A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance Part 10

THE GROWTH OF THE CLa.s.sIC SPIRIT IN ITALIAN CRITICISM

THE growth of cla.s.sicism in Renaissance criticism was due to three causes,--humanism, or the imitation of the cla.s.sics, Aristotelianism, or the influence of Aristotle's _Poetics_, and rationalism, or the authority of the reason, the result of the growth of the modern spirit in the arts and sciences. These three causes are at the bottom of Italian cla.s.sicism, as well as of French cla.s.sicism during the seventeenth century.

I. _Humanism_

The progress of humanism may be distinguished by an arbitrary but more or less practical division into four periods. The first period was characterized by the discovery and acc.u.mulation of cla.s.sical literature, and the second period was given up to the arrangement and translation of the works thus discovered. The third period is marked by the formation of academies, in which the cla.s.sics were studied and humanized, and which as a result produced a special cult of learning. The fourth and last period is marked by the decline of pure erudition, and the beginning of aesthetic and stylistic scholars.h.i.+p.[239] The practical result of the revival of learning and the progress of humanism was thus the study and imitation of the cla.s.sics. To this imitation of cla.s.sical literature all that humanism gave to the modern world may be ultimately traced. The problem before us, then, is this: What was the result of this imitation of the cla.s.sics, in so far as it regards the literary criticism of the Renaissance?

In the first place, the imitation of the cla.s.sics resulted in the study and cult of external form. Elegance, polish, clearness of design, became objects of study for themselves; and as a result we have the formation of aesthetic taste, and the growth of a cla.s.sic purism, to which many of the literary tendencies of the Renaissance may be traced.[240] Under Leo X. and throughout the first half of the sixteenth century, the intricacies of style and versification were carefully studied. Vida was the first to lay down laws of imitative harmony;[241] Bembo, and after him Dolce and others, studied the poetic effect of different sounds, and the onomatopoeic value of the various vowels and consonants;[242]

Claudio Tolomei attempted to introduce cla.s.sical metres into the vernacular;[243] Trissino published subtle and systematic researches in Tuscan language and versification.[244] Later, the rhetorical treatises of Cavalcanti (1565), Lionardi (1554), and Partenio (1560), and the more practical manuals of Fanucci (1533), Equicola (1541), and Ruscelli (1559), all testify to the tremendous impulse which the imitation of the cla.s.sics had given to the study of form both in cla.s.sical and vernacular literatures.

In Vida's _Ars Poetica_ there are abundant evidences of the rhetorical and especially the puristic tendencies of modern cla.s.sicism. The mechanical conception of poetic expression, in which imagination, sensibility, and pa.s.sion are subjected to the elaborate and intricate precepts of art, is everywhere found in Vida's poem. Like Horace, Vida insists on long preparation for the composition of poetry, and warns the poet against the indulgence of his first impulses. He suggests as a preparation for the composition of poetry, that the poet should prepare a list of phrases and images for use whenever occasion may demand.[245]

He impresses upon the poet the necessity of euphemistic expressions in introducing the subject of his poem; for example, the name of Ulysses should not be mentioned, but he should be referred to as one who has seen many men and many cities, who has suffered s.h.i.+pwreck on the return from Troy, and the like.[246] In such mechanical precepts as these, the rhetoric of seventeenth-century cla.s.sicism is antic.i.p.ated. Its restraint, its purity, its mechanical side, are everywhere visible in Vida. A little later, in Daniello, we find similar puristic tendencies.

He requires the severe separation of _genres_, decorum and propriety of characterization, and the exclusion of everything disagreeable from the stage. In Partenio's _Della Imitatione Poetica_ (1560), the poet is expressly forbidden the employment of the ordinary words in daily use,[247] and elegance of form is especially demanded. Partenio regards form as of superior importance to subject or idea; for those who hear or read poetry care more for beauty of diction than for character or even thought.[248]

It is on merely rhetorical grounds that Partenio distinguishes excellent from mediocre poetry. The good poet, unlike the bad one, is able to give splendor and dignity to the most trivial idea by means of adornments of diction and disposition. This conception seems to have particularly appealed to the Renaissance; and Ta.s.so gives expression to a similar notion when he calls it the poet's n.o.blest function "to make of old concepts new ones, to make of vulgar concepts n.o.ble ones, and to make common concepts his own."[249] In a higher and more ideal sense, poetry, according to Sh.e.l.ley, "makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar."[250]

It is in keeping with this rhetorical ideal of cla.s.sicism that Scaliger makes _electio et sui fastidium_ the highest virtues of the poet.[251]

All that is merely popular (_plebeium_) in thought and expression is to be minutely avoided; for only that which proceeds from solid erudition is proper to art. The basis of artistic creation is imitation and judgment; for every artist is at bottom somewhat of an echo.[252] Grace, decorum, elegance, splendor are the chief excellences of poetry and the life of all excellence lies in measure, that is, moderation and proportion. It is in the spirit of this cla.s.sical purism that Scaliger minutely distinguishes the various rhetorical and grammatical figures, and carefully estimates their proper place and function in poetry. His a.n.a.lysis and systematization of the figures were immediately accepted by the scholars and grammarians of his time, and have played a large part in French education ever since. Another consequence of Scaliger's dogmatic teaching, the Latinization of culture, can only be referred to here in pa.s.sing.[253]

A second result of the imitation of the cla.s.sics was the paganization of Renaissance culture. Cla.s.sic art is at bottom pagan, and the Renaissance sacrificed everything in order to appear cla.s.sical.[254] Not only did Christian literature seem contemptible when compared with cla.s.sic literature, but the mere treatment of Christian themes offered numerous difficulties in itself. Thus Muzio declares that the ancient fables are the best poetic materials, since they permit the introduction of the deities into poetry, and a poem, being something divine, should not dispense with the a.s.sociation of divinity.[255] To bring the G.o.d of Israel into poetry, to represent him, as it were, in the flesh, discoursing and arguing with men, was sacrilege; and to give the events of poetic narrative divine authoritativeness, the pagan deities became necessities of Renaissance poetry. Savonarola, in the fifteenth century, and the Council of Trent, in the sixteenth, reacted against the paganization of literature, but in vain. Despite the Council of Trent, despite Ta.s.so and Du Bartas, the pagan G.o.ds held sway over Parna.s.sus until the very end of the cla.s.sical period; and in the seventeenth century, as will be seen, Boileau expressly discourages the treatment of Christian themes, and insists that the ancient pagan fables alone must form the basis of neo-cla.s.sical art.

A third result of the imitation of the cla.s.sics was the development of applied, or concrete, criticism. If the foundations of literature, if the formation of style, can result only from a close and judicious imitation of cla.s.sical literature, this problem confronts us: Which cla.s.sical authors are we to imitate? An answer to this question involves the application of concrete criticism. A reason must be given for one's preferences; in other words, they must be justified on principle. The literary controversies of the humanists, the disputes on the subject of imitation, of Ciceronianism, and what not, all tended in this direction.

The judgment of authors was dependent more or less on individual impressions. But the longer these controversies continued, the nearer was the approach to a literary criticism, justified by appeals to general principles, which became more and more fixed and determined; so that the growth of principles, or criteria of judgment in matters of literature, is in reality coterminous with the history of the growth of cla.s.sicism.[256]

But one of the most important consequences of the imitation of the cla.s.sics was that this imitation became a dogma of criticism, and radically changed the relations of art and nature in so far as they touch letters and literary criticism. The imitation of the cla.s.sics became, in a word, the basis of literary creation. Vida, for example, affirms that the poet must imitate cla.s.sical literature, for only by such imitation is perfection attainable in modern poetry. In fact, this notion is carried to such an extreme that the highest originality becomes for Vida merely the ingenious translation of pa.s.sages from the cla.s.sic poets:--

"Haud minor est adeo virtus, si te audit Apollo, Inventa Argivum in patriam convertere vocem, Quam si tute aliquid intactum inveneris ante."[257]

Muzio, echoing Horace, urges the poet to study the cla.s.sics by day and by night; and Scaliger, as has been seen, makes all literary creation depend ultimately on judicious imitation: "Nemo est qui non aliquid de Echo." As a result, imitation gradually acquired a specialized and almost esoteric meaning, and became in this sense the starting-point of all the educational theories of the later humanists. The doctrine of imitation set forth by John Sturm, the Strasburg humanist, was particularly influential.[258] According to Sturm, imitation is not the servile copying of words and phrases; it is "a vehement and artistic application of mind," which judiciously uses and transfigures all that it imitates. Sturm's theory of imitation is not entirely original, but comes through Agricola and Melanchthon from Quintilian.[259] Quintilian had said that the greater part of art consists in imitation; but for the humanists imitation became the chief and almost the only element of literary creation, since the literature of their own time seemed so vastly inferior to that of the ancients.

The imitation of the cla.s.sics having thus become essential to literary creation, what was to be its relation to the imitation of nature? The ancient poets seemed to insist that every writer is at bottom an imitator of nature, and that he who does not imitate nature diverges from the purpose and principle of art. A lesson coming from a source so authoritative as this could not be left unheeded by the writers of the Renaissance, and the evolution of cla.s.sicism may be distinguished by the changing point of view of the critics in regard to the relations between nature and art. This evolution may be traced in the neo-cla.s.sical period through three distinct stages, and these three stages may be indicated by the doctrines respectively of Vida, Scaliger, and Boileau.

Vida says that it is the first essential of literary art to imitate the cla.s.sics. This, however, does not prevent him from warning the poet that it is his first duty to observe and copy nature:--

"Praeterea haud lateat te, nil conarier artem, Naturam nisi ut a.s.simulet, propiusque sequatur."

For Vida, however, as for the later cla.s.sicists, nature is synonymous with civilized men, perhaps even further restricted to the men of the city and the court; and the study of nature was hardly more for him than close observation of the differences of human character, more especially of the external differences which result from diversity of age, rank, s.e.x, race, profession, and which may be designated by the term _decorum_.[260] The imitation of nature even in this restricted sense Vida requires on the authority of the ancients. The modern poet should imitate nature because the great cla.s.sical poets have always acknowledged her sway:--

"Hanc unam vates sibi proposuere magistram."

Nature has no particular interest for Vida in itself. He accepts the cla.s.sics as we accept the Scriptures; and nature is to be imitated and followed because the ancients seem to require it.

In Scaliger this principle is carried one stage farther. The poet creates another nature and other fortunes as if he were another G.o.d.[261] Virgil especially has created another nature of such beauty and perfection that the poet need not concern himself with the realities of life, but can go to the second nature created by Virgil for the subject-matter of his imitation. "All the things which you have to imitate, you have according to another nature, that is, Virgil."[262] In Virgil, as in nature, there are the most minute details of the foundation and government of cities, the management of armies, the building and handling of s.h.i.+ps, and in fact all the secrets of the arts and sciences. What more can the poet desire, and indeed what more can he find in life, and find there with the same certainty and accuracy?

Virgil has created a nature far more perfect than that of reality, and one compared with which the actual world and life itself seem but pale and without beauty. What Scaliger stands for, then, is the subst.i.tution of the world of art instead of life as the object of poetic imitation.

This point of view finds expression in many of the theorists of his time. Partenio, for example, a.s.serts that art is a firmer and safer guide than nature; with nature we can err, but scarcely with art, for art eradicates from nature all that is bad, while nature mingles weeds with flowers, and does not distinguish vices from virtues.[263]

Boileau carries the neo-cla.s.sical ideal of nature and art to its ultimate perfection. According to him, nothing is beautiful that is not true, and nothing is true that is not in nature. Truth, for cla.s.sicism, is the final test of everything, including beauty; and hence to be beautiful poetry must be founded on nature. Nature should therefore be the poet's sole study, although for Boileau, as for Vida, nature is one with the court and the city. Now, in what way can we discover exactly how to imitate nature, and perceive whether or not we have imitated it correctly? Boileau finds the guide to the correct imitation of nature, and the very test of its correctness, in the imitation of the cla.s.sics.

The ancients are great, not because they are old, but because they are true, because they knew how to see and to imitate nature; and to imitate antiquity is therefore to use the best means the human spirit has ever found for expressing nature in its perfection.[264] The advance of Boileau's theory on that of Vida and Scaliger is therefore that he founded the rules and literary practice of cla.s.sical literature on reason and nature, and showed that there is nothing arbitrary in the authority of the ancients. For Vida, nature is to be followed on the authority of the cla.s.sics; for Boileau, the cla.s.sics are to be followed on the authority of nature and reason. Scaliger had shown that such a poet as Virgil had created another nature more perfect than that of reality, and that therefore we should imitate this more beautiful nature of the poet. Boileau, on the contrary, showed that the ancients were simply imitating nature itself in the closest and keenest manner, and that by imitating the cla.s.sics the poet was not imitating a second and different nature, but was being shown in the surest way how to imitate the real and only nature. This final reconciliation of the imitation of nature and the imitation of the cla.s.sics was Boileau's highest contribution to the literary criticism of the neo-cla.s.sical period.

II. _Aristotelianism_

The influence of Aristotle's _Poetics_ is first visible in the dramatic literature of the early sixteenth century. Trissino's _Sofonisba_ (1515), usually accounted the first regular modern tragedy, Rucellai's _Rosmunda_ (1516), and innumerable other tragedies of this period, were in reality little more than mere attempts at putting the Aristotelian theory of tragedy into practice. The Aristotelian influence is evident in many of the prefaces of these plays, and in a few contemporary works of scholars.h.i.+p, such as the _Antiquae Lectiones_ (1516) of Caelius Rhodiginus, whom Scaliger called _omnium doctissimus praeceptor noster_.

At the same time, the _Poetics_ did not immediately play an important part in the critical literature of Italy. From the time of Petrarch, Aristotle, identified in the minds of the humanists with the mediaeval scholasticism so obnoxious to them, had lost somewhat of his supremacy; and the strong Platonic tendencies of the Renaissance had further contributed to lower the prestige of Aristotelianism among the humanists. At no time of the Renaissance, however, did Aristotle lack ardent defenders, and Filelfo, for example, wrote in 1439, "To defend Aristotle and the truth seems to me one and the same thing."[265] In the domain of philosophy the influence of Aristotle was temporarily sustained by the liberal Peripateticism of Pomponazzi; and numerous others, among them Scaliger himself, continued the traditions of a modernized Aristotelianism. From this time, however, Aristotle's position as the supreme philosopher was challenged more and more; and he was regarded by the advanced thinkers of the Renaissance as the representative of the mediaeval obscurantism that opposed the progress of modern scientific investigation.

But whatever of Aristotle's authority was lost in the domain of philosophy was more than regained in the domain of literature. The beginning of the Aristotelian influence on modern literary theory may be said to date from the year 1536, in which year Trincaveli published a Greek text of the _Poetics_, Pazzi his edition and Latin version, and Daniello his own _Poetica_. Pazzi's son, in dedicating his father's posthumous work, said that in the _Poetics_ "the precepts of poetic art are treated by Aristotle as divinely as he has treated every other form of knowledge." In the very year that this was said, Ramus gained his Master's degree at the University of Paris by defending victoriously the thesis that Aristotle's doctrines without exception are all false.[266]

The year 1536 may therefore be regarded as a turning-point in the history of Aristotle's influence. It marks the beginning of his supremacy in literature, and the decline of his dictatorial authority in philosophy.

Between the year 1536 and the middle of the century the lessons of Aristotle's _Poetics_ were being gradually learned by the Italian critics and poets. By 1550 the whole of the _Poetics_ had been incorporated in the critical literature of Italy, and Fracastoro could say that "Aristotle has received no less fame from the survival of his _Poetics_ than from his philosophical remains."[267] According to Bartolommeo Ricci, in a letter to Prince Alfonso, son of Hercules II., Duke of Ferrara, Maggi was the first person to interpret Aristotle's _Poetics_ in public.[268] These lectures were delivered some time before April, 1549. As early as 1540, Bartolommeo Lombardi, the collaborator of Maggi in his commentary on the _Poetics_, had intended to deliver public lectures on the _Poetics_ before a Paduan academy, but died before accomplis.h.i.+ng his purpose.[269] Numerous public readings on the subject of Aristotle and Horace followed those of Maggi,--among them those by Varchi, Giraldi Cintio, Luisino, and Trifone Gabrielli; and the number of public readings on topics connected with literary criticism, and on the poetry of Dante and Petrarch, increased greatly from this time.

The number of commentaries on the _Poetics_ itself, published during the sixteenth century, is really remarkable. The value of these commentaries in general is not so much that they add anything to the literary criticism of the Renaissance, but that their explanations of Aristotle's meaning were accepted by contemporary critics, and became in a way the source of all the literary arguments of the sixteenth century. Nor was their influence restricted merely to this particular period. They were, one might almost say, living things to the critics and poets of the cla.s.sical period in France. Racine, Corneille, and other distinguished writers possessed copies of these commentaries, studied them carefully, cited them in their prefaces and critical writings, and even annotated their own copies of the commentaries with marginal notes, of which some may be seen in the modern editions of their works. In the preface to Rapin's _Reflexions sur l'Art Poetique_ (1674) there is a history of literary criticism, which is almost entirely devoted to these Italian commentators; and writers like Chapelain and Balzac eagerly argued and discussed their relative merits.

Several of these Italian commentators have been alluded to already.[270]

The first critical edition of the _Poetics_ was that of Robortelli (1548), and this was followed by those of Maggi (1550) and Vettori (1560), both written in Latin, and both exhibiting great learning and ac.u.men. The first translation of the _Poetics_ into the vernacular was that by Segni (1549), and this was followed by the Italian commentaries of Castelvetro (1570) and Piccolomini (1575). Ta.s.so, after comparing the works of these two commentators, concluded that while Castelvetro had greater erudition and invention, Piccolomini had greater maturity of judgment, more learning, perhaps, with less erudition, and certainly learning more Aristotelian and more suited to the interpretation of the _Poetics_.[271] The two last sections of Trissino's _Poetica_, published in 1563, are little more than a paraphrase and transposition of Aristotle's treatise. But the curious excesses into which admiration of Aristotle led the Italian scholars may be gathered from a work published at Milan in 1576, an edition of the _Poetics_ expounded in verse, Baldini's _Ars Poetica Aristotelis versibus exposita_. The _Poetics_ was also adapted for use as a practical manual for poets and playwrights in such works as Riccoboni's brief _Compendium Artis Poeticae Aristotelis ad usum conficiendorum poematum_ (1591). The last of the great Italian commentaries on the _Poetics_ to have a general European influence was perhaps Beni's, published in 1613; but this carries us beyond the confines of the century. Besides the published editions, translations, and commentaries, many others were written which may still be found in Ms. in the libraries of Italy. Reference has already been made to Salviati's (1586). There are also two anonymous commentaries dating from this period in Ms. at Florence,--one in the Magliabechiana and the other in the Riccardiana. The last work which may be mentioned here is Buonamici's _Discorsi Poetici in difesa d' Aristotele_, in which Aristotle is ardently defended against the attacks of his detractors.

It was in Italy during this period that the literary dictators.h.i.+p of Aristotle first developed, and it was Scaliger to whom the modern world owes the formulation of the supreme authority of Aristotle as a critical theorist. Fracastoro had likened the importance of Aristotle's _Poetics_ to that of his philosophical treatises. Trissino had followed Aristotle verbally and almost literally. Varchi had spoken of years of Aristotelian study as an essential prerequisite for every one who entered the field of literary criticism. Partenio, a year before the publication of Scaliger's _Poetics_, had a.s.serted that everything relating to tragedy and epic poetry had been settled by Aristotle and Horace. But Scaliger went farther still. He was the first to regard Aristotle as the perpetual lawgiver of poetry. He was the first to a.s.sume that the duty of the poet is first to find out what Aristotle says, and then to obey these precepts without question. He distinctly calls Aristotle the perpetual dictator of all the arts: "Aristoteles imperator noster, omnium bonarum artium dictator perpetuus."[272] This is perhaps the first occasion in modern literature in which Aristotle is definitely regarded as a literary dictator, and the dictators.h.i.+p of Aristotle in literature may, therefore, be dated from the year 1561.

But Scaliger did more than this. He was the first apparently to attempt to reconcile Aristotle's _Poetics_, not only with the precepts of Horace and the definitions of the Latin grammarians, but with the whole practice of Latin tragedy, comedy, and epic poetry. It was in the light of this reconciliation, or concord of Aristotelianism with the Latin spirit, that Aristotle became for Scaliger a literary dictator. It was not Aristotle that primarily interested him, but an ideal created by himself, and founded on such parts of the doctrine of Aristotle as received confirmation from the theory or practice of Roman literature; and this new ideal, harmonizing with the Latin spirit of the Renaissance, became in the course of time one of the foundations of cla.s.sicism. The influence of Aristotelianism was further augmented by the Council of Trent, which gave to Aristotle's doctrine the same degree of authority as Catholic dogma.

All these circ.u.mstances tended to favor the importance of Aristotle in Italy during the sixteenth century, and as a result the literary dictators.h.i.+p of Aristotle was by the Italians foisted on Europe for two centuries to come. From 1560 to 1780 Aristotle was regarded as the supreme authority in letters throughout Europe. At no time, even in England, during and after that period, was there a break in the Aristotelian tradition, and the influence of the _Poetics_ may be found in Sidney and Ben Jonson, in Milton and Dryden, as well as in Sh.e.l.ley and Coleridge. Lessing, even in breaking away from the cla.s.sical practice of the French stage, defended his innovations on the authority of Aristotle, and said of the _Poetics_, "I do not hesitate to acknowledge, even if I should therefore be held up to scorn in these enlightened times, that I consider the work as infallible as the Elements of Euclid."[273] In 1756, a dozen years before Lessing, one of the precursors of the romantic movement in England, Joseph Warton, had also said of the _Poetics_, "To attempt to understand poetry without having diligently digested this treatise would be as absurd and impossible as to pretend to a skill in geometry without having studied Euclid."[274]

One of the first results of the dictators.h.i.+p of Aristotle was to give modern literature a body of inviolable rules for the drama and the epic; that is, the dramatic and heroic poets were restricted to a certain fixed form, and to certain fixed characters. Cla.s.sical poetry was of course the ideal of the Renaissance, and Aristotle had a.n.a.lyzed the methods which these works had employed. The inference seems to have been that by following these rules a literature of equal importance could be created. These formulae were at the bottom of cla.s.sical literature, and rules which had created such literatures as those of Greece and Rome could hardly be disregarded. As a result, these rules came to be considered more and more as essentials, and finally, almost as the very tests of literature; and it was in consequence of their acceptance as poetic laws that the modern cla.s.sical drama and epic arose. The first modern tragedies and the first modern epics were hardly more than such attempts at putting the Aristotelian rules into practice. The cult of form during the Renaissance had produced a reaction against the formlessness and invertebrate character of mediaeval literature. The literature of the Middle Ages was infinitely inferior to that of the ancients; mediaeval literature lacked form and structure, cla.s.sical literature had a regular and definite form. Form then came to be regarded as the essential difference between the perfect literatures of Greece and Rome, and the imperfect and vulgar literature of the Middle Ages; and the deduction from this was that, to be cla.s.sical, the poet must observe the form and structure of the cla.s.sics. Minturno indeed says that "the precepts given of old by the ancient masters, and now repeated by me here, are to be regarded merely as common usage, and not as inviolable laws which must serve under all circ.u.mstances."[275] But this was not the general conception of the Renaissance. Muzio, for example, specifically says:--

"Queste legge ch' io scrivo e questi esempi Sian, lettore, al tuo dir perpetua norma;"

and in another place he speaks of a precept he has given, as "vera, ferma, e inevitabil legge."[276] Scaliger goes still further than this; for, according to him, even the cla.s.sics themselves are to be judged by these standards and rules. "It seems to me," says Scaliger, "that we ought not to refer everything back to Homer, just as though he were the norm, but Homer himself should be referred to the norm."[277] In the modern cla.s.sical period somewhat later, these rules were found to be based on reason:--

"These rules of old, discovered not devised, Are nature still, but nature methodized."[278]

But during the Renaissance they were accepted _ex cathedra_ from cla.s.sical literature.

The formulation of a fixed body of critical rules was not the only result of the Aristotelian influence. One of the most important of these results, as has appeared, was the rational justification of imaginative literature. With the introduction of Aristotle's _Poetics_ into modern Europe the Renaissance was first able to formulate a systematic theory of poetry; and it is therefore to the rediscovery of the _Poetics_ that we may be said to owe the foundation of modern criticism. It was on the side of Aristotelianism that Italian criticism had its influence on European letters; and that this influence was deep and widespread, our study of the critical literatures of France and England will in part show. The critics with whom we have been dealing are not merely dead provincial names; they influenced, for two whole centuries, not only France and England, but Spain, Portugal, and Germany as well.

Literary criticism, in any real sense, did not begin in Spain until the very end of the sixteenth century, and the critical works that then appeared were wholly based on those of the Italians. Rengifo's _Arte Poetica Espanola_ (1592), in so far as it deals with the theory of poetry, is based on Aristotle, Scaliger, and various Italian authorities, according to the author's own acknowledgment. Pinciano's _Philosophia Antigua Poetica_ (1596) is based on the same authorities.

Similarly, Cascales, in his _Tablas Poeticas_ (1616), gives as his authorities Minturno, Giraldi Cintio, Maggi, Riccoboni, Castelvetro, Robortelli, and his own countryman Pinciano. The sources of these and all other works written at this period are Italian; and the following pa.s.sage from the _Egemplar Poetico_, written about 1606 by the Spanish poet Juan de la Cueva, is a good ill.u.s.tration, not only of the general influence of the Italians on Spanish criticism, but of the high reverence in which the individual Italian critics were held by Spanish men of letters:--

"De los primeros tiene Horacio el puesto, En numeros y estilo soberano, Qual en su Arte al mundo es manifesto.

Escaligero [_i.e._ Scaliger] hace el paso llano Con general ensenamiento y guia, Lo mismo el docto Cintio [_i.e._ Giraldi Cintio] y Biperano.[279]

Maranta[280] es egemplar de la Poesia, Vida el norte, Pontano[281] el ornamento, La luz Minturno qual el sol del dia....

Acuden todos a colmar sus vasos Al oceano sacro de Stagira [_i.e._ Aristotle], Donde se afirman los dudosos pasos, Se eterniza la trompa y tierna lira."[282]

The influence of the Italians was equally great in Germany. From Fabricius to Opitz, the critical ideas of Germany were almost all borrowed, directly or indirectly, from Italian sources. Fabricius in his _De Re Poetica_ (1584) acknowledges his indebtedness to Minturno, Partenio, Ponta.n.u.s, and others, but above all to Scaliger; and most of the critical ideas by which Opitz renovated modern German literature go back to Italian sources, through Scaliger, Ronsard, and Daniel Heinsius.

No better ill.u.s.tration of the influence of the Italian critics upon European letters could be afforded than that given by Opitz's _Buch von der deutschen Poeterei_.[283]

The influence of Italian criticism on the critical literature of France and England will be more or less treated in the remaining portions of this essay. It may be noted here, however, that in the critical writings of Lessing there is represented the climax of the Italian tradition in European letters, especially on the side of Aristotelianism. Sh.e.l.ley represents a similar culmination of the Italian tradition in England.

His indebtedness to Sidney and Milton, who represent the Italian influence in the Elizabethan age, and especially to Ta.s.so, whom he continually cites, is very marked. The debt of modern literature to Italian criticism is therefore not slight. In the half century between Vida and Castelvetro, Italian criticism formulated three things: a theory of poetry, a rigid form for the epic, and a rigid form for the drama. These rigid forms for drama and epic governed the creative imagination of Europe for two centuries, and then pa.s.sed away. But while modern aesthetics for over a century has studied the processes of art, the theory of poetry, as enunciated by the Italians of the sixteenth century, has not diminished in value, but has continued to pervade the finer minds of men from that time to this.