responsibilities and true functions deserves all sympathy and
encouragement. It is refreshing to turn from the sort of thing to which
we have referred to such a work as Mr. Worsfold has given us. His design
is “to present an account of the main principles of literary criticism,”
which he professes to trace from Plato to Matthew Arnold. Mr. Worsfold’s
thesis simply stated is that criticism--and he deals with criticism
chiefly in its application to poetry--has passed successively through
five stages. With the Greeks it concerned itself principally with form.
“The first question it asked with them was not, as with us, What is the
thought? but What is the form?” By Addison--for here Mr. Worsfold makes
a prodigious leap over some twenty centuries--it was furnished with a
new test, and it asked, How does a given poem affect the imagination? By
Lessing a return was made to the formal criticism of the ancients, but
he adopted also Addison’s criterion, and added definiteness to it.
Victor Cousin followed in 1818 with his lectures, entitled, _Du Vrai, du
Beau, et du Bien_, and enlarged the boundaries of the science by a
complete theory of beauty and art, developed mainly out of Plato. Lastly
came Matthew Arnold, who extended the realm still further, by the
addition of certain other important touchstones of poetic excellence. At
the present time a gradual limitation of the scope of its rules, and a
gradual extension of the scope of its principles, are the tendencies
most discernible in criticism. “An enlightened criticism no longer aims
at directing the artist by formulating rules which, if they were valid,
would only tend to obliterate the distinction between the fine and the
technical arts. It allows him to work by whatever methods he may choose,
and it is content to estimate his merit not by reference to his method
but by reference to his achievement, as measured by principles of
universal validity.”
All this is exceedingly ingenious, and has in it a measure of truth,
but, like most generalisations on vast and complicated subjects, it is
more plausible than sound. The stages in the progress of criticism are
not so sharply defined as Mr. Worsfold would have us believe. If Greek
criticism were represented only by Plato and the extant works of
Aristotle, English by Addison and Matthew Arnold, German by Lessing, and
French by Victor Cousin, what Mr. Worsfold postulates might, after a
manner, pass muster. But by far the greater portion of Greek criticism
has perished; it exists only in fragments, and to the most important and
remarkable work on this subject which has come down to us from
antiquity, the _Treatise on the Sublime_, Mr. Worsfold does not even
refer. If he had done so, and had he considered what is scattered
fragmentarily through the Greek writers, or may be gathered from the
titles of treatises which are lost, he would have seen that much which
he supposes to mark development in criticism has long been old.
Innumerable passages in the minor Greek critics, in Plutarch and in the
Scholia, especially if we add what is to be found in Roman writers,
derived no doubt from Greek sources, amply warrant doubt whether, after
all, it is not with criticism as it is, to use Goethe’s expression, with
wit, “Alles Gescheidte ist schon gedacht worden, man muss nur
versuchen, es noch einmal zu denken.” At all events, it is a great
mistake to suppose that Greek criticism, in its application to poetry,
is represented by Plato and Aristotle. It would be almost as absurd to
go to Plato for typical Greek criticism on poetry as it would be to go
to Henry More or the Puritan Divines for typical English criticism. He
approached it only as such a philosopher would be likely to approach it.
He regarded art and letters generally simply as means of educational
discipline and culture, or as mere playthings, of which the best to be
expected was harmless pleasure. He despised poetry not only as an
appeal, and a perturbing appeal, to the senses and the passions, but as
representing the shadows of shadows. It may be pronounced with
confidence that, had he seriously applied himself to literary and
artistic criticism, he would have been one of the subtlest and
profoundest critics who ever lived, and would probably have anticipated,
so far as principles are concerned, all that Mr. Worsfold attributes to
Addison, to Lessing, and to Victor Cousin; but, like our own Ruskin, he
was wilful and fanatical.
Still less is Greek criticism represented by Aristotle. It is in the
highest degree misleading to generalize from such a work as the
_Poetics_. It is not merely a fragment, but a fragment deformed by
desperate corruption, hopeless interstices and contemptible
interpolations. If it confines itself, or in the main confines itself,
to formal criticism, it is simply because it was designed to deal with
that particular department of criticism, not because its author supposed
that the chief question which concerned criticism was form. Again, if by
form Mr. Worsfold understands, as he appears to do, expression and
structure, he very much misrepresents the Treatise. Aristotle’s
criterion of poetry is not its formal expression, for he distinctly
declares that it is not metre which makes a poem, and even seems to
maintain that a poem may be composed without metre. In Aristotle’s
definition and conception of poetry as the concrete expression of the
universal, in his definition of the scope and functions of tragedy, and
in innumerable occasional remarks we have the germs of much, and of very
much, which Mr. Worsfold would attribute to the later developments of
criticism.
Aristotle, it is true, derived his canons from an analysis of the
masterpieces of Greek poetry, but it is doing him great injustice to
say, that he would make all epics Homeric, and all plays Sophoclean, and
most erroneous to assume that modern criticism commenced at this point.
Aristotle distinctly questions whether tragedy had as yet perfected its
proper types or not (_Poet._, IV. 11), and in discussing the proper
length of tragedy he makes a remark which shows that such a plot as the
plot of _Hamlet_ or the plot of _Lear_ would have been quite compatible
with his canons.[38] The truth is that Mr. Worsfold has gone too far; he
has confounded the various aspects of criticism with stages in its
development. Aristotle dealt mainly with form, because it was his
business to deal with form. Plato approached poetry from a particular
point of view, because it was from that particular point of view that it
concerned him.
Had Mr. Worsfold taken his stand in his review of ancient criticism on
the treatise attributed to Longinus, he would have seen that what he so
strangely attributes to Addison and later writers had long been
anticipated. This remarkable work which, since its translation into
French by Boileau in 1674, has had more influence on criticism both in
England and on the Continent than any other work that could be named,
would alone show how much we owe to the Greeks. It has analyzed and
defined, for all time, the essential virtues and the essential vices of
diction and style, and has traced them to their sources. It has
furnished us with infallible criteria in judging rhetoric and poetry.
Take its analysis of the “grand style,” which is described
comprehensively as μεγαλοφροσυνης απηχημα, “the echo of a
great soul”; it has, the Treatise tells us, five
characteristics--richness and grandeur of conception (το περι
τας νοησεις ἁδρεπηβολον); vehement and inspired passion (το
σφοδρον και ενθουσιαστικον παθος), the due formation of figures,
which are twofold--first those of thought, and secondly those of
expression (ἡ ποια των σχηματων πλασις δισσα δε που ταυτα, τα
μεν νοησεως, θατερα δε λεξεως); noble diction (ἡ γενναια,
φρασις); dignified and elevated composition (ἡ εν αξιωματι
και διαρσει συνθεσις). Nothing could be more masterly than its
detailed analysis of each of these qualities, and of the pseudo forms
which they assume, as the result of stimulated enthusiasm. How
admirable, too, is its test of the sublime in the seventh chapter; its
criticism of Sappho, generalizing what constitutes the charm and power
of lyric, in the tenth chapter; its analysis of the eloquence of
Demosthenes, again generalizing the characteristics of oratory in
perfection (chap. xvii.); its demonstration of the inferiority of
correct mediocrity to the faulty irregularities of inspired genius; its
admirable remarks about the relation of Art to Nature. Like the
_Poetics_, it has come down to us in a very mutilated form, and has
evidently been interpolated by some inferior hand, which no doubt
accounts for the exasperating triviality of some of the sections. Here,
as elsewhere, we have references to the many losses which Greek
criticism has sustained, the author referring to treatises written by
him on Xenophon, on Composition, and on the Passions.
It is impossible to give an adequate account of the evolution of
criticism without a very careful survey of the chief contributors to
criticism in each generation, and such a survey Mr. Worsfold has not
attempted. To Latin criticism he never even refers. And yet it has had
great influence on critical literature. The Romans, it is true,
contributed scarcely anything new to criticism, except that which
pertains to oratory. We know enough of Varro, with whom Roman criticism
may be said to begin, to feel confident that he could have had no
pretension to the finer qualities of the critic. Of the five treatises
composed by him, only one, the περι χαρακτηρων, appears to
have been purely critical, and it almost certainly drew largely on Greek
sources. Horace derived the material of the _Ars Poetica_ from a Greek
writer, Neoptolemus of Parium. Much of Quinctilian’s criticism is
demonstrably a compilation from Greek writers. The best critic of poetry
among the Romans is undoubtedly to be found in Petronius, occasional and
scanty though his remarks are. But of prose literature Rome produced two
really great critics--the one was Cicero, the other was Tacitus. The
_Brutus_ and the _Dialogus de Oratoribus_ are masterpieces, equal to
anything which has come down to us from the Greeks. One of the most
important critical principles ever enunciated we owe to Cicero. He was
the first to demonstrate that the test of excellence in oratory lay, in
its appealing equally to the multitude and to the most fastidious of
connoisseurs. The most consummate rhetorician which the world has ever
seen, he was at the same time a consummate critic of his art. This
department of criticism has, indeed, for nearly two thousand years, been
practically his monopoly; it may be questioned whether anything can be
added, so far as the technique of rhetoric is concerned, to what may be
traced to his writings. The interest of the _Dialogus de Oratoribus_ is
largely historical, but never have the causes which inspire and nourish,
or depress and starve, eloquence been more eloquently and brilliantly
explained. Nor must it be forgotten that it was through the medium of
the Latin critics that Greek criticism became influential on modern
literature.
Mr. Worsfold has very properly drawn attention to the fine passage about
poetry in the second book of Bacon’s _Advancement of Learning_, but he
says not a word about Sidney’s remarkable treatise, one of the most
charming contributions to the criticism of poetry which has ever been
made, or about the admirable remarks in Ben Jonson’s _Discoveries_. The
interest of Elizabethan criticism, as represented by these works--and
they are the only works on this subject of any value produced during the
Elizabethan period--lies partly in its return to Aristotelian canons,
and partly in the importance which, in accordance with the ancients, it
attaches to the didactic element in poetry. This is expressed very
eloquently in Ben Jonson’s dedication of the _Fox_:--
“If men will impartially and not asquint look toward the
offices and function of a poet, they will easily conclude to
themselves the impossibility of a man’s being the good poet
without being first the good man,--he that is able to inform
young men to all good discipline, inflame young men to all good
virtues, keep old men in their best and supreme state, or, as
they decline to childhood, recover them to their first state,
that comes forth the interpreter and arbiter of nature, a
teacher of things divine no less than human.”
This was precisely Spenser’s conception of one of the chief functions of
poetry. Thus the Elizabethan critics, who were followed afterwards by
Milton, if they did not formally discuss the relation of æsthetic to
ethic, insisted on their essential connection in the higher forms of
poetry. Even in the succeeding age, when poetry lost all its high
seriousness and much of its moral dignity, criticism, if it did not
always insist on the application of this test, still retained it. Dryden
could write, “I am satisfied if verse cause delight, for delight is the
chief, if not the only end, of poesy”; but in adding “instruction can be
admitted but in the second place, for poesy only instructs as it
delights,” he half corrected his former statement, and, indeed, simply
reverted to what Aristophanes, Ben Jonson, and Milton would have been
the first to admit.
But to return to Mr. Worsfold. A very serious defect in his work is his
omission of all notice of Boileau and Dryden, and of the critics
contemporary with them in France and England. The consequence is, that
much is attributed to Addison which belongs to them, and Addison’s
importance as a critic is much overrated. Again, of the many memorable
contributions to this branch of literature in England, in France, in
Italy, and in Germany, which were made between the appearance of the
Abbé Dubos’s _Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et la peinture_ in
1719, and the lectures of Coleridge and Schlegel about 1812, all that is
said is represented by what is said of Lessing. Though a long chapter is
given to Matthew Arnold, Matthew Arnold’s master, Sainte-Beuve, is, if
we remember rightly, not so much as named.
Dr. Johnson divided critics into three classes--those who know the rules
and judge by them, those who know no rules but judge entirely by natural
taste, those who know the rules but are above them. This has been true
in all ages, and sufficiently disposes of Mr. Worsfold’s hypothesis
about the stages through which criticism has passed. All that can be
said is, that at certain times there has been a tendency, determined of
course by the character of the particular age, towards the predominance
of a particular critical method and of particular points of view.
Further than this it would be perilous to go. It has been the task of
the present age to develop each of these methods to the full, and the
most authoritative critics of the last twenty years might easily be
ranged under one of those classes.
The soundest and most valuable part of Mr. Worsfold’s book is the part
dealing with the criticism of the last few years. His chapter on Matthew
Arnold, in particular, is admirable, and his remarks on the functions of
criticism at the present time, deduced as they have been from
Wordsworth, Arnold and Ruskin, are in a high degree instructive and
interesting. In pointing out that criticism should not confine itself
merely to the investigation of technical excellence, and to all that is
implied in the doctrine of Art for Art’s sake, but should recognise that
there are limits beyond which the artist should not exercise his
technical skill, he recalls us to principles which it is well that
criticism should not forget. We quite agree with him that there is now
an increasing tendency to recognise these limits, and to lay most stress
on the interpretation of the ideal element in literature and art. That
is certainly the modern note. We have expressed our reasons for
dissenting from Mr. Worsfold’s historical view of the evolution of
criticism, but his book is full of interest, and will amply repay the
attention of serious readers. It is a book which does not deserve to be
lost in the crowd.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 38: ὁ δε κατ’ αυτην την φυσιν του πραγματος ὁρος,
αει μεν ὁ μειζων μεχρι του συνδηλος ειναι καλλιων εστι κατα το
μεγεθος. ὡς δε ἁπλως διορισαντας ειπειν, εν ὁσω μεγεθει κατα το
εικος η το αναγκαιον εφεξης γιγνομενων συμβαινει εις ευτυχιαν εκ
δυστυχιας, η εξ ευτυχιας εις δυστυχιαν μεταβαλλειν, ἱκανος ὁρος
εστιν του μεγεθους. (_Poet._, vii. 7.)]
WOMEN IN GREEK POETRY[39]
[Footnote 39: _Antimachus of Colophon and the Position of Women in Greek
Poetry._ By E. F. M. Benecke.]
The editor of this book cannot be congratulated either on his competence
or on his discretion. To hurry into the world a work which is not merely
a fragment, but which cries for revision, suppression, and correction in
almost every page, is a literary crime of the first magnitude, and
deserves the severest castigation. Of the author of the work, who
appears to have been a young man of some attainments and of much
promise, we desire to speak with all gentleness; we wholly absolve him
from blame, for we have no right to assume that he would himself have
given to the world what his editor admits was _intra penetralia Vestæ_,
and what we hope and believe he would himself have committed
_emendaturis ignibus_, had he arrived at years of discretion. But the
dissemination of error is no light thing, especially in relation to
subjects which are of great interest, and, from an historical and
literary point of view, of great importance. When we think of the many
amiable and industrious tutors at Oxford and Cambridge who, unless they
are put on their guard, will unsuspiciously fill their note-books with
the nonsense of this volume, and impart it, by degrees, to the listening
credulity of youth, we feel we have no alternative but to perform a
plain, if painful, duty. We repeat, we absolve the author from all
blame; the sole culprit is the editor.
That Solomon was the author of the _Iliad_, Poggio the author of the
_Annals_ of Tacitus, and Bacon the author of Shakespeare’s plays, are
hypotheses scarcely less monstrously absurd than the thesis propounded
in this volume. Mr. Benecke’s main contentions are “that a pure love
between man and woman seemed to the early Greeks” (that is, to those who
lived before the latter end of the Peloponnesian War) a sheer
impossibility; that “in extant Greek poetry there is no trace of
romantic love poetry addressed to women prior to the time of Asclepiades
and Philetas”; that “in the works of these writers this element suddenly
appears not in the nature of an experiment but as a leading motive”;
that the appearance of this element was due to the influence of
Antimachus, “who was the first man who had the courage to say that a
woman was worth loving, and who may thus be regarded as the originator
of the romantic element in literature.” As we have not space to refute
this nonsense in detail, we will give some examples of the way in which
it is supported. First come misrepresentations and blunders. To
emphasize the degradation of women, passages in translation are twisted
and perverted almost beyond recognition.
Thus the couplet of Catullus--
“Tunc te dilexi, non tantum ut vulgus amicam,
Sed pater ut natos diligit et generos”--
is actually paraphrased “I loved you, not as a man loves a woman, but as
a man loves a youth.” The couplet in which Antigone says, “If my husband
died, I could get another, and were I deprived of him too, I could be a
mother by another man”--
ποσις μεν αν μοι, κατθανοντος, αλλος ην
και παις απ’ αλλου φωτος, ει τουδ’ ημπλακον--
is translated “If my husband had died, I could have married another, if
he had failed to get me children, I could have committed adultery.” The
“main motive of the Iliad,” we are informed, (p. 76), “is the love of
Achilles for Patroclus.” The interest of the _Ajax_ “is meant to centre
on Teucer, the _amasius_ of the dead Ajax.” That the _Alcestis_ may not
be pressed into the service of those who would maintain that the Greeks
knew how to respect women, the key to it is to be found “in the relation
existing between Admetus and Apollo”(!) The revolting coarseness and
flippant vulgarity which mark the book, and, which do very little credit
to Oxford training, are illustrated by the remarks employed to disparage
these types of womanhood which the writer well knows would refute his
theory. Thus of Nausicaa, “she is always regarded as a charming type of
woman; but, after all, how one naturally thinks of her is (_sic_) as a
charming type of washerwoman”; of Penelope, “she longs for the return of
her husband, no doubt; but what really grieves her about the suitors is
not their suggestions as to his death, but the quantity of pork they
eat.” On a par with this sort of thing is the remark about a play of
Sophocles, which, by the way, is not extant, that “it merely drew the
usual picture of the gods playing shove-halfpenny with human souls” (p.
47); or flippant vulgarity like the following--Admetus expresses “his
deep regret that he cannot accompany Alcestis, as Charon does not issue
return tickets.” If this is the humour of young Oxford, the progress of
which we hear so much has been purchased at a heavy price.
But to continue. On page 27 we are confronted with the astounding
statement that “it is in Anacreon that we find for the first time
love-poetry addressed to a woman.” Why, Hermesianax (15, 16) distinctly
states that Musæus wrote love-poetry to his wife or mistress, Antiope,
and that Hesiod wrote many poems in honour of his love, Eoia (_Id._
22-24). Alcæus notoriously wrote love-poems to Sappho, as we need go no
further than the first book of Aristotle’s _Rhetoric_ to know; both
Alcman, the lover of Egido and Megalostrate, and, probably Ibycus also
wrote love-poetry to women. It is mere special pleading to contend that
Mimnermus did not write poetry to the mistress of his affections, to
whom, according to Strabo, his erotic poetry was addressed. Hermesianax
distinctly states that Mimnermus was passionately in love with Nanno,
and certainly implies that his love-poetry was addressed to her (35-38).
It is true that two of the fragments of Archilochus are ambiguous, but
one is not; and, if we may judge by a single line (Fr. 71), his love for
Neobule expressed itself in a manner indistinguishable from Petrarch’s
vein--“Would that I might touch Neobule’s hand”: ει γαρ ὡς εμοι
γενοιτο χειρα Νεοβουλης θιγειν. It is clear that women had a
prominent place in the poetry of Stesichorus, and in his poem entitled
_Calyce_ we seem to have had an anticipation of the modern love romance.
And yet, in spite of all this, we are informed that the Greeks had no
love-poetry addressed to, or concerning women, before Anacreon.
The methods adopted for minimizing or disguising the importance of women
in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ are very amusing. “The Trojan war was the
work of a woman; but how very little that woman appears in the _Iliad_.”
She appears quite as frequently and imposingly as the action admits,
and she and Andromache are painted as elaborately as any of the
_dramatis personæ_ in the poem. Indeed, it would not be too much to say
that, with the exception of Achilles and Agamemnon, they leave the
deepest impression on us. “A woman has been managing the affairs of
Odysseus for twenty years in an exemplary fashion; but the hero of the
_Odyssey_ on his return prefers to associate with the swineherd.”
Comment is superfluous. Nothing could be more striking than the
prominence which is given to women both in the _Iliad_ and in the
_Odyssey_. To cite such writers as Simonides of Amorgus, Phocylides and
Theognis, as authorities on the position of women, is as absurd, in
Sancho Panza’s phrase, as to look for pears on an elm.
The Greek Tragedies are treated after the same fashion as the _Iliad_
and the _Odyssey_. We are told that the remarkable prominence given in
Sophocles’s plays to the affection between brother and sister affords
conclusive proof that the nature of modern love between man and woman
was unknown to him; and we are also informed, that the relations between
Electra and Orestes, and Antigone and Polynices “are absolutely those of
modern lovers.” It would be difficult to say which is more absurd, the
deduction or the statement. What love could be more loyal and more
passionate than Hæmon’s love for Antigone? The prominence given by
Sophocles to the love between brother and sister has its origin from the
same cause as the very small part played by lovers in the Greek
tragedies generally. In the first place, a poet who took his plot from
the fortunes of the houses of Pelops or Laius could only work within the
limits of tradition; in the second place, love romances, unless
involving deep tragical issues as in the _Trachiniæ_, the _Medea_, and
the _Hippolytus_, were totally incompatible with the Greek idea of
tragedy. But we must hurry to the grand discovery made by the author of
this volume.