Chapter XVI: Part III: (Style), opening with the rhetorical tradition of

the “three styles,” finds the third, _magnifico_ (the Latin
_grande_), appropriate to epic (52). [Tasso’s own practice of
_magnifico_ is neither florid nor dilated.] Ariosto’s style is
_medium_; Trissino’s, _tenue_. Tragedy (53), relying oftener on
specific words (_proprio_), is less _magnifico_; lyric is more
flowered and adorned; epic, though ranging between the two, is
normally _magnifico_.

Adding (55-60) a summary of the rhetoric of style, including
figures, Tasso finds Boccaccio’s prose over-rhythmical. His
appreciation of the force of exact words in Dante is refreshing
after the earlier disparagement. He closes with an illuminating
comparison (63) of epic style in Vergil with lyric in Petrarch.

Even contributions so distinctive as these are less important than the work as a whole. Tasso’s treatise is so consecutive and so well knit as to be worth more than the sum of its parts. Alike in his order and in his sentences he is firmer and more severe than his time. These _Discorsi_ are carefully planned and adjusted for teaching. They seek neither the conversational ease of Castiglione nor the seriatim analysis of Macchiavelli; and they are far removed from the discursive suggestions of Montaigne. They constitute a reasoned, consecutive poetic.

11. SIDNEY

Sidney’s _Defense of Poesy_ (about 1583; edited by Albert S. Cook, Boston, 1890) exhibits its moral function from mere moralizing, through winsome teaching, to incitement toward higher living.

The reminiscences of rhetoric are not accidental. Sidney makes
the usual Renaissance transfer to poetry of the traditional
threefold function of oratory: to teach, to delight, to move
(9, 11, 13, 22, 26). Toward the end (55) he apologizes. “But
what! methinks I deserve to be pounded [imprisoned] for
straying from poetry to oratory. But both have such an affinity
in the wordish consideration ...” [i.e., in diction; but the
main defect of the treatise is in leaving vague the distinctive
character of poetic composition].

Moralizing, deviating to rhetoric, Sidney is nevertheless suggestive and sometimes penetrative.

He cites Plato’s dialogues (3) as poetical. His lively account
of poetry as imaginative realization (4-6) and as insight into
human life makes clear Aristotle’s saying that poetry “is more
philosophical and more studiously serious than history” (18).
He satirizes Elizabethan ignoring of the dramatic unities (48),
and sees through Ciceronianism (53). His section (55-56) on the
character and capacity of English verse, all too brief, has
real importance.

But he is so far from grasping Aristotle’s idea of imitation that he renders it thus:

Poesy, therefore, is an art of imitation, for so Aristotle
termeth it in his word μίμησις, that is to say, a representing,
counterfeiting, or figuring forth; to speak metaphorically, a
speaking picture, with this end, to teach and delight (9).

We leap away from Aristotle to Horace’s _ut pictura poesis_, and so to rhetoric. This is not merely misinterpretation; it indicates Sidney’s lack of any controlling poetic principle. Though he tidily provides summaries at the ends of his sections, he has little advance of thought. His work is what it is called, a defense[59] of poetry, not a reasoned theory.

There is occasional significance in the usual Renaissance
array of names. Paying his respects to the Cardinals Bembo
and Bibbiena (44), Sidney immediately offsets them with the
Protestants Beza and Melancthon. He calls Fracastoro and
Scaliger “learned philosophers”; Pontano and Muret, “great
orators”; and refers twice to the Latin tragedies of George
Buchanan. His praise of l’Hospital (45) is probably reminiscent
of Ronsard’s ode; for Sidney is acquainted with the Pléiade.
Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Ariosto he merely mentions; but
he knows the greatness of Dante and of course the charm of
Sannazaro. Of the ancients, Plato is cited oftenest, then
Aristotle, Plutarch, Horace of course, and Pindar. He speaks of
“the height of Seneca’s style” (47), mentions Apuleius (50),
and cites the “Greek Romances” in an extraordinary miscellany:
“so true a lover as Theagenes, so constant a friend as Pylades,
so valiant a man as Orlando, so right a prince as Xenophon’s
Cyrus, so excellent a man every way as Virgil’s Aeneas” (8).
His review of English poetry (45-47) scorns the intrusion
of “base men with servile wits,” finds that Chaucer “did
excellently”—for his time, and gives vague praise to Surrey and
Spenser. The reading of the English gentleman poet has been
wide, creditably classical, undiscriminating.

12. ENGLISH DISCUSSION OF VERSE

George Gascoigne’s _Certaine notes of instruction concerning the making of verse or rime in English_, written at the request of Master Edouardo Donati (1575; reprinted in G. Gregory Smith’s _Elizabethan Critical Essays_, I, 46-57) is a brief primer of English verse usage. Though it bungles in detail, it is fairly true to the English tradition of rhythm determined by stress.

The last years of the century prolonged in England a proposal to classicize English metric. William Webbe’s _Discourse of English Poetrie_ (1586; Gregory Smith, I, 226-302. References are to these pages.) harps uncertainly on classical prosody.

What shoulde be the cause that our English speeche ... hath
neuer attained to anie sufficient ripeness, nay not ful auoided
the reproch of barbarousness in poetry? (227) ... What credite
they might winne to theyr natiue speeche, what enormities they
might wipe out of English Poetry ... if English Poetrie were
truely reformed (229).

A traditional preface on the origin of poetry leads from divine inspiration through early bards to Ovid moralized, Horace, and Mantuan (231-239). After dismissing medieval rhymed Latin as “this brutish poetrie,” Webbe proceeds to a review of English achievement.

“I know no memorable worke written by any Poet in our English
speeche vntill twenty yeeres past (239).

“Chawcer ... was next after [Gower].... Though the manner of
hys stile may seeme blunte and course to many fine English
eares at these dayes, yet ... a man shall perceiue ... euen a
true picture of perfect shape of a right poet.... Neere in time
... was Lydgate ... comparable with Chawcer (241). The next ...
Pierce Ploughman ... somewhat harsh and obscure, but indeede a
very pithy wryter ... the first ... that obserued the quantity
of our verse without the curiosity of ryme” (242). A review of
the sixteenth century surrounds Surrey and Sidney with an array
of second-rate poets.

Taking a fresh start with the division into “comicall,
tragicall, historiall,” Webbe finds that Chaucer (251), even as
Horace (250), mingled delight with profit. After a vague word
for John Lyly (256) he returns to Golding’s translation of Ovid
(262). “Somewhat like, but yet not altogether so poetical” is
Chaucer, whom he seems to have on his conscience. “But nowe yet
at the last,” and comparable with the best, is Spenser (263).
A brief return to the ancients proceeds from Hesiod through
Vergil to Tusser and Googe (265).

But Webbe still wishes that rhyme were not habitual. “Which
rude kinde of verse ... I may not vtterly dissalowe [266]. I am
perswaded the regard of wryters to this hath beene the greatest
decay of that good order of versifying which might ere this
haue beene established in our speeche” (274). He even finds in
English a “rule of position” (281), and that _-ly_ is short in
adverbs, long in adjectives (282). Stubbornly he closes his
stupid book with an appendix (290): “Heere followe the Cannons
or general cautions of poetry, prescribed by Horace, first
gathered by Georgius Fabricius Chemnicensis.”

Deaf to the tradition of English verse, Webbe is blind to the development of English poetry.

Puttenham’s more pretentious _Arte of English Poesie_ (1589; reprinted in part by G. Gregory Smith, II, 1-193), after the obligatory rehearsal of ancient seers, reads history thus.

“How the wilde and sauage people vsed a naturall poesie in
versicle and rime as our vulgar is” (chapter v); and “How the
riming poesie came first to the Grecians and Latins, and had
altered and almost spilt their maner of poesie” (chapter vi).
Classification into heroic, lyric, etc., and then into comedy,
tragedy, ode, elegy, etc., is followed (chapter xxxi) by a
review of English poetry as meager for a roll of honor as it is
undiscriminating in criticism.

Book II, Proportion Poeticall, is a misguided prosody.
“Proportion” is exhibited (chapter ii) in “staff” (i.e., stave
or stanza); (iii) in “measure” (i.e., feet) estimated by the
number of syllables without assigning a distinct function to
“accent”; (v) in caesura ranged with “comma, colon, periodus,”
terms transferred from rhetoric to serve as aspects of rhythm;
(vi and following) in “concord,” which includes rime, accent,
time, “stir,” and “cadence”; (xi) in “position”; and finally
in “figure,” square stanzas, triangles, ovals, suitable to
emblems and other devices. Through this confusion and deviation
the typical English stress habit glimmers so faintly as never
to be distinct. “How Greek and Latin feet might be applied
in English” (xiii) leads in the closing chapters to “a more
particular declaration of the metrical feet of the ancient
poets.”