THE DRAMA 179 



of Fleeming's mimetic instinct ; and to the 

 pleasures of the open air, of hardships supported, 

 of dexterities improved and displayed, and of 

 plain and elegant society, added a spice of drama. 



II 



Fleeming was all his life a lover of the play The 

 and all that belonged to it. Dramatic literature ^^*™^^ 

 he knew fully. He was one of the not very 

 numerous people who can read a play : a knack, 

 the fruit of much knowledge and some imagina- 

 tion, comparable to that of reading score. Few 

 men better understood the artificial principles 

 on which a play is good or bad ; few more un- 

 affectedly enjoyed a piece of any merit of con- 

 struction. His own play (which the reader will 

 find reprinted farther on ^) was conceived with a 

 double design ; for he had long been filled with 

 his theory of the true story of Griselda ; used 

 to gird at Father Chaucer for his misconception ; 

 and was, perhaps first of all, moved by the desire 

 to do justice to the Marquis of Saluces, and per- 

 haps only in the second place, by the wish to treat 

 a story (as he phrased it) like a sum in arith- 

 metic. I do not think he quite succeeded ; but 

 I must own myself no fit judge. Fleeming and 

 I were teacher and taught as to the principles, 



^ This refers to the two volumes of * Papers ^ Literary^ Scientijicy 

 etc., by the late Fleeming Jenkin, F.R.S.,' to which this Memoir 

 was originally prefixed. 



