And the authority for this, Themistius, is very late. The catalogue of the works given by Diogenes Laertius (ed. cit., p. 240) includes nothing even distantly bearing on criticism. Nothing else could reasonably be expected when we consider the nature of Rhetoric as we find it exhibited in Aristotle himself, and as it was certainly conceived by its first inventors or nomenclators. It was the Art of Persuasion—the Art of producing a practical effect—almost the Art of Succeeding in Life. We shall see when we come to Aristotle himself that this was as inevitable _a priori_ as it is certain in fact: for the present the certainty of the fact itself may content us. Where the few recorded or imputed utterances of the later sophists do touch on literature they bear (with a certain additional ingenious wire-drawing) the same marks as those of the early philosophers. [Sidenote: _The Sophists—later._] They play upon the “honourable deceit” of tragedy;[19] they tread harder the old road of allegorical interpretations;[20] they dwell on words and their nature;[21] or else, overshooting mark as far as elsewhere they fall short of it, they attempt ambitious theories of beauty in general, whether it is “harmony,” utility, sensual pleasure, what not.[22] This is—to adopt the useful, if accidental, antithesis of metaphysic—metacritic, not criticism. And we shall not, I think, be rash in assuming that if we had the texts, which we have not, we should find—we are most certainly not rash in saying that in the actual texts we do find—nothing but excursions in the vestibules of Criticism proper, or attempts more or less in vain upon her secret chambers,—no expatiation whatever in her main and open halls.[23] Footnote 19: Gorgias ap. Plutarch. Footnote 20: Prodicus in the “Choice of Hercules.” Footnote 21: V. the _Cratylus_, _passim_. Footnote 22: V. _Hippias Minor_. Footnote 23: There is not the slightest evidence for assigning the _Rhetoric_ called _ad Alexandrum_, and variously attributed to Aristotle and Anaximenes, to any pre-Aristotelian writer, least of all for giving it to Corax himself. Two only, and those two of the very greatest, of Greek writers before Aristotle—Plato and Aristophanes—furnish us with literary criticism proper, while of these two the first is a critic almost against his will, and the second one merely for the nonce. Yet we may be more than thankful for what they give us, and for the slight reinforcement, as regards the nature of pre-Aristotelian criticism, which we derive from a third and much lesser man—Isocrates.