Even those other nations which directly contributed little or nothing[[348]] to criticism during the time, contributed, as we have seen, something also under this head by examination of their own literatures, and something more by their adoption and following of English, or of French, or (towards the end) of German also. Towards any wide comparative study of literature, indeed, this period made but a far-off approach: that could not come till later, though it is the glory of Germany, in the second division of the time, with which we shall deal presently, to have begun the attack itself, and made it something more. But the study of the individual literature at different periods has very much the same kind of widening and altering power as the study of different literatures, and this at least was vigorously pursued.
For after all it is History which is at the root of the critical—as of almost every other—matter. To judge you must know,—must know not merely the so-called best that has been thought and done and written (for how are you to know the best till you know the rest?), but to know all, or something of all, that has been written, and done, and thought by the undulating and diverse animal called Man. His undulation and his diversity will play you tricks still, know you never so widely; but the margin of error will be narrower, the more widely you know. The most perfect critical work that we have—that of Aristotle and that of Longinus—is due in its goodness to the thoroughness of the writers’ knowledge of what was open to them, in its occasional badness and lack of perfection to the fact that everything was not open to them to know. “The goodness of our goodness when we’re good” is due to our knowing a little more, and the more frequent badness of our badness when we are bad to our not taking the trouble to know it thoroughly.
[341]. Les définitions ne se posent pas à priori, si ce n’est peut-être en mathématique. En histoire, c’est de l'étude patiente de la réalité qu’elles se dégagent insensiblement. Compare Mme. de Stael, sup., p. 108.
[342]. It may be barely necessary to remind the reader once more that the period of this accomplishment by no means synchronises in all cases. The “Dissolving of Neo-Classicism” takes in Germany scarcely more than fifty years at farthest—from 1725 to 1775 or thereabouts; in England about another quarter of a century, or till 1800 in round numbers; in France a good century—from 1730 to 1830. In Italy the solitary figure of Vico anticipates even the earliest of these dates, and originates vast alterations in what calls itself criticism; but they do not take effect for the time. The general state, both here and in Spain, is stationary.
[343]. Père André probably seemed, to himself or others, to do this.
[344]. This is where Hurd is so valuable.
[345]. It is doubtful whether Hurd would have accepted it; it is certain that Lessing would not: and Diderot never quite reached the point of view at which it presented itself.
[346]. Lessing’s attempt to confute the French ex ore Aristotelis is extraordinarily effective ad homines, and most valuable now and then intrinsically. But it has the drawback of ignoring the fact that, though much in Shakespeare is justified by Aristotle, much can only be justified without him, and some must be justified in his teeth.
[347]. See Index to vol. i.