or of Siegfried? We say nothing of the lies
in these, but why? Oh, it will be said, but they are
fictions, they were never supposed to be true. But
they were supposed to be true, to the full as true as the
Legenda Aurea. Oh then, they are poetry; and besides,
they have nothing to do with Christianity. Yes, that is
it; they have nothing to do with Christianity. It has
grown such a solemn business with us, and we bring
such long faces to it, that we cannot admit or conceive
to be at all naturally admissible such a light companion
as the imagination. The distinction between secular
and religious has been extended even to the faculties;
and we cannot tolerate in others the fulness and freedom
which we have lost or rejected for ourselves. Yet it has
been a fatal mistake with the critics. They found
themselves off the recognized ground of Romance and
Paganism, and they failed to see the same principles
at work, though at work with new materials. In the
records of all human affairs, it cannot be too often
insisted on that two kinds of truth run for ever side by
side, or rather, crossing in and out with each other, form
the warp and the woof of the coloured web which we
call history. The one, the literal and external truths
corresponding to the eternal and as yet undiscovered
laws of fact: the other, the truth of feeling and of
thought, which embody themselves either in distorted
pictures of the external, or in some entirely new creation;
sometimes moulding and shaping real history, sometimes
taking the form of heroic biography, of tradition, or
popular legend; sometimes appearing as recognized
fiction in the epic, the drama, or the novel. It is
useless to tell us that this is to confuse truth and
falsehood. We are stating a fact, not a theory, and if it
makes truth and falsehood difficult to distinguish, that
is nature's fault, not ours. Fiction is only false, when
it is false, not to fact, else how could it be fiction? but
when it is--to law. To try it by its correspondence to
the real is wretched pedantry; we create as nature
creates, by the force which is in us, which refuses to
be restrained; we cannot help it, and we are only false
when we make monsters, or when we pretend that our
inventions are fact, when we substitute truths of one kind
for truths of another; when we substitute,--and again we
must say when we intentionally substitute;--whenever
persons, and whenever facts seize strongly hold of the
imagination,