The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare Part 24

V.

Thus in two different ways a reaction showed itself against the literature in fashion, and the merits of those who attempted it only made its failure the more felt. The caricature of the heroic romance and the attempt at the novel of common life were without effect. Their authors had come too soon, and remained isolated; the false heroism now scoffed at in France continued in England until the eighteenth century.

The writers under Queen Anne, in order to destroy it, were obliged to recommence the whole campaign. Addison, as we have seen, found heroism still in fashion, and the great romances in their places in ladies'

libraries. They were still being reprinted. There is, for example, an English edition of "Ca.s.sandra" dated 1725, and one of "Cleopatra" dated 1731. Fielding saw heroism still in possession of the stage, and he satirized it in his amusing "Tom Thumb." Carey attacked it in his "Chrononotontologos."[365]

The hundred years which follow Shakespeare's death are, therefore, taken altogether, a period of little invention and progress for romance literature. The only new development it takes, consists in the exaggeration of the heroic element, of which there was enough already in many an Elizabethan novel; it consists, in fact, in the magnifying of a defect. The imitation of France only resulted in absurd productions which were so successful and filled the literary stage so entirely that they left no s.p.a.ce for other kinds of romances. In vain did a few intelligent persons, such as the authors of "The Adventures of Covent Garden" and of "Zelinda," attempt to bring about a reaction; their words found no echo. The other kinds of novels started in Shakespearean times continued to be cultivated, but were not improved. The picaresque romance as Nash had understood it, includes in the seventeenth century no original specimen but Richard Head's "English Rogue,"[366] one of the worst compositions in this style to be found in any literature. The allegorical, social, and political novel, as inaugurated by Sir Thomas More, continued by Bacon, by Joseph Hall, Bishop of Norwich, and by G.o.dwin,[367] that novel which was to gain new life in the hands of Swift and Johnson, is, if we except Bunyan's eloquent manual of devotion, mainly represented in the second half of the century by barren allegories, such as Harrington's "Oceana," 1656, and Ingelow's "Bentivolio and Urania," 1660; or by short stories like "The perplex'd Prince," "The Court Secret," &c.[368] When we have read ten pages of these it is difficult to speak of them with coolness and without an aggressive animosity towards their authors.

Persistent and close a.n.a.lysis of human emotion and of the pa.s.sion of love in the way in which Sir Philip Sidney had caught sight of it, disappeared from the novel until the day when a second "Pamela" was to figure on the literary stage, and to fill with emotion all London and Paris, down even to Crebillon fils, who was to write to Lord Chesterfield: "Without 'Pamela' we should not know what to read or to say." And at reading it, the author of "The Sopha" was "moved to tears."

One work alone was published towards the end of the century in which an original thought is to be found, the "Oroonoko"[369] of Mrs. Behn. The sentiment that animates it is of another epoch, and belongs to a quite peculiar cla.s.s of novel; with her begins the philosophical novel, crowded with dissertations on the world and humanity, on the vanity of religions, the innocence of negroes, and the purity of savages. These are the ideas of Rousseau before Rousseau: other ideas of Rousseau had been, as we have seen, antic.i.p.ated, in the history of the novel, by Lyly.

Remains of the ordinary heroic style are of course not wanting. Being love-struck Oroonoko, an African negro, well read in the cla.s.sics, refuses to fight, and following Achilles' example, retires to his tent.

"For the world, said he, it was a trifle not worth his care. Go, continued he, sighing, and divide it amongst you, and reap with joy what you so vainly prize!" In trying to carry out this advice his companions are utterly routed, until after two days Oroonoko consents to take up his arms again, and the victors are at once all put to flight.

Oroonoko's death is also in the heroical style, but a peculiar sort of heroism which recalls Scudery, and at the same time Fenimore Cooper.

But more striking are the parts in which the manners of the savages are compared to those of civilized nations. "Everything is well," Rousseau was to say later, "when it comes fresh from the hands of the Maker of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man."[370] Mrs. Behn expressed many years before the very same ideas; her Oroonoko has been educated by a Frenchman who "was a man of very little religion, yet he had admirable morals and a brave soul," an ancestor obviously of Rousseau himself, and a fit tutor for this black "Emile." The aborigines of Surinam live in a state of perfection which reminds Mrs. Behn of Adam and Eve before the fall: "These people represented to me an absolute idea of the first state of innocence, before man knew how to sin: and 'tis most evident and plain that single nature is the most harmless, inoffensive and virtuous mistress. 'Tis she alone, if she were permitted, that better instructs the world than all the inventions of man. Religion would here but destroy that tranquillity they possess by ignorance, and laws would but teach 'em to know offences of which now they have no notion. They made once mourning and fasting for the death of the English governor who had given his hand to come on such a day to 'em and neither came nor sent; believing when a man's word is past, nothing but death could or should prevent his keeping it."

The words "humanity," "mankind," are repeated also with a frequency worthy of Rousseau, and the religion of humanity is set in opposition to the religion of G.o.d with a clearness foreshadowing the theories of Auguste Comte. When the sea captain refuses to take the word of Oroonoko as a pledge equivalent to his own, "which if he should violate, he must expect eternal torments in the world to come,"--"Is that all the obligations he has to be just to his oath? replyed Oroonoko. Let him know, I swear by my honour; which to violate, would not only render me contemptible and despised by all brave and honest men, and so give me perpetual pain, but it would be eternally offending and displeasing to all mankind, harming, betraying, circ.u.mventing and outraging all men."[371]

Most of these ideas, including an embryo-taste for landscape painting, were to be cherished and eloquently defended by Rousseau. Mrs. Behn, as a novelist, can only be studied with the authors of the middle of the eighteenth century; she carries us at once beyond the times of Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding, and takes us among the precursors of the French Revolution. With the change she foreshadows, philosophy and social science are perhaps more concerned than the novel proper.

It can, all things considered, be stated with truth that, between the age of Elizabeth, and the age of Anne and the Georges, there is in the history of the novel a long period of semi-stagnation. The seventeenth century, which furnishes hardly any important name, added very little, apart from an exaggerated heroism, to the art of the novel. Defoe, Richardson and Fielding are, as novelists, more nearly related to the men of the time of Shakespeare than to the men of the time of Dryden.

They have been thus so completely separated from their literary ancestors that the connection has been usually forgotten. It cannot, however, be doubted.

Now that we have carried so far this sketch of the history of the early English novel, as far indeed as the time of writers whose works are still our daily reading, we have to take leave of our heroes, picaroons, and monsters, of Arthur and Lancelot, Euphues and Menaphon, Pyrocles and Rosalind, Jack Wilton and Peregrine, Oroontades and Parthenissa; nor let us forget to include in this farewell our Lamias, Mantichoras, dragons, and all the menagerie of Topsell and of Lyly. Mummified, buried and forgotten as most of these romances have long been, they managed somehow not to die childless, but left behind them the seed of better things.

"No, those days are gone away," says Keats, thinking of the legends of early times,

"And their hours are old and grey, And their minutes buried all Under the down trodden pall Of the leaves of many years....

Gone, the merry morris din; Gone, the song of Gamelyn; Gone, the tough-belted outlaw; All are gone away and past."

With them many reputations are gone. White fingers circled with gold no longer turn over the pages of "Euphues" or "Arcadia." But the writings of the descendants of Greene and Nash and Sidney afford endless delight to-day. And that is why these old authors deserve not the lip-tribute of cold respect, but the heart's offering of warmest grat.i.tude; for they have had the most numerous and the most brilliant posterity, perhaps the most loved, that literary initiators have ever had in any time or country.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AQUARIUS.]

FOOTNOTES:

[312] London, 1619, fol., translated by Anthony Munday (first edition of first part, 1590, 4to). Another translation of the same romance was made by F. Kirkman, and published in 1652, 4to.

[313] Advertised by Ch. Bates at the end of "the history of Guy earl of Warwick," London, 1680 (?), 4to (ill.u.s.trated).

[314] From a chap-book of the eighteenth century: "History of Guy earl of Warwick," 1750(?).

[315] "De la Lecture des vieux romans," by Jean Chapelain, ed. Feillet, Paris, 1870, 8vo.

[316] Edition of the "Grands Ecrivains de la France," vol. ii. pp. 529 and 535.

[317] 12th July, 1671, "Grands Ecrivains," vol. ii. p. 277. A few days before, on the 5th, she had been writing: "Je suis revenue a 'Cleopatre'

... et par le bonheur que j'ai de n'avoir point de memoire, cette lecture me divert.i.t encore. Cela est epouvantable, mais vous savez que je ne m'accommode guere bien de toutes les pruderies qui ne me sont pas naturelles, et comme celle de ne pas aimer ces livres la ne m'est pas encore entierement arrivee, je me laisse divertir sous le pretexte de mon fils qui m'a mise en train."

[318] "L'heure de la veille de Pasques, a laquelle le Roy devoit recevoir le baptesme de la main de S. Remy estant venue, il s'y presenta avec une contenance relevee, une demarche grave, un port majestueux, tres richement vestu, musque, poudre, la perruque pendante, curieus.e.m.e.nt peignee, gauffree, ondoiante, crespee et parfumee, selon la coustume des anciens rois Francois" ("Histoire Generale de France," Paris, 1634, vol.

i. p. 58).

[319] "Traicte de l'Economie politique," Rouen, 1615, 4to.

[320]

"Soit que le blond Phoebus, sortant du creux de l'onde Vienne recolorer le visage du monde; Soit que de rays plus chauds il enflame le jour, Ou qu'il s'aille coucher en l'humide sejour, Il ne void un seul homme en ce monde habitable Qui soit en tout bon-heur avec moi comparable: Ma gloire est sans pareille, et si quelqu'un des Dieux Vouloit faire a la terre un eschange des cieux, Et venir habiter sous le rond de la lune, Il se contenteroit de ma belle fortune."

"Aman ou la vanite"; "Tragedies d'Antoine de Montchrestien," Rouen, 1601, 8vo.

[321]

"Outre qu'on m'a vu naistre avec une couronne, La fortune qui m'aime est celle qui les donne, Et sans prendre la leur, ce bras a le pouvoir De m'en acquerir cent, si je les veux avoir.

Mais souffrez mon discours, il est pour votre gloire; Je suy, je suy l'Amour et non pas la Victoire."

("L'amour tirannique," 1640. Speech by Tiridate.)

"Je tiens en mon pouvoir les sceptres et la mort; Je t'arracherais l'un, je te donnerais l'autre ...

Mais j'ay cette faiblesse," &c. ("Ibrahim," 1645.)

[322] Boileau, "Les heros de romans, dialogue a la maniere de Lucien,"

written in 1664, published 1713, but well known before in literary drawing-rooms, where Boileau used himself to read it aloud.

[323] _I.e._, Mme. du Plessis Guenegaud, who figures in "Clelie" under this name. "Letter to Pompone, Nov. 18, 1664."

[324] Scudery's preface to "Ibrahim, or the ill.u.s.trious ba.s.sa ...

englished by Henry Cogan," London, 1652, fol.

[325] "Ca.s.sandre," vol. i book v.

[326] By William Prynne, London, 1628, 4to.

[327] Preface to "Artamenes, or the Grand Cyrus," London, 1653-1654, five vols. fol.

[328] "Astrea ... translated by a person of quality," _i.e._, J.

D[avies?], London, 1657-8, 3 vols. fol.; prefaces to vols. i and ii.

Dramas with their plots taken from "Astree" were written in England and in France, such as "Tragi-comedie pastorale ou les amours d'Astree ...

par le Sieur de Rayssiguier," Paris, 1632, 8vo; "Astrea, or true love's mirrour, a pastoral," by Leonard Willan. London, 1651, 8vo.

[329] "The Grand Scipio ... by Monsieur de Vaumoriere, rendered into English by G. H.," London, 1660, fol.

[330] "Loveday's letters, domestick and foreign," seventh impression.

London, 1684, 8vo, p. 146 (first edition 1659).

[331] By Scudery, translated by J. Philips, London, 1677, fol. part ii.

bk. ii. p. 166. Books entirely made up of "conversations" were published by Mdlle. de Scudery, treating of pleasures, of pa.s.sions, of the knowledge of others and of ourselves, &c. They read very much like dialogued essays; and it is interesting to compare them with Addison's essays which treat sometimes of the same subjects. They were received with great applause; Madame de Sevigne highly praises them. They were translated into English: "Conversations upon several subjects, ... done into English by F. Spence," London, 1683, 2 vol. 12mo.

[332] About this curious little society see Mr. Gosse's "Seventeenth Century Studies," 1883, pp. 205 _et seq._