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 out a plot

according to the laws of art will only find some half-dozen intelligent

people to understand them, while all the rest remain blind to the merit

of their composition; and that for themselves it is better to get bread

from the many than praise from the few; then my book will fare the same

way, after I have burnt off my eyebrows in trying to observe the

principles I have spoken of, and I shall be 'the tailor of the corner.'

And though I have sometimes endeavoured to convince actors that they are

mistaken in this notion they have adopted, and that they would attract

more people, and get more credit, by producing plays in accordance with

the rules of art, than by absurd ones, they are so thoroughly wedded to

their own opinion that no argument or evidence can wean them from it.




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