A History of English Prose Fiction Part 13

"Tristram Shandy" has all the elements of a novel except the plot. The author has no story to tell. His aim is to amuse the reader by odd and whimsical remarks on every subject and on every personage whose peculiarities promise material for humor and satire. Sterne is perpetually digressing, moralizing commenting on every trivial topic which enters into his story, until the story itself is completely lost, if, indeed, it can be said ever to have been begun. The absence of arrangement is so marked that it is very difficult to turn to a pa.s.sage which in a previous perusal has struck the eye. The eccentricity and whimsicality of the book contributed greatly to its immediate popularity. But the same characteristics which seem brilliant when novel, soon become dull when familiar, and although "Tristram Shandy"

will always afford single pa.s.sages of lasting interest to the lover of literature, the work as a whole is not a little tedious when read continuously from cover to cover.

In the course of his literary medley, Sterne introduces his reader to a group of characters amongst the most odd and original in fiction. Mr.

Shandy, with his syllogisms and his hypotheses, his "close reasoning upon the smallest matters"; Yorick, the witty parson, whose epitaph, _Alas! Poor Yorick!_ expresses so tenderly the amiable faults for which he suffered; Captain Shandy, that combination of simplicity, gentleness, humanity, and modesty, are all creations which deserve to rank with the most individual and happily conceived of fict.i.tious personages. Sterne makes a character known to the reader by a succession of delicate touches rather than by description. He seems to enter into an individual, and make him betray his peculiarities by significant actions and phrases. Thus Mr. Shandy exposes at once the nature of his mind and the vigor of his "hobby-horse," when he exclaims to his brother Toby: "What is the character of a family to an hypothesis?"

The combination of sentiment, pathos, and humor which Sterne sometimes reached with remarkable success, is particularly apparent in every incident which concerns the celebrated Captain Toby Shandy, for the creation of which character this author may most easily be forgiven his indecencies and his literary thefts. Uncle Toby's sympathy with Lefevre, a poor army officer, on his way to join his regiment, who died in an inn near Shandy's house, is exquisitely painted throughout, and the colloquy between the captain and his faithful servant, Corporal Trim, when the death of the officer is imminent, is probably the finest pa.s.sage which ever fell from the skilful pen of Laurence Sterne:

A sick brother-officer should have the best quarters, Trim; and if we had him with us,--we could tend and look to him.--Thou art an excellent nurse thyself, Trim: and what with thy care of him, and the old woman's, and his boy's, and mine together, we might recruit him again at once, and set him upon his legs.

--In a fortnight or three weeks, added my uncle Toby, smiling, he might march.--He will never march, an' please your Honour, in this world, said the Corporal.--He _will_ march, said my uncle Toby, rising up from the side of the bed with one shoe off.--An' please your Honour, said the Corporal, he will never march but to his grave. He _shall_ march, cried my uncle Toby, marching the foot which had a shoe on, though without advancing an inch,--he _shall_ march to his regiment.--He cannot stand it, said the Corporal.--He shall be supported, said my uncle Toby.--He'll drop at last, said the Corporal, and what will become of his boy? He _shall not_ drop said my uncle Toby, firmly,--Ah, well-a-day!--do what we can for him, said Trim, maintaining his point,--the poor soul will die.--_He shall not die, by G--_, cried my uncle Toby.

--The _accusing spirit_, which flew up to Heaven's chancery with the oath, blushed as he gave it in;--and the _recording angel_, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever.[190]

"Ye, who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow; attend to the history of Ra.s.selas, Prince of Abyssinia." Thus begins the famous tale which Dr. Johnson made the repository of so much of his wisdom, and so beautiful an example of English style. Ra.s.selas and his royal brothers and sisters live in a secluded portion of the earth known as the Happy Valley, where, completely isolated from the world, they await their succession to the crown of the imaginary land of Abyssinia, surrounded by every luxury which can make life agreeable, and shut off from all knowledge of those evils which can make it painful. The aim of the story is to show the vanity of expecting perfect happiness, and the folly of sacrificing present advantages for the delusive promises of the future.

The scene opens in the Happy Valley, where there is all that labor or danger can procure or purchase, without either labor to be endured or danger to be dreaded. Ra.s.selas ill.u.s.trates the habitual discontent of man by wearying of the monotonous happiness of his royal home, and, together with his sister Nekayah, who shares his ennui, and Imlac, a man of learning, he escapes from the abode of changeless joys and perpetual merriment.

Once beyond the barriers of the Happy Valley, Ra.s.selas and Nekayah seek in the various ranks and conditions of men the abode of true happiness. It is sought in vain amidst the hollow and noisy pleasures of the young and thoughtless; in vain among philosophers, whose theories so ill accord with their practice; in vain among shepherds, whose actual life contrasts so painfully with the descriptions of the poet; in vain in crowds, where sorrow lurks beneath the outward smile; in vain in the cell of the hermit, who counts the days till he shall once more mix with the world. The task becomes more hopeless with each new disappointment. Ra.s.selas pursues his investigation among the higher ranks, in courts and cities; Nekayah, hers among the poor and humble, in the shop and the hamlet. But when the brother and sister meet to share their experiences, they both have the same tale to tell of human discontent. Finally, in returning disappointed to Abyssinia, they ill.u.s.trate the tendency among men to look back with regret on the early pleasures of life, abandoned for the impossible happiness which discontent had taught them to seek.

On this slight thread of narrative, Johnson strung his thoughts with great felicity. The characters, by the different view which they entertain of life, are distinct and individual. The book is filled with pregnant and beautiful pa.s.sages, which leave a deep impression on the reader. The words in which Imlac describes to the Prince and Princess the dangers of an unrestrained imagination, might, with equal propriety, find a place in a scientific treatise on the causes of insanity, and in a collection of beautiful literary extracts:

To indulge the power of fiction, and send imagination out upon the wing, is often the sport of those who delight too much in silent speculation. When we are alone, we are not always busy; the labour of excogitation is too violent to last long; the ardour of inquiry will sometimes give way to idleness or satiety. He who has nothing external that can divert him, must find pleasure in his own thoughts, and must conceive himself what he is not; for who is pleased with what he is? He then expatiates in boundless futurity, and culls from all imaginable conditions that which for the present moment he should most desire, amuses his desires with impossible enjoyments, and confers upon his pride unattainable dominion. The mind dances from scene to scene, unites all pleasures in all combinations, and riots in delights which nature and fortune, with all their bounty, cannot bestow.

In time, some particular train of ideas fixes the attention; all other intellectual gratifications are rejected; the mind, in weariness or leisure, recurs constantly to the favorite conception, and feasts on the luscious falsehood whenever she is offended with the bitterness of truth. By degrees, the reign of fancy is confirmed; she grows first imperious, and in time, despotic. Then fictions begin to operate as realities, false opinions fasten upon the mind, and life pa.s.ses in dreams of rapture or of anguish.[191]

The resemblance between Johnson's "Ra.s.selas" and Voltaire's "Candide"

is so marked, that had either author seen the other's work, he must have been suspected of imitation. But while both these great minds were writing at nearly the same time on the same theme of human misery, the lessons they taught differed in a manner which is strongly ill.u.s.trative of the differences between the two men and their respective surroundings. French scepticism and distrust of divine power led Voltaire to impute human griefs to the incapacity of the Creator. But Johnson, writing "Ra.s.selas" in an hour of sorrow, to obtain means to pay for his mother's funeral, taught that that happiness, which this world can not afford, should be sought in the prospect of another and a better.[192]

All readers of Boswell know how the "Vicar of Wakefield" found a publisher. How Goldsmith's landlady arrested him for his rent, and how he wrote to Johnson in his distress. How the kind lexicographer sent a guinea at once, and followed to find the guinea already changed, and a bottle of Madeira before the persecuted but philosophical author. How Johnson put the cork in the bottle, and after a hasty glance at the MS.

of the "Vicar of Wakefield," went out and sold it for sixty pounds. And how triumphantly Goldsmith rated his landlady.

In the hands of that bookseller, who purchased the novel as much out of charity as in hope of profit, the "Vicar of Wakefield" remained neglected, until the publication of "The Traveler" had made the author famous. This interval would have afforded Goldsmith ample time to correct the obvious inconsistencies and faults which his work contained. But in the spirit of a man who depended on his pen for his bread, he made no effort to improve what had already brought him all this remuneration for which he could hope. This is the more to be regretted, that very little revision would have been sufficient, to make the "Vicar of Wakefield" as perfect in its construction as in its style and spirit. "There are a hundred faults in this thing," says the preface, "and a hundred things might be said to prove them beauties.

But it is needless. A book may be amusing with numerous errors, or it may be very dull without a single absurdity. The hero of this piece unites in himself the three greatest characters upon earth;--he is a priest, a husbandman, and the father of a family. He is drawn as ready to teach, and ready to obey--as simple in affluence, and majestic in adversity."

These few words are not an inaccurate statement of the merits and demerits of the "Vicar of Wakefield." Faults there are, certainly. The improbability of Sir William Thornhill's being able to go about among his own tenantry _incognito_, without other disguise than a change of dress; the inconsistency of the philanthropist's allowing his villainous nephew to retain possession of the wealth which he used only to a.s.sist him in his crimes; and, finally, the impossibility of that nephew's being so nearly of an age with Sir William himself, when he must have been the son of a younger brother, are all blemishes which Goldsmith might easily have removed, had he not relied on the opinion which he expressed in Chapter xv, "the reputation of books is raised, not by their freedom from defect, but by the greatness of their beauties."

Such a rule would be an obviously dangerous one for an author to follow. But Goldsmith's confidence in the beauties of his novel was fully justified by the verdict of the world. No novelist has more deeply imbued his work with his own genius and spirit, and none have had a more beneficent genius, nor a more beautiful spirit to impart than the author of "The Deserted Village." The exquisite style, the delicate choice of words, the amiability of sentiment, so peculiarly his own, and so well suited to express the simple beauty of his thoughts, give a charm to the work which familiarity can only endear.

Dr. Primrose, preserving his simplicity, his modesty, and his n.o.bility of character alike when surrounded by the pleasures of his early and prosperous home, when struggling with the hards.h.i.+ps of his ruined fortune, and when rewarded at last by the surfeit of good-fortune which follows his trial, stands high among the most n.o.ble conceptions of English fiction. "We read the 'Vicar of Wakefield,'" said the great Sir Walter, "in youth and in age. We return to it again and again, and bless the memory of an author who contrives so well to reconcile us to human nature."

Goethe, when in his eighty-first year, declared that Goldsmith's novel "was his delight at the age of twenty, that it had in a manner formed a part of his education, influencing his tastes and feelings throughout life, and that he had recently read it again from beginning to end, with renewed delight, and with a grateful sense of the early benefit derived from it." "Rogers, the Nestor of British literature, whose refined purity of taste and exquisite mental organization rendered him eminently calculated to appreciate a work of the kind, declared that of all the books, which, through the fitful changes of three generations he had seen rise and fall, the charm of the 'Vicar of Wakefield' had alone continued as at first; and could he revisit the world after an interval of many more generations, he should as surely look to find it undiminished." So wrote Was.h.i.+ngton Irving; and if the reader is inclined to look for the causes of the extraordinary endurance of Goldsmith's work, he can find them nowhere better stated than in the words of John Forster: "Not in those graces of style, nor even in that home-cherished gallery of familiar faces can the secret of its extraordinary fascination be said to consist. It lies nearer the heart.

A something which has found its way _there_; which, while it amused, has made us happier; which, gently interweaving itself with our habits of thought, has increased our good-humour and charity; which, insensibly it may be, has corrected wilful impatiences of temper, and made the world's daily accidents easier and kinder to us all; somewhat thus should be expressed, I think, the charm of the 'Vicar of Wakefield.'"

In 1760 was published "Chrysal, the Adventures of a Guinea," by Charles Johnstone, the author of several deservedly forgotten novels.[193] The first volume was sent to Dr. Johnson for his opinion, who thought, as Boswell tells us, that it should be published--an estimate justified by the considerable circulation which the book enjoyed.

Chrysal is an elementary spirit, whose abode is in a piece of gold converted into a guinea. In that form the spirit pa.s.ses from man to man, and takes accurate note of the different scenes of which it becomes a witness. This is a natural and favorable medium for a satire, which Johnstone probably owed, in some measure, both to the "Diable Boiteux" of Gil Blas, and the "Adventures of a Halfpenny" of Dr.

Bathurst. The circulation of the guinea enables the author to describe the characteristics of its possessors as seen by a truthful witness, and he has taken advantage of his opportunity to produce one of the most disgusting records of vice in literature. A depraved mind only could find any pleasure in reading "Chrysal," and whoever is obliged to read it from cover to cover for the purpose of describing it to others, must find himself, at the end of his task, in sore vexation of spirit.

Human depravity is never an agreeable subject for a work of entertainment, and while Swift's genius holds the reader fascinated with the horror of his Yahoos, the ability of a Manley or a Johnstone is not sufficient to aid the reader in wading through their vicious expositions of corruption. It must be said that Johnstone had some excuse. If he were to satirize society at all, it was better that he should do it thoroughly; that he should expose official greed and dishonesty, the orgies of Medenham Abbey, the infamous extortions of trading justices, in all their native ugliness. It must be said that the time in which he lived presented many features to the painter of manners which could not look otherwise than repulsive on his canvas.

But his zeal to expose the vices of his age led him into doing great injustice to some persons, and into grossly libelling others. He imputed crimes to individuals of which he could have had no knowledge; and he shamefully misrepresented the Methodists and the Jews. If Johnstone had wished to see how offensive a book he might write, and how disgusting and indecent a book the public of his day would read and applaud, he might well have brought "Chrysal" into the world. If he had intended, by exposing crime, to check it, he had better have burned his ma.n.u.script. He has added one other corruption to those he exposed, and one other evidence of the lack of taste and decency which characterized his time. No man can plead the intention of a reformer as an excuse for placing before the world the scenes and suggestions of unnatural crime which sully the pages of "Chrysal," and if men do, in single instances, fall below the level of brutes, he who gloats over their infamy and publishes their contagious guilt deserves some share of their odium.

The novels of Henry Mackenzie have a charm of their own, which may be largely attributed to the fact that their author was a gentleman.

Whoever has read, to any extent, the works of fiction of the eighteenth century, must have observed how perpetually he was kept in low company, how rarely he met with a character who had the instincts as well as the social position of a gentleman. A tone of refined sentiment and dignity pervades "The Man of Feeling," which recalls the "Vicar of Wakefield,"

and introduces the reader to better company and more elevated thoughts than the novels of the time usually afford. "The Man of Feeling" is hardly a narrative. Harley, the chief character, is a sensitive, retiring man, with feelings too fine for his surroundings. The author places him in various scenes, and traces the effect which each produces upon his character. The effect of the work is agreeable, though melancholy, and the early death of Harley completes the delineation of a man too gentle and too sensitive to battle with life.

In his next novel Mackenzie described the counterpart of Harley, "The Man of the World." Almost any writer of the present day who took a man of the world for his hero, would draw him as a calm, philosophical person, neither very good nor very bad,--one who took the pleasures and troubles of life as they came, without quarrelling with either. But the man of the world as Mackenzie paints him, and as the eighteenth century made him, was quite another individual. Sir Thomas Sindall is a villain of the heroic type. Not one, simply, who does all the injury and commits all the crimes which chance brings in his way. He labors with a ceaseless persistency, and a resolution which years do not diminish, to seduce a single woman. Without any apparent pa.s.sion, he finally accomplishes his object by force, after having spent several years in ruining her brother to prevent his interference. The long periods of time, the great expenditure of vital energy, and the exhaustless fund of brutality which are consumed by the fict.i.tious villains of the eighteenth century in gratifying what would seem merely a pa.s.sing inclination, astonish the reader of to-day. The crime of rape, rarely now introduced into fiction, and rarely figuring even in criminal courts, is a common incident in old novels, and as commonly, remains unpunished. In Sir Thomas Sindall, Mackenzie meant to present a contrast to the delicate and benevolent character of Harley. Both are extremes, the one of sensibility, the other of brutality. Harley was a new creation, but Sindall quite a familiar person, with whom all readers of the novels of the last century have often a.s.sociated.

It was suggested very sensibly to Mackenzie, that the interest of most works of fiction depended on the _designing_ villainy of one or more characters, and that in actual life calamities were more often brought about by the innocent errors of the sufferers. To place this view before his readers, Mackenzie wrote "Julia de Roubigne," in which a wife brings death upon herself and her husband by indiscreetly, though innocently, arousing his jealousy. Sir Walter Scott ranked this novel among the "most heart-wringing histories" that ever were written--a description which justly becomes it. Mackenzie's aim was less to weave a complicated plot, than to study and move the heart; and to the lover of sentiment his novels may still be attractive.

The "Fool of Quality," by Henry Brooke, has had a singular history. The author was a young Irishman of a fine figure, a well-stored mind, and a disposition of particular gentleness. He was loved by Pope and Lyttleton, caressed by the Prince of Wales, and honored by the friendly interest of Jonathan Swift. Married before he was twenty-one to a young girl who presented him with three children before she was eighteen, his life was a constant struggle to provide for a family which increased with every year. After a long period of active life, pa.s.sed in literary occupations, he retired to an obscure part of Ireland, and there died, attended by a daughter, the only survivor of twenty-two children, who remembered nothing of her father "previous to his retirement from the world; and knew little of him, save that he bore the infirmities and misfortunes of his declining years with the heroism of true Christianity, and that he was possessed of virtues and feelings which shone forth to the last moment of his life, unimpaired by the distractions of pain, and unshaken amid the ruins of genius."[194]

The "Fool of Quality" was first published in 1766, and received a moderate share of public attention. Its narrative was extremely slight.

Harry, the future Earl of Moreland, was stolen from his parents by an uncle in disguise; and the five volumes of the work consist almost entirely of an account of the education of the child, and the various incidents which affected or ill.u.s.trated his mental growth. One day John Wesley chanced to meet with it, and although he required his followers "to read only such books as tend to the knowledge and love of G.o.d," he was tempted to look into this particular novel. The "whimsical t.i.tle"

at first offended him, but as he proceeded, he became so enthusiastic over the moral excellence of the work, that he expunged some offensive pa.s.sages it contained, and republished it for the benefit of the Methodists. "I now venture to recommend the following treatise," said Wesley to his people, "as the most excellent in its kind that I have seen either in the English or any other language. * * * It perpetually aims at inspiring and increasing every right affection; at the instilling grat.i.tude to G.o.d and benevolence to man. And it does this not by dry, dull, tedious, precepts, but by the liveliest examples that can be conceived; by setting before your eyes one of the most beautiful pictures that ever was drawn in the world. The strokes of this are so delicately fine, the touches so easy, natural, and affecting, that I know not who can survey it with tearless eyes, unless he has a heart of stone. I recommend it, therefore, to all those who are already, or who desire to be, lovers of G.o.d and man." It was not as a good novel that Wesley either enjoyed or republished the "Fool of Quality." He recommended it for the excellence of its moral, and the "Fool of Quality" would have been allowed to slumber forever on Methodist book-shelves, had it not been revived by a man who was an equally good judge of a moral and a work of fiction.

But, in regard to this novel, it must be admitted that Charles Kingsley's judgment was seriously at fault. He saw both its qualities and its faults, but he did not realize that a good purpose will not make up for a poor execution. The causes of the neglect of the book, said the Canon in his preface, are to be found "in its deep and grand ethics, in its broad and genial humanity, in the divine value which it attaches to the relations of husband and wife, father and child, and to the utter absence, both of that sentimentalism and that superst.i.tion which have been alternately debauching of late years the minds of the young. And if he shall have arrived at this discovery, he will be able possibly to regard at least with patience those who are rash enough to affirm that they have learnt from this book more which is pure, sacred, and eternal, than from any which has been published since Spenser's 'Fairy Queen.'"[195] On the testimony of Wesley and of Kingsley, all the merits of a moral nature which they claim for the "Fool of Quality"

will readily be accorded to it. But it is very doubtful that such qualities would necessarily interfere with the success of a work of fiction. The real reason why very few who can help it will read this novel, lies in those characteristics which Kingsley himself admitted would appear to the average reader. "The plot is extravagant as well as ill-woven, and broken, besides, by episodes as extravagant as itself.

The morality is quixotic, and practically impossible. The sermonizing, whether theological or social, is equally clumsy and obtrusive. Without artistic method, without knowledge of human nature and the real world, the book can never have touched many hearts and can touch none now."[196]

It is singular that Kingsley should have expected that a book with so many and so evident faults could have remained popular simply because its moral was a good one. If he had sat down to warn the world against Henry Brooke's novel, he could hardly have expressed himself with more effect. Whatever merit it may have is buried under a ma.s.s of dulness almost impossible to penetrate, and a silliness pervades the characters and the conversations which makes even the lighter portions unreadable.

The "Fool of Quality" has all the drawbacks of a novel of purpose in an exaggerated form. The improvement of his reader is a laudable object for a novelist. But it is an object which can be successfully carried out in a work of art, only very indirectly. An author may have a great influence for good, but that influence can be obtained, not by deliberate sermonizing, but only by tone of healthy sentiment which insensibly elevates the reader's mind.

Toward the end of the eighteenth century, the number and variety of works of fiction rapidly increased. William Beckford, whom Byron calls in "Childe Harold," "Vathek, England's wealthiest son," wrote in his twentieth year the oriental romance "Vathek," which excited great attention at the time. It was composed in three days and two nights, during which the author never took off his clothes. Byron considered this tale superior to "Ra.s.selas." It represented the downward career of an oriental prince, who had given himself up to sensual indulgence, and who is allured by a Giaour into the commission of crimes which lead him to everlasting and horrible punishments. "Vathek" gives evidence of a familiarity with oriental customs, and a vividness of imagination which are remarkable in so youthful an author. The descriptions of the Caliph and of the Hall of Eblis are full of power. But in depth of meaning, and in that intrinsic worth which gives endurance to a literary work, it bears no comparison to "Ra.s.selas." The one affords an hour's amus.e.m.e.nt; the other retains its place among those volumes which are read and re-read with constant pleasure and satisfaction.

The novels of Richard c.u.mberland, "Henry," "Arundel," and "John de Lancaster," contain some well-drawn characters and readable sketches of life. But c.u.mberland had little originality. He aimed without success at Fielding's constructive excellence, and imitated that great master's humor, only to reproduce his coa.r.s.eness. The character of Ezekiel Daw, the Methodist, in "Henry," is fair and just, and contrasts very favorably with the libellous representations of the Methodist preachers in Graves' "Spiritual Quixote," and other contemporary novels. Another writer of fiction of considerable prominence in his day, but of none in ours, was Dr. Moore, whose "Zeluco" contained some very lively "Views of human nature, taken from life and manners, foreign and domestic,"

but also some very disagreeable exhibitions of human degradation and vice.

The influence of the French Revolution in England is apparent in the works of several novelists who wrote at the end of the eighteenth century. Thomas Holcroft embodied radical views in novels now quite forgotten.[197] Robert Bage has left four works containing opinions of a revolutionary character--"Barham Downs," "James Wallace," "The Fair Syrian," and "Mount Henneth." These novels are written in the form of a series of letters and have little narrative interest. The author has striven, sometimes successfully, at a powerful delineation of character, but his works are too evidently a vehicle for his political and philosophical opinions. He represents with unnatural consistency the upper cla.s.ses as invariably corrupt and tyrannical, and the lower as invariably honest and deserving. His theories are not only inartistically prominent, but are worthless and immoral. He looks upon a tax-gatherer as a thief, and condones feminine unchast.i.ty as a trivial and unimportant offence.

The novelist most deeply embued with the doctrines of the French Revolution was William G.o.dwin--a man of great literary ambition, and less literary capacity. His "Life of Chaucer" has the merits of a compilation, but not those of an original literary work. His political and social writings were merely reproductions of French revolutionary views, and were entirely discredited by Malthus' attacks upon them. The same lack of originality and of independent power characterized G.o.dwin's novels. They all have a patch-work effect, and in all may be found the traces of imitation. "St. Leon" and "Mandeville"[198] are dull attempts in the direction of the historical novel. "Fleetwood, or the New Man of Feeling" embodies some of the author's social views, and contains evidence of an imitation of Fielding and Smollett, in which only their coa.r.s.eness is successfully copied.

But G.o.dwin gave one book to the world which has acquired a notoriety which ent.i.tles it to a more extended notice than its intrinsic merits would otherwise justify. "Caleb Williams" was first published in 1794, and was widely read. Lord Byron is said to have threatened his wife that he would treat her as Falkland had treated Caleb Williams, and this fact brought the novel into prominence with the Byron controversy, and occasioned its republication in the present century. The author tells us that his object was "to comprehend a general review of the modes of domestic and unrecorded despotism by which man becomes the destroyer of man." And this was to be done "without subtracting from the interest and pa.s.sion by which a performance of this sort (a novel) ought to be characterized." In both his didactic and his artistic purpose the author must be said to have failed. The story is briefly as follows: Falkland, who is represented as a man whose chief thought and consideration consist in guarding his honor from stain, stabs Tyrrel, his enemy, in the back, at night. He then allows two innocent men to suffer for the murder on the gallows. His aim, during the remainder of his life, is to prevent the discovery of his crime and the consequent disgrace to his name. Caleb Williams enters his employment as a secretary, discovers the secret with the greatest ease, and promises never to betray his patron. Williams soon becomes weary of his position, and attempts to escape. He is accused by Falkland of robbery and is imprisoned. He escapes from prison, and wanders about the country, always pursued by the hirelings of his master who use every means to render his life miserable. Finally he openly accuses Falkland of his crime, who confesses it and dies. The story is full of the most evident inconsistencies. There is no adequate reason for Tyrrel's hatred of Falkland, which leads to the murder. It is inconceivable that a man of Falkland's wors.h.i.+p of honor should commit so dastardly a crime, and should suffer two innocent men to pay its penalty. The facility with which Falkland allows his secretary to discover a secret which would bring him to the gallows is entirely inconsistent with the strength of mind which the author imputes to his hero. Finally, the confession of crime, after so many years of secrecy, and when conscience must have been blunted by time and habit, is without adequate cause. The characters are very slightly sketched, and excite neither interest nor sympathy. Emily Melville resembles Pamela too closely, and Tyrrel is a poor reproduction of Squire Western.

G.o.dwin tells us that, when thinking over "Caleb Williams," he said to himself a thousand times: "I will write a tale, that shall const.i.tute an epoch in the mind of the reader, that no one, after he has read it, shall ever be exactly the same man that he was before." The effort, and straining after effect which this confession implies, are evident throughout the work. The reader's curiosity is continually excited by the promise of new interest and new developments, but he is as continually disappointed. The main idea of the story is certainly a striking one, but it is feebly carried out. The const.i.tution of society cannot be effectively attacked by so improbable and exceptional an ill.u.s.tration of tyranny as the persecution of Caleb Williams.

[Footnote 189: It would be difficult to find a more bare-faced and impudent literary theft than the case in which Sterne appropriated to himself the remonstrance of Burton ("Anatomy of Melancholy"), against that very plagiarism which he (Sterne) was then committing. Burton said: "As apothecaries, we make new mixtures, every day pour out of one vessel into another * * * We weave the same web, still twist the same rope again and again." Sterne says, with an effrontery all his own: "Shall we forever make new books, as apothecaries make new medicines, by pouring only out of one vessel into another? Are we forever to be twisting and untwisting the same rope--forever in the same track?

forever at the same pace?" For Sterne's plagiarism, see Dr. Ferriar's "Essay and Ill.u.s.trations," also Scott's "Life of Sterne."]

[Footnote 190: "Tristram Shandy," orig. ed., vol. viii, chap. 8.]

[Footnote 191: "Ra.s.selas," chap. xliv. Contrast with Porter on "The Human Intellect," pp. 371-2.]

[Footnote 192: See Scott's "Memoir of Johnson."]

[Footnote 193: "The Reverie," "The History of Arbaces," "The Pilgrim,"

"The History of John Juniper."]

[Footnote 194: The facts of Brooke's life are taken from the introduction to the "Fool of Quality," by Rev. Charles Kingsley, New York, 1860.]