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We must break away from Velazquez, passing by his marvellous portraits of kings and dwarfs, saints and poodles, among whom there is a dwarf of two centuries ago, who is too like Tom Thumb to serve for his twin brother, and a portrait of Aesop, which is a flash of intuition, an epitome of all the fables.
He then asked me if I knew Spanish, and on my telling him that I had some knowledge of that language, he asked me to translate some of the fables. I translated two of them, which pleased him much. I then asked if he had ever heard of a collection of Welsh fables compiled about the year thirteen hundred. He said that he had not, and inquired whether they had ever been printed.
Is not the want of reason in the people evidently the work of the priests, who, instead of instructing men in a rational morality, entertain them with fables, reveries, ceremonies, fallacies, and false virtues which they think of the greatest importance?
Rose like a fairy had breathed her spirit here, and it was a delight to the silly luxurious youth to lie down, and fix some image of a flower bending to the stream on his brain, and in the cradle of fancies that grew round it, slide down the tide of sleep. From the image of a flower bending to the stream, like his own soul to the bosom of Rose, Evan built sweet fables.
Never before did he fully appreciate the "thunderous lilt" of Greek epic, the touching and voluptuous tenderness of Latin elegy, the regal pomp of history, the gorgeous and philosophic mystery of the old dramatic fables. Never before had he learnt to gaze on "the bright countenance of truth, in the mild and dewy air of delightful studies."
The most stupid of her priests, equally with the shrewdest of her 'patriots, are quite alive to the expediency of teaching as fact the fraudulent fables of the 'dark ages. To keep the people ignorant, or what is worse, to teach them only what is false, is the great end of their training; and if a British ministry propose anything better than the merest mockery of education, they call it 'dangerous to faith and morals.
Then he said aloud: "All that the Senor Penitentiary has said ironically is the truth. But it is not our fault if science overturns day after day the vain idols of the past: its superstitions, its sophisms, its innumerable fables beautiful, some of them, ridiculous others for in the vineyard of the Lord grow both good fruit and bad.
Rend, wither, waste, and ruin, what thou wilt, But call not Greatness what the Gods call Guilt. Blossoms and grass from blood in battle spilt, And poppied corn, I bring. 'Mid mouldering Babels, to oblivion built, My violets spring. Little by little my small drops have strength To deck with green delights the grateful earth. Best of all are the fables that deal more immediately with the emotions.
They can allege no better grounds for their incredulity than that the thing has an air of the fabulous and horrible about it. But this is not philosophy. Incredulity is the characteristic of the half-educated. It may be carried too far, and the fables of the vulgar have often a stratum of truth at the bottom.
Violet and Emma were dead to Amy's imagination, and she could not make herself believe in them any more. She was too woe-begone to care for the fables of Circe and her swine which Katy told as they rounded the magnificent Cape Circello, and the isles where the sirens used to sing appealed to her in vain.
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