A defence of

the doctrine

of

"the kinds."

nature and

the reason of things.

of common means. . . . Perhaps the effects even of Shakespeare's poetry might have been yet greater had he not counteracted himself.

S. JOHNSON, The Rambler (No. 156), 1751.

[G]ood sense will acknowledge no work of art but such as is composed according to the laws of its kind. These kinds, as arbitrary things as we account them (for I neither forget nor dispute what our best philosophy teaches concerning kinds and sorts), have yet so far their foundation Founded in in nature and the reason of things, that it will not be allowed us to multiply, or vary them, at pleasure. We may, indeed, mix and confound them, if we will (for there is a sort of literary luxury which would engross all pleasures at once, even such as are contradictory to each other), or, in our rage for incessant gratification, we may take up with half-formed pleasures, such as come first to hand, and may be administered by anybody; but true taste requires chaste, severe, and simple pleasures; and true genius will only be concerned in administering such.

Read the ancients.

R. HURD, Idea of Universal Poetry, 1766.

To copy nature is a task the most bungling workman is able to execute; to select such parts as contribute to delight is reserved only for those whom accident has blessed with uncommon talents, or such as have read the ancients with indefatigable industry.

O. GOLDSMITH, Life of Parnell, 1770.

[L]et them not talk of "Dark Ages," or of Ages are all any "Ages"! Ages are all equal, but genius is always above

equal.

Grecian is mathematic form.

its age.

W. BLAKE, Notes on Reynolds, c. 1820.

Rome and Greece swept art into their maw, and destroyed it. A warlike state never can produce art. It will rob and plunder, and accumulate into one place, and translate and copy, and buy and sell, and criticise, but not make. Grecian is mathematic form. Mathematic

form is eternal in the reasoning memory. Living form is eternal existence. Gothic is living form.

W. BLAKE (1757-1827), On Virgil (undated).

Gothic is living form.

cannot be A criticism of "the kinds."

[T]he general disposition of mankind . contented even with the happiest imitations of former excellence, but demands novelty as a necessary ingredient for amusement. To insist that every epic poem shall have the plan of the Iliad, and every tragedy be modelled by the rules of Aristotle, resembles the principle of the architect who should build all his houses with the same number of windows and of storeys. It happened, too, inevitably, that the critics, in the plenipotential authority which they exercised, often assumed as indispensable requisites of the drama, or epopeia, circumstances which, in the great authorities they quoted, were altogether accidental or indifferent. These they erected into laws and handed down as essential; although the forms prescribed have often as little to do with the merit and success of the original from which they are taken as the shape of the drinking-glass with the flavour of the wine which it contains.

Sir W. SCOTT, Life of Dryden, 1808.

of Greece

[T]imes and manners lend their form and pressure The dramas to genius. [T]he dramas of Greece and England and England differ . . . from the dissimilitude of circumstances by differ. which each was modified and influenced.

S. T. COLERIDGE, Lectures, 1818.

There may or may not be . . different orders of Orders of poetry.

LORD BYRON, Letter to John Murray, 1821.

poetry.

necessarily

Imitators are not, necessarily, unoriginal-except at Imitators not the exact points of the imitation. Keen sensibility unoriginal. of appreciation-that is to say, the poetic sentiment (in distinction from the poetic power) leads almost inevitably to imitation. Thus all great poets have been gross imitators.

Are the ancients to be our sole models?

What we may learn from the ancients.

Let us study the ancients.

It is, however, a mere non distributio medii hence to infer
that all great imitators are poets.

:

E. A. POE (1809-1849), Marginalia.

What then, it will be asked, are the ancients to be our
sole models? the ancients with their comparatively narrow
range of experience and their widely different circumstances?
Not, certainly, that which is narrow in the ancients, nor that
in which we can no longer sympathize. . . . I am speaking
... it will be remembered, not of the best sources of
intellectual stimulus for the general reader, but of the best
models of instruction for the individual writer. This last
may certainly learn of the ancients, better than anywhere
else, three things which it is vitally important for him to
know the all-importance of the choice of a subject; the
necessity of accurate construction; and the subordinate
character of expression. He will learn from them how
unspeakably superior is the effect of the one moral im-
pression left by a great action treated as a whole, to the
effect produced by the most striking single thought or by
the happiest image. As he penetrates into the spirit of
the great classical works, as he becomes gradually aware
of their intense significance, their noble simplicity, and
'their calm pathos, he will be convinced that it is this
effect, unity and profoundness of moral impression, at
which the ancient poets aimed; that it is this which
constitutes the grandeur of their works, and which makes
them immortal. He will desire to direct his own efforts
towards producing the same effect. Above all, he will
deliver himself from the jargon of modern criticism, and
escape the danger of producing poetical works conceived
in the spirit of the passing time, and which partake of its
transitoriness.

M. ARNOLD, Preface to Poems, 1853-1854.

Again, with respect to the study of the classic writers of antiquity: it has been said that we should emulate rather than imitate them. I make no objection: all I say is, Let us study them. They can help to cure us of

1

what is, it seems to me, the great vice of our intellect,
manifesting itself in our incredible vagaries in literature,
in art, in religion, in morals; namely, that it is fantastic.
and wants sanity. Sanity-that is the great virtue of the
ancient literature: the want of which is the great defect
of the modern, in spite of all its variety and power. It
is impossible to read carefully the great ancients without
losing something of our caprice and eccentricity; and to
emulate them we must at least read them.

M. ARNOLD, Poems, 1853-1854
(Preface to the Second Edition).

'kinds.'

The tact of the Greeks in matters of this kind was "The infallible. We may rely upon it that we shall not improve upon the classification adopted by the Greeks for kinds of poetry; that their categories of epic, dramatic, lyric, and so forth, have a natural propriety and should be adhered to. It may sometimes seem doubtful to which of two categories a poem belongs; whether this or that poem is to be called, for instance, narrative or lyric, lyric or elegiac. But there is to be found in every good poem a strain, a predominant note, which determines the poem as belonging to one of these kinds rather than the other; and here is the best proof of the value of the classification and of the advantage of adhering to it.

M. ARNOLD, Preface to Poems of Wordsworth, 1879.

Pedantical

to turn an

for word.

Follow the material things themselves.

TRANSLATION

[H]ow pedantical and absurd an affectation it is in the author word interpretation of any author (much more of Homer) to turn him word for word, when (according to Horace and other best lawgivers to translators) it is the part of every knowing and judicial interpreter not to follow the number and order of words but the material things themselves, and sentences to weigh diligently, and to clothe and adorn them with words, and such a style and form of oration, as are most apt for the language into which they are converted. If I have not turned him in any place falsely (as all other his interpreters have in many, and most of his chief places), if I have not left behind me any of his sentence, elegancy, height, intention, and invention, if in some few places I be something paraphrastical and faulty, is it justice in that poor fault (if they will needs have it so) to drown all the rest of my labour?

Paraphrase.

Translate poesy into poesy.

G. CHAPMAN, Preface to Homer, 1610-1616.

It is a vulgar error, in translating poets, to affect being fidus interpres . . . for it is not his business alone to translate language into language, but poesy into poesy; and poesy is of so subtle a spirit, that in pouring out of one language into another, it will all evaporate; and if a new spirit be not added in the transfusion, there will remain nothing but a caput mortuum.

Out 1

and

Such The

Sir J. DENHAM, Preface to the Destruction of Troy, 1656. Translation adds some perfection to a language, because others in one's it introduces the wit of others into its own words, as the French have of late done well in theirs.

The wit of

own words.

E. HOWARD, Preface to the Women's Conquest, 1671.