'Composure,''Et Caetera,'and several more,are merely similes poetically elaborated.So,too,is the pathetic story of the grandfather and grandchild:the child,having treasured away an icicle and forgotten it for ten minutes,comes back to find it already nearly melted,and no longer beautiful:at the same time,the grandfather has just remembered and taken out a bundle of love-letters,which he too had stored away in years gone by,and then long neglected;and,behold!the letters are as faded and sorrowfully disappointing as the icicle.This is merely a simile poetically worked out;and yet it is in such as these,and some others,to be mentioned further on,that the author seems at his best.Wherever he has really written after the old model,there is something to be deprecated:in spite of all the spirit and freshness,in spite of his happy assumption of that cheerful acceptation of things as they are,which,rightly or wrongly,we come to attribute to the ideal fabulist,there is ever a sense as of something a little out of place.A form of literature so very innocent and primitive looks a little over-written in Lord Lytton's conscious and highly-coloured style.It may be bad taste,but sometimes we should prefer a few sentences of plain prose narration,and a little Bewick by way of tail-piece.So that it is not among those fables that conform most nearly to the old model,but one had nearly said among those that most widely differ from it,that we find the most satisfactory examples of the author's manner.
In the mere matter of ingenuity,the metaphysical fables are the most remarkable;such as that of the windmill who imagined that it was he who raised the wind;or that of the grocer's balance ('Cogito ergo sum')who considered himself endowed with free-will,reason,and an infallible practical judgment;until,one fine day,the police made a descent upon the shop,and find the weights false and the scales unequal;and the whole thing is broken up for old iron.Capital fables,also,in the same ironical spirit,are 'Prometheus Unbound,'the tale of the vainglorying of a champagne-cork,and 'Teleology,'where a nettle justifies the ways of God to nettles while all goes well with it,and,upon a change of luck,promptly changes its divinity.
In all these there is still plenty of the fabulous if you will,although,even here,there may be two opinions possible;but there is another group,of an order of merit perhaps still higher,where we look in vain for any such playful liberties with Nature.Thus we have 'Conservation of Force';where a musician,thinking of a certain picture,improvises in the twilight;a poet,hearing the music,goes home inspired,and writes a poem;and then a painter,under the influence of this poem,paints another picture,thus lineally descended from the first.This is fiction,but not what we have been used to call fable.We miss the incredible element,the point of audacity with which the fabulist was wont to mock at his readers.And still more so is this the case with others.'The Horse and the Fly'states one of the unanswerable problems of life in quite a realistic and straightforward way.A fly startles a cab-horse,the coach is overset;a newly-married pair within and the driver,a man with a wife and family,are all killed.The horse continues to gallop off in the loose traces,and ends the tragedy by running over an only child;and there is some little pathetic detail here introduced in the telling,that makes the reader's indignation very white-hot against some one.It remains to be seen who that some one is to be:the fly?Nay,but on closer inspection,it appears that the fly,actuated by maternal instinct,was only seeking a place for her eggs:is maternal instinct,then,'sole author of these mischiefs all'?'Who's in the Right?'one of the best fables in the book,is somewhat in the same vein.After a battle has been won,a group of officers assemble inside a battery,and debate together who should have the honour of the success;the Prince,the general staff,the cavalry,the engineer who posted the battery in which they then stand talking,are successively named:the sergeant,who pointed the guns,sneers to himself at the mention of the engineer;and,close by,the gunner,who had applied the match,passes away with a smile of triumph,since it was through his hand that the victorious blow had been dealt.Meanwhile,the cannon claims the honour over the gunner;the cannon-ball,who actually goes forth on the dread mission,claims it over the cannon,who remains idly behind;the powder reminds the cannon-ball that,but for him,it would still be lying on the arsenal floor;and the match caps the discussion;powder,cannon-ball,and cannon would be all equally vain and ineffectual without fire.Just then there comes on a shower of rain,which wets the powder and puts out the match,and completes this lesson of dependence,by indicating the negative conditions which are as necessary for any effect,in their absence,as is the presence of this great fraternity of positive conditions,not any one of which can claim priority over any other.But the fable does not end here,as perhaps,in all logical strictness,it should.It wanders off into a discussion as to which is the truer greatness,that of the vanquished fire or that of the victorious rain.And the speech of the rain is charming:
'Lo,with my little drops I bless again And beautify the fields which thou didst blast!
Rend,wither,waste,and ruin,what thou wilt,But call not Greatness what the Gods call Guilt.
Blossoms and grass from blood in battle spilt,And poppied corn,I bring.
'Mid mouldering Babels,to oblivion built,My violets spring.
Little by little my small drops have strength To deck with green delights the grateful earth.'
And so forth,not quite germane (it seems to me)to the matter in hand,but welcome for its own sake.