THE AGE OF DR. JOHNSON (1750-1798) Or THE AGE OF TRANSITION

General Characteristics of the Age
Although Dr. Samuel Johnson is the representative writer of the second half of the eighteenth century, the age under discussion is better known as a transitional period, an era of change from pseudo-classicism to romanticism. The decline of party spirit and the democratic upsurge exercised great influence both on life and literature. The main characteristics of this period are given below:
(i) Decline of the Party Feud: The rivalry between the Whigs and Tories still continues, but it had lost its previous bitterness. This naturally led to a considerable decline of the activity in political pamphleteering. So, the poets and satirists ceased to be statesmen. The institution of patronage, by which the writers depended for their success on the favours of noblemen, gradually crumbled during the period under review, and men of letters learnt to depend entirely on their public.
(ii) The French Revolution: During the second half of the eighteenth century new ideas were germinating and new forces were gathering strength. The French Revolution of 1789 was only the climax to a long and deeply diffused unrest. Revolutionary ideas gave birth to democratic and humanitarian feelings, and influenced literature greatly.
(iii) Renaissance of Learning: This period is characterised by a kind of mild Renaissance of learning. In literature this Renaissance revealed itself in the study and editing of old authors like Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton, and research into archaic literary forms like the ballad. The publication of Bishop Percy's Reliques (1765), which contained some of the oldest and most beautiful specimens of ballad literature, is a landmark in the history of the Romantic movement. The eighteenth century witnessed the swift rise of historical literature to a place of great importance. The historical school had a glorious leader in Gibbon. Hume and Robertson too were celebrated historians of this period.
(iv) The New Realism: The birth of a new spirit of inquiry was at the root of realism which is conspicuous in the novels of this period and is noticeable in the poetry of the last decades of the century. In the novels of Richardson we find a microscopic analysis and a realistic portrayal of character, and his great contemporary, Fielding, never spares his readers the sordid realities of life.
(v) The Rise of Middle Class: The rise of the middle class did not negative and destroy the authority and influence of the aristocracy, but it was modified and continually made more supple by the bourgeois elements which were commingling with it. The fusion of aristocracy and middle class which began in the Age of Pope was complete in the Age of Johnson. The middle class appropriated classicism with its moralizing needs. The emergence of middle class led to the rise of sentimentalism, feelings and emotions. Religion in the Age of Pope was deistic, formal, utilitarian and unspiritual. In the great evangelical revival, led by Wesley and Whitefield, the old formalism was swept away and the utilitarian was abandoned. A mighty tide of spiritual energy poured out into Church and the masses. These characteristics also influenced literature immensely. W. H. Hudson writes: "The new generation in its turn reacted against the smug self-complacency, the chilliness, and the aridity of the preceding age. They found themselves discontent with the way in which their fathers had looked at life, with their formalism, their narrowness of sympathy, and their controlling ideals. Weary of the long-continued artificiality, they began to crave something more natural and spontaneous in thought and language. They awoke to a sense that in a world of wonder and mystery there were many things undreamt of in the shallow philosophy of the Augustan school. In particular, they were quickened into fresh activity by the renaissance of feelings. This is perhaps beyond all others the one capital fact in the history of this period of transition. The emotions, long repressed, were now reinstated, and all life was modified in consequence."
(vi) The Humanitarian Spirit: This period is characterised by the rapid growth of democracy. The democratic movement led to protests against the callousness and brutality of society, which resulted in the rapid spread of the spirit of humanitarianism. Stress was laid on the individual worth of man. People became familiar with the notions of equality, liberty and brotherhood. They recognised their rights and were aware of the countless absurdities and evils of the existing social state. The philosophy of Rousseau and the French Revolution popularised the democratic ideals.
(vii) An Age of Transition. In the domain of poetry this period was clearly an age of transition. On the one hand we have poets like Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith who slavishly follow the Augustan tradition and emulate Pope in their writings. At the other extreme, we find, during the closing years of the century, poets like Blake and Burns who herald the new age of Romanticism and have nothing in common with Augustan school of poetry. Between these two extremes, we have poets like Gray and Collins who are true transitional poets in the sense that they share both the romantic and the classic characters. The double tendency—the adherence to the classic& tradition and the search for a new romanticism — is the most important characteristic of the Age of Transition.
POETRY
In the poetry of this period we find the co-existence of the double tendency, first, the allegiance to the old order of Classicism, which is represented by Dr. Samuel Johnson and Churchill, and, secondly, the search for the new order of Romanticism, which is represented by Goldsmith, James Thompson, Gray, Collins and many others. Towards the middle and later years of the eighteenth century appeared two poets — Robert Burns and William Blake, who completely abandoned the classical traditions and became the poetical forebears of the Era of Romanticism. W. H. Hudson writes: "Looking at this literature from the more purely literary point of view, we may also expect to find that it exhibits a struggle between the powerful traditions of the Augustan Age and various opposed theories, and, with the gradual failure in prestige of the classic school, the establishment of a literature essentially different from this in respect alike of matter, spirit and form."
I
THE AUGUSTAN POETS
1. Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-84)
His Life. Born in 1709 at Lichfield, Dr. Johnson was the son of a bookseller, from whom he inherited his huge, unwieldy, unhealthy frame and vile melancholy of disposition which cast a gloom over his entire life. In his childhood he was privately educated and, then, he proceeded to Oxford, where he had to suffer much of indignities and miseries. He left the university and tried school teaching. He did some translation for a Birmingham publisher and married a widow twenty years his senior. In 1737 Johnson went to London with two pence in his pocket and threw himself into the squalor and allurements of Grub Street. Boswell, Johnson's friend, has given an arresting description of his life in Life of Johnson.
In 1738 Johnson published a poem called London and contributed parliamentary reports to Cave's Magazine. His Dictionary (1747-55) advanced his fame. Johnson's historic letter to Lord Chesterfield dealt the death blow to the pernicious eighteenth century system of literary patronage. The Dictionary made him independent. He produced the Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Irene (1749), a tragedy on the neoclassical model. In March 1750 he started a periodical, The Rambler which was later followed by two other series— The Adventurer and The Idler. He published his didactic tale Rasselas in 1759, an edition of Shakespeare in 1765. Johnson's largest and greatest work, The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets With Critical Observations On Their Works appeared in 1779-81. He died in 1784 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Dr. Johnson was the acknowledged dictator of contemporary literature. Smollett called him "the great cham of literature."
Johnson's Poetry. Johnson's two poems London and The Vanity of Human Wishes belong entirely to the neoclassical school of poetry. Both are written in the heroic couplet and abound in personifications and other tricks that belonged to the poetic diction of the age of Pope. In their tricks didacticism, their formal, rhetorical style, and their adherence to the closed couplet they belong to the pseudo-classic poetry. The Vanity of Human Wishes was written in imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal. It "transfers to the activities of mankind in general the gloomy convictions raised ten years earlier by the spectacle of London. The metre is the same as in London, and there is the same bleak pessimism, but the weight and power of emotion, the tremendous conviction and the stern immobility of the work, give it a great value. There are many individual lines of solemn grandeur."
2. Churchill (1731-64)
He was a satirist and his best work The Rosciad is a bitter satire on the chief political and social figures of the time. It is written in the heroic couplet and is obviously modelled on Pope's The Dunciad.
II
THE TRANSITIONAL POETRY
The history of the later eighteenth century poetry is the history of a struggle between old and new, and of the gradual triumph of the new. In the words of Hudson the poetry of the Age of Johnson "is obviously an age of transition, innovation, and varied experience." The new poetry marks the beginning of a reaction against the rational, intellectual, formal, artificial and unromantic poetry of the age of Pope. The cardinal characteristics of the transitional poetry are given below:
(i) Reaction Against Rules: The transitional poetry was marked by a strong reaction against stereotyped rules. The new poetry was the expression of individual genius. Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton were the inspiration
(ii) Return to Nature: The beginning of Romanticism is marked by a return to nature and to plain humanity for its material. So, it is in marked contrast to Classicism, which had confined itself largely to the clubs and drawing rooms, and to the social and political life of London. The transitional poets returned to the real nature of earth and air, and not to the bookish nature of the artificial pastoral. The growth of the love of nature and of a feeling for the picturesque characterise English poetry between Pope and Wordsworth. Thomas Parnell, Lady Winchilsea, Allan Ramsay, James Thompson and John Dyer show, though feebly, signs of returning to nature.
(iii) Humanism: Romanticism was marked by intense human sympathy and by a consequent understanding of the human heart. The poems of Cowper, Crabbe, Gray and Burns are characterised by an enlightened human sympathy for the poor and oppressed.
(iv) Revolt Against the Conventional Literary Technique: The poets revolted against the conventional literary technique, such as, that of the heroic couplet. They discarded the artificial and stereotyped poetic style of the age of Pope and cared for achieving strength, sincerity and simplicity in the expression of the new literary ideals.
(v) Fresh Treatment of Old Themes: Writers turned to super­natural stories, legends, and the more colourful periods of history, especially the Middle Ages.
(vi) Search of Idealism: W. J. Long writes: "It brought again the dream of a golden age in which the stern realities of life were forgotten and the ideals of youth were established as the only permanent realities. "For the dreamer lives for ever, but the toiler dies in a day" expresses, perhaps, only the wild fancy of a modern poet; but, when we think of it seriously, the dreams and ideals of a people are cherished possessions long after their stone monuments have crumbled away and their battles are forgotten. The romantic movement emphasised these eternal ideals of youth, and appealed to the human heart as the classic elegance of Dryden and Pope could never do."
(vii) The Development of Naturalism: Naturalism implies some­thing more than an interesting feeling for the picturesque and for the charms of the country. W. H. Hudson writes: "It meant a rising sense of all that is implied in the contrast between nature and civilization, and a deepening belief that, as the cramping conventions of our artificial social system prevent the free development and expression of individuality, and give birth to many evils, the only way of salvation for men and nations lies through a radical simplification of life. This resulted in poetry in the quest for more elementary themes, which of course had to be sought among the unsophisticated countryfolk rather than amid the complexities of the recognised centres of culture and refinement, and for more natural modes of treatment. Greater simplicity in the subject-matter chosen, in the passions described, and in the language employed, were thus among the principal objects aimed at by many poets of the new generation." The poets of this period tried to bring poetry back to nature and reality. Crabbe, Burns, Blake and many others are the pioneers of naturalism, which reached perfection in the poetry of Wordsworth.
EMINENT POETS OF THE TRANSITIONAL PERIOD
1. James Thomson (1700-48). Thomson was the first to bring the new note in poetry both in his Seasons (1726) and The Castle of Indolence (1748). The Seasons is a blank verse poem and consists of a long series of descriptive passages dealing with natural scenes. Though its style is sometimes clumsy, the treatment is refreshing, full of acute observation and joy in nature. The Castle of Indolence is written in Spenserian stanza; It is imitative no doubt, but is remarkable for its languid suggestiveness and harmonious versification. It creates an atmosphere of dreamy melancholy much in the manner of Spenser. Rickett writes: "As a writer he signalised the departure from the town to the country, chose the Spenserian stanza and blank verse as his medium, and eschewed the stopped couplet that was ubiquitous in the realm of poetry at the time." Thomson is a transitional poet. He could not completely get rid of the conventional phraseology of the age, which gives a stilted air to much of his work. Liberty (1735-36), a long poem in blank verse, was not successful.
2. Oliver Goldsmith (1728-74). Goldsmith's first poem, The Traveller (1764) is written in the heroic couplet and deals with his wanderings through Europe. It contains a series of descriptions and criticisms of the places and peoples of which he had experience. Goldsmith uses simple and clear language. The couplet is melodious and polished. The poem reveals human sympathy for the sufferings of the poor, where "laws grind the poor and rich men make the laws." In The Deserted Village (1770) Goldsmith deals with the memories of his youth and the pathetic note is more freely expressed. Goldsmith's The Hermit and the witty Elegy On the Death of a Mad Dog are remarkable for sentimentalism and the blending of humour and pathos.
Goldsmith's poetry represents the poetic tradition of pseudo-classicism so far as the use of the heroic couplet and the stilted and pompous phraseology is concerned. Goldsmith's treatment of nature and rural life, note of human sympathy and simplicity of expression are the characteristics of the new poetry.
3. Thomas Gray (1716-71). Gray, a man of poor physique, a great scholar, and a recluse, produced but little poetry, but what he wrote is exquisite in quality and finish, and epitomises the changes which were coming over the literature of his age. Indeed, Gray, "a born poet, fell upon an age of prose", which arrested the growth and development of his poetic genius.
Gray's first poetic effort was The Alliance of Education and Government, which belonged to the Augustan school and was written in the closed couplet. It is not a memorable work. Gray's Letters (1775) and his Journal are worth mentioning but it is to a single small volume of poems that he owes his fame and place in literature.
Gray's poetic career may be divided into three periods, which show the progress of Gray's emancipation from the classic rules which had so long governed English literature. The finest peoms of the first period are Hymn To Adversity, and the odes To Spring and On a Distant Prospect of Eton College. These early poems reveal two things. First, the appearance of that melancholy that characterises the entire poetry of the period; and the study of nature, not for its own beauty or truth, but rather as a suitable background for the play of human emotions.
These tendencies develop more strongly in the second period. With the publication of The Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard in 1751 a great change appeared, and many new features in it made it historically very important. First, the use of nature, though employed as a background, is handled with fidelity and sympathy; for example:
Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds.
Secondly, the description of the Churchyard scene, the twilight atmos­phere, and the brooding melancholy connect it with one side of the romantic movement — the development of the distinctive romantic mood. Thirdly, the Elegy shows tender and kind feelings for "the rude forefathers of the hamlet", and reveals the sense of the human value of the little things that are written in "the short and simple annals of the poor". It, thus, partakes of the democratic movement which includes respect for humble things of life. Fourthly, in Elegy Gray expresses with great clarity and poetic graces the primary emotions of human life, which constitute an important characteristic of the romantic poetry. But Gray could not get rid of the Augustan trick of the use of personification and capital letters. The two great Odes, The Progress of Poesy and The Bard express the new conception of the poet as an inspired singer. The first shows Milton's influence in a greater melody and variety of expression. The Bard is even more romantic and original. It breaks with the classical school and proclaims a literary declaration of independence.
In the third period Gray reveals a new field of romantic interest in two Norse poems, The Fatal Sisters and The Descent of Odin. These two poems take their place in English literary history of the revival of the romantic past.
Commenting on Gray's place in transitional poetry W. J. Long writes: "Taken together, Gray's work forms a most interesting commentary on the varied life of the eighteenth century. He was a scholar, familiar with all the intellectual interests of his age, and his work has much of the precision and polish of the classical school; but he shares also the reawakened interest in nature, in common man, and in medieval culture, and his work is generally romantic both in style and in spirit.
4. William Collins (1721-59). Collins' first work Oriental Eclogues (1742), written in prevailing mechanical couplets, is romantic in feeling. His Odes mark a further development in that they strike a distinctly lyric note. Some of the odes are cumbrous no doubt, but the bect of them, especially the Ode to Evening, are instinct with a sweet tenderness, a subdued pathos and a magical enchantment of phrases. His Ode to the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands introduced a new world of witches, pygmies, fairies, and medieval kings. So it strikes an interesting note in the romantic revival. Collins' best known poems are the odes To Simplicity, To Fear, To the Passions and the finest of all, Ode To Evening. His two short elegies How Sleep The Brave and the other on James Thomson ("In Yonder grave a Druid lies") are "captivating with their misty lights and murmuring echoes of melancholy.
5. William Cowper (1731-1800). Cowper like Gray and Goldsmith shows the struggle between romantic and classical ideals. He is rather timorous and lacks robustness of temper. But in his feeling for nature and in his lyrical gift, Cowper is an immediate forerunner of the Romantics.
Cowper's first volume of poems, containing The Progress of Error, Truth, Table Talk etc. shows the poet bound by the classical rules of the age. The Task (1785) is Cowper's longest and forest poem. Much of it is conventional and "wooden" but Cowper's descriptions of homely scenes, of woods and brooks, of plowmen and teamasters and the letter carriers on his rounds indicate the dawn of a new era in poetry. Cowper, who wrote "God made the country and man made the town", was a pioneer who preached the gospel of "back to nature". Hudson thinks that Cowper foreshadowed Wordsworth and Byron. "In a sense, he foreshadowed both. In his love of nature, his emotional response to it, and his sympathetic handling of rural life, he certainly anticipates Wordsworth but, strangely enough, considering the character of man and his creed, his poetry is filled with indications of social unrest, and thus in a rough way points forward to Byron. The most important figure in English poetry between Pope and Wordsworth, his life serves to connect the age of the former with that of the later."
John Gilpin, an excellent example of Cowper's prim but sprightly humour, shows him as a worthy predecessor of Burns. Cowper's most laborious work, the translation of Homer in blank verse, was published in 1791. His numerous hymns, published in the Olney Hymes in 1779, reveal his gentle and devout spirit. They contain such beautiful expressions as "God moves in a mysterious way", "Oh, for a closer walk with God", "Sometimes a light surprises". His minor poems, especially On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture, beginning with the striking line, "Oh, that those lips had language", and Alexander Selkirk, beginning "I am the monarch of all I survey" show the rise of romanticism in English poetry.
6. George Crabbe (1754-1832). Crabbe's chief poetical works, The Library (1781), The Village (1783), The Borough (1810) and Tales (1812), are mostly written in the heroic couplet but thematically they deal with the lives of simple countryfolk and show his sincerity, sympathy and acute observation of human nature. His description of nature and human life are neither sentimental nor picturesque. They are characterised by sincerity and minute accuracy of observation. Rickett writes about Crabbe's humanism " ..... no poet has a wider sympathy with his kind than he, or more stuff of humanity in his writings." As a pioneer of the naturalistic reaction against the Augustan tradition, Crabbe's place is certainly very high.
7. Mark Akenside (1721-1770). Akenside's political poem, An Epistle to Curio (1744) is a brilliant satire in the Augustan tradition. His best known poem, The Pleasures of the Imagination (1744), is a long poem in Miltonic blank verse. The style is somewhat Miltonic in its energy and its turn of phrase, but it is deficient in Miltonic genius. It contains some fine descriptive passages on nature.
8. Christopher Smart (1722-71). Smart is the author of a few excellent pieces of light verse. He is best remembered for his Song to David, which is said to have been partly written on the walls of the mad house in which he was confined. Smart escapes from the verse conventions of his age in it. It "is a wild, rhapsodical effusion, full of extra­vagance and incoherence, but in places containing bursts of tremendous poetic power." It is remarkable for quaint touches of imagery.
9. William Shenstone (1714-63). His published works consist of Odes, Elegies, Levities or Pieces of Humour, and The Schoolmistress (1742). His poems are largely pastoral but they are not the artificial pastoral of Pope. His descriptions of nature are remarkable for accuracy of observation. The Schoolmistress is written in Spenserian stanza.
10. Percy, Chatterton and Macpherson: The publication of Bishop Percy's Reliques (1765) which contained some of the oldest and most beautiful specimens of ballad literature is a landmark in the history of romantic movement. They revived the romance of the Middle Ages and their metrical peculiarities gave inspiration to Coleridge and Keats.
Thomas Chatterton's (1752-1770) Rowley Poems though spurious, are medieval in tone and atmosphere, and exercised considerable influence on English romantic poets.
James Macpherson's (1736-96) Ossian ushers in the Celtic spirit in English literature. It includes tales of the romantic adventure of a mythical hero, called Fingal. There are striking descriptions of wild nature and they are written in rhythmic prose.
III
THE NEW SCHOOL
By the end of the nineteenth century the poets had completely abandoned the classical tradition. Robert Burns and William Blake are not transitional poets. They are the early representatives of the new school of poetry, known as the romanticism.
1. Robert Burns (1559-96)
His Life and Works. Burns was born in 1559 in a small clay-built cottage, the work of his father's hands, in the district of Kyle, in Ayrshire. He spent his childhood in dire poverty, hunger and starvation. He had to toil with the rest of the family to wring subsistence from the soil. He could not get much formal education but all through his life he tried his utmost to learn from the life around him. As he grew older he showed himself to be the possessor of a powerful and lively mind. Due to the audacity of his temper he was censured and punished by the rigid Scottish Church.
Burns' life was hard and bitter. All his attempts at farming and at other occupations met with failure. So, he resolved to go to Jamaica. He gathered together a few of his early poems, hoping to sell them for enough to pay the expenses of his journey. The result was the famous Kilmarnock edition of Burns' Poems, published in 1786. He stormed into popularity as a poet and he gave up the idea of going to Jamaica. Burns edited Poems five times in his life with numerous additions and corrections each time. He also contributed to The Scots Musical Museum and to Thomson's Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs.
The last few years of Burns' life are a sad tragedy. He bought a farm and married Jean Armour in 1788. The next year he was appointed exciseman. His farming was a failure, the income from his Excise post and his poems could not maintain him decently. He died miserably in 1796, when only thirty-seven years old.
Characteristics of Burns' Poetry. Robert Burns was immensely influenced by the traditions of Scottish poetry and the life he saw around him. The vernacular poetry, represented by the songs and ballads of the Scottish peasant folk, shaped his poetic career. The standard English literature affected stanza little, though The Cotter's Saturday Night, is in the Spenserian stanza. Burns, who was "endowed with a marvelously spontaneous power of genius and an almost unrivalled gift of song," spoke straight from the heart to the primitive emotions of the race — His poetry is the earliest embodiment of romantic spirit in English poetry. The main features of his poetry are given below:
(i) Humanism and Democratic Quality: The poetry of Burns shows great interest in the lives of poor peasants of Scotland. He depicts with all sincerity and human compassion the poverty, sufferings, natural feelings, joys and sorrows of the people he saw around him. Hudson writes: "Absolute sincerity to himself and his surroundings was, however, the ultimate basis of his strength; a Scottish peasant, he wrote frankly as a peasant, and became the poetic interpreter of the thoughts and feelings, the racy humour, the homespun philosophy, the joys, sorrows, passions, superstitions, and even sometimes the lawlessness and the debaucheries, of the class from which he sprang. Of all things he sang with an entire freedom from everything suggestive of mere literary mannerism and affectation…….Perhaps more than any other poet of the later eighteenth century he helped to bring natural passion back into English verse." Burns' famous poems The Cotter's Saturday Night and Tam O' Shanter present the flawless and authentic pictures of Scottish poetry. His poetry is an epitome of naturalism which is an important characteristic of Romantic poetry. Although Burns was not influenced by the French Revolution, his poetry is a powerful expression of the democratic quality. We feel the democratic and humanistic spirit in The Cotter's Saturday Night in which he contrasts the homely life and the simple piety of the peasant and his family with the wealth and vulgar ostentation, the luxury and refinements of the fashionable world. His famous lines:
The rank is but the guinea's stamp¾
The man's the gowd's for a' that.
prophesy "the coming time when all over the world me will be brothers, and remind us that it is "man's inhumanity to mann " which "makes countless thousands mourn", he constitutes himself the mouthpiece of the growing faith of his time in Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity."
(ii) Picturesqueness and Concreteness: Burns' pictures of men, women and nature are remarkable for their vividness and concreteness. When we read his poems we feel the smell of the earth in our nostrils, and the sound of careless laughter and primal agonies in our ears. The pictures of Moodie who "clears the points of faith with rattlin' and wi' thumping", and Gavin Hamilton, the broad-minded lawyer are highly concrete. Mark the vivid picture of a chilly November day in The Cotter's Saturday Night:
November chill blows loud wi' angry sigh;
The short'ning winter-day is near a close;
The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh,
The black'ning trains of crows to their repose.
Rickett writes: "It is always clear as a noonday in his singing; there are no half lights, no subtle suggestions; it is sharply visualised and clear cut."
(iii) Love of Nature: Burns perfectly mingles man and nature. He carries into his scenic pictures the same tenderness he shows in dealing with the cottagers. This to a daisy:
Wee, mo:est, crimson — tipp'd flower,
Thou's met me in an evil hour,
For I maun crush among the stoure
Thy slender stem:
To spare thee now is past my pow'r
Thou bonnie gem.
He loves a bird or a mouse with the caressing affection many of us scarcely give to children.
(iv) Lyricism: Burns' best work is lyrical in motive. Like Shelley he is a born singer who could give to human emotions a precious and imperishable utterance. In Tam O' Shanter he brilliantly commingles his narrative gift with lyrical emotion. He sings of simple human emotions which enkindle the hearts of Scottish peasantry. To him the common people are at heart romantic and lovers of the ideal. His poetic creed may be summed in the following lines:
Give me ae spark O' Nature's fire,
That's a' the learning I desire;
Then, though I trudge thro' dub an mire
At pleugh or cart,
My muse, though homely in in attire
May touch the heart.
His love lyrics are conspicuous for intensity of feelings. They are often direct transcripts from personal experience. The women who inspired his love songs were rough toilers of the field, primitive and uncultured, but they sufficed to inspire him with the finest love poetry in English Literature. How perfectly he expresses with great intensity of feeling "the essence of a thousand love tales in the following lines:
Had we never lov'd sae kindly,
Had we never lov'd sae blindly,
Never met — or never parted
We had ne'er been broken hearted.
Many of his lyrics like "O vert thou in the cauld blast", "Scots wha hae Wallace bled" etc. have the singing quality, suggesting a melody, as we read them. Edward Albert writes about his lyricism: "While keeping Within the limits of the lyric he traverses an immense range of emotion and experience. The feelings he describes are those of the Scottish Peasant, but the genius of the poet makes them germane to every member of the human race; he discovers the touch of nature that makes the whole world kin. Here we have the passion and apathy, and glory and shame" that are the inspiration of the lyrical poet, and we have them in rich abundance."
(v) Humour and Pathos: Both humour and pathos are blended together in the poetry of Burns. Both humour and pathos are elemental in his poetry. He could draw laughter as well as tears. Tam O' Shanter is remarkable for gay and rollicking humour. Holy Willie's Prayer is keenly satirical. He can be bitter and scornful in Address to the Unco Guid and The Holy Fair. His pathos ranges from the piercing cry of Ae Fond Kiss, through the pensive pessimism of Ye Banks and Braes, to the tempered melancholy of My Heart's in the Highlands.
(vi) Style: The poetry of Robert Burns represents the finest chlaracteristics of the folk poetry of Scotland. Rickett writes: " ..... love and intimate knowledge of nature, a quaint and racy dialect, a passionate concreteness of imagery, a rich allusiveness— these were focussed with especial brilliance in his genius." Burns represents the Scottish vernacular tradition. He captured the Scottish dialect and gave it permanence. He had a matchless gift of catching traditional airs and wedding them to words of simple and searching beauty.
W. J. Long points out that "the whole spirit of the romantic revival is embodied in this obscure plowman. Love, humour, pathos, the response to nature, — all the poetic qualities that touch the human heart are here; and the heart was touched as it had not been since the days of Elizabeth."
2. William Blake (1757-1827)
His Life and Works. William Blake was born in 1757 in London. He was the son of a tradesman. He was a strange, imaginative child, who was more at home with brooks and flowers and fairies than with the crowd of city streets. Beyond learning to read and write, he received no education. He began at the age of ten to copy prints and to write verses. He was endowed with a visionary temperament. He had visions of "majestic shadows, gray but luminous." He developed a pantheistic conception of nature in his boyhood.
Blake's first publication was Poetical Sketches (1783), a series of imitative poems, in which he experimented with various verse forms in the manner of Shakespeare, Milton and Spenser. This was followed by Songs of Innocence (1789), a collection of short lyrics expressing the poet's views of the original state of human society, symbolized in the joY and happiness of children. These lyrics are not imitative. They have a passionate sincerity and deep sympathy with the child.
Blake also wrote The Book of Thel (1790), The French Revolution (1791), The Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793), America (1793) and Europe (1794).
Blake's Songs of Experience (1794) is another collection of fine lyrics in which the mood of spontaneous love and happiness revealed in Songs of Innocence is replaced by a less joyful note. In 1794-95 appeared The First Book of Urizen (1794), The Book of Ahania (1795), The Book of Los and The Song of Los (1795). His last prophetic works are Milton and Jerusalem, both published in 1804.
Blake died obscurely in 1827.
Characteristics of Blake's Poetry. Blake is the worthy predecessor of Wordsworth. Swinburne calls Blake the only poet of "supreme and simple poetic genius" of the eighteenth century, "the one man of that age fit, on all accounts, to rank with the old great masters." Blake's contribution to Romantic poetry is given below:
(i) Simple Themes: Blake's famous works Poetical Sketches, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience deal with simple and ordinary themes—the love of the country, of simple life, of childhood and of home. He became the leader in that naturalistic kind of poetry, which found its greatest exponent in Wordsworth. He poetically deals with childhood, flowers, hills, streams, the blue sky, the brooding clouds, birds and animals.
(ii) Mysticism: Blake glorifies the common objects of nature and human life, and casts on them a halo of mysticism. He spiritualises them. Endowed with keen visionary power, Blake unites varied objects of nature and human life "in a spirit of joyous abandon and tender sympathy":
Unseen, they pour blessing,
And joy without ceasing,
On each bud and blossom,
And each sleeping bosom.
Rickett writes: "Both the naturalism and the mysticism of the Romantic Revival found expression in Blake; and on this point he differs from pioneers like Burns, who is simply naturalistic, or Cowper who is only slightly touched by mysticism. On the naturalistic side he deals with the simplest phases of life; with the instinctive life of the child; with the love of flowers, hills and streams, the blue sky, the brooding clouds; and yet the mystical vision of the poet is always transforming these familiar things, touching obscure aspects, and spiritualising the veriest common­place, into something strange and wonderful. To Blake every spot is holy ground, angels shelter the birds from harm, the good shepherd looks after his sheep, the divine spark burns even in the breasts of savage animals."
(iii) Lyricism: Blake was a lyric poet par excellence during the eighteenth century. As lyricist he is a visionary like Shelley. He rapturously sings of nature, Love and Liberty. His view of love resembles Shelley's. Love should not be confused with self-love:
Love seeketh not itself to please,
Not for itself hath any care
But for another gives its ease
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.
Another bond of union with Shelley is his passion for Liberty:
But vain the sword and vain the Bow,
They never can work War's overthrow
The Hermit's Prayer, the Widow's Tear
Alone can free the World from Fear.
He is a singer of the simple joys and raptures of ordinary life. Edward Albert writes: "In simple yet beautifully apt language, his lyrics reveal a variety and spontaneity of feeling which place them on a par with the best in our literature. Blake has to the highest degree the faculty of unreserved self-expression, and his style has the quality of "rightness" which is the mark of all truly great poetry."
Blake was a romantic, not only in his passion for liberty, but in his love for children, his love of nature, and his interest in the medieval and the Gothic.
PROSE
The Age of Johnson also saw the remarkable development of prose. It did not fashion a new prose style; that was done by Dryden; but it took the instrument that had been shaped for it, and turned it to glorious uses. Moreover, it did something for its further development; it improved and perfected, in the works of Fielding, Johnson, Gibbon and others, the solid and masculine style of prose, as distinguished from the conversational, almost feminine style of Addison on the one hand, and the highly ornate and rhetorical style on the other. A writer thus summarises the gains of the eighteenth century: "The eighteenth century by itself had created the novel and practically created the literary history; it had put the essay into general circulation; it had hit off various forms, and an abundant supply of lighter verse; it had largely contributed to the literature of philosophy. Above all, it had shaped the form of English prose…….”
1. Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-84)
His Prose Works. Dr. Johnson is a first-rate prose writer. In the beginning he contributed imaginary parliamentary debates, based on the mere skeletons of facts which he could obtain without attending the House, to The Gentleman's Magazine between 1738 and 1744. In 1744 appeared The Life of Savage which was later incorporated in The Lives of Poets. In 1747 he began working on his Dictionary of the English Language. This was his greatest contribution to scholarship. In the Preface Johnson describes his lofty aims—to "preserve the purity and ascertain the meaning of our English idiom" and prevent the language from being overrun with "cant" and Gallicised words.
Dr. Johnson also contributed papers to his periodical The Rambler (1750-52) which appeared twice a week. These papers were full of deep thought and observation, and were founded upon his own experiences of life. They lacked the elegance of The Spectator. The Rambler re-established the periodical essay at a time when it was in danger of being superseded by the newspaper.
In 1759 he wrote Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, a philosophical novel. During 1758-60 he contributed a series of papers, under the title of The Idler, to the Universal Chronicle.
Johnson published his second truly great work, the fine edition of Shakespeare in 1765. It is a landmark in English literary criticism. His A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, published in 1775, is a travel book which shows his narrative skill. His magnum opus, The Lives of the Poets (1777-81), is a series of introductions to fifty-two poets. It is a monumental contribution to English literary criticism.
Dr. Johnson as a Critic. Dr. Johnson is one of the greatest literary critics. He, in the opinion of T. S. Eliot, is "one of the three greatest critics of poetry in English literature: the other two being Dryden and Coleridge." As a literary critic he was an exponent of classicism and he condemned everything which did not conform to classical doctrines. He was incapable of appreciating the subtleties of the musical flow of verse, the flight of imagination and the mystery and vagueness of romantic poetry. According to Christopher Hollis he was "incapable of aesthetic appreciation...... The window of beauty was a window through which he-could never look. For poetry, in the strict sense of the word, he cared nothing." His Lives, particularly of Milton, Gray and Prior present "unmistakable proofs of his inability to appreciate the higher kind of poetry." Johnson could appreciate poetry of good sense and correctness. He rejected the idea of inspiration in disdain. Bosker remarks: "Poetry dealing with subjects outside the bounds of empirical.fact, sentiments and images not consistent with the experiences of common humanity, did not lie within Johnson's sphere of interest."
As a critic of literature Dr. Johnson is almost always penetrating and stimulating, though he allowed his prejudices to interfere with his judgment. He failed to appreciate the value of Milton's poetry, because of his antipathy to Milton's politics and religion. Despite his strongly marked prejudices, Dr. Johnson's critical judgments are noted for radiant rationality, soundness of intellect. T. S. Eliot remarks: "Johnson's Lives of the Poets is the only monumental collection of critical studies of English poets in English language, with a coherence, as well as an amplitude, which no other English criticism can claim."
Johnson's Prose Style. Johnson's prose style has been variously termed as "manly and straightforward", "distinct, individual, heavy and ponderous, full of mannerisms, vigorous and forceful, wearisome but lucid." In his style mannerism is strongly marked. It means "the repetition of certain forms of language in obedience to blind habit and without reference to their propriety in the particular case." The most obvious peculiarity is the tendency which he himself noticed to "use too big words and too many of them." It is not merely the bigness of words, which distinguishes his style, but a peculiar love of putting the abstract for the concrete, of using awkward inversions, and of balancing his sentences in a monotonous rhythm are also found. These mannerisms are strongly marked in The Rambler and The Rasselas. In The Lives of Poets he gives up mannerisms and writes as easily and lucidly as he talked.
Indeed, Johnson's style has the merits and defects of scholarship. He seldom uses language which is either empty or inexact. He always uses it with a scholar's pride. To him a standard prose style should be "above grossness and below refinement." But taking Dr. Johnson's work as a whole, it must be admitted that he could rarely bring himself "below refinement", the refinement not of drawing-room but of the library. When his inspiration is wholly literary, he is apt to grow pompous and pedantic; when, however, some human concern projects itself into his work, then he shakes off his stiffness and writes with force and dignity, as in his notable letter to Lord Chesterfield (1755).
Johnson's prose lacks in some of the essential elements of style; it has no music, no mystery, no gift of suggestion, very little of the highest sort of imagination. But in "particular power of making the old new, and the commonplace individual, Johnson is "among the great masters."
2. Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)
Goldsmith's contribution to the periodical essay is noticeble. He contributed to The Monthly Review in 1757 and to several other periodicals as well. The earliest periodical with which his name is permanently associated was The Bee (1759), which was published weekly. It contained a variety of papers. A few months after the close The Bee, The Citizen of the World (1760-61) began to appear in a journal called The Public Ledger. Hugh Walker writes: "Probably not one in ten thinks for a moment of The Citizen of the World as one of the finest collection of essays ever written, and a work quite worthy of a place beside its author's more popular writings. Goldsmith's literary greatness may be measured by the fact that he has equalled Addison on Addison's own ground, and greatly surpassed him elsewhere."
Goldsmith's essays reveal an extraordinary power, boldness, originality of thought and tenderness. In this respect he is superior to Addison or any other of the periodical essayists. His minute observation of man and human nature is remarkable. The characterisations of the Man in Black and Beau Tibbs and those of Vagabonds are noticeable for minute observation. As an essayist Goldsmith was inspired by a touch of fellow feeling, personal experience and a kindly sympathy. His essay On the English Clergy, and The Popular Preachers is unsurpassed of its kind.
Goldsmith's essays are also conspicuous for their humqur. Every­body feels the humour of Beau Tibbs and the Man in Black. Commenting on his humour, Rickett writes: "Indeed his quaint whimsicality, passing unexpectedly from delicate fancy to elfish merriment, anticipates in many ways the methods of Elia and Leigh Hunt...... He was a poet of talent, a proseman of genius, a proseman, moreover, of distinctive and original genius."
Goldsmith's prose style is clear, limpid and delicate. His style is inseparable from soundness of intelligence. In point of style both Addison and Goldsmith, writes Hugh Walker, "are admitted to be masters, but Goldsmith is the greater of the two. He is greater just because style, in the last resort, is inseparable from thought, just because of that provinciality, that cqmmonplaceness of idea, which Matthew Arnold detected in Addison, and which is not in Goldsmith.
After Goldsmith the periodical essay was in decline, and no man of first-rate ability touched it. As a man of letters he was, in the words of Johnson's Latin epitaph in Westminster Abbey "a gentle master" who "left scarcely any kind of writing untouched, and touched nothing that he did not adorn."
3. Historical Prose
Some of the finest prose of Johnson's age was written in history. The historians like Gibbon treated prose in a more artistic form than ever before in England. Edward Gibbon (1737-94) was the greatest historian of the time. His History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776) is an imperishable contribution to English prose. His Autobiography, which contains valuable material about his life is also a work of importance, which is written with all his usual elegance and suave, ironic humour. Rickett writes: "Gibbon was by far the greatest historian of his age, and one of the greatest of any age. As a literary stylist he is sufficiently remarkable, with his clear, imposing, rhythmic prose, but he is even more remarkable for that intuitive faculty that endows some men so richly with the historic sense quite apart from their scholarship. It is faculty that enables Gibbon to present his work as an organic whole, with the details properly subordinate to the main structure." Gibbon's style is commanding and lordly, with a full, free and majestic rhythm. It is appropriate to its gigantic subject. It has some weaknesses too. "Though it never flags, and rarely stumbles, the very perfection of it tends to monotony, for it lacks ease and variety."
David Hume (1711-76) wrote a History of England in six volumes, which appeared between the years 1754 and 1761. Its style is swift, clear and polished. Hume had no talent for historical research and is greatly marred by carelessness in regard to facts. As a work of historical prose it is important as being the first popular and literary history of England. Hume also distinguished himself as a philosopher, publishing A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40) and Essays, Moral and Political (1741-42).
William Robertson (1721-93), a Scot, had an active and successful career as a historian. He made a great mark with his History of Scotland, History of Charles V and History of America.
4. Political Prose
Edmund Burke (1729-97), the renowned politician, parliamen­tarian and orator, was one of the greatest prose stylists of the eighteenth century. In politics he was passionately attached to the Whig party. Burke's works are both philosophical and political. His philosophical Writings are A Vindication of Natural Society (1756) and A Philosphical inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1756). These works are of mediocre quality but they are remarkable for Burke's style and language. Burke's political writings consisting of his speeches and pamphlets have an abiding place in English prose. He supported the cause of American colonies in his speeches on American Taxation (1774) and On Conciliation with the Colonies (1775). These collections of his speeches are distinguished by a passionate, rhetorical, brilliant and lucid style, fine and artistic arrangement of material and the statesmanlike lasight which underlies these arguments. Burke's speeches on the impeachment of Warren Hastings are highly moving. His famous pamphlets are Thoughts on the Cause of Present Discontent (1770), Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), A Letter to a Noble Lord (1795) and Letters on Regicide Peace (1797). Reflections on the Revolution in France is a powerful challenge to the revolutionary ideas and it is a fine exposition of his own principles. Burke's style has assigned him a permanent place in Literature. Edward Albert writes: "Dignified rather than graceful, it is the most powerful prose of his day, and is marked by all the devices of the orator— much repetition, careful arrangement and balance of parts, copious use of rhetorical figures (such as metaphor, simile, epigram, and exclamation), variation of the sentence structure, homely illustrations, and a swift, vigorous rhythm. It is full of colour and splendour, and is fired by an impassioned imagination." He skilfully arranged his ideas with passionate moral earnestness, vivid imagination, and splendid logical powers; while his rich and highly wrought rhetorical style gave a gorgeous colouring to everything he worte. Burke's style lacks persuasiveness, humour, pathos and intimacy.
Adam Smith (1723-90) wrote The Wealth of Nations (1776), a fine work on the history of economics, laid the foundation of modern economic thought. In the history of English prose it is memorable for the use of plain, businesslike style. William Godwin (1756-1836) wrote Political Justice (1793) which expressed his revolutionary ideas.
5. Other Prose Writers
Boswell (1740-95) is remembered for his famous biography of Dr. Samuel Johnson whom he loved to the extent of hero-worship. His Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) is the first great biography in literature. He vividly portrayed the details of Johnson's powerful personality.
Letter writing was assiduously cultivated both as a pastime and as an art. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), Philip Dermer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773) and Horace Walpole (1717-97) deserve mention as letter writers. Lord Chesterfield, who addressed his letters to his son, was the best letter writer whose style is noticeable for lucidity of expression, intimacy and flawless ease. His letters are a manual in polite behaviour for the young man's guidance. Their tone is that of the typical man of the world. His Letters to His Son were published posthumously in 1774.
William Paley (1743-1805) was a typical theological writer of the age. His main books are Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785), Horae Pauline (1790) and A View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794). His works are characterised by intellectual vigour, and lively and attractive style.
Gilbert White (1720-93) was the first naturalist who cast his observations into genuine literary form. He published The Natural History of Selbome (1789), which is written in a golden and readable style.
Eighteenth century was the golden age of prose. Varied types of prose was written during this period.
NOVEL
The discovery of the modern novel is the typical growth of the eighteenth century. It is the "original contribution of England to the world of literature. Other great types of literature, like the epic, the romance and the drama, were first produced by other nations; but the idea of the modern novel seems to have been worked out largely on English soil; and in the number and the fine quality of her novelists. England has hardly been rivalled by any other nation." (W. J. Long) The novel has been the prevailing type of popular literature since 1740, the year of the publication of Richardson's Pamela. It was with Richardson that prose fiction passed definitely into its modern form. Before we study the novelists who developed this new type of literature, it is well to consider briefly its meaning and history.
Definition and Scope of the Novel. Novel differs from romance. Romance, which may be written in poetry or prose, deals with imaginary and fanciful events and characters, which have little touch with the realities of life. The novel is invariably written in prose and it deals with events and characters taken from real life. The story element is essential to the novel. Defining novel W. J. Long writes: "For the novel is a work of fiction in which the imagination and the intellect combine to express life in the form of a story; and the imagination is always directed and controlled by the intellect. It is interested chiefly, not in romance or adventure, but in men and women as they are, it aims to show the motives and influences which govern human life, and the effects of personal choice upon character and destiny. Such is the true novel, and as such it opens a wider and more interesting field than any other type of literature." It appeals to modern readers because it realistically treats the great mass of interests and problems which make up modern life.
Precursors of the Novel. Malory's Morte D'Arthur is a noticeable romance. Malory sometimes gives these old romances a moral natural setting, and in making the heroes suggest, though faintly, the men and women of their own day. Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales has an abiding story interest and the characters are delightfully true to nature. Chaucer's Tales have in them the suggestion, at least, of a connected story whose chief aim is to reflect life as it is.
In the Elizabethan age the idea of the novel grows more definite. Although Sidney's Arcadia is a romance of chivalry with a pastoral setting and idealized characters, it occasionally gives the impression of presenting real men and women. Most of the fiction during this period had been purely romantic as with Lodge and Greene; or didactic, as with More, Lyly and Bacon. A slight tendency to realism had been shown in the picaresque work of Nash. In Nash's The Unfortunate Traveller, or The Life of Jack Wilton (1594) is an early source of the realistic novel of today. During the seventeenth century Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and The Life and Death of Mr. Badman, though allegorical in nature, come nearer to modern novel. Bunyan's keen insight, his delineation of character, especially those of Christian and Mr. Badman, and his emphasis upon moral effects of individual action paved the way for the rise of novel in the age of Johnson.
The real beginning of the English novel took place in the eighteenth century with the publication of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. By rejecting all the fantastic conventions of the romance and by adopting with studious precision the manner and tone of actual biography, he came very near to the genuine novel. The character writers and Addison 'and Steele contributed much to the evolution of realistic novel. The character of Sir Roger De Coverly is a real reflection of the eighteenth century. With The Tatler and The Spectator and The Guardian we definitely cross the border­land that lies outside of romance, and enter the region of character study where the novel has its beginning. Richardson's Pamela (1740) is the first true novel that appeared in any literature.
Causes of the Popularity of the Novel in the Age of Johnson. The causes which contributed to the rise and development of English novel in Johnson's age are given below:
(i) The Spread of Education and the New Reading Public: In the eighteenth century the spread of education and the appearance of newspapers and magazines led to a remarkable increase in the number of readers. The newspaper and the periodical essay "encouraged a rapid, inattentive, almost unconscious kind of reading habit", and it is exactly such a kind of habit that is required for novel-reading. At the same time the middle-class people assumed a foremost place in English life and history. These new readers and this powerful new middle class had no classic tradition to hamper them. They cared little for the opinions of Dr. Johnson and the famous Literary Club. They took little interest in the exaggerated romances of impossible heroes and the picaresque stories of intrigue and villainy which had interested the upper classes. The new reading class wanted to read for pleasure and relaxation without caring for any high classical or literary standards, and this change of emphasis favoured the growth of the novel. Moreover, it wanted to read about itself, about its own thoughts, motives and struggles, in short, to find out its own life reflected in the books it read. Moreover, it did not have leisure enough for reading the lengthy heroic romances. The new ideal of the eighteenth century, namely, the value and importance of the individual life, demanded a new type of literature. So the novel was born which mirrored the tastes and requirements of this new class of readers.
Women, who were becoming increasingly influential, enjoyed immense leisure. Ian Watts writes: "Women of upper and middle classes could partake in few of the activities of their menfolk, whether of business or pleasure. It was not unusual for them to engage in politics, business or administration of their estates." Increase of wealth and prosperity had also relieved the women of the middle classes from the household drudgery which had been their lot so far. Most of them were driven to literature to utilise this enforced leisure. This new class of female readers, unhampered by any high literary standard, merely sought pleasure, through desultory reading, and this pleasure was provided by novel. The novel of the period reflects their life and their tastes. Pamela is a maid­servant. Richardson presented models of feminine virtue in one novel after the other.
(ii) Democratic Movement: The rise of the novel is also associated with the democratic movement in the eighteenth century. W. H. Hudson writes: "The romance, like tragedy, had been almost consistently aristocratic in the range of its interests and characters; and even Defoe, while he repudiated romantic conventions in this as in all other respects, ...... , held aloof from the ordinary social world, merely substituting adventurers and criminals for princes and Arcadian shepherds. The comprehensiveness of the novel, its free treatment of characters and doings of all sorts and conditions of men, and especially its sympathetic handling of middle class and low life, are unmistakable evidences of its democratic quality."
The rise of the middle class is closely related with the democratic movement. With the growth of commerce and industry, the prestige of the old feudal nobility was on the wane, and the middle classes were increasing steadily in social and political power. The middle classes were inclined to morality, sentiment and reality. The novel reflected the temperament of the middle classes and, hence, it became popular.
(iii) Comprehensiveness of Form: Novel, a new form of literary art, was a sign that literature was beginning to outgrow the cramping limitations of classicism and tradition. It was difficult to reject altogether the authority of the ancients in the epic and the drama. In the novel that authority could be ignored. In general, the novel offered a fresh field, in which modern writers were able to work independently. Hudson writes: "Finally, as the form of the novel gives a far wider scope than is allowed by the corresponding form of the drama for the treatment of motives, feelings, and all the phenomena of the inner life, it tended from the first to take a peculiar place as the typical art form of the introspective and analytical modern world."
(iv) New Prose Style: One of the important causes of the development of novel is the rise of a new prose style. For novel deals with ordinary life, ordinary people, ordinary events and with all sorts of miscellaneous matters, it requires plain, lucid and straightforward style, and not the highly poetic, eloquent and far-fetched style. During the eighteenth century Addison, Steele and Goldsmith evolve a plain style which was capable of expressing the realities of life, which the novel expressed.
(v) The Decline of Drama: It is a literary commonplace that the drama grew as the romance of chivalry declined, and the novel grew as the drama declined. Drama, which was the most popular form of literature during the Renaissance, had grown artificial, unnatural and immoral during the Restoration. It had lost its appeal by the eighteenth century. It was the decline of drama during the earlier part of the eighteenth century that made way for the novel.
The age of Johnson'is the golden age of novel. A true novel means "simply a work of fiction which relates the story of plain human life, under stress of emotion, which depends for its interest not on incident and adventure, but on its truth to nature." (W. J. Long) S. A. Brooke writes: "But the name (novel) is applied now to any story of human life which is woven by the action of characters or of events on characters to a chosen conclusion. Its form, far more flexible than that of the drama, admits of almost infmite development. The whole of human life, at any time, at any place in the world, is its subject, and its vast sphere accounts for its vast production." Richardson, Fielding, Smollett and Sterne, known as the four wheels of the novel, — all seem to have seized upon the idea of reflecting life as it is, in the form of a story, and to have developed it simultaneously.
THE FOUR WHEELS OF THE NOVEL
It is rare indeed that four men of genius — Richardson, Fielding, Smollett and Sterne, popularly known as the four wheels of the novel, brought this new genre to such maturity that it became the glory of England.
1. Samuel Richardson (1689-1761)
His Life and Works. Samuel Richardson, the son of a London joiner, was born in 1689 in Derbyshire. He received very little education, but he had an inborn talent for letter writing. As a boy he was frequently employed by unlettered working girls to write their love letters for them. This early experience coupled with his fondness for the society of "his dearest ladies" rather than of men, gave him that intimate knowledge of the hearts of sentimental and uneducated women which is manifest in all his work. He was also a keen observer of manners and life around him. In his boyhood he was apprenticed as a printer and he remained a printer to the end of his life.
At the age of fifty he had the reputation of writing elegant letters. A publisher approached Richardson with the request to write a series of letters which should serve as models for the correspondence and behaviour of people in the lower walks of life. Moral considerations were always uppermost in his mind. He accepted the publisher's suggestion and began his task by writing a true story in letters, which would combine guidance in conduct and instruction in the art of composition. He conceived the idea of using a real story he had heard some years before as a thread upon which to string his letters. Then the thought occurred to Richardson (to quote his own words), "if written in an easy and natural manner, suitable to the simplicity of it, might possibly introduce a new species of writing, and ..... tend to promote the cause of religion and virtue." So Richardson's first novel Pamela (1740-41), telling the story of the trials, tribulations, and the final happy marriage of the heroine, Pamela, in the form of letters, appeared. The work was instantly successful. In it the moral and social purposes are successfully blended. The character of Pamela in well drawn. The plot, though simple, is well developed. Its chief fame lies in the fact that it is the first novel in the modem sense. Richardson's masterpiece Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady in eight volumes appeared in 1747-48. It is a sentimental novel and it was received with great enthusiasm. It gave Richardson European reputation "and it is still regarded as one of the greatest of the eighteenth century novels." Clarissa's character is realistically drawn with psychological insight. It also contains Richardson's most remarkable character-study in the scoundrel, Lovelace. The dramatic element in this novel is strong, which is increased by its epistolary form. Clarissa is characterised pathos, sincerity and minute realism.
Richardson turned from his middle-class heroines and he attempted to tell the story of a man and an aristocrat in another series of letters, known as Sir Charles Grandison in 1754. The hero of this novel was intended to be a model of aristocratic manners and virtues for the middle-class people, who constituted Richardson's readers. His novels are stories of "human life, told from within, and depending for their interest not on incident and adventure, but on their truth to human nature. Reading his work is, on the whole, like examining the antiquated model of a stern-wheel steamer; it is interesting for its undeveloped possibilities rather than for its achievement."
Richardson's Contribution to Novel. Richardson's contribution to the evolution of English novel is immense. We come across the following characteristics in his novels:
(i) The Sentimental Note: Richardson was the first novelist who recognised the part played in everyday life by sentiment. His novels appeal to the heart. His deliberate, minute, detailed method enabled him to give the most effect to this sentimental note. Cazamian thinks that Richardson sought his inspiration in Puritan sentimentalism. In Pamela emphasis is laid on idealised virtue in consonance with Puritan tradition. On occasions the sentimental note is overdone, as in the protracted account of the approaching death of Clarissa, he is guilty of dwelling too long on the mental sufferings of his characters. Rickett remarks: "Richardson's method is cumulative. For instance, as in Pamela, each letter is rather more harrowing than the preceding one; in Clarissa each scene more poignant until the climax is reached."
(ii) Characterisation: Richardson was the first to write novels of character. His importance in the history of novel lies in his introduction of characters of the lower middle classes, especially women, whom he portrays with great accuracy and minuteness of detail. We learn about them from their own speeches and behaviour, and from what others say about them. His characters are real and lifelike. Richardson specialised in depicting female characters. He could depict with extraordinary skill the subtleties and inconsistencies of women's heart. Richardson represented for the first time the woman's point of view in the history of English fiction. Pamela and Clarissa are well-drawn portraits. Lovelace in Clarissa is a study of a rake. In his third novel Grandison takes the central place. The two girls, Harriet Byron and Clementi, though sketchily drawn, are cleverly differentiated. Rickett writes: "Richardson, therefore, is not only our first novelist of character, but our first novelist of feminine character." Richardson's temperament - "was largely feminine, his standpoint on life almost entirely feminine, and that where he did succeed with his male characters, it was in those feminine aspects that are to be found in men no less than in women."
(iii) Moral Purpose: The most striking feature of Richardson's novels is moral purpose. He was the embodiment of the religious earnestness of the rising Puritan middle class. He advocates typically utilitarian virtue and its reward is material prosperity. Thus Pamela marries her wicked master and prospers in the world as a direct reward for her virtue. Rickett writes: "The morality of Richardson is the morality of his age; not salted by a tolerant humour as in Fielding's case, but sentimentalised often to an unhealthy extent."
(iv) Minuteness of Detail: Richardson's novels are remarkable for minuteness of detail, both of character and incident. Edward Albert writes: "He is an adept in the intimate analysis of motive and emotion which gradually evolves a character that is entire and convincing, and he fills in his sketch with a multitude of tiny strokes. For such detailed analysis a lengthy book is essential, so that length is a vital part of Richardson's technique.
(v) Epistolary Form: Richardson introduced the epistolary form of novel in English fiction. This method is dramatic; that is to say, the reader holds communication directly with the characters. Moody and Lovett remark: "....Richardson thought of the novel as an elaborated drama. He calls Clarissa "a dramatic narrative"; and he does so very properly, for, as in a play, there is in Clarissa a definite catastrophe, every step toward which is carefully prepared for by something in the environment or the characters of the actors. Richardson, however, could not forgo entirely the novelist's right to personal communication." The epistolary method provided him the opportunity for minute analysis of character and motive. Richardson is great because of his power of analysis of emotion and sentiment. As Saintsbury puts it: "Every flutter of Pamela's heart is faithfully registered." Dr. Johnson rightly praised him "for his knowledge of the human heart."
(vi) Richardson's Limitations: His main defects as a novelist are given below:
(1) Richardson's knowledge of human character was incomplete. He had no knowledge of the upper classes. His "genteel" characters, therefore, tend to be artificial and unnatural. Hudson says: "His first-hand knowledge of the world was small, and his view extremely narrow, and the moral element in his work suffered greatly in consequence."
(2) His sense of humour is weak.
(3) Richardson's novels are intolerably lengthy and verbose. He lacks the epic breadth and comprehensive sweep of Fielding.
(4) Richardson's moralising is apt to sink into weariness and his sentiment is often overstrained and mawkish. "In general, the atmosphere of his books is too much like that of a hot house to be entirely pleasant or wholesome."
(5) His style lacks distinction. Though it is adequate for his purpose, it is at times over deliberate, or even elaborately precious.
Richardson's Historical Significance and Influence. Despite his limitations, Richardson owes to himself a very high place in the history of English novel. Rickett writes: "Richardson introduced sentimentality into English fiction and popularised it for ever. Without his influence we might never have had Tristram Shandy; we certainly should have been withoutJoseph Andrews; and ill could we have afforded to lose both these novels. Then the feminine standpoint taken in his writings stirred many able women to continue and amplify the feminine tradition. Fanny Burney and Jane Austen are indebted to him, and a host of lesser names." Richardson was "the first novelist to show a real and vital knowledge of the human heart, its perversities and contradictions — the first to analyse the women's point of view; and the man who did that deserves some measure of praise from posterity."
2. Henry Fielding (1707-54)
His Life and Works. Fielding was the greatest of this new group of novelists, and one of the most artistic that English literature has produced. Born in 1707 in Somersetshire, Fielding was educated at Eton, and studied law at Leyden. He had a wider and deeper knowledge of life, which he gained from his own varied and sometimes riotous experiences. He took to writing plays for earning his livelihood. In 1735 he married an admirable woman, whose vivid glimpses are found in his two characters Amelia and Sophia Western. His first novel Joseph Andrews appeared in 1742. He was called to the Bar and after some time in practice he was appointed Bow Street magistrate in 1748. As a magistrate he had an intimate knowledge of many types of human criminality which was of much use to him in his novels. Richardson's two novels A Journey from this World to the Next and Jonathan Wild the Great appeared in 1743. His greatest and finest work Tom Jones was published in 1749. His last novel Amelia came out in 1751. His Voyage to Lisbon is a diary written during his last journey. He died in Lisbon in 1754.
Fielding's first novel Joseph Andrews began as a burlesque of the false sentimentality and the conventional virtues of Richardson's Pamela. He took for his hero Pamela's brother, a footman, who was exposed to the same kind of temptations, but who, instead of being rewarded for his virtue, was unceremoniously turned out of doors by his mistress. Here the burlesque ends and Fielding becomes interested in his own story. He humorously narrates the adventures of the hero, Joseph Andrews, and his companion, Parson Adams. From the very beginning we see the stamp of Fielding's genius—the complete rejection of the epistolary form and moralising, the structural development of the story, the broad and vivacious humour which was denied to Richardson, the genial and half-contemptuous insight into human nature, and the forceful and pithy style. In Joseph Andrews. Fielding emerges as a pioneer of the novel of manners. He is a painter of manners first as Richardson was a moralist first. It was an experimental work only, but it helped Fielding to find his proper way. Jonathan Wild is the biography of the famous thief and thief taker who was hanged at Newgate. In it the novelist gives us new and piercing glimpses of the ruffian's mentality.
Fielding's greatest novel, Tom Jones, completes and perfects his achievement. Here he takes an enormous canvas and crowds it with numerous characters. Countrymen and manners fill the first part; metropolitan men and manners the second part of the book, which as a whole gives us fullest and richest picture of English life about the middle of the eighteenth century. It opens with the discovery of the hero as a new­born baby in the house of a virtuous gentleman, Mr. Allworthy. Here he grows up with Allworthy's nephew Blifil, who out of jealousy ruins Tom's reputation with his benefactor, and gets him turned out into the world. Meanwhile Tom has fallen in love with Miss Sophia Western, who returns his love despite her father's opposition. Tom travels to London, with many wayside adventures; he passes not unscathed, through various temptations; and finally, by the discovery of the secret of his birth and the revelation of Blifils villainy, he is advanced to his happy fortune, the favour of Allworthy and marriage with Sophia. Although the picaresque element is strongly marked in it, it is more than a picaresque novel. Fielding calls it "the comic epic in prose." Characters and incidents are skilfully related to the main theme. Tom Jones stands unrivalled in the history of English fiction for its coherent and well-knit structure, richness of characterisation, vivid and realistic presentation of society and its manners, sanity and wisdom of point of view.
Amelia is the story of a good wife who, in spite of temptation, remains faithful to a good-natured but erring husband, Captain Booth. It "is at once a searching criticism of contemporary society and a mature, soberly conceived story of everyday life, rich in incident and, like Tom Jones, remarkable for its insight into human character."
Fielding's Contribution to English Novel
Sir Walter Scott called Fielding "the father of English novel." Indeed, neither Bunyan, nor Defoe and Richardson deserve to be called the father of the English novel. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is a moral fable rather than a novel. Defoe's novels are merely a series of adventures grouped round the central figure and lack a coherent plot. His characters lack life and reality. Though Richardson made a significant contribution to the evolution of the novel, his novels are over sentimental, structureless, full of excessive moralising and lack the comprehensive knowledge of human character and nature, reality and manners in contemporary society. Richardson may enlarge our knowledge of human heart but, as Saintsbury points out, he is "entirely unreadable for the modern reader."
Fielding is, indeed, the father of the English novel, who, for the first time, formulated the theory of novel writing in the prefaces of Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones; and he followed his own definition with utmost consistency. It is in the novels of Fielding that we get for the first time a closely knit organic plot. Other novelists emulated his example. Raleigh says: "...there could be no better school for a novelist than is offered by the study of Fielding's plot." He gave a definite form and shape to novel. He deserves the title of being called "the father of English novel" due to following reasons:
(1) His Theory of Novel: Fielding was the first great novelist who formulated the theory of novel in the prefaces of Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones. He knew that he was writing something new in English prose fiction. He was writing, as he says, the "comic epic", a form differing from comedy, as the serious epic differs from tragedy; "its action being far more extended and comprehensive, containing a much larger circle of incidents, and introducing a greater variety of characters. It differs from the serious romance in its fable and action, in this, that as in the one these are grave and solemn, so in the other they are light and ridiculous: it differs in its characters, by introducing persons of inferior rank, and consequently of inferior manners..... lastly, in its sentiments and diction, by presenting the ludicrous instead of the sublime." The characters are taken from life, for "life everywhere furnishes an accurate observer with the ridiculous." Fielding writes: "The only source of the true ridiculous .....is affectation. From the discovery of this affectation arises the ridiculous, which always strikes the readers with surprise and pleasure."
(2) Realism: Common life is the material of Fielding's novels but it is handled, as Raleigh points out, "with the freedom and imagination of a great artist." In the words of Richard Church: "He is the first writer to'focus the novel in such a way that he brought the whole world, as we see it, within the scope of this new, rapidly maturing literary form." He reproduced reality faithfully and accurately without heightening or concealing it. Saintsbury writes: "To embellish and correct, and heighten, and to extra decorate nature was not Fielding's way, but to follow and to interpret, and to take up her own processes, with results uncommonly like her own." Fielding presents a complete and comprehensive picture of contemporary society. His realism is epical in its range, sweep and variety. The authentic and forceful presentation of reality in his novels, especially in Tom Jones, assures them a precious documentary value. Town manners, the pleasures and amusements of the capital, country society organised round the squire; stage coaches, inns, and the incidents of the road, the underworld of vice and crime have been sufficiently accurately described. As a magistrate Fielding knew well the conflicts of the penal code and the instincts; he recounts them with the exactitude of a well-informed witness, and the zeal of a reformer. He has exposed the cruelty of certain legal punishments and the scandals of judicial administration. In this respect Fielding is the founder of modern realistic novel and the novel of manners.
(3) Comic View or Humour and Satire: Moody and Lovett point out: "And with Fielding's realism must be connected his comic point of view, his wise, tolerant acceptance of things as they are. Of the smug, prudish morality of Richardson, Fielding would have nothing. He threw it aside and presented man full length as he found him. Yet though he portrayed men with no reservations, he never forgot that he was one of them. From this inborn sympathy comes his large tolerant way of looking at things, a view of life that often finds relief in raillery, but never in cynicism. He laughs, but his laughter is always ready to give place to tenderness and pity. For him the tragedy of life lay in the presence of virtue and innocence in a world of evil, cruelty and deception. In his presentation of this tragedy, Fielding is always direct, simple and sincere. The scene in which Amelia prepares supper for Booth, and when he does not come puts aside the wine untasted to save a sixpence, while her husband is losing guineas at the gaming table, is far more moving than are the complicated woes of Clarissa. It is this humanity, the most essential quality of the novelist, that makes Fielding's work permanently engaging and powerful."
Fielding was the first to infuse the novel "with the refreshing and preserving element of humour". His humour is spontaneous, all pervasive, genial and tolerant. He was capable of presenting pure comedy in such characters as Adams and Partridge, and lower and more farcical comedy in characters like Mrs. Slipslop and Square Western. He effectively lashes out his satire at affectation, vanity, pedantry, hypocrisy and vice. But he is always human and humane. Irony is a great weapon of his satire. R. W. Church says: "It is no exaggeration to claim that Fielding is one of the greatest ironists in European literature."
(4) Commonsense Reality: Fielding's aim was to replace Richardson's morbid morality by a healthy, commonsense morality. Rickett writes: "This morality does not strike a high note, it is largely a prudential one. Richardson recognised the animalism and called it high-falutin names; Fielding frankly accepted it, man is an animal, according to him, and there is no use disguising the animalism; but he is something more. This commonsense morality, combined with his satiric humour, gave him a shrewd insight into the weaknesses of his character."
(5) Craftsmanship: Fielding was a superb craftsman. His range "is far wider than Richardson's, his outlook more wholesome, and as a novelist of contemporary manners he is unequalled by any of his contemporaries." (Rickett) He made novel writing an art. The following elements were perfected in his novels:
(i) Plot: Fielding revolutionised the concept of plot construction. In his novels we get for the first time a closely-knit organic plot. There is no superfluity in Tom Jones. The action moves rapidly. There is hardly any incident or character which does not contribute to the story. Walter Allen remarks: "No plot has ever been carried with more consummate skill and the skill can be truly appreciated only after the book has been closed." Raleigh remarks that "there could be no better school for a novelist than is afforded by the study of Fielding's plots." Other novelists learnt the art of plot construction from him.
(ii) Characterisation: Fielding is the creator of the novel of character. He peopled the novel with a great crowd of lively and interesting characters, and endowed them with life and vitality. Hazlitt remarks: " ..... he has brought together a greater variety of characters from common life, marked with more distinct peculiarities, and without an atom of caricature, than any other novel writer whatsoever."
Fielding's novels have popularised types that retain their hold upon the English public. But the figures he has drawn are of a very unequal value. Fielding writes: "I describe not men, but manners, not an individual but a species." But he always describes species in terms of the individual. Trulliber may stand for every boorish, semi-illiterate person of the day who was more of a farmer than a priest. Moody and Lovett remark: "Fielding's great strength lies in the Rubens-like fertility with which he peoples his world. For the elaborate subtleties of Richardson he cared little. Fielding's vision is broader: like Shakespeare he portrays all kind of human character, and like Shakespeare he has a sympathetic yet maturely detached view of the human comedy. The forces which guide his characters are, for the most part, natural human needs, for it was these that fielding knew best."
(iii) Setting: Fielding's settings are realistic. He was the first English novelist to localise his settings. Lionel Stevenson writes: "The geographical locations are always precise, the towns and inns along Tom's route from Glastanbury to London, the streets, and taverns and theatres of the metropolis; while Fielding does not indulge in much description of landscape for its own sake, he always makes the setting recognisable."
(iv) Narration: Fielding, says Edward Albert, "is breezy, bustling, and energetic in his narrative." He brilliantly shows us life on the highway, in the cottage, and among the streets of London. He relieved the novel from the tyranny and constraint of the epistolary form. For the first time the novelist himself becomes his own story teller. He, thus, initiates the practice of the omniscient narrator, which has been universally followed, with few exceptions, ever since. Cross rightly remarks: "Fielding throws off the mask of anonymity, steps out boldly, and asks us to accept his omniscience and omnipresence."
(v) Style: Fielding's style is direct, unaffected, vigorous and easy. It is that of a man talking to us at his ease. It is the product of a mind stored with knowledge of men and books. He is always driving a point home with an apt quotation, from the classics or from Shakespeare. As a stylist he breaks away from the mannered, artificial style of the earlier novelists. It is fresh and clear, and it gives vitality to his characters. His use of dialogue and conversation is of a similar nature.
(vi) Conclusion: Felding, says W. J. Long, "must be regarded as an artist, a very great artist, in realistic fiction by giving us genuine pictures of men and women of his age, without moralizing over their vices and virtues, he became the real founder of modern novel." Almost all the elements which have continued in English novel date from Fielding. Saintsbury rightly remarks: "Almost every kind of novel exists potentially, in his four." A critic has remarked: "Up to the time of Meredith and our most recent contemporaries, the English novel has followed Fielding's law."
3. Tobias Smollett (1721-71)
His Life and Works. Born in 1721 in West Scotland, Smollett received good education, and was apprenticed to a Surgeon in Glasgow. He found employment for five years as a surgeon's mate on board a King's ship, during the war with Spain. His medical profession could not deter him from his literary pursuits. During these five years he may be said to have served his apprenticeship to literature. His first novel, The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748) is a series of adventures related by the hero. It was folic Ned by The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1750), in which he reflects with brutal directness the worst of his experiences at sea, and The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771) which recounts the adventures of a Welsh family in a journey through England and Scotland. He died in 1771.
Depiction of Personal Experiences. As a novelist, Smollett relies wholly on his personal experiences. There is very little invention. His Roderick is a deliberate presentation of himself. In the first part, we get his own personal history, in the middle part of his own experiences on board the ship, and his own fortunes in Bath and London toward the end. Similarly, Peregrine Pickle is a record of his travels to Paris in the company of his friend Dr. John Moore and the journey had no other purpose, but to provide him with material for his novel. His other novels, too, are similarly inspired by his personal experiences and adventures.
The Picaresque 'Tradition and Smollett. Smollett's novel-method is a return to the picaresque tradition. He was well-read in the novels of this genre, but he was specially influenced by the Gill Blas of Le Sage. A picaresque novel is a union of intrigue and adventure and the only unity in it is provided by the central figure. Smollett's novels are extremely loose in construction. Indeed, they have no plot worth the name. Hoderick Random ends in the manner of Fielding with the marriage of the hero and the heroine, the end is merely mechanical, being simply a device for stopping somewhere. Somllett's novels are strings of adventure and personal his­tory, and it is not clear to the readers why they should not end differently from the way in which they do. Many of the minor characters and minor scenes, some of them quite capable ones, can be easily dispensed with without the reader being conscious of any gap or missing links.
His Grossness and Obscenity: A Novelist of Sea Life. Smollett's second novel Peregrine Pickle is more ambitious, and it may be higher in parts, but it contains even more doubtful and inferior matter. For one thing, many of its situations, "are half plagiarisms of the main situations of Pamela and Clarissa" (Saintsbury). Many of its inset stories have no connection what ever with the main story. One cannot help suspecting that they have been introduced to provide the author an occasion for pornog­raphy. The grossness and obscenity of the book is revolting. Despite these drawbacks, Peregrine Pickle is a great novel; it is a great sea-novel. It is also remarkable for its racy fun and sparkling wit. As Saintshury puts is, "Peregrine Pickle can never be thrown to the wolves. English literature cannot do without it."
The Vein of Satire — Fierce satire is one of the leading charac­teristics of Smollett's novels. As Crose points out, "He crowds his pages with well-known characters of his own time, usually for the purpose of fierce satire. He is a Swift Without Swift's clear and wide vision." As pointed out above, he was an aggrieved and frustrated man, and "he flings back at society, with all the contempt and indignation he can muster, rather more than he has got" (Allen). "His method is minute and his satire savage and person I". The least unvarnished scenes in English fiction, the most coarse and brutal, belong to Smollett. He is constantly cursing his fellow­men as fools and knaves.
His Masterpiece: Farcical Situations — However, much of this coar­seness, brutality and fierceness disappears from the last novel, Humphrey Clinker. The tone is mellower and it is a season of calm weather we experience. It is a masterpiece. The letter-plan, which smollett has used for this novel, enables him to supply the deficiency in characterisation which was a besetting sin of his earlier works. There was no characterisation worth the name in the earlier novels: Characters in Humphery Clinker come to life through the letters which they receive from, and write to, each other. Exaggeration or caricature is the very essence of Smollett's art, but he is nearer to nature in this novel than in the previous ones. The plot as usual is thin, the story being merely a string of adventures which the central figure has during his circular tour through England and Scotland. The Bath scenes have been done remarkably well. Continuous laughter is excited by farcical situations. Further, the novel is also remarkable for its detailed descriptions of interior funiture, decoration and accessories.
Smollett's Contribution—In short, Smollett is a great novelist despite his faults. He may not be as great as Fielding and Richardson, but he too, has made significant contribution to the growth of the English novel. His contribution may be summarised as follows:
1. He widened the scope of the English novel. Richardson had con­fined the novel within a verx narrow space which has been called "stifling". Fielding took it into a far larger air; But even Fielding was exclusively English. It is smollett who far the first time brings within the scope of the novel not only Scotland and Wales, but also, 'foreign European countries and even Trans­atlantic scenery" (Saintsbury). He thus widened the appeal of the novel and imparted to it immense variety by describing the life and manners of different countries. "As a Panoramic novelist, Smollett has never been surpassed."
2. Smollett is the first great novelist of the sea. In this novels we get, "the real sea, a real ship, a real voyage, and the real English sailors" (Cross). His accounts of sea life, in one novel after another, are remarkable for their vividness and realism and his sea dogs are among the unforgetabla figures of literature. His familiarity with sea-life has enabled him to cap­ture the very idiom of sea-language. Fielding has nothing to do with the sea.
3. Cross rightly points out. "Smollett's land-characters are as novel as his seamen. His Soctchmen, his Irishmen, his Welshmen, and his Jews, are at once professional and national types." "As national types they are the first in English fiction." "In thus sketching the representatives of different nations, he went further than Fielding and he further widened appeal and scope of the English novel."
However, it must be admitted that his characters may be good types, but they are failures as individuals. They are Flat characters, he fails to picture them in the round.. His heroines are thin, shadowy figures, and even his best, characters stand for some particular quality. They are mere pup­pets.
4. Smollett is essentially a caricaturist. He-excels most as a lively caricaturist. He believed that the aim of caricature is to exhibit monsters and not men and men do become monsters in his novels. Thus Lismahagoin Hut-vilely Clinker has been dehumanised presented in terms of his resemblance to an insect. Men in his novels constantly turn to insect or animals. One of the means of caricature which he usually employs is misspelling. The device has been used with great effect in the case of Tabitha Bramble and her maid.
5. As has been pointed out above, Smollett was the first English novelist to give detailed description of interior decoration, furniture and other accessories. In this respect, few have excelled him
6. The author of Humphery Clinker is also the exponent of a new kind of humour. Smollett's object in this novel is to excite continuous laughter by fracical situations. "The novel thus announces the broad com­edy of Dickens, so different from the pure comedy of Fielding and is best characterised by "fiinny", a word then just coming into use". Fierce satire of the previous novels disappears from is masterpiece, and the tone is milder and gentler. The prodigality of his wit is amazing. .
7. Smollett's style is forceful and masculine, like the man himself. At place it grows lyrical and musical. Hazlitt considers his style even more easy and flowing than that of Tom Jones.
8. Smollett's novel methods were easy to imitate, and he has had many distinguished pupils of whom the greatest is, Dickens. By his revival of- the picaresque, he gave a long lease of life to it. As Raleigh shows, he was easily imitated, "and the public was long entertained with every, con­ceivable variety of adventure". There was a spurt of the Picaresque novels after Smollett.
4. Laurence Sterne (1713-1768)
His Life and Works. Sterne was born in 1713 at Clonmel. He was educated at Cambridge, took orders, and obtained a living at Yorkshire in 1738. His habits were unclerical. He temporarily left his living for London and published the first two parts of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1760), which was completed in 1767. It won him immediate recognition. It records the experiences of the eccentric Shandy family, and the book was never finished. "Its chief strength lies in its brilliant style, the most remarkable of the age, and in its odd characters, like uncle Toby and Corporal Trim, which, with all their eccentricities, are so humanised by the author's genius that they belong among the great "creations" of our literature." He toured abroad, returned to England to write his second novel. His second novel A Sentimental Journey— Thorugh France and Italy was published in 1768, the year he died. Sterne combines in this novel fiction, sketches of travel, miscellaneous subjects and essays. It is remarkable for the brilliancy of style. The readers feel the stamp of Sterne's grotesque genius on every page.
Characteristics of Sterne's Works. Sterne defied all conventions of novel writing and he contributed to the development of English novel in his own peculiar way. His contribution is given below:
(i) Brilliant Effects: Sterne's novels can hardly be called novels. There is no central story, no unity and coherence in the development of plot. There are continuous "asides" and parenthetic digressions, which are absolutely irrelevant to the plot, in his two novels. His novels are a medley of unconnected incidents, scraps of out-of-the way learning, whimsical fancies, humour, pathos, reflection, impertinence, and indecency. Rickett writes: "Incident is non-existent in Sterne's fiction; there is neither chronology nor progression. His novels are one long parenthesis — a colossal aside to the reader. Yet despite the chaotic incoherence of his method of story telling, his effects are made with consummate ease." Sterne's prose style, which is characterised by brilliance, force, precision, melody and the sensuousness of the highest poetic expression, helped him to create brilliant effects. His technique of creating striking effects influenced the school of the stream of consciousness.
Laurence Sterne (1718-68)
His Uniqueness as a Novelist. Laurence Sterne, The Irish clergy, is the fourth wheel, and as necessary as the fourth wheel of a carriage, of the novel wain. His two masterpieces are: (1) The Life and Opinions of Tristan! Shandy, 1767. (2) The Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. 1768.
(ii) Characterisation: Sterne's greatest contribution lies in the field of characterisation. Cross writes: "He enlarged for the novelist the sphere of character building by bringing into English fiction the attitude of the sculptor and the painter, combined with a graceful and harmonious movement, which is justly likened to the transitions of music." His characters are drawn with an absolute economy of strokes, and they are utterly solid, three-dimensional characters. He develops his characters by subtle and minute analysis of gestures, expressions, intonations and a hundred other details. Liveliness is the most striking quality of his characters. Sterne imparted humanity to his characters, despite the eccentricities of their lives and surroundings. He does not use the ordinary material of the novelist—of men's desires, passions, political or religious beliefs, success or failure. His characters live in a world of their own. Tristram's father is absorbed in curious learning and speculation. His uncle Toby is occupied in acting out in his garden, with the aid of his servant, Corporal Trim. All these characters by virtue of "the most adroit suggestion of humanity, in their speech, their appearance, their gestures and attitudes." Sterne employed his own method, a method new in the eighteenth century literature. He says: "You perceive that the drawing of my uncle Toby's character went on gently all the time—not the great contours of it —that was impossible — but some familiar strokes and faint designations of it were here and there touched on, as we went along, so that you are much better acquainted with my uncle Toby now than you were before." By this method Sterne gives to his characters an abiding reality and charm. Moody and Lovett remark: "With the characters of Cervantes and Shakespeare, with Quixote and Falstaff, they are among the very few 'creations' of literature." Sterne's method of characterisation is impressionistic, a method which he introduced for the first time.
(iii) Humour and Pathos: Sterne is the most original of English humorists. He intermingles humour and pathos. He blends humour and sentiment in a way peculiarly his own. Neither he vies with Fielding in rolling his jest about with great mirth nor he emulates the uproarious glee of Smollett. Sterne suggests everything. He never laughs but merely sniggers, he never cries but merely flutters his eyelids. He arrests attention by what he leaves unsaid. Rickett writes: "He had a fine artistic sense and developed a style that he made his own by virtue of the peculiar humour which has little in common with Rabelais' uproarious, full-blooded mirth, or Burton's dry, scholarly wit." He smiles at sorrow and finds matter for pathos in the most comical situation.
(iv) Sentimentalism: Sterne was the first to use the word "sentimental" to indicate "the soft state of feelings and the imagination." He represents the "new man of feeling" of the transitional period, whose nature was exquisitely attuned to the pathos of things, and who found a curious satisfaction in the cultivation of melancholy. Hudson remarks: "There is a.good deal of this new emotionalism in Richardson, but Sterne was our first English writer—as Rousseau was the first writer on the continent—to employ it as part of his regular literary stock in trade; and with him it becomes so much of a habit that it fills his pages with a kind of mildew." Sterne also discovered the proper name for it. In a letter to Miss Lumley, he reminds her of the "sentimental" repasts they had enjoyed together. He used the epithet in the sense now attached to it. Sterne made the word classic and current in his record of continental travel, the Sentimental Journey. He was a connoisseur of feeling. He could tell and distinguish between fine shades of feeling, and could communicate them to his readers in a way that aroused both compassion and mirth.
(v) Sterne's Influence: Sterne is the pioneer of modern impressionism. His impressionistic narrative method is very close to that of modern impressionists like Virginia Wolf and James Joyce. He is rightly regarded the first of the impressionists. He had a forward looking quality. Summing up his contribution Rickett writes: "Richardson had given sentimentality, Fielding humour, Smollett liveliness."
OTHER NOVELISTS
1. Oliver Goldsmith (1728-74)
Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) stands in the first rank of the eighteenth century novels. The plot of the novel is simple, though sometimes inconsistent, the characters are human and attractive, and it is also remarkable for the blend of humour and pathos. It has the strong story element. Goldsmith has adopted the direct method of narration through the principal character. The plot is full of glaring improbabilities and the final resolution has been hastily huddled up at the close. The restoration of the entire family of Vicar to happiness is conducted in an ineffective manner.
The Vicar of Wakefield is highly noticeable for life-like characters who grow and change. They have a human touch. The character of Dr. Primrose is a classic character. He is a self-portrait of the novelist himself. Raleigh remarks: "The character of the Vicar is Goldsmith's creation and his portrait must take a rank very near Parson Adams and Uncle Toby "
Goldsmith for the first time depicts the picture of English domestic life. Dr. Primrose unites in himself the three roles of the priest, the husband and the father. His is a contented family in which all members are united together by the strong bonds of love and affection. The members of the family forbear misfortunes, which befall them, good-humouredly. The picture of family life is lovely, natural and charming.
The characters of Olivia and Sophia, though they may be butterflies in the world of fashion, represent "the real country girls that had yet appeared in the novel."
This novel is unique because it gives delightful and idealistic picture of English village life. Hudson remarks that "it is instinct with his peculiar charm and tenderness, and because its materials are handled with that transfiguring power which touches the simplest details with idyllic beauty."
The blend of humour and pathos makes it all the more charming. The Vicar himself is a perennial source of humour and pathos. It is also memorable for its vivid descriptions and dialogue, and its simple, graceful and lively style. Hudson remarks: "Its spirit is that of quiet, manly piety, without the slightest suggestion of the "goody-goody", and the large sympathy which is conspicuous in many of its descriptions—notably in the prison scenes towards the end— shows that in human feeling and real social insight alike Goldsmith was ahead of most of the professional preachers and teachers of his time. The novel had been didactic in the hands of his predecessors, but he made it directly humanitarian."
2. Henry Mackenzie (1745-1831)
He belongs to the sentimental school. He was influenced by Sterne. Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling (1771) shows the influence of Sterne's loose structure. It is from beginning to end a perfect welter of tears. The exaggerated morbid emotionalism in the book connects it with the "graveyard school" of the precursors of the romantic movement.
3. William Godwin (1756-1836)
He wrote Caleb Williams or Things As They Are (1794) in order to give "a general review of the modes of domestic and unrecorded despotism by which man becomes the destroyer of man."
4. Miss Fanny Burney (1752-1842)
Fanny Burney, the first of the women novelists, is an important figure in the history of English novel. She wrote four novels: Evelina (1778), Cecilia (1782), Camilla (1796) and The Wanderer (1814) but her fame rests mainly on the first two. She has successfully created the novel of domestic life. She was endowed with considerable narrative faculty and a great zest for life. In Evelina the novelist reverts to the epistolary method of Richardson, and in broad humour it follows the tradition of Fielding and Smollett, but without their coarseness. Commenting on her contribution to English novel, Hudson writes: "At the same time, as the first novel in which a woman wrote of life quite frankly from the woman's point of view, it was really a new thing. We may, therefore, regard Miss Burney as the founder of the "tea-table school" of fiction." Her heroines, Evelina and Cecilia are of the family of Clarissa, both are a bit prudish, overscrupulous, oversensitive. Her characters, both men and women are drawn from nature, but not from life. They embody a dominant passion or peculiarity. She has presented a large "gallery of striking portraits, the best of which are convincing and amusing caricatures of the Dickensian type. Her observation of life was keen and close, and her descriptions of society are in a delightfully satirical vein, in many ways like that of Jane Austen." (Edward Albert)
The Revival of Romance
The eighteenth century novel from Richardson to Miss Burney was, on the whole, conceived on realistic lines. It presented an authentic and veritable picture of man and manners. Towards the close of the century the novel, like poetry, showed signs of change, as it began to exhibit romantic tendencies. During the transitional period, as we have already seen while discussing poetry, return to nature, absorption in the remote in time and space, especially in the Middle Ages, revelling in the emotions of awe and wonder and emphasis on the individual and his defence against society became the marked literary characteristics. The dew interest in nature made scenic descriptions or landscape an important element in novel. The interest in the past brought into being a new type of fiction, the Gothic, which may be called the prototype of the historical novel.
The Gothic novel or the novel of terror is the peculiar product of the late eighteenth century. It is a new genre of romantic fiction which drew its inspiration from the general revival of interest in medieval life and art, in Gothic castles, in artificial ruins, in Gothic churches and cathedrals. The novelists resorted to the use of ghosts, portents and satanic forces in order to arouse emotions of awe, mystery and terror.
1. Horace Walpole (1717-1797). Just as Bishop Percy's Reliques and Macpherson's Ossian heralded the romantic revival in poetry, so did Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto (1764) proclaim its entrance into fiction. The story is placed in medieval Italy, but the historical background was no integral part of Walpole's plan of fiction. It contains all the paraphernalia of terror and villainy as the ghost, the haunted castle, the villain. Byron called it "the first romance in the language". Moody and Lovett remark: "Walpole gave to the Gothic romance the elements on which it was to thrive for a generation to come —a hero sullied by unmentionable crimes, several persecuted heroines, a castle with secret passages and haunted rooms, and a plentiful sprinkling of supernatural terrors."
2. Mrs. Anne Radcliffe (1764-1832). She was the most popular of terror novelists. She wrote five elaborate romances, of which the most famous are - The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and The Italian (1797). Her stories have well-constructed plots which contain all the elements of medievalism — monks, inquisition, disguises, intrigues, escapes, gloomy castles, clanking chains, and cloaked and saturnine strangers. She displayed "a lively, if undisciplined imagination, and a skilful faculty of depicting wild scenery". She could successfully create an atmosphere of suspense and dread. What distinguishes her as a novelist is the fact that she rationally used the supernatural machinery. Rickett thinks that her novels "influenced Scott, just as Mrs. Radcliffe's picturesque, dark­browed villains reappeared later in Byron's Lara and Manfred."
3. William Beckford (1760-1844). He wrote The History of the Caliph Vathek (1786), which deals with the mysteries of oriental necromancy. In 1782, he wrote in French an Vathek, an Arabian tale, which was translated without his consent in England. Beckford succeeds in conveying a rich impression of oriental magnificence and splendour combined with unchecked sensuality. His horrors are drawn with greater power than those of Walpole or Mrs. Radcliffe. Satire mingles with sensation in his fiction.
4. Matthew Lewis (1775-1818). Lewis' The Monk is the crudest terror novel. He does not rationalise his horrors. He piles horrors upon horrors. Magic and witchcraft were to him congenial matters for the business of fiction. Lewis says: "A ghost or a witch is a sine qua non of all the dishes of which I mean to compose my hobgoblin repast."
5. Other Novelists of the Gothic School. Miss Clara Reeve (1729-1807) is remembered for Old English Baron (1777). It is a Gothic story in which the novelist successfully creates romantic interest with machinery less violent and implausible than that which Walpole had employed. She laid the scene of her story in the England of Henry VI. Rickett observes: "Miss Reeve thought to improve upon the original and economised with her supernatural effects; but she only succeeded in exceeding Walpole's tale in its tedium, repeating most of his absurdities and showing even less acquaintance with medieval life."
Maturina is remembered for his romance, The Fatal Revenge (1807) and Melmoth, the Wanderer (1820). The latter has a well patterned structure. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the wife of the great poet, wrote Frankenstein (1817) which is the only novel of the terror which is still famous. It is the story of the ravages of man-made monster equivalent to the modern robot. It may be considered the first work of science fiction and the last one of the terror school.
Thus, at the close of the eighteenth century, we find "three types of fiction. In addition to the realistic novel, which dealt with social life and manners, there was the romance, which represented the purely emotional interest in nature and in the past, and the humanitarian novel, which seriously undertook to right the wrongs sustained by the individual at the hands of society. These three types, to paint life to escape from life, and to make life better, have defined three schools, the realists, the romanticists, and the social novelists, which have continued, with innumerable cross divisions, until the presnt time." (Moody and Lovett)
DRAMA
The Age of Johnson was unaccountably poor in drama. It was an age of sentimental comedy which was based on cheap sentimentalism and defeated the very purpose of comedy. Goldsmith and Sheridan, the true dramatists, reacted against the sentimental comedy and tried to restore it to its real comic spirit.
The Sentimental Comedy. The sentimental comedy catered to the needs and tastes of the middle-class audiences. With the end of the Stuart rule there set in a sweeping reaction against the licentiousness and immoral tone of the comedy of manners—the reaction which was spearheaded by the sober and literary section of the middle class. Jeremy Collier in his pamphlet A Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage (1698) voiced the middle-class uneasiness and concern at the grossness and vulgarity of the comedy of manners. This pamphlet paved the way for the change which gradually manifested itself in the advent of sensibility in place of wit and immorality in comedy. The new comedy offered them powerful stories full of pathetic and touching scenes which made them weep for the distress of lovers. In these comedies the course of true love never ran smooth till the lovers were rewarded for their sufferings and constancy in the last scene. This type of comedy had two conspicuous features—first, an excessive display of sensibility by the chief characters and, secondly, the strong homiletic strain in their utterances. Nicoll remarks: "In the place of laughter they sought tears; in the place of gallants and witty damsels, pathetic damsels and serious lovers." Sentimental comedy, though it occupied the stage for more than half a century, did not give any memorable work because it lacked wit, humour, verbal dexterity and skill in characterisation which are essential to great comedy.
Steele's The Conscious Lovers (1722), Hugh Kelly's False Delicacy (1768) and Richard Cumberland's The West Indian (1771) are regarded as the best examples of the sentimental comedy: In sentimental comedy tears took the place of laughter; melodramatic and distressing situations that of intrigue, pathetic heroines and serious lovers and honest servants that of rogues and gallants and witty damsels. Nicoll says that in the sentimental comedy "we are in the world of drama, not of comedy: in the realm of emotions, not of the intellect."
Reaction to the Sentimental Comedy. The popularity of the sentimental comedy was not to continue long. Goldsmith and Sheridan pioneered the anti-sentimental movement. Nicoll writes about their contribution: "Goldsmith endeavours to revive the spirit of As You Like It, where Sheridan strives to create another Way of the World."
(i) Oliver Goldsmith (1728-74). Goldsmith first took up the cudgels against the sentimental comedy in 1759, when he wrote an essay The Present State of Polite Learning in which he attacked the sentimental dramatists of the day. In another essay On the Theatre, or .A Comparison Between Laughing and Sentimental Comedy (1772), Goldsmith started with the classical formula that tragedy represented the misfortunes of the great, and comedy the frailties of humbler people. In accordance with this classical principle the sentimental comedy had no place in dramatic literature. In the preface to his anti-sentimental comedy The Good Natured Man (1768) Goldsmith exposes the hollowness of the sentimental comedy. It contains two absolutely new characters— Croaker and Lolly but it could not change the atmosphere.
Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer (1773) approaches in atmos­phere "more closely to Shakespeare's romantic comedy, which, it may be noted, after about 1735, had rapidly come into an esteem which it had not enjoyed since the early seventeenth century. There breathes over the play an atmosphere of romantic sentiment—not the sentimentalism of Goldsmith's contemporaries, but a peculiar union of emotion and intellect which colours the figures and words of Hardcastle and of Tony Lumpkin and of Diggory alike." It contains the immortal character of Tony Lumpkin who is the source of laughter and the spirit of true jollity and mirth_ Rickett writes: "Goldsmith's Good Natured Man is excellent in parts; She Stoops to Conquer excellent throughout, with a bright, whimsical humour and a fresh charm of dialogue not attained since the days of Congreve. Less witty than the Restoration dramatists, Goldsmith is greatly superior in his humanity and taste."
(ii) R. B. Sheridan (1751-1816). Sheridan sought to revive the spirit and atmosphere of the comedy of manners, especially those of Congreve. His prose comedyRivals (1774) had an enormous success. It was followed by a farce St. Patrick's Day, or The Scheming Lieutenant (1775) and an operatic play, The Duenna (1775). His best play The School For Scandal appeared in 1777. It contains his best character, Lady Teazle, and in it his dialogue is at his most brilliant. His last play The Critic, or A Tragedy Rehearsed (1779) is a very telling attack on the popular sentimental drama. It has been called the best burlesque of the age.
Sheridan's prose comedies revive the brilliant spirit of the Restoration comedies but without the immorality of the Restoration plays. We see the polite world of fashion, but Sheridan makes its vices appear foolish by exaggerating them in humorous portraiture. The plots are ingenious and effective, though they depend largely on a stagy complexity of intrigue. He has created some immortal characters — Mrs. Malaprop, Bob Acres, Sir Anthony Absolute, Faulkland and Sir Fretful Plagiary. All of them are drawn with admirable skill. The dialogue is brilliant in its picturesque, epigrammatic repartee. The plays are remarkable for their vivacity and charm.
After Goldsmith and Sheridan no comedies of any lasting merit were written for the stage until two more Irish dramatists Oscar Wilde and G. B. Shaw revitalised the classic concept of comedy again in the later part of the nineteenth century.
Tragedy: Tragedy comes off worst of all. Johnson's Irene (1749), John Home's Douglas (1756) and Joanna Baillie's blank verse tragedies Count Basil (1798) and De Monfort (1798) have little literary importance.