Half-Forgotten Books Edited by E. A. Baker, M.A. With a Special Introduction to each Volume Tom Bullkley of Lissington. By R. MOUNTENEY JEPHSON. Whitefriars; or, the Days of Charles II. ROBINSON. The Mysteries of Udolpho. By ANN RADCliffe. By EMMA Sam Slick the Clockmaker. By JUDGE HALIBURTON. By CHARLES DICKENS. With Cruikshank's Illustrations, and Introduction by Percy Fitzgerald. Black Sheep. By EDMUND YATES. Guy Livingstone. By G. A. LAWRENCE. Old London Bridge. By G. H. RODWELL. The Camp of Refuge. By CHARLES MACFARLANE. Reading Abbey. By CHARLES MACFARLANE. Willy Reilly. By W. CARLETON. The Hour and the Man. By HARRIET MARTINEAU. The Pottleton Legacy. By ALBERT SMITH. The Fool of Quality. By HENRY BROOKE. The Cruise of "The Midge." By MICHAEL SCOTT. The Nightside of Nature. By Mrs. CROWE. LIFE AND OPINIONS OF JOHN BUNCLE BY THOMAS AMORY With an Introduction by LONDON: GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS, LIMITED NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & Co. 1904 Em INTRODUCTION THE History of John Buncle has never been a popular book. It is hardly possible to imagine a period whose standard of taste and culture would render it popular. Yet it is safe to predict that it will always, as in the past, be an object of interest to the connoisseur, the explorer of curious by-paths of literature, and to all who have a liking for the eccentricities of human nature, when conjoined with strength and shrewdness, and with candour of expression. Thrice during the last century was the book disinterred from the obscurity that covered it, and on each occasion by a critic distinguished by this taste for originality. Charles Lamb, in The Two Races of Men, hits off the book with delightful humour when he says, "In yonder nook, John Buncle, a widower-volume, with eyes closed,' mourns his ravished mate." Hazlitt's enthusiasm led him, ill advisedly, to compare the author with a genius of a far superior order : "The soul of Francis Rabelais passed into John (sic) Amory, the author of The Life and Adventures of John Buncle. Both were physicians, and enemies of too much gravity. Their business was to enjoy life. Rabelais indulges his spirit of sensuality in wine, in dried neats'-tongues, in Bologna sausages, in botargos. John Buncle shows the same symptoms of inordinate satisfaction in tea and bread-and-butter. While Rabelais roared with Friar John and the monks, John Buncle gossiped with the ladies, and with equal and uncontrolled gaiety. These two authors possessed all the insolence of health, so that their works give a fillip to the constitution; but they carried off the exuberance of their natural spirits in different ways. The title of one of Rabelais' chapters (and the contents answer to the title) is, How they chirped over their cups.' The title of a corresponding chapter in John Buncle would run thus: The author is invited to spend the evening with the divine Miss Hawkins, and goes accordingly; with the delightful conversation that ensued."" The essay is so well known and so sententious that it has probably led many a man to take its judgments on trust, and not trouble to peruse the book for himself. Leigh Hunt, on the contrary, in that charming literary vade mecum of his, A Book for a Corner, entices one to get the book and read it, or rather to roam about in its leisurely and discursive pages. But whoever has been so tempted hitherto must have met with an initial difficulty, the <extreme scarcity of the work. Amory published the first volume in 1756, along with a complete edition in four volumes, 12mo. Another edition appeared in three volumes in 1825, since which date the chances of coming across the book in any form have steadily grown more remote. What is the peculiar attraction of John Buncle? That a book is merely a literary curiosity, or that it contains excellent passages interspersed amid a huge extent of tedious prosing, is certainly not the thing to secure the interest of Lamb, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt. What fascinates in the book is the vigour and the frankness with which a most exceptional, yet, in a way, a most representative kind of man reveals the whole of his character. For John Buncle is an eccentric only in the sense that he carries very common traits of char. acter to a strange excess. In his love of good living, his sensuality combined with a pharisaic animus against vice, in that blind egotism and portentous arrogance, one might perceive the exaggeration of certain national qualities, with which the author, who was in the first case anonymous, shows his sympathy by exalting them to the degree of absurdity. John Bull, at least one side of him, was caricatured, unintentionally, in John Buncle. And the sectarian spirit that is so deeply ingrained in the national character is faithfully portrayed in John Buncle the unitarian, with his dogmatism and utter intolerance, and his delight in wordy argument untempered by the slightest capacity for understanding his adversary's point of view. It is, in fact, such a paradox of a book that it tempts every one to fly into paradoxes. Buncle himself is so hot in denouncing immorality and yet so immoral; condemns sensuality with so much eloquence yet is so shamelessly sensual; is so sincere and yet such a hypocrite; so fervent in his religious zeal, yet degrades religion so unblushingly to consecrate his unholy appetites. 'It is impossible," said Leigh Hunt, to be serious with John Buncle, Esq., jolly dog, Unitarian, and Bluebeard; otherwise, if we were to take him at his word, we should pronounce him, besides being a jolly dog, to be one of a very selfish description, with too good a constitution to correct him, a prodigious vanity, no feeling whatever, and a provoking contempt for everything unfortunate, or opposed to his whims. He quarrels with bigotry, and is a bigot; with abuse, and riots in it. He hates the cruel opinions held by Athanasius, and sends people to the devil as an Arian. He kills off seven wives out of pure incontinence and love of change, yet cannot abide a rake or even the poorest victim of the rake, unless both happen to be his acquaintances. The way in which he tramples on the miserable wretches in the streets is the very rage and triumph of hard-heartedness, furious at seeing its own vices reflected on it, unredeemed by the privileges of law, divinity, and success. But the truth is, John is no more responsible for his opinions than health itself, or a high-mettled racer. He only thinks he's thinking.' He does, in reality, nothing at all but eat, drink, talk, and enjoy himself. Amory, Buncle's creator, was in all probability an honest man, or he would hardly have been innocent enough to put such extravagances on paper." Leigh Hunt also says in the same place: "John's life is not a classic: it contains no passage which is a general favourite; no extract could be made from it of any length to which readers of good taste would not find objections. Yet there is so curious an interest in all its absurdities; its jumble of the gayest and gravest considerations is so founded in the actual state of things; it draws now and then such excellent portraits from life; and, above all, its animal spirits are at once so excessive and so real, that we defy the best readers not to be entertained with it, and having had one or two specimens, not to desire more. Buncle would say, that there is cut and come again' in him like one of his luncheons of cold beef and a foaming tankard." ་ The Life of John Buncle has many of the same merits as the life of Samuel Pepys, not the least of which is the unconscious humour of the book. Buncle himself is utterly devoid of a sense of humour; his heavy seriousness is something unconscionable. But I doubt if there be a more egregious example in literature of the unintentionally comic. The entire plan, or no-plan, of the book, with its aimless narrative and irrelevant digressions (the story seems to exist for the sake of the digressions) is so absurd; and the idea is so comic of the man going out to try his fortune in the world, "not like the Chevalier La Mancha, in hopes of conquering a kingdom, or marrying some great Princess; but to see if I could find another good country girl for a wife, and get a little more money; as they were the only two things united, that could secure me from melancholy, and confer real happiness.' He puts the case with inimitable gravity: "In the next place, as I had forfeited my father's favour and estate, for the sake of christian-deism, and had nothing but my own honest industry to secure me daily bread, it was necessary for me to lay hold of every opportunity to improve my fortune, and of consequence do my best to gain the heart of the first rich young woman who came in my way, after I had buried a wife. It was not fit for me to sit snivelling for months, because my wife died before me, which was, at least, as probable, as that she should be the survivor; but instead of solemn affliction, and the inconsolable part, for an event I foresaw, it was incumbent on me, after a little decent mourning, to consecrate myself to virtue and good fortune united in the form of a woman." Most diverting of all are the scenes of love-making, a kind of love-making which is, surely, quite unique in literature or in life. What coy maiden was ever wooed after the manner employed to win the "illustrious Statia "? Indelicacy almost ceases to be indelicate when it becomes so elephantine. |