Chapter III

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.

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Footnote 97:

My copy is the second edition (apud Petrum Santandreanum, _s. l._,
1581).

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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.

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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_.

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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]

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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.

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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