Mackenzie's Martyr: The Man of Feeling as Saintly Fool

Abstract

The literary survival of Henry Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling-its persistence as a largely viable work of fiction rather than as a bit of sentimental memorabilia -to some extent belies both its mode and outward appearance. Literary history, after all, has decreed that its longevity is largely a function of its status as a superior, compact parody of Sterne and Goldsmith (not to mention Richardson and Marmontel, whom Mackenzie's narrator cites as probable sources for the narrative).1 Thus, to the Shandyan whimsy and anecdotal structure of Sentimental Journey Mackenzie adds the moral and political earnestness as well as the melancholy tendresse of The Vicar of Wakefield; and though (happily) the final result is far more than a pastiche, I suspect that most readers, like MacKenzie's hunting curate into whose hands the manuscript of the novel falls, tend to view this novel simply as so many shreds of sentimental wadding, torn from the pages of longer and more ambitious novels. Yet for all its derivativeness and apparent disarray, The Man of Feeling achieves a quality of wit and moral passion all the more remarkable for the stylized character of its material. One has only to hold this novel up to one of its even more banal counterparts, say Brooke's The Fool of Quality (which appeared in ever increasing bulk during the same period in which The Man of Feeling was born), to perceive just how original its reticence and thematic consistency really are. And even more strikingly, one begins to perceive as well how Mackenzie's work carries the moral logic of the feeling heart to the very borders of Romantic tragedy (which are often the borders of absurdity as well) as the doctrine of sympathy acquires for him some of the darker anguish it provokes in the Continental masters of sentiment, Goethe and Rousseau. At the moral center of The Man of Feeling we find an enlightened revision of the contemptus mundi theme: a sympathy with the wretched and the outcast that drives Mackenzie's hero, Harley, beyond the limits of mere benevolence towards a more poignant renunciation of the world and its specious claims: