Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/450

Rh 430 ENGLISH LITERATURE [GEORGIAN. that both Fielding and Richardson adhere firmly to the Re- - volution-compromise, both in religion and politics, and the one quite as much as the other. Fielding is as zealous a Protestant as Bunyan or Baxter; and the doctrine of non- resistance was rejected by him as warmly as by the Whig prosecutors of Sachevcrell. Richardson, again, is neither a republican nor a nonconformist. He finds no objection, on the score of tolerance and latitude, to the church of Burnet, Tillotson, and Hoadly; and the hereditary presidency which the Act of Settlement had vested in the Hanoverian family was too feeble and inoffensive to excite in the breast of the most zealous of Whigs fears of the pre ponderance of the regal power in the constitution. Both Richardson and Fielding are entirely satisfied with the political and religious constitution of the land they live in. Dismissing such fancies, let us consider what were the actual occasions which led to the production of Pamela and the novels which followed it, and in what relation they stand to preceding literary work. They were in the main at once the symptoms and the developing causes of a reac tion against the sentimental romances with which ladies and gentlemen had stuffed their heads and beguiled their time in the 17th and in the early part of the 18th century. A list of the chief works of this kind of literature is to be found in Addison s amusing paper on Leonora s library (Spectator, No. 37) ; it includes Sidney s Arcadia, the Grand Cyrus, Cassandra, Pharamond, Cleopatra, &c., the works named being all translations from the French romances of Scudery and Calprenede. The excessive popularity of this kind of reading is intimated by Addison when lie says (No. 92), adverting to letters which he has received in relation to his project of forming a perfect &quot; lady s library,&quot; that he has been &quot; advised to place Pharamond at the head of his catalogue, and, if he thinks proper, to give the second place to Cassandra.&quot; In the character of Leonora herself, Addison mildly ridicules the sentimentality, affecta tion, and unreality which such reading, carried to excess, Ricliard- engenders. Richardson, whose father was a Derbyshire son. joiner, and who was brought up to the trade of a printer, in which he persevered all his life and prospered, had reached his fiftieth year when he was requested by two London booksellers to write for publication a series of Familiar Letters, for the instruction of persons who did not know how to express themselves properly in writing about the ordinary affairs of life. He consented, but pro posed to give a moral and improving turn to the instruction to be communicated ; to this the booksellers at once agreed. While he was writing model letters giving advice to young women going out to service, the incidents of a story which had come within his own experience occurred to his mind. It seemed to him that this story, if told by way of letters, &quot; in an easy and natural manner, suitable to the simplicitjr of it, might possibly introduce a new species of writing that might turn young people into a course of reading different from the pomp and parade of romance writing, and, dismissing the improbable and marvellous, with which novels generally abound, might tend to promote the cause of religion and virtue.&quot; The heroine of his tale was a simple country girl, without book learning, but strong in virtue and honesty of heart, to whom he gave the name Pamela (one of the two princesses in Sidney s Arcadia), as if to show that, to quote from Emerson, &quot; the life of man is the true romance, which, if it be valiantly conducted, will yield the imagination a higher charm than any fiction.&quot; Pamela s virtue is assailed by the young libertine in whose house she is living as a servant ; she resists him, and her &quot;virtue&quot; is &quot; rewarded * (this is the second title of the book) by the honour and glory of marriage with this repro bate, who, being a fine gentleman, and stooping to a union with a &quot; lass of low degree,&quot; atones for all past shortcomings by this amazing condescension. The book was well received ; Pope, then declining towards the tomb, praised it as &quot; likely to do more good than twenty volumes of sermons.&quot; There was, however, a strain of vulgarity in the manner in which the catastrophe of this romance of real life was narrated ; and this defect was noted by the eagle eye of Fielding. As a burlesque upon Pamela, he wrote Fi (1742) the Adventures of Joseph Andrews. Joseph is a virtuous footman who resists the improper advances of the titled lady in whose service he is ; this of course was mere jest and caricature ; in the end Joseph, instead of, like Pamela, marrying out of his condition, is wedded, as common sense would dictate, to a pretty modest girl of his own rank. The bent of his own powers, and the suitable ness of this new field for their employment, must have been revealed to Fielding while vriting Joseph Andrews. Till now it had been his ambition to shine as a dramatist, and he had produced some plays of no inconsiderable merit but soon after the appearance of his first novel he quitted the stage and gave up the remainder of his life, so far as it was not engrossed by the duties of a zealous police magistrate, partly to the production of essays on social topics, partly to novel-writing. Tom Jones (1749) is allowed to be his master-piece ; it is one of the finest pieces of character-painting to be found in the whole range of literature. Yet it must be understood that Fielding s char acters belong to a social medium from which the ideal and the heroic are shut out by the conditions of its existence ; the &quot; compromise&quot; which England had accepted repressed enthusiasm and a high strain of virtue in every direction : no creations, therefore, possessing the immortal interest of some of those in Don Quixote could be expected from him who has been sometimes called the &quot;English Cervantes.&quot; But taking them as they are, the characters of Tom Jones and Blifil, of Thwackum and Square, present us with inimitable types. Tom Jones, as the generous, manly youth, whom passion hurries into vice, but good feeling and innate rectitude never fail to rescue, is contrasted with the artful hypocrite Blifil, whose outward demeanour pays a homage to virtue which his secret practices and desires undo. Thwackum, the pedagogue, shows what comes of a pedantic learning which has nothing of the largeness of true culture ; Square, the thinker, exhibits the moral decadence that results from a grovelling philosophy. In 1748 Richardson published Clarissa Harlowe, and in 1753 Sir Charles Grandison ; both these novels are in the epistolary form. Clarissa soon obtained a European repu tation, the sentimental metaphysics which constitute so large a portion of it being exactly to the taste of a large number of readers in France and Switzerland. Rousseau adopted the style, while corrupting the principles, of the English author, when he wrote his Nouvelle Ildoise. The casuistry of love and seduction is interminable ; so also is the novel of Clarissa, yet perhaps no reader who had launched fairly into it ever put the book down unfinished. It excites a deep tragic interest which no formal tragedy produced in England had awakened for several generations ; the noble Clarissa, dying because she cannot brook a stain which yet touched not her will, nor came near her con science, is a spectacle pathetic and touching in the extreme. The chivalrous, but provokingly perfect, Sir Charles Grandison was the character created by Richardson as a kind of contrast to, and compensation for, the aristocratic villain, Lovelace. His embarrassing situation between two lovely women who both adore him, and both of whom he loves, the. English Harriet and the Italian Clementina, though in the brief telling it seems absurd, is managed in the novel with so much art and vraisemllance as to inspire the reader during seven volumes with a genuine perplexity and solicitude. His abrupt half-declaration to Harriet