Chapter XIX: Part II: of the Third. Naturally, there is no part of the book more (2)

Only when he has spent 150 pages on this arrangement does Patrizzi pass to his Second Book, in which (once more in the true logical order) he arranges the productions of his poets in _kinds_, of which he is a generous and careful distributor. The much shorter Third deals with the kinds of verses; and the Fourth with the festivals and spectacles at which poetry was produced, the Fifth continuing this with special reference to Games and Contests. The Sixth deals with the singing of ancient poetry; the Seventh with its accompanying Music; the Eighth with Rhythm; the Ninth with the Chorus; and the Tenth with the persons who _produced_ ancient poetry—rhapsodists, priests, actors, &c.

It is, of course, to be observed that all this is strictly limited to _Ancient_ Poetry; indeed Patrizzi repeats the very words religiously in the title of every Book. [Sidenote: _The_ Deca Disputata.] To support his examination with a further one of modern or even Italian “vulgar” poetry does not seem to have occurred to him. Perhaps, indeed—since he refers, as has been said, in the very first line of his second part to _la lunga e faticosa istoria delle cose a poeti, a poemi, e a poetica spettanti_ as “condetta a fine” with a sort of sigh of relief—he may have thought that his readers would not stand it. But it is noteworthy that in this Decade he constantly cites Italian writers, and that the last forty pages of his Tenth Book consist of a _Trimerone_ of controversy with Tasso himself, amicable (they were actually friends), but by no means unanimated.

The First Book of the _Disputata_ is given up to the cause of poetry, which Patrizzi, again in accordance with Bruno, decides to be Enthusiasm (_Furori_[127]), relying much on Plato, especially on the Tynnichus passage (_v. supra_, vol. i. p. 20), and even a little on Aristotle. The Second Book attacks, with a good deal of acerbity, and some wire-drawing, but also with learning, acuteness, and common-sense, the Aristotelian doctrine of Imitation, and the philosopher’s order and distribution of poetic kinds. The Third follows this up by an inquiry whether, in a general way, Poetry is Imitation at all; the Fourth by one whether the poet is an imitator. And the conclusion of the three, enforced with great dialectical skill, and with a real knowledge of Greek criticism,—that of Plato, Longinus, and the Rhetoricians, as well as Aristotle’s,—is that Poetry is _not_ Imitation, or at any rate that Imitation is not proper and peculiar to poets. In which point it will go hard but any catholic student of literature, however great his respect for Aristotle, must now “say ditto” to Patrizzi.

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Footnote 127:

It would be rather interesting to know whether the _Furor Poeticus_ of
the second part of the _Return from Parnassus_ has anything to do with
Patrizzi. There _need_ be no connection, of course; but the
correspondence of England and Italy at this time in matters literary
was so quick and intimate that there _might_ have been. Patrizzi’s
book appeared in the probable year of Shakespeare’s going to London,
and of the production of _Tamburlaine_. Bruno had then left England.

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In his Fifth Book Patrizzi tackles a matter of far greater importance—for after all the discussion, “Is Poetry Imitation, or is it not?” is very mainly a logomachy. As Miss Edgeworth’s philosophic boy remarks, “You may call your hat your cadwallader,” when you have once explained that by this term you mean “a black thing that you wear on your head.” But the question of this Fifth Book, “Whether Poetry can be in prose?” is of a very different kind. It goes, not to words but to things, and to the very roots of them; it involves—if it may not be said actually to _be_—the gravest, deepest, most vital question of literary criticism itself; and on the answer given to it will turn the further answer which must be given to a whole crowd of minor questions.

On this point _il gran Patricio_ has at least this quality of greatness, that he knows his own mind with perfect clearness, and expounds it as clearly as he knows it. His conclusion[128] is, “That verse is so proper and so essential to every manner of poetry that, without verse, no composition either can or ought to be Poetry.” This is refreshing, whether we consider that Patrizzi has taken the best way of establishing his dogma or not. He proceeds as usual by posing and examining the places—four in number—in which Aristotle deals with the question; and discusses them with proper exactness from the verbal point of view, dwelling specially, as we should expect, on the term ψιλὸς for prose. Then, as we should expect also, he enters into a still longer examination of the very obscure and difficult passage about the Mimes and the Socratic Dialogues. To say that the argument is conducted in a manner wholly free from quibbling and wire-drawing would perhaps be too much. Patrizzi—and his logic is certainly not the worse for it—was still in the habit of bringing things to directly syllogistic head now and then; and of this modern readers are too often impatient. But he does succeed in convicting Aristotle of using language by no means wholly consistent; and he succeeds still better in getting and keeping fast hold of that really final argument which made De Quincey so angry when Whately so forcibly put it[129]—the argument that from time immemorial everybody, who has had no special point to prove, when speaking of a poem has meant something in verse, that everybody, with the same exception, has called things in verse poems.

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Footnote 128:

_Deca Disputata_, p. 122.

Footnote 129:

See Whately, _Rhetoric_, III. iii. 3, p. 216 (ed. 8, London, 1857),
and De Quincey, _Rhetoric_ (_Works_, ed. Masson, x. 131).

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Our author’s acuteness is not less seen in the selection and treatment of the subject of his Sixth Book, which is the intimately allied question—indeed, the same question from another point of view—“Whether the Fable rather than the verse makes the property of the poem?” He is equally uncompromising on this point; and has of course no difficulty in showing—against Plutarch rather than Aristotle—that “fable” in the sense of “_made-up_ subject” is not only not necessary to Poetry, but does not exist in any of the most celebrated poems of the most celebrated poets.[130] But he is not even yet satisfied in his onslaught on the Four Places. He devotes a special Book (VII.—it is true that all the constituents of this group of books are short) to Aristotle’s contrast of Empedocles and Homer, labelling the latter only as poet, the former as rather Physiologist. And with this he takes the same course, convicting Aristotle, partly out of his own mouth,[131] partly by citing the “clatter” (_schiamaccio_) which even his own commentators had made on this subject. And, indeed, at the time even the stoutest Aristotelians must have been puzzled to uphold a judgment which, taken literally, would have excluded from the name of poetry the adored _Georgics_ of old, and the admired _Syphilis_ of recent, times.

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Footnote 130:

_Deca Disputata_, p. 134 _sq._

Footnote 131:

Of course an Aristotelian advocate may justly point out that the
Master after all only says μᾶλλον ἢ ποιητὴν, without absolutely
denying the latter title to Empedocles.

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But, indefatigable as he is, he is still not “satiate with his victory,” and in the Eighth Book attacks yet another facet of the same great problem, “Whether Poetry can be based upon, or formed from, History?” This was, as we have seen, a question which had already interested the Italians much; and Patrizzi in handling it draws nearer and nearer to his controversy with Tasso, whom he here actually mentions. He has little difficulty in showing that Aristotle’s contrast between Poetry and History itself by no means denies historical subjects to the poet, and that Aristotle is not at all responsible for, or in accordance with, Plutarch’s extravagant insistence on “mendacity” as a poetic _proprium_. “All the materials comprised in Art, or Science, or study,” says he[132] (in that manner of his which we have already called refreshing, and which we shall meet again seldom in this volume), “can be suitable subjects for poetry and poems, _provided that they be poetically treated_.” Verily, a _gran Patricio_!

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Footnote 132:

_Deca Disputata_, p. 175.

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The subject of the Ninth Book is less important and more purely antiquarian, but interesting enough. It discusses the question whether ancient poetry necessarily involved “harmony” and “rhythm,” and what these terms exactly mean—dancing and gestic accompaniment being considered as well as music. Patrizzi decides, sensibly enough on the historical comparison, that all these things, though old and not unsuitable companions of poetry, are in no sense formative or constitutive parts of Poetry itself.[133]

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Footnote 133:

_Deca Disputata_, p. 192.

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The title-question of the Tenth Book is, “Whether the modes of Imitation are three?” He discusses this generally, and specially in regard to narrative and dramatic delivery of the poetic matter, and then passes in an appendix (which, however, he declares to be part of the book) to the _Trimerone_ of reply to Tasso. [Sidenote: _The_ Trimerone _on Tasso_.] This is a necessarily rather obscure summary, with some quotations, of a fuller controversy between the two, complicated by glances at the other literature of the _Gerusalemme_ quarrel, especially at the work of Camillo Pellegrino.[134] To disentangle the spool, and wind it in expository form, is out of the question here. Fortunately the piece concludes with a tabular statement[135] of forty-three opposition theses to Pellegrino and Tasso. A good many of these turn on rather “pot-and-kettle” recriminations between Homerists and Ariostians; but the general principles of comparative criticism are fairly observed in them, and there is no acerbity of language. In fact, although on some of the points of the controversy Patrizzi took the Della Cruscan side, it does not seem to have interrupted his friendship with Tasso, who attended his lectures,[136] and whose funeral he attended.

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Footnote 134:

Who had been _pars non minima_ in the exaltation of Tasso and
depreciation of Ariosto. See Spingarn, pp. 122, 123; and Serassi,
_Vita di Tasso_ (Rome, 1785), pp. 331-348.

Footnote 135:

_Deca Disputata_, pp. 246-249.

Footnote 136:

This was long after the publication of the _Trimerone_ (1586), and
when Patrizzi had been translated from Ferrara to a newly founded
chair of Platonic Philosophy at Rome, _V._ Serassi, _op. cit._, p.
475.

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The intrinsic importance of Patrizzi’s criticism may be matter of opinion; but it will hardly be denied that both its system and its conclusions are widely different from those of nearly all the Italian critics whom we have yet considered, though there may be approaches to both in Cinthio on the one hand and in Castelvetro on the other. [Sidenote: _Remarkable position of Patrizzi._] The bickering with Aristotle on particular points is of much less importance than the constant implicit, and not rare explicit, reliance on the historic method—on the poets and the poems that exist, the ideas of poetry conveyed by common parlance, the body of the written Word in short, and not the letter of the written Rule. I am not sure that Patrizzi ever lays down the doctrine that “Rules follow practice, not practice rules,” with quite the distinctness of Bruno in the passage cited above.[137] But he makes a fight for it in a passage of the _Trimerone_,[138] and his entire critical method involves it more or less. If he does not quote modern literature much, it is obviously because the controversy in which he was mixing took its documents and texts mainly from the ancients; but he is so well acquainted with the modern literature, not merely of his own language, that he actually cites[139] Claude Fauchet’s _Origines de la Poésie Française_, which had appeared in 1581. That his interest in the whole matter may have been philosophical rather than strictly, or at least exclusively, literary is very possible—he was actually a Professor of Philosophy; but however this may be, he has hit on the solid causeway under the floods, and has held his way steadily along it for as far as he chose to go. Nay, in the sentence which has been chosen for the epigraph of this Book, he has kept it open for all to the end of Poetry and of Time.

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Footnote 137:

P. 95.

Footnote 138:

Pp. 221, 222. Of course it is possible to take exception even to
_poeticamente_—to ask “Yes; but what is this?” But the demurrer is
only specious. The very adverbial form shifts the sovereignty from the
_subject_ to the _treatment_.

Footnote 139:

Ibid., p. 235.

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There are, however, few propositions in literature truer than this—that it is of no present use to be wise for the future. [Sidenote: Sed contra mundum.] If a man chooses the wisdom of the morrow, he must be content for the morrow to appreciate him—which it does not always, though no one but a poor creature will trouble himself much about that. Patrizzi had a really considerable reputation, and deserved it; but in matters literary he was two hundred years in front of his time, and his time avenged itself by taking little practical notice of him.[140] The critical writers of the last fifteen or twenty years of the century are fairly numerous; and though none of them can pretend to great importance, the names of some have survived, and the writings of some of these are worth examination, certainly by the historian and perhaps by the student. But the general drift of them is usually anti-Patrician and pro-Aristotelian, in that very decidedly sophisticated interpretation of Aristotle which was settling itself down upon the world as critical orthodoxy. [Sidenote: _The latest group of sixteenth-century Critics._] Among them we may mention one or two which, though actually earlier than Patrizzi, are later than Castelvetro, and will help to complete, as far as we can here attempt it, the conspectus of that remarkable flourishing time of Italian critical inquiry which actually founded, and very nearly finished, the edifice of European criticism generally for three centuries at least. The authors to whom we return are Partenio, Viperano, Piccolomini, Gilio da Fabriano, and Mazzoni; those to whom we proceed are Jason Denores, Gabriele Zinano, and Faustino Summo. This latter, who, with an odd coincidence of name, date, and purport, does really sum up the sixteenth century for Aristotle, and so govern the decisions of the seventeenth and eighteenth, had been immediately preceded in the same sense by Buonamici,[141] Ingegneri,[142] and others.

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Footnote 140:

The way in which Patrizzi is referred to after the lapse of a century
by Baillet and Gibert (_v. inf._, p. 320) shows at once the sort of
_magni nominis umbra_ which still made itself felt, and the absence of
any definite knowledge to give body to the shade. For his dealings
with Rhetoric, see next Book, p. 329.

Footnote 141:

_Discorsi Poetici_, 1597.

Footnote 142:

_Poesia Rappresentativa_, 1598.

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Partenio, like Minturno and some others, gave his thoughts on the subject to the world in both “vulgar” and “regular”;[143] [Sidenote: _Partenio._] but the two forms, while not identical, are closer together than is sometimes the case, though there is in the Latin a curious appended anthology of translation and parallel in the two languages. He is rather a formal person (as indeed may be judged from his particular addiction to Hermogenes as an authority), but he is not destitute of wits. Throughout he quotes Italian as well as Latin examples, and refers to Italian critics such as Trissino; while in one place he gives something like a regular survey of contemporary Latin poetry by Italians from Pontanus to Cotta. He lays special stress on the importance of poetic diction; he thinks that Art can and should improve nature; but he is as classical as the stiffest _perruque_ of the French anti-Romantic school in believing Aristotle and Horace to contain everything necessary to poetical salvation.

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Footnote 143:

_Della Imitatione Poetica_, Venice, 1560; _De Poetica Imitatione_,
ibid., 1565.

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[Sidenote: _Viperano._]

Viperano[144] (who by a natural error is sometimes cited as Vi_tu_perano) somewhere makes the half-admission, half-boast, _scripsimus autem varios libros de variis rebus_, and is indeed a sort of rhetorical bookmaker who oscillates between instruction and epideictic. This character is sufficiently reflected in his _De Arte Poetica_. He had some influence—even as far as Spain (_v. inf._)

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Footnote 144:

His _De Arte Poetica_ seems to have first appeared at Antwerp in 1579:
I know it in his _Opera_, Naples, 1606.

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Piccolomini’s book,[145] which is a compact small quarto of 422 pages, differs in arrangement from Castelvetro’s merely in not giving the Greek—the _particelle_ of the original in translation being followed by solid blocks of _annotationi_. [Sidenote: _Piccolomini._] The author was of that well-known type of Renaissance scholar which aspired to a generous if perhaps impossible universalism; and as he puts this encyclopædic information at the service of his notes, they are naturally things not easily to be given account of in any small space, or with definite reference to a particular subject. That Piccolomini, however, was not destitute of acuteness or judgment to back his learning, reference to test passages will very easily show. He has not allowed the possible force of the μᾶλλον, for instance, to escape him in the Homer-and-Empedocles passage referred to a little earlier—indeed Maggi had put him in the right way here. But, in this and other cases, he is somewhat too fond of “hedging.” “We must remember this; but we must not forget that,” &c. The inspiriting downrightness of Scaliger on the one side, and Patrizzi on the other, is not in him; and we see the approach, in this subject also, of a time of mere piling up of authorities, and marshalling of arguments _pro_ and _con_, to the darkening rather than the illumination of judgment.

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Footnote 145:

_Annotationi di M. Alessandro Piccolomini nel Libro della Poetica
d’Aristotele_: Vinegia. The dedication to Cardinal Ferdinand dei
Medici is dated Ap. 20, 1572, from Piccolomini’s native town of
Sienna, where he became co-adjutor-archbishop. Some of Salviati’s MS.
observations, printed by Mr Spingarn, seem to show that even
Piccolomini’s contemporaries regarded him as a little too
_polymathic_, while his _Raffaella_ exhibits the less grave side of
the Renaissance. But he was now getting an old man, and died six years
later at the full three score and ten.

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The _Topica Poetica_ of Giovanni Andrea Gilio da Fabriano[146] comes well next to Piccolomini, because the pair are characteristic examples of the two parallel lines in which, as we have seen throughout, Italian criticism proceeds during the century. [Sidenote: _Gilio._] In plan it presents no inconsiderable resemblance to that work of our own Puttenham (_v. infra_) which followed it at no great interval; but it is, as its special title will have indicated to the expert, even more definitely rhetorical. In fact, it must be one of the very latest treatises in which, on the partial precedent of antiquity, Poetics are brought _directly_ under Rhetoric. We actually start with accounts, illustrated by poetical examples in the vernacular, of the Deliberative, Demonstrative, and Judicial kinds; we pass thence to Invention, Imitation, and Style; and thence again to Decorum, the Proper, and so forth, all still illustrated from the vulgar tongue mainly, but with a Latin example here and there. And this finishes the short First Book. The longer Second is the most strictly “topical,” with its sections (at first sight bewildering to the modern non-expert mind) on Definition and Etymology, on Genus and Species, on Example and Induction, on Proceeding from Less to Greater and from Greater to Less, on Amplification, Authority, Custom, and Love. The Third is wholly on Figures of Speech, and the Fourth on Tropes or Figures of “Conceit.” The poetical illustration is all-pervading, and there is an odd appendix of sonnets from ladies of Petrarch’s time. The book is chiefly worth notice here because, as has been said, it is one of the latest—perhaps, with the exception of Puttenham’s own, the actually latest—of its special subdivision that we shall have to notice,—the subdivision, that is to say, in which the literature handled is absolutely subordinate to an artificial system of classification, in which the stamped and registered ticket is everything, so that, when the critic has tied it on, his task is done.

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Footnote 146:

In Venetia, 1580. Why has Time, in the title-page woodcut of this, an
hour-glass as head-dress, but a scourge instead of a scythe in his
hand?

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Giacomo Mazzoni is perhaps better known[147] than at least some of the subjects of this chapter, owing to his connection with [Sidenote: _Mazzoni._] Dante. He first, in 1573, published at Cesena a brief _Difesa di Dante_ of some fifty folios, in fairly large print, and followed it up fourteen years later with an immense _Della Difesa_, containing 750 pages of very small print without the index. The points of the actual _Difesa_ are not uncurious—such as an argument that discourses on Poetry are not improper for the philosopher, and that Dante is a particularly philosophical poet, in fact encyclopædic. From the Imitation point of view the Comedy can be easily defended, as it is a real following of action, and not the mere relation of a dream: and as dealing with _costume_ (manners) it is a comedy, not a tragedy or heroic poem. The _Della Difesa_, on the other hand, is a wilderness of erudition and controversy, arranged under abstract heads (“how the poets have conducted themselves towards the predicaments of Time and Place,” &c.), and diverging into inquiries and sub-inquiries of the most intricate character—the trustworthiness of dreams,[148] the opinions held of them in antiquity, the nature and kinds of allegory, Dante’s orthodoxy—in short, all things Dantean, and very many others. If I cannot with Mr Spingarn[149] discover “a whole new theory of poetry” in the _Difesa_ itself, I am ready to admit that almost anything might be discovered in the _Della Difesa_.

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Footnote 147:

Milton had read Mazzoni, and cites him.

Footnote 148:

There is a large folding table of the causes and kinds of visions.

Footnote 149:

_Op. cit._, p. 124.

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The _Poetica_ of Jason Denores[150] is remarkable from one point of view for its thoroughgoing and “charcoal-burner” Aristotelianism, from another for the extraordinary and meticulous precision of its typographical arrangements. How many sizes and kinds of type there are in Jason’s book I am [Sidenote: _Denores._] not enough of an expert in printing to attempt to say exactly: and the arrangement of his page is as precious as the selection of his type. Sometimes his text overflows the opened sheet, with decent margins indeed but according to ordinary proportions; at others (and by no means always because he requires side-notes) it is contracted to a canal down the centre, with banks broader than itself. It is, however, when Denores comes to the tabular arrangement and subdivision of statement and argument, in which nearly all these writers delight, that he becomes most eccentric. As many divisions, so many parallel columns; under no circumstances will his rigid equity give one section the advantage of appearing on the _recto_ of a leaf while the others are banished to the _verso_. This is all very well when the divisions are two or three or even four. But when, as sometimes happens, there are six or even eight, the cross-reading of the parallel columns is at once tempting and conducive to madness. As each column is but some half-inch broad, almost every word longer than a monosyllable has to be broken into, and as only a single _em_ of space is allowed between the columns, there is a strong temptation to “follow the line.” By doing this you get such bewilderments as

“gue do-diEdip-di Laio, ttappas-menosia ra il Poe mu tio lipo, per,”
&c.,

a moderate dose of which should suffice to drive a person of some imagination, and excessive nerves, to Bedlam. Read straight, however, Denores is much more sedative, not to say soporific, than exciting: and his dealings with Tragedy, the Heroic Poem, and Comedy have scarcely any other interest than as symptoms of that determination towards unqualified, if not wholly unadulterated, Aristotelianism which has been remarked upon.

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Footnote 150:

Padua, 1588. Denores (whose name is often separated into “de Nores”)
was, like Patrizzi, a Professor of Philosophy, and, like Piccolomini,
very polymathic and polygraphic. He had a year earlier published a
_Discourse_ (which I have not) on the Philosophical Principles of
poetical kinds, and had very much earlier still, in 1553, commented
the _Epistola ad Pisones_. His son Pietro was an affectionate and
attentive disciple of Tasso’s in his last days at Rome.

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_Il Sogno, overo della Poesia_, by Gabriele Zinano,[151] dedicated at Reggio on the 15th October 1590 to the above-mentioned Ferrando Gonzaga of Guastalla, is a very tiny treatise, [Sidenote: _Zinano._] written with much pomp of style, but apparently unnoticed by most of the authorities on the subject. The author had studied Patrizzi (or Patrici, as he, too, calls him), and was troubled in his mind about Imitation, and about the equivocal position of Empedocles. He comforts himself as he goes on, and at last comes to a sort of eclectic opportunism, which extols the instruction _and_ delight of poetry, admits that it can practically take in all arts and sciences, but will not admit fable as making it without verse, or verse without fable, and denies that both, even together, make it necessarily good. The little piece may deserve mention for its rarity, and yet once more, as symptomatic of the hold which critical discussion had got of the Italian mind, Zinano is evidently full of the _Deca Istoriale_ and the _Deca Disputata_, but alarmed at their heresies.

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Footnote 151:

I have not found much about Zinano near to hand, nor have I thought it
worth while to go far afield in search of him. Tiraboschi (vii., 1716,
1900) names him as a poet-miscellanist in almost every kind. My copy,
of 42 duodecimo pages, has been torn out of what was its cover, and
may have been its company.

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Paolo Beni, the antagonist of Summo, the champion of prose for tragedy as well as for comedy, and a combatant in the controversy over the _Pastor Fido_, which succeeded in time, and almost equalled in tedium, that over the _Gerusalemme_, will come best in the next Book; and though I have not neglected, I find little to say about, Correa[152] and others.[153] [Sidenote: _Mazzone da Miglionico, &c._] A sign of the times is the somewhat earlier _I Fiori della Poesia_[154] of Mazzone da Miglionico (not to be confounded with the above-mentioned Mazzoni), a tightly packed quarto of five hundred pages, _plus_ an elaborate index. This is a sort of “Bysshe” _ante Bysshium_—a huge _gradus_ of poetic tags from Virgil, Ovid, and Horace, arranged ready for anybody who wishes to pursue the art of poetry according to the principles of Vida. Here you may find choice of phrases to express the ideas of “going to bed for the purpose of sleeping,” of “black and beautiful eyes,” of “shoes that hurt the feet,” and of “horses that run rapidly.” It was inevitable that this manual at once and _reductio ad absurdum_ of the mechanic Art of Poetical Imitation should come—indeed, others had preceded Mazzone, for instance Fabricius, in Germany (see next Book). But one cannot help invoking a little woe on those by whom it came.

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Footnote 152:

His _Explanationes de Arte Poetica_ (Rome, 1587) are simply notes on
Horace.

Footnote 153:

I have not yet been able to see L. Gambara, _De Perfecta Poeseos
Ratione_ (Rome, 1576), and I gather that Mr Spingarn was in the same
case, as he refers not to the book, but to Baillet. According to that
invaluable person (iii. 70), Gambara must have been an early champion
of the uncompromisingly religious view of Poetry which appears in
several French seventeenth-century writers, and in our own Dennis. The
poet is not even to introduce a heathen divinity.

Footnote 154:

Venice, 1592-93.

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[Sidenote: _Summo._]

The twelve _Discorsi_[155] of Faustino Summo manage to cover as many questions in their 93 leaves: the end of Poetry; the meaning of the word _philanthropia_;[156] the last words (the purgation clause) of the Definition of Tragedy; the possibility of a happy ending; the representation of atrocities and deaths; the admissibility of true fables; the necessity of unity of action; the propriety of drama in prose; _furor poeticus_; the sufficiency of verse to make poetry; the legitimacy of tragi-comedy and pastoral; and the quality of the _Pastor Fido_. Summo gives us our last word here with singular propriety. He is not quite Aristotelian to the point of infallibility, and his orthodoxy is what may be called a learned orthodoxy—that is to say, he is careful to quote comments or arguments of many of the writers whom we have mentioned in this chapter and the last, from Trissino to Denores, and of a few whom we have not. But in him this orthodoxy is in the main _constituted_: it is out of the stage of formation and struggle; and it is ready—all the more so that many of its documents have already passed with authority to other countries and languages—to take its place as the creed of Europe.

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Footnote 155:

Padua, 1600.

Footnote 156:

Cf. Butcher, _op. cit._, p. 297 and note.

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