In fine, the Action of a Fable may be serious, great, and important, or familiar, low, and vulgar. It may be either perfect or defective; writ in Verse or Prose; swell'd to a large Discourse, or express'd in a few Words; recited by the Author, or represented by the Persons who are the sole Actors in it. And all these different ways make no Alteration in the Essence, and in the Nature of the Fable.
Excepting the Representation, which the Epick Poet leaves the Stage to be Master of, he takes always the most excellent, and the most noble Method. So that the Epick Action is grave, important, compleat, and rehearsed in a long train of Verses.
One may add to this, that there are some Fables which consist less in Action than in Speaking; as that Fable, for instance, which ridicules the foolish Vanity of those Men, who attribute all the Glory of an Event to themselves, for the producing of which they contributed nothing but their own unprofitable Presence. The Fable represents them under the Allegory of a Fly, which lighting upon a Chariot, and seeing her self in the midst of a Cloud of Dust, which the Chariot-Wheels and the Horse-Feet raised in the Air, cries out; O Gemini! What a Dust do I make? The Epick is not of this sort of Fables, but of those which imitate an Action.
These then are the Differences which specifie the Epick Fable, and distinguish it from all others. It is Rational and Probable; it imitates an Action that is compleat and important; it is long and rehears'd in Verse; but neither of these Properties change its Nature, nor make it less a Fable, than those which are publish'd in Aesop's Name.
So much for the Sorts and Differences of the Epick Fable, now for its Parts.
[1]Aristotle says, that the Fable is a Composition of several Things. And in truth two Things do compose it, which are as it were its two essential Parts. The one is Truth, which serves as a Foundation to it; and the other is Fiction, which Allegorically disguises this Truth, and gives it the Form of a Fable.
The Truth lies conceal'd; and is that piece of Morality the Poet would teach us. The Romans made use of this very Expression, when they said to [2]Teach Fables and Tragedies, instead of saying to Act and Represent them. The Fiction is the Action or the Words, whereby these Instruction are veil'd. In the Instance we just now propos'd, the Truth is this, that it is ridiculous to brag of any thing we have no hand in: and the Fiction is that pleasant Thought of a Fly riding upona chariot,
