SOURCE: "The New Critical Outlook and Methods: 'Longinus'," in Literary Criticism in Antiquity: A Sketch of Its Development, Peter Smith, 1961, pp. 210-53.

In the essay that follows, originally written in 1934, Atkins considers the question of the authorship of On the Sublime and its immediate instructive purpose, evaluating its achievement in terms of its "definite and practical effort to grapple with those excesses of style which were notoriously prevalent among first-century orators and writers."

With the revived interest in critical matters which had become evident during the latter half of the first century A.D., yet another and an important work must also be associated, namely, the Greek treatise of "Longinus", best known perhaps under the title of On the Sublime … though it may at once be said that the work in all probability was not due to Longinus, nor does it deal with what we understand by "the...