But the licence, whether of exaggerating, of borrowing, or of inventing incidents, would be more freely assumed by the bard, and more indulgently admitted by his audience; and indeed the reports of travellers, who have always enjoyed a peculiar privilege, would provide the materials of fiction in greater variety, and of a more wonderful kind, when the scene of the hero’s adventures happened to be in distant and unknown regions, inhabited by other races of men, enclosed by other mountains and other seas, subject to the influence of other skies, and governed by other gods and another order of Nature.—The Odyssey is a curious example.—If we except the usual interposition of the usual deities, the history of what passes in Ithaca and Greece seems to contain little which may not be more easily conceived to have actually happened, than to have been invented by the poet. But when we accompany Ulysses to Italy, Sicily and Ogygia, countries so little known in those early times to the inhabitants of Ionia or Greece, we find ourselves in another world. We meet with the enchantments of Circe, the mother of a large family of enchantresses; and the songs of Sirens—whose fascinating progeny has multiplied still more extensively both in verse and in prose. We meet with Giants who devoured human flesh, and are manifestly near of kin to the raw-boned gentlemen against whom not only the knights-errant of after-times, but also our dearly beloved school-fellow Jack the Giant-killer exerted his prowess and sagacity—though we have some pleasure in remarking that the more modern giants are of a finer breed, and farther removed from the savage state, as they look through two eyes instead of one, and live in castles instead of caves. What is more wonderful, we meet with the road to hell; not indeed the broad way through the wide gate, so well known and so much frequented by men of all ranks in every age of the world; but the secret path which it requires mystic rites to open, and by which a hero, a saint, or a poet, with a proper guide and good interest at court, may not only descend with all his flesh and blood about him to gratify his curiosity, but also return safe and sound, to entertain his friends above ground with the sights he saw below.
It appears, then, in what manner the bards, prompted by patriotism, and the desire of exciting the wonder of their auditors, might be enabled, without any great trouble of invention, to adorn with fiction the songs which recorded the exploits of their own countrymen; and their freedom in this respect would be the greater, according to the distance of time or place. But all restraint would be removed, when the hero of the tale was a foreigner. The historical truth would in this case be indifferent to the audience, and the narrative would be more acceptable, according as it was more extraordinary, affecting, and miraculous. Now it is obvious, that as the bards were indebted to their powers of amusing company for their estimation in society, and even for their livelihood, they would be prompted, by vanity and interest, as well as by their genius and habits, to provide an ample store and variety of tales; and not to confine themselves to transactions where they must have been fettered by the national records or traditions, but to adopt also those other subjects, where they could employ without control all the materials which were furnished by their experience, memory or fancy. It is obvious, too, that recourse to foreign subjects would become the more frequent, according as the nation advanced in knowledge and refinement, and ceased to depend on their poets for the preservation of their history. And when the professions of the poets and historians were completely separated, the former would be fully and for ever invested with the privilege of fiction, the quidlibet audendi potestas, in all their narratives, whether of foreign or domestic transactions—subject only to the remonstrances of the critics, not for telling lies, but for telling ill-contrived or uninteresting lies.
We have dwelt the longer on the origin of fictitious narrative, not only because the subject has been strangely misrepresented by the critics, but also because it is entirely overlooked in our author’s history. And this oversight seems to have produced another very material defect, the limitation of his plan to fictions in prose.
The earliest fictions are obviously entitled to the greatest attention, on account of the information which may be extracted from them with regard to the history, manners, and opinions of the nation and age to which they belong. They are also connected with many of the succeeding fictions; so that, by a mutual comparison, they are all rendered more intelligible and agreeable, more valuable both to the antiquary, the philosopher, and the innocents who read for amusement. But all the early fictions are composed in verse; and after fiction became less connected with history, many of the finest specimens of poetry are also the finest specimens of fictitious narrative. In fact, if we except a very few Italian tales, and some of the first-rate French and English novels, by far the best fictitious narratives in existence are poems. And a history of Mathematics which should exclude Archimedes and Newton, would not be more extraordinary, than a history of Fiction which excludes Homer, Hesiod, Virgil, Lucan, Ariosto, Tasso, Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Scott, Campbell and Byron.
The reason alleged for this exclusion appears to us, we will confess, altogether unsatisfactory.
‘The history of Fiction,’ says our author in his Introduction, ‘becomes in a considerable degree interesting to the philosopher, and occupies an important place in the history of the progress of society. By contemplating the fables of a people, we have a successive delineation of their prevalent modes of thinking, a picture of their feelings and tastes and habits. In this respect prose fiction appears to possess advantages considerably superior either to history or poetry. In history there is too little individuality; in poetry too much effort, to permit the poet and historian to pourtray the manners living as they rise. History treats of man, as it were, in the mass; and the individuals whom it paints, are regarded merely or principally in a public light, without taking into consideration their private feelings, tastes, or habits. Poetry is in general capable of too little detail, while its paintings at the same time are usually too much forced and exaggerated. But in Fiction we can discriminate without impropriety, and enter into detail without meanness. Hence it has been remarked, that it is chiefly in the fictions of an age that we can discover the modes of living, dress and manners of the period.’
In the two last sentences it is plain that the author means prose fictions, and not fictions in general. But we hope he will consider this matter a little more deliberately. Even though we should grant all that he has here stated, it would not afford a sufficient reason for excluding fictitious narratives in verse from the History of Fiction. But we apprehend that verse is by no means incompatible with accurate and minute description; for which we may appeal to the finest poems that have ever yet been published, as well as to the ruder lays of the bards in the North and West of Europe, which are of such importance both in the history of Fiction, and in the history of Society. Of the manners and characters of the Greek in the heroic ages, we find a distinct and even minute account in the poems of Homer: but it would not be adviseable to form our ideas of the Greek Shepherds and Shepherdesses in any age, from a certain prose romance to which our Author has condescended to afford a conspicuous place in his history—Longus’s pastoral tale of Daphnis and Chloe. We doubt much if the manners of chivalry are as correctly represented in the prose of Amadis de Gaul, and the long train of prose romances to which it gave rise, and which occupy so great a portion of the present work; as in the Orlando Furioso and Gerusalemme liberata, under all the fetters of the ottava rima. The voluminous histories of Astrea and Cleopatra, the accomplished Sir Philip Sydney’s Arcadia, and various other celebrated romances, which are admitted into our author’s history on account of their prose, and which are chiefly deserving of attention, from the difficulty of discovering how any body could ever have been at the trouble to read them, describe a state of society which never existed any where but in the fantastic imaginations of those writers, who may κατ’ ἐξοχήν—be denominated Prosers. On the other hand, the Lady of the Lake, Gertrude of Wyoming, the Bride of Abydos and the Corsair, present in the most harmonious versification and highest colouring of poetry, many details of national manners which are not surpassed in accuracy by the plain prose of that most honest of all travellers, Bell of Antermony. We are far however from wishing to insinuate that any of the prose romances which we have mentioned should be excluded from the History of Fiction. On the contrary we are extremely obliged to Mr. Dunlop for his judicious and elegant accounts of them. But we regret that the mere circumstance of versification should have excluded so many capital or curious works which are essentially connected with a philosophical and critical delineation of the origin and progress of Fiction in general, and particularly in the West of Europe.
The present publication, however, although it ought only to be entitled Sketches of the History of Fiction, is still interesting and amusing, and in general is respectably executed. But we have only to look at the first chapter, in order to be sensible of the imperfection of the plan. This chapter gives a view of the Greek romances in prose, and begins with a work of Antonius Diogenes in the time of Alexander the Great, entitled Accounts of the incredible things in Thule, τῶν ὑπὲρ Θουλην ἀπιστῶν λόγοι. It is now, we believe, extant only in the Epitome of Photius; and is a farrago of absurd and extravagant stories, which its author acknowledges to have been collected from former writers. We mention it only to apprise the reader at how recent a period Mr. Dunlop’s history begins. At this period, the art of composition, both in prose and verse, had attained a high degree of excellence; the departments of history and fiction were completely separated,—though some irregular practices have existed, down to our own days, of borrowing the ornaments of the latter department to decorate the former; fiction had been long cultivated on its own account; the tales which delighted the Milesians, and which probably borrowed many of their incidents from the neighbouring and civilised nations of Persia, were then in circulation; and the intercourse which Alexander’s expedition had opened with the more easterly nations, must have afforded a copious supply of materials for the story-tellers of Greece. Thus our author’s history opens, not in the beginning, but in the midst, of things; an arrangement which, however commendable in an Epic poem, does not appear so well adapted to sober history,—not even to a history of Fiction. Nor does our author, like the Epic poets, fall upon any device for carrying us back in due time to the commencement of the subject; from which indeed he is precluded by the artificial limits of his plan.
Of the Greek Romances in prose, now extant, of any considerable length (if we except the Cyropœdia, which is a fiction of a very particular kind, and not intended for popular amusement), the oldest is not earlier than the end of the fourth century. It is the history of Theagenes and Chariclea, written by Heliodorus, Bishop of Tricca in Thessaly, but before his promotion to the episcopal dignity. It is deserving of notice chiefly on account of the hints which it has furnished to succeeding writers of eminence, particularly to Tasso and Guarini; but we mention it here, chiefly for the purpose of recommending to our author a revisal of the principles of criticism which he has laid down in his remarks on this Romance. To us it appears that a story may possess novelty, probability, and variety in its incidents; that the incidents may be arranged by the narrator, so as to keep us ignorant of the final issue till the last; that it may possess all the ornaments which our author has enumerated—a good style, characters well defined and interesting in themselves, sentiments as sublime as any in Epictetus, and descriptions as fine as in the Romance of the Forest, or as correct as in Bell’s Travels; nay, to crown all, we can even conceive that the story shall be written in prose;—and yet, that with all these merits, which are all that our author requires, it shall be a string of events so unimportant or unimpassioned, that a second perusal would be quite insufferable. Have we not seen Mr. Cumberland’s novels?
Waiting to be better instructed, we would merely hint at present, that the proper merit of a Romance consists in Interest and Pathos, including in Pathos the ludicrous as well as the serious emotions. A romance is nothing, if it does not preserve alive our anxiety for the fate of the principal characters, with a constant, though varied, agitation of the passions. For this purpose, we must be made to conceive the whole action as passing before us—to hear the conversations of the different persons—to see their demeanours and looks—to enter into their thoughts—and to have each of them as distinctly and individually present to our mind, as the several characters in the Iliad, in Marianne, in Tom Jones, or in Cecilia. When the characters are striking, either by their virtues, vices, or follies—and when our imagination is thus occupied by a succession of scenes in which these qualities are rendered conspicuous, and in which our sympathies and aversions, our admiration and laughter, our joy and sorrow, our hopes and fears, are kept in continual play—we can forgive many improbabilities and even impossibilities in the story,—as is well known to the readers of Homer, Ariosto, and Shakespeare: still less are we displeased with borrowed incidents,—as almost all our dramatic authors can testify. In fact, there is generally but little merit in the adoption, or even invention of the simple incident, compared to the genius of the poet, the actor, or the painter, who bestows upon it life and passion. Chariclea was appointed by the priest of Apollo to present to Theagenes the lighted torch for kindling the sacrifice in the temple of Delphi. They first saw each other upon this occasion, and became mutually and deeply enamoured. But how feeble is the impression produced by this dry narrative, compared to what we feel at Raphael’s glowing picture of the scene, or compared to what we would have felt if Rousseau had described the looks and thoughts of the enraptured lovers!—When they were flying from Delphi to Sicily, their ship was captured by the pirate Charinus, whom Chariclea implored in vain not to separate her from Theagenes. We hear without emotion the general account of the event; but how affecting is it to contemplate, in the picture drawn by the same great master, the attitude and countenance of Chariclea as she is kneeling at the Pirate’s feet! And how could Otway have wrung the heart by the dramatic representation of such an interview!