[120]. It is perhaps well to meet a possible, though surely not probable objection “Do you deny ranks in poetry?” Certainly not—but only the propriety of excluding ranks which do not seem, to the censor, of the highest.
[121]. At Venice, but ad instanza of a Ferrarese bookseller.
[122]. These pieces form the major part of Cesare Guasti’s Prose Diverse di T. T. (2 vols., Florence, 1875).
[123]. For instance, my attention was drawn by Mr Ker to the fact that the description of the subject of the third original Discorso given at the end of the second (f. 24 original ed. vol. i. p. 48, Guasti) does not in the least fit the actual contents, while the missing matter is duly supplied in the later book (i. 162 sq., Guasti).
[124]. For instance in the opening of the first Discorsi (f. 2, verso): Variamente tessendolo, di commune proprio, e di vecchio novo il facevano.
[125]. Bruno himself, in more places than one, takes the same line; indeed his statement in the Eroici Furori, that “the rules are derived from the poetry, and there are as many kinds and sorts of true rules as there are kinds and sorts of true poets,” is the conclusion of the whole matter, and would have done his friend Sidney a great deal of good. (The passage may be found at p. 38 of the first vol. of the translation by I. Williams (London, 1887, or in the original, ed. Lagarde, p. 625).) But Bruno’s genius, as erratic as it was brilliant, could not settle to mere Rhetoric.
[126]. Especially when they are contrasted with the superciliousness (v. supra) of Lilius Giraldus and Scaliger.
[127]. It would be rather interesting to know whether the Furor Poeticus of the second part of the Return from Parnassus has anything to do with Patrizzi. There need be no connection, of course; but the correspondence of England and Italy at this time in matters literary was so quick and intimate that there might have been. Patrizzi’s book appeared in the probable year of Shakespeare’s going to London, and of the production of Tamburlaine. Bruno had then left England.
[128]. Deca Disputata, p. 122.
[129]. See Whately, Rhetoric, III. iii. 3, p. 216 (ed. 8, London, 1857), and De Quincey, Rhetoric (Works, ed. Masson, x. 131).