Monsieur Bossu's Treatise of the Epick Poem/Chapter 15
CHAP. XV.
Of the feign'd Actions, the Recitals whereof are Historical.
As there are True Actions, the Recitals whereof are exact and regular Fables; so on the other hand, there are Feign'd Actions, the Recitals whereof are Historical. Nothing is to be esteem'd Fabulous in them, but a downright Falshood, and that has as little to do with the Fable, as the Truth of History. The Reason of this is, that the most essential part of the Fable, and that which must indispensibly serve for its Foundation, is the Truth signified. 'Tis easie to explain our selves by those very Examples we have already made use of; we need only cut off some necessary Circumstances of them in order to illustrate the Doctrine we would add here.
If the Dogs that were set to keep the Sheep, and whose Falling out gave the Wolf an opportunity of seizing upon some of them; if they, I say, follow the Wolf before they end their Quarrel; and if upon overtaking him, they are as fierce against one another, as against their Common Enemy: in this case, though the Wolf quit his Prey, fly for it, or though he die of the Wounds they give him; yet this Fiction will no longer signifie, That Concord re-establishes what Discord destroys; since the Calamity would have been ended, though the Discord still continued.
In like manner, if Achilles being provok'd at the Death of Patroclus, had set upon and kill'd Hector without being reconcil'd to Agamemnon; the Omission of this Incident, would have spoil'd the Fable.
We add farther, that if Achilles had been less inexorable, and had submitted to the Offers of Agamemnon before the Death of Patroclus; and if this Quarrel had not cost him the Life of his Friend, the Fable would have been spoil'd: For since the Quarrel would have been only prejudicial to Agamemnon, this Example would have shew'd us, in the Person of Achilles, that one might Quarrel, and be at Variance, without losing any thing: which is quite contrary to the Moral of the Poet.
We should deprive the Odysseïs of its very Soul, and spoil its Fable; should we retrench from it the Disorders which the Suitors of Penelope rais'd in the Isle of Ithaca, during the Absence of Ʋlysses: because this Poem would no longer inform us of the mischievous Effects which the Absence of a Commander, a King, or a Father of a Family, does produce.
Lastly, Take away from the Æneid, the Choice which the Gods made of Æneas for the re-establishing of the Empire; his Divine Arms; the Care Jupiter took to engage Mezentius in the Quarrel, where he was to be punish'd for his Impieties; and the Terrors with which this God affrights Turnus: and the Æneid will no longer inform the Romans in favour of Augustus, That the Founders of Empires, such as this Prince was, were the Chosen of Heaven, that Divine Providence protects them from all manner of Violence, and severely punishes the Impious, who oppose their Designs.
All these Recitals want their Emphasis, and that Instruction, which is the most essential part of the Fable. When a Poet goes this way to work, he does not make such Epick Poems as Aristotle and Horace prescribes Rules for, nor such as Homer and Virgil has left us such exact Patterns of. It is not much matter whether these Recitals are of true Things, such as those of Lucan, and Silius Italicus; or whether they are feign'd and drawn from Fables, such as those of Statius in his two Poems. He relates a Fiction, they History: but all three write more like Historians than Epick Poets.
'Tis true, they have all a Mixture of Divinities and Machines, which carry a Fabulous and Poetical Air in them: but since these very Additions are likewise in true Fables, they will never make these Recitals to be of the Nature of an Epopéa; because these Fables consist only in the Additions and Decorations of the Action. Now the Epick Fable is none of all this; 'tis on the contrary the Soul of a Poem, and the Ground-work upon which all the rest is built. And this Ground-work is to be prepar'd before one so much as think of the Decorations, which make no part of the Essence of the Fable. The being adorn'd and loaded with Animate Things, will never make an Animal, but there must be a Soul added to it: And though all the Earth were cover'd and embellish'd with an infinite number of Trees, and pierc'd very deep with their Roots, yet it will never pass for a Tree it self.