I am one of those that
detest all insidious attempts to rob men situated as this artist of
their fair fame, by going about and whispering that perhaps the thing
is true. Far from it! I sympathize with the poor trembling artist, and
agree most cordially that the whole story is a lie; and he may rely
upon my support at all times to the extent of denying that any vestige
of truth probably lay at the foundations of his ingenious apologue. And
what I say of the English fable, I am willing to say of the French one.
Both, I dare say, were the rankest fictions. But next, what, after all,
if they were _not?_ For, in the rear of all discussion upon anecdotes,
considered simply as true or _not_ true, comes finally a _valuation_
of those anecdotes in their moral relation, and as to the inferences
which they will sustain. The story, for example, of the French
minister Louvois, and the adroitness with which he fastened upon
great foreign potentates, in the shape of war, that irritability
of temper in his royal master which threatened to consume himself; the
diplomatic address with which he transmuted suddenly a task so delicate
as that of skirmishing daily in a Council Chamber with his own
sovereign, into that far jollier mode of disputation where one replies
to all objections of the very keenest logician, either with round shot
or with grape; here is an anecdote, which (for my own part) I am
inclined to view as pure gasconade.
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