A History of English Prose Fiction by Bayard Tuckerman

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[Footnote 57: Paine's "History of English Literature," book iii, ch. 1.]

[Footnote 58: Nichol's "Progresses," vol. I, p. 3.]

[Footnote 59: The Italian tales were issued in various collections,
such as Painter's "Palace of Pleasure," Whetstone's "Heptameron," the
"Histories" of Goulard and Grimstone. One of the best of these
collections is "Westward for Smelts," by Kinde Kit of Kingstone, circa
1603, reprinted by the Percy Society. It is on the same plan as
Boccaccio's "Decamerone," except that the story-tellers are fish-wives
going up the Thames in a boat. Imitations of the Italian tales may be
found in Hazlitt's "Shakespeare's Library," notably "Romeo and
Julietta." Most of these are modernized versions of old tales. I may
here add, as undeserving further mention, such stories as "Jacke of
Dover's Quest of Inquirie," 1601, Percy Soc.; "A Search for Money," by
William Rowley, dramatist, 1609, Percy Soc.; and "The Man in the Moone,
or the English Fortune-Teller," 1609, Percy Soc.]

[Footnote 60: The most comprehensive remarks on Lyly and "Euphues" are
to be found in the _London Quarterly Review_ for April, 1801, and are
due to Mr. Henry Morley.]

[Footnote 61: Henry Peacham, "Compleat Gentleman." See Drake's
"Shakespeare and his Times."]

[Footnote 62: Shakespeare ridiculed the affectations of contemporary
language in "Love's Labour Lost." Among the characters of Ben Jonson
are some good Euphuists. In "Every Man out of his Humour," Fallace says
(act v, sc. x), "O, Master Brisk, as 'tis said in Euphues, Hard is the
choice, when one is compelled, either by silence to die with grief, or
by speaking to live with shame." In "The Monastery," a novel which the
author himself considered a failure, Sir Walter Scott represented a
Euphuist. But the language of Sir Piercie Shafton is entirely devoid of
the characteristics of Euphuism, and gives a very false impression
concerning it. (See introduction to "The Monastery.") Compare passages
quoted in the text with one in chap. xiv ("Monastery") beginning: "Ah,
that I had with me my Anatomy of Wit." Also _passim_.]

[Footnote 63: The lines quoted from the "Winter's Tale" are in act iv,
sc. 3. For Greene's words see "Dorastus and Fawnia," in Hazlitt's
"Shakespeare's Library," part I, vol. 4, p. 62. The resemblance between
the two passages is pointed out by Dunlop ("History of Fiction," p.
404). Collier in his introduction to "Dorastus and Fawnia" denied this
obligation of Shakespeare to Greene. But he was evidently led into this
error by liking the following passage, instead of the one quoted in the
text, for the foundation of Shakespeare's lines: "The gods above
disdaine not to love women beneathe. Phoebus liked Sibilla: Jupiter Io;
and why not I, then Fawnia?"]

[Footnote 64: Another of Greene's tales, possessing much the same
merits and the same defects as those already mentioned is "Never too
Late."]

[Footnote 65: Shakespeare's Celia.]

[Footnote 66: Act I, sc. 3.]

[Footnote 67: "Miscellanea," part ii, essay iv.]

[Footnote 68: Gray's "Life of Sidney," p. 8.]

[Footnote 69: "Pierce Penniless."]

[Footnote 70: Folio, 1622. p. 6.]

[Footnote 71: Folio, 1622, p. 10.]

[Footnote 72: Folio, p. 130.]

[Footnote 73: Folio, p. 115.]

[Footnote 74: Folio, p. 260.]

[Footnote 75: See an "Answer in 'Eikon Basilike,'" Milton's Works,
Symmons' ed., v. 2, p. 408.]

[Footnote 76: Folio, p. 248.]

[Footnote 77: Folio, p. 116.]

[Footnote 78: Folio, p. 231.]

[Footnote 79: Book iii.]

[Footnote 80: "Morte d'Arthur," book x, chap. 12.]

[Footnote 81: A Scotchman named Barclay published a partly political
and partly heroic volume called "Argenis" in 1621. It was much
commended by Cowper the poet, but being written in Latin, is hardly to
be included in English fiction. See Dunlop, chap. x. Francis Godwin
wrote a curious story about 1602, called "The Man in the Moon," in
which is described the journey of one Domingo Gonzales to that planet.
Dunlop ("Hist. of Fiction") thought Domingo to be the real author. See
chapter xiii. This romance is chiefly remarkable for its scientific
speculations, and the adoption by the author of the Copernican theory.
It was translated into French, and imitated by Cyrano de Bergerac, who
in his turn was imitated by Swift in Brobdignag. See Hallam, "Lit. of
Europe," vol 3, p. 393.]

CHAPTER IV.

THE PURITANS. BUNYAN'S "PILGRIM'S PROGRESS."

I.

The renaissance of learning, with its delight in a sense of existence,
its enjoyment of a new life, a newly acquired knowledge, and a
quickened intelligence, was gradually supplanted by that renaissance of
religion which followed the general introduction of the Bible among the
English people. Weary of the oppression of the clergy, weary of giving
an often ruinous obedience to the tyranny of men whose lives gave them
no claim to control the conduct of others, the early Puritan found in
the Bible the knowledge of God and the means of grace which he
despaired of obtaining from the priest. The Bible became in reality
_The Book_. It was the one volume possessed and read by the people at
large. The classical authors, the volumes of translations issued in
Elizabeth's time, the productions, even, of English genius had been
familiar only to the upper and best-educated classes. The great body of
the people were without books, and the Bible became their one literary
resource, and the sole teacher of the conditions by which salvation
could be attained. It was seized upon with extraordinary avidity and
enthusiasm. Old men learned to read, that they might study it for
themselves. Crowds gathered in churches and private houses to hear it
read aloud. A good reader became a public benefactor. Alike in manor
and in cottage, the family gathered at night to listen with awe-struck
interest to the solemn words whose grandeur was not yet lessened by
familiarity. As we quote, often unconsciously, from a hundred different
authors, the Puritans quoted from their one book.[82] Some, like
Bunyan, at first preferred the historical chapters. But the Bible soon
came to have a far more powerful and absorbing interest than any of a
literary nature. There men looked for their sentence of eternal life or
eternal torment. There they sought the solution of the question: "What
shall I do to be saved?" And they sought it with all the fervor of
conscientious men who realized, as we cannot realize, the doctrine of
eternal damnation. To understand the influence of the Bible, we must
remember how completely men believed in a personal God, ruling England
then, as He had ruled Israel of old; and in a devil who stalked through
the world luring men to their perdition. The Bible was studied with a
fearful eagerness for the way to please the one and to escape the
other. Looked upon as the word of God, pointing out the only means of
salvation, men placed themselves, through the Bible, in direct
communication with the Deity, and, casting aside the authority of a
church, acknowledged responsibility to Him alone. The difficulty of
interpreting obscure portions of the Scriptures drove many to frenzy
and despair. A hopeful or consoling passage was hailed with joy. "Happy
are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." "Lo," wrote Tyndale,
"here God hath made a covenant wyth us, to mercy full unto us, yf we
wyll be mercy full one to another."

Thus two ideas became paramount: the idea of God, and the idea of
conscience. God was thought of as a judge who will reward His chosen
servants by eternal happiness, but who will deliver those who do not
know Him, or those who sin against His laws, to Satan and everlasting
fire; a God to please whom is the first object of this life, as no
pleasure and no pain here can compare with the pleasure or pain to
come. This conception of the Deity still survives among us, but it is
not realized with the intensity of men who feel the hand of God in
every incident of their lives, who fancy that the Devil in person is
among them, and who distinctly hear his tempting words. Conscience, the
guide who pointed out the path of rectitude, became strict and
self-searching, ever looking inwardly, and judging harshly, magnifying,
through the greatness of its ideal of virtue, every failing into a
crime. The natural result of these ideas seething in a brain which had
little other food was Puritanism: the subordination of all other
interests of life to the attainment of a spiritual condition acceptable
in the sight of God. Following this aim with feverish intentness, and
tortured by a conscience of extreme tenderness, the Puritans naturally
cast aside the pleasures of this life as likely to interfere with the
attainment of future happiness, and as worthless compared to it. It was
no time for gaiety and trifling when the horrors of hell were staring
them in the face.

There is extant a life-like picture of a London housewife, which can
teach us much regarding the spirit of Puritanism.[83] "She was very
loving and obedient to her parents, loving and kind to her husband,
very tender-hearted to her children, loving all that were godly, much
misliking the wicked and profane. She was a pattern of sobriety unto
many, very seldom was seen abroad, except at church. When others
recreated themselves, at holidays and other times, she would take her
needlework, and say, 'here is my recreation.'"

The self-denial of this virtuous housewife developed into that
austerity which, when Puritanism had become the ruling power in
England, closed the theatre and the bear-garden, stopped the dancing on
the village green, and assumed a dress and manner, the sombreness of
which was meant to signify a scorn of this world. While we can now
easily perceive the mistakes of the Puritans, and condemn the folly of
prohibiting innocent amusements which form a natural outlet for
exuberant spirits, it will be well if we can do justice to the nobility
of aim, and the greatness of self-sacrifice, to which their austerity
was due. We must remember that the aim of the Puritans was a godliness
far more exacting than that which we seek, and requiring a
proportionate sacrifice of immediate pleasure. We must remember, too,
that the amusements of that time were in large part brutal, like the
bear-gardens; and licentious, like most of the theatres. Puritanism
could only exist among men filled to an uncommon degree with a love of
virtue, who were ready to undergo every hardship, and to sacrifice
every personal inclination to attain it. Growing up among the people at
large, Puritanism showed a strong national love of religion and
morality. The resolution with which its devotees pursued their aims,
the serene content with which the martyrs welcomed the flames which
were to open the gates of Heaven, were backed by a strength of faith
not exceeded by that of the early Christians. The self-control and
self-sacrifice of the Puritans moulded the armies of the Commonwealth,
and overthrew the tyranny of Charles. But their finer qualities were
clouded by the fanaticism which a long persecution had engendered. A
phrase in our description of the London housewife unconsciously tells
the story: "Loving all that were godly, much misliking the wicked and
profane." The godly were the sharers of her own faith, the "wicked and
profane" were all those without its pale. Here lay the weakness of
Puritanism: its narrowness, its lack of sympathy with the world at
large, its indifference to the sufferings of those who had no place in
the ranks of the elect.

Among such men we must look in vain for literary productions having the
aim of entertainment. The literature of the time was chiefly polemical,
and commentaries crowded on the book-shelves the volumes of classical
and Italian writers. To Puritanism, fiction was the invention of the
Evil One, but still to Puritanism we owe, what is now, and seems
destined ever to remain, the finest allegory in the English language.

[Footnote 82: See Green's "Short History of the English People," chap.
viii, sec. 1.]

[Footnote 83: John Wallington's description of his mother. Green's
"Short History of the English People," p. 451.]

II.

That John Bunyan, a poor, illiterate tinker, was able to take the first
place among writers of allegory, and to accomplish the extraordinary
intellectual feat of producing a work which charmed alike the ignorant,
who could not perceive its literary merits, and cultivated critics, who
viewed it only from a literary standpoint, depended partly on his own
natural gifts, and partly on the character of Puritan thought. To write
a good allegory requires an imagination of unusual power. It requires,
in addition, a realization of the subject sufficiently strong to give
to immaterial and shadowy forms a living personality. These conditions
were combined in Bunyan's case to an unexampled degree. He possessed an
imagination the activity of which would have unsettled the reason of
any less powerfully constituted man. His subject, the doctrine of
salvation by grace, was, by the absorbing interest then attached to it,
impressed upon his mind with a vividness difficult to conceive. In
"Grace Abounding in the Chief of Sinners," Bunyan left a description of
his life, and the workings of his mind on religious subjects, which is
without a parallel in autobiography. The veil which hides the thoughts
of one man from another is withdrawn, and the reader is placed in the
closest communion with the mind of the writer. In "Grace Abounding" is
easily detected the secret of Bunyan's success in allegory. "My sins
did so offend the Lord, that even in my childhood He did scare and
affright me with fearful dreams, and did terrify me with dreadful
visions. I have been in my bed greatly afflicted, while asleep, with
apprehensions of devils and wicked spirits, who still, as I then
thought, labored to draw me away with them, of which I could never be
rid. I was afflicted with thoughts of the Day of Judgment, night and
day, trembling at the thoughts of the fearful torments of hell fire."
One Sunday, "as I was in the midst of a game at cat, and having struck
it one blow from the hole, just as I was about to strike it the second
time, a voice did suddenly dart from heaven into my soul, which said,
'Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to Heaven, or have thy sins and go to
Hell?' At this I was put to an exceeding maze; wherefore leaving my cat
on the ground, and looking up to Heaven, saw, as with the eyes of my
understanding, Jesus Christ looking down upon me very hotly displeased
with me, and severely threatening me with some grievous punishment for
my ungodly practices. * * * I cannot express with what longing I cried
to Christ to call me. I saw such glory in a converted state that I
could not be contented without a share therein. Had I had a whole world
it had all gone ten thousand times over for this, that my soul might
have been in a converted state." After Bunyan's conversion he says of
his conscience: "As to the act of sinning, I was never more tender than
now. I durst not take up a pin or a stick, though but so big as a
straw, for my conscience now was sore, and would smart at every touch.
I could not tell how to speak my words for fear I should misplace
them."

A man so sensitive to supernatural impressions could realize them as
completely as the actual experiences of his daily life. Such, in fact,
they were. With a conscience so tender, and a longing so intense for
what he considered a condition of grace, Bunyan described the journey
of Christian with the minuteness and fidelity of one who had trod the
same path. The sketch of the pilgrim, which opens the work, stamps
Christian at once an individual.

As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a
certain place where was a den; and I laid me down in that place to
sleep; and as I slept, I dreamed a dream. I dreamed, and behold, I
saw a man clothed with rags, standing in a certain place, with his
face from his own house, a Book in his hand, and a great burden
upon his back. I looked, and saw him open the Book, and read
therein; and, as he read, he wept and trembled; and not being able
longer to contain, he broke out with a lamentable cry, saying "what
shall I do?"

The same impression of reality pervades the whole work. Christian's
sins take an actual form in the burden on his back. Every personage
whom he meets on his journey, and every place through which he passes
appears to the mind of the reader with the vividness of actual
experience. The child or the laborer reads the "Pilgrim's Progress" as
a record of adventures undergone by a living man; the scholar forgets
the art which has raised the picture before his mind, in a sense of
contact with the subject portrayed. This is the triumph of a great
genius, and it is a triumph to which no other writer has attained to
the same degree. Other allegorists have pleased the fancy or gratified
the understanding, but Bunyan occupies at once the imagination, the
reason and the heart of his reader. Defoe's power of giving life to
fictitious scenes and personages has not been surpassed by that of any
other novelist. But Defoe's scenes and characters were of a nature
familiar to his readers, and therefore easily realized. In the
"Pilgrim's Progress," strange and unreal regions become well-known
places, and moral qualities distinct human beings. Evangelist, who puts
Christian on the way to the Wicked Gate; Pliable, who deserts him at
the first difficulty; Help, who pulls him out of the Slough of Despond;
Mr. Worldly Wiseman, who shows him an easy way to be rid of his burden,
are all life-like individuals. Timorous, Talkative, Vain Confidence,
Giant Despair, are not mere personifications, but distinct human beings
with whom every reader of the "Pilgrim's Progress" feels an intimate
acquaintance. Not less real is the impression produced by the various
scenes through which the journey of Christian conducts him. The Slough
of Despond, the Wicket Gate, the House of the Interpreter, the Hill
Difficulty, have been familiar localities to many generations of men,
who have watched Christian's struggle with Apollyon in the Valley of
Humiliation, and followed his footsteps as they trod the Valley of the
Shadow of Death, as they passed through the dangers of Vanity Fair,
and brought him at last to the Celestial City, and the welcome of the
Shining Ones.

The "Pilgrim's Progress" and the "Holy War" are not as allegories
entirely perfect, but they probably gain in religious effect, as much
as they lose from a literary point of view, in those passages where the
allegorical disguise is not sustained. The simplicity and power of
their language are alone sufficient to give them an important place in
English literature. Throughout the "Pilgrim's Progress" are evidences
of a strong human sympathy, and a kindly indulgence on the part of the
author for the weak and erring among his fellow-men. Ignorance, to be
sure, is cast into the bottomless pit; but as the work taught a
spiritual perfection, it could not afford to encourage the willingly
ignorant by bestowing a pardon on their representative. Bunyan himself
was distinguished for a general sympathy with his fellow-men which the
narrowness of Puritanism had failed to impair. The sad words in which
he mourned, while in prison, his long separation from his wife and
children, show the natural tenderness of his disposition, as well as
the greatness of the sacrifice which he was making for his
religion:--"The parting with my wife and poor children hath often been
to me in this place as the pulling the flesh from my bones; and that
not only because I am somewhat too fond of these great mercies, but
also because I often brought to mind the many hardships, miseries, and
wants that my poor family was like to meet with; especially my poor
blind child, who lay nearer to my heart than all I had beside."

With the allegories of Bunyan, we leave ideality behind us as a
characteristic feature of English fiction. The knights of the Round
Table, Robin Hood and his merry men, the princes and princesses of the
"Arcadia," the pilgrim Christian, were the ideal heroes of the
particular periods to which they belong. They were placed amid the
scenes which seemed most attractive, and were endowed with the
qualities which seemed most admirable to the men whose imaginations
created them. But, with the exception perhaps of Robin Hood, they were
purely ideal, without prototypes in nature. The writer of fiction had
not yet turned his attention to the delineation of character, to the
study of complex social questions, to the portrayal of actual life.
With the fall of Puritan power, begins a great intellectual change.
History shows, since the Restoration, a tendency which has continuously
grown stronger and wider, to subordinate the imagination to the reason
of man, to withdraw political and social questions from the influence
of mere tradition, to subject them instead, to the test of practical
experience, and to encourage the patient physical investigations which
have resulted in the triumphs of modern science. This tendency has
pervaded all the channels of human industry. Its effect upon works of
fiction has been to introduce into that department of literature, a
spirit of realism, and a love of investigating the problems of life and
character, which have resulted in the modern novel. Henceforth we shall
meet no more ideal beings, but men or women, more or less true to
nature. In the fiction of the Restoration are first observable the new
tendencies, which, although but slightly marked at first, have finally
given to the English novel its present importance. An attempt to trace
the gradual perfection of this form of literature, its development into
a work of art, into a natural history of men, into a truthful
reflection of very varied social conditions, will occupy the remainder
of this volume.

CHAPTER V.

THE RESTORATION. ROGER BOYLE. MRS. MANLEY. MRS. BEHN.

I.

The Puritans had overthrown the political tyranny of Charles, but in
attempting to build up by force a kingdom of the saints on earth, they
had established a spiritual tyranny, quite as irksome and quite as
perishable, of their own. Meanwhile they had failed to preserve the
reputation for sanctity which formed the chief basis of their
authority. As soon as they had attained power, they were joined by men
who professed their principles merely for selfish purposes; who vied
with each other in presenting to the world the outward signs of
Puritanism, and remained notoriously profligate in life and character.
The kingdom of the saints, objectionable as a tyranny, and finally
identified in the popular mind with a hated hypocrisy, came to its
inevitable end in the reaction of the Restoration. But when the first
fury of this reaction had passed away, it was evident that Puritanism
survived it: no longer a political power, but a moral influence which
controlled the great body of the people, and gave to English habits and
literature their distinctive tone of serious morality.

But for the time, all sight of this was lost. The entry of Charles II
into Whitehall was the sign for unlimited indulgence in all that had
lately been forbidden. "Chassez le naturel, il revient au galop."[84]
The Puritans had pent up for so long the natural cravings for pleasure
and gaiety, that, when the barriers were withdrawn, license and
debauchery were necessary to satisfy appetites which a long-enforced
abstinence had made abnormal. In Vanburgh's "Provoked Wife," a comedy,
like so many others of the time, at once very immoral and very
entertaining, Sir John Brute thus excuses the virtues of his early
life: "I was afraid of being damned in those days; for I kept sneaking,
cowardly company, fellows that went to church, said grace to their
meat, and had not the least tincture of quality about them."
_Heartfree_: "But I think you have got into a better gang now." _Sir
John_: "Zoons, sir, my Lord Rake and I are hand in glove."[85] In the
country, people were generally satisfied with getting back their
May-poles and Sunday games. But in London, where the rule of Puritanism
had been the strictest, and above all among the courtiers, the new
liberty resulted in a license and shamelessness unequalled in English
history.

In the general proscription of Puritan ideas, the good were involved in
the same destruction as the bad. Religion was mocked at as a cloak for
hypocrisy, self-restraint was thrown aside as an obstacle to enjoyment.
It was thought that emancipation from Puritan tyranny could not be
attained more effectually than by a life of open licentiousness; by
gambling and drunkenness. Such, under the Restoration, were the
occupations most attractive to the gentlemen of fashion. Buckingham,
Rochester, and the troop of courtiers who looked to them for an
example, spent their lives in sinking into an ever deeper depravity.
Their thoughts and mouths were never clean. The verses they wrote are
too foul to transcribe as an illustration of the taste of their
composers. The orgies in which they indulged were not scenes of gaiety,
in which buoyant spirits and lively wit might excuse excess, but were
serious, bestial, and premeditated. The dealings of these men with the
female sex were but a succession of low intrigues, which destroyed all
sentiment and left nothing but disgust behind them. We hear a great
deal about "love" in the literature of the time, but it is the same
kind of love that might be found among a herd of cattle. It would be
difficult to mention any man about the court of Charles II who could
have appreciated the pure and enduring passion which in the century
before had breathed through the noble lines of Spenser's
"Epithalamion," and in the century that followed inspired "John
Anderson, my jo' John." Charles himself, "the old goat," set an example
which hardly needed the authority of the Lord's anointed to become
attractive. Without honor or virtue himself, and denying their
existence in others, he made a fitting leader of the society about him.
His mistresses insulted the queen by their splendor and arrogance, and
insulted him by amours with servants and mountebanks. So destitute of
dignity or principle as to share the Duchess of Cleveland with the
world, he coolly asked a courtier who was reputed to be on too intimate
terms with the queen, how his "mistress" did. While the gaming-tables
at court were nightly covered with gold, and Lady Castlemaine gambled
away thousands of pounds at a sitting, the exchequer was closed amid a
widespread ruin, and the menial servants about the court were in want
of bread. So openly was the king's coarse licentiousness pursued, that
"the very sentrys speak of it," that the queen rarely entered her
dressing-rooms without first being assured that the king was not there
with one of his women. Such an example had a powerful influence upon
all the rank and fashion of the time, already predisposed to a similar
course. The extent of the prevailing reverence for royalty is admirably
illustrated by the scene in which the Earl of Arlington advised Miss
Stewart concerning her conduct as mistress of the king, to which
position "it had pleased God and her virtue to raise her." Thus from
the popular dislike of Puritanism, and the example of a profligate
court, began that reign of social and political corruption which for a
hundred years demoralized the manners and sullied the literature of the
English people. The vice which became so engrafted on the habits of
private life as to make decency seem an affectation, invaded religion
and politics. To religion it brought about a general indifference,
which in the higher ranks of the clergy took effect in disregard of
their duties and in a shameless scramble for lucrative posts, and in
the lower ranks produced poverty and social degradation. In politics
are to be dated from this reign the gross corruption which enabled
every public officer, however high or however low, to use his position
for the purpose of private plunder, and the habit of bribing members of
Parliament which soon converted them into tools of the crown's
ministers.

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