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.|

34. A superior writer to Webbe was George Puttenham, whose “Art of English Poesie,” published in 1589, is a small quarto of 258 pages in three books. It is in many parts very well written, in a measured prose, rather elaborate and diffuse. He quotes occasionally a little Greek. Among the contemporary English poets, Puttenham extols “for eclogue and pastoral poetry Sir Philip Sydney and Master Chaloner, and that other gentleman who wrote the late Shepherd’s Kalendar. For ditty and amorous ode I find Sir Walter Rawleigh’s vein most lofty, _insolent_, [bold? or uncommon?] and passionate; Master Edward Dyer for elegy most sweet, solemn, and of high conceit; Gascon [Gascoyne] for a good metre and for a plentiful vein; Phaer and Golding for a learned and well connected verse, specially in translation, clear, and very faithfully answering their author’s intent. Others have also written with much facility, but more commendably perhaps, if they had not written so much nor so popularly. But last in recital and first in degree is the queen our sovereign lady, whose learned, delicate, noble muse easily surmounteth all the rest that have written before her time or since, for sense, sweetness, and subtilty, be it in ode, elegy, epigram, or any other kind of poem, heroic or lyric, wherein it shall please her majesty to employ her pen, even by so much odds as her own excellent estate and degree exceedeth all the rest of her most humble vassals.”[1333] On this it may be remarked, that the only specimen of Elizabeth’s poetry which, as far as I know, remains, is prodigiously bad.[1334] In some passages of Puttenham, we find an approach to the higher province of philosophical criticism.

[1333] Puttenham, p. 51. of Haslewood’s edition, or in Censura Literaria, i. 348.

[1334] Ellis’s Specimens, ii. 162.

|Sydney’s Defence of Poesy.|

35. These treatises of Webbe and Puttenham may have been preceded in order of writing, though not of publication, by the performance of a more illustrious author, Sir Philip Sydney. His Defence of Poesy was not published till 1595. The Defence of Poesy has already been reckoned among the polite writings of the Elizabethan age, to which class it rather belongs than to that of criticism; for Sydney rarely comes to any literary censure, and is still farther removed from any profound philosophy. His sense is good, but not ingenious, and the declamatory tone weakens its effect.

SECT. III.--ON WORKS OF FICTION.

_Novels and Romances in Italy and Spain--Sydney’s Arcadia._

|Novels of Bandello;|

36. The novels of Bandello, three parts of which were published in 1554, and a fourth in 1573, are perhaps the best known and the most admired in that species of composition after those of Boccaccio. They have been censured as licentious, but are far less so than any of preceding times, and the reflections are usually of a moral cast. These however, as well as the speeches, are very tedious. There is not a little predilection in Bandello for sanguinary stories. Ginguéné praises these novels for just sentiments, adherence to probability, and choice of interesting subjects. In these respects, we often find a superiority in the older novels above those of the nineteenth century, the golden age, as it is generally thought, of fictitious story. But, in the management of these subjects, the Italian and Spanish novelists show little skill; they are worse cooks of better meat; they exert no power over the emotions beyond what the intrinsic nature of the events related must produce; they sometimes describe well, but with no great imagination; they have no strong conception of character, no deep acquaintance with mankind, not often much humour, no vivacity and spirit of dialogue.

|of Cinthio.|

37. The Hecatomithi, or Hundred Tales, of Giraldi Cinthio have become known in England by the recourse that Shakspeare has had to them in two instances, Cymbeline and Measure for Measure, for the subjects of his plays. Cinthio has also borrowed from himself in his own tragedies. He is still more fond of dark tales of blood than Bandello. He seems consequently to have possessed an unfortunate influence over the stage; and to him, as well as his brethren of the Italian novel, we trace those scenes of improbable and disgusting horror, from which, though the native taste and gentleness of Shakspeare for the most part disdained such helps, we recoil in almost all the other tragedians of the old English school. Of the remaining Italian novelists that belong to this period, it is enough to mention Erizzo, better known as one of the founders of medallic science. His Sei Giornate contain thirty-six novels, called Avvenimenti. They are written with intolerable prolixity, but in a pure and even elevated tone of morality. This character does not apply to the novels of Lasca.

|of the Queen of Navarre.|

38. The French novels, ascribed to Margaret Queen of Navarre, and first published in 1558, with the title “Histoire des Amans fortunés,” are principally taken from the Italian collections or from the fabliaux of the trouveurs. Though free in language, they are written in a much less licentious spirit than many of the former, but breathe throughout that anxiety to exhibit the clergy, especially the regulars, in an odious or ridiculous light, which the principles of their illustrious authoress might lead us to expect. Belleforest translated, perhaps with some variation, the novels of Bandello into French.[1335]

[1335] Bouterwek, v. 286, mentions by name several other French novelists of the sixteenth century: I do not know anything of them.

|Spanish romances of chivalry.|

39. Few probably will now dispute, that the Italian novel, a picture of real life, and sometimes of true circumstances, is perused with less weariness than the Spanish romance, the alternative then offered to the lovers of easy reading. But this had very numerous admirers in that generation, nor was the taste confined to Spain. The popularity of Amadis de Gaul and Palmerin of Oliva, with their various continuators, has been already mentioned.[1336] One of these, “Palmerin of England,” appeared in French at Lyons in 1555. It is uncertain who was the original author, or in what language it was first written. Cervantes has honoured it with a place next to Amadis. Mr. Southey, though he condescended to abridge Palmerin of England, thinks it inferior to that Iliad of romantic adventure. Several of the tales of knight-errantry that are recorded to have stood on the unfortunate shelves of Don Quixote, belong to this latter part of the century, among which Don Bellianis of Greece is better known by name than any other. These romances were not condemned by Cervantes alone. “Every poet and prose writer,” says Bouterwek, “of cultivated talent, laboured to oppose the contagion.”[1337]

[1336] La Noue, a severe Protestant, thinks them as pernicious to the young as the writings of Machiavel had been to the old. This he dwells upon in his sixth discourse. “De tout temps,” this honest and sensible writer says, “il y a eu des hommes, qui ont esté diligens d’escrire et mettre en lumière des choses vaines. Ce qui plus les y a conviez est, que ils sçavoient que leurs labeurs seroient agréables a ceux de leurs siècles, dont la plus part a toujours heimé [aimé] la vanité, comme le poisson fait l’eau. Les vieux romans dont nous voyons encor les fragmens par-ci et par-la, a savoir de Lancelot du Lac, de Perceforest, Tristan, Giron le courtois, et autres, font foy de ceste vanité antique. On s’en est repeu l’espace de plus de cinq cens ans, jusques à ce que nostre langage estant devenu plus orné, et nostres esprits plus fretillans, il a fallu inventer quelque nouveauté pour les egayer. Voila comment les livres d’Amadis sont venus en evidence parmi nous en ce dernier siècle. Mais pour en parler au vrai, l’Espagne les a engendrez, et la France les a seulement revetus de plus beaux habillemens. Sous le regne du roy Henry second, ils ont eu leur principale vogue; et croy qui si quelqu’un les eust voulu alors blasmer, en luy eust craché au visage,” &c. p. 153, edit. 1588.

[1337] In the opinion of Bouterwek (v. 282), the taste for chivalrous romance declined in the latter part of the century, through the prevalence of a classical spirit in literature, which exposed the mediæval fictions to derision. The number of shorter and more amusing novels might probably have more to do with it; the serious romance has a terrible enemy in the lively. But it revived, with a little modification, in the next age.

|Diana of Montemayor.|

40. Spain was the parent of a romance in a very different style, but, if less absurd and better written, not perhaps much more interesting to us than those of chivalry, the Diana of Montemayor. Sannazaro’s beautiful model of pastoral romance, the Arcadia, and some which had been written in Portugal, take away the merit of originality from this celebrated fiction. It formed, however, a school in this department of literature, hardly less numerous, according to Bouterwek, than the imitators of Amadis.[1338] The language of Montemayor is neither laboured nor affected, and though sometimes of rather too formal a solemnity, especially in what the author thought philosophy, is remarkably harmonious and elevated; nor is he deficient in depth of feeling or fertility of imagination. Yet the story seems incapable of attracting any reader of this age. The Diana, like Sannazaro’s Arcadia, is mingled with much lyric poetry, which Bouterwek thinks, is the soul of the whole composition. Cervantes indeed condemns all the longer of these poems to the flames, and gives but limited praise to the Diana. Yet this romance, and a continuation of it by Gil Polo, had inspired his own youthful genius in the Galatea. The chief merit of the Galatea, published in 1584, consists in the poetry which the story seems intended to hold together. In the Diana of Montemayor, and even in the Galatea, it has been supposed that real adventures and characters were generally shadowed--a practice not already without precedent, and which, by the French especially, was carried to a much greater length in later times.

[1338] Hist. Span. Lit. p. 305.

|Novels in the picaresque style.|

|Guzman d’Alfarache.|

41. Spain became celebrated about the end of this century for her novels in the _picaresque_ style, of which Lazarillo de Tormes is the oldest extant specimen. The continuation of this little work is reckoned inferior to the part written by Mendoza himself; but both together are amusing and inimitably short.[1339] The first edition of the most celebrated romance of this class, Guzman d’Alfarache, falls within the sixteenth century. It was written by Matthew Aleman, who is said to have lived long at court. He might there have acquired, not a knowledge of the tricks of common rogues, but an experience of mankind, which is reckoned one of the chief merits of his romance. Many of his stories also relate to the manners of a higher class than that of his hero. Guzman d’Alfarache is a sort of prototype of Gilblas, though, in fact, La Sage has borrowed very freely from all the Spanish novels of this school. The adventures are numerous and diversified enough to amuse an idle reader, and Aleman has displayed a great deal of good sense in his reflections, which are expressed in the pointed condensed style affected by most writers of Spain. Cervantes has not hesitated to borrow from him one of Sancho’s celebrated adjudications, in the well-known case of the lady, who was less pugnacious in defence of her honour than of the purse awarded by the court as its compensation. This story is, however, if I am not mistaken, older than either of them.[1340]

[1339] In a former chapter, on the authority of Nicolas Antonio, which I do not find very trustworthy, I have said that the first edition of Lazarillo de Tormes was in 1586. It seems, however, to be doubtful, from what we read in Brunet, whether this edition exists. In return he mentions one printed at Burgos in 1554, and three at Antwerp in 1553 and 1555. Supplement au Manuel du Libraire, art. Hurtado. The following early edition is also in the British Museum, of which I transcribe the title-page. La Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de sus fortunas y adversidades, nuevamente impressa, corregida, y de nuevo anadida en este segunda impression. Vendense en Alcala de Henares en casa de Salzedo librero año de N.D. 1554. A colophon recites the same date and place of impression. The above-mentioned Antwerp edition of 1553 seems to be rather apocryphal. If it exists, it must be the first; and is it likely that the first should have been printed out of Spain?

Though the continuation of Lazarillo de Tormes is reckoned inferior to the original, it contains the only story in the whole novel which has made its fortune, that of the man who was exhibited as a sea-monster.

[1340] The following passage, which I extract from the Retrospective Review, vol. v. p. 199, is a fair and favourable specimen of Aleman as a moralist, who is however apt to be tedious, as moralists usually are.

“The poor man is a kind of money that is not current, the subject of every idle housewife’s chat, the offscum of the people, the dust of the street, first trampled under foot, and then thrown on the dunghill; in conclusion, the poor man is the rich man’s ass. He dineth with the last, fareth with the worst, and payeth dearest; his sixpence will not go so far as the rich man’s threepence; his opinion is ignorance, his discretion foolishness, his suffrage scorn, his stock upon the common, abused by many, and abhorred by all. If he come into company he is not heard; if any chance to meet him, they seek to shun him; if he advise, though never so wisely, they grudge and murmur at him; if he work miracles, they say he is a witch; if virtuous, that he goeth about to deceive; his venial sin is a blasphemy; his thought is made treason; his cause, be it never so just, is not regarded; and to have his wrongs righted, he must appeal to that other life. All men crush him; no man favoureth him. There is no man that will relieve his wants; no man that will bear him company when he is alone and oppressed with grief. None help him, all hinder him; none give him, all take from him; he is debtor to none, and yet must make payment to all. O the unfortunate and poor condition of him that is poor, to whom even the very hours are sold which the clock striketh, and payeth custom for the sunshine in August.”

This is much in the style of our English writers in the first part of the seventeenth century, and confirms what I have suspected, that they formed it in a great measure on the Spanish school. Though this sententiousness and antithetical balancing of clauses is not pleasant to read, it is less insipid than the nerveless elegance of the Italians. Guzman d’Alfarache was early translated into English, as most other Spanish books were; and the language itself was more familiar in the reigns of James and Charles than it became afterwards.

|Las Guerras de Granada.|

42. It may require some excuse that I insert in this place Las Guerras de Granada, a history of certain Moorish factions in the last days of that kingdom, both because it has been usually referred to the seventeenth century, and because many have conceived it to be a true relation of events. It purports to have been translated by Gines Perez de la Hita, an inhabitant of the city of Murcia, from an Arabic original of one Aben Hamili. Its late English translator seems to entertain no doubt of its authenticity; and it has been sagaciously observed that no Christian could have known the long genealogies of Moorish nobles which the book contains. Most of those, however, who read it without credulity, will feel, I presume, little difficulty in agreeing with Antonio, who ranks it “among Milesian fables, though very pleasing to those who have nothing to do.” The Zegris and Abencerrages, with all their romantic exploits, seem to be mere creations of Castilian imagination; nor has Conde, in his excellent history of the Moors in Spain, once deigned to notice them even as fabulous; so much did he reckon this famous production of Perez de la Hita below the historian’s regard. Antonio mentions no edition earlier than that of Alcala in 1604; the English translator names 1601 for the date of its publication, an edition of which year is in the Museum; nor do I find that any one has been aware of an earlier, published at Saragoça in 1595, except Brunet, who mentions it as rare and little known. It appears by the same authority that there is another edition of 1598.

|Sydney’s Arcadia.|

43. The heroic and pastoral romance of Spain contributed something, yet hardly so much as has been supposed, to Sir Philip Sydney’s Arcadia, the only original production of this kind, except such wretched and obscure attempts at story as are beneath notice, which our older literature can boast. The Arcadia was published in 1590, having been written, probably, by its highly accomplished author about ten years before.

|Its character.|

44. Walpole, who thought fit to display the dimensions of his own mind, by announcing that he could perceive nothing remarkable in Sir Philip Sydney (as if the suffrage of Europe in what he admits to be an age of heroes were not a decisive proof that Sydney himself over-topped those sons of Anak), says of the Arcadia, that it is “a tedious lamentable pedantic pastoral romance, which the patience of a young virgin in love cannot now wade through.” We may doubt whether Walpole could altogether estimate the patience of a reader so extremely unlike himself; and his epithets, except perhaps the first, are inapplicable; the Arcadia is more free from pedantry than most books of that age; and though we are now so accustomed to a more stimulant diet in fiction, that few would read it through with pleasure, the story is as sprightly as most other romances, sometimes indeed a little too much so, for the Arcadia is not quite a book for “young virgins,” of which some of its admirers by hearsay seem not to have been aware. By the epithet “pastoral,” we may doubt whether Walpole knew much of this romance beyond its name; for it has far less to do with shepherds than with courtiers, though the idea might probably be suggested by the popularity of the Diana. It does not appear to me that the Arcadia is more tiresome and uninteresting than the generality of that class of long romances, proverbially among the most tiresome of all books; and, in a less fastidious age, it was read, no doubt, even as a story, with some delight.[1341] It displays a superior mind, rather complying with a temporary taste than affected by it, and many pleasing passages occur, especially in the tender and innocent loves of Pyrocles and Philoclea. I think it, nevertheless, on the whole inferior in sense, style, and spirit, to the Defence of Poesy. The following passage has some appearance of having suggested a well-known poem in the next age to the lover of Sacharissa; we may readily believe that Waller had turned over, in the glades of Penshurst, the honoured pages of her immortal uncle.[1342]

[1341] “It appears,” says Drake, “to have been suggested to the mind of Sir Philip by two models of very different ages, and to have been built, in fact, on their admixture; these are the Ethiopic History of Heliodorus, bishop of Tricca in Thessaly, and the Arcadia of Sannazaro,” p. 549. A translation of Heliodorus had been published a short time before.

[1342] The poem I mean is that addressed to Amoret, “Fair! that you may truly know,” drawing a comparison between her and Sacharissa.

45. “The elder is named Pamela, by many men not deemed inferior to her sister; for my part, when I marked them both, methought there was (if at least such perfections may receive the word of more) more sweetness in Philoclea, but more majesty in Pamela: methought love played in Philoclea’s eyes, and threatened in Pamela’s; methought Philoclea’s beauty only persuaded, but so persuaded as all hearts must yield; Pamela’s beauty used violence, and such violence as no heart could resist, and it seems that such proportion is between their minds. Philoclea so bashful, as if her excellencies had stolen into her before she was aware; so humble, that she will put all pride out of countenance; in sum, such proceeding as will stir hope, but teach hope good manners; Pamela, of high thoughts, who avoids not pride with not knowing her excellencies, but by making that one of her excellencies to be void of pride; her mother’s wisdom, greatness, nobility, but, if I can guess aright, knit with a more constant temper.”

|Inferiority of other English fictions.|

46. The Arcadia stands quite alone among English fictions of this century. But many were translated in the reign of Elizabeth from the Italian, French, Spanish, and even Latin, among which Painter’s Palace of Pleasure, whence Shakspeare took several of his plots, and the numerous labours of Antony Munday may be mentioned. Palmerin of England in 1580, and Amadis of Gaul in 1592, were among these; others of less value, were transferred from the Spanish text by the same industrious hand; and since these, while still new, were sufficient to furnish all the gratification required by the public, our own writers did not much task their invention to augment the stock. They would not have been very successful, if we may judge by such deplorable specimens as Breton and Greene, two men of considerable poetical talent, have left us.[1343] The once famous story of the Seven Champions of Christendom, by one Johnson, is of rather a superior class; the adventures are not original, but it is by no means a translation from any single work.[1344] Mallory’s famous romance, La Morte d’Arthur, is of much earlier date, and was first printed by Caxton. It is, however, a translation from several French romances, though written in very spirited language.

[1343] The Mavilia of Breton, the Dorastus and Fawnia of Greene, will be found in the collections of the indefatigable Sir Egerton Brydges. The first is below contempt; the second, if not quite so ridiculous, is written with a quaint affected and empty Euphuism. British Bibliographer, i. 508. But as truth is generally more faithful to natural sympathies than fiction, a little tale, called Never too Late, in which Greene has related his own story, is unaffected and pathetic. Drake’s Shakspeare and his Times, i. 489.

[1344] Drake, i. 529.