period of his own studies, it is said that he carried on a school of his own. Plato called him "the intellect of the school." After Plato's death (347 B. C.), Aristotle, then in his thirty-seventh year, opened a school at the Court of Hermias, king of a province in Mysia, who had been his fellow-student under Plato. In the year 342 B. C., on the invitation of King Philip, Aristotle went to Macedonia and became the tutor of Alexander the Great. From Macedonia he returned to Athens and opened there his celebrated school in the Lyceum, near the temple of the Lycian Apollo. He taught in the Lyceum for thirteen years; and from his habit of discussing philosophy with his pupils in its covered walk (peripatos), his disciples came to be called Peripatetics. Of his one hundred and forty-six separate treatises, forty-six still remain. Among these the "Poetics" is the masterpiece of its class, but the "Politics," the "Rhetoric," the treatises on logic and on natural science, belong to the literature without which the human mind could not have utilized its powers as we see them manifested in the achievements of our own civilization. "Aristotle's mind was logical," writes Professor Morley; "he was a master of analysis; and his keen search into the nature of man, of society, and of the world outside us, made him the first founder of more sciences than one. He made, by experimental research, advances in natural science that were taken as all-sufficient till the sixteenth century. He stood between the Sophists and all later time as founder of the study of rhetoric. He founded the scientific study of politics, as well as of ethics; and although he was himself a man of science rather than a poet, his analytical power made his treatise chiefly upon the character of tragic and epic poetry a masterpiece in its own way." Aristotle died 322 B. C. at Chalcis, whither he had gone a fugitive from the anger of the Athenians, who, after the death of Alexander the Great, attacked Aristotle as his former teacher. After leaving Athens the great philosopher was condemned for "impiety," but his death from a disease of the stomach deprived him of the actual martyrdom to which as the master intellect of the age of Demosthenes and the heir of the mind of Socrates, he was certainly not less entitled than they. W. V. B. MY THE POETICS OF ARISTOTLE PART I Y DESIGN is to treat of poetry in general, and of its several species; to inquire what is the proper effect of each what construction of a fable, or plan, is essential to a good poem-of what, and how many, parts each species consists; with whatever else belongs to the same subject: which I shall consider in the order that most naturally presents itself. Epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambics, as also, for the most part, the music of the flute and of the lyre-all these are, in the most general view of them, imitations; differing, however, from each other in three respects, according to the different means, the different objects, or the different manner of their imitation. For, as men, some through art and some through habit, imitate various objects by means of color and figure, and others, again, by voice, so, with respect to the arts above mentioned, rhythm, words, and melody are the different means by which, either single or variously combined, they all produce their imitation. For example, in the imitations of the flute and the lyre, and of any other instruments capable of producing a similar effect,as the syrinx or pipe,- melody and rhythm only are employed. In those of dance, rhythm alone, without melody; for there are dancers who, by rhythm applied to gesture, express manners, passions, and actions. The epopoeia imitates by words alone, or by verse; and that verse may either be composed of various metres, or confined, according to the practice hitherto established, to a single species. For we should, otherwise, have no general name which would comprehend the mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus and the Socratic dialogues; or poems in iambic, elegiac, or other metres, in which the epic species of imitation may be conveyed. Custom, indeed, connecting the poetry or making with the metre, has denominated some elegiac poets, i. e., makers of elegiac verse; others, epic poets, i. e., makers of hexameter verse; thus distinguishing poets, not according to the nature of their imitation, but according to that of their metre only. For even they who compose |