“And hence it was,” said Lathom, “that in the early ages it might seem to partake of little levity to prefigure our Saviour’s birth in that of Bacchus; his sufferings and death in that of Actæon, or his resurrection in the legend of Hercules, as related by Lycophron; as late as the thirteenth century the Franciscan Walleys wrote a moral and theological exposition of the Metamorphoses of Ovid.”
“But surely the writers of that age did not stop there,” said Thompson; “was it not the case, that to these expositions succeeded compositions professedly allegorical, and which the spirit of refinement of that age resolved into further allegories, for which they were never intended?”
“Undoubtedly so!” replied Lathom; “it was not enough that the writer of the ‘Romaunt of the Rose’ had allegorized the difficulties of an ardent lover in the accomplishment of his object, under the mystery of the rose which was to be gathered in a fair but almost inaccessible garden. Every profession saw in this allegory the great mystery of their craft. To the theologian it was the rose of Jericho, the New Jerusalem, the Blessed Virgin, or any other mystery to which obstinate heretics were unable to attain; to the chemist it was the philosopher’s stone; to the lawyer it was the most consummate point of equity; to the physician the infallible panacea, the water of life; and does not this spirit of allegory extend to the present day, only in a somewhat different form?”
“Not unlike the present system of commentating,” remarked Henry Herbert. “As soon as a poet has attained to any great reputation, and death has sealed up his writings, then comes the host of annotators and critics, each one more intent than his predecessor to develop the mind of the writer, to discover with what hidden intentions, with what feelings, this or that passage was written, and to build on some stray expression a mighty theory, for some more clever writer to overthrow, and raise a new fabric on its ruins. And in these attempts it is not the old author whose glory is sought to be heightened, but the new man who would ascend the ladder of reputation on the labors of the ‘man of old.’”
“Far different,” rejoined Lathom, “was the spirit which prompted the fashion of resolving every thing into allegories in the middle ages; nor, indeed, is it to be solely charged to an unmeaning and wanton spirit of refinement. ‘The same apology,’ says Wharton, ‘may be offered for cabalistic interpreters, both of the classics and of the old romances. The former, not willing that those books should be quite exploded which contained the ancient mythology, labored to reconcile the apparent absurdities of the pagan system with the Christian mysteries, by demonstrating a figurative resemblance. The latter, as true learning began to dawn, with a view of supporting for a time the expiring credit of giants and magicians, were compelled to palliate those monstrous incredibilities, by a bold attempt to unravel the mystic web which had been woven by fairy hands, and by showing that truth was hid under the gorgeous veil of gothic invention.’ And now, Thompson, we must adjourn, you to your real Greeks and Romans, Herbert and I to Aristotle’s Summum Bonum.”
CHAPTER II.
Discussion on the Source of Fiction Renewed—The King and the Glutton—Guido, the Perfect Servant—The Middle-Age Allegories—Pliny and Mandeville’s Wonders Allegorized.
“Surely,” said Henry Herbert, when the friends were again assembled, “surely the poems of the northern Scalds, the legends of the Arabians of Spain, the songs of the Armoricans, and the classics of the ancient world, have been the sources of the most prevalent fictions.”