INTERCHAPTER I.
We have endeavoured, in the foregoing Book, to survey—from the actual texts, and admitting no conjectural or theoretical reconstruction—the history of literary criticism in Greece and the Greek Empire till its fall. It is our duty in this first halt to survey this survey—to see what results it actually gives us, to classify and arrange them, to account for them as philosophically as possible, and, without digressing into the quicksands of theory, to lay down the solid road of logical and historical perspective.
We have seen that criticism in Greece began from two different sources, neither of which, perhaps, was, or could have been expected to be, likely to supply it in an absolutely unmixed condition. There was, in the first place, the strong Greek philosophising tendency, working upon the earliest documents (the most important, then as now, identified with the name of Homer), and subjecting them to processes which oftenest took the form of a kind of rationalising allegory. The second was the invention, for more or less practical purposes, of the art of Rhetoric or Persuasive Composition. As, in the first place, the collection of written literature was very small, and as the oratorical character impressed itself more or less strongly upon nearly all literature in the process of publication, this dominance of Oratory was long maintained, and continued, almost to the latest times, to prevent Rhetoric from assuming its proper etymological position as “speech-craft” in the widest sense, as the art of artificially arranged language.
But this inconvenience, always more or less existing, was mitigated by practice in divers ways. As actual literature, both prose and verse, mustered and multiplied, and as it was more and more enjoyed by the keen Greek appetite for pleasures of all kinds, it at the same time presented more and more temptation to the equally keen Greek aptitude for philosophical inquiry. Larger and larger treasuries were made available for quotation and imitation; more and more kinds of literature were presented to the student for investigation, classification, inquiry into sources, methods, effects. And so after a century, or a century and a half, of progress and exercise, of which little remains to us except the brilliant, but from this point of view wayward, work of Plato, we are confronted, in the work of Aristotle, with an Art of Poetry, incomplete in certain ways, but singularly mature in its own way, with an Art of Prose which, though it has not yet by any means recognised its real nature and estate, and persists in regarding itself as an Art of Persuasion merely, has yet accumulated many valuable observations, and has made the paths of future investigators fairly straight and smooth.
While, however, the oratorical preoccupation prevented Rhetoric from attaining the development which might otherwise have been expected, both Rhetoric and Poetics were very seriously obstructed by the unequal growth of literary kinds within Greek itself, and by the absence of any other literature with which to compare such kinds as existed, and by which to discern the absence of those that did not exist. The whole of Greek Poetic was prejudicially affected—and the affection has continued to be a source of evil in all criticism since—by the accidental lateness of prose fiction in Greek literature; just as the whole of Greek Rhetoric was prejudicially affected by the accidental predominance of Greek oratory. The habit—in the main a sound one—of generalising from the actual facts, led to very arbitrary theories of more literary kinds than one. It was assumed that what we may call “periodic” Epic was the only kind; and Romance, which may be very fairly called a “loose” Epic, was barred as improper. Still more was the same distinction ignored in drama; where a single, though in its way very perfect, form of Tragedy was arbitrarily assumed to be the only one possible or permissible. So the accidental and easily separable extravagances and licences of the Ancient Comedy were allowed to obscure its merits, and depress its rank, in the eyes of the critic. Lyric—perhaps the very highest of all literary kinds, as it must be the oldest, and is the most perennial—became a mere appendage to tragedy. The great kind of History, in which Greece had already produced such magnificent examples, was in the same way regarded as a sort of baggage-waggon to oratorical Rhetoric; and the dialogic form which was preferred in philosophy, partly owing to the habits of the nation, and partly owing to the towering eminence of Plato, was in the same way, or much the same way, allowed or forced to attach itself to the same train.
But these mischiefs, though sufficiently considerable, and assisted by the ignorance (changed latterly in the worse days to a contemptuous ignoring) of other languages, were by no means the equals of those caused directly by this ignorance, while they were aggravated by it in every way. If, while we are certainly not superior to the ancients in most branches of literature, where comparison is possible, we may challenge them more safely in criticism, it is due almost, if not quite wholly, to what has been called the illegitimate advantage of our possession of an infinitely larger stock of accumulated literature, and of the fact that this literature is distributed over the most various times, nations, and languages. It is the rarest thing at any time to find a critic of the first class who is not acquainted with literatures besides his own; and it is almost invariable to find that the mistakes which great critics make arise out of ignorance or forgetfulness of other literatures besides their own. But even in antiquity there is no critic of, or approaching, this first class, except Aristotle, who suffered the full exposure to this disability. As a “tongue of comparison” Longinus knew Latin: Dionysius and Quintilian, who, if not critics of the first class, are not far off it, knew, the one Latin, the other Greek. But Aristotle (unless the legends about Alexander having sent him Indian communications have any basis, and unless we take the references of Plato and others to Egyptian stories as having much more solid ground than there is any reason to accord them) had none, and could have had none: while, even if he had been stocked with Egyptian and Sanscrit, these would have done him but little good, though they might have corrected his delusions as to the necessary connection of poetry and fiction. It must always be reckoned as one of the most fatal proofs of the literary inferiority of the Roman genius that the younger literature, though it enjoyed the bilingual advantage to the full, made so little advance on the older in criticism.
For the three centuries between Aristotle and Dionysius we are but ill provided with original texts. But both from what we have, and from such notices as are trustworthy, we can be tolerably sure that attention was almost entirely devoted, on the one side to the verbal or material criticism of the Alexandrian and Pergamene schools, on the other to technical Rhetoric. Now the former, though a most necessary ancilla to literary appreciation proper, is always to be kept in proper subordination to her mistress; and the conditions of the latter, though in one sense favourable to criticism (inasmuch as the stock of actual literature was always increasing, and the temptation to turn to it from mere declamation-making might at least be expected to be always stronger), was in itself becoming more and more a futile technique. Symbouleutic oratory (above vestry rank) was killed and kept dead by the petty tyrants, the less successors of Alexander, and lastly the Roman rule. Judicial Rhetoric tended to confine itself to minor causes. Only Epideictic, the most dangerous of the kinds, began to flourish more and more, and resulted by degrees, as we have seen, in the creation of a singular profession or pseudo-profession, the members of which had about them something of the travelling lecturer, something of the popular preacher, something—nay, a good deal—of the hack book-maker, and not a little of the journalist pure and simple. Their own study of literature, unless they kept to the stock passages of the textbooks, must have been fairly thorough; but literature was to them partly what Burton’s Anatomy was to Captain Shandon, a mere dictionary of quotations, partly a collection of patterns. Very rarely did they take it by itself even for the canvas of one of their show-orations, and when they did it was seldom or never from the point of view of appreciation of strictly literary beauty.
For about half a century before and a century after the Christian era the record, even putting Latin criticism aside altogether, is a more distinct one. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Plutarch, and Dion Chrysostom, give us a good deal more material than we have yet had. But the results of the inspection of it are not wholly satisfactory. Dionysius of Halicarnassus is, as has been said, perhaps our typical specimen of the literary critic of antiquity. He has far less force and method and originality than Aristotle; but then he is a student confining himself to Rhetoric and History, not a world-philosopher, taking up the philosophy of literature merely as part of a whole. He has far less genius than Longinus; but he is also far more copiously preserved. We read him with respect; we meet just and acute observations in him, we can even occasionally compliment him on something like (never quite) the “grasp” of the comic fragment. But he is still partly under the limitations of his technical rhetoric, partly under others less easy to describe exactly; and he neglects Latin literature, by his time a very considerable entity. He cannot wholly bring himself to regard literature as literature. With Plutarch the case is much worse, for it is evident that he will not do this at all. It is an educating and ethical influence; a convenient storehouse of fact and example; a respectable profession; but not a great, a sovereign, and an infinitely delightful art. As for Dion (the most literary of the pure rhetoricians, and a favourable example of them), he is only an entertainer, the showman of another art, which is not quite coarse, but is certainly not in the highest sense fine. Lucian, somewhat later, is a true artist, a true man of letters, and occasionally a critic, endowed with unerring eyes and the very Sword of Sharpness itself,[itself,] but he is this only at times, and even at those times he is too negative.
If we advance a little in point of time and turn our attention to the strict teaching and practice of Rhetoric itself, from the second century onward, and probably backward almost to the very time of Aristotle, the spectacle is even less satisfactory. The work, of which Hermogenes and Aphthonius are the coryphæi, leading an innumerable chorus of followers and commentators, who continue for more than a thousand years, is not exactly contemptible work. Work conducted with extreme diligence and also, at any rate in some cases, with remarkable alertness and acuteness of mind, can never be wholly contemptible. But it is work disappointing, unsatisfying, and even irritating to the last degree. The technical Rhetoric, always arbitrarily limited in subject and perversely conventional in method, has practically lost all chance of exercising itself in the noblest of its three divisions. Deliberative oratory is dead, except in exercises and make-believes, and the bread-winning chicanery of forensic, the frivolities (hollow except as also bread-winning) of epideictic, have usurped the whole room. It might be thought that in this bereaved condition the art would bethink itself of that profitable, dignified and delightful application which it had always more or less directly practised, but which had seemed less dignified than Persuasion—the art of literary criticism proper. But it does nothing—or but little—of the kind. The remarks of Hermogenes on Frigidity are not bad; the doubtful Demetrius, in his study of Interpretation, is not far from the true kingdom others approach it here and there. The invention of that critical “lingo,” to which reference has more than once been made, is something, though a something liable to abuse, and capable of standing in the way of better things. But, on the whole, the endless procession of some fifty generations, from the author of the Rhet. ad Alex. to John of Sicily, busies itself either on the one hand with endless distinctions, systematisations, and terminologies, with everlastingly twining strands of new colour into the rope that lets down the bucket into the empty well, and varying the staves and hoops of the bucket itself; or on the other with the provision of cut-and-dried patterns for the use of the brainless, with telling tongue-tied sophists what they are to say at the funeral of a fifth cousin, and how to make the most of a harbour which is dry for three-quarters of every tide.
Amidst all this desert and chaos of wasted industry there stands the great rock of the Περὶ Ὕψους with its shade and refreshment in the weary land of its own contemporaries, and with its brow catching the dawn which was not to shine fully for more than fifteen hundred years, and is hardly noon-day yet. In the section devoted to it we have examined, as thoroughly as our limits permitted, the special merits and defects of this great little book; it is only necessary here to lay a slight additional stress on the fact that if it be not the sole book of antiquity—the sole book, except Dante’s, of antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the earlier modern times—to set forth that critical ideal which comprehends the formal and the material, the verbal and the ideal merits of literature, it exhibits this comprehension as no other book does. To confine ourselves to our present special subject—the criticism of Greek antiquity—Plato may alternate noble flights with curious crotchets about literature; Aristophanes may criticise from the point of view of robust common-sense which is yet not in the least Philistine; Aristotle may have almost a mathematical grasp of his own notions of form, and a generous enthusiasm for certain kinds of dignity in subject and proportion; Dionysius may show that adherence to technique (and a rather vicious technique too) is quite compatible with genuine literary appreciation. But all these, and much more others, have their eyes mainly off the object. Aristotle himself at times, lesser men like Plutarch, who have misread their Plato, continually, seem to think it rather vain to look at that object at all. The intelligent enjoyment of literature; the intimacy with it, at once voluptuous and intellectual; the untiring, though it may be never fully satisfied, quest after the secret of its charms, never neglecting the opportunity of basking and revelling in them—these things, till we come to Longinus, are rare indeed. And when we do meet them, the rencontre is of a sort of accidental and shamefaced character. When we come to Longinus there is no more false modesty. “Beautiful words are the light of thought.” These words themselves are the lantern of criticism.
Elsewhere it gleams more faintly; though it would be as ungrateful as it would be Philistine to ignore the debt which we owe to others, from Aristotle himself downwards. It is characteristic of Greek criticism—and it is the secret of its weakness as well as of its strength—that it is more busy with kinds than with authors, with authors than with books. And when it is busy with authors at all, it is hardly ever busy with them as wholes, as phenomena occupying an individual place in the literary cosmos; but almost always as examples of this or that quality, as supplying illustrations of this or that Figure, as giving a good pattern for such-and-such a progymnasma, a model for dealing with such-and-such a stasis. Proceeding in this way, criticism attempts—and fails—to be scientific; it renounces its right to be artistic, and effects the renunciation. The individual ethos of the poet, the more solid but not less individual ethos of the proseman, flies off and melts away, when each is merely regarded as an example of “todetes” or “tallotes” as a lecturer’s cabinet, in which you put your hand to draw out an illustration of Anadiplosis or Palillogia. Almost may the most idealist of metaphysical students think of turning to sheer Hobbism, of blaspheming “nesses and tudes and ties,” when he sees them dragged in and abused after this fatal fashion, which even Aristotle does not wholly escape, and in which others indulge as if it were their sole and legitimate business.
It follows that, except for the stock contrast of Herodotus and Thucydides, in respect of the Orators (the exception being there due to an obvious reason), and to a less extent of the Three Tragedians, we have very few studies at once comprehensive and comparative of authors in Greek, and that, out of Longinus, such studies as we have are scrappy, technical, and altogether lacking in that critical συνάρπασμα which the great locus of Simylus requires. There is really no second passage in Greek which can be put alongside of the Longinian estimate of the Iliad and the Odyssey, agree or disagree as we may with the details of this.
Another and a very important matter (which it is fairer and more philosophical to call rather a defect of our understanding than a defect of the matter presented to it) lies in that impossibility of attaining the Greek standpoint as to certain rhythmical and verbal matters, which has been more than once glanced at, and which is instanced in the case of Longinus himself. Few among the wiser even of those who have paid special attention to the subjects of Greek music and Greek pronunciation would, I think, assert, that they thoroughly understand the passages relating to prose rhythm, and the special suitableness of the cretic and some of the pæons as the base-feet for it. And it is practically admitted by most sober and well-instructed critics that both Aristotle and Longinus make strictures upon things as “frigid” and in bad taste, that they ostracise metaphors and ban conceits which to any modern criticism (putting aside mere assentation) seem perfectly harmless, if not positively admirable. The same thing occurs in English and French to this day, although in this case all the difficulties which beset us in relation to Greek disappear, except the radical difference of national (not now even of temporal) ear and brain. A phrase of Bossuet, which seems to French ears even of to-day the ne plus ultra of majestic melody, will strike very well-instructed Englishmen as a rhetorical jingle and French critics of enthusiasm and enlightenment will see no difference between the music of Moore and that of Shelley, or rather prefer the former. In the other sphere, what is to an Englishman a piece of dry humour will appear to a Frenchman a saugrenu monstrosity; and a Frenchman’s ideal of manly eloquence, dignified or passionate as the case may be, will seem to an Englishman to show nothing but the maudlin pathos of a drunkard, or the petulant braggadocio of a child. Yet here there are innumerable side-lights, a long course of partially identical history, literature, and religion, the experience of persons of both nations who have lived in and with the other, to guide us. No wonder that, when we have none of these things, we should be puzzled. Yet the quarrel, such as it is, with the Greek critics, is not so much that their estimates, low or high, differ from ours, as that they have given us so few documents from their own side to help out the contrast. Even one essay, on both the literatures, by a Greek to set over against the invaluable survey by Quintilian would be not merely something for which we could gladly exchange most of the Greek writers on Rhetoric, except Aristotle, but something in consideration of which we would gladly read all these writers, and make no complaint of them. As it is, we have to go to Photius, a representative of a time and thought far more alien from those of the Greeks proper than is Quintilian himself, for full review of even Greek writers, and he also is silent about Latin.
But “something sealed the mouths of these Evangelists.” It is perhaps not unphilosophical to think that this silence was the price the world had to pay for the confident and magnificent advance which it made under the guidance of the Greek genius. If that genius had been less confident, if it had assumed less cavalierly that no other literature could be worth taking into account, if it had hesitated and faltered about systematising boldly whatever had been produced by itself, and allowing everything else (if anything else existed) to go κατ’ οὖρον, what we have would probably not have been vouchsafed to us. And in that case we should, as probably, never have made up the loss. The estimable but not wise persons who try to make out that the undoubtedly rich and great languages and literatures of Modern Europe can supply substitutes for those of Greece and Rome overlook, ignore, or perhaps are honestly ignorant of, the fact that the very strong points of these modern languages and literatures, their Romantic ebb and flow, their uncertainty, their complaisance to the vagaries of the individual, their lack of logical system and ordonnance, make it impossible that they should ever give us the principles of fixity which we find in the Classical tongues. Those of us who, far more by chance and good fortune than by any deliberate and virtuous proairesis, happen to be acquainted pretty equally with both Ancient and Modern Literature, know that neither will do alone, but that for the education both of the world at large and of any epoch of it, the Ancient is even more necessary than the Modern.
Some idea of the positive extent of our debts to Greek is necessary to this history, though a résumé of them is no easy thing to give. In the first place has to be reckoned the laying of the foundations of mere grammar—the preliminary to every kind of graphica lexis. This must have been done pretty early, and there is no language in the literary record with which it could be done for the first time to so much advantage as with Greek.[Greek.] Some languages, as Latin and its daughter French, have a sort of peddling tendency to purely arbitrary rule, and to enforced observance of it. Others, the chief example of which is English, have had too haphazard a history, and are too much of ingrained rebels to strict convention, to admit of elaborate grammar, despite the athletic attempts which are sometimes made to discover it in them. Between these two, Greek presents not so much the happy mean as the consummate union of all the best qualities. It evidently possessed, from the remotest time at which we have any traces of literature, an innate sense of proportion and grammatical symmetry to guide it, first into unconscious and then into conscious symmetry of accidence and syntax, besides a native melody at once sweet, vigorous, and disciplined, which made it the ideal raw material for prosody. On the other hand, the intense philosophical spirit of the Greeks, and their love of liberty, saved them from the hard and fast irrationality of the grammars of some languages, and from the tendency, not merely to make arbitrary rules, but to insist on their observance with absolute rigidity. The result was a grammar which to this day is the pattern grammar of the world—as flexible as it is symmetrical, as intelligently free as it is philosophically policed,—an eternal harmony of idiom and rule.
We have glanced in the above paragraph at Prosody, but something more must be said on this head, for the debt of literary criticism to Greek in this respect is almost the mightiest item of the total account. The mathematical element, which distinguishes this part of Grammar, enables a people with a suitable language, and a sufficient stock of experiments in it, to discover something much more like a universal calculus than is possible in Accidence and Syntax; and the Greeks discovered this. Prosody is a science which, in its pure, though of course not in its applied, divisions, as regards strictly metrical writing, they practically found out once for all.
There are systems of rhythm—early Latin probably, early Teutonic certainly—to which this prosody does not apply, except partially, if it applies at all. But all poetries that depend upon metre—that is to say, on the arrangement of equivalenced syllabic values in certain recurring orders—are governed by the laws which the Greeks discovered, and which the Greeks exemplified. On this side, therefore (and it is a most important side), the literary critic owes them everything. They have furnished him with every tool that he requires for taking to pieces the mechanism of the Ancient Mariner, as well as of the choruses, of the Agamemnon, of the odes of Hugo as well as of those of Pindar, of the Nordsee of Heine as of the fragments of Sappho and Alcæus. And it is not at all improbable that if we possessed more of their work on prose rhythm, that subject also, and the kindred one of the so-called accentual rhythms of Latin and early Teutonic verse, would be almost as much facilitated.
When we pass beyond these elements and come to the general subject of Rhetoric (which, it must be remembered, in at least some places is recognised as covering the whole of graphica lexis) and Poetics, the advances in both departments, but especially in the latter, are still very great, if not so great proportionately. We have only one poetical kind—that of Tragedy, as understood by the Greeks themselves, and practised by the three great tragedians—which has been subjected to a thorough critical examination in extant text. But then this examination is so thorough that, in reference to the particular kind, hardly anything has been added since. We have, in reference to the capital example of another kind, Epic (again as understood by the Greeks), a large variety of treatments, from Aristotle to Longinus, which, if they do not give as firm and systematic a theory of this as of the former, yet go far towards doing so. Of the remaining divisions of poetry we learn, it must be confessed, less from the Greeks; and even in examples we are, except in so far as the Ode and the Idyl are concerned, very lamentably ill supplied. But in the one case, as in the other, the fragments are precious. And it may in such a book as the present, be pardonable once more to point to the feather in the cap of Criticism furnished by the fact that, but for two critics, we should be destitute of these two great lyrics of Sappho which, outside the contents of drama, are the crown and flower of Greek lyrical poetry.
In prose the same complete examination was only given, and, in the special conditions so often referred to, could only have been given, to one, and that the least important of all the divisions of prose literature—to Oratory. Oratory is, after all, the prose literature of the savage. It is in no degree a contradiction to this that it should have reached its highest pitches at periods which were not at all savage—in the palmy days of Athens, in the agony of the Republic at Rome, in the England of the eighteenth century—for it is scarcely necessary to take into account the one period of modern times when savagery ruled once more supreme, the French Revolution, though Oratory certainly did then share the shameful throne. This confirms the doctrine just laid down simpliciter, the others confirm it indirectly. In the great age of Greece savagery was passing; but the efforts of civilisation were directed to making perfect what the savage ages had regarded as most important. The whole condition of Roman life tended to support oratory. And in eighteenth-century England it so happened that poetry was in abeyance; prose fiction was making its way half in the dark; history was but just rising and philosophy, though still much cultivated, had not got out of the strangling grasp of Locke. Even if these propositions be disputable, the fact of the predominance of oratory in Greece is not,[not,] nor is the thoroughness (surpassing even that of the treatment of tragedy) which was accorded to its study.
Inadequate, however, as was the treatment of prose kinds in general by the Greeks, even with such examples before them as Plato and Thucydides and Herodotus, they did treat them: and their treatment of the main critical aspects of prose was, if not always well directed, even more searching and thorough than their treatment of verse. They did not neglect rhythm as it was neglected, with rare exceptions, by all modern criticism till recently. They bestowed upon prose diction much of the sometimes to us not fully intelligible, but constantly fruitful, care which they had also bestowed on the diction of poetry. They hit at once on the great fundamental principle—that while ordinary language breeds clearness, language of an unfamiliar character (from whatever source that unfamiliarity may be derived) breeds the power of striking—which again not all modern critics, nor even the majority of modern critics, seem to have been able to grasp. And then they hit upon the Figures.
A good deal of evil—too much some may think—has here been spoken of the Figures: it will, at any rate, dispense us from saying any more in this place, though the occasion for doing so may recur. But the good of them as an exercise—as, in the language of their own curious technique, a progymnasma—cannot be exaggerated. Short of the merest rote-work, the consideration of them, the realisation of what they meant, the investigations necessary to refer to one or the other head the phrases of the great writers, were all of them critical processes, the defect rather than the excess of which is to be reproached upon most modern criticism. Exclaim as we may against the practice of ticketing a peculiarity of style as if it were an atom, scientifically isolated, foreordained from the creation of things, and merely gathered and applied by the writer—yet it required at least some exercise of the pure critical spirit to separate this atom, consider it, class it. Figure-hunting and figure-shaping may have been aberrations of the critical spirit, but they showed that spirit: they may have led too many to acquiesce in mere terminology, but they showed the way to something very different from any such acquiescence.
If, finally, we turn to the results of Greek criticism as applied to Greek authors, we come to a region necessarily of doubt, if not exactly of dread. The preoccupations of the writers in various directions, which have already been mentioned, and the occasional difficulty of placing ourselves at their point of view, make the necessary adjustments difficult, but they do not make them hopeless.
In Homeric criticism, the oldest, the largest, and in some respects at least the most interesting department of the whole subject, we find less difference from somewhat similarly situated bodies of criticism in other times than might be expected by some—as little as might be expected by others. As with Shakespeare, as with Dante, as with Cervantes, as with Molière, we find a vast body of unintelligent, if respectable, plodding, and of futile, if occasionally ingenious, crotchet and hypothesis. As in those cases, we find the phenomenon, curious if it were not so familiar, of a sort of personal partisanship or antipathy—two things the most unfavourable to criticism, yet the most frequently found in connection with it.[[275]] What we do not find, in any satisfactory measure, is literary criticism, pure and simple. The critics are constantly drawn away to side questions, after a fashion which is only more excusable than similar conduct in modern times because of the very different relations in which Homer stood to the Greeks. We have talked (Heaven knows!) nonsense enough about Shakespeare as it is. How much more should we have talked if he had been at once the oldest and greatest of our men of letters, the most ancient literary repository of our history, and a kind of Scripture, a religious document, as well? To the Greek Homer was all this, and more than all this. To the student of language he presented the oldest literary exponent of it, to the lover of poetry the admittedly sovereign poet. But neither could bring himself to regard him merely in these lights. The Greeks cared less than the Romans, and very much less than most modern nations, for personal genealogy;[genealogy;] the personal grudge and jealousy which is the ugliest feature of the Greek character, but which is probably inseparable from small democratic societies, made too strongly against this. Very rarely do we find in Greeks any of the feeling which made Romans cherish the notion of being descended from the fabulous companions of Æneas, and from the perhaps not fully historical heroes of the monarchy and the early republic—which, to this day, makes all, save foolish fanfarons of freedom from prejudice, rejoice in the possession, or regret the absence, of a Crusading ancestor. On the other hand, local patriotism and local pride were as notoriously strong in the Greek breast; and to the latest periods we find, not merely Homer but even Herodotus, treated exclusively as if they were stores of flattering or unflattering particulars about the critic’s birthplace and its history. Again, most Greeks were religious, if not quite in our way, and almost all Greeks were interested in philosophy. With religious and even with philosophical questions Homer had been for ages (even at the beginning of the bulk of the literature that we have) so intimately associated that few could disentangle themselves from the associations. If we refuse to remember that the questions discussed resemble rather the questions of Original Sin, or of Innate Ideas, than those of Classic and Romantic, it may astonish us that age after age should busy itself unweariedly with the discussion of Homer’s moral or immoral purpose in depicting the scenes between Helen, Paris, and Aphrodite, between Zeus and Hera with the cestus, instead of dilating upon the character-force of the first scene and the voluptuous beauty of the second. But if we realise the motives which actuated them, we shall be less surprised to find so little literary criticism of Homer.
We have far more in regard to the Tragedians, and for obvious reasons: indeed we have more strictly literary criticism in regard to the drama than to any other division of Greek literary art. The estimates of the Three in general seem to have been not very different from what we should expect, but still somewhat different. The magnificence of Æschylus struck the scrupulous Greek taste as too often approaching bombast, and we look with surprised disappointment for so much as a single appreciation of his unequalled choruses (that of Dion, noted above, is slight and little to the point). With the Greek public generally Euripides seems, on the whole, and putting different times together, to have been the favourite of the three, and if the critics were less favourable to him, it was rather for extra-literary than for literary reasons. Public and critics together seem to have felt for Sophocles that special esteem, as distinguished, perhaps, from actual enthusiasm, which has descended to us moderns as a sort of venerable convention—to be acquiesced in even when we do not actively share it, and to be transformed occasionally into vehement championship. Only from Longinus do we learn that Sophocles was considered to be far from impeccable, but to atone for his faults by his beauties: and Longinus himself, unfortunately, does not tell us what the faults were.
The Orators have naturally been discussed with greater minuteness than any other group, nor have the results of the discussion been much interfered with by modern study. The pre-eminence of Demosthenes was as much “matter of breviary” with Dionysius as with Longinus, with Longinus as with Hermogenes: and if Aristotle says little about his mighty contemporary, we know what the great ox was that trod on his tongue. Necessarily the criticism bears largely—indeed almost entirely—on the oratorical effect; but this effect, narrowly studied as it was, in the hopes of, at any rate to some extent, reproducing it, was analysed into parts which had not a little to do with literature. And, except in Longinus himself (some of whose best remarks are on the orators), there is no chapter of Greek literary criticism richer than the commentaries of Dionysius on these orators generally.
In the same way, Plato seems to have early won, and easily kept, his proper place at the head of philosophers who are men of letters, while the more mannered graces of Isocrates seem, at least generally, to have been put in their proper position. That so obvious, and at the same time so complicated and tempting, a contrast as that of the historical manners of Thucydides and Herodotus should escape quickwitted students was of course impossible; but here those drawbacks, to which reference has been made above, are specially apparent. The animus of Dionysius against the one is as patent, though not quite so stupid, as that of Plutarch or the pseudo-Plutarch against the other; and on the whole the ancient critics seem to have stuck, with surprising want of energy and acuteness, in the commonplace contrast of the instructive and the amusing, instead of going on to the far more interesting contrast of strict literary manner which the two authors offer.
Of the other kinds we have much more scattered and less satisfactory observations. The Greeks were clearly not happy with their Comedy; they were half ashamed of Aristophanes, who might suffice for the glory of a whole literature; and they seem to have too often ranked the ingenious and fertile, but distinctly thin and “pretty,” talent of Menander above his. The same curious kind of mistaken belittling would appear to have hung upon Lyric. Both upon these and several other kinds, from Dithyramb to Mimiambics, they remind us of the apologetic remarks of our own eighteenth-century censors on the work of their own time, which, from the point of view of universal literature, will last longest and rank highest—fiction, essay, and the like. In fact, this mistaken calculus of appraisement of kinds is one of the main notes of the whole subject.
The punishment, as usual, has been adjusted to the crime; and the merit, as usual also, has met with its reward from the secure judgment of the world. The more a man knows Greek literature the more deeply will he be impressed with the inestimable services which, in criticism as elsewhere, the Greeks rendered to humanity. But the more he knows other literatures, besides Greek, the more will he be convinced of the necessity of enlarging, extending, and at the same time correcting, the Greek point of critical view.
BOOK II
LATIN CRITICISM
“At demonstrare virtutes, vel si quando ita incidat vitia,
id ... maxime proprium est.”—Quintilian[Quintilian].
CHAPTER 1.
BEFORE QUINTILIAN—CICERO, HORACE, SENECA THE ELDER, VARRO.
THE CONDITIONS OF LATIN CRITICISM—CICERO—HIS ATTITUDE TO LUCRETIUS—HIS RHETORICAL WORKS—HIS CRITICAL VOCABULARY—HORACE—THE ‘AD PISONES’—ITS DESULTORINESS—AND ARBITRARY CONVENTIONALITY—ITS COMPENSATIONS—BRILLIANCY—TYPICAL SPIRIT—AND PRACTICAL VALUE—THE ‘SATIRES’ AND ‘EPISTLES’—"DECLAMATIONS"—THEIR SUBJECTS: EPIDEICTIC AND FORENSIC—THEIR INFLUENCE ON STYLE—SENECA THE ELDER—THE “SUASORIES”—THE ‘CONTROVERSIES’: THEIR INTRODUCTIONS—VARRO.
The conditions of Latin criticism.
Those who direct their literary ideas by considerations of what they think likely to happen, or of what they think ought to have happened, would probably expect—neither without some reason nor without a certain amount of confirmation from experience—a considerable development of literary criticism under the Latin dispensation.[[276]] In the first place, the Romans had what the Greeks at first lacked, and afterwards too often disdained, that opportunity of Comparison, which, as has been said so often, is the very life and soul and breath of the higher and better critical exercise. In the second place, the whole literature of their classical period was itself a kind of critical imitation—sometimes pretty slavish, sometimes freer—of Greek: and it was practically impossible for a Roman to write without the exercise, independent or second-hand, of processes of study and thought which were critical or nothing. Against this must be set the facts—first, that the Latin literary genius was somewhat timid, that it felt itself rebuked by the majesty of Greece; and secondly, that the tendency of the race was not, till it was much mixed with others, very decidedly literary. Few Romans dared to approach the masterpieces of Greek literary art in a thoroughly critical spirit, and fewer had the sense of literature which might have enabled them to do so usefully. Further, their own period of consummate production was distinctly short, and not excessively fruitful, while those authors of their own to whom they devoted most attention stimulated only certain kinds of criticism. Virgil and Cicero are very great writers, doubtless, but everybody does not feel much enthusiasm for the first, and some people do not feel much enthusiasm for the second. The curious perfection of Horace is, after all, as limited as it is curious—there are no vistas in it; and the same may be said of the easy flow of Livy, the artificial, and, for its range, intense idiosyncrasy of Sallust, and the artful fancy of Ovid. These six writers seem to have always attracted the lion’s share of Roman admiration, though at one time there might be a taste for the tricks, precious or slightly obscure, of Seneca in prose and Persius in verse, at another for other things. For their two most poetical poets, Lucretius and Catullus, the Romans never seem to have felt any deep or widespread admiration; their proseman of greatest genius, Tacitus, came too late, and was too unpopular in his sentiments, to attract much. Even so late as the latter days of Quintilian, when the Silver Age itself was drawing to a close, we find that it was customary to devote chief attention to Greek, and that it was thought necessary to argue for Latin as for a novice, who, if well trained and encouraged, might become a pretty fighter in time. As for Cicero’s time, there is no reason to suppose him an exception: yet we know how, when not in full public dress, he takes refuge in Greek at every moment, and sometimes seems almost inclined to echo a phrase of Ascham’s in the dawn of modern English letters, and say it would be “more easier” for him to write in Greek, as it was for the author of the Toxophilus to have written in Latin.
It is, however, from Cicero that Roman literary criticism, properly so called, begins,[[277]] and he, with Horace, almost exhausts |Cicero.| our supply of it from the days before the Empire. Yet he prepares us for the disappointments which meet us in Latin criticism even more than in Greek. That Cicero’s interest in literature was great no one would dream of denying. His letters swarm with quotations and literary allusion; he is constantly arranging for new bookcases and new books; he no sooner has enforced (he never had much voluntary) leisure than he sets to work to write, to translate, to compose, to discuss. But the general inconveniences just noted, and some others of a particular nature, prevent him from being of much importance as a critic. He thought himself (as Quintilian later thought him) a philosopher, and he devoted much time to composing agreeable but extremely diluted copies of the Platonic dialogues. He was an orator not merely by profession but by taste, and he has left us (even excluding the pretty certainly spurious Ad Herennium) a very respectable bulk of Rhetorical work. But, as we shall presently see more in detail, most of this belongs altogether to the non-literary side of Rhetoric. Still, in default of some regular treatise (which was hardly to be expected), it is to his abundant, varied, and interesting correspondence that we should look for material, and we find very little of it. Here is a joke on the habit of Aristarchus (and indeed of other critics), the habit of marking as spurious anything they do not like: there an equally jocular introduction of rhetorical technicalities; elsewhere a rather curious but more linguistic than literary disquisition on the way in which innocent words and phrases acquire, half by accident, awkward double meanings, or slip into the single bad meaning only. There is a passage of some interest in a letter to Atticus about Cicero’s lost Greek history of his consulship, where he describes himself as having used up all Isocrates' perfume-shop, and the cabinets of his disciples, and even Aristotelian pigments.[[278]]
But the most direct and famous piece of pure literary criticism in the letters is an unlucky one. Cicero of course came |His attitude to Lucretius.| before—or rather himself led—the most brilliant age of Latin, and could not have so much as seen the work of Virgil, of Horace, much less of Ovid, and others. But he could and he did know Lucretius, whose work an absurd tradition has it that he even revised. And what does he say of this mighty poet, who unites the poignancy of Catullus to the sustained grasp of Virgil, and adds a sublimity unknown to both? The manuscripts are said to read: Lucretii poemata, ut scribis, ita sunt: multis luminibus ingenii multæ tamen artis.[[279]] The earlier editors most naturally considered this sentence nonsense. No doubt the opposition of ingenium and ars is a common thing, almost a commonplace, in Latin. But would any one, unless he had a thesis to prove, dream of regarding tamen as admissible here? of translating it as if it were necnon? There is, of course, a certain paradoxical sense in which, at the end of the nineteenth century, a brisk young critic might say of Mr X., “He has plenty of brains, and yet he really knows how to write.” But this is not in the least Roman; and it is Ciceronian rather less than it is Roman generally. Some, recognising that there must have been a non somewhere, put it before multæ, and suppose that Cicero, as if he had been accustomed to Virgilian smoothness, thought Lucretius rough. But this, from his own verses, is very unlikely.[unlikely.] The natural emendation is to put the non (as till recently it used always to be supplied) before multis, which emendation, and which alone, makes the sentence run as, without prejudice on the score of the special meaning, we should expect it to run: “The poems of Lucretius are, as you say, not very full of brilliancy in genius, but show plenty of art.”
Supposing this to be so, some have tried to make out that Cicero’s well-known dislike of the Epicurean tenets accounts for the unfavourable criticism. So much the worse for him as a literary critic if it was so. A man who cannot taste Shelley because Shelley attacks Christianity, or laugh at the Twopenny Postbag because Moore was a Whig, may be, and very likely is, an honour to his species as a man, but the less said about him as a critic of literature the better. But there is no real probability of such a plea having any foundation. We shall see what Quintilian says about Lucretius later: we know that very few other Latin writers say anything about him at all. Cicero, who would fain have been a poet, and who sometimes could hammer out a tolerable hexameter,[[280]] could not as a mere craftsman, as a mere student of Rhetoric, fail to appreciate something of the “art” of Lucretius. The stately volume of those magnificent hexameters—the ne plus ultra of their kind in more ways than one or two—could not but appeal to him as a mere connoisseur of Latin rhythm, which (put him high or low in general literature) he most certainly was. The difference in comparison with Ennius, as a matter of art, was for such a man as Cicero simply unmistakable.
But the qualities of the Lucretian “genius,” as distinguished from the Lucretian art, were not suited to attract Cicero—were, we may say, without fear of injustice, suited to attract very few Romans of the true type.[[281]] That type was, as far as the defects went, distinctly “barbarian,” in the sense in which Mr Matthew Arnold (very unjustly) applied the word to the English aristocracy—full of vigour, instinct with the faculty of ruling, magnanimous after a fashion, but impenetrable to ideas, only formally religious, shutting off its keen perception of a certain justice with huge blinkers, and, above all, curiously insensible to the vague, the mystical, the sense of wonder. Now, Lucretius, though he had chosen for himself a creed approaching mere materialism, had treated it in a fashion constantly and unabashedly ideal. It does not need the “flaming bastions of the world” or the sense of the néant, splendidly as he can describe both, to awake the poetical faculty in him. He can make poetry out of the exiguum clinamen, and out of things less promising if even more abstract still. With him it is always “the riding that does it”; the subject hardly matters at all. Lucretius, in short, was one of the great poets—sheerly and merely as poets—of the world. The didactics in which our eighteenth-century versemen so dismally failed offer no more difficulties to him than a love-poem or a flowery description. He will do you a science, or an atomic system, as another might do an Odyssey or a story of Lancelot. Now this was what the ancients, with all their acuteness and originality, could seldom understand or like; and what Cicero (a man of genius in some ways, but something of a Philistine and nothing of a poet) could like least of all those who can in any way be compared with him. Many of the beauties of the Lucretian imagination would be no doubt simply lost on him; and others he would consider wasted on the wrong subjects, if not positively applied in the wrong manner. Let us, however, for fairness' sake, accept the MS. reading, allow that tamen may be the same or nearly the same as necnon, and further allow that as Marcus is only echoing words of Quintus which we do not possess, equity would in any case require that we should lay no very great stress on his own. There will still remain the objection that a poem of this character and importance, brought directly under his notice, and already as is clear within his knowledge, does not tempt him to do anything more than echo his correspondent’s words in a cut-and-dried formula which would be applicable to any tolerably good composition in verse, and which does not touch nor approach the idiosyncrasy of the poem itself. We cannot therefore very greatly regret that we have so little pure literary criticism from him. But still we must, for the sake of completeness, give some account of his Rhetorical works, which, in a manner, play the same complementary part to the Ars Poetica of Horace that the twin treatises of the Stagirite play to each other.
There is, however, no small difference between the values of the Rhetorical works themselves. The Ad Herennium, even if |His Rhetorical works.| it were as certainly Cicero’s as it is almost certainly not his, would require very small attention, for it is a strict Techne or Art of Rhetoric, of the kind which we have thoroughly examined in the First Book, rigidly limited to Oratory, and containing nothing that may not be found in a dozen or a hundred other places. The De Inventione—more probably, if still not certainly, Cicero’s—is equally technical, and has hardly anything of interest for us except a quotation from Curio, which gives the lie direct to the “saw” of our “dead shepherd,”[[282]] Nemo potest uno aspectu neque præteriens in amorem incidere. It is to Cicero’s credit that he cites this as a rhetorical assumption, as saying that what happens rarely does not happen at all. The De Oratore looks more promising, especially as there are references, in its very exordia, to the study of letters and its difficulty. There is a passage of some interest in Book II., cap. 12, 13, on the connection of oratory and history, with a short review of the Greek historians; and another of somewhat wider reference in cap. 7 of Book III., besides, it may be, others still here and there, especially that which begins about the 37th chapter of the third book. The Brutus is the best of all, with its survey of the Latin orators and its account of the author’s literary education. The Orator deals still more closely with oratorical style, as does the little tract, De Optimo Genere Oratorum. The Partitiones and the Topica are again mainly, if not even merely, technical.
It will be seen from this, not only that there is little purely literary criticism in Cicero, but that it is rather unjust to expect any from him. It was not his business; he had hardly any examples of it before him (and Cicero, like most other Latins, was a man who could do little without a pattern); the mere subject-matter (at least as far as Latin was concerned) was far from very abundant or specially interesting. Moreover, he was constantly occupied on other things. We know, from passages cited above, and others, that he had the purely grammatical and lexicographical interest which was so strong in the Romans; he must have had real feeling for poetry, or he would not be so constantly quoting it, nor would he have made his unequal attempts at writing it; he would fain, in the same way, have been a historian. But these were mere pastimes; and both from that vanity which was his master passion, and from an honest conviction which, as we have seen, was widely spread in antiquity, he seems to have thought Oratory the roof and crown of things literary, the queen of literary kinds, to which all others were ancillary, pedagogic, mere exercising-grounds and sources of convenient ornament. No one so thinking could make any great proficiency in literary criticism, and Cicero did not make any such.
This estimate of Cicero may seem audaciously unfair, if not grossly incompetent, to those who accept the more usual one. So far as much, if not all, very high authority goes, I must acknowledge, though I do not recant, my heresy. Mr Nettleship, for instance, while acknowledging that Cicero “threw his whole strength into the criticism of oratorical prose,” still speaks of his work, especially of the Brutus, with something like enthusiasm, claims “genius” and “fulness of light” for him, and even makes what is to me, I confess, the astonishing remark that he “follows in the same track as the Greek critics in all probability had done before him, as undoubtedly Dionysius and the author of the Περὶ Ὕψους did after him.” I should have myself thought that if there were two critics who might be pedantically symbolised as A and not-A, they were Cicero and Longinus. But to give the other side, in the case of so important a client with such an admirable advocate, I may say that Mr Nettleship, while admitting Cicero’s tendency to the wooden placing and comparison borrowed from the Greeks, and naturally made more wooden by the Latins, and granting his inadequacy as to History (which he, like so many others whom we have seen and shall see, regards as a mere ancilla of Oratory), claims for him the origination of the principle that the general as well as the connoisseurs must stamp the value of a work (Brutus, 183), approves his distaste (De Oratore, iii. 96) for “precious” style, and gives a most interesting cento from the Brutus (93, [125], [139], [143], [148], [201], 261, [274], 301). In these characterisations of the great orators he finds qualities of the highest kind, completing the panegyric by saying, “His usual prolixity is thrown aside, and he returns to obey the true laws of expression. As a critic he can write with all Tacitus' terseness and without any of Tacitus' affectation.” I quote, though—and indeed because—I cannot agree.
One point of great interest, however, in which there may be general agreement as to Cicero’s achievement, Mr Nettleship |His Critical Vocabulary.| did not treat in his Essay, though a passage therein leads straight to it. This passage gives a very useful list[[283]] (elsewhere referred to) of some of the technical terms of criticism which appear to have accumulated in Greek literature during the post-Aristotelian period. Some of these are either used in their ordinary sense, or in senses easily and closely tropical; others are more far-fetched, and, as has also been noted elsewhere, remind one of the technicalities of wine-tasting (especially in French), or of pictorial art. Some are very hard to render exactly in other languages.
It has always been noticed that Cicero—a master of language, and though far from the pedantic prejudice which then tabooed Greek words in Latin, just as it now taboos French words in English, always anxious to enrich his own tongue when he could—has shown special ingenuity in translating, paraphrasing, and adding to this rhetorical and critical dictionary. It is not, however, very many years since the interesting labour of a French scholar[[284]] made it possible, without very considerable trouble on one’s own part, to get the results of this process ready for study. With the Ciceronian terms of mere forensic Rhetoric (though all students of the Greek and Latin Rhetoricians will agree with M. Causeret that these terms have been, with a very mischievous result, transferred to other branches) we need not busy ourselves. It is under the usual head of “Elocution” that we shall find most to interest us. The abundance of the Ciceronian vocabulary every one will recognise; it is less certain whether we are to admire its precision. But it is at least an innocent, and may sometimes be a profitable, pleasure to classify the usages of inusitatum and insolens, to separate the nuances of obsoletum, priscum, and vetustum, of grandia and gravia, of majestas and splendor. The Latin rather than the Teutonic languages admit the distinctions of juncta, cohærentia, apta, and coagmentata, if distinction there be; but it would be of real value to ascertain whether there was any between modus and numerus. Sometimes at least it seems as if it might coincide with that between “rhythm” and “metre”: while often numerus itself seems to be “rhythm.”
By no means uninteresting, again, are the numerous metaphorical expressions from actual physiology—lacerti, sanguis, nervi, succus, exsanguis, enervatus—which we find applied to style, and the still more numerous but vaguer terms, most of them with modern equivalents, which express its qualities by comparison with moral ones.
It is impossible not to see what an influence the use of such terms by such an author must have had, and we shall find evidences much later (in Pliny, for instance) that the language of literary criticism at Rome yielded in nothing to that beautiful dialect which enables our own censors to speak of a novel as “assertive and challenging,” of the “swiftness and fusion” of its style. But whether the influence was as beneficial as it was great is perhaps rather a different question.[[285]]
The contrast between the limited and partial relevance of Aristotle’s Rhetoric to literary criticism, and the complete if |Horace.| still limited relevance of his Poetics, is repeated far more pointedly in that between the Rhetorical works of Cicero and the so-called Ars Poetica of Horace. It is, in fact—though the most ardent admirers of the Venusian would fain defend it from being intentionally and originally an Art of Poetry at all—the most complete, nay, the only complete, example of literary criticism that we have from any Roman.[[286]] As in other similar cases, before saying much about it in the way of secondary comment, it will be well to give a fairly full analysis of it, which can be the better done because of its extreme shortness. The famous tags with which it abounds, to an extent almost unmatched, may be sometimes, but need not be always, given in full.
In form it is merely an Epistola ad Pisones, and plunges at |The Ad Pisones.| once into its subject, without any attempt at preliminary argument or flourish.
The representations of art, like the presentations of nature, must be characterised by appropriateness of parts; you must not simply join anything to anything else. Perhaps, says an objector; but surely painters and poets enjoy liberty of fancy. Certainly; but still some propriety must be observed. Even ornament must be adjusted to the subject; and even when correctness itself is specially attempted, defects wait on the attempt—obscurity on brevity, bombast on flights, tameness on simplicity. Take care that your subject suits both your style and your powers.
Then, as to vocabulary? There is no reason why old words should not be resuscitated and new ones coined, provided that both things are done “with brains” and discretion. Usage is the arbiter, and what usage will not admit must be content to perish. As for metre, the kinds appropriate to the various subjects have been long ago settled, though by whom is not always known—hexameters for Epic by Homer, elegiacs for less important matter by somebody or other, iambics for satire by Archilochus, and so on with tragedy, comedy, lyric, and the rest. It is not wise to alter this established order.
In the same way, the established styles and characters must be maintained: a tragic hero must not speak like a comic one, or vice versâ; and you must not attempt new lights on the character of accepted heroes and heroines like Achilles and Odysseus and Medea. At the same time, you need not cling to the stock subjects, and if you take quite novel ones you may handle your character as you like, provided it keep uniformity throughout. But you may be wiser if you stick to the old.[[287]] If you do, do not begin too magniloquently; bustle your reader well along in the action; and drop the ungrateful parts of the story.
As before for traditional characters, so for the stock parts. Generalise and conventionalise wisely; let your boys be childish; your youths fond of sport, reckless, and fickle; your men of full age, business-like and prudent; your old men praisers of the past, sluggish, grudging, and so forth. In short—Keep to the Type.
In play-writing be careful how you utilise the double opportunity of representation and narrative. Do not let ugly things appear on the actual stage. Stick to your five acts; do not be prodigal of your deus ex machina; do not introduce a fourth personage. Keep your chorus to its business—moral sentiment, religious tone, and so forth. This caution introduces a long digression on the incursion of elaborate music into the stage, and on the combination (while keeping them unmixed) of Satiric Drama and Tragedy.
Then, with the almost shorthand abruptness of transition which characterises the poem, we pass to an incidental consideration of metres. An iambic is a long syllable put after a short one, and you arrange them in batches of six with, in certain places only, spondees for a change. Do not take too many licences: stick to the Greek. If your ancestors were fools enough to admire Plautus you need not. They say Thespis invented drama, or at least tragedy. Æschylus improved it and made it magniloquent. Then came the Old Comedy—rather too licentious, so that it had to pull in its sails and drop its chorus. We have tried all sorts, not without success, but the labour of the file is absolutely necessary. The idea of poetic madness and excess is all nonsense. If I cannot write great poetry I can teach others how to write it. Be careful of your subject, and do not attend to tuneful trifles.
You must either instruct or delight, or both; you must not write romantic and prodigious extravagances. Mix pleasure with profit and you are safe. You need not be absolutely faultless, but avoid faults as much as you can. Be careful to suit the style to the subject as much as possible, and do not “pad.” Mediocre poetry is intolerable.
Finally, do not be in a hurry to publish; invite friendly criticism; do not force yourself; destroy a good deal. For nescit vox missa reverti.
The influence of poets is mythically signified by the stories of Orpheus, who moved beasts, and Amphion, who built Thebes by song. Homer came next, and was famous. Tyrtæus roused men to war. Many kinds of poetry have been discovered since, and they all need hard work to cultivate them with success. Some remarks on recitation follow, and then the lines on which friendly criticism should proceed are drawn, and the piece ends rather ambiguously with a reference to the fate of Empedocles.
Now, in criticising this criticism we must of course take into consideration the plea that Horace may not have meant to give |Its desultoriness| a regular treatise even on Dramatic Poetry, but merely to throw out a few observations for the benefit of a friend. It is still more obvious that we must not saddle him with all the rubbish of corollary and comment with which he has been loaded (sometimes without his having in the least deserved or provoked it) by the “Classical” critics of the 16th-18th centuries. Yet not merely equitable but generous allowances of this kind will still leave the piece open to pretty severe comment. In the first place, its desultoriness is excessive, even extravagant. Much licence in this respect no doubt must be allowed to the “mixer of the useful and the pleasant” by means of verse-didactics. But no possible licence will cover Horace’s method, or absence of method. He begins with a sufficiently lively diatribe against inconsistency of design and want of harmony of parts, then slides to methods of composition, thence to vocabulary, thence to the technical divisions of prosody, thence to stock characters and the selection of subject, gives cautions as to the minor and more arbitrary proprieties of the stage, indulges in a little bit of literary history, returns to metres, insists on the importance of self- and other criticism. Then he shifts artfully to the contrast between Greek emulation and Roman shopkeeping covetousness, extols Orpheus and Amphion, Homer and Tyrtæus, excuses faults if they are not too many, but will not tolerate mere even mediocrity, cautions against flattering hearers, and ends with a description, half sarcastic, half rallying the sarcasm, of bad poets. If it were not for its vividness and its constellation of glittering phrases, nobody could see in such a thing aught but a mere congeries of desultory observations.
Still more indisputable is the singular spirit of routine—of red-tape—which pervades the piece. Aristotle (whom Horace follows without direct acknowledgment, and by no means slavishly, but still on the whole) had been sufficiently positive, and not seldom a little arbitrary; but he had carefully abstained |and arbitrary conventionality.| from mere red-tape. Horace, in his prescription of the five acts, and his proscription of the fourth actor, measures that tape off in a fashion which implies one of two things, both of them bad—either implicit belief in purely arbitrary rules, or indifference to the mischief that such rules may do. Elsewhere, though his good sense sometimes interferes to advantage, he is, though less meticulously, as slavishly conventional. You must use the consecrated metres, and no others, for the various subjects; you must keep to the accepted lineaments of well-known characters, and you must model your new ones strictly on types. Decency, propriety, convention—to these things you must look throughout. If you are really a great poet you may be allowed a “fault” or two, as a great beauty is allowed a mole, but still it is a “fault.” And so this kind of pottering and peddling censorship goes on through the whole. We are at such an antithesis or antipodes to the Περὶ Ὕψους, that one sometimes feels inclined to give the Ars Poetica a third title and call it Περὶ μεσότητος, or De Mediocritate, so directly does it tend to produce the quality which, in one of its own happier moments, it denounces.
All this, I say, is undeniable, or, if it be denied, the denial is of no consequence. But the compensatory merits are very considerable. |Its compensations: Brilliancy.| In the first place, it is no small thing to have got once more to purely, or almost purely, literary criticism, to have done with the sense that literature as such is only the second thought, the parergon, at best the mere means, not the end, to the critic. In the second place, it is a greater thing still to have our literary criticism, now that we have got it, done by such a man as Horace, one in whom the generation of the critic has not waited for the corruption of the poet,[[288]] and who has the peculiar gift of crisp rememberable felicitous phrase. The few hundred lines of the little piece are positively “made of quotations.” Every man of letters, at least, ought to have learnt it by heart in the original during his youth. Yet even to those who have not been thus favoured, but who have some tincture of Humanity, mere scraps and tags of it must often recall the actual context, or at least the sense. The first five-and-twenty lines contain, in the way of such “lights” of phrase, at least seven:—
“Desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne.
Risum teneatis, amici.
Velut ægri somnia....
Pictoribus atque poetis
Quidlibet audendi semper fuit æqua potestas ...
Petimusque damusque vicissim.
Purpureus ... pannus ...
Currente rota cur urceus exit?”
And the proportion is well maintained throughout.
But the greatest value of the piece, beyond all doubt, is the clear and distinct idea which it gives of one, and that |Typical spirit| the principal, side of the critical conception of literature in Roman times certainly, in all times more or less. Just as, and in the same manner as, we said that Longinus plays the exception among the critics of antiquity, so does Horace represent the rule. There is indeed something in other critics of antiquity of the spirit which makes Longinus pre-eminent, but it is not prominent in them. There is in the better of them, especially in Aristotle, much that is not in Horace; but what they have in common with him is the differentia of them all.
Of this latter spirit those worse points which we have noted in the piece are the caricature or corruption, the others are the rational embodiment and expression. “Observe order; do not grovel or soar too high; stick to the usage of reasonable and well-bred persons; be neither stupid nor shocking; above all, be like the best of your predecessors, stick to the norm of the class, do not attempt a perhaps impossible and certainly dangerous individuality.” In short the false mimesis—imitation of previous art—is mixing herself up more and more with the true mimesis, representation of nature. If it is not exactly true that, as a modern prose Horace has it, Tout est dit, at any rate the forms in which everything ought to be said have long been found out. You cannot improve on them: try to make the best use of them that you can.
It is needless to say with what hardly matched and certainly unsurpassed shrewdness and neatness Horace has—not merely in the tags, the phrases, the purple patches themselves |and practical value.| noted above, but throughout—set forth, enforced, decorated his views. Except in a few extremest moods, when the whole world of literature seems to be at once painted red and strangled with the tape that paints it, he is never absurd; he is never even negligible. The most “dishevelled” Romantic may neglect him, but the neglect will always be at his own peril—he must be a Shakespeare, or at least a Marlowe, a Shelley, or at least a Beddoes, if he flies in the face of the Horatian precepts. These precepts even, in the opening, in the “mediocrity” remark, in the peroration and elsewhere, contain not a little antidote for their own bane. “Not worth writing” would be the Horatian verdict on many a “Classical” poem which the judge might acknowledge to be quite unobjectionably written; while on the other hand the evils of extravagance, of disproportion, of tedious and silly crotchet and caprice, at which he drives full from first to last, are real evils, and by no means to be minimised. It is not rash to say—though perhaps one must have read more literatures, and passed through more phases of literary judgment than one, before saying it with conviction—that there is no school or period of literary practice in which the precepts of Horace, when rightly taken, have lost, or are ever likely to lose, critical validity. To say this is to say a very great deal. But it is not inconsistent with—and it makes especially necessary—the further observation that the critical attitude of Horace is a wofully incomplete one. In the first place, he has left us no really “grasping” judgment of a single writer he has mentioned. He had not much room, but nobody could put a paragraph in a line better than he could, when he understood and cared for the matter. Horace on Orpheus and Amphion, on Homer, nay, on Æschylus and Plautus, is banal—badly banal, one may add. But let us grant that the knack of luminous summarising of the individual was not, and could not be, yet born, was not even with Longinus, was not even fifteen hundred years after Horace. His shortcomings do not cease here. Here as elsewhere, except in a few passages of the graver philosophy of life, there is no “soul” in him. He has no enthusiasm, no passion. It is perhaps improper to bring together Horace and Mr Browning, but I never read the Epistola ad Pisones without thinking of certain lines of the latter:—
“The fool! would he try a flight further and say,
He never saw, never, before to-day,
What was able to take his breath away—
A face to lose youth for, to occupy age
With the dream of, meet death with—why, I'll not engage
But that, half in a rapture and half in a rage,
I should toss him the thing’s self, ‘’Tis only a duplicate,
A thing of no value—take it, I supplicate.’”
Longinus, one feels, would have been in some danger of losing his literary loves on this principle; the modern critic can “say ditto to Mr Browning” over a thousand passages. But Horace was quite safe. He never felt this enthusiasm for author, or book, or page; and so he never tried, as others in their despairing way do, to render a reason for it.
To those who consider criticism as a whole and historically, the enormous influence which the Ars Poetica has exercised |The Satires and Epistles.| must always give it the prerogative place among its author’s critical work. But it is needless to say that he has other claims to appear here. And the pieces which give him these claims have by some been considered more important, as they certainly are more original. It is unnecessary to pick out Pindarum quisquis and the other literary references in the Odes, universally known, admirably expressed, but as criticism hardly more than a refashioning of publica materies. The Fourth and Sixth Satires of the First book, which are probably a good deal earlier than the adaptation from Neoptolemus, and the two Epistles of the Second book, which may be taken as later, are serious documents. The Satires perhaps give a better opinion of Horace’s talent than of his taste and temper. His critics had praised Lucilius against him; and without denying his predecessor all merit, he makes, though less generously, the sort of comment which even Dryden made on the rough versification and lack of art of the giant race before the flood. This (i. 4) naturally brought fresh attacks on him, and in i. 10 he returns to the subject, lashes the fautores ineptos Lucili, indulges in the too famous sneer at Catullus and Calvus, and with a touch of something which is perhaps not quite alien from snobbishness, boasts his intimacy and agreement not merely with Varius, Virgil, Pollio, Messala, among men of letters, but with Mæcenas and Octavius.
His general position here is easy enough to perceive, and there are of course defences for it. Among all our thousand fragments of Lucilius,[[289]] but two or three at most are long enough to give us any idea of his faculty of sustained composition. And fine as is the fragment to Albinus—with its Elizabethan reiteration of virtus at the beginning of the lines, its straight-hitting sense, and the positive nobility of its ethic—numerous as are the instances in the smaller scraps of Romana simplicitas and picturesque phrase, there is no doubt that the whole is rough and unfinished, not with the roughness of one who uses a rudimentary art, but of one who has not mastered—perhaps, as Horace insinuates, has not taken the trouble to master—one ready to his hand. But there is something of the Frenchman’s “We are all princes or poets” about the tone of Horace himself. He is, mutatis mutandis, too much in the mood of a parvenu who has just been admitted to an exclusive club, and thinks very meanly of poor wretches who are not entitled to use the club-paper.
On the other hand, Mr Nettleship is surely justified in calling the Epistles of the second book “the best of Horace’s critical utterances,” though perhaps they are not the most important. Indeed, their eulogist hastens to add that “it is the incomparable manner of the writer, the ease and sureness of his tread,” which really interests the reader. It is so; but there is more in criticism than manner, and you must be right as well as felicitous. Horace is not exactly wrong, but he is limited—the Chrysostom of Correctness has acquired better breeding than he showed in the Satires, but he has not enlarged his view. The horridus Saturnius still strikes its own horror into him: he still girds at the ancients; and though in the epistle to Julius Florus there is some pleasant self-raillery, as well as an admirable picture of the legitimate poet, yet there is perhaps no piece of Horace which brings more clearly home to us the fact that he was after all, as he has been called, far more a critic of life than of literature, and much more seriously interested in the former than in the latter. So much the better for him perhaps; so much the better for all the ancients who more or less agreed with him. But that is a matter of argument: the fact remains.[[290]]
The third representative selected for Roman criticism of the latest Republic and earliest empire, the elder Seneca—"Seneca Rhetor"—is again of a different class and at a different standpoint, though he is very much nearer to Cicero than to Horace.
The declamations of antiquity had an influence on its prose style—and consequently an effect on its critical opinions of |“Declamations.”| style both in verse and prose—which it is almost impossible to exaggerate. The practice of them began in boyhood; it formed almost the greater part of the higher education; and it appears to have been continued in later life not merely by going to the Schools to hear novices, but in actual practice, half exercise, half amusement, by orators and statesmen of the most established fame. It was a sort of mental fencing-school or gymnasium, to which those who wished to keep their powers in training resorted, even to the close of life. We know that Cicero composed, if he did not actually deliver, declamations up to the very end of his career; and, in a very different department of letters, we know from Seneca himself that Ovid, though not a constant, was a by no means infrequent, attendant of the schools, and either acquired or exercised his well-known fancy for turns and plays of words in prose as well as in verse.
In theory, and no doubt to some extent in practice also, these meletæ, or declamations, were permissible and desirable in |Their subjects: epideictic| all the branches of Rhetoric. But the examples which have come down to us, and the references that we possess to others, show us that, as, indeed, we should expect, Epideictic and Dicanic provided the chief subjects. The declamations of the former kind were those at which the satirists chiefly laughed—Hannibal crossing the Alps, Leonidas at Thermopylæ, Whether Cicero could decently have avoided death by making a bargain with Antony, and the like. To this kind of subject there could evidently be no limit, and it might sometimes pass, as in the Orations (which are after all only declamations) of Dion Chrysostom we know that it at least once did pass, into a regular literary Essay. But it seems more generally to have affected the fanciful-historic.
The purely forensic declamation had some differences. As its object was not merely or mainly, like that of the other, to |and forensic.| display cleverness, but to assist the acquisition and display of ability as a counsel, it fell into certain rather narrow and not very numerous grooves. Certain “hard cases,” paradoxes of the law, seem from very early times to have been excogitated by the ingenuity of the rhetoricians, and the game was to treat these—on one side or the other, or both—with as much force, but above all with as much apparent novelty, as the speaker’s wits could manage. A very favourite one was based on the venerable practice of allowing the victim of a rape the choice of death for her violator or requiring him to marry her, with the aporia, “Suppose a man is guilty of two such crimes, and one girl demands death, the other marriage, what is to be done?” Or “Suppose a girl, situated like Marina in Pericles, but slaying her Lysimachus, not converting him. Released from her bondage, she presents herself as candidate for a priestess-ship. Is she eligible or not?”[[291]] The extremity of perverse fancy in this direction is perhaps reached by a pair of the declamations attributed to Quintilian,[[292]] in which the lover of a courtesan brings an action against her for administering a counter-philtre, so that he may love her no longer, and she may accept a wealthier suitor. But there is no limit to the almost diseased imagination of these Cases. A city[[293]] is afflicted by famine, and a commissioner is sent to buy up grain, with orders to return by a certain day. He executes his commission successfully and quickly, but being driven into port in a third country by bad weather, sells the grain at a high price, buys twice as much elsewhere, and returns by the appointed time. But, meanwhile, the famine has grown so severe that the people have been driven to cannibalism, which his return direct with his first bargain would have prevented. Is he guilty or not guilty?
A very little consideration will show that both these classes of composition must have had great, permanent, and not altogether |Their influence on style.| good effects on style. Both dealt with hackneyed subjects, and in both success was most likely to be achieved by “peppering higher,” in various ways. The epideictic subjects suggested various forms of bombast, conceit, trick, from the use of poetical, archaic, or otherwise unfamiliar diction to the device of the mouther of whom Seneca tells us,[[294]] and who, declaiming on Greeks and Persians, stood a-tiptoe and cried, “I rejoice! I rejoice!” and only after a due pause explained the cause of his rejoicing. The forensic subjects tempted the racking of the brain for some new quibble, some fresh refinement or hair-splitting. Especially was this the case in the subdivision of what were called the colores—ingenious excuses for the parties, whence comes the special sense of our word colourable, and whereof Seneca makes a special heading, usually at the end of his articles. No pitch of mental wiredrawing, no extravagance of play on word or phrase, was too great for some declaimers, of whom a certain Murredius is Seneca’s favourite Helot. In fact, in both classes, epideictic and forensic, one can see that a plain, forcible, manly style could only be commended by a combination of very unusual genius on the part of the speaker, and still more unusual taste and receptivity on the part of the audience. Their sophos, their euge, their belle,[[295]] were much more likely to be evoked by ingenious and far-fetched conceit than by solid reasoning and Attic style, which latter, indeed, on such trite subjects were nearly impossible.
For illustration of what has been said, the hodge-podge of Seneca is more valuable than the finished declamations of the Pseudo-Quintilian. These latter,[[296]] despite the absurdity, or at any rate the non-naturalness, of their subject, are sometimes rather accomplished pieces of writing in a very artificial style. The speech, Pro Juvene contra Meretricem, referred to above, is, in its whimsical way, a decidedly remarkable example of decadent prose. The crime of making some one cease to love is odd in itself; the complaint that you have been injured by being made to cease to love odder still. Besides, if you complain of this as an injury, do you not still love, and have you not, therefore, nothing to complain of? The topsyturvyfication is, it will be seen, complete. And the declaimer, whoever he was, treats his subject con amore. The tricks of his thought are infinite, and well suited with the artifices of his speech. In particular, every paragraph leads up to, and winds up with, a sort of variation on one general theme or Leitmotiv.
“To be compelled to hate is the one incurable form of disease.”
“There is some solace in being miserable in love. 'Tis a more cruel destiny to hate a harlot.”
“He who cannot leave off hating a harlot is still her lover.”
“The victim of a counter-philtre may hate one: he can love none.”
Thinker and writer, it will be seen, are a sort of pair of bounding brothers: they stand on their heads, fling circles, intertwine limbs, take every non-natural posture, to the utmost possibility of intellectual acrobatics.
The Seneca book,[[297]] much more fragmentary, is also of its nature richer. It consists of one book of “Suasories”[“Suasories”] (examples |Seneca the Elder.| of the symbouleutic or epideictic kind), and ten (by no means completely extant) of “Controversies” (Forensic subjects), the latter sometimes including introductions of interest to the writer’s three sons—Novatus, afterwards Gallio, Seneca the Philosopher, and Mela, father of the poet Lucan—and usually concluding with a kind of résumé (called Excerpta) of their contents. The substance is made up of short extracts from the most celebrated declaimers of Rome, and a few Greeks, on the various subjects.
They give us a really invaluable abundance, in all kinds, of rhetorical loci communes, tags, pointes, with which, from early |The Suasories.| and late practice, the mind of every educated man at Rome was simply saturated, and which could hardly fail to colour his style, either directly in the way of imitation, or indirectly in that of repulsion, and preference of extreme severity.
For instance, the first Suasoria deals with the question, “Shall Alexander cross the Ocean?” though the exact statement of question is lost altogether, with the beginning of the piece itself. It seems to have opened with a sort of abstract of general commonplaces, and then come the quotations. Argentarius [perhaps Marcus the epigrammatist] addresses the conqueror: “Halt! the world that is thine calls thee back; we have conquered as far as it was lawful for us. There is nothing I can seek at the risk of Alexander.” Oscus said: “It is time for Alexander to leave off where the sun and the earth leave off likewise,” and endeavoured to describe the sea, “immense and untried by human experience, the bond of all the world and the keeper of its lands, the vastness unruffled by any oar, the shores, now harried by the raging tide, now deserted by its ebb, the horrid darkness brooding on the waves, and the eternal night oppressing what nature has withdrawn from human eyes.” And so many. Then there is a section (headed Divisio), on the particular kind of suasion to be used in such speeches, the devices which it is safe and proper for orators to address to kings, with gradations as before. It will readily be perceived from this example what sort of dealing is here on the other stock subjects—the deliberation of the three hundred at Thermopylæ, whether they shall go or not; of Agamemnon, whether he shall sacrifice Iphigenia; of Alexander, whether he shall enter Babylon; of the Athenians, whether on Xerxes’ threat of a second invasion they shall remove the Persian war trophies; of Cicero, whether he shall ask mercy of Antony, or burn his Philippics. The quotations are sometimes verse as well as prose, and give us specimens of poets otherwise lost, with an occasional literary anecdote of interest, such as the offence which Asinius Pollio[[298]] took at the praise given to Cicero in the recitation by a certain poet of Corduba, Sextilius Ena—
“Deflendus Cicero est Latiæque silentia linguæ,”
which Cornelius Severus borrowed, and improved into—
“Conticuit Latiæ tristis facundia linguæ.”
This anecdote is interesting in many ways,—first for the protest of Pollio, almost equally piquant whether it proceeded from critical severity, from personal jealousy, or from political feeling; and secondly, for the evidence it gives of the straining for point and rhetorical “hit,” in verse and prose alike.
The Preface of the First Book of the Controversies—addressed to the three sons—gives a rather interesting view of the scheme |The Controversies: their Introductions.| of these curious compositions, which seems to have been that Seneca the father should brush up his memory of the golden or nearly golden age of Latin Rhetoric which immediately followed Cicero, and illustrate it from more strictly literary sources. A good deal in the piece (as is usual in the better class of rhetorical writing) bears directly on our subject. The old rhetorician commends his sons for extending their view beyond their own age, for wanting to know what Roman eloquence there was to set against “insolent Greece”[[299]]—in short, for endeavouring to take that comparative view of at least one division of literature the want of which (as we have so fully set forth) was the crying sin and yet the inevitable weakness of Greek criticism. He has the usual complaint of luxury withdrawing men from literature, which was doubtless as true, and as little peculiar, then as at all other times. He lets us know that there were none (or no good) commentarii of the best declaimers, that he himself had heard them all except Cicero, whom, as far as chronology went, he might have heard,[[300]] but for the confusions of the state: he points out that the regular declamation was a rather late growth, and extols the character of Porcius Latro, one of its oldest practitioners. The Introduction to the Second Book is much shorter, and principally celebrates the ability of Arellius Fuscus. The Third (for the text of which we only have the Excerpts, not the full articles) has an important preface, which starts from the fact or assertion that Cassius Severus, a great orator on serious occasions, was not a good declaimer, though he had good bodily advantages, a voice at once powerful and sweet, a delivery with all the merits and none of the drawbacks of the stage, and an extraordinary faculty of improvisation. It seems that Seneca once asked him why these faculties failed him in set agonismata, and his answer (whether to the point or not) is of the very first interest, as illustrating that difficult point of the ancient conjunction of oratory and literature, and also as a counterblast to the Plinian idea (v. infra) of the poly-historic littérateur. “What great wit,” said he, “has ever been good at more than one thing [whereby, let it be observed, he separates declamation from oratory]? Did not Cicero’s eloquence fail him in verse? Virgil’s genius in prose? We read the orations of Sallust simply as a compliment to the historian: and the oration of that most eloquent man Plato, which is written for Socrates, is worthy neither of counsel nor of client.”
All these things invite comment—the last most of all. I put aside, as entirely irrelevant, certain modern dubitations as to the genuineness of the Platonic Apology. They rest upon no warranty of scripture, and opinion is simply opinion, to be received politely, and to be “laid on the table.” But it is worth dwelling on the point that the Apology as we have it, though to all competent judges of literature one of the capital works of antiquity, arch-worthy of Plato, more than arch-worthy of Socrates, might very well seem to a Roman lawyer unworthy of both, and might possibly have so seemed to Aristotle himself.[himself.] For of all recorded plaidoyers it is perhaps, in the temper of the jury and the circumstances of the case, the least likely to secure an acquittal, and the most likely to render condemnation inevitable. The other remarks do not matter so much; but it is of weight that a man should seriously put the difference between Declamation and practical Oratory on the same footing as the difference between poetry and prose. It shows how ill-adjusted, as yet, the grasp of literary criticism was, and also how necessary it is to keep an eye on everything that is said about Rhetoric, if we are really to master what was thought about Criticism. The introduction to the Fourth Book, again one of Excerpts only, gives the information that Asinius Pollio (whose works, if we had them, would probably be of the greatest possible value to us) disliked declaiming in public, but was, on the rare occasions when he could be heard thus exercising himself, more florid than in his actual orations. We can well believe it, and it shows that Pollio had the root of the matter in him. In the same way a man with critical sense will allow himself, in a rough draft, flowers which he cuts out in the most ruthless manner before he prints.
The Fifth and Sixth books, which are in the same fragmentary condition, have no introductions at all; but the seventh is in better case. Like the others, it is mainly devoted to the characteristics of a single orator—in this case Silius Albucius. Some of the things said about him touch us nearly, as, for instance, Pollio’s—the severe Pollio’s—description of his sentences (axioms, maxims, apophthegms) as “white”—that is to say, simple, clear, with nothing obscure or unexpected,—but “vocal” and “splendid.” It was impossible, continues Seneca, to complain of the poverty of the Latin tongue when you heard him: he was never in the very least in pain for a word. Yet, on the other hand, he was not equal. His language was at one moment magnificent, at another he would mention the most sordid things—"vinegar, and pennyroyal, and lanterns, and pumice, and sponges." He thought “nothing must not be named in a declamation [and the reason is valuable or invaluable] because he feared to smack of the Schools.” And yet further we get the important obiter dictum: “Familiar phrase is, among oratorical virtues, a thing which rarely succeeds.” And then there is a very luminous and jocund anecdote of the real trouble into which the devotion to Figures might even then bring men. Albucius had rhetorically proposed to administer certain oaths. His opponent, L. Arruntius, very coolly rose and said, “We accept the condition: he shall swear.” Albucius protested that this would do away with Figures altogether. Quoth Arruntius (very sensibly), “Let them go—we can do without them”: and the centumviri allowed the catch. The unlucky orator was so annoyed that he renounced actual pleading from that day, because of the insult done to his beloved Figures.
The Eighth Book is again without its preface; but though there is a very large lacuna in ix., we have part of the introduction. It yields little. The last is in better case, but still not very fertile, though we have another instance of the mania for Figures. It is said of the above-quoted Oscus: “Dum nihil non schemate dicere cupit, oratio ejus non figurata erat sed prava.” Certainly there are no few examples of this “pravity” in the declamations themselves, which it would be interesting, but in our space impossible, to examine, as we have examined the prefaces.[[301]]
They, however, also contain examples of that severity of taste which has always distinguished Latin criticism, and of which Pollio is the great example. Messala, as we learn, was Latini utique sermonis observator diligentissimus, and he said of Latro (whom Seneca’s later taste admired) “sua lingua disertus est”—"He is an eloquent man in his own lingo." Seneca himself, however, is by no means tolerant of excessive conceit, and rebukes the class of “sentence” which, he tells us, some charged upon Publilius as inventor. The examples given are in the case of a disinherited son found with poison, which he spills on discovery in the interior of his father’s house: and the sentences are, “He washed out his disinheriting with poison, and what he spilt was my death,” both being supposed to be spoken by the father. And in another stock case—the curious one which has more than one historical analogue, where the Prætor Flamininus was accused of having had a condemned man’s throat cut at dinner, to amuse a courtesan who said she had never seen a man die—the unlucky Murredius is said to have arranged a tetracolon—a four-membered antithesis: “The courts are made subservient to the bed-chamber; the prætor to a harlot; the prison to the banquet; day to night”; as to which last Seneca justly asks, “What sense has it?”
On the whole, this very valuable and interesting book, which has been spoken of with surprisingly uncritical contempt by some, and to which I should like to devote much greater space, forms, with Pliny’s Letters and Quintilian, the great trinity of documents for appreciating directly the state of Latin opinion as to literature, and its causes, in the first century after Christ, while with Cicero and Horace it forms a similar trinity for that in the last century before Christ. And it is needless to say that these two periods were, early avant-coureurs and belated decadents excepted, the flourishing time of classical Latin literature. Of this state and these causes we shall speak generally later.
One writer of famous memory who belongs to this period—who |Varro.| indeed was older even than Cicero—has been hitherto unmentioned, because, as a matter of fact, we have practically no literary criticism remaining from him, and that is Varro. I should myself have been disposed to relegate the author of the De Re Rustica and the De Lingua Latina to the place of his brother (or grandson) grammarians; but this might seem unceremonious in face of the importance of the critical position which Professor Nettleship assigned to him. It is, perhaps, also a convenient place to notice the exact character of that importance. As in so many other cases, if we went by titles only, and by guesswork from them, Varro must certainly have a high rank. “On Poets,” “On Poems,” “On Characters” (in the technical Greek sense of literary differentia?), “On Scenic Action,” “Plautine Questions,” might seem at first sight likely to be, if we had them, a very El Dorado of Latin criticism. But the few surviving fragments are a little discouraging. That Varro would be fertile in grammatical, mythological, social explanation, we may be quite certain. But the fragments seldom go much farther. The report, quoted by Quintilian, of Ælius Stilo’s saying that if the Muses wrote Latin they would write in the language of Plautus, is one of those rather irritating critical catchwords which carry with them the minimum of critical illumination. It is, in fact, only an ad captandum fashion of saying that the speaker liked Plautus, or wanted to pay him a compliment at the moment. Most of the others seem (as indeed Mr Nettleship saw) to be merely examples, either of the habits of “placing” authors in this or that rank, of comparing them with this or that other, from which criticism has suffered many things and gained few, or else of the not much less barren classification of kinds.
It is on the first point that I wish to make a slight digression. It is evident from the epithets that he uses in regard to them, such as “stupid,” “trifling,” “vicious,” that these processes of placing and of comparison were not to Mr Nettleship’s taste. I shall myself admit that the addiction of Greek, and still more of Latin, criticism to them seems to me to be among the very greatest weaknesses of both. But I must add a distinction which is constantly forgotten, and which I am not sure that Mr Nettleship himself had in mind. The “placing” of A, B, C, and D in order of merit is “stupid” and “trifling” enough; the still further awarding of seventh place to A for Somethingity, and of third to B for Somethingelseness, is more stupid and more trivial still. Nor is that comparative criticism, the locus classicus of which is perhaps M. Taine’s ejaculation, “J’aime mieux Alfred de Musset,” as a criticism on Tennyson, any better; in fact, as being not merely sterile and jejune, but illogical and actively misleading, it is considerably worse. But there is a placing and there is a comparison, which are two very different things—which are, in fact, the two highways of all real literary criticism. The placing is that which sets a man, not in the first division of the first class, or the second of the third, but in his relations to time and country, to language and manner, to predecessors and successors—to the whole literary map in larger or smaller circumference. The comparison is that which does not work out a performer’s rank, but disengages his qualities. These are the methods to which all the great critics have perforce resorted, and which have made them great. That there is less of them than there should be in ancient criticism may be true enough; that the want of them (with perhaps a little want also of sympathy with the highest poetry) is what prevents Aristotle from being the greatest critic of all time, is true enough; that the presence of them in Longinus is one of the main secrets of his unmatched quality, is true enough. But they are very different things from the enumeration of Volcatius Sedigitus, and from the in argumentis Cæcilius in ethesin Terentius in sermonibus Plautus of Varro.[[302]]
[275]. Probably the very temperament, which spurs the critic on to his business, afflicts him with this thorn in the flesh. I should not be surprised if examples of it were found in the present volume. But it has been kept down as far as possible.
[276]. I am not aware of any work, corresponding to Egger’s, in reference to Latin Criticism.[Criticism.] But in English there is an Essay of the first excellence on the subject by the late Mr Henry Nettleship (reprinted at vol. ii. p. 44 of his Lectures and Essays, Oxford, 1895). In my case old personal obligations were not needed to deepen the admiration which every one, who would even like to be a scholar, must feel for Mr Nettleship’s work. I am here, however, to demur to his opening division of criticism into “criticism of philosophy, which investigates the principles of beauty,” and “isolated and spontaneous judgments, never rising beyond personal impression.” It is one main purpose of this book to show that a third course is possible and desirable, by way of the wide and systematic comparison of the manifestations of literary beauty in the accomplished work of letters.
[277]. The actual primacy is assigned to a verse canon of the Ten Latin Comic Poets by a certain Volcatius Sedigitus, who may be close to 100 B.C. This “stupid production,” as Mr Nettleship unkindly but most justly calls it, may be found in his Essay (so often quoted) in Aulus Gellius, xv. 24, or in Baehrens' Poetæ Latini Minores, vi. 279. The six-fingered one puts Cæcilius first, Plautus second, Terence sixth, Ennius tenth, antiquitatis causa. He had, of course, borrowed the “canon” system from the Alexandrians, among whose most dubious services to criticism the arrangement of such things must be placed. There are touches of literary and critical reference in Ennius, in the Prologues of Terence, &c., but nothing that need delay us.
[278]. Ad Att., ii. 1: Meus autem liber totum Isocratis μυροθήκιον, atque omnes ejus discipulorum arculas, ac nonnihil etiam Aristotelia pigmenta consumpsit.
[279]. Ep. Ad Quint., Frat., ii. 11 (9 in some edd.)
[280]. It has been urged upon me that my judgment of Cicero’s verse is rather harsh, and that he at any rate made some progress towards the Lucretian hexameter before Lucretius. It may be so; tolerably careful and tolerably wide students of literature know that these things are always “in the air,” and that, sometimes if not always, you find them in the poetaster before you find them in the poet. But after reading all Cicero’s extant verse two or three times over, seeking diligently for mitigations of judgment, I am still afraid that “Cousin Cicero, you will never be a poet,” would have been, and justly, the verdict of Lucretius, had they stood to one another in the relations in which Swift and Dryden stood.
[281]. It is one of Ovid’s titles (v. infra) to credit as a critic that he did see the value of Lucretius, and expressed it in the well-known couplet (Amor., i. 15. 25)—
“Carmina sublimis tunc sunt peritura Lucreti,
Exitio terras quum dabit una dies.”
Virgil’s still better known quit-rent for his borrowings (Georg., ii. 490) is a mere praise of the Lucretian free-thought, with no reference to poetry. But the praise (no mean one) of having appreciated Lucretius better than any other Roman is due to Statius (v. infra, pp. 268-270).
[282]. As You Like It, iii. 5. 82.
[283]. τραχύς, αὐστηρός, αὐθαδής, αὐχμηρός, εὐπινής, στρυφνός, συνεσπασμένος, ἀντίτυπος, ἀρχαϊκός, πυκνός, δεινός, &c. Mr Nettleship gives in all thirty-three, to which, I daresay, one could add as many more from the later rhetoricians, Longinus, and others down to Photius.
[284]. Etude sur la Langue de la Rhétorique et de la Critique Littéraire dans Cicéron. Par C. Causeret. Paris, 1886.
[285]. It has not seemed necessary to go through the literary passages of the Orations, though some, the Pro Archia especially, are not infertile in them. “What counsel says is not evidence,” whatever else it is.
[286]. Here, however, as elsewhere, the fatally parasitic character of the whole literature comes in. There is little doubt (see Nettleship, op. cit.) that the piece was very closely modelled upon the work of a certain Neoptolemus of Parium, an Alexandrian critic, whose date is not known.
[287]. Here comes in one of the most famous and often-quoted of the “tags”—difficile est proprie communia dicere, a sentence which, hackneyed as it is, is not altogether easy to translate fully even by itself, and becomes in the context less easy still.
[288]. I had hoped that no reader would want explanation of this, but it has been hinted to me that some may. For them only, I note that the saying, the thought of which has found various and frequent expression, is slightly altered in form from Dryden, and is one of his happiest scholasticisms. It glances, utilising the old philosophical opposition-connection of γένεσις and φθορά, at the theory, put later by another person of genius more bluntly, that critics are those who “have failed in literature and art.”
[289]. Poet. Lat. Min. (Baehrens), vi. 139-266. Our greatest English Latinists recently have been singularly unkind to this poet. Munro made what I can only call a violent attack on him: and Mr Nettleship, while allowing him “extraordinary vigour” and “the ring of Caius Gracchus” (see his Essay on the Satires (second series),[series),] where Munro’s diatribe is quoted), practically indorses this. Against such judges I should not have a word to say on the linguistic side: but I claim full parrhesia on the literary. The Virtue passage (which Munro specially refuses to except) is as rough as, say, Marston; but it has a far sincerer, loftier, and more truly poetical tone than anything of the kind in Horace, and than most things in Juvenal. And everywhere I see quality, passion, phrase. Here, at least, I can agree with Cicero (De Orat., ii. 6 and elsewhere), though perurbanus is not exactly the epithet that I should, from his extant writings, myself select for Lucilius.
[290]. Mr Nettleship justly and, considering his enthusiasm for Horace generously contrasts the “comprehensive sympathy” of Ovid (Am., i. 15-19, Trist., ii. 423) with the lack of the same quality in the Venusian.
[291]. Seneca, Contr., i. 2.
[292]. xiv. and xv. Ed. cit. inf. (p. 279 note), pp. 154-169.
[293]. Ibid., xii. The so-called Pasti Cadaveribus. Ed. cit. inf., p. 126.
[294]. Suas., ii. 17. His name, too, was Seneca; and the text is curiously worded.
[295]. Of these equivalents of “Hear! hear!” or “Bravo!” the second is good adopted Latin of all times. The first, well known from Martial, is post-Augustan; the third (which Cicero did not much like) seems to have been both lukewarm and affected.
[296]. V. inf., p. 279 sq.
[297]. I use the text of Kiessling. Leipsic, 1872.
[298]. See Suas., vi. Pollio, a great friend of Antony, was both an orator of high reputation and a very severe critic. It was he, it should be remembered, who found “Patavinity” in Livy; though it has been ingeniously suggested that this was only an excessive propriety of speech, such as enabled the old woman to detect Theophrastus as not an Athenian.
[299]. Insolenti Græciæ (op. cit., p. 59). I hope it may be hardly necessary to quote certain lines, “To the memory of my beloved Master, William Shakespeare, and what he hath left us.” It is already known to students of Ben Jonson that Ben was soaked in Latin, especially of the silver age: and Professor Schelling of Philadelphia has done good work by indicating sources in his edition of the Discoveries. But the vein is not exhausted. Seneca and Quintilian were to Ben almost more than Browne and Fuller were to Lamb.
[300]. Seneca was born about 60 B.C., and was thus eighteen at Cicero’s death.
[301]. It has always to be remembered that they are not integral and complete, but centos of quoted flights, conceits, &c., on the stock hard cases.
[302]. Varro was happier in the phrase filo et facetia sermonis applied to Plautus: and he seems to have been genuinely devoted to the dramatist whose canon he constituted, v. Noctes Atticæ, III. iii.
CHAPTER II.
THE CONTEMPORARIES OF QUINTILIAN.
PETRONIUS—SENECA THE YOUNGER—THE SATIRISTS—PERSIUS—THE PROLOGUE AND FIRST SATIRE—EXAMINATION OF THIS—JUVENAL—MARTIAL—THE STYLE OF THE EPIGRAMS—PRÉCIS OF THEIR CRITICAL CONTENTS—STATIUS—PLINY THE YOUNGER—CRITICISM IN THE ‘LETTERS’—THE ‘DIALOGUS DE CLARIS ORATORIBUS’—MR NETTLESHIP’S ESTIMATE OF IT—THE GENERAL LITERARY TASTE OF THE SILVER AGE—“FAULTLESSNESS”—ORNATE OR PLAIN STYLE.
From the later years of Augustus, and the earlier of his immediate successors, we have no criticism of importance |Petronius.| except Seneca’s. But the Neronian time has left us interesting approaches to the subject in the works of Petronius and Seneca the younger, as well as in the poet Persius; while, somewhat later, the satires of Juvenal and the epigrams of Martial are, the former not destitute, the latter full, of literary allusion and opinion. These, with a certain contribution from Pliny’s Letters and the Dialogus de Claris Oratoribus (usually included among the works of Tacitus, but not resembling him in style, and sometimes attributed to Quintilian), must be successively dealt with. Quintilian himself is of too great importance not to deserve a separate chapter.
We can understand, as well from the character usually given of the Arbiter elegantiarum as from the style of his curiously dismembered and rather disreputable written work,[[303]] that questions of literary criticism must have been of the first interest to him. If we had the entire Satires (supposing that they ever were more entire than Tristram Shandy or the Moyen de Parvenir), there can be very little doubt that this element would show itself in very large proportion. There must have been suppers less brutally vulgar and Philistine than that of Trimalchio; and literary discussion was as indispensable at a Roman supper of the better class as broiled bones at an English one—while suppers lasted. Even the Circes, if not the Quartillas, of the time were very frequently “blue” in the intervals of more exciting amusements, and Agamemnon, Eumolpus,[[304]] and others must have frequently spoken in character. As it is, the opening of the fragment as we have it, and a passage farther on, deal directly with the subject.
The opening passage is occupied with that denunciation of bombastic and “precious” language which seems to have been the favourite occupation of the critics of the time. The attack is at first directed against the practice of declamation, which almost inevitably tempted boys and youthful writers to bombast, but it so quickly glides into a general literary censure that it is worth giving in full.
“I believe that the reason why schoolboys and students become such fools is, that they never see or hear of anything to which we are accustomed in the actual world. They are occupied by pirates standing on the beach with chains in their hands, by tyrants ordaining that sons shall cut their fathers’ heads off, by oracles against a pestilence to the effect that three or more virgins are to be sacrificed, by little bundles of words smeared with honey, and everything, as it were, powdered with poppy-seed and sesamum. For people bred in this fashion sense is as impossible as a pleasant odour for those who live in the kitchen.[[305]] If you will excuse my saying so, you rhetoricians were the first to ruin literature. By exciting ridicule of [or playing tricks with] your light and empty phrases,[[306]] you weakened and prostrated the whole body of oratory. Youth had not yet been enslaved to declamations when Sophocles and Euripides devised the words in which they were to speak. The private schoolmaster[[307]] had not spoilt good wits when Pindar and the Nine Lyrists feared to sing in Homeric verse. And not to allege poets only, I certainly find it nowhere said that Plato and Demosthenes betook themselves to this kind of eloquence. Oratory full grown, and, if I may say so, in her maidenhood, is not spotted and swelling [like a toad], but shoots up in natural beauty.
“Of late this windy and extravagant loquacity has shifted from Asia to Athens, and has breathed upon the aspiring minds of youth like a pestilential star, and forthwith true eloquence, its rule corrupted, has been arrested, and put to silence. Tell me, who has since equalled the fame of Thucydides, of Hyperides? Not so much as a lyric of wholesome complexion has appeared, and everything, as if poisoned with the same food, has been unable to last to a natural grey old age. Even painting has made no better end, since the audacity of the Egyptians has cut so great an art down to shorthand.”
The rhetorician Agamemnon defends scholastic procedure by the old plan of throwing the blame on parents and the like; but the story quickly turns to one of its more than “picaresque” episodes, and the subject drops.
The other passage[[308]] begins with equal abruptness, and serves as preface only to a very much longer poetical recitation by Eumolpus, who speaks it. It is chiefly noteworthy for containing the phrase Curiosa felicitas, applied to Horace, which perhaps itself gives us as good a notion of Petronius’ critical faculty as anything could. But it conveys some sound doctrine. Verse itself seems easy; any boy thinks he can write it as soon as he has learnt the rules, and retired orators (a hit, I suppose, at Cicero) compose it as a relaxation, as if it were easier than their speeches. But it is no such light matter. You must take choice words [we are almost at Dante’s “sifted” words], words far from the use of the vulgar crowd,[[309]] and at the same time you must be careful that individual phrases are not too fine for the rest. Nor must you treat your subject—civil war, for instance—in the mere tone of a chronicler, but the “free spirit must be forced through[[310]] difficulties, and the ministry of the gods, and a fabulous torment of sentences, so that it may rather appear the vaticination of a frenzied mind than a trustworthy and scrupulous document under attestation.” Now this advice, though much in it is sound, takes distinctly the other side to that which Encolpius had urged in the overture.
On the whole, we must regret very keenly that we have not more of the Arbiter’s remarks on the subject. It is improbable that anything like a coherent theory of criticism on the great scale would have emerged, and very likely that (as in the two extant examples just quoted) we should rather have had ingenious centos of opposing views. But all would have been originally and brightly put, and it is by no means impossible that what we now chiefly desiderate—aperçus of particular authors, books, or passages, done with grasp and insight—would have been forthcoming. As it is, we have but what we have.
Nero’s other victim, the curious compound between Polonius and Mr Pecksniff (with, it must be owned, some merits which |Seneca the Younger.| belonged to neither), whose name was L. Annæus Seneca, has left us a great deal more work than Petronius, and was certainly a man of letters. He was even a considerable man of letters, and if he wrote the Tragedies, a very considerable man of letters indeed.[[311]] He had, moreover, though scarcely a good, a distinct and by no means commonplace style, and while Quintilian attacks him nominatim in a passage which will occupy us later, it is by no means improbable that Petronius (who must have known him well, and was probably bored by him) had Seneca himself in his mind when he talked of the ventosa et enormis loquacitas.
Seneca, however, was by profession a Stoic, and these classical Pharisees, though their sect was not exactly unliterary, pushed to an extreme the partly superfine, partly puritanic, contempt with which, as we have seen, the philosophy of antiquity generally chose to regard the minutiæ of literary criticism and literary craft. The “wise man of the Stoics” might be a perfect man of letters, as he was a perfect everything else; but it was entirely beneath him to take seriously such things as metre, or style, or the pleasure of literary art. In the Tenth Dialogue, de Brevitate Vitæ,[[312]] after the philosopher has been talking in his high-sniffing way of collecting brasses, singing, giving long and recherché dinners (but not, so far as I remember, of putting out money at usury), he begins a new chapter with things to be treated more contemptuously still.
“’Twould be long,” he says, “to track them all out—those whose life draughts, or ball-playing, or the practice of carefully cooking their flesh in the sun, has caused to waste away. They are not exactly lazy people, since their pleasures give them a great deal of trouble. For nobody can doubt that they make much ado about nothing, who are detained by the study of useless letters—there is a considerable company of them among us Romans. It has been a mania of the Greeks to inquire how many rowers Ulysses had, whether the Iliad was written earlier than the Odyssey, further, whether the two are by the same author, and other matters of the same stamp, which, if you keep to yourself, they will not help your silent conscience, while, if you talk about them, you will seem not more learned but only more of a bore.”
The rest of the chapter draws up a long list of similar enormities of curiosity—historical and literary. “Who had the first naval triumph?” &c. Seneca even ironically supplies questions of the kind, and information about them, to those who like such things. Elsewhere in the 88th (the third of the thirteenth book)[[313]] of those not disagreeable epistles which he composed for the edification of a man of straw called Lucilius, and for the display of his own ability, he supposes the definite question to be put to him, “What do you think of liberal studies?” and he goes off at score in the true style of the Stoic pulpit. He respects none, counts none as good. They are all very well as exercises, as preparations; you may stick to them as long as you can do nothing better. They are called “liberal,” as worthy of a free man: but there is only one study worthy of a freeman (does one not hear the very drone of the ancestor of Mr Chadband?), and that is the study of WISDOM. All else is petty and puerile: it has nothing to do with making a GOOD man. Will the grammarian, who, if he does not stick to mere philology, goes to history or, at farthest, to poetry, be a road-maker for us to VIRTUE, my brethren? Will syntax and prosody banish fear, quench cupidity, bridle lust? And so forth. He makes, indeed, not bad fun of the attempts to make out Homer now a Stoic, now an Epicurean, now a Peripatetic. But he soon relapses into the “chaff and draff” of the conventional moralists at all times. What are the tempests that impelled Ulysses to the storms of the mind? What does it matter whether Penelope was chaste? Teach me what Chastity is. Et patati et patata. From a man in this frame of mind comes no good critical thing; though we certainly should like to have heard from the Tragedian, whoever he was, what put into his head the idea of that remarkable compromise between Classic and Romantic Tragedy which gave us the Latin Hippolytus and the Octavia.
The three satiric poets give us both directly and indirectly a great deal of matter; in fact, they may almost be said to provide the illustrative commentary to their contemporary and friend[[314]] Quintilian’s precepts. It is possible that |The satirists.| the example of Horace may have had something to do with this; but such an example need not have been required. As we know, not merely from themselves, the first century at Rome, if not one of the very greatest times of literary production, was one of very great and very widespread literary interest. As Persius tells us—
“Ecce inter pocula quærunt
Romulidæ saturi, quid dia poemata narrent;”
while Seneca’s remarks, take them with what grains of salt we will, are sound corroborative evidence. Further, it appears on all hands, not merely that there was a distinct fashion of literature, but that this fashion had its own distinct characteristics, that it was one of the times of ornate as opposed to plain style in verse and prose alike, a time of “preciousness,” of “raising the language to a higher power,” a time when men openly called Cicero a commonplace and obvious writer, and, if they did not fail to pay a kind of conventional reverence to Virgil, wrote in a way as far as possible from being Virgilian. This always gives plenty of handles to the poetical satirist, and, as we shall see, all the three availed themselves of these handles to the full.
The scanty and notable work of Persius—work which, in the junction of these two qualities, has hardly a parallel in literary |Persius.| history, except that of Collins in English—is soaked in criticism of literature as well as of life. The poet’s turbid rush of thought and style, forcing its way through self-created obstacles but still forcing it, thick with suspended matter, but all the richer therefor, allows him not merely to deal directly with this subject, but in dealing with others to make constant allusion and by-blow. The famous |The Prologue and First Satire.| scazontic prologue, with its affected language, satirising affectation, and its conceits, giving an object-lesson of conceited style, is all literary except the moral, quoad “Master Gaster, first Master of Arts,” as Rabelais refashioned it fifteen hundred years later. The “horsy fountain” and the sleep on “two-headed” Parnassus, the relinquishment of the Muses to those whom such ladies concern, and the final fling about the crow-poets and poetess-magpies, may be gibes at dabblers in literature: but they show that the giber is steeped in literature himself, and has taken a critical as well as a delighted bath therein. And the first satire (the longest but one) is wholly and directly devoted to the subject. With the old device of a cool objecting friend, Persius takes occasion, while declaring (also an old trick) his own honest desire to keep to better matters, to draw a lively picture of the professional poet, or declamation-writer, scribbling in his locked study, arraying himself in his best clothes, and even with such jewelry as he can muster, carefully gargling his throat, and then tickling the ears of his audience, and comforting himself, when anybody objects the worthlessness of such applause, by the plea—
“At pulchrum digito monstrari et dicier ‘Hic est!’”[[315]]
A still livelier picture follows of the symposium referred to in the lines above quoted as to Romulidæ saturi; of the literary dandy in hyacinthine garment mincing and twanging through his nose some morbid stuff (rancidulum quiddam) about Phyllis and Hypsipyle, and being cheered in a fashion fit to make the poet’s ashes happy, his slab lie lighter on his tomb, and violets spring therefrom.
Then he draws in his horns a little. Verse, of course, is not necessarily bad because it is popular only. But Euge! and Belle! are not the be-all and end-all of literature. What wretched stuff has not received them? How often have they not been consideration for a good dinner, and a cloak just a little torn! And what is even genuine popular judgment worth? Why do not poets adopt honest Roman subjects, instead of chattering about unreal Hellenics? And why do they affect such antiquated and unnatural style? What is the good of borrowing such stuff as
“Ærumnis cor luctificabile fulta,”
of ranging everything in doctis figuris, and of writing passages, such as two famous ones which he quotes, and which are traditionally asserted to be the work of Nero himself. He exhausts his images of scorn on these unlucky lines, and holds up Arma virum against them as an example of natural knotty strength against effeminate drivel. And to a fresh protest of his friends about the danger of this kind of criticism, he replies by an ironical consent to declare it all very good, and a coda of regret for the time when Lucilius used what freedom of speech he chose, when Horace laughed at everybody without giving offence, more seriously declaring that, whether he can publish or not, he will write as the giants of the Old Comedy wrote.
In this lively crabbed production there are two distinct strains or bents to note. All the best critics have for some time admitted that in professed satire generally, and in Roman satire more than in any other, there is, if not a touch of cant, at any rate a distinct convention of moral indignation—a sort of stock-part of bluff, honestly old-fashioned, censuring of modern corruption—which the satirist takes up as a matter of business. Even Martial, upon whom, Heaven knows! it sits oddly enough, though his consummate dexterity carries it off not ill, affects this now and then; it sometimes suggests itself even through the gloomy intensity of Juvenal; and though such a line as Persius’ famous
“Virtutem videant intabescantque relicta”
carries us far out of the dissenting-pulpiteer region where Seneca too often gesticulates, there is in this First Satire, at any rate, some suspicion of forced wrath, of the righteous overmuch.
But the other strand in the twist, the other glance of the view, is in a very different state. There is nothing unreal, to all appearance, in the poet’s condemnation of the preciousness |Examination of this.| and conceit of poetic and prose style in his day. That his own is very far from simple or Attic does not matter; the satire had a prescriptive right to be crabbed, archaic, irregular, bizarre. Whether political dislike of the tyrant did not sharpen literary objection to the poetaster (if the lines really are Nero’s) may be a debatable question for those who care to debate it; but, in any case, the objection was there, and seems to have been quite genuine. Now, as has been often pointed out, these definite passages, definitely objected to or praised, are precisely what we want most, and have least of, in ancient criticism. A short examination of them, therefore, will serve our turn very well.
The first passage appears to be cited chiefly as an objectionable example of archaism. We shall see that Quintilian (perhaps in obedience to this very passage, for he knew his Persius, and admired him) repeats the objection to the word ærumna[[316]]—to us a word not in the least objectionable, but the contrary. And if it be said that foreigners, and especially foreigners who acknowledge themselves entirely uncertain about the probable pronunciation of Latin, have no business to give an opinion about the euphony of words, the retort is obvious and pretty triumphant. To some Romans, at any rate, if not to Persius and Quintilian, the word must have sounded agreeable, or as poets they would not have used, and as hearers or readers would not have applauded, it. The conceit of “cor fulta ærumnis”—with heart stretched on pillows of woes—was no doubt another crime, and it is not improbable that luctificabile was a third. The Romans had a rather pedantic horror of long words, which is again formulated by Quintilian, just as it is implied and exemplified here.
Of the same type and colour is the objection to rasa antitheta and doctæ figuræ which follows, as well as that to the vowel harmony, the soft cadence, the mouth-watering[[317]] tenderness of the Neronian fragments. We may, without rashness, point to the soft sound of “Berecynthius Attin,” the alliteration of “dirimebat” and “Delphin” with the internal half-rhyme of “cæruleum” and “Nerea,” the leonine effect of “longo” and “Apennino” and the two tetrasyllables, with the sudden pull up of the spondaic ending, as what irritated Persius. This same accompaniment of sound, and cunning contrast or echo of vowels, recurs in the second and more coherent extract: “Torva, cornua”; “Mimalloneis bombis,” “raptum caput”; “vitulo superbo”; “lyncem corymbis”; the long words “reparabilis” and “Mimalloneis,” with the foreign effect of the latter and others. These, no doubt, were the things which annoyed our poet here.
A little reflection will make this annoyance exceedingly interesting. Not merely is the general effect of these lines very similar to that of hundreds and thousands of lines, in the earlier English Romantic school from Marlowe to Chamberlayne, in the later from Keats to Mr Swinburne; but the indignation of Persius is exactly similar, if not to the almost incredulous and disgusted disdain with which the critics and poets of the “school of good sense” looked back on the vagaries of their predecessors, to the alarmed and furious attempt made by critics of the present century to extinguish contemporaries who indulged in such things. Persius on Nero, if Nero it was, no doubt gave hints to, and, with hardly less doubt, was himself quite in sympathy with, the Quarterly Reviewers of Keats and Tennyson. There is the same protest against the effeminate, the luscious, the unrestrained, the same indignant demand for manliness, order, sanity.
But we may go even further. These same processes, which we have ventured to point out as certainly illustrated by the gibbeted verses, and as probably accounting for the wrath of their executioner, are the very processes by which all our great nineteenth-century poets in English have produced their characteristic effects—alliteration, internal rhyme or assonance, complete or muffled, and, above all, the modulation of vowel and consonant so as to produce a sort of song without music, accompanying the actual words. And it may be noted that while some of our modern critics have objected to these things in themselves, many more, oddly enough, object to the process of pointing them out, and seem to think that there is something almost indecent in it.
It would be unreasonable to expect that in the narrow compass of some six hundred lines this passage—locus uberrimus fructuosissimusque, to borrow the Ciceronian superlatives—should repeat itself. But the literary interest of Persius, as regards criticism, is by no means exhausted. The next three satires are indeed wholly occupied by the exposition of that practical, honest, upright, rather hard, rather limited morality which it is the pride of Rome to have carried as far as mere morality of the sort can travel. But the beginnings of the fifth[[318]] and sixth[[319]] have a literary and critical turn in them, and though the course of the satire is afterwards deflected, these beginnings show the same man, the same tastes, the same standards that we have seen in the first. Don’t potter over fantastic subjects and sham Greek epics, but attack something Roman and serious. Whatever you write, write it in a manly fashion, with no æsthetic trifling. That is the critical gospel of Persius, and he sets it forth with a vigour which we shall seldom find equalled, and with (in the instance we have dwelt upon) a most fortunate fertility of illustration.
The far bulkier work of Juvenal—work also of far higher genius in parts, but more unequal and uncertain—contains less |Juvenal.| that concerns our subject. It is impossible to mistake in Persius, young as he died, and scanty as are his remains, a very direct interest in literary form, such as did not always or often accompany Stoic philosophy. Juvenal, with a less definite philosophical creed, and perhaps a rather lower moral standard, had a higher “Pisgah-sight” and a stronger grasp of life as a whole. However long Persius had lived, it is improbable that he would ever have given us anything equal to the magnificent Tenth Satire. But Juvenal, much more of a pessimist than Persius, was less capable of enthusiasm. His general critical standpoint does not seem to have been very different from that of his predecessor, or indeed (allowing for the vastly greater difference of temperament) from that which we shall find in Martial. But to Juvenal literature as literature had no special pre-eminence among the contents of his famous farrago. It would even appear that, although practising it greatly himself, he had a rather special contempt for it.[[320]] The well-known opening of the First Satire[[321]] agrees with Persius and with Martial in its scorn of artificial Greek epics, of sham heroic subjects and forms generally. But there pierces through it something of a special contempt for “Grub Street”—for the unlucky “Codrus”—who reappears, not always to be abused, but always to be dismissed with a sort of kick of contempt. There is something more than the stock superciliousness of the satirist in the thousand times quoted
“Stulta est clementia, cum tot ubique
Vatibus occurras, perituræ parcere chartæ.”
The same tone is maintained throughout, and when poetry and literature appear (which is not extremely often), poets and men of letters are treated as practitioners of a rather troublesome, nearly superfluous, and slightly disreputable, profession, not as bad or good artists as the case may be. The stage-fright of the rhetorician who is going to make a speech at Lyons (the gird at the provincial is obvious), the book-chest of Codrus, with the mice gnawing the divine poems, the Greek mania which alternates with others in wives, and the learned lady who talks for hours on the comparative merits of Homer and Virgil, are introduced with the poet’s usual spirit and vigour, but very distinctly not from the literary point of view. They are ludicrous things and persons, good satiric matter: but the book-chest is in the same class with the lectus Procula minor, the fancy for Greek with the fancy for gladiators, the critical lady with her sister who enamels her face. It is by no means un-noteworthy that, in the Tenth itself, the vanity of literary study and success—an admirably suggestive subject—is hardly touched at all; that the careers of Demosthenes and Cicero are held up as a moral because of their political ill-success, and the sanguinary fate of each—which might have happened to the most illiterate of men. But this is most noticeable of all in the Seventh, which may be said to have a definitely literary frame and scheme, or which at least certainly would have had these in the hands of a man really inclined to literary criticism. It opens with a characteristic picture of what the Americans would call a “slump” in poetry—the most celebrated bards giving up the profession in sheer despair, becoming bath-keepers, or stokers, or auctioneers’ criers, selling their tragedies at rummage sales, or at the very best getting empty praise and no pudding from their stingy though wealthy patrons. Then Juvenal becomes a little graver, and contrasts the victim of cacoethes scribendi with the really exceptional poet (whom he cannot point out, and only imagines), who will put forth no hack-work, and writes not even for fame, but to please himself and the Muses. Such a poet must be in independent circumstances—if Virgil had had no boy to wait on him, and no tolerable lodging, all the snakes would have dropped from the hair of his Erinyes, says he in one of his most characteristic Juvenalisms. Lucan happened to be well off: but Statius, for all the popularity of his Thebais, would have gone dinnerless if he had not sold his Agave to the actor Paris (apparently to pass off as his own).[[322]] Nor is the historian’s labour more profitable. Indeed it is less so, for it consumes more paper, more time, and more oil for the lamp, as Juvenal points out in what some modern reviewers would call “his flippant manner.” Even the much-praised trade of the orator brings in wretched fees as a rule—a ham, a jar of sardines, a bunch of onions, half-a-dozen of common wine. If you wish to soar higher in the matter of receipts, you must spend greatly, have handsome horses, furniture, rings. Merely teaching to declaim may be rather more profitable, but think of the intolerable boredom of the business! the same patter of stock declamations and exercises, the unreality and folly of it all! True, there are exceptions—and here comes a curious passage, half satirical, half complimentary, on Quintilian himself, but treating him not in the least from the literary standpoint. And so to the end.
This abstract, though brief, should be sufficient to establish our point—that Juvenal, while he rarely cared to touch strictly literary subjects, hardly ever treated them in a strictly literary manner. He shared the opinion of the best Roman literary judges at all times—and especially in his own times, when the popular current was setting in the opposite direction—that literary style ought to be plain, nervous, manly; and he could express this with even better right than Persius, inasmuch as his own, though extremely allusive and of the most original character, is quite clear from involution or conceit. But he did not care in the least to investigate literary processes: nor did he trouble himself very much to contrast styles and differentiate their values. One may even, without any rashness of guess, be certain that he would have regarded criticism of form with nearly as much disfavour in a man as he expressly does in a woman. In fact, he would have considered it the occupation of a fribble.
When we pass to the graceful graceless crowd of motes, or rather midges (for they have a very distinct bite), which composes |Martial.| the works of Martial, we find, as has been said, very much the same general attitude towards styles in literature. But the expression is differentiated, not merely by the existence in the writer of a different moral complexion, but by the necessary conditions of his form. They could discuss; he can only glance. Further, the avowed purpose of amusement, of composing the verses of a very peculiar society, which animates the epigrams practically throughout, affects the result very considerably. Their author resembles both Persius and Juvenal in paying very elaborate attention to the outside of things, to the accidents of the literary business. We hear in him continually the echo of the sophos, the “bravo!” which the reciter and the rhetorician sought for, and which they sometimes, if not often, procured by the agency of a regular claque. We learn (not in the least to our surprise) that then, as now, there existed the kind literary friend who was quite eager to receive presentation copies, but who was by no means ready to go to the publishers and exchange even an extremely moderate number of his own denarii for a nice clean book, on polished vellum and neatly rubricated.[[323]] There were also then, as now, readers or reviewers who would take copyists’ (lege “printers’”) errors very seriously, and upbraid the poet for them[[324]]—which he did not bear patiently.
Here we have the certainly pointed, if not very polite, excuse for not submitting to the same tax of presentation copies, that he fears his friend may reply with a present of his works:[[325]] elsewhere (in those triumphs of ingenious trifling the apophoreta, or gift-tickets) the neat suggestion, with a blank album, that a poet can offer no more acceptable present than paper not written upon.[[326]] In one place there is, to carry off a piece of sheer begging, an irresistibly comic anecdote of a “curious impertinent,” who after asking whether the poet is not the Martial whom everybody not a fool admires, and receiving a confession of the soft impeachment, abruptly demands why such a poet has such a shocking bad great-coat, and receives the meek reply, quia sum malus poeta.[[327]] But these, and a good many others, which an easy reading, and a not very troublesome classification, of the Epigrams will enable any one to produce, are examples parallel rather to our citations from Juvenal than to the capital one from Persius. That is to say, they are examples rather of the selection of a particular subject, as one of a hundred suitable to the special mode of treatment, than of the assertion or the display of any particular interest in that subject, or any special theories upon it. So, too, in some cases of more special reference, Martial’s habits of flattery, and the unblushing way in which (not for the first or the last time) men of letters in his generation were wont to fish for presents, make it not always quite easy to know how much seriousness to attach to his expressions of opinion on particular writers. Did he, for instance, really think Silius Italicus such a great poet?[[328]] One cannot say: it is certain that Silius was rich, and a person who seems to have been able to keep his head above water, and on his shoulders, during all the stormy changes of his lifetime. And if such a man wrote poetry, if he was not his enemy—still more if, as was the case here, he was his friend—we know but too well that Marcus Valerius Martialis was never likely to publish any unflattering opinion of it.
But, in a very large number of cases, there was no possibility of hoodwinking, nor any object in attempting the operation. In |The style of the Epigrams.| the very numerous references to his own books, Martial shows us that he wrote, not at haphazard but with the keenest critical knowledge of the requirements of the form. That he recognises, in more places than one,[[329]] Catullus as his own master, model, and superior, is itself a critical document and testimonial of the first value. For it is notorious that the Romans, as a rule, by no means rated the great poet of Verona at his due; and though the sneer of Horace[[330]] may have been dictated by a sufficiently ignoble but very intelligible jealousy, the slight and passing note of Quintilian[[331]] admits of no such explanation. But it was the Catullus of the epigrams that Martial endeavoured to rival. In doing so he shows that he had a very definite, and a very just, notion of the versification and diction necessary to his purpose. His praise of the Romana simplicitas shown in the style of the lampoon of Augustus on Fulvia, in respect to which one can only refer modern readers to the original,[[332]] is capable of being mistaken for a mere laudation of coarse language—for an anticipation of that curious fallacy which has more than once made men regret the withdrawal of the licence to “talk greasily.” But this is unfair both to the poet and to the Emperor. Martial certainly does talk greasily with a vengeance; but the last line of this Imperial fescenninity depends for its point by no means merely on the obscene, and is an excellent example of clear-cut, straight-hitting phrase.
This phrase Martial himself almost always achieved, though in a few cases his points are still dark to us, and though he had not the slightest objection to using Greek words, vulgar words, and so forth when it suited his purpose. The misty magniloquence which attracted so many men of his time had no charms for him. When he rises, as he sometimes does, from sheer naughtiness or playful trifling to pathos, to seriousness, to graceful description of landscape—in the well-known Pætus and Arria piece, in the epitaphs on Erotion, and the still finer one on Paris, in his country poems and elsewhere—he is purely Attic. No style can have a simpler and a less affectedly simple grace. And that he did this deliberately—that it was his theory as well as his practice—we may see very well from a sort of cento of passages bearing on the subject. He differs not merely from Catullus but from Prior (who is perhaps his nearest analogue in almost all ways) by having obviously no velleities towards the grand style. We can imagine Prior writing, and writing quite as well, the piece which tells how pretty Phyllis, when her lover was racking his brains for some elegant present to reward her kindness past, exerted fresh coaxing before asking him for—a jar of wine,[[333]] or describing the singular history of Galla on the stock- and share-lists of Love.[[334]] But we cannot imagine Martial writing Alma or Solomon. And all his critical observations, direct or indirect, testify to a conception of literature perfectly clear and not really deserving the term narrow, if only because the poet quite frankly limits it to the kind in which he wishes to, and knows that he can, excel, the kind indicated in his own famous quatrain:—
“Ille ego sum nulli nugarum laude secundus
Quem non ignoras, sed puto lector amas:
Majores majora sonent, mihi parva locuto
Sufficit in vestras sæpe redire manus.”
Let us see what morsels of criticism such handling furnishes.
The prose preface and the opening epigrams of the first book contain humorous statements of his own fame, excuses (not quite valid) for his licence of speech, and jocose exaggerations of the critical temper of the times; but there is not much doctrine in them. There is more in ii. 77, where, not in the best temper |Précis of their critical contents.| (for Martial, like some other persons, though he loved to criticise, was not excessively fond of being criticised), he points out to a certain Cusconius what the French wit afterwards borrowed from him in the phrase “ce n’est pas long, mais il y a des longueurs.” Verses, he says, like his own, though there may be many of them, are not long because they can spare nothing, because there is nothing otiose in them. Cusconius, on the other hand, can write distichs which are long. There is a not uninteresting glance at the fashionable literary subjects and kinds—History of the times of Claudius, criticism of the myths about Nero (these could be safely done under the Flavian emperors), fables in the style of Phædrus, tender elegiacs and stern hexameters, Sophoclean tragedy or Attic salt—in iii. 20. Another French jest—one of the very best of Piron on La Chaussée—is anticipated with variation in the 25th of the same book, by the suggestion to a friend whose baths have been overheated, that he should ask Sabinæus the rhetor to bathe. He can reduce the temperature of the Thermæ of Nero themselves. IV. 49 gives us another critical laudation of the epigram. Flaccus is quite wrong to think it child’s play. The poet is much more guilty of that who busies himself with Tereus and Thyestes and Dædalus and Polyphemus. There is no mere bombast in his book: his Muse is not frounced with senseless tragic train.[[335]] “But,” says Flaccus, “the others are the things that people praise.” “Perhaps,” says Martial, “they praise them: but they read me,” with of course the implied and very sound criticism that it is not so easy to write what shall be easy to read. V. 10 ends with a jest, the poet saying that if his fame is to come after his death he hopes it will come late. But it treats rather seriously the other “touch of nature” (opposite to that of which Shakespeare speaks and complementary to it), that in literature, and at times [not always, O Martial!] men do not “praise new-born gauds.” They read Ennius in the lifetime of Virgil, laughed at Homer [the evidence for this?] in his own days, preferred Philemon to Menander, and left Ovid to the appreciation of Corinna.[[336]] But he shows his less critical mood in setting this down to envy rather than to the undoubted fact that, in at least many cases, poets anticipate, if they do not exactly create, the taste for them—that, as it has been said, a poet’s chief admirers are born at about the time when he writes. The necessity of some “bite”[[337]] in epigrams, vii. 25, is counsel at least as much of common-sense as of literature. In the 85th of the same, the poet objects to Sabellus that he can write a few quatrains rather well, but not a book—by which he probably glances at the necessity, in a book, of varying and sorting the kinds, as well as of providing a mere quantity of monotonous stuff. And in the 90th again of the same book he is still more explicitly argumentative. A certain Matho, it seems, went about saying that Martial’s books were unequal. If this be so, retorts our bard, it is because Calvinus (? or Cluvienus, as in Juvenal) and Umber write “equal” verses, and a bad book is always an “equal” one.
Now, what exactly did he mean by “equal”? When we say that a book is unequal, we generally mean that it has faults as well as beauties, that it is not equally good, and in this sense Martial would merely be vindicating himself from the charge of a tame faultlessness, from that æqualis mediocritas which Quintilian smites in passing. But, if we take it in conjunction with the Sabellus epigram just quoted, I think it will not be unfair to allow to æqualis also its other sense of “unvarying,” “monotonous,” and give the prominence to this in the equivalence with malus of the last line.[[338]] Martial specially and critically prided himself on the variety of his books, on their containing something for every taste, and something (almost) about every subject. And the book, he says therefore, that has not this quality is a bad book. The same doctrine pierces through the laudation of the prose preface of the Eighth to Domitian, and points the hope that the celestial verecundia of the “bald Nero” will not be offended by the naughtier epigrams.
The third of this eighth book contains an interesting dialogue between the Poet and his Muse. Were it not, says he, better to stop? Are not six or seven books enough and too much? Their fame is far and widely spread, and when the monuments of the great are dust they will be, and strangers will take them to their own country. It is never quite easy to know whether Martial is laughing in his sleeve or not in these boastings. But the ninth of the sisters, her hair and garments dripping with perfume (probably Thalia, certainly not one of the Musæ severiores), upbraids him with ingratitude and folly. Why drop these pleasantries? What better pastime will he find? Will he change his sock for the buskin, or arrange hexameters to tell of wars, that pedants may spout him, and that good boys and fair girls may loathe his name? Let the grave and precise write such things by their midnight lamp. But for him, let an elegant saltness dash his Roman books, let real living people recognise and read their own actions and characters; and if the oat be thin, remember that it conquers the trumpets of many. The Epigram here, it will be seen, arrogates to itself something like the place of the full Satire.
This, one of the best and most spirited of Martial’s literary pronouncements, is followed up in a lower key by the 56th epigram of the same book, addressed to that Flaccus who is elsewhere the recipient of the poet’s literary confidences. It contains the famous line—
“Sint[[339]] Mæcenates, non deerunt, Flacce, Marones”—
and elaborates the doctrine that the patron makes the poet, comfort, if not luxury, the poetry, in an ingenious but impudent manner, carrying off the impudence, however, by the close. What, he supposes Flaccus to say, will you be a Virgil if I give you what Mæcenas gave him? Well, no, perhaps: but I may be a Marsus—a poet who wrote many things, but chiefly in the occasional kind, whom Martial greatly admired, and whose epilogue on Tibullus—
“Te quoque Virgilio comitem non æqua Tibulle”—
with two or three other fragments, we possess.[[340]] And the same doctrine, that love and luxury are needful to the bard, reappears in 73.
Martial does not often come down to the minutiæ of criticism, but he sometimes does, and once in a very noteworthy passage, ix. 11. Here, in some of his most gracefully fluttering verses, he celebrates the charm of the name[[341]] Eiarinos or Earinos, notes that unless he takes the epic licence of the first form it will not come into verse, and then adds—
“Dicunt Eiarinon tamen poetæ,
Sed Græci, quibus est nihil negatum
Et quos Ἄρες ἄρες decet sonare:
Nobis non licet esse tam disertis,
Qui Musas colimus severiores.”
There are two things noticeable here—first, Martial’s truly poetical sensitiveness to the beauty of a name, for certainly there is none prettier than Earine (let him keep the masculine to himself!) which also appears elsewhere; and secondly his equally poetical yearning for that licence of “common” quantification, which has made Greek and English the two great poetical languages of the world.[[342]] If he would have developed these views a little oftener, and at a little greater length, we really could have spared a considerable number of epigrams imputing unmentionable offences to the persons he did not like. It was his cue, however, to profess (though half his charm comes from his sense of them) disdain for such niceties, as in the 81st epigram of the same book, which is one of his neatest turns. Readers, he says, and hearers like his books, but a certain poet denies that they are correctly finished (exactos). It does not trouble him much, for he would rather that the courses of the feast he offers pleased the guests than that they pleased the cooks. In this, light as it is, there lurks the germ of a weighty criticism, and one which would, had it been worked out, have carried Martial far from the ordinary critical standpoint of his time. That, in homely phrase analogous to his own, the proof of the pudding is in the eating—that the production of the poetical satisfaction afterwards, not the satisfaction of the examiners beforehand as to the observation of the rules, is the thing—that Martial doubtless saw, and that he, by implication, says. But he does not say it quite openly, and it might have shocked Quintilian (though it would not have shocked Longinus) if he had.
The Tenth book is particularly rich in literary epigrams. It opens with a batch of them,—one of his pleasant excuses for yet another reappearance (the pieces are so short that if you don’t like the book you can lay it down as finished at any moment), an honest indication of the fact that some of the epigrams are only new editions, so to speak, of old ones, smoothed with a recent file, one of the not disagreeably boasting reminders that letters outlive brass and marble (a boast justified in his own case, but not so, alas! in those of Marsus and others whom he admitted as his masters), a strongly worded protest against some clandestine poet who has been forging bad epigrams in his name, a repetition of the old contemptuous pooh-poohing of stock Greek subjects, and the old exhortation to study the life. The 19th, in a pleasant envoy of the book to Pliny, bids the Muse who carries it observe her time, and not disturb the grave man at his graver hours. The 21st is an expostulation with a certain Sextus, who seems to have prided himself on the eccentric vocabulary of his poems. What is the use of writing so that Modestus and Claranus themselves (known men of learning) can scarcely understand you, and so that your books demand not an ordinary reader but the Delphic Apollo? You would prefer to Virgil Cinna—Helvius Cinna, whose fancy for out-of-the-way words we can see, even in the petty wreckage of his work that time has fated to us.[[343]] Perhaps, Martial admits, such poems may be praised; but he would rather have grammarians like his work, and not be necessary to its liking.[[344]] The 35th is a specially graceful compliment to the poetess Sulpicia, who wrote her love poems (apparently rather warm ones[[345]]) to her husband only, and with whom, says Martial, for schoolmate or schoolmistress, Sappho herself would have been doctior et pudica—a right happy blending of comparative and positive. 70 is a quaint apology, not for writing so much but for writing so little, the satire of which is so ingeniously airy that it is possible to interpret its irony in more ways than one. Potitus calls him lazy because he does not bring out more than one book a-year. What time has a man to write poetry? Calls and congratulations (which, somehow, he does not find returned), attendances at religious and official functions, listening the whole day long to other poets, to advocates, to declaimers, to very grammarians, the bath, the sportula—why, the whole day slips away sometimes without one’s being able to settle to work at all!
The 78th, addressed to Macer, contains the graceful request—
“Nec multos mihi præferas poetas,
Uno sed tibi sim minor Catullo”—
which shows Martial’s faithfulness to his exquisite master.
The Eleventh and Twelfth, the last of the epigrams proper (for the Xenia and Apophoreta[[346]] have been dealt with so far as the little that they have concerns us, and the Liber de Specta culis is out of the question), are also fruitful. The common habit of addressing the book itself at its beginning frequently has a literary turn given to it by Martial, and as in the Tenth so in the Eleventh, not one but a batch appears as overture, chiefly dedicatory; while another batch farther on is opened by the promise, certainly not falsified, that the book is going to be the naughtiest of all. The 90th, however, is important for us, though by no means immaculate[immaculate], because the sudden fling of a handful of mud, in which Martial too often delights, is led up to by satire on that same preference for uncouth and archaic language, which, as we have seen, so often defrays the satiric criticism of the time. Chrestillus, the victim, it seems, approves no smooth verses; they must roll over rocks and jolt on half-made roads to please him. A verse like
“Luceili columella heic situ’ Metrophanes”
is better to him than all Homer, and he worships terrai frugiferai and all the jargon of Attius and Pacuvius.
The prose preface of the Twelfth book starts with an excuse for a three years’ silence (it would appear that for a considerable time Martial had produced a book yearly), due to the poet’s return to Spain. He had been, as the epigram above quoted pleads, too busy or too lazy to write in town; in the country he found himself deprived of the material for writing. The stimulating, teasing occupations of Rome had given place to mere clownish vacancy. However, to please Priscus, he has busied himself again, and he only hopes that his friend will not find his work “not merely Spanish of the Roman Pale, but Spanish pure and simple.”[[347]] In the third epigram there is a half-rueful recommendation (which Thackeray would have translated impeccably) to his book to revisit the dear old places, ending with a distich revindicating, in no wise foolishly, the crown of style—
“Quid titulum poscis? Versus duo tresve legantur,
Clamabunt omnes te, liber, esse meum.”
He was right. Nobody but Martial could have written Martial except Catullus himself in his less noble moods; and the boast is in itself a criticism and a just one. Yet Martial had his dignity, and an odd epigram, the 61st of this book, disclaims the mere coarse language in which he seems to us too often to have indulged. And the tale of literary epigrams ceases (I apologise for omissions in the bright and shifting bevy) with another odd piece, which may be either gross flattery, irony of a rather sanguinary kind, or mere playfulness, and in which he remonstrates with his friend Tucca for touching and executing, so as to make competition impossible, every kind of poetry.[poetry.] Epic, tragedy, lyric, satire, epigram itself—Martial has tried them all and dropped them, because he feels himself beaten by Tucca. This is not fair; let Tucca leave him at least one kind, the kind that he doesn’t care for. It is not fanciful, surely, to find a critique of poetical polypragmatism here also.
It may well seem to some that too much space has been accorded to Martial; but it has been allotted on the principle which, be it mistaken or not, is the principle that underlies this book. We have, in this good-for-nothing trifler, a very considerable number of pronouncements on critical points, or points connected with criticism, and, what is more, we have in him a writer who has a very clear notion of literary criticism in and for his own work. A great poet Martial is not: he has no fine madness, or only the remotest touches of it. He does not look back to the way in which Lucretius had infused that quality into the language; I do not think, speaking under correction, that he ever so much as names him. He does not anticipate (and if he had anticipated, he would not, I think, have welcomed with any pleasure) the tide which, welling in upon the severer Muses of classical Latin style, gave them once more the Siren quality in the Low Latin of the Middle Ages. Farther, he can hardly be said to have any “wood-notes wild”; even his country descriptions, charming as they are, are distinctly artificial. Much as he adores Catullus, it is not for the flashes of pure poetry which we see in that poet. But, on the other hand, Martial sees, not merely with instinctive but with critical certainty, that gift of precision, clearness, felicity, venustas, which the Greek-Latin blend of the Golden and Silver Ages had. He practises and he preaches the cultivation of this. He preaches it at no tedious length: his chosen form as well as his common-sense would have prevented that. But he directly extols the cultivation of style—of that quality which will make any decent judge identify a poet when he has heard three lines of his poem. And he practises what he preaches. Even what the grave and precise (quite truly one must confess) call his moral degradation saves him from confusing the moral with the literary quality of literature—the noble error of most ancient criticism. He has, as scarcely any other ancient writer has, formulated the great critical question, “L’ouvrage est-il bon ou est-il mauvais?” And if he had chosen to write a De Arte Poetica, I am bound, shocking as the confession may seem, to say that I think it would have been superior to that of Horace, while he has provided no unimportant progymnasmata towards one as it is.
From “the mixed and subtle Martial,” as Gavin Douglas excellently |Statius.| calls him, we may pass to the poet, perhaps the rival, whom he never mentions[[348]]—the author of that only adequate Roman description of Lucretius which has been referred to above.[[349]] The precise sources of the popularity of Statius in the Middle Ages have never yet, I think, been thoroughly investigated. It is, however, not difficult to discern them afar off, and to include among them a certain touch of that uncritical quality which, as we shall see, was one of the main notes of the Middle Ages themselves. Yet the author of the words furor arduus Lucreti[[350]] must have been able at least to appreciate. And the poem which contains that phrase, as well as the prose prefaces of the Sylvæ where it occurs, will yield something more bearing on our subject. The first of these prefaces is a curious if not particularly felicitous plea for the legitimacy—indeed, for the necessity—of a poet’s indulging in lighter work in the intervals of Thebaids and Achilleids. This is something like the view of Pliny: the poet must be a Jack-of-all-poetical-trades. Martial knew better. But it is a noteworthy thing (and Martial himself would have been pungent on it) that Statius cannot make his trifles brief. Domitian’s horse has nearly three hundred lines. I do not think that there is a single poem in the five books of the Sylvæ which falls short of several scores, whatever its metre. In the preface of the second he apologises to his friend Melior for some of the pieces, as libellos quasi epigrammatic loco scriptos, and here again Martial might have had something to say about epigrams seventy-seven lines long. That Statius had not cleared up his own mind about criticism appears from the touching and attractive, though not quite consummate, Ad Claudiam Uxorem, where the poet, beaten in the public competitions where he had long triumphed, proposes that Naples, and his wife’s caresses, shall console him for the loss of tasteless and thankless Rome. But the Genethliacon Lucani, a commemorative birth-day poem on Lucan (which would have been a little more effective if we could forget that this tribute to the victim of Nero was written by a flatterer of Domitian), contains the central utterance of Statius about other poets. It is, as nearly everything of Statius has been said to be, too long and too much improvised, though also, like most things, if not everything, of his, it contains fine touches, especially that of Lucan in the shades:—
“Seu magna sacer et superbus umbra
Nescis Tartaron, et procul nocentum
Audis verbera, pallidumque visa
Matris lampade respicis Neronem.”
But its interest for us, besides the Lucretian description, which is itself not improved by docti, consists in the long eulogy of Lucan himself, and the repeated, and therefore not probably conventional, advice to him not to be afraid of Virgil—
“Bætin Mantua provocare noli;”
and after some time—
“Quin majus loquor; ipsa te Latinis
Æneis venerabitur canentem.”
It would be clear from this, if we did not know it from the evidence of his original work, that Statius was not on the side of the satirists, that he had no objection to the Spanish ampulla.
The, in all ways very delightful, Epistles[[351]] of the younger Pliny are not least delightful in the line of literary criticism. |Pliny the Younger: Criticism on the Letters.| Pliny was a confirmed man of letters. In no member of the most interesting group of late Flavian and early Antonine writers do we see more clearly the “bookish” tone which so largely pervaded Roman society. He even, on the celebrated occasion[[352]] when he tells Tacitus with modest pride that he had bagged three wild boars, et quidem pulcherrimos, admits that he sat at the nets with a pencil and a notebook, thus anticipating the action of Kingsley’s Lancelot Smith when he took St Francis de Sales to a meet. He takes an intelligent pride in his uncle’s literary work, and if he is a little wrong in doubting Martial’s power of “lasting” in the letter which he writes after his death,[[353]] let us remember that Martial had paid him a very pretty compliment (which he quotes and which we have quoted[[354]]), and that it would not have done to be too certain of the fact of this coming to Prince Posterity. The very first letter[[355]] admits a particular critical care in composition, and the second gives further particulars thereof. He had never taken such care as with the book that he sends to Arrian. He had tried to follow Demosthenes and Calvus, but few, quos æquus amavit (this allusiveness would have been reprehended by some of our modern critics), can really catch up such masters. The matter was good, and he had sometimes ventured to extract special ornaments from the “perfume-bottles”[[356]] of Cicero. But Arrian must give him a careful revision, for the booksellers tell him that the thing is already popular. He has many of the technical phrases which half attract and half repel modern readers, because they are so difficult to adjust. There is something like a miniature review in his description of the works of Pompeius Saturninus to Erucius in i. 16. This Pompey has something so varium, so flexibile, so multiplex, that he holds Pliny’s entire attention. He had heard him pleading both with and without preparation, acriter et ardenter, nec minus polite et ornate. There were in these speeches acutæ, crebræque sententiæ, a grave and decorous construction, sonorous and archaic terms (Martial and Persius would have shaken heads). “All these things,” he says, “please strangely when they are rolled forth in a rushing flood, and they please even if they are read over again. You will think as I do when you have his orations in your hands, orations comparable to those of any of the ancients whom he rivals. Yet he is still more satisfactory in History, whether you take his brevity, or his light, or his sweetness, or his splendour, or his sublimity. In popular addresses he is the same as in Oratory, though more compressed and circumscript, and wound together. His verses are as good as Catullus or Calvus, and full of elegance, sweetness, bitterness, love! and his Letters (which he calls his wife’s) are like Plautus or Terence without the metre.” Truly an Admirable Crichton of a Pompeius Saturninus! and great pity it is that he has not come down to us, this “Cambridge the everything”[[357]]—of circa 100 A.D.
But the most famous of Pliny’s letters in connection with this subject is the twentieth of the first book,[[358]] to Tacitus, in which he deals with a set question of literary criticism. “A certain learned and skilful man” maintains that in oratory brevity is everything. In certain cases, Pliny admits, but only in certain cases. The adversary objects Lysias among the Greeks, the Gracchi and Cato among the Romans. Pliny retorts with Demosthenes, Æschines, Hyperides, Pollio, Cæsar, Cælius, Cicero. Indeed he does not fear to lay it down as a general principle, “the bigger the better.”[[359]] The adversary says that the orators spoke less than they published. Pliny dissents. And then he discusses the matter generally—from the point of view of oratory in the main, but partly also from that of literature. And his general view, like that of his generation (I hardly know whether to include his master Quintilian or not), may be taken as put in the phrase, Non enim amputata oratio et abscissa, sed lata et magnifica et excelsa tonat, fulgurat, omnia denique perturbat ac miscet.[[360]]
The third letter of the second book is a set panegyric of Isæus,[[361]] which would be of more interest if criticisms of orators were not so common; the fifth of the third is the notice of the life, literary and other, of Pliny the Elder. The obituary criticism of Martial, to which reference has been made, occurs in the 21st of this third book, and is a little patronising. But the contemner of brevity, even if he were a private friend and a flattered one, and if he had (as most Romans would have had) no objection to Martial’s freedom of subject and language, could hardly be expected to do full justice to the epigrammatist.
We are less able to judge the literary part of the flattering epistle (iv. 3) to Antoninus, afterwards Emperor, which is so much in the extravagant style of Roman compliment that, in the absence of the work referred to, it gives us no critical information whatever. The literary characteristic of the future Pius appeared to Pliny to be the mixture of the severe with the agreeable—of the grave with the gay, which made his style extraordinary sweet, as the eighteenth century would have said. The usual honey and its maker-bees put in the usual appearance to express Pliny’s sensations when he reads his correspondent’s Greek epigrams and iambics. He thinks of Callimachus or Herodes (doubtless our just recovered Herondas). Only neither has done anything so humane, so venust, so sweet, so loving, so keen, so correct. How could a Roman write such Greek? It is more Attic than Athens, and Pliny grudges such a writer to the Greeks, though there is no doubt that if Antoninus would only write in his mother tongue he would do better still.
IV. 14, enclosing some hendecasyllabics which have not come down (from other specimens they are a tolerable loss), contains some interesting and curious remarks on the always burning and never yet settled question of morality in literature. Pliny adopts to the full, as a matter of principle, the doctrine which his friend Martial had both practised and preached, that naughty things, and even the naughtiest words, may figure in poetry,—that, as Pliny himself puts it, with the still higher authority of Catullus—
“Nam castum esse decet pium poetam
Ipsum—versiculos nihil necesse est.”
Only he himself declines to use the naughty words,[[362]] not out of prudery, but out of timidity. He follows this up with the sounder doctrine that everything must be judged in its own kind.
Another short letter to Antoninus (iv. 18) not merely repeats the praise of his Greek epigrams, but informs us that Pliny himself has put some of these in Latin. A longer one, which follows, to Calpurnia Hispulla, contains an elaborate eulogy of the lady’s niece, Pliny’s second wife, who shows her good taste and virtue by learning her husband’s books by heart, instructing herself in literature generally for love of him, and singing his verses. And later, with something of the same innocence or lack of humour which was a Roman—in fact, has generally been a Latin—characteristic, he tells us that he has been for three days listening cum summa voluptate to a certain Sentius Augurinus, reciting his poems or poemkins (poematia). Sentius, it seems, performed many things with lightness, many with sublimity, many with beauty, many with tenderness, many with sweetness, many with bile. It is not quite clear under which head comes the specimen he produces, which is a rather feeble compliment to Pliny himself. “Vides,” says Pliny, after quoting it, “quam acuta omnia, quam apta, quam expressa.” Besides, he is the friend of Spurinna and Antoninus. What an emendatus adolescens!
V. 8[[363]] is a not uninteresting paper on History. Tutinius Capito wishes him, as he tells us others had done, to write this. Pliny is not ill-disposed to do so, not because he thinks he shall do it very well, but (the sentiment is a fine one, though a little bombastically expressed) because “it seems to him one of the best of actions to rescue from perishing that which ought to be eternal.”[[364]] His idea of history, however, is not very lofty. Oratory and Poetry, he says, must have style; History pleases howsoever it be written, because of the natural curiosity of man—a doctrine which, in slightly changed matter, has been joyfully accepted by the usual novelist. Besides, his uncle had been a diligent historian. Then why does he delay? Because he wants to execute a careful recension of his speeches in important cases, and he hardly feels equal to both tasks, while, though there is much in common between Oratory and History, they are also different. The contrast is curious, and shows the overweening position which Oratory had with the ancients. To History, says Pliny, things humble and sordid, or at least mediocre, belong: to Oratory, all that is exquisite, splendid, and lofty.[[365]] The bare bones, muscles, and nerves suit history: Oratory must have the swelling bulk of flesh and the waving plumes of hair. History pleases by rough, bitter energy:[[366]] Oratory by long-drawn sweetness. Diction, style, construction—all are different. After which he gives a somewhat unexpected turn to the famous Thucydidean saying, by admitting that history is the ktema, and the agonisma oratory. And, therefore, he thinks that he had better not attempt at once two things so different. A letter to Suetonius about the books of both (v. 10), another to Spurinna (v. 17) about a recitation by Calpurnius Piso, a third (vi. 15) on a thin jest by Javolenus Priscus at another recitation by a descendant of Propertius (who began “Prisce jubes,” and was interrupted by Javolenus, Ego vero non jubeo), may be glanced at rather than discussed.
Perhaps there is no better document of Pliny’s literary criticism, both in its strength and in its weakness, than vi. 17. He writes in a state of indignatiuncula (let us translate “mild wrath”), which he can only relieve by working it off in a letter to his friend Restitutus. He has been at one of the eternal recitations, where the book recited was not so usual; indeed, it was absolutissimus—quite “A per se,” as our ancestors would have said. But one or two of the audience (clever[[367]] fellows, as they and a few others thought) listened to it as if they were deaf mutes. They did not open their lips: they did not clap: they did not even rise from their seats save when they were tired of sitting. What is the good of such gravity, such wisdom, nay, such laziness, arrogance, sinisterity (a good word!), or, to cut things short, madness, which leads men to spend a whole day [the terrors of recitation were obviously not exaggerated by the satirists] in offending and making an enemy of a man whom you have visited as a friend? Are you clever? Do not show envy: the envier is the lesser. Nay, whether you can yourself do as well, or less well, all the same praise him, whether he be inferior or superior or equal. Your superior, because, if he is not praiseworthy, still less are you; your equal or inferior, because the better he is, in that case, the better you are. Pliny, for his part, is wont to venerate and admire anybody who does anything in literature. It is a difficult thing, sir, an arduous, a fastidious, and it has a knack of bringing scorn on those who scorn it.[[368]] Restitutus will surely agree: he is the most amiable and considerate of judges. We may mark this passage as, of many interesting ones, that which gives us Pliny’s measure as a literary critic best.
But the list of his noteworthy “places” is by no means closed. VI. 21 gives us his standpoint in another famous quarrel—that of Ancients and Moderns. He admires the former, but by no means so as to despise the latter. He does not hold with the doctrine of the senescence of nature. He recently heard Vergilius Romanus recite a comedy in the Old Comedy kind, which was as good as it could be. The same man has written mimiambics with perfect grace, comedies in another kind as good as Menander’s; he has force, grandeur, subtlety, bitterness, sweetness, neatness, he glorifies virtue, attacks vice, invents his personages,[[369]] and uses real ones, with equal appropriateness. And (as by this time we begin to expect in such cases) “In writing about me he has only gone wrong by excessive kindness; and, after all, poets may feign.” One sees that the excellent Pliny’s geese were swans in every quill.
VII. 4 deals at some length with his own poems, and gives some hexameters about Tiro and Cicero, which are in style quite worthy of the subject. There are some elegiacs (rather better) in vii. 8, which is an elaborate recommendation of literary study—the turning of Greek into Latin, and vice versa, the refashioning and rearrangement of work already done, the alternation of oratorical practice with history, letter-writing, and verse of the lighter kind, which receives an elaborate and not unhappy encomium. As for reading, read all the best models in all the styles in which you write. VII. 17 is on recitation; 20 of the same book is one of several interesting, though slightly amusing, letters to Tacitus, in which Pliny implies it to be his own opinion, and quotes it as that of others, that he and Tacitus were the two greatest literary men of Rome, and that it was quite wonderful that they were such friends. What Tacitus thought of the conjunction we do not know; he was probably too well bred a man to put his thought in words, though a Tacitean expression of it would indeed be a treasure. In vii. 25 we meet another “swan,” Terentius Junior, who writes things quam tersa omnia! quam Latina! quam Græca! Later, in the 30th, a friend having compared his work, in vindication of Helvidius Priscus, to that of Demosthenes against Midias, he confesses that he had had the piece in view, though he thinks it would have been improbum et pæne furiosum to have imagined rivalry possible. In viii. 4 he encourages the friend to write an epic poem in Greek on the Dacian war, thereby incurring a considerable responsibility. The descendant of Propertius, on whom Javolenus Priscus made that surpassing joke, recurs in ix. 22 with fresh praise; and the last literary letter of importance (the 26th of the same) is on what may be called the grand style in oratory.
Here, as elsewhere, there may no doubt be room for difference of opinion as to the space and importance allowed to our witnesses. From the point of view of this book, however, Pliny’s testimony is of the utmost importance. We may regret—I certainly do—that an equal abundance of documents of the same character has not come to us from some one of greater literary competence—from Aristotle, or even from Dionysius, from Longinus, or even from Quintilian. But this is distinctly a case where the better is enemy to the good. For the purpose of ascertaining what was the actual state of critical opinion and literary taste at a given time, it is of more value to possess such a collection as this of Pliny’s than to have fifty Arts of Poetry.
Let us “write off” liberally at the outset for the drawbacks of the document. Pliny’s Letters, pleasant as they are, are not free from a suspicion, and, considering some statements of their own, something more than a suspicion, of being not entirely spontaneous: they were, at any rate in some cases, evidently written for publication. The author himself, though a man of excellent learning, of the completest cultivation of his day, of wide and ardent literary interests, and of no little common-sense, was, as some of his quoted judgments will have shown, not quite sufficiently possessed of the finest or most discriminating literary judgment. Moreover, he had a somewhat omnivorous and disproportionate opinion of the value of literary work, merely as such, even merely as something that looked such—compilation, translation, copying verse and prose, what not. Further, in these characteristics he to a great extent reflected those of his time—a time of great and active attention to literature, but rather one of talent than of genius, a period of decadence in many respects, and hardly of resurrection in any, and lastly, a period of doubtful literary taste, inclining, when it was sincere, to the florid and Asiatic, when it affected superiority, to a forced Pseudo-Atticism and concinnity.
Yet it will readily be perceived that none of these allowances is damning to the individual, while most of them even increase his value as a representative of the period itself. That he was, and was regarded by the time itself as, one of the most eminent of contemporary men of letters, cannot reasonably be doubted, though he certainly yokes himself rather unequally with Tacitus. And he is none the worse witness that, though a generous admirer of antiquity, he avowedly was by no means so out of conceit with his own time as men of letters often are. That this age was no decrepit one need hardly be said—with Persius “dead ere his prime,” and Martial, Juvenal, Quintilian, Tacitus, Statius, and Pliny himself, in full flourishing, with Marcus Aurelius and Arrian coming, with Lucian and Apuleius not far off—to mention no others—it had something considerable to show and say for itself. If we can obtain anything like a clear view of its opinions on literary criticism (to which it was naturally inclined, as being itself not of the very first, and having pasts of the very first behind it), we shall not do ill. And Pliny gives us help of a very special kind, and in very abundant degree, for the attainment of such a view, which we may proceed to take, after noticing briefly the only other documents of the time which require notice for our purpose.
These are the Apocrypha[[370]] of Quintilian, which are, for more reasons than one, best regarded apart from the Institutes. There are, in the first place, the Declamations, already referred to[[371]]—nineteen complete, with sketches, fragments, and skeletons of a much larger number, which even thus falls short of the huge total of nearly four hundred assigned to him after a fashion. If the whole were written on the scale of the score that we possess, they would fill some four thousand closely printed pages. Interesting, in a fashion, they are; as pointed out above, they supply, with the works of the elder Seneca, our only considerable bodies in Latin of that work of the schools which for centuries occupied the growing intellects of the two great ancient literary nations, and which supplied the never-blunted point of the satirist’s
“Ut pueris placeas et declamatio fias.”
Seneca has been treated already in his proper place. The Pseudo-Quintilian (for there is hardly a page of the Declamations which does not fly in the face of the Institutes) gives us speeches, adjusted to the strict canons of status and the rest, written in the well-known style of the Ciceronian superlative (one wonders that, simply to save breath and time, the bar of Rome did not agree that any one who said -issimus should be sconced an amphora, or, if that seem excessive, at least a congius), extremely ingenious now and then, but of the most fantastic and arbitrary quality. The chief interest of them, at least from our point of view, is, that in the mere reading one understands how impossible it was that attention to such things should consist with attention to true literary criticism.
The Dialogus de Claris Oratoribus, traditionally ascribed to Tacitus, though some will have it to be nothing less than the |The Dialogus de Claris Oratoribus.| otherwise lost De Causis corruptæ Eloquentiæ which Quintilian, as we know from himself, certainly wrote, is a much more meritorious performance. The style is very unlike[[372]] that of the surely unmistakable author of the Germania and the Annals, the method does not seem, to me at least, after a good deal of study of Quintilian, to be his. But it is very likely about their date, and by no contemptible author. The opening certainly chimes in not ill with the title of Quintilian’s missing treatise. A certain Justus Falinus had asked why, after the magnificent crops of oratory which former ages had yielded, the very name of orator had almost died out, and had been supplanted by “counsel”[[373]] and “advocate” and “patron.” The author replies, with a due Ciceronianism, that he had better rub up his memory of a remarkable conversation on the subject heard in his youth. Curiatius Maternus, both poet and orator, had recited a tragedy on Cato which excited the town nearly as much as another piece of the same name sixteen hundred years later; and Marcus Aper, a man of Gaulish origin, consular rank, and great fame, and Julius Secundus, met (with the writer) at Maternus’ house to talk over it. The first of these rather despised literature, relying on mother-wit; the second was said to be indebted more to art than to nature: but both were among the leading counsel of their day. Secundus gently suggests that Cato is a dangerous subject, and Maternus says that he has another tragedy in hand (Thyestes) with which to follow it. Then Aper opens fire upon him: first, for deserting oratory and the bar for idle play-writing; secondly, for choosing foolish fancy subjects like Thyestes. Maternus appeals to Secundus. He is accustomed to Aper’s denunciations of poetry. Will not Secundus act as judge? Secundus says that he is not quite impartial because of his friendship for Saleius Bassus (a contemporary epic poet of whom we hear in Quintilian as a particular friend of his). Oh, says Aper, let Bassus and others, who cannot compass oratory, cultivate poetry if they like. Here is Maternus who can: so he is wasting his time. And he embarks on a warm and by no means ineloquent eulogy of eloquence from its practical side, urging not merely its great political importance but other points. Eloquence opens positions of opulence and power, makes you valuable to your friends and the State, is a safeguard to yourself, gives fame, wealth, dignity. As for poetry, it brings none of these things. It is of no use, and the pleasure it gives is short, idle, and unprofitable. What is the good of it? Who thinks much even of Bassus himself? And if he or his friends are in any difficulty, to whom will they go? Why, to an orator. The poet spends an infinity of labour on his poem, compasses heaven and earth to whip an audience together, and gets nothing from it. Certainly Vespasian did give Bassus five hundred sestertia, and very noble it was of him; but this was mere alms. An orator earns his money. Besides, your poets have to skulk in the country, and even if they stay in town, who cares about them, or goes to see them? Of course, as before said, if a man cannot be an orator, why, let him be a poet. But eloquence is as great a thing from the merely literary point of view, and far more useful.
Maternus takes this diatribe quite coolly, and replies readily enough. He has had some little experience, he says, and some little fame in both oratory and poetry: he does not care for the publicity (so precious to Aper) which the former brings, and, holding the contrary opinion to his friend’s, he thinks the country life far higher and better than that of the town. The great poets of old, if you reckon mere fame, are at least the equals of the orators, and (here we come to another point of contact with Quintilian) there are more nowadays who run down Cicero than Virgil. The unquiet and anxious life of the orator has no charms for him. He wants neither more money nor more power: and he would have himself figured on his tomb, not serious and frowning, but merry and crowned. At the peroration of Maternus comes in Vipsanius[[374]] Messalla, who, being informed by Secundus of the nature of the dispute, expresses his approval of it, but hints a strong preference for the older orators. Aper catches this up rather hotly, after his manner: and after a little general conversation puts the obvious aporia, Who are the old orators? running over the history of Roman oratory, with some not uninteresting criticisms, and a strong contention in favour of his own contemporaries. Maternus and Messalla take up the same matter from other sides, and the dialogue ends.
This piece at first promises considerably, and it cannot be said to perform badly in any place; but its conclusion and middle part are of less importance to us than seemed likely at the beginning. The panegyrics of Oratory and Poetry respectively, in which Aper and Maternus indulge, might well have led to a fuller and more searching analysis of the respective literary merits of the two—instead of which we have from Aper only a rather Philistine exaltation of the superior use and profit of oratory, from Maternus a generous, but slightly vague and rhetorical, exaltation of the qualities of poetry and the delights of the poet. From the entrance of Messalla the piece becomes little more than a contribution to the everlasting ancient-and-modern quarrel on the one hand, and to the history of Roman oratory on the other. Yet in Aper, at least, we have a vigorous projection of the positive Roman spirit, combined with a fancy for pregnant and precious style; in Maternus, an indication of that mainly dilettante and bookish temper which the satirists blame in their literary, and especially their poetical, contemporaries; and in Messalla (who is taken by the partisans of the Tacitean authorship to represent Tacitus himself), an instance of that looking back to better times which is, at any rate sometimes, if not invariably, a token of literary decadence.
Here again, as in the case of Cicero, it is necessary to break the rule of not entering upon controversy, lest by silence one |Mr Nettleship’s estimate of it.| incur the blame of neglecting more than competent authority. As in that other case, Mr Nettleship’s estimate of the critical value of the Dialogus (which he unhesitatingly attributes to Tacitus) is higher, though not so much higher, than mine. He ranks it with, but above, the Brutus, as “the two great documents of Latin criticism”: I should put both as such (though Cicero and Tacitus were both of them far cleverer than Quintilian) below the Institutes, and also below other things.
The reason of the difference somewhat consoles me for the fact. Mr Nettleship was evidently bitten with that noble error, the belief that criticism of literature must be criticism of something that is not literature. Tacitus seems to him to ask “under what social conditions great writing and great speaking arise,”—a most interesting question, but an excursus from criticism proper. “He sees clearly, and this is the important point which characterises the treatise, that literature must be taken and judged as the expression of national life, not as a matter of form and of scholastic teaching.”
For “scholastic teaching” so be it: that also is extraneous to the central matter. But on the other point one must throw away the scabbard. Never will literature be judged adequately—seldom will it be, even within limits, judged accurately—as “an expression of national life.” From this and kindred fallacies come, and always have come, a brood of monsters, the folly, almost as great as its opposite, that “a poet must be a good man,” the folly that you can judge literature by remembering that there is much water-meadow in England[[375]]—hundreds of others. That literature is an expression of national life nobody need deny—that national life can never be estimated without an estimate of literature is, if anything, still more true. But literature is first of all literature, and it must be judged, like all other things, by the laws of its essence, and not by the laws of even its inseparable accidents.
How different was Mr Nettleship’s point of view may be judged from the mere fact that he actually passes over the first fifteen chapters, which to me seem to contain most of the literary criticism of the piece. Nor can I (though he himself fully admits the oratorical preoccupation both here and still more in Cicero) help thinking that the substitution of the English “style” for “eloquentia” and “oratio” amounts to a certain begging of the question. Much that is true of the orator is no doubt also true of the writer, but not all: and the connection with life, with public national life, on which such stress is here laid, undoubtedly applies to oratory, whether of the pulpit, the senate-house, or the bar, far more than it applies to books. The most literary side of oratory (I am not ashamed to make the concession) is the lowest—that of pure epideictic. But then, that is because oratory is, after all, only applied, not pure literature.
We see, then, from this interesting piece, almost as much as from the poets and Pliny, that the age was, so to say, poly-historic |The general literary taste of the Silver Age.| rather than original, and that, while it was no stranger to the very sound opinion that the goodness of a thing must be measured in its own kind, it still had not cleared up its mind about the relative value of different kinds. Although oratory had, with the rarest exceptions, become the mere art of the advocate, or the mere business of the travelling or resident rhetorician, it still had a most disproportionate position. Although the satirist laughed at the custom of writing artificial Greek epics and tragedies, it is clear that these still held the highest place in the general opinion. The bilingual practice, not merely in these but in other kinds, of itself inferred a certain lack of “race,” vernacularity, genuineness, in either literature. Some kinds of letters were still hardly known; Pliny’s own indulgent reference to fabellæ is all the more interesting that we are not so very far from the Lucius and the Golden Ass. In almost all departments odd conventions and assumptions prevailed, such as the necessity of loose subjects, and even of coarse language, in vers de société. And it was probably the working of this, and of the strict ideas as to certain forms and their laws, that caused the jack-of-all-trade tendency to which we have more than once referred. If the rules are pretty clearly laid down, and if you are a man of reasonable learning and intelligence, attention to such rules will secure success. There is no reason why as Pliny himself seems to have thought in his own case and the cases of many of his friends, you should not be at once an orator and a historian, an epic poet and a comic, a dramatist and an epigram-writer. And the age still believed devoutly in the rules, though free-lances like Martial might kick at them in verse, and though Quintilian, with his unfailing good sense, might hint that there were far too many Figures, and that the subdivisions of Greek rhetoric were in many cases idle.
In nothing, perhaps, is this tendency of ancient criticism better shown than in its attitude to the question of Faultlessness. |“Faultlessness.”| Of course, on this question there were two parties, with many subdivisions in each. There were the extreme classics of that classic time, the wooden persons of whom Martial tells us, for whom it was enough if a thing was not “correct,” to whom a fault was a fault—indelible, incompensable, to be judged off-hand and Draconically. And at the other side there were the sensible persons, like Quintilian, like Pliny, like Martial himself (not to mention Longinus, whom some would have to be their contemporary), who contended that faults might be made up by beauties, who sneered at mere “faultlessness.” But no one, not Longinus himself, seems to have taken up the position which the boldest and most consistent (it would be question-begging to say the best) modern critics take, that the whole calculus is wrong—that this notion of “faults” made up by “beauties,” of a balance-sheet, debtor and creditor, with the result struck one way or the other, is wholly a misconception. Two, I suppose, of the most representative passages in English poetry touching this subject are Lear’s apostrophe to the elements, and Milton’s episode of Sin and Death. The extreme stop-watch and foot-rule critics of the first century, like those of the eighteenth, and, perhaps, some (though they are not a prevailing party) even at the present day would call these undoubted faults, both of them sinning against the law or conception of measure in language, and the second offending still more gravely against that or those of decency, propriety, the becoming, in imagery, subject, language. The defenders, or those who might have been the defenders, of Shakespeare and Milton, from the other point of view, would admit in varying degrees that the things were faulty; but would urge the pathos of the first, the gloomy magnificence of the second, the force and power and grandeur of both, as redeeming them—in a degree and to an extent again varying with the individual critic.
Now, a thoroughgoing “Romantic” and comparative critic of the modern type, while he would, of course, scout the first party, would be loath to adopt either the method or the exact conclusions of the second. “Let us clear our minds of cant,” he would say. “These things are not ‘faults’ at all. They do not leave the court pardoned on consideration of the previous or subsequent good behaviour of the culprit, but simply because there is no stain on his or their character. There is no need to plead extenuating circumstances: we stand for acquittal sans phrase. These things might be faults elsewhere, in other poems: they are not so here. They are the absolutely right things in the right place, producing the right effect, driven home by the right power to the right mark. Shakespeare and Milton have faults—the somewhat excessive tendency of the first to play on words out of season as well as in, and the deplorable propensity of the second to joke when joking was absolutely impossible to him. But these are not of the character of the Longinian or Quintilianian ‘fault’ at all. They do not endear the poets; they make them less good; we wish they were faultless in this sense. Your ‘faultlessness’ simply means that the man has that most hopeless of all faults—mediocrity: and your ‘fault’ is simply derived from the existence in your mind of a more or less complicated set of rules which have no real existence. Nay,” he might proceed, “the extremest classical men are sounder in a way than you are. They are right in thinking that a fault is a fault, and can never be ‘redeemed,’ much less purged, by a beauty. They are only wrong in not knowing what beauties or what faults really are.”
Now, I do not say whether the criticism of antiquity was right or wrong in not taking this view. But I think there is absolutely no evidence that it was ever taken at this time.
In some other agreements and differences we find ourselves more at home. The everlasting questions of archaic or modern |Ornate or plain style.| language, of conceited or direct thought, of ornate or plain style, occupied the critics of the end of the first and the beginning of the second century, just as they have occupied those of more recent pasts, are occupying those of the present, and will occupy those of the future. As has been indicated in detail, there was not here quite the critical unanimity which some periods have shown on these and similar questions. Among the general there was something like an agreement; it seems undeniable that the popular taste of Roman audiences at recitations ran towards elaborate and slightly archaic phraseology, to Greek literary subjects, and (both in verse-epics and tragedies and in prose declamations) to topsy-turvy conceit. This was evidently frequent in verse, though time has carried away most traces of it; and in prose it is not entirely alien from the magnificent phrase-making of Tacitus, it shows itself amply in the rhetoric of Seneca the son, as in the earlier rhetorical examples of Seneca the father, is almost openly defended by Pliny, and seems to receive a certain amount of “colour” (as the rhetoricians themselves would have said) even from some passages of Quintilian. It is very noteworthy that all these prose-writers incline more or less to the artificial side, while the verse-satirists argue and sally for terseness, elegance, concinnity. And the cause may not improbably be sought in those very declamations of which mention has been so often made. We have no enormous stock of them, which is not to be regretted; but in the surviving examples we have material which is welcome in its way, and which amply proves what has been said.[[376]]
[303]. I use the smaller edition of Bücheler, Berlin, 1862.
[304]. There is a theory that the verses put in the mouth of Eumolpus are parodies of Lucan and Seneca.
[305]. Or “good taste is as impossible as good smell to those,” &c. I have not hit on any satisfactory English equivalents for sapere (with its double sense) and bene olere. What is meant, of course, is that the power of distinguishing is lost in the vicious atmosphere.
[306]. Ludibria quædam excitando.
[307]. Umbraticus doctor, which Ben Jonson Englishes directly as “umbratical doctors” in the Discoveries, and De Quincey rather hardily converts to a compliment in his Essay on Rhetoric.
[308]. § 118. Ed. cit., p. 71.
[309]. Refugiendum est ab omni verborum ut ita dicam vilitate, et sumendæ voces a plebe summotæ.
[310]. Præcipitandus est liber spiritus. A characteristic Petronian phrase which will serve (and has in part been used) as text for very different sermons. Part of what follows is no doubt intentionally obscure. The ambages deorumque ministeria refer, of course, to the stock revolutions and interventions of Epic as of Tragedy. But fabulosum sententiarum tormentum is not such plain sailing. I think it means (with an intentional side-glance at the fabled torments which the heroes of Epic see in Hades) the process of racking the brain for story-ornament and sententious conceit of phrase.
[311]. Works, 3 vols., ed. Haase, Leipsic, 1886-87. This does not contain the Tragedies, as to which, however, I have never wished to go beyond a nearly forty years’ possession, the pretty little “Regent’s Classics” edition of 1823. But I have never, as a critic, been able to believe that Seneca wrote them.
[312]. Ed. cit., i. 209. If Seneca be suspected of possible insincerity, Marcus Aurelius cannot be. Yet the estimable Emperor, who had earlier (i. 7), in the true Pharisaic spirit, congratulated himself on abstaining from “rhetoric and poetry,” concludes his reference to the drama (xi. 6) (a reference interesting as including one of the explanations of κάθαρσις), by asking, “To what end does the whole plan of poetry and drama look?” As for Epictetus, v. supra, p. [62].
[313]. Ed. cit., iii. 246 sq.
[314]. In two cases at least. And Quintilian might have known Persius, as he was in Rome before 59 A.D., while Persius did not die till 62.
[315]. Not a few other phrases, such as—
“Cum carmina lumbum
Intrant, et tremulo scalpuntur ubi intima versu”—
show what a formidable, and what an accurate and capable, reviewer, of the slashing order, Persius would have made.
[316]. It has been questioned whether Persius did object to ærumna, or to any of these words, as words. I should say that the coincidence in Quintilian settles the first point: even if the context did not, to my thinking, settle it, with the others. But he may have been thinking merely or mainly of the confusion of tragic and epic style.[style.]
[317]. Tenerum et laxa cervice legendum ... delumbe ... natat in labris ... in udo est.
[318]. Vatibus hic mos est, κ.τ.λ.
[319]. With its compliment to Cæsius Bassus and his marem strepitum fidis Latinæ.
[320]. It has been held that Juvenal shows his “freedman” extraction by aping and overdoing patrician prejudice in this and other matters. But I had rather not think this.
[321]. Semper ego auditor tantum, &c.
[322]. I think intactam insinuates this. But it may only mean that the play was produced “for the first time on any stage,” though this seems feebler. Some would have it that Paris, as being a pantomime, was to travesty the thing.
[323]. i. 117.
[324]. ii. 8.
[325]. vii. 3.
[326]. xiv. 10.
[327]. vi. 82.
[328]. iv. 14; vii. 63.
[329]. E.g., x. 78.
[332]. xi. 20.
[333]. xii. 65.
[334]. x. 75.
[335]. Insano syrmate tumet.
[336]. Another and severer side of the same epigram is that, viii. 69, to Vacerra, who only praises dead poets. To die in order to please Vacerra, says the bard, is not quite tanti.
[337]. Sapit quæ novit pungere.
[338]. There is yet another sense of æqualis, “like something else,” which might be brought in.
[339]. Some MSS. and edd. read sunt: but sint is so clearly required that this seems mere perversity.
[340]. Baehrens, Poet. Lat. Min., vi. 346-348.
[341]. Nomen cum violis rosisque natum. Wherefore Ben Jonson took it for the heroine of this most beautiful thing, The Sad Shepherd.
[342]. My friend Professor Hardie rather demurs to the idea of “common” syllables being commoner in Greek than in Latin, save possibly in proper names. But I had certainly thought they were, and, even if we allow for some poetic and humorous exaggeration in nihil negatum, it seems to show that Martial thought so too.
[343]. Cf. the technical words carchesia, anquina in the fragment of his Propempticon Pollionis, Baehrens, Poetæ Latini Minores, vi. 323.
[344]. Grammaticis placeant, et sine grammaticis.
[345]. V. the only remaining fragment in Baehrens, Poet. Lat. Min., vi. 370. The satirical piece, usually printed with Juvenal and assigned to a Sulpicia, may be hers: but at any rate Martial was not thinking of anything of the kind. He varies his own conceit in vii. 69 on a certain Theophila.
[346]. It ought, however, perhaps to be added that these include a considerable batch of inscription-distichs for presents of books from Homer and Virgil downwards. Most of these are decorative but conventional: that on Lucan (194), “There are those who say that I am not a poet; but my bookseller thinks me one,” is keen with a double edge.
[347]. Non Hispaniensem sed Hispanum.
[348]. No one of his contemporaries, except Juvenal (v. supra, p. [255]), ever does mention Statius. It is indeed usually said that no classical author does so, with the same exception.
[349]. P. 216.
[350]. Et docti furor arduus Lucreti. Genethliacon Lucani, Sylv., ii. 7. 76.
[351]. It did not seem necessary to specify editions of Persius, Juvenal, and Martial. For Pliny I use that of Keil, Leipsic, 1886.
[352]. I. vi. Ed. cit., p. 5.
[353]. III. 21, p. 65.
[355]. Hortatus es ut epistolas si quas paulo accuratius scripsissem colligerem ... Collegi.
[356]. ληκύθους. The word, whether from the use of its diminutive in the Frogs or not, seems to have become a stock metaphor for rhetorical tropes. It has even been compared to ampulla, though I fancy it was not quite so uncomplimentary, and meant “prettiness,” “conceit,” rather than “bombast.” Both, however, illustrate the view, put frequently in Book I. and here, as to the ancient conception of style.
[357]. If the reader is in ignorance of this worthy, he can cure his disease by any one of three pleasant medicines—Boswell, Horace Walpole, and Mr Austin Dobson’s Eighteenth Century Vignettes.
[358]. P. 16.
[359]. Ut aliæ bonæ res, ita bonus liber melior est quisque, quo major.
[360]. This letter contains an interesting mot of Aquilius Regulus, the brilliant and questionable orator-informer, of whom Pliny frequently speaks with a sort of mixture of admiration and dislike, reminding one of the way in which men used to speak of Lord Chancellor Westbury. “You,” said Regulus to him, “hunt out everything in your brief. I see the throat at once, and go for it”—ego jugulum statim video, hunc premo. There is some point in Pliny’s retort that people who do this not infrequently hit knee or ankle instead.
[361]. Not the great Attic; but an Assyrian rhetor of Pliny’s own time, supposed to be also referred to by Juvenal in the well-known phrase, Isæo torrentior (iii. 74).
[362]. Verba nuda.
[363]. There is another interesting critical remark at the end of the famous description of the villa (v.6): “I think it the first duty of a writer to read his own title, and constantly ask himself what he sat down to write, and to be sure that if he sticks to his subject he will never be too long, but will be hopelessly so if he drags other matters in.”
[364]. Non pati occidere, quibus æternitas debeatur.
[365]. This, of course, is the old invidious distinction between tragedy and comedy revived in other material. Cf. the curious passage in Tacitus (Ann., xiii. 31) in which he, for his part, glances disdainfully at those who think “beams and foundation-stones” (Nero’s amphitheatre) worth mentioning. such things should be kept for journals (diurnis urbis actis): it is for the dignity of the Roman people that only illustrious matters should find place in Annals. The two thoughts are characteristic of the two men.
[366]. Vi, amaritudine, instantia.
[367]. Diserti, used here, as disertior is lower, with the slightly invidious sense which often attaches to the word, just as it does to the English equivalent here used for it.
[368]. Est enim res difficilis, ardua, fastidiosa, et quæ eos, a quibus contemnitur, invicem contemnat.
[369]. So I translate nominibus.
[370]. The Declamations were last edited, I think, by Ritter in the Teubner Library. That invaluable collection puts (as indeed is usual) the Dialogus with the other minor works of Tacitus, ed. Halm. It may also be found, with the same company, in the new Oxford Bibliotheca Classicorum, ed. Furneaux. I use a pretty and convenient joint edition of the nineteen complete Declamations and the Dialogue, which appeared at Oxford, without editor’s name, in 1692.
[372]. I say this in some fear and trembling, with such an authority as the late Mr Nettleship against me. But I have been accustomed for a good many years to compare styles in more languages than one or two, and I think these most unlike. Even the argument that a man may suit his style to his work is not conclusive, for here it is the general unlikeness of tone and flavour, which cannot be wholly disguised, that decides me.
[373]. Causidici.
[374]. Or Vipstanus, as they read now.
[375]. Those who have an accurate memory of M. Taine’s English Literature and of his English Notes will not object to this apparent impossibility.
[376]. I am not sure that I should have given any place here to Cornelius Fronto, if his ticket of admission had not been (rather contumeliously) countersigned by Mr Nettleship. The low opinion which Marcus Aurelius seems to have had of literature may possibly have been in part excused by his preceptor’s utterances on the subject. He appears to have been an eminent representative of the “labelling” school of critics. Lucilius is “gracile” (this is not quite Horace’s view), Albucius and Pacuvius mediocre, Accius unequal, Ennius multiform. Sallust writes history structe, Pictor incondite, Claudius lepide, Antias invenuste, Sisenna longinque, Cato verbis multijugis, Cœlius singulis. One cannot help “nodding approval and saying, ‘This is very satisfactory to know,’” as Lady Kew did when she was informed that “Alfred was a trump, and Ethel a brick, and Barnes a snob.” But if Mr Nettleship thought that æsthetic, as opposed to philosophical, criticism could not get beyond this system of tickets-of-leave, he was surely mistaken.
CHAPTER III.
QUINTILIAN.
THE ‘INSTITUTES’—PREFACE—BOOK I.: ELEMENTARY EDUCATION AND GRAMMAR—BOOKS II.-VII. ONLY RELEVANT NOW AND THEN—HOW TO LECTURE ON AN AUTHOR—WIT—BOOK VIII.: STYLE; PERSPICUITY; ELEGANCE—BOOKS VIII., IX.: TROPES AND FIGURES—COMPOSITION—PROSE RHYTHM—BOOK X.: SURVEY OF CLASSICAL LITERATURE—GREEK: HOMER AND OTHER EPIC POETS—THE LYRISTS—DRAMA—THE HISTORIANS—THE ORATORS AND PHILOSOPHERS—LATIN: VIRGIL—OTHER EPIC AND DIDACTIC POETS—ELEGIAC AND MISCELLANEOUS—DRAMA—HISTORY—ORATORY: CICERO—PHILOSOPHY: CICERO AND SENECA—MINOR COUNSEL OF THE TENTH BOOK—BOOKS XI. AND XII.—THE STYLES OF ORATORY—"ATTICISM"—LITERARY QUALITY OF GREEK AND LATIN—QUINTILIAN’S CRITICAL “ETHOS.”
In passing, say, from Cicero, the chief prose Latin critic of præ-Augustan times, to Quintilian, the chief of post-Augustan, and |The Institutes.| indeed of Latin critics of all dates, we come to a man of much less genius no doubt, and, in particular, of far less creative literary power, but still to one who, for our special purpose, has some very considerable advantages. It is not merely that the Spanish-Roman is a professional critic, as well as a rhetorician—that he is as much the professional critic of Latin as Dionysius of Halicarnassus (whom he much resembles, and to whom, as has been said, he possibly owes not a little) is of Greek. He has over the greater writer (whom he admires so generously) the further advantage of complete freedom from that touch of dilettantism (one is sometimes almost tempted to use a harsher word and call it quackery) which besets Cicero whenever he is not actually pleading or debating, and which is not invariably lost even then. Further, Quintilian is the only critic of antiquity (for even Longinus, as we saw, merely glances at the subject) who seriously takes the two languages, seriously compares them, and, by the help of the comparison, acquires a view-point over literature as such—not merely as Greek or Latin literature—which was shut to all his predecessors and most of his followers. If the Rhetoric and the Poetics of Aristotle form the great book of critical method for ancient times, if the Περὶ Ὕψους is the great book of their critical inspiration; the Institutes of Oratory contain the fullest, the most intelligent, the most satisfactory applications of criticism to literature, as it presented itself to an intelligent and thoroughly educated person, whose eyes were sharpened by long expert use, at the end of the first century, when, except for a few belated authors, mostly of curiosities, the list of the great writers of antiquity was all but closed. The book[[377]] is extremely well written; it is, with a few cruces, remarkably clear, and its range and thoroughness leave practically nothing to desire.
This wide range of it (which, according to different, but, in each case, defensible interpretations of its title, busies itself with the whole education of an orator, or with the whole theory and practice of oratory) naturally makes it include much which does not fall strictly within our subject. But nearly the whole of three books, the eighth, ninth, and tenth, and a large and important section of the twelfth, are devoted directly to that subject; while there are references to it almost throughout. We shall therefore, as we did in the case of Aristotle and Longinus, give a kind of running abstract of the whole, dwelling very briefly on the irrelevant, somewhat more fully on the partly relevant, fully on the rest, and returning to the consideration of special points later.
In a sort of Advertisement, to and for the use of his publisher Trypho, and in a prefatory dedication to his friend Marcellus |Preface.| Victorius, Quintilian gives some information about the origin and object of the work. From this we learn, among other things, that part-cause at least of its actual appearance was the fact, not unknown in more modern times, of unauthorised publication of his lectures by note-taking pupils.
The first book is devoted to the subject of the education of boys from the earliest age, a subject on which Quintilian speaks |Book I. Elementary Education| with much knowledge and good sense, as well as kindliness. But from this he soon passes to Grammar, and his importance for us begins. For his treatment of the subject is quite in the larger and humaner sense, insisting from the first on critical reading, though he seems, as indeed we should expect, to regard the “desperate hook” of the extremer kind of verbal critic with little favour. It is noteworthy that he alleges music to be necessary, because the grammarian has to speak of metre and rhythm. And passing rapidly from considerations of orthography, right pronunciation, and audience, he arrives at the all-important subject of “correctness,” and of its attainment, negatively by the avoidance of barbarisms and solecisms, positively by the selection of the best words in the best arrangement. Observations of special importance in this context may be cited: That the word in itself (i.e., out of connection) has no merit except its inherent euphony; that (a most pregnant remark) it is often difficult to distinguish Faults from Figures of speech; and some exceedingly |and Grammar.| interesting, but also more than ordinarily difficult, remarks on tone and accent-variation. In all these grammatical notes, which are pretty full and numerous, and often very curious—showing that, as he himself says pleasantly, though he is not writing a treatise on Grammar, yet as it lay in his way he did not like not to be polite to it—there is a pervading quality of not at all Philistine common-sense which shows the best side of the Roman temperament. Although Quintilian acknowledges the convenience of Greek for terminology, and makes fairly free use of the terms, it is quite evident that he has (long before he formulates it later) a profound and very wholesome distrust of the Greek rhetorical practice of splitting a thing up, naming the splinters, and then passing on, as if a real, solid, and final examination had been attained. And the same quality appears eminently in the summing up of his discourse on words, “Custom in speaking I shall call the agreement of the educated, as custom in living is the agreement of the good.”
Remarks on orthography follow, and some on reading, valuable, though not so valuable, as those on the same |Books II.-VII. only relevant now and then.| subject which come later. And then he passes to certain of the progymnasmata of the Greek rhetoricians, fables, uses, sentences, and “ethologies,” which, though they have puzzled some, are clearly the same as the ethopœiæ of Hermogenes and his fellows.[[378]] All these are, in fact, exercises in composition. The rest of the book is occupied with the discussion of other subjects of the school curriculum, subsidiary to rhetoric. The second book continues the subject of Composition, but with more special reference to Oratory proper—a tendency which naturally increases; and for some five or six books the technicalities of the rhetoric-school and the courts have the better of literature. There are, however, two exceptions, which require notice—the first a remarkable passage[[379]] on reading or lecturing on authors.
“But”—he has just ruled out the explanation of the mere meaning of uncommon words as below the duties of a Professor of Rhetoric—"to point out the merits, and if it so happen, the faults, is the properest of all things for the profession and for the promise by which he holds himself out as a master of eloquence...." (He should make the students read in turn, and then), "after setting forth the case on which the oration was composed (for thus it will be more clearly understood), he should leave nothing unnoticed which may be noteworthy in the invention or the elocution, pointing out the manner of conciliating the jury in the proem, the clearness, conciseness, persuasive force of the narration, the occasional design and hidden artifice (for that alone is true art here, which can only be understood by an artist), what foresight there is in division, what subtle and thronging[[380]] argumentation, the strength of the inspiration, the attraction of the winning passages, the roughness[[381]] of the objurgation, and the humour of the jokes; how, finally, the man |How to lecture on an author.| shows mastery of feeling, makes his way into the very heart, and adjusts the minds of the jury to his own contention. Then, as for style, we must point out what words are proper, ornate, sublime, where the amplification is to be praised, what excellence there is in the contrary direction,[[382]] what is ingeniously transferred; what the figurativeness of the words is, how smooth and squared, yet manly, the composition." And then he proceeds to recommend the occasional selection of passages which are not to be praised—the exhibition, in short, of a rhetorical helotry.
No reader, I hope, will need to have it pointed out to him, at any great length, how exactly this corresponds to the practice of the critical lecturer or reviewer, as it ought to be, in regard to all kinds of literature, and not oratory merely. Such a lecturer, or such a reviewer, can do no better than grave these words of Quintilian on his mind, and follow their directions as best he can, whensoever an author is to be expounded on the platform or reviewed in the column. It scarcely requires more than the easiest and most obvious substitutions and amplifications to make the passage a manual in miniature of all criticism, be it of prose or poetry.
The other passage is the very curious and interesting section in the third chapter of the Sixth book, on Wit.[[383]] As is well known, this is one of the points on which ancient (especially Latin) and modern taste are most out of harmony. Except |Wit.| Aristophanes at one end, with his alternations of outrageous farce and keen poetry, and Lucian at the other, with the innocent-seeming flow of his white-hot irony, there are perhaps not even any Greek authors whose command of our risibility is absolutely sure; and the average Greek joke, as reported by the anecdote-mongers, is to us but a vapid thing. In Latin it is even worse. Plautus pretty generally, but in a limited way; Catullus, when he exchanges passion for humour; sometimes Horace, for a pleasant Augustan “wit of the town”; Martial for a too often naughty persiflage,—these we have little doubt about. But Terence, even if we shut our eyes to his borrowed capital, is but comedy-and-water; Cicero jokes without indeed much difficulty on his part, but with surprisingly little effect on ours; and the average Latin jest is far worse than the average Greek. Of course this is all natural enough; the jest always, save in certain transcendences, lies more in the ear of the hearer than the charm or quality of any other kind of literature. But it is all the more interesting and valuable to have a set discussion on the comic by a man of immense reading, excellent taste, and great acuteness. Besides, Quintilian’s Spanish blood or birth may very likely have given him a somewhat wider and more flexible appreciation of humour than the “firm Roman” wit itself allowed, or at least encouraged.
After mentioning, as a generally accepted thing, the deficiency of the comic element in Demosthenes, and the superabundant quantity and inferior quality of it in Cicero (it must be remembered that Quintilian had the Tullian Three Books of Jests, which time has mercifully hidden from us), he passes to the general question, and accepts the almost universal classical opinion that laughter has always something low about it.[[384]] In this, we know, Plato and Aristotle both agreed; it was a sort of postulate of all Greek philosophy, and though almost certainly false, was excused, partly by the extreme licence of the Comic Muse in ancient times, and partly by the rarity of humour in the best sense, and the almost non-existence of Romantic Comedy. He observes, however, acutely enough, on the insufficiency of the general explanations of the origin of laughter (an insufficiency which has certainly not been filled up to the present day), and shows that urbane shrewdness, which is one of his best points, by questioning whether deliberate cultivation of jesting as an art is an altogether satisfactory thing. But it is in his subsequent remarks on the kind of jesting admissible in oratory (we might here at least substitute, with hardly any wrong, “in literature”) that his chief merit lies. On the dangerous business of verbal distinction between venustum, salsum, facetum he is luminous and useful; while his remarks, in two different places, on urbanitas are not far from a locus classicus, and those[[385]] on the special treatise of Domitius Marsus on that topic have the best qualities of a review—that is to say, of the kind of review that one sees too seldom.
It is not, however, till the eighth book is reached (for the seventh, except in some remarks on arrangement, is almost |Book VIII.: Style.| purely legal) that we find Quintilian, for a considerable time, at close quarters with our special subject. After summarising with remarkable clearness (so that there is nowhere any better conspectus, in little, of the matter) the earlier and technically rhetorical part of the Institutes, he comes to the third part, which he calls “elocution.”[[386]] This is no other than the lexis, which Aristotle treats not indeed perfunctorily (it was not in Aristotle to be guilty of that crime), but with a sort of apologetic impatience, as one turning back to the Court of the Gentiles after visiting the Holy of Holies. The point of view, with some four hundred years of great work, not merely in oratory, but in general literature, behind the critic, and with the new requirement of comparison between Greek and Latin brought in, has changed remarkably. Instead of a popular and slightly vulgar appendix, it is (Quintilian tells us that all orators agreed with him) the most difficult part of the subject. At the same time, he has not attained to the almost perfect parrhesia of Longinus; he dares not tell us (though we can see that he was sometimes half minded to do so) that “beautiful words are the light of thought.” He has the stereotyped caution—very wholesome in its way—to those who neglect things and attend to words. But he will not allow words to be neglected in their turn, and as a matter of fact perhaps the greater, certainly the most interesting and original, part of the five books which follow is occupied with what, disguise itself as it may under the term of “elocution,” is really “style.” Not, be it added, the mere fritter and foppery which sometimes receives that name, but literary manner and art in the great and wide sense—the proper subject, that is to say, of literary criticism.
After this proem, Quintilian begins regularly on the subject—φράσις in Greek, elocutio in Latin—referring to his remarks |Perspicuity.| in the first book (vide supra) on the avoidance of Barbarism and Solecism, and glancing at Livy’s Patavinity, and at the alleged over-Atticism of Theophrastus. He has, however, a good deal more to say on the actual lexicon; and in the course of it sharply perstringes that sort of affected periphrasis which the eighteenth century (though it thought it knew its Quintilian) so dearly loved. “The Iberian shrub” for “broom,” the “fishes solidified by brine” which he laughs at, are Thomson in his worst mood, Armstrong, Mason, even Wordsworth at times, to the very life, and Delille to more than the life—of which there is not much in that famous Abbé. The necessity of making the epithet fit the noun is excellently inculcated; the use of archaic technical terms not excessively denounced. But I grieve that Quintilian joins the herd in condemning Parenthesis, a heavenly maid whom there have been many and great ones, from Herodotus to De Quincey, to love, but whom few have dared to praise as she deserves. It is true that she speaks chiefly to the sapient; and the insipient accordingly do not love her.
Passing from perspicuity to “elegance,” as our own eighteenth-century rhetoricians would have said, Quintilian is equally admirable; but, as before, a certain amount of “hedging” is perceptible in him. True beauty, he thinks, is never separable |Elegance.| from utility. It is a noble sentiment, and to a very large extent a true one; but it may be questioned whether the greatest part of its truth is not esoteric—whether it does not arise from the suppressed rider, “because true beauty, in merely being beautiful, is of the highest utility.”
He himself, however, perhaps did not care to penetrate so far with his analysis; at any rate he does not, and so he rather beats about the bush. Grace of style will captivate; all the great men, Aristotle no less than Cicero, say that we ought to excite admiration. Only we must be “manly, sir, manly”; our embellishment must not be effeminate—it must be in good taste. The three kinds of oratory, too, will admit of different degrees—even different kinds of embellishment. Epideictic almost demands ostentation of ornament; debating sometimes permits it; it must be far more cautiously used in forensic speech. Even words must be most cautiously chosen—harshness, a touch of the ludicrous, and other effects, unless they are deliberately invited, must be carefully shunned. The archaic (from this point of view there is no real contradiction with the former, v. supra) will add picturesqueness, but we must walk warily with it, we must not say antigerio for valde. Here, perhaps, one may presume to differ with Quintilian, who extends his condemnation to the beautiful word ærumna. He may have been led to dislike it by that sensitiveness of his ear to the grunt of the “um,” which we shall notice later, but which ought here to have been appeased by the musical syllables on either side.
Proceeding from individual words to connected speech, he has some capital cautions on unlucky conjunctions of words, suggesting double meaning—with, however, the still wiser reflection that if you are always looking out for this, you had better hold your tongue altogether. A handful of the rhetorical tickets—tapeinosis,[[387]] meiosis,[[388]] Homœology, Macrology, pleonasm, cacozelon,[[389]] and so forth—is taken up, and they are shaken out and shown to be at least susceptible of useful application, while in the passages that follow (the conclusion of the third chapter) some celebrated loci[[390]] are severally examined, with an admirable combination of verbal acuteness and general grasp. The shorter fourth chapter deals in the same way with the favourite figure of Amplification and its opposite Diminution, as exemplified in chosen illustrations. Then he turns (and we must remember that the turn is not arbitrary nor desultory, but follows the divisions of the older Rhetoric) to those sentences or gnomæ, as the Greeks termed them, which had such an effect on ancient audiences, and which, mutatis mutandis, are not without effect on modern readers. We have seen very recently how the mere trick of what may be called “topsy-turvyfying” accepted maxims has, not once or twice, but again and again, managed to secure an audience.
This section ends with a passage of such weight and importance as general criticism that we must give it nearly in extenso:—
“But there will be no end to it if I follow out individual forms of corrupt taste. It is better to turn to what is more necessary. There are two opposite opinions on this subject; some hardly pay attention to anything but ‘sentences’—some utterly condemn them; and with neither do I entirely agree. If sentences are too crowded they get in each other’s way, just as, with all crops and trees, nothing can grow to a proper size if it lacks room. Nor does anything stand out in a picture where there is no shading; so that artists, when they deal with many things in one canvas, leave spaces between them lest shade and object fall together. Moreover, this same profusion cuts the style too short; for each sentence stands by itself,[[391]] and there is, as it were, a fresh beginning after it. Whence the composition becomes too disjointed, consisting not of integral members, but of separate scraps, inasmuch as these things, each rounded and cut off from the rest, refuse conjunction.[[392]] Besides, the colour of the speech becomes, as it were, spotty with blotches, bright indeed, but too many and too different. For though a selvage and fringes of purple, in their proper place, light up the gown, a garment speckled with patches of colour is certainly unbecoming. Wherefore, though these sentences may seem to flash and to strike in some sense, yet they are lights which may be likened, not to flame but to sparks amid smoke: they are not even seen when the whole speech is luminous, as the stars themselves cease to be visible in sunshine. And, rising only with fitful and feeble effort, they are but unequal, and, as it were, broken, so as to attain neither the admiration due to things eminent nor the grace of a close uniformity” (VIII. v. 25-29).
The end of the Eighth book, and the beginning of the Ninth, deal with the subject—the all too famous and long-studied |Books VIII., IX.: Tropes and Figures.| subject—of Tropes and Figures, which Quintilian distinguishes from one another a little artificially, and with a kind of confession that the distinction is sometimes correspondent to no real difference. It is not till rather late in his handling (IX. i. 22) that he makes that scornful reference to the Greek abundance in this kind which has been itself more than once referred to here. He is bound to say that figures are by no means so numerous as some would make them out. Nor have the names, which the Greeks can botch up at any occasion, the least influence with him.[[393]] And he is particularly earnest in condemning the practice of allotting a Figure to every affection of the mind—a practice certainly absurd enough, though no very unnatural consequence of the constitution of “figures” as real things.[[394]]
He himself, however, is by no means stingy of accepted Tropes and Figures, though he treats them, with his usual common-sense, as names, not things. The first place, in his discussion and enumeration of the matter, is occupied as usual by Metaphor, a mode of speech so prevailing in both senses that, here at least, no objection can be made to its constitution into a quasi-entity. He calls it “the most frequent and by far the most beautiful,” points out, of course, that it is only Simile in another and shorter form, and illustrates its kinds by examples in the best critical style. He specifies these kinds; but once more not to distinguish for the mere sake o£ distinguishing. In fact, here as elsewhere, we may notice that Quintilian, half unconsciously, stops short at the points where Rhetoric parts company with literary criticism, and becomes mere pseudo-science. From Metaphor he goes, treating them in the same way, as with all the tropes and figures that he mentions, to Synecdoche, Metonymy, Hypallage; and has some good remarks on the fine but real distinctions between the indulgences in these flights and sleights which are, and those which are not, permissible to the orator, whom he practically identifies with the prose-writer by contrasting him with the poet. Antonomasia, which is of the same family, follows, and then a rather disappointing treatment of Onomatopœia. One sees here the Roman, and the late Roman, but also the yearner after better things, in the observation that “this, which the Greeks thought one of the greatest excellences, is scarcely allowed us.” “We do not dare to form a new word,” he says, and tells us that even the formation of such words, on strict analogy of others, was scarcely ventured on,[[395]] and that the inability to compound, which has so notoriously manifested itself later in her greatest daughter, was beginning to appear in Latin. In short, Latin had reached a stationary state—the state of the nation qui cesse de prendre, if not quite of that qui commence à rendre. It had to become the picturesque and delightful, if perhaps too much crossed and blended, Low Latin of the Dark and Middle Ages before it could recover itself.
Catachresis, Metalepsis, the ornamental and “perpetual” epithet follow; and then we come to the fruitful subject of Allegory.
Quintilian is perhaps not exactly the writer from whom we should expect a thoroughly satisfactory treatment of this great subject—a subject which, far more than metaphor, escapes the state of a mere rhetorical ticket, and challenges that of a real literary quality or kind. Although it is unjust to represent him as merely conversant in details and afraid to rise, a certain timidity serves as the Nemesis of his common-sense. Besides, his materials were not favourable: the great allegorical style of Plato had long passed, not to be revived; the magnificent exuberance of mediæval fancy in this kind was far in the future; the exercises which Quintilian had before him were either mere phrases in the poets, tedious didactic things in the philosophers, or such easy examples as Horace’s “O navis,” which he quotes. We have therefore no such handling of the matter as we might have had from Longinus. And when we are told that the most ornamental kind of writing by far is that in which the three figures—simile, metaphor, and allegory—are mixed, we seem to see the worst side of Rhetoric as we seldom do in Quintilian. Once more there arises the picture of a dismal sort of library-laboratory, with bottles and drawers full of ready cold-drawn or ready short-cut figures—of the literary dispenser, with his apron on and his balance adjusted, taking a handful of this, two ounces of that, three drachms of the other, and compounding a draught or a pill to be exhibited in the forum, or the lecture-room, or the courts of justice, as the case may be. But he recovers himself soon, if only by the dry fashion in which he observes that, if anybody does not know it, the Greeks call certain kinds of allegory sarcasm, asteism, antiphrasis, and parœmia, to which it may be well to add mycterism,[[396]] a kind of derision which is dissembled, but not altogether concealed—as very neatly by M. Fabius Quintilianus in the passage before us.
Periphrasis, Hyperbaton, Hyperbole close the chapter, and the book, and Quintilian shines on the latter, while at the end he refers to his lost dialogue On the Causes of the Corruption of Eloquence, one of the things of its kind which we must regret most.
The Ninth book opens with the distinction between Trope and Figure,[[397]] and with some general remarks on the latter word which illustrate rather amusingly the Delilah-effect of it on those who use it. We should not have been sorry to have had that treatise of Apollodorus which Quintilian seems only to have known through Cæcilius (the writer on the Sublime), and in which the author by no means frivolously argued that, in the common sense of Figure, everything is a figure, and the enumeration of figures is impossible and useless. We should have thanked Time for sparing that other of the Homeromastix, in which Zoilus, with better sense apparently than when he talked of matters too high for him, limited the word Figure to a phrase, in which the apparent or first meaning is different from the second or real. And Quintilian himself, when he comes to the distinction between Figures of Thought and Figures of Speech, illustrates (whether purposely or not it is difficult to say) the purely childish side of the matter, by remarking that in one of the Verrines, jamjam and liberum are figures of speech. For, as the commentators have gravely worked it out, jamjam is a Palillogia or repetition, and liberum, contracted from libeirum, is an instance of Syncope. Verily, one exclaims, there is much to be said for Apollodorus! And when he further observes that the greatest power of Figures is to render oratory attractive, one feels inclined to say, “The figure is nothing, and the power of making figures is less; but there are attractive qualities in oratory, and you may ticket them as figures, within moderation, as you like.”
But it would be a delusion to suppose Quintilian himself deluded. Immediately after the passage just quoted comes his Declaration of Independence in regard to the Greek nomenclature, a fresh observation in the same key “to exhibit anger or grief, or any other passion in literature, is not of itself to be figurative, though one may use figures in the expression,” and—after two quotations from Cicero, in which crowds of figures are introduced and named—a distinct, though gentle, hint that, much as he admires Cicero, he thinks him too prodigal here.
Two long chapters, the second and third of the Ninth Book, contain Quintilian’s own survey of figures as distinguished from tropes, and as divided into figures of thought and speech respectively. He opens the first division with Interrogation—the rhetorical interrogation, of course; he goes on to Anticipation (prolepsis in a sense different from the usual one); Feigned Doubt, Communication,[[398]] Feigned Passion, Prosopopeia, Apostrophe, Hypotyposis, and then regains more open and higher ground for a time with the great figure of Irony, of which, however, he makes relatively as little as of Allegory. Aposiopesis, Ethopœia, and Emphasis follow, with something to which he gives no definite name, but which approaches Parable. After this he becomes rather technically forensic, and winds up with a shower of names of the verbal hair-splitting kind.
Verbal figures—"Figures of Speech" proper—begin, after some general remarks, by examples which seem to bring us back to the old conclusion that “everything is a figure,” and which are sometimes barely intelligible, as where Sthenelus sciens pugnæ, which seems to us a most ordinary expression, is said to show two figures combined.[[399]] The Figures themselves, where named distinctly, range from such familiar things as Parenthesis and Climax to more technical ones in Epanodos[[400]] and Paradiastole.[[401]] Others, familiar and less familiar, follow, but at last Quintilian grows impatient, and after plumply denying that Paromologia[[402]] and Parasiopesis[[403]] are figures at all, declares roundly that he shall pay no attention to authors who have made no end of mere term-seeking, and have classed arguments among Figures. And he winds up the whole with a weighty caution against abusing even those Figures which he has admitted. Of such abuse, almost all times, whether they have been devoted to nominated Figures or not, leave more than sufficient record: but it can never have been more tempting or more frequent than when the process of peppering style with the contents of a certified chemist’s shop of Figures was almost prescribed by the orthodox curriculum of literary education.
The connection, however, with strictly literary criticism becomes closer still in the following (fourth) chapter of the Ninth |Composition.| Book, which, together with the surveys of literature in the Tenth and Twelfth, is the “place” of Quintilian for our subject. For it deals directly with Composition, in the higher sense of attention to style, and before very long we see that what is immediately uppermost in Quintilian’s mind at the moment is the order of the words, and the consequent rhythmical effect. He spends, after a fashion pardonable to the professional declaimer and teacher of rhetoric, some time on general remarks, rebutting the silly talk, common then as now, about the superiority of natural to artificial eloquence, the frippery of style, and the like. And then he mounts the battle-horse of all true critics, the argument from alteration of arrangement of words, adding, truly enough, that the more beautiful the sentence which is thus distorted, the worse will the distortion seem. He turns to an interesting and quite relevant historical digression on the lateness of deliberate style, and on its differences, narrowing these for the present to two, “loose” and “firm,” by which it would appear that he does not mean the usual contrast of “loose” and “periodic,” but merely that between irregular conversational style and set speech. Then, noting the technical divisions of phrases, clauses, and sentences, he considers the order of words, and (being a Latin) of course urges the conclusion of the sentence with a verb, where possible, and perstringes certain sentences of Mæcenas, a notedly “precious” writer, in which we can only dimly perceive the offence.
Remarks on emphasis, hiatus, cacophonous conjunction of consonants, jingle, plethora of monosyllables, and the like, |Prose rhythm.| follow, and then the great and difficult subject of rhythm is tackled directly. Distinguishing it from metre, correctly if not quite sufficiently, by the necessity that the latter should show a certain order, he proceeds to deal with the proper rhythm of prose in the most difficult, but not least important, passage of his book, rightly insisting in sum on the presence of numbers, which are not to be monotonous. Some of his minor directions are, indeed, dark to us, especially his objection, not merely in prose, but even in verse, to polysyllables at the end. And though we are in full light again when he denounces complete verses in prose (the chief formal fault of Mr Ruskin), he, here also, goes too far for us. The most delicate English ear would not object to the equivalent of Sallust’s “Falso queritur de natura sua,”[[404]] to the commencement of a hexameter in the Timæus,[[405]] or to the muffled Galliambic of Thucydides.[[406]]
But this in the last case is, perhaps, due to the fact that the pæon is hardly an English poetic foot at all, and in the first to the fact that we have nothing corresponding to the strangely broken rhythm of the Latin comic senarius and tetrameter. It is, however, in dealing with the feet of prose that Quintilian, like Aristotle, gets most out of our depth, and for the same reason, that we really do not know enough—if we know anything—about the pronunciation, or intonation, of Greek and Latin. Yet the general drift, if here and there we do not quite “feel our feet,” is unmistakable and unmistakably correct, and the whole is an excellent sample of a kind of criticism most necessary, much neglected in modern times till very recently, and entirely independent of any mere rhetorical technicality. And it is followed—at section 116 onward—by some general remarks of capital importance, laying down among other things that the chief touchstone of composition is the ear, and admitting that in many cases, both of selection of single words and ordonnance of phrases, it is impossible to render an exact reason why one thing is right and another wrong. It is so: and there’s an end on’t! In the peroration of the Book, first the orator receives some special, and then (at 138 onward) the author, in verse as well as in prose, some general, cautions and admonitions as to musical effect.
But all this, good as it is, could be easily spared, if the choice lay between it and the Tenth book. For here, and here only, do |Book X.: Survey of Classical Literature.| we get, from an eminent critic of the first rank, a critical survey of the joint literatures of Greece and Rome, during the main classical course of both. Interesting as this would be from any one of tolerable ability, seeing that it is precisely what we lack—doubly interesting as it is from a man of Quintilian’s learning, long practice in teaching, and interest in the subject—it becomes trebly so from certain characteristics of his which have been more than once glanced at, and which make him an almost perfect, certainly a typical, exponent in rational form of what may be regarded as the standard orthodoxy—the textus receptus of the critical creed—of the ancients. Aristotle came too early to give this opinion with full knowledge, and would, perhaps, always have been disinclined to give it in the same way. Longinus, we feel, is an exception of genius. But what Quintilian says the enormous majority of cultivated Greeks and Romans (allowing in the former case for particularist and parochial contempt of the latter) are likely to have thought. He prefaces the survey by an interesting, and perhaps not really equivocal, explanation of the reasons for its insertion. I say “perhaps not really equivocal,” because Quintilian, a very genuine person, would not have hesitated to give it the form of an apology if he had meant it apologetically. The orator on his probation must, he says, study and imitate for himself all the best authors, not merely the orators themselves, but, as no less an authority than Theophrastus recommended, poets, and historians, and philosophers. But this must be done with care and judgment; for the methods of history are not the same as those of oratory, and it is no use addressing one kind of juryman with the pregnant terseness of Sallust, or another kind with the lactea ubertas of Livy, while the philosophers require the same caution, put in a different way. And some remarks of his on at least the more celebrated authors will be expected by his friends—to which friends we owe more thanks than is always the case.
He “begins with Zeus,” that is to say, Homer, and delivers a very neat set criticism on him from that oratorical point of view which was so common in regard to both Homer and Virgil.
“For he, as,” in his own words, "the violence of rivers and the courses of the springs take their beginning from the ocean, |Greek: Homer and other Epic poets.| has given an example and a starting-point to all parts of eloquence. Him none has excelled, for great things in sublimity as for small ones in propriety of speech. At once abundant and compressed, agreeable and serious, wonderful now in volume, now in terseness, is he; and not only in poetical, but also in oratorical, virtue most eminent. For, not to say anything of his panegyrics, his hortatives, his consolations, do not the Ninth Book, with the embassy sent to Achilles, and the quarrel between the generals in the First, and the sentences expressed in the Second, set forth every device of advocacy and debate?" &c., &c.
Others he treats more briefly. Hesiod is in the middle style only, but easy and sententious in that. Antimachus[[407]] (one of our losses) is second to Homer, has force, energy, originality, but is deficient in attractiveness and in ordonnance. Panyasis (another) excels Hesiod in subject and Antimachus in treatment. Apollonius has an evenly sustained mediocrity. Aratus is “equal to the work to which he thought himself equal”—an ingeniously double-edged compliment. Theocritus (one must quote the whole of this, and waive the discussion of it) “is admirable in his peculiar style, but his rustic and pastoral muse shrinks not only from appearing in the forum, but even from approaching the city.” And then Pisander, Nicander, Euphorion, Tyrtæus, Callimachus, Philetas are slid over rapidly, while, though Aristarchus had sanctioned three iambographi, Simonides and Hipponax are passed in silence, Archilochus only receiving very high praise for vigour and all similar qualities.
So, too, of the nine canonical lyrists, Bacchylides, Ibycus, Anacreon, Alcman, and even Sappho, are overlooked. Pindar |The Lyrists.| has a brilliant testimonial, to which, however, the authority of Horace seems to be thought necessary as an indorsement. Stesichorus is “equal to a great subject, strong, dignified, but exuberant.” Alcæus is magnificent, but descends to sportive and amorous subjects (ecce idola scholæ!); and Simonides, though of no very lofty genius, is correct and pleasing.
The Old Comedy, with the usual three selected, but not characterised separately, is better adapted for the orator’s use |Drama.| than anything save Homer: it is the cream of Attic; it is graceful, elegant (and one may wonder for a moment, but it is a useful warning as to the connotation of the word), “sublime.” The judgment of the three tragedians is scarcely worthy of Quintilian. He speaks of Æschylus very much as a Frenchman, not in the times of utter ignorance, used to speak of Shakespeare. He is half silent, half enigmatic, on Sophocles; but he gives Euripides obviously heartfelt praise, and thinks him the most serviceable study of all for the orator. To which observations Aristophanes would pretty certainly have retorted (clothing the retort in language perhaps sadly lacking in decorum) that it was not very wonderful that the sophist should be useful to the rhetorician.
Very high, too, is the praise of Menander. Indeed, as we have seen before, Menander held a much higher position with the ancients than, if we had more than fragments of him, he would, from those fragments, be likely to hold with the moderns. He is praised (almost in the very words) for his “criticism of life,”[[408]] and a tradition is mentioned that he was an orator as well as a poet. But whether this be the case or not, passages in his plays are cited as possessing all the charms of eloquence, and he is especially extolled for that presentation of character—ethopœia—which the ancients exacted from the orator even more than from the poet. Philemon is the other late comic mentioned, and though the taste of the age that preferred him is denounced as bad, he is admitted as a fair second.
Herodotus and Thucydides are of course put in front of the historians, and are contrasted fairly, though not with a great |The Historians.| deal of penetration. Theopompus, Philistus, Ephorus, Clitarchus, and Timagenes are slightly mentioned: but Xenophon, somewhat to our surprise, is put off to the philosophers. Yet this is of itself a useful datum for our inquiry, when we think how low we should put Xenophon’s contributions to philosophy (as distinguished of course from philosophical biography), how much higher even the rather dry annals of the Hellenics, how much higher still the agreeable miscellanies, and the pleasant didactic romance of the Cyropædia, and how far highest of all, the Anabasis, with its vivid realisation of action and scenery, and the narrative power which gives a romantic interest to the rather undeserved escape of a gang of mercenary filibusters.
Conscious, probably, that the comparison of them must be hackneyed, Quintilian does not dwell long on the Greek orators, |The orators and philosophers.| even on that half of The Ten which he selects, and of the later speakers mentions only Demetrius Phalereus. He is much more enthusiastic about the philosophers, discerning “agreeableness” of style[[409]] in Aristotle, a judgment in which few of us who have groaned over the not indeed obscure, but hard and juiceless, language of the Ethics and the Organon, will quite acquiesce, while we might think it rather kind even for that which clothes the more popular matter of the Politics, Poetics, and Rhetoric. But it would not be easy better to recognise the mastery of Plato, “whether in acumen of argument, or in a certain divine and Homeric faculty of style.” He rises far above mere prose, and seems instinct, not with human reason, but with a sort of Delphic inspiration. Xenophon at last receives due meed for his “unaffected delightfulness beyond the reach of affectation,” and the “persuasive goddess that sits on his lips.”[[410]] Perhaps Theophrastus may be a “little overparted” with “divine brilliance,”[[411]] though of course the epithet is a mere translation of the name Aristotle gave him.
When the critic approaches his own countrymen his words have, perhaps, an even greater interest. He begins of course |Latin—Virgil.| with Virgil, and, as in duty bound, ranks him next to Homer, and nearer Homer than any one is near himself. Yet a suspicion crosses one’s mind whether Quintilian was exactly enthusiastic about the elegant Mantuan, for he talks about his being “obliged to take more care,”[[412]] about his losing in the higher qualities, but finding compensations, &c.
So far so good. But what shall we say of this: “All others must follow afar off. For Macer and Lucretius are indeed to |Other epic and didactic poets.| be read, but not for supplying phrase—that is to say, the body of style. Each is elegant in his own subject, but the one is tame and the other difficult.” Now, as to Macer we know little or nothing; he seems to have been a sort of Roman Armstrong or Darwin, who wrote about herbs, drugs, &c.[[413]] But Lucretius—a greater master of phrase than Landor himself, nay, a greater, perhaps, than Milton—"not good for supplying" it, and merely “difficult”? One wants, again, some Aristophanic interjection. Varro is damned with faint praise as not indeed despicable (non spernendus quidem), but parum locuples. Ennius is spoken of as some of our own critics used to speak of Chaucer—as a gigantic and aged oak, venerable but not beautiful. Ovid is “wanton,” and too fond of his own conceits. Valerius Flaccus is a great loss. Others—Severus, Bassus, Rabirius, Pedo[[414]]—names to us mostly, though we have fragments of at least three, are dismissed, the two first with high praise, the two last with the scarcely enthusiastic remark that the orator may read them, if he has time. Lucan is ardent, eager, and of noble sententiousness, but rather an orator than a poet. Domitian would have been the greatest of poets, if the gods had pleased. But, unluckily, they did not please!
In elegy Tibullus is Quintilian’s choice, but he admits that others prefer Propertius. Ovid is more luxuriant than either; |Elegiac and miscellaneous.| Gallus harsher. Horace receives praise thrice over as terse, pure and just in satire, bitter in iambics (lampoons), and almost the only Roman deserving to be read[[415]] in lyric—where he sometimes soars. He is full of pleasant grace, and is agreeably audacious. After this, or rather before it, it is not surprising that Catullus is only mentioned for “bitter” iambics. As older satirists (“Satire is ours!” says Quintilian with a pleasant patriotic exaltation), Lucilius and Varro have praise.
The remarks on Tragedy we are unfortunately unable to check; but it is interesting that Quintilian apparently thought |Drama.| Latin better off here than in Comedy, which we certainly should not have expected. He quotes the traditional praise of the language of Plautus without expressing any opinion on it, but in a fashion pretty clearly intimating that he was unable to agree.[[416]] “The ancients extol Cæcilius,”—another phrase which can only be pointed in one way; and Terence, though extremely elegant in his kind, scarcely attains to a faint image of Greek. It seems, however, as if he would have thought better of Afranius had it not been for that foulness of subject which, from the frequency of mention of it in connection with the author, seems to have turned the by no means squeamish stomach even of less moral Romans.
He is much more patriotic in regard to History—in fact, his patriotism rather outruns his discretion. One may have the |History.| highest admiration of Sallust’s masterly sweep (“immortal velocity” Quintilian himself calls it), of his pregnant thought and vivid representation, yet hesitate to match the two miniatures or Kit-cats of the Jugurtha and the Catiline against the mighty grasp and volume, alike in whole and in detail, of the Peloponnesian War. It must, however, be remembered that Sallust wrote a larger History in four books, which is lost except in fragments. Livy with Herodotus, though Quintilian thinks the latter ought not to feel indignant at the match, is only not so impar congressus, because there is here no unequality in scale and range. But, once more, the expression of opinion is a valuable one, and we must come back to it. Of Servilius Nonianus and Aufidius Bassus we know nothing; but the section ends with a high and most interesting panegyric on a certain unnamed living historian, whom we must all hope, though some would identify him with Pliny, to be Tacitus. If he had been equalled with even the greatest of the Greeks, Thucydides might have made room for him with hardly condescending good-humour.
Having thus put himself in the mood of “our country right or wrong” by this time, Quintilian is emboldened to match |Oratory—Cicero.| Cicero against any Greek orator, though he proceeds to explain that this is not meant to depress Demosthenes. Thus minded, he certainly does not go to work “with a dead hand,” as the French say, and endows his favourite not merely with the energy of Demosthenes, but with the flow of Plato and the sweetness of Isocrates. (One may invoke the aid of Echo—courteous nymph—and assent at least to Isocrates.) And then he passes to other Latin orators, praising Pollio for pains, and Messala for an aristocratic elegance. Cæsar (it is noticeable that he says nothing of the Commentaries) has qualities in his speeches which might have made him a rival to Cicero, especially the elegance of his diction. Cælius for wit; Calvus for severe correctness; others for other things, receive homage.
In Latin philosophy he again, with some rashness, advances Cicero as a rival to Plato, and ends with a curious and interesting |Philosophy—Cicero and Seneca.| passage on Seneca, whom he had been supposed to condemn and even hate, whose vitiated taste he still reprehends, but to whose real merits he now makes handsome concessions. This is quite one of Quintilian’s best “diploma-pieces” as a literary critic, in the division of decided but not illiberal censure, qualified by just and not grudging allowance for merits. It is a pity that it is too long to quote.
With the rest of the book, interesting as it is and germane to our subject, we must deal more succinctly. It first handles |Minor counsel of the Tenth Book.| Imitation of the styles just run through, and contains some of the best advice available anywhere on that head. The danger of imitating one style is especially dwelt upon, and Quintilian draws nearer to Greece or England than to Rome, in the simple observation that he has known Ciceronians think themselves quite accomplished when they ended a sentence with esse videatur. Habemus criticum! Another most excellent chapter is devoted to Writing—that is to say, to “exercises in composition,” which, under the dispensation of Rhetoric, were much in use. We know that Cicero wrote theses at the moment, and on the subject, of his sorest trouble. Quintilian’s advice here again is excellent; and if it were worse, it would be saved by the delightful story he tells of Julius Florus, a Gaulish provincial (for literary talent was beginning to be centrifugal), who, to his nephew and Quintilian’s friend Julius Secundus, when he was troubled about his style, observed, “Do you want to write better than you can?” Nor should the subsequent observations on rough copies be passed over. The rough copy is the superstition of those who wish to write better than they can. In some respects, and especially for the urbane, intimate, un-Philistine common-sense of it, this is one of Quintilian’s best chapters. He follows it up by a short one on Correction, wisely observing that we may indulge in that too much; by another on Translation, dedication-writing, and so forth; by yet another on premeditation, and by a last on speaking extempore, which he says (irrefutably from his oratorical point of view, and perhaps not much less so from the point of general literature) is all but a sine qua non. In these later chapters he is, as we may say, pursuing the art of the critic the reverse way—that is to say, he is counselling the author how to anticipate the critic. But it ought to be needless to add that they are not the less important as chapters of a manual of criticism itself.
The Eleventh book is wholly professional, dealing with the manner and general conduct appropriate to the orator, the |Books XI., XII.: The styles of oratory.| cultivation of the memory, delivery, gesture, and so forth. It therefore yields us nothing, while the beginning of the Twelfth, with its respectable paradox that a good orator must be a good man, may not look more promising, nor the subsequent demonstration that he ought to be acquainted with the civil law, and with examples and precedents, that he must have firmness and presence of mind, years of discretion, and also reasonable fees and retainers, that he must study his brief, not lay himself out too much for mere applause, and while preparing carefully, be ready with impromptus and extempore speech when necessary. But when we are beginning to get a little weary of this good-man-of-the-Stoics, called to the bar, an abrupt turn to the style of oratory refreshes us. The sketch of literature in the Tenth Book had been made, it is to be remembered, from a somewhat different point of view; it had been occupied with the authors whom an orator should read, and the qualities which were to be discovered in them. Here the standpoint changes, and the literary quality of what the orator himself is to produce is the question. After a distinctly interesting parallel from painting and sculpture, to illustrate differences of style, Quintilian takes up these differences, in some cases repeating the descriptions of Book X., in reference to Latin orators, and especially renewing his eulogy of Cicero as excellent in every oratorical quality. This, however, he admits, was by no means the universal opinion, either of Cicero’s contemporaries or of succeeding critics. And he hits a distinct blot in too much literary criticism by pointing out that while these earlier critics usually censured the great Arpinate as too flowery, too Asiatic, too fond of jests, his, Quintilian’s, |“Atticism.”| own contemporaries were apt to speak of him as dry and wanting in succulence. Next he turns to the three famous divisions of oratorical style—Attic, Asiatic, and Rhodian: the first chastened, energetic, correct; the second redundant and flowery; the third a mixture of the other two. And then, with his usual unpretending shrewdness, he proceeds to point out that although there certainly is an Attic style, and this style is far the best, yet that there are many, nay, infinite varieties and subdivisions of it—that Lysias is not in the least like Andocides, Isocrates different from either, Hyperides apart from all three. And so, with perfect good sense, he objects to the limitation of the “odour of thyme,” the Attic charm, to those who “flow as a slender stream making its way through pebbles”—that is to say, to those who write in a studiously correct and elegant style, with no magniloquence or turbid rush.
More interesting still, because it is the first and by far the best thing of the kind that we have, is the passage which follows on the oratorical—we may excusably read the |Literary quality of Greek and Latin.| “literary”—qualities of the Latin language as compared with the Greek. There are, it is true, phonetic difficulties here, and probably no wise man will pretend to understand Quintilian’s praise of the “sweetness” of the Greek phi, as compared with the harsh repulsiveness of the Latin f and v. No one but a student of phonetics themselves (that is to say, of a science as arbitrary as the most technical part of the Hermogenean rhetoric) can perceive any difference between phi and f, or the repulsiveness of the latter and of v, or the extra harshness of fr as in frangit. Fr, to a modern English ear, gives a very harmonious sound indeed. He incidentally, however, as far as v is concerned, gives us a “light” by saying that the sound of the digamma was preserved in Servus and Cervus, so that the Romans adopted the Wellerian form in these words; and has a specially interesting observation (because it applies equally to Anglo-Saxon) on the ugliness of terminations in m, “like the lowing of an ox,” as opposed to the clear ringing Greek n. The intonation of Latin he also thinks inferior to Greek, and still more the vocabulary. But sursum corda! after all:—
“Wherefore, if any demand from Latins the grace of Attic speech, let him give us the same sweetness of utterance, and an equal abundance of words. If this be denied, we must match our meaning to the words we have, nor mix a too great subtlety of matter with words too strong, not to say too stout, for it, lest the combination lose either excellence. The less the mere language helps us, the more we must reinforce ourselves by invention of matter. Let us extract sublime and varied meanings. Let us stir all the passions, and illuminate our addresses with gleaming metaphor. We cannot be so graceful; let us be more vigorous. We are conquered in subtlety; let us prevail in weight. They are surer of propriety, let us overcome by numbers. The genius of the Greeks, even in their lesser men, has its own ports; let us spread more ample sail and fill it with a mightier breeze. Nor let us always seek the deep; we must sometimes follow the windings of the shore. They may slip over any shallows; let me find a deeper sea in which my bark may not sink.”
A very little farther[[417]] and we find Wordsworth’s paradox in the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads—that there is no natural eloquence but in the speech of ordinary folk—anticipated, stated, and very happily and thoroughly answered, though in reference to prose, not verse; and after this, some interesting further observations on sententiæ—deliberate and ostentatious sententiousnesses.
Later still he returns upon himself, and adopts a fresh threefold division into ἰσχνὸν or plain; ἁδρὸν or grand; and ἀνθηρὸν or florid, examples of each of which, with oratorical adaptations, he proceeds to give, perorating on plain and florid style, in a manner not unworthy of his precepts. He concludes with a sort of postscript on the necessity of the orator’s withdrawing before his natural force is abated, and thus leads, by a not ungraceful parable, to his own Finis.
It may be hoped that the above analysis, however jejune and imperfect, of this remarkable book will at least serve as a basis for some intelligible, if brief, remarks on its position |Quintilian’s critical ethos.| and value in the history of literary criticism. Its status as a document of this is, like that of all other ancient documents without exception (even the Περὶ Ὕψους cannot rank as completely exceptional), an indirect one, one of but partial relevance to the gospel of criticism. The Law of Rhetoric was but a schoolmaster, teaching, like all good schoolmasters, many things which had no absolute bearing on the future life of its pupils. And it is all the more curious that Quintilian should nevertheless give us so much that is of direct importance, because he is not merely a literary critic at intervals, but almost a literary critic malgré lui. Except in the case of Cicero, where his professional feeling comes in, he displays no very great enthusiasm for literature. He is never tempted, as not merely Longinus, but even Dionysius, is, to take a particular author, book, piece, and thoroughly analyse him and it, to grasp it, turn it lovingly inside out, hold it up to the admiration of others, deck it with the ornament, and adore it with the incense, of his own. His interest, though liberal, is just a trifle utilitarian. He holds, like Scott’s counsellor, that “a lawyer without history or literature is a mere mechanic,” and he studies both accordingly; but his study is mainly a means to an end. He may not be exactly insensible to the pure beauty of literature in and by itself; but it may be suspected that, if he spoke of it freely, he would speak in much the same tone that he uses in an odd passage[[418]] about working in the country, where he thinks the beauty of tree and flower, the song of birds, the sound of streams, likely to distract rather than to inspire. The prose of the Roman nature, its businesslike character, its matter-of-factness, all betray themselves a little in him.
It is therefore not wonderful that he embodies for us, in a vary edifying fashion, that distrust of the Romantic which appears so often, if not so constantly, in the post-Homeric classical ages, up to his own time, though soon after it was to break down in writers like Apuleius. We saw that if he did not absolutely dislike or despise, he ignored the romantic element in Xenophon, that the “seizing” situation of the Ten Thousand, leaderless though victorious, a handful isolated in the heart of a hostile country, the moving accidents of their journey across the mountain walls and through the warlike clans of Kurdistan, and all the rest, till the sight of the sea, and the rush to the hill-brow to behold it, and the shout of welcome—even though the incident be as rhetorical a thing as history and literature contain—pass entirely unnoticed by him. His astonishing dismissals of Lucretius (though he may have been prejudiced by Cicero[[419]] there) as merely “difficult,” of Catullus as merely “bitter,” group themselves with this very well. The grim force of the Lucretian despair, which would so fain persuade itself to be scientific acquiescence in contemplation from the temples of the wise, the throb of the Catullian passion, are not his business. Indeed, what contio, what judices, would pay any attention to the drift of the atoms in the void? what respectable paterfamilias but must highly deprecate verses, not merely immoral but extravagant, to Ipsithilla and Lesbia, attempts to reproduce, in sober Latin, the Greek ravings of a Sappho or about an Attis? Apollonius Rhodius, too, who to us seems a Romantic before Romanticism, touches no chord in Quintilian’s breast. And we may be tolerably certain that the chords which were not responsive in the breast of Quintilian were at least equally mute in other breasts of his time.
But these shortcomings are not only inevitable, they are, for the purpose of the historian, almost welcome. We may protest as lovers, but we register and interpret as students. Moreover, Quintilian, like all the greater men in all periods, and some even of the smaller in some, supplies us with a great deal of matter for registration and interpretation, without any protest at all. In the first place, we see in him the gradual deflection or development (whichever word may be preferred) of Rhetoric into pure Literary Criticism, assisted by the practical disappearance of symbouleutic oratory, by the degradation of epideictic, and by the practical Roman contempt for mere technicalities, unless, as in the case of law, they are intimately and almost inextricably connected with some practical end. It would be possible, as we have seen, by a process of mere “lifting out,” with hardly any important garbling of phrase, to extract from the Institutions a “Treatise on Composition and Critical Reading” which would be of no mean bulk, of no narrow range, and would contain a very large proportion of strictly relevant and valuable detail. And this treatise would be illuminated—for practically the only time, in the range of ancient literature on the subject, to any considerable extent—by that searchlight of criticism, the comparative method; while it would also display, throughout, the other illuminative powers of wide reading, sound judgment, and an excellent and by no means merely pedestrian common-sense.
We may regret, indeed, as we have regretted already, that these good gifts were not turned to the business of direct literary examination of particular books and authors, after the fashion of Dionysius; but it is quite evident why they were not. And their actual use has resulted in passage on passage, in chapter on chapter, of the most precious material. Quintilian can only be despised by those who consider themselves defrauded if critics do not attempt the meteorosophia of the highest æsthetic generalisations. It is, on the other hand, certain that these airy flights, in this particular matter, have too often had the ultimate Icarian fate, and have not often met even with the temporary Icarian success. The “high priori way” has never led to any permanent conquest in literary criticism; and it is never likely to do so, because of the blessed infinity and incalculableness of human genius. It has constantly led that genius into deserts and impasses. Even things that look like generalisations firmly based on actual experience have to be cautiously guarded, and put forth merely as working hypotheses. You make, with the almost superhuman compound of learning and reason belonging to an Aristotle, a general theory of Poetry, and a special one of Tragedy, which require, and command, almost universal agreement. In a few hundred years there drops in a graceless sort of prose tale-tellers, who by establishing, slowly and uncertainly at first, but after a couple of thousand years unmistakably, the kind of prose fiction, sap the very foundations of your theory of poetry. Later still arises a more graceless sort of strolling actors, ne’er-do-weel university men in England, cavaliers or shavelings in Spain, who in the same way bring it about that your theory of tragedy has to acknowledge itself to be only a theory of one kind of tragedy.
The other way is the way of safety; and if it be objected that it is the way of plodders only, one could undertake to make a very striking company of plodders from Longinus to Mr Arnold, who, sometimes not quite wittingly or willingly, have done all their best work in it. It would be but re-summarising our summary to point out once more, in any fulness, what work Quintilian has done. He has given us a history in little of the choicest Greek and Latin literature; he has drawn and placed for us the contrasted styles, not merely of oratorical, but of all prose composition; he has handled the literary side of grammar with singular fairness and sense; and has dealt more satisfactorily—to us at least—than any other ancient writer with the all-important and most difficult question of euphony in written speech. No one among ancient writers has treated the important but delusive subject of the Figures with more sense and skill; no one has contrived to get, out of some of the merest technicalities of the Rhetoric of the Schools, such a solid extract of critical power. The technical observations in Book X., which for want of space we passed over rapidly, form the most invaluable Introduction to Composition to be found in any language; they put our modern books of the kind to shame, at once by the practical character of their suggestions, and by their freedom from mere mechanical arbitrariness of prescription on points where idiom, good usage, and individual ability are really the only arbiters. And lastly, on the all-important and ever-recurring battle of the styles, Plain and Ornate, Attic and Asiatic, or whatever antithesis be preferred, it would be almost impossible to find a more intelligent pronouncement than Quintilian’s.
He can therefore afford to smile at those who say that he chancelle sur le terrain des principes,[[420]] and to reply that terrain is exactly the word which does not apply to the principles with which he is reproached for not dealing. The only reproach to which he is perhaps open is one which all antiquity, from Aristotle to Longinus, and including both these great men, shares with him. This is the reproach of never completely clearing up the mind about Rhetoric, and of perpetually confusing it with the Art of Prose Literature, or else leaving prose literature without any “art” at all. We have seen, long ago, how this confusion arose, and how it was maintained by conditions which, though working more feebly in Quintilian’s days, were still working. The matter came to a head (though, oddly enough, the person chiefly concerned seems not quite to have understood it) when Lucian formally renounced Rhetoric and took to essay-writing in dialogue, when Apuleius in the Golden Ass mingled declamation, dialogue, philosophy, and romance in one olla podrida, with a daring sauce of new prose style to make it go down. But the barbarians were then at the gates; and the real recognition and reconstruction was not to take place for ages later, if it has completely taken place even yet.
[377]. Whether its correct title be Institutiones Oratoriæ, or De Institutione Oratoria, and whether this be better translated Principles of Oratory, or Of the Education of an Orator, are questions not very important to us. The sense of “Institutes” may be illustrated by the old division of academical chairs in, for instance, Medicine into “Institutes” (i.e., “Theory”) and “Practice.” But Quintilian includes a good deal of the practical side. All the editions of Quintilian are either antiquated by, or more or less based upon, that of Spalding and Zumpt, with Lexicon, &c., by Bonnell, Leipsic, 1798-1834. I find the little Tauchnitz print of the text (ibid., 1829) very useful. The Bohn translation, by the ill-starred J. S. Watson, though not impeccable, will serve English readers well enough.
[378]. For these technical terms v. ante, bk. i. chap. iv., or the Index.
[379]. II. v. 5-9.
[380]. Crebra, as it were “attacking on all sides,” “redoubling blows.”
[381]. Asperitas, which some would rather translate “trenchancy.” But there was an idea in ancient times (not quite unknown in modern) that in hostile argument politeness (“treating your adversary with respect,” as Johnson said) was out of place.
[382]. Quæ virtus ei contraria, that is to say, I suppose, brevity and pregnancy. “Transferred” just below, in the sense of translatio, “metaphor,” “what ingenuity of metaphor.”
[383]. Virtus quæ risum judicis movet, VI. iii.
[384]. Hoc semper humile.
[385]. §§ 101-112.
[386]. Some moderns (notably Campbell in his Philosophy of Rhetoric) have followed Quintilian in this use of the word for “style.” But the accepted sense in English is too well settled for this to be permissible.
[387]. The use of undignified expression, as “a wart of stone” on a mountain.
[388]. Not in its usual equivalence with litotes, but in the sense of cursory and elliptic reference.
[389]. Affected excess in any direction, whether ornate or plain.
[390]. Chiefly from Virgil and Cicero.
[391]. Subsistit: or perhaps “comes to a halt,” “stops dead.”
[392]. Insistere invicem nequeant: or perhaps “are unable to lean upon each other,” “to come close to each other,” “to stand in each other’s shoes.”
[393]. Neque enim me movent nomina illa, quæ fingere utique Græcis promptissimum est.
[394]. And, it may be added, pretty closely connected with the mania for insisting that literary criticism shall perpetually mix itself up with ethics and psychology.
[395]. This famous horror of the insolens, the inusitatum verbum, is the very dominant note of all Latin criticism, and will recur constantly.
[396]. I.e., suppressed sneering.
[397]. Trope = an expression altered from its natural and obvious sense. Figure = an expression differing in form from the ordinary mode.
[398]. In the technical sense of “taking the audience into confidence,” of asking the jury what they would do in such a case, &c.
[399]. Sciens being used for scitus and pugnæ for pugnandi, and each use of one word for another being reckoned as one figure.
[400]. Deliberate repetition.
[401]. Antithetic distinction.
[402]. Concession in order to strengthen argument.
[403]. Pretended reticence, implying what is meant.
[404]. Said to be an iambic decasyllable—hobbling enough!
[405]. Εἷς δύο τρεῖσ· ὁ δὲ δὴ τέταρτος ἡμῶν ὧ φίλε. The first words to δὴ make the beginning of a hexameter or a penthemimer elegiac, the whole, omitting Εἷς, a very “lolloping” iambic trimeter, while ὁ to ἡμῶν is an Anacreontic. Plato would certainly have retorted that where so many metres are possible no one can arise distinctly, and therefore disagreeably, to the ear.
[406]. ὑπὲρ ἥμισυ Κᾶρες ἐφάνησαν. Spalding, I think, detected Galliambic cadence here, regarding the first foot as an anapæst and the rest as two third pæons. You may also begin with a third pæon (ὑπὲρ ἥμι), as do many of the lines of the Atys itself. Therefore I call it “muffled,” and have dwelt on the pæon, though the Galliambic is more commonly thought of as Ionic a minore. Professor Hardie, however, suggests to me that Quintilian was actually thinking of the Sotadean metre of which he himself, lower in the chapter, quotes an example beginning rather like this.
[407]. V. supra, pp. [20], [85]. Perhaps no single “windfall of the Muses” would be so great a gain to literary criticism, in respect of Greek, as the recovery of a substantial portion of Antimachus.[Antimachus.]
[408]. Ita omnem vitæ imaginem expressit.
[409]. Eloquendi suavitas. Cicero is equally complimentary, however, in speaking of his flumen aureum: and the charitable have thought that these qualities were discoverable in the lost Dialogues.
[410]. Eupolis on Pericles.
[411]. Nitor divinus.
[412]. Ei fuit magis laborandum.
[413]. His fragments in Baehrens’s Poetæ Minores, vol. vi. pp. 344, [345], run to seventeen, none exceeding two lines, and only two so long. The most complete is this—
“Cygnus in auspiciis semper lætissimus ales:
Hunc optant nautæ, quia se non mergit in undis.”
This is certainly not much better than humilis, “tame” in phrase.
[414]. Of Cornelius Severus, a friend of Ovid, who wrote on the Sicilian war, and of whom Quintilian thinks that, had he lived, he might have been second to Virgil, we have some dozen odd lines, and a more solid fragment of twenty-five, enshrining that plagiarism from Sextilius Ena which has been noticed above (p. 235). It has some merit. For Saleius Bassus see above (p. 281). The five scraps which we possess of Rabirius warrant no judgment. But Seneca the Rhetorician in a context noticed above (p. 234), has preserved a block of twenty-three lines of Albinovanus Pedo on the voyage of Germanicus, which have a certain declamatory vigour. See Baehrens, vi. 351-356. (Some elegies have also been attributed to Pedo.)
[415]. At Lyricorum idem Horatius fere solus legi dignus.
[416]. In comœdia maxime claudicamus: licet Varro, Musas (Ælii Stilonis sententia), Plautino dicat sermone locuturas fuisse, si Latine loqui vellent.
[417]. XII. x. 40.
[418]. X. iii. 22-24. It is natural to compare this with the remarks of Aper and Maternus in the Dialogus.
[419]. This remark is, of course, made subject to the uncertainties referred to above (p. 214 sq.).
[420]. Théry, op. cit., i. 207. I venture to think that Mr Nettleship also is not quite just to Quintilian.
CHAPTER IV.
LATER WRITERS.
AULUS GELLIUS: THE ‘NOCTES ATTICÆ’—MACROBIUS: THE ‘SATURNALIA’—SERVIUS ON VIRGIL—OTHER COMMENTATORS—AUSONIUS—THE ‘ANTHOLOGIA LATINA’—THE LATIN RHETORICIANS—RUTILIUS LUPUS, ETC.—CURIUS FORTUNATIANUS, HIS CATECHISM—MARIUS VICTORINUS ON CICERO—OTHERS—MARTIANUS CAPELLA.
The period from Nero to Hadrian is not merely the central and most important period of Latin criticism, but it contains a proportion altogether disproportionate of the bulk as of the value of Latin contributions to the subject. We must, however, complete our view of that subject, before summing up its general characteristics, with another chapter surveying the yield of the second, third, and fourth—perhaps, in view of the uncertainty of date of Martianus, we should add the fifth—centuries. The crop, if not very abundant, or of the very greatest value, is neither very scanty nor very uninteresting. It shall consist, in the specimens of it which we can afford to examine, first of the two famous and by no means unamusing miscellanists, the authors of the Noctes Atticæ and the Saturnalia; then, by an easy transition, of the commentators and scholiasts represented by their prior Servius, himself an interlocutor in the Macrobian symposium; in the third place, of a poetical contingent, much less important indeed than that furnished by the satirists from Horace to Martial, but not quite insignificant; and lastly, of the technical rhetoricians, ending with one of their latest representatives, but perhaps the most interesting of all, Martianus Capella. The chapter will thus, at least, not lack variety.
It would be difficult to have a better example of the indisposition of the Latin mind towards literary criticism proper, |Aulus Gellius: the Noctes Atticæ.| than that which is afforded by the famous Noctes Atticæ of Aulus Gellius.[[421]] We know nothing of this good person except that he was probably of more or less pure Roman descent, that he probably lived for the most part of his life at Rome and at Athens in the early second century, that he was a friend of Herodes Atticus, probably knew Plutarch, and was extremely intimate with, and a great admirer of, the rhetorician Favorinus. The well-known miscellany which he has left us, and which, in purporting to give the results of study or conversation in an Attic country-house, has been for seventeen hundred years so fruitful in imitations—mother, indeed, of a family sometimes a great deal fairer than herself—is an amusing book and a valuable, because it preserves for us a great number of quotations from lost authors or books, because its farrago of matter is good pastime, and not least because of a certain Pepysian or Boswellian quality in its author. But though, amid its jumble of things ethical, physical, logical, legal, and, above all, philological, perhaps the larger part is occupied with literature or at least with books, it is quite astonishing how small is the proportion that can be called literary criticism, and how rudimentary and infantine even that small proportion is. Gellius had nearly all the qualities and acquirements of the dictionary-maker; he was interested in etymology, was a most exact and careful purist in the definition and usage of words, and evidently prided himself on his collections of illustrative phrases and passages.[[422]] But almost invariably it must be said of him that hæret in litera, or, if he escapes that adhesion, that he gives himself over to the substance and meaning, not to the literary form and art, of what he quotes and studies. In all the nineteen or twenty books of his work there are probably not nineteen or twenty pages of real literary criticism; and where he does give us any it is of the “strawiest” character. Take, for instance, his comparison (ii. 23) of the Greek and Latin comic writers, and especially of some passages of Cæcilius with their originals in Menander. In preferring the Greek he is, of course, quite right; but it is noteworthy that he can hardly render any specific reason for his preference. He says, vaguely if truly, that the Latins seem low and sordid beside the wit and brilliancy of the Greeks, that Cæcilius appears stupid and frigid by Menander. But as to detail he prudently adds, nihil dicam ego quantum differat; and, less prudently transgressing this rule later, confines himself wholly to the matter, accusing the Roman of leaving out a simplex et verum et delectabile remark of the Greek. And if he comes a little nearer in praising (or making his favourite Favorinus praise) the flavum marmor of Ennius, it is still pretty clear that he does this merely or mainly from the side of the dictionary-maker, pleased at getting a light on the exact meaning of flavus. Although to our ears his preference (vi. 20) of “Ora” to “Nola” (in the passage which Virgil is said to have altered from a rather petty spite to the Nolans), “because it makes a sweet hiatus” with Vesevo at the end of the preceding line, may seem all wrong, the principle is æsthetic if the application is not. But, as a rule, we shall find that his critical opinions, where they are not concerned with purely verbal matters, are always decided by moral, philosophical, or in some other way extra-literary considerations. Even in an extremely interesting passage towards the end (xix. 9) where he makes Græci plusculi attack the Spanish-Latin rhetor Antonius Julianus[[423]] on the score of the inferiority of Roman to Greek erotic poets, and gives the passages with which Julianus retorted, the chief interest for us is that even the Greeks except Catullus to some extent, and Calvus, from their censure. For there is little or nothing but logomachy to be got out of the condemnation of Hortensius as invenustus and Cinna as illepidus.
This same imputation of logomachy is hard to clear from the dispute in x. 3, whether, though Caius Gracchus is undoubtedly fortis et vehemens, it is or is not intolerable that he should be deemed severior, amplior, acrior, than Cicero. If Gellius had kept to the same words, and had said fortior and vehementior, the observation just made might seem unkind; but as it is, one seems to be dropping into the well-known jargon of our own times, and of all times, to be hearing one reviewer asserting that Johnson is “alert” and another replying that Thompson is “nimble,” or opposing the “poignancy” of Smith to the “swiftness” of Brown. But the attention to words certainly comes in better when the critic objects to the use, in an otherwise non sane incommode adapted version from Euripides by Ennius, of ignobiles and opulenti for ἀδοξοῦντες and δοκοῦντες. XII. 2, however, is a good locus for us in more ways than one. It opens with a sketch of the difference of opinion about Seneca in the age succeeding his own, a difference of which Quintilian had, a little earlier, given us an inkling. “Some,” says Gellius, “think of him as of a most unprofitable writer, one not worth reading, because they hold his style vulgar and hackneyed, his matter and opinions distinguished either by inept and empty haste (impetu) or by frivolous and Old-Bailey (causidicali) wire-drawing, his erudition vernacular and plebeian, and possessing nothing either of the dignity or the grace of the classics. Others, while not denying that he has little grace of phrase, maintain that his matter lacks neither information nor teaching power, and that he has no unhappy gravity and severity in castigating vice.” He himself will give no general censure, but consider Seneca’s opinion of Cicero and Ennius and Virgil. This “consideration,” according to his wont, is rather a string of quotations with objurgatory epithets than a regular criticism. One may not agree with Seneca or one may (there are certainly some who would indorse his confession and avoidance of Cicero’s faults in the words non ejus sed temporis vitium). But the words which Gellius himself uses—insulsissime, homo nugator, inepti et insubidi[[424]] hominis joca—surely require some little argument to justify them, and this argument is what Gellius never gives. We may thank him, however, for the criticism as well as for the anecdote preserved (xiii. 2) in the story of the meeting of the tragic poets Pacuvius and Accius at Tarentum, in the extreme old age of the former. Pacuvius had asked his young guest and craftsfellow to read his tragedy of Atreus, and, after the reading, praised it as sonorous and grand, but perhaps a little harsh and austere. “It is so,” said the junior, “but I am not very sorry, for I hope to improve. It is the same in wits as in fruits: the hard and harsh mellow and sweeten, but those that are at first flabby, and soft, and moist, do not ripen but rot. I thought it best to have something in my genius for time and age to mitigate.” A sound principle, though not quite a universal one, as one may see in studying a certain life-work which ranges from “Claribel” to “Crossing the Bar.”
He is in his more meticulous moods when (xiii. 18) he accuses Plato of misquotation and Euripides of plagiarism; but a couple of chapters later a set discourse on euphony, starting from a saying of Valerius Probus, seems to promise well. Some one had asked Probus whether it was better to use the terminations em or im, es or is, for the accusative, where both occur. Aurem tuam interroga, said Probus, which is no doubt the conclusion of the whole matter. But his questioner, either foolish or dogged, asked how he was to do this, and Probus replied, “As Virgil did when he wrote Urbisne invisere Cæsar but Urbes habitant magnas.” Nor are we sorry to hear that when the questioner still bored on, saying that he could not understand why one should be better in one place and another in another, Probus retorted, “You need not trouble yourself; it will do you no harm whatever you use.” Prope inclementer, says Gellius (“Served him right,” most of us will say). But he goes on to accumulate some other instances of this application of the rule of euphony, and perhaps here draws as near to true criticism as he ever does. Nor is he wrong, though he may be fanciful, in deciding in regard to certain almost literal Virgilian imitations of Homer, that the Greek is simplicior et sincerior, Virgil νεωτερικώτερος et quodam quasi ferrumine immisso fucatior.[[425]]
He may strain the word again too much, when he bestows a page on the difference of multis hominibus and multis mortalibus (xii. 28), but he recovers esteem when in xiv. 6 we find him rejecting, not without contumely, contributions to his Noctes on the questions “Who was the first grammarian?” and “Why Telemachus did not nudge his bedfellow Pisistratus but kicked him?” &c., &c. Properans reddidi, says he, with the shudder one can fancy, though, to tell the truth, he does himself “something grow to” this kind of disease.
We may close this anthology of the Gellian criticisms with some account of one of the most elaborate—a discourse of Favorinus on Pindar and Virgil.[[426]] After quoting the Roman poet’s traditional saying about himself—that he brought forth his verses as a bear does her cubs, licking them slowly and busily into shape—he points out that the facts exactly bear out the description, and that certain verses, not having undergone the process of licking, are very inferior to the others. Among these unlicked cubs, it seems, Favorinus would place the Etna passage. Even Pindar himself, whom Virgil followed, is, the critic thinks, ipso insolentior tumidiorque in the place; but Virgil’s verse is such that Favorinus calls it “begun, not made.” And, the two passages having been cited in full, he indulges in the following drastic verbal censure: “At the very beginning, Pindar, paying more attention to the truth, said what was the fact, and a matter of ocular demonstration, that Etna smoked by day and flamed by night. But Virgil, laboriously seeking noisy-sounding words, confuses the two. The Greek says plainly that fountains of fire are belched forth, and rivers of smoke flow, and yellow, curling volumes of flame are borne down to the shores of the sea like fiery snakes; but this fellow of ours, choosing to interpret ῥόον καπνοῦ αἴθωνα by atram nubem turbine piceo et favilla fumantem, makes a crass and clumsy mixture, and translates the κρουνοὺς of flames, both harshly and inexactly, into ‘globes.’ Again, when he talks of ‘licking the stars,’ he makes an idle and empty exaggeration. Nay, the phrase, ‘emitting a black cloud of smoke full of pitchy whirlwinds and glowing ashes,’ is bad style and almost nonsense.[[427]] For glowing things, quoth he, neither smoke nor are black; unless by an improper vulgarism he applies candente, not to glowing but to merely ‘hot’ ash. But when he talks of ‘rocks and cliffs being belched and flung up,’ adding immediately that they are ‘melted, and groan, and are flung in handfuls into the air,’ neither did Pindar write this, nor would anybody else think of saying it, and the thing is the most monstrous of all monstrosities.”
The classical hatred of bombast and the classical propensity to “stick at the word” in criticism are both very well illustrated here; but we should hardly guess, from the sample, that there existed in classical times much power of grasping the literary and poetical merit of a passage as a whole. Virgil, if he had cared to defend himself, would, no doubt, have called attention to the Pindaric words, τέρας and θαῦμα, as justifying even “monstrosity” in his own expanded description, and have urged that this description was at least partly intended to indicate the terror and confusion of mind caused by so portentous a phenomenon.
But this absence of the synoptic grasp of æsthetic means, as applied to produce literary effect, is precisely what we notice most in the ancient criticism which has come down to us. And it may be added that it is also precisely what we should expect to follow from the limitations of the ancient Rhetoric. Grammar provided rules for the arrangement of words, and lexicography provided lists of them, with their authority and their use carefully ticketed; so here criticism was at home. Rhetoric provided lists of Figures with which a man could compare the passage before him. But there was no training in the process of simply “submitting to” this passage, interrogating oneself whether it exercised a charm or not, and then interrogating oneself further whether that charm was genuine, and what was its cause. After all, Gellius has, as we have seen, sometimes come near to the discovery of the true method, and that he loved literature there can be no doubt.[[428]]
Nor, much later, shall we find things different with that favourite of the Middle Ages and of Dr Johnson’s youth, |Macrobius: The Saturnalia.| Macrobius,[[429]] who, about the beginning of the fifth century, undertook a pendant to the work of Gellius. It is not surprising that the author, qui ot nom Macrobes,[[430]] should have been a favourite (for his commentary on the Somnium Scipionis principally, no doubt) with the period between Darkness and Renaissance. He has precisely the “fine confused feeding” in the way of matter and manner that these ages loved; and they would not be likely to quarrel with him for his lack of the criticism which, as we shall see, they themselves hardly, in more than a single instance, relished or understood. But he certainly illustrates, even in a greater degree than Gellius, the small propulsion of the Romans and their vassals towards the proper subjects of this book. Once more we find that etymology, mythology, grammar, the farrago of the antiquary as distinguished from that of the literary enthusiast, of the philologist as opposed to the critic, receive ample attention. And, once more, what we are specially in quest of remains practically, if not entirely, unhandled.
There are few more striking loci in connection with this subject than the end of the first book of the Saturnalia. The guests have been talking mythology and etymology for some stricken hours, till at last a break occurs. Vettius Prætextatus, the host, has just ended a long mythological dissertation, to the admiration of everybody, when Euangelus (the irreverent humourist of the party) breaks in, with some amusement at the practice of citing Virgil as an authority. He supposes that the notion of making Latin poets into philosophers is an imitation of the Greeks, and hints that the process is dangerous, since even Tully himself, who was as formal a professor of philosophising as of oratory, so often as he talks of the nature of the gods, or of fate, or of divination, injures the glory which he has got together through his eloquence, by his desultory handling of things. Symmachus, the scholar-statesman, rebukes this blasphemer gravely, observing that, as for Cicero, he is conviciis impenetrabilis, and may be left aside for the moment, but that he fears Euangelus has learnt his Virgil only as boys do, and thinks him only good for boys, with nothing higher in him. Euangelus is by no means abashed, and takes the offensive. It was all very well, he says, for us as boys to take Virgil at our master’s valuation, but did not he himself pronounce himself far from faultless, inasmuch as he wished them to burn the Æneid? No doubt he was afraid, not merely of ethical blame for such scenes as the request of Venus to her lawful husband in favour of her illegitimate son, but of critical blame for his now Greek, now barbarous, diction, and for the awkward ordonnance of his work. To this, cum omnes exhorruissent, Symmachus, still calm and sententious, makes answer by putting Virgil beside Cicero, and saying of his glory, that as it can grow by no one’s praise, so it is diminished by no one’s abuse. Any grammarian, he continues, can refute these calumnies; and it would be a shame to ask Servius (the famous Virgilian scholiast, who is present) to take the trouble. But he should like to know whether, as Euangelus is dissatisfied with Virgil’s Poetic, he likes his Rhetoric better. “Oh!” says Euangelus, “you have made him a philosopher, and now you are going to make him an orator, are you?”
A conversation of this kind gives us no bad reason to expect something like literary criticism proper, something such as Coleridge has given us in the Biographia Literaria in reference to Wordsworth. But Symmachus for the time contents himself with undertaking to defend the Mantuan’s rhetoric, while the others overwhelm the impenitent Euangelus with a string of affirmations as to the poet’s proficiency in politics, law, augury, astrological and other philosophy, fidelity to the traditions of the Latin language, &c. But the justifications of these praises are deferred by the announcement of dinner, and for a time the conversation turns to lighter subjects—the famous string of stories for which Macrobius is most commonly quoted, including scandal about Princess Julia. Only in the third book, and then, it would seem, after a lacuna, is the detailed criticism of Virgil resumed.
There is no occasion to find fault with the quantity of it, for it fills, with a digression or two of the lighter kind, such as that on the dessert when it appears, four whole books, and some two hundred and forty pages in Eyssenhardt’s text. But the quality is, at any rate from our point of view, not quite so satisfactory. Much simply consists in citation of passages illustrating different “Figures.” A very large part, probably the largest, is mere and sheer quotation from Virgil himself, from Homer, and from other poets, Latin and Greek, with whom he is compared. And the comparison is carried on almost, if not quite entirely, on that most unsatisfying parallel-passage system which, in its abuse, has ever since been the delight of the pedantic criticaster—and the abomination of the true critic.
Of course the parallel passage, rightly handled, is invaluable—is practically indispensable to true literary criticism. The “Truth” passages of the Areopagitica and Halifax’s Character of a Trimmer, the “Death” passages of Raleigh, Marston, and Lee, the different harmonies which the motive “Ask me no more” has suggested to Carew and Tennyson, the accounts of the passing of Arthur or the parting of Lancelot and Guinevere in Malory, and in his probable verse original, are the constant, the inexhaustible, texts and exercises of the critical faculty. But I do not think it unfair to Macrobius to say that hardly in a single occasion does he make any such use of his parallels. And in literary criticism, properly so called, such parallels as
οὐδέ τις ἄλλη
φαίνετο γαιάων ἀλλ’ οὐρανὸς ἠδε θάλασσα,
and
“Nec jam amplius ulla
apparet tellus, cælum undique et undique pontus,”
are all but valueless. They merely show what might be demonstrated once for all in a page—what does not need demonstrating to any intelligent person who has read fifty lines of the two poets—that Virgil was an excellent translator, and was, rather more frequently than becomes a great poet, content simply to translate.
The rest of the matter lies, for the most part if not wholly, as much as this or more in the uttermost precincts of literary criticism proper. The illustrations of Virgil’s attention to that religious ritual and liturgical language which was so important at Rome are very curious, very interesting, very valuable but they scarcely touch the fringe of literature: a Roman Blackmore could be as prolific of them as the Roman Dryden.
The contents of Book IV. may, perhaps, be urged against me; and I shall confess that they come nearer to a certain conception of literary criticism. But I should reply that this conception itself is an argument on the side I am taking. One of the gaps, common at the opening of the books of the Saturnalia, plunges us into the midst of a demonstration of Virgil’s pathos, that word being sometimes used in the Greek plural pathe, and referring to the Rhetorical “passions” appealed to. We find, however, almost directly, that the citations are only applied to illustrate and enforce Virgil’s technical command of rhetoric, as Symmachus had foreshadowed. The parts are accordingly dealt out in the orthodox way between accuser and defendant, and the passages quoted are distributed once more under figures—Irony, Hyperbole, and the rest. This, of course, is literary criticism after a fashion, though a fashion which Quintilian had already treated with some disdain (abandoning it almost entirely in the best parts of his own critical work), and which Longinus, though he too was not quite bold enough to discard it entirely, avoids, either cunningly or instinctively, in all his best passages. Macrobius and his distinguished company seem to wish for nothing better, and after they have complacently ticked off the sorts and sources of the pathos—time, place, circumstance, age, mood, manner, and so forth—they decide triumphantly, at the beginning of the Fifth Book, that Virgil must be held no less of an orator than of a poet. Indeed, Eusebius, who has conducted the rhetorical inquiry, draws a neat parallel between Virgil and Cicero himself. The eloquence, he says, of the Mantuan is multiplex and multiform, and comprehends every kind of speech. In your Cicero [Eusebius of course is a Greek] there is one tenor of eloquence, the abundant, and torrential, and copious. For the nature of orators is not uniform, but one flows and overflows, another affects a brief and concise manner. The thin and dry and sober speaker loves, as it were, a parsimony of words, his rival revels in full and florid and amply illustrated rhetoric. Virgil is the only man who, while others are so dissimilar, blends his own eloquence of every kind. And he subsequently distributes these kinds more specially to Cicero, Sallust, Fronto, and the younger Pliny. The passage which follows, for three or four pages, till the scoffer Euangelus brings on the Homeric parallels by asking whether they think a Venetian farmer’s boy is likely to have known Greek literature, is one of the most literary in the book. But it is (as a devil’s advocate must point out) curious and a little unfortunate that once more we find the subject drawn, as it were, irresistibly to the oratorical side. In no other branch of literature, it seems, could a Roman or a late Greek (which Macrobius probably was) taste the minutiæ of difference, the savours and qualities which concern criticism proper. Elsewhere he “stuck in letters,” or in Figures, or in the merest schematic construction of prosody, or in the matter, as opposed to the form and spirit, of the literature.
Another piece of criticism, proper if not consummate, will be found in the seventeenth chapter of the Fifth Book, in the shape of a fresh comparison, to be itself compared with that cited above from Gellius, between Pindar’s Ætna, in the First Pythian and Virgil’s in the third Æneid. It is an even weaker piece. For the critic, a Greek, cavils at Virgil quite in the Rymer-and-Dennis style, not merely because he speaks of an atram nubem as fumantem candente favilla, but (exactly as if he were an eighteenth-century French critic speaking of Shakespeare) because the poet actually indulges in such shocking words as eructans.
The Sixth Book deals with Virgil’s borrowing of diction and phrase from the older Latin poets, and has, of course, great linguistic, and a certain portion of literary, interest. But it is again remarkable how little this latter is improved or worked out. As in the Homeric case, the literary interest of the fact that Virgil was content simply to “lift” Ennian phrases, like stellis fulgentibus or tollitur in cælum clamor, is limited to the demonstration that Virgil “stole his brooms ready made,” as the Berkshire broom-squire did. And no attempt is made (as might easily have been done, and in fairness to Virgil should have been done) to show the taste with which the poet selected beautiful words and happy phrases. Servius, later in the book, has some not uninteresting verbal criticism, but attempts nothing more. In fact, in all this bulk of work there is not as much literary criticism in the proper sense as Longinus has often given us in a paragraph, and hardly an attempt at even that general characterisation which we find sometimes in Gellius and still more in Quintilian. The place and power of Virgil remain untouched, or are referred to only in the vaguest conventionalisms.
Servius on Virgil.
One of the contributors, as has been said, to the Macrobian symposium is no less a person than Maurus (or Marius) Servius Honoratus, the greatest commentator on the greatest Latin poet in general repute, and obviously, from the figure he makes in the Saturnalia, a man held in very high esteem for erudition and ability. We have his commentary,[[431]] together with those of other ancient commentators of less repute. They are extremely voluminous;[[432]] they are, and always have been, justly respected for their value in the interpretation of the poet. Servius had before him, and undoubtedly used, a very large bulk of precedent annotation, and represents, almost fully, the “Variorum” editor of modern times. We might therefore expect to find in him, if not something like the proceedings and results of Mr Furness in his Shakespeare, at any rate something like those of the Johnson-Malone time. Let us see what we actually do find. He gives us, at the very first, a definition of the duties of a critical editor, in which, on the face of it, there is very little to blame. The life of the poet; the titles of his work; the quality of the poem; the intention of the writer; the number of the books, the order of them, the explanation of them. Looking at this off-hand, one may wonder a little at the elevation to co-ordinate honours of the number and order of the books, and of course perceive that qualitas carminis, the critical point, is susceptible of rather widely differing interpretations as a promise. In the vague modern sense of “quality”—a sense, too, not absolutely unknown in ancient times—it covers by itself almost all that the most accomplished and wide-ranging criticism—the criticism of Coleridge or of Arnold, of Hazlitt or of Sainte-Beuve—can extend unto. In the narrow technical sense of the Greek ποιότης, it comes to very little more than the mere technical classification of the piece as epic or what not, and offers us food as little sappy with critical juice as the most arid distinctions of Rhetoric.
But we have barely turned a page when the sense in which Servius understands the comparative extent of the duties he has so lucidly mapped out breaks upon us. The “life,” brief and business-like, leaves no special room for complaint except to anecdote-mongers. But all the rest, except the “explanation,” is huddled up in less than a page, and in forms as succinct as the answers to a catechism. Title? “Æneis,” derived from Æneas, cf. Juvenal’s “Theseis.” Quality? Quite clear: the metre is heroic, the action “mixed” (i.e., the poet sometimes speaks himself, sometimes introduces others speaking). It is also Heroic, because it contains a mixture of divine and human things, of truth and fiction. For Æneas really did come to Italy, but clearly the poet made it up[[433]] when he represented Venus speaking to Jupiter, or the mission of Mercury. The style is grandiloquent—that is to say, the phrase is lofty and the sentiments noble. Besides, are there not three kinds of speaking, the low, the middle, the grand? This is the grand style. Virgil intended first to imitate Homer, then to magnify the ancestry of Augustus (proofs of this latter given). Here there is no dispute about the number of the author’s books, though in other cases (such as that of Plautus) there is. And there is not much doubt about the order, though a mere crotcheteer might put them in the order 2, [3], [1], in his ignorance that the art of the poet consists in beginning at the middle and anticipating the future (see Horace). This shows that Virgil was a skilful bard. That is all. Sola superest explanatio quæ in sequenti expositione probabitur.
Sola superest explanatio! All, except the mere verbal part, is swept aside, as settled and done for, in these thirty or forty lines. Of the quality, in the fuller and higher sense, of the Virgilian art nothing; nothing of its comparative value even with that of Homer himself, still less of other Greeks, or with that of Ennius, of Lucretius, of Statius, of the scores of Roman epic or “heroic” poets whom and whose books Servius had before him, while their names only are before us. Nothing of his way of managing his metre, his diction, his prosopopœia, his scenery, his dialogue. And in the settlement of the questions that are attacked, the most schoolboy-like abstinence from anything but reference to stock authorities, stock classifications. Nothing, for instance, one would think, would be easier and more attractive, for a man who thinks that Virgil’s is the grand style, than to prove it to be so, nothing more curious and fascinating than to reply to the objections of those who think it is not, if there be such heretics (and, as we know from the Euangelus of the Saturnalia, there were such, even in those days). But no glimpse or glimmer of any such thing enters the mind of our scholiast. There are, everybody allows, three styles: Low, Middle, and Grand. Nobody calls Virgil low; you surely would not call him middle; therefore he must be grand. Q.E.D.; and demonstrated it is most mathematically. Then what kind of poem is it? You run your finger down the official list of kinds and find “Heroic; written in hexameters and dealing with mixed kinds.” Virgil is in hexameters, but is he mixed? Let us run the careful finger down yet another table, “Mixed: that which is partly divine and partly human, partly false, partly true.” Let us see whether this will apply to Virgil. It does. Then Virgil is Heroic. Next, about order and so forth. Ought not Books II. and III., which tell the voyage of Æneas up to the events recorded in the opening of Book I., to come before it? This gives a moment’s pause, but let us look at our Horace—Ut jam nunc dicat, and so forth. Once more, we need not trouble ourselves: the order is all right.
To some readers this account may savour of flippancy; and to them it is impossible to offer any excuse. To others, who may not be likely to take the trouble to read Servius for themselves, it will be enough to say that practically nothing is put in his mouth which he does not say, that his method is hardly caricatured even in form. It is one of the best illustrations we have, or could reasonably expect to have, of the whole system of ancient criticism, save in its very greatest examples, and to some extent even in these. You construct, or accept from tradition as already constructed, a vast classification of terms and kinds, hierarchically arranged; and when a subject presents itself you simply refer it to the classification. Practically no intellectual labour is required, and still less—a mere minus quantity indeed—of cultivation of the æsthetic sentiment. The necessary cards, with the necessary descriptions on them, are in cell B or A, compartment x or y, case 3 or 5, room I. or VI. You take them out and you tie them on, and there’s an end of the matter. Nay, some fifteen hundred years after Servius, there are other authorities who conduct criticism—and are indignant when it is not conducted—in the very self-same way.
But, it may be said, superest explanatio; the explanation does remain, and there may be much in that. In point of bulk there is very much; in point of value there is a great deal; but in point of strict criticism there is simply nothing, though the same reference to card, and cell, and compartment, and case abounds, as thus:—
Arma virumque. Arma means “war”: it is the trope called Metonymy. So toga, for “peace,” see Cic. As for Arma virumque, it is another figure—that by which we change the order: some call it Hyperbaton. The whole phrase is a professive poetic beginning; Musa, &c., an invocative, and urbs antiqua a narrative. As for virum, he does not mention the name, but indicates the person circumstantially. And now, as Thackeray says somewhere, “we know all about it, and can proceed” to write the exordium of an Æneid.
Far, very far, be it from me to speak with any ignorant or vulgar contempt of Servius. His erudition is very great; his verbal expositions are almost always very sound and grammatical; but for him we should lack a whole world of traditional information, without which the meaning of Virgil would either be entirely dark to us, or attainable only by the rashest of guesswork. And it must be admitted that according to the “figure” system of criticising he is, as the Roman orators say, accuratissimus. When Virgil, as he so often does, borrows a phrase from Ennius with a slight alteration, Servius points out that it is an acyrologia, and no doubt feels much comforted by the fact. Something else is an amblysia (a “blunting,” lessening, litotes). There are derivations, anticipating the modern philologist, of the most scientific kind, as that of consilia for considia, because people’s minds become quieter when they sit down. There is, indeed, a very great deal of miscellaneous information of all kinds.
But of criticism nothing, or less than nothing. Occasionally, at the beginning of the books, it does seem to occur to the excellent commentator that something more may be expected of him. Especially, and indeed most naturally, is this the case with the Fourth. He tells us, quite properly, that Apollonius had written an Argonautica, and that the whole book is borrowed from it.[[434]] It is; a fact of which those persons who (having better knowledge than Dante had) still take Virgil for a supreme poet might perhaps take more notice than they have usually taken. But to Servius, and persons of Servius’ way of thinking, there would not have been much in this. He goes on. It is almost entirely in affection, though it has pathos in the end, where the departure of Æneas begets sorrow. It consists entirely in counsels and subtleties. The style is very nearly comic—which is not surprising, considering that it treats of love. But there is a proper junction with the former book, which is a proof of art, as we have often said. An abrupt transition is a bad transition, though some people foolishly say that this junction is not well managed, &c., &c.
Grant that Virgil shows his want of originality by his relying on Apollonius. Grant that in the delineation of Dido’s tragic “All for Love and the World well Lost” for such a tame scoundrel as Æneas, he has none of the lightning strokes of Lucretius or Catullus. Yet most of us think that the Fourth book is a great thing, some that it is a much greater thing than the Æneid of which it forms part. Servius might think, was entitled to think, and has the consent of many respectable moderns in thinking, differently. But it does not appear that he thought about it at all. He found in his books a distinction between “affection” and “pathos,” and applied it. He had learnt from the same books that Love was an inferior subject, Comedy an inferior style, and the former a proper theme of the latter. So the Fourth book, with its steady rise towards the hopeless, the hapless, the inevitable end, is pæne comicus. Certainly the criticism is, from our point of view.
But the very value of Servius, as of so many other writers, is precisely this, that he is not writing from our point of view, that he is writing from a point of view entirely different. When he annotates Est in secessu “Topothesia est—i.e., fictus secundum poeticam licentiam locus.... Nam topographia est rei veræ descriptio,” it may be difficult to repress a smile. So also when he points out, in respect to one of Anna’s speeches to Dido, not that it is touching, or eloquent, or indicative of a wonderful knowledge of the human heart, and an equally wonderful grasp of pathetic expression, but that it is regular Rhetoric—suasione omni parte plena; nam purgat objecta, et ostendit utilitatem, et a timore persuadet. But, after all, he is only playing his own game, not ours. It is impossible, or at any rate very difficult, to be sure whether it is in innocent unconsciousness or dry humour that he quotes, without comment, the objection to the phrase nepos Veneris that it is unbecoming to represent Venus as a grandmother. Again, in one of his short prefaces to the Seventh book—at the point when, to modern readers, the interest of the Æneid is all but over, and the romantic wanderings of Æneas, the passion of the Fourth book, the majesty and magnificence of the Sixth, are exchanged for the kite-and-crow battles of Trojans and Rutulians, the doll-like figure of Lavinia, and the unjust fate of the hero Turnus at the hands of a divinely helped invader—he tells us that the earlier books have been like the Odyssey (as indeed they are), not because of the romantic interest, which of course he did not see, but as being graviores varietate personarum et allocutionum, while the last books are like the Iliad, as being negotiis validiores!
So, again, the relatively long preface to the Bucolics tells us that the word comes from the Greek for oxen, which are the principal rustical animals; that these poems were invented in the time of Xerxes, when the Laconians (one does not quite see why, as Xerxes never landed in the Peloponnese) were kept to their walls or the mountains; that the qualitas is a humilis character, thus, with the medius of the Georgics, vindicating all the three styles for Virgil. For we must not require lofty speaking from humble rustics. He then gives us a curious specimen of the critical punctiliousness in matters of mint, anise, and cumin which accompanied blindness to weightier things. In bucolic verse there ought, it seems, to be a pause at the fourth foot; and if that foot is a dactyl so much the better; and it is better also that the first foot should be a dactyl and included in the word, and so forth.
For a final specimen he tells us, in the corresponding introduction to the Georgics themselves, that as Virgil had followed Homer, and had not come near him in the Æneid, as he had followed Theocritus and run a good second in the Eclogues, so he followed Hesiod, and “simply left him” (penitus reliquit) in the Georgics. It required enormous skill to do what he has done. (So far so good, but before very long we come again to the parting of the ways.) The book is didactic, and therefore it should be written to somebody, for teaching presupposes two personages—the teacher and the taught. Again, one does not know whether to smile or not, to take the matter gravely and urge that any lector benevolus will occupy quite sufficiently the personam discipuli, or to pass the matter, olli subridens, and reflecting that our legs also are not unexposed to the arrows.
It can scarcely be necessary to take special examples from the minor commentators on Virgil or on other Latin poets: for their characteristics are, so far as I know, exactly uniform with |Other commentators.| those of Servius and with those of the Greek scholiasts. In explanation of words and things diligent to admiration, and extremely serviceable, if not always (according to modern standards, which are very likely temporary) scientific. In matters of prosody excellently minute and regular, though occasionally a little arbitrary. Not very seldom careful, to an almost touching extent, of referring phrases to the accepted categories of Figure, and applying the stock Rhetorical divisions and classifications. But not merely in the higher, but even in the middle regions of criticism proper, so meagre that they may almost be called entirely to seek. Quite rudimentary in Comparison; in indicating character, content to accept stock divisions, and not even attempting individual signalement. Abstaining with such uniformity that one can easily perceive the entire absence of any demand for it, from, any attempt to deal with the literary beauty of phrase or of passage, to bring out its effect on the reader, to estimate it as a work of art, like a picture or a statue. And now and then, as we have seen, not merely not applying the right, but applying totally wrong, tests to literature and especially to poetry, demanding from this latter compliance with the arbitrary requirements of traditional Rhetoric, and praising it for such compliance. Are they to be blamed for all this? Certainly not; no one is to be blamed for not doing what he never intended to do and what nobody wanted him to do, for doing what was his commission and his business. But they are to be cited, and examined, and recorded as witnesses to prove that, for the most part at any rate, criticism, in the best and highest sense, was what no critic thought of giving, and no reader thought of demanding, under the Latin dispensation.
It may not be uninteresting to accompany (as we did in the case of Greek) this view of the later criticism, more or less formal, with some account of the poets where they touch the subject. These touches are not frequent or important, but we find some in Ausonius for the end of the fourth century, and in the curious collection bearing (with what imparity of suggested contrast!) the title of the Latin Anthology, and supposed to have been put together at Carthage, at the end of the fifth, or a little later.
The unequal and decadent, but sometimes fascinating, author[[435]] of the Mosella and the Cupido cruci affixus, of the two charming epigrams to wife and mistress—
“Uxor vivamus,”
and
“Deformem quidam te dicunt, Crispa”—
has, in his epigrams themselves, followed Martial in directions where he is a less blameless guide than in his literary criticism. |Ausonius.| But he has not followed him here; and though much of the collection is simply a translation of the Greek Anthology, I do not remember any literary following thereof. But the curious verse celebration of what we may call the University of Bordeaux, with its “commemoration,” in separate pieces of varying length and metre, of a couple of dozen of Professors; the Fourth Idyll, to his namesake and grandson on his studies; and the Epistles, especially those to Paullus the Rhetor and to Tetradius, all have more or less to do with the subject.
We find, and are not surprised to find, that of the Professors at Bordeaux the majority are Professors of Rhetoric. Compliment has naturally rather the better of criticism in the addresses to them, but certain things emerge. Tib. Victor Minervius is “another Quintilian,” especially for fluency and for the Demosthenicum (I suppose δεινότης); but it is a little suspicious that the fullest praise is given to his memory. Latinus Alcimus Alethius seems to have been himself a careful critic, and appears to have written specially on Sallust and on the Emperor Julian—perhaps the books are somewhere? Attius Patera was “a descendant of the Druids,” and we should have been glad to know whether he displayed that “Celtic spirit” in literature of which we have heard more than enough in these days. But Ausonius is vague as the Celtic vague itself. Attius Tiro Delphinius was a poet as well as an orator. Others—the dead Luciolus, Alethius Minervius the Younger, the Grammarian Lentulus, “cognomine Lascivus” (quite innocent, Ausonius tells us), his brother Jucundus, are more generally commended. Pieces, two grouped and some single, to the Greek and the Latin grammarians of Bordeaux—show that the languages, as well as the literatures, received plentiful attention. The compliment to Exuperius of Toulouse goes closer, and is decidedly double-edged.[[436]] Erudition is specially attributed to Staphylius, who knew not only Livy and Herodotus, but “all that is stored in the thousand volumes of Varro” (sexcentis, of course). It is observable that the grammarians[[437]] appear to have chiefly lectured on poetry, the Rhetors on prose, and the whole, with touches numerous, if not very definite, suggests to us a study liberal enough, but perhaps not very wide, rather undiscriminating. The Idyll to his nephew enters naturally into a few more particulars. A generous but general incitement to the study of the tongues is followed by detail. The, as it seems to us, very odd conjunction of Homer and Menander is an additional testimony to the popularity of the great New Comic. It can hardly be accidental, for it is separated by some lines from any other mention. In fact, Ausonius is not prodigal of names, only those of Horace, Virgil, and Terence being mentioned for Latin poetry, and the work, though not the name, of Sallust, with some other histories of the last Republican period. Lastly, the Epistles, besides supplying fresh instances of Ausonius’ rococo fancy for the cento—even the Macaronic cento—supply a perhaps humorous prose criticism in form of his own work, which is worth subjoining.[[438]]
The Anthologia Latina,[[439]] which a certain noble youth of the name of Octavian composed at the bidding of some Vandal |The Anthologia Latina.| chieftain, perhaps as late as 532, at the extreme verge of the twilight of the West, is not entirely deserving of the transferred sense attached to its patron’s nationality. It has preserved one or two pretty things for us, and more curious ones. And, in our particular relation, it shows that literary society and occupation had by no means gone wholly out of fashion. Both with individuals and coteries Virgil was a perversely favourite subject; and the deplorable persons who called themselves the Twelve Wise Men wrote distichs, and pentastichs, and polystichs, à dormir debout, on the contents of the books of the Æneid and other subjects. The epigrams attributed to Seneca are probably, whether they belong to any of the known Senecas or not, of an older and better time; and the pair (Nos. 27 and 28) on the theme of Ære perennius, though the sentiment is of course a commonplace, have a grip and ring of style which, at any rate after the flaccid barbarisms of the sixth century, shows well. But for the literary taste of this time itself, the works of a certain Luxorius (a contemporary it would seem, and, from the word spectabilis, probably of official rank) are most valuable. They are of some bulk, consisting of not much less than a hundred pieces, filling some forty pages in Baehrens’s edition. The body of the work, according to the usual prava docilitas of the epigrammatist, consists of things licentious or trivial enough; but Luxorius had read his Martial in this respect more closely than Ausonius, that he begins with three or four pieces of a critical or semi-critical kind. He is thoroughly convinced of the danger of writing after the ancients; but, as he says with some force to the Reader, “If you think them of better quality, why don’t you read them and not me?” He consoles his book, should it meet with contempt at Rome and Carthage, with the observation that things must be content with their proper places; and in a fourth piece pleads that if his epigrams are short, why, the reading will be the sooner finished. The tone, with a good deal less disguised conceit, is very much that of a literary abbé or President of the eighteenth century—a kind of person with whose general tastes, literary and other, Luxorius would probably have sympathised well enough.
We may now complete our survey of the actual documents by dealing with such remnants as we have of the technical |The Latin Rhetoricians.| treatises on Rhetoric in Latin. These are neither numerous nor bulky, nor, with one exception at the very end of the classical, and gate of the mediæval, period (to which latter some of them even belong), of much interest or importance. The fact may seem a little surprising, in face of the immense interest in the practice of the subject, which not merely Seneca, and Quintilian, and Pliny, but all others, show. But the surprise will vanish at a little consideration. Before the Romans attempted it, the technical part of Rhetoric had been reduced, as we saw, to a settled scheme of extreme intricacy by the Greeks, and these claimed to be as much the masters of the subject as Jews were of Medicine in the Middle Ages. Probably every Roman, though he might attend his own countrymen’s declamations, learnt the art of Rhetoric from a Greek professor at one time or another, and was familiar with the Greek technæ. It was only after the separation of the Empires, and not even immediately then, that Greek ceased to be the language of education. Moreover, the Romans, though of orderly and business-like habits of thought, had neither the liking nor the language suited for the intenser and minuter technicalities of the Art.
It may be almost sufficient justification of the last paragraph to mention that the whole body of Latin Rhetoricians, as given in the standard edition of Capperonnier,[[440]] fills but a volume of some 400 not very large quarto pages; and that this is made up by the insertion not merely of the Rhetorical part of Martianus Capella, but of such purely mediæval or “Dark Age” work as that of Bede, Isidore, and possibly Alcuin. These latter will find better place in the next Book. Martianus shall be noticed by himself presently; we may meanwhile run over the rest.
The first in order, and perhaps the oldest, is the Treatise on the Figures of P. Rutilius Lupus, a rhetorician often quoted |Rutilius Lupus, &c.| by Quintilian. It is in the dictionary form, but not alphabetically arranged. The definitions are technical, meagre, and chiefly limited to that jejune splitting of kinds which has been noticed under the head of Greek. The illustrative quotations, which are numerous and not useless, are wholly from Greek authors, many of them indicating by their time that the Gorgias, whose four books Quintilian tells us that Rutilius abstracted into one, was not the sophist of Leontini, but a later Athenian rhetorician. Except for the close connection which—until quite recently if not still—has existed between the Figures and criticism, this has little interest for us.
The next treatise, that of Aquila Romanus, is in the same way only a Latin accommodation of the work of Alexander (v. supra, p. [102]). It is of the same class, a non-alphabetical dictionary in miniature, and devoted to the same subject. Of the same class again, exactly, is the tractate of Julius Rufinianus, who, since he keeps, as Rutilius and Aquila had not done, the Greek words schema for figura, and lexis for elocutio, was probably a closer adapter, paraphrast, or translator of his original even than they. He has added a short parallel treatment of the other division of schemata, the intellectual or dianoetic.
Curius or Chirius Fortunatianus (a writer at any rate senior to Cassiodorus, who epitomised him) was more ambitious, |Curius Fortunatianus: his Catechism.| and instead of confining himself to the Figures, composed a regular art of the Rhetoric of the Schools in three books. It supplies an interesting and early example of the catechetical form which was so popular during the middle ages, which continued to flourish till within the memory of the present generation, and the disuse of which has certainly been accompanied by a loss in exactness of actual knowledge, compensated, or not, by a gain in the philosophical character of such as is acquired.
“Q. What is Rhetoric? A. The science of speaking well. Q. What is an orator? A. A good man skilled in speaking. Q. What is the duty of an orator? A. To speak well in civil cases. Q. What is his end? A. To persuade so far as the condition of things and persons allows.”
And so forth—the writer proceeding by the simple method of throwing into catechism-form the same kind of dictionary matter which we have just noticed, sometimes with very odd effect, as in Quæ est anæschyntos?—a question which, if Mrs. Quickly had heard it and had understood Greek, would doubtless have made her adjust to the occasion her objection to “Jenny’s case.” The thing, though curious, drags Rhetoric farther out of its proper course than ever, and one perhaps at no time feels more inclined to join in the contempt of scholastic methods, mistaken as one knows it to be, than when reading such questions as—Assumpta qualitas facit statum? and the rest of this liturgy of abracadabra in catechetical form. In no rhetorical treatise, indeed, is the question of style so unceremoniously ignored. A long handling of the staseis is followed by shorter ones of other technical divisions, “Elocution” receiving the most perfunctory treatment possible (though with a certain practicality). How are you to acquire diction? By reading, speaking, hearing others speak, and inventing new words (which must not be done too often). Put your long words last; but begin a sentence if you can with a long syllable, and do not keep too many short ones, or too many monosyllables, together; avoid archaisms; and attend to such minute, but in at least some cases arbitrary, rules as the following[[441]]:—
“Let your construction be more frequently round than flat; let it not gape with too frequent collision of vowels, especially long ones; nor be rough with the conflict of two consonants; let not many monosyllables be joined together; let there be no great stretch of short syllables nor many long ones; let not the first syllable of a word be the same as the last of the word before, nor let the two together make any awkward compound; let not the oration be deformed by many thin[[442]] words or vast syllables; and let not many genitive plurals come together.”[[443]]
Cautions, it will be observed, sometimes judicious, sometimes capricious, but never reasoned.
The commentary of Marius Victorinus on Cicero’s Rhetoric is the longest of all these treatises. It contains a great deal of |Marius Victorinus on Cicero.| matter, and there is no discoverable reason why it should not have contained a great deal more. For the very first note on Cicero’s words, “I have thought to myself of this often and very much,” is as follows: “If there be only one of these, it does not indicate a sufficiently lengthy cogitation. For we may frequently think of a thing, but immediately desist from the thinking. We may also think long upon a thing, but do it only on a single day. He therefore has properly joined the two, and said: ‘Often and much have I thought to myself on this.’ And because a thing ought not to be published unless it be certain and the result of deliberation, he rightly says: ‘I thought of this to myself.’”
All this is exceedingly true; but it is also exceedingly trivial. And the second is like unto it. Bonine an mali plus attulerit hominibus et civitatibus sc. eloquentia: “The cause of his deliberation is not whether eloquence be good or bad, but whether it have more of good or of bad in it. The order of the words, however, is not unimportant, for he might have said, ‘of bad or of good.’ But Cicero stuck to the nature of eloquence, which, when it first began, did good to men, for it brought them together. But later, when it was depraved by the ingenuity of bad men, it hurt the republic very much. So he arranged the words in the proper order in saying Bonine, &c. The republic consists of two parts, private and public—that is to say, of men and states. We may notice this also in the Verrines, how Cicero always defends either men or cities.”
A man who is content to write like this need never stop while paper, pen, and ink hold out, or till the kindness of nature, or the impatience of men, puts an end to his life. Sometimes the comment is not quite so nugatory, especially when Victorinus illustrates the differences between Cicero and Hermagoras. But he seldom even approaches literary criticism.
The rest, save one, may be almost silence. The ambitiously entitled Institutiones Oratoriæ of Sulpicius Victor is incomplete. |Others.| What we have of it follows the usual order of “states” narration, &c., with some, but only a few, peculiarities. Most of the other articles are both meagre and late. Emporius deals with ethopœia, the Commonplace, and one or two other matters. There is a Latin version of the Progymnasmata of Hermogenes. The probably spurious Principia Rhetorices, attributed to St Augustine, are at least commended by his name, yet hardly by anything else; and the same may be said in lesser degree of the Compendium of Cassiodorus.[[444]] The verses of Rufinus, on the rhythms suitable to oratory, have more interest. And so we may come to Martianus.
Inferior as Latin criticism, on the Rhetorical side, is in comparison with Greek, it is not fanciful to say that it ends with a better note, though a quaint and fantastic one. The later stages in Greek, as we have seen, were mere arid technicalities or idle epideictic—ghosts of things no longer alive, and never perhaps alive with the best kind of life. What followed in the Byzantine age had at best the character of literary research. Such a book as that of Photius, invaluable as it is to us, has no life-promise in it, either as regards its own generation or for the future.
On the contrary, there is much of both, as we look back on it, in the eccentric treatise on the Marriage of Philology and |Martianus Capella.| Mercury, by Martianus Capella.[[445]] Of the author and date of the book we know, with accuracy, hardly anything at all. His full name appears to have been Martianus Minneius Felix Capella, and he is described as a Carthaginian. His date is much contested, as well as his religion, his occupations, and other things which no mortal need trouble himself about; while this date, which is of some importance, cannot be adjusted very exactly. There is, however, not very much dispute that it must have been somewhere in the fifth century. “Before 439” is all that his latest editor, Eyssenhardt, will say.
What is certain is that the treatise is written in a very late and not a little barbarous Latin style, and that it was popular in the Middle Ages, with that peculiar popularity which seems to have settled itself upon Boethius, Orosius, and other writers of the last age before chaos—the age to which those who kept up education in chaos itself would be most likely to look back, as connecting them with the greater past yet not too far off.
Further, while we find in Martianus a firm outline of the exact scheme of Humaner Letters which prevailed from 500 to 1500, we find in his frame and setting, slightly preposterous and more than slightly fantastic as it is, just that touch of romance—of youth, with its promise as well as its foolishness—which is wanting in Byzantine work, and which has Future in it. On both these characteristics of the whole book we must say something, before coming to its rhetorical part.
The title of the book (to observe Servian formality) has been already given. Its form is that of the Varronian satura, or mingle-mangle of prose and verse; and it is divided into nine books. The first two of these serve as an introduction, containing a wonderful rigmarole, in more wonderful jargon,[[446]] about things in general, divine and human, the old mythology and physics, with abstract philosophical personifications, Sophia, Phronesis, and so forth, coming in. At last it settles down to the real plan of the treatise, which is that the Seven Liberal Arts, as adopted (very mainly from this book) by the Middle Ages, being estated as bridesmaids (or something like it) to Philology, each Art has a book to herself, and, in the flowery fantastic fashion of the Introduction, gives a summary of her teaching to the assembled gods. This summary is of the most precise and business-like character, despite its “trimmings,” so that Grammar is not ashamed to inform the gods that “Ulcus makes ulceris, but pecus pecoris,” and Logic rattles off things like Primæ formæ primus modus est in quo conficitur ex duobus universalibus, and so forth, after a fashion which suggests that the marriage itself might have been celebrated by Dean Aldrich with great propriety. The beginnings and ends of the books are generally decorated with verse, and with fancy prosopopœiæ of different kinds: but the stuff of the text is exactly what it was intended to be—solid schoolbook matter.
The book devoted to Rhetoric is the fifth, being preceded by those of Grammar and Logic, in the usual and indeed natural order of the Trivium:—
“Gram. loquitur, Dia. vera docet, Rhet. verba colorat,”
though Martianus does not arrange the Quadrivium exactly according to the second line of the mnemonic—
“Mus. canit, Ar. numerat, Geo. ponderat, Ast. colit Astra,”
his order being Geometry, or rather Geography, Arithmetic, Astronomy, Music.
The book on Rhetoric opens literally with a flourish of trumpets,—
“Interea sonuere tubæ,”—
which, as some sixteen rather bombastic hexameters full of gradus-tags inform us, quite alarms the gods, major and minor. In the midst of it there steps forth “a stately woman of lofty stature, and confidence greater than common, but radiantly handsome, helmed and crowned, weaponed both for defence and with flashing arms wherewith she could smite her enemies with a thundering coruscation. Under her armpits, and thrown over her shoulder in Latian fashion, was a vest, exhibiting embroidery of all possible figures in varied hue, while her breast was baldricked with gems of the most exquisite colour. As she walked her arms clashed, so that you would have thought the broken levin to rattle—with explosive handclaps, like the collision of clouds, so that you might even believe her capable of wielding the thunderbolts of Jove. For she it is who, like a mighty queen of all things, can direct them whither she will and call them back whence she chooses, and unbend men to tears or incite them to rage, and sway the minds of civic crowds as of warring armies. She brought beneath her sway the senate, the rostra, the courts at Rome,” &c., &c., the innocent and transparent allegory of the earlier part changing into a half-historical, half-philosophical account of the functions of Rhetoric generally. She is followed by a great crowd of men, some Greek, some Roman, among whom (it is worth mentioning, as a proof of the taste of the age) Æschines, Isocrates, and Lysias are specially mentioned for the one tongue, and, with some uncertain names, Pliny and Fronto in the other. Cicero is later put, by Rhetoric herself, as beyond competition in either. She displays her declamatory skill in a formal exordium, and then plunges into the usual matter of Rhetorical treatises. The treatment is technical, but by no means ill-arranged, clear enough even in the bewildering labyrinths of the status, not excessive in the Figures, and altogether one of the best of the Latin Rhetorics. When she finishes, Mercury beckons to her to join the group of those who had played their part, and to salute the bride. So she walks with much confidence up to Philology, gives her “a sounding kiss—for she can do nothing silently even if she would—on the top of her head,”[[447]] and joins the society of her sisters.
Recurring to the speech of one of these sisters, Grammar, and combining it with this, we shall have no ill notion of the helps to literary criticism with which the next thousand years of the world’s history were provided in the west of Europe. They were rudimentary enough, and those who were furnished with them had in most cases no thought—indeed for long centuries hardly any opportunity—of using them for any critical purpose. But they lay ready for the hand of others, and at the Renaissance, as well as in one brilliant and some minor instances earlier, they were turned with only a little delay to their proper purpose.
Grammar, with the quaintness that suffuses the whole book, says, “My parts are four—litteræ, litteratura, litteratus, litterate. ‘Letters’ are what I teach; ‘Literature’ am I who teach them; ‘the man of letters’ is he whom I shall have taught; ‘literate’ the manner in which my pupil shall skilfully handle things.” But the expectation thus raised is a little falsified, for “letters” are taken at their own foot, though Pallas pulls up Grammar and maintains that she has omitted the “historic part,” which does not mean our historic in the very least, any more than litteratura means our Literature.
There is, however, both in these places and throughout the book, a great deal of “fine confused feeding,” both on matters really literary and on those more or less subsidiary to literature, from Phonetics upwards. The citations, though not extremely frequent or copious, show pretty wide reading, especially in Latin. In the book on Rhetoric we find very particular and minute attention paid to these considerations of euphony to which attention has already been drawn, Martianus (who, whether we allow him poetry or not, was evidently a very careful and deft versifier[[448]]) applying his practice in the other harmony with his usual quaint conceit here. Nowhere, perhaps, do we better perceive, though nowhere may we find it more difficult exactly to follow, the niceties of the ancient ear, than in the caution that while it is well to end a clause with a molossus (three longs), if the final word is a trisyllable you must be careful to put a trochee before it, and by no means a spondee or pyrrhic. Thus “Littus ejectis,” with which Tully finishes a clause, is all right, but “rupes ejectis” would be pessima clausula, and “apex ejectis” (where apex is described as a pyrrhic, according to its natural quantity in the oblique cases) almost worse.
Further than this, however, Low Latin was not encouraged by its tutor Martianus to advance. Nor is it surprising that with such teaching we find no such advance in the first lisping of the modern literatures themselves, till the strangely articulate speech of their greatest critic, as he was their greatest creator—Dante the Wingbearer.
[421]. Ed. Hertz, 2 vols., Leipsic, 1886.
[422]. Cf. the amusing chapter (vi. 17) in which he tells with innocent pride how he overwhelmed quempiam græculum with apt citations on the word obnoxius. Gellius is not the only critic who has allowed parallel passages to choke his critical faculties, or has endeavoured to make up by the former for the absence of the latter.
[423]. This Antonius Julianus, from another notice (xx. 9), seems to have been a person of slightly florid but by no means bad taste. For Gellius tells us that he used to say his ears were delighted and caressed by the coined words in the first mimiambic of C. Matius,[[a]] such as Columbulatim, which is certainly not a little charming and very Caroline. After all, the famous advice to regard and avoid an unusual word, tanquam scopulum (which, by the way, Gellius gives us), is fatal to poetry.
[a]. The fragments of this author may be found either in the sixth volume of Baehrens’s Poetæ Latini Minores, or in the appendix to Otto Crusius’s edition of Herondas (Leipsic, 1898). He has another word which Herrick might have Englished, albicascit.
[424]. A Gellian synonym or variant for ineptus, not found in Augustan Latin.
[425]. “Hobbledehoyish, and got up with inserted expletives.” Ferrumen, a post-classical word, is almost exactly the French cheville.
[426]. xvii. 10.
[427]. Inenarrabile et propemodum insensibile.
[428]. It may perhaps seem to those who know him well that he might have been allowed more space here; and certainly he gives plentiful material. But the individual importance of his items hardly requires more than representative treatment.
[429]. Ed. Eyssenhardt, Leipsic, 1883.
[430]. Roman de la Rose, l. 7.
[431]. Ed. Lion, 2 vols., Göttingen, 1826.
[432]. The edition just quoted contains, without its indices, all but 1000 pages of very close and small print.
[433]. Constat esse compositum.
[434]. The enthusiastic Maronite usually
One may be, I hope without affectation, a little aghast at this. urges that not the whole is conveyed, and that Virgil combines his conveyances. Let it be so.
[435]. Ausonius received little attention from scholars till very recently; and I know him only, as I have long known him, in the Delphin edition and the Corpus Poetarum. There are now, however, I believe, editions by Peiper, Leipsic, 1886, and Schenkl, Berlin, 1883, besides monographs.
[436]. He has praised him (Prof. xvii.) his stately walk, his verba ingentia, his handsome dress, and adds—
“Copia cui fandi longe pulcherrima: quam si
Auditu tenus acciperes deflata placeret.
Discussam scires solidi nihil edere sensus.”
[437]. It may be barely necessary to append the caution that grammaticus is a good deal more than “grammarian” in the most limited sense, including “philologist,” “critic,” &c. Some preferred literatus, as the Latin word.
[438]. In verbis rudem; in eloquendo hiulcum; a propositis discrepantem; in versibus concinnationis expertum, in cavillando natura invenustum nec arte conditum; diluti salis et fellis ignavi; nec de mimo planipedem nec de comœdis histrionem..
[439]. Poetæ Latini Minores, ed. Baehrens, vol. iv. Sidonius Apollinaris, who comes between Ausonius and the Anthology, and has much concern for us, is deliberately postponed to the next Book.
[440]. Rhetores Latini (Argentorati, 1756). It is, however, worth while to substitute, or add, the newer edition of Halm (2 vols., Leipsic, 1863), which gives not only critical apparatus and very useful indices, but some more texts from MSS. Ernesti’s Lexicon Technologiæ Latinorum Rhetoricæ (Lips., 1795) is only less necessary than its Greek companion, inasmuch as Latin-English lexicographers have been less neglectful of rhetorical vocabulary than Greek-English—but still necessary.
[441]. Op. cit., p. 93.
[442]. Exilibus.
[443]. To avoid the um-um sound, the “lowing” to which Quintilian objects, and which is undoubtedly one of the great defects of Latin as of Anglo-Saxon.
[444]. We shall return to these in the next Book.
[445]. Ed. Eyssenhardt. Leipsic, 1866.
[446]. There is, however, a certain barbaric charm—of the nose-ring and feather belt and head-dress kind—about this furthest development of the “African style” which Apuleius had started. The gay bombastic ornament of Anglo-Saxon prose-writing, both in Latin and vernacular, has sometimes been credited to Martianus.
[447]. Martianus is curious in philematology. In the second book of the Introduction, when the Muses have described themselves in elaborate verse, one of the Graces kisses Philology “on that part of the forehead where a smooth middle space intervenes between the pubescence of the eye-brows.”
[448]. His Anacreontics in particular are sometimes by no means inelegant. His use of metrical terms is, however, sometimes odd, and tells tales of the inroads and havoc of the accent. Thus below he speaks of a molossus with a short first syllable!
INTERCHAPTER II.
In considering and summing up the contribution of ancient Latin literature to the history and achievements of Criticism, we may conveniently adopt a threefold division and arrangement, so as to see, first, what was the general character of Latin criticism as contrasted with Greek, and with that comparative study of literature which has only recently become possible; secondly, its actual and positive achievement; thirdly, the state in which it left the chances of the future.
The first point under the first head is obvious at once, and has been repeatedly glanced at and referred to already. The Romans had what the Greeks had not and could not have—the advantage of literary comparison in two tongues. This—it may be said a thousand times over, and not be said too often—is an advantage so enormous that nothing else is required to show the wonderful faculty of the nation which could effect so much without it. Without comparison, not merely is the diagnosis of qualities mostly guesswork, but even the discovery of them becomes extremely difficult. With comparison, the qualities almost “leap to the eyes,” and the difference of their results goes far to help in the differentiation of their natures.
At the same time, this advantage, huge as it still was, was conditioned and hampered by the fact that Latin, as a language, was an extremely close connection of Greek, and, as a literature, was daughter and pupil in one. It would be stepping out of the safe and solid, if not often trodden, path which has been prescribed for this book, to inquire whether, if more scope had been given to the Italian and less to the Italiote[[449]] element, this need have been the case; it is sufficient for our strictly historical inquiry that it was the case as a matter of fact. With rare exceptions, of which the Satire itself is a doubtful chief, with few and more doubtful followers, the Romans invented no form of literature whatsoever. Nor did they, as more literary races have so often done, re-create and make their own the forms that they borrowed. The earlier lost Roman tragedy was, it is clear, simply calqué upon Greek, as was the Roman comedy (though the mother-wit of Plautus, one of the most original of Latin writers not of the decadence, gives it an original air) absolutely calqué upon the later forms of the Attic. The Epic was even more slavishly imitative—those who rate Virgil highest must admit that, delicately as he walks, and elegant as is his footgear, he simply steps in the footprints, now of Homer, now of Apollonius, now, in all probability, of writers who happen to be lost. The Latin Lyric poets dare invent no fresh scheme; the historians, even those of genius, have the fear, or at any rate the following, of the Greeks always before them. And so they deprive themselves, from the critical point of view, of the very advantage with which they start—they lose their chance of finding out the real forms of literature, transcending those of any particular tongue, by assimilating the forms of their own as exactly as possible to another’s.
And this lack of independence continues to betray itself throughout, and at once to lessen their opportunities for criticism, and dilute the quality of such criticism as they do venture upon. The Roman—it has been observed, and truly observed, a thousand times—is a man of letters almost always by accident, and on the way to being something else. When he is not, he is generally of the second class. Virgil, Horace, and Cicero perhaps are the chief exceptions, and the two first at any rate, if not the third, were among the most artificial, if also of the most artful, imitators of the Greeks. To Catullus, his exquisite and hardly surpassed poetical faculty was evidently little more than a toy or a pastime—helpful to express his moods of love or of laughter, and that was all. So the magnificent singing robes of Lucretius cover a man who has hardly a thought of being a poet, who aims mainly at being a philosopher; and the scarcely inferior Muse of Juvenal positively turns her back on her sisters, and busies herself with a sardonic “criticism of life,” in which indignant disdain is oddly blended with a strange interest in all trifles, and all serious things, that are not literary. The men with whom literature is, if not exactly a passion, a really serious interest, are, on the other hand, “polyhistoric” persons of talent, in strengths varying from Cicero himself to Pliny, or else men like Martial, admirable practitioners, and something more, in a limited and not very high kind.
Yet, again, though the Roman talent was extremely businesslike, it was by no means subtle. It could, at any rate to some extent, borrow the fanciful Greek refinements; but it found a necessity of changing them into hard and fast rules.
To all this we must add another thing of the first importance. Great as were the accidental advantages of oratory in Greece, they were almost greater at Rome. During every age of the Republic a good speaker had a great weight in his favour; but in its last age, unless the luck was strangely against him, honours and wealth were to be had by him simply for the asking. Under the Empire his position as to the honours of the state was a little more precarious, and his talents (if he was a very honest man and not a very discreet one) were not unlikely to bring him into trouble. But if he were not too scrupulous—as in the case of Eprius Marcellus, of that Regulus whom Pliny evidently admired almost as much as he loathed him, of Fabricius Veiento, and others—these talents could be dishonestly made subservient to fortune. Even in the worst times of the worst emperors their exercise in the law courts was fairly safe, and extremely profitable; while the rage for declamations also gave the art of speaking a factitious but very great popularity.
Hence there was no fear, or hope, of Oratory being brought to its proper place among the departments of literature. On the contrary, the practical prosaic character of the people tended to exalt it higher than ever over such kickshaws as poetry. Probably nine out of ten Romans would have agreed with Aper in the Dialogus.
All this was not particularly favourable to any practice of criticism, and particularly unfavourable to a fresher and wider interpretation of it. Yet, as we have seen, there was something of a set towards literary criticism of a kind in Rome. There, fashion was at once very powerful and very conservative: and the fashion of literary conversations, especially after dinner, set by the Scipios and others when they came into contact on their foreign campaigns with lettered Greeks, seems never to have died out till the very incoming of the Dark Ages, if then. It may have been—it was—more philological, antiquarian, “folklorish,” and what not, than strictly literary, but it was sometimes this. The other fashion of recitation and declamation, closely connected with this, provided also material for it. Sometimes, no doubt, these literary conversations were a terrible bore, as the satirists not obscurely tell us, and as Pliny, in a letter[[450]] full of good sense and pleasantness, points out to a friend of his who had been bored at another kind of dinner, where the fun was provided by scurræ, moriones, and other professional persons not to be mentioned in English.
From all this we find, and are not surprised to find, that literary critical talk, and literary critical writing, in Rome, turned much more upon oratory than upon any other department, and that, when they did turn on others, these were often merely or mainly regarded as storehouses of quotation and patterns of imitation for the orator. There was, indeed, one additional reason for this which has not yet been mentioned, but which was not unnaturally among the most powerful of all. Oratory was about the only division of literature in which even a very patriotic Roman could, with any show of reason, consider his countrymen the equals of the Greeks. Here the flattering unction was often laid; and though as regards Cicero and Demosthenes, the inevitably selected champions, we may hardly think the match an equal one, it must be remembered that the extraordinary, and not quite comprehensible, loss of nearly all other Roman orators puts Latin at a very great disadvantage. We have Æschines, Lysias, Isæus, something, if not much, of Hyperides, a good deal of Isocrates, on the literary side of oratory. But we have nothing by which fairly to judge Hortensius or Catulus, Calvus or Pollio or Messala. What is certain is that men of cool judgment, who did not venture to set up even Virgil against Homer, and who practically let all Roman minor poetry go by the board, did think they could make a fight for Rome in symbouleutic and dikanic, if not in epideictic, oratory.
It follows from all these things that, strong as is the oratorical preoccupation in Greek, it is stronger still in Roman Rhetoric and criticism. Even the men who take the widest view of literature, and are most familiar with it—Cicero, Pliny, nay, Quintilian himself—fall, as has been said, unconsciously, or in the way of bland assumption as of a matter not worth arguing about, into the habit of regarding it either primarily as an exercising-ground, a magazine, a source of supply and training for the orator, or as a means of sport and pastime to him in the intervals of his more serious business. The utterly preposterous notion (as it seems to us) of trying a poet like Virgil by the rules of the rhetorician, classifying his speeches, pointing out his deft use of “means of persuasion,” laying stress on the proprieties and felicities of his use of language according to the rhetorical laws, taking examples of Figures from him and the like, could arise from nothing but this preliminary assumption or confusion, and could only be excused by it. It is in fact all-pervading—forget or lose sight of it, and there is hardly a Roman utterance about literature which will not be either quite unmeaning, or very seriously misleading.
The consequence is that very seldom do we get literary criticism of anything like the best kind—of any kind that deserves the name in meaning at once full and strict—from a Roman. There is no Latin Longinus—Quintilian himself is but at best a rather less technical Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and it is even very uncertain whether he does not owe a good deal directly to Dionysius himself. At any rate, much as we owe him, we owe it rather to his ineradicable and inevitable good sense, his thorough grasp of the educational values of things, and his unfeigned love of literature, than to any full conception on his part of the art of criticism as an art of appreciation—as a reasoned valuing and analysing of the sources of literary charm.
Another consequence (of the illustrative kind chiefly) is that the spell of the Figures is even more heavy on the Roman than on the Greek. That horrified cry[[451]] of the unlucky Albucius, schemata tollis ex rerum natura, is as much the note of the average Roman critic as the quotation given above from Simylus[[452]] is above the note both of Roman and even of Greek as a rule. It could hardly out of the head of a critic of this stamp, that if you took the proper number of scruples of hyperbole, so many drams of antiphrasis, and so on, you would make a fine sentence—that so many sentences thus formed and arranged, with proper regard to inventio, narratio, and the rest, would make a fine chapter, so many chapters a fine book. The whole process, once more, is topsy-turvy, and can come to no good end.
In Poetic of the limited kind we have, of course, from Rome one document, the historical importance of which it is impossible to exaggerate. But the intrinsic importance, even of this, is singularly out of proportion to its reputation and its influence. As has been explained in detail above, it may be unjust to regard the Epistola ad Pisones as a designed and complete tract De Arte Poetica. But make as much allowance as we may and can for scheme and purpose, the intrinsic quality of such criticism as it does give will remain clear and unaltered. Neither of the real nature, requirements, capabilities of any one literary form, nor of the character of any one source of literary beauty, does Horace show himself in the very least degree conscious. His precepts are now precepts of excellent commonsense, not less—perhaps rather more—applicable to life than to literature: now purely arbitrary rules derived from the practice—sometimes the quite accidental practice—of great preceding writers.
Yet, all the same, Horace unconsciously and almost indirectly does take up a very decided critical side, and expresses, with the neatness and in the rememberable fashion to be expected from so consummate a master, one of the two great critical creeds. Nor is there any doubt that this creed, so far as literary criticism appealed to the Roman mind at all, was that of by far the larger number of persons. This is—not necessarily in a ne varietur shape, but put very clearly in a certain form—the creed of what is known as “Classicism,” the creed which recommends, first of all, as the probable, if not the certain, road to literary success, adherence to the approved traditions, the elaboration of types and generalisations rather than indulgence in the eccentric and efforts to create the individual, the preference of the regular to the vague, &c., &c.
This, it may be repeated without much rashness, was even more the critical orthodoxy of Rome than it was the critical orthodoxy of Greece. We see it in the stock preference of the Attic to the Asiatic style in oratory; it simply defrays the whole of the just-mentioned criticism of Horace; it animates the campaign of the satirists against archaic and euphuist phraseology; it is clearly the proper thing to think in the literary miscellanies of Gellius, and even of Macrobius. The precepts of the formal treatises, so far as they touch on style at all, never fail to express this general tendency; and the even more deliberate and canonical “correctness” of the modern Latin races and literatures, if not directly and unavoidably inherited, is a very legitimate attempt to recover and improve the lost heritage of their ancestor.
Nor will any other conclusion, I think, be drawn from the study of those grammarians in the strict sense, of whom little or nothing has been said in the main body of this Book, for the simple reason that there was little or nothing to say. From Varro to Festus the symptoms which we have noted elsewhere recur with unmistakable fidelity. The etymology and signification of words; the explanation of customs, rites, myths; the arrangements of accidence and syntax—all these things awake evident interest, and receive careful and often most intelligent pains. These grammarians (and, of course, still more professedly metrical writers like Terentianus Maurus) are diligent on metre, and even behind metre, on that most difficult of subjects, in all times and languages, the metrical quality and quantity as distinguished from the metrical arrangement of words. But where all these things begin to group and crystallise themselves into higher criticism of literary form and charm, there our authors, I think it will be found with hardly an exception, stop dead. I shall be surprised (to stick to the example formerly given) to have pointed out to me a single passage in which the poetical quality of the Ennian, the Lucretian, and the Virgilian hexameter is discussed.
At the same time, it would be uncritical not to perceive, and unhistorical not to note, the existence in the history of Latin literature of a current running strongly in the opposite direction, making itself distinctly felt at more than one period, and, finally, in creative literature at least, going near to triumph. We have seen, both directly and indirectly, that in the first century of our era there was a very strong set towards archaism and euphuism, that it had the patronage of Seneca the father, certainly, if not also that of his more famous and more influential son; that it was not by any means wholly disapproved by Pliny; and that though what we may call literary orthodoxy was against it, a very large bulk (perhaps the great majority) of the prose declamations and the verse exercises of the time must have exhibited its influence. What is more, it is certain that in more than one of the Roman colonial or provincial districts, which furnished fresher and more vigorous blood than the Eternal City herself, or her Italian precinct, could now supply, this tendency received very strong accessions from various local peculiarities. It seems to have been least prevalent in Gaul, though by no means unknown there; the Senecas, and Quintilian himself, show at what an early date Spanish blood or birth inclined those who had it to what was long afterwards to take names from Guevara and Gongora. But the great home of Roman Euphuism was Africa. To say nothing of ecclesiastical writers like Tertullian (who might be supposed to have their style affected by Eastern influences), Apuleius earlier, and Martianus later, are more than sufficient, and luckily pretty fully extant, witnesses to the fact.
Yet this tendency is not represented in criticism at all. Apuleius, who was a very pretty pleader as well as an accomplished Euphuist in original composition, might well have left us a parallel to De Quincey’s own vindications of the ornate style, if he had chosen; but it did not apparently occur to him though the Florida would have given a quite convenient and proper home to such a dissertation.[[453]] Con amore as Martianus describes (in the passage above translated) the gorgeousness of Rhetoric, it is strictly in reference to her oratorical practice. If the satires of the later Cæsars’ time take the other side, and so do give us some criticism on that, it is pretty certainly because all the greatest satirists, from Aristophanes downwards, have always been Tories, and have selected the absurdities of innovation more gladly than those of tradition for their target. Nay, it is a question whether Petronius, in one direction, and Persius in another, do not, so far as their own compositions are concerned, somewhat incur the blame of which they are so lavish, though Martial and Juvenal certainly do not. On all sides the conviction comes in that for strictly literary criticism the time was not ripe, or that the country, the nation, was indisposed and unprepared for it.
In no point, perhaps, is this so noteworthy and so surprising as in regard to what we may call the literary criticism of metre. For this Latin offered, at both ends of the history of Latin proper, temptations and opportunities which, so far as we know, were unknown to the Greeks. At the one end there were the remains, scanty, but significant even now, then probably abundant, of “Saturnian” prosody. Of this, of course, Roman writers, technical and other, do take notice: they even, with the antiquarian and mythological patriotism so common at Rome, take a fairly lively interest in it. But of the remarkable literary difference between it and the accepted literary metres—a point almost exactly on a par with that of the difference between our ballad metre and the accepted literary poetic forms of the eighteenth century—they do not, so far as I remember, seem to have taken any notice at all. There must have been—in fact we know perfectly well that there were—Roman literary antiquaries as diligent, as enthusiastic, and, no doubt, at least as intelligent as any of our own, from Percy and Hurd to Tyrwhitt and Ritson. There is no reason in the nature of things (indeed, Varro is a very fair analogue to the historian of English poetry) why there should not have been Romans of the calibre at least of Warton, if not even of Gray. But hardly a vestige of the combined antiquarian, philological, and literary interest, which animates all these men of ours, appears in the extant fragments of any Roman writer.
The facts at the other end point to the same conclusion. From no Roman critic, so far as I know, have we any notice whatsoever of that insurrection or resurrection (whichever word may be preferred) of accentual against quantitative rhythm which is one of the most interesting, and certainly one of the most mysterious, phenomena of the literary history of the world. Grant that early in the third century (if that be the right date) no cultivated student was likely to pay much attention to the barbarous rhythms of a Commodian,[[454]] to be prepared even to consider
“Audite quoniam propheta de illo prædixit”
as a hexameter. But a hundred and fifty years later things were different. Before Macrobius wrote, before Servius commented, the verse of Prudentius had been given to the world. Now, the mere classical scholar has no doubt been usually unkind to Prudentius,[[455]] but few people who have read him without a fixed idea that anybody who writes in Latin is bound to confirm to the prosody of the Augustan age, can have read him without frequent satisfaction. At any rate, he is a literary person; and his personality is emphasised by the fact that at one time he tries to write, and not infrequently succeeds in writing, very fair orthodox hexameters and trimeters; at others (and in the best work of the Cathemerinon and Peristephanon) his verse, whether answering to the test of the finger or not in metre, is clearly accentual in rhythm, and seems to be yearning for rhyme to complete and dress it. Now, if literary criticism in the full sense had been common, such a phenomenon must have attracted attention. The orthodox critics would have attacked it as furiously as the orthodox critics in England attacked Coleridge’s system of metrical equivalence, or the orthodox critics in France attacked Victor Hugo’s enjambements. The unorthodox critics, the revolutionary and romantic party, would, as in each case, have welcomed it with pæans. But, so far as we know, not the slightest notice was taken of Prudentius by the literary wits of the Saturnalia, or by any one else.
In part, no doubt, this silence may be set down to accidental and extra-literary causes. The very growth of provincial literatures would at once have rendered the productions of these literatures less likely to reach Rome, and have disinclined the literary critics of the capital to listen to provincial productions. Even the debate of Christian and Pagan,[[456]] as it became more and more of a conflict between triumphant youth and declining eld, less and less of the resurrection of a desperate and despised minority against established order, may have had something to do with the matter. But, however this may be, the facts are the facts.
We shall do well to accept them as they are, and to recognise that Latin had the criticism which it deserved, the criticism which was made necessary by the conditions of its own classical literature, and, lastly, the criticism which was really most useful both for itself and for its posterity—that is to say, in greater or less degree, not merely the so-called Romance tongues, but all the literary languages of modern Europe. The first two points must be tolerably clear to any tolerable Latinist, but they may be freshly put. A literature like classical Latin, which is from first to last in statu pupillari, which, with whatever strength, deftness, elegance, even originality at times, follows in the footsteps of another literature, must for the very life of it have a critical creed of order, discipline, moderation. Otherwise it runs the risk of being a mere hybrid, even a mere monstrosity.
Still more certainly, nothing could have been better for the future of the world than the exact legacy which Latin left, not merely in its great examples of literature, but in the forms of the scholastic Grammar and Rhetoric, to that millennium of reconstruction and recreation which is called the Middle Age. For that wonderful period—which even yet has never been put in its right place in the history of the world—a higher lesson would have been thrown away, or positively injurious. No instruction in Romanticism was wanted by the ages of Romance: for full literary knowledge of the ancient literatures they were in no wise suited or prepared. Their business was, after a long period of mere foundation-work in the elaboration of the modern speeches, to get together the materials of the modern literatures, and to build up the structure of these as well as they could. So strongly did they feel the nisus towards this, that they even travestied into their own likeness such of the old literature as remained.
But still Grammar and Rhetoric abode—to be a perpetual grounding and tutelage, a “fool-guard” and guide-post in these ages of exploration and childhood. That the Rhetoric was meagre and arbitrary, that a great deal of it had nothing to do with literature at all, but was a sort of fossilised skeleton of a bygone philosophy, or else a mere business training, mattered nothing. The Trivium and Quadrivium, the legacies of the classics, especially of Latin, gave in every one of their divisions, and not least in Rhetoric, precisely the formal stays, the fixed norms and forms of method, which were required in the general welter.
Had the appreciative criticism of Latin been stronger and wider, had it left any tradition in its own last age, and so been able to throw that tradition as a bridge over the dark time to come, it would have been no advantage, but a loss and a mischief. Not only would it have been waste of time for the Middle Ages to appreciate Greek and Latin literature critically, if they could have done so, but it would have hampered them in the doing of their own great day’s, or rather night’s, work—their work of assimilation, of recuperation, and, not least, of dream.
[449]. Of course I do not mean to imply that the Italiote cities were the direct source of the Greek element in classical Latin literature.
[450]. Ep., ix. 17.
[453]. The fact that the subject not seldom seems to be coming (e.g., at i. 9 and iv. 20) in this curious patchwork, and does not come, is not without significance.
[454]. The edition of the Instructiones and the Carmen Apologeticum which I use is the most accessible, and I think the most recent, that of E. Ludwig (two parts, Leipsic, 1877-78). But I must own that a certain compunction invades me at finding any fault with the shortcomings of ancient critics, when I find in this edition, at the end of the nineteenth century, great care about the text, but not a single word about the date, the person, or the circumstances of Commodianus, and an utter ignoring of the literary position and interest of the matter edited. Commodian’s form may be barbarous, and his matter may be respectably ordinary; but he is, at any rate, on a not yet disturbed hypothesis, the ancestor—or the earliest example—of the prosody of every modern language which combines (as some at least of us hold that all modern languages do) quantitative scansion with a partly or wholly non-quantitative syllabic value. And one might at least have expected a few facts, if not a little discussion, to butter the bread of the bare text in such a case. But the fetish of the letter has been too much for this editor also.
[455]. I use the Delphin edition, but I believe the standards are those of Obbarius (Tubingen, 1845) or Dressel (Leipsic, 1860). A good deal of work which has not yet come in my way seems to have been recently spent on this most interesting writer, resulting in such things as the first part of a Lexicon Prudentianum (Bermann, Upsala, 1891), a book on illustrated MSS. of him (Stettener, Berlin, 1895), while in England Mr Bridges has translated some of his charming hymns.
[456]. Symmachus, the great defender of Virgil in the Saturnalia, was an obstinate and audacious champion of Paganism against Christianity: and Prudentius wrote directly against him.
BOOK III
MEDIÆVAL CRITICISM
“Sola vocabula nobilissima in cribro tuo residere curabis.”
—Dante.
CHAPTER I.
BEFORE DANTE.
CHARACTERISTICS OF MEDIÆVAL LITERATURE—ITS ATTITUDE TO CRITICISM—IMPORTANCE OF PROSODY—THE EARLY FORMAL RHETORICS: BEDE—ISIDORE—ALCUIN (?)—ANOTHER TRACK OF INQUIRY—ST AUGUSTINE A PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC—HIS ATTITUDE TO LITERATURE BEFORE AND AFTER HIS CONVERSION—ANALYSIS OF THE ‘CONFESSIONS’ FROM THIS POINT OF VIEW—A CONCLUSION FROM THIS TO THE GENERAL PATRISTIC VIEW OF LITERATURE—SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS—HIS ELABORATE EPITHET-COMPARISON AND MINUTE CRITICISMS OF STYLE AND METRE—A DELIBERATE CRITIQUE—CASSIODORUS—BOETHIUS—CRITICAL ATTITUDE OF THE FIFTH CENTURY—THE SIXTH: FULGENTIUS—THE FULGENTII AND THEIR BOOKS—THE ‘SUPER THEBAIDEN’ AND ‘EXPOSITIO VIRGILIANA’—VENANTIUS FORTUNATUS—ISIDORE OF SEVILLE AGAIN—BEDE AGAIN—HIS ‘ARS METRICA’—THE CENTRAL MIDDLE AGES TO BE MORE RAPIDLY PASSED OVER—PROVENÇAL AND LATIN TREATISES—THE ‘DE DICTAMINE RHYTHMICO’—JOHN OF GARLANDIA—THE ‘LABYRINTHUS’—CRITICAL REVIEW OF POETS CONTAINED IN IT—MINOR RHYTHMICAL TRACTATES—GEOFFREY DE VINSAUF: HIS ‘NOVA POETRIA.’
It may seem a platitude, but it really has much more of the altitudinous than of the platitudinous about it, to say that, before entering on the consideration of mediæval criticism,[[457]] it is above all things necessary to clear the mind of cant about mediæval literature. For in no division of this work is such a caution a more appropriate writing on the door. On the classical |Characteristics of mediæval literature.| and on the modern sections it would be a gratuitous impertinence. In both or them, as here, there is the distinction between linguistic and literary criticism, and the further distinction between literary criticism of different kinds. But in both there are, as there always have been in relation to the classics, and as there sometimes have been in relation to modern literature, a very large number of persons who are aware of the crevasses, and who can cross them.
In mediæval literature such persons are, and for the strongest reasons, much more to seek. Until recently—it is the greatest “refusal” and the greatest misfortune in the literary history of the world—mediæval literature, which some, at least, believe to hold the keys of both ancient and modern, was utterly neglected and contemned. Then, for a time, it was praised without full knowledge, or by divination only. It is now possible to know much if not most of it; but few are they who are content to know it as literature. Not only has it had to go through, all at once, the usual diseases to which literary childhood is obnoxious, the petty grammarianisms which Latin and Greek got over in their own time, the squabbles as to interpretation from which the Renaissance, to a great extent, delivered us in their case, and the criticastry of the seventeenth-eighteenth centuries, but new ailments, diphtherias and influenzas of its own, have arisen in “phonology,” and Heaven knows what else. Even this does not exhaust the list of ills that wait upon its most unhappy state. It has been thought necessary, for political and ecclesiastical reasons, to praise the Middle Ages a little unwisely for a time, and then (more recently) to abuse them with an unwisdom so much greater, that one feels inclined to relapse upon the mood of the real Mr Kenelm Digby of The Broad Stone of Honour, and the imaginary Mr Chainmail of Crotchet Castle. Abused and extolled as “Ages of Faith,” they were really ages of a mixture of logical argument and playful half-scepticism. Regarded with scorn as “Ages of Ignorance,” they knew what they did know thoroughly, which is more than can be said of some others. Commiserated as Ages of Misery, they were probably the happiest times of the world, putting Arcadia and Fairyland out of sight. Patronised as Ages of mere preparation, they accomplished things that we have toiled after in vain for some five hundred years. They have in the rarest cases been really understood, even historically. And the understanding which has, in these rare cases, reached their history, has almost always merely scrabbled on the doors of their literature. There are exceptions, of course, some of whom have taught me all I know, and whom I honour only short of the great originals. But they are still exceptions.
Lest any one should accuse me of passing from criticism into dithyrambic, let me acknowledge at once that whatsoever the |Its attitude to criticism.| Middle Ages were or were not, they were certainly not Ages of Criticism. They could not—it has already been hinted—have been anything of the kind; it would have ruined their business and choked their vocation if they had attempted to be so. One mighty figure does indeed show himself in their midst, to pass on the torch from Aristotle and Longinus, through unknowing ages, to Coleridge and Sainte-Beuve. But their very essence was opposed to criticism in any prevalence. The incorrigible and triumphant (though or because wholly unconscious) originality which, in practice, created the Romance, revolutionised the Drama, altered History, devised a fresh Lyric, would have been constrained and paralysed in the face of theory. At no time can we be so thankful for the shortcomings of the School Rhetoric which, if it had been better, might have done frightful harm. Had the Italian critics, with their warpings of Plato and of Aristotle, appeared in the thirteenth century instead of the sixteenth, it might have been all over with us. For the thirteenth century was docile: the sixteenth, fortunately, was not.
In one particular, however, the comparatively scanty criticism of the thousand years from the sack of Rome by Alaric to the |Importance of prosody.| fall of Constantinople before Mahomet, acquires a new significance. We have hitherto said little about the formal criticism of prosody, and for good reasons. The Greek, and in a less degree the Latin, writers on Metric, are interesting, but their interest is hardly literary at all, though it has so much to do with literature. Before we have any finished classical literature from them, Greek had by its own euphuia acquired, and Latin had forced on itself by a stern process of gymnastic, systems of prosody which, though in the former case at least easy as nature, were in both cases simply a branch of mathematics. The decay of Greek, the bursting by the strong Italian wine of the earthen or leathern vessel of artificial prosody which had so long contained it, and the rise of the new vernaculars, introduced a perfectly different situation; and the criticism, the tentative unscientific rule-of-thumb criticism, of prosody assumed an importance, at about the beginning of the fifth century of our era, which it has not lost on the eve of the twentieth. But these general questions will be further treated at the close of this Book (see Interchapter iii.) We must now turn to the details of the actual history.
The standard collection[[458]] of Latin Rhetorics contains four of very early date, speaking from our present point of view. The |The early formal Rhetorics—Bede.| oldest, and, if it were genuine, the most interesting, of all in point of authorship, that attributed to S. Augustine, we shall—for reasons—take last. The others, still of great interest in this respect, are by, or attributed to, the three greatest men of “regular” letters in the whole period (500-1000), except Scotus Erigena—to wit, Bede, Isidore of Seville, and Alcuin.
Bede, who has also left us work of interest on metre,[[459]] has included in his works a tractate on the Tropes and Figures of the Holy Scriptures which gives us, at least, a glimmer in darkness. His argument is characteristic of his time; but nobody except a churl, and an ignorant and foolish churl, will smile at it. The Figures are the most important things in style; the Scriptures are the most important of books; therefore there must be as good Figures in the Scriptures as in any other book, and better. He uses, to prove his point, seventeen figures with examples. In what follows, the chief point of interest is that he first quotes classical examples (chiefly from Virgil) and then Scriptural analogues. But he does not by any means confine himself to the chosen seventeen.
The critical importance of this, for its time especially, can be shown with little labour. The great danger, the great curse, so to say, of uncritical reading, is the taking of things as a matter of course, and the neglect to analyse and ascertain the exact causes and sources of literary excellence. Now, in itself, the comparison of the Bible and the classics, from the hard-and-fast point of view of a scholastic classification of Figures, is a very small matter—and not perhaps even a very good matter. But when these two so different things are compared, from any point of view no matter what, the curiosity is aroused; the mind begins to consider what it really does think fine in this and that; and in happy circumstances and cases a real—in any perhaps some approach to a real—appreciation of the goodness of literature will result. Bede did not intend this—he might have left no pepper to any one who suggested it to him, as a consequence of his work. But such a consequence at least might follow.
The references of that great authority of the early Middle Ages, Isidore of Seville, to Rhetoric are not copious, and are |Isodore.| chiefly made up of the already consecrated tags, while the subject is somewhat mixed with Logic. The orator is the vir bonus dicendi peritus; the parts of Rhetoric are as usual, its kinds likewise. The forensic side is almost exclusively prominent, and style has hardly any attention at all.[[460]]
Very much more curious is the dialogue with Charlemagne, attributed to Alcuin or Albinus. The emperor-king, in a |Alcuin (?).| rather precious but not inelegant style, beseeches instruction on the point; and his teacher, with grandiosity suitable (at least on the estimate of Martianus) to the subject, protests that the spark of his little intellect can add nothing to the flame-vomiting light of the emperor’s genius,[[461]] but will obey his commands, juxta auctoritatem veterum. In fact, he follows the usual lines, with occasional indulgence in the curiously, and rather barbarically, but sometimes not unpleasantly, ornate style which seems to have pleased the youthful nations of modern Europe. The hard cases of the old Declamations make a considerable appearance—in fact, very much more of the dialogue (which is neither very long nor very short) is devoted to this side of the matter than is the case with Bede and Isidore; and there is even a slight glance into the subject of Fallacies. The passage on Elocution may be scrutinised, not perhaps with very great results, but with some interest and profit, not merely because it directly concerns us, but also because one may at least hope to have the auctoritas veterum qualified by a little personal and temporal colour. From attention to style comes venustas to the cause, and dignitas to the orator. It must be facunda et aperta—that is to say, grammatically correct and clearly arranged. The best authors must be read, and their example followed. In choosing single words (here the characteristic above-mentioned may be thought to appear, while the sentiment, and even the phrase, though of course not new, leads us interestingly on to the great work of Dante) we ought to choose electa et illustria. Metaphor (translatio) brings ornament; as the first object of clothing is to keep the cold out, and then we make it ornamental, so, &c. In fact, metaphor is now quite common—the very vulgar speak of the vines “gemming,” the harvest being “luxuriant,” the crops “waving”: for what can hardly be described by a “proper” word is illustrated by a metaphor. Metaphors make things clearer, as “the sea shivers”; and sometimes save a periphrasis, as “the dart flies from the hand.” But you must be careful only to use honest metaphors; and here the old illustrations recur. Special figures are slightly touched, though Metonymy and Synecdoche occur. The remarks on Composition are very meagre, chiefly deprecating hiatus, the juxtaposition of similar syllables, &c. It is not unnoteworthy that much more time is spent on actual delivery, that no illustrations from the poets appear, and that the piece finishes with remarks on religious and moral virtue, of great excellence in themselves, but having very little to do with Rhetoric, save indirectly in the epideictic kind.
But it is unnecessary to hunt further through the formal Rhetorics which appeared during the Dark and earlier |Another track of inquiry.| Middle Ages, though it may be proper to return to the subject in the chapter dealing with Criticism after Dante. Conservative in all their ways, though with a conservatism compatible with limitless expatiation and rehandling, these Ages were nowhere more conservative than in regard to Rhetoric; and Martianus by himself almost represents their manual thereof. The influence of the Marriage of Philology, which is prominent at the middle in the Contention of Phyllis and Flora,[[462]] appears again at the very close, when Hawes “rang to even-song,” and it will dispense all but specialists from investigation under this head. We have seen how small is its contribution to criticism. We must therefore look elsewhere, and, throwing back a little to St Augustine, himself a Professor of Rhetoric, may endeavour to trace and pick up, often in bypaths, such windfalls of expression about literature as may enable us to compose something like a history, if not of definite and expressed Criticism, at any rate of Literary Taste, century by century, from the fourth to the thirteenth, through a chain of now almost wholly Christian writers.
It is probable, if not certain, that the Principia Rhetorices, which has been already referred to, and which we have |St Augustine a Professor of Rhetoric.| under the name of Aurelius Augustinus, was never written or delivered by the chief of the Latin Fathers, at Tagaste or at Carthage, at Milan or at Rome. The loss to him is certainly not great. The treatise, which is short (some ten quarto pages in Capperonnier), is based upon, and apparently to a large extent quoted or stolen from, Hermagoras, Cicero’s Rhodian master. It busies itself first with the nature of Rhetoric, and the calumnies brought against it, and proceeds to the examination of technicalities, not dictionary-fashion, as had lately become usual, but continuously. Perhaps the sole argument (a worthless one enough, for there were probably ten thousand professors of Rhetoric doing the same thing in his time) for the Saint’s authorship is, that no book could better answer to his own bitter description of his worldly profession as “selling words to boys.”
But he was a Professor of Rhetoric, and therefore, in a way, of literature; and the decisive, because in most cases unintentional, evidence of the Confessions[[463]] touches |His attitude to literature before and after his conversion.| our subject closely and frequently. We can not only see what was Augustine’s attitude to literature even before his conversion, but from his attitude to it after that event we can, without rashness or unfairness, discern the causes which make one huge and important division of late ancient and early mediæval literature—the works of the Fathers of the Church—almost a blank for our special purpose.
That Augustine as a little boy (Conf., I. 13) hated Greek and loved Latin, especially the Latin poets,[[464]] has nothing in |Analysis of the Confessions from this point of view.| it more marvellous than that any healthy English boy should hate Latin and love (it is to be hoped that he still does love) Robinson Crusoe, and Gulliver, and the Morte d’Arthur, and the Faerie Queene. And there is, no doubt, some allowance to be made for that “megalomania” of repentance which besets the strongly religious, in his regrets for the tears he shed over dead Dido, neglectful of his own death in life as far as the soul was concerned.[[465]] But his attitude to literature, as expressed in this chapter and onwards, is suggestive not merely of religiosity, but of a certain antiquarian priggishness. Will not even the “sellers of grammar” confess that nobody knows when Æneas came to Carthage, while the more learned know that he never did? Which is the more useful, reading and writing per se, or the figments of poetry? Homer, though full of “sweetly idle fiction,” was bitter to him, because he was difficult. And then he returns to the other line, wherein, it must be confessed, he had strong pagan as well as Christian support.
Do not the poets assign vices to the gods, or rather give the divine title to wicked men? (cap. 16.) Does not Terence actually make one of his characters shelter his own sin under Jove’s example? How absurd it was, if not worse, to have to learn by heart the wrath of Juno at her ill-success in thwarting Æneas! Nay, he proceeds to further altitudes. Grammar is more carefully observed than the Law of God. Rhetoric helps you to do harm to human beings. His own father spent more money than he could afford on sending him to Madaura and Carthage for education, but was wholly indifferent to his spiritual welfare (Book II. cap. iii.) His success in the Rhetoric school (III. 2) filled him with wicked pride. He even liked stage plays; was so wretchedly mad as to grieve at their falsehoods and shadows, and so wicked as to sympathise with the imaginary but immoral enjoyments of lovers. He read Cicero’s Hortensius with admiration, but for its wisdom, not its form. His own professorship of Rhetoric was a “covetous selling of tricks to conquer,” though he himself would not fee a wizard to gain a dramatic prize. He wrote a treatise, De Apto et Proprio, which we (like him) have not, but which was evidently, if criticism at all, criticism in the abstract. Although he refers often (e.g., V. 7) to his lectures on literature, he gives us hardly a notion of his literary preferences, estimates, views; and his Manichæan difficulties, his agonies about the origin of evil, seem to have drawn him further and further from anything but a mere professional connection with the subject. In his high eulogium of Victorinus (VIII. 2) it can hardly be said that he says a word about his literature. In all his allusions to his Chair he constantly refers to the oratorical, or rather the debating and advocating, not the literary side. And what to me seems the most conclusive and remarkable point of all, the long discourse of sinful, or at least worldly, pleasures with which Book Ten closes, contains not a reference to the pleasures of literature, which, as we know from the beginning, he did think ungodly. They have apparently not importance enough to be taken into consideration, not merely in connection with the pleasures of sense (where there might be a reason for their omission), but along with curiosity, love of praise, fear of blame, vainglory, self-conceit, and other purely intellectual temptations. The boy had been charmed by Virgil and Terence—wicked charms he acknowledges—but the man, though he certainly does not mean to deny their wickedness, has simply put them away as childish things.
I have thought it well to be somewhat particular in regard to this appearance of what we may call the Puritan attitude to |A conclusion from this to the general patristic view of literature.| literature, in its earliest and perhaps almost its greatest exponent. It is of course not entirely new—nothing indeed is ever that; and it is not merely foreshadowed, but to a certain extent fathered, by the Platonic views of poetry, and the Academic and Pyrrhonist views of literature generally. But these older things here acquire an entirely new character and importance—a character and an importance which can hardly be said to be merely matters of history yet. Moreover, as I have hinted above, the attitude is that—varied only by the personal factor—of all the Fathers, more or less, until, and for some time after, the complete downfall of Paganism, and of the great majority of ecclesiastical writers for a thousand years later still.
Its justifications, or at least its excuses, have been often put, and must in great measure be allowed. Not merely had it, as has been said, a most respectable pedigree in purely Pagan philosophy, but, as a fighting creed, it was almost indispensable to the Church Militant. Literature, and Heathen religion, and the Seven Deadly Sins, were, it might even seem, inextricably connected. If you wrote an epic you had to begin with Jove or some other false god; if you wrote a parcel of epigrams it was practically de rigueur to accuse somebody of unnatural vices, or affect a partiality for them yourself. But even if things had been better—if there had been no danger of relapses in faith, and none of the worst kind in practice—it was inevitable that the poor Fine Arts should seem vain and trifling exercises to that intense “otherworldliness” which had come (as no doubt it will at some time or other have to come again) as an alternative to secular absorption in things secular. To Augustine, as to monk and homilist long afterwards, not merely was the theology of literature false, and its morals detestable, but it was—merely as occupation—frivolous and puerile, a thing unworthy not only of a Christian but even of a reasonable being. We shall have to count with so much of this in the present book (and not there only) that it seemed worth while to take note of it at the outset. It probably did no great harm, for, as has been repeated more than once, what was wanted was a new development of literature, as fresh and as spontaneous as possible: and this might have been more hindered than helped by too great a devotion to the old. Meanwhile the Seven Liberal Arts were not much interfered with, either by the Seven Deadly Sins or by their opponent Virtues, and the mere necessities of preaching and homily-writing, of controversy with heretics, and of historical summaries, obliged to practise in the more scholastic branches of literature itself. As for the less scholastic, they came soon enough, and more than well enough, as the rains of heaven descended and the wind of the Spirit blew—the Northern wind.
In such a state of mind literary criticism, though the fact is not even yet universally recognised, is practically impossible. It is the furthest stage, and to some extent the converse, of the famous fallacy—stated once by a critic[[466]] of great though one-sided ability, and probably accepted, tacitly or implicitly, by the majority of critics still—that a man “must take pleasure in the thing represented before he can take pleasure in the representation.” Here the assumption is that, if you take pleasure in the representation, you take pleasure in the thing represented. And there is more also. Not only are the subjects of literature in part men or devils masquerading as gods, in part men committing more or less shameful acts; but, even when they are in themselves unobjectionable, they are idle fiction, there is no truth or usefulness in them. Men with immortal souls to be saved or lost should at the worst be horrified at touching such pitch, at the best be ashamed of burdening themselves with such trumpery. Great as is St Augustine’s genius for producing literature, one doubts whether he had much taste for estimating it. The story of the famous pears, which he stole, comes in rather fatally pat. He stole them, he says, not because he wanted them or liked them, but because it was naughty to do it. This, though no uncommon mood, is the worst possible for the critic. It leads him, in the same way, to praise a book or an author, not because he really likes them, but because they are naughty—the reverse of the other fallacy and its punishment.
Taking this fact into consideration, and adding to it the facts already glanced at,—the sickness incidental to the moulting of language, the want of helpfulness in such ancient critics as were likely to fall in the writer’s way, the increasing scarcity, for hundreds of years, of books, and other things of the same kind,—it will be seen to have been not nearly but wholly impossible that the Dark and the Early Middle Ages could produce much criticism—or any, strictly speaking. The importance of what they did produce, with the much greater importance of the wholly new material they offered (to be long slighted by the critical world), will be considered at length in the Interchapter succeeding this Book. In the course of the Book itself we shall have to consider a few rhetorical and art-poetical treatises, entirely in Latin, between the sixth century and the thirteenth, the solitary document of the De vulgari Eloquio at the central point of the history, and perhaps some more Rhetorics and Poetics, now dealing in increasing measure for moderns with the modern tongues, between 1300 and 1500. But we shall derive most of our material, and almost all the more interesting part of it, from incidental expressions on literary matters in books not professedly rhetorical or critical. And, taking century by century and beginning with the Fifth, we are lucky in finding at once, in the latter part of this, an interesting and half-famous writer who stands at the gate of the Dark Ages, but is something of a Janus, avowedly looking back on classical times, and, Christian as he is, admiring classical writers.
The literary references in the works of Sidonius Apollinaris[[467]] are pretty numerous, and no small proportion of them possesses |Sidonius Apollinaris.| direct or indirect critical bearing. On the rather numerous occasions when the good count-bishop puts a little thing of his, in easy or flebile verse, into his letters, he by no means seldom prefaces or follows it with a little modest depreciation; he has not a few references to books and reading, and now and then he criticises in form. We could therefore hardly have a fairer chance of knowing what, at the very eleventh hour and fiftieth minute of the classical period, was the general state of literary taste in the West. That Sidonius was a very well-read man, not merely for his time, and that he had access not merely to most of the things that we have but to many that we have not, is sufficiently established by this evidence. And that he did not merely read but marked—that he endeavoured to shape a style for himself from his reading—is equally certain. Nor would it be any argument against his critical competence that this style is, if not exactly harsh, or even very barbarous, marked by the affectation and involution which seem to beset alike periods of immaturity and periods of decadence, and which were specially likely to affect a period of both at once.
But it is not easy to rank him very high. His critical utterances have a besetting tendency to run off into those epithet-tickets which have been referred to more than once, and which were the curse of the routine criticism of antiquity. Still, he is very interesting both for his position and for his intrinsic characteristics: and a selection from the passages bearing on the subject which I have noted in my reading may, as in former cases, be of service.
The very dedication of the Epistles to Constantius shows him to us as modestly endeavouring to follow, if without presumptuous footsteps, “the roundness of Symmachus, the discipline and maturity of Pliny,” for he will not say a word of Cicero, referring only to an odd criticism of that master[[468]] by Julius Titianus, and to an expression of the school of Fronto, “the ape of the orators,” applied to Titianus himself. The description[[469]] of the villa at Nîmes which, from Gibbon’s[[470]] introduction of it, is perhaps better known than anything else of Sidonius, includes that of a library containing religious works arranged in cases among the armchairs of the ladies, and a collection of profane authors near the men’s seats. Thus not merely Augustine, Prudentius, and the Latin translation of Origen by Rufinus, but Varro and Horace, received attention; while the excellence of Rufinus’ work is brought out by a critical allusion to the translations by Apuleius of the Phædo, and by Cicero of the De Corona.
The metrical questions which were becoming of such immense critical importance, in consequence of the impingence of vernacular accent and rhythm on Latin, are frequently touched upon by Sidonius, not, of course, with a full (that was impossible), but with a fair, sense of their magnitude. He thinks, justly enough (Ep. ii. 10),[[471]] that “unless a remnant, at any rate,[[472]] vindicates the purity of the Latin tongue from the rust of barbarism, we shall soon have to bewail it as utterly abolished and made away with.” And then he justifies himself for writing a “tumultuous poem” on the church of “Pope”[[473]] Patiens at Lyons in hendecasyllabics (which he seems oddly to call “trochaic triplets” here, as looking at the end only), because he wished not to vie with the hexameters of the eminent poets Constantius and Secundinus.
There is a glance in iii. 3,[[474]] which may excite indignation in the apostles of the “Celtic Renascence,” at the nobility of |His elaborate epithet-comparison| his correspondent “dropping its Celtic slough” and “imbuing itself, now with the style of oratory, now with Camenal measures.” This was his brother-in-law Ecdicius, son of the Emperor Avitus. The epithets come now in single spies, now in battalions. In a very interesting letter (iv. 3), addressed Claudiano suo (not, of course, the poet, who was dead before Sidonius was born), he says that if the “prerogative of antiquity” does not overwhelm him he will refuse, as equals, the gravity of Fronto and the thunder of the Apuleian weight; nay, both the Varros, both the Plinys. Then, after an equally hyperbolical praise in detail, he addresses Claudian’s work as “O book, multifariously pollent! O language, not of a thin, but of a subtle mind! which neither bombasts itself out with hyperbolical effusion, nor is thinned to tameness by tapeinosis!” And later:—
“Finally, no one in my time has had such a faculty of expressing what he wished to express. When he[[475]] launches out against his adversary he claims, of right, the symbola of the characters and studies of either tongue. He feels like Pythagoras, he divides like Socrates, he explains[[476]] like Plato, he is pregnant like Aristotle; he coaxes like Æschines, and like Demosthenes is wroth; he has the Hortensian bloom of spring, and the fruitful summer[[477]] of Cethegus; he is a Curio in encouragement, and a Fabius in delay; a Crassus in simulation, and in dissimulation a Cæsar. He ‘suades’ like Cato, dissuades like Appius, persuades like Tully. Yea, if we are to bring the holy fathers into comparison, he is instructive like Jerome, destructive like Lactantius, constructive like Augustine; he soars like Hilary, and abases himself like John; reproves like Basil, consoles like Gregory; has the fluency of Orosius, and the compression of Rufinus; can relate like Eusebius, implore like Eucherius; challenges like Paulinus, and like Ambrose perseveres.”
As for hymns "your commatic is copious,[[478]] sweet, lofty, and overtops all lyrical dithyrambs in poetical pleasantness and historical |and minute criticisms of style and metre.| truth. And you have this special peculiarity, that while keeping the feet or your metres, the syllables of your feet, and the natures of your syllables, you can, in a scanty verse, include rich words within its limits, and the shortness of a restricted poem does not banish the length of a fully equipped prose phrase: so easily do you manage, with tiny trochees and tinier pyrrhics, to surpass, not merely the ternaries of the molossus and the anapæst, but even the fourfold combination of the epitrite and the pæon."
In this extravagant, but really interesting and important, passage, we may probably see the critical taste of the meeting of the fifth and sixth centuries—of the late classical and the Dark ages, at its best and most characteristic. Although the mere taste has lost the power of distinction, it retains distinguishing formulas. It has learnt, only too much by heart, certain stock ticket-epithets for distinguished writers, and it applies them fearlessly and, as far as rote goes, well. Secondly, we see that a not unimportant habit of comparison had grown up between the old Pagan and the new Christian literature. Thirdly, that Sidonius was well aware that all poets of his time by no means kept “the feet of their metres, and the syllables of their feet, and the natures of their syllables.” And fourthly, that a lively sense of metrical quality—of the effects that a poet can get out of metre—existed in him. Fortunately, this sense survived and flourished: and it had almost everything to do with the formation of the prosody of the new languages.
The promise of the twelfth epistle of the same book,[[479]] which opens with a picture of the poet-bishop’s son reading Terence (the Hecyra), while his father expounded the parallel passages in Menander’s Ἐπιτρέπων is not maintained. But the words, Gaius Tacitus unus ex majoribus tuis, opening another letter[[480]] to a certain Polemius, bring us once more close to literary matters, though only to hear that (in a characteristically Sidonian calculus) Polemius might vanquish, not only Tacitus in oratory but Ausonius (another, and perhaps more authentic, ancestor) in verse. If we had a few more details, the letter to Syagrius (v. 5) on his acquired skill in German speech[[481]] would be priceless; as it is, it is rather tantalising. But yet another list[[482]] of flattering comparative tickets is valuable because it refers in the main to lost authors. The diction of Sapaudus is tam clara tam spectabilis, that “the division of Palæmon,[[483]] the gravity of Gallio, the copiousness of Delphidius, the discipline of Agroecius, the strength of Alcimus and the tenderness of Adelphius, the rigour of Magnus and the sweetness of Victorius, are not only not superior but scarcely equal.” And then, with a sort of apology for this hyperbolical catalogue, he cites the “acrimony” of Quintilian and the “pomp” of Palladius as perhaps comparable. The sixth and seventh books are, the first wholly, the second mainly, occupied with letters to bishops, of whose interest in literature Sidonius might not be sure, or to whom he might not care to parade his own. But the eighth[[484]] opens with one of those references to the nasty critics, the envious rivals and derogators, who play the part of Demades to Demosthenes and Antony to Cicero, and of whose likes we have perhaps heard from writers later than the Bishop of Clermont. Their “malice is clear while their diction is obscure,” a play, of course, on the double meanings of clarus as “clear” and “illustrious,” and of “obscure” as still observed. And the third letter of the same has reference to an accompanying translation of the Life of Apollonius, not straight from Philostratus, but as Taxius Victorianus did it from a recension by one Nicomachus—which the author depreciates as, by reason of haste, a confused and headlong and “Opic” translation, thrown out in a rough-and-ready draft.
The eleventh[[485]] contains a much longer critical passage, of something the same character as that quoted and analysed |A deliberate critique.| above. The death of a certain Lampridius gives Sidonius an opportunity of copying one of the little things above noted, which had been composed in the lifetime of its subject, instead of an elegy, and of praising the Ciceronian, Virgilian, Horatian, and other accomplishments of that subject as usual. A prose eulogy follows—a passage among the best of its author’s for the real feeling and force of its descant on the necessitas abjecta nascendi, vivendi misera, dura moriendi, in which we hear approaching the true Mediæval tone. The praise is by no means unmixed as far as character goes; it only approaches panegyric when it comes to the literary part. In orations, it seems, the defunct was “keen, round, well composed and well struck off,”[[486]] in poems “tender, good at various metres, and a cunning craftsman.” His verses were “very exact but singularly varied both in foot and measure,” his hendecasyllables were “smooth and knotless,” his hexameters “detonating[[487]] and cothurned (fitted for the buskin)”; his elegiacs “now echoing, now recurrent, now joined at end and beginning by anadiplosis” (the “turn of words” in which the decadence bettered Ovid). In his “ethica dictio” (probably equal to “ethopoeia”) he did not use words as they came, but selected “grand, beautiful, carefully polished” ones.[[488]] In controversy he was strong and nervous, in satire careful[[489]] and biting, in tragic passions fierce or plaintive, in comic urbane and multiform, in his fescennines showing the bloom of spring (we know this Euphuism) in his words, the warmth of summer in his wishes; watchful, economical, and “carminabund”[[490]] in bucolics, and in Georgics so rustical as to have nothing clownish about him. His epigrams aimed not at abundance but point; they were not shorter than a distich or longer than a quatrain; they were not seldom peppered, often honeyed, always salt. He followed Horace in swift iambics, weighty choriambics, supple Alcaics, inspired Sapphics. In short, into whatever form of expression his mind carried him, he was subtle, apt, instructed, most eloquent, a swan like to soar, with wings only inferior to those of Horace himself and Pindar. And envious fate has left us not a note of this swan’s song![[491]]
We may close the account of the Sidonian criticism in prose with a mere reference to the curious list of symbolic gestures and features of the philosophers in ix. 9. His poems need not detain us; but reference should also be made to the verse enclosure in Epist. ix. 13, containing glosses on different metres[[492]] and poetic forms; to the exposition of “recurrent” verses in the succeeding letter, as well as, in the Carmina, to the long list, with critical remarks, of authors in ix.; to the very interesting, and to this day sound, justification of the introduction of exotic words and neologisms when necessary, in the prose preface to xiv.; and to a crowd of literary references in xxiii.
I have been somewhat copious in dwelling on the bishop-count-poet, because he is infinitely the most valuable document |Cassiodorus.| that we have as to the highwater-mark of the state of critical knowledge and opinion with which the Dark or Earlier Middle Ages started.[[493]] We have in the last book examined the chief text-book of formal grammar and Rhetoric, that of Martianus, with which they were already provided, and we need only glance at two other standards of theirs, Boethius and Cassiodorus, who come close in time to Sidonius, and probably to Martianus likewise. Cassiodorus wrote, like Capella, on the Liberal arts, though in a manner at once informal and less fantastic, and his influence in encouraging the frequenters of the mediæval scriptorium to copy ancient manuscripts deserves eternal gratitude. But I have not yet discovered in him much material for our special inquiry.
Nor is the great name of Boethius here as great as elsewhere. He wrote, indeed, on rhetorical loci, and the author of the |Boethius.| metres in the Consolatio[[494]] deserves no mean place in creative literature. But if he had taken any really keen critical interest in books, for their form as distinguished from their matter, it must have appeared in the Consolatio itself. On the contrary, as everybody knows who has ever looked at the book, it begins with Philosophy packing the Muses off as “strumpets and mermaidens” in a tone half-suggestive of Plato a little the worse for Augustine. And though the “suasion of sweetness rhetorien” is afterwards patronisingly spoken of (Book II., Prose i.), and Homer with the honey-mouth, Lucan, and others are quoted, yet Rhetoric is expressly warned that “she goeth the right way only when she forsaketh not my statutes.” Moreover, the beautiful metre Vela Neritii ducis is a merely moral, and almost merely allegorical, playing on the story of Circe.
We can, however, see from the comparison some useful things. The stock of actual erudition possessed by at any rate some persons was considerable; but the number of these persons was not very large, and both the |Critical attitude of the fifth century.| “remnant” itself[[495]] and its accomplishments were likely to decline and dwindle. The new vernaculars were already assuming importance; men were likely[[496]] to be chosen for positions of ecclesiastical eminence (almost the only ones in which study of literature was becoming possible), because of their bilingual skill, or to be driven by such positions to study of the vernacular. And this bilingualism was likely not merely to barbarise even their Latin style, but to draw them away from the study of classical Latin, and still more Greek. In regard to the latter, we see further, from two passages of Sidonius quoted above, that persons of very considerable education were apt to use translations of the Greek fathers, as well as of Pagan writings, in preference to the original. Yet again we see that even the most accomplished scholars of the time (and Sidonius himself may certainly claim that distinction) were, on the one hand, more and more acquiescing in what, to borrow Covenanting phraseology, we may call the “benumbing, deadening, and soul-destroying” list of ticket-epithets: and, on the other, were gradually losing a sense of the relative proportions of things—of the literary ratio of patristic to classical literature, and of the productions of their own day to those of the great masters, whether classical or patristic. And thirdly, we see that even so careful a metrical student as the Bishop of Clermont was succumbing to the charm of “recurrent” verses, acrostics, telestics, and all the rest of it.
On the other hand, this process of “losing grip” is very far from the state in which we find it by the time that we are in full Middle Age: and, for good as well as for evil, the glorious hotch-potch of that period is still distant. Virgil is not yet an enchanter or anything like it: he and his works are perfectly well placed in their proper literary and historical connections. If, on the side of form, there is perhaps already a rather perilous tendency to see no very great difference between Orosius and Livy, there is none to put Dares (who probably did not exist) on a level as an authority with Homer, or above him, in point of matter. And while the fables about Alexander probably did exist, men of education did not think of mixing them up with the facts.
The most favourable sign of all, however, is that metrical solicitude which has been already more than once referred to. The anxiety which Sidonius shows to suit his metres to his subject would do credit to a much better poet in a much more “enlightened” age; and it is surely not fantastic to see in his constant reference to success or failure in adjusting “syllables to feet, and feet to measures,” that the difference of the classical prosody from the newer, half-accentual quantification even in Latin, and from the vernacular rhythms sounding all over Europe, was forcing itself, consciously or unconsciously, on his mind. And it cannot be repeated too often that to construct and perfect new prosodies, in Latin and in the vernaculars alike, was perhaps the greatest critical-practical problem that the Middle Age had before it.
The sixth century has even fewer lights among its gathering gloom; in the beginning and at the end of the seventh a kind of rally of torches is made by Isidore and Bede. |The sixth—Fulgentius.| There are, however, two authors at least in the sixth who are full of significance, even if that significance be too much of a negative kind. These are the African grammarian Fulgentius, with his Expositio Virgiliana, probably in the earlier half, and the poet-priest Venantius Fortunatus, certainly in the later.
Fulgentius[[497]] holds something like a position in the history of Allegory, being not infrequently breveted with the rank of go-between, or the place of fresh starting-point, between the last development of the purely classical allegory in Claudian, and the thick-coming allegoric fancies of the early Christian homilists and commentators, which were to thicken ever and spread till the full blossoming of Allegory in the Romance of the Rose, and its busy decadence thenceforward. Unluckily, Allegory was, as we have seen, no novelty in criticism; but rather a congenital or endemic disease—and Fulgentius only marks a fresh and furious outburst of it. Virgil, a favourite everywhere in the late Roman world, was, it has been said, an especial favourite in Africa: and Fulgentius would appear to have given the reins, not exactly to the steed, but to the ass, of his fancy, in reference to the Mantuan.
The writings of the Fulgentian clan (none of which, fortunately, is long) consist of (1) three books of Mitologiæ (Mythologiæ), of (2) the Expositio Virgilianæ Continentiæ |The Fulgentii and their books.| secundum Philosophos Morales which is our principal text, and of (3) a shorter Expositio Sermonum Antiquorum, attributed to Fabius Planciades Fulgentius, who was probably of African birth, and probably lived in the early sixth century; of (4) a tractate, De Ætatibus Mundi et Hominis, attributed to Fabius Claudius Gordianus Fulgentius; and (5) of a note on the Thebaid of Statius, attributed to Fulgentius, Saint and Bishop. The personalities of these persons are to the last degree unknown; and it is very uncertain whether they were in reality one or two or three. The books we may best cite as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
4 is far better written and more sensible than the others; but it has nothing to do with our subject. 3 is a short list (sixteen pages and sixty-two articles) of notes on out-of-the-way words (abstrusi sermones), where it is curious to find among really unusual locutions—friguttire, suggrundaria, tittivilitium, and the like—such to us everyday ones as problema and auctio. 2 and 5 concern our business, equally in substance, unequally in importance and extent, and to understand them both, it is desirable to read 1 at least cursorily, although it, like them, is a tissue of appallingly barbarous Latin—enshrining allegorical interpretations as ridiculous as the most absurd in the Gesta Romanorum,[[498]] and derivations which in their sheer serious insanity surpass the most promising efforts of the clever and sportive schoolboy in the same kind. As no one, I think, who reads this book will regard me as a detractor of the Dark and Middle Ages, I may speak here without fear and without favour.
Having surveyed Mythology from the point of view of the most grovelling allegory, etymologically assisted by such fancies as that Teiresias (Teresias in his spelling) is derived |The Super Thebaiden and Expositio Virgiliana.| from theros and æon, meaning “eternal summer,” and that Ulixes Græce (it will go near to be thought shortly that Fulgentius knew less Greek than Shakespeare) is “quasi-olon xenos id est omnium peregrinus,” Fulgentius seems to have turned to literature. If he also wrote the note on the Thebaid attributed to the Sainted Bishop (and it is very much in the same style), he confined himself to a brief argument of the story, with a few etymologies, such as “Creon quasi cremens omnia,” and a short preface. In this he tells us that he “can never without grand ammiration[[499]] retract the ininvestigable prudence of the poets, and the immarcescible vein of their genius”: and having thus prepared rejoicing for the heart of the Limousin scholar nine hundred years ahead, he sets the fashion to Lyly by observing “Diligit puer nucem ad ludum integram: sapiens autem et adultus frangit ad gustum.” But this, though not insignificant, is a slight thing.
The Expositio Virgiliana or Virgiliana Continentia (this word being late Latin for “contents”) is itself not long: it fills, with apparatus criticus, some five-and-twenty pages. If it were not written in a most detestable style, combining the presence of more than the affectation and barbarism of Martianus with a complete absence of his quaintness and full-blooded savour, it would be rather agreeable to read: even as it is, it is full of interest. We catch Virgil in mid-flight through the void, from that position of universal exponent of sober literary art which we have seen him occupy with Macrobius, to his rank as beneficent enchanter a few centuries later. The Bucolics and Georgics are full of such Phisica secreta, such misticæ rationes, that they are actually dangerous to touch. He has passed over the interna viscera nullius pæne artis in these books. In the first Eclogue he has physically summed up the three lives (active, contemplative, and enjoying); in the fourth, he is a prophet; in the fifth, a priest; in the sixth, partly a musician, partly a physiologist; in the seventh, botanicen dinamin tetigit, he has touched the power of botany;[[500]] in the eighth he has pointed out magic and the apotelesmatic of the musician; combining this with euphemesis,[[501]] in the ninth.
In the first Georgic he is throughout an astrologer and then a “eufemetic”; in the second, a physiologist and medical man; in the third, wholly an aruspex; and in the fourth, is to the fullest musical. But Fulgentius will not meddle further with the details of these books; and, after a breathless and intricate prologue, attacks the Æneid in a manner easily to be conjectured from what has been said. Every word, every syllable almost, of the first line, is tortured to yield an allegory; the account being thrown into the form, first of a dialogue between poet and interpreter, and then of a long speech from the former. Achates is “Græce quasi aconetos id est tristitiæ consuetudo.” Iopas is “quasi siopas id est taciturnitas puerilis.” The progress of the story is the growth of human life. The wanderings of the first three books are the tales that amuse youth; the fourth shows how love distracts early manhood; the fifth displays it turning to generous exercises; the sixth is deep study of nature and things; the rest active life. And if anybody wishes to know why Turnus’ charioteer was called Metiscus, “Metiscos enim Græce est ebriosus.”
It cannot be necessary to say much of this, which speaks for itself; it is, as we said at first, the intellectus (or rather the want of intellect) sibi permissus and expatiating unchecked. Qui l’aime le suive!
Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus[[502]] (for a plethora of names was as characteristic of the Latin as of other decadences) is a much more interesting figure, and his |Venantius Fortunatus.| critical importance, if less direct, is not really inferior. He goes in the general literary memory with Sidonius, as the twin-light of not yet wholly barbaric Gaul; and he had probably more original poetic gift than his predecessor. At least, I can find nowhere in Sidonius anything approaching the throb and thrill of his two great and universally known hymns, Pange Lingua and Vexilla Regis—the earliest, perhaps, to attain that ineffable word-music of hymn-Latin, which is entirely independent of mere tune, mere setting, and which is not only equal to, but independent of, the choicest sound-music of either ancient or modern verse. He was also a livelier writer; and though he has made even further progress in the direction of affectation and bombast, these things rather add a piquancy, if not to his painful official praises of Queen Brunehault, at any rate to his expression of his half-pious, half-human affection for Radegund the Queen and Agnes the Abbess, his account of the sad results when the hospitable Mummolenus[[503]] would make him eat too many peaches, and his admirable description of his sail on the Moselle.
Moreover, he was certainly accomplished in all the learning of his time. He could even write very fair, if not delightful, sapphics. And he is not to be treated with the scornful contempt which some have heaped upon him, merely because he composed (with an amount of labour which makes one’s brain and eyes ache to think of) acrostics and cross-poems of various degrees of artificiality. He has one marvellous structure of the latter kind,[[504]] in which not only do the frame-letters of the scheme make sense, but correspondences, interwoven in the text trace out, also in sense, a sort of cross patée, as thus:—
Here the dots represent (though they are fewer) letters doing double duty, as part of sentences straight across, and in the lines of the figure itself. “The grace and liberty of the composition,” as some one says, may indeed be lost in such intricacies, yet are they not in themselves unliterary as a pastime.
It must, however, be most frankly confessed that the literary expressions and references which we find in Fortunatus are (in the sense in which the word has so often to be used in this part of our work) “tell-tales.”
The Preface of his Poems,[[505]] addressed to Pope Gregory, opens with a somewhat emphatic and inflated laudation of the great men of letters of old, who were, we learn, "provident in invention, serious in partition, balanced in distribution, pleasant with the heel of epilogues, fluent with the fount of bile, beautiful with succise terseness, adorned from head to foot [literally "alike crowned and buskined">[ with tropes, paradigms, periods, epicheiremes," which gives us a pretty clear idea of what seemed to Fortunatus to be literature. It contains also some touches of the “Italic”[[506]] writer’s contempt of those who “make no distinction between the shriek of the goose and the song of the swan,” who love “the harp buzzing barbarous leods.” But far fewer direct references to literature occur in these poems than in those of Sidonius. In II. ix.,[[507]] to the Parisian clergy who bade him resume his long-abandoned lyre, he takes it up purely as the hymn-writer, not the man of letters. There is more of the attitude of the latter in the prose epistle (III. iv.)[[508]] to Bishop Felix, but it does not come to very much. In the tenth of the same book,[[509]] the same bishop (who had, it seems, turned a river from its course) receives a complimentary reference to Homer, but none to Herodotus. Yet another bishop (of the undeniably Frankish name of Bertechramnus) is complimented, in the eighteenth, on his epigrams.[[510]] But Fortunatus, after much applause, does not fear (let us hope that the Frank was more placable than his brother prelate of Granada later) to add—
“Sed tamen in vestro quædam sermone notavi
Carmine de veteri furta novella loqui,
Ex quibus in paucis superedita syllaba fregit
Et pede læsa suo musica clauda gemit.”
Let us congratulate Venantius on not yielding to the heresy of the “extra-metrical syllable,” which has deceived some of the very elect in more illuminated days. Some slight glimmers are given by the flattery,[[511]] more elaborate than anything yet noticed, of still another bishop, Martin of Gallicia: and in V. iii.[[512]] we get a ticket-list of the same kind (though shorter and slighter) as those of which Sidonius is so prodigal. In this, after Athanasius has been designated fortis, Hilary clarus, Martin dives, and Ambrose gravis, he adds the distich—
“Gregorius radiat, sacer Augustinus inundat,
Basilius rutilat, Cæsariusque micat.”
The epistle to Syagrius of Autun (V. vi.)[[513]], which introduces another elaborate cross-poem, contains a vindication of it, by a twist of the Horatian tag to the effect that as painting and poetics are so like, why should you not combine them in such a fashion? After which the intricacies of the poem itself are carefully explained. The reference to “us Romans” in the poem to Sigebert (V. ii. 98)[[514]] (where he compliments the king on his skill, Sicambrian as he is, in the Latin tongue) suggests that the writer would have been scantly grateful for the inclusion of his work among “Monumenta Germaniæ.”
The genuine prose works of Fortunatus, consisting only of a few Saints’ Lives, do not promise much; but there is at least one remarkable passage in them. It is the opening of the Life of Saint Marcellus[[515]] in which his customary deprecation takes this form. “Illustrious orators of the most eloquent genius, whose speeches are distinguished by varied flowers, and shadowed by the vernal tendrils of eloquence, are wont deliberately to seek common causes and sterile matter, that they may show themselves as possessing an inexhaustible flow of speech on the smallest subjects, and as able to inundate the dryest themes with their internal founts of rhetoric. Men not so clever cannot even treat great subjects,” &c.
And this, falling in with the other glimpses we have obtained, gives no misty view of the critical standpoint of this agreeable writer. The literary nisus, the literary tone, are fairly well maintained; there is no glaring lack of positive knowledge; and neither style nor sense shows anything like the degradation of Fulgentius. But Fortunatus, far more than Sidonius, is, in the good old phrase, “to seek” in the general field of matters literary, and especially in its critical quarters. Glitter and clatter, tinsel and crackers, are in prose, if not in verse (he is far more sober there), too much his ideals. The curse of the ancient formal Rhetoric has so far outlasted its blessings, that the expression of opinion last quoted would suit, and almost exaggerate, the position of the worst of the old declamation-makers. As to prosody, he has to some extent, if not wholly, “kept the bird in his bosom,” and his affection for subtleties in arrangement is, as has been said, not so wholly to his discredit as Mr Addison and Mr Pope thought. But it is rather a dangerous support; and he has very few others.
As Fulgentius and Venantius have stood for the sixth, so Isidore and Bede[[516]] may stand for the seventh century, while Bede’s flourishing time stretches into the eighth.
Isidore’s treatment of Grammar[[517]] is much fuller than his handling of her showier sister Rhetoric.[[518]] It fills the whole of |Isidore of Seville again.| the First Book of the curious Encyclopædia called the Origines, and is much more liberally arranged than the usual grammatical treatise, including a great deal of applied matter of various kinds, visibly filching Tropes and Figures from Rhetoric herself, and, besides dealing with Prosody, even devoting sections to the Fable and to History under more than one head. There is much interesting (if not for us strictly relevant) matter in the earlier chapters, where we read that literæ are quasi legiteræ, and that Greek and Latin appear to have arisen out of Hebrew. The vitia, from barbarism and solœcism downwards, are pure Rhetoric, containing, as they do, things like tapeinosis and amphibology, with which Grammar, as such, has certainly nothing to do; and they are near the rhetorical side of Criticism herself. The Metaplasms which follow, as purely verbal, may be claimed by the elder sister, but the schemata and the tropi are unquestioned usurpations. And thereafter, with Chapter Thirty-Seven De Prosa, we are almost on our own ground.
Isidore, if not (save in his title) very original, is judicious in his selections from the public stock, and puts them together in a much more useful fashion than some authors of “composition-books” a good deal his juniors. Prose is “a straightforward form of speech freed from metre.” Metres (he has given “feet” a good deal earlier) are the fixed arrangements of feet which constitute verse. Their names are classified and accounted for, as are, subsequently, the chief forms of poetry in which they appear. The origination of these is claimed for various sacred persons—of the Hymn for David, “who was long before Ennius,” of the Epithalamium for Solomon. Not a few of the definitions, though desultory and oddly selected, are noteworthy, and the considerable space given to that of the Cento is characteristic of the age.
Fable, as has been said, has a section to itself, an honour which is prophetic of—and considering Isidore’s influence may, to some extent, have caused—the great attention paid in the Middle Ages to that kind. The History sections, though four in number, are much shorter—indeed, scarcely so long together as the single one allotted to Fable, which fact also is true, as the needle is, to the pole of the time. It is much better, Isidore thinks, that a man should only write of what he has actually seen. But History is not useless reading. Strictly, it is of our own time; “Annals” of the past; while Ephemeris is a diurnal and Kalendarium a monthly history. Finally the book ends with a contrast of historia, argumentum, and fabula. The first is of true things really done; the second of things which, though they have not been done, might be; the third of things which neither have been done nor can be, because they are contrary to nature. Here argumentum clearly looks towards oratory: with regard to the difference between historia and fabula, it must be admitted that the ages which followed very scrupulously forgot their teacher’s warning.
But even this does not exhaust our indebtedness to a very agreeable work, full of good sense and sound learning. The Sixth Book, which begins with an account of the Old and New Testament, diverges to the consideration of books generally. A note on famous libraries leads Isidore to record the chief authorities on Biblical Exegesis, from whom he passes to Latin libraries, to others (those of the Martyr Pamphilus and of Jerome), and thence to authors. Much writing attracts him first: and Varro, the Greek Chalcenterus, Origen, and St Augustine are picked out, the not entirely single-edged compliment being paid to the last, that not only could nobody write his books by working day and night, but nobody could read them completely by a similar expenditure of time and labour. An odd division of works follows, into excerpta or scholia, “homilies,” and “tomes” or books,[[519]] or volumes: and this is followed by a string of remarks, as before rather desultory, on different kinds of books and writings, commentaries, prefaces, and what not. Then Isidore passes to the material side, and discusses waxen and wooden tablets, parchment, paper, with something about format. The staff and the plant of libraries follow; and then, returning from things profane to things divine, the book finishes with an account of the Calendar and the Offices of the Church.
Those to whose taste and intellect this kind of thing appears despicable must, of course, be permitted to despise it. Others will prefer to recognise, with interest and sympathy, the combination of an extremely strong desire for knowledge, and the possession of no small quantity thereof, not merely with great disadvantages of resource and supply, but with a most curious and (if it were not so healthy and so promising) pathetic inability to distinguish, to know exactly where to plant the grip, what to discard, what simply to neglect. And they, once more, will see in this whole attitude, in this childhood crying for the light, something more encouraging than the complacent illumination of certain other ages, with which, perhaps, they may be more fully acquainted.
Bede,[[520]] a century later than Isidore, presents a changed but not a lesser interest. It is utterly improbable that the Bishop |Bede again.| of Seville found himself in face of any vernacular writing that could be called in the least literary—if any vernacular except Latin and Old Basque can be supposed to have existed in Spain at all. Bede’s circumstances were quite different. The most famous passage in his writings—the story of Cædmon—is sufficient to tell us, even if we did not know it from other testimony, and from his extant death-bed verses, that he was well acquainted with vernacular poetry.
But he seems to have thought it either unnecessary or undesirable to give any critical attention to it. His Ars Metrica[[521]], like his Orthography[[522]] and his Rhetoric,[[523]] concerns |His Ars Metrica.| itself strictly with Latin. That this was on the whole better for the time, and so indirectly for us, who are the offspring of that time; that it was better for the vernaculars to be left to grow and seed themselves, and be transformed naturally without any attempt to train and so to cramp them; that it was, on the other hand, all important that the hand of discipline should be kept on the only “regular” writing, that of Latin—we may not only admit with frankness, but most eagerly and spontaneously advance and maintain. But the carnal man cannot help sighing for a tractate—a tractatule even of the tiniest—on English verse, from the Venerable One. There are, however, in the Ars Metrica one large and several small crumbs of comfort. It is a pity that the learned and accurate Keil should have spoken so scornfully[[524]] of the undoubted truth that, while Bede supplements the precepts of the old grammarians in no whit, his whole usefulness lies in regard to the examination of more recent poets, and, as he calls them, “modern versifiers”; and should, a little further, have still more scornfully declined[[525]] to trouble himself with verifying unnamed references to such persons as Prudentius, Sedulius, Venantius Fortunatus, and others. To despise any age of literature is not literary: and to ignore it (as the motto which I have ventured to borrow from the excellent Leyser hath it in other words) is not safe. I think we may ask Herr Keil this question, “Is it not exactly of the moderni versificatores that Bede can speak to us with advantage?” Do we, except by a supererogation of curiosity, want remarks from him on Virgil and Ovid?
Bede (who addresses the tract to the same Cuthbert whom we have to thank for the charming account of his death) begins with the letter, goes on to the syllable, and then has a chapter of peculiar interest on common syllables—those stumbling-blocks to so many modern students of English prosody. The quantity of syllables in various positions is then dealt with successively, and next the metres, cæsura, elision, &c. One may note as specially interesting the section Quæ sit optima Carminis forma (p. 243), both as showing long before, in reference to the hexameter, the same “striving after the best” which appears in Dante’s extrication of the canzone and the hendecasyllable from meaner forms and lines, and as indicating something like a sense of that “verse-paragraph” which was to be the method of Shakespeare and of Milton. In dealing with these things he sometimes quotes, and still more frequently relies upon, Mallius Theodorus. But the passage which, if it existed alone, would make the book valuable (though in that case, as no doubt in many others, we should be prone to think that we had lost something more precious than it actually is), comes under the head De Rhythmo. After saying that the “Common books of a hundred metres”[[526]] will give many of these which he has omitted, he goes on thus: “But rhythm seems to be like metres, in that it is a modulated arrangement of words, governed not by metrical rule, but by the number of syllables, according to the judgment of the ear. And there can be rhythm without metre, though there can be no metre without rhythm: or, as it may be more clearly defined, metre is rhythm with modulation, rhythm modulation without proportion. But for the most part you will find, by a certain chance, proportion likewise in rhythm: not that any artificial discipline is used, but from the conduct of the sound and the modulation itself; and such as the poets of the people naturally produce in a rustic, learned poets in a learned manner.”[[527]] And then he quotes, as examples of iambic and trochaic rhythms respectively, the well-known hymns, Rex æterne Domine and Apparebit repentina.
Now this, which, though partly a result of, is quite different from, the classical opposition of rhythm and metre, is a thing of the first importance, and could not have been said by any one who had neglected the moderni versificatores: while it would perhaps not have been said so clearly and well by any one who had not known, and paid some attention to, the rising vernaculars. Even if, as Keil thinks, Bede followed such writers as Victorinus and Audax, he confirmed and strengthened this following by his study of recent verse.
I do not perceive any great crux in this passage: but Guest[[528]] was puzzled by the phrase numero syllabarum, which he seems to have taken as meaning that rhythm was more, not less, strict than metre in syllabic regularity. I am not sure that the words bear this interpretation: but, even if they did, we must remember that the rhythms of which Bede was speaking are very strict syllabically, and admit little or no equivalence. The more prudish hymn-writers even dislike elision, and give every syllable its value.
It is not from caprice or idleness that the somewhat minute examination thus given to the opening centuries of the Dark |The Central Middle Ages to be more rapidly passed over.| or early Middle Ages will now be exchanged for a more rapid flight over the central portion of the same division of history. There are two very good reasons for this course. The first is, that there is a very great absence, probably of all material, certainly of material that is accessible. The second is, that even if such material existed and could be got at, it would probably be of little if of any service. When conditions of rhythmical composition in Latin were once settled, that composition was pursued with delightful results,[[529]] but with half traditional, half instinctive, absence of critical inquiry as to form. It was impossible that any such inquiry should take place, in the case of the vernaculars, until they had reached a state of actual creative development, which none of them enjoyed till the twelfth century, and hardly any of them till the thirteenth. As for appreciation, other than traditional, of authors classical, patristic, or contemporary, this was rendered a rare thing by that very mental constitution of the Middle Ages which has already been often referred to, and which will be more fully discussed in the Interchapter following this book. This constitution, rich in many priceless qualities, almost entirely lacked self-detachment on the one hand, and egotistic introspection on the other. It can very seldom have occurred to any Mediæval to isolate himself from the usual estimate of writers—to separate his opinion of their formal excellence from the interest, or the use, of their contents. And even if it had so occurred to any one, he would probably not have thought that opinion worth communicating. From which things, much more than from the assumed shallowness or puerility, a thousand years saw an almost astoundingly small change in regard to the matters with which we deal. Boethius and Martianus are text-books to the early sixteenth century as to the early sixth: the satirical lampoons of the religious wars in France burlesque the form, and use the language, of the hymns of Venantius Fortunatus:[[530]] Hawes and Douglas look at literature and science with the eyes of Isidore, if not even of Cassiodorus. Whether this conservatism did not invite, disastrously, the reaction of the Renaissance-criticism, we shall have to consider later; it is certain that it limits, very notably, the material of the present book, and especially of this portion of the present chapter.[chapter.] On two very remarkable books of the earliest thirteenth century, the Labyrinthus attributed to Eberhard, and the Nova Poetria of Geoffrey de Vinsauf, we may dwell with the utmost advantage. Otherwise a few notes, chiefly on the formal Arts Poetic of the mid-Middle Age, are not only all that need, but almost all that can, be given before we turn to the great mediæval document of our subject, the De Vulgari Eloquio of Dante.
In the vernacular languages it is hardly necessary to do more than refer to the instructions for accomplishing the intricacies |Provençal and Latin treatises.| of Provençal verse found in that tongue;[[531]] the Latin rhythmics are rather more interesting. Until quite recently, access to them, save in the case of those students who unite palæographical accomplishment with leisure and means to travel all over Europe, was almost confined to two precious collections, the Reliquiæ Antiquæ of Wright and Halliwell, and the plump and pleasing volume of Polycarp Leyser, which, among its varied treasures, gives the entire Labyrinthus of Eberhard, the most important of them all. Now, however, the really admirable industry of Signor Giovanni Mari has collected, not merely the metrical part of the Labyrinthus, and the work (also rather famous) of John de Garlandia, but no less than six others, all of the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries.[[532]] It is indeed not impossible that the first of these, the De Rhythmico Dictamine, may in its original have been as old as the twelfth, to which the Labyrinthus itself used also to be assigned.
The Dictamen,[[533]] the MSS. of which are found all over Europe, is very short. It lays down firmly the principle, which was |The De Dictamine Rhythmico.| later to differentiate Romance from Teutonic, especially English, prosody, that rhythmus est consonans paritas syllabarum sub certo numere comprehensarum; it sets the limits of the line at a minimum of four syllables and a maximum of fourteen; it designs rhyme throughout as consonance; it gives examples from well-known hymns, from the poems attributed to Mapes and some not elsewhere known; and it supplies minute distinctions of kind as “transformed,” “equicomous,” “orbiculate,” “serpentine” rhythms. The tractatule is strictly limited to rhythm proper: classical metres do not appear in it. A rehandling by a certain “Master Sion” differs in its examples, and is rather more minute in its subdivisions: and there is yet a third version or pair of versions showing the authority and general influence of the treatise, while the Regulæ de Rhythmis hardly differ essentially, and lead to the same conclusion.
The Ars Rhythmica of John de Garlandia is a much more elaborate composition, which originally followed upon similar |John of Garlandia.| treatments of “prose” and “metre.” It is remarkable on the one hand for giving, not mere verses, but whole poems as examples, and on the other for varying the same theme in different rhythmical dispositions. The terms of ancient metric are also borrowed rather more freely than in the Dictamen; and great attention is paid to “rhetorical colours” of verse—homœoteleuton and the like. It is much longer than any form of the Dictamen, and has a supplement dealing with the strictly metrical forms usual in hymns. This does not exhibit the learned John Garland (he may have been an Englishman) as an expert in literary history, since he writes: “Saphicum, a Sapho muliere quadam quæ fuit inventrix hujus metri: adonicum ab Adone inventore.” But in his liberal contribution of probably original examples he includes an Oda de Archidiacono, which might have been useful in a famous investigation. In fact, probably a major part of the treatise consists of not very excellent verse.
Signor Mari, conformably to his plan, has given of the Labyrinthus[[534]] only the short section dealing actually with |The Labyrinthus.| rhythm: but the whole poem is of very great interest and importance for us—indeed of more than any work known to me between Isidore and Dante. The work, which is otherwise called De Miseriis Rectorum Scholarum, is an elaborate treatise on pædagogics. In the progress and details of this, the writer seems to forget the lugubrious estimate of his profession with which he starts, and which goes so far as to lay down that the future schoolmaster is cursed in his mother’s womb. Very sound rules are however given for guiding the moral nature and conduct of this unfortunate functionary; and then his various businesses are systematically attacked in elegiacs, not at all contemptible with due allowance. The second part deals with “themes,” grammar, and, to some extent, composition in general, though the examples, like the lecture, are in verse; the third with versification. And here we get a really precious estimate of various authors, ostensibly for their educational value, but, as in Quintilian’s case, going a good deal further. Indeed, hardly since Quintilian’s own time have we had such a critical summary. Cato, a special darling of the Middle Age, is “a path of virtue and a rule of Morals,” |Critical review of poets contained in it.| “though the brevity of his metre forbids him to polish his words.” Theodolus,[[535]] a tenth-century writer of Eclogæ, who “champions” (is this the sense of arcet?) the cause of truth against falsehood, “and in whose verse theology plays,” comes next; and then the far better known Avianus, the instructive and moral virtue of whose fables is acknowledged, though he is debited pauperiore stylo. In one of the puns so dear to the sensible Middle Ages, Æsopus metrum non sopit—i.e., writes no dull or sleepy verse—and is otherwise highly praised. Maximianus[[536]] and Pamphilus (the original of the Celestina) follow, and “Geta,”[[537]] and a punning reference[[538]] to Claudian’s Rape of Proserpine. Statius, of course, is praised, indeed twice over. The “pleasing” work of Ovid, the “satire of the Venusian,” the “not juvenile but mature” ditto of Juvenal, which “lays bare and never cloaks vice”; Persius of the lofty soul, who spares no subtlety of mind though he is a lover of brevity, come next, while to these great satirists of old, the Architrenius[[539]] of John of Hauteville is yoked, with less injustice than may seem likely to devotees of classic and scorners of mediæval literature. The inevitable eccentricity (to us) of the mediæval estimate, and probably also the perseverance of the wooden censorship of Servius, is shown by the fact that only Virgil’s “themes,” not his treatment, are noticed, except obliquely. The second notice of Statius for the Thebaid, as the first had been for the Achilleid, is less reticent, praising him as eloquii jucundus melle; and Lucan is said to sing metro lucidiore, while an Alexandreid (no doubt that of Gautier of Châtillon), though described as “shining by Lucan’s light,” is extolled as a historical poem. Claudian, again by allusion, receives praise for his praise of Stilicho, and Dares (as we expect with resignation) for his “veracity”; indeed the clerestories toward that south-north are quite as lustrous as ebony. Still Homer is placed beside him without depreciation, unless the mention of Argolicum dolum is intended as a stigma. The couplet following—
“Sidonii regis qui pingit prælia morem
Egregium calamus Sidonianus habet”—
is annotated by Leyser “Apollonius,” but there seems some difficulty in this Apollonius. Rhodius has nothing to do with Tyre or Sidon; and Apollonius of Tyre has very little to do with prælia. The poet alluded to, whoever he is, possesses a pen with a noble manner. A Salimarius or Solinarius, who sang of the crusades, may be any versifier of William of Tyre: unless, indeed, the phrase plenus amore crucis refers to one of the numerous poems on the Invention of the Cross. Macer’s matter is praised, but not his verse, non sapit ille metro—a true Quintilianian judgment. Petrus Riga (petra cujus rigat Cristus) escapes better. Sedulius is noted for “sedulity” of metre, and Arator “ploughs” the apostolic facts well, while Prudentius, of course, is prudent.
Alanus (de Insulis: “Alanus who was very sage,” as Pierre de la Sippade, the translator of Paris and Vienne from Provençal into French says) is cited for his dealing with the Seven Arts in the Anti-Claudianus; and half-a-dozen lines of rather obscure allusiveness are devoted to Matthias Vindocinensis on Tobit, Geoffrey of Vinsauf (v. infra), and Alexander of Villedieu. Prosper doctrinæ prosperitate sapit; and the list is closed by fresh praises of the above Matthias or Matthew, of Martianus Capella and his “happy style,” of Boethius, Bernardus, the Physiologus, Paraclitus (?), and Sidonius Apollinaris.[[540]]
This catalogue, partly reasoned, is precious, as showing what the “Thirty best books” of the age of Dante’s birth were. It is succeeded by metrical and rhythmical directions, characterised by a good deal of punning as above, but also by acuteness and knowledge.
The extract from the Labyrinthus given by Signor Mari is followed in his book by two other rhythmical tractates of |Minor rhythmical tractates.| small importance, one very short, from a MS. in the Monaco library, and a longer one, but much later (it is probably as late as 1400), by a certain Nicolo Tibino. This last is chiefly noteworthy as giving fewer examples, but much exposition and discussion: it is indeed, after the custom of these ancestors, a kind of commentary on the Labyrinthus.
But, as it happens, the next piece to the Labyrinthus in Leyser is a treatise of interest as great as its own, if not greater, the Poetria Nova of Geoffrey de Vinsauf. Geoffrey, who, despite his French-sounding name, was certainly a |Geoffrey de Vinsauf: his Nova Poetria.| countryman of ours, has been rather unkindly treated by us. Chaucer bestowed upon him one of his most ingeniously humorous gibes,[[541]] and Mr Wright (the most faithful and enthusiastic guardian and restorer of our Latin poets, and usually as tolerant as any, this side of mere critical omnivorousness) uses hard language of him in the Biographia Britannica Literaria.[[542]] But he is too valuable to us to be here abused: rather shall we be grateful to him exceedingly for revealing the literary tastes and ideals of the age as they lived. The New Poetic[[543]] begins by one of those mediæval gambades which, themselves sometimes partaking of the not unamiably nonsensical, seem at the present day to have a special gift of maddening those persons whose imbecility is of a different complexion from theirs. Geoffrey dedicates his poem to Pope Innocent III. (“stupor mundi”), and is at once in a difficulty. It would not do to call the Pope Nocens; Innocens is simply impossible in a hexameter. So he plays about the subject for a score or so of lines, adding eulogistic jocular remarks on other Christian names, especially in relation to the Papacy. “Augustine may hold his tongue: Leo be quiet: John leave off: Gregory halt,”[[544]] while Innocent is comparable with Bartlemy in nobility, with Andrew in mildness, with St John himself in precious youth, in faith with Peter, in consummate scholarship with Paul. Then Rome is praised in comparison with England, and the poet-professor-of-poetry plunges into his subject.
His value, even if it were more flawed and alloyed than it is, will appear at once from the simple statement of the fact that, unlike the great majority of mediæval writers (such as they are) on literature, he does not confine himself to form on the one hand, and on the other does not adopt, in handling his subject, the extreme cut-and-dried rhetorical restrictions, though his own conception of the matter is more or less regulated by them. I do not remember that he ever quotes Horace; but it is pretty certain that he had the Ars Poetica before him. He opens with the most solemn and elaborate commands to the poet not to rush upon his subject, to leave nothing to chance, but to form the conception of the work carefully and completely beforehand. “A little gall embitters a whole mass of honey, and one spot makes a whole face ugly.” In his second chapter he becomes more closely rhetorical. The poet must first choose and arrange his subject; then elaborate and amplify it; then clothe it in “civil, not rustic” words; and lastly, study its proper recitation or delivery. Under the first head the mot d’ordre is order: the very word ordo occurs over and over again in the first dozen or sixteen lines. The exordium must look straight to the end: and all the other parts must follow according to the regular drill of a “theme.” Special attention is given to the employment of Examples and Proverbs. Under the head of treatment, Brevity, Amplification, and all the scholastic tricks of style are inculcated again with plentiful examples, these including that unlucky passage against Friday which tempted the wicked wit of another Geoffrey. It is, however, fair to say that He of the Sound Wine does not himself seem to have been by any means destitute of a certain sense of humour, and demands ridicule of the ridiculous. If by his precept, and still more by his examples, Geoffrey seems too much to encourage word-play as a lighter, and bombast as a graver, ornament of composition, it is well to remember that the fashions of every time are not only liable to exaggeration, but nearly always exhibit it. Professional students of literature have no difficulty in putting a name to such exaggerations in the thirteenth, the sixteenth, or the eighteenth century; nor will such students in the future have any more in performing the same office for the literary fashions of the late nineteenth. Nor are some of the prescriptions for figure, and fanciful colour and conceit, by any means infelicitous—always supposing that such things can be made the subject of regular prescription at all. On the other hand, it must be admitted that Geoffrey is sometimes painfully rudimentary. The budding poet who requires to be told that
“Aptantur bene dentes nix; labra flammæ;
Gustus mel; vultus rosa; frons lac; crines et aurum;”
and who then obediently “goes and does it,” is a person with whose works reviewers (for their sins) are indeed still well acquainted, but to whom no philanthropist would willingly give encouragement.
This descent to even the lowest ranges of the particular is, however, one of the most interesting points of the book. There are some two thousand lines in all, and the whole, except the dedication and three not very long epilogue-addresses to Pope, Emperor, and a certain Archbishop William (who has not, I think, been identified), is strictly devoted to business.
This poem is, on fair authority, assigned to the year 1216, the Labyrinthus being dated some four years earlier. And, without pinning our faith to these dates and so running the danger of its unsettlement should they be attacked, we may say quite boldly that the Labyrinthus and the Nova Poetria[[545]] together give us a remarkable and nearly complete conspectus of what the late twelfth and early thirteenth century thought about literature, in what was still its almost all-embracing form—poetry, in both its rhythmical and metrical shapes—and in the only thoroughly acknowledged literary language of the time. For although the vernaculars were already knocking at the door, they were doing so as yet timidly and half consciously, while in so far as they were deliberately practised, the principles of composition and of taste which guided the practice cannot have been different. We find, if not always with exactly the same nuance, terms of Dante’s critical vocabulary (e.g., “pexa”) in the Poetria Nova. And though neither Eberhard nor Geoffrey would in all probability have had anything but scorn for the suggestion that “vulgar” could possibly equal “regular” composition; though they were at best men of respectable talent; their general critical estimate was probably not very different from that of their great successor on the bridge of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Of his eagle glance into the future of literature they were entirely destitute, but he shared at least some of their confused vision in reference to the past.[[546]]
[457]. As at the beginning of Bk. ii. I had less obligation to acknowledge than at that of Bk. i., so here also the diminution continues. On the general subject it approaches zero. Théry himself is more sketchy than himself here; and has practically nothing in detail to say of any one save Raymond Lully, who does not supply us with anything, though he brought Rhetoric, like other sciences, into his philosophic scheme. Even in regard to individuals, it is only on Dante that I know of much precedent treatment, and for that v. infra.
[458]. Ed. Capperonnier, pp. 318-328; pp. 375-409. Ed. Halm, i. 137-151; ii. 505-550, 607-618. The Rhetoric (forming part of his Institutiones) of Cassiodorus is also in both collections. It has been glanced at, supra (pp. [346], [349]), and will be noticed again, infra (p. [390]).
[460]. But see below (p. [400]) for other contributions of Isidore to our subject.
[461]. Licet flammivomo tuæ sapientiæ lumini scintilla ingenioli mei nil addere possit. This was the kind of style wherewith the Dark Ages liked to lighten their darkness.
[462]. This very agreeable Latin verse debate on the merits of knights and clerks as lovers, which had so long a popularity that it was paraphrased by Chapman on the eve of the seventeenth century, dates originally, it would seem, from the twelfth. It may be found in Wright’s Poems of Walter Mapes, p. 258 (London, 1841), or in Carmina Burana, p. 155 (3rd ed., Breslau, 1894).
[463]. The editions of the Confessions, Latin and English, are so numerous that I refer to none in particular, but quote book and chapter throughout.
[464]. For poor little Roman boys had no prose Defoes or Marryats.
[465]. Virgil was of course popular everywhere. But, as we have seen, he was specially popular in Roman Africa, because of the local patriotism (the strongest sentiment of ancient times) which laid hold of the story of the hapless Queen of Carthage. I have sometimes thought that much of the origin of Romance may be traced to this. For Africa, till the Mahometan Deluge, was the most literary quarter of the late Roman world.
[466]. Peacock, in Gryll Grange. The utterance is of course dramatic, not direct, but the character in whose mouth it is put obviously expresses the author’s sentiments.
[467]. Ed. Paulus Mohr, Leipsic, 1895.
[468]. Quem in stilo epistulari nec Julius Titianus sub nominibus illustrium feminarum dignum similitudine expressit. Ep. i. 1, p. 1, ed. cit.
[469]. Ep. ii. 9, p. 42.
[470]. In a note to his account (ch. xxxvi.) of the Emperor Avitus, the father-in-law of our poet and epistoler.
[471]. P. 44 sq.
[472]. Vel paucissimi.
[473]. Sidonius of course uses papa for “bishop” generally.
[475]. “He” appears to be better than “it,” as partly a personification of the book, partly a polite deflection of the flattery from the author.
[476]. Or perhaps “expatiates” is better for “explicat” as a contrast to implicat for Aristotle.
[477]. Vernat ... æstivat, a favourite antithesis of conceit with Sidonius. An alternative equivalent for it would be, of course, the freshness of spring and the glow of summer. Nor does this exhaust the suggested pairs.
[478]. Commaticus. This word, originally employed of the alternate threnos of personage and chorus in Tragedy, passed, in rhetorical use, to the signification of “short-cut” clauses of prose, and later received a special application to poems (especially hymns) in very short lines.
[479]. P. 87.
[480]. P. 89.
[481]. Immane narratu est quantum stupeam sermonis te Germanici notitiam tanta facilitate rapuisse, pp. 108, [109].
[482]. Ep. x. p. 114.
[483]. No doubt Q. Remmius Palæmon, a very famous, very arrogant, and very immoral grammarian and schoolmaster, who flourished from Tiberius to Claudius, taught Quintilian, and is mentioned by Juvenal (vi. 451, vii. 215-219).
[484]. P. 172.
[485]. P. 188 sq.
[486]. Acer, rotundus, compositus, excussus. I am never quite certain whether these Sidonian collocations (see above, p. [385 note]) ought not to be taken in pairs as antithetic double epithets, “round in the keenness, and well struck off in its composition.”
[487]. Crepantes.
[488]. Here does Sidonius (though all unknowing, in the one case certainly, in the other all but certainly) repeat Longinus and anticipate Dante—a cry of the child in the night.
[489]. Sollicitus, perhaps “actively harassing” his enemy.
[490]. This is a word so delightful in itself that I have no heart to attempt translation. “Carolling,” I suppose, would come nearest.
[491]. The passage contains many curious details about this not wholly Admirable Crichton, who was at last strangled by his slaves. The description of the dead body and its silent testimony to the crime—protinus argumento fuere livida cutis, oculi protuberantes, et in obruto vultu non minora iræ vestigia quam doloris—is vivid, and does not compare too badly even with the great picture of Glouceester’s corpse in Henry VI.
[493]. Indeed, such a passage as the elaborate criticism of the literary work of Lampridius, however exaggerated and out of focus, is of quite priceless value to us. It is the kind of thing of which we have only too little from classical antiquity, and if it were not for the Halicarnassian and Longinus, should have quite wofully little. It is the kind of thing of which we have as nearly as possible nothing from the Middle Ages, and hardly anything, of equal directness to the individual, from the Renaissance; while, though it has been plentiful enough for the last two hundred and fifty years, and especially for the last hundred, the very abundance of it diminishes the individual significance of the expressions.
[494]. I use the agreeable Variorum edition, Leyden, 1671. No apology, I think, is needed in this instance for not making my own translations, but partly conveying Chaucer’s.
[495]. V. supra, p. [384], and [note].
[496]. As in the well-known cases, somewhat later, of St Faron and of Mummolenus.
[497]. Fabius Planciades Fulgentius (to describe whom in appropriate epithet would require the pen and ink of Ritson, though his recent editor says that the injucundum opus, as Reifferscheid had called it, had become to him jucundissimum in performance) used to be buried in the Mythographi Latini. The benevolence of Herr Teubner has however made him accessible separately, or rather with a dim little brace of satellite Fulgentii (ed. Helm, Leipsic, 1898).
[498]. Some of the morals of the Gesta are of course not in the least ridiculous: but others “bear the bell” in that respect.
[499]. The forms ammiratio, nimfa, &c. are interesting as showing Latin in its transformation to Romance.
[500]. It is very agreeable to see how the poor copyist of one MS., utterly nonplussed by the learning of Fulgentius, has excogitated the blessed words “totakicendi namin.”
[501]. This, disentangled from various voces nihili in the MS., is probably used in one of the senses which εὐφημία more properly bears in classical Greek, “liturgical writing,” “prayer and praise.”
[502]. Ed. in two parts—the prose by F. Leo and the verse by B. Krusch—among the Monumenta Germaniæ Historica (Berlin, 1881-85).
[503]. Not the Bishop afterwards famous as first known to preach in French.
[504]. Part i. p. 30. Another design of only minor intricacy, but not fully filled in, appears a little later.
[505]. Part i. p. 1.
[506]. Fortunatus seems to have been carefully styled Presbyter Italicus. Cf. “Romanos” below. He was born at, or near, Treviso.
[507]. P. 37.
[508]. P. 52.
[509]. P. 62.
[510]. P. 72.
[511]. In the prose overture of Bk. V., p. 101 sq.
[512]. Ll. 37-40 (p. 107).
[516]. Aldhelm, between the two, wrote on metre, and is a considerable and characteristic writer for his time, but needs no detailed treatment here.
[517]. The Origines or Etymologiæ, as a whole, form vol. iii. of Lindemann’s Corpus Grammaticorum (Leipsic, 1833), but this can usually be obtained separate, and is worth having. It, of course, repeats the Rhetoric, which is merely one section of it.
[518]. See above, p. 374 sq.
[519]. Perhaps this is not so odd as it looks. Excerpta or scholia are, individually, scraps; “homilies,” or essays, are only parts of a book: tomi are books substantive.
[520]. Bede’s treatises on Metric and Orthography, besides being accessible in the various collected editions of his works, are to be found in vol. vii. part ii. of Keil’s Grammatici Latini (Leipsic, 1878).
[521]. Ed. cit. (with Introd.), pp. 219-260.
[522]. Ibid., pp. 261-294.
[523]. See p. 374.
[524]. Ed. cit., p. 221.
[525]. Ut longum et molestum erat, ita in hoc genere scriptorum parum utile esse videbatur.
[526]. Libris centimetrorum simplicibus examinata. “Centimeter” is “the poet who employs a hundred metres,” or the critic who discusses them. Sidonius (Carm. ix. 264), in a passage referred to above (p. 389), applies it to Terentianus Maurus, who certainly deserves it both in theory and practice (v. his book, ed. Lachmann, Berlin, 1836).
[527]. Vulgares poetæ.
[528]. History of English Rhythms, Bk. iii. chap. vi. (p. 472, ed. Skeat). He also speaks of “discrepancies” in the different copies: but Keil’s apparatus gives no important variants in the MSS.
[529]. For the understanding reader there is perhaps no subdivision of literature more constantly delectable and refreshing than the Latin hymns of the sixth-thirteenth centuries on the one hand, and on the other the lighter work contained in such collections as the Carmina Burana, Edélestand du Méril’s three issues of Poésies Populaires Latines, Wright’s Poems of Walter Mapes, &c.
[530]. Cf. the ferocious, but vigorous, lampoon on Catherine of Montpensier and Jacques Clément, entitled Prosa Cleri Parisiensis ad ducem de Mena (Anciennes Poésies Françaises, vol. ii. Bibl. Elzévirienne: Paris, 1855).
[531]. V. Bartsch, Grundriss zur Gesch. der Prov. Lit., p. 65 sq., on Faidit’s Donat, Ramon Vidal’s Rasos de Trobar, &c.
[532]. Reliquiæ Antiquæ, by T. Wright & J. O. Halliwell, 2 vols., London, 1845.
P. Leyser, Historia Poetarum et Poematum Medii Ævi, Halle, 1721.
G. Mari, I Trattate Medievali di Ritmica Latina, Milan, 1899.
[533]. First given in Reliquiæ Antiquæ, i. 30-32. The others (except the Labyrinthus) are in Mari only.
[534]. Or Laborintus. The adoption of an “Eberhard of Bethune” as the author is not universally granted, nor the dating at 1212. But the exact authorship is not of the slightest importance to us, and the exact date not of much. The whole poem is printed by Leyser, p. 795 sq.
[535]. Or Theodulus: v. Leyser, op. cit., p. 825 sq.
[536]. This barbarous, and to Mrs Grundy shocking, but by no means uninteresting versifier, was a great favourite with the Middle Ages. He may be found conveniently in Baehrens, Poetæ Latini Minores, v. 313 sq.
[537]. Leyser oddly annotated Geta gemens “titulus tragediæ,” but the words—
“Quia captus Mercuriali
Arte Jovem lectus Amphitrionis habet”—
can only refer to an Amphitryon.
“Thesiphones raptum qui comptus carmine claudit
Arte nec ingenio claudicat ille suo.”
To abduct Tisiphone would be a feather in the cap of any Don Juan, for audacity if not for taste; but the text is corrupt enough to make it (as it is elsewhere) an easy f.l. for Persephone. The puns in claudit and claudicat, moreover, are practically decisive.
[539]. This remarkable twelfth-century poem—v. infra, [note], p. 414, an allegorical world-pilgrimage with special reference to student sojourn at Paris—was first abstracted by Wright in his Biographia Britannica Literaria, vol. ii., London, 1846, and afterwards published in full by him (Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets of the Twelfth Century, London, 1872). John of Hauteville or Anville is also credited with a MS. treatise, De Epistolarum Compositione. I wish I had seen it.
[540]. Physiologus is of course the famous piece of Thetbaldus, the original—mediate or immediate—of all the vernacular Bestiaries. “Paraclitus” Leyser prints in capitals, like the other titles of books or authors:—
“Hortatur propria per scripta Paraclitus omnes
Peccantes. Veniam gratia donat iis.”
I should myself have taken this for a reference to the Holy Spirit as speaking through the moralities of the Physiologus. The false quantity is, of course, no objection to this: the 3rd syllable is short at pleasure from Prudentius onwards. For poems of Matthias Vindocinensis see Reliquiæ Antiquæ, ii. 257 sq. There is some merit in them.
[541]. Nun’s Priest’s Tale, 527 sq.
[542]. Anglo-Norman Period, vol. ii. p. 398 sq.
[543]. Leyser, op. cit., pp. 855-986.
“Augustine tace. Leo papa quiesce. Johannes
Desine. Gregori subsiste.”
[545]. Three other poems of the twelfth or early thirteenth century (referred to above) are more original, two of them at least are more amusing, and all have obtained more notice from general literary historians. These are the Speculum Stultorum or Brunellus of Nigel Wireker, the Architrenius (see p. 410) of John of Hauteville, and the Anti-Claudianus of Alanus de Insulis. All three may be found most conveniently in Wright’s above-cited work, Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets of the Twelfth Century (2 vols., Rolls Series, London, 1872). They are by no means to be neglected by us, though their testimony is mostly negative, and a slight reference to its nature will cover, indirectly, the absence of reference in the text to such still more generally famous authors as John of Salisbury and Walter Mapes himself. It is probable that all five writers, as well as Godfrey of Winchester (also in Wright, op. cit.), who could write fair epigrams in the more decent style of Martial, and others, were well acquainted with no inconsiderable part of the classics. Upon satirists, moreover, like Wireker and John of Hauteville, who were attacking the vanity of monkish and clerical life, hopes, and ambitions, the labour-in-vain of Universities, and the like, some such indirect but substantive literary criticism as we find in their Roman originals would seem almost imperative. But there is nothing of the kind, either in the Speculum or in the Architrenius. In the much duller Anti-Claudianus, Rhetoric, like the other arts, appears, and she is employed, consistently with her presentation in Martianus (though the Rhetoric of Capella would perhaps have been too proud to do this directly) to “paint and gild the pole” of the allegorical Chariot of Prudence. But of criticism there is nothing, or so little as to be nothing. Nor will much be found in the interesting notice of mediæval notices of books and book collections which occurs in M. Cocheris’ ed. of the Philobiblon (v. infra, p. [455]), pp. xxxiv-xlvii.
[546]. If to this peculiarity I seem to refer too often, let me close this chapter with a sentence from one who loved the Middle Ages as well as any man, and knew them far better than almost any. To them, says M. Paulin Paris, “Les siècles passés ne semblaient former qu’une seule et grande époque, où se réunissaient toutes les célébrités de l’histoire.”—Les Romans de la Table Ronde, i. 169 (Paris: 1868-77).
CHAPTER II.
DANTE.
THE ‘DE VULGARI ELOQUIO’: ITS HISTORY AND AUTHENTICATION—ITS IMPORTANCE, AND THE SCANTY RECOGNITION THEREOF—ABSTRACT OF ITS CONTENTS: THE “VULGAR TONGUE” AND “GRAMMAR”—THE NATURE, ETC., OF THE GIFT OF SPEECH—DIVISION OF CONTEMPORARY TONGUES, AND OF THE SUBDIVISIONS OF ROMANCE—THE ‘ITALIAN DIALECTS’: SOME REJECTED AT ONCE—OTHERS: SICILIAN, APULIAN, TUSCAN, AND GENOESE—VENETIAN: SOME GOOD IN BOLOGNESE—THE “ILLUSTRIOUS” LANGUAGE NONE OF THESE, BUT THEIR COMMON MEASURE—ITS FOUR CHARACTERISTICS—THE SECOND BOOK: WHY DANTE DEALS WITH POETRY ONLY—ALL GOOD POETRY SHOULD BE IN THE “ILLUSTRIOUS”—THE SUBJECTS OF HIGH POETRY: WAR, LOVE, VIRTUE—ITS FORM: CANZONI—DEFINITION OF POETRY—ITS STYLES, AND THE CONSTITUENTS OF THE GRAND STYLE—“SUPERBIA CARMINUM”—“CONSTRUCTIONIS ELATIO”—“EXCELLENTIA VERBORUM”—“PEXA ET HIRSUTA”—THE CANZONE—IMPORTANCE OF THIS BOOK—INDEPENDENCE AND NOVELTY OF ITS METHOD—DANTE’S ATTENTION TO FORM—HIS DISREGARD OF ORATORY—THE INFLUENCE ON HIM OF ROMANCE, AND OF COMPARATIVE CRITICISM—THE POETICAL DIFFERENTIA ACCORDING TO HIM—HIS ANTIDOTE TO THE WORDSWORTHIAN HERESY—HIS HANDLING OF METRE—OF DICTION—HIS STANDARDS OF STYLE—THE “CHAPTER OF THE SIEVE”—THE “PEXA”—THE “HIRSUTA”—OTHER CRITICAL “LOCI” IN DANTE: THE EPISTLE TO CAN GRANDE—THE “CONVITO”—DANTE ON TRANSLATION—ON LANGUAGE AS SHOWN IN PROSE AND VERSE—FINAL REMARKS ON HIS CRITICISM.
Many are the fortunes of books and the curiosities of them: but there are few which exceed, in curiosity of many kinds, the history, character, and fate of the treatise variously entitled De Vulgari Eloquentia and De Vulgari Eloquio, and attributed generally, if not universally, to Dante Alighieri.[[547]] Its mere history is unusual. In the fifth chapter of the first book of |The De Vulgari Eloquio. Its history and authentication.| the Convito, Dante says that he shall speak elsewhere more fully, on the subject of Latin and the Vernacular, in a book which, D.V., he intends to write on Volgare Eloquenza. Boccaccio further says that very near his death he did write it, and the statement is confirmed by Villani. These mentions give it us as written in Latin prose and in two books, but after them we hear nothing about it. In 1529 the poet and dramatist Trissino printed at Vicenza an Italian translation of it, not under his own name, but under that of Giovan Battista Doria. No indication was given that this was not the original, and for a time it was taken as such. But in 1577 Jacopo Corbinelli published, at Paris, the Latin Text. The MS. which he used, and which for centuries was supposed to be unique, appears to be that rediscovered at Grenoble in 1840, and published in facsimile by MM. Maignien and Prompt in 1892; but there are two other early MSS. One of these, belonging to the Trivulzi, is taken to be as old, perhaps, as the Grenoble, both not improbably being older than 1400. A third, at the Vatican, is a century younger, but still some twenty years older than the first printed (and translated) edition. The usual difficulties have been started over these facts, and over some supposed contradictions between the treatise and Dante’s more certain work. But these concern us little, and may be sought, by those who want them, in the editions of the book. It is sufficient to say that few books have a better external testimony, and that the internal difficulties (some of which will be referred to later) are quite insignificant.
We may take it then on its own showing; and, without haggling about dates, be reasonably confident that it was written |Its importance.| after Dante’s banishment, and of course before his death—that is to say, in the opening years of the fourteenth century. Forgery is practically out of the question, for, as has been said, the oldest manuscripts are some century and a quarter older than Trissino’s version, and there could be no conceivable reason why any one late in the fourteenth century—even if he had the wits to forge such a thing, which is begging a huge question—should have abstained from reaping the sole advantage derivable from such a forgery by making it known as Dante’s. We take it, then—and may take it with confidence very nearly if not completely absolute—as in two different ways a document of the very highest value, even before its intrinsic worth is considered at all. In the first place, there is the importance of date, which gives us in it the first critical treatise on the literary use of the vernacular, at exactly the point when the various vernaculars of Europe had finished, more or less, their first stage. Secondly, there is the importance of authorship, in that we have, as is hardly anywhere else the case, the greatest creative writer, not merely of one literature but of a whole period of the European world, betaking himself to criticism. If Shakespeare had written the Discoveries instead of Ben Jonson, the only possible analogue would have been supplied. Even Homer could not have given us a third, for he could hardly have had the literature to work upon.
As a matter of fact, however, the book, as I shall hope to show, would be of almost the highest interest if it were anonymous. |And the scanty recognition thereof.| Its intrinsic value has been by no means universally recognised: indeed I hardly know any editor or critic of Dante who has put it in quite its right place. This is, I venture in all humility to think, due mainly to the fact that the historic estimate of criticism in general has hitherto been so rarely taken, and so scantily based. But there are minor reasons. In the first place, the book, except by professed Dantists, has been very little studied.[[548]] And in the second, what I shall endeavour to prove to be its greatest value may, in the curious critical prejudices which still prevail so largely, have told positively against it. It has shocked people to find the author of the Commedia indulging in grammatical and prosodic scholasticism; and the shocked ones either do not pause to ask, or refuse to answer, the question whether the said scholasticism had not a good deal to do with the quality of the Commedia.
As in the case of other books of importance, we may give a pretty full abstract of the book, which will be all the more desirable in that it is, as has been said, far from well known. The Latin, though not very crabbed, is sometimes peculiar, and some of the terms require careful elucidation.
Dante begins by stating in due form his reasons for writing; the absence of any treatise of the kind, the importance of the |Abstract of its contents: The “Vulgar Tongue” and “Grammar.”| subject, and so forth. He is going to write about the Vulgar Tongue, and this Vulgar Tongue is that which we acquire, without any rule, by imitating our nurses. But, he says, we also have another and secondary speech, which the Romans called Grammar. The Greeks also have it, and other nations, but not all, while comparatively few individuals possess it, because its acquisition means time and trouble. And the Vulgar Tongue is nobler, because it is more natural: so we shall treat of it.
Here a slight crux arises as to what Dante meant by “Grammar”: at least (for the first part of his observations is clear enough) what he meant by saying that “the Greeks have it, and others but not all.”[[549]] Are Grammatica and “Latin” interchangeable terms? or does he mean that there was a literary as well as a vernacular form of Greek, and literary as well as vernacular forms of Hebrew, Arabic, &c.? The latter seems to suit the argument best up to a certain point; but it is exposed to the difficulty that, if so, Dante would be trying to make, out of the Vulgars, a Grammatica for Italian, which nowhere seems to have been his intention. But it is no great matter.
He has so far cleared his ground very well; but, to his own orderly and scholastically educated mind, he does not seem to |The nature, &c., of the gift of speech.| have done enough. He lays down in chap. ii. that man alone has intercourse by speech. Angels and animals do not want it, for angels communicate intuitively; devils have no need of it;[[550]] to animals[[551]] it were useless: and if anybody urges the serpent in Paradise, Balaam’s ass, Ovid in the Metamorphoses about magpies, these objections can be met in various ways. The real power of speech has been given to man alone. He needed it (chap. iii.) because he has both reason and senses, and therefore must have some medium which will convey the discourse of the former in a manner acceptable to the latter. It is probable (chap. v.) that man spoke before woman, though the earliest recorded speech is assigned to Eve: for man is more excellent. And it is probable that the first word he spoke was “El,” “God,” and was addressed to God Himself in Paradise. No doubt (vi.) the language was Hebrew. Foolish people may be driven (had Dante heard of the Gaelic claim?) to believe that their own vernacular was that of Adam. But he knows better. Though he drank of Arno before his teeth appeared, and loves Florence so dearly that for the love he bore her is he wrongfully suffering exile—though for the pleasure of his own senses there exists no pleasanter place than Florence, yet he thinks that there are places in the world nobler and more delightful than Tuscany and Florence, and that many nations and races may use a pleasanter and handier speech. The consideration of the Flood, Babel, and the consequent division of speech (chap, vii.) saddens him very much; but the facts are indisputable.
It is probable that these chapters, coming as they do at the very outset, have, with hasty readers and thinkers, brought some discredit on the book. They exhibit what it used to be, and still is to some extent, the fashion to call the childish side of mediævalism and scholasticism. Every age no doubt has its own childishnesses, and is profoundly convinced that in holding them it has thoroughly put away childish things. I do not myself know that, if it were possible to take a simultaneous horizontal view of the ages, the nineteenth century would be found so very much in advance of the thirteenth in this respect. But putting this aside as matter of separable controversy, we may observe that, in the main body of his argument, Dante is merely arguing, and arguing very sensibly and closely, from premisses which no one educated man in a thousand of his contemporaries would have disputed, and that at the beginning and end there are very notable things. The notable thing at the beginning is the separation of “Grammar” and the “Vulgar Tongue,” and the, at that time, exceedingly bold ascription of greater “nobility” to the latter.[[552]] The notable thing at the end is the unexpectedly cosmopolitan character of Dante’s sentiments about the excellence of various countries and their vernaculars. It is true that, for good as well as for evil, there was about Europe then a certain solidarity which has entirely disappeared; but local, as distinct from national, patriotism was as strong, and occasionally as silly, as at any other time. Dante’s own attitude puts us at once into a position for literary criticism which neither Greek nor Roman had enjoyed—the Greek losing it by his arrogant assumption of a solitary literary position for his own tongue, and the Roman partly by his imitation of Greek, partly by the lurking desire to make out that Latin was not so very inferior after all.
At any rate, in the chapter (viii.) which follows, there is no deficiency in what we are pleased to call the scientific spirit; |Division of contemporary tongues.| on the contrary, any one who knows the historical circumstances of the time can only be amazed at the precision, the general justice, and, on the whole, the particular exactness with which Dante, in full Middle Age, surveys the languages of Europe. He is well aware of the threefold general division of language—Teutonic-Slavonic, Turanian or Tartar, and Romance—and assigns the boundaries quite correctly. He is further aware of the divisions of Romance speech itself, and as he had adopted as his criterion of Teutonic speech different forms of “yea” (“jo”) for the word of affirmation, so he uses the same criterion in this case. Of Romance-speaking nations he says, some say “oc,” some “oil,” and some “si.” The first are “Spaniards,” the second Frenchmen, the third Italians. The connection of “Spaniards” and “oc” need excite no surprise. Castilian, though in existence, and already provided with the noble Poema del Cid and other documents, was as yet by no means the dominant language of Spain. In particular, Aragon and Catalonia, which spoke a Provençal dialect, had far more to do with Italy than Castile: Galicia, which all Europe visited in pilgrimage to the shrine of Santiago, also favoured the “oc,” and Provençal was actually later than this the dialect of Portugal, if not of all Spain, for certain literary purposes. And the Spanish kingdom of Aragon was infinitely the most important country that spoke “oc.”
Proceeding, Dante illustrates the relationship of the three tongues by observing that all call most important things (God, |And of the subdivisions of Romance.| heaven, earth, living, dying, loving—the selection is not negligible) by forms of the same Latin originals. In the next chapter he continues the stress on this point, producing literary and poetical quotations, from Provençal (Giraut de Borneil), French (Thibaut of Navarre), and Italian (Guido Guinicelli), of the word Amor; and points out—thus ever drawing nearer, in true methodic way, to his special subject—that the variations between the three great Romance speeches are produced, in each language, by dialectic differences. And he has, on the fact and on the consequent necessity of establishing some common centrical form by Grammar[[553]], observations which lack neither truth nor sense. Then, Which is the best of the three Romance forms? He will not say, only timidly advancing for Italian that si is nearest sic. Otherwise, each has strong claims. Oil is not only easier and pleasanter,[[554]] but whatever has been composed or translated in vernacular prose belongs to it, the “most fair intricacies of Arthur,”[[555]] those of Trojans and Romans, &c. Oc was first employed for poetry, being more finished and sweeter. Italian has the sweetest and most refined poets[[556]] of all, and seems to be the closest to “grammar.”[[557]]
He will not, however, attempt componere lites[[558]], but consider the variations, &c., of the Vulgar Tongue itself—i.e., Italian—though, |The Italian Dialects: Some rejected at once.| as we shall see, he does not hesitate to draw illustrations from the others. He first takes the Apennines as his language-watershed, and allowing fifteen main dialects, not a few of which are sub-divided, he proceeds to examine their claims, clearing away the bad ones. As the Romans think they ought to have precedence[[559]] (note the crisp touch of life in this), let us give it them—by kicking their claims out of the way at once.[[560]] The alma sdegnosa gives something more than a hint of itself in the description of Roman dialect as a “tristiloquy,” the ugliest of all the vernacular dialects; which is no wonder, since they stink worst of all in the deformity of their customs and morals. The Marchers of Ancona and the Spoletans go next, each of the rejected ones having a scornful tag of his own barbarism tied to his tail, as Dante ejects him from the competition. And he tells us, as if it settled the matter (for, as we shall see, the Canzone is rather a fetish with Dante), “many Canzoni have been written in contempt of them.” The Milanese, the Bergamasks, the Aquileans and Istrians follow, with all the mountainous and country patois[[561]], and the Sardinians, who are not Latins, though “to be joined with them,” and who only imitate Latin as apes do men. After this rapid sifting (he uses the metaphor) a new chapter is necessary.
Of those “kept in the sieve” Sicilian claims the first place. Indeed Dante acknowledges that “whatsoever the Italians poetise is called Sicilian.” He admits this, but says it is merely |Others—Sicilian, Apulian, Tuscan, and Genoese.| due to the fact that Sicilian princes, or princes resident in Sicily, Frederick the Emperor and his son Manfred, have been patrons of literature, and have thus attached the best Italian genius to the Sicilian court. But he says (after an indignant digressory denunciation of contemporary sovereigns) that there is no special value in the common Sicilian dialect, which indeed is seldom used for poetry at all, while of that which is used, more to follow. As for the Apulians, there have been some good writers among them, but their ordinary speech is spoilt with barbarisms.[[562]]
But what of the Tuscans? Dante can only repeat that cosmopolitan criticism, which, though it would be very illiberal to impute it wholly to his exile, was no doubt assisted thereby. They may madly assert their title to the possession of the Illustrious Vulgar Tongue, and even some distinguished men may have condescended to the Tuscan vernacular. But let us examine them town by town. Florence, Pisa, Lucca, Siena, Arezzo are hit off each in a sentence expressing its boast, and, we may suppose, expressing it with some provincialism. But Dante says, when men really to be admired, Guido, Lapo, and “another”[[563]] of Florence, and Cino da Pistoia, have written, it is in “curial,” not in the vulgar Tuscan tongue.
As for the Genoese, the annihilation of the letter Z would strike them dumb, for they can say nothing without it.
Then he crosses the Apennines[[564]] and decides successively that Romagnese, in its various divisions, and Venetian, are full of |Venetian: Some good in Bolognese.| drawbacks and vulgarities.[[565]] After which a whole chapter (xv.) is given to the dialect of Bologna. It is perhaps better than any other and why? Because it borrows the best things from the others, as, for instance, Sordello the Mantuan borrowed from Cremona, Brescia, and Verona. On the other hand, Ferrara, Modena, and Reggio are too Lombardic, and though they have lent a touch of piquancy to Bolognese, cannot create a good literary dialect for themselves. Still Bolognese, though better than other individual dialects, because more composite, is not the Illustrious Vulgar Tongue, for otherwise Guido Guinicelli and other great Bolognese poets would not have departed from it. So down with the sieve for, as for places like Trent and Turin, they are too near the frontier, and if they were pulcherrima as they are turpissima they would not be vere Latinum.
Having thus for fifteen chapters pursued a sort of “Rule of False” in order to catch that panther[[566]], the Illustrious Vulgar |The “Illustrious” Language none of these, but their common measure.| Tongue, by the a posteriori method, Dante determines to track her a priori. He calls Logic to his aid, and observes that every individual, species, genus is subject to a common measure. The measure of individual conduct is Virtue; of conduct between man and man, Law; in public behaviour, national manners and customs. So too there must be some norm, some common measure of all Italian tongues and dialects, and this, perceptible in all, abiding in none, will be what is sought for. This is the—
- 1. Illustre.
- 2. Cardinale.
- 3. Aulicum; et
- 4. Curiale vulgare in Latio.
Each of these epithets has then to be discussed.
So we have the substance, the underlying and fashioning unity, of Italian defined as a tongue possessing a quadripartite |Its four characteristics.| differentia, and so it becomes necessary to explain the four parts. Illustrious, as the seventeenth chapter, devoted to it, explains, is something that “shines forth,” illuminans et illuminatum. Men are so called who, having been well trained, are great trainers, like Numa Pompilius and Seneca. This is what the Illustrious Vulgar Tongue of Italy is. It has cleared off much rubbish, as in Cino da Pistoia. It attracts even the unwilling. It exalts those who practise it. They surpass kings, marquises, counts. It gives a glory which even we, exiles as we are, acknowledge as sweetening the bitterness of our exile. Therefore it is Illustrious.
The three other epithets enjoy but a chapter between them. It is Cardinal, for as a door turns on a hinge, so all the throng of dialects turns on it. It is Aulic, because, if we Italians had a Court, it would be spoken there, and because, as a matter of fact, all those who enjoy courtly frequentation speak it. It is Curial because, though as in the Aulic case the conditions are wanting, it would be spoken in the great Law Courts of Italy if they existed, and it presents the action of a great Court of Law in trying and sifting cases. This is the proper Italian language, common to all, aimed at (if unconsciously) by all, giving the real key to all.
And so the first book ends, with the establishment on logical bases (none the weaker because the struts and props of them are sometimes decorated with a bygone ornamentation) at once of the necessity and the fact of a literary language for Italy, a language combining the merits, and purified from the defects, of the various local kinds of speech.
The First Book of the De Vulgari Eloquio has been chiefly concerned with language, though—as it is of the very highest |The Second Book—Why Dante deals with poetry only.| importance to observe—always with a side-glance at literature. The Second passes to literature itself, at least to that part of literature which was almost the only serious part to the earlier Middle Ages—namely, poetry. If we wanted anything to show us what a man of letters Dante was, it would be found in the apology which he makes at the beginning of this book for not dealing with Rhetoric at large, but only with Poetic. It is simply that “prosaicants” usually get their language from “inventors,” and “invention” remains a solid example to them, not vice versa. This, perhaps, with some exceptions (the chief among them he has himself referred to in citing the French Arthurian legend), was true in his time, though it was ceasing to be true; and a certain amount of truth remains still, greatly as the circumstances have changed. There is, he goes on to say, a kind of primacy about verse; so let us deal with it secundum quod metricum est.
Now, ought writers in verse to write vulgariter? Yes, he thought. The best things require the best language, and that, |All good poetry should be in the Illustrious.| as we have seen, is the Illustrious Vernacular. Things not so good will be improved by the best expression. So all verse-writers should use it, at least at first sight, though we must alter this conception on further thought. The Illustrious language demands illustrious writers (alma sdegnosa again!), and not only that, but the best thoughts or subjects. Very inferior persons writing on very inferior subjects had better not use the Illustrious, for an ugly woman never looks uglier than when dressed in gold and silk.
Now what subjects are good enough for the Illustrious Vernacular? Only Three: Salus, Venus, Virtus—in other words, |The subjects of High Poetry—War, Love, Virtue.| War, Love, and Moral Beauty, which means philosophy plus religion. Dante reaches this conclusion in the queer-looking but perhaps not easily improvable manner usual with him, by the prior and the posterior roads alike. These subjects are, first, the three things of most importance to a Vegetable-Animal-Rational-creature like man, and they are also those discussed by the best writers in the Vulgar Tongue, Bertran de Born, Arnaut Daniel, Cino da Pistoia, &c. But he does not find that any Italian has written on the subject of Salus or Arms. (An ominous fact!)
So much for subject; now for form. What forms are there of Illustrious Vulgar Verse? Some have written Canzoni, some |Its form: Canzoni.| Ballades, some Sonnets, some other and irregular forms. The best of these are Canzoni, for a wilderness of reasons, good, not very good, indifferent, and bad, the strongest of which, though not expressed, evidently is that Dante likes Canzoni best and knows he writes them well. They unite, he says, all the best points of art; the works of the best poets are found in them. So let us write of Canzoni, putting off Ballades, &c., to the Fourth Book—which, alas! we have not.
What is Poetry? It is fictio rhetorica in musica posita. |Definition of Poetry.| This is so important that no passing criticism of it will do, and we must postpone the discussion.
But here comes in the curious mediæval humility which made a poet like Dante regard himself as inferior to Ovid, and |Its styles and the constituents of the grand style.| Lucan, and Statius. Our poets differ from the “great” poets, the “regular” ones; but they ought to approach them as nearly as possible, and, as Magister noster Horatius teaches, take a suitable subject. And then they must decide what style to write in. If in the Tragic or Higher style, the Illustrious Vernacular will be suitable; if in the comic, a mixed or intermediate style; if in Elegy, the lower. But these two latter are again relegated to the lost, or never written, Fourth Book. Canzoni must be written in the Tragic style, and the Illustrious Vulgar Tongue. This is to be attained when, with the gravity of the meaning, not merely the pride of the verse, but the loftiness of the phrasing and the excellence of the words, agrees. It is no light matter to compose in this way; the most strenuous efforts are necessary. And, therefore, let the folly of those be confessed who, guiltless of art and science, and trusting to their wits alone, break out into the highest song on the highest subjects.
So the considerations are marked out, the Gravitas Sententiæ having been already distributed between War, Love, and Virtue.
- 1. Superbia Carminum.
- 2. Constructionis elatio.
- 3. Excellentia vocabulorum.
Beginning with metric, Dante, like a sensible man, confines himself here to the teachings of experience, eschewing all |Superbia Carminum.| argument in the vague. What lines have actually given the best results in the Illustrious Vernacular? He looks them over, and finds that lines have varied from three syllables to eleven, that those of five, seven, and eleven are best of all, and that that of eleven (in which he rightly includes the French decasyllable with its weak ending) is the best of these best. Seven comes next; then five, then three. Nine is not good, because divisible into three threes. Even lines are “rude,” by which he means (as is undoubtedly true) that they do not suit the structure of Italian. The hendecasyllable is that superbissimum carmen that we sought.
Next for the phrase or construction. Here Dante becomes a little difficult, chiefly because he uses peculiar words, which have |Constructionis elatio.| not been always judiciously translated. He says that there is first the “insipid” style, that without flavour (sapor) or individual character, which merely states a fact, his example being Petrus amat multum dominam Bertam.
Next there is the purely “sapid” or tasteful, described oddly as that of “rigid scholars or masters”; the sapidus et venustus, which is of those who have drunk superficial draughts of rhetoric; and the sapid, venust, and also lofty, which is the best of all. The examples of these shall be given below[[567]], but they are hard to follow in detail, though the classes are clear enough, corresponding to (1) sheer prose, (2) efforts at style, (3) ornate prose without much distinction, (4) style achieved.
This last, of course, is what the poet must aim at, and again examples of hitting it are given. But the chapter ends with a valuable catalogue of the “great,” the “regular” poets: Virgil, Ovid in the Metamorphoses, Statius, and Lucan, with, in prose, Cicero, Livy, Pliny, Frontinus, and (O ye groves of Blarney!) Paulus Orosius. Let people read these, and not talk about Guido of Arezzo.
Lastly the words.
|Excellentia Verborum.|
Here the subdivision is again of great importance and some difficulty. Dante distinguishes a sort of tree—
| Puerilia — Muliebria — Virilia. | ||||
| Silvestria. | Urbana. | |||
| Pexa et hirsuta. | Lubrica et reburra. | |||
All these words (save perhaps reburra, which, however, a remembrance of the French à rebours will clear up at once) are easy to understand, if sometimes rather hard of application.
Now, according to Dante, Pexa et Hirsuta are grandiosa, while lubrica et reburra in superfluum sonant. And it will be most specially important to use the “sieve,” for, looking to the poets who have succeeded in the Illustrious Vernacular, sola vocabula nobilissima are to be left therein. “Childish”[[568]] words must be left out altogether: “feminine”[[569]] words are too soft, “silvan”[[570]] words too rough, nor will lubrica nor reburra[[571]], though urbana, do. So pexa[[572]] et hirsuta[[573]] alone are left.
All this terminology is, of course, more than a little obscure, and the explanation of the obscurities rather concerns a commentator |Pexa et hirsuta.| on Dante than a historian of literary criticism. But the explanation, given by the critic-poet himself, of pexa et hirsuta does concern us, and is interesting. The former, it seems, are words which are trisyllabic, or “neighbours to trisyllabity,” without an aspirate, without an acute or circumflexed accent, without double x’s or z’s, without the conjunction of two liquids, or the placing of them after a mute, which freedoms give a certain sweetness. Hirsuta, on the other hand, are all others which, like the monosyllabic pronouns and articles, cannot be dispensed with, or which, though the above uglinesses have not been “combed out” of them, still, when mixed with combed-out words, are ornamental. He includes in this last class sovramagnificentissimamente, a hendecasyllabic in itself. He would not even mind onorificabilitudinitate, which has thirteen syllables in two of its Latin cases, if it were not by its length excluded from Italian verse.
So having got the sticks of words for our faggot the canzone, and the cords of construction and classification to bind them |The Canzone.| up[[574]], let us set to work to the actual binding and faggoting, before which something more must be said about the faggot itself, the Canzone. The Canzone (cantio) is the action or passion of singing, just as a “reading” or book (lectio) is the action or passion of reading. A little metaphysic follows on actio and passio, and the fact that the cantio is actio when composed, passio when sung or acted. But is the cantio the words or the tune? Surely the words; nobody calls the tune canzone. In fact, all words written for music may in a sense be called canzoni, even ballads, even sonnets, even poems in Latin (regulariter). But we are speaking of the supreme canzone, like Dante’s Donne ch’ avete. It is “a tragic composition” of equal stanzas, without responsorium (dialogue or antiphon). The last six chapters concern us less, because they are wholly occupied with the particular rhyming, lining, and stanza-fashion of the canzone itself, and, interesting as they are, overflow our limits, except as a particular example of the general kind of criticism which has been so laboriously built up.
With the conclusion of this the tractate stops abruptly, nor have we any indication of what the Third Book was to consist of, though the Fourth, as we have seen above, is more than once referred to. The loss of both must be regarded as one of the most serious that the history of criticism has suffered.
Yet the possession of what we have is no mean consolation, and I must be excused for repeating an expression of the |Importance of the book.| extremest surprise at the comparatively small attention which the book has received, and at the slighting fashion in which it has been treated by some of those who have paid attention to it. For myself, I am prepared to claim for it, not merely the position of the most important critical document between Longinus and the seventeenth century at least, but one of intrinsic importance on a line with that of the very greatest critical documents of all history. There is no need at all to lay much stress on the mere external attractiveness, unusual as that may be, of the combination in one person of the greatest poet and the first, if not the sole, great critic of the Middle Ages. The tub can stand on its own bottom.
In the first place, it only requires acquaintance with that previous history of the subject, which we have here endeavoured to unfold, to see that we have the inestimable advantage of a quite new and independent treatment of that subject. There is |Independence and novelty of its method.| no direct evidence that Dante knew the Poetics[[575]]: we see that he cites Horace and cites him magnificentissime. But the Epistle to the Pisos might never have been written, for any sign there is of direct influence from it on Dante’s method. So, too, singular as is the resemblance between the spirit of him and the spirit of Longinus; remarkable as is the coincidence between the words of both about words; and possible as the John of Sicily[[576]] reference makes it that Dante might have known the Great Unknown of Criticism—yet there is not the faintest evidence that he did know him, and an almost overwhelming probability that he did not. To the method of no classical predecessor in pure criticism does his method bear the smallest resemblance, even if faint resemblances might be pointed out in phrase.
But it is still more remarkable that, steeped to the lips as he is in scholastic lore—though trivium and quadrivium must have been at his fingers’ ends—the De Vulgari Eloquio, even in mentioning Rhetoric itself, shows not the faintest tincture of that scholastic rhetoric which we have noticed. There is not so much as an allusion to the Figures: they have been, for Dante on this occasion, as completely banished from rerum natura as poor Albucius feared they would be, if his judges disallowed his pleading.[[577]] The familiar Arts of Composition make no appearance: Beginning, Middle, and End are with the Figures. If we did not know that these things must have been as familiar to Dante as the alphabet or the multiplication-table to any modern child, we might think, from this treatise, that he had never heard of them.
It would seem, indeed, without too much guess-work, that, despite his attempts to assimilate writing vulgariter et regulariter, Dante had an unconscious and an infinitely salutary instinct, telling him that regulariter and vulgariter were not the same thing. He may have sometimes thought that the former was the nobler; even in his disdainful soul, the touching humility of the Middle Ages existed, as we know, to such an extent that he could put Virgil, who may be worthy to unloose his shoe-latchet, in a position above himself. But something must have warned him to keep the two apart, to approach the criticism of the illustrious Vernacular literature by a path nullius ante trita solo.
That path, as has been pointed out, is in fact a double approach: we might almost say that the restless manymindedness |Dante’s attention to Form.| of Dante attacks the hill on half-a-dozen different sides at once. We have a chain of mainly a priori argument, reaching from the origin and nature of language to the completely built and fitted-out canzone. We have careful surveys of existing language and literature, with the keenest observation bent upon what is the actual state of each, on what each has actually achieved. But besides these two ways of approach, neither of which is at all like those of the ancient critics, there is a third difference which is more striking still: and that is that the critic’s attention is evidently from the first fixed, not exclusively, but, from the point of view of his business, mainly, on questions of form, expression, result, rather than on questions of matter, conception, plan. Not exclusively—let that be emphatically repeated: but still mainly.
Again we see, incidentally, but none the less to an important effect, that he has, no doubt by the mere operation of the lapse |His disregard of Oratory.| of ages in part, in part by the activity of his own intellect, and the character of the matter presented to it, got rid of divers prejudices which weighed upon the ancients. It is not a just retort, when it is said that he has completely got rid of the oratorical preoccupation, to say that he is only dealing with Poetics. For the ancients themselves this preoccupation was constant, even when they dealt with Poetics; and Dante does, as a matter of fact, make references to prose which show that he did not dream (as how indeed should he?) of oratory having any pre-eminence. And at the same time that the fruitful modern literatures helped him to get rid of this, the greatest drawback or interfering flaw of ancient criticism, they helped him to get rid of another, the ignorance of prose fiction. True, he may in his quaint low Latin use inventor for poeta; but the simple reference to the prose Arthurian, Trojan, and Roman legends shows that the gap, which led Aristotle and all the rest astray, had been filled up.
Yet again, the character of the Romance poetry which he chiefly had before him, as well as (if he knew anything of them, |The influence on him of Romance.| which is quite possible) that of the German minnesingers, was such as to require positively, from any vigorous and subtle intellect, a quite different treatment from that appropriate to most ancient poetry. The war-songs might stand on no very different footing; but, as he admits, there were no war-songs in Italian. The mystical passion and the mystical religion of the other two divisions are like nothing in ancient poetry, except scraps and flashes of things which must have been mostly unknown to Dante,—the choruses of the Greek Poets, Catullus, Lucretius, and some things in the Greek Anthology. There was in most cases no action at all; the subject, though varying and twisting in facet and form, like a mountain mist, was always more or less the same; the expression of the poet’s passionate intense individual feeling and thought was all, and of this no general criticism was possible. The forms, on the other hand, the language, the arrangements, these were matters of intense, novel, and pressing interest. The ancient critic, at the very earliest date at which we have any utterances of his in extenso, had a sort of catholic faith already provided for him on these points. Tragedy, Comedy, Oratory, History, Lyric, &c., were established forms. Rhetoric, though interesting, was almost as scientific as arithmetic or geometry. As for language, you imitated the best models, and did not play personal tricks. Besides, it was quite a minor matter.
Lastly, we see that (again half, or more than half, unconsciously and instinctively) Dante has been brought by the "forward |And of comparative criticism.| flowing tide of time" to a more advanced position in respect of comparative criticism. No ancient critic could have made such a survey as he makes of the different languages of Europe; no ancient critic did make such a survey of the dialects of Greek as he makes of the dialects of Italian. That curious spirit of routine which (valuable as it was in the time and in the circumstances) mars ancient literature to some extent, shows itself nowhere more oddly than here. You used Æolic dialect for lyric poetry, because Sappho and Alcæus were Æolians; Doric for pastorals, because Theocritus and the others were Dorians. You might use Ionic in history because Herodotus was a Halicarnassian; and Homer preserved a special dialect for you in epic likewise. But otherwise you wrote in Attic, not because Attic was the Illustrious Vulgar Tongue of Greece (as it very nearly if not quite was), but because an enormous proportion of the best writers in most departments were Athenians. So in Latin you might—almost must—use loose verse, and familiar or abstruse phrase, in satire, but not elsewhere.
Of this there is no trace in Dante, though he may allot his Illustrious tongue to one kind, his Intermediate and Lower to others. He may indeed cite, as a subsidiary argument, the fact that such and such a one has used such and such a dialect or form, but it is only subsidiary. He is, in effect, looking about to see, partly how the reason of things will go, partly what has actually had the best effect. He, groping dimly in the benighted, the shackled Middle Ages, actually attains to a freer and more enlightened kind of criticism than the Greeks, with all their “play of mind,” all their “lucidity,” had reached.
And his bent towards formal criticism—towards those considerations of prosody, of harmony, of vocabulary, of structure, which, when they are considered to-day, even now send some critics into (as the poet says)
“A beastly froth of rage”
against those who so consider them—is all the more important, because not the most impudent accuser of the brethren can |The poetical differentia according to him.| bring against Dante the charge of being a mere formalist, of being indifferent to meaning, of having no “criticism of life” in him, of lacking “high seriousness,” attention to conduct, care for meaning and substance. On the contrary, there is not a poet in the whole vast range of poetry, not the Greek tragedians at their gravest and highest chorus-pitch, not Lucretius in his fervour of Idealist Materialism, not Shakespeare in the profoundest moments of Macbeth, or Prospero, or Hamlet, not Milton, not Wordsworth, who is more passionately ideal, “thoughtful,” penetrated and intoxicated with the “subject,” than Dante is. But he, thanks very mainly to the logical training of the despised scholasticism, thanks partly to the mere progress of time, the refreshing of the human mind after its season of sleep—most of all no doubt to his own intense and magnificent poetical genius—had completely separated and recognised the differentia of poetry, its presentation of the subject in metrical form with musical accompaniment, whether of word or of actual music.[[578]] He knows—he actually says in effect—that prosemen may have the treatment of the same subjects; but he knows that the poet’s treatment is different, and he goes straight for the difference.
And where does he find it? Exactly where Wordsworth five hundred years later refused to find it, in Poetic Diction and |His antidote to the Wordsworthian heresy.| in Metre. The contrast of the De Vulgari Eloquio and of the Preface to Lyrical Ballads is so remarkable that it may be doubted whether there is any more remarkable thing of the kind in literature. Whether Wordsworth was acquainted with the treatise it is impossible to say. (Coleridge certainly knew of it, though it is not quite clear whether he had read it.) But it is improbable, for Wordsworth was not a wide reader. And, moreover, though in tendency the two tractates are diametrically opposed, he nowhere answers Dante; but, on the contrary, is answered by Dante, with an almost uncanny anticipation of the privilege of the last word, in a word five hundred years earlier.
We shall have to return to this matter in dealing with Wordsworth himself. But for the present let us confine ourselves to Dante.
The details of his metrical part need the lesser notice because they are of the more limited and particular application. |His handling of metre.| Had Dante completed his book, it would still have had the limitation of dealing solely with Romance, if not exclusively with Italian, poetry. And with particular episodes we shall only meddle when they are closely connected with general critical quarrels. But his method is worth a word or two, because it is again, precisely, that apparently loose but really unerring mixture of general reasoning and particular observation which the critic requires, which prevents him from being ever exactly scientific, but which gives to his craft the dignity, the difficulty, the versatile charm of art. His recognition of the hendecasyllable, not merely as the line preferred by the best writers in Italian, but as the longest line really manageable in Italian, would be sufficient proof of this.
But he is considerably more interesting on diction, because here his observations (mutatis mutandis, and that in extremely |Of diction.| few cases and unimportant measure) are of universal application. The theory of Poetic Diction, the twin pillar of the temple of Poetry, had been put by Longinus in one flashing axiom, true, sound, illuminative for ever and ever. But he had not elaborated this; he had even, in some cases, as in his remarks on the Εἰς ἐρωμέναν, given occasion to those who blaspheme the doctrine. Dante, with no such single phrase (which indeed the odd mongrel speech he uses denied him), expresses the doctrine far more fully, elaborates it, establishes it soundly, and, moreover, is never in the very least inconsistent with himself about it. Even Aristotle himself would have joined no direct issue with the quadripartite division of the necessities of serious poetry as gravitas sententiæ and superbia carminum, constructionis elatio and excellentia verborum; but he would have given the first preponderance over all the others, and would have laid descending stress on the rest. It may almost be said that Dante exactly reverses the order. The gravitas sententiæ is not denied, but assumed as a thing of course, common to all good matter in verse and prose alike. The superbia carminum is a matter of investigation; but when you have got your form of cantio, &c., settled, that is settled. It is upon the third and the fourth, which are, briefly, Style and Diction, that he bends his whole strength, and that he exhibits his most novel, most important, most eternally valid criticism.
It has been said that the examples, both Latin and Italian, produced in the chapter on Style (that is to say, the construction |His standards of style.| or arrangement of selected phrase as opposed to selection of the component words) are not free from difficulty. But if we examine them all carefully together, something will emerge from the comparison. In the four Latin sentences[[579]] (for translations here are totally useless) we observe that the first[[580]] is a mere statement of fact, possessing, indeed, that complete expression of the meaning which Coleridge so oddly postulates as the differentia of style, but possessing nothing more—nourishing, in short, but not “sapid.” The next[[581]] is carefully (“tastefully”) arranged according to the scholastic rules—verb at the end, important words at end or beginning of clause, &c., but nothing more. The charm (venustas) of the third[[582]] is more difficult to identify; but it would seem to consist in a sort of superficially rhetorical declamation. But there is no difficulty in discovering in what the fourth sentence[[583]] differs from the rest. There is the conceit of the “casting out of the flowers” with the interwoven play of florum and Florentia, the apostrophe to the town, the double alliteration of florum, Florentia, Trinacriam, Totila, with the reverse order of length in the words, and their vowel arrangement. And in almost all the verse vernacular examples, though it may not always be easy to discern their exact attraction for Dante, we shall find the same alliteration—
“Sols sui qui sai lo sobrafan, que me sortz;”
the same vowel-music—
“Dreit Amor qu’ en mon cor repaire;”
or a combination of this music with careful mounting and falling rhythm, as in
“Si com l’ arbres, que per sobrecarcar.”
In other words, we shall find, in all, devices for making the common uncommon, for giving the poetic strangeness, unexpectedness, charm,—by mere arrangement, by arrangement plus music, and so forth.
The contempt of style as something “vulgar,” which had beset all antiquity (save always Longinus), would have alone prevented the ancients from criticising in this way, even if the lack of various language had not done so.
And so we find, on the threshold, or hardly even on the threshold, of what is commonly called modern literature, an anticipation, and more than an anticipation, of what is really modern criticism. Of course this is a disputable even more than a disputed statement. Of course there are many respectable authorities who will not hear of it, who will accuse those who make it of mere will-worship, perhaps even of gross error, for assuming any such thing. Yet it may be said in all humility, but after a very considerable number of years of study of a subject to which little general attention has been given, that there is this difference between ancient and modern criticism, and that it appears in the De Vulgari Eloquio. I shall be content, I shall even be much obliged, if any one will point out to me, in the authors who have been hitherto considered, or in any who may have been overlooked, a passage like this. I can only say that, in my reading, I have found none.
But the chapter of words—the Chapter of the Sieve, as we may call it—is that which contains the real heart and kernel |The "Chapter of the Sieve."| of Dante’s criticism. For, dwell as much as he may on the importance of arrangement and phrase, it is impossible that these should be beautiful without beautiful words to make them of. And his system of “sifting,” quaint as its phraseology may seem at first sight, arbitrary as some of its divisions may appear, and here and there difficult as it may be exactly to follow him, is a perfectly sound scheme, and only requires working out at greater length. The objection to puerilia, though it may be too sweepingly expressed, is absolutely just, and cuts away Wordsworth’s childishnesses by anticipation. That to “effeminate” words, “silvan” words, words too “slippery” and too much “brushed the wrong way,” is, in its actual form, perhaps somewhat too closely connected with the peculiarities of the Italian language. We can understand that the snarling sound of the r in gregia and corpo—the silvestre and the reburrum—may have offended the delicate Italian musical ear; and it is perfectly easy for a pretty well-educated English one to perceive that donna, with the ring of the n’s and the sudden descent—the falcon drop—to a, is a far more poetical word than femina, where, except the termination, there is no hold for the voice at all; it merely “slips over” the “lubric” syllables fe and mi. But it is much more difficult to understand the objection to dolciada and piacevole as too effeminate. Not only is dolciada itself a very charming word to us, but it is impossible to see anything more effeminate in it than in many of those which Dante admits and admires. These things, however, will always happen.
The metaphor of the pexa and hirsuta, odd as it seems, is not difficult to work out when we have once accepted the |The pexa.| analogy of hair, for which in itself it would not be difficult to find a more or less fanciful justification. The merely “glossy”—smooth, soft, insufficient—will not do, and those “brushed the wrong way” still less. What is wanted is natural curl and wave—with light and colour in them, of course, though not mere gloss. This may be either the result of careful “combing out” of all tangle and disorder, or it may be wilder grace, the hirsutum, the “floating hair” of our poet. Dante’s rigid orthodoxy makes him assign very strict qualification to the pexa. They are to be trisyllabic or vicinissima to this—that is to say, they are either to be amphibrachs complete—amore, difesa, salute—or words like donna, on the one hand, or letizia[[584]] on the other, which, by a slight rest of the voice or a little slur of it, can be made amphibrachic in character. And why? Because these amphibrachic words help, as no others can do, to give that trochaic swing, with little intervals between, which supplies the favourite rhythm of Italian poetry, as in the very instance given a little later by Dante from his own poetry—
“Donne ch‘ avete intelletto d’ amore”—
where the rhythm (as opposed to the actual scansion) of the line is represented by almost sinking the italicised syllables, and leaving the four main trochees to carry the rock of the verse on their backs. The dislike to aspirates, to double x’s and z’s, to certain collocations of consonants, &c., is again purely Italian, though it would not be difficult to assign somewhat similar qualifications to the pexa of other languages.
But Dante is far too free and far too opulent a poet to confine himself, or recommend others to confine themselves, to a mere |The hirsuta.| “prunes and prism”—to simple prettiness of precious words. The hirsuta, the more careless ordered vocabulary, must be had too sometimes, because you cannot do without them, as in the case of the monosyllabic particles, copulatives, and what not, sometimes as dissyllables, and polysyllables, which will make an ornamental effect by combination and contrast with the pexa. Here, yet once more, there may be difficulties with the individual cases; it is indeed hard to see the possibility of beauty, even in the most combed-out company, of such a word as disavventuratissimamente: but the principle is clear and sound. What that principle is we may |Other critical loci in Dante.| shortly state when we have given a glance at Dante’s other and much less important critical utterances, contained in the undoubtedly genuine Convito, and in the sometimes, but perhaps captiously, disputed Letter to Can Grande.
This last[[585]], which, as is well known, sets itself forth as a dedication of the Paradiso to the Lord of Verona, contains a kind of |The Epistle to Can Grande.| expository criticism by the author of the Commedia itself. There is nothing in it inconsistent with the De Vulgari, but the method is very much more scholastic and jejune. There are six things to be inquired about in any serious matter—the subject, the agent, the form, the end, the title, the kind of philosophy.
The Paradiso is different from the other two cantiche in subject, form, and title, not in author, end, and philosophic tone. The meaning or subject is partly literary, partly allegorical; the form is duplex—the external by cantiche, cantos, verses; while the method or internal form is poetic, figurative, &c. The title is, “Here beginneth the Comedy of D. A., Florentine by birth not disposition.” Comedy comes from, &c., tragedy from, &c. As Comedy begins ill and ends well, we call this a comedy. It is in the vulgar tongue: its end is evangelic, its philosophy ethical and practical.
There is little to notice here except the poet’s comparative depreciation of the Vulgar Tongue as “humble and weak,”[[586]] but this of course is only said rhetorically.
The curious First Book of the Convito[[587]] not merely contains the promise of the De Vulgari[[588]], but is a sort of pendent |The Convito.| to it, being an elaborate excuse for writing the book in the Vulgar tongue itself. Its expressions are not always in literal agreement with those of the other treatise; but these differences, even the exaltation of Latin as “nobler,”[[589]] in an apparent contradiction to the argument of the later book, are sufficiently accounted for by the difference of purpose and subject. But the elaborate apology for writing in the vernacular, and the elaborate arguments by which it is supported, have no small critical interest of their own; and the later chapters contain eager championship of Italian, if not against Latin, yet against Provençal, which it was the fashion to compare to it. It is scarcely necessary to go through this book in detail; but it contains some very interesting glimpses, and, as it were, vistas of critical truth. The two most noteworthy of these are the remarks about translation, and those about the respective advantages for showing a language of prose and verse.
Translation Dante condemns utterly. Nothing harmonised by the laws of the Muses can be changed from one tongue to |Dante on Translation.| another without destroying all its sweetness and harmony. This (which is arch-true) connects itself directly with Dante’s unerring direction towards the criticism of form. If “all depends on the subject,” translation can do no harm, for the subject can be maintained in exactly the same condition through more languages than Mezzofanti or Prince Lucien Bonaparte ever meddled with. But the form, the language, the charm of the verse, the music of the composition, they go utterly and inevitably; and even if the translator succeeds in putting something in their place, it is another, and not themselves.
Again, in the eloquent and admirable defence[[590]] of the tongue of Si against the Lingua d’Oco, he has this remarkable saying, |On language as shown in prose and verse.| that you cannot see its real excellence in rhymed pieces, for the accidental accompaniments (“accidental,” quoad language). So do the clothes and jewels of a beautiful woman distract the attention from her real beauty, as much as this is set forth by them. In prose the ease, propriety, and sweetness of the language itself can best be shown. Now, let it be observed that this is no exaltation of prose above poetry as such—Dante was far too good a critic, as well as far too great a poet, to make a blunder which has been made since, though hardly before. His argument is the perfectly sound, and, unless I mistake, almost wholly novel one—that the intrinsic powers (if they be doubted) of a language are best shown in prose. If it can do well there, a fortiori it can do better in poetry; but the “added sweetness” of rhythm, metre, rhyme, poetic diction, and the like may distract the attention from the mere and sheer merits of the language itself. And so once more we find Dante, in opposition to the Master, in opposition to all ancient critics except Longinus, and partly even to him, recognising the ultimate and real test of literary excellence as lying in the expression, not in the meaning.
This would in itself be a thing so great that no greater has met or will meet us throughout this history. Even yet the truth, which Longinus caught but as in a Pisgah-sight, which |Final remarks on his criticism.|Dante himself rather felt and illustrated throughout than consciously or deliberately championed in any particular place—the truth that the criticism of literature is first of all the criticism of expression as regards the writer, of impression as regards the reader—is far from being universally recognised, is far even from being a prevailing or a popular doctrine. By many it is regarded as an unquestionable heresy, by others as a questionable half-truth. But that Dante did feel, if he hardly saw, it, that he was penetrated by it, that his criticism in the De Vulgari Eloquio turns on it—for these things I hope to have shown some cause.
Not of course (it may, though it should not, be necessary to repeat this) that he was himself by any means indifferent to the “subject.” On the contrary, the great threefold division of the subjects of high poetry into Salus, Venus, Virtus—Arms, Love, and religiously guided Philosophy—is to this day the best that exists. And here too Dante has made a notable advance on the ancients, in admitting Love to equality in principle, to the primacy (I had almost said), in practice. We saw how the good Servius found it necessary to apologise for the fourth book of the Æneid, as dealing with the trifling subject of Love; we know how Greek criticism slighted Euripides, not, as it might have done, for his literary shortcomings, but because of his reliance on the tender passion; we know further how, except in mystical philosophisings of the Platonic kind, there is nothing satisfactory on the matter anywhere—that not merely Dionysius but Longinus, in the very act of preserving for us the two chief love-poems of the ancient world, can find nothing adequate to say about them, and that Aristotle leaves the subject severely alone.
Here also Dante knew better; here also he expressed consummately all the enormous gain of dream which the sleep of the Dark Ages had poured into the heart and the soul of the world. But here his service, though critical in category, was hardly critical in method; and, besides, he was only one of a myriad. From Brittany to Transylvania, and from Iceland to Provence, the whole thirteenth century, if not the whole twelfth also, had been “full of loves”—there had been no fear of “Venus” being forgotten. But all these thousand singers had simply sung because they must or would. They had had no critical thought of the manner of their singing. If they had written in Latin, it was because of custom, because they wanted learned appreciation, because they had been taught to write in Latin. If they had written in the vernacular, it was because it came naturally to them, and there was guerdon for it.
But this, as we have seen, was not possible to Dante. Ever a fighter, he was not content to serve the Illustrious Vernacular, to write in it, to advance its powers, without arguing for it as well, without giving it a critical title to place and eminence. Ever a thinker, too, he was not satisfied to write the best poetry, but must know how and in what the best poetry consisted, what made it best, what were its resources and stores of attack and of charm. Most fortunately, his conviction that vulgare and regulare were two very different things, and that the methods of treating them must be different also, led him, as it would seem, to abandon the devices of the regular Rhetoric, and to construct, half-consciously no doubt, a new and really Higher Rhetoric of the vulgar tongue itself.
This is what we have systematically, if incompletely, for Poetics in the De Vulgari Eloquio, while we have hints towards a prose Rhetoric in the first book of the Banquet[[591]]. And it cannot be too much insisted on that, in the former case definitely and systematically, in the latter by sample and suggestion rather than directly, a kind of criticism is disclosed of which we hardly find any trace in the ancients (Longinus partly excepted), though if Aristotle had worked out one side of his own doctrines, and had been less afraid of Art and its pleasure, we might have had it from him.
That the book itself remained so long unknown, and that even after its belated publication it attracted little attention, and has for the most part been misunderstood, or not understood at all, is no doubt in part connected with the fact of its extraordinary precocity. On the very threshold of modern literature, Dante anticipates and follows out methods which have not been reached by all, or by many, who have had the advantage of access to the mighty chambers whereof the house has since been built and is still a-building.
We shall see nothing like this in the rest of the present Book. Some useful work on Prosody, a little contribution of the usual Rhetoric, some interesting if indirect critical expression, will meet us. But no, or next to no, such criticism properly so called, no such exploration and exposition of the secrets of the literary craft, no such revelation of the character of the literary bewitchment.[[592]]
[547]. The choice between Eloquentia and Eloquium lies with the taste and fancy of the chooser. The first word occurs first in the treatise itself. The second is in the title of the Grenoble MS. The texts which I use are, for the Latin, Dr Prompt’s facsimile of this MS., Venice, Olschki, 1892, and Dr Moore’s edition of the Opere (Oxford, 1897), with Mr Ferrers-Howell’s annotated English translation (London, 1890). This latter is very good as a whole, though of course one may differ as to the rendering of individual terms. The edition of the Società Dantesca by Signor P. Rajna (Florence, 1896) is elaborated with all the minute care by which scholarship in the looser modern vernaculars endeavours to put itself on a level with that in the older and exacter tongues. Unfortunately the emulation, here as elsewhere, is carried as far as the old unworthy tricks of depreciation and abuse of predecessors and rivals. The elaborate commentary is limited, with an almost ferocious scrupulosity, to the barest letter of the text; but another volume containing literary annotation is promised.
[548]. Coleridge, I think, refers to it; but with no adequate recognition.
[549]. Hanc quidem secundariam Græci habent et alii sed non omnes.
[550]. For the delightfully scholastic (and, like most scholastic things, by no means inept) reasons, first, that as they set God at nought we need take no count of them; secondly, that all they want to know of each other, for their fiendish purposes, is their diabolic quality and rank.
[551]. As being solely guided by instinct.
[552]. As to the apparent contradiction with the Convito, v. infra.
[553]. It is desirable to note that the original confusion, or, to speak more correctly, ambiguity of “Grammar” is curiously illustrated in this close context. Here the first “grammar” seems to denote literary as opposed to vernacular tongue: the second can only mean Latin.
[554]. Facilior et delectabilior.
[555]. Arturi regis ambages pulcerrimæ. This observation is not quite negligible in the endless debate about the priority of verse or prose in these legends.
[556]. Qui dulcius subtiliusque poetati vulgariter sunt.
[557]. Cf. note opposite.
[558]. Judicium relinquentes is his own phrase.
[559]. Se cunctis præponendos existimant.
[560]. In hac eradicatione, sive discerptione non immerito eos aliis præponamus.
[561]. Montaninas et rusticanas loquelas.
[562]. Turpiter barbarizant.
[563]. Guidonem, Lapum et unum alium Florentinos. It is needless to say who is unus alius.
[564]. Frondiferos humeros Apennini—a more affectionate if less picturesque touch than Mr Ruskin’s “angry Apennine” and Mr Browning’s “wind-swept gash” thereof.
[565]. Hildebrand of Padua is excepted, as Nitentem divertere a materno et ad curiale vulgare intendere. Two sonnets of his are said to be now extant.
[566]. This beast is of course not here referred to, as in the well-known passage at the beginning of the Inferno, as a type of vice, but, as in Inf., xvi. 106, as a desirable prey. The beauty of the panther’s skin, the sweet breath fabulously attributed to it, and so forth, sometimes gave it a wholly favourable place in mediæval fantasy, as in one of the prettiest fragments of Anglo-Saxon verse, the “Panther” of the Exeter Book, where it is a type of Christ.
[567]. Sapid pure: Piget me cunctis, sed pietatem majorem illorum habeo, quicunque in exilio tabescentes, patriam tantum somniando revisunt.
Sapid and venust: Laudabilis discretio Marchionis Estensis et sua magnificentia præparata cunctis illum facit esse dilectum.
Sapid, venust, and excelse: Ejecta maxima parte florum de sinu tuo, Florentia, nequicquam Trinacriam Totila serus adivit.
[568]. As mamma and babbo.
[569]. As dolciada and piacevole.
[570]. As gregia.
[571]. As femina and corpo.
[572]. As amore, donna, virtute.
[573]. As terra, onore, speranza, gravitate, and on to sovramagnificentissimamente.
[574]. Fustibus et torquibus ad fascem.
[575]. It is thought that Petrarch may have known the German thirteenth-century version in Latin.
[578]. Some have assumed that Dante thinks all high poetry must be “set” in the common sense. He does not say so, and every consideration is against it. The “rhetorical fiction set in music” is obviously the opposition of poetry to prose, and nothing more.
[579]. V. supra, p. [429], and [note].
[580]. Petrus amat, &c.
[581]. Piget me cunctis, &c.
[582]. Laudabilis discretio, &c.
[583]. Ejecta maxima, &c.
[584]. This word is most unluckily misprinted “litiria” in Mr Ferrers-Howell’s version.
[585]. Original, tenth and last of Latin Epistles, ed. Moore, p. 414. Those who wish for an English translation will find one in the Appendix to Miss Katharine Hillard’s translation of the Convito (p. 390, London 1889).
[586]. § 10. Remissus est modus et humilis quia loquutio vulgaris in qua et mulierculæ communicant.
[587]. Italian, ed. Moore, p. 235 sq. English, Miss Hillard, as above. There is the usual fighting about its date.
[588]. I. v. 3, at end.
[589]. Ibid., at beginning. The ground of exaltation is that same notion of the greater stability of Latin, of its being unlikely to “play the bankrupt with books,” which subsisted till the time of Bacon and Hobbes, if not of Johnson, though without the apparent justification it had in the Middle Ages.
[590]. I. x. 5.
[591]. It is not quite trivial that, as in the other case there is the dispute between Eloquium and Eloquentia, so there is here between Convito and Convivio.
[592]. I have not thought it necessary to devote any space to the consideration of the relations of Scholastic Philosophy to Criticism. To search the whole literature of Scholasticism for these would be an enormous labour; and some slight knowledge of the subject (to which I once hoped to devote much of the time and energy actually, but involuntarily, spent on things less worthy and less interesting) leads me to believe that it would be an almost wholly fruitless one. In Dante and in Boccaccio (v. infra) we have interesting examples of the bent which scholastic education gave to critics. Lully, or “Lull,” as they call him now (though he by no means rhymes to “dull”), shows (v. [note, p. 371]) how criticism afar off might strike a schoolman. But all the men of the schools abode in mere Rhetoric, and even that they mostly despised.
CHAPTER III.
THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES.
LIMITATIONS OF THIS CHAPTER—THE MATERIAL IT OFFERS—THE FORMAL ARTS OF RHETORIC AND OF POETRY—EXAMPLES OF INDIRECT CRITICISM: CHAUCER—‘SIR THOPAS’—FROISSART—RICHARD OF BURY—PETRARCH—BOCCACCIO—HIS WORK ON DANTE—THE ‘TRATTATELLO’—THE ‘COMENTO’—THE ‘DE GENEALOGIA DEORUM’—GAVIN DOUGLAS—FURTHER EXAMPLES UNNECESSARY.
The contents of the two foregoing chapters should have in some sort prepared the reader for the character and limitations of the |Limitations of this chapter.| third. If it were not part of the scheme of this work to leave no period of literary history unnoticed in relation to criticism, a straight stride might almost be taken from the De Vulgari Eloquio to the earliest of the momentous and (from some points of view) rather unfortunate attempts which the Italian critics of the Renaissance made to bring about an eirenicon between Plato and Aristotle, by sacrificing the whole direct product, and the whole indirect lesson, of the Middle Ages. Between Dante and this group of his compatriots two hundred years later, it is scarcely too much to say that there is not a single critic or criticism, either in Italy or in any other European language, possessing substantive importance. But this book endeavours to be a history, not merely of explicit literary criticism, but of implicit literary taste; and no period—not the dimmest gloom of the Dark Ages nor the most glaring blaze of the Aufklärung—is profitless as a subject for inquiry in that respect, even if the result be little more than the old stage-direction—même jeu.
In Arts of Rhetoric, with or without special or partial reference to Poetry, the two centuries, especially the fifteenth, are |The material it offers.| indeed fairly prolific. Nothing could be more significant for the subjective side of Critical History than that gradual and at last undisguised identification of “Rhetoric” with “Poetry” itself, which is notorious alike in the hackneyed title of grands rhétoriqueurs for the French poets of the fifteenth century, and the continual praise of Chaucer’s “rhetoric” by the English and Scottish writers of the same time. The sacra fames[[593]] of the whole two hundred years for Allegory—a hunger which was not in the least checked by the Renaissance, though the sauce of what it glutted itself on was somewhat altered—is another capital fact of the same kind; the renewed passion for changed kinds of Romance another; the ever-increasing interest in drama yet another still. These are the real materials for the student of criticism and taste at this time, and they are identical with the materials, for this period, of the student of literary history generally. In the strictly proper matter of our particular province we not merely may, but had best, confine ourselves to some short notice of the formal writings of the period, and some, rather fuller, of the literary opinions expressed by characteristic exponents of it, whether their claim to represent be derived from eminence, or from merely average, and therefore tell-tale, quality.
Into the first it will not be necessary to enter at any length. The formal Latin Arts of Rhetoric of the fourteenth and fifteenth |The Formal Arts of Rhetoric.|centuries exhibit nothing new, but observe with a touching fidelity the lines of Martianus, or Aphthonius, or Hermogenes, as the case may be. Moreover, such notice of them as is at all necessary will be better given in the next Book and volume, in connection with their immediate successors of the undoubted Renaissance. The chain of merely formal Rhetoric is unbroken till much later; as it had been little affected by the change from “Classical” to “Mediæval,” so it was not sensibly changed till “Renaissance” had definitely given way to “Modern.” The vernacular Arts of Poetry are, in English of this period, non-existent; and, considering all things, they are heartily to be congratulated on their wisdom and foresight in not existing. In Italy they are of little moment, since Italian poetry had to a great extent taken its line once for all. In French and in German they both exist, and exhibit considerable individual quality. But that quality is emphatically for an age, and not of all time. The growth of the exquisitely graceful but dangerously artificial French poetry of Ballade and Chant Royal, of rondeau and triolet; the growth of the artificial, but rarely in the very least graceful, form-torturing of the meister-singers were both accompanied and followed, as was natural and indeed inevitable, by abundance of formal directions for executing the fashionable intricacies. Some of the more noteworthy of these may be indicated in a note but—as has not always been, and will not always be the case with similar things—they require little or no discussion in the text. For the developments to which they related were not merely a little artificial in the bad sense, but they were also purely episodic and of the nature of curiosities. They had not, as even the most apparently preposterous acrobatics of the Latin rhythmic had, the priceless |And of Poetry.| merit of serving as gymnastic to the new vernaculars—at best they only continued this gymnastic in the case of languages that were “grown up.” That they—at least the French division of them—furnished some exquisite moulds, into which the purest poetry could be thrown, is perfectly true. But Jehannot de Lescurel, and Charles d’Orléans, and Villon most of all, could have, and doubtless would have, produced that poetry in any form that happened to be popular at their time. Nay, as has been abundantly shown in France and England during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and a little earlier, the forms themselves will fit any poetry of any time. The ancient names, and the mediæval trimmings, and the modern sentiment of the Dames du Temps Jadis, are all equally at home in its consummate but artificial form; and that form is equally suitable to the Voyage à Cythère and the aspiration for a grave on the breast of the Windburg. Defect there is none in this accommodating character: rather there is a great quality. But, in the special kind of merit, there is a differentiation from such things as the Greek chorus, the Latin elegiac, the Mediæval rhythmus, the mono-rhymed or single-assonanced tirade, the Spenserian, even the eighteenth-century, couplet, which carry their atmosphere and their time inseparably with them. And so we may turn to our testings of writers in whom the criticism “is not so expressed,” but who are not the less valuable to us for that.
Are we to regret, or not, that Chaucer did not leave us an Art of Rhetoric instead of a Treatise on the Astrolabe? Probably not. |Examples of Indirect Criticism: Chaucer.| He would hardly have felt what is called in religious slang “freedom” to say what he undoubtedly might have said on Applied Rhetoric and on Pure Rhetoric, though it would have been very agreeable to hear him. He would probably not have told us anything new. In any kind of formal writing he would probably have displayed that not in the least irrational orthodoxy which he displays on most subjects. But there is perhaps no writer—at least no writer of anything approaching his greatness—who, abstaining from deliberate and expressed critical work, has left us such acute and unmistakable critical byplay, such escapes of the critical spirit. If the sly hit at his namesake of Vinsauf, which has been already glanced at[[594]], stood alone, it would show us “what a critic was in Chaucer lost”—at least to the extent of lying perdu for the most part. But this is not the only example of the kind by any means, even in apparent chance-medleys: while in the Rhyme of Sir Thopas[[595]] we have what is almost a criticism in form, and what certainly displays more critical power than ninety-nine out of a hundred criticisms in fact.
That this celebrated and agreeable fantasy-piece is in any sense an onslaught on Romance, as Romance, is so fond a thing that it is sufficient to discredit the imaginations, or the intelligence, of those who entertain it. Dulness never will understand, either that those who are not dull can laugh at what they love, or that it is possible for a man to see faults, and even serious faults, in writers and writings on whom and on which, as wholes, he bestows the heartiest admiration. From the outset of his career the critic has to make up his mind to be charged with “ungenerous,” or “grudging,” or “not cordial” treatment of those whom he loves with a love that twenty thousand of his accusers could not by clubbing together equal, and understands with an understanding of which—not of course by their own fault but by that of Providence—they are simply incapable.
Of this touch of foolish nature the inference from Sir Thopas that Chaucer disliked, or despised, or failed to sympathise with, |Sir Thopas.| Romance, is one of the capital instances. To remember that the author of the Rhyme was also the author of the Knight’s Tale, and the Squire’s Tale, and Troilus, that he was the translator of the Romance of the Rose, might of itself suffice to keep the wayfaring man straight in this matter; but those who can understand what they read have not the slightest need of such a memory. There have been parodies[[596]] of Romance which incurred the curse of blasphemy: there is one in particular, not very many years old, which, in the energetic and accurate language of Mr Philip Pirrip, “must excite Loathing in every respectable mind.” But Sir Thopas, even to those who have not read many of its originals and victims, much more to those who are well acquainted with them, and who rejoice in them exceedingly and unceasingly, can never put on any such complexion. The intense good-humour and the absolutely unruffled play of intelligence, the complete freedom from (what appears for instance capitally in the example just glanced at) political, national, social animus, and the almost miraculous fashion in which the caricature strikes at the corruptions, but never at the essential character, of the thing caricatured, settle this once for all.
If we knew (as unluckily we do not know) whether the Host and the company stopped Sir Thopas because they disliked the type, or because the example was a parody, it would be a great help to us; but it is scarcely a less help to perceive clearly that its critical character would have been enough to put them out of conceit with it. Few people really do like criticism; fewer still like real criticism. And the criticism of Sir Thopas, though disguised, is very real. Everybody, whether he knows the metrical romances of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries or not, can see the joke of the seemly nose; the far country of Flanders; the rebuke to the maidens, who had much better have been sleeping quietly than fussing about the beautiful knight; the calm decision of that knight that an elf-queen—nobody less—must be the object of his affections; the terrible wilderness, where buck and hare ramp and roar, and seek whom they may devour; the extraordinarily heroic exertions, which consist merely in pumping the unhappy steed; the fair bearing, which consists in running away with celerity and success. But nobody who does not know the romances themselves in their weakest examples, such as Sir Eglamour or Torrent of Portugal, can fully appreciate the manner in which the parody is adjusted to the original. Not the deftest and most disinterested critic of any day could single out, by explicit criticism, the faults “before the Eternal” of the feebler and more cut-and-dried romance, more clearly or more accurately than Chaucer has, by example, in this tale. The stock epithet and phrase; the stock comparison; the catalogue (he had himself indulged pretty freely in the catalogue); the pound of description to an ounce of incident; the mixture of the hackneyed and the ineffective in the incident itself,—all these things this mercilessly candid friend, this maliciously expert practitioner, exposes with the precision of an Aristotle and the zest of a Lucian.
Yet the whole is done by implication and unexpounded example, not in the very least by direct criticism. Had it occurred to him, or pleased him, he could no doubt have censured all these faults in as businesslike and direct a manner as his Parson (or rather his Parson’s original) censures the moral, social, and fashionable shortcomings of the age. But he certainly did not do this, and probably he never thought of doing it.
Cross the Channel (though indeed it was not always necessary to do this) and take Chaucer’s greatest contemporary among French |Froissart.| writing men. It has been said, by that very agreeable biographer of Froissart whom England (mindful of his early loyalty, and characteristically neglectful of his later infidelity) lent to France, that he “was not a man of letters.”[[597]] It may be so: but if it be, he was certainly one of the most literary not-men-of-letters that the world has ever seen. Not only is he admittedly one of that world’s most charming prose-writers, but it has long been known that the notion of him (if it ever existed among the intelligent) as of a good garrulous old person who wrote as the birds sing, is utterly erroneous. At one time he could make a mosaic of borrowed and original writing—the borrowings often in the very words of the original, the original adjusted to them with an art that nobody but Malory has ever approached, and that even Malory shows rather in general management than in style. At another, and at another again, he could, whether with or against the grain, laboriously recast this mosaic into the most widely different forms. His very desultoriness is calculated; he is criticising the romances by imitation when he makes a chassé-croisé to the story of Orthon from the victory of Aljubarrota, from the battle of Otterburn to the evil receipt for a green wound adopted by Geoffrey Tête-Noire, and the remarkably sensible, just, kindly, and gentlemanly remarks of that dying brigand to his fellow-outlaws.
But he is not a man of prose letters only. He is a poet, to the tune of some thirty thousand verses in the long-lost and late-won Méliador alone, to the tune of, I suppose, about as many more in his familiar, or at least long accessible, minor poems. He is deft at all the intricate popular forms of the day—at pastourelles as at chansons royaux, at virelais as at rondelets. He possesses its learning; and can not only appeal to the common tales of Troy and Thebes and Alexander, not only refer to ancient mythology with the semi-pagan docility which long puzzled students, and seems to puzzle some still, but be even at home with Enclimpostair, and Pynoteus, and Neptisphelè. In a certain sense he is a man of letters, a man of books, all his life, and very much more than Chaucer is. With all his patronisings by great people and his sojourns among them, he is nothing like the man of affairs that Master Geoffrey was.
And yet, in a sense also, Madame Darmesteter’s phrase is intelligible and almost justifiable. It is indeed hardly fair to base this construction on his scanty and not in the least literary reference to Chaucer, whom he does not even, like Eustache Deschamps[[598]], call a great translator. In Froissart’s happy early English time Chaucer had done probably little work, and certainly none of his best: in that melancholy revisiting, no more of the blaze of the sun of Cressy and Poitiers, but of the glimpses of the moon that was to set in blood at Pontefract, he was probably too old and too disgusted to make inquiries about such matters. But the absence of the strictly literary interest in one who not merely had so much literary genius, but was so constantly reading and writing, is pervading and incessant. This interest is absent not merely where it might well have been present, but where its presence seems almost indispensable. Froissart’s style of poetry invites the widest, and (except that it is rather too methodical, not to say mechanical) the wildest, liberty of divagation, of dragging in anything that really interested him. In the most recondite allegorising of the Prison Amoureuse he expostulates[[599]] with Desire for not coming to his aid, and giving him the victory, by the same sort of clever outflanking attack as that which Chandos executed at the Battle of Auray, and of which he kindly gives some details. He names books in the usual manner of Romance; he will go so far as to praise them; but he never discusses them. In the well-known passage[[600]] of the Espinette Amoureuse, when he asks his beloved the name of the romance she is reading, she does indeed tell him that it is Cléomadès (Did he mention the same to Chaucer?), with the commendation that it is “well made and dittied amorously,” and she asks him to lend her another (it is the Bailiff of Love[[601]] that he hits upon),
“Car lire est un douls mestiers.”
But, though the comparing of critical opinions on literature has been not unknown as one of the primrose paths of the garden of Flirtation, they seem to have trodden it no farther.
So in his prose. The satura of the Chroniques admits anything that interested either Froissart or the men of his time. In those strange midnight sessions of the Italianate Gascon Count of Foix—the lettered tyrant-sorcerer who would have been even more at home in Ferrara or Rimini than in Béarn—books were in great request; but nobody seems to have talked criticism. “So much the better for the Bearnese,” the reader may say; and he is welcome to an opinion which, at times, if not always, most people must have shared. But that is not the question. The question is, “Was this a critical age?” and the answer is, “If it had been, a man could not have been so bookish as Froissart was and yet be not critical in the least.” Nor could he, even if some private idiosyncrasy had accounted for his own attitude, have failed to reveal the presence of a different one in the time which he has drawn for us, more poetically no doubt than Boswell or Pepys, but with not a little of their unpremeditated, their even unconscious, fidelity.
The lesson taught by the two men, who occupy the summits of European literature at the very midmost of the period of this |Richard of Bury.| chapter, will be confirmed whether we look earlier or later. It might seem almost impossible that the somewhat famous Philobiblon[[602]] of Richard of Bury (or Aungervyle), who made one of the greatest collections of books in the early part of the fourteenth century, and celebrated it in this little tract just before his own death and shortly after Chaucer’s probable birth, should not contribute something—improbable that it should not contribute very much—to our subject. As a matter of fact it contributes nothing at all. Almost the oldest Sacred Book (as distinguished from “sacred passages” in Cicero and others) of Bibliophily, it remains entirely outside of literary criticism. The good Bishop of Durham, indeed, does not devour all books with indiscriminating voracity. He is true to his order in candidly avowing no high opinion of law-books; but his reason—that they belong rather to Will than to Wit—shows us his point of view. From that point of view one book may be preferable to another, as being more useful, as dealing with a nobler subject, as boasting a more venerable authorship, as being perhaps rarer, more beautifully written or bound, older, newer, in better condition, but not, I think, at all as being better literature. The pleasant garrulity of the tractate; its agreeable onslaught upon woman, the natural enemy of books; its anecdotage; its keen sympathy with the Book as almost a living thing, and certainly one exposed to almost all the dangers of life, have made it, and will long make it, a favourite. It is sweet and pleasant: but it is not criticism.
The author of the Philobiblon was a friend of Petrarch’s, and it may at first sight seem strange that Petrarch himself should |Petrarch.| not be—should not indeed have been at the very beginning or this chapter—summoned to give evidence likewise. But the fact is that Petrarch has nothing to tell us in our context. He has indeed, as has been pretty universally recognised, nothing to do with the Middle Ages. Not only in his heart and desires, but in his nature, he is a man of the early—if of the earliest—Renaissance. Even in the vernacular he rings false as an exponent of anything mediæval. Timotheus, not St Cecily, has taught his strains. And in his “regular” writing he is severely, almost ludicrously, a classicaster. We may return to him as the earliest distinguished example of the Renaissance attitude; here he cannot even, as others have done, help us by his silence.
It is otherwise with his great contemporary, and at the last friend, Boccaccio. Boccaccio likewise has been claimed as a prophet of the Renaissance, as one of the first of the |Boccaccio.| moderns and the like; nor would it skill to deny that there is much both of the Renaissance and of the modern spirit in him. But he has not broken with the immediate past; he is only tinging it, and blending it a little, with the farther past and the future. If something of the magical charm of the mediæval prose story is gone from the Decameron, the learned voluptuousness of the Renaissance conte is not yet there.[there.] The Filostrato, and the Filocopo[[603]], and the Teseide, are still romances. And in the De Genealogia Deorum, if there is much of that non-mediæval spirit which was always in Italy, and not a little of the Renaissance proper, there is enough of the Middle Age itself to give it a locus standi here.
Indeed, by a recent authority of great eminence[[604]] Boccaccio has been treated as a coryphæus and representative of “the |His work on Dante.| critics of the middle ages.” I have endeavoured, in these chapters, to show that the critics of the middle ages are, except in the most remote and shadowy function, almost a non-existent body. And it seems to me that Boccaccio’s views on criticism, though most worthy of remark, are the very head and front of that Renaissance side of him which is so undeniable. In the passage which Mr Courthope cites from the Life of Dante, where Boccaccio says that Theology and poetry are almost one, that “Theology is God’s poetry,” that it is a kind of poetic invention when Christ is spoken of at one time as a lion, at the other as a lamb, that the words of the Saviour in the Gospel are merely or mainly allegory, that “Poetry is Theology and Theology poetry,” and that Aristotle said nearly as much[[605]]—when he writes in this way he is speaking very much less the mind of the Middle Ages than the mind which agitated the mass of his countrymen, the Italian critics, from Daniello onwards in the sixteenth century. But it is quite certain that in writing this he is writing with a conception of criticism quite alien from that which we are now handling. He may quote Aristotle, but he is speaking in the manner of Plato. It is poetry in the abstract with which he is dealing, not the literary value of poetry according to its expression in form, of no matter what ideal in essence. And it will be found, I think, that a careful study of his commentary on Dante, the most important thing of the kind that we possess by one considerable man of letters in the Middle Ages upon another, entirely bears this out.
As for the Life (or, as he himself seems to call it in the first lecture of the Commentary, the “Little Treatise”[[606]]) on Dante, it is couched in so extremely rhetorical a style, with constant bursts of apostrophe and epiphonema, that there may seem to be a sort |The Trattatello.| of warning on it from the first: “Criticism not to be expected.” As a matter of fact, however, Boccaccio does give us some of what, as we shall see more fully in a moment, he thought to be criticism, and of what not a few persons seem still to think the best criticism. For he has an elaborate digression on Poetry and Poets in the abstract, with a particular parallel distinction (referred to above) between poetry and theology. But he goes no farther, and the heading “Qualità e diffetti di Dante” is entirely occupied with moral characteristics. In the Comento itself, however, it might well seem to be a case of Now or Never. Here was a literary lectureship expressly instituted for the treatment of the greatest man of letters of the city, the country, and (as it happened) the world, at the time and for long before and after. Here was an exceedingly learned lecturer, with plenty of mother-wit to keep his learning alive, with a distinct fellow-feeling of creation further to animate both, and with the sincerest and heartiest goodwill to complete his competence. He spares no trouble, but goes to his work with scholastic minuteness, expending some three score lectures and some nine hundred pages on seventeen cantos only out of the hundred of the Commedia. Unfortunately neither his models nor his tastes seem to incline |The Comento.| him in the way where we would so fain see him go. He has read Servius and all (or at least many of) the rhetoricians and scholastic philosophers, and he tells us with gusto what are the causes, formal, efficient, material, and final, of the book, how its form is “poetic, fictive, descriptive, digressive, and transitive,” and how the efficient cause is “that very same author, Dante Alighieri, of whom we will speak more extensively by-and-by.” He has also read Fulgentius:[[607]] and before very long he gives us a capital specimen of derivation, in the manner of that ingenious author, by telling us that “Avernus” is from a, which is without, and vernus, which is joy. He has at his command all that extraordinary supply of mythological and miscellaneous classical learning which, as we shall see immediately, enabled him to write his Genealogy: and he never comes to the name of an ancient writer or of a mythological personage without giving a full and particular account thereof. No details are too obvious or too minute for him, even apart from the allegorical interpretation, in which, as any scholar of Fabius Planciades, and indeed any mediæval writer of the fourteenth century, was bound to do, he expatiates delightedly. He vouches the information that Dante called the forest selvaggia “because he wished to denote that there was not in it any human habitation, and that as a consequence it was horrible;” aspera, “in order to demonstrate the quality of the trees and shrubs of the same, which would be old, with long straggling branches en woven and interpleached among themselves, and likewise full of blackthorns, and brambles, and dry stubs, growing without any order, and stretching hither and thither—whereby it was a rough thing and a dangerous to go through,” &c. He is copious in moral excursus on the impropriety of Florentine dress, on the sin of Luxury, on the obvious inconvenience and hardship of the fact that while men are allowed to try horses, asses, oxen, dogs, clothing, casks, pitchers before they buy them, they have to take their wives on trust and without trial. But on literary criticism we come not seldom, but never, beyond the beggarly elements of verbal interpretation, where Boccaccio is just as happy with Pape Satan as with Galeotto fu il libro, or rather more so, while he is much happier with Penthesilea or Pasiphae than with either. It is no doubt unfair to try Master John Bochas with the things that make us “nearly wild” (as Cowper made Miss Marianne Dashwood,[[608]] and does not often make us), but still the Galeotto passage is very tempting. Lancelot, we learn, was one of whom the French romances tell many beautiful and laudable things (things which he tells us, in confidence, he himself believes to be set forth rather to please than according to the truth), and the said Lancelot was ferventissimamente enamoured of Guinevere. Then he points out that the line which follows (Soli eravamo, &c.), and the previous mention of the book, indicate three things—reading about love, solitude, and freedom from suspicion—which are very powerful to induce a man and a woman to adoperate dishonestly. And so he proceeds, expounding or construing the whole ineffable passage, word for word, with a solemn and indiscriminate enjoyment—the trembling at the kiss, the fact that Galehault was a kind of giant, great and big, down to Quel giorno, his remark on which, though not scientifically inaccurate, savours rather of the Decameron than of the Commedia itself. But in the whole comment there is nothing (or, what is worse than nothing, a single banal ottimamente descrive) for any part whatsoever of the passion, the poetry, the mysterious magnificence of the expression. The passage is to Boccaccio a good ecphrasis, a capital compte rendu of an interesting situation—that is all.
The De Genealogia Deorum.
Nor will this be less borne out by an examination of Boccaccio’s principal “place” of criticism, which will be, perhaps somewhat unexpectedly, found in the two last books, the fourteenth and fifteenth, of that singular monument of learning, the De Genealogia Deorum.[[609]] After laboriously searching out all the mythological stories of antiquity within his reach, and co-ordinating them into a regular family history, from Demogorgon, through Erebus and his twenty-one sons and daughters by Night, to Alexander and Scipio (whom, however, he declines, as a strict genealogist, to admit as sons of Jove), Boccaccio, at the beginning of his fourteenth book, takes up the cudgels for Poetry against her enemies. The style is decidedly rhetorical, and faint remembrances of Clodius as an accuser (or, to be less pedantic and less hackneyed, of Steenie lecturing on the turpitude of incontinence) may possibly occur, as we find the author of the Decameron indignantly denouncing those who sneer at poets and learned men, meretriculis gannientes, and holding cups of foaming wine in their hands. But he is perfectly serious: if a man has not proved his seriousness by writing a Latin genealogy of the gods in four hundred large and closely printed folio pages, what is Proof? There was always, he says, a quarrel between Learning and Licentiousness. Even some graver folk sneer at, or find fault with, poetry. Lawyers do so: and the lawyers are properly rebuked and bid to look at the example of Cicero. Monks do: and there is expostulation likewise with them. But he will attack the question in form. Poetry is a noble and useful thing. Its meaning, its antiquity, its origin are discussed. There is nothing wrong or harmful in a “fable” as such; but in all its kinds it can be made of positive utility. Poets do not retire into solitude out of any misanthropy or wrong motive, but simply for the sake of meditation: and they have often been the friends of most respectable people—Ennius of the Scipios, Virgil of Augustus, Dante of King Frederick and Can de la Scala, Francis Petrarch of the Emperor Charles, of King John of France, of King Robert of Jerusalem and Sicily, and of any number of Popes.
But, some say, poetry is obscure. It is certainly written for the learned and people of wit, not for the common herd; but it is none the worse for that. It is entirely false that poets are liars: poetry and lying are two quite different things (Virgil is here particularly cleared in the matter of Dido). It is foolish to condemn what you do not understand: and this is generally done by those who abuse poetry. And it is intolerable that men should speak against Homer, Hesiod, Virgil, Horace, Juvenal, when they have hardly read them. The “seduction” of Poetry is all nonsense: and the accusation that poetry is the ape of philosophy, greater nonsense still. It would be better to call poets the apes of Nature.[[610]]
He does not fear to contest the authority of Jerome when he said that verses were Dæmonum cibus, of Plato himself, and of Boethius when he called the Muses “scenic meretricules.” He grapples with the two first at great length, and points out that Boethius was thinking chiefly of the naughty theatre. An allocution to the King (Hugh of Cyprus and Jerusalem), to whom the whole treatise is dedicated, and a milder deprecation to the enemies of poetry, conclude this book.
The Fifteenth at first seems to launch out into still deeper waters. You must not insist too much on use. What is the use of the beard? Yet men of a certain age are ashamed to be beardless. And as for the duration of work, that is in the hand of God. But this turns to a mere excuse of his own actual book. His work has been done as well as he can do it, both for matter and for style. He refers to divers living or recent authors, Dante and Petrarch among them, of whom he gives little descriptions that raise, but hardly satisfy, our curiosity to see whether he will really criticise. Dante was peritissimus circa poeticam, and what he was is shown by his inclytum opus, “which he wrote with wonderful art, under the title of a Comedy, in rhyme of the Florentine idiom, and in which he certainly showed himself not a mythologer but rather a catholic and divine Theologian. And while he is known to almost all the world, I know not whether the fame of his name has come to your latitude.” Petrarch is dealt with much more fully. “Even that remote corner of the earth England knows him as a principal poet,”[[611]] and here Boccaccio no longer nescit utrum, but haud dubitat quin, his fame has reached Cyprus. His “divine” Africa, his Bucolics, his Epistles in verse and prose, and a good many other things, are noticed.
Next he recurs to antiquity, mentioning Homer especially, and defending his own practice of mixing Greek words with Latin by the examples of Cicero, Macrobius, Apuleius, and Ausonius. He has a good deal to say (entirely in a Renaissance spirit) on the importance of the Greeks and of Greek; defends, against clerical prejudice, his description of the heathen poets as the theologians of mythology, argues once more that Dante may be called a theologian proper, contends at great length that there is no harm in the study of heathen matters by Christians, and, after purging himself of other objections, concludes.
A most interesting document; indeed a document upon which, with reference both to its general tenor and to individual expressions (of which it has been possible to mention but one or two here), it would be pleasant to spend much more time. But a document which, for our present purpose and plan, seems to establish in the main two things, both of them rather negative than positive. The first is that Boccaccio can hardly be appealed to either as helping Dantes Aligerus to remove the reproach from mediæval criticism, in the sense in which we here understand it, or even as a representative proper of mediæval criticism at all—that his criticism, such as it is, is of a purely Renaissance type, and results, not from the application of mediæval ideas to ancient matter, but from the application of resuscitated ancient ideas to matter which, though not wholly, is preferably chosen from ancient material. It is not to be forgotten that even in that creative work which has been referred to above, Boccaccio has always preferred the matière de Rome, the classical side of the mediæval storehouse. From this he has drawn the Teseide, from this the Filostrato, and if in the Filocopo he has made a more purely mediæval choice, let it be remembered that Floire et Blanche-fleur, his original, is of all Romances the most like a Byzantine novel, and has even been thought to have been directly inspired by one.
Secondly, when we examine the character of this criticism of his in detail, we find it differing from Dante’s in this, that while Dante undoubtedly does consider the general and abstract points of poetry and of literature, Boccaccio practically considers nothing else. His descriptions of Dante himself and of Petrarch would suffice to prove this: but, in fact, it is proved by every page, every paragraph, every sentence, almost every word. Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth books of the Genealogy Boccaccio is really pleading pro domo sua—for the status and craft of the story-teller generally, not of the poet as such. And further, he is pleading for free trade in the story, not for any special process of art or craft in its manufacture. He had possibly, if not certainly, read the De Vulgari, but, as he read it, it must have been in the first part of the first book only that he found much that was germane to his own tastes and principles. If we could but have had from himself such an examen of the Decameron as Corneille and, still more, Dryden have given of their work! But the time simply did not admit of any such thing: and though Boccaccio was very much in advance of his time in some ways, these ways were not of the some.
Nor does the Fifteenth Century proper necessitate any revision of the general doctrine of this chapter. There are here and there blind stirrings of the Renaissance spirit; but, once more, they do not concern us. There is everywhere the dogged or unconscious adherence to the uncritical promiscuousness of the past; and that has been sufficiently commented upon. If it be, as perhaps it is, desirable to take a single example, and deal with it as we have dealt with others, there can hardly be a better than Gavin Douglas, who at the very end of the period shows, side by side with Renaissance tendency (which certainly exists, though to me it does not seem so great as it has seemed to some), the strongest symptoms of persistent mediævalism.
Nobody can deny that the good Bishop of Dunkeld (uneasiest to him of bishop-stools!) not only would have liked to be a |Gavin Douglas.| critic, but shows both his critical and his Renaissance sides in the well-known and violent onslaught on poor Caxton in the first of the very agreeable Prologues to his own translation of the Æneid. In fact, those to whom the woman who killed Abimelech with a stone or slate is the patron saint of criticism, must regard him as a very considerable critic. How Caxton’s work and Virgil’s are “no more like than the Devil and Saint Austin”; how the author “shamefully perverted” the story; how the critic read it “with harms at his heart” that such a book “without sentence or engine” should be entitled after so divine a bard; how such a wight never knew three words of what Virgil meant; how he, Gavin, is “constrained to flyte,”—all this is extremely familiar. We seem to hear the very voice of the modern “jacket-duster,” of the man who finds his pet task anticipated, his pet subject trespassed upon, and is determined to make the varlet pay for it. Douglas, to be sure, is not quite in the worst case of this class of critic. He can render some reasons, neither garbled nor forged, for his censure. He has (and this is a sign that criticism was stirring) lost taste for, lost even comprehension of, the full, guileless, innocent, mediæval licence of suppression, suggestion, and digression. He protests (quite truly) that Neptune did not join with Æolus in causing the storm that endangered Æneas, but on the contrary stilled that storm. He is indignant at the extension given to the true romantic part of the poem, the Tragedy of Carthage in the Fourth Book, and only less indignant at the suppression of the “lusty games” and plays palustral in the Fifth. Most of all does he tell us of that aggravation of the critical misuse of allegory which was to be one of the main Renaissance notes. The “hidden meaning” of poetry is the great thing for Douglas, and he has much to say about it before he “turns again” on Caxton. Will it be believed that Caxton wrote "Touyr for Tiber"! Alas! alas!
“For Touyr divides Greece from Hungarie,
And Tiber is chief fluide of Italy.”
But all this, and a great deal more like it, as the setting up of the old Rhetoric-Poetic theory of a poem as the story of a perfectly noble character, and the rebuke even to Chaucer not merely for being too literal, just as Caxton was too loose, but for actually saying (the more Chaucer he!) that Æneas was not a perfectly noble character but a forsworn traitor,—all this argues no real relinquishment of the mediæval ideal except in a special case. Douglas shows in his own work that he is after all a chip of the old block, and not fresh hewn from a virgin quarry.
In the Prologue to the Sixth Book he returns to the allegorical-philosophical interpretation of Virgil, and shows himself a hundred leagues to leeward of the critical port by urging, in Virgil’s favour, that St Augustine is always quoting him against Paganism. Not in the whole range of mediæval literature is that pell-mell cataloguing, which, with more truth than reverence, has been assimilated to that of the “Groves of Blarney,” better shown than in the Palice of Honour. Solomon, “the well of sapience,” Aristotle, “fulfillit of prudence,” “Salust, Seneca, and Titus Livius” jostle Pythagoras and Porphyry, Parmenides and “Melysses,” “Sidrach, Secundus, and Solenius,” “Empedocles, Neptanabus, and Hermes,” “wise Josephus and facund Cicero,” with other miraculous couples and trinities. The procession of the Court of Venus huddles classical, Biblical, and mediæval in the same, but a more pardonable, fashion; and when the Muses intervene to save the peccant poet, Dictys and Dares still march unblushingly with Homer and Virgil. “Plautus, Poggius, and Persius” must have looked only less oddly, the first and last at the second, than “Esop, Cato, and Allane” (Alanus de Insulis of the Anti-Claudianus and the De planetu Naturæ) each at other. Such a capital phrase as “the mixt and subtle Martial,” the valuable naming of contemporary poets that follows, and other things, may much more than atone for, but cannot hide, the higgledy-piggledy character of the cataloguing, or the odd repetition of the same thing with a difference at the end of the Second Part, and the yet further development in the Third. The note of criticism is discrimination—the note of the Middle Age, as of this, almost its latest exponent, save in the few places where he has chipped his shell, is the indiscriminate.
It can scarcely be necessary, though it might not be uninteresting, to take any more examples. We need not |Further examples unnecessary.| wander in Hercynian forests with those rules of latest Middle High German poetry, which have all the formality of the French “Arts” and none of the charm of their products. The Marquis of Santillana and his comrades, in castle or convent of Spain, concern national rather than general history, history of literature rather than history of criticism; and they, like others, will best be glanced at retrospectively in the Renaissance section. From the French rhétoriqueur period we might pick out much that would illustrate, over and over again, what has been sufficiently illustrated already, little that would give us anything new, nothing or next to nothing that would be at once new and important.[[612]] As will be shown, a little more in detail, in the Interchapter which follows, the service which the Middle Ages rendered to Criticism was indeed inestimable; but it was by way of provision of fresh material, not by way of examination, either of that material or of anything older.
[593]. The “cursed appreciation,” as a modern wit has translated the phrase in its most famous context.
[595]. I must apologise to those who hold that Chaucer never rhymed -y and -ye for ascribing Sir Thopas to him. But I really cannot give it up as Chaucerian.
[596]. Not Rebecca and Rowena. I think it barely desirable to insert this note because quite recently a person, not demonstrably insane, called that exquisite piece of Romantic humour “distressing,” or some such word.
[597]. Froissart. Par Mary Darmesteter (Paris, 1894), p. 19.
[598]. Deschamps, a far more exclusively bookish person than Froissart, and one who has even left us, in his elaborate Art de Dittier, not the least remarkable of the formal “Poetics” referred to above, is no more of a critic in any true sense than Froissart himself—not nearly so much as Sidonius or Eberhard.
[599]. Œuvres de Froissart (Poésies), par A. Scheler, 3 vols. (Bruxelles, 1870), i. 303.
[600]. Ibid., p. 107 sq.
[601]. Cléomadès (which is possibly not unconnected with Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale) whoso will may know and (if he be of my mind) rejoice in (ed. Van Hasselt, Bruxelles, 1865). But, alas! we have not the Bailiff of Love.
[602]. Often printed: the best edition of the original Latin is, I believe, that (with French version) of M. Cocheris (Paris, 1856). The late Professor H. Morley gave one of the wide biographical excursus of his English Writers (iv. 38-58) to Bishop Richard, and included in it a pretty full abstract of the Philobiblon (or “Philobiblion”).
[603]. Without prejudice to Filocolo. We attempt not to decide such quarrels.
[604]. My friend, Mr W. J. Courthope, in the third chapter of his Life of Pope (Pope’s Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, v. 50: London, 1889.)
[605]. Had he known Maximus Tyrius (v. supra, p. [117]), he might almost have borrowed the very words of that writer. But in the astonishingly long list of Boccaccio’s classical authorities Maximus does not, I think, occur.
[606]. Trattatello. I use the cheap and convenient ed. of the two books published by Le Monnier. (Florence, 1863; latest ed. 1895, 2 vols.)
[607]. He quotes him early, ed. cit., i. 94 (see [note] opposite).
[608]. “To hear those beautiful lines, which have frequently almost driven me wild, pronounced with such impenetrable calmness, such dreadful indifference!”
“... but you would give him Cowper.”
“Nay, mamma, if he is not to be animated by Cowper!”—Sense and Sensibility, chap. iii.
[609]. There is said, to the discredit of modernity, to be no modern edition of this most remarkable and interesting book. Of the three folio issues (1494 and later) which are in the library of the University of Edinburgh, I have used that of Hervagius (Basle, 1532.)
[610]. Mr Courthope must, I should think, have overlooked this passage when he denied ([denied (]loc. cit.) that Boccaccio and other mediæval writers held the doctrine that poetry should follow Nature.
[611]. By favour of one Geoffrey Chaucer?
[612]. Considerations of something the same kind may partly excuse a further omission—which I know will be deplored by some, and which I daresay will be denounced by others—that of any notice of rhetorical and metrical writings in the Celtic and Scandinavian languages. I shall very frankly acknowledge that there is another reason for this omission. I have the greatest dislike to writing about anything at second-hand; and while I have as yet had time to acquire only a slight knowledge of Icelandic, I do not know anything at all of the Celtic languages. With the help of Fors Fortuna, I may be yet able to make these defects in some measure good; but I do not think it necessary to delay the present volume indefinitely in order to do so. “There is no staying,” as Johnson says, “for the concurrence of all conveniences. We will do as well as we can.” So far as I have been able to inform myself, the rhetorical writing of Icelandic is not extensive or important, even though some may have come from the interesting hand of Snorri Sturluson. The early Irish metrical treatises are, no doubt, of great importance for the history of metre. But being purely particularist, and out of the general current of European literature, their critical importance can hardly be regarded as of the highest kind. And Welsh, while anything of the sort in it must be much later, is necessarily in the same position.