A History of English Prose Fiction Part 15

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 pa.s.sages 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 fict.i.tious 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 superst.i.tious 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 scene_ could supply to her supernatural effects was most skilfully brought into play. Lonely castles, secret pa.s.sages, gloomy churches, and monkish superst.i.tions,--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 superst.i.tious 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 ma.s.ses 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 ill.u.s.trate, 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.

[Footnote 201: "The Mysteries of Udolpho," chap. xix.]

[Footnote 202: "The Mysteries of Udolpho," ch. iv.]

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 a.s.sume 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 fict.i.tious 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 quant.i.ty 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 pa.s.sion.

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 quant.i.ty 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 coa.r.s.eness and licentiousness had a strong tendency to disseminate the morbid thoughts and unregulated pa.s.sions 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.sed "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 amus.e.m.e.nt they afforded be called up in their favor. No amus.e.m.e.nt 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 pa.s.sed 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 fellows.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sed. 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 fas.h.i.+onable 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 inst.i.tutions of Oriental life. He has taken his characters from historic times, and has recommended the past for the instruction or amus.e.m.e.nt 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 fas.h.i.+onable 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 const.i.tuted, 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 authors.h.i.+p. 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 pa.s.s the time which hung heavily on their hands; to put into form their dreams or experiences; to gratify a mere literary vanity. The needy n.o.bleman has made profitable use of his name on the t.i.tle-page of a novel purporting to give information concerning fas.h.i.+onable 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 quant.i.ty 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 s.e.x 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, coa.r.s.eness 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 d.i.c.kens, 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 a.s.sociated with it, that parental censors.h.i.+p 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 const.i.tutes 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 a.s.sociates 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 ign.o.ble, 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'a.s.sommoir" 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 gla.s.s _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 inst.i.tutions 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 s.h.i.+eling--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 n.o.bility 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. c.o.c.kburn 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 s.h.i.+pwreck. His pa.s.sion rose with the storm. He lifted his eyes and hands: 'There's the mast gone!' says he. 'Crash it goes! They will all peris.h.!.+' 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 G.o.d, he instantly yielded. When taken to bed last night, he told his aunt he liked that lady. 'What lady?' says she. 'Why, Mrs.

c.o.c.kburn, 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."