ART. VI.-LONGINUS AND THE TREATISE ON THE SUBLIME.

1. Longinus on the Sublime. The Greek Text, edited after the Paris Manuscript, with Introduction, Translation, Facsimiles, and Appendices. By W. Rhys Roberts, M.A. Cambridge: at the University Press, 1899.

2. Longinus on the Sublime.

Translated into English by H. L. Havell, B.A. With an Introduction by Andrew Lang. London: Macmillan, 1890.

IN

N all the history of literature we know of nothing so extraordinary as the fortunes of this treatise. The silence of antiquity about a work so brilliant, so original, and so essentially unlike anything in extant Greek criticism, and about a writer who produced, as he himself tells us, other treatises, presumably of a similar kind, and who must, therefore, have been a man of note among his contemporaries; the difficulties involved in ascribing it to its reputed author; the difficulties involved in ascribing it to anyone else; the homage paid so unsuspiciously for upwards of two centuries and a half to the critic to whom it had been so confidently assigned; his sudden dethronement at the beginning of the present century, and the relegation of the treatise to anonymity; the strange vicissitudes through which its reputation has passed; its enormous popularity between about 1674 and 1790; the comparative oblivion into which it seems to have fallen during the subsequent period; the increasing favour with which it is beginning to be regarded now; the voluminous critical literature which has gathered round it, not merely in the form of editorial exegesis and commentary, but in the form of independent disquisitions, monographs, and translations; the extraordinary influence which it has, in different degrees and at different periods, exercised on men of letters and on popular belles lettres; the not less extraordinary indifference with which it has been, and still is, treated by the universities and by those who regulate liberal education in England-all this gives to the Treatise on the Sublime' a unique place in literary history and invests it with curious interest. And its importance is equal to its interest. With the single exception of Aristotle's 'Poetics,' it has probably had more influence on criticism, both directly and indirectly, than any work in the world.

The Treatise was first brought into prominence by Boileau and the French critics towards the end of the seventeenth century. Before that it had not travelled beyond the libraries

of scholars. Its very existence was unknown to the world till Robortello printed it in 1554. Even then it seems to have attracted no general notice, either in England or on the Continent. No allusions are to be found to it in our Elizabethan writers. It was plainly unknown to Ascham, to Sidney, to Meres, to Webbe, to Puttenham, and even to Ben Jonson. Nor during the first half of the next century did it make any way. Milton, indeed, in his Tractate on Education,' gives Longinus a place among those philosophers and rhetoricians who should be studied as models of expression. But it may be doubted whether he was familiar with him; he never, if we are not mistaken, quotes him, nor can we find any trace either in his poems or in his prose-writings of knowledge of the Treatise. Though Hobbes had paid special attention to rhetoric, and even published a treatise on it,* he makes no mention of Longinus; and though Butler has, in more than one poem, ridiculed the fashionable cant about Aristotle and Greek criticism, he does not make the faintest reference to the Sublime.' But when Boileau's version appeared in 1674 attention was at once turned to this neglected critic, and in less than three years the name of Longinus was on the lips of every man of letters on both sides of the Channel. Boileau's preface to his translation was admirable, and appealed equally to the general reader and to the scholar. Here, it said in effect, is a critic even greater than Aristotle, here is a master at whose feet every man of taste should be proud to sit. The charm and power of the Treatise could not, indeed, have been interpreted with more eloquence and discrimination.

Thus Longinus took his place with Aristotle at the head of criticism. Fénelon even preferred him to Aristotle. Not less enthusiastic was Rollin, who would have Longinus made a text-book wherever rhetoric is taught; he speaks of the Treatise as that 'admirable traité,' which is seul capable de former le goût des jeunes gens.'† Between the end of the seventeenth and the middle of the eighteenth century, allusions to Longinus and quotations from the Sublime' abound in French literature; and the influence which he exercised may be judged from the frequency with which we find his characteristic sentiments, as well as direct references to him, appearing and reappearing in sermons and 'Éloges.'

In England he became even more influential. Wotton, in his 'Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning,' says that, with

This appeared as a supplement to his abstract of Aristotle's 'Rhetoric."

De la Manière d'Enseigner et d'Etudier les Belles Lettres,' vol. ii, p. 69.

Demosthenes, Aristotle, Tully, and Quintilian, he was studied by all who would write finely in prose.* Dryden, who pronounced him to be undoubtedly, after Aristotle, the greatest critic among the Greeks,' confessed himself to be his disciple. 'Aristotle and his interpreters,' he says, in his 'Apology for Heroic Poetry,'' and Horace, and Longinus, are the authors to whom I owe my lights.' No author is more frequently quoted by him. Whoever would understand how much Dryden owed to Longinus would do well to turn to the preface to Troilus and Cressida,' and to the preface to the State of Innocence.' To Addison Longinus was that great critic'; and the care with which Addison had studied him is abundantly clear from the frequency with which he quotes and appeals to him. The germ, and indeed more than the germ, of the most eloquent papers Addison ever wrote, those on the pleasures of the imagination, was derived from the twenty-fifth section of the Sublime.' Indeed, all Addison's criticism, and particularly his æsthetic, is coloured by the Treatise. Pope's lines are well known:

'Thee, bold Longinus! all the Nine inspire,
And bless their critic with a poet's fire;
An ardent judge who, zealous in his trust,
With warmth gives sentence, yet is always just;
Whose own example strengthens all his laws;
And is himself that great Sublime he draws.'

6

There is nothing, it is true, in Pope's Essay on Criticism which he may not have borrowed from other sources than Longinus; and it is scarcely necessary to say that he probably could not construe a paragraph of the Greek. But two English translations were at his service; and we may therefore fairly presume that when he expressed himself as he did in the lines just quoted, he expressed himself sincerely. It is perhaps rather in the tone of the Essay' than in particular reminiscences that the influence of Longinus is discernible. In the treatise ‡ on 'Bathos, or the Art of Sinking in Poetry,' the joint production of Pope and Swift, we have testimony of another kind to the popularity of our author, and certainly a curious commentary on the use to which a word bearing quite another sense in the text may be applied § But the cult of Longinus

*See second edition of Reflections' (1697), p. 23.

† See particularly the second paper, 'Spectator,' No. 412.

The parallels between the Essay' and the Treatise appear to be part i, 67-73, 84-91, 94-9, 134–5, 138, 150-5; part ii, 233-6, 243-6, 299-300, 318-21. § See the commentators on the words εἰ ἔστιν ὕψους τις ἢ βάθους τέχνη, in sect. ii.

had now passed into a sort of cant, and we find Swift writing in his rhapsody 'On Poetry' :—

'A forward critic often dupes us
With sham quotations peri hupsous,
And if we have not read Longinus
Will magisterially outshine us.'

But worthier homage was paid him both then and afterwards than that offered by fribbles and criticasters. The noblest passage—perhaps it would be more correct to say the one noble passage-in Akenside's 'Pleasures of Imagination,' is little more than a paraphrase of the thirty-fifth section of the Sublime,” while another fine passage in the third book is the expansion of a remark in the second section.† Throughout Akenside's poem we frequently indeed catch the note of Longinus. That Young had read him is clear from his 'Conjectures on Original Composition,' where he quotes him; and there can therefore be little doubt that what appear to be reminiscences of the Treatise in the Night Thoughts' are not simply accidental or derived from other sources. Take the following lines in Night IX. Pagan tutors taught, he says'That mind immortal loves immortal aims:

That boundless mind affects a boundless space :
That vast surveys and the sublime of things
The soul assimilate and make her great:
That therefore heaven her glories, as a fund
Of inspiration, thus spreads out to man.'

This is little more than a summary of section thirty-five of Longinus, and of that section, as well as of the forty-third, we are constantly reminded in 'The Relapse' (Night V) and The Infidel Reclaimed' (Night VII). In his Resignation' (Part II, st. 46), he has, in the couplet

'Nothing is great of which more great,

More glorious is the scorn

little more than translated part of the opening sentence of the second section of Longinus.

That Goldsmith was a student of him is plain from his Essays. He ranks him among the most approved classics,' and frequently quotes him ; and if the remarks on luxury and corruption in the 'Traveller' and the Deserted Village' need not be attributed to any reminiscences of 'the Sublime,' they recall

* From 1. 151, Say, why was man,' to 1. 221, 'close the scene,' in bk. i.

† Longinus, ii, 2, compared with Akenside, bk. iii, 535 et seqq.

See particularly the Essays on the Cultivation of Taste' and on 'Metaphors.'

similarly forcible remarks in the last section of it. Johnson, who quotes Longinus more than once, had evidently read him with attention, but probably, as might be expected, without much sympathy. Very different, however, was the impression which Longinus appears to have made on Johnson's friend Reynolds. Longinus, if we recollect rightly, is only once mentioned by Sir Joshua in his 'Academic Discourses'; but, whether consciously or not, there is scarcely one of them in which he does not recall the 'De Sublimitate.' There is the same noble conception of the character and functions of art, of its relation to the divine, of its relation to nature, of the spirit in which its study should be approached and pursued. There is the same union of the critic and the enthusiast. Reynolds speaks of Michael Angelo precisely as Longinus speaks of Homer. His definition of the Sublime, and his criteria for testing it, are identical with those of the Greek critic. If Reynolds had not studied Longinus with the greatest care and with the greatest sympathy, we can only assume that experience, reflection, and genius, operating on similar temperaments, had conducted both these critics independently to the same truths, and inspired them to express themselves in the same noble language.*

Hurd, a less-known writer, but a highly accomplished literary judge, had evidently studied the Sublime' with care, and frequently quotes it, remarking incidentally that Longinus was one of the three most popular critics in his day-the others being Bouhours and Addison. Kames's chapter on Grandeur and Sublimity, in his Elements of Criticism,' is little more than a paraphrase of Longinus; Dugald Stewart in his Essay on the Sublime' draws largely on him; and Blair, who observes that Longinus deserves to be consulted, 'not so much for distinct instruction concerning the sublime as for excellent general ideas concerning beauty in writing,' has throughout his 'Lectures on Rhetoric' appealed to him, though more often, it is true, without than with approval. Porson places him with Aristotle at the head of criticism.† Fielding, to turn to popular men of letters, was one of his most enthusiastic admirers; and, as he appears to have been a good classical scholar, he had no doubt practised what he preached • when he said, 'No author is to be admitted into the order of critics until he hath read over and understood Aristotle, Horace,

See particularly the remarks about the Sublime in Discourse IV,' and the fine passage about the alliance of Art with the Divine at the conclusion of 'Discourse XIII.'

+ See his Prælectio in Euripidem.'