Page:Monsieur Bossu's Treatise of the epick poem - Le Bossu (1695).djvu/93

Book I. dents being thus United together, do not make different Actions and Fables, but are only the uncompleat, and unfinished Parts of one and the same Action and Fable, which alone can only be said to be Compleat and Entire: And all these Maxims of the Moral, are easily reduc'd into these two parts, which in my opinion cannot be separated without enervating the force of both. The two parts are these, That a right understanding is the Preservation, and Discord the Destruction of States.

Tho' then our Poets have made use of two parts in their Poems, each of which might have serv'd for a Fable, as we have observ'd: Yet this Multiplication cannot be call'd a vicious and irregular Polymythia, contrary to the necessary Unity and Simplicity of the Fable; but it gives the Fable another Qualification, altogether as necessary and as regular, namely its Perfection and finishing stroke.

There are Fables which naturally contain in them a great many parts, each of which might make an exact Fable: And there are likewise Actions of the very same nature. The subject Matter of the Odysseïs is of this kind; for Homer being willing to instruct a Prince and his Subjects, could not do it without Multiplying Instructions; and this Prince's Travels into Countries quite different from each other are likewise different Actions. This Multiplication of Instructions and Incidents is extremely approv'd of by Horace. He commends the Adventures of Antiphates, Polypheme, Charybdis, Circe, the Sirens and others, stiling them the Miracles of the Odysseïs.

One might likewise multiply the Fable another way, by mixing with it some other Fable which should not be a part of the Principal one, but only a Species of it. This might be done by applying to some Point that is chiefly specified the Moral Instruction, which the Action contains in general. Homer has left us an Example of this in the Fable of Vulcan, at the End of his first Book of the Iliad.

The General Instruction is, That Discord is a prejudice of the Affairs of them who quarrel: And this story of Vulcan applies it, to the Injury which the falling out of Parents do their Children. "Jupiter and Juno quarrel, their Son Vulcan is for perswading his Mother to submit to her Lord and Husband, because he was most Powerful. You know (says he) what befell me for endeavouring once to protect you from the rage of Jupiter. He took me by the Heels, and threw me headlong from his Battlements, and I carry the marks of it still about me."