the nil admirari' of the same writer, who ventured on that somewhat audacious assertion, would have been but an imprudent motto for Ion and his brethren. Praise was their vocation, and eulogist of Homer* was a title they were proud to bear. And, after all, criticism is much dishonoured when considered as the art of censure. Ivy is the plant deemed sacred to critics, but its wreaths are not best merited by those who, like itself, delight to flourish on the ruins they have made. We could not assign the dawn of philosophic criticism to the age of the second Rhapsodists, were it as certain as Wolf,+ from an ambiguous passage in Aristotle's Metaphysics, concludes it to be, that a prior race of intellectual labourers endeavoured to illustrate the art of poetry by a reference to the principles of taste. But we are persuaded that the ancient Sophists (in the good sense of that term which prevails in Herodotus)—to whom he alludes-had no more to do with the philosophy of taste, than with the exposition of words. Their criticism was wholly exegetical of the subject-matter of poetry; their great aim was to expound Homer in conformity with their own speculative tenets; and strange and tortuous were the meanings extracted by them from the words of the old bard, with an ingenuity that would have puzzled his comprehension at least as much as that of any of their hearers. We recognise the first of these perversely dexterous professors in the person of Theagenes of Rhegium, about the time of the death of Pisitratus (Ol. 63. 2. B. C. 527.) The famous Anaxagoras, Metrodorus of Lampsacus, and others of less note, were of this college of interpreters. Their masterkey was allegory, a passe-partout to all difficulties, and obviously the most triumphant mode of commentary, since by it any thing can be made to signify any thing. The later Sophistsand, as applied to them, the word has no longer a respectable meaning of the age of Pericles, such as Prodicus, Protagoras, and the Elean Hippias, were likewise, for the most part, explanatory critics,-busying themselves with the ethical tendency of poetical works, or trying the merits of the poet's descriptions by technical tests, without much notion of the true principles of the divine art. And though among the problems and solutions with which these gregarious gentlemen, as Isocrates calls them, were wont to amuse themselves in the lounge of the Lyceum, * Ομήρου δεινὸς εἶ ἐπαινίτης, says Socrates ; "Ομηρον ἐπαινώ, responds Ion. + See his Prolegomena to Homer, § xxxvii. In the Panathenaic oration. and of which some specimens have been preserved by Aristotle, there are a few that seem to belong to the philosophy of taste; yet neither does their date give them precedence of the Rhapsodists, whom, in fact, they to a certain extent imitated; nor is their importance sufficient to detain us longer from the contemplation of that illustrious writer, who draws us to him with a more potent magic as we approach nearer the circle of his influence, and who has thrown around the theory of the fine arts the light and glory of a mind, beautiful even in its errors, that never shone on any theme without leaving it emblazoned in the radiant characters of genius. Plato, whose inimitable style would suffice to place him in the great Quaternion* of Grecian luminaries, but whose soaring and expansive intellect would have been cabin'd and confined' without that exuberant richness of expression that bespeaks the prodigality of Heaven to a favoured mind; whose works, unfit perhaps for the earlier periods of classic study, are the highest guerdon of toils that have mastered the complicated niceties of the idiom, in which alone their charm can be appreciated; whose spirit is to be unsphered,' not in the midst of social bustle, nor even in closet-seclusion, but in the unfettered hour of liberty, as well as loneliness-in the heart of some silvan scene, such as his own pencil has portrayed, or amid the speaking silence of the mountain-side;-Plato, whose dreamy depths of solemn meditation, and visions of ethereal beauty, and bright glimpses of the unknown world, are for moments when we rise above life's tumults, and, rapt in pleasing melancholy, Can look in heav'n with more than mortal eyes, Survey the region, and confess her home-' Plato, who from the witchery of his graphic and glowing language, and the splendour of his lofty conceptions, has been so often hailed the poet of philosophy, could not be ignorant of the philosophy of poetry. That he did indeed unveil the secrets of imaginative power, and that he established on a firm basis the * With the most eloquent of philosophers we should rank Herodotus (as unrivalled in the true province of history), and the living thunders of Demosthenes. The claims of Homer need no demonstration. What a language-and what a literature-in which Pindar, Eschylus, Thucydides, and Aristophanes, belong to the second rank! elements of philosophic criticism, is well known to those versed in his productions; but is not the general opinion among persons, who have but a superficial acquaintance with their tendency and substance. With reference to this subject, a strong line of distinction must be drawn between Plato the metaphysician, and Plato the political projector. As long as Utopia was out of his thoughts, as long as he looked upon poetry, or the other fine arts, in the abstract, without regard to any influence exercised by them upon human character and conduct, so long was this gifted man a sagacious and eloquent expounder of the true principles of taste. The Platonic scholar, who proceeds to review the critical writings of Aristotle, will discover the clearest evidence of this proposition in the many lights and pregnant hints which the Stagyrite has borrowed from his master. We shall mention a few of their remarkable coincidencies, and indicate the portions of their works which ought to be compared. Plato traces the origin of poetry to the natural love of melody and rhythm,* and to the imitative instinct, though in applying the latter principle to the divisions of the art, he has taken a less limited, and consequently a more just and consistent view, than Aristotle. Plato recognises, as the great sphere and scope of the fine arts, that beau ideal to which Aristotle likewise so distinctly alludes, however boldly certain modern critics seem to claim it as their own discovery. In the fifth book of the Republic, Plato -acknowledging that it savours of paradox-has yet made the striking assertion that action comes less near to vital truth than description, on which Aristotle builds his memorable doctrine, that poetry is something more philosophical and excellent than history §-a doctrine very naturally impugned by Gibbon, but supported by Bacon, by Fielding, and-may we add-by William Hazlitt? If Aristotle, in conformity to common sense, considers pleasure as the end of poetry, Plato too, in his milder moods, pronounces pleasure ¶-the pleasure of the virtuous**to be the effect aimed at by the fine arts, and the true test of their success. Plato, probably following out a hint given by Democri Aristot. Poet. c. 4. Rep. B. iii. x. Aristot. Poet. c. 1, 4, et passim. * Pl. Leg. B. ii. See Mr Twining's 277th note. tus, has dwelt in lively terms upon the fine frenzy' of poetic inspiration, and on the necessity that nature and enthusiasm should combine in the production of a genuine bard,*—a truth acknowledged, though in more tame and logical expression, by the Stagyrite. That terror and pity are the mainsprings of tragedy, is distinctly affirmed in the Phædrus of Plato, and every scholar is acquainted with the famous definition in which Aristotle+ recognises the function of those golden keys that unlock the gate of thrilling fears, Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears :' the characteristic difference, however, being, that Plato objects to tragic poetry, as pampering and inflaming the passions, whereas Aristotle lauds it, as tending to mitigate and refine them.§ We will add only, that though Aristotle judiciously declares the essence of the poetic art to depend upon, nay, even to coincide with, the imitative principle, and the metrical dress to be only a subordinate adjunct, still he does allow, though with some hesitation and an appearance of inconsistency, that this adjunct is necessary, and not purely accidental, thereby acceding to the doctrine laid down by Plato in the Gorgias; that, in extolling the mimetic spirit of Homer, and developing the germs of the Grecian drama in his poems, he does not go further than the founder of the Academy, who plainly names Homer the prince of Tragedy as much the prince of Tragedy as Epicharmus was of Comedy;-and that even Aristotle's fervid admiration of THE POET might have been learned, not indeed from the ethics, but from the taste of Plato, who speaks so often of the author of the Iliad as divine-as the chief of bards ¶-who cannot dissemble the regret with which he banishes him from his imaginary commonwealth, and who has made Socrates enumerate his name among those of other dwellers in the invisible world, for ** * Pl. Phædr. Ion. Apolog. Crito.-Aris. Poet. c. 17. (Ed. Herman.) In some of Plato's assertions on this head, there is a dash of his favourite style of banter, yet his real opinion is manifest. Pl. Rep. B. x. + Arist. Poet. c. 6. § Δι' ἐλίου καὶ φόβου περαίνουσα τὴν τῶν τοιούτων παθημάτων κάθαρσιν the ingenious perversions of this plain passage by the commentators (e. g. by the Abbé Batteux, Professor Moore, &c.) must have been avoided, had they perceived that Aristotle is here combating his master. ** Pl. Apologia. Pl. Theætetus. VOL. LIV. NO. CVII. ¶ Pl. Ion. D whose society a man might gladly quit the scenes of present existence-might loathe to live, or at least not fear to die. In short, it would not be difficult to collect from the Dialogues of Plato, a volume of Poetics, which would supply as much for the illustration of Aristotle's treatise, as it would detract from its character for originality. A work of this kind was actually compiled by Paulus Benius, and published at Venice A.D. 1622. The same scholar put together a Platonic Rhetoric; but of neither of these publications have we ever been able to obtain a view. With such agreement, however, in some of their principles and preferences, the harmony between Plato and his disciple as critics terminates. Their contrariety of opinion becomes apparent, wherever the philosophy of taste touches upon the philosophy of morals. Into these parts of his system Plato has infused all the bitterness derived from his own disappointment as a poetical aspirant. Here he summons the sternness of the legislator to indurate the nerves of the critic-he gives to his views a tinge of rigour, at variance with the bent of his secret inclinations and forgetting the force of some of his own admissions, and the great truth that there is usefulness in pleasure, he seeks to banish all pleasure from usefulness. It is in such places, and in this spirit, that he finds out that others besides Aristophanes and his comic brethren are worthy of all contempt and castigation* -that the keen blade of his trenchant irony is bared against the votaries of every muse+-that even conversation about poetry is stigmatized as silly and vulgar +-that poets are proclaimed to be fit only to titillate the ears of a mob-audience-and that the epic mythology, and descriptions of gods, heroes, wounds, and death, are denounced as absurd, and dangerous to the youthful mind. § Now it is that a bad imitation of bad subjects becomes, according to Plato, the true definition of poetry; now he objects to the art its want of truth, somewhat in the vein of Rousseau's condemnation of fables, which even the pious Cowper ridicules, or of the well-known mathematical complaint against the Paradise Lost-that it proves nothing. We presume that none but a thorough-paced Utilitarian, and one who is prepared to impeach *For Plato's very natural abuse of the comic poets, see particularly the Phædrus and the Apologia. + Pl. Lysis. Ion. + Pl. Protag. Pl. Gorgias, Theætetus. Rep. § Pl. Rep. See especially the 2d and 3d books. |