“Thought” is somewhat briefly referred to Rhetoric (vide infra), and then we come to Diction. This is treated rather oddly, though the oddity will not seem so odd to those who have carefully studied the contents, still more the texts, of the foregoing chapter. Much of the handling is purely grammatical. The “Figures,” especially metaphor, make some appearance: and of style proper we hear little more than that it is to be clear without being mean, though we have some illuminative examples of this difference.
Then Aristotle passes briefly to Epic, his prescription for which is an application of that already given—the single action, with its beginning, middle, and end. The organism, with its oikeia hedone, the parts, the kinds are the same, with the exception of song and scenery. The only differences are scale (Epic being much larger) and metre, with a fuller allowance for the improbable, the irrational. Some rather desultory remarks on difficulties of criticism or interpretation follow, and the piece ends abruptly with a consideration of the purely academic question whether Epic or Tragedy ranks higher. Some had given the primacy to Epic: Aristotle votes for Tragedy, and gives his reasons.
This summary has been cut down purposely to the lowest point consistent with sufficiency and clearness; but I trust it is neither insufficient nor obscure. We may now see what can be observed in it.
We observe, in the first place, not merely a far fuller dose of criticism than in anything studied hitherto, but also a great |Characteristics, general.| advance of critical theory. Not only has the writer got beyond the obscure, fragmentary, often irrelevant, utterances of the early philosophers: but he is neither conducting a particular polemic, as was Aristophanes, nor speaking to the previous question, like Plato. An a posteriori proof of the depth and solidity of the inquiry may be found in the fact that it is still, after more than two thousand years, hardly in the least obsolete. But we are not driven to this: its intrinsic merit is quite sufficient.
At the same time, there are certain defects and drawbacks in it which are of almost as much importance as its merits, and which perhaps require prior treatment. That it is incomplete admits of no doubt; that part of it shows signs of corruption, that there are possible garblings and spurious insertions, does not admit of very much. But the view throughout is so firm and consistent; the incidental remarks tally so well with what we should expect; and, above all, the exclusions or belittlings are so significant, that if the treatise were very much more complete, it would probably not tell us very much more than we know or can reasonably infer already.
In the first place, we can see, partly as a merit and partly as a drawback, that Aristotle has not merely confined himself with philosophical exactness to the Greek literature actually before him, but has committed the not unnatural, though unfortunate, mistake of taking that literature as if it were final and exhaustive. He generalises from his materials, especially from Homer and the three Tragedians, as if they provided not merely admirable examples of poetic art, but a Catholic body of literary practice to go outside of which were sin. It is impossible not to feel, at every moment, that had he had the Divina Commedia and Shakespeare side by side with the Iliad and Æschylus, his views as to both Epic and Tragedy might have been modified in the most important manner. And I at least find it still |Limitations of range.| more impossible not to be certain that if there had been a Greek Scott or a Greek Thackeray, a Greek Dumas or a Greek Balzac before him, his views as to the constitutive part of poetry being not subjective form but “imitative” substance would have undergone such a modification that they might even have contradicted these now expressed. If tragedy, partly from its religious connection, partly from its overwhelming vogue, but most of all from the flood of genius which had been poured into the form for two or three generations past, had not occupied the position which it did occupy in fact, it would probably not have held anything like its present place in the Poetics. And so in other ways. It may be consciously, it may be unconsciously, Aristotle took the Greek, and especially the Attic, literature, which constituted his library, and treated this as if it were all literature. What he has executed is in reality an induction from certain notable but by no means all-embracing phenomena; it has too much of the appearance, and has too often been taken as having more than the appearance, of being an authoritative and inclusive description of what universally is, and universally ought to be.
We have also to take into account the Greek fancy for generalising and philosophising, especially with a strong ethical |Ethical twist.| preoccupation. Aristotle does not show this in the fantastic directions of the earlier allegorising critics, but he is doubly and trebly ethical. He has none of the Platonic doubts about Imitation as being a bad thing in itself, but he is quite as rigid in his prescription of good subjects. Although we have no full treatment of Comedy, his distaste—almost his contempt—for it is clear; and debatable as the famous “pity and terror” clause of the definition of tragedy may be, its ethical drift is unmistakable.
Thus his criticism, consciously or unconsciously, is warped and twisted by two unnecessary controlments. On the one |Drawbacks resulting.| hand, he looks too much at the actual occupants of his bookcase, without considering whether there may not be another bookcase filled with other things, as good but different. On the other, he is too prone, not merely to generalise from his facts as if they were the only possible facts, but to “overstep the genus” a little in his generalisation, and to merge Poetics in Ethics. That others went further than he did, that they said later that a hero must not only be good but white, and superadded to his Unity of Action a Unity of Time and a Unity of Place, which his documents do not admit, and which his doctrines by no means justify, are matters for which, no doubt, he is not to be blamed. But of the things for which he is legitimately responsible, some are not quite praiseworthy.
In the first place, “Imitation” is an awkward word, though no doubt it is more awkward in the English than in the Greek, and “Representation” or “Fiction” will get us out of part of the difficulty. Not only does this term for the secondary creation proper to art belittle it too much, but it suggests awkward and mischievous limitations: it ties the poet’s hands and circumscribes his aims.[[42]] Indirectly it is perhaps responsible for Aristotle’s worst critical slip—his depreciation of Character in comparison with Action. This very depreciation is, however, a serious shortcoming; and so is the failure to recognise, despite some not indistinct examples of it in the matter before him from the Odyssey downwards, what has been called “Romantic Unity,” that is to say, the Unity given by Character itself, though the action may be linear and progressive rather than by way of desis and lusis. The attempt to extend (save in respect of scale only) the limitations of Tragedy to Epic is another fault; and so perhaps is the great complexity and the at least not inconsiderable obscurity of the definition of Tragedy itself. In such a treatise as this it is possible merely to allude to the famous clause, “through pity and terror effecting the katharsis of such emotions.” Volumes have been written on these few words,[[43]] the chief crux being, of course, the word katharsis. It cannot be said that any of the numerous solutions is by itself and to demonstration correct, but it is clear that the addition is out of keeping with the rest of the definition. Hitherto Aristotle, whether we agree with him or not, has been purely literary, but he now shifts to ethics. You might almost as well define fire in terms strictly appropriate to physics, and then add, “effecting the cooking of sirloins in a manner suitable to such objects.”
Yet the advantages of this criticism far exceed its drawbacks. In the first place it is, not merely so far as we positively know, |Overbalance of merit.| but by all legitimate inference, the earliest formal treatise on the art in European literature. In the second place, even if it sticks rather too close to its individual subject, that individual subject was, as it happens, so marvellously rich and perfect that no such great harm is done. A man will always be handicapped by attempting to base criticism on a single literature, yet he who knows Greek only will be in far better case than he who only knows any one other, except in so far as the knowledge of any later literature inevitably conveys an indirect dose of knowledge of Greek.