BYZANTINE CRITICISM.
Photius 175
Detailed examination of the _Bibliotheca_ 177
Importance of its position as a body of critical judgment 183
Tzetzes 187
John the Siceliote 187
INTERCHAPTER I. 191
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BOOK II.
LATIN CRITICISM.
CHAPTER I.
BEFORE QUINTILIAN—CICERO, HORACE, SENECA THE ELDER, VARRO.
The conditions of Latin criticism 211
Cicero 213
His attitude to Lucretius 214
His Rhetorical works 217
His Critical Vocabulary 219
Horace 221
The _Ad Pisones_ 221
Its desultoriness 224
And arbitrary conventionality 225
Its compensations: Brilliancy 225
Typical spirit 226
And practical value 227
The _Satires_ and _Epistles_ 228
“Declamations” 230
Their subjects: epideictic 231
And forensic 231
Their influence on style 232
Seneca the Elder 234
The Suasories 234
The _Controversies_: their Introductions 236
Varro 240
CHAPTER II.
THE CONTEMPORARIES OF QUINTILIAN.
Petronius 242
Seneca the Younger 245
The satirists 248
Persius 248
The Prologue and First Satire 248
Examination of this 251
Juvenal 253
Martial 256
The style of the Epigrams 258
Précis of their critical contents 260
Statius 268
Pliny the Younger: Criticism on the Letters 270
The _Dialogue de Claris Oratoribus_ 280
Mr. Nettleship’s estimate of it 283
The general literary taste of the Silver Age 284
“Faultlessness” 285
Ornate or plain style 287
CHAPTER III.
QUINTILIAN.
The _Institutes_ 289
Preface 291
Book I.: Elementary Education 291
And Grammar 291
Books II.-VII. only relevant now and then 292
How to lecture on an author 293
Wit 294
Book VIII.: Style 295
Perspicuity 296
Elegance 297
Books VIII., IX.: Tropes and Figures 299
Composition 304
Prose rhythm 304
Book X.: Survey of Classical Literature 306
Greek: Homer and other Epic poets 307
The Lyrists 308
Drama 308
The Historians 309
The orators and philosophers 309
Latin—Virgil 310
Other epic and didactic poets 310
Elegiac and miscellaneous 311
Drama 311
History 312
Oratory—Cicero 313
Philosophy—Cicero and Seneca 313
Minor counsel of the Tenth Book 313
Books XI., XII.: The styles of oratory 314
“Atticism” 315
Literary quality of Greek and Latin 315
Quintilian’s critical _ethos_ 317
CHAPTER IV.
LATER WRITERS.
Aulus Gellius: the _Noctes Atticæ_ 323
Macrobius: the _Saturnalia_ 329
Servius on Virgil 334
Other commentators 341
Ausonius 342
The _Anthologia Latina_ 344
The Latin Rhetoricians 345
Rutilius Lupus, &c. 346
Curius Fortunatianus: his Catechism 346
Marius Victorinus on Cicero 348
Others 349
Martianus Capella 349
INTERCHAPTER II. 355
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BOOK III.
MEDIÆVAL CRITICISM.
CHAPTER I.
BEFORE DANTE.
Characteristics of mediæval literature 372
Its attitude to criticism 373
Importance of prosody 373
The early formal Rhetorics—Bede 374
Isidore 375
Alcuin(?) 375
Another track of inquiry 377
St Augustine a Professor of Rhetoric 377
His attitude to literature before and after his conversion 378
Analysis of the _Confessions_ from this point of view 378
A conclusion from this to the general patristic view of 380
literature
Sidonius Apollinaris 383
His elaborate epithet-comparison 385
And minute criticisms of style and metre 386
A deliberate critique 388
Cassiodorus 389
Boethius 390
Critical attitude of the fifth century 391
The sixth—Fulgentius 392
The Fulgentii and their books 393
The _Super Thebaiden_ and _Expositio Virgiliana_ 394
Venantius Fortunatus 396
Isidore of Seville again 400
Bede again 402
His _Ars Metrica_ 403
The Central Middle Ages to be more rapidly passed over 405
Provençal and Latin treatises 407
The _De Dictamine Rhythmico_ 407
John of Garlandia 408
The _Labyrinthus_ 408
Critical review of poets contained in it 409
Minor rhythmical treatises 411
Geoffrey de Vinsauf: his _Nova Poetria_ 412
CHAPTER II.
DANTE.
The _De Vulgari Eloquio_: Its history and authentication 417
Its importance 418
And the scanty recognition thereof 418
Abstract of its contents: The “Vulgar Tongue” and “Grammar” 419
The nature, &c., of the gift of speech 420
Division of contemporary tongues 421
And of the subdivisions of Romance 422
The _Italian Dialects_: Some rejected at once 423
Others—Sicilian, Apulian, Tuscan, and Genoese 424
Venetian: Some good in Bolognese 424
The “Illustrious” Language none of these, but their common 425
measure
Its four characteristics 425
The Second Book—Why Dante deals with poetry only 426
All good poetry should be in the Illustrious 427
The subjects of High Poetry—War, Love, Virtue 427
Its form: Canzoni 427
Definition of Poetry 428
Its styles, and the constituents of the grand style 428
_Superbia Carminum_ 428
_Constructionis elatio_ 429
_Excellentia Verborum_ 429
_Pexa et hirsuta_ 430
The Canzone 430
Importance of the book 431
Independence and novelty of its method 432
Dante’s attention to Form 433
His disregard of Oratory 433
The influence on him of Romance 434
And of comparative criticism 434
The poetical differentia according to him 435
His antidote to the Wordsworthian heresy 436
His handling of metre 436
Of diction 437
His standards of style 438
The “Chapter of the Sieve” 439
The _pexa_ 440
The _hirsuta_ 441
Other critical _loci_ in Dante 441
The Epistle to Can Grande 441
The _Convito_ 442
Dante on Translation 443
On language as shown in prose and verse 443
Final remarks on his criticism 444
CHAPTER III.
THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES.
Limitations of this chapter 447
The material it offers 448
The Formal Arts of Rhetoric 448
And of Poetry 449
Examples of Indirect Criticism: Chaucer 450
_Sir Thopas_ 451
Froissart 453
Richard of Bury 455
Petrarch 456
Boccaccio 457
His work on Dante 457
The _Trattatello_ 458
The _Comento_ 459
The _De Genealogia Deorum_ 460
Gavin Douglas 464
Further examples unnecessary 466
INTERCHAPTER III.
§ I. THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE MEDIÆVAL PERIOD TO LITERARY 469
CRITICISM
§ II. THE POSITION, ACTUAL AND POSSIBLE, OF LITERARY 481
CRITICISM AT THE RENAISSANCE
——————————
INDEX 487
BOOK I
GREEK CRITICISM
----------
ἡ γὰρ τῶν λόγων κρίσις πολλῆς ἐστι πείρας
τελευταῖον ἐπιγέννημα.
—LONGINUS.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
DELIMITATION OF FRONTIER—CLASSES OF CRITICISM EXCLUDED—CLASS
RETAINED—METHOD—TEXTS THE CHIEF OBJECT—“HYPOTHESES NON
FINGO”—ILLUSTRATION FROM M. EGGER—THE
DOCUMENTS—GREEK—ROMAN—MEDIÆVAL—RENAISSANCE AND MODERN.
It is perhaps always desirable that the readers of a book should have a
clear idea of what the writer of it proposes to give them: it is very
certainly desirable that such an idea should [Sidenote: _Delimitation of
frontier._] exist in the writer himself. But if this is the case
generally, it must be more especially the case where there is at least
some considerable danger of ambiguity. And that there is such danger, in
regard to the title of the present book, not many persons, I suppose,
would think of denying. The word Criticism is often used, not merely
with the laxity common to all such terms, but in senses which are not so
much extensions of each other as digressions into entirely different
_genera_. In the following pages it will be used as nearly as possible
univocally. The Criticism which will be dealt with here is that function
of the judgment which busies itself with the goodness or badness, the
success or ill-success, of literature from the purely literary point of
view. Other offices of the critic, real or so-called, will occupy us
slightly or not at all. We shall meddle little with the more
transcendental Æsthetic, with those ambitious theories of Beauty, and of
artistic Pleasure in general, which, fascinating and noble as they
appear, have too often proved cloud-Junos. The business of
interpretation, a most valuable and legitimate side-work of his, though
perhaps only a side-work, will have to be glanced at, as we come to
modern times, with increasing frequency. We shall not be able entirely
to leave out of the question, though we shall not greatly trouble
ourselves with it, what is called the “verbal” part of his office—the
authentication or extrusion of this or that “reading.” But we shall, as
far as possible, neglect and decline what may perhaps best be called the
Art of Critical Coscinomancy, by which the critic affects to discern,
separate, and rearrange, on internal evidence not of a literary
character, the authorship and date of books. Of the Criticism,
so-called, which has performed its chief exploits in Biblical
discussion, which has meddled a good deal with the [Sidenote: Classes of
Criticism excluded.] Classics, and which occupies, in regard to the
older and therefore more tempting documents of modern literature, a
position of activity midway between that exercised towards the sacred
writings and that exercised towards Greek and Roman authors, no word
will, except by some accidental necessity, be found in these pages. The
rules and canons of this Criticism are different from, and in most cases
antagonistic to, those of Criticism proper: its objects are entirely
distinct; and in particular it, for the most part if not wholly,
neglects the laws of Logic. Now Criticism proper, which is but in part a
limitation, in part an extension, of Rhetoric, never parts company with
Rhetoric’s elder sister.
In other words, the Criticism or modified Rhetoric, of which this book
attempts to give a history, is pretty much the same thing as the
reasoned exercise of Literary Taste—the [Sidenote: _Class retained._]
attempt, by examination of literature, to find out what it is that makes
literature pleasant, and therefore good—the discovery, classification,
and as far as possible tracing to their sources, of the qualities of
poetry and prose, of style and metre, the classification of literary
kinds, the examination and “proving,” as arms are proved, of literary
means and weapons, not neglecting the observation of literary fashions
and the like. It will follow from this that the History must pursue the
humble _a posteriori_ method. Except on the rarest [Sidenote: _Method._]
occasions, when it may be safe to generalise, it will confine itself
wholly to the particular and the actual. We shall not busy ourselves
with what men ought to have admired, what they ought to have written,
what they ought to have thought, but with what they did think, write,
admire. To some, no doubt, this will give an appearance of plodding, if
not of pusillanimity; but there may be others who will recognise in it,
not so much a great refusal, as an honest attempt to provide some sound
and useful knowledge which does not exist in any accessible form,—to
raise, by whatsoever humble drudgery, vantage-points from which more
aspiring persons than the writer may take Pisgah-sights, if they please,
without fear of their support collapsing under them in the manner of a
tub.
It has further seemed desirable, if not absolutely necessary for the
carrying out of this scheme, to confine ourselves mainly to the actual
texts. This is not, perhaps, a fashionable proceeding. Not what Plato
says, but what the latest [Sidenote: _Texts the chief object._]
commentator says about Plato—not what Chaucer says, but what the latest
thesis-writer thinks about Chaucer—is supposed to be the qualifying
study of the scholar. I am not able to share this conception of
scholarship. When we have read and digested the whole of Plato, we may,
if we like, turn to his latest German editor; when we have read and
digested the whole of Shakespeare, and of Shakespeare’s contemporaries,
we may, if we like, turn to Shakespearian biographers and commentators.
But this extension of inquiry, to apply a famous contrast, is
facultative, not necessary. At any rate, in the following pages it is
proposed to set forth, and where necessary to discuss, what Plato,
Aristotle, Dionysius, Longinus, what Cicero and Quintilian, what Dante
and Dryden, what Corneille and Coleridge, with many a lesser man
besides, have said about literature, noticing by the way what effect
these authorities have had on the general judgment, and what, as often
happens, the general judgment has for the time made up its mind to,
without troubling itself about authorities. But we shall only
occasionally busy ourselves with what others, not themselves critically
great, have said about these great critics, and that from no arrogance,
but for two reasons of the most inoffensive character. In the first
place, there is no room to handle both text and margent, with the
margent’s margent _ad infinitum_. In the second, the handling of the
margent would distinctly obscure the orderly setting forth of the texts.
Yet, further, leave will be taken to neglect guesswork as [Sidenote:
"Hypotheses non fingo."] far as possible, and for the most part, if not
invariably, to refrain from building any hypotheses upon titles, casual
citations, or mere probabilities.
To illustrate what is meant, let us take a book which every one who
makes such an attempt as this must mention with the utmost gratitude and
respect, the admirable _Essai sur l'Histoire de la Critique chez les
Grecs_[3] of the late M. Egger. That excellent scholar and most
agreeable writer was perhaps as free from “hariolation” as any one who
has ever dealt with classical subjects; yet the first ninety pages of
his book are practically in the air. The judges of rhapsodical
competitions were the first critics; the Homeric edition of Pisistratus
presupposes and implies criticism, which is equally—which is even
more—presupposed and implied in the choragic system of Athens, whereby
plots were chosen for performance; there are known to have been
successive and corrected versions of plays, from which the same
conclusions may be drawn. We are told, and can readily believe, that the
actors had their parts suited to them, and this means criticism. Nay,
was not the [Sidenote: _Illustration from M. Egger._] whole Comedy, the
Old Comedy at least, a criticism, and often a purely literary one? Is
not the _Frogs_, in particular, a dramatised “review” of the most
slashing kind? And have we not even the titles, at least, of regular
treatises, presumably critical, by Pratinas, by Lasus, by the great
Sophocles himself?
Footnote 3:
Paris. Third Edition, #1887.
Now all this is probable; nearly all of it is interesting, and some of
it is, so far as it goes, certain. But then as a certainty it goes such
a very little way! M. Egger himself, with the frankness which the
scholar ought to have, but has not always, admits the justice of the
reproach of one of his critics, that part of it is conjecture. It would
scarcely be harsh to say that all of it is, in so far as any solid
information as to the critical habits of the Greeks is furnished by it.
In the pages that follow at least a steady effort will be made to
discard the conjectural altogether, and to reduce even the amount of
superstructure on [Sidenote: _The Documents._] second-hand foundations
to the minimum. The extant written word, as it is the sole basis of all
sound criticism in regard to particulars, so it is the only sound basis
for the history of Criticism in general. The enormous losses which we
have suffered in this department of Greek literature, and the scanty
supply which, except in the department of the Lower Rhetoric, seems to
be all that existed in Latin, may appear to make the effort to conduct
inquiry in this way a rash or a barren one; but the present writer at
least is convinced that no effort can usefully be made in any other. And
after [Sidenote: _Greek._] all, though so much is lost, much remains. In
point of tendency we can ask for nothing better than Plato, provoking
and elusive as he may seem in individual utterances; in point of
particular expression and indication of general lines, the _Rhetoric_
and the _Poetics_ of Aristotle are admittedly priceless; and such
writers as Dionysius of Halicarnassus, as Plutarch, as Dion Chrysostom,
as Lucian, and above all as Longinus, leave us very little reason to
complain, even when we turn from the comparative scantiness of this
_corpus_ to the comparative wealth of arid rhetorical term-splitting
which still remains to us.
Nor is it at all probable that if we had more Latin literary criticism
we should be so very much better off. For, once more,[Sidenote:
_Roman._] the existing work of such men as Cicero, Quintilian, Tacitus,
and above all Horace, with the literary allusions of the later
satirists, not to mention for the present the gossip of Aulus Gellius
and the like, gives more than sufficient “tell-tales.” We can see the
nature and the limitations of Roman criticism in these as well as if
they filled a library.
In the great stretch of time—some thousand years—between the decadence
of the pure Classics and the appearance of the [Sidenote: _Mediæval._]
Renaissance it is not the loss but the absence of material that is the
inconvenience, and this inconvenience is again tolerable. The opinions
of the Dark and Early Middle Ages on the Classics themselves are only a
curiosity; for real criticism or matured judgment on existing work in
the vernacular they had little opportunity even in a single language,
for comparative work still less. Only the astonishing and strangely
undervalued tractate of Dante remains to show us what might have been
done; the rest is curious merely.
But the Renaissance has no sooner come than our difficulties assume a
different form, and increase as we approach our [Sidenote: _Renaissance
and Modern._] own times. It is now not deficiency but superabundance of
material that besets us; and if this work reaches its second volume, a
rigid process of selection and of representative treatment will become
necessary.
But in this first the problem is how to extract from comparatively,
though not positively, scanty material a history that, without calling
in guesswork to its assistance, shall present a fairly adequate account
of the Higher Rhetoric and Poetic, the theory and practice of Literary
Criticism and Taste, during ancient and during mediæval times. At
intervals the narrative and examination will be interrupted for the
purpose of giving summaries of a kind necessarily more temerarious and
experimental than the body of the book, but even here no attempt will be
made at hasty generalisation. Where the path has been so little trodden,
the loyal road-layer will content himself with making it straight and
firm, with fencing it from precipices, and ballasting it across morasses
as well as he can, leaving others to stroll off on side-tracks to
agreeable view-points, and to thread loops of cunning expatiation.
In conclusion, with special regard to this Book and the next, I would,
very modestly but very strenuously, deprecate a line of comment which is
not unusual from exclusively classical students, and which stigmatises
“judging ancient literature from modern points of view.” Such a process
is no doubt even more grossly wrong than that (not unknown) of judging
modern literature from ancient standpoints. But the true critic admits
neither. He endeavours—a hard and ambitious task!—to extract from _all_
literature, ancient, mediæval, and modern, lessons of its universal
qualities, which may enable him to see each period _sub specie
æternitatis_. And nothing less than this—with the Muses to help—is the
adventure of this work.
CHAPTER II.
GREEK CRITICISM BEFORE ARISTOTLE.
EARLIEST CRITICISM OF THE GREEKS—PROBABLY HOMERIC IN SUBJECT—PROBABLY
ALLEGORIC IN METHOD—XENOPHANES—PARMENIDES—EMPEDOCLES—DEMOCRITUS—THE
SOPHISTS: EARLIER—THE SOPHISTS: LATER—PLATO—HIS CROTCHETS—HIS
COMPENSATIONS—ARISTOPHANES—THE ‘FROGS’—OTHER CRITICISM IN
COMEDY—SIMYLUS(?)—ISOCRATES.
Although we have, putting aside Aristophanes, an almost utter dearth of
actual texts before Plato, it is possible, without [Sidenote: _Earliest
criticism of the Greeks._] violating the principles laid down in the
foregoing chapter, to discern some general currents, and a few
individual deliverances, of Greek criticism[4] in earlier ages. The
earliest character of this criticism that we perceive is, as we should
expect, a tendency towards allegorical explanations of literature. And
the earliest subject of this that we discover is, again as we should
expect, the work attributed to Homer.
Footnote 4:
I am not aware of any _complete_ treatment of the subject of Greek
criticism except that of M. Egger already cited, and, as part of a
still larger whole, that of M. Théry (see note on Preface). The German
handlings of the subject, as Professor Rhys Roberts (p. 259 of his ed.
of Longinus) remarks, seem all to be concerned with the philosophy of
æsthetic. If the work which Professor Roberts himself promises (ibid.,
p. ix.) had appeared, I should doubtless have had a most valuable
guide and controller in him.
If we had older and more certain testimony about the fact, and still
more about the exact character, of the [Sidenote: _Probably Homeric in
subject._] world-famous Pisistratean redaction of the Homeric and other
poems, it would be necessary to reverse the order of this statement; and
even as it is, the utmost critical caution may admit that it was
probably with Homer that Greek criticism began. We shall find nothing so
constantly borne out in the whole course of this history as the
fact—self-evident, but constantly neglected in its consequences—that
criticism is a vine which must have its elm or other support to fasten
on. And putting aside all the endless and (from some points of view at
least) rather fruitless disputes about the age, the authorship, and so
forth, of Homer, we know, from what is practically the unanimous and
unintentional testimony of the whole of Greek literature, that “Homer”
and the knowledge of Homer were anterior to almost all of it. And it was
impossible that a people so acute and so philosophically given as the
Greeks should be soaked in Homer, almost to the same extent as that to
which the English lower and middle classes of the seventeenth century
were soaked in the Bible, without being tempted to exercise their
critical faculties upon the poems. It was long, as we shall see, before
this exercise took the form of strictly literary criticism, of the
criticism which (with the provisos and limitations of the last chapter)
we call æsthetic. It was once said that the three functions of criticism
in its widest sense are to interpret, to verify or sanction, and to
judge, the last being its highest and purest office. [Sidenote:
_Probably allegoric in method._] But the other two commend themselves
perhaps more to the natural man—they certainly commended themselves more
to the Greeks—and we should expect to find them, as we do find them,
earlier practised. The Pisistratean redaction, if a fact (as in some
form or other it pretty certainly was), is an enterprise both bold and
early in the one direction; there is no reason to doubt that many
enterprises were made pretty early in the other; and not much to doubt
that most of these experiments in interpretation took the allegorical
form.
Modern readers and modern critics have usually a certain dislike to
Allegory, at least when she presents herself honestly and by her own
name. Her government has no doubt at times been something despotic, and
her votaries and partisans have at times been almost intolerably tedious
and absurd. Yet in the finer sorts of literature, at any rate, the
apprehension of some sort of allegory, of some sort of double meaning,
is almost a necessity. The student of any kind of poetry, and the
student of the more imaginative prose, can never rest satisfied with the
mere literal and grammatical sense, which belongs not to literature but
to science. He cannot help seeking some hidden meaning, something
further, something behind, if it be only rhythmical beauty, only the
suggestion of pleasure to the ear and eye and heart. Nor ought he to
help it. But the ill repute of Allegory arises from the ease with which
her aid is borrowed to foist religious, philosophical, and other sermons
into the paradise of art. This danger was especially imminent in a
country like Greece, where religion, philosophy, literature, and art of
all kinds were, from the earliest times, almost inextricably connected
and blended.
Accordingly allegory, and that reverse or seamy side of allegory,
rationalistic interpretation, seem to have made their appearance very
early in Greece. This latter has only to do with literary criticism in
the sense that it is, and always has been, a very great degrader
thereof, inclining it to be busy with matter instead of form. The
allegorising tendency proper is not quite so dangerous, though still
dangerous enough. But in the second-hand and all too scanty notices that
we have of the early philosophers, it is evident that the two tendencies
met and crossed in them almost bewilderingly. When Xenophanes found
fault with the Homeric anthropomorphism, when Anaxagoras and others made
the scarcely audacious identification of the arrows of Apollo with the
rays of the sun, and the bolder one of Penelope’s web with the processes
of the syllogism, they were anticipating a great deal which has
presented itself as criticism (whether it had any business to do so or
not) in the last two thousand and odd hundred years. We have not a few
names, given by more or less good authority and less or more known
independently, of persons—Anaximander, Stesimbrotus, a certain Glaucus
or Glaucon, and others—who early devoted themselves to allegorical
interpretation of Homer and perhaps of other poets; but we have hardly
even fragments of their work, and we can found no solid arguments upon
what is told us of it. Only we can see dimly from these notices, clearly
from the fuller and now trustworthy evidence which we find in Plato,
that their criticism was criticism of matter only,—that they treated
Homer as a historical, a religious, a philosophical document, not as a
work of art.
Indeed, as one turns over the volumes of Karsten[5] and Mullach[6] with
their budgets of commentary and scholia enveloping the scanty kernel of
text; as one reads the [Sidenote: _Xenophanes._] relics, so interesting,
so tantalising, so pathetic, of these early thinkers who already knew of
metaphysics _ce qu’on a su de tous les temps_,—one sees, scanty as they
are, how very unlikely it is that, if we had more, there would be
anything in it that would serve our present purpose. These Greeks, at
any rate, _were_ children—children of genius, children of extraordinary
promise, children almost of that gigantic breed which has to be stifled
lest it grow too fast. But, like children in general, when they have any
great mental development, they scorned what seemed to them little
things. And, also like children, they had not and could not have the
accumulation of knowledge of particulars which is necessary for the
criticism of art. The audacious monopantheism of Xenophanes could not,
we are sure, have stooped to consider, not as it actually did[7] whether
Homer and Hesiod were blasphemers, but whether they did their
blaspheming with technical cunning. In its sublimer moments and in its
moments of discussion, in those of the famous single line—
οὖλος ὁρᾷ, οὖλος δὲ νοεῖ, οὖλος δέ τ᾿ ἀκούει,
as well as in the satire on the ox- and lion-creed of lions and oxen, it
would have equally scorned the attempt to substitute for mere opinion a
humble inductive approach to knowledge on the differences of Poetry and
prose and the proper definition of Comedy. Even in those milder moods
when the philosopher gave, if he did give, receipts for the proper mode
of mixing negus,[8] and was not insensible to the charms of a soft
couch, sweet wine, and devilled peas,[9] one somehow does not see him as
a critic.
Footnote 5:
_Philosophorum Græcorum Veterum Reliquiæ. Rec. et ill. Simon Karsten_
(Amsterdam, 1830-38). Vol. i. pars 1, Xenophanes; vol. i. pars 2,
Parmenides; vol. ii. Empedocles.
Footnote 6:
_Democriti Abderitæ Operum Fragmenta. Coll., &c., F. G. A. Mullachius_
(Berlin, 1843).
Footnote 7:
Karsten, i. 1. 43. Fr. 7.
Footnote 8:
Ibid., i. 1.77. Fr. 23. Xenophanes is emphatic on the necessity of
putting the water in _first_.
Footnote 9:
Ibid., i. 1. 55. Fr. 17. The philosopher says merely ἐρεβίνθους, but
we know from Pherecrates (_ap. Athenæum_, ii. 44) that they were
parched or devilled, πεφρυγμένους.
How much less even does one see anything of the kind in the few and
great verses of Parmenides, that extraordinary link of union between
Homer and Lucretius, the poet of [Sidenote: _Parmenides._] the “gates of
the ways of night and day,”[10] the philosopher whose teaching is of
that which “is and cannot but be?”[11] the seer whose sight was ever
“straining straight at the rays of the sun”?[12] We shall see shortly
how a more chastened and experienced idealism, combined in all
probability with a much wider actual knowledge of literature and art,
made the literary criticism of Plato a blend of exquisite rhapsody and
childish crotchet. In the much earlier day of Parmenides not even this
blend was to be expected. There could hardly by any possibility have
been anything but the indulgence in allegorising which is equally dear
to poets and philosophers, and perhaps the inception of a fanciful
philology. Metaphysics and physics sufficed, with a little creative
literature. For criticism there could be no room.
Footnote 10:
Parm. _de Natura_, l. 11; Karsten, I. ii. 29.
Footnote 11:
Ibid., l. 35.
Footnote 12:
Ibid., l. 144.
But it will be said, Empedocles? Empedocles who, according to some
traditions, was the inventor of Rhetoric—who certainly was a native of
the island where Rhetoric arose—the [Sidenote: _Empedocles._] chief
speaker among these old philosophers? That Empedocles had a good deal of
the critical temper may be readily granted. He has little or nothing of
the sublime beliefs of Parmenides; his scepticism is much more
thorough-going than that which certainly does appear in the philosopher
of Colophon. If a man do not take the discouragement of it too much to
heart there is, perhaps, no safer and saner frame of mind for the critic
than that expressed in the strongest of all the Empedoclean fragments,
that which tells us how “Men, wrestling through a little space of life
that is no life, whirled off like a vapour by quick fate, flit away,
each persuaded but of that with which he has himself come in contact,
darting this way and that. But the Whole man boasts to find idly; not to
be seen are these things by men, nor heard, nor grasped by their minds.
Thou shalt know no more than human counsel has reached.”[13] An
excellent critical mood, if not pushed to mere inaction and despair: but
there is no evidence that it led Empedocles to criticism. Physics and
ethics appear to have absorbed him wholly.
Footnote 13:
Emp. _de Natura_ l. 34-40; Karsten, ii. 89, 90.
That the sophist was the first rhetorician would be allowed by his
accusers as well as by his apologists: and though Rhetoric long followed
wandering fires before it recognised its true star and became Literary
Criticism, yet nobody doubts that we must look to it for what literary
criticism we shall find in these times. The Sophists, on the very face
of the charge constantly brought against them of attending to words
merely, are almost acknowledged to be the inventors of Grammar; while
from the other charge that they corrupted youth by teaching them to talk
fluently, to make the worse the better reason, and the like, it will
equally follow that they practised the deliberate consideration of
style. Grammar is only the _ancilla_ of criticism, but a tolerably
indispensable one; the consideration of style is at least half of
criticism itself. Accordingly the two first persons in whose work (if we
had it) we might expect to find a considerable body of literary
criticism, if only literary criticism of a scrappy, tentative, and
outside kind, are the two great sophists Gorgias and Protagoras,
contemporaries, but representatives of almost the two extremities of the
little Greek world, of Leontini and Abdera, of Sicily and Thrace.
We have indeed a whole catalogue of work that should have been critical
or nothing ascribed by Diogenes Laertius[14] to the still greater
contemporary and compatriot of Protagoras, Democritus. How happily would
the days of Thalaba (supposing Thalaba to be a historian of criticism)
go by, if he had that little library of works which Diogenes thus
assigns and calls "Of _Music_"! They are eight in number: “On Rhythm and
Harmony,” “On Poetry” (one would compound for this alone), “On the
Beauty of Words,”[15] “On Well- and Ill-sounding Letters,” “On Homer or
Right Style and Glosses,”[16] “On the Aoedic Art,” “On Verbs(?),”[17]
and an _Onomasticon_. But Democritus lived in the fifth [Sidenote:
_Democritus._] century before Christ, and Diogenes in the second century
after Christ; the historian’s attribution is unsupported, and he has no
great character for accuracy; while, worst of all, he himself tells us
that there were six Democriti, and that of the other five one was a
musician, another an epigrammatist, and a third (most suspiciously) a
technical writer on rhetoric. It stands fatally to reason that as all
these (save the Chian musician) seem to have been more modern, and as
the works mentioned would exactly fall in with the business of the
musician and the teacher of rhetoric, they are far more likely, if they
ever existed (and Diogenes seems to cite rather the catalogue of a
certain Thrasylus than the books themselves), _not_ to have been the
work of the Laughing Philosopher. At any rate, even if they were, we are
utterly ignorant of their tenor.
Footnote 14:
Diog. Laert., ix. 7, p. 239 ed. Cobet (Didot Collection).
Footnote 15:
ἐπέων. It is very difficult to be certain whether this means here
“word,” “song,” or “epic.”
Footnote 16:
ὀρθοεπείης καὶ γλωσσέων.
Footnote 17:
ῥημάτων
That the other great Abderite, Protagoras, the disciple of Democritus
himself, wrote on subjects of the kind, there can be no reasonable
doubt. It is practically impossible that he should not have done so,
though we have not the exact title of any. He is said to have been the
first to distinguish the parts of an oration by name, to have made some
important advances in technical grammar, and to have lectured on the
poets. But here again we have no texts to appeal to, nor any certain
fact.
Yet perhaps it is not mere critical whim to doubt whether, if we had
these texts also, we should be much further advanced. The titles of
those attributed to Democritus, if we could accept [Sidenote: _The
Sophists—earlier._] the attribution with any confidence, would make such
scepticism futile. But we have no titles of critical works attributed to
Protagoras; we only know vaguely that he lectured on the poets.[18] And
from all the stories about him as well as from the famous dialogue which
puts the hostile view of his sophistry, we can conclude with tolerable
certainty that his interests were mainly ethical, with perhaps a dash of
grammar—the two notes, as we have seen and shall see, of all this early
Greek criticism. Certainly this was the case with the Sicilian school
which traditionally founded Rhetoric—Empedocles himself perhaps, Corax,
Tisias, Gorgias, and the pupil of Gorgias, Polus, with more certainty.
Here again most of our best evidence is hostile, and therefore to be
used with caution; but the hostility does not affect the present point.
Socrates or Plato could have put unfavourable views of Sophistic quite
as well—indeed, considering Plato’s curious notions of inventive art,
perhaps better—in regard to Æsthetics. If ethics and philology, not
criticism proper, are the subjects in which their adversaries try to
make Protagoras and Gorgias cut a bad figure, we may be perfectly
certain that these were the subjects in which they themselves tried to
cut a good one. If they are not misrepresented—are not indeed
represented at all—in the strict character of the critic, it can only be
because they did not, for good or for ill, assume that character. The
philosophy of language, the theory of persuasion, the moral character of
poetry and oratory, these were the subjects which interested them and
their hearers; not the sources of literary beauty, the division of
literary kinds, the nature and varieties of style. Wherever ethic and
metaphysic are left, the merest philology seems to have been the only
alternative—the few phrases attributed to any writers of this period
that bear a different complexion being _very_ few, uncertainly
authentic, and in almost every case extremely vague.
Footnote 18:
And the authority for this, Themistius, is very late. The catalogue of
the works given by Diogenes Laertius (ed. cit., p. 240) includes
nothing even distantly bearing on criticism.
Nothing else could reasonably be expected when we consider the nature of
Rhetoric as we find it exhibited in Aristotle himself, and as it was
certainly conceived by its first inventors or nomenclators. It was the
Art of Persuasion—the Art of producing a practical effect—almost the Art
of Succeeding in Life. We shall see when we come to Aristotle himself
that this was as inevitable _a priori_ as it is certain in fact: for the
present the certainty of the fact itself may content us. Where the few
recorded or imputed utterances of the later sophists do touch on
literature they bear (with a certain additional ingenious wire-drawing)
the same marks as those of the early philosophers. [Sidenote: _The
Sophists—later._] They play upon the “honourable deceit” of tragedy;[19]
they tread harder the old road of allegorical interpretations;[20] they
dwell on words and their nature;[21] or else, overshooting mark as far
as elsewhere they fall short of it, they attempt ambitious theories of
beauty in general, whether it is “harmony,” utility, sensual pleasure,
what not.[22] This is—to adopt the useful, if accidental, antithesis of
metaphysic—metacritic, not criticism. And we shall not, I think, be rash
in assuming that if we had the texts, which we have not, we should
find—we are most certainly not rash in saying that in the actual texts
we do find—nothing but excursions in the vestibules of Criticism proper,
or attempts more or less in vain upon her secret chambers,—no
expatiation whatever in her main and open halls.[23]
Footnote 19:
Gorgias ap. Plutarch.
Footnote 20:
Prodicus in the “Choice of Hercules.”
Footnote 21:
V. the _Cratylus_, _passim_.
Footnote 22:
V. _Hippias Minor_.
Footnote 23:
There is not the slightest evidence for assigning the _Rhetoric_
called _ad Alexandrum_, and variously attributed to Aristotle and
Anaximenes, to any pre-Aristotelian writer, least of all for giving it
to Corax himself.
Two only, and those two of the very greatest, of Greek writers before
Aristotle—Plato and Aristophanes—furnish us with literary criticism
proper, while of these two the first is a critic almost against his
will, and the second one merely for the nonce. Yet we may be more than
thankful for what they give us, and for the slight reinforcement, as
regards the nature of pre-Aristotelian criticism, which we derive from a
third and much lesser man—Isocrates.
It could not possibly be but that so great a writer as Plato, with an
_ethos_ so philosophical as his, should display a strong [Sidenote:
_Plato._] critical element. Yet there were in him other elements and
tendencies, which repressed and distorted his criticism. To begin with,
though he less often lingered in the vestibule than his enemies the
sophists, he was by the whole tendency of his philosophy even more
prompted than they were to make straight for the adytum, neglecting the
main temple. Some form of the Ideal Theory is indeed necessary to the
critic: the beauty of literature is hardly accessible, except to one who
is more or less a Platonist. No system so well accounts for the
ineffable poetic pleasure, the sudden “gustation of God” which poetry
gives, as that of an archetypal form of every possible thought and
passion, as well as person and thing, to which as the poet approaches
closer and closer, so he gives his readers the deeper and truer thrill.
But Plato’s unfortunate impatience of anything but the idea pure and
simple, led him all wrong in criticism. Instead of welcoming poetry for
bringing him nearer to the impossible and unattainable, he chides it for
interfering with possession and attainment. In the _Phædrus_ and the
_Republic_ especially, but also elsewhere, poetic genius, poetic charm,
poetry itself, are described, if not exactly defined, with an accuracy
which had never been reached before, and which has never been surpassed
since; in the same and other places the theory of Imitation, or, as it
might be much better called, Representation, is outlined with singular
acuteness and, so far as we know, originality, though it is pushed too
far; and remarks on the divisions of literature, at least of poetry,
show that a critic of the highest order is but a little way off. But
then comes that everlasting ethical and political preoccupation which is
at once the real forte and the real foible of the Greek genius, and
(with some other peculiarities) succeeds to a great extent in
neutralising the philosopher’s critical position as a whole. In the
first place, the “imitation” theory (imperfectly grasped owing to causes
to be more fully dealt with later) deposes the poet from his proper
position, and, combined with will-worship of the Idea, prevents Plato
from seeing that the poet’s duty, his privilege, his real reason for
existence, is to “_dis_-realise,” to give us things not as they are but
as they are not. In the second, that curious, interesting, and in part
most fruitful and valuable Manichæism which Idealism so often comports,
makes him gradually [Sidenote: _His crotchets._] look more and more down
on Art as Art, more and more take imagination and invention as sinful
human interferences with “reminiscence,” and the simple acceptance of
the Divine. In the third place, the heresy of instruction grows on him,
and makes him constantly look, not at the intrinsic value of poetry, its
connection with beauty, its importance to the free adult human spirit,
but at its position in reference to the young, the private citizen, and
so forth. These things sufficiently account for the at first sight
almost unintelligible, though exquisitely put, caprices of the
_Republic_ and the _Laws_, which at their worst represent the man of
letters and the man of art generally as a dangerous and anti-social
nuisance, at the very best admit him as a sort of Board-Schoolmaster, to
be rigidly kept in his place, and to be well inspected, coded, furnished
with schedules and rules of behaviour, in order that he may not step out
of it.
Even here, as always, there is some excuse for the choice _cum Platone
errare_, not merely in the exquisiteness of the literary form which this
unworthy view of literature takes, but in the fact that, as usual, Plato
could not go wrong without going also right. He had probably seen in
Athenian life, and he had certainly anticipated in his instinctive
command of human nature, the complementary error and curse of “Art for
Art only”—of the doctrine (itself, like his own, partly true, but, like
his own also, partly false and mischievous) of the moral
irresponsibility of the artist. And looking first at morals and politics
with that almost feverish eagerness of the Greek philosopher, which was
in great part justified by the subsequent Greek collapse in both, he
shot wide of the bow-hand from the purely critical point of aim.
Yet where shall we find earlier in time, where shall we find nobler in
tone at any time, a critical position to match with that of the
_Phædrus_ and the _Ion_ as wholes, and of [Sidenote: _His
compensations._] many other passages? That “light and winged and sacred
thing the poet” had never had his highest functions so celebrated
before, though in the very passage which so celebrates him the
antithesis of art and delirium be dangerously over-worked. Alas! it is
in the power of all of us to avoid bad art, and it is not in the power
of us all to secure good delirium! But this matters little, or at worst
not so very much. No one can acknowledge more heartily than Plato—no one
has acknowledged more poetically—that the poet is not a mere moralist, a
mere imitator, a mere handler of important subjects. And from no one,
considering his other views, could the acknowledgment come with greater
force and greater authority. In him and in that great enemy of his
master, to whom we come next, we find first expressed that real
enthusiasm for literature of which the best, the only true, criticism is
but a reasoned variety.
If we but possessed that ode or pæan of Tynnichus[24] of Chalcis, which,
it would appear from the _Ion_,[25] Plato not merely thought the only
good thing among its author’s works, but regarded as a masterpiece in
itself! If we could but ourselves compare the works of Antimachus with
those of the more popular Chœrilus, to which Plato himself is said to
have so much preferred them that he sent to Colophon to have a copy made
for his own use! Then we might know what his real literary preferences
in the way of poetry were, instead of being put off with beautiful,
invaluable, but hopelessly vague enthusiasms about poetic beauty in the
abstract, and with elaborate polemics against Homer and Hesiod from a
point of view which is not the point of view of literary criticism at
all. But these things have been grudged us. There are assertions, which
we would not only fain believe, but have no difficulty whatever in
believing, that the aversion to poets represented in the _Republic_ and
the _Laws_ was, if not feigned, hypothetical and, as one may say,
professional. But this, though a comfort generally, is of no assistance
to us in our present inquiry. The old comparison of the lantern “high,
far-shining, _empty_” recurs depressingly.[26]
Footnote 24:
Not only have we not this: we have practically nothing of Tynnichus.
His page in Bergk (iii. 379) is blank, except for the phrase which
Plato himself quotes: εὕρημά τι Μοισᾶν—“a windfall of the Muses.” Of a
very commonplace distich about Agamemnon’s ship, quoted by Procopius,
we may apparently relieve him.
Footnote 25:
534 D.
Footnote 26:
If the space and treatment here allotted to Plato seem exceeding poor
and beggarly, it can but be urged that his own criticism of literature
is so exceedingly _general_ that in this book no other treatment of it
was possible. On his own principles we should be “praising the horse
in terms of the ass” if we did otherwise. It is true that besides the
_attitude_ above extolled, there are to be found, from the glancing,
many-sided, parabolic discourse of the _Phædrus_ to the mighty theory
of the _Republic_, endless things invaluable, nay, indispensable, to
the critic. It is nearly certain that, as Professor Butcher thinks, no
one had anticipated him in the recognition of the organic unity
necessary to a work of literary, as of all, art. But even here, as in
the messages “to Lysias and all others who write orations, to Homer
and all others who write poems, to Solon, &c.,” we see the generality,
the abstraction, the evasiveness, one may almost say, of his critical
gospel. Such concrete things as the reference to Isocrates at the end
of the _Phædrus_ are very rare; and, on the other hand, his frequent
and full dealings with Homer are not literary criticism at all. In a
treatise on Æsthetics Plato cannot have too large a space; in a
History of Criticism the place allotted to him must be conspicuous,
but the space small.
There have been periods, not the happiest, but also not the least
important of her history, when Criticism herself would have absolutely
fenced her table against Aristophanes. [Sidenote: _Aristophanes._] That
a poet, and a dramatic poet, and a dramatic poet who permitted himself
the wildest excesses of farce, should be dignified with the name of
critic, would have seemed to the straiter sect a monstrous thing. Yet
the Old Greek Comedy was emphatically “a criticism of life,” and as such
it could not fail to meddle with such an important part of Athenian life
as Athenian literature. It might be not uninteresting, but is at best
superfluous, if not positively irrelevant here, to point out how
important that part was; the fact is certain. And while it is going
rather a long way round to connect the rivalries of serious poets, and
the alterations which these or other causes brought about in their
works, with the history of criticism proper, there is no doubt of such a
connection in the case of the work—fortunately in fairly large measure
preserved—of Aristophanes, and with that—unfortunately lost, except in
fragments—of his fellows.
Nor can there be very much doubt that, though our possessions might be
greater in volume, we could hardly have anything better in kind than the
work of Aristophanes, and especially the famous play of the _Frogs_,
which was probably the earliest of all the masterpieces of hostile
literary criticism, and which remains to this day among the very finest
of them. Aristophanes indeed united, both generally and in this
particular instance, all the requisites for playing the part to
perfection, with one single exception—the possession, namely, of that
wide comparative knowledge of other literatures which the Greeks lacked,
and which, in this as in other matters, was their most serious
deficiency. His own literary faculty was of the most exquisite as well
as of the most vigorous kind. His possession, not merely of wit but of
humour in the highest degree, saved him from one of the commonest and
the greatest dangers of criticism—the danger of dwelling too long on
single points, or of giving disproportionate attention to the different
points with which he dealt. And though no doubt the making a dead-set at
bad or faulty literature, not because it is bad or faulty, but because
it happens to be made the vehicle of views in politics, religion, or
what not which the critic dislikes, is not theoretically defensible; yet
the historian and the practical philosopher must admit that, as a matter
of fact, it has given us some of the very best criticism we have.
Nor has it given us anything much better than the _Frogs_. That the
polemic against Euripides, here and elsewhere, is unfairly [Sidenote:
_The_ Frogs.] and excessively personal, is not to be denied; and even
those who almost wholly agree with it from the literary side may grant
that it admits, here and there, of an answer. But still as criticism it
is both _magnifique_ and also _la guerre_. The critic is no desultory
snarler, unprovided with theory, and simply snapping at the heels of
some one he dislikes. His twenty years' campaign against the author of
the _Medea_, from the _Acharnians_ to the _Frogs_ itself, is thoroughly
consistent: it rests upon a reasoned view of art and taste as well as of
politics and religion. He disapproves the sceptical purpose, the
insidious sophistic, the morbid passion of his victim; but he
disapproves quite as strongly the tedious preliminary explanations and
interpolated narratives, the “precious” sentiment and style, the tricks
and the trivialities. And let it be observed also that Aristophanes,
fanatic as he is, and rightly is, on the Æschylean side, is far too good
a critic and far too shrewd a man not to allow a pretty full view of the
Æschylean defects, as well as to put in the mouth of Euripides himself a
very fairly strong defence of his own merits. The famous debate between
the two poets, with the accompanying observations of Dionysus and the
Chorus, could be thrown, with the least possible difficulty, into the
form of a critical _causerie_ which would anticipate by two thousand
years and more the very shrewdest work of Dryden, the most thoughtful of
Coleridge, the most delicate and ingenious of Arnold and Sainte-Beuve.
It is indeed rather remarkable how easily literary criticism lends
itself to the dramatic-poetical form, whether the ease be owing to the
fact of this early and consummate example of it, or to some other cause.
And what is especially noticeable is that, throughout, the censure goes
documents in hand. The vague generalities of the _Poetics_ in verse, in
which, after Horace and Vida, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
delighted, are here eschewed in favour of direct criticism of actual
texts. One might call the _Frogs_, borrowing the phrase from mediæval
French, a review _par personnages_, and a review of the closest, the
most stringent, and the most effective. We can indeed only be surprised
that with such an example as this, and others not far inferior, in the
same dramatist if not in others, formal criticism in prose should have
been so long in making its appearance, and when it appeared, should have
shown so much less mastery of method. Beside Aristophanes, the pure
critical reviewing of Aristotle himself is vague, is desultory, and
begins at the wrong end; even that of Longinus is scrappy and lacking in
grasp; while it would be as unfair as it would be unkind to mention, in
any comparison of genius with the author of the _Frogs_, the one master
of something like formal critical examination of particular books and
authors that Greek preserves for us in Dionysius of Halicarnassus.
It is, however, extremely rash to conclude, as has sometimes been
concluded, that because we find so much tendency towards [Sidenote:
_Other criticism in Comedy._] literary criticism in Aristophanes, we
should find a proportionate amount in other Comic writers (at least in
those of the Old Comedy, who had perhaps most genius and certainly most
_parrhesia_), if their works existed. The contrary opinion is far more
probable. For though we have nothing but fragments, often insignificant
in individual bulk, of the writers of the Old Comedy except
Aristophanes, and of all the writers of the Middle—nothing but
fragments, though sometimes not insufficient in bulk, of Menander,
Philemon, and the other writers of the New—yet it must be remembered
that these fragments are extremely numerous, and that in a very
considerable number of cases, fragments as they are, they give a fair
glimpse of context and general tone. I do not hesitate to say, after
most careful examination of the collections of Meineke and his
successors, that there are not more than one or two faint and doubtful
approaches to our subject discoverable there. The passage of
Pherecrates[27] on which M. Egger chiefly relies to prove his very wide
assertion that “il n’y a peut-être pas un seul poète” of the Old Comedy
“qui n’ait mêlé la critique littéraire à ses fictions comiques” deals
with music, not literature. And it is exceedingly rash to argue from
titles, which, as we know from those of the plays remaining to us in
their entirety, bore as little necessary relation to contents in ancient
as in modern times.
Footnote 27:
This passage, which is twenty-five lines long, is from the play
_Chiron_, and may be found at p. 110 of the Didot edition of Meineke’s
_Poet. Com. Græc. Fragmenta_. Egger (p. 40) only gives it in
translation. It is not in the least literary but wholly _musical_ in
subject, Music appearing in person and complaining of the alteration
of the lyre from seven strings to twelve.
It may be pleaded, of course, that our comic fragments are very mainly
preserved to us by grammarians, scholiasts, and lexicographers, who were
more likely to find the unusual locutions for which they principally
looked in those descriptions of the fishmarket and the stews, of which
we have so many, than in literary disquisitions. But in these myriads of
fragments, motelike as they often are, it is contrary to probability
that we should not find at least a respectable proportion of allusions
to any subject which was frequently treated by the comic writers, just
as we do find references not merely to fish and the hetæræ, but to
philosophy (such references are common enough), to cookery, politics,
dress, and all manner of things except literary criticism. Parodies of
serious pieces there may have been; but parody, though akin to
criticism, is earlier,[28] and is rather criticism in the rough. And it
is probable, or rather certain, that the example of the greatest of
Comic poets was followed by the smaller fry in attacks on Euripides; but
these attacks need not have been purely literary at all. The contrast
between comedy and tragedy attributed to Antiphanes[29] in his _Poiesis_
bears solely on the subject, and the necessity of greater inventiveness
on the part of the comic poet.
Footnote 28:
Thus we find it constantly in the Middle Ages, where pure criticism is
still almost unknown.
Once only, so far as I have been able to discover, do we come upon a
passage which (if it be genuine, of which there [Sidenote: _Simylus_
(?).] seems to be doubt for more than one reason) has undoubted right to
rank. This is the extremely, the almost suspiciously, remarkable passage
attributed to the Middle Comic poet, Simylus, by Stobæus, who, be it
remembered, can hardly have lived less than eight or nine hundred years
later. This advances not only a theory of poetry and poetical criticism,
but one of such astonishing completeness that it goes far beyond
anything that we find in Aristotle, and is worthy of Longinus himself at
his very happiest moment, while it is more complete than anything
actually extant in the Περὶ Ὕψους. It runs as follows:[30] “Neither is
nature without art sufficient to any one for any practical achievement,
nor is art which has not nature with it. When both come together there
are still needed a _choragia_,[31] love of the task, practice, a lucky
occasion, time, a _critic able to grasp what is said_. If any of these
chance to be missing, a man will not come to the goal set before him.
Natural gifts, good will, painstaking method—this is what makes wise and
good poets. Number of years makes neither, but only makes them old.”
Footnote 29:
See Egger (p. 73), who as usual makes a little too much of it. The
original may be found in Athenæus (at the opening of Bk. vi. 222 _a_:
vol. i. p. 485, ed. Dindorf), where it is followed by a burlesque
encomium on tragedy from the comic poet Timocles, or in Meineke, ed.
cit., p. 397.
Footnote 30:
As the Greek is not in some editions of Meineke’s _Fragments_, and is
not given by Egger at all, while his translation is very loose, it
will be best to quote it in full from the former’s edition of Stobæus'
_Florilegium_, ii. 352:—
Οὔτε φύσις ἱκανὴ γίγνεται τέχνης ἄτερ
πρὸς οὐδὲν ἐπιτήδευμα παράπαν οὐδενί,
οὔτε πάλι τέχνη μὴ φύσιν κεκτημένη.
τούτων ὁμοίως τοῖν δυοῖν συνηγμένων
εἰς ταυτόν, ἔτι δεῖ προσλαβεῖν χορηγίαν,
ἔρωτα, μελέτην, καιρὸν εὐφυῆ, χρόνον,
κριτὴν τὸ ῥηθὲν δυνάμενον συναρπάσαι.
ἔν ᾧ γὰρ ἂν τούτων τις ἀπολειφθεὶς τύχῃ,
οὐκ ἔρχετ’ ἐπὶ τὸ τέρμα τοῦ προκειμένου.
φύσις, θέλησις, ἐπιμέλει’, εὐταξία
σοφοὺς τίθησι κἀγαθούς· ἐτῶν δέ τοι
ἄριθμος οὐδὲν ἄλλο πλὴν γῆρας ποιεῖ.
Footnote 31:
_I.e._, the official acceptance of the piece, and the supply of a
chorus to bring it out. It ought, however, perhaps to be added that
the word is often used in a more general sense, “appliances and
means,” pecuniary and otherwise.
It would be impossible to put the matter better after more than two
thousand years of literary accumulation and critical experiment. But it
is very hard to believe that it was said in the fourth century before
Christ. The wits, indeed, are rather those of that period than of a
later; but the experience is that of a careful comparer of more than one
literature. In other words, it is the voice of Aristotle speaking with
the experience of Quintilian. And it stands, let me repeat, so far as I
have been able to discover, absolutely alone in the extant
representation of the department of literature to which it is
attributed.
To pass from Aristophanes and Plato to Isocrates is to pass from persons
of the first rank in literature to a person not of [Sidenote:
_Isocrates._] the first rank. Yet for our purpose the “old man eloquent”
is not to be despised. On the contrary, he even has special and
particular value. For the worst—as no doubt also the best—of men like
Aristophanes and Plato is, that they are too little of their time and
too much for all time. Moreover, in Isocrates we come not merely to a
man above the common, though not reaching the summits of wit, but also
to something like a “professional”—to some one who, to some extent,
supplies the loss of the earlier professionals already mentioned.
To some extent only: for Isocrates, at least in so far as we possess his
work, is a rhetorician on the applied sides, which commended themselves
so especially to the Greeks, not on the pure side. The legend of his
death, at least, fits the political interests of his life; his rhetoric
is mostly judicial rhetoric; little as he is of a philosopher, he
attacks the sophists as philosophers were in duty bound to do. His
purely literary allusions (and they are little more) have a touch of
that amusing, that slightly irritating, that wholly important and
characteristic patronage and disdain which meets us throughout this
period. He was at least believed to have written a formal _Rhetoric_,
but it is doubtful whether we should find much purely literary criticism
in it if we had it. His own style, if not exactly gaudy, is pretentious
and artificial: we can hardly say that the somewhat vaguely favourable
prophecy which Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates about him at the
end of the _Phædrus_ was very conspicuously fulfilled. And his critical
impulses cannot have been very imperative, seeing that though he lived
till nearly a hundred, he never found the “happy moment”[32] to write
about poetry spoken of in the 12th section of the Panathenaic with a
scornful reference to those who “rhapsodised and chattered” in the
Lyceum about Homer and Hesiod and other poets. Most of his actual
literary references are, as usual, ethical, not literary. In the 12th
and 13th section of the oration-epistle to Nicocles[33] he upbraids
mankind for praising Hesiod and Theognis and Phocylides as admirable
counsellors in life, but preferring to hear the most trumpery of
comedies; and himself declares Homer[34] and the great tragic masters
worthy of admiration because of their mastery of human nature. In the
_Busiris_[35] he takes quite a Platonic tone about the blasphemies of
poets against the gods. There is, indeed, a curious and interesting
passage in the _Evagoras_[36] about the difficulties of panegyric in
prose, and the advantages possessed by verse-writers. They have greater
liberty of handling their subject; they may use new words and foreign
words and metaphors; they can bewitch the soul with rhythm and metre
till even bad diction and thought pass unnoticed. For if (says the
rhetor naïvely enough) you leave the most celebrated poets their words
and meaning, but strip them of their metre, they will cut a much
shabbier figure than they do now. But this does not take us very far,
and with Isocrates we get no further.
Footnote 32:
εὐκαιρίαν. Ed. Benseler (Leipsic, 1877), ii. 21.
Footnote 33:
Ibid., i. 23.
Footnote 34:
Ibid., i. 24.
Footnote 35:
Section 16. Ibid., ii. 9, 10.
Footnote 36:
Section 3. Ibid., i. 207, 208.
Nor need we expect to get any further. Criticism, in any full and
fertile sense of the word, implies in all cases a considerable body of
existing literature, in almost all cases the possibility of comparing
literatures in different languages. The Greeks were but accumulating
(though accumulating with marvellous rapidity) the one; they had as yet
no opportunity of the other, and it must be confessed that they did not
welcome the opportunity with any eagerness when it came. All the more
glory to them that, when as yet the accumulation was but proceeding,
they produced such work in the kind as that of Plato and Aristophanes;
that at the first halt they made such astonishing, if in some ways such
necessarily incomplete, use of what had been accumulated, as in the next
chapter we shall see was made by Aristotle.
CHAPTER III.
ARISTOTLE.
AUTHORSHIP OF THE CRITICISM ATTRIBUTED TO ARISTOTLE—ITS
SUBJECT-MATTER—ABSTRACT OF THE ‘POETICS’—CHARACTERISTICS,
GENERAL—LIMITATIONS OF RANGE—ETHICAL TWIST—DRAWBACKS
RESULTING—OVERBALANCE OF MERIT—THE DOCTRINE OF ἁμαρτία—THE
‘RHETORIC’—MEANING AND RANGE OF “RHETORIC”—THE CONTENTS OF
THE BOOK—ATTITUDE TO “LEXIS”—VOCABULARY: “FIGURES”—A
DIFFICULTY—“FRIGIDITY”—ARCHAISM—STOCK EPITHET AND PERIPHRASIS—FALSE
METAPHOR—SIMILE—“PURITY”—“ELEVATION”—PROPRIETY—PROSE RHYTHM—LOOSE
AND PERIODIC STYLE, ETC.—GENERAL EFFECT OF THE ‘RHETORIC’—THE
“HOMERIC PROBLEMS”—VALUE OF THE TWO MAIN TREATISES—DEFECTS AND
DRAWBACKS IN THE ‘POETICS’—AND IN THE ‘RHETORIC’—MERITS OF
BOTH—“IMITATION”—THE END OF ART: THE οἰκεία ἡδονή—THEORY OF
ACTION—AND OF ἁμαρτία—OF POETIC DICTION.
The uncomfortable conditions which have prevailed during the examination
of Greek criticism during the Pre-Aristotelian [Sidenote: _Authorship of
the criticism attributed to Aristotle._] age disappear almost entirely
when we come to Aristotle himself. Hitherto we have had either no texts
at all, mere fragments and titles, or else documents fairly voluminous
and infinitely interesting as literature, but as criticism indirect,
accidental, and destitute of professional and methodical character. With
the _Rhetoric_ and the _Poetics_ in our hands, no such complaints are
any longer possible. It is true that in both cases certain other
drawbacks, already glanced at, still exist, and that the _Poetics_, if
not the _Rhetoric_, is obviously incomplete. But both, and especially
the shorter and more fragmentary book, give us so much that it is almost
unreasonable to demand more—nay, that we can very fairly, and with no
rashness, divine what the “more” would have been like if we had it. In
these two books the characteristics of Greek criticism, such as it was
and such as probably in any case it must have been, are revealed as
clearly as by a whole library.
In dealing with them we are happily, here as elsewhere, freed from a
troublesome preliminary examination as to genuineness. There is no
reasonable doubt on this head as far as the _Rhetoric_ goes, and I
should myself be disposed to say that there is no reasonable doubt as to
the _Poetics_, but others have thought differently. It so happens,
however, that for our special purpose it really does not matter so very
much whether the book is genuine or not. For it can hardly by any
possibility be much later than Aristotle, and that being so it gives us
what we want—the critical views of Greek literature when the first great
age of that literature was pretty well closed. It is by Aristotle,
probably, by X or Z possibly, but in any case by a man of wide
knowledge, clear intellect, and methodical habits.
Before we examine in detail what these views were, let us clearly
understand what was the literature which this person (whom in both cases
we shall call, and who in both pretty certainly was, Aristotle) had
before him. The bulk of it was in verse, and though unfortunately a
large proportion of that bulk is now lost, we have specimens, and (it
would seem) many, if not most, of the best specimens, of all its kinds.
Of a great body of epic or quasi-epic verse, only Homer and Hesiod
survive; but Homer was admittedly the greatest epic, and Hesiod the
greatest didactic, poet of this class. In the course of less than a
century an enormous body of tragic drama had been accumulated,
[Sidenote: _Its subject-matter._] by far the greatest part of which has
perished; but we possess ample specimens of the (admittedly) first Three
in this kind also. Of the great old comic dramatists, Aristophanes
survives alone—a mere volume, so to speak, of the library which
Aristotle had before him: yet it is pretty certain that if we had it
all, the quantity rather than the degree and kind of literary pleasure
given by the series from the _Acharnians_ to the _Plutus_ would be
increased. We are worst off in regard to lyric: it is here that
Aristotle has the greatest advantage over his modern readers. Yet, by
accident or not (it may be strongly suspected _not_), it is the
advantage of which he avails himself least. On the other hand, some
kinds—the pastoral, the very miscellaneous kind called epigram, and
others—were scarcely yet full grown; and, much of them as is lost, we
have more advantage of him.
In prose he had (or at least so it would seem likely) a lesser bulk of
material, and what he had was subject to a curious condition, of which
more hereafter. But he had nearly all the best things that we have—Plato
and Xenophon, Herodotus and Thucydides, all the greatest of the orators.
Here, however, his date again subjected him to disadvantages, the
greatest of which—one felt in every page of the _Poetics_, and not
insensible in the _Rhetoric_—was the absence, entire or all but entire,
of any body of prose fiction. The existence, the date, the subjects, the
very verse or prose character of the “Milesian tales,” so often talked
of, are all shadows of shades, and whatever they were, Aristotle takes
no count of them. It seems to be with him a matter of course that
“fiction” and “poetry” are coextensive and synonymous.[37]
Of the enormous and, to speak frankly at once, the very disastrous,
influence which this limitation of his subject-matter has on him, it
will be time to speak fully later. Let us first see what this famous
little treatise[38]—than which perhaps no other document in the world,
not religious or political, has been the occasion of fuller
discussion—does actually contain.
Footnote 37:
He does, no doubt, refer to the prose mimes, _v. infra_, and in
referring at the same time to the “Socratic dialogues” he may be
specially thinking of the “Egyptian and other” stories with which
Socrates was wont, half to please, half to puzzle, his hearers. But
his whole treatment of Tragedy and Epic is really based on some such
assumption as that in the text.
Footnote 38:
I need hardly express, but could not possibly omit the expression of,
my indebtedness to my friend and colleague Professor Butcher’s
admirable edition and translation of the work in _Aristotle’s Theory
of Poetry and Fine Art_ (London, 2nd ed., 1898), a book which, as much
as any other for many years past, enables English scholarship to hold
its head up with that of other countries. Nor need I make any
apologies for occasionally differing, on the purely critical side,
with him as to the interpretation of a document which is admittedly
very obscure in parts, and on even the clearest parts of which
opinion, not demonstration, must decide in very many cases.
He first defines his scheme as dealing with poetry itself and its
various kinds, with their essential parts, with the [Sidenote: _Abstract
of the_ Poetics.] structure of the plot, the number and nature of the
parts, and the rest of poetic method. Then he lays it down that Epic,
Tragedy, Comedy, Dithyrambic, as well as _auletice_ and _kitharistice_
generally, are _mimesis_—"imitation," as it is generally translated—but
that they differ in the medium, the objects, and the manner of that
imitation. And after glancing at music and dancing as non-literary
mimetic arts, he turns to the art which imitates by language alone. Here
he meets a difficulty: there is, he thinks, no common name which will
suit the mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus, the “Socratic dialogues,” and
iambic or elegiac _mimesis_. He objects strongly to the idea that metre
makes the poet, and produces instances, among which the most striking is
his refusal of the name poet to Empedocles. Having disposed of the
_medium_—rhythm, metre, &c.—he turns to the objects. Here he has no
doubt: the _objects_ of mimesis are men in action, and we must represent
them as “better than life” (heroic or idealising representation), as
they are (realistic), or worse (caricature or satire). The _manner_ does
not seem to suggest to him much greater diversity than that of epic (or
direct narrative), and dramatic, as to the latter of which he has a
slight historical excursus.
Then he philosophises. Poetry, he says, has two causes: one the instinct
of imitation, with the pleasure attached to it; the other, the instinct
for harmony. And then he again becomes historical, and reviews briefly
Homer, Æschylus, Sophocles, and the progress of poetry under them.
Comedy he dismisses very briefly. He thinks that it ἔλαθε διὰ τὸ μὴ
σπουδάζεσθαι—little attention was paid to it, as not being taken
seriously. Epic and tragedy must be treated first—tragedy first of all.
And then he plunges straight into the famous definition of tragedy,
discussion of which had best be reserved. The definition itself is this:
“An imitation of an action, serious, complete, and possessing magnitude,
in language sweetened with each kind of sweetening in the several parts,
conveyed by action and not recital, possessing pity and terror,
accomplishing the purgation of such[39] emotions.” Tragedy will require
scenic arrangements, musical accompaniments, and “words,” as modern
actors say; his own term, “lexis,” is not so very different. But it will
also require character, “thought,” and plot or story. The most important
of all is the last, which he also describes by another name, the
“setting together of incidents,” the Action—to which he thinks character
quite subsidiary, and indeed facultative. There cannot, he says
categorically, be tragedy without action; there may be without
character. “The most powerful elements of emotional interest,” as
Professor Butcher translates οἷς ψυχαγωγεῖ, “the things with which
tragedy leads souls,” are revolutions and discoveries, and these are
parts of action. Novices can do good things in diction and in character,
not in plot. Still Character is second. Thought is third, Diction
apparently a bad fourth. Song is only a chief embellishment or
“sweetening,” and Scenery is the last of all, because, though
influencing the soul, it is inartistic and outside poetry. So he turns
once more as to the principal or chief thing, to the plot or action.
This is to be a complete whole, and of a certain magnitude, with a
beginning, middle, and end. A very small animal organism[40] cannot be
beautiful, as neither can one “ten thousand stadia long.” Then he comes
to the great question of Unity—or, since that word is much blurred by
usage, let us say “what makes the story one.” It is not enough to have a
single hero; life, even a part of a life, is too complicated for that.
We must have just so much and just so little that the action shall
present neither gaps nor redundancies. Nor need the poet by any means
stick to historical or prescribed fact—the probable, not the actual, is
his game. He may invent wholly (subject to this law of probability) if
he likes. Plots with episodes are bad.
Footnote 39:
There are strong arguments for rendering τῶν τοιούτων not “such” but
“these,” and Professor Butcher actually does so.
Footnote 40:
Here one of the first very important differences of interpretation
comes in. Professor Butcher would translate ζῷον “picture,” as though
it were short for ζῷον γεγραμμένον. Scholars differ whether the word
_can_ by itself have this meaning, and on such a point I have no
pretensions to decide. But its more common sense is certainly “living
organism,” and I feel certain that this is the only meaning which
makes full critical sense here. To begin with, Aristotle has just used
it in this way, and in the second place the analogy of another _art_
would come in very ill. We want a comparison drawn from _nature_, to
give us the law for the imitation of nature.
We have, however, to go further. Not only must the action of tragedy be
complete and probable, but it must deal with terrible and pitiful
things: if these surprise us, so much the better. After distinguishing
between simple plots (without Revolution and Discovery) or complex (with
them), and describing these two elements at more length, he attacks, in
a rather suspected passage, the Parts—Prologue, Episode, Exodus,[41] the
choric part, &c.—and then, preferring the complex scheme, shows how it
is to be managed. The hero must not blamelessly pass from prosperity to
adversity, nor blamefully in the opposite direction. He must be a person
of considerable position, who by some error or weakness (ἁμαρτία) comes
to misfortune. Also the special kind of pity and terror which is to be
employed to make him interesting, the _oikeia hedone_ of tragedy, is
most important, not a few examples being taken in illustration from the
great tragedians.
Footnote 41:
“Episode” is here defined in quite a new sense as the dialogue
_between_ choruses; “Exodus” as that which no chorus follows. The
chapter is doubtful—or something more.
Then we pass to Character. It must be good—even a woman is good
sometimes—it must be appropriate, true to life, and consistent.
Probability is here as important as in Action; the _Deus ex machina_ is
to be used with extreme caution. After turning to the details of
Discovery, and dealing with Gesture, Scene, &c., he goes to the two main
stages of Tragedy, _desis_ and _lusis_, Twisting and Unravelling, and to
its four kinds (an extension of his former classification)—Simple,
Complex, Pathetic, and Ethical. And the tragic poet is especially warned
against Tragedy with an Epic structure—that is to say, a variety of
plots. The Chorus must bear part in the action, and not give mere
interludes.
“Thought” is somewhat briefly referred to Rhetoric (_vide infra_), and
then we come to Diction. This is treated rather oddly, though the oddity
will not seem so odd to those who have carefully studied the contents,
still more the texts, of the foregoing chapter. Much of the handling is
purely grammatical. The “Figures,” especially metaphor, make some
appearance: and of style proper we hear little more than that it is to
be clear without being mean, though we have some illuminative examples
of this difference.
Then Aristotle passes briefly to Epic, his prescription for which is an
application of that already given—the single action, with its beginning,
middle, and end. The organism, with its _oikeia hedone_, the parts, the
kinds are the same, with the exception of song and scenery. The only
differences are scale (Epic being much larger) and metre, with a fuller
allowance for the improbable, the irrational. Some rather desultory
remarks on difficulties of criticism or interpretation follow, and the
piece ends abruptly with a consideration of the purely academic question
whether Epic or Tragedy ranks higher. Some had given the primacy to
Epic: Aristotle votes for Tragedy, and gives his reasons.
This summary has been cut down purposely to the lowest point consistent
with sufficiency and clearness; but I trust it is neither insufficient
nor obscure. We may now see what can be observed in it.
We observe, in the first place, not merely a far fuller dose of
criticism than in anything studied hitherto, but also a great [Sidenote:
_Characteristics, general._] advance of critical _theory_. Not only has
the writer got beyond the obscure, fragmentary, often irrelevant,
utterances of the early philosophers: but he is neither conducting a
particular polemic, as was Aristophanes, nor speaking to the previous
question, like Plato. An _a posteriori_ proof of the depth and solidity
of the inquiry may be found in the fact that it is still, after more
than two thousand years, hardly in the least obsolete. But we are not
driven to this: its intrinsic merit is quite sufficient.
At the same time, there are certain defects and drawbacks in it which
are of almost as much importance as its merits, and which perhaps
require prior treatment. That it is incomplete admits of no doubt; that
part of it shows signs of corruption, that there are possible garblings
and spurious insertions, does not admit of very much. But the view
throughout is so firm and consistent; the incidental remarks tally so
well with what we should expect; and, above all, the exclusions or
belittlings are so significant, that if the treatise were very much more
complete, it would probably not tell us very much more than we know or
can reasonably infer already.
In the first place, we can see, partly as a merit and partly as a
drawback, that Aristotle has not merely confined himself with
philosophical exactness to the Greek literature actually before him, but
has committed the not unnatural, though unfortunate, mistake of taking
that literature as if it were final and exhaustive. He generalises from
his materials, especially from Homer and the three Tragedians, as if
they provided not merely admirable examples of poetic art, but a
Catholic body of literary practice to go outside of which were sin. It
is impossible not to feel, at every moment, that had he had the _Divina
Commedia_ and Shakespeare side by side with the _Iliad_ and Æschylus,
his views as to both Epic and Tragedy might have been modified in the
most important manner. And I at least find it still [Sidenote:
_Limitations of range._] more impossible not to be certain that if there
had been a Greek Scott or a Greek Thackeray, a Greek Dumas or a Greek
Balzac before him, his views as to the constitutive part of poetry being
not subjective form but “imitative” substance would have undergone such
a modification that they might even have contradicted these now
expressed. If tragedy, partly from its religious connection, partly from
its overwhelming vogue, but most of all from the flood of genius which
had been poured into the form for two or three generations past, had not
occupied the position which it did occupy in fact, it would probably not
have held anything like its present place in the _Poetics_. And so in
other ways. It may be consciously, it may be unconsciously, Aristotle
took the Greek, and especially the Attic, literature, which constituted
his library, and treated this as if it were all literature. What he has
executed is in reality an induction from certain notable but by no means
all-embracing phenomena; it has too much of the appearance, and has too
often been taken as having more than the appearance, of being an
authoritative and inclusive description of what universally is, and
universally ought to be.
We have also to take into account the Greek fancy for generalising and
philosophising, especially with a strong ethical [Sidenote: _Ethical
twist._] preoccupation. Aristotle does not show this in the fantastic
directions of the earlier allegorising critics, but he is doubly and
trebly ethical. He has none of the Platonic doubts about Imitation as
being a bad thing in itself, but he is quite as rigid in his
prescription of good subjects. Although we have no full treatment of
Comedy, his distaste—almost his contempt—for it is clear; and debatable
as the famous “pity and terror” clause of the definition of tragedy may
be, its ethical drift is unmistakable.
Thus his criticism, consciously or unconsciously, is warped and twisted
by two unnecessary controlments. On the one [Sidenote: _Drawbacks
resulting._] hand, he looks too much at the actual occupants of his
bookcase, without considering whether there may not be another bookcase
filled with other things, as good but different. On the other, he is too
prone, not merely to generalise from his facts as if they were the only
possible facts, but to “overstep the genus” a little in his
generalisation, and to merge Poetics in Ethics. That others went further
than he did, that they said later that a hero must not only be good but
white, and superadded to his Unity of Action a Unity of Time and a Unity
of Place, which his documents do not admit, and which his doctrines by
no means justify, are matters for which, no doubt, he is not to be
blamed. But of the things for which he is legitimately responsible, some
are not quite praiseworthy.
In the first place, “Imitation” is an awkward word, though no doubt it
is more awkward in the English than in the Greek, and “Representation”
or “Fiction” will get us out of part of the difficulty. Not only does
this term for the secondary creation proper to art belittle it too much,
but it suggests awkward and mischievous limitations: it ties the poet’s
hands and circumscribes his aims.[42] Indirectly it is perhaps
responsible for Aristotle’s worst critical slip—his depreciation of
Character in comparison with Action. This very depreciation is, however,
a serious shortcoming; and so is the failure to recognise, despite some
not indistinct examples of it in the matter before him from the
_Odyssey_ downwards, what has been called “Romantic Unity,” that is to
say, the Unity given by Character itself, though the action may be
linear and progressive rather than by way of _desis_ and _lusis_. The
attempt to extend (save in respect of scale only) the limitations of
Tragedy to Epic is another fault; and so perhaps is the great complexity
and the at least not inconsiderable obscurity of the definition of
Tragedy itself. In such a treatise as this it is possible merely to
allude to the famous clause, “through pity and terror effecting the
_katharsis_ of such emotions.” Volumes have been written on these few
words,[43] the chief crux being, of course, the word _katharsis_. It
cannot be said that any of the numerous solutions is by itself and to
demonstration correct, but it is clear that the addition is out of
keeping with the rest of the definition. Hitherto Aristotle, whether we
agree with him or not, has been purely literary, but he now shifts to
ethics. You might almost as well define fire in terms strictly
appropriate to physics, and then add, “effecting the cooking of sirloins
in a manner suitable to such objects.”
Footnote 42:
In all modern languages, though no doubt not in Greek, “Imitation”
carries with it a fatal suggestion of copying previous examples of
art, and not going direct to Nature at all. I think there is no
reasonable doubt that this suggestion is responsible by itself for
much of the mistakes of modern “Classical” criticism in the sixteenth,
seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. You must “imitate” Homer,
Virgil, Milton, not “represent” Nature.
Footnote 43:
Those who do not care to “grapple with whole libraries” will find
excellent handlings of the question in Butcher, _op. cit._, pp.
236-237, and Egger, _op. cit._, pp. 267-300.
Yet the advantages of this criticism far exceed its drawbacks. In the
first place it is, not merely so far as we positively know, [Sidenote:
_Overbalance of merit._] but by all legitimate inference, the earliest
formal treatise on the art in European literature. In the second place,
even if it sticks rather too close to its individual subject, that
individual subject was, as it happens, so marvellously rich and perfect
that no such great harm is done. A man will always be handicapped by
attempting to base criticism on a single literature, yet he who knows
Greek only will be in far better case than he who only knows any one
other, except in so far as the knowledge of any later literature
inevitably conveys an indirect dose of knowledge of Greek.
Then, too, Aristotle’s use of his material is quite astonishingly
judicious. In almost every single instance we might [Sidenote: _The
doctrine of_ ἁμαρτία.] expect his limitations to do him more harm than
they have done. He might, for instance, with far more excuse than
Wordsworth, have fallen into Wordsworth’s error of considering metre not
merely as not essential to poetry, but as only accidentally connected
with it. And it is also extremely remarkable how little, on the whole,
his ethical preoccupation carries him away. He exhibits it; but it does
not blind him (as it had blinded even Plato) to the fact that the
special end of Art is pleasure, that the perfection of literature is not
an end in itself but a means to an end. Even more surprising is the
acuteness, the sufficiency, and the far-reaching character of his
doctrine of the Tragic ἁμαρτία. For there can be no question that he has
here hit on the real differentia of tragedy—a differentia existing as
well in the tragedy of Character, which he rather pooh-poohs, and in the
Romantic tragedy which he did not know, and on his actual principles was
bound to disapprove if he had known it, as in the Classical. Shakespeare
joins hands with Æschylus (and both stand thus more sharply contrasted
with inferior tragedians than in any other point) in making their chief
tragic engine “the pity of it,” the sense that there is infinite excuse,
but no positive justification, for the acts which bring their heroes and
heroines to misfortune. Wherever the tragedian, of whatever style and
time, has hit this ἁμαρτία, this human and not disgusting “fault,” he
has triumphed; wherever he has missed it, he has failed, in proportion
to the breadth of his miss.
With respect to the minor and verbal points of the _Poetics_ there is
less to say, because there is very much less of them: [Sidenote: _The_
Rhetoric.] and what there is to say had better be said when we have
considered the contents of the other great critical book, the
_Rhetoric_, which may be taken as holding, if not intentionally yet
actually, something of the same position towards Prose as that which the
_Poetics_ holds towards verse.
Before giving an analysis of this book,[44] to match that given above of
the _Poetics_, a few words may properly be said to justify [Sidenote:
_Meaning and range of “Rhetoric.”_] what may seen to be the rather
arbitrary proceeding of, on the one hand, attaching to Rhetoric a sense
avowedly somewhat different from Aristotle’s, and on the other dropping
consideration of the major part of what he has actually written in it.
Footnote 44:
No edition with commentary can here be recommended to English readers
with quite such confidence as Professor Butcher’s _Poetics_. That of
E. M. Cope (3 vols., Cambridge, 1877), with a fourth, but earlier,
volume of Introduction (London, 1867), is extremely full and useful,
though the Germans (see Römer’s edition after Spengel, Pref., p.
xxxiv) scoff at its text. Dr Welldon’s translation is well spoken of:
and the old “Oxford” version, reprinted with some corrections in
Bohn’s Library, is not contemptible, while Hobbes’s “Brief” (or
Analysis), which accompanies it, is very valuable indeed. But here, as
elsewhere, he who neglects the original neglects it at his peril.
It is a mistake to force too much the bare meanings of words; but I
suppose one may, without much danger of controversy, take the bare
meaning of Rhetoric to be “speechcraft.” Now, it is not difficult to
prove that, in Aristotle’s time, speechcraft practically included the
whole of prose literature, if not the whole of literature. Poems were
recited; histories were read out; the entire course of scientific and
philosophic education and study went on by lecture or by dialogue. Nay,
it is perhaps not fanciful to point out that the very words for reading,
ἀναγιγνώσκω and ἐπιλέγομαι seem to represent it as at best a secondary
and parasitic process, a “going over again” of something previously said
and heard.[45]
Footnote 45:
Professor Butcher rather doubts this stress of mine on the
prepositions, and points out to me that ἐπιλέγομαι (in the sense of
reading) is almost exclusively Herodotean, and never established
itself generally in Greek. But he admits that the more usual
employment of ἀναγιγνώσκω for “reading _aloud_” bears on my point.
Yet though this is an important point, and has been rather too commonly
overlooked, it is no doubt inferior in gravity to the universally
recognised fact that the importance of speechcraft proper, of oratory,
was in Greece such as it is now only possible dimly to realise. Every
public and private right of the citizen depended upon his power to speak
or the power of somebody else to speak for him; a tongue-tied person not
only had no chance of rising in the State, but was liable to be
insulted, and plundered, and outraged in every way. To some it has
seemed that the great and almost fatal drawback to that Athenian life,
which in not a few ways was life in a sort of Earthly Paradise, was the
incessant necessity of either talking or being talked to. It was
therefore not in the least wonderful that the first efforts—those of the
Sicilian sophists (or others)—to reduce to something like theory the art
of composition, of arranging words effectively, should be directed to
_spoken_ words, and to spoken words more particularly under the
all-important conditions of the public meeting and the law court—by no
means neglecting the art of persuasion, as practicable in the Porch, or
the Garden, or the private supper-room. That prose literature—that all
literature—has for its object to give pleasure dawned later upon men.
Aristotle and persons much earlier than Aristotle—Corax and Tisias
themselves—would probably have acknowledged that prose, like poetry,
ought to please, but only as a further means to a further end,
persuasion. Its object was to make men _do_ something—pass or negative
such a law, bring in such a verdict, appoint such an officer, or (in the
minor cases) believe or disbelieve such a tenet, adopt or shun such a
course of conduct. Even in poetry, as we have seen, the ethical
preoccupation partly obscured the clear æsthetic doctrine—you were to be
purged as well as pleased, and pleased in order that you might be
purged. But in prose the pleasure became still more subsidiary,
ancillary, facultative. You were first of all to be “persuaded.”
Now, if this be taken as granted, and if, further, we keep in mind
Aristotle’s habit of sticking to the facts before him, we [Sidenote:
_The contents of the book._] shall not be in the least surprised to find
that the _Rhetoric_ contains a great deal of matter which has either the
faintest connection with literary criticism, or else no connection with
it at all. It is true that of the three subjects which the _Rhetoric_
treats, _pistis_ (means of persuasion), _lexis_ (style), and _taxis_
(arrangement), the second belongs wholly and the third very mainly to
our subject, while it would be by no means impossible for an ingenious
arguer to make good the position that _pistis_, with no extraordinary
violence of transition, may be laid at least under contribution for that
_attractive_ quality which all literature as a pleasure-giving art must
have. But in actual handling _Pistis_ has two out of the three books,
and is treated, as a rule, from a point of view which leaves matters
purely literary out of consideration altogether—"The Characteristics of
Audiences," “The Colours of Good and Evil,” “The Passions as likely to
exist in an Audience,” “The Material of Enthymeme” (the special
rhetorical syllogism), and so forth.
Only in the third book (which, by the way, is shorter than either of the
other two) do we get beyond these counsels to the advocate and the
public speaker, into the Higher Rhetoric which concerns all prose
literature and even some poetry. And even then we meet with a sort of
_douche_ of cold water which may not a little dash those who have not
given careful heed to the circumstances of the case.
Inquiry into the sources and means of persuasion (our author admits
graciously, but with a touch of superiority which, [Sidenote: _Attitude
to_ lexis.] as we shall see, accentuates itself later) does not quite
exhaust Rhetoric. It must also discuss style and arrangement. But style
is a modern thing, and, rightly considered, something _ad
captandum_.[46] Indeed Aristotle never seems to keep it quite clear from
mere elocution or delivery—from the art of the actor as
contradistinguished from that of the writer. He remarks that he has
dealt with style fully in his _Poetics_; and as he has certainly not
done so in the _Poetics_ which we have, this is an argument that they
are incomplete, though by no means that they are spurious. But it is
almost impossible to mistake the touch of patronage, not to say of
scorn, with which he deals with it here, and we need not doubt that, if
we had the other handling to which he refers, something of the same sort
would appear there. The fact is, that the Greeks of this period were
what we may call High-fliers; anything that had the appearance of being
“mechanical,” anything that seemed to subject the things of the spirit
to something not wholly of the spirit, they regarded with suspicion and
impatience, which rather suggests the objection of some theologians to
good works. Words, like colours, materials of sculpture and
architecture, and the like, were “filthy rags”; and if Aristotle’s
common-sense carried him a little less far in this direction than his
master Plato’s philosophical enthusiasm, it certainly carried him some
way.
Footnote 46:
Τὸ περὶ τὴν λέξιν ὀψὲ προῆλθεν· καὶ δοκεῖ φορτικὸν εἶναι, καλῶς
ὑπολαμβανόμενον. See note at end of chapter.
This same common-sense, however, seldom deserted him, and it makes
sometimes wholly for good, sometimes a little less [Sidenote:
_Vocabulary—"Figures"._] so, throughout the treatise. At the very outset
he commits himself to that definition of style as being first of all
_clear_—as giving the meaning of the writer—which has so often
captivated noble wits down to Coleridge’s time, and even since, but
which yet is clearly wrong, for “two and two make four” is the _a per
se_ of clearness, and there is uncommonly little style in it
notwithstanding. That he himself saw this objection cannot be doubted,
for he hastens to add[47] that it must be not only clear, but neither
too low nor too far above the subject, thus producing a useful and
perfectly just distinction between the styles of poetry and prose. And
then he gives us, as he had done in the _Poetics_, one of those
distinctions of his which are so valuable—the distinction of vocabulary
into what is κύριον or current (which conduces to clearness), and what
is ξένον or unfamiliar (which conduces to elevation). Let us note that
this, like the ἁμαρτία theory in the _Poetics_, is one of Aristotle’s
great critical achievements. But the note of greatness may perhaps be
discovered less in the attention which from this point he begins to pay
to Metaphor. Not of course that metaphor is not a very important thing;
but that the example of ticking it off in this fashion with a name
spread rapidly in Rhetoric, and became a mere nuisance. Even Quintilian,
who spoke words of wit and sense about the Greek mania for baptising new
Figures, submitted to them to some extent: and any one who wishes to
appreciate the need of Butler’s jest to the effect that
“all a rhetorician’s rules
Teach nothing but to name his tools,”
has no farther to look than to the portentous list at the end of
Puttenham’s _Art of Poetry_.
Footnote 47:
He had earlier, in the most grudging context, admitted that _lexis_
gives _character_ to a speech, that συμβάλλεται πολλὰ πρὸς τὸ φανῆναι
ποιόν τινα τὸν λόγον—a confession from which can be extracted, at
least in germ, all that a very fanatic of style need contend for.
Yet his cautions as to metaphors themselves, which he regards as the
chief means of embellishment in prose, are perfectly just and sound.
They must, he says, be selected with careful reference to the particular
effect intended to be produced, be euphonious, not far-fetched, and
drawn from beautiful objects.
Here, perhaps as well as in reference to any single passage in the
_Poetics_, we have an opportunity of considering for the [Sidenote: _A
difficulty._] first time a difficulty, not unexpected, not
uninteresting, which meets us, and which will recur frequently, in
ancient (and sometimes in the most modern) criticism. It is the
difficulty which so did please Locke and his followers in the attack on
the doctrine of Innate Ideas,—in other words, the difficulty of an
apparently hopeless difference of standard on points of taste—the
difference between Greek and modern love, between English and Hottentot
beauty. One should, says the philosopher, say ῥοδοδάκτυλος rather than
φοινικοδάκτυλος, while ἐρυθροδάκτυλος is the worst of all. The
commentators have tried to get out of the difficulty by suggesting that
the last suggests the redness of frost-bitten or domestically disfigured
fingers. φοινικοδάκτυλος would in the same way, I suppose, be considered
as objectionable because the colour is overcharged in the epithet, and
might even suggest “red-handed” in the sense of “bloodstained.” Yet one
may doubt whether Aristotle’s objection is based on anything but the
fact that Homer uses the one epithet, not the others. The verb ἐρυθριάω,
at any rate, is invariably used for blushing, not an unattractive or
unbeautiful proceeding by any means. And we shall find very much
stronger instances of this difficulty later.
The explanation is partly supplied by the very next section, which deals
with ψυχρότης and is one of the most valuable [Sidenote: “_Frigidity._”]
keys existing to the whole tone of Greek, indeed of classical,
criticism. It is rather unlucky that “frigidity,” our only equivalent,
is not quite clear to English ears. In fact, “fustian” comes nearest to
what is meant, though it is not completely adequate and coextensive. The
idea is not difficult to follow—it is that of something which is
intended to excite and inflame the auditor or reader, while in fact it
leaves him cold, if it does not actually lower his spiritual
temperature. Aristotle gives four cases, or (which is nearly the same
thing) four kinds of it—words excessively compounded, foreign terms, too
emphatic or minute epithets, and improper metaphors. To these, as
generalities, few would object, but the instances are sometimes
decidedly puzzling. Lycophron (the sophist, not the poet) is blamed for
calling the heavens πολυπρόσωπον (“many-visaged”), the earth
μεγαλοκόρυφον (“mightily mountain-topped”), and the shore στενοπόρον
(“leaving a narrow passage between cliff and sea”). Now, perhaps these
terms are too poetical, yet we should hardly call them frigid, for they
are not untrue to nature, and they not only show thought and imagination
in the writer, but excite both in the reader. Still, they are all
slightly _excessive_; they pass measure, as do other things blamed in
Alcidamas and Gorgias still more.
The second objection is of still greater interest, because it has
practically supplied a shibboleth in the Classic-Romantic debate
[Sidenote: _Archaism._] up to the present moment. It is the objection to
archaic, foreign, and otherwise inusitate words, which Aristotle seems
to apply even to Homeric terms, not as poetic but as obsolete, just as
other good persons in times nearer our own have applied the same to
Chaucerisms and the like. The sounder doctrine, of course, is that
_nullum tempus occurrit regi_ in this transferred sense also—that what
the old kings of literature have stamped remains current for ever, and
what the new kings of literature stamp takes currency at once.
Almost as interesting is the third punishment-cell, in which epithets
too long, too many, or out of place are bestowed. The [Sidenote: _Stock
epithet and periphrasis._] two habits which seem to be mainly aimed at
here (Alcidamas is still the chief awful example) are the use in prose
of the poetical perpetual epithet (“white milk” is the example chosen)
and the undue tendency to periphrasis, which, curiously enough, reminds
one of the besetting sin of the extreme “Classical” school of the last
century.
Most puzzling of all are the examples pilloried for impropriety in the
fourth class, the unfortunate Alcidamas being rebuked for calling
philosophy “the intrenchment of law,” and [Sidenote: _False metaphor._]
the Odyssey a “mirror of human life.” The most, thoroughgoing
Aristotelians have given up this last criticism with an acknowledgment
that ancient and modern tastes differ; while Mr Cope even suggests that
Aristotle “winked,” not nodded, when he wrote the whole passage. I do
not so easily figure to myself a winking Stagirite.
In the chapter on Simile which follows there is much that is sensible,
but nothing that is surprising—the relation of simile [Sidenote:
_Simile._] and metaphor being the main point. One’s expectations are
more raised in coming to the great subject of “purity” of
style—"Hellenising," “writing Greek.” This phrase, in our author, is
directed against something corresponding rather to the French “fautes de
Français” than to our “not English,” having regard to the syntax, the
sentence-building, [Sidenote: “_Purity._”] rather than to the actual
diction. But it differs from both in having, like so much of his
criticism, more to do with matter than form. In fact, it has been well
observed that “Perspicuity” rather than “Purity” is really the subject
of the chapter. It is, however, of great importance, and the next, on
Elevation, or Grandeur, or Dignity, is [Sidenote: “_Elevation._”] of
greater still. Some slight difficulty may occur at starting with the
word thus variously rendered in English, ὄγκος. In its non-rhetorical
use, the word (which strictly means “bulk,” with the added notion of
weight) inclines rather to an unfavourable signification, often
signifying “pretentiousness,” “pomposity”: it is sometimes used later in
Rhetoric itself with such a meaning; and I think those who compare the
earlier passage on Frigidity will be inclined to suspect that Aristotle
himself was not using it entirely _honoris causa_. He gives, however,
some hints for its attainment, and a bundle of instances, where our
ignorance of the context makes the illustrative power somewhat small.
Next we come to that quality of τὸ πρέπον, “the becoming,” “propriety,”
which is commonly and not wrongly taken to be [Sidenote: _Propriety._]
the special note of “classical” writing. And we have rules for its
attainment, some ethical rather than æsthetic, some æsthetic enough but
curiously arbitrary, as that unusual words are not appropriate _except
to_ a person in a state of excitement. At the close there is an
interesting glance at the irony of Gorgias and of Socrates.
The next division is one of the very _apices_ of the whole. It deals
with that subject of the rhythm of prose which, though [Sidenote: _Prose
rhythm._] (as we see from Quintilian as well as from Aristotle) never
neglected by the ancients, is one of the most difficult parts of their
critical Rhetoric for us to understand, and (perhaps for that reason)
has been, till the last hundred years or so, strangely neglected in the
criticism of modern languages.
We see from its very opening words that the great distinctions between
verse and prose literature on the one hand, and between literary and
non-literary composition on the other, had been already hit upon. Prose
style, says he, must be neither _emmetron_ nor _arrhythmon_—that is to
say, it must not have metre nor lack rhythm. But he does not very
accurately define the difference between these things; and it cannot be
said that any of his commentators and successors have supplied this
defect, though it is easy enough to do so.[48] He, however, allows feet
if not metre in prose, and proceeds to inquire what feet will do, making
observations on the subject which are in the three degrees of obscurity
to all who are not fond of guessing. Dactylic, iambic, and trochaic
rhythms are dismissed for various reasons, rather bad than good—it not
having apparently struck the critic that all these arrange themselves
too _easily_, certainly, and definitely into metre. He pitches finally
on the pæan, a foot which, though admissible in those Greek choric
measures which are a sort of compromise between prose and poetry, at
once reveals its suitableness for prose in modern languages by the fact
that it is unsuitable for modern verse. The pæan or pæon is a
tetrasyllabic foot, consisting of three short syllables and a long one,
of which in strictness there may be four varieties, the long syllable
being admissible in any of the four places. But Aristotle only admits
two, with the long syllable in the first and fourth place respectively.
And here, most tantalisingly, he breaks off.
Footnote 48:
Metre being neither more nor less than definitely _recurrent_ rhythm,
first within the line, then in corresponding lines.