GILBERT.Who would not be flippant when he is gravely told that the Greeks had no art-critics?I can understand it being said that the constructive genius of the Greeks lost itself in criticism,but not that the race to whom we owe the critical spirit did not criticise.You will not ask me to give you a survey of Greek art criticism from Plato to Plotinus.The night is too lovely for that,and the moon,if she heard us,would put more ashes on her face than are there already.But think merely of one perfect little work of aesthetic criticism,Aristotle's TREATISE ON POETRY.
It is not perfect in form,for it is badly written,consisting perhaps of notes dotted down for an art lecture,or of isolated fragments destined for some larger book,but in temper and treatment it is perfect,absolutely.The ethical effect of art,its importance to culture,and its place in the formation of character,had been done once for all by Plato;but here we have art treated,not from the moral,but from the purely aesthetic point of view.Plato had,of course,dealt with many definitely artistic subjects,such as the importance of unity in a work of art,the necessity for tone and harmony,the aesthetic value of appearances,the relation of the visible arts to the external world,and the relation of fiction to fact.He first perhaps stirred in the soul of man that desire that we have not yet satisfied,the desire to know the connection between Beauty and Truth,and the place of Beauty in the moral and intellectual order of the Kosmos.The problems of idealism and realism,as he sets them forth,may seem to many to be somewhat barren of result in the metaphysical sphere of abstract being in which he places them,but transfer them to the sphere of art,and you will find that they are still vital and full of meaning.It may be that it is as a critic of Beauty that Plato is destined to live,and that by altering the name of the sphere of his speculation we shall find a new philosophy.But Aristotle,like Goethe,deals with art primarily in its concrete manifestations,taking Tragedy,for instance,and investigating the material it uses,which is language,its subject-matter,which is life,the method by which it works,which is action,the conditions under which it reveals itself,which are those of theatric presentation,its logical structure,which is plot,and its final aesthetic appeal,which is to the sense of beauty realised through the passions of pity and awe.That purification and spiritualising of the nature which he calls [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]is,as Goethe saw,essentially aesthetic,and is not moral,as Lessing fancied.Concerning himself primarily with the impression that the work of art produces,Aristotle sets himself to analyse that impression,to investigate its source,to see how it is engendered.As a physiologist and psychologist,he knows that the health of a function resides in energy.To have a capacity for a passion and not to realise it,is to make oneself incomplete and limited.The mimic spectacle of life that Tragedy affords cleanses the bosom of much 'perilous stuff,'and by presenting high and worthy objects for the exercise of the emotions purifies and spiritualises the man;nay,not merely does it spiritualise him,but it initiates him also into noble feelings of which he might else have known nothing,the word [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]having,it has sometimes seemed to me,a definite allusion to the rite of initiation,if indeed that be not,as I am occasionally tempted to fancy,its true and only meaning here.This is of course a mere outline of the book.But you see what a perfect piece of aesthetic criticism it is.Who indeed but a Greek could have analysed art so well?After reading it,one does not wonder any longer that Alexandria devoted itself so largely to art-criticism,and that we find the artistic temperaments of the day investigating every question of style and manner,discussing the great Academic schools of painting,for instance,such as the school of Sicyon,that sought to preserve the dignified traditions of the antique mode,or the realistic and impressionist schools,that aimed at reproducing actual life,or the elements of ideality in portraiture,or the artistic value of the epic form in an age so modern as theirs,or the proper subject-matter for the artist.Indeed,I fear that the inartistic temperaments of the day busied themselves also in matters of literature and art,for the accusations of plagiarism were endless,and such accusations proceed either from the thin colourless lips of impotence,or from the grotesque mouths of those who,possessing nothing of their own,fancy that they can gain a reputation for wealth by crying out that they have been robbed.
And I assure you,my dear Ernest,that the Greeks chattered about painters quite as much as people do nowadays,and had their private views,and shilling exhibitions,and Arts and Crafts guilds,and Pre-Raphaelite movements,and movements towards realism,and lectured about art,and wrote essays on art,and produced their art-historians,and their archaeologists,and all the rest of it.
Why,even the theatrical managers of travelling companies brought their dramatic critics with them when they went on tour,and paid them very handsome salaries for writing laudatory notices.
Whatever,in fact,is modern in our life we owe to the Greeks.
