THE 
 
 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS 
 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY, 
 
 IN ILLUSTRATION OF THE 
 
 MANNERS AND MORALS OF THE AGE. 
 
 BY A- 
 
 WILLIAM FORSYTE, M. A., Q. C., 
 
 ACTHOE OF "THE LIFE OF ciCEiio, 1 "CASES AND OPINIONS ON CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, 
 
 ETC., ETC.; 
 LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 I). APPLETON & COMPANY, 
 
 549 & 551 BROADWAY. 
 
 1871. 
 
PKEFACE. 
 
 I BEGAN this work intending to amuse the idle 
 ness of a long vacation ; but a severe and dangerous 
 illness, caused by an accident, entirely baffled my 
 design, and I was obliged to finish the task when I 
 had much less leisure. I do not say this to depre 
 cate criticism if the work is to be criticised at all 
 but merely state the fact, which may account for 
 shortcomings that are very likely to be discovered. 
 But I hope that the bo*ok will be judged by what it 
 professes to be, and not by what it is not. It is not 
 a history of the w r orks of fiction of the last century, 
 which would have required much more copious detail, 
 but a view of the manners and morals of that century, 
 as gathered principally from hints and descriptions in 
 
4: PREFACE. 
 
 the novels of the period, corroborated by facts from 
 other sources. But I have not thought it necessary 
 to adhere strictly and formally to this programme, 
 and have therefore introduced sketches of the plots 
 and characters of some of the most interesting and 
 once widely-popular novels, which for various reasons 
 remain practically unknown to the great mass of 
 readers of the present day, and especially to the fe 
 male part of them. To do this and give any thing 
 like a just idea of the originals, without offending 
 against decorum, is no easy task, nor do I at all flatter 
 myself that I have succeeded. But the very diffi 
 culty is in itself a proof of the difference, in one 
 important respect, between the taste and manners 
 of the last and the taste and manners of the present 
 century. In these, I think, it cannot be denied that 
 there has been a great improvement; but I hope it 
 will not be supposed that I mean to imply that our 
 more decorous sins are not morally quite as bad as the 
 vices of our coarser and more free-spoken ancestors. 
 We may be thankful that in many aspects the state 
 of society is better now than then : but the luxury of 
 
PREFACE. 5 
 
 the ricli is still in startling contrast with the misery 
 of the poor, and, although vice may have lost its 
 grossness, it still lurks like a canker in the Common 
 wealth. We shall have little cause to boast of our 
 superior morality, if we 
 
 " Compound for sins we are inclined to, 
 By damning those we have no mind to." 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 0) 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Fiction in relation to Fact. Information to be gleaned from Novels. 
 General Characteristics of the Last Century. Its Coarseness. 
 Religion. Love. Influence of the Age upon "Women. The 
 Essayists. Hogarth. Progress of Refinement. Danger of mis 
 taking Satire and Caricature for Truth, 9 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Dress. Masquerades. Drums. Pretty Fellows and Maccaro- 
 nies. Clubs. Ranelagh and Vauxhall. London. Dangers of 
 the Streets. State of the Roads. Highwaymen, ... 60 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Prisons. Drunkenness. Swearing. Gambling. Duelling. Jus 
 tice of the Peace. Country Squire, 94 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 The Parson of the Last Century. Fleet Marriages, . . . .125 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Old Romances. The Female Quixote. Novels of the Last 
 Century. Their Coarseness and its Apologists. Chrysal, or 
 the Adventures of a Guinea. Pompey. The Fool of 
 Quality. Two Classes of Novels. * Simple Story. The 
 Comic Novels, 152 
 
CONTENTS. 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PAGK 
 
 rs. Belm and her Novels. Oroonoko. The Wandering Beau 
 ty. The Unfortunate Happy Lady. Mrs. Manley and The 
 New Atalantis. The Power of Love in Seven Novels. The 
 Fair Hypocrite. Mrs. Heywood. Her Novel, Miss Betsy 
 Thoughtless, 176 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Richardson. Clarissa Harlowe. Pamela. Sir Charles Grandi- 
 son. Richardson s Correspondence. His Portrait drawn by 
 Himself, ............ 213 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Fielding. Tom Jones, a Favorite of the Ladies. Joseph An- 
 
 drews. Amelia, ......... 255 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 mollett. Difference between him and Fielding. Peregrine 
 Pickle. Humphry Clinker. The Spiritual Quixote, . . 274 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Goldsmith. The Vicar of Wakefield. Character of Later Novels 
 and Romances. Mackenzie. The Man of Feeling, The Man 
 of the "World, and Julia de Roubigne. Miss Burney. 
 Evelina, and Cecilia. Miss Edgeworth. Belinda. Jane 
 Austen. Uses of Novels. Responsibility of the Novelist, . 299 
 
V" * 
 
 Jjibrary. 
 
 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS 
 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 FICTION IN EELATION TO FACT. INFORMATION TO BE GLEANED 
 FROM NOVELS. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LAST CEN 
 TURY. ITS COARSENESS. RELIGION. LOVE. INFLUENCE OF THE 
 AGE UPON WOMEN. THE ESSAYISTS. HOGARTH. PROGRESS OF 
 REFINEMENT. DANGER OF MISTAKING SATIRE AND CARICA 
 TURE FOR TRUTH. 
 
 MY object in the following work is to make use 
 of fiction as the exponent of fact, and to show what 
 information is to be gleaned as to the habits and man 
 ners and social life of our ancestors from the novels 
 of the last century. If I may be pardoned a legal 
 metaphor, I shall summon the heroes and heroines as 
 well as the authors into court, that they may give evi 
 dence as witnesses of a state of society that has 
 passed away and of which it is difficult now in the 
 many wonderful changes that have since taken place 
 to form a right idea. We may read histories of Eng- 
 
10 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 land, and be familiar with the pages of Cunningham, 
 Belsham, Adolphns, Hume, and Smollett (I mean 
 Smollett, as an historian), and yet be almost entirely 
 ignorant of the manners and habits and mode of life 
 of our forefathers : of their houses and dress : their 
 domestic arrangements and amusements : of the state 
 of religion and morality and all that goes to make up 
 the character of a people. As one of our greatest 
 novelists has said : "Out of the fictitious book I get 
 the expression of the life, of the times, of the man 
 ners, of the merriment, of the dress, the pleasures, 
 the laughter, the ridicules of society the old times 
 live again, and I travel in the old country of England. 
 Can the heaviest historian do more for me ? " * I an 
 swer, not half so much. The historian tells us of 
 Court factions and political intrigues, and the strug 
 gles of an Oligarchy of great families for power of 
 the "Walpoles and JSTewcastles, and Grenvilles and 
 Pitts of foreign wars and domestic treason but lit 
 tle of the condition of the peasantry and life of the 
 people, and absolutely nothing of the state of society 
 in the period. Paradoxical as it may seem, there can 
 be no doubt that fiction is often more truthful than 
 fact. By this I mean that a more correct idea of a 
 period may be formed from a story where the person- 
 * Thackeray, English Humorists, p. 113. 
 
INFORMATION TO BE GLEANED. H 
 
 ages and many of the incidents are imaginary, than 
 from a dry, doll narrative of events. The most life 
 like account of the Civil Wars in England in the sev 
 enteenth century that I know is contained in De 
 Foe s Memoirs of a Cavalier, which it is impossible 
 to read without believing that it is the work of a wri 
 ter who had been himself an actor in the scenes 
 which he describes and which Lord Chatham indeed 
 quoted as a genuine history. And yet it is as much a 
 tiction as Waverley, with its picture of the Rebellion 
 of 1745. 
 
 Without some such object in view, it would have 
 been difficult to go through the task of reading what 
 I have been obliged to read. For as stories, the nov 
 els of the last century, with the exception of some 
 well-known names, are deplorably dull. Their plots 
 are contemptible, and the style is detestable. But, 
 however poor the incidents, or inartistic the construc 
 tion, the writers unconsciously give us hints w r hen they 
 least intended it of the manners and customs of the 
 time. We may turn with disgust from the insipid 
 narrative and stupid dialogue ; but we get from both 
 little traits of habits and opinions which are valuable, 
 as enabling us to form a just idea of the state of soci 
 ety around. We learn how our ancestors lived, how 
 they amused themselves, and the conversation they 
 
12 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 / indulged in ; how they travelled in lumbering coaches 
 drawn by six Flanders mares ; the books they read, 
 the hour at which they dined, and the dress they 
 wore; how the boys played at " tagg " and " thrush- 
 a-thrush," and the girls at " draw-gloves " and " ques 
 tions and commands." We are brought into contact 
 with drums and ridottos, and masquerades ; with 
 E-anelagh and Yauxhall, "Marybone Gardens" and 
 the Pantheon; with swords and periwigs, and fon- 
 tanges ; dominoes and masques ; minuets, cotillons, 
 and Sir Roger de Coverleys ; ombre and quadrille, 
 and lansquenet ; with Pope Joan, and " snip snap 
 snorum ; " and we see pictured before us the " life of 
 the fine old English gentleman all of the olden 
 time." 
 
 There is, indeed, no source from which so much 
 information may be gleaned with respect to the social 
 life of our ancestors as the Novels, supplemented by 
 Diaries and Letters, such as those of Lady Cowper, 
 Lady Mary "Wortley Montagu, and Mrs. Delany; 
 the Richardson correspondence, and that of the 
 Malmesbury family and Horace Walpole. We find 
 ourselves there living in a world strangely different 
 from that of our own day. This difference is shown 
 in a thousand ways, by which the writers uncon 
 sciously betray the existence of habits and manners 
 
DIFFERENCE OF MANNERS. 13 
 
 which have now ceased to exist. We find there the 
 loud swearing, the hard drinking, the loose talk, 
 which were common even among? those who called 
 
 O 
 
 themselves gentlemen ; the swords drawn and the 
 duels fought on the slightest provocation ; the stiffness 
 of intercourse between parents and children, and the 
 ceremonious coldness with which the latter addressed 
 the former in their letters, beginning with " Sir " and 
 "Madam," and ending with " Your dutiful child and 
 humble servant." * 
 
 But there is a difficulty in the way. We have to 
 face an amount of coarseness which is in the highest 
 degree repulsive. It is like raking a dirt-heap to dis 
 cover grains of gold. And herein lies the specialty 
 of the case. It is because the novels reflect, as in a 
 mirror, the tone of thought and language of the age 
 in which they were written, that the perusal of them 
 even now is useful ; and we get from them a much 
 more truthful idea of the state of society and morals 
 than from pompous histories and labored essays. 
 That < Roderick Eandom, < Peregrine Pickle, < Tom 
 Jones and i Tristram Shand could have been writ- 
 
 * Dr. Jolmson almost always ends his letters to Boswell with 
 the subscription, "your affectionate and very humble servant," 
 and Boswell does the same when he writes to the object of his 
 idolatry. 
 
14: NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 ten and become popular, not only among men but 
 among women, proves that society was accustomed 
 to actions and language which would not be tolerated 
 now. 
 
 It is besides my purpose to describe the intellect 
 ual characteristics of the century, and attempt to esti 
 mate its true value among the centuries of the world s 
 history with reference to the greatness of the men 
 it produced, and the works they left behind them. 
 Whatever may be thought of the average, it is impos 
 sible to deny that the age was the parent of some of 
 the most illustrious names of which England can 
 boast. The general face of the sky might be dark, 
 .-But there were stars in the firmament that shone with 
 brilliant splendor. Butler and Clarke among Di 
 vines ; Pope, Chatterton, and Cowper, among Poets ; 
 Addison and Johnson, magnum et venerdbile nomen, 
 among Essayists ; Wilson, Gainesborough, and Rey 
 nolds, among Painters ; Chatham and Burke among 
 Statesmen ; Hardwicke and Mansfield among Law 
 yers ; Fielding, Smollett, and Goldsmith, among Nov 
 elists ; Marlborough among Generals ; Bentley among 
 Scholars; Gibbon among Historians; and Erskine 
 among Advocates are names of which any period 
 might be proud, and they redeem the eighteenth cen 
 tury from the reproach which has been cast upon it 
 
SOCIAL ASPECTS. 15 
 
 by a distinguished but eccentric writer of the present 
 day, who says that u it lies massed up in our minds as 
 a disastrous wrecked inanity not useful to dwell upon : 
 a kind of dusky, chaotic background, in which the 
 figures that had some veracity in them a small com 
 pany, and ever growing smaller, as our demands rise 
 in strictness are delineated for us." * 
 
 As regards, however, the social aspect of the age, 
 and the general tone of thought, it is, I think, impos 
 sible to deny that the by-gone century is not an at 
 tractive period. 
 
 There was little of the earnestness of life and 
 quick invention and active benevolence which are the 
 characteristics of our own age. The questions that 
 have stirred the hearts of the present generation then 
 slumbered in the womb of time. Reform, Free Trade, 
 Education, and Sanitary Laws, occupied no part of 
 the thoughts of statesmen, and excited no interest in 
 the people. The miracles of change which have been 
 wrought by Steam, Electricity, Chloroform, Photog 
 raphy, and Breech-loading Artillery, revolutionizing 
 Mechanics and Science, and Medicine, and Art, and 
 War, were not even suspected as possible. The state 
 of our prisons and workhouses and lunatic asylums 
 was simply a disgrace to humanity. Our criminal 
 
 * Carlyle, Frederick the Great, vol. i. p. 2. 
 
16 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 law was written in characters of blood. / To commit a 
 murder, or pick a pocket, or cut down a young apple- 
 tree, was punished by the same penalty, and that 
 penalty was death. The lower classes led the exist 
 ence of animals, and were brutal even in their sports. 
 Cock-fighting, bull-baiting, and the bear-garden, were 
 the ordinary amusements, diversified sometimes by the 
 fun of ducking an old woman in a horse-pond as a witch. 
 The country gentlemen, as a class, were boorish and 
 ignorant, devoted to the bottle and the chase. The 
 country clergy frequented ale-houses and intermarried 
 with housemaids. J We read in the i Connoisseur 
 (A. D. 1755), that " the kept-mistress is a constant part 
 of the retinue of a fine gentleman, and is indeed as 
 indispensable a part of his equipage as a French valet 
 de chambre or a four-wheeled post-chaise." 
 
 On the pleasant banks of the Thames, not far from 
 Marlow, may be seen the ruins of Medmenham Ab 
 bey, which was formerly the scene of the orgies of the 
 Hell-Fire Club. It was here that the company of 
 hard drinkers and professed infidels were frightened 
 out of their wits, one night, by the sudden appearance 
 of a monkey, which in their tipsy confusion they mis 
 took for the Devil. And yet they pretended not to 
 believe in any devil at all ! 
 
 A recent writer, who has attacked with unsparing 
 
WANT OF REFINEMENT. 1Y 
 
 severity the faults which, until our own day, disgraced 
 English jurisprudence,* says of the period : " The up 
 per classes were corrupt, without refinement ; the 
 middle, gross without good-humor ; and the lower, 
 brutal without honesty." f I do not think it is fair to 
 say that the middle classes had no good-humor and 
 the lower no honesty; but it is certainly true, that 
 grossnessand brutality were their characteristics, : and 
 beyond all doubt their condition was very lamentable. 
 At the end of the century evidence was given that 
 " the condition of the poor was every day made more 
 wretched than ever." The laborer was, in fact, 
 
 * There was great truth in what a Justice of the Peace is 
 made to say in Fielding s Amelia: "And to speak my opin 
 ion plainly, such are the laws, and such the method of proceed 
 ing, that one would almost think our laws were made for the 
 protection of rogues rather than for the punishment of them." 
 And as regards civil rights, those who wish to know how jus 
 tice was sacrificed to chicane, even in our own day, may be 
 amply satisfied by looking at the sixteen volumes of the Re 
 ports of Meeson & Welsby. 
 
 t History of the Law of Evidence, by J. G. Phillimore, p. 
 546. 
 
 J " The time when he (Fielding) wrote was remarkable for 
 the low tone of manners and sentiment ; perhaps the lowest 
 that ever prevailed in England ; for it was precisely a juncture 
 when the romantic spirit of the old chivalrous manners was ex 
 tinguished and before the modern standard of refinement was 
 introduced." Shaw s * History of English Literature, p. 343. 
 
 Quoted in Pashley s Pauperism and the Poor Laws, p. 
 252. 
 
18 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 almost as much adscriptus glebce as a Russian serf be 
 fore his late emancipation ; and the reason was, be 
 cause if he removed from his parish in search of 
 employment, he was likely to become chargeable to 
 the new parish, township, or place to which he mi 
 grated. This evil was in some respect mitigated by 
 an Act passed in 1795, 35 Geo. III. c. 101, the pre 
 amble of which states that industrious poor persons 
 chargeable to the parish where they live, " are, for the 
 most part, compelled to live in their own parishes and 
 townships, and are not permitted to inhabit elsewhere, 
 under pretence that they are likely to become charge 
 able to the parish " where they went for the purpose 
 of getting employment. 
 
 The condition of the laborer, which from natural 
 causes is generally bad, was made worse by vicious 
 legislation. The Law of Settlement, which then, and 
 indeed until recently prevailed, made it the interest 
 of landowners to pull down cottages or build as few 
 as possible, in order to diminish the pressure of the 
 poor-rates. In Burn s History of the Poor Laws, 
 published in 1764, he says that " in practice the office 
 of an overseer of the poor seems to be understood to 
 be this .... to pull down cottages and to drive out 
 as many inhabitants and admit as few as possibly 
 
CONDITION OF THE LABORER. 19 
 
 they can ; that is, to depopulate the parish, in order 
 to lessen the poor-rate." 
 
 " Where then, ah ! where shall poverty reside, 
 To scape the pressure of contiguous pride ? " 
 
 The price of wheat was no doubt much lower in 
 the last century than it has been since, the average 
 value between 1720 and 1750 being considerably be 
 low 40s. a quarter, and this might seem at first sight 
 to indicate that the laborer had a greater command of 
 the necessaries of life. But it proves nothing unless 
 we know its exchangeable value ; that is, the proportion 
 it bore to the value of other commodities, and the 
 price of labor, or, in other words, the rate of wages.* 
 
 As to the upper classes, I know few books that 
 leave a more painful impression upon the reader than 
 the volumes which contain the letters of Horace "Wai- 
 pole, in which we see all the froth and scum that 
 floated to the surface of what is called Good Society, 
 and can form a tolerable idea of what was fermenting 
 in the mass below. "With all his persiflage and cyni 
 cism, he at all events may be trusted as a witness who 
 
 * The average prices of wheat per quarter, from 1746 to 
 1765, was 32s. 3^., and from 1771 to 1774, was 45s. 8d. Even 
 when the price was above 80s., toward the end of the century, 
 the wages of the laborer did not exceed 8s. a week. 
 
20 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 does not invent, but retails the current scandals of the 
 day. And what a picture he gives us of the hollow- 
 ness, the heartlessness, and the vice, of fashionable 
 life! 
 
 The Rev. Charles Kingsley, in his preface to 
 Henry Brooke s Fool of Quality, originally pub 
 lished in 1763, and republished by him in 1859, asks, 
 " Who, in looking round a family portrait-gallery, has 
 not remarked the difference between the heads of the 
 seventeenth and those of the eighteenth century? 
 The former are of the same type as our own, and with 
 the same strong and varied personality; the latter 
 painfully like both to each other, and to an oil-flask ; 
 the jaw round, weak, and sensual, the forehead nar 
 row and retreating. Had the. race really degenerated 
 for a while, or was the lower type adopted intention 
 ally out of compliment to some great personage ? " I 
 should be disposed to doubt that the portraits of the 
 seventeenth century " are of the same type as our 
 own." It is impossible not to be struck with the 
 greater strength of face and feature with the square, 
 massive forehead and resolute expression. And this 
 we might expect of the heroes of the civil war and 
 the grand theologians and poets of the century of 
 men like Cromwell and Hampden; Andrews and 
 Jeremy Taylor; and Shakespeare and Milton. 
 
RELIGION. 21 
 
 What would be thought now but little more than 
 a decent compliance with religious worship, such as 
 attendance at the Sacrament and family prayers, was 
 in the last century considered the badge of a Puritan 
 and a Methodist. " ^Nothing is so sad," says a French 
 writer in a recent work, " as the religious history of 
 the eighteenth century. Piety languishes ; Science 
 there is none, at least on the side of the defenders of 
 Christianity. In England and Germany a parching 
 wind blows over hearts and minds. There is preached 
 in the Protestant pulpits a religion without grandeur, 
 without mysteries, which has neither the boldness of 
 philosophy nor that of faith." The phraseology of 
 the evangelical School, with which we are so familiar, 
 was deemed strange and unorthodox, and " the new 
 birth and the operations of grace" were the standing 
 jokes of novelists, who had, however, in the extrava 
 gance of "Wliitefield and his followers, too good an 
 excuse to ridicule doctrines which have since been 
 illustrated by some of the most exemplary men ot 
 whom the Church of England can boast. 
 
 The laxity of the age is, I think, strongly shown 
 in the strange mixture of religion and immorality 
 
 * PressensC. L figlise ct la Revolution F^ancaise. But we 
 must not forget that in the eighteenth century appeared Bishop 
 Butler s immortal work, The Analogy of Religion. 
 
22 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 which we see exhibited, not only in the lives but in 
 the writings of some of the most distinguished men. 
 It shows how little they were able rightly to appre 
 ciate the requirements of unworldliness and purity 
 enjoined in the Gospel. Their Christianity was in 
 general only skin-deep ; and while they made a merit 
 of professing to believe the doctrines of Revelation, 
 they acted as if they had no higher code to guide 
 them than heathen Ethics. I am not speaking of 
 mere infirmities to which the best of erring men 
 are liable, of small blemishes which detract from the 
 purity of life although one is grieved to think that 
 Addison had not strength to resist the temptation 
 of wine but of a general looseness of conduct and 
 language which would now be considered hardly com 
 patible with any thing like religious profession ; but 
 which was not thought so then. When one thinks 
 
 O 
 
 of the man, the sermons of Dean Swift, although in 
 
 themselves excellent, seem to be a mockery, and we 
 
 can fancy them written by the author of a c Tale of a 
 
 \ Tub with a grin of derision on his face.* Defoe 
 
 * Swift s Sermon on the Trinity is one of the best I ever 
 read on the subject. The following passage sums up the objec 
 tions and the answer :- " Since the world abounds with pestilent 
 books written against the doctrine of the Trinity, it is fit to 
 inform you that the authors of them proceed wholly upon a 
 mistake ; they would show how impossible it is that three can 
 
SWIFT S SERMONS. 23 
 
 wrote religious tracts and sermons i Religious Court 
 ship and the Family Instructor as to the last of 
 which he professes to have a firm belief that " he was 
 not without a more than ordinary presence and assist 
 ance of the Divine Spirit in the performance ; " but 
 he is also the author of i Moll Flanders, c Roxana, 
 and i Colonel Jack. Most certainly Steele was not a 
 bad man he was amiable, affectionate, and kindly 
 and the tone of his papers in the Tatler is unexcep- 
 tionably good. But he was notoriously fond of the 
 
 be one, and one can be three ; whereas, the Scripture saith no 
 such thing, at least in that manner they would make it; but 
 only that there is some kind of unity and distinction in the 
 divine nature which mankind cannot possibly comprehend: 
 thus the whole doctrine is short and plain, and in itself inca 
 pable of any controversy, since God himself hath pronounced 
 the fact, but wholly concealed the manner. And therefore many 
 divines, who thought fit to answer those wicked books, have 
 been mistaken too by answering fools in their folly, and endeav 
 oring to explain a mystery which God intended to keep secret 
 from us." The sermon concludes thus : " May God of His 
 infinite mercy inspire us with true faith in every article and 
 mystery of our religion, so as to dispose us to do what is pleas 
 ing in His sight : and this we pray through Jesus Christ, to 
 whom with the Father and the Holy Ghost be all honor and 
 glory, now, and for evermore, Amen." There is an excellent 
 sermon by Swift on the text, " The wisdom of this world is 
 foolishness with God ; " and another upon Sleeping in Church. 
 In his Thoughts on Various Subjects, he wittily asks, " Query, 
 whether churches are not dormitories of the living, as well as 
 of the dead ? 
 
24 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 bottle and constantly in debt. Dr. Johnson said leni 
 ently of him, " Steele, I believe, practises the lighter 
 vices." He was not, therefore, the kind of "person 
 from whom we should expect a grave, religious trea 
 tise. And yet Steele wrote * The Christian Hero. 
 If ever there was a free liver, to say nothing of the 
 loose morality of his works his genius and power are 
 quite a different matter it was Fielding : and yet no 
 writer could discourse in a more edifying manner 
 about morality, virtue, and religion. What shall we 
 say of Sterne ? He, like Swift, was by profession a 
 clergyman, and therefore, of course, obliged to be a 
 teacher of religion. But his life gave the lie to his 
 profession, and he behaved like a brute to his wife. 
 He seems to have thought there was no inconsistency 
 in preaching and publishing sermons, and writing 
 Tristram Shandy. 
 
 There is nothing in which the difference between 
 the last century and the present is more strikingly 
 shown than in the delineation of love. As a mere 
 natural instinct, love, of course, is the same in all ages 
 and in all climes, and fulfils the main object for which 
 it was designed in the order of Providence, which is 
 the preservation of the species. But the style and 
 mode of its expression differ as widely as it is possible 
 to conceive. In the whole range of Greek and Ro- 
 
LOVE. 25 
 
 man literature I hardly know a passage where love is 
 described as a purifying passion of the soul.* And 
 nothing can be more frigid than the language of lo^e 
 when lovers meet in the Greek tragedians, although 
 its power as a Divinity is celebrated in chorus and in 
 song. Among the Romans, if we except the exquisite 
 description of the love of Dido for ^Eneas, it is almost 
 always the language of desire. And to come to the 
 eighteenth century, we find in its literature little, if 
 any thing, of the romance of love such love as we 
 read of in the Bride of Lammermoor and f Henri 
 etta Temple and still less of its elevating influence 
 on the heart. 
 
 " To an exact perfection they have brought 
 The action love the passion is forgot." 
 
 There is little trace of -such an effect of love as is 
 described in the beautiful lines of Dryclen in his 
 4 Cimon and Iphigenia: 
 
 " Love taught him shame, and shame with love at strife 
 Soon taught the sweet civilities of life " 
 
 Ko writer then thought of depicting love as 
 Coleridge has depicted and glorified it in the fol 
 lowing passage : 
 
 * Let those who wish to see what Greek writers could say of 
 ^ove, read the Deipnosophists of Athenocus, Book xiii. 
 
2G NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 " That enduring personal attachment so beauti 
 fully delineated by Erin s sweet Melodist, and still 
 mare touchingly perhaps in the well-known ballad 
 1 John Anderson my Jo John, in addition to a depth 
 and constancy of character of no every-day occur 
 rence, supposes a peculiar sensibility and tenderness 
 of nature, a constitutional communicativeness and 
 utterance of heart and soul ; a delight in the detail 
 of sympathy, in the outward and visible signs of the 
 sacrament within to count, as it were, the pulses of 
 the life of love. But, above all, it supposes a soul 
 which even in the pride and summer-tide of life, even 
 ia the lustihood of health and strength, had felt often- 
 est and prized highest that which age cannot take 
 away, and which in all our lovings is the love ; I mean 
 that willing sense of the unsufficingness of the self for 
 itself, winch predisposes a generous nature to see in 
 the total being of another the supplement and com 
 pletion of its own ; that quiet, perpetual seeking 
 which the presence of that beloved object modulates, 
 not suspends ; where the heart momently finds, and 
 finding again seeks on ; lastly, when life s changeful 
 orb has passed the full, a confirmed faith in the no 
 bleness of humanity thus brought home and pressed 
 as it were to the very bosom of hourly experience; it 
 supposes, I say, a heart-felt reverence for worth, not 
 
COLERIDGE ON LOVE. 27 
 
 the less deep because divested of its solemnity by 
 habit, by familiarity, by mutual infirmities, and even 
 by a feeling of modesty which will arise in delicate 
 minds when they are unconscious of possessing the 
 same or the correspondent excellence in their own 
 characters. In short, there must be a mind which, 
 while it feels the beautiful and the excellent in the 
 beloved as its own, and by the right of love appro 
 priates it, can call goodness its playfellow ; and dares 
 make sport of time and infirmity while in the person 
 of a thousandfoldly endeared partner we feel for aged 
 virtue the caressing fondness that belongs to the inno 
 cence of childhood, and repeat the same attentions 
 and tender courtesies which had been dictated by the 
 same affection to the same object, when attired in 
 feminine loveliness or in manly beauty." ~ x ~ 
 
 The term which best expresses the idea under 
 which the writers in the early part of the last century 
 expressed love, and indeed all the great emotions of 
 the human soul, is conventionality. " One would 
 like," says De Quincey,f " to see a searching investi 
 gation into the state of society in Anne s days its 
 
 * Poetical Works, vol. ii. p. 120. 
 
 t Essay on Schlosser s Literary History of the Eighteenth 
 Century ; one of the best and most amusing of this great 
 writer s essays. 
 
28 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 extreme artificiality, its sheepish reserve upon all the 
 impassioned grandeurs, its shameless outrages upon 
 all the decencies of human nature. Certain it is that 
 Addison (because everybody) was in the meanest of 
 conditions which blushes at the very expression of 
 sympathy with the lovely, the noble, or the impas 
 sioned. The wretches were ashamed of their own 
 nature, and perhaps with reason; for in their own 
 denaturalized hearts they read only a degraded 
 nature. Addison, in particular, shrank from every 
 bold and every profound expression as from an offence 
 against good taste. He dared not for his life have 
 used the word passion, except in the vulgar sense of 
 an angry paroxysm. He durst as soon have danced 
 a hornpipe on the top of the monument as have 
 talked of rapturous emotion. "What would he have 
 said? Why, sentiments that were of a nature to 
 prove agreeable after an unusual rate. In their odi 
 ous verses the creatures of that age talk of love as 
 something that burns them.* You suppose at first 
 
 * When a fellow-scholar brought to young Henry Brooke, 
 the author of the Fool of Quality, born in 1708, an Ode to the 
 Moon, which broke off with the line 
 
 " Ah, why doth Phoebe love to shine by night ? " 
 the precocious boy immediately wrote under it 
 " Because the sex look best by candle-light. 1 
 
DE QUINCEY 0^ THE AGE. 29 
 
 that they are discoursing of tallow-candles, though 
 you cannot imagine by what impertinence they ad 
 dress yoU) that are not a tallow-chandler, upon such 
 painful subjects. And w r hen they apostrophize the 
 woman of their heart (for you are to understand that 
 they pretend to such an organ) they beseech her to 
 ease their pain. Can human meanness descend 
 lower? As if the man, being ill from pleurisy, had 
 a right to take a lady for one of the dressers in a 
 hospital, whose duty it would be to fix a burgundy 
 pitch-plaster between his shoulders." 
 
 In an Essay in the c Tatler Steele says : " If a 
 man of any delicacy were to attend the discourses of 
 the young fellows of this age, he would believe that 
 there were none but prostitutes to make the objects 
 of passion. . . . But Cupid is not only blind at 
 present, but dead drunk ; he has lost all his faculties : 
 else how could Clelia be so long a maid with that 
 agreeable behavior? Corinna with that sprightly 
 
 Richardson mentioned in one of his letters to Edwards, a for 
 gotten sonneteer, that Miss Highmore had set herself on fire, 
 and scorched herself with the curling-irons. Upon which the 
 poet, in answer, supposes that the accident must have happened, 
 not from the heat of the irons, but from the love- verses she used 
 as curling-papers ; and that the blaze happening on the left 
 side was extinguished by the prevalent force of the cold about 
 her heart. Correspondence of Richardson, vol. iii. 35, 37. 
 Such was sentiment in those days. 
 
30 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 wit ? Lesbia with that heavenly voice ? And Sacha- 
 rissa with all those excellences in one person, fre 
 quent the park, the play, and murder those poor tits 
 that drag her to public places, and not a man turn 
 pale at her appearance ? " In one of her letters in 
 Richardson s novel of Sir Charles Grandison, Har 
 riet Byron says : " And pray may I not ask if the taste 
 of the age among men is not dress, equipage, and fop 
 pery ? Is the* cultivation of fhe mind any part of their 
 study ? The men in short are sunk, my dear, and 
 the women but barely swim." 
 
 Admiration of the sex was shown not by deep and 
 respectful homage, but by extravagance of conduct, 
 It was the fashion to inscribe the names of reigning 
 beauties on drinking-glasses with the point of a dia 
 mond.* Goldsmith tells us, in his < Life of Beau 
 Kash, that in the days when his hero was young, a 
 fellow would drink no wine but what was strained 
 through his mistress s chemise (nasty beast ! ), and he 
 would eat a pair of her shoes tossed upon a fricassee. 
 This last feat was repeated in the middle of the cen 
 tury. In a paper of the Connoisseur, by the Earl 
 of Cork (1754), we are told that he was present at an 
 entertainment where a celebrated fille dejoie was one 
 of the party, and her shoe was pulled off by a young 
 *<Tatler, No. 24. 
 
EXTRAVAGANCE OF CONDUCT. 31 
 
 man who filled it with champagne and drank it off to 
 her health. " In this delicious draught he was imme 
 diately pledged by the rest, and then, to carry the 
 compliment still further, he ordered the shoe itself to 
 be dressed and served up for supper. The cook set 
 himself seriously to work upon it ; he pulled the 
 upper part of it (which was of damask) into line 
 shreds, and tossed it up in a ragout ; minced the sole, 
 cut the wooden heel into very thin slices, fried them 
 in butter, and placed them round the dish for garnish. 
 The company, you may be sure, testified their affec 
 tion for the lady by eating very heartily of this ex 
 quisite impromptu." 
 
 For the difference between the past and present 
 century in the mode of regarding the passion of love, 
 two causes may be specially assigned. First, that the 
 habits of the last age were libertine, and men acted 
 upon the odious maxim 
 
 " And every woman is at heart a rake." 
 
 Xo one who is at all conversant with the literature 
 of the age will deny this; and nothing can be con 
 ceived which would have a more poisonous influence 
 upon manners and morals than such a theory. Men 
 talked before women of things which one would havej 
 thought all decency and respect for the sex would, 
 
32 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 have induced them to conceal. They boasted of their 
 intrigues, as if seduction and adultery were meritorious 
 actions and titles of honor. In i Sir Charles Grandison, 
 Harriet Byron says, in one of her letters to Lucy 
 Selby, " I am very much mistaken, if every woman 
 would not find her account, if she wishes herself to be 
 thought well of, in discouraging every reflection that 
 may have a tendency to debase or expose the sex in 
 general. How can a man be suffered to boast of his 
 vileness to one. woman in the presence of another, 
 without a rebuke, that should put it to the proof 
 whether the boaster was or was not past blushing? " 
 Few women, in that age, had the courage and the 
 sense of Stella, of whom Swift tells us in his Charac 
 ter of Mrs. Johnson, that when " a coxcomb of the 
 pert kind " began to utter some doubles entendres in 
 the company of herself and several other ladies, and 
 " the rest flapped their fans, and used the other com 
 mon expedients practised in such cases, of appearing 
 not to mind or comprehend whatever was said," she 
 sternly rebuked him, and said : " Sir, all these ladies 
 and I understand your meaning very well, having, in 
 spite of our care, too often met with those of your 
 sex who wanted manners and good sense. But, believe 
 me, neither virtuous nor even vicious women love 
 such kind of conversation. However, I will leave 
 
SWIFT S STELLA. 83 
 
 you, and report your behavior, and whatever visit I 
 make, I shall -first inquire at the door whether you are 
 in the house, that I maybe sure to avoid you." And 
 yet, strangely enough, in the short collection of Bons 
 Mots de Stella, which is given by Swift, there is one 
 in which she made a joke of an intolerably vulgar and 
 offensive expression, which Dr. Sheridan disgraced 
 himself by uttering in her presence.* 
 
 We find the novelists introducing episodes which 
 consist of stories told by women of their past lives, in 
 which the most unblushing details of profligacy are 
 given; and the curious circumstance is, that they do 
 so with apparently an utter unconsciousness that they 
 offend against propriety by the narrative, however 
 much they may have offended against it by their acts. 
 
 In the Spiritual Quixote, published in the mid 
 dle of the century, the author, who was a clergyman, 
 makes every lady in whom he wishes the reader to 
 take interest, give the history, or others tell the his 
 tory of her past life and, however modest and re- 
 
 
 
 spectable she may have been, she has always been the 
 object of libertine attempts. When she tells the 
 
 * The difference, however, between the two cases is this, and 
 it serves as an illustration of the manners of the time. The 
 language in the one case was licentious ; in the other, simply 
 indecent. Stella had too much virtue to tolerate the one, and 
 too little refinement to resent the other. 
 
34 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 story herself, she does it with a plainness of speech 
 that is astonishing. Such is the narrative of Miss 
 Townsend with whom "Wildgoose, the hero, falls in 
 love ; and such is the story of Mrs. Rivers, the charm 
 ing wife of Mr. Rivers, as told by her husband, who 
 has settled down with her in an old country house, 
 and taken to farming. One of the chapters is headed 
 " Narrative of a Licentious Amour," and this narra 
 tive is supposed to be related by a gentleman in pres 
 ence of several respectable -unmarried ladies who 
 make comments upon it as it proceeds. 
 
 Even in the Female Quixote, written by a lady, 
 which is as free as any of the old novels from licen 
 tiousness, we have the history of Miss Groves told 
 with apparent unconsciousness of its impropriety. 
 Peregrine Pickle belongs to a different school, and 
 in it, of course, we might expect any thing. There is 
 introduced a long episode called The Memoirs of a 
 Lady of Quality, or, in other words, the adventures 
 of a kept mistress, who in early life was married to a 
 nobleman.* And the reason for mentioning them 
 
 * The lady of quality was Lady Vane, daughter of Mr. 
 Hawes, a South-Sea director, first married to Lord William 
 Hamilton, and secondly to Lord Vane. See Walpole s Letters, 
 edited by Cunningham, vol. i. p. 91. It was not an uncommon 
 practice to make living persons figure in fiction, and describe 
 their adventures and amours. In 1780, Sir Herbert Croft, Bart., 
 
WANT OF MODESTY. 35 
 
 here is, that although they are the frankest possible 
 confession of a life of profligacy, they are told by 
 " her Ladyship " after she has become repentant and 
 virtuous " in a select party," in hopes that they may 
 perceive that, however much her head might have 
 erred, her heart had always been uncorrupted ! 
 
 Lord Chesterfield says, speaking of the reign of 
 Queen Anne, "No woman of fashion could receive 
 any man at her morning toilet without alarming her 
 husband and his friends." But this I do not believe. 
 It is not likely that women of fashion denied them 
 selves in such a case a liberty which women of the 
 middle classes were freely allowed to use. In Mrs. 
 Heywood s novel of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, of 
 which I shall speak more particularly hereafter, we 
 find the heroine, a young unmarried lady, receiving 
 as a matter of course male visitors in her dressing- 
 room while performing her toilet. At Bath, ladies 
 bathed in public, and, if we were to take literally the 
 description in Miss Burney s Evelina, we might sup 
 pose that the only part of the body that was covered 
 
 published a novel called Love and Madness, a Story too true, 
 in a series of letters between parties whose names would perhaps 
 be mentioned were they less known or less lamented. This 
 purported to be the correspondence between Miss Ray, the mis 
 tress of Lord Sandwich, and the Rev. Mr. Hackman, who shot 
 her at the door of the opera, and was afterward hanged. 
 
36 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 was the head for Evelina says : " As to the pump- 
 room I was amazed at the public exhibition of the 
 ladies in the bath ; it is true that their heads are cov 
 ered with bonnets, but the very idea of being seen in 
 such a situation by whoever pleases to look is indeli 
 cate." But we can correct this impression from the 
 account given of the same scene by another young 
 lady, Miss Lydia Melford, in c Humphry Clinker : 
 " Right under the pump-room window is the king s 
 bath a large cistern where you see the patients up 
 to their neck in the hot water. The ladies wear 
 jackets and petticoats of brown linen with chip hats, 
 in which they fix their handkerchiefs to wipe the 
 sweat from their faces ; but .... they look so flushed 
 and so frightful, that I always turn my eyes another 
 way." 
 
 No complaint was more common than that of in 
 sults offered to women when travelling in a public 
 conveyance, by the loose . and indecent talk of their 
 male companions. And they were not always so for 
 tunate as to find an Ephraim the Quaker, who was in 
 the stage-coach with the Spectator when a recruiting 
 officer began to be impertinent to a young lady, and 
 who was abashed by his rebuke : " Thy mirth, friend, 
 savoreth of folly ; thou art a person of a light mind ; 
 thy drum is a type of thee, it soundeth because it is 
 
INSULTS TO WOMEN. 37 
 
 empty. Verily, it is not from thy fulness but thy 
 emptiness that thou hast spoken this day." * And at 
 places of public resort, like Ranelagh and Vauxhall, 
 ladies were exposed to the grossest insults from 
 " pretty fellows," and "fine gentlemen," as will be 
 shown more fully hereafter. 
 
 A second cause was, that a woman was regarded 
 
 O 
 
 chiefly for her beauty and accomplishments, and little 
 honor was paid to her virtues and understanding. 
 Steele was the author of those clays, who seems to 
 have regarded women with most respect, and to have 
 been most disposed to look upon them as something 
 better than playthings for amusement or instruments 
 of desire. " The love of a woman," he says, in one 
 of his papers in the Tatler, " is inseparable from 
 some esteem of her, and she is naturally the object of 
 affection ; the woman who has your esteem has also 
 some degree of your love. A man that dotes on a 
 
 * Spectator, No. 132. I remember once in the old days of 
 coaching, being on the top of a coach, when the driver told me 
 that the day before there was a Quaker on the box, and a man 
 behind him who was ridiculing the Bible. The Quaker remained 
 silent until, being addressed by the stranger thus: "Come, 
 old square-toes, you say nothing : what do you think of the 
 story of David and Goliath ? Do you believe that David killed 
 the giant with a pebble ? " he replied, " I ll tell thee what, 
 friend, if Goliath s forehead was as soft as thy pate, there could 
 have been no difficulty in the matter." 
 
38 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 woman for her beauty will whisper his friend, i That 
 creature has a great deal of wit -when you are well ac 
 quainted with her. - And if you examine the bottom 
 of your esteem for a woman you will find you have a 
 greater opinion of her beauty than anybody else." 
 This last sentence is certainly equivocal for it may 
 mean that esteem is founded upon admiration of the 
 gift of beauty but I think it has a nobler and pro- 
 founder sense, that a man who esteems a woman finds 
 in her a beauty which is unseen by others. The idea 
 is the converse of that expressed by Wither! in the 
 two charming lines 
 
 " If she be not so to me, 
 What care I how fair she be ? " 
 
 A certain degree of license must always IDC allowed 
 to the stage, and it w^ould not be fair to consider it an 
 exact test of the modesty and decorum of a particular 
 period. We ourselves should be sorry to be judged 
 hereafter by such exhibitions as take place in the 
 ballet, where decency is outraged without a blush 
 before the eyes of wives, mothers, and daughters. But 
 if some future writer were to describe them, and then 
 go on to say that they were patronized and applauded 
 by English ladies, it would be very difficult to resist 
 the inference that delicacy and purity among us had 
 
WOMEN AND THE STxlGE. 39 
 
 sunk to a very low ebb. And when we look at the 
 plays which were acted at the theatres during the last 
 century we are filled with astonishment. Grave ma 
 trons and young virgins listened to and laughed at 
 jokes as broad and coarse as those of Aristophanes, 
 and heard without a blush the language of the stables 
 and the stews. "It is," says the Spectator (A. D. 
 1712), " one of the most unaccountable things in our 
 age, that the lewdness of our theatres should be so 
 much complained of, so well exposed, and so little 
 redressed .... As matters stand at present, multi 
 tudes are shut out from this noble diversion, by reason 
 of those abuses and corruptions that accompany it. 
 A father is often afraid that his daughter should be 
 ruined by those entertainments which were invented 
 for the accomplishment and refining of human na 
 ture .... Cuckoldom is the basis of most of our 
 modern plays. If an alderman appears upon the stage 
 you may be sure that it is in order to be cuckolded 
 knights and baronets, country squires, and justices of 
 the quorum come up to town for no other purpose .... 
 The accomplished gentleman upon the English stage 
 is the person that is familiar with other men s wives 
 and indifferent to his own, as the fine woman is gen 
 erally a composition of sprightliness and falsehood." 
 Lady Cowper tells us in her Diary (1715), that 
 
40 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. * 
 
 she went with the Princess of Wales to see the play 
 of the i Wanton Wife better known as the c Amorous 
 Widow, by Betterton, a sort of free translation of 
 Moliere s i George Dandin, and she says : " I had seen 
 it once ; and I believe there were few in town had 
 seen it so seldom, for it used to be a favorite play and 
 often Tjespoke ly the ladies .... Went to the play 
 with my mistress ; and to my great satisfaction she 
 liked it as well as any play she had seen ; and it cer 
 tainly is not more obscene than old comedies arc. It 
 were to be wished our stage was chaster." In a paper 
 in the * Connoisseur, published in the middle of the 
 century, the writer says: "I was present a few nights 
 ago at the representation of the Chances, " a most 
 indecent play, " and when I looked round the boxes 
 and observed the loose dress of all the ladies, and the 
 great relish w^ith which they received the high-seasoned 
 jests in that comedy, I was almost apprehensive that 
 the old story of the outrage of the Romans on the 
 Sabine women would be inverted." 
 
 In a letter from Richardson, in 1748, to Lady 
 Bradshaigh, w T ho under the feigned name of Belfour 
 carried on a correspondence with him, he says, "A 
 good comedy is a fine performance ; but how few are 
 there which can be called good ? Even those that are 
 tolerable, are so mixed with indecent levities (at which 
 
WOMEN" AND THE STAGE. 41 
 
 footmen have a right to insult by tlieir mars their 
 ladies in the boxes) that a modest young creature 
 hardly knows how to bear the offence to her ears in 
 the representation, joined with the insults given by 
 the eyes of the young fellows she is surrounded by." 
 
 In Miss Burney s novel of Evelina the heroine 
 says : " The play was Love for Love ; and, though it 
 is fraught with wit and entertainment, I hope I shall 
 never see it represented again ; for it is so extremely 
 indelicate to use the softest word I can that Mise 
 Mirvan and I were perpetually out of countenance, 
 and could neither make any observations ourselves, 
 nor venture to listen to those of others." 
 
 It must, however, be borne in mind that an age 
 or period can only be described according to its lead 
 ing features and general tendencies. The same is true 
 of national character or national portraiture. And 
 during the eighteenth century how many must have 
 lived and died among our forefathers, to whom the 
 general description of the age could have been by no 
 means with truth applied ! * When we speak of its 
 
 * " In an age that prides itself on the careful rules of induc 
 tive reasoning, nothing is more surprising than the sweeping 
 assertions with regard to national character, and the reckless 
 way in which casual observations that may be true of one, two, 
 three, or it may be ten or even a hundred individuals, are ex 
 tended to millions." Chips from a German Workshop, by 
 Max MiUler, TO!, iii. p. 265. 
 

 42 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 laxity of morals and its indifference to religion, we 
 cannot doubt that there was piety both in the town 
 and in the country that there were gentle and loving 
 souls who shrank from profanity and impurity, and 
 /were disgusted at the scenes of intemperance which 
 they were too often obliged to witness. In the licen 
 tious periods of the reign of Charles II. in England 
 and the Regency in France there were, women like 
 Mrs. Godolphin and Madame Louise, who, amid the 
 corruptions of a court, devoted themselves to the ser 
 vice of God, and kept themselves unspotted from the 
 world. "We are not to suppose that all ladies spent 
 their time in frivolous amusements or intrigues of gal 
 lantry as the novelists too often represent them- and 
 we may be sure that there were thousands who could 
 give as innocent an account of their hours as Lady 
 Bradshaigh does in one of her letters to Richard 
 son : 
 
 "I rise about seven, sometimes sooner ; after my 
 private duties, I read or write till nine ; then breakfast ; 
 work and converse with my company till about twelve ; 
 then, if the weather permit, walk a mile in the garden ; 
 dress and read till dinner; after which sit and chat 
 till four ; from that till the hour of tea-drinking each 
 day variety of employments. You know what the 
 men say enters with the tea-table ; though I will ven- 
 
PICTURE OF DAILY LIFE. 43 
 
 ture to say, if mine is not an exception, it is as near 
 one as you can imagine."* 
 
 And when we visit an old mansion-house in the 
 country, with its oriel windows and deep-red brick, 
 mellowed by time ; its terrace-walks and trim gar 
 dens shaded by venerable yews, it is pleasing to think 
 of our great-grandmothers, then young and lovely 
 women, quietly and happily passing their time there. 
 We can fancy the scene of some fair girl whose face 
 Gainsborough has painted, immersed in the volumes 
 of Ainadis de Gaul or perhaps Clarissa. 
 
 " Gracefully o er some volume bending, 
 While by her side the youthful sage 
 Held back her ringlets, lest descending 
 They should o ershadow all the page." 
 
 And we are not to suppose that there were not in 
 England many others besides Cowper who, although 
 not gifted with a genius like his, and the power of 
 expressing their thoughts in prose or verse like him, 
 did not equally with him mourn over the degeneracy 
 of the age, and pour out their hearts in prayer to 
 God for a reformation in the habits of the people, 
 and that Christianity might be more than a name. 
 We know few of their names now ; they are only 
 
 * Correspondence of Richardson, vol. vi. pp. 54, 55. 
 
44 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 chronicled on the tombstone the silent witnesses 
 have passed away, and we must judge the century by 
 its works and the records it has left, -y 
 
 We find in the Essayists much useful matter that 
 throws light upon manners and social usages, and 
 they form a valuable supplement to the novels ; or, 
 rather I should say, as the essays go more fully and 
 directly to the point, the novels form a supplement to 
 them. But, if we attempt to appreciate their worth, 
 I fear I shall be thought to broach a heresy when I 
 say- that, in my opinion, the great body of the Essay 
 ists are very dull. Of course I except many papers 
 by Addison, such as those that relate to the delightful 
 Sir Eoger de Coverley, the Visions of Mirza, and 
 the criticisms on Virgil and Milton ; and some by 
 Steele, Goldsmith, Johnson, and Hawkes worth. But, 
 taking them as a whole, it is difficult to feel interest 
 in them now, except so far as they tend to illustrate 
 the condition of society at the time. "What strikes 
 one most is the frivolity of many of the subjects 
 about which men of mark and genius thought it 
 worth while to write. The wit is generally of the 
 mildest kind, .and the good-natured public seems to 
 have been very easily amused. We have essays and 
 letters about the size of petticoats and hoops, and the 
 mode of flirting with fans about patches and the 
 
THE ESSAYISTS. 45 
 
 love of women for puppet-shows, about riding-habits 
 and commodes : accounts of the She-romp Club, the 
 Ugly Club, the Lazy Club, and the Amorous Club ; 
 of female " salamanders," and all the fashions, follies, 
 and nonsense of the age. Women of the town, like 
 Rebecca !N"ettletop, recite their adventures, and mod 
 est women, like Belvidera, write to complain of fe 
 male panders. Betty Saunter sends a letter to ask 
 whether " dimple " is spelled with a single or double 
 u p," and Benjamin Easy writes to warn the public 
 against the danger caused by the fan-exercise. " Last 
 Sunday," he says, " he met with a soldier of your own 
 training ; she furls a fan, recovers a fan, and goes 
 through the whole exercise of it to admiration : this 
 well-managed officering of yours has, to my knowl 
 edge, been the ruin of above five young gentlemen, 
 besides myself, and still goes on laying waste where 
 soever she comes, whereby the whole village is in 
 great danger." And he goes on to suggest that the 
 management of the fan should be met with the man 
 agement of the snuffbox, which hint is accordingly 
 taken up ; and in a subsequent number appears an 
 advertisement stating where "the exercise of the 
 snuffbox, according to the most fashionable airs and 
 motions," will be taught. 
 
 The grave Dr. Johnson gives us letters in the 
 
4:6 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS 
 
 Idler from Betty Brown and Molly Quick and 
 Deborah Singer : and an imaginary complaint from a 
 grocer s wife, whose husband, instead of attending to 
 the shop, spent his time in a nine-pin alley, and on 
 Sunday in an ale-house. Also another from Peggy 
 Heartless, whose peace of mind is disturbed because 
 her husband cannot find lodgings in London to suit 
 his fancy. 
 
 In one of Jane Austen s novels. Northanger Ab- 
 
 > o 
 
 bey, where she is defending the reading of novels, 
 she contrasts the conduct of a young lady who might 
 be caught with a novel in her hand, and " lays it 
 down with affected indifference or momentary shame 
 although it were perhaps Cecilia, or ( Camilla, or 
 i Belinda " with her conduct if discovered reading 
 the Spectator. " ]S~ow, had the same young lady 
 been engaged with a volume of the Spectator in 
 stead of such a work, how proudly would she have 
 produced the book and told its name ! though the 
 chances must be against her being occupied with any 
 part of that voluminous publication of which either 
 the matter or manner would not disgust a young per 
 son of taste ; the substance of its papers so often con 
 sisting in the statement of improbable circumstances, 
 unnatural characters, and topics of conversation which 
 no longer concern any one living ; and their language 
 
THE ESSAYISTS. 47 
 
 frequently so coarse as to give no very favorable idea 
 of the age that conld endure it." 
 
 The object of the writers was no doubt good to 
 reform manners and morals by irony and satire ; but 
 Lord Macanlay certainly attributes too much influ 
 ence to the satire of Addison when he says that he 
 so effectually retorted on vice the mockery which had 
 recently been directed against virtue, that since his 
 time the open violation of decency has always been 
 considered as the mark of a fool. This, I suppose, 
 was suggested by the well-known lines 
 
 " Immodest words admit of no defence, 
 For want of decency is want of sense." 
 
 But the aphorism is not true in itself, and it was long 
 after Addison before indecency of conduct, and inde 
 cency of talk, even before women, were banished from 
 society. The change was due to that silent revolu 
 tion in opinions and manners which is brought about 
 by time, and the eifect of which is so w r ell described 
 by Mr. Lecky in his History of Rationalism. The 
 strange thing, however, is and it is a remarkable 
 proof of the manners of the century -that in works 
 
 * 
 
 seriously and sincerely devoted to the canse of mo 
 rality and religion, and intended to be read at every 
 breakfast-table in the kingdom, letters should be 
 
48 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 printed whicli exhibited vice in its most naked form. 
 The same, indeed, may be said of the reports of cases 
 in our newspapers at the present day, and it is, I 
 think, deeply to be regretted that they give at full 
 length such polluting details as often fill their col 
 umns. It will generally be found that the minuteness 
 of the narrative, or the fidelity of the report of 
 the evidence, is in proportion to the objection 
 able nature of the subject-matter ; and attention 
 is called by leaded type to conversations and actions 
 in real life which, if dressed up as fiction, and sold as 
 novels, would lead to a prosecution by the Society for 
 the Suppression of Yice, or a. seizure under Lord 
 Campbell s Act. I know the sort of apology which 
 is made for this ; namely, that publicity is the most 
 effectual punishment of vice and crime. But the 
 answer is twofold : first, publicity may be given with 
 out revelling in the details of indecency a picture 
 may be a sketch instead of being a photograph and, 
 secondly, the object of the proprietors in so doing is 
 not to advance the cause of morality, but to put 
 money into their pockets. The sale of a newspaper 
 increases witli. the enormity of the scandal it reports, 
 and the simple reason why the report is so disgust- 
 ingly minute is that it pays. Of course there is the 
 difference between the two cases the modern news- 
 
MODERN NEWSPAPERS. 49 
 
 papers detail facts that liave actually occurred, and 
 evidence that has been given in a court of justice, 
 while the objectionable letters in the 4 Tatler and 
 Spectator and f Guardian, are purely imaginary. 
 But the effect is the same, or rather, I should say, the 
 effect of the modern practice is infinitely worse, for 
 the interest of the readers is more engaged, and the 
 mind realizes more vividly the scenes that are de 
 scribed. 
 
 Another source of information as to the manners 
 of the age, is Painting. The pictures of Hogarth, so 
 well known to all of us by the engravings, are of 
 excellent use in conveying a truthful idea of these, 
 and the costume of the time. But this has been so 
 admirably drawn by a master-hand, that I shall not 
 attempt to give an analysis of my own, but merely 
 quote two or three sentences from Thackeray.* 
 We look and see pass before us the England of a 
 hundred years ago the peer in his drawing-room, the 
 lady of fashion in her apartment, foreign singers sur 
 rounding her, and the chamber filled w r ith gewgaws in 
 the mode of that day; the church, with its quaint 
 fiorid architecture and singing congregation ; the par 
 son with his great wig, and the beadle with his cane, 
 all these are represented before us, and we are sure 
 *< English Humorists, pp. 244, 245 
 
50 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 of the truth of the portrait The Yorkshire 
 
 wagon rolls into the inn-yard; the country parson, 
 in his jack-boots, and his bands, and short cassock, 
 comes trotting into town, and we fancy it is Parson 
 Adams with his sermons in his pocket. The Salisbury 
 fly sets forth from the old Angel. You see the pas 
 sengers entering the great heavy vehicle, and up the 
 wooden steps, their hats tied down with handker 
 chiefs over their faces, and under their arms sword - 
 hanger and case-bottle ; the landlady, apoplectic with 
 the liquors in her own bar, is tugging at the bell ; the 
 hunch-backed postilion he may have ridden the lead 
 ers to Humphry Clinker is begging a gratuity ; the 
 miser is grumbling at the bill ; Jack of the Centu 
 rion lies on the top of the clumsy vehicle with a 
 soldier by his side it may be Smollett s Jack Hatch 
 way, it has a likeness to his make-up." 
 
 Before, however, entering more into detail as to 
 the manners and habits of our forefathers, I wish to 
 make one remark on which I shall have occasion to 
 insist hereafter, when I come to speak more particu 
 larly of the novels of the last century. It must not be 
 supposed that, in describing its vices and failings, I 
 mean to imply that we at the present day have any 
 right te sit with Pecksniff complacency in judgment 
 upon the past, and congratulate ourselves, as if we 
 
HOGARTH. 51, 
 
 had nothing to be ashamed of in our morals and con 
 duct. In some respects we may be thankful for a vast 
 improvement, and it would be lamentable indeed if it 
 were not so. There can be no doubt that in lan 
 guage, and manners, and taste, we are much more 
 refined than our ancestors of a hundred or a hundred 
 and fifty years ago. Drinking, swearing, and duelling, 
 are no longer the accomplishments of gentlemen. 
 Coarse jests and improper allusions are no longer per 
 mitted in the presence of women, and even among 
 men an habitual offender in those respects would soon 
 find that his society was shunned. Women may be 
 treated with less ceremony, but they are certainly 
 treated with more respect. In our houses, our furni 
 ture, and our sanitary arrangements, there is far more 
 comfort and attention to cleanliness and health.* 
 
 * " It is not necessary to go back much beyond half a century 
 to arrive at the time when prosperous shopkeepers, in the lead 
 ing thoroughfares of London, were without that necessary 
 article of furniture, a carpet, in their ordinary sitting-rooms : 
 luxury in this particular seldom went further with them than a 
 well-scoured floor strewed with sand." Porter s Progress of 
 the Nation, p. 522. In his Life of Beau Nash, Goldsmith thus 
 speaks of Bath at the beginning of the last century: "The 
 lodgings for visitants were paltry though expensive ; the dining- 
 rooms and other chambers were floored with boards colored 
 brown with soot and small beer to hide the dirt ; the walls were 
 covered with unpainted wainscot ; the furniture corresponded 
 with the meanness of the architecture ; a few oak chairs, a small 
 
52 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 But the real progress made, besides the improvement 
 in manners and refinement (I say nothing of politics), 
 is in the enlarged scope of modern legislation and 
 consideration for the wants of the poor. 
 
 We are not, however, to suppose that the age was 
 without manly virtues and womanly decorum, still 
 less that the minds of the men of former generations 
 were unfeeling or corrupt, because they tolerated 
 things which we should now regard with pity or dis 
 gust. "\\ r e must cautiously discriminate between the 
 outward act and the inward sentiment. Take the 
 case of religious persecution in former times. As lias 
 been forcibly remarked by Mr. Lecky, " The burnings, 
 the tortures, the imprisonments, the confiscations, the 
 disabilities, the long wars and still longer animosities, 
 that for so many centuries marked the conflicts of 
 great theological bodies, are chiefly due to men whose 
 lives were spent in absolute devotion to what they 
 believed to be true, and whose characters have passed 
 
 looking-glass, with a fender and tongs, composed the magnifi 
 cence of their temporary habitations. I do not believe that 
 from the beginning to the end of the century there could be 
 found in any house, in town or country, a really easy arm 
 chair. We all know the stiff, hard, upright things on which 
 our great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers used to sit, and 
 which we can hardly look upon without feeling a pain in the 
 fiack." 
 
NECESSITY OF DISCRIMINATION. 53 
 
 unscathed through the most hostile and searching 
 criticism. In their worst acts the persecutors were 
 but the exponents and representatives of the wishes of 
 a large section of the community, and that section was 
 commonly the most earnest and the most unselfish." * 
 So, again, with regard to the state of our criminal 
 law. The frequency of capital punishments, when 
 miserable wretches were hanged by the dozen for 
 picking pockets, or stealing sheep, or cutting down 
 apple-trees, did not shock the moral sense of the 
 public, and excited remonstrance only in the minds of 
 a few thoughtful men not because the public was 
 more cruel, and took pleasure in human suffering, but 
 because they were thought indispensable to the safety 
 of the community; and the idea of the necessity of 
 protecting property outweighed considerations of the 
 value of human life. In old times, indeed, the num 
 ber of executions was thought a proof of the superior 
 ity of our countrymen, as indicating the existence of 
 valiant crime. Chief-Justice Fortescue, in the reign 
 of Henry VI., wrote almost with a kind of pride, that 
 " more men are hanged in Englande in one year, than 
 in France in seven, because the English have better 
 partes. The Scotchmenne likewise never dare rob, 
 
 * The Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe, vol. i. 
 p. 387. 
 
54: NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 but only commit larcenies." * Bull-baiting and bear- 
 baiting were defended by Canning and Windham, 
 and yet no one lias ever brought against those eminent 
 men the charge of cruelty. The Puritans were not 
 cruel, and yet Macaulay says of them, "If the 
 Puritans suppressed bull-baiting, it was not be 
 cause it gave pain to the bull, but because it gave 
 pleasure to the spectators." And then, again, with 
 respect to the Slave Trade, how long it was before 
 public opinion was effectually brought round to 
 second the efforts of Clarkson and "Wilberforce for its 
 abolition ! But it would be most untrue to say that 
 the men and women who defended it some within 
 living memory were, in their dispositions and char 
 acters, more inhuman than ourselves. 
 
 Nor, while we congratulate ourselves upon the 
 progress made in civilization and refinement, must we 
 forget " the beam that is in our own eye." We may 
 turn with disgust from the coarseness that sullies the 
 pages of the literature of the eighteenth century, but 
 what shall we say of the sensational novels of the 
 present day, with their tales of murder, seduction, 
 adultery, and intrigue, the writers of which seem to 
 have studied nothing but the morbid anatomy of the 
 human heart ? 
 
 * Quoted by Mr. Lecky in liis Rise and Influence of Ration 
 alism in Europe, vol. i. p. 381. 
 
THE BEAM IN OUR OWN EYE. 55 
 
 " Those were times," says the Rev. Charles Kings- 
 lev, speaking of the last century, in his preface to 
 Brooke s Fool of Quality, " in which men were 
 coarser and more ignorant, but yet heartier and health 
 ier than now. Those intricacies of the human heart, 
 which (as unravelled by profligate Frenchmen or 
 pious Englishwomen) are now in such high and all 
 but sole demand, were then looked on chiefly as indi 
 gestions of the human stomach or other physical or 
 gans ; and the public wanted, over and above the 
 perennial subject of love, some talk at least about 
 valor, patriotism, loyalty, chivalry, generosity, the 
 protection of the oppressed, the vindication of the 
 innocent, and other like matters, which are now ban 
 ished alike from pulpit and from stage, and only 
 call forth applause (so I am informed) from the sluts 
 and roughs in the gallery of the Victoria Theatre." 
 
 In so far as the miserable trash of a certain school of 
 
 
 
 fiction prevalent among us, is here condemned, I en 
 tirely agree with Mr. Kingsley, although happily the 
 writers usurp only a part of the domain of fiction, and 
 we can point to authors still living, or only recently 
 departed, who are as hearty and healthy as Fielding 
 or Smollett, without any of their coarseness or scenes 
 of prurient vice. 
 
 There is another danger to guard against in form- 
 
56 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 ing an opinion with regard to the manners and morals 
 of a by-gone age, and that is, lest we should mistake 
 satire for truth and caricature for likeness. In mak 
 ing use of the novels for this purpose some caution is 
 no doubt necessary. 
 
 But here an important distinction must be made. 
 It would be very wrong to consider that particular 
 characters in the hands of novelists truthfully repre 
 sent a class, where it is obvious that the object is to 
 indulge in exaggeration and provoke a laugh. Ko- 
 body believes that the grotesque personages who figure 
 in the pages of Dickens are anywhere to be found in 
 real life. His plan was to seize upon some oddity of 
 human nature, and invest his puppets with it so com 
 pletely that they can never open their lips without 
 betraying it. "Who ever met with such a compound 
 of impudence and wit in a shoeblack, or a groom, as 
 we find in the immortal Sam "Weller? It may have 
 been our lot to know " a great man struggling with 
 the storms of fate," but where shall we look for a man 
 who is jolly in proportion as he is unfortunate, like 
 ^lark Tapley ? Who can believe in the actual exist 
 ence of such persons as Miss Flite and Miss Mowchcr 
 and Toots ? Gradgrind is so practical that he ceases 
 to be human ; Micawber is full of maudlin sentiment 
 and emphatic nonsense ; Mrs. Nickleby is always par- 
 
EVIDENCE OF STATE OF SOCIETY. 57 
 
 cntlictical and incolierent ; Boythorn never opens his 
 lips without being intensely and boisterously ener 
 getic ; and Major Bagstock always describes himself 
 as " tough old Joe ; " " Joe is rough and tough, sir ! 
 blunt, sir, blunt is Joe." It would be in the last de 
 gree absurd for a future writer to take these characters 
 as types of English society in the middle of the nine 
 teenth century; and, to a certain extent, the same 
 kind of allowance must be made for the characters in 
 the novels of the last century. For it is impossible 
 to believe that the portrait of Squire "Western repre 
 sented in all its brutal details the country gentleman 
 of England ; that Parson Adams and Parson Trulli- 
 bcr give us a just idea of the clergy, or that the Rox- 
 ana of Defoe, the Mrs. Waters and Lady Bellaston of 
 Fielding, the Miss Grizzle Pickle and Miss Tabitha 
 Bramble of Smollett, the Mrs. Harriet Freke of Miss 
 Edgeworth, and the Mrs^Bennett of Jajo&Austen, are 
 true types of the modesty, education, refinement, and 
 intelligence, of Englishwomen of the time. I say that 
 this allowance should be made only to " a certain ex 
 tent," for I believe that the characters drawn by the 
 old novelists are, with a few exceptions, intended to 
 be less imaginary than the creations of fiction in our 
 own day, and have a substratum of reality which is 
 wanting in many of the amusing characters of Dick- 
 
58 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 ens. But, at all events, we may use the novels as 
 evidence of a state of society and manners on two 
 grounds, which are independent of the question 
 whether particular characters truthfully represent a 
 class. First, we may be sure that in the general tone 
 of conversation and description, and the unconscious 
 introduction of little incidents o every-day life, the 
 writers hold the mirror up to Nature and reflect the 
 image they themselves received from the world around 
 them. And next the degree of popularity which their 
 works enjoyed is evidence that their coarseness did not 
 disgust nor their licentiousness repel the public taste. 
 Such scenes as they described, and such language as 
 they put into the mouths of their heroes, would now 
 make a book unsalable whereas, then, Clarissa 
 Ilarlowe was thought to teach lessons of virtue, and 
 young ladies were not ashamed to avow their famil 
 iarity with Tom Jones. We are not therefore to 
 conclude that they were rakes and ready to throw 
 themselves into the arms of the first adventurer they 
 met ; but we must infer that their delicacy was less 
 susceptible and their modesty less sensitive than now. 
 In Lockhart s 4 Life of Scott * there is an instructive 
 anecdote told by Sir "Walter, which remarkably illus 
 trates this change in the public taste. A grand-aunt 
 
 *Vol. v. pp. 136, 137. 
 
CHANGE Itf PUBLIC TASTE. 59 
 
 of his, Mrs. Keith of Bavelstone, when a very old 
 lady, once asked him whether he had ever seen Mrs. 
 Belm s novels. Sir falter confessed that he had. 
 She then asked him whether he conld get her a sight 
 of them, and, "with some hesitation," he said he 
 believed he could, but he did not think that she would 
 like either the manners or language. " Nevertheless," 
 said the good old lady, " I remember their being so 
 much admired, and being so much interested in them 
 myself, that I wished to look at them again." " So," 
 says Sir Walter, " I sent Mrs. Aphra Behn, curiously 
 sealed up, with private and confidential on the 
 packet, to my gay old grand-aunt. The next time I 
 saw her afterward she gave me back Aphra, properly 
 wrapped up, w r ith nearly these words : c Take back 
 your bonny Mrs Behn, and, if you will take my 
 advice, put her in the fire, for I find it impossible to 
 get through the very first novel. But is it not, she 
 said, a very odd thing that I, an old w r oman of eighty 
 and upward, sitting alone, feel myself ashamed to 
 read a book which sixty^years ago I have heard read 
 aloud for the amusement of large circles, consisting of 
 the first and most creditable. sncifilv in London ? " 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 DRESS. MASQUERADES. DRUMS. "PRETTY FELLOWS" AND "MAC- 
 CAEONIES." CLUBS. EANELAGH AND VAUXHALL. LONDON. 
 DANGERS OF THE STREETS. STATE OF THE ROADS. HIGHWAY 
 MEN. 
 
 LET us now go a little more into detail, and con 
 sider some of the aspects of the social life and habits 
 of our great-great-grandfathers and great-great-grand 
 mothers. 
 
 And first as to the dress of the ladies. At the 
 beginning of the last century the fashionable head 
 dress was the commode^ or f outage^ by which the hair 
 was piled up on wires to a prodigious height. Then 
 there came a sudden fall, so that women who were 
 more than seven feet high were reduced to five. In a 
 letter in the Spectator, from a barrister of the Mid 
 dle Temple who " rode " the Western Circuit, he says 
 that one of the most fashionable women he met with 
 in all the circuit was the landlady at Staines, and her 
 commode was not half a foot high, and her petticoat 
 " within some yards of a modish circumference." 
 The writer of a letter in the i London Magazine of 
 
DRESS OF LADIES. 61 
 
 August, 1768, says : " I went the other morning to 
 make a visit to an elderly aunt of mine, when I found 
 her pulling off her cap and tendering her head to the 
 ingenious Mr. Gilchrist, who has lately obliged the 
 public with a most excellent essay on hair. He 
 asked her how long it was since her head had been 
 opened or repaired. She answered, not above nine 
 weeks. To which lie replied, that it was as long as 
 a head could well go in summer, and that therefore it 
 was proper to deliver it now ; for he confessed that it 
 began to be a little hazarde." * And to show how 
 the follies of fashion repeat themselves, I may men 
 tion that the satirists of the last century used to 
 mourn over the nakedness of the birds which had 
 been robbed of their plumage to deck the heads of 
 the ladies. 
 
 AYhen Lydia Medford, in c Humphry Clinker, dress 
 es for an assembly, she says : " I was not six hours in the 
 hands of the hair-dresser, who stuffed my head with 
 as much black wool as would have made a quilted 
 petticoat, and after all it was the smallest head in the 
 assembly except my aunt s." In Miss Burney s c Eve 
 lina the heroine says: "I have just had my hair 
 dressed. You cannot think how oddly my head feels ; 
 full of powder and black pins, and a great cushion on 
 
 * Quoted in Wright s Caricature History of the Georges. 
 
62 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 the top of it .... When I shall be able to make 
 use of a comb for myself I cannot tell ; for my hair is 
 so much entangled, frizzled they call it, that I fear it 
 will be very difficult." 
 
 In the reigns of George I. and George II. the pet 
 ticoats of the ladies attained such a monstrous and ex 
 travagant size as to become the favorite subjects of 
 satire and caricature. Mrs. Delany says.in one of her 
 letters, written in 1738 : u The fashionable hoops are 
 made of the richest damask with gold and silver, four 
 teen guineas a hoop." * There is in the ( Tatler, ) a 
 paper which gives an account of a mock trial of a 
 pretty young woman for wearing a monstrous petti 
 coat, which when taken off the judge ordered to be 
 drawn up by a pulley, and it formed " a very vast and 
 splendid canopy, and covered the whole court of judi 
 cature with a kind of silken rotunda, in its form not 
 unlike the cupola of St. Paul s." Counsel was heard 
 in defence of the petticoat, and among other argu 
 ments they insinuated that its weight and unwieldi- 
 ness might be of great use to preserve the honor of 
 families. The corpus delicti was, however, condemned, 
 and sentence of forfeiture pronounced. And in the 
 letter of the lawyer of the Western Circuit, which I 
 have already quoted, he says : " As I proceeded on my 
 *Mrs. Delany s Autobiography, vol. ii. p. 25. fNo. 110. 
 
HOOP PETTICOATS. 63 
 
 journey, I observed the petticoat grew scantier and 
 scantier, and about threescore miles from London was 
 so very unfashionable that a woman might walk in it 
 without any manner of inconvenience." They disap 
 peared in the early part of the reign of George III., 
 but we all know that they were revived in a slightly- 
 modified form in the reign of Queen Yictoria. 
 
 What Goldsmith says of the tyranny of female 
 fashion in his day is equally true now : " Our ladies 
 seem to have no other standard for grace but the run 
 of the town. If fashion gives the word, every dis 
 tinction of beauty, complexion, or stature, ceases. 
 Sweeping trains, Prussian bonnets, and trollopees, as 
 like each other as if cut from the same piece, level all 
 to one standard." * 
 
 But those who wish to have an accurate idea of the 
 dress of their female ancestors in the last century, had 
 better consult the pages of the diary of the first Earl 
 of Malmesbury, recently published, where they will 
 find full details of their gowns, ribbons, laces, and or 
 naments. 
 
 As to the dress of the men, the chief thing to notice 
 in contrast with our present apparel was its extreme 
 gayety. Velvet with lace for coats, embroidered waist 
 coats with deep pockets and low flaps, satin breeches 
 * Bee, October, 1759. 
 
64: NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 and buckled shoes, were the attire of our great-great 
 grandfathers ; and it is difficult to understand how 
 they could support the expense. Thackeray says of 
 Steele, with a delightful touch of sarcasm: "He paid, 
 or promised to pay, his barber fifty pounds a year, 
 and always went abroad in a laced coat and large 
 black-buckled periwig that must have cost somebody 
 fifty guineas." 
 
 When Goldsmith resolved to try to better his for 
 tune by practising as a physician, in 1765, he came 
 out according to the account-books of Filby, the 
 tailor in purple-silk small-clothes and a scarlet ro- 
 quelaire, with a wig, a sword, and a gold-headed cane. 
 And the same minute record shows that he had a blue- 
 velvet suit which cost twenty guineas, and a rich straw 
 silk tamboured waistcoat, which cost four guineas, 
 to say nothing of the " Tyrian-bloom, satin-grain, and 
 garter blue-silk breeches." He was, as we know from 
 Boswell, rather vain of his bloom-colored coat, notwith 
 standing the surly remark of Johnson that his tailor 
 hoped that people w T ould stare at it and see how well 
 he could make a coat of so absurd a color. 
 
 In 1746, Lord Derwentwater ascended the scaffold 
 
 dressed in scarlet, faced with black velvet trimmed 
 
 with gold, a gold-laced waistcoat, and a white feather 
 
 in his hat.* But he certainly did not show the white 
 
 * Gentlemen s Magazine, vol. xvi. 6GG. 
 
DEESS OF GENTLEMEN. 65 
 
 feather in his conduct, for lie met death with the ut 
 most bravery. In 1753, Dr. Cameron went to execu 
 tion in a light-colored coat, red waistcoat and breeches, 
 and a new bag wig.* 
 
 It was in the following guise that Commodore 
 Trunnion, in Peregrine Pickle, one of Smollett s 
 most amusing characters, was dressed on the morning 
 of his intended marriage w r ith Miss Grizzly Pickle. 
 a He had put on, in honor of his nuptials, his best coat 
 of blue broadcloth, cut by a tailor of Ramsgate, and 
 trimmed with five dozen of brass buttons, large and 
 small. His breeches were of the same piece, fastened 
 at the knees with large bunches of tape ; his waist 
 coat was of red plush, lapelled with green velvet and 
 garnished with vellum holes; his boots bore an infi 
 nite resemblance, both in color and shape, to a pair of 
 leather buckets; his shoulder was graced with a broad 
 buff belt, from whence depended a huge hanger, with 
 a hilt like that of a back sword ; and on each side of 
 his pommel appeared a rusty pistol rammed in a case 
 covered with a bear-skin. The loss of his tie, periwig, 
 and laced hat, which were curiosities of the kind, did 
 
 * Ibid. vol. xxiii. 292. The size of watches may be ima 
 gined from the fact mentioned by Lady Cowper in her diary (A. D. 
 1710) that Lord Wintou, when a prisoner in the Tower, had 
 sawed an iron bar very near in two with the spring of his watch, 
 in order to try and make his escape. 
 
66 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 not at all contribute to tlie improvement of the pic 
 ture ; but, on the contrary, by exhibiting his bald pate 
 and the natural extension of his lantern jaws, added to 
 the peculiarity and extravagance of the whole." 
 
 The most important and conspicuous part of the 
 dress was the wig. In 1765 the peruke-makers pre 
 sented a petition to the King, praying that their dis 
 tressed condition might be taken into consideration 
 on account of so many persons wearing their own 
 hair ; upon which his Majesty was graciously pleased 
 to declare that he held nothing dearer to his heart 
 than the happiness of his people, and he would 
 at all times use his endeavors to promote their 
 welfare. It seems that on this occasion some of 
 the wig-makers who attended the deputation were 
 so inconsistent as to wear their own hair, which 
 was cut off by the mob that attacked them."* 
 In Graves s f Spiritual Quixote there is a chapter 
 headed " A Dissertation on Periwigs," where a his 
 tory of these cauliflowers for the head is given, and 
 we are told that " of late years any man that has a 
 mind to look more considerable or more wise than his 
 neighbors goes to a barber s and purchases fifty shil 
 lings worth of false hair (white, black, or gray) and 
 hangs it upon his head, without the least regard to 
 * Ann. Reg. Chron. February, 1765. 
 
PERIWIGS. 67 
 
 liis complexion, liis age, or his person, or his station 
 in life ; and certainly if an inhabitant of the Cape of 
 Good Hope were to behold the stiff horsehair buckles 
 or the tied wigs of our lawyers, physicians, tradesmen, 
 or divines, they would appear as barbarous and ex 
 traordinary to them as the sheep s tripe and chitterlings 
 about the neck of a Hottentot do to us." And these 
 wigs were not confined to the men. " I heard lately 
 of an old baronet," says the same authority, " that 
 fell in love with a young lady of small fortune at 
 some public place for her beautiful brown locks. He 
 married her 011 a sudden, but was greatly disappointed 
 upon seeing her wig, or tete^ the next morning, thrown 
 carelessly upon her toilet, and her ladyship appear 
 ing at breakfast in very bright red hair, which was a 
 color the old gentleman happened to have a particular 
 aversion to." * If we substitute chignon for wig, are 
 we quite sure that the same misadventure might not 
 happen now ? 
 
 Wesley, when a young man, was distinguished for 
 his long flowing hair, which he wore to save the ex 
 pense of a periwig, that he might give the money to 
 
 * In one of Walpole s letters he says, " You must know that 
 the ladies of Norfolk universally wear periwigs and affirm that 
 is the fashion in London," vol. i. p. 272. 
 
68 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 the poor.* I do not know the exact period when the 
 fashion of wearing periwigs went out ; but in Miss 
 Burner s Cecilia, published at the latter end of the 
 century, the vulgar old miser, Mr. Briggs, is repre 
 sented as taking oif his wig at a masquerade and wip 
 ing his head with it. 
 
 A favorite form of public amusements was mas 
 querades, which, however, led to great abuse. In 
 1749 Elizabeth Chudleigh, afterward Duchess of 
 Kingston, w r ho was tried for bigamy and sentenced to 
 be burnt in the hand, but praying " her clergy " as a 
 peeress, escaped the punishment, appeared when she 
 was one of the maids of honor of the Princess of 
 Wales at a masquerade, in the character of Iphigenia 
 ready for sacrifice, in a close dress of flesh-colored 
 silk. The Princess, by w T ay of rebuke, threw her own 
 veil over her. And in 1771, Colonel Luttrell, the 
 opponent of Wilkes, in the Middlesex election, came 
 to a masquerade as a dead corpse in a shroud with 
 his coffin. These exhibitions became at last, however, 
 so offensive, that they were put down after public 
 
 * Horace Walpole heard him preach at Bath in 1766, and 
 describes him as " a lean elderly man, fresh colored, his hair 
 smoothly combed, but with a soupgon of curls at the ends, won 
 drous clean, but as evidently an actor as Garrick." Walpole s 
 Letters, edited by Cunningham, vol. v. p. 16. 
 
MASQUERADES. G9 
 
 opinion had become disgusted.* It is from a mas 
 querade that Harriet Byron, in Eichardson s novel of 
 4 Sir Charles Grandison, is carried off by Sir Hargrave 
 Pollexfen ; at a masquerade Tom Jones and Lady 
 Bellaston meet ; and it is at a masquerade that Cap 
 tain Booth, in Fielding s Amelia, is tortured with 
 jealousy, having mistaken another woman who was 
 there for his wife. 
 
 Private parties given by ladies were called drums. 
 In the novel of Amelia the heroine is asked to go 
 to Lady Betty Castleton s, but excuses herself on the 
 ground that she does not know her. " !Nbt know 
 Lady Betty ? How is that possible ? But no matter, 
 I will introduce you. She keeps a morning rout, 
 indeed ; a little bit of a drum ; only four or live 
 tables. Come, take your capuchin ; you positively 
 shall go." And in one of Daniel "Wray s letters, 
 dated November 4, 176 6, he thus speaks of a party 
 given by his wife : " Mrs. "W"., like a miser who gives a 
 dinner but once a year, determined to be magnificent, 
 
 * A writer in the Westminster Magazine, in May, 1774, 
 describing a masquerade at the Pantheon says : "I saw ladies 
 and gentlemen together in attitudes and positions that would 
 have disgraced the Court of Comus. In short, I am so thorough 
 ly sick ef masquerading, from what I beheld there, that I do 
 seriously decry them, as subversive of virtue and every noble 
 and domestic point of honor." 
 
YO NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 and peopled her drum so well, tliat her fire was put 
 out ; and had the company been less chosen it would 
 have been a most insufferable crowd. We amounted 
 in common arithmetic to forty-four souls ; but as 
 one lady was near her time, and as the number is 
 fashionable, we counted forty-five." * 
 
 At the beginning of the century, men who affected 
 the extreme of fashion were called " bucks," or 
 "pretty fellows." This name was changed in the 
 early part of the reign of George II. to " beaux ; " 
 then came the " fribbles," and after them the " mac- 
 caronies." 
 
 " With little hat and hair dressed high 
 
 And whip to ride a pony, 
 If you but take a right survey, 
 Denotes a maccaroni." 
 
 These were followed by the "-dandies," who con 
 tinued down to our own day ; and, perhaps, are not 
 yet wholly extinct. 
 
 In Richardson s correspondence there is a letter 
 from Miss "Westcourt, in which she speaks of the 
 celebrated Miss Gunnings, one of whom afterward 
 married the Duke of Hamilton with the rino; of a 
 
 O 
 
 * I suppose that this refers to No. 45 of the North Briton, 
 for which Wilkes was imprisoned, but afterward discharged on 
 habeas corpus. 
 
PRACTICAL JOKES. 71 
 
 bed-curtain for a wedding-ring, and the other the 
 Earl of Coventry.* They had just left Enfield (where 
 Miss AVestcourt resided), as not being gay enough. 
 And she says : " May toupees, powder, lace, and 
 essence (the composition of the modern pretty fellows) 
 follow them in troops to stare and be stared at, till 
 the more bashful youths give the first blush." The 
 bucks were fond of practical jokes, and anticipated 
 the famous one of Theodore Hook in Berner s Street. 
 " Once I remember," says a writer in the Connois 
 seur,^ " it was a frolic to call together all the wet- 
 nurses that wanted a place ; at another time to sum 
 mon several old women to bring their male tabby 
 cats, for which they were to expect a considerable 
 price ; and, not long ago, by the proffer of a curacy, 
 they drew all the poor parsons to St. Paul s Coffee 
 house, where the bucks themselves sat in another 
 box to smoke (that is, laugh at) their rusty w T igs and 
 brown cassocks." Sometimes they outwitted them 
 selves in their mad merriment, as when a party of 
 tipsy Templars set out at midnight on a voyage to 
 
 * Richardson thoroughly reciprocated this lady s dislike of 
 the Miss Gunnings, and expressed a wish " and that in charity 
 that they may catch the small-pox and have their faces 
 scarred with it ! " Correspondence of Richardson, vol. Hi. p. 
 273. 
 
 t No. 54, 1755. 
 
72 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 Lisbon to get good port. " They took boat at Temple 
 Stairs and prudently laid in by way of provisions a 
 cold venison pasty and two bottles of raspberry 
 brandy ; but when they imagined themselves just 
 arrived at Gravesend, they found themselves suddenly 
 overset in Chelsea Reach, and very narrowly escaped 
 being drowned." They must have been as drunk as 
 the Greek revellers at Corinth, described by Athenoeus, 
 who seeing the room appear to move up and down, 
 fancied that they were at sea in a storm on board a 
 trireme, and began to throw the tables and couches 
 out of window, in order to lighten the vessel. These 
 were certainly at least half-seas over. 
 
 The Clubs very different from the palaces of 
 Pall Mall and Coffee-houses were the great resort 
 of politicians and literary men and, indeed, of every 
 body who liked to pick up news and retail it over a 
 cup of sack or beer and pipe of tobacco. There were 
 White s Chocolate-house in St. James s Street ; Wil 
 lis s Coffee-house, called also Button s, on the north 
 side, of Russell Street in Covent Garden ; the Cocoa 
 Tree in St. James s Street ; the Grecian, in Devereux 
 Court in the Strand; Child s Coffee-house in St. 
 Paul s Churchyard, where the clergy resorted ; the 
 Rose, by Temple Bar, close beside which was the 
 barber s shop, where the young Templar used to have 
 
CLUBS AM) COFFEE-HOUSES. 73 
 
 " his slices rubbed and his periwig powdered " before 
 lie went to the play ; the Devil Tavern, not far off 
 Jonathan s in Change Alley, frequented by merchants 
 and brokers, and several others. And the sort of 
 club-life which men of letters led then is pleasantly 
 described by Addison in the first number of the 
 i Spectator. " Sometimes I smoke a pipe at Child s, 
 and while I seem attentive to nothing but the Post 
 man, overhear the conversation of every table in the 
 room. I appear on Tuesday night at St. James s 
 Coffee-house, and sometimes join the little committee 
 of politics in the inner room, as one who comes to 
 hear and improve. My face is likewise very well 
 known at the Grecian, the Cocoa Tree, and in the 
 theatres both of Drury Lane and the Haymarket. I 
 have been taken for a merchant upon the Exchange 
 for above three years, and sometimes pass for a Jew 
 in the assembly of stockjobbers at Jonathan s. In 
 short, wherever I see a cluster of people I mix with 
 them, though I never open my lips but in my own 
 club." Dr. Johnson tells us that when Addison had 
 suffered any vexation in his ill-assorted marriage with 
 the Countess of Warwick w r hich was often enough 
 
 O 
 
 he withdrew the company from Button s house, and 
 " from the coffee-house lie went again to a tavern, 
 
 where he often sat late and drank too much wine." 
 4 
 
74 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 Button liad been a servant in the Countess s 
 family. 
 
 "Whatever may be said against clubs nowadays, 
 as interfering with domestic life and preventing 
 matrimony, the attractions of the old coffee-houses 
 seem to have been more injurious to the supremacy 
 of the wife. Here are one or two short notes written 
 by Steele to his second wife Miss Scurloek, " his dear 
 Prue," shortly after their marriage in 1707 : 
 
 "DEVIL TAVERN, TEMPLE BAE, 
 
 January 3, 1707- S. 
 " DEAR PKUE : 
 
 " I have partly succeeded in my business to-day, 
 and enclose two guineas as earnest of more. Dear 
 Prue, I cannot come home to dinner. I languish for 
 your welfare, and will never be a moment careless 
 
 more. 
 
 " Your faithful husband, 
 
 "EicH. STEELE." 
 
 How cunningly he tried to bribe her into good 
 humor with the two guineas ! But, alas, for his prom 
 ises. A few days afterward he writes : 
 
 "DEAR WIFE, 
 
 " Mr. Edgcombe, ISTed Ask, and Mr. Lumley, have 
 desired me to sit an hour with them at the George, in 
 
EFFECT ON MATRIMONY. 75 
 
 Pall Mall, for which I desire your patience till twelve 
 o clock, or that you will go to bed. ..." 
 
 On another occasion he begs her not to send for 
 him, lest he should seem to be a henpecked husband. 
 "Dear Prue, don t send after me, for I shall be ridic 
 ulous." But he was, I fear, incorrigible, and must 
 have tried Prue s patience not a little by such letters 
 as the following : 
 
 " TENNIS-COURT COFFEE-HOUSE, 
 
 May 5, 1708. 
 " DEAK WIFE, 
 
 " I hope I have done this day what will be pleasing 
 to you ; in the mean time, shall lie this night at a 
 baker s, one Leg, over against the Devil Tavern, at 
 Charing Cross. ... If the printer s boy be at home, 
 send him hither ; and let Mrs. Todd send by the boy 
 my night-gown, slippers, and clean linen. You shall 
 hear from me early in the morning." 
 
 And yet he tells her in another letter, that he 
 " knows no happiness in this life comparable to the 
 pleasure he has in her society," although he adds a bit 
 of advice which may, perhaps, have somewhat dashed 
 the compliment. " Kising a little in the morning, 
 and being disposed to a cheerfulness .... would 
 not be amiss." 
 
70 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 It seems that tlie complaint so often heard that 
 young men will not marry, and therefore that young 
 women are not married, is as old as the times of 
 Richardson, and the causes assigned are nearly the 
 same. Miss Byron, in one of her letters in i Sir 
 Charles Grandison, says : " I believe there are more 
 bachelors now in England by many thousands than 
 were a few years ago ; and probably the number of 
 them (and of single women of course) will every 
 year increase. The luxury of the age will account a 
 good deal for this, and the turn our sex take in un- 
 domesticating themselves, for a good deal more. But 
 let not those worthy young women who may think 
 themselves destined to a single life, repine over-much 
 at their lot ; since possibly if they have had no lovers, 
 or having had one, two, or three, have not found a 
 husband, they have had rather a miss than a loss, as 
 men go. And let me here add, that I think as matters 
 stand in this age, or, indeed, ever did stand, that those 
 women who have joined with the men in their inso 
 lent ridicule of old maids, ought never to be forgiven ; 
 no, though Miss Grandison should be one of the ridi- 
 culers. An old maid may l>e an odious character, if 
 they will tell us that the bad qualities of the persons, 
 not the maiden state, are what they mean to expose ; 
 but then they must allow that there are old maids of 
 
KANELAGH AND VAUXIIALL. 77 
 
 twenty, and even that there are widows and wives of 
 all ages and complexions, who, in the abusive sense of 
 the words, are as much old maids as the most particu 
 lar of that class of females." 
 
 The favorite places of public resort were Eanelagli 
 and Vauxhall, and at a later period Maryleboiie or 
 " Marybone " Gardens, as they were called, and the 
 Pantheon. Eanelagh was on the south side of Hans 
 Place, and was so named from its site being that of a 
 villa of Viscount Eanelagh. The last entertainment 
 given there was the installation of the Knights of the 
 Bath, in 1802. In one of his letters, Walpole says 
 " I have been breakfasting this morning (1742), at 
 Eanelagh Garden: they have built an immense am 
 phitheatre full of little alehouses ; it is in rivalry of 
 Vauxhall, and costs above twelve thousand pounds." " x " 
 In another letter lie describes it as " a vast amphi 
 theatre, finely gilt, painted and illuminated, into 
 which everybody that loves eating, drinking, staring, 
 or crowding, is admitted for twelve pence." f It was 
 frequently visited by the king and the royal family, 
 and w r as apparently very much like the Cremorne 
 
 * Walpole s Letters, edited by Cunningham, vol. i. p. 158. 
 
 t When Dr. Johnson visited Kanelagh he said that " the 
 coup d ceil was the finest thing he had ever seen." Boswell s 
 Life of Johnson. 
 
78 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 Gardens of the present day, which, however, royalty 
 does not visit. We have a description of the place in 
 several of the old novels. 
 
 Horace Walpole mentions, in a letter to George 
 Montague, dated June 23, 1750, a party of pleasure 
 of ladies and gentlemen, of which he made one, at 
 Vauxhall : " We got into the best order we could, and 
 marched to our barge, with a boat of French horns 
 attending, and little Ashe singing. We paraded 
 some time up the river, and at last debarked at Yaux 
 hall ; there, if we had so pleased, we might have had 
 the vivacity of our party increased by a quarrel. . . . 
 Miss Spurre, who desired nothing so much as the fun 
 of seeing a duel a thing which, though she is fifteen, 
 she has never been so lucky to see took due pains to 
 make Lord March resent this, but he, who is very 
 lively and agreeable, laughed her out of this charm 
 ing frolic with a great deal of humor. Here we 
 picked up Lord Granby, arrived very drunk from 
 Jenny s (a w r ell-known tavern at Chelsea), where, in 
 stead of going to old Stratford s catacombs to make 
 honorable love, he had dined with Lady Fanny, and 
 left her, and eight women, and four other men, play 
 ing at Brag." The party then enjoyed themselves 
 mincing chickens in a china dish, which Lady Caro 
 line Petersham stewed over a lamp, with pats of but- 
 
EANELAGH AND VAUXHALL. 79 
 
 tcr, and eating strawberries and cherries brought by 
 Betty, the fruit-girl.* 
 
 There is an amusing account in the Connoisseur 
 (1755), of the surprise of an honest citizen, whose 
 wife and two daughters had persuaded him to take 
 them to Yauxhall, when he found how thin were the 
 slices of ham, and how heavy was the reckoning. 
 His daughters ask him when they shall come again to 
 the Gardens, but he retorts by asking them if they 
 mean to ruin him. " Once in one s life is enough, 
 
 O ? 
 
 and I think I have done very handsome. Why it 
 would not have cost me above fourpence-halfpenny to 
 have spent my evening at Lot s Hole ; and what with 
 the cursed coach-hire, and altogether, here s almost a 
 pound gone, and nothing to show for it." And so he 
 flapped his hat, and tied his pocket-handkerchief over 
 it, to save his wig, as it began to rain, and shook the 
 dust of Yauxhall from off his feet. 
 
 In c Humphry Clinker, Mr. Matthew Bramble 
 asks, what are the amusements of Yauxhall ? " One- 
 half of the company are following one another s tails 
 in an eternal circle ; like so many blessed asses in an 
 olive-mill, where they can neither discourse, distin 
 guish, nor be distinguished ; while the other half are 
 drinking hot water, under the denomination of tea 
 
 * Walpolc s Letters, edited by Cunningham, vol. ii. p. 211. 
 
80 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 .... Yauxliall is a composition of baubles, over 
 charged with paltry ornaments." But Lydia Melford 
 speaks in raptures of Ranelagh, which, she says, " looks 
 like the enchanted palace of a genio," and as to Yaux 
 liall, she is " dazzled and confounded with the variety 
 of beauties that rushed all at once upon my eye." 
 
 JSTo account, however, that I have read of Rane- 
 lagh or Yauxliall, is so lifelike and spirited as that by 
 Thackeray, of Yauxliall, in Yanity Fair. lie could 
 speak from experience, for Yauxliall existed in his 
 youth, and he vouches for the truth of the fact there 
 was 110 headache in the world like that caused by 
 Yauxhall punch. He tells us of all the delights of 
 the Gardens ; of the hundred thousand extra lamps 
 which were always lighted, the fiddlers in cocked hats, 
 who played ravishing melodies under the gilded 
 cockle-shell in the midst of the gardens ; the singers, 
 both of comic and sentimental ballads, who charmed 
 the ears there; the country dances formed by boun 
 cing cockneys and cockney esses, and executed amid 
 jumping, thumping, and laughter ; the signal that an 
 nounced that Madame Saqui was about to mount sky 
 ward on a slack rope, ascending to the stars ; the her 
 mit that always sat in the illuminated hermitage ; the 
 dark walks so favorable to the interviews of young 
 lovers ; the pots of stout handed about by the people 
 
THACKERAY S DESCRIPTION OF VAUXIIALL. 81 
 
 in the shabby old liveries ; and the twinkling boxes 
 in which the happy feasters made believe to eat slices 
 of almost invisible ham. 
 
 Bat there is hardly a scene at Eanelagh described 
 by the old novelists, where some insult is not offered 
 to ladies by men calling themselves gentlemen, al 
 though they did not always attack them quite as 
 openly as the young nobleman, who, in Fielding s 
 Amelia, meets the heroine at "Vauxhall, and cries 
 
 out, " Let the devil come as soon as he will ; d n 
 
 me if I have not a kiss." 
 
 We find in the novels of the last century, several 
 incidental notices of London, which give us some idea 
 of the difference between the metropolis then and as 
 it exists now. "We are told in f Humphry Clinker, 
 that " Pimlico and Knightsbridge are now almost 
 joined to Chelsea and Kensington, and if this infat 
 uation continues fur half a century, I suppose the 
 whole county of Middlesex will be covered with 
 brick." * 
 
 In Mrs. Heywood s novel of Miss Betsy Thought 
 less, a gentleman mentions in a letter that he wants 
 
 * The sights of London are described by Mrs. Winifred Jen 
 kins in the same veracious work. " And I have seen the park 
 and the paleass of St. Gimses, and the king s and the queen s 
 magisterial pursing, and the sweet young princes, and the hilly- 
 fents and pye-bald ass, and all the rest of the royal family." 
 
82 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 a house, and says, " I should approve of St. James s 
 Square if rents are not exorbitant, for in that case a 
 house in any of the adjoining streets must content 
 me ; I would not willingly exceed 100?. or 110Z. per 
 annum ; but I should be as near the Park and Palace 
 as possible." The idea of a house in St. James s 
 Square at a rent of a hundred a year is rather start 
 ling, and is probably a mistake on the part of the 
 authoress. 
 
 Let those who wish to understand what might 
 happen in the streets of London in the reign of Queen 
 Anne, read the attempt of Captain Hill to seize and 
 run away with the beautiful actress, Mrs. Bracegir- 
 dle, as the story was told upon sworn evidence in the 
 House of Lords, and is chronicled in the pages of the 
 State Trials. The gallant lover, assisted by Lord Mo- 
 hun, lay in wait for his mistress in Drury Lane, with 
 a hackney-coach and six horses and half a dozen sol 
 diers. He caught hold of her hand and tried to force 
 her into the carriage, while the soldiers attacked with 
 their swords Mr. Page, a friend who accompanied her. 
 But a hubbub arose, and the by-standers came to the 
 rescue, so that his Lordship and Captain Hill were 
 obliged to let the fair Bracegirdle go, and in revenge 
 for their disappointment they afterward attacked 
 Mountford the comedian of whom Hill was jealous 
 
STATE OF THE EOADS. 83 
 
 as lie was coming out of a house in Norfolk Street 
 in the Strand, and killed him. For this murder Lord 
 Mohun was tried by his peers, but found not guilty, 
 as the actual blow was struck by Hill, while the 
 attention of Mountford was engaged in conversation 
 
 cD O 
 
 by his Lordship. 
 
 In the early part of the century the streets of 
 London w r ere infested by a body of wild young men, 
 who called themselves members of the Mohock Club. 
 Their exploits consisted in knocking down watchmen, 
 assaulting tlie citizens, and rolling women in tubs.* 
 
 " Who has not heard the scourer s midnight fame ? 
 Who has not trembled at the Mohock s name ? 
 Was there a watchman took his nightly rounds, 
 Safe from their blows, or new-invented wounds ? 
 I pass these desperate deeds, and mischiefs done, 
 Where from Snow-hill black steepy torrents run ; 
 How matrons, hooped within the hogshead s womb 
 Were tumbled furious thence ; the rolling tomb 
 O er the stone thunders, bounds from side to side ; 
 So Regulus, to save his country, died." t 
 
 The dangers of the street, from Mohocks and other 
 ruffians, was such that to go to the theatre was like 
 going to Donnybrook Fair. "When Sir Roger cle Cov- 
 -erley wished to see a play Captain Sentry came to 
 
 * Spectator, No. 324. t Gay s Trivia, published in 1711. 
 
84: NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 accompany him, after putting OH his sword, and, in 
 in tho words of the- Spectator, "Sir .Roger s ser 
 vants, and among the rest my old friend the butler, 
 had, I found, provided themselves with good oaken 
 plants, to attend their master on this occasion. When 
 we had placed him. in his coach, with myself at tho 
 left hand, the captain before him, and his butler at 
 the head of the footmen in the rear, we conveyed him 
 in safety to the play-house." 
 
 The roads were everywhere in an abominable 
 state. In the country they were merely grcon lain;;-;, 
 with deep ruts, almost impassable from mud in winter, 
 or after rain ; and coaches drawn by six horses stuck 
 in them as in an impervious morass. The average 
 speed of a stage-coach was about three miles an hour. 
 It took a week to travel from York to London, and 
 between London and Edinburgh the time allowed, in 
 1763, was a fortnight.* But this was by the ordinary 
 coach, for we learn from "Richardson s Correspondence 
 that the "fast coaches" actually performed the jour 
 ney between London and York in three days! In 
 the metropolis the gutters flowed in the middle of the 
 
 * On Monday, April 20,1000,1,11(1 ".Flying Coach" wcni, from 
 Oxford to London for the first time in one day. It Iiad a b<>ol, 
 on cacli side. Among the passengers, we are told, was Mr. Hoi- 
 loway, "a Counsellor of Oxon, afterward a Judge." 
 
HAPNKSS OF T11K KOAPS. 85 
 
 j-treets, and there was no side pavement, or /A >//<>//% 
 for pedestrians. .Describing bis journey between 
 (Chester and London in a stage-coach in 17-10, Pen 
 nant savs: " Tlu> strain and labor of six good horses, 
 sometimes eij^ht, drew us through the slo\lpjllS of 
 Mireilen niul niaiiy otlicr places. AVe \\IMV constantly 
 out t\vo bonrs before tl:iv, :viul as Into nt nii^bt, jviul in 
 tlie cleptb of winter proportionately greater." And 
 lie el raws an unfavorable eontra.st between tbe single 
 gentleman of former times -\vbo equipped in jaek- 
 boots n>de ]>ost tbron^b tbiek ami tbin, and, ^nanletl 
 against tlie mire, detietl tbe frequent stumble and fall 
 -and "t.beir enervated posterity, ubo sl(H x }> jvwny 
 tbeir ra]>id journeys in easy-ebairs! "* 
 
 Tbe same ant.bor speaks of tbe Cboster stai;e as 
 " no des]>ieable vebiele for country gontleiucn." He 
 reaebed London from Cbester, lk :is a wondrous effort," 
 on tbe sixtb day before nightfall. k l^a,mili( x s \vbo 
 travelled in tbeir own carriages contracted witb Uen- 
 son tfc C\)., and were dragged np in tbe same number 
 of days, by three sets of able horses."* We need not, 
 therefore, be surprised that, the old novelists so fre 
 quently introduce the family eoaeh and six, although 
 it is difficult to understand how country gentlemen of 
 moderate means could bear the expense. 
 
 * Journey from Chester to Lomlon, p. 187. 
 
SG NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 When Mrs. Delany travelled from London to " the 
 Farm " in Gloucestershire in her father s coach and 
 six, the journey occupied five days, " through miser 
 able roads." Writing to her sister, in 1728, she says : 
 "At the end of the town some part of the coach 
 broke and we were obliged to get out, and took shel 
 ter in an ale-house ; in half an hour we jogged on, and 
 about an hour after that, flop we went into a slough, 
 not overturned, but stuck. Well ! out we were hauled 
 again, and the coach with much difficulty was heaved 
 out." * Horace Walpole, writing in 1752, describes 
 the roads in the neighborhood of Tunbridge Wells 
 as " bad beyond all badness," where young gentlemen 
 were forced to drive their curricles with a pair of 
 oxen, f Mrs. Scudamore says, in a letter to Richard 
 son, the novelist, written from Kent Church in 1757 : 
 " Thank God, we have met with no ill accident ; all 
 arrived in health. We now and then stuck a little by 
 the way from the narrowness of the roads, which we 
 were obliged to make wider in places by a spade." J 
 
 In a letter written by Lord Hervey from Kensing 
 ton, in 1763, he says : " The road between this place 
 and London is grown so infamously bad, that we live 
 
 * Mrs. Delany s Autobiography, vol. i. pp. 12, 17. 
 
 t Walpole s Letters, edited by Cunningham, vol. ii. p. 281. 
 
 t Correspondence of Richardson, vol. iii. p. 327. 
 
HIGHWAYMEN. 87 
 
 here in tlie same solitude as we would do if cast upon 
 a rock in the middle of the ocean, and all the Lon 
 doners tell us that there is between them and us an 
 impassable gulf of mud." 
 
 In Arthur Young s Tour in the North of Eng- 
 
 O O 
 
 land, published 1770, he describes a turnpike road 
 1 jet ween Preston and "Wigan, and cautions travellers 
 to avoid it " as they would the devil ; " saying " they 
 will here meet with ruts, which I actually measured, 
 four feet deep, and floating with mud, only from a wet 
 summer what therefore must it be after a winter? 
 The only mending it receives in places is the tum 
 bling in some loose stones, which serve no other pur 
 pose but jolting a carriage in the most intolerable 
 manner." 
 
 In his sketch of the life of Jane Austen, the Rev. 
 Mr. Leigh describes the road between the villages of 
 Deane and Steventon, of which successively her father 
 was incumbent, as being, in the year 1771, "a mere 
 cart-track, so cut up by deep ruts as to be im 
 passable for a light carriage. Mrs. Austen, who was 
 not then in strong health, performed the short journey 
 on a feather-bed placed upon some soft articles of fur 
 niture in the wagon which held their household 
 goods. In those days it was not unusual to set men 
 to work with shovel and pickaxe to fill up ruts and 
 
88 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 holes in roads seldom . used by carriages on such spe 
 cial occasions as a funeral or a wedding." 
 
 But besides the danger of an upset from holes and 
 mud, there was the more serious danger of. an attack 
 from highwaymen, who infested all the great roads. 
 ISTo wonder, then, that pious Ralph Thoresby, when 
 travelling by coach from Leeds to London, in 1708, 
 records in his diary " Evening : I got an opportunity 
 in secret to bless God for mercies vouchsafed, and im 
 plore further protection, though I had a Scotch phy 
 sician for my chamber-fellow ! " When a family of 
 even moderate wealth travelled to Tunbridffc. or 
 
 O 5 
 
 Bath, or Harrogate, or Scarborough, they set out in a 
 coach and six, attended by servants on horseback, 
 armed with, pistols, to guard them against robbers.* 
 To be attacked on the road by highwaymen was, in 
 deed, one of the commonest incidents of travel, and 
 there is hardly a novel of the last century which docs 
 not introduce some such a scene as the most natural 
 thing in the world. 
 
 Lady Cowper has the following entry in her diary, 
 
 * Beau Nash, at the beginning of the century, used to travel 
 from Bath to Tunbridge in a post-chariot and six grays, with 
 outriders, footrnen, French horns, and a white hat ; which 
 last he said he wore to prevent it from being stolen. Gold 
 smith s Life of Beau Nash. 
 
HIGHWAYMEN. 89 
 
 under date 1716 : " Friday night Mr. Mickletliwaite 
 was set upon by nine footpads, who fired at his pos 
 tilion, without bidding him stand, just at the .end of 
 Bedford Row, in the road that goes there from Pan- 
 eras Church to Gray s Inn Lane. His servants and 
 lie fired at them again, and the pads did the same till 
 all the fire was spent." 
 
 This was at the beginning of the century ; but 
 toward its close Horace "Walpole tells us in one of his 
 letters, written in 1781, that he and Lady Browne 
 were robbed by a highwayman as they were going to 
 an evening party at the Duchess of Montrose s, near 
 Twickenham Park, and after Lady Browne had given 
 the thief her purse and he had ridden away, she said, 
 " I am in terror lest he should return, for I have given 
 him a purse with only bad money that I carry on 
 purpose" * And when Mrs. Calderwood, of Coltness, 
 went from Edinburgh to London in 1756, she says in 
 her diary that she travelled in her own post-chaise, 
 attended by John Hattray, her stout serving-man, on 
 horseback, with pistols at his holsters and a good 
 broadsword by his side. She had also with her in 
 the carriage a case of pistols for use upon an emer 
 gency, f 
 
 * Walpole s Letters, vol. viii. p. 89. 
 
 t Quoted in Smiles s Lives of the Engineers, vol. i. p. 176. 
 
90 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 In a letter written by Mrs. Harris, the mother of 
 the first Lord Malmesbury, to her son, dated February 
 16, ,1V73, she says:* "A most audacious fellow 
 gobbed Sir Francis Holburne and his sisters in their 
 coach in St. James s Square, coming from the opera. 
 He was on horseback, and held a pistol close to the 
 breast of one of the Miss Ilolburnes for a considerable 
 time. She had left her purse at home, which he 
 would not believe. He has since robted a coach in 
 Park Lane." " It is shocking to think," writes Wai- 
 pole, in 1752, " what a shambles this country has 
 grown ! Seventeen were executed this morning after 
 having murdered the turnkey on Friday night, and 
 almost forced open Newgate. One is forced to travel, 
 even at noon, as if one was going to battle." f 
 
 In his introduction to a Voyage to Lisbon, 
 Fielding congratulates himself on having broken up, 
 in 1753, the gang of cut-throats and street-robbers, 
 who had been the terror of the metropolis, so that 
 " instead," he says, " of reading of murders and street- 
 robberies in the news almost every morning, there was 
 in the remaining part of the month of November, and 
 in all December, not only no such thing as a murder, 
 
 * The Letters of the First Earl of Malmesbury, vol. i. p. 
 258. 
 
 1 Walpole s Letters, vol. ii. p. 281. 
 
FIELDING ON ROBBERIES. 91 
 
 but not even a street robbery committed." In his 
 i Amelia, lie describes the watchmen of London as 
 " poor, old, decrepit people, from their want of bodily 
 strength rendered incapable of getting their livelihood 
 by work." And we must remember that Fielding 
 
 t/ O 
 
 was a London magistrate and sat in Bow Street, so 
 that his testimony is unexceptionable. He says in his 
 Inquiry into the Causes of the Increase of Robberies, 
 that he makes no doubt that the streets of London 
 and the roads leading to it will shortly be impassable 
 without the utmost hazard, and speaks of a great 
 gang of rogues who were incorporated into one body, 
 had officers and a treasury, and reduced theft and 
 robbery to a regular system. The first cause to 
 which he attributes the evils he complains of is the 
 too frequent and expensive dressiness among the 
 lower kind of people. Among them he instances 
 masquerades, which were by no means confined to 
 places of fashionable resort, like Ranelagh and Yaux- 
 liall, but were scattered over the metropolis and its 
 neighborhood, " where the places of pleasure have al 
 most become numberless." The next cause is drunk 
 enness, for the cure of which he proposes that all 
 spirituous liquors should be locked up in the chemists 
 and apothecaries shops, " thence never to be drawn 
 till some excellent physician call them forth for the 
 
92 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 cure of nervous distempers." The third cause is gain 
 ing, and the fourth the state of the poor-law. Field 
 ing was, in the matter of law-reform, far in advance 
 of his age ; and he points out with great force and 
 acuteness the defects of our boasted system of juris 
 prudence. " There is," he says, " no branch of the 
 law more bulky, more full of confusion and contra 
 diction, I had almost said of absurdity, than the law 
 of evidence as it now stands." And yet that law was 
 suffered to remain unchanged until a few years ago ! 
 He had the good sense to suggest the improvement, 
 which has only just been sanctioned by Parliament, 
 of private instead of public executions, and he ex 
 hausts the argument for it in a few words, when he 
 says : " If executions, therefore, could be so contrived 
 that few could be present at them, they would be 
 much more shocking and terrible to the crowd with- 
 out-doors than at present, as well as much more 
 dreadful to the criminals themselves, who would thus 
 die only in the presence of their enemies ; and thus 
 the boldest of them would find no cordial to keep up 
 his spirits, nor any breath to flatter his ambition." 
 
 The subject of executions in the last century and 
 during a great part of the present, is really almost too 
 dreadful to dwell upon. It is sickening to turn over 
 the pages of the Annual Register and see what a holo- 
 
EXECUTIONS. 93 
 
 caust of victims was given over to the hangman for 
 offences which now would be punished by a few 
 months imprisonment. There was quite a trade in 
 " last dying speeches." "I continued," says Thomas 
 Gent, printer of York, in his autobiography, speaking 
 of 1733, "working for Mr. Woodfall until the execu 
 tion of Counsellor Layer, on whose few dying words 
 I formed observations in the nature of a large speech, 
 and had a run of sale for about three days successively, 
 which obliged me to keep in my own apartments, the 
 unruly hawkers being ready to pull my press in pieces 
 for the goods." 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 TEISONS. DEUNKENNESS. SWEAEING. GAMBLING. DUELLING. 
 JUSTICE OF THE PEACE. COUNTRY SQUIEE. 
 
 THE mention of robberies leads naturally to speak 
 of prisons, and it is shocking to think of what they 
 were. They were more like dens of wild beasts than 
 habitations of men. Some idea of the condition of 
 the Fleet may be obtained from the perusal of a re 
 port of a Committee of the House of Commons in 
 1729, when the House resolved that several of the 
 officers of the prison should be committed to Newgate, 
 and some of them were afterward tried for murder, 
 but acquitted. Nothing in fiction exceeds the reality 
 of the horrible disclosures which these trials brought 
 to light. The following is a description of the dun 
 geon called the strong room : * 
 
 " This place is like a vault, like those in which the 
 
 dead are interred, and wherein the bodies of persons 
 
 dying in the said prison are usually deposited till the 
 
 coroner s inquest hath passed upon them ; it has no 
 
 * Ho well s State Trials, vol. xvii. p. 298. 
 
PEISONS. 95 
 
 chimney nor fireplace, nor any light but what comes 
 over the door, or through a hole of about eight inches 
 square. It is neither paved nor boarded; and the 
 rough bricks appear both on the sides and top, being 
 neither wainscoted nor plastered. What adds to the 
 dampness and stench of the place is its being built 
 over the common sewer, and adjoining to the sink and 
 dunghill, where all the nastiness of the prison is cast. 
 In tliis miserable place, the poor wretch was kept by 
 the said Cambridge, manacled and shackled for near 
 two months." 
 
 At one of the trials the followino- evidence was 
 
 *_5 
 
 given : * 
 
 Mr. Ward. Was Acton there ? 
 
 Demotet. Acton came and saw JSTewton locked 
 into the strong room. When he was first put in, Cap 
 tain Delagol was confined there at the same time. 
 
 Mr. Ward. Was Newton sick in the strong room ? 
 
 Demotet. He fell sick there ; both of them were 
 lousy ; his wife and young child came to take care of 
 her husband, and petitioned to Mr. John Darrell to 
 have him released ; he was put in the sick-room, and 
 there died in four or five days after. His wife 
 broke her heart, and she and the little child died in 
 the same week. 
 
 * Ho weirs State Trials, vol. xvii. p. 531. 
 
96 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 Mr. Ward. What was the occasion of his being 
 sick? 
 
 Demotet. That he was on the ground ; he had no 
 bed to lie on, and the water came in on the top. 
 
 Mr. Ward. What kind of place is the strong 
 room ? 
 
 Demotet. It is not fit to put a man in ; the rain 
 comes in. 
 
 Mr. Baron Carter. Were you ever in it ? 
 
 Demotet. I was in it myself; Grace put me in 
 there. 
 
 Mr. Baron Carter. How long were you in the 
 strong room ? 
 
 Demotet.^ was in there for ten minutes, and 
 there were two dead men in at the same time, and I 
 fell sick for five months. 
 
 Mr. Marsh. Was it infested with rats ? 
 
 Demotet. It was very much infested with rats 
 and vermin. 
 
 Large sums were extorted from the wretched pris 
 oners in the shape of fees. In the case of Huggins 
 and Bambridge, reported on by the same Committee 
 of the House of Commons, in 1729, the judges repri 
 manded them, and declared that " a jailer could not 
 answer the ironing of a man before he was found 
 guilty of crime ; but it "being out of term, they could 
 
PRISONS. 97 
 
 not give tlie prisoner any relief or satisfaction." Not 
 withstanding this opinion of the judges, the said Barn- 
 bridge continued to keep the prisoner in irons till he 
 had paid him six guineas.* So that there is no exag 
 geration in the story told by. Fielding in his i Amelia, 
 of a prisoner in Bridewell : " The case of this poor 
 man is unhappy enough. He served his country, lost 
 his limb, and was wounded at the siege of Gibraltar ; 
 he was apprehended and committed here on a charge 
 of stealing ; he was tried and acquitted indeed, his 
 innocence manifestly appeared at the trial l)ut lie 
 was brought back here for his fees, and here he has 
 lain ever since. " The same author gives us a picture 
 of the interior of this prison, in which Captain Booth 
 was incarcerated, but it is by no means so revolting 
 as many others that might be quoted from the writers 
 of the time : " The first persons he met were three 
 men in fetters, who were enjoying themselves very 
 merrily over a bottle of wine and a pipe of tobacco. 
 They were street-robbers, who were to be tried for a 
 capital felony, and certain to be hanged. The next 
 was a man prostrate on the ground, whose groans 
 and frantic actions showed that his mind was disor 
 dered. He had been committed for a small felony, 
 and his wife, who was then in her confinement, had 
 
 * Howell s State Trials, vol. xvii. p. 304. 
 5 
 
98 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 thrown herself from a window two stories high. A 
 pretty, innocent-looking girl came up and uttered a 
 volley of oaths and indecent ribaldry, while not far 
 off was a young woman in rags, supporting the Lead 
 of an old man, her father, who appeared to be dyinu*. 
 She had been committed for stealing a loaf in order 
 to support him, and he for receiving it knowing it to 
 be stolen." 
 
 In the c Fool of Quality, a novel written by Henry 
 Brooke, in 1763, of which more hereafter, we find 
 terrible complaints of the severity of the law against 
 debtors, and arguments against imprisonment for debt, 
 to which it took more than a hundred years afterward 
 to give practical effect. I do not know any book, 
 or report, or speech, where the case is stated more 
 strongly and concisely for a change in the law, than 
 in the following passage : 
 
 " As all the members of a community are inter 
 ested in the life, liberty, and labors of each other, he 
 who puts the rigor of our laws in execution, by de 
 taining an insolvent brother in jail, is guilty of a four 
 fold injury: first, he robs the community of the la 
 bors of their brother ; secondly, lie robs his brother of 
 all means of retrieving his shattered fortune ; thirdly, 
 he deprives himself of the possibility of payment ; 
 and lastly, he lays an unnecessary burden on the pub- 
 
DRUNKENNESS. 99 
 
 lie, wlio, in charity, must maintain the member whom 
 he in his cruelty confines." In the same work, speaking 
 of the prisons in which debtors were confined, he de 
 scribes them as driven to kennel together in a hovel 
 lit only to stable a pair of horses; and huddled into 
 windowless rooms, with naked walls, while they were 
 squeezed by exorbitant charges and illicit demands 
 " as grapes are squeezed in a wine-press, so long as a 
 drop remains." There is, however, not a single novel 
 of the last century, which describes the interior of a 
 prison, at whatever time it w r as written, whether in 
 the middle of the period by Fielding, or toward its 
 close, by Godwin and Mackenzie, where the same tes 
 timony is not borne to its revolting horrors.* 
 
 As to the almost universal prevalence of one vice in 
 the last century, there can be no difference of opinion 
 I mean the vice of drunkenness. The preamble to 
 the Act 9 Geo. II. c. 23, recites that " the drinking of 
 spirituous liquors, or strong waters, is become very 
 common, especially among the people of lower and 
 inferior rank, the constant and excessive use whereof 
 
 * In a paper in the Idler (A. D. 1759), Dr. Johnson com 
 putes that there were twenty thousand debtors in England in 
 prison, and that one in four of them died every year in con 
 sequence of their treatment there, " the corruption of confined 
 air, the want of exercise, and sometimes of food, the conta 
 gion of diseases, and the severity of tyrants." 
 
100 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 tends greatly to tlie destruction of their healths, ren 
 dering them unfit for useful labor and business, de 
 bauching their morals, and exciting them to perpe 
 trate all manner of vices." I fear that, as regards the 
 lower classes, it cannot be said that this recital would 
 be wholly inapplicable now, but the reformation that 
 has taken place among the gentry and middle classes 
 generally is wonderful. It is difficult for us to realize 
 the extent to which our forefathers carried their pota 
 tions.* Mrs. Delany, writing in 1719, says that Sir 
 "William Pendarves had a copper coffin placed in the 
 middle of his hall, which was filled with punch, and 
 he and his boon companions used to sit beside it and 
 get drunk.f Lady Cowper, in her diary, under date 
 
 * This of course does not apply to the other sex ; and I do 
 not find in the literature of the century any hint that women 
 were given to excess. There is a passage in Thoresby s Diary, 
 vol. ii. p. 207, under date 1714, which we must interpret chari 
 tably : "Had other passengers which, though females, were more 
 chargeable with wine and brandy than the former part of the 
 journey, wherein we had neither." I once was asked by an Eng 
 lish woman, with two or three daughters, at a hotel in Ger 
 many, to explain to her an item in her bill, which, being written 
 in German, she did not understand. " Madam," I said, " that 
 is a charge for brandy." " Oh ! " she answered, getting rather 
 red in the face, " one of my daughters was taken ill in the 
 night." Let us hope that the brandy alluded to by Thoresby 
 was required for a similar reason, 
 t Autobiography, vol. i. p. 66. 
 
DRUNKENNESS. 101 
 
 1716, says : " At the drawing-room, George Mayo 
 turned out for being drunk and saucy. He fell out 
 with Sir James Baker, and, in the fray, had pulled him 
 by the nose." * And again, in 1720, on the King s 
 birthday, at Court, " the Duke of Newcastle (then 
 Lord Chamberlain) had got drunk for our sins ; so the 
 Princess s ladies had no places, but stood in the heat 
 and the crowd all the night." And the servants were 
 not behind their masters, for immediately afterward 
 she makes the following entry : u Dined with Aunt 
 Allavern. Go to the Master of the Rolls. The ser 
 vants got so drunk I was forced to send one of them 
 home." Again : " I dine with Mrs. Clayton. Left by 
 chairman and servants all drunk. I can hardly get to 
 the Princess." In one of the essays in the Tatler, 
 Steele says : " I will undertake, were the butler and 
 swineherd, at any true inquiries in Great Britain, to 
 keep and compare accounts of w r hat wash is drunk up 
 in so many hours in the parlor and pigsty, it would 
 
 *An old German writer, Paul Hentzner, who visited Eng 
 land in 1598, says : " In London, persons who have got drunk, 
 are wont to mount a church-tower, for the sake of exercise, and 
 to ring the bells for several hours." Quoted by Max Miiller in 
 his * Chips from a German Workshop, 1 vol. iii. p. 247. It would 
 be curious to find out the source of information from which 
 Hentzner got this strange story. 
 
102 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 appear the gentleman of the house gives much more 
 to his friends than his hogs." * 
 
 This wretched habit continued with little diminu 
 tion to the end of the century. In Miss Edgeworth s 
 i Belinda, written about that time, on the first occa 
 sion when the heroine saw Lord Delacour, he was 
 dead drunk in the arms of two footmen, who were 
 carrying him up-stairs to his bedchamber, while his 
 lady, who had just returned from Ranelagh, passed by 
 him on the landing-place with a look of sovereign 
 contempt. " Don t look so shocked and amazed," 
 said Lady Delacour to Belinda, " don t look so new, 
 child : this funeral of my lord s intellects is to me a 
 nightly, or," added her ladyship, looking at her watch 
 and yawning, " I believe I should say a daily cere 
 mony. Six o clock, I protest ! " 
 
 But if it w T as bad in England, it was worse in Scot 
 land. There the ordinary drink was whiskey, or claret, 
 and the latter beverage must have seemed weak as 
 water after the former. One of the Scotch judges, 
 Lord Her m and, is said to have got drunk at Ayr 
 
 * In a touching paper in the Taller, in which he describes 
 his father s death and his mother s grief, Steele says he is inter 
 rupted by the arrival of a hamper of wine, " of the same sort 
 with that which is to be put to sale on Thursday next at Garra- 
 way s," and he sends for three friends, and they carouse together, 
 drinking two bottles a man, until two o clock in the morning." 
 
DRUNKENNESS. 103 
 
 while on circuit, and to have continued drunk until 
 his work was finished at Jedburgh. In a house 
 where Mackenzie, the author of the Man of Feeling, 
 was a visitor, a servant-lad was kept, whose business 
 was to " loose the neckcloths " of the guests who fell 
 under the table, and at Castle Grant two Highlanders 
 attended to carry the drunken company to bed. Dr. 
 Carlyle (in 1751), describing in terms of praise Dr. 
 Patrick Gumming, a clergyman, says that he " had 
 both learning and sagacity and a very agreeable con 
 versation, with a constitution able to "bear the convivi 
 ality of the times" Ladies were obliged to leave the 
 dining-room that the gentlemen might get drunk, and 
 had to receive afterward those who could stand, stag- 
 irerin<r in the drawing-room.* 
 
 c5 O O 
 
 A natural accompaniment of hard drinking was 
 hard swearing, and this was as common in fashionable 
 as in vulgar life in the dining-room and the drawing- 
 room, as in the kitchen or the stable. In most of the 
 novels of the last century that we take up we find the 
 pages studded with blanks and dashes, to denote the 
 oaths of the speakers. I do not mean merely such 
 characters as Squire Western or Commodore Trunnion, 
 or Squire Tyrrel ; but it seems to have been considered 
 
 * See for these facts Ramsay s Reminiscences of Scottish 
 Life and Character. 
 
104 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 the necessary stamp of a man of fashion to be in the 
 habit of swearing. And the lady-novelists made no 
 scruple in furnishing their pages with oaths, in order 
 to give a lifelike reality to the conversations of their 
 dramatis persona*. This continued to the end of the 
 century, and beyond it. In Miss Edgeworth s Be 
 linda Sir Philip Baddely and his friend Koclifort 
 never speak without an oath, and in a single page I 
 have counted nine. Even Miss Austen does not shrink 
 from putting in the mouths of young men like John 
 Thorpe a quantity of these expletives, which, of course, 
 she would not have done if she had not thought it 
 necessary in order to give vraisemblance to their 
 characters. 
 
 , The habit of swearing was so common that it 
 hardly excited any attention ; and we find little notice 
 taken of it by the essayists, who professed to attack 
 every kind of folly and vice. In the l Spectator, in 
 deed, swearing is described as a reproach to the 
 nation. And there is a paper in the c Tatler upon 
 this " blustering impertinence," as it is called, which 
 " is already banished out of the society of well-bred 
 men, and can be useful only to bullies and ill tragic 
 writers, who would have sound and noise pass for 
 courage and sense." But the number of well-bred 
 men, if judged by this criterion, must have been ex- 
 
SWEARING. 105 
 
 tremely small. In the i Microcosm there is a paper 
 by Canning, in 1786, which tries to make people 
 ashamed of it by turning it into ridicule, and propos 
 ing to teach as a science " the noble art of swearing." 
 We are there told, and beyond all doubt it was the 
 truth, that " this practice pervades all stations and 
 degrees of men, from the peer to the porter, from the 
 minister to the mechanic .... nay, even the female 
 sex have, to their no small credit, caught the happy 
 contagion ; and there is scarce a mercer s wife in the 
 kingdom but has her innocent unmeaning impreca 
 tions, her little oaths ( softened into nonsense and 
 with squeaking treble, mincing blasphemy into ods- 
 bodikins* slitterkins, and such like, will swear you 
 like a sucking dove, ay, an it were any nightingale. 
 The writer then proposes that an advertisement should 
 be issued in the following terms : " Ladies and gen 
 tlemen instructed in the most fashionable and elegant 
 oaths ; the most peculiarly adapted to their several 
 ages, manners, and professions, etc. He (the adver 
 tiser) has now ready for the press a book entitled 
 The Complete Oath Register : or, Every Man his 
 own SWEARER, containing oaths and imprecations for 
 all times, seasons, purposes, and occasions. Also 
 Sentimental Oaths for ladies. Likewise Execrations 
 for the year 1786." 
 
106 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 Gambling for high stakes was almost universal. 
 In Lady Cowper s diary, under date 1715, she says: 
 " My mistress (the Princess of Wales) and the Duchess 
 of Montague went halves at hazard, and won 600. 
 Mr. Archer came in great form to offer me a place at 
 the table ; but I laughed, and said he did not know 
 me if he thought that I was capable of venturing two 
 hundred guineas at play for none sit down to the 
 table with less." 
 
 On one occasion large sums of money were lost 
 
 CD t/ 
 
 and won on a race between two maggots crawling 
 across a table.* Horace Walpole, writing to the Earl 
 of Strafford, in 1786, says : " If we turn to private life, 
 what is there to furnish pleasing topics ? Dissipation, 
 without object, pleasure, or genius, is the only color 
 of the times. One hears every day of somebody un 
 done ; but can we or they tell how, except when it is 
 by the most expeditious of all means, gaming ? And 
 now even the loss of an hundred thousand pounds is 
 not rare enough to be surprising." f 
 
 At the end of the century three titled ladies, Lady 
 Buckinghamshire, Lady Archer, and Lady Mount- 
 Edgcumbe, were so notorious for their passion for 
 
 * Oxford Magazine, October, 1770. Caricature History 
 of the Georges, p. 319. 
 
 t Walpole s Letters, edited by Cunningham, vol. viii. p. 73. 
 
GAMBLING. 107 
 
 play, that they were popularly known as " Faro s 
 daughters,- and Gilray published, in 1796, a carica 
 ture representing two of them as standing in the 
 pillory, with a crier and his bell in front. This was 
 in consequence of what was said by Chief-Justice 
 Kenyon, in a case that came before him in 1796, 
 when he said, with reference to the practice of gam 
 bling : " If any prosecutions of this nature are fairly 
 brought before me, and the parties are justly con 
 victed, whatever be their rank or station in the coun 
 try though they should be the first ladies in the 
 land thev shall certainty exhibit themselves in the 
 pillory." 
 
 In her novel of Belinda, Miss Edgeworth intro 
 duces a fashionable lady, Mrs. Luttridge, as keeping 
 an E, O. table at her house, where heavy play goes 
 on, and which is constructed for the purpose of cheat 
 ing. The consequence is, that being detected, she is 
 obliged, in order to prevent exposure, to give an ac 
 knowledgment that nothing is due for large sums won 
 by her from one of her victims. 
 
 "We know that Duelling, the offspring of the mod 
 ern code of honor and involving the double crime of 
 murder and suicide, nourished in full vigor during the 
 whole of the last century and was continued down to 
 our own day. In one of her letters Mrs. Delany calls 
 
108 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 it, "that reigning curse." It was too common, and 
 its existence too notorious, to require even a passing 
 illustration. Every gentleman who was challenged 
 had to fight or forfeit his reputation ; and we have a 
 type of the character in Colonel Bath, one of the 
 heroes in Fielding s Amelia, who is described as 
 " being indeed a perfect good Christian, except in the 
 articles of fightine; and swearing." x He is something 
 
 O O O O 
 
 like Captain Hector McTurk in St. Ronan s Well, 
 whose tears came into his eyes when he recounted the 
 various quarrels which had become addled, notwith 
 standing his best endeavors to hatch them into an 
 honorable meeting. It was even thought no violation 
 of probability in a novel to introduce clergymen as 
 ready to give "satisfaction" with the pistol or the 
 sword. In Mrs. Inchbald s simple Story, Dorriforth, 
 a Roman Catholic priest, in a moment of irritation, 
 strikes Lord Frederick Lawnley, who, he thinks, is 
 persecuting Miss Milner with his addresses, and then 
 
 * With this we may compare Dr. Johnson s remark : " Camp 
 bell is a good man, a pious man. I am afraid he has not been 
 in the inside of a church for many years : but he never passes a 
 church without pulling off his hat : this shows lie has good 
 principles." On which passage Macaulay observes, in his re 
 view of Croker s edition of Boswell s life of Johnson : " Spain 
 and Sicily must surely contain many pious robbers and well- 
 principled assassins." 
 
DUELLING. 100 
 
 accepts a challenge to figlit a duel, in which he comes 
 off with a wounded arm. And in Humphry Clinker, 
 Mr. Prankley challenges at Bath the Reverend Mr. 
 Eastgate, after telling him that unless he held his 
 tongue he " would dust his cassock for him " and 
 they go out together armed w r ith pistols but the 
 affair is amicably settled on the ground.* In Miss 
 Edgeworth s story of Belinda, published in 1801, 
 Lady Delacour, a fashionable dame, narrates a " meet 
 ing " she had with Mrs. Luttridge, owing to a quarrel 
 that arose out of an election squib, when each lady 
 appeared on the ground in male attire, with a pistol in 
 her hand and attended by a female second. The mat 
 ter was, however, arranged peaceably, and it was 
 agreed that the combatants should fire their pistols 
 into the air. 
 
 But what is not so generally known is, that the 
 law steadily and consistently treated duelling as mur 
 der. Juries, indeed, might refuse to convict ; but that 
 was not the fault of the law, but of a state of society 
 which threw its shield over the transgressor. It would 
 be easy to quote instances of the stern severity with 
 which duelling was punished when judges had the 
 
 * The Rev. Henry Bate, who in 1781 took the name of Dud- 
 Icy, fought two duels, and was afterward made a Canon and a 
 Baronet. See Croker s Edition of Boswell s Life of Johnson. 
 
110 XOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 opportunity of passing sentence. Thus, in 1708, one 
 Mawgridge was executed at Tyburn for having killed 
 William Cope, in a duel two years before.* He had 
 in the mean time escaped to Flanders, " washed and 
 rubbed all over with green-walnut shucks and wal 
 nut-liquor to disguise him." 
 
 In 1729, Major Oneby was tried at the Old Bailey 
 for killing Mr. Gower in a duel. The jury found a 
 special verdict, stating the facts, and praying the ad 
 vice of the Court " whether this be murder or man 
 slaughter ? " Chief- Justice Raymond delivered the 
 opinion of all the Judges that the prisoner was guilty 
 of murder, and he was sentenced to be hanged, but he 
 escaped the gallows by destroying himself in prison. f 
 In 1753, John Barbot was tried in the Island of St. 
 Kitts and found guilty of killing Mr. Mills in a duel 
 after the President of the Court had told the jury that 
 the offence was murder. He was afterward executed^ 
 But not only the law denounced duelling the essay 
 ists and novelists emphatically condemned it. And 
 yet in Ireland, in 1808, where two persons were tried 
 
 * Howell s State Trials, vol. xvii. pp. 57-71. 
 
 t Ibid., pp. 30-55. J Ibid., vol. xviii. 1316. 
 
 Dr. Johnson, however, seriously defended duelling, on the 
 ground that a man was justified in fighting, if he did so, not 
 from passion against his antagonist, but in self-defence; to 
 avert the stigma of the world, and to prevent himself from 
 
TRIALS FOR DUELLING. HI 
 
 for wilful murder, in a duel arising out of an election 
 quarrel, and there were really no circumstances what 
 ever in mitigation, the jury acquitted the prisoners, 
 and Baron Smith, the Judge, " expressed his satisfac 
 tion at the verdict." *" But this was in Ireland 
 where, according to a well-known story, a Judge who 
 thought himself insulted by a barrister told him that 
 in a few minutes he would put off his official costume 
 and be ready to meet him. 
 
 In her novel of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, Mrs. 
 Hey wood says : " They then fell into some discourse on 
 duelling ; and Mr. Trueworth could not help joining 
 with the ladies, in condemning the folly of that cus 
 tom, which, contrary to the known laws of the land, 
 
 being driven out of society. This he regretted as " a super 
 fluity of refinement," but added, " while such notions prevail, 
 no doubt a man may lawfully fight a duel." It is needless now 
 adays to attempt to refute such a sophism as this, which makes 
 the opinion of the world, however wrong it may be, the stand 
 ard of what is right. On another occasion, Dr. Johnson said : 
 " Sir, a man may shoot the man who invades his character, as 
 he may shoot him who attempts to break into his house." But 
 Boswell appends this note : " I think it necessary to caution my 
 readers against concluding that in this or any other conversa 
 tion of Dr. Johnson, they "have his serious and deliberate 
 opinion on the subject of duelling." He once confessed, " No 
 body at times talks more laxly than I do." And in his Jour 
 nal of a Tour to the Hebrides, he owns that he could not ex 
 plain the rationality of duelling. 
 
 * Edinburgh Annual Register, 1808, part ii. p. 55. 
 
112 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 and oftentimes contrary to his own reason too, obliges 
 the gentleman either to obey the call of the person 
 who challenges him to the field, or, by refusing, 
 submit himself not only to all the insults his adver 
 sary is pleased to treat him with, but also to be branded 
 with the infamous character of a coward by all that 
 know him." And in a conversation between Dr. 
 Harrison and Colonel Bath in Fielding s Amelia/ 
 the doctor says of duelling : " In short, it is a modern 
 custom introduced by barbarous nations since the 
 times of Christianity ; though it is a direct and auda 
 cious defiance of the Christian law, and is consequently 
 much more sinful in us than it would have been in 
 the heathens." 
 
 Sir Charles Grandison declines to fight any duel, 
 and this on the high ground of religious principle. 
 " I will not meet any man, Mr. Reeves," he said, " as 
 a duellist. I am not so much a coward as to be afraid 
 of being branded for one. I hope my spirit is in gen 
 eral too well known for any one to insult me on such 
 an imputation. Forgive the seeming vanity, Mr. 
 Reeves ; but I live not to the world, I live to myself; 
 to the monitor within me." And in his letter to Sir 
 Hargrave Pollexfen, who had sent him a challenge to 
 meet him at Kensington Gravel Pits, he replies : " My 
 answer is this I have ever refused (and the occasion 
 
DUELLING CONDEMNED IN NOVELS. 113 
 
 has happened too often) to draw my sword upon a set 
 and formal challenge .... Let any man insult me 
 upon my refusal, and put me upon my defence, and 
 lie shall find that numbers tc my single arm shall not 
 intimidate me. Yet even in that case I would much 
 rather choose to clear myself of them as a man of 
 honor should wish to do, than either to kill or maim 
 any one. My life is not my own ; much less is an 
 other man s mine. Him who thinks differently from 
 me I can despise as heartily as he can despise me 
 .... In a word, if any man has aught against me, 
 and will not apply for redress to the laws of his coun 
 try, my goings out and comings in are always known ; 
 and I am any hour of the day to be found or met 
 with, wherever I have a proper call. My sword is a 
 sword of defence, not offence." It must be admitted 
 that the tone of the last paragraph but one is not 
 very conciliatory, nor likely to balk an adversary of 
 his wish to ficrht, and Richardson takes care to make 
 
 O 7 
 
 his hero such a perfect master of his weapon and the 
 trick of fence, that when attacked he is always able 
 to overcome and disarm his opponent. Sir Charles, 
 however, states the argument in a nutshell when he 
 
 c3 
 
 asks : " Of whose making, Mr. Bagenhall, are the 
 laws of honor you mention ? I own no laws but the 
 laws of God and my country." 
 
114: NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 A lawyer in any shape is always supposed to be 
 fair game, and hardly any character has been a more 
 favorite bntt of ridicule with the playwriters and nov 
 elists than that of a Justice of the Peace. I scarcely 
 know an instance of his appearance in fiction, except 
 to be quizzed ; from Mr Justice Shallow in Shake 
 speare to Mr. Justice Inglewood in Sir Walter Scott s 
 Rob Roy, who finds the legal knowledge of his 
 clerk, Jobson, so inconveniently embarrassing. AVe 
 have Mr. Thrasher in i Amelia ; also Mr. Justice 
 Buzzard in the same novel, wdiose ignorance of law is 
 as great as his readiness to take a bribe ; and Mr. Jus 
 tice Frogmore in Humphry Clinker, " sleek and cor 
 pulent, solemn and shallow, who had studied Burn 
 with uncommon application, but he had studied noth 
 ing so much as the art of living (that is, eating) well." 
 All who have read the book remember the laughable 
 consequence that ensues to him from eating at supper 
 a plate of broiled mushrooms. And there is the " Jus- 
 tass of Zummersettshire," who was going to commit 
 Joseph Andrews and Fanny Goodwin for stealing a 
 twig. When Lady Booby gets Joseph and Fanny 
 taken before the justice they are charged with cutting 
 and stealing one hazel-twig, on the deposition of 
 Scout, an attorney. 
 
 " Jesu ! said the squire, would you commit two 
 
COUNTRY SQUIRE. 115 
 
 persons to Bridewell for a twig ? i Yes, said tlie law 
 yer, i and with, great lenity too : for if we had called 
 it a young tree, they would both have been hanged. : 
 And Scout was not far wrong, for by the Act 9 Geo I. 
 c. 22, unlawfully and maliciously to cut down a tree 
 growing in a plantation was a capital felony. 
 
 But the " great unpaid " may be laughed at and 
 ridiculed with impunity ; for by the law of England 
 it is not actionable to say of a justice of the peace 
 " lie is an ass, and a beetle-headed justice." " Ratio 
 est, because a man cannot help his want of ability, as 
 he may his want of honesty; otherwise where w r ords 
 impute dishonesty or corruption." * And an indict 
 ment for saying of Sir Rowland Gwyn, w T ho was a 
 justice of the peace, in a discourse concerning a war 
 rant made by him, " Sir Rowland Gwyn is a fool, an 
 ass, and a coxcomb, for making such a warrant, and 
 he knows no more than a stickbill," was held naught 
 on demurrer. Holt, C. J., there laid it down as law : 
 " To say a justice is a fool, or an ass, or a coxcomb, or 
 a blockhead, or a bufflehead, is not actionable." f So 
 that Field ing was not guilty of scandalum magnatum 
 in denning in his Modern Glossary " Judge, Jus 
 tice ; an old woman." 
 
 * Howe v. Prinn, 2 Salk. Reports, 695. 
 t Reg. v. Wrightson, Ibid. 698. 
 
116 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 We are apt to think that there is no position more 
 fortunate, and no life likely to be happier, than that 
 of a country gentleman. And certainly, at the pres 
 ent day, there is no class of men to whom the word 
 " Gentlemen " more emphatically applies, or who are 
 more generally distinguished for their culture and 
 refinement. But the country squires of the last cen 
 tury were very different persons. According to al 
 most unanimous testimony, they were generally boor 
 ish and ignorant, mighty hunters, and hard drinkers, 
 who swore loud oaths, and used in the drawing-room 
 the language of the stable. 
 
 They are thus described in a paper in the i Con 
 noisseur (1T55) : " They are mere vegetables which 
 grow up and rot on the same spot of ground ; except 
 a few, perhaps, which are transplanted into the Par 
 liament House. Their whole life is hurried away in 
 scampering after foxes, leaping five-bar gates, tramp 
 ling upon the farmer s corn, and swilling October." 
 And, again : u The dull country squire, w T ho, with no 
 taste for literary amusements, has nothing except his 
 dogs and horses, but his bumper to divert him ; and 
 the town squire sits soaking in a tavern for the same 
 "reason." 
 
 We may fairly consider Squire Western in Tom 
 Jones as an exaggerated caricature. Here is a speci- 
 
SQUIRE WESTERN. 117 
 
 men of his language, and, so far as 1 dare quote it, 
 Fielding s description of tlie language of country 
 gentlemen generally : " I will have satisfaction o 
 thee, answered the Squire ; so doff thy clothes. At 
 unt half a man, and I ll lick thee as well as wast ever 
 licked in thy life. He then bespattered the youth 
 with abundance of that language which passes between 
 country gentlemen who embrace opposite sides of the 
 question, with frequent applications to him to ... ." 
 And yet Squire Western is hardly more boorish, and 
 certainly he is far less detestable, than Squire Tyrrel 
 in Godwin s novel of Caleb Williams, published near 
 the end of the century. Tyrrel is a brute in every 
 sense of the word a brute in language, in heart, and 
 in conduct without any of the redeeming qualities 
 which in Fielding s creation, to a certain extent, miti 
 gate the sentiment of disgust. But it is not safe to 
 trust the fidelity of any character draw r n by such a 
 democrat as Godwin. There are of course exceptions 
 to the general description ; and we have Squire All- 
 worthy in c Tom Jones, and Sir William Thornton in 
 the c Yicar of Wakefield, who are models of pro 
 priety. 
 
 And as a set-off to such a boorish brute as Fielding 
 has drawn, we have the delightful Sir Eoger de Cover- 
 ley, the pattern of what a country gentleman should 
 
118 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 be, and the happiest creation of Addison. It is hardly 
 worth while to enter into a discussion whether the 
 original conception of the character is due to him or 
 to Steele. All the finer touches, and all the interest 
 we feel in this worthy gentleman, are, beyond doubt, 
 due to Addison ; and we cannot but be grateful to 
 him for giving us so charming a portrait. Alas ! for 
 the caprice of woman, that such a man was doomed 
 to live and die a bachelor. That perverse widow for 
 whom he sighed in vain must indeed have been dif 
 ficult to please, and her rejection of his suit is almost 
 of itself sufficient proof that she was unworthy of his 
 hand. It is strange that Dr. Johnson should imagine 
 that there are in the delineation of his character "the 
 flying vapors of incipient madness, which from time 
 to time cloud reason, without eclipsing it ; " and he 
 speaks of the irregularities of Sir Roger s conduct as 
 the effects of " habitual rusticity, and that necjlip-ence 
 
 t/ J O O 
 
 which solitary grandeur naturally generates." Never 
 were epithets more unfortunate. Irregularities and 
 rusticity and solitary grandeur of Sir Roger ! Ilia 
 life is represented as one of blameless virtue, full of 
 good-humor, benevolence, and affection ; although it 
 is admitted that, when a very young man, he so far 
 yielded to the bad custom of the age as once to fight a 
 duel. If by "habitual rusticity" is meant any thing 
 
SIB ROGER DE COVERLEY. 119 
 
 more than that lie lived generally in the country, it is 
 entirely untrue, for a more polite and affable gentle 
 man could not have existed. And as to "solitary 
 grandeur," the expression is ludicrously false ; for 
 sociability is his characteristic, and he is distinguished 
 for the gentleness and considerate attention with 
 which he treats his neighbors and dependents. Dr. 
 Johnson has mistaken humor of character for aberra 
 tion of intellect; and as he had nothing of the former 
 in his own composition, but was conscious of a dark 
 stratum in his mind which made him often dread 
 madness, he has fancied that the harmless eccentrici 
 ties of the worthy baronet were due to the same 
 cause. Surely we all know Sir Roger well, and -fully 
 agree with the i Spectator that " his singularities 
 proceed from his good sense, and are contradictions to 
 the manners of the world, only as he thinks the world 
 is in the wrong." In early life he had been what was 
 called a fine gentleman ; had often supped with my 
 Lord Rochester and Sir George Etherege, fought a 
 duel upon his first coming to town, and kicked bully 
 Dawson in a public coffee-house for calling him 
 youngster. But then came the cruel widow, and she 
 sobered him for life. He first saw r her in an assize- 
 court when he was serving the office of sheriff for the 
 county, where, as he says himself: "At last with a 
 
120 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 murrain to her, she cast her bewitching eyes upon 
 me." He no sooner met her glance than he bowed, 
 " like a great surprised booby." He fell, in short, 
 desperately in love with her ; but met with little en 
 couragement. This, however, was enough to make 
 him resolve to offer her his hand ; and, in the words 
 of his own confession, " I made new liveries, new 
 paired my coach-horses, sent them all to town to be 
 bitted and taught to throw their legs well and move 
 all together, before I pretended to cross the country 
 and wait upon her." But she proved to be too witty 
 and learned for a plain country gentleman ; and Sir 
 Roger was confounded with what he calls her casuis 
 try. " Chance," he says, " has since that time thrown 
 me very often in her way, and she has as often directed 
 a discourse to me which I do not understand. This 
 barbarity has left me ever at a distance from the most 
 beautiful object my eyes ever beheld. It is thus also 
 she deals with all mankind, and you must make love 
 to her, as you would conquer the Sphinx, by posing 
 her. . . . You must know I dined with her at a pub 
 lic table the day after I saw her, and she helped me to 
 some tansy in the eye of all the gentlemen in the 
 county. She has certainly the finest hand of any 
 woman in the world." 
 
 We have a charming account of a visit paid by the 
 
SIR ROGER DE COVERLET. 121 
 
 Spectator to Sir Roger s country seat, where, to say 
 nothing of the affection borne to him by his servants, 
 you might see " the goodness of the master even in 
 the old house-dog and in a gray pad that is kept in 
 the stable with great care and tenderness, out of re 
 gard to his past services, though he had been useless 
 for several years." There was a picture in his gallery 
 of two young men standing in a river, the one naked 
 and the other in livery. This was painted in memory 
 of an act of gallantry and devotion by one of his ser 
 vants, who jumped into the water and saved his mas 
 ter from drowning. His bounty was carried so far 
 that the faithful domestic was enabled to become the 
 possessor of a pretty residence, which the Spectator 
 had observed as he approached the house. " I re 
 membered, indeed, Sir Roger said, that there lived 
 a very worthy gentleman to whom he was highly 
 obliged, without mentioning any thing farther." At 
 a little distance from the house, among the ruins of 
 an old abbey, u there is a long walk of aged elms, 
 which are shot up so very high that when one passes 
 under them the rooks and crows that rest upon the 
 tops of them seem to be cawing in another region." 
 " I am," continues the Spectator, " very much de 
 lighted with this sort of noise, which I consider as a 
 kind of natural prayer to that Being who, in the 
 
122 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 beautiful language of the Psalms, feedeth the young 
 ravens that call upon him." And Sir Roger at 
 church ! where he will not let anybody take a quiet 
 nap but himself, and calls John Matthews to mind 
 what he is about, and not disturb the congregation. 
 For John Matthews was an idle fellow, who some 
 times amused himself by kicking his heels during the 
 sermon. The following passage has more than once 
 formed the subject of a picture, and it would be diffi 
 cult to find a more pleasing one of a country gentleman 
 of the olden time : " As soon as the sermon is finished 
 nobody presumes to stir till Sir Roger is gone out of 
 church. The Knight walks down from his seat in the 
 chancel between a double row of his tenants, that 
 stand bowing to him on each side : and every now 
 and then inquires how such a one s wife, or mother, 
 or son, or father do, whom he does not see at church, 
 which is understood as a secret reprimand to the per 
 son that is absent." 
 
 How touchingly is the death of the good old 
 Knight related in a letter from his butler to the 
 Spectator, written, of course, by Addison : " I am 
 afraid," he says, " he caught his death the last county- 
 sessions, where he would go to see justice done to a 
 poor widow woman and her fatherless children, that 
 had been wronged by a neighboring gentleman ; for 
 
SIR ROGER DE COVERLET. 123 
 
 yon know, sir, my good master was always the poor 
 man s friend." And then he complained that he had lost 
 4i his roast-beef stomach," and grew worse and worse, 
 although at one time he seemed to revive " upon a 
 kind message that was sent him from the widow lady 
 whom he had made love to the forty last years of his 
 life." He bequeathed to her, " as a token of his love, 
 a great pearl necklace and a couple of silver bracelets, 
 set with pearls, which belonged to my good lady his 
 mother. ... It being a very cold day when he made 
 his will, he left for mourning to every man in the 
 parish a great frieze coat, and to every woman a black 
 riding-hood." What a charming trait of considerate 
 kindness is this ! And then he took leave of his ser 
 vants, most of whom had grown gray-headed in his 
 service, bequeathing to them pensions and legacies. 
 " The chaplain tells everybody that he made a very 
 good end. . . . The coffin was borne by six of his 
 tenants, and the pall held up by six of the quorum. 
 The whole parish followed the corpse with heavy 
 hearts and in their mourning suits ; the men in frieze 
 and the women in riding-hoods." As for the old 
 house-dog, " it would have gone to your heart to have 
 heard the moans the dumb creature made on the day 
 of my master s death." * 
 
 ;: It lias been said that Aclclison put Sir Roger to death to 
 
124: NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 In the c Spectator also we have the memoirs of a 
 country gentleman, " an obscure man who lived up 
 to the dignity of his nature and according to the rules 
 of nature." Among other memoranda are the fol 
 lowing : 
 
 " Mem. : Prevailed upon M. T., Esq., not to take 
 the law of the farmer s son for shooting a partridge, 
 and to give him his gun again. 
 
 "Paid the apothecary for curing an old woman 
 that confessed herself a witch. 
 
 " Gave away my favorite dog for biting a beggar. 
 
 " Laid up my chariot and sold my horses to relieve 
 the poor in a scarcity of grain. 
 
 " In the same year remitted to my tenants a fifth 
 part of their rents. 
 
 " Mem. : To charge my son in private to erect no 
 monument for me ; but put this in my last will." 
 
 Such a character we may hope was not merely 
 ideal and it may be fairly put into the scale against 
 the Squire Westerns and Squire Tyrrell s of the cen 
 tury. 
 
 prevent liberties being taken with the character by Steele and 
 others, in case he was supposed to remain alive. 
 
CHAPTER IY. 
 
 THE PARSON OF THE LAST CENTUKY. FLEET MARRIAGES 
 
 IN a famous chapter of his * History of England, 
 Lord Macaulay has described the state of the Clergy 
 in the seventeenth century in terms the truth of 
 which has been much disputed. He refers to Eachard 
 and Oldham as authorities for some of his most tell 
 ing passages. Eachard was master of Catherine Hall 
 at Cambridge, and published in 1670 a book called 
 Causes of the Contempt of the Clergy and Religion. 
 Swift says of him : " I have known men happy enough 
 at ridicule, who upon grave subjects were perfectly 
 stupid ; of which Dr. Eachard of Cambridge, who 
 writ < The Contempt of the Clergy was a great exam 
 ple." The book, which is very short, assigns as the 
 chief reasons for the contempt of the clergy their ig 
 norance and poverty. The remarks are, upon the 
 whole, exceedingly sensible, and some of them well 
 worthy of attention even now. A considerable part 
 of the work is devoted to criticising the bad taste of 
 
126 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 the sermons of that period ; and the author strongly 
 complains also of the miserable stipends which a large 
 portion of the clergy received, and which compelled 
 them to eke out a support for their families by degrad 
 ing employments. " What a becoming thing," he 
 asks, " is it for him that serves at the altar to fill the 
 dung-cart in dry weather, and to heat the oven and 
 pull hemp in wet? .... Or. to be planted on a pan 
 nier, with a pair of geese or turkeys bobbing out their 
 heads from under his canonical coat, as you cannot 
 but remember the man, sir, that was thus accom 
 plished? " In another passage he speaks of the chap 
 lains in great houses as having " a little better wages 
 than the cook or butler," and describes their degraded 
 position in one respect, which continued to be literally 
 true in the following century. He says he does not 
 object to a young man becoming a chaplain, so that 
 " he may not be sent from table picking his teeth, and 
 sighing with his hat under his arm, while the knight 
 and my lady eat up the tarts and chickens." 
 
 Oldham s poem is avowedly a satire " addressed to 
 a friend that is about to leave the university ; but the 
 following lines express the exact truth : 
 
 " Little the unexperienced wretch does know 
 What slavery he oft must undergo ; 
 Who, though in silken scarf and cassock drest, 
 
THE PARSON OF THE LAST CENTURY. 127 
 
 Wears but a gayer livery at best. 
 
 When dinner calls the implement must wait 
 
 With holy words to consecrate the meat, 
 
 But hold it for a favor seldom known, 
 
 If he be deigned the honor to sit down. 
 
 Soon as the tarts appear, Sir Crape, withdraw, 
 
 These dainties are not for a spiritual maw. " 
 
 The same custom is thus alluded to by Gay in his 
 < Trivia : ; 
 
 "Cheese, that the table s closing rites denies, 
 And bids me with the unwilling chaplain rise." 
 
 For, strange as it may seem now, it was the usual 
 custom for the domestic chaplain to retire from table 
 at the second course. In the Tatler there is a let 
 ter purporting to be written by a clergyman, in which 
 he says : * " I am a chaplain to an honorable family, 
 very regular at the house of devotion, and, I hope, of 
 an unblamable life ; but for not offering to rise at the 
 
 J O 
 
 second course, I found my patron and his lady out of 
 humor, though at first I did not know the reason of it. 
 At length, when I happened to help myself to a jelly, 
 the lady of the house, otherwise a devout woman, told 
 me that it did not become a man of my cloth to de 
 light in such frivolous food ; but as I still continued to 
 
 * Tatler, No. 255. 
 
128 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 sit out the last course, I was yesterday informed by 
 the butler that his lordship had no further occasion 
 for my service." 
 
 And Steele, in his comment upon this letter, ob 
 serves : " The original of this barbarous custom I 
 take to have been merely accidental. The chaplain 
 retires out of pure complaisance, to make room for the 
 removal of the dishes, or possibly for the ranging of 
 the dessert. This by degrees grew into a duty, until 
 at length, as the fashion improved, the good man 
 found himself cut off from the third part of the en 
 tertainment." In another letter a poor chaplain ac 
 knowledges the benefit he has received from the pub 
 lication of the former one, and the notice taken of it. 
 He says that he was helped by " my lord " to a slice 
 of fat venison, and pressed to eat a jelly or conserve 
 at the second course. 
 
 Lord Macaulay quotes also Swift s * Advice to Ser 
 vants to show that, in the time of George II., " in a 
 great household the chaplain was the resource of 
 a lady s maid whose character had been blown upon, 
 and who was therefore forced to give up hopes of 
 catching the steward." But in a recent work this is 
 denied, and the author calls it " an astounding blind 
 ness to the purposes of satire, and a still more extraor 
 dinary ignorance of the artistic devices by which it 
 
THE PARSON OF THE LAST CENTURY. 129 
 
 achieves its ends." * He says that throughout the 
 early part of the eighteenth century the status of the 
 wives of clergymen continued rapidly to improve. 
 There can, however, be no doubt that during a great 
 part of the century what in the Prayer Book are called 
 " the inferior clergy," were in a very low and pitiable 
 condition. They were looked down upon by the rich, 
 and thought hardly fit to associate with the country 
 squires. They drank ale and smoked tobacco in the 
 kitchen with the servants, and frequently married the 
 cast-off Abigails of the housekeeper s room.f It is 
 impossible to doubt the testimony which the literature 
 of the age bears to the truth of this.J 
 
 Thus, when the young Squire in Richardson s 
 Pamela pretends that he will provide a husband for 
 
 * Jeaffreson s * Book of the Clergy. 
 
 t " The menial thing, perhaps for a reward, 
 Is to some slender benefice preferred, 
 With this proviso bound, that he must wed 
 My Lady s antiquated waiting-maid, 
 In dressing only skilled and marmalade." 
 
 Oldham. 
 But these lines were written in the seventeenth century. 
 
 I In one of the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 
 
 dated 1716, she says, that "Mrs. D is resolved to marry the 
 
 old greasy curate. . . . The curate indeed is very filthy such 
 a red, spongy, warty nose !....! met the lover (i. e., the cu 
 rate) yesterday, going to the ale-house, in his dirty night-gown, 
 with a book under his arm to entertain the club." 
 
130 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 the servant-ffirl whose innocence he wishes to betray, 
 
 O t> / 
 
 and she asks him who the person is, he answers : 
 " "Why, young Mr. Williams, my chaplain, in Lincoln 
 shire, who will make you very happy." 
 
 The coarse, fat, ignorant, and sensual Parson Trul- 
 liber, feeding his hogs and talking vulgar gibberish, is 
 no doubt a caricature ; and if the story is true that 
 he was intended to represent Fielding s own domestic 
 tutor when he was a boy, he very likely wished to 
 pay off old scores by making him as repulsive as pos 
 sible. And although Richardson assures us that Par- 
 
 O 
 
 son Adams was drawn from the life, it is difficult to 
 believe that a clergyman, however simple-minded, 
 could have been engaged in such scenes as are de 
 picted in c Joseph Andrews. But the novels of the 
 century furnish abundant and conclusive evidence of 
 the low social position of the clergy, or at all events 
 of the country clergy." 
 
 In Sir Charles Grandison, the clergyman who is 
 called in to perform the marriage which Sir Hargravc 
 Pollexfen tries to force upon Harriet Byron is thus 
 described by her: "A vast, tall, big-boned, splay- 
 
 * " There is no doubt that in the low social estimation, as 
 well as in the ignorance and coarseness, of many of his clerical 
 personages, Fielding has faithfully represented the degraded 
 state of the rural clergy at the time when he wrote." Shaw s 
 History of English Literature, p. 343. 
 
THE PARSON OF THE LAST CENTURY. 131 
 
 footed man. A shabby gown : as shabby a wig, a 
 huge and pimply face ; and a nose that hid half of it 
 when he looked on one side, and he seldom looked 
 foreriglit when I saw him. He had a dog-eared Com 
 mon Prayer-book in his hand, which once had been 
 gilt, opened, horrid sight ! at the page of matrimony. 
 .... The man snuffled his answer through his nose. 
 When he opened his pouched mouth, the tobacco 
 hung about his great yellow teeth. He squinted 
 upon me, and. took my clasped hands which were 
 buried in his huge hand." In < Tom Jones, Mrs. 
 Honor, Sophia "Western s maid, says, " I am a Chris 
 tian as well as he, and nobody can say that I am base 
 born : my grandfather was a clergyman, and would 
 have been very angry, I believe, to have thought any 
 of his family should have taken up with Molly Sea- 
 grim s dirty leavings." To this passage Fielding ap 
 pends a note : " This is the second person of low 
 condition whom we have recorded in this history to 
 have sprung from the clergy. It is to be hoped that 
 such instances will, in future ages, when some pro 
 vision is made for the families of the inferior clergy, 
 appear stranger than they can be thought at present." 
 A writer before the middle of the last century thus 
 describes the conduct and occupation of a clergyman 
 in a country house in Somersetshire : " There was in- 
 
132 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 deed a clergyman in the house, who had quite laid 
 aside his sacerdotal character, but acted in several 
 capacities, as valet de chainbre, butler, game-keeper, 
 pot-companion, butt, and buffoon, who never read 
 prayers, or so much as said grace in the family while 
 I was in it." * 
 
 In his preface to the Spiritual Quixote, a novel 
 written in the middle of the last century by a clergy 
 man named Graves, he makes his imaginary landlord 
 thus describe a jolly plump gentleman, who lodged 
 " not far from the celebrated seat of the Muses called 
 Grub Street," and left behind him the manuscript 
 containing the story in the book : " By his dress, 
 indeed, I should have taken him for a country 
 clergyman, but that he never drank ale or smoked 
 tobacco." 
 
 A distinction was of course allowed to exist be 
 tween the town and country parson, and the former 
 might be a gentleman, while the latter was a boor. 
 There is a paper in the Connoisseur (1756), which 
 was written to entertain " town readers, who can 
 have no other idea of our clergy than what they have 
 collected from the spruce and genteel figures which 
 they have been used to contemplate here in doctors 
 
 * The Contempt of the Clergy Considered, 1739 ; quoted 
 in Mr. Jeaffreson s Book of the Clergy, vol. ii., p. 272. 
 
TOWN AND COUNTRY PARSON. 133 
 
 scarfs, pudding-sleeves, starched bands, and feather- 
 top grizzles." It purports to be a letter from Don- 
 caster, and describes a Yorkshire parson, who is a 
 jovial fox-hunter, and to whom Sunday is as dull and 
 tedious " as to any fine lady in town." He takes his 
 friend with him on horseback on a Sunday, to serve 
 a church twenty miles off, lamenting all the while 
 that so fine and soft a morning should be thrown 
 away upon a Sunday. "At length we arrived full 
 gallop at the church, where w r e found the congrega 
 tion waiting for us ; but as Jack had nothing to do 
 but to alight, pull his band out of the sermon case, 
 give his brown scratch bob a shake, and clap on the 
 surplice, he was presently equipped for the service. 
 In short, he behaved himself, both in the desk and 
 pulpit, to the entire satisfaction of all the parish, as 
 well as the Squire of it." 
 
 This kind of clergyman was called a " buck-par 
 son," and one of them, who was chaplain to Lord 
 Delacour, in Miss Edgeworth s novel of 4 Belinda, is 
 thus described by Lady Delacour : " It was the com 
 mon practice of this man to leap from his horse at 
 the church door after following a pack of hounds, 
 huddle on his surplice, and gabble over the service 
 with the most indecent mockery of religion. Do I 
 speak with acrimony ? I have reason ; it was he who 
 
134: NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 first taught my lord to drink. Then he was a wit 
 an insufferable wit ! His conversation, after he had 
 drunk, was such as no woman but Harriet Freke 
 could understand, and such as few gentlemen could 
 hear. I have never, alas ! been thought a prude, but, 
 in the heyday of my youth and gayety, this man 
 always disgusted me. In one word, he was a buck- 
 parson." * 
 
 It is difficult to decide whether the contempt in 
 which the clergy were held ought to be considered as 
 the cause or the effect of such habits, but most cer 
 tainly contempt is the word which best expresses the 
 estimation in which their calling was very generally 
 regarded. 
 
 Dr. "Wolcott, the well-known Peter Pindar, was 
 for many years a physician, and in that capacity, in 
 1767, accompanied Sir William Trelawny to Jamaica, 
 of which that officer was appointed Governor. But 
 Trelawny thought that he could promote his interests 
 better in the church, and recommended him to take 
 
 * The term " parson " is generally used in a contemptuous 
 sense. But not so originally. He is the clergyman, qui PERSO- 
 NAM gerit ecclesice, and Blackstone says, book i. c. 2 : "The 
 appellation of parson (however it may be depreciated by famil 
 iar, clownish, and indiscriminate use) is the most legal, most 
 beneficial, and most honorable title that a parish-priest can en 
 joy ; because such a one (Sir Edward Coke observes) is said 
 vicem sen personatn ecdesice gerere." 
 
CONTEMPT OF THE CLERGY. 135 
 
 orders, saying, " Away then for England. Get your 
 self japanned, but remember not to return with, the 
 hypocritical solemnity of a priest. I have just be 
 stowed a good living on a parson who believes not 
 all lie preaches, and what he really believes he 
 dares not preach. You may very conscientiously 
 declare that you have an internal call, as the same 
 expression will equally suit a" hungry stomach and 
 the soul." 
 
 Although all the parsons in the novels of the cen 
 tury are not low, vulgar, or simple-minded fools, it is 
 undeniable that those to whom such epithets are ap 
 plicable leave by far the strongest impression on the 
 mind of the reader. Dr. Eartlett, the family chaplain 
 in c Sir Charles Grandison, is a respectable colorless 
 person, quite unexceptionable as regards language and 
 conduct, as every one who lived in Sir Charles s house 
 must of course be. He is never tired of singing the 
 praises of his patron, and rather wearies us with his 
 trite and sententious morality. In Clarissa Har- 
 lowe we have the worthy Dr. Lewin, and the pedan 
 tic Elias Brand, but none of them are types of a class ; 
 and, like Dr. Harrison in Amelia, they soon fade 
 away from the memory. Dr. Primrose is, of course, 
 an exception, but we must remember that he is the 
 hero of the story, the pivot on which all the family 
 
136 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 history turns. And it is indeed refreshing to make 
 the acquaintance of such a delightful character. But 
 as a set-off against the typical parson of the novels, 
 we may cite the example of Sir Roger de Coverley s 
 chaplain in the 4 Spectator, " a person of good sense 
 and some learning, of a very regular life and obliging 
 conversation," who understood backgammon, and 
 lived in the family rather as a relation than a depend 
 ant, and who showed his good sense by preaching in 
 regular succession the sermons of Tillotson, Saunder- 
 son, Barrow, Calamy, and South, " instead of wasting 
 his spirits in laborious compositions of his own." He 
 heartily loved Sir Roger, and stood high in the old 
 knight s esteem, having lived with him thirty years, 
 during which time there had not been a lawsuit in the 
 parish. 
 
 It was the custom for a clergyman always to go 
 abroad in his cassock, and if we might trust Mr. Dis 
 raeli s Lothair, we should believe it to be the custom 
 now, for he represents curates at Muriel Towers play 
 ing at croquet in this dress. Parson Adams, in Jo 
 seph Andrews, sits smoking his pipe with a night-cap 
 drawn over his wig, and " a short great-coat which 
 half covered his cassock." " Is the gentleman a cler 
 gyman then ? says Barnabas, for his cassock had been 
 tied up when he first arrived." When Adams visits 
 
THE CASSOCK. 137 
 
 Trulliber "After a short pause Adams said, *I fancy, 
 sir, you already perceive me to be a clergyman. 
 Ay. ay, cries Trulliber, grinning, I perceive you 
 have some cassock, I will not venture to call it a 
 whole one. Adams answered, It was indeed none 
 of the best, but he had the misfortune to tear it about 
 ten years ago in passing over a stile. : And when 
 he is attacked by the hounds, they mistake the skirts 
 of his cassock for a hare s skin, and he escapes by 
 leaving a third part of it as exuvice or spoil to the 
 enemy. In going about thus clothed, the clergy, how 
 ever, obeyed one of the canons of the church ; for by 
 the 74th it is enjoined that they " shall usually wear 
 in their journeys cloaks with sleeves, commonly called 
 priests cloaks, without guards, welts, long buttons, or 
 cuts. And no ecclesiastical person shall wear any 
 coif or wrought night-cap, but only plain night-caps 
 of black silk, satin, or velvet .... and that in pub 
 lic they go not in their doublet and hose, without 
 coats or cassocks ; and that they wear not any light- 
 colored stockings." * 
 
 * In 1729 the Rev. Thomas Kinnersley was convicted of 
 forging a promissory note, and being sentenced to stand 
 twice in the pillory, he appeared both times, first at the Royal 
 Exchange, and next at Fetter-lane end in Fleet Street, " in his 
 canonical habit, thinking to draw compassion and respect from 
 
138 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 One of the most curious things, as throwing light 
 upon the position of many of the clergy, is the his 
 tory of Fleet marriages, on which I will say a few 
 words. 
 
 While the hero in Peregrine Pickle is in the 
 Fleet Prison, he makes the acquaintance of a clergy 
 man "who found means to enjoy a pretty consider 
 able income by certain irregular practices in the way 
 of his function." That this was quite possible, we 
 know from the entries that still exist in those very 
 curious books called Fleet Registers. On the cover 
 of one of them there is the following memoraii- 
 
 O 
 
 dum : 
 
 "Mr. Wyatt, Minister of the Fleet, is removed 
 from the Two Sawyers, the corner of Fleet Lane 
 (with all the Register Books) to the Hand and Pen, 
 near Holborn Bridge, where marriages are solemnized 
 without imposition." 
 
 And it appears that he received for weddings in 
 the month of October, 1748, no less a sum than 572. 
 12-5. 9d. 
 
 These parsons used to advertise their trade in 
 handbills, of which I will give a specimen : 
 
 the populace, but it had the contrary effect." HowelFs State 
 Trials, vol. xvii. p. 296. 
 
FLEET MARRIAGES. 139 
 
 G. R. 
 
 At the true Chapel 
 at the old red Hand and Mitre, three doors from Fleet Lane, 
 
 and next Door to the White Swan ; 
 
 Marriages are performed by authority by the Reverend Mr. 
 
 Symson, educated at the University of Cambridge, and late 
 
 Chaplain to the Earl of Rothes. 
 
 1ST. B. Without Imposition. 
 
 How tlie practice began is not altogether clear. 
 The earliest Register is dated 1674, but it must have 
 commenced much earlier, for in a letter from Alder 
 man Lowe to Lady Ilickes, in 1613 he, says : "Now I 
 am to inform you that an ancyent acquayntance of 
 y" and myne is yesterday married in the Fleete, one 
 Mr. George Lester, and hath maryed Mrfc Babbing- 
 ton, Mr. Thomas Fanshawe s mother-in-lawe. It is 
 saved she is a woman of good wealthe, so as nowe the 
 man w v ylle be able to lyve and mayntayn hymself in 
 prison, for hether unto he hath byne in poor estate." 
 
 The entries in these Registers, and the pocket- 
 books of the parsons, reveal a shocking state of profli 
 gacy and vice. In one of the latter, belonging to the 
 same Mr. Wyatt, who carried on so lucrative a trade, 
 under the date of 1736, he says : * 
 
 * Lansdowne MSS. 93-17, quoted in Burn s History of 
 
140 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. - 
 
 " Give to every man his due, and learn ye way of 
 Truth. 
 
 " This advice cannot be taken by those that are 
 concerned in y e Fleet marriages ; not so much as y c 
 priest can do ye thing yt is just and right there, unless 
 he designs to starve. For by lying, bullying, and 
 swearing, to extort money from the silly and unwary 
 people, you advance your business, and gets y e pelf 
 which always wastes like snow in sun shiney day. 
 
 " The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. 
 The marrying in the Fleet is the beginning of eternal 
 woe. 
 
 " If a dark or plyer tells a lye, you must vouch it 
 to be as true as ye gospel, and if disputed you must 
 affirm with an oath to y e truth of a downright damna 
 ble falsehood. Virtus laudatur et alget. 
 
 " May God forgive me what is past, and give me 
 grace to forsake such a wicked place, where truth and 
 virtue can t take place unless you are resolved to 
 starve." 
 
 Tavern-keepers within the Eules of the Fleet used 
 to keep clergymen in their pay at a salary of a pound 
 a week and touters or " plyers," as they were called, 
 were always on the lookout for customers. From an 
 
 Fleet Marriages, to which I am indebted for many of these 
 curious particulars. 
 
FLEET MARRIAGES. 
 
 anonymous letter in the Bishop of London s Registry, 
 written between 1702 and 1714, we learn something 
 of the character of these parsons : " There is also one 
 Mr. Nehemiah Rogers ; he is a prisoner, but goes at 
 large to his Living in Essex, and all places else ; he is 
 a very wicked man as lives for drinking .... and 
 swearing ; he has struck and boxed the bridegroom in 
 the chappie, and damned like any com on souldier ; 
 he marries both within and without the chappie like 
 his brother Colton." And in the Weekly Journal 
 of February, 1717, there is an account of a trial of 
 one John Mottram, clerk, for solemnizing clandestine 
 and unlawful marriages in the Fleet Prison, and keep 
 ing fraudulent registers, in which it was proved that 
 he kept nine separate registers at different houses 
 which contained many scandalous frauds. " It rather 
 appeared from evidence that these sham marriages 
 were solemnized in a room in the Fleet they call 
 the Lord Mayor s Chappel, which was furnished with 
 chairs, cushions, and proper conveniencies, and that a 
 coal-heaver was generally set to ply at the door to 
 recommend all couples that had a mind to be married, 
 to the prisoner, who would do it cheaper than any 
 body. It further appeared, that one of the registers 
 only, contained above 2200 entrys which had been 
 made within the last year." The reverend gentleman 
 
142 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 was tried at Guildhall, before Chief-Justice Parker, 
 found guilty, and find 200. 
 
 In the Grub Street Journal of January 15, 1784, 
 there is a letter signed "Virtuous," which gives a 
 graphic account of the scandalous way in which such 
 marriages took place : 
 
 " These ministers of wickedness ply about Luel- 
 gate Hill, pulling and forcing people to some peel- 
 ling ale-house, or a brandy-shop, to be married ; even 
 on a Sunday, stopping them as they go to Church, 
 and almost tearing their clothes off their backs. To 
 confirm the truth of these facts, I will give you a case 
 or two which lately happened. Since Midsummer 
 last, a young lady of fortune was deluded and forced 
 from her ^ friends, and by the assistance of a wry- 
 necked swearing parson, married to an atheistical 
 wretch, whose life is a continued practice of all man 
 ner of vice and debauchery. And since the ruin of 
 my relation, another lady of my acquaintance had 
 like to have been trepanned in the following manner : 
 This lady had appointed to meet a gentlewoman at 
 the Old Playhouse in Drury Lane ; but extraordinary 
 business prevented her coming. Being alone when 
 the play was done, she bade a boy call a coach for the 
 City. One dressed like a gentleman helps her into it, 
 and jumps in after her. c Madame, says he, "this 
 
FLEET MARRIAGES. 
 
 coacli was called for me, and since the weather is so 
 Lad and there is no other, I beg leave to bear you 
 company : I am going into the City, and will set you 
 down wherever yon please. The lady begged to be 
 excused, but he bade the coachman drive on. Being 
 come to Ludgate Hill, he told her his sister, who 
 waited his coming, but five doors up the Court, would 
 go with her in two minutes. He went and returned 
 with his pretended sister, who asked her to step in 
 one minute, and she would wait upon her in the 
 coach. Deluded with the assurance of having his sis 
 ters company, the poor lady foolishly followed her 
 into the house, when instantly the sister vanished, 
 and a tawny fellow in a black coat and a black wig 
 appeared. Madam, you are come in good time, 
 the Doctor was just a going. The Doctor! says 
 she, horribly frighted, fearing it was a mad-house. 
 What has the Doctor to do with me ? c To marry 
 you to that gentleman ; the Doctor has waited for you 
 these three hours, and will be paid by you or by that 
 gentleman before you go ! That gentleman ! says 
 she, recovering herself, is worthy a better fortune 
 than mine ; and begged hard to be gone. But Dr. 
 Wryneck swore she should be married, or if she 
 would not, he would still have his fee, and register the 
 marriage from that night. The lady finding she 
 
144 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 could not escape without money or a pledge, told 
 them she liked the gentleman so well, she would cer 
 tainly meet him to-morrow night, and gave them a 
 ring as a pledge, which, says she, i was my mother s 
 gift on her death-bed, enjoining that if ever I mar 
 ried, it should be my wedding ring. By which cun 
 ning contrivance she was delivered from the black 
 Doctor and his tawny crew. Sometime after this, I 
 went with this lady and her brother in a coach to 
 Ludgate Hill, in the day-time, to see the manner of 
 their picking up people to be married. As soon as 
 our coach stopped near Fleet Bridge, up comes one of 
 the myrmidons. Madam, says he, ( you want a par 
 son ? Who are you ? says I. I am the Clerk and 
 Eegister of the Fleet. Show me the Chapel. At 
 which comes a second, desiring me to go along with 
 him. Says he f that fellow will carry you to a ped- 
 ling ale-house. Says a third, * go with me, he will 
 carry you to a brandy-shop. In the interim comes 
 the Doctor. Madam, says he, c I ll do your job for 
 you presently. Well, gentlemen, says I, since you 
 can t agree, and I can t be married quietly, I ll put it 
 off till another time, so drove away." 
 
 Nor were these marriages confined to the lower 
 classes. In 1724, Lord Abergavenny was married at 
 the Fleet to Miss Tatton; and in 1744, Mr. Henry 
 
FLEET MARRIAGES. 
 
 Fox, afterward created Baron Holland, was married 
 there to Lady Georgiana Gordon, the eldest daughter 
 of the Duke of Richmond. 
 
 One of the most notorious of the Fleet parsons 
 was Dr. Gaynham or Garnham, popularly known as 
 the Bishop of Hell, " a very lusty, jolly man," who 
 being asked at a trial, where he gave evidence, 
 whether he w r as not ashamed to come and own a clan 
 destine marriage in the face of a Court of Justice, 
 replied, bowing to the Judge, " Video meliora, dete- 
 riora sequor" On another occasion, when questioned 
 as to his recollection of the prisoner, he said : u Can I 
 remember persons ? I have married 2,000 since that 
 time." The entry of a marriage by the Rev. John 
 Evans has the following memorandum attached to it : 
 
 " Pd. one shilling only ; the Bridegroom a boy 
 about eighteen years of age, and the Bride about six 
 ty-five. They were brought in a coach and attended 
 by four Qv^invg whopw (sic) out of Drury Lane as 
 guests." Another of these worthies was the Rev. 
 John Flint, who died in 1729. He dispensed with 
 marriage in his own case and kept a mistress, called 
 Mrs. Blood. One of his entries is : " Paid three shil 
 lings and sixpence, certificate one and sixpence ; it 
 being pretty late, they lay here, and paid me one 
 shilling for bed (a kind girl)." Another is, "The 
 
146 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 man had five shillings for marrying her, of which I 
 had one and sixpence. JS". B. The above said person 
 marries in common." In several cases it is noticed 
 that the bridegroom had something paid to him " for 
 his trouble," the object of the lady being to be able to 
 plead coverture in case of her arrest for debt. Other 
 memoranda in these books are : " I gave a certificate, 
 for which I had only quartern of brandy." " Two 
 most notorious Thieves." " This marriage upon hon 
 our." " Brought by a Counsellor." " Married upon 
 Tick." "N. B. married for nothing to oblige ]VIr. 
 Golden, Attorney-att-Law." "Stole my clothes 
 brush." " Her eyes very black, and he beat about y e 
 face very much." 
 
 "Having a mistrust of some Irish roguery, 1 took 
 upon me to ask what y e gentleman s name was, his age, 
 etc., and likewise the lady s name and age. Answer 
 made me What was that to me. G dam me, if 
 I did not immediately marry them he would use me 
 ill; in short, apprehending it to be a conspiracy, I 
 found myself obliged to marry them in terror em. 
 !N". B. Some material part was omitted." 
 
 "The woman ran across Ludgate Hill in. her 
 shift." * 
 
 * This was owing to a vulgar opinion that a husband was 
 not liable for his wife s debts if he took her in no other dress 
 
FLEET MARRIAGES. 
 
 " He dressed in a gold waistcoat like an officer ; 
 she a beautiful young lady with two fine diamond 
 rings and a Black high crown Hat, and very well 
 dressed at Boyce s." 
 
 These extracts are sufficient to prove the preva 
 lence of such disreputable practices, and to justify 
 what Smollett says in his novel called The Adven 
 tures of Count Fathom : " This would have been a 
 difficulty soon removed had the scene of the transac 
 tion been laid in the metropolis of England, where 
 passengers are plied in the streets by clergymen, who 
 prostitute their characters and consciences for hire, in 
 defiance of all decency and law." 
 
 Notwithstanding the infamous character of such 
 marriages, those that took place before the Marriage 
 Act 26 Geo. II. c. 33 (1753), came into operation on 
 the 25th of March, 1754, were unquestionably valid. 
 It Avas at one time doubted whether the Fleet Regis 
 ters were or were not admissible in evidence to prove 
 a marriage. They seem to have been admitted by 
 Mr. Justice "Willes on a trial at York in 1780 ; by Mr. 
 Justice Heath in 1794 ; and in the same year, with 
 considerable doubt, by Lord Chief-Justice Kenyon.* 
 
 but her shift. For an instance of the custom, see Ann. Reg. 
 17GG, Chron. p. 10G. 
 
 * A Fleet Register was admitted as evidence by Mr. Justice 
 
148 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 But soon afterward lie refused to admit them, and 
 said that in a case before Lord Hardwicke, where one 
 of the Register books was offered in evidence, he tore 
 the book and declared that such evidence could never 
 be admitted in a court of justice. It is now settled 
 law that the Registers are not admissible as evidence 
 to prove a marriage but they may, when signed by 
 the parties, be received in pedigree cases as declara 
 tions of deceased members of the family. 
 
 A great destruction of papers and documents at 
 the Fleet took place at the time of the Lord George 
 Gordon riots, in 1780 ; but a large number of the 
 Registers and pocket-books, which were in the pos 
 session of the proprietors of the taverns and houses 
 where marriages were celebrated after passing through 
 parsons hands, were purchased by Government, and 
 deposited in the Registry of the Consistory Court of 
 London. There are two or three hundred large Re 
 gisters, and upward of a thousand dirty little pocket- 
 
 Powel, on the trial of Beau Fielding, in 1706, for bigamy, in 
 intermarrying with the Duchess of Cleveland, in order to 
 prove that his first wife, Mary Wadsworth, had been previously 
 married to, and was then, the wife of one Bradley. But even 
 according to the loose notions of evidence which then prevailed, 
 the entry for other reasons, which it would be too technical to 
 discuss here, ought to have been peremptorily rejected. Beau 
 Fielding was found guilty, but escaped punishment by having 
 the benefit of clergy. See State Trials, vol. xiv. 1327. 
 
FLEET MARRIAGES. 
 
 books, in which entries of the marriages were made. 
 Besides these, there are registers of marriage per 
 formed in the King s Bench Prison, the Mint, and 
 May Fair, where the same practice existed. The 
 May Fair Chapel was built in 1730, and was a sort 
 of opposition house to the Fleet for the purpose of 
 matrimony. It seems, however, to have been sup 
 pressed, and in the c Daily Post of July, 1744, the 
 following advertisement appears : 
 
 u To prevent mistakes, the little new chapel in 
 May Fair, near Hyde Park Corner, is in the corner 
 house opposite to the city side of the great chapel, 
 and within ten yards of it, and the minister and clerk 
 live in the same corner house, where the little chapel 
 is, and the license on a crown stamp, and the minister 
 a] id clerk s fees, together with the certificate, amount 
 to one guinea as heretofore, at any hour till four in 
 the afternoon. And that it may be the better known, 
 there is a porch at the door like a country church 
 porch." In 1752 the marriage of the Duke of Ham 
 ilton and Miss Gunning took place in a May Fair 
 chapel. One of these chapels belonged to the Hey. 
 Mr. Keith, who is said to have married in one day 
 173 couples. He thus advertises his place of business 
 in the i Daily Advertiser, in 1753 : 
 
 " Mr. Keith s chapel, in May Fair, Park Corner, 
 
150 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 where the marriages are performed, by virtue of a 
 license on a crown stamp, and certificate for a guinea, 
 is opposite to the great chapel, and within ten yards 
 of it. The way is through Piccadilly, by the end of 
 St. James s Street, down Clarges Street and turn on 
 the left hand." 
 
 On many houses signs were hung out, and over 
 the door were written the words, " Marriages done 
 here ; " while .touters accosted passengers with the 
 cry, " Do you want a parson ? " " "Will you be mar 
 ried ? " Sion Chapel, at Ilampstead, which seems to 
 have belonged to the keeper of an adjoining tavern, 
 was a favorite place of resort, and was thus adver 
 tised in the Weekly Journal of September 8, 1718 : 
 
 "Sion Chapel, at Hampstead, being a private and 
 pleasant place, many persons of the best fashion have 
 lately been married there. Now, as a minister is 
 obliged constantly to attend, this is to give notice, 
 that all persons upon bringing a license, and w r ho 
 shall have their wedding-dinner in the gardens, may 
 be married in the said chapel without giving any fee 
 or reward whatsoever ; and such as do not keep their 
 wedding-dinner in the gardens, only five shillings w r ill 
 be demanded of them for all fees." Like most abuses, 
 the facility of celebrating clandestine marriages was 
 clung to as a great social privilege ; and the Marriage 
 
FLEET MAKRIAGES. 151 
 
 Act, 26 Geo. II. c. 33, which put an end to them, was 
 strongly opposed. Horace Walpole says, in one of 
 his letters, that the Act was so drawn by the judges 
 " as to clog all matrimony in general." * It was for 
 some time evaded by persons going to the Channel 
 Islands, which were not within its operation ; and, in 
 the ( Gentleman s Magazine of 1T60, we read that 
 there w r ere " at Southampton vessels always ready to 
 carry on the trade of smuggling w T eddings, which, for 
 the price of five guineas, transport contraband goods 
 into the land of matrimony." 
 
 * When Dr. King, the public orator at Oxford, presented 
 candidates for the degree of Doctor of Law at the Installation 
 in 1754, he fiercely denounced the new law. " The times," he 
 said, " were so horribly corrupt that we had agreed to sell our 
 daughters by the late Marriage Act. Sweet creatures ! it was 
 ten thousand pities that such fine girls as then filled the theatre 
 should be sold by their unnatural parents, and perhaps (dread 
 ful thought !) even to Whig husbands. But he was sure that 
 such beautiful and elegant ladies as were there assembled were 
 on the right side, and he advised them to wear upon their 
 rings, and embroider upon their garments, the maxim : The 
 man who sells his country will sell his wife or his daughter," 1 upon 
 which there was loud applause." * Correspondence of Richard 
 son, vol. ii. p. 190. 
 
CHAPTEK IY. 
 
 THE OLD ROMANCES. THE FEMALE QUIXOTE. 1 NOVELS OF THE 
 LAST CENTURY. THEIR COARSENESS AND ITS APOLOGISTS. 
 CHRYSAL, OR THE ADVENTURES OF A GUINEA. POMPEY/ 
 THE FOOL OF QUALITY/ TWO CLASSES OF NOVELS. SIMPLE 
 STORY: THE COMIC NOVELS. 
 
 I COME now to speak more particularly of the nov 
 els. It would be easy for an author to make a parade 
 of learning, if an acquaintance with novels and ro 
 mances can be called learning, by quoting the names 
 of old authors and their works, and leaving the reader 
 to suppose that he was familiar with their contents. 
 I might go back to remote antiquity and speak of the 
 c Books of Love of Clearchus the Cilician of Jam- 
 blichus, who wrote the Adventures of Rhodanes - 
 of Heliodorus of Emesus, the author of ( Theogenus 
 and Chariclea of Achilles Tatius, who wrote the 
 Amours of Clitophon and Leucippe 7 of Damascius, 
 who composed four books of fiction of the three 
 Xenophons mentioned by Suidas of the parables of 
 the Indian Sandabar and the fables of Pilpay of the 
 lying legends of the Talmud of the famous Milesian 
 
THE OLD ROMANCES. 153 
 
 tales, and Aristides the most famous of the authors 
 of Dionysius the Milesian who wrote fabulous histo 
 ries of the romance of Dinias and Dercyllis, of 
 which Antonius Diogenes was the author, or the still 
 older romances of Antiphanes of Parthenius office 
 of the True and Perfect Love of Athenagoras 
 of the Golden Ass of Apuleius of the Amours of 
 Diocles and Rhodanthe, by Theodorus Prodromus, 
 and those of Ismenias and Ismene, by Gustathius, 
 Bishop of Thessalonica ; and, coming lower down into 
 the Middle Ages, of the novels of Boccaccio and the 
 Romances of Garin de Loheran, Tristan, i Lancelot 
 clu Lac, St. Greal, Merlin, Arthur, Perceval, 
 Perceforet, Amadis de Gaul, Palmerin of Eng 
 land, and Don Beliaris of Greece ; and in more 
 modern times, of the Astrsea of Monsieur d Urfe, 
 and the Illustrious Bassa the Grand Cyrus and 
 Clelia of Mademoiselle de Scuderi, who is called by 
 Monsieur Huet, the Bishop of Avranches, in his let 
 ters to Monsieur de Legrais On the Original of Ro 
 mances, a grave and virtuous virgin the Roman 
 Comique of Scarron, and the Zaide and Princesse 
 de Cleves of Madame de la Fayette the Phara- 
 niond, Cassandra, and Cleopatra of M. de la Cal- 
 prenede ; and, to come to our own country, of Eu- 
 phues, by John Lylie, who was born in 1553 of the 
 
NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 famous delectable and pleasant Hystorie, of the re 
 nowned Parrissius, Prince of Bohemia, and the Or- 
 natus and Artesia of Ford, who lived in the reign of 
 Elizabeth of Greene s i Philomela " penned to ap 
 prove women s chastity," and his Pandosto the Tri 
 umph of Time, from which Shakespeare borrowed 
 the plot of his Winter s Tale, of Barclay s < Arge- 
 nis, of Eliana, published in 1661 and of the 
 Parthenissa of Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery I 
 might, I say, pretend to be familiar with these works, 
 but for two reasons, first, that many of them have 
 long ceased to exist, and, secondly, that no appetite 
 for books could be supposed to induce a man now to 
 face the appalling dulness and interminable length 
 of most of these old romances. As Sydney Smith 
 says, " human life has been distressingly abridged 
 since the flood," and considering the multiplicity of 
 demands upon one s time now, it is really too short 
 to wade through the ponderous romances of the sev 
 enteenth century, which Sir "Walter Scott aptly de 
 scribed when he called them " huge folios of inanity 
 over which our ancestors yawned themselves to 
 sleep." 
 
 In Leonora s Library, which, the i Spectator vis 
 ited in order to deliver to her a letter from Sir Hoger 
 de Coverley, he found i Astrea, The Grand Cyrus, 
 
THE FEMALE QUIXOTE. 155 
 
 "with a pin stuck in one of the middle leaves," Cle- 
 lia, which opened of itself in the place that de 
 scribes two lovers in a bower, the Xew Atalantis 
 u with a key to it," and all the classic authors " in 
 wood." 
 
 It was to ridicule the taste for such romances as 
 these that Mrs. Lennox published her Female Qui 
 xote, in 1752,* in which the heroine Arabella, the only 
 child of a widowed and misanthropic marquis, is sup 
 posed to be brought up in seclusion in the country, 
 where she has access to a library full of old romances, 
 by which her head is almost as much turned as that 
 of the Knight of La Mancha was by the same kind 
 of study. She takes a young gardener in her father s 
 service for a nobleman in disguise, and is with diffi 
 culty undeceived when he gets a thrashing for steal 
 ing carp from a pond. The book is cleverly written, 
 and is useful as enabling us to get at second hand a 
 knowledge of the romances which were Lady Ara 
 bella s favorite reading. She has a cousin named 
 Glanville, who is in love w r ith her for her beauty, but 
 is sorely puzzled by her conduct, and wholly ignorant 
 of the books on which she has modelled it. In order 
 
 * Hichardson says of the authoress : " The writer has genius. 
 She is hardly twenty-four, and has been unhappy." Corre 
 spondence, vol. yi. p. 243. 
 
156 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 to instruct him, she bids one of her women to bring 
 from her library i Cleopatra, Cassandra/ Clelia. 
 and i the Grand Cyrus, and leaves him to peruse 
 them. But he is bewildered by their length, and 
 turns over the pages in despair. She then examines 
 him as to his proficiency, and convicts him of his de 
 ception in pretending to have read them, when he 
 talks of Orontes and Oroontades as two lovers of Sta- 
 tira, whereas " if lie had read a single page, he would 
 have known that Orontes and Oroontades was the 
 same person, the name of Orontes being assumed by 
 Oroontades to conceal his real name and quality." 
 
 But although the Lady Arabella talks in the strain 
 of Catlios and Madelon in ^Lcs Precieuses Ridicules 
 of Moliere, the novel wants the wit of that admirable 
 comedy, and as a satire it has lost its point, for no 
 body certainly no young lady- at the present day 
 knows or cares any thing of the Loves of Artemisa 
 and Candace, of the c Great Sisygambis, or the re 
 nowned Artaban and I fear that such illustrations 
 of love as are quoted by Arabella, would now be the 
 utterance of an unknown tongue. For instance 
 " Love is ingenious in artifices ; who would have 
 thought that under the name of Alcippus, a simple 
 attendant of the fair Artemisa, princess of Armenia, 
 the gallant Alexander, son of the great and unfortu- 
 
WHERE ARE THEY NOW? 157 
 
 nate Antony, by Queen Cleopatra, was concealed, who 
 took upon himself that mean condition for the sake 
 of seeing his adored princess ? " 
 
 The time has gone by when, as the Bishop of Av- 
 ranches tells us, he and his sisters were obliged to lay 
 down the Astnea of M. d Urfe while reading it, in 
 order that they might indulge freely in their tears ; 
 and it would be difficult for Boileau, if he were alive, 
 to find now, in either town or country 
 
 " Deux nobles campagnards, grands lecteurs de romans, 
 Qui m ont dit tout Cyrus dans leurs longs complimens." * 
 
 Old Thomas Gent, " Printer of York," when de 
 scribing his intercourse with his dear niece, Anne 
 
 * In Lea Prcciemes Ridicules, 1 Marotte, the lady s maid, 
 says : " Dame ! je n entends point le latin, et je n ai pas appris, 
 comme vous, la filophie dans le grand Cyre." Boswell tells us, 
 on the authority of Bishop Percy, that when Dr. Johnson spent 
 part of a summer at his parsonage in the country, he chose for 
 his regular reading the old Spanish romance of Felixmarte of 
 Ilyrcania, in folio, which he read quite through. This was the 
 book which the curate in Don Quixote condemned to the 
 flames. These romances are satirized by the youthful Canning 
 in the Microcosm, where he describes the hero sighing respect 
 fully at the feet of his mistress during a ten-years courtship in 
 a wilderness ; and quotes the adventures of St. George, " who 
 mounts his horse one morning at Cappadocia, takes his way 
 through Mesopotamia, then turns to the right into Illyria, and 
 so by way of Grecia and Thracia, arrives in the afternoon in 
 England." 
 
158 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 Standish, " a perfect beauty," says in his autobiogra 
 phy : " Often did we walk till late hours in the garden ; 
 she could tell me almost every passage in Cassandra, 
 a celebrated romance that I had bought for her at 
 London." And to come to a later period, the close 
 of the century, we have a list of the novels, which 
 Miss Thorpe tells Catherine Morland, the heroine in 
 Jane Austen s story of ( Korthanger Abbey, she has 
 written down in her pocket-book ; Castle of Wolfe n- 
 bach, Clermont, c Mysterious Warnings, Xecro- 
 mancer of the Black Forest, < Midnight Bell, Or 
 phan of the Rhine, and the Horrid Mysteries. 
 Possibly these novels are merely imaginary, but if 
 they are real books, where are any of them to be 
 found now? and where could readers be found for 
 them if they existed ? Few have the courage to wade 
 through the twenty-one volumes of Richardson for 
 in no less a number are contained his Pamela, i Cla 
 rissa liarlowe, and Sir Charles Grandison, and the 
 man wiio has performed the feat in these degenerate 
 days may plume himself upon the achievement. 
 
 For a long list of the novels in vogue in the mid 
 dle of the last century we may refer to the preface to 
 George Colman s comedy of Polly Honeycomb, first 
 acted in 1760, and intended to expose the mischiefs 
 of novel-reading, although it really does nothing of 
 
LAWLESS GALLANTRY. 159 
 
 the kind.* The names of nearly two hundred are 
 given, of which very few, exclusive of the fictions of 
 Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett, are now known 
 even by name, or could be procured without a good 
 deal of hunting at second-hand book-stalls. But the 
 same will be true a century hence of most of the nov 
 els of this generation. As Fielding says in Tom 
 Jones, " The great happiness of being known to pos 
 terity is the portion of few." Among those w r orks 
 that are practically lost there are some whose names, 
 like that of the Fair Adulteress, sufficiently indicate 
 their contents. Some for a long time lingered in 
 circulating libraries, and, perhaps, may still be found 
 there, although they are seldom or never asked for 
 by readers whose taste has been reformed and purified 
 by the writings of such authors as Scott, Thackeray, 
 Dickens, and Trollope. Of very few of these old nov 
 els can be predicated what Dr. Johnson said of Priors 
 poems, " Xo, sir, Prior is a lady s book. Xo lady is 
 ashamed to have it standing in her library." Their 
 character may be described by two lines from the pro 
 logue to c Polly Honeycomb 
 
 * Polly Honeycomb ends thus: "Zounds! .... a man 
 might as well turn his daughter loose in Covent Garden, as 
 trust the cultivation of her mind to a circulating library." 
 
160 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 " Plot and elopement, passion, rape, and rapture, 
 The total sum of every dear dear chapter." 
 
 or by the following verses of Cowper : 
 
 " Ye novelists who mar what ye would mend, 
 Snivelling and drivelling, folly without end ; 
 Where corresponding misses fill the ream 
 With sentimental frippery and dream, 
 Caught in a delicate soft silken net 
 By some lewd earl or rake-hell baronet." * 
 
 The subject of most of them is, in fact, what 
 Charles Lamb calls " the undivided pursuit of lawless 
 gallantry." In his essay on the artificial comedy of 
 the last century he attempts a defence of this where 
 he says : " The Fainealls and the Mirabels, the Dori- 
 courts and Lady Touchwoods, in their own sphere, do 
 not offend any moral sense ; in fact, they do not ap 
 peal to it at all. They seem engaged in their proper 
 element. They break through no law r s or conscien 
 tious restraints. They know of none. They have 
 got out of Christendom into the land what shall I 
 call it ? of cuckoldy the Utopia of gallantry, where 
 pleasure is duty, and the manners perfect freedom." 
 
 I think this is a bad and false apology even for 
 the stage. But whatever may be the case with the 
 
 * Progress of Error. 
 
LESSONS IN MOBALITY. 161 
 
 plays, such a defence is not available for the novels. 
 The object in writing them was not merely to amuse 
 but to instruct, as the authors assure us over and over 
 again in their prefaces and dedications, and they cer 
 tainly did not intend their heroes and heroines to be 
 mere shadowy abstractions, but representations of 
 real flesh and blood. And our forefathers so regarded 
 them, looking to them for^lessons in moralitj_and^ 
 conduct. It is in this light that Dr. Young, in one 
 of his letters, calls Richardson. " an instrument of 
 Providence." A writer in the Olla Podrida (A. D. 
 178Y) says, that " if we wish for delicate or refined 
 sentiments we can recur to i Grandison and Cla 
 rissa ; if we would see the world more, perhaps, as 
 it is than it should be, we have i Joseph Andrews 
 and Tom Jones ; or can we find the happy mixture 
 of satire and moral tendency in the Spiritual Qui 
 xote and Cecilia. And the Rev. Mr. Graves, in 
 his preface or apology, as he calls it, for his i Spiritual 
 Quixote, says : " Nay, I am convinced that Don 
 Quixote or < Gil Bias, < Clarissa, or Sir Charles 
 Grandison, will furnish more hints for correcting the 
 follies and regulating the morals of young persons, 
 and impress them more forcibly on their minds, 
 than volumes of severe precepts seriously delivered 
 and dogmatically enforced." Now, what is the char- 
 
162 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 acter of most of these "books which were to correct 
 follies and regulate morality ? Of a great many of 
 them, and especially those of Fielding and Smollett, 
 the prevailing features are grossness and licentious 
 ness. Love degenerates into mere animal passion, 
 and almost every woman has to guard her chastity 
 if, indeed, she cares to guard it at all against the ap 
 proaches of man as the sworn enemy of her virtue. 
 The language of the characters abound in oaths and 
 gross expressions, and to swear loudly and -to drink 
 deeply are the common attributes of fashionable as 
 well as vulgar life. The heroines allow themselves to 
 take part in conversations which no modest woman 
 could have heard without a blush. 
 
 And yet these novels were the delight of a by-gone 
 generation, and were greedily devoured by women as 
 well as men. Are we, therefore, to conclude that our 
 great-great-grandmothers those stately dames, whose 
 pictures by Gainsborough and Reynolds look down 
 upon us in our dining-rooms were less chaste and 
 moral than their female posterity ? I answer, cer 
 tainly not ; but we must infer that they were inferior 
 to them in delicacy and refinement. They were ac 
 customed to hear a spade called a spade, and words 
 which would shock the more fastidious ear in the 
 reign of Queen Victoria w^ere then in common and 
 
A LADY S VIEW OF TRISTRAM SHANDY. 163 
 
 daily use. TV r e see this in the diaries and journals of 
 the time, but it would not be pleasant to quote pas 
 sages in proof of the statement ; and, perhaps, the 
 women of that day would defend themselves in some 
 such way as Charlotte Grandison does in Richardson s 
 novel : " Let me tell you that there is more indelicacy 
 in delicacy than you very delicate people are aware 
 of." 
 
 There is in Richardson s Correspondence a long 
 extract from a letter written by a young lady in Lon 
 don to another lady, her friend, in the country, in 
 which she laments the hard necessity she supposed 
 she was under of having been obliged to read Tris 
 tram Shandy. " Happy are you in your retirement, 
 where you read what books you choose, either for 
 instruction or entertainment ; but in this foolish town 
 we are obliged to read every foolish book that fashion 
 renders prevalent in conversation ; and I am horribly 
 out of humor with the present taste, which makes 
 people ashamed to own they have not read what, if 
 fashion did not authorize, they would with more rea 
 son blush to say they had read. Perhaps some polite 
 person from London may have forced this piece into 
 your hands ; but give it not a place in your library ; 
 let not Tristram Shandy be ranked among the well- 
 chosen authors there. It is indeed a little book, and 
 
161 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 little is its merit, though great lias been the writer s 
 reward. Unaccountable wildness, whimsical digres 
 sions, comical incoherences, uncommon indecencies, 
 all with an air of novelty has catched the reader s 
 attention, and applause has flown from one to another, 
 till it is almost singular to disapprove. . . . Yet I 
 will do him justice ; and if, forced by friends, or led 
 by curiosity, you have read and laughed and almost 
 cried at Tristram, I will agree with you that there is 
 subject for mirth and some affecting strokes. . . But 
 mark my prophecy, that by another season this per 
 formance will be as much decried as it is now ex 
 tolled ; for it has not sufficient merit to prevent its 
 sinking when no longer upheld by the short-lived 
 breath of fashion : and yet another prophecy I utter, 
 that this ridiculous compound will be the cause of 
 many more productions, witless and humorless, per 
 haps, but indecent and absurd, till the town will be 
 punished for undue encouragement by being poisoned 
 with disgustful nonsense." * 
 
 In his i Essay on Conversation, which contains 
 
 some admirable precepts, Fielding strongly insists 
 
 against indecency, and proscribes " all double-enten- 
 
 dres and obscene jests " as carefully to be avoided 
 
 before ladies. And yet in that very essay he offends 
 
 * Correspondence of Kichardson, vol. v. p. 147. 
 
COARSE LANGUAGE. 165 
 
 against decency, according to modern notions, by 
 using words with which no writer of reputation would 
 now sully his pen. This is curious, and proves what 
 I contend for, namely, that in the last century men 
 and women were so accustomed to coarse language 
 that they hardly knew what was a sin against deco 
 rum. Necessarily I cannot give quotations to show 
 this, for in. doing so I should myself offend ; but I 
 may state, without fear of contradiction, that there is 
 hardly a novel of the eighteenth century which does 
 not contain expressions and allusions which would at 
 the present day be thought not only vulgar but indec 
 orous. 
 
 And this is true not only of the beginning and 
 middle, but the end of the period, not only of Defoe, 
 Swift, Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett, but of 
 Mrs. Inchbald, Miss Burney, and Miss Edgeworth. 
 Nobody can think higher of the last-named authoress 
 than myself, and I attribute whatever faults of this 
 kind she has committed to the manners of the age. 
 She could never have put into the mouth of a fashion 
 able lady such language as Mrs. Freke in i Belinda 
 uses, unless she had thought it at least possible that a 
 fashionable lady could so talk. 
 
 I will give one or two specimens of it, addressed, 
 be it observed, to a young lady : 
 
166 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 " The devil ! they seem to have put you on a 
 course of the bitters a course of the woods might do 
 your business better. Do you ever hunt ? Let me 
 take you out with me some morning. You d be quite 
 an angel on horseback, or let me drive you out some 
 day in my unicorn." 
 
 " I only wish, I only wish his wife had been by. 
 Why the devil did not she make her appearance ? I 
 suppose the prude was afraid of my demolishing and 
 unrigging her." 
 
 " i Drapery, if you ask my opinion, cried Mrs. 
 Freke, c drapery, whether wet or dry, is the most con 
 foundedly indecent thing in the world. 
 
 I know that there are writers who assert that we 
 have not gained by the difference ; but I think they 
 are wholly wrong. The gain is immense, when we 
 remember all that such want of refinement implies. 
 Coarseness of language is a proof of coarseness of 
 thought, and too often leads to coarseness of conduct. 
 And the same is equally true of profanity and vice. 
 Studia ablunt in mores. A profane talker is a pro 
 fane liver, and the man who revels in licentious con 
 versation is not likely to be a Joseph in morals. 
 
 Two of the most popular novels mentioned in the 
 preface to Polly Iloneycombe, next to those of 
 Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett, are Chrysal, or 
 
CHKYSAL, ETC. 167 
 
 the Adventures of a Guinea, and The Fool of Qual 
 ity. 
 
 I have looked through the four volumes of Chry- 
 sal it is impossible for human patience now to pe 
 ruse them to see if there was any thing which could 
 interest a reader at the present day ; but the attempt 
 was vain. The book in both style and matter is exe 
 crably bad. And yet it was once very popular.* 
 But see the uncertainty of fame ! I had the greatest 
 difficulty in procuring a copy, although I inquired of 
 many booksellers, and hunted many book-stalls. It 
 has sunk into total oblivion, and I am bound to say 
 that it deserves its fate. 
 
 The Guinea passes from hand to hand, and this 
 gives the author the opportunity of describing all 
 kinds of characters, and all kinds of scenes. I need 
 not say that many of them are licentious and impure ; 
 but the vice is not redeemed by wit or grace of style, 
 and the book is simply unreadable. The same idea 
 is produced in the novel of i Pompey, or the Adven- 
 
 * The author of The Adventures of a Guinea was Charles 
 Johnson, a barrister, whose deafness prevented him from follow 
 ing his profession. The bookseller to whom it was offered for 
 publication, sent the first volume to Dr. Johnson, in manu 
 script, to have his opinion whether it should be printed, and he 
 thought it should. We can only wonder that such a stupid 
 book met with Johnson s approval. 
 
168 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 tures of a Lap-dog, by Coventry, where the dog be 
 comes the property of a variety of persons, of whom 
 it is sufficient to say that all the women are rakes, 
 and the men libertines and scamps. Many of the 
 scenes can only be described by one word, and that 
 is filthy and there is nothing in Swift which is 
 more gross or more offensive. I cannot understand 
 how it obtained the honor of being allowed a place in 
 the edition of the British Novelists. 
 
 4 The Fool of Quality was written by Henry 
 Brooke, and published by him in 1766. It was re- 
 published by the Rev. Charles Kingsley, with a pref 
 ace and life of the author, in 1859 ; and he speaks 
 with enthusiasm of the causes which have made the 
 book to be forgotten for a while, and which, he says, 
 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 sen- 
 timentalism and that superstition which have been 
 alternately debauching of late years the minds of the 
 young." He calls it a " brave book." I am bound 
 to say that I wholly disagree with him. A more 
 horribly dull and tedious book it was never my mis 
 fortune to read ; and as a fiction, or a story, or a 
 tvork of art, it is beneath criticism. Mr. Kingsley ad- 
 
THE FOOL OF QUALITY. 169 
 
 mits that " an average reader " would say that " 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, with 
 out knowledge of human nature and the real world, 
 the book can never have touched many hearts, and 
 can touch none now." 
 
 I willingly rank myself among the average read 
 ers as regards my estimate of the book, and can only 
 wonder at Mr. Kingsley having taken the trouble to 
 republish it, and still more at the praise w T hich he 
 lavishes upon it. It is made up of dull sermons and 
 dull disquisitions on morality and the British Consti 
 tution, with an absurd attempt at a story, in which 
 it is impossible to take interest, running through it. 
 Harry Clinton, afterward Earl of Moreland, the hero, 
 is carried off by a benevolent old gentleman, w T ho 
 turns out to be his uncle in disguise, and supplies him 
 while a boy with almost unlimited sums of money to 
 scatter broadcast in prisons, hospitals, and the abodes 
 of poverty. To slip a hundred guineas into a poor 
 man s pocket is with him quite an ordinary occur 
 rence ; and his uncle kisses him and exclaims, " Oh, 
 my noble, my generous, my incomparable boy ! " An- 
 
170 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 other gentleman is so enraptured by the generous 
 manner in which the hero spends his uncle s money 
 that he exclaims in ecstasy : " Let me go, let me go 
 from this place. This boy will absolutely kill me if I 
 stay any longer. He overpowers, he suffocates me with 
 the weight of his sentiments." The author certainly 
 overpowers the reader with the weight of his dulness. 
 The dress of a lady is thus described : " A scarf of 
 cerulean tint flew between her right shoulder and her 
 left hip, being buttoned at each end by a row of rubies 
 .... A coronet of diamonds, through which there 
 passed a w r hite branch of the feathers of the ostrich, 
 was inserted on the left decline of her lovely head, 
 and a stomacher of inestimable brilliance rose beneath 
 her dazzling bosom, and by a fluctuating blaze of un- 
 remitted light, checked and turned the eye away from 
 too presumptuous a gaze " ! "When the hero goes to 
 Court, Queen Mary sends the Lord Chamberlain to tell 
 him to come to her, and after a few words of conver 
 sation cries out : " You are the loveliest and sweetest 
 fellow I ever knew. My eye followed you all along, 
 and marked you for my own, and I must either beg 
 or steal you from our good friend your father." Her 
 Majesty then gives him her picture ! There is a cari 
 cature of a trial at the Old Bailey, where a woman is 
 tried for killing a nobleman in defence of her chastity, 
 
DIFFERENT CLASSES OF NOVELS. 171 
 
 and where the judge is represented as summing up 
 for a conviction in a way which would have shocked 
 a Jeffreys or a Scroggs. The foreman of the jury 
 prefaces their verdict of Not Guilty, with a sentimen- 
 tal speech, calling the prisoner " an honor to human 
 nature and the first grace and ornament of her own 
 sex." But Ohe jam satis. Considering the nature 
 of the book, it is not surprising that John "Wesley 
 " bowdlerized " the * Fool of Quality, striking out 
 such passages as he did not like, and then published it 
 during the author s lifetime as the c History of Harry, 
 Earl of Moreland, which was long believed by the 
 Wesleyans to be the w r ork of the great John himself. 
 
 The novels of the last century may be divided into 
 different classes. In the first we have the domestic 
 life of our ancestors portrayed under the guise of fic 
 tion, of which the staple generally is the story of a 
 young lady who has great difficulty in preserving her 
 honor intact from the pursuit of libertine admirers. 
 Thus in c Clarissa Harlowe the heroine falls a victim 
 to her seducer, while in Pamela she triumphs over 
 his arts, and the result is a happy marriage. In c Sir 
 Charles Grandison, the lady is forcibly carried off by 
 Sir Hargrave Pollexfen, whose object is to compel her 
 to marry him, but she is rescued by Sir Charles, and 
 after an intolerably tedious courtship becomes his 
 
1Y2 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 wife. It is the same idea in a more disguised form 
 which forms the subject of the story in Miss Burney s 
 Evelina, or the History of a young Lady s Intro 
 duction to the World. There Miss Anville comes up 
 to town from the country on a visit to Mr. and Mrs. 
 Mirvan, in Queen Anne Street, and she is immediate 
 ly beset by admirers, one of whom, Lord Orville, is a 
 gentleman not only by birth, but in character and con 
 duct ; while another, Sir Clement "Willoughby, pur 
 sues her with no other object than that of " lawless 
 gallantry." She has a narrow escape when she trusts 
 herself with him in his carriage to take her home from 
 the theatre. She is insulted at Ranelagh, and " Mary- 
 bone," and the Hotwells, by libertine addresses. 
 
 In Mrs. Inchbald s 6 Simple Story we have the 
 tale of a young lady, Miss Milner, left to the care of 
 a lloman Catholic priest, Dorriforth, with whom she 
 falls in love ; and, as he becomes the Earl of Elm- 
 wood, and is released from his ordination vows, she 
 marries him; but afterward becomes unfaithful, and 
 dies in great misery. The latter part of the novel is 
 occupied with the story of her daughter, an only 
 child, whom the father allows to live at one of his 
 country residences ; but, in bitter resentment at her 
 mother s misconduct, obstinately refuses to see or allow 
 her name to be mentioned in his presence, until he 
 
COMIC NOVELS. 173 
 
 hears that she lias been carried off by a libertine 
 nobleman, when he rushes to her rescue, and then 
 opens his heart to her with parental fondness, and 
 sanctions her marriage with his nephew, who has long 
 been her secret adorer. 
 
 A favorite form in which many of these novels are 
 written is a series of letters, which seems to me the 
 most uninteresting mode in which a story can be told. 
 It is difficult not to compassionate the persons who sit 
 down day after day, and night after night, to pen 
 their long-winded epistles, and fill them with the most 
 trivial and egotistical details. Perhaps in these days 
 of the penny-post one is more impatient of the length 
 of a letter ; but no mortal men nor women could have 
 spun out in real life such a correspondence as is car 
 ried on in Clarissa Harlowe, Sir Charles Grandi- 
 son, and Evelina. * 
 
 Another class of novels consists of comic stories 
 of low life, in which the hero or heroine is engaged in 
 ludicrous adventures, where the scenes are often laid 
 in a country inn, and the interior of a prison, and 
 where such events as are likely to happen there are 
 
 * These letters were supposed to be sent by private hands, 
 not the post. "Letters from Northamptonshire, by Fanner 
 Jenkins ; I kiss the seals." * Sir Charles Grandison : Letter 
 XIV. 
 
174 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 described with all the fidelity, and, I will add, all the 
 coarseness of a Dutch picture. Such are i Roderick 
 Random, and * Peregrine Pickle, i Tom Jones, and 
 ; Joseph Andrews. The men riot in every kind of 
 dissipation, and the women indulge in every species 
 of intrigue. But there is always some virtuous figure 
 who is generally the heroine like Sophia Western, or 
 Fanny Goodwin, or Emilia who resists all libertine 
 advances, and whose constancy is at last rewarded by 
 marriage. It is with reference to this class of novels 
 that an accomplished French critic, M. Taine, speak 
 ing of Torn Jones, says: " " One becomes tired of 
 your fisticuffs and your ale-house adventures. You 
 dirty your feet too much in the stables among the ec 
 clesiastical pigs of Trulliber. One would like to see 
 more regard for the modesty of your heroines ; the 
 roadside accidents disturb their dresses too often, and 
 it is in vain that Fanny, Sophy, and Mistress Heart- 
 free preserve their purity ; one can t help remember 
 ing the assaults which have lifted their petticoats. 
 You are so rude yourself that you are insensible to 
 what is atrocious. . . . Man, such as you conceive 
 him, is a good buffalo, and perhaps he is the kind of 
 hero required by a people which is itself called John 
 Bull." It is curious to contrast with this the opinion 
 
 * Histoire de la Literature Anglaise, vol. iii. pp. 317,318. 
 
LOW SCENES. 175 
 
 of Coleridge. " How charming, liow wholesome. 
 Fielding always is ! To take liim up after Richard 
 son, is like emerging from a sick-room heated by 
 stoves, into an open lawn on a breezy clay in May." * 
 In so far as Fielding is opposed to Richardson, we 
 should all agree in this ; but I cannot think that the 
 pure breeze of a May morning is a proper metaphor 
 to describe such scenes as occur in Tom Jones and 
 i Joseph Andrews. 
 
 * Table Talk, p. 332. 
 
CHAPTER YI. 
 
 MRS. BEHN AND. HEE NOVELS. OEOONOKO. 1 THE "WANDERING 
 BEAUTY: THE UNFORTUNATE HAPPY LADY: MRS. MANLEY 
 AND THE NEW ATALANTIS. 1 THE POWER OF LOVE IN SEVEN 
 NOVELS: THE FAIR HYPOCRITE: MRS. HEY WOOD. HER NOV 
 EL. Miss BETSY THOUGHTLESS: 
 
 IT is remarkable that some of the most immoral 
 novels in the English language should have been 
 written by women. This bad distinction belongs to 
 Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley, and Mrs. Ileywood ; Cor- 
 ruptio optimi est pessima, and that such corrupt 
 stories as they gave to the world were the offspring 
 of female pens is an unmistakable proof of the loose 
 manners of the age. Mrs. Behn, indeed, belongs to 
 an earlier period. She wrote in the reign of Charles 
 II., when vice was triumphant, and modesty, like 
 Astrsea, had left her last footsteps upon earth.* 
 Strictly, therefore, she does not come within the scope 
 
 * Mrs. Behn called herself Astrsea, and as such ia alluded 
 to by Pope in the lines 
 
 " The stage how loosely does Astraea tread, 
 Who fairly puts all characters to bed ! " 
 
MRS. BEEN". 177 
 
 of the present work ; but as some of her stories were 
 the first that at all approached in idea the modern 
 novel, and in that respect she may be considered as 
 the literary progenitor of a most numerous race, I 
 may be excused for saying something about her, and 
 so far as I dare, giving some specimens of her works. 
 Her maiden name was Aphra Johnson ; her father 
 was made Governor of Surinam, whither she accom 
 panied him, and then she became acquainted with the 
 ne^ro slave Oroonoko and his wife Imoinda. whose 
 
 o 
 
 adventures she has made the subject of the best known 
 one of the least objectionable of her novels, called 
 Oroonoko. She afterward married a Dutch mer 
 chant named Behn, and went to Antwerp, w T here she 
 was employed by Charles II. in some political in 
 trigues during the war with Holland. After various 
 vicissitudes of fortune she settled in England and de 
 voted herself to literature, chiefly novels and come 
 dies, the titles of some of which sufficiently indicate 
 their centers. In her preface to The Lucky Chance 
 she attempts to defend . herself against the charge of 
 indecency and indelicacy; but it is by what lawyers 
 call a plea in confession and avoidance retorting the 
 charge of prudery on her accusers. She died in 1689, 
 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. In a curious 
 memoir of her prefixed to a volume of her novels 
 
178 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 which was published in 1705, and written " by one of 
 the Fair Sex," she is described as an honor and glory 
 to women, and possessed of uncommon charms of 
 person. The lady takes pains to deny the truth of an 
 ill-natured rumor which it seems w r as current as to 
 some love-affair between Mrs. Behn, or Astrsea, as she 
 is called, and Oroonoko, whose heart she said was too 
 devoted to Imoinda to be shaken in its constancy by 
 the charms of a white beauty, " and Astrsea s relations 
 who were there present had too watchful an eye over 
 her to permit the frailty of her youth, if that had 
 been powerful enough." While she was at Antwerp 
 more than one lover paid his addresses to her, but she 
 merely used them as tools to worm out political 
 secrets, and, in the words of the lady who wrote her 
 life, " she contrived to preserve her honor without in 
 juring her gratitude." She adds : " They are mistaken 
 who imagine that a Dutchman can t love; for, though 
 they are generally more phlegmatic than other men, 
 yet it sometimes happens that love does penetrate 
 their lumps and dispense an enlivening fire, that de 
 stroys its graver and cooler considerations." One of 
 her lovers met with a rather unlucky adventure in 
 pursuit of his object. He bribed an old lady who 
 slept with Mrs. Behn, to put him, dressed in her 
 night-clothes, in their bed, while Mrs. Behn was ab- 
 
MRS. BEHN. 1Y9 
 
 sent at an evening party, in Antwerp ; when she came 
 home, attended by some friends, one of them, " a brisk, 
 lively, frolicsome young fellow," proposed as a practical 
 joke to go to the old lady s bed, " while they should 
 all come in with candles and complete the merry 
 scene." This he did, but was not a little confounded 
 when he encountered, not an old woman, as he ex 
 pected, but Mrs. Behn s Dutch lover, who was occu 
 pying the bed. The rest of the company came in, 
 and it is needless to say that her admirer, thus caught 
 in his own trap, was ignominiously dismissed. Her 
 female biographer praises her for her virtue and self- 
 command, but she prints some " Love Letters to a 
 Gentleman by Mrs. A. Belm " which she declares are 
 genuine, and if so they leave little doubt that her con 
 duct was as loose as her writings, notwithstanding the 
 assertion, " I knew her intimately and never saw 
 aught unbecoming the just modesty of our sex, though 
 more gay and free than the folly of the precise will 
 allow. She was, I am satisfied, a greater honor to our 
 sex than all the canting tribes of dissemblers that die 
 with the false reputation of saints." 
 
 She was a learned lady, and among other things 
 wrote a treatise on the c History of Oracles, which is 
 in part a translation of the Latin work of Van Dale, 
 De Oraculis Ethnicorum, on the same subject. 
 
180 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 Mrs. Belm tells us in her preface, that she had taken 
 great liberties with Yan Dale, and had changed the 
 whole disposition of the book, retrenching and adding 
 as she thought fit, and sometimes arguing i n direct 
 
 o / o o 
 
 opposition to him. " In fine," she says, " I have new 
 cast and modelled the whole work, and have put it 
 into the same order as I should have done at first to 
 have pleased my particular view, had I had so much 
 knowledge as Mr. Van Dale, but since I am far from 
 it, I have borrowed his learning, and ventured to make 
 use of my own wit and fancy (such as it is) to adorn 
 it." The object of Yan Dale s work was to refute 
 the opinion that the ancient oracles were delivered by 
 Demons, and that they ceased wholly at the coming 
 of Jesus Christ. Mrs. Belm also translated Fon- 
 tenelle s work on the ; Plurality of Worlds, but her 
 version was first published after her death. In the 
 dedication to the Earl of Kingston, by Briscoe, who 
 seems to have brought it out, he calls her " the Sap 
 pho of our nation, the incomparable Mrs. Belm," and 
 describes himself as one who has been " only a neces 
 sary appendix to the traders in Parnassus." Al 
 though utterly forgotten now, Mrs. Belm s name once 
 occupied a prominent place in the -world of letters. 
 In Tom Jones occurs the following passage : " This 
 young fellow lay in bed, reading one of Mrs. Belm s 
 
OKOONOZO. 181 
 
 novels, fur lie had been instructed by a friend that he 
 could not find a more effectual method of recommend 
 ing himself to the ladies, than by improving his un 
 derstanding, and filling his mind with good literature." 
 This of course is Fielding s sarcasm. 
 
 I have said that Oroonoko is tlis best known of 
 Mrs. Belm s novels, but I doubt whether more than a 
 very few of the present generation, have read or even 
 seen it, and I had some difficulty in procuring a copy. 
 The story is founded on fact, and became known to 
 the authoress while she was residing at Surinam, of 
 which her father was Governor. The real history of 
 Oroonoko and Imoinda seems to be this : He w r as a 
 young negro chief, whose grandfather was ruler of a 
 country in Africa, not far from the coast. He had 
 just married a n egress named Imoinda, when the old 
 king, having seen her, and being struck with her 
 beauty, ordered that she should be brought to him to 
 live as his concubine. Notwithstanding her opposi 
 tion and despair, the royal will was law, and she took 
 up her residence with the king. Oroonoko, however, 
 contrived to get access to her apartment, and being 
 discovered, she was sold as a slave, while he managed 
 to make his escape. He got down to the coast, and 
 was there basely inveigled on board a slave-ship, and 
 carried off to Surinam. Here he was sold as a slave, 
 
182 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 and became the property of a kind-hearted master 
 named Trefry. It happened that Imoinda was work 
 ing as a slave on the same plantation, and the unfor 
 tunate husband and wife thus unexpectedly met. 
 They told their story to their master, who showed 
 sympathy with their sorrows, and they were allowed 
 to live together as man and wife, in a cottage on the 
 estate, where, Mrs. Behn says, she frequently visited 
 them. Oroonoko was known by the name of Cresar, 
 and Imoinda by that of Clemene. He tried in vain 
 to purchase his liberty, and at last excited his fellow- 
 slaves to a revolt, which was quickly suppressed. He 
 and Imoinda had escaped into the woods, but they 
 were taken, and he was barbarously flogged. Enraged 
 at this, he brooded over a scheme of signal vengeance 
 on the whites, but fearing that his wife would become 
 a prey to their lawless caprice, and that the child she 
 then bore in her bosom was doomed to slavery, he de 
 termined to kill her. Taking her into the woods, he 
 cut her throat, and remained for some days beside her 
 dead body, until he was found by those who went in 
 search of the runaways. He was brought back, tied 
 to a post, and literally cut to pieces. I may give the 
 death-scene in Mrs. Behn s own words : " He had 
 learned to take tobacco ; and when he was assured he 
 should die, he desired they would give him a pipe in 
 
OROONOKO. 183 
 
 his mouth, ready lighted, which they did: and the 
 
 tJ iD v 
 
 executioner came .... and threw them into the 
 fire ; after that, with an ill-favored knife, they cut off 
 his ears and nose, and burned them ; he still smoked 
 on as if nothing had touched him ; then they hacked 
 off one of his arms, and still he bore up, and held his 
 pipe ; but at the cutting off the other arm, his head 
 sank, and his pipe dropped, and he gave up the ghost 
 without a groan or a reproach. My mother and sis 
 ter," she adds, " were by him all the while, but not 
 suffered to save him." 
 
 Such, I believe, to be the true facts of this tragic 
 tale, which Mrs. Behn took as the basis of her story, 
 and which she has of course amplified and altered as 
 suited her purpose. She has made Oroonoko a most 
 accomplished prince, well acquainted with English, 
 French, and mathematics, and says : " I have often 
 seen and conversed with this great man, and have 
 been a witness to many of his mighty actions, and do 
 assure my reader that the most illustrious courts could 
 not have produced a braver man, both for greatness 
 of courage and mind, a judgment more solid, a wit 
 more quick, and a conversation more sweet and di 
 verting. He knew almost as much as if he had read 
 much ; he had heard of the late civil wars in Eng 
 land, and the deplorable death of our great monarch : 
 
184: NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 and would discourse of it with all the sense and 
 abhorrence of the injustice imaginable. He had an 
 extreme good and graceful mien, and all the civility 
 of a well-bred great man. He had nothing of barbar 
 ity in his nature, but in all points addressed himself 
 as if his education had been in some European court." 
 This shows the key in which the tone of the novel is 
 pitched, and the person of the sable hero is described 
 in corresponding style : " He was pretty tall, but of 
 a shape the most exact that can be fancied. The 
 most famous statuary could not form the figure of a 
 man more admirably turned from head to foot. His 
 face was not of that brown rusty black which most 
 of that nation are, but a perfect ebony or polished 
 jet. His eyes were the most awful that could be 
 seen, and very piercing, the white of them being like 
 snow, as were his teeth. His nose was rising and 
 Roman, instead of African and flat. His mouth the 
 finest shaped that could be seen, far from those great 
 turned lips which are so natural to the rest of the ne 
 groes. . . . His hair came down to his shoulders by 
 the aids of art, which was by pulling it out witli a 
 quill, and keeping it combed, of which he took par 
 ticular care." As to Imoinda, " one need say only 
 that she was female to the noble male ; the beautiful 
 black Yenus to our young Mars, as charming in her 
 
OROONOKO. 185 
 
 person as he, and of delicate virtues. I have seen an 
 hundred white men sighing after her, and making a 
 thousand vows at her feet, all vain and unsuccessful." 
 After thus turning a woolly-headed negro into an 
 Adonis, with a Roman nose and flowing hair, it is 
 not surprising that Mrs. Behn should metamorphose 
 the hut of an African chief into a palace where the 
 king is surrounded by Oriental luxury, and where the 
 usages are borrowed from such tales as the Arabian 
 
 o 
 
 .Nights. When Oroonoko was about to be treacher 
 ously carried off by the slaver, " the captain, in his 
 boat richly adorned with carpets and velvet cushions, 
 went to the shore to receive the prince, with another 
 long-boat where was placed all his music and trump 
 ets." When he got on board, his Highness drank 
 too much wine and punch, and so fell an easy prey to 
 the cupidity of the captain, who seized on him and 
 put him in irons, and then "made from the shore 
 with this innocent and glorious prize, who thought 
 of nothing less than such an entertainment." I will 
 only add that the novel contains a rather interesting 
 account of the country around Surinam, and the mode 
 of life there. On one occasion when Mrs. Behn, with 
 some women, Caesar, and "an English gentleman, 
 brother to Harry Marten, the great Oliverian" that 
 is Marten, the regicide, on whom Southey wrote the 
 
186 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 sonnet parodied by Canning in the Antijacobin - 
 were out " surprising, and in search of young tigers 
 in their dens," they were themselves surprised by the 
 appearance of an enormous tigress, and would have 
 been torn to pieces if the monster had not been killed 
 by the valiant Caesar that is, Oroonoko. 
 
 Two others at least of Mrs. Behn s stories they 
 are almost too short to be called novels may be still 
 read without offence, and if better handled might be 
 made interesting even now. One is c The Wander 
 ing Beauty, and the other * The Unfortunate Happy 
 Lady, and it may be worth while to sketch the plots, 
 and give a few specimens of the style. 
 
 In the first, Arabella Fairname, the youthful 
 daughter of a gentleman of large fortune in the west 
 of England, in order to avoid being forced by her 
 parents into a marriage with a neighboring squire old 
 enough to be her father, runs away from home, and 
 disguising her skin with walnut-juice, changes clothes 
 with a laborer s daughter, and wanders on foot as far 
 as Lancashire. There she reaches the house of Sir 
 Christian Kindly, and offering herself as a servant 
 under the name of Peregrina Goodhouse, becomes 
 the attendant of his daughter, who is almost the same 
 age as herself. 
 
 " In this state of easy servitude she lived there for 
 
THE WANDERING BEAUTY. 187 
 
 near three years, very well contented at all times but 
 when site bethought herself of her father, mother, 
 and sisters; courted by all the principal men-servants, 
 whom she refused in so obliging a manner, and with 
 such sweet, obliging w r ords, that they could not think 
 themselves injured, though they found their addresses 
 were in vain. Mr. Prayfast, the chaplain, could not 
 hold out against her charms ; for her skin had long 
 since recovered its native whiteness ; nor did she 
 need ornaments of clothes to set her beauty off, if 
 any thing could adorn her, since she was dressed 
 altogether as costly, though not so richly (perhaps) as 
 Eleanora. Prayfast, therefore, found that the spirit 
 was too weak for the flesh, and gave her very broad 
 signs of his kindness in sonnets, anagrams, and acros 
 tics, which she received very obligingly of him, tak 
 ing a more convenient time to laugh at em with her 
 young lady." 
 
 The Rev. Mr. Prayfast. however, was informed 
 that Peregrina s father was a " husbandman," or some 
 thing inferior to that, and had, when she first appeared 
 at Sir Christian Kindly s house, begged u one night s 
 entertainment in the barn." " i Alas ! sir, then " (re 
 turned the proud, canonical sort of a farmer, sic) " she 
 is no wife for me ; I shall dishonor my family by 
 marrying so basely. " The chaplain, therefore de- 
 
188 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS, 
 
 dined to pursue his addresses, and a young knight, 
 Sir Lucius Lovewell, coming to the mansion to pay 
 court to Eleanora, Sir Christian s daughter, fell in 
 love with Peregrina instead, and soon afterward mar 
 ried her. She did not reveal to her husband the 
 secret of her birth ; but as she longed to see her 
 parents again, whom he believed to be poor laborers, 
 they both set out for the west of England, " and in 
 five or six days more, by the help of a coach and six, 
 they got to Cornwall," and put up at a little inn near 
 the residence of Sir Francis and Lady Fairname. Sir 
 Lucius is persuaded by his wife to go and see the 
 house, where he is courteously received by Sir Francis, 
 and invited to dinner. lie is much struck by a pic 
 ture in the room, which is the likeness of his own 
 wife, and also by the appearance of her two sisters, 
 who greatly resembled her. He mentions the circum 
 stance to his host, who begs him to fetch his wife, 
 that they may see one w r ho bears a likeness to their 
 lost Arabella. He returns to the inn and brings her 
 back with him. " The boot of the coach (for that was 
 the fashion in those days) was presently let down, and 
 Sir Lucius led his ladv forward to them, who, coining 
 
 y 
 
 within three or four paces of the good old knight, 
 his lady fell on her knees and begged their pardon 
 and blessing. . . . She then gave her father, mother, 
 
THE UNFORTUNATE HAPPY LADY. 189 
 
 and sisters, a relation of all that liad happened to her 
 since her absence from her dear parents, who were 
 extremely pleased with the account of Sir Christian 
 and his lady s hospitality and kindness to her ; and in 
 less than a fortnight after, they took a journey to Sir 
 Lucius s, carrying the two other young ladies along 
 with em ; and by the way they called at Sir Chris 
 tian s, where they arrived in time enough to be pres 
 ent the next day at Sir Christian s daughter s wed 
 ding, which they kept there for a whole fortnight." 
 
 In < The Unfortunate Happy Lady, which Mrs. 
 Behn calls " a true history," we have the story " of 
 the uncommon villany of a gentleman of good family 
 in England, practised upon his sister, which was- at 
 tested to me by one who lived in the family, and from 
 whom I had the whole truth of the story." "Whether 
 or not this is only a device to attract the interest of 
 the reader, I cannot say ; but, in either case, it affords 
 a curious picture of what was possible in those days, 
 which we must, however, remember were the days of 
 the seventeenth century. The brother is introduced 
 under the name of Sir William Wilding, who has a 
 sister called Philadelphia. He gets heavily into debt, 
 " contracted in his profuse treats, gaming and women," 
 and is obliged to mortgage part of his estate. His 
 sister begs him to pay her her portion ; and he prom- 
 
190 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 ises to do this if she will accompany him to town, 
 where, he tells her, he will place her with an ancient 
 lady " of incomparable morals and of a matchless life 
 and conversation." "When they reach London, Sir 
 William goes to Lady Beldam and tells her that his 
 sister was a cast-off mistress of his, asking her to give 
 her " a wholesome lesson or two before night " for a 
 pecuniary reward, and giving the old harridan three 
 guineas. Poor Philadelphia falls into the trap, and 
 takes up her abode with Lady Beldam. In answer to 
 her Ladyship s inquiry, she assures her that she is 
 Sir William s sister, and tells her that she is assured 
 he intends to deprive her of her portion. " I will 
 show you," said the other, " the means of living hap 
 py and great without your portion, or your brother s 
 help ; so much I am charmed with your beauty and 
 innocence." The means may be easily conjectured. 
 In the afternoon three or four young women visit 
 Lady Beldam, and are introduced by her to Philadel 
 phia as her nieces. They adjourn after dinner into 
 the garden, where there was " a very fine dessert of 
 sweetmeats and fruits brought into one of the 
 arbors. Sherbets, Ros Solis, rich and small wines, 
 with tea, chocolate, etc., completed the old lady s 
 treat, the pleasure of which was much heightened by 
 the voices of two of her Ladyship s sham nieces, who 
 
THE UNFORTUNATE HAPPY LADY. 191 
 
 sang very charmingly." Kext day a servant came to 
 say that Sir William would come at one o clock, and 
 desired that he might dine in the young lady s apart 
 ment, adding that he had invited a gentleman, his 
 particular friend, to join them at dinner. The gentle 
 man comes a Mr. Gracelove but not Sir William; 
 and the poor girl is in the most imminent peril. She, 
 however, undeceives Gracelove as to her real position 
 and character, and he behaves very well, offering to 
 rescue her and get her out of the house. Under pre 
 tence of taking her to the play, he is allowed by Lady 
 Beldam to call a coach, and they go at once " to Coun 
 sellor Fairlaw s house, in Great Lincoln s Inn Fields, 
 whom they found accidentally at home ; but his lady 
 and daughter were just gone to chapel, being then 
 turned of five." The old counsellor was a relation of 
 Gracelove, and when he heard her story, promised to 
 take every care of her. He introduced her to his 
 family, and " the mother and daughter both kindly 
 and tenderly embraced her, promising her all the as 
 sistance within their power, and bid her a thousand 
 welcomes." Gracelove afterward went with a consta 
 ble to Lady Beldam s house and demanded Miss Wild 
 ing s trunk, " which at first her reverence denied to 
 return, till Mr. Constable produced the emblem of his 
 authority, upon which it was delivered." He then 
 
192 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 found out Sir "William and reproached him with his 
 villany, threatening him with the consequences. Sir 
 William, upon this, "retreated into a place of sanctu 
 ary called the Savoy, whither his whole equipage was 
 removed as soon as possible," and he assumed a false 
 name. Gracelove then avowed his passion to Phila 
 delphia; but the marriage could not immediately 
 take place, as he was obliged to go to Turkey on busi 
 ness. News afterward arrived that the ship in which 
 he sailed was lost, and he was supposed to be drowned. 
 Two years passed away, at the end of which old Lady 
 Fairlaw died, " and dying told her husband that she 
 had observed he had a particular esteem or kindness 
 for Philadelphia, which was now a great satisfaction 
 to her ; since she was assured that if he married she 
 would prove an excellent nurse to him, and prolong 
 his life by some years." And so, at the expiration of 
 a decent time from the funeral, they were married, 
 and "kept the wedding very nobly for a month at 
 their own house, in Great Lincoln s Inn Fields." But 
 at the end of four months the old gentleman fell sick 
 and died. " "Whether it was the change of an old 
 home for a new (for they had removed to Covent- 
 Garden), or an old wife for a young, is yet uncertain, 
 though his physicians said, and are still of opinion, 
 that doubtless it was the last." The young and beau- 
 
THE UNFOKTUNATE HAPPY LADY. 193 
 
 tiful widow, wlio was left in affluence, w r as now ad 
 dressed " by as many lovers, or pretended lovers, as 
 our dear King Charles, whom God grant long to reign, 
 was lately by the Presbyterians, Independents, Ana 
 baptists, and all those canting whiggish brethren ; " 
 but she yielded her hand to none of them. In the 
 mean time her worthless brother was arrested for debt, 
 and thrown into gaol in the King s bench, where the 
 Marshal " turned him to the common side, where he 
 learned the art of peg-making." Philadelphia used 
 to send money and provisions to relieve the poor pris 
 oners, and she thus became acquainted with her 
 brother s forlorn position, and took measures unknown 
 to him to extricate his property from its load of debt. 
 One day, " looking out of her coach on the road near 
 Dartford, she saw a traveller on foot, who seemed to 
 be tired w T ith his journey, whose face she thought she 
 had formerly known." This, of course, was Grace- 
 love, " now very pale and thin, his complexion swar 
 thy, and his clothes (perhaps) as rotten as if he had 
 been buried in them." Philadelphia did not make 
 herself known to him ; but took care to find out where 
 he lodged, and sent her steward, who told him that he 
 came from -the young widow of Counsellor Fairlaw, 
 and ordered that he should " be taken measure of by 
 the best tailor in Coven t-Garden ; that he should have 
 
NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 three of the most modish rich suits made that might 
 become a private gentleman of a thousand pounds a 
 year, and hats, perukes, linen, swords, and all tilings 
 suitable to them." She then invited her brother and 
 Gracelove and three of her admirers to dine with her. 
 " After dinner the cloth was taken away. She thus 
 began to her lovers : My Lord, Sir Thomas and Mr. 
 Fat-acres ! I doubt but that it will be some satisfac 
 tion to you to know that I have made choice for my 
 real husband, which now I am resolved no longer to 
 defer/" She then took a diamond ring from her 
 linger, and, putting it into a wine-glass, said, " My 
 dear Gracelove ! I drink to thee ; and send thee back 
 thy own ring with Philadelphia s heart." The rest 
 may be easily imagined, and she invited the party to 
 her wedding on the morrow. The graceless Sir Wil 
 liam is by this time supposed to be reformed, and he 
 is off-hand accepted as a husband by the step-daugh 
 ter Eugenia. " The whole company in general went 
 away very w r ell that night, who returned the next 
 morning and saw the two happy pair firmly united." 
 Some of this lady s descriptions it would be im 
 possible to quote ; but an idea of their warmth may 
 be gathered from the following passage in The Un 
 fortunate Bride, where the mutual passion of Frank- 
 wit and Belvira is thus related : " Their flames, now 
 
THE UNHAPPY MISTAKE. 195 
 
 joined, grew more and more, glowed in their cheeks, 
 and lightened in their glances. Eager they looked, 
 as if there were pulses beating in their eyes ; and, all 
 endearing at last, she vowed that, Frankwit living, 
 i she would ne er be any other man s. Thus they 
 past on some time, while every day rolled over fair ; 
 Heaven showed an aspect all serene, and the sun 
 seemed to smile at what was done. He still caressed 
 his charmer with an innocence becoming his sin 
 cerity ; he lived upon her tender breath, and basked 
 in the bright lustre of her eyes, with pride and secret 
 
 joy." 
 
 In the i Unhappy Mistake a lover, who is about 
 to fight a duel, goes early in the morning to his sis 
 ter s bedroom, with whom Lucretia, the mistress of 
 his affections, is sleeping. " They both happened to 
 be awake, and talking as he came to th~e door, which 
 his sister permitted him to unlock, and asked him the 
 reason of his so early rising ? who replied that, since 
 he could not sleep, he would take the air a little. 
 i But first, sister (continued he), I will refresh my 
 self at your lips. And now, madam (added he to 
 Lucretia), ( I would beg a cordial from you. l For 
 that (said his sister) you shall be obliged to me for 
 this once. Saying so, she gently turned Lucretia s 
 face toward him, and he had his wish. Ten to one 
 
196 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 but lie had rather have continued with Lucretia than 
 have gone to her brother, had he known him, for he 
 loved her truly and passionately. But being a man 
 of true courage and honor, he took his leave of them, 
 presently dressed, and tripped away with the messen 
 ger, who made more than ordinary haste." 
 
 Mrs., or rather Miss Manley, for she was never 
 married, is best known as the authoress of the i New 
 Atalantis, a scandalous work, which she published at 
 the end of the seventeenth or the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century. Her life was a sad career of 
 dissipation, and as licentious as her books. But she 
 was much to be pitied. Her father, Sir Roger Man- 
 ley, was Governor of Guernsey, and after his death 
 she was seduced under a promise of marriage and 
 abandoned by a cousin, who was, unknown to her, a 
 married man. Her New Atalantis, which was pub 
 lished anonymously, was such a satire upon many of 
 the eminent men of the time that both the printer 
 and publisher were imprisoned under a warrant of 
 the Secretary of State, when she came forward and 
 avowed herself the authoress. She was arrested, but 
 sued out a writ of habeas corpus, and w r as admitted 
 to bail. After her final discharge she plunged afresh 
 into vice, and died in 1724, the mistress of a printer 
 named Barber. The New Atalantis, or Secret Me- 
 
MRS. MANLEY. 197 
 
 moirs and Manners of Persons of Quality, is one of 
 the worst books I know the worst in style and worst 
 in morals, and fully deserves the oblivion into which 
 it has fallen. It is impossible to read it through ; and 
 that it should ever have been popular the edition 
 I have before me is the seventh notwithstanding 
 Pope s line, 
 
 "As long as Atalantis shall be read," 
 
 is almost incredible, and denotes a taste utterly de 
 praved. To a certain extent, however, this may be 
 accounted for by the fact that it is a scandalous 
 chronicle of persons in high life under thinly dis 
 guised names, and reveals or invents their amours 
 and intrigues. 
 
 Besides this New Atalantis, Mrs. Manley wrote 
 4 The Power of Love, in seven Novels, under the 
 following names: The Fair Hypocrite, i The Physi 
 cian s Stratagem, The Wife s Resentment, The 
 Husband s Kesentment in two Examples, The 
 Happy Fugitive, and The Perjured Beauty ; and 
 in her dedication to Lady Landsdowne she says that 
 they have truth for their foundation, and several of 
 the facts are to be found in ancient histories. 
 
 In The Fair Hypocrite Reginia, the young and 
 beautiful daughter of Charles the German Emperor, 
 
198 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 is, for reasons of state, married to the Duke of Savoy, 
 an old man past seventy, who, " to please her fond 
 girlish fancy," entertains her with " collations, pretty 
 sports, fine clothes, rich jewels, coaches and equi 
 page ; " and she, in return for his complaisance, 
 " hugged the fond Duke in her arms, with this fond, 
 this passionate expression, I love you better than my 
 Papa ! : The Duke s prime minister was Sigisbert, 
 Count of Briancon, who fell in love with the Duchess, 
 and when his old master left the capital to command 
 the army " he saw her at all times, and made the dis 
 patches from the Duke his pretence to come at any 
 hour into her apartment, even to her bedside, where, 
 if ever a clean young lady have any charms, that is 
 certainly the scene wherein they become most con 
 spicuous and dangerous to others." But the Duchess 
 was smitten by the sight of a picture of a young 
 Spanish nobleman, Don Carlos, Duke of Mendoza, 
 and pined to behold him. Many schemes for accom 
 plishing this purpose were considered ; and at last, by 
 the advice of a female confidante^ she resolved to feign 
 sickness, and make a vow if she recovered to go on a 
 pilgrimage to the shrine of St. lago cle Compostella, 
 in Spain. The plan succeeded, and the Duchess set 
 out on her journey, accompanied by the Lady Isa 
 bella, a sister of Don Carlos. When she saw Don 
 
THE FAIR HYPOCRITE. 199 
 
 Carlos she fell desperately in love with, him ; but 
 " his modesty was equal to his beauty," and she found 
 him insensible to her charms. She therefore, without 
 bidding him farewell, suddenly left him to go forward 
 to Compostella; but he followed her and overtook her 
 on the road, and avowed that he was " vanquished 
 and irrecoverably lost by the powers of love." She 
 confessed her passion for him, and promised to visit 
 him again on her return from the shrine of St. lago, 
 when, she said, she should think herself most happy 
 in whatever proofs he could give her of his love, 
 " provided we both may preserve our innocency." In 
 the mean time the Count de Briangon persuaded the 
 Duke of Savoy that it was right to go after his wife, 
 and they both proceeded to Spain. They found her 
 at Compostella, and the Duke knelt beside her at the 
 high altar of the Cathedral. " Then it was that she 
 felt the love of God, and the disdain of her guilty 
 passion filled her heart with Divine ardor and con 
 tempt for her misdoings." She resolved to forget 
 Don Carlos and not see him again, " giving her hand 
 willingly to the Duke to be conducted back by sea 
 to Turin." Again her husband left her in Turin to 
 assume the command of his troops, and the faithless 
 Count Briancon took the opportunity of his absence 
 to declare his passion. 
 
200 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 The Duchess received the avowal " with a sweet 
 disdain, which was more tempered by sorrow than 
 scorn ; " but firmly repulsed the Count s advances. 
 He persisted in his suit, and one morning " bringing 
 letters from her lord to her bedside, which he said re 
 quired an immediate answer and consultation, he bade 
 her women retire, and had the boldness not only to 
 kiss the Duchess by force, but was proceeding to 
 greater liberties," when he was compelled to desist 
 by her stern rebuke. The Count now saw that his 
 own ruin was inevitable unless he could first pro 
 cure that of the Duchess, and his guilty passion was 
 changed into hatred and a burning desire for revenge. 
 lie feigned penitence and remorse, and the fair au 
 thoress says : " It may be a proper question whether 
 any woman was ever truly enraged at seeing the effects 
 of her beauty when she had not suffered much by it. 
 Her Highness s wrongs were only imaginary ; a kiss 
 or two, with the aspect of a greater force, might be 
 easily forgiven to a true penitent who was, perhaps, 
 by his death to expiate his offence. Add to this the 
 softness and good-nature which are usually lodged in 
 ladies breasts ; the Duchess was so far influenced by 
 them that she easily came to a composition with the 
 criminal." He promised not to offend again, and she 
 promised not to inform the Duke, "if he never fell 
 
THE FAIR HYPOCRITE. 1 201 
 
 into a relapse." The Count had a young nephew 
 named Lotharius, whom he now resolved to use as 
 the instrument of his vengeance. He pretended ill 
 ness, and sending for his nephew told him that he had 
 made his will and named him as his heir. His ambi 
 tion, he said, was to marry him to the Duchess if the 
 Duke should die in the campaign, and he advised him 
 to do all in his power to ingratiate himself with her ; 
 and as he had observed that she had often cast upon 
 him eyes of affection, Lotharius willingly entered into 
 the scheme, and began to pay assiduous court to his 
 princely mistress, who received him graciously. At 
 last his uncle told him that he must take steps to 
 assure himself of her sincerity, and suggested that he 
 should get that night into her chamber, and hide 
 himself under the bed, and " an hour after midnight, 
 when the bedchamber lady is retired to her own bed 
 in the little room adjoining, who happens to be the 
 Countess of Brian con, of whom thou needest not stand 
 so much in fear, thou mayest come softly out and 
 satisfy her of thy fidelity and discretion." The poor 
 youth fell into the trap and hid himself under the 
 bed, but after the Duchess had got into it, in rushed 
 the Count with his sword drawn, and followed by 
 three great officers of the Court, crying out, " Traitor, 
 
202 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 I shall certainly find thee here." The scene reminds 
 one of Don Juan 
 
 " They looked beneath the bed, and there they found " 
 
 the unhappy Lotharius, who was pulled out by his 
 hair and stabbed to the heart by his treacherous un 
 cle. It was the stratagem of Tarquin to destroy the 
 reputation of Lucretia. A courier was dispatched to 
 the Duke w r ith the fatal news, and he sent orders that 
 the law should be put in force against his wife as an 
 adulteress. The judges seem to have been rather at 
 a loss to know what the law was, for they caused the 
 records to be searched, and there they found that ac 
 cording to ancient precedents a pillar of marble was 
 to be erected between the bridge of the Po and the 
 city, on which was to be engraved the accusation 
 against the Duchess and a summons to her champion 
 to enter the lists on her behalf against the Count de 
 Brian gon, within twelve months and a day, or else 
 she was to die by fire. To make the rest of the story 
 short, Don Carlos accepted the challenge, and in sin 
 gle combat overthrew the Count. When he had un 
 horsed him, he put his sword to his throat and made 
 him confess his villany, after which the people rushed 
 upon the traitor and tore him to pieces. The Duke 
 died at the right moment, and Don Carlos married 
 
MRS. HEYWOOD. 203 
 
 the Duchess. "!N"o words can describe the happiness 
 of the two lovers when the close-drawn curtains left 
 them to whisper to each other s souls their mutual 
 desires : Yenus blessed their bed, and from this beau 
 teous pair descended a race of heroes worthy of their 
 illustrious extraction." 
 
 This will be a sufficient specimen of the seven 
 stories of the Power of Love, and Mrs. Manley s 
 style. It is far less objectionable than that of the 
 4 NGW Atalantis, and hardly worse than that of Mrs. 
 Behn, which is certainly not saying much for it. 
 
 We now come to Mrs. Heywood, or Haywood, 
 who died in ITS 6. She figures prominently in the 
 Dunciad, under the name of Eliza, and is repre 
 sented 
 
 u With cow-like udders and with ox-like eyes," 
 
 as one of the prizes to be contended for in the 
 * Games of the Dunces. 
 
 " See in the circle next Eliza placed, 
 Two babes of love close clinging to her waist ; 
 Fair as before her works she stands confessed, 
 In flowers and pearls by bounteous Kirkall dressed*" 
 
 The rest of the passage is in Pope s coarsest style. 
 Besides the History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, she 
 
204: NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 wrote the c Court of Caramania, the New Utopia, 
 and several other tales, such as the Fortunate Found 
 ling, and Jenny and Jemmy Jessamy. * ( Miss 
 Betsy Thoughtless is rather a clever work and inter 
 esting, as the first really domestic novel according to 
 modern ideas, that exists in the language. It has 
 been supposed that Miss Burney took it as the model 
 of her Evelina, and it is the only novel I know 
 which could have served for the purpose. As, al 
 though once celebrated, it is now almost entirely for 
 gotten, I will give a short sketch of the plot : 
 
 Betsy Thoughtless gets into several compromising 
 scrapes, not from any vicious propensities, from which 
 she is absolutely free, but owing to that feature in her 
 character which is expressed by her name. Her 
 worst fault is vanity, and her head is turned by the 
 multiplicity of her admirers, of whom only one, 
 named Trueworth, is able at all to touch her heart, 
 and she loses him by her foolish inattention to appear 
 ances, and her impatience of the least remonstrance 
 which implies an imputation upon the correctness of 
 her behavior. She is left motherless while a child, 
 and her father dies before she has attained her fif- 
 
 * She also conducted a monthly periodical called The Fe 
 male Spectator, from April, 1744, to March, 1746. See Drake s 
 * Essays, vol. iv. p. 92, 
 
MISS BETSY THOUGHTLESS. 205 
 
 teenth year. She has two brothers, the eldest of 
 whom, Thomas, is then abroad, and the other, Fran 
 cis, a student at Oxford. She comes up from the 
 country and is placed in London under the care of one 
 of her guardians, an elderly merchant named Good 
 man, who has married a young widow, Lady Mellasin, 
 who under the mask of simulated affection entirely 
 governs him. Lady Mellasin has a daughter named 
 Flora, an abandoned young lady, who makes no scru 
 ple to sacrifice her honor to her passions, and who is 
 detected by Miss Betsy in an intrigue, seen through 
 a chink in the panel of her bedroom. The secret, 
 however, is kept, and the young ladies continue to 
 sleep together as if nothing had happened. Miss 
 Betsy has also the misfortune to have made friends 
 with a school-fellow in the country, a Miss Forward, 
 who falls an easy victim to the arts of a seducer, and 
 coming up to town imposes upon Betsy s simplicity 
 as to her position and character, and involves her in 
 embarrassments which make Trueworth believe that 
 she is wholly unworthy of his love. This is aided by 
 the unscrupulous use of anonymous letters, in which 
 her reputation is slandered by Miss Flora. The re 
 sult is that he withdraws from his attentions to her 
 and afterward falls in love with and marries Harriet 
 Loveit, the amiable sister of Sir Basil Loveit. In the 
 
206. NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 mean time Lady Mellasin has been carrying on an in 
 trigue with an old lover named Marplus, to whom be 
 fore her marriage with Mr. Goodman she was by a 
 trick induced to give her hand for two thousand five 
 hundred pounds, and whose rapacious demands upon 
 her purse she had great difficulty in satisfying so as to 
 conceal her infamy from her husband. He, however, 
 is at last arrested for the amount of the bond, for 
 which by his marriage he had become liable, and then 
 all the wickedness of his wife becomes known to him. 
 This has such an effect upon him that before lie is 
 able to get a divorce he dies, having by his will left 
 only a small provision for his w r idow ; but a forged 
 will is set up by her. While all this is going on, Miss 
 Betsy has removed from Mr. Goodman s house and 
 taken lodgings in Jermyn Street, where she lives upon 
 a sufficient income and receives her admirers, whose 
 visits to an unmarried young lady living alone do not 
 seem in the opinion of the authoress to be at all in 
 consistent with strict propriety. Among these are 
 a soi-disant baronet, Sir Frederick Fineer, and a Mr. 
 Munden. The Baronet, however, is in reality a dis 
 carded valet, who succeeds in forcing her into a sham 
 marriage at the house of her milliner, Mrs. Modeley, 
 by the aid of a mock clergyman ; and we have a 
 scene which reminds us of that in { Sir Charles Gran- 
 
MISS BETSY THOUGHTLESS. 207 
 
 dison, where Harriet Byron more successfully resists 
 the attempt of Sir Hargrave Pollexfen to compel her 
 to become his wife, when she dashes the Prayer-book 
 on the ground. At the proper moment, however, 
 Miss Betsy is rescued from the villain by her former 
 lover, Mr. Trueworth, just before he becomes the hus 
 band of Miss Loveit. She then is persuaded by her 
 brothers and her other guardian, Sir Ralph Trusty, 
 who with his wife has always acted the part of a kind 
 friend to her, to accept the addresses of Mr. Munden, 
 and she becomes his wife, although she cares little for 
 him, and he is very unworthy of her. The marriage 
 turns out unhappily. Her husband is stingy and self 
 ish, and a libertine; but she herself endeavors-to do 
 her duty, and under the chastening discipline of mat 
 rimonial trials she gains sedateness and strength of 
 character. 
 
 At the house of a nobleman from whom her hus 
 band expects some appointment, she is in great danger 
 from his libertine advances, and with great difficulty 
 escapes ; but soon after her return home is driven 
 from it by the misconduct of Mr. Munden, who gives 
 loose to his passion for a Frenchwoman, the discard 
 ed mistress of her eldest brother. She quits his house 
 and takes refuge with her brother. Her husband tries 
 to force her to return to him, but she withdraws from 
 
208 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 his pursuit, and, while matters are in this state, he 
 falls suddenly ill, and she comes to his death-bed to 
 perform her duty to the last. She then retires to pass 
 the first year of her widowhood with Sir Ralph and 
 Lady Trusty in the country ; and as in the mean time 
 Trueworth s wife has died, all his old love for Betsy 
 revives, and the story ends when they are happily 
 married. 
 
 True worth pays a visit to the fair w^idow at the 
 expiration of a year s mourning, and she becomes 
 aware of his arrival by " a very neat running foot 
 man, who, on the gate being opened, came tripping 
 toward the house, and was immediately followed by a 
 coach, with one gentleman in it, drawn by six pran 
 cing horses" people in those days seem never to 
 have travelled with less than six horses " and at 
 tended by two servants in rich liveries, and well 
 mounted. . . . Prepared as* she was by the expecta 
 tion of his arrival, all her presence of mind was not 
 sufficient to enable her to stand the sudden rush of 
 joy which, on the sight of him, burst in upon her 
 heart ; nor was he less overcome ; he sprang into her 
 arms, which of themselves opened to receive him, and 
 while he kissed away the tears that trickled from her 
 eyes, his own bedewed her cheeks. i Oh ! have I 
 lived to see you thus, cried he, c thus ravishingly 
 
MISS BETSY THOUGHTLESS. 209 
 
 kind ! And have I lived, rejoined she, to receive 
 these proofs of affection from the best and most ill- 
 used of men. Oh ! Trueworth ! Trueworth ! added 
 she, c I have not merited this from you. You merit 
 all things, said he ; ; let us talk no more of what is 
 past, but tell me that you now are mine ; I came to 
 make you so by the irrevocable ties of love and law, 
 and we must now part no more ! Speak, my angel 
 my first, my last charmer ! continued he, perceiving 
 she was silent, blushed, and hung down her head. 
 4 Let those dear lips confirm my happiness, and say 
 the time is come, that you will be all mine. The 
 trembling fair now having gathered a little more 
 assurance, raised her eyes from the earth, and looking 
 tenderly on him : i You know you have my heart, 
 cried she, and cannot doubt my hand. : 
 
 Such is a meagre sketch of the plot of this once 
 popular novel, omitting numerous episodes which, at 
 the present day, would be deemed very unfit for the 
 perusal of those for whom it is professedly designed. 
 But, notwithstanding these, it is obvious throughout 
 that it is the honest purpose of the writer to promote 
 the cause of innocence and virtue. In no one of her 
 characters does immorality go unpunished ; and, if 
 vicious scenes are too nakedly described, she cannot 
 be accused of making them alluring and attractive. 
 
210 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 In that age it was taken for granted that they must 
 occur in the so-called journey of life, as much as dirty 
 puddles must be met with in an actual road. 
 
 Beyond the risks which every young lady was then 
 supposed to run of becoming the object of licentious 
 addresses, such as would be impossible in good society 
 now, there is not much in this novel that is charac 
 teristic of a different state of manners from those of 
 the present day. But a few little touches may be no 
 ticed: It seems that it was not thought indecorous for 
 a young woman to receive male visitors in her dress 
 ing-room while performing her toilet. The usual 
 mode of conveyance w r as a chair, and ladies, when 
 they wished to preserve an incognito, went abroad in 
 masks. It is in this disguise that Flora Mellasin 
 meets Trueworth by appointment " at General Tat- 
 ten s bench, opposite Rosamond s pond, in St. James s 
 Park." Rosamond s pond had rather a bad reputa 
 tion, both as the scene of assignations and a place 
 for suicide. In Southern s play of the Maid s Last 
 Prayer, acted in 1693, when Granger says to Lady 
 Trickett that he did not see her at Rosamond s pond, 
 she exclaims, " Me ! fie, fie, a married woman there, 
 Mr. Granger ! " What has become of General Tat- 
 ten s bench I know not, but Rosamond s pond was 
 filled up in 1770 by " Capability " Brown. 
 
MISS BETSY THOUGHTLESS. 211 
 
 The fashionable dinner-hour was then three 
 o clock.* Knockers were so constructed that they 
 could be removed from the front door at night when 
 the inmates went to bed. At least so I gather from 
 the following passage : " She came not home till be 
 tween one and two o clock in the morning, but was 
 
 o" 
 
 extremely surprised to find that when she did so the 
 knocker was taken off the door : a thing which, in 
 complaisance to her, had never before been done till 
 she came in, how late soever she stayed abroad." 
 
 The passion of love is the same in all ages, but the 
 style of love-making is very different. 
 
 One of Miss Betsy Thoughtless s lovers thus ad 
 dresses her : 
 
 " i The deity of soft desires flies the confused glare 
 of pomp and public shows ; tis in the shady bowers, 
 or on the banks of a sweet purling stream, he spreads 
 his downy wings, and wafts his thousand nameless 
 pleasures on the fond the innocent and the happy 
 pair. 
 
 " He was going on, but she interrupted him with 
 a loud laugh. i Hold, hold, cried she ; c was there 
 ever such a romantic description ? I wonder how 
 
 * In 1725, the time of dinner at Merton College, Oxford, 
 was altered from twelve o clock to one : and was altered soon 
 afterward to twelve o clock again, " for weighty reasons." 
 Rawlinson s MSS., quoted in Oxoniana. 
 
212 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 such silly ideas come into your head " shady bowers ! 
 and purling streams ! " Heavens, how insipid ! "Well J 
 (continued she), you may be the Strephon of the 
 woods, if you think fit ; but I shall never envy the 
 happiness of the Chloe that accompanies you in these 
 fine recesses. What ! to be cooped up like a tame 
 dove, only to coo, and bill, and Ireed f O, it would 
 be a delicious life, indeed ! : 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 RICHARDSON. CLARISSA HARLOWE. PAMELA. SIR CHARLES 
 GRANDISON. RICHARDSON S CORRESPONDENCE. HIS PORTRAIT 
 DRAWN BY HIMSELF. 
 
 IF my object were to give a history of 
 the eighteenth century, there is hardly any name 
 which would more deservedly claim our attention 
 than the name of Defoe, who, of all novelists, is the 
 one who has given the most lifelike reality to his 
 stories, and cheats his readers most easily into the be 
 lief that imaginary scenes are the narratives of actual 
 fact. But my purpose is different, and the works of 
 Defoe throw little or no light upon the social manners 
 of the age with which we have to deal, not to men 
 tion the difficulty there would be in conveying, with 
 out offence, an idea of such heroes and heroines as 
 Captain Singleton, Roxana, Moll Flanders, and Colo 
 nel Jack. We may therefore dismiss from our notice 
 the immortal author of Robinson Crusoe, and turn 
 to the next chief figure among the novelists of the 
 
214 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 century, I mean Richardson, the author of c Pamela, 
 Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison. 
 
 And what are we to say of these famous novels 
 which stirred to their inmost depths the hearts of a 
 by-gone generation, and were regarded as the great 
 literary feats of the age in which they appeared ? Few. 
 very few, read them now, but there are some minds 
 for which they have attractions still. Lord Macaulay 
 told Thackeray that when he produced l Clarissa one 
 hot season at the hills in India, " the whole station 
 was in a passion of excitement .... the Governor s 
 wife seized the book, and the Secretary waited for it, 
 and the Chief- Justice could not read it for tears." 
 One enthusiastic admirer in the last century went so 
 far as to say, that if all other books were to be burnt, 
 Pamela and the Bible should be preserved ; and 
 ladies at Hanelagh used to hold up the book in tri 
 umph to show that they were lucky enough to possess 
 a copy. One of Richardson s correspondents, how 
 ever, wrote to him that ladies complained that they 
 could not read the letters of Pamela without blushing 
 and well they might. 
 
 Sir John Herschel tells an anecdote of a black 
 smith at a much later period, who used to read the 
 book to his village neighbors collected round his an 
 vil, and when, at the end of the story, it turned out 
 
1 CLARISSA HARLOWE. 215 
 
 that Pamela and her master were happily married, 
 the unsophisticated rustics shouted for joy, and pro 
 curing the keys of the church set the bells ringing. 
 Mrs. Barbauld says that she well remembered a 
 Frenchman who paid a visit to Hampstead, for the 
 sole purpose of finding out the house in the Flask 
 Walk where Clarissa lodged, and was surprised at the 
 ignorance or indifference of the inhabitants on the 
 subject. The Flask Walk was to him what the Hocks 
 of Meillerie, on the Lake of Geneva, were to the -wor 
 shippers of Rousseau. 
 
 But de gustibus hand dispiitanduin^ and every one 
 roust judge for himself 
 
 " Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri." 
 
 To me, I confess, Clarissa Harlowe is an unpleasant, 
 not to say odious, book. 
 
 I read it through once, many years ago, and I 
 should be sorry to do so again. As to the plot of the 
 story, there is really almost none. 
 
 " Story ? God bless you, I have none to tell, sir ! " 
 
 A young lady leaves her father s house to avoid a dis 
 tasteful marriage, and throws herself upon the protec 
 tion of her lover, who, after in vain attempting to 
 seduce her, succeeds in effecting her ruin by an act for 
 
216 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS 
 
 which he might have been hanged. He afterward 
 offers to marry her, but she refuses, and retiring to 
 solitary lodgings, dies broken-hearted, while the vil 
 lain is killed abroad in a duel by a relative of the lady. 
 Upon this foundation Richardson has built up seven 
 or eight tedious volumes, consisting of letters between 
 " two young ladies of virtue and honor," Miss Cla 
 rissa Harlowe and Miss Howe, and "two gentlemen 
 of free lives," Mr. Lovelace and Mr. Belford, besides 
 others.* The key-note of the whole composition is 
 libertine pursuit, and we are wearied and disgusted by 
 volume after volume devoted to the single subject 
 of attack on a woman s chastity. It would be bad 
 enough to read this if compressed into a few chapters, 
 but it becomes intolerably repulsive when spun out in 
 myriads of letters. If any book deserved the charge 
 of " sickly sentimentality," it is this, and that it should 
 have once been so widely popular, and thought ad 
 mirably adapted to instruct young women in lessons 
 of virtue and religion, shows a strange and perverted 
 state of the public taste, not to say public morals.f 
 
 * Clarissa s will occupies nineteen closely-printed pages. 
 
 t Two ladies, without the knowledge of each other, wrote 
 to Richardson, the one blaming Clarissa as a coquette, and the 
 other blaming her as a prude. He sent to each the letter of the 
 other by way of an answer to both. See his Correspondence, 
 vol. vi. p. 82. 
 
CLARISSA IIARLOWE. 217 
 
 Richardson, in his preface, thinks that he deserves 
 credit for not making his libertines infidels. He says : 
 " It will be proper to observe, for the sake of such as 
 may apprehend hurt to the morals of youth from the 
 more freely written letters, that the gentlemen, though 
 professed libertines as to the female sex, and making 
 it one of their wicked maxims to keep no faith with 
 any of the individuals of it who are thrown into their 
 power, are not, however, either infidels or scoffers, 
 nor yet such as think themselves freed from the ob 
 servances of those other moral duties which bind man 
 to man." And, apologizing for not making Clarissa 
 Harlowe herself " perfect," he adds, " To have been 
 impeccable must have left nothing for divine grace 
 and a purified state to do, and earned our idea of her 
 from woman to angel." It is nauseous to find religion 
 thus mixed up with such a story ; and as to the plea 
 that Lovelace is not an atheist, Richardson forgets the 
 Book where the converse case is put, and we are told 
 that " He that said Do not commit adultery said also, 
 Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet 
 if thou kill thou art become a transgressor of the 
 law." As well might a highwayman in the dock urge 
 in his defence that he had not committed arson or 
 forgery. 
 
 What has been said of c Clarissa applies almost 
 10 
 
218 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 equally to Pamela, which was Kichardson s first 
 novel. It is the story, told in interminable letters, of 
 a servant-girl who resists the attempts of her master 
 to triumph over her virtue, and finally marries him. 
 This, however, may be said for Pamela that the 
 letters, although full of tedious gossip, are written in 
 an artless natural style ; * and if we except one or 
 two scenes, in which the peril of the heroine is too 
 vividly and broadly detailed witness that in the 
 lonely house in Lincolnshire they contain little that 
 need offend modern delicacy. It is impossible not to 
 sympathize with the poor girl who so courageously re 
 sists every effort to effect her ruin, and not to rejoice 
 in the happiness which is afterward her lot. But 
 after all, it is only harping upon one string page 
 after page and letter after letter and that string is 
 what Charles Lamb calls " the undivided pursuit of 
 lawless gallantry." 
 
 Dr. Johnson said that there is more knowledge of 
 the heart in one letter of Richardson than in all ( Tom 
 
 * Richardson had early experience in affaires de cceur of 
 the humbler classes, for, when he was a mere boy, he was em 
 ployed by some young women " who had a high opinion of his 
 taciturnity," to write love-letters for them. If they were at all 
 in his later style, they must have been terribly long-winded, and 
 taxed not a little the patience of the rustic swains to whom 
 they were addressed. 
 
RICHARDSON S SENTIMENT. 219 
 
 Jones ; and when Erskine remarked to him, as well 
 lie might, " Surely, sir, Richardson is very tedious," 
 Johnson answered, " Why, sir, if you were to read 
 Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so 
 much fretted that you would hang yourself; but you 
 must read him for the sentiment, and consider the 
 story as only giving occasion to the sentiment." If 
 the tediousness of the story would induce a reader to 
 hang himself, I do not think that the sentiment, or 
 rather sentimentality, would prevent him. A great 
 part of it is twaddle, and one cannot help agreeing 
 with D Alembert, who said, with reference to Rich 
 ardson : " La nature est bonne a imiter, mais non pas 
 jusqu a 1 ennui." 
 
 In i Sir Charles Grandison we have a story to 
 which the objection of immorality does not apply ; 
 and as it was once so celebrated, and is now so seldom 
 read, some account of it may be interesting. Rich 
 ardson tells us that lie was persuaded by his friend 
 " to produce into public view the character and ac 
 tions of a man of TRUE HONOR." * And he presents 
 to the reader, " in Sir Charles Grandison, the example 
 of a man acting uniformly well through a variety of 
 
 * la one of his letters, in 1756, he says : " I am teased by a 
 dozen ladies of note and virtue to give them a good man, as 
 they say I have been partial to their sex and unkind to my 
 own." 
 
220 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 trying scenes because all his actions are regulated by 
 one steady principle. A man of religion and virtue, 
 of liveliness and spirit, accomplished and agreeable, 
 happy in himself, and a blessing to others." And 
 however much we may quarrel with the tedious length 
 of the interminable letters that comprise the work, 
 and sicken at the sentiment which forms the staple of 
 most of them, it must be admitted that, beyond the 
 drawback of too stiff and ceremonious a politeness, 
 the character of Richardson s hero fully comes up to 
 his ideal. He is, in fact, " the faultless monster whom 
 the world ne er saw ! " Young, rich, graceful, and 
 accomplished, he is not only absolutely free from vice, 
 but all his actions are governed by high religious 
 principle. He is romantically generous and yet per 
 fectly prudent, and his behavior toward the fair sex is 
 marked with all that chivalrous delicacy and respect 
 which, since the novel was written, has passed into a 
 proverb, and to be a Sir Charles Grandison to the 
 ladies, is supposed to be a modern lady s perfect 
 Knight, 
 
 The heroine of the story, and the principal writer 
 of the long-winded letters, is Harriet Byron, an or 
 phan girl, brought up by an uncle and aunt, Mr. and 
 Mrs. Selby, and a grandmother, Mrs. Shirley, who 
 live near one another in easy circumstances, in North- 
 
SIR CHARLES GRANDISON. 221 
 
 amptonshire. Miss Byron is, of course, beautiful, 
 although rather short, and at the age of twenty, when 
 the letters begin, has three passionate admirers in the 
 country, Mr. Greville, Mr. Fenwick, and Mr. Orme. 
 Greville is a man of no principle, and no self-control, 
 full of self-conceit ; an obstinate lover, who tries to 
 carry her affections by storm, and will take no repulse 
 or denial. Fenwick and Orme are much more amia 
 ble, but neither has been able to make any impression 
 on Harriet s heart. Both are kept much in the back 
 ground of the story, and, indeed, all we know of Orme 
 is that he continues sighing in a state of bashful silli 
 ness at his country-seat ; and when Miss Byron passes 
 in her carriage by the gates of his park, " there was 
 he on the very ridge of the highway. I saw him not 
 till it was near him. He bowed to the very ground 
 with such an air of disconsolateness ! Poor Mr. 
 Orme ! " Greville and Fenwick, however, although 
 rivals for her hand, have entered into an armed neu 
 trality together, and each is to try to win the prize 
 without quarrelling with the other. Miss Byron goes 
 up to town to visit her cousins, Mr. and Mrs. Reeves, 
 and is attended b}^ her two lovers Greville and Fen 
 wick to the first " baiting," when they had " a genteel 
 dinner " ready provided for them, and then took leave. 
 " ; Fenwick, you dog, said Mr. Greville " it is Miss 
 
222 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 Byron who writes " we must return. Miss Byron 
 looks grave. . . . And in the most respectful man 
 ner they both took leave of me, insisting, however, 
 on my hand that I would wish them well." 
 
 No sooner has Miss Byron arrived in London than 
 she is instantly beset by lovers ; one of them is Mr. 
 Fowler, the nephew of a Welsh knight, Sir Rowland 
 Meredith, an old bachelor, with " a gold button and 
 button-hole coat, and full buckle and wig," whose 
 great object in life is to see his nephew well married. 
 Mr. Fowler falls in love with Harriet at first sight, 
 when he meets her at a dinner-table, and comes the 
 next day to beseech Mr. Reeves " to give him his in 
 terest " with her " without asking any questions about 
 her fortune." He is followed next morning by Sir 
 Rowland, who breakfasts with the family, and besides 
 Miss Byron and her uncle and aunt, three young 
 ladies are present. 
 
 But he proceeds at once to business, and pleads 
 the cause of his nephew with high-flown compliments 
 to the charmer and talking nonsense like a silly old 
 fool which character he sustains throughout, although 
 I believe Richardson intends the reader to regard him 
 as a kind-hearted, generous gentleman, whose whole 
 soul is wrapped up in the happiness of his nephew, 
 
SIR CHARLES GRANDISON. 223 
 
 and who acts as proxy in the love-making. He tries 
 hard to soften Harriet s heart, but in vain. 
 
 " He met me, and taking my not- withdrawn hand 
 and peering in my face, Mercy, said he, the same 
 kind aspect! the same sweet and obliging coun 
 tenance ! How can this be ? But you must be gra 
 cious ! You will ! Say you will. 
 
 " You must not urge me, Sir Rowland. You 
 will give me pain if you lay me under the necessity 
 to repeat 
 
 u Repeat what ? Don t say a refusal. Dear 
 madam, don t say a refusal! "Will you not save a 
 life ? Why, madam, my poor boy is absolutely and 
 bond fide broken-hearted. I would have had him 
 come with me ; but no, he could not bear to leave the 
 beloved of his soul ! Why, there s an instance of love 
 now ! !Not for all his hopes, not for his life s sake, 
 could he bear to tease you ! lS"one of your fluttering 
 Jack-a-dandies, now, w r ould have said this! and let 
 not such succeed where modest merit fails ! Mercy ! 
 you are struck with my plea! Don t, don t, God 
 bless you now, don t harden your heart on my obser 
 vation. . . . Come, come, be gracious ! be merciful. 
 Dear lady, be as good as you look to be. One word 
 of comfort for my poor boy ; I could kneel to you for 
 one word of comfort nay, I will kneel ; taking 
 
224: NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 hold of my other hand as he still held one ; and down 
 on his knees dropped the honest knight." 
 
 The matter is at last compromised by an agree 
 ment that Miss Byron is to call the old gentleman 
 Father, and his nephew Brother. 
 
 Another advance of a very different stamp is i Sir 
 Hargrave Pollexfen, a young baronet, " handsome 
 and genteel, pretty tall, about twenty-eight or thirty." 
 He is a libertine and a scoundrel, and falls desperate 
 ly in love with Harriet Byron, whom he persecutes 
 with offers of marriage, which she steadily rejects. 
 
 The following is a specimen of the mode in which 
 he makes love : 
 
 "I made an effort to go. He caught my hand 
 and arose, then kissed it and held it between both his. 
 
 " ( For God s sake, madam 
 
 " 4 Pray, Sir Hargrave 
 
 " ; Your objections ? I insist upon knowing your 
 objections. My person, madam forgive me, I am not 
 used to boast my person, madam 
 
 " i Pray, Sir Hargrave 
 
 " Is not contemptible. My fortune 
 
 " c God bless you, sir ! with your fortune. 
 
 " Is not inconsiderable. My morals 
 
 " i Pray, Sir Hargrave ! why this enumeration to 
 me? 
 
SIR CHARLES GRANDISOX. 225 
 
 " c Are as unexceptionable as those of most 
 young men of fashion in the present age. 
 
 " i I am sorry if this be true, thought I to myself. 
 4 You have reason, I hope, sir, to be glad of that. 
 
 " My descent 
 
 " Is honorable, sir, no doubt. 
 
 u 4 My temper is not bad. I am thought to be a 
 man of vivacity and cheerfulness. I have courage, 
 madam and this should have been seen, had I found 
 reason to dread a competitor in your favor. : 
 
 At last Sir Hargrave, aided by the treachery of 
 her man-servant, carries Miss Byron off in her sedan 
 chair from a masquerade, to a house in Lisson Green 
 (now Lisson Grove), where he tries to force her into a 
 marriage. It may interest female readers to know 
 how she was dressed for the ball at which this hap 
 pened. A white Paris net sort of cap, glittering with 
 spangles, and encircled by artificial flowers, " with a 
 little white feather perking from the left ear," a Yene- 
 tian mask, tucker and ruffles, and blond lace, a waist 
 coat of blue satin, trimmed with silver point d Es- 
 pagne, the skirts edged with silver fringe, so as to sit 
 close to the waist by double clasps, all set off with 
 bugles and spangles, " which made a mighty glitter," 
 a petticoat of blue satin, trimmed and fringed as the 
 waistcoat. 
 
226 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 The house in Lisson Green, to which Miss Byron 
 is taken, is kept by a widow with two daughters, who 
 has agreed to assist Sir Hargrave in his project of 
 marrying her, but nothing more. She tells our hero 
 ine, " These young women are my daughters. They 
 are sober and modest women. No ruin is intended 
 you. One of the richest and noblest men in England 
 is your admirer; he dies for you; he assures me that 
 he intends honorable marriage to you. You are not 
 engaged, he says, and you must and you shall be 
 his. You may save murder, madam, if you consent. 
 He resolves to be the deatli of any lover whom you 
 may encourage." 
 
 A clergyman now appears upon the scene, a de 
 scription of whose figure and appearance I have 
 already quoted.* 
 
 " Dearly beloved, began to read the snuffling 
 monster. 4 ICead no more ! said I, and in my frenzy 
 dashed the book out of the minister s hand, if a min 
 ister he was. . . . i Dearly ~belovedj again snuffled the 
 wretch. O ! my Lucy, I shall never love these words. 
 Sir Hargrave still detained my struggling hand. I 
 stamped and threw myself to the length of my arm 
 as he held my hand. No dearly beloveds, said I. I 
 
 * Ante, p. 131. 
 
SIR CHARLES GRANDISON. 227 
 
 was just beside myself. What to say, what to do, I 
 knew not." 
 
 The whole scene is powerfully drawn, and is one 
 of Richardson s best. Miss Byron s passionate resist 
 ance succeeds in stopping the performance of the cere 
 mony, and Sir Hargrave, unable to accomplish his 
 purpose of a forced marriage at Lisson Green, resolves 
 to carry her to a country-house he has near Windsor, 
 and compels her, still in her masquerade dress, to ac 
 company him, attended by his servants on horseback, 
 in a chariot and six, with a handkerchief tied over 
 her face, and muffled up in a scarlet cloak. But be 
 yond Hounslow they are met by another coach and 
 six, and Miss Byron s cries for help bring to her res 
 cue Sir Charles Grandison, who happens to be travel 
 ling to town. A scuffle takes place, and Sir Hargrave 
 Pollexfen, who pretends that he is conveying a fugi 
 tive wife, who was going to elope from him at a 
 " damned masquerade," is flung under the wheels in 
 a dilapidated state, w r hile Sir Charles places the lady 
 in his own carriage, and takes her to the house of his 
 brother-in-law the Earl of L. 
 
 He has two sisters, one married, Lady L., and the 
 other unmarried, Miss Charlotte Grandison. She is 
 meant by Richardson to be witty or " whimsical," as 
 the word was then used, and sprightly, but her wit 
 
228 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 and sprightliness sound strangely in the ears of the 
 present generation. Her favorite expressions are 
 " deuced," " deuce take it," and " what a deuce," 
 and when she does marry at last, she treats her hus 
 band with a petulance and insult for which, if he had 
 boxed her ears, instead of humoring her, one would 
 have been inclined to excuse him. 
 
 Harriet Byron falls in love with Sir Charles 
 Grandison, and Sir Charles falls in love w r ith her 
 or rather would fall in love and declare himself, but 
 for an entanglement, owing to which he is not alto 
 gether a free man. He has a mystery which his sis 
 ters have been unable to unravel, for it is connected 
 with his absence abroad during his father s life. His 
 father, Sir Thomas Grandison, was a profligate spend 
 thrift, who, after the death of his wife, seduced the 
 governess of his daughter, a Mrs. Oldham, and by 
 her he had two children. He kept her at his country- 
 house, where his daughter resided, and had. another 
 mistress in town, W T !IO died of the small-pox, caught 
 at the opera, where she was taken ill " on seeing a 
 lady of her acquaintance there, whose face bore too 
 strongly the marks of the distemper." Sir Thomas 
 behaved like a brute to his two daughters, and for 
 bade the eldest to receive the addresses of Lord L. 
 One of the most painful scenes in the story is that in 
 
SIR CHARLES GRANDISON. 229 
 
 which he summons them both into the dining-room, 
 and commands Caroline to give up her lover. He 
 thus addresses her : " And what cries the girl for ? 
 Why, Caroline, you shall have a husband, I tell you. 
 I will hasten with you to the London market. Will 
 you be offered at Raiielagh market first ? the con 
 cert or breakfasting ? or will I show you at the opera 
 or at the play ? Ha, ha, hah ! Hold up your head, 
 my amorous girl ! You shall stick some of your 
 mother s jewels in your hair and in your bosom, to 
 draw the eyes of fellows. You must strike at once, 
 while your face is new, or you will be mingled with 
 the herd of women who prostitute their faces at every 
 polite place. Look at me, Caroline." 
 
 And yet Sir Charles Grandison, who knows his 
 father s cruelty and worthless character, addresses 
 him from abroad as "Dear and ever honored Sir!" 
 and after his death always speaks of him in terms of 
 affection and respect. 
 
 Sir Thomas afterward entered into a bargain with 
 her relations for the ruin of a young Irish girl the 
 details of which nefarious scheme are minutely given 
 by Miss Byron in her letters to her cousin, Lucy Selby 
 when he was suddenly cut off by a fever. His son 
 then returned to England, " the graceful youth of 
 seventeen, with fine curling auburn locks waving 
 
230 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 upon his shoulders ; delicate in complexion ; intelli 
 gence sparkling in fine free eyes, and good humor 
 sweetening his lively features." When he first met 
 his sisters, " c O my brother, said Caroline, with open 
 arms, but shrinking from his embrace, * may I say my 
 brother ? and was just fainting. He clasped her in 
 his arms to support her." 
 
 He astonished his sisters, as he well might, by his 
 courteous politeness to his father s late mistress, Mrs. 
 Oldham, in his own house, and the account given to 
 Miss Byron of his generosity and kindness on the oc 
 casion, so overpowers her that she exclaims to her 
 correspondent : 
 
 " Lord bless me, my Lucy ! what shall I do about this 
 man ? . . . . Here (would you believe it ?) I laid down 
 my pen, pondered and wept for joy : I think it was 
 for joy, that there is such a young man in the world ; 
 for what else could it be? And now, with a watery 
 eye, twinkle, twinkle, do I resume it." And again : 
 
 u O my aunt ! be so good as to let the servants 
 prepare my apartments at Selby House. There is no 
 living within the blazing glory of this man." 
 
 Of course such a phenomenon as Sir Charles is 
 adored by the sex. Lady Ann S., the only daughter 
 of an Earl with " a vast fortune," is in love with him. 
 Miss Jervis, a young girl and sort of ward of his, not 
 
SIR CHARLES GRANDISON. 231 
 
 sixteen years old, is unconsciously in love with him, 
 and the Lady Olivia, an Italian whom he has met 
 abroad, is so madly in love that she follows him to 
 England, and threatens his life if he will not marry 
 her! But he has another and more serious affair. 
 While in Italy he had saved the life of one of the 
 sons of the Marchese della Porretta, when he was at 
 tacked by assassins, and this led to an intimacy with 
 the family. The only daughter was the Lady Clem 
 entina, and she and Sir Charles Grandison fell in love 
 with each other. But she was a Koman Catholic and 
 he was a Protestant, and although passionately de 
 voted to him, she dared not peril the salvation of her 
 soul by union with a heretic. I think that the Lady 
 Clementina is the best-drawn character in Richard 
 son s novels, but the interest of her story is marred 
 and almost destroyed by the astounding length at 
 which it is drawn out. Sir Charles tries to overcome 
 her scruples, and offers her full liberty to adhere to 
 her own faith, giving a promise, on which she knows 
 she can rely, that if she becomes his wife he will make 
 no attempt to induce her to change her religion ; but 
 she feels that she loves him too well not to fear that 
 the force of his silent example may be strong enough 
 to win her over to his creed. The conflict be 
 tween her passion for Sir Charles and what she be- 
 
232 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 lieved to be her duty to her God, overthrows her 
 reason, and I know no author who has more finely 
 touched what I may call the pathos of madness, than 
 Kichardson has in the scenes where he describes the 
 struggles of her confused and bewildered intellect. 
 
 While she is in this state Sir Charles is summoned 
 home by the news of his father s death, and afterward 
 meets Miss Byron and falls in love with her, as I have 
 mentioned. But he is the soul of honor, and besides, 
 still retains much of his old feeling for Lady Clem 
 entina, In fact, he is in a most perplexing dilemma, 
 beino; in love with both ladies at once : and concciv- 
 
 O J 
 
 ing that, he is in duty bound to give the Italian anoth 
 er chance, provided that she recovers her intellect. 
 He therefore leaves Miss Byron in England, and goes 
 to Italy to join the Porretta family. Before, how 
 ever, he goes away, Sir Hargrave Pollexfen sends him 
 a challenge; but instead of accepting it, he invites 
 himself to breakfast with the crest-fallen baronet, at 
 his house in Cavendish Square ; and we have a long 
 and prosy account of the conversation at the inter 
 view as taken down by a short-hand writer, who was 
 summoned and hid in a closet for the purpose. Lady 
 Clementina has in the mean time been restored to her 
 senses, and her love for Sir Charles burns as strongly 
 as ever. But the old obstacle remains. She dares not 
 
SIR CHARLES GEAKDISOK 233 
 
 bring herself to marry a Protestant, notwithstanding 
 that her parents and brothers consent, and she tries in 
 vain to persuade Sir Charles to become a Catholic. 
 She, therefore, has but one wish left, and that is to be 
 allowed to enter a convent and take the veil. This, 
 however, is strongly opposed by her relatives, who are 
 bent upon her marrying somebody, and an Italian 
 nobleman is desperately in love with her. "Whole 
 chapters of the novel are occupied with the argument 
 on both sides, in which considerable skill and a good 
 deal of theological knowledge are displayed, at the 
 expense, however, of awful prolixity. 
 
 As the lady is inflexible in her determination not 
 to marry a heretic, and Sir Charles will not change 
 his religion, she repeatedly urges him to find an Eng 
 lish wife, little thinking at the moment that he was 
 already more than half in love with another. In his 
 heart of hearts, therefore, he is not sorry to be re 
 leased, and he leaves Italy ; and on his arrival in Eng 
 land in true Grandisonian manner, solicits the hand 
 of Harriet Byron. It may amuse the reader to see 
 the mode in which this mirror of chivalry makes love. 
 He pays the most extravagant compliments. 
 
 " * There seems, said he, to be a mixture of gen 
 erous concern and kind curiosity in one of the loveli 
 est and most intelligent faces in the world. : 
 
234 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 " Thus, resumed lie, snatching my hand and ar 
 dently pressing it with his lips, do I honor to myself 
 for the honor done me. How poor is man, that he 
 cannot express his gratitude to the object of his vows 
 for obligations confessed, but by owing to her new 
 obligations ! ; What a formal pedant of a lover ! 
 
 " In a soothing, tender, and respectful manner, lie 
 put his arm round me, and taking my own handker 
 chief, unresisted, wiped away the tears as they fell on 
 my cheek. f Sweet humanity ! charming sensibility ! 
 Check not the kindly gush. Dew-drops of Heaven ! 
 (wiping away my tears, and kissing the handkerchief,) 
 dew-drops of Heaven, from a mind like that Heaven, 
 mild and gracious. 5 
 
 " He kissed my hand with fervor ; dropped down 
 on one knee ; again kissed it. You have laid me, 
 madam, under everlasting obligations ; and will you 
 permit me before I rise, loveliest of women, will you 
 permit me to beg an early day ? 
 
 " He clasped me in his arms with an ardor that 
 displeased me not, on reflection ; but at the time 
 startled me. He then thanked me again on one knee. 
 I held out the hand he had not in his, with intent to 
 raise him ; for I could not speak. He received it as 
 a token of favor ; kissed it with ardor ; arose, again 
 pressed my cheek with his lips. I was too much sur- 
 
SIR CHARLES GRANDIS03T. 235 
 
 prised to repulse him with anger ; but was he not too 
 free ? Am I a prude, my dear ? " 
 
 Yes ! Miss Byron, I am afraid you are a prude, to 
 feel such surprise and doubt at an innocent kiss after 
 a formal engagement. 
 
 After Sir Charles has prevailed over the coy re 
 luctance of Miss Byron to "name the day," about 
 which she makes a most absurd difficulty, he thus 
 writes to her : 
 
 "Receive, dearest, loveliest of women, the thanks 
 of a most grateful heart, for your invaluable favor 
 of Wednesday last. Does my Harriet (already, me- 
 thinks, I have sunk the name of Byron into that of 
 Grandison), do Mrs. Shirley, Mrs. Selby, think that I 
 have treated one of the most delicate of female minds 
 indelicately in the vnsh (not the presumption) I have 
 presumed to signify to the beloved of my heart, that 
 within three days, after my permitted return to North 
 amptonshire, I may be allowed to receive at the altar 
 the greatest blessing of my life ? I would not be 
 thought ungenerous. I signified my wishes ; but I 
 told you in the same letter that your cheerful com 
 pliance was to me the great desirable. ... If I have 
 not your commands to the contrary, Tuesday morn 
 ing, then, if not Monday night, shall present to you 
 the most ardent and sincere of men, pouring out in 
 
236 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 your band his grateful vows for the invaluable favor 
 of Wednesday s date, which I considered in the sacred 
 light of a plighted love, and, as such, I have given it 
 
 a place near my heart Conclude me, dearest 
 
 madam, your most grateful, obliged, and ever affec 
 tionate 
 
 " CHARLES GEANDISOX." 
 
 It seems to have been the custom for the bride 
 groom, after the ceremony of marriage had been per 
 formed, to wait upon the bride and the guests at 
 table; and Sir Charles, on the day of his wedding, 
 takes a napkin from the butler, and " was the modest- 
 est servitor that ever waited at table while his napkin 
 was under his arm ; but he laid it down while he 
 addressed the company, finding something to say to 
 each, in his pithy, agreeable manner, as he went round 
 the table." 
 
 The banquet was followed by a dance, as usual, 
 and the ceremony of throwing the stocking was, on 
 this occasion, dispensed with. "Lord L. undertook 
 to make the gentlemen give up form ; which, he said, 
 they would the more easily do, as they were set into 
 dancing." * 
 
 * It was while Richardson was writing one ol the letters 
 which describes the wedding that the incident occurred men 
 tioned in his Correspondence. He was seated in his room in 
 
SIR CHARLES GRANDISON. 237 
 
 The story ought to have ended here, but it is spun 
 out to a considerable length. Lady Clementina, dis 
 tracted between love and religion, quits Italy clandes 
 tinely, and, attended only by a page, comes to Eng 
 land and hides herself in London. At last Sir Charles 
 Grandison finds her out, and her parents follow her. 
 They all go down to Grandison Hall, where she is fol 
 lowed by the Count Belvedere, the Italian nobleman 
 who is in love with her and wishes to make her his 
 wife. There infinite palaver takes place after formal 
 " articles of accommodation " have been drawn up 
 and signed, whereby the Lady Clementina engages to 
 give up all thoughts of entering a convent ; and her 
 parents and family promise that they will u never with 
 earnestness endeavor to persuade, much less compel, 
 her to marry any man whatever." The last interview 
 between the parties, before Lady Clementina leaves 
 Grandison Hall to return with her parents to Italy, 
 
 Salisbury Square, where he carried on his printing business, 
 when he was disturbed by a loud cry. " Oh ! rny nerves, my 
 nerves ! " he exclaimed, and rang the bell. It turned out that 
 the prentices were " cobbing " wall-eyed Torn, for watering a 
 can of porter after drinking some of it himself, for which he 
 had been sent to the Barley Mow. It was contrary to rules to 
 have beer in the office before noon, but the pressmen pleaded 
 that they had been working all night upon Moore s Almanac, 
 of which the Treasurer wanted "ten thousand perfect, a week 
 before publishing day." and they required some refreshment. 
 
238 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 takes place in the garden present, Sir Charles, Lady 
 Grandison, and the Lady Clementina. 
 
 " When we saw Sir Charles enter the garden we 
 stood still, arm in arm, expecting and inviting his ap 
 proach. i Sweet sisters ! lovely friends ! said he, 
 when he came up to us, taking a hand of each and 
 joining them, bowing on both ; c let me mark this 
 blessed spot with my eye, looking round him, then on 
 me. A tear on my Harriet s cheek ! He dried it 
 off with his own handkerchief. Friendship, dearest 
 creatures, will make at pleasure a safe bridge over the 
 narrow seas. . . Kindred souls are always near. 
 . . . . * Promise me again, said the noble lady. c I, 
 too, have marked the spot with my eye (standing 
 still, as Sir Charles had done, looking round her). 
 c The orangery on the right hand ; that distant clump 
 of oaklings on the left ; the villa, the rivulet before 
 us ; the cascade in view ; that obelisk behind us. Be 
 this the spot to be recollected as witness to the prom 
 ise (that the Grandisons will visit her in Italy) c when 
 we are far, far distant from each other. 
 
 " TVe both repeated the promise ; and Sir Charles 
 said (and he is drawing a plan accordingly) that a lit 
 tle temple should be erected on that little spot, to be 
 consecrated to our friendship ; and since she had so 
 happily marked it, to be called after her name." 
 
A TERMAGANT WIFE. 239 
 
 There only remains to add that Sir Hargrave Pol- 
 lexfen dies a penitent sinner, and leaves by his will a 
 very large legacy to Lady Grandison, and another to 
 Sir Charles, whom he had made his sole executor. 
 
 Miss Grandison, Sir Charles s sister, is intended to 
 be sprightly and witty ; but Richardson had no con 
 ception of either sprightliness or wit ; and as to hu 
 mor, he had not a particle of it in his composition. 
 I will give one or two specimens of her talk. 
 
 " Harriet. My lord is nothing to me. I have an 
 swered. I have given my negative. 
 
 " Miss Grandison. The deuce you have ! Why 
 the man has a good 12,000 a year. 
 
 " Harriet. I don t care. 
 
 " Miss G. What a deuce ails the girl ? 
 
 " Then humorously telling on her fingers c Orme, 
 one ; Fenwick, two ; Greville, three ; Fowler, four : 
 I want another finger ; but I ll take in my thumb 
 Sir Hargrave, five ; and now (putting the forefinger 
 of one hand on the thumb of the other), Lord D., 
 six ! And none of them the man ! Depend upon it, 
 girl, pride will have a fall. " 
 
 Two days after marriage Charlotte quarrels with 
 her husband, and concludes a note to Miss Byron 
 thus : " Hang me, if I sign by any other name while 
 this man is in his fits than that of CHARLOTTE GRAN- 
 
240 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 DISOX." Certainly no oilier husband would have put 
 up with such disgusting petulance as she showed, 
 which Richardson designed as a proof of her " humor 
 ous " character. Her husband makes her a present of 
 some old china, " And when he had done," says his 
 wife, " taking the liberty as he phrased it, half fearful, 
 half resolute, to salute his bride for his reward, and 
 then pacing backward several steps with such a strut 
 and crow I see him yet indulge me, Harriet ! I 
 burst into a hearty laugh ; I could not help it ; and 
 he reddening looked round himself and round himself 
 to see if any thing was amiss on his part. c The man, 
 the man, honest friend, I could have said, but had 
 too much reverence for my husband, c is the oddity ! 
 nothing amiss in the garb. r And when to play him 
 a trick, or as she says, to give him a hint, she pins her 
 apron to his coat and the apron is torn, she calls out, 
 " You are always squatting upon one s clothes in de 
 fiance of hoop or distance." 
 
 We must not, however, suppose that the style of 
 conversation which Richardson puts into the mouths 
 of his characters in < Sir Charles Grandison, represents 
 the style prevalent in his time among the higher 
 classes of society. Of this he knew personally little 
 or nothing, and he must have consequently evolved it, 
 in the same way that the German writer is said to 
 
RICHARDSON S STYLE. 
 
 have evolved his description of a camel, " from liis 
 own consciousness." Cooped up in a small room in 
 Salisbury Court during the day, and spending his 
 evenings and holidays at Parson s Green, he was not 
 likely to have many opportunities of seeing fashion 
 able life, and he was much more at home in writing 
 the letters of a servant-girl like Pamela, or of a young 
 lady of the middle class like Clarissa Harlowe, than 
 in imitating the language and describing the manners 
 
 of Charlotte Grandison and her sister. Lady L . 
 
 The last specimen I will give of Richardson s 
 style is the scene in which Miss Byron relates her 
 meeting with her despairing lover, Mr. Orme, on her 
 way home from town. " Mr. Orme, good Mr. Orme, 
 when we came near his park, was on the highway 
 side. Perhaps near the very spot where he stood to 
 see me pass to London so many weeks ago. Poor 
 man ! when I first saw him he looked with so discon 
 solate an air and so fixed, that I compassionately said 
 to myself, Sure]y the worthy man has not been there 
 ever since ! 
 
 * " I am apt to conceive, that one reason why many English 
 writers have totally failed in describing the manners of upper 
 life, may possibly be that in reality they know nothing of it. 
 .... A true knowledge of the world is gained only by con 
 versation, and the manners of every rank must be seen in order 
 to be known." Fielding in Tom Jones, book xiv. chap. 1. 
 11 
 
242 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 "I twitched the string just in time: the coach 
 stopped. Mr. Orme, I said, i how do you ? "Well, 
 I hope ? How does Miss Orme ? 
 
 " I laid my hand on the coach-door. He snatched 
 it. It was not an unwilling hand. . He pressed it 
 with his lips. c God he praised, said he (with a coun 
 tenance, O ! how altered for the "better ! ) i for permit- 
 ing me once more to behold that face that angelic 
 face ! he said. 
 
 " c God bless yon ! Mr. Orme, said I, I am glad 
 to see you. Adieu. : 
 
 Richardson intended this as serious sentiment ; 
 but the scene is, I think, rather comic than serious. 
 The poor rejected lover stands, and may have stood 
 for weeks, behind his park palings watching for the 
 carriage, and then when it comes up thanks Heaven 
 for allowing him to see the angelic creature whom he 
 knows it is in .vain to adore. 
 
 I have heard Sir Charles Grandison called a " sol 
 emn fop ; " but, I think, this is to mistake his real 
 character. Solemn, enough he is beyond all doubt, 
 but there is nothing foppish in his manner or talk. 
 It is true that one feels often inclined to kick him ; 
 but this is because one feels bored by his overstrained 
 courtesy and elaborate politeness.* He is too much 
 
 * In his Sketches by Boz, Dickens describes Mr. Watkins 
 
A FRENCH CRITICISM. 243 
 
 of a paragon too much praised by everybody. We 
 sympathize with the man who was tired of always 
 hearing Aristides called the Just ; and we sympathize 
 with Harriet Byron, who when she was in love with 
 Sir Charles was half inclined to wish that he were 
 not such an angel. " A most intolerable superiority ! 
 I wish he could do something wrong; something 
 cruel ; if he would but bear malice, would but stiffen 
 his air by resentment, it would be something." He is 
 worshipped by his two sisters, with an idolatry which 
 is a] most childish, and we are cloyed by the treacle 
 of their panegyrics and compliments. 
 
 u O my brother ! O my brother ! said both ladies 
 at one time half in admiration, though half con 
 cerned, at a goodness so eclipsing." 
 
 " You, my brother, who in my eye are the first 
 of men, must not let me have cause to dread that your 
 Caroline is sunk in yours." 
 
 M. Taine says, and I agree with him, " Nothing is 
 so insipid as an instructive hero. This one is as cor 
 rect as an automaton ; he passes his life in weighing 
 his duties and making salutations. . . . He is great, 
 lie is generous, lie is delicate, he is pious, he is irre- 
 
 Tottle as having " a cloau-cravatisli formality of manner, and a 
 kitchen-pokerness of carriage, which Sir Charles Grandison 
 himself might have envied." 
 
NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 proachable, lie lias never done a dirty action nor made 
 a false step. His conscience and his periwig are in 
 tact. Amen. We must canonize him, and stuff him 
 with straw." * 
 
 The abduction of Harriet Byron by Sir Hargrave 
 Pollexfen is a fiction, but in those times such an ad 
 venture might easily have happened. At an earlier 
 period in France, it did befall a once celebrated lady, 
 Madame de Miramion, who for her piety was entitled 
 by Madame de Sevigne " one of the mothers of the 
 church," and whose benevolence and charity made the 
 Due de St. Simon say that " her death was considered 
 a public loss." f 
 
 * * Histoire de la Literature Anglaise, vol. iii. 299-302. I 
 have before me a curious pamphlet, published in 1754, aud 
 styled * A candid examination of the History . of Sir Charles 
 Grandison in a Letter to a Lady of Distinction. The writer 
 complains of the length of the novel and its enhanced price, 
 
 "as if Mr. R n began to consider himself as a bookseller as 
 
 well as an author." The criticism of the novel is not worth 
 much, and need not be quoted ; but such a passage as the fol 
 lowing would be thought strange in a letter addressed nowa 
 days to a Lady of Distinction : " "I think Mr. E n makes a 
 
 great deal too much of the terrible apprehensions of matrimony, 
 and of Miss Byron s almost fainting, dying : but as I hear, your 
 ladyship felt something of these palpitations on the approach 
 of the awful day, the solemn rite, the fearful night, I must not 
 take the liberty to be so full as I should be on this occasion." 
 
 t The story is told in the Life of Madame de Miramion, 
 by M. Bonneau, edited by Lady Herbert. 
 
RICHARDSON S CORRESPONDENCE. 245 
 
 The scene, also, of the attempt to force Miss By 
 ron into a marriage at Lisson Green very much resem 
 bles what actually occurred in Ireland in the last cen 
 tury, when a Miss McDermott was carried off by Mr. 
 Flinn, who tried to compel her to marry him in a way 
 side cabin. The story is told by Mrs. Delany, as re 
 lated to her by Miss McDermott herself: * "Finding 
 she was resolute in not complying with his request, 
 but vehemently asserted that she would rather die 
 than be united to such a monster, on their laying hold 
 of her to put the ring on her finger, she threw it off 
 while the priest was muttering over the marriage 
 ceremony, and springing from them, snatched up a 
 mug of milk which she had accidentally laid her eyes 
 on, standing by the fire, and threw it full in the 
 priest s face." Happily the lady was rescued from the 
 ruffians after having been badly wounded, and plunged 
 in a bog up to her shoulders in mud. 
 
 It is very curious and amusing to read Eichard- 
 son s Correspondence, in six volumes, and see the 
 old gentleman, in his house at North End, Hammer 
 smith, or Parson s Green, between Chelsea and Ful- 
 ham, writing to and receiving letters from ladies 
 " my ladies," as he calls them, or " dear girls " who 
 smother him with compliments, and interest them- 
 
 * Mrs. Delany s Autobiography, vol. iii. p. 348. 
 
246 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 selves about the fate of liis heroes and heroines, Sir 
 Charles Grandison, Harriet Byron, and Clarissa Har- 
 lo\ve, as if they were friends and acquaintances. But 
 among his correspondents is Colley Cibber, who makes 
 himself a conspicuous ass. He writes to Richardson, 
 in 1748, and prays that the Lord grant he may be 
 disappointed in his apprehension of meeting, in the 
 course of the story of Clarissa, something to dis 
 please him. " O Lord, Lord ! can there be any thing 
 yet to come that will trouble this smooth stream of 
 pleasure I am bathing in ? But the book again lies 
 open before me. I have just finished this letter of 
 Miss Howe s" (Clarissa s correspondent); "with that 
 charming chicken s neck at the end of it. What a 
 mixture of lively humor, good sense, and wanton wil- 
 fulness, does she conclude it with ! How will you be 
 able to support this spirit ? " Again, " Ah ! ah ! you 
 may laugh if you please ; but how will you be able to 
 look me in the face if the lady " (Clarissa) " should ever 
 
 be able to show Tiers again ? What piteous, d -d 
 
 disgraceful pickle have you placed her in ? For God s 
 sake send me the sequel, or I don t know what to 
 say ! . . . My girls are all on fire and fright to know 
 what can possibly have become of her. Take care. 
 If you have betrayed her into any shocking company, 
 you will be as accountable for it as if you were your- 
 
CHARACTER OF LOVELACE. 34.7 
 
 self the monster that took delight in her calamity." 
 In 1750, he writes, with disgusting levity: "Though 
 Death lias been cooling his heels at my door these 
 three weeks, I have not had time to see him. ... If 
 you have a mind to make one among us, I will order 
 Death to come another day. To be serious, I long- 
 to see you, and hope you will take the first opportu 
 nity.* In 1753 : " The delicious meal I made of Miss 
 Byron on Sunday last, has given me an appetite for 
 another slice of her, off from the spit, before she is 
 served up for the public table. If about five o clock 
 to-morrow afternoon will not be inconvenient, Mrs. 
 Brown and I will come and piddle upon a bit more 
 of her." He raved when he heard that Clarissa was 
 destined to have an unhappy end, and said, " God 
 
 d n him, if she should ! " 
 
 Dr. Young, the author of the jS"ight Thoughts, 
 approved of the portrait of the scoundrel libertine 
 Lovelace, on account of its fidelity, but we should 
 hardly expect the following criticism from a divine : 
 u Be not concerned about Lovelace! tis the likeness, 
 not the morality of a character, we call for. A sign 
 post angel can by no means come into competition 
 with the devils of Michael Ano-elo." And as^ain : 
 
 o o 
 
 Believe me, Christians of taste will applaud your 
 plan, and they who themselves would act Lovelace s 
 
248 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 part, will find the greatest fault with it." But Rich- 
 ardson himself seems to have had a more just idea of 
 the character he was drawing. He answers one of 
 Dr. Young s letters with a promise to send two more 
 of his volumes, and adds : " Miss Lee may venture (if 
 you and she have patience) to read these two to you. 
 But Lovelace afterward is so vile a fellow, that if I 
 publish any more (so much have some hypercritics 
 put me out of conceit with my work) I doubt whether 
 she, of whose delicacy I have the highest opinion, can 
 see it as from you or me." Dr. Young assured him, 
 after the appearance of Sir Charles Grandison, that 
 he looked upon him " as an instrument of Provi 
 dence." In one of the letters to Richardson, the 
 writer, after mentioning that a lady of very high rank 
 (but bad character) had declared that Lovelace was a 
 charming young fellow, and owned that she liked him 
 excessively, says that the anecdote is an instance of 
 what "you have reason to say you too often meet 
 with, namely, the fondness most women have for the 
 character of Lovelace." 
 
 As to the ladies, they could hardly find words 
 strong enough to express their admiration of the 
 novels. Miss Fielding, in 1749, wrote of c Clarissa 
 to the author : " "When I read of her I am all sensa 
 tion ; my heart glows. I am overwhelmed, my only 
 
RICHARDSON" AND THE LADIES. 249 
 
 vent is tears, and unless tears could mark my thoughts 
 as legibly as ink, I cannot speak half I feel." Miss 
 Collier said that her "good old folks" believed both 
 * Clarissa and ; Sir Charles to be real stories, and no 
 work of imagination, and she did not care to unde 
 ceive them. Poor Mrs. Pilkington, who was reduced 
 so low as to be obliged to issue the following adver 
 tisement " At the sign of the Dove in Great White 
 Lion Street, near the Seven Dials, letters are written 
 on any subject (except the law) by Letitia Pilkington, 
 price one shilling " prayed Richardson to save Cla 
 rissa from dishonor : " Spare her virgin purity, dear 
 sir, spare it ! Consider if this wounds both Mr. Cib- 
 ber and me (who neither of us set up for immaculate 
 chastity), what must it do with those who possess that 
 inestimable treasure ? " 
 
 In a letter written in 1750, Eichardson says that 
 he had just had a breakfast visit at North End, from 
 two very worthy ladies recommended by Mrs. Delany, 
 who were both extremely earnest with him to give 
 them a good man, that is, draw a good character, 
 and he asks the young lady who is his correspondent : 
 " How can we hope that ladies will not think a good 
 man a tame man ? " 
 
 Among the correspondents of Eichardson was 
 Klopstock s first wife, who lived at Hamburg, and 
 
250 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 wrote very good English. She gives an account of 
 how she fell- in love with the poet on reading his 
 6 Messiah, before she ever saw him, how she after 
 ward married him, and how happy she was. Poor 
 thing ! her last letter expresses her joy in the prospect 
 of becoming a mother, and then comes another from 
 a stranger, dated a w r eek later, telling him that Mrs. 
 Klopstock had just died " in a very dreadful manner " 
 in childbed.* 
 
 But all these ladies are eclipsed by Lady Brad- 
 shaigh, who, under the name of Belfour, carried on 
 a long correspondence with Richardson, which be- 
 gan in the following manner : A lady calling herself 
 Belfour, after reading the first four volumes of c Cla 
 rissa, which came out in parts, w r rote to him, in 1748, 
 telling him that a report prevailed that the history of 
 Clarissa was to end in a most tragical manner, and 
 expressing her abhorrence of such a catastrophe, she 
 begged to be satisfied of the truth by a few lines 
 inserted in the Whitehall Evening Post. This led 
 to the letters which passed between them, and very 
 curious they are. I can only give a few extracts, 
 which will be enough to show the earnestness of 
 
 * When I was at Altona, I read on Klopstock s tonib, a copy 
 of verses addressed by his second wife to the memory of the 
 first. 
 
KICHABDSON AND LADY BKADSHAIGH. 251 
 
 the lady in pleading for a happy conclusion to 
 Clarissa : 
 
 " You must know (though I shall blush again) 
 that if I was to die for it, I cannot help being fond 
 of Lovelace. A sad dog ! why would you make him 
 so wicked and yet so agreeable ? ... If you disap 
 point me, attend to my curse : May the hatred of all 
 the young, beautiful, and virtuous, forever be your 
 portion ! and may your eyes never behold any thing 
 but age and deformity ! May you meet with ap 
 plause only from envious old maids, surly bachelors, 
 and tyrannical parents ! May you be doomed to the 
 company of such, and after death may their ugly 
 souls haunt you ! 
 
 "JSTow make Lovelace and Clarissa unhappy if 
 you dare ! " 
 
 " Do, dear sir (it is too shocking and barbarous a 
 story for publication I wish I could not think of it), 
 blot out but one night, and the villanous laudanum, 
 and all may be well again. ... I am as mad as the 
 poor injured Clarissa, and am afraid I cannot help 
 hating you, if you alter not your scheme." 
 
 " When alone, in agonies would I lay down the 
 book, take it up again, walk about the room, let fall 
 a flood of tears, wipe my eyes, read again, perhaps 
 not three lines, throw away the book, crying out, 
 
252 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 Excuse me, good Mr. Richardson, I cannot go on ; it 
 is your fault, you have done more than I can bear. 5 
 
 " A lady was reading to two or three others the 
 seventh volume of i Clarissa, while her maid curled 
 her hair, and the poor girl let fall such a shower of 
 tears upon her lady s head that she was forced to send 
 her out of the room to compose herself, asking her 
 what she cried for. She said, to see such goodness 
 and innocence in distress ; and the lady followed her 
 out of the room, and gave her a crown for that an 
 swer." 
 
 These passages will give some idea of the extraor 
 dinary interest which Richardson s novels excited in 
 the hearts of the fair sex, and the way in which they 
 made the woes of Clarissa their own. 
 
 Lady Bradshaigh kept up for along time her in 
 cognita of Belfour, and many were the contrivances 
 which she and Richardson adopted, she to see him 
 without being known, and he to discover his admirer. 
 He walked in the Park, " up the Mall and down the 
 Mall," having sent her a description of himself which 
 I will quote by-and-by, and hoping that she would re 
 veal herself, as she said that she would look for him 
 in the Park. She once ventured to go to Salisbury 
 Court, where he carried on his business of a printer, 
 and got as far as his door, when her courage failed 
 
PORTRAIT OF RICHARDSON. 253 
 
 her. At last she wrote in her real name, and told 
 him that she had walked for an hour in the Park, in 
 the vain hope of seeing him, and would try her for 
 tune again next Saturday. Then comes a letter tell 
 ing him that her curiosity was satisfied as to a distant 
 view, " I passed you four times last Saturday in the 
 Park ; knew you by your own description at least 
 three hundred yards off; walking in the Park be 
 tween the trees and the Mall. . . . You looked at me 
 every time we passed, but I put on so unconcerned a 
 countenance, that I am almost sure I deceived you." 
 She feared that she would find something in his per 
 son stern and awful, but it turned out " quite the con 
 trary." The comical pair, however, at last put an 
 end to this game of hide and seek, and Lady Brad- 
 shaigh made the personal acquaintance of the author 
 who had so bewitched her. 
 
 Let us now see what manner of man in the flesh 
 this petted and spoiled favorite of the ladies was. He 
 has twice given us his own portrait, and described 
 himself to the life. First as he walks on the pantiles 
 at Tunbridge "Wells. " A sly sinner, creeping along 
 the very edges of the walks, getting behind benches ; 
 one hand in his bosom, the other held up to his chin, 
 as if to keep it in its place ; afraid of being seen #s a 
 thief of detection . . stealing in and out of the 
 
254: NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 bookseller s shop, as if he had one of their glass-cases 
 under his coat. Come and see this odd figure ! " * 
 
 And at a later period in St. James s Park : 
 " Short, rather plump than emaciated, notwithstand 
 ing his complaints ; about five feet five inches ; fair 
 wig, lightish cloth coat, all black besides ; one hand 
 generally in his bosom, the other a cane in it, which 
 he leans upon under the skirts of his coat usually 
 .... of a light-brown complexion, teeth not yet 
 failing him, smoothish face and ruddy cheeked; at 
 some times looking to be almost sixty-five, at other 
 times much younger, a regular even pace, stealing 
 away ground rather than seeming to rid it ; a gray 
 eye too often overclouded by mistiness from the head ; 
 by chance lively very lively it will be if he have 
 hopes of seeing a lady whom he loves and honors ; his 
 eye always on the ladies ; if they have very large 
 hoops he looks down and supercilious, and as if he 
 would be thought wise, but perhaps the sillier for 
 that." f Yes, we see the sentimental little prig be 
 fore us to the life, with his head turned by all the 
 compliments paid to him by the ladies, and thinking 
 that every woman whom he meets is conscious that 
 she looks upon the author of c Clarissa Harlowe and 
 c Sir Charles Grandison. 
 
 * Correspondence of Richardson, vol. ii. p. 206. 
 t Ibid. vol. iv. p. 290. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 FIELDING. TOM JONES, 1 A FAVORITE OF THE LADIES. JOSEPH 
 ANDREWS. 1 AMELIA. 
 
 now turn to a very different school of thought 
 and a very different style of novels. We leave the 
 sick-room for the open common. 
 
 A lady once asked me why she might not read 
 Tom Jones. It seemed hard, she thought, that so 
 famous a work which was praised by everybody that 
 is, by every man who had read it should remain a 
 sealed book to her ; and she inquired whether I could 
 not give her an idea of its merits and an inkling of 
 the story without sinning against decorum. The 
 question was a delicate one, and I cannot pretend that 
 I answered it satisfactorily. The truth is, that it would 
 be impossible to give an analysis of the novel, or even 
 describe the plot except in the most meagre terms, 
 without offending against the respect due to female 
 delicacy now. And such a description as could be 
 given salvo pudore would be worthless. It would be 
 like producing a bony skeleton as the representative 
 
256 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 of the human form. What idea would a listener have 
 of the mirth and fun and fulness of life in l Tom 
 Jones, if he were merely told that it is the story of a 
 young man, a foundling, brought up as a dependent 
 in a gentleman s family, who falls in love with Sophia, 
 the daughter of Squire Western, and with whom Miss 
 Western falls in love, running after him from place to 
 place, accompanied only by her maid j who is exposed 
 to the mean hatred of a wretch called Blifil, the 
 nephew of an excellent gentleman named Allworthy, 
 who befriends Tom until his patience is exhausted by 
 the tales he hears of his unworthy conduct ; and who, 
 after many vicissitudes of fortune and many divert 
 ing but wicked scrapes, is discovered at last to be the 
 natural son of Mr. Allworthy s maiden sister; and 
 Blifil s villany being now exposed and discomfited, is 
 made Mr. Allworthy s heir, and marries the fair So 
 phia ? And yet this is the main plot of the story, or 
 at all events it was all I could tell my inquirer. But 
 her grandmother, no doubt, had read < Tom Jones, 5 
 and was as modest and virtuous a lady as herself. * 
 
 * Mrs. Delany says in one of her letters (1749) : " Unluckily 
 for Gaudentio, " a book attributed to Bishop Berkeley, " I had 
 just been reading Clarissa, and it must have been an extraor 
 dinary book that would have been relished after that ! Tom 
 Jones in his married state, is a poor thing, and not written by 
 Fielding." 
 
TOM JONES. 257 
 
 Lady Bradshaigh, writing to Richardson in 1749, 
 says : "As to c Tom Jones, I am fatigued with, the 
 name, having lately fallen into the company of several 
 young ladies who had each a Tom Jones ; in some 
 part of the world, for so they called their favorites ; 
 and ladies, you know, are ever talking of their favor 
 ites. Last post I received a letter from a lady who 
 laments the loss of her Tom Jones ; and from an 
 other who was happy in the company of her Tom 
 Jones. And again : " The girls are certainly fond 
 of Tom Jones, as I told you before ; and they do 
 not scruple declaring it in the presence of your incog 
 nita."- 
 
 AVe cannot but regret that the coarseness of the 
 age, and his own natural instincts, led Fielding to 
 choose for the hero of his novel a young libertine, 
 whose adventures are only fit for the ale-house or a 
 worse place ; while he has lavished upon it a skill of 
 construction and artistic development of plot such as 
 have never been surpassed. In these respects it well 
 deserves the title of a prose epic. Coleridge says : 
 " Upon my word, I think the (Edipus Tyrannus, 
 The Alchymist, and Tom Jones, the three most 
 perfect plots ever planned." * But the coarseness 
 and licentiousness in which it abounds admit of no 
 * Table Talk, p. 332. 
 
258 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 defence, however much some writers may say the con 
 trary. 
 
 "If lowsie is Lucy as some volke miscall it, 
 Then Lucy is lowsie whatever befall it." 
 
 It is all very well for Charles Lamb to say that 
 the hearty laugh of Tom Jones " clears the air ; " 
 and no doubt it is refreshing as contrasted with the 
 sentimentality of Richardson, whose style was Field 
 ing s special aversion ; but we must remember that it 
 is the horse-laugh of a youth full of animal spirits and 
 rioting in the exuberance of health, who sells himself 
 to Lady Bellaston as her paramour, while all the time 
 he is described as being desperately in love with So 
 phia "Western. 
 
 I know no writer more likely than Thackeray to 
 have given unqualified praise to Tom Jones, and 
 certainly none more fitted to appreciate the charac 
 ter ; for the robust nature of his intellect made him 
 by no means squeamish, and no man was more dis 
 posed to look kindly upon the frailties of others, 
 whether heroes of fiction or persons in real life. But 
 what does he say about Fielding s hero? I am glad 
 to quote the passage, for it shows Thackeray s sound 
 sense and right feeling : 
 
 "I can t say that I think Mr. Jones a virtuous 
 
THACKERAY AND COLERIDGE. 959 
 
 character ; I can t say but that I think Fielding s evi 
 dent liking and admiration for Mr. Jones shows that 
 the great humorist s moral sense was blunted by his 
 life, and that here, in t Art and Ethics, there is a 
 great error. If it is right to have a hero whom we 
 may admire, let us at least take care that he is ad 
 mirable ; if, as is the plan of some authors (a plan 
 decidedly against their interests, be it said), it is pro 
 pounded that there exists in life no such being, and 
 therefore that in novels, the picture of life, there 
 should appear no such character, then Mr. Thomas 
 Jones becomes an admirable person, and we examine 
 his defects and good qualities, as we do those of Par 
 son Thwackum or Miss Seagrim. But a hero with a 
 flawed reputation ; a hero springing for a guinea ; a 
 hero who can t pay his landlady, and is obliged to let 
 his honor out to hire, is absurd, and his claim to he 
 roic rank untenable. I protest against Mr. Thomas 
 Jones holding such rank at all. I protest against his 
 being considered a more than ordinary young fellow, 
 ruddy-cheeked, broad-shouldered, and fond of wine 
 and pleasure. He would not rob a church, but that 
 is all ; and a pretty long argument may be debated 
 as to which of these old types the spendthrift, the 
 hypocrite, Jones and Blifit, Charles and Joseph Sur 
 face is the worst member of society, and the most 
 
260 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 deserving of censure. ... I am angry with Jones. 
 Too much, of the plum-cake and rewards of life fall 
 to that boisterous, swaggering young scapegrace. So 
 phia actually surrenders without a proper sense of 
 decorum, the fond, foolish, palpitating little crea 
 ture." * Coleridge might have been expected to be at 
 least equally sensitive to the tainted atmosphere of the 
 work ; but, strange to say, he is more than indulgent 
 to it, and can discover no fault at all. He says : " I 
 do not speak of young women ; but a young man, 
 whose heart or feelings can be injured, or even his 
 passions excited by this novel, is already thoroughly 
 corrupt. There is a cheerful, sunshiny, breezy spirit 
 that prevails everywhere, strongly contrasted with the 
 close, but day-dreamy continuity of Richardson." f 
 Who that has read i Tom Jones can read this pas 
 sage without amazement ? If no young man s heart 
 or feelings can be injured, or even his passions be ex 
 cited, by the novel, unless he is " already thoroughly 
 corrupt," why in the name of common-sense does 
 Coleridge imply that young women can be injured by 
 its perusal ? "What he says of Tom Jones is un 
 doubtedly true of Shakespeare; and therefore it is 
 that we allow our wives and sisters and daughters to 
 
 * English Humorists, pp. 276-7. 
 t Literary Remains, ii. p. 374. 
 
FIELDING S DEFENCE OF TOM JONES. 261 
 
 read him without fear or scruple. Coleridge adds 
 that he " loathes the cant which can recommend l Pa 
 mela and c Clarissa Harlowe as strictly moral, while 
 Tom Jones is prohibited as loose." But this is 
 really a false issue. It would indeed be grossly in 
 consistent to recommend Clarissa Harlowe as moral 
 and condemn c Tom Jones as loose ; but of such in 
 consistency we are not likely to find examples at all 
 events not now ; but it is not a logical consequence 
 that because some men may mistake gray for white, 
 they are therefore wrong when they call black by its 
 real name. Coleridge further says that this novel is, 
 and indeed pretends to be, no example of conduct. 
 But this is a poor and weak defence. There is noth 
 ing to show that the author had any such idea ; on 
 the contrary, he does all in his power to make his 
 readers admire his hero ; and he therefore invests him 
 with the qualities of courage, generosity, and kind 
 ness.* 
 
 The real defence which Fielding himself makes 
 for what he calls "the wit and humor" of his novel 
 
 * " Tom Jones is Fielding himself, hardened in some 
 places, softened in others. His Lady Bellaston is an infamous 
 woman of his former acquaintance. His Sophia is again his 
 first wife." Letter from Richardson to Mrs. Donnellan in his 
 Correspondence, vol. iv. p. 60. But we must remember that 
 Richardson hated Fielding. 
 
262 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 and that it abounds in wit and humor no reader of 
 it can deny, only it must be admitted to be of the 
 broadest kind is that he has " endeavored to laugh 
 mankind out of their favorite follies and vices." But 
 I fear the attempt has been as little successful as that 
 of trying to put burglary out of fashion by making it 
 ridiculous. We laugh with the author, and not at the 
 folly or the vice. 
 
 In his dedication of Tom Jones to the Hon. 
 George Lyttelton, Fielding says : "I hope any reader 
 will be convinced at his very entrance on this work, 
 that he will find in the whole course of it nothing 
 prejudicial to the cause of religion and virtue ; noth 
 ing inconsistent with the strictest rules of decency, nor 
 which can offend even the chastest eye in the perusal" 
 The italics are my own, and the passage marked 
 shows that- Fielding believed, or pretended to believe, 
 that the purest maiden might read his novel without 
 offence. And this, with the scene of Partridge s 
 trial for incontinency, the scene between Philosopher 
 Square and Molly Seagrim, the scenes between Tom 
 Jones and Mrs. "Waters in the inn at Upton, between 
 him and Lady Bellaston in London, to say nothing of 
 the language of Squire "Western and others ! 
 
 The same insensibility to what is indecent and 
 immodest is shown by Defoe ; for he, like Fielding, 
 
EXTRACTS FROM TOM JONES. 263 
 
 thought that in some of his most offending novels 
 there was nothing improper. In his preface to i Rox- 
 ana, or The Fortunate Mistress, he says: "If there 
 are any parts in her story which, being obliged to 
 relate a wicked action, seem to describe it too plainly, 
 the writer" (Defoe pretends that the story was written 
 by Hoxaiia herself) " says all imaginable care has been 
 taken to keep clear of indecencies and immodest ex 
 pressions ; and it is hoped you will find nothing to 
 prompt a vicious mind, but everywhere much to dis 
 courage and expose it." And this with the conversa 
 tions between Roxana and her maid Amy, and the 
 scenes before his eyes, in which they both are actors ! 
 It only shows how the moral sense may be blunted 
 in a corrupt period, and how men can put bitter for 
 sweet even if they do not put sweet for bitter. 
 
 In 1787, Canning, then a boy at Eton, asks, in 
 the c Microcosm : "Is not the novel of c Tom Jones, 
 however excellent a work of itself, generally put too 
 early into our hands, and proposed too soon to the 
 imitation of children?" This shows what different 
 ideas prevailed even then from those which prevail 
 now on such a question. E"o parent nor schoolmaster 
 would dream of putting i Tom Jones into the hands 
 of a mere boy in the hope (as the practice was for 
 merly defended) that he would be attracted by the 
 
264 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 manliness of the hero s character, and draw for him 
 self the line which certainly is not drawn by Field 
 ing where virtue ends and vice and immorality begin. 
 The book is so full of wit and fun that it is pro 
 voking not to be able to give specimens without the 
 risk of p^nJin^^gain^^dQp.mn2. Perhaps the fol 
 lowing passage will bear quotation, where, after Tom 
 Jones has been detected with Molly Seagrim, like 
 ^Eneas and Dido in their cave, by Thwackum and 
 Blifil, and a battle royal has been fought between 
 them, Squire Western, who comes up and separates 
 the combatants, exclaims : " But where is she ? 
 Prithee, Tom, show me. He then began to beat 
 about, in the same language and in the same manner 
 as if he had been beating for a hare ; and at last cried 
 out : Soho ! Puss is not far off. Here s her form, 
 upon my soul ! I believe I may cry, Stole away ! 
 And indeed so he might ; for he had now discovered 
 the place whence the poor girl had, at the beginning 
 of the fray, stolen away, upon as many feet as a hare 
 generally uses in travelling." 
 
 "When the Squire s sister says to him, "Your 
 ignorance, brother, as the great Milton says, almost 
 subdues my patience," he answers: "D n Milton; 
 if he had the impudence to say so to my face, I d 
 lend him a douse, thof he was never so great a man." 
 
EXTRACTS FROM TOM JOXES. 265 
 
 Fielding is fond of what may be called Homeric 
 similes, and several occur in i Tom Jones, of which 
 the following is a good example. He is describing 
 the attack made by Mrs. Partridge upon her hus 
 band : 
 
 " As fair Grimalkin, who, though the youngest of 
 the feline family, degenerates not in ferocity from the 
 elder branches of her house ; and though inferior in 
 strength, is equal in fierceness to the noble tiger him 
 self; when a little mouse, whom it hath long tor 
 mented in sport, escapes from her clutches, for a 
 while frets, scolds, growls, swears ; but if the trunk 
 or box behind which the mouse lay hid be again re 
 moved, she flies like lightning on her prey, and with 
 envenomed wrath bites, scratches, mumbles, and tears 
 the little animal 
 
 " Not with less fury did Mrs. Partridge fly on the 
 poor pedagogue. Her tongue, teeth, and hands fell 
 all upon him at once. His wig was in an instant 
 torn from his head, his shirt from his back, and from 
 his face descended five streams of blood, denoting the 
 number of claws with which Nature had unhappily 
 armed the enemy." 
 
 And again, when the Somersetshire mob rushes 
 forward to assault Molly Seagrim : 
 
 "As a vast herd of cows in a rich farmer s yard, 
 12 
 
266 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 if, when they are milked, they hear their calves at a 
 distance lamenting the robbery which is then com 
 mitting; so roared forth the Somersetshire mob an 
 halloo. . . ." 
 
 But having quoted the prologue to the fight, I 
 cannot resist the temptation of quoting also the 
 prowess of the victorious Molly : 
 
 "Molly, then, taking a thigh-bone in her hand, 
 fell in among the flying ranks, and, dealing her blows 
 with great liberality on either side, overthrew the 
 carcass of many a mighty hero and heroine. 
 
 "Recount, O Muse, the names of those who fell 
 on that fatal day. First, Jemmy Tweedle felt on his 
 hinder head the direful bone. Him the pleasant 
 banks of sweetly-winding Stour had nourished, where 
 he first learnt the vocal art, with which, wandering 
 up and down, at w^akes and fairs, he cheered the rural 
 nymphs and swains, when upon the green sward they 
 interweaved the sprightly dance, while he himself 
 stood fiddling and jumping to his own music. How 
 little now avails his fiddle ! He thumps the verdant 
 floor with his carcass. Next, old Echepole, the sow- 
 gelder, received a blow on his forehead from our Ama 
 zon heroine, and immediately fell to the ground. He 
 was a swingeing fat fellow, and fell with almost as 
 much noise as a house. His tobacco-box dropped at 
 
JOSEPH ANDREWS. 267 
 
 the same time from his pocket, which Molly took up 
 as lawful spoils. Then Kate of the mill tumbled un 
 fortunately over a tombstone, which, catching hold of 
 her uno-artered stocking, inverted the order of Nature, 
 
 O O / 
 
 and gave her heels the superiority to her head. Betty 
 Pippin, with young Roger her lover, fell both to the 
 ground, where, oh perverse fate ! she saluted the 
 earth and he the sky. ..." 
 
 The following burst of eloquence ushers in the 
 first appearance of Sophia Western : 
 
 " Hushed be every ruder breath. May the heathen 
 rulers of the winds confine in iron chains the boister 
 ous limbs of noisy Boreas, and the sharp-pointed nose 
 of bitter-biting Eurus. Do thou, sweet Zephyrus, 
 rising from thy fragrant bed, mount the western sky, 
 and lead on those delicious gales, the charms of which 
 call forth the lovely Flora from her chamber, per 
 fumed with pearly dews, when on the 1st of June, 
 her birthday, the blooming maid, in loose attire, 
 gently trips it o er the verdant mead, where every 
 fiower rises to do her homage, till the whole field 
 becomes enamelled, and colors contend with sweets, 
 which shall ravish her most. 
 
 u So charming may she now appear ! And you, 
 the feathered choristers of Nature, whose sweetest 
 notes not even Handel can excel, tune your melodious 
 
268 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 throats to celebrate her appearance. From love pro 
 ceeds your music, and to love it returns. Awaken, 
 therefore, that gentle passion in every swain ; for lo ! 
 adorned with all the charms in which Nature can 
 array her bedecked with beauty, youth, sprightli- 
 ness, innocence, modesty, and tenderness ; breathing 
 sweetness from her rosy lips, and darting brightness 
 from her sparkling eyes, the lovely Sophia comes ! " 
 
 The next most celebrated novel of Fielding, al 
 though earlier in point of time, is i Joseph Andrews, 
 with the immortal character of Parson Adams, a rare 
 compound of simplicity, benevolence, and goodness. 
 Fielding tells us in his preface that in Parson Adams 
 he designed a character of perfect simplicity, and 
 hopes his goodness will excuse the author "to the 
 gentlemen of his cloth, as no other office could have 
 given him so many opportunities of displaying his 
 worthy inclinations, notwithstanding the low adven 
 tures in which he is engaged." * 
 
 * " Parson Young sat for Fielding s Parson Adams, a man 
 he knew, and only made a little more absurd than he is known 
 to be." Letter from Richardson to Mrs. Donnellan, vol. iv., p. 
 60. Fielding says of the characters in this novel: "I declare 
 here, once for all, I describe not men but manners ; not indi 
 viduals, but a species. Perhaps it will be answered, are not the 
 characters then taken from life ? To which I answer in the 
 affirmative, nay, I believe I might aver that I have writ little 
 more than I have seen." 
 
JOSEPH ANDREWS. 269 
 
 And the adventures are low indeed. In one of 
 them, at a village ale-house, Parson Adams, to defend 
 Joseph Andrews, hits the landlord on the face with 
 his fist, when Mrs. Towwouse, the landlady, rushes to 
 the rescue, " when lo ! a pan full of hog s blood, 
 which unluckily stood on the dresser, presented itself 
 first to her hands. She seized it in her fury, and, 
 without any reflection, discharged it into the parson s 
 face, and with so good an aim, that much the greater 
 part first saluted his countenance, and trickled thence 
 in so large a current down to his beard, and all over 
 his garments, that a more horrible spectacle was 
 hardly to be seen, or even imagined." In another 
 scene, having by mistake taken a wrong turn, he 
 enters Fanny s bedroom, and, laying himself down 
 beside her in utter unconsciousness of her presence, 
 falls fast asleep, " nor could the emanation of sweets 
 which flowed from her mouth overpower the fumes of 
 tobacco which played in the parson s nostrils." Jo 
 seph comes in the morning to the bedroom-door to 
 awaken the fair Fanny, and we may imagine the 
 confusion that follows. 
 
 The object of Parson Adams s journey is to have 
 a volume of his sermons published, and at an inn, 
 when his money had run short, he wants to borrow 
 from the landlord three guineas on the security of the 
 
270 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 manuscript. Pointing to liis saddle-bag, lie told him, 
 " with a face and voice full of solemnity, that there 
 were in that bag no less than nine volumes of manu 
 script sermons, as well worth a hundred pounds as a 
 shilling was worth twelve pence, and that he would 
 deposit one of the volumes in his hands by way of 
 pledge." But the landlord did not like the security 
 and shortly afterward, when the saddle-bags are 
 opened by Joseph to look for the sermons, he can find 
 none. " c Sure, sir, says Joseph, c there is nothing in 
 the bags. Upon which Adams, starting and testify 
 ing some surprise, cried, Hey ! fie, fie upon it ! they 
 are not here, suro enough. Ay, they are certainly 
 left behind. " 
 
 The least objectionable, according to modern 
 notions, of Fielding s novels, is Amelia. There is 
 much less coarseness, and also less licentiousness. 
 His object is to portray the conduct of a virtuous 
 wife, who adores her husband and children ; and she 
 is really a charming character. Scenes, of course, 
 are introduced in which the old, old story of illicit 
 love goes on ; but they are wholly unknown to her, 
 and they serve only to enhance, by the force of con 
 trast, the innocence and purity of her mind. M. 
 Taine says : " Amelia is the perfect model of an 
 English wife, excelling in the kitchen, devoted to her 
 
AMELIA. 271 
 
 husband, even so far as to pardon his accidental in 
 fidelities ; toujours cjrosse. She is modest in excess, 
 always blushing and tender."* 
 
 She is, no doubt, intended to represent the char 
 acter of Fielding s first wife, as her husband, Captain 
 Booth, is, in some points, intended to represent his 
 own. But he is, upon the whole, a poor creature, if 
 not what Lady Mary "Wortley Montagu called him, 
 " a sorry scoundrel " hardly ever proof against 
 temptation, and getting constantly into debt. He, 
 however, fully appreciates the value of the treasure 
 he has got in his wife ; and in the midst of his frail 
 ties has the merit of feeling repentance and remorse. 
 
 i Amelia is not a comic novel. There are no 
 ludicrous scenes like those in i Tom Jones, Joseph 
 Andrews, and Peregrine Pickle ; and yet there is 
 sufficient incident and variety in the plot to interest 
 and amuse the reader. We are introduced into the 
 interior of a prison, and have a vivid picture of all 
 its abominations in those days to Yauxhall, where 
 Amelia is insulted by libertine advances to a mas 
 querade, with its intrigues and loose talk and to 
 
 * Histoire de la LittSrature Anglaise, vol. iii. p. 33. I 
 hardly know what M. Taine means by applying the terms 
 "toujours grosse" here, for Amelia is not once represented as 
 being in that interesting situation. 
 
272 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 domestic scenes of profligate noblemen and colonels, 
 and conversations where Mrs. Atkinson quotes Yirgil 
 and Horace as familiarly as if they had been written 
 in her mother tongue. 
 
 If we may believe Richardson, who had a spite 
 against Fielding for representing Pamela as the sister 
 of Joseph Andrews, and ridiculing her, the novel of 
 Amelia w r as not successful. He says in one of 
 his letters in 1752 : " Mr. Fielding has met with 
 the disapprobation you foresaw he would meet with 
 in his Amelia. He is, in every paper he publishes 
 under the title of the Covent Garden, contributing 
 to his own overthrow. He has been overmatched in 
 his own way by people whom he had despised, and 
 whom he thought he had vogue enough from the suc 
 cess his spurious brat i Tom Jones so unaccountably 
 met with, to write down." * And again : " Captain 
 Booth " (Amelia s husband), " madam, has done his 
 own business. . . . The piece, in short, is as dead as 
 if it had been published forty years ago, as to sale. 
 You guess that I have not read f Amelia. Indeed, I 
 have read but the first volume. I had intended to go 
 through with it ; but I found the characters and situa 
 tions so wretchedly low and dirty, that I imagined I 
 could not be interested for any one of them. . . . 
 
 * Richardson s Letters, vol. iii. p. 63. 
 
AMELIA. 273 
 
 Booth in his last piece again himself. Amelia, even 
 to her noselessness, is again his first wife. His brawls, 
 his jars, his gaols, his spunging-houses, are all drawn 
 from what he has seen and known." * 
 
 However this may be, I think that of all the 
 novels of that period, Amelia is the one which 
 gives the most generally truthful idea of the manners 
 and habits of middle-class society then. There is 
 little, if any, exaggeration or caricature, and I have 
 no doubt that Fielding intended faithfully to depict 
 society, such as he knew it, with its merits and its 
 faults ; its licentious manners, and domestic virtues ; 
 its brawls, its oaths, its prisons, and its masquerades. 
 
 * This is bitter spite on the part of Richardson. Fielding 
 describes Amelia as having her nose injured by a fall before her 
 marriage. Dr. Johnson said : " Fielding s Amelia was the most 
 pleasing heroine of all the romances ; but that vile broken nose, 
 never cured, ruined the sale of perhaps the only book which 
 being printed off betimes one morning, a new edition was called 
 for before night." 
 
> 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 SMOLLETT. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HIM AND FIELDING. PEE- 
 EGEINE PICKLE: HUMPHRY CLINKEE: THE SPIRITUAL 
 QUIXOTE: 
 
 THE jolly, riotous kind of life which I have spoken 
 of as characteristic of one class of novels of the last 
 century is fully displayed in the pages of Smollett. 
 He reflects, in many respects, the character of the 
 age more fully than any other writer its material 
 pleasures, its coarse amusements, its hard drinking, 
 loud swearing, and practical jokes. His heroes are 
 generally libertines, full of mirth and animal spirits, 
 who make small account of woman s chastity, and 
 whose adventures are intrigues, and their merriment 
 broad farce. Such are the chief features of Eoder- 
 ick Random and i Peregrine Pickle, neither of 
 which, however, is so offensive as the Adventures 
 of Ferdinand, Count Fathom, the hero of which is a 
 blackguard and a scoundrel, without a redeeming 
 virtue. 
 
 The French critic, M. Taine, whom I have already 
 
SMOLLETT. 275 
 
 quoted, thus speaks of Smollett : " He exaggerates 
 caricature ; he thinks he amuses us in showing us 
 mouths gaping to the ears, and noses half a foot long; 
 he exaggerates a national prejudice or a professional 
 trick until it absorbs the whole character. lie . flings 
 together personages the most revolting with the most 
 grotesque a Lieutenant Lismahago, half roasted by 
 Red Indians ; sea-wolves who pass their lives in 
 shouting and travestying all their ideas into a sea 
 jargon ; old maids as ugly as she-asses, as withered 
 as skeletons, and as acrid as vinegar ; maniacs steeped 
 in pedantry, hypochondria, misanthropy, and silence. 
 Far from sketching them slightly, like Gil Bias, he 
 brings into prominent relief each disagreeable trait, 
 and overloads it with details, without considering 
 whether they are too numerous, without reflecting 
 that they are excessive, without feeling that they are 
 odious, without seeing that they are disgusting. The 
 public whom he addresses is on a level with his energy 
 and roughness, and Jn order to shake such nerves a 
 writer cannot strike too hard." * 
 
 One of the chief differences between Smollett and 
 Fielding is this the scenes and adventures in Smol 
 lett s novels are laughable and farcical in themselves ; 
 but have little or no bearing upon the progress of the 
 * Histoire de la Literature Anglaise, vol. iv. p. 323. 
 
276 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 story. They are too much like the disconnected slides 
 in a magic-lantern. But Fielding makes each sepa 
 rate adventure, especially in Tom Jones, subservient 
 to the plot, the issue of which is worked out with 
 admirable consistency and skill. 
 
 It will be sufficient, for the purpose of giving an 
 idea of Smollett s humor, to take two of his stories, 
 c Peregrine Pickle and Humphry Clinker. Pere 
 grine Pickle is the son of Gamaliel Pickle, and at his 
 birth his mother conceived an unnatural aversion to 
 him, which she continued to feel until her death. He 
 is adopted by an uncle, Commodore Trunnion, who, 
 with his friend and companion Lieutenant Jack 
 Hatchway (with a wooden leg), and his former boat 
 swain Tom Pipes, has retired from the navy and 
 ensconced himself not far from his brother s house 
 near the sea-side, in a habitation which is called the 
 Garrison, defended by a ditch, over which he had laid 
 a drawbridge and planted his court-yard with patere- 
 roes continually loaded with shot. There is little 
 doubt that Sterne took the idea of Uncle Toby and 
 Corporal Trim in Tristram Shandy from Commo 
 dore Trunnion and Jack Hatchway. The Commo 
 dore gives every thing a -nautical turn, and hardly 
 ever speaks without uttering, a volley of oaths. Smol 
 lett himself had been a surgeon s mate, and was per- 
 
PEREGKINE PICKLE. 277 
 
 fcctly at home in sea-phrases. Mi*. Gamaliel Pickle 
 lias a sister Grizzle, "with a very wan, not to say 
 sallow, complexion," a cast in lier eye, and an enor 
 mous mouth, and slightly addicted to brandy, who 
 gets her heart on engaging the affections of the Com 
 modore. She is aided in her schemes by Jack Hatch 
 way, who persuades Pipes to get on the chimney 
 belonging to the Commodore s chamber at midnight, 
 and lower down by a rope a bunch of rotten and phos 
 phorescent whitings, while he put a speaking-trumpet 
 to his mouth and in a voice like thunder shouted out 
 " Trunnion ! Trunnion ! turn out and be spliced, or 
 lie still and be d d." This so terrifies the gallant 
 sailor that he yields to the lady s advances, exclaim 
 ing, " Well, since it must be so, I think w T e must e en 
 grapple. But . . . tis a hard case that a fellow of 
 my years should be compelled, d ye see, to beat up to 
 windward all the rest of my life, against the current 
 of my inclination." I have already described the 
 dress he wore at his wedding, but not the adventure 
 that befell him on the occasion. When he had 
 mounted his horse, attended by his lieutenant, to meet 
 the bride at church, a pack of hounds unluckily 
 crossed his path. Off set the two horses, and Jack 
 Hatchway was soon deposited in a field of clover, 
 while the Commodore was carried past him at a gal- 
 
278 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 lop, crying out, " O, you are safe at anchor. I wish 
 to God I were as fast moored." His horse takes a 
 five-barred gate, " to the utter confusion and disorder 
 of his owner, who lost his hat and periwig in the leap, 
 and now began to think in good earnest that he was 
 actually mounted on the back of the devil." After 
 various other mishaps, he is first in at the death of 
 the stag, and, being refreshed by a flask of brandy, 
 explains to the sportsmen the cause of his strange 
 appearance. He says he was bound to the next church 
 on the voyage of matrimony ; but, " howsomever," 
 the wind, shifting, blowed directly in their teeth, so 
 that they were forced to tack all the way, and had 
 almost hauled up within sight of port when the two 
 horses luffed round in a trice, and then, refusing the 
 helm, drove away like lightning. " I have been car 
 ried over rocks, and flats, and quicksands, among 
 which I have pitched away a special good tie-periwig 
 and an iron-bound hat ; and at last, thank God ! am 
 got into smooth water and safe riding ; but if ever I 
 venture my carcass upon such a hare um scare um . . . 
 again, my name is not Hawser Trunnion. . . ." 
 
 The ceremony of marriage was performed at a later 
 day in the Garrison, and the wedding-supper con 
 sisted of a huge pillau, two dishes of hard fish flanked 
 by lobscouse and salmagundy, a goose " of monstrous 
 
PEREGRINE PICKLE. 279 
 
 magnitude," two guinea-liens, a pig barbacued, a leg 
 of mutton roasted with, potatoes, and another boiled 
 with yams. Then came a loin of fresh pork with ap 
 ple-sauce, a kid smothered with onions, and a terrapin 
 baked in the shell ; and last of all a prodigious sea- 
 pie " with an infinite volume of pancakes and fritters." 
 Of liquors there was abundance in the shape of strong 
 beer, flip, rumbo, and burnt brandy, " with plenty of 
 Barbadoes water for the ladies." The happy pair go 
 to bed in a hammock, which, not being used to a 
 double weight, tumbles to the ground, and Mrs. Trun 
 nion screams. 
 
 Peregrine is sent by his uncle to a boarding-school, 
 kept by " an old illiterate German quack, who had 
 formerly practised corn-cutting among the quality, 
 and sold cosmetic washes to the ladies, together with 
 tooth-powders, hair-dyeing liquids, prolific elixirs, and 
 tinctures to sweeten the breath." But he has an ex 
 cellent usher, who was a man of learning, probity, and 
 good sense ; but who soon resigned his situation, and 
 "finding interest to obtain holy orders he left the 
 kingdom, hoping to find a settlement in some of our 
 American plantations." 
 
 Peregrine now returns to the Commodore at the 
 Garrison, upon whom, in conjunction with Hatchway 
 and Pipes, he plays several practical jokes, and, being 
 
280 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 detected, is sent off with a tutor to "Winchester school. 
 Here he meets at a race-ball Miss Emilia Gauntlet, 
 with, whom he falls in love, and who is the virtuous 
 heroine of the story. He makes her acquaintance by 
 begging that she would do him the honor to walk a 
 minuet with him, and is introduced to her mother, 
 who lives with her daughter in a small house in a vil 
 lage near Winchester. He writes a copy of verses in 
 praise of his charmer, and, enclosing them in a tender 
 epistle, commits it to the care of Pipes, who had ac 
 companied him to Winchester, with directions to de 
 liver it and a present of venison at Mrs. Gauntlet s 
 house. For the sake of safety, Tom Pipes puts the 
 letter between the stocking and sole of his foot, and 
 when he looks for it at the end of his journey finds it 
 torn to tatters. He therefore goes to an inn and 
 composes a love-letter himself to replace the one that 
 was lost, and we may guess the kind of nonsense it 
 contained. He delivers the letter, and Emilia s as 
 tonishment on reading it is only equalled by her in 
 dignation at what she supposes is meant to be an 
 insult. She dismisses Pipes without an answer ; and 
 Peregrine, taking offence at this, resolves to retort 
 her own neglect upon his ungrateful mistress, so that 
 the misunderstanding is complete. 
 
 He afterward goes to the University of Oxford as 
 
4 PEREGRINE PICKLE. 281 
 
 a student, and, happening to meet Emilia, an explana 
 tion takes place between them, and they are recon 
 ciled. Tom Pipes is interrogated as to the letter. 
 Seizing him by the throat, Peregrine asks him, " Ras- 
 cal ! tell me this instant what became of the letter I 
 intrusted to your care," and Pipes, squirting a collec 
 tion of tobacco-juice out of his mouth, replies, "Why, 
 burnt it. You wouldn t have me give the young 
 woman a thing that shook all in the wind in tatters, 
 would you ? " Peregrine quarrels with his tutor, who 
 writes to Mrs. Trunnion, and informs her of the love- 
 affair, and this leads to a rupture with his uncle, who 
 send him a letter in which he says : " I am informed 
 as how you are in chase of a painted galley, which 
 will decoy you upon the flats of destruction, unless 
 you keep a better lookout and a surer reckoning than 
 you have hitherto done." Jack Hatchway brings the 
 letter, and tries all he can to persuade him to yield to 
 the Commodore s wishes. "Among other remon 
 strances, Jack observed that mayhap Peregrine had 
 got under Emilia s hatches, and did not choose to set 
 her adrift ; and that if that was the case, he himself 
 would take charge of the vessel, and see her cargo 
 safely delivered ; for he had a respect for the young 
 woman, and his needle pointed toward matrimony, 
 and as, in all probability, she would not be much the 
 
282 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 worse for the wear, lie would make shift to scud 
 through life with her under an easy sail." 
 
 But Peregrine is obstinate, and the two friends 
 get so warm that Hatchway at last says : " You and I 
 must crack a pistol at one another ; here is a brace ; 
 you shall take which you please." They stand up in 
 the Park, when Tom Pipes interposes with his cud 
 gel and prevents the duel, saying to Peregrine : " I am 
 your man. Here s my sapling, and I don t value 
 your sapling a rope s end." The quarrel is soon made 
 up, and Peregrine goes to pay a visit to Emilia, where 
 he meets a brother, and after fighting a duel with 
 him, becomes his intimate friend. He then returns 
 to the Garrison, and there finds the poor old Commo 
 dore sadly hen-pecked by his wife, " who by the force 
 of pride, religion, and cognac, had erected a most ter 
 rible tyranny in the house." I should mention that 
 Peregrine has a younger brother Gamaliel, or Gam, 
 as he is called, upon whom his mother lavishes all her 
 fondness, and who is an ugly, deformed scoundrel, and 
 also a sister Julia, a loving, charming creature. He 
 now resolves to travel abroad, and sets off for the Con 
 tinent, accompanied by Jolter as his tutor or com 
 panion. We need not follow him there, for it is be 
 side the purpose of this book to give descriptions of 
 foreign cities and foreign mariners. It is enough to 
 
PEREGRINE PICKLE. 283 
 
 say that Peregrine is not a Joseph, and if the fair 
 Emilia had known of all his adventures, she would 
 have been quite justified in declining further intimacy 
 with such a scapegrace. But I must mention the 
 famous banquet in Paris, which a pedantic doctor " in 
 a suit of black, and a huge tie-wig," gave in the man 
 ner of the ancients. He had to dismiss five cooks, 
 who could not prevail upon their consciences to obey 
 his directions, and the last whom he engaged begged 
 on his knees to be released from his contract, but find 
 ing this in vain, " wept, sang, cursed, and capered for 
 two whole hours without intermission." "When the 
 guests meet, the Doctor apologizes for not having 
 been able to procure for them the exact triclinia of 
 the ancients, and they have to put up with couches, 
 where, on settling themselves, the feet of one come in 
 contact with the head of another, to the great discom 
 fiture of periwigs. " At each end there are dishes of 
 the salacacabia of the Romans ; this is made of pars 
 ley, pennyroyal, cheese, pinetops, honey, vinegar, 
 lime, cucumber, onions, and hen-livers." But the 
 Frenchman who swallowed the first spoonful, " made 
 a full pause, his throat swelled as if an egg had 
 stuck in his gullet, his eyes rolled, and his mouth 
 underwent a series of involuntary contractions and 
 dilatations." A pie follows, and well might the 
 
284 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 painter exclaim : " A pie made of dormice and syrup 
 of poppies ! Lord in heaven ! what beastly fellows 
 those Romans were ! The sow s stomach and fricas 
 see of snails were not more tempting, and when one 
 of the fowls was opened, the unhappy carver was as 
 saulted by such an irruption of intolerable smells, that, 
 without staying to disengage" himself from the cloth, 
 he sprang away, with an exclamation, Lord Jesus ! 
 and involved the whole table in havoc, ruin, and con 
 fusion." 
 
 Peregrine returns to England a thorough libertine, 
 and when he meets Emilia, talks to her in a strain 
 which keeps barely within the bounds of decency. 
 His object now is something very different from mar 
 riage, but he finds himself baffled by her prudence and 
 reserve. He goes back to the Garrison, where he finds 
 the old Commodore very near his end, but cheerful to 
 the last. " Swab the spray from your bowsprit," he 
 cries, " and coil up your spirits. You must not let the 
 top-lifts of your heart give way because you see me 
 ready to go down at these years. . . . Here has been 
 a doctor that wanted to stow me chock-full of physic, 
 but when a man s hour is come, what signifies his tak 
 ing his departure with a pothecary s shop in his hold ? 
 Those fellows come alongside of dying men, like the 
 messengers of the Admiralty, with sailing orders ; but 
 
PEREGRINE PICKLE. 285 
 
 I told him as how I could slip my cable without his 
 direction or assistance, and so he hauled off in dud 
 geon. . . . There s your aunt sitting whimpering by 
 the fire. I desire you will keep her tight, warm, and 
 easy in her old age ; she s an honest heart in her own 
 way ; and thof she goes a little crank and humorsome, 
 by being overstowed with JSTantz and religion, she has 
 been a faithful shipmate to me. . . . Jack Hatchway, 
 you know the trim of her as well as e er a man in 
 England, and I believe she has a kindness for you ; 
 whereby if you two will grapple in the way of matri 
 mony, when I am gone, I do suppose that my godson, 
 for love of me, will allow you to live in the Garrison 
 all the days of your life." And so the kind-hearted 
 old gentleman dies a man whom, with all his fail 
 ings, it is impossible not to love, and we sympathize 
 with honest Tom Pipes, who exclaims : " Well fare 
 thy soul, old Hawser Trunnion man and boy I have 
 known thee these five-and-thirty years, and sure a 
 truer heart never broke biscuit. Many a hard gale 
 hast tliou weathered ; but now thy spells are all over, 
 and thy hull fairly laid up. A better commander I d 
 never desire to serve, and who knows but I may help 
 to set up thy standing-rigging in another world ? " 
 
 He dies, leaving the bulk of his fortune to Pere 
 grine, who, on the strength of it, goes to town, buys a 
 
286 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 new chariot and horses, and seeks to distinguish him 
 self in the world of fashion. He now lays a plan for 
 carrying out his infamous design upon Emilia, whom 
 he meets in London. He persuades her to accompany 
 him to a masquerade in the Hay market, where he 
 drugs the wine he offers her, and afterward, instead 
 of conveying her in his carriage to her uncle s house, 
 as she supposes, had her driven elsewhere. But he 
 little knows the character and spirit of Emilia. When 
 she discovers the trick that has been played upon her, 
 she betrays no alarm, but confounds him with the se 
 verity of her rebuke. " i Sir, she said, your be 
 havior on this occasion is in all respects low and con 
 temptible, for, ruffian as you are, you durst not harbor 
 one thought of executing your execrable scheme while 
 you knew my brother was near enough to protect or 
 avenge the insult ; so that you must not only be a 
 treacherous villain, but also a most despicable coward. 
 " Having expressed herself in this manner with a 
 most majestic serenity of aspect, she opened the door, 
 and walking down-stairs with surprising resolution, 
 committed herself to the care of a watchman, who 
 accommodated her with a hackney-chair," in which 
 she is safely conveyed to her uncle s house. Pere 
 grine goes to the uncle, an alderman in the city, who 
 shows him the door, and then we have a series of 
 
PEREGPJXE PICKLE. 287 
 
 adventures in London, which are neither edifying nor 
 interesting. 
 
 It is here that Smollett introduces the long episode 
 called the Memoirs of a Lady of Quality, to which 
 I have "before alluded, and which occupy a consid 
 erable part of the novel. There is also a tiresome 
 Welshman, named Cadwallader, who is one of the 
 bores of the story. 
 
 Peregrine goes on from bad to worse, sinking low 
 er and lower in fortune, until at last, having taken to 
 authorship and libelled a Minister, he is, at his insti. 
 gation, arrested for debt and lodged in the Fleet. 
 Here again we have another long and tedious episode, 
 
 the Memoirs of Mr. M , a fellow-prisoner in the 
 
 Fleet, who no doubt is intended to represent some 
 real character of the time. Hatchway and Pipes 
 come to visit him, and, like Sam Weller in t Pick 
 wick, insist upon taking up their quarters in the 
 prison to keep him company. At last better fortune 
 begins to dawn ; some money which he thought he 
 had irrevocably lost in an adventure is repaid to him ; 
 the fair Emilia, who has in the mean time become a 
 great heiress, relents and offers to forgive the past ; 
 his father dies suddenly intestate, leaving Peregrine 
 his heir, and he offers Emilia his hand. In those 
 days, or at all events in the novels of those days, no 
 
288 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 time was lost in wedding preparations. He falls at 
 her feet and entreats that they may be married at 
 once, "but the bride objects with great vehemence 
 to such precipitation, being desirous of her mother s 
 presence at the ceremony." She is, however, teased 
 into compliance ; they go to Doctors Commons for a 
 license, engage a clergyman, and the ceremony is per 
 formed at Emilia s lodgings. The evening is spent 
 " at the public entertainments in Marylebone Gar 
 dens, which were at that time frequented by the best 
 company in town," and after Emilia and her friend 
 Sophy have retired to her lodging, Peregrine follows 
 her there, " where he found her dished (!) out, the fair 
 est daughter of chastity and love." 
 
 6 Humphry Clinker is a very different kind of 
 novel, in which Smollett gives full play to his powers 
 of satire ; and in which, therefore, it is necessary to 
 be cautious, before we can accept any part of his de 
 scriptions as true. It was written by him when he 
 was dying at Leghorn, and is a proof of the vigor and 
 fertility of his intellect. 
 
 The story consists of the adventures of a Welsh 
 family of the name of Bramble in their travels through 
 England and Scotland, and the wit depends upon the 
 oddity of the characters introduced. 
 
 Mr. Matthew Bramble, a testy but kind-hearted 
 
HUMPHRY CLINKER. 289 
 
 Welsh squire whose opinions are supposed to repre 
 sent those of Smollett himself accompanied by his 
 stingy and ugly sister, Miss Tabitha Bramble " ex 
 ceedingly starched, vain, and ridiculous," and bent at 
 all cost upon matrimony his nephew and his niece 
 makes a family tour in a coach and six. They are 
 attended by a lady s maid, Mrs. "Winifred Jenkins, 
 whose letters to her fellow-servants at Brambleton 
 Hall, with their wonderful spelling and " malaprop " 
 words, are the most amusing part of the work. They 
 pick up a postilion named Humphry Clinker, a con 
 vert to the new doctrines of Whitefield and Wesley, 
 who afterward turns out to be a natural son of Mr. 
 Bramble himself, and who, after converting Miss Ta 
 bitha and Mrs. Winifred, marries the latter. The 
 niece, Lydia Melford, has a love-affair with a young 
 gentleman, whom she first meets in the disguise of a 
 strolling actor, and whom she ultimately marries. 
 
 A great part of the wit of the novel consists in 
 the ludicrous way in which the language of the Meth 
 odists is travestied. But this is, I think, wit of the 
 lowest kind. Nothing is easier than to write a par 
 ody, and of all parodies those which turn sacred 
 things into ridicule are the easiest and the most rep 
 rehensible. It is but poor jesting to make a maid 
 servant write " grease " for " grace," and " pyebell " 
 13 
 
290 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 for " Bible ; " to " pray constantly for grease that I 
 may have a glimpse of the new-light to show me the 
 way through the wretched veil of tares ; " and say, 
 " Mr. Clinker assures me that by the new light of 
 grease I may deify the devil and all his works ; " or, 
 " Sattin has had power to temp me in the shape of 
 Van Ditton, the young Squire s wally de shamble, 
 but by God s grease he did not perrvail.* " O ! Mary 
 Jones, pray without seizing for grease to prepare 
 you for the operations of this wonderful instrument, 
 which, I hope, will be exercised this winter upon you 
 and others at Brambleton Hall." "I do no more 
 than yuse the words of my good lady who has got 
 the infectual calling ; and I trust that even myself, 
 though unworthy, shall find grease to be excepted/ 
 But, apart from this, it is impossible not to help 
 laughing at Mrs. "Winifred s descriptions of places 
 and things, which are irresistibly comic. 
 
 " O Molly ! what shall I say of London ? All the 
 towns that ever I beheld in my born-days are no more 
 than "Welsh barrows and crumleeks to this wonder 
 fully sitty ! Even Bath itself is but a fillitch in the 
 naam of God. One would think there s no end of 
 the streets but the land s end. Then there s such a 
 power of people going hurry-skurry ! Such a racket 
 of coxes ! Such a noise and haliballoo ! So many 
 
MISS TABITHA BRAMBLE. 291 
 
 strange sites to be seen ! O gracious ! my poor Welsh 
 brain lias been spinning like a top ever since I came 
 hither ! " I have already quoted the rest of the de 
 scription in which she tells her correspondent that she 
 has seen " the Park and the pallass of Saint Gemses, 
 . . . and the hillyfents, and pyeball ass, and all the 
 rest of the royal family." 
 
 A little misadventure that happened to Humphry 
 Clinker is thus described by Mrs. Jenkins : 
 
 " He was tuck up for a rubbery and had before 
 gustass Bunhard, who made his mittamouse, and the 
 pore youth was sent to prison upon the false oaf of a 
 willain, that wanted to sware his life away for the 
 looker of Cain." 
 
 And another that happened to herself: 
 
 " I went in the morning to a private place along 
 with the house-maid, and we bathed in our birthday 
 soot, after the fashion of the country (Scotland) ; and 
 behold, whilst we dabbled in the loff, Sir George Coon 
 started up with a gun ; but we clapt our hands to our 
 faces, and passed by him to the place where we had 
 left our smocks. A civil gentleman would have 
 turned his head another way. My comfit is, he knew 
 not which was which ; and, as the saying is, all cats 
 in the dark are gray" 
 
 The description of the person of Miss Tabitha 
 
292 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 Bramble, as given by her nephew, is worth quot 
 ing: 
 
 " She is tall, raw-boned, awkward, flat-chested, 
 and stooping ; her complexion is sallow and freckled ; 
 her eyes are not gray but greenish, like those of a 
 cat, and generally inflamed ; her hair is of a sandy, 
 or rather dusty hue; her forehead low; her nose long, 
 sharp, and toward the extremity always red in cool 
 weather ; her lips skinny ; her mouth extensive ; her 
 teeth straggling and loose, of various colors and con 
 formation ; and her long neck shrivelled into a thou 
 sand wrinkles." 
 
 Such was the beauteous spinster of forty-five who 
 ensnared at last the immortal Lismahago a tall mea 
 gre figure, with thighs like those of a grasshopper, very 
 narrow in the shoulders and very thick in the calves 
 of the legs, with a face half a yard in length, " brown 
 and shrivelled, with projecting cheek-bones, little gray 
 eyes of a greenish hue, a large hook nose, a pointed 
 chin, a mouth from ear to ear, very ill-furnished with 
 teeth, and a high, narrow forehead, well furnished 
 with wrinkles."" At this attractive cavalier Tabitha 
 makes a dead set, and she hooks her fish at last. 
 u Who would have thought," asks Winifred Jenkins, 
 " that mistress, after all the pains taken for the good 
 of her priisias sole, would go for to throw away her 
 
BATH IN HUMPHRY CLINKER. 293 
 
 poor body ? That she would cast the Leys of infec 
 tion upon such a carraying crow as Lishmihago ! as 
 old as Matthewsullin, as dry as a red herring, and as 
 pore as a starved veezel. O Molly, hadst thou seen 
 him come down the ladder in a shurt so scanty that it 
 could not kiver his nakedness ! " And when they are 
 married they sit in state in the nuptial couch while 
 the benediction posset is drunk and a cake is broken 
 over the head of Mrs. Tabitha Lismahago. 
 
 Although, upon the whole, the Expedition of 
 Humphry Clinker is the most amusing of Smollett s 
 works, arid we can never tire of laughing at such char 
 acters as Tabitha Bramble, and Winifred Jenkins, and 
 Lieutenant Lismahago, a considerable part of the book 
 is nothing more than an itinerary through England 
 and Scotland, which enables the author to give a sar 
 castic description of the towns, and vent his spleen 
 upon the inhabitants. Thus, the buildings at Bath 
 " look like the wreck of streets and squares disjointed 
 by an earthquake, which hath broken the ground into 
 a variety of hills and hillocks, or as if some Gothic 
 devil had stuffed them altogether in a bag, and left 
 them to stand higgledy-piggledy, just as chance di 
 rected. . . . Every upstart of fortune, harnessed in 
 the trappings of the mode, presents himself at Bath, 
 as in the very focus of observation. Clerks and fac- 
 
294: NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 tors from the East Indies, loaded with the spoils of 
 plundered provinces ; planters, negro - drivers, and 
 hucksters from our American plantations, enriched 
 they know not how ; agents, commissaries, and con 
 tractors, who have fattened in two successive wars on 
 the blood of the nation ; usurers, brokers, and jobbers 
 of every kind ; men of low birth and no breeding have 
 found themselves suddenly translated into a state of 
 affluence unknown to former ages ; and no wonder 
 that their brain should be intoxicated with pride, 
 vanity, and presumption." And Mrs. Winifred Jen 
 kins gives her view of the City of Waters. " O Molly ! 
 you that live in the country have no deception of our 
 doings at Bath. . . . Dear girl, I have seen all the 
 fine shows : the Prades, the Squires, and the Circlis, 
 the Crashit, the Hottogon, and Bloody Buildings, and 
 Harry King s Row, and I have been twice in the Bath 
 with mistress, and ne er a smoak upon our backs, hus 
 sy." As to Harrigate (sic) Mr. Bramble says that 
 it " is a wild common, bare and bleak, without tree or 
 shrub or the least sign of cultivation ; and the people 
 who come to drink the water are crowded together in 
 paltry inns, where the few tolerable rooms are monop 
 olized by the friends and favorites of the house, and 
 all the rest of the lodgers are obliged to put up with 
 dirty holes where there is neither space, air, nor con- 
 
EDINBURGH IN HUMPHRY CLINKER. 295 
 
 venience." The water was of course then as disagree 
 able as it is now. " Some people say it smells of rot 
 ten eggs ; and others compare it to the scouring of a 
 foul gun." A visit to Scarborough furnishes an ex 
 cuse for an elaborate description of a bathing-machine, 
 which seems then to have been a thing unknown else 
 where. York Minster gives occasion for an attack 
 upon Gothic architecture, which is called " preposter 
 ous in a country like England, where the air is exter 
 nally loaded with vapors, and where of consequence the 
 builder s intention should be to keep the people dry 
 and warm." And we have the following astounding 
 description of a cathedral : " The external appearance 
 of an old cathedral cannot but be displeasing to the 
 eye of every man who has any idea of propriety and 
 proportion, even though he may be ignorant of archi 
 tecture as a science ; and the long, slender spire puts 
 one in inind of a criminal impaled with a sharp stake 
 rising up through his shoulder ! " We need not won 
 der, therefore, that the cathedral of Durham is dis 
 missed as " a huge, gloomy pile ; " but it is undoubt 
 edly true at the present day, as when Mr. Matthew 
 Bramble and his party visited that city, that " the 
 streets are generally narrow, dark, and unpleasant." 
 Edinburgh is fairly dealt with, and praised for its ro 
 mantic site, its castle, and its palace. The Canongate 
 
296 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 " would be undoubtedly one of the noblest streets in 
 Europe, if an ugly mass of mean buildings, called the 
 Lueken-booths, had not thrust itself, by what accident 
 I know not, into the middle of the way, like Middle 
 Row in Holborn." But " the first thing that strikes 
 the nose of a stranger shall be nameless ; " and the 
 state of the stairs leading to the flat* was such that 
 " a man must tread with great circumspection to get 
 safe housed with unpolluted shoes." It would not be 
 possible to quote the confidential letter of Winifred 
 Jenkins to Mrs. Mary Jones at Brambleton Hall, on 
 the subject. It has all the vigor and fidelity of a 
 Dutch picture, but tempora rmitantur, and it must be 
 read in private. Linlithgow has " an elegant royal 
 palace, which is now gone to decay, as well as the 
 town itself; " but " Glasgow is the pride of Scotland," 
 and, according to Mr. Bramble s opinion or, in other 
 words, the opinion of Dr. Smollett himself it is " one 
 of the prettiest towns in Europe." He thinks that its 
 cathedral may be compared with York Minster or 
 "Westminster, and computes the number of inhabitants 
 at thirty thousand they now amount to more than 
 four hundred thousand. But the journey is dull 
 enough as a narrative, although it is enlivened by 
 some ludicrous adventures ; as, for instance, that in 
 which the kitchen chimney catches fire at night, and 
 
THE SPIRITUAL QUIXOTE. 297 
 
 the women rush out in dishabille, when Tabitha Bram 
 ble, in her under-petticoat, endeavors to lay hold of 
 Mr. Micklewhimmen, and he pushes her down, crying 
 out, " N"a, na, gude faith, charity begins at hame ! " 
 and Mrs. Winifred Jenkins falls from the ladder into 
 the arms of Humphry Clinker. 
 
 The Brambles visit, in the course of their travels, 
 the seat of a country gentleman in Argyleshire, where 
 " the great hall, paved with flat stones, serves not only 
 for a dining-room but also for a bedchamber to gentle 
 men dependants and hangers-on of the family. At 
 night half a dozen occasional beds are ranged on each 
 side along the wall. These are made of fresh heath, 
 pulled up by the roots, and disposed in such manner 
 as to make a very agreeable couch, where they lie 
 without any covering but the plaid." 
 
 I have previously alluded to the mode in which 
 Smollett, in his Humphry Clinker, attacked the doc 
 trines of the new sect ; and it was to ridicule them 
 that a clergyman named Graves wrote his novel called 
 The Spiritual Quixote, the hero of which is Geoffrey 
 Wildgoose, a young man of a respectable family and 
 small estate, who, having picked up some old volumes 
 of puritan divinity, such as Crumbs of Comfort, 
 < Honeycombs for the Elect, the Marrow of Divinity, 
 the i Spiritual Eye Salve and Cordials for the Saints, 
 
298 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 and a book of Baxter with an unmentionable name, 
 resolves to sally fojjth and convert his benighted fel 
 low-countrymen in the highways and by-ways of Eng 
 land. He is accompanied by Jeremiah Tugwell, a 
 cobbler, who acts as a sort of Sancho Panza, and they 
 visit Gloucester, Bath, and Bristol, where they are 
 involved in various adventures more creditable to the 
 zeal of Wildgoose than his discretion. 
 
 He holds such books as Tillotson s Sermons and 
 the 4 "Whole Duty of Man in sovereign contempt, and 
 asserts that it would be as profitable to read the 
 i Seven Champions or Jack the Giant Killer as 
 Tillotson, who, he says, quoting Whitefield himself, 
 knew no more of Christianity than Mohammed. 
 
 It is, however, a stupid book ; the attempts at 
 satire are miserably poor, and the adventures of Wild- 
 goose and his companion show neither wit nor inven 
 tion. 
 
CHAPTEE X. 
 
 GOLDSMITH. THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. 1 CHARACTER OF 
 LATER NOVELS AND ROMANCES. MACKENZIE. THE MAN OF 
 FEELING, 1 THE MAN OF THE WORLD, 1 AND JULIA DE ROU- 
 BIGNE. 1 MISS BURNEY. EVELINA, 1 AND CECILIA. 1 MISS EDGE- 
 WORTH. BELINDA. 1 JANE AUSTEN. USES OF NOVELS. RE- 
 SPONSIBILITY OF THE NOVELIST. 
 
 IT is a sensible relief to turn from the maudlin 
 sentimentality of Richardson and the coarseness of 
 Fielding and Smollett, to the purity of the pages of 
 Goldsmith. We seem to breathe all at once 
 
 An ampler ether, a diviner air," 
 
 and have as sweet a picture as was ever drawn of fam 
 ily life in a country parsonage, with its joys and sor 
 rows, its trials and rewards. One great charm of the 
 i Vicar of "Wakefield is its gentle irony very differ- ,, 
 cut indeed from the vicious double entendre of Swift 
 or Sterne, where the implied meaning is almost al 
 ways impure. With all the childlike simplicity of 
 Dr. Primrose, there is in him an tinder-current of 
 sound good sense, which makes him fully sensible of 
 the folly of his wife and daughters, while he indulges 
 
300 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 their vanity and smiles at their credulity. With what 
 a soft touch of sarcasm he describes the good lady 
 whom he chose, as she did her wedding-gown, not for 
 a fine glossy surface, but such qualities as would wear 
 well ! " She could read any English book without 
 much spelling ; but for pickling, preserving, and 
 cookery, none could excel her. She prided herself 
 upon being an excellent contriver in housekeeping ; 
 though I could never find that we grew richer with 
 all her contrivances." The key to his character is, I 
 think, contained in the following sentence about his 
 wife, when he tells us how she began to build castles 
 in the air when Mr. Burchell had rescued their young 
 est daughter, Sophia, from drowning, and she said 
 that if he had birth and fortune to entitle him to 
 match into such a family as theirs, she knew no man 
 she would sooner fix upon. " I could not but smile 
 to hear her talk in this lofty strain ; but I was never 
 much displeased with those harmless delusions that 
 tend to make us more happy." When, after the loss 
 of his fortune, and the removal of his family to an hum 
 bler abode, his wife and daughters come down-stairs 
 on Sunday morning dressed out in all their former 
 finery, " their hair plastered up with pomatum, their 
 faces patched to taste, their trains bundled up in a 
 heap behind, and rustling at every motion," the way 
 
THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. 301 
 
 in which Dr. Primrose rebukes their vanity is by 
 ordering his son, with an important air, to call their 
 coach. " Surely, my dear, you jest, cried my wife, 
 4 we can walk perfectly well: we want no coach to 
 carry us now. * You mistake, child, returned I, we 
 do want a coach ; for if we walk to church in this 
 trim, the very children in the parish will hoot after 
 us ; : " and he ends with the wise apothegm, " I do 
 not know whether such flouncing and shredding is 
 becoming, even in the rich, if we consider, upon a 
 moderate calculation, that the nakedness of the indi 
 gent world may be clothed from the trimmings of tbe 
 vain." When Squire Thornhill was expected to pay 
 them a visit, and Mrs. Primrose went to make the 
 venison pasty, the Yicar observed his daughters busy 
 cooking something over the fire. He at first thought 
 that they were assisting their mother, but little Dick 
 whispered that they were making a wash for their 
 faces. Washes he abominated. " I therefore ap 
 proached my chair by sly degrees to the fire, and, 
 grasping the poker, as if it wanted mending, seem 
 ingly, by accident, overturned the whole composition, 
 and it was too late to begin another." 
 ^ The introduction into this scene of innocent hap 
 piness of the two town ladies or rather ladies of the 
 town Lady Blarney and Miss Carolina Wilhelmina 
 
302 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 Amelia Skeggs, is characteristic of the manners of the 
 age ; but it unpleasantly breaks in upon the harmony 
 of the tale. Their attempt at personation is too gross, 
 and no family, who were not all idiots, could have 
 been deceived as to their real character. But Dr. 
 Primrose only very gently hints his suspicions. " One 
 of them, I thought, expressed her sentiments upon 
 this occasion in a very coarse manner, when she ob 
 served that by the living jingo she was all of a muck 
 of sweat. Possibly the family may have thought 
 themselves disqualified by their rustic habits from ap 
 preciating the wit of conversation in fashionable life, 
 as retailed by the two strangers, and may have fancied 
 that something more was meant than met the ear, 
 when they were informed by them that u the next 
 morning my Lord Duke cried out three times to his 
 valet de chambre, Jernigan, Jernigan, Jernigan, bring 
 me my garters. 
 
 How exquisitely the story is told of Moses and the 
 colt and the gross of green spectacles ! Here, again, 
 Dr. Primrose s good sense and temper are finely con 
 trasted with his wife s impetuous anger. " A fig for 
 the silver rims, said my wife in a passion ; I dare 
 swear they won t sell for above half the money at the 
 rate of broken silver, five shillings the ounce. You 
 need be under no uneasiness, cried I, ( about selling 
 
THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. 303 
 
 the rims ; for they are not worth sixpence, for I per 
 ceive they are only copper varnished over. What ! 
 cried my wife, c not silver, the rims not silver ! No, 
 cried I, i no more silver than your saucepan. And 
 so, returned she, we have parted with the colt, and 
 have only got a gross of green spectacles, with copper 
 rims and shagreen cases ! A murrain take such trump 
 ery ! The blockhead has been imposed upon, and 
 should have known his company better. There, my 
 dear, cried I, you are wrong ; he should not have 
 known them at all. Marry, hang the idiot, returned 
 she, to bring such stuff! If I had them, I would 
 throw them into the fire ! There, again, you are 
 wrong, my dear, cried I, for though they are copper, 
 we will keep them by us, as copper spectacles, you 
 know, are better than nothing. 
 
 But, however Dr. Primrose may have plumed him 
 self on his worldly wisdom, he, like his son Moses, was 
 destined to be tricked by the same sharper and that, 
 too, in the matter of the sale of a horse. He takes 
 him to the fair, and puts him through his paces but 
 the would-be purchasers find so many faults in him 
 one declaring that he had a spavin ; another that he 
 had a wind-gall ; others that he had the botts that 
 at last his owner begins to have a most hearty con 
 tempt for the poor animal himself. At this juncture, 
 
304: NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 the inimitable Epliraim Jenkinson. appears on the 
 scene, " a venerable old man, wholly intent over a 
 book which he was reading ; his locks of silver gray 
 venerably shaded his temples, and his green old age 
 seemed to be the result of health and temperance." 
 We all know how the scoundrel swindled the Yicar 
 out of his horse, by palming off upon him a bill pay 
 able at sight upon farmer Flamborough. But who 
 could doubt the honesty of a man who could boast of 
 his intimacy with honest Flamborough and who 
 could give such a convincing proof of their friendship 
 as to be able to say, " I remember, I always beat him 
 at three jumps ; but he could hop on one leg farther 
 than I ? " And this, too, after he had disarmed all sus 
 picion by asking the Doctor if he was in any way re 
 lated to the great Primrose, that courageous monoga 
 mist, who had been the bulwark of the Church. What 
 a flood of nonsensical learning he then poured out 
 upon him, quoting the opinions of Sanchoniathon, 
 Manetho, Berosus, and Ocellus Lucanus, and ending 
 with Greek ! " c But, sir, I ask pardon ; I am stray 
 ing from the question/ That he actually was ; nor 
 could I for my life see how the creation of the world 
 had any thing to do with the business I was talking 
 of ; but it was sufficient to show that he was a man 
 of letters, and I now reverenced him the more." 
 
THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. 305 
 
 The only fault in the plot of the * Yicar of Wake- 
 field is the way in which the story is huddled up at 
 the close, and the lavish profusion with which, at the 
 last, the favors of Fortune are showered down upon 
 the family which has so long "been in the lowest 
 depths of adversity. " It never rains but it pours " 
 is an adage much more applicable to the evils than 
 to the blessings of life but it fully expresses the 
 rapid succession of good-luck which all of a sudden 
 fails to the lot of the Primrose family. When the 
 Yicar and his son George are beggars and in jail, 
 George is released " from the incumbrances of jus 
 tice," or, in other words, set free, because the person 
 he was supposed to have wounded was detected to be 
 an impostor ; Sir William Thornhill is revealed in the 
 person of Mr. Burchell, and offers his hand to Sophia. 
 Olivia, who was thought to be dead after being vilely 
 seduced, turns out to be alive, and the lawfully-mar 
 ried wife of her would-be betrayer and this by the 
 evidence of the quondam swindler, Ephraim Jen kin- 
 son and almost at the same moment new r s arrives 
 that the merchant whose failure had caused Dr. Prim 
 rose the loss of his fortune, had been arrested, and 
 given up property which was more than sufficient to 
 pay all his creditors. And so the curtain falls upon 
 a happy scene where the good Doctor has the pleasure 
 
306 NOVELS AKD NOVELISTS. 
 
 of seeing all his family assembled once more by a 
 cheerful fireside. " My two little girls sat upon each 
 knee, the rest of the company by their partners. I 
 had nothing now on this side of the grave to wisli 
 for; all my cares were over, my pleasure was un 
 speakable. It only remained that my gratitude in 
 good fortune should exceed my former submission in 
 adversity." 
 
 I have already alluded to the Simple Story, by 
 Mrs. Inchbald, The Female Quixote, by Mrs. Len 
 nox, the Spiritual Quixote, by Graves, and the 
 Fool of Quality, by Brooke and besides these I 
 hardly know a novelist or a novel after the time of 
 Goldsmith w^orth mentioning until we come to Mac 
 kenzie and Miss Burney. At all events, I know of 
 no novels in the intermediate period which throw 
 light upon the manners and opinions of the age, ex 
 cept in so far as their general worthlessness proves 
 the low state of public taste. In a paper in the i Mi 
 crocosm written by Canning, at Eton, in 1787, he 
 describes the novels of his day as replete with "sto 
 ries without invention, anecdotes without novelty, 
 observations without aptness, and reflections without 
 morality." To how many novels of the present day 
 would the same criticism not apply ? I say nothing 
 of such romances as the i Castle of O trail to of Hor- 
 
THE EADCLIFFE SCHOOL. 307 
 
 ace "Walpole, wliicli some think was intended as a 
 burlesque, and the i Old English Baron of Clara 
 Reeve, and the c Romance of the Forest and Mys 
 teries of Udolpho of Mrs. Radcliffe. They are too 
 unreal to be of any service for my purpose, and it is 
 enough, to say that no young gentleman or young 
 lady at the present day is likely to be frightened at 
 night and disturbed in sleep by reading their shadowy 
 horrors. 
 
 This style of romances is admirably parodied by 
 Miss Austen in her novel of Northanger Abbey, 
 where Catherine Morland pays her first visit to the 
 Tilneys at the Abbey, a most comfortable house fitted 
 up with all the appliances of modern luxury ; but 
 which, misled by the name, her imagination has 
 painted as full of trap-doors, sliding panels, secret 
 passages, and concealed mysteries.* Henry Tilney 
 tells her that she will have to sleep in a bedroom 
 apart from the rest of the family, and asks, " Will not 
 your mind misgive you when you find yourself in this 
 gloomy chamber, too lofty and extensive for you, with 
 only the feeble rays of a single lamp to take in its 
 size, its walls hung with tapestry exhibiting figures as 
 
 * I am told by a friend, most competent to give an opinion, 
 that Barrett s Heroine is one of the best parodies of these 
 romances, but I have not seen the book. 
 
308 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 large as life, and the bed, of dark-green stuff or pur 
 ple velvet, presenting even a funereal appearance ? 
 "Will not your heart sink within you ? . . . You will 
 proceed into this small vaulted room, and through 
 this into several others, without perceiving any thing 
 very remarkable. In one, perhaps, there may be a 
 dagger, in another a few drops of blood, and in a 
 third the remains of some instrument of torture ; but 
 there being nothing in all this out of the common 
 w$y, and your lamp being nearly exhausted, you will 
 return toward your own apartment. In repassing 
 through the small vaulted room, however, your eyes 
 will be attracted toward a large, old-fashioned cabinet 
 of ebony and gold, which, though narrowly examin 
 ing the furniture before, you had passed unnoticed. 
 Impelled by an irresistible presentiment, you will 
 eagerly advance to it, unlock its folding doors, and 
 search into every drawer ; but for some time without 
 discovering any thing of importance perhaps noth 
 ing but a considerable hoard of diamonds. At last, 
 however, by touching a secret spring, an inner com 
 partment will open, a roll of paper appears, you 
 seize it it contains many sheets of manuscript you 
 hasten with the precious treasure into your own cham 
 ber ; but scarcely have you been able to decipher, 
 4 Oh thou, whosoever thou mayest be, into whose 
 
ROMANCES PARODIED. 309 
 
 hands these memorials of the wretched Matilda may 
 fall, when your lamp suddenly expires in the socket, 
 and leaves you in total darkness." 
 
 After this pleasant description, Catherine retires 
 to her bedroom to dress for dinner, and she is about to 
 unpack her trunk, " when her eye suddenly fell on a 
 large high chest, standing back in a deep recess on 
 one side of the fireplace." She starts in wonder at 
 the sight. Here was the very realization of Henry s 
 imaginary scene. " The lock was silver, though tar 
 nished from age ; at each end were the imperfect re 
 mains of handles also of silver, broken perhaps pre 
 maturely by some strange violence ; and in the centre 
 of the lid was a mysterious cipher in the same metal." 
 The dinner-bell, however, rings, and Catherine has no 
 time to satisfy her eager curiosity. She must wait 
 until bedtime, and then when she goes to her apart 
 ment her eyes are fascinated by the appearance of a 
 high, old-fashioned, black cabinet, which she had not 
 
 O 7 7 j 
 
 observed before. The key is in the door, and with 
 trembling eagerness she tries to unlock it. After 
 some difficulty she succeeds, and she discovers a range 
 of small drawers, which she examines, and at last 
 " her quick eyes fell on a roll of paper pushed back 
 into the farther part of the cavity, apparently for con 
 cealment, and her feelings at that moment were in- 
 
310 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 describable. Her heart fluttered, her knees trembled, 
 and her cheeks grew pale." She seizes the manu 
 script, and in her nervous anxiety snuffs out the can 
 dle, and, as the fire has died away, she is left in total 
 darkness. She creeps into bed, trembling from head 
 to foot, while a howling storm beats against the win 
 dows. In the morning she rushes to the cabinet and 
 clutches the manuscript. " Her greedy eye glanced 
 rapidly over a page. She started at its import. Could 
 it be possible, or did not her senses play her false ? 
 An inventory of linen, in coarse and modern char 
 acters, seemed all that was before her! If the evi 
 dence of sight might be trusted, she held a washing- 
 bill in her hand. She seized another sheet and saw 
 the same articles, with little variation ; a third, a 
 fourth, and a fifth, presented nothing new. Shirts, 
 stockings, cravats, and waistcoats, faced her in each. 
 Two others, penned by the same hand, marked an ex 
 penditure scarcely more interesting, in letters, hair- 
 powder, shoe-string, and breeches-ball. And the larger 
 sheet, which enclosed the rest, seemed, by its first 
 cramp line, To poultice chestnut mare, a farrier s 
 bill ! " 
 
 From the description given by Canning of the 
 novels of his youthful days must be excepted The 
 Man of Feeling, < The Man of the World, and Julia 
 
THE MAN OF FEELING. 311 
 
 de Roubigne, by Mackenzie. I do not know the ex- 
 tict dates when they were published, but I believe 
 before the end of the century, and in point of style 
 they deserve high praise. The Man of Feeling, in 
 deed, can hardly be called a novel, for it has no plot, 
 and consists only of disjointed fragments ; the manu 
 script being assumed to have been used as wadding 
 for his gun by a sporting curate. It reminds us in its 
 tone of Sterne s Sentimental Journey, and contains 
 merely a few unconnected scenes in which the Man 
 of Feeling alleviates distress and indulges in senti 
 ments of pity. The hero is so shy and bashful that he 
 cannot muster courage to declare his attachment to 
 the lady whom he loves until he is on his death-bed, 
 when she reciprocates the passion ; but it is too late. 
 He visits Bedlam, where the insane were treated more 
 like wild beasts than men. " The clanking of chains, 
 the wildness of their cries, and the imprecations which 
 some of them uttered, formed a scene inexpressibly 
 shocking." And such scenes might then, and for a 
 long time afterward, be witnessed in every lunatic- 
 asylum in the kingdom. " Terror, and not kindness, 
 was the mode in which the poor afflicted creatures 
 were treated, and the result, of course, was that few 
 were restored to their senses." 
 
 6 The Man of the World is a regularly-constructed 
 
312 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 novel, and is much more interesting than the desultory 
 sketches of The Man of Feeling, although the chief 
 incidents are robbery, seduction, and attempted incest. 
 A country clergyman named Annesley has two chil 
 dren, a son and daughter, named William and Harriet. 
 The squire of the parish where he resides is a young 
 baronet, Sir Thomas Sindall, who is studying at Ox 
 ford, but in the course of his vacations at home is 
 smitten by the beauty of Harriet, and determines if 
 possible to seduce her. To effect this purpose he 
 thinks it necessary to undermine the principles of her 
 brother, and get him into his power. He therefore 
 persuades the father to send him to Oxford, where, 
 being introduced by the baronet into a loose set of 
 young men, he becomes a gambler, and is extricated 
 from his debts by advances from Sir Thomas Sindall. 
 At last, on a pretended promise of being engaged as a 
 travelling tutor, he is inveigled to London, where he 
 is again entrapped into play, and stripped of his last 
 shilling. Driven to desperation, he possesses himself 
 of a pistol, attacks the " chair " of the man who had 
 won his money in the streets at night, and succeeds in 
 robbing him. He is, however, tracked to his lodgings, 
 arrested, and thrown into Newgate to take his trial 
 for the capital felony. His sister Harriet comes to 
 town to visit him in prison, and there meets Sir Thorn- 
 
THE MAN OF THE WOKLD. 313 
 
 as, who pretends the most sincere friendship and pity. 
 William Annesley is arraigned, and pleads guilty. Sen 
 tence of death is passed, but the punishment is com 
 muted to transportation for twelve years. Harriet 
 leaves London to return to her father s house, but on 
 the road is taken to a country inn, where Sir Thomas, 
 who, with her female attendant, had accompanied her, 
 overpowers her reason by means of drugs, and effects 
 her ruin. She reaches home and conceals her shame 
 from her father, but in the course of time becomes a 
 mother, and the child is taken away under the care of 
 a woman. Nothing further is heard of them, and a 
 cloak and other clothes found by the side of a river 
 lead to the supposition that they have been drowned. 
 The father, who is in weak health, hears the sad tale 
 and dies, and his wretched daughter dies also. Years 
 pass on, Sir Thomas Sindall goes abroad, and when 
 he returns home brings with him a young lady who, 
 he says, had been confided to his care by a friend when 
 he was at the point of death. She grows up, and is 
 beloved by a cousin of Sir Thomas named Booth, 
 whose affection she returns. But the infamous baronet 
 wishes to make her his victim, and when she fully 
 understands his designs, she escapes from the house, 
 but, being betrayed by her attendant, is overtaken and 
 
 conveyed to the house of one of his creatures, where 
 1! 
 
314: NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 she is on the point of being outraged by Sir Thomas, 
 when a woman the person to whom the care of 
 Harriet s child had been intrusted rushes into the 
 room, and exclaims that the young lady is Sir Thom 
 as s own daughter, the long-lost child of Harriet. In 
 the mean time her cries have brought upon the scene 
 Harriet s brother "William, who had returned from 
 transportation, and Booth. A scuffle ensues, swords 
 are drawn, and Sir Thomas is mortally wounded. I 
 need not add that his daughter and Booth are after 
 ward happily married, and so the story, of which the 
 above is a mere outline, ends. 
 
 Although the incidents of this novel are very 
 much in unison with the incidents of the novels of 
 the century, with its profligate hero, its ruined maid 
 en, and its lone country inn as the scene of villany, 
 there is a marked improvement over most of them in 
 tone and style. There is no coarseness, and no vul 
 garity, nor, unless my memory deceives me, does the 
 book contain a single oath. It betokens the dawn of 
 a period of more refined literary taste, whicji was soon 
 to brighten into day in the pages of Miss Austen and 
 Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 Julia de Eoubigne has the uncommon fault of be 
 ing only too short. The story is told in a series of 
 letters, and the scenes are laid entirely in France. 
 
JULIA DE ROUBIGNE. 315 
 
 The heroine is the daughter of a French gentleman, 
 reduced from affluence to poverty, whose hand is 
 sought by a wealthy neighbor, M. Montauban, con 
 siderably older than herself. She at first refuses him, 
 but is won over by his generosity to her father, whom 
 he extricates from his difficulties, and she consents to 
 marry him. But she does so in the belief that Savil- 
 lon, the early object of her secret love, who had gone 
 abroad, was married to another. This, however, was 
 a mistake, and Savillon returns to France free to de 
 clare his passion, but learns that Julia is the wife of 
 Montauban. He writes, pressing for a secret inter 
 view, which she reluctantly and with perfect inno 
 cence of purpose consents to grant. But the suspi 
 cions of her husband are aroused, and when he has 
 proof that the meeting has taken place, he determines 
 to poison her. This he accomplishes by giving her a 
 poisoned drink as a cordial, and when he finds from 
 her dying avowal to him of all that had taken place, 
 that she is perfectly innocent, he destroys himself with 
 laudanum. The story is told in a charming style, 
 and it is difficult to read parts of it without being 
 affected to tears. 
 
 In one of his brilliant essays, Lord Macaulay says 
 that " Miss Burney first showed that a tale might be 
 written in which both the fashionable and the vulgar 
 
316 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 life of London might be exhibited with great force 
 and with broad comic humor, and which yet should 
 not contain a single line inconsistent with rigid mo 
 rality, or even with virgin delicacy." But this is car 
 rying praise too far. There are scenes in * Evelina 
 which are certainly not such as virgin delicacy now 
 would imagine, and still less portray. 
 
 What are we to think of the scene in " Marybone 
 Gardens," where Evelina, to protect herself from the 
 insults of a young officer, throws herself upon two 
 courtesans, and walks with them arm in arm ; and 
 when she leaves them, they get a gentleman between 
 them and pinch and pinion him to the great amuse 
 ment of the Miss Branghtons? This is certainly a 
 situation not very consistent with " virgin delicacy " 
 of mind, to say nothing of the extreme vulgarity of 
 the talk of such creatures as Captain Mirvan, Madame 
 Duval, and the whole family of Branghtons. At the 
 Pantheon a young lady, the sister of Lord Orville, 
 pretends to scold a young nobleman for a profane 
 allusion, and he parries the attack by saying, " And 
 how can one sit by you and be good, when only to 
 look at you is enough to make one wicked, or wish to 
 be so ? " But it is impossible to read c Evelina with 
 out seeing that a state of society existed which was 
 very different from that of the present day, and feel- 
 
EVELINA. 317 
 
 ing thankful that our sisters and daughters can fre 
 quent public places, whether parks or gardens or ball 
 rooms, without being exposed to libertine advances, 
 or offended by impertinent remarks. 
 
 "What Lord Macaulay says of Evelina applies 
 more truly to Miss Burney s Cecilia, written at a 
 later period ; for this novel is really free from objec 
 tionable matter, so far as modesty is concerned. But 
 it is not nearly so interesting a story, and is much 
 more prosy. "We respect Cecilia and all her well- 
 meaning resolutions ; but we fall in love with Eve 
 lina, whose mistakes arise from the charming inno 
 cence of her heart. 
 
 It was for a long time believed that Miss Burney 
 was only seventeen when she wrote Evelina. If so, 
 it was indeed an extraordinary book ; but the ques 
 tion depended upon the exact period of her birth ; 
 and when Croker edited Boswell s Life of Johnson, 
 he took the pains, most properly and naturally one 
 would think, to ascertain the fact by examining the 
 parish register of the town where she was born, and 
 it turned out that she was twenty-six when Evelina 
 was published. But this excited the ire of Macaulay, 
 who hated Croker ; and in an article on the e Diary 
 and Letters of Madame d Arblay he sneers at him, 
 as if he had done an ungentlemanly action. He says 
 
318 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 that Miss Burney was too honest to confirm the re 
 port : "probably she was too much a woman to con 
 tradict it : " and that, although there was no want of 
 low minds and bad hearts in the generation which 
 witnessed her first appearance as an authoress, " it 
 did not, however, occur to them to search the parish 
 register at Lynn in order that they might be able to 
 twit a lady with having concealed her age. That 
 truly chivalrous exploit was reserved for a bad writer 
 of our own time, whose spite she had provoked by 
 not furnishing him with materials for a worthless 
 edition of Boswell s Life of Johnson, some sheets 
 of which our readers have doubtless seen round par 
 cels of better books." I think it would be difficult in 
 the annals of criticism to beat this. But when Lord 
 Macaulay wrote that Miss Burney was too honest to 
 confirm the report about her age, he forgot that in 
 her preface to Evelina, which was published anony 
 mously, she speaks of herself " as a young female edu 
 cated in the most secluded retirement," who " makes, 
 at the age of seventeen, her first appearance on the 
 great and busy stage of life." * 
 
 * In his edition of Boswcll s Life of Johnson, Croker took 
 upon himself to omit, as he says, " in one or two instances, an 
 indecent passage ; and to substitute in two or three others, for 
 a coarse word, a more decorous equivalent." For this he was 
 
MISS EDGEAYOKTH S BELINDA. 319 
 
 In his History of English Literature, the late 
 Mr. Shaw passes a rather severe criticism on this 
 lady s works. " The chief defect of her novels," he 
 says, " is vulgarity of feeling ; not that falsely-called 
 vulgarity which describes with congenial animation 
 low scenes and humble personages, but the affectation 
 of delicacy and refinement. The heroines are per 
 petually trembling at the thought of impropriety, and 
 exhibit a nervous, restless dread of appearing indeli 
 cate, that absolutely renders them the very essence 
 of vulgarity." I do not think that this is quite fair. 
 Evelina and Cecilia are not vulgar, and the reason 
 why they tremble at the thought of "impropriety" 
 is that the manners of the age constantly exposed 
 young women to contact with it both in conversation 
 and conduct. They could not mix in society without 
 hearing at times libertine language, from which they 
 must have shrunk in proportion to their purity. 
 
 Miss Edgeworth s novel of Belinda was pub 
 lished in 1801, and belongs, therefore, to the present 
 century, but it describes a state of manners in fash- 
 
 attacked by Macaulay, who called it capricious delicacy, and 
 regretted the suppression of " a strong, old-fashioned English 
 word, familiar to all who read their Bibles." It is needless to 
 determine which of the disputants was right but at all events 
 the controversy shows the difference between our free-spoken 
 forefathers and ourselves. 
 
320 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 ionable life, whicli we may be certain is not worse 
 than prevailed previously. In her preface, or adver 
 tisement, she called her story a Moral Tale, " not wish 
 ing to acknowledge a Novel," because " so much folly, 
 error, and vice, are disseminated in books classed un 
 der this denomination." * The heroine is a young 
 lady who is sent by her aunt to London to pay a long 
 visit to Lady Delacour, a fashionable dame, who is 
 the victim of a disease which she supposes to be a 
 cancer, and conceals from the knowledge of her hus 
 band and friends, putting herself in the hands of .a 
 quack doctor, with whom she has several interviews, 
 in a small boudoir opening out of her bedroom; and 
 these lead to the suspicion that she is engaged in 
 some improper intrigue. The ailment from which 
 she suffers was caused by a blow from a pistol, whicli 
 she fired into the air when she met another lady witli 
 whom she had been engaged to fight a duel ! She 
 bears a brave front to the world, and assumes a gay 
 appearance while she is consumed by inward agony. 
 The language which some of the young men admitted 
 to the society of Lady Delacour and Belinda make 
 
 * Lord Jeffrey said : " A greater mass of trash and rubbish 
 never disgraced the press of any country than the ordinary 
 novels that filled and supported our circulating libraries, down 
 nearly to the time of Miss Edgeworth s first appearance." 
 
NOVELS AT THE END OF THE CENTURY. 321 
 
 use of in tlieir presence is studded with oaths and 
 such as would be thought grossly improbable, if not 
 impossible, now. And Mrs. Freke is nearly as bad ; 
 if she does not actually swear, she conies very near it 
 in her talk, of which I have already, in a previous 
 page, given a specimen. 
 
 Xow, Ave must assume that Miss Edgeworth in 
 tended to represent the conversation and manners of 
 society as she believed them to exist although, no 
 doubt, Mrs. Freke is, in some respects, a caricature ; 
 and if her representation is true, we cannot but come 
 to the conclusion that morality and good manners 
 were at a very low ebb in fashionable life. 
 
 "With the name of Jane Austen these references to 
 the novels of the last century may fitly end. But 
 before saying a few words about her, I may, in pass 
 ing, mention another authoress worthy of being placed 
 beside her, and belonging to the same period I mean 
 Miss Ferrier wiiose three novels, Marriage, 4 Inher 
 itance, and i Destiny, especially the two former, I 
 consider among the best in the English language. 
 Sir Walter Scott speaks of her as a gifted personage 
 . . . full of humor, and exceedingly ready at repar 
 tee ; and all this without the least affectation of the 
 blue-stocking." And Allan Cunningham says : " Edge- 
 worth, Ferrier, and Austen, have all given portraits 
 
322 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 of real society far superior to any thing man vain 
 man has produced of the like nature." 
 
 But to return to Jane Austen. Strictly speaking, 
 this charming writer belongs to the present century, 
 for her first publication took place in 1811. But 
 three of her novels were written several years before, 
 and two of them had been offered in vain to the book 
 sellers. Fully to appreciate the excellence of Miss 
 Austen s works, one ought to have some acquaintance 
 with the state of the literature of fiction at the time 
 she began to write. Besides the gloomy horrors of 
 the Radcliffe school, there was a flood of weak and 
 vapid novels which deluged the libraries with trash. 
 
 In Hannah More s Coelebs the hero questions 
 two young ladies on the subject of books, and one of 
 them says that she had read Tears of Sensibility, 
 and Rosa Matilda, and Sympathy of Souls, and 
 Too Civil by Half, and < The Sorrows of Werter, 
 and c The Stranger, and The Orphans of Snowdon. 
 " Yes, sir, joined in the younger sister, w^ho had 
 not risen to so high a pitch of literature, and we 
 have read Perfidy Punished, and Jemmy and Jen 
 ny Jessamy, and The Fortunate Footman, and The 
 Illustrious Chambermaid. : I do not think that these 
 were much worse, in point of morality, than many of 
 the novels which now appear, and of which the inci- 
 
MISS AUSTEST. 323 
 
 dents seem to be taken from tlie records of the Police 
 Courts and the Divorce Courts ; but the misfortune 
 was, that at that time, a young lady had very little 
 choice, and her mind must feed upon such garbage, 
 or abstain from novel-reading altogether. 
 
 It is wonderful to think that Jane Austen, a young 
 woman, the daughter of a country clergyman, brought 
 up in absolute retirement, should, by the intuitive 
 force of genius, have been able to produce a series of 
 fictions which, in a knowledge of the anatomy of the 
 human heart, in purity and gracefulness of style, and 
 in individuality of character, have never been sur 
 passed.* We are introduced, at once, into the do 
 mestic life of England at the close of the century, 
 and find that in her pages it does not much differ 
 from that of the present day the periwigs and swords 
 have disappeared, and the habits of society are much 
 the same as now. But still there are some differences 
 which it is curious to observe, considering how short, 
 in point of time, is the distance that separates us from 
 the writer, and that there are still living persons who 
 remember her. She is fond of introducing clergymen 
 
 * The late Sir George Lewis coupled the names of Defoe 
 and Miss Austen together as writers of fiction, "which observes 
 nil the canons of probability." See his Credibility of Early 
 Roman History, vol. ii. p. 489. 
 
324 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 into her stories, and in some of them they are the 
 heroes of the tale. But theology, and indeed reli 
 gion, is kept entirely in the background. The type is 
 rather secular than religious. But it is far higher 
 and more refined than in the conceptions of the 
 earlier novelists, although not so refined as it appears 
 in the pages of a distinguished writer of the present 
 day I mean Anthony Trollope who excels in the 
 description of sleek Canons and polished Archdea 
 cons, and courtly Bishops. The Reverend Josiah 
 Crawl ey, perpetual curate of Hogglestock, would, in 
 the hands of Fielding or Smollett, have been repre 
 sented as smoking tobacco in the kitchen, drinking 
 beer in the ale-house, and involved in very question 
 able scenes ; but with all his poverty and obstinacy, 
 he is a perfect gentleman and an accomplished scholar. 
 The line which is now more strictly drawn as to the 
 amusements in which the clergy allow themselves to 
 indulge, was, in Miss Austen s time, more flexible 
 and although in Mansfield Park the young clergy 
 man, Edmund Bertram, has some misgivings as to the 
 propriety of taking part in private theatricals, it is 
 thought quite a matter of course that clergymen should 
 dance at public balls, as the .Rev. Mr. Tilney, in 
 4 ]STorthanger Abbey, does at Bath. And the view 
 taken of a clergyman s duties was very superficial. 
 
MISS AUSTEN. 325 
 
 With a snug parsonage and decent income it seems 
 to have been supposed that nothing more was incum 
 bent upon him than to preach a few sermons, and he 
 might enjoy the pleasures of life with as little restric 
 tion as if he were a layman. 
 
 In Persuasion we have the following recommen 
 dation of a living : " And a very good living it was, 
 Charles added ; only five-and-twenty miles from Up- 
 percross, and in a very fine country fine part of Dor 
 setshire. In the centre of some of the best preserves 
 in the kingdom, surrounded by three great proprie 
 tors, each more careful and jealous than the other. : 
 
 In Sense and Sensibility, Robert Ferrars laughs 
 at the idea of his brother Edward becoming a clergy 
 man. " The idea of Edward s being a clergyman, 
 and living in a small parsonage-house, diverted him 
 beyond measure; and when to that was added the 
 fanciful imagery of Edward reading prayers in a 
 white surplice, and publishing the banns of marriage 
 between John Smith and Mary Bacon, he could con 
 ceive nothing more ridiculous." And in i Mansfield 
 Park, the elder brother of Edmund Bertram says, 
 when Edmund is about to be ordained : " Seven hun 
 dred a year is a fine thing for a younger brother; and 
 a?, of course, he will live at home, it will be all for 
 his menus plaisirs ; and a sermon at Christmas and 
 
326 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 Easter, I suppose, will be the sum total of all the sacri 
 fice." It is, however, only fair to state that Edmund 
 has a higher and more worthy conception of the du 
 ties of a clergyman. 
 
 The vice of drunkenness hardly appears in Miss 
 Austen s novels ; but she represents the Rev. Mr. El 
 ton as flustered with wine, if not quite tipsy, when he 
 surprises Emma by a declaration of his attachment as 
 they drive home together in a carriage after a dinner 
 party. And in another of her novels she speaks of a 
 clergyman " breathing of wine " as he passes from the 
 dining-room to the drawing-room to join the ladies. 
 
 "We are told by the Rev. Austen Leigh, in the 
 sketch he has lately published of Miss Austen s life, 
 that she was never in love. It is difficult to believe 
 this ; but, if so, it is an additional proof of her won 
 derful acquaintance with the human heart, that she 
 was able to write, 
 
 " In maiden meditation fancy-free," 
 
 and yet to describe love in all its mysteries and effects, 
 with a subtlety of analysis and skill which make her 
 almost unapproachable among novelists. Where shall 
 we find elsewhere such touching pictures of concealed 
 and aching attachment, where all hope seems to be 
 struck dead, as in Fanny Price in Mansfield Park, 
 
HUSBAND-HUNTING. 327 
 
 in Elinor Dash wood in Sense and Sensibility, and in 
 Anne Elliot in Persuasion ? The last heroine, one 
 of the most charming of Miss Austen s characters, 
 says to Captain Harville, " All the privilege I claim 
 for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one, you need 
 not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence 
 or when hope is gone." And how finely contrasted 
 with the o-nawino; tooth of this " worm i the bud " is 
 
 & O 
 
 the half-formed love of Elizabeth Bennet for Mr. Dar- 
 cy in Pride and Prejudice, and the undisguised and 
 artless love of Catherine Morland for Mr. Tilney in 
 4 Northanger Abbey ! 
 
 One thing, however, that strikes us in these novels 
 is the excessive and obtrusive eagerness of all the 
 minor heroines to get married. Are we to think that 
 husband-hunting was the sole object in life of daugh 
 ters, and the sole object for which mothers existed ? 
 Pride and Prejudice opens with the sentence that 
 when a single man of good fortune settles in a neigh 
 borhood the maxim that he must be in want of a wife 
 " is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding fam 
 ilies that he is considered as the rightful property of 
 some one or other of their daughters." And when the 
 llev. Mr. Collins, who, it must be admitted, is in 
 tended as a fool, comes to visit his cousins with the 
 intention of proposing to one of them, the first words 
 
328 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 lie speaks in the presence of the young ladies, the Miss 
 Ben nets, is to assure them that he comes prepared to 
 admire them. Here " he was interrupted by a sum 
 mons to dinner ; and the girls smiled on each other." 
 As to Mrs. Bennet, she thinks, and dreams, and speaks 
 of nothing else but getting her girls married. And 
 the last chapter tells us that " happy for all her ma 
 ternal feelings was the day on which Mrs. Bennet (jot 
 rid of her two most deserving daughters " by marriage. 
 The story of Emma is nothing but match-mak 
 ing from beginning to end, and a very charming story 
 indeed it is. In c Sense and Sensibility Marianne 
 Dash wood, who represents sensibility as opposed to 
 her sister Elinor s sense, happens to fall and sprain her 
 ankle, and is carried by a stranger to her mother s 
 house. Sir John Middleton calls soon afterward, and 
 on being asked about the unknown by Elinor answers, 
 " Yes, yes, he is well worth catching, I can tell you, 
 Miss Dashwood ; he has a pretty little estate of his 
 own in Somersetshire besides ; and if I were you I 
 would not give him up to my younger sister, in spite 
 of all this tumbling down-hills." In c Northanger 
 Abbey, the heroine, Catherine Morland, dances twice 
 in the Lower Rooms at Bath with a young clergyman, 
 whom she has never seen before ; and her friend Miss 
 Thorpe, to whom she mentions the circumstance, im- 
 
THE LITERATURE OF FICTION. 329 
 
 mediately assumes that she lias fallen desperately in 
 love with him exclaiming, when his sister is pointed 
 out to her, "But where is her all-conquering brother ? 
 Is he in the room ? Point him out to me this instant 
 if he is. I die to see him." This is the speech of a 
 silly girl, but from the general tone of the characters 
 in these novels it would really seem as if it were 
 thought that no man could look twice at a woman, or 
 show her ordinary civility, without falling in love with 
 her ; or that, at all events, every woman was entitled 
 to construe the commonest attentions as declarations 
 of attachment. 
 
 I feel that I am treading on delicate ground, and 
 my opinion on such a subject is perhaps worth little ; 
 but I cannot believe that, except among those who 
 are known by the sobriquet of " Belgravian mothers," 
 young women at the present day are so brought up. 
 That they should desire to be happily married is most 
 reasonable, and that they should fall in love is most 
 natural but this is something very different from the 
 constant husband-hunting which we see displayed in 
 Miss Austen s novels. For the change that has taken 
 place in this respect several reasons may be assigned. 
 In the first place, there is generally nowadays among 
 gentlewomen a greater degree of modesty and reserve ; 
 they are also better educated, and do not feed their 
 
330 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 minds with such trash as the old circulating libraries 
 supplied. In the next, their resources are greatly 
 multiplied, and they can find in works of charity and 
 benevolence, in visiting the sick and ministering to 
 the wants of the poor, means of occupation and out 
 lets for their affections, which were practically un 
 known to young women of a former generation. 
 
 It is happily no part of my plan to discuss the 
 novels of the present century, for their number would 
 render the task one of appalling magnitude. In no 
 department of literature has authorship been so pro 
 lific as the Literature of Fiction. And, taking it as a 
 whole, we have good reason to be proud of it. Ko 
 nation can produce the names of novelists which can 
 stand a comparison I speak only of writers who are 
 deceased with those of Scott, Thackeray, and Dick 
 ens.* So far as my knowledge of them extends, 
 German novels are heavy and uninteresting, and over 
 loaded with minute details of family menage while 
 those of France, with a few brilliant exceptions 
 among which I cannot refrain from mentioning the 
 names of Louis Reybaud and the dual-authors Erck- 
 
 * When I visited, in Paris, the prison called Maison des Con- 
 damnes, or La fioquette, and was in the library there, I asked 
 what books were most read by the prisoners, and I was told 
 that they were translations of the novels of Sir Walter Scott. 
 
USES OF FICTIOK 331 
 
 rnann-Cliatrian arc defiled by impurity. Since the 
 beginning of the reign of Louis Philippe, the French 
 press has been deluged with novels of what I may 
 call the Cyprian School, the staple incidents of which 
 are crime, seduction, and adultery. If we may take 
 these as any indication of the state of morals in 
 France, it is difficult not to believe that it was cor 
 rupt to the very core. And whatever exception may 
 be made for the provinces, where domestic purity was 
 less exposed to attack, I fear that this may be said, 
 with too much truth of the luxurious capital. If 
 there had not been a demand for such a literature, the 
 supply would soon have ceased ; but the supply went 
 on increasing, and betokened that 
 
 increase of appetite 
 Had grown Iby what it fed upon." 
 
 In our own country there have of late been novels 
 and some of them from female pens which, if not 
 quite so unreserved in their details of profligacy, have 
 been quite as bad in their tone and tendency. But 
 the difference is this : In England they have been 
 rather the exception than the rule ; w r hereas in France 
 they have been the rule and not the exception. 
 "Would, however, that all novelists bore in mind the 
 responsibility of their vocation ! There is no litera- 
 
332 NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 
 
 ture so fascinating, and none which is perused with 
 more avidity by the young. The old prejudice which 
 condemned novel-reading as dangerous and improper 
 has almost worn away, and people have the sense to 
 see that lessons of purity and truth may be taught 
 most attractively when dressed in the garb of fiction, 
 whether that fiction assume the form of parable or 
 novel. What Bacon says of Poetry applies equally 
 to Prose Fiction : " Therefore, because the acts or 
 wants of true history have not that magnitude which 
 satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and 
 events greater and more heroical; because true his 
 tory propoundeth the successes and issues of actions 
 not so agreeable to the merits of virtue and vice, 
 therefore poesy feigns them more just in retribution, 
 and more according to revealed Providence; because 
 true history representeth actions and events more or 
 dinary and less interchanged, therefore poesy indueth 
 them with more rareness, and more unexpected and 
 alternative variations ; so it appeareth that poesy 
 serveth and conformeth to magnanimity, morality, 
 and delectation." * 
 
 And even if the story has no moral, it is enough 
 if it supplies the means of innocent recreation ; and 
 it need not be like Coelebs in Search of a Wife, 
 * Advancement of Learning, Book ii. 
 
RESPONSIBILITY OF NOVELISTS. 333 
 
 which has been called a " dramatic sermon." Youth 
 is the season of imagination, and the imagination re 
 quires its proper aliment as much as any other of our 
 faculties. But what shall we say of the writer who 
 feeds it with the poison of impurity, and, having the 
 power to range at will over the whole realm of fancy, 
 chooses for his subject the prurient details of vice and 
 crime ? The coarseness of the novels of the last cen 
 tury may, to a certain extent, have acted as an anti 
 dote to the harm which they would otherwise have 
 done, for often in them 
 
 " Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, 
 As to be hated needs but to be seen ; " 
 
 although the age was so coarse that I doubt whether 
 these lines were quite applicable then. But now a 
 thin veil of decency is thrown over incidents which 
 in themselves are as immoral as any of the adven 
 tures of Peregrine Pickle or Tom Jones, and the 
 only antidote to their insidious mischief is their silli 
 ness and stupidity. Indeed, the veil of decency makes 
 some of the modern novels more dangerous than the 
 
 O 
 
 old ; just as, to use the illustration which Bacon has 
 drawn from the Hebrew law regarding leprosy, "If 
 the whiteness have overspread the flesh, the patient 
 
334 XOVELS AM> NOVELISTS. 
 
 may go abroad for clean ; hut if there be any whole 
 flesh remaining, he is to he shut ^lp for unclean" 
 which " noteth a position of moral philosophy, that 
 men, abandoned to vice, do not so much corrupt 
 manners as those that are half-good and half-evil." 
 Again, I say, let novelists remember the responsibil 
 ity they incur in the creation of their fictions. It 
 would be well if they would lay to heart the words 
 of an American writer, with which I will conclude 
 this volume : 
 
 " If they " (i. e., the ideals w r e set before us) " are 
 consistent with the conditions of our human nature 
 and our human life, if they are conformed to the 
 physical and moral laws of our nature, and the Gov 
 ernment and will of God, they are healthful and en 
 nobling. Such ideals can scarcely be too high or too 
 ardently and steadfastly adhered to. But if they arc 
 false in their theory of life and happiness, if they are 
 untrue to the conditions of our actual existence, if 
 they involve the disappointment of our hopes, and 
 discontent with real life, they are the bane of all en 
 joyments, and fatal to true happiness. The brief 
 excitement which these unreal dreams occasion, 
 however highly wrought this excitement may be, 
 is a poor offset to the painful contrasts which they 
 
RESPONSIBILITY OF NOVELISTS. 335 
 
 necessarily involve." * The author is here speaking 
 of the day-dreams of our waking thoughts ; but 
 what he says applies equally to the fictions of the 
 
 Kovelist. 
 
 * Porter on The Human Intellect, 7 pp. 371, 372. New York, 
 1869. 
 
A. 
 
 ABDUCTION, 244. 
 
 Addison, 22, 28, 47, 73, 122. 
 
 Adventures of Count Fathom, 
 
 147, 274. 
 Amelia, 17, 69, 91, 97, 108, 112, 
 
 270-273. 
 
 Amorous Widow, 40. 
 Astrsea, 176, 178. 
 Atalantis, New, 155, 190. 
 Athenaeus, 25, 72. 
 Austen, Miss Jane, 46, 87, 104, 307, 
 
 321-329. 
 
 B. 
 
 Bacon, 332, 333. 
 
 Barnbridge, Trial of, 95. 
 
 Bate, Eev. Henry, 109. 
 
 Bath. 35, 294. 
 
 Bathing in Public, 35. 
 
 Beau Nash, 30, 88. 
 
 Beaux, 70. 
 
 Behn, Mrs., 59, 176-180. 
 
 Belinda, 102. 107, 109, 133, 319. 
 
 Bracegirdle, Mrs., 82. 
 
 Bradshaigh, Lady, 40, 42, 250-254, 
 
 257. 
 
 Brooke, Henry, 20, 28, 55, 98, 168. 
 Buck-parson, 134. 
 Bucks, 70. 
 Burney, Miss, 37, 41, 317. 
 
 C. 
 
 Coelebs, 322, 332. 
 Oalderwood, Mrs., 89. 
 Cameron, Dr., 65. 
 
 Canning, 105, 263, 306, 310. 
 Capital Punishment, 53. 
 Caricature, 56, 107. 
 Carlylc, 15. 
 Cassock, 137. 
 Cecilia, 68. 
 Chances, The, 40. 
 Chesterfield, Lord, 35. 
 
 sal, or the Adv _ 
 
 Guinea, 167, 168. 
 Cibber, Colley, 246, 247. 
 Clarissa Harlowe 135, 171, 214- 
 
 217. 
 
 Clergy, The, 125-1 37, 324-326. 
 Distinction between Town and 
 
 Country, 132. 
 Clubs, 72. 
 Coaches, 84. 
 Coffee-houses, 72. 
 Coleridge, 25, 175, 257, 260. 
 Connoisseur, 16, 30, 71, 79, 110. 
 Contempt of the Clergy, 125, 131. 
 Conversation, Essay on, 164. 
 
 Country Squires, 116, 117, 123. 
 Coverley, Sir Koger de, 83, 
 
 m- 
 
 124. 
 
 Cowper s (Lady) Diary, 39, 65. 88, 
 
 100. 
 Croker and Lord Macaulay, 317, 318. 
 
 D. 
 
 Debtors, Law against, 98. 
 
 Defoe, 11, 22, 213, 263. 
 
 Delany, Mrs., 62, 85, 100, 107, 245, 
 
 256. 
 
 De Quincey, 27. 
 Derwentwater, Lord, 64. 
 Dickens, 56, 242. 
 Dinner-hour, 210. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 337 
 
 Dress of Gentlemen, 63. 
 
 of Ladies, 61. 
 Drunkenness, 91, 99-103. 
 Drums, G9. 
 Duelling, 107-113. 
 
 E. 
 
 Edgeworth, Miss, 319-321. 
 
 Edinburgh, 295. 
 
 Emma 328. 
 
 English Humorist, 49. 
 
 Epliraim the Quaker, 37. 
 
 Essayists, 44-47. 
 
 Evelina, 35, 41, 171, 336. 
 
 Executions, 90, 92. 
 
 Extravagance of Conduct, < 
 
 F. 
 
 Fair Hypocrite, 197-202. 
 Faro s Daughters, 107. 
 Female Quixote, 34, 155-157 
 Fielding, 17, 24, 90, 241, 25G-273, 
 
 275. 
 
 Fleet Marriages, 138-151. 
 Fleet Prison, 94. 
 Fleet Kegisters, 147. 
 Flying Coach, The, 84. 
 Fool of Quality, 20, 
 
 168-171. 
 French Novels, 330. 
 
 28, 55, 98, 
 
 G. 
 
 Gambling. 106. 
 
 Gay s Trivia, 83, 127. 
 
 Gent, Thomas, 93. 157. 
 
 Godwin, 99, 117. 
 
 Goldsmith, 30, 51, 64. 299-306, 
 
 1 Grandison, Sir Charles 30, 32, 76, 
 
 112, 171, 219-239. 
 Greeks, Love as described by, 24. 
 Grub-Street Journal, 142. 
 Gunnings, Miss, 70, 149. 
 
 H. 
 
 Ilarrogate, 294. 
 Hell-fire Club, 16. 
 Herschel, Sir John, 214. 
 Ileywood, Mrs., 176, 203. 
 Highwaymen, 88-92. 
 15 
 
 Hill, Captain, 82. 
 
 Hogarth, 49. 
 
 Hoop-petticoats, 63. 
 
 House-rents, 82. 
 
 Huggins, Trial of, 96. 
 
 Humphry Clinker, 36, 61, 79, 81, 
 
 109, 288-297. 
 Husband-hunting, 327. 
 
 I. 
 
 * Idler, The, 46, 99. 
 Imprisonment for Debt, 
 Insults to Women, 36. 
 
 J. 
 
 Jeffrey, Lord, 320. 
 
 Johnson, Dr., 13, 24, 45, 64, 73, 77, 
 
 108, 110, 118, 218, 318. 
 Jokes, Practical, 71. 
 Joseph Andrews, 130, 136, 268- 
 
 270. 
 
 * Julia do Koubigne", 314. 
 Justice of the Peace, 114. 
 
 K. 
 
 Kingsley, Eev. Charles, 20, 55, 168. 
 Kingston, Duchess of, 68. 
 
 L. 
 
 Laborer, Condition of, 19, 
 Lecky s History of Eationalism, 
 
 47,52,54. 
 
 Letters, Novels under Form of, 173. 
 Lewis, Sir George, 323. 
 London, 81, 82, 290. 
 Love, 25-32. 
 
 Love and Madness, 34. 
 Love for Love, 41. 
 
 M. 
 
 Macaulay, Lord, 47, 128, 214, 315, 
 
 317 2 318. 
 Maccaromes, 70. 
 Mackenzie, 311. 
 
 Malmesbury, Earl of, Letters, 90. 
 Manley, Mrs., 196. 
 Man of Feeling, The, 310. 
 
338 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 4 Man of the World, The, 311. 
 Mansfield Park, 324. 
 Marriage, 73-76, 236. 
 Marriage of the Clergy, 128. 
 Marybone Gardens, 77, 316. 
 Masquerades, 68. 
 Matrimony, 73-76. 
 Memoirs of a Lady of Quality, 
 
 34, 287. 
 
 Microcosm, 105, 263, 306. 
 Miss Betsy Thoughtless 35, 81, 
 
 111, 203-212. 
 Modesty, Want of, 35. 
 Mohock Club, 83. 
 Moliere, 156, 157. 
 Montagu, Lady Mary Wortlcy, 129. 
 
 N. 
 
 New Atalantis, 155, 106. 
 Newspapers, Modern, 48. 
 Northanger Abbey, 46, 307, 327. 
 Novelists, Responsibility of, 333. 
 
 O. 
 
 Oldham s Poem on the Clergy, 126. 
 Oroonoko, 181-187. 
 
 P. 
 
 Painting, 49. 
 
 Pamela, 129, 214, 218. 
 
 Parson, 125-137, 324-326. 
 
 4 Peregrine Pickle, 34, 65 138, 276- 
 
 287. 
 
 Periwigs, 65. 
 Peter Pindar, 134. 
 Petticoats, 63. 
 Persuasion 327. 
 Polly Honeycomb, 159, 16u. 
 Pompey, or the Adventures of a 
 
 Lap-Dog, 168. 
 Porter on The Human Intellect, 
 
 334. 
 
 Pretty Fellows, 70. 
 Pride and Prejudice, 327. 
 Prisons, 94. 
 Puritans, 54. 
 
 B. 
 
 Radcliffc, Mrs., 307. 
 Eanelagh, 77-80. 
 
 Refinement, Want of, 17. 
 
 Religion, 21, 24. 
 
 Richardson, 29, 40, 42, 70, 86, 151, 
 
 153, 163, 217, 236, 2G1, 2G8, 
 
 272. 
 
 his Style, 241. 
 
 Correspondence, 245-254. 
 
 Portrait of, 253, 254. 
 
 Roads, State of, 84. 
 Robberies, 88-92. 
 Romances, the Old, 152-154. 
 
 Parodied, 307-310. 
 
 Romans, Love as described by, 25. 
 Rosamond s Pond, 210. 
 Roxana, 263. 
 
 Satire, 56. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 58, 330. 
 
 Sermons of Swift. 22. 
 
 Sense and Sensibility, 325, 328. 
 
 Settlement, Law of, 18. 
 
 Shaw s History of English Litera 
 ture, 17, 318. 
 
 4 Simple Story, 108, 172. 
 
 Smollett, 274-276. 
 
 Social Aspects, 15. 46, 74. 
 
 Society, State of, 58. 
 
 Spectator, 37, 39, 46, GO, 84, 104, 
 121, 122, 136. 
 
 Spiritual Quixote, 33, 66, 132, 101, 
 298, 299. 
 
 Squire, Country, 116, 117, 123. 
 
 Squire Western, 116. 
 
 Stage, 38-40. 
 
 Steele, 23, 29, 37, 74, 101, 128. 
 
 Stella, 32. 
 
 Sterne, 24, 164. 
 
 Streets, 83. 
 
 Swearing, 103, 117. 
 
 Swift, Dean, 22, 23, 33, 125, 128. 
 
 T. 
 
 Taine s Histoire de la Litterature 
 Anglaise, 174, 244, 271, 275. 
 
 4 Taller, 29, 37, 62, 101, 104, 127. 
 
 Thackeray, 10, 49, 80, 258-260. 
 
 Thoresby s Diary, 88, 100. 
 
 4 Tom Jones, 180, 255-267. 
 
 Travelling, 84. 
 
 Trees, Punishment for cutting 
 down, 115. 
 
 Tristram Shandy-, 163. 
 
 Trivia, 83,127. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 339 
 
 u. 
 
 1 Unfortunate Bride, 191. 
 Unfortunate Happy Lady, 189- 
 
 194. 
 1 Unhappy Mistake, 195. 
 
 V. 
 
 Vane, Lady, 34. 
 
 Vanity Fair, 80. 
 
 Vauxhall, 77-81. 
 
 4 Vicar of Wakefield, 299-306. 
 
 W. 
 
 Walpole, Horace, 19, 67, 77, 80, 89, 
 90, 106. 
 
 Wandering Beauty 186-189. 
 1 Wanton Wife, 40. 
 Watches, Size of, 65. 
 Watchmen, 91. 
 Wesley, 67, 171. 
 Wig-makers, Petition of v 66. 
 Wigs, 67. 
 Women, Insults to, 36. 
 
 and the Stage, 38. 
 
 Influence of the Age upon, 31- 
 
 36. 
 Wray, Daniel, 69. 
 
 Y. 
 
 York Cathedral, 295. 
 Young, Dr., 161, 247. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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