III.

The publication of "Evelina," in 1778, made a sensation which the merits of the work fully justified. The story of Miss Burney's[199] early life, her furtive attempts at fictitious composition, the great variety of artistic and political characters who passed in review before her observant eyes at Dr. Burney's house have been made familiar by her own diary and letters. Petted and admired by Johnson, Mrs. Thrale, and the brilliant literary society of which they formed the centre, she lived sufficiently far into the present century to see the works of her early friends enrolled among the classics or consigned to oblivion, and to recognize that the approval of posterity had been added to the early fame of her own writings. As a very young girl, unnoticed by the distinguished persons who frequented her father's house, she had studied with careful attention the characters and manners of those who talked and moved about her. A strong desire to reproduce the impressions which filled her mind induced Miss Burney in her sixteenth year to devote her stolen hours of seclusion to fictitious composition. Discouraged in her early efforts by her stepmother, her habits of observation remained active, and took form, when the authoress was twenty five years old, in the famous novel of "Evelina." The book was issued secretly and anonymously, the publisher even being ignorant of the writer's true name. But the immediate popularity and admiration which greeted the work soon led to its open acknowledgment by the happy young authoress.

And "Evelina" fully deserved the praise and interest which it obtained and still excites. The aim was to describe the difficulties and sensations of a young girl just entering life. The heroine chosen by Miss Burney was one whose circumstances particularly well suited her to form the centre of a varied collection of characters and of a comprehensive picture of contemporary society. Well connected on her father's side, Evelina moved in fashionable circles with the Mirvan family. On account of the origin of her mother she was brought into close contact with humbler personages, with Madame Duval and the Brangtons. Hence this novel presents to the reader a variety of social scenes which gives it a value possessed by no other work of fiction of the eighteenth century. No novelist has described so well or so fully the aspect of the theatres, of Vauxhall and Ranelagh, of Bath in the season, of the ridottos and assemblies of the London fashionable world. The shops, the amusements and the manners of the middle classes are made familiar to Evelina by her association with the Brangtons, and add greatly to the breadth of this valuable picture of metropolitan life. With a feminine attention to detail, and a quick perception of salient characteristics, Miss Burney described the world about her so faithfully and picturesquely as to deserve the thanks of every student of social history. The novel of "Evelina," the letters of Horace Walpole and Mrs. Delany corroborate each other, and may be appropriately placed on the same shelf in a well-ordered library.

In the painting of manners Miss Burney was eminently successful. But she was hardly less so in a point in which excellence could not have been expected in so youthful a writer. The plot of "Evelina" is constructed with a skill worthy of a veteran. Fielding alone, of the eighteenth century novelists, can be said to surpass Miss Burney in this respect. The whole story of the mischances and misunderstanding of Evelina's intercourse with Lord Orville, the skill with which the various personages are brought into contact with each other and made to contribute to the final dénoument, compose a truly artistic success. The introduction of Macartney and his marriage to the supposed daughter of Sir John Belmont form a very happy and effective invention.

In regard to her sketches of character, it may be objected that Miss Burney lacked breadth of treatment, that she dwelt on one distinctive characteristic at the expense of the others. But still, Lord Orville, though somewhat too much of a model, and Mrs. Selwyn, though somewhat too habitually a wit, are vivid and life-like characters. The Brangtons and Sir Clement Willougby are nature itself, and the girlish nature of Evelina is betrayed in her letters with great felicity.

It is no small triumph for Miss Burney, who has had so many and so deserving competitors in the department of literature to which she contributed, that her novels should have remained in active circulation for more than a century after their publication. "Cecilia" has much the same merits which distinguished "Evelina," and the two novels bid fair to hold their own as long as English fiction retains its popularity. Johnson considered Miss Burney equal to Fielding. But although she possessed qualities similar to his—constructive power and picturesqueness—she possessed them in a lesser degree. In the management of the difficulties of the epistolary form of novel-writing, she surpassed Richardson in verisimilitude and concentration.

Some readers of the present day object to Miss Burney's novels that they contain so many references to "delicacy" and "propriety" that an air of affectation is produced. But at the time when "Evelina" was written, a perpetual discretion in actions and words was absolutely necessary to a young woman who did not wish to be subjected to libertine advances. Society is now so much more generally refined that there is far less danger of such misconstruction, and far less need for a young girl to be always on her guard. A sound objection, on the ground of taste, may be made against the excessively prolonged account of Captain Mirvan's brutalities. The effect might have been as well produced in a much shorter space, and the reader spared the uninteresting scenes which now fill so many repulsive pages. For this defect, however, we must blame the times more than the author.

Charlotte Lennox was the daughter of Sir James Ramsay, Lieutenant governor of New York, where she was born in 1720. When fifteen years of age she was sent to London, and there supported herself by her pen. Johnson said that he had "dined at Mrs. Garrick's with Mrs. Carter, Miss Hannah More, and Miss Fanny Burney: three such women are not to be found. I know not where I could find a fourth, except Mrs. Lennox, who is superior to them all." Such high praise was not called forth by Mrs. Lennox's novels, which have little originality or power. "The Female Quixote" is an entertaining satire on the old French romances, but "Sophia," and "Euphemia" are without any special interest.

A writer of more ability, whose name is still remembered by novel-readers, is Mrs. Inchbald. She was overcome in early life by an enthusiasm for the stage; ran away from home to find theatrical employment, and remained for many years a popular London actress. Although possessed of great and durable beauty, and the object of constant attention from aristocratic admirers, it is believed that her reputation continued unsullied. Her poverty, largely caused by a worthless husband, obliged her to perform the most menial labors. She rejoiced on one occasion that the approach of warmer weather released her from the duty of making fires, scouring the grate, sifting the cinders, and of going up and down three pair of long stairs with water or dirt. All this Mrs. Inchbald thought that she could cheerfully bear, but the labor of being a fine lady the remainder of the day was almost too much for her. "Last Thursday," she wrote to a friend, "I finished scouring my bed-chamber, while a coach with a coronet and two footmen waited at the door to take me an airing."

The same courage and industry were carried by Mrs. Inchbald into her literary labors, the profits of which enabled her to live with considerable comfort toward the end of her life. She left a large number of plays, many of which had been acted with success, and two novels, "A Simple Story," published in 1791, and "Nature and Art," published five years later. Neither of these works has much merit from a critical point of view. They are faulty in construction, and give frequent evidence of the authoress' lack of education.

Yet, in her ability to excite the interest and to move the feelings of her reader, Mrs. Inchbald met with great success. Her novels are of the pathetic order, and appeal to the sympathies with a sometimes powerful effect. Maria Edgeworth was deeply moved by the "Simple Story." "Its effect upon my feelings," she said after reading it for the fourth time, "was as powerful as at the first reading; I never read any novel—I except none,—I never read any novel that affected me so strongly, or that so completely possessed me with the belief in the real existence, of all the persons it represents. I never once recollected the author whilst I was reading it; never said or thought, that's a fine sentiment,—or, that is well expressed—or, that is well invented; I believed all to be real, and was affected as I should be by the real scenes, if they had passed before my eyes; it is truly and deeply pathetic."

The sisters, Harriet and Sophia Lee, wrote a number of stories gathered together under the rather unfortunate title of "The Canterbury Tales," which had a long-continued popularity. "The Young Lady's Tale," and "The Clergyman's Tale" were written by Sophia; all the others, together with the novel "Errors of Innocence," belonged to Harriet. These stories have great narrative interest, and contain some powerfully drawn characters. Byron was deeply affected by some of them. Of the "German's Tale," he confessed: "It made a deep impression on me, and may be said to contain the germ of much that I have since written." It not only contained the germ of "Werner," but supplied the whole material for that tragedy. All the characters of the novel are reproduced by Byron except "Ida," whom he added. The plan of Miss Lee's work is exactly followed, as the poet admitted, and even the language is frequently adopted without essential change.

Charlotte Smith was a woman of talent and imagination who was driven to literature for aid in supporting a large family abandoned by their spendthrift father. She was among the most prolific novelists of her time, but only one work, "The Old Manor House," enjoyed more than a passing reputation, or has any claim to particular mention here. The chief merit of Charlotte Smith's novels lies in their descriptions of scenery, an element only just entering into the work of the novelist.

Clara Reeve and the celebrated Mrs. Radcliffe did much to sustain the prominent position which women were taking in fictitious composition, and their works will be commented upon in connection with the romantic revival, to which movement they were eminent contributors.

Toward the end of the eighteenth century, the number and variety of works of fiction increased with remarkable rapidity. The female sex supplied its full share, both in amount and in excellence of work. But those who desire to see the advent of women into new walks of active life on the ground that their presence and participation add to the purity of every occupation they adopt, can find no illustration of the theory in the connection of women with fictitious composition. Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley, and Mrs. Heywood, the earliest female novelists, produced the most inflammatory and licentious novels of their time. At a later period, during the eighteenth century, although some female writers exhibited a very exceptional refinement, the majority showed in this respect no marked superiority to their masculine contemporaries. In our own time, whoever would make a list of those novels which are most evidently immoral in their teachings and licentious in their tone, would be obliged to seek them almost quite as much among the works of female writers, as among those of the rougher sex.

To write a really excellent novel, is among the most difficult of literary feats. But to write a poor one has often been found an easy undertaking. The apparent facility of fictitious composition has deceived great numbers of literary aspirants, and has filled the circulating libraries with a vast collection of thoroughly worthless productions. This unfortunate fecundity, to which the department of fiction is subject, began to be conspicuous at the end of the eighteenth century,[200] and excited much opposition to novels of all kinds. Hannah More, in her essays on female education, inveighed against the evil in terms which are quite as applicable at the present day. "Who are those ever multiplying authors, that with unparalleled fecundity are overstocking the world with their quick-succeeding progeny? They are novel-writers; the easiness of whose productions is at once the cause of their own fruitfulness, and of the almost infinitely numerous race of imitators to whom they give birth. Such is the frightful facility of this species of composition, that every raw girl, while she reads, is tempted to fancy that she can also write. And as Alexander, on perusing the Iliad, found by congenial sympathy the image of Achilles stamped on his own ardent soul, and felt himself the hero he was studying; and as Correggio, on first beholding a picture which exhibited the perfection of the graphic art, prophetically felt all his own future greatness, and cried out in rapture: 'And I, too, am a painter!' So a thorough-paced novel-reading miss, at the close of every tissue of hackneyed adventures, feels within herself the stirring impulse of corresponding genius, and triumphantly exclaims: 'And I, too, am an author!' The glutted imagination soon overflows with the redundance of cheap sentiment and plentiful incident, and, by a sort of arithmetical proportion, is enabled by the perusal of any three novels, to produce a fourth; till every fresh production, like the prolific progeny of Banquo, is followed by

IV.

The writers who took the chief part in originating and sustaining the romantic revival in English fiction were Horace Walpole, Clara Reeve, and Mrs. Radcliffe. As we have called upon the testimony of Walpole so often in this work, and as we are now to consider him as an author, some account of his personal appearance may be of interest. "His figure," says Miss Hawkins, "was not merely tall, but long and slender to excess; his complexion, and particularly his hands, of a most unhealthy paleness. His eyes were remarkably bright and penetrating, very dark and lively:—his voice was not strong, but his tones were extremely pleasant, and, if I may so say, highly gentlemanly. I do not remember his common gait; he always entered a room in that style of affected delicacy which fashion had then made almost natural; chapeau bras between his hands as if he wished to compress it, or under his arm; knees bent, and feet on tiptoe, as if afraid of a wet floor. His dress in visiting was most usually, in summer, when I most saw him, a lavender suit, the waistcoat embroidered with a little silver, or of white silk worked in the tambour, partridge silk stockings, and gold buckles, ruffles and frill generally lace. I remember, when a child, thinking him very much under-dressed, if at any time, except in mourning, he wore hemmed cambric. In summer, no powder, but his wig combed straight, and showing his very smooth, pale forehead, and queued behind; in winter, powder."

Posterity has cause to regret that Horace Walpole, of all men best fitted by personal knowledge and ability to draw a picture of the brilliant society of his time, should have contributed no work in the department of realistic fiction. Had the keen observation and experience of the world so conspicuous in his letters been brought to bear on a narrative of real life not less ably constructed than that of "The Castle of Otranto," an addition of no little value to the social history of the eighteenth century must have been the result. But although Walpole attempted no novel in which he might have depicted the fashionable life of which he was so faithful a chronicler, he yet tried an experiment in fiction for which he was peculiarly qualified by his antiquarian studies and his fondness for the arts and customs of feudal times.

The object of "The Castle of Otranto" was to unite the characteristic elements of the ancient romance with those of the modern novel. It was attempted to introduce into a narrative constructed with modern order and sequence, such supernatural events as controlled the incidents of romantic fiction. To accomplish this result, it was necessary that the mise en scène should be impressive and awe-inspiring, that the reader's mind should be insensibly prepared by strange surroundings for extraordinary incidents. In his selection of age and scene, Walpole was highly judicious. He chose the feudal period, when superstition accorded the most ready belief to supernatural agencies. He introduced his reader to a huge, gloomy castle, furnished with towers, donjons, subterranean passages, and trapdoors. He took for his hero, Manfred, a fierce and cruel knight, who had obtained his lands by duplicity and blood; whose chief aim in life was to continue his posterity in possession of wrongfully acquired power. He added subordinate characters of a kind to aid the effect of supernatural phenomena: a monk in a neighboring convent, who threatened Manfred with divine visitation for his crimes; superstitious servants, whose easy fears exaggerated every unusual sound or foot-fall. He gave an interest to his narrative by the love passages of Manfred's daughters which were perpetually at the mercy of the fate which hung over the castle. He introduced his supernatural effects in the form of a gigantic gauntlet seen on the stair-rail; a gigantic helmet which crushed the son and heir of the house as he was about to be married and to carry out his father's hopes; a skeleton monk who urged the rightful owner of the castle to take his own from the usurper's hands.

In attempting to make a regularly constructed narrative depend on supernatural agencies, Walpole undoubtedly succeeded as far as success was possible. But it may be said without hesitation that real success was unattainable. The very merits of "The Castle of Otranto" sustain this decision. The experiment had a fair trial. The narrative of Manfred's crimes and the punishments visited upon them, the characters and actions of subordinate personages are all managed with skill; while the supernatural agencies are introduced at the proper times and have the expected effects. But the real test of success in such an attempt must lie in the impression made on the reader's mind. And this impression may be of two kinds. Let us imagine a group of young people sitting about the dying embers of a fire on a winter's evening, listening to a ghost story. The black darkness, the sound of the wind howling without, accord with the low tones, the dim light, and the tale of horror within. The minds of the listeners insensibly cast off their ordinary trains of thought, and give themselves up to the unreal impressions of the moment. The incredible circumstances of the apparition are accepted without question or criticism; the impression of the supernatural occurrences is alone thought of and enjoyed. But now, let the same tale be read aloud after breakfast, from a newspaper, with the affidavits of the witnesses of the apparition duly attached, and only laughter can be the result.

Now let us apply the same test to romance. We open the "Morte d'Arthur"; we find ourselves at once in an unreal, almost nameless land; we meet with knights whom we only know apart by their armor, and queens ambling through pathless forests on white palfreys; we attend brilliant tournaments and witness superhuman deeds of arms. Our minds, untroubled by scepticism and thoughtless of unreality, yield themselves to the poetical illusion. Who stops to think of the incredible when Sir Bedivere hurls into the lake the dying Arthur's sword Excalibur?

Then Sir Bedivere departed, and went to the sword, and lightly took it up, and went to the water side, and there he bound the girdle about the hilts, and then he threw the sword as far into the water as he might, and there came an arm and an hand above the water, and met it, and caught it, and so shook it thrice and brandished, and then vanished away the hand with the sword in the water.

But when we are introduced to the castle of Otranto, when we know its dimensions and appearance, when we have become acquainted with its inmates, and have been made to realize that they are flesh and blood like ourselves, we cannot receive without a shock the account of the supernatural occurrences by which they are affected. It is as if we listened to a ghost story in the glare of daylight, and in the full activity of our critical faculties.

"Thou art no lawful prince," said Jerome; "thou art no prince—go, discuss thy claim with Frederic; and when that is done——" "It is done," replied Manfred; "Frederic accepts Matilda's hand, and is content to waive his claim, unless I have no male issue." As he spoke these words three drops of blood fell from the nose of Alfonso's statue.

"The Castle of Otranto" is an entertaining, well-constructed romance which may absorb the attention of young people, and indeed of all readers who delight in tales of superstitious horror. But looked upon as a work of art, it contains discordant elements. The realistic manner in which the scene and characters are made known, the exactitude with which the incidents are combined, are in constant opposition to that poetical ideality without which the supernatural cannot take possession of the mind. In reading the "Morte d'Arthur" we are insensibly penetrated by an atmosphere of the marvellous which makes a giant a natural companion, and a magic sword a necessary part of a warrior's outfit. But Manfred and his family are so essentially human, and their surroundings are so realistic, that the reader's sense of congruity is shocked by the introduction of a bleeding statue or a skeleton monk.

This was evident to Miss Clara Reeve, who hoped to attain success in the attempt to unite the romance and the novel by limiting all supernatural occurrences to the verge of probability. It is obvious that the line would be difficult to draw. Miss Reeve drew it at ghosts. In the "Old English Baron," she took a story similar to that of Walpole. She presented to the reader a castle whose real owner had been murdered, and of which the rightful heir, ignorant of his birth, lived as a dependent on the wrongful possessor. The story turned on the revelation of the secret by the ghost of the murdered knight.

"God defend us!" said Edmund; "but I verily believe that the person that owned this armor lies buried under us." Upon this a dismal, hollow groan was heard, as if from underneath. A solemn silence ensued, and marks of fear were visible upon all three; the groan was thrice heard.

To the average mind of the present day Clara Reeve's ghost is not less improbable and incredible than Walpole's gigantic helmet. If the reader is prepared by the poetic nature of a narrative for the influence of the supernatural, he will receive all marvels with equal ease; but if he be not prepared, if his mind be occupied during the greater part of the work with actual and ordinary occurrences, any supernatural event is rejected. Miss Reeve introduced far less of the incredible than her predecessor, but she did not approach Walpole in the adaptation of her scenes to supernatural effects. It requires less imagination to see a figure walk out of a portrait in the gloomy castle of Otranto, than to hear the groan of Miss Reeve's spectre.

The incompatibility of the real and the unreal in the same work is sufficiently shown by the course pursued by the different writers who took part in the romantic revival. Walpole had boldly introduced a skeleton monk, and had crushed one of his characters by a gigantic helmet which fell from the sky. Clara Reeve's sense of congruity was shocked by so strong a contrast between the usual and the extraordinary, and therefore limited herself to a single supernatural effect, which might inspire fear while yet remaining within the bounds of superstitious credulity. The next and greatest contributor to the romantic revival still further modified the methods of her predecessors, and in so modifying them, testified her doubts of their efficacy. Mrs. Radcliffe's plan was not to summon a spectre from his resting-place and to make him move among flesh and blood personages. She simply described the superstitious fears of her heroes and heroines, and sought to make her reader share in them. She excited the imagination by highly wrought scenes of horror, but instead of ascribing those scenes to the intervention of supernatural beings, she showed them to proceed from natural causes. The terror felt, by her fictitious characters and shared by the reader, was not so much inspired by real dangers from without, as by superstitious fear within. The following passage will illustrate Mrs. Radcliffe's method of dealing with the supernatural:

From the disturbed slumber into which she then sunk, she was soon awakened by a noise, which seemed to arise within her chamber; but the silence that prevailed, as she tearfully listened, inclined her to believe that she had been alarmed by such sounds as sometimes occur in dreams, and she laid her head again upon the pillow.

A return of the noise again disturbed her, it seemed to come from that part of the room which communicated with the private staircase, and she instantly remembered the odd circumstance of the door having been fastened during the preceding night by some unknown hand. The late alarming suspicion concerning its communication also occurred to her. Her heart became faint with terror. Half raising herself from the bed, and gently drawing aside the curtain, she looked toward the door of the staircase, but the lamp that burnt on the hearth spread so feeble a light through the apartment, that the remote parts of it were lost in shadow. The noise, however, which she was convinced came from the door, continued. It seemed like that made by the undrawing of rusty bolts, and often ceased, and was then renewed more gently, as if the hand that occasioned it was restrained by a fear of discovery. While Emily kept her eyes fixed on the spot, she saw the door move, and then slowly open, and perceived something enter the room, but the extreme duskiness prevented her perceiving what it was. Almost fainting with terror, she had yet sufficient command over herself to check the shriek that was escaping from her lips, and, letting the curtain drop from her hand, continued to observe in silence the motions of the mysterious figure she saw. It seemed to glide along the remote obscurity of the apartment, then paused, and, as it approached the hearth, she perceived, in the stronger light, what appeared to be a human figure. Certain remembrances now struck upon her heart, and almost subdued the feeble remains of her spirit. She continued, however, to watch the figure, which remained for some time motionless, but then, advancing slowly toward the bed, stood silently at the feet, where the curtains, being a little open, allowed her still to see it; terror, however, had now deprived her of the power of discrimination, as well as that of utterance.[201]

This scene is an excellent example of Mrs. Radcliffe's power of depicting and exciting fear. The loneliness of Emily in the castle, her dread of real dangers inclining her mind to expect the unreal, are shown with an art of which neither Walpole nor Reeve were capable. But, while these writers would have introduced a real spectre as the disturber of Emily's slumber, Mrs. Radcliffe is contented with the terror she has aroused, and hastens to explain its cause.

Having continued there a moment, the form retreated towards the hearth, when it took the lamp, held it up, surveyed the chamber for a few moments, and then again advanced towards the bed. The light at that instant awakening the dog that had slept at Emily's feet, he barked loudly, and, jumping to the floor, flew at the stranger, who struck the animal smartly with a sheathed sword, and springing towards the bed, Emily discovered—Count Morano.

These passages afford evidence of both the strength and the weakness of Mrs. Radcliffe's work. She chose a scene calculated to inspire horror, she subjected to its influence a lonely female, and she then described with blood-curdling minuteness each detail which could enhance the sense of hidden danger which it was her purpose to excite. While the reader follows such portions of her writings, he is carried by the force and picturesqueness of Mrs. Radcliffe's language into a condition of sympathy with the fears of the fictitious personage. But the moment that the scene of horror is past, that the hidden danger is revealed, that, it turns out to be no ghost but only a Count Morano, all Mrs. Radcliffe's power is required to prevent an anti-climax. This weakness is very different from that of Walpole or Reeve. They failed to excite the feeling of superstitious fear. Mrs. Radcliffe excited it, but she destroyed its effect by revealing the inadequacy of its cause. The works of Walpole, Clara Reeve, and particularly of Mrs. Radcliffe, contain very decided merits. They made a school which has found many admirers and has given a vast deal of pleasure. But the school was founded on wrong principles and could not endure. It is impossible for the mind to enjoy the supernatural while it is chained down to every-day life by realistic descriptions of scenes and persons. And it is equally impossible to permanently please by fear-inspiring narratives, when the reader is aware that all the while there is no sufficient cause for the hero's terror.

But what Mrs. Radcliffe attempted, she carried out with a very great skill. She placed the scenes of her narratives in Sicily, in Italy, or the south of France, and made good use of the warm natures and vivid imaginations which are born of southern climates. Every aid which an effective mise en scène could supply to her supernatural effects was most skilfully brought into play. Lonely castles, secret passages, gloomy churches, and monkish superstitions,—all were adapted to the tale of unknown dangers and fearful predicaments which Mrs. Radcliffe had to tell. She kept up with remarkable strength a supernatural tone which insensibly aids the imagination. In her descriptions of scenery, she chose nature in its most awe-inspiring forms, and instilled into the reader's mind the same sense of the insignificance of man, under the influence of which her heroes and heroines so continually remain. We are reminded of Buckle's description of the effect of nature upon human imagination and credulity when we notice the striking manner in which Mrs. Radcliffe moulded the surroundings of her heroes and heroines, and made their minds susceptible to superstitious terror.

From Beaujeu the road had constantly ascended, conducting the travellers into the higher regions of the air, where immense glaciers exhibited their frozen horrors, and eternal snow whitened the summits of the mountains. They often paused to contemplate these stupendous scenes, and, seated on some wild cliff, where only the ilex or the larch could flourish, looked over dark forests of fir, and precipices where human foot had never wandered, into the glen—so deep that the thunder of the torrent, which was seen to foam along the bottom was scarcely heard to murmur. Over these crags rose others of stupendous height and fantastic shape; some shooting into cones; others impending far over their base, in huge masses of granite, along whose broken ridges was often lodged a weight of snow, that, trembling even to the vibration of a sound, threatened to bear destruction in its course to the vale. Around on every side, far as the eye could penetrate, were seen only forms of grandeur the long perspective of mountain tops, tinged with ethereal blue, or white with snow; valleys of ice, and forests of gloomy fir. * * * The deep silence of these solitudes was broken only at intervals by the scream of the vultures, seen cowering round some cliff below, or by the cry of the eagle sailing high in the air; except when the travellers listened to the hollow thunder that sometimes muttered at their feet.[202]

Lewis in "The Monk," and Maturin in "The Family of Montorio," carried the principles of the Radcliffe school beyond the verge of absurdity. Their novels are wild melodramas, the product of distorted imaginations, in which endless horrors are mingled with gross violations of decency. "The Monk" and "The Family of Montorio" had a great reputation in their day, and in contemporary criticism we find their praise sung and their immortality predicted. But, while they illustrate, on the one hand, the temporary vogue an author may acquire by highly-wrought clap-trap and flashy flights of imagination, they show very plainly, in the oblivion which has overtaken them, how little such characteristics avail in the race for enduring fame.

V.

At the end of the eighteenth century, the novel had become established as a popular form of literature, and the number of its votaries had begun to assume the proportions which have since made novelists by far the most numerous literary body. Some writers, perhaps, have been omitted who deserved mention as much as some who have been commented upon. But all have been spoken of, it is believed, who contributed any new ideas or methods to the art of fictitious composition.

The novel had, indeed, taken the place of the stage to a very great extent. If we compare the productions of the dramatist with those of the novelist, as regards both quantity and merit, during the last hundred and fifty years, we shall perceive a great preponderance in favor of the writer of fiction. Although there are some respects in which the novel cannot compete with the drama, there are obvious reasons why the former should be much better adapted than the latter to modern requirements. Great changes have come over the audience. With the progress of civilization, life has become less and less dramatic, and affords fewer striking scenes and violent ebullitions of passion. It not only furnishes far less material for stage effects, but also supplies little of that sympathy which the dramatist must find in the minds of his audience. While life has become less dramatic, it has become far more complex, and requires a broader treatment in its delineation than the restrictions of the stage can allow.

As we look back upon the fiction of the eighteenth century it is evident that the novel, like the play, is capable of great uses and of great abuses, according to the spirit in which it is written. In the hands of Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Goldsmith, and Miss Burney, it reached a high position as a work of art. It retained, indeed, much of the manner of the story of adventure, inasmuch as the interest was more commonly made to depend on the fortunes of a chosen hero than on the development of a well constructed plot. But "Robinson Crusoe," "Tom Jones," "The Vicar of Wakefield," and "Evelina," are works which deserve and possess the interest of the present time. Such books as these are to be cherished as precious legacies from the years that have gone before. They have given, in the course of their long active circulation, an incalculable amount of pleasure. They have supplied posterity with a picturesque view of the life and manners of their ancestors which could not be acquired from any other source. But while the fiction of the eighteenth century includes much that is valuable from a literary and from a historical point of view, it includes also a great quantity of worthless and injurious writing. By far the larger number of novels published were of a kind likely to exert an evil influence on their readers. Their coarseness and licentiousness had a strong tendency to disseminate the morbid thoughts and unregulated passions which dictated their production. So general was the feeling that a work of fiction would probably contain immoral and debasing views of life, that the novel and the novelist, were both looked upon askance. "In the republic of letters," said Miss Burney, "there is no member of such inferior rank, or who is so much disdained by his brethren of the quill, as the humble novelist; nor is his fate less hard in the world at large, since, among the whole class of writers perhaps not one can be named of which the votaries are more numerous but less respectable." Miss Edgeworth, in the beginning of the present century, felt it necessary to call her first novel "a moral tale," because so much folly, error, and vice are disseminated in books classed "under the denomination of novels." A great part of the fiction of the last century, as indeed of our own time, possesses neither the value of a work of art nor that belonging to the description and preservation of contemporary manners. Nor could the excuse of the amusement they afforded be called up in their favor. No amusement is worth having which is not healthy and innocent. The general prejudice which formerly existed against novels very much lessened their circulation, and lessened the evil done by licentious productions. Careful parents did not allow a novel in their children's hands which had not passed an examination—a precaution now too generally neglected.

But notwithstanding all the trash, and worse than trash, which has gone into circulation under the broad and attractive term of novel, it is evident that the English speaking public on both sides of the Atlantic demand purity in the works of fiction which are submitted to its judgment. While no literary work can present a greater claim to permanent favor than a really good novel, none is more certain to be quite ephemeral than a bad one, whether its badness consist in the manner or the matter. For more than a hundred years "The Vicar of Wakefield" has held its own, while hundreds of novels which created more sensation at the time of their appearance have fallen into everlasting oblivion. And this triumph is not only due to literary excellence, but to the human excellence of the conception which Goldsmith gave to the world.

CHAPTER VIII.

I.—THE NOVEL IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
II.—THE NOVEL OF LIFE AND MANNERS.
III.—OF SCOTCH LIFE.
IV.—OF IRISH LIFE.
V.—OF ENGLISH LIFE.
VI.—OF AMERICAN LIFE.
VII.—THE HISTORICAL NOVEL.
VIII.—THE NOVEL OF PURPOSE.
IX.—THE NOVEL OF FANCY.
X.—USE AND ABUSE OF FICTION.

I.

Fiction has absorbed so much of the literary talent of the present century, and has attained so important a place in the lives and thoughts of the reading public, that, in this chapter, we will attempt a description of its varied forms, and an inquiry into its uses and abuses, rather than an extended criticism of individual writers. Allibone's "Dictionary of Authors" contains two thousand two hundred and fifty-seven names of writers of fiction, by far the greater number of which belong to the nineteenth century, and every year adds to the list.

There is no better example of the closeness of the connection between society and its literature than is supplied by the novel. Every change in the public taste has been followed by a corresponding variety of fiction, until it is difficult to enumerate all the schools into which novelists have divided themselves. During the present century, life has become far more complex and the reading public far more exacting, varied, and extended than ever before. Steam and electricity have brought distant countries into close communion, and have awakened a feeling of fellowship among the different nations of the civilised world which has greatly widened the horizon of human interests. The spread of education, the increase and distribution of wealth, together with the cheapness of printing, have largely increased the number and variety of those who seek entertainment from works of fiction. The novel-reader is no longer content with the description of scenes and characters among which his own life is passed. He wishes to be introduced to foreign countries, to past ages, and to societies and ranks apart from his own. He wishes also to find in fiction the reflection of his own tastes and the discussion of his own interests. He seeks psychology, or study of character, or the excitement of a complicated plot, or the details and events of sea-faring, criminal, or fashionable life. All of these different tastes the novelist has undertaken to gratify.

Under the extensive head of the novel of life and manners, the habits, modes of thought, and peculiarities of language of Scotland, Ireland, England, and the United States, with many sub-divisions of provinces and cities, have been studied and described. The novelist has extended his investigations into Eastern countries, and has portrayed the customs and institutions of Oriental life. He has taken his characters from historic times, and has recommended the past for the instruction or amusement of the present. The experience of the soldier and the sailor have taken their place among the incidents of fiction; the adventures and crimes of blacklegs and convicts have been drawn upon to gratify palates sated with the weak pabulum of the fashionable novel.

Fiction has not been confined to the study of manners and character, but has been extensively used to propagate opinions and to argue causes. Novels have been written in support of religious views, Catholic, High-Church, and Low-Church; political novels have supported the interests of Tory, Whig, anti-slavery, and civil service; philosophical novels have exposed the evils of society as at present constituted, and have built up impossible utopias. Besides the novel of purpose, there has been the novel of fancy, in which the imagination has been allowed to soar unchecked in the regions of the unreal and the supernatural.

With so great a variety of works of fiction, it is not surprising to find a corresponding variety of authorship. Lords and ladies, generals and colonels have entered the lists against police court reporters and female adventurers. The novel is no longer the exclusive work of a professional author. Amateurs have attempted it to pass the time which hung heavily on their hands; to put into form their dreams or experiences; to gratify a mere literary vanity. The needy nobleman has made profitable use of his name on the title-page of a novel purporting to give information concerning fashionable life. But the most remarkable characteristic of novel-writing has been the important part taken by women. They have adopted fiction as their special department of literature, and have shown their capacity for it by the production of novels which fully equal in number and almost equal in merit the works of their masculine rivals. On her own ground, George Eliot has no superior, while the writings of Miss Austen, of Miss Edgeworth, of Miss Ferrier, of Mrs. Stowe, not to mention many others, are to be ranked among the best works of fiction in any language. But while women have contributed their full share of novels, both as regards quantity and merit, they have also contributed much more than what we think their full share of worthless and immoral writing. Bad women will have literary capacity as well as bad men, but it is doubly shocking to find that the prurient thoughts, the indecent allusions, and immoral opinions which are often met with in the novels of the day proceed from that sex which ought to be the stronghold of modesty and virtue.

And this matter becomes very important when we consider the position which works of fiction have attained in the present century. In the days of Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Heywood, Fielding, or Smollett, coarseness of thought and language was so general that it naturally had a prominent place in novels. All persons who objected to licentious scenes and gross expressions in the reading of themselves or their children excluded works of fiction. As Miss Edgeworth said, most novels were filled with vice or folly, and as Miss Burney complained, no body of literary men were so numerous, or so little respectable as novelists. But, in the hands of such writers as Sir Walter Scott, as Miss Ferrier, as Miss Austen, as Dickens, as Thackeray, as Charles Kingsley, as Mr. Anthony Trollope, the novel has achieved for itself a position of respectability and dignity which seems to remain unimpaired, notwithstanding the efforts of many authors to destroy it. Works of fiction are to be found in every home, in the hands of parents, in the hands of young boys and girls. The word novel has been given so high a signification by the great names which are associated with it, that parental censorship has almost ceased. It is impossible that a form of literature to which so many and so great minds have been devoted, and which takes so prominent a place in the favor of the reading public, should not be without a powerful influence. Let us look more closely at the works of fiction of the nineteenth century, and then endeavor to determine how far their influence has been for good, and how far for evil.

II.

It is the especial province of the novel of life and manners to be as far as possible a truthful reflection of nature. And the more it approaches to this condition, the more realistic it is said to be. But the word realism is a vague term, and is constantly employed to express different ideas. As far as it applies to the novel, it usually signifies an author's fidelity to nature. But even with this definition, the term realism has no very definite meaning unless all persons agree as to what constitutes nature. There is a great difference in men according as they are looked at with the eye of a Raphael or of a Rembrandt. There has been a strong tendency among novelists of the present century who have written since Scott, to devote themselves more to the common characters and incidents of every-day life; to describe the world as it appears to the ordinary observer, who rarely associates with either heroes or villains, and has little experience of either the sublime or the marvellous. Such was the expressed object of Thackeray, and such is the general character of the works of George Eliot and of Mr. Anthony Trollope. This tendency has been carried to an extreme by some English novelists, and above all by the Frenchman, Emile Zola, who have not only thrown aside entirely the romantic element in their fictions, but have shown their ideas of realism to consist in the base and the ignoble, and have confined their studies to the vices and degradation of the human species.

An admirer of Thackeray and an admirer of Zola would consider the works of his favorite author to be realistic, and yet nature appears under very different aspects in the pages of the two novelists. But the partisans of Thackeray and those of Zola would probably unite in the opinion that Sir Walter Scott was not realistic; they would call him romantic, and claim that he painted ideal scenes and ideal characters. But among those who read and re-read the novels of Scott, by far the greater number believe that "The Wizard of the North" was true to nature, that Jeanie Deans and Rob Roy and Meg Merrilies were not impossible characters. There are many who enter into the scenes described by Scott with as much feeling of reality as is experienced by those who follow the career of a Pendennis, of a Duke of Omnium, or of a Nana. A novelist, then, is realistic or not realistic according to the views which he and his reader entertain of nature. To the optimist, to the youthful and romantic, "The Heart of Midlothian" and "Guy Mannering" will seem a truthful representation of life. The more worldly and practical will find their idea of reality in "The Mill on the Floss," in "Vanity Fair," in "The Prime Minister." And finally those whose taste or lot has kept them "raking in the dirt of mankind" will think their view of truth best expressed by "L'Assommoir" or "Nana."

But we would not be understood to mean that a novelist or a painter is realistic, because he represents nature as it appears to him, whether he look at it through a glass couleur de rose, or with the distorted eye of a cynic. He may describe the sublime, the ordinary, or the vile, as nature supplies examples of all three, and yet be realistic, so long as he presents any one of these conditions without exaggeration, and without too extended an application.

The writers who have devoted themselves to the novel of life and manners have all sought to be realistic, and the value of their work largely depends on the success which has attended their efforts in this direction. The enduring vitality of "Tom Jones" is due to Fielding's fidelity to nature, and it is safe to predict that no novel which fails in this respect can have more than an ephemeral reputation. Nothing could be more false than the views of contemporary life contained in a large part of the fiction of the present day, and the future historian who looks to the novel of the nineteenth century for information concerning morals and social habits will have to exercise a constant discrimination.

III.

Scottish life and manners have been made familiar to the world by a series of brilliant novelists, first among whom stands the greatest figure in the history of English fiction. Sir Walter Scott was qualified to an extraordinary degree for the great work he was destined to perform for his country and for the novel. His ancestry, the traditions among which he grew up, his in-born love of legendary lore, his vivid imagination and keenness of sympathy all fitted him to appreciate and to put into enduring form the latent romance which pervaded his beloved Scotland. His practical experience as a lawyer and as a sheriff, gave him a clear insight into the institutions of his country. Previous to the publication of "Waverley," Scotland was a comparatively unknown land. Even Englishmen had little knowledge of its national habits, of its traditions, or its scenery. To Scotchmen, the history of their country was little more than a skeleton, till the magic wand of Scott it filled it with flesh and blood, and gave it new life and animation. "Up to the era of Sir Walter," says an eminent Scotchman, "living people had some vague, general, indistinct notions about dead people mouldering away to nothing, centuries ago, in regular kirk-yards and chance burial-places, 'mang muirs and mosses many O,' somewhere or other in that difficultly distinguished and very debatable district called the Borders. All at once he touched their tombs with a divining-rod, and the turf streamed out ghosts, some in woodmen's dresses, most in warriors' mail; queer archers leapt forth, with yew bows and quivers, and giants stalked shaking spears! The gray chronicler smiled, and taking up his pen, wrote in lines of light the annals of the chivalrous and heroic days of auld feudal Scotland. The nation then, for the first time, knew the character of its ancestors; for these were not spectres—not they, indeed,—nor phantoms of the brain, but gaunt flesh and blood, or glad and glorious;—base-born cottage churls of the olden time, because Scottish, became familiar to the love of the nation's heart, and so to its pride did the high born lineage of palace kings. * * * We know now the character of our own people as it showed itself in war and peace—in palace, castle, hall, hut, hovel, and shieling—through centuries of advancing civilization."

And it was not only to his countrymen that Scott made vivid and familiar the history of his native land. Since his genius described the Highland fastnesses, and peopled them with the chiefs and maidens of old, all the world feels at home in that land at once so small and so great. In Italy, in France in Germany, in America, Jeanie Deans and the Master of Ravenswood are household friends, and Scottish life and habits are known to tens of thousands who never leave their native town.

Besides making his country celebrated by his writings, Scott placed the novel on the firm foundation in public estimation which it has since retained. He redeemed its character from the disrepute into which it had fallen. He used it not only as a means of giving acute and healthful pleasure, but he made it the medium for moral and intellectual advancement. The purity of thought which pervades all his writings, the never-failing nobility of the views of life which he placed before his readers can have no other than an elevating influence.

Scott's literary success was due both to genius and to industry. Of his early precocity Mrs. Cockburn has left a remarkable instance.[203] "I last night supped in Mr. Walter Scott's. He has the most extraordinary genius of a boy I ever saw. He was reading a poem to his mother when I went in. I made him read on; it was the description of a shipwreck. His passion rose with the storm. He lifted his eyes and hands: 'There's the mast gone!' says he. 'Crash it goes! They will all perish!' After his agitation he turns to me: 'That is too melancholy,' says he. 'I had better read you something more amusing.' I preferred a little chat, and asked his opinion of Milton and other books he was reading, which he gave me wonderfully. One of his observations was: 'How strange it is that Adam, just new come into the world, should know every thing! That must be the poet's fancy,' says he. But when told he was created perfect by God, he instantly yielded. When taken to bed last night, he told his aunt he liked that lady. 'What lady?' says she. 'Why, Mrs. Cockburn, for I think she is a virtuoso,—like myself.' 'Dear Walter,' says Aunt Jenny, 'what is a virtuoso?' 'Don't ye know? Why, it's one who wishes and will know every thing.' Now, sir, you will think this a very silly story. Pray, what age do you suppose this boy to be? Name it, now, before I tell you. 'Why, twelve or fourteen.' No such thing; he is not quite six years old. He has a lame leg, for which he was a year at Bath, and has acquired the perfect English accent, which he has not lost since he came, and he reads like a Garrick. You will allow this an uncommon exotic."

The vivid imagination and love of knowledge which Scott displayed from his earliest years were supplemented throughout his life by an assiduous self-cultivation. The great and varied body of legendary lore which he accumulated, together with his ever active and universal sympathy with mankind, made the chief elements in his fictions. There is no one respect in which the Waverley novels are pre-eminent. As regards plot, Scott has been frequently surpassed. While "Kenilworth," the "Bride of Lammermoor," and "Ivanhoe," are well constructed, the plan of "Rob Roy" and "The Monastery" are lacking in sequence. Other novelists, too, have drawn character with quite as much power. But the Waverly novels have attained their supreme position in public estimation by a rare and well balanced union of different qualities. They contain beautiful examples of the sublime, and amusing examples of the ludicrous. They reflect nature in various phases, and always with picturesqueness, power, and truth. Of Scott's historical novels we shall speak elsewhere. Of those which relate especially to his own country, the most remarkable merit consists in the fidelity with which they have reflected the Scotch nationality. On this account they will always possess a value for the student of social history.

Of the estimation in which these novels have been held by the world, and the immense area over which their influence has extended, some idea may be formed from the fact that the actual profits which accrued from them to the author or to his estate shortly after his death, exceeded two millions of dollars. When we add to this sum the profits of the publishers, and when we consider the number of translations issued in Europe and the editions printed since Scott's death in Great Britain and America, we can realize how vast a sum the world has been glad to pay for the possession of these invaluable works.

Following the great Sir Walter in the description of Scottish life and manners, are many well-known writers. John Galt, in the "Annals of the Parish," gave many humorous descriptions of national character. In Wilson's "Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life," in "The Ettrick Shepherd," in the works of Scott's son-in-law, Lockhart, are scenes and characters still very familiar to novel readers. Jane Porter embodied rather ideal views of history in "Thaddeus of Warsaw," and "The Scottish Chiefs." The talents of Miss Ferrier, of Mrs. Oliphant, and of Mr. William Black have kept up the interest which the world has learned to take in every thing appertaining to the land which Sir Walter Scott taught it to know and love so well.[204]