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thought?' When the Greeks criticized, they asked first, 'What is the form?' In other words, we have adopted the standpoint of poetry itself; and so long as we find in it 'the finer spirit of all knowledge,' we are content to believe that Nature herself will provide an appropriate vehicle for its utterances.

CHAPTER III

CRITICISM-APPLICATION

REVIVAL OF FORMAL

OF

ARISTOTLE'S PRINCIPLES BY ADDISON TO 'PARA-
DISE LOST'

INCOMPLETE and partial, however, as was this formal criticism of Aristotle, it was nevertheless the last word of the ancient world. In all departments of intellectual activity, with the sole exception of the science of law, Rome was the child of Greece; and no addition was made to this last word of Hellenism until the intellect of Europe had first been stirred to productiveness by the Renaissance, and this period of productiveness had in turn been succeeded by a period of reflection. Then, when men began to take stock of the new literature, which had been added to the recovered literature of Greece and Rome, it was upon the foundation of Aristotle's treatise that criticism was reconstructed. During the seventeenth and the earlier part of the eighteenth century, its canons were accepted as supreme. At this time France was the leader of European thought, and Greece was the schoolmistress of France. Following, or thinking they followed the ancients,'

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1

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says Mr. Saintsbury, French dramatists and dramatic critics adopted certain fixed rules according to which a poet had to write just as a whistplayer has to play the game.''

1 History of French Literature, p. 303.

2 Even in Addison we read1 ́... although in Poetry it be absolutely necessary that the unities of time, place, and action, with other points of the same nature, should be thoroughly explained and understood.' Now, as a matter of fact, of these three dramatic unities-time, place, and action-Aristotle gives an elastic rule for the first, omits to mention the second, and speaks fully only of the third. The elastic rule is contained in the cautiously expressed obiter dictum which occurs in a comparison of the period of action in Epic and Tragedy. Further,' he says, 'in the period of the action, while Tragedy endeavours to confine itself to a single revolution of the sun, or to only slightly exceed that limit, Epic is unlimited in point of time.' In speaking of the third, unity of action, he says3 unity based upon the representation of a single person is artificial; the real unity of action consists in the plot being the representation of a single action: and to make the representation of this one action effective, the episodes must be, in the first place, pertinent, and, in the second, subordinate.

The effect produced by this excessive regard for the Aristotelian canons, real or imaginary, appears in the dramas of Corneille and Racine. 'Malgré les différences,' says Demogeot, 'qui le [Racine] distinguent de son prédécesseur [Corneille], il y a entre eux une ressemblance que leur imposait leur époque. Tous deux sont spiritualistes au plus haut degré ; tous deux cherchent exclusivement dans la nature morale la source de leur puissance. Ils dédaignent ou ignorent le spectacle extérieur, le mouvement matériel de la scène, les couleurs toutes faites de l'histoire. Leurs tableaux ne sont pas des portraits, mais des types; ce sont des idées qui ont pris sous leurs mains un corps et un visage. Ces poëtes n'embrassent point, comme Shakspeare, la réalité grossière pour l'élever à l'idéal; ils saississent la pensée dans son germe et l'échauffent sous leurs ailes jusqu'à ce qu'elle ait reçu la vie.

'De là cette unité sévère, que subit Corneille et dont Racine porte le joug si légèrement. De là ce petit nombre de personages,

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Meanwhile in England, where the literary harvest of the Renaissance had been most ample, one mind had penetrated the secret of poetic success, and one voice had stated with perfect clearness the philosophic basis which gives superior truth and value to the poetic treatment of the facts of life.

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Poesy is nothing else but Feigned History, which may be styled as well in prose as in verse. The use of this

toujours restreint aux indispensable besoins de l'intrigue; de là cette marche rapide et non interrompue d'un seul et unique fait, de là enfin les grands portiques déserts où se rencontrent les interlocuteurs, endroits vagues, sans caractère et sans nom; où s'agite une action idéale dépouillée avec soin de tout épisode vulgaire; en sorte qu'on peut dire qu'il y a moins unité de temps et de lieur, que nullité de temps et de lieur. L'action morale, spirituelle, semble vivre en elle-même, comme la pensée, et n'occuper ni durée, ni espace.'

Concurrent with this study of Greek models was the effect produced by the establishment of the Academy in 1637. Both of these influences tended to produce a certain characteristic feeling of French thought which Amiel notices.1 'The French lack that intuitive faculty to which the living unity of things is revealed, they have very little sense of what is sacred, very little penetration into the mysteries of being. What they excel in is the construction of special sciences; the art of writing a book, style, courtesy, grace, literary models, perfection and urbanity; the spirit of order, the art of teaching, discipline, elegance, truth of detail, power of arrangement; the desire and gift for proselytism, the vigour necessary for practical conclusions. But if you wish to travel in the Inferno or the Paradiso you must take other guides.'

With the recovery of French literature from the shock of the Revolution, and its revival at the beginning of the present century, there came a broader and truer view of this doctrine of the unities, as well as an expansion of the canons of art in general; and of this more natural criticism we shall find hereafter a conspicuous exponent in Victor Cousin.

1

Journal Intime. Translated by Mrs. Humphry Ward, p. 84.

feigned history hath been to give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those points wherein the nature of things doth deny it; the world being in proportion inferior to the soul; by reason whereof there is, agreeable to the spirit of man, a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute variety, than can be found in the nature of things. Therefore, because the acts and events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfyeth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical. Because history propoundeth the successes and issues of actions not so agreeable to the merits of virtue and vice, therefore poesy feigns them more just in retribution and more according to revealed providence.'

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Here we have a signal example of the power of learning to raise a man above the limitations of his own age, and project him into the future. The conception of poetry which is embodied in these words of Bacon is precisely that conception which has gained currency in the nineteenth century. It is a conception which recognizes the existence in poetry of a separate order of thought, corresponding to the spiritual element in man; and it is, therefore, an advance on the Greek conception, which had no room for spiritual aspirations. It is a conception, too, which sees in poetry a vehicle of thought which is capable of growing with the growth of man, and such a conception is alone consistent with the facts. For with the separation of the drama and the recognition of prose-fiction-a new form of creative literature which is independent of metre-structural 1 Advancement of Learning. Book II. iv. 1–2.

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