But the word allegory is, in these days, a dangerous one, and some one will soon be showing me that we have, each one of us, his Sea-Fog, his White Tower, and that it is the fault of his own weakness if he does not fling out of the window his Red-Haired man.
No, no, God forbid. This is a tale and nothing but a tale, and all I ask is that once beginning it you will find it hard to lay down unfinished—
and that you will think of me always as
Your affectionate friend
HUGH.
. . . Within these few restrictions, I think, every writer may be permitted to deal as much in the wonderful as he pleases; nay, if he then keeps within the rules of credibility, the more he can surprise the reader the more he will engage his attention, and the more he will charm him.
As a genius of the highest rank observes in his fifth chapter of the Bathos, "The great art of all poetry is to mix truth with fiction, in order to join the credible with the surprising."
For though every good author will confine himself within the bounds of probability, it is by no means necessary that his characters or his incidents should be trite, common, or vulgar; such as happen in every street, or in every house, or which may be met with in the home articles of a newspaper. Nor must he be inhibited from showing many persons and things which may possibly never have fallen within the knowledge of great part of his readers.
HENRY FIELDING.