C^REEINOUGH RcviEvy or Conant Tmc: Q^itHTAt Tall (N ELNeUArm IN THt CiCHTeSIITH CtNTUAY 1909 Reprinted from THE JOURNAL OF ENGLISH AND GERMANIC PHILOLOGY FOUNDED BY GUSTAF E. KARSTKN Managing Editor L>-V^'^ JULIUS GOEBEL,' University of Illinois Associate Kditors C. N. GREENOUGH and OTTO E. LESSING, University of Illinois Co-operating Editors HERMANN COEEITZ, Johns Hopkins University GEORGE O. CURME, Northwestern University GEORGE T. FLOM, University of Iowa CLARK S. NORTHUP, CornEI,L University Volume VIII, No. 2 April, 1909 PUBEISHED QUARTERLY BY THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS Urbana, Ii,!,., U.S.A. StTnsCRlPTlON Price $3 no fi.K Vl-,I,^T^I^:. SiNi.i.K Numbkrs *] nn i:tTROPEAN agent: ADOLF WEIOEL, Li;ip/.Ti., Germany (Entered at Urbana, Illinois, rj.S.A., as second rlas-^ matter under Act .>[ <.'orit.rr»-Rs ol July !(■. Ls''4) Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92401 3358969 ,^^1.^^...^^-^^ ^^d.,;?^ r>^y^^ THE ORIENTAL TALE IN ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. By Martha Pike Conant, Ph.D. Coltunbia University Studies in Comparative Liter- ature. New York: The Columbia University Press, 1908. Publishers, The Macmillan Company, 66 Fifth Avenue, New York. Price, $2.00 net. Between 1684 and 1786 Miss Conant finds a pronounced tendency both in France and in England to orientalize — some- times very slightly, sometimes as thoroughly as might be — the novel, allegory, tale, vision, drama, and fictitious correspondence. \/ This material she very effectively divides into four main groups, — imaginative, moralistic, philosophic, and satiric. A rather long chapter on each of these groups, together with a final "lit- erary estimate," an introduction, appendices, and an index, make up the work. Miss Conant's book will certainly be useful; she has brought together French and English literature at many points, she has shown the presence in a period which was prevailingly classical, of an influence more than slightly romantic; she has spoken of books in a way that makes one wish to read them, and she has i ,^ delighted those who love a phrase by dubb ing th e ArabJeLn) Nights the fa jry_ godmother of the English novel. In her final ""cFapter she sums up clearly and justly. She is particularly to be commended for the good judgment with which she handles her point (on the whole perhaps the most salient in the book) that the material with which she has been dealing was popular chiefly because it was pseudo-romantic. Just as Bishop Hurd, a pseudo-romantic in criticism, prepared the way for Coleridge, or as Thomson, a pseudo-romantic in landscape poetry, prepared the way for Wordsworth, so "less obviously, but none the less truly, the translators and writers of the oriental tale, together with historians and travelers, were forerunners of Southey, Moore, Byron, Matthew Arnold, Fitzgerald, and many others, on to KJipling in the present day.'" Such results as these should go far toward convincing those not already under conviction that — notwithstanding all of its enemies 'and many of its friends toN the contrary — the literature of the eighteenth century is quite / y sufficiently complex and inconsistent to be interesting. With the heartiest thanks to Miss Conant for what she has done, we venture to suggest some additional facts and consid- erations which seem to us to enlarge or modify the subject. 'Page 251. In the first place, we doubt if it can be too clearly kept in mind that the oriental movement in fiction extended rather more generally than Miss Conant makes us realize to most other arts, and that as a cult it was regarded by its enemies as no less inimical than the "gothic" to all that was orthodox and "just". Scores of passages show this : for a single instance let us take a part of the fifty-sixth letter in Dr. John Shebbeare's Letters on the English Nation: By Battista Angeloni, a Jesuit, Who resided many years in London. Translated from the Original Italian, etc. (1755), — a work which Miss Conant has, strangely enough, neglected to include in her list of pseudo-letters after the manner of Goldsmith's Citizen of the World. "The siinple and sublime have lost all influence almost every where, all is Chinese or Gothic ; every chair in an apartment,, the frames of glasses, and tables, must be Chinese : the walls covered with Chinese paper filled with figures which resemble nothing of God's creation, and which a pTudent nation would prohibit for the sake of pregnant women. "In one chamber, all the pagods and distorted animals of the east are piled up, and called the beautiful decorations of a chimney-piece; on the sides of the room, lions made of porce- lain, grinning and misshapen,, are placed on brackets of the Chinese taste, in arbors of fiowers made in the same ware, and leaves of brass painted green lying like lovers in the shades of old Arcadia. "Nay, so excessive is the love of Chinese architecture be- come,, that at present the foxhunters would be sorry to break a leg in pursuing their sport in leaping any gate that was not made in the eastern taste of little bits of wood standing in all directions; the connoisseurs of the table delicacies can dis- tinguish between the taste of an ox which eats his hay from a Chinese crib, a hog that is inclosed in a stye of that kind, or a fowl fattened in a coop the fabric of which is in that design, and find great difference in the flavor. ^ ^ ^ S|£ ip ^ !p "To my unpolite ears, the airs which are sung at present have no longer the imitation of anything which would express passion or sentiment, and the whole merit lyes in the Gothic and Chinese closes and cantabiles,. f rithered into niceties and di- visions, which, like minute carvings, are the certain character- istics of a little taste, that delights more in difficulties than truth, that would rather see a posture-master in all bodily dis- tortion than the graceful attitudes of Dupre on the French theatre of the opera at Paris, in the most exalted manner of dancing. "The Chinese taste is so very prevalent in this city at pres- ent, that even pantomime has obliged harlequin to seek shelter in an entertainment, where the scenes and characters are all in the taste of the nation." A glance at almost any book on the furniture, the gardens, the music, or the cookery of 1750 and thereabouts will confirm the essential truth of Shebbeare's amusing picture. Something is said (pp. 333-325) by Miss Conant about this aspect of the matter, but hardly enough. Again it is to be observed that this rage for things oriental, and particularly for things Chinese, was partly due to actual contact with the east. Exploration, travel, trade, war and the" great number of books which these brought into being, — all give us help which we must not neglect if we are to understand the full complexity of English interest in the orient. Turn- where we will, we meet it; for example, in that curious "Essay upon all sorts of Learning, written by the Athenian Society," which is prefixed to the Young-Students-Library (1693) we find in the chapter devoted to history, which is decidedly en- lightened," a strikingly large number of books of travel and 'the like — most of them pointing eastward — set down among the sixty-three "best books" for the historian. There are Chardin's Voyages into Persia, The Emhassie of the Five Jesuits into Siam, Chammonf s Emibassie into Siam, Dapper's Description of Africk, Tavernier's Travels, a History of Bartadoes and the Caribbee Islands, Ogleby's History of China, his Japan, his Asia, and his Africa, Eycaut's History of the Turhs (which Addison makes Will Honeycomb quote in Spectator 343), Knowl's (sic) History of the Turks, An Historical Relation of the Island of Ceylon in the East Indies, and The Travels of Monsieur Thevevot into the Levant. Thus the trend of serious writing was largely in the paths of trade and travel, and the trend of fiction followed that of serious writing. A part of an essay in The World (No. 103, December 13, 1754) bears upon this point: "Besides those words which owe their rise to caprice or accident, there are many which having been long confined to particular professions, offices, districts, climates, etc., are brought into public use by fashion, or the reigning topic on which conversation has happened to dwell for any considerable time. During the great rebellion they talked universally the language of the scriptures. * * * j^ our own memory the ^ For example, the chapter closes thus : "There only remains to inform our Readers, That 'tis not onely Books, but Maps, Monumenis, Bas-Reliefs, Medals, and all Antient Descriptions, that mightily strengthen and confirm History." late war, which began at sea, filled our mouths with terms from that element. * * * The peace taught us the language of the secretary's office. * * * With the rails and buildings of the Chinese, we adopted also for a while their language. A doll of that country, we called a joss, and a slight building a pagoda. For that year we talked of nothing but palanquins, nabobs, mandarins, junks, sipoys, etc. To what was this owing, but the war in the East Indies?" At the same time it is true, and particularly true in the case of the material which Miss Conant treats in her fourth chapter ("The Satirical Group"), that the orient was used largely as a point of view. The popular attitude toward neigh- boring nations was unfavorable; the seventeenth-century "char- acters" of France, Spain, Ireland, Scotland, and Italy are ad- verse; and the Frenchman or Dutchman in the. drama of the period is, like the Irishman or the Welshman, usually a butt for ridicule. The oriental had the advantage of remoteness, — ^his habits of thought were quaint and fresh, and there was nothing against him. Moreover, he had other advantages than mere re- moteness; he lived in the chosen abode of magic, wealth, wis- dom, and gravity. In a romantic period — and in the more imaginative writings of any period — the magic and the fabulous riches of the east would be emphasized; in the eighteenth cen- tury, particularly by the moralist and satirist, constant use was made of oriental wisdom uttered with oriental gravity. As these characteristics were developed, the unskilful erred on the side of excess; long before the Citizen of the World, Dr. Johnson commended Father Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia because the eastern people described in it were not "either devoid of all sense of humanity, or consummate in all private and social virtues; here are no Hottentots without religion, polity, or articulate language; no Chinese perfectly polite and completely skilled in all sciences." The oriental in literature very early acquired his characteristic manner of speaking in similes and parables, and this manner was applied with little discrimination to Turks, Chinese, and American Indians. As early as 1700 Charles Gildon, in his Post-Boy Bohh'd of his Mail, introduced some letters from one Honan, an Asiatic, but of just what country even his friends did not know. As these letters are about to be opened, "Now shall we (said Grave) have Metaphors, Allegories, Exclamations and Interrogations in abundance. Eight (pur- su'd Church,) for that is the style of the Asiatic Virtuoso's. At least (pursu'd River,) if we may credit all that goes in our Language for such.'" ' The Post-Boy Rohh'd of his Mail, second edition, 1706, p. 229. This sameness of thought and language serves well enough when the oriental is merely, as he so often was, a prodigy con- structed for didactic purposes. In such cases the main care of the writer is to take a good long Jump away from England. He does not always land in China, or even in the orient. Sometimes he finds his foreign observer among the South Sea islands,* or the American Indians." So later, we find American authors (for example, Wirt in his British Spy and Jacob Duche in his "Caspipina's Letters") using the eyes of Englishmen, and Matthew Arnold, in Friendship's Garland, resorting to a Ger- man, the notable Arminius, Baron von Tlmnder-ten-Tronckh. Primarily, in this species of satire, the search is for a representa- tive of that people who would be most unfavorably struck by the particular faults which it is desired to correct. Little praise can be given to Miss Conant for her investiga- tions into the oriental material in periodical publications. In- J ./ deed the mere existence of such lists as those of the periodical publications in the British Museum, Mchols", Drake,' and the Hope Collection,' should suffice to check one from venturing to apply the word "complete" (p. xi) to a list of oriental material in periodical publications which includes nothing except Eng- lish periodicals, and of English periodicals only the Spectator, Guardian, Freeholder, Rambler, Idler, Adventurer, Worldj Connoisseur, Bailer, Lounger, Mirror, and Observer.' Ten minutes' use of Drake's Gleaner — the work to which one would naturally turn after exhausting Chalmers and the other familiar ' Opposite the title-page of the iirst edition of Swift's Tale of a Tub (1704), among several other "Treatises writ by the same author * * * ; which will be speedily published," is "A Voyage into Eng- land, by a Person of Quality in Terra Australia incognita, translated from tiie Original." This probably explains Swift's well-known com- ment on Spectator 50 in his letter to Stella of April 28, 1710. Another South Sea Islander is the supposed author of No. 15 on p. 303 below. ° Cf. Spectator 50, and Nos. 8 and 13 on pp. 302-3 below. " John Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, IV, pp. 39 ff. ' Nathan Drake, Essays * * * illustrative of the Banibler, Adventurer, and Idler, etc., London, 1810, especially Parts IV and V. * Cataloffue of a Collection of Early Neioepapers and Essayists, * * * presented to the Bodleian Library by the late Rev. Frederick William Hope, M.A., D.C.L., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1865. "A similarly unguarded statement is (p. 173) that in the Con- noisseur No. 21 "is the only example of deliberate parody in all the eighteenth-century periodicals." It is of no great moment to point out the entirely deliberate parody of "L' Allegro" in Looker-On, No. 53 : it is of importance, however, that a general warning should be issued against reckless generalizations concerning such a vast and — to Amer- ican scholars — such an inaccessible body of material. collections — would have revealed several additional papers of importance. Much more might be found by a cqjpeful search through the Gentleman's Magazine, in which a great many im- portant periodicals are summarized. Even then there would still remain the British Museum and the "Nichols News- papers" in the Bodleian. Meanwhile, let us note: Le Babillard, Vol. Ill, Nos. 35fl. The Champion, I, 300. Common Sense, July 33, 1737 ; August 5, 1738. Flying Post, No. 1. Free Thinker, Nos. 84, 138, 139. Friend, No. 8. Hyp-Doctor, No. 10. Lay-Monastery, No. 18. Loiterer, No. 25. LooTcer-On, I, 373. Meddler, No. 11. Muscovite, Nos. 1-5. Pharos, Nos. 11, 13. Philanthrope, No. 34. Prater, Nos. 13, 15, 38. Visitor, Nos. 17, 34, 35, 36. The handling of the Citizen of the World device also leaves a good deal to be desired in the matter of completeness, although here the omissions are less conspicuous than in the case of the periodical publications. The device of a foreigner visiting the country to be satirized, and writing letters about it which are accidentally translated and made public, is still vital and ef- fective, as is shown by Mr. Howells's Traveller from Altruria and Through the Eye of a Needle, Mr. Dickinson's Letters from a Chinese Official, and — ^with a certain difference — Mr. Irwin's Letters of a Japanese School-Boy. Miss Conant follows this interesting little genre down from Marana (or whoever wrote The Turkish Spy) through Montesquieu and the rest to Gold- smith's Citizen of the World and beyond, not forgetting to men- tion Lord Lyttelton's Letters from a Persian in England and Horace Walpole's Letters from Xo Ho, as well as the Marquis d'Argens' Chinese Letters and others, and Madame de Graffig- ny's Lettres d'une p'ruvienne. She even goes so far afield as to include Defoe's Consolidator and his Tour through Great Britain. She fails, however, to mention several examples ; and so it is perhaps worth while to arrange chronologically some instances of the genre which occur before 1787 and which are not noticed in this book: (1) 1704. Swift's hint given opposite the title page of his Tale of a Tub. (See note, p. 300 above.) (3) 1706. Charles Gildon's Post-Boy Rohb'd of his Mail; or, the Pacquet Brohe Open, Consisting of Letters of Love and Gallantry, and all Miscellaneous Subjects; In which are Discov- ered the Vertues, Vices, Follies, Humors and Intrigues of Man- hind. (3) 1714. The Muscovite. (See the catalogue of the Hope Collection, page 29, Fo. 108.) (4) 1728. The Flying Post, No. 1. (5) 1731. The Hyp-Doctor, No. 10. (6) 1744. The Meddler, No. 11. (7) 1749 or 1750. Dr. William Dodd's The African Prince now in England, to Zara at his Father's Court and Zara's Answer. (Watt dates this work 1750; the Diet. Nat. Biog. gives 1749.) (8) 1752. Lettres iroquoises. (9) 1755. John Shebbeare, Letters on the English Na- tion: By Batista Angeloni, a Jesuit, Who resided many years in London. Translated from the Original Italian, by the Aw- thor of the Marriage Act a Novel. (10) 1755. The Friend, No. 8. (11) 1760. The Visitor, No. 17. (12) 1760-61. The Algerine Spy. (13) 1766. L'Espion Americain en Europe, ou Lettres Illinoiscs. (14) 1774. Jacob Duch6, Observations on a Variety of Subjects, Literary, Moral and Religious; in a Series of Original Letters, written by a Gentleman of Foreign Extraction, who re- sided some time in Philadelphia. (Better known as "Caspi- pina's Letters," their supposed author being one Tamoe Caspi- pina, "an acrostic upon the full title of the office which Dueh6 then held: 'The Assistant Minister of Christ Church and St. Peter's in Philadelphia in North America.' " Tyler, Lit. Hist. Am. Rev., II, 393, note.) (15) 1775. An Historical Epistle, from Omiah, to the Queen of Otaheite; being his Remarhs on the English Nation. With notes by the Editor. Books do not stand or fall by their bibliographies, however; and from even fewer cases than she has studied Miss Conant might safely have drawn the conclusions which entitle her book to consideration among the not very large number of ser- viceable studies in special phases of the literature of the eigh- teenth century. C. N. Greenough. University of Illinois. DATE DUE !il ^diil.' ii. atAJw-* Ijl*c '/ ■' m^ .J^M^^^fr tms^w- • "••r nrn a e.itmaij' . .> WUKt ~ff~ ^TctF^^TT pr?S sSTT y?!B8^ r- GAYLOBD PRINTEDINU.S.A. Cornell University Library PR 858.07C75 Oriental tale in England in «he eigliteen 3 1924 013 358 969