As for the final result of these wars and love-makings, it is a very airy one; for Crowne seems to have entertained a higher ideal of purity than even Montausier and Orinda. His ladies bestow upon their lovers nothing at all, not even marriage, and the author, after having been at some trouble to re-establish order in Thessaly and other countries, gives up all idea of getting Pandion and Amphigenia wedded, this lady, she of the pillow above described, being as he says so very "coy."

Though not quite a match for Crowne's it must be conceded that neither is Dryden's bombast of a mean order. The following passage which very nearly bears comparison with the above, will show how heroism appeared when transferred to the stage. In one of the dramas, the plot of which Dryden took from the French romances, Almanzor thus addresses a rival:

Any number of speeches of this sort are to be found in the heroical dramas of Dryden, Settle, Lee, and their contemporaries. Roman, Arab, Turk, Greek or Moorish heroes, pirates or princes, when they mean to set anything at defiance, choose nothing less than heaven and earth as their object; they divide the world between them as if it were an orange; they rush to the fight or stop for a speech with a fine shake of the head which sends a majestic undulation round the wig worn by them, even by the Moors, as we may see in one of the very rare dramas then published with engravings. They are represented there with embroidered justaucorps, wigs and ribbons.[349]

Crowne besides his romance wrote several dramas that secured him a wide, if temporary, popularity. He also adapted Racine's "Andromaque" for the English stage, but he was very much disgusted with this work; the French original, though not "the worst" of French plays, was after all so mean and tame! "If the play be barren of fancy, you must blame the original author. I am as much inclined to be civil to strangers as any man; but then they must be strangers of merit. I would no more be at the pains to bestow wit (if I had any) on a French play, than I would be at the cost to bestow cloaths on every shabby Frenchman that comes over." Here we have Racine put in his proper place; what claim had he to be considered "a stranger of merit"? True, some crabbed English critics seem to have taken his part against the translator, and, incredible as it may seem, they have expressed a thought that "this suffered much in the translation.—I cannot tell in what," answers Crowne, "except in not bestowing verse upon it, which I thought it did not deserve. For otherwise, there is all that is in the French play, verbatim, and something more, as may be seen in the last act, where what is dully recited in the French play is there represented, which is no small advantage."[350] And true, it is, Pyrrhus is slain before our eyes; there are "alarums" and other lively, if customary, ornaments.

In this age obviously Racine could not please. Nor would Shakespeare have pleased a French audience, but as we know no attempt in that direction was made in Paris. The two nations lent one another, if anything, their defects. "Alaric" was named with praise by Dryden; Scudéry and La Calprenède continued to be most popular French authors during the century. Even in the next we find something remaining of their fame. Among the books in the library of the fashionable Leonora, Addison notices: "'Cassandra,' 'Cleopatra,' 'Astræa' ... the 'Grand Cyrus,' with a pin stuck in one of the middle leaves ... 'Clelia,' which opened of it self in the place that describes two lovers in a bower,"[351] &c. The passions in them which seem to us now so incredibly frigid, had not yet cooled down; their warmth was still felt: so much so that in one of Farquhar's plays, "Cassandra" is mentioned as greatly responsible for Lady Lurewell's first and greatest fault, the beginning of many others: "After supper I went to my chamber and read 'Cassandra,' then went to bed and dreamt of it all night, rose in the morning and made verses ..."[352] We cannot follow her in her account of the consequences.

All that was truly noble and simple in French literature was known, but at the same time generally misunderstood in England. To make French authors acceptable, grossness was added to Molière, bombast to Racine; even Otway, when translating "Bérénice," transformed Racine's "Titus" into a bully of romance who, in order to assuage his grief, goes to overrun "the Universe" and make "the worlds" as wretched as he is.[353] Madame de la Fayette had shown how it was possible to copy from life, in a novel, true heroism and true tenderness without exaggeration; her exquisite masterpiece was translated of course as was everything then that was French; but oblivion soon gathered round the "Princess of Cleve," and the only proof we have that it did not pass unnoticed is a clumsy play by Lee, in which this best of old French novels is mercilessly caricatured.[354] There was no attempt to imitate the Comtesse's pure and perfect style and high train of thought.

IV.

Reaction against the heroical romances did not wait, however, till the eighteenth century to assert itself in England; it set in early and very amusingly: but it remained powerless. As the evil had chiefly come from France, so did the remedy; but the remedy in France proved sufficient for a cure. In that country at all times the tale had flourished, and at all times in the tale, to the detriment of chivalry and heroism, writers had prided themselves on seeking mere truth. Thus, in the charming preface of the Reine de Navarre's "Heptaméron," Dame Parlamente establishes the theory of these narratives, and relates how, at the court, it had been decided to write a series of them, but to exclude from the number of their authors "those who should have studied and be men of letters; for Monseigneur the Dauphin did not wish their artifice to be introduced into them, and was also afraid lest the beauty of rhetoric should in some place injure the truth of the tale."

In the seventeenth century, the tradition of the old story-tellers is carried on in France in more developed writings, in actual novels, such as the "Baron de Fœneste" of D'Aubigné, 1617; the "Francion" of Charles Sorel, 1622(?); the "Berger extravagant" of the same, 1628; the "Roman Comique" of Scarron, 1651; the "Roman bourgeois" of Furetière, 1666, and many others. Scarron, who had travestied Virgil, was not the man to spare La Calprenède, and he does not lose his opportunity. "I cannot exactly tell you," he writes of one of his characters, "whether he had sup'd that night, or went to bed empty, as some Romance-mongers use to do, who regulate all their heroes' actions, making them rise early, and tell on their story till dinner time, then dine lightly, and after their meal proceed in the discourse: or else retire to some shady grove to talk by themselves, unless they have something to discover to the rocks and trees."

Furetière, writing in the same spirit, declares that he wishes to concern himself with "persons who are neither heroes nor heroines, who will neither raise armies nor overturn kingdoms; but who will be good people of middling rank who quietly go on their usual way, of whom some are handsome and others plain, some wise and others foolish; and the latter have the appearance indeed of forming the greatest number."[355]

Without speaking of the more important works of Cervantes and Rabelais,[356] most of these novels were translated into English, and in the same spirit as they had been written, that is, to be used as engines of war against heroes and heroism. "The French themselves," writes one of the translators, "our first romantique masters ... have given over making the world otherwise than it was; are now come to represent it to us as it is and ever will be."[357] "Among all the books that ever were thought on," writes another, who curiously enough had about the same opinion of the favourite novels of his time as Sidney had had of the drama a century earlier, "those of knight errantry and shepherdry have been so excellently trivial and naughty, that it would amuse a good judgment to consider into what strange and vast absurdities some imaginations have straggled ... the Knight constantly killing the gyant, or it may be whole squadrons; the Damosel certainly to be relieved just upon the point of ravishing; a little childe carried away out of his cradle after some twenty years discovered to be the sone of some great prince; a girl after seven years wandring and co-habiting and being stole, confirmed to be a virgin, either by a panterh, fire or a fountain, and lastly all ending in marriage ... These are the noble entertainments of books of this kinde, which how profitable they are, you may judge; how pernicious 'tis easily seen, if they meet but with an intentive melancholy and a spirit apt to be overborn by such follies;"[358] a spirit, in fact, such as Lady Lurewell's, whose reading of "Cassandra" had, as we have seen, such remarkable consequences.[359]

Efforts made in England to imitate this style and to lead, by means of the romance itself, a reaction against the false heroism that the romance had introduced, proved sadly abortive. These attempts have fallen into a still more profound oblivion than those of the story-tellers of Shakespeare's time. The English were not yet masters of the supple, crisp and animated language which suited that kind of tale, and which the French possessed from the thirteenth century. A few original minds like Sidney in his "Apologie" had employed it; but they formed rare exceptions, and in the seventeenth century most men continued to like either the pompous prose with its Latin periods, held in highest honour by Bacon, or the various kinds of flowery prose used by Lodge, Greene, Shakespeare and Sidney. So the romance writers who attempted to bring about a reaction received no encouragement and were forgotten less from want of merit than because even their contemporaries paid no attention to them. Thinking to open up a new path, they got entangled in a blind alley where they were left. The ground was to be broken anew by more robust hands than theirs, the hands of Defoe.

Some of these attempts however are worthy of attention, notably one in which imitation of Scarron and Furetière is to be found, entitled "The Adventures of Covent Garden."[360] The scene is laid in London among the cultivated upper middle class: life is so realistically represented, that this work, now entirely unknown, is one of those that best aid us to re-constitute that society in which Dryden, Wycherley and Otway lived.

Peregrine, the hero of the tale, spends his evenings at the "Rose" or at "Will's," Dryden's favourite coffee-house, or at the theatre, where the "Indian Emperor," one of Dryden's heroic dramas, was being played. With the Lady Selinda, in whose box he sits, he discusses the merits of the play, the value of the French rules and the license of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. Many interesting remarks occur in these conversations which seem put in writing after nature, and are very curious in the history of literature. If they do not exactly recall the Molière of the "Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes," they will recall Furetière, no insignificant praise. It is, besides, a compliment difficult to apply to any other English novelist of the period. Here is a specimen of literary criticism if not deep, at least lively, such as was going on at the play, or in the drawing-rooms at the time of the Restoration:

"You criticks, said Selinda, make a mighty sputter about exactness of plot, unity of time, place and I know not what, which I can never find do any play the least good (Peregrine smiled at her female ignorance). But, she continued, I have one thing to offer in this dispute, which I think sufficient to convince you. I suppose the chief design of plays is to please the people,[361] and get the playhouse and poet a livelihood?

"You must pardon me, madam, replyed Peregrine, Instruction is the business of plays.

"Sir, said the lady, make it the business of the audience first to be pleased with instruction, and then I shall allow you it to be the chief end of plays.

"But, suppose, madam, said he, that I grant what you lay down.

"Then sir, answered she, you must allow that whatever plays most exactly answer this aforesaid end are most exact plays. Now I can instance you many plays, as all those by Shakespeare and Johnson, and the most of Mr. Dryden's which you criticks quarrel at as irregular, which nevertheless still continue to please the audience and are a continual support to the Theatre. There is very little of your unity of time in any of them, yet they never fail to answer the proposed end very successfully.... Certainly, these rules are ill understood, or our nature has changed since they were made, for we find they have no such effects now as they had formerly. For instance, I am told the 'Double Dealer' and 'Plot and no Plot' are two very exact plays, as you call them, yet all their unity of time, place and action neither pleased the audience nor got the poets money. A late play called 'Beauty in distress,'[362] in which the author no doubt sweat as much in confining the whole play to one scene, as the scene-drawers should, were it to be changed a hundred times, this play had indeed a commendatory copy from Mr. Dryden, but I think he had better have altered the scene and pleased the audience; in short, had these plays been a little more exact as you call it, they had all been exactly damn'd."

Further, some traits of character almost worthy of Fielding are to be remarked in the course of the tale, though, it is true, it grows confused towards the end, and touches the melodramatic in the same way as Nash's novel. Thus the above conversation is interrupted by the entrance of the coquette Emilia, long before loved by Peregrine who had vainly asked for her hand. "Peregrine would have answered, but a pluck by the sleeve obliged him to turn from Selinda to entertain a lady mask'd who had given him the nudg. He presently knew her to be Emilia, who whispered him in the ear: I find sir, what Guyomar said just now is very true:

Peregrine tho surprised was pleased with her pretty reprimand, being delivered without any anger, but in murmuring, complaining accents, which never fail to move ..."

Thus again, Peregrine goes to the famous St. Bartholomew fair, which was still, as in Ben Jonson's time, a place of general meeting. "Lord C." is there discovered, who had a masked lady with him; she pulls off her mask and smiles at Peregrine, who again recognizes Emilia. The mixed impressions that this sight makes on the hero are analysed in these terms:

"He took a secret pride in rivalling so great a man, and it confirmed his great opinion of Emilia's beauty to see her admir'd by so accomplish't a person and absolute a courtier as my lord C. These considerations augmenting his love increased his jealousy also, and every little familiarity that my Lord us'd, heightened his love to her and hatred to his Lordship; he lov'd her for being admir'd by my Lord, yet hated my Lord for loving her."

The vain woman for her part is sufficiently interested in Peregrine to put a stop to a dawning passion which she discovers in him for another woman, and which might have ended in a marriage; but not at any rate enough to repay his sacrifice by true love. Emilia's artifices are studied with much skill, and the author seems, here too, to be imitating nature, and recounting personal experiences: "Quorum pars magna fui," as he says on the title-page of his book. At one time Emilia feels that Peregrine is escaping her; what does she conceive will keep him attached to her? At such a crisis she is shrewd enough not to resort to vulgar coquetries, feeling that they are no longer in season. With excellent instinct she guesses that the only means of recovering possession of honest Peregrine is to appeal to his good heart: instead of promising him her favours, she asks of him a service. Peregrine would have despised himself had he not rendered it, and it is only afterwards that he perceives his chain is by this means newly forged. Emilia has fixed ideas on the usefulness of men of this sort, and puts them very clearly before Lord C. Only unsubstantial favours must ever be granted them, in order that the favours by which they see their rivals profit, may not give them too gloomy suspicions. They are very useful for defending publicly their mistress' honour; they must if possible be men of a lofty and refined mind, for only such persons are simple enough to feed their passions on nothing.

The direct satire and caricature of heroical novels in the style of Scudéry and La Calprenède, which had been also practised in France, is to be found in a few English tales, of which the best, as entirely forgotten as the worst, is entitled "Zelinda, an excellent new romance, translated from the French of Monsieur de Scudéry."[363] With an amusing unconcern, and a very lively pen, the author hastens, on the first page, to give the lie to his title, and to inveigh against the impertinences of publishers in general. "Book-sellers too are grown such saucy masterly companions, they do even what they please; my friend Mr. Bentley calls this piece an excellent romance; there I confess his justice and ingenuity. But then he stiles it a translation, when (as Sancho Panca said in another case) 'tis no more so then the mother that bore me. Ingrateful to envy his friend's fame.... But I write not for glory, nor self-interest, nor to gratifie kindness nor revenge. Now the impertinent critical reader will be ready to ask, for what then? For that and all other questions to my prejudice, I will borrow Mr. Bays's answer and say, Because—I gad sir, I will not tell you—I desire to please but one person in the world, and, as one dedicates his labours and heroes to Calista, another to Urania, &c., at the feet of her my adored Celia, I lay all my giants and monsters."

There follows a story in the manner of Scudéry, the plot of which, however, is drawn not from Scudéry, but from Voiture,[364] and which is treated in a playful accent, and with an air of persiflage that reminds us of Byron's tone when relating the adventures of Don Juan. It is Voiture indeed, but Voiture turned inside-out. As with Byron, the raillery is from time to time interrupted by poetical flights, and, as with him, licentious scenes abound and are described with peculiar complacency.

Alcidalis and Zelinda, both pursued by a contrary fate, adore one another, but at a distance: for tempests, pirates, family feuds separate them, according to the classical standard of the grave romances of the day. They mutually seek one another; Alcidalis, who only dreams of Zelinda, has every good fortune he does not want. He believes his fiancée has been married to an elderly Italian duke distractedly in love with the young princess: "As we are never so fond of flowers, as in the beginning of spring, or towards the end of autumne; the first for their novelty, and the others because we think we shall see them no more: so the pleasures of love are at no time so dear to us as in the beginning of our youth and the approaches of our age." Alcidalis, deceiving the jealous vigilance of the duke, makes the tour of a promontory in a boat by night, climbs to a window by means of a rope-ladder, and in the second visit gains the favour of the duchess, who was not at all the lady whom he thought to find. "Ye gods! do I again behold the fair Zelinda? cries Alcidalis in his joy (a very pertinent question, for it is to be remembred there was no light)."

Very unseasonably the husband arrives; Alcidalis has as much difficulty in escaping as Don Juan; and the duchess, just like the first mistress of Byron's hero, bursts out into reproaches against her bewildered husband, who has much trouble to obtain her pardon. "O woman! woman!" continues the author in an apostrophe Byron would not have disowned; "thou dark abysse of subtility; 'tis easier to trace a wandring swallow through the pathless air, then to explicate the crafty wyndings of thy love or malice."

During this time, Alcidalis in flight, comes "to the sea side, where a ship being just ready to leave the port (for that must never be wanting to a hero upon a ramble)," he gets on board and resumes his search for the true Zelinda. He encounters many new adventures, and in a battle dangerously wounds a warrior. This warrior is a woman, Zelinda herself. The lovers recognize one another, embrace, and relate their adventures. Alcidalis omits nothing except the episode of the duchess, and shows himself as fond a lover as at starting: "Were I racked to ten thousand pieces, as every part of a broken mirrour presents an entire face, in every part of Alcidalis would appear the bright image of my adored Zelinda." At length they are married; the couple recline at their banquet of love, "and if no other pen raises them, they shall lye there till Doomsday."

V.

Thus in two different ways a reaction showed itself against the literature in fashion, and the merits of those who attempted it only made its failure the more felt. The caricature of the heroic romance and the attempt at the novel of common life were without effect. Their authors had come too soon, and remained isolated; the false heroism now scoffed at in France continued in England until the eighteenth century. The writers under Queen Anne, in order to destroy it, were obliged to recommence the whole campaign. Addison, as we have seen, found heroism still in fashion, and the great romances in their places in ladies' libraries. They were still being reprinted. There is, for example, an English edition of "Cassandra" dated 1725, and one of "Cleopatra" dated 1731. Fielding saw heroism still in possession of the stage, and he satirized it in his amusing "Tom Thumb." Carey attacked it in his "Chrononotontologos."[365]

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

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

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

Remains of the ordinary heroic style are of course not wanting. Being love-struck Oroonoko, an African negro, well read in the classics, refuses to fight, and following Achilles' example, retires to his tent. "For the world, said he, it was a trifle not worth his care. Go, continued he, sighing, and divide it amongst you, and reap with joy what you so vainly prize!" In trying to carry out this advice his companions are utterly routed, until after two days Oroonoko consents to take up his arms again, and the victors are at once all put to flight. Oroonoko's death is also in the heroical style, but a peculiar sort of heroism which recalls Scudéry, and at the same time Fenimore Cooper.

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

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

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

It can, all things considered, be stated with truth that, between the age of Elizabeth, and the age of Anne and the Georges, there is in the history of the novel a long period of semi-stagnation. The seventeenth century, which furnishes hardly any important name, added very little, apart from an exaggerated heroism, to the art of the novel. Defoe, Richardson and Fielding are, as novelists, more nearly related to the men of the time of Shakespeare than to the men of the time of Dryden. They have been thus so completely separated from their literary ancestors that the connection has been usually forgotten. It cannot, however, be doubted.

Now that we have carried so far this sketch of the history of the early English novel, as far indeed as the time of writers whose works are still our daily reading, we have to take leave of our heroes, picaroons, and monsters, of Arthur and Lancelot, Euphues and Menaphon, Pyrocles and Rosalind, Jack Wilton and Peregrine, Oroontades and Parthenissa; nor let us forget to include in this farewell our Lamias, Mantichoras, dragons, and all the menagerie of Topsell and of Lyly. Mummified, buried and forgotten as most of these romances have long been, they managed somehow not to die childless, but left behind them the seed of better things. "No, those days are gone away," says Keats, thinking of the legends of early times,

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

INDEX.

INDEX.

A.