Chapter VI (2)

But the most remarkable criminal career, and that which best illustrates the inefficiency of the law and the impunity and ferocity of criminals, is that of Johnathan Wild, surnamed the Great.[146] This man spent some time in Newgate, and having become acquainted with the secrets and methods of its inhabitants, married a notorious woman who was well versed in similar knowledge. He then set up an establishment for receiving stolen goods, and organized thieves into regular bands. Some were to rob churches, others to pick pockets at theatres and fairs, others to rob on the streets and highways. He even divided the country into districts, and appointed a special gang to work in each. All these thieves were obliged to account to him for what they stole, and he disposed of it in London, or if that seemed too dangerous, he sent it abroad in a ship of his own. He attained over lesser criminals the most rigid authority and absolute power. His lieutenants were chosen among transported convicts who had returned before the expiration of their terms. These were legally incapable of giving evidence against Wild, but he could send them to the gallows at a moment's notice, if suspicious of their fidelity, by information to the authorities. Over the common thieves he had nearly the same power. Those whom he suspected of retaining part of their booty, or whom he feared as witnesses against himself, were at once sent to the gallows by private information to the magistrates. On the other hand, a thief who was in danger of arrest, if useful and faithful, was taken into Wild's own house, protected, fed, and employed in counterfeiting or other in-door occupation. When a law was passed making it criminal to receive stolen goods, Wild opened an intelligence office for the discovery of missing articles. To that office came the thieves, like so many workmen, to deliver their booty and receive their wages, and there, too, came the robbed to describe their losses and name their rewards. If the reward were sufficient to satisfy Wild, he returned the article; otherwise he had it made unrecognizable by skilled workmen whom he employed for the purpose, and presented it to a faithful follower, or disposed of it in the regular course of business. It is impossible not to notice a certain resemblance between Johnathan Wild and Defoe's English Tradesman. The practical turn of mind, the absence of sentiment so characteristic of the times, are to be seen alike in the thief, the tradesman, and the gentleman. Conducted on purely business principles, like a mercer's shop or a marriage between noble families, without hatred or affection, anger or generosity, the work went on. Wild dealt in human lives with the same cold, money-making calculation which directed the disposal of a stolen watch. When public complaints were made, that although many robberies were committed few thieves were apprehended, Wild supplied the gallows with thieves who were useless to him or lukewarm in his interest. When a large reward was offered for the apprehension of a criminal, Wild was usually able to deliver the man. If he was unable to do so, or was friendly to the criminal, he still secured the reward by giving false information against an innocent person, and supported his assertions by the perjury of his subordinates. By these methods he soon grew rich. He carried a silver wand which he asserted to be a badge of office given him by the government, and entered into secret leagues with corrupt magistrates. After a time he called himself a gentleman, and wore a sword, the first use of which was to cut off his wife's ear. At last he was detected in aiding the escape of a highwayman confined in Newgate, and being deprived of his power, he was easily convicted. He was hung in 1725, and on his way to the scaffold was almost pelted to death by the mob.

The impunity with which Wild followed his long career of crime was not unusual. The authorities were inefficient and corrupt. Fielding, himself a police justice, makes a magistrate say in "Amelia": "And to speak my opinion plainly, such are the laws and such the method of proceeding that one would almost think our laws were made for the protection of rogues, rather than for the punishment of them." The laws bore hardly upon the poor and spared the rich. "The parson," complained Defoe in the "Poor Man's Plea," "preaches a thundering sermon against drunkenness, and the justice of the peace sets my poor neighbor in the stocks, and I am like to be much the better for either, when I know perhaps that this same parson and this same justice were both drunk together but the night before." The magistrates and constables were as much in need of reform as the laws. "The greatest criminals in this town," said Walpole,[147] "are the officers of justice; there is no tyranny they do not exercise, no villany of which they do not partake." Many of the magistrates were never impartial, except, as Fielding said: "when they could get nothing on either side." One class of constables was described by Fielding in "Amelia."[148] The watchmen intended "to guard our streets by night from thieves and robbers, an office which at least requires strength of body, are chosen out of those poor old decrepit people, who are from their want of bodily strength rendered incapable of getting a livelihood by work. These men, armed only with a pole, which some of them are scarce able to lift, are to secure the persons and houses of his Majesty's subjects from the attacks of young, bold, stout, desperate, and well-armed villains. If the poor old fellows should run away from such enemies, no one, I think, can wonder, unless it be that they were able to make their escape." Defoe's pickpockets are always more afraid of being mobbed on the spot, than of being detected and punished by the police. Well known highwaymen not infrequently rode through the streets of London with armed companions, although large rewards were offered for their capture. Many of the constables were of the most villanous character. The following incident, recorded by Walpole, is only one of many instances of their brutality which might be mentioned.[149] "There has lately been the most shocking scene of murder imaginable; a parcel of _drunken_ constables took it into their heads to put the laws in execution against _disorderly_ persons, and so took up every woman they met till they had collected five or six and twenty, all of whom they thrust into St. Martin's round house, where they kept them all night, with doors and windows closed. The poor creatures, who could not stir or breathe, screamed as long as they had any breath left, begging at least for water; one poor wretch said she was worth eighteen-pence, and would gladly give it for a draught of water, but in vain! So well did they keep them there, that in the morning four were found stifled to death; two died soon after, and a dozen more are in a shocking way. In short, it is horrid to think what the poor creatures suffered. Several of them were beggars, who, from having no lodging, were necessarily found in the street, and others honest labouring women. One of the dead was a poor washer-woman, big with child, who was returning home late from washing. * * * These same men, the same night, broke into a bagnio in Covent Garden, and took up Jack Spencer, Mr. Stewart, and Lord George Graham, and would have thrust them into the round-house with the poor women if they had not been worth more than eighteen-pence!"

Keepers of prisons bought their places with the distinct purpose of making money by extortions from the prisoners. The following is an account of the means pursued by Bainbridge, Warden of the Fleet, to extort money from one Solas, a poor man, imprisoned for debt[150]: "Bainbridge caused him to be turned into the dungeon, called the Strong Room of the Master's side. This place is a vault, like those in which the dead are interred, and wherein the bodies of persons dying in the said prison are usually deposited till the coroner's inquest hath passed upon them; it has no chimney nor fireplace, nor any light but what comes over the door, or through a hole of about eight inches square. It is neither paved nor boarded; and the rough bricks appear both on the sides and top, being neither wainscotted nor plastered; what adds to the dampness and stench of the place, is its being built over the common sewer, and adjoining to the sink and dunghill where all the nastiness of the prison is cast. In this miserable place the poor wretch was kept by the said Bainbridge manacled and shackled for near two months. At length on receiving five guineas from Mr. Kemp, a friend of Solas's, Bainbridge released the prisoner from his cruel confinement. But though his chains were taken off, his terror still remained, and the unhappy man was prevailed upon by that terror, not only to labor _gratis_ for the said Bainbridge, but to swear also at random all that he hath required of him; and the committee themselves saw an instance of the deep impression his sufferings had made upon him; for on his surmising from something said, that Bainbridge was to return again as Warden of the Fleet, he fainted, and the blood started out of his mouth and nose." This example is by no means an exceptional one. It is impossible, within the limits of this volume, to give an adequate idea of the disease, the squalor, the cruelties and abuses which existed in the prisons. Their interiors are often described by the novelists, who were unable to exaggerate the actual circumstances. Poor prisoners, when acquitted, were dragged back to prison and kept there till their dues were paid or they were released by death. Richer men were subjected to all sorts of indignity and danger, even to that of small-pox, to force them to enrich their jailers.

The social condition of England in the first half of the eighteenth century presents a material and unattractive aspect. Its most prominent characteristics are the corruption and coarseness of the upper classes, and the ignorant brutality of the lower. Still there existed beneath this exterior, qualities and habits in the highest degree favorable to civilization and social order. At a later time these qualities brought about reforms which did away with many of the worst abuses. Among the middle classes, fast rising to political and social prominence, lived an earnest morality, which at a later time took form in the great Methodist revival, and the rise of philanthropy. This persevering industry of the same classes added enormously to the wealth of the nation. When reform came, it came as a revolt against existing conditions, showing at once how bad those conditions were, and how strongly the popular mind inclined to a better state. A general feeling of disgust prevailed which left deep traces on contemporary literature, and produced a widespread misanthropy. The first half of the eighteenth century was to the period of the Restoration like the morning after a debauch. Rochester, in the time of Charles II, and Hervey, in the time of George II were representative men. The difference in the feelings with which these men looked upon life is significant. Rochester, in the full tide of dissipation, glories in his sensuality, and writes the "Maimed Debauchee."

Should some brave youth (worth being drunk) prove nice,
And from his fair inviter meanly shrink,
'T would please the ghost of my departed vice,
If, at my council, he repent and drink.

But Hervey represents the time when dissipation had run a long course, and disgust, sanctity, and misanthropy were succeeding. To him, as to Swift, men were "a worthless species of animals," their vices, natural; their virtues, affectation:

Mankind I know, their nature and their art,
Their vice their own, their virtue but a part
Ill played so oft, that all the cheat can tell,
And dangerous only when 't is acted well,

* * * * *

To such reflections when I turn my mind
_I loathe my being, and abhor mankind._

[Footnote 90: Carlyle, "Frederick the Great," p. 13. vol. i.]

[Footnote 91: Addison, "An Account of the Greatest English Poets." Quoted by Henry Morley, LL.D., "English Literature in the Reign of Victoria."]

[Footnote 92: Lecky's "History of England in the 18th Century," vol. i, p. 502.]

[Footnote 93: Lord Hervey, "Memoirs of George II," v. 3, p. 527.]

[Footnote 94: Hervey's "Mem. of George II," vol. 1, p. 147, note.]

[Footnote 95: Walpole's "Reminiscences"; Hervey's "Mem.," v. 2, p. 103, note.]

[Footnote 96: Walpole's "Mem. of George II," vol. 1, p. 87.]

[Footnote 97: Browne's "Estimate of the Times"; Lecky, "Hist. of 18th Century," vol. 1, p. 509.]

[Footnote 98: Lord Hervey, "Mem. of Geo. II," vol. i, p. 5.]

[Footnote 99: _Idem_, vol. i, p. 170.]

[Footnote 100: _Idem_, vol. i, p. 18.]

[Footnote 101: Hervey's "Mem.," i, 20.]

[Footnote 102: _Idem_, vol. 1, p. 208.]

[Footnote 103: Hervey's "Memoirs," 1, 39.]

[Footnote 104: _Idem_, ii, 360.]

[Footnote 105: _Idem_, ii, 31.]

[Footnote 106: _Idem_, vol. i, p. 91.]

[Footnote 107: Hervey's "Memoirs," vol. 1, p. 37.]

[Footnote 108: Hervey, 1, 22-25.]

[Footnote 109: Horace Walpole, "Reminiscences."]

[Footnote 110: Locke "On Civil Government," b. ii, ch. 13; Lecky's "History of the 18th Century," vol. I, p. 471.]

[Footnote 111: Hervey's "Memoirs," ii, 280.]

[Footnote 112: Chesterfield, "Correspondence," iii, 94.]

[Footnote 113: Walpole to Mann, Dec. 24, 1741.]

[Footnote 114: Hervey's "Memoirs," i, 172.]

[Footnote 115: "History of the Eighteenth Century," vol. 1, p. 512.]

[Footnote 116: Green's "Short History of the English People," pp. 768-9.]

[Footnote 117: Hervey, ii, 189, note.]

[Footnote 118: Hervey's "Memoirs," vol. i, p. 500.]

[Footnote 119: Hervey's "Memoirs," vol. i, p. 502.]

[Footnote 120: Lord Hervey's "Memoirs", ii, 255.]

[Footnote 121: _Idem_, ii, 434.]

[Footnote 122: Hervey's "Memoirs," ii, 472.]

[Footnote 123: Hervey's "Memoirs," ii, 350.]

[Footnote 124: _Idem_, i, 90.]

[Footnote 125: _Idem_, ii, 349.]

[Footnote 126: _Tatler_, No. 159, Saturday, April 15, 1710.]

[Footnote 127: Steele, _Tatler_, No. 5.]

[Footnote 128: Walpole to Montague, March 20, 1737.]

[Footnote 129: Wilson's "Memoirs of Defoe," vol. i, p. 265.]

[Footnote 130: Wilson's "Memoirs of Defoe," vol. i, p. 206.]

[Footnote 131: Steele, _Tatler_, No. 12 May 7, 1709.]

[Footnote 132: Walpole to Mann, Nov. 26, 1711.]

[Footnote 133: Letter to Mrs. Ann Granville, Dec. 5, 1739.]

[Footnote 134: Letter to Mrs. Ann Granville, Jan. 17, 1731-32.]

[Footnote 135: Letter to Mrs. Ann Granville, Nov. 18, 1729.]

[Footnote 136: Letter to Mrs. Ann Granville, Christmas-day, 1729.]

[Footnote 137: Green, "Short History of the English People," p. 717.]

[Footnote 138: Lord Hervey's "Memoirs of George II," vol. ii, p. 139.]

[Footnote 139: Strutt's "Sports and Pastimes," p. 259; Lecky, "History of England in the 18th Century," vol. i, chap. iv.]

[Footnote 140: Lecky, "History of England in the 18th Century," vol. i, p. 522.]

[Footnote 141: Walpole to Sir H. Mann, March 23, 1752.]

[Footnote 142: The _Spectator_, "Sir Roger at the Playhouse."]

[Footnote 143: Horace Walpole, "Short Notes of My Life."]

[Footnote 144: Horace Walpole to Sir H. Mann, Aug. 2, 1750.]

[Footnote 145: See the "Newgate Calendar."]

[Footnote 146: See the "Newgate Calendar" and Pike's "History of Crime," vol. 2, chap. x.]

[Footnote 147: Walpole to Mann, bet. July 14 and 29, 1742.]

[Footnote 148: "Amelia," book i, chap. 2.]

[Footnote 149: Walpole to Mann, bet. July 14 and 29, 1742.]

[Footnote 150: "State Trials;" vol. xvii, p. 298. _Proceedings against John Higgins, Esq., Warden of the Fleet, Thomas Bainbridge, Esq., Warden of the Fleet, Richard Corbett, one of the Tipstaffs of the Fleet, and William Acton, Keeper of the Marshalsea Prison: 3 George II, A.D. 1729. Report of the Com. of the House of Commons_.]

II.

Lord Hervey's bitter lines introduce us to Jonathan Swift. Nature, together with the character of his time, made the great Dean a misanthropist. Physical infirmity, disappointed hopes, and a long series of humiliations destroyed the happiness which should have belonged to his rare union of noble gifts,--his tall, commanding figure, his awe-inspiring countenance, his acute wit, and magnificent intellect. Naturally proud and sensitive to an abnormal degree, he was obliged to suffer the most galling slights. From his earliest years he hated dependence, and yet, until middle life he was forced to be a dependent. His education was furnished by the charity of relatives, between whom and himself there was no affection. His college degree was conferred in a manner which made it a disgrace rather than an honor. The long years which he passed in the household of Sir William Temple, subject to the humors and caprices of his master, embittered his temper at the time of life when it should have been most buoyant and hopeful. Thus began the melancholy and misanthropy which marred his whole life, darkening his triumphs, turning such love as he had to give into a curse to those who received it, producing an eccentricity which often gave him the appearance of a madman, and finally bringing him to a terrible end--to die, as he himself foretold, like a blasted elm, first at the top. He kept his birthday as a day of mourning. He solemnly regretted his escape when nearly killed by an accident. He habitually parted from a friend with the wish that they might never meet again. Caesar's description of Cassius is wonderfully applicable to Swift:[151]

----He reads much;
He is a great observer, and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men ----
Seldom he smiles; and smiles in such a sort
As if he mocked himself, and scorn'd his spirit
That could be amused to smile at any thing.

The character of Swift presents great apparent contradictions. Although full of good-will and appreciation for individuals, although exercising out of a small income the most discriminating and open handed generosity, there has never lived a man more bitter in his misanthropy, more fierce in his denunciation of mankind. Although capable of great and disinterested affection, he was unable to make his affection a source of happiness to himself or to others. Although he always chose for companionship the most refined and cultivated women, the wisest and most honored men, his mind dwelt by preference on the most terrible examples of human depravity, and he gave permanent form, in his literary productions, to ideas from which a healthy mind must always turn with horror and disgust. His misanthropy was founded partly on observation of the evil and corruption which he saw about him, and partly on the suspicions and exaggerations of his own imagination. He gave up writing a history of England, because, in his own words, he found the characters of history such a pack of rascals that he would have no more to say to them. He made a "List of Friends," which he classified as Grateful, Ungrateful, Indifferent, and Doubtful. Of these friends, forty-four in number, only seventeen were marked with the _g_ which signified that their friendship was trusted. We cannot disassociate Swift from his own time, nor can we attribute simply to a melancholy life or to mental aberration the revolting conceptions which his works contain. The coarseness and corruption which marked the private and public life of Swift's day had their share in the production of such poems as The "Lady's Dressing-Room," and such degrading views of human nature as are expressed in the "Voyage to the Houyhnhnms."

It is a significant sign of the times that Hogarth, the greatest English painter, and Swift, the greatest English writer, should have employed their talents in caricature and in satire. In the wonderful allegory of the "Tale of a Tub," in which the corruptions and failings of the English, Roman, and Presbyterian churches were ridiculed in the persons of Jack, Peter, and Martin, Swift displayed at an early age his exuberant wit and surpassing satirical power. The "Tale of a Tub" was succeeded by the "Battle of the Books," an imaginary conflict between volumes in a library, which exposed the absurdity of the controversy over the relative merits of the ancients and the moderns. But Swift's satire became most fierce and brilliant when it was turned from rival creeds and rival literatures, and directed toward mankind itself.

The "Travels of Lemuel Gulliver" were dropped, said the publisher, at his house, in the dark, from a hackney-coach. In regard to this work, the Dean followed his custom of sending out his writings to the world to make their way on their own merits, without the assistance of his name. But the authorship of the book could not long remain unknown before the storm of applause and curiosity which it immediately excited. It was a production, said Johnson,[152] "so new and strange that it filled the reader with a mingled emotion of merriment and amazement. It was received with such avidity, that the price of the first edition was raised before the second could be made; it was read by the high and the low, the learned and illiterate. Criticism was for a while lost in wonder; no rules of judgment were applied to a book written in open defiance of truth and regularity." Whether read for the satire or the story, the adventures of Gulliver proved equally fascinating. They "offered personal and political satire to the readers in high life, low and coarse incidents to the vulgar, marvels to the romantic, wit to the young and lively, lessons of morality and policy to the grave, and maxims of deep and bitter misanthropy to neglected age and disappointed ambition."[153]

The early part of the eighteenth century offered rich material to the satirist, and Swift brought to his work unparalleled fierceness and power. He attacked the corruption of the politician and the minister, the vanity and vice of the courtier, the folly and extravagance of the fashionable world, and gathering venom in his course, made his satire universal and painted the pettiness and deformity of the human race. But among the follies and vices of mankind, vanity was the fault most offensive to Swift, and that which he lashed with his most bitter invective. To ridicule human pride, and to expose its inconsistency with the imperfection of man, is the ruling object of his great satirical romance. On Gulliver's return to England from the land of the Houyhnhnms, where, under the degraded form of Yahoos, he had studied mankind as they appeared when influenced by all human vices and brutal instincts unveiled by hypocrisy or civilization, he describes his horror at observing the existence of vanity among his countrymen who resembled Yahoos so closely;--

My reconcilement to the Yahoo kind in general might not be so
difficult, if they would be content with those vices and follies
only which nature has entitled them to. I am not in the least
provoked at the sight of a lawyer, a pickpocket, a colonel, a fool,
a lord, a gamester, a politician, a whoremonger, a physician, an
evidence, a suborner, an attorney, a traitor, or the like; this is
all according to the due course of things: but when I behold a lump
of deformity and diseases, both in body and mind, smitten with
pride, it immediately breaks all the measures of my patience;
neither shall I ever be able to comprehend how such an animal, and
such a vice, could tally together.

In the "Voyage to Lilliput" the follies and vanities of individuals and of parties are ridiculed by the representation of their practice among diminutive beings. Sir Robert Walpole suffered in the person of Flimnap the Lilliputian Premier, Tories and Whigs in the High-Heels and Low-Heels, Catholics and Protestants in the Big-endians and Small-endians. In the "Voyage to Brobdingnag," where Gulliver finds himself a pigmy among giants, the general object of the satire is the same, but its application becomes more bitter and universal. Characteristics of the human race hardly perceptible in their ordinary proportions, attain a disgusting and monstrous prominence when seen in the huge persons of the Brobdingnagians. The king of this gigantic people is represented as a beneficent monarch, who directs all his energies toward the peace, prosperity, and material advancement of his subjects; who seeks with a cold, calculating mind, undisturbed by passion or prejudice, the greatest good of the greatest number. To this monarch Gulliver gave a description of his native country: "I artfully eluded many of his questions, and gave to every point a more favorable turn, by many degrees, than the strictness of truth would allow; for I have always borne that laudable partiality to my own country, which Dionysius Halicarnasseusis, with so much justice, recommends to a historian; I would hide the frailties and deformities of my political mother, and place her virtues and beauties in the most advantageous light." But the impression produced upon the King of Brobdingnag by Gulliver's relation expressed the widespread sense of evil which existed in Swift's day, which tinctured literature with misanthropy, and made Rousseau at a later time argue the superiority of the savage man over his civilized, but corrupt and hypocritical brother.

He was perfectly astonished with the historical account I gave him
of our affairs during the last century; protesting: "It was only a
heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions,
banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction,
hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy,
lust, malice, and ambition could produce."

His majesty, in another audience, was at the pains to recapitulate
the sum of all I had spoken; compared the questions he made with
the answers I had given; then, taking me into his hands, and
stroking me gently, delivered himself in these words, which I shall
never forget, nor the manner he spoke them in: "My little friend,
Grildrig, you have made a most admirable panegyric upon your
country; you have clearly proved that ignorance, idleness, and vice
are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator; that laws
are best explained, interpreted, and applied by those whose
interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding
them. I observe among you some lines of an institution, which in
its original, might have been tolerable, but these half erased, and
the rest wholly blurred and blotted by corruptions. It does not
appear from all you have said, how any one perfection is required
toward the procurement of any one station among you; much less,
that men are ennobled on account of their virtue; that priests are
advanced for their piety or learning; soldiers for their conduct or
valor; judges for their integrity; senators for the love of their
country; or counsellors for their wisdom. * * * I cannot but
conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of
little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the
surface of the earth!"

In the voyage to Laputa the satire is directed against the vanity of human wisdom, and the folly of abandoning useful occupations for the empty schemes of visionaries. The philosophers of Laputa had allowed their land to run to waste, and their people to fall into poverty in their attempts to "soften marble for pillows and pin-cushions," to "petrify the hoofs of a living horse to prevent them from foundering," to "sow land with chaff," and to "extract sunbeams from cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers." The satire cannot be considered too broad when we consider the folly and credulity which, at the time of the South Sea mania, led many persons into sinking their whole fortunes in such enterprises as the company "To Fish up Wrecks on the Irish Coast," to "Make Salt-Water Fresh," to "Extract Silver from Lead," and to "Import Jackasses from Spain."

It is impossible within the limits of this volume to comment with any completeness on the application of Gulliver's Travels. The satire gathered strength and bitterness in its progress, until the limits of horror were reached in the voyage to the Houyhnhnms. This portion of the work cannot be considered to apply universally. Man does not here perceive a truthful reflection of himself. The Houyhnhnms, beings endowed with reason, but undisturbed and untempted by the passions or struggles of earthly existence, are not brutes, and are not to be compared with men. The Yahoos, in their total depravity, are not human; they represent, and that with a terrible truthfulness, the condition into which men may fall when their animal instincts and baser passions are allowed to subvert their reason and their noble qualities. The more a man suffers his better nature to yield to his lower, the more he resembles the detestable Yahoo. In this sense alone, the satire applies generally to mankind; but it applies with peculiar point to some characteristics of Swift's time. In reading the following passage, it is impossible not to be reminded of the treatment of Sir Robert Walpole by his former flatterers and sycophants when his power seemed at an end:

Some curious _Houyhnhnms_ observe that in most herds there was a
sort of ruling _Yahoo_, * * * who was always more deformed in body
and mischievous in disposition than any of the rest; that this
leader had usually a favorite as like himself as he could get,
whose employment was to lick his master's feet * * * and drive the
female Yahoos to his kennel; for which he was now and then rewarded
with a piece of ass's flesh. This favorite is hated by the whole
herd, and, therefore, to protect himself, keeps always near the
person of his leader. He usually continues in office till a worse
can be found; but the very moment he is discarded, his successor,
at the head of all the _Yahoos_ in that district, young and old,
male and female, come in a body, and * * * (defile) him from head
to foot.

But Swift, in his denunciation of men under the form of the Yahoos, disclosed the narrowness of his own misanthropy. When Gulliver has returned from his last voyage, with a mind which had dwelt on the beastliness and vice of the human race as it existed in the land of the Houyhnhnms, his warped judgment is unable to discern in his countrymen any attributes but those which they seem to share with the Yahoos:--

My wife and family received me with great surprise and joy, because
they concluded me certainly dead; but I must freely confess the sight
of them filled me only with hatred, disgust, and contempt; and the
more, by reflecting on the near alliance I had to them. * * * As soon
as I entered the house, my wife took me in her arms and kissed me;
at which, having not been used to the touch of that odious animal
for so many years, I fell into a swoon for almost an hour. At the
time I am writing, it is five years since my last return to England:
during the first year, I could not endure my wife or children in my
presence; the very smell of them was intolerable, much less could I
suffer them to eat in the same room. To this hour they dare not
presume to touch my bread, or drink out of the same cup; neither
was I ever able to let one of them take me by the hand.

Thus Swift himself, from the vividness with which he realized, and the intensity with which he hated, the vices and failings of humanity, was unable to duly appreciate the good, which, in some measure, always accompanies the evil.

It was the habit of the great Dean to utter the witticisms which caused the continual delight or terror of all who approached him with the most stern composure. Such was the manner of the "Travels." The solemn and circumstantial narrative style, imitated from the old English explorers added verisimilitude to the incidents and point to the sarcasm. Trifles, personal to the traveller and of no consequence to the course of the story, gave an appearance of truth to the whole work. Thus Gulliver keeps the reader informed of the most minute details interesting to himself. "I took part of a small house in the Old Jewry; and being advised to alter my condition, I married Mrs. Mary Burton, second daughter to Mr. Edmund Burton, hosier, in Newgate Street, with whom I received four hundred pounds for a portion." In the same way he informs us carefully that the date of his sailing on the first voyage was May 4, 1699, from Bristol, and the storm which destroyed the ship arose when in the latitude of 30 degrees 2 minutes south. In a work of fiction only such events are expected as have a direct bearing upon the development of the plot, and when immaterial details are introduced, the reader is likely to be impressed with their truth. In this way the personality of Gulliver is kept up, and he remains, through whatever strange scenes he passes, the same honest, blunt English sailor.

Yet more remarkable is the skill of the author in maintaining the probability of the allegory. When living among the Lilliputians, Gulliver insensibly adopts their ideas of size. He admires as much as they the prowess of the horseman who clears his shoe at a single leap. When the committee of the Lilliputian king examine Gulliver's pockets, they describe his handkerchief as a "great piece of coarse cloth, large enough to be a foot-cloth to your majesty's chief room of state"; his purse is "a net, almost large enough for a fisherman," containing "several massy pieces of yellow metal, which, if they be real gold, must be of immense value." The same almost mathematical accuracy of proportion is kept up in the visit to Brobdingnag, and on Gulliver's return to his native country he experiences as much trouble in reaccustoming his mind to the ordinary standard as he had met with in adopting that of pigmies or giants. There was a country clergyman living in Ireland, who declared there were some things in Gulliver's Travels he could not quite believe. His difficulty probably occurred in the "Voyage to the Houyhnhnms." In the latter part of the work Swift allowed the fiction to yield to the exigencies of the satire. So long as we can imagine the existence of giants and pigmies, it is easy to realize all the circumstances connected with Gulliver's existence among them, but it is impossible to feel the same sense of reality in regard to horses who live in houses they could not build, and who eat oats they could not harvest.[154]

The general desire for reform is not more clearly to be seen in Acts of Parliament than in the works of Swift and Addison. The earlier part of the century was marked by a strong realization of evil, and by a constantly growing inclination to suppress it. The first condition is illustrated by the fierce satire of "Gulliver's Travels," the second by the earnest admonitions of the _Spectator_. The two great authors make a striking contrast. Swift, misanthropic, miserable, bitter; Addison, happy, loving mankind, admired alike by ally and opponent, Swift, dying mad; Addison, calm, conscious, employing his last moments to ask pardon of one he had offended. The same contrast is in their works. Swift dwelt and gloated on the evil about him, exposed it in more than its own deformity, and left his reader to reflect on his own degradation. Addison, to whom that evil was almost equally apparent, but who turned from its contemplation with horror, exerted all his talents to correct it. "The great and only end of these speculations," he tells the reader of the _Spectator_, "is to banish vice and ignorance out of the territories of Great Britain."

With solemn reproof and delicate raillery, Addison urged women to lay aside coarseness and folly, and preached against the licentiousness, swearing, gambling, duelling, and drunkenness of the men. He attacked with both argument and ridicule the idea so prevalent since the Restoration, that vice was necessarily associated with pleasure and elegance, virtue with Puritanism and vulgarity. To teach people to be witty without being indecent, gay without being vicious, such was the object of Addison. As M. Taine says, he made morality fashionable. To do this he exposed the folly and ugliness of vice. But he did more. He held up to the public view characters who exemplified his teachings, and were calculated to attract imitation. In the creation and delineation of these characters he unconsciously began the English novel.

We should look in vain in the pages of Fielding, of Scott, or of George Eliot, for a more perfect sketch of character than that of Sir Roger de Coverley. And the minor personages are little less delicately and naturally drawn. There is the Bachelor of the Inner-Temple, "an excellent critick," to whom "the time of the play is his hour of business"; Sir Andrew Freeport, the typical merchant; Captain Sentry, "a gentleman of great courage, good understanding, but invincible modesty"; Will Honeycomb, "an honest, worthy man where women are not concerned"; the clergyman, who has ceased to have "interests in this world, as one who is hastening to the object of all his wishes, and conceives hope from his decays and infirmities." "These are my ordinary companions," says the _Spectator_, whom we soon learn to know very well too.

Addison's knowledge of human nature, and his skill in delineating it in single touches, place him in the front rank of writers of fiction, notwithstanding the limit of his contributions to this department of literature. In a few words we are made to see and know the Quaker who reproves the insolent captain on the stage-coach: "Thy mirth, friend, savoureth of folly; thou art a person of a light mind; thy drum is a type of thee, it soundeth because it is empty." There is nothing wanting to the reader's perfect acquaintance with Will Wimble, the poor relation. All who know Worcestershire, says the _Spectator_, "are very well acquainted with the parts and merits of Sir Roger." His fame has spread from Worcestershire throughout the English-speaking world, where he has been loved and admired for more than a hundred and fifty years. Sir Roger de Coverley is not to be described by any pen but that of Addison. He exhibits, joined to a perfect simplicity, the qualities of a just, honest, useful man, and delightful companion. Our acquaintance with him is a personal one. We know how he appears at his country-house, surrounded by admiring tenants and servants, and how he occupies himself in London, and whom he meets there. We know his ancestry, the extent and management of his estate, his long standing love affair with the beautiful widow, all his thoughts, opinions, and surroundings. All who read about Sir Roger remember him with affection. Addison dwelt with tenderness on every detail regarding him, and finally described Sir Roger's death to prevent any less reverential pen from trifling with his hero.

Previous to the publication of the papers of the _Spectator_ relating to Sir Roger de Coverley, there had been no attempt at what is a necessary constituent of the modern novel--the study of character. There had been the romance and the allegory. There had been the short love story. But with Addison, nature becomes the subject of fiction, and the novel is begun.

In a review of the remarkable life of Daniel Defoe, he appears to us under the varied aspects of a tradesman, a pamphleteer, a politician, a novelist, and, through it all, a reformer. It is in his character as a novelist that he is now known, and that he is to be considered here. But there are few among the millions to whom "Robinson Crusoe" has brought pleasure, who know that the composition of that work was only one event in a long life of ceaseless labor, political and literary, and that its author's fame among his contemporaries was assured independently of it. Defoe's career was so full that both his chief biographers[155] have found three large volumes to be necessary to do it justice. And yet it was not until near the end of that busy life, when the author was fifty-eight years old, feeling the approach of age and infirmity, and looking about for means to provide for a large family, that he added the writing of novels to his multifarious occupations.

There is probably no writer with whose works his life and personality are more intimately connected. It is impossible to consider the one separate from the other. Defoe began to write novels as a tradesman, as a literary hack, and as a reformer. Being dependent on his pen for his bread, he wrote what was likely to bring in the most immediate return. He calculated exactly the value and quality of his wares. He gave to his fictions the same moral object which inspired his own life. His novels followed naturally on his other labors, and partook of their character. It was his custom, on the death of any celebrated person, to write his life immediately, and to send it to the world while public interest was still fresh. But being often unable to obtain complete or authentic information concerning the subject of his biography, he supplemented facts and rumors by plausible inventions. Fiction entered into his biographies, just as biography afterward entered into his novels. But in writing the lives of real individuals Defoe recognized the necessity of impressing his reader with a sense of the truth and exactitude of the narrative. This effect he attained by the use of a literary faculty which he possessed in a degree unequalled by any other writer--that of circumstantial invention. By the multiplication of small, unimportant details, each one of which is carefully dwelt upon, and by the insertion of uninteresting personal incidents and moral reflections, seeming true from their very dulness, he gave to his work a remarkable verisimilitude. He did not even issue the book under his own name, but invented an authorship which would attract attention and credibility. Thus the "History of Charles XII" was announced on the title-page as "written by a Scot's gentleman in the Swedish service"; and the "Life of Count Patkul" was "written by a Lutheran minister who assisted him in his last home, and faithfully translated out of a High Dutch manuscript."[156] The same characteristics appear in all Defoe's works. He invents freely, giving the most elaborate details to support his assertions, and attains to an extraordinary degree the art of "lying like truth." In the "Journal of the Plague Year," Defoe assumed with his accustomed ease and skill the character of a plain, blunt London shopkeeper. He described with such apparent accuracy the observations of a man who had lived in the scene of that terrible calamity, giving curious incidents, anecdotes, statistics, after so methodical a manner, that it was long before any doubts were cast on the authenticity of the journal. It was a work of imagination, but so matter-of-fact, that it is difficult to believe the author had any imagination, and that he had not actually witnessed every occurrence he so calmly related. It is the same with the "Memoirs of a Cavalier." The civil wars are described by a young officer who took part in them, who gives a detailed account of his own opinions, his wardrobe, his horse, his lodgings. Lord Chatham quoted these memoirs as the true account of an eye-witness. From writing the life of a well known individual, Defoe had advanced to writing the life of a fictitious person placed amidst historical scenes. His next step was to write the life of a fictitious person amidst fictitious scenes.[157]

The "Journal of the Plague Year" had been issued to satisfy a popular interest excited by the appearance of the plague in France and the consequent fear of it in England. A similar public demand occasioned the composition of "Robinson Crusoe." A sailor named Alexander Selkirk had been "marooned" on the uninhabited island of Juan Fernandez, and after living there alone for more than four years, had been taken off by the same captain who had abandoned him. The interest taken in England in the narrative of this event revealed to Defoe's acute mind a great literary opportunity. But if he was indebted to the adventure of Selkirk for the fundamental idea of his novel, he was not the less original. Never has a greater individuality been given to a fictitious character, or a more vivid impression of life and reality to the circumstances surrounding him. The combination of ingenuity and simplicity which distinguishes the work, has, for a century and a half, had a peculiar fascination for children, and has awakened the wonder and admiration of men. There are three works of English fiction of imperishable interest, all of which have attained in a high degree the quality of reality, and have charmed alike all classes and ages. In the allegory of "The Pilgrim's Progress," the sense of reality was produced by the intense realization of the subject by the author, unassisted by any literary device. In "Gulliver's Travels" the effect was attained by a skilful observation of exact proportions, added to a circumstantial and personal method of narration, which Swift probably owed in some measure to Defoe. If the reader can accept the possible existence of pigmies and giants, his credulity is put to no further strain. Defoe had no difficulty of the supernatural to overcome. He had a power almost as great as that of Bunyan of identifying himself with his hero; and he surpassed Swift in the power of circumstantial invention.

The story of "Robinson Crusoe" is too intimately known to require comment. His over-mastering desire to go to sea, his being cast up by the breakers on the island, his endless labors, and the resolute determination which overcame them, his dangers, fears, and the consolation of religion, the foot-print on the sand, the companionship with Friday, and the final release, are recollections of our childhood too familiar to be dwelt upon. But in this very familiarity with Robinson himself, in the brightness and endurance of our idea of him, in our acquaintance with the inmost workings of his mind and heart, is contained the evidence that Defoe not only wrote a novel of adventure, as he had intended, but that he wrote also a novel of character.

If the author of "Robinson Crusoe" could realize so thoroughly the difficulties and expedients of a man living on a desert island, he could deal yet more easily with the adventures and shifts of thieves and abandoned women which formed the subject of his other tales. In these minor works, now little known, Defoe displayed equal talents, but did not attain equal results. The enduring interest which must ever attach to the central idea of "Robinson Crusoe" the complete isolation of the man--gave that work a very exceptional claim to the attention of posterity. But it had other merits, which are not apparent in the same perfection in Defoe's lesser novels. Its design was single and concentrated, its chief character natural and strongly marked, its plot coherent and complete. Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack are indeed well-drawn and real persons, and the design of the works which bear their names is clear, but in both cases the plot is merely a series of independent adventures, and the characters themselves could not, from their nature, long attract the attention of readers. "Colonel Jack," "Captain Singleton," "Moll Flanders," and "Roxana," have been surpassed, and are neglected. "Robinson Crusoe" is, of its kind, perfect, and therefore enduring.

But the works of Defoe have a historical, almost equal to their literary, interest. Whoever would attain a correct idea of the condition of the lower classes in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, should consult "Moll Flanders" and "Colonel Jack," as much as the "Newgate Calendar," and histories of crime and labor. What the author has described, he had seen.

Defoe was throughout his life a reformer; a large proportion of the many pamphlets and occasional writings which fell from his pen have for their object the reformation or exposure of some abuse. Yet a large number of his fictitious characters are thieves and harlots. The criminal classes occupied the public mind in the first half of the eighteenth century to a remarkable degree, and Defoe was not mistaken in thinking that novels concerning those classes would interest and sell. He knew that the public taste was low, and his business was to cater to public taste. He said, in "More Reformation":[158]

Let this describe the nation's character.
One man reads Milton, forty Rochester;
The cause is plain, the temper of the time.
One wrote the lewd, the other the sublime.

To satisfy the forty who read Rochester, Defoe described the lives and occupations of pirates, pickpockets, highwaymen, and women of abandoned character. The title-pages of some of these novels cannot with decency be quoted, and the novels themselves are filled with criminal and licentious scenes. But the reforming inclination of Defoe himself, and that which we find in the general literature of the time, induced him to turn these scenes into a moral account. Moll Flanders is a low, cunning, thoroughly bad woman, and her life is placed quite bare before the reader. Yet Defoe asserts that the book is designed to teach a good lesson.[159] "There is not a superlative villain brought upon the stage, but either he is brought to an unhappy end, or brought to be a penitent. There is not an ill thing mentioned, but it is condemned even in the relation; nor a virtuous, just thing, but it carries its praise along with it. * * * Upon this foundation the book is recommended to the reader, as a work from every part of which something may be learned, and some just and religious inference is drawn." Defoe, thoroughly a man of his time, thought he could put the coarsest and most vicious matter before his reader, and reasonably expect him to profit by the moral, without being hurt by contact with the vice. "All possible care," he says, "has been taken to give no lewd ideas, no immodest turns in the dressing up of this story. * * * To this purpose some of the vicious part of her life, which could not be modestly told, is quite left out, and several other parts very much shortened. What is left, 'tis hoped will not offend the chastest reader, or the modestest hearer." To any one acquainted with "Moll Flanders" this seems a strange statement. It exhibits the standard of the age. Mrs. Behn said almost the same thing about her novels and plays. To make up for the low, vicious life unrolled before us, it is not enough that Moll at last "grew rich, lived honest, and died penitent."

The aim of "Roxana, or the Fortunate Mistress," like that of "Moll Flanders," is to describe the gradual corruption of a woman, who is influenced by some conscientious scruples and misgivings, but the heroine is placed in a higher station of life. We have a curious commentary on the times in comparing the body of the work with the preface. "Roxana" is among the coarsest records of vice in English fiction. But yet it is to impart moral instruction. "In the manner she has told the story it is evident she does not insist upon her justification in any part of it; much less does she recommend her conduct, or, indeed, any part of it, except her repentance, to our imitation. On the contrary, she makes frequent excursions, in a just censuring and condemning her own practice. How often does she reproach herself in the most passionate manner, and guide us to make just reflections in the like cases?" The modern reader is astonished to find "that all imaginable care has been taken to keep clear of indecencies and immodest expressions; and, it is hoped, you will find nothing to prompt a vicious mind, but everywhere much to discourage and expose it."

Defoe is much more successful in teaching a moral lesson in "Colonel Jack." The aim of this novel is to describe the course of a street-boy who takes to thieving before he knows that it is not a legitimate business, and who being possessed naturally of a good character is brought to repentance and reform when subjected to better influences. Defoe's preface has great significance when we consider the deplorable condition of the lower classes and no better idea can be gained of the usual fate of the children of the poor than is afforded by this novel.

Here is room for just and copious observations on the blessings and
advantages of a sober and well-governed education, and the ruin of
so many thousands of all ranks in this Nation for want of it; here
also we may see how much public schools and charities might be
improved, to prevent the destruction of so many unhappy children,
as, in this town, are every year bred up for the executioner.