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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
George Walker, a London bookseller and publisher, author of several Gothic tales, printed in 1799 a satirical novel, The Vagabond, directed against the Jacobins and their philosophic forerunners. The author's purpose was a serious one, to refute and counteract the works that had poured from the Jacobin presses. As a result the novel, though amusing and fanciful in the manner of the Anti-Jacobin, represents a consistent view-point and an earnest desire to show the beauties of society as then organized. In its way, it is a summary of the reactionary position, and, by giving the opinions of the opponents of Rousseau, Hume, Mary Wollstonecraft, Holcroft, Paine, William Godwin, and others, illustrates a large section of late eighteenth-century thought.
page 515 note 1 For Walker's life and works see D.N.B., xx, 516–517.
page 515 note 2 By 1800 the book was in its fourth edition. Quotations in this paper are taken from the first American edition, Boston, 1800, because this edition is the most accessible, and because, a reprint of the English fourth, it contains the notes which Walker added to that edition, and which are useful in identifying the various references in the text.
page 515 note 3 Walker, George, The Vagabond (Boston, 1800), pp. v–x,—Hereafter cited as “Walker.”
page 515 note 4 Ibid., p. 223.
page 515 note 5 Ibid., pp. 204–205.
page 515 note 6 Ibid., p. 215.
page 515 note 7 Ibid., pp. 156–161.
page 515 note 8 Ibid., pp. 213–219.
page 515 note 9 Ibid., p. 20—Compare this with Stupeo's ridiculous definition, “act of beginning,” pp. 210–211.
page 216 note 10 See, for instance, Frederick's remarks on crime, op. cit., p. 125.
page 216 note 11 Walker, p. 50.
page 216 note 12 Walker, though he laughs at the perfectabilitarians, naturally, as here, comes to the possibility of improvement, and so to ultimate perfection as inherent in his own theory.
page 216 note 13 Walker, p. 153.
page 216 note 14 Ibid., pp. 156–161.
page 216 note 15 Ibid., p. 198.
page 216 note 16 Ibid., p. 199.
page 216 note 17 Ibid., p. 194.
page 216 note 18 Ibid., p. 51.
page 216 note 19 Ibid., pp. 96–97.
page 217 note 20 Ibid., p. 210.
page 217 note 21 Ibid., p. 205.
page 217 note 22 Ibid., p. 196.
page 217 note 23 Ibid., p. 95.
page 217 note 24 Impelled by Rousseau's descriptions of primitive life. Walker, pp. 30, 130.
page 218 note 25 An interesting problem is found in deciding how much actual reading of Rousseau Walker did. It almost seems impossible that such malicious misquotation should have been conscious, despite the fact that the time did delight in mis-representing Rousseau. See particularly the d'Epinay diary. See Josephson, Matthew, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (New York, 1931) pp. 531–533.
page 218 note 26 See Stephen, Leslie, English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1904), pp. 103–107.
page 218 note 27 Walker, p. 83.
page 218 note 28 Ibid., p. 117.
page 218 note 29 Rousseau, J.-J., Œuvres Completes (Paris, 1824), La Nouvelle Heloise, Part. ii, Let. xxi, pp. 439–463.
page 219 note 30 Frederick is wicked at this point, according to Rousseau's remark, “—le bon s'ordonne pour rapport au tout, et … le mechant ordonne le tout par rapport à lui.” Rousseau, ed. cit., Emile, Tom. ii, Liv. iv, p. 200.
page 219 note 31 Walker, pp. 30–31.
page 219 note 32 Ibid., pp. 109, 110.
page 219 note 33 Ibid., p. 118.
page 219 note 34 Ibid., pp. 12–13.
page 220 note 35 Rousseau, ed. cit., Contrat Social, Liv. i., Chap. iv, pp. 13–14.
page 220 note 36 Walker, p. 31.
page 220 note 37 Walker, pp. 9–10. Rousseau, op. cit., Liv. i, Chap. ii, p. 5.
page 220 note 38 Rousseau, ed. cit., Emile, Tom. i, Liv. ii, p. 123.
page 221 note 39 Walker, p. 123; Rousseau, op. cit., Tom. iii, Liv. v., p. 6.
page 221 note 40 One of the chief weapons of a wartime propaganda is, after all, to accuse your enemy of sexual immorality.
page 221 note 41 Rousseau, ed. cit., La Nouvelle Heloise, Vol. i, Part i, Let. xiv, pp. 92–95.
page 221 note 42 It is interesting to note that John Morley, in Rousseau (London, 1905) ii, 29, says of St. Preux, “With some rotund nothing on his lips about virtue being the only path to happiness, his heart burns with sickly desire”; that, on p. 35, he finds Wolmar unbelievable; and that, on p. 28, he refers to the three living together at Clarens as “so unwholesome and prurient a situation.”
page 222 note 43 Walker gives a footnote here: “To this may now be added the Monk.”
page 222 note 44 Walker, pp. 123–124.
page 222 note 45 See Josephson, Matthew, op. cit., pp. 208–209; 284–285.
page 222 note 46 Walker, pp. 174–176.
page 222 note 47 Ibid., p. 176.
page 222 note 48 Rousseau, ed. cit., Emile, Tom. i, Liv. i, p. 48. Rousseau ends bitterly “Choisissons donc un riche; nous serons sûrs au moins d'avoir fait un homme de plus, au lieu qu'un pauvre peut devenir homme de lui-même.”
page 222 note 49 Walker, pp. 178–179. Rousseau, ed. cit., La Nouvelle Heloise, Tom. ii, Part. iii, Let. xxi, p. 128.
page 223 note 50 Walker, p. 176.
page 223 note 51 Ibid., p. 115.
page 223 note 52 Rousseau, ed. cit., Emile, Tom. ii, Liv. iv, pp. 164–165.
page 223 note 53 Pp. 234–237 (ed. cit.).
page 223 note 54 See note 24 above.
page 223 note 55 See Fairchild, Hoxie Neale, The Noble Savage (New York, 1928), pp. 120–139.
page 224 note 56 Walker, pp. 96–97; Rousseau, ed. cit., Emile, Tom. i, Liv. iii, pp. 382–386.
page 224 note 57 Brown, Ford K., The Life of William Godwin (London and Toronto, 1926).
page 224 note 58 Ibid., p. 162.
page 224 note 59 Walker, p. 32; Godwin, William, Political Justice (London, 1793): Walker, p. 129; Godwin, William, op. cit., pp. 85–86, pp. 81–83.
page 224 note 60 Walker, pp. 185–213.
page 224 note 61 Walker, pp. 188–191. Godwin, op. cit., ii, 822–823. Godwin, The Enquirer (London, 1798), p. 163.
page 224 note 62 Vide Supra, section one.
page 225 note 63 Godwin, Political Justice (London, 1793), ii, p. 823.
page 225 note 64 Ibid., Bk. viii.
page 225 note 65 Walker, p. 97.
page 225 note 66 Godwin, op. cit., pp. 804–805.
page 225 note 67 Walker, p. 152.
page 225 note 68 Walker, p. 98. Godwin, The Enquirer, ed. cit., p. 177.
page 226 note 69 Walker, p. 133. Godwin, Political Justice, ed. cit., ii, 809.
page 226 note 70 Walker, p. 134.—This argument today seems superficial. The reading of such a book as Sheldon and Eleanor T. Glueck's One Thousand Juvenile Delinquents, Harvard Law School Study of Crime in Boston, Vol. i (Cambridge, 1934), shows that the truth of the origin of crime includes the theories of Walker and Godwin more completely than either would admit.
page 226 note 71 Walker, p. 4.
page 226 note 72 Godwin, op. cit., i, 313–314.
page 226 note 73 Godwin, Political Justice (London 1798), ii, 327. This passage added to the 3d ed. summarizes his original position in the 1st.
page 226 note 74 Godwin, Political Justice (London, 1793), ii, 701–703. Compare also Godwin, Things as They Are, or the Adventures of Caleb Williams (London, 1794), iii, 62.
page 227 note 75 Godwin, Political Justice, ed. cit., ii, 761.
page 227 note 76 Walker, pp. 56–57.
page 227 note 77 Ibid., p. 45; p. 208.
page 227 note 78 Walker, p. 9; Godwin, op. cit., ii, 852. It is significant that this passage was omitted in the third edition.
page 227 note 79 Walker, p. 103.
page 228 note 80 Walker, p. 19; Godwin, op. cit., ii, 850.
page 228 note 81 Walker, pp. 114–115; Godwin, op. cit., ii, 850.
page 228 note 82 This passage is a précis of Godwin's example of the Archbishop of Cambray and his valet. Godwin, op. cit., i, 81–83.
page 228 note 83 Walker, pp. 32–33.
page 228 note 84 Godwin, op. cit.,i, 89.
page 229 note 85 Walker, pp. 87–88.
page 229 note 86 Walker, p. 10; Godwin, op. cit., i, 84.
page 229 note 87 Godwin, op. cit., i, 85–86, Walker, p. 25.
page 229 note 88 Walker, p. 24; Godwin, op. cit., i, 94–96.
page 229 note 89 Walker, pp. 194–195; Godwin, The Enquirer, ed. cit., p. 5.
page 229 note 90 Walker, p. 85; Godwin, op. cit., p. 27.
