An Essay on True and Apparent
Beauty in Which From Settled Principles
is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing
and Rejecting Epigrams

by Pierre Nicole

Translated by J. V. Cunningham

Publication Number 24
(Series IV, No. 5)

Los Angeles
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
University of California
1950

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GENERAL EDITORS

H. Richard Archer, Clark Memorial Library
Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan
Edward Niles Hooker, University of California, Los Angeles
H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, Los Angeles

ASSISTANT EDITORS

W. Earl Britton, University of Michigan
John Loftis, University of California, Los Angeles

ADVISORY EDITORS

Emmett L. Avery, State College of Washington
Benjamin Boyce, University of Nebraska
Louis I. Bredvold, University of Michigan
Cleanth Brooks, Yale University
James L. Clifford, Columbia University
Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago
Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota
Ernest Mossner, University of Texas
James Sutherland, Queen Mary College, London

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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 title 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 chastity 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 wishing 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 passing 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

id="FNanchor_6_6"/>[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 principal 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 fashion 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 titles of a good many pieces, especially where the original involved the name of some fictitious or base person. The purpose of a title is to recall the whole piece to memory or to facilitate finding it in an index. Why, then, title an epigram To Gargilianus or Cecilianus, which gives no idea of what the epigram is about? The editor, therefore, has substituted titles 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 asserted above in the preface, are not peculiarly his own but those of the group with which he was associated. 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 multitude 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

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NOTES

class="label">[6] See Georg Ellinger, Geschichte der neulateinischen literatur Deutschlands, I, "Italien und der Deutsche humanismus," Berlin, 1929, pp. 115-7.

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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 analysis all else must be determined; rather, each has immediately pronounced 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 constituted 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 assigned 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 procumbit humi bos, do you not seem to hear the blunt sound of the falling bull? Or when you read the line Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit 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 classes 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 anticipates 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?

Again, what is harsher than this epigram?

Or than this distich?

But just as it is a considerable fault in diction wholly to neglect the pleasure of the ear, since verse, as we said, was devised to flatter it, so on the other hand those writers make a grievous mistake who have an immoderate regard for the ear, and pay no attention to the thought so long as they are satisfied with the sound. Out of such concern we get tuneful trifles and verses empty of substance. Writers who have by an attentive consideration of the poets achieved the faculty of poetic diction and rhythm quite often fall into this error. They abound in choice phrases and so are in effect content to smooth over the commonplace with a not indecorous make-up. You can see this in many poems and epigrams of Buchanan, Borbonius, and Barleius. If the reader is not quite attentive such poems will often deceive him, but being re-read and examined they beget a kind of distaste because of the thinness of the matter. Consequently, we have looked carefully for this fault, and have eliminated many poems that are melodious in this way and have nothing inside.

How diction should be suited to subject-matter.

We come now to the question of conforming the diction and subject-matter to nature, in which, as was said above, nature must be considered in its double aspect: namely, in relation to the subjects of which we speak, and in relation to the audience by whom we are heard or read.

The agreement of words and subject consists in this: that lofty words should be fitted to lofty subjects, and lowly to lowly. It is true, of course, that every kind of writing demands simplicity, but the simplicity meant is such as does not exclude sublimity or vehemence. In fact, it is no less faulty to treat high and weighty subjects in a slight and unassuming style than it is to treat what is slight and unassuming in a high and weighty style. In both of these ways one departs from that agreement with nature in which, we have said, beauty resides. Therefore, not every piece of writing admits the rhetorical figures and ornaments, and likewise not every one excludes them. The answer lies wholly in whether there is throughout a complete harmony between diction and subject.

In addition, I wish you would carefully observe something that few do—namely, when you temper your diction to the subject, to regard it not only as it is in itself or in the mind of the writer, but also as it has been formed by your speech in the minds of your audience. Thus, the reader is assumed to be unacquainted with what you have to say at the beginning of a work, and hence you must use simple language to initiate him into your lines of thought. Afterwards you may build upon this foundation what you can. It follows that if you are to speak of some outrageous crime, you should not inveigh against it with a comparable violence of diction until your audience has achieved such a notion of the crime as will not be at odds with such force and violence.

Thus Vergil begins in the best way with simple diction:

And Homer, too, who was praised for this by Horace:

But Statius begins badly, and sweeps the reader away too suddenly in these verses:

guilt of Thebes
I sing, moved by the fiery Muse.

Claudian is even more at fault, and thrusts these bombastic lines on our unprepared attention:

But this rule should particularly be observed in the use of adjectives, which are always ill-joined with their noun when they disaccord with the impression the reader has in his mind. I have seen the opening of Lucan censured on this point:

The critics urge that the epithet worse than civil could justly be employed after the depiction of the slaughter at Pharsalia, but that here it is out of order and suddenly attacks the reader who was thinking of no such thing. It offends against the precept of Horace:

In what way diction should answer to man's inner nature. First, the grounds of the natural disaffection with unusual diction: how far this should be observed.

But it is not sufficient that diction answer to the subject-matter unless it also answers to the nature of man, in which may be discerned a kind of aversion to obsolete, low, and inappropriate words. I prefer to call this aversion a natural one rather than a result of opinion, though it is in a way based on opinion. For although the feeling that a particular word is more in common use and more civilized than another is purely a matter of men's judgement, nevertheless it is as natural to be displeased by the unusual and inappropriate as it is to be pleased with the usual and proper. Whatever is contrary to reason offends by the very fact that it is seen to lack reason. Certainly, to leave aside familiar terms and to search out unusual ones is wholly foreign to reason. However, there is added to this natural source of offense another that proceeds from opinion. Since such words are commonly condemned, there is associated with them a certain distaste and contempt such that it is scarcely possible to pronounce them without immediately arousing the associated feelings.

Consequently, the intelligent writer will willingly comply with usage so as not to give grounds for displeasure—whether this displeasure springs from nature or opinion. Though he is aware that usage is unstable and changes day by day, nevertheless he will prefer rather to please at one time than never. He will be careful, however, in his written work not to make use of the current jargon, especially of the French court and women's circles, or of any locutions that are not yet generally received. For the life of such expressions is too short to be bound into a lasting work—not to speak of the detestable affectation which detracts from the weight and dignity of the writing.

To conclude, there is a beauty and charm in propriety and elegance of diction which is not to be scorned, though it is but of a time, and, since it rests on opinion, by which usage is determined, will pass away with a change of opinion. Hence those who write not for an age but for all time should try to attain something else, something that has no admixture of opinion: Such is the agreement of words with nature, which we will now explain.

The inner and more intimate agreement of words and nature.

If one wishes to look deeply into the nature of the human mind and to search out its inner sources of delight, he will find there something of strength conjoined with something of weakness, and out of this circumstance arises variety and irregularity. The mind's vexation with a continual relaxation derives from its strength, while from its weakness stems the fact that it cannot bear a continual straining. Hence it is that nothing pleases the human mind very long, nothing that is all of one piece. So in music it rejects a wholly perfect harmony, and for this reason musicians deliberately intercalate discordant sounds—what are technically called dissonances. So, finally, it happens that physical exercise, even if it was at first undertaken for pleasure, becomes a torture when continued without interruption.

This point has its pertinence to literature, the more so since in that field nature reveals the greatest delicacy and cannot long endure what is lofty and excited. Yet on the other hand, whatever creeps close to earth and never lifts its head is, if it be prolonged, wearisome. To stand, to rest, to rise up, to be thrown down, this is what every reader or listener desires, and from this derives the driving necessity for variety, for the mingling of the majestic and slight, excited and calm, high and low. But it may seem that this consideration has little pertinence to the epigram, which is brief and so in less need of variety. However, I need not apologize for introducing these more general considerations since others of more immediate pertinence to the course of our discussion are derived from them, and particularly the question of the discriminate use of metaphors, which are of considerable effect in adorning or vitiating poetry.

For if we consider attentively why men are pleased with metaphors we will find no other reason than that already stated: the weakness of nature which is wearied by the inflexibility of truth and plain statement and must be refreshed by an admixture of metaphors which depart somewhat from the truth. This gives the clue to the proper and legitimate use of metaphors; they are to be employed specifically, as musicians employ discordant sounds, to relieve the distaste of perfect harmony. But how frequently and at what point they should be introduced is a matter of considerable caution and skill. One warning will suffice for the present: that metaphors, hyperboles, and whatever varies from the plain and natural way of saying something should not be sought for their own sakes but as a kind of relief for nauseated nature. They are to be accepted on grounds of necessity, and consequently a good deal of moderation must be observed in their use. Thus Quintilian rightly says, "A sparing and opportune use of these figures gives lustre to speech; frequent use obscures and fills with disgust."[6] You will discover this fault often in many epigrams, especially in those of contemporary writers as I shall show by several examples later on. However, lest this doctrine should issue in too strict an austerity of diction, it should be noted that only those expressions are to be taken as metaphors that are remote from ordinary usage and offer the mind a double idea. Hence if a metaphor is so commonplace that it no longer has a figurative connotation and suggests nothing other than the notion itself for which it is used, then it should be numbered among proper rather than metaphorical expressions and does not fall in that class of tropes whose too frequent use is here censured.

On a too metaphorical style. Certain epigrams rejected for this reason.

Though poets are granted a greater indulgence in the use of tropes, nevertheless they have their own mean, or, as Cicero says, their own modesty, and there is ever an especial ornament to be derived from simplicity. Consequently those writers stray pretty far from beauty for whom, as it were, all nature plays the ham to the point that they say nothing in an ordinary way, imagine nothing in the way in which it is perceived outside of poems, but instead elevate, debase, alter, and clothe everything in a theatrical mask. For this reason we have excluded from this anthology a number of epigrams as too metaphorical: for example, these two by Daniel Heinsius, a man otherwise eminent in scholarship and letters:

By my sun he means Douza. And again:

In these epigrams, apart from the metaphors heaped up ad nauseam, and each of them harsh and absurd, a keen critic has noted another fault: namely, that nothing is more distant from the spirit of a man grieving and mourning for the death of a friend—and this is what Heinsius intended to depict—than such a wantonness of epithets. And so much for diction.

Truth, the primary virtue of ideas. How great a fault there is in untruth. Thence, of false epigrams.

We take up now the question of ideas, and postulate again that these too must conform both to the subject and to men's character. Ideas agree with the subject if they are true, if they are appropriate, and if they so to speak get into the insides of the thing. They are in accord with men's character if they fit in with natural aversions or desires.

The primary virtue of ideas is truth. Whatever is false is at variance with external reality, nor is there any beauty in falsity except in so far as it pretends to truth. From this you may gather that truth is the source of beauty, falsity of ugliness. The latter, in fact, is out of keeping not only with reality but also with human nature. For we possess an innate love of truth and an aversion to falsehood, so that what delights us when it seems to be true becomes disagreeable and unpleasant when its falseness is made manifest. This principle applies to those learned men whom we have mentioned several times now, and has led to the exclusion from this anthology of many epigrams in which the point rests on a falsehood: for example, there is the well-known one by Grotius, though simply as a poem it is noble enough:

On Joan of Arc, who is called "La pucelle d'Orleans"