Aquilius.—Yes, I remember it well, and being rather nervous, declined reading Emilia Wyndham, by the same author, because I heard it was melancholy, and feared a similar conclusion. I agree with you with respect to biography: and remember, when a boy, the sickening sensation when I read at school the end of Socrates. I wish biographers would know where to stop, and save us the sad catastrophe. It is strange, that you must not read the life of a buffoon but you must see his tricks come to an end, and his whole broad farce of life suddenly drop down dead in tragedy. Whatever may be said of the biographer in his defence, I hold the novelist inexcusable.
Curate.—I should even prefer the drop-scene of novel happiness to come quietly down before the accoucheur and the registrar of births make their appearance. Why should we be told of a nursery of brats—a whole quiverful, as Lamb says, "shot out" upon you? It is better to take these things for granted. Doubtless it is as true, that the happy couple will occasionally suffer—she from nerves, and he under dyspepsia; but we do not see such matters, nor ought they to be brought forward, although I doubt not the authors might obtain a very handsome fee from an advertising doctor for only publishing the prescriptions. If they go on, however, in this absurd way, it is to be feared they will go one step further with the biographers, and publish the will, with certificate of probate and legacy-tax duly paid.
Aquilius.—We are not, however, as bad as the French. If our novels do sometimes require an epitaph at the end, they do not make death at once a lewd, sentimental, frightful, and suicidal act—and that not as a warning, but as a French sublime act.
Curate.—You have read, then, the Juif Errant. I am not very well acquainted with French novels, but have read some very pretty stories in the voluminous Balzac, most of which were not of a bad tendency. Did you ever read the Greek novels Theagenes and Chariclea, and the Loves of Ismenias and Ismene? Being curious to see how the Thessalonian archbishop, who lived in the times of Manuelis and Alexis Commenus, about the year 750, would speak the sentiments of his age on the passion of love, I lately took up his novel, the "Loves of Ismenias and Ismene."
Aquilius.—I know it not; perhaps you will give me an outline, and select passages. I have great respect for the old Homeric commentator.
Curate.—I remember a few tender passages, and graceful descriptions of gardens and fountains, and that he is not unmindful of his Homer, for he refers to the gardens of Alcinous as his model. I confess I am a little ashamed of the archbishop; but read with more than shame that Greek novel of Longus, written it is doubted whether in the second or fourth century, and to which, it is said, Eustathius was indebted for his novel. Longus's Daphnis and Chloë is a pastoral,—it would burn well. There are pleasing descriptions in both of garden scenery. Speaking of gardens and fountains reminds me of the richness of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, which I am surprised did not before come into our discussion. How strange is it that, though manners and scenes are so far from our usages and any known locality, we admit them at once within the recognised boundary of imaginative nature! They are indeed fascinating; yet have I not unfrequently met with persons who professed that they could not endure them.
Aquilius.—Were they young persons?—if so, they must be very scantily gifted with a conciliating imagination, though they may very possibly be the most reasonable of human beings. The charm that renders the Arabian Nights acceptable in all countries appears to me to arise from this—that vivid are the touches which speak of our common nature, and what is extraneous is less defined. Indeed, not unfrequently is great use made of the obscure—such obscure as Rembrandt, the master of mystery, profusely spread around the gorgeous riches of his pencil. There is here and there, too, a sprinkling of simpletonianism in a foreign shape, showing that all nations have something akin.
Curate.—Besides, they have the charm of magic, and a magic which blends very skilfully and harmoniously with the realities of every-day life. They were evidently composed in a country where magic was a creed. Could such tales have been ever the product of this country, so different from any of our "fairy tales?" though perhaps none of ours, those that delighted us in our childhood, are of English origin. Magic of some kind or other must have been adopted in tale at a very early period. Ulysses' safety girdle, which he was directed mysteriously to throw behind him, and I believe not to look back, comes undoubtedly from some far land of faery, from whence the genius of Homer took it with a willing hand.
Aquilius.—Grecian fable is steeped in the charmed fountain. The power of the Medusa's head, and the black marble prince's metamorphoses, are nearly allied. And a Circe may be discovered in many places of Arabic enchantment.
Curate.—Time converts everything into beauty. You smile, thinking doubtless that age has something to do with ugliness. Perhaps so, though it follows not but that there may be, personally speaking, to every age its own beauty, visible to eyes not human, whilst we are under earthly beauty's fascination, at any rate with regard to fact and to fable. Time unites them, as it covers the riven rock with lichen; so the shattered and ugliest idols of remotest ages doth Time hand over to Fable, to remodel and invest with garments of beauty or deformity, to suit every desire of the imagination. Strange as it may seem, it is true that there is in most of us, weary and unsatisfied with this matter-of-fact world, a propensity to throw ourselves into dream, and let fancy build up for us a world of its own, and, for a season, fit us with an existence for it—taking with us the beautiful of this, and charming what is plain under the converting influence of fiction. Who understood this as Shakspeare did? His Tempest, Midsummer's Night Dream, his Merchant of Venice, are built up out of the materials supplied by this natural propensity.