ell a story with additions, in the belief that we are doing our hearers
a pleasure.

Homer more than any other has taught the rest of us the art of framing
lies in the right way. I mean the use of paralogism. Whenever, if A is
or happens, a consequent, B, is or happens, men's notion is that, if the
B is, the A also is--but that is a false conclusion. Accordingly, if A
is untrue, but there is something else, B, that on the assumption of its
truth follows as its consequent, the right thing then is to add on the
B. Just because we know the truth of the consequent, we are in our own
minds led on to the erroneous inference of the truth of the antecedent.
Here is an instance, from the Bath-story in the _Odyssey_.

A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing
possibility. The story should never be made up of improbable incidents;
there should be nothing of the sort in it. If, however, such incidents
are unavoidable, they should be outside the piece, like the hero's
ignorance in _Oedipus_ of the circumstances of Lams' death; not within
it, like the report of the Pythian games in _Electra_, or the man's
having come to Mysia from Tegea without uttering a word on the way, in
_The Mysians_. So that it is ridiculous to say that one's Plot would
have been spoilt without them, since it is fundamentally wrong to make
up such Plots. If the poet has taken such a Plot, however, and one
sees that he might have put it in a more probable form, he is guilty
of absurdity as well as a fault of art. Even in the _Odyssey_ the
improbabilities in the setting-ashore of Ulysses would be clearly
intolerable in the hands of an inferior poet. As it is, the poet
conceals them, his other excellences veiling their absurdity. Elaborate
Diction, however, is required only in places where there is no action,
and no Character or Thought to be revealed. Where there is Character
or Thought, on the other hand, an over-ornate Diction tends to obscure
them.

25

As regards Problems and their Solutions, one may see the number and
nature of the assumptions on which they proceed by viewing the matter in
the following way. (1) The poet being an imitator just like the painter
or other maker of likenesses, he must necessarily in all instances
represent things in one or other of three aspects, either as they were
or are, or as they are said or thought to be or to have been, or as they
ought to be. (2) All this he does in language, with an admi