“Why then,” interrupted I, “why did they who remained behind fall disputing?”
“That I will explain to you,” said he. “Just as he broke off, Cassem the miser (who, as far as I heard, seems as well drawn as Moliere’s Avare) having already suffered a thousand whimsical misfortunes and dilapidations of fortune, is brought before the Cadi for digging in his garden, on the presumption that he was digging for treasure. As soon as the historian was gone, they first applauded him, and then began to discuss his story—which they one and all agreed in praising highly: and when they came to talk of the probable issue of the sequel of it, there were almost as many opinions as there were men in company; each maintained his own, and they went to loggerheads as you saw about it—when the chance is a thousand to one, that not one of them was near the mark. One in particular surmised that Cassem would be married to the Cadi’s daughter; which gave great offence to some, and roused another of the company to declare, that he was well assured in his conscience that Cassem would be brought to the bastinado or the stake, or else hanged, in the sequel.”
“And is it possible,” said I, “that a group of twenty or thirty rational beings can be so far bereft of all common sense, as to dispute upon the result of a contingency, which absolutely depends on the arbitrary fancy of an acknowledged fabricator of falsehoods?”
“C’est vrai, Monsieur! and thereby they demonstrate the power of the poet (for poet we may well call him); and entre nous, I doubt whether it is not more rational, as well as more fair, to dispute what the denouement ought to be before than after the inventor of the piece has disposed of it, as is the practice with us. When he has once finished his fable, you will find them all content, and the voice of criticism silent. Now in France or England, our critics lie perdue, in order to attack the poet, let him finish his performance how he may. But you will recollect, Monsieur, that in Turkey criticism is the honest spontaneous issue of the Heart, and with us is a trade, where sometimes lucre, sometimes vanity, but oftener than both, envy and malice direct the decision, and dispose to cavil and censure.
But we will go again to-morrow, continued he, probably he will be there to conclude or proceed further with his story; I agreed to this and we parted.
On the next day we went, and not seeing the orator in his place, lounged about the caravansera, and going to another coffee-house found him declaiming with all his might. My friend told me that the story he was now on was quite different from the former: however we watched his motions so effectually that we got the conclusion of the story of Cassem, which completely disappointed the prognostics of the two conflicting Turkish critics; for Cassem was neither bastinadoed, staked, or hanged, nor married to the Cadi’s daughter, but lived to see that extreme avarice was folly; and to be sensible that to make the proper use of the goods of this life is to enjoy them.
LETTER XXXIV.
My last letter has shewn you, that the conceptions of genius, though they may want the aid of the Press to bring them in full and perfect disclosure to the world, will yet burst through their bounds, and find some means of communication with mankind; for though the art of Printing be unknown in Turkey, the emanations of superior intellect and fancy find their way to the general ear through the medium of public declamation in coffee-houses. This letter will serve to shew you that malversation in office, public delinquency, and all those crimes of the great, which with us are cognizable by no tribunal but that of the public press, are not altogether so exempt from the lash and exposure of the satirist in Turkey, as the want of that great palladium of Freedom would dispose us to believe; and that, incredible as it may appear, the magistrates are held up to ridicule in public exhibition, satirised with all the extravagant vulgarity of coarse humour and unpolished wit, and exposed with all the bitter exaggerations of envenomed genius.