Greece and Rome, and it is only lately that
Niebuhr and Grote have refunded them into
legend. And the same thing is going on in the
present day. In the course of about thirty
years most things become mythical; fancies
and feelings mingle in the records, and ideas
are gradually substituted for facts. Many
so-called histories of the past, like Hume's History
of England, are little better than political
theories; and that of the late Lord Macaulay is
another example, only on the other side of the
question. The tendency to this has, indeed,
produced a natural reaction, and the State
Paper Office is now under the process of being
ransacked, in order to ascertain from actual
data the precise statement of the facts as they
actually occurred and were regularly
documented. Unfortunately, however, these data
themselves are infected with the prevailing
disease, and myths are even to be found in
figures of arithmetic, and in matters in which
they would be little suspected. Wills, deeds,
and letters are not always dated on the days on
which they are written, executed, or
transmitted; and individual observation varies so
much in both minute and important particulars,
that two witnesses to the same transaction will
give a widely different account of it. Those
who repeat it after them will modify it materially,
and after a time will so vary their own version,
that little consistency will be left between it
and their first relation. Let history be written
as it will, it can only be more or less the result
of the process we have described; and however
correctly compiled, it will inevitably be finally
valued more for its ideas than for its facts.
Anecdotes become parables, and, like fables,
are cherished for their moral application; great
events grow into sublime spiritual lessons, and
allegorise themselves with a speed which is
surprising even to those who have lived with
them, and suffered from them. And in our
days the process is even faster than in the past;
and no sooner is the germ deposited than the
development commences. To-day it is but a
promise; to-morrow it is a fulfilment.

The spirit of fiction mingles with our daily
life, and interferes in its most serious concerns.
Each man, according to his natural disposition
and acquired education, has a peculiar method
of viewing and estimating occurrences, whether
the latter be simple or complex—nay, he will
make them one or the other according to his
individual stand-point. Every age will have its
special manner of judging of persons, motives,
and events; and the intelligence of the present
will decide very differently from that of the
past on the very same class of events. What
was formerly miracle is now but ordinary; the
effect exciting no wonder, because the cause is
no longer secret.

With these fictions of the past or present
we are dealing, moreover, precisely in the same
way in which our predecessors dealt with those
of the dateless times, whose traditions they
repeated, adopted, modified, or amalgamated.
Each legend Becomes infinitely multiplied as
well as altered, so that it is with difficulty it
can be recognised in the variations which it has
produced. Our burlesque and pantomime-
opening writers have given themselves such
outrageous licence in the treatment of mythology
and nursery lore, that nothing remains the
same except the name. The features of the
portrait are changed in the most arbitrary way,
yet we are expected to recognise the likeness.
The simplicity of the subject is impaired by the
blending of several fables in one composition;
nevertheless, we are called on to accept the
unity in the variety without question. The
general resemblance becomes more slender with
every experiment—the adaptation to extraneous
purposes more and more violent—the
numerous refinements of meaning, style, and
incident, grow more and more daring and
audacious—yet, albeit through repeated alterations
the ship is scarcely the same in any portion,
the demand exists that we should admit its
identity. This curious development and
multiplication of the products of imagination and
memory threaten so to recast the entire written
and unwritten literature of early ages, that at
no distant period the form will undergo entire
alteration. Much already has suffered a sea-
change. Aladdin with his wonderful lamp,
Pygmalion with his beautiful statue, Fatima with
her mysterious husband, all alike are moulded
into new shapes, and clothed with new robes
that shine with a brilliance strange to these
shadows of the past. Even the Polytechnic
Institution, with its dissolving views and its
optical illusions, innovates on the ancient
formulae, and sacrifices the accepted interpretations
to scientific expediencies.

Still the ancient spirit is not dead, and the
influence of fiction is not confined to the past.
The present is full of it. Never was there a
time when novels and romances more abounded.
These for the most part seek in the common
and familiar life around us, rather than from
ideal sources, for the materials of adventure.
They aim, and properly, at the real,
and great pains are taken, which only those
who are practised in the art can adequately
appreciate, to secure the correctness of the
local colouring, and of the actual manners of
the day. But in both there is a large amount
of the fictitious. To different authors, according
to their capacities and dispositions, the facts
present a different appearance and receive a
different interpretation. When transplanted to
the story-book they are seen through an
artificial medium, and are exaggerated or diminished
according to the purpose intended and the form
adopted. Mr. Wilkie Collins and Mr. George
MacDonald would vary extremely in the treatment
of similar characters and events; George
Eliot and Mrs. Gaskell would make the most
opposite use of the same materials. So with
the poets, who deal with popular classes of
subjects; a tale by Crabbe on the same
theme would have differed widely from one by
Wordsworth or Goethe. To say nothing of the
philosophical fact that we are all partly creators
of the objects we perceive, there are six or more
ways at least in which different men can