Psychological

can be gained by a manner of speech expressing the same content of thought without such particular modification.” 1 But the psychological interpretation of figures of interpretation. speech, the first stage towards their æsthetic criticism, was not allowed to drop here. In his Elements of Criticism, Home says that he had long questioned whether that part of Rhetoric concerning figures might not be reduced to rational principles, and had finally discovered that figures consist in the passional element; 2 he set himself therefore to analyse prosopopœia, apostrophe and hyperbole in the light of the passional faculty. From Du Marsais and Home is derived everything of value in the Lectures on Rhetoric and belles lettres of Hugh Blair, professor at Edinburgh University from 1759 onwards;3 published in book form, these lectures had an immense vogue in all the schools of Europe including those of Italy, and replaced advantageously, by their "reason and good sense," works of a much cruder type. Blair defined figures in general as "language suggested by imagination or passion." Similar ideas were promulgated in France by Marmontel in his Elements of Literature.5 In Italy Cesarotti was contrasting the logical element or cypher-terms" of language with the rhetorical element or "figure-terms," and rational eloquence with imaginative eloquence. Beccaria, though a shrewd psychological analyst, held to the view of literary style as "accessory ideas or feelings added to the principal in any discourse"; that is, he failed to free himself from the distinction between the intellectual form intended for the expression of the principal ideas, and the literary form, modifying the first by the addition of accessory ideas.? In Germany an effort was made by Herder to interpret tropes and meta

1 Des tropes ou des différens sens dans lesquels on peut prendre un même mot dans une même langue, part i. art. 1; cf. art. 4.

2 Elem. of Criticism, iii. ch. 20.

3 Hugh Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric and belles lettres (London, 1823). 4 Lect. on Rhet. and belles lettres, lecture 14.

5 Marmontel, Éléments de littérat. (in Œuvres, Paris, 1819), iv. p. 559.

6 Cesarotti, Saggio sulla filos. del linguaggio, part ii.

Ricerche intorno alla natura dello stile (Turin, 1853), ch. 1.

phors as Vico had done, that is to say as essential to

primitive language and poetry.

and Rhetoric.

Romanticism was the ruin of the theory of ornament, Romanticism and caused it practically to be thrown on the scrap-heap; Present day. but it cannot be said to have gone under for good or to have been superseded by a new and accurately stated theory. The chief philosophers of Esthetic (not only Kant, who as we know remained in bondage to the mechanical and ornamental theory; not only Herder, whose knowledge of art seems to have been confined to a little music and a great deal of rhetoric; but such romantic philosophers as Schelling, Solger and Hegel) still retained the sections devoted to metaphor, trope and allegory for tradition's sake, without severe scrutiny. Italian Romanticism with Manzoni at its head destroyed the belief in beautiful and elegant words, and dealt a blow at Rhetoric: but was it killed by the stroke? Apparently not, judging by the concessions unconsciously made by the scholastic treatise-writer Ruggero Bonghi, whose Critical Letters assert the existence of two styles or forms, which at bottom are nothing else than the plain and the ornate.1 German schools of philology have pretty generally accepted the stylistic theory of Gröber, who divides style into logical (objective) and affective (subjective): 2 an ancient error masked by terminology borrowed from the psychological philosophy in fashion at modern universities. In the same spirit a recent writer rechristens the rhetorical doctrine of tropes and figures by the title "Doctrine of the Forms of Esthetic Apperception," and divides them into the four categories (the ancient wealth of categories reduced to a paltry four !) of personification, metaphor, antithesis, and symbol.3

1 R. Bonghi, Lettere critiche, 1856 (4th ed., Naples, 1884), PP. 37, 65-67, 90, 103.

2 Gustav Gröber, Grundiss d. romanischen Philologie, vol. i. pp. 209-250; K. Vossler, B. Cellinis Stil in seiner Vita, Versuch einer psychol. Stilbetrachtung, Halle a. S., 1899; cf. the self-criticism of Vossler, Positivismus u. Idealismus in der Sprachwissenschaft, Heidelberg, 1904 (It. trans., Bari, Laterza, 1908).

3 Ernst Elsteb, Principien d. Literaturwissenschaft, Halle a. S., 1897, vol. i. pp. 359-413.

Biese has devoted an entire book to metaphor; but one searches it in vain for a serious æsthetic analysis of this category.1

The best scientific criticism of the theory of ornament is found scattered throughout the writings of De Sanctis, who when lecturing on rhetoric preached what he called anti-rhetoric. But even here the criticism is not conducted from a strictly systematic point of view. It seems to us that the true criticism should be deduced negatively from the very nature of æsthetic activity, which does not lend itself to partition; there is no such thing as activity of type a or type b, nor can the same concept be expressed now in one way, now in another. Such is the only way of abolishing the double monster of bare form which is, no one knows how, deprived of imagination, and ornate form which contains, no one knows how, an addition on the side of imagination.3

The kinds in antiquity. Aristotle.

II

HISTORY OF THE ARTISTIC AND LITERARY KINDS

The theory of artistic and literary kinds and of the laws or rules proper to each separate kind has almost always followed the fortunes of the rhetorical theory.

Traces of the threefold division into epic, lyric and dramatic are found in Plato; and Aristophanes gives an example of criticism according to the canon of the kinds, particularly that of tragedy. But the most conspicuous theoretical treatment of the kinds bequeathed us by antiquity is precisely the doctrine of Tragedy which forms a large part of the Aristotelian fragment known as the Poetics. Aristotle defines such a composition as an imitation of a serious and complete action, having size,

1 Biese, Philos. des Metaphorischen, Hamburg-Leipzig, 1893.

2 La Giovinezza di Fr. de S. chs. 23, 25; Scritti vari, ii. pp. 272-274. See above, pp. 67-73.

• Republic, iii. 394; see also E. Muller, Gesch. d. Th. d. Kunst, i. PP. 134-206; ii. pp. 238-239, note.

in language adorned in accordance with the requirements of the different parts, its exposition to be by action and not by narration, and using pity or terror as means to free or purify us from these same passions; 1 he gives minute details as to the six parts of which it is composed, especially the plot and the tragic character. It has been often said, ever since the days of Vincenzo Maggio in the sixteenth century, that Aristotle treated of the nature of poetry, or particular forms of poetry, without claiming to give precepts. But Piccolomini answered that "all these things and other similar ones are shown or asserted with no other purpose but that we may see in what way their precepts and laws must be obeyed and carried out,” just as, to make a hammer or saw, one begins by describing the parts of which they are composed.2 The error of which we take Aristotle as representative lies in transmuting abstractions and empirical partitions into rational concepts this was almost inevitable at the beginnings of æsthetic reflexion, and the Sanskrit theory of poetry employed the same method independently when, for example, it defines and legislates for ten principal and eighteen secondary styles of drama; forty-eight varieties of hero; and we know not how many kinds of heroines.3

Renaissance

After Aristotle, the theory of poetic kinds does not In the Middle seem to have been completely or elaborately developed Ages and in antiquity. The Middle Ages may be said to have expressed the doctrine in treatises of the kind known as "rhythmic arts" or "methods of composition." When the Aristotelian fragment was first noticed, it is curious to see the way in which the paraphrase of Averroes distorted the theory of kinds. Averroes conceives tragedy as the art of praise, comedy as that of blame, which amounts to identifying the former with panegyric, the latter with satire; and he believes the peripeteia to be the same thing as antithesis, or the artifice of beginning the description of a thing by describing its opposite.1

1 Poet. ch. 6.

2 Annotazioni, introd.

* Cf. for Sanskrit poetry S. Levi, Le Théâtre indien, pp. 11-152. 4 Cf. Menendez y Pelayo, op. cit. I., i. pp. 126-154, 2nd ed.

The doctrine

of the three unities.

This distortion demonstrates afresh the merely historical character of these kinds and their unintelligibility by the methods of pure logic to a thinker living in times and under customs different from those of the Hellenic world. The Renaissance seized upon Aristotle's text, partly expounded it, partly distorted it and partly thought it out afresh, and thus succeeded in establishing a long list of kinds and sub-kinds rigidly defined and subjected to inexorable laws. Controversy now began over the correct understanding of the unities of epic or dramatic poetry; over the moral quality and social standing proper to the characters in this kind of poem and in that; over the nature of the plot, and whether it includes passions and thoughts, and whether lyrics should or should not be received as true poetry; whether the material of tragedy should be historical; whether the dialogue of comedy may be in prose; whether a happy ending may be allowed in tragedy; whether the tragic character may be a perfect gentleman; what kind and number of episodes is admissible in the poem, and how they should be incorporated in the main plot; and so on. Great anguish was caused by the mysterious rule of catharsis found in black and white in Aristotle's text, and Segni naïvely predicted that tragic poetry would be revived in its perfect spectacular entirety for the sake of experiencing the effect spoken of by Aristotle, that "purgation" which causes" the birth of tranquillity in the soul and of freedom of all perturbation." 1

Amongst the many undertakings brought to a glorious end by the critics and treatise-writers of the sixteenth century, the best known is the establishment of the three unities of time, place and action. One cannot indeed see why they are called unities, for in strictness they could at most be spoken of as shortness of time, straitness of space and limitation of tragic subjects to a certain class of action. It is well known that Aristotle prescribed unity of action only, and reminded his hearers that theatrical custom alone imposed on the action a time

1 Introd. to his tr. of the Poetics.