CHAPTER III

FICTION

The great achievement of the eighteenth century was in the development of fiction. The famous names here are, of course, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne. After them, and also to a less degree contemporary with them, are many writers of fiction the quality of whose work has consigned them to the list of “The Neglected, the Disdained, the Forgotten,” and in most cases it would be a literary misfortune if by any chance they should fall into the fourth class, “The Resuscitated.” As literature they are almost unreadable. It is only from the historical point of view that they can arouse any real interest. For the present purpose I do not pretend to have read all the works of fiction written in the eighteenth century. The forty-three mentioned here were selected because by their dates they represent the century as a whole, and because they represent also the various kinds of fiction. I shall first speak of these briefly in chronological order, and then indicate such general statements as may seem the legitimate outcome of the facts presented. The one point to be considered is the use made of external Nature in the novel or romance.

The “Sir Roger de Coverley” papers (Addison and Steele, 1712) are continuous narratives marked by some at least of the characteristics of the coming English novel. Many of these papers purport to be written from the country and Will Wimble complains that they “begin to smell confoundedly of woods and meadows.” After a time the author finds himself growing short of subjects in the country, and returns to town as the true “field of game for sportsmen of his species.” Though written from the country the papers have nothing about country scenes except frequent phrases such as, “We then took a walk in the fields,” and one brief description of “a solemn walk of elms,” unless, indeed, we might add the pleasure the author took in his friend’s poultry yard. The stress is all on country people.

“Robinson Crusoe” (Defoe, 1719), the first great example of the _voyage imaginaire_, necessarily regards Nature from the point of view of immediate utility. The whole interest of the book rests on the mechanical ingenuity whereby man subdues Nature. There are few if any passages where Robinson Crusoe is represented as being in any way sensitive to the beauty or charm of Nature.

In “Pamela” (Richardson, 1740) there is much talk about the value of travel in Great Britain and on the continent, but there is not a word about the scenery of the places visited. Pamela sums up her impressions of travel in England in one sentence. “These excursions have given me infinite delight and pleasure, and enlarged my notions of the wealth and power of the kingdom” (Vol. III, p. 304). When Lord B. and Pamela are spending their honeymoon in their Kentish house they plan certain improvements such as cutting a vista through the coppice; they train the vines around the windows because they love the mingled odors of woodbines and jessamines; and they listen for two hours at a stretch to the “responsive songs of two warbling nightingales” (Vol. II, p. 163). Earlier in their career, during a walk in the garden, the fragrance from a bank of flowers inspires Lord B. to sing a typical eighteenth-century song of which this is one stanza:

The purple violet, damask rose, Each, to delight your senses, blows. The lilies ope as you appear; And all the beauties of the year Diffuse their odours at your feet, Who give to ev’ry flower its sweet.

There is not a hint in the book of any feeling toward Nature except such as is characteristic of the pseudo-classical poetry.

In “Joseph Andrews” (Fielding, 1742) there are four brief passages in which Nature is touched upon. Two of these are evidently meant as satires on the ordinary descriptions of sunrise. The first one is as follows:

“Aurora now began to show her blooming cheeks over the hills, whilst ten millions of feathered songsters, in jocund chorus, repeated odes a thousand times sweeter than those of our laureate” (p. 43; cf. p. 219). The longest description is of a vale with a winding rivulet, many trees, and soil “spread with a verdure which no paint could imitate,” the whole place being such as “might have raised romantic ideas in older minds than those of Joseph and Fanny” (p. 226).

In “Jonathan Wild” (Fielding, 1743) there are no references to the world of Nature.

In “David Simple” (Sarah Fielding, 1744) the search of the hero for a true friend is so complicated and absorbing an occupation that there is no room for observation of the external world.

In “Clarissa Harlowe” (Richardson, 1748) there is one simile drawn from Nature (Vol. II, p. 478), one mention of the “variegated prospects” from Hampstead Heath (Vol. III, p. 198), and one reference to an overgrown ivy so thick as to be a shelter from the rain (Vol. I, p. 394).

In “Roderick Random” (Smollett, 1748) there are no references to Nature.

Of the eight passages referring to Nature in “Tom Jones” (Fielding, 1749) two are satirical of the conventional descriptions and similitudes of the day.

Aurora now first opened her casement, _Anglicé_, the day began to break (Vol. II, p. 9).

As in the month of June, the damask rose, which chance hath planted among the lilies, with their candid hues mixes his vermilion; or, as some playful heifer in the pleasant month of May diffuses her odoriferous breath over the flowery meadows; or as, in the blooming month of April, the gentle, constant dove, perched on some fair bough, sits meditating on her mate, so sits Sophia, looking a hundred charms, and breathing as many sweets, her thoughts being fixed on her Tommy (Vol. II, p. 61).

A third passage, also satirical, is, “And now the moon began to put forth her silver light, as the poets call it (though she looked at that time more like a piece of copper)” (Vol. II, p. 172). There is one appreciative reference to the attractive scenery of Devon and Dorset. The description of Mr. Allworthy’s estate which owed “less to art than to nature,” is modern in tone and marks the break already made with the formal garden (Vol. I, p. 12). In another passage there is an expression of pleasure in a wide prospect, seen by moonlight, for “the solemn light which the moon casts on all objects is beyond expression beautiful, especially to an imagination which is desirous of cultivating melancholy ideas” (Vol. I, p. 422). The other passages are of no significance.

“Peter Wilkins” (Robert Paltock, 1751) is the first and most famous of the successors of “Robinson Crusoe.” The scene of Peter’s trials and successes is laid in Africa and the southern islands. There is but one brief passage in which there is even the slightest indication that the author thought of Nature from any but the utilitarian point of view.

“Pompey the Little” (Coventry, 1751) is a romance ostensibly relating with serio-comic minuteness the life and adventures of a lapdog much in the manner of the _novele picaresco_ of Mendozo and Aleman, but really dealing in thinly disguised social satire. It makes no use of Nature, unless we may count poor Mr. Rhymer who looks at the moon and quotes Milton to the extravagant amusement of a group of dandies who observe him.

In “Peregrine Pickle” (Smollett, 1751) Peregrine sings one of the conventional songs to Emilia, beginning,

Thy charms divinely bright appear And add new splendor to the year.

This is the only use of Nature in the book. The eighteen months of travel in France and Holland do not suggest a single phrase about the scenery of those countries.

Mrs. Lennox’s “The Female Quixote” (1752) is a record of the absurd and futile attempts of a beautiful maiden unfortunately brought up on “the languishing love romances of the Calprenedos and the Scuderis” to make over the practical world about her according to the laws of love and chivalry. Almost all her adventures occur in the country, but there are only two references to the out-door world. Of the estate of the marquis it is said: “The most laborious endeavours of art had been expended to make it appear like the beautiful product of wild uncultivated nature.”

In another passage the heroine is said to lead her unhappy friend into the garden, “supposing a person whose uneasiness proceeded from love would be pleased with the sight of groves and streams.”

In “Ferdinand Count Fathom” (Smollett, 1753) there is merely a conventional description of a furious storm.

In “Sir Charles Grandison” (Richardson, 1753) there are two interesting passages concerning the estate of Sir Charles. It was his aim not “to force and distort nature, but to help it as he finds it, without letting art be seen in his works, where he can possibly avoid it” (Vol. II, p. 276). A part of the estate was evidently laid out according to the ideas of Kent and Brown, but the orchard “with its regular semicircle rows of pears, apples, cherries, plums and apricots, arranged according to the season of flowering,” belonged to the days of Sir Thomas, when symmetry and regularity ruled (Vol. IV, p. 238). In this novel also is Richardson’s frequently quoted description of Savoy, “equally noted for its poverty and rocky mountains ... one of the worst countries under heaven” (Vol. III, pp. 138–42).

We have now passed the middle of the century and there has not been in the works of fiction mentioned a single passage indicating any close observation or love of Nature, and hardly a passage showing any knowledge of Nature except as found in parks and gardens. But in 1756–66 there appeared a fantastic novel by Thomas Amory called “The Life of John Buncle,” which is notable in the present study because nearly all the adventures whereby the hero gains and loses his seven Socinian wives occur among the mountains of Westmoreland and Cumberland. We have but to compare the book with Mrs. Ward’s “Robert Elsmere” to see how extravagantly unreal are most of Amory’s descriptions. They often contain marvels equal to those of “Vathek.” The mountains are made as lofty and dangerous as the most inaccessible Alps, and they are so heaped in together that progress from one valley to another would be out of the question were it not for convenient caves and natural tunnels by which the venturesome hero makes his way from vale to vale. But in the midst of these absurdities and impossibilities, there are occasional passages of effective description, and of real appreciation of wild mountain scenery. It is an entirely new note in fiction and it followed close upon the poem by Dr. Dalton, which was probably the first poetical tribute to the scenery of the Lakes. Mr. Amory aptly describes mountain tarns as pools of “black, standing, unfathomable water” (Vol. I, p. 290). He frequently gives enthusiastic descriptions of the views from mountain tops. In one passage he says: “I climbed up to the top by a steep, craggy way. This was very difficult and dangerous, but I had an enchanting prospect when I gained the summit of the hill.... The vast hills had a fine effect in the view” (Vol. II, p. 122; cf. Vol. I, p. 167).

Of Westmoreland he says:

The Vale of Keswick and Lake of Derwentwater, in Cumberland, are thought by those who have been there to be the finest point of view in England, and extremely beautiful they are, far more so than Dr. Dalton has been able to make them appear in his descriptive poem; or than the Doctor’s brother, Mr. Dalton, has painted them in his fine drawings; and yet they are inferior in charms to the vale, the lake, the brooks, the shaded sides of the surrounding mountains, and the tuneful falls of water to which we came in Westmoreland. In all the world, I believe, there is not a more glorious scene to be seen in the fine time of the year (Vol. III, p. 93).

And, again, “Westmoreland is the most beautiful and romantic solitude in the world” (Vol. III, p. 151). The first volume of Amory’s book appeared in 1756. The other volumes, written at intervals thereafter, were published in 1766. The best passages are in the third volume, but at the latest they must have been written three years before Gray made his tour to the lakes. It would be interesting to know whether Gray had read “John Buncle,” as Amory had Dalton’s poem. At any rate Amory’s novel shows how early the Lake District was visited by lovers of the beautiful, for he not only describes it himself, but he speaks as if there were already a good deal of discussion as to the rival charms of Keswick and Westmoreland.

In “Rasselas” (Dr. Johnson, 1759) the scenery of the Happy Valley is briefly described. Since it was a spot where “all the diversities of the world were brought together, the blessings of nature were collected, and its evils were extracted and excluded,” it would be in vain to look for first-hand description. We have merely an impossible combination of millennial details. After leaving the Happy Valley Imlac wanders through the world, but his only impression from Nature is a feeling of repulsion at the “barren uniformity” of the ocean. When he tried to be a poet he did, to be sure, turn to Nature. He “ranged mountains and deserts for images and similitudes” in true classical style. He studied trees and flowers, he wandered along rivulets, and sometimes he watched the clouds, for “to a poet nothing can be useless.” Dr. Johnson’s use of Nature in “Rasselas” is tasteless and insipid.

Sterne’s one allusion to Nature in “Tristram Shandy” (1759–67) is too characteristic to be omitted. It occurs in the description of a journey.

There is nothing more terrible to travel-writers than a large rich plain, especially if it is without great rivers or bridges; and presents nothing to the eye but one unvaried picture of plenty; for after they have once told you that it is delicious or delightful (as the case may happen); that the soil was grateful and that nature pours out all her abundance, etc., they have then a large plain upon their hands which they know not what to do with and which is of little or no use to them but to carry them to the next town.

In “Almoran and Hamet” (Hawkesworth, 1761), an oriental tale, there is no use of Nature except in a few far-fetched similes, and one or two phrases about the lengthening evening shadows.

In “Sir Launcelot Greaves” (Smollett, 1762) there is no reference to Nature except in a sarcastic allusion to poets who cannot talk of a beautiful girl without “blending the lily and the rose and bringing in a parcel of similes of cowslips, carnations, pinks, and daisies.”

Mrs. Brooke’s “The History of Lady Julia Mandeville” (1763) has a hero and a heroine who rejoice in “a genuine taste for elegant nature,” and their letters contain some descriptive passages evidently intended to combine vividness and elegance. The gardens and parks behind the house are “romantic beyond the wantonness of imagination,” and the whole adjoining country has “every charm of lovely unadorned nature.” Beyond the house there is “an avenue of the tallest trees which lets in the prospect of a fruitful valley, bounded at a distance by a mountain, down the sides of which rushes a foaming cascade, which spreads into a thousand meandering streams in the vale below.” In the woods are rustic temples “in the most elegant style of simplicity.” At the close of a walk they come to a grotto “wildly lovely, its entrance almost hidden by the vines that flaunt over its top,” and there they find an opportune repast with servants in attendance. The motherly care with which Mrs. Brooke preserves her delicately bred characters from roughness or fatigue or hunger interferes somewhat with her attempts to represent “simple, unadorned nature,” and in spite of her protests against “the gloomy haunts of London” she never quite gets out into the free country. Her raptures have a forced, made-up air. The exclamatory ecstacy of such passages as the following is certainly open to suspicion:

“What a divine morning! how lovely is the face of nature! The blue serene of Italy with the lovely verdure of England! But behold a more charming object than nature herself! The sweet, the young, the blooming Lady Julia!”

There is a more genuine ring to Lady Wilmot’s protest, “The finest landscape is a dreary wild without people.”

Most of the action in Mrs. Brooke’s second novel, “Emily Montague,” is laid in Canada, which country Mrs. Brooke had visited. The book represents her enjoyment of the strange scenes about her. The beauty of the river Montmorenci more than repays Miss Arabella Fermor for the fatigues of a voyage across the Atlantic. The hero finds that the streams and mountains of England seem petty when he is in the presence of the majesty and sublimity of the western world. The descriptions are perhaps over-elaborate, but they are not ineffective, and they show much closer knowledge of natural phenomena and more real interest in them, than do the tamer passages in the preceding novel.

In the famous “Castle of Otranto” (Walpole, 1764) there is no use whatever of Nature.

In Brooke’s “Fool of Quality” (1766) the sky is fitly spoken of as “a stupendous expanse sumptuously furnished with a profusion of planets.” Certainly no other sort of sky would have presumed to bend down over Mr. Brooke’s stupendous little prig of a hero. The chief use of Nature, however, is in similes for Harry’s countenance which is “like sunshine on a dark day,” or a “lake on a summer’s evening showing heaven in its bosom,” or, if bathed in tears as it frequently was, “like the sun in a shower.”

The charm of “The Vicar of Wakefield” (Goldsmith, 1766) rests upon its sweetness and purity, its quaint humor, and its quality of fresh, open-air wholesomeness. Its use of Nature is of the most casual, unemphasized sort. There are not in the whole work twenty-five lines concerning the country scenes in which all the action takes place. And yet these simple, direct phrases have a magical power of suggestion. The seat under the hawthorn where the family drank their tea and watched the sunset, the dinner in the hayfield, the brief description of the little farm, have in them the power of reality and do more to give a free, out-of-doors atmosphere to the story than all Mrs. Brooke’s panegyrics. But here, as in Goldsmith’s other works, the stress is on the characters, and the little, truthful pictures of Nature seem almost accidental.

In Sterne’s “Sentimental Journey” (1768) there is no use of external Nature.

Of Mackenzie’s “Man of Feeling” (1771) the same may be said unless, indeed, we except one reference to a scene “not unlike Salvator’s backgrounds.”

Smollett’s “Humphrey Clinker” (1771) is the last of his novels and the only one in which there is effective use of Nature. Smollett was born and brought up in the valley of the Leven; and he spent some months there before the final trip to Italy for his health. He was in Leghorn about a year before he died, and during this year he wrote “Humphrey Clinker.” It recounts the travels of Matthew Bramble in search of health. The love of Nature comes out chiefly in the letters supposed to be written from Scotland. He speaks with pleasure of the “huge dusky mountains of the West Highlands, piled one over another,” and of Loch Lomond, that “surprising body of pure, transparent water, unfathomably deep in many places,” with its green, wooded islands. His delight in the wild scenery of Scotland is thus expressed:

I have seen the Lago di Gardi, Albano, De Vico, Bolsena, and Geneva, and upon my honor, I prefer Loch Lomond to them all; a preference which is certainly owing to the verdant islands that seem to float upon its surface, affording the most enchanting objects of repose to the excursive view. Nor are the banks destitute of beauties, which even partake of the sublime. On this side they display a sweet variety of woodland, cornfield, and pasture, with several agreeable villas emerging as it were out of the lake, till at some distance the prospect terminates in huge mountains, covered with heath, which being in the bloom, affords a very rich covering of purple. Everything here is romantic beyond imagination.... Above the house is a romantic glen or cleft of a mountain covered with hanging woods, having at bottom a stream of fine water that forms a number of cascades in its descent to form the Leven; so that the scene is quite enchanting.... This country is amazingly wild, especially towards the mountains, which are heaped upon the backs of one another, making a most stupendous appearance of savage nature, with hardly any signs of cultivation, or even of population. All is sublimity, silence, and solitude (pp. 261–65).

On the country of Ossian he says:

These are the lonely hills of Morven, where Fingal and his heroes enjoyed the same pastime. I feel an enthusiastic pleasure when I survey the brown heath that Ossian was wont to tread; and hear the wind whistle through the bending grass.... The poems of Ossian are in every mouth.

Smollett’s love for the Leven, that “charming stream ... transparent, pastoral, delightful,” is further evidenced by this “Ode to the Leven,” a single stanza of which may be quoted here:

Pure stream in whose transparent wave My youthful limbs I wont to lave; No torrents stain thy limpid source, No rocks impede thy dimpling course, That sweetly warbles o’er its bed, With white round polished pebbles spread (p. 262).

Smollett has one character who labored under ἀγροφοβια, or _horror of green fields_, but that was manifestly not his own case. Though he completely ignored Nature in his other books, “Humphrey Clinker” is ample proof of his sensitiveness to Nature and his descriptive power. It needed a touch of homesickness and the vivifying force of early associations to bring the feeling to the surface, but as soon as it found expression there was revealed a closeness of observation and a genuineness of affection for Nature in her milder forms not found in any novel before “Humphrey Clinker.” The nearest approach to it is in the fantastic work of Amory.

In Clara Reeve’s “Old English Baron” (1777) there is one brief conventional passage about the morning serenade of the birds and the fragrance of the woodbine (p. 27).

In “Julia de Roubigné” (1777) Mackenzie makes more use of Nature than he had in “The Man of Feeling.” Julia and Savillon are both represented as finding pleasure in the beautiful country around them. In one letter Julia says: “Methinks I should hate to have been born in a town; when I say my native brook, or my native hill, I talk of friends of whom the remembrance warms my heart.” In the serenity of Nature she finds calmness after spiritual tumult. Belville, the home of Julia, is described as “a venerable pile, the remains of ancient Gothic magnificence.” The most attractive part of the estate was “a wild and rocky dell, where tasteless wealth had never warred on nature, nor even elegance refined or embellished her beauties. The walks are only worn by the tread of shepherds and the banks only smoothed by the feeding of their flocks.” There is great regret expressed when the new owner of Belville cuts down the trees, and puts in modern adornments “which they call Chinese.” In this novel Mackenzie shows a real though narrow appreciation of free, unsubdued Nature.

In Fanny Burney’s “Evelina” (1778) the only touch of Nature is a criticism of Vauxhall Gardens as being too formal and regular. In “Cecilia” (1782) there is no use of Nature.

William Beckford’s “Vathek” (1784) is an extravaganza where there is no pretense of representing Nature as it is. A single quotation will give the general tone. It is a description of a high mountain:

Upon it grew a hundred thickets of eglantine and other fragrant shrubs, a hundred arbours of roses, jessamines and honeysuckle, as many clumps of orange trees, cedar, and citron whose branches interwoven with the palm, the pomegranate, and the vine, presented every luxury that could regale the eye or the taste. The ground was strewed with violets, harebells, and pansies, in the midst of which sprang forth tufts of jonquils, hyacinths, and carnations, with every other perfume that impregnates the air.

In Dr. Moore’s “Zeluco” (1786) neither the hero himself, that “finished model of depravity,” nor any of the characters associated with him, show any knowledge of the existence of any world outside their own intrigues and counter-intrigues.

Mrs. Inchbald’s “A Simple Story” (1791) is a study of true and false education. There is in it no word concerning Nature. The same may be said of her “Nature and Art,” published in 1796.

Godwin’s story, “Caleb Williams” (1794), has one brief, conventional description of a sunrise. This ignoring of Nature seems the more surprising in Godwin since his next novel, published ten years later, “Fleetwood, or the New Man of Feeling,” is full of the wild scenery of Wales and is really the study of a character made sensitive by early and constant communion with Nature. But this novel would carry us into the next century.

Another novel of some repute toward the close of the century is Robert Bage’s “Hermsprong, or Man as He Is Not” (1796). It was read chiefly for its political bias toward the popular democratical doctrines. The scene is laid chiefly in the country and there are occasional pleasant bits of description. They are unimportant, but the book cannot be dismissed without a reference to the hero who was compelled, by lack of funds, to seek a country retreat, and who fortified his failing resolution to leave the beloved city by quoting Thomson’s “Seasons.”

The two authors who first made extensive use of Nature in fiction are Mrs. Charlotte Smith and Mrs. Ann Radcliffe.

Mrs. Smith shows in her novels and poems a really ardent enjoyment, though seldom a close knowledge, of Nature. She indulges in long and animated descriptions of places of which she has only vaguely heard and the result is sometimes as amazing as the scenes in “Vathek.” In “The Old Manor House” (1793), her best work, a part of the scene is laid in the northern United States and Canada. Here is her idea of spring in that region:

The forest in only a few days after the severest weather, which had buried the whole country in snow, burst into bloom, and presented, beneath the tulip tree and the magnolia, a more brilliant variety of flowers than art can collect in the most cultivated European garden.

The following is a description of Canada on the banks of the St. Lawrence, “a very few days” after the severest winter weather:

On the opposite side of the river lay an extensive savannah, alive with cattle and coloured with such a variety of swamp plants that their colour, even at that distance, detracted something from the vivid green of the new-sprung grass.... The acclivity on which the tents stood sinking very suddenly on the left, there gave place to a cypress swamp ... while the rocks rising suddenly and sharply were clothed with wood of various species; the evergreen oak, the scarlet oak, the tulip tree and magnolia, seemed bound together by festoons of flowers, some resembling the convolvuluses of our garden, and others the various sorts of clematis with vegenias and the Virginia creeper ... beneath these fragrant wreaths that wound about the trees, tufts of rhododendrons, and azalia, of andromedas and calmias, grew in the luxuriant beauty; and strawberries already ripening, or even ripe, peeped forth among the rich vegetation of grass and flowers.

Mrs. Smith’s imagination certainly had other laws than the dull ones imposed by the facts of the case. She could hardly have mixed up zones and seasons and flowers and fruits more successfully if she had tried. But the notable point here is that there was in her mind an instinctive and inevitable dwelling upon the scenery of the country through which she led her hero. The English scenes are much better. The following passage shows well her emotional openness to the influence of Nature.

Just as he arrived at the water, from the deep gloom of the tall firs through which he passed, the moon appeared behind the opposite coppices, and threw her long line of trembling radiance on the water. It was a cold but clear evening, and, though early in November, the trees were not yet entirely stripped of their discoloured leaves; a low wind sounded hollow through the firs and stone pines over his head, and then faintly sighed among the reeds that crowded into the water; no other sound was heard but, at distant intervals, the cry of the wild fowl concealed among them, or the dull murmur of the current, which was now low. Orlando had hardly ever felt himself so impressed with those feelings which inspire poetic effusions: Nature appeared to pause and to ask the turbulent and troubled heart of man, whether his silly pursuits were worth the toil he undertook for them. Peace and tranquillity seemed here to have retired to a transient abode; and Orlando, as slowly he traversed the narrow path over ground made hollow by the roots of these old trees, stepped as lightly as if he feared to disturb them. Insensibly he began to compare this scene, the scene he every day saw of rural beauty and rural content with those into which his destiny was about to lead him.

Mrs. Barbauld says that Mrs. Smith was one of the first to introduce description of scenery into fiction. That she had predecessors we have already seen, but it is true that she laid much more stress on Nature than had any other novelist except Mrs. Radcliffe. Mrs. Smith has frequent descriptions that are not needed for the progress of the plot or the development of the characters, but are written purely for their own sake. She also often uses Nature as dramatic background and she represents her hero as deeply influenced by Nature. Mrs. Smith’s poems further attest her love of Nature. In one poem she says,

Farewell, Aruna! on whose varied shore My early vows were paid to Nature’s shrine.

In another she addresses the South Downs,

Ah, hills beloved, where once a happy child, Your beechen shades, your turfs, your flowers among, I wove your bluebells into garlands wild.

Mrs. Smith’s life was a most unhappy one, and she found her real comfort in Nature.

Mrs. Radcliffe’s “Romance of a Forest” (1791) appeared two years before “The Old Manor House,” and “The Mysteries of Udolpho” (1794) one year after. In these novels by Mrs. Radcliffe the romantic landscape was presented in its complete form. Except in the most rapid parts of the story there is greater stress on the scenery than on the characters. Emily, Adeline, and Clara seldom indulge in an emotion without first describing the dell or glen or forest glade, to which they have wandered. They are never too deeply agitated to observe the glories of sunrise and sunset. A wide view can soothe any grief. This susceptibility of the heroines to Nature is represented as one of their greatest charms. Mrs. Radcliffe had never seen most of the scenes she described. She had never been in France, Italy, or Switzerland. The landscapes she gives us do not bear the stamp of reality. They are ideal compositions but they are never merely an inventory nor are they impossible combinations. Though not exactly true, they can be read with pleasure because the details are blended into harmonious and lovely pictures which seem to have caught the actual spirit of the places described. She delighted in all kinds of Nature, peaceful or wild, but her especial pleasure was in those phases of Nature ignored by the classicists. Mountains, the ocean, the phenomena of the sky, and deep forests, are chiefly dwelt upon in her descriptions. Her love of the ocean is really a new element in the general attitude toward Nature. Painting, poetry, and fiction had up to this time put little stress on the ocean, but Mrs. Radcliffe in frequent passages shows that her own feeling was that of Adeline, of whom she says, “Of all the grand objects which nature had exhibited the ocean supplied her with the most sublime admiration. She loved to wander alone by its shore.” It is, however, in the representation of forest scenes that Mrs. Radcliffe’s most effective work is done. The wild and terrifying influence of the dark woods that cover the Apennines, all the dim and shadowy loveliness, all the mystery and suggestiveness of the romantic forest about the ruined abbey, reappear in her descriptions. Her feeling toward mountains is one of almost extravagant delight in their vastness, their wildness, their remoteness, and inaccessibility. She is deeply sensitive to all the “goings on” in the sky. She catches with accuracy the most ethereal, delicate, evanescent effects. It is especially mystery and remoteness that she loves, hence night, moonlight, and stars attract her. Closely connected with her pleasure in the sky is her artistic openness to all aërial transformations. In her wide views over land and sea, in vistas caught through forest glades, in pictures of twilight or dawn, of sunrise or sunset, she seldom fails to note the quick shiftings of color and form, the interplay of light and shade, the dimness, the transparency, the luminosity, resulting from atmospheric changes.

She looked upon Nature not only, as she said of one of her own characters, “with the eye of an artist, but with the raptures of a poet.” The effect of Nature on man in soothing his grief, modifying his passions, and elevating his character is everywhere insisted upon. As Adeline’s eyes “wandered through the romantic glades that opened into the forest her heart was gladdened.” Through the melancholy boughs the evening twilight, which still colored the air, “diffused a solemnity that vibrated in thrilling sensations upon the hearts of the travellers.... The tranquillity of the scene, which autumn had touched with her sweetest tints, softened her mind to a tender kind of melancholy.”

The Alps “filled her mind with sublime emotions.” The solitary grandeur of these scenes both “assisted and soothed the melancholy of her heart.” The stillness and total seclusion of the scene, the stupendous mountains, the gloomy grandeur of the woods, “diffuse a sacred enthusiasm over the mind and awaken sensations truly sublime.” Such a scene “fills the soul with emotions of indescribable awe, and seems to lift it to a nobler nature.” “It was in the tranquil observation of beautiful nature” that Clara’s mind recovered its tone. The moonlight on the sea seemed to “diffuse peace.” Twilight sometimes “inspires the mind with pensive tenderness,” sometimes “exalts it to sublime meditations.” The Alps inspire reflections that “soften and elevate the heart and fill it with the certainty of a present God.” Such expressions were repeated with an insistence that becomes monotonous. There is, indeed, an element of sameness in all the descriptions, an effect the more tiresome because they are so numerous. So large a descriptive element would hardly be admitted in a novel today unless justified by some remarkable power of word-painting. Mrs. Radcliffe’s descriptions would doubtless invite the modern reader, at least after a steady progress through four or five volumes, to do some judicious skipping. But thought of as in her own day, Mrs. Radcliffe must always rank as a discoverer, so new and fresh was this element she brought into fiction. As is usual with discoverers she overworked her idea. She was not a great genius. She was often weakly sentimental. But she had a genuine and most ardent love of Nature, and, when at her best, had exceptional descriptive power. Her fame and her influence on succeeding literature rest on these characteristics.

In “Fiction,” as in “Travels” and “Poetry,” there is the transfer of interest from what man does or is, to the powers of untrammeled Nature. The new spirit here, as in “Travels,” is late in finding adequate expression. We can hardly put any real beginnings of it earlier than “John Buncle” (1756–66). Even after that, development is spasmodic and slow. In most of the novels and romances we find the romantic impulse to see strange lands, but men and manners absorb the attention of the travelers. Mrs. Radcliffe’s fugitives in “The Romance of the Forest,” the travelers in “The Mysteries of Udolpho,” and Mrs. Brooke’s soldier in “Emily Montague” are the first to make much of the scenery through which they pass.

In general we may say that novels had little to do with Nature, and romances much. This may account for the lack of reality in the descriptions. There is nothing in any work of fiction at all correspondent to the temperate, truthful, clear-cut work of Cowper and Burns. There is practically nothing of the bald realism of John Scott, whose poetry was written rather in the scientific temper with which most travels were undertaken. Nor, on the other hand, is there anything of the visionary, mystical power of Blake. The best use of Nature in fiction is more akin to the emotionalism of Beattie. Except for Mrs. Radcliffe, and she came late in the century, fiction contributed less to bring about the new attitude toward Nature than did any other form of art expression.