CHAPTER XVI. THE WORLD OF FICTION. XVI. The means employs. OW comes a new point of view. I CHAPTER have explained that in examining the moral influence of art, we have which art to take into account in the first place the end of art, in the second place its means. Having at some length discussed the ethics of art in connection with its object, which is the production of pleasure, it is time now to discuss the same theme in view of the means which art employs. These may be loosely described in one word as fiction, and unhappily fiction has come to be regarded as the reverse of truth. Hence a controversy, in which art, in more than one sense, is denounced as the great engine of falsehood. In what is perhaps rightly entitled to the first The pleaplace among those wonderful Essays, all brim- falsehood VOL. II. P sure of XVI. CHAPTER ming with wit, wisdom, and winning eloquence, -in the Essay on Truth, Bacon avers that the mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure, and leaves us to infer, nay, pointedly declares that the pleasure of imagination and poetry comes of the same house and lineage.* Whatever the poet handles he is supposed to change into a lie. Macamut, Sultan of Cambaya, lived on poison, and thus became so deadly that flies alighting on his finger, and all who drew near him, were speedily killed. Even so, the poet has fed all his days on leasing, and-compact of imagination, which is supposed to be the most illusive of our faculties,—makes light of truth and deals Asserted by death to fact. Perhaps the poets have to blame and others. themselves most of all for the currency of this the poets mistake. When King Charles II. reproached Edmund Waller with having written a poem in honour of the Restoration inferior to that which he had formerly composed in praise of Cromwell, he made answer: "Sir, the poet suc So also Locke,-"If we would speak of things as they are, we must allow that all the art of rhetoric, besides order and clearness, all the figurative and artificial application of words eloquence hath invented, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move passions, and thereby mislead the judgment, and so, indeed, are perfect cheats." . . "It is evident how much men love to deceive and be deceived, since rhetoric, that powerful instrument of error, has always been had in great reputation.” . . . “It is in vain to find fault with these arts of deceiving wherein men find pleasure to be deceived."Essay on Human Understanding, Book III. Chap. x. Sect. 34. XVI. ceeds better in fiction than in truth;" and what CHAPTER a muster-roll of poets and poetasters might be called who, if possessed of Waller's ready wit, would without scruple have vouchsafed the selfsame reply! times accused of mendacity. The least formidable, because the most igno- Art is somerant, method of regarding the fictitious character distinctly of art is, to charge it boldly with a want of veracity. Here it is the proser that we have chiefly to deal with. I am reminded of the criticism of a terrible proser in the last century, who could not make out what Hotspur meant when, describing Mortimer's fight with Glendower, he says: On the gentle Severn's sedgy bank He did confound the best part of an hour In changing hardiment with great Glendower: Three times they breathed, and three times did they drink, Who then affrighted with their bloody looks Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds, ever, the The critic declares that if Shakespeare had not This, howbeen perverted in his taste, he would never view chiefly have penned such lines as these: "Nature could of prosers." never have pointed out to him that a river was capable of cowardice, or that it was consistent with the character of a gentleman such as Percy to say the thing that was not." It is with a touch of the same fire that Mr. Collier records a CHAPTER Conversation which he held with Wordsworth. Speaking of his poem on the cuckoo: XVI. Story of Words Collier. O blithe new comer! I have heard, I hear thee and rejoice. O cuckoo! shall I call thee bird, Or but a wandering voice? Wordsworth observed that the merit of these worth and lines did not consist in the justice of the thought, but in their noting what had never before been expressed, although it must strike every one as true, that the cuckoo, always heard, never seen, might not untruthfully be described as a wandering voice. It seems absurd to explain so elaborately the poet's meaning; but what are we to think of Mr. Collier's reply?" I mentioned that I had several times seen the cuckoo ;" and Wordsworth had of course to point out that it made no difference. We are all familiar with this style of cavilling, which needs no reply, and is tolerable only in jest. As fair as day, says Dumaine of his mistress. Ay, as some days, mutters Biron, but then no sun must shine. But even the poets have some times held the same view, or Curiously enough, however, the poets and their friends have sometimes frankly accepted the charge of lacking veracity. It does not indeed seem to trouble them to plead guilty to like it. such a charge, and they fall into wonderful absurdities in attempting to show that their fibbing is harmless. Thus George Puttenham, something |