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NEVER BET THE DEVIL YOUR HEAD
A Tale With a Moral.
"
CON tal que las costumbres de un autor," says Don Thomas de las
Torres, in the preface to his "Amatory Poems" "sean puras y castas,
importo muy poco que no sean igualmente severas sus obras"--meaning,
in plain English, that, provided the morals of an author are pure
personally, it signifies nothing what are the morals of his books. We
presume that Don Thomas is now in Purgatory for the assertion. It would
be a clever thing, too, in the way of poetical justice, to keep him
there until his "Amatory Poems" get out of print, or are laid definitely
upon the shelf through lack of readers. Every fiction should have a
moral; and, what is more to the purpose, the critics have discovered
that every fiction has. Philip Melanchthon, some time ago, wrote a
commentary upon the "Batrachomyomachia," and proved that the poet's
object was to excite a distaste for sedition. Pierre la Seine, going
a step farther, shows that the intention was to recommend to young
men temperance in eating and drinking. Just so, too, Jacobus Hugo has
satisfied himself that, by Euenis, Homer meant to insinuate John Calvin;
by Antinous, Martin Luther; by the Lotophagi, Protestants in general;
and, by the Harpies, the Dutch. Our more modern Scholiasts are
equally acute. These fellows demonstrate a hidden meaning in "The
Antediluvians," a parable in Powhatan, "new views in Cock Robin," and
transcendentalism in "Hop O' My Thumb." In short, it has been shown that
no man can sit down to write without a very profound design. Thus to
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