Chapter II: Part 2

On the other hand, hypocrisy becomes living flesh and blood in the person of the discreet, pious, treacherous, cold-blooded Blifil, who “visited his friend Jones but seldom, and never alone,” and “cautiously avoided any intimacy lest it might contaminate the sobriety of his own character.”

The most picturesque person in the book is undoubtedly Squire Western, with his senseless prejudices and his wild outbreaks of passion.

But if we leave the characters and incidents out of the question, there is a good deal of delightful reading in the book. The author is a consummate master of English. I began “Tom Jones” just after finishing “David Copperfield,” and the transition from the style of Dickens to that of Fielding was a refreshing surprise. The chapters which are introductory to each of the so-called “books” of the novel are intended, as the author tells us, to set off the rest by reason of their dulness. Some of them are in fact a little tedious, but many are pleasant excursions into fields of criticism and satire which mark the author as an essayist of the first order. The mock-heroic manner in which he describes the methods of his own work, the burlesque praises which he bestows upon it, and his contempt for his critics, are very amusing.

“This work,” he says, “may indeed be considered as a great creation of our own, and for a little reptile of a critic to presume to find fault with any of its parts without knowing the manner in which the whole is connected, and before he comes to the final catastrophe, is a most presumptuous absurdity.”

In another place he gives a comic justification of plagiarism from classical authors:

“The ancients,” he says, “may be considered as a rich common where every person who has the smallest tenement in Parnassus hath a free right to fatten his muse.” “The writers of antiquity were so many wealthy squires from whom the poor might claim an immemorial custom of taking whatever they could come at, so long as they maintained strict honesty among themselves.”

His use of epic diction in the description of the commonplace is sometimes irresistibly comic,--for example, the following on the fight of Mollie Seagrim in the churchyard:

“Recount, O Muse, the names of those who fell on this fatal day.
First, Jemmy Tweedle felt on his hinder head the direful bone.
Him the pleasant banks of sweetly winding Stour had nourished,
where he first learnt the vocal art, with which, wandering up and
down at wakes and fairs, he cheered the rural nymphs and swains,
when upon the green they interweaved the sprightly dance, while
he himself stood fiddling and jumping to his own music. How
little now avails his fiddle! He thumps the verdant floor with
his carcass.”

Contrary to the general opinion, I think that Fielding is entitled to far more praise for the literary quality which pervades his novel than for its “realism” and “fidelity to nature” which are the claims of most of its admirers.

RASSELAS
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON

Dr. Johnson is one of the few men whose reputation is due, not so much to his writings (which are generally the source of all permanent renown in a literary man) as to his conversation and his peculiarities as recorded by his wonderful biographer--things which in most men are the source of a very limited and evanescent fame.

It is not intended here to dispute the conclusions of Macaulay that he was both a great and a good man, but merely to point out how little good work he has put forth to justify his prodigious reputation. For instance, he compiled a dictionary; and although it was never a very good dictionary, and is now quite obsolete, yet the memory of the tremendous stir it made has lasted down to the present time. He wrote some annotations of Shakespeare’s plays, which show that he had a very limited understanding of their meaning, yet his observations have been more generally quoted than those of commentators far more accurate and discerning. He entered the field of fiction and wrote “Rasselas,” and there are very few novels (if “Rasselas” can be called a novel at all) which upon their intrinsic merits less deserve an extravagant reputation as one of the classics of our literature.

The plot is the slenderest possible. Rasselas, the fourth son of the emperor of Abyssinia, is confined within the “Happy Valley,” from which exit is impossible, and, wanting nothing, naturally suffers from _ennui_. He spends twenty months in fruitless imaginings, and then four months more in resolving to lose no more time in idle resolves, when he is awakened to more vigorous exertion by hearing a maid who had broken a porcelain cup remark, “What cannot be repaired is not to be regretted.” Then for a few hours he “regretted his regret,” and from that time bent his whole mind to the means of escape. He spent ten months trying to find a way out (a job which would be laughed at by an able-bodied member of the Alpine Club) then he betook himself to an inventor of a flying machine, who of course came to grief. Finally a poet, named Imlac, told Rasselas of his extensive travels, and they received from the conies, who had “dug holes tending upwards in an oblique line,” a hint as to the means of escape, of which Dr. Johnson gives the following rather foggy description: “By piercing the mountain in the same direction, we will begin where the summit hangs over the middle part and labor upwards till we issue up behind the prominence.” The two now proceed to tunnel the mountain, and Nekayah, the prince’s sister, with her favorite maid, Pekuah, accompany them to the outside world. They journey to Cairo, where they engage in the search for happiness,--philosophy, the pastoral life, material prosperity, solitude, the life led “according to nature,” the splendor of courts, the modesty of humble life, marriage, and celibacy, all being successively examined and found wanting. They visit the pyramids, and here Pekuah is carried away by a band of Arabs, but she is afterwards ransomed and relates her adventures (which are not interesting) at considerable length. They admire the learning and happiness of a certain astronomer, but Imlac finds out that he is crazy; they consult an old man whose wisdom has deeply impressed them, but who can give them little comfort; they discuss the merits of conventual life; finally they visit the catacombs, where Imlac discourses on the nature of the soul; and at “the conclusion in which nothing is concluded” (for this is the title of the last chapter), Pekuah thinks she would like to be the prioress of a convent, Nekayah wants to learn all the sciences and found a college, Rasselas desires a little kingdom where he can administer justice, while Imlac and the astronomer (who has now recovered his right mind) “were contented to be driven along the stream of life without directing their course to any particular port.” They all know that none of their wishes can be gratified, so they resolve to go home. This conclusion might have been inserted almost anywhere else in the book with equal propriety.

The story is a mere thread upon which is hung a succession of reflections and homilies, some of which are shallow, many commonplace and trite, and only a few are at the same time striking, original, and worthy of remembrance.

The author maintains the existence of ghosts because belief in them is supported by the “concurrent and unvaried testimony of all ages and of all nations,” and such an opinion “could become universal only by its truth!”

There is very little humor to be found in the ponderous moralizing of this book. There is, however, a touch of quaint satire upon the theories of contemporary French philosophy, that deserves to be remembered. Rasselas is listening to a philosopher who advises his hearers to “throw away the incumbrance of precepts” and carry with them “this simple and intelligible maxim that ‘deviation from nature is deviation from happiness.’” He asks what it is to live according to nature, and the philosopher answers:

“‘To live according to nature is to act always with due regard to
the fitness arising from the relations and qualities of causes
and effects; to concur with the great and unchangeable scheme of
universal felicity; to cooperate with the general disposition and
tendency of the present system of things.’

“The prince soon found that this was one of the sages whom he
should understand less as he heard him longer. He therefore bowed
and was silent; and the philosopher, supposing him satisfied, and
the rest vanquished, rose up and departed with the air of a man
that had coöperated with the present system.”

The style of “Rasselas” (like that of everything Dr. Johnson wrote) is stilted and affected. In the Happy Valley “every blast shook spices from the rocks and every month dropped fruits.” Its inhabitants “wandered in the gardens of fragrance and slept in the fortresses of security.” When Rasselas reaches Cairo he tells us of the gilded youth of that metropolis, that “their mirth was without images, their laughter without motive.... The frown of power dejected and the eye of wisdom abashed them.”

Of a professor who there lectured on philosophy, Rasselas declares: “He speaks, and attention watches his lips. He reasons, and conviction closes his periods.” This might do in an oration, but it is pretty poor for a novel. But worst of all, Dr. Johnson puts into the mouth of the young and innocent Nekayah the following words upon the subject of marriage:

“When I see and reckon the various forms of connubial infelicity,
the unexpected causes of lasting discord, the diversities of
temper, the oppositions of opinion, the rude collisions of
contrary desire where both are urged by violent impulses, the
obstinate contests of disagreeable virtues where both are
supported by consciousness of good intention, I am sometimes
disposed to think with the severer casuists of most nations,
that marriage is rather permitted than approved, and that none,
but by the instigation of a passion too much indulged, entangle
themselves with indissoluble compacts.”

Readers who think that this sort of conversation is natural and beautiful ought to be fond of “Rasselas,” but those who do not will inevitably feel that it was too bad that the author of the great Dictionary had so intimate an acquaintance with so many words.

CANDIDE
FRANÇOIS VOLTAIRE

In the same year that “Rasselas” appeared (1759), Voltaire published his “Candide.” While the coarseness and irreverent merriment of the French philosopher are quite unlike the ponderous Sunday-school didacticism of Dr. Johnson, still there are points of remarkable resemblance in these two works, written as they were by the two literary autocrats of that generation. The Happy Valley of Abyssinia finds its counterpart in El Dorado, and the object of each book was to illustrate the same truths--the uncertainties and vicissitudes of life and the vanity of human wishes, although the moral drawn from these truths is very different in the two cases.

Saintsbury considers “Candide”, from a literary point of view, “unsurpassable,” while some of Voltaire’s critics and commentators seem to regard it as scarcely worthy of notice. The truth lies somewhere between these estimates. “Candide” can hardly be classed as a novel, for it is in no sense a just portraiture of life or of human nature. It is essentially a burlesque written in ridicule of philosophic optimism, and of the orthodox contention that all which happens is the result of a wise and beneficent design. It is a work thoroughly characteristic of Voltaire, and sparkles everywhere with his wit and laughing mockery.

Candide, the hero, is brought up in the castle of the Baron of Thunder-Ten-Tronckh, where Master Pangloss, the instructor who teaches meta-physico-theologo-cosmolo-ingology, is the oracle of the family. “It is demonstrable,” says this great philosopher, “that things cannot be otherwise than they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end. Observe, for instance, the nose is formed for spectacles; therefore we wear spectacles. The legs are visibly designed for stockings; accordingly we wear stockings,” etc. The book is a commentary on this text. Candide is kicked out of the castle for falling in love with the baron’s daughter. After sad wanderings, he is impressed by the Bulgarians, flogged nearly to death, takes part in the war with the Abares, in which some thirty thousand souls are massacred, escapes to Holland, meets the sage Pangloss, who is dying of a loathsome disease and who tells him that the castle has been destroyed and its inmates put to death. But Pangloss recovers and they start for Portugal, encountering a tempest, a shipwreck, the earthquake of Lisbon, (where 30,000 people were destroyed,) and finally the Inquisition and an _auto-da-fé_, where Candide receives a hundred lashes and Pangloss is hanged. Here Candide finds that his inamorata Cunegund is alive, having escaped the slaughter at Thunder-Ten-Tronckh, though she has encountered calamities equal to his own, and though at that time the Grand Inquisitor and one Issachar, a Jew, are holding her as their prisoner and slave. Candide slays them one after the other, and escapes with his Cunegund to Cadiz, whence they set sail for Buenos Aires. But here things are as bad as in Europe. Cunegund is again torn from her lover, who, with his servant, Cacambo, wanders through Paraguay; fights with her brother the baron, who has turned Jesuit and become one of the rulers of that country; escapes again, and discovers the hitherto inaccessible and unknown country of El Dorado in the heart of the mountains, where the clay is yellow gold, the pebbles are precious stones, where there are no priests, nor monks, nor courts, nor prisons, and where the people lead lives of innocence and ideal happiness. Upon his departure he takes with him a flock of sheep laden with treasure, but as soon as he reaches the haunts of men the wickedness of the world begins again. His treasure is stolen and he returns to Europe, meeting with marvellous adventures in France, in England, in Venice, and finally in Turkey, where he again encounters his Cunegund, ransoms her from slavery, and weds her, after she has become a hideous and ill-favored scold. The sage Pangloss, although he has been hanged, dissected, enslaved and flogged, turns up again, still maintaining that everything goes on as well as possible, because as a philosopher it would be unbecoming in him to retract!

At every turn of the kaleidoscope some new scene of fraud, lust, rapine, slaughter, sacrilege, or inevitable calamity, comes into view, generally linked with some ridiculous accessory such as only the mind of Voltaire could conceive, and yet with each grotesque apparition there comes also a sort of conviction that the author has not greatly overdrawn the picture, but has merely grouped together in startling juxtaposition the things which actually happen in the world.

At last Candide settles in a small farm in the Propontis, and from a neighbor, an old man, quite ignorant of philosophy and public affairs, he learns the real secret of happiness,--to cultivate his little patch of land, and by labor to keep off the three great evils, idleness, vice, and want. The moral is thus expressed in the concluding sentences:

“‘There is a concatenation of all events in the best of possible
worlds; for, in short, had you not been kicked out of a fine
castle for the love of Miss Cunegund, had you not been put into
the Inquisition, had you not traveled over America on foot, had
you not run the baron through the body, and had you not lost
all your sheep which you brought from the good country of El
Dorado, you would not have been here to eat preserved citrons and
pistachio nuts.’ ‘Excellently observed,’ answered Candide, ‘but
let us take care of our garden.’”

While the story as a whole is a wild phantasmagoria, calling to mind the works of Rabelais by its grossness and inextricable confusion, it contains also, like “Gargantua,” passages of exquisite irony and masterly satire. For instance, the Venetian senator Pococurante, who by despising and condemning the great works of art and literature proved his superiority to all and passed for a prodigious genius, is vividly drawn, and it makes us wonder whether Voltaire’s own great reputation had not a source which was essentially the same as that of his Pococurante.

TRISTRAM SHANDY
LAURENCE STERNE

I was for some time in doubt whether “Tristram Shandy” ought to be in my list of masterpieces. In one sense it is hardly a work of fiction at all, for a few rather trifling incidents are made the basis of such endless digressions and ruminations that it is in fact not so much a story as a medley of satire, philosophy, and humor. But the ear-marks of Cervantes and Rabelais appear in it very plainly, and perhaps it is as much entitled to a place here as the burlesques of the celebrated Frenchman.

I began “Tristram Shandy” several times, and read the greater part of it on disconnected occasions; yet the poor hero had such a hard time, through so many hundreds of pages, in getting into the world at all, that I always gave up without reading the book to the end. And, to say the truth, nobody ought to read it consecutively. A part of the humor consists in the endless prolixity with which trifling events are narrated, and a joke thus lengthened out into the enormous dimensions of several volumes becomes too huge to handle all at once. Another part of the humor is displayed in the jumble with which the events and observations upon them are thrown together. The preface, for instance (and a very amusing preface it is), is pitched into the middle of the book. Whole chapters are omitted and their places supplied by stars, and the subsequent chapters (which tell the whole story) are given to explaining why these omissions were made, namely, that the parts left out were too fine for the rest of the story. The author appropriately asks us, after several volumes of this confusion, how our heads feel!

The style, which is generally conversational and highly idiomatic, is sometimes purposely involved, and gives us a picturesque, vague impression, which is often vivid, though upon analysis it represents nothing in particular. Evidently Carlyle, who was a great admirer of Sterne, imitated his manner in places, though he lacked much of the wit and lightness of fancy of the author of “Tristram Shandy.” There are indeed passages in which the style of the two authors is almost indistinguishable.

Naturally, in such a book a good part of the fun has to be dug out with considerable labor; and this is not always the way in which humor is most attractive. To the reader who is anxious for a _denouement_, “Tristram Shandy” is a most exasperating work, for there is no _denouement_ at all. You never get anywhere, and the book ends, like the Sentimental Journey, right at the midst of perhaps the most interesting part of it.

It improves a good deal, however, upon a second reading, when you no longer care how anything is going to turn out, and when the choice morsels are more easily extracted. It contains a great many observations which go well in a commonplace book, containing as they do a humorous epitome of matters of universal knowledge. Sterne has the Shakespearean quality of filching from others and then transforming his plunder into gold by a striking originality of his own. The actual facts described are very few. Tristram’s birth, with all its accessories, his broken nose, his christening, his father’s odd philosophy and scheme of education, so elaborate that the boy’s actual training had to be abandoned while the father was writing his great Tristrapaedia,--these things, together with the history of Uncle Toby, wounded in the groin at the siege of Namur, and of his faithful servant Corporal Trim, and finally the episode of the Widow Wadman, who laid siege to Uncle Toby’s heart, an episode broken off in the middle at the end of the book, are pretty much all. But the descriptions of character are admirable. The dear, simple-minded, modest Uncle Toby, with his hobby, to wit: his fortifications and his military science,--Uncle Toby, who continually interrupts the emanations of Shandean philosophy by inapposite remarks, will always be a type in literature.

The coarseness of “Tristram Shandy” excludes the book from indiscriminate reading at the present time, but its coarseness, although in places very great, is, on the whole, of a rather innocent character, and the work will keep its place as a classic among the lovers of genuine humor.

It contains occasional passages of singular beauty. Witness the following.

“Time wastes too fast; every letter I trace tells me with what
rapidity life follows my pen; the days and hours of it more
precious, my dear Jenny, than the rubies about thy neck, are
flying over our heads like light clouds of a windy day, never to
return more; everything presses on,--whilst thou art twisting
that lock, see! it grows gray; and every time I kiss thy hand to
bid adieu, and every absence which follows it, are preludes to
that eternal separation which we are shortly to make.”

THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD
OLIVER GOLDSMITH

I was forcibly reminded of the fact that our estimate of a work of literature depends largely upon our mood and upon surrounding circumstances after my last reading of “The Vicar of Wakefield.” Upon a former reading I had been filled with great admiration for Goldsmith’s novel. The plot seemed admirably constructed, the characters well drawn, and the literary charm of the book inexpressibly attractive. On the subsequent perusal the work did not come up to the standard I had imagined. Both the style and the plot appeared somewhat artificial, and the combination of incidents improbable. The literary charm was there, but even that was not so great as I had supposed. I can not altogether account for this change of view. Perhaps it is due to the fact that my earlier reading was just after my perusal of “Tom Jones,” and followed a certain disappointment and disgust at Fielding’s work, whereas the final reading followed the perusal of Manzoni’s masterpiece, “The Betrothed,” by the side of which even “The Vicar of Wakefield” shines with a lustre that is somewhat dim. It is perhaps also due to the fact that the sudden alternations of fortune described in Goldsmith’s novel are more startling, and therefore more attractive on a fresh impression than they are when they are anticipated.

“The Vicar of Wakefield” begins with a delightful description of the family of the good man who tells the story,--of his wife, “chosen for the qualities that would wear well,” but whose conduct, I thought, did not altogether justify such a selection; of his two daughters, Olivia and Sophia, with romantic names in which the father had no choice; and of his younger sons. Among these, he says, a family likeness prevailed, and “properly speaking, they had but one character, that of being all equally generous, credulous, simple, and inoffensive.” He describes the part he took in the Whistonian controversy, maintaining that it was unlawful for a priest of the church of England, after the death of his first wife, to take another,--a controversy which led to a difference with a neighboring clergyman, Mr. Wilmot, the father of Arabella, to whom the vicar’s son George was betrothed, and ended in the breaking off of the engagement, after it was also found that the vicar’s fortune had been lost. Then follows a description of the removal of the family to a new parish; of the departure of George to seek his fortune; of the straightened circumstances and simple life of the others; of the love of finery displayed by the wife and daughters; of their efforts at gentility and their attempts to attract Squire Thornhill, their dissolute landlord, and to secure him as a husband for Olivia. The squire brings from London two women of abandoned character, whom he introduces as ladies of high rank, and who seek to induce the daughters of the honest clergyman to return with them to the town.

Two attractive episodes are here introduced. In order to defray the expenses necessary to keep up appearances and to send the girls to London, the boy Moses is sent to a fair to sell the colt, and an amusing account is given of his return with a gross of worthless green spectacles, which a sharper had palmed off upon him. Then the vicar himself goes to sell the other horse, and the same man, one Ephraim Jenkinson, who appeared to be a pious and venerable gentleman, and displayed great learning about Sanchoniathon, Manetho, Berosus, Ocellus Lucanus, and the cosmogony of the world, gives him a worthless draft upon one of his neighbors in payment. These two episodes call to mind some of the adventures of Gil Blas.

Upon his return home the vicar finds that the two great ladies from London have departed, without his daughters, being dissuaded from taking them by a letter of one Mr. Burchell, a friend of the family, a gentleman in reduced circumstances, as was supposed, whose attentions to Sophia have caused her father much anxiety. A letter of Burchell is discovered, containing some dark insinuations, which are erroneously thought to apply, not to the two women, but to the vicar’s own family, and great is the indignation at Burchell for his scandalous interference. Squire Thornhill continues his attentions to the vicar’s eldest daughter, and is included with the family in a huge picture, which is inadvertently made so large that it will not go into any of the rooms of the vicar’s cottage, but has to stand against the kitchen wall. Instead of pressing his suit openly, however, the squire elopes with Olivia, upon whom he imposes a fictitious marriage, and then, after a time, abandons her. The poor clergyman starts upon a vain pursuit of his daughter, believing that Burchell is responsible for her abduction. In his wanderings he comes upon his son George, who is attached to a company of strolling players, and the young man gives him an account of his adventures; of his travels in Holland, whither he has gone to teach the Dutch English, without reflecting that for this purpose it was necessary that he should first learn Dutch; of his induction into the art of a connoisseur of pictures at Paris, where he learns that the whole secret of it consists in a strict adherence to two rules,--“the one, always to observe the picture might have been better if the painter had taken more pains; and the other, to praise the works of Pietro Perugino.” The squire arrives during the vicar’s interview with his son, and agrees to purchase for George a commission in a West India regiment, taking from the father a bond for a hundred pounds, the purchase money.

But shortly afterwards the vicar comes upon his daughter Olivia, who is in great distress, and he learns from her that it is the squire, and not Burchell, who has betrayed her. When the good man returns home he finds his dwelling in flames, and rescues his two little boys, but is seriously burned in the conflagration, and shortly afterwards he has an altercation with the squire, who thereupon arrests him for non-payment of the hundred pounds, and throws him into jail. One of his fellow-prisoners begins to talk about cosmogony, Sanchoniathon, etc., and he recognizes the rogue Jenkinson, who now, however, becomes his friend. A simple and pathetic account is given of the scenes in the prison; of his exhortations to his fellow-prisoners to reform their evil courses; of their laughter, the pranks they play on him, and the ultimate respect and love which he awakens. So long as his daughter lives, the vicar will not seek to secure his release from prison by making his submission to the squire; but he soon learns from Jenkinson that the poor girl is dead. His second daughter, Sophia, is suddenly abducted, and George unexpectedly comes into the prison in fetters, prosecuted by the squire for sending a challenge and for injuring one of his servants. At this point the climax of human wretchedness would seem to be reached. But here everything changes. Burchell, who has just rescued Sophia and brought her back in safety, now comes upon the scene and discloses himself as the uncle of Squire Thornhill and the real owner of the estate which the young squire has been enjoying. Thornhill arrives, and his villainies are one after another unmasked. Miss Wilmot, whom he is about to marry, learns of his infidelities, renounces him, and again accepts her former suitor, George. The squire impudently insists on keeping her fortune, according to the marriage contract, but Jenkinson now reveals the fact that Thornhill is already wedded to Olivia, since the priest who married them was a true priest, and it was he and not the girl who had been imposed upon. Olivia herself now appears; she is not dead, Jenkinson having declared that she was for the purpose of inducing the good vicar to make his submission to the squire and get out of prison. Burchell, now Sir William Thornhill, seeks the hand of Sophia, the vicar’s property is restored to him, and the story concludes with two weddings and universal happiness. The conclusion is more satisfactory than that of the book of Job, to which the story bears some slight resemblance, for in Goldsmith’s novel even the dead are restored to life.

It is quite evident, from the foregoing outline of the plot, that there is decidedly too much machinery in it to be altogether natural; and this artificiality, which seems characteristic rather of the age than of the author, is also found in the diction of the book, in which Johnsonian antitheses sometimes appear, although these were used by Goldsmith with more restraint and with better taste than by any other writer of the period. For instance, in the author’s Advertisement, speaking of the vicar, it is said:

“He is drawn as ready to teach, and ready to obey; as simple in
affluence, and majestic in adversity.”

Describing the early prosperous days of the family, the vicar says:

“We had no revolutions to fear, nor fatigues to undergo; all our
adventures were by the fire-side, and all our migrations from the
blue bed to the brown.”

Again:

“My children, the offspring of temperance, as they were educated
without softness, so they were at once well-formed and healthy;
my sons hardy and active, my daughters beautiful and blooming....
The one entertained me with her vivacity when I was gay, the
other with her sense when I was serious,” etc., etc.

Of course the language of the book is elegant and beautiful,--nothing that Goldsmith ever wrote was otherwise; but I think that our present era is to be congratulated upon the fact that however great its defects of style in other particulars such formalism is now mostly obsolete.

Two of the characters in the book are extremely well drawn,--the good vicar himself, with his simplicity, kindness, and religious reverence; his patience, however, on two or three occasions interrupted by most natural outbreaks of indignation; and his wife, motherly and foolish, with her shallow schemes for the advancement of her daughters.

The three poems introduced into the story,--“The Hermit,” the “Elegy on a Mad Dog,” and last and most beautiful of all, the verses beginning--

“When lovely woman stoops to folly,
And finds, too late, that men betray,”

will long be known and admired in English literature. They are models of purity and simplicity, though Goldsmith, as well as Wordsworth, sometimes comes dangerously near the line which separates that which is delicately beautiful from that which is sentimental and commonplace.

THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

Many of the lovers of Goethe will no doubt say that his longer works, “Wilhelm Meister” or “Elective Affinities,” are his most important productions in the field of fiction; but it always seemed to me that, as a portrait of actual life, his earliest and simplest story is entitled to the highest rank. The first part of “Werther” is one of the most charming bits of idyllic literature extant. The character of the hero appears very clearly and naturally from his letters to his friend. He has a sensitive, impressionable, sympathetic, unaffected, lovable, and simple nature, subject to sudden transitions from joy to wretchedness. He loves children; he is interested in the lowly. To his eyes, at this time, the world and the people in it are all good. His descriptions of natural scenery are filled with a lively and poetic charm, and so, too, are his accounts of those he meets. Most attractive of all is his portrait of Charlotte, when he first sees her, cutting bread for her little brothers and sisters, then at the dance, and afterwards, on almost every page in which her name appears. The incidents of this story, except the concluding portion of it, are taken largely from the author’s own experience, and Goethe, inconstant as he was in his affections, knew not only how to love passionately, but how to describe the object of his passion as she appeared to him; and he has given us here a girl so attractive that we become enamored of the portrait. Her outbursts of merriment, her constant cheerfulness, her deep, sympathetic nature, the delicate home touches in her conduct of the household, all go to make up a character the charm of which is irresistible. But she is engaged to be married. Werther knows this from the time he has first seen her; yet, like a moth, he flits around the candle; and when Albert, her betrothed, arrives,--a character whose cool temper and sound understanding are a sharp antithesis to his own passionate and volatile nature,--life in his eyes suddenly changes. We see this even in the changing views with which he regards Nature. The universe, instead of being the source of universal joy, has grown to be a fearful monster, forever devouring its own offspring. His buoyant spirits become depressed; he broods over the one thought of his love for Charlotte, until he resolves to flee. He takes service under an ambassador, whom he describes as “the most punctilious blockhead under heaven.” He writes with utter contempt of the hollow society by which he is surrounded, with its meaningless gradations; and when at last he inadvertently remains at a reception at which his rank does not entitle him to be present, and is asked to leave, whereupon scandal arises, he resigns his place in disgust.

In the meantime, Albert and Charlotte have become married, but the one great passion of Werther’s life brings him back to her. He recognizes his folly, but he can not resist it. His thoughts circle around her alone, and his imaginations become morbid and feverish. “If Albert should die!” “How much better fitted am I to be her husband!” Her pity for him, and the tenderness with which she treats his hopeless passion, inflame him all the more.

Werther’s letters to his friend are now interrupted, and the editor fills in the gaps with a narrative and observations of his own. Werther becomes gloomy, morose, unbalanced, and finally resolves upon suicide. Charlotte asks him not to visit her, but in spite of this he goes, and reads to her some melancholy passages from Ossian, not very apposite in the facts they describe, but quite in tune with his feelings in their mournful and melancholy character. When he sees her sympathy with his affliction, a passionate outbreak ensues, and she parts from him, declaring that she can never see him again. He wanders distraught at night over the crags, and, returning home, makes his preparations for death. He sends to Albert, asking to borrow his pistols for a journey. Albert directs Charlotte to give them to the messenger, which she does. A long letter from Werther to Charlotte and a simple description of the final catastrophe end the narrative.

There is a great inconsistency between Werther’s character as it appears in the last part of the book and that shown by his earlier letters, an inconsistency which it seems to me is not wholly due to the transformation in his feelings caused by his hopeless love. The last letter which Werther writes to Charlotte is of a most compromising character, telling her that he knows she loves him, and that she is to be his in that curious future world which he pictures to himself, where it would seem that passion rather than virtue is to be rewarded. He insists on describing the harrowing details of his contemplated suicide, reminding her that it is from her hand that he has received the pistol, and throwing upon her the responsibility, all this accompanied by the most tender endearments. Is this love? Is it even a tolerable form of insanity? It may be said that no course of action is unreasonable for a madman, yet to me the final pages seem inartistic. In this part of the book the author evidently had to rely upon his unaided imagination rather than upon the memory of his own experience, and Werther’s frame of mind after he had resolved upon suicide is one which I think Goethe had felt very imperfectly in his own consciousness.

But whatever the incongruities of the story so far as the hero is concerned, it must be said that fiction has rarely, if ever, drawn a character more womanly, in the best sense of the word, than Charlotte. She is one of the most attractive types in literature.

PAUL AND VIRGINIA
BERNARDIN DE ST. PIERRE

Were it not for the immense reputation of “Paul and Virginia,” a reputation which has lasted for more than a century, that book should find no place in a list of the great works of fiction.

Saint Pierre considered his work a picture of nature, a sort of prose pastoral, modelled after Theocritus; but to many it will seem rather the picture of a counterfeit or fiat nature, which was greatly in vogue at the time in an extremely artificial society and among those who had little knowledge of the genuine article. I do not mean by this to criticise the author’s description of natural scenery or natural phenomena. His picture of the Isle-de-France, and of the surroundings of the little cabins in which the events of the story occur, is beautiful and lifelike; his account of the hurricane in which Virginia perishes is realistic, and impressive; but his portrait of what human life would be in a condition of Arcadian simplicity is far from convincing. The author tells us in his preface that he intends to show that our happiness consists in living according to nature and virtue. When a definite thesis is thus proposed at the outset, the truthfulness of the portrait may easily be overlooked and the _dramatis personæ_ may even become impossibilities.

Here are two amiable children who grow up together in two neighboring cabins “according to nature,”--that is, they can not read and write,--and yet they devote themselves to amateur theatricals and to landscape gardening. In decorating the tropical surroundings of their humble homes they make these almost as artificial as the park of Versailles. The names which they give to the choice spots are stilted and unnatural. A certain rock is called “The Discovery of Friendship.” A circle of orange trees and bananas around a small grass-plat, where Paul and Virginia go and dance, is called “Concord.” Another tree where their respective mothers meet to tell their griefs is christened “Tears Wiped Away.” A neighboring hermit (the man who afterwards tells the story) scatters appropriate Latin verses in divers other localities.

Nothing that is planted ever seems to fail. The flowers are abundant, but somehow they seem like manufactured flowers. Even their perfume suggests rather the pharmacy than the field, and we see nothing of any thorns.

A few of the scenes between Paul and Virginia are natural and beautiful. Perhaps the best part of the story is the description of the shy maidenly reserve which takes the place of childish affection when the girl first becomes a woman. But the bulk of the book is filled with a curious mixture of sickly sentimentality, long Sunday-school homilies, and a very commonplace philosophy. The climax is reached after Virginia, who has been sent to France to be educated by her aunt, returns to the island and perishes with the ship which is wrecked by a hurricane upon the shore. This occurs under the eyes of her lover, who makes heroic but ineffectual efforts to rescue her. According to the curiously devised plot of the author, she could escape by swimming from the sinking ship if she would accept the proffered aid of a sailor and consent to divest herself of her clothing, but her modesty is greater than her love of life. She turns away, lifts her eyes to heaven, and with appropriate gestures goes down with the ship. This may be impressive to the Gallic mind, but to many a hard-headed Anglo-Saxon it will look like rubbish. The book ends with a description of the grief of her lover, in spite of enormous doses of consolation ineffectually administered to him by a friend, and finally with the death of pretty much everybody concerned, all from broken hearts, and in a very short space of time. Thus is demonstrated the happiness which is sure to reward those who keep close to nature.

We are told that the events recorded actually occurred. It may be that the skeleton of the story is founded upon fact, but if so, I feel sure that the flesh and blood with which the imagination of the author has clothed it is quite different from that which it actually possessed.

ATALA
FRANÇOIS CHATEAUBRIAND

I hear that not long ago, as the result of an extensive vote taken among the subscribers of a leading French periodical, it was found that Chateaubriand was the most popular of all French writers of fiction of the present century. Certainly this is a surprising result when such names as Balzac, Hugo, and Daudet are considered as competitors, and one’s first impression is that those who gave their suffrages in favor of Chateaubriand must have been sentimental rather than judicious readers.

And yet a careful perusal of “Atala,” the short romance by which Chateaubriand won his literary spurs, will perhaps give the author a higher rank in fiction than is generally accorded to him by our colder and less impressionable race. The plot is simplicity itself. Atala is an Indian maiden, although a Christian, and is supposed to be the daughter of Simaghan the chief. Her real father, however, is Lopez, a Spaniard. Her mother before her death required from her a vow of perpetual celibacy. Chactas, a young brave of the tribe of the Natchez, who has lived among the Spaniards at St. Augustine, is captured by Simaghan and is to be burned alive. Atala releases him from his bonds, they flee together, and wander long through the forest. Their love is so great that Atala, fearing she would break her vow, takes poison and dies under the care of the good Father Aubry, a missionary, who administers the last consolations of religion.

This story has been called an epic in prose, but its predominant feature is hardly the heroic. It is rather a pastoral, if that word can be applied to a description of primitive life where there are neither flocks nor shepherds. “Atala” follows somewhat the same lines as “Paul and Virginia,” and although it is supposed to contain incongruities in attributing the qualities of civilization to savages, yet perhaps Chateaubriand, who had had considerable personal experience with American Indians, may not have been so wide of the mark as we think. Moreover, Atala was part Spaniard; Chactas had been brought up among the whites, and the counterpart of the old priest actually existed in Jogues the Jesuit father. And if it were not so, why may not the poet create such children of his fancy as he will, and give them what garb and conversation and surroundings he may please, so long as they are really human and beautiful? Atala is certainly an interesting and natural character, the consolations of the priest are filled with tender pathos, the style of the book is simple yet highly poetical, and there are descriptions of nature--of the forest, the mountains, the storm--of great beauty and vividness,--pictures that sometimes make us wish to betake ourselves to the wilderness.

The moralizing of Chateaubriand is by no means so tedious as that of St. Pierre, and there is nothing in Atala so essentially devoid of common sense as the conduct of the artificial creatures who have been “living according to Nature,” in the Ile de France.

Let us say, then, that Chateaubriand, if not preëminent, is entitled to an honorable rank among the masters of fiction.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
JANE AUSTEN

The narrow horizon of Jane Austen’s life was perhaps one of the reasons why her perception of human nature was so keen and accurate in the matters which fell under her observation. Her novels contain no extraordinary types nor incidents, but she makes the most of the average and the commonplace, which become more than usually interesting under her treatment. He who reads “Pride and Prejudice” will get a faithful picture, not only of English country life, but of a great deal that belongs to life everywhere. None of the characters are exaggerated; they are entirely human and natural. The conversation is not too brilliant to be lifelike. When bright things are said they are introduced in a spontaneous and almost inevitable manner. All through the book we recognize in the author a quiet yet acute observer of actual occurrences, who has culled largely from her own recollection many of the most attractive incidents and has grouped them together with simple yet effective art. The satire is so unobtrusive that sometimes it appears unconscious.

The Bennet household is well described. “Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humor, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three and twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. Her mind was less difficult to develop. She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.”

And again: “Her husband was very little otherwise indebted to her than as her ignorance and folly contributed to his amusement. This is not the sort of happiness which a man would in general wish to owe to his wife, but where other powers of entertainment are wanting, the true philosopher will derive benefit from such as are given.”

There are five daughters in the family, whose characters are excellently set off by comparison with one another,--Jane, the eldest, beautiful, gracious, kindly, sweet-tempered, always believing the best of everybody; Elizabeth, high-spirited, brilliant, and decidedly the most attractive, although by no means so charitable as her sister in her judgment of others. The three other sisters, Mary, Kitty, and Lydia, are as empty-headed as their mother. Lydia, the youngest, in particular, is a wild, giddy girl, continually running after the officers with their fine coats.

The book deals with a society where woman’s sole resource is matrimony, and through the entire story there runs a great deal of talk of catching a husband, and of schemes for this purpose. The silly Mrs. Bennet flings her daughters, in the most transparent way, first at one man and then another, much to the mortification of Jane and Elizabeth.

It appears that Mr. Bingley, a young, unmarried, and wealthy gentleman, has recently taken the estate of Netherfield, and moves into the neighborhood, bringing with him his two sisters, women of selfish and supercilious character. His friend Darcy, the proprietor of the large estate of Pemberly, in Derbyshire, also accompanies him. The book opens with the following sentence:

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in
possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. However
little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his
first entering a neighborhood, this truth is so well fixed in the
minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the
rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.”

The partiality of Bingley for Jane is soon apparent, but the young man is hurried away from Netherfield by his sisters and his friend Darcy, who desires to preserve him from an undesirable connection. By mutual misunderstandings Jane and he are kept apart until near the close of the book, and the main interest in the story centers around Darcy and Elizabeth. Darcy’s manner is proud, cold, and disagreeable, and Elizabeth resents his conduct in a lively and spirited fashion, which renders her all the more attractive in his eyes. She hears, however, from Wickham, a young officer in the militia, of his evil conduct in disregarding his father’s wishes and depriving this companion of his boyhood of a living, which he had been recommended by his father’s will to bestow upon Wickham.

Mr. Collins, a young clergyman who has inherited by entail the reversion of Longbourn, the Bennet property, visits the Bennet household, resolving to marry one of the daughters--any one of them will do; and on learning that Jane is likely to be disposed of, he at once transfers his suit to Elizabeth. He is a formal, pompous, ridiculous toady, filled with great awe of his patroness, Lady Catherine De Bourgh. The manner in which he pays his addresses to Elizabeth is related with delightful particularity:

“‘Almost as soon as I entered the house,’ [he says], ‘I singled
you out as the companion of my future life. But, before I am run
away with by my feelings on this subject, perhaps it will be
advisable for me to state my reasons for marrying--and, moreover,
for coming into Hertfordshire with the design of selecting a
wife, as I certainly did.’

“The idea of Mr. Collins, with all his solemn composure, being
run away with by his feelings, made Elizabeth so near laughing,
that she could not use the short pause he allowed in any attempt
to stop him further, and he continued:

“‘My reasons for marrying are, first, that I think it a right
thing for every clergyman in easy circumstances (like myself)
to set the example of matrimony in his parish; secondly, that
I am convinced it will add very greatly to my happiness; and
thirdly--which, perhaps, I ought to have mentioned earlier,
that it is the particular advice and recommendation of the very
noble lady whom I have the honor of calling patroness. Twice has
she condescended to give me her opinion (unasked, too!) on this
subject; and it was but the very Saturday night before I left
Hunsford--between our pools at quadrille, while Mrs. Jenkinson
was arranging Miss De Bourgh’s footstool--that she said, ‘Mr.
Collins, you must marry. A clergyman like you must marry. Choose
properly, choose a gentlewoman, for _my_ sake; and for your
_own_, let her be an active, useful sort of person, not brought
up high, but able to make a small income go a good way. This
is my advice. Find such a woman as soon as you can, bring her
to Hunsford, and I will visit her.’ Allow me, by the way, to
observe, my fair cousin, that I do not reckon the notice and
kindness of Lady Catherine de Bourgh as among the least of the
advantages in my power to offer. You will find her manners beyond
anything I can describe; and your wit and vivacity I think must
be acceptable to her, especially when tempered with the silence
and respect which her rank will inevitably excite. Thus much
for my general intention in favor of matrimony; it remains to
be told why my views were directed to Longbourn instead of my
own neighborhood, where, I assure you, there are many amiable
young women. But, the fact is, that being as I am to inherit this
estate after the death of your honored father, (who, however,
may live many years longer), I could not satisfy myself without
resolving to choose a wife from among his daughters, that the
loss to them might be as little as possible, when the melancholy
event takes place--which, however, as I have already said, may
not be for several years. This has been my motive, my fair
cousin, and I flatter myself it will not sink me in your esteem.
And now, nothing remains for me but to assure you, in the most
animated language, of the violence of my affection. To fortune
I am perfectly indifferent, and shall make no demand of that
nature on your father, since I am well aware that it could not
be complied with; and that one thousand pounds in the four per
cents., which will not be yours till after your mother’s decease,
is all that you may ever be entitled to. On that head, therefore,
I shall be uniformly silent; and you may assure yourself that no
ungenerous reproach shall ever pass my lips when we are married.’