A history of criticism and literary taste in Europe, from the earliest texts to the present day. Volume 1 (of 3), Classical and mediæval criticismSaintsbury, George
History
A history of criticism and literary taste in Europe, from the earliest texts to the present day. Volume 1 (of 3), Classical and mediæval criticism
Saintsbury, George
Criticism -- History; Literature -- History and criticism; Literature, Medieval
The “Monody” and the “Funeral Oration” on Julian himself may again
excite expectation, for the dead Emperor was certainly a man of letters;
but they will equally disappoint it. The quaintly named “To Those Who Do
Not Speak” (pupils of his who on growing up and entering the senate or
other public bodies prove dumb dogs) might help us, but does not.
Libanius merely exhorts these sluggards, in the most general way, to be
good boys, to pay less attention to chariot-racing and more to books. By
far the larger number of the “Orations” are on political or legal
subjects, and it would be unreasonable to expect critical edification
from them; but even where it might seem likely to come in, it does not.
The “Against Lucian” (Reiske, vol. iii.) is in the same case as the “For
Aristophanes.” The not uninteresting oration in defence of the system of
his School (No. LXV., the last of Reiske’s third volume) constantly
refers to a matter which might be of great concern to us—the difficulty
which schoolmasters or professors had at this time in keeping their
pupils up to the mark in the _two_ languages and literatures, Greek and
Latin. But the discourse is not turned our way.
Nor do the _Letters_, our last resort, furnish us with much consolation.
Their enormous number—there are over 1600 in Wolf’s edition of the Greek
originals, while the _editio princeps_ of Zambicarius, in Latin only,
adds problems of divagation and duplication to the heart’s content of a
certain order of scholar—is to some extent mitigated by their usual
brevity. But this very brevity is often an aggravation not a mitigation
of teen. Very many are mere “notes,” as we should say, written, indeed,
with the pomp and circumstance of the epistoler-rhetorician, but about
nothing or next to nothing. Very often Libanius seems to be
unconsciously anticipating the young person who said that he did not
_read_ books, he wrote them. Sometimes, at least, an apparently
promising reference leads to a bitter disappointment, as in the case of
that to Longinus. The reader—his appetite only whetted by the exertion
of rectifying a miscitation in Wolf’s _Preface_ (it quotes the Letter as
990, while it is really 998)—at last approaches his quest, and reads as
follows: _To Eusebius_, “The speech [or book] which I want is
_Odenathus_, and it is by Longinus. You must give it me, and keep your
promise.” This is indeed precious; though a remembrance of the
information, epistolary and other, vouchsafed in many modern
biographies, may moderate sarcastic impulses. No sarcasm, but profound
sympathy, should be excited by the professor’s constant complaints of
headache; yet again they are unilluminative for our purpose. In fact,
such examination as I have been able to give to these Epistles shows
that it is unreasonable to demand from them what they have no intention
to supply. Very likely there are passages in this mass, as in that other
of the Orations, which might be adduced: but I am pretty sure that they
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