Page:Prometheus bound - Browning (1833).djvu/23

ledgment of his genius, and censure of his taste; and by an invidious opposition to Sophocles and Euripides. Of the three great critics of antiquity,—Longinus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Quintilian,—Dionysius alone does not measure his criticism to twice the length of his commendation. Quintilian calls him "rudis in plerisque et incompositus," which my sense of justice almost gives me courage to call a false criticism. Longinus—Longinus!! uses similar language: —ἐνίοτε μέντοι ἀκατεργάστους καὶ οἱονεὶ ποκοειδεῖς τας ἐννοίας καὶ ἁμαλάκτους φέροντος. Now there are, undeniably, some things in Æschylus, which, like the expressions of Callisthenes, would properly fall under the censure of Longinus, as being οὐχ ὑψηλὰ, ὰλλὰ μετέωρα. But according to every principle by which he himself could urge his immortal claim upon posterity, the Homer of criticism should have named