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.