Born at Darley, Derbyshire, England, Feb. 29, 1728: died at Tamworth, England, Sept. 1, 1801. An English novelist. He was a paper-manufacturer by trade, and did not begin to write before the age of fifty-three. He wrote “Mount Henneth” (1781), “Barham Downs” (1784), “Hermsprong, or Man as he is not” (1796), etc.

Personal

  In his person, Robert Bage was somewhat under the middle size, and rather slender, but well proportioned. His complexion was fair and ruddy; his hair light and curling; his countenance intelligent, mild, and placid. His manners were courteous, and his mind was firm. His integrity, his honour, his devotion to truth, were undeviating and incorruptible; his humanity, benevolence, and generosity, were not less conspicuous in private life than they were in the principal characters in his works. He supplied persons he never saw with money, because he heard they wore in want. He kept his servants and his horses to old age, and both men and quadrupeds were attached to him. He behaved to his sons with the unremitting affection of a father; but, as they grew up, he treated them as men and equals, and allowed them that independence of mind and conduct which he claimed for himself.

  We have the testimony of Mr. Hutton, his most intimate friend, that in private life Bage was most amiable, but he adds with regret that “he laid no stress upon revelation,” and was “barely a christian.” His friends were deeply attached to him, and they described his temper as open, mild, and sociable. He was very kind to his domestics, who lived with him till they were old, and even to his horses when they were past work.

General

  It is scarce possible to read him without being amused, and, to a certain degree instructed. His whole efforts are turned to the development of human character; and, it must be owned, he possessed a ready key to it. The mere story of the novels seldom possesses much interest—in which we are interested; and, contrary to his general case, the reader is seldom or never tempted to pass over the dialogue in order to continue the narrative…. A light, gay, pleasing air, carries us agreeably through Bage’s novels; and when we are disposed to be angry at seeing the worse made to appear the better reason, we are reconciled to the author by the ease and good-humour of his style.

  Bage’s novels are decidedly inferior to those of Holcroft, and it is surprising that Sir Walter Scott should have admitted them into his “British Novelists,” and at the same time excluded so many superior works.

  Good Mr. Bage near Tamworth, whom Godwin, about the time when he tried to persecute and argue Miss Harriet Lee into marrying him, went out of his way to see, asking, “Are not such men as much worth visiting as palaces, towns, and cathedrals?” Bage was born a miller, and was a well-to-do person with paper-mills, beside those that ground the grain. To “dissipate his melancholy” under some special trouble, he began to write novels; and afterward, when he had formed the habit, went on producing them methodically one every two years, as children are born in well-regulated families. Where have all those children of the fancy gone? “Hermsprong,” which Godwin reports to be “his sixth,” very much indeed as if it had been a baby, is the one that is best known.

  The writer in Chambers’s “Cyclopædia of English Literature” describes Bage’s novels as decidedly inferior to those of Holcroft, with whom Bage had not little in common; and he expresses surprise that Sir Walter Scott should have admitted them into his “Novelists’ Library.” But the reader will feel inclined to applaud Sir Walter for granting them this distinction. As novels they may not interest strongly by their plot, but there is a distinct originality about them. They were chiefly intended to inculcate certain political and philosophical opinions. Not unfrequently, perhaps, the author’s strong convictions betray him into exaggeration. But touching the literary power of his works there can scarcely be two opinions. Considered altogether apart from their moral and social bearings, the novels of Bage display an unquestionable power in drawing and developing character, while their style is always entertaining and frequently incisive.

  It is impossible to say that there is genius in Bage; yet he is a very remarkable writer, and there is noticeable in him that singular fin de siècle tendency which has reasserted itself a century later. An imitator of Fielding and Smollett in general plan,—of the latter specially in the dangerous scheme of narrative by letter,—Bage added to their methods the purpose of advocating a looser scheme of morals and a more anarchical system of government. In other words, Bage, though a man well advanced in years at the date of the Revolution, exhibits for us distinctly the spirit which brought the Revolution about. He is a companion of Godwin and of Mary Wollstonecraft; and though it must be admitted that, as in other cases, the presence of “impropriety” in him by no means implies the absence of dulness, he is full of a queer sort of undeveloped and irregular cleverness.