Chapter III: German and Dutch Criticism

THE HINDMOST OF ALL—ORIGINS—STURM—FABRICIUS—VERSION A.—VERSION B.—JAC.
PONTANUS—HEINSIUS: THE ‘DE TRAGŒDIÆ CONSTITUTIONE’—VOSS—HIS
‘RHETORIC’—HIS ‘POETICS’—OPITZ—THE ‘BUCH DER DEUTSCHEN POETEREI.’

It is not necessary to add much to what has been said in the first chapter of the last Book on the subject of Erasmus, in order to indicate the reasons why the growth of criticism in Germany, High and Low,[465] was far more tardy, and for a long time far scantier, than even in England; and why, when it came, it displayed a one-eyed character which is not visible in any other of the great European countries.[466] [Sidenote: _The hindmost of all._] Want of unity, religious and political troubles, Grobianism and its opposite or companion Pedantry—all had to do with this; but the principal hindrance was the non-existence of any considerable German vernacular literature, and the consequent inveteracy of the habit of writing in Latin. So long as this lasted the Germans and Dutch might be and were commentators, scholars, grammarians—but they could hardly be critics, because they still lacked the comparative stimulus. And it is not a little noteworthy that the earlier development of Criticism in the Low Countries as compared with Germany, during our present period, at least coincided with a greater development of Dutch vernacular literature, though this is a matter which lies out of our direct route.

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Footnote 465:

I do not know any general-special books on the subject of this
chapter, except those of Blankenburg, and Gayley and Scott, _cit.
sup._

Footnote 466:

Of course Olmucensis (_v. supra_, p. 27) and Cornelius Agrippa (p. 28)
in strictness belong to the subject, as does Erasmus himself. But the
last is too cosmopolitan, and the two first too unimportant, to make
the abstraction of them from this place a great wrong to the _Teutsche
Nation_. Ulrich von Hutten wrote on versification, but not
importantly.

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There may easily be differences of opinion as to the persons, not mere Humanists, who shall be selected as representing the beginning of German criticism in modern times, in so far at least as the section of Poetics is concerned. [Sidenote: _Origins._] The choice may lie between the famous Johann Sturm, who touches on literary matters in his letters, who wrote on Rhetoric, and whose pupil, late in his life, drew up a commentary on the Epistle to the Pisos in 1576; Georgius Fabricius, of Chemnitz, the first form of whose _De Re Poetica_ appeared in 1565; and Jacobus Pontanus, whose real name was Spanmüller, whose book on the subject was published thirty years later, but who, as he was then a man of over fifty, and had long been a professor, had probably dealt with the subject, if only in lectures, much earlier.[467]

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Footnote 467:

The _Disputationes de Tragœdia_ of Schosser (1559) are earlier than
any of these; but they seem to be pure commentary on Aristotle. I have
not been able to see them.

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Sturm’s interests were more in pædagogy than in poetry, and he does not rank high as a critic: though there is no doubt that he helped to spread devotion to books. [Sidenote: _Sturm._] It is not in his favour that, in the teeth of both external and internal evidence, he fights[468] for the name _De Arte Poetica_, on the special ground that the work of Horace is an _Ars Perfecta_ (which, put its merits as high as you please, it most certainly is _not_), and that it has all the six parts of poetry—fable, character, _dianoia_, _lexis_, _melopœia_, and “sight.” For the rest he has few general remarks, and is almost wholly commentatorial. His Rhetorical writing yields little really critical: nor in his _Letters_ have I yet found half so much criticism as is extant in that single letter of Ascham to him, which has been noticed above.[469]

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Footnote 468:

_Commentarii in Art. Poet. Horat._ (Strasburg, 1576). The compiler was
Johann Lobart. Sturm’s Rhetorical works are rather numerous, and range
from the _De amissa dicendi ratione_ (ibid., 1538) onwards.

Footnote 469:

P. 155.

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The other two were both men of very wide influence as teachers of Poetics: and both underwent the process—complimentary but disfiguring, and specially usual in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—of having their work watered out, or boiled down, by others. [Sidenote: _Fabricius._] I do not know, and I have not considered it _tanti_ to spend much time or labour in the attempt to discover, the exact process by which the small four books of the first edition of Fabricius’ _De Re Poetica_[470] became the fat volume of seven, which presents itself under the same title thirty years later.[471] [Sidenote: _Version A._] It seemed better to give this time and labour to the reading of the books themselves. Version A (as we may call that of 1565) is an early example of the kind of _gradus_ which was particularly popular among the northern nations, though, as we have seen from the work of Mazzone da Miglionico,[472] it was by no means unknown in Italy. In his first book Fabricius discusses quantity, metre, and diction in general, with plentiful examples. Book II. is an elaborate table of locutions from the Latin poets, listed under heads as thus:—

Amor tangit. Matrimonium promittere.
” versat. ” ” inire.
” torquet. ” ” fallere.
” dat vulnus. ” ” odisse.
” mordet.
” torret.