Book III, Ornament, is a long and elaborate classification of

figures of speech.[60] It ends conventionally with typical faults, with decorum, and, in tardy caution, with Horace’s _ars celare artem_.

At the end of the sixteenth century, then, these Englishmen could still assume, with Ascham fifty years earlier, that English poetry had no valid tradition of its own, still seek to revive it by classicism. That classicism should be not only revival of ancient stanza and imitation of ancient style, as with the Pléiade, but even conformity to ancient metric might rather have been proposed in France or Italy, where vernacular verse had kept much of the Latin rhythmical habit. In England, where the vernacular tradition determined the verse pattern by the Germanic habit of stress, the proposal was foredoomed as futile. The insistence of the classical cult nevertheless lingers in serious discussion. The correspondence of Gabriel Harvey with Spenser on this point may be playful, or even partly satirical; but Harvey was a fanatic, and even Spenser sometimes read Chaucer’s verse strangely, sometimes in his poetical youth made strange experiments. The item that lingered longest in discussion, perhaps because it was common to both verse traditions, is rhyme. Thomas Campion’s _Arte of English Poesie_ (1602)[61] attacked this specifically and with more understanding of English rhythms than Webbe had or Puttenham. Samuel Daniel replied with a correct but feeble _Defence of Ryme_ (1603).[62] Classicism could attempt to deviate English verse the more easily when even poets and men of some learning did not understand the linguistic development of their own vernacular.

13. PATRIZZI

Patrizzi’s poetic (_Della poetica di Francesco Patrici la deca disputata ..._ Ferrara, 1586) renews the quarrel with Aristotle begun in his rhetoric.

The sub-title goes on: “in which by history, by arguments, and by authority of the great ancients is shown the falsity of the opinions most accepted in our times concerning poetic. There is added the _Trimerone_ of the same author in reply to the objections raised by Signor Torquato Tasso[63] against his defence of Ariosto.” The ten sections severally inquire: I concerning poetic inspiration (_furore poetico_), II whether poetry originated in the causes assigned by Aristotle, III whether poetry is imitation, IV whether the poet is an imitator, V whether poetry can be written in prose, VI whether plot (_favola_) is rather distinctive of the poet than verse, VII whether Empedocles as a poet was inferior to Homer, VIII whether poetry can be made from history, IX whether ancient poems imitated by harmony and rhythm, X whether the modes of imitation are three.

The divisions obviously overlap, and there is confusion in VII (152) between the origin of poetry and its essential character, in VIII (168) between historical material and history. Section VIII also misses the point of Aristotle’s creative characterization for poetic consistency. These misinterpretations, common enough at the time, are due with Patrizzi to his missing Aristotle’s idea of imitation as the distinctive poetic form of composition. Aristotle thinking of composition remains dark or wrong to Patrizzi thinking of style.[64] Thus he is typical of that general Renaissance difficulty with Aristotle which came from looking the other way. Even after Tasso and Castelvetro, Renaissance poetic kept its preoccupation with style.

14. DENORES

Jason Denores, on the contrary, made his _Poetica_ a digest of Aristotle with a tabular view at the end of each section (_Poetica di Iason Denores, nella qual per via di definitione & divisione si tratta secondo l’opinion d’Aristotele della tragedia, del poema heroico, & della comedia ..._ Padua, 1588). The book has no critical grasp.

Section I (Tragedy) classifies characterization by types (good rulers, bad rulers, etc.) and by the sophistic headings for encomium. “Appropriateness of the traits of the tragic personae consists in conformity (_decoro_) to age, emotion, sex, country, profession” (folio 24, verso). In a word, it is consistency. Chapter IX sums up what makes “una perfettissima tragedia”; and the concluding chapter (X) exemplifies an ideal tragic plot (_argomento_) by a novella of Boccaccio.

Section II (Epic) imposes the obligation of a single action as against the _Achilleis_ of Statius, the _Metamorphoses_ of Ovid, “and many of the romances of our time” (58). The _Aeneid_ has not one action (63) and is not so well extended (_distesa_) as the _Odyssey_ (66). Denores thinks that Aristotle intends the same demands as to plot (_favola_, Chapter I) and even as to component parts (Chapter VI) as for tragedy. Reviewing as before in Chapter IX, he again demonstrates in Chapter X by a story of Boccaccio.

Section III (Comedy) is merely an adaptation of the headings for tragedy. Denores even makes bold to say: “But since Aristotle seems to intend that the parts of comedy should be as many as for tragedy, therefore we have for convenience attributed to comedy prologue, episode, exode. The chorus we have not included, since in general it seems not to have been used” (folio 138, verso). This section, too, is concluded by a review and a demonstration from Boccaccio.

15. VAUQUELIN

The poetic of the Sieur Vauquelin de la Fresnaye is important mainly for confirmation at the end of the century (_L’Art poétique de Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, ou l’on peut remarquer la perfection et le défaut des anciennes et des modernes poésies_; text of 1605 edited by Georges Pellissier,[65] Paris, 1885). Conceived in 1574 and embracing the ideas of the Pléiade, it was still unfinished in 1585 and finally published at Caen only two years before the gentleman poet’s death. The latter part of the sub-title refers to the addition of a sort of _catalogue raisonné_ of poets. Seventeen hundred and sixty Alexandrine couplets survey poetry in three books as style and metric; for composition enters rarely and in terms of rhetoric. Though Aristotle is cited, the base is once more the “Ars poetica” of Horace. Once more poetry is “speaking pictures” (I. 226); once more the Pléiade repudiates _balades_ and _rondeaux_ (I. 546). The doctrine of appropriateness (_bienséance_, _il decoro_) indicates characterization by type (II. 330; III. 499); and the ideal poetic combination is of instruction with delight (III. 609, _utile-dulce_). Instead of saying that Vauquelin outlived his age,[66] we may rather reflect that change in doctrine had been slow and was not yet recognized generally.

16. SUMMARY

In the variety of these poetics appear certain habits and tendencies significant of the period. First, the Renaissance gentleman scholar finds it becoming not only to write verse, especially Latin verse, but to discuss poetic. Sound taste and informed judgment in poetry, as in painting and sculpture, give him rank as accomplished. The people assembled by Castiglione to discuss the ideal courtier agree on this; and indeed several of them might have written the dialogues examined above. Modern readers impatient at the willingness to talk from the book without independent thinking should beware of disparaging the value of a general obligation to be informed about poetry. But even the Renaissance gentlemen who were in the stricter sense scholars seem content with learning for itself. Instead of interpreting and advancing, they exhibit.

The confusion about imitation is too general to be attributed to the stupidity of individuals. It reflects the clash of two conceptions: Aristotle’s idea of imitating human life[67] by focusing its actions and speech in such continuity as shall reveal its significance, an idea of composition; and the humanist idea of imitating classical style. As ideas, the two have nothing to do with each other; but they tripped each other in fact. For the first was new, not yet understood either exactly or generally; and the second was a widespread habit of thought. Imitation suggested classicism. Aristotle, being an ancient, must in some way be reconciled to this. Meantime it is evident, especially from the more commonplace discussions, that though the theory might not be clear, the practice inclined toward dilation and borrowing. Ciceronianism, even while it waned, had spread far beyond Cicero. Bembo’s imitation of Petrarch was not a reproach; it was an added virtue.

The cult of the great period does not preclude citation of Claudian, Statius, Silius Italicus; and Scaliger adds Ausonius and Sidonius. Even Apuleius is not excluded; and space is occasionally found for the dullness of Aulus Gellius and Macrobius. The “Greek Romances” of Achilles Tatius, Apollonius or Heliodorus find place not only with Cinthio, Scaliger, and Vauquelin, but also with Ronsard and Sidney. Indeed, those poetic habits summed up in the term Alexandrianism and corresponding to the decadent rhetoric called sophistic, crop out often enough to suggest a considerable vogue. The sophistic recipe for encomium is accepted by Ronsard; and there is common approval, in doctrine as in practice, of parenthetical dilation by descriptive show-pieces. So the rhetoric of Hermogenes, embraced by Camillo and Partenio for poetic, is mentioned elsewhere with respect. Alexandrianism is at least an inclination of the Renaissance.

But the commonest sign of the times is the unabated vogue of Horace’s “Ars poetica”. It is gospel as much to the Renaissance as it had been to the Middle Age. The cynical explanation would be its very shallowness and conventionality; but probably the deeper reason is that Renaissance thinking on poetic, as Horace’s, was essentially rhetorical. Here, at any rate, is the main significance of these poetics. Various as they may be otherwise, they have this in common. Tasso stands out as an exception, in theory as in practice, by his clear view of poetic as a distinct art of composition; and he is supported by Castelvetro’s penetrative interpretation of the _Poetic_ of Aristotle. But Vauquelin has not heard them; and even Sidney, though he sees the distinction, still falls back on rhetoric. Even to the end of the sixteenth century, Renaissance poetic was largely rhetoric.[68]