184

RECENT MEMOIRS.

admirable exponent in G. Henry Lewes's "Life of Goethe," a fine study of a remarkable intellect. And now, in conclusion, I must put together, without attempting any arrangement, some recent biographies of acknowledged interest and merit, such as Mr. W. H. Lecky's Lives of Flood, Grattan, and Daniel O'Connell, in his "Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland;" Lord Dalling's "Historic Characters," which, however, are more critical than biographical; Miss Agnes Strickland's entertaining "Lives of the Queens" and Mrs. Everett Green's "Lives of the Princesses" of England; Canon Ashwell's (unfinished) "Life of Bishop Wilberforce; "Sir William Stirling-Maxwell's "Cloister Life of the Emperor Charles V.;" George Henry Lewes's "Life of Maximilian Robespierre;" Mrs. Oliphant's "Life of Edward Irving," a man of fine but wayward genius; James Spedding's "Life and Letters of Lord Bacon," a work of profound research, which fulfils the purpose of its writer, and enables us to form a true conception of the kind of man Bacon was; Lord Campbell's gossipy "Lives of the Lord Chancellors" and "Chief Justices," and Dean Hook's "Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury;" Mr. Hepworth Dixon's Lives of John Howard and William Penn; John Forster's masterly "Life of Oliver Goldsmith," his "Life of Sir John Eliot," and biographies of Walter Savage Landor and Charles Dickens (the latter should be read along with the "Letters of Charles Dickens," recently published); Dr. Burn Jones's "Life of Faraday," which contains much encouragement for self-helpers; Dr. Hanna's "Life of Dr. Chalmers; " Mrs. Mary Somerville's "Personal Recollections" (see also the autobiographical narrative of Mrs. Delany and Miss Cornelia Knight); Mrs. Gaskell's "Life of Charlotte Brontë" (to be read along with Mr. Wemyss Reid's monograph); Sir Arthur Helps's "Life of Mr. Brassey the Engineer; Dr. Doran's "Lives of the Princes of Wales" and "Lives of the Queens of England of the House of Hanover;" Mr. H. A. Page's "Thomas De Quincy;" Mrs. Cameron's "Beauties of the Court of Charles II." and "Lives of Celebrated Female Sovereigns "Eliza Meteyard's "Life of Josiah Wedgwood;" Dr. Smiles's "Life of George Stephenson" and "Lives of the Engineers ;" J. P. Muirhead's "Life of James Watt;" Sir James Stephen's "Essays on Ecclesiastical Biography," and David Masson's "Life of William Drummond of Hawthornden," the Scottish poet. Mr. Theodore Martin's "Life of the Prince Consort" approaches to the dignity of history. Miss Yonge portrays a noble character in her "Life of Bishop Pattison;" and the "Life of Charles Kingsley" by his wife admits us to the most familiar acquaintance with a man of high talents, elevated aims, and generous impulses. Mr. Sime's Life of Lessing and Miss Zimmerman's "Life and Philosophy of Schopenhauer" will have an interest for philosophical inquirers similar to that which, for the literary student, attaches to Mr. Kegan Paul's" William Godwin, his Friends and Contemporaries."

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CHAPTER V.

ENGLISH FICTION: A COURSE OF READING.

came to be

HE next branch of literature with which we shall concern ourselves is that of Fiction. It divides into two natural sub-branches-the romance and the novel; the former the older and the latter the newer form; the former dealing generally with wild, wonderful, and poetic themes, the latter with the everyday events of common life. For the origin of both I must content myself with referring to Mr. Dunlop's "History of Fiction." The romance, it is sufficient to say here, owes its name to the fact that the earliest mediæval tales were written in the Romance languages; that is, in those languages which arose out of the combination of the Latin with the indigenous tongues of France and Spain. Hence the word "Romans" was applied to them; and as those tales were luxuriantly imaginative in character, the term "romance" bestowed upon all fictions dealing with purely fanciful themes. In England, the romance, for several generations, was purely an exotic: the old knightly legends were imported from the Continent in rude translations, and no original effort was made until the Renascence stimulated the national intellect into various forms of literary culture. Then Sir Thomas More produced his "Utopia," the first of a long line of fictions of which the central motive has been the representation of an ideally perfect state of society. In our own time we have seen the idea reproduced in "Erewhon" and "The Coming_Race." The "Utopia," however, was written in Latin by Sir Thomas More (1516-18); and in Latin, too, as the language of scholars, was written Robert Barclay's "Argenis," a political allegory, which has also been the fertile parent of many imitations. Cowper pronounces it the most amusing romance that was ever written, and Hallam warmly praises its style. Coleridge wished to see it translated and rendered into an English form. The Italian pastoral romances were the models adopted by Sir Philip Sidney for his Arcadia" (1580-81), the first legitimate English romance. He wrote it at the request of his sister, Mary, Countess of Pembroke (celebrated by Ben Jonson); and, as he says to her, "Only for you, only to

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186

EARLY ENGLISH FICTION.

you.... Your dear self can best witness the manner, being done in loose sheets of paper, most of it in your presence, the rest by sheets sent unto you as fast as they were done." It is written partly in prose, partly in verse, and embodies both the Italian pastoral and the old heroic romance. The style is sometimes very sweet and natural, rising into poetry; at other times it smacks of the Euphuism of the age, and abounds in conceits and forced inversions. I suppose it would not be easy to read it through at one sitting, but it will be relished if taken in instalments; some of the episodes are exceedingly charming. The descriptive passages are drawn with a fine pencil and richly coloured, while the pictures of tender affection and enthusiastic friendship fully justify Southey in speaking of its brilliant author

as

"Illustrating the vales of Arcady

With courteous courage and with loyal loves."

The prayer of Pamela was a great favourite with Charles I., and is reproduced in the "Eikon Basilike."

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Contemporaneous with Sidney's "Arcadia" was the "Euphues; or, the Anatomy of Wit" (1579), written by John Lyly at the age of twenty-five. Its form is that of an Italian story; its style an elaborate development of those verbal conceits and traits of language, which, borrowed from Italy, had become fashionable in England. There is little doubt that Lyly designed to ridicule it, but his satire was so successful that it was taken literally, and this childish and affected form of speech was henceforth known as Euphuism." It became so popular, especially among the ladies, that she who spoke not Euphuism" was "as little regarded at court as if she could not speak French." Shakespeare has laughed at it in his "Love's Labour's Lost" and Ben Jonson in his "Every Man out of his Humour." Sir Walter Scott endeavoured to revive the ridicule in the "Sir Piercie Shafton" of his "Monastery." The story of the book is simply the recital of some not very interesting adventures which befell a young Athenian, first at Naples and afterwards in England. He is named Euphues, because he is the embodiment of that nimble intelligence and physical perfection which Plato describes by that word. The tone is very pure and earnest, and Lyly inveighs against the follies and vices of the time with considerable vehemence. Altogether the work is of a far higher class than is generally represented, and affords a complete mine of moral reflections and aphorisms.

The poets and the dramatists had it all their own way for the next century; and with the exception of Lord Bacon's Atlantis and Sir John Harrington's "Oceana," both modelled on the same lines as the 66 Utopia," we meet with no prose fiction until we come to the novels of Mrs. Aphra Behn (1642-98), who is generally dull when she is not indecent, and in only one of her efforts

has risen above mediocrity. This is "The History of Oronooko; or, the Royal Slave," published in 1698, and founded on the story of an African prince who was sold into slavery, and, after suffering and sorrowing much, was put to death by the authorities of the colony in which he laboured. The story is told with vigour and tenderness. It suggested to the dramatist Thomas Southern his tragedy of "Oronooko;" and, apart from its literary merits, deserves to be remembered as the first English protest against the crime of slavery.

We stand upon more familiar ground when we arrive at the novels of Daniel Defoe (1635-1731). The research of recent biographers has lowered the estimate originally formed of this prolific pamphleteer, and diminished the sympathy with which we were wont to regard his trade failures, his political persecutions, his pillory, and his poverty. It seems tolerably evident that his pen was at the disposal of the highest bidder ; yet, on the other hand, he cherished a very genuine love of freedom, and in political ideas was far in advance of his contemporaries. After a busy career as journalist and pamphleteer, he struck out a new line of fiction at fifty-six years of age, and in 1719 published his "Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe," a work which, like Shakespeare's plays and Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," is one of the familiar masterpieces of our literature, the inheritance of every Englishman, as indisputably as Magna Charta or the Bill of Rights. Whether it was suggested by the story of Alexander Selkirk, or was the natural outcome of the romantic spirit fed by the narratives of Dampier and the Buccaneers, will matter little to the student, who will chiefly be attracted by the extraordinary realism of the writer, the minuteness of the details in which he indulges, and the prosaic manner in which he handles an essentially romantic theme. Defoe himself professed that the book was partly autobiographical, a kind of type of what the dangers and vicissitudes and surprising escapes of his own life had been; but we suspect this was an afterthought. The charm of "Robinson Crusoe" is due to Defoe's remarkable narrative power and to his active sympathy with his subject. The critic will observe its entire originality it owes nothing to French or Italian models. In no other of his fictions did Defoe rise again to this high level, and, in truth, it is no more given to a man to write two "Robinson Crusoes" than to write two "Hamlets," but in all of them his mode of working is the same, and in all he displays the same singular success in stamping on his narrative the marks of vraisemblance. His "Journal of the Plague" has been quoted as if written by an eyewitness; the great Chatham accepted his " Memoirs of a Čavalier' as authentic; and his "Life and Adventures of Colonel Jack" have been frequently reprinted among accounts of genuine highwaymen. The "Life of Captain Carleton," sometimes accepted as fictitious, is, by some good authorities, believed to be edited

from a genuine narrative. To these, in order to complete the list of Defoe's fictions, must be added "Moll Flanders," "Roxana," "New Voyage round the World," and the "Life and Piracies of Captain Singleton." This last has always seemed to me second only in cleverness of workmanship to "Robinson Crusoe." The description of the Captain's African journeys reads almost like a prophecy.

Dean Swift (1667-1745) wrote his "Tale of a Tub" fifteen years before "Robinson Crusoe" was published, but it is a political satire rather than a novel, and a political satire in the shape of an allegory. A strong book, the book of a keen masculine intellect, it abounds in humorous illustrations and ironical touches. Probably in none of the cynical Dean's works is the copiousness of his genius more evident. It is not only a humorous, but, as all true humour is instinct with wisdom, a wise book, and a book that in the main effectively supports the great principle of religious toleration. In "Gulliver's Travels," published in 1726, I think the influence of Defoe may be traced; there is, at all events, the same directness of narrative, simplicity of language, and attention to detail. Swift, like Defoe, is a master of the realistic, and it may be noted that in this respect both of them resemble Bunyan, the three being the three greatest realists whom our literature has produced. And by "realists" I mean writers who make familiar and acceptable the most imaginative conceptions by working them out through everyday means and investing them with everyday associations. Gulliver's Travels" is, of course, a political satire, but it is not necessary to the enjoyment of the story that the reader should catch up the political allusions, though he cannot do justice to the writer's skill until these are understood. The hero, Lemuel Gulliver, makes four voyages: first, to Lilliput, a satire on the court of George I., Blefuscu standing for France; second, to Brodingnag, a satire on European and English politics; third, to Laputa, a satire on the philosophers; and fourth, to the country of the Houyhnhms, a terribly savage satire upon the whole human race. Something Swift may have owed to Cyrano de Bergerac's "Comic History of the States and Empires of the Moon," and something to "Utopia," of which it is in effect a travesty; but essentially the book is original, and it is one which only Swift could have written. For it needed not alone a fertile invention, a trenchant wit, a keen faculty of observation, but a heart like his all aflame with mortified ambitions, disappointed hopes, and rage and hate and scorn.

The elegantly fanciful papers, lighted up with genial humour, in which Addison records the fortunes of Sir Roger de Coverley, his vanities and his virtues, his foibles and his humanities, belong to the province of fiction; but simply noting that the first outline of this inimitable character came from the hand of Sir Richard Steele, I pass on to the three great names that stand, omnium