Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

conduct which has been uniformly perse-vered in through the rest of the story; nor will any one acquainted with the power of habit be very sanguine as to its continuance. The character of Blifil, too, is no less exceptionable than that of his opponent. Its evident tendency to represent regularity and prudence as intimately connected with deceit and malignity.

Booth seems to be formed nearly after the model of his predecessor Tom Jones, though he does not act so distinguished a part. The most interesting object in this pleasing novel is Amelia herself.

In the representation of manners, particu-larly in the dramatic part, I believe the writer will always be found to excel most in regard to those classes of men with whom he has been most in the habit of conversing. This will not give us any very high idea of Fielding's companions. Innkeepers, rogues, and female demireps, are the characters with whom he seems most completely at home. A just picture of fashionable life was reserved for the pens of our female novelists.

1

SMOLLET.

Smollet is still coarser than Fielding, and does not possess the same intimate knowledge of the human heart. As a painter of manners, however, he is little, if at all, inferior. He excels particularly in those of seamen, chiefly, no doubt, from having been once engaged in that profession himself. But his most striking talent seems to be humour, the exhibition of odd and eccentric charaçters. Of these he has assembled, in Humphrey Clinker, the most ludicrous and amusing collection that is anywhere to be found..

In a moral view, Smollet is inferior to Fielding. The vices of his heroes are at least as great, without the same good qualities to counterbalance them. We meet nothing of that refined generosity, and those just sentiments, at least, of moral conduct, which Fielding's heroes discover. Indeed, Smollet, in regard to his, seems to make hardly any distinction between their best

and their worst actions; both are related in the same animated and approving manner.

Roderick Random is generally supposed to contain only an embellished narrative of his own adventures. The character of the hero, therefore, is naturally supposed to resemble his own; high spirited, irritable, and vindictive; not devoid of a certain rough generosity and good humour, but destitute of any fixed principles, and readily yielding to every temptation which chance throws in his way. There is more real life and business in this novel than are commonly to be met with. It does not, indeed, always present these under the most favourable aspect, but is deeply tinged with those irritable and satirical habits which appear to have strongly predominated in the mind of the writer.

Peregrine Pickle presents us with nearly the same features, only that the humour is broader, and the manners still coarser and more licentious.

Humphrey Clinker contains less incident, and is therefore not quite so attractive to the bulk of readers. But it possesses, perhaps,

more genuine merit, as being that in whichr Smollet has most completely displayed his talent for the ludicrous delineation of character. Bramble is supposed to be a picture of himself in more advanced life, after his spirit was lowered, and his temper soured by age and infirmity. He discovers, however, a view of worth and benevolence, which did not appear in his youthful predecessors. In Tabitha malignity and ill-temper are very properly represented under a ridiculous and disgusting aspect. The tendency of the whole is nearly unexceptionable.

BURNEY.

Proceeding in the order of time, we come now to the purer and more elegant performances of Miss Burney. The distinguishing excellence of this lady is, as might be expected, a perfect acquaintance with whatever relates to the character and peculiar circumstances of her own sex. She excels particularly in describing the feelings of a young lady at her first entrance into the

world; the hopes, the fears, the little em+ barrassments, which agitate her mind at this interesting crisis. Nothing can exceed the picture of these which is given in Evelina. The venial errors into which she is betrayed by youth and inexperience, with the disastrous consequences which threaten to ensue, are described in a manner the most lively and natural. The correct view which is given of the habits prevalent in the fashionable circles, must be useful both to those who are destined to move in them, and to such as wish to form a general estimate of the reigning manners. It is only to be regretted that she should have occasionally given way to a somewhat mean species of buffoonery, from which the elegant taste she has elsewhere displayed, might have been expected to preserve her.

In the Brangton family the awkward attempts frequently made by the trading part of society to copy the manners of fashionable life are very happily ridiculed. Perhaps, however, this part of the work may tend to increase that horror of vulgarity, and

« PredošláPokračovať »