with those digressions, those repetitions, those perpetual excursions beyond the strict matter in hand, which characterise the speculations of every fruitful thinker. Moreover, with such a thinker as Aristotle, we may even rejoice that he did not condescend to waste his few years of mature work in polishing his style, instead of quarrying out great mines of untouched knowledge. These considerations are an ample apology for all those negligences which arise from carelessness of form, or the over-crowding of thoughts in the teeming mind of the great thinker. The case is somewhat different when we approach those barren subtleties, those minute subdivisions and distinctions, which waste our time and exhaust our patience, while they do not advance our knowledge. We must confess that here Aristotle was the child of his race and age, and did not escape that defect of over-subtlety, which is the leading fault in the Hellenic mind. Not only their philosophers, but their poets and orators give way to this weakness; no sooner do they come in sight of any logical distinction, than they forthwith abandon themselves to the luxury of divisions and subdivisions, of definitions and qualifications. Which of us has not been wearied with them throughout the divine dialogues of Plato? Which of us has not been in turn offended and amused with them in Aristotle? Ce sont des articles de dictionnaire que le philosophe s'amuse à rédiger chemin faisant.' One almost imagines that the Greeks of his day still found the newly discovered mechanism of reasoning so delightful, that they could not help exhibiting it, as a child keeps working a new mechanical toy. We see the same turn in Thucydides; we see it in Euripides, who affects his audience as much by conflicts of argument as by pictures of passion or of woe. But in the great classical writers this dominant passion for logical subtlety alternates with those higher literary qualities, which command the sympathy of all civilised men, and thus we condone the Parmenides and the Sophistes for

'I cannot recal any great discoverer who has put his thinking into a scrupulously neat and perfect form except Champollion, whose inductive reasoning in the Précis du système hiéroglyphique has this extraordinary

merit.

the pathos of the Phadon, for the imagination and humour of the Symposium, though here too there are not wanting tedious analyses. In Aristotle, as we have him, there is not this relief; we have nothing but depth of thought, and suggestiveness of expression, to atone for the arid scholasticism of his discourse.

§ 587. Thus the classical literature of Greece may be said to close with Aristotle. He himself, as a literary man, stands between the living and the dead; and if in early life he attended to style, in mature age we find him neglecting it for the sake of the matter of knowledge. With him and his generation-the brilliant generation which produced the greatest eloquence in Demosthenes and Hypereides, the most perfect social comedy in Menander and Philemon-the power of original production seems suddenly to collapse, and the age of criticism to commence. Grammar, rhetoric, eclectic philo.. sophy are the branches of literature which flourish, and which, together with second-rate poetry and oratory, fill up the silver or Alexandrine epoch in Greek literature. We have as yet to say something of the historians contemporary with Aristotle, who, though they were inferior to the great masters whom they imitated, transmitted the taste for historical enquiry to those later men, who have left us what is best and most enduring in the decadence of the nation. Poetry, as we have seen in the former volume, had its flashes of revival in Apollonius and Theocritus, but we may thank the kind Fate which has saved us the study of more productions like the Hymns of Callimachus and the Alexandra of Lycophron.

In the Renaissance among the Romans, and afterwards in mediæval Italy, the contrast of classical and post-classical was not strongly felt. Men imitated and admired Philetas and Callimachus along with Alcæus and Sappho, and loved Polybius and Plutarch as much as Herodotus and Xenophon. No doubt we have gone into an opposite extreme, and neglect too completely the real worth of the later literature, such as it remains to us in Theocritus and Plutarch. But still, in this hurried and weary age, when it is impossible to study the whole of Greek literature in its vast extent, the proper principle of

selection is certainly to confine ourselves to the age and to the men who, in the judgment of all sound critics, have been preeminent as well in form as in matter. Plutarch is a pure and elevating writer, full of precious information, and breathing a lofty moral tone. But we lose little by reading Plutarch in English or in French, for as a stylist he is no Herodotus or Thucydides; he is read for his matter, and his matter only. This too is strictly the case with Aristotle as we know him, and he therefore, as a stylist, is beyond the limit of classical Greek literature. As a critic, however, especially as a critic of classical literature, he has occupied us, I trust, in no undue detail.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE LOST HISTORIANS OF THE FOURTH CENTURY, B.C.

§ 588. WE must not conclude this account of classical Greek prose without saying something of those numerous historians, especially of the school of Isocrates, who were much praised and quoted, and formed the principal materials from which Plutarch, Diodorus, and other writers of the Roman period drew their facts. The enquiry into what were the sources of Plutarch's biographies, or of the later histories, forms a favourite exercising ground for the Germans, and tracts de fontibus Plutarchi, or Diodori, or of the rest, inundate the learned periodicals. Unfortunately, though we have many criticisms upon these authors, especially by Polybius, and by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who reviews the most important of them, I do not know that we have a single specimen of their style sufficient to afford us an independent judgment. They are cited for facts ; they are criticised by one another, at times savagely; they are praised and blamed, but never quoted verbatim at any length. Hence the splendid collection of Carl Müller1 in the early volumes gives us hundreds of their fragments, and yet conveys no definite idea of their style. Nevertheless, we may be quite certain that none of these writers were in anyone's judgment (except their own) equal to the three great masters, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, who have fortunately survived. All sound ancient critics note this inferiority, not only in judg ment and critical knowledge of political and military affairs, but, what would have pained the authors far more, in style. For they were trained rhetoricians, who cultivated manner with conscious care, and sought to outdo the great models placed before them.

Fragg. Hist. Græc. 5 vols., Didot, 1853-70.

One imitated Herodotus, another Thucydides, another Xenophon, but, like almost all copies, they were wanting in the vividness, the grace, and the power of the originals. There was apparently a self-conscious and controversial tone about them; they were exercised not only in the jealousies of rival schools, but in the party politics of the day; they wrote history as rhetoricians, and as partisans, if not of men, at least of political theories. Hence later days neglected them, and amid the wreck of the dark ages no one exerted himself to save them. One alone, from a later age, survives. Polybius was doubtless the soberest and most valuable of these Epigoni. His work is of the highest value to the historian, as a long series of approving critics has amply shown; but as a stylist he never has been, and never will be, read. He is a valuable moment in the historical development of the Greeks; he forms no part of their classical literature.

1

From this preamble it will appear that these writers may here be disposed of very briefly, but a list of their names and works should not be wanting even in this handbook. It is, however, not easy to separate those of a later period from those who flourished before the death of Alexander; for we have a continuous stream of names reaching down to the Roman times, as the student of Müller's Fragmenta will see at a glance. I am only here concerned with the earliest of them, and of these some reach higher than the opening of the fourth century B.C.

§ 589. I have already mentioned Ion and Stesimbrotus 2 as authors of historical memoirs from which Plutarch borrowed. Another early historian, who treated of no events subsequent to 420 B.C., was ANTIOCHUS OF SYRACUSE, son of Xenophanes. He wrote on the early history of Italy, in which he, first among Greek writers, mentioned Rome. He also composed the history of Sicily from the earliest times to the first year of Darius

For the English reader the best sources to estimate the value of Polybius are Thirlwall's Hist. of Greece (last volume) and Freeman's very remarkable Hist. of Federal Government, vol. i. Unfortunately, neither Grote nor E. Curtius have carried down their Histories to the period of which Polybius treats. 2 Above, p. 42.