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[9] Oedipus.  See the Oedipus Tyrannus and Oedipus Coloneus of Sophocles.

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[10] grand style.  Arnold, while admitting that the term grand style, which he repeatedly uses, is incapable of exact verbal definition, describes it most adequately in the essay On Translating Homer:  “I think it will be found that the grand style arises in poetry when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject.”  See On the Study of Celtic Literature and on Translating Homer, ed. 1895, pp. 264-69.

[11] Orestes, or Merope, or Alcmaeon.  The story of Orestes was dramatized by AEschylus, by Sophocles, and by Euripides.  Merope was the subject of a lost tragedy by Euripides and of several modern plays, including one by Matthew Arnold himself.  The story of Alcmaeon was the subject of several tragedies which have not been preserved.

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[12] Polybius.  A Greek historian (c. 204-122 B.C.)

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[13]. Menander.  See Contribution of the Celts, Selections, Note 3, p. 177.[Transcriber’s note:  this is Footnote 255 in this e-text.]

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[14] rien a dire.  He says all that he wishes to, but unfortunately he has nothing to say.

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[15] Boccaccio’s Decameron, 4th day, 5th novel.

[16] Henry Hallam (1777-1859).  English historian.  See his Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, chap. 23, Sec.Sec. 51, 52.

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[17] Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot (1787-1874), historian, orator, and statesman of France.

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[18] Pittacus, of Mytilene in Lesbos (c. 650-569 B.C.), was one of the Seven Sages of Greece.  His favorite sayings were:  “It is hard to be excellent” ([Greek:  chalepon esthlon emenai]), and “Know when to act.”

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[19] Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1776-1831) was a German statesman and historian.  His Roman History (1827-32) is an epoch-making work.  For his opinion of his age see his Life and Letters, London, 1852, II, 396.

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[20] AEneid, XII, 894-95.

THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME

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