R. _Turpe & miserabile._ But let me have your sincere opinion.
N. I dare not.
R. You have dared to the utmost by that single word: Pray explain
yourself.
N. My opinion depends upon your answer to this question: is it a real,
or fictitious, correspondence?
R. I cannot perceive the consequence. In order to give one’s
sentiments of a book, of what importance can it be to know how it was
written?
N. In this case it is of great importance. A portrait has its merit if
it resembles the original, be that original ever so strange; but in a
picture which is the produce of imagination, every human figure should
resemble human nature, or the picture is of no value: yet supposing
them both good in their kind, there is this difference, the portrait
is interesting but to a few people, whilst the picture will please the
public in general.
R. I conceive your meaning. If these letters are portraits, they are
uninteresting; if they are pictures, they are ill done. Is it not so?
N. Precisely.
R. Thus I shall snatch your answers before you speak. But, as I
cannot reply, directly to your question, I must beg leave to propose
one in my turn. Suppose the worst: my Eloisa----
N. Oh! if she had really existed.
R. Well.
N. But certainly it is no more than a fiction.
R. Be it so.
N. Why then, there never was any thing more absurd: the letters are no
letters, the romance is no romance, and the personages are people of
another world.
R. I am sorry for it, for the sake of this.
N. Console yourself; there is no want of fools among us; but yours
have no existence in nature.
R. I could----No, I perceive the drift of your curiosity. But why do
you judge so precipitately? Can you be ignorant how widely human
nature differs from itself? how opposite its characteristics? how
prejudice and manners vary according to times, places, and age. Who is
it that can prescribe bounds to nature and say, Thus far shalt thou
go, and no farther?
N. If such reasoning were allowed, monsters, giants, pygmies and
chimeras of all kinds might be specifically admitted into nature:
every object would be disfigured, and we should have no common model
of ourselves. I repeat it, in a picture of human nature, every figure
should resemble man.
R. I confess it; but then we should distinguish between the variety in
human nature and that which is essential to it. What would you say of
one who should only be able to know mankind in the picture of a
Frenchman?
N. What would you say of one who, without expressing features or
shape, should paint a human figure covered with a veil? Should we not
have reason to ask, where is the man?
R. Without expressing features or shape? Is this just? There is no
perfection in human nature: that is indeed chimerical. A young virgin
in love with virtue, yet swerving from its dictates, but reclaimed by
the horror of a greater crime; a too easy friend punished at last by
her own heart for her culpable indulgence; a young man, honest and
sensible, but weak, yet in words a philosopher; an old gentleman
bigotted to his nobility, and sacrificing every thing to opinion; a
generous and brave Englishman, passionately wise, and, without reason,
always reasoning.
N. A husband, hospitable and gay, eager to introduce into his family
his wife’s quondam paramour.