Halleck's New English Literature Part 41

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN NOVEL

The Growth of Prose Fiction.--Authentic history does not take us back to the time when human beings were not solaced by tales. The _Bible_ contains stories of marked interest. _Beowulf_, the medieval romances, the _Canterbury Tales_, and the ballads relate stories in verse.

For a long time the knight and his adventures held the place of honor in fiction; but the time came when improbable or impossible achievements began to pall. The knight who meets with all kinds of adventures and rescues everybody, is admirably burlesqued in _Don Quixote_ by the Spanish author Cervantes, which appeared at the beginning of the seventeenth century. This world-famous romance shows by its ridicule that the taste for the impossible adventures of chivalry was beginning to pall. The following t.i.tle to one of the chapters of _Don Quixote_ is sufficiently suggestive: "Chapter LVIII.--Which tells how Adventures came crowding on Don Quixote in Such Numbers that they gave him No Breathing Time."

Much prose fiction was written during the Elizabethan Age. We have seen that Lyly's _Euphues_ and Sidney's _Arcadia_ contain the germs of romance. Two of the novelists of the sixteenth century, Robert Greene (1560?-1592) and Thomas Lodge (1558?-1625), helped to give to Shakespeare the plots of two of his plays. Greene's novel _Pandosto_ suggested the plot of _The Winter's Tale_, and Lodge's _Rosalind_ was the immediate source of the plot of _As You Like It_.

Although Greene died in want at the age of thirty-two, he was the most prolific of the Elizabethan novelists. His most popular stories deal with the pa.s.sion of love as well as with adventure. He was also the pioneer of those realistic novelists who go among the slums to study life at first hand. Greene made a careful study of the sharpers and rascals of London and published his observations in a series of realistic pamphlets.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A BLIND BEGGAR ROBBED OF HIS DRINK. _From a British Museum MS._]

Thomas Nashe (1567-1601) was the one who introduced into England the picaresque novel in _The Unfortunate Traveller, or the Life of Jacke Wilton_ (1594). The picaresque novel (Spanish, _picaro_, a rogue) is a story of adventure in which rascally tricks play a prominent part.

This type of fiction came from Spain and attained great popularity in England. Jacke Wilton is page to a n.o.ble house. Many of his sharp tricks were doubtless drawn from real life. Nashe is a worthy predecessor of Defoe in narrating adventures that seem to be founded on actual life.

In spite of an increasing tendency to picture the life of the time, Elizabethan prose fiction did not entirely discard the matter and style of the medieval romances. All types of prose fiction were then too p.r.o.ne to deal with exceptional characters or unusual events. Even realists like Greene did not present typical Elizabethan life. The greatest realist in the prose fiction of the Elizabethan Age was Thomas Deloney (1543?-1600), who chose his materials from the everyday life of common people. He had been a traveling artisan, and he knew how to paint "the life and love of the Elizabethan workshop." He wrote _The Gentle Craft_, a collection of tales about shoemakers, and _Jack of Newberry_, a story of a weaver.

The seventeenth century produced _The Pilgrim's Progress_, a powerful allegorical story of the journey of a soul toward the New Jerusalem.

Mrs. Aphra Behn (1640-1689), dramatist and novelist, shows the faults of the Restoration drama in her short tales, which helped to prepare the way for the novelists of the next century. Her best story is _Oroonoko_ (1658), a tale of an African slave, which has been called "the first humanitarian novel in English," and a predecessor of _Uncle Tom's Cabin_.

Fiction in the First Part of the Eighteenth Century.--Defoe's _Robinson Crusoe_ shows a great advance over preceding fiction. In the hands of Defoe, fiction became as natural as fact. Leslie Stephen rightly calls his stories "simple history minus the facts." Swift's _Gulliver's Travels_ (1726) is artfully planned to make its impossibilities seem like facts. _Robinson Crusoe_ took another forward step in showing how circ.u.mstances and environment react on character and develop the power to grapple with difficulties and overcome them. Unlike the majority of modern novels, Defoe's masterpiece does not contain a love story.

The essay of life and manners at the beginning of the eighteenth century presents us at once with various pigments necessary for the palette of the novelist. Students on turning to the second number of _The Spectator_ will find sketches of six different types of character, which are worthy to be framed and hung in a permanent gallery of English fiction. The portrait of Sir Roger de Coverley may even claim one of the places of honor on the walls.

Distinction between the Romance and the Modern Novel.--The romances and tales of adventure which had been so long in vogue differ widely from the modern novel. Many of them pay but little attention to probability; but those which do not offend in this respect generally rely on a succession of stirring incidents to secure attention. Novels showing the a.n.a.lytic skill of Thackeray's _Vanity Fair_, or the development of character in George Eliot's _Silas Marner_ would have been little read in compet.i.tion with stirring tales of adventure, if such novels had appeared before a taste for them had been developed by habits of trained observation and thought.

We may broadly differentiate the romance from the modern novel by saying that the romance deals primarily with incident and adventure for their own sake, while the novel concerns itself with these only in so far as they are necessary for a faithful picture of life or for showing the development of character.

Again, the novel gave a much more prominent position to that important cla.s.s of human beings who do the most of the world's work,--a type that the romance had been inclined to neglect.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SAMUEL RICHARDSON. _From an original drawing_.]

Samuel Richardson, the First Modern English Novelist.--Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) was born in Derbyshire. When he was only thirteen years old some of the young women of the neighborhood unconsciously began to train him for a novelist by employing him to conduct their love correspondence. This training partly accounts for the fact that every one of his novels is merely a collection of letters, written by the chief characters to each other and to their friends, to narrate the progress of events.

At the age of fifteen Richardson went to London and learned the printer's trade, which he followed for the rest of his life. When he was about fifty years old, some publishers asked him to prepare a letter writer which would be useful to country people and to others who could not express themselves with a pen. The idea occurred to him of making these letters tell a connected story. The result was the first modern novel, _Pamela_, published in four volumes in 1740. This was followed by _Clarissa Harlowe_, in seven volumes, in 1747-48, and this by _Sir Charles Grandison_, in seven volumes, in 1753.

The affairs in the lives of the leading characters are so minutely dissected, the plot is evolved so slowly and in a way so unlike the astonishing bounds of the old romance, that one is tempted to say that Richardson's novels progress mere slowly than events in life. One secret of his success depends on the fact that we feel that he is deeply interested in all his characters. He is as much interested in the heroine of his masterpiece, _Clarissa Harlowe_, as if she were his own daughter. He has the remarkable power of so thoroughly identifying himself with his characters that, after we are introduced to them, we can name them when we hear selections read from their letters.

The length and slow development of his novels repel modern readers, but there was so little genuinely interesting matter in the middle of the eighteenth century that many were sorry his novels were no longer.

The novelty of productions of this type also added to their interest.

His many faults are largely those of his age. He wearies his readers with his didactic aims. He is narrow and prosy. He poses as a great moralist, but he teaches the morality of direct utility.

The drama and the romance had helped to prepare the way for the novel of everyday domestic life. While this way seemed simple, natural, and inevitable, Richardson was the first to travel in it. Defoe had invested fict.i.tious adventure with reality. Richardson transferred the real human life around him to the pages of fiction. The ascendancy of French influence was noteworthy for a considerable period after the Restoration. England could now repay some of her debt. Richardson exerted powerful influence on the literature of France as well as on that of other continental nations.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HENRY FIELDING. _From the original sketch by Hogarth_.]

Henry Fielding, 1707-1754.--The greatest novelist of the eighteenth century, and one of the greatest that England ever produced, was Henry Fielding, who was born in Sharpham Park, Somersetshire. After graduating at the University of Leyden, he became a playwright, a lawyer, a judge of a police court, and, most important of all, a novelist, or a historian of society, as he preferred to style himself.

When Richardson's _Pamela_ appeared, Fielding determined to write a story caricaturing its morality and sentiment, which he considered hypocritical. Before he had gone very far he discovered where his abilities lay, and, abandoning his narrow, satiric aims, he wrote _Joseph Andrews_ (1742), a novel far more interesting than _Pamela_.

_Jonathan Wild the Great_ (1743) tells the story of a rogue who was finally hanged. In 1749 appeared Fielding's masterpiece, _Tom Jones_, and in 1751 his last novel, _Amelia_.

Richardson lacks humor, but Fielding is one of the greatest humorists of the eighteenth century. Fielding is also a master of plot. From all literature, Coleridge selected, for perfection of plot, _The Alchemist, Oedipus Tyrannus_, and _Tom Jones_.

Fielding's novels often lack refinement, but they palpitate with life.

His pages present a wonderful variety of characters, chosen from almost all walks of life. He could draw admirable portraits of women.

Thackeray says of Amelia, the heroine of the novel that bears her name:--

"To have invented that character, is not only a triumph of art, but it is a good action. They say it was in his own home that Fielding knew her and loved her, and from his own wife that he drew the most charming character in English fiction... I admire the author of _Amelia_, and thank the kind master who introduced me to that sweet and delightful companion and friend. _Amelia_, perhaps, is not a better story than _Tom Jones_, but it has the better ethics; the prodigal repents at least before forgiveness,--whereas that odious broad-backed Mr. Jones carries off his beauty with scarce an interval of remorse for his manifold errors and shortcomings... I am angry with Jones. Too much of the plum cake and rewards of life fall to that boisterous, swaggering young scapegrace."[1]

The "prodigal" to whom Thackeray refers is Captain Booth, the husband of Amelia, and "Mr. Jones" is the hero of _Tom Jones_. Fielding's wife, under the name of Sophia Western, is also the heroine of _Tom Jones_. It is probable that in the characters of Captain Booth and Tom Jones, Fielding drew a partial portrait of himself. He seems, however, to have changed in middle life, for his biographer, Austin Dobson, says of him: "He was a loving father and a kind husband; he exerted his last energies in philanthropy and benevolence; he expended his last ink in defence of Christianity."

Fielding shows the eighteenth-century love of satire. He hates that hypocrisy which tries to conceal itself under a mask of morality. In the evolution of the plots of his novels, he invariably puts such characters in positions that tear away their mask. He displays almost savage pleasure in making them ridiculous. Perhaps the lack of spirituality of the age finds the most ample expression in his pages; but Chaucer's Parish Priest and Fielding's Parson Adams are typical of those persisting moral forces that have bequeathed a heritage of power to England.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LAURENCE STERNE.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: UNCLE TOBY AND CORPORAL TRIM. _From a drawing by B.

Westmacott_.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: TOBIAS SMOLLETT.]

Sterne and Smollett.--With Richardson and Fielding it is customary to a.s.sociate two other mid-eighteenth century novelists, Lawrence Sterne (1713-1768) and Tobias Smollett (1721-1771). Between 1759 and 1767 Sterne wrote his first novel, _The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman_, which presents the delightfully comic and eccentric members of the Shandy family, among whom Uncle Toby is the masterpiece. In 1768 Sterne gave to the world that compound of fiction, essays, and sketches of travel known as _A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy_. The adjective "sentimental" in the t.i.tle should be specially noted, for it defines Sterne's att.i.tude toward everything in life. He is habitually sentimental in treating not only those things fitted to awaken deep emotion, but also those trivial incidents which ordinarily cause scarcely a ripple of feeling.

Although he is sometimes a master of pathos, he frequently gives an exhibition of weak and forced sentimentalism. He more uniformly excels in subtle humor, which is his next most conspicuous characteristic.

_Roderick Random_ (1748), _Peregrine Pickle_ (1751), and _The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker_ (1771) are Smollett's best novels.

They are composed mainly of a succession of stirring or humorous incidents. In relying for interest more on adventure than on the drawing of character, he reverts to the picaresque type of story.

The Relation of Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, and Smollett to Subsequent Fiction.--Although the modern reader frequently complains that these older novelists often seem heavy, slow in movement, unrefined, and too ready to draw a moral or preach a sermon, yet these four men hold an important place in the history of fiction. With varying degrees of excellence, Richardson, Fielding, and Sterne all have the rare power of portraying character from within, of interpreting real life. Some novelists resort to the far easier task of painting merely external characteristics and mannerisms. Smollett belongs to the latter cla.s.s. His effective focusing of external peculiarities and caricaturing of exceptional individuals has had a far-reaching influence, which may be traced even in the work of so great a novelist as Charles d.i.c.kens. Fielding, on the other hand, had great influence of Thackeray, who has recorded in _The English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century_ his admiration for his earlier fellow-craftsman.

Although subsequent English fiction has invaded many new fields, although it has entered the domain of history and of sociology, it is not too much to say that later novelists have advanced on the general lines marked out by these four mid-eighteenth century pioneers. We may even affirm with Gosse that "the type of novel invented in England about 1740-50 continued for sixty or seventy years to be the only model for Continental fiction; and criticism has traced in every French novelist, in particular, the stamp of Richardson, if not of Sterne, and of Fielding."

PHILOSOPHICAL, HISTORICAL, AND POLITICAL PROSE

Philosophy.--Although the majority of eighteenth-century writers disliked speculative thought and resolutely turned away from it, yet the age produced some remarkable philosophical works, which are still discussed, and which have powerfully affected later thought. David Hume (1711-1776) is the greatest metaphysician of the century. He took for his starting point the conclusions of a contemporary philosopher, George Berkeley (1685-1753).

Berkeley had said that ideas are the only real existing ent.i.ties, that matter is merely another term for the ideas in the Mind of the Infinite and has no existence outside of mind. He maintained that if every quality should be taken away from matter, no matter would remain; _e.g._, if color, sweetness, sourness, form, and all other qualities should be taken away from an apple, there would be no apple.

Now, a quality is a mental representation based on a sensation, and this quality varies as the sensation varies; in other words, the object is not a stable immutable thing. It is only a thing as I perceive it. Berkeley's idealistic position was taken to crush atheistic materialism.

Hume attempted to rear on Berkeley's position an impregnable citadel of skepticism. He accepted Berkeley's conclusion that we know nothing of matter, and then attempted to show that inferences based on ideas might be equally illusory. Hume attacked the validity of the reasoning process itself. He endeavored to show that there is no such thing as cause and effect in either the mental or the material world.

Hume's _Treatise of Human Nature_ (1739-1740), in which these views are stated, is one of the world's epoch-making works in philosophy.

Its conclusion startled the great German metaphysician Kant and roused him to action. The questions thus raised by Hume have never been answered to the satisfaction of all philosophers.

Hume's skepticism is the most thoroughgoing that the world has ever seen; for he attacks the certainty of our knowledge of both mind and matter. But he dryly remarks that his own doubts disappear when he leaves his study. He avoids a runaway horse and inquires of a friend the way to a certain house in Edinburgh, relying as much on the evidence of his eyes and on the directions of his friend as if these philosophic doubts had never been raised.

Historical Prose.--In carefully elaborated and highly finished works of history, the eighteenth century surpa.s.ses its predecessors. _The History of England_ by David Hume, the philosopher, is the first work of the kind to add to the history of politics and the affairs of state an account of the people and their manners. This _History_ is distinguished for its polished ease and clearness. Unfortunately, the work is written from a partisan point of view. Hume was a Tory, and took the side of the Stuarts against the Puritans. He sometimes misrepresented facts if they did not uphold his views. His _History_ is consequently read more to-day as a literary cla.s.sic than as an authority.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EDWARD GIBBON. _From the painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds_.]

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) is the greatest historian of the century.

His monumental work, _The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, in six volumes, begins with the reign of Trajan, A.D. 98, and closes with the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire at Constantinople in 1453. Gibbon constructed a "Roman road" through nearly fourteen centuries of history; and he built it so well that another on the same plan has not yet been found necessary. E.A. Freeman says: "He remains the one historian of the eighteenth century whom modern research has neither set aside nor threatened to set aside." In preparing his _History_, Gibbon spent fifteen years. Every chapter was the subject of long-continued study and careful original research. From the chaotic materials which he found, he constructed a history remarkable as well for its scholarly precision as for the vastness of the field covered.