At the same time, it must be difficult, for all but the extremest Virgilians, to think that he does not err by way of excess in his estimate of that poet; and it must be still more difficult, even for them, not to perceive that the pitch, even if excusable in the individual, is dangerous as an example. and danger. Followers will make-believe; they will give inept reasons to support their made belief; and worst of all, by that fatal catachresis of “imitation” which is always waiting upon the critic, they will begin to think, and to say, that by simply copying and borrowing from Virgil and other great ones you may go near to be thought not entirely destitute of their so-much-praised charm. The danger very soon ceased to be a danger only, and we find a victim to it in Vida; but before coming to him we may divagate a little.

The furor poeticus of Politian put him much beyond other Humanists in critical respects. His contemporary and friend, Petrus Crinitus: his De Poetis Latinis. Petrus Crinitus,[[30]] was, if not quite of the same caste as Politian, by no means of the mere ordinary Humanist type. His kissing-verses, Dum te Neæra savior, are among the best of their kind between Petronius and Johannes Secundus; and his curious pot-pourri, De Honesta Sapientia, is quite worth reading, though one may know most of its constituents well enough beforehand. Yet the literary inquiries here are surprisingly few, and treated in no critical spirit whatsoever, so that there is no disappointment in one sense, though there may be in another, with his three books, De Poetis Latinis. These consist of a large number of separate articles in more or less chronological order, by no means ill-written in the classical-dictionary fashion: Genitus est here; obiisse traditur there, and in such a year; totum se dicavit poeticæ facultati, and the rest. The taste as expressed by preferences is not bad, and the approaches (they are hardly more) to critical estimate, though very obvious and mostly traditional, are sound enough and fairly supported by quotation. But of original attempt to grasp and to render the character of Latin poetry generally, or of any one Latin poet by himself, there is hardly a vestige.

It is not at all improbable that Poetics in one form or another, both Italian and “Tedescan,” may exist in MSS. of this period: Augustinus Olmucensis: his Defence of Poetry. there is certainly work, even in print, of which very little notice has been taken hitherto. For instance, a few months ago my friend Mr Gregory Smith saw in a catalogue, bought, and very kindly lent to me, a Dialogus in Defensionem Poetices, printed at Venice in 1493, and written by a certain Augustinus Moravus Olmucensis.[[31]] This writer’s family name in vernacular appears to have been Käsenbrot; and he was one of the early German Humanists whose most famous chiefs were Reuchlin earlier, Conrad Celtes and Eobanus Hessus later, who achieved much tolerable verse, and in the Epistolæ Obscurorum one immortal piece of prose, but who were whelmed in the deluge of the Reformation struggles, and accomplished little of the good which they might have done to Germany. The Dialogus—which has the perhaps not quite accidental interest of having appeared in the year between the writing of Savonarola’s somewhat dubious backing of Poetry, and the first printing of Boccaccio’s uncompromising and generous championship thereof—cannot be said to be of much intrinsic importance. The author gives, or rather adopts, the definition of Poetry as “a metrical structure of true or feigned narration, composed in suitable rhythm or feet, and adjusted to utility and pleasure.” But his text is rather rambling. A parallel with Medicine (the piece seems to have been written at Padua, which helps it to its place here) is not very well worked out, and the latter part is chiefly occupied with rather dull-fantastic allegorisings of the stories of Tiresias, the Gorgons, the geography of Hades, and so forth. Still it is a sign, and welcome as such.

Another Transalpine may be admitted here, for reasons of time rather than of place, to introduce two undoubted Italians. Paradoxical attacks on it by Cornelius Agrippa, Landi, Berni. It is customary to mention the name at least of Cornelius Agrippa,[[32]] if not exactly as a critic, at any rate as being a denouncer, though no mean practitioner, of literature. It is perhaps a just punishment for his blasphemy that no one who only knew this would dream that the adept of Nettesheim was as good a man of letters as he is. It constitutes the fourth chapter of the De Vanitate Scientiarum (1527), and is a mere piece of hackneyed railing at the art which aures stultorum demulcet, which is architectrix mendaciorum et cultrix perversorum dogmatum, which is pertenuis et nuda, insulsa, esuriens, famelica. Alas! if some tales are true, Cornelius (who really was a clever man) found that Occultism could starve its votaries as well as Poetry. His attack is, in fact, nothing but an instance of that measles of the Renaissance (nor of the Renaissance only) paradox-quackery; and it has no solid foundation whatever. The later (1543) Paradossi of Ortensio Landi[[33]] exhibit more frankly the same spirit, but in regard to individuals, especially Aristotle, rather than to poetry and literature generally. And it is probably not absent from Berni’s Dialogo contra i Poeti[[34]] (1537, but written earlier), in which Poetry is dismissed by this agreeable poet as suitable enough pastime for a gentleman, but out of the question as a regular vocation or serious business.

But we must return to serious persons. Of the critical texts to which we pay chief attention in this book, there are not a few which are of far higher critical value than Vida’s Poetics.[[35]] Vida. But it may be doubted whether even the similarly named treatises of Aristotle and of Horace have had a greater actual influence; and I at least am nearly certain that no modern treatise has had, or has yet had a chance of having, anything like so much. In the recently renewed study of Renaissance Criticism there has been, naturally enough, a repetition of a phenomenon familiar on such occasions—that is to say, the deflection of attention from pretty well-known if half-forgotten material to material which had been still more forgotten, and was hardly known at all. Daniello, Minturno, and the rest had, since the seventeenth century, rested almost undisturbed; even Castelvetro and Scaliger had more or less shrunk to the position of authorities, of some importance, in regard to ancient criticism. But Vida, owing to the unmistakable though unacknowledged borrowing of Boileau, the franker discipleship of Pope, and the inclusion of a very characteristic translation by Pitt among the usual collections of “British Poets,” had taken rank once for all. It is true that it was a rank somewhat of the museum order, but it existed. Now, the critics who followed him and refined upon him have been disinterred, and are enjoying their modest second vogue; and he is comparatively neglected, though a judicious American[[36]] has put him in modern dress once more between his master Horace and his pupil Boileau.

Of three things, however, the one is absolutely incontestable as a fact, and the other two are not easily, I think, to be gainsaid by competent authority. Importance of the Poetics. The first is, that Vida anticipates in time even the earliest of the prose critics of the new Italian school by some couple of years, while he anticipates the main group of these critics by more than twenty. The second is, that though no doubt he took some impulse from Politian and other Humanists, he is practically the first to codify that extravagant Virgil-worship which reigned throughout the Neo-Classical dispensation. The third is that, not merely in this point but in others, he seems, by a sort of intuition, to have anticipated, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, almost the whole critical orthodoxy of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth. It is this which makes the translation of him by Pitt so interesting; because the translator is, for once, no traitor, but plus royaliste que le roi—fanatically imbued with the principles, and equipped to the finger-tips with the practice, of his original. But for the purposes of the scholar that original itself must of course be taken.

The temper and the faith in which Vida writes are made manifest by the very beginning of his poem—an invocation to the Muses woven of unexceptionable gradus-tags, and deftly dovetailed into a dedication to the luckless Dauphin Francis, who had then taken his father’s place as Charles the Fifth’s prisoner at Madrid, and to whose captivity the poem is modestly offered as a solace or pastime. Analysis of the piece. These invocations accomplished more majorum, Vida proceeds to occupy his First Book with a sort of general clearing of the ground. He is ready to teach the secret of all kinds of poetry; but the poet must very carefully inquire what are the kinds to which he himself is best adapted and best inclined. Commissioned work is dubious, unless under a king’s command. But there is more than this: the poetic child must be carefully nursed in the arts suitable to his great calling. He must be as carefully guarded from the taint of vulgar and incorrect speech; and must be regularly initiated into Poetry—Latin first, especially Virgil, and then Greek, especially Homer. A short historical sketch of poetry follows; but it, like everything else, is brought round to the deification of the Mantuan. Hence Vida (who must be pronounced rather long in weighing anchor) diverges to a good-natured intercession with parents and teachers not to have the boys whipped too much, telling a moving legend of an extremely pretty[[37]] boy who was actually whipped to death, or at least died of fear. Emulation, however, is quite a good stimulus; and by degrees work will be loved for itself. But original poetical production must not be attempted too young; there must be time for play; the rudiments of metre and so forth must be thoroughly learnt; and, above all, non omnes omnia must be constantly kept in mind. It is better to begin with pastorals and minor subjects; solitude and country life are very desirable circumstances. And so Book I. closes with a fresh invocation of the spirit of poetry and a fresh celebration of its power.

After this rather ample prelude the author somewhat unreasonably (seeing that the delay has been his own doing), but in coachmanlike fashion, says Pergite! Pierides, and proposes to unfold the whole of Helicon to coming ages. The first disclosure is scarcely novel. You must invoke Jove and the Muses; nor will one Invocation do. When in doubt always invoke.[[38]] Next you should, without holding out bombastic promises, allure your reader by a modest but sufficient description of the subject of your poem. So far the method of turning the practice of the ancients into a principle is impartially adjusted to Homer and Virgil alike; but after a few score verses the partisan appears. The beginnings of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the plunging into the midst of things with the wrath of Achilles, and the sojourn with Calypso, instead of the rape of Helen (why not of Hesione?) or the launching from Troy, are duly praised. But the elaborate Homeric descriptions—as that of the car—are boggled at; the introduction of Thersites shocks Vida (Drances seems a far nobler figure), and the pettiness of the subjects of some of the Homeric similes would never suit the magniloquence of the Latian Muse.[[39]] In Virgil, on the other hand, he can see no fault; even the demand of Venus for arms to clothe her bastard son, which had given qualms to admirers of old, does not disturb Vida at all; and his poem seems to be slipping by degrees into a mere précis of the Æneid, that each trait actually found in Virgil may be registered as a pattern to poets generally. He wrenches himself free for a moment to inculcate the following of nature; but presently lapses into an elaborate demonstration of the beautiful way in which the Mantuan does follow nature. In short, though now and then to “save his face” an illustration is drawn honoris causa from Homer, this Second Book on the ordonnance of the poem is, till it ceases with a panegyric of Leo X., little more than a descant On the Imitation of Virgil.

It cannot be said that the Third Book offers much difference in this respect—though the idolatry of Virgil is in parts a little more disguised. It is, again more majorum, devoted to Diction, and, the Muses having been invited to cross the stage once more, our Mentor first reprobates Obscurity. But though you must not be obscure, you may and should be Figurative, and not a few of the best known of our ancient acquaintances the Figures—Metaphor, Hyperbole, Apostrophe, and so forth—are introduced and commended, or sometimes discommended. It is extremely noteworthy that the warnings-off include one far from ugly conceit—

“Aut crines Magnæ Genetricis gramina dicat.”