Aristotle On The Art of Poetry. by INGRAM BYWATER. Oxford:: Clarendon Press, 1909. Pp. Xlvii+387. 16s. Net

BOOK REVIEWS 97
No one can doubt that Homer must have drawn on preceding tradition
and literature for his knowledge of the age described, but just because we
have no independent knowledge of this literature or tradition it is impossible
to decide what is due to the source and what is due to Homer. Even when
we do have the source it is difficult to judge which is the source and which
the imitation; Muilder is certain that the speech of Priam in Iliad xxiv is
modeled after a poem of Tyrtaeus, while to most scholars the imitation seems
just the reverse. Here we do have the original and the copy, yet cannot
agree; but when one attempts to reconstruct an assumed original with no
clue except that furnished by the copy there is no check on the most rash
hypotheses. Where I have the material from which to form a judgment I
cannot accept Muilder's theories in regard to original and copy, as in the
assumed imitation of Tyrtaeus by Homer and the assumption that the anger
of Poseidon in the Odyssey is copied from the anger of Achilles in the Iliad.
While the arguments in regard to the sources are built upon too small
a basis, the book is still one of unusual merit and every page is full of the
most original and brilliant observations.
JOHN A. SCOTT
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
Aristotle on the Art of Poetry. By INGRAM BYWATER. Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1909. Pp. xlvii+387. 16s. net.
The peculiar value of the book lies in the wealth of illustration by
which Professor Bywater endeavors to make Aristotle explain himself.
A very striking use is also made of Isocrates. Add to this the scientific
spirit, the fine sobriety, and textual acumen of Professor Bywater, and we
have an edition which was much needed and which pretty well exhausts
what antiquity can do to explain its own remains. It is a noble edition
of the Poetics and in its way complete. But whether this famous book
can be explained without venturing into a field from which Professor
Bywater expressly excludes himself is another question.
It is no doubt true that Aristotle "would be surprised to find how
large a meaning we are able to read into some of his more incidental
utterances." But if the appeal is to Aristotle redivivus, would he not be
still more surprised at the enormous energy expended upon determining
his ipsissima verba? Would he not find the scholarship more congenial
which argued with him upon first principles?
Of course what Aristotle really did mean is what we want to know,
whether or not we like it or hirn for saying it, and everything depends
upon how the metaphor of KaJOap4TLt originally suggested itself to him.
All may agree that his first intention was a criticism of Plato. Does he
not indeed consciously take up the mocking challenge which Plato makes
to the champions of tragedy? Reducing to its simplest dimensions
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98 BOOK REVIEWS
Professor Bywater's fine summary and justification of the doctrine of

Weil and Bernays, we are to make Aristotle say that tragedy, instead of
nourishing certain normal though disturbing human emotions, affords a
safe and pleasurable discharge of their overplus. To this pleasant cure,
as to drugs in general, we should resort only occasionally. Here lies the
healing power of poetry. If not an anodylne or narcotic, it is a cathartic.
But there is after all more assumption in this argument than at first
sight appears. Are we to believe that the why was not as present to the
eager mind of Aristotle as the how? Why do we take a noble delight
in what excites pain in ordinary life? Is it not more than possible that
this mysterious power of art was the very thing that suggested the
metaphor to our pioneer in the theory of art ? In short, are we not juisti-
fied in assuming that Aristotle is making the first fumbling attempt in
history to detach a first principle of art? Professor Bywater is not so
happy in his summary of opposing views. They can neither be compre-
hended under the one head of the lustratory use of KaaOap0-t1, nor are th
all allowed for. They do not include, for example, the most interesting
argument of Knoke, Milton is hoplessly misplaced, and Browning ignored.
But creative instinct counts for something. There is, mpreover, a sort of
naive petulance in the way he concludes his defense of the interpretation
of Weil and Bernays as "more consonant with fact and experience than
the moral or disciplinary purpose which many still profess to regard as
the true raison d'etre of the theatre"-as though this were the only
alternative.
One could have wished that Professor Bywrater had stopped to con:
sider the possibilities of the suggestion -rpaKTtKa' for KaLaprTKa in the last
sentence of the famous passage of the Politics, which he appends to his
text. It has a very important bearing. Aristotle shares the belief of all
Greece in the importance of ethical music, admits the music of 7rp&4ts
into his state as furnishing harmless pleasure to the man in the street or
pastime and relaxation for all, and justifies what is evidently the faint
dawn of the splendid art of today, as affording not "harmless pleasure,"
but a high employment of leisure (cf. Pol. v. [viii.] 5. 1339a. 25-31).
Now whether we have lost Aristotle's development of Ka'Oapo-ts, or he
has failed, as often, to keep a promise, he has none the less done some-
thing in the Poetics to explain the why, and, as we should anticipate,
Professor Bywater is weak at such points. First of all, had Aristotle
done nothing more than toucb for the first time upon the generalizing
power of poetry, it would have been a sufficient achievement. Has this
no bearing upon KaOapUYS? Professor Bywater, it is true, quotes Diderot
(p. 188) on the novelist Richardson with exquisite appositeness, but
one regrets, without being able to explain, his Olympian silence as to
Butcher's development of this context -surely one of the finest things in
modern English scholarship. Again, the significance of St' ailaprtav is
BOOK REVIEWS 99
found to lie in that we are thus enabled to forgive or pity the hero! In
the same connection, Twining's interpretation of 4tXacvOponrov (1452. b. 38)
is dismissed, a consideration which perhaps decided the retention of
o-roXaZovTat (1456. a. 21) and certainly accounts for the ventureso
on p. 254. But Aristotle says Kat o' &Av3pEtos luv 18KOS of, not Kat o
p v avopetos of. And, finally, there is no note on TWV EV ,XeyaAX 6o
KaL Evvx ... (1453 a. 10-11; though he stops to note the apparent
contradiction in E /3EXTLovos 1453 a. 16). But is there no significance in
the doctrine that tragedy must be the "fall of something great"?
But when Professor Bywater deals with the text, and in the main
body of the commentary, one can feel nothing but admiration for his
refined, if hard-headed, sobriety. No one has so well pointed out or so
carefully collected the lapses and contradictions in the Poetics, or so
clearly shown the apparent waning of Aristotle's interest in his subject
as the book goes on.
Professor Bywater frankly undertakes at the start to prove that the
Arabic version is of little or no value as against the final authority of Ac.
The notes on 1447. a. 17 rT yevEt erEpots and 1448. a. 10-11, rT (ept rovs
Aoyovs are good examples of the well-known judgment which appears on
nearly every page. One observes casually that Vahlen's insertion of
e before ETvXEv in 1460. b. 36, is silently passed by, and, strangely
commentary contains no note on the singular passage '$ oxt erTafat
EvTvXtav .... (1455. b. 28).
We heartily accept his position that a translation of Aristotle should
lean toward paraphrase. If somewhat bold, his version is very sure-
footed where others stumble, as e.g. 1455. a. 30-31, 7rtOaVraToL yap a&ro
Trs aVTrls qv'ews, where Butcher goes wrong. But one must object to " as
having maagnitude" in the definition of a tragedy, where the note also is
defective, for the principle involved might have been illustrated at great
leng,th from Aristotle. Finally &p/movia may be equivalent to /ufXos in 1449.
b. 29, though this is doubtful, and to rovos in 1449. a. 27, but it is never
our English "harmony."
W. S. MILNER
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE
TORONTO
-our Plays of Jfenander: The Hero, Epitrepontes, Pericei-

romene, ancd Sa9nia. Edited with Introductions, Ex-
planatory Notes, Critical Appendix, and Bibliography, by
EDWARD CAPPS. Boston: Ginn & Co., 1910. x + 329 pp.
Mr. Capps's edition of the four plays in the Cairo papyrus has a
distinct individuality: the editor's liberal employment of his own supple-
ments in the filling of lacunae, his independence in the distribution of

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BOOK REVIEWS 97

Aristotle on the Art of Poetry. By INGRAM BYWATER. Oxford:

Professor Bywater's fine summary and justification of the doctrine of

-our Plays of Jfenander: The Hero, Epitrepontes, Pericei-

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