I am trying to be as lucid as I can in presenting this obscure matter to you without
details."
Similarly the story of the Argonauts appears from the fragments (37-42) to have been told in some detail.
For 1) if the quarrel between the brothers were a fiction, we should expect it to be detailed at length and not noticed allusively and rather obscurely -- as we find it; 2) as MM.
Hellen had three sons, Dorus, Xuthus, and Aeolus, parents of the Dorian, Ionic and Aeolian races, and the offspring of these was then detailed. In one instance a considerable and characteristic section can be traced from extant fragments and notices: Salmoneus, son of Aeolus, had a daughter Tyro who bore to Poseidon two sons, Pelias and Neleus; the latter of these, king of Pylos, refused Heracles purification for the murder of Iphitus, whereupon Heracles attacked and sacked Pylos, killing amongst the other sons of Neleus Periclymenus, who had the power of changing himself into all manner of shapes.
As the journals, on which I chiefly depended, had been kept by men of business, intent upon the main object of the enterprise, and but little versed in science, or curious about matters not immediately bearing upon their interest, and as they were written often in moments of fatigue or hurry, amid the inconveniences of wild encampments, they were often meagre in their
details, furnishing hints to provoke rather than narratives to satisfy inquiry.
And with an air of spite, which he did not dissemble: "I am unacquainted with these
details, will you guarantee their authenticity, monsieur?"
And, in so far as he could direct, he varied not one jot from the
details of that vividly conceived masterpiece of hellishness during the twenty years which followed.
For forty years together it will remember its injury down to the smallest, most ignominious
details, and every time will add, of itself,
details still more ignominious, spitefully teasing and tormenting itself with its own imagination.
My friend was in excellent spirits over the success which had attended a succession of difficult and important cases, so that I was able to induce him to discuss the details of the Baskerville mystery.
The idea of using her as a decoy was clearly already in his mind, though he may not have been certain how the details of his plot were to be arranged.
But it should always be remembered that truth is quite as much a matter of general spirit and impression as of literal accuracy in details of fact.
From the unorganized material thus brought clearly to the author's consciousness Imagination next selects the details which can be turned to present use, and proceeds to combine them, uniting scattered traits and incidents, perhaps from widely different sources, into new characters, stories, scenes, and ideas.
"Well," said he, "I have done enough to demonstrate the correctness of my
details. The defects," he added, with a look at the ruined brick-work, "are merely basic and fundamental."
Those who are sufficiently interested to desire to read his own
detailed account of the society he would fain establish, will find an excellent passage in Aphorism 57 of "The Antichrist".
But, taken for all in all, by far the finest, though in some
details not the most correct, presentations of whales and whaling scenes to be anywhere found, are two large French engravings, well executed, and taken from paintings by one Garnery.
