SCALIGER, CASTELVETRO, AND THE LATER ITALIAN
CRITICS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
JULIUS CÆSAR SCALIGER—THE ‘POETIC’—BOOK I.: ‘HISTORICUS’—BOOK II.:
‘HYLE’—BOOKS III. AND IV.: ‘IDEA’ AND ‘PARASCEVE’—BOOKS V. AND VI.:
‘CRITICUS’ AND ‘HYPERCRITICUS’—BOOK VII.: EPINOMIS—GENERAL
IDEAS ON UNITY AND THE LIKE—HIS VIRGIL-WORSHIP—HIS SOLID
MERITS—CASTELVETRO—THE OPERE VARIE—THE ‘POETICA’—ON DRAMATIC
CONDITIONS—ON THE THREE UNITIES—ON THE FREEDOM OF EPIC—HIS ECCENTRIC
ACUTENESS—EXAMPLES: HOMER’S NODDING, PROSE IN TRAGEDY, VIRGIL, MINOR
POETRY—THE MEDIUM AND END OF POETRY—UNCOMPROMISING CHAMPIONSHIP OF
DELIGHT—HIS EXCEPTIONAL INTEREST AND IMPORTANCE—TASSO AND THE
CONTROVERSIES OVER THE ‘GERUSALEMME’—TASSO’S CRITICAL WRITINGS AND
POSITION—PATRIZZI: HIS ‘POETICA’—THE ‘DECA ISTORIALE’—THE ‘DECA
DISPUTATA’—THE ‘TRIMERONE’ ON TASSO—REMARKABLE POSITION OF
PATRIZZI—‘SED CONTRA MUNDUM’—THE LATEST GROUP OF SIXTEENTH-CENTURY
CRITICS—PARTENIO—VIPERANO—PICCOLOMINI—GILIO—MAZZONI—DENORES—ZINANO—MAZZONE
DA MIGLIONICO, ETC.—SUMMO.
In the remarkable little book, a notice of which concluded the last
chapter, Lilius Giraldus, as we observed, includes—for their verse-work
nominally, as became his title, but, with his usual acuteness, obviously
perceiving that their importance lay elsewhere—both of the most famous
and influential critics of the central sixteenth century in Italy.
[Sidenote: _Julius Cæsar Scaliger._] His reference to Julius Cæsar
Scaliger (who was, indeed, not more than six years younger than himself)
contains some touches (such as the mention of him by the name he took,
but with the addition “qui primus Bordonus cognomine fuit,” and the
description of his book on Comic Metres, as “arranged with such
wonderful subtlety as not to be intelligible save to a reader well
versed in the subject”) which are of doubtful friendliness, but allows
the Veronese gladiator to be _apprime eruditus_ and capable of _carmina
elegantia_. For us nothing of Scaliger’s needs detailed notice except
the once world-famous and still famous _Poetices Libri Septem_,[97]
which appeared in 1561 after the death of Giraldus, and indeed after his
own.
-----
Footnote 97:
My copy is the second edition (apud Petrum Santandreanum, _s. l._,
1581).
-----
Scaliger was very much better qualified than Boileau to be _législateur
du Parnasse_ in the sense in which both understood Parnassus: or perhaps
it would be better to say that without a Scaliger a Boileau would have
been impossible. [Sidenote: _The_ Poetic.] He had immense learning; he
had absolute confidence in his own judgment; and within limits which, if
they reduce his positive value, make him an even more complete and
direct exponent of his own particular school and creed, he had great
acuteness, an orderly and logical spirit, and a thorough command of
method. Nothing (certain inevitable postulates being granted) can be
more luminous and intelligible than the book, in which the author,
through all his thousand pages, never loses sight, nor permits his
reader to lose sight, of the subject, the process, and the goal. That he
stands forth in the preface to his son Sylvius with an air of patronage
at once paternal and pedagogic, announcing himself as the pioneer of the
subject, dismissing those who allege Varro, as with levity ignoring the
fact that neither Varro nor anybody else in antiquity did, or could do,
anything of the kind: that he blandly sweeps away the _plebs
grammaticorum_; that he labels the _Ars Poetica_ itself as teaching
_adeo sine ulla arte ut saturæ propius esse videatur_, Aristotle as
fragmentary, Vida as _optimus poeta in theatro, claudus magister in
schola_—is all of it agreeably Scaligerian in manner. But it is far from
being untrue in fact. And there is a touch of sublimity in the _Quare
porro opera danda est nobis_, “wherefore _we_ must put our shoulders to
the wheel,” with which he concludes. “Let others grub money, or canvass
for office, or talk about the wars as parasite guests at dinner: we will
let them alone, and simply defend the nobility of our studies, the
magnanimity and simplicity of our purpose.” After this magnificent pose
and draping, and before commendatory verses (the main copy being by no
less a person than Etienne de La Boétie) comes a table of contents of
antique clearness and solidity, filling nearly a dozen pages, by means
of which, and of the more than sixty of index at the end, the study of
the text is not a little facilitated.
The First Book has the special title, _Qui et Historicus_, which it
deserves, if not exactly or exclusively in our sense of History.
[Sidenote: _Book I._: Historicus.] The critic begins, scholastically
enough, with a distribution of everything into necessary, useful, or
delightful, and proceeds to apply the classification in a beneficial
manner to literary expression in general and Poetry in particular,
ending the chapter with a characteristic gibe (for Scaliger is far from
unhumorous) at the moderns who confine the appellation “Makers” to
candle-makers.[98] Then he follows the safe road by discussing the
causes (material, formal, &c.) of poetry; and indulges in a free review
(for Scaliger, to do him justice, is _paratus nullius jurare in verba_)
of ancient opinions. Hence he sets off to a full enumeration and
examination, not merely of the kinds of poetry, but (in connection more
especially with the drama) of the theatres and games of the ancients.
Nothing escapes the extensive view of his observation, neither palinodes
nor parodies, neither centos nor enigmas. And he is intensive as well as
extensive. He rebukes, in his usual magisterial manner, the _Græculas
nugas_ of Plutarch, who explains the number of the Muses by that of the
letters in the name of their mother, Mnemosyne; and as for Plato’s blame
of poetry, _respiceat ipse sese quot ineptas quot spurcas fabellas
inserat_.[99] The distinction of _Poesis_, _Poema_, and _Poeta_, which
follows (and which many grave writers, including Ben, copy), we have
often met in kind or in itself before, nor is it quite so meticulous as
it looks. For Scaliger utilises it to stop the blunder of Plutarch and
others, who make a distinction in kind between great poems and smaller
ones. It is tempting but impossible to follow him through the
multitudinous, though far from mazy, ramifications of his plan. It must
be enough to say that he leaves few items of the dictionary of his
subject untouched, and (however inclined one may be to cry “Halt and
fight!” at not a few of his definitions) formulates them with a
roundness and a touch of confident mastery which fully explain, and to
some extent justify, the practical dictatorship which he so long
enjoyed. As thus (at the opening of chap. vi. p. 27), “Tragedy, like
Comedy established in examples of human life, differs from it in three
things—the condition of the persons, the quality of the fortunes and
actions, the end. Whence it is necessary that it should also differ in
style.” And this legislative calmness is accompanied and fortified by a
profusion of erudite example, which might well awe the disciple.
-----
Footnote 98:
This joke requires a little explanation and adaptation to get it into
English. The Latin is _miror majores nostros sibi tam iniquos fuisse
ut factoris vocem maluerint_ oleariorum cancellis _circumscribere_. In
fact, _Fattojo_ and _Fattojano_, if not _fattore_, do mean in Italian
“Oil-Press” and “Oil-Presser.”
Footnote 99:
Scaliger goes so far as to say that “it would be better never to have
read” the _Symposium_ and the _Phædrus_, because of their taint with
the _Grœcanicum scelus_.
-----
The second book, _Qui et Hyle_, gives us an important point at once, in
the fact that this _hyle_—this “material” of poetry—is [Sidenote: _Book
II._: Hyle.] frankly acknowledged to be verse.[100] The entire book is
occupied, at the rate of a chapter apiece, after the half-dozen general
ones which open it, with almost every classical metre, if not from
pyrrhic to dochmiac, at least from iambic to galliambic. A great number
of interesting dicta might be extracted from this book—as, for instance,
Scaliger’s remarkable distinction of Rhythm and Metre, as giving, the
latter the more exact _measure_ of the line, the former its continuity
and “temperament.”[101]
-----
Footnote 100:
The decision of this is all the more remarkable that Scaliger does
not, as unwary moderns might expect, make verse the _form_ of Poetry,
but the _matter_. Feet, rhythm, metre, these are the things that
Poetry works in, her stuff, her raw material. The skill of the poet in
its various applications is the form. A very little thought will show
this to be the most decisive negation possible of the Wordsworthian
heresy—anticipated by many sixteenth-century writers, from Italy to
England, and though not exactly authorised, countenanced by the
ancients, from Aristotle downwards—that verse is _not_ essential in
any way.
Footnote 101:
One cannot help thinking that this distinction, which is quite
contrary to those entertained by Aristotle and Quintilian, must have
been influenced by the cadences of the modern languages—Italian and
French—with which Scaliger was familiar. In both, but especially in
French, the actual “measuring-off” of syllables was the be-all and
end-all of metre, the easements provided in English and German by
syllabic equivalence being in French refused altogether, in Italian
replaced only by the more meagre aid of syncope and apocope.
-----
The third, _Qui et Idea_, is far longer than either of the preceding,
and is less easily describable to modern readers. [Sidenote: _Books III.
and IV._: Idea _and_ Parasceve.] Those who have read the first volume of
this book with some care will understand it without much difficulty, if
we call it a throwing of the traditional and technical treatment of
Rhetoric into a form suitable to Poetry. Prosopopœia and ethopœia; the
bearings or “colours” of time, place, race, sex, and the rest; the
considerations of chance and manners and fortune; lead us to our old
friends the Figures. To these, giving them the most liberal
interpretation possible, so as to include fresh kinds of poetry as well
as actual turns of speech, Scaliger complacently allows nearly a hundred
out of the nearly hundred and thirty chapters of this overgrown Book,
comprising by itself nearly a full quarter of the volume. Nor does even
this devotion to Figures satisfy him, for the Fourth Book, _Qui et
Parasceve_ (preparation), beginning with the characters or distinctions
of style, turns before long to more Figures, and is, in fact, a sort of
Part II. of the Third. Naturally, there is no part of the book more
difficult to analyse, but, as naturally, there is none in which analysis
is less required. Scaliger luxuriates in his opportunities of
sub-division and sub-definition; but he abounds ever more and more in
those examples which we have recognised as, from the time of Hermogenes
downwards, the “solace of this sin,” and the plentifulness of which in
Scaliger himself would, even if they stood alone, go some way to atone
for the absence of a larger examination of writers as wholes. And he
does not allow us to lack even this.
Another pair of Books, the Fifth (_Qui et Criticus_) and the Sixth (_Qui
et Hypercriticus_), together constitute the pith and body of the book in
spirit, and occupy more than a third of it in space. [Sidenote: _Books
V. and VI._: Criticus _and_ Hypercriticus.] It is here that Scaliger
lets himself and his learning loose. The Fifth Book consists of a vast
series of cross-comparisons, Homer with Virgil, Greeks with Latins,
Virgil with Greeks other than Homer, Horace and Ovid with Greeks, Latins
with other Latins, special subject-passages of the same theme from
different authors. Its sequel, the _Hypercriticus_, undertakes, for the
first time, an actual survey of _belles lettres_ as Scaliger understood
them, beginning, after an odd discussion of Plautus and Terence, with
the Renaissance Humanists (many Italians and a few Germans and French),
and then receding through three Ages (the Middle disdainfully excluded),
to Catullus and Horace. Here, of course, one may, according to taste or
temperament, most revel in, or most shudder away from, “criticism of
criticism.” Here the citation is most opulent and useful. Here, above
all, the most hostile judge must be forced to admire and acknowledge the
erudition which not merely for the first time attempts, but for the
first time completely meets the initial requirements of, a complete
examination of poetic literature on a definite and reasoned basis. But
here, inevitably, the weakness of Scaliger comes out most strongly, as
well as his strength. Not only was his judgment warped in more ways than
one by prejudice, but we are, with all the goodwill in the world, forced
before long to conclude[102] that his taste itself was radically
defective. Nor does this conclusion rest merely on his preference
(anticipated by Vida and others, and almost an article of national
faith) of Virgil to Homer. His estimate of Musæus also as far superior
to Homer, as incomparable among Greeks, as “worthy of Virgil,” speaks
this taste only too well; and the fearless good faith with which,
disdaining the “guile that lurks in generals,” he quotes line after line
as specially beautiful, delivers him into our hands, a respectable but
self-convicted victim. After this the “coldness” and “childishness” and
“unsuitability” of the Homeric epithet, the “semper-august” character of
Virgil, and innumerable other things of the kind, disturb us not.
Scaliger’s idol has spoken Scaliger’s doom in _Qui Bavium non odit_—not,
of course, that _Hero and Leander_ is itself by any means Bavian, but
that it is so in comparison with Homer. Nearly a hundred pages are given
up to this main comparison of Homer and Virgil. The others are shorter,
but always result in the same dogged maintenance of the superiority of
Latins to Greeks—that is to say, the same involuntary confession of
Scaliger’s preference of Rhetoric to Poetry. It is interesting, however,
to find him conducting his comparisons in a way in which, as in most
other cases, posterity for two centuries thronged to follow him—the
assemblage, that is to say, of passages on the same subject from
different poets.
-----
Footnote 102:
As, even throughout the neo-classic age, very orthodox neo-classics
admitted, especially in the “Musæus _v._ Homer” case.
-----
Still less can we abstract the curious and invaluable survey of the
_Hypercriticus_. Not a little of it is actual review of actual
contemporaries or very recent predecessors, and review of the ancients
takes the same form, reinforced constantly by discussed quotations.
Sometimes, as in the case of Juvenal, these are arranged into a little
anthology of “jewels five words long,” strung together with _acute et
hoc, illud valde festivum_, and the like appreciative interjections. His
preference of Juvenal to Horace is seasoned with a characteristic fling
at Erasmus (p. 876).
[Sidenote: _Book VII._: Epinomis.]
Lastly comes an _Epinomis_ or Codicil, which is divided into two parts,
and takes up some of the special points of poetical or dramatic
criticism then most interesting—the relative importance of action and
character, the parts of tragedy, the Chorus, the metres most appropriate
to the stage, and the like, ending with a sort of “gratillity” or bonus
in the shape of an examination of a codex of Terence, which we could
spare, at least in this place. More piquant, at least, are the diatribes
_de negligentia aut inscitia professorum_, directed (with a show of
respect) against Erasmus once more; the occasional flights, such as
“Variety is the _tirewoman_ of poetry”[103] (p. 906); the amusing
references to _mea poemata_, which in some parts of the book he has
obligingly, and once more with a fearlessness drawing nigh to rashness,
exposed to the arrows; and other things which are perhaps here all the
more numerous because the Book is an avowed Appendix, and, as it were,
_omnium gatherum_. They are, however, plentiful everywhere; and if it
were possible to revive the old periodical Literary Miscellanies of
commonplace-book character—a thing which will have to be done sooner or
later, if the accumulations of the last few centuries are not to became
mere Nineveh-mounds, as yet unexplored—I should like to compose a
_florilegium_ of memorabilia out of Scaliger.
-----
Footnote 103:
_Varietas poetices_ κομητικὴ, _sicut Cypassis Corinnæ_. The text has
κομωτικὴ, which I do not find.
-----
For in this great space, occupied with equal method and erudition, it
could not be but that remarkable pronouncements on the more general
questions of literary criticism, whether given _obiter_ or in definite
reference to argued questions, should emerge. [Sidenote: _General ideas
on Unity and the like._] Scaliger is, indeed, less set than most of his
predecessors in Italian criticism, and than some at least of his
successors, on these general pronouncements. “The disinterested and
philosophic treatment of æsthetic problems wholly aside from all
practical considerations,” as the tendency of Italian criticism has been
rather unguardedly characterised,[104] does not seem to have had the
first attraction for him. Yet he could not, in the wide sweep of his
net, have avoided such questions if he would; and, with his fearless
temper and eager literary interests, there is no reason to suppose that
he would have avoided them if he could. He did not explicitly enjoin the
Three Unities,[105] but he did more than any other man had done to
inculcate that unfortunate notion of “verisimilitude”[106] from which,
much more than from Aristotle, they were deduced. Not many words need be
wasted (especially as the point will recur only too often during the
volume) on the absurdity of this wresting of _Incredulus odi_. The whole
arrangements of the theatre are _invraisemblables_, no matter whether
you have electric light or cross-shaped laths with candles on them,
marquises sitting on the stage or millionaires in stage-boxes, elaborate
scenery or directions to the audience, “Here is Thebes.” You do not
murder, or (if you can help it) make love, in real life, before a
miscellaneous audience who have paid to see you do it; in real life you
do not talk in any regular stage lingo that has hitherto been invented,
whether the outward form of it be senarii, or fourteeners, or
complicated rhymed stanzas, or doggerel, or couplet, or blank verse, or
stage prose. The sixteenth century _Globe_, and the twentieth century
_Lyceum_, are alike unlike any place in which one habitually performs
any action of life from birth, through marriage, to death. That there
_is_ a stage verisimilitude, which it is dangerous or fatal to break,
need not be denied. But neither Scaliger nor any of his successors in
purism has proved that we are, or ought to be, any more shocked by
Æschylus when he shifts from Delphi to Athens than by Thackeray when he
transports us from Flanders to Chelsea.
-----
Footnote 104:
Spingarn, p. 172. “Disinterested treatment” of practical problems,
such as poems certainly are, “wholly aside from all practical
considerations,” sometimes leads to awkward results.
Footnote 105:
Mr Spingarn (p. 94) apparently states that he “formulated” them, but
the gist of the next two pages fully corrects this slip or ambiguity;
and he has himself pointed out with equal decision and correctness
that the French assumption contained in the phrase, _Unités
Scaligériennes_, is unfounded.
Footnote 106:
P. 365.
-----
We may venture indeed to suspect that Scaliger “had more wit than to be
here.” One may frequently differ with him; but he seldom runs mad on
mere theory. It is he, for instance, who, while, as we have seen, he
lays down uncompromisingly that the material of poetry is verse,
instances the _Æthiopica_ as a perfect epic. Instead of confusing poetry
and learning, as some have done, he holds the much more sensible
position that learning is useful to a poet. He takes the hard-and-fast
ethical view of the ends both of tragedy and of all poetry, and he
believes firmly in the type. But he does not bemuse himself, as some had
done and more were to do, in the explanation of _katharsis_, and the
definition of the tragic hero.
His greatest and also his most pervading critical fault is that
“deification of Virgil,” whereof, though by no means the inventor, he
was the chief prophet to the best part of three centuries. [Sidenote:
_His Virgil-worship._] Let it be admitted (with every possible emphasis
on the fact that it is no mere extorted admission but a genuine and
spontaneous opinion) that anybody is free to admire Virgil or any one
else as much as he likes. “She that is fair to him” _is_ so, and there’s
an end on’t. But if any one proceed, not merely to intimate indifference
to other fair ones, but to find positive fault with them because they
are not like her, then he becomes at once uncritical: still more so if
he erect her qualities, features, style, into abstract virtues and
positive truths, all opposites to which are sin and vileness. He may
call “Simula Silene, nervosa et lignea Dorcas,” to take two only out of
the famous list in the classic place of this matter. But he must not
declare that a girl who has a straight Grecian nose is therefore ugly,
or that softness and plumpness are not excellent things in woman.
Scaliger does this. For him Virgil is, at once, the standard of
excellence and the infallible touchstone of defect. Nay, he is actually
a better Nature; a wiser but more perfect Creation, whereby you may save
yourself the trouble of outside imitation, inasmuch as everything worth
imitating is there better done than by Nature herself. It is impossible
to exaggerate or caricature Scaliger’s Maronolatry: as the Highfliers
did in the case of Defoe’s _Shortest Way_, he would cheerfully accept
and indorse the most outrageous statement of it.
Grave, however, as is this fault, and seriously as it vitiates
Scaliger’s attitude as a critic, there is no doubt that it served in
itself as the backbone of that attitude, and gave it the stiffness which
enabled it to resist at once argument and time. A cause of disquiet to
some critics themselves, and a rallying-cry to most enemies of
criticism, has been constantly found in the apparently floating and
uncertain character of the completest critical orthodoxy. Longinus
himself, perhaps the best exponent of that orthodoxy, has been and is
charged with vagueness; and all those who follow him must lay their
account with the same accusation. In the last resort we often cannot
give a clear, definite, cut-and-dried reason for the faith that is in
us, and we still oftener had better not try to do so. Scaliger and
Scaligerism are in no such plight. Their _Sortes Virgilianæ_ are _ex
hypothesi_ decisive, and of universal application. What is found in
Virgil is good, is the best; what is different from Virgil is bad or
mediocre; what is like Virgil is good in direct proportion to the
likeness. This of itself gives confidence both to the critic and to his
disciples.
Again, Scaliger, though he has no more right to arrogate Reason and
Nature as on his side than the rest of his school, possesses, like all
of the best of them, a certain sturdy _prima facie_ common-sense.
[Sidenote: _His solid merits._] It is this which dictates his theory of
dramatic verisimilitude; this which palliates some of his Homeric and
other blasphemies. Though uncompromisingly moral, and by no means
illogical (when you have once granted his bundle of postulates), he is
not in the least metaphysical. The wayfaring man, with tolerable
intelligence and a very little trouble, can understand him perfectly.
Still more unmixed praise can be given to him from other points of view.
To any scholar his scholarship is singularly refreshing in its
thoroughness and range; he really neglects nothing proper to his
subject, though he may define that subject with a somewhat arbitrary
hand. Agree with him or differ with him as we may, it is an infinite
comfort to be brought thus in contact and confrontation with the actual
texts—to exchange the paper symbols of “the poet,” “the dramatist,” “the
satirist” in the abstract, for sound ringing coin of actual poetry,
drama, satire, told down on the counter, and tested by file and acid if
required. The literary atlas of the _Hypercriticus_ is, as has been
said, the first attempt at a complete thing of the kind since
Quintilian, and of necessity far more complete than his. In fact,
Scaliger taught the school opposed to him—the school which after many a
generation of desultory fighting at last worsted his own—the way to
conquer. History and Comparison—the twin lights of criticism, the only
road-makers across the abyss—are resorted to by him fearlessly. That he
loses the best of their light, and twists the road in the wrong
direction, by following Will-o'-the-wisps like his Virgil-worship,
matters in detail but not in principle. He has practically come back to
the safe way which Aristotle entered, but was precluded from treading
far enough, which Quintilian and Longinus trod, but on which most of the
ancients would not set foot. He has not found the last secret—the secret
of _submitting_ to History and to Comparison; he still looks upon both
as instruments to be used merely under the direction of, and in
subordination to, the purposes of _a priori_ theory. His neglect of the
vernaculars is not only wrong, but by his time absurd. His minor
prejudices (as against Erasmus) are sometimes contemptible. His actual
taste, as has been said, was probably neither delicate nor versatile.
But he has learning, logic, lucidity within his range, laborious
industry, and love of literature. The multitude which followed him
followed him partly to do evil; but it would have been a surprise, and
almost a shame, had so bold and capable a leader lacked a multitude of
followers.
As has been said, Lilius Giraldus also refers to Lodovico Castelvetro,
who at least resembled Scaliger in the characteristic Ishmaelitism of
the Renaissance critic. [Sidenote: _Castelvetro._] His quarrel with
Caro, also already referred to, was unluckily, we must not say
distinguished, but marked, by unfair play on the part of his adversary,
who “delated” him to the Inquisition for heresy; and Castelvetro had to
fly the country. His most important work appeared late, the famous
edition and translation, with commentary, of the _Poetics_[107] not
being published till a year before his death. “He was of his nature
choleric,” says his biographer; and he bestowed a good deal of this
choler not merely upon Caro, but upon the majestic Bembo and others. Yet
Castelvetro was a very remarkable critic, and perhaps deserved the
ascription of actual critical genius better than any man who has yet
been mentioned in this volume. It is but for chequered righteousness
that his practically certain formulation of the Three Unities can be
counted to him; but, as we shall see, he has other claims, from which it
is not necessary to write off anything.
-----
Footnote 107:
Vienna, 1570. My copy is the second enlarged and improved issue, which
appeared at Basle five years later. I have also the companion edition
of Petrarch (Basle, 1582), and the _Opere Varie Critiche_, published,
with a Life, by Muratori, in 4to (Lione, 1727). Besides these he wrote
an “exposition” of Dante, which was lost, and he is said, by Muratori,
to have been never tired of reading, and discovering new beauties in,
Boccaccio. Bentley, _Diss. on Phal._, ed. 1817, p. liii, defending
Castelvetro against Boyle, says that “his books have at this present
time such a mighty reputation, that they are sold for their weight in
silver in most countries of Europe.” I am glad that this is not true
now, for the _Poetic_ by itself weighs nearly 3 lb. But Europe often
makes its valuations worse. I have seen, though not bought, a copy for
a shilling in these days.
-----
His impartial attachment to both classical and vulgar tongues ranks him,
of itself, in a higher sphere than that of Scaliger; and a certain
impetuous, incalculable, _prime-sautier_ genius puts him higher still.
Even contemporaries seem to have recognised this in him, though they
sometimes shook their heads over its pronouncements.[108] It may,
indeed, sometimes seem that these pronouncements are, if not
inconsistent, difficult to connect by any central tie-beam of critical
theory. But this is almost inevitable in the case of a critic whose work
takes the form, not of regular treatises on large subjects, nor even of
connected essays on separate authors and books, but of commentaries and
_adversaria_, where the passage immediately under consideration is
uppermost in the writer’s mind, and may—not illegitimately in a
fashion—induce him to display a facet of his thought which does not seem
logically connected with other facets. This peculiarity is perhaps the
only excuse for the depreciation of Dacier, who, reinforcing his native
dulness with the superciliousness of a Frenchman in the later years of
Louis XIV., accused Castelvetro of ignorance, and even of contradiction
of Aristotle. The fact is, that Castelvetro is first of all an
independent critic, and that, though there are few less common, there
are no more valuable critical qualities than independence, even when it
is sometimes pushed to the verge of eccentricity, providing only that it
is sincere, and not ill-informed. It seems to me uncharitable, if not
flagrantly unjust, to deny Castelvetro sincerity, and either impudent or
ignorant to deny him information.
-----
Footnote 108:
See the curious remarks of Salviati, printed from MS. by Mr Spingarn
(_op. cit._, p. 316). Salviati thinks that Castelvetro too often wrote
to show off subtlety of opinion, and to be _not_ like other people.
-----
But he had also acuteness and taste. I do not know a better example in
little of the latter quality at the time than his short and scornful
description[109] of a preposterous comparison by another critic,
Bartolommeo Riccio, between the “Sparrow” of Catullus and a pretty but
commonplace poem of Navagero on a dog. [Sidenote: _The Opere Varie._]
One may sigh over the ruling passion, not to say the original sin, of
critical man, on passing from this to a tangle of recrimination and
“that’s _my_ thunder” which follows with reference to Riccio and Pigna
and Cinthio. But this passes again into a solid discussion on the
material and form of poetry, and on the office of the Muses. Many of
these animadversions are, as we should expect, purely verbal, sometimes
not beyond the powers of the _grammaticuccio_, of whom Castelvetro
himself not unfrequently talks with piquant scorn. But the comfort of
finding annotations on Virgil alternating with discourses on Dante, like
that of placing a quarto on Petrarch side by side with one on Aristotle,
more than atones for any occasional hair-splitting. We are at last in
the Jerusalem of general Literature which is the mother of us all, which
is free and universal; not in this or that separatist Samaria or
exclusive Hebron. The Platonic annotations, which are numerous, are
important, because they show just the other side of Castelvetro’s talent
from the merely verbal one—almost the whole of them being devoted to the
exposition and illustration of meaning. It is a great pity that he did
not work his notes[110] on the _Gorgias_ (which he regards expressly as
Plato’s _Rhetoric_) into a regular treatise of contrast and comparison
on this subject between Aristotle and Plato. But all these notes show us
the qualification of the commentator to deal with so difficult a subject
as the _Poetics_.
-----
Footnote 109:
_Op. Var._, p. 83 _sq._
Footnote 110:
_Op. Var._, pp. 288-306.
-----
The stout post quarto, with its vignette of an exceedingly
determined-looking owl standing on a prostrate pitcher and hooting
_Kekrika_, is dedicated to Maximilian II. [Sidenote: _The_ Poetica.] It
is arranged on a system equally simple and thorough. First comes a
section of the Greek Text; then a short Italian summary of its contents;
then the Italian translation; and then the _spositione_—the
Commentary—which may be long or short as circumstances require. Often,
on a Greek text of a few lines, it will run to as many quarto pages,
full-packed with small print. Not the least advantageous part of this
quadripartite arrangement is that the summaries—being, though very
brief, to the point—are capable of being put together as a table of
contents. This, however, but partially applies to Castelvetro’s
commentary, which is often not a little discursive from the text. The
defect was, however, supplied in the second edition by an elaborate
index specially devoted to the _Spositioni_, and consisting, not of mere
words or names with page references, but of reasoned descriptions of the
subjects, as thus—
"_Allegrezza._
“Come nasca dalla tristitia, che si sente del male del giusto, e del
bene del malvagio.
oblica, che si prende dalla miseria, o dalla felicita altrui qual sia,”
&c. &c.
This is a great help in tackling Castelvetro’s text, the book containing
some seven hundred pages, of perhaps as many words each.
No analysis of a book of such a size, so necessarily parasitic or
satellitic on another in general run, and yet branching and winding with
such a self-willed originality of its own, is possible. [Sidenote: _On
Dramatic conditions._] One might easily write a folio on Castelvetro’s
quarto. Here we can only, as in most other cases now, except those of
books or parts of books at once epoch-making in character and moderate
in bulk, give an idea of the author’s most important views on general
and particular points. It was necessary, since Castelvetro is revolving
round Aristotle, that the greater part of his treatise should deal with
the drama: and perhaps nowhere is that originality which has been
praised more visible than here, whether it lead him wrong or right. He
has undoubtedly made a step, from the mathematical towards the æsthetic
view of literature, in conditioning, as he does, his view of the Drama
by a consideration of the stage. To literary _a-priorists_ this is of
course horrible; to those who take the facts of literature, as they take
the facts of life, it is a welcome and reconciling discovery. The
conditions of the Greek stage were admittedly such as can never be
naturally reproduced, and therefore, however great and perfect the Greek
Tragedy may be in its own way, it cannot usurp the position of “best in
all ways”; and can still less pretend to dictate to other kinds that
they shall not be good at all in ways different from its own.
If the details of Castelvetro’s theory do not always correspond in
excellence to the sense and novelty of the general view, this is because
he adulterates his notion of stage requirements with that unlucky
“verisimilitude” misunderstood, which is the curse of all the
neo-classic critics, and which comes from neglect of the Aristotelian
preference of the probable-impossible to the improbable-possible.
[Sidenote: _On the Three Unities._] The huge Mysteries of the Middle
Ages, which ranged from Heaven to Hell, which took weeks to act, and
covered millennia in their action, did at least this good to the English
and some other theatres—that they familiarised the mind with the neglect
of this verisimilitude. But Castelvetro would have none of such neglect.
His play must be adjusted, not merely in Action, but in Space and Time,
as nearly as possible to the actual capacity of the stage, the actual
duration of the performance.[111] And so the Fatal Three, the Weird
Sisters of dramatic criticism, the vampires that sucked the blood out of
nearly all European tragedy, save in England and Spain, for three
centuries, make their appearance. They “enter the critical literature of
Europe,” as Mr Spingarn has very truly laid it down,[112] “from the time
of Castelvetro.”
But to balance this enslaving of the Drama (in which he far exceeds
Aristotle), Castelvetro frees the Epic from Aristotelian restrictions in
an almost equally important manner. [Sidenote: _On the freedom of
Epic._] From his references in the _Opere Varie_ to Cinthio and Pigna,
it would appear that he claimed, if not priority, an even portion with
them in the consideration of the subject of Epic Poetry. And though not
agreeing with them altogether, he certainly agrees with them in
enlarging the domains of the Epic. Poetry, he says in effect,[113] may
do anything that History can do; and, like the latter, it may deal, not
only with one action of one man, but with his life-actions, or with many
actions of many men.
-----
Footnote 111:
In fact, he subordinates the first to the other two. _They_ make it
necessary. In order to appreciate his views, it is necessary to read
the commentary on all the Aristotelian places concerned, and also on
that touching Epic.
Footnote 112:
P. 101.
Footnote 113:
_Poet. d’Arist._, p. 278.
-----
With Castelvetro, however,—and it is probably the cause why pedants like
Dacier undervalue him,—both the character of his compositions, and
probably also the character of his mind, draw him much more to
independent, though by no means always or often isolated, critical
_aperçus_ and judgments, than to theoretical discourses, with or without
illustration. [Sidenote: _His eccentric acuteness._] To put it
differently, while there is usually a theory at the back of his
appreciations, the appreciation generally stands in front of the theory.
But however this may be, that quality of “unexpectedness,” in which some
æsthetic theorists have found such a charm, belongs to him as it does to
few critics. One might, for instance, give half-a-dozen guesses to a
tolerably ingenious person without his hitting on Castelvetro’s
objection to the story of Ricciardetto and Fiordispina in the
_Orlando_.[114] That objection is not moral: not on the ground of what
is ordinarily called decorum: not on that of digression, on that of
improbability generally, on any other that is likely to occur. It is, if
you please, that as Fiordispina was a Mahometan, and Ricciardetto a
Christian, and as Christians and Mahometans do not believe in the same
kind of Fauns and Fairies, as, further, Fauns do not eat ladies or
goddesses, whether alive or dead, Ricciardetto’s explanation of his
alleged transformation of sex is not credible. In a modern writer this
would look like an absolute absence of humour, or like a clumsy attempt
at it; and I am not prepared to say that humour was a strong point with
these Italian critics as a rule. But Castelvetro strikes me as being by
no means exceptionally unprovided with it: and such a glaring lapse as
this is probably due to the intense seriousness with which these
critical questions, new as they were, presented themselves to him and to
his class.
-----
Footnote 114:
_Poet. d’Arist._, pp. 585, 586.
-----
They get, as was once said, “into logical coaches”; and are perfectly
content to be driven over no matter what minor precipices, and into no
matter what sloughs of despond, so long as they are not actually thrown
out. Yet Castelvetro at least is never dull. At one time[115] he
compares the “somnolent indecorum,” the _sconvenevolezza sonnachiosa_,
of Homer to the practice of German innkeepers (whether observed by
himself in his exile, or taken from Erasmus, one cannot say) in putting
the worst wines and viands on the table first, and the best later.
Elsewhere[116] he gives a very curious reason against that other
_sconvenevolezza_ (this sonorous word is a great favourite with him)
which he too saw in the use of prose for tragedy—namely, that in
reciting verse the speaker _naturally_ raises his voice, and so makes it
more audible to the audience. He has been blamed for adopting the notion
of rank being necessary to tragic characters, but on this see _ante_ (p.
61).
-----
Footnote 115:
Ibid., p. 576.
Footnote 116:
Ibid., p. 23.
-----
His irreverent independence in regard to Virgil is noticeable in a
critic of his time, and of course especially so if one comes [Sidenote:
_Examples: Homer’s nodding, prose in tragedy, Virgil, minor poetry._] to
him straight from Scaliger. It would not be fair to represent him as a
“Virgiliomastix,” but his finer critical sense enables him to perceive
the superiority of Homer, in respect of whom he goes so far[117] as to
say that Virgil “is not a poet.” But this—_per se_, of course,
excessive—had been provoked by the extravagance of Maronolatry from Vida
downwards: and Castelvetro does not scruple to praise the Mantuan for
his grasp, his variety of phrase, and other good things. He has an
extremely sensible passage—not novel to us, but by no means a truism to
his contemporaries or to a good many poets still—on what he who
publishes miscellaneous poetry has to expect. By the publication, says
this other Messer Lodovico, of a thing which nobody asked him for (_cosa
non richiesta_) without any necessity, he publishes at the same time his
confidence in himself, and affirms that the thing is good. “Which
thing,” goes on Castelvetro in his pitiless critical manner, “if it be
found to be faulty (_rea_) and blameworthy, it convicts him who
publishes it either of malice or of folly.” Alas! for the minor bard.
-----
Footnote 117:
_Poet. d’Arist._, p. 545. It is fair to say that the ban is only
pronounced in reference to a single point—the management of
_speeches_.
-----
His attitude[118] to the everlastingly vexed question of the connection
of verse and poetry is very sensible, and practically anticipates, with
less reluctant circumlocution, that of Coleridge, who in more things
than one comes close to Castelvetro, and who probably knew him.
[Sidenote: _The medium and end of Poetry._] He does not here contradict
Aristotle by denying that verse is un-_essential_ to poetry. But he
insists—and points out the undoubted truth that Aristotle’s practice,
whatever his theory may do, admits this—that Verse is a kind of
inseparable accident of poetry,—that it is the appropriate garb and
uniform thereof, which cannot be abandoned without impropriety. And he
takes up this attitude still more emphatically in regard to the closely
connected, and still more important, question of the _end_ of Poetry.
Here, as we have seen, the great Master of Criticism temporised.
[Sidenote: _Uncompromising championship of Delight._] He did not doubt
that this end was Delight: but in deference to idols, partly of the
Cavern, partly of the Market-place, he yokes and hampers this end with
moral improvement, with Imitation, itself for itself, and so on.
Castelvetro is much more uncompromising. One shudders, almost as much as
one rejoices, at the audacity of a critic who in mid-sixteenth-century
calmly says, “What do beginning, middle, and end matter in a poem,
provided it delights?”[119] Nay, Castelvetro has reached a point of view
which has since been attained by very few critics, and which some who
thought they had gained this peak in Darien first may be mildly
chagrined to find occupied by him—the view that there are different
_qualities_ of poetry, suited to delight different qualities of persons
and of mind.
-----
Footnote 118:
Ibid., p. 23.
Footnote 119:
_Poet. d’Arist._, p. 158.
-----
How seldom this view has been taken all critics ought to know, if they
do not. Even now he who climbs the peak must lay his account with
stone-throwing from the garrisons of other points. That Burns
administers, and has a right to administer, one delight to one class of
mind, Shelley another to another; that Béranger is not to be denied the
wine of poetry because his vintage is not the vintage of Hugo: that
Longfellow, and Cowper, and George Herbert are not to be sneered at
because their delight is the delight of cheering but not of
intoxication; that Keble is not intrinsically the less a poet because he
is not Beddoes, or Charles Wesley because he is not Charles
Baudelaire—or _vice versa_ in all the cases—these are propositions which
not every critic—which perhaps not very many critics—will admit even in
the abstract, and which in practice almost every critic falsifies and
renounces at some time or other.[120] But they are propositions which
follow fairly, and indeed inevitably, from Castelvetro’s theory of the
necessary end, Delight, and the varying adjustment of the delighting
agent to the patient’s faculty of being delighted.
He is perhaps less sound in his absolute condemnation of “knowledge” as
material for poetry. He is right in black-marking Fracastoro from this
point of view: but he is certainly not right in extending the black mark
to Lucretius. The fact is, that even he could not wrench himself
sufficiently free from the trammels of old time to see that in the
treatment lies the faculty of delighting, and that therefore, on his own
scheme, the treatment is the poetry.
-----
Footnote 120:
It is perhaps well to meet a possible, though surely not probable
objection “Do you deny _ranks_ in poetry?” Certainly not—but only the
propriety of _excluding_ ranks which do not seem, to the censor, of
the highest.
-----
There are few writers to be dealt with in this volume—none, I think,
already dealt with—to whom it would be more satisfactory to devote the
minutest handling than to Castelvetro. [Sidenote: _His exceptional
interest and importance._] He has been called by Mr Spingarn
“revolutionary.” The term, in an American mouth, probably has no
unfavourable connotation; but waiving that connotation altogether, I
should be inclined to demur to it. Even the _Vehmgericht_ (if one may
rely on the leading case of _Vgr._ v. _Philipson_, reported by Sir
Walter Scott) acquitted of High Treason those who had spoken evil of it
in countries where its authority was not acknowledged, and indeed its
name hardly known. Now, Castelvetro was dealing—as we must, for his
honour as well as for our comprehension of him, remember that he
dealt—with modern as well as with ancient literature at once, and
instead of adopting the injudicious though natural separation of
Minturno, or the one-sided treatment of Scaliger, was constantly
exploring, and always more or less keeping in view, territories not
merely in which Aristotle’s writ did not run, but which in Aristotle’s
time were No Man’s Land and _terra incognita_. He can no more be
regarded as a revolutionary or a rebel, in framing new laws for the new
facts, than a man could be regarded in either light for disregarding the
Curfew Law at the North Pole, or for disobeying sumptuary regulations as
to the use of woollen in the tropics. His _ethos_ is really that of the
self-reliant, resourceful, and adventurous explorer, as he has been
called—of the experimenter in new material and under new conditions.
That the paths he strikes out sometimes lead to _culs-de-sac_—that the
experiments he makes sometimes fail, is nothing more than is natural,
than is inevitable in the circumstances.
More generally his value is great, and we may forgive him (especially
since he did _us_ little or no harm) the binding of the Unities on the
necks of Frenchmen and Italians, in consideration of the inestimable
service which he did in standing up for Epic—that is, Romantic—Unity of
a different kind, and in formulating, in a “No Surrender” fashion, the
doctrine of Delight as the Poetic Criterion. By doing this he not merely
fought for the freedom of the long narrative poem (which, as it happens,
has been a matter of minor importance, save at rare intervals, since his
time), but he unknowingly safeguarded the freedom of the long narrative
prose romance or novel, which was to be the most important new
contribution of modern times to literature. Nor may it be amiss once
more to draw attention to a more general merit still, the inestimable
_indifference_ with which he continually handles ancient and modern
examples. Only by this—the wisest “indifference of the wise”—can true
criticism be reached. It is an indifference which neglects no change of
condition, which takes count of all features and circumstances, but
which, for that very reason, declines to allow ancient literature to
prescribe unconditionally to modern, or modern to ancient, or either to
mediæval. As to this last, Castelvetro has, and could be expected to
have, nothing to say: as to the others, he is more eloquent in practice
than in express theory. But his practice speaks his conviction, and it
is the practice by which, and by which alone, the serene temples of the
really Higher Criticism can be reached.
The last third of the century provides only one author who deserves
(though he has seldom received) at least equal attention with Scaliger
and Castelvetro: but it has, like the second, a crowd of minor critics
who must not be wholly passed over. [Sidenote: _Tasso and the
controversies over the_ Gerusalemme.] Moreover, it boasts—if such a
thing be a subject of boasting—one equally famous and weary controversy,
that over the _Gerusalemme_. This, which expects the critical historian
as its prey, and will test his powers to the utmost if haply he may
wrestle free of it at once without inadequacy and without tedium, we may
dare first: may take the interesting single figure of Patrizzi or
Patrici second, and then may sweep the rest into a conclusion, which
will itself leave not a little summarising to be done in the
Interchapter succeeding this Book.
Torquato Tasso was, in more ways than one, fated to the ordeal of
controversy. His work would, in the already unfolded state and temper of
Italian criticism on the subject of the “heroic poem,” have invited it
in any case; but he had, in a manner, inherited the adventure. His
father, Bernardo, as has been briefly recorded above, had himself taken
much interest in critical questions; and after being at first a
classicist, had come round to the position of Cinthio. It was Torquato’s
object, by argument and example alike, to reconcile the combatants. His
_Discorsi_ did not appear till late in 1587;[121] but they are said to
have been written some twenty years earlier, after the appearance of
Minturno’s Italian book. His plan is as simply obvious—shall we say as
obviously defective?—as that of the immortal contributor to the
_Eatanswill Gazette_. He, too, “combined his information.” Some kind of
Unity is to be imposed on the Romantic Variety; and though this Unity
cannot possibly be the Aristotelian, it need not be quite such a
different kind as that of Castelvetro. It is to be organic, but may
permit itself the organs of a complex animal system.
-----
Footnote 121:
At Venice, but _ad instanza_ of a Ferrarese bookseller.
-----
Nor did Tasso stick to generalities; nor did he shrink from giving
hostages to fortune, and his enemies, by embodying his ideas in
practice. These ideas we have already seen floating in various critical
minds from Fracastorius to Castelvetro. The “heroic poem”—for his theory
and his example alike consecrated that word for use, instead of either
“epic” or “romance,” for nearly two centuries—must not be pure
invention, but must avail itself of the authority of history. It must be
animated by religion, true religion—that is to say, Christianity. It
must have the supernatural. The hero must be a pious and moral, if not
necessarily faultless, character. It must not be too dogmatic—that the
poet may be free. It must deal with ancient or modern history so as to
be neither absolutely unfamiliar, nor too familiar in its atmosphere and
manners. The persons, things, and scenes must be noble and stately. It
will probably strike every one that this is an admirable receipt for a
historical novel; and thus do we constantly find blind strivings at
things that cannot yet get themselves born. But whether it is an equally
good receipt for a poem may be doubted. Some of us, at least, have no
doubt that the _Gerusalemme_, which is faithfully constructed in
accordance with it, is not nearly so good a poem as the _Orlando_, for
the graceless graces of which it was expressly devised to substitute
something more orderly and decent.
The extensive and execrable controversy which followed did not, however,
turn wholly, though it very largely turned, on the actual case of
Ariosto _v._ Tasso. But, as usually happens, the partisans of the latter
provoked it by unadvised laudations of him, and worse-advised attacks on
his great predecessor. The Florentines had not, as such, any special
reason for championing the “turnip-eating” Ariosto; but Tasso had
offended the coteries of the Della Crusca, and a Della Cruscan chief,
the Salviati already mentioned, took the field against the author of the
_Gerusalemme_. He sallied forth in turn; and the bickering became
universal. Five mortal volumes of the standard edition of Tasso appear
to be occupied with an incomplete collection of the documents on the
subject—a collection which I have not read and do not intend to read,
but which whosoever rejoices in such things may, if he likes, supplement
with all the _Histories of Italian Literature_ from Tiraboschi
downwards, and all the Lives of Tasso, especially those of Serassi in
the eighteenth century and Solerti in the nineteenth.
The most important upshot of the controversy is not itself in dispute.
The impregnable historical position of Cinthio was strangely neglected
by both sides (except by Ishmaelite outsiders like Bruno and Patrizzi);
nor was even the modified Aristotelianism and “Unitarianism” of
Castelvetro, as a rule, attempted. Both sides swore fealty to Aristotle,
and all debated what Aristotle meant—what Unity was. And, in spite of
the exceptions, this was the condition in which the question was left to
the next century.
The controversy, like that between Caro and Castelvetro, and (I fear it
must be said) like literary controversies in general, did not pass off
without a muddying of the waters. Salviati, Tasso’s chief adversary, and
author of the dialogue _L’Infarinato_ against him, had at first been a
great admirer and almost flatterer of the _Gerusalemme_, had offered the
author his friendship, had praised his scheme, and had actually proposed
to celebrate it in that very commentary on the _Poetics_ which Mr
Spingarn (who has read it in MS.) describes as actually devoted to
“undermining Tasso’s pretensions.” Exactly by what personal, or
cliquish, or patriotic offences he was induced to take the opposite
line, belongs to the obscure, dull, and disgusting history of these
literary squabbles generally, and we need not concern ourselves with it.
The points “for us” in the whole matter are, first, that the controversy
shows the strong hold which a certain conception of criticism (whether
the right one or not) had obtained of the Italian mind; and, secondly,
that the main question on which it turned—“What _sort_ of Unity heroic
poems must have?”—“In what manner must the precepts of Aristotle be
interpreted and adjusted?”—shows more than the shadow of coming
Neo-Classicism. The path of safety and truth which Giraldi and Pigna had
opened up many years earlier, and which even Castelvetro, Unitarian as
he was, had been careful to leave open—the path starting, that is to
say, from the positions that Aristotle had not all literature before
him, and that the kinds of literature which he had not before him could
not, therefore, be subject to his dicta—was now ignored or barred.
_Apparent diræ facies_, the faces of the Unities, and there is nothing
left to do, in the general opinion, but to wrangle about their exact
lineaments.
The critical work of Tasso is far from inconsiderable, and only a sense
of duty prevents the consideration of it here at greater length.
[Sidenote: _Tasso’s Critical writings_] It consists[122] of the
_Discorsi_ which, as noted above, appeared at Venice (with divers
_Lettere Poetiche_) in one of the thin small parchment-covered quartos
for which the student of this literature begins, after a time, to feel a
distinct affection. The much longer and later _Discorsi del Poema Epico_
partly repeat, partly correct, partly expand, the earlier work; and
sometimes stand in a curious relation to it.[123] But this by no means
exhausts the tale. Tasso, nothing if not conscientious, appears to have
taken his art in general, and his work in particular, very seriously
indeed. He makes extracts from Castelvetro; writes on the Allegory of
his own _Gerusalemme_, an Apology for it in dialogue, a formal Reply to
the strictures of the Della Cruscans, a tractate in answer to Patrizzi’s
defence of Ariosto, another on Poetical Differences, a long “Judgment of
the _Conquistata_,” a discourse on the Art of the Dialogue. Also he has
some curious considerations on three Canzoni of Pigna’s entitled _Le Tre
Sorelle_, written in honour of Lucrezia Bendidio, and dealing with
Sacred and Profane Love. These considerations have the additional
interest of being addressed to Leonora d’Este, and of breathing a
peculiar blend of that half-sensual, half-Platonic Renaissance rapture
of which the great _locus_ is the discourse assigned to Bembo at the end
of Castiglione’s _Courtier_, with the religiosity which we more
specially think of in Tasso. He has an elaborate lecture on a single
sonnet of La Casa,—a great favourite of Tasso’s, and deservedly so as
far as his serious poetry goes,—and some minor matter of the kind.
-----
Footnote 122:
These pieces form the major part of Cesare Guasti’s _Prose Diverse di
T. T._ (2 vols., Florence, 1875).
Footnote 123:
For instance, my attention was drawn by Mr Ker to the fact that the
description of the subject of the _third_ original _Discorso_ given at
the end of the _second_ (f. 24 original ed. vol. i. p. 48, Guasti)
does not in the least fit the actual contents, while the missing
matter is duly supplied in the later book (i. 162 _sq._, Guasti).
-----
To the writing of this not inconsiderable _corpus_ of criticism Tasso
brought, besides his own genius and the interesting association of his
creative power, really wide reading, and, as has been said, an
indefatigable interest in the subject. [Sidenote: _and position._] He
exercised a good deal of influence in the time to come—both Milton and
Dryden, for instance (the latter again and again), refer to his critical
work. Yet it may perhaps be said without presumption that this criticism
is rather more interesting to a student of Tasso, or to one who wishes
to obtain at famous hands some knowledge of the Italian sixteenth
century _ethos_ in this kind without going any further, than to the
student of criticism itself. Tasso is very fairly representative of it
in its combination of Plato and Aristotle, in its anxiety to get general
notions of poetry and poetic kinds, in its respect for the ancients, in
its ethical turn. But he is rather more representative than original or
distinct; and his criticism is not perhaps improved by the very natural
fact that sometimes avowedly, and probably in most cases really, it is
less a disinterested consideration of Poetry in general than an
apologetic of the poetry of Torquato Tasso. And as that poetry itself,
beautiful as it often is, is notoriously something of a compromise
between the Romantic and the Classical, so the criticism which is
connected with it is compromising and compromised likewise. Tasso has
many interesting observations, intelligent _aperçus_, just remarks: he
is a link, and a very early link, in the apostolic succession of those
who have held and taught the great doctrine that poetry makes the
familiar unfamiliar, the accustomed strange and new.[124] But he has not
shaken himself free enough to gain the standpoint of his friendly
antagonist Patrizzi, and to recognise, even imperfectly, that the secret
of poetry is treatment _poeticamente_, and that only the historic method
unfettered by rules will tell you what _poeticamente_ has been and is,
even thus leaving unknown what it will be.
-----
Footnote 124:
For instance in the opening of the first _Discorsi_ (f. 2, _verso_):
_Variamente tessendolo, di commune proprio, e di vecchio novo il
facevano_.
-----
At about the same time, however, a last, and the most vigorous, if not
altogether the best informed, attempt was made to put the matter on this
true historical basis. [Sidenote: _Patrizzi: his_ Poetica.] A year
(1586) before the publication of Tasso’s _Discorsi_, and of his
_Apologia_, though long after the writing of the first, and not without
reference to himself and the dispute between his partisans and those of
Ariosto, there had been printed at Ferrara, in two parts, one of the
most important and original of the numerous treatises which appeared
during this half-century or more, under the title of _Della Poetica_. It
was the work of Francesco Patrizzi (as he is generally cited in books,
though both in the title-pages of this work, and in the signature of his
Dedication, it is spelt Patrici). The inspiration of the book was, at
least partly, due to the violent anti-Peripateticism of which Patrizzi
was at this time the twin champion with Bruno;[125] and while we must no
doubt thank this party spirit for being in great part the cause of the
volume, there may be room for objecting that it somewhat obscures the
pure critical value of the treatises. That value, however, remains
great, and would be great even if there were nothing in the book but an
ill-carried-out idea. For its idea is the basing of the inquiry into
poetry, not on _a priori_ discussion of the nature of the thing, and of
its exponent the poet,—not on previous authority as to these
questions,—but on a historical examination of extant poetical
composition. It is, of course, true that an examination of the kind was
ready at hand in Scaliger’s book. But nothing was further from
Scaliger’s mind than to _base_ his inquiry on this: on the contrary, it
comes late, and is merely intended to supply illustration and texts for
verbal criticism.
Footnote 125:
Bruno himself, in more places than one, takes the same line; indeed
his statement in the _Eroici Furori_, that “the rules are derived from
the poetry, and there are as many kinds and sorts of true rules as
there are kinds and sorts of true poets,” is the conclusion of the
whole matter, and would have done his friend Sidney a great deal of
good. (The passage may be found at p. 38 of the first vol. of the
translation by I. Williams (London, 1887, or in the original, ed.
Lagarde, p. 625).) But Bruno’s genius, as erratic as it was brilliant,
could not settle to mere Rhetoric.
Patrizzi’s plan is quite different. His book consists of two parts or
“decades”—_La Deca Istoriale_ and _La Deca Disputata_; and though in
some copies (my own is an instance) the cart is perversely put before
the horse, this is evidently a mere stupidity of the binder, due to the
fact that both books, which are separately paged and title-paged, are of
the same year (1586), and perhaps to the other fact that the Dedication
of the _Disputata_ to Don Ferrando Gonzaga, Signor di Guastalla, is
dated, while that of the _Istoriale_ to Lucrezia d’Este, Duchess of
Urbino, is not. But the very first line of the _Disputata_ makes
references to the other as already done.
That the “History of Poetry” of _il gran Patricio_, as his commendatory
sonneteers love to call him, should be either completely exhaustive or
impeccably methodical, it would be unreasonable to expect. [Sidenote:
_The_ Deca Istoriale.] There are indeed some surprising touches,[126]
both of knowledge and of liberality, in his admissions of the
_Architrenius_ and the _Anticlaudianus_, of Marbod and Bede. But for the
most part he confines himself to classic and scriptural authors; and his
notices are rather those of a classical dictionary maker, or hand-list
man, than of a critical historian in the best sense. Still, all things
must have beginnings; and it is a very great beginning indeed to find
the actual documents of the matter produced and arranged in any orderly
fashion, even if we do begin a little in the air with Giubale and
Giafeto, and end a little in the dark with Gaufredo and Guntero.
-----
Footnote 126:
Especially when they are contrasted with the superciliousness (_v.
supra_) of Lilius Giraldus and Scaliger.
-----
Only when he has spent 150 pages on this arrangement does Patrizzi pass
to his Second Book, in which (once more in the true logical order) he
arranges the productions of his poets in _kinds_, of which he is a
generous and careful distributor. The much shorter Third deals with the
kinds of verses; and the Fourth with the festivals and spectacles at
which poetry was produced, the Fifth continuing this with special
reference to Games and Contests. The Sixth deals with the singing of
ancient poetry; the Seventh with its accompanying Music; the Eighth with
Rhythm; the Ninth with the Chorus; and the Tenth with the persons who
_produced_ ancient poetry—rhapsodists, priests, actors, &c.
It is, of course, to be observed that all this is strictly limited to
_Ancient_ Poetry; indeed Patrizzi repeats the very words religiously in
the title of every Book. [Sidenote: _The_ Deca Disputata.] To support
his examination with a further one of modern or even Italian “vulgar”
poetry does not seem to have occurred to him. Perhaps, indeed—since he
refers, as has been said, in the very first line of his second part to
_la lunga e faticosa istoria delle cose a poeti, a poemi, e a poetica
spettanti_ as “condetta a fine” with a sort of sigh of relief—he may
have thought that his readers would not stand it. But it is noteworthy
that in this Decade he constantly cites Italian writers, and that the
last forty pages of his Tenth Book consist of a _Trimerone_ of
controversy with Tasso himself, amicable (they were actually friends),
but by no means unanimated.
The First Book of the _Disputata_ is given up to the cause of poetry,
which Patrizzi, again in accordance with Bruno, decides to be Enthusiasm
(_Furori_[127]), relying much on Plato, especially on the Tynnichus
passage (_v. supra_, vol. i. p. 20), and even a little on Aristotle. The
Second Book attacks, with a good deal of acerbity, and some
wire-drawing, but also with learning, acuteness, and common-sense, the
Aristotelian doctrine of Imitation, and the philosopher’s order and
distribution of poetic kinds. The Third follows this up by an inquiry
whether, in a general way, Poetry is Imitation at all; the Fourth by one
whether the poet is an imitator. And the conclusion of the three,
enforced with great dialectical skill, and with a real knowledge of
Greek criticism,—that of Plato, Longinus, and the Rhetoricians, as well
as Aristotle’s,—is that Poetry is _not_ Imitation, or at any rate that
Imitation is not proper and peculiar to poets. In which point it will go
hard but any catholic student of literature, however great his respect
for Aristotle, must now “say ditto” to Patrizzi.
-----
Footnote 127:
It would be rather interesting to know whether the _Furor Poeticus_ of
the second part of the _Return from Parnassus_ has anything to do with
Patrizzi. There _need_ be no connection, of course; but the
correspondence of England and Italy at this time in matters literary
was so quick and intimate that there _might_ have been. Patrizzi’s
book appeared in the probable year of Shakespeare’s going to London,
and of the production of _Tamburlaine_. Bruno had then left England.
-----
In his Fifth Book Patrizzi tackles a matter of far greater
importance—for after all the discussion, “Is Poetry Imitation, or is it
not?” is very mainly a logomachy. As Miss Edgeworth’s philosophic boy
remarks, “You may call your hat your cadwallader,” when you have once
explained that by this term you mean “a black thing that you wear on
your head.” But the question of this Fifth Book, “Whether Poetry can be
in prose?” is of a very different kind. It goes, not to words but to
things, and to the very roots of them; it involves—if it may not be said
actually to _be_—the gravest, deepest, most vital question of literary
criticism itself; and on the answer given to it will turn the further
answer which must be given to a whole crowd of minor questions.
On this point _il gran Patricio_ has at least this quality of greatness,
that he knows his own mind with perfect clearness, and expounds it as
clearly as he knows it. His conclusion[128] is, “That verse is so proper
and so essential to every manner of poetry that, without verse, no
composition either can or ought to be Poetry.” This is refreshing,
whether we consider that Patrizzi has taken the best way of establishing
his dogma or not. He proceeds as usual by posing and examining the
places—four in number—in which Aristotle deals with the question; and
discusses them with proper exactness from the verbal point of view,
dwelling specially, as we should expect, on the term ψιλὸς for prose.
Then, as we should expect also, he enters into a still longer
examination of the very obscure and difficult passage about the Mimes
and the Socratic Dialogues. To say that the argument is conducted in a
manner wholly free from quibbling and wire-drawing would perhaps be too
much. Patrizzi—and his logic is certainly not the worse for it—was still
in the habit of bringing things to directly syllogistic head now and
then; and of this modern readers are too often impatient. But he does
succeed in convicting Aristotle of using language by no means wholly
consistent; and he succeeds still better in getting and keeping fast
hold of that really final argument which made De Quincey so angry when
Whately so forcibly put it[129]—the argument that from time immemorial
everybody, who has had no special point to prove, when speaking of a
poem has meant something in verse, that everybody, with the same
exception, has called things in verse poems.
-----
Footnote 128:
_Deca Disputata_, p. 122.
Footnote 129:
See Whately, _Rhetoric_, III. iii. 3, p. 216 (ed. 8, London, 1857),
and De Quincey, _Rhetoric_ (_Works_, ed. Masson, x. 131).
-----
Our author’s acuteness is not less seen in the selection and treatment
of the subject of his Sixth Book, which is the intimately allied
question—indeed, the same question from another point of view—“Whether
the Fable rather than the verse makes the property of the poem?” He is
equally uncompromising on this point; and has of course no difficulty in
showing—against Plutarch rather than Aristotle—that “fable” in the sense
of “_made-up_ subject” is not only not necessary to Poetry, but does not
exist in any of the most celebrated poems of the most celebrated
poets.[130] But he is not even yet satisfied in his onslaught on the
Four Places. He devotes a special Book (VII.—it is true that all the
constituents of this group of books are short) to Aristotle’s contrast
of Empedocles and Homer, labelling the latter only as poet, the former
as rather Physiologist. And with this he takes the same course,
convicting Aristotle, partly out of his own mouth,[131] partly by citing
the “clatter” (_schiamaccio_) which even his own commentators had made
on this subject. And, indeed, at the time even the stoutest
Aristotelians must have been puzzled to uphold a judgment which, taken
literally, would have excluded from the name of poetry the adored
_Georgics_ of old, and the admired _Syphilis_ of recent, times.
-----
Footnote 130:
_Deca Disputata_, p. 134 _sq._
Footnote 131:
Of course an Aristotelian advocate may justly point out that the
Master after all only says μᾶλλον ἢ ποιητὴν, without absolutely
denying the latter title to Empedocles.
-----
But, indefatigable as he is, he is still not “satiate with his victory,”
and in the Eighth Book attacks yet another facet of the same great
problem, “Whether Poetry can be based upon, or formed from, History?”
This was, as we have seen, a question which had already interested the
Italians much; and Patrizzi in handling it draws nearer and nearer to
his controversy with Tasso, whom he here actually mentions. He has
little difficulty in showing that Aristotle’s contrast between Poetry
and History itself by no means denies historical subjects to the poet,
and that Aristotle is not at all responsible for, or in accordance with,
Plutarch’s extravagant insistence on “mendacity” as a poetic _proprium_.
“All the materials comprised in Art, or Science, or study,” says he[132]
(in that manner of his which we have already called refreshing, and
which we shall meet again seldom in this volume), “can be suitable
subjects for poetry and poems, _provided that they be poetically
treated_.” Verily, a _gran Patricio_!
-----
Footnote 132:
_Deca Disputata_, p. 175.
-----
The subject of the Ninth Book is less important and more purely
antiquarian, but interesting enough. It discusses the question whether
ancient poetry necessarily involved “harmony” and “rhythm,” and what
these terms exactly mean—dancing and gestic accompaniment being
considered as well as music. Patrizzi decides, sensibly enough on the
historical comparison, that all these things, though old and not
unsuitable companions of poetry, are in no sense formative or
constitutive parts of Poetry itself.[133]
-----
Footnote 133:
_Deca Disputata_, p. 192.
-----
The title-question of the Tenth Book is, “Whether the modes of Imitation
are three?” He discusses this generally, and specially in regard to
narrative and dramatic delivery of the poetic matter, and then passes in
an appendix (which, however, he declares to be part of the book) to the
_Trimerone_ of reply to Tasso. [Sidenote: _The_ Trimerone _on Tasso_.]
This is a necessarily rather obscure summary, with some quotations, of a
fuller controversy between the two, complicated by glances at the other
literature of the _Gerusalemme_ quarrel, especially at the work of
Camillo Pellegrino.[134] To disentangle the spool, and wind it in
expository form, is out of the question here. Fortunately the piece
concludes with a tabular statement[135] of forty-three opposition theses
to Pellegrino and Tasso. A good many of these turn on rather
“pot-and-kettle” recriminations between Homerists and Ariostians; but
the general principles of comparative criticism are fairly observed in
them, and there is no acerbity of language. In fact, although on some of
the points of the controversy Patrizzi took the Della Cruscan side, it
does not seem to have interrupted his friendship with Tasso, who
attended his lectures,[136] and whose funeral he attended.
-----
Footnote 134:
Who had been _pars non minima_ in the exaltation of Tasso and
depreciation of Ariosto. See Spingarn, pp. 122, 123; and Serassi,
_Vita di Tasso_ (Rome, 1785), pp. 331-348.
Footnote 135:
_Deca Disputata_, pp. 246-249.
Footnote 136:
This was long after the publication of the _Trimerone_ (1586), and
when Patrizzi had been translated from Ferrara to a newly founded
chair of Platonic Philosophy at Rome, _V._ Serassi, _op. cit._, p.
475.
-----
The intrinsic importance of Patrizzi’s criticism may be matter of
opinion; but it will hardly be denied that both its system and its
conclusions are widely different from those of nearly all the Italian
critics whom we have yet considered, though there may be approaches to
both in Cinthio on the one hand and in Castelvetro on the other.
[Sidenote: _Remarkable position of Patrizzi._] The bickering with
Aristotle on particular points is of much less importance than the
constant implicit, and not rare explicit, reliance on the historic
method—on the poets and the poems that exist, the ideas of poetry
conveyed by common parlance, the body of the written Word in short, and
not the letter of the written Rule. I am not sure that Patrizzi ever
lays down the doctrine that “Rules follow practice, not practice rules,”
with quite the distinctness of Bruno in the passage cited above.[137]
But he makes a fight for it in a passage of the _Trimerone_,[138] and
his entire critical method involves it more or less. If he does not
quote modern literature much, it is obviously because the controversy in
which he was mixing took its documents and texts mainly from the
ancients; but he is so well acquainted with the modern literature, not
merely of his own language, that he actually cites[139] Claude Fauchet’s
_Origines de la Poésie Française_, which had appeared in 1581. That his
interest in the whole matter may have been philosophical rather than
strictly, or at least exclusively, literary is very possible—he was
actually a Professor of Philosophy; but however this may be, he has hit
on the solid causeway under the floods, and has held his way steadily
along it for as far as he chose to go. Nay, in the sentence which has
been chosen for the epigraph of this Book, he has kept it open for all
to the end of Poetry and of Time.
-----
Footnote 137:
P. 95.
Footnote 138:
Pp. 221, 222. Of course it is possible to take exception even to
_poeticamente_—to ask “Yes; but what is this?” But the demurrer is
only specious. The very adverbial form shifts the sovereignty from the
_subject_ to the _treatment_.
Footnote 139:
Ibid., p. 235.
-----
There are, however, few propositions in literature truer than this—that
it is of no present use to be wise for the future. [Sidenote: Sed contra
mundum.] If a man chooses the wisdom of the morrow, he must be content
for the morrow to appreciate him—which it does not always, though no one
but a poor creature will trouble himself much about that. Patrizzi had a
really considerable reputation, and deserved it; but in matters literary
he was two hundred years in front of his time, and his time avenged
itself by taking little practical notice of him.[140] The critical
writers of the last fifteen or twenty years of the century are fairly
numerous; and though none of them can pretend to great importance, the
names of some have survived, and the writings of some of these are worth
examination, certainly by the historian and perhaps by the student. But
the general drift of them is usually anti-Patrician and
pro-Aristotelian, in that very decidedly sophisticated interpretation of
Aristotle which was settling itself down upon the world as critical
orthodoxy. [Sidenote: _The latest group of sixteenth-century Critics._]
Among them we may mention one or two which, though actually earlier than
Patrizzi, are later than Castelvetro, and will help to complete, as far
as we can here attempt it, the conspectus of that remarkable flourishing
time of Italian critical inquiry which actually founded, and very nearly
finished, the edifice of European criticism generally for three
centuries at least. The authors to whom we return are Partenio,
Viperano, Piccolomini, Gilio da Fabriano, and Mazzoni; those to whom we
proceed are Jason Denores, Gabriele Zinano, and Faustino Summo. This
latter, who, with an odd coincidence of name, date, and purport, does
really sum up the sixteenth century for Aristotle, and so govern the
decisions of the seventeenth and eighteenth, had been immediately
preceded in the same sense by Buonamici,[141] Ingegneri,[142] and
others.
-----
Footnote 140:
The way in which Patrizzi is referred to after the lapse of a century
by Baillet and Gibert (_v. inf._, p. 320) shows at once the sort of
_magni nominis umbra_ which still made itself felt, and the absence of
any definite knowledge to give body to the shade. For his dealings
with Rhetoric, see next Book, p. 329.
Footnote 141:
_Discorsi Poetici_, 1597.
Footnote 142:
_Poesia Rappresentativa_, 1598.
-----
Partenio, like Minturno and some others, gave his thoughts on the
subject to the world in both “vulgar” and “regular”;[143] [Sidenote:
_Partenio._] but the two forms, while not identical, are closer together
than is sometimes the case, though there is in the Latin a curious
appended anthology of translation and parallel in the two languages. He
is rather a formal person (as indeed may be judged from his particular
addiction to Hermogenes as an authority), but he is not destitute of
wits. Throughout he quotes Italian as well as Latin examples, and refers
to Italian critics such as Trissino; while in one place he gives
something like a regular survey of contemporary Latin poetry by Italians
from Pontanus to Cotta. He lays special stress on the importance of
poetic diction; he thinks that Art can and should improve nature; but he
is as classical as the stiffest _perruque_ of the French anti-Romantic
school in believing Aristotle and Horace to contain everything necessary
to poetical salvation.
-----
Footnote 143:
_Della Imitatione Poetica_, Venice, 1560; _De Poetica Imitatione_,
ibid., 1565.
-----
[Sidenote: _Viperano._]
Viperano[144] (who by a natural error is sometimes cited as
Vi_tu_perano) somewhere makes the half-admission, half-boast,
_scripsimus autem varios libros de variis rebus_, and is indeed a sort
of rhetorical bookmaker who oscillates between instruction and
epideictic. This character is sufficiently reflected in his _De Arte
Poetica_. He had some influence—even as far as Spain (_v. inf._)
-----
Footnote 144:
His _De Arte Poetica_ seems to have first appeared at Antwerp in 1579:
I know it in his _Opera_, Naples, 1606.
-----
Piccolomini’s book,[145] which is a compact small quarto of 422 pages,
differs in arrangement from Castelvetro’s merely in not giving the
Greek—the _particelle_ of the original in translation being followed by
solid blocks of _annotationi_. [Sidenote: _Piccolomini._] The author was
of that well-known type of Renaissance scholar which aspired to a
generous if perhaps impossible universalism; and as he puts this
encyclopædic information at the service of his notes, they are naturally
things not easily to be given account of in any small space, or with
definite reference to a particular subject. That Piccolomini, however,
was not destitute of acuteness or judgment to back his learning,
reference to test passages will very easily show. He has not allowed the
possible force of the μᾶλλον, for instance, to escape him in the
Homer-and-Empedocles passage referred to a little earlier—indeed Maggi
had put him in the right way here. But, in this and other cases, he is
somewhat too fond of “hedging.” “We must remember this; but we must not
forget that,” &c. The inspiriting downrightness of Scaliger on the one
side, and Patrizzi on the other, is not in him; and we see the approach,
in this subject also, of a time of mere piling up of authorities, and
marshalling of arguments _pro_ and _con_, to the darkening rather than
the illumination of judgment.
-----
Footnote 145:
_Annotationi di M. Alessandro Piccolomini nel Libro della Poetica
d’Aristotele_: Vinegia. The dedication to Cardinal Ferdinand dei
Medici is dated Ap. 20, 1572, from Piccolomini’s native town of
Sienna, where he became co-adjutor-archbishop. Some of Salviati’s MS.
observations, printed by Mr Spingarn, seem to show that even
Piccolomini’s contemporaries regarded him as a little too
_polymathic_, while his _Raffaella_ exhibits the less grave side of
the Renaissance. But he was now getting an old man, and died six years
later at the full three score and ten.
-----
The _Topica Poetica_ of Giovanni Andrea Gilio da Fabriano[146] comes
well next to Piccolomini, because the pair are characteristic examples
of the two parallel lines in which, as we have seen throughout, Italian
criticism proceeds during the century. [Sidenote: _Gilio._] In plan it
presents no inconsiderable resemblance to that work of our own Puttenham
(_v. infra_) which followed it at no great interval; but it is, as its
special title will have indicated to the expert, even more definitely
rhetorical. In fact, it must be one of the very latest treatises in
which, on the partial precedent of antiquity, Poetics are brought
_directly_ under Rhetoric. We actually start with accounts, illustrated
by poetical examples in the vernacular, of the Deliberative,
Demonstrative, and Judicial kinds; we pass thence to Invention,
Imitation, and Style; and thence again to Decorum, the Proper, and so
forth, all still illustrated from the vulgar tongue mainly, but with a
Latin example here and there. And this finishes the short First Book.
The longer Second is the most strictly “topical,” with its sections (at
first sight bewildering to the modern non-expert mind) on Definition and
Etymology, on Genus and Species, on Example and Induction, on Proceeding
from Less to Greater and from Greater to Less, on Amplification,
Authority, Custom, and Love. The Third is wholly on Figures of Speech,
and the Fourth on Tropes or Figures of “Conceit.” The poetical
illustration is all-pervading, and there is an odd appendix of sonnets
from ladies of Petrarch’s time. The book is chiefly worth notice here
because, as has been said, it is one of the latest—perhaps, with the
exception of Puttenham’s own, the actually latest—of its special
subdivision that we shall have to notice,—the subdivision, that is to
say, in which the literature handled is absolutely subordinate to an
artificial system of classification, in which the stamped and registered
ticket is everything, so that, when the critic has tied it on, his task
is done.
-----
Footnote 146:
In Venetia, 1580. Why has Time, in the title-page woodcut of this, an
hour-glass as head-dress, but a scourge instead of a scythe in his
hand?
-----
Giacomo Mazzoni is perhaps better known[147] than at least some of the
subjects of this chapter, owing to his connection with [Sidenote:
_Mazzoni._] Dante. He first, in 1573, published at Cesena a brief
_Difesa di Dante_ of some fifty folios, in fairly large print, and
followed it up fourteen years later with an immense _Della Difesa_,
containing 750 pages of very small print without the index. The points
of the actual _Difesa_ are not uncurious—such as an argument that
discourses on Poetry are not improper for the philosopher, and that
Dante is a particularly philosophical poet, in fact encyclopædic. From
the Imitation point of view the Comedy can be easily defended, as it is
a real following of action, and not the mere relation of a dream: and as
dealing with _costume_ (manners) it is a comedy, not a tragedy or heroic
poem. The _Della Difesa_, on the other hand, is a wilderness of
erudition and controversy, arranged under abstract heads (“how the poets
have conducted themselves towards the predicaments of Time and Place,”
&c.), and diverging into inquiries and sub-inquiries of the most
intricate character—the trustworthiness of dreams,[148] the opinions
held of them in antiquity, the nature and kinds of allegory, Dante’s
orthodoxy—in short, all things Dantean, and very many others. If I
cannot with Mr Spingarn[149] discover “a whole new theory of poetry” in
the _Difesa_ itself, I am ready to admit that almost anything might be
discovered in the _Della Difesa_.
-----
Footnote 147:
Milton had read Mazzoni, and cites him.
Footnote 148:
There is a large folding table of the causes and kinds of visions.
Footnote 149:
_Op. cit._, p. 124.
-----
The _Poetica_ of Jason Denores[150] is remarkable from one point of view
for its thoroughgoing and “charcoal-burner” Aristotelianism, from
another for the extraordinary and meticulous precision of its
typographical arrangements. How many sizes and kinds of type there are
in Jason’s book I am [Sidenote: _Denores._] not enough of an expert in
printing to attempt to say exactly: and the arrangement of his page is
as precious as the selection of his type. Sometimes his text overflows
the opened sheet, with decent margins indeed but according to ordinary
proportions; at others (and by no means always because he requires
side-notes) it is contracted to a canal down the centre, with banks
broader than itself. It is, however, when Denores comes to the tabular
arrangement and subdivision of statement and argument, in which nearly
all these writers delight, that he becomes most eccentric. As many
divisions, so many parallel columns; under no circumstances will his
rigid equity give one section the advantage of appearing on the _recto_
of a leaf while the others are banished to the _verso_. This is all very
well when the divisions are two or three or even four. But when, as
sometimes happens, there are six or even eight, the cross-reading of the
parallel columns is at once tempting and conducive to madness. As each
column is but some half-inch broad, almost every word longer than a
monosyllable has to be broken into, and as only a single _em_ of space
is allowed between the columns, there is a strong temptation to “follow
the line.” By doing this you get such bewilderments as
“gue do-diEdip-di Laio, ttappas-menosia ra il Poe mu tio lipo, per,”
&c.,
a moderate dose of which should suffice to drive a person of some
imagination, and excessive nerves, to Bedlam. Read straight, however,
Denores is much more sedative, not to say soporific, than exciting: and
his dealings with Tragedy, the Heroic Poem, and Comedy have scarcely any
other interest than as symptoms of that determination towards
unqualified, if not wholly unadulterated, Aristotelianism which has been
remarked upon.
-----
Footnote 150:
Padua, 1588. Denores (whose name is often separated into “de Nores”)
was, like Patrizzi, a Professor of Philosophy, and, like Piccolomini,
very polymathic and polygraphic. He had a year earlier published a
_Discourse_ (which I have not) on the Philosophical Principles of
poetical kinds, and had very much earlier still, in 1553, commented
the _Epistola ad Pisones_. His son Pietro was an affectionate and
attentive disciple of Tasso’s in his last days at Rome.
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_Il Sogno, overo della Poesia_, by Gabriele Zinano,[151] dedicated at
Reggio on the 15th October 1590 to the above-mentioned Ferrando Gonzaga
of Guastalla, is a very tiny treatise, [Sidenote: _Zinano._] written
with much pomp of style, but apparently unnoticed by most of the
authorities on the subject. The author had studied Patrizzi (or Patrici,
as he, too, calls him), and was troubled in his mind about Imitation,
and about the equivocal position of Empedocles. He comforts himself as
he goes on, and at last comes to a sort of eclectic opportunism, which
extols the instruction _and_ delight of poetry, admits that it can
practically take in all arts and sciences, but will not admit fable as
making it without verse, or verse without fable, and denies that both,
even together, make it necessarily good. The little piece may deserve
mention for its rarity, and yet once more, as symptomatic of the hold
which critical discussion had got of the Italian mind, Zinano is
evidently full of the _Deca Istoriale_ and the _Deca Disputata_, but
alarmed at their heresies.
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Footnote 151:
I have not found much about Zinano near to hand, nor have I thought it
worth while to go far afield in search of him. Tiraboschi (vii., 1716,
1900) names him as a poet-miscellanist in almost every kind. My copy,
of 42 duodecimo pages, has been torn out of what was its cover, and
may have been its company.
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Paolo Beni, the antagonist of Summo, the champion of prose for tragedy
as well as for comedy, and a combatant in the controversy over the
_Pastor Fido_, which succeeded in time, and almost equalled in tedium,
that over the _Gerusalemme_, will come best in the next Book; and though
I have not neglected, I find little to say about, Correa[152] and
others.[153] [Sidenote: _Mazzone da Miglionico, &c._] A sign of the
times is the somewhat earlier _I Fiori della Poesia_[154] of Mazzone da
Miglionico (not to be confounded with the above-mentioned Mazzoni), a
tightly packed quarto of five hundred pages, _plus_ an elaborate index.
This is a sort of “Bysshe” _ante Bysshium_—a huge _gradus_ of poetic
tags from Virgil, Ovid, and Horace, arranged ready for anybody who
wishes to pursue the art of poetry according to the principles of Vida.
Here you may find choice of phrases to express the ideas of “going to
bed for the purpose of sleeping,” of “black and beautiful eyes,” of
“shoes that hurt the feet,” and of “horses that run rapidly.” It was
inevitable that this manual at once and _reductio ad absurdum_ of the
mechanic Art of Poetical Imitation should come—indeed, others had
preceded Mazzone, for instance Fabricius, in Germany (see next Book).
But one cannot help invoking a little woe on those by whom it came.
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Footnote 152:
His _Explanationes de Arte Poetica_ (Rome, 1587) are simply notes on
Horace.
Footnote 153:
I have not yet been able to see L. Gambara, _De Perfecta Poeseos
Ratione_ (Rome, 1576), and I gather that Mr Spingarn was in the same
case, as he refers not to the book, but to Baillet. According to that
invaluable person (iii. 70), Gambara must have been an early champion
of the uncompromisingly religious view of Poetry which appears in
several French seventeenth-century writers, and in our own Dennis. The
poet is not even to introduce a heathen divinity.
Footnote 154:
Venice, 1592-93.
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[Sidenote: _Summo._]
The twelve _Discorsi_[155] of Faustino Summo manage to cover as many
questions in their 93 leaves: the end of Poetry; the meaning of the word
_philanthropia_;[156] the last words (the purgation clause) of the
Definition of Tragedy; the possibility of a happy ending; the
representation of atrocities and deaths; the admissibility of true
fables; the necessity of unity of action; the propriety of drama in
prose; _furor poeticus_; the sufficiency of verse to make poetry; the
legitimacy of tragi-comedy and pastoral; and the quality of the _Pastor
Fido_. Summo gives us our last word here with singular propriety. He is
not quite Aristotelian to the point of infallibility, and his orthodoxy
is what may be called a learned orthodoxy—that is to say, he is careful
to quote comments or arguments of many of the writers whom we have
mentioned in this chapter and the last, from Trissino to Denores, and of
a few whom we have not. But in him this orthodoxy is in the main
_constituted_: it is out of the stage of formation and struggle; and it
is ready—all the more so that many of its documents have already passed
with authority to other countries and languages—to take its place as the
creed of Europe.
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Footnote 155:
Padua, 1600.
Footnote 156:
Cf. Butcher, _op. cit._, p. 297 and note.
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