THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 4987, 17 March 1877, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL.

(From the Standard.) Mr. Henry Morley, professor of the English language and literature at University College, delivered recently at the London Institution, the second of the two lectures on “ The History of the English Novel.” The learned professor, who found throughout a most appreciative audience, traced the pedigree of the English novel to a Platonic philosopher of the second century, named Apuleius, and to a Christian Bishop, Heliodorus, who wrote three centuries later. The first wrote a tale called the “ Golden-Ass,” in which as an episode appeared the graceful fiction of the loves of Cupid and Psyche. In the opening of the story, where one of the characters says he is always eager for something “ new to the ears," there is found in the diminutive form of novus (new) the first approach to our English word novel. The “ .Ethiopica ” of Heliodorus, Bishop of Tricoa, was an account of the startling adventures in the valley of the Nile of the lovers Theagenes and Chariolea, after a style modernised in quite recent times by C. P. R. James. : This first work of fiction from a Christian pen had a marked effect upon literature for generations afterwards. In the middle of the twelfth century the Arthurian romance made its appearance in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s translation of fabulous Breton legends. Geoffrey, being a patriotic Welshman, endeavored -to eclipse Saxon annalists by a history of all the British Idngs from the time of the Trajan war, chronicling in the long line of mythical sovereigns, amongst others, the “ Lear ” which Shakspere has immortalised, and the “ Eerrex and Porrex,” who gave their name to the first English dramas. The same Arthurian romance was subsequently popularised by Goimar, Layamon, and Walter Slaps, the last of whom, in the reign of Henry 11., infused a religious spirit into the epic by introducing the search for the Holy Grail. It was, however, to Italy, two centuries later, that the origin of the modern novel was to be traced, Boocacio being the true father of the pastoral and epic medise val romance. His “ Decameron” gave what he called a ■“ hundred novels,” or, as he explained, “ fables, or parables,' or histories,” told in ten days—hence the title; —by seven ladies and three young gentlemen. In a Paris collection of MSS. Church canons, however, written in the thirteenth century, the word novel was applied to a story of the Emperor Constantine being cured of leprosy by substituting, at the suggestion of Pope Sylvester, the waters of baptism for a bath of the blood of newly-born babies. “Amadis de Gaul,” written by Vasco di Lobiera, and based on old Welsh legends, was the beginning of Spanish fiction, and this was one of ’the books spared when the novels of Don Quixote were committed to the flames. The earliest English romances were very wild stories about the magic of Friar Browu aud Friar Bungay. la Elizabeth’s time the Italian novel was fairly transplanted to our shores. Lilly’s “Euphnes,” published in 1579, and bis “Euphnes and his England,” in the following year, and Robert Green’s novels heading the list. Sydney’s “ Arcadia,” published in 1590, was a turningpoint in the story of the English novel, for it was the first of a series of what might- be called the heroic pastoral romances formed under the influence of the pastoral poetry of Italy and Spain, arising from the “ Amadis de Gaul.” After the “Arcadia” we had no more of it for some time, but it received great development in France. It was characteristic of this kind of romance that the hero and heroine must be persons of exalted character —kings and queens, princes and princesses—for if they were introduced as shepherds and shepherdesses they always turned out to be princes and princesses, at least, before the romance ended. It was the theory of that form of literature that it was impossible to take any interest in the fortunes of people who had not ’the highest earthly dignity. The straining after the ingenuity of conceit became more and more conventional and mechauioal, assuming at last a pedantic form—that later form of Euphueism, which Dr. Johnson called “metaphysical” poetry, being probably poetry which no one could understand. Referring to the French novelists, H. Durb, Culpreunais, Madelaine de Sender!, and to the class of novels produced under the influence of such feminine reformers of the French language as the. Marquise de Ramhouillet, when it was laid down and accepted that they were ; only addressed»to r the polite few, aud not intended for the masses, ■ an amusing sketch was given of the fantastic language and • conceits which arose, at this. The novels so produced were published, two volumes at, a time,’ at long intervals, being completed in eight or ten octavo volumes. They were translated in England, and published here as pamphlets in quarto until the : romance was completed, when all were bound together in a solid-looking quarto, a specimen of which was exhibited to the audience. Men’s minds were too much exercised during the stirring times of ’ the Civil War and the Commonwealth to imitate these French romances, Lord Orrery’s “ Parthenissori ” being the only example. That was published in parts, of which the last did not appear until after the accession of Charles the Second. ' In 1660, Nathaniel Ingelow, D.D., thought it time to protest against the frivolity of romance of love by writing-a religious ’novel, called “Bentevolio and Urania,” in which the hero, who is born in a state of “being near to the state of God,” is enamored of heavenly wisdom, allegorically represented as Urania. Though the reverend author had not much imagination, his book went through three editions. Short love stories were produced in the reign of Charles the Second, characterised by much of the coarseness of the age, the love being rather animal than spiritual, the best novelist of tbe time being Mrs. Aira Behm, who, in her novel of “ Oranoco,” took a slave as her hero, and denounced the cruelties of slavery from her own experience on a slave plantation. Thomas Sothern dramatised “Orunooo” the novel and the play together commencing that English protest against slavery which in the present century has produced such magnificent results. Mrs. Behm’a novel was the first indication of the reaction against the theory of the French romance that no interest could be felt unless the hero was an exalted person. The full force of the change was first seen in the method of fiction inaugurated by De Foe’s immortal “ Robinson Crusoe” in 1719. De .Foe must be considered as the founder of the modern novel, though he did not profess to be a novelist at all. Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels” was written less as a story than for the purpose of satirising the politics and politicians of the day, and the taint of the insanity of which he died gave a twist to his mind which was visible in his books. The full force of the reaction against the French romance was seen in the three works of Samuel Richardson, who undertook, aud by his thorough earnestness showed, that the deepest interest might be excited for the sorrows and trials of a servant maid. It was

when ridiculing “ Pamela ; or, Virtue Rewarded ” in “Joseph Andrews,” that the greatest novelist perhaps to this day—Henry Fielding—had found his true vocation. In his character of Parson Adams, Fielding laid down a principle, since generally recognised, that nothing is ridiculous which is sincere. In Smollett there was not the solidity 'of thought which characterised the genius of Fielding; but there was a quick perception of the humors of character and a spirit of fun that was inherent in his nature. Literature from the middle of the last century was characterised by reaction against authority in politics and the Church, and by a sense that the relations between man and man were not what they should be. This was, seen in the works of Rousseau and in Goldsmith,. both of whom were exponents of the feeling of the' reaction of feeling against over-much restraint. After referring to Laurence Sterne, Horace Walpole, Henry Mackenzie, and the epoch of sickly sentimentality in English literature, the lecturer had left himself no time to deal with the novelists of the present day further than to refer very briefly to Thackeray and Dickens, and point out the way in whicii an influence had been exercised on the former by the matings of Fielding, and on the latter by those of Smollett.