POSTGATE, JOHN PERCIVAL English classical scholar and Fellow of the British Academy, was the son of Dr. John Postgate (182o-81), the initiator of the laws against the adulteration of food. He was educated at King Edward's school, Birmingham, and Trinity college, Cambridge, where he took his degree in 1876. He was elected to a fellowship at the college, where he was classical lecturer (1884-1909). He was professor of comparative philology at London (1880-1910) and Latin professor at Liverpool university (1909-20). He was acci dentally killed in Cambridge by a steam lorry on July 14, 1926.
Postgate ranks very high among Latin scholars, but some of his due reputation was lost him by his vehement methods. Of these an example is to be found in his great Corpus Poetarum Latino rum. He expelled the writings of Ausonius from the Corpus on grounds which, though stated in mellifluous Latin, amount to little more than that he thought him a bad poet. Some have seen traces of the same vehemence in certain of the emendations in his Propertius (1894) and Tibullus ; he was, however, un doubtedly a very eminent critic and his article on TEXTUAL CRITICISM (written for the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and substantially retained in this) is a classic upon its subject.
His greatest successes were achieved in reforming the teaching of Latin. His New Latin Primer (1888, last ed. 1918) and his Serino Latinus (1889, 1913) became widely used because of their simple methods. In particular he took a leading part in chasing out the old Victorian pronunciation of Latin—a mass of false quantities and mispronunciations which had no relation to the established facts of ancient pronunciation. He was largely re sponsible, not only for the adoption of the reformed scheme by the Classical Association, but for the organization and propaganda which secured its general acceptance.
Before his death Postgate had the pleasure of knowing that the old pronunciation had been practically entirely wiped out of British scholastic and learned life and, as he said, that "even a lawyer had been known to pronounce nisi Arius without making a false quantity." Postgate's chief works, besides those mentioned above, were editions of Catullus (1894), Virgil (1912), Phaedrus (192o) and part of Lucan (1896, 1917) ; • How to Pronounce Latin (1907) ; Translation and Translations (1922) ; Prosodia Latina (1923) ; Guide to the Accentua tion of Greek (1925). The Corpus was published in parts in 1893,
1894, 1904 and 1905. See S. G. Owen, J. P. Postgate (British Academy, 1927).
The essential difference between impressionism and post-impressionism is perhaps best explained by the description of the former as an objective outlook which results in the rendering of the image received on the retina, and of the latter as the mental image expressed in accordance with a sub jective outlook. In other words, whilst impressionism is based on strict fidelity to natural appearances, the need of post-impression ism consists, in the main, of absolute attachment to the personal vision, and, in reality, is the expression of the matter received through the glass of impressionism to be subsequently subjected to an individual thought process. The statement which emerges from the artist as a result of this process might well be termed expressionism, were it not that this name is more exclusively reserved for the excessively brutal German contribution to the movement under consideration. Post-impressionism (a term coined on the occasion of the first exhibition of the work of Cezanne, van Gogh and Gauguin in London, in 1911) provides an alterna tive which, if less apt, has the merit of being safe.
Post-impressionism was as much a revolt against the naturalism of the impressionists, as impressionism was a revolt against the tyrannical academic formula. It replaced analysis by synthesis. It despised representation and gave the artist unbridled licence to amplify and distort the forms of nature, acknowledging no law but the artist's sense of fitness in arranging and organizing the contents of his picture so as to express with the greatest possible directness and intensity the material and spiritual significance of his subject—the "treeness" of the tree, as Roger Fry has it, and the "wallness" of the wall. Delivered from all restraint and rules, the post-impressionists were able to proceed by leaps and bounds on their excursions into the realms of synthesis and abstraction, to the utter bewilderment of a public which, accustomed to judg ing art by the degree of its verisimilitude to nature, were left floundering hopelessly when attempting to fathom the meaning of these startling artistic manifestations.