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A History of English Literature

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THE NOVEL. We have traced the literary production of the eighteenth century
in many different forms, but it still remains to speak of one of the most
important, the novel, which in the modern meaning of the word had its
origin not long before 1750. Springing at that time into apparently sudden
popularity, it replaced the drama as the predominant form of literature and
has continued such ever since. The reasons are not hard to discover. The
drama is naturally the most popular literary form in periods like the
Elizabethan when the ability (or inclination) to read is not general, when
men are dominated by the zest for action, and when cities have become
sufficiently large to keep the theaters well filled. It is also the natural
form in such a period as that of the Restoration, when literary life
centers about a frivolous upper class who demand an easy and social form of
entertainment. But the condition is very different when, as in the
eighteenth and still more in the nineteenth century, the habit of reading,
and some recognition of its educating influence, had spread throughout
almost all classes and throughout the country, creating a public far too
large, too scattered, and too varied to gain access to the London and
provincial theaters or to find all their needs supplied by a somewhat
artificial literary form. The novel, on the other hand, gives a much fuller
portrayal of life than does the drama, and allows the much more detailed
analysis of characters and situations which the modern mind has come more
and more to demand.

The novel, which for our present purpose must be taken to include the
romance, is, of course, only a particular and highly developed kind of long
story, one of the latest members of the family of fiction, or the larger
family of narrative, in prose and verse. The medieval romances, for
example, included most of the elements of the novel, even, sometimes,
psychological analysis; but the romances usually lacked the unity, the
complex and careful structure, the thorough portrayal of character, and the
serious attention to the real problems of life which in a general way
distinguish the modern novel. Much the same is true of the Elizabethan
'novels,' which, besides, were generally short as well as of small
intellectual and ethical caliber. During the Restoration period and a
little later there began to appear several kinds of works which perhaps
looked more definitely toward the later novel. Bunyan's religious
allegories may likely enough have had a real influence on it, and there
were a few English tales and romances of chivalry (above, pages 184-5), and
a few more realistic pieces of fiction. The habit of journal writing and
the letters about London life sent by some persons in the city to their
friends in the country should also be mentioned. The De Coverly papers in
'The Spectator' approach distinctly toward the novel. They give real
presentation of both characters and setting (social life) and lack only
connected treatment of the story (of Sir Roger). Defoe's fictions,
picaresque tales of adventure, come still closer, but lack the deeper
artistic and moral purpose and treatment suggested a moment ago. The case
is not very different with Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels,' which, besides, is
primarily a satire. Substantially, therefore, all the materials were now
ready, awaiting only the fortunate hand which should arrange and shape them
into a real novel. This proved to be the hand of a rather unlikely person,
the outwardly commonplace printer, Samuel Richardson.

SAMUEL RICHARDSON. It is difficult, because of the sentimental nature of
the period and the man, to tell the story of Richardson's career without an
appearance of farcical burlesque. Born in 1689, in Derbyshire, he early
gave proof of his special endowments by delighting his childish companions
with stories, and, a little later, by becoming the composer of the love
letters of various young women. His command of language and an insistent
tendency to moralize seemed to mark him out for the ministry, but his
father was unable to pay for the necessary education and apprenticed him to
a London printer. Possessed of great fidelity and all the quieter virtues,
he rose steadily and became in time the prosperous head of his own printing
house, a model citizen, and the father of a large family of children.
Before he reached middle life he was a valetudinarian. His household
gradually became a constant visiting place for a number of young ladies
toward whom he adopted a fatherly attitude and who without knowing it were
helping him to prepare for his artistic success.

When he was not quite fifty his great reputation among his acquaintances as
a letter-writer led some publishers to invite him to prepare a series of
'Familiar [that is, Friendly] Letters' as models for inexperienced young
people. Complying, Richardson discovered the possibilities of the letter
form as a means of telling stories, and hence proceeded to write his first
novel, 'Pamela, [Footnote: He wrongly placed the accent on the first
syllable.] or Virtue Rewarded,' which was published in 1740. It attained
enormous success, which he followed up by writing his masterpiece,
'Clarissa Harlowe' (1747-8), and then 'The History of Sir Charles
Grandison' (1753). He spent his latter years, as has been aptly said, in a
sort of perpetual tea-party, surrounded by bevies of admiring ladies, and
largely occupied with a vast feminine correspondence, chiefly concerning
his novels. He died of apoplexy in 1761.

At this distance of time it is easy to summarize the main traits of
Richardson's novels.

1. He gave form to the modern novel by shaping it according to a definite
plot with carefully selected incidents which all contributed directly to
the outcome. In this respect his practice was decidedly stricter than that
of most of his English successors down to the present time. Indeed, he
avowedly constructed his novels on the plan of dramas, while later
novelists, in the desire to present a broader picture of life, have
generally allowed themselves greater range of scenes and a larger number of
characters. In the instinct for suspense, also, no one has surpassed
Richardson; his stories are intense, not to say sensational, and once
launched upon them we follow with the keenest interest to the outcome.

2. Nevertheless, he is always prolix. That the novels as published varied
in length from four to eight volumes is not really significant, since these
were the very small volumes which (as a source of extra profit) were to be
the regular form for novels until after the time of Scott. Even 'Clarissa,'
the longest, is not longer than some novels of our own day. Yet they do
much exceed the average in length and would undoubtedly gain by
condensation. Richardson, it may be added, produced each of them in the
space of a few months, writing, evidently, with the utmost fluency, and
with little need for revision.

3. Most permanently important, perhaps, of all Richardson's contributions,
was his creation of complex characters, such as had thitherto appeared not
in English novels but only in the drama. In characterization Richardson's
great strength lay with his women--he knew the feminine mind and spirit
through and through. His first heroine, Pamela, is a plebeian serving-maid,
and his second, Clarissa, a fine-spirited young lady of the wealthy class,
but both are perfectly and completely true and living, throughout all their
terribly complex and trying experiences. Men, on the other hand, those
beyond his own particular circle, Richardson understood only from the
outside. Annoyed by criticisms to this effect, he attempted in the hero of
his last book to present a true gentleman, but the result is only a
mechanical ideal figure of perfection whose wooden joints creak painfully
as he moves slowly about under the heavy load of his sternly self-conscious
goodness and dignity.

4. Richardson's success in his own time was perhaps chiefly due to his
striking with exaggerated emphasis the note of tender sentiment to which
the spirit of his generation was so over-ready to respond. The substance of
his books consists chiefly of the sufferings of his heroines under
ingeniously harrowing persecution at the hands of remorseless scoundrels.
Pamela, with her serving-maid's practical efficiency, proves able to take
care of herself, but the story of the high-bred and noble-minded Clarissa
is, with all possible deductions, one of the most deeply-moving tragedies
ever committed to paper. The effect in Richardson's own time may easily be
imagined; but it is also a matter of record that his novels were commonly
read aloud in the family circle (a thing which some of their incidents
would render impossible at the present day) and that sometimes when the
emotional strain became too great the various listeners would retire to
their own rooms to cry out their grief. Richardson appealed directly, then,
to the prevailing taste of his generation, and no one did more than he to
confirm its hold on the next generation, not only in England, but also in
France and Germany.

5. We have not yet mentioned what according to Richardson's own reiterated
statement was his main purpose in writing, namely, the conveying of moral
and religious instruction. He is extremely anxious to demonstrate to his
readers that goodness pays and that wickedness does not, generally even in
this world (though in 'Clarissa' his artistic sense refuses to be turned
aside from the inevitable tragic outcome). The spiritual vulgarity of the
doctrine, so far as material things are concerned, is clearly illustrated
in the mechanically virtuous Pamela, who, even in the midst of the most
outrageous besetments of Squire B----, is hoping with all her soul for the
triumph which is actually destined for her, of becoming his wife and so
rising high above her original humble station. Moreover, Richardson often
goes far and tritely out of his way in his preaching. At their worst,
however, his sentimentality and moralizing were preferable to the
coarseness which disgraced the works of some of his immediate successors.

6. Lastly must be mentioned the form of his novels. They all consist of
series of letters, which constitute the correspondence between some of the
principal characters, the great majority being written in each case by the
heroine. This method of telling a story requires special concessions from
the reader; but even more than the other first-personal method, exemplified
in 'Robinson Crusoe,' it has the great advantage of giving the most
intimate possible revelation of the imaginary writer's mind and situation.
Richardson handles it with very great skill, though in his anxiety that his
chief characters may not be misunderstood he occasionally commits the
artistic blunder of inserting footnotes to explain their real motives.

Richardson, then, must on the whole be called the first of the great
English novelists--a striking case of a man in whom one special endowment
proved much weightier than a large number of absurdities and littlenesses.

HENRY FIELDING. Sharply opposed to Richardson stands his later contemporary
and rival, Henry Fielding. Fielding was born of an aristocratic family in
Somersetshire in 1707. At Eton School and the University of Leyden (in
Holland) he won distinction, but at the age of twenty he found himself, a
vigorous young man with instincts for fine society, stranded in London
without any tangible means of support. He turned to the drama and during
the next dozen years produced many careless and ephemeral farces,
burlesques, and light plays, which, however, were not without value as
preparation for his novels. Meanwhile he had other activities--spent the
money which his wife brought him at marriage in an extravagant experiment
as gentleman-farmer; studied law and was admitted to the bar; and conducted
various literary periodicals. His attacks on the government in his plays
helped to produce the severe licensing act which put an end to his dramatic
work and that of many other light playwrights. When Richardson's 'Pamela'
appeared Fielding was disgusted with what seemed to him its hypocritical
silliness, and in vigorous artistic indignation he proceeded to write 'The
History of Joseph Andrews,' representing Joseph as the brother of Pamela
and as a serving-man, honest, like her, in difficult circumstances.
Beginning in a spirit of sheer burlesque, Fielding soon became interested
in his characters, and in the actual result produced a rough but masterful
picture of contemporary life. The coarse Parson Trulliber and the admirable
Parson Adams are among the famous characters of fiction. But even in the
later part of the book Fielding did not altogether abandon his ridicule of
Richardson. He introduced among the characters the 'Squire B----' of
'Pamela,' only filling out the blank by calling him 'Squire Booby,' and
taking pains to make him correspondingly ridiculous.

Fielding now began to pay the penalty for his youthful dissipations in
failing health, but he continued to write with great expenditure of time
and energy. 'The History of Jonathan Wild the Great,' a notorious ruffian
whose life Defoe also had narrated, aims to show that great military
conquerors are only bandits and cutthroats really no more praiseworthy than
the humbler individuals who are hanged without ceremony. Fielding's
masterpiece, 'The History of Tom Jones,' followed hard after Richardson's
'Clarissa,' in 1749. His last novel, 'Amelia,' is a half autobiographic
account of his own follies. His second marriage, to his first wife's maid,
was intended, as he frankly said, to provide a nurse for himself and a
mother for his children, but his later years were largely occupied with
heroic work as a police justice in Westminster, where, at the sacrifice of
what health remained to him, he rooted out a specially dangerous band of
robbers. Sailing for recuperation, but too late, to Lisbon, he died there
at the age of forty-seven, in 1754.

The chief characteristics of Fielding's nature and novels, mostly directly
opposite or complementary to those of Richardson, are these:

1. He is a broad realist, giving to his romantic actions a very prominent
background of actual contemporary life. The portrayal is very illuminating;
we learn from Fielding a great deal, almost everything, one is inclined to
say, about conditions in both country and city in his time--about the state
of travel, country inns, city jails, and many other things; but with his
vigorous masculine nature he makes abundant use of the coarser facts of
life and character which a finer art avoids. However, he is extremely human
and sympathetic; in view of their large and generous naturalness the
defects of his character and works are at least pardonable.

2. His structure is that of the rambling picaresque story of adventure, not
lacking, in his case, in definite progress toward a clearly-designed end,
but admitting many digressions and many really irrelevant elements. The
number of his characters, especially in 'Tom Jones,' is enormous. Indeed,
the usual conception of a novel in his day, as the word 'History,' which
was generally included in the title, indicates, was that of the complete
story of the life of the hero or heroine, at least up to the time of
marriage. It is virtually the old idea of the chronicle-history play.
Fielding himself repeatedly speaks of his masterpiece as an 'epic.'

3. His point of view is primarily humorous. He avowedly imitates the manner
of Cervantes in 'Don Quixote' and repeatedly insists that he is writing a
_mock_-epic. His very genuine and clear-sighted indignation at social
abuses expresses itself through his omnipresent irony and satire, and
however serious the situations he almost always keeps the ridiculous side
in sight. He offends some modern readers by refusing to take his art in any
aspect over-seriously; especially, he constantly asserts and exercises his
'right' to break off his story and chat quizzically about questions of art
or conduct in a whole chapter at a time.

4. His knowledge of character, that of a generous-hearted man of the world,
is sound but not subtile, and is deeper in the case of men than of women,
especially in the case of men who resemble himself. Tom Jones is virtually
Henry Fielding in his youth and is thoroughly lifelike, but Squire
Allworthy, intended as an example of benevolent perfection, is no less of a
pale abstraction than Sir Charles Grandison. The women, cleverly as their
typical feminine traits are brought out, are really viewed only from
without.

THE OTHER SENTIMENTALISTS AND REALISTS. Richardson and Fielding set in
motion two currents, of sentimentalism and realism, respectively, which
flowed vigorously in the novel during the next generation, and indeed
(since they are of the essence of life), have continued, with various
modifications, down to our own time. Of the succeeding realists the most
important is Tobias Smollett, a Scottish ex-physician of violent and brutal
nature, who began to produce his picaresque stories of adventure during the
lifetime of Fielding. He made ferociously unqualified attacks on the
statesmen of his day, and in spite of much power, the coarseness of his
works renders them now almost unreadable. But he performed one definite
service; in 'Roderick Random,' drawing on his early experiences as a ship's
surgeon, he inaugurated the out-and-out sea story, that is the story which
takes place not, like 'Robinson Crusoe,' in small part, but mainly, on
board ship. Prominent, on the other hand, among the sentimentalists is
Laurence Sterne, who, inappropriately enough, was a clergyman, the author
of 'Tristram Shandy.' This book is quite unlike anything else ever written.
Sterne published it in nine successive volumes during almost as many years,
and he made a point of almost complete formlessness and every sort of
whimsicality. The hero is not born until the third volume, the story mostly
relates to other people and things, pages are left blank to be filled out
by the reader--no grotesque device or sudden trick can be too fantastic for
Sterne. But he has the gift of delicate pathos and humor, and certain
episodes in the book are justly famous, such as the one where Uncle Toby
carefully puts a fly out of the window, refusing to 'hurt a hair of its
head,' on the ground that 'the world surely is wide enough to hold both
thee and me.' The best of all the sentimental stories is Goldsmith's 'Vicar
of Wakefield' (1766), of which we have already spoken (above, page 244).
With its kindly humor, its single-hearted wholesomeness, and its delightful
figure of Dr. Primrose it remains, in spite of its artlessness, one of the
permanent landmarks of English fiction.

HISTORICAL AND 'GOTHIC' ROMANCES. Stories which purported to reproduce the
life of the Past were not unknown in England in the seventeenth century,
but the real beginning of the historical novel and romance belongs to the
later part of the eighteenth century. The extravagance of romantic writers
at that time, further, created a sort of subspecies called in its day and
since the 'Gothic' romance. These 'Gothic' stories are nominally located in
the Middle Ages, but their main object is not to give an accurate picture
of medieval life, but to arouse terror in the reader, by means of a
fantastic apparatus of gloomy castles, somber villains, distressed and
sentimental heroines, and supernatural mystery. The form was inaugurated by
Horace Walpole, the son of the former Prime Minister, who built near
Twickenham (Pope's home) a pseudo-medieval house which he named Strawberry
Hill, where he posed as a center of the medieval revival. Walpole's 'Castle
of 'Otranto,' published in 1764, is an utterly absurd little story, but its
novelty at the time, and the author's prestige, gave it a great vogue. The
really best 'Gothic' romances are the long ones written by Mrs. Ann
Radcliffe in the last decade of the century, of which 'The Mysteries of
Udolpho,' in particular, was popular for two generations. Mrs. Radcliffe's
books overflow with sentimentality, but display real power, especially in
imaginative description. Of the more truly historical romances the best
were the 'Thaddeus of Warsaw' and 'Scottish Chiefs' of Miss Jane Porter,
which appeared in the first decade of the nineteenth century. None of all
these historical and 'Gothic' romances attains the rank of great or
permanent literature, but they were historically important, largely because
they prepared the way for the novels of Walter Scott, which would hardly
have come into being without them, and which show clear signs of the
influence of even their most exaggerated features.

NOVELS OF PURPOSE. Still another sort of novel was that which began to be
written in the latter part of the century with the object of exposing some
particular abuse in society. The first representatives of the class aimed,
imitating the French sentimentalist Rousseau, to improve education, and in
accordance with the sentimental Revolutionary misconception which held that
all sin and sorrow result from the corruptions of civilization, often held
up the primitive savage as a model of all the kindly virtues. The most
important of the novels of purpose, however, were more thorough-going
attacks on society composed by radical revolutionists, and the least
forgotten is the 'Caleb Williams' of William Godwin (1794), which is
intended to demonstrate that class-distinctions result in hopeless moral
confusion and disaster.

MISS BURNEY AND THE FEMININE NOVEL OF MANNERS. The most permanent results
of the latter part of the century in fiction were attained by three women
who introduced and successively continued the novel which depicts, from the
woman's point of view, with delicate satire, and at first in the hope of
accomplishing some reform, or at least of showing the beauty of virtue and
morality, the contemporary manners of well-to-do 'society.' The first of
these authoresses was Miss Frances Burney, who later became Madame
D'Arblay, but is generally referred to familiarly as Fanny Burney.

The unassuming daughter of a talented and much-esteemed musician,
acquainted in her own home with many persons of distinction, such as
Garrick and Sir Joshua Reynolds, and given from girlhood to the private
writing of stories and of a since famous Diary, Miss Burney composed her
'Evelina' in leisure intervals during a number of years, and published it
when she was twenty-five, in 1778. It recounts, in the Richardsonian letter
form, the experiences of a country girl of good breeding and ideally fine
character who is introduced into the life of London high society, is
incidentally brought into contact with disagreeable people of various
types, and soon achieves a great triumph by being acknowledged as the
daughter of a repentant and wealthy man of fashion and by marrying an
impossibly perfect young gentleman, also of great wealth. Structure and
substance in 'Evelina' are alike somewhat amateurish in comparison with the
novels of the next century; but it does manifest, together with some lack
of knowledge of the real world, genuine understanding of the core, at
least, of many sorts of character; it presents artificial society life with
a light and pleasing touch; and it brought into the novel a welcome
atmosphere of womanly purity and delicacy. 'Evelina' was received with
great applause and Miss Burney wrote other books, but they are without
importance. Her success won her the friendship of Dr. Johnson and the
position of one of the Queen's waiting women, a sort of gilded slavery
which she endured for five years. She was married in middle-age to a French
emigrant officer, Monsieur D'Arblay, and lived in France and England until
the age of nearly ninety, latterly an inactive but much respected figure
among the writers of a younger generation.

MISS EDGEWORTH. Much more voluminous and varied was the work of Miss
Burney's successor, Maria Edgeworth, who devoted a great part of her long
life (1767-1849) to active benevolence and to attendance on her father, an
eccentric and pedantic English gentleman who lived mostly on his estate in
Ireland and who exercised the privilege of revising or otherwise meddling
with most of her books. In the majority of her works Miss Edgeworth
followed Miss Burney, writing of the experiences of young ladies in
fashionable London life. In these novels her purpose was more obviously
moral than Miss Burney's--she aimed to make clear the folly of frivolity
and dissipation; and she also wrote moral tales for children which though
they now seem old-fashioned were long and widely popular. Since she had a
first-hand knowledge of both Ireland and England, she laid the scenes of
some of her books partly in both countries, thereby creating what was later
called 'the international novel.' Her most distinctive achievement,
however, was the introduction of the real Irishman (as distinct from the
humorous caricature) into fiction. Scott testified that it was her example
that suggested to him the similar portrayal of Scottish character and life.

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