mingled with anecdotes and short tales, such as the Hermits (iii. 125), with biographical or literary episodes, acroamata, table-talk and analects where humorous Rabelaisian anecdote finds a place; in fact the fabliau or novella.  This style of composition may be as ancient as the apologues.  We know that it dates as far back as Rameses iii., from the history of the Two Brothers in the Orbigny papyrus,[FN#242] the prototype of Yusuf and Zulaykha, the Koranic Joseph and Potiphar’s wife.  It is told with a charming naivete and such sharp touches of local colour as, “Come, let us make merry an hour and lie together!  Let down thy hair!”

Some of the apologues in The Nights are pointless enough, rien moins qu’amusants; but in the best specimens, such as the Wolf and the Fox[FN#243] (the wicked man and the wily man), both characters are carefully kept distinct and neither action nor dialogue ever flags.  Again The Flea and the Mouse (iii. 151), of a type familiar to students of the Pilpay cycle, must strike the home-reader as peculiarly quaint.

Next in date to the Apologue comes the Fairy Tale proper, where the natural universe is supplemented by one of purely imaginative existence.  “As the active world is inferior to the rational soul,” says Bacon with his normal sound sense, “so Fiction gives to Mankind what History denies and in some measure satisfies the Mind with Shadows when it cannot enjoy the Substance.  And as real History gives us not the success of things according to the deserts of vice and virtue, Fiction corrects it and presents us with the fates and fortunes of persons rewarded and punished according to merit.”  But I would say still more.  History paints or attempts to paint life as it is, a mighty maze with or without a plan:  Fiction shows or would show us life as it should be, wisely ordered and laid down on fixed lines.  Thus Fiction is not the mere handmaid of History:  she has a household of her own and she claims to be the triumph of Art which, as Goeethe remarked, is “Art because it is not Nature.”  Fancy, la folle du logis, is “that kind and gentle portress who holds the gate of Hope wide open, in opposition to Reason, the surly and scrupulous guard."[FN#244] As Palmerin of England says and says well, “For that the report of noble deeds doth urge the courageous mind to equal those who bear most commendation of their approved valiancy; this is the fair fruit of Imagination and of ancient histories.”  And, last but not least, the faculty of Fancy takes count of the cravings of man’s nature for the marvellous, the impossible, and of his higher aspirations for the Ideal, the Perfect:  she realises the wild dreams and visions of his generous youth and portrays for him a portion of that “other and better world,” with whose expectation he would console his age.