Chapter 1 (2)

“There is some solace in being miserable in love. 'Tis a more cruel destiny to hate a harlot.”

“He who cannot leave off hating a harlot is still her lover.”

“The victim of a counter-philtre may hate one: he can love none.”

Thinker and writer, it will be seen, are a sort of pair of bounding brothers: they stand on their heads, fling circles, intertwine limbs, take every non-natural posture, to the utmost possibility of intellectual acrobatics.

The Seneca book,[297] much more fragmentary, is also of its nature richer. It consists of one book of “Suasories” (examples [Sidenote: _Seneca the Elder._] of the symbouleutic or epideictic kind), and ten (by no means completely extant) of “Controversies” (Forensic subjects), the latter sometimes including introductions of interest to the writer’s three sons—Novatus, afterwards Gallio, Seneca the Philosopher, and Mela, father of the poet Lucan—and usually concluding with a kind of _résumé_ (called Excerpta) of their contents. The substance is made up of short extracts from the most celebrated declaimers of Rome, and a few Greeks, on the various subjects.

Footnote 297:

I use the text of Kiessling. Leipsic, 1872.

They give us a really invaluable abundance, in all kinds, of rhetorical _loci communes_, tags, _pointes_, with which, from early [Sidenote: _The Suasories._] and late practice, the mind of every educated man at Rome was simply saturated, and which could hardly fail to colour his style, either directly in the way of imitation, or indirectly in that of repulsion, and preference of extreme severity.

For instance, the first _Suasoria_ deals with the question, “Shall Alexander cross the Ocean?” though the exact statement of question is lost altogether, with the beginning of the piece itself. It seems to have opened with a sort of abstract of general commonplaces, and then come the quotations. Argentarius [perhaps Marcus the epigrammatist] addresses the conqueror: “Halt! the world that is thine calls thee back; we have conquered as far as it was lawful for us. There is nothing I can seek at the risk of Alexander.” Oscus said: “It is time for Alexander to leave off where the sun and the earth leave off likewise,” and endeavoured to describe the sea, “immense and untried by human experience, the bond of all the world and the keeper of its lands, the vastness unruffled by any oar, the shores, now harried by the raging tide, now deserted by its ebb, the horrid darkness brooding on the waves, and the eternal night oppressing what nature has withdrawn from human eyes.” And so many. Then there is a section (headed _Divisio_), on the particular kind of suasion to be used in such speeches, the devices which it is safe and proper for orators to address to kings, with gradations as before. It will readily be perceived from this example what sort of dealing is here on the other stock subjects—the deliberation of the three hundred at Thermopylæ, whether they shall go or not; of Agamemnon, whether he shall sacrifice Iphigenia; of Alexander, whether he shall enter Babylon; of the Athenians, whether on Xerxes’ threat of a second invasion they shall remove the Persian war trophies; of Cicero, whether he shall ask mercy of Antony, or burn his Philippics. The quotations are sometimes verse as well as prose, and give us specimens of poets otherwise lost, with an occasional literary anecdote of interest, such as the offence which Asinius Pollio[298] took at the praise given to Cicero in the recitation by a certain poet of Corduba, Sextilius Ena—

“Deflendus Cicero est Latiæque silentia linguæ,”

which Cornelius Severus borrowed, and improved into—

“Conticuit Latiæ tristis facundia linguæ.”

This anecdote is interesting in many ways,—first for the protest of Pollio, almost equally piquant whether it proceeded from critical severity, from personal jealousy, or from political feeling; and secondly, for the evidence it gives of the straining for point and rhetorical “hit,” in verse and prose alike.

Footnote 298:

See _Suas._, vi. Pollio, a great friend of Antony, was both an orator
of high reputation and a very severe critic. It was he, it should be
remembered, who found “Patavinity” in Livy; though it has been
ingeniously suggested that this was only an _excessive_ propriety of
speech, such as enabled the old woman to detect Theophrastus as not an
Athenian.

The Preface of the First Book of the _Controversies_—addressed to the three sons—gives a rather interesting view of the scheme [Sidenote: _The_ Controversies: _their Introductions_.] of these curious compositions, which seems to have been that Seneca the father should brush up his memory of the golden or nearly golden age of Latin Rhetoric which immediately followed Cicero, and illustrate it from more strictly literary sources. A good deal in the piece (as is usual in the better class of rhetorical writing) bears directly on our subject. The old rhetorician commends his sons for extending their view beyond their own age, for wanting to know what Roman eloquence there was to set against “insolent Greece”[299]—in short, for endeavouring to take that comparative view of at least one division of literature the want of which (as we have so fully set forth) was the crying sin and yet the inevitable weakness of Greek criticism. He has the usual complaint of luxury withdrawing men from literature, which was doubtless as true, and as little peculiar, then as at all other times. He lets us know that there were none (or no good) _commentarii_ of the best declaimers, that he himself had heard them all except Cicero, whom, as far as chronology went, he might have heard,[300] but for the confusions of the state: he points out that the regular declamation was a rather late growth, and extols the character of Porcius Latro, one of its oldest practitioners. The Introduction to the Second Book is much shorter, and principally celebrates the ability of Arellius Fuscus. The Third (for the text of which we only have the Excerpts, not the full articles) has an important preface, which starts from the fact or assertion that Cassius Severus, a great orator on serious occasions, was not a good declaimer, though he had good bodily advantages, a voice at once powerful and sweet, a delivery with all the merits and none of the drawbacks of the stage, and an extraordinary faculty of improvisation. It seems that Seneca once asked him why these faculties failed him in set _agonismata_, and his answer (whether to the point or not) is of the very first interest, as illustrating that difficult point of the ancient conjunction of oratory and literature, and also as a counterblast to the Plinian idea (_v. infra_) of the poly-historic _littérateur_. “What great wit,” said he, “has ever been good at more than one thing [whereby, let it be observed, he separates declamation from oratory]? Did not Cicero’s eloquence fail him in verse? Virgil’s genius in prose? We read the orations of Sallust simply as a compliment to the historian: and the oration of that most eloquent man Plato, which is written for Socrates, is worthy neither of counsel nor of client.”

Footnote 299:

_Insolenti Græciæ_ (_op. cit._, p. 59). I hope it may be hardly
necessary to quote certain lines, “To the memory of my beloved Master,
William Shakespeare, and what he hath left us.” It is already known to
students of Ben Jonson that Ben was soaked in Latin, especially of the
silver age: and Professor Schelling of Philadelphia has done good work
by indicating sources in his edition of the _Discoveries_. But the
vein is not exhausted. Seneca and Quintilian were to Ben almost more
than Browne and Fuller were to Lamb.

Footnote 300:

Seneca was born about 60 B.C., and was thus eighteen at Cicero’s
death.

All these things invite comment—the last most of all. I put aside, as entirely irrelevant, certain modern dubitations as to the genuineness of the Platonic _Apology_. They rest upon no warranty of scripture, and opinion is simply opinion, to be received politely, and to be “laid on the table.” But it is worth dwelling on the point that the _Apology_ as we have it, though to all competent judges of literature one of the capital works of antiquity, arch-worthy of Plato, more than arch-worthy of Socrates, might very well seem to a Roman lawyer unworthy of both, and might possibly have so seemed to Aristotle himself. For of all recorded _plaidoyers_ it is perhaps, in the temper of the jury and the circumstances of the case, the least likely to secure an acquittal, and the most likely to render condemnation inevitable. The other remarks do not matter so much; but it is of weight that a man should seriously put the difference between Declamation and practical Oratory on the same footing as the difference between poetry and prose. It shows how ill-adjusted, as yet, the grasp of literary criticism was, and also how necessary it is to keep an eye on everything that is said about Rhetoric, if we are really to master what was thought about Criticism. The introduction to the Fourth Book, again one of Excerpts only, gives the information that Asinius Pollio (whose works, if we had them, would probably be of the greatest possible value to _us_) disliked declaiming in public, but was, on the rare occasions when he could be heard thus exercising himself, more florid than in his actual orations. We can well believe it, and it shows that Pollio had the root of the matter in him. In the same way a man with critical sense will allow himself, in a rough draft, flowers which he cuts out in the most ruthless manner before he prints.

The Fifth and Sixth books, which are in the same fragmentary condition, have no introductions at all; but the seventh is in better case. Like the others, it is mainly devoted to the characteristics of a single orator—in this case Silius Albucius. Some of the things said about him touch us nearly, as, for instance, Pollio’s—the severe Pollio’s—description of his _sentences_ (axioms, maxims, apophthegms) as “white”—that is to say, simple, clear, with nothing obscure or unexpected,—but “vocal” and “splendid.” It was impossible, continues Seneca, to complain of the poverty of the Latin tongue when you heard him: he was never in the very least in pain for a word. Yet, on the other hand, he was not equal. His language was at one moment magnificent, at another he would mention the most sordid things—"vinegar, and pennyroyal, and lanterns, and pumice, and sponges." He thought “nothing must _not_ be named in a declamation [and the reason is valuable or invaluable] because he feared to smack of the Schools.” And yet further we get the important _obiter dictum_: “Familiar phrase is, among oratorical virtues, a thing which rarely succeeds.” And then there is a very luminous and jocund anecdote of the real trouble into which the devotion to Figures might even then bring men. Albucius had rhetorically proposed to administer certain oaths. His opponent, L. Arruntius, very coolly rose and said, “We accept the condition: he shall swear.” Albucius protested that this would do away with Figures altogether. Quoth Arruntius (very sensibly), “Let them go—we can do without them”: and the _centumviri_ allowed the catch. The unlucky orator was so annoyed that he renounced actual pleading from that day, because of the insult done to his beloved Figures.

The Eighth Book is again without its preface; but though there is a very large lacuna in ix., we have part of the introduction. It yields little. The last is in better case, but still not very fertile, though we have another instance of the mania for Figures. It is said of the above-quoted Oscus: “Dum nihil non schemate dicere cupit, oratio ejus non figurata erat sed prava.” Certainly there are no few examples of this “pravity” in the declamations themselves, which it would be interesting, but in our space impossible, to examine, as we have examined the prefaces.[301]

Footnote 301:

It has always to be remembered that they are not integral and
complete, but centos of quoted flights, conceits, &c., on the stock
hard cases.

They, however, also contain examples of that severity of taste which has always distinguished Latin criticism, and of which Pollio is the great example. Messala, as we learn, was _Latini utique sermonis observator diligentissimus_, and he said of Latro (whom Seneca’s later taste admired) “_sua_ lingua disertus est”—"He is an eloquent man in his own lingo." Seneca himself, however, is by no means tolerant of excessive conceit, and rebukes the class of “sentence” which, he tells us, some charged upon Publilius as inventor. The examples given are in the case of a disinherited son found with poison, which he spills on discovery in the interior of his father’s house: and the sentences are, “He washed out his disinheriting with poison, and what he spilt was my death,” both being supposed to be spoken by the father. And in another stock case—the curious one which has more than one historical analogue, where the Prætor Flamininus was accused of having had a condemned man’s throat cut at dinner, to amuse a courtesan who said she had never seen a man die—the unlucky Murredius is said to have arranged a _tetracolon_—a four-membered antithesis: “The courts are made subservient to the bed-chamber; the prætor to a harlot; the prison to the banquet; day to night”; as to which last Seneca justly asks, “What sense has it?”

On the whole, this very valuable and interesting book, which has been spoken of with surprisingly uncritical contempt by some, and to which I should like to devote much greater space, forms, with Pliny’s _Letters_ and Quintilian, the great trinity of documents for appreciating directly the state of Latin opinion as to literature, and its causes, in the first century after Christ, while with Cicero and Horace it forms a similar trinity for that in the last century before Christ. And it is needless to say that these two periods were, early _avant-coureurs_ and belated decadents excepted, the flourishing time of classical Latin literature. Of this state and these causes we shall speak generally later.

One writer of famous memory who belongs to this period—who [Sidenote: _Varro._] indeed was older even than Cicero—has been hitherto unmentioned, because, as a matter of fact, we have practically no literary criticism remaining from him, and that is Varro. I should myself have been disposed to relegate the author of the _De Re Rustica_ and the _De Lingua Latina_ to the place of his brother (or grandson) grammarians; but this might seem unceremonious in face of the importance of the critical position which Professor Nettleship assigned to him. It is, perhaps, also a convenient place to notice the exact character of that importance. As in so many other cases, if we went by titles only, and by guesswork from them, Varro must certainly have a high rank. “On Poets,” “On Poems,” “On Characters” (in the technical Greek sense of literary _differentia_?), “On Scenic Action,” “Plautine Questions,” might seem at first sight likely to be, if we had them, a very El Dorado of Latin criticism. But the few surviving fragments are a little discouraging. That Varro would be fertile in grammatical, mythological, social explanation, we may be quite certain. But the fragments seldom go much farther. The report, quoted by Quintilian, of Ælius Stilo’s saying that if the Muses wrote Latin they would write in the language of Plautus, is one of those rather irritating critical catchwords which carry with them the minimum of critical illumination. It is, in fact, only an _ad captandum_ fashion of saying that the speaker liked Plautus, or wanted to pay him a compliment at the moment. Most of the others seem (as indeed Mr Nettleship saw) to be merely examples, either of the habits of “placing” authors in this or that rank, of comparing them with this or that other, from which criticism has suffered many things and gained few, or else of the not much less barren classification of kinds.

It is on the first point that I wish to make a slight digression. It is evident from the epithets that he uses in regard to them, such as “stupid,” “trifling,” “vicious,” that these processes of placing and of comparison were not to Mr Nettleship’s taste. I shall myself admit that the addiction of Greek, and still more of Latin, criticism to them seems to me to be among the very greatest weaknesses of both. But I must add a distinction which is constantly forgotten, and which I am not sure that Mr Nettleship himself had in mind. The “placing” of A, B, C, and D in order of merit is “stupid” and “trifling” enough; the still further awarding of seventh place to A for Somethingity, and of third to B for Somethingelseness, is more stupid and more trivial still. Nor is that comparative criticism, the _locus classicus_ of which is perhaps M. Taine’s ejaculation, “J’aime mieux Alfred de Musset,” as a criticism on Tennyson, any better; in fact, as being not merely sterile and jejune, but illogical and actively misleading, it is considerably worse. But there _is_ a placing and there _is_ a comparison, which are two very different things—which are, in fact, the two highways of all real literary criticism. The placing is that which sets a man, not in the first division of the first class, or the second of the third, but in his relations to time and country, to language and manner, to predecessors and successors—to the whole literary map in larger or smaller circumference. The comparison is that which does not work out a performer’s rank, but disengages his qualities. These are the methods to which all the great critics have perforce resorted, and which have made them great. That there is less of them than there should be in ancient criticism may be true enough; that the want of them (with perhaps a little want also of sympathy with the highest poetry) is what prevents Aristotle from being the greatest critic of all time, is true enough; that the presence of them in Longinus is one of the main secrets of his unmatched quality, is true enough. But they are very different things from the enumeration of Volcatius Sedigitus, and from the _in argumentis Cæcilius in ethesin Terentius in sermonibus Plautus_ of Varro.[302]

Footnote 302:

Varro was happier in the phrase _filo et facetia sermonis_ applied to
Plautus: and he seems to have been genuinely devoted to the dramatist
whose canon he constituted, _v._ _Noctes Atticæ_, III. iii.