GREEK CRITICISM.*

THE Greeks, who did all things supremely well, were doubt- less the best of literary critics, and it is a sad mischance that so few specimens of their reasoned judgment have come down to us. In early times, maybe, the critic was merged in the creator or in the public. Homer himself knew that he was a finished artist; he knew that the effect of his every line was consciously and loyally achieved; and perhaps a few of those who - heard the sonorous hexameters recited could

explain to themselves the pleasure which overtook them. But the professional critic seems to have been a later dis- covery. Plato and Aristotle were the inventors each of a method; they seldom stooped to analyse a particular impres- sion; and as for the censors of the Alexandrian period, they have left little trace of their fearless severity. With Dionysius of Halicarnassus, however, we are on the sure ground of literary criticism, and late as he is, he is so sound a writer, and so deeply tinged with the olassical spirit, that his works make us regret his lost predecessors all the more.

Of course, being a rhetorician, he was sometimes guilty of the pedantry and fussiness which distinguish his class. He was apt to exhaust his subject, having considered it duly under four or five separate headings. He regards Plato with the serene eye of the schoolmaster, and frowns disapproval upon the obscurity of Thucydides. His com- parison of this great historian with Herodotus, excellent as it is from some points of view, is vitiated by an idle com- parison of the subjects which they chose :—

"The first, and we may say the most necessary, task for writers of any kind of history is to choose a noble subject and one pleasing to their readers. In this Herodotus seems to me to have succeeded better than Thucydides. He has produced a national history of the conflict of Greeks and barbarians, in order that neither should the deeds of men fade into oblivion, nor should achievements,' to quote from his opening words. For this same proem forms both the beginning and the end of his History. Thucydides, on the other hand, writes of a single war, and that neither glorious nor fortunate; one which, beat of all, should not have happened, or (failing that) should have been ignored by posterity and consigned to silence and oblivion."

Thus Dionysius in the translation of Professor Roberts, and

Lb is not difficult to demolish this ready-made judgment. It is not merely bad criticism, it is a piece of cowardice as well; and if, like the sun-dial, history is to record only happy hours, its Function is as trivial as that of a comic paper. But when Dionysius leaves these false generalisations and regards his authors in a serenely critical spirit, his thoughts and phrases are alike ingenious and witty. When he says that the beauty of Herodotus is radiant, that of Thucydides awe-inspiring (TO

tar •llpoldrou signor ixspim tpoi3ip4, i rc/- eovzaroov), he has

Found a luminous contrast. Moreover, his assertion that Thucydieles's manner was "neither absolute prose nor down- right metre" is the best possible defence of the historian's obscurity ; and for all his just admiration of Herodotus, he

• wisely praises in the author of The Peloponnesian War a terrible vehemenoe and a power of stirring the emotions. But the best side of Dionysius's talent is but faintly -revealed in the letters now edited by rrofessor Roberti. The Halicarnassian will always be most highly esteemed for his famous treatise, nips evethatw; iesteee'var, of which we should welcome a scholarly edition.. For, in this treatise Dionysius

• Dionysivecof Halicarnasem : the Three Literary Letters. Edited by W.' Shy. Roberta. Cambridge: at the University Press. [its.]

reviews and attempts to explain the art of literature. His criticism is sternly technical, but it is all the better for that. It is not concerned with subject or suggestion ; it is a brilliant effort to analyse the sensuous emotions produced by the harmonious arrangement of beautiful words. Homer in his eyes is not the blind primitive, snatching a chance applause at the street corner, but a "sedulous artist," making his effects with the full cunning and consciousness of his trade. So he quotes the famous line-

aZhc-firetras Treloph xvh:ratro hum; ci retain.,

and pertinently asks:" Does not the structure of the words roll downhill together with the ponderous rock, or rather does not the speed of the narration outstrip the stone's career Methinks it does." -

With a similar intention he chooses a passage from Herodotus, and with a few changes of order converts it to the style of Thucydides and Hegesias. So with a few lines of Pinder to aid him, he shows how the music of poetry depends on a certain alternation of vowels and consonants. Now, criticism of this kind, indubitably sound though it be, is always unpopular. The reader who goes to literature that he may be told something profitable for his guidance most bitterly resents a technical appreciation. When Mr. Steven- son, unconsciously echoing the 11Epi syydisEo4, arrived at the same conclusions as Dionysius, his essay on Style was greeted with a howl of disapproval. "Poetry a mere affair of o's and ' a's '!" said the general reader. "Impossible !" 'Yet the general reader erred only from lack of thought. Neither Dionysius nor Mr. Stevenson declared that verbal music was the only function of poetry. Both the one and the other assert that thought must be beautifully arrayed if it would win immortality. Poetry, by counting its syllables, acknow- ledges the sovereignty of the ear.

But above all we respect Dionysius for the purity of his teste. He liked whatever was best in literature, and he paid to the masters a respect which was not impaired by any passing fashion. • The years of his activity (30 B.C. to 8 B.C.) were passed in Rome, where he taught the virtues of the Greek classics with what energy he might. He did for literature what Pasiteles did for sculpture : lie attempted to revive the ancient fashion. He was Attic, not Asiatic. Plato, Demosthenes, Herodotus, Thucydides, these were his gods, and his taste in poetry is generally impeccable. He saw the beauty of Sappho, and it is to him we owe her splendid ode to Aphrodite. He lived in Rome, and was wholly untouched by her influence. The consideration of Demosthenes did not suggest to him an odious comparison with Cicero. An historian, he never mentions Liv-y ; a critic of poetry, he does not quote the Are Poetica. And thus he gives us another example of Hellenic arrogance. The rise of Rome did not mitigate, in the eyes of the Greeks, her essential barbarity. So Lucian, for all his skill in both tongues, saw beyond his environment to the greater gloriee of Thucydides and Aristophan.es. So Pausanias, though he bowed the knee to Hadrian, remained a pagan and a Greek. And it is this splendid pride in nationality which made the influence of the Greeks lasting and beneficent.

The earliest among the ancients who professed the trade of critic, Dionysius is also the soundest. The warmer sentiment and larger view of Longinus have doubtless secured for the author of the treatise I-421 "TI,Gon the greater number of disciples ; but for patient understanding of the literary art, for a lucid insight into the subtleties of verbal music, Dionysius has few rivals. His method of criticism is as fresh to-day as it was two thousand years ago, and our poets and historians might still profit by his precepts. Professor Roberts is prudently conscious of his author's gifts, and he has given us an edition of his three letters which for intelligence and scholarship is beyond censure. But he will add greatly to our obligation if he will print us a clear and simple text of the Ilspi ovrdissas. For, as we have said, that treatise best reveals the talent of Dionysius, and its eternal truth might make it a text-book for to-day.