No More Learning

2


## p. 61 (#87) ##############################################

a
Horace Walpole. Clara Reeve 61
were to change it out of all knowledge. The book, as Walpole
himself tells us, was written in conscious reaction against the domes-
ticities and the sentiment of Richardson. It was a deliberate attempt
to divert fiction from the channel along which it had hitherto flowed;
to transport it from the sphere of close observation to that of
free invention; to substitute for the interest of the present that
of the past, the world of experience by that of the mysterious and
the supernatural. The performance is bungling; but the design is
in a high degree original and fruitful. It was, in fact, so original
that, as sometimes happens in such cases, Walpole himself took
fright at his own boldness. He is at the pains to explain that, all
appearances to the contrary, his heart is still half with the novel
of every-day life. 'It was not so much my intention to recall the
glories of ancient romance as to blend the wonderful of old stories
with the natural of modern novels? . ' And he appeals, in proof of
his sincerity, to Matilda's avowal of her passion for Theodore. We
are not bound to take him at his word. He may, with more kind-
ness, be regarded as a whole-hearted rebel, who led the forlorn
hope in a cause which, years after, had its day of triumph. It is
that which makes The Castle of Otranto a marked book-even more
marked perhaps for its ultimate bearing on foreign literature than
on our own.
Clara Reeve, to whom we now pass, led an entirely uneventful
life (1729-1807), marked only by the publication of various tales,
of which The Old English Baron has alone survived, and by her
friendship with Mrs Brigden, Richardson's daughter, who revised
that work in its earlier shape, The Champion of Virtue.
If there is some doubt about the intentions of Walpole, about
those of Clara Reeve, his successor and disciple, there is none
whatever. The Old English Baron (1777)-it had been published
earlier in the same year as The Champion of Virtue, a Gothic
Tale-is undeniably what The Castle of Otranto professes to be,
'an attempt to unite the merits and graces of the ancient Romance
and of the modern Novel. ' There is 'a sufficient degree of the
.
marvellous,' in the shape of a ghost, 'to excite attention ; enough
of the manners of real life,' or what passes for such, 'to give an air
of probability; and enough of the pathetic'-in the form of a
love-story, with an interesting peasant, who turns out to be son and
heir of the ghost (a murdered baron), for hero—'to engage the
heart in its behalf. It is quite true that the ingredients of
Otranto, including the irresistible young peasant, were much the
1 Letter to Élie de Beaumont, 18 March 1765.


## p. 62 (#88) ##############################################

62 Sterne, and the Novel of his Times
same.
But they were differently mixed. In Walpole’s book, the
chief appeal was to 'terror' and to the romantic past. In The
Old English Baron, these have sunk into little more than
trimmings. The main stress on the part of the author lies upon a
tale of righteous vengeance and of love. About the use of the mar-
vellous, she is manifestly nervous. She reduces it, therefore, to the
presence of an ordinary ghost, who contents himself with groaning
beneath the floor, by way of instituting proceedings against his
murderer. Even the medieval is a source of some alarm. And,
considering what she makes of it, we can hardly be surprised.
Walpole, absurd as novelist of the crusades—his scene is laid with
delightful vagueness during the century and a half which covered
them—at least contrives to give some faint flavour of the later
middle ages to his characters and their setting. Clara Reeve can
boast of no such success. A trial by combat, her supreme effort
in this direction, is conducted with all the flourishes of forensic
etiquette. The manners of the eighteenth century are transplanted
straight into the fifteenth. The scene may be labelled 'A Feudal
Castle'; in reality, it is the cedar parlour of Miss Byron and
Sir Charles. The Gothic element and the element of terror being
thus disposed of, nothing is left but that which 'engages the heart
on its behalf': the eternal theme of 'virtue rewarded,' of injured
innocence triumphant over treachery and crime. In the com-
promise which the authoress strove to effect, the 'modern Novel'
carries off all the honours; the ancient Romance' is represented
by little beyond garnish and appurtenance.
How far can it be said that the works comprised in the above
group did anything to prepare the way for the historical and
romantic novel, as it was subsequently shaped by Scott? The
answer is : only in the vaguest and most rudimentary sense. The
novel of terror-if by that we understand the terror which springs
from the marvellous and supernatural-has never taken kindly to
English soil. And it is manifest that Scott fought shy of the mar-
vellous as an element of prose fiction. In appealing to terror,
accordingly, neither Walpole nor Clara Reeve did much more than
enter a claim that the borders of the novel might without treason
be enlarged; that the novel was not bound down by the charter
of its being to the presentation of current life in its most obvious
aspects—of buying and selling, of marrying and giving in marriage.
That, if judged by the permanent results, was all; but it was
enough. The appeal to history told in the same direction ; but it
was far more fruitful of results. Walpole, it is true, did not make


## p. 63 (#89) ##############################################

Fanny Burney (Mme d'Arblay)
63
much of it; Clara Reeve still less. But they pointed the way
which, with a thousand modifications suggested by his genius,
Scott was triumphantly to follow. And the very defects of The
Old English Baron may have aided him in the discovery, so often
missed by his successors, that, in the historical novel, the history
is of far less importance than the human interest and the romance.
The earlier and greater Waverleys, in fact, can be called historical
only by a stretch. It was not until Scott had worked for years
upon the near past—a past which still made itself felt as a
living force upon the present—that he plunged into the middle
ages. Moreover, in spite of its stirring adventure, Ivanhoe has
always counted for less with the English reader than with those of
Germany and France.
Frances Burney (1752—1840), the last novelist of note belonging
to our period, was daughter of Dr Burney, the historian of music.
During her youth, and until some years after the publication of
her second novel, Cecilia (1782), she lived in the most brilliant
literary society of her day, including that of Johnson, Mrs Thrale
and Burke. In 1786 she was appointed second keeper of the robes
to queen Charlotte, a post which she held for four years, to her own
great discomfort, but to the delight of those who read her fascinating
Diary. After her release, she married (1793) a French officer of
the name of d’Arblay, one of the emigrants who gathered at
Juniper hall and of whom her Diary contains many striking and
amusing notices. From 1802 to 1812 she lived in France, returning
only to publish her last novel, The Wanderer (1814). The later
years of her life (1815—40) were passed peacefully in England.
With the novels of Fanny Burney we pass into another world.
They stand far nearer to the novel as we know it than anything
which had yet appeared. The picaresque scaffolding, the obtrusive
moral, the deliberate sentiment-much more the marvellous and
the medievalism-of the writers who had immediately gone before
her are thrown to the winds. She sets herself to tell a plain story
-enlivened, doubtless, with strange adventures, with characters
still stranger-and that is all.
Yet in this very simplicity is contained a new and, as time
has proved, a very fruitful conception of what the novel might
achieve. Starting from the general plan laid down by Richardson,
she limits, she adds, she modifies, until the result is something
entirely different. The tragic element is the first to go. This,
with other modifications, leaves her with a story of home life for
the ground-work of her picture. And the introduction of a whole


## p. 64 (#90) ##############################################

64 Sterne, and the Novel of his Times
*
gallery of oddities, dogging the steps of the heroine at every turn,
gives variety, zest and sparkle to what otherwise would have been
a humdrum, and, perhaps, a slightly sentimental, tale. The novel
of home life, it is not too much to say, is the creation of Fanny
Burney. There is a great deal else, and a great deal more
brilliant, in her creations. But it is this that makes them a land-
mark in the history of fiction.
Her method is simplicity itself. Evelina is the 'History of a
young lady's entrance into the world. And the same description
would apply to every one of the stories which followed. Her
unvarying plan is to take a young girl with a virtuous mind, a
cultivated understanding and a feeling heart,' but wholly “ignorant
of the forms and inexperienced in the manners of the world'; to
provide her with a guardian instead of parents and so throw her
on her own resources; to place her in circumstances unusual but
not, except in The Wanderer, unnatural; and, with an inexhaust-
ible fertility of invention, to devise incidents and situations such
as will draw out her character and keep the interest of the reader
on the stretch. In Cecilia, no doubt, she added to this something
of the tragic purpose, the solemn moral, of Richardson; and very
few are likely to regard the addition as an improvement. But, with
this partial exception, her aim was always what has been said; and
she had two gifts which enabled her triumphantly to attain it.
The first is a talent, not easily to be matched among English
novelists, for telling a story; an unaffected delight in telling it,
which wakens a like pleasure in the reader. The second is an
amazing power—a power in which she is surpassed by Dickens
only-of giving flesh and blood to caricature. 'My little character-
monger' was Johnson's pet name for her! ; and, in the sense just
hinted at, she earned it ten times over. With infectious zest, she
adds touch after touch of absurdity to her portrait, until the
reader is fairly swept off his feet by the drollery of the figure
she has conjured up. This particular talent is, no doubt, most
conspicuous in her earliest two works, Evelina (1778) and Cecilia
(1782). But it flashes out often enough in Camilla (1796) and, on
occasion, even in The Wanderer (1814). In all this gallery of
'humourists' the most laughable is Mr Briggs, the ill-bred but not
unkindly skinflint of Cecilia. But he is hard run by the Branghtons,
i The story is told in the dedication to The Wanderer. There was a party at Lady
Galloway's, shortly after the appearance of Cecilia. “Johnson endeavouring to detain
me when I rose to depart, by calling out“Don't go yet, little character-monger,” Burke
followed, gaily but impressively exclaiming, "Miss Burney, die to-night! ”.


## p. 65 (#91) ##############################################

65
Diary of Mme d'Arblay
still harder perhaps by Mr Smith, the 'gentleman manqué, as
Mrs Thrale called him, of Evelina ; while Sir Hugh Tyrold and
Dr Orkborne, the Admiral, Sir Jasper Herrington and Mr Tedman
keep up the succession not quite unworthily, in the two later
novels. But even to mention instances is to do injustice. For,
after all, the most surprising thing is their unlimited abundance;
the way in which they start up from every corner, from each rung
of the social ladder, at the bidding of the author. For vulgarity,
in particular, she has the eye of a lynx. Right and left, high or
low, she unmasks it with unflagging delight, tearing off the count-
less disguises under which it lurks and holding it up, naked but
not ashamed, to the laughter, and, sometimes, though not often, to
the contempt of the reader. By the side of these lively beings,
the figures of Smollett seem little better than stuffed birds in a
museum.
Spontaneity is among the best gifts of the novelist. And few
novelists are more spontaneous than Fanny Burney. We should
have guessed this from the novels themselves. The Diary', in
some ways a yet greater masterpiece, puts it beyond doubt. It is
evident that all she saw and all she heard presented itself to her
instinctively in dramatic form ; that all the incidents through
which she passed naturally wove themselves into a story-one
might almost say, into a novel-before her eyes. In the Diary,
as in the novels, the two gifts are intertwined beyond possibility of
separation. The observation which enabled her to take in the
passing scene, to seize the distinctive features of every man and
woman she met, may have put the material in her hands. But the
material would have lost half its effect, it would have lost more
than half its charm, if the genius of the born story-teller had not
been there to weave it into a coherent whole, to give it life and
movement. The Diary is a better test of this even than the
novels. The incidents recorded in it are, for the most part, what
might happen to any of us. The men and women it brings before
us are, with some marked exceptions, such as might be met at any
party. Who but themselves would have cared a straw for Miss
Streatfield or M. de Guiffardière, for colonel Blakeney or even the
'sweet Queen'? Yet, through the magic glass of the Diary, each
of them takes distinct form and feature; all have gestures,
mannerisms, gesticulations of their own; and each, without the
smallest effort, fits into a drama as lively as any that could be put
upon the stage. It is, of course, perfectly true, and it is as it should
1 Cf, chap. XI, post.
5
E. L. X.
CH. III.


## p. 66 (#92) ##############################################

66 Sterne,
and the Novel of his Times
be, that, when she has an incident of intrinsic interest to record,
the portrait of a really marked figure to paint, she surpasses
herself. Her portraits of Johnson and Mrs Thrale, of George III
and the French émigrés, are among the best ever drawn. Her
account of the king's madness, of the escape of the duc de Lian-
court, is as good as anything in Saint-Simon or Carlyle. These,
however, were the chances of a lifetime. And it is in her more
level work that her peculiar talent is most readily to be traced.
There we can almost see the portrait growing, the incidents moving
each into its own place, under the hand of the diarist. And we
know that the same process must lie behind the triumphs of the
novelist.
It is an injustice that her last two books, Camilla in particular,
should have been allowed utterly to drop out. The old brilliance
is, doubtless, largely gone. But the more solid qualities remain
almost untouched. There is the old keenness of observation, the
old narrative genius, the old power of contriving ingenious and, in
the main, natural situations. The secondary figures are certainly
less laughable, but that, as Macaulay hints, is largely because they
are less freakish and more human; because their humour is often
next door to pathos and the laughter they call out, to tears. This is
true even of The Wanderer, when we can once forget the grotesque
opening—the writer can think of no better machinery for intro-
ducing her heroine, a beautiful English girl, than the make-up of a
negress-and the woeful touches of grandiloquence--the heroine
is described as a female Robinson Crusoe 'which the authoress
of Evelina would have been the first to laugh out of court. Such
lapses, however, give no fair impression of the book; and, with the
best will in the world, Macaulay has made them bulk for more
than they are worth. Strike out a few paragraphs, and The
Wanderer is not written in jargon '-any more than, with the
exception of a few pages, the language of Cecilia is Johnsonese.
To the end Miss Burney remains what she was at the begin-
ning: a keen observer, a great character-monger,' a supreme
story-teller, the first writer to see that the ordinary embarrass-
ments of a girl's life would bear to be taken for the main theme of
a novel. "To her we owe not only Evelina, Cecilia and Camilla,
but also Mansfield Park and The Absentee. When Macaulay
ended his estimate of Miss Burney with these words, he said better
than he knew. He was thinking of her as the first of a long line
of woman novelists. He forgot that the innovation applied not
only to her sex, but to her theme.
6


## p. 67 (#93) ##############################################

CHAPTER IV
THE DRAMA AND THE STAGE
THE term 'eighteenth century English drama' suggests a some-
what arbitrary chronology. Yet it has, perhaps, other justification
than that of convenient reference. The year 1700 marks the
death of Dryden, the dominant figure in restoration drama, and
the retirement of Congreve, its most brilliant comic dramatist.
Etherege, Wycherley, Lee, Otway and many other contemporaries
of Dryden had already passed from the ranks of active dramatists.
The growing protest against the immorality of the drama,
vigorously expressed in Jeremy Collier's invective, A Short View
of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698),
shows that the old order has changed and is soon to yield place
to new
The reign of queen Anne (1702—14) may be regarded, there-
fore, as a period of transition in English drama. Though the
current of restoration comedy still runs strong in the first decade
of the eighteenth century, in Vanbrugh's later works and in
Farquhar's plays, the tide of drama turns with the moralised
comedies of Colley Cibber? and the sentimental dramas of Richard
Steeles. Cibber strove deliberately to moralise the drama. He
ascribed the success of his first comedy to the 'moral Delight
receiv'd from its Fable,' and, in reviewing his own dramatic career,
claimed to have had the Interest and Honour of Virtue always
in view' Imperfect as his ethical standards often appear to
modern critics, there is little reason to question the sincerity of
his intention to reform comedy. To the moral aim of Cibber,
Steele united sentiment. Without the epigrammatic brilliancy of
Congreve or the fertile invention of Farquhar, he sought to sustain
1 Cl. ante, vol. vin, chap. vi, pp. 163 ff.
Ct. ibid. pp. 176—7.
3 Cf. ante, vol. ix, pp. 29-30, 64.
An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber, edited by Lowe, R. W. , vol. I,
Pp. 220, 266.
5-2


## p. 68 (#94) ##############################################

68
The Drama and the Stage
comedy by a different method. If comedy was moralised by
Cibber, it was sentimentalised by Steele.
Meanwhile, tragedy, also, was showing signs of transition. The
heroic drama of the restoration had torn passion to tatters; but
the queen Anne age inclined more toward classical constraint than
toward romantic licence. Even Nicholas Rowe, who, in The Fair
Penitent (1703), followed an Elizabethan model and wrote Jane
Shore (1714) ‘in imitation of Shakespear's style,' shows classical
tendencies in limitation of the number of characters, in restriction
of dramatic action and in rejection of comic relief. His chief
dramas—to use his own phrase, 'she-tragedies '-have an almost
feminine refinement of tone'. In the moralised sentiment with
which they enforce their pathetic appeals there is a close kinship
between the tragedy of Rowe and the comedy of Steele. In
sentimental drama, pity is akin to love.
The conventional critical distinction between tragedy and
comedy should not, then, be unduly pressed. Doubtless, it is
unnecessary to find fault with the term “sentimental comedy,'
which is sanctioned by contemporary usage and actually adopted
by Goldsmith in his attack upon sentimental drama. But it is
important to recognise that the wave of sentiment swept over a
wider field than that of English comedy, or even of English drama.
It invaded the continent. Destouches, whose residence in England
brought him, like Voltaire, into direct contact with English in-
fluences, admitted into several of his later comedies (1727–53) a
serious undertone. Marivaux touched comedy with pathos and
sentiment. Nivelle de la Chaussée, who followed Steele's dictum
that 'laughter's a distorted passion’ more closely than did its
author, developed sentimental comedy into comédie larmoyante.
Voltaire, though by no means ready to permit comedy to forget
her function of mirth, found 'melting pity' admissible. Diderot
drew inspiration from Lillo's moralised bourgeois tragedy. The
very term drame suggests the obliteration of the rigid line
between comedy and tragedy? . In England and on the continent
alike, sentiment tended to break down the barriers of dramatic
convention.
Notwithstanding the far-reaching influence of sentimental
drama, the record of its rise and progress is but part of the
3
1 Cf. ante, vol. VIII, chap. vii, pp. 195—7.
2 Saurin, Epitre Dédicatoire to his drame, Beverlei (1768), declares that he does
not know whether Sedaine's Philosophe sans le Savoir (1765) is tragedy or comedy, but
that it is un drame très beau et très original,
1
'1


## p. 69 (#95) ##############################################

French Classical and Native Influences 69
English dramatic history of the eighteenth century. The queen
Anne period was, essentially, a critical age, which fixed its standards
largely on classical authority. To a very considerable degree, its
playwrights reflect the influence of French classical drama and
dramatic theory. Racine and Corneille were adapted for the
English stage in a whole series of versions? Addison, whose
critical influence was cast in favour of dramatic rule and regularity,
put classical theory so effectively into practice in Cato (1713) that
Voltaire hailed it as the first tragédie raisonnable in English? .
Stimulated by the successes of Ambrose Philips3 and Addison,
other English playwrights turned to classical models and trans-
lated, though often with considerable freedom, such dramas as
Le Cid, Cinna and Iphigénie.
Though the influence of French classical drama and dramatic
standards upon eighteenth century English drama demands
ample recognition, it should not be overestimated. Not even
under queen Anne was the Elizabethan tradition forgotten.
Shakespeare's tragedies, Jonson’s comedies and Beaumont and
Fletcher's romantic plays continued to hold the stage. Rowe
turned freely to Elizabethan models and sought to imitate Shake-
speare's style. Even Addison, a confirmed classicist, in at least one
memorable passage“, treated Shakespeare's genius as above arti-
ficial restraints. English translators of French tragedy sometimes
abated the rigid classical conventions in their adaptations for the
freer English stage. In reality, English drama, even during the
Augustan period, was often an unconscious compromise between
the restraint of French theory and the inherited freedom of
English dramatic practice. Furthermore, the English element in
queen Anne drama is not confined to the survival of Elizabethan
influences. The note of sentiment struck in contemporary comedy
by Steele is perceptible, not merely in the tragedy of Rowe, but,
perhaps, even in classical English drama itself. The triumphs of
Philips and Addison were founded on the distresses of the heroine
and the moralised sentiments of the hero. Despite, then, the domi-
nance of classical standards, queen Anne drama is not a merely
Gallicised product. It is the resultant of English and continental
forces.
If critical survey of the period be broadened so as to include
1 Cf. ante, vol. VIII, chap. VII, pp. 180–1.
2 Cf. ante, vol. ix, chap. II, pp. 63—4,
3 The Distrest Mother (adapted from Racine's Andromaque) was produced in 1712.
• The Spectator, no. 592.


## p. 70 (#96) ##############################################

70
The Drama and the Stage
1
1
the history of the stage as well as of the drama, the dramatic
currents will appear still more complex. Dorset gardens theatre
had catered more and more to the popular demand for spectacle.
Foreign singers and dancers invaded the boards of the patent
theatres. The successful advent of Italian opera made the judicious
Cibber grieve and Steele demand that Britons should 'from foreign
insult save this English stage? ' But even Colley Cibber, sworn
advocate of regular drama, compromised his convictions and, as a
manager, ‘had not Virtue enough to starve by opposing a Multitude
that would have been too hard for me? ' Meanwhile, the attacks
of Collier and his followers were continued, through almost a
generation, until, in 1726, William Law published his treatise,
The Absolute Unlawfulness of the Stage Entertainment fully
demonstrated. Thus, beset by foes without and by rivals within
the theatre, regular drama had fallen on evil days.
To the adverse factors which threatened the ascendancy of
formal tragedy and comedy must be added two theatrical develop-
ments of great significance. The second decade of the eighteenth
century marks the introduction of English pantomime; the
third, that of ballad-opera. The elements of pantomime had long
-
been present on the English stage before John Rich fused them
into an extraordinarily popular type of theatrical entertainment.
Dumb-shows,' introduced as early as Gorboduc, scenic and
mechanical elements in masque and the spectacular accessories
of restoration opera anticipate salient features of Rich's pro-
ductions. Yet, even if Cibber's suggestion be accepted that
the 'original hint' for pantomime is to be found in Weaver's
Drury lane production of The Loves of Mars and Venus
(1717), John Rich was the dominant factor in establishing the
popular type. He had none of Cibber's scruples about catering
to 'the vulgar taste. ' A remarkable mimic, but without the
gift of stage speech, Rich cleverly turned his limitation to
advantage. The speaking barlequin, familiar on the Italian stage
and already introduced on the English, now became dumb; but
Rich made actions speak louder than words. To a theme usually
drawn from fabulous history or classical myth, the pantomime
added the comic courtship of harlequin and columbine, heightening
the effect with spectacular transformations, elaborate scenery and
music. The patent theatres vied with each other in producing
pantomimes; for the receipts from them doubled those from
· Epilogue to The Tender Husband (1705).
* Apology, vol. II, p. 182.
Apology, vol. II, pp. 180 ff.
1
1
3


## p. 71 (#97) ##############################################

6
The Beggar's Opera. Transition
71
regular drama. Henceforth, pantomime had to be numbered as
one of the stock attractions of the eighteenth century stage.
Hardly had pantomime firmly established itself in popular
favour, when Rich produced another formidable rival to regular
drama in John Gay’s Beggar's Opera (1728)". This work marked
the triumph of ballad-opera. "The vast Success of that new
Species of Dramatick Poetry' was, to Colley Cibber, further
proof of the 'vulgar taste' which had already welcomed pantomime.
But the influence of Gay's opera is not confined to its intro-
duction of popular lyrics. In satirising not merely the absurdities
of Italian opera but the conscious moralisings of sentimental
drama, and in providing happy issues out of all the afflictions of
its charmingly pathetic' prison scenes, Gay points towards the
dramatic burlesques of Fielding and Carey. Palpable hits at
Sir Robert Walpole and other politicians of the day open the vein
of social and political satire, worked to the full in Fielding's farces.
The Beggar's Opera, accordingly, holds an important place in
English dramatic annals. Like pantomime, ballad-opera, hence-
forth, must be regarded as a stock attraction of the theatre.
During the Garrick era, its popularity was maintained by many
operas like those of Isaac Bickerstaff, and the initial run of
Sheridan's Duenna surpassed that of The Beggar's Opera.
Even this general survey of those earlier aspects of eighteenth
century drama, which form a necessary background to any account
of its later history, must make it clear that English drama is the
resultant of many forces. So complex, indeed, is the interaction
of these various forces that it is idle to seek to resolve actual
dramatic products exactly into their precise component parts.
Still more futile are attempts to warp the actual facts of dramatic
history into conformity with a rigid preconceived theory of dramatic
evolution. The convenient distinction between tragedy and
comedy, if converted into an arbitrary critical formula, becomes a
stumbling-block to the critic of sentimental drama. To attempt
to explain English classical drama simply from the standpoint of
French classical, or pseudo-classical, theory is to ignore English
influences which directly affected the dramatic practice, and even
the theories, of Voltaire himself. To regard the transition from
the immorality of restoration comedy to the sentimentalised
morality of the eighteenth century as a complete moral regenera-
tion is to forget the frank licence of Mrs Centlivre and the imperfect
ethical standards of even professed moralists like Cibber.
1 Cf. ante, vol. 1x, chap. VI, p. 163.
Apology, vol. 1, pp. 243, 245.
2


## p. 72 (#98) ##############################################

72
The Drama and the Stage
2
Broadly viewed, eighteenth century drama shows decided
reaction from the immorality that provoked the attacks of
Sir Richard Blackmore and Jeremy Collier. Yet, despite many
evidences of an awakening sense of moral responsibility in the
attitude of the court, of society and of administrators of the
law, the conversion of drama was neither sudden nor complete.
Farquhar, whose dramatic work is subsequent to Collier's attack,
maintains, essentially, the spirit of restoration comedy. Even The
Careless Husband, despite Cibber's good intentions, presents the
stock characters of restoration comedy purged of their gross
excesses, doubtless, but yet not wholly chastened in spirit. The
tendencies of earlier comedy are maintained in the dramatic work
of Mrs Centlivre. The sins of various dramatists of her sex
seem to have been visited chiefly upon Mrs Aphra Behn'; but,
though Mrs Centlivre has largely escaped the notoriety of the
'chaste Aphra,' the character of her drama is without fear rather
than without reproach. A certain concession to Collier's charge
that 'the Stage-Poets make their Principal Personages Vicious,
and reward them at the End of the Play,' may, perhaps, be detected
in the fifth-act repentance which she allows to sinners whose
consciences have lain comfortably dormant through the earlier acts.
Yet, for the most part, she can be acquitted of any intention 'to
moralise the stage. ' With considerable skill in dramatic structure
and facility in securing comic effect, she was content to achieve
theatrical effectiveness with little hesitation as to methods. An
early attempt at blank-verse tragedy, The Perjur'd Husband, or
The Adventures of Venice (1700), proves that her dramatic aptitude
did not extend either to verse or to tragedy. Her forte lay in
cleverness of comic intrigue and fluency of prose dialogue. Her
characters often have the salient traits which are within the ready
grasp of the actor, while the best of them are more vital comic
creations. Marplot, in The Busy-Body (1709) and its sequel,
lateras Marplot in Lisbon (1710), is much more than a copy from Molière's
L'Étourdi; and Don Felix, in The Wonder! A Woman keeps a
Secret (1714), became one of Garrick's most popular parts. From
Molière and from Spanish sources, Mrs Centlivre drew materials
freely for various plays; but she deserves credit for ability in
adaptation and for the addition of effective original touches. Of
her later plays, A Bold Stroke for a Wife (1718) was a successful
comedy, and The Artifice (1722) reflects in some measure the
4
from
1 Cf. , as to Aphra Behn, ante, vol. VIII, chap. v, pp. 140-2.


## p. 73 (#99) ##############################################

Lillo 73
Young
Hughes. Thomson. .
influence of sentimental drama. Mrs Centlivre serves as a
convenient illustration of the fact that comedy had not wholly
responded to the movement for its moral improvement; but it
is fair to recall, at the same time, that the epilogues appended
to some of Young's dramas maintain the restoration practice of
enlivening tragedy with coarsely comic epilogues.
Like the current of moral reform, the current of classical in-
fluence, which was very strong in queen Anne drama, encountered
various obstacles in its course. Some of the early Georgian tragedies
of Edward Young (1683—1765)' have much of the violent action
of Elizabethan drama and the unrestraint, though not the poetic
imagination, of Lee's dramatic utterance. It needed but little
exaggeration for Fielding to turn the heroics of Busiris (1719) to
mockery in his burlesque tragedy, Tom Thumb. The Revenge
(1721), in striving to depict 'the tumults of a Godlike mind,'
recalls the heroic drama of the restoration, though Zanga, the
Moor, is reminiscent of Othello. Thus, these tragedies of Young
seem, in reality, to follow English, rather than strict continental,
models. In The Siege of Damascus (1720), a tragedy far superior
to the mediocre work of Young, John Hughes had turned to an
English source in borrowing from D'Avenant's play, The Siege? .
While the ponderous tragedies of James Thomson, to which
reference is made elsewhere3, lent weight rather than dignity to
the cause of classical drama, the rather uneventful course of
English tragedy during the second quarter of the eighteenth
century was broken by one radical innovation.
In The London Merchant, or The History of George Barnwell
(1731), George Lillo introduced prose domestic tragedy. Brought
up, to his father's trade of jeweller in the city of London, Lillo
became the dramatist of domestic life. His first theatrical venture
was an insignificant ballad-opera, Silvia, or The Country Burial
(1730). The production at Drury lane theatre, on 22 June 1731,
of The London Merchant, or The History of George Barnwell,
is, however, an important landmark in English dramatic history.
Domestic tragedy, in a sense, was no novelty on the English stage.
Elizabethan dramas such as Arden of Feversham, A Yorkshire
Tragedy and A Woman Killed with Kindness, forego the usual
noble preferences of tragedy. Otway, Southerne and Rowe found
that pathos was not dependent upon rank and title. The pro-
logue to Rowe's Fair Penitent, indeed, deliberately announces
1 Cf. chap. VII, post.
* Ct. ante, vol. VIII, p. 184.
3 Cf. chap. , post.


## p. 74 (#100) #############################################

74
The Drama and the Stage
the creed which Lillo followed. Yet the father of the fair Calista
is a Genoese nobleman and her lover is a young lord. Jane
Shore tells the ruin of a woman of lower class; but it is a great
noble who compasses her downfall. Otway's Orphan, like most
of the domestic tragedies that precede Lillo's, seems rather to
neglect the aristocratic tone of tragedy than to magnify its demo-
cratic character.
With Lillo, domestic tragedy becomes positively and insistently
familiar. He deliberately dramatises ordinary commercial life,
and teaches the importance of the commonplace. The prologue
to George Barnwell dwells on the fact that the tragic muse, after
moving in the very highest social spheres, has 'upon our stage'
been sometimes seen, nor without applause,
in a humbler dress-
Great only in distress. When she complaing
In Southern's, Rowe's, or Otway's moving strains,
The brilliant drops that fall from each bright eye
The absent pomp with brighter jems supply.
Forgive us then, if we attempt to show,
In artless strains, a tale of private woe,
A London 'Prentice ruin'd is our theme.
Lillo puts Rowe's earlier creed into aggressive practice. The
atmosphere of George Barnwell is that of the trading class, and
its ideal the virtue of the merchant's calling. Thorowgood, the
honest merchant, gratifies the ‘laudable curiosity' of his faithful
apprentice, Trueman, as to the political situation,
because from thence you may learn how honest merchants, as such, may
sometimes contribute to the safety of their country, as they do at all times to
its happiness; that if hereafter you should be tempted to any action that has
the appearance of vice or meanness in it, upon reflecting on the dignity of
our profession, you may with honest scorn reject whatever is unworthy of it.
. . . As the name of merchant never degrades the gentleman, so by no means
does it exclude him.
Even the rapid downward course of Lillo's erring prentice-hero is
interrupted, at the opening of the third act, to allow Thorowgood
to continue his instructions to Trueman on the ethics of business
and the moral mission of commerce. Trueman is bidden to observe
how trade
has promoted humanity, as it has opened and yet keeps up an intercourse
between nations, far remote from one another in situation, customs, and
religion; promoting arts, industry, peace and plenty; by mutual benefits
diffusing mutual love from pole to pole.
i See the lines beginning :
Long has the fate of kings and empires been
The common business of the tragick scene.


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The Morality of Lillo
75
6
The merchant's vocation is thus defined: 'It is the industrious
merchant's business to collect the various blessings of each soil
and climate, and, with the product of the whole, to enrich his
native country. ' Even when, with something of a sigh, he descends
to the routine of the day's work, he delivers such business maxims
as, Method in business is the surest guide. '
In conscious moral aim, Lillo is akin to the sentimental
dramatists. He seeks deliberately
thoughtless youth to warn, and shame the age
From vice destructive.
Thorowgood is 'a man of sentiment,' and, unlike Joseph Surface,
'acts up to the sentiments he professes. ' From his store of
commonplaces, he draws apposite maxims for moral as well as
business emergencies— When innocence is banish’d, modesty
soon follows'; 'When vice becomes habitual, the very power of
leaving it is lost. Maria inherits her father's gift for sentiment.
Even when Barnwell yields precipitately to Millwood's seductions,
he ejaculates such unavailing precepts as these : "To ease our
present anguish, by plunging into guilt, is to buy a moment's
pleasure with an age of pain'; 'The law of Heaven will not be
revers'd; and that requires us to govern our passions. Sentiment
attends him even to the gallows. He parts from his mistress with
this cold consolation :
From our example may all be taught to fly the first approach of vice; but, if
o'ertaken
By strong temptation, weakness, or surprize,
Lament their guilt and by repentance rise !
Th' impenitent alone die unforgiven;
To sin's like man, and to forgive like Heaven.
In the moralised drama of the eighteenth century, didactic senti-
ment is not merely the reward of virtue but a very present help in
trouble.
The plot of George Barnwell, as Lillo says, is 'Drawn from
the fam'd old song that bears his name. ' Ballad and play tell
alike the story of the ruin of an apprentice by a courtesan. The
theme suggests Hogarth's plates ? _Trueman is the industrious,
and Barnwell the idle, apprentice. Lillo ekes out the somewhat
meagre materials of the ballad by introducing Maria, Trueman
and Millwood's servants, and by expanding the shadowy figure of
the merchant into Thorowgood. He presents his hero in a more
1 Hogarth's first work of importance, A Harlot's Progress, appeared the year after
George Barnwell.


## p. 76 (#102) #############################################

76
The Drama and the Stage
sympathetic light by shifting to Millwood the responsibility for
the suggestion of his uncle's murder, and by emphasising his
'fear and sting of conscience,' of which the ballad makes but
passing mention.
In portrayal of character, Lillo is often crude and sometimes
inconsistent. At the outset, Barnwell, young, innocent, and
bashful,' is an unsuspecting innocent, whose response to Millwood's
leading question as to his thoughts of love would, in a less senti-
mental age, stamp him as either a prig or a hypocrite:
If you mean the love of women, I have not thought of it all. My youth and
circumstances make such thoughts improper in me yet. But if you mean the
general love we owe to mankind, I think no one has more of it in his temper
than my self. I don't know that person in the world whose happiness I don't
wish, and wou'dn't promote, were it in my power. In an especial manner I
love my Uncle, and my Master, but, above all, my friend.
Yet he yields to temptation, almost without resistance; nor can he
be defended on the score of innocent ignorance, since the moral
aphorisms with which he meets Millwood's advances clearly betray
his consciousness of guilt. His morality is but a thin veneer,
penetrated at the first touch. Yet, assuredly, this is not the con-
ception of character which Lillo sought to impart. Millwood is a
more consistent study in passion and depravity, and became the
prototype of more than one powerful dramatic figure? .
To Lillo's influence on the subjects of English tragedy must
be added his no less marked influence upon its language. He
deliberately adopted prose as the vehicle 'of expression for
domestic tragedy. He accepts, indeed, the convention of rime-
tags at the end of every act and at the conclusion of some scenes
during the act; but his main intent is to give domestic drama the
vocabulary and phrase that suit his theme. Judged by modern
standards, his attempt to abandon the sublime frequently achieves
the ridiculous. So firmly fastened was the habit of verse tragedy
that Lillo's dialogue often preserves the inverted phrases and
general rhythmic movement, and, at times, the actual scansion, of
blank verse.
The martyr cheaply purchases his heaven. Small are his sufferings, great
ward; not so the wretch who combats love with duty. . . . What is an
hour, a day, a year of pain, to a whole life of tortures such as these?
The habit of ornate description also persists even with the honest
merchant : "The populous East, luxuriant abounds with glittering
gems, bright pearls, aromatick spices, and health-restoring drugs.
1
is his rew
à
1 Notably of Marwood in Lessing's Miss Sara Sampson.


## p. 77 (#103) #############################################

George Barnwell and Fatal Curiosity 77
6
The late found Western World glows with unnumber'd veins of
gold and silver ore. ' Most grotesque is the dialogue of the scenes
of the uncle's murder. His prophetic soul forebodes evil and his
'imagination is fill’d with gashly forms of dreary graves, and
bodies chang'd by death. His apostrophe to 'Death, thou strange
mysterious power—seen every day, yet never understood but by the
incommunicative dead'-unnerves the murderer for the moment,
and hardly has the deed been perpetrated when Barnwell throws
himself on the body of the 'expiring saint,' his 'martyr'd uncle,'
with an outbreak of inflated rhetoric which expires in moralised
heroic couplets. Judged by the modern standards of prose drama
that has felt the influence of Ibsen, Lillo's prose is sheer travesty.
Yet his was an age accustomed to the artificial rhetoric of senti-
mental drama, as it was to the 'grand manner' in acting. Even
so classical a critic as Pope deemed that, if Lillo 'had erred
through the whole play, it was only in a few places, where he had
unawares led himself into a poetical luxuriancy, affecting to be
too elevated for the simplicity of the subject' In Lillo's hands,
the old shackles of verse tragedy are broken ; but cruel marks of
the fetters remain visible.