A Poet (says Jonson) is a Maker, or a fainer: His Art, an Art of imitation or faining, expressing the life of man in fit measure, numbers, and harmony.... Hence hee is called a Poet, not he which writeth in measure only, but that fayneth and formeth a fable, and writes things like the truth. For the Fable and Fiction is, as it were, the form and Soule of any Poeticall worke or Poeme.[[245]]
So convinced was Jonson that the essence of poetry does not lie in verse but in fiction that Drummond reports, "he thought not Bartas a Poet, but a Verser, because he wrote not fiction."[[246]] Jonson was misled by the false analogy of poetry and painting.
Poetry and Picture are Arts of a like nature, and both are busie about imitation. It was excellently said of Plutarch, Poetry was a speaking Picture, and Picture a mute Poesie. For they both invent, fame, and devise many things.[[247]]
This structural and static conception of poetry is well exemplified by his comparisons. Whereas Aristotle classified poetry with music and dance, Jonson compares the epic or dramatic plot to a house. The epic is like a palace and so requires more space than a drama. The influence of Jonson was beneficial, however, in that he did emphasize in poetry the element of structure which the middle ages had largely neglected.[[248]] In his ideals of style Jonson is rhetorical. In the twelve sections of Timber which he devotes to rhetoric he incorporates a sound treatise on prose style, urging restraint and perspicuity as especial virtues. In his nine sections on poetry he says nothing about style, except to quote Oicero to the effect that "the Poet is the nearest Borderer upon the Orator, and expresseth all his vertues, though he be tyed more to numbers." It would seem that the section on style in oratory was meant to serve for poetry as well. Jonson's own methods of comparison, as related to Drummond, would bear this out: "That he wrote all his (verses) first in prose."[[249]] From the same authority one may learn that "He recommended to my reading Quintilian, who, he said, would tell me the faults of my Verses as if he lived with me," and "That Quintilian's 6, 7, 8, bookes were not only to be read, but altogether digested,"[[250]] Though Jonson makes no more distinction than Petrarch, between Horace, Cicero, or Quintilian as authorities on poetical style,[[251]] his rhetorical cast does not imply the style advocated by Webbe and Puttenham. This was the exuberant style of mediaeval rhetoric, whereas by temperament and scholarly training Jonson threw his influence in favor of the classical rhetorical style of the best period.
The influence of Bacon in favor of the sound rhetoric of Cicero and Quintilian, seconded by that of Jonson, finally did away with the mediaeval ideal of rhetoric as being one with aureate language and embroidered style. The stylistic exuberance of the Elizabethans gave place to a more restrained and polished phrase in the reign of Charles. Bolton, for instance, in his Hypercritica (c. 1618) warns the historians against the style of the Arcadia. "Solidity and Fluency," he says, "better becomes the historian, then Singularity of Oratorical or Poetical Notions."[[252]] Henry Reynolds, in his Mythomystes (c. 1633), although he goes wool-gathering with mystical interpretations of poetry, yet evinces the same reaction against the ornate style in terming the flowers of rhetoric and versification as mere accidents of poetry.[[253]] In his Anacrisis (1634) the Earl of Stirling likewise urges that "language is but the Apparel of Poesy."[[254]] The "but" marks the difference between the ideals of two ages. Fiction remains for him the essence of poetry, for fiction in prose is poetry. But he will not go the whole way with Jonson and deny the name of poet to one whose material is not fictitious.[[255]]
Unfortunately, for English criticism, Milton wrote very little on the theory of poetry. His casual remarks, however, show such enlightened scholarship and keen insight that what little he did write makes up in importance what it lacks in bulk. In the Treatise Of Education (1644) he refers to the sublime art of poetry "which in Aristotle's poetics, in Horace, and the Italian commentaries of Castelvetro, Tasso, Mazzoni, and others, teaches what the laws are of a true Epic poem, what of a Dramatic, what of a Lyric, what decorum is, which is the grand master peece to observe."[[256]] His rhetoric, also, he knew at first hand from the best classical sources. He gives as his authorities Plato, Aristotle, Phalereus,[[257]] Cicero, Hermogenes, Longinus.[[258]] This is the first time that an English critic mentions the treatise On the Sublime in connection with poetry. It can thus hardly be a coincidence that Milton, while citing the only surviving literary critic of classical antiquity who gave proper emphasis to the importance of passion in poetry,[[259]] should himself be the first English critical writer to urge for passion the same importance. This he does in his famous differentiation of rhetoric and poetic. In the educational scheme, he says, after mathematics should be studied logic and rhetoric "To which Poetry would be made subsequent or indeed rather precedent, as being lesse suttle and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate."[[260]] Milton has sometimes been thought to be here defining poetry, but he is only distinguishing it from rhetoric. A definition of poetry he never attempted. Meter he deemed essential to poetry,[[261]] but rime he disliked. Thus, as far as he goes, Milton represents the best in English renaissance criticism. He knew at first hand the best classical treatises on poetic and on rhetoric; and he recognized the distinctions which the ancients had made between them.
With the English literary criticism in the second half of the Seventeenth Century, when the influence of French classicism was in the ascendant, this study is not concerned. In the period which has just been surveyed three points are noteworthy: the character of the English critics, the slowness with which the classical theories penetrated English thought, and the modifications which they underwent in the process. Gregory Smith calls attention to the influence of Sidney and Daniel in establishing "the claim of English criticism as an instrument of power outside the craft of rhetoricians and scholars."[[262]] Of the English critical writers Ascham is the foremost of the scholarly type; Harvey is the only other example. Thomas Wilson, although he wrote a rhetoric, wrote a better one in many ways because he was not a professional rhetorician, but a man of affairs. Gascoigne, Lodge, Spenser, were poets who incidentally wrote on the technic of their art or in defence of its value. Sidney, the poet, courtier, and soldier, wrote not from the musty alcoves of libraries. Webbe, it is true, was a pedant, but certainly not a scholar. Puttenham was a bad poet, a well-read man, and a courtier. Jonson's scholarship was thorough, but sweetened and ventilated by his activities as poet and dramatist. Bacon was a scholar, but even more a philosopher and a statesman. Milton, our most scholarly poet, during most of his life could not keep his mind and pen from church and national politics. Indeed, during the entire English renaissance there was no professional critic. Literary criticism was not a field to be tilled, but a wood to be explored by busy men who could find time for the exploit.
This amateur character of English critics accounts in a measure for the slowness with which classical and Italian renaissance critical theories filtered into England; for a statesman or a soldier is less likely to be up-to-date on theories of poetry than is a professional critic whose business it is to know what is written on his specialty. Another powerful influence in the same direction was the characteristic English conservatism which preferred the traditional paths of thought to Italian innovations.
This same common-sense conservatism accounts also for the modifications of Italian renaissance critical theories before they were incorporated into the fund of English criticism. Classical meters, slavish imitation of the ancients, close adherence to the rules of unity and decorum never made much headway in the English renaissance. Such contaminations of poetic by rhetoric as are clearest seem to arise not from the new Italian influence, but from the mediaeval tradition.
To sum up, classical critics had recognized two categories of literature: a fine art, poetic; and a practical art, rhetoric. Poetic they thought characterized by narrative or dramatic structure or movement, and by vividness of realization, and by passion. Rhetoric was characterized by a logical structure determined by the necessity of persuading an audience. Although most classical critics accepted prose as characteristic of rhetoric, and verse of poetry, Aristotle pointed out that the distinction was far more fundamental. As these two kinds of literature had a common ground in diction, there was a tendency from very early times for them to merge. In the artistic degeneracy of late Latin literature both rhetoric and poetic paid less attention to structure and other elements which distinguished them, and more attention to style, which they had in common. Moreover, under the influence of sophistical rhetoric, preoccupied with style, poetic and rhetoric practiced the same rhetorical artifices. As a result Virgil might be either an orator or a poet. This was the rhetoric which the middle ages inherited. To them rhetoric was synonymous with stylistic beauty. Poetry was a compound of doctrina and eloquentia, in other words of theology and style, in verse. In England this mediaeval tradition persisted into the seventeenth century, as the school rhetorics and the treatises on poetry show. The English renaissance poetic never freed itself from this influence of mediaeval rhetoric until the middle of the seventeenth century. With the recovery of classical literature and literary criticism, the new theories were interpreted in the light of the old ideas.