The Man of Feeling

224 Pages·2005·0.946 MB·English

by  Henry Mackenzie, Maureen Harkin

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This electronic material is under
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COMMON SENSE
THE MAN OF FEELING
FOR THE METAPHYSICS OF
MORALS
broadview editions
series editor: L.W. Conolly
MEMOIRSOFMODERNPHILOSOPHERS 1
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Portrait of Henry Mackenzie by Sir Henry Raeburn,circa 1810.
By courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery,London.
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THE MAN OF FEELING
FOR THE METAPHYSICS OF
MORALS
Henry Mackenzie
translated by Thomas K.Abbott
with revisions by Lara Denis
edited by Maureen Harkin
broadview editions
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©2005 Maureen Harkin
All rights reserved.The use of any part of this publication reproduced,transmitted in any form
or by any means,electronic,mechanical,photocopying,recording,or otherwise,or stored in a
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Street,Suite 1900,Toronto,Ontario M5E 1E5 — is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Mackenzie,Henry,1745–1831.
The man of feeling / Henry Mackenzie ;edited by Maureen Harkin.
(Broadview editions)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-55111-468-2
I.Harkin,Maureen II. Title. III. Series.
PR3543.M2M328 2005 823¢.6 C2005-900769-9
Broadview Editions
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Contents
Acknowledgements • 7
Introduction • 9
Henry Mackenzie:A Brief Chronology • 39
A Note on the Text • 43
The Man of Feeling • 45
Appendix A:Sympathy and Sentiment
1. From David Hume,A Treatise of Human Nature
(1739-40) • 141
2. From Adam Smith,The Theory of Moral Sentiments
(1759) • 146
3. From Laurence Sterne,A Sentimental Journey Through
France and Italy(1768) • 157
Appendix B:Mackenzie’s Correspondence on the Composition
and Publication of The Man of Feeling
1. Letters to Elizabeth Rose on the Composition of The Man
of Feeling,1769-70 • 161
2. Correspondence with James Elphinston on the Composi-
tion and Reception of The Man of Feeling,1770-71 • 165
Appendix C:Other Fiction and Journalism by Mackenzie
1. From Julia de Roubigné (1777) • 171
2. The Mirror,nos.42-44 (19-26 June 1779):“The Effects
of Religion on Minds of Sensibility.The Story of La
Roche” • 179
3. The Mirror,no.101 (25 April 1780):“The Effects of
Sentiment and Sensibility on Happiness.From a
Guardian” • 190
4. The Lounger,no.20 (18 June 1785):“On Novel-
Writing” • 195
5. The Lounger,no.90 (21 October 1786):“Letter from
Barbara Heartless,the Unfortunate Attendant of a
Woman of Extreme Sensibility and Feeling” • 199
Appendix D:Contemporary Reviews and Evaluations
1. TheMonthly Review(May 1771) • 205
2. The Critical Review(June 1771) • 205
GROUNDWORK 5
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3. The Scots Magazine(August 1771) • 206
4. The London Magazine(August 1771) • 206
5. Sir Walter Scott,“Henry Mackenzie,”Lives of the Novelists
(1823) • 206
Select Bibliography • 219
6 CONTENTS
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Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the financial assistance of the Reed
College Faculty Research Fund in preparing this edition, and to
thank the research librarians at both Reed and the Green Library
of Stanford University for their help. I would also like to thank
Julia Gaunce at Broadview for her assistance with the project.
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8 INTRODUCTION
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Introduction
Mackenzie and the Sentimental Novel
I remember so well its first publication, my mother and sis-
ters crying over it,dwelling upon it with rapture! And when I
read it,as I was a girl of fourteen not yet versed in sentiment,
I had a secret dread I should not cry enough to gain the cred-
it of proper sensibility.
—Lady Louisa Stuart,writing about The Man of Feelingin 1826.1
It takes quite an effort of historical imagination to reconstruct a
literary culture in which the term “sentimental”was not automat-
ically understood as a pejorative, when admissions of weeping
over a novel did not mark one as an unsophisticated reader.Yet in
the middle and later decades of the eighteenth century,as Stuart’s
quote intimates, a tearful response to the novel of sentiment so
popular at the time—provided one wept enough—could be read as
a sign that one “got”the novel,grasped its ambition and felt the
full power of its effects.This epoch in British and European liter-
ature, spanning the decades of the 1740s to the 1780s, and
authors including Sarah Fielding, Jean Francois Marmontel,
Samuel Richardson, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oliver Goldsmith,
Sarah Scott, Laurence Sterne, Mackenzie, and Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe, was one in which the sentimental novel was one of
the most important genres in prose fiction.Though the sentimen-
tal as an element in literary texts is not confined to this period,
remaining important in the works of nineteenth-century novelists
such as Dickens,for example,2 the sentimental novel of the eigh-
teenth century is unique in making the spectacle of pathos,which
it typically stages over and over in its pages,and the responses of
observers to that spectacle its central concern.
Mid-century sentimentalism is also a phenomenon that extends
well beyond the borders of fiction, to poetic, dramatic, essayistic
and philosophical texts,part of the culture’s fascination with the
relation between emotion and judgment, and the nature of the
human ability to comprehend and imaginatively recreate the
1 Lady Louisa Stuart,letter to Walter Scott,4 September 1826,in The Pri-
vate Letter-Books of Sir Walter Scott,ed.Wilfred Partington (New York:
Frederick Stokes,1930) 273.
2 See Janet Todd,Sensibility:An Introduction(London:Methuen,1986) 147.
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experiences of others.The tremendous popularity of sentimental-
ism as an attitude at this time is famously attested to by the nov-
elist Samuel Richardson’s correspondent, Lady Bradshaigh. In a
wondering letter to Richardson in 1749 Bradshaigh describes a
veritable cult of the sentimental:“Pray Sir, give me leave to ask
you ...what,in your opinion is the meaning of the word sentimen-
tal,so much in vogue among the polite,both in town and coun-
try? ... Everything clever and agreeable is comprehended in that
word.I am frequently astonished to hear such a one is a sentimen-
tal man; we were a sentimental party; I have been taking a senti-
mental walk.”1The danger of the term’s expanding to a point of
near-meaninglessness is clearly in view, but sentimentalism as a
particularly rich vein for novelists was not exhausted for several
decades more.
Henry Mackenzie’sThe Man of Feeling marks the high point of
the sentimental novel in English.Published in April 1771,it ini-
tially received little notice and lukewarm reviews (see Appendix
D) but went on to phenomenal popularity and dozens more edi-
tions in Britain and the United States between 1771 and 1824.2
Up to that point, Mackenzie, a twenty-five-year-old Edinburgh
lawyer and aspiring man of letters, had published only a few
poems and completed an unpublished tragedy. He went on to
write two subsequent novels (The Man of the World, 1773, and
Julia de Roubigné, 1777), various dramatic pieces (including The
Prince of Tunis,performed 1773),and acted as editor and princi-
pal author of the two Edinburgh periodical papers The Mirror
(January 1779-May 1780) and The Lounger (February 1785-Jan-
uary 1787).In this latter role as editor,social observer,and con-
tributor to Edinburgh literary and cultural life Mackenzie
achieved considerable renown,and it was in recognition of his sta-
tus as the “Scottish Addison”that Walter Scott famously dedicat-
ed his first novel Waverley(1814) to him.Yet it was his first novel
and its impact which dominated the literary career and subse-
quent reputation of Henry Mackenzie. He carried the sobriquet
of “the man of feeling” from 1771 until the end of his life, long
after he had stopped writing sentimental fiction,and indeed long
after he had effectively given up his literary career amidst the
1 Undated letter to Samuel Richardson,The Correspondence of Samuel
Richardson,ed.Anna Laetitia Barbauld (London:1804) 282-83.
2 See list of editions in Harold William Thompson,A Scottish Man of Feeling
(London:Oxford UP,1931) 417-18.
10 INTRODUCTION