But enough of this. It is the pleasanter, and, though not in kind, yet in degree, the more important, business of the historian, to call attention to the enormous positive |Merits of both.| advance which we make with these two books. It is almost the advance from chaos to cosmos; and we shall find nothing in all the rest of the history quite to match it, though the resurrection of Criticism with the revival of learning, and the reformation of it at the Romantic era, come nearest.
In the first place, we find the great kinds of literature, if not finally and exhaustively, yet in nearly all their most important points, discerned, marked off, and as far as possible furnished with definitions. The most important of all demarcations, that between poetry and prose, is rather taken for granted than definitely argued out; but we see that, with whatever hesitations and reservations, it is taken for granted. So, too, with the kinds of poetry itself. If prose is inadequately treated, both in general and in its departments, we have been able to assign something like a reason for that; and a good deal is actually done in this direction. In other words, the field, the “claim,” of literary criticism is pretty fairly pegged out.
In the second place, the only sound plan—that of taking actually accomplished works of art and endeavouring to ascertain how it is that they give the artistic pleasure—is, with whatever falterings, pretty steadily pursued. The critic, as Simylus, Aristotle’s own contemporary, has it, consistently endeavours to “grasp” his subject; and he does grasp it over and over again.
Let us review our positive gains from this grasp.
That the “Imitation” doctrine of the Poetics is in some respects disputable need not be denied; and that it lends itself rather easily to serious misconstruction is certain. |“Imitation.”| But let us remember also that it is an attempt—probably the first attempt, and one which has not been much bettered in all the improvements upon it—to adjust those proportions of nature and art which actually do exist in poetry. For by Imitation, whatever Aristotle did mean exactly, he most certainly did not mean mere copying, mere tracing or plaster-of-Paris moulding from nature. It is not quite impossible that his at first sight puzzling objection to Alcidamas' use of the “mirror” as a description of the Odyssey had something to do with this.[[54]] A mirror, he would or might have said, reproduces passively, slavishly, and without selection or alteration: the artist selects, adapts, adjusts, and if necessary alters. Now this is the true doctrine, and all deviations from, it, whether in the shape of realism, impressionism,[[55]] and the like, in the one direction, or of adherence to generalised convention on the other, have always led to mischief soon or late. The artist must be the mime, not the mirror: the reasonable, discreet, free-willed agent, not the passive medium. The single dictum that poetry does not necessarily deal with the actual but with the possible—that it is therefore “more philosophic,” higher, more universal, than history, though it requires both extension and limitation, will put us more in the true critical position than any dictum that we find earlier, or (it may be very frankly added) than most that we shall find later.[[56]]
So, too, the all-important law that the end of art is pleasure appears solidly laid down.[[57]] True, it is not laid down so explicitly as it is in the Metaphysics and the Politics, |The end of art: the οἰκεία ἡδονή.| but it is assumed throughout, and such assumption practically more valuable than argument. We have left behind us the noble wrongheadedness of the Platonic depreciation of pleasure; we are even past the stage when it might seem necessary to plead humbly and with bated breath for its locus standi. Moreover, the doctrine of the oikeia hedone not only by implication lays down the end of all art, but guards (in a fashion which should have been sovereign, though the haste and heedlessness of men have too often robbed it of its virtues) against one of the greatest dangers and mistakes of criticism in time to come. That what we have to demand of a work of literature is pleasure, and its own pleasure—how simple this seems, how much a matter of course! Alas! Aristotle himself is not entirely free from the charge of having sometimes overlooked it, while since his time the great majority of critical errors are traceable to this very overlooking. The obstinate ignoring or the captious depreciation of Latin literature by the later Greeks; the wooden “Arts of Poetry” of the Latins themselves; the scorn of Chaucer for “rim-ram-ruffing”; of the Renaissance for mediæval literature; of Du Bellay for Marot; of Harvey for the Faerie Queene; of Restoration criticism for the times before Mr Waller improved our numbers; of our Romantic critics for Dryden and Johnson; of Mr Matthew Arnold for French poetry,—all these things, and many others of the same class, come from the ignoring of the oikeia hedone, from the obstinate insistence that this thing shall be other than it is, that this poet shall be not himself but somebody else.
Again, whatever we may think of the relative importance assigned to plot and to character by Aristotle, as well as of not |Theory of Action,| a few minor details of his theory of plot or action, there is no denying the huge lift given to the intelligent enjoyment of literature by the distinction of these two important elements, and by the analysis of action if not of character. With the aid of such refinements we cease, as Dryden has it, to “like grossly,” to accept our pleasure without distinction of its gradations or inquiry into its source. The artist no longer aims in the dark; his processes are no longer mere rules—if rules at all—of thumb. And this is also the justification, though by no means the sole justification, of such minor matters as peripeteia and anagnorisis, as desis and lusis. True, there is here, as in the case of the Figures, a danger that a convenient designation a posteriori may be taken as a primæval and antecedent law. But this is the, in one sense, inevitable, in another very evitable and gratuitous, danger of all philosophical, scientific, and artistic inquiry. Fools can never be prevented from taking the means for the end, the ritual for the worship, the terminology for the spirit; but means and ritual and terminology are not the less good things for that.
Most of the points hitherto mentioned, though requiring, at the time and in the circumstances, immense pains, acuteness, and patience to discover and arrange them, are not beyond |and of ἁμαρτία.| the reach of somewhat more than ordinary patience, acuteness, and pains. The theory of ἁμαρτία, as has been shown since by its triumphant justification in the other great tragedy—the tragedy which seems at first sight to flout Aristotle’s rules—is a stroke of genius. To this day it has not been fully accepted; to this day persons, sometimes very far indeed from fools, persist in confusing the tragic with the merely painful, with the monstrous, with the sentimental, and so forth. Aristotle knew better, and has given here a touch of the really higher criticism—of that criticism which does not waste time over the subject as such, which does not potter overmuch about details of expression, but which goes to the root of the matter, to the causes of a certain pleasure indissolubly associated with literature, if not strictly literary.
Nor, perhaps, ought we to be least grateful for the remarks on lexis—on poetic style proper. In details we may fail fully |Of Poetic Diction.| to understand them, or, understanding, may disagree with them; and there is no doubt that they are somewhat tinged with that superior view of style, as something a little irrelevant, a little vulgar, which appears more fully in the Rhetoric, and which, while it has not entirely disappeared even at the present day, was naturally rife at a time fresh from the views, and still partly under the influence, of Socrates and Plato. Here once more we find those evidences of directness of grasp which are what we seek, especially in the main description of poetic style, as being on the one hand “clear,” and yet on the other not “low,” and in the further specification of the means by which these characteristics are to be secured. More particularly is this to be noticed in the indication of the ξένον—that is to say, the unfamiliar—as the means of avoiding “lowness.” Here from the very outset we see that Aristotle (as Dante far later did, and as Wordsworth later again did not) recognised the necessity of “Poetic diction,”—the necessity, that is to say, of causing a slight shock, a slight surprise, in order to bring about the poetic pleasure. And by the example which he gives of heightening and lowering the effect alternately, by substituting different words in the same general context, we see how accurately he had divined the importance of this diction, whether we may or may not think that the fact is quite consistent with his exaggerated view of Action. Aristotle’s verbal criticisms are never, as (to speak frankly) the verbal criticisms of the ancients too often are, mere glossography—mere dictionary work. They are invariably concerned with, and directed to, the literary value of the word, and that is what we have to look to.
The positive gains, of or from the Rhetoric, are less, but hardly less. It follows from the special limitations of the plan, which have already been dealt with, that we have no special theory of prose as such, and that, not merely some shortcomings, but some positive and mischievous delusions (such as the confusion of style with delivery), result from it. But, in divers casual animadversions, he shows us that if by good fortune he had given us Prosaics, the book would, though it were not more faultless than the Poetics, have been quite as valuable. And as it is, these things supply us with invaluable hints, glimpses, points de repère. The first, and not the least valuable, is the distinction, used also in the Poetics, but there only casually and in a glance, of words as κύρια and ξένα. Purity, “Amplification,” Propriety, while they at least suggest those dangers of misapprehended terminology which have been already dealt with, supply Criticism with those appropriate classifications, and that necessary plant, without which no art can exist. And the importance of the rhythm-section cannot be exaggerated.