bitter grief, more intense and excessive joy, or greater ecstasy and madness. A lover's soul looks like Sophocles' city, "At the same moment it is full of sacrifices, of paeans, and of lamentations."1 Wherefore it is not strange or surprising that, since love contains all the causes of musicgrief, joy, and inspiration-and is also prone to talk and babble, it should be more inclined than any other passion to the making of poetry and songs. But although the poet must be a man of sensitive emotions, not every man of sensibility will be a poet. The power to express passionate feeling in language melodious, rhythmical, and nobly embellished is a gift to rare temperaments. Consequently, when Euripides says that "Love makes men poets who before no music knew," he does not mean that love infuses music and poetry into men that were not already inclined to them, but that it warms and awakens that disposition which lay inactive and drowsy before. . . . Poetic rapture, like the raptures of love, makes use of the ability of its subject." It was because this temperamental aptitude was general among the early Greeks that they produced such a wealth of poetry. A people whose civilization favored a natural and sincere play of the emotions was equipped with a genius for metrical utterance, and responded to the slightest excitation with spontaneous and melodious poetry; accordingly their banquets, where wine flowed and spirits were high, were graced with charming odes and love-songs.*

But while emotion plays a large part in poetry, as already stated poetry is the product, not of feeling alone, but of intellect as well; one must therefore not allow such a passage as that quoted above, which, moreover, is dealing strictly with lyrics, to cause him to overlook the emphasis laid upon wisdom and judgment as factors in the production of poetry. Indeed, by this very word 'enthusiasm,' Plutarch does not mean that the poet's personality is lost while the

1 Oed. Tyr. 4.

2 Nauck 666.

3 Why the Pythian Priestess Ceases her Oracles in Verse 23.

4 Ibid. 23.

god is speaking through him, for he is too much of a rationalist to entertain such a theory of divine possession; rather, that the god uses each poet according to the ability which nature and training have given him. Even the Pythian priestess, if brought up among the ignorant, must utter her oracles in prose.1

The necessity for this element of judgment in the production of works of art is considered at length in the essay On Music. The thought is that he is the best musician who combines the greatest amount of skill with the best judgment. By skill is meant the technical understanding of the different modes, such as the Dorian, the Ionian, and the Phrygian, and the ability to play or sing in any one of them without violating the laws of harmony. Judgment is an inclusive term, comprising the ability to discover the nature and genius of the poem, to choose for it the mode which is most appropriate, and to judge of the coherency of all the component parts.3 As to the importance of a knowledge of philosophy for the production, or the appreciation, of music, Plutarch does not go to the extreme of Pythagoras, who 'rejected the judging of music by the senses, affirming that the virtue of music could be appreciated only by the intellect, yet he does advise him who would be proficient in this art to acquaint himself with all sciences, and especially to make philosophy his tutor.5

94

It is needless to enforce this point further by citing passages from the essay on poetry; suffice it to say that Plutarch thought that poetry of real excellence must be grounded in philosophy.

To summarize the conclusions already reached: while prose is didactic, and appeals to the intellect, poetry is

1 Ibid. 22.

2 Among the Greeks music was accessory to poetry. Throughout this essay the intimate relation of poetry and music is apparent on every page, at times it being almost impossible to tell whether the writer is speaking of the one or the other. In this essay Plutarch follows the theories of Aristoxenus and Heraclides.

331 ff.

4 Ibid. 37; see Plato, Laws ii. 659.

5 Ibid. 23.

emotional, and the product of feeling as well as of intellect. Further, poetical power is a gift, but a gift that may be refined by proper training-indeed, a gift that cannot be possessed by the altogether untutored.

So much for Plutarch's distinction between prose and poetry. Let us now consider his theory of the relation of poetry to nature and to truth.

Is it truthful or

We shall find an

Does poetry copy nature or transcend it? untruthful? Is it universal or restricted? answer to these questions in determining Plutarch's use of the expression 'imitation.' Imitation as applied to the arts was employed by Greek writers very generally, and widely differing theories of its nature were held. As both Plato and Aristotle give much prominence to this term in their discussions of art, it will be helpful to examine somewhat carefully their employment of the word, in order that Plutarch's views may be seen against the background of earlier Greek thought. In the tenth book of the Republic,1 where the work of poet and painter is discussed, we find the following train of thought: The artist is one who turns a mirror round and round, and catches the reflection of objects—of the sun, the heavens, the earth, plants, animals, men. There is the ideal world as it exists in the mind of God, for example, the ideal plant, table, or man; the actual world which produces plants, tables, or men imitative of the ideal; and the world of the artist, in which are copied the appearances of the objects in the actual world. Imitative art is therefore an imitation of an imitation, and further from truth than the world of nature about us; it is three removes from God. Useful art is superior to imitative art, for the carpenter who makes a bed is better employed than the painter who reproduces the appearance of the bed, and the general who conducts a campaign than Homer, the poet of battles.2

1595-607.

2 See Plutarch, Whether the Athenians were More Renowned for their Warlike Achievements or their Learning cc. vi-viii, for an elaborate argument that more honor belongs to commanders than to poets, orators, and historians.

Further light is thrown on this conception of imitation in the Third Book,1 where it is defined as the assimilation of oneself to another, whose character is assumed. Precisely because any such assumption of the character of another is undignified, unnatural, and insincere, because, for example, the poet, not being a cobbler, can never really act the cobbler, all imitative artists were to leave the Republic, even though the banishment included the much loved Homer. All art, however, was not excluded, for Plato implies a distinction between imitative art and true art. The best art is the sincere and direct expression of a courageous and harmonious life, not the product of the fancy of some 'pantomimically-versatile' imitator. The Republic is a return to simplicity, and that poetry alone is permissible which expresses the simplicity of a mind so nobly ordered that, whether in action or repose, it expresses the highest moral energy. The temper of this, the true artist-soul, gives character to the words, and through the words to the rhythm and harmony. Rhythm and harmony, then, become formal expressions of the great virtues, bravery and temperance; they give to the senses graceful and beautiful expression of true beauty and grace, for, in Plato's very words, 'grace and harmony are the sisters and images of goodness and virtue." Such rhythm and harmony find their way into the inmost part of the soul of the listener, and render right the form of his soul through their rightness of form.3 Such art is one with the music of the spheres; it is divine beauty and loveliness.*

In the Poetics of Aristotle imitation is used in two senses. In an early chapter, where Aristotle simply wishes to show that the instinct of imitation is universal, occurs the follow3 402.

2

401.

1393. 4 In Laws vii. 817, in a less severe vein Plato is more generous to tragedy, speaking of it as above of ideal art: Our whole state is an imitation of the best and noblest life, which we affirm to be indeed the very truth of tragedy.' Likewise, in Laws ii. 667-669, imitative art is defined as good when it truthfully reproduces the original as to proportions, etc., and is beautiful.

ing statement: 'Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, each of them lying deep in our nature. First, the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures; and through imitation he learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated. We have evidence of this in the facts of experience. Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity, such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies. The cause of this again is, that to learn gives the liveliest pleasure, not only to philosophers, but to men in general, whose capacity of learning, however, is more limited. Thus the reason why men enjoy seeing a likeness is that in contemplating it they find themselves learning or inferring, and saying perhaps, "Ah, that is he." For if you happen not to have seen the original, the pleasure will be due not to the imitation as such, but to the execution, the coloring, or some such thing."

That Aristotle is speaking of imitation in general, and not of artistic imitation, is at once apparent when one reads in other chapters that 'Poetry imitates men as they ought to be;" that it ‘is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history," for the 'one relates what has happened, the other what may happen;" that 'poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular.'5 In essence Aristotle says that poetry is not limited to the actual deeds of men who have lived, but that, freeing itself from the trammels of the accidental, the temporary, and the local, it portrays men nobler than nature, though such men as nature's tendencies toward the ideal would produce. The poet sees through and

1iv. I-5.

2 Poet. i. 5; see also xxv. 6: 'Further, if it be objected that the description is not true to fact, the poet may perhaps reply, "But the objects are as they ought to be;" just as Sophocles said that he drew men as they ought to be drawn; Euripides as they are.'

3 Ibid. ix. 3.

4 Ibid. ix. 2.

5 Ibid. ix. 3.