost fantastic mixture of qualities intended to fit him for the +difficult part he has to play. To exalt Clarissa, for example, +Lovelace's family are represented as all along earnestly desirous of a +marriage between them; and Lovelace has every conceivable motive, +including the desire to avoid hanging, for agreeing to the match. His +refusal is unintelligible, and Richardson has to supply him with a +reason so absurd and so diabolical that we cannot believe in it; it +reminds us of Hamlet's objecting to killing his uncle whilst at prayers, +on the ground that it would be sending him straight to heaven. But we +may, if we please, consider Hamlet's conceit as a mere pretext invented +to excuse his irresolution to himself; whereas Lovelace speculates so +long and so seriously upon the marriage, that we are bound to consider +his far-fetched arguments as sincere. And the supposition makes his +wickedness gratuitous, if we believe in his sanity. Lovelace suffers, +again, from the same necessity which injures Sir Charles Grandison; as +the virtuous hero has to be always expatiating on his own virtues, the +vicious hero has to boast of his own vices; it is true that this is, in +an artistic sense, the least repulsive habit of the two; for it gives +reason for hating not a hero but a villain; unluckily it is also a +reason for refusing to believe in his existence. The improbability of a +thoroughpaced scoundrel writing daily elaborate confessions of his +criminality to a friend, even when the friend condemns him, expatiating +upon atrocities that deserved hanging, and justifying his vices on +principle, is rather too glaring to be admissible. And by another odd +inconsistency, Lovelace is described as being all the time a steady +believer in eternal punishment and a rebuker of sceptics--Richardson +being apparently of opinion that infidelity would be too bad to be +introduced upon the stage, though a vice might be described in detail. A +man who has broken through all moral laws might be allowed a little +free-thinking. We might add that Lovelace, in spite of the cleverness +attributed to him, is really a most imbecile schemer. The first +principle of a villain should be to tell as few lies as will serve his +purpose; but Lovelace invents such elaborate and complicated plots, +presenting so many chances of detection and introducing so many persons +into his secrets, that it is evident that in real life he would have +broken down in a week. + +Granting the high improbability of Lovelace as a real living human +being, it must be admitted that he has every merit but that of +existence. The letters which he writes are the most animated in the +voluminous correspondence. The respectable domestic old printer, who +boasted of the perfect purity of his own life, seems to have thrown +himself with special gusto into the character of a heartless reprobate. +He must have felt a certain piquancy in writing down the most atrocious +sentiments in his own respectable parlour. He would show that the quiet +humdrum old tradesman could be on paper as sprightly and audacious as +the most profligate man about town. As quiet people are apt to do, he +probably exaggerated the enormities which such men would openly avow; he +fancied that the world beyond his little circle was a wilderness of wild +beasts who could gnash their teeth and show their claws after a terribly +ostentatious fashion in their own dens; they doubtless gloated upon all +the innocent sheep whom they had devoured without any shadow of +reticence. And he had a fancy that, in their way, they were amusing +monsters too; Lovelace is a lady's villain, as Grandison is a lady's +hero; he is designed by a person inexperienced even in the observation +of vice. Indeed, he would exaggerate the charm a good deal more than the +atrocity. We must also admit that when the old printer was put upon his +mettle he could be very lively indeed. Lovelace, like everybody else, is +at times unmercifully prolix; he never leaves us to guess any detail for +ourselves; but he is spirited, eloquent, and a thoroughly fine gentleman +after the Chesterfield type. 'The devil take such fine gentlemen!' +exclaims somebody; and if he does not, I see little use (to quote the +proverbial old lady) in keeping a devil. But, as Johnson observed, a man +may be very wicked and 'very genteel.' Richardson lectures us very +seriously on the evil results which are sure to follow bad courses; but +he evidently holds in his heart that, till the Nemesis descends, the +libertines are far the most amusing part of the world. In Sir Charles +Grandison's company, we should be treated to an intolerable deal of +sermonising, with an occasional descent into the regions of humour--but +the humour is always admitted under protest. With Lovelace we might hear +some very questionable morality, but there would be a never-ceasing flow +of sparkling witticisms. The devil's advocate has the laugh distinctly +on his side, whatever may be said of the argument. Finally, we may say +that Lovelace, if too obviously constructed to work the plot, certainly +works it well. When we coolly dissect him and ask whether he could ever +have existed, we may be forced to reply in the negative. But whilst we +read we forget to criticise; he seems to possess more vitality than +most living men; he is so full of eloquent brag, and audacious +sophistry, and unblushing impudence, that he fascinates us as he is +supposed to have bewildered Clarissa. The dragon who is to devour the +maiden comes with all the flash and glitter and overpowering whirl of +wings that can be desired. He seems to be irresistible--we admire him +and hate him, and some time elapses before we begin to suspect that he +is merely a stage dragon, and not one of those who really walk this +earth. + +Richardson's defects are, of course, obvious enough. He cares nothing, +for example, for what we call the beauties of nature. There is scarcely +throughout his books one description showing the power of appealing to +emotions through scenery claimed by every modern scribbler. In passing +the Alps, the only remark which one of his characters has to make, +beyond describing the horrible dangers of the Mont Cenis, is that 'every +object which here presents itself is excessively miserable.' His ideal +scenery is a 'large and convenient country-house, situated in a spacious +park,' with plenty of 'fine prospects,' which you are expected to view +from a 'neat but plain villa, built in the rustic taste.' And his views +of morality are as contracted as his taste in landscapes. The most +distinctive article of his creed is that children should have a +reverence for their parents which would be exaggerated in the slave of +an Eastern despot. We can pardon Clarissa for refusing to die happy +until her stupid and ill-tempered old father has revoked a curse which +he bestowed upon her. But we cannot quite excuse Sir Charles Grandison +for writing in this fashion to his disreputable old parent, who has +asked his consent to a certain family arrangement in which he had a +legal right to be consulted:-- + +'As for myself,' he says, 'I cannot have one objection; but what am I in +this case? My sister is wholly my father's; I also am his. The +consideration he gives me in this instance confounds me. It binds me to +him in double duty. It would look like taking advantage of it, were I so +much as to offer my humble opinion, unless he were pleased to command it +from me.' + +Even one of Richardson's abject lady-correspondents was revolted by this +exaggerated servility. But narrow as his vision might be in some +directions, his genius is not the less real. He is a curious example of +the power which a real artistic insight may exhibit under the most +disadvantageous forms. To realise his characteristic power, we should +take one of the great French novelists whom we admire for the exquisite +proportions of his story, the unity of the interest and the skill--so +unlike our common English clumsiness--with which all details are duly +subordinated. He should have, too, the comparative weakness of French +novelists, a defective perception of character, a certain unwillingness +in art as in politics to allow individual peculiarities to interfere +with the main flow of events; for, admitting the great excellence of his +minor performers, Richardson's most elaborately designed characters are +so artificial that they derive their interest from the events in which +they play their parts, rather than give interest to them--little as he +may have intended it. Then we must cause our imaginary Frenchman to +transmigrate into the body of a small, plump, weakly printer of the +eighteenth century. We may leave him a fair share of his vivacity, +though considerably narrowing his views of life and morality; but we +must surround him with a court of silly women whose incessant flatteries +must generate in him an unnatural propensity to twaddle. It is curious, +indeed, that he describes himself as writing without a plan. He compares +himself to a poor woman lying down upon the hearth to blow up a wretched +little fire of green sticks. He had to live from hand to mouth. But the +absence of an elaborate scheme is not fatal to the unity of design. He +watches, rather than designs, the development of his plot. He has so +lively a faith in his characters that, instead of laying down their +course of action, he simply watches them to see how they will act. This +makes him deliberate a little too much; they move less by impulse than +from careful reflection upon all the circumstances. Yet it also implies +an evolution of the story from the necessity of the characters in a +given situation, and gives an air of necessary deduction to the whole +scheme of his stories. All the gossiping propensities of his nature will +grow to unhealthy luxuriance, and the fine edge of his wit will be +somewhat dulled in the process. He will thus become capable of being a +bore--a thing which is impossible to any unsophisticated Frenchman. In +this way we might obtain a literary product so anomalous in appearance +as 'Clarissa'--a story in which a most affecting situation is drawn with +extreme power, and yet so overlaid with twaddle, so unmercifully +protracted and spun out as to be almost unreadable to the present +generation. But to complete Richardson, we must inoculate him with the +propensities of another school: we must give him a liberal share of the +feminine sensitiveness and closeness of observation of which Miss Austen +is the great example. And perhaps, to fill in the last details, he +ought, in addition, to have a dash of the more unctuous and offensive +variety of the dissenting preacher--for we know not where else to look +for the astonishing and often ungrammatical fluency by which he is +possessed, and which makes his best passages remind us of the marvellous +malleability of some precious metals. + +Anyone who will take the trouble to work himself fairly into the story +will end by admitting Richardson's power. Sir George Trevelyan records +and corroborates a well-known anecdote told by Thackeray from Macaulay's +lips. A whole station was infected by the historian's zeal for +'Clarissa.' It worked itself up into a 'passion of excitement,' and all +the great men and their wives fought for the book, and could hardly read +it for tears. The critic must observe that Macaulay had a singular taste +for reading even the trashiest novels; and, that probably an Indian +station at that period was in respect of such reading like a thirsty +land after a long drought. For that reason it reproduced pretty +accurately the state of society in which 'Clarissa' was first read, when +there were as yet no circulating libraries, and the winter evenings were +long in the country and the back parlours of tradesmen's shops. +Probably, a person eager to enjoy Richardson's novels now would do well +to take them as his only recreation for a long holiday in a remote place +and pray for steady rain. On those conditions, he may enter into the old +spirit. And the remark may suggest one moral, for one ought not to +conclude an article upon Richardson without a moral. It is that a +purpose may be a very dangerous thing for a novelist in so far as it +leads him to try means of persuasion not appropriate to his art; but +when, as with Richardson, it implies a keen interest in an imaginary +world, a desire to set forth in the most forcible way what are the great +springs of action of human beings by showing them under appropriate +situations, then it may be a source of such power of fascination as is +exercised by the greatest writers alone. + + + + +_POPE AS A MORALIST_ + + +The vitality of Pope's writings, or at least of certain fragments of +them, is remarkable. Few reputations have been exposed to such perils at +the hands of open enemies or of imprudent friends. In his lifetime 'the +wasp of Twickenham' could sting through a sevenfold covering of pride or +stupidity. Lady Mary and Lord Hervey writhed and retaliated with little +more success than the poor denizens of Grub Street. But it is more +remarkable that Pope seems to be stinging well into the second century +after his death. His writings resemble those fireworks which, after they +have fallen to the ground and been apparently quenched, suddenly break +out again into sputtering explosions. The waters of a literary +revolution have passed over him without putting him out. Though much of +his poetry has ceased to interest us, so many of his brilliant couplets +still survive that probably no dead writer, with the solitary exception +of Shakespeare, is more frequently quoted at the present day. It is in +vain that he is abused, ridiculed, and often declared to be no poet at +all. The school of Wordsworth regarded him as the embodiment of the +corrupting influence in English poetry; and it is only of late that we +are beginning to aim at a more catholic spirit in literary criticism. It +is not our business simply to revile or to extol the ideals of our +ancestors, but to try to understand them. The passionate partisanship +of militant schools is pardonable in the apostles of a new creed, but +when the struggle is over we must aim at saner judgments. Byron was +impelled by motives other than the purely judicial when he declared Pope +to be the 'great moral poet of all times, of all climes, of all +feelings, and of all stages of existence;' and it is not less +characteristic that Byron was at the same time helping to dethrone the +idol before which he prostrated himself. A critic whose judgments, +however wayward, are always keen and original, has more recently spoken +of Pope in terms which recall Byron's enthusiasm. 'Pope,' says Mr. +Ruskin, in one of his Oxford lectures, 'is the most perfect +representative we have since Chaucer of the true English mind;' and he +adds that his hearers will find, as they study Pope, that he has +expressed for them, 'in the strictest language, and within the briefest +limits, every law of art, of criticism, of economy, of policy, and +finally of a benevolence, humble, rational, and resigned, contented with +its allotted share of life, and trusting the problem of its salvation to +Him in whose hand lies that of the universe.' These remarks are added by +way of illustrating the relation of art to morals, and enforcing the +great principle that a noble style can only proceed from a sincere +heart. 'You can only learn to speak as these men spake by learning what +these men were.' When we ask impartially what Pope was, we may possibly +be inclined to doubt the complete soundness of the eulogy upon his +teaching. Meanwhile, however, Byron and Mr. Ruskin agree in holding up +Pope as an instance, almost as the typical instance, of that kind of +poetry which is directly intended to enforce a lofty morality. Though we +can never take either Byron or Mr. Ruskin as the representative of sweet +reasonableness, their admiration is some proof that Pope possessed great +merits as a poetical interpreter of morals. Without venturing into the +wider ocean of poetical criticism, I will endeavour to consider what was +the specific element in Pope's poetry which explains, if it does not +justify, this enthusiastic praise. + +I shall venture to assume, indeed, that Pope was a genuine poet. +Perhaps, as M. Taine thinks, it is a proof of our British grossness that +we still admire the 'Rape of the Lock,' yet I must agree with most +critics that it is admirable after its kind. Pope's sylphs, as Mr. Elwin +says, are legitimate descendants from Shakespeare's fairies. True, they +have entered into rather humiliating bondage. Shakespeare's Ariel has to +fetch the midnight dew from the still-vexed Bermoothes; he delights to +fly-- + + To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride + On the curl'd clouds-- + +whereas the 'humbler province' of Pope's Ariel is 'to tend the fair'-- + + To steal from rainbows, ere they drop in showers, + A brighter wash; to curl their waving hairs, + Assist their blushes, and inspire their airs. + Nay, oft in dreams invention we bestow + To change a flounce or add a furbelow. + +Prospero, threatening Ariel for murmuring, says 'I will + + rend an oak + And peg thee in his knotty entrails, until + Thou hast howled away twelve winters.' + +The fate threatened to a disobedient sprite in the later poem is that he +shall + + Be stuff'd in vials, or transfixed with pins, + Or plunged in lakes of bitter washes lie, + Or wedged whole ages in a bodkin's eye. + +Pope's muse--one may use the old-fashioned word in such a +connection--had left the free forest for Will's Coffee-house, and +haunted ladies' boudoirs instead of the brakes of the enchanted island. +Her wings were clogged with 'gums and pomatums,' and her 'thin essence' +had shrunk 'like a rivel'd flower.' But a delicate fancy is a delicate +fancy still, even when employed about the paraphernalia of modern life; +a truth which Byron maintained, though not in an unimpeachable form, in +his controversy with Bowles. We sometimes talk as if our ancestors were +nothing but hoops and wigs; and forget that they had a fair allowance of +human passions. And consequently we are very apt to make a false +estimate of the precise nature of that change which fairly entitles us +to call Pope's age prosaic. In showering down our epithets of +artificial, sceptical, and utilitarian, we not seldom forget what kind +of figure we are ourselves likely to make in the eyes of our own +descendants. + +Whatever be the position rightly to be assigned to Pope in the British +Walhalla, his own theory has been unmistakably expressed. He boasts + + That not in fancy's maze he wandered long, + But stooped to truth and moralised his song. + +His theory is compressed into one of the innumerable aphorisms which +have to some degree lost their original sharpness of definition, because +they have passed, as current coinage, through so many hands. + + The proper study of mankind is man. + +The saying is in form nearly identical with Goethe's remark that man is +properly the only object which interests man. The two poets, indeed, +understood the doctrine in a very different way. Pope's interpretation +strikes the present generation as narrow and mechanical. He would place +such limitations upon the sphere of human interest as to exclude, +perhaps, the greatest part of what we generally mean by poetry. How +much, for example, would have to be suppressed if we sympathised with +Pope's condemnation of the works in which + + Pure description holds the place of sense. + +Nearly all the works of such poets as Thomson and Cowper would +disappear, Wordsworth's pages would show fearful gaps, and Keats would +be in risk of summary suppression. We may doubt whether much would be +left of Spenser, from whom both Keats and Pope, like so many other of +our poets, drew inspiration in their youth. Fairyland would be deserted, +and the poet condemned to working upon ordinary commonplaces in broad +daylight. The principle which Pope proclaimed is susceptible of the +inverse application. Poetry, as it proves, may rightly concern itself +with inanimate nature, with pure description, or with the presentation +of lovely symbols not definitely identified with any cut-and-dried saws +of moral wisdom; because there is no part of the visible universe to +which we have not some relation, and the most ethereal dreams that ever +visited a youthful poet 'on summer eve by haunted stream' are in some +sense reflections of the passions and interests that surround our daily +life. Pope, however, as the man more fitted than any other fully to +interpret the mind of his own age, inevitably gives a different +construction to a very sound maxim. He rightly assumes that man is his +proper study; but then by man he means not the genus, but a narrow +species of the human being. 'Man' means Bolingbroke, and Walpole, and +Swift, and Curll, and Theobald; it does not mean man as the product of a +long series of generations and part of the great universe of +inextricably involved forces. He cannot understand the man of distant +ages; Homer is to him not the spontaneous voice of the heroic age, but a +clever artist whose gods and heroes are consciously-constructed parts of +an artificial 'machinery.' Nature has, for him, ceased to be inhabited +by sylphs and fairies, except to amuse the fancies of fine ladies and +gentlemen, and has not yet received a new interest from the fairy tales +of science. The old ideal of chivalry merely suggests the sneers of +Cervantes, or even the buffoonery of Butler's wit, and has not undergone +restoration at the hands of modern romanticists. Politics are not +associated in his mind with any great social upheaval, but with a series +of petty squabbles for places and pensions, in which bribery is the +great moving force. What he means by religion is generally not so much +the existence of a divine element in the world as a series of bare +metaphysical demonstrations too frigid to produce enthusiasm or to +stimulate the imagination. And, therefore, he inevitably interests +himself chiefly in what is certainly a perennial source of interest--the +passions and thoughts of the men and women immediately related to +himself; and it may be remarked, in passing, that if this narrows the +range of Pope's poetry, the error is not so vital as a modern delusion +of the opposite kind. Because poetry should not be brought into too +close a contact with the prose of daily life, we sometimes seem to think +that it must have no relation to daily life at all, and consequently +convert it into a mere luxurious dreaming, where the beautiful very +speedily degenerates into the pretty or the picturesque. Because poetry +need not be always a point-blank fire of moral platitudes, we +occasionally declare that there is no connection at all between poetry +and morality, and that all art is good which is for the moment +agreeable. Such theories must end in reducing all poetry and art to be +at best more or less elegant trifling for the amusement of the indolent; +and to those who uphold them Pope's example may be of some use. If he +went too far in the direction of identifying poetry with preaching, he +was not wrong in assuming that poetry should involve preaching, though +by an indirect method. Morality and art are not independent, though not +identical. Both, as Mr. Ruskin urges in the passage just quoted, are +only admirable when the expression of healthful and noble natures. But, +without discussing that thorny problem and certainly without committing +myself to an approval of Mr. Ruskin's solution, I am content to look at +it for the time from Pope's stand-point. + +Taking Pope's view of his poetical office, there remain considerable +difficulties in estimating the value of the lesson which he taught with +so much energy. The difficulties result both from that element which was +common to his contemporaries and from that which was supplied by Pope's +own idiosyncrasies. The commonplaces in which Pope takes such infinite +delight have become very stale for us. Assuming their perfect sincerity, +we cannot understand how anybody should have thought of enforcing them +with such amazing emphasis. We constantly feel a shock like that which +surprises the reader of Young's 'Night Thoughts' when he finds it +asserted, in all the pomp of blank verse, that + + Procrastination is the thief of time. + +The maxim has rightly been consigned to copy-books. And a great deal of +Pope's moralising is of the same order. We do not want denunciations of +misers. Nobody at the present day keeps gold in an old stocking. When +we read the observation, + + 'Tis strange the miser should his cares employ + To gain the riches he can ne'er enjoy, + +we can only reply that we have heard something like it before. In fact, +we cannot place ourselves in the position of men at the time when modern +society was first definitely emerging from the feudal state, and +everybody was sufficiently employed in gossiping about his neighbours. +We are perplexed by the extreme interest with which they dwell upon the +little series of obvious remarks which have been worked to death by +later writers. Pope, for example, is still wondering over the first +appearance of one of the most familiar of modern inventions. He +exclaims, + + Blest paper credit! last and best supply! + That lends corruption lighter wings to fly! + +He points out, with an odd superfluity of illustration, that bank-notes +enable a man to be bribed much more easily than of old. There is no +danger, he says, that a patriot will be exposed by a guinea dropping out +of his pocket at the end of an interview with the minister; and he shows +how awkward it would be if a statesman had to take his bribes in kind, +and his servants should proclaim, + + Sir, Spain has sent a thousand jars of oil; + Huge bales of British cloth blockade the door; + A hundred oxen at your levees roar. + +This, however, was natural enough when the South Sea scheme was for the +first time illustrating the powers and the dangers of extended credit. +To us, who are beginning to fit our experience of commercial panics into +a scientific theory, the wonder expressed by Pope sounds like the +exclamations of a savage over a Tower musket. And in the sphere of +morals it is pretty much the same. All those reflections about the +little obvious vanities and frivolities of social life which supplied +two generations of British essayists, from the 'Tatler' to the +'Lounger,' with an inexhaustible fund of mild satire, have lost their +freshness. Our own modes of life have become so complex by comparison, +that we pass over these mere elements to plunge at once into more +refined speculations. A modern essayist starts where Addison or Johnson +left off. He assumes that his readers know that procrastination is an +evil, and tries to gain a little piquancy by paradoxically pointing out +the objections to punctuality. Character, of course, becomes more +complex, and requires more delicate modes of analysis. Compare, for +example, the most delicate of Pope's delineations with one of Mr. +Browning's elaborate psychological studies. Remember how many pages of +acute observation are required to set forth Bishop Blougram's peculiar +phase of worldliness, and then turn to Pope's descriptions of Addison, +or Wharton, or Buckingham. Each of those descriptions is, indeed, a +masterpiece in its way; the language is inimitably clear and pointed; +but the leading thought is obvious, and leads to no intricate problems. +Addison--assuming Pope's Addison to be the real Addison--might be +cold-blooded and jealous; but he had not worked out that elaborate +machinery for imposing upon himself and others which is required in a +more critical age. He wore a mask, but a mask of simple construction; +not one of those complex contrivances of modern invention which are so +like the real skin that it requires the acuteness and patience of a +scientific observer to detect the difference and point out the nature of +the deception. The moral difference between an Addison and a Blougram +is as great as the difference between an old stage-coach and a +steam-engine, or between the bulls and bears which first received the +name in Law's time and their descendants on the New York Stock Exchange. + +If, therefore, Pope gains something in clearness and brilliancy by the +comparative simplicity of his art, he loses by the extreme obviousness +of its results. We cannot give him credit for being really moved by such +platitudes. We have the same feeling as when a modern preacher employs +twenty minutes in proving that it is wrong to worship idols of wood and +stone. But, unfortunately, there is a reason more peculiar to Pope which +damps our sympathy still more decidedly. Recent investigations have +strengthened those suspicions of his honesty which were common even +amongst his contemporaries. Mr. Elwin was (very excusably) disgusted by +the revelations of his hero's baseness, till his indignation became a +painful burden to himself and his readers. Speaking bluntly, indeed, we +admit that lying is a vice, and that Pope was in a small way one of the +most consummate liars that ever lived. He speaks himself of +'equivocating pretty genteelly' in regard to one of his peccadilloes. +Pope's equivocation is to the equivocation of ordinary men what a +tropical fern is to the stunted representatives of the same species in +England. It grows until the fowls of the air can rest on its branches. +His mendacity in short amounts to a monomania. That a man with intensely +irritable nerves, and so fragile in constitution that his life might, +without exaggeration, be called a 'long disease,' should defend himself +by the natural weapons of the weak, equivocation and subterfuge, when +exposed to the brutal horseplay common in that day, is indeed not +surprising. But Pope's delight in artifice was something unparalleled. +He could hardly drink tea without 'a stratagem,' or, as Lady Bolingbroke +put it, was a politician about cabbages and turnips; and certainly he +did not despise the arts known to politicians on a larger stage. Never, +surely, did all the arts of the most skilful diplomacy give rise to a +series of intrigues more complex than those which attended the +publication of the 'P. T. Letters.' An ordinary man says that he is +obliged to publish by request of friends, and we regard the transparent +device as, at most, a venial offence. But in Pope's hands this simple +trick becomes a complex apparatus of plots within plots, which have only +been unravelled by the persevering labours of most industrious literary +detectives. The whole story was given for the first time at full length +in Mr. Elwin's edition of Pope, and the revelation borders upon the +incredible. How Pope became for a time two men; how in one character he +worked upon the wretched Curll through mysterious emissaries until the +piratical bookseller undertook to publish the letters already privately +printed by Pope himself; how Pope in his other character protested +vehemently against the publication and disavowed all complicity in the +preparations; how he set the House of Lords in motion to suppress the +edition; and how, meanwhile, he took ingenious precautions to frustrate +the interference which he provoked; how in the course of these +manoeuvres his genteel equivocation swelled into lying on the most +stupendous scale--all this story, with its various ins and outs, may be +now read by those who have the patience. The problem may be suggested to +casuists how far the iniquity of a lie should be measured by its +immediate purpose, or how far it is aggravated by the enormous mass of +superincumbent falsehoods which it inevitably brings in its train. We +cannot condemn very seriously the affected coyness which tries to +conceal a desire for publication under an apparent yielding to +extortion; but we must certainly admit that the stomach of any other +human being of whom a record has been preserved would have revolted at +the thought of wading through such a waste of falsification to secure so +paltry an end. Moreover, this is only one instance, and by no means the +worst instance, of Pope's regular practice in such matters. Almost every +publication of his life was attended with some sort of mystification +passing into downright falsehood, and, at times, injurious to the +character of his dearest friends. We have to add to this all the cases +in which Pope attacked his enemies under feigned names and then +disavowed his attacks; the malicious misstatements which he tried to +propagate in regard to Addison; and we feel it a positive relief when we +are able to acquit him, partially at least, of the worst charge of +extorting 1,000_l._ from the Duchess of Marlborough for the suppression +of a satirical passage. + +Whatever minor pleas may be put forward in extenuation, it certainly +cannot be denied that Pope's practical morality was defective. Genteel +equivocation is not one of the Christian graces; and a gentleman +convicted at the present day of practices comparable to those in which +Pope indulged so freely might find it expedient to take his name off the +books of any respectable club. Now, if we take literally Mr. Ruskin's +doctrine that a noble morality must proceed from a noble nature, the +inference from Pope's life to his writings is not satisfactory. + +We may, indeed, take it for demonstrated that Pope was not one of those +men who can be seen from all points of view. There are corners of his +nature which will not bear examination. We cannot compare him with such +men as Milton, or Cowper, or Wordsworth, whose lives are the noblest +commentary on their works. Rather he is one of the numerous class in +whom the excessive sensibility of genius has generated very serious +disease. In more modern days we may fancy that his views would have +taken a different turn, and that Pope would have belonged to the Satanic +school of writers, and instead of lying enormously, have found relief +for his irritated nerves in reviling all that is praised by ordinary +mankind. But we must hesitate before passing from his acknowledged vices +to a summary condemnation of the whole man. Human nature (the remark is +not strictly original) is often inconsistent; and, side by side with +degrading tendencies, there sometimes lie not only keen powers of +intellect, but a genuine love for goodness, benevolence, and even for +honesty. Pope is one of those strangely mixed characters which can only +be fully delineated by a masterly hand, and Mr. Courthope in the life +which concludes the definitive edition of the works has at last +performed the task with admirable skill and without too much shrouding +his hero's weaknesses. Meanwhile our pleasure in reading him is much +counterbalanced by the suspicion that those pointed aphorisms which he +turns out in so admirably polished a form may come only from the lips +outwards. Pope, it must be remembered, is essentially a parasitical +writer. He was a systematic appropriator--I do not say plagiarist, for +the practice seems to be generally commendable--of other men's thoughts. +His brilliant gems have often been found in some obscure writer, and +have become valuable by the patient care with which he has polished and +mounted them. We doubt their perfect sincerity because, when he is +speaking in his own person, we can often prove him to be at best under +a curious delusion. Take, for example, the 'Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot,' +which is his most perfect work. Some of the boasts in it are apparently +quite justified by the facts. But what are we to say to such a passage +as this?-- + + I was not born for courts or great affairs; + I pay my debts, believe, and say my prayers; + Can sleep without a poem in my head, + Nor know if Dennis be alive or dead. + +Admitting his independence, and not inquiring too closely into his +prayers, can we forget that the gentleman who could sleep without a poem +in his head called up a servant four times in one night of 'the dreadful +winter of Forty' to supply him with paper, lest he should lose a +thought? Or what is the value of a professed indifference to Dennis from +the man distinguished beyond all other writers for the bitterness of his +resentment against all small critics; who disfigured his best poems by +his petty vengeance for old attacks; and who could not refrain from +sneering at poor Dennis, even in the Prologue which he condescended to +write for the benefit of his dying antagonist? Or, again, one can hardly +help smiling at his praises of his own hospitality. The dinner which he +promises to his friend is to conclude with-- + + Cheerful healths (your mistress shall have place), + And, what's more rare, a poet shall say grace. + +The provision made for the 'cheerful healths,' as Johnson lets us know, +consisted of the remnant of a pint of wine, from which Pope had taken a +couple of glasses, divided amongst two guests. There was evidently no +danger of excessive conviviality. And then a grace in which Bolingbroke +joined could not have been a very impressive ceremony. + +Thus, we are always pursued, in reading Pope, by disagreeable +misgivings. We don't know what comes from the heart, and what from the +lips: when the real man is speaking, and when we are only listening to +old commonplaces skilfully vamped. There is always, if we please, a bad +interpretation to be placed upon his finest sentiments. His indignation +against the vicious is confused with his hatred of personal enemies; he +protests most loudly that he is honest when he is 'equivocating most +genteelly;' his independence may be called selfishness or avarice; his +toleration simple indifference; and even his affection for his friends a +decorous fiction, which will never lead him to the slightest sacrifice +of his own vanity or comfort. A critic of the highest order is provided +with an Ithuriel spear, which discriminates the sham sentiments from the +true. As a banker's clerk can tell a bad coin by its ring on the +counter, without need of a testing apparatus, the true critic can +instinctively estimate the amount of bullion in Pope's epigrammatic +tinsel. But criticism of this kind, as Pope truly says, is as rare as +poetical genius. Humbler writers must be content to take their weights +and measures, or, in other words, to test their first impressions, by +such external evidence as is available. They must proceed cautiously in +these delicate matters, and instead of leaping to the truth by a rapid +intuition, patiently enquire what light is thrown upon Pope's sincerity +by the recorded events of his life, and a careful cross-examination of +the various witnesses to his character. They must, indeed, keep in mind +Mr. Ruskin's excellent canon--that good fruit, even in moralising, can +only be borne by a good tree. Where Pope has succeeded in casting into +enduring form some valuable moral sentiment, we may therefore give him +credit for having at least felt it sincerely. If he did not always act +upon it, the weakness is not peculiar to Pope. Time, indeed, has partly +done the work for us. In Pope, more than in almost any other writer, the +grain has sifted itself from the chaff. The jewels have remained after +the flimsy embroidery in which they were fixed has fallen into decay. +Such a result was natural from his mode of composition. He caught at +some inspiration of the moment; he cast it roughly into form; brooded +over it; retouched it again and again; and when he had brought it to the +very highest polish of which his art was capable, placed it in a +pigeon-hole to be fitted, when the opportunity offered, into an +appropriate corner of his mosaic-work. We can see him at work, for +example, in the passage about Addison and the celebrated concluding +couplet. The epigrams in which his poetry abounds have obviously been +composed in the same fashion, for that 'masterpiece of man,' as South is +made to call it in the 'Dunciad,' is only produced in perfection when +the labour which would have made an ode has been concentrated upon a +couple of lines. There is a celebrated recipe for dressing a lark, if we +remember rightly, in which the lark is placed inside a snipe, and the +snipe in a woodcock, and so on till you come to a turkey, or, if +procurable, to an ostrich; then, the mass having been properly stewed, +the superincumbent envelopes are all thrown away, and the essences of +the whole are supposed to be embodied in the original nucleus. So the +perfect epigram, at which Pope is constantly aiming, should be the +quintessence of a whole volume of reflection. Such literary cookery, +however, implies not only labour, but an unwearied vividness of thought +and feeling. The poet must put his soul into the work as well as his +artistic power. Thus, if we may take Pope's most vigorous expressions as +an indication of his strongest convictions, and check their conclusions +by his personal history and by the general tendency of his writings, we +might succeed in putting together something like a satisfactory +statement of the moral system which he expressed forcibly because he +believed in it sincerely. + +Without following the proofs in detail, let us endeavour to give some +statement of the result. What, in fact, did Pope learn by his study of +man, such as it was? What does he tell us about the character of human +beings and their position in the universe which is either original or +marked by the freshness of independent thought? Perhaps the most +characteristic vein of reflection is that which is embodied in the +'Dunciad.' There, at least, we have Pope speaking energetically and +sincerely. He really detests, abjures, and abominates as impious and +heretical, without a trace of mental reservation, the worship of the +great goddess Dulness. The 'Dunciad' does not show the quality in which +Pope most excels, that which makes his best satires resemble the +quintessence of the most brilliant thought of his most brilliant +contemporaries. But it has more energy and continuity than most of his +other poetry. The 'Dunciad' often flows in a continuous stream of +eloquence, instead of dribbling out in little jets of epigram. If there +are fewer points, there are more frequent gushes of sustained rhetoric. +Even when Pope condescends--and he condescends much too often--to pelt +his antagonists with mere filth, he does it with a touch of boisterous +vigour. He laughs out. He catches something from his patron Swift when +he + + Laughs and shakes in Rabelais's easy chair. + +His lungs seem to be fuller and his voice to lose for the time its +tricks of mincing affectation. Here, indeed, there can be no question of +insincerity. Pope's scorn of folly is to be condemned only so far as it +was connected with too bitter a hatred of fools. He has suffered, as +Swift foretold, by the insignificance of the enemies against whom he +rages with superfluous vehemence. But for Pope, no one in this +generation would have heard of Arnall and Moore and Breval and Bezaleel +Morris and fifty more ephemeral denizens of Grub Street. The fault is, +indeed, inherent in the plan. It is in some degree creditable to Pope +that his satire was on the whole justified, so far as it could be +justified, by the correctness of his judgment. The only great man whom +he has seriously assaulted is Bentley; and to Pope, Bentley was of +necessity not the greatest of classical critics, but the tasteless +mutilator of Milton, and, as we must perhaps add, the object of the +hatred of Pope's particular friends, Atterbury and Warburton. The +misfortune is that the more just his satire, the more perishable is its +interest; and if we regard the 'Dunciad' simply as an assault upon the +vermin who then infested literature, we must consider him as a man who +should use a steam-hammer to crack a flea. Unluckily for ourselves, +however, it cannot be admitted so easily that Curll and Dennis and the +rest had a merely temporary interest. Regarded as types of literary +nuisances--and Pope does not condescend in his poetry, though the want +is partly supplied in the notes, to indulge in much personal +detail--they may be said by cynics to have a more enduring vitality. Of +course there is at the present day no such bookseller as Curll, living +by piratical invasions of established rights, and pandering to the worst +passions of ignorant readers; no writer who could be fitly called, like +Concanen, + + A cold, long-winded native of the deep, + +and fitly sentenced to dive where Fleet Ditch + + Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames; + +and most certainly we must deny the present applicability of the note +upon 'Magazines' compiled by Pope, or rather by Warburton, for the +episcopal bludgeon is perceptible in the prose description. They are not +at present 'the eruption of every miserable scribbler, the scum of every +dirty newspaper, or fragments of fragments picked up from every dirty +dunghill ... equally the disgrace of human wit, morality, decency, and +common sense.' But if the translator of the 'Dunciad' into modern +phraseology would have some difficulty in finding a head for every cap, +there are perhaps some satirical stings which have not quite lost their +point. The legitimate drama, so theatrical critics tell us, has not +quite shaken off the rivalry of sensational scenery and idiotic +burlesque, though possibly we do not produce absurdities equal to that +which, as Pope tells us, was actually introduced by Theobald, in which + + Nile rises, Heaven descends, and dance on earth + Gods, imps, and monsters, music, rage, and mirth, + A fire, a jig, a battle and a ball, + Till one wide conflagration swallows all. + +There is still facetiousness which reminds us too forcibly that + + Gentle Dulness ever loves a joke, + +and even sermons, for which we may apologise on the ground that + + Dulness is sacred in a sound divine. + +Here and there, too, if we may trust certain stern reviewers, there are +writers who have learnt the principle that + + Index learning turns no student pale, + Yet holds the eel of Science by the tail. + +And the first four lines, at least, of the great prophecy at the +conclusion of the third book is thought by the enemies of muscular +Christianity to be possibly approaching its fulfilment: + + Proceed, great days! till learning fly the shore, + Till birch shall blush with noble blood no more, + Till Thames see Eton's sons for ever play, + Till Westminster's whole year be holiday, + Till Isis' elders reel, their pupils sport, + And Alma Mater lies dissolved in Port! + +No! So far as we can see, it is still true that + + Born a goddess, Dulness never dies. + +Men, we know it on high authority, are still mostly fools. If Pope be in +error, it is not so much that his adversary is beneath him, as that she +is unassailable by wit or poetry. Weapons of the most ethereal temper +spend their keenness in vain against the 'anarch old' whose power lies +in utter insensibility. It is fighting with a mist, and firing +cannon-balls into a mudheap. As well rave against the force of +gravitation, or complain that our gross bodies must be nourished by +solid food. If, however, we should be rather grateful than otherwise to +a man who is sanguine enough to believe that satire can be successful +against stupidity, and that Grub Street, if it cannot be exterminated, +can at least be lashed into humility, we might perhaps complain that +Pope has taken rather too limited a view of the subject. Dulness has +other avatars besides the literary. In the last and finest book, Pope +attempts to complete his plan by exhibiting the influence of dulness +upon theology and science. The huge torpedo benumbs every faculty of +the human mind, and paralyses all the Muses, except 'mad Mathesis,' +which, indeed, does not carry on so internecine a war with the general +enemy. The design is commendable, and executed, so far as Pope was on a +level with his task, with infinite spirit. But, however excellent the +poetry, the logic is defective, and the description of the evil +inadequate. Pope has but a vague conception of the mode in which dulness +might become the leading force in politics, lower religion till it +became a mere cloak for selfishness, and make learning nothing but +laborious and pedantic trifling. Had his powers been equal to his +goodwill, we might have had a satire far more elevated than anything +which he has attempted; for a man must be indeed a dull student of +history who does not recognise the vast influence of dulness-worship on +the whole period which has intervened between Pope and ourselves. Nay, +it may be feared that it will yet be some time before education bills +and societies for university extension will have begun to dissipate the +evil. A modern satirist, were satire still alive, would find an ample +occupation for his talents in a worthy filling out of Pope's incomplete +sketch. But though I feel, I must endeavour to resist the temptation of +indicating some of the probable objects of his antipathy. + +Pope's gallant assault on the common enemy indicates, meanwhile, his +characteristic attitude. Pope is the incarnation of the literary spirit. +He is the most complete representative in our language of the +intellectual instincts which find their natural expression in pure +literature, as distinguished from literature applied to immediate +practical ends, or enlisted in the service of philosophy or science. The +complete antithesis to that spirit is the evil principle which Pope +attacks as dulness. This false goddess is the literary Ahriman; and +Pope's natural antipathies, exaggerated by his personal passions and +weaknesses to extravagant proportions, express themselves fully in his +great mock-epic. His theory may be expressed in a parody of Nelson's +immortal advice to his midshipmen: 'Be an honest man and hate dulness as +you do the devil.' Dulness generates the asphyxiating atmosphere in +which no true literature can thrive. It oppresses the lungs and +irritates the nerves of men whose keen brilliant intellects mark them as +the natural servants of literature. Seen from this point of view, there +is an honourable completeness in Pope's career. Possibly a modern +subject of literature may, without paradox, express a certain gratitude +to Pope for a virtue which he would certainly be glad to imitate. Pope +was the first man who made an independence by literature. First and +last, he seems to have received over 8,000_l._ for his translation of +Homer, a sum then amply sufficient to enable him to live in comfort. No +sum at all comparable to this was ever received by a poet or novelist +until the era of Scott and Byron. Now, without challenging admiration +for Pope on the simple ground that he made his fortune, it is difficult +to exaggerate the importance of this feat at the time. A contemporary +who, whatever his faults, was a still more brilliant example than Pope +of the purely literary qualities, suggests a curious parallel. Voltaire, +as he tells us, was so weary of the humiliations that dishonour letters, +that to stay his disgust he resolved to make 'what scoundrels call a +great fortune.' Some of Voltaire's means of reaching this end appear to +have been more questionable than Pope's. But both of these men of genius +early secured their independence by raising themselves permanently above +the need of writing for money. It may be added in passing that there is +a curious similarity in intellect and character between Pope and +Voltaire which would on occasion be worth fuller exposition. The use, +too, which Pope made of his fortune was thoroughly honourable. We +scarcely give due credit, as a rule, to the man who has the rare merit +of distinctly recognising his true vocation in life, and adhering to it +with unflinching pertinacity. Probably the fact that such virtue +generally brings a sufficient personal reward in this world seems to +dispense with the necessity of additional praise. But call it a virtuous +or merely a useful quality, we must at least admit that it is the +necessary groundwork of a thoroughly satisfactory career. Pope, who from +his infancy had + + Lisped in numbers, for the numbers came, + +gained by his later numbers a secure position, and used his position to +go on rhyming to the end of his life. He never failed to do his very +best. He regarded the wealth which he had earned as a retaining fee, not +as a discharge from his duties. Comparing him with his contemporaries, +we see how vast was the advantage. Elevated above Grub Street, he had no +temptation to manufacture rubbish or descend to actual meanness like De +Foe. Independent of patronage, he was not forced to become a 'tame cat' +in the hands of a duchess, like his friend Gay. Standing apart from +politics, he was free from those disappointed pangs which contributed to +the embitterment of the later years of Swift, dying 'like a poisoned rat +in a hole;' he had not, like Bolingbroke, to affect a philosophical +contempt for the game in which he could no longer take a part; nor was +he even, like Addison and Steele, induced to 'give up to party what was +meant for mankind.' He was not a better man than some of these, and +certainly not better than Goldsmith and Johnson in the succeeding +generation. Yet, when we think of the amount of good intellect that ran +to waste in the purlieus of Grub Street, or in hunting for pensions in +ministerial ante-chambers, we feel a certain gratitude to the one +literary magnate of the century, whose devotion, it is true, had a very +tangible reward, but whose devotion was yet continuous, and free from +any distractions but those of a constitutional irritability. Nay, if we +compare Pope to some of the later writers who have wrung still +princelier rewards from fortune, the result is not unfavourable. If +Scott had been as true to his calling, his life, so far superior to +Pope's in most other respects, would not have presented the melancholy +contrast of genius running to waste in desperate attempts to win money +at the cost of worthier fame. + +Pope, as a Roman Catholic, and as the adherent of a defeated party, had +put himself out of the race for pecuniary reward. His loyal adherence to +his friends, though, like all his virtues, subject to some deduction, is +really a touching feature in his character. His Catholicism was of the +most nominal kind. He adhered in name to a depressed Church chiefly +because he could not bear to give pain to the parents whom he loved with +an exquisite tenderness. Granting that he would not have had much chance +of winning tangible rewards by the baseness of a desertion, he at least +recognised his true position; and instead of being soured by his +exclusion from the general competition, or wasting his life in frivolous +regrets, he preserved a spirit of tolerance and independence, and had a +full right to the boasts in which he certainly indulged a little too +freely:-- + + Not Fortune's worshipper, nor Fashion's fool, + Not Lucre's madman, nor Ambition's tool; + Not proud, nor servile--be one poet's praise + That, if he pleased, he pleased by manly ways; + That flattery, even to kings, he held a shame, + And thought a lie in prose or verse the same. + +Admitting that the last line suggests a slight qualm, the portrait +suggested in the rest is about as faithful as one can expect a man to +paint from himself. + +And hence we come to the question, what was the morality which Pope +dispensed from this exalted position? Admitting his independence, can we +listen to him patiently when he proclaims himself to be + + Of virtue only, and her friends, the friend; + +or when he boasts in verses noble if quite sincere-- + + Yes, I am proud; I must be proud to see + Men not afraid of God, afraid of me; + Safe from the Bar, the Pulpit, and the Throne, + Yet touched and shamed by ridicule alone. + +Is this guardian of virtue quite immaculate, and the morality which he +preaches quite of the most elevated kind? We must admit, of course, that +he does not sound the depths, or soar to the heights, in which men of +loftier genius are at home. He is not a mystic, but a man of the world. +He never, as we have already said, quits the sphere of ordinary and +rather obvious maxims about the daily life of society, or quits it at +his peril. His independence is not like Milton's, that of an ancient +prophet, consoling himself by celestial visions for a world given over +to baseness and frivolity; nor like Shelley's, that of a vehement +revolutionist, who has declared open war against the existing order; it +is the independence of a modern gentleman, with a competent fortune, +enjoying a time of political and religious calm. And therefore his +morality is in the main the expression of the conclusions reached by +supreme good sense, or, as he puts it, + + Good sense, which only is the gift of heaven, + And though no science, fairly worth the seven. + +Good sense is one of the excellent qualities to which we are scarcely +inclined to do justice at the present day; it is the guide of a time of +equilibrium, stirred by no vehement gales of passion, and we lose sight +of it just when it might give us some useful advice. A man in a passion +is never more irritated than when advised to be sensible; and at the +present day we are permanently in a passion, and therefore apt to assert +that, not only for a moment, but as a general rule, men do well to be +angry. Our art critics, for example, are never satisfied with their +frame of mind till they have lashed themselves into a fit of rhetoric. +Nothing more is wanted to explain why we are apt to be dissatisfied with +Pope, both as a critic and a moralist. In both capacities, however, Pope +is really admirable. Nobody, for example, has ridiculed more happily the +absurdities of which we sometimes take him to be a representative. The +recipe for making an epic poem is a perfect burlesque upon the +pseudo-classicism of his time. He sees the absurdity of the contemporary +statues, whose grotesque medley of ancient and modern costume is +recalled in the lines-- + + That livelong wig, which Gorgon's self might own, + Eternal buckle takes in Parian stone. + +The painters and musicians come in for their share of ridicule, as in +the description of Timon's Chapel, where + + Light quirks of music, broken and uneven, + Make the soul dance upon a jig to heaven; + On painted ceilings you devoutly stare, + Where sprawl the saints of Verrio and Laguerre. + +Pope, again, was one of the first, by practice and precept, to break +through the old formal school of gardening, in which + + No pleasing intricacies intervene, + No artful wildness to perplex the scene; + Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother, + And half the platform just reflects the other. + The suffering eye inverted Nature sees, + Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees, + With here a fountain never to be played, + And there a summer-house that knows no shade; + Here Amphitrite sails through myrtle bowers, + There gladiators fight or die in flowers; + Unwatered see the drooping sea-horse mourn, + And swallows roost in Nilus' dusty urn. + +It would be impossible to hit off more happily the queer formality which +annoys us, unless its quaintness makes us smile, in the days of good +Queen Anne, when Cato still appeared with a + + Long wig, flowered gown, and lacquered chair. + +Pope's literary criticism, too, though verging too often on the +commonplace, is generally sound as far as it goes. If, as was +inevitable, he was blind to the merits of earlier schools of poetry, he +was yet amongst the first writers who helped to establish the rightful +supremacy of Shakespeare. + +But in what way does Pope apply his good sense to morality? His +favourite doctrine about human nature is expressed in the theory of the +'ruling passion' which is to be found in all men, and which, once known, +enables us to unravel the secret of every character. As he says in the +'Essay on Man'-- + + On life's vast ocean diversely we sail, + Reason the card, but passion is the gale. + +Right reason, therefore, is the power which directs passions to the +worthiest end; and its highest lesson is to enforce + + The truth (enough for man to know) + Virtue alone is happiness below. + +The truth, though admirable, may be suspected of commonplace; and Pope +does not lay down any propositions unfamiliar to other moralists, nor, +it is to be feared, enforce them by preaching of more than usual +effectiveness. His denunciations of avarice, of corruption, and of +sensuality were probably of little more practical use than his +denunciation of dulness. The 'men not afraid of God' were hardly likely +to be deterred from selling their votes to Walpole by fear of Pope's +satire. He might + + Goad the Prelate slumbering in his stall + +sufficiently to produce the episcopal equivalent for bad language; but +he would hardly interrupt the bishop's slumbers for many moments; and, +on the whole, he might congratulate himself, rather too cheaply, on +being animated by + + The strong antipathy of good to bad. + +Without exaggerating its importance, however, we may seek to define the +precise point on which Pope's morality differed from that of many other +writers who have expressed their general approval of the ten +commandments. A healthy strain of moral feeling is useful, though we +cannot point to the individuals whom it has restrained from picking +pockets. + +The defective side of the morality of good sense is, that it tends to +degenerate into cynicism, either of the indolent variety which commended +itself to Chesterfield, or of the more vehement sort, of which Swift's +writings are the most powerful embodiment. A shrewd man of the world, +of placid temperament, accepts placidly the conclusion that as he can +see through a good many people, virtue generally is a humbug. If he has +grace enough left to be soured by such a conclusion, he raves at the +universal corruption of mankind. Now Pope, notwithstanding his petty +spite, and his sympathy with the bitterness of his friends, always shows +a certain tenderness of nature which preserves him from sweeping +cynicism. He really believes in nature, and values life for the power of +what Johnson calls reciprocation of benevolence. The beauty of his +affection for his father and mother, and for his old nurse, breaks +pleasantly through the artificial language of his letters, like a sweet +spring in barren ground. When he touches upon the subject in his poetry, +one seems to see tears in his eyes, and to hear his voice tremble. There +is no more beautiful passage in his writings than the one in which he +expresses the hope that he may be spared + + To rock the cradle of reposing age, + With lenient arts extend a mother's breath, + Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death; + Explore the thought, explain the asking eye, + And keep awhile one parent from the sky. + +Here at least he is sincere beyond suspicion; and we know from +unimpeachable testimony that the sentiment so perfectly expressed was +equally exemplified in his life. It sounds easy, but unfortunately the +ease is not always proved in practice, for a man of genius to be +throughout their lives an unmixed comfort to his parents. It is +unpleasant to remember that a man so accessible to tender emotions +should jar upon us by his language about women generally. Byron +countersigns the opinion of Bolingbroke that he knew the sex well; but +testimony of that kind hardly prepossesses us in his favour. In fact, +the school of Bolingbroke and Swift, to say nothing of Wycherley, was +hardly calculated to generate a chivalrous tone of feeling. His +experience of Lady Mary gave additional bitterness to his sentiments. +Pope, in short, did not love good women-- + + Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear, + And best distinguished as black, brown, or fair, + +as he impudently tells a lady--as a man of genius ought; and women have +generally returned the dislike. Meanwhile the vein of benevolence shows +itself unmistakably in Pope's language about his friends. Thackeray +seizes upon this point of his character in his lectures on the English +Humourists, and his powerful, if rather too favourable, description +brings out forcibly the essential tenderness of the man who, during the +lucid intervals of his last illness, was 'always saying something kindly +of his present or absent friends.' Nobody, as has often been remarked, +has paid so many exquisitely turned compliments. There is something +which rises to the dog-like in his affectionate admiration for Swift and +for Bolingbroke, his rather questionable 'guide, philosopher, and +friend.' Whenever he speaks of a friend, he is sure to be felicitous. +There is Garth, for example-- + + The best good Christian he, + Although he knows it not. + +There are beautiful lines upon Arbuthnot, addressed as-- + + Friend to my life, which did not you prolong, + The world had wanted many an idle song. + +Or we may quote, though one verse has been spoilt by familiarity, the +lines in which Bolingbroke is coupled with Peterborough:-- + + There St. John mingles with my friendly bowl + The feast of reason and the flow of soul; + And he whose lightning pierced the Iberian lines + Now farms my quincunx, and now ranks my vines, + And tames the genius of the stubborn plain + Almost as quickly as he conquered Spain. + +Or again, there are the verses in which he anticipates the dying words +attributed to Pitt:-- + + And you, brave Cobham, to the latest breath, + Shall feel the ruling passion strong in death; + Such in those moments, as in all the past, + 'Oh, save my country, Heaven!' shall be your last. + +Cobham's name, again, suggests the spirited lines-- + + Spirit of Arnall! aid me while I lie, + Cobham's a coward, Polwarth is a slave, + And Lyttelton a dark, designing knave; + St. John has ever been a wealthy fool-- + But let me add Sir Robert's mighty dull, + Has never made a friend in private life, + And was, besides, a tyrant to his wife. + +Perhaps the last compliment is ambiguous, but Walpole's name again +reminds us that Pope could on occasion be grateful even to an opponent. +'Go see Sir Robert,' suggests his friend in the epilogue to the Satires; +and Pope replies-- + + Seen him I have; but in his happier hour + Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power; + Seen him uncumbered with the venal tribe + Smile without art, and win without a bribe; + Would he oblige me? Let me only find + He does not think me what he thinks mankind; + Come, come; at all I laugh, he laughs no doubt; + The only difference is, I dare laugh out. + +But there is no end to the delicate flattery which may be set off +against Pope's ferocious onslaughts upon his enemies. If one could have +a wish for the asking, one could scarcely ask for a more agreeable +sensation than that of being titillated by a man of equal ingenuity in +caressing one's pet vanities. The art of administering such consolation +is possessed only by men who unite such tenderness to an exquisitely +delicate intellect. This vein of genuine feeling sufficiently redeems +Pope's writings from the charge of a commonplace worldliness. Certainly +he is not one of the 'genial' school, whose indiscriminate benevolence +exudes over all that they touch. There is nothing mawkish in his +philanthropy. Pope was, if anything, too good a hater; 'the portentous +cub never forgives,' said Bentley; but kindliness is all the more +impressive when not too widely diffused. Add to this his hearty contempt +for pomposities, humbugs, and stupidities of all kinds, and above all +the fine spirit of independence, in which we have again the real man, +and which expresses itself in such lines as these: + + Oh, let me live my own, and die so too! + (To live and die is all I have to do); + Maintain a poet's dignity and ease, + And see what friends and read what books I please. + +And we may admit that Pope, in spite of his wig and his stays, his +vanities and his affectations, was in his way as fair an embodiment as +we would expect of that 'plain living and high thinking' of which +Wordsworth regretted the disappearance. The little cripple, diseased in +mind and body, spiteful and occasionally brutal, had in him the spirit +of a man. The monarch of the literary world was far from immaculate; but +he was not without a dignity of his own. + +We come, however, to the question, what had Pope to say upon the deepest +subjects with which human beings can concern themselves? The most +explicit answer must be taken from the 'Essay on Man,' and the essay +must be acknowledged to have more conspicuous faults than any of Pope's +writings. The art of reasoning in verse is so difficult that we may +doubt whether it is in any case legitimate, and must acknowledge that it +has been never successfully practised by any English writer. Dryden's +'Religio Laici' may be better reasoning, but it is worse poetry than +Pope's Essay. It is true, again, that Pope's reasoning is intrinsically +feeble. He was no metaphysician, and confined himself to putting +together incoherent scraps of different systems. Some of his arguments +strike us as simply childish, as, for example, the quibble derived from +the Stoics, that + + The blest to-day is as completely so + As who began a thousand years ago. + +Nobody, we may safely say, was ever much comforted by that reflection. +Nor, though the celebrated argument about the scale of beings, which +Pope but half-understood, was then sanctioned by the most eminent +contemporary names, do we derive any deep consolation from the remark +that + + in the scale of reasoning life, 'tis plain, + There must be somewhere such a rank as man. + +To say no more of these frigid conceits, as they now appear to us, Pope +does not maintain the serious temper which befits a man pondering upon +the deep mysteries of the universe. Religious meditation does not +harmonise with epigrammatical satire. Admitting the value of the +reflection that other beings besides man are fitting objects of the +Divine benevolence, we are jarred by such a discord as this: + + While man exclaims, See all things for my use! + See man for mine! replies a pampered goose. + +The goose is appropriate enough in Charron or Montaigne, but should be +kept out of poetry. Such a shock, too, follows when Pope talks about the +superior beings who + + Showed a Newton as we show an ape. + +Did anybody, again, ever complain that he wanted 'the strength of bulls, +the fur of bears?'[2] Or could it be worth while to meet his complaints +in a serious poem? Pope, in short, is not merely a bad reasoner, but he +wants that deep moral earnestness which gives a profound interest to +Johnson's satires--the best productions of his school--and the deeply +pathetic religious feeling of Cowper. + +Admitting all this, however, and more, the 'Essay on Man' still contains +many passages which not only testify to the unequalled skill of this +great artist in words, but show a certain moral dignity. In the Essay, +more than in any of his other writings, we have the difficulty of +separating the solid bullion from the dross. Pope is here pre-eminently +parasitical, and it is possible to trace to other writers, such as +Montaigne, Pascal, Leibniz, Shaftesbury, Locke, and Wollaston, as well +as to the inspiration of Bolingbroke, nearly every argument which he +employs. He unfortunately worked up the rubbish as well as the gems. +When Mr. Ruskin says that his 'theology was two centuries in advance of +his time,' the phrase is curiously inaccurate. He was not really in +advance of the best men of his own time; but they, it is to be feared, +were considerably in advance of the average opinion of our own. What may +be said with more plausibility is, that whilst Pope frequently wastes +his skill in gilding refuse, he is really most sensitive to the noblest +sentiments of his contemporaries, and that, when he has good materials +to work upon, his verse glows with unusual fervour, often to sink with +unpleasant rapidity into mere quibbling or epigrammatic pungency. The +real truth is that Pope precisely expresses the position of the best +thinkers of his day. He did not understand the reasoning, but he fully +shared the sentiments of the philosophers among whom Locke and Leibniz +were the great lights. Pope is to the deists and semi-deists of his time +what Milton was to the Puritans or Dante to the Schoolmen. At times he +writes like a Pantheist, and then becomes orthodox, without a +consciousness of the transition; he is a believer in universal +predestination, and saves himself by inconsistent language about +'leaving free the human will;' his views about the origin of society are +an inextricable mass of inconsistency; and he may be quoted in behalf of +doctrines which he, with the help of Warburton, vainly endeavoured to +disavow. But, leaving sound divines to settle the question of his +orthodoxy, and metaphysicians to crush his arguments, if they think it +worth while, we are rather concerned with the general temper in which he +regards the universe, and the moral which he draws for his own +edification. The main doctrine which he enforces is, of course, one of +his usual commonplaces. The statement that 'whatever is, is right,' may +be verbally admitted, and strained to different purposes by half-a-dozen +differing schools. It may be alleged by the cynic, who regards virtue +as an empty name; by the mystic, who is lapped in heavenly contemplation +from the cares of this troublesome world; by the sceptic, whose whole +wisdom is concentrated in the duty of submitting to the inevitable; or +by the man who, abandoning the attempt of solving inscrutable enigmas, +is content to recognise in everything the hand of a Divine ordainer of +all things. Pope, judging him by his most forcible passages, prefers to +insist upon the inevitable ignorance of man in presence of the Infinite: + + 'Tis but a part we see, and not the whole; + +and any effort to pierce the impenetrable gloom can only end in +disappointment and discontent: + + In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies. + +We think that we can judge the ways of the Almighty, and correct the +errors of His work. We are as incapable of accounting for human +wickedness as for plague, tempest, and earthquake. In each case our +highest wisdom is an humble confession of ignorance; or, as he puts it, + + In both, to reason right is to submit. + +This vein of thought might, perhaps, have conducted him to the +scepticism of his master, Bolingbroke. He unluckily fills up the gaps of +his logical edifice with the untempered mortar of obsolete metaphysics, +long since become utterly uninteresting to all men. Admitting that he +cannot explain, he tries to manufacture sham explanations out of the +'scale of beings,' and other scholastic rubbish. But, in a sense, too, +the most reverent minds will agree most fully with Pope's avowal of the +limitation of human knowledge. He does not apply his scepticism or his +humility to stimulate to vain repining against the fetters with which +our minds are bound, or an angry denunciation, like that of Bolingbroke, +of the solutions in which other souls have found a sufficient refuge. +The perplexity in which he finds himself generates a spirit of +resignation and tolerance. + + Hope humbly, then; with trembling pinions soar; + Wait the great teacher, Death, and God adore. + +That is the pith of his teaching. All optimism is apt to be a little +irritating to men whose sympathies with human suffering are unusually +strong; and the optimism of a man like Pope, vivacious rather than +profound in his thoughts and his sympathies, annoys us at times by his +calm complacency. We cannot thrust aside so easily the thought of the +heavy evils under which all creation groans. But we should wrong him by +a failure to recognise the real benevolence of his sentiment. Pope +indeed becomes too pantheistic for some tastes in the celebrated +fragment--the whole poem is a conglomerate of slightly connected +fragments--beginning, + + All are but parts of one stupendous whole, + Whose body Nature is, and God the soul. + +But his real fault is that he is not consistently pantheistic. Pope was +attacked both for his pantheism and fatalism and for having borrowed +from Bolingbroke. It is curious enough that it was precisely these +doctrines which he did not borrow. Bolingbroke, like most feeble +reasoners, believed firmly in Free Will; and though a theist after a +fashion, his religion had not emotional depth or logical coherence +enough to be pantheistic. Pope, doubtless, did not here quit his +master's guidance from any superiority in logical perception. But he did +occasionally feel the poetical value of the pantheistic conception of +the universe. Pantheism, in fact, is the only poetical form of the +metaphysical theology current in Pope's day. The old historical theology +of Dante, or even of Milton, was too faded for poetical purposes; and +the 'personal Deity,' whose existence and attributes were proved by the +elaborate reasonings of the apologists of that day, was unfitted for +poetical celebration by the very fact that his existence required proof. +Poetry deals with intuitions, not with remote inferences, and therefore +in his better moments Pope spoke not of the intelligent moral Governor +discovered by philosophical investigation, but of the Divine Essence +immanent in all nature, whose 'living raiment' is the world. The finest +passages in the 'Essay on Man,' like the finest passages in Wordsworth, +are an attempt to expound that view, though Pope falls back too quickly +into epigram, as Wordsworth into prose. It was reserved for Goethe to +show what a poet might learn from the philosophy of Spinoza. Meanwhile +Pope, uncertain as is his grasp of any philosophical conceptions, shows, +not merely in set phrases, but in the general colouring of his poem, +something of that width of sympathy which should result from the +pantheistic view. The tenderness, for example, with which he always +speaks of the brute creation is pleasant in a writer so little +distinguished as a rule by an interest in what we popularly call nature. +The 'scale of being' argument may be illogical, but we pardon it when it +is applied to strengthen our sympathies with our unfortunate dependants +on the lower steps of the ladder. The lamb who + + Licks the hand just raised to shed his blood + +is a second-hand lamb, and has, like so much of Pope's writing, acquired +a certain tinge of banality, which must limit quotation; and the same +must be said of the poor Indian, who + + thinks, admitted to that equal sky, + His faithful dog will bear him company. + +But the sentiment is as right as the language (in spite of its +familiarity we can still recognise the fact) is exquisite. Tolerance of +all forms of faith, from that of the poor Indian upwards, is so +characteristic of Pope as to have offended some modern critics who might +have known better. We may pick holes in the celebrated antithesis + + For forms of government let fools contest: + Whate'er is best administered is best; + For forms of faith let graceless zealots fight, + He can't be wrong whose life is in the right. + +Certainly, they are not mathematically accurate formulae; but they are +generous, if imperfect, statements of great truths, and not unbecoming +in the mouth of the man who, as the member of an unpopular sect, learnt +to be cosmopolitan rather than bitter, and expressed his convictions in +the well-known words addressed to Swift: 'I am of the religion of +Erasmus, a Catholic; so I live, so I shall die; and hope one day to meet +you, Bishop Atterbury, the younger Craggs, Dr. Garth, Dean Berkeley, and +Mr. Hutchinson in heaven.' Who would wish to shorten the list? And the +scheme of morality which Pope deduced for practical guidance in life is +in harmony with the spirit which breathes in those words just quoted. A +recent dispute in a court of justice shows that even our most cultivated +men have forgotten Pope so far as to be ignorant of the source of the +familiar words-- + + What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards? + Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards. + +It is therefore necessary to say explicitly that the poem where they +occur, the fourth epistle of the 'Essay on Man,' not only contains +half-a-dozen other phrases equally familiar--_e.g._, 'An honest man's +the noblest work of God;'[3] 'Looks through nature up to nature's God;' +'From grave to gay, from lively to severe'--but breathes throughout +sentiments which it would be credulous to believe that any man could +express so vigorously without feeling profoundly. Mr. Ruskin has quoted +one couplet as giving 'the most complete, the most concise, and the most +lofty expression of moral temper existing in English words'-- + + Never elated, while one man's oppressed; + Never dejected, whilst another's blessed. + +The passage in which they occur is worthy of this (let us admit, just a +little over-praised) sentiment; and leads not unfitly to the conclusion +and summary of the whole, that he who can recognise the beauty of +virtue knows that + + Where Faith, Law, Morals, all began, + All end--in love of God and love of man. + +I know but too well all that may be said against this view of Pope's +morality. He is, as Ste.-Beuve says, the easiest of all men to +caricature; and it is equally easy to throw cold water upon his +morality. We may count up his affectations, ridicule his platitudes, +make heavy deductions for his insincerity, denounce his too frequent +indulgence in a certain love of dirt, which he shares with, and in which +indeed he is distanced by, Swift; and decline to believe in the virtue, +or even in the love of virtue, of a man stained by so many vices and +weaknesses. Yet I must decline to believe that men can gather grapes off +thorns, or figs off thistles, or noble expressions of moral truth from a +corrupt heart thinly varnished by a coating of affectation. Turn it how +we may, the thing is impossible. Pope was more than a mere literary +artist, though he was an artist of unparalleled excellence in his own +department. He was a man in whom there was the seed of many good +thoughts, though choked in their development by the growth of +innumerable weeds. And I will venture, in conclusion, to adduce one more +proof of the justice of a lenient verdict. I have had already to quote +many phrases familiar to everyone who is tinctured in the slightest +degree with a knowledge of English literature; and yet have been haunted +by a dim suspicion that some of my readers may have been surprised to +recognise their author. Pope, we have seen, is recognised even by judges +of the land only through the medium of Byron; and therefore the +'Universal Prayer' may possibly be unfamiliar to some readers. If so, it +will do them no harm to read over again a few of its verses. Perhaps, +after that experience, they will admit that the little cripple of +Twickenham, distorted as were his instincts after he had been stretched +on the rack of this rough world, and grievous as were his offences +against the laws of decency and morality, had yet in him a noble strain +of eloquence significant of deep religious sentiment. A phrase in the +first stanza may shock us as bordering too closely on the epigrammatic; +but the whole poem from which I take these stanzas must, I think, be +recognised as the utterance of a tolerant, reverent, and kindly heart: + + Father of all! in every age, + In every clime adored, + By saint, by savage, and by sage-- + Jehovah, Jove, or Lord! + + Thou great First Cause, least understood, + Who all my sense confined + To know but this, that thou art good, + And that myself am blind. + + ... + + What conscience dictates to be done, + Or warns me not to do, + This, teach me more than hell to shun; + That, more than heaven pursue. + + What blessings thy free bounty gives + Let me not cast away; + For God is paid when man receives-- + To enjoy is to obey. + + Yet not to earth's contracted span + Thy goodness let me bound, + Or think thee Lord alone of man, + When thousand worlds are round. + + Let not this weak, unknowing hand + Presume thy bolts to throw, + Or deal damnation round the land + On each I judge thy foe. + + If I am right, thy grace impart + Still in the right to stay: + If I am wrong, oh, teach my heart + To find that better way. + + ... + +These stanzas, I am well aware, do not quite conform to the modern taste +in hymns, nor are they likely to find favour with admirers of the +'Christian Year.' Another school would object to them on a very +different ground. The deism of Pope's day was not a stable form of +belief; but in the form in which it was held by the pure deists of the +Toland and Tindal school, or by the disguised deists who followed Locke +or Clarke, it was the highest creed then attainable; and Pope's prayer +is an adequate impression of its best sentiment. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[2] The remark was perhaps taken from Sir Thomas Browne: 'Thus have we +no just quarrel with nature for leaving us naked; or to envy the horns, +hoofs, skins, and furs of other creatures; being provided with reason +that can supply them all.'--_Religio Medici_, Part I. sec. 18. + +[3] This sentiment, by the way, was attacked by Darnley, in his edition +of Beaumont and Fletcher, as 'false and degrading to man, derogatory to +God.' As I have lately seen the remark quoted with approbation, it is +worth noticing the argument by which Darnley supports it. He says that +an honest able man is nobler than an honest man, and Aristides with the +genius of Homer nobler than Aristides with the dulness of a clown. +Undoubtedly! But surely a man might say that English poetry is the +noblest in the world, and yet admit that Shakespeare was a nobler poet +than Tom Moore. Because honesty is nobler than any other quality, it +does not follow that all honest men are on a par. This bit of cavilling +reminds one of De Quincey's elaborate argument against the lines: + + Who would not laugh, if such a man there be? + Who would not weep, if Atticus were he? + +De Quincey says that precisely the same phenomenon is supposed to make +you laugh in one line and weep in the other; and that therefore the +thought is inaccurate. As if it would not be a fit cause for tears to +discover that one of our national idols was a fitting subject for +laughter! + + + + +_SIR WALTER SCOTT_ + + +The question has begun to be asked about Scott which is asked about +every great man: whether he is still read or still read as he ought to +be read. I have been glad to see in some statistics of popular +literature that the Waverley Novels are still among the books most +frequently bought at railway stations, and scarcely surpassed even by +'Pickwick,' or 'David Copperfield.' A writer, it is said, is entitled to +be called a classic when his books have been read for a century after +his death. The number of books which fairly satisfies that condition is +remarkably small. There are certain books, of course, which we are all +bound to read if we make any claim to be decently educated. A modern +Englishman cannot afford to confess that he has not read Shakespeare or +Milton; if he talks about philosophy, he must have dipped at least into +Bacon and Hobbes and Locke; if he is a literary critic, he must know +something of Spenser and Donne and Dryden and the early dramatists; but +how many books are there of the seventeenth century which are still read +for pleasure by other than specialists? To speak within bounds, I fancy +that it would be exceedingly difficult to make out a list of one hundred +English books which after publication for a century are still really +familiar to the average reader. Something like ninety-nine of those have +in any case lost the charm of novelty, and are read, if read at all, +from some vague impression that the reader is doing a duty. It takes a +very powerful voice and a very clear utterance to make a man audible to +the fourth generation. If something of the mildew of time is stealing +over the Waverley Novels, we must regard that as all but inevitable. +Scott will have succeeded beyond any but the very greatest, perhaps even +as much as the very greatest, if, in the twentieth century, now so +unpleasantly near, he has a band of faithful followers, who still read +because they like to read and not because they are told to read. +Admitting that he must more or less undergo the universal fate, that the +glory must be dimmed even though it be not quenched, we may still ask +whether he will not retain as much vitality as the conditions of +humanity permit: Will our posterity understand at least why he was once +a luminary of the first magnitude, or wonder at their ancestors' +hallucination about a mere will-o'-the-wisp? Will some of his best +performances stand out like a cathedral amongst ruined hovels, or will +they all sink into the dust together, and the outlines of what once +charmed the world be traced only by Dryasdust and historians of +literature? It is a painful task to examine such questions impartially. +This probing a great reputation, and doubting whether we can come to +anything solid at the bottom, is especially painful in regard to Scott. +For he has, at least, this merit, that he is one of those rare natures +for whom we feel not merely admiration but affection. We may cherish the +fame of some writers in spite of, not on account of, many personal +defects; if we satisfied ourselves that their literary reputations were +founded on the sand, we might partly console ourselves with the thought +that we were only depriving bad men of a title to genius. But for Scott +most men feel in even stronger measure that kind of warm fraternal +regard which Macaulay and Thackeray expressed for the amiable, but, +perhaps, rather cold-blooded, Addison. The manliness and the sweetness +of the man's nature predispose us to return the most favourable verdict +in our power. And we may add that Scott is one of the last great English +writers whose influence extended beyond his island, and gave a stimulus +to the development of European thought. We cannot afford to surrender +our faith in one to whom, whatever his permanent merits, we must trace +so much that is characteristic of the mind of the nineteenth century. +Whilst, finally, if we have any Scotch blood in our veins, we must be +more or less than men to turn a deaf ear to the promptings of +patriotism. When Shakespeare's fame decays everywhere else, the +inhabitants of Stratford-on-Avon, if it still exist, should still revere +their tutelary saint; and the old town of Edinburgh should tremble in +its foundation when a sacrilegious hand is laid upon the glory of Scott. + +Let us, however, take courage, and, with such impartiality as we may +possess, endeavour to sift the wheat from the chaff. And, by way of +following an able guide, let us dwell for a little on the judgment +pronounced upon Scott by one whose name I would never mention without +profound respect, and who has a special claim to be heard in this case. +Carlyle is (I must now say was) both a man of genius and a Scotchman. +His own writings show in every line that he comes of the same strong +Protestant race from which Scott received his best qualities. 'The +Scotch national character,' says Carlyle himself, 'originates in many +circumstances. First of all, the Saxon stuff there was to work on; but +next, and beyond all else except that, in the Presbyterian gospel of +John Knox. It seems a good national character, and, on some sides, not +so good. Let Scott thank John Knox, for he owed him much, little as he +dreamed of debt in that quarter! No Scotchman of his time was more +entirely Scotch than Walter Scott: the good and the not so good, which +all Scotchmen inherit, ran through every fibre of him.' Nothing more +true; and the words would be as strikingly appropriate if for Walter +Scott we substitute Thomas Carlyle. And to this source of sympathy we +might add others. Who in this generation could rival Scott's talent for +the picturesque, unless it be Carlyle? Who has done so much to apply the +lesson which Scott, as he says, first taught us--that the 'bygone ages +of the world were actually filled by living men, not by protocols, +state-papers, controversies, and abstractions of men'? If Scott would in +old days--I still quote his critic--have harried cattle in Tynedale or +cracked crowns in Redswire, would not Carlyle have thundered from the +pulpit of John Knox his own gospel, only in slightly altered +phraseology--that shams should not live but die, and that men should do +what work lies nearest to their hands, as in the presence of the +eternities and the infinite silences? + +That last parallel reminds us that if there are points of similarity, +there are contrasts both wide and deep. The rugged old apostle had +probably a very low opinion of moss-troopers, and Carlyle has a message +to deliver to his fellow-creatures, which is not quite according to +Scott. And thus we see throughout his interesting essay a kind of +struggle between two opposite tendencies--a genuine liking for the man, +tempered by a sense that Scott dealt rather too much in those same shams +to pass muster with a stern moral censor. Nobody can touch Scott's +character more finely. There is a charming little anecdote which every +reader must remember: how there was a 'little Blenheim cocker' of +singular sensibility and sagacity; how the said cocker would at times +fall into musings like those of a Wertherean poet, and lived in +perpetual fear of strangers, regarding them all as potentially +dog-stealers; how the dog was, nevertheless, endowed with 'most amazing +moral tact,' and specially hated the genus _quack_, and, above all, that +of _acrid-quack_. 'These,' says Carlyle, 'though never so +clear-starched, bland-smiling, and beneficent, he absolutely would have +no trade with. Their very sugar-cake was unavailing. He said with +emphasis, as clearly as barking could say it, "Acrid-quack, avaunt!"' +But once when 'a tall, irregular, busy-looking man came halting by,' +that wise, nervous little dog ran towards him, and began 'fawning, +frisking, licking at the feet' of Sir Walter Scott. No reader of reviews +could have done better, says Carlyle; and, indeed, that canine +testimonial was worth having. I prefer that little anecdote even to +Lockhart's account of the pig, which had a romantic affection for the +author of 'Waverley.' Its relater at least perceived and loved that +unaffected benevolence, which invested even Scott's bodily presence with +a kind of natural aroma, perceptible, as it would appear, to very +far-away cousins. But Carlyle is on his guard, and though his sympathy +flows kindly enough, it is rather harshly intercepted by his sterner +mood. He cannot, indeed, but warm to Scott at the end. After touching on +the sad scene of Scott's closing years, at once ennobled and embittered +by that last desperate struggle to clear off the burden of debt, he +concludes with genuine feeling. 'It can be said of Scott, when he +departed he took a man's life along with him. No sounder piece of +British manhood was put together in that eighteenth century of time. +Alas, his fine Scotch face, with its shaggy honesty, sagacity, and +goodness, when we saw it latterly on the Edinburgh streets, was all worn +with care, the joy all fled from it, ploughed deep with labour and +sorrow. We shall never forget it--we shall never see it again. Adieu, +Sir Walter, pride of all Scotchmen; take our proud and sad farewell.' + +If even the Waverley Novels should lose their interest, the last +journals of Scott, recently published by a judicious editor, can never +lose their interest as the record of one of the noblest struggles ever +carried on by a great man to redeem a lamentable error. It is a book to +do one good. + +And now it is time to turn to the failings which, in Carlyle's opinion, +mar this pride of all Scotchmen, and make his permanent reputation +doubtful. The faults upon which he dwells are, of course, those which +are more or less acknowledged by all sound critics. Scott, says Carlyle, +had no great gospel to deliver; he had nothing of the martyr about him; +he slew no monsters and stirred no deep emotions. He did not believe in +anything, and did not even disbelieve in anything: he was content to +take the world as it came--the false and the true mixed +indistinguishably together. One Ram-dass, a Hindoo, 'who set up for +god-head lately,' being asked what he meant to do with the sins of +mankind, replied that 'he had fire enough in his belly to burn up all +the sins in the world.' Ram-dass had 'some spice of sense in him.' Now, +of fire of that kind we can detect few sparks in Scott. He was a +thoroughly healthy, sound, vigorous Scotchman, with an eye for the main +chance, but not much of an eye for the eternities. And that unfortunate +commercial element, which caused the misery of his life, was equally +mischievous to his work. He cared for no results of his working but such +as could be seen by the eye, and in one sense or other, 'handled, +looked at, and buttoned into the breeches' pocket.' He regarded +literature rather as a trade than an art; and literature, unless it is a +very poor affair, should have higher aims than that of 'harmlessly +amusing indolent, languid men.' Scott would not afford the time or the +trouble to go to the root of the matter, and is content to amuse us with +mere contrasts of costume, which will lose their interest when the +swallow-tail is as obsolete as the buff-coat. And then he fell into the +modern sin of extempore writing, and deluged the world with the first +hasty overflowings of his mind, instead of straining and refining it +till he could bestow the pure essence upon us. In short, his career is +summed up in the phrase that it was 'writing impromptu novels to buy +farms with'--a melancholy end, truly, for a man of rare genius. Nothing +is sadder than to hear of such a man 'writing himself out;' and it is +pitiable indeed that Scott should be the example of that fate which +rises most naturally to our minds. 'Something very perfect in its kind,' +says Carlyle, 'might have come from Scott, nor was it a low kind--nay, +who knows how high, with studious self-concentration, he might have +gone: what wealth nature implanted in him, which his circumstances, most +unkind while seeming to be kindest, had never impelled him to unfold?' + +There is undoubtedly some truth in the severer criticisms to which some +more kindly sentences are a pleasant relief; but there is something too +which most persons will be apt to consider as rather harsher than +necessary. Is not the moral preacher intruding a little too much on the +province of the literary critic? In fact we fancy that, in the midst of +these energetic remarks, Carlyle is conscious of certain half-expressed +doubts. The name of Shakespeare occurs several times in the course of +his remarks, and suggests to us that we can hardly condemn Scott whilst +acquitting the greatest name in our literature. Scott, it seems, wrote +for money; he coined his brains into cash to buy farms. Did not +Shakespeare do pretty much the same? As Carlyle himself puts it, 'beyond +drawing audiences to the Globe Theatre, Shakespeare contemplated no +result in those plays of his.' Shakespeare, as Pope puts it, + + Whom you and every playhouse bill + Style the divine, the matchless, what you will, + For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving flight, + And grew immortal in his own despite. + +To write for money was long held to be disgraceful; and Byron, as we +know, taunted Scott because his publishers combined + + To yield his muse just half-a-crown per line; + +whilst Scott seems half to admit that his conduct required +justification, and urges that he sacrificed to literature very fair +chances in his original profession. Many people might, perhaps, be +disposed to take a bolder line of defence. Cut out of English fiction +all that which has owed its birth more or less to a desire of earning +money honourably, and the residue would be painfully small. The truth, +indeed, seems to be simple. No good work is done when the one impelling +motive is the desire of making a little money; but some of the best work +that has ever been done has been indirectly due to the impecuniosity of +the labourers. When a man is empty he makes a very poor job of it, in +straining colourless trash from his hardbound brains; but when his mind +is full to bursting he may still require the spur of a moderate craving +for cash to induce him to take the decisive plunge. Scott illustrates +both cases. The melancholy drudgery of his later years was forced from +him in spite of nature; but nobody ever wrote more spontaneously than +Scott when he was composing his early poems and novels. If the precedent +of Shakespeare is good for anything, it is good for this. Shakespeare, +it may be, had a more moderate ambition; but there seems to be no reason +why the desire of a good house at Stratford should be intrinsically +nobler than the desire of a fine estate at Abbotsford. But then, it is +urged, Scott allowed himself to write with preposterous haste. And +Shakespeare, who never blotted a line! What is the great difference +between them? Mr. Carlyle feels that here too Scott has at least a very +good precedent to allege; but he endeavours to establish a distinction. +It was right, he says, for Shakespeare to write rapidly, 'being ready to +do it. And herein truly lies the secret of the matter; such swiftness of +writing, after due energy of preparation, is, doubtless, the right +method; the hot furnace having long worked and simmered, let the pure +gold flow out at one gush.' Could there be a better description of Scott +in his earlier years? He published his first poem of any pretensions at +thirty-four, an age which Shelley and Keats never reached, and which +Byron only passed by two years. 'Waverley' came out when he was +forty-three--most of our modern novelists have written themselves out +long before they arrive at that respectable period of life. From a child +he had been accumulating the knowledge and the thoughts that at last +found expression in his work. He had been a teller of stories before he +was well in breeches; and had worked hard till middle life in +accumulating vast stores of picturesque imagery. The delightful notes +to all his books give us some impression of the fulness of mind which +poured forth a boundless torrent of anecdote to the guests at +Abbotsford. We only repine at the prodigality of the harvest when we +forget the long process of culture by which it was produced. And, more +than this, when we look at the peculiar characteristics of Scott's +style--that easy flow of narrative never heightening into epigram, and +indeed, to speak the truth, full of slovenly blunders and amazing +grammatical solecisms, but also always full of a charm of freshness and +fancy most difficult to analyse--we may well doubt whether much labour +would have improved or injured him. No man ever depended more on the +perfectly spontaneous flow of his narratives. Carlyle quotes Schiller +against him, amongst other and greater names. We need not attempt to +compare the two men; but do not Schiller's tragedies smell rather +painfully of the lamp? Does not the professor of aesthetics pierce a +little too distinctly through the exterior of the poet? And, for one +example, are not Schiller's excellent but remarkably platitudinous +peasants in 'William Tell' miserably colourless alongside of Scott's +rough border dalesmen, racy of speech, and redolent of their native soil +in every word and gesture? To every man his method according to his +talent. Scott is the most perfectly delightful of story-tellers, and it +is the very essence of story-telling that it should not follow +prescribed canons of criticism, but be as natural as the talk by +firesides, and, it is to be feared, over many gallons of whisky-toddy, +of which it is, in fact, the refined essence. Scott skims off the cream +of his varied stores of popular tradition and antiquarian learning with +strange facility; but he had tramped through many a long day's march, +and pored over innumerable ballads and forgotten writers, before he had +anything to skim. Had he not--if we may use the word without +offence--been cramming all his life, and practising the art of +story-telling every day he lived? Probably the most striking incidents +of his books are in reality mere modifications of anecdotes which he had +rehearsed a hundred times before, just disguised enough to fit into his +story. Who can read, for example, the inimitable legend of the blind +piper in 'Redgauntlet' without seeing that it bears all the marks of +long elaboration as clearly as one of those discourses of Whitfield, +which, by constant repetition, became marvels of dramatic art? He was an +impromptu composer, in the sense that when his anecdotes once reached +paper, they flowed rapidly, and were little corrected; but the +correction must have been substantially done in many cases long before +they appeared in the state of 'copy.' + +Let us, however, pursue the indictment a little further. Scott did not +believe in anything in particular. Yet once more, did Shakespeare? There +is surely a poetry of doubt as well as a poetry of conviction, or what +shall we say to 'Hamlet'? Appearing in such an age as the end of the +last and the beginning of this century, Scott could but share the +intellectual atmosphere in which he was born, and at that day, whatever +we may think of this, few people had any strong faith to boast of. Why +should not a poet stand aside from the chaos of conflicting opinions, so +far as he was able to extricate himself from the unutterable confusion +around them, and show us what was beautiful in the world as he saw it, +without striving to combine the office of prophet with his more +congenial occupation? Carlyle did not mean to urge so feeble a criticism +as that Scott had no very uncompromising belief in the Thirty-nine +Articles; for that is a weakness which he would share with his critic +and with his critic's idol, Goethe. The meaning is partly given by +another phrase. 'While Shakespeare works from the heart outwards, +Scott,' says Carlyle, 'works from the skin inwards, never getting near +the heart of men.' The books are addressed entirely to the everyday +mind. They have nothing to do with emotions or principles, beyond those +of the ordinary country gentleman; and, we may add, of the country +gentleman with his digestion in good order, and his hereditary gout +still in the distant future. The more inspiring thoughts, the deeper +passions, are seldom roused. If in his width of sympathy, and his vivid +perception of character within certain limits, he reminds us of +Shakespeare, we can find no analogy in his writings to the passion of +'Romeo and Juliet,' or to the intellectual agony of 'Hamlet.' The charge +is not really that Scott lacks faith, but that he never appeals, one way +or the other, to the faculties which make faith a vital necessity to +some natures, or lead to a desperate revolt against established faiths +in others. If Byron and Scott could have been combined; if the energetic +passions of the one could have been joined to the healthy nature and +quick sympathies of the other, we might have seen another Shakespeare in +the nineteenth century. As it is, both of them are maimed and imperfect +on different sides. It is, in fact, remarkable how Scott fails when he +attempts a flight into the regions where he is less at home than in his +ordinary style. Take, for instance, a passage from 'Rob Roy,' where our +dear friend, the Bailie, Nicol Jarvie, is taken prisoner by Rob Roy's +amiable wife, and appeals to her feelings of kinship. '"I dinna ken," +said the undaunted Bailie, "if the kindred has ever been weel redd out +to you yet, cousin--but it's kenned, and can be proved. My mother, +Elspeth Macfarlane (otherwise Macgregor), was the wife of my father, +Denison Nicol Jarvie (peace be with them baith), and Elspeth was the +daughter of Farlane Macfarlane (or MacGregor), at the shielding of Loch +Sloy. Now this Farlane Macfarlane (or Macgregor), as his surviving +daughter, Maggy Macfarlane, wha married Duncan Macnab of +Stuckavrallachan, can testify, stood as near to your gudeman, Robin +MacGregor, as in the fourth degree of kindred, fur----" + +'The virago lopped the genealogical tree by demanding haughtily if a +stream of rushing water acknowledged any relation with the portion +withdrawn from it for the mean domestic uses of those who dwelt on its +banks?' + +The Bailie is as real a human being as ever lived--as the present Lord +Mayor, or Dandie Dinmont, or Sir Walter himself; but Mrs. Macgregor has +obviously just stepped off the boards of a minor theatre, devoted to the +melodrama. As long as Scott keeps to his strong ground, his figures are +as good flesh and blood as ever walked in the Saltmarket of Glasgow; +when once he tries his heroics, he too often manufactures his characters +from the materials used by the frequenters of masked balls. Yet there +are many such occasions on which his genius does not desert him. Balfour +of Burley may rub shoulders against genuine Covenanters and west-country +Whigs without betraying his fictitious origin. The Master of Ravenswood +attitudinises a little too much with his Spanish cloak and his slouched +hat; but we feel really sorry for him when he disappears in the Kelpie's +Flow. And when Scott has to do with his own peasants, with the +thoroughbred Presbyterian Scotchman, he can bring intense tragic +interest from his homely materials. Douce Davie Deans, distracted +between his religious principles and his desire of saving his daughter's +life, and seeking relief even in the midst of his agonies by that +admirable burst of spiritual pride: 'Though I will neither exalt myself +nor pull down others, I wish that every man and woman in this land had +kept the true testimony and the middle and straight path, as it were on +the ridge of a hill, where wind and water steals, avoiding right-hand +snare and extremes, and left-hand way-slidings, as well as Johnny Dodds +of Farthy's acre and ae man mair that shall be nameless'--Davie is as +admirable a figure as ever appeared in fiction. It is a pity that he was +mixed up with the conventional madwoman, Madge Wildfire, and that a +story most touching in its native simplicity, was twisted and tortured +into needless intricacy. The religious exaltation of Balfour, or the +religious pigheadedness of Davie Deans, are indeed given from the point +of view of the kindly humourist, rather than of one who can fully +sympathise with the sublimity of an intense faith in a homely exterior. +And though many good judges hold the 'Bride of Lammermoor' to be Scott's +best performance, in virtue of the loftier passions which animate the +chief actors in the tragedy, we are, after all, called upon to +sympathise as much with the gentleman of good family who can't ask his +friends to dinner without an unworthy device to hide his poverty, as +with the passionate lover whose mistress has her heart broken. In truth, +this criticism as to the absence of high passion reminds us again that +Scott was a thorough Scotsman, and--for it is necessary, even now, to +avoid the queer misconception which confounds together the most distinct +races--a thorough Saxon. He belonged, that is, to the race which has in +the most eminent degree the typical English qualities. Especially his +intellect had a strong substratum of downright dogged common sense; his +religion, one may conjecture, was pretty much that of all men of sense +in his time. It was that of the society which had produced and been +influenced by Hume and Adam Smith; which had dropped its old dogmas +without becoming openly sceptical, but which emphatically took 'common +sense' for the motto of its philosophy. It was equally afraid of bigotry +and scepticism and had manufactured a creed out of decent compromises +which served well enough for ordinary purposes. Even Hume, a sceptic in +theory, was a Tory and a Scottish patriot in politics. Scott, who cared +nothing for abstract philosophy, did not bother himself to form any +definite system of opinions; he shared Hume's political prejudices +without inquiring into his philosophy. He thoroughly detested the +dogmatism of the John Knox variety, and considered the Episcopal Church +to offer the religion for a gentleman. But his common sense in such +matters was chiefly shown by not asking awkward questions and adopting +the creed which was most to his taste without committing himself to any +strong persuasion as to abstract truth. He would, on the whole, leave +such matters alone, an attitude of mind which was not to Carlyle's +taste. In the purely artistic direction, this common sense is partly +responsible for the defect which has been so often noticed in Scott's +heroes. Your genuine Scot is indeed as capable of intense passion as any +human being in the world. Burns is proof enough of the fact if anyone +doubted it. But Scott was a man of more massive and less impulsive +character. If he had strong passions, they were ruled by his common +sense; he kept them well in hand, and did not write till the period of +youthful effervescence was over. His heroes always seem to be described +from the point of view of a man old enough to see the folly of youthful +passion or too old fully to sympathise with it. They are chiefly +remarkable for a punctilious pride which gives their creator some +difficulty in keeping them out of superfluous duels. When they fall in +love, they always seem to feel themselves as Lovel felt himself in the +'Antiquary,' under the eye of Jonathan Oldbuck, who was himself once in +love but has come to see that he was a fool for his pains. Certainly, +somehow or other, they are apt to be terribly wooden. Cranstoun in the +'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' Graeme in the 'Lady of the Lake,' or Wilton +in 'Marmion,' are all unspeakable bores. Waverley himself, and Lovel in +the 'Antiquary,' and Vanbeest Brown in 'Guy Mannering,' and Harry Morton +in 'Old Mortality,' and, in short, the whole series of Scott's pattern +young men, are all chips of the same block. They can all run, and ride, +and fight, and make pretty speeches, and express the most becoming +sentiments; but somehow they all partake of one fault, the same which +was charged against the otherwise incomparable horse, namely, that they +are dead. And we must confess that this is a considerable drawback from +Scott's novels. To take the passion out of a novel is something like +taking the sunlight out of a landscape; and to condemn all the heroes to +be utterly commonplace is to remove the centre of interest in a manner +detrimental to the best intents of the story. When Thackeray endeavoured +to restore Rebecca to her rightful place in 'Ivanhoe,' he was only doing +what is more or less desirable in all the series. We long to dismount +these insipid creatures from the pride of place, and to supplant them by +some of the admirable characters who are doomed to play subsidiary +parts. There is, however, another reason for this weakness which seems +to be overlooked by many of Scott's critics. We are often referred to +Scott as a master of pure and what is called 'objective' story-telling. +Certainly I don't deny that Scott could be an admirable story-teller: +'Ivanhoe' and the 'Bride of Lammermoor' would be sufficient to convict +me of error if I did. But as mere stories, many of his novels--and +moreover his masterpieces--are not only faulty, but distinctly bad. +Taking him purely and simply from that point of view, he is very +inferior, for example, to Alexandre Dumas. You cannot follow the thread +of most of his narratives with any particular interest in the fate of +the chief actors. In the 'Introductory Epistle' prefixed to the +'Fortunes of Nigel' Scott himself gives a very interesting account of +his method. He has often, he says in answer to an imaginary critic, +begun by laying down a plan of his work and tried to construct an ideal +story, evolving itself by due degrees and ending by a proper +catastrophe. But, a demon seats himself on his pen, and leads it astray. +Characters expand; incidents multiply; the story lingers while the +materials increase; Bailie Jarvie or Dugald Dalgetty leads him astray, +and he goes many a weary mile from the regular road and has to leap +hedge and ditch to get back. If he resists the temptation, his +imagination flags and he becomes prosy and dull. No one can read his +best novels without seeing the truth of this description. 'Waverley' +made an immense success as a description of new scenes and social +conditions: the story of Waverley himself is the least interesting part +of the book. Everybody who has read 'Guy Mannering' remembers Dandie +Dinmont and Meg Merrilies and Pleydell and Dominie Sampson; but how many +people could explain the ostensible story--the love affair of Vanbeest +Brown and Julia Mannering? We can see how Scott put the story together. +He was pouring out the most vivid and interesting recollections of the +borderers whom he knew so well, of the old Scottish gentry and smugglers +and peasants, and the old-fashioned lawyers who played high jinks in the +wynds of Edinburgh. No more delightful collection of portraits could be +brought together. But he had to get a story as a thread. He started with +the legend about an astrological prediction told of Dryden and one of +his sons, and mixed it up with the Annesley case, where a claimant +turned up with more plausibility than the notorious Orton. This +introduced of necessity an impossible and conventional bit of lovemaking +and a recognition of a long-lost heir. He is full of long-lost heirs. +Equally conventional and impossible stories are introduced in the +'Antiquary,' the 'Heart of Midlothian,' and the 'Legend of Montrose' and +elsewhere. Nobody cares about them, and the characters which ostensibly +play the chief part serve merely to introduce us to the subordinate +actors. 'Waverley,' for example, gives a description drawn with +unsurpassable spirit of the state of the Highland clans in 1745; and +poor Waverley's love affair passes altogether out of sight during the +greatest and most interesting part of the narrative. When Moore said of +the poems that Scott intended to illustrate all the gentlemen's seats +between Edinburgh and London, he was not altogether wide of the mark. +The novels are all illustrations--not of 'gentlemen's seats' indeed, but +of various social states; and it is only by a kind of happy accident +when this interest in the surroundings does not put the chief characters +out of focus. Nobody has created a greater number of admirable types, +but when we run over their names we perceive that in most cases they are +the secondary performers who are ousting the nominal heroes and heroines +from their places. Dugald Dalgetty, for example, becomes so attractive +that he squeezes all the other actors into a mere corner of the canvas. +Perhaps nothing more is necessary to explain why Scott failed as a +dramatist. With him, Hamlet would have been a mere peg to show us how +Rosencrantz and Guildenstern amused themselves at the royal drinking +parties. + +For this reason, again, Scott bestows an apparently disproportionate +amount of imagination upon the mere scene-painting, the external +trappings, the clothes, or dwelling-places of his performers. A +traveller into a strange country naturally gives us the external +peculiarities which strike him. Scott has to tell us what 'completed the +costume' of his Highland chiefs or mediaeval barons. He took, in short, +to that 'buff-jerkin' business of which Carlyle speaks so +contemptuously, and fairly carried away the hearts of his contemporaries +by a lavish display of mediaeval upholstery. Lockhart tells us that Scott +could not bear the commonplace daubings of walls with uniform coats of +white, blue, and grey. All the roofs at Abbotsford 'were, in appearance +at least, of carved oak, relieved by coats-of-arms duly blazoned at the +intersections of beams, and resting on cornices, to the eye of the same +material, but composed of casts in plaster of Paris, after the foliage, +the flowers, the grotesque monsters and dwarfs, and sometimes the +beautiful heads of nuns and confessors, on which he had doated from +infancy among the cloisters of Melrose Abbey.' The plaster looks as well +as the carved oak for a time; but the day speedily comes when the sham +crumbles into ashes, and Scott's knights and nobles, like his carved +cornices, became dust in the next generation. It is hard to say it, and +yet we fear it must be admitted, that many of those historical novels, +which once charmed all men, and for which we have still a lingering +affection, are rapidly converting themselves into mere debris of plaster +of Paris. Sir F. Palgrave says somewhere that 'historical novels are +mortal enemies to history,' and we are often tempted to add that they +are mortal enemies to fiction. There maybe an exception or two, but as a +rule the task is simply impracticable. The novelist is bound to come so +near to the facts that we feel the unreality of his portraits. Either +the novel becomes pure cram, a dictionary of antiquities dissolved in a +thin solution of romance, or, which is generally more refreshing, it +takes leave of accuracy altogether and simply takes the plot and the +costume from history, but allows us to feel that genuine moderns are +masquerading in the dress of a bygone century. Even in the last case, it +generally results in a kind of dance in fetters and a comparative +breakdown under self-imposed obligations. 'Ivanhoe' and 'Kenilworth' and +'Quentin Durward,' and the rest are of course audacious anachronisms for +the genuine historian. Scott was imposed upon by his own fancy. He was +probably not aware that his Balfour of Burley was real flesh and blood, +because painted from real people round him, while his Claverhouse is +made chiefly of plumes and jackboots. Scott is chiefly responsible for +the odd perversion of facts, which reached its height, as Macaulay +remarks, in the marvellous performance of our venerated ruler, George +IV. That monarch, he observes, 'thought that he could not give a more +striking proof of his respect for the usages which had prevailed in +Scotland before the Union than by disguising himself in what, before the +Union, was considered by nine Scotchmen out of ten as the dress of a +thief.' The passage recalls the too familiar anecdote about Scott and +the wine-glass consecrated by the sacred lips of his king. At one of +the portrait exhibitions in South Kensington was hung up a +representation of George IV., with the body of a stalwart highlander in +full costume, some seven or eight feet high; the face formed from the +red puffy cheeks developed by innumerable bottles of port and burgundy +at Carlton House; and the whole surmounted by a bonnet with waving +plumes. Scott was chiefly responsible for disguising that elderly London +debauchee in the costume of a wild Gaelic cattle-stealer, and was +apparently insensible of the gross absurdity. We are told that an air of +burlesque was thrown over the proceedings at Holyrood by the apparition +of a true London alderman in the same costume as his master. An alderman +who could burlesque such a monarch must indeed have been a credit to his +turtle-soup. Let us pass by with a brief lamentation that so great and +good a man laid himself open to Carlyle's charge of sham worship. We +have lost our love of buff jerkins and other scraps from mediaeval +museums, and Scott is suffering from having preferred working in stucco +to carving in marble. We are perhaps inclined to saddle Scott +unconsciously with the sins of a later generation. Borrow, in his +delightful 'Lavengro,' meets a kind of Jesuit in disguise in that +sequestered dell where he beats 'the Blazing Tinman.' The Jesuit, if I +remember rightly, confides to him that Scott was a tool of that +diabolical conspiracy which has infected our old English Protestantism +with the poison of modern Popery. And, though the evil may be traced +further back, and was due to more general causes than the influence of +any one writer, Scott was clearly responsible in his degree for certain +recent phenomena. The buff jerkin became the lineal ancestor of various +copes, stoles, and chasubles which stink in the nostrils of honest +dissenters. Our modern revivalists profess to despise the flimsiness of +the first attempts in this direction. They laugh at the carpenter's +Gothic of Abbotsford or Strawberry Hill, and do not ask themselves how +their own more elaborate blundering will look in the eyes of a future +generation. What will our posterity think of our masquerading in old +clothes? Will they want a new Cromwell to sweep away nineteenth-century +shams, as his ancestors smashed mediaeval ruins, or will they, as we may +rather hope, be content to let our pretentious rubbish find its natural +road to ruin? One thing is pretty certain, and in its way comforting; +that, however far the rage for revivalism may be pushed, nobody will +ever want to revive the nineteenth century. But for Scott, in spite of +his complicity in this wearisome process, there is something still to be +said. 'Ivanhoe' cannot be given up. The vivacity of the description--the +delight with which Scott throws himself into the pursuit of his +knicknacks and antiquarian rubbish, has something contagious about it. +'Ivanhoe,' let it be granted, is no longer a work for men, but it still +is, or still ought to be, delightful reading for boys. The ordinary boy, +indeed, when he reads anything, seems to choose descriptions of the +cricket-matches and boat-races in which his soul most delights. But +there must still be some unsophisticated youths who can relish 'Robinson +Crusoe' and the 'Arabian Nights' and other favourites of our own +childhood, and such at least should pore over the 'Gentle and free +passage of arms at Ashby,' admire those incredible feats with the +long-bow which would have enabled Robin Hood to meet successfully a +modern volunteer armed with the Martini-Henry, and follow the terrific +head-breaking of Front-de-Boeuf, Bois-Guilbert, the holy clerk of +Copmanshurst, and the _Noir Faineant_, even to the time when, for no +particular reason beyond the exigencies of the story, the Templar +suddenly falls from his horse, and is discovered, to our no small +surprise, to be 'unscathed by the lance of the enemy,' and to have died +a victim to the violence of his own contending passions. If 'Ivanhoe' +has been exploded by Professor Freeman, it did good work in its day. If +it were possible for a critic to weigh the merits of a great man in a +balance, and to decide precisely how far his excellences exceed his +defects, we should have to set off Scott's real services to the spread +of a genuine historical spirit against the encouragement which he +afforded to its bastard counterfeit. To enable us rightly to appreciate +our forefathers, to recognise that they were living men, and to feel our +close connection with them, is to put a vivid imagination to one of its +worthiest uses. It was perhaps inevitable that we should learn to +appreciate our ancestors by paying them the doubtful compliment of +external mimicry; and that only by slow degrees, and at the price of +much humiliating experience, should we learn the simple lesson that a +childish adult has not the grace of childhood. Even in his errors, +however, Scott had the merit of unconsciousness, which is fast +disappearing from our more elaborate affectations; and, therefore, +though we regret, we are not irritated by his weakness and deficiency in +true insight. He really enjoys his playthings too naively for the +pleasure not to be a little contagious, when we can descend from our +critical dignity. In his later work, indeed, the effort becomes truly +painful, tending more to the provocation of sadness than of anger. But +that work is best forgotten except as an occasional warning. + +Scott, however, understood, and nobody has better illustrated by +example, the true mode of connecting past and present. Mr. Palgrave, +whose recognition of the charm of Scott's lyrics merits our gratitude, +observes in the notes to the 'Golden Treasury' that the songs about +Brignall banks and Rosabelle exemplify 'the peculiar skill with which +Scott employs proper names;' nor, he adds, 'is there a surer sign of +high poetical genius.' The last remark might possibly be disputed; if +Milton possessed the same talent, so did Lord Macaulay, whose ballads, +admirable as they are, are not first-rate poetry; but the conclusion to +which the remark points is one which is illustrated by each of these +cases. The secret of the power is simply this, that a man whose mind is +full of historical associations somehow communicates to us something of +the sentiment which they awake in himself. Scott, as all who saw him +tell us, could never see an old tower, or a bank, or a rush of a stream +without instantly recalling a boundless collection of appropriate +anecdotes. He might be quoted as a case in point by those who would +explain all poetical imagination by the power of associating ideas. He +is the poet of association. A proper name acts upon him like a charm. It +calls up the past days, the heroes of the '41, or the skirmish of +Drumclog, or the old Covenanting times, by a spontaneous and +inexplicable magic. When the barest natural object is taken into his +imagination, all manner of past fancies and legends crystallise around +it at once. + +Though it is more difficult to explain how the same glow which ennobled +them to him is conveyed to his readers, the process somehow takes place. +We catch the enthusiasm. A word, which strikes us as a bare abstraction +in the report of the Censor General, say, or in a collection of poor law +returns, gains an entirely new significance when he touches it in the +most casual manner. A kind of mellowing atmosphere surrounds all +objects in his pages, and tinges them with poetical hues. Even the +Scottish dialect, repulsive to some ignorant Southrons, becomes musical +to his true admirers. In this power lies one secret of Scott's most +successful writing. Thus, for example, I often fancy that the second +title of 'Waverley'--''Tis Sixty Years Since'--indicates precisely the +distance of time at which a romantic novelist should place himself from +his creations. They are just far enough from us to have acquired a +certain picturesque colouring, which conceals the vulgarity, and yet +leaves them living and intelligible beings. His best stories might be +all described as 'Tales of a Grandfather.' They have the charm of +anecdotes told to the narrator by some old man who had himself been part +of what he describes. Scott's best novels depend, for their deep +interest, upon the scenery and society with which he had been familiar +in his early days, more or less harmonised by removal to what we may +call, in a different sense from the common one, the twilight of history; +that period, namely, from which the broad glare of the present has +departed, and which we can yet dimly observe without making use of the +dark lantern of ancient historians, and accepting the guidance of +Dryasdust. Dandie Dinmont, though a contemporary of Scott's youth, +represented a fast perishing phase of society; and Balfour of Burley, +though his day was past, had yet left his mantle with many spiritual +descendants who were scarcely less familiar. Between the times so fixed +Scott seems to exhibit his genuine power; and within these limits we +should find it hard to name any second, or indeed any third. + +Indeed, when we have gone as far as we please in denouncing shams, +ridiculing men in buff-jerkins, and the whole Wardour Street business of +gimcrack and Brummagem antiquities, it still remains true that Scott's +great service was what we may call the vivification of history. He made +us feel, it is generally said, as no one had ever made us feel before, +that the men of the past were once real human beings; and I can agree if +I am permitted to make a certain distinction. His best service, I should +say, was not so much in showing us the past as it was when it was +present; but in showing us the past as it is really still present. His +knights and crusaders and feudal nobles are after all unreal, and the +best critics felt even in his own day that his greatest triumphs were in +describing the Scottish peasantry of his time. Dandie Dinmont and Jeanie +Deans and their like are better than many Front de Boeufs and Robin +Hoods. It is in dealing with his own contemporaries that he really shows +the imaginative insight which entitles him to be called a great creator +as well as an amusing story-teller. But this, rightly stated, is not +inconsistent with the previous statement. For the special characteristic +of Scott as distinguished from his predecessors is precisely his clear +perception that the characters whom he loved so well and described so +vividly were the products of a long historical evolution. His patriotism +was the love of a country in which everything had obvious roots in its +previous history. The stout farmer Dinmont was the descendant of the old +borderers; the Deanses were survivals from the days of the Covenanters +or of John Knox; every peculiarity upon which he delighted to dwell was +invested with all the charm of descent from a long and picturesque +history. When Fielding describes the squires or lawyers of the +eighteenth century, he says nothing to show that he was even aware of +the existence of a seventeenth, or still less of a sixteenth century. +Scott can describe no character without assigning to it its place in +the social organism which has been growing up since the earliest dawn of +history. This was, of course, no accident. He came at the time when the +little provincial centres were just feeling the first invasion of the +great movements from without. Edinburgh, whether quite comparable to +Athens or not, had been for two or three generations a remarkable centre +of intellectual cultivation. Hume and Adam Smith were only the most +conspicuous members of a society which monopolised pretty well all the +philosophy which existed in the island and a great deal of the history +and criticism. In Scott's time the patriotic feeling which had been a +blind instinct was becoming more or less self-conscious. The literary +society in which Scott was leader of the Tories, and Jeffrey of the +Whigs, included a large proportion of the best intellect of the time and +was sufficiently in contact with the outside world to be conscious of +its own characteristics. When the crash of the French Revolution came in +Scott's youth, Burke denounced its _a priori_ abstract reasonings in the +name of prescription. A traditional order and belief were essential, as +he urged, to the well-being of every human society. What Scott did +afterwards was precisely to show by concrete instances, most vividly +depicted, the value and interest of a natural body of traditions. Like +many other of his ablest contemporaries, he saw with alarm the great +movement, of which the French Revolution was the obvious embodiment, +sweeping away all manner of local traditions and threatening to engulf +the little society which still retained its specific character in +Scotland. He was stirred, too, in his whole nature when any sacrilegious +reformer threatened to sweep away any part of the true old Scottish +system. And this is, in fact, the moral implicitly involved in Scott's +best work. Take the beggar, for example, Edie Ochiltree, the old +'bluegown.' Beggars, you say, are a nuisance and would be sentenced to +starvation by Mr. Malthus in the name of an abstract principle of +population. But look, says Scott, at the old-fashioned beggar as he +really was. He had his place in society; he was the depository of the +legends of the whole country-side: chatting with the lairds, the +confidential friend of fishermen, peasants, and farmers; the oracle in +all sports and ruler of village feasts; repaying in friendly offices far +more than the value of the alms which he took as a right; a respecter of +old privileges, because he had privileges himself; and ready when the +French came to take his part in fighting for the old country. There can +be no fear for a country, says Scott, where even the beggar is as ready +to take up arms as the noble. The bluegown, in short, is no waif and +stray, no product of social corruption, or mere obnoxious parasite, but +a genuine member of the fabric, who could respect himself and scorn +servility as much as the highest members of the social hierarchy. Scott, +as Lockhart tells us, was most grievously wounded by the insults of the +Radical mob in Selkirk, who cried 'Burke Sir Walter!' in the place where +all men had loved and honoured him. It was the meeting of the old and +new, and the revelation to Scott in brutal terms of the new spirit which +was destroying all the old social ties. Scott and Wordsworth and +Coleridge and Southey and their like saw in fact the approach of that +industrial revolution, as we call it now, which for good or evil has +been ever since developing. The Radicals denounced them as mere +sentimentalists; the solid Whigs, who fancied that the revolution was +never to get beyond the Reform Bill of 1832, laughed at them as mere +obstructives; by us, who, whatever our opinions, speak with the +advantage of later experience, it must be admitted that such +Conservatism had its justification, and that good and far-seeing men +might well look with alarm at changes whose far-reaching consequences +cannot yet be estimated. Scott, meanwhile, is the incomparable painter +of the sturdy race which he loved so well--a race high-spirited, loyal +to its principles, surpassingly energetic, full of strong affections and +manly spirits, if crabbed, bigoted, and capable of queer perversity and +narrow self-conceit. Nor, if we differ from his opinions, can anyone who +desires to take a reasonable view of history doubt the interest and +value of the conceptions involved. Scott was really the first +imaginative observer who saw distinctly how the national type of +character is the product of past history, and embodies all the great +social forces by which it has slowly shaped itself. That is the new +element in his portraiture of human life; and we may pardon him if he +set rather too high a value upon the picturesque elements which he had +been the first to recognise. One of the acutest of recent writers upon +politics, the late Mr. Bagehot, has insisted upon the immense value of +what he called a 'solid cake of customs,' and the thought is more or +less familiar to every writer of the evolutionist way of thinking. +Scott, without any philosophy to speak of, political or otherwise, saw +and recognised intuitively a typical instance. He saw how much the +social fabric had been woven out of ancient tradition; and he made +others see it more clearly than could be done by any abstract reasoner. + +When naturalists wish to preserve a skeleton, they bury an animal in an +ant-hill and dig him up after many days with all the perishable matter +fairly eaten away. That is the process which great men have to undergo. +A vast multitude of insignificant, unknown, and unconscious critics +destroy what has no genuine power of resistance, and leave the remainder +for posterity. Much disappears in every case, and it is a question, +perhaps, whether the firmer parts of Scott's reputation will be +sufficiently coherent to resist after the removal of the rubbish. We +must admit that even his best work is of more or less mixed value, and +that the test will be a severe one. Yet we hope, not only for reasons +already suggested, but for one which remains to be expressed. The +ultimate source of pleasure derivable from all art is that it brings you +into communication with the artist. What you really love in the picture +or the poem is the painter or the poet whom it brings into sympathy with +you across the gulf of time. He tells you what are the thoughts which +some fragment of natural scenery, or some incident of human life, +excited in a mind greatly wiser and more perceptive than your own. A +dramatist or a novelist professes to describe different actors on his +little scene, but he is really setting forth the varying phases of his +own mind. And so Dandie Dinmont, or the Antiquary, or Balfour of Burley, +is merely the conductor through which Scott's personal magnetism affects +our own natures. And certainly, whatever faults a critic may discover in +the work, it may be said that no work in our literature places us in +communication with a manlier or more lovable nature. Scott, indeed, +setting up as the landed proprietor at Abbotsford, and solacing himself +with painted plaster of Paris instead of carved oak, does not strike us, +any more than he does Carlyle, as a very noble phenomenon. But luckily +for us, we have also the Scott who must have been the most charming of +all conceivable companions; the Scott who was idolised even by a +judicious pig; the Scott, who, unlike the irritable race of literary +magnates in general, never lost a friend, and whose presence diffused an +equable glow of kindly feeling to the farthest limits of the social +system which gravitated round him. He was not precisely brilliant; +nobody, so far as we know, who wrote so many sentences has left so few +that have fixed themselves upon us as established commonplaces; beyond +that unlucky phrase about 'my name being MacGregor and my foot being on +my native heath'--which is not a very admirable sentiment--I do not at +present remember a single gem of this kind. Landor, I think, said that +in the whole of Scott's poetry there was only one good line, that, +namely, in the poem about Helvellyn referring to the dog of the lost +man-- + + When the wind waved his garments, how oft didst thou start! + +Scott is not one of the coruscating geniuses, throwing out epigrams at +every turn, and sparkling with good things. But the poetry, which was +first admired to excess and then rejected with undue contempt, is now +beginning to find its due level. It is not poetry of the first order. It +is not the poetry of deep meditation or of rapt enthusiasm. Much that +was once admired has now become rather offensive than otherwise. And yet +it has a charm, which becomes more sensible the more familiar we grow +with it, the charm of unaffected and spontaneous love of nature; and not +only is it perfectly in harmony with the nature which Scott loved so +well, but it is still the best interpreter of the sound healthy love of +wild scenery. Wordsworth, no doubt, goes deeper; and Byron is more +vigorous; and Shelley more ethereal. But it is, and will remain, a good +thing to have a breath from the Cheviots brought straight into London +streets, as Scott alone can do it. When Washington Irving visited +Scott, they had an amicable dispute as to the scenery: Irving, as became +an American, complaining of the absence of forests; Scott declaring his +love for 'his honest grey hills,' and saying that if he did not see the +heather once a year he thought he should die. Everybody who has +refreshed himself with mountain and moor this summer should feel how +much we owe, and how much more we are likely to owe in future, to the +man who first inoculated us with his own enthusiasm, and who is still +the best interpreter of the 'honest grey hills.' Scott's poetical +faculty may, perhaps, be more felt in his prose than his verse. The fact +need not be decided; but as we read the best of his novels we feel +ourselves transported to the 'distant Cheviot's blue;' mixing with the +sturdy dalesmen, and the tough indomitable puritans of his native land; +for their sakes we can forgive the exploded feudalism and the faded +romance which he attempted with less success to galvanise into life. The +pleasure of that healthy open-air life, with that manly companion, is +not likely to diminish; and Scott as its exponent may still retain a +hold upon our affections which would have been long ago forfeited if he +had depended entirely on his romantic nonsense. We are rather in the +habit of talking about a healthy animalism, and try most elaborately to +be simple and manly. When we turn from our modern professors in that +line, who affect a total absence of affectation, to Scott's Dandie +Dinmonts and Edie Ochiltrees, we see the difference between the sham and +the reality, and fancy that Scott may still have a lesson or two to +preach to this generation. Those to come must take care of themselves. + + + + +_NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE_ + + +The most obvious fact about Hawthorne is that he gave one solution of +the problem what elements of romance are discoverable amongst the harsh +prose of this prosaic age. How is the novelist who, by the inevitable +conditions of his style, is bound to come into the closest possible +contact with facts, who has to give us the details of his hero's +clothes, to tell us what he had for breakfast, and what is the state of +the balance at his banker's--how is he to introduce the ideal element +which must, in some degree, be present in all genuine art? What +precisely is meant by 'ideal' is a question which for the moment I +pretermit. Anyhow a mere photographic reproduction of this muddy, +money-making, bread-and-butter-eating world would be intolerable. At the +very lowest, some effort must be made at least to select the most +promising materials, and to strain out the coarse or the simply prosaic +ingredients. Various attempts have been made to solve the problem since +De Foe founded the modern school of English novelists, by giving us what +is in one sense a servile imitation of genuine narrative, but which is +redeemed from prose by the unique force of the situation. De Foe +painting mere everyday pots and pans is as dull as a modern blue-book; +but when his pots and pans are the resource by which a human being +struggles out of the most appalling conceivable 'slough of despond,' +they become more poetical than the vessels from which the gods drink +nectar in epic poems. Since he wrote, novelists have made many voyages +of discovery, with varying success, though they have seldom had the +fortune to touch upon so marvellous an island as that still sacred to +the immortal Crusoe. They have ventured far into cloud-land, and, +returning to _terra firma_, they have plunged into the trackless and +savage-haunted regions which are girdled by the Metropolitan Railway. +They have watched the magic coruscations of some strange 'Aurora +Borealis' of dim romance, or been content with the domestic gaslight of +London streets. Amongst the most celebrated of all such adventurers were +the band which obeyed the impulse of Sir Walter Scott. For a time it +seemed that we had reached a genuine Eldorado of novelists, where solid +gold was to be had for the asking, and visions of more than earthly +beauty rewarded the labours of the explorer. Now, alas! our opinion is a +good deal changed; the fairy treasures which Scott brought back from his +voyages have turned into dead leaves according to custom; and the +curiosities, upon which he set so extravagant a price, savour more of +Wardour Street than of the genuine mediaeval artists. Nay, there are +scoffers, though I am not of them, who think that the tittle-tattle +which Miss Austen gathered at the country-houses of our grandfathers is +worth more than the showy but rather flimsy eloquence of the 'Ariosto of +the North.' Scott endeavoured at least, if with indifferent success, to +invest his scenes with something of + + The light that never was on sea or land, + The consecration and the poet's dream. + +If he too often indulged in mere theatrical devices, and mistook the +glare of the footlights for the sacred glow of the imagination, he +professed, at least, to introduce us to an ideal world. Later novelists +have generally abandoned the attempt, and are content to reflect our +work-a-day life with almost servile fidelity. They are not to be blamed; +and doubtless the very greatest writers are those who can bring their +ideal world into the closest possible contact with our sympathies, and +show us heroic figures in modern frock-coats and Parisian fashions. The +art of story-telling is manifold, and its charm depends greatly upon the +infinite variety of its applications. And yet, for that very reason, +there are moods in which one wishes that the modern story-teller would +more frequently lead us away from the commonplace region of newspapers +and railways to regions where the imagination can have fair play. +Hawthorne is one of the few eminent writers to whose guidance we may in +such moods most safely entrust ourselves; and it is tempting to ask, +what was the secret of his success? The effort, indeed, to investigate +the materials from which some rare literary flavour is extracted is +seldom satisfactory. We are reminded of the automaton chess-player who +excited the wonder of the last generation. The showman, like the critic, +laid bare his inside, and displayed all the cunning wheels and cogs and +cranks by which his motions were supposed to be regulated. Yet, after +all, the true secret was that there was a man inside the machine. Some +such impression is often made by the most elaborate demonstrations of +literary anatomists. We have been mystified, not really entrusted with +any revelation. And yet, with this warning as to the probable success of +our examination, let us try to determine some of the peculiarities to +which Hawthorne owes this strange power of bringing poetry out of the +most unpromising materials. + +In the first place, then, he had the good fortune to be born in the most +prosaic of all countries--the most prosaic, that is, in external +appearance, and even in the superficial character of its inhabitants. +Hawthorne himself reckoned this as an advantage, though in a very +different sense from that in which we are speaking. It was as a patriot, +and not as an artist, that he congratulated himself on his American +origin. There is a humorous struggle between his sense of the rawness +and ugliness of his native land and the dogged patriotism befitting a +descendant of the genuine New England Puritans. Hawthorne the novelist +writhes at the discords which torture his delicate sensibilities at +every step; but instantly Hawthorne the Yankee protests that the very +faults are symptomatic of excellence. He is like a sensitive mother, +unable to deny that her awkward hobbledehoy of a son offends against the +proprieties, but tacitly resolved to see proofs of virtues present or to +come even in his clumsiest tricks. He forces his apologies to sound like +boasting. 'No author,' he says, 'can conceive of the difficulty of +writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no +antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but +a commonplace prosperity, as is happily' (it must and shall be happily!) +'the case with my dear native land. It will be very long, I trust, +before romance-writers may find congenial and easily-handled themes +either in the annals of our stalwart republic, or in any characteristic +and probable events of our individual lives. Romance and poetry, ivy, +lichens, and wallflowers need ruins to make them grow.' If, that is, I +am forced to confess that poetry and romance are absent, I will +resolutely stick to it that poetry and romance are bad things, even +though the love of them is the strongest propensity of my nature. To my +thinking, there is something almost pathetic in this loyal +self-deception; and therefore I have never been offended by certain +passages in 'Our Old Home' which appear to have caused some irritation +in touchy Englishmen. There is something, he says by way of apology, +which causes an American in England to take up an attitude of +antagonism. 'These people think so loftily of themselves, and so +contemptuously of everybody else, that it requires more generosity than +I possess to keep always in perfectly good humour with them.' That may +be true; for, indeed, I believe that all Englishmen, whether +ostentatiously cosmopolitan or ostentatiously patriotic, have a peculiar +type of national pride at least as offensive as that of Frenchmen, +Germans, or Americans; and, to a man of Hawthorne's delicate +perceptions, the presence of that sentiment would reveal itself through +the most careful disguises. But that which really caused him to cherish +his antagonism was, I suspect, something else: he was afraid of loving +us too well; he feared to be tempted into a denial of some point of his +patriotic creed; he is always clasping it, as it were, to his bosom, and +vowing and protesting that he does not surrender a single jot or tittle +of it. Hawthorne in England was like a plant suddenly removed to a rich +soil from a dry and thirsty land. He drinks in at every pore the +delightful influences of which he has had so scanty a supply. An old +cottage, an ivy-grown wall, a country churchyard with its quaint +epitaphs, things that are commonplace to most Englishmen and which are +hateful to the sanitary inspector, are refreshing to every fibre of his +soul. He tries in vain to take the sanitary inspector's view. In spite +of himself he is always falling into the romantic tone, though a sense +that he ought to be sternly philosophical just gives a humorous tinge +to his enthusiasm. Charles Lamb could not have improved his description +of the old hospital at Leicester, where the twelve brethren still wear +the badge of the Bear and Ragged Staff. He lingers round it, and gossips +with the brethren, and peeps into the garden, and sits by the cavernous +archway of the kitchen fireplace, where the very atmosphere seems to be +redolent with aphorisms first uttered by ancient monks, and jokes +derived from Master Slender's note-book, and gossip about the wrecks of +the Spanish Armada. No connoisseur could pore more lovingly over an +ancient black-letter volume, or the mellow hues of some old painter's +masterpiece. He feels the charm of our historical continuity, where the +immemorial past blends indistinguishably with the present, to the +remotest recesses of his imagination. But then the Yankee nature within +him must put in a sharp word or two; he has to jerk the bridle for fear +that his enthusiasm should fairly run away with him. 'The trees and +other objects of an English landscape,' he remarks, or, perhaps we +should say, he complains, 'take hold of one by numberless minute +tendrils as it were, which, look as closely as we choose, we never find +in an American scene;' but he inserts a qualifying clause, just by way +of protest, that an American tree would be more picturesque if it had an +equal chance; and the native oak of which we are so proud is summarily +condemned for 'John Bullism'--a mysterious offence common to many things +in England. Charlecote Hall, he presently admits, 'is a most delightful +place.' Even an American is tempted to believe that real homes can only +be produced by 'the slow ingenuity and labour of many successive +generations,' when he sees the elaborate beauty and perfection of a +well-ordered English abode. And yet he persuades himself that even here +he is the victim of some delusion. The impression is due to the old man +which stills lurks even in the polished American, and forces him to look +through his ancestor's spectacles. The true theory, it appears, is that +which Holgrave expresses for him in the 'Seven Gables,' namely, that we +should free ourselves of the material slavery imposed upon us by the +brick-and-mortar of past generations, and learn to change our houses as +easily as our coats. We ought to feel--only we unfortunately can't +feel--that a tent or a wigwam is as good as a house. The mode in which +Hawthorne regards the Englishman himself is a quaint illustration of the +same theory. An Englishwoman, he admits reluctantly and after many +protestations, has some few beauties not possessed by her American +sisters. A maiden in her teens has 'a certain charm of half-blossom and +delicately folded leaves, and tender womanhood shielded by maidenly +reserves, with which, somehow or other, our American girls often fail to +adorn themselves during an appreciable moment.' But he revenges himself +for this concession by an almost savage onslaught upon the full-blown +British matron with her 'awful ponderosity of frame ... massive with +solid beef and streaky tallow,' and apparently composed 'of steaks and +sirloins.' He laments that the English violet should develop into such +an overblown peony, and speculates upon the whimsical problem, whether a +middle-aged husband should be considered as legally married to all the +accretions which have overgrown the slenderness of his bride. Should not +the matrimonial bond be held to exclude the three-fourths of the wife +that had no existence when the ceremony was performed? A question not to +be put without a shudder. The fact is, that Hawthorne had succeeded only +too well in misleading himself by a common fallacy. That pestilent +personage, John Bull, has assumed so concrete a form in our +imaginations, with his top-boots and his broad shoulders and vast +circumference, and the emblematic bulldog at his heels, that for most +observers he completely hides the Englishman of real life. Hawthorne had +decided that an Englishman must and should be a mere mass of transformed +beef and beer. No observation could shake his preconceived impression. +At Greenwich Hospital he encountered the mighty shade of the +concentrated essence of our strongest national qualities; no truer +Englishman ever lived than Nelson. But Nelson was certainly not the +conventional John Bull, and, therefore, Hawthorne roundly asserts that +he was not an Englishman. 'More than any other Englishman he won the +love and admiration of his country, but won them through the efficacy of +qualities that are not English.' Nelson was of the same breed as +Cromwell, though his shoulders were not so broad; but Hawthorne insists +that the broad shoulders, and not the fiery soul, are the essence of +John Bull. He proceeds with amusing unconsciousness to generalise this +ingenious theory, and declares that all extraordinary Englishmen are +sick men, and therefore deviations from the type. When he meets another +remarkable Englishman in the flesh, he applies the same method. Of Leigh +Hunt, whom he describes with warm enthusiasm, he dogmatically declares, +'there was not an English trait in him from head to foot, morally, +intellectually, or physically.' And the reason is admirable. 'Beef, ale, +or stout, brandy or port-wine, entered not at all into his +constitution.' All Englishmen are made of those ingredients, and if not, +why, then, they are not Englishmen. By the same method it is easy to +show that all Englishmen are drunkards, or that they are all +teetotalers; you have only to exclude as irrelevant every case that +contradicts your theory. Hawthorne, unluckily, is by no means solitary +in his mode of reasoning. The ideal John Bull has hidden us from +ourselves as well as from our neighbours, and the race which is +distinguished above all others for the magnificent wealth of its +imaginative literature is daily told--and, what is more, tells +itself--that it is a mere lump of prosaic flesh and blood, with scarcely +soul enough to keep it from stagnation. If we were sensible we should +burn that ridiculous caricature of ourselves along with Guy Fawkes; but +meanwhile we can hardly complain if foreigners are deceived by our own +misrepresentations. + +Against Hawthorne, as I have said, I feel no grudge, though a certain +regret that his sympathy with that deep vein of poetical imagination +which underlies all our 'steaks and sirloins' should have been +intercepted by this detestable lay-figure. The poetical humorist must be +allowed a certain license in dealing with facts; and poor Hawthorne, in +the uncongenial atmosphere of the Liverpool Custom-house, had doubtless +much to suffer from a thick-skinned generation. His characteristic +shyness made it a hard task for him to penetrate through our outer +rind--which, to say the truth, is often elephantine enough--to the +central core of heat; and we must not complain if he was too apt to deny +the existence of what to him was unattainable. But the problem +recurs--for everybody likes to ask utterly unanswerable +questions--whether Hawthorne would not have developed into a still +greater artist if he had been more richly supplied with the diet so dear +to his inmost soul? Was it not a thing to weep over, that a man so +keenly alive to every picturesque influence, so anxious to invest his +work with the enchanted haze of romantic association, should be confined +till middle age amongst the bleak granite rocks and the half-baked +civilisation of New England? 'Among ourselves,' he laments, 'there is no +fairy land for the romancer.' What if he had been brought up in the +native home of the fairies--if there had been thrown open to him the +gates through which Shakespeare and Spenser caught their visions of +ideal beauty? Might we not have had an appendix to the 'Midsummer +Night's Dream,' and might not a modern 'Faerie Queen' have brightened +the prosaic wilderness of this nineteenth century? The question, as I +have said, is rigidly unanswerable. We have not yet learnt how to breed +poets, though we have made some progress in regard to pigs. Nobody can +tell, and perhaps, therefore, it is as well that nobody should guess, +what would have been the effect of transplanting Shakespeare to modern +Stratford, or of exiling him to the United States. And yet--for it is +impossible to resist entirely the pleasure of fruitless speculation--we +may guess that there are some reasons why there should be a risk in +transplanting so delicate a growth as the genius of Hawthorne. There are +more ways, so wise men tell us, of killing a cat than choking it with +cream; but it is a very good way. Over-feeding produces atrophy of some +of the vital functions in higher animals than cats, and the imagination +may be enfeebled rather than strengthened by an over-supply of +materials. Hawthorne, if his life had passed where the plough may turn +up an antiquity in every furrow, and the whole face of the country is +enamelled with ancient culture, might have wrought more gorgeous hues +into his tissues, but he might have succumbed to the temptation of +producing mere upholstery. The fairy land for which he longed is full of +dangerous enchantments, and there are many who have lost in it the +vigour which comes from breathing the keen air of everyday life. From +that risk Hawthorne was effectually preserved in his New England home. +Having to abandon the poetry which is manufactured out of mere external +circumstances, he was forced to draw it from deeper sources. With easier +means at hand of enriching his pages, he might have left the mine +unworked. It is often good for us to have to make bricks without straw. +Hawthorne, who was conscious of the extreme difficulty of the problem, +and but partially conscious of the success of his solution of it, +naturally complained of the severe discipline to which he owed his +strength. We who enjoy the results may feel how much he owed to the very +sternness of his education and the niggard hand with which his +imaginative sustenance was dealt out to him. The observation may sound +paradoxical at the first moment, and yet it is supported by analogy. Are +not the best cooks produced just where the raw material is the worst, +and precisely because it is there worst? Now, cookery is the art by +which man is most easily distinguished from beasts, and it requires +little ingenuity to transfer its lessons to literature. At the same time +it may be admitted that some closer inquiry is necessary in order to +make the hypothesis probable, and I will endeavour from this point of +view to examine some of Hawthorne's exquisite workmanship. + +The story which perhaps generally passes for his masterpiece is +'Transformation,' for most readers assume that a writer's longest book +must necessarily be his best. In the present case, I think that this +method, which has its conveniences, has not led to a perfectly just +conclusion. In 'Transformation,' Hawthorne has for once the advantage of +placing his characters in a land where 'a sort of poetic or fairy +precinct,' as he calls it, is naturally provided for them. The very +stones of the streets are full of romance, and he cannot mention a name +that has not a musical ring. Hawthorne, moreover, shows his usual tact +in confining his aims to the possible. He does not attempt to paint +Italian life and manners; his actors belong by birth, or by a kind of +naturalisation, to the colony of the American artists in Rome; and he +therefore does not labour under the difficulty of being in imperfect +sympathy with his creatures. Rome is a mere background, and surely a +most felicitous background, to the little group of persons who are +effectually detached from all such vulgarising associations with the +mechanism of daily life in less poetical countries. The centre of the +group, too, who embodies one of Hawthorne's most delicate fancies, could +have breathed no atmosphere less richly perfumed with old romance. In +New York he would certainly have been in danger of a Barnum's museum, +beside Washington's nurse and the woolly horse. It is a triumph of art +that a being whose nature trembles on the very verge of the grotesque +should walk through Hawthorne's pages with such undeviating grace. In +the Roman dreamland he is in little danger of such prying curiosity, +though even there he can only be kept out of harm's way by the admirable +skill of his creator. Perhaps it may be thought by some severe critics +that, with all his merits, Donatello stands on the very outside verge of +the province permitted to the romancer. But without cavilling at what is +indisputably charming, and without dwelling upon certain defects of +construction which slightly mar the general beauty of the story, it has +another weakness which it is impossible quite to overlook. Hawthorne +himself remarks that he was surprised, in re-writing his story, to see +the extent to which he had introduced descriptions of various Italian +objects. 'Yet these things,' he adds, 'fill the mind everywhere in +Italy, and especially in Rome, and cannot be kept from flowing out upon +the page when one writes freely and with self-enjoyment.' The +associations which they called up in England were so pleasant, that he +could not find it in his heart to cancel. Doubtless that is the precise +truth, and yet it is equally true that they are artistically out of +place. There are passages which recall the guide-book. To take one +instance--and, certainly, it is about the worst--the whole party is +going to the Coliseum, where a very striking scene takes place. On the +way they pass a baker's shop. + +'"The baker is drawing his loaves out of the oven," remarked Kenyon. "Do +you smell how sour they are? I should fancy that Minerva (in revenge for +the desecration of her temples) had slyly poured vinegar into the batch, +if I did not know that the modern Romans prefer their bread in the +acetous fermentation."' + +The instance is trivial, but it is characteristic. Hawthorne had +doubtless remarked the smell of the sour bread, and to him it called up +a vivid recollection of some stroll in Rome; for, of all our senses, the +smell is notoriously the most powerful in awakening associations. But +then what do we who read him care about the Roman taste for bread 'in +acetous fermentation?' When the high-spirited girl is on the way to meet +her tormentor, and to receive the provocation which leads to his murder, +why should we be worried by a gratuitous remark about Roman baking? It +somehow jars upon our taste, and we are certain that, in describing a +New England village, Hawthorne would never have admitted a touch which +has no conceivable bearing upon the situation. There is almost a +superabundance of minute local colour in his American Romances, as, for +example, in the 'House of the Seven Gables;' but still, every touch, +however minute, is steeped in the sentiment and contributes to the +general effect. In Rome the smell of a loaf is sacred to his +imagination, and intrudes itself upon its own merits, and, so far as we +can discover, without reference to the central purpose. If a baker's +shop impresses him unduly because it is Roman, the influence of ancient +ruins and glorious works of art is of course still more distracting. The +mysterious Donatello, and the strange psychological problem which he is +destined to illustrate, are put aside for an interval, whilst we are +called upon to listen to descriptions and meditations, always graceful, +and often of great beauty in themselves, but yet, in a strict sense, +irrelevant. Hawthorne's want of familiarity with the scenery is of +course responsible for part of this failing. Had he been a native Roman, +he would not have been so preoccupied with the wonders of Rome. But it +seems that for a romance bearing upon a spiritual problem, the scenery, +however tempting, is not really so serviceable as the less prepossessing +surroundings of America. The objects have too great an intrinsic +interest. A counter-attraction distorts the symmetry of the system. In +the shadow of the Coliseum and St. Peter's you cannot pay much attention +to the troubles of a young lady whose existence is painfully ephemeral. +Those mighty objects will not be relegated to the background, and +condescend to act as mere scenery. They are, in fact, too romantic for a +romance. The fountain of Trevi, with all its allegorical marbles, may be +a very picturesque object to describe, but for Hawthorne's purposes it +is really not equal to the town-pump at Salem; and Hilda's poetical +tower, with the perpetual light before the Virgin's image, and the doves +floating up to her from the street, and the column of Antoninus looking +at her from the heart of the city, somehow appeals less to our +sympathies than the quaint garret in the House of the Seven Gables, from +which Phoebe Pyncheon watched the singular idiosyncrasies of the +superannuated breed of fowls in the garden. The garret and the pump are +designed in strict subordination to the human figures: the tower and the +fountain have a distinctive purpose of their own. Hawthorne, at any +rate, seems to have been mastered by his too powerful auxiliaries. A +human soul, even in America, is more interesting to us than all the +churches and picture-galleries in the world; and, therefore, it is as +well that Hawthorne should not be tempted to the too easy method of +putting fine description in place of sentiment. + +But how was the task to be performed? How was the imaginative glow to be +shed over the American scenery, so provokingly raw and deficient in +harmony? A similar problem was successfully solved by a writer whose +development, in proportion to her means of cultivation, is about the +most remarkable of recent literary phenomena. Miss Bronte's bleak +Yorkshire moors, with their uncompromising stone walls, and the valleys +invaded by factories, are at first sight as little suited to romance as +New England itself, to which, indeed, both the inhabitants and the +country have a decided family resemblance. Now that she has discovered +for us the fountains of poetic interest, we can all see that the region +is not a mere stony wilderness; but it is well worth while to make a +pilgrimage to Haworth, if only to discover how little the country +corresponds to our preconceived impressions, or, in other words, how +much depends upon the eye which sees it, and how little upon its +intrinsic merits. Miss Bronte's marvellous effects are obtained by the +process which enables an 'intense and glowing mind' to see everything +through its own atmosphere. The ugliest and most trivial objects seem, +like objects heated by the sun, to radiate back the glow of passion with +which she has regarded them. Perhaps this singular power is still more +conspicuous in 'Villette,' where she had even less of the raw material +of poetry. An odd parallel may be found between one of the most striking +passages in 'Villette' and one in 'Transformation.' Lucy Snowe in one +novel, and Hilda in the other, are left to pass a summer vacation, the +one in Brussels and the other in pestiferous Rome. Miss Snowe has no +external cause of suffering but the natural effect of solitude upon a +homeless and helpless governess. Hilda has to bear about with her the +weight of a terrible secret, affecting, it may be, even the life of her +dearest friend. Each of them wanders into a Roman Catholic church, and +each, though they have both been brought up in a Protestant home, seeks +relief at the confessional. So far the cases are alike, though Hilda, +one might have fancied, has by far the strongest cause for emotion. And +yet, after reading the two descriptions--both excellent in their +way--one might fancy that the two young ladies had exchanged burdens. +Lucy Snowe is as tragic as the innocent confidante of a murderess; +Hilda's feelings never seem to rise above that weary sense of melancholy +isolation which besieges us in a deserted city. It is needless to ask +which is the best bit of work artistically considered. Hawthorne's style +is more graceful and flexible; his descriptions of the Roman Catholic +ceremonial and its influence upon an imaginative mind in distress are +far more sympathetic, and imply a wider range of intellect. But Hilda +scarcely moves us like Lucy. There is too much delicate artistic +description of picture-galleries and of the glories of St. Peter's to +allow the poor little American girl to come prominently to the surface. +We have been indulging with her in some sad but charming speculations, +and not witnessing the tragedy of a deserted soul. Lucy Snowe has very +inferior materials at her command; but somehow we are moved by a +sympathetic thrill: we taste the bitterness of the awful cup of despair +which, as she tells us, is forced to her lips in the night-watches; and +are not startled when so prosaic an object as the row of beds in the +dormitory of a French school suggests to her images worthy rather of +stately tombs in the aisles of a vast cathedral, and recall dead dreams +of an elder world and a mightier race long frozen in death. Comparisons +of this kind are almost inevitably unfair; but the difference between +the two illustrates one characteristic--we need not regard it as a +defect--of Hawthorne. His idealism does not consist in conferring +grandeur upon vulgar objects by tinging them with the reflection of deep +emotion. He rather shrinks than otherwise from describing the strongest +passions, or shows their working by indirect touches and under a +side-light. An excellent example of his peculiar method occurs in what +is in some respects the most perfect of his works, the 'Scarlet Letter.' +There, again, we have the spectacle of a man tortured by a life-long +repentance. The Puritan Clergyman, reverenced as a saint by all his +flock, conscious of a sin which, once revealed, will crush him to the +earth, watched with a malignant purpose by the husband whom he has +injured, unable to summon up the moral courage to tear off the veil, and +make the only atonement in his power, is a singularly striking figure, +powerfully conceived and most delicately described. He yields under +terrible pressure to the temptation of escaping from the scene of his +prolonged torture with the partner of his guilt. And then, as he is +returning homewards after yielding a reluctant consent to the flight, we +are invited to contemplate the agony of his soul. The form which it +takes is curiously characteristic. No vehement pangs of remorse, or +desperate hopes of escape, overpower his faculties in any simple and +straightforward fashion. The poor minister is seized with a strange +hallucination. He meets a venerable deacon, and can scarcely restrain +himself from uttering blasphemies about the Communion-supper. Next +appears an aged widow, and he longs to assail her with what appears to +him to be an unanswerable argument against the immortality of the soul. +Then follows an impulse to whisper impure suggestions to a fair young +maiden, whom he has recently converted. And, finally, he longs to greet +a rough sailor with a 'volley of good, round, solid, satisfactory, and +heaven-defying oaths.' The minister, in short, is in that state of mind +which gives birth in its victim to a belief in diabolical possession; +and the meaning is pointed by an encounter with an old lady, who, in the +popular belief, was one of Satan's miserable slaves and dupes, the +witches, and is said--for Hawthorne never introduces the supernatural +without toning it down by a supposed legendary transmission--to have +invited him to meet her at the blasphemous Sabbath in the forest. The +sin of endeavouring to escape from the punishment of his sins had +brought him into sympathy with wicked mortals and perverted spirits. + +This mode of setting forth the agony of a pure mind, tainted by one +irremovable blot, is undoubtedly impressive to the imagination in a high +degree; far more impressive, we may safely say, than any quantity of +such rant as very inferior writers could have poured out with the +utmost facility on such an occasion. Yet it might possibly be mentioned +that a poet of the highest order would have produced the effect by more +direct means. Remorse overpowering and absorbing does not embody itself +in these recondite and, one may almost say, over-ingenious fancies. +Hawthorne does not give us so much the pure passion as some of its +collateral effects. He is still more interested in the curious +psychological problem than moved by sympathy with the torture of the +soul. We pity poor Mr. Dimmesdale profoundly, but we are also interested +in him as the subject of an experiment in analytical psychology. We do +not care so much for his emotions as for the strange phantoms which are +raised in his intellect by the disturbance of his natural functions. The +man is placed upon the rack, but our compassion is aroused, not by +feeling our own nerves and sinews twitching in sympathy, but by +remarking the strange confusion of ideas produced in his mind, the +singularly distorted aspect of things in general introduced by such an +experience, and hence, if we please, inferring the keenness of the pangs +which have produced them. This turn of thought explains the real meaning +of Hawthorne's antipathy to poor John Bull. That worthy gentleman, we +will admit, is in a sense more gross and beefy than his American cousin. +His nerves are stronger, for we need not decide whether they should be +called coarser or less morbid. He is not, in the proper sense of the +word, less imaginative, for a vigorous grasp of realities is rather a +proof of a powerful than a defective imagination. But he is less +accessible to those delicate impulses which are to the ordinary passions +as electricity to heat. His imagination is more intense and less mobile. +The devils which haunt the two races partake of the national +characteristics. John Bunyan, Dimmesdale's contemporary, suffered under +the pangs of a remorse equally acute, though with apparently far less +cause. The devils who tormented him whispered blasphemies in his ears; +they pulled at his clothes; they persuaded him that he had committed the +unpardonable sin. They caused the very stones in the streets and tiles +on the houses, as he says, to band themselves together against him. But +they had not the refined and humorous ingenuity of the American fiends. +They tempted him, as their fellows tempted Dimmesdale, to sell his soul; +but they were too much in earnest to insist upon queer breaches of +decorum. They did not indulge in that quaint play of fancy which tempts +us to believe that the devils in New England had seduced the 'tricksy +spirit,' Ariel, to indulge in practical jokes at the expense of a nobler +victim than Stephano or Caliban. They were too terribly diabolical to +care whether Bunyan blasphemed in solitude or in the presence of human +respectabilities. Bunyan's sufferings were as poetical, but less +conducive to refined speculation. His were the fiends that haunt the +valley of the shadow of death; whereas Hawthorne's are to be encountered +in the dim regions of twilight, where realities blend inextricably with +mere phantoms, and the mind confers only a kind of provisional existence +upon the 'airy nothings' of its creation. Apollyon does not appear armed +to the teeth and throwing fiery darts, but comes as an unsubstantial +shadow threatening vague and undefined dangers, and only half-detaching +himself from the background of darkness. He is as intangible as Milton's +Death, not the vivid reality which presented itself to mediaeval +imaginations. + +This special attitude of mind is probably easier to the American than to +the English imagination. The craving for something substantial, whether +in cookery or in poetry, was that which induced Hawthorne to keep John +Bull rather at arm's length. We may trace the working of similar +tendencies in other American peculiarities. Spiritualism and its +attendant superstitions are the gross and vulgar form of the same phase +of thought as it occurs in men of highly-strung nerves but defective +cultivation. Hawthorne always speaks of these modern goblins with the +contempt they deserve, for they shocked his imagination as much as his +reason; but he likes to play with fancies which are not altogether +dissimilar, though his refined taste warns him that they become +disgusting when grossly translated into tangible symbols. Mesmerism, for +example, plays an important part in the 'Blithedale Romance' and the +'House of the Seven Gables,' though judiciously softened and kept in the +background. An example of the danger of such tendencies may be found in +those works of Edgar Poe, in which he seems to have had recourse to +strong stimulants to rouse a flagging imagination. What is exquisitely +fanciful and airy in Hawthorne is too often replaced in his rival by an +attempt to overpower us by dabblings in the charnel-house and prurient +appeals to our fears of the horribly revolting. After reading some of +Poe's stories one feels a kind of shock to one's modesty. We require +some kind of spiritual ablution to cleanse our minds of his disgusting +images; whereas Hawthorne's pure and delightful fancies, though at times +they may have led us too far from the healthy contact of everyday +interests, never leave a stain upon the imagination, and generally +succeed in throwing a harmonious colouring upon some objects in which we +had previously failed to recognise the beautiful. To perform that duty +effectually is perhaps the highest of artistic merits; and though we +may complain of Hawthorne's colouring as too evanescent, its charm +grows upon us the more we study it. + +Hawthorne seems to have been slow in discovering the secret of his own +power. The 'Twice-Told Tales,' he tells us, are only a fragmentary +selection from a great number which had an ephemeral existence in +long-forgotten magazines, and were sentenced to extinction by their +author. Though many of the survivors are very striking, no wise reader +will regret that sentence. It could be wished that other authors were as +ready to bury their innocents, and that injudicious admirers might +always abstain from acting as resurrection-men. The fragments which +remain, with all their merits, are chiefly interesting as illustrating +the intellectual development of their author. Hawthorne, in his preface +to the collected edition (all Hawthorne's prefaces are remarkably +instructive) tells us what to think of them. The book, he says, +'requires to be read in the clear brown twilight atmosphere in which it +was written; if opened in the sunshine it is apt to look exceedingly +like a volume of blank pages.' The remark, with deductions on the score +of modesty, is more or less applicable to all his writings. But he +explains, and with perfect truth, that though written in solitude, the +book has not the abstruse tone which marks the written communications of +a solitary mind with itself. The reason is that the sketches 'are not +the talk of a secluded man with his own mind and heart, but his attempts +... to open an intercourse with the world.' They may, in fact, be +compared to Brummel's failures; and, though they do not display the +perfect grace and fitness which would justify him in presenting himself +to society, they were well worth taking up to illustrate the skill of +the master's manipulation. We see him trying various experiments to hit +off that delicate mean between the fanciful and the prosaic, which +shall satisfy his taste and be intelligible to the outside world. +Sometimes he gives us a fragment of historical romance, as in the story +of the stern old regicide who suddenly appears from the woods to head +the colonists of Massachusetts in a critical emergency; then he tries +his hand at a bit of allegory, and describes the search for the mythical +carbuncle which blazes by its inherent splendour on the face of a +mysterious cliff in the depths of the untrodden wilderness, and lures +old and young, the worldly and the romantic, to waste their lives in the +vain effort to discover it--for the carbuncle is the ideal which mocks +our pursuit, and may be our curse or our blessing. Then perhaps we have +a domestic piece--a quiet description of a New England country scene +touched with a grace which reminds us of the creators of Sir Roger de +Coverley or the Vicar of Wakefield. Occasionally there is a fragment of +pure _diablerie_, as in the story of the lady who consults the witch in +the hollow of the three hills; and more frequently he tries to work out +one of those strange psychological problems which he afterwards treated +with more fulness of power. The minister who, for an unexplained reason, +puts on a black veil one morning in his youth, and wears it until he is +laid with it in his grave--a kind of symbolical prophecy of Dimmesdale; +the eccentric Wakefield (whose original, if I remember rightly, is to be +found in 'King's Anecdotes'), who leaves his house one morning for no +particular reason, and though living in the next street, does not reveal +his existence to his wife for twenty years; and the hero of the 'Wedding +Knell,' the elderly bridegroom whose early love has jilted him, but +agrees to marry him when she is an elderly widow and he an old bachelor, +and who appals the marriage party by coming to the church in his +shroud, with the bell tolling as for a funeral--all these bear the +unmistakable stamp of Hawthorne's mint, and each is a study of his +favourite subject, the border-land between reason and insanity. In many +of these stories appears the element of interest, to which Hawthorne +clung the more closely both from early associations and because it is +the one undeniably poetical element in the American character. +Shallow-minded people fancy Puritanism to be prosaic, because the laces +and ruffles of the Cavaliers are a more picturesque costume at a masked +ball than the dress of the Roundheads. The Puritan has become a grim and +ugly scarecrow, on whom every buffoon may break his jest. But the +genuine old Puritan spirit ceases to be picturesque only because of its +sublimity: its poetry is sublimed into religion. The great poet of the +Puritans fails, as far as he fails, when he tries to transcend the +limits of mortal imagination-- + + The living throne, the sapphire blaze, + Where angels tremble as they gaze, + He saw: but blasted with excess of light, + Closed his eyes in endless night. + +To represent the Puritan from within was not, indeed, a task suitable to +Hawthorne's powers. Carlyle has done that for us with more congenial +sentiment than could have been well felt by the gentle romancer. +Hawthorne fancies the grey shadow of a stern old forefather wondering at +his degenerate son. 'A writer of story-books! What kind of business in +life, what mode of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in +his day and generation, may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as +well have been a fiddler!' And yet the old strain remains, though +strangely modified by time and circumstance. In Hawthorne it would seem +that the peddling element of the old Puritans had been reduced to its +lowest point; the more spiritual element had been refined till it is +probable enough that the ancestral shadow would have refused to +recognise the connection. The old dogmatical framework to which he +attached such vast importance had dropped out of his descendant's mind, +and had been replaced by dreamy speculation, obeying no laws save those +imposed by its own sense of artistic propriety. But we may often +recognise, even where we cannot express in words, the strange family +likeness which exists in characteristics which are superficially +antagonistic. The man of action may be bound by subtle ties to the +speculative metaphysician; and Hawthorne's mind, amidst the most obvious +differences, had still an affinity to his remote forefathers. Their +bugbears had become his playthings; but the witches, though they have no +reality, have still a fascination for him. The interest which he feels +in them, even in their now shadowy state, is a proof that he would have +believed in them in good earnest a century and a half earlier. The +imagination, working in a different intellectual atmosphere, is unable +to project its images upon the external world; but it still forms them +in the old shape. His solitary musings necessarily employ a modern +dialect, but they often turn on the same topics which occurred to +Jonathan Edwards in the woods of Connecticut. Instead of the old Puritan +speculations about predestination and free-will, he dwells upon the +transmission by natural laws of an hereditary curse, and upon the +strange blending of good and evil, which may cause sin to be an +awakening impulse in a human soul. The change which takes place in +Donatello in consequence of his crime is a modern symbol of the fall of +man and the eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. As an +artist he gives concrete images instead of abstract theories; but his +thoughts evidently delight to dwell in the same regions where the daring +speculations of his theological ancestors took their origin. Septimius, +the rather disagreeable hero of his last romance, is a peculiar example +of a similar change. Brought up under the strict discipline of New +England, he has retained the love of musing upon insoluble mysteries, +though he has abandoned the old dogmatic guide-posts. When such a man +finds that the orthodox scheme of the universe provided by his official +pastors has somehow broken down with him, he forms some audacious theory +of his own, and is perhaps plunged into an unhallowed revolt against the +Divine order. Septimius, under such circumstances, develops into a kind +of morbid and sullen Hawthorne. He considers--as other people have +done--that death is a disagreeable fact, but refuses to admit that it is +inevitable. The romance tends to show that such a state of mind is +unhealthy and dangerous, and Septimius is contrasted unfavourably with +the vigorous natures who preserve their moral balance by plunging into +the stream of practical life. Yet Hawthorne necessarily sympathises with +the abnormal being whom he creates. Septimius illustrates the dangers of +the musing temperament, but the dangers are produced by a combination of +an essentially selfish nature with the meditative tendency. Hawthorne, +like his hero, sought refuge from the hard facts of commonplace life by +retiring into a visionary world. He delights in propounding much the +same questions as those which tormented poor Septimius, though, for +obvious reasons, he did not try to compound an elixir of life by means +of a recipe handed down from Indian ancestors. The strange mysteries in +which the world and our nature are shrouded are always present to his +imagination; he catches dim glimpses of the laws which bring out strange +harmonies, but, on the whole, tend rather to deepen than to clear the +mysteries. He loves the marvellous, not in the vulgar sense of the word, +but as a symbol of perplexity which encounters every thoughtful man in +his journey through life. Similar tenants at an earlier period might, +with almost equal probability, have led him to the stake as a dabbler in +forbidden sciences, or have caused him to be revered as one to whom a +deep spiritual instinct had been granted. + +Meanwhile, as it was his calling to tell stories to readers of the +English language in the nineteenth century, his power is exercised in a +different sphere. No modern writer has the same skill in so using the +marvellous as to interest without unduly exciting our incredulity. He +makes, indeed, no positive demands on our credulity. The strange +influences which are suggested rather than obtruded upon us are kept in +the background, so as not to invite, nor indeed to render possible, the +application of scientific tests. We may compare him once more to Miss +Bronte, who introduces, in 'Villette,' a haunted garden. She shows us a +ghost who is for a moment a very terrible spectre indeed, and then, very +much to our annoyance, rationalises him into a flesh-and-blood lover. +Hawthorne would neither have allowed the ghost to intrude so forcibly, +nor have expelled him so decisively. The garden in his hands would have +been haunted by a shadowy terror of which we could render no precise +account to ourselves. It would have refrained from actual contact with +professors and governesses; and as it would never have taken bodily +form, it would never have been quite dispelled. His ghosts are confined +to their proper sphere, the twilight of the mind, and never venture into +the broad glare of daylight. We can see them so long as we do not gaze +directly at them; when we turn to examine them they are gone, and we are +left in doubt whether they were realities or an ocular delusion +generated in our fancy by some accidental collocation of half-seen +objects. So in the 'House of the Seven Gables' we may hold what opinion +we please as to the reality of the curse which hangs over the Pyncheons +and the strange connection between them and their hereditary +antagonists; in the 'Scarlet Letter' we may, if we like, hold that there +was really more truth in the witch legends which colour the imaginations +of the actors than we are apt to dream of in our philosophy; and in +'Transformation' we are left finally in doubt as to the great question +of Donatello's ears, and the mysterious influence which he retains over +the animal world so long as he is unstained by bloodshed. In 'Septimius' +alone, it seems to me that the supernatural is left in rather too +obtrusive a shape in spite of the final explanations; though it might +possibly have been toned down had the story received the last touches of +the author. The artifice, if so it may be called, by which this is +effected--and the romance is just sufficiently dipped in the shadow of +the marvellous to be heightened without becoming offensive--sounds, like +other things, tolerably easy when it is explained; and yet the +difficulty is enormous, as may appear on reflection as well as from the +extreme rarity of any satisfactory work in the same style by other +artists. With the exception of a touch or two in Scott's stories, such +as the impressive Bodach Glas, in 'Waverley,' and the apparition in the +exquisite 'Bride of Lammermoor,' it would be difficult to discover any +parallel. + +In fact Hawthorne was able to tread in that magic circle only by an +exquisite refinement of taste, and by a delicate sense of humour, which +is the best preservative against all extravagance. Both qualities +combine in that tender delineation of character which is, after all, one +of his greatest charms. His Puritan blood shows itself in sympathy, not +with the stern side of the ancestral creed, but with the feebler +characters upon whom it weighed as an oppressive terror. He resembles, +in some degree, poor Clifford Pyncheon, whose love of the beautiful +makes him suffer under the stronger will of his relatives and the prim +stiffness of their home. He exhibits the suffering of such a character +all the more effectively because, with his kindly compassion there is +mixed a delicate flavour of irony. The more tragic scenes affect us, +perhaps, with less sense of power; the playful, though melancholy, fancy +seems to be less at home when the more powerful emotions are to be +excited; and yet once, at least, he draws one of those pictures which +engrave themselves instantaneously on the memory. The grimmest or most +passionate of writers could hardly have improved the scene where the +body of the magnificent Zenobia is discovered in the river. Every touch +goes straight to the mark. The narrator of the story, accompanied by the +man whose coolness has caused the suicide, and the shrewd, unimaginative +Yankee farmer, who interprets into coarse, downright language the +suspicions which they fear to confess to themselves, are sounding the +depths of the river by night in a leaky punt with a long pole. Silas +Foster represents the brutal, commonplace comments of the outside world, +which jar so terribly on the more sensitive and closely interested +actors in the tragedy. 'Heigho!' he soliloquises, with offensive +loudness, 'life and death together make sad work for us all. Then I was +a boy, bobbing for fish; and now I'm getting to be an old fellow, and +here I be, groping for a dead body! I tell you what, lads, if I thought +anything had really happened to Zenobia, I should feel kind o' +sorrowful.' That is the discordant chorus of the gravediggers in +'Hamlet.' At length the body is found, and poor Zenobia is brought to +the shore with her knees still bent in the attitude of prayer, and her +hands clenched in immitigable defiance. Foster tries in vain to +straighten the dead limbs. As the teller of the story gazes at her, the +grimly ludicrous reflection occurs to him that if Zenobia had foreseen +all 'the ugly circumstances of death--how ill it would become her, the +altogether unseemly aspect which she must put on, and especially old +Silas Foster's efforts to improve the matter--she would no more have +committed the dreadful act than have exhibited herself to a public +assembly in a badly-fitting garment.' + + + + +_BALZAC'S NOVELS_ + + +Balzac exacts more attention than most novel-readers are inclined to +give; he is often repulsive, and not unfrequently dull; but the student +who has once submitted to his charm becomes spell-bound. Disgusted for a +moment, he returns again and again to the strange, hideous, grotesque, +but most interesting world to which Balzac alone can introduce him. Like +the opium-eater, he acquires a taste for the visions that are conjured +up before him with so vivid a colouring, that he almost believes in +their objective existence. There are perhaps greater novelists than +Balzac; there are many who preach a purer morality; and many who give a +far greater impression of general intellectual force; but in this one +quality of intense realisation of actors and scenery he is unique. + +Balzac, indeed, was apparently himself almost incapable of +distinguishing his dreams from realities. Great wits, we know, are +allied to madness; and the boundaries seem in his case to have been most +shadowy and indistinct. Indeed, if the anecdotes reported of him be +accurate--some of them are doubtless rather overcharged--he must have +lived almost in a state of permanent hallucination. This, for example, +is a characteristic story. He inhabited for some years a house called +_les Jardies_, in the neighbourhood of Paris. He had a difficulty in +providing material furniture, owing to certain debts, which, as some +sceptics insinuated, were themselves a vast mystification. He habitually +ascribed his poverty to a certain 'deficit Kessner,' a loss which +reposed on some trifling foundation of facts, but which assumed +monstrous proportions in his imagination, and recurred perpetually as +the supposed cause of his poverty. In sober reality, however, he was +poor, and found compensation in creating a vast credit, as imaginary as +his liabilities. Upon that bank he could draw without stint. He +therefore inscribed in one place upon the bare walls of his house, 'Ici +un revetement de marbre de Paros;' in another, 'Ici un plafond peint par +Eugene Delacroix;' in a third, 'Ici des portes, facon Trianon;' and, in +short, revelled in gorgeous decorations made of the same materials as +the dishes of the Barmecides' feast. A minor source of wealth was the +single walnut-tree which really grew in his gardens, and which increased +his dream-revenue by 60_l._ a year. This extraordinary result was due, +not to any merit in the nuts, but to an ancient and imaginary custom of +the village which compelled the inhabitants to deposit round its foot a +material defined by Victor Hugo as 'du guano moins les oiseaux.' The +most singular story, however, and which we presume is to be received +with a certain reserve, tells how he roused two of his intimate friends +at two o'clock one morning, and urged them to start for India without an +hour's delay. The cause of this journey was that a certain German +historian had presented Balzac with a seal, valued by the thoughtless at +the sum of six sous. The ring, however, had a singular history in +Balzac's dreamland. It was impressed with the seal of the Prophet, and +had been stolen by the English from the Great Mogul. Balzac had or had +not been informed by the Turkish ambassador that that potentate would +repurchase it with tons of gold and diamonds, and was benevolent enough +to propose that his friend should share in the stores which would exceed +the dreams of Aladdin. + +How far these and other such fancies were a merely humorous protest +against the harsh realities of life, may be a matter of speculation; but +it is less doubtful that the fictitious personages with whom Balzac +surrounded himself lived and moved in his imagination as distinctly as +the flesh-and-blood realities who were treading the pavement of Paris. +He did not so much invent characters and situations as watch his +imaginary world, and compile the memories of its celebrities. All +English readers are acquainted with the little circle of clergymen and +wives who inhabit the town of Barchester. Balzac has carried out the +same device on a gigantic scale. He has peopled not a country town but a +metropolis. There is a whole society, with the members of which we are +intimate, whose family secrets are revealed to us, and who drop in, as +it were, in every novel of a long series, as if they were old friends. +When, for example, young Victurnien d'Esgrignon comes to Paris he makes +acquaintance, we are told, with De Marsay, Maxime de Trailles, Les +Lupeaulx, Rastignac, Vandenesse, Ajuda-Pinto, the Duchesses de +Grandlieu, de Carigliano, de Chaulieu, the Marquises d'Espard, +d'Aiglemont, and De Listomere, Madame Firmiani, the Comtesse de Serizy, +and various other heads of the fashionable world. Every one of these +special characters has a special history. He or she appears as the hero +or heroine of one story, and plays subsidiary parts in a score of +others. They recall to us innumerable scandalous episodes, with which +anybody who lives in the imaginary society of Balzac's Paris feels it a +duty to be as familiar as a back-stairs politician with the gossip of +the House of Commons. The list just given is a mere fragment of the +great circle to which Balzac introduces us. The history of their +performances is intimately connected with the history of the time; nay, +it is sometimes essential to a full comprehension of recent events. +Bishop Proudie, we fear, would scarcely venture to take an active part +in the Roman Catholic emancipation; he would be dissolved into thin air +by contact with more substantial forms; but if you would appreciate the +intrigues which were going on at Paris during the campaign of Marengo, +you must study the conversations which took place between Talleyrand, +Fouche, Sieyes, Carnot, and Malin, and their relations to that prince of +policemen, the well-known Corentin. De Marsay, we are told, with +audacious precision of time and place, was President of the Council in +1833. There is no tendency on the part of these spectres to shrink from +the light. They rub shoulders with the most celebrated statesmen, and +mingle in every event of the time. One is driven to believe that Balzac +really fancied the banker Nucingen to be as tangible as a Rothschild, +and was convinced that the conversations of Louis XVIII. with Vandenesse +were historic facts. His sister tells us that he discussed the behaviour +of his own creations with the utmost gravity, and was intensely +interested in discovering their fate, and getting the earliest +information as to the alliances which they were about to form. It is a +curious question, upon which I cannot profess to speak positively, +whether this voluminous story ever comes into hopeless conflict with +dates. I have some suspicions that the brilliant journalist, Blondet, +was married and unmarried at the same period; but, considering his very +loose mode of life, the suspicion, if true, is susceptible of +explanation. Such study as I have made has not revealed any case of +inconsistency; and Balzac evidently has the whole secret (for it seems +harsh to call it fictitious) history of the time so completely at his +fingers' ends, that the effect upon the reader is to produce an +unhesitating confidence. If a blunder occurs one would rather believe in +a slip of the pen, such as happens to real historians, not in the +substantial inaccuracy of the narrative. Sir A. Alison, it may be +remembered, brings Sir Peregrine Pickle to the Duke of Wellington's +funeral, which must have occurred after Sir Peregrine's death; and +Balzac's imaginary narrative may not be perfectly free from anachronism. +But, if so, I have not found him out. Everybody must sympathise with the +English lady who is said to have written to Paris for the address of +that most imposing physician, Horace Bianchion. + +The startling realisation may be due in part to a mere literary trick. +We meet with artifices like those by which De Foe cheats us into +forgetfulness of his true character. One of the best known is the +insertion of superfluous bits of information, by way of entrapping his +readers into the inference that they could only have been given because +they were true. The snare is more worthy of a writer of begging-letters +than of a genuine artist. Balzac occasionally indulges in somewhat +similar devices; little indirect allusions to his old characters are +thrown in with a calculated nonchalance; we have bits of antiquarian +information as to the history of buildings; superfluous accounts of the +coats-of-arms of the principal families concerned, and anecdotes as to +their ancestry; and, after he has given us a name, he sometimes takes +care to explain that the pronunciation is different from the spelling. +As a rule, however, these irrelevant minutiae seem to be thrown in, not +by way of tricking us, but because he has so genuine an interest in his +own personages. He is as anxious to set De Marsay or the Pere Goriot +distinctly before us, as Carlyle to make us acquainted with Frederick or +Cromwell. Our most vivid painter of historical portraits is not more +charmed to discover a characteristic incident in the life of his heroes, +or to describe the pimples on his face, or the specks of blood on his +collar, than Balzac to do the same duty for the creations of his fancy. +De Foe may be compared to those favourites of showmen who cheat you into +mistaking a flat-wall painting for a bas-relief. Balzac is one of the +patient Dutch artists who exhaust inconceivable skill and patience in +painting every hair on the head and every wrinkle on the face till their +work has a photographic accuracy. The result, it must be confessed, is +sometimes rather trying to the patience. Balzac's artistic instinct, +indeed, renders every separate touch more or less conducive to the +general effect; but he takes an unconscionable time in preparing his +ground. Instead of launching boldly into his story, and leaving his +characters to speak for themselves, he begins, as it were, by taking his +automatons carefully to pieces, and pointing out all their wires and +springs. He leaves nothing unaccounted for. He explains the character of +each actor as he comes upon the stage; and, not content with making +general remarks, he plunges with extraordinary relish into the minutest +personal details. In particular, we know just how much money everybody +has got, and how he has got it. Balzac absolutely revels in elaborate +financial statements. And constantly, just as we hope that the action is +about to begin, he catches us, as it were, by the button-hole, and begs +us to wait a minute to listen to a few more preparatory remarks. In one +or two of the stories, as, for example, in the 'Maison Nucingen,' the +introduction seems to fill the whole book. After expecting some +catastrophe, we gradually become aware that Balzac has thought it +necessary to give us a conscientious explanation of some very dull +commercial intrigues, in order to fill up gaps in other stories of the +cycle. Some one might possibly ask, what was the precise origin of this +great failure of which we hear so much, and Balzac resolves that he +shall have as complete an answer as though he were an accountant drawing +up a balance-sheet. It is said, I know not on what authority, that his +story of 'Cesar Birotteau' has, in fact, been quoted in French courts as +illustrating the law of bankruptcy; and the details given are so ample, +and, to English readers at least, so wearisome, that it really reads +more like a legal statement of a case than a novel. As another example +of this elaborate workmanship I may quote the remarkable story of 'Les +Paysans.' It is intended to illustrate the character of the French +peasant, his profound avarice and cunning, and his bitter jealousy, +which forms a whole district into a tacit conspiracy against the rich, +held together by closer bonds than those of a Fenian lodge. Balzac +resolves that we shall have the whole scene and all the actors +distinctly before us. We have a description of a country-house more +poetical, but far more detailed, than one in an auctioneer's circular; +then we have a photograph of the neighbouring _cabaret_; then a minute +description of its inhabitants, and a detailed statement of their ways +and means. The story here makes a feeble start; but Balzac recollects +that we don't quite know the origin of the quarrel on which it depends, +and, therefore, elaborately describes the former proprietor, points out +precisely how she was cheated by her bailiff, and precisely to what +amount, and throws in descriptions of two or three supplementary +persons. We now make another start in the history of the quarrel; but +this immediately throws us back into a minute description of the old +bailiff's family circumstances, of the characters of several of his +connections, and of the insidious villain who succeeds him. Then we have +a careful financial statement of the second proprietor's losses, and the +commercial system which favours them; this leads to some antiquarian +details concerning the bailiff's house, and to detailed portraits of +each of the four guards who are set to watch over the property. Then +Balzac remarks that we cannot possibly understand the quarrel without +understanding fully the complicated family relations, owing to which the +officials of the department form what in America would be called a +'ring.' By this time we are half-way through the volume, and the +promised story is still in its infancy. Even Balzac makes an apology for +his _longueurs_, and tries to set to work in greater earnest. He is so +much interrupted, however, by the necessity of elaborately introducing +every new actor, and all his or her relations, and the houses in which +they live, and their commercial and social position, that the essence of +the story has at last to be compressed into half-a-dozen pages. In +short, the novel resolves itself into a series of sketches; and reading +it is like turning over a set of photographs, with letterpress +descriptions at intervals. Or we may compare it to one of those novels +of real life, so strange to the English mind, in which a French +indictment sums up the whole previous history of the persons accused, +accumulates every possible bit of information which may or may not throw +light upon the facts, and diverges from the point, as English lawyers +would imagine, into the most irrelevant considerations. + +Balzac, it is plain, differs widely from our English authors, who +generally slightly despise their own art, and think that, in providing +amusement for our idle hours, they are rather derogating from their +dignity. Instead of claiming our attention as a right, they try to +entice us into interest by every possible artifice: they give us +exciting glimpses of horrors to come; they are restlessly anxious to get +their stories well under way. Balzac is far more confident in his +position. He never doubts that we shall be willing to study his works +with the seriousness due to a scientific treatise. And occasionally, +when he is seized by a sudden and most deplorable fit of morality, he +becomes as dull as a sermon. The gravity with which he sets before us +all the benevolent schemes of the _medecin de campagne_, and describes +the whole charitable machinery of the district, makes his performance as +dismal as a gigantic religious tract. But when, in his happier and +wickeder moods, he turns this amazing capacity of graphic description to +its true account, the power of his method makes itself manifest. Every +bit of elaborate geographical and financial information has its meaning, +and tells with accumulated force on the final result. I may instance, +for example, the descriptions of Paris, which form the indispensable +background to the majority of his stories, and contribute in no +inconsiderable share to their tragic effect. Balzac had to deal with the +Paris of the Restoration, full of strange tortuous streets and +picturesque corners, of swinging lanterns and defective drainage; the +Paris which inevitably suggested barricades and street massacres, and +was impregnated to the core with old historical associations. It had not +yet lowered itself to the comprehension of New Yorkers, and still +offered such scenery as Gustave Dore has caught in his wonderful +illustrations of the 'Contes Drolatiques.' Its mysterious and not +over-cleanly charm lives in the pages of Balzac, and harmonises with the +strange society which he has created to people its streets. Thus, in one +of his most audacious stories, where the horribly grotesque trembles on +the verge of the ridiculous, he strikes the key-note by an elegant +apostrophe to Paris. There are, he tells us, a few connoisseurs who +enjoy the Parisian flavour like the bouquet of some delicate wine. To +all Paris is a marvel; to them it is a living creature; every man, every +fragment of a house, is 'part of the cellular tissue of this great +courtesan, whose head, heart, and fantastic manners are thoroughly known +to them.' They are lovers of Paris; to them it is a costly luxury to +travel in Paris. They are incessantly arrested before the dramas, the +disasters, the picturesque accidents, which assail one in the midst of +this moving queen of cities. They start in the morning to go to its +extremities, and find themselves still unable to leave its centre at +dinner-time. It is a marvellous spectacle at all times; but, he +exclaims, 'O Paris! qui n'a pas admire tes sombres paysages, tes +echappees de lumiere, tes culs-de-sac profonds et silencieux; qui n'a +pas entendu tes murmures entre minuit et deux heures du matin, ne +connait encore rien de ta vraie poesie, ni de tes bizarres et larges +contrastes.' + +In the scenes which follow, we are introduced to a lover watching the +beautiful and virtuous object of his adoration as she descends an +infamous street late in the evening, and enters one of the houses +through a damp, moist, and fetid passage, feebly lighted by a trembling +lamp, beneath which are seen the hideous face and skinny fingers of an +old woman, as fitly placed as the witches in the blasted heath in +'Macbeth.' In this case, however, Balzac is in one of his wildest moods, +and the hideous mysteries of a huge capital become the pretext for a +piece of rather ludicrous melodrama. Paris is full enough of tragedies +without the preposterous beggar Ferragus, who appears at balls as a +distinguished diplomat, and manages to place on a young gentleman's head +of hair a slow poison (invented for the purpose), which brings him to an +early grave. More impressive, because less extravagant, is that Maison +Vauquer, every hole and corner of which is familiar to the real student +of Balzac. It is situated, as everybody should know, in the Rue Neuve +St.-Genevieve, just where it descends so steeply towards the Rue de +l'Arbalete that horses have some trouble in climbing it. We know its +squalid exterior, its creaking bell, the wall painted to represent an +arcade in green marble, the crumbling statue of Cupid, with the +half-effaced inscription-- + + 'Qui que tu sois, voici ton maitre,-- + Il l'est, le fut, ou le doit etre.' + +We have visited the wretched garden with its scanty pot-herbs and +scarecrow beds, and the green benches in the miserable arbour, where the +lodgers who are rich enough to enjoy such a luxury indulge in a cup of +coffee after dinner. The salon, with its greasy and worn-out furniture, +every bit of which is catalogued, is as familiar as our own studies. We +know the exact geography even of the larder and the cistern. We catch +the odour of the damp, close office, where Madame Vauquer lurks like a +human spider. She is the animating genius of the place, and we know the +exact outline of her figure, and every article of her dress. The +minuteness of her portrait brings out the horrors of the terrible +process by which poor Goriot gradually sinks from one step to another +of the social ladder, and simultaneously ascends from the first floor to +the garrets. We can track his steps and trace his agony. Each station of +that melancholy pilgrimage is painted, down to the minutest details, +with unflinching fidelity. + +Paris, says Balzac, is an ocean; however painfully you explore it and +sound its depths, there are still virgin corners, unknown caves with +their flowers, pearls, and monsters, forgotten by literary divers. The +Maison Vauquer is one of these singular monstrosities. No one, at any +rate, can complain that Balzac has not done his best to describe and +analyse the character of the unknown social species which it contains. +It absorbs our interest by the contrast of its vulgar and intensely +commonplace exterior with the terrible passions and sufferings of which +it is the appropriate scene. + +The horrors of a great metropolis, indeed, give ample room for tragedy. +Old Sandy Mackaye takes Alton Locke to the entrance of a London alley, +and tells the sentimental tailor to write poetry about that. 'Say how ye +saw the mouth o' hell, and the twa pillars thereof at the entry, the +pawnbroker's shop on the one side and the gin-palace at the other--two +monstrous deevils, eating up men, women, and bairns, body and soul. Look +at the jaws o' the monsters, how they open and open to swallow in +anither victim and anither. Write about that!' The poor tailor complains +that it is unpoetical, and Mackaye replies, 'Hah! is there no the heaven +above them here and the hell beneath them? and God frowning and the +deevil grinning? No poetry there! Is no the verra idee of the classic +tragedy defined to be--man conquered by circumstances? Canna ye see it +here?' But the quotation must stop, for Mackaye goes on to a moral not +quite according to Balzac. Balzac, indeed, was anything but a Christian +socialist, or a Radical reformer; we don't often catch sight in his +pages of God frowning or the devil grinning; his world seems to be +pretty well forgotten by the one, and its inhabitants to be quite able +to dispense with the services of the other. Paris, he tells us in his +most outrageous story, is a hell, which one day may have its Dante. The +proletaire lives in its lowest circle, and seldom comes into Balzac's +pages except as representing the half-seen horrors of the gulf reserved +for that corrupt and brilliant society whose vices he loves to describe. +A summary of his creed is given by a queer contrast to Mackaye, the +accomplished and able De Marsay. People speak, he says, of the +immorality of certain books; here is a horrible, foul, and corrupt book, +always open and never to be shut; the great book of the world; and +beyond that is another book a thousand times more dangerous, which +consists of all that is whispered by one man to another, or discussed +under ladies' fans at balls. Balzac's pages are flavoured, rather to +excess, with this diabolical spice, composed of dark allusions to, or +audacious revelations of these hideous mysteries. If he is wanting in +the moral elevation necessary for a Dante, he has some of the sinister +power which makes him a fit guide to the horrors of our modern Inferno. + + * * * * * + +Before accepting Balzac's guidance into these mysterious regions, I must +touch upon another peculiarity. Balzac's genius for skilfully-combined +photographic detail explains his strange power of mystification. A word +is wanting to express that faint acquiescence or mimic belief which we +generally grant to a novelist. Dr. Newman has constructed a scale of +assent according to its varying degrees of intensity; and we might, +perhaps, assume that to each degree there corresponds a mock assent +accorded to different kinds of fiction. If Scott, for example, requires +from his readers a shadow of that kind of belief which we grant to an +ordinary historian, Balzac requires a shadow of the belief which Dr. +Pusey gives to the Bible. This still remains distinctly below any +genuine assent; for Balzac never wishes us really to forget, though he +occasionally forgets himself, that his most lifelike characters are +imaginary. But in certain subordinate topics he seems to make a higher +demand on our faith. He is full of more or less fanciful heresies, and +labours hard to convince us either that they are true or that he +seriously holds them. This is what I mean by mystification, and one +fears to draw a line as to which he was probably far from clear himself. +Thus, for example, he is a devout believer in physiognomy, and not only +in its obvious sense; he erects it into an occult science. Lavater and +Gall, he says, 'prove incontestably' that ominous signs exist in our +heads. Take, for example, the chasseur Michu, his white face injected +with blood and compressed like a Calmuck's; his ruddy, crisp hair; his +beard cut in the shape of a fan; the noble forehead which surmounts and +overhangs his sunburnt, sarcastic features; his ears well detached, and +possessing a sort of mobility, like those of a wild animal; his mouth +half open, and revealing a set of fine but uneven teeth; his thick and +glossy whiskers; his hair, close in front, long on the sides and behind, +with its wild, ruddy hue throwing into relief the strange and fatal +character of the physiognomy; his short, thick neck, designed to tempt +the hatchet of the guillotine: these details, so accurately +photographed, not only prove that M. Michu was a resolute, faithful +servant, capable of the profoundest secresy and the most disinterested +attachment, but for the really skilful reader of mystic symbols foretell +his ultimate fate--namely, that he will be the victim of a false +accusation. Balzac, however, ventures into still more whimsical +extremes. He accepts, in all apparent seriousness, the theory of his +favourite, Mr. Shandy, that a man's name influences his character. Thus, +for example, a man called Minoret-Levrault must necessarily be 'un +elephant sans trompe et sans intelligence,' and the occult meaning of Z. +Marcas requires a long and elaborate commentary. Repeat the word Marcas, +dwelling on the first syllable, and dropping abruptly on the second, and +you will see that the man who bears it must be a martyr. The zigzag of +the initial implies a life of torment. What ill wind, he asks, has blown +upon this letter, which in no language (Balzac's acquaintance with +German was probably limited) commands more than fifty words? The name is +composed of seven letters, and seven is most characteristic of +cabalistic numbers. If M. Gozlan's narrative be authentic, Balzac was +right to value this name highly, for he had spent many hours in seeking +for it by a systematic perambulation of the streets of Paris. He was +rather vexed at the discovery that the Marcas of real life was a tailor. +'He deserved a better fate!' said Balzac pathetically; 'but it shall be +my business to immortalise him.' + +Balzac returns to this subject so often and so emphatically that one +half believes him to be the victim of his own mystification. Perhaps he +was the one genuine disciple of Mr. Shandy and Slawkenbergius, and +believed sincerely in the occult influence of names and noses. In more +serious matters it is impossible to distinguish the point at which his +feigned belief passes into real superstition; he stimulates conviction +so elaborately, that his sober opinions shade off imperceptibly into +his fanciful dreamings. For a time he was attracted by mesmerism, and in +the story of Ursule Mirouet he labours elaborately to infect his readers +with a belief in what he calls 'magnetism, the favourite science of +Jesus, and one of the powers transmitted to the apostles.' He assumes +his gravest airs in adducing the cases of Cardan, Swedenborg, and a +certain Duke of Montmorency, as though he were a genuine historical +inquirer. He almost adopts the tone of a pious missionary in describing +how his atheist doctor was led by the revelations of a _clairvoyante_ to +study Pascal's 'Pensees' and Bossuet's sublime 'Histoire des +Variations,' though what those works have to do with mesmerism is rather +difficult to see. He relates the mysterious visions caused by the +converted doctor after his death, not less minutely, though more +artistically, than De Foe described the terrible apparition of Mrs. +Veal, and, it must be confessed, his story illustrates with almost equal +force the doctrine, too often forgotten by spiritualists, that ghosts +should not make themselves too common. When once they begin to mix in +general society, they become intolerably prosaic. + +The ostentatious belief which is paraded in this instance is turned to +more artistic account in the wonderful story of the 'Peau de Chagrin.' +Balzac there tries as conscientiously as ever to surmount the natural +revolt of our minds against the introduction of the supernatural into +life. The _peau de chagrin_ is the modern substitute for the +old-fashioned parchment on which contracts were signed with the devil. +M. Valentin, its possessor, is a Faust of the boulevards; but our +prejudices are softened by the circumstance that the _peau de chagrin_ +has a false air of scientific authenticity. It is discovered by a +gentleman who spends a spare half-hour before committing suicide in an +old curiosity shop, which occupies a sort of middle standing-ground +between a wizard's laboratory and the ordinary Wardour Street shop. +There is no question of signing with one's blood, but simply of +accepting a curious substance with the property--rather a startling one, +it is true--that its area diminishes in proportion to the amount of +wishes gratified, and vanishes with the death of the possessor. The +steady flesh-and-blood men of science treat it just as we feel certain +that they would do. After smashing a hydraulic press in the attempt to +compress it, and exhausting the power of chemical agents, they agree to +make a joke of it. It is not so much more wonderful than some of those +modern miracles, which leave us to hesitate between the two incredible +alternatives that men of science are fallible, or that mankind in +general, like Sir Walter Scott's grandmother, are 'awfu' leears.' Every +effort is made to reduce the strain upon our credulity to that moderate +degree of intensity which may fairly be required from the reader of a +wild fiction. When the first characteristic wish of the +proprietor--namely, that he may be indulged in a frantic orgie--has been +gratified without any apparent intervention of the supernatural, we are +left just in that proper equilibrium between scepticism and credulity +which is the right mental attitude in presence of a marvellous story. +Balzac, it is true, seems rather to flag in continuing his narrative. +The symbolical meaning begins to part company with the facts. Stories of +this kind require the congenial atmosphere of an ideal world, and the +effort of interpreting such a poetical legend into terms of ordinary +life is perhaps too great for the powers of any literary artist. At any +rate M. Valentin drops after a time from the level of Faust to become +the hero of a rather commonplace Parisian story. The opening scenes, +however, are an admirable specimen of the skill by which our +irrepressible scepticism may be hindered from intruding into a sphere +where it is out of place; or rather--for one can hardly speak of belief +in such a connection--of the skill by which the discord between the +surroundings of the nineteenth century and a story of grotesque +supernaturalism can be converted into a pleasant harmony. A similar +effect is produced in one of Balzac's finest stories, the 'Recherche de +l'Absolu.' Every accessory is provided to induce us, so long as we are +under the spell, to regard the discovery of the philosopher's stone as a +reasonable application of human energy. We are never quite clear whether +Balthazar Claes is a madman or a commanding genius. We are kept +trembling on the verge of a revelation till we become interested in +spite of our more sober sense. A single diamond turns up in a crucible +which was unluckily produced in the absence of the philosopher, so that +he cannot tell what are the necessary conditions of repeating the +process. He is supposed to discover the secret just as he is struck by a +paralysis, which renders him incapable of revealing it, and dies whilst +making desperate efforts to communicate the crowning success to his +family. Balzac throws himself into the situation with such energy that +we are irresistibly carried away by his enthusiasm. The impossibility +ceases to annoy us, and merely serves to give additional dignity to the +story. + + * * * * * + +One other variety of mystification may introduce us to some of Balzac's +most powerful stories. He indulges more frequently than could be wished +in downright melodrama, or what is generally called sensational writing. +In the very brilliant sketch of Nathan in 'Une Fille d'Eve,' he remarks +that 'the mission of genius is to search, through the accidents of the +true, for that which must appear probable to all the world.' The common +saying, that truth is stranger than fiction, should properly be +expressed as an axiom that fiction ought not to be so strange as truth. +A marvellous event is interesting in real life, simply because we know +that it happened. In a fiction we know that it did not happen; and +therefore it is interesting only as far as it is explained. Anybody can +invent a giant or a genius by the simple process of altering figures or +piling up superlatives. The artist has to make the existence of the +giant or the genius conceivable. Balzac, however, often enough forgets +this principle, and treats us to purely preposterous incidents, which +are either grotesque or simply childish. The history of the marvellous +'Thirteen,' for example, that mysterious band which includes statesmen, +beggars, men of fortune, and journalists, and goes about committing the +most inconceivable crimes without the possibility of discovery, becomes +simply ludicrous. Balzac, as usual, labours to reconcile our minds to +the absurdity; but the effort is beyond his powers. The amazing disease +which he invents for the benefit of the villains in the 'Cousine Bette' +can only be accepted as a broad joke. At times, as in the story of the +'Grande Breteche,' where the lover is bricked up by the husband in the +presence of the wife, he reminds us of Edgar Poe's worst extravagances. +There is, indeed, this much to be said for Balzac in comparison with the +more recent school, who have turned to account all the most refined +methods of breaking the ten commandments and the criminal code; the +fault of the so-called sensation writer is, not that he deals in murder, +bigamy, or adultery--every great writer likes to use powerful +situations--but that he relies upon our interest in startling crimes to +distract our attention from feebly-drawn characters and conventional +details. Balzac does not often fall into that weakness. If his criminals +are frequently of the most outrageous kind, and indulge even in +practices unmentionable, the crime is intended at least to be of +secondary interest. He tries to fix our attention on the passions by +which they are caused, and to attract us chiefly by the legitimate +method of analysing human nature--even, it must be confessed, in some of +its most abnormal manifestations. Macbeth is not interesting because he +commits half-a-dozen murders; but the murders are interesting because +they are committed by Macbeth. We may generally say as much for Balzac's +villains; and it is the only justification for a free use of blood and +brutality. In applying these remarks, we come to the real secret of +Balzac's power, which will demand a fuller consideration. + +It is common to say of all great novelists, and of Balzac in particular, +that they display a wonderful 'knowledge of the human heart.' The chief +objection to the phrase is that such knowledge does not exist. Nobody +has as yet found his way through the complexities of that intricate +machine, and described the springs and balances by which its movement is +originated and controlled. Men of vivid imagination are in some respects +less competent for such a work than their neighbours. They have not the +cool, hard, and steady hand required for psychological dissection. +Balzac gave a queer specimen of his own incapacity in an attempt to +investigate the true history of a real murder, celebrated in its day, +and supposed by everybody but Balzac to have been committed by one +Peytel, who was put to death in spite of his pleading. His skill in +devising motives for imaginary atrocities was a positive +disqualification for dealing with facts and legal evidence. The greatest +poet or novelist describes only one person, and that is himself; and he +differs from his inferiors, not necessarily in having a more systematic +knowledge, but in having wider sympathies, and so to speak, possessing a +great number of characters. Cervantes was at once Don Quixote and Sancho +Panza; Shakespeare was Hamlet and Mercutio and Othello and Falstaff; +Scott was at once Dandie Dinmont and the Antiquary and the Master of +Ravenswood; and Balzac embodies his different phases of feeling in +Eugenie Grandet and Vautrin and the Pere Goriot. The assertion that he +knew the human heart must be interpreted to mean that he could +sympathise with, and give expression to, a wide range of human passions; +as his supposed knowledge of the world implies merely that he was deeply +impressed by certain phenomena of the social medium in which he was +placed. Nobody, I should be inclined to think, would have given a more +unsound judgment than Balzac as to the characters of the men whom he +met, or formed a less trustworthy estimate of the real condition of +society. He was totally incapable of stripping the bare facts given by +observation of the colouring which they received from his own +idiosyncrasy. But nobody, within certain points, could express more +vividly in outward symbols the effect produced upon keen sympathies and +a powerful imagination by the aspect of the world around him. + +The characteristic peculiarities of Balzac's novels may be described as +the intensity with which he expresses certain motives, and the vigour +with which he portrays the real or imaginary corruption of society. Upon +one particular situation, or class of situations, favourable to this +peculiar power, he is never tired of dwelling. He repeats himself +indeed, in a certain sense, as a man must necessarily repeat himself who +writes eighty-five stories, besides doing other work, in less than +twenty years. In this voluminous outpouring of matter the machinery is +varied with wonderful fertility of invention, but one sentiment recurs +very frequently. The great majority of Balzac's novels, including all +the most powerful examples, may thus be described as variations on a +single theme. Each of them is in fact the record of a martyrdom. There +is always a virtuous hero or heroine who is tortured, and most +frequently, tortured to death, by a combination of selfish intrigues. +The commonest case is, of course, that which has become the staple plot +of French novelists, where the interesting young woman is sacrificed to +the brutality of a dull husband: that, for example, is the story of the +'Femme de Trente Ans,' of 'Le Lys dans la Vallee,' and of several minor +performances; then we have the daughter sacrificed to the avaricious +father, as in 'Eugenie Grandet;' the woman sacrificed to the imperious +lover in the 'Duchesse de Langeais;' the immoral beauty sacrificed to +the ambition of her lover in the 'Splendeurs et Miseres des +Courtisanes;' the mother sacrificed to the dissolute son in the 'Menage +de Garcon;' the woman of political ambition sacrificed to the +contemptible intriguers opposed to her in 'Les Employes;' and, indeed, +in one way or other, as subordinate character or as heroine, this figure +of a graceful feminine victim comes into nearly every novel. Virtuous +heroes fare little better. Poor Colonel Chabert is disowned and driven +to beggary by the wife who has committed bigamy; the luckless cure, +Birotteau, is cheated out of his prospects and doomed to a broken heart +by the successful villainy of a rival priest and his accomplices; the +Comte de Manerville is ruined and transported by his wife and his +detestable mother-in-law; Pere Goriot is left to starvation by his +daughters; the Marquis d'Espard is all but condemned as a lunatic by the +manoeuvres of his wife; the faithful servant Michu comes to the +guillotine; the devoted notary Chesnel is beggared in the effort to save +his scape-grace of a master; Michaud, another devoted adherent, is +murdered with perfect success by the brutal peasantry, and his wife dies +of the news; Balthazar Claes is the victim of his devotion to science; +and Z. Marcas dies unknown and in the depths of misery as a reward for +trying to be a second Colbert. The old-fashioned canons of poetical +justice are inverted; and the villains are dismissed to live very +happily ever afterwards, whilst the virtuous are slain outright or +sentenced to a death by slow torture. Thackeray, in one or two of his +minor stories, has touched the same note. The history of Mr. Deuceace, +and especially its catastrophe, is much in Balzac's style; but, as a +rule, our English novelists shrink from anything so unpleasant. + +Perhaps the most striking example of this method is the 'Pere Goriot.' +The general situation may be described in two words, by saying that +Goriot is the modern King Lear. Mesdames de Restaud and de Nucingen are +the representatives of Regan and Goneril; but the Parisian Lear is not +allowed the consolation of a Cordelia; the cup of misery is measured out +to him drop by drop, and the bitterness of each dose is analysed with +chemical accuracy. We watch the poor old broken-down merchant, who has +impoverished himself to provide his daughters' dowries, and has +gradually stripped himself, first of comfort, and then of the +necessaries of life to satisfy the demands of their folly and luxury, +as we might watch a man clinging to the edge of a cliff and gradually +dropping lower and lower, catching feebly at every point of support till +his strength is exhausted, and the inevitable catastrophe follows. The +daughters, allowed to retain some fragments of good feeling and not +quite irredeemably hateful, are gradually yielding to the demoralising +influence of a heartless vanity. They yield, it is true, pretty +completely at last; but their wickedness seems to reveal the influence +of a vague but omnipotent power of evil in the background. There is not +a more characteristic scene in Balzac than that in which Rastignac, the +lover of Madame de Nucingen, overhears the conversation between the +father in his wretched garret and the modern Goneril and Regan. A gleam +of good fortune has just encouraged old Goriot to anticipate an escape +from his troubles. On the morning of the day of expected release Madame +Goneril de Nucingen rushes up to her father's garret to explain to him +that her husband, the rich banker, having engaged all his funds in some +diabolical financial intrigues, refuses to allow her the use of her +fortune; whilst, owing to her own misconduct, she is afraid to appeal to +the law. They have a hideous tacit compact, according to which the wife +enjoys full domestic liberty, whilst the husband may use her fortune to +carry out his dishonest plots. She begs her father to examine the facts +in the light of his financial experience, though the examination must be +deferred, that she may not look ill with the excitement when she meets +her lover at the ball. As the poor father is tormenting his brains, +Madame Regan de Restaud appears in terrible distress. Her lover has +threatened to commit suicide unless he can meet a certain bill, and to +save him she has pledged certain diamonds which were heirlooms in her +husband's family. Her husband has discovered the whole transaction, +and, though not making an open scandal, imposes some severe conditions +upon her future. Old Goriot is raving against the brutality of her +husband, when Regan adds that there is still a sum to be paid, without +which her lover, to whom she has sacrificed everything, will be ruined. +Now old Goriot had employed just this sum--all but the very last +fragment of his fortune--in the service of Goneril. A desperate quarrel +instantly takes place between the two fine ladies over this last scrap +of their father's property. They are fast degenerating into Parisian +Billingsgate, when Goriot succeeds in obtaining silence and proposes to +strip himself of his last penny. Even the sisters hesitate at such an +impiety, and Rastignac enters with some apology for listening, and hands +over to the countess a certain bill of exchange for a sum which he +professes himself to owe to Goriot, and which will just save her lover. +She accepts the paper, but vehemently denounces her sister for having, +as she supposes, allowed Rastignac to listen to their hideous +revelations, and retires in a fury, whilst the father faints away. He +recovers to express his forgiveness, and at this moment the countess +returns, ostensibly to throw herself on her knees and beg her father's +pardon. She apologises to her sister, and a general reconciliation takes +place. But before she has again left the room she has obtained her +father's endorsement to Rastignac's bill. Even her most genuine fury had +left coolness enough for calculation, and her burst of apparent +tenderness was a skilful bit of comedy for squeezing one more drop of +blood from her father and victim. That is a genuine stroke of Balzac. + +Hideous as the performance appears when coolly stated, it must be +admitted that the ladies have got into such terrible perplexities from +tampering with the seventh commandment, that there is some excuse for +their breaking the fifth. Whether such an accumulation of horrors is a +legitimate process in art, and whether a healthy imagination would like +to dwell upon such loathsome social sores, is another question. The +comparison suggested with 'King Lear' may illustrate the point. In +Balzac all the subordinate details which Shakespeare throws in with a +very slovenly touch are elaborately drawn, and contribute powerfully to +the total impression. On the other hand, we never reach the lofty +poetical heights of the grandest scenes in 'King Lear.' But the +situation of the two heroes offers an instructive contrast. Lear is +weak, but is never contemptible; he is the ruin of a gallant old king, +is guilty of no degrading compliance, and dies like a man, with his +'good biting falchion' still grasped in his feeble hand. To change him +into Goriot we must suppose that he had licked the hand which struck +him, that he had helped on the adulterous intrigues of Goneril and Regan +from sheer weakness, and that all his fury had been directed against +Cornwall and Albany for objecting to his daughters' eccentric views of +the obligation of the marriage vow. Paternal affection leading a man to +the most trying self-sacrifice is a worthy motive for a great drama or +romance; but Balzac is so anxious to intensify the emotion, that he +makes even paternal affection morally degrading. Everything must be done +to heighten the colouring. Our sympathies are to be excited by making +the sacrifice as complete, and the emotion which prompts it as +overpowering, as possible; until at last the love of children becomes a +monomania. Goriot is not only dragged through the mud of Paris, but he +grovels in it with a will. In short, Balzac wants that highest power +which shows itself by moderation, and commits a fault like that of an +orator who emphasizes every sentence. With less expenditure of horrors, +he would excite our compassion more powerfully. But after all, Goriot +is, perhaps, more really affecting even than King Lear. + +Situations of the 'Pere Goriot' kind are, in some sense, more +appropriate for heroines than for heroes. Self-sacrifice is, for the +present at least, considered by a large part of mankind as the complete +duty of woman. The feminine martyr can indulge without loss of our +esteem in compliances which would be degrading in a man. Accordingly +Balzac finds the amplest materials for his favourite situation in the +torture of innocent women. The great example of his skill in this +department is Eugenie Grandet, in which the situation of the Pere Goriot +is inverted. Poor Eugenie is the victim of a domestic tyrant, who is, +perhaps, Balzac's most finished portrait of the cold-blooded and cunning +miser. The sacrifice of a woman's life to paternal despotism is +unfortunately even commoner in real life than in fiction; and when the +lover, from whom the old miser has divided her during his life, deserts +her after his death, we feel that the mournful catastrophe is demanded +by the sombre prologue. The book may indeed justify, to some extent, one +of the ordinary criticisms upon Balzac, that he showed a special +subtlety in describing the sufferings of women. The question as to the +general propriety of that criticism is rather difficult for a male +critic. I confess to a certain scepticism, founded partly on the general +principle that hardly any author can really describe the opposite sex, +and partly on an antipathy which I cannot repress to Balzac's most +ambitious feminine portraits. + +Eugenie Grandet is perhaps the purest of his women; but then Eugenie +Grandet is simply stupid, and interesting from her sufferings rather +than her character. She reminds us of some patient animal of the +agricultural kind, with bovine softness of eyes and bovine obstinacy +under suffering. His other women, though they are not simply courtesans, +after the fashion of some French writers, seem, as it were, to have a +certain perceptible taint; they breathe an unwholesome atmosphere. In +one of his extravagant humours, he tells us that the most perfect +picture of purity in existence is the Madonna of the Genoese painter, +Piola, but that even that celestial Madonna would have looked like a +Messalina by the side of the Duchesse de Manfrigneuse. If the duchess +resembled either personage in character, it was certainly not the +Madonna. And Balzac's best women give us the impression that they are +courtesans acting the character of virgins, and showing admirable +dramatic skill in the performance. They may keep up the part so +obstinately as to let the acting become earnest; but even when they +don't think of breaking the seventh commandment, they are always +thinking about not breaking it. When he has done his best to describe a +thoroughly pure woman, such as Henrietta in the 'Lys dans la Vallee,' he +cannot refrain from spoiling his performance by throwing in a hint at +the conclusion that, after all, she had a strong disposition to go +wrong, which was only defeated by circumstances. Indeed, the ladies who +in his pages have broken loose from all social restraints, differ only +in external circumstances from their more correct sisters. Coralie, in +the 'Illusions Perdues,' is not so chaste in her conduct as the +immaculate Henriette, but is not a whit less delicate in her tastes. +Madame de la Baudraye deserts her husband, and lives for some years with +her disreputable lover at Paris, and does not in the least forfeit the +sympathies of her creator. Balzac's feminine types may be classified +pretty easily. At bottom they are all of the sultana variety--playthings +who occasionally venture into mixing with the serious affairs of life, +but then only on pain of being ridiculous (as in the 'Employes,' or the +'Muse du Departement'); but properly confined to their drawing-rooms, +with delicate cajoleries for their policy, and cunning instead of +intellect. Sometimes they are cold-hearted and selfish, and then they +are vicious, making victims of lovers, husbands, or fathers, consuming +fortunes, and spreading ill-will by cunning intrigues; sometimes they +are virtuous, and therefore according to Balzac's logic, pitiable +victims of the world. But their virtue, when it exists, is the effect, +not of lofty principle, but of a certain delicacy of taste corresponding +to a fine organisation. They object to vice, because it is apt to be +coarse; and are perfectly ready to yield, if it can be presented in such +graceful forms as not to shock their sensibilities. Marriage is +therefore a complicated intrigue in which one party is always deceived, +though it may be for his or her good. If you will be loved, says the +judicious lady in the 'Memoires de Deux Jeunes Mariees,' the secret is +not to love; and the rather flimsy epigram is converted into a great +moral truth. The justification of the lady is, that love is only made +permanent by elaborate intrigue. The wife is to be always on the footing +of a mistress who can only preserve her lover by incessant and +infinitely varied caresses. To do this, she must be herself cool. The +great enemy of matrimonial happiness is satiety, and we are constantly +presented with an affectionate wife boring her husband to death, and +alienating him by over-devotion. If one party is to be cheated, the one +who is freest from passion will be the winner of the game. As a maxim, +after the fashion of Rochefoucauld, this doctrine may have enough truth +to be plausible; but when seriously accepted and made the substantive +moral of a succession of stories, one is reminded less of a really acute +observer than of a lad fresh from college who thinks that wisdom +consists in an exaggerated cynicism. When ladies of this variety break +their hearts, they either die or retire in a picturesque manner to a +convent. They are indeed the raw material of which the genuine _devote_ +is made. The morbid sentimentality directed to the lover passes without +perceptible shock into a religious sentimentality, the object of which +is at least ostensibly different. The graceful but voluptuous mistress +of the Parisian salon is developed without any violent transition into +the equally graceful and ascetic nun. The connection between the +luxurious indulgence of material flirtations and religious mysticism is +curious, but unmistakable. + +Balzac's reputation in this respect is founded, not on his little hoard +of cynical maxims, which, to say the truth, are not usually very +original, but on the vivid power of describing the details and scenery +of the martyrdom, and the energy with which he paints the emotion, of +the victim. Whether his women are very lifelike, or very varied in +character, may be doubted; but he has certainly endowed them with an +admirable capacity for suffering, and forces us to listen +sympathetically to their cries of anguish. The peculiar cynicism implied +in this view of feminine existence must be taken as part of his +fundamental theory of society. When Rastignac has seen Goriot buried, +the ceremony being attended only by his daughters' empty carriages, he +climbs to the highest part of the cemetery, and looks over Paris. As he +contemplates the vast buzzing hive, he exclaims solemnly, 'a nous deux +maintenant!' The world is before him; he is to fight his way in future +without remorse. Accordingly, Balzac's view of society is, that it is a +masquerade of devils, engaged in tormenting a few wandering angels. That +society is not what Balzac represents it to be is sufficiently proved by +the fact that society exists; as indeed he is profoundly convinced that +its destruction is only a question of time. It is rotten to the core. +Lust and avarice are the moving forms of the world, while profound and +calculating selfishness has sapped the base of all morality. The type of +a successful statesman is De Marsay, a kind of imaginary Talleyrand, who +rules because he has recognised the intrinsic baseness of mankind, and +has no scruples in turning it to account. Vautrin, who is an open enemy +of society, is simply De Marsay in revolt. The weapons with which he +fights are distinguished from those of greater men, not in their +intrinsic wickedness, but in their being accidentally forbidden by law. +He is less of a hypocrite, and scarcely a greater villain than his more +prosperous rivals. He ultimately recognises the futility of the strife, +agrees to wear a mask like his neighbours, and accepts the congenial +duties of a police agent. The secret of success in all ranks of life is +to be without scruples of morality, but exceedingly careful of breaking +the law. The bankers, Nucingen and Du Tillet, are merely cheats on a +gigantic scale. They ruin their enemies by financiering instead of +picking pockets. Be wicked if you would be successful; if possible let +your wickedness be refined; but, at all events, be wicked. + +There is, indeed, a class of unsuccessful villains, to be found chiefly +amongst journalists, for whom Balzac has a special aversion; they live, +he tells us, partly on extortion, and partly on the prostitution of +their talents to gratify political or personal animosities, and are at +the mercy of the longest purse. They fail in life, not because they are +too immoral, but because they are too weak. They are the victims instead +of the accomplices of more resolute evil-doers. Lucien de Rubempre is +the type of this class. Endowed with surpassing genius and personal +beauty, he goes to Paris to make his fortune, and is introduced to the +world as it is. On the one hand is a little knot of virtuous men, called +the _cenacle_, who are working for posterity and meanwhile starving. On +the other is a vast mass of cheats and dupes. After a brief struggle +Lucien yields to temptation, and joins in the struggle for wealth and +power. But he has not strength enough to play his part. His head is +turned by the flattery of pretty actresses and scheming publishers: he +is enticed into thoughtless dissipation, and, after a brilliant start, +finds that he is at the mercy of the cleverer villains who surround him; +that he has been bought and sold like a sheep; that his character is +gone, and his imagination become sluggish; and, finally, he has to +escape from utter ruin by scarcely describable degradation. He writes a +libel on one of his virtuous friends, who is forgiving enough to improve +it and correct it for the press. In order to bury his mistress, who has +been ruined with him, he has to raise money by grovelling in the foulest +depths of literary sewerage. He at last succeeds in crawling back to his +relations in the country, morally and materially ruined. He makes +another effort to rise, backed up by the diabolical arts of Vautrin, and +relying rather on his beauty than his talents. The world is again too +strong for him, and, after being accomplice in the most outrageous +crimes, he ends appropriately by hanging himself in prison. Vautrin, as +we have seen, escapes from the fate of his partner because he retains +coolness enough to practise upon the vices of the governing classes. +The world, in short, is composed of three classes--consistent and, +therefore, successful villains; inconsistent and, therefore, +unsuccessful villains; and virtuous persons, who never have a chance of +success, and enjoy the honours of starvation. + +The provinces differ from Paris in the nature of the social warfare, but +not in its morality. Passions are directed to meaner objects; they are +narrower, and more intense. The whole of a man's faculties are +concentrated upon one object; and he pursues it for years with +relentless and undeviating ardour. To supplant a rival, to acquire a few +more acres, to gratify jealousy of a superior, he will labour for a +lifetime. The intensity of his hatred supplies his want of intellect; he +is more cunning, if less far-sighted; and in the contest between the +brilliant Parisian and the plodding provincial we generally have an +illustration of the hare and the tortoise. The blind, persistent hatred +gets the better in the long run of the more brilliant, but more +transitory, passion. The lower nature here, too, gets the better of the +higher; and Balzac characteristically delights in the tragedy produced +by genius which falls before cunning, as virtue almost invariably yields +to vice. It is only when the slow provincial obstinacy happens to be on +the side of virtue that stupidity, doubled with virtue, as embodied for +example in two or three French Caleb Balderstons, generally gets the +worst of it. There are exceptions to this general rule. Even Balzac +sometimes relents. A reprieve is granted at the last moment, and the +martyr is unbound from the stake. But those catastrophes are not only +exceptional, but rather annoying. We have been so prepared to look for a +sacrifice that we are disappointed instead of relieved. If Balzac's +readers could be consulted during the last few pages of a novel, I feel +sure that most thumbs would be turned upwards, and the lions allowed to +have their will of the Christians. Perhaps our appetites have been +depraved; but we are not in the cue for a happy conclusion. + +I know not whether it was the cause or the consequence of this sentiment +that Balzac was a thorough legitimist. He does not believe in the +vitality of the old order, any more than he believes in the truth of +Catholicism. But he regrets the extinction of the ancient faiths, which +he admits to be unsuitable; and sees in their representatives the only +picturesque and really estimable elements that still survived in French +society. He heartily despises the modern mediaevalists, who try to spread +a thin varnish over a decaying order; the world is too far gone in +wickedness for such a futile remedy. The old chivalrous sentiments of +the genuine noblesse are giving way to the base chicanery of the +bourgeois who supplant them: the peasantry are mean, avaricious, and +full of bitter jealousy; but they are triumphantly rooting out the last +vestiges of feudalism. Democracy and communism are the fine names put +forward to justify the enmity of those who have not, against those who +have. Their success means merely an approaching 'descent of Niagara,' +and the growth of a more debasing and more materialist form of +despotism. But it would be a mistake to assume that this view of the +world implies that Balzac is in a state of lofty moral indignation. +Nothing can be further from the case. The world is wicked; but it is +fascinating. Society is very corrupt, it is true; but intensely and +permanently amusing. Paris is a hell; but hell is the only place worth +living in. The play of evil passions gives infinite subjects for +dramatic interests. The financial warfare is more diabolical than the +old literal warfare, but quite as entertaining. There is really as much +romance connected with bills of exchange as with swords and lances, and +rigging the market is nothing but the modern form of lying in ambush. +Goneril and Regan are triumphant; but we may admire the grace of their +manners and the dexterity with which they cloak their vices. Iago not +only poisons Othello's peace of mind, but, in the world of Balzac, he +succeeds to Othello's place, and is universally respected. The story +receives an additional flavour. In a characteristic passage, Balzac +regrets that Moliere did not continue 'Tartufe.' It would then have +appeared how bitterly Orgon regretted the loss of the hypocrite, who, it +is said, made love to his wife, but who, at any rate, had an interest in +making things pleasant. Your conventional catastrophe is a mistake in +art, as it is a misrepresentation of facts. Tartufe has a good time of +it in Balzac: instead of meeting with an appropriate punishment, he +flourishes and thrives, and we look on with a smile not altogether +devoid of complacency. Shall we not take the world as it is, and be +amused at the 'Comedie Humaine,' rather than fruitlessly rage against +it? It will be played out whether we like it or not, and we may as well +adapt our tastes to our circumstances. + +Ought we to be shocked at this extravagant cynicism; to quote it, as +respectable English journalists used to do, as a proof of the awful +corruption of French society, or to regard it as semi-humorous +exaggeration? I can't quite sympathise with people who take Balzac +seriously. I cannot talk about the remorseless skill with which he tears +off the mask from the fearful corruptions of modern society, and +penetrates into the most hidden motives of the human heart; nor can I +infer from his terrible pictures of feminine suffering that for every +one of those pictures a woman's heart had been tortured to death. This, +or something like this, I have read; and I can only say that I don't +believe a word of it. Balzac, indeed, as compared with our respectable +romancers, has the merit of admitting passions whose existence we +scrupulously ignore; and the further merit that he takes a far wider +range of sentiment, and does not hold by the theory that the life of a +man or a woman closes at the conventional end of a third volume. But he +is above all things a dreamer, and his dreams resemble nightmares. +Powerfully as his actors are put upon the stage, they seem to me to be, +after all, 'such stuff as dreams are made of.' A genuine observer of +life does not find it so highly spiced, and draws more moderate +conclusions. Balzac's characters run into typical examples of particular +passions rather than genuine human beings; they are generally +monomaniacs. Balthazar Claes, who gives up his life to search for the +philosopher's stone, is closely related to them all; only we must +substitute for the philosopher's stone some pet passion, in which the +whole nature is absorbed. They have the unnatural strain of mind which +marks the approach to madness. It is not ordinary daylight which +illuminates Balzac's dreamland, but some fantastic combination of +Parisian lamps, which tinges all the actors with an unearthly glare, and +distorts their features into extravagant forms. The result has, as I +have said, a strange fascination; but one is half-ashamed of yielding, +because one feels that it is due to the use of rather unholy drugs. The +vapours that rise from his magic caldron and shape themselves into human +forms smell unpleasantly of sulphur, or perhaps of Parisian sewers. + +The highest poetry, like the noblest morality, is the product of a +thoroughly healthy mind. A diseased tendency in one respect is certain +to make itself manifest in the other. Now Balzac, though he shows some +powers which are unsurpassed or unequalled, possessed a mind which, to +put it gently, was not exactly well regulated. He took a pleasure in +dwelling upon horrors from which a healthy imagination shrinks, and +rejoiced greatly in gloating over the mysteries of iniquity. I do not +say that this makes his work immoral in the ordinary sense. Probably few +people who are likely to read Balzac would be any the worse for the +study. But, from a purely artistic point of view, he is injured by his +morbid tendencies. The highest triumph of style is to say what everybody +has been thinking in such a way as to make it new; the greatest triumph +of art is to make us see the poetical side of the commonplace life +around us. Balzac's ambition was, doubtless, aimed in that direction. He +wished to show that life in Paris or at Tours was as interesting to the +man of real insight as any more ideal region. In a certain sense, he has +accomplished his purpose. He has discovered food for a dark and powerful +imagination in the most commonplace details of daily life. But he falls +short in so far as he is unable to represent things as they are, and has +a taste for impossible horrors. There are tragedies enough all round us +for him who has eyes to see. Balzac is not content with the materials at +hand, or rather he has a love for the more exceptional and hideous +manifestations. Therefore the 'Comedie Humaine,' instead of being an +accurate picture of human life, and appealing to the sympathies of all +human beings, is a collection of monstrosities, whose vices are +unnatural, and whose virtues are rather like their vices. One feels that +there is something narrow and artificial about his work. It is intensely +powerful, but it is not the highest kind of power. He makes the utmost +of the gossip of a club smoking-room, or the scandal of a drawing-room, +or perhaps of a country public-house; but he represents a special phase +of manners, and that not a particularly pleasant one, rather than the +more fundamental and permanent sentiments of mankind. When shall we see +a writer who can be powerful without being spasmodic, and pierce through +the surface of society without seeking for interest in its foulest +abysses? + + + + +_DE QUINCEY_ + + +Little more than fourteen years ago there passed from among us a man who +held a high and very peculiar position in English literature. In 1821 De +Quincey first published the work with which his name is most commonly +associated, and at uncertain intervals he gave tokens to mankind of his +continued presence on earth. What his life may have been in the +intervals seems to have been at times unknown even to his friends. He +began by disappearing from school and from his family, and seems to have +fallen into the habit of temporary eclipses. At one moment he dropped +upon his acquaintance from the clouds; at another he would vanish into +utter darkness for weeks or months together. One day he came to dine +with Christopher North--so we are told in the professor's life--was +detained for the night by a heavy storm of rain, and prolonged his +impromptu visit for a year. During that period his habits must have been +rather amazing to a well-regulated household. His wants, indeed, were +simple, and, in one sense, regular; a particular joint of mutton, cut +according to a certain mathematical formula, and an ounce of laudanum, +made him happy for a day. But in the hours when ordinary beings are +awake he was generally to be found stretched in profound opium-slumbers +upon a rug before the fire, and it was only about two or three in the +morning that he gave unequivocal symptoms of vitality, and suddenly +gushed forth in streams of wondrous eloquence to the supper parties +detained for the purpose of witnessing the display. Between these +irregular apparitions we are lastly given to understand that his life +was so strange that its details would be incredible. What these +incredible details may have been, I have no means of knowing. It is +enough that he was a strange unsubstantial being, flitting uncertainly +about in the twilight regions of society, emerging by fits and starts +into visibility, afflicted with a general vagueness as to the ordinary +duties of mankind, and generally taking much more opium than was good +for him. He tells us, indeed, that he broke off his over-mastering habit +by vigorous efforts; as he also tells us that opium is a cure for most +grievous evils, and especially saved him from an early death by +consumption. It is plain enough, however, that he never really refrained +for any length of time; and perhaps we should congratulate ourselves on +a propensity, unfortunate it may be, for its victim, but leading to the +Confessions as one collateral result. + +The life of De Quincey by "H. A. Page," published since this was +written, has removed much of the mystery; and it has also done much to +raise in some respects our estimate of his character. With all his +weaknesses De Quincey undoubtedly was a man who could excite love as +well as pity. Incapable, to a grotesque degree, of anything like +business, he did his best to discharge domestic duties: he had a +punctilious sense of honour, and got himself into difficulties by a +generosity which was certainly not corrected by the virtue of prudence. +But I will not attempt to sum up the facts, for which, as for a higher +estimate than I can subscribe of his intellectual position, I gladly +refer to his biography. I have only to do with the De Quincey of books +which have a singular fascination. De Quincey himself gives thanks for +four circumstances. He rejoices that his lot was cast in a rustic +solitude; that that solitude was in England: that his 'infant feelings +were moulded by the gentlest of sisters,' instead of 'horrid pugilistic +brothers;' and that he and his were members of 'a pure, holy, and' (the +last epithet should be emphasized) 'magnificent Church.' The +thanksgiving is characteristic, for it indicates his naive conviction +that his admiration was due to the intrinsic merits of the place and +circumstances of his birth, and not to the accident that they were his +own. It would be useless to inquire whether a more bracing atmosphere +and a less retired spot might have been more favourable to his talents; +but we may trace the influence of these conditions of his early life +upon his subsequent career. + + * * * * * + +De Quincey implicitly puts forward a claim which has been accepted by +all competent critics. They declare, and he tacitly assumes, that he is +a master of the English language. He claims a sort of infallibility in +deciding upon the precise use of words and the merits of various styles. +But he explicitly claims something more. He declares that he has used +language for purposes to which it has hardly been applied by any prose +writers. The 'Confessions of an Opium-eater' and the 'Suspiria de +Profundis' are, he tells us, 'modes of impassioned prose, ranging under +no precedents that I am aware of in any literature.' The only +confessions that have previously made any great impression upon the +world are those of St. Augustine and of Rousseau; but, with one short +exception in St. Augustine, neither of those compositions contains any +passion, and, therefore, De Quincey stands absolutely alone as the +inventor and sole performer on a new musical instrument--for such an +instrument is the English language in his hands. He belongs to a genus +in which he is the only individual. The novelty and the difficulty of +the task must be his apology if he fails, and causes of additional glory +if he succeeds. He alone of all human beings who have written since the +world began, has entered a path, which the absence of rivals proves to +be encumbered with some unusual obstacles. The accuracy and value of so +bold a claim require a short examination. After all, every writer, +however obscure, may contrive by a judicious definition to put himself +into a solitary class. He has some peculiarities which distinguish him +from all other mortals. He is the only journalist who writes at a given +epoch from a particular garret in Grub Street, or the only poet who is +exactly six feet high and measures precisely forty-two inches round the +chest. Any difference whatever may be applied to purposes of +classification, and the question is whether the difference is, or is +not, of much importance. By examining, therefore, the propriety of De +Quincey's view of his own place in literature, we shall be naturally led +to some valuation of his distinctive merits. In deciding whether a bat +should be classed with birds or beasts, we have to determine the nature +of the beast and the true theory of his wings. And De Quincey, if the +comparison be not too quaint, is like the bat, an ambiguous character, +rising on the wings of prose to the borders of the true poetical region. + +De Quincey, then, announces himself as an impassioned writer, as a +writer in impassioned prose, and, finally, as applying impassioned prose +to confessions. The first question suggested by this assertion concerns +the sense of the word 'impassioned.' There is very little of what one +ordinarily means by passion in the Confessions or elsewhere. There are +no explosions of political wrath, such as animate the 'Letters on a +Regicide Peace,' or of a deep religious emotion, which breathes through +many of our greatest prose writers. The language is undoubtedly a +vehicle for sentiments of a certain kind, but hardly of that burning and +impetuous order which we generally indicate by impassioned. It is deep, +melancholy reverie, not concentrated essence of emotion; and the epithet +fails to indicate any specific difference between himself and many other +writers. The real peculiarity is not in the passion expressed, but in +the mode of expressing it. De Quincey resembles the story-tellers +mentioned by some Eastern travellers. So extraordinary is their power of +face, and so skilfully modulated are the inflections of their voices, +that even a European, ignorant of the language, can follow the narrative +with absorbing interest. One may fancy that if De Quincey's language +were emptied of all meaning whatever, the mere sound of the words would +move us, as the lovely word Mesopotamia moved Whitefield's hearer. The +sentences are so delicately balanced, and so skilfully constructed, that +his finer passages fix themselves in the memory without the aid of +metre. Humbler writers are content if they can get through a single +phrase without producing a decided jar. They aim at keeping up a steady +jog-trot, which shall not give actual pain to the jaws of the reader. +They no more think of weaving whole paragraphs or chapters into complex +harmonies, than an ordinary pedestrian of 'going to church in a galliard +and coming home in a coranto.' Even our great writers generally settle +down to a stately but monotonous gait, after the fashion of Johnson or +Gibbon, or are content with adopting a style as transparent and +inconspicuous as possible. Language, according to the common phrase, is +the dress of thought; and that dress is the best, according to modern +canons of taste, which attracts least attention from its wearer. De +Quincey scorns this sneaking maxim of prudence, and boldly challenges +our admiration by indulgence in what he often calls 'bravura.' His +language deserves a commendation sometimes bestowed by ladies upon rich +garments, that it is capable of standing up by itself. The form is so +admirable that, for purposes of criticism, we must consider it as +something apart from the substance. The most exquisite passages in De +Quincey's writings are all more or less attempts to carry out the idea +expressed in the title of the dream fugue. They are intended to be +musical compositions, in which words have to play the part of notes. +They are impassioned, not in the sense of expressing any definite +sentiment, but because, from the structure and combination of the +sentences, they harmonise with certain phases of emotion. + +Briefly, De Quincey is doing in prose what every great poet does in +verse. The specific mark thus indicated is still insufficient to give +him a solitary position among writers. All great rhetoricians, as De +Quincey defines and explains the term, rise to the borders of poetry, +and the art which has recently been cultivated among us under the name +of word-painting may be more fitly described as an attempt to produce +poetical effects without the aid of metre. From most of the writers +described under this rather unpleasant phrase he differs by the +circumstance, that his art is more nearly allied to music than to +painting. Or, if compared to any painters, it must be to those who care +comparatively little for distinct portraiture or dramatic interest. He +resembles rather the school which is satisfied by contemplating +gorgeous draperies, and graceful limbs and long processions of imposing +figures, without caring to interpret the meaning of their works, or to +seek for more than the harmonious arrangement of form and colour. In +other words, his prose-poems should be compared to the paintings which +aim at an effect analogous to that of stately pieces of music. Milton is +the poet whom he seems to regard with the sincerest admiration; and he +apparently wishes to emulate the majestic rhythm of the 'God-gifted +organ-voice of England.' Or we may, perhaps, admit some analogy between +his prose and the poetry of Keats, though it is remarkable that he +speaks with very scant appreciation of his contemporary. The 'Ode to a +Nightingale,' with its marvellous beauty of versification and the dim +associations half-consciously suggested by its language, surpasses, +though it resembles, some of De Quincey's finest passages; and the +'Hyperion' might have been translated into prose as a fitting companion +for some of the opium dreams. It is in the success with which he +produces such effects as these that De Quincey may fairly claim to be +unsurpassed in our language. Pompous (if that word may be used in a good +sense) declamation in prose, where the beauty of the thought is lost in +the splendour of the style, is certainly a rare literary product. Of the +great rhetoricians whom De Quincey quotes in the Essay on Rhetoric just +noticed, such men as Burke and Jeremy Taylor lead us to forget the means +in the end. They sound the trumpet as a warning, not for the mere +delight in its volume of sound. Perhaps his affinity to Sir Thomas +Browne is more obvious; and one can understand the admiration which he +bestows upon the opening bar of a passage in the Urn-burial:--'Now since +these bones have rested quietly in the grave under the drums and +tramplings of three conquests,' &c. 'What a melodious ascent,' he +exclaims, 'as of a prelude to some impassioned requiem breathing from +the pomps of earth and from the sanctities of the grave! What a _fluctus +decumanus_ of rhetoric! Time expounded, not by generations or centuries, +but by vast periods of conquests and dynasties; by cycles of Pharaohs +and Ptolemies, Antiochi and Arsacides! And these vast successions of +time distinguished and figured by the uproars which revolve at their +inaugurations; by the drums and tramplings rolling overhead upon the +chambers of forgotten dead--the trepidations of time and mortality +vexing, at secular intervals, the everlasting sabbaths of the grave!' + +The commentator is seeking to eclipse the text, and his words are at +once a description and an example of his own most characteristic +rhetoric. Wordsworth once uttered an aphorism which De Quincey repeats +with great admiration: that language is not, as I have just said, the +dress, but 'the incarnation of thought.' But though accepting and +enforcing the doctrine by showing that the 'mixture is too subtle, the +intertexture too ineffable' to admit of expression, he condemns the +style which is the best illustration of its truth. He is very angry with +the admirers of Swift; De Foe and 'many hundreds' of others wrote +something quite as good; it only wanted 'plain good sense, natural +feeling, unpretendingness, some little scholarly practice in putting +together the clockwork of sentences, and, above all, the advantage of an +appropriate subject.' Could Swift, he asks, have written a pendant to +passages in Sir W. Raleigh, or Sir Thomas Browne, or Jeremy Taylor? He +would have cut the same figure as 'a forlorn scullion from a greasy +eating-house at Rotterdam, if suddenly called away in vision to act as +seneschal to the festival of Belshazzar the King, before a thousand of +his lords.' And what, we may retort, would Taylor, or Browne, or De +Quincey himself, have done, had one of them been wanted to write down +the project of Wood's halfpence in Ireland? He would have resembled a +king in his coronation robes compelled to lead a forlorn hope up the +scaling ladders. The fact is, that Swift required for his style not only +the plain good sense and other rare qualities enumerated, but pungent +humour, quick insight, deep passion, and general power of mind, such as +is given to few men in a century. But, as in his case the thought is +really incarnated in the language we cannot criticise the style +separately from the thoughts, or we can only assign, as its highest +merit, its admirable fitness for producing the desired effect. It would +be wrong to invert De Quincey's censure, and blame him because his +gorgeous robes are not fitted for more practical purposes. To everything +there is a time; for plain English, and for De Quincey's highly-wrought +passages. + +It would be difficult or impossible, and certainly it would be +superfluous, to define with any precision the peculiar flavour of De +Quincey's style. A few specimens would do more than any description; and +De Quincey is too well known to justify quotation. It may be enough to +notice that most of his brilliant performances are variations on the +same theme. He appeals to our terror of the infinite, to the shrinking +of the human mind before astronomical distances and geological periods +of time. He paints vast perspectives, opening in long succession, till +we grow dizzy in the contemplation. The cadence of his style suggests +sounds echoing each other, and growing gradually fainter, till they die +away into infinite distance. Two great characteristics, he tells us, of +his opium dreams were a deep-seated melancholy and an exaggeration of +the things of space and time. Nightly he descended 'into chasms and +sunless abysses, depths below depths, from which it seemed hopeless that +he could ever reascend.' He saw buildings and landscapes 'in proportion +so vast as the human eye is not fitted to receive.' He seemed to live +ninety or a hundred years in a night, and even to pass through periods +far beyond the limits of human existence. Melancholy and an awe-stricken +sense of the vast and vague are the emotions which he communicates with +the greatest power; though the melancholy is too dreamy to deserve the +name of passion, and the terror of the infinite is not explicitly +connected with any religious emotion. It is a proof of the fineness of +his taste, that he scarcely ever falls into bombast; we tremble at his +audacity in accumulating gorgeous phrases; but we confess that he is +justified by the result. The only exception that I can remember is the +passage in 'The English Mailcoach,' where his exaggerated patriotism +leads him into what strikes me at least as a rather vulgar bit of +claptrap. If any reader will take the trouble to compare De Quincey's +account of a kind of anticipation of the Balaclava charge at the battle +of Talavera, with Napier's description of the same facts, he will be +amused at the distortion of history; but whatever the accuracy of the +statements, one is a little shocked at finding 'the inspiration of God' +attributed to the gallant dragoons who were cut to pieces on that +occasion, as other gallant men have been before and since. The phrase is +overcharged, and inevitably suggests a cynical reaction of mind. The +ideas of dragoons and inspiration do not coalesce so easily as might be +wished; but, with this exception, I think that his purple patches are +almost irreproachable, and may be read and re-read with increasing +delight. I know of no other modern writer who has soared into the same +regions with so uniform and easy a flight. + +The question is often raised how far the attempt to produce by one art +effects specially characteristic of another can be considered as +legitimate; whether, for example, a sculptor, when encroaching upon the +province of the painter, or a prose writer attempting to rival poets, +may not be summarily condemned. The answer probably would be that a +critic who lays down such rules is erecting himself into a legislator, +when he should be a simple observer. Success justifies itself; and when +De Quincey obtains, without the aid of metre, graces which few other +writers have won by the same means, it is all the more creditable to De +Quincey. A certain presumption, however, remains in such cases, that the +failure to adopt the ordinary methods implies a certain deficiency of +power. If we ask why De Quincey, who trenched so boldly upon the +peculiar province of the poet, yet failed to use the poetical form, +there is one very obvious answer. He has one intolerable fault, a fault +which has probably done more than any other to diminish his popularity, +and which is, of all faults, most diametrically opposed to poetical +excellence. He is utterly incapable of concentration. He is, from the +very principles on which his style is constructed, the most diffuse of +writers. Other men will pack half-a-dozen distinct propositions into a +sentence, and care little if they are somewhat crushed and distorted in +the process. De Quincey insists upon putting each of them separately, +smoothing them out elaborately, till not a wrinkle disturbs their +uniform surface, and then presenting each of them for our acceptance +with a placid smile. His commendable desire for lucidity of expression +makes him nervously anxious to avoid any complexity of thought. Each +step of his argument, each shade of meaning, and each fact in his +narrative, must have its own separate embodiment; and every joint and +connecting link must be carefully and accurately defined. The clearness +is won at a price. There is some advantage in this elaborate method of +dissecting out every distinct fibre and ramification of an argument. +But, on the whole, one is apt to remember that life is limited, and that +there are some things in this world which must be taken for granted. If +a man's boyhood fill two volumes, and if one of these (though under +unfavourable circumstances) took six months to revise, it seems probable +that in later years he would have taken longer to record events than to +live them. No autobiography written on such principles could ever reach +even the middle life of the author. Take up, for example, the first +volume of his collected works. Why, on the very first page, having +occasion to mention Christendom in the fifteenth century, should he +provide against some eccentric misconception by telling us that it did +not, at that time, include any part of America? Why should it take +considerably more than a page to explain that when a schoolmaster begins +lessons punctually, and leaves off too late, there will be an +encroachment on the hours of play? Or two pages to describe how a porter +dropped a portmanteau on a flight of stairs, and didn't waken a +schoolmaster? Or two more to account for the fact that he asked a woman +the meaning of the noise produced by the 'bore' in the Dee, instead of +waiting till she spoke to him? Impassioned prose may be a very good +thing; but when its current is arrested by such incessant stoppages, and +the beauty of the English language displayed by showing how many +faultless sentences may be expended on an exhaustive description of +irrelevant trifles, the human mind becomes recalcitrant. A man may +become prolix from the fulness or fervency of his mind; but prolixity +produced by this finical minuteness of language, ends by distressing +one's nerves. It is the same sense of irritation as is produced by +waiting for the tedious completion of an elaborate toilette, and one is +rather tempted to remember Artemus Ward's description of the Fourth of +July oration, which took four hours 'to pass a given point.' + +This peculiarity of his style is connected with other qualities upon +which a great deal of eulogy has been bestowed. There are two faculties +in which, so far as my experience goes, no man, woman, or child ever +admits his or her own deficiency. The driest of human beings will boast +of their sense of humour; and the most perplexed, of their logical +acuteness. De Quincey has been highly praised, both as a humorist and as +a logician. He believed in his own powers, and exhibits them rather +ostentatiously. He says, pleasantly enough, but not without a substratum +of real conviction, that he is 'a _doctor seraphicus_, and also +_inexpugnabilis_ upon quillets of logic.' I confess that I am generally +sceptical as to the merits of infallible dialecticians, because I have +observed that a man's reputation for inexorable logic is generally in +proportion to the error of his conclusions. A logician, in popular +estimation, seems to be one who never shrinks from a _reductio ad +absurdum_. His merits are measured, not by the accuracy of his +conclusions, but by the distance which separates them from his +premisses. The explanation doubtless lies in the general impression that +logic is concerned with words and not with things. There is a vague +belief that by skilfully linking syllogisms you can form a chain +sufficiently strong to cross the profoundest abyss, and which will need +no test of observation and verification. A dexterous performer, it is +supposed, might pass from one extremity of the universe to the other +without ever touching ground; and people do not observe that the refusal +to draw an inference may be just as great a proof of logical skill as +ingenuity in drawing it. Now De Quincey's claim to infallibility would +be plausible, if we still believed that to define words accurately is +the same thing as to discover facts, and that binding them skilfully +together is equivalent to reasoning securely. He is a kind of rhetorical +Euclid. He makes such a flourish with his apparatus of axioms and +definitions that you do not suspect any lurking fallacy. He is careful +to show you the minutest details of his argumentative mechanism. Each +step in the process is elaborately and separately set forth; you are not +assumed to know anything, or to be capable of supplying any links for +yourself; it shall not even be taken for granted without due notice that +things which are equal to a third thing are equal to each other; and the +consequence is, that few people venture to question processes which seem +to be so plainly set forth, and to advance by such a careful +development. + +When, indeed, De Quincey has a safe guide, he can put an argument with +admirable clearness. The expositions of political economy, for example, +are clear and ingenious, though even here I may quote Mr. Mill's remark, +that he should have imagined a certain principle--obvious enough when +once stated--to have been familiar to all economists, 'if the instance +of Mr. De Quincey did not prove that the complete non-recognition and +implied denial of it are compatible with great intellectual ingenuity +and close intimacy with the subject-matter.'[4] Upon this question, Mr. +Shadworth Hodgson has maintained that De Quincey was in the right as +against Mill, and I cannot here argue the point. I think, however, that +all economists would admit that De Quincey's merits were confined to an +admirable exposition of another man's reasoning, and included no +substantial addition to the inquiry. Certainly he does not count as one +of those whose writings marked any epoch in the development of the +science--if it be a science. Admirable skill of expression is, indeed, +no real safeguard against logical blunders; and I will venture to say +that De Quincey rarely indulges in this ostentatious logical precision +without plunging into downright fallacies. I will take two instances. +The first is trifling, but characteristic. Poor Dr. Johnson used to +reproach himself, as De Quincey puts it, 'with lying too long in bed.' +How absurd! is the comment. The doctor got up at eleven because he went +to bed at three. If he had gone to bed at twelve, could he not easily +have got up at eight? The remark would have been sound in form, though a +quibble in substance, if Johnson had complained of lying in bed 'too +late;' but as De Quincey himself speaks of 'too long' instead of 'too +late,' it is an obvious reply that eight hours are of the same length at +every period of the day. The great logician falls into another +characteristic error in the same paragraph. Dr. Johnson, he says, was +not 'indolent;' but he adds that Johnson 'had a morbid predisposition to +decline labour from his scrofulous habit of body,' which was increased +by over-eating and want of exercise. It is a cruel mode of vindication +to say that you are not indolent, but only predisposed by a bad +constitution and bad habits to decline labour; but the advantage of +accurate definition is, that you can knock a man down with one hand, and +pick him up with the other. + +To take a more serious case. De Quincey undertakes to refute Hume's +memorable argument against miracles. There are few better arenas for +intellectual combats, and De Quincey has in it an unusual opportunity +for display. He is obviously on his mettle. He comes forward with a +whole battery of propositions, carefully marshalled in strategical +order, and supported by appropriate 'lemmas.' One of his arguments, +whether cogent or not, is that Hume's objection will not apply to the +evidence of a multitude of witnesses. Now, a conspicuous miracle, he +says, can be produced resting on such evidence, to wit, that of the +thousands fed by a few loaves and fishes. The simplest infidel will, of +course, reply that as these thousands of witnesses cannot be produced, +the evidence open to us reduces itself to that of the Evangelists. De +Quincey recollects this, and replies to it in a note. 'Yes,' he says, +'the Evangelists certainly; and, let us add, all those contemporaries to +whom the Evangelists silently appealed. These make up the "multitude" +contemplated in the case' under consideration. That is, to make up the +multitude, you have to reckon as witnesses all those persons who did not +contradict the 'silent appeal,' or whose contradiction has not reached +us. With such canons of criticism it is hard to say what might not be +proved. When a man with a great reputation for learning and logical +ability tries to put us off with these wretched quibbles, one is fairly +bewildered. He shows an ignorance of the real strength and weakness of +the position, which, but for his reputation, one would summarily explain +by incapacity for reasoning. As it is, we must suppose that, living +apart from the daily battle of life, he had lost that quick instinct +possessed by all genuine logicians for recognising the vital points of +an argument. A day in a court of justice would have taught him more +about evidence than a month spent over Aristotle. He had become fitter +for the parade of the fencing-room than for the real thrust and parry of +a duel in earnest. The mere rhetorical flourish pleases him as much as a +blow at his antagonist's heart. Another glaring instance in the same +paper is his apparent failure to perceive that there is a difference +between proving that such a prophecy as that announcing the fall of +Babylon was fulfilled, and proving that it was supernaturally inspired. +Hume, without a tenth part of the logical apparatus, would have exposed +the fallacy in a sentence. Paley, whom he never tires of treating to +contemptuous abuse, was incapable of such feeble sophistry. De Quincey, +in short, was a very able expositor; but he was not, though under better +discipline he might probably have become, a sound original thinker. He +is an interpreter, not an originator of thought. His skill in setting +forth an argument blinds him to its most palpable defects. If language +is a powerful weapon in his hands, it is only when the direction of the +blow is dictated by some more manly, if less ingenious, understanding. + +Let us inquire, and it is a more delicate question, whether he is better +qualified to use it as a plaything. He has a reputation as a humorist. +The Essay on Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts is probably the +most popular of his writings. The conception is undoubtedly meritorious, +and De Quincey returns to it more than once in his other works. The +description of the Williams murders is inimitable, and the execution +even in the humorous passages is frequently good. We may praise +particular sentences: such as the well-known remark that 'if a man once +indulges himself in murder, he comes to think little of robbing; and +from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking; and from +that to incivility and procrastination.' One laughs at this whimsical +inversion; but I don't think one laughs very heartily; and certainly one +does not find, as in really deep humour, that the paradox is pregnant +with further meaning, and the laugh a prelude to a more melancholy +smile. Many of the best things ever said are couched in a similar form: +the old remark that the use of language is the concealment of thought; +the saying that the half is greater than the whole, and that two and two +don't always make four, are familiar instances; but each of them really +contains a profound truth expressed in a paradoxical form, which is a +sufficient justification of their extraordinary popularity. But if every +inversion of a commonplace were humorous, we should be able to make +jokes by machinery. There is no humour that I can see in the statement +that honesty is the worst policy, or that procrastination saves time; +and De Quincey's phrase, though I admit that it is amusing as a kind of +summary of his essay, seems to me to rank little higher than an +ingenious pun. It is a clever trick of language, but does not lead any +further. + +Here, too, and elsewhere, the humour gives us a certain impression of +thinness. It is pressed too far, and spun out too long. Compare De +Quincey's mode of beating out his one joke through pages of laboured +facetiousness, with Swift's concentrated and pungent irony, as in the +proposal for eating babies, or the argument to prove that the abolition +of Christianity may be attended with some inconveniences. It is the +difference between the stiffest of nautical grogs and the negus provided +by thoughtful parents for a child's evening party. In some parts of the +essay De Quincey sinks far lower. I do not believe that in any English +author of reputation there is a more feeble piece of forced fun, than in +the description of the fight of the amateur in murder with the baker at +Munich. One knows by a process of reasoning that the man is joking; but +one feels inclined to blush, through sympathy with a very clear man so +exposing himself. A blemish of the same kind makes itself unpleasantly +obvious at many points of his writings. He seems to fear that we shall +find his stately and elaborate style rather too much for our nerves. He +is conscious that, as a great master of language, he can play what +tricks he pleases, without danger of remonstrance. And therefore, he +every now and then plunges into slang, not irreverently, as a vulgar +writer might do, but of malice prepense. The shock is almost as great as +if an organist performing a solemn tune should suddenly introduce an +imitation of the mewing of a cat. Now, he seems to say, you can't accuse +me of being dull and pompous. Let me quote an instance or two from his +graver writings. He wishes to argue, in defence of Christianity, that +the ancients were insensible to ordinary duties of humanity. 'Our wicked +friend Kikero, for instance, who _was_ so bad, but _wrote_ so well, who +_did_ such naughty things, but _said_ such pretty things, has himself +noticed in one of his letters, with petrifying coolness, that he knew of +destitute old women in Rome who went without tasting food for one, two, +or even three days. After making such a statement, did Kikero not tumble +downstairs and break at least three of his legs in his hurry to call a +public meeting,' &c., &c. What delicate humour! The grave apologist of +Christianity actually calls Cicero, Kikero, and talks about 'three of +his legs!' Do we not all explode with laughter? A parallel case occurs +in his argument about the Essenes; where he grows so irrepressibly +funny as to call Josephus 'Mr. Joe,' and addresses him as +follows:--'Wicked Joseph, listen to me: you've been telling us a fairy +tale; and for my part, I've no objection to a fairy tale in any +situation, because if one can make no use of it oneself, always one +knows that a child will be thankful for it. But this tale, Mr. Joseph, +happens also to be a lie; secondly, a fraudulent lie; thirdly, a +malicious lie.' I have seen this stuff described as 'scholarlike +badinage;' but the only effect of such exquisite foolery, within my +mind, is to persuade one that a writer assailed by such weapons, and +those weapons used by a man who has the whole resources of the English +language at his command, must probably have been encountering an +inconvenient truth. I will simply refer to the story of Sir Isaac Newton +sitting all day with one stocking on and one off, in the Casuistry of +Roman Meals, as an illustration of the way in which a story ought not to +be told. Its most conspicuous, though not its worst fault, its extreme +length, protects it from quotation. + +It is strange to find that a writer, pre-eminently endowed with delicacy +of ear, and boasting of the complex harmonies of his style, should +condescend to such an irritating defect. De Quincey says of one of the +greatest masters of the humorous:--'The gyration within which his +(Lamb's) sentiment wheels, no matter of what kind it may be, is always +the shortest possible. It does not prolong itself, it does not repeat +itself, it does not propagate itself.' And he goes on to connect the +failing with Lamb's utter insensibility to music, and indifference to +'the rhythmical in prose composition.' The criticism is a fine one in +its way, but it may perhaps explain some of De Quincey's shortcomings in +Lamb's peculiar sphere. De Quincey's jokes are apt to repeat and +prolong and propagate themselves, till they become tiresome; and the +delicate touch of the true humorist, just indicating a half-comic, +half-pathetic thought, is alien to De Quincey's more elaborate style. +Yet he had a true and peculiar sense of humour. That faculty may be +predominant or latent; it may form the substance of a whole book, as in +the case of Sterne: or it may permeate every sentence, as in Carlyle's +writings; or it may simply give a faint tinge, rather perceived by +subsequent analysis than consciously felt at the time; and in this +lowest degree it frequently gives a certain charm to De Quincey's +writing. When he tries overt acts of wit, he becomes simply vulgar; when +he directly aims at the humorous, we feel his hand to be rather heavy; +but he is occasionally very happy in that ironical method, of which the +Essay on Murder is the most notorious specimen. The best example, in my +opinion, is the description of his elder brother in the Autobiographical +Sketches. The account of the rival kingdoms of Gombroon and +Tigrasylvania; of poor De Quincey's troubles in getting rid of his +subjects' tails; of his despair at the suggestion that by making them +sit down for six hours a day they might rub them off in the course of +several centuries; of his ingenious plan of placing his unlucky island +at a distance of 75 degrees of latitude from his brother's capital; and +of his dismay at hearing of the 'vast horns and promontories' which run +down from all parts of the hostile dominions towards his unoffending +little territory, are touched with admirable skill. The grave, elaborate +detail of the perplexities of his childish imagination is pleasant, and +at the same time pathetic. When, in short, by simply applying his usual +stateliness of manner to a subject a little beneath it in dignity, he +can produce the desired effect, he is eminently successful. The same +rhetoric which would be appropriate (to use his favourite illustration) +in treating the theme of 'Belshazzar the King giving a great feast to a +thousand of his lords,' has a certain piquancy, when for Belshazzar we +substitute a schoolboy playing at monarchy. He is indulging in a +whimsical masquerade, and the pomp is assumed in sport instead of in +earnest. Nobody can do a little mock majesty so well as he who on +occasion can be seriously majestic. Yet when he altogether abandons his +strong ground, and chooses to tumble and make grimaces before us, like +an ordinary clown, he becomes simply offensive. The great tragedian is +capable on due occasion of pleasant burlesque; but sheer unadulterated +comedy is beyond his powers. De Quincey, in short, can parody his own +serious writing better than anybody, and the capacity is a proof that he +had the faculty of humour; but for a genuine substantive joke--a joke +which, resting on its own merits, instead of being the shadow of his +serious writing, is to be independently humorous--he seems, to me at +least, to be generally insufferable. + +De Quincey's final claim to a unique position rests on the fact that his +'impassioned prose' was applied to confessions. He compares himself, as +I have said, to Rousseau and Augustine. The analogy with the last of +these two writers would, I should imagine, be rather difficult to carry +beyond the first part of resemblance; but it is possible to make out a +somewhat closer affinity to Rousseau. In both cases, at least, we have +to deal with men of morbid temperament, ruined or seriously injured by +their utter incapacity for self-restraint. So far, however, as their +confessions derive an interest from the revelation of character, +Rousseau is more exciting almost in the same proportion as he confesses +greater weaknesses. The record of such errors by their chief actor, and +that actor a man of such singular ability, presents us with a strangely +attractive problem. De Quincey has less to confess, and is less anxious +to lay bare his own morbid propensities. His story excites compassion; +and, as in the famous episode of 'Anne,' attracts us by the genuine +tenderness and delicacy of feeling. He was free from the errors which +make some of Rousseau's confessions loathsome, but he was also not the +man to set fire, like Rousseau, to the hearts of a whole generation. His +narrative is a delight to literary students; not a volcanic outburst to +shake the foundations of society. Nearly all that he has to tell us is +that he ran away from school, spent some time in London, for no very +assignable reason, in a semi-starving condition, and then, equally +without reason, surrendered at discretion to the respectabilities and +went to Oxford like an ordinary human being. It is no doubt a proof of +extraordinary literary power that the facts told with De Quincey's +comment of rich meditative eloquence become so fascinating. +Unfortunately, though he managed to write recollections which are, in +their way, unique, he never achieved anything at all comparable to his +autobiographic revelations. Vague thoughts passed through his mind of +composing a great work on Political Economy, or of writing a still more +wonderful treatise on the Emendation of the Human Intellect. But he +never seems to have made any decided steps towards the fulfilment of +such dreams, and remained to the end of his days a melancholy specimen +of wasted force. There is nothing, unfortunately, very uncommon in the +story, except so far as its hero was a man of genius. The history of +Coleridge exemplifies a still higher ambition, resulting, it is true, in +a much greater influence upon the thought of the age, but almost +equally sad. Their lives might be put into tracts for the use of +opium-eaters; and whilst there was still hope of redeeming them, it +might have been worth while to condemn them with severity. Indignation +is now out of place, and we can only grieve and pass by. When thousands +of men are drinking themselves to death every year, there is nothing +very strange or dramatic in the history of one ruined by opium instead +of by gin. + +From De Quincey's writings we get the notion of a man amiable, but with +an uncertain temper; with fine emotions, but an utter want of moral +strength; and, in short, of a nature of much delicacy and tenderness +retreating into opium and the Lake district, from a world which was too +rough for him. He uttered in many fragmentary ways his views of +philosophy and politics. Whatever their value, De Quincey has of course +no claim to be an originator. He not only had not strength to stand +alone, but he belonged to a peculiar side-current of English thought. He +was the adjective of which Coleridge was the substantive; and if +Coleridge himself was an unsatisfactory and imperfect thinker, his +imperfections are greatly increased in his friend and disciple. He +shared that belief which some people have not yet abandoned, that the +answer to all our perplexities is to be found in some of the mysteries +of German metaphysics. If we could only be taught to distinguish between +the reason and the understanding, the scales would fall from our eyes, +and we should see that the Thirty-nine Articles contained the plan on +which the universe was framed. He had an acquaintance, which, if his own +opinion were correct, was accurate and profound with Kant's writings, +and had studied Schelling, Fichte, and Hegel. He could talk about +concepts and categories and schematisms without losing his head amongst +those metaphysical heights. He knew how by the theoretic reason to +destroy all proofs of the existence of God, and then, by introducing the +practical reason, to set the existence of God beyond a doubt. He fancied +that he was able to translate the technicalities of Kant into plain +English; and he believed that when so translated, they would prove to +have a real and all important meaning. If German metaphysics be a +science, and not a mere edifice of moonshine; and if De Quincey had +really penetrated the secrets of that science, we have missed a chance +of enlightenment. As it is, we have little left except a collection of +contemptuous prejudices. De Quincey thought himself entitled to treat +Locke as a shallow pretender. The whole eighteenth century was, with one +or two exceptions, a barren wilderness to him. He aspersed its +reasoners, from Locke to Paley; he scorned its poets with all the +bitterness of the school which first broke loose from the rule of Pope; +and its prose-writers, with the exception of Burke, were miserable +beings in his eyes. He would have seen with little regret a holocaust of +all the literature produced in England between the death of Milton and +the rise of Wordsworth. Naturally, he hated an infidel with that kind of +petulant bitterness which possesses an old lady in a country village, +who has just heard that some wicked people dispute the story of Balaam's +ass. And, as a corollary, he combined the whole French people in one +sweeping censure, and utterly despised their morals, manners, +literature, and political principles. He was a John Bull, as far as a +man can be who is of weakly, nervous temperament, and believes in Kant. + +One or two illustrations may be given of the force of these effeminate +prejudices; and it is to be remarked with regret that they are +specially injurious in a department where he otherwise had eminent +merits, that, namely, of literary criticism. Any man who lived in the +eighteenth century was _prima facie_ a fool; if a free thinker, his case +was all but hopeless; but if a French free thinker, it was desperate +indeed. He lets us into the secret of his prejudices, which, indeed, is +tolerably transparent in his statement that he found it hard to +reverence Coleridge when he supposed him to be a Socinian. Now, though a +'liberal man,' he could not hold a Socinian to be a Christian; nor could +he 'think that any man, though he make himself a marvellously clever +disputant, ever could tower upwards into a very great philosopher, +unless he should begin or end with Christianity.' The canon may be +sound, but it at once destroys the pretensions of such men as Hobbes, +Spinoza, Hume, and even, though De Quincey considers him 'a dubious +exception,' Kant. Even heterodoxy is enough to alienate his sympathies. +'Think of a man,' he exclaims about poor Whiston, 'who had brilliant +preferment within his reach, dragging his poor wife and daughter for +half a century through the very mire of despondency and destitution, +because he disapproved of Athanasius, or because the "Shepherd of +Hermas" was not sufficiently esteemed by the Church of England.' To do +him justice, De Quincey admits, in another passage, that this ridicule +of a poor man for sacrificing his interests to his principles was not +quite fair; but then Whiston was only an Arian. When Priestley, who was +a far worse heretic, had his house sacked by a mob and his life +endangered, De Quincey can scarcely restrain his exultation. He admits +in terms that Priestley ought to be pitied, but adds that the fanaticism +of the mob was 'much more reasonable' than the fanaticism of Priestley; +and that those who play at bowls must look out for rubbers. Porson is to +be detested for his letters to Travis, though De Quincey does not dare +to defend the disputed text. He has, however, a pleasant insinuation at +command. Porson, he says, stung like a hornet; 'it may chance that on +this subject Master Porson will get stung through his coffin, before he +is many years deader.' What scholarlike badinage! Political heretics +fare little better. Fox's eloquence was 'ditch-water,' with a shrill +effervescence of 'imaginary gas.' Burnet was a 'gossiper, slanderer, and +notorious falsifier of facts.' That one of his sermons was burnt is 'the +most consolatory fact in his whole worldly career;' and he asks, 'would +there have been much harm in tying his lordship to the sermon?' Junius +was not only a knave who ought to have been transported, but his +literary success rested upon an utter delusion. He had neither +'sentiment, imagination, nor generalisation.' Johnson, though the best +of Tories, lived in the wrong century, and unluckily criticised Milton +with foolish harshness. Therefore 'Johnson, viewed in relation to +Milton, was a malicious, mendacious, and dishonest man.' + +Let us turn to greater names. Goethe's best work was 'Werther,' and De +Quincey is convinced that his reputation 'must decline for the next +generation or two, until it reaches its just level.' His merits have +been exaggerated for three reasons--first, his great age; secondly, 'the +splendour of his official rank at the court of Weimar;' thirdly, 'his +enigmatical and unintelligible writing.' But 'in Germany his works are +little read, and in this country not at all.' 'Wilhelm Meister' is +morally detestable, and, artistically speaking, rubbish. Of the author +of the Philosophical Dictionary, of the 'Essai sur les Moeurs,' of +'Candide,' and certain other trifles, his judgment is that Horace +Walpole's reputation is the same in kind, as the _genuine_ reputation of +Voltaire: 'Both are very splendid memoir writers, and of the two, Lord +Orford is the more brilliant.' In the same tone he compares Gibbon to +Southey, giving the advantage to the latter on the score of his poetical +ability; and his view of another great infidel may be inferred from the +following phrase. One of Rousseau's opinions is only known to us through +Cowper, 'for in the unventilated pages of its originator it would have +lurked undisturbed down to this hour of June, 1819.' + +Voltaire and Rousseau have the double title to hatred of being Frenchmen +and freethinkers. But even orthodox Frenchmen fare little better. 'The +French Bossuets, Bourdaloues, Fenelons, &c., whatever may be thought of +their meagre and attenuated rhetoric, are one and all the most +commonplace of thinkers.' In fact, the mere mention of France acts upon +him like a red rag on a bull. The French, 'in whom the lower forms of +passion are constantly bubbling up, from the shallow and superficial +character of their feelings,' are incapable of English earnestness. +Their taste is 'anything but good in all that department of wit and +humour'--the department, apparently, of anecdotes--'and the ground lies +in their natural want of veracity;' whereas England bases upon its +truthfulness a well-founded claim to 'a moral pre-eminence among the +nations.' Belgians, French, and Italians attract the inconsiderate by +'facile obsequiousness,' which, however, is a pendent of 'impudence and +insincerity. Want of principle and want of moral sensibility compose the +original _fundus_ of southern manners.' Our faults of style, such as +they are, proceed from our manliness. In France there are no unmarried +women at the age which amongst us gives the insulting name of old maid. +'What striking sacrifices of sexual honour does this one fact argue!' +The French style is remarkable for simplicity--'a strange pretension for +anything French;' but on the whole the intellectual merits of their +style are small, 'chiefly negative,' and 'founded on the accident of +their colloquial necessities.' They are amply compensated, too, by 'the +prodigious defects of the French in all the higher qualities of prose +composition.' Even their handwriting is the 'very vilest form of +scribbling which exists in Europe,' and they and the Germans are 'the +two most gormandising races in Europe.' They display a brutal +selfishness in satisfying their appetites, whereas Englishmen at all +public meals are remarkably conspicuous for 'a spirit of mutual +attention and self-sacrifice.' It is enough to show the real degradation +of their habits, that they use the 'odious gesture' of shrugging their +shoulders, and are fond of the 'vile ejaculation "bah!"' which is as bad +as to puff the smoke of a tobacco-pipe into your companion's face. They +have neither self-respect nor respect for others. French masters are +never dignified, though sometimes tyrannical; French servants are +always, even without meaning it, disrespectfully familiar. Many of their +manners and usages are 'essentially vulgar, and their apparent +affability depends not on kindness of heart, but love of talking.' + +The impudence of the assertions is really amusing, though one cannot but +regret that the vulgar prejudice of the old-fashioned John Bull should +have been embodied in the pages of a master of our language. They are +worth notice because they were not special to De Quincey, but +characteristic of one very intelligible tendency of his generation. De +Quincey's prejudices are chiefly the reflection of those of the +Coleridge school in general, though he added to them a few pet aversions +of his own. At times his genuine acuteness of mind raises him above the +teaching of his masters, or at least enables him to detect their +weaknesses. He discovers Coleridge's plagiarisms, though he believes +and, indeed, speaks in the most exaggerated terms of his philosophical +pretensions; whilst, in treating of Wordsworth, he points out with great +skill the fallacy of some of his theories and the inconsistency of his +practice. But whilst keenly observant of some of the failings of his +friends, he reproduces others in even an exaggerated type. He shows to +the full their narrow-minded hatred of the preceding century, of all +forms of excellence which did not correspond to their favourite types, +and of all speculation which did not lead to, or start from their +characteristic doctrines. The error is fully pardonable. We must not +look to men who are leading a revolt against established modes of +thought for a full appreciation of the doctrines of their antagonists; +and if De Quincey could recognise no merit in Voltaire or Rousseau, in +Locke, Paley, or Jeremy Bentham, their followers were quite prepared to +retaliate in kind. One feels, however, that such prejudices are more +respectable when they are the foibles of a strong mind engaged in active +warfare. We can pardon the old campaigner, who has become bitter in an +internecine contest. It is not quite so pleasant to discover the same +bitterness in a gentleman who has looked on from a distance, and never +quite made up his mind to buckle on his armour. De Quincey had not +earned the right of speaking evil of his enemies. If a man chances to be +a Hedonist, he should show the good temper which is the best virtue of +the indolent. To lie on a bed of roses, and snarl at everybody who +contradicts your theories, seems to imply rather testiness of temper +than strength of conviction. De Quincey is a Christian on Epicurean +principles. He dislikes an infidel because his repose is disturbed by +the arguments of freethinkers. He fears that he will be forced to think +conscientiously, and to polish his logical weapons afresh. He mutters +that the man is a fool, and could be easily thrashed if it were worth +while, and then turns back to his opium and his rhetoric and his beloved +Church of England. There is no pleasanter institution for a gentleman +who likes magnificent historical associations, and heartily hates the +rude revolutionists who would turn the world upside down, and thereby +disturb the rest of dreamy metaphysicians. + +He is quite pathetic, too, about the British Constitution. 'Destroy the +House of Lords,' he exclaims, 'and henceforward, for people like you and +me, England will be no habitable land.' Here, he seems to say, is one +charming elysium, where no rude hand has swept away the cobwebs or +replaced the good old-fashioned machinery; here we may find rest in the +'pure, holy, and magnificent Church,' whose Articles, interpreted by +Coleridge, may guide us through the most wondrous of metaphysical +labyrinths, and dwell in a grand constitutional edifice, rich in +picturesque memories, and blending into one complex harmony elements +contributed by a long series of centuries. And you, wretched French +revolutionists, with your love of petty precision, and irreverent +radicals and utilitarians, with your grovelling material notions, +propose to level, and destroy, and break in upon my delicious reveries. +No old Hebrew prophet could be more indignant with the enemy who +threatened to break down the carved work of his temples with axes and +hammers. But his complaint is, after all, the voice of the sluggard. Let +me dream a little longer; for much as I love my country and its +institutions, I cannot rouse myself to fight for them. It is enough if I +call their assailants an ugly name or so, and at times begin to write +what might be the opening pages of the preface to some very great work +of the future. Alas! the first digression diverts the thread of the +discourse; the task becomes troublesome, and the labour is abruptly +broken off. And so in a life of seventy-three years De Quincey read +extensively and thought acutely by fits, ate an enormous quantity of +opium, wrote a few pages which revealed new capacities in the language, +and provided a good deal of respectable padding for magazines. It +sounds, and many people will say that it is, a harsh and, perhaps they +will add, a stupid judgment. If so, they may find plenty of admirers who +will supply the eulogistic side here too briefly indicated. I will only +say two things: first, that there are very few writers who have revealed +new capacities in the language, and in English literature they might +almost be counted on the fingers. Secondly, I must confess that I have +often consulted De Quincey in regard to biographic and critical +questions, and that though I have generally found something to admire, I +have always found gross inaccuracies and almost always effeminate +prejudices and mere flippancies draped in elaborate rhetoric. I take +leave, therefore, to insist upon faults which are passed over too easily +by writers of more geniality than I claim to possess. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[4] It is curious that De Quincey, in his Essay on Style, explains that +political economy, and especially the doctrine of value, is one of those +subjects which cannot be satisfactorily treated in dialogue--the very +form which he chose to adopt for that particular purpose. + + + + +_SIR THOMAS BROWNE_ + + +'Let me not injure the felicity of others,' says Sir Thomas Browne in a +suppressed passage of the 'Religio Medici,' 'if I say that I am the +happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty into +riches, adversity into prosperity, and I am more invulnerable than +Achilles; fortune hath not one place to hit me.' Perhaps on second +thoughts, Sir Thomas felt that the phrase savoured of that presumption +which is supposed to provoke the wrath of Nemesis; and at any rate, he, +of all men, is the last to be taken too literally at his word. He is a +humorist to the core, and is here writing dramatically. There are many +things in this book, so he tells us, 'delivered rhetorically, many +expressions therein merely tropical,... and therefore also many things +to be taken in a soft and flexible sense, and not to be called unto the +rigid test of reason.' We shall hardly do wrong in reckoning amongst +them this audacious claim to surpassing felicity, as we may certainly +include his boast that he 'could lose an arm without a tear, and with +few groans be quartered into pieces.' And yet, if Sir Thomas were to be +understood in the most downright literal earnest, perhaps he could have +made out as good a case for his assertion as almost any of the troubled +race of mankind. For, if we set aside external circumstances of life, +what qualities offer a more certain guarantee of happiness than those +of which he is an almost typical example? A mind endowed with an +insatiable curiosity as to all things knowable and unknowable; an +imagination which tinges with poetical hues the vast accumulation of +incoherent facts thus stored in a capacious memory; and a strangely +vivid humour that is always detecting the quaintest analogies, and, as +it were, striking light from the most unexpected collocations of +uncompromising materials: such talents are by themselves enough to +provide a man with work for life, and to make all his work delightful. +To them, moreover, we must add a disposition absolutely incapable of +controversial bitterness; 'a constitution,' as he says of himself, 'so +general that it consorts and sympathises with all things;' an absence of +all antipathies to loathsome objects in nature--to French 'dishes of +snails, frogs, and toadstools,' or to Jewish repasts on 'locusts or +grasshoppers;' an equal toleration--which in the first half of the +seventeenth century is something astonishing--for all theological +systems; an admiration even of our natural enemies, the French, the +Spaniards, the Italians, and the Dutch; a love of all climates, of all +countries; and, in short, an utter incapacity to 'absolutely detest or +hate any essence except the devil.' Indeed, his hatred even for that +personage has in it so little of bitterness, that no man, we may be +sure, would have joined more heartily in the Scotch minister's petition +for 'the puir de'il'--a prayer conceived in the very spirit of his +writings. A man so endowed--and it is not only from his explicit +assertions, but from his unconscious self-revelation, that we may credit +him with closely approaching his own ideal--is admirably qualified to +discover one great secret of human happiness. No man was ever better +prepared to keep not only one, but a whole stableful of hobbies, nor +more certain to ride them so as to amuse himself, without loss of temper +or dignity, and without rude collisions against his neighbours. That +happy art is given to few, and thanks to his skill in it, Sir Thomas +reminds us strongly of the two illustrious brothers Shandy combined in +one person. To the exquisite kindliness and simplicity of Uncle Toby he +unites the omnivorous intellectual appetite and the humorous pedantry of +the head of the family. The resemblance, indeed, may not be quite +fortuitous. Though it does not appear that Sterne, amidst his +multifarious pilferings, laid hands upon Sir Thomas Browne, one may +fancy that he took a general hint or two from so congenial an author. + +The best mode of approaching so original a writer is to examine the +intellectual food on which his mind was nourished. He dwelt by +preference in strange literary pastures; and their nature will let us +into some secrets as to his taste and character. We will begin, +therefore, by examining the strange furniture of his mind, as described +in his longest, though not his most characteristic book--the 'Inquiry +into Vulgar Errors.' When we turn over its quaint pages, we feel as +though we were entering one of those singular museums of curiosities +which existed in the pre-scientific ages. Every corner is filled with a +strange, incoherent medley, in which really valuable objects are placed +side by side with what is simply grotesque and ludicrous. The modern man +of science may find some objects of interest; but they are mixed +inextricably with strange rubbish that once delighted the astrologer, +the alchemist, or the dealer in apocryphal relics. And the possessor of +this miscellaneous collection accompanies us with an unfailing flow of +amusing gossip: at one moment pouring forth a torrent of out-of-the-way +learning; at another, making a really passable scientific remark; and +then lapsing into an elaborate discussion of some inconceivable +absurdity; affecting the air of a grave inquirer, and to all appearance +fully believing in his own pretensions, and yet somehow indulging +himself in a half-suppressed smile, which indicates that the humorous +aspect of a question can never be far removed from his mind. Mere +curiosity is not yet differentiated from scientific thirst for +knowledge; and a quaint apologue is as good a reward for the inquirer as +the discovery of a law of nature. The numerous class which insists upon +a joke being as unequivocal as a pistol-shot, and a serious statement as +grave as a Blue-book, should therefore keep clear of Sir Thomas Browne. +His most congenial readers are those who take a simple delight in +following out any quaint train of reflections, careless whether it may +culminate in a smile or a sigh, or in some thought in which the two +elements of the sad and the ludicrous are inextricably blended. Sir +Thomas, however, is in the 'Inquiry' content generally with bringing out +the strange curiosities of his museum, and does not care to draw any +explicit moral. The quaintness of the objects unearthed seems to be a +sufficient recompense for the labour of the search. Fortunately for his +design, he lived in the time when a poet might have spoken without +hyperbole of the 'fairy tales of science.' To us, who have to plod +through an arid waste of painful observation, and slow piecing together +of cautious inferences before reaching the promised land of wondrous +discoveries, the expression sometimes appears to be ironical. Does not +science, we may ask with a _prima facie_ resemblance of right, destroy +as much poetry as it generates? To him no such doubts could present +themselves, for fairyland was still a province of the empire of science. +Strange beings moved through the pages of natural history, which were +equally at home in the 'Arabian Nights' or in poetical apologues. The +griffin, the phoenix, and the dragon were not yet extinct; the +salamander still sported in flames; and the basilisk slew men at a +distance with his deadly glance. More commonplace animals indulged in +the habits which they had learnt in fables, and of which only some +feeble vestiges now remain in the eloquence of strolling showmen. The +elephant had no joints, and was caught by felling the tree against which +he rested his stiff limbs in sleep; the pelican pierced its breast for +the good of its young; ostriches were regularly painted with a horseshoe +in their bills, to indicate their ordinary diet; storks refused to live +except in republics and free states; the crowing of a cock put lions to +flight, and men were struck dumb in good sober earnest by the sight of a +wolf. The curiosity-hunter, in short, found his game still plentiful, +and, by a few excursions into Aristotle, Pliny, and other more recondite +authors, was able still to display a rich bag for the edification of his +readers. Sir Thomas Browne sets out on that quest with all imaginable +seriousness. He persuaded himself, and he has persuaded some of his +editors, that he was a genuine disciple of Bacon, by one of whose +suggestions the 'Inquiry' is supposed to have been prompted. +Accordingly, as Bacon describes the idols by which the human mind is +misled, Sir Thomas sets out with investigating the causes of error; but +his introductory remarks immediately diverge into strange paths, from +which it is obvious that the discovery of true scientific method was a +very subordinate object in his mind. Instead of telling us by what means +truth is to be attained, his few perfunctory remarks on logic are lost +in an historical narrative given with infinite zest, of the earliest +recorded blunders. The period of history in which he most delighted was +the antediluvian--probably because it afforded the widest field for +speculation. His books are full of references to the early days of the +world. He takes a keen personal interest in our first parents. He +discusses the unfortunate lapse of Adam and Eve from every possible +point of view. It is not without a visible effort that he declines to +settle which of the two was the more guilty, and what would have been +the result if they had tasted the fruit of the Tree of Life before +applying to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Then he passes +in review every recorded speech before the Flood, shows that in each of +them, with one exception, there is a mixture of falsehood and error, and +settles to his own satisfaction that Cain showed less 'truth, wisdom, +and reverence' than Satan under similar circumstances. Granting all +which to be true, it is impossible to see how we are advanced in +settling, for example, whether the Ptolemaic or the Copernican system of +astronomy is to be adopted, or in extracting the grains of truth that +may be overlaid by masses of error in the writings of alchemists. Nor do +we really learn much by being told that ancient authorities sometimes +lie, for he evidently enjoys accumulating the fables, and cares little +for showing how to discriminate their degree of veracity. He tells us, +indeed, that Medea was simply a predecessor of certain modern artists, +with an excellent 'recipe to make white hair black;' and that Actaeon was +a spirited master of hounds, who, like too many of his ancestors, went +metaphorically, instead of literally, to the dogs. He points out, +moreover, that we must not believe on authority that the sea is the +sweat of the earth, that the serpent, before the Fall, went erect like +man, or that the right eye of a hedgehog, boiled in oil, and preserved +in a brazen vessel, will enable us to see in the dark. Such stories, he +moderately remarks, being 'neither consonant unto reason nor +correspondent unto experiment,' are unto us 'no axioms.' But we may +judge of his scepticism by his remarks on 'Oppianus, that famous +Cilician poet.' Of this writer he says that 'abating the annual mutation +of sexes in the hyaena, the single sex of the rhinoceros, the antipathy +between two drums of a lamb's and a wolf's skin, the informity of cubs, +the venation of centaurs, and some few others, he may be read with +delight and profit.' Obviously we shall find in Sir Thomas Browne no +inexorably severe guide to truth! he will not too sternly reject the +amusing because it happens to be slightly improbable, or doubt an +authority because he sometimes sanctions a mass of absurd fables. Satan, +as he argues at great length, is at the bottom of most errors, from +false religions down to a belief that there is another world in the +moon; but Sir Thomas takes little trouble to provide us with an +Ithuriel's spear, and, indeed, we have a faint suspicion that he will +overlook at times the diabolic agency in sheer enthusiasm at the +marvellous results. The logical design is little more than ostensible; +and Sir Thomas, though he knew it not himself, is really satisfied with +any line of inquiry that will bring him in sight of some freak of nature +or of opinion suitable to his museum of curiosities. + +Let us, however, pass from the anteroom, and enter this queer museum. We +pause in sheer bewilderment on the threshold, and despair of classifying +its contents intelligibly within any moderate space. This much, indeed, +is obvious at first sight--that the title 'vulgar errors' is to some +extent a misnomer. It is not given to vulgar brains to go wrong by such +complex methods. There are errors which require more learning and +ingenuity than are necessary for discovering truths; and it is in those +queer freaks of philosophical minds that Sir Thomas specially delights. +Though far, indeed, from objecting to any absurdity which lies on the +common highroad, he rejoices in the true spirit of a collector when he +can discover some grotesque fancy by rambling into less frequented paths +of inquiry. Perhaps it will be best to take down one or two specimens, +pretty much at random, and mark their nature and mode of treatment. +Here, for example, is that quaint old wonder, the phoenix, 'which, after +many hundred years, burneth itself, and from the ashes thereof ariseth +up another.' Sir Thomas carefully discusses the pros and cons of this +remarkable legend. In favour of the phoenix, it may be alleged that he +is mentioned 'not only by human authors,' but also by such 'holy +writers' as Cyril, Epiphanius, and Ambrose. Moreover, allusions are made +to him in Job and the Psalms. 'All which notwithstanding,' the following +grave reasons may be alleged against his existence: First, nobody has +ever seen a phoenix. Secondly, those who mention him speak doubtfully, +and even Pliny, after telling a story about a particular phoenix which +came to Rome in the censorship of Claudius, unkindly turns round and +declares the whole story to be a palpable lie. Thirdly, the name phoenix +has been applied to many other birds, and those who speak unequivocally +of the genuine phoenix contradict each other in the most flagrant way as +to his age and habitat. Fourthly, many writers, such as Ovid, only speak +poetically, and others, as Paracelsus, only mystically, whilst the +remainder speak rhetorically, emblematically, or hieroglyphically. +Fifthly, in the Scriptures, the word translated phoenix means a palm +tree. Sixthly, his existence, if we look closely, is implicitly denied +in the Scriptures, because all fowls entered the ark in pairs, and +animals were commanded to increase and multiply, neither of which +statements is compatible with the solitary nature of the phoenix. +Seventhly, nobody could have known by experience whether the phoenix +actually lived for a thousand years, and, therefore, 'there may be a +mistake in the compute.' Eighthly, and finally, no animals really +spring, or could spring, from the ashes of their predecessors and it is +impossible to believe that they could enter the world in such a fashion. +Having carefully summed up this negative evidence--enough, one would +have fancied, to blow the poor phoenix into summary annihilation--Sir +Thomas finally announces his grave conclusion in these words--'How far +to rely on this tradition we refer unto consideration.' And yet he feels +impelled to add a quaint reflection on the improbability of a statement +made by Plutarch, that 'the brain of a phoenix is a pleasant bit, but +that it causeth the headache.' Heliogabalus, he observes, could not have +slain the phoenix, for it must of necessity be 'a vain design to destroy +any species, or mutilate the great accomplishment of six days.' To which +it is added, by way of final corollary, that after Cain had killed Abel, +he could not have destroyed Eve, supposing her to have been the only +woman in existence; for then there must have been another creation, and +a second rib of Adam must have been animated. + +We must not, however, linger too long with these singular speculations, +for it is probable that phoenix-fanciers are becoming rare. It is enough +to say briefly, that if anyone wishes to understand the natural history +of the basilisk, the griffin, the salamander, the cockatrice, or the +amphisboena--if he wishes to know whether a chameleon lives on air, and +an ostrich on horseshoes--whether a carbuncle gives light in the dark, +whether the Glastonbury thorn bore flowers on Christmas-day, whether the +mandrake 'naturally groweth under gallowses,' and shrieks 'upon +eradication,'--on these and many other such points he may find grave +discussions in Sir Thomas Browne's pages. He lived in the period when it +was still held to be a sufficient proof of a story that it was written +in a book, especially if the book were Latin; and some persons, such as +Alexander Ross, whose memory is preserved only by the rhyme in +'Hudibras,' argued gravely against his scepticism.[5] For Sir Thomas, in +spite of his strange excursions into the marvellous, inclines for the +most part to the sceptical side of the question. He was not insensible +to the growing influence of the scientific spirit, though he believed +implicitly in witchcraft, spoke with high respect of alchemy and +astrology, and refused to believe that the earth went round the sun. He +feels that his favourite creatures are doomed to extinction, and though +dealing lovingly with them, speaks rather like an attached mourner at +their funerals than a physician endeavouring to maintain their +flickering vitality. He tries experiments and has a taste for +dissection. He proves by the evidence of his senses, and believes them +in spite of the general report, that a dead kingfisher will not turn its +breast to the wind. He convinced himself that if two magnetic needles +were placed in the centre of rings marked with the alphabet (an odd +anticipation of the electric telegraph, _minus_ the wires), they would +not point to the same letter by an occult sympathy. His arguments are +often to the point, though overlaid with a strange accretion of the +fabulous. In discussing the question of the blackness of negroes, he +may remind benevolent readers of some of Mr. Darwin's recent +speculations. He rejects, and on the same grounds which Mr. Darwin +declares to be conclusive, the hypothesis that the blackness is the +immediate effect of the climate; and he points out, what is important in +regard to 'sexual selection,' that a negro may admire a flat nose as we +admire an aquiline; though, of course, he diverges into extra-scientific +questions when discussing the probable effects of the curse of Ham, and +rather loses himself in a 'digression concerning blackness.' We may +fancy that this problem pleased Sir Thomas rather because it appeared to +be totally insoluble than for any other reason; and in spite of his +occasional gleams of scientific observation, he is always most at home +when on the border-land which divides the purely marvellous from the +region of ascertainable fact. In the last half of his book, indeed, +having exhausted natural history, he plunges with intense delight into +questions which bear the same relation to genuine antiquarianism that +his phoenixes and salamanders bear to scientific inquiry: whether the +sun was created in Libra; what was the season of the year in Paradise; +whether the forbidden fruit was an apple; whether Methuselah was the +longest-lived of all men (a main argument on the other side being that +Adam was created at the perfect age of man, which in those days was +fifty or sixty, and thus had a right to add sixty to his natural years); +what was the nature of St. John the Baptist's camel's-hair garment; what +were the secret motives of the builders of the Tower of Babel; whether +the three kings really lived at Cologne,--these and many other profound +inquiries are detailed with all imaginable gravity, and the interest of +the inquirer is not the less because he generally comes to the +satisfactory and sensible conclusion that we cannot possibly know +anything whatever about it. + +The 'Inquiry into Vulgar Errors' was published in 1646, and Sir Thomas's +next publication appeared in 1658. The dates are significant. Whilst all +England was in the throes of the first civil war, Sir Thomas had been +calmly finishing his catalogue of intellectual oddities. This book was +published soon after the crushing victory of Naseby. King, Parliament, +and army, illustrating a very different kind of vulgar error, continued +to fight out their quarrel to the death. Whilst Milton, whose genius was +in some way most nearly akin to his own, was raising his voice in favour +of the liberty of the press, good Sir Thomas was meditating profoundly +on quincunxes. Milton hurled fierce attacks at Salmasius, and meanwhile +Sir Thomas, in his quiet country town, was discoursing on 'certain +sepulchral urns lately found in Norfolk.' In the year of Cromwell's +death, the result of his labours appeared in a volume containing 'The +Garden of Cyrus' and the 'Hydriotaphia.' + +The first of these essays illustrates Sir Thomas's peculiar mysticism. +The external world was not to him the embodiment of invariable forces, +and therefore capable of revealing a general law in a special instance; +but rather a system of symbols, signatures of the Plastic Nature, to +which mysterious truths were arbitrarily annexed. A Pythagorean doctrine +of numbers was therefore congenial to his mind. He ransacks heaven and +earth, he turns over all his stores of botanical knowledge, he searches +all sacred and profane literature to discover anything that is in the +form of an X, or that reminds him in any way of the number five. From +the garden of Cyrus, where the trees were arranged in this order, he +rambles through the universe, stumbling over quincunxes at every step. +To take, for example, his final, and, of course, his fifth chapter, we +find him modestly disavowing an 'inexcusable Pythagorism,' and yet +unable to refrain from telling us that five was anciently called the +number of justice: that it was also called the divisive number; that +most flowers have five leaves; that feet have five toes; that the cone +has a 'quintuple division;' that there were five wise and five foolish +virgins; that the 'most generative animals' were created on the fifth +day; that the cabalists discovered strange meanings in the number five; +that there were five golden mice; that five thousand persons were fed +with five barley-loaves; that the ancients mixed five parts of water +with wine; that plays have five acts; that starfish have five points; +and that if anyone inquire into the causes of this strange repetition, +'he shall not pass his hours in vulgar speculations.' We, however, must +decline the task, and will content ourselves with a few characteristic +phrases from his peroration. 'The quincunx of heaven,' he says, +referring to the _Hyades_, 'runs low, and 'tis time to close the five +parts of knowledge. We are unwilling to spin out our awaking thoughts +into the phantasms of sleep, which often continueth precogitations, +making cables of cobwebs, and wildernesses of handsome groves.... Night, +which Pagan theology could make the daughter of chaos, affords no +advantage to the description of order; although no lower than that mass +can we derive its genealogy. All things began in order, so shall they +end, and so shall they begin again; according to the admirer of order +and mystical mathematics of the City of Heaven. Although Somnus, in +Homer, be sent to rouse up Agamemnon, I find no such effects in these +drowsy approaches of night. To keep our eyes open longer were but to +act with our Antipodes. The huntsmen are up in America, and they are +already past their first sleep in Persia. But who can be drowsy at that +hour, which roused us from everlasting sleep? Or have slumbering +thoughts at that hour, when sleep itself must end, and, as some +conjecture, all shall wake again?' + +'Think you,' asks Coleridge, commenting upon this passage, 'that there +ever was such a reason given for going to bed at midnight, to wit, that +if we did not, we should be acting the part of our Antipodes?' In truth, +Sir Thomas finishes his most whimsical work whimsically enough. The +passage is a good specimen of the quaint and humorous eloquence in which +he most delights--snatching fine thought from sheer absurdities, and +putting the homeliest truth into a dress of amusing oddity. It may +remind us that it is time to touch upon those higher qualities, which +have led one of the acutest of recent critics[6] to call him 'our most +imaginative mind since Shakspeare.' Everywhere, indeed, his imaginative +writing is, if we may so speak, shot with his peculiar humour. It is +difficult to select any eloquent, passage which does not show this +characteristic interweaving of the two elements. Throw the light from +one side, and it shows nothing but quaint conceits; from the other, and +we have a rich glow of poetic colouring. His humour and his melancholy +are inextricably blended; and his melancholy itself is described to a +nicety in the words of Jaques:--'It is a melancholy of his own, +compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and, indeed, +the sundry contemplation of his travels, in which his often rumination +wraps him in a most humorous sadness.' That most marvellous Jaques, +indeed, is rather too much of a cynic, and shows none of the religious +sentiment of Sir Thomas Browne; but if they could have talked together +in the forest, poor Jaques would have excited a far closer sympathy than +he receives from his very unappreciative companions. The book in which +this 'humorous sadness' finds the fullest expression is the 'Religio +Medici.' The conception of the book apparently resulted from the 'sundry +contemplation of his travels,' and it is written throughout in his +characteristic strain of thought. From his travels he had learnt the +best lesson of a lofty toleration. The furious controversies of that +age, in which the stake, the prison, and the pillory were the popular +theological arguments, produced a characteristic effect on his +sympathies. He did not give in to the established belief, like his +kindly natured contemporary Fuller, who remarks, in a book published +about the same time with the 'Religio Medici,' that even 'the mildest +authors' agree in the propriety of putting certain heretics to death. +Nor, on the other hand, does he share the glowing indignation which +prompted the great protests of Chillingworth and Taylor against the +cruelties practised in the name of religion. Browne has a method of his +own in view of such questions. He shrinks from the hard, practical world +into spiritual meditation. He regards all opinions less as a philosopher +than as a poet. He asks, not whether a dogma is true, but whether it is +amusing or quaint. If his imagination or his fancy can take pleasure in +contemplating it, he is not curious to investigate its scientific +accuracy. And therefore he catches the poetical side of creeds which +differ from his own, and cannot even understand why anybody should grow +savage over their shortcomings. He never could be angry with a man's +judgment 'for not agreeing with me in that from which, perhaps, within +a few days, I should dissent myself.' Travelling in this spirit through +countries where the old faith still prevailed, he felt a lively sympathy +for the Catholic modes of worship. Holy water and crucifixes do not +offend him. He is willing to enter the churches and to pray with the +worshippers of other persuasions. He is naturally inclined, he says, 'to +that which misguided zeal terms superstition,' and would show his +respect rather than his unbelief. In an eloquent passage, which might +teach a lesson to some modern tourists, he remarks:--'At the sight of a +cross or crucifix I can dispense with my hat, but scarce with the +thought and memory of my Saviour. I cannot laugh at, but rather pity, +the fruitless journeys of pilgrims, or contemn the miserable condition +of friars; for though misplaced in circumstances, there is something in +it of devotion. I could never hear the Ave Mary bell without an +elevation; or think it a sufficient warrant, because they erred in one +circumstance, for me to err in all--that is, in silence and dumb +contempt. Whilst, therefore, they directed their devotions to her, I +offered mine to God, and rectified the errors of their prayers by +rightly ordering my own. At a solemn procession I have wept abundantly, +while my consorts, blind with opposition and prejudice, have fallen into +an excess of laughter and scorn.' + +Very characteristic, from this point of view, are the heresies into +which he confesses that he has sometimes fallen. Setting aside one +purely fantastical theory, they all imply a desire for toleration even +in the next world. He doubted whether the damned would not ultimately be +released from torture. He felt great difficulty in giving up prayers for +the dead, and thought that to be the object of such prayers, was 'a good +way to be remembered by posterity, and far more noble than a history.' +These heresies, he says, as he never tried to propagate them, or to +dispute over them, 'without additions of new fuel, went out insensibly +of themselves.' Yet he still retained, in spite of its supposed +heterodoxy, some hope for the fate of virtuous heathens. 'Amongst so +many subdivisions of hell,' he says, 'there might have been one limbo +left for these.' With a most characteristic turn, he softens the horror +of the reflection by giving it an almost humorous aspect. 'What a +strange vision will it be,' he exclaims, 'to see their poetical fictions +converted into verities, and their imagined and fancied furies into real +devils! How strange to them will sound the history of Adam, when they +shall suffer for him they never heard of!' + +The words may remind us of an often-quoted passage from Tertullian; but +the Father seems to gloat over the appalling doctrines from which the +philosophical humorist shrinks, even though their very horror has a +certain strange fascination for his fancy. Heresies such as these will +not be harshly condemned at the present day. From others of a different +kind, Sir Thomas is shielded by his natural love of the marvellous. He +loves to abandon his thoughts to mysterious contemplations; he even +considers it a subject for complaint that there are 'not impossibilities +enough in religion for an active faith.' 'I love,' he says, 'to lose +myself in a mystery; to pursue my reason to an _O altitudo_! 'Tis my +solitary recreation to pose my apprehension with those involved enigmas +and riddles of the Trinity, incarnation, and resurrection. I can answer +all the objections of Satan and my rebellious reason with that odd +resolution I learnt of Tertullian, _certum est quia impossibile est_.' +He rejoices that he was not an Israelite at the passage of the Red Sea, +or an early Christian in the days of miracles; for then his faith, +supported by his senses, would have had less merit. He loves to puzzle +and confound his understanding with the thoughts that pass the limits of +our intellectual powers: he rejoices in contemplating eternity, because +nobody can 'speak of it without a solecism,' and to plunge his +imagination into the abysses of the infinite. 'When I cannot satisfy my +reason,' he says, 'I love to recreate my fancy.' He recreates it by +soaring into the regions where the most daring metaphysical logic breaks +down beneath us, and delights in exposing his reason to the rude test of +believing both sides of a contradiction. Here, as everywhere, the +strangest freaks of fancy intrude themselves into his sublime +contemplations. A mystic, when abasing reason in the presence of faith, +may lose sight of earthly objects in the splendour of the beatific +vision. But Sir Thomas, even when he enters the holiest shrine, never +quite loses his grasp of the grotesque. Wonder, whether produced by the +sublime or the simply curious, has equal attraction for him. His mind is +distracted between the loftiest mysteries of Christianity and the +strangest conceits of Talmudists or schoolmen. Thus, for example, whilst +eloquently descanting on the submissiveness of his reason, he informs us +(obviously claiming credit for the sacrifice of his curiosity) that he +can read of the raising of Lazarus, and yet refrain from raising a 'law +case whether his heir might lawfully detain his inheritance bequeathed +unto him by his death, and he, though restored to life, have no plea or +title unto his former possessions.' Or we might take the inverse +transition from the absurd to the sublime, in his meditations upon hell. +He begins by inquiring whether the everlasting fire is the same with +that of our earth. 'Some of our chymicks,' it appears, 'facetiously +affirm that, at the last fire, all shall be crystallised and +reverberated into glass,' but, after playing for some time with this and +other strange fancies, he says in a loftier strain, though still with +his odd touch of humour, 'Men speak too popularly who place it in those +flaming mountains, which, to grosser apprehensions, represent hell. The +heart of men is the place the devils dwell in. I feel sometimes a hell +within myself; Lucifer keeps his courts in my breast; Legion is revived +in me. There was more than one hell in Magdalene, when there were seven +devils; for every devil is a hell unto himself; he holds enough of +torture in his own _ubi_, and needs not the misery of circumference to +afflict him; and thus a distracted conscience here is a shadow or +introduction into hell hereafter.' + +Sir Thomas's witticisms are like the grotesque carvings in a Gothic +cathedral. It is plain that in his mind they have not the slightest +tinge of conscious irreverence. They are simply his natural mode of +expression; forbid him to be humorous, and you might as well forbid him +to speak at all. If the severity of our modern taste is shocked at an +intermixture which seemed natural enough to his contemporaries, we may +find an unconscious apology in a singularly fine passage of the 'Religio +Medici.' Justifying his love of church music, he says, 'Even that vulgar +and tavern music, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me +a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the first +composer.' That power of extracting deep devotion from 'vulgar tavern +music' is the great secret of Browne's eloquence. It is not wonderful, +perhaps, that, with our associations, the performance seems of +questionable taste; and that some strains of tavern music mix +unpleasantly in the grander harmonies which they suggest. Few people +find their religious emotions stimulated by the performance of a nigger +melody, and they have some difficulty in keeping pace with a mind which +springs in happy unconsciousness, or rather in keen enjoyment, of the +contrast from the queer or commonplace to the most exalted objects of +human thought. + +One other peculiarity shows itself chiefly in the last pages of the +'Religio Medici.' His worthy commentators have laboured to defend Sir +Thomas from the charge of vanity. He expatiates upon his own universal +charity; upon his inability to regard even vice as a fitting object for +satire; upon his warm affection to his friend, whom he already loves +better than himself, and whom yet in a few months he will regard with a +love which will make his present feelings seem indifference; upon his +absolute want of avarice or any kind of meanness; and, which certainly +seems a little odd in the midst of these self-laudations, upon his +freedom from the 'first and father sin, not only of man, but of the +devil, pride.' Good Dr. Watts was shocked at this 'arrogant temerity,' +and Dr. Johnson appears rather to concur in the charge. And certainly, +if we are to interpret his language in a matter-of-fact spirit, it must +be admitted that a gentleman who openly claims for himself the virtues +of charity, generosity, courage, and modesty, might be not unfairly +accused of vanity. To no one, as we have already remarked, is such a +matter-of-fact criticism less applicable. If a humorist was to be denied +the right of saying with a serious face what he does not quite think, we +should make strange work of some of the most charming books in the +world. The Sir Thomas Browne of the 'Religio Medici' is by no means to +be identified with the everyday flesh-and-blood physician of Norwich. +He is the ideal and glorified Sir Thomas, and represents rather what +ought to have been than what was. We all have such doubles who visit us +in our day-dreams and sometimes cheat us into the belief that they are +our real selves, but most of us luckily hide the very existence of such +phantoms; for few of us, indeed, could make them agreeable to our +neighbours. And yet the apology is scarcely needed. Bating some few +touches, Sir Thomas seems to have claimed little that he did not really +possess. And if he was a little vain, why should we be angry? Vanity is +only offensive when it is sullen or exacting. When it merely amounts to +an unaffected pleasure in dwelling on the peculiarities of a man's own +character, it is rather an agreeable literary ingredient. Sir Thomas +defines his point of view with his usual felicity. 'The world that I +regard,' he says in the spirit of the imprisoned Richard II., 'is +myself: it is the microcosm of my own frame that I cast mine eye on; for +the other, I use it but like my globe, and turn it round sometimes for +my recreation.' That whimsical inversion of the natural order is the key +to the 'Religio Medici.' We, for the nonce, are to regard Sir Thomas +Browne as a world, and to study the marvels of his microcosm instead of +the outside wonders. And no one can deny that it is a good and kindly +world--a world full of the strangest combinations, where even the most +sacred are allied with the oddest objects. Yet his imagination +everywhere diffuses a solemn light such as that which falls through +painted windows, and which somehow harmonises the whole quaint +assemblage of images. The sacred is made more interesting instead of +being degraded by its association with the quaint; and on the whole, +after a stay in this microcosm, we feel better, calmer, more tolerant, +and a good deal more amused than when we entered it. + +Passing from the portrait to the original, we may recognise, or fancy +that we recognise, the same general features. Sir Thomas assures us that +his life, up to the period of the 'Religio Medici,' was a 'miracle of +thirty years, which to relate were not a history, but a piece of poetry, +and would sound to common ears like a fable.' Johnson, with his usual +sense, observes that it is rather difficult to detect the miraculous +element in any part of the story open to our observation. 'Surely,' he +says, 'a man may visit France and Italy, reside at Montpelier and Padua, +and at last take his degree at Leyden, without anything miraculous.' And +although Southey endeavours to maintain that the miracle consisted in +Browne's preservation from infidelity, it must be admitted that to the +ordinary mind that result seems explicable by natural causes. We must be +content with Johnson's explanation, that, in some sense, 'all life is +miraculous;' and, in short, that the strangeness consists rather in +Browne's view of his own history, than in any unusual phenomena. +Certainly, no man seems on the whole to have slipped down the stream of +life more smoothly. After his travels he settled quietly at Norwich, and +there passed forty-five years of scarcely interrupted prosperity. In the +'Religio Medici' he indulges in some disparaging remarks upon marriage. +'The whole world,' he says, 'was made for man; but the twelfth part of +man for woman. Man is the whole world and the breath of God; woman the +rib and crooked part of man.' He wishes, after the fashion of Montaigne, +that we might grow like the trees, and avoid this foolish and trivial +ceremony; and therefore--for such inferences are perfectly legitimate in +the history of a humorist--he married a lady, of whom it is said that +she was so perfect that 'they seemed to come together by a kind of +natural magnetism,' had ten children, and lived very happily ever +afterwards. It is not difficult, from the fragmentary notices that have +been left to us, to put together some picture of his personal +appearance. He was a man of dignified appearance, with a striking +resemblance, as Southey has remarked, to Charles I., 'always cheerful, +but never merry,' given to unseasonable blushing, little inclined to +talk, but strikingly original when once launched in conversation; sedate +in his dress, and obeying some queer medical crotchets as to its proper +arrangement; always at work in the intervals of his 'drudging practice;' +and generally a sober and dignified physician. From some letters which +have been preserved we catch a view of his social demeanour. He was +evidently an affectionate and liberal father, with good old orthodox +views of the wide extent of the paternal prerogative. One of his sons +was a promising naval officer, and sends home from beyond the seas +accounts of such curiosities as were likely to please the insatiable +curiosity of his parent. In his answers, the good Sir Thomas quotes +Aristotle's definition of fortitude for the benefit of his gallant +lieutenant, and argues elaborately to dissuade him from a practice which +he believes to prevail in 'the king's shipps, when, in desperate cases, +they blow up the same.' He proves by most excellent reasons, and by the +authority of Plutarch, that such self-immolation is an unnecessary +strain of gallantry; yet somehow we feel rather glad that Sir Thomas +could not be a witness to the reception of this sensible, but perhaps +rather superfluous, advice, in the messroom of the 'Marie Rose.' It is +more pleasant to observe the carefulness with which he has treasured up +and repeats all the compliments to the lieutenant's valour and wisdom +which have reached him from trustworthy sources. This son appears to +have died at a comparatively early age; but with the elder son, +Edward--who, like his father, travelled in various parts of Europe, and +then became a distinguished physician--he maintained a long +correspondence, full of those curious details in which his soul +delighted. His son, for example, writes from Prague that 'in the mines +at Brunswick is reported to be a spirit; and another at the tin mine at +Stackenwald, in the shape of a monke, which strikes the miners, playeth +on the bagpipe, and many such tricks.' They correspond, however, on more +legitimate inquiries, and especially on the points to be noticed in the +son's medical lectures. Sir Thomas takes a keen interest in the fate of +an unlucky 'oestridge' which found its way to London in 1681, and was +doomed to illustrate some of the vulgar errors. The poor bird was +induced to swallow a piece of iron weighing two and a-half ounces, +which, strange to say, it could not digest. It soon afterwards died 'of +a soden,' either from the severity of the weather or from the peculiar +nature of its diet. + +In one well-known case Sir Thomas's peculiar theories received a more +unfortunate application; he contributed by his evidence to the death of +the witches tried by Hale in 1664; and one could wish that in this case +his love of the wonderful had been more checked by his sense of humour. + +The fact that he was knighted by Charles II. in 1671 is now memorable +only for Johnson's characteristic remark. The lexicographer's love of +truth and loyalty to his pet monarch struggle with each other in the +equivocal compliment to Charles's virtue in rewarding excellence 'with +such honorary distinctions at least as cost him nothing.' The good +doctor died in 1682, in the seventy-seventh year of age, and met his +end, as we are assured, in the spirit of his own writings. 'There is,' +he admirably says, 'but one comfort left, that, though it be in the +power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest +to deprive us of death.' Most men, for one reason or another, have at +times been 'half in love with easeful death.' Sir Thomas gives his view +more fully in another passage, in which he says, with his usual quaint +and eloquent melancholy, 'When I take a full view and circle of myself, +without this reasonable moderator and equal piece of justice, death, I +do conceive myself the miserablest person extant. Were there not another +life that I hope for, all the vanities of this world should not entreat +a moment's breath from me. Could the devil work my belief to imagine I +could never die, I could not outlive that very thought. I have so abject +a conceit of this common way of existence, this retaining to the sun and +elements, I cannot think this to be a man, or to have according to the +dignity of humanity. In expectation of a better, I can with patience +embrace this life, yet, in my best meditations, do often defy death.' + +What, after all, one is inclined to ask, is the secret of the strange +charm of Sir Thomas's style? Will you be kind enough to give us the old +doctor's literary prescription, that we may produce the same effects at +will? In what proportions shall we mingle humour, imagination, and +learning? How are we to select the language which will be the fittest +vehicle for the thought? or rather, for the metaphor is a little too +mechanical, what were the magic spells with which he sways our +imaginative moods? Like other spells, we must reply, it is +incommunicable: no real answer can be given even by critics who, like +Coleridge and De Quincey, show something of the same power. Coarser +observers can only point to such external peculiarities as the Latinisms +in which he indulges even more freely than most of his contemporaries. +To Johnson they seemed 'pedantic;' to most modern readers they have an +old-world charm; but in any case we know little more of Sir Thomas when +we have observed that he is capable of using for 'hanging' the +periphrasis 'illaqueation or pendulous suffocation.' The perusal of a +page will make us recognise what could not be explained in a whole +volume of analysis. One may, however, hazard a remark upon the special +mood which is clothed or incarnated in his stately rhetoric. The +imagination of Sir Thomas, of course, shows the generic qualities +roughly described as Northern, Gothic, Teutonic, or romantic. He writes +about tombs, and all Englishmen, as M. Taine tells us, like to write +about tombs. When we try to find the specific differences which +distinguish it from other imaginations of similar quality, we should be +inclined to define him as belonging to a very rare intellectual family. +He is a mystic with a sense of humour, or rather, his habitual mood is +determined by an attraction towards the two opposite poles of humour and +mysticism. He concludes two of his treatises (the 'Christian Morals' and +'Urn Burial') in words expressive of one of these tendencies: 'If any +have been so happy as personally to understand Christian annihilation, +ecstacy, exolution, transformation, the kiss of the spouse, and +ingression into the divine shadow according to mystical theology, they +have already had an handsome anticipation of heaven; the world is in a +manner over, and the earth in ashes unto them.' Many of Sir Thomas's +reflections, his love in spiritualising external emblems, as, for +example, in the reflections on the quincunx, and the almost sensuous +delight in the contemplation of a mystery, show the same bent. The +fully-developed mystic loses sight of the world and its practical duties +in the rapture of formless meditations; facts become shadows, and +emotions the only realities. But the presence of a mystical element is +the mark of all lofty imaginations. The greatest poet is he who feels +most deeply and habitually that our 'little lives are rounded with a +sleep;' that we are but atoms in the boundless abysses of space and +time; that the phenomenal world is but a transitory veil, to be valued +only as its contemplation arouses or disciplines our deepest emotions. +Capacity for passing from the finite to the infinite, for interpreting +the high instincts before which our mortal nature + + 'Doth tremble like a guilty thing surprised,' + +is the greatest endowment of the Shakespeares and Dantes. Mysticism +proper is the abuse of this tendency, which prompts to the impossible +feat of soaring altogether beyond the necessary base of concrete +realities. The mystic temperament is balanced in some great men, as in +Shakespeare, by their intense interest in human passion; in others, as +in Wordsworth, by their profound sense of the primary importance of the +moral law; and in others, as in Jeremy Taylor, by their hold upon the +concrete imagery of a traditional theology; whilst to some, the mystic +vision is strangely blended with an acceptance of the epicurean precept, +Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. Sir Thomas Browne seems to +be held back from abandoning himself to the ecstasies of abstract +meditation, chiefly by his peculiar sense of humour. There is a closer +connection than we are always willing to admit between humour and +profanity. Humour is the faculty which always keeps us in mind of the +absurdity which is the shadow of sublimity. It is naturally allied to +intellectual scepticism, as in Rabelais or Montaigne; and Sir Thomas +shared the tendency sufficiently to be called atheist by some wiseacres. +But his humour was too gentle to suggest scepticism of the aggressive +kind. It is almost too free from cynicism. He cannot adopt any dogma +unreservedly, but neither does any dogma repel him. He revels in the +mental attitude of hopeless perplexity, which is simply unendurable to +the commonplace and matter-of-fact intellects. He likes to be balanced +between opposing difficulties; to play with any symbol of worship +without actually worshipping it; to prostrate himself sincerely at many +shrines, and yet with a half smile on his lips. He cannot be a +rhetorician in the ordinary sense of the word; he would have been +hopelessly out of place on the floor of the senate, stirring men's +patriotism or sense of right; for half his sympathy would always be with +the Opposition. He could not have moved the tears or the devotional +ecstasies of a congregation, for he has too vivid a sense that any and +every dogma is but one side of an inevitable antinomy. Strong +convictions are needed for the ordinary controversial successes, and his +favourite point of view is the centre from which all convictions radiate +and all look equally probable. But then, instead of mocking at all, he +sympathises with all, and expresses the one sentiment which may be +extracted from their collision--the sentiment of reverence blended with +scepticism. It is a contradictory sentiment, one may say, in a sense, +but the essence of humour is to be contradictory. The language in which +he utters himself was determined by his omnivorous appetite for every +quaint or significant symbol to be discovered in the whole field of +learning. With no prejudices, nothing comes amiss to him; and the +signature of some mysterious principle may be found in every object of +art or nature. Science in its infancy was still half mystic, and the +facts which he gathered were all tinged with the semi-mythical fancies +of the earliest explorers of the secrets of nature. In an old relic, +recalling 'the drums and tramplings of three conquests,' in a queer +annual, or an ancient fragment of history might be the appropriate +emblem, or something more than the emblem of a truth equally impressive +to the scientific and the poetical imagination. He would have been happy +by the midnight lamp in Milton's 'high lonely tower;' but his humour +would look at the romances which Milton loved rather with the eyes of +Cervantes than of Milton. Their tone of sentiment would be too strained +and highflown; and he would prefer to read of the spirits that are found + + 'In fire, air, flood, or underground,' + +or to try to penetrate the secret of + + 'Every star that heaven doth show, + And every herb that sips the dew,' + +by reading all the nonsense that had been written about them in the dawn +of inquiry. He should be read in a corresponding spirit. One should +often stop to appreciate the full flavour of some quaint allusion, or +lay down the book to follow out some diverging line of thought. So read +in a retired study, or beneath the dusty shelves of an ancient library, +a page of Sir Thomas seems to revive the echoes as of ancient chants in +college chapels, strangely blended with the sonorous perorations of +professors in the neighbouring schools, so that the interferences +sometimes produce a note of gentle mockery and sometimes heighten +solemnity by quaintness. + +That, however, is not the spirit in which books are often read in these +days. We have an appetite for useful information, and an appetite for +frivolous sentiment or purely poetical musing. We cannot combine the two +after the quaint fashion of the old physician. And therefore these +charming writings have ceased to suit our modern taste; and Sir Thomas +is already passing under that shadow of mortality which obscures all, +even the greatest, reputations, and with which no one has dwelt more +pathetically or graphically than himself. + +If we are disposed to complain, Sir Thomas shall himself supply the +answer, in a passage from the 'Hydriotaphia,' which, though described by +Hallam as the best written of his treatises, is not to my taste so +attractive as the 'Religio Medici.' The concluding chapter, however, is +in his best style, and here are some of his reflections on posthumous +fame. The end of the world, he says, is approaching, and 'Charles V. can +never hope to live within two Methuselahs of Hector.' 'And, therefore, +restless inquietude for the diuturnity of our memories with present +considerations seems a vanity out of date, and a superannuated piece of +folly. We cannot hope to live as long in our names as some have done in +their persons. One face of Janus holds no proportion to the other. 'Tis +too late to be ambitious. The great mutations of the world are acted, or +time may be too short for our designs. To extend our memories by +monuments, whose death we daily pray for, and whose duration we cannot +hope without injury to our expectations in the advent of the last day, +were a contradiction to our beliefs. We, whose generations are ordained +in this setting part of time, are providentially taken off from such +imaginations; and being necessitated to eye the remaining particle of +futurity, are naturally constituted into thoughts of the next world, and +cannot excusably decline the consideration of that duration, which +maketh pyramids pillars of snow, and all that's past a moment.' + +If the argument has now been vulgarised in the hands of Dr. Cumming and +his like, the language and the sentiment are worthy of any of our +greatest masters. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[5] Ross, for example, urges that the invisibility of the phoenix is +sufficiently accounted for by the natural desire of a unique animal to +keep out of harm's way. + +[6] Mr. Lowell, in 'Shakspeare Once More,' 'Among My Books.' + + + + +_JONATHAN EDWARDS_[7] + + +Two of the ablest thinkers whom America has yet produced were born in +New England at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The theorists +who would trace all our characteristics to inheritance from some remote +ancestor might see in Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin normal +representatives of the two types from which the genuine Yankee is +derived. Though blended in various proportions, and though one may exist +almost to the exclusion of the other, an element of shrewd mother-wit +and an element of transcendental enthusiasm are to be detected in all +who boast a descent from the pilgrim fathers. Franklin, born in 1706, +represents in its fullest development the more earthly side of this +compound. A thoroughbred utilitarian, full of sagacity, and carrying +into all regions of thought that strange ingenuity which makes an +American the handiest of all human beings, Franklin is best embodied in +his own poor Richard. Honesty is the best policy: many a little makes a +mickle: the second vice is lying, the first is running in debt; and-- + + 'Get what you can, and what you get hold; + 'Tis the stone that will turn all your lead into gold.' + +These and a string of similar maxims are the pith of Franklin's message +to the world. Franklin, however, was not merely a man in whom the +practical intelligence was developed in a very remarkable degree, but +was fortunate in coming upon a crisis admirably suited to his abilities, +and in being generally in harmony with the spirit of his age. He +succeeded, as we know, in snatching lightning from the heavens, and the +sceptre from tyrants; and had his reward in the shape of much +contemporary homage from French philosophers, and lasting renown amongst +his countrymen. Meanwhile, Jonathan Edwards, his senior by three years, +had the fate common to men who are unfitted for the struggles of daily +life, and whose philosophy does not harmonise with the dominant current +of the time. A speculative recluse, with little faculty of literary +expression, and given to utter opinions shocking to the popular mind, he +excited little attention during his lifetime, except amongst the sharers +of his own religious persuasions; and, when noticed after his death, the +praise of his intellectual acuteness has generally been accompanied with +an expression of abhorrence for his supposed moral obtuseness. Mr. +Lecky, for example, whilst speaking of Edwards as 'probably the ablest +defender of Calvinism,' mentions his treatise on Original Sin as 'one of +the most revolting books that have ever proceeded from the pen of man' +('Rationalism,' i. 404). That intense dislike, which is far from +uncommon, for severe reasoning has even made a kind of reproach to +Edwards of what is called his 'inexorable logic.' To condemn a man for +being honestly in the wrong is generally admitted to be unreasonable; +but people are even more unforgiving to the sin of being honestly in the +right. The frankness with which Edwards avowed opinions, not by any +means peculiar to himself, has left a certain stain upon his reputation. +He has also suffered in general repute from a cause which should really +increase our interest in his writings. Metaphysicians, whilst admiring +his acuteness, have been disgusted by his adherence to an outworn +theology; and theologians have cared little for a man who was primarily +a philosophical speculator, and has used his philosophy to bring into +painful relief the most terrible dogmas of the ancient creeds. Edwards, +however, is interesting just because he is a connecting link between two +widely different phases of thought. He connects the expiring Calvinism +of the old Puritan theocracy with what is called the transcendentalism +embodied in the writings of Emerson and other leaders of young America. +He is remarkable, too, as illustrating, at the central point of the +eighteenth century, those speculative tendencies which were most vitally +opposed to the then dominant philosophy of Locke and Hume. And, finally, +there is a still more permanent interest in the man himself, as +exhibiting in high relief the weak and the strong points of the teaching +of which Calvinism represents only one embodiment. His life, in striking +contrast to that of his more celebrated contemporary, ran its course far +away from the main elements of European activity. With the exception of +a brief stay at New York, he lived almost exclusively in the interior of +what was then the thinly-settled colony of Massachusetts.[8] His father +was for nearly sixty years minister of a church in Connecticut, and his +mother's father, the 'celebrated Solomon Stoddard,' for about an equal +time minister of a church at Northampton, Massachusetts. Young Jonathan, +brought up at the feet of these venerable men, after the strictest sect +of the Puritans, was sent to Yale at the age of twelve, took his B.A. +degree at the age of seventeen, and two years afterwards became a +preacher at New York. Thence he returned to a tutorship at Yale, but in +his twenty-fourth year was ordained as colleague of his grandfather +Stoddard, and spent at Northampton the next twenty-three years of his +life. It may be added that he married early a wife of congenial temper, +and had eleven children.[9] One of his daughters,--it is an odd +combination,--was the mother of Aaron Burr, the duellist who killed +Hamilton, and afterwards became the prototype of all Southern +secessionists. The external facts, however, of Edwards' life are of +little interest, except as indicating the influences to which he was +exposed. Puritanism, though growing faint, was still powerful in New +England; it was bred in his bones, and he was drilled from his earliest +years into its sternest dogmas. Some curious fragments of his early life +and letters indicate the nature of his spiritual development. Whilst +still almost a boy, he writes down solemn resolutions, and practises +himself in severe self-inspection. He resolves 'never to do, be, or +suffer anything in soul or body, more or less, but what tends to the +glory of God;' to 'live with all my might while I do live;' 'never to +speak anything that is ridiculous or matter of laughter on the Lord's +Day' (a resolution which we might think rather superfluous, even though +extended to other days); and, 'frequently to renew the dedication of +myself to God, which was made at my baptism, which I solemnly renewed +when I was received into the communion of the Church, and which I have +solemnly ratified this 12th day of January 1723' (i. 18). He pledges +himself, in short, to a life of strict self-examination and absolute +devotion to what he takes for the will of God. Similar resolutions have +doubtless been made by countless young men, brought up under the same +conditions, and diaries of equal value have been published by the +authors of innumerable saintly biographies. In Edwards' mouth, however, +they really had a meaning, and bore corresponding results. An +interesting paper gives an account of those religious 'experiences' to +which his sect attaches so tremendous an importance. From his childhood, +he tells us, his mind had been full of objections to the doctrine of +God's sovereignty. It appeared to him to be a 'horrible doctrine' that +God should choose whom He would, and reject whom He pleased, 'leaving +them eternally to perish and be tormented eternally in hell.' The whole +history of his intellectual development is involved in the process by +which he became gradually reconciled to this appalling dogma. In the +second year of his collegiate course, we are told, which would be about +the fourteenth of his age, he read Locke's Essay with inexpressible +delight. The first glimpse of metaphysical inquiry, it would seem, +revealed to him the natural bent of his mind, and opened to him the path +of speculation in which he ever afterwards delighted. Locke, though +Edwards always mentions him with deep respect, was indeed a thinker of a +very different school. The disciple owed to his master, not a body of +doctrine, but the impulse to intellectual activity. He succeeded in +working out for himself a satisfactory answer to the problem by which he +had been perplexed. His cavils ceased as his reason strengthened. 'God's +absolute sovereignty and justice' seemed to him to be as clear as +anything he saw with his eyes; 'at least,' he adds, 'it is so at times.' +Nay, he even came to rejoice in the doctrine and regard it as +'infinitely pleasant, bright, and sweet' (i. 33). The Puritan +assumptions were so ingrained in his nature that the agony of mind which +they caused never led him to question their truth, though it animated +him to discover a means of reconciling them to reason; and the +reconciliation is the whole burden of his ablest works. The effect upon +his mind is described in terms which savour of a less stern school of +faith. God's glory was revealed to him throughout the whole creation, +and often threw him into ecstasies of devotion (i. 33). 'God's +excellency, His wisdom, His purity, and love seemed to appear in +everything: in the sun, moon, and stars: in the clouds and blue sky; in +the grass, flowers, and trees; in the water and all nature, which used +greatly to fix my mind. I often used to sit and view the moon for +continuance, and in the day spent much time in viewing the clouds and +sky, to behold the sweet glory of God in these things; in the meantime +singing forth, with a low voice, my contemplations of the Creator and +Redeemer.' Thunder, he adds, had once been terrible to him; 'now scarce +anything in all the works of nature' was so sweet (i. 36). It seemed as +if the 'majestic and awful voice of God's thunder' was in fact the voice +of its Creator. Thunder and lightning, we know, suggested +characteristically different contemplations to Franklin. Edwards' +utterances are as remarkable for their amiability as for their +non-scientific character. We see in him the gentle mystic rather than +the stern divine who consigned helpless infants to eternal torture +without a question of the goodness of their Creator. This vein of +meditation, however, continued to be familiar to him. He spent most of +his time reflecting on Divine things, and often walking in solitary +places and woods to enjoy uninterrupted soliloquies and converse with +God. At New York he often retired to a quiet spot--now, one presumes, +seldom used for such purposes--on the banks of the Hudson river, to +abandon himself to his quiet reveries, or to 'converse on the things of +God' with one Mr. John Smith. To the end of his life he indulged in the +same habit. His custom was to rise at four o'clock in the morning, to +spend thirteen hours daily in his study, and to ride out after dinner to +some lonely grove, where he dismounted and walked by himself, with a +notebook ready at hand for the arrest of stray thoughts. Evidently he +possessed one of those rare temperaments to which the severest +intellectual exercise is a source of the keenest enjoyment; and though +he must often have strayed in to the comparatively dreary labyrinths of +metaphysical puzzles, his speculations had always an immediate reference +to what he calls 'Divine things.' Once, he tells us, as he rode into the +woods, in 1737, and alighted according to custom 'to walk in Divine +contemplation and prayer,' he had so extraordinary a view of the glory +of the Son of God, and His wonderful grace, that he remained for about +an hour 'in a flood of tears and weeping aloud.' This intensity of +spiritual vision was frequently combined with a harrowing sense of his +own corruption. 'My wickedness,' he says, 'as I am in myself has long +appeared to me perfectly ineffable; like an infinite deluge or mountains +over my head.' Often, for many years, he has had in his mind and his +mouth the words 'Infinite upon infinite!' His heart looks to him like +'an abyss infinitely deeper than hell;' and yet, he adds, it seems to +him that 'his conviction of sin is exceedingly small.' Whilst weeping +and crying for his sins, he seemed to know that 'his repentance was +nothing to his sin' (i. 41). Extravagant expressions of this kind are +naturally rather shocking to the outsider; and, to those who are +incapable of sympathising, they may even appear to be indications of +hypocrisy. Nobody was more alive than Edwards himself to the danger of +using such phrases mechanically. When you call yourself the worst of +men, he says, be careful that you do not think highly of yourself just +because you think so meanly. And if you reply, 'No, I have not a high +opinion of my humility; it seems to me I am as proud as the devil;' ask +again, 'whether on this very account that you think yourself as proud as +the devil, you do not think yourself to be very humble' (iv. 282). That +is a characteristic bit of subtilising, and it indicates the danger of +all this excessive introspection. Edwards would not have accepted the +moral that the best plan is to think about yourself as little as +possible; for from his point of view this constant cross-examination of +all your feelings, this dissection of emotion down to its finest and +most intricate convolutions, was of the very essence of religion. No +one, however, can read his account of his own feelings, even when he +runs into the accustomed phraseology, without perceiving the ring of +genuine feeling. He is morbid, it may be, but he is not insincere; and +even his strained hyperboles are scarcely unintelligible when considered +as the expression of the sentiment produced by the effort of a human +being to live constantly in presence of the absolute and the infinite. + +The event which most powerfully influenced Edwards' mind during his life +at Northampton was one of those strange spiritual storms which then, as +now, swept periodically across the Churches. Protestants generally call +them revivals; in Catholic countries they impel pilgrims to some +devotional shrine; Edwards and his contemporaries described such a +phenomenon as 'a remarkable outpouring of God's Holy Spirit.' He has +carefully described the symptoms of one such commotion, in which he was +a main agent; and two or three later treatises, discussing some of the +problems suggested by the scenes he witnessed, testify to the +profoundness of the impression upon his mind. In fact, as we shall +presently see, Edwards' whole philosophical system was being put to a +practical test by these events. Was the excitement, as modern observers +would say, due to a mere moral epidemic, or was it actually produced by +the direct interposition in human affairs of the Almighty Ruler? +Unhesitatingly recognising the hand of the God the very thought of whom +crushed him into self-annihilation, Edwards is unconsciously troubled by +the strange contrast between the effect and the stupendous cause +assigned for it. When the angel of the Lord comes down to trouble the +waters, one would expect rather to see oceans upheaved than a trifling +ripple in an insignificant pond. There is something almost pathetic in +his eagerness to magnify the proportions of the event. He boasts that in +six months 'more than three hundred souls were savingly brought home to +Christ in this town' (iii. 23). The town itself, it may be observed, +though then one of the most populous in the country, was only of +eighty-two years' standing, and reckoned about two hundred families, the +era of Chicagos not having yet dawned upon the world. The conversion, +however, of this village appeared to some 'divines and others' to herald +the approach of the 'conflagration' (iii. 59); and though Edwards +disavows this rash conjecture, he anticipates with some confidence the +approach of the millennium. The 'isles and ships of Tarshish,' +mentioned in Isaiah, are plainly meant for America, which is to be 'the +firstfruits of that glorious day' (iii. 154); and he collects enough +accounts of various revivals of an analogous kind which had taken place +in Salzburg, Holland, and several of the British Colonies, to justify +the anticipation 'that these universal commotions are the forerunners of +something exceeding glorious approaching' (iii. 414). The limited area +of the disturbance perhaps raised less difficulty than the equivocal +nature of many of the manifestations. In Edwards' imagination, Satan was +always on the watch to produce an imitation, and, it would seem, a +curiously accurate imitation, of the Divine impulses. As De Foe says, in +a different sense-- + + Wherever God erects a house of prayer, + The devil always builds a chapel there. + +And some people were unkind enough to trace in the diseases and other +questionable products of the revival a distinct proof of the 'operation +of the evil spirit' (iii. 96). Edwards felt the vital importance of +distinguishing between the two classes of supernatural agency, so +different in their source, and yet so thoroughly similar in their +effects. There is something rather touching, though at times our +sympathy is not quite unequivocal, in the simplicity with which he +traces distinct proofs of the Divine hand in the familiar phenomena of +religious conversions. The stories seem stale and profitless to us which +he accepted with awe-stricken reverence as a demonstrative testimony to +the Divinity of the work. He gives, for example, an anecdote of a young +woman, who, being jealous of another conversion, resolved to bring about +her own by the rather naif expedient of reading the Bible straight +through. Having begun her task on Monday, the desired effect was +produced on Thursday, and she felt it possible to skip at once to the +New Testament. The crisis ran through its usual course, ending in a +state of rapture, during which she enjoyed for days 'a kind of beatific +vision of God.' The poor girl was very ill, and expressed 'great +longings to die.' When her brother read in Job about worms feeding on +the dead body, she 'appeared with a pleasant smile, and said it was +sweet to her to think of her being in such circumstances' (iii. 69). The +longing was speedily gratified, and she departed, perhaps not to find in +another world that the universe had been laid out precisely in +accordance with the theories of Mr. Jonathan Edwards, but at least +leaving behind her--so we are assured--memories of touching humility and +spirituality. If Abigail Hutchinson strikes us as representing, on the +whole, rather a morbid type of human excellence, what are we to say to +Phebe Bartlet, who had just passed her fourth birthday in April 1735? +(iii. 70). This infant of more than Yankee precocity was converted by +her brother, who had just gone through the same process at the age of +eleven. She took to 'secret prayer,' five or six times a day, and would +never suffer herself to be interrupted. Her experiences are given at +great length, including a refusal to eat plums, 'because it was sin;' +her extreme interest in a thought suggested to her by a text from the +Revelation, about 'supping with God;' and her request to her father to +replace a cow which a poor man had lost. She took great delight in +'private religious meetings,' and was specially edified by the sermons +of Mr. Edwards, for whom she professed, as he records, with perhaps some +pardonable complacency, the warmest affection. The grotesque side of the +story of this detestable infant is, however, blended with something more +shocking. The poor little wretch was tormented by the fear of +hell-fire; and her relations and pastor appear to have done their best +to stimulate this, as well as other religious sentiments. Edwards boasts +at a subsequent period that 'hundreds of little children' had testified +to the glory of God's work (iii. 146). He afterwards remarks +incidentally that many people had considered as 'intolerable' the +conduct of the ministers in 'frightening poor innocent little children +with talk of hell-fire and eternal damnation' (iii. 200). And indeed we +cannot deny that when reading some of the sermons to which poor Phebe +Bartlet must have listened, and remembering the nature of the audience, +the fingers of an unregenerate person clench themselves involuntarily as +grasping an imaginary horsewhip. The answer given by Edwards does not +diminish the impression. Innocent as children may seem to be, he +replies, 'yet if they are out of Christ, they are not so in God's sight, +but are young vipers, and are infinitely more hateful than vipers, and +are in a most miserable condition as well as grown persons; and they are +naturally very senseless and stupid, being _born as the wild ass's +colt_, and need much to awaken them' (iii. 200). Doubtless they got it, +and if we will take Edwards' word for it, the awakening process never +did harm in any one instance. Here we are touching the doctrines which +naturally excite a fierce revolt of the conscience against the most +repulsive of all theological dogmas, though unfortunately a revolt which +is apt to generate an indiscriminating hostility. + +The revival gradually spent its force; and, as usual, the more +unpleasant symptoms began to assume greater prominence as the more +spiritual impulse decayed. In Edwards' phraseology, 'it began to be very +sensible that the Spirit of God was gradually withdrawing from us, and +after this time Satan seemed to be set more loose, and raged in a +dreadful manner' (iii. 77). From the beginning of the excitement, the +usual physical manifestation, leapings, and roarings and convulsions +(iii. 131, 205), had shown themselves; and Edwards labours to show that +in this case they were genuine marks of a Divine impulse, and not of +mere enthusiasm, as in the externally similar cases of the Quakers, the +French prophets, and others (iii. 109). Now, however, more startling +phenomena presented themselves. Satan persuaded a highly respectable +citizen to cut his throat. Others saw visions, and had fancied +inspirations; whilst from some hints it would seem probable that grosser +outrages on morality resulted from indiscriminate gatherings of frenzied +enthusiasts (iii. 284). Finally, people's minds were diverted by the +approach of his Excellency the Governor to settle an Indian treaty, and +the building of a new meeting-house altered the channel of enthusiasm +(iii. 79). Northampton settled down into its normal tranquillity. + +Some years passed, and, as religious zeal cooled, Edwards became +involved in characteristic difficulties. The pastor, it may easily be +supposed, was not popular with the rising generation. He had, as he +confesses with his usual candour, 'a constitution in many respects +peculiarly unhappy, attended with flaccid solids; vapid, sizy, and +scarce fluids; and a low tide of spirits; often occasioning a kind of +childish weakness and contemptibleness of speech, presence and +demeanour; with a disagreeable dulness and stiffness, much unfitting me +for conversation, but more especially for the government of a college,' +which he was requested to undertake (i. 86). He was, says his admiring +biographer, 'thorough in the government of his children,' who +consequently 'reverenced, esteemed, and loved him.' He adopted the +plan, less popular now than then, and even more decayed in America than +in England, of 'thoroughly subduing' his children as soon as they showed +any tendency to self-will. He was a 'great enemy' to all 'vain +amusements;' and even after his children had grown up, he enforced their +abstinence from such 'pernicious practice,' and never allowed them to be +out after nine at night. Any gentleman, we are happy to add, was given +proper opportunities for courting his daughters after consulting their +parents, but on condition of conforming strictly to the family +regulations (i. 52, 53). This Puritan discipline appears to have +succeeded with Edwards' own family; but a gentleman with flaccid solids, +vapid fluids, and a fervent belief in hell-fire is seldom appreciated by +the youth even of a Puritan village. + +Accordingly, Edwards got into trouble by endeavouring to force his own +notions of discipline amongst certain young people, belonging to +'considerable families,' who were said to indulge in loose conversation +and equivocal books. They possibly preferred 'Pamela,' which had then +just revealed a new source of amusement to the world, to awakening +sermons; and Edwards' well-meant efforts to suppress the evil set the +town 'in a blaze' (i. 64). A more serious quarrel followed. Edwards +maintained the doctrine, which had been gradually dying out amongst the +descendants of the Puritans, that converted persons alone should be +admitted to the Lord's Supper. The practice had been different at +Northampton; and when Edwards announced his intention of enforcing the +test of professed conversion, a vigorous controversy ensued. The dispute +lasted for some years, with much mutual recrimination. A kind of +ecclesiastical council, formed from the neighbouring churches, decided +by a majority of one that he should be dismissed if his people desired +it; and the people voted for his dismissal by a majority of more than +200 to 20 (i. 69). + +Edwards was thus a martyr to his severe sense of discipline. His +admirers have lamented over the sentence by which the ablest of American +thinkers was banished in a kind of disgrace. Impartial readers will be +inclined to suspect that those who suffered under so rigorous a +spiritual ruler had perhaps some reason on their side. However that may +be, and I do not presume to have any opinion upon a question involving +such complex ecclesiastical disputes, the result to literature was +fortunate. In 1751 Edwards was appointed to a mission for Indians, +founded at Stockbridge, in the remotest corner of Massachusetts, where a +few remnants of the aborigines were settled on a township granted by the +colony. There were great hopes, we are told, of the probable influence +of the mission, which were destined to frustration from accidental +causes. The hopes can hardly have rested on the character of the +preacher. It is difficult to imagine a more grotesque relation between a +minister and his congregation than that which must have subsisted +between Edwards and his barbarous flock. He had remarked pathetically in +one of his writings on the very poor prospect open to the Houssatunnuck +Indians, if their salvation depended on the study of the evidences of +Christianity (iv. 245). And if Edwards preached upon the topics of which +his mind was fullest, their case would have been still harder. For it +was in the remote solitudes of this retired corner that he gave himself +up to those abstruse meditations on free-will and original sin which +form the substance of his chief writings. A sermon in the Houssatunnuck +language, if Edwards ever acquired that tongue, upon predestination, the +differences between the Arminian and the Calvinist schemes, Liberty of +Indifference, and other such doctrines, would hardly be an improving +performance. If, however, his labours in this department 'were attended +with no remarkable visible success' (i. 83), he thought deeply and wrote +much. The publication of his treatise on the Freedom of the Will +followed in 1754, and upon the strength of the reputation which it won +for him, he was appointed President of New Jersey College in the end of +1757, only to die of small-pox in the following March. His death cut +short some considerable literary schemes, not, however, of a kind +calculated to add to his reputation. Various remains were published +after his death, and we have ample materials for forming a comprehensive +judgment of his theories. In one shape or another he succeeded in giving +utterance to his theory upon the great problems of life; and there is +little cause for regret that he did not succeed in completing that +'History of the Work of Redemption' which was to have been his _opus +magnum_. He had neither the knowledge nor the faculties for making much +of a Puritan view of universal history, and he has left a sufficient +indication of his general conception of such a book. + +The book upon the Freedom of the Will, which is his main title to +philosophical fame, bears marks of the conditions under which it was +composed, and which certainly did not tend to confer upon an abstruse +treatise any additional charm. Edwards' style is heavy and languid; he +seldom indulges in an illustration, and those which he gives are far +from lively; it is only at rare intervals that his logical ingenuity in +stating some intricate argument clothes his thought in language of +corresponding neatness. He has, in fact, the faults natural to an +isolated thinker. He gives his readers credit for being familiar with +the details of the labyrinth in which he had wandered till every +intricacy was plainly mapped out in his own mind, and frequently dwells +at tiresome length upon some refinement which probably never occurred to +anyone but himself. A writer who, like Hume, is at once an acute thinker +and a great literary artist, is content to aim a decisive blow at the +vital points of the theory which he is opposing, and leaves to his +readers the task of following out more remote consequences; Edwards, +after winning the decisive victory, insists upon attacking his adversary +in every position in which he might conceivably endeavour to entrench +himself. It seems to be his aim to answer every objection which could +possibly be suggested, and, of course, he answers many objections which +no one would raise, whilst probably omitting others of which no +forethought could warn him. The book reads like a verbatim report of +those elaborate dialogues which he was in the habit of holding with +himself in his solitary ramblings. There is some truth in Goldsmith's +remark upon the ease of gaining an argumentative victory when you are at +once opponent and respondent. It must be added, however, that any man +who is at all fond of speculation finds in his second self the most +obstinate and perplexing of antagonists. No one else raises such a +variety of empty and vexatious quibbles, and splits hairs with such +surprising versatility. It is true that your double often shows a +certain discretion, and whilst obstinately defending certain untenable +positions contrives to glide over some weak places, which come to light +with provoking unexpectedness when you are encountered by an external +enemy. Edwards, indeed, guards himself with extreme care by an elaborate +system of logical divisions and subdivisions against the possibility of +so unpleasant a surprise; but no man can dispense with the aid of a +living antagonist, free from all suspicion of being a man of straw. The +opponents against whom he labours most strenuously were unfortunately +very feeble creatures for the most part; such as poor Chubb, the Deist, +and the once well-known Dr. Whitby, who had changed sides in more than +one controversy with more credit to his candour than to his force of +mind. Certain difficulties may, therefore, have evaded the logical +network in which he tried to enclose them; but, on the whole, he is +rather over than under anxious to stop every conceivable loophole. +Condensation, with a view to placing the vital points of his doctrine in +more salient relief, would have greatly improved his treatise. But the +fault is natural in a philosophical recluse, more intent upon thorough +investigation than upon lucid exposition. + +Without following his intricate reasonings, the main position may be +indicated in a few words. The doctrine, in fact, which Edwards asserted +may be said to be simply that everything has a cause, and that human +volitions are no more an exception to this universal law than any other +class of phenomena. This belief in the universality of causation rests +with him upon a primary intuition (v. 55), and not upon experience; and +his whole argument pursues the metaphysical method instead of appealing, +as a modern school would appeal, to the results of observation. The +Arminian opponent of necessity must, as he argues, either deny this +self-evident principle, or be confined to statements purely irrelevant +to the really important question. The book is occupied in hunting down +all the evasions by which these conclusions may be escaped, and in +showing that the true theory, when rightly understood, is obnoxious to +no objections on the score of morality. The ordinary mode of meeting +the argument is by appealing to consciousness. We know that we are free, +as Dr. Johnson said, and there's an end on't. Edwards argues at great +length, and in many forms, that this summary reply involves a confusion +between the two very different propositions: 'We can do what we will,' +and 'We can will what we will.' Consciousness really testifies that, if +we desire to raise our right hand, our right hand will rise in the +absence of external compulsion. It does not show that the desire itself +may either exist or not exist, independently of any preceding causes +either external or internal. The ordinary definition of free-will +assumes an infinite series of volitions, each determining all that has +gone before; or, to let Edwards speak for himself, and it will be a +sufficient specimen of his style, he says in a passage which sums up the +whole argument, that the assertion of free-will either amounts to the +merely verbal proposition that you have power to will what you have +power to will; 'or the meaning must be that a man has power to will as +he pleases or chooses to will; that is, he has power by one act of +choice to choose another; by an antecedent act of will to choose a +consequent act, and therein to execute his own choice. And if this be +their meaning, it is nothing but shuffling with those they dispute with, +and baffling their own reason. For still the question returns, wherein +lies man's liberty in that antecedent act of will which chose the +consequent act? The answer, according to the same principle, must be, +that his liberty lies also in his willing as he would, or as he chose, +or agreeably to another act of choice preceding that. And so the +question returns _in infinitum_ and again _in infinitum_. In order to +support their opinion there must be no beginning, but free acts of the +will must have been chosen by foregoing acts of will in the soul of +every man without beginning, and so before he had a beginning.' + +The heads of most people begin to swim when they have proceeded but a +short way into such argumentation; but Edwards delights in applying +similar logical puzzles over and over again to confute the notions of a +'self-determining power in the will,' or of a 'liberty of indifferency;' +of the power of suspending the action even if the judgment has +pronounced its verdict; of Archbishop King's ingenious device of putting +the cart before the horse, and declaring that our delight is not the +cause but the consequence of our will; or Clarke's theory of liberty, as +consisting in agency which seems to erect an infinite number of +subsidiary first causes in the wills of all created beings. A short cut +to the same conclusions consists in simply denying the objective reality +of chance or contingency; but Edwards has no love of short cuts in such +matters, or rather cannot refuse himself the pleasure of following the +circuitous route as well as explaining the more direct method. + +This main principle established, Edwards has of course no difficulty in +showing that the supposed injury to morality rests on a misconception of +the real doctrine. If volitions, instead of being caused, are the +products of arbitrary chance, morality becomes meaningless. We approve +or disapprove of an action precisely because it implies the existence of +motives, good or bad. Punishment and reward would be useless if actions +were after all a matter of chance; and if merit implied the existence of +free-will, the formation of virtuous habits would detract from a man's +merit in so far as they tend to make virtue necessary. So far, in short, +as you admit the existence of an element of pure chance, you restrict +the sphere of law; and therefore morality, so far from excluding, +necessarily involves an invariable connection between motives and +actions. + +Arguments of this kind, sufficiently familiar to all students of the +subject, are combined with others of a more doubtful character. Edwards +has no hesitation about dealing with the absolute and the infinite. He +dwells, for example, with great ingenuity upon the difficulty of +reconciling the Divine prescience with the contingency of human actions, +and has no scruple in inferring the possibility of reconciling virtue +with necessity from the fact that God is at once the type of all +perfection, and is under a necessity to be perfect. If such arguments +would be rejected as transcending the limits of human intelligence by +many who agree with his conclusions, others, equally characteristic, are +as much below the dignity of a metaphysician. Edwards draws his proofs +with the same equanimity from the most abstruse speculations as from a +child-like belief in the literal inspiration of the Scriptures. He +'proves,' for example, God's foreknowledge of human actions from such +facts as Micaiah's prophecy of Ahab's sin, and Daniel's acquaintance +with the 'horrid wickedness' about to be committed by Antiochus +Epiphanes. It is a pleasant supposition that a man who did not believe +that God could foretell events, would be awed by the authority of a +text; but Edwards' polemic is almost exclusively directed against the +hated Arminians, and he appears to be unconscious of the existence of a +genuine sceptic. He observes that he has never read Hobbes (v. 260); and +though in another work he makes a brief allusion to Hume, he never +refers to him in these speculations, whilst covering the same ground as +one of the admirable _Essays_. + +This simplicity is significant of Edwards' unique position. The doctrine +of Calvinism, by whatever name it may be called, is a mental tonic of +tremendous potency. Whether in its theological dress, as attributing all +events to the absolute decrees of the Almighty, or in its metaphysical +dress, as declaring that some abstract necessity governs the world, or +in the shape more familiar to modern thinkers, in which it proclaims the +universality of what has been called the reign of law, it conquers or +revolts the imagination. It forces us to conceive of all phenomena as so +many links + + In the eternal chain + Which none can break, nor slip, nor overreach; + +and can, therefore, be accepted only by men who possess the rare power +of combining their beliefs into a logical whole. Most people contrive to +shirk the consequences, either by some of those evasions which, as +Edwards showed, amount to asserting the objective existence of chance, +or more commonly by forbidding their reason to follow the chain of +inferences through more than a few links. The axiom that the cause of a +cause is also the cause of the thing caused, though verbally admitted, +is beyond the reach of most intellects. People are willing to admit that +A is irrevocably joined to B, B to C, and so on to the end of the +alphabet, but they refuse to realise the connection between A and Z. The +annoyance excited by Mr. Buckle's enunciation of some very familiar +propositions, is a measure of the reluctance of the popular imagination +to accept a logical conclusion. When the dogma is associated with a +belief in eternal damnation, the consequences are indeed terrible; and +therefore it was natural that Calvinism should have become an almost +extinct creed, and the dogma have been left to the freethinkers who had +not that awful vision before their eyes. Hobbes, Collins, and Hume, the +three writers with whom the opinion was chiefly associated in English +literature, were also the three men who were regarded as most +emphatically the devil's advocates. In the latter part of the eighteenth +century, it was indeed adopted by Hartley, by his disciple Priestley, +and by Abraham Tucker, all of whom were Christians after a fashion. But +they reconciled themselves to the belief by peculiar forms of optimism. +Tucker maintained the odd fancy that every man would ultimately receive +a precisely equal share of happiness, and thought that a few thousand +years of damnation would be enough for all practical purposes. If I +remember rightly, he roughly calculated the amount of misery to be +endured by human beings at about two minutes' suffering in a century. +Hartley maintained the still more remarkable thesis that, in some +non-natural sense, 'all individuals are always and actually infinitely +happy.' But Edwards, though an optimist in a very different sense, was +alone amongst contemporary writers of any speculative power in asserting +at once the doctrine that all events are the result of the Divine will, +and the doctrine of eternal damnation. His mind, acute as it was, yet +worked entirely in the groove provided for it. The revolting +consequences to which he was led by not running away from his premisses, +never for an instant suggested to him that the premisses might +conceivably be false. He accepts a belief in hell-fire, interpreted +after the popular fashion, without a murmur, and deduces from it all +those consequences which most theologians have evaded or covered with a +judicious veil. + +Edwards was luckily not an eloquent man, for his sermons would in that +case have been amongst the most terrible of human compositions. But if +ever he warms into something like eloquence, it is when he is +endeavouring to force upon the imaginations of his hearers the horrors +of their position. Perhaps the best specimen of his powers in this +department is a sermon which we are told produced a great effect at the +time of revivals, and to which, we may as well remember, Phebe Bartlet +may probably have listened. Read that sermon (vol. vii., sermon xv.) and +endeavour to picture the scene of its original delivery. Imagine the +congregation of rigid Calvinists, prepared by previous scenes of frenzy +and convulsion, and longing for the fierce excitement which was the only +break in the monotony of their laborious lives. And then imagine Edwards +ascending the pulpit, with his flaccid solids and vapid fluids, and the +pale drawn face, in which we can trace an equal resemblance to the stern +Puritan forefathers and to the keen sallow New Englander of modern +times. He gives out as his text, 'Sinners shall slide in due time,' and +the title of his sermon is, 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.' For +a full hour he dwells with unusual vehemence on the wrath of the Creator +and the sufferings of the creature. His sentences, generally languid and +complex, condense themselves into short, almost gasping asseverations. +God is angry with the wicked; as angry with the living wicked as 'with +many of those miserable creatures that He is now tormenting in hell.' +The devil is waiting: the fire is ready; the furnace is hot; the +'glittering sword is whet and held over them, and the pit hath opened +her mouth to receive them.' The unconverted are walking on a rotten +covering, where there are innumerable weak places, and those places not +distinguishable. The flames are 'gathering and lashing about' the +sinner, and all that preserves him for a moment is 'the mere arbitrary +will and uncovenanted unobliged forbearance of an incensed God.' But +does not God love sinners? Hardly in a comforting sense. 'The God that +holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some +other loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully +provoked; He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast +into the fire;... you are ten thousand times as abominable in His eyes +as the most hateful and venomous serpent is in ours.' The comparison of +man to a loathsome viper is one of the metaphors to which Edwards most +habitually recurs (_e.g._ vii. 167, 179, 182, 198, 344, 496). No relief +is possible; Edwards will have no attempt to explain away the eternity +of which he speaks; there will be no end to the 'exquisite horrible +misery' of the damned. You, when damned, 'will know certainly that you +must wear out long ages, millions of millions of ages, in wrestling and +conflicting with this Almighty merciless vengeance: and then when you +have so done, when so many ages have actually been spent by you in this +manner, you will know that all is but a point to what remains.' Nor +might his hearers fancy that, as respectable New England Puritans, they +had no personal interest in the question. It would be awful, he says, if +we could point to one definite person in this congregation as certain to +endure such torments. 'But, alas! instead of one, how many is it likely +will remember this discourse in hell? It would be a wonder if some that +are now present should not be in hell in a very short time, before this +year is out. And it would be no wonder if some persons that now sit here +in some seats of this meeting-house in health, and quiet and secure, +should be there before to-morrow morning.' + +With which blessing he dismissed the congregation to their dinners, with +such appetites as might be left to them. The strained excitement which +marks this pleasing production could not be maintained; but Edwards +never shrank in cold blood from the most appalling consequences of his +theories. He tells us, with superlative coolness, that the 'bulk of +mankind do throng' to hell (vii. 226). He sentences infants to hell +remorselessly. The imagination, he admits, may be relieved by the +hypothesis that infants suffer only in this world, instead of being +doomed to eternal misery. 'But it does not at all relieve one's reason;' +and that is the only faculty which he will obey (vi. 461). Historically +the doctrine is supported by the remark that God did not save the +children in Sodom, and that He actually commanded the slaughter of the +Midianitish infants. 'Happy shall he be,' it is written of Edom, 'that +taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones' (vi. 255). +Philosophically he remarks that 'a young viper has a malignant nature, +though incapable of doing a malignant action' (vi. 471), and quotes with +approval the statement of a Jewish Rabbi, that a child is wicked as soon +as born, 'for at the same time that he sucks the breasts he follows his +lust' (vi. 482), which is perhaps the superlative expression of the +theory that all natural instincts are corrupt. Finally, he enforces the +only doctrine which can equal this in horror, namely, that the saints +rejoice in the damnation of the wicked. In a sermon called 'Wicked Men +useful in their Destruction only' (vol. viii., sermon xxi.), he declares +that 'the view of the doleful condition of the damned will make them +(the saints in heaven) more prize their own blessedness.' They will +realise the wonderful grace of God, who has made so great a difference +between them and others of the same species, 'who are no worse by nature +than they, and have deserved no worse of God than they.' 'When they +shall look upon the damned,' he exclaims, 'and see their misery, how +will heaven ring with the praises of God's justice towards the wicked, +and His grace towards the saints! And with how much greater enlargement +of heart will they praise Jesus Christ their Redeemer, that ever He was +pleased to set His love upon them, His dying love!' + +Was the man who could utter such blasphemous sentiments--for so they +undoubtedly appear to us--a being of ordinary flesh and blood? One would +rather have supposed his solids to be of bronze, and his fluids of +vitriol, than have attributed to them the character which he describes. +That he should have been a gentle, meditative creature, around whose +knees had clung eleven 'young vipers' of his own begetting, is certainly +an astonishing reflection. And yet, to do Edwards justice, we must +remember two things. In the first place, the responsibility for such +ghastly beliefs cannot be repudiated by anyone who believes in the +torments of hell. Catholics and Protestants must share the opprobrium +due to the assertion of this tremendous doctrine. Nor does Arminianism +really provide more than a merely verbal escape from the difficulty. +Jeremy Taylor, for example, draws a picture of hell quite as fearful and +as material as Edwards', and, if animated by a less fanatical spirit, +adorned by an incomparably more vivid fancy. He specially improves upon +Edwards' description by introducing the sense of smell. The tyrant who +fastened the dead to the living invented an exquisite torment; 'but what +is this in respect of hell, when each body of the damned is more +loathsome and unsavoury than a million of dead dogs, and all those +pressed and crowded together in so strait a compass? Bonaventure goes so +far as to say that if one only of the damned were brought into this +world, it were sufficient to infect the whole earth. Neither shall the +devils send forth a better smell; for, although they are spirits, yet +those fiery bodies unto which they are fastened and confined shall be of +a more pestilential flavour.' It is vain to attempt an extenuation of +the horror, by relieving the Almighty from the responsibility of this +fearful prison-house. The dogma of free-will is a transparent mockery. +It simply enables the believer to retain the hideous side of his creed +by abandoning the rational side. To pass over the objection that by +admitting the existence of chance it really destroys all intelligible +measures of merit and of justice, the really awful dogma remains. You +still believe that God has made man too weak to stand alone, that He has +placed him amidst temptations where his fall, if not rigidly certain in +a given case, is still inevitable for the mass, and then torments him +eternally for his wickedness. Whether a man is slain outright, or merely +placed without help to wander at random through innumerable pitfalls, +makes no real difference in the character of the action. Theologians +profess horror at the doctrine of infantile damnation, though they +cannot always make up their minds to disavow it explicitly, but they +will find it easier to condemn the doctrine than effectually to +repudiate all responsibility. To the statement that it follows logically +from the dogma of original sin, they reply that logic is out of place in +such questions. But, if this be granted, do they not maintain doctrines +as hideous, when calmly examined? It is blasphemous, we are told, to say +with Edwards, that God holds the 'little vipers,' whom we call 'helpless +innocents,' suspended over the pit of hell, and drops millions of them +into ruthless torments. Certainly it is blasphemous. But is an infant +really more helpless than the poor savage of Australia or St. Giles, +surrounded from his birth with cruel and brutal natures, and never +catching one glimpse of celestial light? Nay, when the question is +between God and man, does not the difference between the infant and the +philosopher or the statesman vanish into nothing? All, whatever figment +of free-will may be set up, are equally helpless in face of the +surrounding influences which mould their characters and their fate. +Young children, the heterodox declare, are innocent. But the theologian +replies with unanswerable truth, that God looks at the heart and not at +the actions, and that science and theology are at one in declaring that +in the child are the germs of the adult man. If human nature is corrupt +and therefore hateful to God, Edwards is quite right in declaring that +the bursting bud must be as hateful as the full-grown tree. To beings of +a loftier order, to say nothing of a Being of infinite power and wisdom, +the petty race of man would appear as helpless as insects appear to us, +and the distinction between the children or the ignorant, and the wise +and full-grown, an irrelevant refinement. + +It is of course true that the patient reception of this and similar +doctrines would indicate at the present day a callous heart or a +perverted intellect. Though, in the sphere of abstract speculation, we +cannot draw any satisfactory line between the man and the infant, there +is a wide gap to the practical imagination. A man ought to be shocked +when confronted with this fearfully concrete corollary to his theories. +But the blame should be given where it is due. The Calvinist is not to +blame for the theory of universal law which he shares with the +philosopher, but for the theory of damnation which he shares with the +Arminian. The hideous dogma is the existence of the prison-house, not +the belief that its inmates are sent there by God's inscrutable decree, +instead of being drafted into it by lot. And here we come to the second +fact which must be remembered in Edwards' favour. The living truths in +his theory are chained to dead fancies, and the fancies have an odour as +repulsive as Taylor's 'million of dead dogs.' But on the truths is +founded a religious and moral system which, however erroneous it may +appear to some thinkers, is conspicuous for its vigour and loftiness. +Edwards often shows himself a worthy successor of the great men who led +the moral revolt of the Reformation. Amongst some very questionable +metaphysics and much outworn--sometimes repulsive--superstition, he +grasps the central truths on which all really noble morality must be +based. The mode in which they presented themselves to his mind may be +easily traced. Calvinism, logically developed, leads to Pantheism. The +absolute sovereignty of God, the doctrine to which Edwards constantly +returns, must be extended over all nature as well as over the fate of +the individual human soul. The peculiarity of Edwards' mind was, that +the doctrine had thus expanded along particular lines of thought, +without equally affecting others. He is a kind of Spinoza-Mather; he +combines, that is, the logical keenness of the great metaphysician with +the puerile superstitions of the New England divine; he sees God in all +nature, and yet believes in the degrading supernaturalism of the Salem +witches. The object of his faith, in short, is the 'infinite Jehovah' +(vi. 170), the God to whose all-pervading power none can set a limit, +and who is yet the tutelary deity of a petty clan; and there is +something almost bewildering in the facility with which he passes from +one conception to the other without the smallest consciousness of any +discontinuity. Of his coincidence in the popular theories, and +especially in the doctrine of damnation, I have already given instances. +His utterances derived from a loftier source are given with equal +emphasis. At the age of fifteen or sixteen he had said 'God and real +existence are the same; God is, and there is none else.'[10] The same +doctrine is the foundation of the theories expounded in his treatises on +Virtue and on the End of God in Creation. In the last of these, for +example, he uses the argument (depending upon a conception familiar to +the metaphysicians of the previous age), that benevolence, consisting in +regard to 'Being in general,' must be due to any being in proportion to +the degree of existence (ii. 401). Now 'all other being is as nothing in +comparison of the Divine Being.' God is 'the foundation and fountain of +all being and all perfection, from whom all is perfectly derived, and on +whom all is most absolutely and perfectly dependent; whose being and +beauty is, as it were, the sum and comprehension of all existence and +excellence, much more than the sun is the fountain and summary +comprehension of all the light and brightness of the day' (ii. 405). As +he says in the companion treatise, 'the eternal and infinite Being is, +in effect, being in general, and comprehends universal existence' (vi. +59). The only end worthy of God must, therefore, be his own glory. This +is not to attribute selfishness to God, for 'in God, the love of Himself +and the love of the public are not to be distinguished as in man, +because God's being, as it were, comprehends all' (vi. 53). In +communicating His fulness to His creatures, He is of necessity the +ultimate end; but it is a fallacy to make God and the creature in this +affair of the emanation of the Divine fulness, 'the opposite parts of a +disjunction' (vi. 55). The creature's love of God and complacence in the +Divine perfections are the same thing as the manifestation of the Divine +glory. 'They are all but the emanations of God's glory, or the excellent +brightness and fulness of the Divinity diffused, overflowing, and, as it +were, enlarged; or, in one word, existing _ad extra_' (vi. 117). In more +familiar dialect, our love to God is but God's goodness making itself +objective. The only knowledge which deserves the name is the knowledge +of God, and virtue is but the knowledge of God under a different name. + +Without dwelling upon the relations of this doctrine to modern forms of +Pantheism, I must consider this last proposition, which is of vital +importance in Edwards' system, and of which the theological and the +metaphysical element is curiously blended. God is to the universe--to +use Edwards' own metaphor--what the sun is to our planet; and the +metaphor would have been more adequate if he had been acquainted with +modern science. The sun's action is the primary cause of all the +infinitely complex play of forces which manifest themselves in the fall +of a raindrop or in the operations of a human brain. But as some bodies +may seem to resist the action of the sun's rays, so may some created +beings set themselves in opposition to the Divine Will. To a +thoroughgoing Pantheist, indeed, such an opposition must appear to be +impossible if we look deep enough, and sin, in this sense, be merely an +illusion, caused by our incapacity of taking in the whole design of the +Almighty. Edwards, however, though dimly aware of the difficulty, is not +so consistent in his Pantheism as to be much troubled with it. He admits +that, by some mysterious process, corruption has intruded itself into +the Divine universe. The all-pervading harmony is marred by a discord +due, in his phraseology, to the fall of man. Over the ultimate cause of +this discord lies a veil which can never be withdrawn to mortal +intelligence. Assuming its existence, however, virtue consists, if one +may so speak, in that quality which fits a man to be a conducting +medium, and vice in that which makes him a non-conducting medium to the +solar forces. This proposition is confounded in Edwards' mind, as in +that of most metaphysicians, with the very different proposition that +virtue consists in recognising the Divine origin of those forces. It is +characteristic, in fact, of his metaphysical school, to identify the +logical with the causal connection, and to assume that the definition of +a thing necessarily constitutes its essence. 'Virtue,' says Edwards, 'is +the union of heart to being in general, or to God, the Being of beings' +(ii. 421), and thus consists in the intellectual apprehension of Deity, +and in the emotion founded upon and necessarily involving the +apprehension. The doctrine that whatever is done so as to promote the +glory of God is virtuous, is with him identified with the doctrine that +whatever is done consciously in order to promote the glory of God is +virtuous. The major premiss of the syllogism which proves an action to +be virtuous must be actually present to the mind of the agent. This, in +utilitarian phraseology, is to confound between the criterion and the +motive. If it is, as Edwards says, the test of a virtuous action that it +should tend to 'the highest good of being in general,' it does not +follow that an action is only virtuous when done with a conscious +reference to that end. But Edwards overlooks or denies the distinction, +and assumes, for example, as an evident corollary, that a love of +children or friends is only virtuous in so far as it is founded on a +desire for the general good, which, in his sense, is a desire for the +glory of God (ii. 428). He judges actions, that is, not by their +tendency, but by their nature; and their nature is equivalent to their +logic. + +His metaphysical theory coincides precisely with his theological view, +and is generally expressed in theological language. The love of 'Being +in general' is the love of God. The intellectual intuition is the +reflection of the inward light, and the recognition of a mathematical +truth is but a different phase of the process which elsewhere produces +conversion. Intuition is a kind of revelation and revelation is a +special intuition. + +One of his earliest published sermons is devoted to prove the existence +of 'a Divine and supernatural light, immediately imparted to the soul by +the Spirit of God' (vol. viii., sermon xxvii.). On that fundamental +doctrine his whole theological system is based; as his metaphysical +system rests on the existence of absolute _a priori_ truths. The +knowledge of God sums up all true beliefs, and justifies all virtuous +emotions, as the power of God supports all creation at every instant. +'It is by a Divine influence that the laws of nature are upheld, and a +constant concurrence of Divine power is necessary in order to our being, +moving, or having a being' (v. 419). To be constantly drawing sustenance +from the eternal power which everywhere underlies the phenomena of the +world is the necessary condition of spiritual life, as to breathe the +air is the condition of physical life. The force which this conception, +whether true or false, exercises over the imagination, and the depth +which it gives to Edwards' moral views, are manifest at every turn. +Edwards rises far above those theories, recurring in so many different +forms, which place the essence of religion in some outward observances, +or in a set of propositions not vitally connected with the spiritual +constitution. Edwards' contemporaries, such as Lardner or Sherlock, +thought that to be a Christian was to accept certain results of +antiquarian research. With a curious _naivete_ they sometimes say that a +ploughman or a cobbler could summarily answer the problems which have +puzzled generations of critics. Edwards sees the absurdity of hoping +that a genuine faith can ever be based on such balancing of historical +probabilities. The cobbler was to be awed by the learned man; but how +could he implicitly trust a learned man when his soul was at stake, and +when learned men differed? To convince the ignorant or the Houssatunnuck +Indian, God's voice must speak through a less devious channel. The +transcendent glory of Divine things proves their Divinity intuitively; +the mind does not indeed discard argument, but it does not want any +'long chain of argument; the argument is but one and the evidence +direct; the mind ascends to the truth of the Gospel but by one step, and +that is its Divine glory.' The moral theory of the contemporary +rationalists was correlative to their religious theory. To be religious +was to believe that certain facts had once happened; to be moral was to +believe that under certain circumstances you would at some future time +go to hell. Virtue of that kind was not to Edwards' taste, though few +men have been less sparing in using the appeal to damnation. But threats +of hell-fire were only meant to startle the sinner from his repose. His +morality could be framed from no baser material than love to the Divine +perfections. 'What thanks are due to you for not loving your own misery, +and for being willing to take some pains to escape burning in hell to +all eternity? There is ne'er a devil in hell but would gladly do the +same' (viii. 145). + +The strength, however, and the weakness of Edwards as a moralist are +best illustrated from the two treatises on the Religious Affections and +on Original Sin. The first, which was the fruit of his experiences at +Northampton, may be described as a system of religious diagnostics. By +what symptoms are you to distinguish--that was the problem which forced +itself upon him--the spiritual state produced by the Divine action from +that which is but a hollow mockery? After his mode of judging in +concrete cases, as already indicated, we are rather surprised by the +calm and sensible tone of his argument. The deep sense of the vast +importance of the events to which he was a witness makes him the more +scrupulous in testing their real character. He resists the temptation to +dwell upon those noisy and questionable manifestations in which the +vulgar thirst for the wonderful found the most appropriate testimony to +the work. Roman Catholic archbishops at the present day can exhort their +hearers to put their faith in a silly story of a vision, on the express +ground that the popularity of the belief amongst Catholics proves its +Divine origin. That is wonderfully like saying that a successful lie +should be patronised so long as it is on the side of the Church. +Edwards, brought up in a manlier school, deals with such phenomena in a +different spirit. Suppose, he says, that a person terrified by threats +of hell-fire has a vision 'of a person with a beautiful countenance, +smiling on him with arms open and with blood dropping down,' whom he +supposes to be Christ come to promise him eternal life, are we to assume +that this vision and the consequent transports infallibly indicate +supernatural agency? No, he replies, with equal sense and honesty; 'he +must have but slightly considered human nature who thinks such things +cannot arise in this manner without any supernatural excitement of +Divine power' (iv. 72). Many mischievous delusions have their origin in +this error. 'It is a low, miserable notion of spiritual sense' to +suppose that these 'external ideas' (ideas, that is, such as enter by +the senses) are proofs of Divine interference. Ample experience has +shown that they are proofs not of the spiritual health which comes from +communion with God, but of 'weakness of body and mind and distempers of +body' (iv. 143). Experience has supplied exemplary confirmations of +Edwards' wisdom. Neither bodily convulsions, nor vehement excitement of +mind, nor even revelations of things to come (iv. 158), are sufficient +proofs of that mysterious change of soul which is called conversion. No +external test, in fact, can be given. Man cannot judge decisively, but +the best symptoms are such proofs as increased humility, a love of +Christ for His own sake, without reference to heaven or hell, a sense of +the infinite beauty of Divine things, a certain 'symmetry and +proportion' between the affections themselves (iv. 314), a desire for +higher perfection, and a rich harvest of the fruit of Christian +practice. + +So far, Edwards is unassailable from his own point of view. Our theory +of religion may differ from his; but at least he fully realises how +profound is the meaning of the word, and aims at conquering all human +faculties, not at controlling a few external manifestations. But his +further applications of the theory lead him into more doubtful +speculations. That Being, a union with whom constitutes true holiness, +is not only to be the ideal of perfect goodness, but He must be the God +of the Calvinists, who fulfils the stipulations of a strange legal +bargain, and the God of the Jews, who sentences whole nations to +massacre for the crimes of their ancestors. Edwards has hitherto been +really protesting against that lower conception of God which is latent +in at least the popular versions of Catholic or Arminian theology, and +to which Calvinism opposes a loftier view. God, on this theory, is not +really almighty, for the doctrine of free-will places human actions and +their results beyond His control. He is scarcely omniscient, for, like +human rulers, He judges by actions, not by the intrinsic nature of the +soul, and therefore distributes His rewards and punishments on a system +comparable to that of mere earthly jurisprudence. He is at most the +infallible judge of actions, not the universal ordainer of events and +distributor of life and happiness. Edwards' profound conviction of the +absolute sovereignty of God leads him to reject all such feeble +conceptions. But he has now to tell us where the Divine influence has +actually displayed itself; and his view becomes strangely narrowed. +Instead of confessing that all good gifts come from God, he infers that +those which do not come from his own God must be radically vicious. +Already, as we have seen, in virtue of his leading principle, he has +denied to all natural affections the right to be truly virtuous. Unless +they involve a conscious reference to God, they are but delusive +resemblances of the reality. He admits that the natural man can in +various ways produce very fair imitations of true virtue. By help of +association of ideas, for example, or by the force of sympathy, it is +possible that benevolence may become pleasing and malevolence +displeasing, even when our own interest is not involved (ii. 436). Nay, +there is a kind of moral sense natural to man, which consists in a +certain preception of the harmony between sin and punishment, and which +therefore does not properly spring from self-love. This moral sense may +even go so far as to recognise the propriety of yielding all to the God +from whom we receive everything (ii. 443), and the justice of the +punishment of sinners. And yet this natural conscience does not imply +the existence of a 'truly virtuous taste or determination of the mind to +relish and delight in the essential beauty of true virtue, arising from +a virtuous benevolence of the heart' (ii. 445). God has bestowed such +instincts upon men for their preservation here; but they will disappear +in the next world, where no such need for them exists. He is driven, +indeed, to make some vague concessions (against which his enlightened +commentators protest), to the effect that 'these things [the natural +affections] have something of the general nature of virtue, which is +love' (ii. 456); but no such uncertain affinity can make them worthy to +be reckoned with that union with God which is the effect of the Divine +intervention alone. + +Edwards is thus in the singular position of a Pantheist who yet regards +all nature as alienated from God; and in the treatise on Original Sin he +brings out the more revolting consequences of that view by help of the +theological dogma of corruption. He there maintains in its fullest sense +the terrible thesis, that all men are naturally in a state of which the +inevitable issue is their 'utter eternal perdition, as being finally +accursed of God and the subjects of His remediless wrath through sin' +(vi. 137). The evidence of this appalling statement is made up, with a +simplicity which would be amusing if employed in a less fearful cause, +of various texts from Scripture, quoted, of course, after the most +profoundly unhistorical fashion; of inferences from the universality of +death, regarded as the penalty incurred by Adam; of general reflections +upon the heathen world and the idolatry of the Jews; and of the +sentences pronounced by Jehovah against the Canaanites. In one of his +sermons, of portentous length and ferocity (vol. vii., sermon iii.), he +expands the doctrine that natural men--which includes all men who have +not gone through the mysterious process of conversion--are God's +enemies. Their heart, he says, 'is like a viper, hissing and spitting +poison at God;' and God requites their ill-will with undying enmity and +never-ceasing torments. Their unconsciousness of that enmity, and even +their belief that they are rightly affected towards God, is no proof +that the enmity does not exist. The consequences may be conceived. 'God +who made you has given you a capacity to bear torment; and He has that +capacity in His hands; and He can enlarge it and make you capable of +more misery, as much as He will. If God hates anyone and sets Himself +against him as His enemy, what cannot He do with him? How dreadful it +must be to fall into the hands of such an enemy!' (vii. 201). How +dreadful, we add, is the conception of the universe which implies that +God is such an enemy of the bulk of His creatures; and how strangely it +combines with the mild Pantheism which traces and adores the hand of God +in all natural objects! The doctrine, it is to be observed, which is +expanded through many pages of the book on Original Sin, is not merely +that men are legally guilty, as being devoid of 'true virtue,' though +possessed of a certain factitious moral sense, but that they are +actually for the most part detestably wicked. One illustration of his +method may be sufficient. The vileness of man is proved by the remark +(not peculiar to Edwards), that men who used to live 1,000 years now +live only 70; whilst throughout Christendom their life does not average +more than 40 or 50 years; so that 'sensuality and debauchery' have +shortened our days to a twentieth part of our former allowance. + +Thus the Divine power, which is in one sense the sole moving force of +the universe, is limited, so far as its operation upon men's hearts is +concerned, to that small minority who have gone through the process of +conversion as recognised by Edwards' sect. All others, heathens, +infants, and the great mass of professed Christians, are sentenced to +irretrievable perdition. The simplicity with which he condemns all other +forms even of his own religion is almost touching. He incidentally +remarks, for example, that external exercises may not show true virtue, +because they have frequently proceeded from false religion. Members of +the Romish Church and many ancient 'hermits and anchorites' have been +most energetic in such exercises, and Edwards once lived next to a Jew +who appeared to him 'the devoutest person that he ever saw in his life' +(iv. 90); but, as he quietly assumes, all such appearances must of +course be delusive. + +Once more, then, we are brought back to the question, How could any man +hold such doctrines without going mad? or, as experience has reconciled +us to that phenomenon, How could a man with so many elevated conceptions +of the truth reconcile these ghastly conclusions to the nobler part of +his creed? Edwards' own explanations of the difficulty--such as they +are--do not help us very far. The argument by which he habitually +defends the justice of the Almighty sounds very much like a poor quibble +in his mouth, though it is not peculiar to him. Our obligation towards +God, he says, must be in proportion to His merits; therefore it is +infinite. Now there is no merit in paying a debt which we owe; and hence +the fullest discharge of our duty deserves no reward. On the other hand, +there is demerit in refusing to pay a debt; and therefore any +short-coming deserves an infinite penalty (vi. 155). Without examining +whether our duty is proportional to the perfection of its object, and is +irrespective of our capacities, there is one vital objection to this +doctrine, which Edwards had adopted from less coherent reasoners. His +theory, as I have said, so far from destroying virtue, gives it the +fullest possible meaning. There can be no more profound distinction than +between the affections which harmonise with the Divine will and those +which are discordant, though it might puzzle a more consistent Pantheist +to account for the existence of the latter. That, however, is a primary +doctrine with Edwards. But if virtue remains, it is certain that his +theory seems to be destructive both of merit and demerit as between man +and God. If we are but clay in the hands of the potter, there is no +intelligible meaning in our deserving from him either good or evil. We +are as He has made us. Edwards explains, indeed, that the sense of +desert implies a certain natural congruity between evil-doing and +punishment (ii. 430). But the question recurs, how in such a case the +congruity arises? It is one of the illusions which should disappear when +we rise to the sphere of the absolute and infinite. The metaphor about a +debt and its payment, though common in vulgar Calvinism, is quite below +Edwards' usual level of thought. And, if we try to restate the argument +in a more congenial form, its force disappears. The love of God, even +though imperfect, should surely imply some conformity to His nature; and +even an imperfect love should hardly be confounded, one might fancy, +with an absolute enmity to the Creator. Though the argument, which is +several times repeated, appears to have satisfied Edwards, it would have +been more in harmony with his principles to declare that, as between man +and his God, there could be no question of justice. The absolute +sovereignty of the Creator is the only, and to him it should be the +conclusive, answer to such complaints. But, whatever may be the fate of +this apology, the one irremovable difficulty remains behind. If God be +the one universal cause of all things, is He not the cause of evil as +well as good? Do you not make God, in short, the author of sin? + +With this final difficulty, which, indeed, besets all such theories, +Edwards struggles long and with less than his usual vigour. He tries to +show, and perhaps successfully, that the difficulty concerns his +opponents as much as himself. They can, at least, escape only by +creating a new kind of necessity, under the name of contingency; for God +is, on this theory, like a mariner who has constantly to shape his +course to meet unforeseen and uncontrollable gusts of wind (v. 298); and +to make the best of it. He insists upon the difference, not very +congenial to his scheme, between ordering and permitting evil. The sun, +he says (v. 293), causes light, but is only the occasion of darkness. +If, however, the sun voluntarily retired from the world, it could +scarcely evade the responsibility of its absence. And, finally, he makes +the ordinary distinction, and that which is perhaps the best answer to +be made to an unanswerable difficulty. Christ's crucifixion, he says, +was so far bad as it was brought about by malignant murderers: but as +considered by God, with a view to all its glorious consequences, it was +not evil, but good (v. 297). And thus any action may have two aspects; +and that which appears to us, whose view is necessarily limited, as +simply evil, may, when considered by an infinite intelligence, as part +of the general order of things, be absolutely good. God does not will +sin as sin, but as a necessary part of a generally perfect system. + +Here, however, in front of that ultimate mystery which occurs in all +speculation, I must take leave of this singular thinker. In a +frequently-quoted passage, Mackintosh speaks of his 'power of subtle +argument, perhaps unmatched, certainly unsurpassed amongst men.' The +eulogy seems to be rather overstrained, unless we measure subtlety of +thought rather by the complexity and elaboration of its embodiment than +by the keenness of the thought itself. But that Edwards possessed +extraordinary acuteness is as clear as it is singular that so acute a +man should have suffered his intellectual activity to be restrained +within such narrow fetters. Placed in a different medium, under the same +circumstances, for example, as Hume or Kant, he might have developed a +system of metaphysics comparable in its effect upon the history of +thought to the doctrines of either of those thinkers. He was, one might +fancy, formed by nature to be a German professor, and accidentally +dropped into the American forests. Far away from the main currents of +speculation, ignorant of the conclusions reached by his most cultivated +contemporaries, and deriving his intellectual sustenance chiefly from an +obsolete theology, with some vague knowledge of the English followers of +Locke, his mind never expanded itself freely. Yet, even after making +allowance for his secluded life, we are astonished at the powerful grasp +which Calvinism, in its expiring age, had laid upon so penetrating an +intellect. The framework of dogma was so powerful, that the explosive +force of Edwards' speculations, instead of destroying his early +principles by its recoil, expended its whole energy along the line in +which orthodox opinion was not injured. Most bold speculators, indeed, +suffer from a kind of colour-blindness, which conceals from them a whole +order of ideas, sufficiently familiar to very inferior minds. Edwards' +utter unconsciousness of the aspect which his doctrines would present to +anyone who should have passed beyond the charmed circle of orthodox +sentiment is, however, more surprising than the similar defect in any +thinker of nearly equal acuteness. In the middle of the eighteenth +century, he is still in bondage to the dogmas of the Pilgrim Fathers; he +is as indifferent to the audacious revolt of the deists and Hume as if +the old theological dynasty were still in full vigour; and the fact, +whatever else it may prove, proves something for the enduring vitality +of the ideas which had found an imperfect expression in Calvinism. +Clearing away the crust of ancient superstition, we may still find in +Edwards' writings a system of morality as ennobling, and a theory of the +universe as elevated, as can be discovered in any theology. That the +crust was thick and hard, and often revolting in its composition, is, +indeed, undeniable; but the genuine metal is there, no less unmistakably +than the refuse. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[7] The Works of President Edwards. Worcester (Mass.), 1808. + +[8] The population of Massachusetts is stated at 164,000 inhabitants in +1742, and 240,000 in 1761.--_See_ Holmes' Annals. + +[9] These early New England patriarchs were blessed with abundant +families. Edwards' father had eleven children, his paternal grandfather +thirteen, and his maternal grandfather had twelve children by a lady who +had already three children by a previous marriage. + +[10] See an interesting article in the 'American Cyclopedia,' which has, +however, this odd peculiarity, that it never mentions hell in discussing +the theories of Edwards. + + + + +_HORACE WALPOLE_ + + +The history of England, throughout a very large segment of the +eighteenth century, is simply a synonym for the works of Horace Walpole. +There are, indeed, some other books upon the subject. Some good stories +are scattered up and down the 'Annual Register,' the 'Gentleman's +Magazine,' and Nichols' 'Anecdotes.' There is a speech or two of Burke's +not without merit, and a readable letter may be disinterred every now +and then from beneath the piles of contemporary correspondence. When the +history of the times comes to be finally written in the fashion now +prevalent, in which some six portly octavos are allotted to a year, and +an event takes longer to describe than to occur, the industrious will +find ample mines of waste paper in which they may quarry to their +heart's content. Though Hansard was not, and newspapers were in their +infancy, the shelves of the British Museum and other repositories groan +beneath mountains of State papers, law reports, pamphlets, and chaotic +raw materials, from which some precious ore may be smelted down. But +these amorphous masses are attractive chiefly to the philosophers who +are too profound to care for individual character, or to those +praiseworthy students who would think the labour of a year well rewarded +by the discovery of a single fact tending to throw a shade of additional +perplexity upon the secret of Junius. Walpole's writings belong to the +good old-fashioned type of history, which aspires to be nothing more +than the quintessence of contemporary gossip. If the opinion be +pardonable in these days, history of that kind has not only its charm, +but its serious value. If not very profound or comprehensive, it +impresses upon us the fact--so often forgotten--that our grandfathers +were human beings. The ordinary historian reduces them to mere +mechanical mummies; in Walpole's pages they are still living flesh and +blood. Turn over any of the proper decorous history books, mark every +passage where, for a moment, we seem to be transported to the past--to +the thunders of Chatham, the drivellings of Newcastle, or the prosings +of George Grenville, as they sounded in contemporary ears--and it will +be safe to say that, on counting them up, a good half will turn out to +be reflections from the illuminating flashes of Walpole. Excise all that +comes from him, and the history sinks towards the level of the solid +Archdeacon Coxe; add his keen touches, and, as in the 'Castle of +Otranto,' the portraits of our respectable old ancestors, which have +been hanging in gloomy repose upon the wall, suddenly step from their +frames, and, for some brief space, assume a spectral vitality. + +It is only according to rule that a writer who has been so useful should +have been a good deal abused. No one is so amusing and so generally +unpopular as a clever retailer of gossip. Yet it does seem rather hard +that Walpole should have received such hard measure from Macaulay, +through whose pages so much of his light has been transfused. The +explanation, perhaps, is easy. Macaulay dearly loved the paradox that a +man wrote admirably precisely because he was a fool, and applied it to +the two greatest portrait painters of the times--Walpole and Boswell. +There is something which hurts our best feelings in the success of a +man whom we heartily despise. It seems to imply, which is intolerable, +that our penetration has been at fault, or that merit--that is to say, +our own conspicuous quality--is liable to be out-stripped in this world +by imposture. It is consoling if we can wrap ourselves in the belief +that good work can be extracted from bad brains, and that shallowness, +affectation, and levity can, by some strange chemistry, be transmuted +into a substitute for genius. Do we not all, if we have reached middle +age, remember some idiot (of course he was an idiot!) at school or +college who has somehow managed to slip past us in the race of life, and +revenge ourselves by swearing that he is an idiot still, and that idiocy +is a qualification for good fortune? Swift somewhere says that a +paper-cutter does its work all the better when it is blunt, and converts +the fact into an allegory of human affairs showing that decorous dulness +is an over-match for genius. Macaulay was incapable, both in a good and +bad sense, of Swift's trenchant misanthropy. His dislike to Walpole was +founded not so such upon posthumous jealousy--though that passion is not +so rare as absurd--as on the singular contrast between the character and +intellect of the two men. The typical Englishman, with his rough, strong +sense, passing at times into the narrowest insular prejudice, detested +the Frenchified fine gentleman who minced his mother tongue and piqued +himself on cosmopolitan indifference to patriotic sentiment: the +ambitious historian was irritated by the contempt which the dilettante +dabbler in literature affected for their common art; and the +thoroughgoing Whig was scandalised by the man who, whilst claiming that +sacred name, and living face to face with Chatham and Burke and the +great Revolution families in all their glory, ventured to intimate his +opinion that they, like other idols, had a fair share of clay and +rubbish in their composition, and who, after professing a kind of sham +republicanism, was frightened by the French Revolution into a paroxysm +of ultra-Toryism. 'You wretched fribble!' exclaims Macaulay; 'you +shallow scorner of all that is noble! You are nothing but a heap of +silly whims and conceited airs! Strip off one mask of affectation from +your mind, and we are still as far as ever from the real man. The very +highest faculty that can be conceded to you is a keen eye for oddities, +whether in old curiosity shops or in Parliament; and to that you owe +whatever just reputation you have acquired.' Macaulay's fervour of +rebuke is amusing, though, by righteous Nemesis, it includes a species +of blindness as gross as any that he attributes to Walpole. The summary +decision that the chief use of France is to interpret England to Europe, +is a typical example of that insular arrogance for which Matthew Arnold +popularised the name of Philistinism. + +Yet criticism of this one-sided kind has its value. At least it suggests +a problem. What is the element left out of account? Folly is never the +real secret of a literary reputation, or what noble harvests of genius +we should produce! If we patiently take off all the masks we must come +at last to the animating principle beneath. Even the great clothes +philosophers did not hold that a mere Chinese puzzle of mask within mask +could enclose sheer vacancy; there must be some kernel within, which may +be discovered by sufficient patience. And in the first place, it may be +asked, why did poor Walpole wear a mask at all? The answer seems to be +obvious. The men of that age may be divided by a line which, to the +philosophic eye, is of far more importance than that which separated +Jacobites from loyal Whigs or Dissenters from High Churchmen. It +separated the men who could drink two bottles of port after dinner from +the men who could not. To men of delicate digestions the test imposed by +the jovial party in ascendency must have been severer than those due to +political or ecclesiastical bigotry. They had to choose between social +disabilities on the one side, and on the other indigestion for +themselves and gout for their descendants. Thackeray, in a truly +pathetic passage, partly draws the veil from their sufferings. Almost +all the wits of Queen Anne's reign, he observes, were fat: 'Swift was +fat; Addison was fat; Gay and Thomson were preposterously fat; all that +fuddling and punch-drinking, that club and coffee-house boosing, +shortened the lives and enlarged the waistcoats of men of that age.' +Think of the dinner described, though with intentional exaggeration, in +Swift's 'Polite Conversation,' and compare the bill of fare with the +_menu_ of a modern London dinner. The very report of such +conviviality--before which Christopher North's performances in the +'Noctes Ambrosianae' sink into insignificance--is enough to produce +nightmares in the men of our degenerate times, and may help us to +understand the peevishness of feeble invalids such as Pope and Lord +Hervey in the elder generation, or Walpole in that which was rising. +Amongst these Gargantuan consumers, who combined in one the attributes +of 'gorging Jack and guzzling Jemmy,' Sir Robert Walpole was celebrated +for his powers, and seems to have owed to them no small share of his +popularity. Horace writes piteously from the paternal mansion, to which +he had returned in 1743, not long after his tour in Italy, to one of his +artistic friends: 'Only imagine,' he exclaims, 'that I here every day +see men who are mountains of roast beef, and only seem just roughly +hewn out into outlines of human form, like the giant rock at Pratolino! +I shudder when I see them brandish their knives in act to carve, and +look on them as savages that devour one another. I should not stare at +all more than I do if yonder alderman at the lower end of the table were +to stick his fork into his neighbour's jolly cheek, and cut a brave +slice of brown and fat. Why, I'll swear I see no difference between a +country gentleman and a sirloin; whenever the first laughs or the second +is cut, there run out just the same streams of gravy! Indeed, the +sirloin does not ask quite so many questions.' What was the style of +conversation at these tremendous entertainments had better be left to +the imagination. Sir R. Walpole's theory on that subject is upon record; +and we can dimly guess at the feelings of a delicate young gentleman who +had just learnt to talk about Domenichinos and Guidos, and to buy +ancient bronzes, when plunged into the coarse society of these mountains +of roast beef. As he grew up manners became a trifle more refined, and +the customs described so faithfully by Fielding and Smollett belonged to +a lower social stratum. Yet we can fancy Walpole's occasional visit to +his constituents, and imagine him forced to preside at one of those +election feasts which still survive on Hogarth's canvas. Substitute him +for the luckless fine gentleman in a laced coat, who represents the +successful candidate in the first picture of the series. A drunken voter +is dropping lighted pipe ashes upon his wig; a hideous old hag is +picking his pockets; a boy is brewing oceans of punch in a mash-tub; a +man is blowing bagpipes in his ear; a fat parson close by is gorging the +remains of a haunch of venison; a butcher is pouring gin on his +neighbour's broken head; an alderman--a very mountain of roast beef--is +sinking back in a fit, whilst a barber is trying to bleed him; brickbats +are flying in at the windows; the room reeks with the stale smell of +heavy viands and the fresh vapours of punch and gin, whilst the very air +is laden with discordant howls and thick with oaths and ribald songs. +Only think of the smart young candidate's headache next morning in the +days when soda-water was not invented! And remember too that the +representatives were not entirely free from sympathy with the coarseness +of their constituents. Just at the period of Hogarth's painting, +Walpole, when speaking of the feeling excited by a Westminster election, +has occasion to use this pleasing 'new fashionable proverb'--'We spit in +his hat on Thursday, and wiped it off on Friday.' It owed its origin to +a feat performed by Lord Cobham at an assembly given at his own house. +For a bet of a guinea he came behind Lord Hervey, who was talking to +some ladies, and made use of his hat as a spittoon. The point of the +joke was that Lord Hervey--son of Pope's 'mere white curd of asses' +milk,' and related, as the scandal went, rather too closely to Horace +Walpole himself--was a person of effeminate appearance, and therefore +considered unlikely--wrongly, as it turned out--to resent the insult. We +may charitably hope that the assailants, who thus practically +exemplified the proper mode of treating milksops, were drunk. The +two-bottle men who lingered till our day were surviving relics of the +type which then gave the tone to society. Within a short period there +was a prime minister who always consoled himself under defeats and +celebrated triumphs with his bottle; a chancellor who abolished evening +sittings on the ground that he was always drunk in the evening; and even +an archbishop--an Irish archbishop, it is true--whose jovial habits +broke down his constitution. Scratch those jovial toping aristocrats, +and you everywhere find the Squire Western. A man of squeamish tastes +and excessive sensibility jostled amongst that thick-skinned, +iron-nerved generation, was in a position with which anyone may +sympathise who knows the sufferings of a delicate lad at a public school +in the old (and not so very old) brutal days. The victim of that tyranny +slunk away from the rough horseplay of his companions to muse, like +Dobbin, over the 'Arabian Nights' in a corner, or find some amusement +which his tormentors held to be only fit for girls. So Horace Walpole +retired to Strawberry Hill and made toys of Gothic architecture, or +heraldry, or dilettante antiquarianism. The great discovery had not then +been made, we must remember, that excellence in field-sports deserved to +be placed on a level with the Christian virtues. The fine gentlemen of +the Chesterfield era speak of fox-hunting pretty much as we speak of +prize-fighting and bull-baiting. When all manly exercises had an +inseparable taint of coarseness, delicate people naturally mistook +effeminacy for refinement. When you can only join in male society on +pain of drinking yourself under the table, the safest plan is to retire +to tea-tables and small talk. For many years, Walpole's greatest +pleasure seems to have been drinking tea with Lady Suffolk, and +carefully piecing together bits of scandal about the Courts of the first +two Georges. He tells us, with all the triumph of a philosopher +describing a brilliant scientific induction, how he was sometimes able, +by adding his bits of gossip to hers, to unravel the secret of some +wretched intrigue which had puzzled two generations of quidnuncs. The +social triumphs on which he most piqued himself were of a congenial +order. He sits down to write elaborate letters to Sir Horace Mann, at +Florence, brimming over with irrepressible triumph when he has +persuaded some titled ladies to visit his pet toy, the printing-press, +at Strawberry Hill, and there, of course to their unspeakable surprise, +his printer draws off a copy of verses composed in their honour in the +most faded style of old-fashioned gallantry. He is intoxicated by his +appointment to act as poet-laureate on the occasion of a visit of the +Princess Amelia to Stowe. She is solemnly conducted to a temple of the +Muses and Apollo, and there finds one of his admirable effusions,-- + + T'other day with a beautiful frown on her brow, + To the rest of the gods said the Venus of Stowe: + +and so on. 'She was really in Elysium,' he declares, and visited the +arch erected in her honour three or four times a day. + +It is not wonderful, we must confess, that burly ministers and jovial +squires laughed horse-laughs at this mincing dandy, and tried in their +clumsy fashion to avenge themselves for the sarcasms which, as they +instinctively felt, lay hid beneath this mask of affectation. The enmity +between the lapdog and the mastiff is an old story. Nor, as we must +confess again, were these tastes redeemed by very amiable qualities +beneath the smooth external surface. There was plenty of feminine spite +as well as feminine delicacy. To the marked fear of ridicule natural to +a sensitive man Walpole joined a very happy knack of quarrelling. He +could protrude a feline set of claws from his velvet glove. He was a +touchy companion and an intolerable superior. He set out by quarrelling +with Gray, who, as it seems, could not stand his dandified airs of +social impertinence, though it must be added in fairness that the bond +which unites fellow travellers is, perhaps, the most trying known to +humanity. He quarrelled with Mason after twelve years of intimate +correspondence; he quarrelled with Montagu after a friendship of some +forty years; he always thought that his dependants, such as Bentley, +were angels for six months, and made their lives a burden to them +afterwards; he had a long and complex series of quarrels with all his +near relations. Sir Horace Mann escaped any quarrel during forty-five +years of correspondence; but Sir Horace never left Florence and Walpole +never reached it. Conway alone remained intimate and immaculate to the +end, though there is a bitter remark or two in the Memoirs against the +perfect Conway. With ladies, indeed, Walpole succeeded better; and +perhaps we may accept, with due allowance for the artist's point of +view, his own portrait of himself. He pronounces himself to be a +'boundless friend, a bitter but placable enemy.' Making the necessary +corrections, we should translate this into 'a bitter enemy, a warm but +irritable friend.' Tread on his toes, and he would let you feel his +claws, though you were his oldest friend; but so long as you avoided his +numerous tender points, he showed a genuine capacity for kindliness and +even affection; and in his later years he mellowed down into an amiable +purring old gentleman, responding with eager gratitude to the caresses +of the charming Miss Berrys. Such a man, skinless and bilious, was ill +qualified to join in the rough game of politics. He kept out of the +arena where the hardest blows were given and taken, and confined his +activity to lobbies and backstairs, where scandal was to be gathered and +the hidden wires of intrigue to be delicately manipulated. He chuckles +irrepressibly when he has confided a secret to a friend, who has let it +out to a minister, who communicates it to a great personage, who +explodes into inextinguishable wrath, and blows a whole elaborate plot +into a thousand fragments. To expect deep and settled political +principle from such a man would be to look for grapes from thorns and +figs from thistles; but to do Walpole justice, we must add that it would +be equally absurd to exact settled principle from any politician of that +age. We are beginning to regard our ancestors with a strange mixture of +contempt and envy. We despise them because they cared nothing for the +thoughts which for the last century have been upheaving society into +strange convulsions; we envy them because they enjoyed the delicious +calm which was the product of that indifference. Wearied by the +incessant tossing and boiling of the torrent which carries us away, we +look back with fond regret to the little backwater so far above Niagara, +where scarcely a ripple marks the approaching rapids. There is a charm +in the great solid old eighteenth-century mansions, which London is so +rapidly engulfing, and even about the old red brick churches with +'sleep-compelling' pews. We take imaginary naps amongst our grandfathers +with no railways, no telegraphs, no mobs in Trafalgar Square, no +discussions about ritualism or Dr. Colenso, and no reports of +parliamentary debates. It is to our fancies an 'island valley of +Avilion,' or, less magniloquently, a pleasant land of Cockaine, where we +may sleep away the disturbance of battle, and even read through +'Clarissa Harlow.' We could put up with an occasional highwayman in Hyde +Park, and perhaps do not think that our comfort would be seriously +disturbed by a dozen executions in a morning at Tyburn. In such +visionary glances through the centuries we have always the advantage of +selecting our own position in life, and perhaps there are few that for +such purposes we should prefer to Walpole's. We should lap ourselves +against eating cares in the warm folds of a sinecure of 6,000_l._ a year +bestowed because our father was a Prime Minister. There are many +immaculate persons at the present day to whom truth would be truth even +when seen through such a medium. There are--we have their own authority +for believing it--men who would be republicans, though their niece was +married to a royal duke. Walpole, we must admit, was not of the number. +He was an aristocrat to the backbone. He was a gossip by nature and +education, and had lived from infancy in the sacred atmosphere of court +intrigue; every friend he possessed in his own rank either had a place, +or had lost a place, or was in want of a place, and generally combined +all three characters; professed indifference to place was only a cunning +mode of angling for a place, and politics was a series of +ingeniously-contrived manoeuvres in which the moving power of the +machinery was the desire of sharing the spoils. Walpole's talk about +Magna Charta and the execution of Charles I. could, it is plain, imply +but a skin-deep republicanism. He could not be seriously displeased with +a state of things of which his own position was the natural out-growth. +His republicanism was about as genuine as his boasted indifference to +money--a virtue which is not rare in bachelors who have more than they +can spend. So long as he could buy as much bric-a-brac, as many +knicknacks, and old books and bronzes and curious portraits and odd +gloves of celebrated characters as he pleased; add a new tower and a set +of battlements to Strawberry Hill every few years; keep a comfortable +house in London, and have a sufficiency of carriages and horses; treat +himself to an occasional tour, and keep his press steadily at work; he +was not the man to complain of poverty. He was a republican, too, as +long as that word implied that he and his father and uncles and cousins +and connections by marriage and their intimate friends were to have +everything precisely their own way; but if a vision could have shown him +the reformers of a coming generation who would inquire into civil lists +and object to sinecures--to say nothing of cutting off the heads of the +first families--he would have prayed to be removed before the evil day. +Republicanism in his sense was a word exclusive of revolution. Was it, +then, a mere meaningless mask intended only to conceal the real man? +Before passing such a judgment we should remember that the names by +which people classify their opinions are generally little more than +arbitrary badges; and even in these days, when practice treads so +closely on the heels of theory, some persons profess to know extreme +radicals who could be converted very speedily by a bit of riband. +Walpole has explained himself with unmistakable frankness, and his +opinion was at least intelligible. He was not a republican after the +fashion of Robespierre, or Jefferson, or M. Gambetta; but he had some +meaning. When a duke in those days proposed annual parliaments and +universal suffrage, we may assume that he did not realise the probable +effect of those institutions upon dukes; and when Walpole applauded the +regicides, he was not anxious to send George III. to the block. He +meant, however, that he considered George III. to be a narrow-minded and +obstinate fool. He meant, too, that the great Revolution families ought +to distribute the plunder and the power without interference from the +Elector of Hanover. He meant, again, that as a quick and cynical +observer, he found the names of Brutus and Algernon Sidney very +convenient covers for attacking the Duke of Newcastle and the Earl of +Bute. But beyond all this, he meant something more, which gives the +real spice to his writings. It was something not quite easy to put into +formulas; but characteristic of the vague discomfort of the holders of +sinecures in those halcyon days arising from the perception that the +ground was hollow under their feet. To understand him we must remember +that the period of his activity marks precisely the lowest ebb of +political principle. Old issues had been settled, and the new ones were +only just coming to the surface. He saw the end of the Jacobites and the +rise of the demagogues. His early letters describe the advance of the +Pretender to Derby; they tell us how the British public was on the whole +inclined to look on and cry, 'Fight dog, fight bear;' how the Jacobites +who had anything to lose left their battle to be fought by half-starved +cattle-stealers, and contented themselves with drinking to the success +of the cause; and how the Whig magnates, with admirable presence of +mind, raised regiments, appointed officers, and got the expenses paid by +the Crown. His later letters describe the amazing series of blunders by +which we lost America in spite of the clearest warnings from almost +every man of sense in the kingdom. The interval between these +disgraceful epochs is filled--if we except the brief episode of +Chatham--by a series of struggles between different connections--one +cannot call them parties--which separate and combine, and fight and make +peace, till the plot of the drama becomes too complicated for human +ingenuity to unravel. Lads just crammed for a civil service examination +might possibly bear in mind all the shifting combinations which resulted +from the endless intrigues of Pelhams and Grenvilles and Bedfords and +Rockinghams; yet even those omniscient persons could hardly give a +plausible account of the principles which each party conceived itself +to be maintaining. What, for example, were the politics of a Rigby, or a +Bubb Dodington? The diary in which the last of these eminent persons +reveals his inmost soul is perhaps the most curious specimen of +unconscious self-analysis extant. His utter baseness and venality, his +disgust at the 'low venal wretches' to whom he had to give bribes; his +creeping and crawling before those from whom he sought to extract +bribes; his utter incapacity to explain a great man except on the +hypothesis of insanity; or to understand that there is such a thing as +political morality, derive double piquancy from the profound conviction +that he is an ornament to society, and from the pious aspirations which +he utters with the utmost simplicity. Bubb wriggled himself into a +peerage, and differed from innumerable competitors only by superior +frankness. He is the fitting representative of an era from which +political faith has disappeared, as Walpole is its fitting satirist. All +political virtue, it is said, was confined, in Walpole's opinion, to +Conway and the Marquis of Hertford. Was he wrong? or, if he was wrong, +was it not rather in the exception than the rule? The dialect in which +his sarcasms are expressed is affected, but the substance is hard to +dispute. The world, he is fond of saying, is a tragedy to those who +feel, a comedy to those who think. He preferred the comedy view. 'I have +never yet seen or heard,' he says, 'anything serious that was not +ridiculous. Jesuits, Methodists, philosophers, politicians, the +hypocrite Rousseau, the scoffer Voltaire, the encyclopaedists, the Humes, +the Lytteltons, the Grenvilles, the atheist tyrant of Prussia, and the +mountebank of history, Mr. Pitt, are all to me but impostors in their +various ways. Fame or interest is their object, and after all their +parade, I think a ploughman who sows, reads his almanack, and believes +that the stars are so many farthing candles created to prevent his +falling into a ditch as he goes home at night, a wiser and more rational +being, and I am sure an honester, than any of them. Oh! I am sick of +visions and systems that shove one another aside, and come again like +figures in a moving picture.' Probably Walpole's belief in the ploughman +lasted till he saw the next smock-frock; but the bitterness clothed in +the old-fashioned cant is serious and is justifiable enough. Here is a +picture of English politics in the time of Wilkes. 'No government, no +police, London and Middlesex distracted, the colonies in rebellion, +Ireland ready to be so, and France arrogant and on the point of being +hostile! Lord Bute accused of all, and dying in a panic; George +Grenville wanting to make rage desperate; Lord Rockingham and the +Cavendishes thinking we have no enemies but Lord Bute, and that five +mutes and an epigram can set everything to rights; the Duke of Grafton +(then Prime Minister) like an apprentice, thinking the world should be +postponed to a horse-race; and the Bedfords not caring what disgraces we +undergo while each of them has 3,000_l._ a year and three thousand +bottles of claret and champagne!' And every word of this is true--at +least, so far as epigrams need be true. It is difficult to put into more +graphic language the symptoms of an era just ripe for revolution. If +frivolous himself, Walpole can condemn the frivolity of others. 'Can one +repeat common news with indifference,' he asks, just after the surrender +of Yorktown, 'while our shame is writing for future history by the pens +of all our numerous enemies? When did England see two whole armies lay +down their arms and surrender themselves prisoners?... These are +thoughts I cannot stifle at the moment that expresses them; and, though +I do not doubt that the same dissipation that has swallowed up all our +principles will reign again in ten days with its wonted sovereignty, I +had rather be silent than vent my indignation. Yet I cannot talk, for I +cannot think, on any other subject. It was not six days ago that, in the +height of four raging wars (with America, France, Spain, and Holland), I +saw in the papers an account of the opera and of the dresses of the +company, and hence the town, and thence, of course, the whole nation, +were informed that Mr. Fitzpatrick had very little powder in his hair.' +Walpole sheltered himself behind the corner of a pension to sneer at the +tragi-comedy of life; but if his feelings were not profound, they were +quick and genuine, and, affectation for affectation, his cynical +coxcombry seems preferable to the solemn coxcombry of the men who +shamelessly wrangled for plunder, while they talked solemn platitudes +about sacred Whig principles and the thrice blessed British +Constitution. + +Walpole, in fact, represents a common creed amongst comfortable but +clear-headed men of his time. It was the strange mixture of scepticism +and conservatism which is exemplified in such men as Hume and Gibbon. He +was at heart a Voltairian, and, like his teacher, confounded all +religions and political beliefs under the name of superstition. Voltaire +himself did not anticipate the Revolution to which he, more than any +man, had contributed. Walpole, with stronger personal reasons than +Voltaire for disliking a catastrophe, was as furious as Burke when the +volcano burst forth. He was a republican so far as he disbelieved in the +divine right of kings, and hated enthusiasm and loyalty generally. He +wished the form to survive and the spirit to disappear. Things were +rotten, and he wished them to stay rotten. The ideal to which he is +constantly recurring was the pleasant reign of his father, when nobody +made a fuss or went to war, or kept principles except for sale. He +foresaw, however, far better than most men, the coming crash. If +political sagacity be fairly tested by a prophetic vision of the French +Revolution, Walpole's name should stand high. He visited Paris in 1765, +and remarks that laughing is out of fashion. 'Good folks, they have no +time to laugh. There is God and the King to be pulled down first, and +men and women, one and all, are devoutly employed in the demolition. +They think me quite profane for having any belief left.' Do you know, he +asks presently, who are the philosophers? 'In the first place, it +comprehends almost everybody, and in the next it means men who, avowing +war against Papacy, aim, many of them, at the destruction of regal +power. The philosophers,' he goes on, 'are insupportable, superficial, +overbearing, and fanatic. They preach incessantly, and their avowed +doctrine is atheism--you could not believe how openly. Don't wonder, +therefore, if I should return a Jesuit. Voltaire himself does not +satisfy them. One of their lady devotees said of him, "_Il est bigot, +c'est un deiste!_"' French politics, he professes a few years +afterwards, must end in 'despotism, a civil war, or assassination,' and +he remarks that the age will not, as he had always thought, be an age of +abortion, but rather 'the age of seeds that are to produce strange crops +hereafter.' The next century, he says at a later period, 'will probably +exhibit a very new era, which the close of this has been, and is, +preparing.' If these sentences had been uttered by Burke, they would +have been quoted as proofs of remarkable sagacity. As it is, we may +surely call them shrewd glances for a frivolous coxcomb. + +Walpole regarded these symptoms in the true epicurean spirit, and would +have joined in the sentiment, _apres moi le deluge_. He was on the whole +for remedying grievances, and is put rather out of temper by cruelties +which cannot be kept out of his sight. He talks with disgust of the old +habit of stringing up criminals by the dozen; he denounces the +slave-trade with genuine fervour; there is apparent sincerity in his +platitudes against war; and he never took so active a part in politics +as in the endeavour to prevent the judicial murder of Byng. His +conscience generally discharged itself more easily by a few pungent +epigrams, and though he wished the reign of reason and humanity to dawn, +he would rather that it should not come at all than be ushered in by a +tempest. His whole theory is given forcibly and compactly in an answer +which he once made to the republican Mrs. Macaulay, and was fond of +repeating:--'Madam, if I had been Luther, and could have known that for +the _chance_ of saving a million of souls I should be the cause of a +million of lives, at least, being sacrificed before my doctrines could +be established, it must have been a most palpable angel, and in a most +heavenly livery, before he should have set me at work.' We will not ask +what angel would have induced him to make the minor sacrifice of six +thousand a year to establish any conceivable doctrine. Whatever may be +the merit of these opinions, they contain Walpole's whole theory of +life. I know, he seems to have said to himself, that loyalty is folly, +that rank is contemptible, that the old society in which I live is +rotten to the core, and that explosive matter is accumulating beneath +our feet. Well! I am not made of the stuff for a reformer: I am a bit of +a snob, though, like other snobs, I despise both parties to the bargain. +I will take the sinecures the gods provide me, amuse myself with my +toys at Strawberry Hill, despise kings and ministers, without +endangering my head by attacking them, and be over-polite to a royal +duke when he visits me on condition of laughing at him behind his back +when he is gone. Walpole does not deserve a statue; he was not a +Wilberforce or a Howard, and as little of a Burke or a Chatham. But his +faults, as well as his virtues, qualified him to be the keenest of all +observers of a society unconsciously approaching a period of tremendous +convulsions. + +To claim for him that, even at his best, he is a profound observer of +character, or that he gives any consistent account of his greatest +contemporaries, would be too much. He is full of whims, and moreover, +full of spite. He cannot be decently fair to anyone who deserted his +father, or stood in Conway's light. He reflects at all times the +irreverent gossip current behind the scenes. To know the best and the +worst that can be said of any great man, the best plan is to read the +leading article of his party newspaper, and then to converse in private +with its writer. The eulogy and the sarcasm may both be sincere enough; +only it is pleasant, after puffing one's wares to the public, to glance +at their seamy side in private. Walpole has a decided taste for that +last point of view. The littleness of the great, the hypocrisy of the +virtuous, and the selfishness of statesmen in general, is his ruling +theme, illustrated by an infinite variety of brilliant caricatures +struck off at the moment with a quick eye and a sure hand. Though he +elaborates no grand historical portrait, like Burke or Clarendon, he has +a whole gallery of telling vignettes which are often as significant as +far more pretentious works. Nowhere, for example, can we find more +graphic sketches of the great man who stands a head and shoulders above +the whole generation of dealers in power and place. Most of Chatham's +contemporaries repaid his contempt with intense dislike. Some of them +pronounced him mad, and others thought him a knave. Walpole, who at +times calls him a mountebank and an impostor, does not go further than +Burke, who, in a curious comment, speaks of him as the 'grand artificer +of fraud,' who never conversed but with 'a parcel of low toad-eaters;' +and asks whether all this 'theatrical stuffing' and these 'raised heels' +could be necessary to the character of a great man. Walpole, of course, +has a keen eye to the theatrical stuffing. He takes the least +complimentary view of the grand problem, which still puzzles some +historians, as to the genuineness of Chatham's gout. He smiles +complacently when the great actor forgets that his right arm ought to be +lying helpless in a sling and flourishes it with his accustomed vigour. +But Walpole, in spite of his sneers and sarcasms, can recognise the +genuine power of the man. He is the describer of the striking scene +which occurred when the House of Commons was giggling over some +delicious story of bribery and corruption--the House of Commons was +frivolous in those benighted days; he tells how Pitt suddenly stalked +down from the gallery and administered his thundering reproof; how +Murray, then Attorney-General, 'crouched, silent and terrified,' and the +Chancellor of the Exchequer faltered out an humble apology for the +unseemly levity. It is Walpole who best describes the great debate when +Pitt, 'haughty, defiant, conscious of injury and supreme abilities,' +burst out in that tremendous speech--tremendous if we may believe the +contemporary reports, of which the only tolerably preserved fragment is +the celebrated metaphor about the confluence of the Rhone and the +Saone. Alas! Chatham's eloquence has all gone to rags and tatters; +though, to say the truth, it has only gone the way of nine-tenths of our +contemporary eloquence. We have, indeed, what are called accurate +reports of spoken pamphlets, dried specimens of rhetoric from which the +life has departed as completely as it is strained out of the specimens +in a botanical collection. If there is no Walpole amongst us, we shall +know what our greatest living orator has said; but how he said it, and +how it moved his audience, will be as obscure as if the reporters' +gallery were still unknown. Walpole--when he was not affecting +philosophy, or smarting from the failure of an intrigue, or worried by +the gout, or disappointed of a bargain at a sale--could throw electric +flashes of light on the figure he describes which reveal the true man. +He errs from petulancy, but not from stupidity. He can appreciate great +qualities by fits, though he cannot be steadily loyal to their +possessor. And if he wrote down most of our rulers as knaves and fools, +we have only to lower those epithets to selfish and blundering, to get a +very fair estimate of their characters. To the picturesque historian his +services are invaluable; though no single statement can be accepted +without careful correction. + +Walpole's social, as distinguished from his political, anecdotes do in +one sense what Leech's drawings have done for this generation. But the +keen old man of the world puts a far bitterer and deeper meaning into +his apparently superficial scratches than the kindly modern artist, +whose satire was narrowed, if purified, by the decencies of modern +manners. Walpole reflects in a thousand places that strange combination +of brutality and polish which marked the little circle of fine ladies +and gentlemen who then constituted society, and played such queer +pranks in quiet unconsciousness of the revolutionary elements that were +seething below. He is the best of commentators on Hogarth, and gives us +'Gin Lane' on one side and the 'Marriage a la mode' on the other. As we +turn over the well-known pages we come at every turn upon characteristic +scenes of the great tragi-comedy that was being played out. In one page +a highwayman puts a bullet through his hat, and on the next we read how +three thousand ladies and gentlemen visited the criminal in his cell, on +the Sunday before his execution, till he fainted away twice from the +heat; then we hear how Lord Lovat's buffooneries made the whole +brilliant circle laugh as he was being sentenced to death; and how +Balmerino pleaded 'not guilty,' in order that the ladies might not be +deprived of their sport; how the House of Commons adjourned to see a +play acted by persons of quality, and the gallery was hung round with +blue ribands; how the Gunnings had a guard to protect them in the park; +what strange pranks were played by the bigamous Miss Chudleigh; what +jokes--now, alas! very faded and dreary--were made by George Selwyn, and +how that amiable favourite of society went to Paris in order to see the +cruel tortures inflicted upon Damiens, and was introduced to the chief +performer on the scaffold as a distinguished amateur in executions. One +of the best of all these vignettes portrays the funeral of George II., +and is a worthy pendant to Lord Hervey's classic account of the Queen's +death. It opens with the solemn procession to the torch-lighted Abbey, +whose 'long-drawn aisles and fretted vault' excite the imagination of +the author of the 'Castle of Otranto.' Then the comic element begins to +intrude; the procession jostles and falls into disorder at the entrance +of Henry the Seventh's Chapel; the bearers stagger under the heavy +coffin and cry for help; the bishop blunders in the prayers, and the +anthem, as fit, says Walpole, for a wedding as a funeral, becomes +immeasurably tedious. Against this tragi-comic background are relieved +two characteristic figures. The 'butcher' Duke of Cumberland, the hero +of Culloden, stands with the obstinate courage of his race gazing into +the vault where his father is being buried, and into which he is soon to +descend. His face is distorted by a recent stroke of paralysis, and he +is forced to stand for two hours on a bad leg. To him enters the +burlesque Duke of Newcastle, who begins by bursting into tears and +throwing himself back in a stall whilst the Archbishop 'hovers over him +with a smelling-bottle.' Then curiosity overcomes him, and he runs about +the chapel with a spyglass in one hand to peer into the faces of the +company, and mopping his eyes with the other. 'Then returned the fear of +catching cold; and the Duke of Cumberland, who was sinking with heat, +felt himself weighed down, and turning round found it was the Duke of +Newcastle standing upon his train to avoid the chill of the marble.' +What a perch to select! Imagine the contrast of the two men, and +remember that the Duke of Newcastle was for an unprecedented time the +great dispenser of patronage, and so far the most important personage in +the government. Walpole had reason for some of his sneers. + +The literary power implied in these brilliant sketches is remarkable, +and even if Walpole's style is more Gallicised than is evident to me, it +must be confessed that with a few French idioms he has caught something +of that unrivalled dexterity and neatness of touch in which the French +are our undisputed masters. His literary character is of course marked +by an affectation analogous to that which debases his politics. Walpole +was always declaring with doubtful sincerity--(that is one of the +matters in which a man is scarcely bound to be quite sincere)--that he +has no ambition for literary fame, and that he utterly repudiates the +title of 'learned gentleman.' There is too much truth in his disavowals +to allow us to write them down as mere mock-modesty; but doubtless his +principal motive was a dislike to entering the arena of open criticism. +He has much of the feeling which drove Pope into paroxysms of unworthy +fury on every mention of Grub Street. The anxiety of men in that day to +disavow the character of professional authors must be taken with the +fact that professional authors were then an unscrupulous, scurrilous, +and venal race. Walpole feared collision with them as he feared +collision with the 'mountains of roast beef.' Though literature was +emerging from the back lanes and alleys, the two greatest potentates of +the day, Johnson and Warburton, had both a decided cross of the bear in +their composition. Walpole was nervously anxious to keep out of their +jurisdiction, and to sit at the feet of such refined lawgivers as Mason +and Gray, or the feebler critics of polite society. In such courts there +naturally passes a good deal of very flimsy flattery between persons who +are alternately at the bar or on the bench. We do not quite believe that +Lady Di Beauclerk's drawings were unsurpassable by 'Salvator Rosa and +Guido,' or that Lady Ailesbury's 'landscape in worsteds' was a work of +high art; and we doubt whether Walpole believed it; nor do we fancy that +he expected Sir Horace Mann to believe that when sitting in his room at +Strawberry Hill, he was in the habit of apostrophising the setting sun +in such terms as these: 'Look at yon sinking beams! His gaudy reign is +over; but the silver moon above that elm succeeds to a tranquil +horizon,' &c. Sweeping aside all this superficial rubbish, as a mere +concession to the faded taste of the age of hoops and wigs, Walpole has +something to say for himself. He has been condemned for the absurdity of +his criticisms, and it is undeniable that he sometimes blunders +strangely. It would, indeed, be easy to show, were it worth while, that +he is by no means so silly in his contemporary verdicts as might be +supposed from scattered passages in his letters. But what are we to say +to a man who compares Dante to 'a Methodist parson in Bedlam'? The first +answer is that, in this instance, Walpole was countenanced by greater +men. Voltaire, with all his faults the most consummate literary artist +of the century, says with obvious disgust that there are people to be +found who force themselves to admire 'feats of imagination as stupidly +extravagant and barbarous' as those of the 'Divina Commedia.' Walpole +must be reckoned as belonging both in his faults and his merits to the +Voltairian school of literature, and amongst other peculiarities common +to the master and his disciple, may be counted an incapacity for +reverence and an intense dislike to being bored. For these reasons he +hates all epic poets, from Dante to Blackmore; he detests all didactic +poems, including those of Thomson and Akenside; and he is utterly +scandalised by the French enthusiasm for Richardson. In these last +judgments, at least nine-tenths of the existing race of mankind agree +with him; though few people have the courage to express their agreement +in print. We may be thankful that Walpole is as incapable of boring as +of enduring bores. He is one of the few Englishmen who share the quality +sometimes ascribed to the French as a nation, and certainly enjoyed by +his teacher, Voltaire; namely, that though they may be frivolous, +blasphemous, indecent, and faulty in every other way, they can never +for a single moment be dull. His letters show that crisp, sparkling +quality of style which accompanies this power, and which is so +unattainable to most of his countrymen. The quality is less conspicuous +in the rest of his works, and the light verses and essays in which we +might expect him to succeed are disappointingly weak. Xoho's letter to +his countrymen is now as dull as the work of most imaginary travellers, +and the essays in 'The World' are remarkably inferior to the +'Spectator,' to say nothing of the 'Rambler.'[11] Yet Walpole's place in +literature is unmistakable, if of equivocal merit. Byron called him the +author of the last tragedy and the first romance in our language. The +tragedy, with Byron's leave, is revolting (perhaps the reason why Byron +admired it), and the romance passes the borders of the burlesque. And +yet the remark hits off a singular point in Walpole's history. A +thorough child of the eighteenth century, we might have expected him to +share Voltaire's indiscriminating contempt for the Middle Ages. One +would have supposed that in his lips, as in those of all his generation, +Gothic would have been synonymous with barbaric, and the admiration of +an ancient abbey as ridiculous as admiration of Dante. So far from +which, Walpole is almost the first modern Englishman who found out that +our old cathedrals were really beautiful. He discovered that a most +charming toy might be made of mediaevalism. Strawberry Hill, with all its +gimcracks, its pasteboard battlements, and stained-paper carvings, was +the lineal ancestor of the new law-courts. The restorers of churches, +the manufacturers of stained glass, the modern decorators and +architects of all vanities, the Ritualists and the High Church party, +should think of him with kindness. It cannot be said that they should +give him a place in their calendar, for he was not of the stuff of which +saints are made. It was a very thin veneering of mediaevalism which +covered his modern creed; and the mixture is not particularly edifying. +Still he undoubtedly found out that charming plaything which, in other +hands, has been elaborated and industriously constructed till it is all +but indistinguishable from the genuine article. We must hold, indeed, +that it is merely a plaything, when all has been said and done, and +maintain that when the root has once been severed, the tree can never +again be made to grow. Walpole is so far better than some of his +successors, that he did not make a religion out of these flimsy +materials. However that may be, Walpole's trifling was the first +forerunner of much that has occupied the minds of much greater artists +ever since. And thus his initiative in literature has been as fruitful +as his initiative in art. The 'Castle of Otranto' and the 'Mysterious +Mother' were the progenitors of Mrs. Radcliffe's romances, and probably +had a strong influence upon the author of 'Ivanhoe.' Frowning castles +and gloomy monasteries, knights in armour, and ladies in distress, and +monks and nuns and hermits, all the scenery and the characters that have +peopled the imagination of the romantic school, may be said to have had +their origin on the night when Walpole lay down to sleep, his head +crammed full of Wardour Street curiosities, and dreamt that he saw a +gigantic hand in armour resting on the banister of his staircase. In +three months from that time he had elaborated a story, the object of +which, as defined by himself, was to combine the charms of the old +romance and the modern novel, and which, to say the least, strikes us +now like an exaggerated caricature of the later school. Scott criticises +'The Castle of Otranto' seriously, and even Macaulay speaks of it with a +certain respect. Absurd as the burlesque seems, our ancestors found it +amusing, and, what is stranger, awe-inspiring. Excitable readers +shuddered when a helmet of more than gigantic size fell from the clouds, +in the first chapter, and crushed the young baron to atoms on the eve of +his wedding, as a trap smashes a mouse. This, however, was merely a +foretaste of a series of unprecedented phenomena. At one moment the +portrait of Manfred's grandfather, without the least premonitory +warning, utters a deep sigh, and heaves its breast, after which it +descends to the floor with a grave and melancholy air. Presently the +menials catch sight of a leg and foot in armour to match the helmet, and +apparently belonging to a ghost which has lain down promiscuously in the +picture gallery. Most appalling, however, of all is the adventure which +happened to Count Frederick in the oratory. Kneeling before the altar +was a tall figure in a long cloak. As he approached it rose, and, +turning round, disclosed to him the fleshless jaws and empty eye-sockets +of a skeleton. The ghost disappeared, as ghosts generally do, after +giving a perfectly unnecessary warning and the catastrophe is soon +reached by the final appearance of the whole suit of armour with the +ghost inside it, who bursts the castle to bits like an egg-shell, and, +towering towards the sky, exclaims, 'Theodore is the true heir of +Alphonso!' This proceeding fortunately made a lawsuit unnecessary, and +if the castle was ruined at once, it is not quite impossible that the +same result might have been attained more slowly by litigation. The +whole machinery strikes us as simply babyish, unless we charitably +assume the whole to be intentionally burlesque. The intention is pretty +evident in the solemn scene in the chapel, which closes thus:--'As he +spake these words, three drops of blood fell from the nose of Alphonso's +statue' (Alphonso is the spectre in armour). 'Manfred turned pale, and +the princess sank on her knees. "Behold!" said the friar, "mark this +miraculous indication that the blood of Alphonso will never mix with +that of Manfred!"' Nor can we think that the story is rendered much more +interesting by Walpole's simple expedient of introducing into the midst +of these portents a set of waiting-maids and peasants, who talk in the +familiar style of the smart valets in Congreve's or Sheridan's comedies. + +Yet, babyish as this mass of nursery tales may appear to us, it is +curious that the theory which Walpole advocated has been exactly carried +out. He wished to relieve the prosaic realism of the school of Fielding +and Smollett by making use of romantic associations, without altogether +taking leave of the language of common life. He sought to make real men +and women out of mediaeval knights and ladies, or, in other words, he +made a first experimental trip into the province afterwards occupied by +Scott. The 'Mysterious Mother' is in the same taste; and his interest in +Ossian, in Chatterton, and in Percy's Relics, is another proof of his +anticipation of the coming change of sentiment. He was an arrant +trifler, it is true; too delicately constituted for real work in +literature and politics, and inclined to take a cynical view of his +contemporaries generally, he turned for amusement to antiquarianism, and +was the first to set modern art and literature masquerading in the +antique dresses. That he was quite conscious of the necessity for more +serious study, appears in his letters, in one of which, for example, he +proposes a systematic history of Gothic architecture, such as has since +been often enough executed. It does not, it may be said, require any +great intellect, or even any exquisite taste, for a fine gentleman to +strike out a new line of dilettante amusement. In truth Walpole has no +pretensions whatever to be regarded as a great original creator, or even +as one of the few infallible critics. The only man of his time who had +some claim to that last title was his friend Gray, who shared his Gothic +tastes with greatly superior knowledge. But he was indefinitely superior +to the great mass of commonplace writers, who attain a kind of bastard +infallibility by always accepting the average verdict of the time; +which, on the principle of the _vox populi_, is more often right than +that of any dissenter. There is an intermediate class of men who are +useful as sensitive barometers to foretell coming changes of opinion. +Their intellects are mobile if shallow; and, perhaps, their want of +serious interest in contemporary intellects renders them more accessible +to the earliest symptoms of superficial shiftings of taste. They are +anxious to be at the head of the fashions in thought as well as in +dress, and pure love of novelty serves to some extent in place of +genuine originality. Amongst such men Walpole deserves a high place; and +it is not easy to obtain a high place even amongst such men. The people +who succeed best at trifles are those who are capable of something +better. In spite of Johnson's aphorism, it is the colossus who, when he +tries, can cut the best heads upon cherry-stones, as well as hew statues +out of rock. Walpole was no colossus; but his peevish anxiety to affect +even more frivolity than was really natural to him, has blinded his +critics to the real power of a remarkably acute, versatile, and original +intellect. We cannot regard him with much respect, and still less with +much affection; but the more we examine his work, the more we shall +admire his extreme cleverness. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[11] It is odd that in one of these papers Walpole proposes, in jest, +precisely our modern system of postage cards, only charging a penny +instead of a halfpenny. + + +END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. + +PRINTED BY +SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE +LONDON + + * * * * * + + +------------------------------------------------------------+ + | Transcriber's Notes: | + | | + | Page 8: Closing quote added | + | Page 145: Shakspeare amended to Shakespeare | + | Page 181: Mismatched single and double quotes amended | + | Page 215: orgie _sic_ | + | Page 295: Shakspeares amended to Shakespeares | + | Page 301: comtemporary amended to contemporary | + | Page 333: Full stop added after parentheses (vol. viii., | + | sermon xxvii.) | + | Page 349: boosing _sic_ | + | Page 373: helmit amended to helmet | + | | + | Italicisation and hyphenation have been standardised. | + | However, where there is an equal number of instances of | + | a hyphenated and unhyphenated word, both have been | + | retained: back-stairs/backstairs; life-like/lifelike; | + | note-book/notebook; now-a-days/nowadays. | + | | + +------------------------------------------------------------+ + + * * * * * + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Hours in a Library, Volume I. 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