It may, perhaps, be some satisfaction to show the young writer, that the
most celebrated ancients have been as rudely subjected to the tyranny of
criticism as the moderns. Detraction has ever poured the "waters of
bitterness."
It was given out, that Homer had stolen from anterior poets whatever was
most remarkable in the Iliad and Odyssey. Naucrates even points out the
source in the library at Memphis in a temple of Vulcan, which according
to him the blind bard completely pillaged. Undoubtedly there were good
poets before Homer; how absurd to conceive that an elaborate poem could
be the first! We have indeed accounts of anterior poets, and apparently
of epics, before Homer; Ælian notices Syagrus, who composed a poem on
the Siege of Troy; and Suidas the poem of Corinnus, from which it is
said Homer greatly borrowed. Why did Plato so severely condemn the great
bard, and imitate him?
Sophocles was brought to trial by his children as a lunatic; and some,
who censured the inequalities of this poet, have also condemned the
vanity of Pindar; the rough verses of Æschylus; and Euripides, for the
conduct of his plots.
Socrates, considered as the wisest and the most moral of men, Cicero
treated as an usurer, and the pedant Athenæus as illiterate; the latter
points out as a Socratic folly our philosopher disserting on the nature
of justice before his judges, who were so many thieves. The malignant
buffoonery of Aristophanes treats him much worse; but he, as Jortin
says, was a great wit, but a great rascal.
Plato--who has been called, by Clement of Alexandria, the Moses of
Athens; the philosopher of the Christians, by Arnobius; and the god of
philosophers, by Cicero--Athenæus accuses of envy; Theopompus of lying;
Suidas of avarice; Aulus Gellius, of robbery; Porphyry, of incontinence;
and Aristophanes, of impiety.
Aristotle, whose industry composed more than four hundred volumes, has
not been less spared by the critics; Diogenes Laertius, Cicero, and
Plutarch, have forgotten nothing that can tend to show his ignorance,
his ambition, and his vanity.
It has been said, that Plato was so envious of the celebrity of
Democritus, that he proposed burning all his works; but that Amydis and
Clinias prevented it, by remonstrating that there were copies of them
everywhere; and Aristotle was agitated by the same passion against all
the philosophers his predecessors.
Virgil is destitute of invention, if we are to give credit to Pliny,
Carbilius, and Seneca. Caligula has absolutely denied him even
mediocrity; Herennus has marked his faults; and Perilius Faustinus has
furnished a thick volume with his plagiarisms. Even the author of his
apology has confessed, that he has stolen from Homer his greatest
beauties; from Apollonius Rhodius, many of his pathetic passages; from
Nicander, hints for his Georgies; and this does not terminate the
catalogue.
Horace censures the coarse humour of Plautus; and Horace, in his turn,
has been blamed for the free use he made of the Greek minor poets.
The majority of the critics regard Pliny's Natural History only as a
heap of fables; and Pliny cannot bear with Diodorus and Vopiscus; and in
one comprehensive criticism, treats all the historians as narrators of
fables.
Livy has been reproached for his aversion to the Gauls; Dion, for his
hatred of the republic; Velleius Paterculus, for speaking too kindly of
the vices of Tiberius; and Herodotus and Plutarch, for their excessive
partiality to their own country: while the latter has written an entire
treatise on the malignity of Herodotus. Xenophon and Quintus Curtius
have been considered rather as novelists than historians; and Tacitus
has been censured for his audacity in pretending to discover the
political springs and secret causes of events. Dionysius of
Harlicarnassus has made an elaborate attack on Thucydides for the
unskilful choice of his subject, and his manner of treating it.
Dionysius would have nothing written but what tended to the glory of his
country and the pleasure of the reader--as if history were a song! adds
Hobbes, who also shows a personal motive in this attack. The same
Dionysius severely criticises the style of Xenophon, who, he says, in
attempting to elevate his style, shows himself incapable of supporting
it. Polybius has been blamed for his frequent introduction of
reflections which interrupt the thread of his narrative; and Sallust has
been blamed by Cato for indulging his own private passions, and
studiously concealing many of the glorious actions of Cicero. The Jewish
historian, Josephus, is accused of not having designed his history for
his own people so much as for the Greeks and Romans, whom he takes the
utmost care never to offend. Josephus assumes a Roman name, Flavius; and
considering his nation as entirely subjugated, to make them appear
dignified to their conquerors, alters what he himself calls the _Holy
books_. It is well known how widely he differs from the scriptural
accounts. Some have said of Cicero, that there is no connexion, and to
adopt their own figures, no _blood_ and _nerves_, in what his admirers
so warmly extol. Cold in his extemporaneous effusions, artificial in his
exordiums, trifling in his strained raillery, and tiresome in his
digressions. This is saying a good deal about Cicero.
Quintilian does not spare Seneca; and Demosthenes, called by Cicero the
prince of orators, has, according to Hermippus, more of art than of
nature. To Demades, his orations appear too much laboured; others have
thought him too dry; and, if we may trust Æschines, his language is by
no means pure.
The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, and the Deipnosophists of Athenæus,
while they have been extolled by one party, have been degraded by
another. They have been considered as botchers of rags and remnants;
their diligence has not been accompanied by judgment; and their taste
inclined more to the frivolous than to the useful. Compilers, indeed,
are liable to a hard fate, for little distinction is made in their
ranks; a disagreeable situation, in which honest Burton seems to have
been placed; for he says of his work, that some will cry out, "This is a
thinge of meere industrie; a _collection_ without wit or invention; a
very toy! So men are valued; their labours vilified by fellowes of no
worth themselves, as things of nought: Who could not have done as much?
Some understande too little, and some too much."
Should we proceed with this list to our own country, and to our own
times, it might be curiously augmented, and show the world what men the
Critics are! but, perhaps, enough has been said to soothe irritated
genius, and to shame fastidious criticism. "I would beg the critics to
remember," the Earl of Roscommon writes, in his preface to Horace's Art
of Poetry, "that Horace owed his favour and his fortune to the character
given of him by Virgil and Varus; that Fundanius and Pollio are still
valued by what Horace says of them; and that, in their golden age, there
was a good understanding among the ingenious; and those who were the
most esteemed, were the best natured."