The Cure of the Passions and the Origins of the English Novel Geoffrey Sill Frontmatter More Information

Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-80805-7 - The Cure of the Passions and the Origins of the English Novel Geoffrey Sill Frontmatter More information

THE CURE OF THE PASSIONS AND THE ORIGINS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL

This new study examines the role of the passions in the rise of the English novel. Geoffrey Sill locates the origins of the novel in the breakdown of medical and religious dogmas prior to the eighteenth century, leading to a crisis in the regulation of the passions which the novel helped to address. He examines medical, religious, and literary efforts to anatomize the passions, paying particular attention to the works of Dr. Alexander Monro of Edinburgh, Reverend John Lewis of Margate, and Daniel Defoe, novelist and natural historian of the passions. He shows that the ﬁgure of the “physician of the mind” ﬁgures prominently not only in Defoe’s novels, but also in those of Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, Burney, and Edgeworth. The “rise” of the novel comes to an end when the passions give way at the end of the century to the more modern concept of the emotions.

GEOFFREY SILL is Associate Professor of English and Chair of his department at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey. He is the author of Defoe and the Idea of Fiction () and the editor of Walt Whitman of Mickle Street () and other books. He is the Defoe editor of The Scriblerian and an active member of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

© in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-80805-7 - The Cure of the Passions and the Origins of the English Novel Geoffrey Sill Frontmatter More information

THE CURE OF THE PASSIONS AND THE ORIGINS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL

GEOFFREY SILL

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First published 2001

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Contents

List of illustrations page vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction: the passions and the English novel   The physician of the mind from Zeno to Arbuthnot   The heart, the Holy Ghost, and the ghost of Michael Servetus   Alexander Monro and the anatomist’s gaze   Defoe and the natural history of the passions   Crusoe in the cave: family passions in Robinson Crusoe   The sinner, the saddler, and the brewer’s wife: three case studies in desire   “Surprized by his Passions”: the ghost of Servetus and the Reverend John Lewis   “Mr. Jones had Somewhat about him”: Henry Fielding and the moral sense   Burney, Richardson, and the “extirpation” of passion  Epilogue: Belinda and the end of the origins  Appendixes  Who was “Betty”?   Who was “Sir Benjamin Hodges”?   The history of the “History of the Life of Servetus,” told in letters  Notes  Bibliography  Index 

Illustrations

 Alexander Monro, primus (–), engraved by James Basire (–) after a portrait by Allan Ramsay (–), frontispiece of The Works of Alexander Monro (). Reproduced by courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London. page   “Robinson Crusoe terriﬁed at the dying goat,” engraved by Charles Heath (–) after a drawing by Thomas Stothard (–)forThe Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Embellished with Engravings from the Designs by Thomas Stothard, esq. (London: T. Cadell, ). Reproduced by permission of the Special Collections Library, University of Michigan.   Reverend John Lewis (–), engraved by George White, frontispiece of John Lewis, The Hisory and Antiquities, as well as Ecclesiastical as Civil, of the Isle of Tenet, in Kent, nd edn. (London, ). Reproduced by permission of the Kent County Council Arts and Libraries.  a and b Copy of a letter of remonstrance from a clergyman to his daughter Betty, found among the papers of John Lewis (–). MS. Rawl. D. , fols.  recto and verso. Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.   Map of the Isle of Tenet, showing St. John the Baptist Church in Margate and St. Mary’s, Minster, both parishes of John Lewis. Opposite p. vii in John Lewis, The History and Antiquities, as well as Ecclesiastical as Civil, of the Isle of Tenet, in Kent, nd edn. (London, ). Reproduced by permission of the Kent County Council Arts and Libraries. 

vii

viii Illustrations  North prospect of St. Mary’s, Minster, burial place of the Reverend John Lewis (–). Opposite p.  in John Lewis, The History and Antiquities, as well as Ecclesiastical as Civil, of the Isle of Tenet, in Kent, nd edn. (London, ). Reproduced by permission of the Kent County Council Arts and Libraries. 

Acknowledgments

A scholarly project that requires over a decade to complete is, in the end, the work of many hands besides the author’s. I gratefully acknowledge the assistance I received from the students in my courses at the Camden cam- pus of Rutgers University, whose willingness to hear about the passions as a way of reading the eighteenth century helped sustain my own interest in the subject; my colleagues at Rutgers, who gave me the freedom and security necessary to see me through a long period of research and writing; the administrators at Rutgers who approved sabbatical leaves in , , and , during which substantial progress was made; my colleagues in the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Stud- ies (ASECS), and particularly the East-Central ASECS, who listened to a dozen versions of this book in the form of short papers and talks; and Peter Jones, director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, and Dr. Michael Barfoot, director of the Medical Archive Centre, both at the University of Edinburgh. I also owe thanks to the li- brarians at Rutgers University,the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Edinburgh University Library, the Bodleian Library at Oxford Univer- sity, the British Library, Dr. Williams’s Library in London, the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, the Royal College of Physicians of London, the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, the National Library of Scotland, the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury, the Kent County Council Library at Mar- gate, and the London Public Record Ofﬁce, all of which opened their treasures to me. I am grateful to Richard Gilder for his interest in the passions and humours, and for many other kindnesses; Linda Bree of the Cambridge University Press, for her interest in this project and safe- guarding of it; Heather Bosence, for showing me St. Mary’s in Minster and reading my chapter on John Lewis; John T.Williams of the Margate Local History Museum and Penny Ward of the Kent County Coun- cil for information on Margate; and Henry L. Fulton, Yvonne Noble, ix

x Acknowledgments Peter Sabor, and the anonymous readers at Cambridge University Press who offered many useful suggestions. I am grateful for the work of Rachel De Wachter, Lesley Atkin, and Pamela Mertsock Wolfe, who produced, copyedited, and indexed the book, respectively. I thank David Blewett, editor of Eighteenth-Century Fiction, for allowing me to use portions of “Crusoe in the Cave: Defoe and the Semiotics of Desire,” ECF  (), –; Suzanne Poirier, editor of Literature and Medicine, for the use of “Neurology and the Novel: Alexander Monro primus and secundus, Robinson Crusoe, and the Problem of Sensibility,”  (), –; and Timothy Erwin and Ourida Mostefai, editors of Studies in Eighteenth- Century Culture, for “Roxana’s Susan: Whose Daughter is she Anyway?,” SECC  (), –. Finally, I owe more than I can acknowledge or repay to the members of my extended family, particularly my son Ian, daughter Maggie, and my wife Susan, who taught me everything there is to know about the passions. This book is dedicated affectionately to her.