English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History Part 30

In his second voyage, that to Brobdignag, his satirical imagination took a wider range--European politics as they appear to a superior intelligence, ill.u.s.trated by a man of _sixty_ feet in comparison with one of _six_. As Gulliver had looked with curious contempt upon the united efforts of the Lilliputians, he now found himself in great jeopardy and fear when in the hands of a giant of Brobdignag. As the pigmy metropolis, five hundred yards square, was to London, so were London and other European capitals to the giants' city, two thousand miles in circ.u.mference. And what are the armies of Europe, when compared with that magnificent cavalry manœuvring on a parade-ground twenty miles square, each mounted trooper ninety feet high, and all, as they draw their swords at command, representing ten thousand flashes of lightning?

The third part contains the voyage of Gulliver--no less improbable than the former ones--to _Laputa_, the flying island of projectors and visionaries. This is a varied satire upon the Royal Society, the eccentricities of the savans, empirics of all kinds, mathematical magic, and the like. In this, political schemes to restore the pretender are aimed at. The Mississippi Scheme and the South Sea bubble are denounced.

Here, too, in his journey to Luggnagg, he introduces the sad and revolting picture of the Struldbrugs, those human beings who live on, losing all their power and becoming hideously old.

In his last voyage--to the land of the _Houyhnhnms_--his misanthropy is painfully manifest. This is the country where horses are masters, and men a servile and degraded race; and he has painted the men so brutish and filthy that the satire loses its point. The power of satire lies in contrast; we must compare the evil in men with the good: when the whole race is included in one sweeping condemnation, and an inferior being exalted, in opposition to all possibility, the standard is absurd, and the satirist loses his pains.

The horses are the _Houyhnhnms_, (the name is an attempt to imitate a neigh,) a n.o.ble race, who are amazed and disgusted at the Yahoos,--the degraded men,--upon whom Swift, in his sweeping misanthropy, has exhausted his bitterness and his filth.

STELLA AND VANESSA.--While Swift's mysterious a.s.sociations with Stella and Vanessa have but little to do with the course of English Literature, they largely affect his personality, and no sketch of him would be complete without introducing them to the reader. We cannot conjure up the tall, burly form, the heavy-browed, scowling, contemptuous face, the sharp blue eye, and the bushy black hair of the dean, without seeing on one side and the other the two pale, meek-eyed, devoted women, who watch his every look, shrink from his sudden bursts of wrath, receive for their infatuation a few fair words without sentiment, and earnestly crave a little love as a return for their whole hearts. It is a wonderful, touching, baffling story.

Stella he had known and taught in her young maidenhood at Sir William Temple's. As has been said, she was called the daughter of his steward and housekeeper, but conjectures are rife that she was Sir William's own child. When Swift removed to Ireland, she came, at Swift's request, with a matron friend, Mrs. Dingley, to live near him. Why he did not at once marry her, and why, at last, he married her secretly, in 1716, are questions over which curious readers have puzzled themselves in vain, and upon which, in default of evidence, some perhaps uncharitable conclusions have been reached. The story of their a.s.sociation may be found in the _Journal to Stella_.

With Miss Hester Vanhomrigh (Vanessa) he became acquainted in London, in 1712: he was also her instructor; and when with her he seems to have forgotten his allegiance to Stella. Cadenus, as he calls himself, was too tender and fond: Vanessa became infatuated; and when she heard of Swift's private marriage with Stella, she died of chagrin or of a broken heart.

She had cancelled the will which she had made in Swift's favor, and left it in charge to her executors to publish their correspondence. Both sides of the history of this connection are fully displayed in the poem of _Cadenus and Vanessa_, and in the _Correspondence of Swift and Vanessa_.

CHARACTER AND DEATH.--Pride overbearing and uncontrollable, misanthropy, excessive dogmatism, a singular pleasure in giving others pain, were among his personal faults or misfortunes. He abused his companions and servants; he never forgave his sister for marrying a tradesman; he could attract with winning words and repel with furious invective; and he was always anxiously desiring the day of his death, and cursing that of his birth.

His common farewell was "Good-bye; I hope we may never meet again." There is a painful levity in his verses _On the Death of Doctor Swift_, in which he gives an epitome of his life:

From Dublin soon to London spread, 'Tis told at court the dean is dead!

And Lady Suffolk, in the spleen, Runs laughing up to tell the queen: The queen, so gracious, mild, and good, Cries, "Is he gone? it's time he should."

At last the end came. While a young man, he had suffered from a painful attack of vertigo, brought on by a surfeit of fruit; "eating," he says, in a letter to Mrs. Howard, "an hundred golden pippins at a time." This had occasioned a deafness; and both giddiness and deafness had recurred at intervals, and at last manifestly affected his mind. Once, when walking with some friends, he had pointed to an elm-tree, blasted by lightning, and had said, "I shall be like that tree: I shall die first at the top."

And thus at last the doom fell. Struck on the brain, he lingered for nine years in that valley of spectral horrors, of whose only gates idiocy and madness are the hideous wardens. From this bondage he was released by death on the 19th of October, 1745.

Many have called it a fearful retribution for his sins, and especially for his treatment of Stella and Vanessa. A far more reasonable and charitable verdict is that the evil in his conduct through life had its origin in congenital disorder; and in his days of apparent sanity, the character of his eccentric actions is to be palliated, if not entirely excused, on the plea of insanity. Additional force is given to this judgment by the fact that, when he died, it was found that he had left his money to found a hospital for the insane, ill.u.s.trating the line,--

A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind.

In that day of great cla.s.sical scholars, Swift will hardly rank among the most profound; but he possessed a creative power, a ready and versatile fancy, a clear and pleasing but plain style. He has been unjustly accused by Lady Montagu of having stolen plot and humor from Cervantes and Rabelais: he drew from the same source as they; and those suggestions which came to him from them owe all their merit to his application of them. As a critic, he was heartless and rude; but as a polemic and a delineator of his age, he stands prominently forth as an historian, whose works alone would make us familiar with the period.

OTHER WRITERS OF THE AGE.

_Sir William Temple_, 1628-1698: he was a statesman and a political writer; rather a man of mark in his own day than of special interest to the present time. After having been engaged in several important diplomatic affairs, he retired to his seat of Moor Park, and employed himself in study and with his pen. His _Essays and Observations on Government_ are valuable as a clue to the history. In his controversy with Bentley on the _Epistles of Phalaris_, and the relative merits of ancient and modern authors, he was overmatched in scholars.h.i.+p. In a literary point of view, Temple deserves praise for the ease and beauty of his style. Dr.

Johnson says he "was the first writer who gave cadence to English prose."

"What can be more pleasant," says Charles Lamb, "than the way in which the retired statesman peeps out in his essays, penned in his delightful retreat at Shene?" He is perhaps better known in literary history as the early patron of Swift, than for his own works.

_Sir Isaac Newton_, 1642-1727: the chief glory of Newton is not connected with literary effort: he ranks among the most profound and original philosophers, and was one of the purest and most unselfish of men. The son of a farmer, he was born at Woolsthorpe, in Lincolns.h.i.+re, after his father's death,--a feeble, sickly child. The year of his birth was that in which Galileo died. At the age of fifteen he was employed on his mother's farm, but had already displayed such an ardor for learning that he was sent first to school and then to Cambridge, where he was soon conspicuous for his talents and his genius. In due time he was made a professor. His discoveries in astronomy, mechanics, and optics are of world-wide renown.

The law of gravitation was established by him, and set forth in his paper _De Motu Corporum_. His treatise on _Fluxions_ prepared the way for that wonderful mathematical, labor-saving instrument--the differential calculus. In 1687 he published his _Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica_, in which all his mathematical theories are propounded. In 1696 he was made Warden of the Mint, and in 1699 Master of the Mint. Long a member of the Royal Society, he was its president for the last twenty-four years of his life. In 1688 he was elected member of parliament for the university of Cambridge. Of purely literary works he left two, ent.i.tled respectively, _Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John_, and a _Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended_; both of which are of little present value except as the curious remains of so great a man.

_Viscount Bolingbroke_ (Henry St. John), 1678-1751: as an erratic statesman, a notorious free-thinker, a dissipated lord, a clever political writer, and an eloquent speaker, Lord Bolingbroke was a centre of attraction in his day, and demands observation in literary history. During the reign of Queen Anne he was a plotter in favor of the pretender, and when she died, he fled the realm to avoid impeachment for treason. In France he joined the pretender as Secretary of State, but was dismissed for intrigue; and on being pardoned by the English king, he returned to England. His writings are brilliant but specious. His influence was felt in the literary society he drew around him,--Swift, Pope, and others,--and, as has been already said, his opinions are to be found in that _Essay on Man_ which Pope dedicated to him. In his meteoric political career he represents and typifies one phase of the time in which he lived.

_George Berkeley_, 1684-1753: he was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and soon engaged in metaphysical controversy. In 1724 he was made Dean of Derry, and in 1734, Bishop of Cloyne. A man of great philanthropy, he set forth a scheme for the founding of the _Bermudas College_, to train missionaries for the colonies and to labor among the North American Indians. As a metaphysician, he was an _absolute idealist_. This is no place to discuss his theory. In the words of Dr. Reid, "He maintains ...

that there is no such thing as matter in the universe; that the sun and moon, earth and sea, our own bodies and those of our friends, are nothing but ideas in the minds of those who think of them, and that they have no existence when they are not objects of thought; that all that is in the universe may be reduced to two categories, to wit, _minds_ and _ideas in the mind_." The reader is referred, for a full discussion of this question, to Sir William Hamilton's _Metaphysics_. Berkeley's chief writings are: _New Theory of Vision, Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge_, and _Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous_. His name and memory are especially dear to the American people; for, although his scheme of the training-college failed, he lived for two years and a half in Newport, where his house still stands, and where one of his children is buried. He presented to Yale College his library and his estate in Rhode Island, and he wrote that beautiful poem with its kindly prophecy:

Westward the course of empire takes its way: The four first acts already past, A fifth shall close the drama with the day; Time's n.o.blest offspring is the last.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF MODERN FICTION.

The New Age. Daniel Defoe. Robinson Crusoe. Richardson. Pamela, and Other Novels. Fielding. Joseph Andrews. Tom Jones. Its Moral. Smollett.

Roderick Random. Peregrine Pickle.

THE NEW AGE.

We have now reached a new topic in the course of English Literature--contemporaneous, indeed, with the subjects just named, but marked by new and distinct development. It was a period when numerous and distinctive forms appeared; when genius began to segregate into schools and divisions; when the progress of letters and the demands of popular curiosity gave rise to works which would have been impossible, because uncalled for, in any former period. English enterprise was extending commerce and scattering useful arts in all quarters of the globe, and thus giving new and rich materials to English letters. Clive was making himself a lord in India; Braddock was losing his army and his life in America.

This spirit of English enterprise in foreign lands was evoking literary activity at home: there was no exploit of English valor, no extension of English dominion and influence, which did not find its literary reproduction. Thus, while it was an age of historical research, it was also that of actual delineations of curious novelties at home and abroad.

Poetry was in a transition state; it was taking its leave of the unhealthy satire and the technical wit of Queen Anne's reign, and attempting, on the one hand, the impostures of Macpherson and Chatterton,--to which we shall hereafter refer,--and, on the other, the restoration of the pastoral from the theatrical to the real, in Thomson's song of the Rolling Year, and Cowper's pleasant Task, so full of life and nature. Swallow-like, English poetry had hung about the eaves or skimmed the surface of town and court; but now, like the lark, it soared into freer air--

Ctusque vulgares et udam Spernit humum fugiente penna.

In short, it was a day of general awakening. The intestine troubles excited by the Jacobites were brought to an end by the disaster of Culloden, in 1745. The German campaigns culminating at Minden, in 1759, opened a door to the study of German literature, and of the Teutonic dialects as elements of the English language.

It is, therefore, not astonis.h.i.+ng that in this period Literature should begin to arrange itself into its present great divisions. As in an earlier age the drama had been born to cater to a popular taste, so in this, to satisfy the public demand, arose English _prose fiction_ in its peculiar and enduring form. There had been grand and desultory works preceding this, such as _Robinson Crusoe, The Pilgrim's Progress_, and Swift's inimitable story of _Gulliver_; but the modern novel, unlike these, owes its origin to a general desire for delineations of private life and manners. "Show us ourselves!" was the cry.

A novel may be defined as a fict.i.tious story of modern life describing the management and mastery of the human pa.s.sions, and especially the universal pa.s.sion of love. Its power consists in the creation of ideal characters, which leave a real impress upon the reader's mind; it must be a prose _epic_ in that there is always a hero, or, at least, a heroine, generally both, and a _drama_ in its presentation of scenes and supplementary personages. Thackeray calls his _Vanity Fair_ a novel without a hero: it is impossible to conceive a novel without a heroine. There must also be a _denouement_, or consummation; in short, it must have, in the words of Aristotle, a beginning, middle, and ending, in logical connection and consecutive interest.

DANIEL DEFOE.--Before, however, proceeding to consider the modern novel, we must make mention of one author, distinctly of his own age as a political pamphleteer, but who, in his chief and inimitable work, stands alone, without antecedent or consequent. _Robinson Crusoe_ has had a host of imitators, but no rival.

Daniel Foe, or, as he afterwards called himself, De Foe, was born in London, in the year 1661. He was the son of a butcher, but such was his early apt.i.tude, for learning, that he was educated to become a dissenting minister. His own views, however, were different: he became instead a political author, and wrote with great force against the government of James II. and the Established Church, and in favor of the dissenters. When the Duke of Monmouth landed to make his fatal campaign, Defoe joined his standard; but does not seem to have suffered with the greater number of the duke's adherents.

He was a warm supporter of William III.; and his famous poem, _The True-Born Englishman_, was written in answer to an attack upon the king and the Dutch, called _The Foreigners_. Of his own poem he says, in the preface, "When I see the town full of lampoons and invectives against the Dutch, only because they are foreigners, and the king reproached and insulted by insolent pedants and ballad-making poets for employing foreigners and being a foreigner himself, I confess myself moved by it to remind our nation of their own original, thereby to let them see what a banter they put upon themselves, since--speaking of Englishmen _ab origine_--we are really all foreigners ourselves:"

The Pict and painted Briton, treach'rous Scot, By hunger, theft, and rapine hither brought; Norwegian pirates, buccaneering Danes, Whose red-haired offspring everywhere remains; Who, joined with Norman-French, compound the breed From whence your true-born Englishmen proceed.

In 1702, just after the death of King William, Defoe published his severely ironical pamphlet, _The Shortest Way with the Dissenters_.

a.s.suming the character of a High Churchman, he says: "'Tis vain to trifle in the matter. The light, foolish handling of them by fines is their glory and advantage. If the gallows instead of the compter, and the galleys instead of the fines, were the reward of going to a conventicle, there would not be so many sufferers." His irony was at first misunderstood: the High Churchmen hailed him as a champion, and the Dissenters hated him as an enemy. But when his true meaning became apparent, a reward of 50 was offered by the government for his discovery. His so-called "scandalous and seditious pamphlet" was burnt by the common hangman: he was tried, and sentenced to pay two hundred marks, to stand three times in the pillory, and to be imprisoned during the queen's pleasure. He bore his sentence bravely, and during his two years' residence in prison he published a periodical called _The Review_. In 1709 he wrote a _History of the Union_ between England and Scotland.

ROBINSON CRUSOE.--But none of these things, nor all combined, would have given to Defoe that immortality which is his as the author of _Robinson Crusoe_. Of the groundwork of the story not much need be said.