e muse about our own past we are
conscious of no effort to give it dramatic unity; on the contrary, the
excitement and interest of the process consist in seeming to discover
the hidden eloquence and meaning of the events themselves. When a man of
experience narrates the wonders he has seen, we listen with a certain
awe, and believe in him for his miracles as we believe in our own memory
for its arts. A bard's mechanical and ritualistic habits usually put all
judgment on his own part to sleep; while the sanctity attributed to the
tale, as it becomes automatically more impressive, precludes tinkering
with it intentionally. Especially the allegories and marvels with which
early history is adorned are not ordinarily invented with malice
prepense. They are rather discovered in the mind, like a foundling,
between night and morning. They are divinely vouchsafed. Each time the
tale is retold it suffers a variation which is not challenged, since it
is memory itself that has varied. The change is discoverable only if
some record of the narrative in its former guise, or some physical
memorial of the event related, survives to be confronted with the
modified version. The modified version itself can make no comparisons.
It merely inherits the name and authority of its ancestor. The innocent
poet believes his own lies.

Legends consequently acquire a considerable eloquence and dramatic
force. These beauties accrue spontaneously, because rhythm and ideal
pertinence, in which poetic merit largely lies, are natural formative
principles for speech and memory. As symmetry in material structures is
a ground for strength, and hills by erosion are worn to pyramids, so it
is in thoughts. Yet the stability attained is not absolute, but only
such stability as the circumstances require. Dramatic effect is not
everywhere achieved, nor is it missed by the narrator where it is
wanting, so that even the oldest and best-pruned legends are full of
irrelevant survivals, contradictions, and scraps of nonsense. These
literary blemishes are like embedded fossils and tell of facts which the
mechanism of reproduction, for some casual reason, has not obliterated.
The recorder of verbal tradition religiously sets down its
inconsistencies and leaves in the transfigured chronicle many tell-tale
incidents and remarks which, like atrophied organs in an animal body,
reveal its gradual formation. Art and a deliberate pursuit of unction or
beauty would have thrown o