Che l’onestade ad ogni atto dismaga,”

in regard to a book which has been the actual work and companion of seven years in its composition, the result of more than seven-and-twenty in direct or indirect preparation.

After all it is, as Dante says elsewhere, for knowledge “not to prove but to set forth its subject,” and I do not see any further necessity to argue against the notion that Criticism, alone of the departments of literary energy, is to be denied a simple and straightforward History of its actual accomplishments. That is what I set myself to give. If other people want other things, let them go and do them. When the next History of Criticism is written it will doubtless be, if the author knows his business, a much better book than mine; but I may perhaps hope that his might be worse, and would certainly cost him more time and labour, were it not for this.

One final point I think it may be well to take up. A friend who is at once friendly, most competent, and of a different complexion in critical thought, objected to me that I “treat literature as something by itself.” I hastened to admit the impeachment, and to declare that this is the very postulate of my book. That literature can be absolutely isolated is, of course, not to be thought of; nothing human can be absolutely isolated from the general conditions of humanity, and from the other functions and operations thereof. But in that comparative isolation and separate presentation which Aristotle meant by his caution against confusion of kinds, I do thoroughly believe. With which profession of faith, and with all renewed acknowledgments to friends and helpers, especially to Professors Elton, Ker, and Raleigh for their kindness in reading the proofs of this volume, I must leave the book to its fate.[[1]]

GEORGE SAINTSBURY.

Holmbury St Mary, Lammas 1904.

ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA.

VOLUME I.

P. 63, note. “Ludhaus” should be “Sudhaus.” I received from Professor Gudeman of Cornell University, along with the notice of this misprint, and some other minor corrections which I gratefully acknowledge, a large number of much more important animadversions, for noticing which generally I may make it a pretext. I have the highest respect for their author: and it is quite natural that to him, as a professed and professional classical philologist, my treatment should in many respects seem superficial, or amateurish, or even positively wrong. But on at least one point we are, I fear, irreconcilable. Professor Gudeman thinks that Kaibel has “settled once for all” the question of the Περὶ Ὕψους,—has “given incontrovertible proof” that it cannot be later than the first century. Now, as an old student of Logic and of Law, and as a literary critic of thirty years’ standing, I absolutely deny the possibility of “settling once for all,” of “incontrovertible proof,” in this matter as in many others. The evidence is not extant, if it is existent. It may turn up, but it has not turned up yet. On this point—the point as to what constitutes literary evidence and what does not—I am well aware that I am at issue, perhaps with the majority, at any rate with a large number, of scholars in the ancient and modern languages; but I am quite content to remain so. As to another protest of Professor Gudeman’s against my neglect of the latest editions, I might refer him to Schopenhauer (v. infra, p. 567); but I will only say that for my purpose the date of an edition is of very little importance, and the spelling of “Gnæus” or “Cnæus,” “iuris” or “juris,” of no importance at all. I am sorry to appear stiff-necked in reference to criticisms made with many obliging expressions, but Ich kann nicht anders, as also in reference to Theophrastus, the Alexandrians, and others, whose substantive works are lost, but with whom Mr Gudeman would like me to deal in the usual manner of conjectural and inferential patchwork.