[263]. “Abbregé de l’Art Poetique,” in Works, ed. Blanchemain, VII. 318.
[264]. Ibid., VII. 340. “Aussi les divines fureurs de Musique, de Poësie, et de paincture, ne viennent pas par degrés en perfection comme les autres sciences, mais par boutées et comme esclairs de feu, qui deçu qui dela apparoissent en divers pays, puis tout en un coup s’esvanouissent.”
[265]. For writers in the vulgar tongue, Dante reverses the rule of more matter and less art. They are too facile. “Pudeat ergo, pudeat idiotas tantum audere deinceps, ut ad cantiones prorumpant,” de vulgar. Eloq., Cap. vi. The canzone must not be content with the speech of common life; let it essay an exalted style.
[266]. Cap. iv., Pastoralia, p. 6.
[267]. G. J. Vossius, de artis poeticæ natura, 1647, Cap. iii. Many subsequent writers followed Scaliger’s account of origins.
[268]. Critische Dichtkunst, 1737, pp. 86, 72.
[269]. Unterricht von der teutschen Sprache und Poesie, deren Ursprung, Fortgang und Lehrsätzen, Kiel, 1682. This book has been called the first attempt at a history of German, and, indeed, of collective European, poetry. Morhof gives a historic account of rime, compares German verse with verse of other nations, and is the first writer in Germany to name Shakspere.
[270]. “De la Poésie Naturelle ou de la Langue Poétique” and “De la Poésie Artificielle,” in Mém. Acad. Inscript., XV. 192 ff., 207 ff. (1739). The only interest lies in the titles, the text is all verbal quibbling. In Mém., XXIII. 85 ff., is a plan for a general history of poetry. But Racine Junior is negligible.
[271]. Ibid., IX. 320 f. (1731-1733), in a paper on the songs of ancient Greece. He repeats the idea that art comes out of nature, but lays stress on a development of special singers, a sort of guild, as contrasted with earlier universality of song. This is the contrast made afterward by Wilhelm Grimm (Heldensage, 2d ed., pp. 382 f.) between “free” and professional song.
[272]. Augustini Calmet dissertatio de poesi veterum Hebraeorum, ... Helmstadii, 1723. A French version is in the Dissertationes qui peuvent servir de Prologomenes de l’Ecriture Sainte, ... Paris, 1720, 3 vols., I. 128 ff. See particularly 15 ff. of the Latin: “Duo habentur Poeseos genera: naturale et artificiale,” etc.