Chapter III: Part 3

Goethe, treating of the drama, has said, that “to be theatrical a piece must be symbolical; that is to say, every action must have an importance of its own, and it must tend to one more important still.” It is still more important, for dramatic effect, that the _dramatis personæ_ should embody attributes of passion, humour, sentiment, character, with which large miscellaneous audiences can establish sympathy; and sympathy can be only established by such a recognition of a something familiar to our own natures, or to our conception of our natures, as will allure us to transport ourselves for the moment into the place of those who are passing through events which are not familiar to our actual experience. None of us have gone through the events which form the action of Othello or Phèdre; but most of us recognise in our natures, or our conceptions of our natures, sufficient elements for ardent love or agonising jealousy, to establish a sympathy with the agencies by which, in Othello and Phèdre, those passions are expressed. Thus, the more forcibly the characters interest the generalities of mankind which compose an audience, the more truthfully they must represent what such generalities of mankind have in common—in short, the more they will be types, and the less they will be portraits. Some critics have supposed that, in the delineation of types, the artist would fall into the frigid error of representing mere philosophical abstractions. This, however, is a mistake which the poet who comprehends and acts upon the first principle of his art—viz., the preference of generals to particulars—will be the less likely to commit, in proportion as such generals are vivified into types of humanity. For he is not seeking to personate allegorically a passion; but to show the effects of the passion upon certain given forms of character under certain given situations: And he secures the individuality required, and avoids the lifeless pedantry of an allegorised abstraction, by reconciling passion, character, and situation with each other; so that it is always a living being in whom we sympathise. And the rarer and more unfamiliar the situation of life in which the poet places his imagined character, the more in that character itself we must recognise relations akin to our own flesh and blood, in order to feel interest in its fate. Thus, in the hands of great masters of fiction, whether dramatists or novelists, we become unconsciously reconciled, not only to unfamiliar, but to improbable, nay, to impossible situations, by recognising some marvellous truthfulness to human nature in the thoughts, feelings, and actions of the character represented, granting that such a character _could_ be placed in such a situation. The finest of Shakespeare’s imaginary characters are essentially typical. No one could suppose that the poet was copying from individuals of his acquaintance in the delineations of Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Iago, Angelo, Romeo. They are as remote from portraiture as are the conceptions of Caliban and Ariel. In fine, the distinctive excellence of Shakespeare’s highest characters is that, while they embody truths the most subtle, delicate, and refining in the life and organisation of men, those truths are so assorted as to combine with the elements which humanity has most in common. And it is obvious to any reader of ordinary reflection, that this could not be effected if the characters themselves, despite all that is peculiar to each, were not, on the whole, typical of broad and popular divisions in the human family.

Turning to prose fiction, if we look to the greatest novel which Europe has yet produced (meaning by the word novel a representation of familiar civilised life)—viz., ‘Gil Blas’—we find the characters therein are vivid and substantial, capable of daily application to the life around us, in proportion as they are types and not portraits—such as Ambrose Lamela, Fabricio, the Archbishop of Toledo, &c.; and the characters that really fail of truth and completion are those which were intended to be portraits of individuals—such as Olivares, the Duke de Lerma, the Infant of Spain, &c. And if it be true that, in Sangrado, Le Sage designed the portrait of the physician Hecquet (the ingenious author of the “Système de la Trituration),” and, in the poetical charlatan Triaquero, aimed at a likeness of Voltaire, all we can say is, that no two portraits can be more unfaithful to the originals; and whatever belongs to the characters worthy the genius of the author is to be found in those strokes and touches by which the free play of humour involuntarily destroys the exactitude of portraiture. Again, with that masterpiece of prose romance or fantasy ‘Don Quixote,’ the character of the hero, if it could be regarded as that of an individual whom Cervantes found in life, would be only an abnormal and morbid curiosity subjected to the caricature of a satirist. But regarded as a type of certain qualities which are largely diffused throughout human nature, the character is psychologically true, and artistically completed; hence we borrow the word “Quixotic” whenever we would convey the idea of that extravagant generosity of enthusiasm for the redress of human wrongs, which, even in exciting ridicule, compels admiration and conciliates love. The grandeur of the conception of ‘Don Quixote’ is its fidelity to a certain nobleness of sentiment, which, however latent or however modified, exists in every genuinely noble nature. And hence, perhaps, of all works of broad humour, ‘Don Quixote’ is that which most approximates the humorous to the side of the sublime.

The reflective spirit of our age has strongly tended towards the development of a purpose in fiction, symbolical in a much more literal sense of the word than Goethe intended to convey in the extract I have quoted on the symbolical nature of theatrical composition. Besides the interest of plot and incident, another interest is implied, more or less distinctly or more or less vaguely, which is that of the process and working out of a symbolical purpose interwoven with the popular action. Instead of appending to the fable a formal moral, a moral signification runs throughout the whole fable, but so little obtrusively, that, even at the close, it is to be divined by the reader, not explained by the author. This has been a striking characteristic of the art of our century. In the former century it was but very partially cultivated, and probably grows out of that reaction from materialism which distinguishes our age from the last. Thus—to quote the most familiar illustrations I can think of—in Goethe’s novel of ‘Wilhelm Meister,’ besides the mere interest of the incidents, there is an interest in the inward signification of an artist’s apprenticeship in art, of a man’s apprenticeship in life. In ‘Transformation,’ by Mr Hawthorne, the mere story of outward incident can never be properly understood, unless the reader’s mind goes along with the exquisite mysticism which is symbolised by the characters. In that work, often very faulty in the execution, exceedingly grand in the conception, are typified the classical sensuous life, through Donato; the Jewish dispensation, through Miriam; the Christian dispensation, through Hilda, who looks over the ruins of Rome from her virgin chamber amidst the doves.

To our master novelists of a former age—to Defoe, Fielding, Richardson, and Smollett—this double plot, if so I may call it, was wholly unknown. Swift, indeed, apprehended it in ‘Gulliver’s Travels,’ which I consider the greatest poem—that is, the greatest work of pure imagination and original invention—of the age in which he lived; and Johnson divined it in ‘Rasselas,’ which, but for the interior signification, would be the faulty and untruthful novel which Lord Macaulay has, I venture to opine, erroneously declared it to be. Lord Macaulay censures ‘Rasselas’ because the Prince of Abyssinia does not talk like an Abyssinian. Now, it seems to me that a colouring faithful to the manners of Abyssinia, is a detail so trivial in reference to the object of the author of a philosophical romance, that it is more artistic to omit than to observe it. Rasselas starts at once, not from a positive but from an imagined world—he starts from the Happy Valley to be conducted (in his progress through actual life, to the great results of his search after a happiness more perfect than that of the Happy Valley) to the Catacombs. This is the interior poetical signification of the tale of ‘Rasselas’—the final result of all departure from the happy land of contented ignorance is to be found at the grave. There, alone, a knowledge happier than ignorance awaits the seeker beyond the catacombs. For a moral so broad, intended for civilised readers, any attempt to suit colouring and manners to Abyssinian savages would have been, not an adherence to, but a violation of, Art. The artist here wisely disdains the particulars—he is dealing with generals.

Thus Voltaire’s ‘Zadig’ is no more a Babylonian than Johnson’s ‘Rasselas’ is an Abyssinian. Voltaire’s object of philosophical satire would have been perfectly lost if he had given us an accurate and antiquarian transcript of the life of the Chaldees; and, indeed, the worst parts in ‘Zadig’ (speaking artistically), are those in which the author does, now and then, assume a _quasi_ antique oriental air, sadly at variance with meanings essentially modern, couched in irony essentially French.

But the writer who takes this duality of purpose—who unites an interior symbolical signification with an obvious popular interest in character and incident—errs, firstly, in execution, if he render his symbolical meaning so distinct and detailed as to become obviously allegorical—unless, indeed, as in the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ it is avowedly an allegory; and, secondly, he errs in artistic execution of his plan, whenever he admits a dialogue not closely bearing on one or the other of his two purposes, and whenever he fails in merging the two into an absolute unity at the end.

Now, the fault I find chiefly with novelists is their own contempt for their craft. A clever and scholarlike man enters into it with a dignified contempt. “I am not going to write,” he says, “a mere novel.” What, then, is he going to write? What fish’s tail will he add to the horse’s head? A tragic poet might as well say, “I am not going to write a mere tragedy.” The first essential to success in the art you practise is respect for the art itself. Who could ever become a good shoemaker if he did not have a profound respect for the art of making shoes? There is an ideal even in the humblest mechanical craft. A shoemaker destined to excel his rivals will always have before his eye the vision of a perfect shoe, which he is always striving to realise, and never can. It was well said by Mr Hazlitt, “That the city prentice who did not think the Lord Mayor in his gilded coach was the greatest of human beings would come to be hanged.” Whatever our calling be, we can never rise in it unless we exalt, even to an exaggerated dignity, the elevation of the calling itself. We are noble peasants or noble kings just in proportion as we form a lofty estimate of the nobility that belongs to peasants or the nobility that belongs to kings.

We may despair of the novelist who does not look upon a novel as a consummate work of art—who does not apply to it, as Fielding theoretically, as Scott practically, did, the rules which belong to the highest order of imagination. Of course he may fail of his standard, but he will fail less in proportion as the height of his standard elevates his eye and nerves his sinews.

The first object of a novelist is to interest his reader; the next object is the quality of the interest. Interest in his story is essential, or he will not be read; but if the quality of the interest be not high, he will not be read a second time. And if he be not read a second time by his own contemporaries, the chance is that he will not be read once by posterity. The degree of interest is for the many—the quality of interest for the few. But the many are proverbially fickle, the few are constant. Steadfast minorities secure, at last, the success of great measures, and confirm, at last, the fame of great writings.

I have said that many who, in a healthful condition of our stage, would be dramatists, become novelists. But there are some material distinctions between the dramatic art and the narrative—distinctions as great as those between the oratorical style and the literary. Theatrical effects displease in a novel. In a novel much more than in a drama must be explained and accounted for. On the stage the actor himself interprets the author; and a look, a gesture, saves pages of writing. In a novel the author elevates his invention to a new and original story; in a drama, I hold that the author does well to take at least the broad outlines of a story already made. It is an immense advantage to him to find the tale he is to dramatise previously told, whether in a history, a legend, a romance, or in the play of another age or another land; and the more the tale be popularly familiarised to the audience, the higher will be the quality of the interest he excites. Thus, in the Greek tragedy, the story and the characters were selected from the popular myths. Thus Shakespeare takes his story either from chronicles or novels. Thus Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire take, from scenes of antiquity the most familiarly known, their fables and their characters. Nor is it only an advantage to the dramatist that the audience should come to the scene somewhat prepared by previous association for the nature of the interest invoked; it is also an advantage to the dramatist that his invention—being thus relieved from the demand on its powers in what, for the necessities of the dramatic art, is an unimportant if not erroneous direction of art—is left more free to combine the desultory materials of the borrowed story into the harmony of a progressive plot—to reconcile the actions of characters, whose existence the audience take for granted, with probable motives—and, in a word, to place the originality there where alone it is essential to the drama—viz., in the analysis of the heart, in the delineation of passion, in the artistic development of the idea and purpose which the drama illustrates through the effects of situation and the poetry of form.

But in the narrative of prose fiction an original story is not an auxiliary or erroneous, but an essential, part of artistic invention; and even where the author takes the germ of his subject and the sketch of his more imposing characters from History, he will find that he will be wanting in warmth of interest if the tale he tells be not distinct from that of the history he presses into his service—more prominently brought forward, more minutely wrought out—and the character of the age represented, not only through the historical characters introduced, but those other and more general types of life which he will be compelled to imagine for himself. This truth is recognised at once when we call to mind such masterpieces in historical fiction as ‘Ivanhoe,’ ‘Kenilworth,’ ‘Quentin Durward,’ and ‘_I Promessi Sposi_.’

In the tragic drama, however, historical subjects appear to necessitate a different treatment from that which most conduces to the interest of romantic narrative. There is a dignity in historical characters which scarcely permits them to be transferred to the stage without playing before the audience the important parts which they played in life. When they enter on the scene they excite a predominating interest, and we should not willingly see them deposed into secondary agencies in the conduct of the story. They ought not to be introduced at all, unless in fitting correspondence with our notions of the station they occupied and the influence they exercised in the actual world; and thus, whether they are made fated victims through their sufferings, or fateful influences through their power, still, in the drama, it is through them that the story moves: them the incidents affect—them the catastrophe involves—whether for their triumph or their fall.

The drama not necessitating an original fable nor imaginary characters, that which it does necessitate in selecting a historical subject is, the art of so arranging and concentrating events in history as to form a single action, terminating in a single end, wrought through progressive incidents clearly linked together. It will be seen that the dramatic treatment is, in this respect, opposed to the purely historical treatment; for in genuine history there are innumerable secondary causes tending to each marked effect, which the dramatist must wholly eliminate or set aside. He must, in short, aim at generals to the exclusion of particulars.

And thus, as his domain is the passions, he must seek a plot which admits of situations for passion, and characters in harmony with such situations. Great historical events in themselves are rarely dramatic—they are made so on the stage by the appeal to emotions with which, in private life, the audience are accustomed to sympathise. The preservation of the Republic of Venice from a conspiracy would have an interest in history from causes appealing to political reasoning, that would be wholly without interest on the stage. The dramatist, therefore, places the preservation of Venice in the struggle of a woman’s heart between the conflicting passions, with which, in private life, the audience could most readily sympathise. According as Belvidera acts, as between her husband and her father, Venice will be saved or lost. This is dramatic treatment—it is not historical. All delineations of passion involve the typical; because whoever paints a passion common to mankind presents us with a human type of that passion, varied, indeed, through the character of an individual and the situations in which he is placed; but still, in the expression of the passion itself, sufficiently germane to all in whom that passion exists, whether actively or latently, to permit the spectator to transfer himself into the place and person of him who represents it. Hence the passions of individuals, though affecting only themselves, or a very confined range of persons connected with them, command, in reality, a far wider scope in artistic treatment than the political events affecting millions in historical fact. For political events, accurately and dispassionately described, are special to the time and agents—they are traced through the logic of the reason, which only a comparative few exercise, and even the few exercise it in the calm of their closets, they do not come into the crowd of a theatre for its exercise. But the passions of love, ambition, jealousy—the conflict between opposing emotions of affection and duty—expressed in the breast of an individual, are not special,—they are universal. And before a dramatic audience the safety of a state is merged or ignored in the superior interest felt in the personation of some emotion more ardent than any state interest, and only more ardent because universal amongst mankind in all states and all times. If the domestic interest be the strongest of which the drama is capable, it is because it is the interest in which the largest number of human breasts can concur, and in which the poet who creates it can most escape from particulars into generals. In the emancipation of Switzerland from the Austrian yoke, history can excite our interest in the question whether William Tell ever existed—and in showing the large array of presumptive evidence against the popular story of his shooting the apple placed on his son’s head. But in the drama William Tell is the personator of the Swiss liberties; and the story of the apple, in exciting the domestic interest of the relationship between father and son, is that very portion of history which the dramatic artist will the most religiously conserve,—obtaining therein one incalculable advantage for his effect—viz., that it is not his own invention, and therefore of disputable probability; but, whether fable or truth in the eyes of the historical critic, so popularly received and acknowledged as a truth, that the audience are prepared to enter into the emotions of the father, and the peril of the son.

It is, then, not in the invention of a story, nor in the creation of imaginary characters, that a dramatist proves his originality as an artist, but in the adaptation of a story, found elsewhere, to a dramatic purpose; and in the fidelity, not to historical detail, but to psychological and metaphysical truth with which he reconciles the motives and conduct of the characters he selects from history, to the situations in which they are placed, so as to elicit for them, under all that is peculiar to their nature or their fates, the necessary degree of sympathy from emotions of which the generality of mankind are susceptible.

But to the narrator of fiction—to the story-teller—the invention of fable and of imaginary character is obviously among the legitimate conditions of his art; and a fable purely original has in him a merit which it does not possess in the tragic or comic poet.

On the other hand, the skilful mechanism of plot, though not without considerable value in the art of narrative, is much less requisite in the Novelist than in the Dramatist. Many of the greatest prose fictions are independent of plot altogether. It is only by straining the word to a meaning foreign to the sense it generally conveys, that we can recognise a plot in ‘Don Quixote,’ and scarcely any torture of the word can make a plot out of ‘Gil Blas.’ It is for this reason that the novel admits of what the drama never should admit—viz., the operation of _accident_ in the conduct of the story: the villain, instead of coming to a tragic close through the inevitable sequences of the fate he has provoked, may be carried off, at the convenient time, by a stroke of apoplexy, or be run over by a railway train. Nevertheless, in artistic narrative, accident, where it affects a _dénouement_, should be very sparingly employed. Readers, as well as critics, feel it to be a blot in the story of ‘Rob Roy’ when the elder brothers of Rashleigh Osbaldistone are killed off by natural causes unforeseen and unprepared for in the previous train of events narrated, in order to throw Rashleigh into a position which the author found convenient for his ultimate purpose.

A novel of high aim requires, of course, delineation of character, and with more patient minuteness, than the drama; and some novels live, indeed, solely through the delineation of character; whereas there are some tragedies in which the characters, when stripped of theatrical costume, are very trivial, but which, despite the poverty of character, are immortal, partly from the skill of the plot, partly from the passion which is wrought out of the situations, and principally, perhaps, from the beauty of form—the strength and harmony of the verse. This may be said of the French drama generally, and of Racine in especial. The tragic drama imperatively requires passion—the comic drama humour or wit; but a novel may be a very fine one without humour, passion, or wit—it may be made great in its way (though that way is not the very highest one) by delicacy of sentiment, interest of story, playfulness of fancy, or even by the level tenor of everyday life, not coarsely imitated, but pleasingly idealised. Still mystery is one of the most popular and effective sources of interest in a prose narrative, and sometimes the unravelling of it constitutes the entire plot. Every one can remember the thrill with which he first sought to fathom the dark secret in ‘Caleb Williams’ or ‘The Ghost-Seer.’ Even in the comic novel, the great founder of that structure of art has obtained praise for perfection of plot almost solely from the skill with which Tom Jones’s parentage is kept concealed; the terror, towards the end, when the hero seems to have become involved in one of the crimes from which the human mind most revolts, and the pleased surprise with which that terror is relieved by the final and unexpected discovery of his birth, with all the sense of the many fine strokes of satire in the commencement of the tale, which are not made clear to us till the close.

To prose fiction there must always be conceded an immense variety in the modes of treatment—a bold licence of loose capricious adaptation of infinite materials to some harmonious unity of interest, which even the most liberal construction of dramatic licence cannot afford to the drama. We need no lengthened examination of this fact; we perceive at once that any story can be told, but comparatively very few stories can be dramatised. And hence some of the best novels in the world cannot be put upon the stage; while some, that have very little merit as novels, have furnished subject-matter for the greatest plays in the modern world. The interest in a drama must be consecutive, sustained, progressive—it allows of no _longueurs_. But the interest of a novel may be very gentle, very irregular—may interpose long conversations in the very midst of action—always provided, however, as I have before said, that they bear upon the ulterior idea for which the action is invented. Thus we have in ‘Wilhelm Meister’ long conversations on art or philosophy just where we want most to get on with the story—yet, without those conversations, the story would not have been worth the telling; and its object could not, indeed, be comprehended—its object being the accomplishment of a human mind in the very subjects on which the conversations turn. So, in many of the most animated tales of Sir Walter Scott, the story pauses for the sake of some historical disquisition necessary to make us understand the altered situations of the imagined characters. I need not say that all such delays to the action would be inadmissible in the drama. Hence an intelligent criticism must always allow a latitude to artistic prose fiction which it does not accord to the dramatic, nor indeed to any other department of imaginative representation of life and character. I often see in our Reviews a charge against some novel, that this or that is “a defect of art,” which is, when examined, really a beauty in art—or a positive necessity which that department of art could not avoid—simply because the Reviewer has been applying to the novel rules drawn from the drama, and not only inapplicable, but adverse, to the principles which regulate the freedom of the novel. Now, in reality, where genius is present, art cannot be absent. Unquestionably, genius may make many incidental mistakes in art, but if it compose a work of genius, that work must be a work of art on the whole. For just as virtue consists in a voluntary obedience to moral law, so genius consists in a voluntary obedience to artistic law. And the freedom of either is this, that the law is pleasing to it—has become its second nature. Both human virtue and human genius must err from time to time; but any prolonged disdain, or any violent rupture, of the law by which it exists, would be death to either. There is this difference to the advantage of virtue (for, happily, virtue is necessary to all men, and genius is but the gift of few), that we can lay down rules by the observance of which any one can become a virtuous man; but we can lay down no rules by which any one can become a man of genius. No technical rules can enable a student to become a great dramatist or a great novelist; but there is in art an inherent distinction between broad general principles and technical rules. In all genuine art there is a sympathetic, affectionate, and often quite unconscious adherence to certain general principles. The recognition of these principles is obtained through the philosophy of criticism; first, by a wide and patient observation of masterpieces of art, which are to criticism what evidences of fact are to science; and next, by the metaphysical deduction, from those facts, of the principles which their concurrence serves to establish. By the putting forth of these principles we cannot make bad writers good, nor mediocre writers great; but we may enable the common reader to judge with more correctness of the real quality of merit, or the real cause of defect, in the writers he peruses; and by directing and elevating his taste, rectify and raise the general standard of literature. We may do more than that—we may much facilitate the self-tuition that all genius has to undergo before it attains to its full development, in the harmony between its freedom and those elements of truth and beauty which constitute its law. As to mere technical rules, each great artist makes them for himself; he does not despise technical rules, but he will not servilely borrow them from other artists; he forms his own. They are the by-laws which his acquaintance with his special powers lays down as best adapted to their exercise and their sphere. Apelles is said to have made it a by-law to himself to use only four colours in painting: probably Apelles found his advantage in that restraint, or he would not have imposed it on his pallet. But if Zeuxis found that he, Zeuxis, painted better by using a dozen colours than by confining himself to four, he would have used a dozen, or he would not have been Zeuxis.

On careful and thoughtful examination we shall find, that neither in narrative nor dramatic fiction do great writers differ on the principles of art in the works which posterity accepts from them as great—whereas they all differ more or less in technical rules. There is no great poetic artist, whether in narrative or the drama, who, in his best works, ever represents a literal truth rather than the idealised image of a truth—who ever condescends to servile imitations of nature—who ever prefers the selection of particulars, in the delineation of character or the conception of fable, to the expression of generals—who does not aim at large types of mankind rather than the portraiture of contemporaries—or, at least, wherever he may have been led to reject these principles, it will be in performances that are allowed to be beneath him. But merely technical rules are no sooner laid down by the critics of one age, than they are scornfully violated by some triumphant genius in the next. Technical rules have their value for the artist who employs them, and who usually invents and does not borrow them. Those that he imposes on himself he seldom communicates to others. They are his secret—they spring from his peculiarities of taste; and it is the adherence to those rules which constitutes what we sometimes call his style, but more properly his manner. It is by such rules, imposed on himself, that Pope forms his peculiar cæsura, and mostly closes his sense at the end of a couplet. When this form of verse becomes trite and hackneyed, up rises some other poet, who forms by-laws for himself, perhaps quite the reverse. All that we should then ask of him is success: if his by-laws enable him to make as good a verse as Pope’s in another way, we should be satisfied; if not—not. One main use in technical rules to an author, if imposed on himself, or freely assented to by himself, is this—the interposition of some wholesome impediment to the over-facility which otherwise every writer acquires by practice. And as this over-facility is naturally more apt to be contracted in prose than in verse, and in the looseness or length of the novel or romance, than in any other more terse and systematic form of imaginative fiction—so I think it a wise precaution in every prolific novelist to seek rather to multiply, than emancipate himself from, the wholesome restraints of rules; provided always that such rules are the natural growth of his own mind, and confirmed by his own experience of their good effect on his productions. For if Art be not the imitator of Nature, it is still less the copyist of Art. Its base is in the study of Nature—not to imitate, but first to select, and then to combine, from Nature those materials into which the artist can breathe his own vivifying idea; and as the base of Art is in the study of Nature, so its polish and ornament must be sought by every artist in the study of those images which the artists before him have already selected, combined, and vivified; not, in such study, to reproduce a whole that represents another man’s mind, and can no more be born again than can the man who created it; but again to select, to separate, to recombine—to go through the same process in the contemplation of Art which he employed in the contemplation of Nature; profiting by all details, but grouping them anew by his own mode of generalisation, and only availing himself of the minds of others for the purpose of rendering more full and complete the realisation of that idea of truth or beauty which has its conception in his own mind. For that can be neither a work of art (in the æsthetic sense of the word) nor a work of genius in any sense of the word, which does not do a something that, as a whole, has never been done before; which no other living man could have done; and which never, to the end of time, can be done again—no matter how immeasurably better may be the _other_ things which _other_ men may do. ‘Ivanhoe’ and ‘Childe Harold’ were produced but the other day; yet already it has become as impossible to reproduce an ‘Ivanhoe’ or a ‘Childe Harold’ as to reproduce an ‘Iliad.’ A better historical romance than ‘Ivanhoe,’ or a better contemplative poem than ‘Childe Harold,’ may be written some day or other; but, in order to be better, it must be totally different. The more a writer is imitated the less he can be reproduced. No one of our poets has been so imitated as Pope, not because he is our greatest or our most fascinating poet, but because he is the one most easily imitated by a good versifier. But is there a second Pope, or will there be a second Pope, if our language last ten thousand years longer?

THE LIFE OF GENERAL SIR HOWARD DOUGLAS, BART.[3]

When the announcement first appeared that a biography of the late Sir Howard Douglas was in progress, the impression made upon our minds was anything but favourable to the enterprise. Of the good and gifted man himself, as he mixed in general society, our recollections were indeed of the most pleasurable kind. He stood before us with his kindly manner, his noble appearance, his high bearing, his generous nature, the perfect model of what an English officer and gentleman ought to be. And casting our eyes across the room to the shelf on which his ‘Naval Gunnery’ and ‘Military Bridges’ were ranged, we thought of him as a man of science more than ordinarily well read in his profession. But not all our desire to find in connection with him materials for a consecutive history, helped us to any other conclusion than this, that the story of his life, if told at length, must be a dull one. We acknowledge, less with shame than with satisfaction and some surprise, that we were quite mistaken. Sir Howard Douglas’s career had more of romance about it than that of many a man who has filled a much larger space in the world’s observation. It was successful as far as it carried him, because a sound judgment controlled good abilities, and directed them to a wise end. And, above all, it reads this lesson to coming generations, that he who honestly seeks the wellbeing of others rarely fails, sooner or later, to secure his own. Nor must we omit to render to Sir Howard’s biographer the commendation which he deserves. Mr Fullom has executed his task well; neither overlaying his narrative with details, which sometimes weary, nor keeping back anything which might conduce to its completeness, he has given us one of the pleasantest books which, for some time past, has come under our notice.

The house of Douglas has from the earliest times been renowned in Scottish story. Its alliance with the royal family began in the fourteenth century, when the Lord of Dalkeith took to wife Mary the fifth daughter of James I. On this same Lord of Dalkeith the earldom of Morton was not long afterwards conferred by his brother-in-law, James II. From father to son, or from uncle to nephew, the earldom passed through twelve generations, and narrowly escaped coming in the thirteenth to the father of Sir Howard. But Charles Douglas, if he missed a coronet, won for himself a baronetcy and great distinction as a British sailor. He it was who, when Arnold and Montgomery besieged Quebec, forced his squadron through the ice on the St Lawrence and relieved the place. He it was who first of all constructed a flotilla for himself, and then swept the Canadian lakes of the rebel gunboats; and by-and-by, on the 12th of April 1782, he caught, as if by inspiration, that idea, the application of which enabled Admiral Rodney to break the enemy’s line, and to save at a critical moment the honour of the British fleet.

Of this Sir Charles Douglas, Howard was the eldest son by a second marriage. Sir Charles’s first wife, a foreign lady, had brought him two sons and a daughter, so that Howard’s prospects, so far as title and fortune were concerned, could not have been in his infancy very bright: and they would have been entirely overcast by the early death of his mother, had not her place been well supplied by a maternal aunt. Under the roof of this lady, Mrs Bailey of Olive Bank, near Musselburgh, the little fellow grew and prospered, repaying all the tenderness with which he was reared by his affectionate and gentle disposition, as well as by his industry and success over his books.

Howard’s brothers both entered the navy. This was natural, and it was perhaps equally so that Howard should desire to follow their example; but Sir Charles considered that, if his three sons were all to embrace the same profession, the chances were that they would only stand in each other’s way. He gave directions, therefore, that Howard should be educated for a different walk in life, and the boy ascended in due time from the charge of the governess to the grammar-school. Yet the child’s tastes were entirely naval all the while. He built toy ships, and sailed them on a pond in the garden; he made friends of the fisher-lads and cabin-boys along the coast, and became so initiated into the mysteries of their craft that none among them could better manage than he a fishing-boat or a ship’s yawl. It thus became clear to Sir Charles Douglas, who visited his sister in 1789, previously to assuming the command on a foreign station, that nature had designed his youngest son for a career similar to his own, and he made up his mind to take Howard with him, and to rate him as a midshipman on board the flag-ship. But the coveted flag he was never destined to hoist. A sudden illness carried him off while the guest of his sister, and Howard’s lot was cast for him in the army.

The Royal Academy at Woolwich was more easily entered in those days than it is now. A pass examination was, however, required; and young Douglas, strange to say, in spite of his marked bias for practical mechanics, failed in the elements of geometry. But he had made so good a figure in other respects, and appeared so cast down by the circumstance, that the examiner, Dr Hutton, encouraged him to try again; and three weeks spent with a clever crammer sufficed to bring him up to the mark. He therefore presented himself a second time, passed, and was admitted.

There is one defect in Mr Fullom’s history which puts his readers to considerable inconvenience—he is not very accurate in his dates. We do not quite make out, for example, when young Douglas made his way into the Academy, or how long he continued a cadet; but we are told, what is extremely probable in itself, that he was much beloved by his contemporaries, and that he soon took the lead among them both in the playground and in the class-room. His passion for naval affairs continued as strong as ever, and he indulged it by frequent boat excursions on the Thames. He swam, also, like a duck, and paid many a furtive visit to Deptford dockyard, where he studied by fits and starts the art of shipbuilding. His vacations he spent in Scotland, passing to and from Leith in one of the smacks;—an intense delight to him, because he was instructed by the crews in the arts of knotting and splicing, of plaiting points and gaskets, of making gammets, and heaving the lead. It is not often that a youth displays such unmistakable aptitude for a career which he is not destined to follow; and it still more rarely happens that the amusements of the boy, whom circumstances in after life place in a groove apparently wide apart from them, turn out to have been by no means the least useful branches of his education, either to himself or to others.

After completing his college course, Douglas received a lieutenant’s commission, and in 1795 assumed the command of a small artillery corps in the north of England. His headquarters were in Tynemouth Castle, and he had detachments at Sunderland, Hartlepool, and Berwick-upon-Tweed. His entire force in gunners fell short of fifty men; yet this was at a time when the risk of invasion appeared to be imminent, and Douglas and his gunners were necessarily exposed to bear the brunt of it. The young lieutenant felt how perfectly inefficient his force was, and cast about to devise some means of increasing it. He asked first for a reinforcement of artillerymen, which could not be afforded. He then suggested to the general officer of the district the propriety of drilling a portion of his infantry to the great-gun exercise; and himself, with unwearied diligence, instructed thirty men from each of the regiments quartered within many miles of Tynemouth. He was not, however, satisfied even with this—the thought struck him that he might enlist the sympathies of the fishermen and coasting sailors in the cause which he had at heart; and having obtained through General Balfour the sanction of the Government, he invited them to form themselves into companies of volunteer artillery. Upwards of five hundred fine fellows answered to the call; and the thoughtful lad had soon the satisfaction of knowing that danger, if it did come, would not find him unprepared, and that the merit of having provided a remedy for a great and acknowledged evil was entirely his own.

It is not to be supposed that the young man was so given up to serious matters as to turn away from the recreations common to his age and profession: on the contrary, Douglas seems to have been at Tynemouth the gayest of the gay. He danced well, rode well, established a yacht in which he made many adventurous cruises, and won the hearts of young and old by his frank and graceful manners. But sterner work awaited him, and the romance of his existence began.

Early in August 1795 he received orders to take charge of a detachment of troops, which, with women and children, were to proceed from Woolwich to Quebec. He joined the Phillis transport at Gravesend, and found himself the senior officer, with six subalterns besides himself on board. To him the prospect of a voyage across the Atlantic was a positive delight. What cared he about the inadequacy of accommodation, or the wretched nature of the food which was then issued to soldiers embarked? His thoughts were entirely given up to the great object of his boyish fancy—the actual navigation of a ship out of sight of land, and all the enterprise and excitement incident thereto. Never neglecting his own proper duties, he accordingly found time to make himself one of the crew, and, sharing their labours, and evincing perfect intelligence of all that was required, he won more than the goodwill, the confidence and respect of every one on board.

The Phillis was a slow sailer. She encountered various changes of weather, behaving, upon the whole, tolerably well, though sometimes uneasy and always uncomfortable. At last, however, a tempest overtook her about forty leagues to the east of the southern entrance of the Gulf of St Lawrence, and the sea swept over her decks, knocking the boats from their fastenings. The gale lasted all that day and throughout the night; but a lull came in the morning, and the women and children, who had been kept below, were allowed to come on deck. The same evening the officers entertained the skipper, and all were rejoicing in the prospect of escape from danger, when the mate suddenly broke into the cabin and requested the captain to follow him. Douglas guessed from the manner of the two men that something must be wrong. He ran up the companion-stair, and heard—for he could see nothing—the roar of breakers close ahead. The ship had drifted before the wind, and was already in imminent danger. Immediately the soldiers were ordered up, and, with their assistance, the best bower anchor was let go. But though it seemed to check the vessel for a moment, it soon began to drag; and, with breakers on the bow, practised eyes discovered that there was land on both quarters—that the ship was embayed.

It was evident, under such circumstances, that the single chance of saving the lives of those on board was to force the Phillis, if possible, round a projecting reef on her lee bow. But this could be done only by making more sail, and to go aloft at that moment and shake out reefs was a service of the utmost hazard. The seamen ordered to do so hung back, whereupon Douglas sprang into the shrouds, and, followed by two cabin-boys, accomplished the operation. The consequence was that the Phillis bore up and cleared the point, though very narrowly; but it was a mere respite from danger. The storm grew more and more tremendous. The boats could with difficulty be moved, and one of them (the long-boat) was scarce got over the side ere she went to pieces. The ship was now upon the rocks, and another boat was lowered chiefly by the exertions of the soldiers. But she in her turn seemed in danger of being broken to pieces; whereupon Douglas, followed by two officers, sprang in, hoping to fend her off from the ship’s side. Already she was more than half full of water, which compelled the three youths to spring back, in doing which Douglas missed his footing and fell into the sea. Happily he had divested himself of most of his clothing, and his skill as a swimmer stood him in good stead, for he rose upon the top of a wave, and one of his friends, seizing his collar at the moment, dragged him on to the deck.

Shipwreck under any circumstances is an awful thing. The wreck of the Phillis went on, so to speak, through two days and as many nights. Men and women went overboard; children died from exposure in their mothers’ arms. One poor fellow struck out in despair for the land, and was lost among the breakers. The first raft which the survivors constructed carried two of their number to the shore, who, regardless of the fate of their companions, immediately deserted. A second raft was put together, and on that Mr Douglas reached the land. He had carried a rope with him, and began immediately to construct a bridge. Fortunately the wind lulled at this moment, and the wreck was cleared of its living occupants. But scarcely was this done ere the Phillis went to pieces without an opportunity having been afforded of securing the means of subsistence even for a single day.

The sufferings of these poor people on the barren cliff to which they escaped were dreadful. Happily the waves brought ashore some pieces of cloth as well as a cask of wine and a quantity of smoked pork. But the sailors seized the wine and drank it; and the first night was spent in cold and misery, for the snow lay deep on the ground, and there was no fuel with which to make a fire. All lay down and slept—a sleep from which they would probably never have wakened had not Douglas been roused by a fearful scream, to which the wife of his servant gave utterance. She had gone mad from privations and excitement, and died shrieking to the last, so that her voice was heard over the wind and rain. She had outlived all the women who went on board at Gravesend, and not a child survived.

Mr Douglas was at this time barely nineteen years of age, yet such was the force of his character that all about him, seamen as well as soldiers, looked to him for instructions. He rescued a second cask of wine from being broached this time by soldiers, though not without a struggle. “We are all equals now,” said the leader of the mutineers; “we’ll take no orders from you or anybody else.” “Won’t you!” cried Douglas, springing at his throat with a knife; “you are under my command; and if you don’t obey, by heavens, I’ll kill you!” The man yielded; the small stock of provisions and wine was secured, and after a vain attempt to penetrate through the forest, the whole party returned again to the cliff—there to wait till either help should come from the sea, or famine do its work and destroy them.

A feeling of despair was beginning to gain the mastery, when one day the cry was heard, “A sail! a sail!” They had already set up a spar, and hoisted a piece of cloth upon it; but the object was small, and might not be discerned from a distance, and then what a fate awaited them! It was not, however, so ordered. The sail approached; she was a small schooner trading between St John and Great Jarvis; and the crew gave back the cheer which the poor castaways raised in their agony, crowding at the same time to the beach. They were all taken off and carried to the place whither the schooner was bound, and spent the winter, roughly but not unhappily, among the honest fishermen who had there established themselves.

The winter seemed long, the days being very short in that latitude. Not ungrateful, but tired of the monotony, Douglas purchased a whale-boat, and, having fitted it with a deck, determined, as soon as the season should advance a little, to risk a voyage to the West Indies. Several of his brother officers agreed to share the danger with him, and they got a St Lawrence pilot and a seaman from Newfoundland to join them. But a succession of heavy gales hindered them from starting till April was far spent. At last, just as their preparations were completed, there arrived in the harbour a schooner bound from Halifax to St John, the commander of which had heard of their misfortunes, and gone out of his way to offer them assistance. Adventurous as they were, Douglas and his friends did not hesitate to abandon their own project, and to avail themselves of the superior accommodation thus placed at their disposal. They were accordingly conveyed in the first instance to St John, Mr Douglas doing seaman’s duty throughout the voyage, and by-and-by to Halifax, whither, after discharging cargo, the schooner returned.

The Duke of Kent, the father of her present Majesty, was at that time Governor and Commander-in-Chief in Nova Scotia. He had heard of the fate of the Phillis, and of the sufferings of the crew and passengers, and sent an aide-de-camp to request that such of the officers as might be in a state to be moved, should present themselves at Government House. Douglas and his friend Mr Forbes obeyed the summons, and were most kindly treated by the Royal Duke. But their destination was Quebec, whither, as soon as means of transport could be found, they proceeded. The reception awarded them there, and especially Mr Douglas, was gratifying in the extreme. The important services rendered by the father to the colony had not yet passed out of men’s minds, and they believed that they saw in the son qualities which proved him worthy of his parentage. He was taken at once, so to speak, to the hearts of the people, and had the still higher gratification to find that the authorities, civil and military, entertained a just appreciation of his talents, and were determined to make use of them.