Take Him. His Merits most aver: His weak Point is--his Chronicler!
Not from the ranks of those we call Philosopher or Admiral,-- Neither as LOCKE was, nor as BLAKE, Is that Great Genius for whose sake We keep this Autumn festival.
And yet in one sense, too, was he A soldier--of humanity; And, surely, philosophic mind Belonged to him whose brain designed That teeming COMIC EPOS where, As in CERVANTES and MOLIÈRE, Jostles the medley of Mankind.
Our ENGLISH NOVEL'S pioneer! His was the eye that first saw clear How, not in natures half-effaced By cant of Fashion and of Taste,-- Not in the circles of the Great, Faint-blooded and exanimate,-- Lay the true field of Jest and Whim, Which we to-day reap after him. No:--he stepped lower down and took The piebald PEOPLE for his Book!
Ah, what a wealth of Life there is In that large-laughing page of his! What store and stock of Common-Sense, Wit, Wisdom, Books, Experience! How his keen Satire flashes through, And cuts a sophistry in two! How his ironic lightning plays Around a rogue and all his ways! Ah, how he knots his lash to see That ancient cloak, Hypocrisy!
Whose are the characters that give Such round reality?--that live With such full pulse? Fair SOPHY yet Sings _Bobbing Joan_ at the spinet; We see AMELIA cooking still That supper for the recreant WILL; We hear Squire WESTERN'S headlong tones Bawling "Wut ha?--wut ha?" to JONES. Are they not present now to us,-- The Parson with his _Æschylus_? SLIPSLOP the frail, and NORTHERTON, PARTRIDGE, and BATH, and HARRISON?-- Are they not breathing, moving,--all The motley, merry carnival That FIELDING kept, in days agone?
He was the first who dared to draw Mankind the mixture that he saw; Not wholly good nor ill, but both, With fine intricacies of growth. He pulled the wraps of flesh apart, And showed the working human heart; He scorned to drape the truthful nude With smooth, decorous platitude!
He was too frank, may be; and dared Too boldly. Those whose faults he bared, Writhed in the ruthless grasp that brought Into the light their secret thought. Therefore the TARTUFFE-throng who say "_Couvrez ce sein_," and look that way,-- Therefore the Priests of Sentiment Rose on him with their garments rent. Therefore the gadfly swarm whose sting Plies ever round some generous thing, Buzzed of old bills and tavern-scores, Old "might-have-beens" and "heretofores";-- Then, from that garbled record-list, Made him his own Apologist.