[92]. Not merely northern Humanists like Reuchlin, Erasmus, Eobanus Hessus, and Hutten, not merely Greeks from Gemistus Pletho to Musurus and Lascaris, but foreign vernacular writers like Ressendi, Juan de la Mena, Marot, Martial d’Auvergne receive notice.

[93]. The supposed date of the conversation is, as usual in such case, thrown a good deal back.

[94]. He allows him (p. 18, ed. cit.) “sweetness and wit,” but says nescio quare as to the contemporary praise of the Hermaphroditus, and adds plumply, nec poeta bonus nec bonus orator. The simple fact is that, if the subjects of this notorious book were decent, nobody would see anything but quite ordinary merit in their treatment.

[95]. Ed. cit., p. 25.

[96]. As a rough but not misleading gauge of this it may be mentioned that Herr Wotke’s Namenregister contains for less than 100 printed pages, between four and five hundred entries, including, besides those noticed in the text, names like those of Olympia Morata and Bilibald Pirkheimer, Castiglione and Alciati, Conrad Celtes and Paulus Jovius, Cardinal Perotti and Jacob Wimpheling. In fact, hardly any one in Europe who had to do with belles lettres seems to have been outside the cognisance, in closer or vaguer kind, of Giraldus.

CHAPTER III.
SCALIGER, CASTELVETRO, AND THE LATER ITALIAN
CRITICS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

JULIUS CÆSAR SCALIGER—THE ‘POETIC’—BOOK I.: ‘HISTORICUS’—BOOK II.: ‘HYLE’—BOOKS III. AND IV.: ‘IDEA’ AND ‘PARASCEVE’—BOOKS V. AND VI.: ‘CRITICUS’ AND ‘HYPERCRITICUS’—BOOK VII.: EPINOMIS—GENERAL IDEAS ON UNITY AND THE LIKE—HIS VIRGIL-WORSHIP—HIS SOLID MERITS—CASTELVETRO—THE OPERE VARIE—THE ‘POETICA’—ON DRAMATIC CONDITIONS—ON THE THREE UNITIES—ON THE FREEDOM OF EPIC—HIS ECCENTRIC ACUTENESS—EXAMPLES: HOMER’S NODDING, PROSE IN TRAGEDY, VIRGIL, MINOR POETRY—THE MEDIUM AND END OF POETRY—UNCOMPROMISING CHAMPIONSHIP OF DELIGHT—HIS EXCEPTIONAL INTEREST AND IMPORTANCE—TASSO AND THE CONTROVERSIES OVER THE ‘GERUSALEMME’—TASSO’S CRITICAL WRITINGS AND POSITION—PATRIZZI: HIS ‘POETICA’—THE ‘DECA ISTORIALE’—THE ‘DECA DISPUTATA’—THE ‘TRIMERONE’ ON TASSO—REMARKABLE POSITION OF PATRIZZI—‘SED CONTRA MUNDUM’—THE LATEST GROUP OF SIXTEENTH-CENTURY CRITICS—PARTENIO—VIPERANO—PICCOLOMINI—GILIO—MAZZONI—DENORES—ZINANO—MAZZONE DA MIGLIONICO, ETC.—SUMMO.

In the remarkable little book, a notice of which concluded the last chapter, Lilius Giraldus, as we observed, includes—for their verse-work nominally, as became his title, but, with his usual acuteness, obviously perceiving that their importance lay elsewhere—both of the most famous and influential critics of the central sixteenth century in Italy. Julius Cæsar Scaliger. His reference to Julius Cæsar Scaliger (who was, indeed, not more than six years younger than himself) contains some touches (such as the mention of him by the name he took, but with the addition “qui primus Bordonus cognomine fuit,” and the description of his book on Comic Metres, as “arranged with such wonderful subtlety as not to be intelligible save to a reader well versed in the subject”) which are of doubtful friendliness, but allows the Veronese gladiator to be apprime eruditus and capable of carmina elegantia. For us nothing of Scaliger’s needs detailed notice except the once world-famous and still famous Poetices Libri Septem,[[97]] which appeared in 1561 after the death of Giraldus, and indeed after his own.

Scaliger was very much better qualified than Boileau to be législateur du Parnasse in the sense in which both understood Parnassus: or perhaps it would be better to say that without a Scaliger a Boileau would have been impossible. The Poetic. He had immense learning; he had absolute confidence in his own judgment; and within limits which, if they reduce his positive value, make him an even more complete and direct exponent of his own particular school and creed, he had great acuteness, an orderly and logical spirit, and a thorough command of method. Nothing (certain inevitable postulates being granted) can be more luminous and intelligible than the book, in which the author, through all his thousand pages, never loses sight, nor permits his reader to lose sight, of the subject, the process, and the goal. That he stands forth in the preface to his son Sylvius with an air of patronage at once paternal and pedagogic, announcing himself as the pioneer of the subject, dismissing those who allege Varro, as with levity ignoring the fact that neither Varro nor anybody else in antiquity did, or could do, anything of the kind: that he blandly sweeps away the plebs grammaticorum; that he labels the Ars Poetica itself as teaching adeo sine ulla arte ut saturæ propius esse videatur, Aristotle as fragmentary, Vida as optimus poeta in theatro, claudus magister in schola—is all of it agreeably Scaligerian in manner. But it is far from being untrue in fact. And there is a touch of sublimity in the Quare porro opera danda est nobis, “wherefore we must put our shoulders to the wheel,” with which he concludes. “Let others grub money, or canvass for office, or talk about the wars as parasite guests at dinner: we will let them alone, and simply defend the nobility of our studies, the magnanimity and simplicity of our purpose.” After this magnificent pose and draping, and before commendatory verses (the main copy being by no less a person than Etienne de La Boétie) comes a table of contents of antique clearness and solidity, filling nearly a dozen pages, by means of which, and of the more than sixty of index at the end, the study of the text is not a little facilitated.

The First Book has the special title, Qui et Historicus, which it deserves, if not exactly or exclusively in our sense of History. Book I.: Historicus. The critic begins, scholastically enough, with a distribution of everything into necessary, useful, or delightful, and proceeds to apply the classification in a beneficial manner to literary expression in general and Poetry in particular, ending the chapter with a characteristic gibe (for Scaliger is far from unhumorous) at the moderns who confine the appellation “Makers” to candle-makers.[[98]] Then he follows the safe road by discussing the causes (material, formal, &c.) of poetry; and indulges in a free review (for Scaliger, to do him justice, is paratus nullius jurare in verba) of ancient opinions. Hence he sets off to a full enumeration and examination, not merely of the kinds of poetry, but (in connection more especially with the drama) of the theatres and games of the ancients. Nothing escapes the extensive view of his observation, neither palinodes nor parodies, neither centos nor enigmas. And he is intensive as well as extensive. He rebukes, in his usual magisterial manner, the Græculas nugas of Plutarch, who explains the number of the Muses by that of the letters in the name of their mother, Mnemosyne; and as for Plato’s blame of poetry, respiceat ipse sese quot ineptas quot spurcas fabellas inserat.[[99]] The distinction of Poesis, Poema, and Poeta, which follows (and which many grave writers, including Ben, copy), we have often met in kind or in itself before, nor is it quite so meticulous as it looks. For Scaliger utilises it to stop the blunder of Plutarch and others, who make a distinction in kind between great poems and smaller ones. It is tempting but impossible to follow him through the multitudinous, though far from mazy, ramifications of his plan. It must be enough to say that he leaves few items of the dictionary of his subject untouched, and (however inclined one may be to cry “Halt and fight!” at not a few of his definitions) formulates them with a roundness and a touch of confident mastery which fully explain, and to some extent justify, the practical dictatorship which he so long enjoyed. As thus (at the opening of chap. vi. p. 27), “Tragedy, like Comedy established in examples of human life, differs from it in three things—the condition of the persons, the quality of the fortunes and actions, the end. Whence it is necessary that it should also differ in style.” And this legislative calmness is accompanied and fortified by a profusion of erudite example, which might well awe the disciple.