The tastes and sensibilities of Pope, which led him to cultivate the society of persons of fine manners, or wit, or taste, or beauty, caused him to shrink equally from that shabby and boisterous crew which formed the rank and file of literature in his time: and he was as unjust to these men as they to him. The delicate little creature sickened at habits and company which were quite tolerable to robuster men: and in the famous feud between Pope and the Dunces, and without attributing any peculiar wrong to either, one can quite understand how the two parties should so hate each other. As I fancy, it was a sort of necessity that when Pope"s triumph pa.s.sed, Mr. Addison and his men should look rather contemptuously down on it from their balcony; so it was natural for Dennis and Tibbald, and Welsted, and Cibber, and the worn and hungry pressmen in the crowd below, to howl at him and a.s.sail him. And Pope was more savage to Grub Street than Grub Street was to Pope. The thong with which he lashed them was dreadful; he fired upon that howling crew such shafts of flame and poison, he slew and wounded so fiercely, that in reading the _Dunciad_ and the prose lampoons of Pope, one feels disposed to side against the ruthless little tyrant, at least to pity those wretched folks upon whom he was so unmerciful. It was Pope, and Swift to aid him, who established among us the Grub Street tradition. He revels in base descriptions of poor men"s want; he gloats over poor Dennis"s garret, and flannel nightcap, and red stockings; he gives instructions how to find Curll"s authors, the historian at the tallow-chandler"s under the blind arch in Petty France, the two translators in bed together, the poet in the c.o.c.k-loft in Budge Row, whose landlady keeps the ladder. It was Pope, I fear, who contributed, more than any man who ever lived, to depreciate the literary calling. It was not an unprosperous one before that time, as we have seen; at least there were great prizes in the profession which had made Addison a minister, and Prior an amba.s.sador, and Steele a commissioner, and Swift all but a bishop. The profession of letters was ruined by that libel of the _Dunciad_. If authors were wretched and poor before, if some of them lived in haylofts, of which their landladies kept the ladders, at least n.o.body came to disturb them in their straw; if three of them had but one coat between them, the two remained invisible in the garret, the third, at any rate, appeared decently at the coffee-house, and paid his twopence like a gentleman. It was Pope that dragged into light all this poverty and meanness, and held up those wretched shifts and rags to public ridicule.
It was Pope that has made generations of the reading world (delighted with the mischief, as who would not be that reads it?) believe that author and wretch, author and rags, author and dirt, author and drink, gin, cowheel, tripe, poverty, duns, bailiffs, squalling children and clamorous landladies, were always a.s.sociated together. The condition of authorship began to fall from the days of the _Dunciad_: and I believe in my heart that much of that obloquy which has since pursued our calling was occasioned by Pope"s libels and wicked wit. Everybody read those.
Everybody was familiarized with the idea of the poor devil, the author.
The manner is so captivating that young authors practise it, and begin their career with satire. It is so easy to write, and so pleasant to read!
to fire a shot that makes a giant wince, perhaps; and fancy one"s self his conqueror. It is easy to shoot-but not as Pope did-the shafts of his satire rise sublimely: no poet"s verse ever mounted higher than that wonderful flight with which the _Dunciad_ concludes(141):-
She comes, she comes! the sable throne behold!
Of Night primaeval and of Chaos old; Before her, Fancy"s gilded clouds decay, And all its varying rainbows die away; Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires, The meteor drops, and in a flash expires.
As, one by one, at dread Medea"s strain The sick"ning stars fade off the ethereal plain; As Argus" eyes, by Hermes" wand oppress"d, Closed one by one to everlasting rest;- Thus, at her fell approach and secret might, Art after Art goes out, and all is night.
See skulking Faith to her old cavern fled, Mountains of casuistry heaped o"er her head; Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before, Shrinks to her second cause and is no more.
Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires, And, unawares, Morality expires.
Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine, Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine.
Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos, is restored, Light dies before thy uncreating word; Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall, And universal darkness buries all.(142)
In these astonishing lines Pope reaches, I think, to the very greatest height which his sublime art has attained, and shows himself the equal of all poets of all times. It is the brightest ardour, the loftiest a.s.sertion of truth, the most generous wisdom, ill.u.s.trated by the n.o.blest poetic figure, and spoken in words the aptest, grandest, and most harmonious. It is heroic courage speaking: a splendid declaration of righteous wrath and war. It is the gage flung down, and the silver trumpet ringing defiance to falsehood and tyranny, deceit, dullness, superst.i.tion. It is Truth, the champion, shining and intrepid, and fronting the great world-tyrant with armies of slaves at his back. It is a wonderful and victorious single combat, in that great battle, which has always been waging since society began.
In speaking of a work of consummate art one does not try to show what it actually is, for that were vain; but what it is like, and what are the sensations produced in the mind of him who views it. And in considering Pope"s admirable career, I am forced into similitudes drawn from other courage and greatness, and into comparing him with those who achieved triumphs in actual war. I think of the works of young Pope as I do of the actions of young Bonaparte or young Nelson. In their common life you will find frailties and meannesses, as great as the vices and follies of the meanest men. But in the presence of the great occasion, the great soul flashes out, and conquers transcendent. In thinking of the splendour of Pope"s young victories, of his merit, unequalled as his renown, I hail and salute the achieving genius, and do homage to the pen of a hero.
Lecture The Fifth. Hogarth, Smollett, And Fielding
I suppose as long as novels last and authors aim at interesting their public, there must always be in the story a virtuous and gallant hero, a wicked monster his opposite, and a pretty girl who finds a champion; bravery and virtue conquer beauty: and vice, after seeming to triumph through a certain number of pages, is sure to be discomfited in the last volume, when justice overtakes him and honest folks come by their own.
There never was perhaps a greatly popular story but this simple plot was carried through it: mere satiric wit is addressed to a cla.s.s of readers and thinkers quite different to those simple souls who laugh and weep over the novel. I fancy very few ladies indeed, for instance, could be brought to like _Gulliver_ heartily, and (putting the coa.r.s.eness and difference of manners out of the question) to relish the wonderful satire of _Jonathan Wild_. In that strange apologue, the author takes for a hero the greatest rascal, coward, traitor, tyrant, hypocrite, that his wit and experience, both large in this matter, could enable him to devise or depict; he accompanies this villain through all the actions of his life, with a grinning deference and a wonderful mock respect: and doesn"t leave him, till he is dangling at the gallows, when the satirist makes him a low bow and wishes the scoundrel good day.
It was not by satire of this sort, or by scorn and contempt, that Hogarth achieved his vast popularity and acquired his reputation.(143) His art is quite simple,(144) he speaks popular parables to interest simple hearts and to inspire them with pleasure or pity or warning and terror. Not one of his tales but is as easy as _Goody Two Shoes_; it is the moral of Tommy was a naughty boy and the master flogged him, and Jacky was a good boy and had plum cake, which pervades the whole works of the homely and famous English moralist. And if the moral is written in rather too large letters after the fable, we must remember how simple the scholars and schoolmaster both were, and like neither the less because they are so artless and honest. "It was a maxim of Dr. Harrison"s," Fielding says in _Amelia_, speaking of the benevolent divine and philosopher who represents the good principle in that novel-"that no man can descend below himself, in doing any act which may contribute to protect an innocent person, _or to bring a rogue to the gallows_." The moralists of that age had no compunction you see; they had not begun to be sceptical about the theory of punishment, and thought that the hanging of a thief was a spectacle for edification.
Masters sent their apprentices, fathers took their children, to see Jack Sheppard or Jonathan Wild hanged, and it was as undoubting subscribers to this moral law, that Fielding wrote and Hogarth painted. Except in one instance, where in the mad-house scene in the _Rake"s Progress_, the girl whom he has ruined is represented as still tending and weeping over him in his insanity, a glimpse of pity for his rogues never seems to enter honest Hogarth"s mind. There"s not the slightest doubt in the breast of the jolly Draco.
The famous set of pictures called "Marriage a la Mode", and which are exhibited at Marlborough House [1853], in London, contains the most important and highly wrought of the Hogarth comedies. The care and method with which the moral grounds of these pictures are laid is as remarkable as the wit and skill of the observing and dexterous artist. He has to describe the negotiations for a marriage pending between the daughter of a rich citizen Alderman and young Lord Viscount Squanderfield, the dissipated son of a gouty old earl. Pride and pomposity appear in every accessory surrounding the earl. He sits in gold lace and velvet-as how should such an earl wear anything but velvet and gold lace? His coronet is everywhere: on his footstool on which reposes one gouty toe turned out; on the sconces and looking-gla.s.ses; on the dogs; on his lordship"s very crutches; on his great chair of state and the great baldaquin behind him; under which he sits pointing majestically to his pedigree, which shows that his race is sprung from the loins of William the Conqueror, and confronting the old alderman from the City, who has mounted his sword for the occasion, and wears his alderman"s chain, and has brought a bag full of money, mortgage-deeds, and thousand-pound notes, for the arrangement of the transaction pending between them. Whilst the steward (a Methodist, therefore a hypocrite and cheat, for Hogarth scorned a Papist and a Dissenter) is negotiating between the old couple, their children sit together, united but apart. My lord is admiring his countenance in the gla.s.s, while his bride is twiddling her marriage ring on her pocket-handkerchief; and listening with rueful countenance to Counsellor Silvertongue, who has been drawing the settlements. The girl is pretty, but the painter, with a curious watchfulness, has taken care to give her a likeness to her father, as in the young viscount"s face you see a resemblance to the earl, his n.o.ble sire. The sense of the coronet pervades the picture, as it is supposed to do the mind of its wearer. The pictures round the room are sly hints indicating the situation of the parties about to marry. A martyr is led to the fire; Andromeda is offered to sacrifice; Judith is going to slay Holofernes. There is the ancestor of the house (in the picture it is the earl himself as a young man), with a comet over his head, indicating that the career of the family is to be brilliant and brief. In the second picture, the old lord must be dead, for madam has now the countess"s coronet over her bed and toilet-gla.s.s, and sits listening to that dangerous Counsellor Silvertongue, whose portrait now actually hangs up in her room, whilst the counsellor takes his ease on the sofa by her side, evidently the familiar of the house, and the confidant of the mistress. My lord takes his pleasure elsewhere than at home, whither he returns jaded and tipsy from the "Rose", to find his wife yawning in her drawing-room, her whist-party over, and the daylight streaming in; or he amuses himself with the very worst company abroad, whilst his wife sits at home listening to foreign singers, or wastes her money at auctions, or, worse still, seeks amus.e.m.e.nt at masquerades. The dismal end is known. My lord draws upon the counsellor, who kills him, and is apprehended whilst endeavouring to escape. My lady goes back perforce to the alderman in the City, and faints upon reading Counsellor Silvertongue"s dying speech at Tyburn, where the counsellor has been executed for sending his lordship out of the world. Moral:-Don"t listen to evil silver-tongued counsellors: don"t marry a man for his rank, or a woman for her money: don"t frequent foolish auctions and masquerade b.a.l.l.s unknown to your husband: don"t have wicked companions abroad and neglect your wife, otherwise you will be run through the body, and ruin will ensue, and disgrace, and Tyburn. The people are all naughty, and Bogey carries them all off.
In the _Rake"s Progress_, a loose life is ended by a similar sad catastrophe. It is the spendthrift coming into possession of the wealth of the paternal miser; the prodigal surrounded by flatterers, and wasting his substance on the very worst company; the bailiffs, the gambling-house, and Bedlam for an end. In the famous story of Industry and Idleness, the moral is pointed in a manner similarly clear. Fair-haired Frank Goodchild smiles at his work, whilst naughty Tom Idle snores over his loom. Frank reads the edifying ballads of Whittington and the London "Prentice, whilst that reprobate Tom Idle prefers Moll Flanders, and drinks hugely of beer. Frank goes to church of a Sunday, and warbles hymns from the gallery; while Tom lies on a tombstone outside playing at halfpenny-under-the-hat, with street blackguards, and is deservedly caned by the beadle; Frank is made overseer of the business, whilst Tom is sent to sea. Frank is taken into partnership and marries his master"s daughter, sends out broken victuals to the poor, and listens in his nightcap and gown with the lovely Mrs.
Goodchild by his side, to the nuptial music of the City bands and the marrow-bones and cleavers; whilst idle Tom, returned from sea, shudders in a garret lest the officers are coming to take him for picking pockets. The Worshipful Francis Goodchild, Esq., becomes Sheriff of London, and partakes of the most splendid dinners which money can purchase or alderman devour; whilst poor Tom is taken up in a night-cellar, with that one-eyed and disreputable accomplice who first taught him to play chuck-farthing on a Sunday. What happens next? Tom is brought up before the justice of his country, in the person of Mr. Alderman Goodchild, who weeps as he recognizes his old brother "prentice, as Tom"s one-eyed friend peaches on him, and the clerk makes out the poor rogue"s ticket for Newgate. Then the end comes. Tom goes to Tyburn in a cart with a coffin in it; whilst the Right Honourable Francis Goodchild, Lord Mayor of London, proceeds to his Mansion House, in his gilt coach with four footmen and a sword-bearer, whilst the Companies of London march in the august procession, whilst the trainbands of the City fire their pieces and get drunk in his honour; and O crowning delight and glory of all, whilst his Majesty the King looks out from his royal balcony, with his ribbon on his breast, and his Queen and his star by his side, at the corner house of St. Paul"s Churchyard, where the toy-shop is now.
How the times have changed! The new Post Office now not disadvantageously occupies that spot where the scaffolding is in the picture, where the tipsy trainband-man is lurching against the post, with his wig over one eye, and the "prentice-boy is trying to kiss the pretty girl in the gallery. Pa.s.sed away "prentice-boy and pretty girl! Pa.s.sed away tipsy trainband-man with wig and bandolier! On the spot where Tom Idle (for whom I have an unaffected pity) made his exit from this wicked world, and where you see the hangman smoking his pipe as he reclines on the gibbet and views the hills of Harrow or Hampstead beyond-a splendid marble arch, a vast and modern city-clean, airy, painted drab, populous with nursery-maids and children, the abodes of wealth and comfort-the elegant, the prosperous, the polite Tyburnia rises, the most respectable district in the habitable globe!
In that last plate of the London Apprentices, in which the apotheosis of the Right Honourable Francis Goodchild is drawn, a ragged fellow is represented in the corner of the simple kindly piece, offering for sale a broadside, purporting to contain an account of the appearance of the ghost of Tom Idle, executed at Tyburn. Could Tom"s ghost have made its appearance in 1847, and not in 1747, what changes would have been remarked by that astonished escaped criminal! Over that road which the hangman used to travel constantly, and the Oxford stage twice a week, go ten thousand carriages every day: over yonder road, by which d.i.c.k Turpin fled to Windsor, and Squire Western journeyed into town, when he came to take up his quarters at the Hercules Pillars on the outskirts of London, what a rush of civilization and order flows now! What armies of gentlemen with umbrellas march to banks, and chambers, and counting-houses! What regiments of nursery-maids and pretty infantry; what peaceful processions of policemen, what light broughams and what gay carriages, what swarms of busy apprentices and artificers, riding on omnibus-roofs, pa.s.s daily and hourly! Tom Idle"s times are quite changed: many of the inst.i.tutions gone into disuse which were admired in his day. There"s more pity and kindness and a better chance for poor Tom"s successors now than at that simpler period when Fielding hanged him and Hogarth drew him.
To the student of history, these admirable works must be invaluable, as they give us the most complete and truthful picture of the manners, and even the thoughts, of the past century. We look, and see pa.s.s before us the England of a hundred years ago-the peer in his drawing-room, the lady of fashion in her apartment, foreign singers surrounding her, and the chamber filled with gewgaws in the mode of that day; the church, with its quaint florid architecture and singing congregation; the parson with his great wig, and the beadle with his cane: all these are represented before us, and we are sure of the truth of the portrait. We see how the Lord Mayor dines in state; how the prodigal drinks and sports at the bagnio; how the poor girl beats hemp in Bridewell; how the thief divides his booty and drinks his punch at the night-cellar, and how he finishes his career at the gibbet. We may depend upon the perfect accuracy of these strange and varied portraits of the bygone generation: we see one of Walpole"s Members of Parliament chaired after his election, and the lieges celebrating the event, and drinking confusion to the Pretender: we see the grenadiers and trainbands of the City marching out to meet the enemy; and have before us, with sword and firelock, and white Hanoverian horse embroidered on the cap, the very figures of the men who ran away with Johnny Cope, and who conquered at Culloden.
Posterity has not quite confirmed honest Hogarth"s opinion about his talents for the sublime. Although Swift could not see the difference between tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum, posterity has not shared the Dean"s contempt for Handel; the world has discovered a difference between tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum, and given a hearty applause and admiration to Hogarth, too, but not exactly as a painter of scriptural subjects, or as a rival of Correggio. It does not take away from one"s liking for the man, or from the moral of his story, or the humour of it-from one"s admiration for the prodigious merit of his performances, to remember that he persisted to the last in believing that the world was in a conspiracy against him with respect to his talents as an historical painter, and that a set of miscreants, as he called them, were employed to run his genius down. They say it was Liston"s firm belief, that he was a great and neglected tragic actor; they say that every one of us believes in his heart, or would like to have others believe, that he is something which he is not. One of the most notorious of the "miscreants", Hogarth says, was Wilkes, who a.s.sailed him in the _North Briton_; the other was Churchill, who put the _North Briton_ attack into heroic verse, and published his _Epistle to Hogarth_. Hogarth replied by that caricature of Wilkes, in which the patriot still figures before us, with his Satanic grin and squint, and by a caricature of Churchill, in which he is represented as a bear with a staff, on which, "Lie the first", "Lie the second", "Lie the tenth", are engraved in unmistakable letters. There is very little mistake about honest Hogarth"s satire: if he has to paint a man with his throat cut, he draws him with his head almost off; and he tried to do the same for his enemies in this little controversy. "Having an old plate by me,"
says he, "with some parts ready, such as the background, and a dog, I began to consider how I could turn so much work laid aside to some account, and so patched up a print of Master Churchill, in the character of a bear; the pleasure and pecuniary advantage which I derived from these two engravings, together with occasionally riding on horseback, restored me to as much health as I can expect at my time of life."
And so he concludes his queer little book of _Anecdotes_: "I have gone through the circ.u.mstances of a life which till lately pa.s.sed pretty much to my own satisfaction, and I hope in no respect injurious to any other man. This I may safely a.s.sert, that I have done my best to make those about me tolerably happy, and my greatest enemy cannot say I ever did an intentional injury. What may follow, G.o.d knows."
A queer account still exists of a holiday jaunt taken by Hogarth and four friends of his, who set out, like the redoubted Mr. Pickwick and his companions, but just a hundred years before those heroes; and made an excursion to Gravesend, Rochester, Sheerness; and adjacent places.(145) One of the gentlemen noted down the proceedings of the journey, for which Hogarth and a brother artist made drawings. The book is chiefly curious at this moment from showing the citizen life of those days, and the rough, jolly style of merriment, not of the five companions merely, but of thousands of jolly fellows of their time. Hogarth and his friends, quitting the "Bedford Arms", Covent Garden, with a song, took water to Billingsgate, exchanging compliments with the bargemen as they went down the river. At Billingsgate, Hogarth made a "caracatura" of a facetious porter, called the Duke of Puddledock, who agreeably entertained the party with the humours of the place. Hence they took a Gravesend boat for themselves; had straw to lie upon, and a tilt over their heads, they say, and went down the river at night, sleeping and singing jolly choruses.
They arrived at Gravesend at six, when they washed their faces and hands, and had their wigs powdered. Then they sallied forth for Rochester on foot, and drank by the way three pots of ale. At one o"clock they went to dinner with excellent port, and a quant.i.ty more beer, and afterwards Hogarth and Scott played at hopscotch in the town hall. It would appear that they slept most of them in one room, and the chronicler of the party describes them all as waking at seven o"clock, and telling each other their dreams. You have rough sketches by Hogarth of the incidents of this holiday excursion. The st.u.r.dy little painter is seen sprawling over a plank to a boat at Gravesend; the whole company are represented in one design, in a fisherman"s room, where they had all pa.s.sed the night. One gentleman in a nightcap is shaving himself; another is being shaved by the fisherman; a third, with a handkerchief over his bald pate, is taking his breakfast; and Hogarth is sketching the whole scene.
They describe at night how they returned to their quarters, drank to their friends, as usual, emptied several cans of good flip, all singing merrily.
It is a jolly party of tradesmen engaged at high-jinks. These were the manners and pleasures of Hogarth, of his time very likely, of men not very refined, but honest and merry. It is a brave London citizen, with John Bull habits, prejudices, and pleasures.(146)
Of SMOLLETT"S a.s.sociates and manner of life the author of the admirable _Humphry Clinker_ has given us an interesting account, in that most amusing of novels.(147)
I have no doubt that the above picture is as faithful a one as any from the pencil of his kindred humourist, Hogarth.
We have before us, and painted by his own hand, Tobias Smollett, the manly, kindly, honest, and irascible; worn and battered, but still brave and full of heart, after a long struggle against a hard fortune. His brain had been busied with a hundred different schemes; he had been reviewer and historian, critic, medical writer, poet, pamphleteer. He had fought endless literary battles; and braved and wielded for years the cudgels of controversy. It was a hard and savage fight in those days, and a n.i.g.g.ard pay. He was oppressed by illness, age, narrow fortune; but his spirit was still resolute, and his courage steady; the battle over, he could do justice to the enemy with whom he had been so fiercely engaged, and give a not unfriendly grasp to the hand that had mauled him. He is like one of those Scotch cadets, of whom history gives us so many examples, and whom, with a national fidelity, the great Scotch novelist has painted so charmingly. Of gentle birth(148) and narrow means, going out from his northern home to win his fortune in the world, and to fight his way, armed with courage, hunger, and keen wits. His crest is a shattered oak-tree, with green leaves yet springing from it. On his ancient coat-of-arms there is a lion and a horn; this shield of his was battered and dinted in a hundred fights and brawls,(149) through which the stout Scotchman bore it courageously. You see somehow that he is a gentleman, through all his battling and struggling, his poverty, his hard-fought successes, and his defeats. His novels are recollections of his own adventures; his characters drawn, as I should think, from personages with whom he became acquainted in his own career of life. Strange companions he must have had; queer acquaintances he made in the Glasgow College-in the country apothecary"s shop; in the gun-room of the man-of-war where he served as surgeon, and in the hard life on sh.o.r.e, where the st.u.r.dy adventurer struggled for fortune. He did not invent much, as I fancy, but had the keenest perceptive faculty, and described what he saw with wonderful relish and delightful broad humour. I think Uncle Bowling, in _Roderick Random_, is as good a character as Squire Western himself; and Mr. Morgan, the Welsh apothecary, is as pleasant as Dr. Caius. What man who has made his inestimable acquaintance-what novel-reader who loves Don Quixote and Major Dalgetty-will refuse his most cordial acknowledgements to the admirable Lieutenant Lismahago? The novel of _Humphry Clinker_ is, I do think, the most laughable story that has ever been written since the goodly art of novel-writing began. Winifred Jenkins and Tabitha Bramble must keep Englishmen on the grin for ages yet to come; and in their letters and the story of their loves there is a perpetual fount of sparkling laughter, as inexhaustible as Bladud"s well.
Fielding, too, has described, though with a greater hand, the characters and scenes which he knew and saw. He had more than ordinary opportunities for becoming acquainted with life. His family and education, first-his fortunes and misfortunes afterwards, brought him into the society of every rank and condition of man. He is himself the hero of his books: he is wild Tom Jones, he is wild Captain Booth, less wild, I am glad to think, than his predecessor, at least heartily conscious of demerit, and anxious to amend.
When Fielding first came upon the town in 1727, the recollection of the great wits was still fresh in the coffee-houses and a.s.semblies, and the judges there declared that young Harry Fielding had more spirits and wit than Congreve or any of his brilliant successors. His figure was tall and stalwart; his face handsome, manly, and n.o.ble-looking; to the very last days of his life he retained a grandeur of air, and, although worn down by disease, his aspect and presence imposed respect upon the people round about him.
A dispute took place between Mr. Fielding and the captain(150) of the ship in which he was making his last voyage, and Fielding relates how the man finally went down on his knees and begged his pa.s.senger"s pardon. He was living up to the last days of his life, and his spirit never gave in. His vital power must have been immensely strong. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu(151) prettily characterizes Fielding and this capacity for happiness which he possessed, in a little notice of his death, when she compares him to Steele, who was as improvident and as happy as he was, and says that both should have gone on living for ever. One can fancy the eagerness and gusto with which a man of Fielding"s frame, with his vast health and robust appet.i.te, his ardent spirits, his joyful humour, and his keen and hearty relish for life, must have seized and drunk that cup of pleasure which the town offered to him. Can any of my hearers remember the youthful feats of a college breakfast-the meats devoured and the cups quaffed in that Homeric feast? I can call to mind some of the heroes of those youthful banquets, and fancy young Fielding from Leyden rushing upon the feast, with his great laugh and immense healthy young appet.i.te, eager and vigorous to enjoy. The young man"s wit and manners made him friends everywhere: he lived with the grand Man"s society of those days; he was courted by peers and men of wealth and fashion. As he had a paternal allowance from his father, General Fielding, which, to use Henry"s own phrase, any man might pay who would; as he liked good wine, good clothes, and good company, which are all expensive articles to purchase, Harry Fielding began to run into debt, and borrow money in that easy manner in which Captain Booth borrows money in the novel: was in nowise particular in accepting a few pieces from the purses of his rich friends, and bore down upon more than one of them, as Walpole tells us only too truly, for a dinner or a guinea. To supply himself with the latter, he began to write theatrical pieces, having already, no doubt, a considerable acquaintance amongst the Oldfields and Bracegirdles behind the scenes. He laughed at these pieces and scorned them. When the audience upon one occasion began to hiss a scene which he was too lazy to correct, and regarding which, when Garrick remonstrated with him, he said that the public was too stupid to find out the badness of his work;-when the audience began to hiss, Fielding said, with characteristic coolness-"They have found it out, have they?" He did not prepare his novels in this way, and with a very different care and interest laid the foundations and built up the edifices of his future fame.
Time and shower have very little damaged those. The fashion and ornaments are, perhaps, of the architecture of that age; but the buildings remain strong and lofty, and of admirable proportions-masterpieces of genius and monuments of workmanlike skill.
I cannot offer or hope to make a hero of Harry Fielding. Why hide his faults? Why conceal his weaknesses in a cloud of periphrases? Why not show him, like him as he is, not robed in a marble toga, and draped and polished in a heroic att.i.tude, but with inked ruffles, and claret stains on his tarnished laced coat, and on his manly face the marks of good fellowship, of illness, of kindness, of care, and wine. Stained as you see him, and worn by care and dissipation, that man retains some of the most precious and splendid human qualities and endowments. He has an admirable natural love of truth, the keenest instinctive antipathy to hypocrisy, the happiest satirical gift of laughing it to scorn. His wit is wonderfully wise and detective; it flashes upon a rogue and lightens up a rascal like a policeman"s lantern. He is one of the manliest and kindliest of human beings: in the midst of all his imperfections, he respects female innocence and infantine tenderness, as you would suppose such a great-hearted, courageous soul would respect and care for them. He could not be so brave, generous, truth-telling as he is, were he not infinitely merciful, pitiful, and tender. He will give any man his purse-he can"t help kindness and profusion. He may have low tastes, but not a mean mind; he admires with all his heart good and virtuous men, stoops to no flattery, bears no rancour, disdains all disloyal arts, does his public duty uprightly, is fondly loved by his family, and dies at his work.(152)
If that theory be-and I have no doubt it is-the right and safe one, that human nature is always pleased with the spectacle of innocence rescued by fidelity, purity, and courage; I suppose that of the heroes of Fielding"s three novels, we should like honest Joseph Andrews the best, and Captain Booth the second, and Tom Jones the third.(153)
Joseph Andrews, though he wears Lady b.o.o.by"s cast-off livery, is, I think, to the full as polite as Tom Jones in his fustian suit, or Captain Booth in regimentals. He has, like those heroes, large calves, broad shoulders, a high courage, and a handsome face. The accounts of Joseph"s bravery and good qualities; his voice, too musical to halloo to the dogs; his bravery in riding races for the gentlemen of the county, and his constancy in refusing bribes and temptation, have something affecting in their _naivete_ and freshness, and prepossess one in favour of that handsome young hero. The rustic bloom of f.a.n.n.y, and the delightful simplicity of Parson Adams are described with a friendliness which wins the reader of their story; we part with them with more regret than from Booth and Jones.
Fielding, no doubt, began to write this novel in ridicule of _Pamela_, for which work one can understand the hearty contempt and antipathy which such an athletic and boisterous genius as Fielding"s must have entertained. He couldn"t do otherwise than laugh at the puny c.o.c.kney bookseller, pouring out endless volumes of sentimental twaddle, and hold him up to scorn as a moll-coddle and a milksop. _His_ genius had been nursed on sack-posset, and not on dishes of tea. _His_ muse had sung the loudest in tavern choruses, had seen the daylight streaming in over thousands of emptied bowls, and reeled home to chambers on the shoulders of the watchman.
Richardson"s G.o.ddess was attended by old maids and dowagers, and fed on m.u.f.fins and bohea. "Milksop!" roars Harry Fielding, clattering at the timid shop-shutters. "Wretch! Monster! Mohock!" shrieks the sentimental author of _Pamela_;(154) and all the ladies of his court cackle out an affrighted chorus. Fielding proposes to write a book in ridicule of the author, whom he disliked and utterly scorned and laughed at; but he is himself of so generous, jovial, and kindly a turn that he begins to like the characters which he invents, can"t help making them manly and pleasant as well as ridiculous, and before he has done with them all loves them heartily every one.
Richardson"s sickening antipathy for Harry Fielding is quite as natural as the other"s laughter and contempt at the sentimentalist. I have not learned that these likings and dislikings have ceased in the present day: and every author must lay his account not only to misrepresentation but to honest enmity among critics, and to being hated and abused for good as well as for bad reasons. Richardson disliked Fielding"s works quite honestly: Walpole quite honestly spoke of them as vulgar and stupid. Their squeamish stomachs sickened at the rough fare and the rough guests a.s.sembled at Fielding"s jolly revel. Indeed the cloth might have been cleaner: and the dinner and the company were scarce such as suited a dandy. The kind and wise old Johnson would not sit down with him.(155) But a greater scholar than Johnson could afford to admire that astonishing genius of Harry Fielding: and we all know the lofty panegyric which Gibbon wrote of him, and which remains a towering monument to the great novelist"s memory. "Our immortal Fielding," Gibbon writes, "was of the younger branch of the Earls of Denbigh, who drew their origin from the Counts of Hapsburgh. The successors of Charles V may disdain their brethren of England: but the romance of _Tom Jones_, that exquisite picture of human manners, will outlive the palace of the Escurial and the Imperial Eagle of Austria."
There can be no gainsaying the sentence of this great judge. To have your name mentioned by Gibbon, is like having it written on the dome of St.
Peter"s. Pilgrims from all the world admire and behold it.
As a picture of manners, the novel of _Tom Jones_ is indeed exquisite: as a work of construction quite a wonder: the by-play of wisdom; the power of observation; the multiplied felicitous turns and thoughts; the varied character of the great Comic Epic keep the reader in a perpetual admiration and curiosity.(156) But against Mr. Thomas Jones himself we have a right to put in a protest, and quarrel with the esteem the author evidently has for that character. Charles Lamb says finely of Jones, that a single hearty laugh from him "clears the air"-but then it is in a certain state of the atmosphere. It might clear the air when such personages as Blifil or Lady Bellaston poison it. But I fear very much that (except until the very last scene of the story), when Mr. Jones enters Sophia"s drawing-room, the pure air there is rather tainted with the young gentleman"s tobacco-pipe and punch. I can"t say that I think Mr.
Jones a virtuous character; I can"t say but that I think Fielding"s evident liking and admiration for Mr. Jones, shows that the great humourist"s moral sense was blunted by his life, and that here in Art and Ethics, there is a great error. If it is right to have a hero whom we may admire, let us at least take care that he is admirable: if, as is the plan of some authors (a plan decidedly against their interests, be it said), it is propounded that there exists in life no such being, and therefore that in novels, the picture of life, there should appear no such character; then Mr. Thomas Jones becomes an admissible person, and we examine his defects and good qualities, as we do those of Parson Thwack.u.m, or Miss Seagrim. But a hero with a flawed reputation; a hero spunging for a guinea; a hero who can"t pay his landlady, and is obliged to let his honour out to hire, is absurd, and his claim to heroic rank untenable. I protest against Mr. Thomas Jones holding such rank at all. I protest even against his being considered a more than ordinary young fellow, ruddy-cheeked, broad-shouldered, and fond of wine and pleasure. He would not rob a church, but that is all; and a pretty long argument may be debated, as to which of these old types, the spendthrift, the hypocrite, Jones and Blifil, Charles and Joseph Surface,-is the worst member of society and the most deserving of censure. The prodigal Captain Booth is a better man than his predecessor Mr. Jones, in so far as he thinks much more humbly of himself than Jones did: goes down on his knees, and owns his weaknesses, and cries out, "Not for my sake, but for the sake of my pure and sweet and beautiful wife Amelia, I pray you, O critical reader, to forgive me." That stern moralist regards him from the bench (the judge"s practice out of court is not here the question), and says, "Captain Booth, it is perfectly true that your life has been disreputable, and that on many occasions you have shown yourself to be no better than a scamp-you have been tippling at the tavern, when the kindest and sweetest lady in the world has cooked your little supper of boiled mutton and awaited you all the night; you have spoilt the little dish of boiled mutton thereby, and caused pangs and pains to Amelia"s tender heart.(157) You have got into debt without the means of paying it. You have gambled the money with which you ought to have paid your rent. You have spent in drink or in worse amus.e.m.e.nts the sums which your poor wife has raised upon her little home treasures, her own ornaments, and the toys of her children. But, you rascal! you own humbly that you are no better than you should be; you never for one moment pretend that you are anything but a miserable weak-minded rogue. You do in your heart adore that angelic woman, your wife, and for her sake, sirrah, you shall have your discharge.
Lucky for you and for others like you, that in spite of your failings and imperfections, pure hearts pity and love you. For your wife"s sake you are permitted to go hence without a remand; and I beg you, by the way, to carry to that angelical lady the expression of the cordial respect and admiration of this court." Amelia pleads for her husband Will Booth: Amelia pleads for her reckless kindly old father, Harry Fielding. To have invented that character, is not only a triumph of art but it is a good action. They say it was in his own home that Fielding knew her and loved her: and from his own wife that he drew the most charming character in English fiction-Fiction! why fiction? why not history? I know Amelia just as well as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. I believe in Colonel Bath almost as much as in Colonel Gardiner or the Duke of c.u.mberland. I admire the author of _Amelia_, and thank the kind master who introduced me to that sweet and delightful companion and friend. _Amelia_ perhaps is not a better story than _Tom Jones_, but it has the better ethics; the prodigal repents at least, before forgiveness,-whereas that odious broad-backed Mr. Jones carries off his beauty with scarce an interval of remorse for his manifold errors and shortcomings; and is not half punished enough before the great prize of fortune and love falls to his share. I am angry with Jones. Too much of the plum-cake and rewards of life fall to that boisterous, swaggering young scapegrace. Sophia actually surrenders without a proper sense of decorum; the fond, foolish, palpitating little creature,-"Indeed, Mr. Jones," she says,-"it rests with you to appoint the day." I suppose Sophia is drawn from life as well as Amelia; and many a young fellow, no better than Mr. Thomas Jones, has carried by a _coup de main_ the heart of many a kind girl who was a great deal too good for him.
What a wonderful art! What an admirable gift of nature, was it by which the author of these tales was endowed, and which enabled him to fix our interest, to waken our sympathy, to seize upon our credulity, so that we believe in his people-speculate gravely upon their faults or their excellences, prefer this one or that, deplore Jones"s fondness for drink and play, Booth"s fondness for play and drink, and the unfortunate position of the wives of both gentlemen-love and admire those ladies with all our hearts, and talk about them as faithfully as if we had breakfasted with them this morning in their actual drawing-rooms, or should meet them this afternoon in the Park! What a genius! what a vigour! what a bright-eyed intelligence and observation! what a wholesome hatred for meanness and knavery! what a vast sympathy! what a cheerfulness! what a manly relish of life! what a love of human kind! what a poet is here!-watching, meditating, brooding, creating! What mult.i.tudes of truths has that man left behind him! What generations he has taught to laugh wisely and fairly! What scholars he has formed and accustomed to the exercise of thoughtful humour and the manly play of wit! What a courage he had!(158) What a dauntless and constant cheerfulness of intellect, that burned bright and steady through all the storms of his life, and never deserted its last wreck! It is wonderful to think of the pains and misery which the man suffered; the pressure of want, illness, remorse which he endured; and that the writer was neither malignant nor melancholy, his view of truth never warped, and his generous human kindness never surrendered.(159)
In the quarrel mentioned before, which happened on Fielding"s last voyage to Lisbon, and when the stout captain of the ship fell down on his knees and asked the sick man"s pardon-"I did not suffer," Fielding says, in his hearty, manly way, his eyes lighting up as it were with their old fire-"I did not suffer a brave man and an old man to remain a moment in that posture, but immediately forgave him." Indeed, I think, with his n.o.ble spirit and unconquerable generosity, Fielding reminds one of those brave men of whom one reads in stories of English shipwrecks and disasters-of the officer on the African sh.o.r.e, when disease has destroyed the crew, and he himself is seized by fever, who throws the lead with a death-stricken hand, takes the soundings, carries the ship out of the river or off the dangerous coast, and dies in the manly endeavour-of the wounded captain, when the vessel founders, who never loses his heart, who eyes the danger steadily, and has a cheery word for all, until the inevitable fate overwhelms him, and the gallant ship goes down. Such a brave and gentle heart, such an intrepid and courageous spirit, I love to recognize in the manly, the English Harry Fielding.
Lecture The Sixth. Sterne And Goldsmith