This is the first Platform of a Fable. The Action, which this Recital presents us with, has four Qualifications: it is Ʋniversal, it is Imitated, it is Feign'd, and it contains Allegorically, a Moral Truth. This Model then comprehends the two Essential Parts which compose the Fable, viz. the Truth and the Fiction. All this is common to all sorts of Fables.
The Names that are given to the Personages do first specifie a Fable. Aesop gives them the Names of Beasts. Once upon a time (says he) two Dogs were set to keep a Flock of Sheep, they fight with one another, and leave the Sheep without Defence to the Mercy of the Wolf, that commits what Ravage he pleases among them. These Names are the meanest of any. The Action is still General, and the Fiction is altogether apparent.
We may disguise the Fiction, render the Action more singular, and make it a Rational Fable by the Names of Men invented at Pleasure. Pridamant and Orontes, two Brothers by a second Marriage, were left very rich by their Father's last Will and Testament. They could not agree in sharing their Estates, and were so obstinately bent one against the other, that to provide for their common Interest against Clitander (their elder Brother by a former Marriage) was the very least of their care. He very dextrously foments their Quarrel, and keeps them from minding the Design he has upon them, by pretending he expected nothing but a small Gratuity by the Accommodations, which he daily proposes, but never urges home to them. In the mean time he gains upon the Judges, and all others, who were intrusted with this Affair; he procures the Will to be cancell'd, and becomes Master of all that Estate he pretended he would have gratified his Brothers with, though to his own prejudice.
This Fable is a Rational and Probable Fable; but because the Names are feign'd as well as the Things, and the Action is only particular, and the Families ordinary, it is neither an Epick nor Tragick Fable; and can only be manag'd in Comedy. For [1]Aristotle informs us, That Comick Poets invent both the Names and the Things.
In order to make this an Alamode Comick Fable, some Girl or another should have been promised to Clitander; but the Will should have put the Father upon altering his Design, and he should have oblig'd her to have married one of these two rich Coxcombs, for whom she had not the least Fancy. And here the Comical Part might have been carried on very regularly even as the Poet pleas'd. But to return.
The Fiction might be so disguis'd under the Truth of History, that those who are ignorant of the Poet's Art would believe thathe
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