a moral) is an express relation of actual facts or a pure invention. It does not come natural to us to confound the three provinces of professed history, mere conjecture and pure romance. But to minds of the thirteenth century (in the gross) it was otherwise. The interest, the utility, the charm of the story—these were for them primary considerations; its poetic, rather than its historic truth engaged them.
We have no desire to exalt or glorify this attitude—rather simply to point it out; still it may be interesting to observe how it finds support in some profound considerations and from some high authorities. What Sir Philip Sidney well says of poetry (as opposed to mere didactics or dry records) may be applied to the popular mediæval treatment of history :—
What philosopher's counsel can so readily direct a prince as the feigned Cyrus in Xenophon; or a virtuous man in all fortunes, as Æneas in Virgil; or a whole common-wealth, as the way of Sir Thomas More's Utopia … For the question is whether the feigned image of poetry, or the regular instruction of philosophy hath the more force in teaching.
Passing on from philosophy to history, Sidney instances the parables of Christ Himself as evidences of the superiority of free invention over literal record. He proceeds :—
If the question be for your own use and learning whether it be better to have a particular act set down as it should be or as it was; then certainly is more doctrinable the feigned Cyrus in Xenophon than the true Cyrus in Justin, and the feigned Æneas in Virgil than the right Æneas in Dares Phrygius.[1]
- ↑ It does not in the least weaken the force of Sidney's argument, but is a curious instance of the fluctuations of historical judgments, that this ' right ' or historical 'Æneas' has since been shown to be
