Chapter XVIII: Part II: of the Third. Naturally, there is no part of the book more (1)

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.

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Footnote 103:

_Varietas poetices_ κομητικὴ, _sicut Cypassis Corinnæ_. The text has
κομωτικὴ, which I do not find.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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_.

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Footnote 109:

_Op. Var._, p. 83 _sq._

Footnote 110:

_Op. Var._, pp. 288-306.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Footnote 114:

_Poet. d’Arist._, pp. 585, 586.

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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).

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Footnote 115:

Ibid., p. 576.

Footnote 116:

Ibid., p. 23.

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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.

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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_.

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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.

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Footnote 118:

Ibid., p. 23.

Footnote 119:

_Poet. d’Arist._, p. 158.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Footnote 121:

At Venice, but _ad instanza_ of a Ferrarese bookseller.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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_.

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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.

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Footnote 126:

Especially when they are contrasted with the superciliousness (_v.
supra_) of Lilius Giraldus and Scaliger.

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