English Literature
in solitude for five years. On his return to England in 1709, Selkirk's
experiences became known, and Steele published an account of them in _The
Englishman_, without, however, attracting any wide attention. That Defoe
used Selkirk's story is practically certain; but with his usual duplicity
he claimed to have written _Crusoe_ in 1708, a year before Selkirk's
return. However that may be, the story itself is real enough to have come
straight from a sailor's logbook. Defoe, as shown in his _Journal of the
Plague Year_ and his _Memoirs of a Cavalier_, had the art of describing
things he had never seen with the accuracy of an eyewitness.
The charm of the story is its intense reality, in the succession of
thoughts, feelings, incidents, which every reader recognizes to be
absolutely true to life. At first glance it would seem that one man on a
desert island could not possibly furnish the material for a long story; but
as we read we realize with amazement that every slightest thought and
action--the saving of the cargo of the shipwrecked vessel, the preparation
for defense against imaginary foes, the intense agitation over the
discovery of a footprint in the sand--is a record of what the reader
himself would do and feel if he were alone in such a place. Defoe's long
and varied experience now stood him in good stead; in fact, he "was the
only man of letters in his time who might have been thrown on a desert
island without finding himself at a loss what to do;"[215] and he puts
himself so perfectly in his hero's place that he repeats his blunders as
well as his triumphs. Thus, what reader ever followed Defoe's hero through
weary, feverish months of building a huge boat, which was too big to be
launched by one man, without recalling some boy who spent many stormy days
in shed or cellar building a boat or dog house, and who, when the thing was
painted and finished, found it a foot wider than the door, and had to knock
it to pieces? This absolute naturalness characterizes the whole story. It
is a study of the human will also,--of patience, fortitude, and the
indomitable Saxon spirit overcoming all obstacles; and it was this element
which made Rousseau recommend _Robinson Crusoe_ as a better treatise on
education than anything which Aristotle or the moderns had ever written.
And this suggests the most significant thing about Defoe's masterpiece,
namely, that the hero represents the whole of human society, doing with his
own hands all the things which, by the division of labor and the demands of
modern civilization, are now done by many different workers. He is
therefore the type of the whole civilized race of men.
In the remaining works of Defoe, more than two hundred in number, there is
an astonishing variety; but all are marked by the same simple, narrative
style, and the same intense realism. The best known of these are the
_Journal of the Plague Year_, in which the horrors of a frightful plague
are minutely recorded; the _Memoirs of a Cavalier_, so realistic that
Chatham quoted it as history in Parliament; and several picaresque novels,
like _Captain Singleton, Colonel Jack, Moll Flanders_, and _Roxana_. The
last work is by some critics given a very high place in realistic fiction,
but like the other three, and like Defoe's minor narratives of Jack
Sheppard and Cartouche, it is a disagreeable study of vice, ending with a
forced and unnatural repentance.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON (1689-1761)
To Richardson belongs the credit of writing the first modern novel. He was
the son of a London joiner, who, for economy's sake, resided in some
unknown town in Derbyshire, where Samuel was born in 1689. The boy received
very little education, but he had a natural talent for writing letters, and
even as a boy we find him frequently employed by working girls to write
their love letters for them. This early experience, together with his
fondness for the society of "his dearest ladies" rather than of men, gave
him that intimate knowledge of the hearts of sentimental and uneducated
women which is manifest in all his work. Moreover, he was a keen observer
of manners, and his surprisingly accurate descriptions often compel us to
listen, even when he is most tedious. At seventeen years of age he went to
London and learned the printer's trade, which he followed to the end of his
life. When fifty years of age he had a small reputation as a writer of
elegant epistles, and this reputation led certain publishers to approach
him with a proposal that he write a series of _Familiar Letters_, which
could be used as models by people unused to writing. Richardson gladly
accepted the proposal, and had the happy inspiration to make these letters
tell the connected story of a girl's life. Defoe had told an adventure
story of human life on a desert island, but Richardson would tell the story
of a girl's inner life in the midst of English neighbors. That sounds
simple enough now, but it marked an epoch in the history of literature.
Like every other great and simple discovery, it makes us wonder why some
one had not thought of it before.
RICHARDSON'S NOVELS. The result of Richardson's inspiration was _Pamela, or
Virtue Rewarded_, an endless series of letters[216] telling of the trials,
tribulations, and the final happy marriage of a too sweet young maiden,
published in four volumes extending over the years 1740 and 1741. Its chief
fame lies in the fact that it is our first novel in the modern sense. Aside
from this important fact, and viewed solely as a novel, it is sentimental,
grandiloquent, and wearisome. Its success at the time was enormous, and
Richardson began another series of letters (he could tell a story in no
other way) which occupied his leisure hours for the next six years. The
result was _Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady_, published in eight
volumes in 1747-1748. This was another, and somewhat better, sentimental
novel; and it was received with immense enthusiasm. Of all Richardson's
heroines Clarissa is the most human. In her doubts and scruples of
conscience, and especially in her bitter grief and humiliation, she is a
real woman, in marked contrast with the mechanical hero, Lovelace, who
simply illustrates the author's inability to portray a man's character. The
dramatic element in this novel is strong, and is increased by means of the
letters, which enable the reader to keep close to the characters of the
story and to see life from their different view points. Macaulay, who was
deeply impressed by _Clarissa_, is said to have made the remark that, were
the novel lost, he could restore almost the whole of it from memory.
Richardson now turned from his middle-class heroines, and in five or six
years completed another series of letters, in which he attempted to tell
the story of a man and an aristocrat. The result was _Sir Charles
Grandison_ (1754), a novel in seven volumes, whose hero was intended to be
a model of aristocratic manners and virtues for the middle-class people,
who largely constituted the novelist's readers. For Richardson, who began
in _Pamela_ with the purpose of teaching his hearers how to write, ended
with the deliberate purpose of teaching them how to live; and in most of
his work his chief object was, in his own words, to inculcate virtue and
good deportment. His novels, therefore, suffer as much from his purpose as
from his own limitations. Notwithstanding his tedious moralizing and his
other defects, Richardson in these three books gave something entirely new
to the literary world, and the world appreciated the gift. This was the
story of human life, told from within, and depending for its interest not
on incident or adventure, but on its truth to human nature. Reading his
work is, on the whole, like examining the antiquated model of a stern-wheel
steamer; it is interesting for its undeveloped possibilities rather than
for its achievement.
HENRY FIELDING (1707-1754)
LIFE. Judged by his ability alone, Fielding was the greatest of this new
group of novel writers, and one of the most artistic that our literature
has produced. He was born in East Stour, Dorsetshire, in 1707. In contrast
with Richardson, he was well educated, having spent several years at the
famous Eton school, and taken a degree in letters at the University of
Leyden in 1728. Moreover, he had a deeper knowledge of life, gained from
his own varied and sometimes riotous experience. For several years after
returning from Leyden he gained a precarious living by writing plays,
farces, and buffoneries for the stage. In 1735 he married an admirable
woman, of whom we have glimpses in two of his characters, Amelia, and
Sophia Western, and lived extravagantly on her little fortune at East
Stour. Having used up all his money, he returned to London and studied law,
gaining his living by occasional plays and by newspaper work. For ten
years, or more, little is definitely known of him, save that he published
his first novel, _Joseph Andrews_, in 1742, and that he was made justice of
the peace for Westminster in 1748. The remaining years of his life, in
which his best novels were written, were not given to literature, but
rather to his duties as magistrate, and especially to breaking up the gangs
of thieves and cutthroats which infested the streets of London after
nightfall. He died in Lisbon, whither he had gone for his health, in 1754,
and lies buried there in the English cemetery. The pathetic account of this
last journey, together with an inkling of the generosity and
kind-heartedness of the man, notwithstanding the scandals and
irregularities of his life, are found in his last work, the _Journal of a
Voyage to Lisbon_.
FIELDING'S WORK. Fielding's first novel, _Joseph Andrews_ (1742), was
inspired by the success of _Pamela_, and began as a burlesque of the false
sentimentality and the conventional virtues of Richardson's heroine. He
took for his hero the alleged brother of Pamela, who was exposed to the
same kind of temptations, but who, instead of being rewarded for his
virtue, was unceremoniously turned out of doors by his mistress. There the
burlesque ends; the hero takes to the open road, and Fielding forgets all
about Pamela in telling the adventures of Joseph and his companion, Parson
Adams. Unlike Richardson, who has no humor, who minces words, and
moralizes, and dotes on the sentimental woes of his heroines, Fielding is
direct, vigorous, hilarious, and coarse to the point of vulgarity. He is
full of animal spirits, and he tells the story of a vagabond life, not for
the sake of moralizing, like Richardson, or for emphasizing a forced
repentance, like Defoe, but simply because it interests him, and his only
concern is "to laugh men out of their follies." So his story, though it
abounds in unpleasant incidents, generally leaves the reader with the
strong impression of reality.
Fielding's later novels are _Jonathan Wild_, the story of a rogue, which
suggests Defoe's narrative; _The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling_ (1749),
his best work; and _Amelia_ (1751), the story of a good wife in contrast
with an unworthy husband. His strength in all these works is in the
vigorous but coarse figures, like those of Jan Steen's pictures, which fill
most of his pages; his weakness is in lack of taste, and in barrenness of
imagination or invention, which leads him to repeat his plots and incidents
with slight variations. In all his work sincerity is perhaps the most
marked characteristic. Fielding likes virile men, just as they are, good
and bad, but detests shams of every sort. His satire has none of Swift's
bitterness, but is subtle as that of Chaucer, and good-natured as that of
Steele. He never moralizes, though some of his powerfully drawn scenes
suggest a deeper moral lesson than anything in Defoe or Richardson; and he