d "Juan," viii. 25, 26.]

[Footnote 94: Perhaps some even of the attentive readers of Byron may
not have observed the choice of the three names--Myrrha (bitter
incense), Marina (sea lady), Angiolina (little angel)--in relation to
the plots of the three plays.]

[Footnote 95: I shall have lost my wits very finally when I forget the
first time that I pleased my father with a couplet of English verse
(after many a year of trials); and the radiant joy on his face as he
declared, reading it aloud to my mother with emphasis half choked by
tears,--that "it was as fine as anything that Pope or Byron ever
wrote!"]

[Footnote 96: Of our tingle-tangle-titmouse disputes in Parliament like
Robins in a bush, but not a Robin in all the house knowing his great A,
hear again Plato: "But they, for ever so little a quarrel, uttering much
voice, blaspheming, speak evil one of another,--and it is not becoming
that in a city of well-ordered persons, such things should be--no;
nothing of them nohow nowhere,--and let this be the one law for all--let
nobody speak mischief of anybody ([Greek: Medena kakegoreito
medeis])."--Laws, book ii. s. 935; and compare Book iv. 117.]

[Footnote 97: A paragraph beginning "I find press corrections always
irksome work, and in my last paper trust the reader's kindness to make
some corrections in the preceding paper," is here omitted, and the
corrections made.--ED.]

FICTION, FAIR AND FOUL.

V.[98]

THE TWO SERVANTS.

100. I have assumed throughout these papers, that everybody knew what
Fiction meant; as Mr. Mill assumed in his Political Economy, that
everybody knew what wealth meant. The assumption was convenient to Mr.
Mill, and persisted in: but, for my own part, I am not in the habit of
talking, even so long as I have done in this instance, without making
sure that the reader knows what I am talking about; and it is high time
that we should be agreed upon the primary notion of what Fiction is.

A feigned, fictitious, artificial, supernatural,
put-together-out-of-one's-head, thing. All this it must be, to begin
with. The best type of it being the most practically fictile--a Greek
vase. A thing which has two sides to be seen, two handles to be carried
by, and a bottom to stand on, and a top to be poured out of, this, every
right fiction _is_, whatever else it may be. Planned rigorously, rounded
smoothly, balanced symmetrically, handled handily, lipped softly for
pouring out oil and wine. Pa