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Silent he walks the road of life along,

And views the aims of its tumultuous throng:
He finds what shapes the Proteus-passions take,
And what strange waste of life and joy they make,
And loves to show them in their varied ways,
With honest blame or with unflattering praise:
'Tis good to know, 'tis pleasant to impart,
These turns and movements of the human heart;
The stronger features of the soul to paint,
And make distinct the latent and the faint:
MAN AS HE IS to place in all men's view,

Yet none with rancour, none with scorn pursue :
Nor be it ever of my portraits told—

'Here the strong lines of malice we behold.'"

One great source of his strength is, that he dared to be true to himself, and to work with unhesitating confidence his own peculiar vein. This originality is not only great, but always genuine. A never-failing charm lies in the clear simplicity and truthfulness of nature which shines through all his writings. Nothing false or meretricious ever came from his pen; and if his works want order and beauty, neither they nor his life are destitute of the higher harmony which springs from a character naturally single and undeteriorated by false aims and broken purposes.

222

UNIDEAL FICTION: DE FOE.*

[October 1856.]

THE modern novel is the characteristic literature of modern times. It is not difficult to detect some of the leading sources of its growth in the conditions and tendencies of modern society, especially in England. Increase of personal liberty has given increased scope and a greater common importance to individual life and character. A diminishing political and social restraint over men's lives, and a less urgent necessity for active personal engagement in political affairs, combined with a less formal and exigent code of manners in society, have endowed men with both more room and more leisure for the conscious determination of their own lives and characters. The sphere of human duty is not less wide and important than it used to be but it is more voluntary-less under the law; its claims are less engrossing and less exacting; the relations to God are less distracted-less mediatemore comprehensive. A man may either live that he may act in a certain way, or he may so act that he may live a certain life and be a certain sort of thing. The facilities for the latter arrangement of existence are probably greater now in England than they have ever hitherto been in the world; and the effects of a growing tendency in this direction are visible enough in our literature. An increased interest in our own characters has naturally given us an increased interest in the individual characters

*Bohn's British Classics. De Foe's Works. Vols. I.-IV. London, Henry G. Bohn. 1854, 1855.

of others; and the examination and representation of character has been the most universal object of modern imaginative literature, its most special characteristic, and its highest excellence. The limits of the drama have not sufficed for its wants: it requires to display not only statical forms of character, but its development under the most varied and protracted circumstances; and an intimate union of the dramatic and narrative modes of delineation has been contrived, to give scope to the new requirements of art. The same tendencies may be observed in other sorts of writing. They have somewhat warped history from its true model and objects, and they have given a higher and truer character to biography. The distinguishing use of history lies in the light it throws on the political and social nature of man. Its lessons are for the statesman and the citizen. It investigates, or should investigate, the principles of common human action in communities, and furnishes its students with comprehensive grounds for judging the tendencies and estimating the value of legislative changes. Its function is to supply men with guiding knowledge in their capacity as the members of a state. The object of biography is, or should be, to furnish as complete as possible a view of the whole character and life of its subject, both for the sake of its own interest, and as making additions to that sort of knowledge of individual men which may subserve others in moulding their own individual lives and characters. Modern history, as we might expect, tends too much to become biographical in its character: while biography is far less content than it used to be with stringing together the events of a man's life, and aims at as searching as possible an examination and exhibition of the whole nature of the man. The same reasons that have tended to make character a more universal subject of study have also tended to give it a form which has made newer and more exhaustive methods of treating it more necessary for its exhibition. There are fewer

sharp diversities in character than there used to be. Men differ, not less completely, but less prominently, than they used to do there is less one-sided individual development. When men are sharply constrained by an external power, which can grasp only a part of their nature, the very pressure there will make other parts of their nature start out in strange and abnormal excrescences. The more external restraint is removed, the more rounded and the more alike in their general aspects will be the forms of the single particles which together constitute society differences of character become less apparent on the surface, and a finer discrimination, a more comprehensive insight, and a more delicate expression, are necessary to delineate its diversities.

Modern taste, accustomed to this more refined school of art, finds little to gratify it in the novels of De Foe. Neither his own genius nor that of his times was favourable to a compliance with its more recondite demands. The reigns of William and of Anne were any thing rather than adapted for the unhampered growth and quiet contemplation of character. They were filled with restless petty action. The liberties of the nation itself had been secured; but the respective rights and claims of the several parties within the nation were never more undecided. It was a time of discord and jangling. Arbitrary invasions on the general liberty of the subject were replaced by harassing restrictions on the free action of certain classes; and dangers important enough to unite the mass of the people in resistance had been replaced by a petty tyranny of disqualifications and fines over discordant minorities, which led an anxious life of mixed warfare and occasional conformity. In such times measures were more interesting than men, events occupied attention more than the study of character. And in such a time the natural bent of De Foe's genius to occupy itself with action and practical affairs was thoroughly confirmed by a long life of thankless political effort, conducted from so

independent a point of view as to expose him to the secution of both the great parties of the day.

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Human existence, in all its varied forms and conditions, was the one thing which interested him: but he busied himself rather with what men were doing than with what they were; with how they influenced the external world, rather than with how the external world influenced them. The modes of human life had a curious fascination for him. The way in which people lived and did things, and other imagined ways in which they might live and do the same or other things, were the matters which occupied his attention. The administration of affairs, the conduct of wars, the management of trade, the control of a household, these were his favourite objects of contemplation. Great or small, they pleased him alike. The main labours, on which he spent nearly forty years of his life, were works of survey and practical suggestion in political and social affairs, often the most intricate and important; but he could turn with equal relish to discuss the "pride, insolence, and exorbitant wages of our women-servants" (though "they were pleased to say he undervalued himself to take notice of them"), and to make "proposals for the amendment of the same." Even the most private and delicate arcana of domestic life were not too sacred to escape his curious observation and didactic suggestions.

His novels set forth not so much the life of a particular person as some particular mode of life. They tell us something that happened, or how things happened. Often the hero is a mere mouthpiece for a mass of adventures, told for their own sakes, and carrying their interest entirely in themselves, not deriving any from the light they throw on the supposititious narrator. The Memoirs of a Cavalier is De Foe's notion of how the civil wars were carried on. Captain Carleton is only a device to tell us what he knows of some of the Low Country campaigns, of Spain, and of Lord Peterborough's exploits

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