However this may be, the point, already more than once touched upon, that we have now a Literary Criticism, regularly if not fully constituted, may be regarded as established without need of further exposition or argument. In some respects, indeed, we have got no further than Aristotle; we are still arguing on his positions, defending or attacking his theses. In others we have indeed got a good deal further, by virtue chiefly of the mere accretion of material and experience. We have, perhaps, learned (or some of us have) to resign ourselves rather more to the facts than he, with the enthusiasm of the first stage still hardly behind him, was able to do. We are less inclined to prescribe to the artist what he shall do, and more tempted to accept what the artist does, and see what it can teach as well as how it can please us. But in the wider sense of critical method we have not got so very far beyond him in the poetical division. While if we have got beyond him in the direction of prose (as perhaps we have), the advance has been very late, and can hardly be said even now to have, by common consent and as a clear matter of fact, covered, occupied, and reduced to order the territory on to which it has pushed. Great as are Aristotle’s claims in almost every department of human thought with which he meddles, it may be doubted whether in any he deserves a higher place than in this. He is the very Alexander of Criticism, and his conquests in this field, unlike those of his pupil in another, remain practically undestroyed, though not unextended, to the present day. ----------------------- _Note to p. 42._ Attempts have been made to confine Aristotle’s slighting remarks on _lexis_ to mere “delivery.” It is true that in the whole passage there is a certain confusion of the different senses of “elocution.” But in this sentence Aristotle has just said, τὸ περὶ τὴν λέξιν _not_ ὑπόκρισιν—that is to say, has covered the entire ground which he is going to discuss. Even if φορτικὸν be violently restricted, by the help of καὶ before τό, to ὑποκριτική (which occurs further back), the general drift will remain. CHAPTER IV. GREEK CRITICISM AFTER ARISTOTLE. SCHOLASTIC AND MISCELLANEOUS.