THE FATHERS OF ENGLISH FICTION.* The task accomplished by Mr.
Tuckerman was at one time projected by Mr. Anthony Trollope. That he would have • written a highly entertaining volume is not open to doubt. It is of no slight advantage to have the judgment of an accom- plished novelist on his predecessors in the art of fiction. He would treat of a subject especially interesting to him, and unconsciously, perhaps, would be led to contrast his own method of work with that of the writers whom he criticises. Mr. Trollope did this in his account of Thackemy, and Thackeray himself, by criticisms and parodies, has given as some very significant indications of his views about
novel-writing. In spite of the three new novels pub- lished weekly in London, and of the six which appear within the same brief space in Paris, good fictions are comparatively rare, and a great work of the kind is as uncommon as a great poem. Mr. Tuckerman's History shows the truth of this state- ment: It is premature, if not impossible, to decide upon the ultimate position of living novelists, but it is evident that the greatest popularity during a novel-writer's life time or century does not secure him from ultimate neglect. Of this, Richardson's novels afford a striking illustration. His reputation, not only in his own country, but on the Continent, was of no ordinary kind. Statesmen, bishops, and moralists combined with all the ladies of England in praising Pamela, Clarissa Harlow, and Sir Charles Grandison; and abroad, the old bookseller's stories were translated into German, French, and Dutch. Diderot raved over Clarissa Harlowe, and said that her creator would rest in the same class with Homer and Sophocles, "to be read alternately ;" while Klopstock's wife called the book heavenly. Heavenly, too, was the story of the virtuous Pamela, which Sherlock recommended from the pulpit,
A. History of _English Prose Fiction, from Sir Thomas Malorg to George Eliot. By Bayard Tackerman. London : Sampson Low and Co.
The Works of Samuel Richardson, with a Prefatory Chapter ef Biographical Criticism. By Lralie Stephen- In 12 vols. Pam5ta, in 3 vols. London : &Aber= and Co. and which, according to one critic, was likely to do more good than twenty volumes of sermons ; while another declared that if all other books were to be burnt, Pamela and the Bible should be preserved. What Dr. Johnson said in favour of Richardson everybody knows, and admirers of the novelist are familiar also with the exclamation of Macaulay, "Not read Clarissa ! If you have once thoroughly entered on Clairissa, and are infected by it, you can't leave it." Here is praise, coming from widely different quarters, of a novelist whose name is still familiar, but whose works are almost unheeded. Ladies in our day do not keep Pamela on their dressing-tables, they no longer, like Lady Bradshaigh, weep bitter tears in the daytime and wake up cry- ing at night over the woes of Clarissa.
Of Richardson, we shall have more to say presently. At present, we will confine our attention to Mr. Tuckerman's History. The author's first chapter, the "Romance of Chivalry," is illustrated by an account of the Marta d'Arthstr. In the following chapter, he discovers the special characteristics of the English novel as it is now written in the works of Chaucer, who is assuredly an incomparable story-teller in verse. More's Utopia, Sidney's Arcadia, Lyly's Euphues, Greene's Pandosto,. the source of Shakespeare's Winter Tale, and his Philomekt, the principal incident of which, as the writer might have observed, is to be found also in Cymbeline and other early romances; are criticised briefly and fairly. In this portion of the book, however, we find little to call for comment. It has neither novelty nor originality to recommend it, and the utmost to be said in favour of the earlier chapters is that they compress within a small compass what has been told again and again on. a larger scale.
Mrs. Behn, the "female Wycherley," whose stories are among the grossest of a gross age, probably deserves the honour of originating the modern novel, for her Oroonoko, as Mr. Tacker- man points out, "is worthy of notice, as one of the earliest attempts on the part of an English novelist to deal with char- acters which had come under the writer's observation in actual life ;" and he adds that it is still more important "on account of the presence within it of a didactic purpose, a characteristic- which, for good or evil, has been a prominent feature of the novel in this country. While English narrative fiction was still in its ' first youth, Mrs. Beim protested against the evils of the slave- trade, through the medium of a story which may be considered a forerunner of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Another and even less- reputable female novelist, Mrs. Manley, claimed for her father the authorship of the first volume of the Turkish Spy, and states in her Adventures of Rivella that a certain Dr. Midgley, a relative of the family, found the manuscript, and added to it seven volumes," without ever having the justice to name the author of the first." According to another report, the addition was not the work of Midgley, but of a hack writer whom he employed. Hallam, who discusses this question carefully, gives no credit to Mrs. Manley, on the ground that the first volume was certainly written by Marana ; but he has little doubt that the succeeding volumes were of English origin. The question is not without interest, but Mr. Tackerman, strange to say, makes no allusion, to it.
It is remarkable, as Hallam has pointed out, what a strange scarcity of original fiction existed in England up to the close of the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth, the novel took a conspicuous place in literature. Addison in his charming sketches, and Steele in a smaller measure, produced life-like characters, and gave the town a taste for fiction. In 1712, Addi- son records the death of Sir Roger de Coverley; in 1719, Robin- son Crusoe appeared, and Defoe, having discovered thus late in life his craft as a novelist, wrote in rapid succession a number of tales, the coarseness of which forms a strange contrast to the purity and beauty of his first great fiction. At least nine works, either wholly or partially fictitious, were published by Defoe before 1726, in which year Gulliver's Travels appeared. From that date, we believe, no important novel was issued until the publi- cation of Richardson's Pamela, in 1740. That there was a strong taste for fiction in the country is evident from the extraordinary success of Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Goldsmith, and Fanny Barney, in the latter half of the century. In the earlier half, the fiction-loving public were but meagrely served.
The extreme coarseness of the age is exhibited with the utmost vividness in the novels of Richardson and Fielding, and with still more grossness in the Roderick Random and Peregrine Pickle of Smollett. Defoe is also so intolerable in this respect, that the very titles of some of his works cannot now be read
aloud in the presence of ladies. Yet all these writers, and even their predecessor, Mrs. Behn, declare their purpose to be dis- tinctly moral, and protest that they have written nothing that an offend the chastest ear. Fully to describe the plots of some of these stories, Moll Flanders and .Roxana, for ex- ample, would be impossible in modern English ; and both Richardson and Fielding act their parts as moralists by ex- hibiting highly-coloured pictures of vice. It is but just, however, to say that vice is never, as in our refined days, so confounded with virtue that the reader is led to consider the difference between them insignificant. The "hot, day-dreamy sentimentality" of Richardson, to quote the expression of 'Coleridge, and the licentious scenes of Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, are probably far less evil in tendency than the works of some living writers mentioned by Mr. Tuckerman, "issued by respectable publishers, and often written by women," the subject being the unlawful gratification of the passions. "Bigamy, seduction, adultery," adds the writer, "are the incidents on which the story turns, and an effort is always made by the novelist to give to the sinners as attractive and interesting an aspect as possible, and to hold up any respectable people who may appear in the book to the contempt and derision of the reader." This is tru6 with regard to some of the novels mentioned by the critic, and it is not true of the best characters invented by Richardson and Fielding. Clarissa, Harriet Byron, Clementina, that highly proper prig Sir Charles Gra.ndison, Mr. Allworthy, Parson Adams, and Amelia excite feelings very different from those of contempt and derision. On the whole, the vicious suffer, and the virtuous are rewarded; and yet it cannot be denied that the amusement gained from these novelists is gained in a great degree either from the humorous descrip- tion of doubtful situations, or from the minute pourtrayal of scenes unfitted for the public eye. Of such scenes, Richardson is fond, and he is fond also of moralising upon them ; but it is possible, such is the perversity of human nature, that the picture may sometimes make a stronger impression than the moral.
Fielding is better known in our day than Richardson, and a splendid edition of his works, edited by Mr. Leslie Stephen, has -recently been published. Mr. Tuckerman thinks that the coarse- ness of his novels "may unfit them for the perusal of very young people." Bat he defends him from the charge of immorality, and observes, with unnecessary iteration, that he describes life as he had seen it, and that if his novels "were more pure, they • would be less valuable from an historical point of view, less true to nature, and therefore less artistic." To this assertion the moralist might reply that there is a truth to nature the faithful representation of which can do good to nobody, and that Fielding, while disgusting us with the hypocrisy of Blifil, does not disgust his readers, which, as a moralist, be professes to do, with the debaucheries of TOM Jones. On the contrary, we are made to hate the former and to condone the faults of the latter. It is but fair to point out, however, as Mr. Tuckerman does, that this great novelist's broad descriptions of vice did not offend the readers • of his own age, neither were -the elaborate representations of Richardson less acceptable. In the correspondence between Miss 'Carter and Miss Talbot, the latter writes how she once beard a lady wish with all her heart that her son were like Tom Jones. Miss Talbot's uncle was the Bishop of Oxford, and under his roof Clarissa Marlowe was read aloud to the family at set hours, much to the admiration of the young lady. She detests Tom Jones, which her friend does not, but allows, "there are in it things which must touch and please every good heart." ,Toseph Andrews is recommended to Miss Carter, who thanks Miss Talbot for the "perfectly agreeable entertainment." "It con- tains," she writes, "such a surprising variety of nature, wit morality, and good-sense, as is scarcely to be met with in any one composition, and there is such a spirit of benevolence runs through the whole as I think renders it peculiarly charming?'
Mr. Tuckerman enlarges on the merits of Fielding and • Smollett, but for some later novelists his praise is confined -within the narrowest limits. Some pages, indeed, are allotted • to Mrs. Radcliffe, but Miss Austen is dismissed in a few lines. The latter part of the book is shallow, and indeed useless, for the impossible attempt is made to criticise Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, Lytton, George Eliot, and other well-known English and American novelists, in a single chapter. Every reader will find something to interest him in this History, and possibly something to annoy him, for although the book is published in London, its orthography is not English, but American. It is, perhaps, a bold venture of Messrs. Sotheran and Co., to publish a fine library edition of Richardson's works. Mr. Leslie Stephen's critical introduction is a reprint, with additions and alterations, of his essay on the subject in the first series of Hours in a Library. It is an admirable criticism, but scarcely calculated to promote the sale of Pamela, the" gigantic tract," which, in his judgment, is beyond all comparison the worst of Richardson's works, and succeeds neither in being moral nor amusing. It describes, as all the world knows, the licentious pursuit of a servant-girl by her master, and might have possessed the virtues of a tract, had Pamela not only retained her virtue, but her freedom. In loving the man who had tried to rain her, and in marrying the reformed rake at last, she sinks from the highest level of virtue. Her resistance is rewarded by wealth and reputation, and that kind of reward takes off, in our judgment, the fine edge of her purity.
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