I OFTEN feel sorry that so many quaint and pretty fancies, such as we find gravely weighed by Sir Thomas Brown in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica, have fluttered away from our knowing modern world like so many butterflies. After all, there was little harm and often a great deal of poetry or grotesque humour in these ‘vulgar errors,’ as Sir Thomas called them. Now that the ordinary man has flung away these gaily-coloured fancies, I do not know that he is any better off with such dismal scraps of learning as are coming his way at the present time. His ancestors were fanciful fellows with little exact knowledge; his descendants may occupy themselves with a vast accumulated store of learning; meanwhile, he himself, our contemporary, has relinquished his old fancies and quaint dreams, and received little or nothing, as yet, in return. Now, barren of belief, he stands waiting for the meagre crumbs of science.

The Wandering Jew no longer creeps past our doors; we buried him long ago, and there is the end of a grand old tale. No Salamanders live in our fires. No more do ‘swans, a little before their death, sing most sweetly’; another gleam of poetry has faded from the world. We meet with the Unicorn and the Phoenix only in coats-of-arms and commercial advertisements. The Basilisk, or Cockatrice, which came from a cock’s egg, hatched under a toad or serpent, and which could kill at a distance by the power of the eye, no longer haunts the world; perhaps we do not regret him, yet the briefest glance at him, while he was looking some other way, would have been an experience worth remembering. The mermaids and mermen have long since ridden away from our coasts on their water-horses, driving their water-bulls before them. The giants have eaten the pigmies, and have themselves succumbed to indigestion. Our acetylene lights have frightened away Jack-o’-Lanthorn himself, and there is no green cheese in the moon, and very little cheese worth eating on the earth.

Does the Glastonbury thorn still blossom at Christmastide? Certainly the ass still bears the sign of the Cross on its back, and the haddock still shows the black marks left by the finger and thumb of St. Peter. Do our seamen still take cauls with them to guard against drowning? I am afraid that barnacles, when broken off from the sides of a ship, no longer turn into geese. Nor do mandrakes shriek out when they are uprooted, these days. Do our country girls still put the Bible, with sixpence between the pages of Ruth, under their pillows at night, in order to dream of their future husbands? How many of us put bay leaves under our pillows so that we may have true dreams?

Sneezing, in our time, does not call for a blessing. Nor do we bless the moon when it is at the full, nor ask our ladies to drop it a curtsey at the time of its rebirth. Omens trouble us no longer; it does not matter how we put on our stockings and shoes, or, at least, we do not feel that good or ill fortune is bound up with the order of our dressing. We do not attempt to read our destiny in the leaping flames on the hearth, nor look for purses and coffins in the coals that fly out from time to time. On the rare occasions when we see a lighted candle, we do not expect to find it presageful, and we are not likely to try divination from the behaviour of the gas or electric light. A tingling ear, an itching nose, a burning cheek, and other little pranks of the blood and nerves pass as a jest among us. We allow no trafficking with amulets and charms, except as the merest decoration, and we attempt to read the future only through our pass-books. We leave Fate severely alone, not because we think that it is of no importance, but because our lives do not seem of sufficient consequence to be meddled with; wherein we are more modest than our forefathers, but also, I think, more miserable.

All these quaint beliefs have gone in the wind, and it is well, for the world cannot stand still. As I have said before, there was little harm in them, and often a great deal of poetry; they have furnished some good folk, high and low, with many a heartening tale for the chimney-corner; their weft of phantasy has been woven into many a fine ballad or romance. But, shrinking from the fierce light of Truth, these fanciful notions left us long ago.

Yet we must not hasten to plume ourselves. Have we not our own over-ripe crop of errors? Are we not for ever swallowing lies a thousand times more hurtful than the old pleasing or idle fancies? We cannot weave immortal romances out of the woof of falsehood that comes to us now; if we want tales, we must hire some fellow to put his tongue in his cheek and mechanically turn out volume after volume of ‘bright fiction.’ We cannot believe in the Salamander, a poetical notion, but we are always ready to take it on trust that Mr. Worldly Wiseman, who votes for us, is a very great hero, and Mr. Greatheart, who keeps his own counsel, is a very deep scoundrel.

The old fancies were sustained by the people’s sense of wonder; they arose naturally and no one benefited by them, except an occasional sorcerer. Our vulgar errors are not a natural growth, but are forced upon us by the cunning and powerful members, who tell us what we are to believe. We do not acknowledge the Basilisk, with his deadly stare, but we have still a touching faith in Such-and-Such, the scientific reformer, with his insufferable jargon. We do not put bayleaves under our pillows to have true dreams, but we put the Daily Dope on our breakfast-tables so that we may have false ones. And we are too apt to believe that (in the fine phrase of a modern novelist) ‘we are all very fine people,’ which is a very vulgar error indeed, and more mischievous than Jack-o’-Lanthorn and more deadly than the Cockatrice.