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Addison and Some of his Predecessors on “Novelty”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Clarence DeWitt Thorpe
Clarence DeWitt Thorpe*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Extract

When Addison in his essay on the imagination made novelty a source of aesthetic pleasure, along with beauty and grandeur, he was not announcing a discovery. Previous critics had repeatedly noted the efficacy of the varied and strange, the wonderful, and the surprising in achieving desired poetic effects. Addison's idea of novelty includes these elements. The new or uncommon diverts our minds with “the Strangeness of its appearance”; the novel “fills the Soul with an agreeable Surprise”; variety, in the essay on the Imagination and in the criticism of Paradise Lost alike, is a virtual synonym for novelty; and the wonderful, or the marvelous, almost invariably applies to that which possesses both grandeur and novelty—to anything that excites “admiration.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , December 1937 , pp. 1114 - 1129
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1937

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References

1 The Spectator, No. 412.

2 Ibid.

3 On occasion, however, he uses these terms with separate application: for example, in Spectator 273, he remarks that Homer surpasses all other poets not only in “the Variety, but also in the Novelty of his Characters.”

4 Though Addison tentatively sets off novelty from other sources of æsthetic effect, he more generally recognizes that it is not necessarily separated from greatness and beauty. Thus in The Spectator, No. 412, he writes: “ … a spacious Horizon is an Image of Liberty, where the Eye has Room to range abroad, to expatiate at large on the Immensity of its Views and to lose itself amidst the Variety of Objects that offer themselves to its observation. Such wide and undetermined Prospects are as pleasing to the Fancy, as the Speculations of Eternity or Infinitude are to the Understanding. But if there be a Beauty or Uncommonness joined with this Grandeur, as in a troubled Ocean, a Heaven adorned with stars and meteors, or a spacious Landskip cut out into Rivers, Woods, Rocks, and Meadows, the Pleasure still grows upon us, as it arises from a single principle.”

5 In The Genesis of Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century, Chapter x, p 248.

6 Of the individual authors I mention, all were well known to Addison, with the possible exception of Wright, Reynolds, and Charleton.

7 The Poetics (Butcher), 1460a.

8 Jebb, 1371a. In the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle offers a rationale of the pleasure in the new. Proceeding from the premise that, given a normal object of thought or sensation and a normal contemplative subject, there will always be a pleasure in sense of other mental activity, Aristotle inquires why it is “that nobody feels pleasure continuously. It is probably because we grow weary [he replies]. Human beings are incapable of continuous activity, and as the activity comes to an end, so does the pleasure; for it is a concomitant of the activity. It is for the same reason that some things give pleasure when they are new, but give less pleasure afterwards; for the intelligence is called into play at first, and applies itself to its object with intense activity … but afterwards the activity ceases to be so intense and … consequently the pleasure fades away” (Welldon, Bk. x, Ch. iv, p. 326). Thomas Aquinas, who also put a high value on novelty, evidently made this a point of departure for a valuable psychological observation. Rare things are pleasant, he wrote, “either … from the fact that we desire to know something about them, in so far as they are wonderful; or … from the fact that the mind is more inclined by desire to act intensely in things that are new, as stated in Ethic x, since more perfect operation causes more perfect pleasure” [Summa Theologica, tr. by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London, 1911–17), Part n, First Part, First Number, Q, xxxii, A. 8, p. 386].

9 Jebb, 1371a.

10 The reversals and surprise which add to “tragic wonder,” in case. Thus, he tells us that tragic effect “is best produced when the events come on us by surprise” (Poetics, Butcher, 1452a); and again, “Two parts, then, of the plot—Reversal of the Situation and Recognition—turn upon surprises” (Ibid., 1452b); also “But, of all recognition, the best is that which arises from the incidents themselves, where the startling discovery is made by natural means” (Ibid., 1455a).

ll Poetics (Butcher), 1457b, 1458a, 1458b.

12 Hobbes in Leviathan, Part i, and in The Elements of Law, part i; Descartes in The Passions of the Soul, Articles liii, lxx-lxxviii. Descartes' essay was published in 1649, Hobbes' Leviathan in 1651, his Elements of Law, in 1650 (though the section on “Human Nature,” containing an analysis of the passions, had been in private circulation since 1640).

13 “The Passions of the Soul,” Art. lxx, in Haldane and Ross, The Philosophical Works of Descartes, i, 362.

14 Ibid., Art. lxxii, p. 363.

15 Ibid., Art. lxxv, p. 364.

16 Ibid., Art. lxxvii, p. 365.

17 Ibid., Art. lxxiii, p. 364.

18 Ibid., Art. lxxviii, p. 366.

19 Leviathan, Part i, Chap, viii (Molesworth, iii, 58).

20 Ibid., p. 57.—Cf. Bacon: “… because true history, through the frequent satiety and similitude of things, works a distaste and misprison in the mind of man, poesy cheereth and refresheth the soul, chanting things rare and various, and full of vicissitudes” (The Advancement of Learning, Book ii).

21 “Answer to Davenant,” Spingarn, Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, ii, 63.

22 Virtues of an Heroic Poem, Spingarn, ii, 68.

23 Ibid., Spingarn, ii, 68, 75.

24 Answer to Davenant, Spingarn, ii, 62.

25 The Elements of Law, edited by Ferdinand Tönnies (Cambridge: University Press, 1928). Part i, Ch. ix, §19.—It is of interest that the case proposed by Hobbes appears to be taken from Lucretius: “It is sweet, when on the great sea the winds trouble its waters to behold from land another's deep distress; not that it is a pleasure and delight that any should be afflicted, but because it is sweet to see from what evils you are yourself exempt. It is sweet also to look upon the mighty struggles of war arrayed along the plains without sharing yourself in the danger” [On the Nature of Things, translated by A. J. Munro (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1914), ii, 42]. To this Hobbes seems to have added novelty deliberately.

26 Part i, Ch. ix, #18.

27 Ibid.

28 The Elements of Philosophy (Molesworth, i, 410).

29 Leviathan, I, viii (Molesworth, iii, 62).

30 The Spectator, No. 412.

31 Ibid., No. 413.

32 Ibid., No. 412.

33 Ibid., No. 411.

34 Ibid., No. 412.

35 Rene Rapin,“Reflections on Aristotle's Poesie,” The Whole Critical Works of Monsieur Rapin, translated by Many Hands (London, 1706), ii, 88.

36 Ibid., x, 89.—Rapin, however, like Hobbes—and like Aristotle too—warns against the improbable. The surprising and the wonderful must be made subordinate to what is natural and credible, Ibid., x, 94.

37 Ibid., vii, 141.

38 Treatise of the Epick Poem. Translation (London, 1695). Bk. i, Ch. ii, p. 5.

39 Ibid., Bk. i, Ch. iii, p. 6.

40 Ibid., Bk. iii, Ch. ix, p. 140. In another place, he says “Joy and Admiration are most essential to it [epic]” (Bk. i, Ch. ii, p. 5).

41 Bossu is, indeed, basing his case for Admiration on Aristotle (Poetics) and on Horace (Art of Poetry), both of whom he cites (Bk. iii, Ch. viii, pp. 138, 139).

42 Ibid., Bk. v, Ch. iii, pp. 222–223.

43 Preface to Troilus and Cressida, Ker, i, 209.

44 Examen Poeticum, Ker, ii, 12.

45 An Essay of Heroic Plays, Ker, i, 153.

46 Du Fresnoye's Art of Painting contains little on the subject of novelty; even so there is a clear recognition of the claims of the fresh and the varied. Lines 434 and 435 contain this statement: “Bodies of diverse natures, which are aggrouped (or combined) together, are agreeable and pleasant to the sight.” De Piles, in his notes on Du Fresnoye, develops the point in the direction of novelty. His illustration is, “As flowers, fruits, animals, skins, sattins, velvets, beautiful flesh, works of silver, armours, instruments of music, ornaments of ancient sacrifices, and many other pleasing diversities which may present themselves to the painter's imagination.” “It is most certain,” he continues, “that the diversity of objects recreates the sight …” For, “Experience teaches us, that the eye grows weary with poring perpetually on the same thing; not only on pictures, but even on nature itself —Thus to content and fill the eye of the understanding, the best authors have had the. address to sprinkle their works with pleasing digressions, with which they recreate the minds of the readers” (Scott and Saintsbury, xvii, 474).

47 An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Ker, i, 70.

48 Ker, i, 73.

49 Ker, i, p. 249. Cf. Gildon: “An English Audience will never be pleas'd with a dry, Jejune and formal Method [that] excludes Variety, as the Religious observation of the Rules of Aristotle does” [“Modern Poets against the Ancients” (1694), Durham, Critical Essays of the XVIIIth Century, pp. 16–17].

50 By J. G. Robertson, op. cit., pp. 243 ff.

51 Ch. vi, p. 145.—I am using a photostat of the first edition, 1696, in the British Museum library.

52 Ibid., p. 177.

53 Ibid., p. 179.

54 The Spectator, No. 413.

55 Thomas Wright, The Passions of the Minde in General (London, 1601). I am using the 1630 edition (London, Printed by Miles Flesher … to be sold by Robert Davolman).

56 “Nothing is so curious and thirsty after knowledge of dark and obscure matters,” says Wright, “as the nature of man.” This same thirst leads him to crave the new and the curious. The craze of “nice London Dames” for various fantastical and strange dishes, and for fruits and vegetables out of season at fabulous prices, can be ascribed to nothing less than a “gluttonous curiosity”; likewise is the taste for “curious gardens, sundry fashions of apparell, glorious buildings”—all “off-springs of curious pride” (Ibid., pp. 314, 316).

57 Ibid., p. 293.

58 We are too much inclined, Reynolds says, to ignore those works which show the greatest power of our Creator, “fixing our Admiration onely on those Pictures and unusual Novelties, which though for their rareness they are most strange, yet for their nature are less worthy.” Prodigies we marvel at; but “None looketh with wonder on the Sunne, but in an Eclipse; no eye gazeth on the Moone, but in her Travell: so naturell it is with men, to admire things New than Common” [A Treatise of the Passions and Faculties of the Soul of Man (London, 1640). I am using the 1650 edition printed by F. N. for Robert Bostock and George Badger].

59 Op. cit., p. 47.

60 Ibid., pp. 211–212.

61 Ibid., pp. 212–214.

62 Ibid., pp. 20–22. It is interesting to find Reynolds ascribing poetry and its pleasures to the imagination: “Imagination and Fancy, either in our selves or other Men, is many times, the foundation of Delight … Hence … Men are delighted with Mythologies and Poeticall Fables … because all these and other the like, are either the fruit or food of the Imagination” (pp. 215–216).

63 Walter Charleton, Natural History of the Passions (London, printed by T. N. for James Magnes in Russell Street, 1674), p. 88.

64 Ibid., pp. 87–88.

65 Ibid., p. 89.

66 Two Discourses I. Concerning the Different Wits of Men: II. Of the Mysterie of Vintners (London, printed by R. W. for William Whitwood, 1669), Discourse i, pp. 20–21.

67 Ibid., p. 25.

68 Boileau, himself, had something to say of variety. Dennis noticed this, translated it for his readers, and made use of it as a text for his harangue on Blackmore's lack of variety. Dennis's version of Boileau's passage (Art of Poetry, i, 11. 69–78) is as follows: “Would you deserve the Approbation of the Publick? In Writing diversifie your Stile incessantly: Too equal and too uniform a manner, shines to no purpose, and inclines us to sleep. Rarely are those Authors read who are born to plague us, and who appear always whineing in the same ungrateful Tone. Happy the man who can so command his Voice, as to pass, without any Constraint, from that which is grave, to that which is moving, and from that which is pleasant, to that which is severe and solemn.” Upon this Dennis comments, “Thus has Boileau prescribed Variety, both for the Stile and Subject” (Remarks upon PRINCE ARTHUR, pp. 148–149).

69 On the Sublime, translated by W. Rhys Roberts (Cambridge, at the University Press, 1899). Second edition, 1907. Section xxxv, p. 135.

70 Ibid., Section i, p. 43.

71 Œuvres Complètes de Boileau, par Charles Antoine Gidel, 5 vols. (Paris, 1870–73), iii, 450.

72 The Guardian, No. 117 (July 25, 1713), Bohn, iv, 225. “Looking over the late edition of Monsieur Boileau's works, I was much pleased with the article which he had added to his notes on the translation of Longinus.”

73 Gidel, iii, 442.

74 It is true that Longinus on occasion speaks against novelty. Thus at the close of his discussion of “frigidity” in Greek writers, he declares, “all these ugly and parasitical growths arise in literature from a single cause, that pursuit of novelty in the expression of ideas which may be regarded as the fashionable craze of the day” (Roberts, v, 53). Elsewhere, he condones the fabulous in poetry, but condemns it in oratory (Ibid., 89). The cases where he speaks favorably of variety, especially in style, decidedly overbalance those containing objections, however. Variety through the use of figures is commended in Sections xx, xxii, xxxii; in Section xxxiv, variety is named as one of the merits of Hyperides; in Section xxiv, the changing of singulars to plurals, and of plurals to singulars is sanctioned as contributing to surprise. The censure of novelty in Section v is qualified by the explanation that it is the excess not the judicial use that is condemned. Such virtues as “variations and hyperboles” may become vices in the hands of the indiscriminate, Longinus explains.

75 Addison mentions Gracian in The Spectator, 409: “Gratian very often recommends the fine Taste …,” also in No. 293, where he cites the Spanish philosopher on how to advance at court. The first reference is made with El Criticon in mind no doubt, the second is specifically to El Oraculo Manual, translated into English in 1685 and again in 1694, with editions in 1702 and 1705 as well.

76 Gracian y Morales, Baltasar, Le Criticon, Traduit de l'Espagnol en François (Paris, 1696), p. 18. The book was written in 1651.

77 Ibid., p. 28.

78 Ibid.—Passages containing corroborative evidence may be easily added. See pp. 29–32. Cf. also: “Invention marks a fruitfulness of wit…. Novelty is insinuant, and if it be happy, it sets a double value on what is good. In matters that concern judgment it is dangerous, because it runs upon Paradoxes; in knacks of subtlety it is laudable; and if novelty and invention jump well together they are plausible” [Oraculo Manual y Arte Prudencia (1647). Translated into English as The Courtiers Manual (London, 1685), Sec. 283].

79 The Tatter, No. 119.

80 Ibid. See also The Guardian, 103, and The Spectator, No. 393.

81 The Spectator, No. 465.

82 The Guardian, No. 101.

83 Remarks on Italy, Greene, ii, 339.

84 Remarks on Italy, Greene, ii, 217.

85 The Spectator, No. 267.

86 The Spectator, No. 273.

87 Ibid., No. 267.

88 Ibid., No. 315.

89 Ibid., No. 315. Satan's flight between the several worlds lying at every side, and the appearance of the Sun are, Addison declares, “set forth in all the Wantonness of a luxuriant Imagination” (Ibid., No. 315).

90 The Spectator, No. 315.

91 Probability with Addison did not mean literal truth or even possibility. It was enough that the poet keep within the range of popular belief or received opinion. In this, he was in harmony with Hobbes (see page 1117 above) and with Dryden's expressed dictum in An Essay of Heroic Plays (Ker, i, 153). In the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid, Addison explains, such fables as those of the Sirens and Polyphemus and of various miracles performed by the gods would have been possible according to the “opinions of Mankind that prevailed in the Age” (The Spectator, No. 315).

92 Professor Samuel H. Monk's remark about the mission of sublimity applies with equal force to novelty: “One of the missions of the sublime was to help art escape from the neo-classicist's nature, and to establish it on a conception of nature that included the very irregularity and vastness from which the orthodox speculation of the Enlightenment instinctively shrank” [The Sublime in XVIII Century England (New York, Modern Language Association of America, 1935), p. 67].