Page:The last days of Pompeii - Bulwer-Lytton - King.djvu/14

10 well as amusing—can so far forget its connection with History, with Philosophy with Politics—its utter harmony with Poetry and obedience to Truth—as to debase its nature to the level of scholastic frivolities : he raises scholarship to the creative, and does not bow the creative to the scholastic.

With respect to the language used by the characters introduced, I have studied carefully to avoid what has always seemed to me a fatal error in those who have attempted, in modern times, to introduce the beings of a classical age. What the strong common sense of Sir Walter Scott has expressed so well in the Preface to "Ivanhoe" (1st edition), appears to me at least as applicable to a writer who draws from classical as to one who borrows from feudal antiquity. Let me avail myself of the words I refer to, and humbly and reverently appropriate them for the moment:—"It is true that I neither can, nor do pretend, to the observation [observance?] of complete accuracy even in matters of outward costume, much less in the more important points of language and manners. But the same motive which prevents my writing the dialogue of the piece in Anglo-Saxon, or in Norman-French [in Latin or in Greek], and which prohibits my sending forth this essay printed with the types of Caxton or Wynken de Worde [written with a reed upon five rolls of parchment, fastened to a cylinder, and adorned with a boss], prevents my attempting to confine myself within the limits of the period to which my story is laid. It is necessary, for exciting interest of any kind, that the subject assumed should be, as it were, translated into the manners as well as the language of the age we live in.

"In point of justice, therefore, to the multitudes who will, I trust, devour this book with avidity [heat!] I leave so far explained ancient manners in modern language, and so far detailed the characters and sentiments of my persons, that the modern reader will not find himself, I should hope, much trammelled by the repulsive dryness of mere antiquity. In this, I respectfully contend, I have in no respect exceeded the fair license due to the author of a fictitious composition.

"It is true," proceedes my authority, "that this license is confined within legitimate bounds; the author must introduce nothing inconsistent with the manners of the age."—Preface to "Ivanhoe."

I can add nothing to these judicious and discriminating remarks: they form the canons of true criticism, by which all fiction that portrays the past should be judged. Authors have mostly given to them the stilted sentences, the cold and didactic solemnities of language which they find in the more admired of the