Now the proper remedy in the case is, to bring such men only together in Dialogue as are of the same rank; or at least to class our speakers with such care as that any great inequality in that respect may be compensated by some other; such as the superiority of age, wisdom, talents, or the like. A Chancellor of England and a Country Justice, or even a Lord and his Chaplain, could hardly be shewn in Dialogue, without incurring some ridicule. But a Judge and a Bishop, one would hope, might be safely brought together; and if a great Philosopher should enter into debate with a lettered Man of Quality, the indecorum would not be so violent as to be much resented.
But the influence of modern manners reaches even to names and the ordinary forms of address. In the Greek and Roman Dialogues, it was permitted to accost the greatest persons by their obvious and familiar appellations. Alcibiades had no more addition, than Socrates: and Brutus and Cæsar lost nothing of their dignity from being applied to in those direct terms. The moderns, on the contrary, have their guards and fences about them; and we hold it an incivility to approach them without some decent periphrasis, or ceremonial title—
——gaudent prænomine molles
Auriculæ.
It was principally, I believe, for this reason, that modern writers of Dialogue have had recourse to fictitious names and characters, rather than venture on the use of real ones: the former absolving them from this cumbersome ceremony, which, in the case of the latter, could not so properly be laid aside. Palæmon and Philander, for instance, are not only well-sounding words; but slide as easily into a sentence, and as gracefully too, as Cicero and Atticus: while the Mr’s and the Sirs, nay his Grace, his Excellency, or his Honour[15], of modern Dialogue, have not only a formality that hurts the ease of conversation, but a harshness too, which is somewhat offensive to a well-tuned Attic or Roman ear.
All this will be allowed; and yet, to speak plainly and with that freedom which ancient manners indulge, the barbarity of these forms is not worse than the pedantry of taking such disgust at them. And there are ways, too, by which the most offensive circumstances in this account may be so far qualified as to be almost overlooked, or at least endured. What these are, the capable and intelligent reader or writer is not to be told; and none but such would easily apprehend.
To come then to the OTHER objection of Lord Shaftesbury, which is more considerable.
It would be a manifest falsehood, he thinks, and directly against the truth both of art and nature, to engage the moderns in a grave discourse of any length. And it is true, the great men of our time do not, like the Senators of ancient Rome, spend whole days in learned debate and formal disputation: yet their meetings, especially in private parties, with their friends, are not so wholly frivolous, but that they sometimes discourse seriously, and even pursue a subject of learning or business, not with coherence only, but with some care. And will not this be ground enough for a capable writer to go upon, in reviving the way of Dialogue between such men?
But, to give the most probable air to his fiction, he may find it necessary to recede from the strict imitation of his originals, in one instance.
It may be advisable not to take for his speakers, living persons; I mean, persons, however respectable, of his own age. We may fancy of the dead, what we cannot so readily believe of the living. And thus, by endeavouring a little to deceive ourselves, we may come to think that natural, which is not wholly incredible; and may admit the writer’s invention for a picture, though a studied and flattering one, it may be, of real life.
In short, it may be a good rule in modern Dialogue, as it was in ancient Tragedy, to take our subjects, and choose our persons, out of former times. And, under the prejudice of that opinion which is readily entertained of such subjects and characters, an artist may contrive to pass that upon us for Fact, which was only ingenious Fiction; and so wind up his piece to the perfection of ancient Dialogue, without departing too widely from the decorum and truth of conversation in modern life.