Again, Scaliger, though he has no more right to arrogate Reason and Nature as on his side than the rest of his school, possesses, like all of the best of them, a certain sturdy prima facie common-sense. His solid merits. It is this which dictates his theory of dramatic verisimilitude; this which palliates some of his Homeric and other blasphemies. Though uncompromisingly moral, and by no means illogical (when you have once granted his bundle of postulates), he is not in the least metaphysical. The wayfaring man, with tolerable intelligence and a very little trouble, can understand him perfectly.

Still more unmixed praise can be given to him from other points of view. To any scholar his scholarship is singularly refreshing in its thoroughness and range; he really neglects nothing proper to his subject, though he may define that subject with a somewhat arbitrary hand. Agree with him or differ with him as we may, it is an infinite comfort to be brought thus in contact and confrontation with the actual texts—to exchange the paper symbols of “the poet,” “the dramatist,” “the satirist” in the abstract, for sound ringing coin of actual poetry, drama, satire, told down on the counter, and tested by file and acid if required. The literary atlas of the Hypercriticus is, as has been said, the first attempt at a complete thing of the kind since Quintilian, and of necessity far more complete than his. In fact, Scaliger taught the school opposed to him—the school which after many a generation of desultory fighting at last worsted his own—the way to conquer. History and Comparison—the twin lights of criticism, the only road-makers across the abyss—are resorted to by him fearlessly. That he loses the best of their light, and twists the road in the wrong direction, by following Will-o'-the-wisps like his Virgil-worship, matters in detail but not in principle. He has practically come back to the safe way which Aristotle entered, but was precluded from treading far enough, which Quintilian and Longinus trod, but on which most of the ancients would not set foot. He has not found the last secret—the secret of submitting to History and to Comparison; he still looks upon both as instruments to be used merely under the direction of, and in subordination to, the purposes of a priori theory. His neglect of the vernaculars is not only wrong, but by his time absurd. His minor prejudices (as against Erasmus) are sometimes contemptible. His actual taste, as has been said, was probably neither delicate nor versatile. But he has learning, logic, lucidity within his range, laborious industry, and love of literature. The multitude which followed him followed him partly to do evil; but it would have been a surprise, and almost a shame, had so bold and capable a leader lacked a multitude of followers.

As has been said, Lilius Giraldus also refers to Lodovico Castelvetro, who at least resembled Scaliger in the characteristic Ishmaelitism of the Renaissance critic. Castelvetro. His quarrel with Caro, also already referred to, was unluckily, we must not say distinguished, but marked, by unfair play on the part of his adversary, who “delated” him to the Inquisition for heresy; and Castelvetro had to fly the country. His most important work appeared late, the famous edition and translation, with commentary, of the Poetics[[107]] not being published till a year before his death. “He was of his nature choleric,” says his biographer; and he bestowed a good deal of this choler not merely upon Caro, but upon the majestic Bembo and others. Yet Castelvetro was a very remarkable critic, and perhaps deserved the ascription of actual critical genius better than any man who has yet been mentioned in this volume. It is but for chequered righteousness that his practically certain formulation of the Three Unities can be counted to him; but, as we shall see, he has other claims, from which it is not necessary to write off anything.

His impartial attachment to both classical and vulgar tongues ranks him, of itself, in a higher sphere than that of Scaliger; and a certain impetuous, incalculable, prime-sautier genius puts him higher still. Even contemporaries seem to have recognised this in him, though they sometimes shook their heads over its pronouncements.[[108]] It may, indeed, sometimes seem that these pronouncements are, if not inconsistent, difficult to connect by any central tie-beam of critical theory. But this is almost inevitable in the case of a critic whose work takes the form, not of regular treatises on large subjects, nor even of connected essays on separate authors and books, but of commentaries and adversaria, where the passage immediately under consideration is uppermost in the writer’s mind, and may—not illegitimately in a fashion—induce him to display a facet of his thought which does not seem logically connected with other facets. This peculiarity is perhaps the only excuse for the depreciation of Dacier, who, reinforcing his native dulness with the superciliousness of a Frenchman in the later years of Louis XIV., accused Castelvetro of ignorance, and even of contradiction of Aristotle. The fact is, that Castelvetro is first of all an independent critic, and that, though there are few less common, there are no more valuable critical qualities than independence, even when it is sometimes pushed to the verge of eccentricity, providing only that it is sincere, and not ill-informed. It seems to me uncharitable, if not flagrantly unjust, to deny Castelvetro sincerity, and either impudent or ignorant to deny him information.

But he had also acuteness and taste. I do not know a better example in little of the latter quality at the time than his short and scornful description[[109]] of a preposterous comparison by another critic, Bartolommeo Riccio, between the “Sparrow” of Catullus and a pretty but commonplace poem of Navagero on a dog. The Opere Varie. One may sigh over the ruling passion, not to say the original sin, of critical man, on passing from this to a tangle of recrimination and “that’s my thunder” which follows with reference to Riccio and Pigna and Cinthio. But this passes again into a solid discussion on the material and form of poetry, and on the office of the Muses. Many of these animadversions are, as we should expect, purely verbal, sometimes not beyond the powers of the grammaticuccio, of whom Castelvetro himself not unfrequently talks with piquant scorn. But the comfort of finding annotations on Virgil alternating with discourses on Dante, like that of placing a quarto on Petrarch side by side with one on Aristotle, more than atones for any occasional hair-splitting. We are at last in the Jerusalem of general Literature which is the mother of us all, which is free and universal; not in this or that separatist Samaria or exclusive Hebron. The Platonic annotations, which are numerous, are important, because they show just the other side of Castelvetro’s talent from the merely verbal one—almost the whole of them being devoted to the exposition and illustration of meaning. It is a great pity that he did not work his notes[[110]] on the Gorgias (which he regards expressly as Plato’s Rhetoric) into a regular treatise of contrast and comparison on this subject between Aristotle and Plato. But all these notes show us the qualification of the commentator to deal with so difficult a subject as the Poetics.

The stout post quarto, with its vignette of an exceedingly determined-looking owl standing on a prostrate pitcher and hooting Kekrika, is dedicated to Maximilian II. The Poetica. It is arranged on a system equally simple and thorough. First comes a section of the Greek Text; then a short Italian summary of its contents; then the Italian translation; and then the spositione—the Commentary—which may be long or short as circumstances require. Often, on a Greek text of a few lines, it will run to as many quarto pages, full-packed with small print. Not the least advantageous part of this quadripartite arrangement is that the summaries—being, though very brief, to the point—are capable of being put together as a table of contents. This, however, but partially applies to Castelvetro’s commentary, which is often not a little discursive from the text. The defect was, however, supplied in the second edition by an elaborate index specially devoted to the Spositioni, and consisting, not of mere words or names with page references, but of reasoned descriptions of the subjects, as thus—

"Allegrezza.

“Come nasca dalla tristitia, che si sente del male del giusto, e del bene del malvagio.

oblica, che si prende dalla miseria, o dalla felicita altrui qual sia,” &c. &c.

This is a great help in tackling Castelvetro’s text, the book containing some seven hundred pages, of perhaps as many words each.