Delivered in the House of Commons, Thursday, May 18, 1837. Delivered in the House of Commons, Wednesday, April 25, 1838. TALFOURD'S MISCELLANIES. ON BRITISH NOVELS AND ROMANCES, INTRODUCTORY TO A SERIES OF CRITICISMS ON THE LIVING NOVELISTS. [NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.] WE regard the authors of the best novels fair and glistening eyes in moments snatched and romances as among the truest benefactors from repose, and beneath counters and shopof their species. Their works have often con- boards minister delights "secret, sweet, and veyed, in the most attractive form, lessons of precious." It is possible that, in particular the most genial wisdom. But we do not prize instances, their effects may be baneful; but, on them so much in reference to their immediate the whole, we are persuaded they are good. aim, or any individual traits of nobleness with The world is not in danger of becoming too which they may inform the thoughts, as for romantic. The golden threads of poesy are not their general tendency to break up that cold too thickly or too closely interwoven with the and debasing selfishness with which the souls ordinary web of existence. Sympathy is the of so large a portion of mankind are encrusted. first great lesson which man should learn. It They give to a vast class, who by no means will be ill for him if he proceeds no farther; if would be carried beyond the most contracted his emotions are but excited to roll back on his range of emotion, an interest in things out of heart, and to be fostered in luxurious quiet. themselves, and a perception of grandeur and But unless he learns to feel for things in which of beauty, of which otherwise they might ever he has no personal interest, he can achieve have lived unconscious. Pity for fictitious suf- nothing generous or noble. This lesson is in ferings is, indeed, very inferior to that sympa- reality the universal moral of all excellent rothy with the universal heart of man which mances. How mistaken are those miserable inspires real self-sacrifice; but it is better even reasoners who object to them as giving "false to be moved by its tenderness, than wholly to be pictures of life-of purity too glossy and etheignorant of the joy of natural tears. How real-of friendship too deep and confiding-of many are there for whom poesy has no charm, love which does not shrink at the approach of and who have derived only from romances ill, but looks on tempests and is never shaken," those glimpses of disinterested heroism and because with these the world too rarely błosideal beauty, which alone "make them less for- soms! Were these things visionary and unlorn," in their busy career! The good house- real, who would break the spell, and bid the dewife, who is employed all her life in the seve-licious enchantment vanish? The soul will rest drudgery, has yet some glimmerings of a state and dignity above her station and age, and some dim vision of meek, angelic suffering, when she thinks of the well-thumbed volume of Clarissa Harlowe, which she found, when a girl, in some old recess, and read, with breathless eagerness, at stolen times and moments of hasty joy. The careworn lawyer or politician, encircled with all kinds of petty anxieties, thinks of the Arabian Nights Entertainments, which he devoured in his joyful school-days, and is once more young, and innocent, and happy. If the sternest puritan were acquainted with Parson Adams, or with Dr. Primrose, he could not hate the clergy. If novels are not the deepest teachers of humanity, they have, at least, the widest range. They lend to genius "lighter wings to fly." They are read where Milton and Shakspeare are only talked of, and where even their names are never heard. They nestle gently beneath the covers of unconscious sofas, are read by not be the worse for thinking too well of its purity of an angel. She is at the same time one of the grandest of tragic heroines, and the divinest of religious enthusiasts. Clarissa alone is above her. Clementina steps statelily in her very madness, amidst "the pride, pomp, and circumstance" of Italian nobility; Clarissa is triumphant, though violated, deserted, and of the nobleness of its final heritage. All the softenings of evil to the moral vision by the gentleness of fancy, are proofs that evil itself shall perish. Our yearnings after ideal beauty show that the home of the soul which feels them, is in a lovelier world. And when man describes high virtues, and instances of nobleness, which rarely light on earth; so sub-encompassed by vice and infamy. Never can lime that they expand our imaginations beyond their former compass, yet so human that they make our hearts gush with delight; he discovers feelings in his own breast, and awakens sympathies in ours, which shall assuredly one day have real and stable objects to rest on ! we forget that amazing scene, in which, on the effort of her mean seducer to renew his outrages, she appears in all the radiance of mental purity, among the wretches assembled to witness his triumph, where she startles them by her first appearance, as by a vision from above; and holding the penknife to her breast, with her eyes lifted to heaven, prepares to die, if her craven destroyer advances, striking the vilest with deep awe of goodness, and walking placidly, at last, from the circle of her foes, none of them daring to harm her! How pathetic, above all other pathos in the world, are those snatches of meditation which she commits to the paper, in the first delirium of her The early times of England-unlike those of Spain-were not rich in chivalrous romances. The imagination seems to have been chilled by the manners of the Norman conquerors. The domestic contests for the disputed throne, with their intrigues, battles, and executions, have none of that rich, poetical interest, which attended the struggles for the Holy Sepulchre. Nor, in the golden age of English genius, were there any very remarkable works of pure fic-wo! How delicately imagined are her prepation. Since that period to the present day, however, there has been a rich succession of novels and romances, each increasing the stores of innocent delight, and shedding on human life some new tint of tender colouring. rations for that grave in which alone she can find repose! Cold must be the hearts of those who can conceive them as too elaborate, or who can venture to criticise them. In this novel all appears most real; we feel enveloped, like Don Quixote, by a thousand threads; and like him, would we rather remain so for ever, than break one of their silken fibres. Clarissa Harlowe is one of the books which leave us different beings from those which they find us. "Sadder and wiser" do we arise from its perusal. The novels of Richardson are at once among the grandest and the most singular creations of human genius. They combine an accurate acquaintance with the freest libertinism, and the sternest professions of virtue-a sporting with vicious casuistry, and the deepest horror of free-thinking-the most stately ideas of paternal authority, and the most elaborate Yet when we read Fielding's novels after display of its abuses. Prim and stiff, almost those of Richardson, we feel as if a stupenwithout parallel, the author perpetually treads dous pressure were removed from our souls. on the very borders of indecorum, but with a We seem suddenly to have left a palace of solemn and assured step, as if certain that he enchantment, where we have past through could never fall. "The precise, strait-laced long galleries filled with the most gorgeous Richardson," says Mr. Lamb in one of the pro- images, and illumined by a light not quite found and beautiful notes to his specimens, human nor yet quite divine, into the fresh air, "has strengthened vice from the mouth of and the common ways of this "bright and Lovelace, with entangling sophistries, and ab- breathing world." We travel on the high struse pleas against her adversary virtue, road of humanity, yet meet in it pleasanter which Sedley, Villiers, and Rochester wanted companions, and catch more delicious snatches depth of libertinism sufficient to have invent- of refreshment, than ever we can hope elseed." He had, in fact, the power of making any where to enjoy. The mock heroic of Fieldset of notions, however fantastical, appear as ing, when he condescends to that ambiguous "truths of holy writ," to his readers. This he style, is scarcely less pleasing than its stately did by the authority with which he disposed of prototype. It is a sort of spirited defiance to all things, and by the infinite minuteness of his fiction, on the behalf of reality, by one who details. His gradations are so gentle, that we knew full well all the strongholds of that do not at any one point hesitate to follow him, nature which he was defending. There is not and should descend with him to any depth in Fielding much of that which can properly before we perceived that our path had been be called ideal-if we except the character of unequal. By the means of this strange magic, Parson Adams; but his works represent life we become anxious for the marriage of Pa- as more delightful than it seems to common mela with her base master; because the author experience, by disclosing those of its dear imhas so imperceptibly wrought on us the belief munities, which we little think of, even when of an awful distance between the rights of an we enjoy them. How delicious are all his reesquire and his servant, that our imaginations freshments at all his inns! How vivid are regard it in the place of all moral distinctions. the transient joys of his heroes, in their After all, the general impression made on us checkered course-how full and overflowing by his works is virtuous. Clementina is to are their final raptures! His Tom Jones is the soul a new and majestic image, inspired by quite unrivalled in plot, and is to be rivalled virtue and by love, which raises and refines its only in his own works for felicitous delineconceptions. She has all the depth and in-ation of character. The little which we have tensity of the Italian character, with all the told us of Allworthy, especially that which re |