The 18th century: Neoclassicism – The Augustan Age – The

Transition/ Pre-romantic Age

Neoclasism.

The 18th century is known as The Age of Enlightenment or The Age of reason, to stress
the rational trend of the period and the attitude according to which reason and judgement
should be the guiding principles for human activities . It saw the birth of a new literary
movement: Neoclassicism or Rationalism. This movement was greatly influenced by the
ideas of John Locke and Isaac Newton. The importance of Newton is clearly seen in the
epitaph written by Alexander Pope: “Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night; God said,’ Let
Newton be! ‘And all was light”. In his Principia Matematica the scientist showed that the
universe was governed by mechanical principles and exact laws rather than by divine ones as it
was believed before. He left little place for God and we may say that he destroyed the traditional
religious view of the world making God subject to the laws of science. Newton was elected
President of the Royal Society, an association of learned man who wanted to promote scientific
studies and to try new methods of experiment. Thanks to the research, new discoveries that
religion seemed unable to explain, were made and Science became the new authority. It was
believed that science and reason would have improved man’s condition turning him into a
social being who would conform to the rules of civilised life. Reason , the most important
man’s ability, enabled him not only to think but also to act correctly. Man, the only living
creature to have it, became important for his power of observation more than for his power of
feelings. Reason became the criterion of everything: what could be justified by reason was
right and what could not be justified or proved by reason was false and rejected.

Every thing was regulated by reason, nature too. People were attracted by a ‘reasoned
Nature‘, as the one we can find in parks or gardens, a nature that reflected order
and harmony. To follow nature meant to represent the world as it was, to
obey reason. Rationalism, stressing out the importance of reason and observation,
started the beginning of the scientific thought and freed man from ignorance.
Enlightenment thinkers mostly tended to atheism. They believed that principles should
only be accepted on the basis of reason and not on the authority of sacred texts and
tradition. In this Age of reason both government and the king had to justify themselves
rationally. The belief that the king ruled by Divine Right was questioned. The king and
the government ruled by the agreement of the people, by contract which they had to
respect.
The importance of reason was also influential in the literature of the time and English
literary standards were reformed. The artistic creation, like science, had to follow exact
rules and was to be based on reason. The writers modelled much of their works
on Classical writers and referred to ancient Greece and Rome using subjects from
classical mythology and history. All that brought to the birth of a new movement known
as Neoclassicism. The reform was helped by the French writer Nicolas Boileau , who
published a book, Art Poetique , which provided the key idea of neoclassicism: in good
art inspiration must be controlled by judgement. He listed the rules of good writing:
writing should be clear, balanced, ordered, elegant and eloquent. Neoclassicism provided
the basis for the Augustan school of writing which dominated the 18th century literature.
THE AUGUSTANS

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The Augustans were so called because they compared their period to that of the
Emperor Augustus in ancient Rome, a period of political stability, splendour and
tranquillity. They wanted this period of stability to last and attacked everything which
threatened to upset it. They thought that ancient art was superior to modern one and
often imitated the great Roman classical authors: Vergil, Ovid, Titus Livius and Horace.
The Augustans believed that their duty was not to try to be original but to re-express
universal truths about mankind. Their Age was characterized by the spirit of the
Enlightenment which implied a new way of thinking characterized by philosophical,
scientific and rational spirit. As to the contents, they mostly used classical
subjects and focused on man in society seen, not as an individual, but as an
important piece of a perfect whole, a piece of a perfect mosaic. The artist was seen as he
who had to express his knowledge of the world in a rational and objective way. He should
not allow his own emotions and prejudices to influence his writing. In order to achieve
objectivity , the writer had to write clearly and to use a precise and correct language,
a language that all readers had to understand. The language they adopted was the poetic
diction, an artificial language which used uncommon and learned words, Latinate and
periphrasis. Samuel Johnson published his famous Dictionary and helped to
understand the meaning of words. As far as style the authors were allowed to use “wit”,
that is attractiveness, clever invention and humour.
Towards the middle of the century there was a reaction against rationalism and
writers focused their attention on the individual and on the people’s feelings. This new
interest found its expression in a new prose form,
the Novel https://rosariomariocapalbo.wordpress.com/2014/01/16/the-18th-
century-novelde-foe-swift-richardson-fielding-sterne/. As far as poetry, we have
to say that Augustan poetry was of secondary importance and continued the restoration
trend for satire and mock-heroic poems written in heroic couplet in which a
trivial subject was treated with the seriousness of epic for comic effect. The most
important representative was Alexander Pope and his finest work was The Rape of
the Lock, telling about a quarrel between two aristocrat families because of a trivial
incident: Lord Petre had cut a lock of hair of Miss Arabella Fermor and that action was
considered as an insult. Pope wrote it to ridicule the narcissistic attitude of
the aristocracy.In the second half of the century new trends started to emerge and the
heroic couplet lost its dominant position.
THE TRANSITION AGE
The Age of Neoclassicism was followed by a transitional period also known as Pre-
Romanticism. It developed during the last decades of the 18th century. There was
a reaction against classicism and reason and a search for new models of poetry
taken no longer from ancient Rome and Greece but from the Middle Ages. The period was
greatly affected by the French Revolution, the American Revolution and the Industrial
Revolution. They provided literature with new themes which began to develop side by
side with the old ones. First of all there was a new interest towards the poor and the
children, who lived at the margin of society during the Augustan Age. Satire and realism
were respectively replaced by sentimentalism and imagination, paving the way to the
flourishing of Romanticism. The Age preserved its main features with its emphasis on
reason, precision, order, clarity and harmony, but some other features appeared in
opposition to them: interest in country life, new way of seeing Nature, different role of
Art, new themes based on feelings and so on.
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Poetry was no longer concerned with “wit” but with simple feelings and nature. Poetry was
pervaded by a melancholic tone and was often associated with meditation on Death. This
kind of poetry was remembered as Graveyard Poetry. The poets of the Graveyard
Group were melancholic and seek for solitude. Their thoughts were directed towards Death, or
the fear of Death, suicide and graves. The settings of their poems were often medieval ruins,
caverns, coffins and skeletons. The most important poet of the group was Thomas Gray and
his most famous poem was Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, based on the concept of the
levelling power of Death. Other poets were Edward Young and Robert Blair, both church
ministers. The Graveyard poets influenced the Gothic Novel and the Ossian Poetry which
became very popular literary forms especially among they who were unsatisfied with classical
novel and poetry and looked for Gothicism, a mixture of both medieval features(ruins, ancient
castle and so on) and supernatural. Both poems and novels of this kind were melodramatic, full
of horrors and supernatural and set in a medieval context. The most famous Gothic Novels
were Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and The Castle of Otranto by Walpole.

English Verse Satire in the Eighteenth Century

Introduction:
The eighteenth century is remarkable as a period in which the satiric spirit reigned supreme. The
names of all the important writers are associated with satire; in fact, their very greatness is due mainly to
their greatness as satirists.

The three most important writers of the age were Pope, Swift, and Dr. Johnson.-Whereas Pope and Dr.
Johnson gave the English language some of its best verse satires, the second named gave it its best prose
satires. But apart from this redoubtable triumvirate, the names of a hundred other lesser satirists can be
mentioned. In addition to the regular satires, the satiric spirit peeps through other modes of writing, too.
The novel and the periodical -paper were the two important gifts of the eighteenth century to English
literature. These new genres, too, are exhibitive of the impact of the satiric spirit which was ubiquitous in
the age. Some of the most delightful satire of the age is provided by the periodical papers of
Steele, Addison, an'd their followers and the novels of Fielding, Smollett, and Steme. As a genre satire
ruled the roost till roughly the third quarter of the century, when new tendencies appeared, to the
detriment of the satiric spirit. The precursors of Romanticism found satire incompatible with their new
sensibility. Satire naturally declined and since then up to the present day very few satires have appeared
which can show the same brilliance as characterised eighteenth-century satires.
Reasons for Dominance:
All satire arises from the sense of dissatisfaction, despair, amusement, anger, or disgust at
the departure of things from their ideals. Satire aims at pointing out and chastising the falling short of
things from their well-accepted standards of excellence. It is only when standards get fixed that
any departure from them can be measured or appreciated. In the eighteenth century-particularly its first
half-4he standards of human conduct were more or less well fixed. -This century has been variously called
"the age of good sense," "the age of good taste," "the age of reason", etc. Almost all the writers of the age
harped upon common sense, good taste, and what they called "right reason." Any departure from them, real

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 or imaginary, put the whip of the satirist into action. Further the accentuation of the political division of
Englishmen into Whigs and Tories also nurtured and provided much material for the satiric spirit. Nearly
every important writer of the first half of the eighteenth century was "employed" by either the Tory or the
Whig party to further its cause and to down its opponents. Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, Prior, Addison, Steele-
all were actively aligned with one party or the other, even though they did not write many political satires
of the nature of Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel and The Medal. Thirdly, we have to take into account
the fierce personal animosities of the writers of the age. It was in the eighteenth century that, for the first
time in the history of English literature, the vocation of a man of letters, like other professions, became a
lucrative job. With the unprecedented increase in the number of readers (consequent mainly upon the
expansion of trade and commerce and the resulting richness) the printed word could sell. Pope and some
others depended for their livelihood entirely upon the patronage of their readers. With the phenomenal rise
in the number of readers there was an equally phenomenal rise in the number of writers many of
whom decorated the garrets of Grub Street. Each of them was necessarily jealous of all the rest as it involved
his very livelihood. The whole air was thick witrHnutual animosities among writers and the personal satires
which they gave rise to. Even Pope's Dunciad-Jhe most powerful and the best satire of the eighteenth
century^was expressly written to lash his literary rivals and critics. His translation of Homer and edition of
Shakespeare had proved for him the most lucrative assets and when they were attacked, partly justly and
partly unjustly, by critics like Bentley and Theobald it was reason enough for him to try to satirise them into
silence.
Formative and Guiding Influences:
There were three formative and guiding influences on satire in the eighteenth century. They were :
the tradition of the Roman Augustan satire of Horace, Juvenal, and Persius; the tradition of the French
satire of the neo-classic school; and the neo-classical native tradition of Dryden. The French satirists like
Boileau were themselves influenced by the Roman satirists and Dryden was influenced by both the Roman
and the French. Let us now consider these three influences one by one.
(i) As regards the influence of the Roman satirists, it is quite apparent in the work ofPope, Dr. Johnson, and
others. Horace and Juvenal -the two greatest Roman satirists—did not write the same kind of satire.
Horation satire is, generally speaking, of the comic, and Juvenalian satire, of the tragic, kind. Horace is
polished, good-honoured, precise but sly, pretty tolerant and somewhat lenient, and always indirect.
Juvenal, on the other hand, is mordant, direct, intolerant, stately, intense, and disdainful. Whereas Pope
came mostly under Horace's influence, Dr. Johnson was evidently influenced by Juvenal.
(ii) Boileau was the most important of the neo-classical French satirists. Dryden himself came under his
influence. Boileau's Le Lutrin was presumably the first example of a mock-heroic poem in world
literature. Dryden's Mac Flecknoe was also a mock epic. In the eighteenth century we find Pope giving a
mock-heroic framework to his famous satires-The Rape of the Lock and The Dunciad. Swift, .likewise,
followed the lead of Boileau in The Battle of the Books. Scarron, the French poet who parodied Virgil, had
also some followers in eighteenth-century England.
(iii) Last but not least is the bracing influence of Dryden who breaking away from the native satiric tradition of
Hall, Marston, Donne, Cleveland, and Butler, had looked for guidance to the Roman satirists and their
followers in France. Pope has well been designated "Dryden's poetical son." His satires provided so many
models for numerous eighteenth-century satirists. The Dunciad followed Mac Flecknoe in being a satire on
dunces. But what is more, Dryden's popularisation and effective handling of the heroic couplet for the
purpose of satire had a powerful effect on the eighteenth century. Almost all the good satires of this century
were written in heroic couplets. Pope regularised the couplet and made it more precise, balanced, and
artistic and, as such, provided a model for his successors. But Dryden's freer use of the couplet had also its
admirers and imitators among whom may be mentioned the name of Churchill.
After these preliminary considerations, let us examine briefly the satiric work of important individual
writers.

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Alexander Pope (1688-1744):
Pope, "the wasp of Twickenham", was the greatest verse satirist of not only the eighteenth century
but of all centuries. It is interesting to note that almost every discussion of his satire boils down to
discussion of his personality. The hase of outright condemnation of Pope as a mischievous and malicious
imp is now over. To quote Bredvold in A History of English Literature, edited by Hardin Craig, "recent
scholarship has made important corrections of the traditional view of Pope and he is now receiving a more
sympathetic hearing." We no longer agree to such views as the one of Lytton Strachey which represents
Pope as a malevolent monkey sitting in a window and pouring on the passers-by (for whom he has dislike)
ladlefuls of boiling oil. Sometimes Pope did hit first, but more often he was hit first. Pope himself was
designed by God to be a rich satiric target. He was short-statured, hunch-backed, and lame. And then he
was a Roman Catholic. But, above all, he was a successful writer-tfie author of numerous best-sellers.
Naturally enough, he excited the spleen of a host of pen-drivers whom at a place he compares to a swarm
of gnats plaguing him. We have also to take into account his revengeful and somewhat malicious
temperament. After getting hit he could not just connive at the attack. He rose from the depths of anger and
disgust and made short work of most of his disparagers. None could match him in his most telling use of
the heroic couplet. Well could he claim that he was "proud to see"
Men not afraid of God, afraid of me.
Happily did he keep politics and religion out of satire. With the exception of The Rape of the
Lock, which is a general satire on female frivolities, all his major satires are characterised by indulgence in
personalities. To name all the persons he attacked in his satires would require tens of pages. His greatest
satire The Dunciad is, in its fundamentals, a satire on the contemporary dunces who had happened to
offend him.
Pope's Friends:
Pope's companions-Arbuthnot, Swift, Prior, and Gay—who were, like him, members of the Tory
"Scriblerus Club"—also distinguished themselves as satirists. But Arbuthnot wrote only in prose. Swift, as
we have already said, was the greatest prose satirist of the age. But he also wrote some verse satires. He
seldom used the heroic couplet and couched almost all his verse satires in the octosyllabic couplet of
Butler's Hudibras. Most of them do not rise above the level of the doggerel. "Cousin Swift, you will never be
a poet"-this was the verdict of Dryden. And he was right. Much of Swift's verse, as his prose, is besmirched
in scatological grossness. Swift takes an almost morbid pleasure in dwelling on the filth of the human,
particularly the female, body. His misogynistic poems like "A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed" are
almost unreadable/Here is an example from one of his poems:
Had you but through a cranny syp 'd
On house of ease your future bride,
In all the postures of her face,
Which nature gives in such a case;
Distortions, groanings, strainings, heavings,
'Twere better you had licked her leavings
Than from experience find too late
Your goddess grown a filthy mate.
It is nothing more than chamber-pot poetry. However, Swift is delightfully ironical in such poems as The
Death of Dr. Swift and The Furniture of a Woman's Mind which are happily free from the scatological taint.
Matthew Priori (1664-1721) contribution to satire is his parody of Dry den's The Hind and the
Panther entitled Story of the Country Mouse (1687), and his Hudibrastic satire on Philosophy,
entitled Alma; or, The Progress of the Mind, in which he traces the advance of the soul from the ankles in
childhood to the head in maturity. Prior is best known not for satire, however, but for his light, topical
Anacreontic verse and his numerous poems for children;

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 John Gay (1685-1732) showed better talent for burlesque than Prior did. "Informality and
burlesque," says George Sherburn, "permeated most of Gay's works." His most important work The
Beggar's Opera also was a satire on and a parody of the Italian opera so popular then. Wine is again a
burlesque-of Ambrose Phili's Cyder Trivia, or The Art of Walking the Streets in London is a parody of
the Georgics of Virgil. It was the most famous of the "town eclogues" written also by such writers as Swift,
Lady Mary Wortley Mongtagu, and some others. Gay, at any rate, did not taint his page with bitter satire.
His satire is mostly impersonal and essentially good-natured and gay. His tombstone carries the following
inscription composed by himself:
Life is a jest, and all things show it,
I thought so once, but now I know it.
We may also refer here to the work of Edward Young (1683-1765) who was one of the first imitators of
Horace in the eighteenth century. Sherburn observes: "The first Hdration satires to achieve real success
were the seven that Edward Young published in 1725-28 as Love of Fame, the Universal Passion. Practically
all of Pope's satires post dated those of Young, which were highly praised."
Dr. Johnson (1709-84):
Dr. Johnson as a satirist ranks next only to Pope among the verse satirists of the eighteenth century.
In addition to being a satrisfhe was, to quote Legouis in A Short History of English Literature, a "translator,
journalist, lexicographer, commentator, novelist, biographer and finally literary critic." His two verse
satires are London (1738) and The Vanity of Human Wishes (1746)-4he latter of which is superior to the
former. London is a satire on the great city which he loved so passionately. There is "the language of the
heart" in his question: "when can starving merit find a home?" There is real pathos in the lines which
describe the misfortunes of talented and enlightened men of letters who are rudely treated by rich fools. The
Vanity of Human Wishes is, according to Edmund Gosse, "a much finer and more accomplished
production." Johnson based this weighty poem on the Tenth Satire of Juvenal whose manner he tried, fairly
successfully, to imitate. Johnson's style is heavy-handed and serious, and his attitude, too, is Juvenalian in
its pessimism and noble disdain. He has often been charged with verbosity and prosaicness; and
Wordsworth in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads gave him a rather undue meed of dispraise. However, modern
critics, after the example of T. S. Eliot, have rehabilitated him as a poet. T. S. Eliot praises his poetry for,
what he calls, its "minimal quality" that of direct, complete, and effective statement. Referring to a passage
in The Vanity of Human Wishes he justly enquires if it is not poetry, what is it?
Charles Churchill (1731-64) and Minor Satirists:
After Johnson we find in the rest of the century few satirists of his stature, not to speak of that of
Pope. The most outstanding among the numerous minor satirists was Charles Churchill—a man of dissolute
and ferocious character who died young of dissipation. He failed in the vocation of a clergyman, and in utter
disgust of the world started writing extremely mordant satire against whosoever crossed his way. He was
particularly severe on Dr. Johnson and the famous painter and engraver Hogarth. He keenly disliked Pope,
and in the handling of the heroic couplet' he followed the lead of Dryden who had handled it with much
greater freedom than Pope. Much of his satire is of the personal kind and scarcely rises above coarse
lampoonery. But there is always in it a devilish strength. Churchill was particularly good at the art of satiric
portraiture and his portrait of Pomposo (Dr. Johnson) in The Ghost'(1762-63) is, quite remarkable. The
Times (1764) was a general satire on the, vices of Londoners. The Duellist was a virulent attack on
Warburton and Lord Sandwich, as they were against Churchill's hero John Wilkies who had incurred the
wrath of George III. The Rociad (1761) was a very vigorous satire on some famous actors of the day. Edmund
Gosse observes about Churchill: "The happiness of others is a calamity to him; and his work would excite
in us the extremity of aversion, if it were not that its very violence betrays the exasperation and
wretchedness of its unfortunate author."
William Cowper (1731 -1800) is much less known for his satiric than non-satiric verse. His Poems
(1782) contains many satiric pieces on such subjects as The Progress of Error, Truth, Hope and Charity,

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Conversation and Retirement. William Blake (1757-1827) was apoet of his own kind. Some of his poems
like London are satirical in temper. Among the little known poets may be mentioned John Wolcot, an
opponent of George III (like Churchill) who wrote The Lousiad. William Giffbrd in The Baviad (1794)
and The Maeviad (1795) satirised bad critics and poets now justly forgotten. Canning and Frere in Anti-
Jacobian denounced the revolutionary zeal of poets like Southey and Coleridge. The last twenty years of the
eighteenth century were a period of singular inactivity as regards not only satiric poetry but all poetry.

Monday, December 27, 2010

The Rise of the Novel in the Eighteenth Century

Introduction:
In the eighteenth century the years after the forties witnessed a wonderful efflorescence of a new
literary genre which was soon to establish itself for all times to come as the dominant literary form. Of
course, we are referring here to the English novel which was born with Richardson's Pamela and has been
thriving since then.

When Matthew Arnold used the epithets "excellent" and "indispensable" for the eighteenth century which
had little of good poetry or drama to boast of, he was probably paying it due homage for its gift of the
novel. The eighteenth century was the age in which the novel was established as the most outstanding and
enduring form of literature. The periodical essay, which was another gift of this century to English
literature, was born and died in the century, but the novel was to enjoy an enduring career. It is to the
credit of the major eighteenth-century novelists that they freed the novel from the influence and elements
of high flown romance and fantasy, and used it to interpret the everyday social and psychological
problems of the common man. Thus they introduced realism, democratic spirit, and psychological interest
into the novel— the qualities which have since then been recognized as the essential prerequisites of-every
good novel and which distinguish it from the romance and other impossible stories.
Reasons for the Rise and Popularity:
Various reasons can be adduced for the rise and popularity of the novel in the eighteenth century.
The most important of them is that this new literary form suited the genius and temper of the times. The
eighteenth century is known in English social history for the rise of the middle classes consequent upon an
unprecedented increase in the volume of trade and commerce. Many people emerged from the limbo of
society to occupy a respectable status as wealthy burgesses. The novel, with its realism, its democratic spirit,
and its concern with the everyday psychological problems of the common people especially appealed to
these nouveaia riches and provided them with respectable reading material. The novel thus appears to have
been specially designed both to voice the aspirations of the middle and low classes and to meet their taste.
Moreover, it gave the writer much scope for what Cazamian calls "morality and sentiment"-the two
elements which make literature "popular." The decline of drama in the eighteenth century was also partly
responsible for the rise and -ascendency of the novel. After the Licensing Act of 1737, the drama lay
moribund. The poetry of the age too-except for the brilliant example of Pope's work—was in a stage
of decadence. It was then natural that from the ashes of the drama (and, to some extent, of poetry, too)
should rise the phoenix-like shape of a new literary genre. This new genre was, of course, the novel.
Before the Masters:

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 Before Richardson and Fielding gave shape to the new form some work had already been done by
numerous other writers, which helped the pioneers to some extent. Mention must here be made of Swift,
Defoe, Addison, and Steele. Swift in Gulliver's Travels gave an interesting narrative, and, in spite of the
obvious impossibility of the "action" and incidents, created an effect of verisimilitude which was to be an
important characteristic of the novel. The Coverley papers of Addison and Steele were in themselves a kind
of rudimentary novel, and some of them actually read like so many pages from a social and domestic novel.
Their good-humoured social satire, their eye for the oddities of individuals, their basic human sympathy,
their lucid style, and their sense of episode-all were to be aspired after by the future novelists. Defoe with
his numerous stories like Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, and Roxana showed his uncanny gift of the
circumstantial detail and racy, gripping narrative combined with an unflinching realism generally
concerned with the seamy and sordid aspects of life (commonly, low life). His lead was to be followed by '
numerous novelists. Defoe's limitation lies in the fact that his protagonists are psychologically too simple
and that he makes nobody laugh and nobody weep. But his didacticism was to find favour with all the
novelists of the eighteenth, and even many of the nineteenth, century. Some call Defoe the first English
novelist. But as David Daiches puts it in A Critical History of English Literature, Vol. II, whether Defoe was
"properly" a novelist "is a matter of definition of terms."
The Masters:
Between 1740 and 1800 hundreds of novels of all kinds were written. However, the real "masters"
of the novel in the eighteenth century were four-Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne. The rest of
them are extremely inferior to them. Oliver Elton maintains: "The work of the four masters stands high, but
the foothills are low." The case was different in, say, the mid-nineteenth century when so many equally great
novelists were at work. Fielding was the greatest of the foursome. Sir Edmund Gosse calls Richardson "the
first great English novelist" and Fielding, "the greatest of English novelists." Fielding may not be the
greatest of all, but he was certainly one of the greatest English novelists and the greatest novelist of the
eighteenth century.
Samuel Richardson (1689-1761):
He was the father of the English novel. He set the vogue of the novel with his Pamela, or Virtue
Rewarded (1741). It was in the epistolary manner. It took England by storm. In it Richardson narrated the
career of a rustic lady's maid who guards her honour against the advances of her dissolute master who in
the end marries her and is reformed. Pamela was followed by Clarissa ffarlowe (1747-48), in eight
volumes. It was, again, of the epistolary kind, Richardson's third and last novel was Sir Charles
Grandison (1754). The hero is a model Christian gentleman very scrupulous in his love-affair.
Among Richardson's good qualities must be mentioned his knowledge of human, particularly
female psychology and his awareness of the emotional problems of common people. He completely, and for
good, liberated the novel from the extravagance and lack of realism of romance to concentrate on social
reality. The note of morality and sentimentality made him a popular idol not only in England but also
abroad. Thus Didoret in France could compare him to Homer and Moses! However, his morality with its
twang of smugness and prudery did not go unattacked even in his own age. Fielding was the most important
of those who reacted against Richardsonian sentimentalism and prudish moralism. One great defect of
Richardson's novels, which is especially noticeable today, is their enormous length. The epistolary
technique which he adopted in all his three novels is essentially dilatory and repetitive, and therefore makes
for bulkiness. He is at any rate a very good psychologist and as one he is particularly admirable for, what a
critic calls, "the delineation of the delicate shades of sentiment as they shift and change and the cross-
purposes which the troubled mind envisages when in the grip of passion.''
Henry Fielding (1707-54):
Fielding in the words of Hudson, "was a man of very different type. His was a virile, vigorous, and
somewhat coarse nature, and his knowledge of life as wide as Richardson's was narrow, including in
particular many aspects of it from which the prim little printer would have recoiled shocked. There was thus

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a strength and breadth in his work for which we look in vain in that of his elder contemporary. Richardson's
judgment of Fielding-that his writings were 'wretchedly low and dirty'-clearly suggests the fundamental
contrast between the two men." His very first novel, Joseph Andrews (1742), was intended to be a parody
of Pamela, particularly of its priggish morality and lachrymosic sentimentalism. According to Wilbur L.
Cross, Richardson "was a sentimentalist, creating pathetic scenes for their own sake and degrading tears
and hysterics into a manner." In Joseph Andrews Fielding light-heartedly titled against morbid
sentimentalism and sham morality. After the ninth chapter of the book, however, he seems to have
outgrown his initial intention of parody. Parson Adams, one of the immortal creations of English fiction,
appears and runs away with the rest of the novel. Joseph Andrews was followed by Tom Jones (1749)
and Amelia (1751). We may add to the list of his fictional works Jonathan Wild the Great (1743), a cynically
ironical novel which, as Legouis says, must have been written "after a fit of gloom.”
Fielding's novels are characterised by a fresh and realistic moral approach which admits
occasionally of animalism and ribaldry, a searching realism, good-humoured social satire, and healthy
sentiment In his abundant and coarse vigour, his common sense and unflinching realism, and his delight
in physical beauty (especially female) he is essentially a masculine writer. He does not have the delicacy of
Richardson. It may be said that it is not Richardson who is the "father of the English novel; it is in fact,
Fielding. As for Richardson, he is only the "mother" of the English novel!
It is to the credit of 'Fielding that unlike Richardson and most of his own successors, at least in Tom
Jones (if not the other novels, too), he provided a glowing model of a well-constructed plot. According to
Coleridge, Jones (with Sophocles' Oedipus the King and Ben Jonson's The Alchemist) is one of the three
works in world literature which have perfectly constructed plots.
Tobias Smollett (1721-71):
Along with Richardson and Fielding, Smollett is generally included among the masters of
eighteenth-century novel; but, as Hudson points out, "it must be distinctly understood that his work is on
a much lower level than theirs." His novels are of the picaresque kind, and include Roderick
Random (1748), Peregrine Pickle (1751), and Humphrey Clinker (1771). Smollett was a realist and had his
own art of racy narrative and eye-catching description. He was a keen observer of the coarser facts of life,
particularly naval life. He exulted in coarseness and brutality. He never bothered about the construction of
a plot. Nor did he bother about morality, Richardsonian or "Fieldingian." His humour, in keeping with his
nature, is coarse rather than subtle or ironical and arises mostly out of caricature. Hazlitt observes: "It is
not a very difficult undertaking to class Fielding or Smollett-the one as an observer of the character of
human life, the other as a describer of its various eccentricities." Smollett's characterisation is necessarily
poor. His heroes are mechanical puppets rather than living personalities. They are meant only for the
bringing in of new.situations. As a critic puts it, "Roderick Random's career is such as would be enough to
kill three heroes and yet the fellow lives just to introduce us to new characters and situations."
Laurence Sterne (1713-68):
His only novel is Tristram Shandy which appeared from 1759 to 1767 in nine volumes and which
is described by Hudson as "the strange work of a very strange man." If this work can be called a novel, it is
one of its own kind, without predecessors and without successors. Hudson observes: "It is rather a medley
of unconnected incidents, scraps of out-of-the-way learning, whimsical fancies, humour, pathos, reflection,
impertinence, and indecency." The plot is of the barest minimum: we have to wait till the third book for the
birth of the hero! And he is put into breeches only in the sixth! What a pace of development! It was, says
Cross, "a sad day for English fiction when a writer of genius came to look upon the novel as the repository
for the crotchets of a lifetime."
Sterne's sentimentalism was to leave a lasting trace on the English novels which followed. What is
quite remarkable in Tris&am Shandy is the wonderfully living characters of Uncle Toby, the elder Shandy,
his wife, and Corporal Trim.
The Novel after Sterne:

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 After Tristram Shandy we find in the eighteenth century a remarkable proliferation of novels. But
none of the later novelists comes anywhere near Richardson and Fielding. We find the novel developing in
many directions. Four major kinds of the novel may be recognized:
(i) The novel of sentiment.
(ii) The so-called Gothic novel.
(iii) The novel of doctrine and didacticism.
(iv) The novel of manners,
Henry Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling (1771) is prominent among the novels of sentiment.
According to Cross, "written in a style alternating between the whims of Sterne and a winning plaintiveness,
[it] enjoys the distinction of being the most sentimental of all English novels." The Gothic novel, which
appeared towards the end of the eighteenth century, indulged in morbid sensationalism with impossible
stories of supernatural monsters and blood-curdling incidents. Horace Walpole, Mrs. Radcliffe, "Monk"
Lewis, and William Beckford were the most important writers of this kind of novel. The novel of doctrine
and didacticism includes such works as Mrs. Inchbad's Nature and Art (1796) and William Godwin's Caleb
Williams (1794). These works used the form of the novel just for propagating a specific point of view. The
novel of manners was mostly patronised by fairly intelligent female writers such as Fanny Burney and Maria
Edgeworth who aimed at a light transcription of contemporary manners.
Sarah Fielding's David Simple (1744), Dr. Johnson's Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia (1759), and Oliver
Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefleld (1766) also deserve a special mention in an account of eighteenth-
century novel. Sarah Fielding's work was inspired by the success of Pamela. It abounds in faithfully
rendered scenes of London life. Dr. Johnson's work is hjighly didactic. It emphasized "the vanity of
human wishes" in the form of an allegorical tale which he wrote in a very despondent mood induced by
the death of his mother. Goldsmith's work is, in the words of Cross, "of all eighteenth-century novels, the
one that many readers would the least willingly lose." This novel is admirable, among other things, for the
sensitive characterisation of Dr. Primrose and the general sanity of the "philosophy of life" which peeps
through, it.

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