Non-Fiction > Uncollected essays > Volume 15, 1874 - Fortnightly review

LOUD LYTTON'8 FABLES IN SONG}
It seems as if Lord Lytton, in tliis new book of his, had found the
form most natural to his talent. In some ways, indeed, it may be
held inferior to Chronicles and Characters ; we look in A'ain for any-
thing- like the terrible intensity of the night scene in Irene, or for any
such passages of massiye and memorable Avriting as appeared, here and
there, in the earlier work, and made it not altogether maworthy of its
model, Hugo's Legend of the Ages. But it becomes eyident, on the
most hasty retrospect, that this earlier work was a step on the way
towards the later. It seems as if the author had been feeling about
for his definitiye medium, and was already, in the language of the
child's game, growing hot. There are many pieces in Chronicles and
Characters that might be detached from their original setting, and
embodied, as they stand, among the Fables in Song.
For the term Fable is not yery easy to define rigorously. In the
most typical form some moral precejjt is set forth by means of a
conception purely fantastic, and usually somewhat triyial into the
bargain ; there is something playful about it, that will not support a
yery exacting criticism, and the lesson must be apprehended by the
fancy at half a hint. Such is the great mass of the old stories of wise
animals or foolish men that haye amused our childhood. But we
should expect the fable, in company with other and more important
literary forms, to be more and more loosely, or at least largely, com-
prehended as time went on, and so to degenerate in conception from
this original t^^Je. That depended for much of its piquancy on the
yery fact that it was fantastic : the point of the thing la}^ in a sort of
humorous inappropriateness ; and it is natural enough that pleasantry
of this descrijjtion should become less common, as men learn to sus-
pect some serious analogy underneath. Thus a comical story of an
ape touches us quite differently, after the proposition of Mr. Darwin's
theory. Moreoyer there lay, perhaps, at the bottom of this primitiye
sort of fable, a humanity, a tenderness of rough truths ; so that at
the end of some story, in which yice or folly had met with its des-
tined punishment, the fabulist might be able to assure his auditors,
as we haye often to assure tearful children on the like occasions, that
they may diy their eyes, for none of it was true. But this benefit of
fiction becomes lost with more sophisticated hearers and authors : a
man is no longer the dupe of his o-s^m artifice, and cannot deal play-
fully with truths that are a matter of bitter concern to him in his
life. And hence, in the progressiye centralisation of modern thought,
(1) Falj/es In Soitj. By Robert Lord Lytton. Bla-kwoods, 1874.
yoL. xy. x.s. 3 ii