elaborate and expensive scenery and apparatus: he also thinks that acting is overdone. Aristotle shows an extensive acquaintance with dramatic literature; and, by mentioning it, he makes us regret the loss of ‘The Flower,’ a play by Agathon, which seems to have been entirely original, and not based on any traditional story.
The remarks here made on Epic poetry are comparatively brief. Aristotle considers it of less importance than Tragedy. He says that every merit which the Epic possesses is to be found in Tragedy. Like Tragedy, the Epic must possess unity of plot, but it may indulge to a greater extent in episodes. Aristotle never loses an opportunity of praising Homer, whom he considers to be the author, not only of the ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey,’ but also of a comic poem called ‘Margites.’ He especially commends the art of Homer in making the action of the ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey’ respectively circle round definite central events. Although it is a narrative, Epic poetry will always be distinct from history: the one has an artistic unity which is wanting to the other; the one describes what might have been, the other what has been; the one deals in universal, the other in particular, truth. The result of this whole comparison is, that “Poetry is more philosophical and more earnest than History.”
The ‘Poetic’ branches off, towards its close, into an immature disquisition on style, which led Aristotle to go back to his ‘Rhetoric,’ and write the third book thereof. Here he even lays down some of the elements of grammar, and enumerates the parts of speech. He
