was played in preference. The name of Lillo was none the less famous, and we must turn to W. Schlegel to find the London Merchant regarded as a "regular assize-court story, scarcely less absurd than trivial." 1 Many were the tears shed over this "assize-court story," before it was relegated from the tragic stage to the boards of the foire.

Prévost, in Pour et Contre, led the chorus in praise of the new master-piece in France. "A tragedy which has been acted thirty-eight times consecutively at Drury Lane, amidst unflagging applause from a constantly crowded house; which has met with similar success wherever it has been performed; which has been printed and published to the number of many thousand copies, and is read with no less interest and pleasure than it is witnessed upon the stage-a tragedy which has called forth so many marks of approbation and esteem must occasion in those who hear it spoken of one or other of two thoughts: either that it is one of those master-pieces the perfect beauty of which is perceived by all; or that it is so well adapted to the particular taste of the nation which thus delights in it that it may be considered as a certain indication of the present state of that nation's taste." 2 Of these two explanations Prévost accepted the former. The London Merchant was, in his eyes, a master-piece, and in support of his verdict he translated a scene from the play.

A few years later George Barnwell found a translator, who was attracted by the warm praise of Prévost. Formerly a minister, and also tutor to the children of Lord Waldegrave, the English ambassador, Clément de Genève was an avowed admirer of England. The writer of a "hyperdrama," Les Frimaçons, and for that reason expelled from the society of Genevan pastors, Clément was also the author of a literary journal, no less caustic than spirited, which makes anglomania an article of faith. Therein the French are reproached for their ignorance" of the beauty of the unstudied, the vast, the fantastic, the gloomy, the 1 W. Schlegel, Littérature dramatique, 34th lesson.

2 Pour et Contre, vol. iii., p. 337. Prévost translates the scene in which Millwood hands her lover over to justice.

3 Born at Geneva, 1707, Clément de Genève died at Charenton in 1767. (Senebier, Histoire littéraire de Genève.)

terrible," and of romantic beauty in every form. "Come to London," he concludes, "we will enlarge your imagination.” 1. So Clément, who knew English, translated the London Merchant, shed tears as he corrected the proofs of his translation, and exclaimed in his preface: "Avaunt, ye small wits, whose quality is not so much delicacy as subtlety and frivolity; ye thankless, hardened hearts, wrecked by excess and overmuch thinking! You are not made for the sweetness of shedding tears! " 2

A select public yielded to persuasion and, following Clément's advice, " plunged with delight into the deepest and most poignant distress." Lillo seemed more pathetic than Shakespeare, and the London Merchant more terrible than the Merchant of Venice. The piece, to tell the truth, was an appeal to "the irresponsive and vulgar souls of a barbarous people," but who could resist its pathos ? "Every act, every scene, as the play progresses, excites more pity, more horror, more heart-rending anguish." What art in the employment of contrast! What a "climax of terror! "4 The slanderer Collé, who declared the translator a fool, in the same breath confessed himself moved to tears; he too exclaimed: "What truth! What vehemence! What intensity of interest!" The workmanship is not good; but there is "genius in abundance," which covers a multitude of faults. In a Lettre de Barnevelt (sic) dans la prison à Truman, son ami, Dorat, also, poured out his soul in whining verse. Lillo's drama furnished Mme. de Beaumont with a theme for a novel,7 Anseaume with the subject of a comedy, and Sébastien Mercier

1 Les cinq années littéraires, 15th March 1752.

2 Le Marchand de Londres ou l'histoire de George Barnwell, tragédie bourgeoise en cinq actes, traduite de l'anglais de Lillo, by M. . ., 1748, 12m0, 139 pp. In the edition of 1751, the hanging scene is also included. A further edition was issued in 1767.

3 Journal encyclopédique, 15th June 1768.

4 Journal étranger, February 1760. Journal encyclopédique, March 1764.

5 Collé, Journal, ed. H. Bonhomme, vol. i., p. 21.

6 Paris, 1764. Cf. Fréron, Année littéraire, 1764, vol. i., and Journal Encyclopédique, 1st March 1764.

7 Lettres du marquis de Roselle.

with the idea for a drama.1 For a moment the Comédie thought of producing this remarkable work, but finally recoiled before its English uncouthness.2 The play was said to have touched even Voltaire, but it appealed to Diderot most of all. He believed he had at last discovered the long-sought dramatic masterpiece. "Call the London Merchant what you will, so long as you admit that the play scintillates with flashes of beauty and splendour." 3 Throughout his life he meditated publishing an annotated edition of the work, together with one of the Gamester.

Was it Diderot who introduced it to the notice of Rousseau, or Clément de Genève, his fellow-countryman, or Prévost, his friend? It does not signify. The important point is that he shared the admiration of all his circle. "An admirable piece of work," we read in a note to the Lettre sur les spectacles, "with a moral which goes more straight to the point than that of any French play I am acquainted with."5 The man who thought it needful to teach the young "to distrust the illusions of love," and "to beware at times of surrendering a virtuous heart to an object unworthy of its solicitude," confessed that nowhere but in Lillo, except in the Misanthrope, had he found that which corresponded to this ideal.

The testimony is brief but significant, and justifies the stress I have laid upon a drama which excited the fervent admiration of Rousseau and of his time.

But neither Addison, nor Defoe, nor Lillo himself, well worth attention as he considered them to be, fully realised his own ideal of bourgeois literature; and the author of the Nouvelle Héloïse, who, after all, was rather a novelist than a dramatist, could only feel at home, if I may say so, in English fiction.

1 L'école de la jeunesse ou le Barnevelt français, a comedy in verse in three acts by M. Anseaume, played at the Italiens, 24th January 1765. Jenneval ou le Barnevelt français, Paris, 1769, 8vo. A singular fact is that Mercier, though an uncompromising reformer of the drama, did not dare to kill his Jenneval, but married him to the daughter of the man he had robbed.

246 L'ostrogothie anglaise.”

4 To Mlle. Voland, vol. ii., p. 87 and p. 140.

3 Article Encyclopédie.

5 This note does not occur in the first edition, but was printed in the edition of 1781.

Chapter III

EUROPEAN POPULARITY OF ENGLISH FICTION

1. Greatness of the English novel in the eighteenth century-Its success upon the Continent-Fielding-Immense popularity of Richardson.

II. Why the French public went into raptures over English fiction-Why, with Rousseau, it rated it more highly than the works of Lesage, Prévost and Marivaux-Wherein the French novelists, and Marivaux in particular, had anticipated Richardson and Rousseau.

III. Prévost translates Richardson (1742, 1751, 1755-56)-Importance of these translations-Their value.

I

Of all the creations of English literature during the eighteenth century, the most original was certainly the novel of middle-class manners, or, as Taine calls it, the roman antiromanesque. Very few revolutions in European literature can be compared to that effected at this period by Defoe, Richardson and Fielding, whose positive and observant minds led them boldly to substitute the accurate study of contemporary society for narratives of adventure of the French or Spanish type. And, assuredly, very few have had such far-reaching consequences. It is not too much to say, of this "austere middle-class thought," that as it developed it produced the effect of "the voice of a nation buried beneath the earth." 1 This voice was heard in every country. In Germany, in France, in the northern countries, and even in Italy, the English novel gave the impression of work which was entirely fresh, similar to nothing else, untrammelled in its glorious flight by any classic models, and absolutely free from any taint of traditional influence. The Harlowes and the Joneses seemed to usurp in the wearied imagination of mankind the place held

1 Taine, Littérature anglaise, vol. iv., p. 84.

for centuries by the heroes of Greece and Italy, or by the knightserrant of epic poetry. The novel-a form of literature almost unknown to the ancients-became with the English the epic of the modern world.

"They are the first," says Mme. de Staël with justice, "who have ventured to believe that a representation of the private affections is enough to interest the human mind and heart; that neither celebrated characters nor marvellous events are necessary in order to captivate the imagination, and that in the power of love there is that which can renew scenes and situations without limit, and without ever blunting the edge of curiosity. And it is in the hands of the English also that the novel has become a work with a moral purpose, wherein obscure virtues and humble destinies may discover motives to moral enthusiasm, and may invent a form of heroism of their own."1 Fiction, a type of literature previously regarded as inferior, was thereby revolutionized. Thereby also, the English became the models of every novelist now wielding a pen. "Where shall we find the progenitors of our own novels," said Goethe to Eckermann, "if not in Goldsmith and Fielding?" In truth the English novelists rendered this frivolous branch of literature capable of conveying ideas and passions; they shewed that, instead of being, in the words of Voltaire, "the work of feeble-minded creatures whose facile productions are unworthy the attention of serious people," it was something better; and from the humble position in which it had languished they raised it to the highest level of all, from which it has never again descended.

Thereby also, unintentionally no doubt, and perhaps unconsciously, they dealt an effective blow at the long domination of classical literature. Here was a fresh arrival, entirely apart from all recognized modes, from those classified by Boileau-from those which a writer of consequence could cultivate without prejudice to his reputation or loss of prestige-springing up in a single day, or at any rate quite suddenly elevated to such high honour, and at a single step assuming in men's minds the position hitherto claimed by dramatic literature alone, or by poetry of

1 De la littérature, i. 15.