Adventures in Criticism Part 6

A suggestion.

But wait a moment--The _original_ editions of _Robinson Crusoe_ (and most, if not all, later editions) give the date of Crusoe's departure from the island as December 19th, 1686, instead of 1687. Mr. Wright suggests that this is a misprint; and, to be sure, it does not agree with the statement respecting the length of Crusoe's stay on the island, _if we a.s.sume the date of the wreck to be correct_. But, (as Mr. Aitken points out) the mistake must be the author's, not the printer's, because in the next paragraph we are told that Crusoe reached England in June, 1687, not 1688. I agree with Mr. Aitken; and I suggest _that the date of Crusoe's arrival at the island, not the date of his departure, is the date misprinted_. a.s.sume for a moment that the date of departure (December 19th, 1686) is correct. Subtract the twenty-eight years, two months, and nineteen days of Crusoe's stay on the island, and we get September 30th, 1658, as the date of the wreck and his arrival at the island. Now add the twenty-seven years which separate Crusoe's experiences from Defoe's, and we come to September 30th, 1685. What was happening in England at the close of September, 1685? Why, Jeffreys was carrying through his b.l.o.o.d.y a.s.size.

"Like many other Dissenters," says Mr. Wright on p. 21, "Defoe sympathised with Monmouth; and, to his misfortune, took part in the rising." His comrades perished in it, and he himself, in Mr. Wright's words, "probably had to lie low." There is no doubt that the Monmouth affair was the beginning of Defoe's troubles: and I suggest that certain pa.s.sages in the story of Crusoe's voyage (_e.g._ the "secret proposal" of the three merchants who came to Crusoe) have a peculiar significance if read in this connection. I also think it possible there may be a particular meaning in the several waves, so carefully described, through which Crusoe made his way to dry land; and in the simile of the reprieved malefactor (p. 50 in Mr. Aitken's delightful edition); and in the several visits to the wreck.

I am no specialist in Defoe, but put this suggestion forward with the utmost diffidence. And yet, right or wrong, I feel it has more plausibility than Mr. Wright's. Defoe undoubtedly took part in the Monmouth rising, and was a survivor of that wreck "on the south side of the island": and undoubtedly it formed the turning-point of his career. If we could discover how he escaped Kirke and Jeffreys, I am inclined to believe we should have a key to the whole story of the shipwreck. I should not be sorry to find this hypothesis upset; for the story of Robinson Crusoe is quite good enough for me as it stands, and without any sub-intention. But whatever be the true explanation of the parable, if time shall discover it, I confess I expect it will be a trifle less recondite than Mr. Wright's, and a trifle more creditable to the father of the English novel.[C]

FOOTNOTES:

[A] "The Life of Daniel Defoe." By Thomas Wright, Princ.i.p.al of Cowper School, Olney. London: Ca.s.sell & Co.

[B] _Romances and Narratives by Daniel Defoe_. Edited by George A.

Aitken. Vols. i., ii., and iii. Containing the Life and Adventures, Farther Adventures, and Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe. With a General Introduction by the Editor. London: J.M. Dent & Co.

[C] Upon this suggestion Mr. Aitken, in a postscript to his seventh volume of the _Romances and Narratives_, has since remarked as follows:--

"In a discussion in _The Speaker_ upon Defoe's supposed period of 'silence,' published since the appearance of the first volume of this edition, Mr. Quiller Couch, while agreeing, for the reasons I have given (vol. i. p. lvii.), that there is no mistake in the date of Robinson Crusoe's departure from his island (December, 1686), has suggested that perhaps the error in the chronology lies, not in the length of time Crusoe is said to have lived on the island, but in the date given for his landing (September, 1659). That this suggestion is right appears from a pa.s.sage which has. .h.i.therto escaped notice. Crusoe was born in 1632, and Defoe makes him say (vol. i. p. 147), 'The same day of the year I was born on, viz. the 30th of September, that same day I had my life so miraculously saved twenty-six years after, when I was cast ash.o.r.e on this island.' Crusoe must, therefore, have reached his island on September 30, 1658, not 1659, as twice stated by Defoe; and by adding twenty-eight years to 1658 we get 1686, the date given for Crusoe's departure.

"It is, however, questionable whether this rectification helps us to interpret the allegory in _Robinson Crusoe_. It is true that if, in accordance with the 'key' suggested by Mr. Wright, we add twenty-seven years to the date of the shipwreck (1658) in order to find the corresponding event in Defoe's life, we arrive at September, 1685, when Jeffreys was sentencing many of those who--like Defoe--took part in Monmouth's rising. But we have no evidence that Defoe suffered seriously in consequence of the part he took in this rebellion; and the addition of twenty-seven years to the date of Crusoe's departure from the island (December, 1686) does not bring us to any corresponding event in Defoe's own story.

Those who are curious will find the question discussed at greater length in _The Speaker_ for April 13 and 20, and May 4, 1895."

LAWRENCE STERNE

Dec. 10, 1891. Sterne and Thackeray.

It is told by those who write sc.r.a.ps of Thackeray's biography that a youth once ventured to speak disrespectfully of Scott in his presence.

"You and I, sir," said the great man, cutting him short, "should lift our hats at the mention of that great name."

An admirable rebuke!--if only Thackeray had remembered it when he sat down to write those famous Lectures on the English Humorists, or at least before he stood up in Willis's Rooms to inform a polite audience concerning his great predecessors. Concerning their work? No.

Concerning their genius? No. Concerning the debt owed to them by mankind? Not a bit of it. Concerning their _lives_, ladies and gentlemen; and whether their lives were pure and respectable and free from scandal and such as men ought to have led whose works you would like your sons and daughters to handle. Mr. Frank T. Marzials, Thackeray's latest biographer, finds the matter of these Lectures "excellent":--

"One feels in the reading that Thackeray is a peer among his peers--a sort of elder brother,[A] kindly, appreciative and tolerant--as he discourses of Addison, Steele, Swift, Pope, Sterne, Fielding, Goldsmith. I know of no greater contrast in criticism--a contrast, be it said, not to the advantage of the French critic--than Thackeray's treatment of Pope and that of M.

Taine. What allowance the Englishman makes for the physical ills that beset the 'gallant little cripple'; with what a gentle hand he touches the painful places in that poor twisted body! M.

Taine, irritated apparently that Pope will not fit into his conception of English literature, exhibits the same deformities almost savagely."

I am sorry that I cannot read this kindliness, this appreciation, this tolerance, into the Lectures--into those, for instance, of Sterne and Fielding: that the simile of the "elder brother" carries different suggestions for Mr. Marzials and for me: and that the lecturer's att.i.tude is to me less suggestive of a peer among his peers than of a tall "bobby"--a volunteer constable--determined to warn his polite hearers what sort of men these were whose books they had hitherto read unsuspectingly.

And even so--even though the lives and actions of men who lived too early to know Victorian decency must be held up to shock a crowd in Willis's Rooms, yet it had been but common generosity to tell the whole truth. Then the story of Fielding's _Voyage to Lisbon_ might have touched the heart to sympathy even for the purely fict.i.tious low comedian whom Thackeray presented: and Sterne's latest letters might have infused so much pity into the polite audience that they, like his own Recording Angel, might have blotted out his faults with a tear.

But that was not Thackeray's way. Charlotte Bronte found "a finished taste and ease" in the Lectures, a "something high bred." Motley describes their style as "hovering," and their method as "the perfection of lecturing to high-bred audiences." Mr. Marzials quotes this expression "hovering" as admirably descriptive. It is. By judicious selection, by innuendo, here a pitying aposiopesis, there an indignant outburst, the charges are heaped up. Swift was a toady at heart, and used Stella vilely for the sake of that hussy Vanessa.

Congreve had captivating manners--of course he had, the dog! And we all know what that meant in those days. d.i.c.k Steele drank and failed to pay his creditors. Sterne--now really I know what Club life is, ladies and gentlemen, and I might tell you a thing or two if I would: but really, speaking as a gentleman before a polite audience, I warn you against Sterne.

I do not suppose for a moment that Thackeray consciously defamed these men. The weaknesses, the pettinesses of humanity interested him, and he treated them with gusto, even as he spares us nothing of that horrible scene between Mrs. Mackenzie and Colonel Newcome. And of course poor Sterne was the easiest victim. The fellow was so full of his confounded sentiments. You ring a choice few of these on the counter and prove them base metal. You a.s.sume that the rest of the bag is of equal value. You "go one better" than Sir Peter Teazle and d.a.m.n all sentiment, and lo! the fellow is no better than a smirking jester, whose antics you can expose till men and women, who had foolishly laughed and wept as he moved them, turn from him, loathing him as a swindler. So it is that although _Tristram Shandy_ continues one of the most popular cla.s.sics in the language, n.o.body dares to confess his debt to Sterne except in discreet terms of apology.

But the fellow wrote the book. You can't deny _that_, though Thackeray may tempt you to forget it. (What proportion does my Uncle Toby hold in that amiable Lecture?) The truth is that the elemental simplicity of Captain Shandy and Corporal Trim did not appeal to the author of _The Book of Sn.o.bs_ in the same degree as the pettiness of the man Sterne appealed to him: and his business in Willis's Rooms was to talk, not of Captain Shandy, but of the man Sterne, to whom his hearers were to feel themselves superior as members of society. I submit that this was not a worthy task for a man of letters who was also a man of genius. I submit that it was an inversion of the true critical method to wreck Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_ at the outset by picking Sterne's life to pieces, holding up the shreds and warning the reader that any n.o.bility apparent in his book will be nothing better than a sham. Sterne is scarcely arrived at Calais and in conversation with the Monk before you are cautioned how you listen to the impostor. "Watch now," says the critic; "he'll be at his tricks in a moment. Hey, _pailla.s.se_! There!--didn't I tell you?" And yet I am as sure that the opening pages of the _Sentimental Journey_ are full of genuine feeling as I am that if Jonathan Swift had entered the room while the Lecture upon him was going forward, he would have eaten William Makepeace Goliath, white waistcoat and all.

Frenchmen, who either are less awed than we by lecturers in white waistcoats, or understand the methods of criticism somewhat better, cherish the _Sentimental Journey_ (in spite of its indifferent French) and believe in the genius that created it. But the Briton reads it with shyness, and the British critic speaks of Sterne with bated breath, since Thackeray told it in Gath that Sterne was a bad man, and the daughters of Philistia triumphed.

October 6, 1894. Mr. Whibley's Edition of "Tristram Shandy."

We are a strenuous generation, with a New Humor and a number of interesting by-products; but a new _Tristram Shandy_ stands not yet among our achievements. So Messrs. Henley and Whibley have made the best of it and given us a new edition of the old _Tristram_--two handsome volumes, with shapely pages, fair type, and an Introduction.

Mr. Whibley supplies the Introduction, and that he writes lucidly and forcibly needs not to be said. His position is neither that so unfairly taken up by Thackeray; nor that of Allibone, who, writing for Heaven knows how many of Allibone's maiden aunts, summed up Sterne thus:--

"A standing reproach to the profession which he disgraced, grovelling in his tastes, indiscreet, if not licentious, in his habits, he lived unhonoured and died unlamented, save by those who found amus.e.m.e.nt in his wit or countenance in his immorality."[B]

But though he avoids these particular excesses; though he goes straight for the book, as a critic should; Mr. Whibley cannot get quit of the bad tradition of patronizing Sterne:--

"He failed, as only a sentimentalist can fail, in the province of pathos.... There is no trifle, animate or inanimate, he will not bewail, if he be but in the mood; nor does it shame him to dangle before the public gaze those poor shreds of sensibility he calls his feelings. Though he seldom deceives the reader into sympathy, none will turn from his choicest agony without a thrill of disgust. The _Sentimental Journey_, despite its interludes of tacit humour and excellent narrative, is the last extravagance of irrelevant grief.... Genuine sentiment was as strange to Sterne the writer as to Sterne the man; and he conjures up no tragic figure that is not stuffed with sawdust and tricked out in the rags of the green-room. Fortunately, there is scant opportunity for idle tears in _Tristram Shandy_.... Yet no occasion is lost.... Yorick's death is false alike to nature and art. The vapid emotion is properly matched with commonness of expression, and the bad taste is none the more readily excused by the suggestion of self-defence. Even the humour of My Uncle Toby is something: degraded by the oft-quoted plat.i.tude: 'Go, poor devil,' says he, to an overgrown fly which had buzzed about his nose; 'get thee gone. Why should I hurt thee? This world surely is big enough to hold both thee and me.'"

But here Mr. Whibley's notorious hatred of sentiment leads him into confusion. That the pa.s.sage has been over-quoted is no fault of Sterne's. Of My Uncle Toby, if of any man, it might have been predicted that he would not hurt a fly. To me this trivial action of his is more than merely sentimental. But, be this as it may, I am sure it is honestly characteristic.

Still, on the whole Mr. Whibley has justice. Sterne _is_ a sentimentalist. Sterne _is_ indecent by reason of his reticence--more indecent than Rabelais, because he uses a hint where Rabelais would have said what he meant, and prints a dash where Rabelais would have plumped out with a coa.r.s.e word and a laugh. Sterne _is_ a convicted thief. On a famous occasion Charles Reade drew a line between plagiary and justifiable borrowing. To draw material from a heterogeneous work--to found, for instance, the play of _Coriola.n.u.s_ upon Plutarch's _Life_--is justifiable: to take from a h.o.m.ogeneous work--to enrich your drama from another man's drama--is plagiary. But even on this interpretation of the law Sterne must be condemned; for in decking out _Tristram_ with feathers from the history of Gargantua he was pillaging a h.o.m.ogeneous work. Nor can it be pleaded in extenuation that he improved upon his originals--though it can, I think, be pleaded that he made his borrowings his own. I do not think much of Mr. Whibley's instance of Servius Sulpicius' letter. No doubt Sterne took his translation of it from Burton; but the letter is a very well known one, and Burton's translation happened to be uncommonly good, and the borrowing of a good rendering without acknowledgment was not, as far as I know, then forbidden by custom. In any case, the whole pa.s.sage is intended merely to lead up to the beautiful perplexity of My Uncle Toby. And that is Sterne's own, and could never have been another man's. "After all," says Mr. Whibley, "all the best in Sterne is still Sterne's own."

But the more I agree with Mr. Whibley's strictures the more I desire to remove them from an Introduction to _Tristram Shandy_, and to read them in a volume of Mr. Whibley's collected essays. Were it not better, in reading _Tristram Shandy_, to take Sterne for once (if only for a change) at his own valuation, or at least to accept the original postulates of the story? If only for the entertainment he provides we owe him the effort. There will be time enough afterwards to turn to the cold judgment of this or that critic, or to the evidence of this or that thief-taker. For the moment he claims to be heard without prejudice; he has genius enough to make it worth our while to listen without prejudice; and the most lenient "appreciation" of his sins, if we read it beforehand, is bound to raise prejudice and infect our enjoyment as we read. And, as a corollary of this demand, let us ask that he shall be allowed to present his book to us exactly as he chooses. Mr. Whibley says, "He set out upon the road of authorship with a false ideal: 'Writing,' said he, 'when properly managed, is but a different name for conversation.' It would be juster to a.s.sert that writing is never properly managed, unless it be removed from conversation as far as possible." Very true; or, at least, very likely. But since Sterne _had_ this ideal, let us grant him full liberty to make his spoon or spoil his horn, and let us judge afterwards concerning the result. The famous blackened page and the empty pages (all omitted in this new edition) are part of Sterne's method. They may seem to us trick-work and foolery; but, if we consider, they link on to his notion that writing is but a name for conversation; they are included in his demand that in writing a book a man should be allowed to "go cluttering away like hey-go mad." "You may take my word"--it is Sterne who speaks, and in his very first chapter--

"You may take my word that nine parts in ten of a man's sense or his nonsense, his success and miscarriages in this world, depend upon their motions and activity, and the different tracks and trains you put them into, so that when they are once set going--whether right or wrong, 'tis not a halfpenny matter--away they go cluttering like hey-go mad; and by treading the same steps over and over again, they presently make a road of it, as plain and smooth as a garden walk, which, when once they are used to, the devil himself sometimes shall not be able to drive them off it."

This, at any rate, is Sterne's own postulate. And I had rather judge him with all his faults after reading the book than be prepared beforehand to make allowances.

Nov. 12, 1895. Sterne's Good-nature.

Let one thing be recorded to the credit of this much-abused man. He wrote two masterpieces of fiction (one of them a work of considerable length), and in neither will you find an ill-natured character or an ill-natured word. On the admission of all critics My Father, My Mother, My Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, and Mrs. Wadman are immortal creations. To the making of them there has gone no single sour or uncharitable thought. They are essentially amiable: and the same may be said of all the minor characters and of the author's disquisitions.

Sterne has given us a thousand occasions to laugh, but never an occasion to laugh on the wrong side of the mouth. For savagery or bitterness you will search his books in vain. He is obscene, to be sure. But who, pray, was ever the worse for having read him? Alas, poor Yorick! He had his obvious and deplorable failings. I never heard that he communicated them. Good-humor he has been communicating now for a hundred and fifty years.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] But why "elder"?

[B] "Pan might _indeed_ be proud if ever he begot Such an Allibone ..."

_Spenser (revised)._

SCOTT AND BURNS

Dec. 9, 1893. Scott's Letters.

"_All Balzac's novels occupy one shelf. The new edition fifty volumes long"_

--says Bishop Blougram. But for Scott the student will soon have to hire a room. The novels and poems alone stretch away into just sixty volumes in Cadell's edition; and this is only the beginning. At this very moment two new editions (one of which, at least, is indispensable) are unfolding their magnificent lengths, and report says that Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton already project a third, with introductory essays by Mr. Barrie. Then the Miscellaneous Prose Works by that untiring hand extend to some twenty-eight or thirty volumes.