70 ON SOME PRINCIPLES OF CRITICISM 



of Musaeus, was the very earliest instead of being, as it is, 

 one of the very latest products of Hellenic genius. They 

 interpreted the genuine dialogues of Plato by the light of 

 Proclus and Plotinus. They confounded the writings of 

 Aristotle with the traditions of his school and with the 

 glosses of Arabian commentators. In that first period of 

 scholarship there was little or no sense for the relative value 

 of evidence, no inquiry into the authority of witnesses. Latin 

 and Graeco-Roman writers, Cicero and Plutarch, were accepted 

 as conclusive with regard to well-nigh prehistoric stages in 

 the political history of Sparta. The verses of an Alexandrian 

 poet were studied side by side with genuine fragments of 

 Anacreon, as though both formed the relics of one author. 

 The epitomes of Diogenes Laertius, the biographies published 

 by Neoplatonic mystics, were regarded as authoritative on the 

 opinions of Pythagoras and Plato, Democritus and Heraclitus. 

 In the field of plastic art a similar want of discrimination 

 prevailed. Every statue of antiquity, whether proceeding 

 from the authentic chisel of Pheidias or from the workshop 

 of a craftsman in the age of Hadrian, appeared to have 

 an equal value. Originals and copies were alike the objects 

 of unquestioning veneration. 



Thanks to the profound enthusiasm awakened by the 

 revival of learning in the fifteenth century, thanks also to 

 the fact that humanism now began to form the staple of 

 European culture, this stage of omnivorous acceptance and 

 encyclopaedic absorption merged into one of patient and 

 minute investigation. The microscope was applied to classical 

 literature ; its fragmentary state became apparent ; the 

 many centuries from Homer to Ausonius were reckoned ; 

 close study of style revealed much that was spurious, counter- 

 feit, of base alloy and of trifling evidential value in hitherto 

 revered authorities. The detailed examination of MSS- 

 required by editors of Greek and Latin authors proved an 

 excellent school in criticism. So did the controversies which 

 raged around the rival merits of Homer and Virgil as epic 

 poets, of Plato and Aristotle as philosophers. Penetrating 

 further into the spirit of the past, students began to perceive 



