PREFACE.
It is perhaps vain to attempt to tone down the audacity of the present essay by any explanations or limitations; it is certain that those who are offended by it at first blush are very unlikely to be propitiated by excuses of the faults which, excusably or inexcusably, it no doubt contains. The genesis of it is as follows. When, not much less than thirty years ago, the writer was first asked to undertake the duty of a critic, he had naturally to overhaul his own acquaintance with the theory and practice of criticism, and to inquire what was the acquaintance of others therewith. The disconcerting smallness of the first was a little compensated by the discovery that very few persons seemed to be much better furnished. Dr Johnson’s projected “History of Criticism, as it relates to Judging of Authours” no doubt has had fellows in the great library of books unwritten. But there were then, and I believe there are still, only two actual attempts to deal with the whole subject. One of these[[1]] I have never seen, and indeed had never heard of till nearly the whole of the present volume was written. Moreover, it seems to be merely a torso. The other, Théry’s Histoire des Opinions Littéraires,[[2]] a book which, after two editions at some interval, has been long out of print, is a work of great liveliness, no small knowledge, and, in its airy French kind, a good deal of acuteness. But the way in which “Critique Arabe,” “Critique Juive,” &c., are knocked off in a page or a paragraph at one end, and the way in which, at the other—though the second edition was published when Mr Arnold was just going to write, and the first when Coleridge, and Hazlitt, and Lamb had already written—the historian knows of nothing English later than Campbell and Blair, are things a little disquieting. At any rate, neither of these was then known to me, and I had, year by year, to pick up for myself, and piece together, the greater and lesser classics of the subject in a haphazard and groping fashion.
This volume—which will, fortune permitting, be followed by a second dealing with the matter from the Renaissance to the death of eighteenth-century Classicism, and by a third on Modern Criticism—is an attempt to supply for others, on the basis of these years of reading, the Atlas of which the writer himself so sorely felt the need. He may have put elephants for towns, he may have neglected important rivers and mountains, like a general from the point of view of a newspaper correspondent, or a newspaper correspondent from the point of view of a general; but he has done what he could.
The book, the plan of which was accepted by my publishers some five or six years ago, before I was appointed to the Chair which I have the honour to hold, has been delayed in its composition, partly by work previously undertaken, partly by professional duties. But it has probably not been injured by the necessity of reading, for these duties, some four or five times over again, the Poetics and the Rhetoric, the Institutes and the Περὶ Ὕψους,, the De Vulgari Eloquio and the Discoveries, the Essay of Dramatic Poesy and the Preface to Lyrical Ballads.
I do not know whether some apology may be expected from a man whom readers, if they know him at all, are likely to know only as a student of modern literature, for the presumption of making his own translations from Greek and Latin. But when one has learnt these languages for twelve or fifteen years, taught them for eight more, and read them for nearly another five-and-twenty, it seems rather pusillanimous to take cover behind “cribs.” I have aimed throughout rather at closeness than at elegance. An apology of another kind may be offered for the biographical and lexicographical details which, at the cost of some trouble, have been incorporated in the Index. Everybody has not a classical dictionary at hand, and probably few people have a full rhetorical lexicon. Yet it was inevitable, in a book of this kind, that a large number of persons, books, and words should be introduced, as to the date, the contents, the meaning of which or of whom, the ordinary reader might require some enlightenment. Information of the sort would have made the text indigestible and have overballasted the notes; so I have put it in the Index, where those who do not want it need not seek it, and where those who seek will, I hope, find.
It only remains to thank, with a heartiness not easily to be expressed, the friends who have been good enough to read my proofs and to give me the benefit of their special knowledge. Not always does the restless explorer of literature at large who, knowing that here also “the merry world is round And [he] may sail for evermore,” elects to be a world-wanderer, receive, from the legitimate authorities of the ports into which he puts, a genuine welcome, cheerful victualling, and assistance in visiting the adjacent provinces. Sometimes they fire into him, sometimes they deny him food and water, often they look upon him as a filibuster, or an interloper, or presumptuous. But Professor Butcher, Professor Hardie, and Professor Ker, who have had the exceeding kindness to read each the portion of this volume which belongs to him more specially of right, have not only given me invaluable suggestions and corrections, but have even encouraged me to hope that my treatment, however far it may fall short of what is desirable, is not grossly and impudently inadequate. May all other competent persons be equally lenient!
GEORGE SAINTSBURY.
Edinburgh, Lammastide 1900.
NOTE TO SECOND EDITION.
Since this book was first printed, I have remembered that the story about Malatesta and the bones (note, p. 124) is told by Mr Symonds in more than one place (e.g., The Revival of Learning, new ed., p. 151) of Gemistus Pletho, the well-known Grecian and Platonist, whose appearance in Italy so much excited Humanism. This is, for many reasons, much more probable; but the mistake of “Themistius,” if mistake it be, is not mine but Dindorf’s, or rather that of Keyssler, from whom Dindorf quotes an account of the matter, and an apparently literal transcript of the inscription. Some minor emendations have been made in this edition, but it has been thought better to place the major corrections of fact and explanations of meaning in the second volume, in order that all possessors of the book may be equally furnished with these.