The second epistle to Ammæus seems to be one of the latest of the numerous utterances of Dionysius on the great Athenian historian. It is somewhat meticulous and verbal; but it is curious that the just-mentioned horror of gorgeousness reappears in it.
And so we come to the famous onslaught in form against the son of Olorus. It is introduced by a somewhat elaborate |The judgment of Thucydides.| apology—the critic going so far as to shelter himself under the leading case of Aristotle v. Plato. Thence he passes to a short sketch of the predecessors of Thucydides in history, commends him for dropping their fables, &c., but soon settles down to a regular éreintement—a “slating” criticism of the familiar type, wherein the desire to “dust the varlet’s jacket” is evidently not merely superior but anterior to any desire whatsoever to criticise varlet or jacket on the merits of either. The division into winters and summers, the setting forth of the causes of the war, the conduct and details of the story, the speeches—all come in for reprehension. But Dionysius is, as we should expect from his other handlings, much kinder to the style, though he objects to its occasional obscurity, urges difficulties on the score of the Figures, criticises some passages at great length, and ends by noticing the chief of the historian’s imitators, among whom he includes Demosthenes. On the whole, the article (as we may call it), though one-sided, is less so than some current descriptions of it may have conveyed to those who have not read it. But still it belongs to the class of critiques indicated above, a class in which few of the best examples of criticism are to be found, except from the point of view of those who hold the true business of that art to be, like the “backward voice” of Trinculo-Caliban, “to utter foul speeches and to detract.”
Yet, on the whole, it need not interfere with the emphatic repetition of the opinion, with the expression of which this |General critical value.| notice of the Halicarnassian began, that he is a very considerable critic, and one to whom justice has not usually, if at all, yet been done. Great as is the place which he gives to oratory, there is no ancient writer (except Longinus) who seems so free from the intention to allow it any really mischievous primacy. If he is, as might be expected from a teacher, sometimes a little meticulous in his philology and lower Rhetoric, yet this very attention to detail saves him from the distinctly unfortunate and rather unphilosophical superciliousness of Aristotle towards style, and from the equally unfortunate divagation, both of that great man and of all his followers, into questions vaguely æsthetic instead of questions definitely literary. The error which, at the new birth of criticism in Europe, was so lucklessly reintroduced and exaggerated by the Italian critics of the sixteenth century—the error of wool-gathering after abstract questions of the nature and justification of poetry, of the a priori rules suitable for poetic forms, of Unities, and so forth—meets very little encouragement from Dionysius, and it is perhaps for this very reason that he has been slighted by high-flying æstheticians. Not thus will the wiser mind judge him, but as a critic who saw far, and for the most part truly, into the proper province of literary criticism—that is to say, the reasonable enjoyment of literary work and the reasonable distribution of that work into good, not so good, and bad. Here, and not in the Laputan meteorosophia of theories of poetry, is criticism’s main work; not that she may not justly imp her wings for a higher flight now and then, but that she must beware of flapping them in the inane.
If the opinions of the criticism of the critical power and position of Dionysius of Halicarnassus have varied rather |Plutarch.| strangely, those uttered concerning Plutarch as a critic are still more irreconcilable. For he has not only been casually suggested but elaborately championed[[193]] as a candidate for the signal honour of the authorship of the Περὶ Ὕψους—that is to say, as one capable of producing what is perhaps the critical masterpiece of antiquity, and certainly one of the few critical masterpieces of the world. From this one would be prepared to expect at least very strong evidences of critical faculty, and some noteworthy pieces of critical accomplishment, in his extant works, which, it must be remembered, are extremely voluminous, and of a character remarkably well suited for the exercise of literary criticism. The Vitæ Parallelæ at least might have been frequently directed in this way; while the enormous miscellany of the Moralia corresponds more closely to the “Essays” of modern writers than any collection of the kind that we have from ancient times. Now, it is hardly necessary to say that the modern Essay has from the very first set strongly in the literary direction, and that up to the present time the amount of literary criticism, in essay form, is probably not less, while the value of it is infinitely greater, than that of all the formal treatises and non-essay-fashioned handlings of the subject.
On turning to the Lives we meet with an almost complete disappointment. If it be said that Plutarch’s object was to give us contrasts of practical men—soldiers and statesmen, not philosophers or men of letters—that is, no doubt, a valid answer as far as it goes, though it would scarcely be unfair to argue from the fact that, at any rate, matters literary were not of the first importance to him. But in one famous instance, the parallel of Demosthenes and Cicero, he not only had a most proper opportunity for dealing with the subject, but was almost obliged to deal with it. It must therefore be worth while to look at his dealing.
He begins the “Demosthenes” with an excuse for his small knowledge of Latin, and makes this a pretext for deliberately excluding all literary and even all oratorical comparison |The Lives quite barren for us.| of the two. Nay, he goes further, and actually upbraids Cæcilius (apparently the same person whose treatment of the Sublime Longinus did not like) with having made this. After such a refusal it is surely idle to contend for any real or strong literary and critical nisus in the agreeable moralist and biographer of Chæronea. Had there been any such tendency in him, he simply could not have avoided such a palmary occasion of giving it course. Even if he really considered himself incompetent to deliver an opinion of Cicero, he would have had something to say about Demosthenes even if this declared incompetence was only a disguise for the reluctance to treat Latin literature seriously, which is so noticeable in Greeks, this would not invalidate the reasoning.
Let us, however, for the sake of the argument, and out of pure generosity, accept his excuse, put the Lives out of the question, and turn to the Moralia.[[194]] As has been |The Moralia at first sight promising.| said above, if we do not find literary criticism, and good literary criticism, in such a collection of a man’s work, it must be either because he has no taste for it, or because he has the taste without the faculty. For the collection is very large, and it is almost absolutely miscellaneous: the mere title Moralia is nothing more than an unauthorised ticket, and has really nothing to do with the contents. Neither Montaigne nor De Quincey takes a more absolute liberty of speaking on any subject that happens to strike his fancy than Plutarch. And it cannot be said that at least some of his subjects are without direct connection with criticism. The two opening papers, “On the Education of Children” and "How a young man should read [“listen to,” literally, but this means what we mean by "read">[ the Poets," would seem, the one almost necessarily (considering the humanism of ancient education), and the other inevitably, to lead to the subject. The next on “Hearing” (i.e., “Reading”) generally, might even seem to strengthen the necessity. Many of the |Examination of this promise.| other titles are promising, and, both in the nature of the case and from what we know of the general course of ancient table-talk, the bulky volume of Symposiac Questions might seem likely to be most prolific, while it is actually not infertile in matter of our kind. Let us examine what is the performance of these promises.
Englishmen, and especially students of English literature, ought to take no mean interest in the tractate on Education, |The “Education.”| if only for the reason that it had a most powerful influence on the great Elizabethan age, both directly and through the medium of Lyly’s Euphues, which is in part[[195]] almost a translation of it. But though, not merely for this but other more intrinsic reasons, the treatise is interesting, it is not of much good to us. In fact, it is scarcely a paradox to say that it is one of its merits not to be of much good to us. It is a truism that the very noblest characteristic of Greek education, a characteristic never fully recovered since, was its combination of high literary ideas with the most perfect and practical recognition of the fact that book-education by itself is education of the most wretchedly inadequate character. Plutarch (and again it is much to his credit) thoroughly shared this view—so thoroughly that he begins his treatise a little before the birth of the children to be educated, and continues it (quite in the Rousseau style) by insisting that mothers shall suckle their own offspring. From the first the importance of inculcating good habits, of not telling children immoral or silly stories, of being careful in the selection of nurses and tutors,—this is the thing that Plutarch busies himself about. He will have them learn all the usual arts and sciences, but he dwells on these very little. How to give them good morals and healthy bodies; how to keep them or wean them from bad company and foul language; how to practise them in manly sports and exercises—these are Plutarch’s cares. Excellent, nay! thrice excellent preoccupation! but it necessarily makes the treatise of no use to us.
No one can reasonably blame its author for this, especially as he seems likely to fill up the gap in the two following Essays. |The Papers on “Reading.”| “How a young man should read Poetry” is a title which would serve well for the very best and most stimulating critical observations of a Coleridge or an Arnold; or to go nearer to its own times, it might really do for an alternative heading to the Περὶ Ὕψους itself. Yet we very soon see—and we must know our Plutarch very little if we do not foresee it—that the ethical preoccupation is just as supreme and exclusive here. The piece is in itself an interesting one, and preserves for us a large number of quotations, some of which are unique. But Plutarch’s handling of them is as little literary as he can make it. You cannot (he tells his friend Marcus Sedatus with a kind of gloomy resignation) prevent clever boys from reading poetry, so you must make the best of it. It is like the head of an octopus, very nice to eat, nourishing enough, but apt to give restless and fantastic dreams. So you must be careful to administer pædagogic correctives, and to put the right meaning on dangerous things, like the account of Helen’s complaisance to Paris after his disgraceful flight from battle, and of Hera’s bewitching Zeus with the aid of the Cestus. This kind of thing runs throughout the piece—the most famous certainly, and perhaps the most diverting instance of Plutarch’s mania for moralising, being his dealing with the delightful passage of the meeting of Nausicaa and Odysseus. He does not indeed go the entire length of the neo-classical critics of the French school as to this gem. He only says that if the Princess fell in love with Odysseus at first sight, her boldness and impudence are very shocking. But if she perceived what a sensible man he was, and preferred him to some rich dandy of her fellow-citizens, it was most creditable. It is not of course worth while to waste any good indignation, or any otherwise utilisable scorn, upon this priggish silliness, the dregs of older Platonism-and-water, the caricature and reduction-to-the-absurd of a confusion only too common among ancient critics, and not quite unknown among modern. It is only necessary to point out that, from a man capable of it, good literary criticism would be surprising, and that as a matter of fact there is here no strictly literary criticism at all. The paper ends as it began, with the general doctrine that the young must be well steered in their reading, so that they may be kindly handed on by Poetry to Philosophy.
The more general tract, “How one should [hear or] read,” is shorter, has few quotations or none, and is less obtrusively moral in tone. But it still regards hearing, or reading, not in any way as the means of enjoying an artistic pleasure, but as the means of acquiring or failing to acquire information or edification. You must listen (or read) attentively: not take unreasonable likes and dislikes, excessive admirations and contempts. You must more particularly not take special pleasure in style and phrase. (Here we come not so much to neglect of literary criticism as to positive blasphemy against it.) A man who will not attend to a useful statement, because its style is not Attic, is like a man who refuses a wholesome drug because it is not offered him in Attic pottery. Later, there are some remarks on actual tricks of style. But, on the whole, it would be possible for a man to be educated, to live his life, carefully observing the precepts of this little batch of tracts, and to die a most respectable person, after perhaps having lived a happy and useful life, yet never to know or to care whether or why Plato was a better prose-writer than any tenth-rate sophist, Tennyson a better poet than Tom Sternhold or Tom Shadwell.