“There remaineth yet another use of poesy parabolical, opposite
to that which we last mentioned; for that tendeth to demonstrate
and illustrate that which is taught or delivered, and this other
to retire and obscure it; that is, when the secrets and mysteries
of religion, policy, or philosophy are involved in fables or
parables. Of this in divine poesy we see the use is authorized.
In heathen poesy we see the exposition of fables doth fall out
sometimes with great felicity; as in the fable that the giants
being overthrown in their war against the gods, the earth, their
mother, in revenge thereof brought forth Fame,—
_Illam Terra parens, irâ irritata Deorum,_
_Extremam, ut perhibent, Cœo Enceladoque sororem_
_Progenuit,_
expounded, that when princes and monarchs have suppressed actual
and open rebels, then the malignity of the people, which is the
mother of rebellion, doth bring forth libels and slanders, and
taxations of the State, which is of the same kind with rebellion,
but more feminine. So in the fable, that the rest of the gods
having conspired to bind Jupiter, Pallas called Briareus, with
his hundred hands, to his aid; expounded, that monarchies need
not fear any curbing of their absoluteness by mighty subjects,
as long as by wisdom they keep the hearts of the people, who
will be sure to come in on their side. So in the fable, that
Achilles was brought up under Chiron, the centaur, who was part
a man and part a beast, expounded ingeniously, but corruptly by
Machiavel, that it belongeth to the education and discipline
of princes to know as well how to play the part of the lion in
violence, and the fox in guile, as of the man in virtue and
justice. Nevertheless, in many the like encounters, I do rather
think that the fable was first, and the exposition then devised,
than that the moral was first, and thereupon the fable framed.
For I find it was an ancient vanity in Chrysippus, that troubled
himself with great contention to fasten the assertions of the
stoics upon the fictions of the ancient poets; but yet that all
the fables and fictions of the poets were but pleasure, and not
figure, I interpose no opinion. Surely, of those poets which
are now extant, even Homer himself (notwithstanding he was made
a kind of Scripture by the latter schools of the Grecians), yet
I should without any difficulty pronounce that his fables had no
such inwardness in his own meaning; but what they might have upon
a more original tradition, is not easy to affirm; for he was not
the inventor of many of them.”
In the treatise _De Augmentis_ the same sentiments will be found, with
a slight alteration in the expressions. He says:—
“There is another use of parabolical poesy opposite to the
former, which tendeth to the folding up of those things, the
dignity whereof deserves to be retired and distinguished, as
with a drawn curtain; that is, when the secrets and mysteries of
religion, policy, and philosophy are veiled and invested with
fables and parables. But whether there be any mystical sense
couched under the ancient fables of the poets, may admit some
doubt; and, indeed, for our part, we incline to this opinion, as
to think that there was an infused mystery in many of the ancient
fables of the poets. Neither doth it move us that these matters
are left commonly to school-boys and grammarians, and so are
embased, that we should therefore make a slight judgment upon
them, but contrariwise, because it is clear that the writings
which recite those fables, of all the writings of men, next to
sacred writ, are the most ancient; and that the fables themselves
are far more ancient than they (being they are alleged by those
writers, not as excogitated by them, but as credited and recepted
before) seem to be, like a thin rarefied air, which, from the
traditions of more ancient nations, fell into the flutes of the
Grecians.”