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