Loci Critici. Passages illustrative of critical theory and practice from Aristotle downwards. Selected, partly translated, and arranged with notes by G. Saintsbury.

460 Pages·1903·19.2 MB·English

by  Saintsbury

THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES

LOCI CRITICI
PASSAGES ILLUSTRATIVE OF CRITICAL
THEORY AND PRACTICE FROM
ARISTOTLE DOWNWARDS
SELECTED, PARTLY TRANSLATED, AND
ARRANGED WITH NOTES
GEOKGE SAINTSBURY, M.A. OXON., HON. LL.D. ABERD.
PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
BOSTON, U.S.A., AND LONDON
GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
Cbc Stl)cn<rnm
1903
ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL
COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY
GEORGE SAINTSBURY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
College
Library
-PN-
PREFACE
The present volume is one of the most strictly practical purpose,
and its compiler lays claim, to nothing beyond mere "porter's
work" except in the one point, not common to all porters, of
having perceived that the work was needed. During the last few
years the study of Ehetoric long disused almost entirely in
England,1 and pursuedwith somewhat altered intent in America
has been revived to some extent in the former country, and to a
very large extent, I am informed, in the latter. In particular, so
far as England is concerned, the recent institution of Honours
Schools of English Literature in the newer Universities almost
necessarily involved the direction of study to the history and prin-
ciples of criticism. I was enabled, some eight or nine years ago,
to take part in the institution of such a School in the Victoria
University, and a little later to undertake the charge of one which
had been just formed at Edinburgh by my honoured predecessor,
Professor Masson,and by his and my colleague,Mr. Gregory Smith,
Lecturer in English at that University.
The resumption of rhetorical-critical studies, however, brought
with it, in the changed circumstances of education, a new and very
real difficulty. In the old days of rhetorical teaching, every
student knew Latin with more or less thoroughness and in the
;
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries most knew some Greek. This
last tongue has become disastrously strange at the present day to
many probably to the large majority of the students likely
to "take" English : while I fear it would be sanguine to expect
that all of them should read Latin with the current ease which
enables a man to extract the meaning of his author without formal
1 InScotlandtheinstitutionoftheChairwhich Ihavenowthehonourtohold,
and of others later, kept it alive, orshould have done so, from the very period
when itwas most failing.
iii
PREFACE
iv
"construing." Hence, what are, and always must be, the texts
and scriptures of the subject Aristotle, Longinus, Quintilian, and
others have to be sought in translations.
Moreover, even supposing that these translations were in all
cases easily attainable in entirely satisfactory forms, there is the
further difficulty that they, with the modern authorities on the
matter, form a small library, with which it is rather unreasonable
to expect that the ordinary student will provide himself, and with
which, as a matter of fact, he most certainly does not. I have
myself found this a very real difficulty in eight years' actual prac-
tice and from the very first of these years I have meditated the
;
production (if necessary privately and at my own expense, seeing
that,for a time at least, the sale was not likely to tempt publishers
in England) of something like this book. Recently, however, in
conversation with an American friendwhowas dumetier(Professor
Gayley of the University of California), I found that there was
likely to be a larger demand in America, and my present pub-
lishers, on the matter being represented to them, offered,with great
kindness and spirit, to take the work in hand.
The principle of the book isto give nothing more than the actual
text (with such annotation as may be barely necessary to compre-
hension) of the passages which experience has shown me to be
most useful for the purpose, from ancient writers, from Dante,
from a few Renaissance critics of the formative period, and from
English critics of the Elizabethan age and onwards. I have only
in a few cases drawn on writers in the modern foreign languages
first, because it was very important not to make the book too
big and secondly, because the matter of their criticism (which is
;
here alone important) can, in almost every case, be perfectly well
exhibited out of English stores. The passages chosen from the
enormous bulk at hand are such as may best illustrate the general
drift of criticism in modern Europe, with a few exceptions and
singularities. In givingthis matter I have taken as much pains as
I could to abstain, as a rule, from expressing any opinions of my
own except on points of bare interpretation. All argumentative
matter all deduction, adjustment, application is left to the
teacher, who will, by using the book, have his hands left free and
PREFACE V
his time saved for this very purpose. Anybody who studying
without a teacher or for other reasons wants my opinions,not in
my fatigue-jacket as compiler but in a somewhat statelier uniform,
may find them in my History of Criticism; anybody who does not
want them will seldom be troubled with them here.
The passages selected are, as has been said, those which I have
myself found either indispensable or most useful. I have taken
the advice of some of the best available authorities on the subject
;
but if any expert reader detects lacunce or superfluities, he will
oblige me by letting me know of them. The exclusion of living
writers and of very modern critical phases is deliberate; and it
can be but barely necessary to say that there is no intention of
giving "Beauties of Criticism." In the case of Aristotle I have,
to save time and labour (or rather under the idea of doing so, for I
am by no means sure that it was not the more troublesome process
of the two) adapted (in each case with many changes) Twining's
version of the Poetics and the old "Oxford" one of the Rhetoric;
adding in the former case, by the kindness of my colleague, Pro-
fessor Butcher, some variants from his own admirable work, and
in the latter, bythe similar courtesy of Bishop Welldon,some from
his version of the Rhetoric. The translations of Dionysius, Longi-
nus, Quintilian, and Dante, as well as all the shorter translated
extracts, are entirely my own. Their chief aim is at the utmost
possible closeness.1
GEORGE SAINTSBURY.
EDINBURGH, July, 1903.
1 The notes indicated by numbers, 1, 2, etc., are mine ; those asterisked
belong to the originals.