Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 14.djvu/779

* NOVEL. 663 NOVEL. the comic romances, such as Cervantes and Scar- ron wrote, but is molded to the form of ancient comedy. His masterjjiece, Tom Jones (1749), is a clever union of many types of comedy for many effects. Amelia (1751) is the pathetic drama of family life, then common in France and England. Fielding makes no use of letters (except for Imrlesque) or of journals and memoirs. His characters speak directly, and the narrative, though hampered at times by ei^isodes, is mostly in the third person. All the essentials of the novel were thus worked out by Richardson and Fielding. Since their time the advance in .struc- ture has been only in details. The novel left their hands a well-ordered literary species. They both aimed, each in his own way, to depict the inner and the outward life as it is. They were realists. True, a good deal that was traditional in fiction foimd its way into their work. The dastardly scenes in Richar<lson, which now so shock readers, were survivals from Greek ro- mance. And Fielding appropriated the old pica- resque escapades. Later realists, having mostly rid themselves of all this material, depend rather upon their own experience and observation,. And though few novelists have dared discard love altogether as a motive, it is now treated less in its physical aspects. In spite of all tliis, which is indicative of the later development of fictirtn, probably no novel t.akes to itself more of human life than Tom Jones. No characters stand in clearer outline than its hero and Squire Western. Richardson's work ended with Sir Charles Graiidison, and Fielding died in 1754. Tobias Smollett survived them. Much under the influ- ence of the picaresque writers, he was careless in manner, ami his imagination delighted in coarse and brutal scenes. He, however, created many caricature types at once professional and national — the Irishman, the Welshman, and the Scotch- man. Roderick Random (I74S) is the first novel of the sea from the pen of a seaman. Humphrcij Clinher (1771) is, said Thackeray, "the most laughable story ever written." In distinction from the humor of Fielding. Smollett is comic. His formlessness and audacity became affecta- tions with Laurence Sterne. Trintram Shandy (1759-67), beginning nowhere and ending no- where, is hardly a novel, but it contains passages of the highest beauty, and a brotherhood of fools unequaled outside of Shakespeare. At this time Oliver Goldsmith wrote the Vicar of Wakefield { 17fiO), the source of many idyls of village life. The novel thus began at once to break up into several varieties. This process, owing to social conditions, went on apace. In the next generation there was a numerous class of writers who resorted to the novel for the purpose of popularizing theories of education and govern- ment. They were inspired by Rousseau and other French philosophers. Among them were Robert Bage, Charlotte Smith. Elizabeth Inehbald, Thomas Holcroft. and William Godwin. It may be claimed for them that they founded the didac- tic novel. Fielding had depicted his characters through trhnt they said in dialogue. Except in the case of Squire Western, little stress was placed upon how they spoke. Here was another lesson to be learned from the drama or rather from the actor. And as soon as it was learned, we had the novel of manners. Frances Rurney •was the pioneer with her Evelina (1778) and Cecilia (1782). In the Irish tales of Maria Edgeworth, as Castle Rackrent (1800) and The Ahsentee (1812), the interest centres wholly on the speech and apjiearanee of the characters. The}' are the first dialect stories. The novel of nninners reached its higliest art in the work of Jane Austen, well represented bv Pride and Prejudice (181.3) and Maiinficld Park (1814), admirable in structure, movement, and tone. Here first the drama and the epic became per- fectly fused. The sentimental novel has perhaps had its greatest exponent in Goethe, whose Leiden dcs junge.n Werther (1773-74) set half of Europe to pondering over suicide and other morbid themes. WUhclm Meister (1795, begun some twenty years earlier), on the other hand, is an autobiogiaphic and to some extent a didac- tic novel. EoiiANCE Ajnj SiE Walteb Scott. The old romances never became quite dead. As late as 1752, Charlotte Lennox thought it worth while to ridicule them in the Female Quixote. Under the impulse of the romantic spirit which was. pervading all literature, a short ghostly romance was published by Horace Wal|)oIe in 1764. His Castle of Otranto set the standard for many writers, among whom were Clara Reeve, Ann Radcliffe, William Beckford, M. G. Lewis, C. B. Brown, William (Jodwin, and Mary Shelley. Per- haps the most typical s])0cimen of their work is ilrs. Radclifl'e's ili/sterics of IJdolpho (1794), which definitely marks an interest in scenery for its o^vn sake. Godwin's Caleb Williams' (1794) is the first detective story. These romances of the eighteenth century are forerunners of the tales of terror and wonder by Poe and Hawthorne. But Poe gave them a new art in the Fall of the House of Usher (1840) and the Masque of the Red Death (1842). To Hawthorne they sug- gested a dress for psychological problems. Wal- pole and his school CKammonly ])Iaced their scenes in medio?val times ; hence, their romances were known as 'Gothic,' and they are, in a manner, his- torical in setting. It was a natural step for an innovator to make history the main interest. Such a step was taken by Sophia Lee, whose Recess (1783-86) is an historical fiction of the time of Queen Elizabeth. Her example was fol- lowed by many others, among whom were .James White, W. H. Ireland, and, most noteworthy of all, Jane Porter, author of The Seotlish Chiefs (1810). Nothing could be more preposterous than the way in which these writers dealt with history. Characters and incidents of different periods they introduced into the same scene. But they rarely employed the historical allegory; and they made po.ssible Waverlei/ ( 1S14). To the amazement of his contemporaries, Scott poured forth during the next sixteen years about thirty novels, covering English and Scotch history, with some gaps, from William Rufus to 1800. Among his English followers were Horace Smith. G. P. R. James, Harrison Ainsworth, and James Grant. He inspired Manzoni in Italy, Freytag in Germany, and Hugo and Dumas in France. His Pirate suggested to James Fenimore Cooper the brilliant tales of the sea beginning with The Pilot { 1824) ; and for his Leather-Stocking Series, containing The Last of the Mohicans. The Pathfinder, and The Decrslayer, Cooper became known as the American Scott. The Retckn to the No'EL of Contemporart Life. Scott's influence on the novel is not summed