Trajan, the fidelity of Zopyrus, the wisdom of Cato,
and in short all the faculties that serve to make
an illustrious man perfect, now uniting them in one
individual, again distributing them among many; and
if this be done with charm of style and ingenious
invention, aiming at the truth as much as possible,
he will assuredly weave a web of bright and varied
threads that, when finished, will display such perfection
and beauty that it will attain the worthiest object
any writing can seek, which, as I said before, is
to give instruction and pleasure combined; for the
unrestricted range of these books enables the author
to show his powers, epic, lyric, tragic, or comic,
and all the moods the sweet and winning arts of poesy
and oratory are capable of; for the epic may be written
in prose just as well as in verse.”
IN WHICH THE CANON PURSUES THE SUBJECT OF THE BOOKS OF CHIVALRY, WITH
OTHER MATTERS WORTHY OF HIS WIT
“It is as you say, senor canon,” said
the curate; “and for that reason those who have
hitherto written books of the sort deserve all the
more censure for writing without paying any attention
to good taste or the rules of art, by which they might
guide themselves and become as famous in prose as
the two princes of Greek and Latin poetry are in verse.”
“I myself, at any rate,” said the canon,
“was once tempted to write a book of chivalry
in which all the points I have mentioned were to be
observed; and if I must own the truth I have more than
a hundred sheets written; and to try if it came up
to my own opinion of it, I showed them to persons
who were fond of this kind of reading, to learned and
intelligent men as well as to ignorant people who cared
for nothing but the pleasure of listening to nonsense,
and from all I obtained flattering approval; nevertheless
I proceeded no farther with it, as well because it
seemed to me an occupation inconsistent with my profession,
as because I perceived that the fools are more numerous
than the wise; and, though it is better to be praised
by the wise few than applauded by the foolish many,
I have no mind to submit myself to the stupid judgment
of the silly public, to whom the reading of such books
falls for the most part.
“But what most of all made me hold my hand and
even abandon all idea of finishing it was an argument
I put to myself taken from the plays that are acted
now-a-days, which was in this wise: if those that
are now in vogue, as well those that are pure invention
as those founded on history, are, all or most of them,
downright nonsense and things that have neither head
nor tail, and yet the public listens to them with delight,
and regards and cries them up as perfection when they
are so far from it; and if the authors who write them,
and the players who act them, say that this is what
they must be, for the public wants this and will have
nothing else; and that those that go by rule and work
