[719]. Du Bos, a little later, with the apolausticism of the French eighteenth century, says bluntly (op. cit. sup., i. 275) that “the best poem is that which interests most,” and that “one hardly ever opens a poem for the sake of instruction.”
[720]. Istoria del Volgar Poesia, Roma, 1698 and later.
[721]. 7 vols. (Bologna and Milan, 1739-1752).
[722]. I shall own frankly that, when I first read this, I had either never heard of Arthur Kelton, or had utterly forgotten him, and thought the name must be a muddle of “Skelton.” What is known about him may be found in Warton, iv. 159, ed. Hazlitt (taken, as was probably Quadrio’s knowledge of him, from Wood and Bale), and also in the Dictionary of National Biography. According to the latter, his poem in praise of the Welsh nation is not now extant or discoverable; and though a Chronicle exists I have never seen it. What made the Jesuit name Kelton at all is as dark to me as what made him transform Gower and “Wicherley” into “Melic” bards.
[723]. If I have said nothing about this excellent Scoto-French disciple of Fénelon, author of the Voyages de Cyrus (which all good little eighteenth-century boys and girls read), and writer of French which was admitted by Frenchmen to be the best (except Hamilton’s) written by any non-Frenchman, it is neither from ignorance nor from outre-cuidance He takes place in criticism for a Discourse of Epic Poetry, prefixed to Télémaque.
[724]. It fills the greater part of the 12th and last vol. of the Paris ed. (1782). The passages quoted are at pp. 29, 30, and 57 of this.
[725]. For instance, of these four only Denina occurs in Dr Garnett’s excellent Short History of Italian Literature (London, 1898), and that for his historical, not his literary, work.
[726]. Huesca, 1692, 12mo.
[727]. Published at Saragossa, date as above. A later edition is said to be garbled.
[728]. Op. cit., p. 348.