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it in their purses or their paunches. Compared with Dekker, Deloney's pictures of London life seem heavy and coarse. Deloney apparently saw only the boisterous side of middle-class life, only the hilarity of comfortable, well-fed citizens who give their animal spirits free rein in their hours of leisure. Dekker also knows the merry side of London life, but the lightness and grace with which he describes it are lacking in Deloney.

In no comprehensive sense can Deloney be characterized as the father of the realistic novel. What he did was to combine older methods and materials, the chronicle narrative with the merry jest and the debased courtly romance, into a succession of episodes held together loosely by a character or group of characters. His three novels are relatively very slight and are quite inadequate to give a full and real picture of the life he depicts. Nor was this probably Deloney's intention. He certainly had no theories of realistic narrative, but wrote to amuse his public, which was a public of apprentices, merchants, tradesmen, and craftsmen. He wrote, consequently, in a simple and naïve style, even when he tried to be fine. He was a man of the people writing for the people, and as an artistic achievement his work is of slight significance. Nevertheless, so far as it goes, Deloney's method was to a considerable extent that of realistic fiction, and one may perhaps reasonably inquire whether Deloney did not build better than he knew, whether without intending it, he did not in fact inaugurate a new literary method which later generations utilized and developed. The dates of the printed editions of Deloney's three novels lend some color to this opinion. Editions of The Gentle Craft are still extant which appeared at intervals of a few years to the middle of the eighteenth century, and of the other two novels editions appeared continuously to the end of the seven

teenth century.60 But the continued interest of the popular reading public in Deloney's novels is not in itself sufficient justification for applying the title of father of English realism to him. He must first be measured by the degree of his influence upon his literary successors, and it is apparent that such influence was slight. His novels were not the models for Defoe, Richardson, or any of the later masters of realism. His historical significance, like that of the other realistic writers of the end of the sixteenth century, lies in his reflection of a growing popular interest in reading in his day, and in the life of simple folk. Scholars and courtiers were then not the only supporters of literature, but the increasing class of prosperous townsmen were eager for literary entertainment and willing to pay for it. The people had always had a traditional oral literature of their own and reflections of this appear even in the romances of the age of chivalry. But in answer to this new demand, certain "villainists," many of whom had enjoyed the advantages of the academic and literary culture of England, condescended to bring printed literature down to the popular level. They told witty and indecent stories, they described the life of the streets, of respectable citizens and their despoilers of the underworld, they gave to literature the boisterous, huf-snuf, and anti-heroic eloquence which was the last cry in Elizabethan modernity. Yet with all this their constructive achievements were slight. Even the drama, the most appropriate container for their material, and one which, in its independent development, had evolved a clearly defined form, was only imperfectly and partially utilized. The merry tale did indeed contain the germ of the

"For bibliography, see Esdaile, pp. 38-43. Doubtless numerous editions of the novels appeared of which no copies have survived. Like the popular chap-books which they resemble, the novels were printed in cheap form and probably in small editions of which no copies escaped the wear and tear of time.

novel, and the elements of a realistic fiction are present in the elaborations of this type of narrative in the writings of Greene, Dekker, and Deloney. But not even Greene, whose short stories went farthest in this direction, seems to have had the courage of any profound realistic convictions, or perhaps to have realized the possibilities of the long and detailed narrative of real life. The conditions of London society called forth writings which revealed the possibilities of a realistic fiction, but it was left for later generations effectually to occupy this newly discovered literary world of the familiar and commonplace.

IX

BACON

PUBLIC ACTIVITIES LITERARY INTERESTS-EARLY WRITINGS METHODS OF SELF-DISCIPLINE-PHILOSOPHICAL

AND GROWTH OF

THE

TREATISES COMPOSITION "ESSAYS"-USE OF LATIN LITERARY TECHNICCONCLUSIONS

THE influences which molded the life of Francis Bacon developed not a talent, but a character. He finds his place in the history of literature largely by virtue of a single book, and that book one which he esteemed less highly than most of his other works. Nature did not deny to Bacon the gifts which might have made an author, but he preferred to be, as he would have regarded it, something more than merely a writer. For all sophistical practices of the craft of writing he had as great scorn as the profound thinker with whom this historical survey of English prose began. Not until all other passages for his activity were closed did Bacon become reconciled to the thought of devoting himself entirely to the profession of letters. Within a year or two of his death he resolved to spend his time wholly in writing, and "to put forth that poor talent, or half talent, or what it is that God hath given me, not as heretofore to particular exchanges, but to banks or mounts of perpetuity, that will not break." 1 But the choice was late and never whole-hearted. The literary talent he possessed Bacon cul1 Works, XIII, 186.

tivated only as an aid to and as a relief from his more serious callings as lawyer, statesman, and philosopher.

Circumstances and family tradition inclined Bacon, even as a youth, to look upon himself as destined for a public career. The university had little part in his education. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1573, at the age of twelve years and three months, but his connection with Cambridge lasted only two years. His youth must have made impossible any deep influence of the university upon him at the time, and later he seems never to have felt an inclination to ally himself with any group of university wits, as ambitious young collegians of his day were wont to do. The most that Cambridge did was to beget in him a sentimental feeling for that university, and when disappointment and lack of advancement weighed heavy upon him, he often thought of retiring "with a couple of men to Cambridge," there to spend his life in "studies and contemplations, without looking back."2 But these were only dreams, and it is doubtful if Bacon would have been as happy as he imagined in the cloistral quiet of the university. He was never content merely to speculate, and his philosophy always implied practical activity on a grand scale.

At the age of fifteen Bacon was admitted to Gray's Inn and began the study of the law. These studies were interrupted, however, by a residence of several years in the household of Sir Amias Paulet, Elizabeth's ambassador in Paris from 1576 to 1579. The reports which Sir Amias Paulet sent to Bacon's father in England show that Bacon was already comporting himself with characteristic discretion. On the death of his father in 1579, however, Bacon returned to England and faced the troublesome problem of choosing a permanent career for himself, a problem all the more difficult and pressing because he was under the necesLetters and Life, I, 291.

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