Chapter XVI (1)

HISTORY OF POLITE LITERATURE IN PROSE FROM 1550 TO 1600.

SECT. I.

_Style of best Italian Writers--Those of France--England._

|Italian writers.|

|Casa.|

|Tasso.|

1. I am not aware that we can make any great distinction in the character of the Italian writers of this and the preceding period, though they are more numerous in the present. Some of these have been already mentioned on account of their subjects. In point of style, to which we now chiefly confine ourselves, Casa is esteemed among the best.[1300] The Galateo is certainly diffuse, but not so languid as some contemporary works; nor do we find in it, I think, so many of the inversions which are common blemishes in the writings of this age. The prose of Tasso is placed by Corniani almost on a level with his poetry for beauty of diction. “We find in it,” he says, “dignity, rhythm, elegance, and purity without affectation, and perspicuity without vulgarity. He is never trifling or verbose, like his contemporaries of that century; but endeavours to fill every part of his discourses with meaning.”[1301] These praises may be just, but there is a tediousness in the moral essays of Tasso, which, like most other productions of that class, assert what the reader has never seen denied, and distinguish what he is in no danger of confounding.

[1300] Corniani, v. 174. Parini called the Galateo, Capo d’opera di
nostra lingua.

[1301] Corniani, vi. 240.

|Firenzuola. Character of Italian prose.|

2. Few Italian writers, it is said by the editors of the voluminous Milan collection, have united equally with Firenzuola the most simple naïveté to a delicate sweetness, that diffuses itself over the heart of the reader. His dialogue on the Beauty of Women is reckoned one of the best of his works. It is diffuse, but seems to deserve the praise bestowed upon its language. His translation of the Golden Ass of Apuleius is read with more pleasure than the original. The usual style of Italian prose in this, accounted by some its best age, is elaborate, ornate, yet not to excess, with a rhythmical structure apparently much studied, very rhetorical and for the most part trivial, as we should now think, in its matter. The style of Machiavel, to which, perhaps the reader’s attention was not sufficiently called while we were concerned with his political philosophy, is eminent for simplicity, strength, and clearness. It would not be too much to place him at the head of the prose writers of Italy. But very few had the good taste to emulate so admirable a model. “They were apt to presume,” says Corniani, “that the spirit of good waiting consisted in the artificial employment of rhetorical figures. They hoped to fertilize the soil barren of argument by such resources. They believed that they should become eloquent by accumulating words upon words, and phrases upon phrases, hunting on every side for metaphors, and exaggerating the most trifling theme by frigid hyperboles.”[1302]

[1302] Corniani, vi. 52.

|Italian letter-writers.|

3. A treatise on Painting, by Raffaelle Borghino, published in 1584, called Il Riposo, is highly praised for its style by the Milan editors; but it is difficult for a foreigner to judge so correctly of these delicacies of language, as he may of the general merits of composition. They took infinite pains with their letters, great numbers of which have been collected. Those of Annibal Caro are among the best known;[1303] but Pietro Aretino, Paolo Manuzio, and Bonfadio are also celebrated for their style. The appearance of labour and affectation is still less pleasing in epistolary correspondence than in writings more evidently designed for the public eye; and there will be found abundance of it in these Italian writers, especially in addressing their superiors. Cicero was a model perpetually before their eyes, and whose faults they did not perceive. Yet perhaps the Italian writings of this period, with their flowing grace, are more agreeable than the sententious antitheses of the Spaniards. Both are artificial, but the efforts of the one are bestowed on diction and cadence, those of the other display a constant strain to be emphatic and profound. What Cicero was to Italy, Seneca became to Spain.

[1303] It is of no relevancy to the history of literature, but in one
of Caro’s letters to Bernardo Tasso about 1544, he censures the
innovation of using the third person in addressing a correspondent.
Tutto questo secolo (dice Monsignor de la Casa) è adulatore; ognuno
che scrive dà de le signorie; ognuno, a chi si scrive, le vuole; e
non pure i grandi, ma i mezzani e i plebei quasi aspirano a questi
gran nomi, e si tengono anco per affronto, se non gli hanno, e
d’errore son notati quelli, che non gli danno. Cosa, che a me pare
stranissima e stomachosa, che habbiamo a parlar con uno, come se
fosse un altro, e tutta via in astratto, quasi con la idea di
colui, con chi si parla, non con la persona sua propria. Pure
l’abuso è gia fatto, ed è generale, &c., lib. i. p. 122. (edit.
1581.) I have found the third person used as early as a letter of
Paolo Manuzio to Castlevetro in 1543; but where there was any
intimacy with an equal rank, it is not much employed; nor is it
always found in that age in letters to men of very high rank from
their inferiors.

|Davanzati’s Tacitus.|

4. An exception to the general character of diffuseness is found in the well-known translation of Tacitus by Davanzati. This, it has often been said, he has accomplished in fewer words than the original. No one, as in the story of the fish, which was said to weigh less in water than out of it, inquires into the truth of what is confidently said, even where it is obviously impossible. But whoever knows the Latin and Italian languages must know that a translation of Tacitus into Italian cannot be made in fewer words. It will be found, as might be expected, that Davanzati has succeeded by leaving out as much as was required to compensate the difference that articles and auxiliary verbs made against him. His translation is also censured by Corniani,[1304] as full of obsolete terms and Florentine vulgarisms.

[1304] vi. 58.

|Jordano Bruno.|

5. We can place under no better head than the present, much of that lighter literature which, without taking the form of romance, endeavours to amuse the reader by fanciful invention and gay remark. The Italians have much of this; but it is beyond our province to enumerate productions of no great merit or renown. Jordano Bruno’s celebrated Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante is one of this class. Another of Bruno’s light pieces is entitled, La Cabala del Cavallo Pegaseo, con l’Aggiunta del’Asino Cillenico. This has more profaneness in it than the Spaccio della Bestia. The latter, as is well known, was dedicated to Sir Philip Sydney; as was also another little piece, Gli Eroici Furori. In this he has a sonnet addressed to the English ladies: “Dell’Inghilterra o Vaghe Ninfe e Belle;” but ending, of course, with a compliment, somewhat at the expense of these beauties, to “l’unica Diana Qual’è trà voi quel, che tra gl’astri il sole.” It had been well for Bruno if he had kept himself under the protection of Diana. The “chaste beams of that watery moon” were less scorching than the fires of the Inquisition.

|French writers. Amyot.|

6. The French generally date the beginning of an easy and natural style in their own language from the publication of James Amyot’s translation of Plutarch in 1559. Some earlier writers, however, have been mentioned in another place, and perhaps some might have been added. The French style of the sixteenth century is for the most part diffuse, endless in its periods, and consequently negligent of grammar; but it was even then lively and unaffected, especially in narration, the memoirs of that age being still read with pleasure. Amyot, according to some, knew Greek but indifferently, and was perhaps on that account a better model of his own language; but if he did not always render the meaning of Plutarch, he has made Plutarch’s reputation, and that, in some measure, of those who have taken Plutarch for their guide. It is well known how popular, more perhaps than any other ancient, this historian and moralist has been in France; but it is through Amyot that he has been read. The style of his translator, abounding with the native idiom, and yet enriching the language, not at that time quite copious enough for its high vocation in literature, with many words which usage and authority have recognised, has always been regarded with admiration, and by some, in the prevalence of a less natural taste, with regret. It is in French prose what that of Marot is in poetry, and suggests, not an uncultivated simplicity, but the natural grace of a young person, secure of appearing to advantage, but not at bottom indifferent to doing so. This naïveté, a word which, as we have neither naturalised nor translated it, I must adopt, has ever since been the charm of good writing in France. It is, above all, the characteristic of one who may justly be called the disciple of Amyot, and who extols him above all other writers in the language--Montaigne. The fascination of Montaigne’s manner is acknowledged by all who read him; and with a worse style, or one less individually adapted to his character, he would never have been the favourite of the world.[1305]

[1305] See the articles on Amyot in Baillet, iv. 428, Bayle, La Harpe.
Biogr. Universelle. Préface aux Œuvres de Pascal, par Neufchateau.

|Montaigne; Du Vair.|

7. In the essays of Montaigne a few passages occur of striking, though simple eloquence. But it must be admitted that the familiar idiomatic tone of Amyot was better fitted to please than to awe, to soothe the mind than to excite it, to charm away the cares of the moment than to impart a durable emotion. It was also so remote from the grand style which the writings of Cicero and the precepts of rhetoric had taught the learned world to admire, that we cannot wonder to find some who sought to model their French by a different standard. The only one of these, so far as I am aware, that falls within the sixteenth century is Du Vair, a man not less distinguished in public life than in literature, having twice held the great seals of France under Louis XIII. “He composed,” says a modern writer, “many works, in which he endeavoured to be eloquent; but he fell into the error, at that time so common, of too much wishing to Latinise our mother tongue. He has been charged with fabricating words, such as sponsion, cogitation, contumélie, dilucidite, contemnement, &c.”[1306] Notwithstanding these instances of bad taste which, when collected, seem more monstrous than as they are dispersed in his writings, Du Vair is not devoid of a flowing eloquence, which, whether perfectly congenial to the spirit of the language or not, has never wanted its imitators and admirers, and those very successful and brilliant, in French literature.[1307] It was of course the manner of the bar and of the pulpit after the pulpit laid aside its buffoonery, far more than that of Amyot and Montaigne.

[1306] Neufchateau, in Préface à Pascal, p. 181. Bouterwek, v. 326,
praises Du Vair, but he does not seem a favourite with his
compatriot critics.

[1307] Du Vair’s Essay de la Constance et Consolations ès Malheurs
Publiques, of which the first edition is in 1594, furnishes some
eloquent declamation in a style unlike that of Amyot. Repassez en
votre memorie l’histoire de toute l’antiquité; et quand vous
trouverez un magistrat qui aura eu grand credit envers un peuple,
ou auprès d’un prince, et qui se sera voulu comporter
vertueusement, dites hardiment; Je gage que cestui-ci a été banni,
que cestui-ci a été tué, qui cestui-ci a été empoisonné. A Athènes,
Aristidès, Themistoclès, et Phocion; à Rome infinis desquels je
laisse les noms pour n’emplir le papier, me contentant de Camille,
Scipion, et Ciceron pour l’antiquité, de Papinien pour les temps
des empereurs Romains, et de Boece sous les Gots. Mais pourquoi le
prenons nous si haut. Qui avons nous vu de notre siècle tenir les
sceaux de France, qui n’ait été mis en cette charge, pour en être
dejetté avec contumelie? Celui qui auroit vu M. le Chancelier
Olivier, ou M. le Chancelier de l’Hospital, partir de la cour pour
se retirer en leurs maisons, n’auroit jamais envié de tels
honneurs, ni de tels charges. Imaginez vous ces braves et
venerables vieillards, esquels reluisoient toutes sortes de vertus,
et esquels entre une infinité de grandes parties vous n’cussiez sçu
que choisir, remplis d’erudition, consommez ès affaires, amateurs,
de leur patrie, vraiment dignes de telles charges, si le siècle
eust été digne d’eux. Apres avoir longuement et fidèlement servis
la patrie, on leur dresse des querelles d’Allemans, et de fausses
accusations pour les bannir des affaires, on plutot pour en priver
les affaires; comme un navire agité de la conduite de si sages et
experts pilotes, afin de le faire plus aisément briser, p. 76
(edit. 1604.)

|Satire Menippée.|

8. It is not in my power to communicate much information as to the minor literature of France. One book may be named as being familiarly known, the Satire Menippée. The first edition bears the date of 1593, but is said not to have appeared till 1594, containing some allusions to events of that year. It is a ridicule on the proceedings of the League, who were then masters of Paris, and has commonly been ascribed to Leroy, canon of Rouen, though Passerat, Pithou, Rapin, and others, are said to have had some share in it. This book is historically curious, but I do not perceive that it displays any remarkable degree of humour or invention. The truth appears so much throughout, that it cannot be ranked among works of fiction.[1308]

[1308] Biog. Univ. Vigneul-Marville, i. 197.

|English writers.|

|Ascham.|

9. In the scanty and obscure productions of the English press under Edward and Mary, or in the early years of Elizabeth, we should search, I conceive, in vain for any elegance or eloquence in writing. Yet there is an increasing expertness and fluency, and the language insensibly rejecting obsolete forms, the manner of our writers is less uncouth, and their sense more pointed and perspicuous than before. Wilson’s Art of Rhetorique is at least a proof that some knew the merits of a good style, if they did not yet bring their rules to bear on their own language. In Wilson’s own manner there is nothing remarkable. The first book which can be worth naming at all is Ascham’s Schoolmaster, published in 1570, and probably written some years before. Ascham is plain and strong in his style, but without grace or warmth; his sentences have no harmony of structure. He stands, however, as far as I have seen, above all other writers in the first half of the queen’s reign. The best of these, like Reginald Scott, express their meaning well, but with no attempt at a rhythmical structure or figurative language; they are not bad writers, because their solid sense is aptly conveyed to the mind; but they are not good, because they have little selection of words, and give no pleasure by means of Style. Puttenham is perhaps the first who wrote a well-measured prose; in his Art of English Poesie, published in 1586, he is elaborate, studious of elevated and chosen expression, and rather diffuse, in the manner of the Italians of the sixteenth century, who affected that fulness of style, and whom he probably meant to imitate. But in these later years of the queen, when almost every one was eager to be distinguished for sharp wit or ready learning, the want of good models of writing in our own language gave rise to some perversion of the public taste. Thoughts and words began to be valued, not as they were just and natural, but as they were removed from common apprehension, and most exclusively the original property of those who employed them. This in poetry showed itself in affected conceits and in prose led to the pedantry of recondite mythological allusion, and of a Latinised phraseology.

|Euphues of Lilly.|

10. The most remarkable specimen of this class is the Euphues of Lilly, a book of little value, but which deserves notice on account of the influence it is recorded to have had upon the court of Elizabeth; an influence also over the public taste, which is manifested in the literature of the age. It is divided into two parts, having separate titles; the first, “Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit;” the second, “Euphues and his England.” This is a very dull story of a young Athenian, whom the author places at Naples in the first part and brings to England in the second; it is full of dry commonplaces. The style which obtained celebrity is antithetical, and sententious to affectation; the perpetual effort with no adequate success rendering the book equally disagreeable and ridiculous, though it might not be difficult to find passages rather more happy and ingenious than the rest. The following specimen is taken at random, and though sufficiently characteristic, is perhaps rather unfavourable to Lilly, as a little more affected and empty than usual.

11. “The sharpest north-east wind, my good Euphues, doth never last three days, tempests have but a short time, and the more violent the thunder is, the less permanent it is. In the like manner it falleth out with jars and carpings of friends, which, begun in a moment, are ended in a moment. Necessary it is that among friends there should be some thwarting, but to continue in anger not convenient: the camel first troubleth the water before he drink; the frankincense is burned before it smell; friends are tried before they be trusted, lest, shining like the carbuncle as though they had fire, they be found, being touched, to be without fire. Friendship should be like the wine, which Homer much commending calleth Maroneum, whereof one pint being mingled with five quarts of water, yet it keepeth his old strength and virtue, not to be qualified by any discurtesie. Where salt doth grow nothing else can breed; where friendship is built no offence can harbour. Then, Euphues, let the falling out of friends be the renewing of affection, that in this we may resemble the bones of the lion, which, lying still and not moved, begin to rot, but being stricken one against another, break out like fire, and wax green.”

12. “The lords and gentlemen in that court (of Elizabeth) are also an example,” he says in a subsequent passage, “for all others to follow, true types of nobility, the only stay and staff of honour, brave courtiers, stout soldiers, apt to revel in peace and ride in war. In fight fierce, not dreading death; in friendship firm, not breaking promise; courteous to all that deserve well, cruel to none that deserve ill. Their adversaries they trust not--that showeth their wisdom; their enemies they fear not--that argueth their courage. They are not apt to proffer injuries, not fit to take any; loth to pick quarrels, but longing to revenge them.” Lilly pays great compliments to the ladies for beauty and modesty, and overloads Elizabeth with panegyric. “Touching the beauty of this prince, her countenance, her majesty, her personage, I cannot think that it may be sufficiently commended, when it cannot be too much marvailed at; so that I am constrained to say, as Praxiteles did when he began to paint Venus and her son, who doubted whether the world could afford colours good enough for two such fair faces, and I whether my tongue can yield words to blaze that beauty, the perfection whereof none can imagine; which, seeing it is so, I must do like those that want a clear sight, who being not able to discern the sun in the sky, are inforced to behold it in the water.”

|Its popularity.|

13. It generally happens that a style devoid of simplicity, when first adopted, becomes the object of admiration for its imagined ingenuity and difficulty; and that of Euphues was well adapted to a pedantic generation who valued nothing higher than far-fetched allusions and sententious precepts. All the ladies of the time, we are told, were Lilly’s scholars; “she who spoke not Euphuism being as little regarded at court as if she could not speak French.” “His invention,” says one of his editors, who seems well worthy of him, “was so curiously strung, that Elizabeth’s court held his notes in admiration.”[1309] Shakspeare has ridiculed this style in Love’s Labour Lost, and Jonson in Every Man out of his Humour; but, as will be seen on comparing the extracts I have given above, with the language of Holofernes and Fastidious Brisk, a little in the tone of caricature, which Sir Walter Scott has heightened in one of his novels, till it bears no great resemblance to the real Euphues. I am not sure that Shakspeare has never caught the Euphuistic style, when he did not intend to make it ridiculous, especially in some speeches of Hamlet.

[1309] In Biogr. Britannica, art. Lilly.

|Sydney’s Arcadia.|

14. The first good prose writer, in any positive sense of the word, is Sir Philip Sydney. The Arcadia appeared in 1590. It has been said of the author of this famous romance, to which, as such, we shall have soon to revert, that “we may regard the whole literary character of that age as in some sort derived and descended from him, and his work as the fountain from which all the vigorous shoots of that period drew something of their verdure and strength. It was indeed the Arcadia which first taught to the contemporary writers that inimitable interweaving and contexture of words, that bold and unshackled use and application of them, that art of giving to language, appropriated to objects the most common and trivial, a kind of acquired and adventitious loftiness, and to diction in itself noble and elevated a sort of superadded dignity, that power of ennobling the sentiments by the language, and the language by the sentiments, which so often excites our admiration in perusing the writers of the age of Elizabeth.”[1310] This panegyric appears a good deal too strongly expressed, and perhaps the Arcadia had not this great influence over the writers of the latter years of Elizabeth, whose age is, in the passage quoted, rather too indefinitely mentioned. We are sometimes apt to mistake an improvement springing from the general condition of the public mind for imitation of the one writer who has first displayed the effects of it. Sydney is, as I have said, our earliest good writer; but if the Arcadia had never been published, I cannot believe that Hooker or Bacon would have written worse.

[1310] Retrospective Review, vol. ii. p. 42.

|His Defence of Poesie.|

15. Sydney’s Defence of Poesie, as has been surmised by his last editor, was probably written about 1581. I should incline to place it later than the Arcadia; and he may perhaps allude to himself where he says; “some have mingled matters heroical and pastoral.” This treatise is elegantly written, with perhaps too artificial a construction of sentences; the sense is good, but the expression is very diffuse, which gives it too much the air of a declamation. The great praise of Sydney in this treatise is, that he has shown the capacity of the English language for spirit, variety, gracious idiom, and masculine firmness. It is worth notice that under the word poesy he includes such works as his own Arcadia, or in short any fiction. “It is not rhyming and versing that maketh poesy; one may be a poet without versing, and a versifier without poetry.”

|Hooker.|

16. But the finest, as well as the most philosophical, writer of the Elizabethan period is Hooker. The first book of the Ecclesiastical Polity is at this day one of the masterpieces of English eloquence. His periods indeed are generally much too long and too intricate, but portions of them are often beautifully rhythmical; his language is rich in English idiom without vulgarity, and in words of a Latin source without pedantry; he is more uniformly solemn than the usage of later times permits, or even than writers of that time, such as Bacon, conversant with mankind as well as books, would have reckoned necessary; but the example of ancient orators and philosophers upon themes so grave as those which he discusses may justify the serious dignity from which he does not depart. Hooker is perhaps the first in England who adorned his prose with the images of poetry; but this he has done more judiciously and with more moderation than others of great name; and we must be bigots in Attic severity, before we can object to some of his grand figures of speech. We may praise him also for avoiding the superfluous luxury of quotation, a rock on which the writers of the succeeding age were so frequently wrecked.

|Character of Elizabethan writers.|

17. It must be owned, however, by every one not absolutely blinded by a love of scarce books, that the prose literature of the queen’s reign, taken generally, is but very mean. The pedantic Euphuism of Lilly overspreads the productions which aspire to the praise of politeness; while the common style of most pieces of circumstance, like those of Martin Mar-prelate and his answerers (for there is little to choose in this respect between parties), or of such efforts at wit and satire as came from Greene, Nash, and other worthies of our early stage, is low, and, with few exceptions, very stupid ribaldry. Many of these have a certain utility in the illustration of Shakspeare and of ancient manners, which is neither to be overlooked in our contempt for such trash, nor to be mistaken for intrinsic merit. If it is alleged that I have not read enough of the Elizabethan literature to censure it, I must reply that, admitting my slender acquaintance with the numberless little books that some years since used to be sold at vast prices, I may still draw an inference from the inability of their admirers, or at least purchasers, to produce any tolerable specimens. Let the labours of Sir Egerton Brydges, the British Bibliographer, the Censura Literaria, the Restituta, collections so copious, and formed with so much industry, speak for the prose of the queen’s reign. I would again repeat that good sense in plain language was not always wanting upon serious subjects; it is to polite writing alone that we now refer.[1311] Spenser’s dialogue upon the State of Ireland, the Brief Conceit of English Policy, and several other tracts are written as such treatises should be written, but they are not to be counted in the list of eloquent or elegant compositions.

[1311] It is not probable that Brydges, as a man of considerable taste
and judgment, whatever some other pioneers in the same track may
have been, would fail to select the best portions of the authors he
has so carefully perused. And yet I would almost defy any one to
produce five passages in prose from his numerous volumes, so far as
the sixteenth century is concerned, which have any other merit than
that of illustrating some matter of fact, or of amusing by their
oddity. I have only noted, in traversing that long desert, two
sermons by one Edward Dering, preached before the queen (British
Bibliographer, i. 260 and 560), which show considerably more vigour
than was usual in the style of that age.

SECT. II.--ON CRITICISM.

_State of Criticism in Italy--Scaliger--Castelvetro--Salviati--In
other Countries--England._

|State of criticism.|

18. In the earlier periods with which we have been conversant, criticism had been the humble handmaid of the ancient writers, content to explain, or sometimes aspiring to restore, but seldom presuming to censure their text, or even to justify the superstitious admiration that modern scholars felt for it. But there is a different and far higher criticism, which excites and guides the taste for truth and beauty in works of imagination; a criticism to which even the great masters of language are responsible, and from which they expect their reward. But of the many who have sat in this tribunal, a small minority have been recognised as rightful arbiters of the palms they pretend to confer, and an appeal to the public voice has as often sent away the judges in dishonour as confirmed their decision.

|Scaliger’s Poetry.|

|His preference of Virgil to Homer.|

19. It is a proof at least of the talents and courage which distinguished Julius Cæsar Scaliger, that he, first of all the moderns (or, if there are exceptions, they must be partial and inconsiderable), undertook to reduce the whole art of verse into system, illustrating and confirming every part by a profusion of poetical literature. His Poetics form an octavo of about 900 pages, closely printed. We can give but a slight sketch of so extensive a work. In the first book he treats of the different species of poems; in the second, of different metres; the third is more miscellaneous, but relates chiefly to figures and turns of phrase; the fourth proceeds with the same subject, but these two are very comprehensive. In the fifth we come to apply these principles to criticism; and here we find a comparison of various poets one with another, especially of Homer with Virgil. The sixth book is a general criticism on all Latin poets, ancient and modern. The seventh is a kind of supplement to the rest, and seems to contain all the miscellaneous matter that he found himself to have omitted, together with some questions purposely reserved, as he tells us, on account of their difficulty. His comparison of Homer with Virgil is very elaborate, extending to every simile or other passage, wherein a resemblance or imitation can be observed, as well as to the general management of their epic poems. In this comparison he gives an invariable preference to Virgil, and declares that the difference between these poets is as great as between a lady of rank and an awkward wife of a citizen. Musæus he conceives to be far superior to Homer, according to the testimony of antiquity; and his poem of Hero and Leander, which it does not occur to him to suspect, is the only one in Greek that can be named in competition with Virgil, as he shows by comparison of the said poem with the very inferior effusions of Homer. If Musæus had written on the same subject as Homer, Scaliger does not doubt but that he would have left the Iliad and Odyssey far behind.[1312]

[1312] Quod si Musæus ea, quæ Homerus Scripsit, scripsisset, longè
melius eum scripturum fuisse judicamus.

The following is a specimen of Scaliger’s style of criticism,
chosen rather for its shortness than any other cause:--

Ex vicesimo tertio Iliadis transtulit versus illos in comparationem;
μαστιγι δ' αιεν ελαυνε κατωμαδον αἰ δέ οἱ ἱπποι
ὑψοσ' αειρεσθην ῥιμφα πρησσοντε κελευθον.
[mastigi d’ aien elaune katômadon; ai de hoi hippoi
hypsos' aeiresthên rhimpha prêssonte keleuthon.]
ισχνολογια [ischnologia] multa; at in nostro animata oratio;
Non tam præcipites bijugo certamine campum Corripuere, ruuntque
effusi carcere currus, &c. Cum virtutibus horum carminum non est
conferenda jejuna illa humilitas; audent præferre tamen grammatici
temerii. Principio, nihil infelicius quam μαστιγι αιεν ελαυνεν
[mastigi aien elaunen]. Nam continuatio et equorum diminuit
opinionem, et contemptum facit verberum. Frequentibus intervallis
stimuli plus proficiunt. Quod vero admirantur Græculi, pessimum
est, υψοσ' αειρεσθην [hypsos' aeiresthên]. Extento namque, et, ut
milites loquantur, clauso cursu non subsiliente opus est. Quare
divinus vir, _undantia lora_; hoc enim pro flagro, et _præcipites_,
et _corripuere campum_; idque in præterito, ad celeritatem. Et
_ruunt_, quasi in diversa, adeo celeres sunt. Illa vero supra omnem
Homerum, _proni in verbera pendent_. l. v. c. 3.

20. These opinions will not raise Scaliger’s taste very greatly in our eyes. But it is not perhaps surprising that an Italian, accustomed to the polished effeminacy of modern verse, both in his language and in Latin, should be delighted with the poem of Hero and Leander, which has the sort of charm that belongs to the statues of Bacchus, and soothes the ear with voluptuous harmony, while it gratifies the mind with elegant and pleasing imagery. It is not, however, to be taken for granted that Scaliger is always mistaken in his judgments on particular passages in these greatest of poets. The superiority of the Homeric poems is rather incontestable in their general effect, and in the vigorous originality of his verse, than in the selection of circumstance, sentiment, or expression. It would be a sort of prejudice almost as tasteless as that of Scaliger, to refuse the praise of real poetic superiority to many passages of Virgil, even as compared with the Iliad, and far more with the Odyssey. If the similes of the older poet are more picturesque and animated, those of his imitator are more appropriate and parallel to the subject. It would be rather whimsical to deny this to be a principal merit in a comparison. Scaliger sacrifices Theocritus as much as Homer at the altar of Virgil, and of course Apollonius has little chance with so partial a judge. Horace and Ovid, at least the latter, are also held by Scaliger superior to the Greeks whenever they come into competition.

|His critique on modern Latin poets.|

21. In the fourth chapter of the sixth book, Scaliger criticises the modern Latin poets, beginning with Marullus; for what is somewhat remarkable, he says that he had been unable to see the Latin poems of Petrarch. He rates Marullus low, though he dwells at length on his poetry, and thinks no better of Augurellus. The continuation of the Æneid by Maphæus he highly praises; Augerianus not at all. Mantuan has some genius, but no skill; and Scaliger is indignant that some ignorant schoolmasters should teach from him rather than from Virgil. Of Dolet he speaks with great severity; his unhappy fate does not atone for the badness of his verses in the eyes of so stern a critic; “the fire did not purify him, but rather he polluted the fire.” Palingenius, though too diffuse, he accounts a good poet, and Cotta as an imitator of Catullus. Palearius aims rather to be philosophical than poetical. Castiglione is excellent; Bembus wants vigour, and sometimes elegance; he is too fond, as many others are, of trivial words. Of Politian Scaliger does not speak highly; he rather resembles Statius, has no grace, and is careless of harmony. Vida is reckoned, he says, by most the first poet of our time; he dwells, therefore, long on the Ars Poetica, and extols it highly, though not without copious censure. Of Vida’s other poems the Bombyx is the best. Pontanus is admirable for everything, if he had known where to stop. To Sannazarius and Fracastorius he assigns the highest praise of universal merit, but places the last at the head of the whole band.

|Critical influence of the academies.|

22. The Italian language, like those of Greece and Rome, had been hitherto almost exclusively treated by grammarians, the superior criticism having little place even in the writings of Bembo. But soon after the middle of the century, the academies established in many cities, dedicating much time to their native language, began to point out beauties, and to animadvert on defects beyond the province of grammar. The enthusiastic admiration of Petrarch poured itself forth in tedious commentaries upon every word of every sonnet; one of which, illustrated with the heavy prolixity of that age, would sometimes be the theme of a volume. Some philosophical or theological pedants spiritualised his meaning, as had been attempted before; the absurd paradox of denying the real existence of Laura is a known specimen of their refinements. Many wrote on the subject of his love for her; and a few denied its Platonic purity, which, however, the academy of Ferrara thought fit to decree. One of the heretics, by name Cresci, ventured also to maintain that she was married; but this probable hypothesis had not many followers.[1313]

[1313] Crescimbeni, Storia della Volgar Poesia, ii. 295-309.

|Dispute of Caro and Castelvetro.|

23. Meantime a multitude of new versifiers, chiefly close copyists of the style of Petrarch, lay open to the malice of their competitors, and the strictness of these self-chosen judges of song. A critical controversy that sprung up about 1558 between two men of letters, very prominent in their age, Annibal Caro and Ludovico Castelvetro, is celebrated in the annals of Italian literature. The former had published a canzone in praise of the king of France, beginning--

Venite all’ombra de’ gran gigli d’oro.

Castelvetro made some sharp animadversions on this ode, which seems really to deserve a good deal of censure, being in bad taste, turgid, and foolish. Caro replied with the bitterness natural to a wounded poet. In this there might be nothing unpardonable, and even his abusive language might be extenuated at least by many precedents in literary story; but it is imputed to Caro that he excited the Inquisition against his suspected adversary. Castelvetro had been of the celebrated academy of Modena, whose alleged inclination to Protestantism had proved, several years before, the cause of its dissolution, and of the persecution which some of its members suffered. Castelvetro, though he had avoided censure at that time, was now denounced about 1560, when the persecution was hottest, to the Inquisition at Rome. He obeyed its summons, but soon found it prudent to make his escape, and reached Chiavenna in the Grison dominions. He lived several years afterwards in safe quarters, but seems never to have made an open profession of the reformed faith.[1314]

[1314] Muratori, Vita del Castelvetro, 1727. Crescimbeni, ii. 431.
Tiraboschi, x. 31. Ginguéné, vii. 365. Corniani, vi. 61.

|Castelvetro on Aristotle’s Poetics.|

24. Castelvetro himself is one of the most considerable among the Italian critics; but his taste is often lost in subtlety, and his fastidious temper seems to have sought nothing so much as occasion for censure. His greatest work is a commentary upon the Poetics of Aristotle; and it may justly claim respect, not only as the earliest exposition of the theory of criticism, but for its acuteness, erudition, and independence of reasoning, which disclaims the Stagyrite as a master, though the diffuseness usual in that age, and the microscopic subtlety of the writer’s mind may render its perusal tedious. Twining, one of the best critics on the Poetics, has said, in speaking of the commentaries of Castelvetro and of a later Italian, Beni, that “their prolixity, their scholastic and trifling subtlety, their useless tediousness of logical analysis, their microscopic detection of difficulties invisible to the naked eye of common sense, and their waste of confutation upon objections made only by themselves, and made on purpose to be confuted--all this, it must be owned, is disgusting and repulsive. It may sufficiently release a commentator from the duty of reading their works throughout, but not from that of examining and consulting them; for in both these writers, but more especially in Beni, there are many remarks equally acute and solid; many difficulties will be seen clearly stated, and sometimes successfully removed; many things usefully illustrated and clearly explained; and if their freedom of censure is now and then disgraced by a little disposition to cavil, this becomes almost a virtue when compared with the servile and implicit admiration of Dacier.”[1315]

[1315] Twining’s Aristotle’s Poetics, preface, p. 13.

|Severity of Castelvetro’s criticism.|

25. Castelvetro in his censorious humour did not spare the greatest shades that repose in the laurel groves of Parnassus, nor even those whom national pride had elevated to a level with them. Homer is less blamed than any other; but frequent shafts are levelled at Virgil, and not always unjustly, if poetry of real genius could ever bear the extremity of critical rigour, in which a monotonous and frigid mediocrity has generally found refuge.[1316] In Dante he finds fault with the pedantry that has filled his poem with terms of science, unintelligible and unpleasing to ignorant men, for whom poems are chiefly designed.[1317] Ariosto he charges with plagiarism, laying unnecessary stress on his borrowing some stories, as that of Zerbino, from older books; and even objects to his introduction of false names of kings, since we may as well invent new mountains and rivers, as violate the known truths of history.[1318] This punctilious cavil is very characteristic of Castelvetro. Yet he sometimes reaches a strain of philosophical analysis, and can by no means be placed in the ranks of criticism below La Harpe, to whom, by his attention to verbal minuteness, as well as by the acrimony and self-confidence of his character, he may in some measure be compared.

[1316] One of his censures falls on the minute particularity of the
prophecy of Anchises in the sixth Æneid; peccando Virgilio nella
convenevolezza della profetia, la quale non suole condescendere a
nomi proprj, ne a cose tanto chiare e particolari, ma, tacendo i
nomi, suole manifestare le persone, e le loro azioni con figure di
parlare alquanto oscure, si come si vede nelle profetie della
scrittura sacra e nell’Alessandra di Licophrone, p. 219 (edit.
1576). This is not unjust in itself; but Castelvetro wanted the
candour to own, or comprehensiveness to perceive, that a prophecy
of the Roman history, couched in allegories, would have had much
less effect on Roman readers.

[1317] Rendendola massimamente per questa via difficile ad intendere
e meno piacente a uomini idioti, per gli quali principalmente si
fanno i poemi, p. 597. But the comedy of Dante was about as much
written for _gl’idioti_, as the Principia of Newton.

[1318] Castelvetro, p. 212. He objects on the same principle to
Giraldi Cinthio, that he had chosen a subject for tragedy which
never had occurred, nor had been reported to have occurred, and
this of royal persons unheard of before, il qual peccato di
prendere soggetto tale per la tragedia non è da perdonare, p. 103.

|Ercolano of Varchi.|

26. The Ercolano of Varchi, a series of dialogues, belongs to the inferior but more numerous class of critical writings, and after some general observations on speech and language as common to men, turns to the favourite theme of his contemporaries, their native idiom. He is one who with Bembo contends that the language should not be called Italian, or even Tuscan, but Florentine, though admitting, what might be expected, that few agree to this except the natives of the city. Varchi had written on the side of Caro against Castelvetro, and though upon the whole he does not speak of the latter in the Ercolano with incivility, cannot restrain his wrath at an assertion of the stern critic of Modena, that there were as famous writers in the Spanish and French as in the Italian language. Varchi even denies that there was any writer of reputation in the first of these except Juan de la Mena, and the author of Amadis de Gaul. Varchi is now chiefly known as the author of a respectable history, which, on account of its sincerity, was not published till the last century. The prejudice that, in common with some of his fellow-citizens, he entertained in favour of the popular idiom of Florence, has affected the style of his history, which is reckoned both tediously diffuse, and deficient in choice of phrase.[1319]

[1319] Corniani, vi. 43.

|Controversy about Dante.|

27. Varchi, in a passage of the Ercolano, having extolled Dante even in preference to Homer, gave rise to a controversy wherein some Italian critics did not hesitate to point out the blemishes of their countryman. Bulgarini was one of these. Mazzoni undertook the defence of Dante in a work of considerable length, and seems to have poured out, still more abundantly than his contemporaries, a torrent of philosophical disquisition. Bulgarini replied again to him.[1320] Crescimbeni speaks of these discussions as having been advantageous to Italian poetry.[1321] The good effects, however, were not very sensibly manifested in the next century.

[1320] Id. vi. 260. Ginguéné, vii. 491.

[1321] Hist. della Volgar Poesia, ii. 282.

|Academy of Florence.|

28. Florence was the chief scene of these critical wars. Cosmo I., the most perfect type of the prince of Machiavel, sought by the encouragement of literature in this its most innocuous province, as he did by the arts of embellishment, both to bring over the minds of his subjects a forgetfulness of liberty, and to render them unapt for its recovery. The Academy of Florence resounded with the praises of Petrarch. A few seceders from this body established the more celebrated academy Della Crusca, of the _sieve_, whose appellation bespoke the spirit in which they meant to sift all they undertook to judge. They were soon engaged, and with some loss to their fame, in a controversy upon the Gierusalemme Liberata. Camillo Pellegrino, a Neapolitan, had published in 1584 a dialogue on epic poetry, entitled Il Caraffa, wherein he gave preference to Tasso above Ariosto. Though Florence had no peculiar interest in this question, the academicians thought themselves guardians of the elder bard’s renown; and Tasso had offended the citizens by some reflections in one of his dialogues. The academy permitted themselves, in a formal reply, to place even Pulci and Boiardo above Tasso. It was easier to vindicate Ariosto from some of Pellegrino’s censures, which are couched in the pedantic tone of insisting with the reader that he ought not to be pleased. He has followed Castelvetro in several criticisms. The rules of epic poetry so long observed, he maintains, ought to be reckoned fundamental principles, which no one can dispute without presumption. The academy answer this well on behalf of Ariosto. Their censures on the Jerusalem apply, in part to the characters and incidents, wherein they are sometimes right, in part to the language, many phrases, according to them, being bad Italian, as _pietose_ for _pie_ in the first line.[1322]

[1322] In the second volume of the edition of Tasso at Venice, 1735,
the Caraffa of Pellegrino, the Defence of Ariosto by the Academy,
Tasso’s Apology, and the Infarinato of Salviati, are cut into
sentences, placed to answer each other like a dialogue. This
produces an awkward and unnatural effect, as passages are torn from
their context to place them in opposition.

The criticism on both sides becomes infinitely wearisome; yet not
more so than much that we find in our modern reviews, and with the
advantage of being more to the purpose, less ostentatious, and with
less pretence to eloquence or philosophy. An account of the
controversy will be found in Crescimbeni, Ginguéné, or Corniani,
and more at length in Serassi’s Life of Tasso.

|Salviati’s attack on Tasso.|

29. Salviati, a verbose critic, who had written two quarto volumes on the style of Boccaccio, assailed the new epic in two treatises, entitled L’Infarinato. Tasso’s Apology followed very soon; but it has been sometimes thought that these criticisms, acting on his morbid intellect, though he repelled them vigorously, might have influenced that waste of labour, by which, in the last years of his life, he changed so much of his great poem for the worse. The obscurer insects whom envy stirred up against its glory are not worthy to be remembered. The chief praise of Salviati himself is that he laid the foundations of the first classical dictionary of any modern language, the Vocabulario della Crusca.[1323]

[1323] Corniani, vi. 204. The Italian literature would supply several
more works on criticism, rhetoric, and grammar. Upon all these
subjects it was much richer, at this time, than the French or
English.

|Pinciano’s Art of Poetry.|

30. Bouterwek has made us acquainted with a treatise in Spanish on the art of poetry, which he regards as the earliest of its kind in modern literature. It could not be so according to the date of its publication, which is in 1596; but the author, Alonzo Lopez Pinciano was physician to Charles V., and it was therefore written, in all probability, many years before it appeared from the press. The title is rather quaint, Philosophia Antigua Poetica, and it is written in the form of letters. Pinciano is the first who discovered the Poetics of Aristotle, which he had diligently studied, to be a fragment of a larger work, as is now generally admitted. “Whenever Lopez Pinciano,” says Bouterwek, “abandons Aristotle, his notions respecting the different poetic styles are as confused as those of his contemporaries; and only a few of his notions and distinctions can be deemed of importance at the present day. But his name is deserving of honourable remembrance, for he was the first writer of modern times who endeavoured to establish a philosophic art of poetry; and, with all his veneration for Aristotle, he was the first scholar who ventured to think for himself, and to go somewhat farther than his master.”[1324] The Art of Poetry, by Juan de la Cueva, is a poem of the didactic class, containing some information as to the history of Spanish verse.[1325] The other critical treatises which appeared in Spain about this time seem to be of little importance; but we know by the writings of Cervantes, that the poets of the age of Philip were, as usual, followed by the animal for whose natural prey they are designed, the sharp-toothed and keen-scented critic.

[1324] Hist. of Sp. Lit., p. 323.

[1325] It is printed entire in the eighth volume of Parnaso Español.

|French treatises of criticism.|

31. France produced very few books of the same class. The Institutiones Oratoriæ of Omer Talon is an elementary and short treatise of rhetoric.[1326] Baillet and Goujet gave some praise to the Art of Poetry by Pelletier, published in 1555.[1327] The treatise of Henry Stephens, on the Conformity of the French Language with the Greek, is said to contain very good observations.[1328] But it must be (for I do not recollect to have seen it) rather a book of grammar than of superior criticism. The Rhetorique Française of Fouquelin (1555) seems to be little else than a summary of rhetorical figures.[1329] That of Courcelles, in 1557, is not much better.[1330] All these relate rather to prose than to poetry. From the number of versifiers in France, and the popularity of Ronsard and his school, we might have expected a larger harvest of critics. Pasquier, in his valuable miscellany, Les Recherches de la France, has devoted a few pages to this subject, but not on an extensive or systematic plan; nor can the two Bibliothéques Françaises, by La Croix du Maine and Verdier, both published in 1584, though they contain a great deal of information as to the literature of France, with some critical estimates of books, be reckoned in the class to which we are now adverting. In this department of literature, without doing a great deal, we had perhaps rather the advantage over our neighbours.

[1326] Gibert, Baillet, printed in Jugemens des Savans, viii. 181.

[1327] Baillet, iii. 351. Goujet, iii. 97. Pelletier had previously
rendered Horace’s Art of Poetry into French verse, id. 66.

[1328] Baillet, iii. 353.

[1329] Gibert, p. 184.

[1330] Id. p. 366.

|Wilson’s Art of Rhetorique.|

32. Thomas Wilson, afterwards secretary of state, and much employed under Elizabeth, is the author of an “Art of Rhetorique,” dated in the preface January 1553. The rules in this treatise are chiefly from Aristotle, with the help of Cicero and Quintilian, but his examples and illustrations are modern. Warton says that it is the first system of criticism in our language.[1331] But in common use of the word it is no criticism at all, any more than the treatise of Cicero de Oratore; it is what it professes to be, a system of rhetoric in the ancient manner; and, in this sense, it had been preceded by the work of Leonard Cox, which has been mentioned in a former chapter. Wilson was a man of considerable learning, and his Art of Rhetorique is by no means without merit. He deserves praise for censuring the pedantry of learned phrases, or, as he calls them, “strange _inkhorn_ terms,” advising men “to speak as is commonly received;” and he censures also what was not less pedantic, the introduction of a French or Italian idiom, which the travelled English affected in order to show their politeness, as the scholars did the former to prove their erudition. Wilson had before published an Art of Logic.

[1331] Hist. of Engl. Poetry, iv. 157.

|Gascoyne; Webbe.|

33. The first English criticism, properly speaking, that I find, is a short tract by Gascoyne, doubtless the poet of that name, published in 1575; “Certain Notes of Instruction concerning the making of Verse or Rhyme in English.” It consists only of ten pages, but the observations are judicious. Gascoyne recommends that the sentence should as far as possible be finished at the close of two lines in the couplet measure.[1332] Webbe, author of a “Discourse of English Poetry” (1586), is copious in comparison with Gascoyne, though he stretches but to seventy pages. His taste is better shown in his praise of Spenser for the Shepherd’s Kalendar, than of Gabriel Harvey for his “Reformation of our English verse;” that is, by forcing it into uncouth Latin measures, which Webbe has himself most unhappily attempted.

[1332] Gascoyne, with all the other early English critics, was
republished in a collection by Mr. Haslewood in two volumes,
1811 and 1815.

|Puttenham’s Art of Poesie.|