Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 21, 1896 - Miscellanies, Volume IV

LORD LYTTON'S FABLES
no longer the dupe of his own artifice, and cannot
deal playfully with truths that are a matter of
bitter concern to him in his life. And hence, in
the progressive centralisation of modern thought, we
should expect the old form of fable to fall gradually
into desuetude, and be gradually succeeded by
another, which is a fable in all points except that
it is not altogether fabulous. And this new form,
such as we should expect, and such as we do indeed
find, still presents the essential character of brevity ;
as in any other fable also, there is, underlying and
animating the brief action, a moral idea ; and as in
any other fable, the object is to bring this home to
the reader through the intellect rather than through
the feelings ; so that, without being very deeply
moved or interested by the characters of the piece,
we should recognise vividly the hinges on which the
little plot revolves. But the fabulist now seeks
analogies where before he merely sought humorous
situations. There will be now a logical nexus
between the moral expressed and the machinery
employed to express it. The machinery, in fact,
as this change is developed, becomes less and less
fabulous. We find ourselves in presence of quite
a serious, if quite a miniature division of creative
literature; and sometimes we have the lesson em-
bodied in a sober, everyday narration, as in the
parables of the New Testament, and sometimes
merely the statement or, at most, the collocation
of significant facts in life, the reader being left to
resolve for himself the vague, troublesome, and not
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