Volume 2 / Part 1 — Part II—The Worldlings (continued 7)

"'The witty, the prudent, nay the dutiful and pious (so she sneeringly pronounced the word) Clarissa Harlowe, should be so strangely fond of a profligate man, that her parents were forced to lock her up, in order to hinder her from running into his arms.' 'Let me ask you, my dear,' said she, 'how you now keep your account of the disposition of your time? How many hours in the twenty-four do you devote to your needle? How many to your prayers? How many to letter-writing? And how many to love? I doubt, I doubt, my little dear, the latter article is like Aaron's rod, and swallows up all the rest.... You must therefore bend or break, that is all, child.'[769]...

"'What, not speak yet? Come, my sullen, silent dear, speak one word to me. You must say two very soon to Mr. Solmes, I can tell you that.... Well, well (insultingly wiping my averted face with her handkerchief)... Then you think you may be brought to speak the two words.'"[770]

She continues thus:

"'This, Clary, is a pretty pattern enough. But this is quite charming?—And this, were I you, should be my wedding nightgown. But, Clary, won't you have a velvet suit? It would cut a great figure in a country church, you know. Crimson velvet, suppose! Such a fine complexion as yours, how it would be set off by it!—And do you sigh, love? Black velvet, so fair as you are, with those charming eyes, gleaming through a wintry cloud, like an April sun. Does not Lovelace tell you they are charming eyes?'"[771]

Then, when Arabella is reminded that, three months ago, she did not find Lovelace so worthy of scorn, she nearly chokes with passion; she wants to beat her sister, cannot speak, and says to her aunt, "with great violence": "Let us go, madam; let us leave the creature so swell till she burst with her own poison."[772] It reminds us of a pack of hounds in full cry after a deer, which is caught, and wounded; whilst the pack grow more eager and more ferocious, because they have tasted blood.

At the last moment, when she thinks to escape them, a new chase begins, more dangerous than the other. Lovelace has all the evil passions of Harlowe, and in addition a genius which sharpens and aggravates them. What; a character! How English! how different from the Don Juan of Mozart or of Molière! Before everything he wishes to have the cruel fair one in his power: then come the desire to bend others, a combative spirit, a craving for triumph; only after all these come the senses. He spares an innocent, young girl, because he knows she is easy to conquer, and the grandmother "has besought him to be merciful to her. The Debellare superbos should be my motto,"[773] he writes to his friend Belford; and in another letter he says, "I always considered opposition and resistance as a challenge to do my worst."[774] At bottom, pride', infinite, insatiable, senseless, is the mainspring, the only motive of all his actions. He acknowledges "that he only wanted Cæsar's outsetting to make a figure among his contemporaries,"[775] and that he only stoops to private conquests out of mere whim. He declares that he would not marry the first princess on earth, if he but thought she balanced a minute in her choice of him or of an emperor. He is held to be gay, brilliant, conversational; but this petulance of animal vigor is only external; he is cruel, jests savagely, in cool blood, like a hangman, about the harm which he has done or means to do. He reassures a poor servant who is troubled at having given up Clarissa to him in the following words: "The affair of Miss Betterton was a youthful frolick.... I went into mourning for her, though abroad at the time—a distinction I have ever paid to those worthy creatures who died in child-bed by me.... Why this squeamishness, then, honest Joseph?"[776] The English roisterers of those days threw the human body in the sewers. One gentleman, a friend of Lovelace, "tricked a farmer's daughter, a pretty girl, up to town,... drank her light-hearted,... then to the play... then to the bagnio, ruined her; kept her on a fortnight or three weeks; then left her to the mercy of the people of the bagnio (never paying for anything), who stript her of all her cloaths, and because she would not take on, threw her into prison, where she died in want and in despair."[777] The rakes in France were only rascals,[778] here they were villains; wickedness with them poisoned love. Lovelace hates Clarissa even more than he loves her. He has a book in which he sets down, he says, "all the family faults and the infinite trouble she herself has given me. When my heart is soft, and all her own, I can but turn to memoranda, and harden myself at once."[779] He is angry because she dares to defend herself, says that he'll teach her to vie with him in inventions, to make plots against and for her conqueror. It is a struggle between them without truce or halting. Lovelace says of himself: "What an industrious spirit have I! Nobody can say that I eat the bread of idleness;... certainly, with this active soul, I should have made a very great figure in whatever station I had filled."[780] He assaults and besieges her, spends whole nights outside her house, gives the Harlowes servants of his own, invents stories, introduces personages under a false name, forges letters. There is no expense, fatigue, plot, treachery which he will not undertake. All weapons are the same to him. He digs and plans even when away, ten, twenty, fifty saps, which all meet in the same mine. He provides against everything; he is ready for everything; divines, dares everything, against all duty, humanity, common-sense, in spite of the prayers of his friends, the entreaties of Clarissa, his own remorse. Excessive will, here as with the Harlowes, becomes an iron wheel, which twists out of shape and breaks to pieces what it ought to bend, so that at last, by blind impetuosity, it is broken by its own impetus, over the ruins it has made.

Against such assaults what resources has Clarissa? A will as determined as Lovelace's. She also is armed for war, and admits that she has as much of her father's spirit as of her mother's gentleness. Though gentle, though readily driven into Christian humility, she has pride; she "had hoped to be an example to young persons" of her sex; she possesses the firmness of a man, and above all a masculine reflection.[781] What self-scrutiny! what vigilance! what minute and indefatigable observation of her conduct, and that of others![782] No action, or word, involuntary or other gesture of Lovelace is unobserved by her, uninterpreted, unjudged, with the perspicacity and clearness of mind of a diplomatist and a moralist! We must read these long conversations, in which no word is used without calculation, genuine duels daily renewed, with death, nay, with dishonor before her. She knows it, is not disturbed, remains ever mistress of herself, never exposes herself, is not dazed, defends every inch of ground, feeling that all the world is on his side, no one for her, that she loses ground, and will lose more, that she will fall, that she is falling. And yet she bends not. What a change since Shakespeare! Whence comes this new and original idea of woman? Who has encased these yielding and tender innocents with such heroism and calculation? Puritanism transferred to the laity. Clarissa "never looked upon any duty, much less a voluntary vowed one, with indifference." She has passed her whole life in looking at these duties. She has placed certain principles before her, has reasoned upon them, applied them to the various circumstances of life, has fortified herself on every point with maxims, distinctions, and arguments. She has set round her, like bristling and multiplied ramparts, a numberless army of inflexible precepts. We can only reach her by turning over her whole mind and her whole past. This is her force, and also her weakness; for she is so carefully defended by her fortifications, that she is a prisoner; her principles are a snare to her, and her virtue destroys her. She wishes to preserve too much decorum. She refuses to apply to a magistrate, for it would make public the family quarrels. She does not resist her father openly; that would be against filial humility. She does not repel Solmes violently, like a hound, as he is; it would be contrary to feminine delicacy. She will not leave home with Miss Howe; that might injure the character of her friend. She reproves Lovelace when he swears,[783] a good Christian ought to protest against scandal. She is argumentative and pedantic, a politician and a preacher; she wearies us, she does not act like a woman. When a room is on fire, a young girl flies barefooted, and does not do what Miss Clarissa does—ask for her slippers. I am very sorry for it, but I say it with bated breath, the sublime Clarissa had a little mind; her virtue is like the piety of devotees, literal and over-nice. She does not carry us away, she has always her guide of deportment in her hand; she does not discover her duties, but follows instructions; she has not the audacity of great resolutions, she possesses more conscience and firmness than enthusiasm and genius.[784] This is the advantage of morality pushed to an extreme, no matter what the school or the aim is. By dint of regulating man, we narrow him.

Poor Richardson, unsuspiciously, has been at pains to set the thing forth in broad light, and has created Sir Charles Grandison "a man of true honor." I cannot say whether this model has converted many. There is nothing so insipid as an edifying hero. This Sir Charles is as correct as an automaton; he passes his life in weighing his duties, and "with an air of gallantry."[785] When he goes to visit a sick person, he has scruples about going on a Sunday, but reassures his conscience by saying; "I am afraid I must borrow of the Sunday some hours on my journey; but visiting the sick is an act of mercy."[786] Would anyone believe that such a man could fall in love? Such is the case, however, but in a manner of his own. Thus he writes to his betrothed: "And now, loveliest and dearest of women, allow me to expect the honour of a line, to let me know how much of the tedious month from last Thursday you will be so good to abate.... My utmost gratitude will ever be engaged by the condescension, whenever you shall distinguish the day of the year, distinguished as it will be to the end of my life that shall give me the greatest blessing of it and confirm me—forever yours, Charles Grandison."[787] A wax figure could not be more proper. All is in the same taste. There are eight wedding-coaches, each with four horses; Sir Charles is attentive to old people; at table, the gentlemen, each with a napkin under his arm, wait upon the ladies; the bride is ever on the point of fainting; he throws himself at her feet with the utmost politeness: "What, my love! In compliment to the best of parents resume your usual presence of mind. I, else, who shall glory before a thousand witnesses in receiving the honor of your hand, shall be ready to regret that I acquiesced so cheerfully with the wishes of those parental friends for a public celebration."[788] Courtesies begin, compliments fly about; a swarm of proprieties flutters around, like a troop of little love-cherubs, and their devout wings serve to sanctify the blessed tendernesses of the happy couple. Tears abound; Harriet bemoans the fate of Sir Hargrave Pollexfen, whilst Sir Charles, "in a soothing, tender, and respectful manner, put his arm round me, and taking my own handkerchief, unresisted, wiped away the tears as they fell on my cheek. Sweet humanity! Charming sensibility! Check not the kindly gush. Dewdrops of heaven! (wiping away my tears, and kissing the handkerchief), dewdrops of heaven, from a mind like that heaven mild and gracious!"[789] It is too much; we are surfeited, we say to ourselves that these phrases should be accompanied by a mandoline. The most patient of mortals feels himself sick at heart when he has swallowed a thousand pages of his sentimental twaddle, and all the milk and water of love. To crown all, Sir Charles, seeing Harriet embrace her rival, sketches the plan of a little temple, dedicated to Friendship, to be built on the very spot; it is the triumph of mythological bad taste. At the end, bouquets shower down as at the opera; all the characters sing in unison a chorus in praise of Sir Charles, and his wife says: "But could he be otherwise than the best of husbands, who was the most dutiful of sons, who is the most affectionate of brothers; the most faithful of friends: who is good upon principle in every relation of life!"[790] He is great, he is generous, delicate, pious, irreproachable; he has never done a mean action, nor made a wrong gesture. His conscience and his wig are unsullied. Amen! Let us canonize him, and stuff him with straw.

Nor, my dear Richardson, have you, great as you are, exactly all the wit which is necessary in order to have enough. By seeking to serve morality, you prejudice it. Do you know the effect of these edifying advertisements which you stick on at the beginning or end of your books? We are repelled, feel our emotion diminish, see the black-gowned preacher come snuffling out of the worldly dress which he had assumed for an hour; we are annoyed by the deceit. Insinuate morality, but do not inflict it. Remember there is a substratum of rebellion in the human heart, and that if we too openly set ourselves to wall it up with discipline, it escapes and looks for free air outside. You print at the end of "Pamela" the catalogue of the virtues of which she is an example; the reader yawns, forgets his pleasure, ceases to believe, and asks himself if the heavenly heroine was not an ecclesiastical puppet, trotted out to give him a lesson. You relate at the end of "Clarissa Harlowe" the punishment of all the wicked, great and small, sparing none; the reader laughs, says that things happen otherwise in this world, and bids you put in here like Arnolphe,[791] a description "of the cauldrons in which the souls of those who have led evil lives are to boil in the infernal regions. We are not such fools as you take us for. There is no need that you should shout to make us afraid; that you should write out the lesson by itself, and in capitals, in order to distinguish it. We love art, and you have a scant amount of it; we want to be pleased, and you don't care to please us. You copy all the letters, detail the conversations, tell everything, prune nothing; your novels fill many volumes; spare us, use the scissors; be a skilled literary workman, not a registrar of the Rolls office. Do not pour out your library of documents on the high-road. Art is different from nature; the latter draws out, the first condenses. Twenty letters of twenty pages do not display a character; but one brilliant saying does. You are weighed down by your conscience, which compels you to move step by step and slow; you are afraid of your genius; you rein it in; you dare not use loud cries and free speech at the very moment when passion is most virulent; you flounder into emphatic and well-written phrases;[792] you will not show nature as it is, as Shakespeare shows it, when, stung by passion as by a hot iron, it cries out, rears, and bounds over your barriers. You cannot love it, and your punishment is that you cannot see it."[793]

Section V.—Henry Fielding

Fielding protests on behalf of nature; and certainly, to see his actions and his persons, we think him made expressly for that purpose, a robust, strongly built man, above six feet high, sanguine, with an excess of good humor and animal spirits, loyal, generous, affectionate, and brave, but imprudent, extravagant, a drinker, a roisterer, ruined as his father was before him, having seen the ups and downs of life, not always clean, but always jolly. Lady Wortley Montague says of him: "His happy constitution made him forget everything when he was before a venison pasty, or over a flask of champagne."[794] Natural impulse, somewhat coarse but generous, sways him. It does not restrain itself, it flows freely, it follows its own bent, not choice in its course, not confining itself to banks, miry but copious, and in a broad channel. From the outset an abundance of health and physical impetuosity plunges Fielding into gross jovial excess, and the immoderate sap of youth bubbles up in him until he marries and becomes ripe in years. He is gay, and seeks gayety; he is careless, and has not even literary vanity. One day Garrick begged him to cut down an awkward scene, and told him "that a repulse would flurry him so much, he should not be able to do justice to the part. If the scene is not a good one, let them find that out," said Fielding; just as was foreseen, the house made a violent uproar, and the performer tried to quell it by retiring to the green-room, where the author was supporting his spirits with a bottle of champagne. "What is the matter, Garrick? are they hissing me now? Yes, just the same passage that I wanted you to retrench. Oh," replied the author, "I did not give them credit for it: they have found it out, have they?"[795] In this easy manner he took all mischances. He went ahead without feeling the bruises much, like a confident man, whose heart expands and whose skin is thick. When he inherited some money he feasted, gave dinners to his neighbors, kept a pack of hounds and a lot of magnificent lackeys in yellow livery. In three years he had spent it all; but courage remained, he finished his law studies, prepared a voluminous Digest of the Statutes at Large, in two folio volumes, which remained unpublished, became a magistrate, destroyed bands of robbers, and earned in the most insipid of labors "the dirtiest money upon earth." Disgust, weariness did not affect him; he was too solidly made to have the nerves of a woman. Force, activity, invention, tenderness, all overflowed in him. He had a mother's fondness for his children, adored his wife, became almost mad when he lost her, found no other consolation than to weep with his maid-servant, and ended by marrying that good and honest girl, that he might give a mother to his children; the last trait in the portrait of this valiant plebeian heart, quick in telling all, having no dislikes, but all the best parts of man except delicacy. We read his books as we drink a pure, wholesome, and rough wine, which cheers and fortifies us, and which wants nothing but bouquet.

Such a man was sure to dislike Richardson. He who loves expansive and liberal nature, drives from him like foes the solemnity, sadness, and pruderies of the Puritans. His first literary work was to caricature Richardson. His first hero, Joseph, is the brother of Pamela, and resists the proposals of his mistress, as Pamela does those of her master. The temptation, touching in the case of a girl, becomes comical in that of a young man, and the tragic turns into the grotesque. Fielding laughs heartily, like Rabelais, or Scarron. He imitates the emphatic style; ruffles the petticoats and bobs the wigs; upsets with his rude jests all the seriousness of conventionality. If we are refined, or simply well dressed, don't let us go along with him. He will take us to prisons, inns, dunghills, the mud of the roadside; he will make us flounder among rollicking, scandalous, vulgar adventures, and crude pictures. He has plenty of words at command, and his sense of smell is not delicate. Mr. Joseph Andrews, after leaving Lady Booby, is felled to the ground, left naked, in a ditch, for dead; a stage-coach came by; a lady objects to receive a naked man inside; and the gentlemen, "though there were several greatcoats about the coach," could not spare them; the coachman, who had two greatcoats spread under him, refused to lend either, lest they should be made bloody.[796] This is but the outset, judge of the rest. Joseph and his friend, the good Parson Adams, give and receive a vast number of cuffs; blows resound; cans of pig's blood are thrown at their heads; dogs tear their clothes to pieces; they lose their horse. Joseph is so good-looking, that he is assailed by the maid-servant, "obliged to take her in his arms and to shut her out of the room";[797] they have never any money; they are threatened with being sent to prison. Yet they go on in a merry fashion, like their brothers in Fielding's other novels, Captain Booth and Tom Jones. These hailstorms of blows, these tavern brawls, this noise of broken warming-pans and basins flung at heads, this medley of incidents and down-pouring of mishaps, combine to make the most joyous music. All these honest folk fight well, walk well, eat well, drink still better. It is a pleasure to observe these potent stomachs; roast-beef goes down into them as to its natural place. Let us not say that these good arms practise too much on their neighbors' skins: the neighbors' hides are tough, and always heal quickly. Decidedly life is a good thing, and we will go along with Fielding, smiling by the way, with a broken head and a bellyful.

Shall we merely laugh? There are many things to be seen on our journey: the sentiment of nature is a talent, like the understanding of certain rules; and Fielding, turning his back on Richardson, opens up a domain as wide as that of his rival. What we call nature is this brood of secret passions, often malicious, generally vulgar, always blind, which tremble and fret within us, ill-covered by the cloak of decency and reason under which we try to disguise them; we think we lead them, and they lead us; we think our actions our own, they are theirs. They are so many, so strong, so interwoven, so ready to rise, break forth, be carried away, that their movements elude all our reasoning and our grasp. This is Fielding's domain; his art and pleasure, like Molière's are in lifting a corner of the cloak; his characters parade with a rational air, and suddenly, through a vista, the reader perceives the inner turmoil of vanities, follies, lusts, and secret rancors which make them move. Thus, when Tom Jones's arm is broken, philosopher Square comes to console him by an application of stoical maxims; but in proving to him that "pain was the most contemptible thing in the world," he bites his tongue, and lets slip an oath or two; whereupon Parson Thwackum, his opponent and rival, assures him that his mishap is a warning of Providence, and both in consequence are nearly coming to blows.[798] In the "Life of Mr. Jonathan Wild," the prison chaplain having aired his eloquence, and entreated the condemned man to repent, accepts from him a bowl of punch, because "it is nowhere spoken against in Scripture"; and after drinking, repeats his last sermon against the pagan philosophers. Thus unveiled, natural impulse has a grotesque appearance; the people advance gravely, cane in hand, but in our eyes they are all naked. Understand, they are every whit naked; and some of their attitudes are very lively. Ladies will do well not to enter here. This powerful genius, frank and joyous, loves boorish feasts like Rubens; the red faces, beaming with good humor, sensuality, and energy, move about his pages, flutter hither and thither, and jostle each other, and their overflowing instincts break forth in violent actions. Out of such he creates his chief characters. He has none more lifelike than these, more broadly sketched in bold and dashing outline, with a more wholesome color. If sober people like Allworthy remain in a corner of his vast canvas, characters full of natural impulse, like Western, stand out with a relief and brightness, never seen since Falstaff. Western is a country squire, a good fellow in the main, but a drunkard, always in the saddle, full of oaths, ready with coarse language, blows, a sort of dull carter, hardened and excited by the brutality of the race, the wildness of a country life, by violent exercise, by abuse of coarse food and strong drink, full of English and rustic pride and prejudice, having never been disciplined by the constraint of the world, because he lives in the country; nor by that of education, since he can hardly read; nor of reflection, since he cannot put two ideas together; nor of authority, because he is rich and a justice of the peace, and given up, like a noisy and creaking weathercock, to every gust of passion. When contradicted, he grows red, foams at the mouth, wishes to thrash someone. "Doff thy clothes." They are even obliged to stop him by main force. He hastens to go to Allworthy to complain of Tom Jones, who has dared to faff in love with his daughter: "It's well for un I could not get at un: I'd a licked un; I'd a spoiled his caterwauling; I'd a taught the son of a whore to meddle with meat for his master. He shan't ever have a morsel of meat of mine, or a varden to buy it. If she will ha un, one smock shall be her portion. I'd sooner give my estate to the sinking fund, that it may be sent to Hanover, to corrupt our nation with."[799] Allworthy says he is very sorry for it: "Pox o' your sorrow. It will do me abundance of good, when I have lost my only child, my poor Sophy that was the joy of my heart, and all the hope and comfort of my age. But I am resolved I will turn her out o' doors; she shall beg, and starve, and rot in the streets. Not one hapenny, not a hapenny shall she ever hae o' mine. The son of a bitch was always good at finding a hare sitting and be rotted to'n; I little thought what puss he was looking after. But it shall be the worst he ever vound in his life. She shall be no better than carrion; the skin o'er it is all he shall ha, and zu you may tell un."[800] His daughter tries to reason with him; he storms. Then she speaks of tenderness and obedience; he leaps about the room for joy, and tears come to his eyes. Then she recommences her prayers; he grinds his teeth, clenches his fist, stamps his feet; "I am determined upon this match, and ha him[801] you shall, damn me, if shat unt. Damn me, if shat unt, though dost hang thyself the next morning."[802] He can find no reason; he can only tell her to be a good girl. He contradicts himself, defeats his own plans; is like a blind bull, which butts to right and left, doubles on his path, touches no one, and paws the ground. At the least sound he rushes head foremost, offensively, not knowing why. His ideas are only starts or transports of flesh and blood. Never has the animal so completely covered and absorbed the man. It makes him grotesque; he is so natural and so brute-like: he allows himself to be led, and speaks like a child. He Says: "I don't know how 'tis, but, Allworthy, you make me do always just as you please; and yet I have as good an estate as you, and am in the commission of the peace just as yourself."[803] Nothing holds or lasts with him; he is impulsive in everything; he lives but for the moment. Rancor, interest, no passions of long continuance affect him. He embraces people whom he just before wanted to knock down. Everything with him disappears in the fire of the momentary passion, which floods his brain, as it were, in sudden waves, and drowns the rest. Now that he is reconciled to Tom Jones, he cannot rest until Tom marries his daughter: "To her, boy, to her, go to her. That's it, little honeys, O that's it. Well, what, is it all over? Hath she appointed the day, boy? What, shall it be to-morrow or next day? I shan't be put off a minute longer than next day; I am resolved.... I tell thee it is all flimflam. Zoodikers! she'd have the wedding to-night with all her heart. Would'st not, Sophy?... Where the devil is Allworthy;... Harkee, Allworthy, I'll bet thee five pounds to a crown, we have a boy to-morrow nine months. But prithee, tell me what wut ha? Burgundy, champagne, or what? For please Jupiter, we'll make a night on't."[804] And when he becomes a grandfather, he spends his time in the nursery, "where he declares the tattling of his little granddaughter, who is above a year and a half old, is sweeter music than the finest cry of dogs in England."[805] This is pure nature, and no one has displayed it more free, more impetuous, ignoring all rule, more abandoned to physical passions than Fielding.

It is not because he loves it like the great impartial artists, Shakespeare and Goethe; on the contrary, he is eminently a moralist; and it is one of the great marks of the age, that reformatory designs are as decided with him as with others. He gives his fictions a practical aim, and commends them by saying that the serious and tragic tone sours, whilst the comic style disposes men to be "more full of good humour and benevolence."[806] Moreover, he satirizes vice; he looks upon the passions not as simple forces, but as objects of approbation or blame. At every step he suggests moral conclusions; he wants us to take sides; he discusses, excuses, or condemns. He writes an entire novel in an ironical style,[807] to attack and destroy rascality and treason. He is more than a painter, he is a judge, and the two parts agree in him. For a psychology produces a morality: where there is an idea of man, there is an ideal of man; and Fielding, who has seen in man nature as opposed to rule, praises in man nature as opposed to rule; so that, according to him, virtue is but an instinct. Generosity in his eyes is, like all sources of action, a primitive inclination; like all sources of action, it flows on receiving no good from catechisms and phrases; like all sources of action, it flows at times too copious and quick. Take it as it is, and do not try to oppress it under a discipline, or to replace it by an argument. Mr. Richardson, your heroes, so correct, constrained, so carefully made up with their impedimenta of maxims, are cathedral vergers, of use but to drone in a procession. Square or Thwackum, your tirades on philosophical or Christian virtue are mere words, only fit to be heard after dinner. Virtue is in the mood and the blood; a gossipy education and cloistral severity do not assist it. Give me a man, not a show-manikin or a mere machine, to spout phrases. My hero is the man who is born generous, as a dog is born affectionate, and a horse brave. I want a living heart, full of warmth and force, not a dry pedant, bent on squaring all his actions. This ardent and impulsive character will perhaps carry the hero too far; I pardon his escapades. He will get drunk unawares; he will pick up a girl on his way; he will hit out with a zest; he will not refuse a duel; he will suffer a fine lady to appreciate him, and will accept her purse; he will be imprudent, will injure his reputation, like Tom Jones; he will be a bad manager, and will get into debt, like Captain Booth. Pardon him for having muscles, nerves, senses, and that overflow of anger or ardor which urges forward animals of a noble breed. But he will let himself be beaten till the blood flows, before he betrays a poor gamekeeper. He will pardon his mortal enemy readily, from sheer kindness, and will send him money secretly. He will be loyal to his mistress, and will be faithful to her, spite of all offers, in the worst destitution, and without the least hope of winning her. He will be liberal with his purse, his trouble, his sufferings, his blood; he will not boast of it; he will have neither pride, vanity, affectation, nor dissimulation; bravery and kindness will abound in his heart, as good water in a good spring. He may be stupid like Captain Booth, a gambler even, extravagant, unable to manage his affairs, liable one day through temptation to be unfaithful to his wife; but he will be so sincere in his repentance, his error will be so involuntary, he will be so carefully, genuinely tender, that she will love him exceedingly,[808] and in good truth he will deserve it. He will be a nurse to her when she is ill, behave as a mother to her; he will himself see to her lying-in; he will feel towards her the adoration of a lover, always, before all the world, even before Miss Matthews, who seduced him. He says, "If I had the world, I was ready to lay it at my Amelia's feet; and so, heaven knows, I would ten thousand worlds."[809] He weeps like a child on thinking of her; he listens to her like a little child. "I believe I am able to recollect much the greatest part (of what she uttered); for the impression is never to be effaced from my memory."[810] He dressed himself "with all the expedition imaginable, singing, whistling, hurrying, attempting by every method to banish thought,"[811] and galloped away, whilst his wife was asleep, because he cannot endure her tears. In this soldier's body, under this brawler's thick breastplate, there is a true woman's heart, which melts, which a trifle disturbs, when she whom he loves is in question; timid in its tenderness, inexhaustible in devotion, in trust, in self-denial, in the communication of its feelings. When a man possesses this, overlook the rest; with all his excesses and his follies, he is better than your well-dressed devotees.

To this we reply: You do well to defend nature, but let it be on condition that you suppress nothing. One thing is wanting in your strongly built folks—refinement; delicate dreams, enthusiastic elevation, and trembling delicacy exist in nature equally with coarse vigor, noisy hilarity, and frank kindness. Poetry is true, like prose; and if there are eaters and boxers, there are also knights and artists. Cervantes, whom you imitate, and Shakespeare, whom you recall, had this refinement, and they have painted it; in this abundant harvest, which you have gathered so plentifully, you have forgotten the flowers. We tire at last of your fisticuffs and tavern bills. You flounder too readily in cow-houses, among the ecclesiastical pigs of Parson Trulliber. We would fain see you have more regard for the modesty of your heroines; wayside accidents raise their tuckers too often; and Fanny, Sophia, Mrs. Heartfree, may continue pure, yet we cannot help remembering the assaults which have lifted their petticoats. You are so coarse yourself, that you are insensible to what is atrocious. You persuade Tom Jones falsely, yet for an instant, that Mrs. Waters, whom he has made his mistress, is his own mother, and you leave the reader during a long time buried in the shame of this supposition. And then you are obliged to become unnatural in order to depict love; you can give but constrained letters; the transports of your Tom Jones are only the author's phrases. For want of ideas he declaims odes. You are only aware of the impetuosity of the senses, the upwelling of the blood, the effusion of tenderness, but you are unacquainted with nervous exaltation and poetic rapture. Man, such as you conceive him, is a good buffalo; and perhaps he is the hero required by a people which gives itself the nickname "John Bull."

Section VI.—Tobias Smollett

At all events this hero is powerful and formidable; and if at this period we collect in our mind the scattered features of the faces which the novel-writers have made pass before us, we will feel ourselves transported into a half-barbarous world, and to a race whose energy must terrify or revolt all our gentleness. Now let us open a more literal copyist of life: they are doubtless all such, and declare—Fielding amongst them—that if they imagine a feature, it is because they have seen it; but Smollett has this advantage, that, being mediocre, he chalks out the figures tamely, prosaically, without transforming them by the illumination of genius: the joviality of Fielding and the rigor of Richardson are not there to light up or ennoble the pictures. Let us observe carefully Smollett's manners; let us listen to the confessions of this imitator of Le Sage, who reproaches that author with being gay, and jesting with the mishaps of his hero. He says: "The disgraces of Gil Blas are, for the most part, such as rather excite mirth than compassion: he himself laughs at them, and his transitions from distress to happiness, or at least ease, are so sudden that neither the reader has time to pity him, nor himself to be acquainted with affliction. This conduct... prevents that generous indignation which ought to animate the reader against the sordid and vicious disposition of the world. I have attempted to represent modest merit struggling with every difficulty to which a friendless orphan is exposed from his own want of experience as well as from the selfishness, envy, malice, and base indifference of mankind."[812] We hear no longer merely showers of blows, but also knife and sword thrusts, as well as pistol shots. In such a world, when a girl goes out she runs the risk of coming back a woman; and when a man goes out, he runs the risk of not coming back at all. The women bury their nails in the faces of the men; the well-bred gentlemen, like Peregrine Pickle, whip other gentlemen soundly, Having deceived a husband, who refuses to demand satisfaction, Peregrine calls his two servants, "and ordered them to duck him in the canal."[813] Misrepresented by a curate, whom he has horsewhipped, he gets an innkeeper "to rain a shower of blows upon his (the parson's) carcase," who also "laid hold of one of his ears with his teeth, and bit it unmercifully."[814] I could quote from memory a score more of outrages begun or completed. Savage insults; broken jaws, men on the ground beaten with sticks, the churlish sourness of conversations, the coarse brutality of jests, give an idea of a pack of bull-dogs eager to fight each other, who, when they begin to get lively, still amuse themselves by tearing away pieces of flesh. A Frenchman can hardly endure the story of "Roderick Random," or rather that of Smollett, when he is on board a man-of-war. He is pressed, that is to say, carried off by force, knocked down, attacked with "cudgels and drawn cutlasses, pinioned like a malefactor," and rolled on board, covered with blood, before the sailors, who laugh at his wounds; and one of them, "seeing my hair clotted together with blood, as it were, into distinct cords, took notice that my bows were manned with the red ropes, instead of my side."[815] Roderick "desired one of his fellow-captives, who was unfettered, to take a handkerchief out of his pocket, and tie it round his head to stop the bleeding; he (the fellow) pulled out my handkerchief, 'tis true, but sold it before my face to a bum-boat woman for a quart of gin." Captain Oakum declares he will have no more sick in his ship, ordered them to be brought on the quarterdeck, commanded that some should receive a round dozen; some spitting blood, others fainting from weakness, whilst not a few became delirious; many died, and of the sixty-one sick, only a dozen remained alive.[816] To get into this dark, suffocating hospital, swarming with vermin, it is necessary to creep under the close hammocks, and forcibly separate them with the shoulders, before the doctor can reach his patients. Read the story of Miss Williams, a wealthy young girl, of good family, reduced to become a prostitute, robbed, hungry, sick, shivering, strolling about the streets in the long winter nights, amongst "a number of naked wretches reduced to rags and filth, huddled together like swine, in the corner of a dark alley," who depend "upon the addresses of the lowest class, and are fain to allay the rage of hunger and cold with gin; degenerate into a brutal insensibility, rot and die upon a dunghill."[817] She was thrown into Bridewell, where, she says, "in the midst of a hellish crew I was subjected to the tyranny of a barbarian, who imposed upon me tasks that I could not possibly perform, and then punished my incapacity with the utmost rigour and inhumanity. I was often whipped into a swoon, and lashed out of it, during which miserable intervals I was robbed by my fellow-prisoners of everything about me, even to my cap, shoes, and stockings: I was not only destitute of necessaries, but even of food, so that my wretchedness was extreme." One night she tried to hang herself. Two of her fellow-prisoners, who watched her, prevented her. "In the morning my attempt was published among the prisoners, and punished with thirty stripes, the pain of which co-operating with my disappointment and disgrace, bereft me of my senses, and threw me into an ectasy of madness, during which I tore the flesh from my bones with my teeth, and dashed my head against the pavement."[818] In vain we turn our eyes on the hero of the novel, Roderick Random, to repose a little after such a spectacle. He is sensual and coarse, like Fielding's heroes, but not good and jovial as these. Pride and resentment are the two principal points in his character. The generous wine of Fielding, in Smollett's hands becomes common brandy. His heroes are selfish; they revenge themselves barbarously. Roderick oppresses the faithful Strap, and ends by marrying him to a prostitute. Peregrine Pickle attacks by a most brutal and cowardly plot the honor of a young girl, whom he wants to marry, and who is the sister of his best friend. We get to hate his rancorous, concentrated, obstinate character, which is at once that of an absolute king accustomed to please himself at the expense of others' happiness, and that of a boor with only the varnish of education. We should be uneasy at living near him; he is good for nothing but to shock or tyrannize over others. We avoid him as we would a dangerous beast; the sudden rush of animal passion and the force of his firm will are so overpowering in him, that when he fails he becomes outrageous. He draws his sword against an innkeeper; he must bleed him, grows mad. Everything, even to his generosities, is spoilt by pride; all, even to his gayeties, is clouded by harshness. Peregrine's amusements are barbarous, and those of Smollett are after the same style. He exaggerates caricature; he thinks to amuse us by showing up mouths gaping to the ears, and noses half a foot long; he magnifies a national prejudice or a professional trick until it absorbs the whole character; he jumbles together the most repulsive oddities—a Lieutenant Lismahago half roasted by Red Indians; old jacktars who pass their life in shouting and travestying all sorts of ideas into their nautical jargon; old maids as ugly as monkeys, as fleshless as skeletons, and as sour as vinegar; eccentric people steeped in pedantry, hypochondria, misanthropy, and silence. Far from sketching them slightly, as Le Sage does in "Gil Bias," he brings into prominent relief each disagreeable feature, overloads it with details, without considering whether they are too numerous, without recognizing that they are excessive, without feeling that they are odious, without perceiving that they are disgusting. The public whom he addresses is on a level with his energy and his coarseness; and in order to move such nerves, a writer cannot strike too hard.[819]

But, at the same time, to civilize this barbarity and to control this violence, a faculty appears, common to all, authors and public: serious reflection intent to observe character. Their eyes are turned toward the inner man. They note exactly the individual peculiarities, and stamp them with such a precise mark that their personage becomes a type, which cannot be forgotten. They are psychologists. The title of a comedy of old Ben Jonson's "Every Man in his Humour," indicates how old and national this taste is amongst them. Smollett writes a whole novel, "Humphrey Clinker," on this idea. There is no action in it; the book is a collection of letters written during a tour in Scotland and England. Each of the travellers, after his bent of mind, judges variously of the same objects. A generous, grumbling old gentleman, who employs his spare time by thinking himself ill, a crabbed old maid in search of a husband; a lady's maid, simple and vain, who bravely bungles her spelling; a series of eccentric people, who one after another bring their oddities on the scene—such are the characters: the pleasure of the reader consists in recognizing their humor in their style, in foreseeing their follies, in perceiving the thread which pulls each of their motions, in verifying the connection between their ideas and their actions. When we push this study of human peculiarities to excess we will come upon the origin of Sterne's talent.

Section VII.—Laurence Sterne

Let us figure to ourselves a man who goes on a journey, with a pair of marvellously magnifying spectacles on his eyes. A hair on his hand, a speck on a table-cloth, a fold of a moving garment, will interest him: at this rate he will not go very far; he will go six steps in a day, and will not quit his room. So Sterne writes four volumes to record the birth of his hero. He perceives the infinitely little, and describes the imperceptible. A man parts his hair on one side; this, according to Sterne, depends on his whole character, which is of a piece with that of his father, his mother, his uncle, and his whole ancestry; it depends on the structure of his brain, which depends on the circumstances of his conception and his birth, and these on the hobbies of his parents, the humor of the moment, the talk of the preceding hour, the difficulties of the parson, a cut thumb, twenty knots made on a bag; I know not how many things besides. The six or eight volumes of "Tristram Shandy" are employed in summing them up; for the smallest and dullest incident, a sneeze, a badly shaven beard, drags after it an inextricable network of inter-involved causes, which from above, below, right and left, by invisible prolongations and ramifications, sink into the depths of a character and in the remote vistas of events. Instead of extracting, like the novel-writers, the principal root, Sterne, with marvellous devices and success, devotes himself to drawing out the tangled skein of numberless threads, which are sinuously immersed and dispersed, so as to suck in from all sides the sap and the life. Slender, intertwined, buried as they are, he finds them; he extricates them without breaking, brings them to the light; and there, where we fancied but a stalk, we see with wonder the underground mass and vegetation of the multiplied fibres and fibrils, by which the visible plant grows and is supported.

This is truly a strange talent, made up of blindness and insight, which resembles those diseases of the retina in which the over-excited nerve becomes at once dull and penetrating, incapable of seeing what the most ordinary eyes perceive, capable of observing what the most piercing sight misses. In fact, Sterne is a sickly and eccentric humorist, a clergyman and a libertine, a fiddler and a philosopher, who preferred "whining over a dead ass to relieving a living mother,"[820] selfish in act, selfish in word, who in everything takes a contrary view of himself and of others. His book is like a great storehouse of articles of vertu, where curiosities of all ages, kinds, and countries lie jumbled in a heap; forms of excommunication, medical consultations, passages of unknown or imaginary authors, scraps of scholastic erudition, strings of absurd histories, dissertations, addresses to the reader. His pen leads him; he has neither sequence nor plan; nay, when he lights upon anything orderly, he purposely contorts it; with a kick he sends the pile of folios next to him over the history he has commenced, and dances on the top of them. He delights in disappointing us, in sending us astray by interruptions and delays.[821] Gravity displeases him, he treats it as a hypocrite: to his liking folly is better, and he paints himself in Yorick. In a well-constituted mind ideas march one after another, with uniform motion or acceleration; in this odd brain they jump about like a rout of masks at a carnival, in troops, each dragging his neighbor by the feet, head, coat, amidst the most general and unforeseen hubbub. All his little lopped phrases are somersaults; we pant as we read. The tone is never for two minutes the same; laughter comes, then the beginning of emotion, then scandal, then wonder, then sensibility, then laughter again. The mischievous joker pulls and entangles the threads of all our feelings, and makes us go higher, thither, in a whimsical manner, like puppets. Amongst these various threads there are two which he pulls more willingly than the rest. Like all men who have nerves, he is subject to sensibility; not that he is really kindly and tender-hearted; on the contrary, his life is that of an egotist; but on certain days he must needs weep, and he makes us weep with him. He is moved on behalf of a captive bird, of a poor ass, which, accustomed to blows, "looked up pensive," and seemed to say, "Don't thrash me with it (the halter); but if you will, you may."[822] He will write a couple of pages on the attitude of this donkey, and Priam at the feet of Achilles was not more touching. Thus in a silence, in an oath, in the most trifling domestic action, he hits upon exquisite refinements and little heroisms, a variety of charming flowers, invisible to everybody else, which grow in the dust of the driest road. One day Uncle Toby, the invalided captain, catches, after "infinite attempts," a big buzzing fly, who has cruelly tormented him all dinner-time; he gets up, crosses the room on his suffering leg, and opening the window, cries: "Go, poor devil, get thee gone; why should I hurt thee? This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me."[823] This womanish sensibility is too fine to be described; we should have to give a whole story—that of Lefèvre, for instance—that the perfume might be inhaled; this perfume evaporates as soon as we touch it, and is like the weak fleeting odor of flowers, brought for one moment into a sick-chamber. What still more increases this sad sweetness is the contrast of the free and easy waggeries which, like a hedge of nettles, encircle them on all sides. Sterne, like all men whose mechanism is over-excited, has odd desires. He loves the nude, not from a feeling of the beautiful, and in the manner of painters, not from sensuality and frankness like Fielding, not from a search after pleasure like Dorat, Boufflers, and all those refined epicures, who at that time were rhyming and enjoying themselves in France. If he goes into dirty places, it is because they are forbidden and not frequented. What he seeks there is singularity and scandal. The allurement of this forbidden fruit is not the fruit, but the prohibition; for he bites by preference where the fruit is half rotten or worm-eaten. That an epicurean delights in detailing the pretty sins of a pretty woman is nothing wonderful; but that a novelist takes pleasure in watching the bedroom of a musty, fusty old couple, in observing the consequences of the fall of a burning chestnut in a pair of breeches,[824] in detailing the questions of Mrs. Wadman on the consequences of wounds in the groin,[825] can only be explained by the aberration of a perverted fancy, which finds its amusement in repugnant ideas, as spoiled palates are pleased by the pungent flavor of decayed cheese.[826] Thus, to read Sterne we should wait for days when we are in a peculiar kind of humor, days of spleen, rain, or when through nervous irritation we are disgusted with rationality. In fact his characters are as unreasonable as himself. He sees in man nothing but fancy, and what he calls the hobby-horse—Uncle Toby's taste for fortifications, Mr. Shandy's fancy for oratorical tirades and philosophical systems. This hobby-horse, according to him, is like a wart, so small at first that we hardly perceive it, and only when it is in a strong light; but it gradually increases, becomes covered with hairs, grows red, and buds out all around: its possessor, who is pleased with and admires it, nourishes it, until at last it is changed into a vast wen, and the whole face disappears under the invasion of the parasite excrescence. No one has equalled Sterne in the history of these human hypertrophies; he puts down the seed, feeds it gradually, makes the propagating threads creep round about, shows the little veins and microscopic arteries which inosculate within, counts the palpitations of the blood which passes through them, explains their changes of color and increase of bulk. Psychological observation attains here one of its extreme developments. A far advanced art is necessary to describe, beyond the confines of regularity and health, the exception or the degeneration; and the English novel is completed here by adding to the representation of form the picture of malformations.

Section VIII.—Oliver Goldsmith

The moment approaches when purified manners will, by purifying the novel, give it its final impress and character. Of the two great tendencies manifested by it, native brutality and intense reflection, one at last conquers the other; when literature became severe it expelled from fiction the coarseness of Smollett and the indecencies of Sterne; and the novel, in every respect moral, before falling into the most prudish hands of Miss Burney, passes into the noble hands of Goldsmith. His "Vicar of Wakefield" is "a prose idyl," somewhat spoilt by phrases too rhetorical, but at bottom as homely as a Flemish picture. Observe in Terburg's or Mieris's paintings a woman at market or a burgomaster emptying his long glass of beer: the faces are vulgar, the ingenuousness is comical, the cookery occupies the place of honor; yet these good folks are so peaceful, so contented with their small ordinary happiness, that we envy them. The impression left by Goldsmith's book is pretty much the same. The excellent Dr. Primrose is a country clergyman, the whole of whose adventures have for a long time consisted in "migrations from the blue bed to the brown." He has cousins, "even to the fortieth remove," who come to eat his dinner and sometimes to borrow a pair of boots. His wife, who has all the education of the time, is a perfect cook, can almost read, excels in pickling and preserving, and at dinner gives the history of every dish. His daughters aspire to elegance, and even "make a wash for the face over the fire." His son Moses gets cheated at the fair, and sells a colt for a gross of green spectacles. Dr. Primrose himself writes pamphlets, which no one buys, against second marriages of the clergy; writes beforehand in his wife's epitaph, though she was still living, that she was "the only wife of Dr. Primrose," and by way of encouragement, places this piece of eloquence in an elegant frame over the chimney-piece. But the household continues the even tenor of its way; the daughters and the mother slightly domineer over the father of the family; he lets them do so, because he is an easy-going man; now and again fires off an innocent jest, and busies himself in his new farm, with his two horses, wall-eyed Blackberry and the other without a tail: "nothing could exceed the neatness of my enclosures, the elms and hedge-rows appearing with inexpressible beauty ... Our little habitation was situated at the foot of a sloping hill, sheltered with a beautiful underwood behind, and a prattling river before; on one side a meadow, on the other a green.... (It) consisted but of one story, and was covered with thatch, which gave it an air of great snugness: the walls on the inside were nicely whitewashed.... Though the same room served us for parlour and kitchen, that only made it the warmer. Besides, as it was kept with the utmost neatness, the dishes, plates, and coppers, being well scoured, and all disposed in bright rows on the shelves, the eye was agreeably relieved, and did not want richer furniture."[827] They make hay all together, sit under the honeysuckle to drink a bottle of gooseberry wine; the girls sing, the two little ones read; and the parents "would stroll down the sloping field, that was embellished with blue bells and centaury": "But let us have one bottle more, Deborah, my life, and Moses, gives us a good song. What thanks do we not owe to heaven for thus bestowing tranquillity, health, and competence! I think myself happier now than the greatest monarch upon earth. He has no such fireside, nor such pleasant faces about it."[828]

Such is moral happiness. Their misfortune is no less moral. The poor vicar has lost his fortune, and, removing to a small living, turns farmer. The squire of the neighborhood seduces and carries off his eldest daughter; his house takes fire; his arm was burnt in a terrible manner in saving his two little children. He is put in prison for debt, amongst wretches and rogues, who swear and blaspheme, in a vile atmosphere, sleeping on straw, feeling that his illness increases, foreseeing that his family will soon be without bread, learning that his daughter is dying. Yet he does not give way: he remains a priest and the head of a family, prescribes to each of them his duty; encourages, consoles, provides for, orders, preaches to the prisoners, endures their coarse jests, reforms them; establishes in the prison useful work, and "institutes fines for punishment and rewards for industry." It is not hardness of heart nor a morose temperament which gives him strength; he has the most paternal soul, the most sociable, humane, open to gentle emotions and familiar tenderness. He says: "I have no resentment now; and though he (the squire) has taken from me what I held dearer than all his treasures, though he has wrung my heart (for I am sick almost to fainting, very sick, my fellow-prisoner), yet that shall never inspire me with vengeance.... If this (my) submission can do him any pleasure, let him know, that if I have done him any injury, I am sorry for it.... I should detest my own heart, if I saw either pride or resentment lurking there. On the contrary, as my oppressor has been once my parishioner, I hope one day to present him up an unpolluted soul at the eternal tribunal."[829] But the hard-hearted squire haughtily repulses the noble application of the vicar, and in addition causes his second daughter to be carried off, and the eldest son to be thrown into prison under a false accusation of murder. At this moment all the affections of the father are wounded, all his consolations lost, all his hopes ruined. "His heart weeps to behold" all this misery, he was going to curse the cause of it all; but soon, returning to his profession and his duty, he thinks how he will prepare to fit his son and himself for eternity, and by way of being useful to as many people as he can, he wishes at the same time to exhort his fellow-prisoners. He "made an effort to rise on the straw, but wanted strength, and was able only to recline against the wall; my son and his mother supported me on either side."[830] In this condition he speaks, and his sermon, contrasting with his condition, is the more moving. It is a dissertation in the English style, made up of close reasoning, seeking only to establish that "Providence has given to the wretched two advantages over the happy in this life," greater felicity in dying; and in heaven all that superiority of pleasure which arises from contrasted enjoyments.[831] We see the sources of this virtue, born of Christianity and natural kindness, but long nourished by inner reflection. Meditation, which usually produces only phrases, results with Dr. Primrose in actions. Verily reason has here taken the helm, and it has taken it without oppressing other feelings; a rare and eloquent spectacle, which, uniting and harmonizing in one character the best features of the manners and morals of that time and country, creates an admiration and love for pious and orderly, domestic and disciplined, laborious and rural life. Protestant and English virtue has not a more approved and amiable exemplar. Religious, affectionate, rational, the Vicar unites predilections which seemed irreconcilable; a clergyman, a farmer, a head of a family, he enhances those characters which appeared fit only for comic or homely parts.

Section IX.—Samuel Johnson

We now come upon a strange character, the most esteemed of his time, a sort of literary dictator. Richardson was his friend, and gave him essays for his paper; Goldsmith, with an artless vanity, admires him, whilst suffering to be continually outshone by him; Miss Burney imitates his style, and reveres him as a father. Gibbon the historian, Reynolds the painter, Garrick the actor, Burke the orator, Sir William Jones the Orientalist, come to his club to converse with him. Lord Chesterfield, who had lost his favor, vainly tried to regain it, by proposing to assign to him, on every word in the language, the authority of a dictator.[832] Boswell dogs his steps, sets down his opinions, and at night fills quartos with them. His criticism becomes law; men crowd to hear him talk; he is the arbiter of style. Let us transport in imagination this ruler of mind, Dr. Samuel Johnson, into France, among the pretty drawing-rooms, full of elegant philosophers and epicurean manners; the violence of the contrast will mark better than all argument the bent and predilections of the English mind.

There appears then before us a man whose "person was large, robust, approaching to the gigantic, and grown unwieldy from corpulency,"[833] with a gloomy and unpolished air, "his countenance disfigured by the king's evil," and blinking with one of his eyes, "in a full suit of plain brown clothes," and with not overclean linen, suffering from morbid melancholy since his birth, and moreover a hypochondriac.[834] In company he would sometimes retire to a window or corner of a room, and mutter a Latin verse or a prayer.[835] At other times, in a recess, he would roll his head, sway his body backward and forward, stretch out and then convulsively draw back his leg. His biographer relates that it "was his constant anxious care to go out or in at a door or passage,... so as that either his right or his left foot should constantly make the first actual movement; ... when he had neglected or gone wrong in this sort of magical movement, I have seen him go back again, put himself in the proper posture to begin the ceremony, and having gone through it, walk briskly on and join his companion."[836] People are sitting at table, when suddenly, in a moment of abstraction, he stoops, and clenching hold of the foot of a lady, draws off her shoe.[837] Hardly is the dinner served when he darts on the food; "his looks seemed rivetted to his plate; nor would he, unless when in very high company, say one word, or even pay the least attention to what was said by others; (he) indulged with such intenseness, that, while in the act of eating, the veins of his forehead swelled, and generally a strong perspiration was visible."[838] If by chance the hare was high, or the pie had been made with rancid butter, he no longer ate, but devoured. When at last his appetite was satisfied, and he consented to speak, he disputed, shouted, made a sparring-match of his conversation, triumphed no matter how, laid down his opinion dogmatically, and ill-treated those whom he was refuting. "Sir, I perceive you are a vile Whig."[839] "My dear lady (to Mrs. Thrale), talk no more of this; nonsense can be defended but by nonsense."[840] "One thing I know, which you don't seem to know, that you are very uncivil."[841] In the intervals of articulating he made various sounds with his mouth, sometimes as if ruminating,... sometimes giving a half whistle, sometimes making his tongue play backwards from the roof of his mouth, as if clucking like a hen.... Generally, when he had concluded a period, in the course of a dispute,... he used to blow out his breath like a whale,[842] and swallow several cups of tea.

Then in a low voice, cautiously, men would ask Garrick or Boswell the history and habits of this strange being. He had lived like a cynic and an eccentric, having passed his youth reading miscellaneously, especially Latin folios, even those least known, such as Macrobius; he had found on a shelf in his father's shop the Latin works of Petrarch, whilst he was looking for apples, and had read them;[843] "he published proposals for printing by subscription the Latin poems of Politian."[844] At twenty-five he had married for love a woman of about fifty, "very fat, with swelled cheeks, of a florid red, produced by thick painting, flaring and fantastic in her dress,"[845] and who had children as old as himself. Having come to London to earn his bread, some people, seeing his convulsive grimaces, took him for an idiot; others, seeing his robust frame, advised him to buy a porter's knot.[846] For thirty years he worked like a hack for the publishers, whom he used to thrash when they became impertinent;[847] always shabby, having once fasted two days;[848] content when he could dine on "a cut of meat for sixpence, and bread for a penny";[849] having written "Rasselas" in eight nights, to pay for his mother's funeral. Now pensioned[850] by the king, freed from his daily labors, he gave way to his natural indolence, lying in bed often till midday and after. He is visited at that hour. We mount the stairs of a gloomy house on the north side of Fleet Street, the busy quarter of London, in a narrow and obscure court; and as we enter, we hear the scoldings of four old women and an old quack doctor, poor penniless creatures, bad in health and in disposition, whom he has rescued, whom he supports, who vex or insult him. We ask for the Doctor, a negro opens the door; we gather round the master's bed: there are always many distinguished people at his levee, including even ladies. Thus surrounded, "he declaims, then went to dinner at a tavern, where he commonly stays late,"[851] talks all the evening, goes out to enjoy in the streets the London mud and fog, picks up a friend to talk again, and is busy pronouncing oracles and maintaining his opinion till four in the morning.

Whereupon we ask if it is the freedom of his opinions which is fascinating. His friends answer, that there is no more indomitable partisan of order. He is called the Hercules of Toryism. From infancy he detested the Whigs, and he never spoke of them but as public malefactors. He insults them even in his Dictionary. He exalts Charles II and James II as two of the best kings who have ever reigned.[852] He justifies the arbitrary taxes which Government presumes to levy on the Americans.[853] He declares that "Whigism is a negation of all principle";[854] that "the first Whig was the devil";[855] that "the Crown has not power enough";[856] that "mankind are happier in a state of inequality and subordination."[857] Frenchmen of the present time, admirers of the "Contrat Social," soon feel, on reading or hearing all this, that they are no longer in France. And what must they feel when, a few moments later, the Doctor says: "I think him (Rousseau) one of the worst of men; a rascal who ought to be hunted out of society, as he has been. ... I would sooner sign a sentence for his transportation, than that of any felon who has gone from the Old Bailey these many years. Yes, I should like to have him work in the plantations."[858]....

It seems that in England people do not like philosophical innovators. Let us see if Voltaire will be treated better: "It is difficult to settle the proportion of iniquity between them (Rousseau and Voltaire)."[859] In good sooth, this is clear. But can we not look for truth outside an Established Church? No; "no honest man could be a Deist; for no man could be so after a fair examination of the proofs of Christianity."[860] Here is a peremptory Christian; there are scarcely any in France so decisive. Moreover, he is an Anglican, with a passion for the hierarchy, an admirer of established order, an enemy of Dissenters. We see him bow to an archbishop with peculiar veneration.[861] We hear him reprove one of his friends "for saying grace without mention of the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."[862] If we speak to him of a Quakers' meeting, and of a woman preaching, he will tell us that "a woman preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs; it is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all."[863] He is a Conservative, and does not fear being considered antiquated. He went at one o'clock in the morning into St. John's Church, Clerkenwell, to interrogate a tormented spirit, which had promised to "give a token of her presence there by a knock upon her coffin."[864] If we look at Boswell's life of him, we will find there fervent prayers, examinations of conscience, and rules of conduct. Amidst prejudices and ridicule he has a deep conviction, an active faith, a severe moral piety. He is a Christian from his heart and conscience, reason and practice. The thought of God, the fear of the last judgment, engross and reform him. He said one day to Garrick: "I'll come no more behind your scenes, David, for the silk stockings and white bosoms of your actresses excite my amorous propensities." He reproaches himself with his indolence, implores God's pardon, is humble, has scruples. All this is very strange. We ask men what can please them in this grumbling bear, with the manners of a beadle and the inclinations of a constable? They answer, that in London people are less exacting than in Paris, as to manners and politeness; that in England they allow energy to be rude and virtue odd; that they put up with a combative conversation; that public opinion is all on the side of the constitution and Christianity; and that society was right to take for its master a man who, by his style and precepts, best suited its bent.

We now send for his books, and after an hour we observe, that whatever the work be, tragedy or dictionary, biography or essay, he always writes in the same style. "Dr. Johnson," Goldsmith said one day to him, "if you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like whales."[865] In fact, his phraseology rolls ever in solemn and majestic periods, in which every substantive marches ceremoniously, accompanied by its epithet; grand, pompous words peal like an organ; every proposition is set forth balanced by a proposition of equal length; thought is developed with the compassed regularity and official splendor of a procession. Classical prose attains its perfection in him, as classical poetry in Pope. Art cannot be more finished, or nature more forced. No one has confined ideas in more strait compartments; none has given stronger relief to dissertation and proof; none has imposed more despotically on story and dialogue the forms of argumentation and violent declamation; none has more generally mutilated the flowing liberty of conversation and life by antitheses and technical words. It is the completion and the excess, the triumph and the tyranny of oratorical style.[866] We understand now that an oratorical age would recognize him as a master, and attribute to him in eloquence the mastery which it attributed to Pope in verse.

We wish to know what ideas have made him popular. Here the astonishment of a Frenchman redoubles. We vainly turn over the pages of his Dictionary, his eight volumes of essays, his many volumes of biographies, his numberless articles, his conversation so carefully collected; we yawn. His truths are too true; we already know his precepts by heart. We learn from him that life is short, and we ought to improve the few moments granted to us;[867] that a mother ought not to bring up her son as a fop; that a man ought to repent of his faults, and yet avoid superstition; that in everything we ought to be active, and not hurried. We thank him for these sage counsels, but we mutter to ourselves that we could have done very well without them. We should like to know who could have been the lovers of ennui who have bought up thirteen thousand copies of his works. We then remember that sermons are liked in England, and that these essays are sermons. We discover that men of reflection do not need bold or striking ideas, but palpable and profitable truths. They desire to be furnished with a useful provision of authentic examples on man and his existence, and demand nothing more. No matter if the idea is vulgar; meat and bread are vulgar too, and are no less good. They wish to be taught the kinds and degrees of happiness and unhappiness, the varieties and results of character and condition, the advantages and inconveniences of town and country, knowledge and ignorance, wealth and moderate circumstances, because they are moralists and utilitarians; because they look in a book for the knowledge to turn them from folly, and motives to confirm them in uprightness; because they cultivate in themselves sense, that is common, practical reason. A little fiction, a few portraits, the least amount of amusement, will suffice to adorn it. This substantial food only needs a very simple seasoning. It is not the novelty of the dishes, nor dainty cookery, but solidity and wholesomeness, which they seek. For this reason essays are Johnson's national food. It is because they are insipid and dull for Frenchmen that they suit the taste of an Englishman. We understand now why they take for a favorite the respectable, the tiresome Dr. Samuel Johnson.

Section X.—William Hogarth

I would fain bring together all these features, see these figures; only colors and forms complete an idea; in order to know, we must see. Let us go to the picture-gallery. Hogarth, the national painter, the friend of Fielding, the contemporary of Johnson, the exact imitator of manners, will show us the outward, as these authors have shown us the inward.

We enter these great galleries of art. Painting is a noble thing! It embellishes all, even vice. On the four walls, under transparent and brilliant glass, the torsos rise, flesh palpitates, the blood's warm current circulates under the veined skin, speaking likenesses stand out in the light; it seems that the ugly, the vulgar, the odious, have disappeared from the world. I no more criticise characters; I have done with moral rules. I am no longer tempted to approve or to hate. A man here is but a smudge of color, at most a handful of muscles; I know no longer if he be a murderer.

Life, the happy, complete, overflowing display, the expansion of natural and corporal powers; this from all sides floods and rejoices our eyes. Our limbs instinctively move by contagious imitation of movements and forms. Before these lions of Rubens, whose deep growls rise like thunder to the mouth of the cave, before these colossal writhing torsos, these snouts which grope about skulls, the animal within us quivers through sympathy, and it seems as if we were about to emit from our chests a roar to equal their own.

What though art has degenerated even among Frenchmen, epigrammatists, the bepowdered abbés of the eighteenth century, it is art still. Beauty is gone, elegance remains. These pretty arch faces, these slender waspish waists, these delicate arms buried in a nest of lace, these careless wanderings among thickets and warbling fountains, these gallant dreams in a lofty chamber festooned with garlands, all this refined and coquettish society is charming. The artist, then as always, gathers the flowers of things, and cares not for the rest.

But what was Hogarth's aim? who ever saw such a painter? Is he a painter? Others make us wish to see what they represent; he makes us wish not to see it.

Is there anything more agreeable to paint than a drunken debauch by night? the jolly, careless faces; the rich light, drowned in shadows which flicker over rumpled garments and weighed-down bodies. With Hogarth, on the other hand, what figures! Wickedness, stupidity, all the vile poison of the vilest human passions, drops and distils from them. One is shaking on his legs as he stands, sick, whilst a hiccup half opens his belching lips; another howls hoarsely, like a wretched cur; another, with bald and broken head, patched up in places, falls forward on his chest, with the smile of a sick idiot. We turn over the leaves of Hogarth's works, and the train of odious or bestial faces appears to be inexhaustible; features distorted or deformed, foreheads lumpy or puffed out with perspiring flesh; hideous grins distended by ferocious laughter: one has had his nose bitten off; the next, one-eyed, square-headed, spotted over with bleeding warts, whose red face looks redder under the dazzling white wig, smokes silently, full of rancor and spleen; another, an old man with a crutch, scarlet and bloated, his chin falling on his breast, gazes with the fixed and starting eyes of a crab. Hogarth shows the beast in man, and worse, a mad and murderous, a feeble or enraged beast. Look at this murderer standing over the body of his butchered mistress, with squinting eyes, distorted mouth, grinding his teeth at the thought of the blood which stains and denounces him; or this ruined gambler, who has torn off his wig and kerchief, and is crying on his knees, with closed teeth, and fist raised against heaven. Look again at this madhouse: the dirty idiot, with muddy face, filthy hair, stained claws, who thinks he is playing on the violin, and has a sheet of music for a cap; the religious madman, who writhes convulsively on his straw, with clasped hands, feeling the claws of the devil in his bowels; the naked and haggard raving lunatic whom they are chaining up, and who is tearing out his flesh with his nails. Detestable Yahoos who presume to usurp the blessed light of heaven, in what brain can you have arisen, and why did a painter sully our eyes with your picture?

It is because his eyes were English, and because the senses in England are barbarous. Let us leave our repugnance behind us, and look at things as Englishmen do, not from without, but from within. The whole current of public thought tends here towards observation of the soul, and painting is dragged along with literature in the same course. Forget then the forms, they are but lines; the body is here only to translate the mind.[868] This twisted nose, these pimples on a vinous cheek, these stupefied gestures of a drowsy brute, these wrinkled features, these degraded forms, only make the character, the trade, the whim, the habit stand out more clearly. The artist shows us no longer limbs and heads, but debauchery, drunkenness, brutality, hatred, despair, all the diseases and deformities of these too harsh and unbending wills, the mad menagerie of all the passions. Not that he lets them loose; this rude, dogmatic, and Christian citizen handles more vigorously than any of his brethren the heavy club of morality. He is a beef-eating policeman charged with instructing and correcting drunken pugilists. From such a man to such men ceremony would be superfluous. At the bottom of every cage where he imprisons a vice, he writes its name and adds the condemnation pronounced by Scripture; he displays that vice in its ugliness, buries it in its filth, drags it to its punishment, so that there is no conscience so perverted as not to recognize it, none so hardened as not to be horrified at it.

Let us look well, these are lessons which bear fruit. This one is against gin: on a step, in the open street, lies a drunken woman, half naked, with hanging breasts, scrofulous legs; she smiles idiotically, and her child, which she lets fall on the pavement, breaks its skull. Underneath, a pale skeleton, with closed eyes, sinks down with a glass in his hand. Round about, dissipation and frenzy drive the tattered spectres one against another. A wretch who has hung himself sways to and fro in a garret. Gravediggers are putting a naked woman into a coffin. A starveling is gnawing a bare bone side by side with a dog. By his side little girls are drinking with one another, and a young woman is making her suckling swallow gin. A madman pitchforks his child, and raises it aloft; he dances and laughs, and the mother sees it.

Another picture and lesson, this time against cruelty. A young murderer has been hung, and is being dissected. He is there, on a table, and the lecturer calmly points out with his wand the places where the students are to work. At this sign the dissectors cut the flesh and pull. One is at the feet; the second man of science, a sardonic old butcher, seizes a knife with a hand that looks as if it would do its duty, and thrusts the other hand into the entrails, which, lower down, are being taken out to be put into a bucket. The last medical student takes out the eye, and the distorted mouth seems to howl under his hand. Meanwhile a dog seizes the heart, which is trailing on the ground; thigh-bones and skull boil, by way of concert, in a copper; and the doctors around coolly exchange surgical jokes on the subject which, piecemeal, is passing away under their scalpels.

Frenchmen will say that such lessons are good for barbarians, and that they only half like these official or lay preachers, De Foe, Hogarth, Smollett, Richardson, Johnson, and the rest. I reply that moralists are useful, and that these have changed a state of barbarism into one of civilization.

INDEX

The Roman Numerals Refer to the Volumes.—The Arabic Figures to the Pages of Each Volume.

Abelard, I. 158, 160 Addison, Joseph, II. 265, 292, 300, note 539, 311; his life and writings, 327; III. 83, 95, 259, 272, 2.80, 306 Adholm, I. 64, 69, 185 Agriculture, improvement in, in sixteenth century, I. 172; in the nineteenth, III. 43, 168 Akenside, Mark, III. 36 Alcuin, I. 64, 70 Alexander VI, Pope, II. 5 Alexandrian philosophy, I. 21, 22 Alfred the Great, I. 64, 69 Alison, Sir Archibald, III. 44 Amory, Thomas, II. note 438 Angelo, Michael, I. 183, 366; III. 27 Anglo-Saxon poetry, I. 53 seq. Ann of Cleaves, I. 186 Anselm, I. 76 Anthology the, I. 209, 240 Arbuthnot, Dr. John, II. note 689, note 691 Architecture, Norman, I. 75, 127; the Tudor style, 174 Ariosto, I. 185, 222; II. 236 Aristocracy British, in the nineteenth century, III. 169 seq. Arkwright, Sir Richard, II. 320 Armada, the I. 173, 279 Arnold, Dr. Thomas, III. 100, 178 Arthur and Merlin, romance of, I. 77 Ascham, Roger, I. 181, 246; II. 3 Athelstan, I. 36, 54 Augier, Emile, III. 208 Austen, Jane, III. 85 Bacon, Francis, Lord, I. 245, 255-263; II. 34, 39; III. 268 seq. 284 Bacon, Roger, I. 161 Bain, Alexander, III. 185 Bakewell, Robert, II. 320 Bale, John, I. 186 Balzac, Honoré de, I. 3; III. 215, 254 Barclay, Alexander, I. 165 Barclay, John, II. 292 Barclay, Robert, I. 58 Barrow, Isaac, II. 292, note 524, note 526, note 527, note 537 Baxter, Richard, I. 268; II. 56, 292 Bayly's (Lewis) Practice of Piety, II. 62 Beattie, Tames, II. note 826; III. 36 Beauclerk, Henry, I. 76 Beaumont, Francis, I. 291, 307-317; II. 41, note 60, 100 Becket, Thomas à, I. 97 Beckford, W., III. 77 Bede, the Venerable, I. 64 Bedford, Duke of (John Russell), II. 310 Beethovan, Lewis van, III. 87 Behn, Mrs. Aphra, II. 157, 254 Bell, Currer. See Brontë, Charlotte Bénoit de Sainte-Maure, I. 76 Bentham, Jeremy, II. 320 Bently, Richard, II. 303 Beowolf, an Anglo-Saxon epic poem, I. 49-53 Béranger, II. 11; III. 287 Berkeley, Bishop, II. 303 Berkley, Sir Charles, II. 141 Berners, Lord, I. 186 Best, Paul, II. 50 Bible, English. See Wiclif, Tyndale Blackmore, Sir Richard, II. 224 Blount, Edward, I. 192 Boccaccio, I. 126, 132; II. 266 Bodley, Sir Thomas, I. 246 Boethius, I. 64-67 Boileau, II. 144, 184, 224, 262, 284; III. 7, 4, 345 Boleyn, Ann, I. 276 Bolingbroke, Lord (Henry St. John), II. 275, 303, note 654, note 670, note 673; III. 8 Bonner, Edmund, II. 33 Borde, Andrew, I. 186 Borgia, Cæsar, II. 5, 6 Borgia, Lucretia, I. 182; II. 5 Bossu (or Lebossu), II. 224 Bossuet, I. 18; II. 233, note 542; III. 25, 306 Boswell, James, II. 444 , note 846, note 851 Bourchier. See Berners Boyle, the Hon. Robert, II. 303 Bridaine, Father, II. 298 Britons, ancient, I. 38 Brontë, Charlotte (Currer Bell), III. 85, 100, 185 Browne, Sir Thomas, I. 245, 246, 252; II. 34, 39 Browning, Mrs., III. 100, 185 Brunanburh, Athelstan's victory at, celebrated in Saxon song, I. 54 Buckingham, Duke of (John Sheffield), II. 153, 180, 184 Buckle, Henry Thomas, III. 154 seq., 176 Bulwer, Sir Henry Lytton, III. 85, 185 Bunyan, John, II. 58, note 94, 133 Burke, Edmund, II. note 536, 317, note 570, 444; III. 286, 306 Burleigh, Lord (William Cecil), I. 273; III. 286 Burnet, Bishop, II. 202 Burney, Francisca (Madame D'Arblay), II. note 508, 320, 444; III. 275 Burns, Robert, II. note 434, note 826; Sketch of his life and works, III. 48-65 Burton, Robert, I. 175, 248-252; II. 34, note 68, 100 Busby, Dr. Richard, II. 256 Bute, Lord, II. 273, 310 Butler, Bishop, II. 320 Butler, Samuel, II. 137, 303 Byng, Admiral, II. 310 Byron, Lord, III. 11; his life and works, 102-151 Cædmon, hymns of, I. 57, 61; his metrical paraphrase of parts of the Bible, 61-64, 185 Calamy, Edmund, II. 58 Calderon, I. 161, 279; II. 155 Calvin, John, II. note 9, 45, note 534 Camden, William, I. 246 Campbell, Thomas, III. 76, 112 Carew, Thomas, I. 238 Carlyle, Thomas, I. 6; III. 100, 176; style and mind, 308 seq.; vocation, 327 seq.; philosophy, morality, and criticism, 336 seq.; conception of history, 348 Carteret, John (Earl Granville), II. 311 Castlereagh, Lord, I. 319 Catherine, St., play of, I. 76 Cellini, Benvenuto, I. 26, 114, 184 Cervantes, I. 100, 151, 222; II. 410 Chalmers, George, I. 72 Chandos, Duke of (John Brydges), III. 8 Chapman, George, I. 330 Charles of Orleans, I. 84, 158 Charles I of England, III. 276 Charles II and his court, II. 140 Chateaubriand, I. 4; II. 346 Chatham. See Pitt Chaucer, I. 106, 126, 157; II. 265 Chesterfield, Lord, II. 278, note 497, 444; III. 15 Chevy Chase, ballad of, I. 125 Chillingworth, William, I. 245; II. 35, 38, 300 Christianity, introduction of, into Britain, I. 56, 63 seq. Chroniclers, French, I. 83 Chroniclers, Saxon, I. 68 Cibber, Colley, III. 8, 17 Cimbrians, the, I. 41 Clarendon, Lord Chancellor (Edward Hyde), I. 245; II. 140 Clarke, Dr. John, II. 289, 301 Classic spirit in Europe, its origin and nature, II. 170 Classical authors translated, I. 180, 190 Clive, Lord, III. 272 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, III. 73 Collier, Jeremy, II. 225, 256 Collins, William, III. 37 Colman, George, II. 220 Comedy-writers, English, II. 188 Comines, Philippe de, I. 124 Commerce in sixteenth century, I. 172; III. 165 seq. Comte, Auguste, III. 362 Condillac, Stephen-Bonnot de, III. 333, 363 Congreve, William, II. 188, note 466, note 508 Conybeare, J. J., I. 54 seq. Corbet, Bishop, II. 35 Corneille, II. 224, 236 Cotton, Sir Robert, I. 246 Court pageantries in the sixteenth century, I. 176, 177 Coventry, Sir John, II. 142 Coverdale, Miles, II. 20 Cowley, Abraham, I. 242-244; II. 34, 71 Cowper, William, III. 67-73 Crabbe, George, III. 71, 112 Cranmer, Archbishop, II. 15, 23 Crashaw, Richard, II. 34 Criticism and History, III. 267 seq. Cromwell, Oliver, I. 6; II. 35, 50; III. 276, 319, 351 Crowne, John, II. 157 Curll, Edmund, III. 18 Daniel, Samuel, I. 246 Dante, I. 135, 158, 161; II. 110; III. 335 Darwin, Charles, I. 13 Davie, Adam, I. 93 Davies, Sir John, II. 34 Daye, John, II. 47 Decker, Thomas, I. 281 De Foe, II. note 549, 402, note 737; III. 169 Delille, James, III. 21 Denham, Sir John, II. 185 Denmark, I. 34, 35 Dennis, John, II. 331 Descartes, II. 149, 233; III. 333 Dickens, Charles, III. 85, 100; his novels, 187-221 Domesday Book, I. 72, 78, 104 Donne, John, I. 240, 241; II. 35 Dorat, C. J., III. 16, 140 Dorset, Earl of (Charles Sackville), II. 179, 180 Drake, Admiral, I. 173 Drake, Dr. Nathan, I. 173, 271 Drama, formation of the, I. 291 seq. Drayton, Michael, I. 205; II. 34 Drummond, William, II. 100 Dryden, John, I. 18; II. 100; his comedies, 153, 184; his life and writings, II. 222, 332; III. 5, 329 Dudevant, Madame (George Sand), III. 207 Dunstan, St., I. 36 seq. Durer, Albert, II. 9, 10 Dyer, Sir Edward, I. 203 Earle, John, I. 246 Eddas, the Scandinavian, I. 42-46; III. 123, 124 Edgeworth, Maria, III. 253 Edward VI, II. 28 Edwy and Elgiva, story of, I. 38 Eliot, George. See Evans, Mary A. England, climate of, I. 33 English Constitution, formation of the, I. 105 Elizabeth, Queen, I. 175-177, 245, 270 Elwin, Whitwell, III. 5 seq. Erigena, John Scotus, I. 64, 69 Esménard, Joseph Alphonse, I. 163 Essex, Robert, Earl of, I. 270, 273 Etheredge, Sir George, II. 137, 158 Evans, Mary A. (George Eliot), III. 85, 179, 185 Eyck, Van, I. 151 Falkland, Lord, I. 245 Farnese, Pietro Luigi, II. 6 Farquhar, George, II. 188, note 290, note 324, 209 Faust, III. 47 Feltham, Owen, I. 246 Fenn, Sir John, I. 172 Ferguson, Dr. Adam, II. 304; III. 271 Fermor, Mrs. Arabella, III. 15, 16 Feudalism, the protection and character of, I. 73 Fichte, III. 335 Fielding, Henry, I. 319; II. note 224, 434, 450 Fitmore, Sir Robert, II. 305 Finsborough, Battle of, an Anglo-Saxon poem, I. 54 Fisher, John, Bishop of Rochester, I. 275; II. 26 Flemish artists, I. 170, 178 Fletcher, Giles, II. 34 Fletcher, John, I. 291, 307-317; II. note 60, 100 Ford, John, I. 291, 297 seq., 312; II. 248 Fortescue, Sir John, I. 113 seq. Fox, Charles James, II. 276, 311, 315 Fox, George, II. 52, 58, 133 Fox, John, II. 13 Francis of Assisi, I. 161 Freeman, Edward A., I. 74 Frisians, the, I. 32, 33 Froissart, I. 83, 102, 126, 127, 132 Froude, J. A., I. 104; II. 15 Fuller, Thomas, I. 318 Gaimar, Geoffroy, I. 76, 92 Gainsborough, Thomas, landscape painter, II. 220 Garrick, David, II. 444, 448 Gaskell, Mrs. Elisabeth C., III. 85, 185 Gay, John, II. 211, 279; III. 4. 29-32 Geoffrey of Monmouth, I. 134 German ideas, introduction of, in Europe and England, III; 328 seq. Germany, drinking habits in, II. 7 Gibbon, Edward, II. 444 Gladstone, William Ewart, III. 274 Glencoe, Massacre of, III. 302 seq. Glover, Richard, III. 37 Godwin, William, II. 95 Goethe, I. 6, 18; II. 111, 118, 430; III. 48, 74, 125-131, 327 seq. Goldsmith, Oliver, II. 211, note 555, 440 Goltzius, I. 196 Gower, John, I. 90, 163 Grammont, Count de, II. 135, note 288, 170 Gray, Thomas, III. 36 Greene, Robert, I. 206, 210, 281, 283, 364 Grenville, George, II. 310 Gresset, J. B. Lewis, III. 16 Grey, Lady Jane, I. 180, 270 Grostete, Robert, I. 90, 93 Grote, George, III. 185 Guicciardini, Ludovic, I. 173 Guido, I. 16 Guizot, I. 107; III. 276, 282, 305 Guy of Warwick, I. 77 Habington, William, I. 240 Hakluyt, Richard, I. 246 Hale, Sir Matthew, II. 16 Hales, John, I. 245; II. 35, 37, note 533, note 534 Halifax, Charles, Montague, Earl of, II. note 595, note 604, 361, 366 Hall, Bishop, Joseph, I. 246; II. 35 Hallam, Henry, I. 118; III. 276 Hamilton, Anthony, II. 136 Hamilton, Sir William, III. 185 Hampden, John, III. 276 Hampole, I. 93 Hardyng, John, I. 269 Harrington, Sir John, I. 237 Harrison, William, I. 173 seq. Hastings, Warren, II. 317; III. 272, 285 seq., 291 Hawes, Stephen, I. 165 Hegel, I. 18, 22, 159; II. 271, 331 Heine, I. 2, 32, 360; III. 39, 48, 74, 87 Hemling, Hans, I. 170 Henry Beauclerk, I. 76 Henry of Huntingdon, I. 39, 76 Henry VIII and his Court, I. 269; II. 15 Herbert, George, I. 240 Herbert, Lord, I. 246 Herder, John Godfrey von, I. 6 Herrick, Robert, I. 238, 239 Hertford, Earl of, I. 270 Hervey, Lord, III. 26 Heywood, Mrs. Eliza, III. 18 Heywood, John, I. 186, 280 Hill, Aaron, III. 8 History, philosophy of. See the Introduction, passim. Hobbes, Thomas, II. 147, 250 Hogarth, William, II. 450; III. 18 Holinslied's Chronicles, I. 176, 246, 275 Holland, I. 31 seq. Homer and Spenser, I. 217 Hooker, Richard, I. 245; II. 35 Horn, Ring, romance of, I. 77, 100 Hoveden, John, I. 90 Howard, John, II. 320 Howe, John, III. 299 Hugo, Victor, I. 2, 165; II. 270; III. 74, 87 Hume, David, II. 304, 440; III. 294, 352 Hunter, William, martyrdom of, II. 31, 32 Hutcheson, Francis, II. 304, 320; III. 271 Iceland and its legends, I. 35, 42 Independency in the sixteenth century, II. 49, 90 Industry, British, in the nineteenth century, III. 165 seq. Irish, the ancient, I. 38 Italian writings and ideas, taste for, in sixteenth century, I. 181, 182; vices of the Italian Renaissance, II. 3 James I and his Court, I. 237 seq. James II, III. 282 Jewell, Bishop, I. 277 Johnson, Samuel, I. 319; II. 303, 321, 444; III. 10, 38, 345 Joinville, Sire de, I. 83 Jones, Inigo, I. 174, 321 Jones, Sir William, II. 444 Jonson, Ben, I. 208, 265, 280; II. 100; III. 155; sketch of his life, I. 318-321; his learning, style, etc., 321-327; his dramas, 327-333; his comedies, 333-345; compared with Molière, 345; fanciful comedies and smaller poems, 345-350 Jordaens, Jacob, I. 178 Jowett, Benjamin, III. 100, 334 Judith, poem of, I. 60, 61 Junius, Letters of, II. 311; III. 106 Jutes, the, and their country, I. 31 seq. Keats, John, III. 130 Kemble, John M., I. 37, 49 Knighton, Henry, I. 123 Knolles, Richard, I. 246 Knox, John, II. 8, 28; III. 354 Kyd, Thomas, I. 280 Lackland, John, I. 102 LaHarpe, III. 345 Lamartine, I. 2; III. 74, 87 Lamb, Charles, III. 73, 76 Languet, Hubert, I. 194 Latimer, Bishop, I. 109; II. 17, 27 Lanfranc, first Norman Archbishop of Canterbury, I. 76 Langtoft, Peter, I. 90 Laud, Archbishop, II. 38; III. 287 Lavergne, Léonce de, I. 33 Law, William, II. 303 Layamon, I. 92 Lebrun, Ponce Denis Econchard, I. 163 Lee, Nathaniel, II. 241 Leibnitz, III. 23 Leighton, Dr. Alexander, II. 49, 88 Lely, Sir Peter, II. 320 Leo X, Pope, II. 4 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, I. 4 Lingard, Dr. John, I. 34, 35 Locke, John, II. 71, 300, 303, note 539, 320 Lockhart, John Gibson, III. 78 seq. Lodge, Thomas, I. 204, 280 Lombard, Peter, I. 157, 160 Loménie de Brienne, Cardinal, III. 311 London in Henry VIII's time, I. 173; in the present day, III. 164 Longchamps, William, I. 97 Longus, Greek romance-writer, I. 209 Lorris, Guillaume de, I. 84, 95 Loyola, I. 161, 171; III. 273 Ludlow, Edmund, II. 51 Lulli, a renowned Italian composer, II. 233 Lully, Raymond; I. 161 Luther, Martin, I. 26, 171; II. 3; and the Reformation, 7 Lydgate, John, I. 164, 165 Lyly, John, I. 192 Lyly, William, I. 180 Macaulay, Thomas Babington (Lord), III. 100; his works, 267-307 Machiavelli, I. 183 Mackenzie, Henry, III. 35, 51 Mackintosh, Sir James, III. 276 Macpherson, James, III. 36 Malcolm, Sir John, III. 78 Malherbe, Francis de, III. 329 Malte-brun, Conrad, I. 31 Mandeville, Bernard, II. 303 Manners of the people in the sixteenth century, I. 178 seq. Marguerite of Navarre, I. 132 Marlborough, Duchess of, III. 26 Marlborough, Duke of, II. 275, 307; III. 259 Marlowe, Christopher, I. 211, 280; III. 73; his dramas, I. 282-291 Marston, John, I. 320 Martyr, Peter, II. 23 Martyrs in the reign of Mary, II. 30 Marvell, Andrew, II. 254 Masques, under James I, I. 177, 348 Massillon, II. 28 Massinger, Philip, I. 280, 281, 297 seq. Maundeville, Sir John, I. 91, 102 May, Thomas, II. 57 Medici, Lorenzo de, I. 182 Melanchthon, Philip, II. 13, 23 Merlin, I. 77 Meung, Jean de, I. 93, 162 Michelet, Jules, I. 4, 57; III. 325 Middleton, Thomas, I. 291 Mill, John Stuart, III. 100, 176, 360-408 Milton, John, I. 62, 215, 245; II. 71; his prose writings, 84; his poetry, 100, 347, 348; III. 272 Molière, I. 213, 359, 361; II. 188, 418; III. 214 Mommsen, Theodor, I. 19 Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, II. 424; III. 8, 15 Montesquieu, Ch., I. 21, 25 Moore, Thomas, II. 440; III. 75 seq., 138 More, Sir Thomas, I. 246, 276 Müller, Max, III. 361 Muller, Ottfried, I. 6 Murray, John, III. 78, 138, 140 Musset, Alfred de, I. 2, 199, 282, 324, 358; II. 267; III. 39, 74, 87, 430 seq. Nash, Thomas, I. 281 Nayler, James, II. 53, 57 Neal's History of the Puritans, II. 53, 88 Newcastle, Duchess of (Margaret Lucas), II. 187 Newspaper, first daily, III. 44 Newton, Sir Isaac, II. 289, 301 Nicole, Peter, II. 283 Norman Conquest, the, I. 71, 72, 73; its effects on the national language and literature, 87 seq., 123-125; III. 151 Normans, the character of, I. 74; how they became French, 75; their taste and architecture, 75; their literature, chivalry, and success, 76-80; their position and tyranny in England, 87-90; III. 152 Nott, Dr. John, I. 191 Novel, the English—its characteristics, II. 402; the modern school of novelists, III. 185 seq. Nut-brown Maid, the—an ancient ballad, 190 Oates, Titus, II. 257 Occam, William, I. 161 Occleve, Thomas, I. 163 Ochin, Bernard, II. 23 Oliphant, Mrs., II. 424 Olivers, Thomas, II. 290 Orrery, Earl of, III. 8 Otway, Thomas, II. 241, 248 Ouseley, Sir William, III. 78 Overbury, Sir Thomas, I. 246 Owen, John, II. 58 Paganism of poetry and painting in Italy in the sixteenth century, I. 181 seq. Paley, William, II. 300 Palgrave, Sir Francis, I. 33 Parnell, Dr. Thomas, III. 4 Pascal, II. 300, 400; III. 25, 306 Pastoral poetry, I. 204 seq. Peele, George, I. 280 Penn, William, II. 288; III. 299 Pepys, Samuel, II. 142, 143, 146 Percy, Thomas, III. 73 Petrarch, I. 126, 185, 190 Philips, Ambrose, III. 4 Philosophy and history, III. 308 seq. Philosophy and poetry, connection of, I. 157 Picts, I. 38 Pickering, Dr. Gilbert, II. 223 Piers Plowman's Crede, I. 122 Piers Ploughman, Vision of, I. 120 seq., 185 Pitt, William, first Earl of Chatham, II. 276, 267; III. 275 Pitt, William (second son of the preceding), II. 311, 217; III. 65 Pleiad, the, I. 18 Pluche, Abbé, II. 342 Poe, Edgar Allan, II. 405 Pope, Alexander, II. 252, 328, 332, 381; III. 5-28, 112, 117, 28O Prayer-book, English, II. 23 Preaching at the Reformation period, II. 27 Presbyterians and Independents in the sixteenth century, II. 49, 90 Price, Dr. Richard, II. 304, 321; III. 271 Priestly, Dr., III. 66 Prior, Matthew, III. 4, 28 Proclus, I. 159 Prynne, William, II. 57 Pulci, an Italian painter, I. 182 Pultock, Robert, II. 438 Purchas, Samuel, I. 246 Puritans, the, II. 45, 132 Puttenham, George, I. 185, 246 Pym, John, III. 276 Quarles, Francis, I. 240 Rabelais, I. 149, 222, 265, 366; II. 144, 388, 438 Racine, I. 371; II. 224, 284; III. 218, 306 Raleigh, Sir Walter, I. 214, 246, 273; II, 34 Rapin, II. 224 Ray, John, II. 303 Reformation in England made way for by the Saxon character and the situation of the Norman Church, I. 122-125, 165; II. 7 Reid, Thomas, II. 304, 320, 440 Renaissance, the English; manners of the time, I. 169-185; the theatre its original product, 264 seq. Renan, Ernest, I. 19, 127 Restoration, period of the, in England, II. 131, 209 Revolution, period of the, in England, II. 273 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, II. 220, 320, 444 Richard Cœur de Lion, I. 101 Richardson, Samuel, II. 135, 303, 412, 444; III. 8, 35 Ridley, Nicholas, II. 30 Ritson, Joseph, I. 108 seq. Robert of Brunne, I. 93 Robert of Gloucester, I. 93 Robertson, Dr. William, II. 440; III. 3, 38, 352 Robespierre, II. 284 Robin Hood ballads, I. 109 seq., 178, 185 Rochester, Earl of (John Wilmot), II. 143, 184, 337; III. 28, 140 Rogers, John, martyrdom of, II. 31 Rogers, Samuel, III. 112 Roland, Song of, I. 77, 81 seq. Rollo, a Norse leader, I. 74 Ronsard, Peter de, I. 18 Roscellinus, I. 160 Roscommon, Earl of, II. 184 Roses, wars of the, I. 114, 124, 172, 287 Rotheland, Hugh de, I. 90 Rousseau, Jean-Baptiste, III. 22 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, II. 447; III. 16, 34 Royer-Collard, Pierre-Paul, III. 392 Rubens, I. 151, 177, 178, 232, 366; III. 27 Rückert, III. 74 Russel, Lord William, II. 141 Sacheverell, Dr., II. 273, 306 Sacy, Lemaistre de, II. 22 Sadeler, I. 196 Sainte-Beuve, I. 6 St. John. See Bolingbroke, Lord Saint-Simon, I. 3; III. 217 St. Theresa, I. 161 Saintré, Jehan de, I. 102 Sand, George. See Dudevant, Madame Savage, Richard, III. 18 Sawtré, William, I. 124 Saxons, the, I. 31 seq.; characteristics of the race, 71; contrast with the Normans, 74, 75; their endurance, 103 seq.; their invasion of England, III. 151, 152 Scaliger, III. 345 Schelling, I. 22 Schiller, III. 48, 74, 87 Scotland in the seventeenth century, II. 134 Scott, Sir Walter, I. 4; II. 222, 361, 440; III. 74, 105, 107, 260; his novels and poems, 78-85 Scotus, Duns, I. 159 seq. Scudéry, Mademoiselle de, I. 195 Sedley, Sir Charles, I. 240; II. 179 Selden, John, I. 246 Seres, William, II. 47 Settle, Elkanah, II. 225, 240 Sévigné, Madame de, III. 15, 306 Shadwell, Thomas, II. 157, 240, 261 Shaftesbury, Anthony Cooper, third Earl of, II. 304 Shakespeare, William, I. 186, 206, 245, 280; II. 230, 238; III. 155; general idea of, I. 350-353; his life and character, 354-366; his style, 366-371, and manners, 372-377; his dramatis personæ, 377-382; his men of wit, 382-386, and women, 386-391; his villains, 391, 392; the principal characters in his plays, 393-407; fancy, imagination—ideas of existence—love; harmony between the artist and his work, 407-419 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, III. 74, 95-100, 130 Shenstone, William, III. 37 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, II. 212, 311, 440 Sherlock, Bishop, II. 292, 301, 412 Shirley, James, I. 280; II. 153 Sidney, Algernon, I. 245; II. 71, 141 Sidney, Sir Phillip, I. 186, 194-204, 245, 266; II. 39; III. 155 Skelton, John, I. 165 Smart, Christopher, III. 37 Smith, Adam, II. 304, 320 Smith, Sidney, II. 282; III. 100 Smollett, Tobias, II. 308, 433, 440 Society in Great Britain in the present day, III. 169 seq.; in England and in France, 430 seq. South, Dr. Robert, II. 292, 295 Southern, Thomas, II. 241 Southey, Robert, II. 438; III. 72, 76, 134, 287 Speed, John, I. 246 Spelman, Sir Henry, I. 246 Spencer, Herbert, III. 185 Spencer, Edmund, I. 186, 207, 213, 245; II. 71, 110; his life, character and poetry, I. 214-237; II. 236; III. 155, 424 Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn, III. 100, 334 Steele, Sir Richard, II. 311, 327; III. 259 Stendhal, Count de, I. 25, 74, 142 Sterling, John, III. 309 seq. Sterne, Laurence, II. 437; III. 35 Stewart, Dugald, II. 320, 440; III. 61 Stillingfleet, Bishop, II. 292, 301 Stowe, John, I. 246 Strafford, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of, III. 276 seq. Strafford, William, I. 172 Strype, John, I. 268 Stubbes, John, I. 175, 180 Suckling, Sir John, I. 238; II. 181 Sue, Eugène, III. 220 Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of, I. 185-192; II. 16 Swift, Jonathan, II. 135, 224, 303, 311, 327; III. 259, 288; sketch of his life, II. 360; his wit, 368; his pamphlets, 371; his poetry, 380; his philosophy, etc., 389 Taillefer, I. 79, 89 Tasso, I. 222, 229 Taylor, Jeremy, I. 246; II. 35, 38, 44 Temple, Sir William, II. 173, 365, 389; III. 3, 272 Teniers, David, III. 83 Tennyson, Alfred, III. 100, 185, 410-438 Thackeray, William M. III. 85, 100; his novels, 223-265 Theatre, the, in the sixteenth century, I. 264 seq.; after the Restoration, II. 153, 188, 226 Thibaut of Champagne, I. 84 Thierry, Augustin, I. 4, 35, 56, 88; III. 305 Thiers, Louis Adolphe, III. 282, 305 Thomson, James, III. 32-35 Thorpe, John, I. 47, 55 Tickell, Thomas, III. 4 Tillotson, Archbishop, II. 292 Tindal, Matthew, II. 303 Titian, I. 236, 366 Tocqueville, Alexis de, I. 19 Toland, John, II. 303 Toleration Act, the, III. 298, 299, 300 Tomkins, Thomas, II. 32 Townley, James, II. 220 Turner, Sharon, I. 48, 54 seq. Tutchin, John, III. 18 Tyndale, William, II. 19, 28, 47 Urfé, Honoré d', I. 197, 315 Usher, James, I. 246 Vanbrugh, Sir John, II. 187 Vane, Sir Harry, II. 143 Vega, Lope de, I. 161, 279; II. 155 Village feasts of sixteenth century described, I. 178-180 Villehardouin, a French chronicler, I. 83, 102 Vinci, Leonardo da, I. 16 Voltaire, I. 16; II. 447; III. 22, 137, 346 Vos, Martin de, I. 196 Wace, Robert, I. 76, 78 seq., 89 Waller, Edmund, I. 240; II. 71, 153, 181; III. 3 Walpole, Horace, III. 15 Walpole, Sir Robert, II. 274, 280 Walton, Isaac, I. 246 Warburton, Bishop, II. 303 Warner, William, I. 212 Warton, Thomas, I. 72, 88, 95, 162; III. 73 Watt, James, II. 320 Watteau, Anthony, III. 14 Watts, Isaac, III. 37 Webster, John, 291, 297 seq.; II. 248 Wesley, John, II. 280 Wetherell, Elizabeth, III. 179 Wharton, Lord, III. 26 Whitfield, George, II. 289 Wiclif, John, I. 123, 286; II. 15 Wilkes, John, II. 310 William III, II. 173 Wither, George, II. 35 William of Malmesbury, I. 75 William the Conqueror, I. 78 seq. Windham, William, II. 311 Witenagemote, the, I. 46 Wollastom William Hyde, III. 271 Wolsey, Cardinal, I. 165; II. 16 Wordsworth, William, III. 73, 88-95 Wortley, Lady Mary. See Montagu Wyatt, Sir Thomas, I. 185, 180, 187 Wycherley, William, I. 18; II. 157, 178, 187, 188, 202, 250, 337 Yonge, Charlotte Mary, III. 179 Young, Arthur, II. 320 Young, Edward, III. 37