Page:The Adventures of David Simple (1904).djvu/24

 those who should object to want of unity of action here, may, if they please, or if they dare, fly back with their objection, in the face of even the Odyssey itself.

This fable hath in it these three difficult ingredients which will be found on consideration to be always necessary to works of this kind, viz. that the main end or scope be at once amiable, ridiculous, and natural.

If it be said, that some of the comick performances I have above mentioned differ in the first of these, and set before us the odious, instead of the amiable; I answer, that is far from being one of their perfections; and of this the authors themselves seem so sensible, that they endeavour to deceive their reader by false glosses and colours; and, by the help of irony at least, to represent the aim and design of their heroes in a favourable and agreeable light.

I might farther observe, that, as the incidents arising from this fable, though often surprising, are everywhere natural (credibility not being once shocked through the whole) so there is one beauty very apparent, which hath been attributed by the greatest of criticks to the greatest of poets; that every episode bears a manifest impression of the principal design, and chiefly turns on the perfection or imperfection of friendship; of which noble passion, from its highest purity to its lowest falsehoods and disguises, this little book is, in my opinion, the most exact model.

As to the characters here described, I shall repeat the saying of one of the greatest men of this age, "That they are as wonderfully drawn by the writer, as they were by nature herself." There are many strokes in Orgueil, Spatter, Varnish, Le Vif, the Balancer, and some others, which would have shined in the pages of Theophrastus, Horace, or La Bruyere. Nay, there are some touches, which I will venture