Chapter I: Preface

In the first volume of this History we had to summarise the critical work of nearly two thousand years; in the second, that of two whole centuries, with the major part of that of the third. In this we have had the apparently more manageable task of considering the whole work of the nineteenth century only, with the _remanets_ (left over, not by accident but design) from the eighteenth and earlier. Yet it would be a poor compliment to the reader’s intelligence to waste time in explaining to him that the weight of the task is very little lightened by the lessened number of the years with which we have to deal. And the actual congestion of the volume ought all the less to be increased by repetition of things already said in former Prefaces, or by single-stick play with reviewers. Some points, which seemed to be really worth handling, I have dealt with in the text; the others I must let alone. I have little fear that many impartial and competent critics will dispute my claim to have surveyed the matter with the actual documents in hand, and not (save in the rare cases specified) from comments and go-betweens, from abstracts and translations; while such critics may even grant my “mass,” as some indeed have in their kindness granted it already, a fair share of “agitating mind,” under the conditions and with the limitations specified in the original preface. I may at least hope that I shall not be charged with

“la fretta
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.

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VOLUME I.

P. 63, note. “_Lu_dhaus” should be “_Su_dhaus.” 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 “_G_næus” or “_C_næus,” “_iu_ris” or “_ju_ris,” 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.

P. 280. I had not observed (oddly enough) that _Clæris_ had crept into text and headings, where it has no business, and that “Fabius” was misprinted “Falinus,” till Professor Gudeman kindly brought both to my notice.

Pp. 410, 411. I owe to Dr Sandys (in _Hermathena_, vol. xii. p. 438) the removal of certain ignorances or forgetfulnesses here. “Solymarius,” as I most assuredly ought to have remembered, seeing that the information is in Warton, was a poem on the Crusades by Gunther, the author of the better known _Ligurinus_ on Barbarossa, and the “Guntero” to whom I myself, in vol. ii. p. 96, alluded in connection with Patrizzi. “Paraclitus” and “Sidonius” were two poems by Warnerius of Basle. I am even more indebted to Dr Sandys for a sheaf of privately communicated annotations on vol. i., of many of which I hope to avail myself in a future edition—if such a thing is called for.

VOLUME II.

P. 23 _sq._ A reference of Hallam’s (_Literature of Europe_, iii. 5, 76, 77) to the _Miscellanies_ of Politian has led some critics, who apparently do not know the book itself, and have not even read Hallam carefully, to object to its omission here. Their authority might have saved them; for he very correctly describes these _Miscellanies_ as “sometimes grammatical, but more frequently relating to obscure customs and mythological allusions.” In other words, the book—which _I_ have read—is hardly, in my sense, critical at all.

P. 29, note 3, l. 3, _for_ “ii.” _read_ “i.” (The _first_ vol. of Pope.)

P. 30, _for_ “with his two great disciples” _read_ “between his master Horace and his pupil Boileau.”

P. 38, note, _for first sentence read_: “But most of this latter part had been written in 1548-49, and all must have been before 1550, when T. died.”

P. 51, l. 7 from bottom, _for_ “Rote” _read_ “Rota.”

P. 67, l. 4, _for_ “prose” _read_ “poor.”

P. 80, note. When I wrote on Castelvetro I was not aware that the Commentary on Dante (at least that on _Inf._, Cantos i.-xxix.) had been recovered and published by Signor Giovanni Franciosi (Modena, 1886) in a stately royal 4to (which I have now read, and possess), with the owl and the pitcher, but without the _Kekrika_, and without the proper resolution in the owl’s countenance. This may be metaphysically connected with the fact that the editor is rather unhappy about his author, and tells us that he was long in two minds about sending him out at last to the world. He admires Castelvetro’s boldness, scholarship, intellect; but thinks him sadly destitute of reverence for Dante, and deplores his “lack of lively and cheerful sense of the Beautiful.” If it were not that my gratitude to the man who gives me a text seals my mouth as to everything else, I should be a little inclined to cry “Fudge!” at this. Nobody would expect from any Renaissance scholar, and least of all from Castelvetro, “unction,” mysticism, rapture at the things that give _us_ rapture in Dante. All the more honour to him that, as in the case of Petrarch, he thought it worth while to bestow on that vernacular, which too many Renaissance scholars despised, the same intense desire to understand, the same pains, the same “taking seriously,” which he showed towards the ancients. This is the true reverence: the rest is but “leather and prunella.”

P. 87, l. 5, _for_ “ideals” _read_ “idols.”

P. 107. Some time after vol. ii. was published I came across (in the catalogues of Mr Voynich, who might really inscribe on these documents for motto

“Das Unzulängliche
Hier wird’s Ereignis”)

quite a nest of Zinanos, mostly written about that year 1590, which seems to have been this curious writer’s most active time; and I bought two of them as specially appurtenant to our subject. One is a _Discorso della Tragedia_, appended (though separately paged and dedicated) to the author’s tragedy of _Almerigo_; the other _Le Due Giornate della Ninfa overo del Diletto e delle Muse_, all printed by Bartholi, at Reggio, and the two prose books or booklets dated 1590. The _Discorso_ is chiefly occupied with an attack on the position that Tragedy (especially according to Aristotle) ought to be busied with true subjects only. The _Giornate_ (which contain another reference to Patrizzi) deal—more or less fancifully, but in a manner following Boethius, which is interesting at so late a date—with philosophy and things in general, rather than with literature.

P. 140, l. 3 from bottom, _delete_ “of” before Catullus.

P. 162, l. 17. “Thomas” should have been “George,” as it appears correctly elsewhere: and “fourth” in the note should be “quarto” (“4th,” “4to”).

P. 191. “_Topmost_ Verulam” should, of course, be “_large-browed_ Verulam”—a curious instance of the tricks played by memory. I know _The Palace of Art_ so well as to see it all printed before me; but the treacherous mind’s eye must have slipped from the epithet of the first line, “topmost _oriels_,” to the name of the third.

P. 248. In the line beginning _O, débile raison!_ “lors” has been misprinted for “ores,” thereby spoiling the metre.

P. 263, l. 12, _for_ “Beni—Pacius” _read_ “Beni and Pazzi (Pacius) as well as of Heinsius.”

P. 301, note, “Grands Écrivains _Français_” should be “G. E. _de la France_.”

P. 319, note. Gibert is, it seems, appended to some edd. of Baillet.

P. 322, bk. IV. chap. i. I ought, perhaps, to have noticed in this context a book rather widely spread—Sorel’s _De La Connaissance des Bons Livres_, Paris, 1671. It contains some not uninteresting things on literature in general, on novels, poetry, comedy, &c., on the laws of good speaking and writing, on the “new language of French.” But it is, on the whole, as anybody acquainted with any part of the voluminous work of the author of _Francion_ would expect, mainly not disagreeable nor ignorant _chat_—newspaper work before the newspaper.

P. 350. The opposition of the two “doctors” is perhaps too sharply put.

P. 376, note, _for_ “Schenck” _read_ “Strunk.”

P. 436. I should like to add as a special “place” for Dennis’s criticism, his comparatively early _Remarks on_ Prince Arthur _and Virgil_ (title abbreviated), London, 1696. It is, as it stands, of some elaboration; but its author tells us that he “meant” to do things which would have made it an almost complete Poetic from his point of view. It is pervaded with that refrain of “this _ought_ to be” and “that _must_ have been” to which I have referred in the text; and bristles with purely arbitrary preceptist statements, such as that Criticism cannot be ill-natured because Good Nature in man cannot be contrary to Justice and Reason; that a man must not like what he ought not to like—a doctrine underlying, of course, the whole Neo-classic teaching, and not that only; almost literally cropping up in Wordsworth; and the very formulation, in categorical-imperative, of La Harpe’s “monstrous beauty.” The book (in which poet and critic are very comfortably and equally yoked together) is full of agreeable things; and may possibly have suggested one of Swift’s most exquisite pieces of irony in its contention that Mr Blackmore’s Celestial Machines are directly contrary to the Doctrine of the Church of England.

P. 449, l. 1, _for_ “is more curious” _read_ “gives rather more.”

P. 478, l. 12 from bottom, _for_ “and in some cases” _read_ “in the lady’s case.”

P. 546. Denina. This author is a good instance of the things which the reader sometimes rather reproachfully demands, when the writer would only too fain have supplied them. I could write more than a page with satisfaction on Denina’s _Discorso sopra le Vicende della Litteratura_, which, rather surprisingly, underwent its second edition in Glasgow at the Foulis press (1763), and which not only deals at large with the subject in an interesting manner, but accepts the _religio loci_ by dealing specially with _Scottish_ literature. But, once more, this is for a fourth volume—or even a fifth—things belonging to the Thinkable-Unthinkable.

P. 550, note. Something like “pie” has been made of this. It should read: “This Gallicism was _not_ universal. _As_ Mr Ticknor,” &c.

P. 554, l. 3. For the _Paragone_ see the present volume under Conti, Antonio.

VOLUME III.

P. 152, note, l. 6 from bottom, _for_ “condenses” _read_ “condemns.”

P. 173, l. 11, _for_ “he” _read_ “Spenser.”

P. 208, ll. 1, 2, _for_ “moon_light_” _read_ “moon_shine_.”

P. 254, note, _add_, “as well as sometimes on Southey.”

P. 267, l. 4. I am glad to know that Blake’s poems at least, and at last, are being edited more than competently.

P. 283, note 2. I accepted too hastily the statement that T. Wright contributed to the _Retrospective Review_ proper. Dates (see Index) will show that he could not have done so, though he might to the so-called “Third” series.

P. 308, l. 8 from bottom, _for_ “Mestre” _read_ “Maistre.”

P. 312, l. 24, _for_ “nor” _read_ “or.”

P. 357, _for_ “Walder” _read_ “Wälder.”

P. 357, sidenote, _for_ “Geschmack” _read_ “Geschmacks.”

P. 471, l. 1, _for_ “more” _read_ “so.”

P. 488. Perhaps the _most_ remarkable example of this parody-criticism is Aytoun’a _Firmilian_, an astonishing satire-judgment, not merely of the actual “Spasmodics,” but of the long-subsequent class, all over Europe, of whom Dr Ibsen is the chief.

CONTENTS.

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BOOK VII.

THE DISSOLVENTS OF NEO-CLASSICISM.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY AND RETROSPECTIVE.

PAGE
Scope of the volume 3
The term Modern 3
The origins 4
Need of caution here 5
Case of Butler on Rymer, Denham 5
And Benlowes 6

PAGE
Of Addison and others 7
Of La Bruyère and “_Tout est dit_” 8
Of Fénelon and Gravina 9
Of Dryden and Fontenelle 9
The more excellent way 10