Chapter XV: Book IV: analyzes style under the headings of the classical

_elocutio_ and _compositio_, and with detailed consideration
of metric. The counsels for imitation, though tolerating the
usual Renaissance closeness, stop short of Ciceronianism. The
concluding advice for revision is drawn from Horace.

8. PARTENIO

Bernardino Partenio devoted five books to _Imitation in poetry_ (_Della imitatione poetica ..._ Venice, 1560). A vernacular dialogue of the _De oratore_ type, it achieves little interchange of views and interposes much delay by ceremonious introduction and interruption. At Murano, near Venice, the main speakers are two elders, Trifone and Trissino, and two younger, Paolo Manutio and Lunisini. The literary fiction is of instructing the latter; but whereas Lunisini remains most of the time silent, Manutio speaks often and sometimes at length. A few other persons pass across the background.

I. After the conventional introduction of poetry as the
original philosophy, poetic composition is left to Aristotle
and Horace, and poetic style is proposed (7) for discussion by
a most confusing division: (1) _inventioni_ through topics; (2)
_assontioni_, which also should mean topics, but are further
described as _commenti_ and _fittione poetiche_ (mythology);
(3) _ordine_, conceived as amplification and variation; (4)
_affetti_, passions and moral habit; (5) _epiteti_.

Imitation (11-13) is common, natural, even necessary, in spite
of objectors and of Pico’s assertion that what we should follow
is the _idea_, not the form. We may imitate a whole subject
(17), or particular _sententiae_, or words, changing the order,
amplifying or restricting, modifying. So did the ancients (24);
so Bembo imitated Petrarch (25); and Terence defended his use
of Menander (28). Camillo’s topics (34) for poetical _inventio_
are set forth with many examples. Partenio’s application seems
to amount to (1) mere periphrasis, (2) concrete specification,
(3) amplification.

II. The next book makes plainer that imitation is dilation,
especially in the direction of sophistic show-pieces (as in
the use of Catullus, 73). The book is not really distinct from
I. Perhaps that explains the padding (80 seq.) with discussion
of poetic diction: compounds, polysyllables, figures. It
closes with a survey of Sannazaro, Pontano, Fracastoro, Vida,
Navagero, and the chief of vernacular poets, Bembo (86).

III. Imitation may mean the expression of human life; but
specifically it is directed toward elegance of diction (93-95),
and may involve the lifting of phrases (98). The awareness
of style which comes from reading should be so confirmed
by imitation (105) as to insure a poetic fund (_copia_).
Imitation of style has always been legitimate (106), but with
variations (110). Boccaccio’s Ser Ciapeletto is dilated by a
list of specifications (119), and concludes, as it should, with
a _sententia_. But dilation demands also the use of topics
(_assontioni_). These are exhibited in tabular view (123) and
exemplified from Vergil, Horace, Catullus, and Petrarch.

IV. Further examples lead into mythology. Order of items in the
encomium recipe may be varied (155). Imitation of passions is
exemplified in Vergil’s Turnus.

V. discusses appropriateness of style (_decoro_) under the
seven _ideas_ of Hermogenes (175), the nine _sensi_, and the
eight instruments.

We have also learned earlier in this confusion that art not only comes from nature, but is a surer and more definite guide (35). Better take epithets from the ancient poets than hunt for them (162). Orators must use common speech; not so poets. Poetic diction should be not only appropriate and sonorous, but remote from daily speech (80).

Partenio’s main significance is the propagation of Camillo’s doctrine of topics derived from Hermogenes[55] and transferred to poetic. Thus it exhibits the common confusion both of poetic with rhetoric and of composing with writing a theme. Its abundant examples are misapplied to show how poetry may be brought on by dilation, which belongs not to poetry, but to oratory. The whole treatise might be called an art of dilation. It has hardly anything to do with writing poetry, almost everything to do with poetifying themes.

9. SCALIGER

Julius Caesar Scaliger achieved the longest Renaissance Latin poetic (_Julii Caesaris Scaligeri viri clarissimi poetices libri septem ..._ 1561).[56] Its complacency must have been sometimes startling even to the Renaissance. The prefatory letter to his son Sylvius is magisterial.

To this art we have applied the sanctions of philosophy, which
are the executives of all nature. That for lack of them it has
hardly been an art before us is evident from our discussion
(iii).

Horace, though he has written an “ars poetica,” teaches with
so little art that almost the whole work seems nearer to
satire. The commentaries of Aristotle, as we have them, are
incomplete. The prudent Vida gives much good advice toward
making a poet more wary, but takes him as already accomplished
to lead him to perfection. We have led him by the right way
through all paths to the very end (iv).

From time to time he inserts reminders of his magistracy.

Thus far Aristotle; but a more accurate account is as follows
(46).

For thus, with more penetration than Aristotle’s ... (201).

No one before us has reduced figures to definite classification
(307).

So much for _inventio_. With greatest toil amid many
difficulties we have elaborated these precepts, which before us
either were not explained at all, or, scattered without art or
order, were merely implied, or were in substance or expression
inept (432).

The Greeks are mistaken if they think we have taken anything
from them except to improve it (598).

As if we were servants of the Greeklings, and not correctors
(623).

His learning is too large to be limited to the subject. “Not to omit anything that makes for erudition” (170), he inserts, for example, a long chapter (I. xviii) on dancing, and another (III. ci) on Roman marriage customs. He is even from time to time autobiographical.

We too have labored not a little that this glory [of _hymnus_
in its ancient sense] might be less obscure among the Latins
(123).

We too celebrated our father, brave as he was unfortunate, in
pastoral (129).

Under the title Senio we had written such a _fabula_, and
sustained the tone with Batavian chime and with such novelty of
invention as might suffice for seven Erasmuses, to say nothing
of one (374).

As we wrote in the epitaph of those who fell at Vienna in the
war against the Turks (426).

His longest quotation (VI. 781-784) is an entire poem of his own.

The seven books of this vast poetic in 310 chapters and 944 pages are as follows.

I. _Historicus_ (57 chapters, 136 pages) presents poetic forms:
pastoral, comedy, tragedy, mime, _satira_, dance, Greek games,
Roman festivals, lyric.

II. _Hyle_ (_Materia_, 42 chapters, 64 pages) is mainly devoted
to verse-forms.

III. _Idaea_ (127 chapters, 238 pages) discusses under the
sophistic topics (sex, occupation, moral habit, fortune,
endowments, etc.) the _personae_ of the poet’s creation; sets
forth the four poetic virtues (_prudentia_, _efficacia_,
_varietas_, _figura_); and adds precepts for the several poetic
forms.

IV. _Parasceve_ (49 chapters, 98 pages) discusses the qualities
of style, with additions on figures.

V. _Criticus_ (17 chapters, 227 pages) is mainly a series of
comparative parallels (_comparationes_), first by authors
(Homer with Vergil, Vergil with Theocritus, etc.), then by
topics (691-717).

VI. _Hypercriticus_ (7 chapters, 134 pages) is a review of
Latin poetry from the sixteenth century back.

VII. _Epinomis_ (11 chapters, 47 pages) is an appendix.

Evidently the division overlaps; and the treatment involves even further repetition. For the book is not a consecutive treatise; it is rather a cyclopedia. Composed generally in short chapters, it indicates the subject of each by a heading, and exhibits all the headings at the beginning in a full table of contents. Thus its vogue may have been mainly for reference. Since it is a guide, not an anthology, the examples are usually brief. Longest naturally in V, the book of parallels, they are elsewhere sometimes only single lines, and rarely exceed ten. Though the great exemplar is Vergil, who almost monopolizes III and IV, they exhibit a wide range.

The object proposed is to form Latin poets: _poetam creare instituimus_ (200); _quoniam perfectum poetam instituimus_ (228). The book sets forth by precept and example not only how to admire and criticize—and correct even famous authors, but how to attain the company of Latin poets, how to make Latin poetry. The history of Latin poetry includes the sixteenth century, though not the Middle Age. Latin poetry has been recovered; and Scaliger, as one of its poets and one of its critics, shows how it is to be carried forward. Surveying it up and down its length, he gives much space to Claudian, Statius, and Silius Italicus, corrects Horace and Ovid, rewrites Lucan (849), estimates his own immediate predecessors. He is a schoolmaster giving _praelectiones_ and correcting Latin themes, extending his instruction by summoning to his desk all authors and all times. He has read everything. Careful to quote the Greeks abundantly in Greek, he asserts the superiority of the Latins. For one author only he has nothing but admiration. His great exemplar, his touchstone, is Vergil.

To pass from Scaliger’s views on individual poets and poetic methods to his view of poetic as a whole is not easy, and is no longer important. As to imitation, his lack of specific precepts suggests that he has no consistent theory. The Aristotelian idea, apparently accepted at the beginning, is misinterpreted in the appendix. The usual Renaissance advice to imitate only with hope of adding luster, rhythm, or other charm (_lucem, numeros, venerem adiungere_, 700) refers, of course, to the other sort of imitation and offers little guidance. On the other hand, Scaliger laments his own early Ciceronianism (800), and makes some acute incidental observations. The topics of sophistic encomium in III, the stock comparisons in V. xiv, and occasional use of terms throughout show the usual Renaissance confusion of poetic with rhetoric. Though in other passages Scaliger seems able to conceive poetry in its own terms, he does not present poetic consistently as a distinct art of composition. Indeed, what he says about composition of either sort is often meager or formal. His preoccupation, from lexicography to figures of speech, is with style. The great apparatus for the production of Latin poetry remains largely rhetoric.

10. RONSARD AND TASSO

Ronsard’s brief, hasty, and perfunctory _L’Art poétique_ (1565; reprinted, with five prefaces, Cambridge University Press, 1930) shows the Pléiade preoccupation with “enriching” the vernacular,[57] and applies the sophistic recipe for encomium to the poet’s celebration of great persons in odes.

“The true aim of a lyric poet is to celebrate to the extreme
him whom he undertakes to praise ... his race ... his native
place” ... (29). Enhancing his diction above common speech
(41-44), he will amplify, even dilate.

The terms _invention_ and _disposition_, transferred
conventionally from rhetoric, do not open anything specific on
composition.

Ronsard refers early to the relation of lyric to music. Except for a few such references, he has been content to gather commonplaces on style. The only importance of the treatise is in showing one of the foremost sixteenth-century poets driven, when asked for theory, as it were inevitably to rhetoric.

Tasso’s poetic, on the other hand, is the most serious, concise, and penetrative of the Renaissance. Composed in 1568 and 1570 to be read before the Ferrara Academy, the _Discorsi dell’arte poetica ed in particolare sopra il poema eroico_ were later amplified, in _Poema eroico_ c. 1590 and _Discorsi dell’arte poetica_, 1587, for Tasso’s theory was no less studious than his practice. Though he too uses the headings of rhetoric _inventio_ and _dispositio_, he applies them to distinctively poetic conception and poetic movement. For he discusses poetic specifically and consistently as movement and as poetic movement. The inspiration is the _Poetic_ of Aristotle. Working independently, Tasso grasped Aristotle’s animating ideas at about the same time as Castelvetro in his illuminating commentary (1570).[58] The following references are to Solerti’s edition of the _Discorsi_ (1901).

The epic poet should move in his own Christian faith and
history, not among pagan deities and rites (12). His field must
not be too large (23-25); his narrative scheme (_favola_), as
Aristotle says, must be entire, of manageable scope, and single
(28). For unity (33), in spite of critical disputes, in spite
of Ariosto’s success without it and of Trissino’s failure with
it, is vital. Ariosto prevails (46) not through lack of unity,
but because of his excellence in other directions. Variety
(47) is desirable only if it does not risk confusion; and,
properly considered, it is compatible with unity. [A clear and
just rebuttal; there is no value in variety unless there is
something from which to vary.]