Teach nothing but to name his tools,”
has no farther to look than to the portentous list at the end of Puttenham’s Art of Poetry.
Yet his cautions as to metaphors themselves, which he regards as the chief means of embellishment in prose, are perfectly just and sound. They must, he says, be selected with careful reference to the particular effect intended to be produced, be euphonious, not far-fetched, and drawn from beautiful objects.
Here, perhaps as well as in reference to any single passage in the Poetics, we have an opportunity of considering for the |A difficulty.| first time a difficulty, not unexpected, not uninteresting, which meets us, and which will recur frequently, in ancient (and sometimes in the most modern) criticism. It is the difficulty which so did please Locke and his followers in the attack on the doctrine of Innate Ideas,—in other words, the difficulty of an apparently hopeless difference of standard on points of taste—the difference between Greek and modern love, between English and Hottentot beauty. One should, says the philosopher, say ῥοδοδάκτυλος rather than φοινικοδάκτυλος, while ἐρυθροδάκτυλος is the worst of all. The commentators have tried to get out of the difficulty by suggesting that the last suggests the redness of frost-bitten or domestically disfigured fingers. φοινικοδάκτυλος would in the same way, I suppose, be considered as objectionable because the colour is overcharged in the epithet, and might even suggest “red-handed” in the sense of “bloodstained.” Yet one may doubt whether Aristotle’s objection is based on anything but the fact that Homer uses the one epithet, not the others. The verb ἐρυθριάω, at any rate, is invariably used for blushing, not an unattractive or unbeautiful proceeding by any means. And we shall find very much stronger instances of this difficulty later.
The explanation is partly supplied by the very next section, which deals with ψυχρότης and is one of the most valuable |“Frigidity.”| keys existing to the whole tone of Greek, indeed of classical, criticism. It is rather unlucky that “frigidity,” our only equivalent, is not quite clear to English ears. In fact, “fustian” comes nearest to what is meant, though it is not completely adequate and coextensive. The idea is not difficult to follow—it is that of something which is intended to excite and inflame the auditor or reader, while in fact it leaves him cold, if it does not actually lower his spiritual temperature. Aristotle gives four cases, or (which is nearly the same thing) four kinds of it—words excessively compounded, foreign terms, too emphatic or minute epithets, and improper metaphors. To these, as generalities, few would object, but the instances are sometimes decidedly puzzling. Lycophron (the sophist, not the poet) is blamed for calling the heavens πολυπρόσωπον (“many-visaged”), the earth μεγαλοκόρυφον (“mightily mountain-topped”), and the shore στενοπόρον (“leaving a narrow passage between cliff and sea”). Now, perhaps these terms are too poetical, yet we should hardly call them frigid, for they are not untrue to nature, and they not only show thought and imagination in the writer, but excite both in the reader. Still, they are all slightly excessive; they pass measure, as do other things blamed in Alcidamas and Gorgias still more.
The second objection is of still greater interest, because it has practically supplied a shibboleth in the Classic-Romantic debate |Archaism.| up to the present moment. It is the objection to archaic, foreign, and otherwise inusitate words, which Aristotle seems to apply even to Homeric terms, not as poetic but as obsolete, just as other good persons in times nearer our own have applied the same to Chaucerisms and the like. The sounder doctrine, of course, is that nullum tempus occurrit regi in this transferred sense also—that what the old kings of literature have stamped remains current for ever, and what the new kings of literature stamp takes currency at once.
Almost as interesting is the third punishment-cell, in which epithets too long, too many, or out of place are bestowed. The |Stock epithet and periphrasis.| two habits which seem to be mainly aimed at here (Alcidamas is still the chief awful example) are the use in prose of the poetical perpetual epithet (“white milk” is the example chosen) and the undue tendency to periphrasis, which, curiously enough, reminds one of the besetting sin of the extreme “Classical” school of the last century.
Most puzzling of all are the examples pilloried for impropriety in the fourth class, the unfortunate Alcidamas being rebuked for calling philosophy “the intrenchment of law,” and |False metaphor.| the Odyssey a “mirror of human life.” The most, thoroughgoing Aristotelians have given up this last criticism with an acknowledgment that ancient and modern tastes differ; while Mr Cope even suggests that Aristotle “winked,” not nodded, when he wrote the whole passage. I do not so easily figure to myself a winking Stagirite.
In the chapter on Simile which follows there is much that is sensible, but nothing that is surprising—the relation of simile |Simile.| and metaphor being the main point. One’s expectations are more raised in coming to the great subject of “purity” of style—"Hellenising," “writing Greek.” This phrase, in our author, is directed against something corresponding rather to the French “fautes de Français” than to our “not English,” having regard to the syntax, the sentence-building, |“Purity.”| rather than to the actual diction. But it differs from both in having, like so much of his criticism, more to do with matter than form. In fact, it has been well observed that “Perspicuity” rather than “Purity” is really the subject of the chapter. It is, however, of great importance, and the next, on Elevation, or Grandeur, or Dignity, is |“Elevation.”| of greater still. Some slight difficulty may occur at starting with the word thus variously rendered in English, ὄγκος. In its non-rhetorical use, the word (which strictly means “bulk,” with the added notion of weight) inclines rather to an unfavourable signification, often signifying “pretentiousness,” “pomposity”: it is sometimes used later in Rhetoric itself with such a meaning; and I think those who compare the earlier passage on Frigidity will be inclined to suspect that Aristotle himself was not using it entirely honoris causa. He gives, however, some hints for its attainment, and a bundle of instances, where our ignorance of the context makes the illustrative power somewhat small.
Next we come to that quality of τὸ πρέπον, “the becoming,” “propriety,” which is commonly and not wrongly taken to be |Propriety.| the special note of “classical” writing. And we have rules for its attainment, some ethical rather than æsthetic, some æsthetic enough but curiously arbitrary, as that unusual words are not appropriate except to a person in a state of excitement. At the close there is an interesting glance at the irony of Gorgias and of Socrates.