CHAPTER II. PROSE WRITINGS. A ROUGH general classification and description of the subject-matter, with a few critical sketches of particular works, or groups of works, is all that we shall attempt in the present volume. The prose writings of our literature may be arranged under the following six heads :— 1. Works of fiction. 2. Works of satire, wit, and humour. 3. Oratory; (with the connected departments of Journalwriting and Pamphleteering). 4. History; (including, besides history proper, biography, and narrative works of all kinds, as subsidiary branches). 5. Theology. 6. Philosophy; (including, besides philosophy proper, essays and political treatises, and all works of thought and theory, e.g. æsthetics and literary criticism). 1. Prose Fiction. By a work of fiction a narrative work is always understood. A fiction which describes, not imaginary actions, but an imaginary state of things, such as More's Utopia, must be considered as a work of thought and theory, and will fall under our sixth head. Works of fiction, then, or fictitious narratives, are of two kinds-those in which the agencies are natural, and those in which they are not. In the latter case they are called romances, in the former, stories of common life. Romances are either mock or serious;—and mock romances may be either satirical, humorous, or comic. Stories of common life are divided into tales of adventure and novels; the novel being in its highest and purest form the correlative in prose of the epic poem in poetry, and, like it, treating of one great complex action, in a lofty style, and with fulness of detail.'1 Whatever be its form, the novel must possess unity of plan, and is thereby distinguishable from the mere tale of adventure or travel, in which this unity is not required. Novels, again, may either refer to the past, in which case they are called historical novels, or to the present. If the latter, they admit of a further subdivision, according to the social level at which the leading characters move, into novels of high life—of middle life -and of low life. Further, there is a cross division applicable to the whole class of novels, into those of the artistic and those of the didactic kind. The following table exhibits the above classification of works of fiction at a glance :-- 1. The word romance is here used in a sense which implies, that in works so-called, some preternatural or supernatural agency is instrumental in working out the plot. We have not many serious romances in English; the Grand Cyrus, and other delectable productions of Scudèry and Calprenède, were read, admired, and translated amongst us in their day, but do not appear to have been imitated, at least in prose. St. Leon, by Godwin, Frankenstein or The Ghost-seer, by his daughter, Mrs. Shelley, and the Old English Baron, by Clara Reeve, are among the principal performances in this kind. The Phantom Ship, by Captain Marryatt, is a remarkable and beautiful story, founded on the grand old legend of the Flying Dutchman. One of the Waverley novels, the Monastery, in which the apparitions of the White Lady of Avenel have an important influence on the development of the story, falls accordingly within the scope of our definition. The most notable examples of the mock romance are the Travels of Lemuel Gulliver. The comic variety is exemplified in the Voyages of Brobdingnag and Lilliput, the satirical in the Voyages to the Houyhnhnms and Laputa. 2. The distinction of novels into artistic and didactic is founded on the different aims which entered into their composition. The artistic novel aims at the beautiful representation of things and persons, such as they really appear in nature, or may be conceived capable of becoming; its purpose is æsthetic, and not moral. Goethe's Wilhelm Meister is a celebrated instance. The didactic novel has some special moral lesson in view, which the progress and issue of the story are intended to enforce. Godwin's Caleb Williams, Bulwer's Paul Clifford and Eugene Aram, and the whole class of religious novels, are instances in point. 3. Among tales of adventure, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe bears the palm. Among the many imitations, more or less close, to which that celebrated production has given rise, may be particularised Miss Porter's Narrative of Sir Edward Seaward, and Captain Marryatt's delightful story of Masterman Ready. The Travels of Anastasius, by Hope, enjoyed a great reputation fifty years ago. 4. Novels of the past are not all necessarily historical novels, since they may relate to supposed events in the private life of former ages, whereas by the historical novel is commonly understood a work of which the interest principally turns on the introduction of some personages or events of historic fame. Thus, Bulwer's Last Days of Pompeii, in which none of the characters are historical, can only, if at all, claim the title of a historical novel in virtue of the historic catastrophe-the great eruption of Vesuvius, which buried Pompeii in ashes in the reign of Vespasian. In the historical novel, Sir Walter Scott, the inventor of the style, remains unapproached. Out of twentyseven novels (omitting short tales), which compose the Waverley series, twenty are historical. The most remote period to which the author has ascended is the eleventh century, the events described in Count Robert of Paris being supposed to occur during the first crusade. This, however, is one of the latest and least interesting of the series. The Betrothed, the Talisman, and Ivanhoe, refer to the twelfth century; the grand romantic personage of Richard Cœur de Lion figuring prominently in both the novels last named. The thirteenth century seems to have had no attractions for our author; and even in the fourteenth-a period so memorable both in English and Scottish history-he has given us only the Fair Maid of Perth and Castle Dangerous; the striking story of Rienzi was left for Bulwer to appropriate, and work up into an historical fiction of the highest order. In the fifteenth century, the reign of Louis XI. is admirably illustrated in Quentin Durward; in which the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold, is presented to us in the plenitude of his power and prosperity; while in Anne of Geierstein we see that power humbled to the dust by the arms of the sturdy Switzers. The Monastery, with its sequel, the Abbot, exhibits the distracted state of Scotland during the religious wars of the sixteenth century. In Kenilworth, which belongs to the same period, the scene is laid in England, and the interest centres in Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and the unfortunate Amy Robsart. The seventeenth century must have possessed a peculiar interest for Scott; for the plots of no less than five of his novels are laid in it, and some of these are among the most successful efforts of his genius. The learned fool James I. is introduced in the Fortunes of Nigel; the Legend of Montrose brings before us the exploits of that gallant but ill-starred chief, and creates for us the admirable portrait of the veteran soldier trained in the Thirty Years' War, under Gustavus Adolphus, the incomparable Major Dalgetty:-Cromwell appears in Woodstock; Peveril of the Peak illustrates the startling contrasts which existed between the gay immoral society gathered round the court of Charles II., and the terrible puritan element beneath the surface, crushed down but still formidable;-lastly, in Old Mortality, deemed by many to be the author's most perfect production, the plot is connected with the insurrection of the Scottish Covenanters in 1679, and brings before us the haughty form of Claverhouse. Four novels belong to the eighteenth century-Rob Roy, the Heart of Mid-Lothian, Waverley, and Redgauntlet. In the first, named, by the happy thought of Constable, Scott's publisher, after a noted Highland freebooter, who flourished in the early part of the century, the chief historic interest lies in the admirable art with which the story brings out the contrast then existing between the civilised law-respecting Lowlands, and the confused turbulent state of things a few miles off |