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.