ἡ γὰρ τῶν λόγων κρίσις πολλῆς ἐστι πείρας
τελευταῖον ἐπιγέννημα.
—Longinus.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
DELIMITATION OF FRONTIER—CLASSES OF CRITICISM EXCLUDED—CLASS RETAINED—METHOD—TEXTS THE CHIEF OBJECT—“HYPOTHESES NON FINGO”—ILLUSTRATION FROM M. EGGER—THE DOCUMENTS—GREEK—ROMAN—MEDIÆVAL—RENAISSANCE AND MODERN.
It is perhaps always desirable that the readers of a book should have a clear idea of what the writer of it proposes to give them: it is very certainly desirable that such an idea should |Delimitation of frontier.| exist in the writer himself. But if this is the case generally, it must be more especially the case where there is at least some considerable danger of ambiguity. And that there is such danger, in regard to the title of the present book, not many persons, I suppose, would think of denying. The word Criticism is often used, not merely with the laxity common to all such terms, but in senses which are not so much extensions of each other as digressions into entirely different genera. In the following pages it will be used as nearly as possible univocally. The Criticism which will be dealt with here is that function of the judgment which busies itself with the goodness or badness, the success or ill-success, of literature from the purely literary point of view. Other offices of the critic, real or so-called, will occupy us slightly or not at all. We shall meddle little with the more transcendental Æsthetic, with those ambitious theories of Beauty, and of artistic Pleasure in general, which, fascinating and noble as they appear, have too often proved cloud-Junos. The business of interpretation, a most valuable and legitimate side-work of his, though perhaps only a side-work, will have to be glanced at, as we come to modern times, with increasing frequency. We shall not be able entirely to leave out of the question, though we shall not greatly trouble ourselves with it, what is called the “verbal” part of his office—the authentication or extrusion of this or that “reading.” But we shall, as far as possible, neglect and decline what may perhaps best be called the Art of Critical Coscinomancy, by which the critic affects to discern, separate, and rearrange, on internal evidence not of a literary character, the authorship and date of books. Of the Criticism, so-called, which has performed its chief exploits in Biblical discussion, which has meddled a good deal with the |Classes of Criticism excluded.| Classics, and which occupies, in regard to the older and therefore more tempting documents of modern literature, a position of activity midway between that exercised towards the sacred writings and that exercised towards Greek and Roman authors, no word will, except by some accidental necessity, be found in these pages. The rules and canons of this Criticism are different from, and in most cases antagonistic to, those of Criticism proper: its objects are entirely distinct; and in particular it, for the most part if not wholly, neglects the laws of Logic. Now Criticism proper, which is but in part a limitation, in part an extension, of Rhetoric, never parts company with Rhetoric’s elder sister.
In other words, the Criticism or modified Rhetoric, of which this book attempts to give a history, is pretty much the same thing as the reasoned exercise of Literary Taste—the |Class retained.| attempt, by examination of literature, to find out what it is that makes literature pleasant, and therefore good—the discovery, classification, and as far as possible tracing to their sources, of the qualities of poetry and prose, of style and metre, the classification of literary kinds, the examination and “proving,” as arms are proved, of literary means and weapons, not neglecting the observation of literary fashions and the like. It will follow from this that the History must pursue the humble a posteriori method. Except on the rarest |Method.| occasions, when it may be safe to generalise, it will confine itself wholly to the particular and the actual. We shall not busy ourselves with what men ought to have admired, what they ought to have written, what they ought to have thought, but with what they did think, write, admire. To some, no doubt, this will give an appearance of plodding, if not of pusillanimity; but there may be others who will recognise in it, not so much a great refusal, as an honest attempt to provide some sound and useful knowledge which does not exist in any accessible form,—to raise, by whatsoever humble drudgery, vantage-points from which more aspiring persons than the writer may take Pisgah-sights, if they please, without fear of their support collapsing under them in the manner of a tub.
It has further seemed desirable, if not absolutely necessary for the carrying out of this scheme, to confine ourselves mainly to the actual texts. This is not, perhaps, a fashionable proceeding. Not what Plato says, but what the latest |Texts the chief object.| commentator says about Plato—not what Chaucer says, but what the latest thesis-writer thinks about Chaucer—is supposed to be the qualifying study of the scholar. I am not able to share this conception of scholarship. When we have read and digested the whole of Plato, we may, if we like, turn to his latest German editor; when we have read and digested the whole of Shakespeare, and of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, we may, if we like, turn to Shakespearian biographers and commentators. But this extension of inquiry, to apply a famous contrast, is facultative, not necessary. At any rate, in the following pages it is proposed to set forth, and where necessary to discuss, what Plato, Aristotle, Dionysius, Longinus, what Cicero and Quintilian, what Dante and Dryden, what Corneille and Coleridge, with many a lesser man besides, have said about literature, noticing by the way what effect these authorities have had on the general judgment, and what, as often happens, the general judgment has for the time made up its mind to, without troubling itself about authorities. But we shall only occasionally busy ourselves with what others, not themselves critically great, have said about these great critics, and that from no arrogance, but for two reasons of the most inoffensive character. In the first place, there is no room to handle both text and margent, with the margent’s margent ad infinitum. In the second, the handling of the margent would distinctly obscure the orderly setting forth of the texts.
Yet, further, leave will be taken to neglect guesswork as |"Hypotheses non fingo."| far as possible, and for the most part, if not invariably, to refrain from building any hypotheses upon titles, casual citations, or mere probabilities.