An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams Part 1

An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams.

by Pierre Nicole.

INTRODUCTION

The following essay forms the introduction to a famous anthology of the seventeenth century, the _Epigrammatum delectus_, a Port-Royal textbook published at Paris in 1659.[1] The essay was twice translated into French in the same century, but the use of the text in France did not survive, apparently, the downfall of the Port-Royal movement. It was, however, later adopted by Eton College, where it was used in the sixth form.[2] The text went through thirteen English editions between 1683 and 1762. The author of the essay, and a collaborator with Claude Lancelot in making the selections for the anthology, was Pierre Nicole, who began teaching in the Little Schools around 1646. It has been said that the essay was written at that time.[3]

The scope of the anthology is indicated on the t.i.tle page, which I translate: _A selection of epigrams carefully chosen from the whole range of ancient and modern poets, and so on. With an essay on true and apparent beauty, in which from settled principles is rendered the grounds for choosing and rejecting epigrams. There are added the best sententiae of the ancient poets, chosen sparingly and with severe judgement. With shorter sententiae, or proverbs, Latin, Greek, Spanish, and Italian, drawn both from the chief authors of those languages and from everyday speech_.

The essay is preceded by a preface in which the origin, purpose and method of the anthology is explained. The two ends of instruction, we are told,[4] are learning and character, and of these the latter is the more important. But there are many books, and especially books of epigrams, that are quite filthy and obscene. Young people are led by curiosity to read these, and losing all chast.i.ty of mind enter upon a progressive corruption of life. It would be best if they could be kept wholly from such books; but there is a good deal in them of genuine profit and literary merit, which makes it difficult to keep them wholly out of the hands of youth. Therefore the editor undertook to expurgate the epigrammatists, especially Catullus and Martial. He was horrified when he read over their works, but he found some good among the bad, as in vipers not everything is poisonous but some things even useful to health. His primary purpose, then, was to protect the good young man from being harmed and to leave him no excuse for wis.h.i.+ng to have or peruse such books since the good in them had already been extracted for him.

The difficulty then arose of making the selection serve the purposes both of morality and of judgement. The editor could either gather together all the epigrams that were not obscene, or he could choose only the best. He took in fact both ways: he preserved everything of Catullus and Martial except the cheapest odds and ends and filthiest obscenities, and he applied strict standards of judgement to the rest so that, unless an epigram had literary merit or contained something worth knowing, he felt there was no reason to burden the book with it.

Nevertheless, some middling epigrams found entrance into the anthology--he confesses the fact so the reader will not look for excellence without flaw. The reasons were, first, that the complete perfection he was looking for is seldom or never attained. Hence, if he had admitted only those epigrams in which there was nothing to censure, the task would not have been one of selecting some but rather of rejecting almost all. Again, in epigrams dealing with memorable events or in praise of famous men, sometimes he looked to the profit of the work rather than to its polish, as in Ausonius' quatrains on the Caesars. Finally, he will not deny that chance has played its part against his will. As a judge after a series of severe sentences will give a lighter one to a man no less guilty than the others, so after rejecting a great number of epigrams by some writer a sense of pity arose and a distaste with severity of judgement; then if anything that seemed pointed turned up, though no better than what was rejected, he could not bear to see it discarded. This has occasionally happened, but hardly ever without a warning note to the reader.

He admits that some, perhaps quite excellent, epigrams have escaped him, either because he never read them or because he was at the moment of reading less attentive. But the paucity or lack of selections from a given writer should not be taken as an indication of ignorance or indiligence in that case. Rather, he confidently professes to have exerted the greatest patience and industry--patience, since so many were so bad. His hope was by his trouble to free others from so much trouble. With this in mind he read countless authors of different ages and countries, a total of around 50,000 epigrams, from most of which nothing at all was worth excerpting. There is no point in memorializing the names of the bad, except to note in pa.s.sing that he found hardly anything so inept as the _Delitiae_, as they call them, of the German poets[5]--in this connection he gives special mention to the book of Lancinus Curtius[6], which contains 2,000 epigrams.

He found some fairly tolerable epigrams in other books, which nevertheless he excluded, for what is lacking in distinction is better not known at all than learned at the expense of better things, not to speak of its being a burden to the mind which gradually will lose the ability to judge excellence, and so, becoming accustomed to mediocrity, will be unable to attempt anything higher. There is no more useful motto for a man in quest of solid learning than Grotius'

line: "Not to know some things is a large part of wisdom."[7]

The editor added to the epigrams a collection of sententiae since the two forms are quite cognate, the sententia being a kind of shorter epigram, for the princ.i.p.al part of an epigram, the conclusion, usually consists in a sententia. It is true that such collections have come in bad repute, and not wholly unjustly, but the thing itself is worth doing. For what is our aim in reading books except to nourish and fas.h.i.+on judgement? and what better serves this end than sententiae, which furnish as it were the premises and axioms by which one is able to form a just and true judgement on most of the duties and affairs of human life? Hence he extracted these gems from the huge pile of trifles in which they lay mixed. Perhaps they please less in isolation than when one runs across them as he reads, and for this reason such anthologizing should be contemned. But it would be precious to refuse a great accession of profit because of a small dimunition of pleasure.

The editor thought that in many cases the selections should not be published without notes, for epigrams have often some obscurity in them and their whole charm is lost unless the light that would illuminate it is at hand. The notes to the selections from Martial are pretty largely taken from Farnaby. Elsewhere the editor has supplied notes sparingly, at those points where the reader might be stuck. He has also changed the t.i.tles of a good many pieces, especially where the original involved the name of some fict.i.tious or base person. The purpose of a t.i.tle is to recall the whole piece to memory or to facilitate finding it in an index. Why, then, t.i.tle an epigram _To Gargilia.n.u.s_ or _Cecilia.n.u.s_, which gives no idea of what the epigram is about? The editor, therefore, has subst.i.tuted t.i.tles which express as well as possible the force of the poem, a difficult task especially when the meaning is compact, as only one who has tried it knows.

But that out of the brevity of this book the reader may get that ability in judgement, which above all should be cultivated, the editor thought it worth while to prefix to the anthology an exposition of the norms of judgement used in selecting the epigrams. He drew these norms not merely from his own wit or from the authorities of Antiquity, but from the conversation of learned men experienced in civilized life.

Hence the reader will find here their judgements, not the editor's, and will, if he is unbiased, perceive how just and accurate they are.

The preface is then followed by the essay. The principles of the essay, as Nicole a.s.serted above in the preface, are not peculiarly his own but those of the group with which he was a.s.sociated. They are the principles, for example, of the _Port-Royal logic_: particularly 1), "one of the most important rules of true rhetoric," "_that there is nothing beautiful except that which is true_; which would take away from discourse a mult.i.tude of vain ornaments and false thoughts;" and 2) the doctrine that "the figurative style commonly expresses, with the things, the emotions which we experience in conceiving or speaking of them," and hence in the light of the adjustment of feeling to the situation "we may judge the use which ought to be made of it, and what are the subjects to which it is adapted."[8]

The purpose of the book is to serve morality and to promote judgement.[9] To this end the editor provides a check list of the better epigrams, and affixes an asterisk to designate the best.[10]

Seventeen pieces are given the highest rating: thirteen of Martial's (1.8, 1.21, 1.33, 2.5, 3.44, 3.46, 4.56, 4.69, 5.10, 5.13, 8.69, 10.53, and 12.13); the re-written epigram ascribed to Seneca and discussed in the notes to the essay (note 32); Claudian on Archimedes'

sphere;[11] Boethius, _De cons. phil._ 1.m.4; and one modern poem, Buchanan's dedication of the _Paraphrase of the psalms_ to Mary, Queen of Scots.[12]

_J. V. Cunningham_ _The University of Chicago_

NOTES

[1] This paragraph is based largely on James Hutton, _The Greek anthology in France_, "Cornell studies in cla.s.sical philology," XXVIII (1946), p. 192, and _The Greek anthology in Italy_, "Cornell studies in English," XXIII (1935), pp. 69-70.

[2] Sir H. C. Maxwell Lyte, _A history of Eton college_, London, 1911, 4th ed., p. 311.

[3] Nigel Abercrombie, _The origins of Jansenism_, Oxford, 1936, p.

246; no authority is there cited.

[4] The following paragraphs contain an abbreviated and paraphrastic translation of the preface.

[5] Ja.n.u.s Gruter, _Delitiae poetarum germanorum_, 6 v., Frankfort, 1612.

[6] See Georg Ellinger, _Geschichte der neulateinischen literatur Deutschlands_, I, "Italien und der Deutsche humanismus," Berlin, 1929, pp. 115-7.

[7] The last line of an epigram on learned ignorance, _Poemata_, Leyden, 1637, pp. 331-2, printed in the _Delectus_, p. 399.

[8] _The Port-Royal logic_, tr. Thomas Spencer Baynes, 8th ed., Edinburgh, n.d., Discourse 2, p. 17; Part 3. 20, p. 286; and 1. 14, p.

90.

[9] _Ibid._, Discourse 1, p. 1, "Thus the main object of our attention should be, to form our judgement, and render it as exact as possible; and to this end, the greater part of our studies ought to tend."

[10] Lipsius had suggested some such procedure (Justus Lipsius, _Epist. quaest._, 1.5, _Opera omnia_, Antwerp, 1637, I, p. 143): "He would do a service to the world of letters who would make a selection of Martial's epigrams in the fas.h.i.+on of the old critics and would affix a mark of praise to the good and of blame to the bad."

[11] Shorter poems 51, _Claudian_, ed. Maurice Platnauer, 2 v., "Loeb cla.s.sical library," London, 1922, II, 278-81.

[12] _Poemata_, Amsterdam, 1687, p. 1; not in _Opera omnia_, Leyden, 1725.

AN ESSAY ON TRUE AND APPARENT BEAUTY IN WHICH FROM SETTLED PRINCIPLES IS RENDERED THE GROUNDS FOR CHOOSING AND REJECTING EPIGRAMS.

_Why men's judgments on beauty differ so much._

I should say that the reason why even learned men differ so widely and display so great a range of opinion in judging the excellence of particular writers is that practically no one looks to reason and weighs the matter in the light of true and settled principles. Indeed everyone in the act of judging embraces a hastily conceived opinion and follows his impressions without reflection or judgment. Thus it is that few have made any attempt so far to arrive at an exact knowledge of the nature of true beauty, by which in the last a.n.a.lysis all else must be determined; rather, each has immediately p.r.o.nounced that to be beautiful which affected him with some sort of pleasure. Yet there is no norm of judgment more misleading or more variable, for a false and adulterate beauty will give pleasure to minds imbued with deformed opinions whom a true and solid beauty often cannot affect. It follows there is nothing so ugly that it will not please someone or other, and nothing on the other hand so absolutely beautiful that it will not displease someone. Farmers will be found to dance to absurd songs, and whole theaters time and again roar at the tasteless jokes of the actors. Similarly, there are a good many who find little or no delight in Vergil or Terence, though there is nothing in the world of letters more polished--such is the power of custom and preconceived opinion to impart or preclude delight. Consequently, if we wish to dissociate ourselves from the fickle mob of opinions, we must have recourse to reason, which is single, fixed, and simple. We must discover by her aid that true and genuine figure of beauty with which is marked whatever is truly beautiful and finished, and from which whatever departs is justly called ugly and repugnant to taste.

Reason leads us directly to nature and establishes that to be generally beautiful which accords both with the nature of the thing itself and with our own. For example, if an object that is excessive or defective in some part is thought ugly, it is because it diverges from nature which demands a completeness in the parts and despises excess. Almost everything that is judged to be ugly is so judged for the same reason: you will always observe that there is here some flaw at variance with a rightly const.i.tuted nature. Nevertheless, for an object to be declared beautiful it is not enough that it answer to its own nature; it must also be congruent with ours. For our nature, being invariable both in the soul and in the body endowed with senses, has definite inclinations and aversions by which it is either attracted or estranged. Thus our eye is moved with pleasure by certain colors, our ear is drawn by a certain kind of sounds; one thing delights the soul, one repels it, each in the measure that it corresponds or is repugnant to our ways of feeling. However, what is meant by nature here is not any nature at all, since some are misshapen, perverse, and corrupt.

What is meant is a nature corrected and well-ordered from whose inclinations must arise the judgement of beauty and charm.

However, the essence of true beauty is such that it is not fugitive, changeable, or of one time, but rather invariable, fixed, persistent and such as pleases all times equally. And although there may be found some men of so corrupt a nature that they despise beauty, nevertheless they are but few. And even these may be recalled to truth by reason, since false beauty though it may for a while have its admirers cannot long hold them, for nature itself which cannot be erased will gradually beget in them a distaste for it. For, as Cicero so notably says, time that erases the fictions of opinion only confirms the judgements of nature.[1]

If we may apply this maxim to literature we may say that that is truly beautiful which agrees both with the nature of things themselves and with the inclinations of our senses and of our soul. And since in a work of literature one takes account of sound, diction, and idea, the agreement of all these with nature in its two aspects is required for beauty. Hence we will take these up one by one, beginning with sound.

ON SOUND

_How seldom it charms in echoing the sense, how commonly by sweetness.

Its natural measure in the ear._

We have a.s.signed the first division of natural beauty to sound, which we distinguish from diction in that propriety and force of meaning are looked to in this; in sound it is the pleasantness or harshness that is regarded, flattering or offending the ear, or it is a kind of imitation of the subject-matter--sad things recited tearfully, excited rapidly, or harsh harshly. This is common enough in the spoken word; in writing, however, with which we are chiefly concerned here, it is uncommon, though Vergil sometimes quite happily represents the sound of things themselves, their swiftness and slowness, in the sound of his verse. When you hear, for example, the well-known _proc.u.mbit humi bos_, do you not seem to hear the blunt sound of the falling bull? Or when you read the line _Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quat.i.t ungula campum_,[2] doesn't the sound of running horses strike your ears? But this effect, as I said, is uncommon, and hardly to be found in any other poet than Vergil. Thus the chief potentiality of sound, and the most common, lies in charming the ear. It is a slight beauty, yet it is of nature, and for this reason especially agreeable to all cla.s.ses of people. For there is scarcely any person so uneducated as not to be naturally displeased at what is incomplete and botched, or not to perceive what is full, ordered, and defined. Hence Cicero says justly in the _Orator_:

The ear, or the soul at the injunction of the ears, possesses a natural way of measuring sounds, by this judges some longer, some shorter, and ever antic.i.p.ates the completion of a measure. It feels hurt when a rhythm is maimed or curtailed as if it had been defrauded of due payment. It dislikes even more whatever is prolonged and runs on beyond the proper bounds, since too much is more offensive than too little. Not that everyone knows the metrical feet, or understands anything about rhythm, or is aware of what offends him, or where, or why; it is rather that nature has set in our ears a power of judging the length and brevity of sound, as also the acute and grave accent of words.[3]

_Pleasantness of sound is justly exacted of poets. The harshness of many poets, particularly the German. Some are too melodious._

Hence it is that anyone who wishes to conform to nature must necessarily strive for pleasantness of sound. This is the more justly exacted of poets since poetry itself is nothing other than measured language, bound into fixed numbers and feet, for the purpose of charming the ear. Consequently, those poets are justly censured who rest content with rounding off their words in six feet and altogether neglect to accommodate the ear. A good many epigrammatists are constant offenders in this kind, especially those who have rendered the Greek Anthology in Latin and the German poets.

For example, who can tolerate this German epigram?