Page:Southern Life in Southern Literature.djvu/195

 must be relative and comparative. I therefore take the responsibility of saying, after due reflection, that, in my opinion, Bolus's reputation stood higher for lying than for anything else; and in thus assigning preeminence to this poetic property, I do it without any desire to derogate from other brilliant characteristics belonging to the same general category, which have drawn the wondering notice of the world.

Some men are liars from interest; not because they have no regard for truth, but because they have less regard for it than for gain. Some are liars from vanity; because they would rather be well thought of by others than have reason for thinking well of themselves. Some are liars from a sort of necessity, which overbears, by the weight of temptation, the sense of virtue. Some are enticed away by allurements of pleasure or seduced by evil example and education. Bolus was none of these; he belonged to a higher department of the fine arts and to a higher class of professors of this sort of belles-lettres. Bolus was a natural liar, just as some horses are natural pacers, and some dogs natural setters. What he did in that walk was from the irresistible promptings of instinct and a disinterested love of art. His genius and his performances were free from the vulgar alloy of interest or temptation. Accordingly, he did not labor a lie. He lied with a relish; he lied with a coming appetite, growing with what it fed on; he lied from the delight of invention and the charm of fictitious narrative. It is true he applied his art to the practical purposes of life, but in so far did he glory the more in it, just as an ingenious machinist rejoices that his invention, while it has honored science, has also supplied a common want.

Bolus's genius for lying was encyclopedical; it was what German criticism calls many-sided. It embraced all subjects without distinction or partiality. It was equally good upon all, "from grave to gay, from lively to severe."