But still the almost invincible equity of the man displays itself even in his judgment of these unhappy schismatics; and he seems to make some difference between the vernacular dialects and the Sermo Etruscus. On Berni, Alamanni, the two “gentlewomen-poetesses,” as the Italians call them, Vittoria Colonna and Veronica Gambara, Speroni, La Casa, Aonio Paleario, Molza, he has things amiable and acute at once to say.
But his heart is not here, nor in the mention of the poor barbarous foreigners who may perhaps have some better excuse than “Latins” for not writing in the Latin tongue. Yet a real critic in both kinds. It is of those who do so write—Italians first of all but also others—that he really thinks as “the poets of his time.” He can find room for a mere grammarian (though a very excellent grammarian) like William Lilly: he speaks of him magnificentissime, and if this notice contrasts rather comically with the brief and cold reference to Erasmus, it is fair to remember not merely that Erasmus was by no means persona grata to the Roman orthodox, but that his poetical work is really nothing as compared with his exquisite prose.
He begins with the two Mirandolas, Pontanus, Marullus, and Sannazar, and is copious though not uncritical on them all: non numquam nimis lascivire et vagari videtur, he says of Pontanus. Short précis of the dialogues. Recalled by his interlocutor to still earlier writers, he has the judgment of “the Panormitan”[94] (Beccadelli), which has been noticed, and a by no means unremarkable one, dwelling ominously on the “facility” of Mapheus Vegius, the egregious person who took upon himself to write a thirteenth Æneid. Many forgotten worthies (among whom Filelfo and the better Aretines, Charles and Leonard, are the least forgotten) lead us (for Bembo and Sadolet have had their position earlier, and will have it again) to a famous pair, Mantuan and Politian. Giraldus is decisive and refreshing on Mantuan. This loudly over-praised poet is extemporalis magis quam poeta maturus, and as to his being alter Maro, why “Bone Deus! quam dispar ingenium!”[95] He is much more favourable to the author of the Nutricia and the Manto, but does not forget his swashing blow even here. Politian seems to him to have written calore potius quam arte, and to have used little diligence either in choosing his subjects or correcting his work. The Strozzi and Urceus Codrus follow, with many minor lights, from the notices of whom the judgment on Ludovicus Bigus Pictorius of Ferrara stands out as applicable, unfortunately, to some greater men and many as small or smaller. “Cum pius deflexit ad religionem, ut vita melior ita carmine deterior visus est.” Then one of the regulation pieces of flattery as to the Augustan character of the rule of Leo Maximus conducts us to notices of Naugerius and Vida, where the moderate and deserved praise of the first would contrast oddly (if we did not know how the pseudo-classical tradition for two hundred years and more said vehement “ditto” to Giraldus) with the extravagant eulogies on the polished emptiness of the latter. And then a great turba comes, among which the two Beroalds, Acciauoli and, among blind poets, Bello, the author of the Mambriano, chiefly take the eye.
We have noted the condescension to such poor vernacular creatures as Ariosto, Bibbiena, and (with a long interval certainly) Trissino and the author of the first Rosmunda. It is succeeded by another review of persons long relinquished to dusty shelves and memories, with a few better known names like Molza and Longolius. The praise of the great Fracastorius is much more moderate than we might have expected—probably Giraldus did not like his subject—and then there is a curious passage on “fancy” verses, leonine, serpentine, and others, leading to yet another, in which the worse side of the Renaissance—its contempt for the Middle Ages—is shown by a scornful reference to Architrenios et Anti-claudianos, which finishes the first dialogue. The second is of a wider cast, but needs less minute account here, though it is at least as well worth reading. It begins with the Greeks, who did so much for Italy, from Gemistus Pletho and Chrysoloras downwards, then takes the Spaniards and Portuguese, then our own countrymen, then the Germans and French. Here comes the description of Erasmus as inter Germanos Latinus inter Latinos aliquando Germanus; and here Giraldus frankly confesses that he is not going to say anything about persons like Œcolampadius, Bucer, Sturm, and Melanchthon, since they were not contented to confine themselves to good literature, and would know too much, and trouble Israel with Luther. But a good word is spared, justly, for the author of the Basia, with a reversion to still younger men, among whom Palingenius, Julius Cæsar Scaliger, and Castelvetro are the best known, and with the final fling at the vernaculars above given.
Such a book, with its wonderful width of range[96] and its sometimes equally wonderful contraction of view, is worth, to the historian of real criticism, a dozen long-winded tractates hunting the old red-herrings of critical theory. Their great historic value. The De Poetis Nostrorum Temporum gives us one of those veritable and inestimable rallying-points of which our History should be little more than a reasoned catalogue, connected by summary of less important phenomena. Referring duly to it, we find ourselves at the standpoint of a man who has really wide knowledge, and who, when his general assumptions do not interfere, has a real critical grasp. But the chief of these assumptions is not merely that the vernaculars have not attained equality with the classics—this, allowing for inevitable defects of perspective and other things, would not be fatal—but that they cannot attain such equality, much less any superiority. The point of view—to us plain common-sense—that if Sannazar and others wrote in Latin about Christian subjects, they should use Christian Latin, seems to Giraldus the point of view of a kind of maniac. Without the details and developments of Vida, he is apparently in exact accordance with that excellent Bishop. Cicero and Virgil, not to mention others, have achieved for literature a medium which cannot be improved upon, and all those who adopt any other are, if not exactly wicked, hopelessly deceived and deluded. This is the major premiss for practically every syllogism of our critic. Where it does not come in—between vernacular and vernacular, between Latin and Latin of the classical type—he can judge just judgment. Where it comes in, the more perfect his logic, the more inevitably vitiated is his conclusion.
19. Since I wrote this, an obliging correspondent, Mr P.G. Thomas of Liverpool, has suggested actual quotation of a passage of Bruni’s on prose style in his De Studiis et Literis. If I do not give this it is, first, because indulgence in quotation here is as the letting out of waters; and, secondly, because the tractate is translated in Mr W. H. Woodward’s well-known and excellent book on Vittorino da Feltre (Cambridge, 1897), where other matter of interest to us will also be found.
20. The connecting and explaining link, sometimes omitted, is to be found in Rhetoric—the close connection of which with Logic and Grammar is no puzzle, while the connection of poetry with it was then an accepted fact. It is rather dangerous to say that Savonarola, in connecting poetry with logic, was “tending towards the elimination of the Imagination in art.” The extremely equivocal nature of the word “Imagination” (v. vol. i. pp. 120, 165) needs constantly to be pointed out. In the ancient sense, Imagination is as much connected with Logic as anything else; in the modern, Savonarola probably never even thought of it.
21. Otherwise, De Divisione et Utilitate Omnium Scientiarum. I have read this in the Wittemberg ed. of his Philosophiæ Epitome (1596, 8vo). The passages quoted and referred to will be found at p. 807 sq. of this.
23. Or, “a pretty old woman that of a girl,” the position of the epithet between the two nouns being ambiguous.
24. Geog. i. 11, 5, where he describes poetry as a rudimentary philosophy, providing an introduction to life, and educating pleasantly. I do not remember who first, or who successively, pointed this out before Shaftesbury, Advice to an Author, Part I. sect. 3, note sub fin. But Castelvetro (Op. Var., p. 83), and Opitz (v. inf., p. 361), among others, refer to it.
25. More especially p. 46 sq. (2nd ed.) The influence of the Somnium Scipionis of Macrobius may also have been considerable.
26. Politian’s critical faculty shows to more advantage here than in his attribution of the Epistles of the Pseudo-Phalaris to Lucian (see Bentley’s immortal Dissertation). He had almost better—from the literary point of view—have believed them genuine.
27. V. vol. i. p. 408.
28.
29. If anybody charges me with plagiarism from Mr Symonds’ “leaping,” I had rather plead guilty than quibble. The metaphor is too obviously the right and only one, for the peculiar motion of Politian’s verse, to any one who has an ear. I keep, however, the order of the edition I use (that of Signor Isidoro del Lugo, Florence, 1867), not the perhaps more logical one of Nutricia—Rusticus—Manto—Ambra, which Mr Symonds followed and which is that of Pope, op. cit. inf.
30. My copy is the edition of Gryphius (Lugduni, 1554). Crinitus (Ricci or Riccio) had dedicated it nearly fifty years earlier, and just before his own death, I believe, to Cosmo Pazzi, Bishop of Arezzo, on November 1, 1505.
31. A fellow-citizen and contemporary printer generally appears in biographical dictionaries under the heading “Olmucensis.” The history of Olmütz, by W. Müller (Vienna, 1882), has not come in my way, so I do not know whether Augustinus appears there. The Dialogus is duly in Hain, but has not, I think, been much noticed by literary historians.
32. I have used the Opera, 2 vols., Lugduni, 1531, 8vo. The passages cited will be found at ii. 14 sq.
33. For Landi or Lando, see an interesting paper by Mr W. E. A. Axon, in vol. xx. of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature.
34. This, which is very amusing, opens the ed. of Berni’s Opere in the Sonzogno collection (Milan, 1888).
35. For the Latin I use Pope’s Selecta Poemata Italorum (2 vols., London, 1740), i. 131-189, and the anonymous Poemata Selecta Italorum (Oxford, 1808), 207-266; for Pitt’s Englishing, Chalmers’s Poets, xix. 633-651. The original is Rome, 1527, 4to.
36. Prof. A. S. Cook (Boston, 1892).
37. Insignis facie ante alios, ed. Oxon., p. 215.
38. For a very interesting and characteristic view of this “invoking” in the next generation, see Castelvetro, Op. Var., ed. cit. inf., pp. 79-99.
39.
It is interesting to hear the watchword “Low!” so early.
40. Some would plead for “mosaic.” But the mosaic worker works his tiny cubes himself—he does not steal them ready made and arranged.
41. Cf. Poet., ii. 162. Semper nutu rationis eant res.
42. Mr Spingarn’s useful chronological table gives twenty-five books by nearly as many different authors for the seventy-three years. Nor does this list pretend to be exhaustive; for instance, it omits Robortello’s Longinus (1554), and the important De poetis nostrorum temporum of Lilius Giraldus.
43. Dolce’s (1535) translation of Horace; Pazzi’s (1536) of Aristotle; Daniello’s Poetica (1536), and Tolomei’s Versi e Regole (1539).
44. Robortello’s ed. of Poetics (1548), and Segni’s translation (1549); Maggi’s ed. (1550); Muzio’s Arte Poetica (1551); Giraldi Cinthio’s Discorsi (1554).
45. Minturno’s Latin De Poeta (1559); Victorius’ Aristotle’s Poetics (1560); Scaliger’s own Poetics (1561); the completion of Trissino (1563); Minturno’s Italian Arte Poetica (1564), and Castelvetro’s Poetics (1570).
46. The work of Piccolomini and Viperano.
47. That of Patrizzi, Tasso, and Denores.
48. That of Buonamici, Ingegneri, and Summo.
49. But most of this latter part had been written in 1548-49, and all must have been before 1550, when Trissino died. Even this, however, leaves a twenty years’ gap, which Trissino attributes to the composition of his great (or at any rate large) poem on the Goths.
50. 2 vols., Verona, 1729.
51. All these, with the Poetica and the translation of Dante, will be found in the second volume of the edition cited. I take the opportunity of correcting an injustice to Trissino which I committed at i. 417, and which was brought to my notice by a reviewer in the Athenæum. “Giovan- [or Giam-] battista Doria” does say, in his dedication to the Cardinal de' Medici, that Dante wrote it in Latin, adding, however, a clause of such singular obscurity that at first sight one takes it as meaning that Dante himself translated the book into Italian. For discussion of this see Rajna’s ed. of the De V. E., p. li sq.
52. II. 95. Perhaps better “unlearned,” indotti Poeti.
53. Spingarn, p. 92.
54. Et ancor oggi si fa.
55. Spingarn, p. 102.
56. The discussion occupies nearly four quarto pages, ii. 127-130. Trissino, of course, does not neglect Quintilian’s handling of the subject in Inst., vi. 3, and he quotes modern as well as ancient examples.
57. Dolce had translated the Ars Poetica of Horace into Italian the year before.
58. Mr Spingarn has extracted from MS., and published as an appendix to his book, an interesting review of these commentators and others, by Leonardo Salviati, a successor of theirs in 1586, and too famous in the Tasso controversy.
59. Maggi in his commentary. See Spingarn, p. 27.
61. Discoveries, sub fin. (iii. 419 of Cunningham’s 3 vol. ed.)
62. On him see also note infra, pp. 49, 50.
63. M. Breitinger (Les Unités d’Aristote avant Corneille, p. 7) says, “ce livre n’est qu’un commentaire du Canzoniere de Pétrarque.” He can hardly have read it; and most probably confused it with the Spositione by Daniello which accompanies an edition of Petrarch (Venice, 1549), and had been partially published eight years earlier. This is a full but rather wooden commentary, chiefly interesting to contrast with Castelvetro’s, and as showing the Italian tendency to expatiate rather than to appreciate.
64. Fracastorii Opera, 2 vols., Lyons, 1591. The Naugerius is at i. 319-365.
65. A few of these poems of Navagero will be found in Pope’s Selecta Poemata Italorum (Londoni, 1740); more in the Oxford Selection (1808); most in Carmina Quinque Illustrium Poetarum (Florence, 1552).
66. Rime Diverse (Venice, f. 68-94). The name on the title-page is Mutio, and the spelling Muzio, which some books have, may lead to confusions; for there appears to be another Rime Diverse of Muzio four years earlier, which does not contain the Arte. This is in blank-verse, agreeably written, with some general observations on Poets and Poetry, Ancient and Modern, and practical enough. Says Mutio, e.g.,—
67. Delia Lingua Toscana. The four Books of this are rather empty things. The first goes to show that Philosophy is necessary to the perfect orator; the second that it is equally necessary to the perfect poet; the third that Rhetoric is useful for writing and speaking with eloquence; while the fourth discusses oratorical diction and its ornaments. Few of the books cited here better justify De Quincey’s too sweeping ban.
68. Due Dialogi dell' Inventione Poetica di Alessandro Lionardi (Venice, 1554). No one carries the ventosa loquacitas about the origin of laws, and virtues, and opinions, and what not, farther than Lionardi; no one is more set on defining “the Historian,” “the Orator,” “the Poet,” &c.; no one pays more attention to all the abstractions. At p. 18 he has a curious catalogue, occupying the greater part of a small quarto page, and capable of being extended to a large folio, or many large folios, of “subjects” and “effects,” in regard to history, enmity, discord, war, peace; in short, all the contents of the dictionary. “Perdonatemi,,” says another interlocutor, “se interrompo i vostri ragionamenti,” and indeed they might have gone on for ever. But the new man has his catalogue ready, too.
69. Venice, 1562. It is very short and very general. There are some literary touches in his Lettere (2 vols., Venice, 1562), especially a correspondence with Cinthio on the Amadigi.
70. Della Vera Poetica, Venice, 1555.
71. His volume appears to be almost introuvable for sale; but the British Museum has no less than three copies. I wish it would give me one of them.
72. Especially in those to La Strega and l’Arzigoglio (Commedie di A. Grazzini, ed. Fanfani, Florence, 1897), pp. 173 and 435. Gelli and others do much the same.
73. The proper quotation is imitatio vitæ, speculum consuetudinis, imago veritatis. It is given as early as by Robortello (see note opposite). But with that intelligent operation of the communis sensus which pedants dislike, speculum vitæ was what took the general.
74. In Prose Scelte di P. Bembo, ed. Costero (Milan, 1880), pp. 141-278.
75. Ed. Costero, 2 vols. (Milan, 1879 and 1884).
76. Ed. Costero (Milan, 1888).
77. Robortello edited Ælian and Æschylus as well as Longinus and Aristotle; Petrus Victorius was busied very widely with the classics. The combined treatment of Aristotle and Horace by the former in his Explicationes (Basle, 1555) is distinctly noteworthy. His dealings with the Greek are almost pure commentary; those with the Roman, though called a “Paraphrase,” are much freer. He begins with a sort of expository lecture on the Epistola ad Pisones, introducing most of its matter and much illustration from other authors. Then separate short essays follow on Satire, Epigram, Comedy, Sales, and Elegy. The heading “Sales” is especially worthy of attention as illustrating that tormenting preoccupation of the classics on Wit, which transmitted itself to the Renaissance, and is found in moderns as recent as Whately. Robortello exercised much authority, and is shown by M. Morel-Fatio in his recent edition of Lope de Vega’s Arte Nuevo (v. infra, p. 343) to have furnished the Spanish poet with much, if not most, of the miscellaneous erudition which he displays to no great purpose. Robortello’s earlier editio princeps of Longinus (ibid., 1554) is noteworthy in a different way. He was by no means more modest than the average Renaissance scholar; on the contrary, he is accused of special arrogance. But this opus redivivum, antea ignotum, e tenebris in lucem editum, as he calls it, seems to have puzzled, if not actually abashed, him. He has no introduction, no regular commentary: only side-headings of the matter, from which, he says, “all the method of the book, and the order of the questions treated, and the whole rationale of the teaching,” and much else, can be learnt. The spirit was too potent for him who had called it up. Of other mainly classical commentators, Riccoboni (Compendium Artis Poeticæ, 1591) is again useful, because he combines Horace and Aristotle, and practicalises the combination, identifying the Aristotelian or pseudo-Aristotelian (see vol. i. p. 34) “Episode” with the first Four Acts, the Exodus with the Fifth, &c. Maggi, Segni, Zabarella are even farther from our sphere.
78. Let, however, the reader beware of being misled by the occurrence of the word “Admiratio” in the side-notes of pp. 52, 53. It is used in quite a different sense.
79. Perhaps, if this be true, the Irish got it from their French friends of the seventeenth century, among whom, according to the Ménagiana, poeta regius was the correct title of the King’s Fool.
80. Ut doceat, ut delectet, ut moveat. Suggested by Cicero on the orator.
81. P. 173. Amatorio mollique sermone effeminat. See Spingarn, p. 70. It should, however, be observed that Minturno is here avowedly expressing the censure of Aristophanes on Euripides rather than his own opinion.
82. “Vain and amatorious.”
83. Minturno mentions neither Cinthio (v. infra) nor Pigna—probably to avoid the appearance of direct attack; but he must have been thinking of one or the other or both. Something the same line was taken by Sperone Speroni.
85. Scritti Estetici di Giambattista Giraldi Cinthio, 2 vols., Milan, 1864. (In Daelli’s Biblioteca Rara.) This edition gives extracts from Pigna’s work, and documents respecting the quarrel.
86. To speak correctly, Seneca prefers (Agamemnon, Hercules Furens, H. Œtæus, Medea, Troades) to compose the First Act of a soliloquy and a chorus. This, when the chorus is not present, becomes of course a monologue. In the Hippolytus, Octavia, Thebais, and Thyestes, there is dialogue in the first Act. But, even of these, the first two begin with a lyrical monologue, which is in effect a first Scene.
87. Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, p. 232.
88. Venice, 1554, 4to.
89. For the neat little edition of this by Karl Wotke (Berlin, 1894) one must be thankful, and also for the careful bibliographical introduction on recent work concerning Renaissance Literature.
90. Op. cit., pp. 62, 63, 70. Giraldus also knows Colet, Grocyn, and others of the set.
91. “Fuere“Fuere et in Britannorum idiomate et eorum vernaculo sermone aliqui poetæ ab iis summo in pretio habiti, inter quos Galfridus Chaucerus qui multa scripsit, et Thomas Viatus.” That he adds “ambo insignes equites” is very pardonable.
92. Not merely northern Humanists like Reuchlin, Erasmus, Eobanus Hessus, and Hutten, not merely Greeks from Gemistus Pletho to Musurus and Lascaris, but foreign vernacular writers like Ressendi, Juan de la Mena, Marot, Martial d’Auvergne receive notice.
93. The supposed date of the conversation is, as usual in such case, thrown a good deal back.
94. He allows him (p. 18, ed. cit.) “sweetness and wit,” but says nescio quare as to the contemporary praise of the Hermaphroditus, and adds plumply, nec poeta bonus nec bonus orator. The simple fact is that, if the subjects of this notorious book were decent, nobody would see anything but quite ordinary merit in their treatment.
95. Ed. cit., p. 25.
96. As a rough but not misleading gauge of this it may be mentioned that Herr Wotke’s Namenregister contains for less than 100 printed pages, between four and five hundred entries, including, besides those noticed in the text, names like those of Olympia Morata and Bilibald Pirkheimer, Castiglione and Alciati, Conrad Celtes and Paulus Jovius, Cardinal Perotti and Jacob Wimpheling. In fact, hardly any one in Europe who had to do with belles lettres seems to have been outside the cognisance, in closer or vaguer kind, of Giraldus.
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. 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.
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. 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. 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.
The second book, Qui et Hyle, gives us an important point at once, in the fact that this hyle—this “material” of poetry—is 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]
The third, Qui et Idea, is far longer than either of the preceding, and is less easily describable to modern readers. 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. 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.
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).