GREAT CHARACTERS IN FICTION.
ANUMBER of ladies, under the editorship of Miss M. E. Townsend, have given us short studies of what they call "Great Characters of Fiction,"* though very few of the characters so studied seem to us really great ; and there is a certain carelessness about small matters in dealing with them which suggests to us that some of the best of these characters are not as familiar to the critics who deal with them as they would be if they had really made intimate friends of the subjects of their study. For instance, Miss Yonge, who writes on Anne Elliot, the heroine of Miss Austen's "Persuasion," writes her name throughout "Elliott," a mis- take she would never have made in relation to a personal friend of her own, and repeatedly writes of Anne's sister's family as the " Musgraves " instead of the " Musgroves." Miss Gertrude Julian Young, in writing of Jeanie Deans, speaks of her visit to Queen Caroline under the Duke of Argyle's care, as paid to Windsor Park instead of Rich- mond Park; and in her study of Morton and Evandale in "Old Mortality," she entitles John Balfour of Burley, John Burley, a title altogether impossible. Burley he was, and John Balfour he was, but John Burley he certainly was not. Such errors would be of no importance in themselves, but they betray a want of intimate familiarity with the persons dealt with, and that is perhaps the reason why what we are told of these "great characters of fiction" is, on the whole, so " innutritions," as Madame Mohl used to put it. The writers have not, as a rule, lived with their characters as we live with our intimate friends, even in the few oases in which it was possible to live with them in that familiar and intimate fashion; and we doubt whether this was possible, except in the three cases of Colonel Newcome, Jeanie Deans, and Anne Elliot, for the "great characters of fiction" assembled in these pages are not really the great characters of fiction at all, but for the most part only ideal characters which neither small nor great writers succeed well in making real and visible to us. We will not deny that Anne Elliot is real and visible to us, though we do exceedingly doubt whether Miss Charlotte Yonge has ever lived in frank intimacy with her, or she would never have left her the amiable shadow who wanders through Miss Yonge's faint eulogy. But Anne Elliot, though a real and living character, is not precisely a great character. She is finely traced and lovable enough, but she has too little body of life in her to impress us with the force with which such characters as the same author's Elizabeth Bennet or Emma impress us ; Anne Elliot hardly occurs to our memory with the vivacity with which a great character should recur, we do not ask ourselves what Anne Elliot would think of this or that, what she would have done had she been placed in any circumstances like those which we our- selves have found embarraising, what mistakes she would have made, or would have avoided by her presence of mind. Hers is a lovable but rather neutral figure, which does not manage to start up in our memory as many of Miss Austen's livelier characters do start up in our memory, in spite of the miniature scale on which they were delineated for us. Anne Elliot is one of Miss Austen's most attractive characters, but too modest and quiet, even as a picture, to haunt us with her personality. She keeps in the background even of one's memory. And as for the majority of those characters which are presented to us as "great," we never care
* Wells Gardner, Darton, and Co.
to think of them at all, Imagine thinking needlessly of that priggish creature Agnes Wickfield who "points upward" through the greater part of David Copperfield's amusing history ! Why, we would sooner think of the Jew who is so anxious to buy his jacket, and keeps on asking him : "Oh my eyes and limbs, how much for the jacket ? Oh my heart on fire, how much for the jacket ? Oh my lungs and liver, how much for the jacket ? Oh goroo, gorse ! " Agnes Wickfield is detestably didactic and up ward-pointing. We prefer Dora greatly. The last choice of that youth was much worse than the first,—for the first had a character, and the second was a more dream of Dickens's affected ideal of self-sacrificing womanhood. Nor are these writers happy in their selections of the " great " characters of even more faithful artists, Great as is Colonel Newsome, Becky is much greater as a production of Thackerity's genius. Respectable as is Adam Bede, either Seth Bede or Lie- beth Bede, or Dinah Morris or Hetty Sorrel is a far greater and more living person. Rouiola, again, is one of George Eliot's least living characters. Hawthorne's Hilda in " Trans- formation " is hardly rememberable at all. Molly Gib- son, in Mrs. Gaskell's "Wives and Daughters," has not half the life of Cynthia. John Halifax is less a man than a woman. In fact, the writers have made the violent mistake of supposing that the "great characters" of fiction should be the faultless characters. As a rule, it is just the contrary. The imagination even of the greatest writers attaches itself especially to faults and failings. Dorothea, in " Middlemarch," is not half as much alive as Celia, and is a star of the tenth magnitude as compared with Rosamund Vincy, whose mild, blue-eyed selfishness devours Lydgate body and soul, and then avowedly regards her own second marriage to a fashionable physician as a " reward " for her forbearance with her first husband. Now, if these writers really did think it necessary to fix on only ideal characters, why did not one of them take Richardson's Clarissa, who is after all twice as much alive as Miss Burney's Evelina. The picture of the vulgar Branghtons is ten times as good as the picture of Evelina ; but in Riohardson's novel the heroine is, after all, quite the principal feminine figure. Indeed, Mrs. Gaskell's Miss Malty, in "Cranford," is a far better ideal, because also a far more real character, than Molly Gibson.
As a matter of fact, the "great characters of fiction" are almost all deeply grooved with characteristics that no one would think ideal. Who would not rather recall to his mini Dickens's Peggotty, or Barkis, or "the lone, lorn woman," or Dora, or even Uriah Heap, or Mr. Dick, than the fdde, senti- mental Agnes Wiekfield? Who would not prefer Mr. Tobts to Paul Dombey, or Mrs. Todgers to Ruth Pinch ? Who can help thinking a great deal more of Becky Sharp than of Amelia or Colonel Dobbin With both Dickens and Thackeray there was always apt to be something mawkish about their ideal characters, though Colonel Newcome is a great exception. Even in Sir Walter Scott's case, we think that Jeanie Deane is almost the only really great ideal character, and there he was much helped by having placed her in a class beneath hie own, at the little blunders and ignorances of which he could permit his readers to smile gently, while he painted the great fortitude and force of the woman in strong, broad lines. He had no occasion to idealise her mere manners. If you think of the "great characters" it Scott, those characters you enjoy most to recall to mind; the characters you would best like, were it possible, to have actually seen in the circumstances and scenes in which Scott delineates them, is there one of them except Jeanie Deane that you could call an ideal? Balfour of Burley is ten times as interesting as Morton, Claverhouse far more living than Lord Evandale, and perhaps Cuddle and Manse Headrigg are more vividly painted than any of them. But of the characters to which we most gladly recur in memory, of the characters which we should have been most delighted to see acting as Sir Walter represents them, is there one that we should call really great in the moral as well as the literary sense, with the single exception we have named? Monkbarns, Edie °chit- tree, Rob Roy, Baillie Nicol Jarvie, Dandle Dinmont, Julia Mannering, Meg Merrilies, none of these are ideal characters, nor is even Di Vernon quite living enough for a heroine of the most real kind. And if we go to the romances, do we not think more of such portraits as those of James I., or Louis XI., or Mary Stuart, or Murray, or Charles of Burgundy, or Eliza- beth and her chief noblemen, than we do of any of the im- aginary heroes and heroines like Nigel or Quentin Durward, or Roland Graeme or the Black Douglas, or Tressilian, or even Amy Robsart ? It is the great pictures of passionate men and women, or cowardly Kings, or crime-stained Queens, or merciless Regents, or shrewd abbots, or smuggling skippers, or daft litigants, or canny innkeepers, which rivet and fascinate our imagination, not the walking gentle- men, and chivalric knights, and oppressed maidens who are put in as a. proper tribute to the expectations of the sentimental reader. Even of the few ideals who are also real, like Colonel Newcome, and, we will add (though Trollope does not enter into the purview of the writers of this book, we do not know why), Mr. Harding, the exquisitely painted warden of the almshouse near Barchester, who resigns his post in consequence of the attacks of the Jupiter, none except Jeanie Deans are strong characters. Colonel Newcome is not strong, Mr. Harding is not strong, none even of George Eliot's ideal men or women are strong, and as a rule we may say that, outside "The Heart of Midlothian" and Shakespeare, there is hardly a single really strong ideal heroine who is also real. And, even including Shake- speare, there is hardly a single really strong ideal hero who is also real, Shakespeare is not within the range, apparently, of the writers who paint "the great characters of fiction." They interpret fiction as including the novel only, and not the drama. Yet, consider how few there are of Shakespeare's greater male characters that are at once ideal and strong. A few of his women are nearly perfect, and are not only nearly perfect, but strong of purpose, like Isabella in Measure for Measure. But which of his male characters would one have cared to serve!' Hamlet perhaps, as Horatio did. Yet Hamlet,— though, without ever having lived except in literature, he has widened for us the range of human nature, and supplied us with as complex a problem as if he had really lived,—was certainly not only vacillating and infirm of purpose, but unscrupulous as well, witness his contriving that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern should be put to death in England, though he had no evidence at all that they had conspired with the King against his life. Of all Shakespeare's other greater characters, is there one that we should most wish to have known to whom we could have been thoroughly loyal ? Certainly not to the most interesting of them. Certainly not to Shylock, or Macbeth, or any of his English Kings, or Wolsey, or Coriolanus, or Julius Omar, or Mark Antony, Even Othello, with all his nobility, is far too jealous and vindictive to inspire moral devotion. As a rule, the greater masculine characters in fiction, like the great characters in history, are deeply scored with lines of tempestuous force and noble or ignoble passion. And literature, though in the hands of the highest genius it has occasionally managed to paint an ideal heroine who impresses us as thoroughly real, has hardly ever managed to paint an ideal hero who is both thoroughly real and thoroughly masculine. Of all the greater characters, it may be said :— " Down the pale cheek long lines of shadow slope, Which years, and curious thought, and suffering give."
But the long lines of shadow are lines which score not only suffering but sin. And wherever that is absent, we almost always find in their place some signal want of power, some signal deficiency in sagacity, resoluteness, and distinctness of purpose. The few exceptions may almost be counted on the fingers of one hand. The " great " characters in fiction are generally the most pathetically helpless, or else the most passionate and imperious of human characters.
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