FABULISTS AS CENSORS.
'Mark, now, how a plain tale shall put you down.'
SHAKESPEARE: _King Henry IV_.
Fabulists as censors have always been not only tolerated, but
patronized and encouraged, even in the most despotic countries, and
when they have exposed wickedness and folly in high places with an
unsparing hand. Æsop among the ancients, and Krilof amongst the
moderns, are both striking examples of this. The fables of antiquity
may indeed be truly said to have been a natural product of the times
in which they were invented. In the early days, when free speech was
a perilous exercise, and when to declaim against vice and folly was
to court personal risk, the fable was invented, or resorted to, by
the moralist as a circuitous method of achieving the end he desired
to reach--the lesson he wished to enforce. The entertainment afforded
by the fable or apologue took off the keen edge of the reproof; and,
whilst the censure conveyed was not less pointed and severe, the device
of making the humbler creatures the scapegoat of human weakness or vice
mollified its bitterness. The very indirectness of the fable had the
effect of making the sinner his own accuser. Whom the cap fitted was at
liberty to don it.
Phædrus, in the prologue to his third book, thus gives his view of the
origin and purpose of fables:
'Here something shortly I would teach
Of fables' origin. To reach
The potent criminal, a slave
To beasts and birds a language gave.
Wishing to strike, and yet afraid,
Of these his instruments he made:
For all that dove or lamb might say,
Against them no indictment lay.'[13]
The fable saves the self-love of the person to whom it is applicable.
It enables him to stand aside, as it were, and become a spectator of
the effect produced by his own conduct. In this way he is impressed
and humbled without being affronted. When one, even though guilty, is
openly and directly reproved for a misdeed, the stigma often raises a
rebellious spirit, which either suggests a hundred justifiable reasons
for his action or begets a defiant mood, driving him to persist in his
evil courses.
Listening to the fable, 'we see nothing of the satirist, who probes
only to heal us, and who does not exhibit any of the personal spleen
and ill-humour which meet and put us out of countenance with ourselves
and each other in the invectives of those who sometimes set up for
moralists without the essential qualification of good nature. The
fable gives an agreeable hint of the duties and relations of life,
not a harangue on our want of sense or decorum. We feel none of the
superiority of the fabulist, who, indeed, generally leaves us to make
the application of his instructive story in our own way; and if we do
sometimes prefer to apply it to our neighbour's case instead of our
own, we are still improved and amended, inasmuch as we have learned to
despise some vice or folly which our unassisted judgment might have
regarded more leniently.'[14] Dodsley, again, puts the matter finely
when he says:[15] 'The reason why fable has been so much esteemed
in all ages and in all countries, is perhaps owing to the polite
manner in which its maxims are conveyed. The very article of giving
instruction supposes at least a superiority of wisdom in the adviser--a
circumstance by no means favourable to the ready admission of advice.
'Tis the peculiar excellence of fable to waive this air of superiority;
it leaves the reader to collect the moral, who, by thus discovering
more than is shown him, finds his principle of self-love gratified,
instead of being disgusted. The attention is either taken off from the
adviser, or, if otherwise, we are at least flattered by his humility
and address. Besides, instruction, as conveyed by fable, does not only
lay aside its lofty mien and supercilious aspect, but appears dressed
in all the smiles and graces which can strike the imagination or engage
the passions. It pleases in order to convince, and it imprints its
moral so much the deeper in proportion that it entertains; so that we
may be said to feel our duties at the very instant we comprehend them.'
The humour of a good fable is a fine lubricant to the temper. Sarcasm,
irony, even direct criticism, are in place in the fable, but humour is
its saving grace. Without this it cannot be classed in the first order.
Wanting in this quality, the fables of some writers who have attempted
them are flat, stale and unprofitable. Humour in the fable is the
gilding of the pill. It is like the effervescing quality in champagne,
the subtle flavour in old port.
It may be questioned whether a fable has ever the full immediate effect
intended. Men are loath to apply the moral to their own case, though
they have no difficulty in applying it to the case of others--even to
their best acquaintances and friends. For example, take the present
company, the present company of my readers--it is usual, by the way, to
except 'the present company,' but we will be rash enough, even at the
risk of castigation, to break the rule--take, then, the present company
in illustration of our point. Who among us would admit for a moment
that we are the counterpart or human representative of the fox with its
low cunning, the loquacious jackdaw, the silly goose, the ungrateful
viper, the crow to be cajoled by flattery, not to mention the egregious
donkey? 'Satire,' says an acute writer,[16] 'is a sort of glass
wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their
own.' Or, to parody a line of Young, 'All men think all men peccable
but themselves.' To be sure, we might be willing, modestly perhaps,
to admit that we who are singers can emulate the nightingale; that we
even possess some of the--call it shrewdness, of the fox; the faithful
character of the honest dog; vie in dignity of manners and bearing with
the stately lion. But all that is a matter of course; the noble traits
we possess are so self-evident that none excepting the incorrigibly
blind or prejudiced will be found to dispute them! So that the
admonishing fable contains no lesson for any of us, but should be
seriously taken to heart, with a view to their reformation, by certain
persons whom we all know. That view of the question, however, need not
be further pursued.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] Boothby's translation.
[14] G. Moir Bussey: Introduction to 'Fables.'
[15] 'Essay on Fable.'
[16] Swift: Preface to 'The Battle of the Books.'