or, noisy hilarity, and frank kindness. | it; but Smollett has this advantage, Poetry is true, like prose; and if there that, being mediocre, he chalks oci are eaters and boxers, there are also the figures tamely, prosaically, without knights and artists. Cervantes, whom transforming them by the illumination you imitate, and Shakspeare, whom of genius: the joviality of Fielding and you recall, had this refinement, and the rigor of Richardson are not there they have painted it; in this abundant to light up or ennoble the pictures. Le harvest, which you have gathered so us observe carefullySmollett's manners; plentifully, you have forgotten the let us listen to the confessions of this flowers. We tire at last of your fisti- imitator of Le Sage, who reproaches cuffs and tavern bills. You flounder too that author with being gay, and jesting readily in cowhouses, among the eccle- with the mishaps of his hero. He says: siastical pigs of Parson Trulliber. We "The disgraces of Gil Blas are, for the would fain see you have more regard most part, such as rather excite mirth for the modesty of your heroines; way- than compassion: he himself laughs at side accidents raise their tuckers too them, and his transitions from distress often, and Fanny, Sophia, Mrs. Hart- to happiness, or at least ease, are so free, may continue pure, yet we cannot sudden that neither the reader has help remembering the assaults which time to pity him, nor himself to be ac have lifted their petticoats. You are quainted with affliction. This conduct so coarse yourself, that you are insensible to what is atrocious. You persuade Tom Jones falsely, yet for an instant, that Mrs. Waters, whom he has made his mistress, is his own mother, and you leave the reader during a long time buried in the shame of this supposition. And then you are obliged to become unnatural in order to depict love; you can give but constrained letters; the transports of your Tom Jones are only the author's phrases. For want of ideas he declaims odes. You are only aware of the impetuosity of the senses, the upwelling of the blood, the effusion of tenderness, but you are unacquainted with nervous exaltation and poetic rapture. Man, such as you conceive him, is a good buffalo; and perhaps he is the hero required by a people which gives itself the nickname "John Bull." VI. At all events this hero is powerful and formidable; and if at this period we collect in our mind the scattered features of the faces which the novelwriters have made pass before us, we will feel ourselves transported into a half-barbarous world, and to a race whose energy must terrify or revolt all our gentleness. Now let us open a more literal copyist of life: they are doubtless all such, and declare-Fielding amongst them-that if they imagine a feature, it is because they have seen prevents that generous indignation * Preface to Roderick Random. In jests, give an idea of a pack of bull- to the tyranny of a barbarian, who im dogs eager to fight each other, who, posed upon me tasks that I could not when they begin to get lively, still possibly perform, and then punished amuse themselves by tearing away my incapacity with the utmost rigor pieces of flesh. A Frenchman can and inhumanity. I was often whipped hardly endure the story of Roderick into a swoon, and lashed out of it, durRandom, or rather that of Smollett, ing which miserable intervals I was when he is on board a man-of-war. robbed by my fellow-prisoners of every He is pressed, that is to say, carried thing about me, even to my cap, shoes, off by force, knocked down, attacked and stockings: I was not only destitute with "cudgels and drawn cutlasses," of necessaries, but even of food, se "pinioned like a malefactor," and that my wretchedness was extreme." rolled on board, covered with blood, One night she tried to hang herself. before the sailors, who laugh at his Two of her fellow-prisoners, who wounds; and one of them, "seeing my watched her, prevented her. "In the hair clotted together with blood, as it morning my attempt was published were, into distinct cords, took notice among the prisoners, and punished that my bows were manned with the with thirty stripes, the pain of which, red ropes, instead of my side." Rod- co-operating with my disappointment erick "desired one of his fellow-cap- and disgrace, bereft me of my senses, tives, who was untettered, to take a and threw me into an ecstasy of madhandkerchief out of his pocket, and ness, during which I tore the flesh from tie it round his head to stop the bleed- my bones with my teeth, and dashed ing; he (the fellow) pulled out my my head against the pavement." handkerchief, 'tis true, but sold it be vain we turn our eyes on the hero of fore my face to a bum-boat woman for the novel, Roderick Random, to repose a quart of gin." Captain Oakum de-a little after such a spectacle. He is clares he will have no more sick in his ship, ordered them to be brought on the quarter-deck, commanded that some should receive a round dozen: some spitting blood, others fainting from weakness, whilst not a few became delirious; many died, and of the sixty-one_sick, only a dozen remained alive. To get into this dark, suffocating hospital, swarming with vermin, it is necessary to creep under the close hammocks, and forcibly separate them with the shoulders, before the doctor can reach his patients. Read the story of Miss Williams, a wealthy young girl, of good family, reduced to become a prostitute, robbed, hungry, sick, shivering, strolling about the streets in the long winter nights, amongst ber of naked wretches reduced to rags and filth, huddled together like swine, ir the corner of a dark alley," who depend "upon the addresses of the lowest class, and are fain to allay the rage of hunger and cold with gin; degenerate into a brutal insensibility, rot and die upon a dunghill." She was thrown into Bridewell, where, she says, "in the midst of a hellish crew I was subjected Peregrine Pickle, ch. xxiv. ↑ Ibid. ch. xxvii. sensual and coarse, like Fielding's heroes, but not good and jovial as these. Pride and resentment are the two principal points in his character. The generous wine of Fielding, in Smollett's hands becomes common brandy. His heroes are selfish; they revenge themselves barbarously. Roderick oppresses the faithful Strap, and ends by marrying him to a prostitute. Peregrine Pickle attacks by a most brutal and cowardly plot the honor of a young girl, whom he wants to marry, and who is the sister of his best friend. We get to hate his rancorous, concentrated obstinate character, which is at once that of an absolute king, accustomed, to please himself at the expense of oth a num-ers' happiness, and that of a boor with only the varnish of education. We should be uneasy at living near him; he is good for nothing but to shock or tyrannize over others. We avoid him as we would a dangerous beast; the sudden rush of animal passion and the force of his firm will are so overpowering in him, that when he fails he becomes outrageous. He draws his sword against an innkeeper; he must bleed him, grows mat. Every thing Ibid. ch. xxiii. * Ibid. even to his generosities, is spoilt by | eyes are turned toward the inner man. pride; all, even to his gayeties, is clouded by harshness. Peregrine's amusements are barbarous, and those of Smollett are after the same style. He exaggerates caricature; he thinks to amuse us by showing us mouths gaping to the ears, and noses half-a-foot long; he magnifies a national prejudice or a professional trick until t absorbs the whole character; he jumbles together the most repulsive oddities, a Lieutenant Lismahago half roasted by Red Indians; old jack-tars who pass their life in shouting and travestying all sorts of ideas into their nautical jargon; old maids as ugly as monkeys, as йeshless as skeletons, and as sour as vinegar; eccentric people steeped in pedantry, hypochondria, misanthropy, and silence. Far from sketching them slightly, as Le Sage does in Gil Blas, he brings into prominent relief each disagreeable feature, overloads it with details, without considering whether they are too numerous, without recognizing that they are excessive, without feeling that they are odious, without perceiving that they are disgusting. The public whom he addresses is on a level with his energy and his coarseness; and in order to move such nerves, a writer cannot strike too hard.* But, at the same time, to civilize this barbarity and to control this violence, a faculty appears, common to all, authors and public: serious reflection intent to observe character. Their * In Novels and Novelists, by W. Forsyth, the author says, ch. v. 159: "What is the character of most of these books (novels) which were to correct follies and regulate morality? Of a great many of them, and especially those of Fielding and Smollett, the prevailing features are grossness and licentiousness. Love degenerates into a mere animal passion. The language of the characters abounds in oaths and gross expressions... The heroines allow themselves to take part in conversations which no modest woman would have heard without a blush. And yet these novels were the delight of a bygone generation, and were greedily devoured by women as well as men. Are we therefore to conclude that our great great-grandmothers ... were less chaste and moral than their female posterity? I answer, certainly not; but we must infer that they were inferior to them in delicacy and refinement. They were accustomed to hear a spade called a pade, and words which would shock the more fastidious ear in the reign of Queen Victoria were then in common and daily use."-TR. They note exactly the individual pecu liarities, and stamp them with such a precise mark that their personage becomes a type, which cannot be forgotten. They are psychologists. The title of a comedy of old Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humor, indicates how old and national this taste is amongst them. "Smollett writes a whole novel, Humphrey Clinker, on this idea. There is no action in it; the book is a collection of letters written during a tour in Scotland and England. Each of the travellers, after his bent of mind, judges variously of the same objects. A generous, grumbling old gentleman, who employs his spare time by think ing himself ill, a crabbed old maid in search of a husband, a lady's maid, simple and vain, who bravely bungles her spelling; a series of eccentric people, who one after another bring their oddities on the scene, such are the characters: the pleasure of the reader consists in recognizing their humor in their style, in foreseeing their follies, in perceiving the thread which pulls each of their motions, in verifying the connection between their ideas and their actions. When we push this study of human peculiarities to excess we will come upon the origin of Sterne's talent. VII. Let us figure to ourselves a man who goes on a journey, with a pair of marvellously magnifying spectacles on his eyes. A hair on his hand, a speck on a table-cloth, a fold of a moving garment, will interest him: at this rate he will not go very far; he will go six steps in a day, and will not quit his room. So Sterne writes four volumes to record the birth of his hero. He per ceives the infinitely little, and describes the imperceptible. A man parts his hair on one side; this, according to Sterne, depends or his whole charac ter, which is of a piece with that of his father, his mother, b's uncle, and his whole ancestry; it depends on the structure of his brain, which depends on the circumstances of his conception, and his birth, and these on the hobbies of his parents, the humor of the mo ment, the talk of the preceding hour * the difficulties of the parson, a cut | torts it; with a kick he sends the pil thumb, twenty knots made on a bag; of folios next to him over the history he I know not how many things besides. has commenced, and dances on the top The six or eight volumes of Tristram of them. He delights in disappointing Shandy are employed in summing us, in sending us astray by interrup them up; for the smallest and dullest tions and delays. Gravity displease incident, a sneeze, a badly-shaven beard, him, he treats it as a hypocrite: to his drags after it an inextricable network liking folly is better, and he paints of inter-involved causes, which from himself in Yorick. In a well-consti above, below, right and left, by invisi- tuted mind ideas march one after an ble prolongations and ramifications, other, with uniform motion or accelera sink into the depths of a character and tion; in this odd brain they jump in the remote vistas of events. In- about like a rout of masks at a carnival, stead of extracting, like the novel- in troops, each dragging his neighbor writers, the principal root, Sterne, with by the feet, head, coat, amidst the marvellous devices and success, devotes most general and unforeseen hubbub himself to drawing out the tangled All his little lopped phrases are somerskein of numberless threads, which are saults; we pant as we read. The tone sinuously immersed and dispersed, so is never for two minutes the same; as to suck in from all sides the sap and laughter comes, then the beginning of the life. Slender, intertwined, buried emotion, then scandal, then wonder, as they are, he finds them; he extri- then sensibility, then laughter again. cates them without breaking, brings The mischievous joker pulls and enthem to the light, and there, where we tangles the threads of all our feelings, fancied but a stalk, we see with won- and makes us go hither, thither, in der the underground mass and vegeta- a whimsical manner, like puppets. tion of the multiplied fibres and fibrils, Amongst these various threads there by which the visible plant grows and are two which he pulls more willingly is supported. than the rest. Like all men who have nerves, he is subject to sensibility; not that he is really kindly and tender. hearted; on the contrary, his life is that of an egotist; but on certain days he must needs weep, and he makes us weep with him. He is moved on behalf of a captive bird, of a poor ass, which, accustomed to blows, "looked up pensive," and seemed to say, "Don't thrash me with it (the halter); but if you will, you may." He will write a couple of pages on the attitude of this donkey, and Priam at the feet of Achilles was not more touching. Thus in a silence, in an oath, in the most trifling domestic action, he hits upon exquisite refinements and little hero isms, a variety of charming flowers, invisible to everybody else, which grow in the dust of the driest road. One This is truly a strange talent, made up of blindness and insight, which resembles those diseases of the retina in which the over-excited nerve becomes at once dull and penetrating, incapable of seeing what the most ordinary eyes perceive, capable of observing what the most piercing sight misses. In fact, Sterne is a sickly and eccentric humorist, a clergyman and a libertine, a fiddler and a philosopher, who preferred "whining over a dead ass to relieving a living mother," selfish in act, selfish in word, who in every thing takes a contrary view of himself and of others. His book is like a great storehouse of articles of virtu, where curiosities of all ages, kinds, and countries lie jumbled in a heap; forms of excommunication, medical consultations, passages of unknown or imaginary authors, scraps of scholastic erudition, strings of absurd histories, dissertatións, addresses to the reader. His pen leads him; he has neither sequence nor plan; nay, when he lights upon any thing orderly, he purposely con Byron's Works, ed. Moore, 17 vols. 1832; Life, iii. 127, note. day Uncle Toby, the invalided captain, | we should wait for days when we are in catches, after "infinite attempts," a big a peculiar kind of humor, days of buzzing fly, who has cruelly tormented spleen, rain, or when through nervous him all dinner-time; he gets up, crosses irritation we are disgusted with ration the room on his suffering leg, and ality. In fact his characters are as unopening the window, cries: "Go, poor reasonable as himself. He sees in devil, get thee gone; why should I hurt man nothing but fancy, and what h: thee? This world surely is wide calls the hobby-horse-Uncle Toby's enough to hold both thee and me."* taste for fortifications, Mr. Shandy's This womanish sensibility is too fine to fancy for oratorical tirades and philobe described; we should have to give sophical systems. This hobby-horse, ■ whole story—that of Lefevre, for in- according to him, is like a wart, so tance that the perfume might be small at first that we hardly perceive inhaled; this perfume evaporates as it, and only when it is in a strong soon as we touch it, and is like the light; but it gradually increases, be weak fleeting odor of flowers, brought comes covered with hairs, grows red, for the moment into a sick-chamber. and buds out all around: its possessor, What still more increases this sad who is pleased with and admires it, sweetness is the contrast of the free nourishes it, until at last it is changed and easy waggeries which, like a hedge into a vast wen, and the whole face of nettles, encircles them on all sides. disappears under the invasion of the Sterne, like all men whose mechanism is parasite excrescence. No one has over-excited, has odd desires. He loves equalled Sterne in the history of these the nude, not from a feeling of the beau- human hypertrophies; he puts down tiful, and in the manner of painters, not the seed, feeds it gradually, makes the from sensuality and frankness like propagating threads creep round about, Fielding, not from a search after pleas- shows the little veins and microscopic ure like Dorat, Boufflers, and all those arteries which inosculate within, counts refined epicures, who at that time were the palpitations of the blood which rhyming and enjoying themselves in passes through them, explains their France. If he goes into dirty places, changes of color and increase of bulk. it is because they are forbidden and Psychological observation attains here not frequented. What he seeks there one of its extreme developments. A is singularity and scandal. The allure- far advanced art is necessary to dement of this forbidden fruit is not the scribe, beyond the confines of regularity fruit, but the prohibition; for he bites and health, the exception or the degenby preference where the fruit is half eration; and the English novel is comrotten or worm-eaten. That an epi- pleted here by adding to the representcurean delights in detailing the pretty ation of form the picture of malforma sins of a pretty woman is nothing tions. wonderful; but that a novelist takes pleasure in watching the bedroom of a musty, fusty old couple, in observing the consequences of the fall of a burning chestnut in a pair of breeches,† in detailing the questions of Mrs. Wadman on the consequences of wounds in the groin, can only be explained by the aberration of a perverted fancy, which finds its amusement in repugnant ideas, as spoiled palates are pleased by the pungent flavor of decayed cheese § Thus, to read Sterne * Sterne's Works, 7 vols., 1783. 3; The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shondy, 1, ii. ch. Kil. ↑ Tristram Shandy, 2, iv. ch. xxvii. Ibid. 3, ix. ch. xx. Sterne, Goldsmith, Burke, Sheridan, Moore, have a tone of their own, which comes VIII. The moment approaches when purified manners will, by purifying the novel, give it its final impress and character. Of the two great tendencies manifested by it, native brutality and intense reflection, one at last conquers the other; when literature from their blood, or from their proximate or distant parentage-the Irish tone. So Hume Robertson, Smollett, Scott, Burns, Beattie, Reid, D. Stewart, and others, have the Scot tish tone. In the Irish or Celtic tone we find an excess of chivalry, sensuality, expansion in short, a mind leso equally balanced, more sympathetic and less practical. The Scotsman on the other hand, is an Englishman, either slightly refined or narrowed, because he ba suffered more and fasted more. |