PREFACE.

It is perhaps vain to attempt to tone down the audacity of the present essay by any explanations or limitations; it is certain that those who are offended by it at first blush are very unlikely to be propitiated by excuses of the faults which, excusably or inexcusably, it no doubt contains. The genesis of it is as follows. When, not much less than thirty years ago, the writer was first asked to undertake the duty of a critic, he had naturally to overhaul his own acquaintance with the theory and practice of criticism, and to inquire what was the acquaintance of others therewith. The disconcerting smallness of the first was a little compensated by the discovery that very few persons seemed to be much better furnished. Dr Johnson’s projected “History of Criticism, as it relates to Judging of Authours” no doubt has had fellows in the great library of books unwritten. But there were then, and I believe there are still, only two actual attempts to deal with the whole subject. One of these[1] I have never seen, and indeed had

vinever heard of till nearly the whole of the present volume was written. Moreover, it seems to be merely a torso. The other, Théry’s Histoire des Opinions Littéraires,[2] a book which, after two editions at some interval, has been long out of print, is a work of great liveliness, no small knowledge, and, in its airy French kind, a good deal of acuteness. But the way in which “Critique Arabe,” “Critique Juive,” &c., are knocked off in a page or a paragraph at one end, and the way in which, at the other—though the second edition was published when Mr Arnold was just going to write, and the first when Coleridge, and Hazlitt, and Lamb had already written—the historian knows of nothing English later than Campbell and Blair, are things a little disquieting. At any rate, neither of these was then known to me, and I had, year by year, to pick up for myself, and piece together, the greater and lesser classics of the subject in a haphazard and groping fashion.

This volume—which will, fortune permitting, be followed by a second dealing with the matter from the Renaissance to the death of eighteenth-century Classicism, and by a third on Modern Criticism—is an attempt to supply for others, on the basis of these years of reading, the Atlas of which the writer himself so sorely felt the need. He may have put elephants for towns, he may have neglected important rivers and mountains, like a general from the point of view of a newspaper correspondent, or a newspaper correspondent from the point of view of a general; but he has done what he could.

The book, the plan of which was accepted by my publishers some five or six years ago, before I was appointed to the Chair which I have the honour to hold, has been delayed in its composition, viipartly by work previously undertaken, partly by professional duties. But it has probably not been injured by the necessity of reading, for these duties, some four or five times over again, the Poetics and the Rhetoric, the Institutes and the Περὶ Ὕψους,, the De Vulgari Eloquio and the Discoveries, the Essay of Dramatic Poesy and the Preface to Lyrical Ballads.

I do not know whether some apology may be expected from a man whom readers, if they know him at all, are likely to know only as a student of modern literature, for the presumption of making his own translations from Greek and Latin. But when one has learnt these languages for twelve or fifteen years, taught them for eight more, and read them for nearly another five-and-twenty, it seems rather pusillanimous to take cover behind “cribs.” I have aimed throughout rather at closeness than at elegance. An apology of another kind may be offered for the biographical and lexicographical details which, at the cost of some trouble, have been incorporated in the Index. Everybody has not a classical dictionary at hand, and probably few people have a full rhetorical lexicon. Yet it was inevitable, in a book of this kind, that a large number of persons, books, and words should be introduced, as to the date, the contents, the meaning of which or of whom, the ordinary reader might require some enlightenment. Information of the sort would have made the text indigestible and

have overballasted the notes; so I have put it in the Index, where those who do not want it need not seek it, and where those who seek will, I hope, find.

It only remains to thank, with a heartiness not easily to be expressed, the friends who have been good enough to read my proofs and to give me the benefit of their special knowledge. Not always does the restless explorer of literature at large who, knowing that here also “the merry world is round And viii[he] may sail for evermore,” elects to be a world-wanderer, receive, from the legitimate authorities of the ports into which he puts, a genuine welcome, cheerful victualling, and assistance in visiting the adjacent provinces. Sometimes they fire into him, sometimes they deny him food and water, often they look upon him as a filibuster, or an interloper, or presumptuous. But Professor Butcher, Professor Hardie, and Professor Ker, who have had the exceeding kindness to read each the portion of this volume which belongs to him more specially of right, have not only given me invaluable suggestions and corrections, but have even encouraged me to hope that my treatment, however far it may fall short of what is desirable, is not grossly

and impudently inadequate. May all other competent persons be equally lenient!

Edinburgh, Lammastide 1900.

Since this book was first printed, I have remembered that the story about Malatesta and the bones (note, p. 124) is told by Mr Symonds in more than one place (e.g., The Revival of Learning, new ed., p. 151) of Gemistus Pletho, the well-known Grecian and Platonist, whose appearance in Italy so much excited Humanism. This is, for many reasons, much more probable; but the mistake of “Themistius,” if mistake it be, is not mine but Dindorf’s, or rather that of Keyssler, from whom Dindorf quotes an account of the matter, and an apparently literal transcript of the inscription. Some minor emendations have been made in this edition, but it has been thought better to place the major corrections of fact and explanations of meaning in the second volume, in order that all possessors of the book may be equally furnished with these.

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 |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 4side-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 |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 |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 |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 5they 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 |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 6of the margent would distinctly obscure the orderly setting forth of the texts.

Yet, further, leave will be taken to neglect guesswork as |"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 |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?

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 7altogether, and to reduce even the amount of superstructure on |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 |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,|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 |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 8in 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 |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.

1. Delia Critica, Libri Tre. B. Mazzarella, Geneva, 1866. The book to which I owe my knowledge of this, Professors Gayley and Scott’s Introduction to the Methods and Materials of Literary Criticism, Boston, U.S.A., 1899, is invaluable as a bibliography, and has much more than merely bibliographical interest.

2. Ed. 2, Paris, 1849. The first edition may have appeared between 1830 and 1840. Vapereau says 1844, which would strengthen my point in the text; but this does not seem to agree with the Preface of the second.

3. Paris. Third Edition, #1887.