Indeed I have sometimes thought that, without extreme arbitrariness or fancifulness, even the Pistis part of the Rhetoric may be made subservient to pure criticism. It is not so very far from the effect of persuading or convincing the hearer to that of producing on the reader the required effect—it may be of persuasion and conviction, it may be of information, or it may be simply of that subduing and charming which is the end and aim of the prose artist as such, whether his name be Burke or Scott, Browne or Arnold, and whether his nominal division of literature be history or fiction, criticism or philosophy, things human or things divine. The “Colours of Good and Evil,” the tendencies of the readers, the fashions of the day and the passions of all days—these are things which beyond all dispute will very mightily affect the appreciation of a book, and which, it may be argued not quite improperly, condition, in no small degree likewise, its attainment of its object, its administration of its own pleasure.
However this may be, the point, already more than once touched upon, that we have now a Literary Criticism, regularly if not fully constituted, may be regarded as established without need of further exposition or argument. In some respects, indeed, we have got no further than Aristotle; we are still arguing on his positions, defending or attacking his theses. In others we have indeed got a good deal further, by virtue chiefly of the mere accretion of material and experience. We have, perhaps, learned (or some of us have) to resign ourselves rather more to the facts than he, with the enthusiasm of the first stage still hardly behind him, was able to do. We are less inclined to prescribe to the artist what he shall do, and more tempted to accept what the artist does, and see what it can teach as well as how it can please us. But in the wider sense of critical method we have not got so very far beyond him in the poetical division. While if we have got beyond him in the direction of prose (as perhaps we have), the advance has been very late, and can hardly be said even now to have, by common consent and as a clear matter of fact, covered, occupied, and reduced to order the territory on to which it has pushed. Great as are Aristotle’s claims in almost every department of human thought with which he meddles, it may be doubted whether in any he deserves a higher place than in this. He is the very Alexander of Criticism, and his conquests in this field, unlike those of his pupil in another, remain practically undestroyed, though not unextended, to the present day.
Note to [p. 42].
Attempts have been made to confine Aristotle’s slighting remarks on lexis to mere “delivery.” It is true that in the whole passage there is a certain confusion of the different senses of “elocution.” But in this sentence Aristotle has just said, τὸ περὶ τὴν λέξιν not ὑπόκρισιν—that is to say, has covered the entire ground which he is going to discuss. Even if φορτικὸν be violently restricted, by the help of καὶ before τό, to ὑποκριτική (which occurs further back), the general drift will remain.
[37]. He does, no doubt, refer to the prose mimes, v. infra, and in referring at the same time to the “Socratic dialogues” he may be specially thinking of the “Egyptian and other” stories with which Socrates was wont, half to please, half to puzzle, his hearers. But his whole treatment of Tragedy and Epic is really based on some such assumption as that in the text.
[38]. I need hardly express, but could not possibly omit the expression of, my indebtedness to my friend and colleague Professor Butcher’s admirable edition and translation of the work in Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art (London, 2nd ed., 1898), a book which, as much as any other for many years past, enables English scholarship to hold its head up with that of other countries. Nor need I make any apologies for occasionally differing, on the purely critical side, with him as to the interpretation of a document which is admittedly very obscure in parts, and on even the clearest parts of which opinion, not demonstration, must decide in very many cases.
[39]. There are strong arguments for rendering τῶν τοιούτων not “such” but “these,” and Professor Butcher actually does so.
[40]. Here one of the first very important differences of interpretation comes in. Professor Butcher would translate ζῷον “picture,” as though it were short for ζῷον γεγραμμένον. Scholars differ whether the word can by itself have this meaning, and on such a point I have no pretensions to decide. But its more common sense is certainly “living organism,” and I feel certain that this is the only meaning which makes full critical sense here. To begin with, Aristotle has just used it in this way, and in the second place the analogy of another art would come in very ill. We want a comparison drawn from nature, to give us the law for the imitation of nature.