The vivid imagination and love of knowledge which Scott displayed from his earliest years were supplemented throughout his life by an a.s.siduous self-cultivation. The great and varied body of legendary lore which he acc.u.mulated, together with his ever active and universal sympathy with mankind, made the chief elements in his fictions. There is no one respect in which the Waverley novels are pre-eminent. As regards plot, Scott has been frequently surpa.s.sed. While "Kenilworth,"
the "Bride of Lammermoor," and "Ivanhoe," are well constructed, the plan of "Rob Roy" and "The Monastery" are lacking in sequence. Other novelists, too, have drawn character with quite as much power. But the Waverly novels have attained their supreme position in public estimation by a rare and well balanced union of different qualities.
They contain beautiful examples of the sublime, and amusing examples of the ludicrous. They reflect nature in various phases, and always with picturesqueness, power, and truth. Of Scott"s historical novels we shall speak elsewhere. Of those which relate especially to his own country, the most remarkable merit consists in the fidelity with which they have reflected the Scotch nationality. On this account they will always possess a value for the student of social history.
Of the estimation in which these novels have been held by the world, and the immense area over which their influence has extended, some idea may be formed from the fact that the actual profits which accrued from them to the author or to his estate shortly after his death, exceeded two millions of dollars. When we add to this sum the profits of the publishers, and when we consider the number of translations issued in Europe and the editions printed since Scott"s death in Great Britain and America, we can realize how vast a sum the world has been glad to pay for the possession of these invaluable works.
Following the great Sir Walter in the description of Scottish life and manners, are many well-known writers. John Galt, in the "Annals of the Parish," gave many humorous descriptions of national character. In Wilson"s "Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life," in "The Ettrick Shepherd," in the works of Scott"s son-in-law, Lockhart, are scenes and characters still very familiar to novel readers. Jane Porter embodied rather ideal views of history in "Thaddeus of Warsaw," and "The Scottish Chiefs." The talents of Miss Ferrier, of Mrs. Oliphant, and of Mr. William Black have kept up the interest which the world has learned to take in every thing appertaining to the land which Sir Walter Scott taught it to know and love so well.[204]
[Footnote 203: Mrs. c.o.c.kburn to Rev. Dr. Douglas, 1777; Lockhart"s "Life of Scott."]
[Footnote 204: Other novelists belonging especially in Scotland and of considerable reputation, are Maria Porter, Elizabeth Hamilton, A.
Cunningham, Mrs. Johnstone, Hogg, Picken, Moir, Sir T.D. Lauder, Hugh Miller, George MacDonald.]
IV.
First among the contributors to the novel of Irish life and manners may be mentioned Maria Edgeworth, by whose successful labors Scott was first inspired to undertake his own. In Miss Edgeworth"s works, Ireland found a true exposition of her wrongs and her virtues; and also of her follies and errors. The evils of absenteeism were powerfully ill.u.s.trated in the novel of the same name. In "Castle Rackrent," the trials and difficulties of landlord and tenant were described with genuine sympathy and dramatic force. The peculiarities of Irish temper and character have been studied by Miss Edgeworth with a fidelity which has given her novels the same national stamp and value which belong to those of Scott. Like him, too, she did much to raise fiction in character, scope, and influence. Whether describing Irish, English, or fashionable life, she is always true to nature, always pure and elevated in tone. Her works are neither marred by the coa.r.s.eness of the past, nor by the false delicacy of the present. She studiously avoids error and exaggeration in every form. Sentimentality and mock heroism have no place in her pages. While she is wanting in poetry, she is singularly rich in the scenes and characters of every-day life, and her novels are marked by a common-sense knowledge of the world which never degenerates into commonplace.
Miss Edgeworth has been ably followed by several students of Irish life. William Carleton"s "Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry,"
the novels of Samuel Lover and of John Banim are still well known.
Thomas Crofton Croker, with whose amusing description of the "Last of the Irish Sarpints," the reader is probably familiar, has studied his countrymen"s superst.i.tions and peculiarities with great success.
Charles James Lever has long retained a well-deserved popularity by the production of about thirty jovial dashing novels, among which the most celebrated is "Charles O"Malley, the Irish Dragoon."[205]
[Footnote 205: Among other novelists of Irish life and manners may be mentioned Lady Morgan, Mrs. S.C. Hall, Gerald Griffin, T.C. Grattan, Justin MacCarthy, and others.]
V.
Novels relating particularly to English life and manners have been greater in number and more varied in character than those of any other country. A large volume would be necessary to do any critical justice to the many distinguished writers whom we can only briefly notice here.
The most considerable subdivision of the English novel has been that occupied with the study of domestic life,--a department for which women are particularly fitted, and in which they have been eminently successful.
Mrs. Opie"s "Simple Tales," "Tales of Real Life," and "Tales of the Heart," although displaying no great talent in construction or style, excel in a natural pathos and a delicacy of sentiment which have made them popular for many years. Miss Edgeworth brought to the study of English life the same practical views and library talents which we have seen in her Irish novels. Her children"s stories, "Frank," "Harry and Lucy," and "Rosamund" were among the first contributions to juvenile fiction. "Helen," in which she exposed the evils of untruthfulness, is a good example of the success with which this admirable woman could combine entertainment and moral elevation. Jane Austen"s name has long been linked with that of Miss Edgeworth, as the two most powerful female novelists of the earlier part of the century. In "Pride and Prejudice," "Emma," "Mansfield Park," "Sense and Sensibility," she described the country gentry and middle cla.s.ses of society. She depended neither on exciting scenes, nor on highly wrought effects of human pa.s.sion for the interest of her stories, but studied every-day life and ordinary people with a sympathy and power of observation which imparted a deep interest to all her works. Miss Ferrier"s novels, "Inheritance" and "Marriage," were greatly admired by Scott, and now, some sixty years later, are still widely read, and receive the honor of both cheap and expensive editions. Miss Ferrier"s skill in the construction of a plot, her natural studies of character and the liveliness of her descriptions have kept her works popular, notwithstanding great changes in the public taste. Mrs. Trollope, the mother of a more celebrated son, contributed largely to the English domestic novel. The pathetic story of the lives of the Bronte sisters, supplied by Mrs. Gaskell, has deepened the interest excited by the early popularity of "Jane Eyre." Charlotte was the most talented of the family, and won a widespread admiration by her knowledge of life, her freshness, her vigor, and her innocent disregard of conventionality.
Mrs. Gaskell described the life and trials of the manufacturing cla.s.ses with great ability in "Mary Barton" and other novels. Miss Yonge, author of the "Heir of Redclyffe," Mrs. Henry Wood, author of "East Lynne," and Mrs. Lynn Linton have added largely to this department of fiction. The Baroness Tautphoeus described English and German life in the particularly fascinating novels, "Quits," "At Odds," and "The Initials." Miss Thackeray has made good use of talents inherited from her father. Mary R. Mitford and Mrs. Alexander have written many entertaining and popular novels. Miss Mulock began a long list of successful works with "The Ogilvies" and "John Halifax."
But by far the greatest female novelist who has devoted her talents to the English domestic novel, and by far the greatest female writer in the language is undeniably George Eliot. Women almost invariably leave the stamp of their s.e.x upon their work. But George Eliot took and held a man"s position in literature from the outset of her career. It was not that she was unfeminine. She brought to her work a woman"s sympathy and a woman"s attention to detail. But in breadth of conception, in comprehensiveness of thought, her mind was essentially masculine. Her appreciation of varieties and shades of character was almost Shakespearian. She could describe the self-indulgence of a Hetty Sorrel leading to cruelty, and that of a t.i.to leading to treachery, with perfect distinctness. She could enter into the generous aspirations of a Savonarola, and the selfish desires of a Grandcourt, with equal perspicuity. Her readers do not feel less familiar with the dull barrenness of Casaubon than with the pregnant vivacity of Mrs. Poyser.
In the study of the inward workings of the human mind, George Eliot is unsurpa.s.sed by any novelist. Thackeray alone can dispute her pre-eminence in this respect. However much the reader may recoil from the horror of Little Hetty"s crime, he cannot deny that it follows as a natural consequence. Although Dorothea"s marriages are extremely disappointing, the train of thought which led her to enter into them is traced with unerring clearness.
An obstacle to the popularity of George Eliot"s novels lies in the slowness of their movement. The author"s soliloquies, comments, and reflections, which are so much valued by her especial admirers, constantly interrupt the course of the narrative, and prove c.u.mbersome to such readers as enjoy a rapid, flowing story. But without these interruptions, how much of George Eliot"s best wisdom would be lost!
How many significant phrases would be lost from familiar language! The commentaries of the auth.o.r.ess herself on the incidents of her tale give her works a value which inclines us to take up her volumes again and again, long after the stories themselves have become familiar. We never weary of such sentences as the following from "Adam Bede": "There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and to have recovered hope."
Not less beautiful and concentrated are those few words on woman"s love in "Middlemarch":--"Those childlike caresses which are the bent of every sweet woman, who has begun by showering kisses on the hard pate of her bald doll, creating a happy soul within that woodenness from the wealth of her own love."
A faculty which George Eliot possessed in common with d.i.c.kens and Thackeray was that of making very ordinary people interesting. And this is a talent characteristic of the best minds which have contributed to fiction or the drama. Shakespeare possessed it in a high degree, and the best creations of Scott are ordinary, unheroic persons. The faculty arises from superior powers of observation. Some people will take a walk through a picturesque country or a crowded city without having seen any thing worthy of remark. Others will pa.s.s over the same ground, and return overflowing with description. In the same manner, the great number of men and women pa.s.s through life finding every thing commonplace, and the observing sympathy of a Thackeray, a Miss Austen, or a George Eliot is necessary to light up the unnoticed figures which throng the path. George Eliot is particularly happy in drawing a really ordinary person, especially when a little pretension is added. She must have written Mr. Brooke"s opinion of women with true enjoyment: "There is a lightness about the feminine mind--a touch and go--music, the fine arts, that kind of thing--they should study those up to a certain point, women should; but in a light way, you know." But though Mrs.
Poyser be humble, she is far from ordinary. "Some folks" tongues," she says, "are like the clocks as run on strikin", not to tell you the time o" the day, but because there"s summat wrong i" their own inside."
So long as George Eliot confined herself to her own sphere of action, she exhibited the same remarkable powers. But even her great name could not command admiration for "The Spanish Gypsy." Her limitations clearly appeared in "Daniel Deronda." When describing the characters and intercourse of Grandcourt and Gwendolen, when dealing with every thing English in that variously estimated work, she remained the great author of "Adam Bede" and "Silas Marner." But in undertaking the discussion of the religion and social position of the Jews, she mistook her own talents, and created in Daniel Deronda, an indefinite combination of virtues unworthy of her genius.
We have now noticed fifteen women, from Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen to George Eliot, who have contributed to the single department of fiction concerned with English domestic life. Many other names almost equally deserving and equally celebrated might be added to the list.
The enduring popularity of their works is sufficient commentary on the success with which woman"s talent has been directed toward fiction. Not only have the productions of these writers a high literary value, but their widespread circulation has afforded a really healthful amus.e.m.e.nt to tens of thousands, and their influence has been uniformly for good.[206]
The novels of English domestic life written by men have been little more numerous or able, but much more extended in scope. "Tremaine" and "De Vere," of R. Plumer Ward, contain clever sketches of character, but the narrative is loaded down with political and philosophical disquisitions. Theodore Hook"s stories were as unequal as his life.
Almost all bear the marks of haste and carelessness, and yet very few are without some portion of that pointed wit and delicate humor which delineated Jack Brag, or described Mr. Abberley"s dinner party in the "Man of Many Friends." Richard Harris Barham is well known as the author of the witty "Ingoldsby Legends," and Samuel Warren as the author of "Ten Thousand a Year." Charles Kingsley described the life and grievances of mechanics in "Alton Locke." Charles Reade began a long series of popular novels with "Peg Woffington" and "Christie Johnstone." His best work is "Never Too Late to Mend," in which he criticized prison discipline, and described the striking scenes of the Australian gold-fields. Few novels of the present day contain a more interesting story or more lifelike delineations of character. Wilkie Collins" greatest power lies in the construction of his plot; the "Moonstone" and the "Woman in White," are among the most absorbing narratives in the whole range of fiction. His studies of the morbid workings of the mind are often striking, but with the exception of Count Fosco and a few others, his characters are not strongly marked.
Thomas Hughes accomplished a truly n.o.ble work in the composition of "Tom Brown"s School Days" and "Tom Brown at Oxford,"--books which have found their way to every boy"s heart, and have appealed to all that was most healthful and manly there. The novels of Benjamin d"Israeli are chiefly interesting in their relation to the character of their ill.u.s.trious author. As works of art they are faulty in construction, exaggerated in description, and unnatural in effect. "Vivian Gray" and "Lothair" cannot pretend to be truthful studies of English life, nor would their author, probably, have represented them as such. But so much of the great statesman"s power was instilled into his novels that they have a certain interest even for those who are most alive to their faults. They are the conceptions of a very rich imagination, and contain many pictures which, if untrue to nature, are still extremely vivid. D"Israeli"s chief literary, and perhaps also his chief political characteristic, was a constant endeavor to make striking effects. The reader may be sure to find nothing commonplace in his writings. Every scene and every character is painted in the brightest of colors. If the background be sombre, it will simply throw out more brilliantly the figures in the foreground. It is said that most men have a favorite word. That of d"Israeli was "wondrous." He took his reader into wondrous baronial halls, filled with wondrous gems, with wondrous tapestries, with wondrous paintings, and introduced him to wondrous dukes and d.u.c.h.esses, looking out from wondrous dark orbs, and breathing through almond-shaped nostrils. He loved to bring the royal family on the scene, and to trace the awe-inspiring effect of their august presence. When we open a novel of d"Israeli"s we are certain of moving in a brilliant society, although one belonging to a yet undiscovered world. Women whose political influence changes the map of Europe, irresistible Catholic priests are mingled with impudent adventurers and professional toad-eaters. And over every thing is cast, by d"Israeli"s Eastern imagination, a glamour of unlimited wealth, of numberless coronets, and of soaring ambitions. The political career of the Earl of Beaconsfield is one of the most remarkable in history, and even his opponents cannot withhold admiration from the great abilities and undaunted resolution which brought that career to its triumphant close.
But the novels of the Earl of Beaconsfield have little value beyond their reflection of his dreams and his ambition.
Among the most famous writers of fiction of the nineteenth century will always be mentioned the name of Sir Bulwer Lytton. More than any other writer, he studied and developed the novel as a form of literature.
Almost every novelist has taken some special field and has confined himself to that. d.i.c.kens, George Eliot, Thackeray made occasional incursions on historic ground, but still their chief work was expended upon the novel of life and manners. Lytton attempted, and successfully, every department of fiction. In "Zanoni," he gave to the world a novel of fancy; in "Pelham" and "The Disowned," fashionable novels: in "Paul Clifford," a criminal novel; in "Rienzi," "Harold," "The Last of the Barons," historical novels; in "What Will He Do With It?" a novel of familiar life. And he brought to each variety of fiction the same artistic sense, the same knowledge of the world, and keen observation.
To describe English life in all its phases, he was particularly fitted.
Born in a high rank, he was perfectly at home in his descriptions of the upper cla.s.ses, and never slow in exposing their vices. His studies of men took so universal a form that he became familiar even with the slang terms of pickpockets and house-breakers. "What Will He Do With It?" combines examples of the heroic, the humorous, the pathetic, and the villainous, and affords, perhaps, the best general view of the author"s varied talents. Sir Bulwer Lytton is one of the most voluminous writers of a very prolific cla.s.s, and yet he has never repeated himself. Mr. Anthony Trollope and several other novelists have shown how fallacious is the idea that the imagination is a fickle mistress to be courted and waited for. They have proved that she can be made to settle down and accustomed by habit to working at stated hours and for regular periods. But Bulwer Lytton not only forced his imagination to continuous labor, but he was able to insure an unending novelty of conception. In each one of his novels we are introduced to an entirely new set of characters inhabiting quite unfamiliar scenes.
With a few exceptions, Mr. Anthony Trollope has confined himself to the novel of English social life, but that mine he has worked with wonderful a.s.siduity and success. In "The Warden," in "Barchester Towers," are studies of clerical character for which this writer has won a special reputation. "The Small House at Allington" is a love story of particular fascination. Few writers have described the manifestations of love in the acts and thoughts of a modest, sweet girl as delicately as Mr. Trollope has done in the case of the deserted Lily. Her rejection of a second suitor is felt by the reader to be the inevitable consequence of so pure a pa.s.sion, and the treachery of Crosbie is traced through its various gradations with true fidelity to nature. "Phineas Finn" is an excellent example of a parliamentary novel. That work and its companions, "Phineas Redux," "The Prime Minister," and "The Duke"s Children," keep up our acquaintance with the family and connections of Plantagenet Palliser, Duke of Omnium, than which few groups of fict.i.tious characters are more continuously interesting. Mr. Trollope"s novels will have a special value for the future student of English social life in the nineteenth century. The race-course, the hunting field, the country seat, Piccadilly, Hyde Park, the life of clubs and parliament, are described by him with photographic minuteness. And the novel-reader of to-day derives a constant pleasure from his books, notwithstanding the fact that the monotony of modern life is somewhat too closely reflected in them.
The works of no writer in the English language, except those of Scott, have attained so immediate a reputation and have won so wide-spread a popularity as the novels of Charles d.i.c.kens. "In less than six months from the appearance of the first number of the "Pickwick Papers,"" said the _London Quarterly Review_ in 1837, "the whole reading public were talking about them, the names of Winkle, Warden, Weller, Snodgra.s.s, Dodson and Fogg, had become familiar in our mouths as household terms; and Mr. d.i.c.kens was the grand object of interest to the whole tribe of "Leo-hunters," male and female, of the metropolis. Nay, Pickwick chintzes figured in linen-drapers" windows, and Weller corduroys in breeches-makers" advertis.e.m.e.nts; Boz cabs might be seen rattling through the streets; and the portrait of the author of "Pelham" or "Crichton" was sc.r.a.ped down or pasted over to make room for that of the new popular favourite in the omnibuses." For forty years the writings of this great novelist have held their place in the public esteem without any sensible diminution. Hundreds of thousands, old and young, in Great Britain, in America, in every country of Europe, have followed the fortunes of Nicholas Nickleby, of David Copperfield, of Oliver Twist, and of numberless other celebrated characters with unflagging interest. Perhaps d.i.c.kens" most remarkable achievement lay in the number of his creations, and in the distinctness with which he could impress them on the memory of his readers. Of the great host of figures who throng his scenes, how many we remember! Their names remain stamped on our minds, and some of their characteristic phrases, like Micawber"s "Something will turn up," or Tapley"s "There"s some credit in being jolly here," have pa.s.sed into current phrases. d.i.c.kens" great object was to celebrate the virtues of the humbler ranks of life, and to expose the acts of injustice or tyranny to which they are subjected.
This he did in a spirit of the truest philanthropy and most universal benevolence. The helpless victims of oppression, like little Oliver Twist, or the inmates of Dotheboys Hall, found in him an effective champion. Never has hypocrisy, the besetting vice of this age, been so mercilessly exposed as in the works of d.i.c.kens. It is not only in such a character as Pecksniff that its ugliness is revealed, but wherever pretence hides guilt behind a sanctimonious countenance, the mask is surely torn off. d.i.c.kens hated hypocrisy as Thackeray hated sn.o.bbism.
And both, in their zeal, occasionally saw the hypocrite or the sn.o.b where he did not exist. Dealing, as d.i.c.kens did, so exclusively with common and low-born characters, it is remarkable that his books so rarely leave any impression of vulgarity behind them. And this result is due to the author"s love of truth and detestation of all pretence.
There can be no vulgarity without pretension. A great many novels of the day are extremely vulgar, because they describe ill-bred people and represent them to the reader as ladies and gentlemen. But d.i.c.kens"
shopkeeper or street-sweeper makes no pretence to gentility, and therefore is as far from being vulgar as the man who has never known what it was to be any thing but a gentleman. The faults, like the merits, of d.i.c.kens" work resulted from the exuberance and power of his imagination. The same vividness of conception which gives such life to his description of a thunderstorm or of a quiet family scene, sometimes betrayed him into exaggeration and caricature. And yet when we consider the number and variety of the figures conjured up by his creative mind, from Paul Dombey to the Jew, f.a.gin, it is extraordinary that to so few this criticism will apply.
d.i.c.kens" vast popularity resulted only in part from the artistic merit of his works. The breadth of his canvas, his intense realization of fict.i.tious scenes, and his extraordinary descriptive power are qualities enough to win for him his eminent position in fiction. But the affection felt for d.i.c.kens as a man, which has made him occupy so much the hearts as well as the minds of the reading public, was attracted by qualities apart from those which excited admiration for the author. d.i.c.kens was essentially a national writer in the variety of the characters with whom he brought his readers into communion. He was essentially popular, from the fact that he dealt with the ma.s.ses and not with any particular cla.s.s. He was essentially English, in that he was the apostle of home. No novelist who has treated domestic life has so thoroughly caught its spirit, and has so sympathetically traced its joys and sorrows, its trials and recompenses. Family life has been for more than two centuries gradually supplanting the life of the camp and the court. It is in the domestic circle that men now find the interest which was formerly sought in adventure or publicity. Not only in the Christmas stories, especially devoted to the celebration of home, but through all his great fictions d.i.c.kens made domestic life his chief study. And he is, above all others, the favorite household novelist.
While he lived, each new work of his was welcomed alike by parent and child, and when he died, there were few homes where books ever came that the loss of a friend was not felt.
Scott, d.i.c.kens, almost all the great English novelists described heroes and heroines. They made their chief character an embodiment of virtue or strength, and strove to win for him the admiration of the reader.
Even Tom Jones was a hero to Fielding, and Roderick Random to Smollett.
But Thackeray said to himself as he looked out on the world, that humanity was not made up of heroes and villains. He had never met with the truly heroic, nor with the utterly depraved. It seemed to him that human nature lay between the two extremes. In "Vanity Fair," in "Pendennis" and in "The Newcomes" he resolved to describe man as he was, with virtues and failings, with occasional glimpses of the n.o.ble, and more common exhibitions of the mean and the little. Young men were to appear in his pages with their weakness and selfishness; young girls with their silliness and affectation. Thackeray, in a word, was to be more realistic than his predecessors in fiction had dared to be. He was to show his readers what they really were, and not what they would wish to be.
But in Thackeray"s novels is evident the difficulty of establishing any generally accepted standard of realism. If this quality consists in representing a character as speaking and acting just as we should expect such a character to speak and act, Thackeray succeeded as perhaps no novelist, except Fielding, had done before him. Becky Sharp, Sir Pitt Crawley, Pendennis, Clive Newcome, all use such words as the reader would expect from them. Their actions are the natural results of the trains of thought into which the author has given us an insight.
When the old reprobate, Lord Steyne, discovers that Becky Sharp had appropriated to herself the money which he had given her to restore poor Miss Briggs" stolen property, he is not indignant at the deception. The admiration of the n.o.ble rogue is only increased for the woman who has shown herself to be possessed of a more astute roguery than his own:--
"What an accomplished little devil it is!" thought he. "What a splendid actress and manager! She had almost got a second supply out of me the other day with her coaxing ways. She beats all the women I have ever seen in the course of all my well-spent life!
They are babies compared to her. I am a green-horn myself and a fool in her hands--an old fool. She is unsurpa.s.sable in lies." His lordship"s admiration for Becky rose immeasurably at this proof of her cleverness. Getting the money was nothing--but getting double the sum she wanted and paying n.o.body--it was a magnificent stroke.
In his delineation of character, in the perfect naturalness with which all his personages act out their respective parts, no novelist is more realistic than Thackeray. But realism has a broader application. A novelist who takes every-day life for his subject has not only to give the stamp of nature to all his scenes and individuals, but he must so write, that at the end of his book the reader will have the impression that real life, with its due apportionment of good and evil, of happiness and grief, has been placed before him. Some readers will receive that impression from Thackeray"s novels; but they will be those who think that the evil and the unhappiness predominate. So thought the author himself. But the world in general think differently, and agree to look upon Thackeray as a satirist.
As such, he ranks in English literature second only to Swift. To the great Dean, man was a lump of deformity and disease. He saw in humanity little besides its vice, and painted his species in colors under which few men have been willing to recognize a portrait. Thackeray"s genial disposition naturally made him far less bitter than Swift. He neither saw nor portrayed the monstrous vice which excited the hatred of the satirist of the eighteenth century. To Thackeray, men were weak rather than bad, selfish rather than vicious. George Osborne braves the consequences of marrying poor Amelia Sedley, and yet prefers his own pleasure to that of his wife. Rawdon Crawley is ignorant, rude, and unprincipled, but yet is loving and faithful to Rebecca. Weakness, pettiness, self-deception were the main objects of Thackeray"s satire.
Where are the absurdities of youthful woman-worship held up to such derision as in Pendennis" love for Miss Costigan!
Pen tried to engage her in conversation about poetry and about her profession. He asked her what she thought about Ophelia"s madness, and whether she was in love with Hamlet or not? "In love with such a little ojus creature as that stunted manager of a Bingley?" She bristled with indignation at the thought. Pen explained that it was not of her he spoke, but of Ophelia of the play. "Oh, indeed, if no offense was meant none was taken: but as for Bingley, indeed, she did not value him--not that gla.s.s of punch." Pen next tried her on Kotzebue. "Kotzebue? who was he?" "The author of the play in which she had been performing so admirably." "She did not know that, the man"s name at the beginning of the book was Thompson," she said.
Pen laughed at her adorable simplicity.... "How beautiful she is,"
thought Pen, cantering homewards. "How simple and how tender! How charming it is to see a woman of her genius busying herself with the humble affairs of domestic life, cooking dishes to make her old father comfortable, and brewing him drink! How rude it was of me to begin to talk of professional matters, and how well she turned the conversation! ... Pendennis, Pendennis,--how she spoke the word!
Emily! Emily! how good, how n.o.ble, how beautiful, how perfect she is!"[207]
Thackeray"s satire is all the more powerful in that it is directed against foibles more than against vices. Many a reader who will reject Swift"s portrait of man as a libel, cannot but feel a twinge at Thackeray"s delicate pencillings. After dwelling on the worldliness, the hypocrisy, the self-seeking of the inmates of Queen"s Crawley, how softly but how terribly he scourges them! "These honest folks at the Hall, whose simplicity and sweet rural purity surely show the advantage of a country life over a town one." His praise is the severest cut of all. "Dear Rebecca," "the dear creature," and we wince for Becky. "What a dignity it gives an old lady, that balance at the banker"s! How tenderly we look at her faults, if she be a relative." "These money transactions, these speculations in life and death--these silent battles for reversionary spoil--make brothers very loving toward each other in Vanity Fair."
Thackeray is the novelist whose works depend in the least degree on narrative interest. The characters are so clearly drawn and so interesting, the manner of Thackeray"s writing is so uniformly entertaining, that his books can always be opened at random and read with pleasure. "Henry Esmond" is the only novel in which the plot is carefully constructed. The others are a string of consecutive chapters, each one of which possesses its individual interest.[208]
The novel of English life and manners includes many subdivisions. Among the writings of Miss Edgeworth, Miss Ferrier, Bulwer Lytton, Mr.
Anthony Trollope, and others, are novels which deal to a greater or less extent with fashionable life. A number of novelists, princ.i.p.ally female, have confined their studies to the aristocratic cla.s.ses.[209]