Note 38 — Chapter III · ARISTOTLE.

I need hardly express, but could not possibly omit the expression of, my indebtedness to my friend and colleague Professor Butcher’s admirable edition and translation of the work in Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art (London, 2nd ed., 1898), a book which, as much as any other for many years past, enables English scholarship to hold its head up with that of other countries. Nor need I make any apologies for occasionally differing, on the purely critical side, with him as to the interpretation of a document which is admittedly very obscure in parts, and on even the clearest parts of which opinion, not demonstration, must decide in very many cases.