Two English Men of Letters

AUSTIN DOBSON on Richardson is a collocation of subject and author to stir the most pleasurable anticipation in the breasts of all true readers. Nor is Mr. Dobson the man to defeat our expectation. There is, perhaps, no living man of letters more deeply learned than he in the literary antiquarianism of the eighteenth century, no more easy master of all the lore of anecdote, “epistolary correspondence,” manners, and old houses that is the indispensable qualification of one who would write humanely of the men of that most “ humane ” era. Moreover, Mr. Dobson is fortunately endowed with the ripe curiosity and humorsome stamina which are especially needful to a critic of the author of the divine Clarissa. He has indeed produced in this brief life of Richardson one of the most thoroughly satisfactory books in an admirable series, and has not fallen short of the measure of his own earlier life of Fielding.

Apart from his minutely intimate acquaintance with Richardson’s temporal environment Mr. Dobson’s contribution to our knowledge of that author consists of transcriptions and deductions from the six vast folio volumes of the Richardson manuscript correspondence, “ of which,” as he says, “ the aspect alone is sufficient to appall the stoutest explorer.” The tendency of all this new material is to reënforce one’s former notion of Richardson’s queer, significant femininism. From the tender age of eleven, when he wrote an edifying letter of moral reproof to a back-biting widow, we see him living almost uninterruptedly in a palpitant atmosphere of feminine adulation, and more closely and exclusively preoccupied with things feminine than any other English writer of either sex, — with the possible exception of Coventry Patmore. Mr. Dobson suggests very aptly the part played by Richardson’s varied friendships with women, together with his multifarious activity as a practical matchmaker, in shaping his literary bent to the realistic analysis of woman’s affections. He also points out discreetly how it was only in the atmosphere of such affections, in the fostering society of many admiring women, that Richardson’s so wavering and hesitating talent was warmed into genius.

Toward the creative genius of Richardson at his best Mr. Dobson is extremely sympathetic. He has his mocking way with Pamela and her opportunism ; but he is disposed to see in Sir Charles Grandison more of nobility than of priggishness ; while of the fine, tragic distinction of the character of Clarissa, “ inviolate in her will ” through ruin and shame, no one has written better.

The noisily heralded Richardson Revival seems still backward, yet Mr. Dobson’s excellent little book will be gratefully welcomed by many readers who honestly care for the Father of the English Novel, and if it make here and there a new Richardsonian it will have served no idle purpose. The old fellow is quite surely “ as tedious as a king,” yet when once he has his reader engaged there is an insistence in his nerveless manner that carries conviction. Scarcely knowing how it comes to pass, one who tarries patiently with Richardson’s masterpiece finds himself moved as only great art can move. Such an one will rise from the triumphant perusal of the seventh volume of Clarissa Harlowe

Sir Alfred Lyall’s Tennyson, unlike Mr. Dobson’s Richardson, is less a life than a critique. Lord Tennyson’s vivid documentary life of his poet-father must have made the purely biographical side of Sir Alfred’s task a matter of comparative ease : for that very reason, perhaps, his narrative is less adequate than his comment. Yet the chronicle of events is accurate and clear, and if we miss something of the smoky, human savor of the poet’s personality, there is no uncertainty of line in the portrait so far as it goes. To all the characteristic Tennysonian graces Sir Alfred has been singularly sensitive. He responds as readily to an “ anapæstic ripple ” or to the “glory” of a word as Tennyson’s self could have wished ; and on all those high formal matters, of such vital importance in dealing with the writing of our English Lord of Language, his remarks are in very judicious taste. But the best that he has to say of Tennyson goes deeper, — into the spirit of that musical and melancholy poetry of but halfsilenced doubt, which is likely more and more to stand as the most representative product of the Victorian Age. His suggestion that despite its vibrant aspiration the reiterant credo of In Memoriam is more conducive to disquiet than to reassurance is a matter for temperamental decision. But there is much that is soundly convincing in what he has to say of Tennyson’s most pervasive mood, — an anxious wistfulness about the “doubtful doom of human kind ” in an age of evolutionary science. With all Tennyson’s enlightened conservatism of temper, his ardent nobility of nature, there was in him the taint of that philosophic malady which unmans the soul, even while it gives to poetry its most searching and poignant cadences. One can hardly wish the finest and truest of English poets other than he was, yet in remembering the anxiety and depression which saddened the bulk of Tennyson’s later work it is well for us to turn with Sir Alfred Lyall to the school of Jowett, and not forget “that loftier conception of service in the cause of truth and humanity, which can inspire men to go forward undauntedly, whatever may be their destiny beyond the grave.”

F. G.