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------------------------------------------------------------------------
A HISTORY OF CRITICISM
AND LITERARY TASTE
_Ignorantium temeraria plerumque sunt judicia._
—POLYCARP LEYSER.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A HISTORY OF CRITICISM
AND
LITERARY TASTE IN EUROPE
_FROM THE EARLIEST TEXTS TO THE PRESENT DAY_
BY
GEORGE SAINTSBURY
M.A. OXON.; HON. LL.D. ABERD.
PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. II.
FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE DECLINE OF
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ORTHODOXY
SECOND EDITION
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MCMV
PREFACE.
In presenting the second volume of this attempt, I feel no compunction,
and offer no apology, for what may seem to some the surprisingly large
space given to English critics. That the book itself is intended
primarily for English readers would be but a poor-spirited plea; and the
greatness of English literature as a whole, though a worthier, is still
an unnecessary argument. For the fact is, that the positive value and
importance of English criticism itself are far greater than has been
usually allowed. Owing very mainly to the not unintelligible or
inexcusable, but unfortunate, initiative of Mr Matthew Arnold, it has
become a fashion to speak of this branch of our national literature, if
not even of the function of the national genius which it expresses, with
bated breath, and with humble acknowledgment of the superiority of
German, and still more of French, critics. This superiority, I say
without the slightest fear, is a fond thing vainly invented. English
criticism was rather late, and for a long time rather intermittent; nor
did it fail, after the manner of the nation, to derive fresh impulses
and new departures in the sixteenth century from Italian, in the
seventeenth and again in the nineteenth century from French, and at the
end of the eighteenth from German. But it is not true that in so much as
one of these cases it was contented slavishly to imitate; and it is not
true that, with the doubtful exception of Sainte-Beuve, foreign
countries have had any critics greater than our own, while they have,
even put together, hardly so many great ones. In everything but mere
superficial consistency Dryden is a head and shoulders above Boileau as
a critic; Coleridge a head, shoulders, and body above the Schlegels,
whom he followed. Long before Sainte-Beuve, Hazlitt had shown a genius
for real criticism, as distinguished from barren formula-making, which
no critic has surpassed. And Mr Arnold himself, with less range, equity,
and sureness than Sainte-Beuve, has a finer literary taste and touch. As
for that _general_ superiority of French criticism of which we have
heard so much, the unerring voice of actual history will tell us that it
never existed at all, except, perhaps, for a generation before 1660, and
a generation before 1860, the latter being the period which called
forth, but misled, Mr Arnold’s admiration. With this last we do not here
deal; nor with the Romantic revolt, in dealing with which it will be
pertinent to appraise the relative excellence of Lessing and Goethe as
compared with Coleridge and Hazlitt. But we have within our present
range an almost better field of comparison, in that “neo-classic” period
from Boileau to La Harpe, and from Dryden to Johnson, in which, on the
whole, and taking recognised orthodoxy only, the critics of France and
of England worshipped the same idols, subscribed the same confessions of
faith, and to no small extent even applied their principles to the same
texts and subjects. I am, after careful examination, certain myself, and
I hope that the results of that examination may make it clear to others,
that they did _not_ “order these things better in France,” that they did
not order them nearly so well.
The subject of this volume has more unity than that of the last; and I
have thought it permissible to avail myself of this fact in the
arrangement of the Interchapters. The whole of so-called Classical or
Neo-classic Criticism is so intimately connected that almost any of its
characteristic documents from Vida to La Harpe might be made the text of
a sermon on the entire phenomenon in its complete development. And in
the same way, though with an opposite effect, all general comment might,
without any grave historical or logical impropriety, have been postponed
to the end of the volume. But this would, in the first place, have
broken the uniformity of the book; in the second, it would have
necessitated a final Interchapter (or “inter-conclusion”) of portentous
and disproportionate length; and in the third, it would have too long
withheld from the reader those resting-places and intermediate views, as
from various stations on Pisgah, which seem to me to be the great
advantages and conveniences of the arrangement. I have therefore, while
keeping the historical character and distribution of the summaries of
the three centuries which happen pretty accurately to coincide with the
three stages of the whole phase, made the logical gist of the first to
concern chiefly the rise of the classical-critical attitude; of the
second that constituted creed or code which was explicitly assented to,
or implicitly accepted, by the entire period except in the case of
rebels; while in the third I have concentrated criticism of this
criticism as a whole. The three Interchapters are thus in manner
consecutive and interdependent; but they will, I hope, serve not less to
connect and illuminate the contents of the several books and of the
whole volume than to conduct the story and the argument of the entire
work duly from the beginning to the end of the appointed stage. They are
perhaps specially important here because of the mass and number of minor
figures with whom I have had to deal. I know that some excellent judges
dislike this _numerus_ and would have attention concentrated on the
chiefs. But that is not my conception of literary history.
After full consideration of the matter, I have thought it better not to
attempt any comment on criticisms of the first volume of this _History
of Criticism_. I am much indebted to many of my critics, and perhaps I
may be permitted to say that I was not a little surprised, and, to speak
as a fool, very much pleased, by the generally favourable reception
given to, rather than deserved by, an undoubtedly audacious undertaking.
In cases where those critics obliged me with a substantive correction
(as, for instance, in that relating to Trissino’s version of the _De
Vulgari Eloquio_, v. _infra_, p. 40), I have taken opportunity, wherever
it was possible, to acknowledge the obligation, and I subjoin some
_corrigenda_ and _addenda_ in a flyleaf. But beyond this I do not think
it desirable to go. In the case of merely snarling or carping censure,
the conduct of Johnson as regards Kenrick gives the absolute precedent,
even for those who have to acknowledge how far nearer their censors have
come to Kenrick than they themselves can ever hope to come to Johnson.
To those who pronounce a task impossible the best answer is to go and do
it; to those who object to style and manner one may once more plead
those disabilities of _la plus belle fille de France_ which attach also
to those who are neither French, nor girls, nor beautiful; for those who
hate jokes and literary allusions one can only pray, “God help them!”
And in the case of _bona fide_ misunderstanding the wisest thing for an
author to do is to make his meaning plainer, if he can, in the rest of
his book.
It would probably be still more idle to attempt to anticipate strictures
on the present volume. That its subject might advantageously have been
dealt with in twice or thrice the space is obvious, and perhaps I may
say without impropriety that the writer could have so treated it with no
additional labour except the mere writing—for the preparation
necessitated would have sufficed for half-a-dozen volumes. But to keep
proportion, and observe the plan, is one of those critical warnings to
which Classic and Romantic alike had much better attend. In the division
which I have adopted of eighteenth-century writers into those who, as
adherents of Neo-Classicism, are to be treated here, and those who, as
forerunners or actual exponents of Modern Criticism, are to be reserved
for our next, there must necessarily be much which invites cavil, and
not a little which excuses objection. I shall only say that the
distribution has not been made hastily; and that it may be possible to
make its principle clearer when the reserved writers have been treated.
The advantage of keeping the subject of the volume as homogeneous as
possible seemed paramount.
In writing Vol. I. it was possible, with rare exceptions, to rely upon
texts in my own possession. This has, of course, here been impossible:
though I possess a fair collection of the Italians of the Renaissance,
while I have long had many of the French and English writers of the
whole time. For the supply of deficiencies I have not only to make the
usual acknowledgment to the authorities of the British Museum—than which
surely no institution ever better deserved the patronage of its
name-giving goddesses—but also to thank those of the libraries belonging
to the Faculty of Advocates and the Society of Writers to the Signet in
Edinburgh, which bodies admit others besides their own members with
remarkable liberality. In the library of the University of Edinburgh I
suppose I may consider myself at home; but I owe cordial thanks to
Bodley’s Librarian, to the University Librarian at Cambridge, and to the
librarian of the John Rylands collection at Manchester, for information
about books which I have been unable to find elsewhere. There are one or
two mentioned in the notes which I have not been able to get hold of
yet; and I shall be extremely obliged to any reader of this history who
may happen to know their whereabouts, and will take the trouble to tell
me of it.
I am only the Satan of this journey across Chaos, and I daresay I have
been driven out of the best course by the impact of more than one
nitrous cloud. In other words, I not merely daresay, but am pretty sure,
that I have made some blunders, especially in summary of readings not
always controllable by reference to the actual books when the matter
came before me again in print. And I daresay, further, that these will
be obvious enough to specialists. I have found some such blunders even
in the first volume, where the literature of the subject was far less
extensive and, even in proportion to its extent, far more accessible;
and I have thought it best to include corrections of some of these in
the present volume, in order that those who already possess the first
may not be in an inferior position to those who acquire the new edition
of it which is, or will shortly be, ready. When the work reaches its
close (if it ever does so) will be the proper time to digest and
incorporate these alterations as Fortune may allow. The kindness of
Professor Elton, King Alfred Professor of English in University College,
Liverpool, of Professor Ker _iterum_, and of my colleague Mr Gregory
Smith, has beyond all doubt enabled me to forestall some part of these
corrections in regard to the present volume. These friends were obliging
enough to undertake between them the reading of the whole; others have
assisted me on particular points, in regard to most of which I have, I
think, made due acknowledgment in the notes. As before, I have taken
some trouble with the Index, and I hope it may be found useful.
GEORGE SAINTSBURY.
EDINBURGH, _September 1902_.
ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA TO VOLUME II.
P. 23 _sq._ A reference of Hallam’s (_Literature of Europe_, iii. 5, 76,
77) to the _Miscellanies_ of Politian has led some critics, who
apparently do not know the book itself, and have not even read Hallam
carefully, to object to its omission here. Their authority might have
saved them; for he very correctly describes these _Miscellanies_ as
“sometimes grammatical, but more frequently relating to obscure customs
and mythological allusions.” In other words, the book—which _I_ have
read—is hardly, in my sense, critical at all.
P. 80, note. When I wrote on Castelvetro I was not aware that the
Commentary on Dante (at least that on _Inf._, Cantos i.-xxix.) had been
recovered and published by Signor Giovanni Franciosi (Modena, 1886) in a
stately royal 4to (which I have now read, and possess), with the owl and
the pitcher, but without the _Kekrika_, and without the proper
resolution in the owl’s countenance. This may be metaphysically
connected with the fact that the editor is rather unhappy about his
author, and tells us that he was long in two minds about sending him out
at last to the world. He admires Castelvetro’s boldness, scholarship,
intellect; but thinks him sadly destitute of reverence for Dante, and
deplores his “lack of lively and cheerful sense of the Beautiful.” If it
were not that my gratitude to the man who gives me a text seals my mouth
as to everything else, I should be a little inclined to cry “Fudge!” at
this. Nobody would expect from any Renaissance scholar, and least of all
from Castelvetro, “unction,” mysticism, rapture at the things that give
_us_ rapture in Dante. All the more honour to him that, as in the case
of Petrarch, he thought it worth while to bestow on that vernacular,
which too many Renaissance scholars despised, the same intense desire to
understand, the same pains, the same “taking seriously,” which he showed
towards the ancients. This is the true reverence: the rest is but
“leather and prunella.”
P. 107. Some time after vol. ii. was published I came across (in the
catalogues of Mr Voynich, who might really inscribe on these documents
for motto
“Das Unzulängliche
Hier wird’s Ereignis”)
quite a nest of Zinanos, mostly written about that year 1590, which
seems to have been this curious writer’s most active time; and I bought
two of them as specially appurtenant to our subject. One is a _Discorso
della Tragedia_, appended (though separately paged and dedicated) to the
author’s tragedy of _Almerigo_; the other _Le Due Giornate della Ninfa
overo del Diletto e delle Muse_, all printed by Bartholi, at Reggio, and
the two prose books or booklets dated 1590. The _Discorso_ is chiefly
occupied with an attack on the position that Tragedy (especially
according to Aristotle) ought to be busied with true subjects only. The
_Giornate_ (which contain another reference to Patrizzi) deal—more or
less fancifully, but in a manner following Boethius, which is
interesting at so late a date—with philosophy and things in general,
rather than with literature.
P. 322, bk. IV. chap. i. I ought, perhaps, to have noticed in this
context a book rather widely spread—Sorel’s _De La Connaissance des Bons
Livres_, Paris, 1671. It contains some not uninteresting things on
literature in general, on novels, poetry, comedy, &c., on the laws of
good speaking and writing, on the “new language of French.” But it is,
on the whole, as anybody acquainted with any part of the voluminous work
of the author of _Francion_ would expect, mainly not disagreeable nor
ignorant _chat_—newspaper work before the newspaper.
P. 350. The opposition of the two “doctors” is perhaps too sharply put.
P. 436. I should like to add as a special “place” for Dennis’s
criticism, his comparatively early _Remarks on_ Prince Arthur _and
Virgil_ (title abbreviated), London, 1696. It is, as it stands, of some
elaboration; but its author tells us that he “meant” to do things which
would have made it an almost complete Poetic from his point of view. It
is pervaded with that refrain of “this _ought_ to be” and “that _must_
have been” to which I have referred in the text; and bristles with
purely arbitrary preceptist statements, such as that Criticism cannot be
ill-natured because Good Nature in man cannot be contrary to Justice and
Reason; that a man must not like what he ought not to like—a doctrine
underlying, of course, the whole Neo-classic teaching, and not that
only; almost literally cropping up in Wordsworth; and the very
formulation, in categorical-imperative, of La Harpe’s “monstrous
beauty.” The book (in which poet and critic are very comfortably and
equally yoked together) is full of agreeable things; and may possibly
have suggested one of Swift’s most exquisite pieces of irony in its
contention that Mr Blackmore’s Celestial Machines are directly contrary
to the Doctrine of the Church of England.
P. 546. Denina. This author is a good instance of the things which the
reader sometimes rather reproachfully demands, when the writer would
only too fain have supplied them. I could write more than a page with
satisfaction on Denina’s _Discorso sopra le Vicende della Litteratura_,
which, rather surprisingly, underwent its second edition in Glasgow at
the Foulis press (1763), and which not only deals at large with the
subject in an interesting manner, but accepts the _religio loci_ by
dealing specially with _Scottish_ literature. But, once more, this is
for a fourth volume—or even a fifth—things belonging to the
Thinkable-Unthinkable.
P. 554, l. 3. For the _Paragone_ see vol. iii. under Conti, Antonio.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS.
BOOK IV.
RENAISSANCE CRITICISM.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY—ERASMUS.
PAGE
The Critical starting-point of the Renaissance. 3
Influences at work: General 4
Particular 5
Weakness of Vernaculars 6
Recovery of Ancient Criticism 6
Necessity of defence against Puritanism 7
The line of criticism resultant 7
Not necessarily anti-mediæval 8
But classical 9
And anti-Puritan 9
Erasmus 10
The _Ciceronianus_ 11
The _Colloquies_ 13
The _Letters_ 15
Distribution of the Book 17
CHAPTER II.
EARLY ITALIAN CRITICS.
The beginnings 19
Savonarola 20
Pico, &c. 22
Politian 23
The _Manto_ 24
The _Ambra_ and _Rusticus_ 25
The _Nutricia_ 25
Their merits 26
And danger 26
Petrus Crinitus: his _De Poetis Latinis_ 27
Augustinus Olmucensis: his _Defence of Poetry_ 27
Paradoxical attacks on it by Cornelius Agrippa, Landi, Berni 28
Vida 29
Importance of the _Poetics_ 30
Analysis of the piece 30
Essential poverty of its theory 34
Historical and symptomatic significance 34
The alleged appeal to reason and Nature 35
The main stream started 37
Trissino 38
Division of his _Poetic_ 39
His critical value 40
Editors, &c., of the _Poetics_ 41
Pazzi 41
Robortello, Segni, Maggi, Vettori 42
Theorists: Daniello 42
Fracastoro 44
Formalists: Mutio. Tolomei and classical metres 46
Others: Tomitano, Lionardi, B. Tasso, Capriano 47
Il Lasca 48
Bembo 49
Caro 49
Varchi 49
Minturno 51
The _De Poeta_ 52
The _Arte Poetica_ 55
Their value 57
Giraldi Cinthio’s _Discorsi_ 58
On Romance 58
On Drama 59
Some points in both 59
On Satire 61
Pigna 62
Lilius Giraldus: his _De Poetis Nostrorum Temporum_ 63
Its width of range 64
But narrowness of view 64
Horror at preference of vernacular to Latin 64
Yet a real critic in both kinds 65
Short _précis_ of the dialogues 66
Their great historic value 68
CHAPTER III.
SCALIGER, CASTELVETRO, AND THE LATER ITALIAN CRITICS OF THE SIXTEENTH
CENTURY.
Julius Cæsar Scaliger 69
The _Poetic_ 70
Book I.: _Historicus_ 71
Book II.: _Hyle_ 72
Books III. and IV.: _Idea_ and _Parasceve_ 73
Books V. and VI.: _Criticus_ and _Hypercriticus_ 73
Book VII.: _Epinomis_ 75
General ideas on Unity and the like 76
His Virgil-worship 77
His solid merits 78
Castelvetro 80
The Opere Varie 81
The _Poetica_ 82
On Dramatic conditions 83
On the Three Unities 83
On the freedom of Epic 84
His eccentric acuteness 84
Examples: Homer’s nodding, prose in tragedy, Virgil, minor 86
poetry
The medium and end of Poetry 86
Uncompromising championship of Delight 87
His exceptional interest and importance 88
Tasso and the controversies over the _Gerusalemme_ 89
Tasso’s Critical writings 92
And position 93
Patrizzi: his _Poetica_ 94
The _Deca Istoriale_ 95
The _Deca Disputata_ 96
The _Trimerone_ on Tasso 100
Remarkable position of Patrizzi 101
_Sed contra mundum_ 101
The latest group of sixteenth-century Critics 102
Partenio 102
Viperano 103
Piccolomini 103
Gilio 104
Mazzoni 105
Denores 106
Zinano 107
Mazzone da Miglionico, &c. 107
Summo 108
CHAPTER IV.
THE CRITICISM OF THE _PLÉIADE_.
The _Rhetorics_ of the Transition 109
Sibilet 111
Du Bellay 112
The _Défense et Illustration de la Langue Française_ 113
Its positive gospel and the value thereof 114
The _Quintil Horatien_ 116
Pelletier’s _Art Poétique_ 117
Ronsard: his general importance 119
The _Abrégé de l’Art Poétique_ 120
The _Prefaces to the Franciade_ 122
His critical gospel 125
Some minors 127
Pierre de Laudun 127
Vauquelin de la Fresnaye 128
Analysis of his _Art Poétique_ 129
The First Book 130
The Second 130
The Third 132
His exposition of _Pléiade_ criticism 133
Outliers: Tory, Fauchet, &c. 134
Pasquier: The _Recherches_ 135
His knowledge of older French literature 136
And criticism of contemporary French poetry 137
Montaigne: his references to literature 138
The Essay _On Books_ 140
CHAPTER V.
ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.
Backwardness of English Criticism not implying inferiority 144
Its cause 145
The influence of Rhetoric and other matters 146
Hawes 146
The first Tudor critics 147
Wilson: his _Art of Rhetoric_ 149
His attack on “Inkhorn terms” 149
His dealing with Figures 150
Cheke: his resolute Anglicism and anti-preciosity 151
His criticism of Sallust 152
Ascham 153
His patriotism 154
His horror of Romance 154
And of the _Morte d’Arthur_ 155
His general critical attitude to Prose 156
And to Poetry 156
The craze for Classical Metres 157
Special wants of English Prosody 157
Its kinds—
(1) Chaucerian 158
(2) Alliterative 158
(3) Italianated 159
Deficiencies of all three 159
The temptations of Criticism in this respect 160
Its adventurers: Ascham himself 160
Watson and Drant 161
Gascoigne 162
His _Notes of Instruction_ 163
Their capital value 164
Spenser and Harvey 165
The Puritan attack on Poetry 169
Gosson 169
_The School of Abuse_ 170
Lodge’s _Reply_ 170
Sidney’s _Apology for Poetry_ 171
Abstract of it 172
Its minor shortcomings 174
And major heresies 175
The excuses of both 175
And their ample compensation 176
King James’s _Reulis and Cautelis_ 176
Webbe’s _Discourse_ 178
Slight in knowledge 179
But enthusiastic 180
If uncritical 180
In appreciation 182
Puttenham’s (?) _Art of English Poesie_ 182
Its erudition 183
Systematic arrangement 184
And exuberant indulgence in Figures 185
Minors: Harington, Meres, Webster, Bolton, &c. 186
Campion and his _Observations_ 187
Daniel and his _Defence of Rhyme_ 189
Bacon 191
The _Essays_ 192
The _Advancement of Learning_ 192
Its denunciation of mere word-study 193
Its view of Poetry 194
Some _obiter dicta_ 194
The whole of very slight importance 195
Stirling’s _Anacrisis_ 196
Ben Jonson: his equipment 197
His _Prefaces_, &c. 198
The Drummond Conversations 199
The _Discoveries_ 200
Form of the book 203
Its date 204
Mosaic of old and new 204
The fling at Montaigne 205
At _Tamerlane_ 206
The Shakespeare Passage 206
And that on Bacon 206
General character of the book 208
INTERCHAPTER IV. 211
BOOK V.
THE CRYSTALLISING OF THE NEO-CLASSIC CREED.
CHAPTER I.
FROM MALHERBE TO BOILEAU.
The supplanting of Italy by France 240
Brilliancy of the French representatives 241
Malherbe 242
The _Commentary on Desportes_ 244
What can be said for his criticism 246
Its defects stigmatised at once by Regnier 247
His _Ninth Satire_ 247
The contrast of the two a lasting one 249
The diffusion of seventeenth century criticism 250
Vaugelas 251
Balzac 252
His Letters 252
His critical Dissertations 253
Ogier and the Preface to _Tyr et Sidon_ 254
Chapelain: the hopelessness of his verse 257
The interest of his criticism 257
The _Sentiments de l’Académie sur le Cid_ 258
Prefaces 259
_Sur les Vieux Romans_ 260
Letters, &c. 261
Corneille 261
The Three _Discourses_ 263
The _Examens_ 263
La Mesnardière—Sarrasin—Scudéry 264
Mambrun 266
Saint-Evremond 268
His critical quality and accomplishment 269
His views on Corneille 270
On Christian subjects, &c. 270
On Ancients and Moderns 270
Gui Patin—his judgment of Browne 272
Tallemant, Pellisson, Ménage, Madame de Sévigné 273
The _Ana_ other than Ménage’s, especially 274
The _Huetiana_ 275
_Valesiana_ 275
_Scaligerana_ 276
And _Parrhasiana_ 276
Patru, Desmarets, and others 277
_Malebranche_ 279
The history of Boileau’s reputation 280
The _Art Poétique_ 281
Its false literary history 281
Abstract of it 282
Critical examination of it 286
Want of originality 287
Faults of method 287
Obsession of good sense 288
Arbitrary proscriptions 289
Boileau’s other works 290
The _Satires_ 290
The _Epigrams_ and _Epistles_ 292
Prose—The _Héros de Roman_; the _Réflexions sur Longin_ 292
The “Dissertation on _Joconde_” 293
A “Solifidian of Good Sense” 295
The plea for his practical services 296
Historical examination of this 296
Concluding remarks on him 299
La Bruyère and Fénelon 300
The “Des Ouvrages de l’Esprit” 301
General observations 302
Judgments of authors 303
Fénelon. The _Dialogues sur l’Eloquence_ 305
_Sur les Occupations de l’Académie Française_ 306
And its challenge to correctness 307
The Abbé D’Aubignac 309
His _Pratique du Théâtre_ 309
Rapin 310
His method partly good 311
His particular absurdities as to Homer in blame 311
As to Virgil in praise 312
As to others 313
The reading of his riddle 313
Le Bossu and the Abstract Epic 314
Bouhours 315
Encyclopædias and Newspapers 316
Bayle 316
Baillet 317
The ethos of a Critical Pedant 318
Gibert 319
The Ancient and Modern Quarrel 320
Its small critical value 321
CHAPTER II.
THE ITALIAN DECADENCE AND THE SPANIARDS.
Decadence of Italian Criticism 323
Paolo Beni 324
Possevino: his _Bibliotheca Selecta_ 325
Tassoni: his _Pensieri Diversi_ 326
Aromatari 328
His _Degli Autori del Ben Parlare_ 329
Boccalini and Minors 329
Influence of the _Ragguagli_ 330
The set of Seicentist taste 331
Spanish criticism: highly ranked by Dryden? 331
The Origins—Villena 333
Santillana 333
Encina 335
Valdés 335
The beginning of regular Criticism. Humanist Rhetoricians 336
Poetics: Rengifo 337
Pinciano 338
La Cueva 341
Carvallo 341
Gonzales de Salas 341
The _Cigarrales_ of Tirso de Molina 343
Lope’s _Arte Nuevo_, &c. 344
His assailants and defenders 346
The fight over the Spanish drama 347
Cervantes and Calderon 347
Gongorism, Culteranism, &c. 349
Quevedo 349
Gracián 349
The limitations of Spanish criticism 350
CHAPTER III.
GERMAN AND DUTCH CRITICISM.
The hindmost of all 352
Origins 353
Sturm 353
Fabricius 354
Version A. 354
Version B. 354
Jac. Pontanus 355
Heinsius: the _De Tragœdiæ Constitutione_ 356
Voss 357
His _Rhetoric_ 358
His _Poetics_ 359
Opitz 360
The _Buch der Deutschen Poeterei_ 361
CHAPTER IV.
DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.
Dead water in English Criticism 365
Milton 365
Cowley 366
The Prefatory matter of _Gondibert_ 367
The “Heroic Poem” 368
Davenant’s _Examen_ 369
Hobbes’s Answer 370
Dryden 371
His advantages 372
The early Prefaces 373
The _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_ 376
Its setting and overture 376
Crites for the Ancients 377
Eugenius for the “last age” 378
Lisideius for the French 378
Dryden for England and Liberty 379
_Coda_ on rhymed plays, and conclusion 380
Conspicuous merits of the piece 381
The Middle Prefaces 382
The _Essay on Satire_ and the _Dedication of the Æneis_ 385
The Parallel of Poetry and Painting 386
The _Preface to the Fables_ 386
Dryden’s general critical position 386
His special critical method 387
Dryden and Boileau 389
Rymer 391
The _Preface to Rapin_ 392
The _Tragedies of the Last Age_ 394
The _Short View of Tragedy_ 395
The Rule of Tom the Second 397
Sprat 398
Edward Phillips 398
His _Theatrum Poetarum_ 399
Winstanley’s _Lives_ 400
Langbaine’s _Dramatic Poets_ 400
Temple 401
Bentley 401
Collier’s _Short View_ 402
Sir T. P. Blount 404
Periodicals: _The Athenian Mercury_, &c. 406
INTERCHAPTER V. 407
BOOK VI.
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ORTHODOXY.
CHAPTER I.
FROM ADDISON TO JOHNSON.
Criticism at Dryden’s death 426
Bysshe’s _Art of English Poetry_ 426
Gildon 429
Welsted 430
Dennis 431
On Rymer 432
On Shakespeare 434
On “Machines” 435
His general theory of Poetry 435
Addison 437
The _Account of the Best known English Poets_ 438
The _Spectator_ criticisms 440
On True and False Wit 441
On Tragedy 441
On Milton 443
The “Pleasures of the Imagination” 444
His general critical value 447
Steele 448
Atterbury 449
Swift 450
_The Battle of the Books_ 450
The _Tale of a Tub_ 451
Minor works 451
Pope 452
The _Letters_ 453
The Shakespeare Preface 454
Spence’s _Anecdotes_ 454
The _Essay on Criticism_ 455
The _Epistle to Augustus_ 457
Remarks on Pope as a critic 457
And the critical attitude of his group 460
Philosophical and Professional Critics 461
Trapp 462
Blair 462
The _Lectures on Rhetoric_ 463
The _Dissertation on Ossian_ 464
Kames 465
The _Elements of Criticism_ 466
Campbell 470
The _Philosophy of Rhetoric_ 470
Harris 473
The _Philological Enquiries_ 474
“Estimate” Brown: his _History of Poetry_ 476
Johnson: his preparation for criticism 477
_The Rambler_ on Milton 480
On Spenser 482
On History and Letter-writing 483
On Tragi-comedy 483
“Dick Minim” 484
_Rasselas_ 484
The Shakespeare Preface 485
The _Lives of the Poets_ 486
Their general merits 487
The _Cowley_ 489
The _Milton_ 489
The _Dryden_ and _Pope_ 490
The _Collins_ and _Gray_ 491
The critical greatness of the _Lives_ and of Johnson 493
Minor Criticism: Periodical and other 496
Goldsmith 498
Vicesimus Knox 499
Scott of Amwell 500
CHAPTER II.
THE CONTEMPORARIES OF VOLTAIRE.
Close connection of French seventeenth and eighteenth 501
century Criticism: Fontenelle
Exceptional character of his criticism 502
His attitude to the “Ancient and Modern” Quarrel 503
The _Dialogues des Morts_ 503
Other critical work 504
La Motte 507
His “Unity of Interest” 508
Rollin 509
Brumoy 509
Rémond de Saint-Mard 510
L. Racine 511
Du Bos 511
Stimulating but desultory character of his _Réflexions_ 512
Montesquieu 514
Voltaire: disappointment of his criticism 515
Examples of it 515
Causes of his failure 518
Others: Buffon 519
“Style and the man” 520
Vauvenargues 521
Batteux 522
His adjustment of Rules and Taste 523
His incompleteness 524
Marmontel 525
Oddities and qualities of his criticism 526
Others 529
Thomas, Suard, &c. 529
La Harpe 530
His _Cours de Littérature_ 530
His critical position as _ultimus suorum_ 531
The Academic Essay 533
Rivarol 534
CHAPTER III.
CLASSICISM IN THE OTHER NATIONS.
Preliminary remarks 537
Temporary revival of Italian Criticism 538
Gravina 538
Muratori: his _Della Perfetta Poesia_ 541
Crescimbeni 542
Quadrio 542
The emergence of literary history 545
Further decadence of Italian criticism 545
Metastasio 546
Neo-classicism triumphs in Spain 546
The absurdities of Artiga 547
Luzán 548
The rest uninteresting 549
Feyjóo, Isla, and others 549
Rise at last of German Criticism 550
Its school time 551
Classicism at bay almost from the first—Gottsched 552
The _Versuch einer Critischen Dichtkunst_ 553
Its chief idea 553
Specimen details 555
Gellert: he transacts 557
INTERCHAPTER VI.
§ I. THE NEMESIS OF CORRECTNESS 559
§ II. THE BALANCE-SHEET OF NEO-CLASSIC CRITICISM 566
---
INDEX 579
BOOK IV
RENAISSANCE CRITICISM
----------
“_Le materie da scienza, o da arte, o da istoria
comprese, possano esser convenevoli soggetti a
poesia, e a poemi, pure che poeticamente sieno
trattate._”—PATRIZZI.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY—ERASMUS.
THE CRITICAL STARTING-POINT OF THE RENAISSANCE—INFLUENCES AT WORK:
GENERAL—PARTICULAR—WEAKNESS OF VERNACULARS—RECOVERY OF ANCIENT
CRITICISM—NECESSITY OF DEFENCE AGAINST PURITANISM—THE LINE OF
CRITICISM RESULTANT—NOT NECESSARILY ANTI-MEDIÆVAL, BUT CLASSICAL AND
ANTI-PURITAN—ERASMUS—THE ‘CICERONIANUS'—THE ‘COLLOQUIES’—THE
‘LETTERS’—DISTRIBUTION OF THE BOOK.
We saw, in the second section of the Interchapter which served as
Conclusion to the first volume of this work, to what a point [Sidenote:
_The Critical starting-point of the Renaissance._] the Middle Ages had
brought the materials and the methods of Literary Criticism, and what
the new age with its combined opportunities might have done. We also
endeavoured to indicate generally, and so to speak, proleptically, what
it did _not_ do. It is now time to examine what it did: and in the
course of the examination to develop the reasons, the character, and the
consequences, both of its commission and of its abstention.[1]
-----
Footnote 1:
At the beginning of Book III. I had practically no obligations to any
general guide to confess; at the beginning of Book II. not very many.
Here, as in the case of M. Egger in regard to Book I., I have
cheerfully to acknowledge the forerunnership and help of Mr Joel Elias
Spingarn, whose _History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance_
appeared (New York and London) in 1899. I shall have occasion to
differ with Mr Spingarn here and there; and his conception of a
History of Criticism is not mine, just as, no doubt, mine is not his.
But the obligations of the second treader of a previously untrodden
path to the first are perhaps the greatest that fall to be
acknowledged in any literary task; and I acknowledge them in Mr
Spingarn’s case to the fullest extent possible.
-----
If no period has ever been more guilty of that too usual injustice to
predecessors which we noted, it is fair to acknowledge that none had
greater temptations to such injustice. The breach between the Classical
and the Dark Ages had been almost astonishingly gradual—so gradual that
it has needed no great hardiness of paradox to enable men to deny that
there was any breach at all. On the other hand, though the breach at the
Renaissance[2] is capable of being, and has sometimes been, much
exaggerated; though it was preceded by a considerable transition period,
and though mediæval characteristics survived it long and far, yet the
turning over of the new leaf is again incontestable, and was as
necessary in the order of thought as it is certain in the sequence of
fact.
-----
Footnote 2:
The complaints sometimes made as to the ambiguity and want of
authority of this term may have some justification; but convenience
and (by this time) usage must be allowed their way.
-----
It is not much more than a hundred years since the French Revolution, a
single event in one department only of things [Sidenote: _Influences at
work: General._] actual, was sufficient to precipitate a change which is
only less—which some would hold likely to be not less—than the change at
the beginning of the Dark Ages, and the change at the end of the Middle.
At the Renaissance, not one but three or four such events, in as many
different departments, brought their shock to bear upon the life and
mind of Europe. The final disappearance of the Eastern Empire, and the
apparent—perhaps, indeed, a little more than apparent—danger of a wide
and considerable barbarian invasion of even Western Europe, with the
balancing of this after a sort a little later by the extinction of the
Moorish power in Spain, coincided, as regards politics, with a general
tendency throughout Europe towards the change of feudal into centralised
monarchy. The determination (resulting no doubt from no single cause,
and taking effect after long preparation) of direct, practical, and
extensive study to the Classics, especially to Greek, affected not
merely literature, but almost everything of which literature treats. The
invention of printing enormously facilitated, not merely the study but,
the diffusion and propagation of ideas and patterns. The discovery of
America, and of the sea-route to the East, excited that spirit of
exploration and adventure which, once aroused, is sure not to limit
itself to the material world. And, lastly, the long-threatened and at
last realised protest against the corruptions of the Christian Church,
and the domination of the Pope, unsettled, directly or indirectly, every
convention, every compromise, every accepted doctrine. In fact, to use
the words of one of the greatest of English writers,[3] in what is
perhaps his most brilliant passage, “in the fabric of habit which they
had so laboriously built for themselves, men could remain no longer.”
-----
Footnote 3:
Mr Froude in the opening of his _History_.
-----
Their critical habits, as we have seen sufficiently in the last Book,
had been mainly negative; and for this reason, if for no other, a
considerable critical development would have been certain to spring up.
But there were other reasons, and powerful ones. In the first place, the
atmosphere of revolt which was abroad necessarily breeds, or rather
necessarily implies, criticism. A few, whom the equal Jove has loved,
may be able to criticise while acquiescing, approving, even loving and
strenuously championing; but this equity is not exceedingly common, and
the general tendency of acceptance, and even of acquiescence, is
distinctly uncritical. On the other hand, the rebel is driven either to
his rebellion by the exercise of his critical faculty, or to the
exercise of his critical faculty in order to justify his rebellion. I do
not myself hold that the Devil was the first critic. I have not the
slightest desire to serve myself and my subject heirs to that spirit
unfortunate; but I recognise the necessity of some argument to rebut the
filiation.
And that these generalities should become particular in reference to
Literary Criticism more especially, there were additional and momentous
inducements of two different kinds. [Sidenote: _Particular._] In the
first place, the malcontents with the immediate past must in any case
have been drawn to attack the literary side of its battlements, because
of their extreme weakness. Everywhere but in the two extremities of the
West, Italy and Scotland (the latter, owing to the very small bulk of
its literary production, and the rudimentary condition of its language,
being hardly an exception at all), the fifteenth century, even with a
generous eking from the earliest sixteenth, had been a time of literary
torpor and literary decadence, relieved only by a few—a very
few—brilliant individual performances. In England the successors of
Chaucer, not content with carrying his method and his choice of subject
no further, had almost incomprehensibly lost command of both. In France
the _rhétoriqueur_ school of poets had degenerated less in form, but had
been almost equally unable to show any progress, or even any [Sidenote:
_Weakness of Vernaculars._] maintained command, of matter. Germany was
far worse than either. If Chaucer himself could criticise, indirectly
but openly, the faults of the still vigorous and beautiful romance—of
the romance which in his own country was yet to boast Chester in verse
and Malory in prose—how much more must any one with sharp sense and
sound taste, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, have been
tempted to apply some similar process to the fossilised formalism of
_rondeau_ and _ballade_; to the lifeless and lumbering allegory of the
latest “Rose” imitations; to the “aureate,” or rather tinselled, bombast
of Chastellain and Robertet?
But, as it happened, no inconsiderable part of the newly disinterred
classics dealt with this very subject of Literary Criticism, [Sidenote:
_Recovery of Ancient Criticism._] and, having been most neglected, was
certain to be most attended to. Later mediæval practice had provided the
examples of disease: earlier classical theory was to provide the remedy.
Plato, the most cherished of the recovered treasures, had—in his own
peculiar way, no doubt—criticised very largely; the _Poetics_ and the
_Rhetoric_ were quickly set afresh before the new age in the originals;
Horace had always been known; Quintilian was, since Rhetoric had not yet
fallen into disfavour, studied direct;[4] and, before the sixteenth
century was half over, Longinus himself had been unearthed and presented
to a world which (if it had chosen to attend thereto) was also for the
first time furnished with Dante’s critical performance.[5] With such an
arsenal; with such a disposition of mind abroad; and with such real or
imagined enemies to attack, it would have been odd if the forces of
criticism, so long disorganised, and indeed disembodied, had not taken
formidable shape.
-----
Footnote 4:
The _complete_ text was, as is well known, not discovered (by Poggio
at St Gallen) till the fifteenth century had nearly filled its second
decade, but the book had been studied long before.
Footnote 5:
Very great influence on sixteenth, and even on seventeenth, century
criticism has also been frequently, and perhaps correctly, assigned to
the grammatical works and Terentian Scholia of Donatus.
-----
There was, however, yet another influence which is not very easy to
estimate, and which has sometimes perhaps been not quite rightly
estimated, but which undoubtedly had a great deal to do with the matter.
[Sidenote: _Necessity of defence against Puritanism._] Almost as soon
as—almost before indeed—the main battle of the Renaissance engaged
itself, certain phenomena, not unusual in similar cases, made their
appearance. Men of letters, humanists, students, were necessarily the
protagonists of revolt or reform. There had always, as we have seen,
been a certain jealousy of Letters on the part of the Church; and this
was not likely to be lessened in the new arrangement of circumstance.
But the jealousy was by no means confined to the party of order and of
the defence. It had been necessary, or it would have had no
rank-and-file, for the attack to enlist the descendants of the old
Lollards and other opponents of the Romish Church in different
countries. But in these, to no small extent, and in men like Calvin,
when they made their appearance, perhaps still more, the Puritan dislike
of Art, and of Literature as part of Art, was even more rampant than in
the obscurest of _obscuri viri_ on the Catholic and Conservative side.
And so men of letters had not merely to attack what they thought
unworthy and obsolete foes of literature, but to defend literature
itself from their own political and ecclesiastical allies.
The line which they took had been taken before, and was no doubt partly
suggested to them by Boccaccio in the remarkable book already referred
to[6]—the _De Genealogia Deorum_—which was repeatedly printed in the
early days of the press. [Sidenote: _The line of criticism resultant._]
There can be very little question that this anticipates the peculiar
tone of what we may call anti-Platonic Platonism, which is so noticeable
in the Italian critics of the Renaissance, and which was caught from
them by Englishmen of great note and worth, from Sidney to Milton. The
excellent historian of the subject—whom I have already quoted, and my
indebtedness to whom must not be supposed to be repudiated because I
cannot agree with him on some important points—is, I think, entirely
wrong in speaking of mediæval “distrust of literature,” while the
statement with which he supports this, that “popular literature had
fallen into decay, and, in its contemporary form, was beneath serious
consideration,”[7] is so astonishing, that I fear we must class it with
those _judicia ignorantium_ of which our general motto speaks. In his
context Mr Spingarn mentions, as examples of mediæval treatment of
literature, Fulgentius, Isidore, John of Salisbury, Dante, Boccaccio.
What “popular” (by which I presume is meant vernacular) literature was
there in the times of Fulgentius or of Isidore? Is not the statement
that “popular literature had fallen into decay” in the time of Dante
self-exploded? And the same may be said of Boccaccio. As for John of
Salisbury, he certainly, as we have seen,[8] was not much of a critic
himself; but that popular literature was decaying in his time is a
statement which no one who knows the _Chansons de Gestes_ and the
Arthurian Legend can accept for one moment; while the documents also
quoted _supra_, the _Labyrinthus_, the _Nova Poetria_, and the
rest—entirely disprove any “distrust” of letters.
-----
Footnote 6:
Vol. i. p. 457 _sq._
Footnote 7:
Spingarn, _op. cit._, p. 2. On the previous page there is the equally
surprising statement that in the Middle Ages “Poetry was disregarded
or contemned, or was valued, if at all, for qualities that least
belong to it.” What were these “qualities”?
Footnote 8:
Vol. i. p. 414 _note_
-----
The truth is, with submission to Mr Spingarn, that there never was any
such, except from the Puritan-religious side, and that this was by no
means specially conspicuous in the Middle Ages. [Sidenote: _Not
necessarily anti-mediæval,_] The “Defence of Poesy,” and of literature
generally, which animates men so different as Boccaccio and Milton, as
Scaliger and Sidney, is no direct revolt against the Middle Ages at all,
but, as has been said, a discourse _Pro Domo_, in the first place,
against the severer and more obscurantist partisans of Catholicism, who
were disposed to dislike men of letters as Reformers, and literature as
the instrument of Reformation; secondly, and much more urgently, against
the Puritan and Philistine variety of Protestantism itself, which so
soon turned against its literary leaders and allies. And the special
form which this defence took was in turn mainly conditioned, not by
anti-mediæval animus, but in part by the circumstances of the case, in
part by the character of the critical weapons which men found in their
new arsenal of the Classics.
Classical Criticism, as we have seen in the preceding volume, had
invariably in theory, and almost as invariably in practice, confined
itself wholly or mainly to the consideration of “the subject.”
[Sidenote: _but classical_]Although Aristotle himself had not denied the
special pleasure of art and the various kinds of art, although Plato, in
distrusting and denouncing, had admitted the psychagogic faculties
thereof; yet nobody except Longinus had boldly identified the chief end
of it with “transport,” not with persuasion, with edification, or
anything of the kind. Accordingly, those who looked to the ancients to
help them against the _Obscuri Viri_ on the one hand, and against good
Puritan folk like our own Ascham on the other, were almost bound to keep
the _pleasure_ of poetry and literature generally in the background; or,
if they brought it to the front at all, to extol it and defend it on
ethical and philosophical, not on æsthetic grounds. Taking a hint from
their “sweet enemy” Plato, from Plutarch, and from such neo-Platonic
utterances as that tractate of Plotinus, which has been discussed in its
place,[9] they set themselves to prove that poetry was _not_ a sweet
pleasant deceit or corrupting influence in the republic, but a
stronghold and rampart of religious and philosophical truth. [Sidenote:
_and anti-Puritan._]Calling in turn Aristotle to their assistance, and
working him in with his master and rival, they dwelt with redoubled and
at length altogether misleading and misled energy on “Action,” “Unity,”
and the like. And when they did consider form it was, always or too
often, from the belittling point of view of the ancients themselves in
spirit, and from the meticulous point of view of Horace (who had always
been known) in detail. Here and there in such a man as Erasmus (v.
_infra_), who was nothing if not sensible, we find the Gellian and
Macrobian particularisms taken up with a really progressive twist
towards inquiry as to the bearing of these particularities on the
pleasure of the reader. But Erasmus was writing in the “false dawn”; the
Puritan tyranny of Protestantism on the one side, and of the Catholic
revival on the other, had not brought back a partial night as yet; and
some of the best as well as some of the worst characteristics of the new
age inclined those of his immediate successors rather than
contemporaries, who adopted criticism directly, to quite different ways.
-----
Footnote 9:
Vol. i. pp. 67, 68.
-----
It would, however, be a glaring omission if the critical position of
Erasmus himself were not set forth at some length.[10] [Sidenote:
_Erasmus._] Standing as he does, the most eminent literary figure of
Europe on the bridge of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, nothing
if not critical as he is in his general temperament, and on the textual
and exegetical, if not on the strictly literary sides of the Art, one of
its great historical figures—his absence from this gallery would be
justly regarded as inexcusable. And if his voluminous work does not
yield us very much within the more special and fully enfranchising lines
of our system, it might be regarded as a sufficient answer to say that
the imperfection of the vernaculars, his own concentration on particular
forms of Biblical and patristic text-criticism, and that peculiar
cosmopolitanism which made him practically of no country at all, served
to draw him away from a practice in which he would, but for these
circumstances and conditions, have certainly indulged.
-----
Footnote 10:
Erasmus is still only readable as a whole, or in combination of his
really important literary work, in the folios of Beatus Rhenanus (8
vols., Basle, 1540-1) or Le Clerc (10 vols., Lyons, 1703-6). It is a
thousand pities that this more important literary work, at least, has
not been re-edited together accessibly and cheaply.
-----
It may, however, be doubted whether Erasmus would ever have made a
capital figure as a purely literary critic. Very great man of letters as
he was, and almost wholly literary as were his interests, those
interests were suspiciously directed towards the applied rather than the
pure aspects of literature—were, in short, _per se_ rather scientific
than literary proper. It is at least noteworthy that the _Ciceronianus_
(though Erasmus was undoubtedly on the right side in it) was directed
against a purely literary folly, against an exaggeration of one of the
tastes and appetites which spur on the critic. And it is almost enough
to read the _Adagia_ and _Apophthegmata_—books much forgotten now, but
written with enormous zest and pains by him, and received with
corresponding attention and respect by two whole centuries at least—to
see how much is there left out which a literary critic _pur sang_ could
not but have said.
The _Ciceronianus_, however, must receive a little fuller treatment,
both because of its intimate connection with our subject, and because
hardly any work of Erasmus, except the _Colloquies_, so definitely
estates him in the new position of critical man of letters, as
distinguished from that of philosophical or rhetorical teacher.
[Sidenote: _The_ Ciceronianus.] The piece[11] (which has for its second
title _De Optimo Dicendi Genere_) did not appear, and could not have
appeared, very early in his career. He might even, in the earlier part
of that career, have been slow to recognise the popular exaggeration
which, as in the other matter of the Reformation itself, struck his
maturer intelligence. He glances at its genesis in divers of his
letters, to Budæus, to Alciatus, and others, from 1527 onwards, and the
chief “begetter” of it seems to have been the Flemish scholar, Longolius
(Christophe de Longueil), who during the latter part of his short life
was actually very much such a fanatic as the Nosoponus of the dialogue.
This person is described by his friends Bulephorus and Hypologus as
_olim rubicundulus, obesulus, Veneribus et gratiis undique scatens_, but
now an austere shadow, who has no aspiration in life but to be
“Ciceronian.” In order to achieve this distinction, he has given his
days and nights wholly to the study of Cicero. The “copy” of his
Ciceronian lexicon would already overload two stout porters. He has
noted the differing sense of every word, whether alone or in context;
and by the actual occurrence, not merely of the word itself, but of its
form and case, he will be absolutely governed. Thus, if you are to be a
true Ciceronian, you may say _ornatus_ and _ornatissimus_, but not
_ornatior_; while, though _nasutus_ is permitted to you, both
comparative and superlative are barred. In the same way, he will only
pass the actual cases and numbers found in the Arpinate; though every
one but, let us say, the dative plural occurs, the faithful must not
presume to usurp that dative. Further, he intends to reduce the whole of
Cicero to quantitative rhythm, fully specified; and in his own writing
he thinks he has done well if he accomplishes one short period in a
winter night. The piece begins with the characteristic Erasmian
banter,—Nosoponus is a bachelor, and Bulephorus observes that it is just
as well, for _his_ wife would in the circumstances either make an
irruption into the study, and turn it topsy-turvy, or console herself
with somebody else in some other place,—but by degrees becomes more
serious, and ends with a sort of adjustment of most ancient and many
modern Latin writers to the Ciceronian point of view.
-----
Footnote 11:
First printed at Basle, 1528. Besides the general editions, there are
some separate reprints (_e.g._, Oxford, 1693). But it ought to have
shared the popular diffusion of the _Colloquies_.
-----
That Erasmus, with his usual shrewdness, hits the great blot of the
time—the merely literal and “Capernaite” interpretation of the
classics—is perhaps less surprising than that he should hit such much
later crazes as the Flaubertian devotion of a night to a clause, and the
still prevalent reluctance of many really literary persons to allow a
reasonable analogy and extension from the actual practice of authority.
It was inevitable that he should offend the pedants (from Scaliger
downwards), and be attacked by them with the usual scurrility; and it is
not quite certain that any but very few of his readers thoroughly
sympathised with him. In this as in other matters he was not so much
before his time (for the time of the wise is a _nunc stans_), as outside
of the time of his contemporaries. But even here we see that he was
still of that time as well. He has no real sympathy with the
vernaculars, nor any comprehension of the fact that they are on equal
literary terms with the classical tongues; and even in regard to
this—even when he is vindicating the freedom of the letter—his thoughts
are fixed on the letter mainly.
That it was better so, there can be no doubt. Literary criticism proper
could wait: correction of the mediæval habit of indiscriminate
acceptance of texts could not. And still, as it is, we have from Erasmus
not a little agreeable material of that kind which we have sedulously
gathered in the preceding volume; which, from men like him, we shall not
neglect in this; but for which there will be decreasingly little and
less room, both here and still more in the “not impossible” third.
Considering the very wide range in subject of the _Colloquies_,[12] it
is not quite insignificant that literary matters have but a small place
in them; there is perhaps more significance still in the nature of the
treatment where it does occur. [Sidenote: _The_ Colloquies.] The chief
_locus_ is inevitably the _Convivium Poeticum_, where, except the
account of the feast itself, and the excellent by-play with the
termagant _gouvernante_ Margaret, the whole piece is literary, and in a
manner critical. But the manner is wholly verbal; or else concerned with
the very mint and anise of form. A various reading in Terence from a
codex of Linacre’s; the possibility of eliding or slurring the
consonantal _v_; whether _Exilis_ in the Palinode to Canidia is a noun
or a verb; whether the Ambrosian rhymes are to be scanned on strict
metrical principles; the mistakes made by Latin translators of
Aristotle,—this is the _farrago libelluli_. I must particularly beg to
be understood as not in the least slighting these discussions. They had
to be done; it is our great debt on this side to the Renaissance that it
got over the doing of them for us in so many cases; they are the
necessary preliminary to all criticism—nay, they are an important part
of criticism itself. But they are only the rudiments.
-----
Footnote 12:
I use the Tauchnitz ed. (with the _Encomium Moriæ_) in 2 vols.
(Leipsic: 1829).
-----
The _Concio, sive Merdardus_, after an explanation of the offensive
sub-title (which has less of good-humoured superiority, and more of the
snappish Humanist temper, than is usual with Erasmus), declines into
similar matters of reading and rendering—here in reference not to
profane but to sacred literature. And the curious _Conflictus Thaliæ et
Barbariei_, which is more dramatically arranged than most of the
_Colloquies_, and may even have taken a hint from the French Morality of
_Science et Asnerye_,[13] loses, as it may seem to us, an opportunity of
being critical in the best and real kind. The antagonists exchange a
good deal of abuse, which on Thalia’s part extends to some mediæval
writers cited by Barbaries (among whom our poor old friend John of
Garlandia rather unfairly figures), and the piece, which is short, ends
with a contest in actual citation of verse—Leonine and scholastic enough
on the part of Barbaries, gracefully enough _pastiched_ from the
classics on the part of Thalia. But Erasmus either deliberately
declines, or simply does not perceive, the opening given for a
_critical_ indication of the charms of purity and the deformities of
barbarism.
-----
Footnote 13:
_V._ E. Fournier, _Théâtre Français avant la Renaissance_ (Paris, n.
d.), p. 334 _sq._ It is not at all impossible that the indebtedness
may be the other way. The dates of these pieces are very uncertain.
-----
To thread the mighty maze of the _Letters_[14] completely, for the
critical utterances to be picked up there, were more tempting than
strictly incumbent on the present adventurer, who has, however, not
neglected a reasonable essay at the adventure. The adroit and
good-humoured attempt to soothe the poetic discontent of Eobanus Hessus,
who thought Erasmus had not paid him proper attention,[15] contains, for
instance, a little matter of the kind, and several references to
contemporary Latin poets. The most important thing, perhaps, is the
opinion—sensible as usual with the writer—that, as the knowledge of
Greek becomes more and more extended, translation of it into Latin is
more and more lost labour. But Erasmus, as we should expect, evidently
has more at heart the questions of “reading and rendering” which fill
his correspondence with Budæus and others. To take the matter in order,
a curious glimpse of the literary manners, as well as the literary
judgments, of the time is afforded by an enclosure in a letter to John
Watson of Cambridge. Watson wanted to know what Erasmus had been doing,
and Erasmus, answering indirectly, sends him a letter on the subject by
one Adrian Barland of Louvain to his brother. [Sidenote: _The_ Letters.]
Some incidental expressions here about Euripides as _nobilissimus
poeta_, and Apuleius as producing _pestilentissimas facetias_, are more
valuable to us than the copious laudations of Barland on Erasmus’ own
work, which pass without any “Spare my blushes!” from the recipient and
transmitter. We note that the moral point of view is still uppermost,
though the observations are taken from a different angle. Aristophanes
would have regarded Euripides as much more “pestilent,” morally
speaking, than Apuleius. The long and necessarily complimentary letter
(ii. 1) to Leo the Tenth contains some praise of Politian and much of
Jerome, on whom Erasmus was then engaged; and while the language of this
correspondence naturally abounds in Ciceronian hyperbole, it is not
insignificant that Erasmus describes the Father with the Lion as _omni
in genere litterarum absolutissimus_, which, assuming any real meaning
in it, is not quite critical, though Jerome was certainly no small man
of letters. The letter to Henry Bovill (ii. 10), which contains the
famous story of “mumpsimus” and “sumpsimus,” as well as the almost
equally famous account of the studies of the University of Cambridge in
the ninth decade of the fifteenth century, contains also a notable
division of his own critics of the unfavourable kind. They are _aut adeo
morosi ut nihil omnino probent nisi quod ipsi faciunt; aut adeo stolidi
ut nihil sentiant; aut adeo stupidi ut nec legant quod carpunt; aut adeo
indocti ut nihil judicent; aut adeo gloriæ jejuni avidique ut carpendis
aliorum laboribus sibi laudem parent_. And their children are alive with
us unto this day.
-----
Footnote 14:
I use the London folio of 1642, where the letter to Hessus, the Fifth
of the Twenty-sixth book, will be found at col. 1407-10. I wish Mr
Nichols’ excellent rearrangement had been available. But even its
first volume only appeared when this book was in the printer’s hands.
Footnote 15:
Hessus, it may be not superfluous to say, was one of the authors of
the _Epistolæ Obscurorum_, and in verse one of the very best Humanists
of Germany.
-----
There is a very curious, half modest and severe, half confident
criticism of his own verses in ii. 22. He admits that there is nothing
“tumultuous” in them, “no torrent overflowing its banks,” no _deinosis_:
but claims elegance and Atticism. It would be perhaps unfair to attach
the character of deliberate critical utterance to his effusive laudation
of the style of Colet in an early letter (v. 4, dated 1498, but Mr
Seebohm has thrown doubt on these dates, and Mr Nichols appears to be
completely redistributing them), as _placidus sedatus inaffectatus,
fontis limpidissimi in morem ditissimo e pectore scatens, æqualis, sui
undique similis, apertus, simplex, modestiæ plenus, nihil usquam habens
scabri contorti conturbati_. But it is interesting, and significant of
his own performances, as is the comparison (v. 19) of Jerome and Cicero
as masters of rhetoric. The somewhat intemperate and promiscuous
contempt of mediæval writing which appears in the _Conflictus_ (_vide
supra_) reappears, with the very same names mentioned, in an epistle
(vii. 3), _Cornelio Suo_, of 1490, which, if it be rightly dated, must
be long anterior to the Colloquy. But a much more important expression
of critical opinion than any of these appears in v. 20 to Ammonius,
where Erasmus gives his views on poetry at large. They are much what we
should suspect or expect beforehand. Some folk, he says, think that a
poem is not a poem unless you poke in all the gods from heaven, and from
earth, and from under the earth. _He_ has always liked poetry which is
at no great distance from prose—_but the best prose_.[16] He likes
rhetorical poetry and poetical rhetoric. He does not care for
far-fetched thoughts; let the poet stick to his subject, but give fair
attention to smoothness of versification. “Prose and sense,” in short:
with a little rhetoric and versification added.
-----
Footnote 16:
Mihi semper placuit carmen quod a prosa, sed optima, non longe
recederet.—_Op. cit._, col. 420.
-----
But on such matters he always touches lightly, and with little
elaboration; and to see where his real interest lay we have but to turn
to the above-quoted verbal discussions with Budæus on the one hand, to
the minute and well-known account of More’s life and conversation given
to Hutten in x. 30 on the other. Nor do I think that it is worth while
to extend to the remaining two-thirds of the letters the more exact
examination which has here been given to the first third or
thereabouts.[17]
-----
Footnote 17:
Those who would like to continue this may look, among many other
places, at xii. 7 (praise of Politian); xv. 17 (jubilation over the
confusion of Humanism); xvii. 11 (ditto to Vives); xxi. 4 (a good deal
on writers both ancient and modern), and especially xxvi. 5 (above
noticed).
-----
Once more, far be it from any reasonable person to blame Erasmus, or any
of his immediate contemporaries, for not doing what it was not their
chief business to do. That chief business, in the direction of
criticism, was to shake off the critical promiscuousness of the Middle
Ages, to insist on the importance of accurate texts and exact
renderings, to stigmatise the actual barbarism, the mere _mumpsimus_,
which had no doubt too often taken the place not only of pure classical
Latinity, not only of the fine if not classical Latin of Tertullian and
Augustine and Jerome, but of that exquisite “sport” the Latin of the
early Middle Age hymns, to hammer Greek into men’s heads (or elsewhere),
to clear up the confusion of dates and times and values, which had put
the false Callisthenes on a level with Arrian, and exalted Dares above
Homer. Even the literary beauty of the classics themselves was not their
main affair;—they had to inculcate school-work rather than University
work, University work rather than the maturer study of literature. Of
the vernaculars it was best that they should say nothing: for except
Italian none was in a very good state, and Humanists were much more
likely to speak unadvisedly with their lips if they did speak on the
subject. They worked their work: well were it for all if others did the
same.
For the reasons given, then, Erasmus and those whom he represents[18]
could do little for criticism proper; and for the [Sidenote:
_Distribution of the Book._] same (or yet others closely connected) the
northern nations, of whom Erasmus is the most distinguished literary
representative, could for a long time do as little: while some of them
for a much longer did nothing at all. Of the others, the criticism of
Spain, the criticism of France, and the criticism of England were all
borrowed directly from that of Italy. The Spaniards did not begin till
so late that their results, like those of Opitz and other Germans,
cannot be properly treated till the next Book. France was stirred about
the middle of the century, and England a very little later. These two
countries, therefore, will properly have each its chapter in the present
book. But two of much more importance must first be given to those
Italian developments, in our Art or Study, on which both French and
English criticism are based. The first will deal with those who write,
roundly speaking, before Scaliger; the second with the work of that
redoubted Aristarch, with the equally—perhaps the more—important name of
Castelvetro, with the weary wrangle over the _Gerusalemme Liberata_
(which, weary as it is, is the first great critical debate over a
contemporary vernacular work of importance, and therefore within measure
not to be missed by us), and with certain of the later Italian critical
theorists, of the sixteenth and earliest seventeenth century, who are
valuable, some as continuing, some as more or less ineffectually
fighting against, the neo-classic domination.
-----
Footnote 18:
See _infra_ (pp. 27-29) on Augustinus Olmucensis (Käsenbrot) and
Cornelius Agrippa.
-----