STORIES TO LET.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—The "fl ne faut pas le damner legerement " story of which you and your correspondents have given so many varia- tions, is surely "a story to let." I have long known it (I forget on what authority) as told of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, when replying to the expostulations of the pious Countess of Huntingdon. The practised story-teller always gives concreteness to his story by providing it with a local habitation and a name to fit the occasion. I have heard such a one tell an old "Joe Miller" story as having happened to himself ; and even explain to a friend one of his con- structive processes, by telling a story with a delicate aroma of profaneness about it,, and then adding : "I have at last fixed that story on Bishop A." When Louis Philippe fortified Paris, M. Pozzo di Borgo was reported to have said that Paris would now fry in its own gravy. When the Germans were besieging the city the same words were attributed to Prince Bismarck as an original piece of wit. Then two English Members of Parliament got the credit of the same epigram, applied respectively to Egypt and to Ireland, till some one wrote to the Times that Chaucer had said the same thing long before. In the Spectator of May 3rd, in the review of Mr. McCarthy's Life of George II., we have another instance of the kind, in the suggestion of the probable origin of the saying that all men have their price, unjustly attributed to Walpole. In another article, of the same date, you give an earlier stage of the story-making process, when you quote a saying of Mr. Harrell Fronde as "a well-known maxim." This will no doubt reappear in due course attached to some other name.—I am, Sir, &c.,
EDWARD STRACHEY.
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