It is easy to conceive, that the widow OLIVER and FELIX had no part of the liberality of madam ***. FELIX died, and the poor widow, with her children, wou'd have perished miserably, if she had not found a refuge in the forest, at her eldest son's, where she labours, notwithstanding her great age, and supports an existence, in the midst of her children and their offspring. Now there are three sorts of tales-There are many more, you will say-Be it so-But I distinguish, first, the tale in the manner of HOMER, VIRGIL, and TASso, and this I call the marvellous tale. NATURE is here exaggerated-the truth is ambiguous; and if the relator have a due regard to the plan he lays down-if every thing in the action and the dialogue correspond to the design, he has obtained the degree of perfection the nature of his work admits, and you have nothing more to require of him. When you enter on his poem, you set your foot on an unknown country, where nothing happens as in that you inhabit; where all things are magnified as about you they are diminish'd.-Then there is the pleasant tale, in the manner of FONTAINE, VERGIER, ARIOSTO, and HAMILTON; here the relator does not propose any imitation of nature, nor truth, nor illusion; but launches forth into the regions of imagination. Say to him, be gay, ingenious, variegated, original, and even extravagant; you have my consent; but deceive me by the details; let the charm of the decorations constantly conceal the improbability of the fact; and here, if the writer does all you require, his work is complete. There is, lastly, the historic tale, such as those of SCARON, CERVANTES, &c.-The devil take the historic tale, and tale-maker! He is a dull insipid liar.-Aye, when he does not understand his trade. This proposes to deceive you; he seats himself by your fire-side, he pretends to the rigorous truth; he will be believed; he will interest, affect, move, transport, make the flesh shiver, and the tears flow-effects that are not to be obtain'd without eloquence and poetry. But eloquence is a species of lying, and nothing is more opposite to illusion than poetry; they both exaggerate, amplify, and excite a mistrust. How then can this writer be a deceiver? As thus he inserts in his relation a number of little circumstances, so connected with the plan, and in a manner so simple, so natural, and always so difficult to imagine, that you are forced to say to yourselves-Faith, this must be true; these things cannot be invention. It is thus that he palliates the exaggeration of eloquence and poetry; that the truth of nature conceals the illusions of art, and that he unites two situations which seem to be irreconcileable, which are, to be at once an historian and a poet, a writer of veracity and a deceiver. An example borrow'd from another art will, perhaps, render my meaning more obvious. A painter executes the figure of a head; all the parts of it are strong, great, and regular, the whole is quite perfect, and very extraordinary. I look at it with approbation, with respect, with admiration, and awe. I endeavour to recollect the model in NATURE, but I find it not; when compared with it, all appears weak, trifling, and mean. I perceive-I say to myself--it is an ideal head..... But let the artist place a slight scar on the forehead, a wart on the temple, or an almost imperceptible cut in the under lip; and, at the instant, the ideal head becomes a real portrait; a mark of the small-pox at the corner of the eye, or on the tip of the nose, and the head is not that of VENUS, but one of my neighbours. I say the same, therefore, to our historic tale-makers: your figures are fine, I allow; but there wants the wart on the temple, the cut in the lip, the mark of the small-pox on the nose, which should render them real; and, as my friend CAILLEAU says— Put a little dust on my shoes, and then I don't come from home-I come out of the country. Atque ita mentitur, sic veris falsa remiscet HOR. ART. POET. And now a little morality, and then a little poetry; that is so natural. FELIX was a beggar not worth a groat; OLIVER another beggar, just as poor; you may say the same of the collier and his wife, and of all the other parties concern'd; and from thence conclude, in general, that there can scarce be any unconfined and solid friendship but between those that have nothing. A man is, then, all the fortune of his friend, and his friend all his. From whence the truth of the experience, that misfortunes draw the bands closer; and this will afford matter for another small paragraph to the next edition of the treatise DE L'ESPRIT. FINIS |