In dealing with them we are happily, here as elsewhere, freed from a troublesome preliminary examination as to genuineness. There is no reasonable doubt on this head as far as the _Rhetoric_ goes, and I should myself be disposed to say that there is no reasonable doubt as to the _Poetics_, but others have thought differently. It so happens, however, that for our special purpose it really does not matter so very much whether the book is genuine or not. For it can hardly by any possibility be much later than Aristotle, and that being so it gives us what we want—the critical views of Greek literature when the first great age of that literature was pretty well closed. It is by Aristotle, probably, by X or Z possibly, but in any case by a man of wide knowledge, clear intellect, and methodical habits. Before we examine in detail what these views were, let us clearly understand what was the literature which this person (whom in both cases we shall call, and who in both pretty certainly was, Aristotle) had before him. The bulk of it was in verse, and though unfortunately a large proportion of that bulk is now lost, we have specimens, and (it would seem) many, if not most, of the best specimens, of all its kinds. Of a great body of epic or quasi-epic verse, only Homer and Hesiod survive; but Homer was admittedly the greatest epic, and Hesiod the greatest didactic, poet of this class. In the course of less than a century an enormous body of tragic drama had been accumulated, [Sidenote: _Its subject-matter._] by far the greatest part of which has perished; but we possess ample specimens of the (admittedly) first Three in this kind also. Of the great old comic dramatists, Aristophanes survives alone—a mere volume, so to speak, of the library which Aristotle had before him: yet it is pretty certain that if we had it all, the quantity rather than the degree and kind of literary pleasure given by the series from the _Acharnians_ to the _Plutus_ would be increased. We are worst off in regard to lyric: it is here that Aristotle has the greatest advantage over his modern readers. Yet, by accident or not (it may be strongly suspected _not_), it is the advantage of which he avails himself least. On the other hand, some kinds—the pastoral, the very miscellaneous kind called epigram, and others—were scarcely yet full grown; and, much of them as is lost, we have more advantage of him.