How Ironic is Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling?

References in parentheses are to chapters of the novel.



     Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling is the most popular and typical of the sentimental novels in vogue during the gestation of Romanticism, but it has long been recognized that Harley, its hero, is as much a criticism of sentimentalism as an exemplification of it. Since Mackenzie’s book, like Sterne’s Sentimental Journey, is largely comic rather than dramatic, the hero’s effusions are as often ridiculous as affecting.
     In his 1824 essay “Henry Mackenzie,” Scott confidently declares that “the universal and permanent popularity of his writings entitles us to rank him among the most distinguished of his class.” While praising Mackenzie’s “tone of exquisite moral delicacy” which reveals “those finer feelings to which ordinary hearts are callous,” Scott worries that Harley might be taken for an absurd and effeminate “Quixote of sentiment.” He proffers “Harley's spirited conduct towards an impertinent passenger in the stagecoach, and his start of animated indignation on listening to Edwards's story as evidence of masculine vigor and assures the reader that he is confident Harley would dare “on suitable occasions, to do all that might become a man.”
     The problem is unavoidable. The virtuous Harley often manifests his warm human sympathy through charitable contributions of the sort recommended by both Christian and secular values. When he gives the fortune-teller a shilling, he is more doubtful than the reader about the morality of the action – he is supporting one who defined his profession as lying. The man’s indigence, however, is the result of misfortune (a fire and subsequent unemployment), and he declares that he had used to be a “plain-dealer” until he found the world too tight-fisted to give alms without something in return.
     Likewise Harley’s beneficence to the prostitute, the inmates of Bedlam, to Edwards and his family, and the similar generosity of Mountford in the story Edwards tells are all appropriate acts of kindness likely to meet the reader’s approbation. Yet Harley’s sensibility, his “delicacy,” leads him as often into foolish error. He fancies himself skilled at physiognomy and able to discern character at a glance, yet he errs repeatedly because he always thinks well of everyone.
     A man he takes for a gentleman is in fact a pimp (XIX), his guide in the psychiatric hospital turns out to be a madman (XX), and his companions are card sharpers who fleece him. (XXVII) While he is certainly kindly, many would describe him as unusually gullible as well. An impoverished aristocrat, he cannot conceive of working for a living. His only recourse is to attempt to advance his standing as a modest country gentleman by acquiring a land lease through political loyalty. He feels “no great relish for the attempt,” but lacks the energy to resist the urgings of friends. (XII)
     His feckless incompetence extends equally to affairs of the heart. Though in love with Miss Walton whose “natural tenderness” might seem to make her an apt mate, his “extreme sensibility” causes him to be silent when she is present. His partiality manifests as “paroxysms of fancy.” (XIII) Paralyzed by modesty, he is unable to express his feelings until he manages a belated declaration of on his deathbed.
     Harley is consistently governed by emotion. His contributions to the needy are determined by his flurried reaction to chance encounters rather than by conscious moral principles. His ethical decisions are especially open to error because they are subjective and impulsive, based on “delicacy” and “refinement” rather than analysis or insight. The fact is that Mackenzie’s man of feeling has an aesthetic system of morality. Suffering strikes him as horrifying because it is ugly. The coins he hands out are aimed at the amelioration of his distaste.
     The subjectivity of the vision of “the man of feeling” is emphasized by the fragmentary character of the manuscript and the accident of its supposed survival. At the outset the narrator calls his own story “of no importance,” and “without art” (deploying the ancient trope of claiming sincerity by asserting artlessness), noting that “had the name of a Marmontel, or a Richardson been on the title-page – ‘tis odds that I should have wept” (Introduction), thus acknowledging the greater power of fiction over fact to generate such a fashionable learned emotion. For Mackenzie there is little that separates morality in real life from the sympathy experienced by the reader of fiction since in both instances the focus is on the sensibility of the man of feeling himself.
     This is comedy indeed, but not wholly untethered to real morality. Mackenzie’s essays provide evidence of his views less ambiguous than the fiction. His essay “On Novel-writing” assumes that fiction should have a moral foundation though he concedes that some stories suffer a “perversion” from that base. Narratives operate by, “like all works of genius and feeling” by “promoting a certain refinement of mind,” yet he rejects the extreme, what he calls a “sickly sort of refinement.” He calls for a unambiguously moral literature and opposes characters of “mingled virtue and vice,” though of course such a phrase would describe everyone. He rejects the sentimental delectation of one’s own reactions in readers whose engagement with improving fiction has no influence on their lives, those whose consciences are separated from their feelings.
     His ambivalence about literary endeavors is foregrounded in another essay, “Defence of Literary Studies and Amusements in Men of Business.” Here the conflict is presented as a social tension produced by the rise of capitalism. The disinterested study, not of letters alone, but of science as well, is, he says, a “danger” to men of affairs, because “the fineness of mind, which is created or increased by the study of letters, or the admiration of the arts is supposed to incapacitate a man for the drudgery by which professional eminence is gained.” The newly rich are indifferent to art, or even contemptuous of it, since “learning and genius are proscribed, as leading their votaries to barren indigence, and merited neglect.” He claims that the old aristocracy was motivated by virtue, while the parvenus have no scruples and laments that men’s measure has come to be self-interest and money alone. He regrets the loss of a certain “independence and delicacy of mind” that accompany a “love of letters.” Aficionados of literature experience “a real superiority of enjoyment” of which mere “wealth-blown insects” are incapable.
     Yet Mackenzie makes a surprisingly feeble defense of the liberal arts and sciences. Like some academic pedagogues today justifying the universally required literature courses that require many teaching assistants, he notes that the student of literature will develop general analytical skills. He notes that, whatever its limitations, art at least provides entertainment superior to “mere sensual enjoyments,” and touts the value of reading for idle hours, for retirement, and for old age as if it were the equivalent of crossword puzzles or golf. His final argument limits art’s value to the private sphere. “In the closer intercourse of friend, of husband, and of father, that superior delicacy and refinement of feeling which the cultivation of the mind bestows, heighten affection into sentiment, and mingle with such connections a dignity and tenderness, which gives its dearest value to our existence.”
     As for the public world, though, Mackenzie is nostalgic for a social harmony that in fact never existed. He critique is thorough, beginning with the fortune-teller’s statement in the novel’s opening in which says there is no honesty in the world, obliging him to lie. (XIV) Toward the end Mountford with heavy irony refers to Respino as a “man of honour,” suggesting that worldly respect is no guarantee of morality. In a surprising passage perhaps in part motivated by his Scottish identity in spite of his Tory loyalties, Mackenzie’s man of feeling denounces imperialism. Though the whole passage is problematized by this fragment’s title: “The Man of Feeling Talks of What He Does Not Understand.” He sees clearly the economic motives that belie a civilizing “white man’s burden”: “when shall I see a commander return from India in the pride of honourable poverty?” Even this indignation is softened by sentiment. In the book’s conclusion is no denunciation of profiteers and exploitation, nothing but a soft-focus “pity” for the world.
     He certainly betrayed no Romantic radicalism in the other aspects of his life; rather he was a solid member of the Scottish ruling class. Apart from his literary activities (three novels, a play, the editorship of two periodicals, and biographical and political writings), he was a prominent lawyer, for many years attorney for the Crown, Comptroller of Taxes for Scotland, and an active controversialist, arguing for Conservative principles. I find nothing in his writings that would suggest that his views were anything but ordinary. He was simply a clever journalist and storyteller who aimed to embellish his career with ornamental literary accomplishments. The emotional extravagance that characterizes Harley, the narrator, and Mountford does not seem to have extended to their creator.
     Critics have wondered whether Mackenzie admired or satirized his main character, but these alternatives are not mutually exclusive. Is it not most efficient to imagine that Mackenzie wrote a piece inspired by the current vogue for the man of sensibility with the conscious aim of becoming a best-selling author? He was doubtless making fun of an extreme (like those who theatrically swooned as we know from diaries) while not condemning emotion in itself. Though he had initial difficulty in finding a publisher, once the work had appeared, it proved popular and he was referred to as the “man of feeling” for the rest of his busy life. While creating a hero of sensitivity, he remained a wholly conformist professional man who laughed at the excesses of his own character and exhibited in his own demeanor nothing of Harley’s extravagance. Some modern critics have suggested that out of this contradiction he crafted a subtly ironic figure; to me it seems the book’s themes arise more from his opportunistic use of a theme that was very much à la mode.

Fictional Destinations

     With the exception of a single trip, as a child in Iowa and Illinois, my family did not travel further than to a nearby lake or campground. In spite of my father and mother’s middle class professions, I never slept in a motel until I was a teenager. Too expensive. Yet it happened that I had uncles in Los Angeles with whom we could stay and my frugal parents saw their way to taking us to Southern California on the Sante Fe’s El Capitan in the days when the great trains had names and linen and heavy silverware in the dining car. It was the last year that my older brother could still pay the child’s fare. I recall not only the thrills of visiting the Farmer’s Market, La Brea tar pits, Knott’s Berry Farm, and seeing a game of the minor league team, the Hollywood Stars, but also swimming on the Will Rogers Beach. The name of this park I found as exciting as the surf due to the fact that, knowing nothing of Will Rogers, I convinced myself that it was, in fact, named after Roy Rogers, a pop culture figure I did appreciate.
     I recall, too, driving in a neighborhood of Beverley Hills homes so large many were not visible from the car and being told that we were passing Pickfair, which was explained as the home of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, names which meant nothing to a child of the fifties. The adults found such sights fascinating. In those days many shops, even street vendors, sold maps to locate the homes of the stars, and making a circuit of such places was a regular activity of organized tours as well as people on private cars. Yet what could be seen? Some mansions, certainly, but those of the stars were surely no less opulent than those of financial tycoons, yet tourists ignored the merely wealthy while they were drawn irresistibly to actors’ homes.
     For me the high point of the trip was doubtless visiting Disneyland which had just opened the year before, the same year that the Mickey Mouse Club began on ABC television. I had been to amusement parks such as Riverview in Chicago, to county fairs and carnivals, but this place was sanctioned by Walt Disney himself, and the difference was palpable. The expected pleasures of the rides and the Cokes were immeasurably enhanced by the associations. One hears of adults today with no children who remain susceptible still to the lure of Mickey Mouse when making travel plans. Disneyland had behind it the Klieg lights of Hollywood, but the later Walt Disney World rose in the swamps near Orlando with only the warm climate as a recommendation.
     Taste, of course, varies. When I visited Casablanca, a city which I found the least charming place in Morocco, I encountered Americans whose chief destination there was a theme restaurant called Rick’s Cafe, a place with virtually no connection to the country. Though housed in a grand pre-WWII mansion, its “developer,” as they say, was an American of my own age to whom the movie’s appeal was largely nostalgic. Her American designer saw to it that every detail was reminiscent of the film, landing the diner for the space of a meal in a mockup of old Hollywood rather than the fascinating, elegant, and gritty land just outside the door. The unthreatening menu includes steaks, John Dory crusted with black pepper, white wine and thyme, and “Rick’s brownies,” though I suspect Bogart’s Rick was not a big brownie eater. Doubtless for some travelers this restaurant is the high point of their journey.
     In an odd conjunction of pop culture and high culture, the Philadelphia Museum of Art surely attracts more visitors by the nearby Rocky Balboa statue than its own sculptures and paintings. The city tourism office declares unreservedly, “Visiting the statue, running up the steps and taking a picture at the top is a must on any first visit to Philly.” (Odder yet is the Rocky statue in Žitište, Romania, but that is primarily a hometown attraction outside the scope of the present inquiry in spite of its selection by Lonely Planet as one of the "top 10 most bizarre monuments on Earth.”)
     Those of somewhat more bookish tastes might prefer to view the well-maintained Sherlock Holmes Museum at the address of the detective’s flat at 221B Baker Street in London. As a matter of fact, at the time that Doyle was writing his stories, numbers on Baker Street barely reached 100. Though later renumbering did make the address possible, 221 was occupied by a bank which long fielded mail meant for the fictional character. A few doors away the Holmes museum began to grow at 239 Baker and in time was granted permission from the Royal Mail to use the 221B number. A place that never existed at a false address! If a trip to London is inconvenient, the tourist may nonetheless view other versions of the Baker Street flat apartment at Lucens, Switzerland where the author’s son used to spend time, or, of all places, in the University of Minnesota’s library.
     The city of Verona recommends visitors find their way first to “Juliet’s house,” complete with a balcony for calling out “wherefore art thou, Romeo?” The association of the medieval building with Shakespeare is, as it happens, a twentieth-century phenomenon, and the balcony, fashioned from a 17th century sarcophagus, was added to evoke the play’s most well-known line only when people complained about its absence.
     I am presently in Romania, and a few days ago I survived the unpleasant crush at Bran Castle, marketed as Dracula Castle on the basis of the conflation of Bram Stoker’s vampire with Vlad III, Vlad the Impaler, otherwise known as Vlad Dracula, son of Vlad Dracul, which is to say Vlad the Dragon who was a member of an order of the dragon. The fact is that, violent though he may have been, this historical Wallachian prince, was never accused of anything like drinking blood — impaling thousands seems more gruesome yet — and he in fact never lived in Bran Castle, though he may have visited there a time or two. Yet the fantasy of an Irish author who had himself never set foot in Romania has made this place the most popular tourist attraction in the entire country.
     Such interest may become a burden to local residents. Prince Edward Island may be glad for Anne of Green Gables, but Dubrovnik chose to limit visitors because of the influx of Game of Thrones fans, as did the Swiss town of Hallstatt, taken by visitors as the source of the setting of the Frozen movies (though the producers named a place in Norway).
     If my attitude sounds sniffy and snobbish, it is also honest. Through a quantum of hard traveling over the years, I flatter myself that I have earned the right to feel distaste for large guided groups identifiable by hats or ids worn about the neck. May we all have a good time, though! I suppose there is in the end little distinction between the pleasure of people in Pisa making a photo of someone pretending to push over (or support) the celebrated tower, and that of the overeducated observer, enjoying his harrumph from the side. If I know more art history, that does not indicate that I live a better life. My nose does not indicate nobility, yet both nose and art history are elements of my identity.
     In a sense, every traveler arrives at fictional destinations. I am quite sure that, despite the head-clearing cool thin air, I saw a Machu Picchu fictional to some extent, fabricated from all that I read in Hiram Bingham and heard from friends. Who could gaze at Apollo’s temple on Delphi with fresh eyes? Some actual sights have nonetheless purely symbolic value. The Eiffel Tower lacks practical use, but has become ever so rich in associations in spite of its denunciation at birth by France’s leading artists. What one sees in the Taj Mahal or a Normandy graveyard or tastes in Tokay (ordered in Tokaj) or hears in fado in Coimbra may seem primarily a matter of perception, but, while the traveler’s reactions may feel candid and spontaneous, they are largely the product of earlier learned impressions. The world is a great fiction and the borderline between history and legend beclouded with mists.
     The fact is that we are all chasing the phantoms of the mind. The tourist does this intentionally and in play. Mental manipulation of symbolic values is the surpassing skill of our species and a principal way in which we define ourselves. If I smile at someone who will travel across the country to attend a Star Wars convention, never leaving the airport hotel, that enthusiast might be amused at my seeking out the site of the Buddha’s first sermon. Both trips may prove rewarding. During travel more vividly than at other times, each feels the power of being the director of a unique narrative, able to ignore practical considerations and act on purely aesthetic grounds, each decision a matter of taste alone. The variety of trips is quite glorious really, reflecting the diversity of sensibilities.

Poetry and Magic Spells

αἱ γὰρ ἔνθεοι διὰ λόγων ἐπῳδαὶ ἐπαγωγοὶ ἡδονῆς, ἀπαγωγοὶ λύπης γίνονται· συγγινομένη γὰρ τῇ δόξῃ τῆς ψυχῆς ἡ δύναμις τῆς ἐπῳδῆς ἔθελξε καὶ ἔπεισε καὶ μετέστησεν αὐτὴν γοητείᾷ.

Sacred incantations sung with words are bearers of pleasure and banishers of pain, for, merging with opinion in the soul, the power of the incantation is wont to beguile it and persuade it and alter it by witchcraft.

Gorgias, Helen



     In his ingenious defense of Helen of Troy, Gorgias argues that she cannot be blamed if she was misled by the power of words. Conflating rhetoric and poetry with magic formulae, he declares speech a “great power,” capable of accomplishing “divine works,” manipulating emotion, and in fact inducing pleasure and pain through a sort of “wizardry.” [1] Helen cannot be guilty if her acts were the result of a quasi-holy compulsion. According to the testimonia of antiquity Gorgias himself was the outstanding practitioner of just such powerful hypnotic language with the power of altering the reality of listeners through the use of words alone.
     The intimate connection between magic and poetry has long been evident from the work of anthropologists. Shamans and priests describe their visionary experiences and work their wonders in large part through words, though other arts, including dance, drama, and visual art (in the form of fetish objects and the like) also play a role. This relationship has hardly diminished in the contemporary age. The words of the Roman Catholic priest ego te absolve are meant to work in the real world just like any charm, while poetry enthusiasts often use figures of speech referring to magic to characterize their reactions and poets like W. B. Yeats, Jack Spicer, James Merrill and others tout their work as supernaturally inspired.
     Perhaps the deepest affinity between magic and poetry lies in desire. The magic worker seeks a prosperous harvest, healing from disease, victory in war, ends that are always in doubt but which the individual passionately desires. In this way the practitioner’s words, whether functionally efficacious or not, constitute a poignant statement of longing, of human uncertainty, frustration, and anxiety not so different from a poem. Though Tylor and most early analysts saw magic as a pseudo-science, an ineffective way of obtaining one’s way in the world which served for people until they developed more practical scientific and technical solutions, the survival of magical practices in current times indicates that such a view is insufficient.
     In archaic societies poetry and magic were often subspecialties of the same individual, a person who excelled others in manipulation of the symbolic values of language. Shamans visited the spirit realm and returned with stories and verses to counsel their fellows. In later institutional practice those who mastered the verbal rituals of sacrifice were priests whose aid was considered essential to human well-being. Still later their expertise may lose much of its magical potency and become more scholarly or more pastoral.
     Both spells and poems seek symbolic means to ameliorate the helplessness of our species. People have traditionally found solace in the claims of religion, ordinarily convincing themselves of providence or, when all seems to have gone wrong, in an afterlife in which everything is set straight. In the meantime one may try to alter one’s circumstances for the better through the use of charms and incantations. The language in which these claims are stated and by which they are invoked is regularly poetic. While many writers distinguish magic with its attempt to control events from prayer and other religious manifestations thought to be more lofty, they are identical in seeking to influence circumstances through verbal formulations. All are variations on the old principle do ut des, in which the believer’s actions are thought to elicit a positive response. While moderns may scoff at the idea that reciting a charm will, for instance, heal a sick calf, every traditional society valorizes such efforts and every modern one has its substitutes, be they priests, therapists, alternative healers, or “life counselors.” The fact is that all reality is subjective and people have always recognized that words can alter, reprogram as it were, an individual consciousness.
     From the beginning, but more conspicuously in modern times as faith in revelation has faded for many thoughtful people, art has supplanted religion in its fundamental role of making life livable. This general development is so well-recognized that it does not require documentation. Artists such as Wagner, Mallarmé, Wilde, and Wallace Stevens come to mind.
     Yet significant differences exist as well between incantations and poetry. Since magic is thought to compel its ends (unless, of course, it is opposed by a more potent magic), its words need be little more than a simple statement of desire, a human version of the divine fiat. In some cases nonsense syllables such as abracadabra, a Sanskrit mantra, or the vocables of much Plains Indian song suffice.
     In others a simple statement of the desired result serves. “I bind down Aristaichmos the smith before those below,” says an ancient Greek curse tablet, then going on to list three other enemies of the writer without the slightest further detail. [2] A Hebrew benediction of the same simple sort says the same thing six ways: “The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.” [3] The Vedda may set out on the hunt with confidence after he sings to his arrow, “Go and drop behind the body of the monitor-lizard/ Pierce it, dear cousin.” [4]
     Poetry, on the other hand, must generate its own power on the strength of its language without the aid of dogmatic belief or social consensus. The consumer of poetry will begin to read in an ordinary state of mind, unaffected by the words on the page. The experience of reading, however, may generate the strongest feelings, altogether undeniable when experienced.
     This is not at all always the case. Some of the Old English charms involve thick, sometimes obscure imagery and elaborate rhetorical structures not always clearly linked to the goal of the spell. The "Wið færstice," called “Against a Stitch,” runs twenty-seven lines, construing a sudden pain as the result of an assault by supernatural beings, either Aesir, elves, or witches (hægtessan) and briefly achieving a tone similar to that of heroic epics. Furthermore the poem itself is a component in a dramatic ritual, a sort of Gesamtkunstwerk, prescribed in a preceding prose passage that recommends the preparation of a potion of medico-magical herbs boiled with butter.
     Poetry and magic have much in common. Both are verbal technologies that aim at making life more livable through symbolic manipulation. Both embody human desire and both construct world-views in which human values supplant the indifferent chaos of the data of reality. Both use hypnotic and little understood verbal rhythms and melodies to transcend and illuminate lived experience. Both also require accepting a set of learned conventions to function. In the case of magic this involves a belief that recitation of the appropriate words will bend nature and even gods to one’s will. Once such credulity in the old forms diminished, art for many filled its place.
     Yet art boasts no divine author. People compose poems without claiming (explicitly at least) to speak for the universe. It requires perhaps as much faith to take advantage of the redemptive power of a great poet as to utter a spell, but such aesthetic power arises more from the reader’s shared humanity with the author than from the poet’s unique ability to access truth. We moderns are surely as much in need of magic as our ancestors yet, lacking their socially approved avenues to gain some purchase on the unwieldy world, we face the challenge of manufacturing conviction out of whole cloth. For some this arrives through the supreme fiction, to use Stevens’ phrase, of poetry.



1. Gorgias’ phrases are λόγος δυνάστης μέγας ἐστίν, θειότατα ἔργα,and γοητείᾷ.

2. See Werner Reiss, Performing Interpersonal Violence: Court, Curse, and Comedy in 4th Century BCE Athens.

3. Numbers 6:24-26 KJV.

4. Quoted in C. M. Bowra, Primitive Song, p. 118.