24.6.
mvp-aristotle-comment-106
24.15
WHOEVER RELATES ANY FACT IS APT TO ADD SOMETHING MARVELLOUS TO GRATIFY THE HEARERS.
ARISTOTLE exemplifies here the position he has laid down, as to the pleasure that arifes from the marvellous, by a circumstance which we need no ghost to tell us, is often given to their stories by those who profess to relate real facts. And this not only by fimple narrators in common conversation, but by grave historians who relate the events of nations, and make serious and political reflections on the incidents they record. Of this Herodotus has been accused, but I think, not with fufficient justice; or if he has been a little too [N] attentive in listening to, and [M] A man turned of forty may certainly be strong and vigorous and have suffered little from the attacks of time: but a man of that age is not very likely, in real life, to gain the affections of a very young woman; and in fiction, which should copy general probability and not bare possibility, a man old enough to be a grandfather should not be made a successful lover. In many of our comedies an impropriety exactly opposite to this occurs. The old man of the piece, who is generally the father of the fine gentleman or fine lady of the drama, is drawn perfectly decrepid and bent down by all the infirmities of age, more like the great-grandfather than the father of a youth of twenty-one or a girl of eighteen. [N] That Herodotus was not credulous of every marvellous story he heard we have a very curious proof in his fourth book, (Melpomene) where he gives an account of the circumnavigation of Africa, by a fleet of Phoenicians fitted out by order of Necus, king of Egypt. 3 R Thefe
and too lavish in relating some wonderful tales current among the nations he visited (for a man could not in his time become acquainted with the history of foreign nations by reading in his study), yet his impartiality in relating the disgraces of his own country, as well as of her enemies, though it incurred the cenfure of the partial Plutarch, might I think have rescued him from the farcafm of the Roman poet, the earlier history of whose country contains an improbable series of almost continual success, [o] and puts one in mind of a bragging school-boy who can beat all the rest of the school however much they may be older and bigger than himself. The first check that Roman egotism received, was from a confciousness that their fables would be detected by a communication with the historians of this Græcia mendax,'' this nation of lyars,' and especially Polybius [P]. These men affirmed, that as they failed round the coast of Africa (from the Red Sea to the straits of Gibraltar) the fun was on their right hand, i. e. to the north of them. Now we know this must have been the fact, but it was too much for the faith of Herodotus, who says expressly this is incredible to me whatever it may be to others. This passage is particularly worthy of remark, as it proves that the Cape of Good Hope had been doubled at a very early period of the art of navigation. [o] Shenstone compares the Roman history to a romance, where we are always so sure of finding the hero of the piece victorious, that we lose the pleasure arifing from expectation. [P] There is a dissertation in Livy on what would have been the event had Alexander turned his arms against Rome. In his time the Romans had never looked out of Italy. When Hannibal invaded Italy they had engaged with foreign armies and were infinitely more powerful. But had Hannibal been an independent sovereign with the resources of Alexander, inftead of the general of a commercial and jealous republic, in all human probability the Roman hiftory would have ended with the second Punic war.. Voltaire
POETIC OF ARISTOTLE. Voltaire in his Questions sur l'Encyclopedie, Art. Histoire, seems to favor this partiality. He says that the famous canon laid down by Cicero for history, Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat,' is to be understood with some limitation, and asks, Is it the duty of the hiftorian to relate facts that may be imparted to him in confidence? Clearly not; for it certainly is the first duty of an historian, as of every body else, to be an honest man. But here Voltaire treats Cicero as he has treated Shakespear; first misrepresents his meaning, and then argues from that misrepresentation. He translates the precept thus, ' Que l'Historien n'ofe • dire une fausseté ni cacher une verité.' 'That the historian should not • dare to speak a falsehood, or conceal a truth. But this is by no means the sense of the original, which does not either express or imply, that there is no truth however foreign to public events, that hiftory should dare to conceal; but that there is no truth it should not dare to speak, which can relate only to fuch truths which it is the province of hiftory to relate. Indeed the annalist of his own times, who alone can be in the situation supposed by Voltaire, can never have the impartiality requifite for an historian. Lucian, in his Essay on the Manner in which History should be written, strongly and convincingly infifts on this impartiality. • If the historian has a private pique against any persons, it is the more necessary for him to esteem himself as a public character and to pay more regard to truth than his own enmity. And if he has a particular regard for any persons on the fame principle, he should not conceal their ⚫ crimes. There is in short only one thing, as I have faid, peculiar to • history, and to which alone it should facrifice, TRUTH [Q].' [Q] Κ᾿ὰν ἰδία μισῆ τίνας, πολὺ ἀναζκαὶολερον ἡγήσεῖαι τὸ κοινὸν, καὶ τὴν ἀλήθειαν περὶ πλείονας ποιήσεῖαι τῆς ἔχθρας. Κ᾿ὰν φιλῆ ὅμως ἐκ ἀφέξεῖαι ἁμαριάνονλος· ἙΝ γὰρ, ὡς ἔφην τῦτο, ἴδιον Ἱσορίας, καὶ μόνη θυζέον ΤΗ. ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ، 3 R2 There
There is another kind of marvellous in which the historians are apt to imitate the poets. They will sometimes a little mistate a fact to make it more interesting. If Macbeth falls in the same battle in which Macduff, who has fuffered the greatest injuries from him, happens to be engaged on the opposite side, the poet, to give a stronger effect to the incident, makes him die by his hand; and so because Gryllus a son of Xenophon fell in the fame battle with Epaminondas, Paufanius has made the latter fall by the former, though neither Xenophon, who concludes his history with an account of that battle, nor any other historian, mention such an event [R].. It is curious to trace the progress of the marvellous from a dark to an enlightened age; and to observe how a love for it will prevail in spite of the fewer sources which a more minute and general notion of cause and effect leave it. Superftition, with all its attendant train of witches, ghosts and fairies, formerly afforded an exhaustless supply of this kind of entertainment. And even at this time a tale of any preternatural appearance will not fail to fix our attention strongly, though it will not win our belief; and even the best and most popular of modern [s] writers will fometimes infert such narratives in their works, which certainly is not done with the intent, nor has it the effect, of displeasing their readers. Natural history seized the ground that superstition was forced to abandon, and phyfical fucceeded to metaphysical wonder. The various properties of matter, the natural miracles revealed to us by the telescope and the microscope, the investigation of volcanoes and their effects, the wonder-- ful operations of electricity, and the secrets of chymistry attract the curio- [R] I am surprised that Spelman in his Life of Xenophon, should mention this as an indif putable fact. [s] See Observer, No. 71. and Andrews's Anecdotes. fity
POETIC OF ARISTOTLE. fity so strongly, that with now and then a little [T] touch of the marvellous to heighten the effect, they supply the place of dreams, omens and apparitions. There is a curious observation in a Tract of Bishop Warburton, entitled [U] AN ENQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES OF PRODIGIES AND MI- RACLES AS RELATED BY HISTORIANS, which is so applicable to this subject that I shall infert it. * But, not to be over fond of an hypothesis, I sha'nt fcruple to con- * fess, that [v] truth may in fome cases beget admiration. [T] Sometimes however the marvellous is not quite so gentle in its touches, witness Animal Magnetism, and the great popularity of Lavater's book. In spite of the most enlightened philosophy, the human mind has a strong tendency to the monkish rant, Credo quod impoffibile.' [U] See Tracts by Warburton anda Warburtonian, page 87. [v] The science of astronomy ventures some times to the verge of the marvellous as in this extract. We inhabit a planet of a ftratum belonging to a compound nebula of the third form. In the crowded part of the milky way I have had fields of view that contained no less than 588 • stars, and these were continued for many minutes, so that in one quarter of an hour's time there * passed through my field of view, no fewer than 116,000 stars. Among the great number of nebulæ which I have already seen, amounting to more than 900, there are many which in all probability are equally extensive with that which we inhabit, and yet they are all separated from each other by confiderable intervals. That the milky way is a most extensive stratum of stars ⚫ of various fizes admits no longer of the least doubt; THAT OUR SUN IS ACTUALLY ONE OF THE HEAVENLY BODIES BELONGING TO IT, IS EVIDENT.' HERSCHEL. Philof. Tranf. Vol. lxxv. for 1785, quoted in a note on No. 119, of the octavo edition of the Tatler, 1789. This, in fact, is a position that may be relatively either true or false. To those parts of the universe between which and our fun the milky way is interposed it seems TRUE, to every other fituation FALSE. • First
، ، ، First mathematical truths, especially if new-invented theorems, will raise it in a very high degree. Witness the old mathematician who hit upon a confiderable discovery as he was bathing; and in an extasy and transport of mind, ran home naked through the streets. But how observable is it here, that even in a truth it is its seeming conformity to error that produces this admiration, by the common way of novelty • and furprize.' ،
