Prefaces to Fiction.

by Various.

INTRODUCTION

The development of the English novel is one of the triumphs of the eighteenth century. Criticism of prose fiction during that period, however, is less impressive, being neither strikingly original nor profound nor usually more than fragmentary. Because the early statements of theory were mostly very brief and are now obscurely buried in rare books, one may come upon the well conceived "program"

of _Joseph Andrews_ and _Tom Jones_ with some surprise. But if one looks in the right places one will realize that mid-eighteenth century notions about prose fiction had a substantial background in earlier writing. And as in the case of other branches of literary theory in the Augustan period, the original expression of the organized doctrine was French. In Georges de Scudery's preface to _Ibrahim_ (1641)[1] and in a conversation on the art of inventing a "Fable" in Book VIII (1656) of his sister Madeleine's _Clelie_ are to be found the grounds of criticism in prose fiction; practically all the principles are here which eighteenth-century theorists adopted, or seemed to adopt, or from which they developed, often by the simple process of contradiction, their new principles.

That many of the ideas in the preface to _Ibrahim_ were not new even in 1641 becomes plain if one reads the discussions of romance written by Giraldi Cinthio and Ta.s.so.[2] The particular way in which Mlle. de Scudery attempted to carry out those ideas in her later, more subjective works she obligingly set forth in _Clelie_ in the pa.s.sage already alluded to. There it is explained that a well-contrived romance "is not only handsomer than the truth, but withal, more probable;" that "impossible things, and such as are low and common, must almost equally be avoided;" that each person in the story must always act according to his own "temper;" that "the nature of the pa.s.sions ought necessarily to be understood, and what they work in the hearts of those who are possess'd with them." He who attempts an "ingenious Fable" must have great accomplishments--wit, fancy, judgment, memory; "an universal knowledge of the World, of the Interest of Princes, and the humors of Nations," and of both closet-policy and the art of war; familiarity with "politeness of conversation, the art of ingenious raillery, and that of making innocent Satyrs; nor must he be ignorant of that of composing of Verses, writing Letters, and making Orations." The "secrets of all hearts" must be his and "how to take away plainness and driness from Morality."[3]

The a.s.sumption that the new prose fiction could be judged, as the Scuderys professed to judge their work, first of all by reference to the rules of heroic poetry is frequent in the next century--in the unlikely Mrs. Davys (preface, _Works_, 1725); in _Joseph Andrews_ of course, where the rules of the serious epic and of the heroic romance are to aid the author in copying the ancient but, as it happens, nonexistent comic epic; and in Fielding's preface to his sister's _David Simple_ (1744). Both Richardson and Fielding were attacked on epic grounds.[4] Dr. Johnson's interesting and unfriendly essay on recent prose fiction (_Rambler_ No. 4) adopted the terminology familiar in the criticism of epic and romance and showed that Johnson, unlike d'Argens and Fielding, did not intend to give any of the old doctrines new meanings in a way to justify realism. Johnson laughed a little in that essay at the heroic romances; but like Mlle. de Scudery, whose _Conversations_ he drew on for a footnote in his edition of Shakespeare (1765),[5] he believed that fiction should be "probable" and yet should idealize life and men and observe poetic Justice. Many other writers on prose fiction borrowed the old neo-cla.s.sic rules, and they applied them often so carelessly and so insincerely that one is glad to come eventually on signs of rebellion, even if from the sentimentalists: "I know not," wrote Elizabeth Griffith in the preface to _The Delicate Distress_ (1769), "whether novel, like the _epopee_, has any rules, peculiar to itself.... Sensibility is, in my mind, as necessary, as taste, to int.i.tle us to judge of a work, like this."

The theory of prose fiction offered by the Scuderys was, on the whole, better than their practice. The same remark can be made with even greater a.s.surance of _The Secret History of Queen Zarah, and the Zarazians_ (1705) and the other political-scandalous "histories"

of Mary De la Riviere Manley. For in spite of the faults of _Queen Zarah_, the preface is one of the most substantial discussions of prose fiction in the century. Boldly and reasonably it repudiates the most characteristic features of the heroic romance--the vastness produced by intercalated stories; the idealized characters, almost "exempted from all the Weakness of Humane Nature;" the marvelous adventures and remote settings; the essay-like conversations; the adulatory att.i.tude; and poetic Justice. _Vraisemblance_ and _decorum_, we are told, are still obligatory, but the probable character, action, dialogue will now be less prodigious, will be closer to real life as the modern English reader knows it. Thus Mrs.

Manley announced a point of view which was, at least in most respects, to dominate the theory and invigorate the practice of prose fiction throughout the century.

A significant phase of Mrs. Manley's discussion is the emphasis upon individual characterization and, in characters, upon not only the "predominant Quality" and ruling pa.s.sion of each but also upon the elusive and surprising "Turnings and Motions of Humane Understanding." Here one should recognize the influence of historical writing rather than of poetry. As Rene Rapin had made clear in Chapter XX of his _Instructions for History_ (J. Davies's translation, 1680), the historian writes the best portraits who finds the "essential and distinctive lines" of a man's character and the "secret motions and inclinations of [his] Heart." But Mrs.

Manley's remarks go beyond Rapin's in implying faith in a sort of scientific psychology, especially of "the pa.s.sions." Other writers showed the same interest and worked toward the same end. Thus Henry Gally in his essay on Theophrastus and the Character was so carried away by a notion of the importance of the Character-writer's knowing all about the pa.s.sions that he allowed himself to say that only by such a knowledge could a Character be made to "hit one Person, and him only"[6]--the goal obviously not of the Character-writer but of the historian and the novelist. The authors of _The Cry_[7] (1754) regarded the unfolding of "the labyrinths of the human mind" as an arduous but necessary task; indeed they went on to declare that the "motives to actions, and the inward turns of mind, seem in our opinion more necessary to be known than the actions themselves." It was Fielding's refusal, in spite of the t.i.tles of his books, to write like an historian with highly individualized and psychological characterizations that caused his admirer Arthur Murphy to admit in his "Essay" on Fielding that "Fielding was more attached to the _manners_ than to the _heart_."[8] He thought Fielding inferior to Marivaux in revealing the heart just as Johnson, according to Boswell, preferred Richardson to Fielding because the former presented "characters of nature" whereas the latter created only "characters of manners." The author of "A Short Discourse on Novel Writing" prefixed to _Constantia; or, A True Picture of Human Life_ (1751) went so far as to say that prose fiction may teach more about the "sources, symptoms, and inevitable consequences" of the pa.s.sions than could easily be taught in any other way. The increasingly subjective and individualized characterization in English fiction was well supported in contemporary theory.

_The Jewish Spy_, translated from the _Lettres Juives_ (1736-38) of Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens, is an early example of citizen-of-the-world literature and contains in its five volumes a "Philosophical, Historical and Critical Correspondence" dealing with French, English, Italian, and other matters. The work had a European vogue, and there were at least two English translations, the present one, issued in 1739, 1744, and 1766, and another, called _Jewish Letters_, published at Newcastle in 1746. (The Dublin edition of 1753 I have not seen.) Though d'Argens's purpose in Letter 35 may have been to advertise his own novel, what he had to say is interesting. Like many others, he could scoff at the heroic romances and yet borrow and quietly modify the doctrines of _Ibrahim_ and _Clelie_. He proposed a still more "advanced" _vraisemblance_ and _decorum_--psychological a.n.a.lysis tinged with cynicism rather than idealism; gallantry but against the background sometimes of the modern city; a plainer style; and only such matters as seemed to this student of Descartes and Locke to be entirely reasonable.

Fielding's chapter in _Tom Jones_ (IX, i) "Of Those Who Lawfully May, and of Those Who May Not, Write Such Histories as This" could be taken as an indication that he knew not only what Mlle. de Scudery thought were the accomplishments of the romancer but that he had read d'Argens's words on that subject too. Both d'Argens and Fielding believed that in addition to "Genius, Wit, and Learning"

the novelist must have a knowledge of the world and of all degrees of men, distinguishing the style of high people from that of low.

They agreed that a writer must have felt a pa.s.sion before he could paint it successfully. Much more goes into the making of a novel, they sarcastically pointed out, than pens, ink, and quires of paper.

D'Argens, like Fielding, relished reflective pa.s.sages and could approve, more readily than Mrs. Manley, of "an Historian that amuses himself by Moralizing or Describing." D'Argens's list of the features to be found in good history and good fiction shows him to be a thoroughgoing rationalist and separates his ideal from that of young readers, who, according to the preface to _The Adventures of Theagenes and Chariclia_ (1717), wish to hear of "Flame and Spirit in an Author, of fine Harangues, just Characters, moving Scenes, delicacy of Contrivance, surprising turns of action ... indeed the choicest Beauties of a _Romance_."

The two novels that d'Argens recommended had different fortunes in England. D'Argens's book, _Memoires du Marquis de Mirmon, ou Le Solitaire Philosophe_ (Amsterdam, 1736) was never translated into English and apparently was not much read. But Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon, the younger, was extolled by Thomas Gray and Horace Walpole, quoted by Sarah Fielding,[9] and had the honor, if one can trust Walpole, of an offer of keeping from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. His _egaremens du Coeur et de l'Esprit_ (1736-38) was translated in 1751[10] and is the novel which Yorick helped the _fille de chambre_ slide into her pocket. Crebillon was d.a.m.ned, however, in _The World_ (No. 19, May 10, 1753) in an essay that, oddly enough, reminds one of d'Argens's Letter 35. The work referred to in the third footnote on page 258 is _Le Chevalier des Essars et la Comtesse de Berci_ (1735) by Ignace-Vincent Guillot de La Cha.s.sagne. The last footnote on that page refers to G.H. Bougeant's satire, _Voyage Merveilleux du Prince Fan-Feredin dans la Romancie_ (1735).

The preface which William Warburton was invited by Richardson to supply for Volumes III and IV of _Clarissa_ when they first appeared in 1748 has never, I think, been reprinted in full. Richardson dropped it from the second edition (1749) of _Clarissa_, probably because he relished neither its implication that he was following French precedents nor its suggestion that his work was one "of mere Amus.e.m.e.nt." In the "Advertis.e.m.e.nt" in the first volume of the second edition he insisted that _Clarissa_ was "not to be considered as a _mere Amus.e.m.e.nt_, as a _light Novel_, or _transitory Romance_; but as a _History_ of LIFE and MANNERS ... intended to inculcate the HIGHEST and _most_ IMPORTANT _Doctrines_."[11] Warburton, offended in turn perhaps, thriftily salvaged more than half of the preface (paragraphs 2 to 6) to use as a footnote in his edition of Alexander Pope,[12] but he there made a striking change: not Richardson but Marivaux and Fielding were praised as the authors who, with the extra enrichment of comic art, had brought the novel of "real LIFE AND MANNERS ... to its perfection."

The important principle of prose fiction which Richardson and Warburton recognized--that there is power in a detailed picture of the private life of the middle cla.s.s--had been suggested earlier.

Mrs. Manley could not voice it, at least not in _Queen Zarah_, where the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, G.o.dolphln, and Queen Anne were to be leading characters. But her sometime-friend Richard Steele could. Having laughed in _The Tender Husband_ (1705) at a girl whose judgment of life was seriously--or, rather, comically--warped by her reading of heroic romances, Steele made a positive plea in _Tatler_ No. 172 for histories of "such adventures as befall persons not exalted above the common level." Books of this sort, still rare in 1710, would be of great value to "the ordinary race of men." The anonymous preface to _The Adventures of Theagenes and Chariclia_ seven years later attributed to Heliodorus's romance the value of suggesting rules "for conducting our Affairs in common Actions of Life." In 1751 when the new realism was a _fait accompli_, the author of _An Essay on the New Species of Writing Founded by Mr.

Fielding_ declared roundly (p. 19) that in the new fiction the characters should be "taken from common Life." A good argument in favor of books about "private persons" was offered in the preface to the English translation of the Abbe Prevost's novel, _The Life And Entertaining Adventures of Mr. Cleveland, Natural Son of Oliver Cromwell_ (1741): "The history of kingdoms and empires, raises our admiration, by the solemnity ... of the images, and furnishes one of the n.o.blest entertainments. But at the same time that it is so well suited to delight the imagination, it yet is not so apt to touch and affect as the history of private men; the reason of which seems to be, that the personages in the former, are so far above the common level, that we consider ourselves, in some measure, as aliens to them; whereas those who act in a lower sphere, are look'd upon by us as a kind of relatives, from the similitude of conditions; whence we are more intimately mov'd with whatever concerns us." A comparison of the first two paragraphs of this preface and the first four paragraphs of Johnson's _Rambler_ No. 60, if it does not discover the source of part of Johnson's paper, will at least reveal how the defender of the fictional "secret history" and a famous champion of intimate biography played into each other's hands. Johnson's appearing to follow the defender of French fiction here is all the more interesting when one recalls his alarm in _Rambler_ No. 4 over the prevailing taste for novels that exhibited, unexpurgated, "Life in its true State, diversified only by the Accidents that daily happen in the World." Indeed if it were not for Fielding himself, one might imagine from Johnson's unsteady and generally unsatisfactory criticism of prose fiction that the old neo-cla.s.sical principles were completely out of date and useless.

Samuel Derrick, the editor of Dryden and friend of Boswell for whom Johnson "had a kindness" but not much respect, the "pretty little gentleman" described by Smollett's Lydia Melford, translated the _Memoirs of the Count Du Beauval_ from _Le Mentor Cavalier, ou Les Ill.u.s.tres Infortunez de Notre Siecle_ ("Londres," 1736) by the Marquis d'Argens. Only the second paragraph of Derrick's preface came from d'Argens, but the drift of the Frenchman's ideas toward "le Naturel" is well sustained in Derrick's praise, no doubt based on Warburton's, of writers who present scenes that "are daily found to move beneath their Inspection." There are ties with the doctrines of 1641 even in this preface, but the transformation of _vraisemblance_ and _decorum_ was sufficiently advanced for the needs of the day.

Benjamin Boyce Duke University

NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION

[1] Most scholars attribute the preface to Georges de Scudery, but it seems impossible to say whether he collaborated with his sister in writing the romance itself or whether the work was written entirely by her.

Cogan's translation of _Ibrahim_ and the preface appeared first in 1652.

[2] See the texts in Allan H. Gilbert's _Literary Criticism: Plato to Dryden_ (N.Y.: American Book Co., 1940) and the discussion in A.E. Parsons' "The English Heroic Play," _MLR_, x.x.xIII (1938), 1-14.

[3] _Clelia. An Excellent New Romance. The Fourth Volume ... Rendered into English by G.H._ (1677; Part IV, Book II), pp.

540-543.

[4] See _An Apology for the Life of Mr. Bempfylde-Moore Carew ... The Sixth Edition_, p. xix; _Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison_ (1754), p. 20.

[5] IV, 184. The footnote could have come, contrary to the a.s.sertion of Sir Walter Raleigh (_Six Essays_ [Oxford, 1910], p.

94), from either the original French (_Conversations sur Divers Sujets_ [Paris, 1680], II, 586-587) or the English translation (1683, II, 102). In both editions, the pa.s.sage appears soon after the dialogue on how to compose a romance. I am indebted to Dr.

Arthur M. Eastman for help in tracing Raleigh's vague reference.

[6] _The Moral Characters of Theophrastus_ (1725), pp.

31-32.

[7] Jane Collier and Sarah Fielding.

[8] The "Essay" was written in 1762, but I quote it as it appeared in the third edition (1766) of _The Works of Henry Fielding_, I, 75.

[9] James B. Foster, _History of the Pre-Romantic Novel in England_ (N.Y.: Modern Lang. a.s.soc., 1949), p. 76.

[10] _The Wanderings of the Heart and Mind: or, Memoirs of Mr. de Meilcour_, translated by M. Clancy. Clara Reeve maintained in 1785 that Crebillon's book was never popular in England and that "Some pious person, fearing it might poison the minds of youth ...

wrote a book of meditations with the same t.i.tle, and _this_ was the book that _Yorick's fille de Chambre_ was purchasing" (_The Progress of Romance_ [N.Y.: Facsimile Text Society, 1930], pp. 130-131).

[11] Richardson said that he dropped Warburton's preface because _Clarissa_ had been well received and no longer needed such an introduction. A fourth explanation of the natter and much other relevant information were presented by Ronald S. Crane, "Richardson, Warburton and French Fiction," _MLR_, XVII (1922), 17-23.

[12] _The Works of Alexander Pope_ (1751), IV, 166-169. The footnote is on line 146 of the Epistle to Augustus ("And ev'ry flow'ry Courtier writ Romance").

IBRAHIM,

OR THE

ILl.u.s.tRIOUS

Ba.s.sA.

The whole Work,

In Four Parts.

Written in French by _Monsieur de Scudery_,

And Now Englished

by

Henry Cogan, Gent.