REVEREND SIR,
Give me leave to present to you the following Essay on the Epistle to Augustus; which, whatever other merit it may want, is secure of this, that it hath been planned upon the best model. For I know not what should hinder me from declaring to you in this public manner, that it was the early pleasure I received from what you had written of this sort, which first engaged me in the province of criticism. And, if I have taken upon me to illustrate another of the finest pieces of antiquity after the same method, it is because I find myself encouraged to do so by higher considerations, than even the Authority of your example.
Criticism, considered in its ancient and noblest office of doing justice to the merits of great writers, more especially in works of poetry and invention, demands, to its perfect execution, these two qualities: a philosophic spirit, capable of penetrating the fundamental reasons of excellence in every different species of composition; and a strong imagination, the parent of what we call true taste, enabling the critic to feel the full force of his author’s excellence himself, and to impress a lively sense of it upon others. Each of these abilities is necessary. For by means of philosophy, criticism, which were otherwise a vague and superficial thing, acquires the soundness and solidity of science. And from the power of fancy, it derives that light and energy and spirit, which are wanting to provoke the public emulation and carry the general conclusions of reason into practice.
Of these talents (to regard them in their separate state) that of a strong imagination, as being the commoner of the two, one would naturally suppose should be the first to exert itself in the service of criticism. And thus it seems, in fact, to have happened. For there were very early in Greece a sort of men, who, under the name of Rhapsodists, made it their business to illustrate the beauties of their favourite writers. Though their art, indeed, was very simple; for it consisted only in acting the finest passages of their works, and in repeating them, with a rapturous kind of vehemence, to an ecstatic auditory. Whence it appears, that criticism, as being yet in its infancy, was wholly turned to admiration; a passion which true judgment as little indulges in the schools of Art, as sound philosophy in those of Nature. Accordingly these enraptured declaimers, though they travelled down to the politer ages, could not subsist in them. The fine ridicule of Plato, in one of his Dialogues[31], and the growing taste for just thinking, seem perfectly to have discredited this folly. And it was presently seen and acknowledged even by the Rhapsodist himself, that, how divinely soever he might feel himself affected by the magnetic virtue of the muse, yet, as he could give no intelligible account of its subtle operations, he was assuredly no Artist; ΘΕΙΟΝ εἶναι καὶ μὴ ΤΕΧΝΙΚΟΝ ἐπαινέτην.
From this time they, who took upon themselves the office of commenting and recommending the great writers of Greece, discharged it in a very different manner. Their researches grew severe, inquisitive, and rational. And no wonder; for the person, who now took the lead in these studies, and set the fashion of them, was a philosopher, and, which was happy for the advancement of this art, the justest philosopher of antiquity. Hence scientific or speculative criticism attained to perfection, at once; and appeared in all that severity of reason and accuracy of method, which Aristotle himself could bestow upon it.
But now this might almost seem as violent an extreme as the other. For though to understand be better than to admire, yet the generality of readers cannot, or will not, understand, where there is nothing for them to admire. So that reason, for her own sake, is obliged to borrow something of the dress, and to mimic the airs, of fancy: And Aristotle’s reason was too proud to submit to this management.
Hence, the critical plan, which the Stagirite had formed with such rigour of science, however it might satisfy the curious speculatist, wanted to be relieved and set off to the common eye by the heightenings of eloquence. This, I observed, was the easier task of the two; and yet it was very long before it was successfully attempted. Amongst other reasons of this delay, the principal, as you observe, might be the fall of the public freedom of Greece, which soon after followed. For then, instead of the free and manly efforts of genius, which alone could accomplish such a reformation, the trifling spirit of the times declined into mere verbal amusements: “whence,” as you say, “so great a cloud of scholiasts and grammarians so soon over-spread the learning of Greece, when once that famous community had lost its liberty[32].”
And what Greece was thus unable, of a long time, to furnish, we shall in vain seek in another great community, which soon after flourished, in all liberal studies. The genius of Rome was bold and elevated enough for this task. But Criticism, of any kind, was little cultivated, never professed as an art, by this people. The specimens we have of their ability in this way (of which the most elegant, beyond dispute, are the two epistles to Augustus, and the Pisos) are slight occasional attempts; made in the negligence of common sense, and adapted to the peculiar exigencies of their own taste and learning: and not by any means the regular productions of art, professedly bending itself to this work, and ambitious to give the last finishing to the critical system.
For so great an effort as this we are to look back to the confines of Greece. And there at length, and even from beneath the depression of slavery (but with a spirit that might have done honour to its age of greatest liberty) a CRITIC arose, singularly qualified for so generous an undertaking. His profession, which was that of a rhetorical sophist, required him to be fully instructed in the graces and embellishments of eloquence; and these, the vigour of his genius enabled him to comprehend in their utmost force and beauty. In a word, Longinus was the person, whom, of all the critics of antiquity, nature seems to have formed with the proper talents to give the last honour to his profession, and penetrate the very soul of fine writing.
Yet so bounded is human wit, and with such difficulty is human art compleated, that even here the advantage, which had been so fortunately gained on the one hand, was, in great measure, lost and forfeited on the other. He had softened indeed the severity of Aristotle’s plan; but, in doing this, had gone back again too far into the manner of the admiring Rhapsodist. In short, with the brightest views of nature and true beauty, which the finest imagination could afford to the best critic, he now wanted, in a good degree, that precision, and depth of thought, which had so eminently distinguished his predecessor. For, as Plotinus long ago observed of him, though he had approved himself a master of polite literature, he was NO Philosopher; ΦΙΛΟΛΟΓΟΣ ΜΕΝ, ΦΙΛΟΣΟΦΟΣ ΔΕ ΟΥΔΑΜΩΣ.