In considering the critical achievement of Italy, the earliest in time, the most abundant in result, the most influential—in fact an abridgment, and no mean abridgment, of that of Europe—we cannot but see at once that there was a certain disadvantage accompanying the inevitableness and the general propriety of this Italian prerogative. No other country had so much learning; but, for this very reason, no other country was so certain rather to over- than to under-value the importance of ancient doctrine. No country had so perfect a literature, though other countries had literatures older, richer, and more vigorous; but this very perfection, while it might seem to provide a fertile field for criticism, had two dangers. The Italians were likely to look down upon, or simply to ignore, other literatures; and, from the failing, though slowly and not conspicuously failing, force of their creative power, they were likely to turn to logomachies and debating-society wrangles. Nay, there was a third peril. No country had so little properly mediæval literature as Italy; and none therefore was more certain to set the fashion of ignoring or slighting that mediæval performance which is so invaluable as a check and balance-redresser. And perhaps we might even add a fourth—that while French and English had got practically beyond the reach of mere dialect-jealousy, Italian had not; and that too much of the abundant interest in literature was throughout turned upon mere grammar and mere linguistics.
Perhaps for these reasons, perhaps for others, perhaps for none assignable except by superfluous guess-work, Italian criticism, active and voluminous as it was, settled very early into certain well-marked limits and channels, and almost wholly confined itself within them, though these channels underwent no infrequent intersection or confluence.
The main texts and patterns of the critics of the Italian Renaissance were three—the Ars Poetica of Horace, the Poetics of Aristotle, and the various Platonic places dealing with poetry. These latter had, as we have seen, begun to affect Italian thought, directly or by transmission through this or that medium, before the close of the fourteenth century; and the maintenance of the Platonic ban, the refutation of it, or the more or less ingenious acceptance and evasion of it, with the help of the Platonic blessing, had been a tolerably familiar exercise from the time of Boccaccio to the time of Savonarola. But Horace and Aristotle gave rules and patterns of much more definiteness. Of the writers of the abundant critical literature which has been partly surveyed, some directly comment these texts; others follow them with more or less selection or combination; many take up separate questions suggested by them; very few, if any, face the subject without some prepossession derived from them.
The very earliest regular criticism, as in Vida and the first books of Trissino, is either strictly grammatical and formal or else tends to expatiate further in the Horatian path of rather desultory practical hints for composition, these latter usually tending towards a more or less slavish “Follow the ancients.” But, from the time of Daniello onwards, more abstract views and questionings, especially in the direction of a sort of Eirenicon between Aristotle and Plato, begin to engage the attention of critics, sometimes as a prelude to study of formal Poetics, sometimes to the exclusion of this. The most thoroughgoing as well as about the ablest example of this latter kind is probably the Naugerius of Fracastoro, where this distinguished physician and physicist, himself a skilled versifier and even something of a poet, scarcely touches poets and poetry in the concrete more than he might in a dialogue on physics or metaphysics, and is entirely occupied with questions of the extremest “metapoetic,” or metacriticism.
This kind of discussion, which is prominent in the whole body of critics from Daniello to Summo, is, with its extensions in the direction of the Theory of the Drama, the Theory of the Heroic Poem, &c., no doubt the most characteristic, and perhaps even the constitutive, feature of Italian criticism. It seems to have been that which most attracted foreign scholars, and stirred them up to emulation; it is very rarely omitted altogether by anybody, save the merest grammarians. In fact, it so impressed itself, during this period, upon the imagination, the memory, the intellectual habit, not merely of Italy but of Europe, that to this day critics who neglect it are looked at askance by many, if not by most, of their fellows.
Questions, however, more practical than these, yet not of quite such extreme practicality as the mere questions of grammar and dialect, of metric and composition, did actually occupy the Italians. About the middle of the century the lucubrations of Cinthio and Pigna on the question of the Romances and their relation to Epic and to the Aristotelian system, opened up the most promising prospect by far that had ever yet been disclosed to criticism. Had these inquiries been followed up—had they been extended from the Romance to the novella, which had already become such a feature of Italian vernacular literature—had Italy provided something not less vigorous, but more polished, than the English Interlude and romantic mystery of the Mary Magdalene type, or the French farce and sotie, so that a similar investigation might have been further extended to drama—there is no saying what might not have been achieved. But this was not permitted.
As a matter of fact, the times were not ready, nor the circumstances. The profitable promise of the discussion on the romanzi dwindled off into the mere logomachies or personalities of the Gerusalemme controversy, and into endless formula-making for the abstract Heroic Poem. But little trace of it is seen on the vigorous and independent mind of Castelvetro; less on the equally vigorous, still more independent, but perhaps rather more scholastic, mind of Patrizzi. For the former, Aristotle is still the special though not quite the exclusive battleground, or canvas, or whatever metaphor may be preferred; and he labours—as all these Italians do, in strange apparent, though perhaps not real, contrast to the vagueness and far-reaching sweep of their more abstract inquiries—under a difficulty, under a seeming impossibility, of getting beyond disjointed observations and comments on Aristotle, Homer, Dante, Petrarch, into a fruitful and satisfying critical study of any poem or poet. Scaliger drills the whole mob of formal and theoretical particulars into an orderly regiment, indulges in plentiful criticism of the verbal and occasional kind, attempts to take a (for him) complete historic survey, and achieves at least a quasi-tiebeam, a bastard unity, for his work by his all-pervading, uncompromising Virgil-worship, which gives a test for everything, an answer for everything, a standard always at hand. Patrizzi seems, with his double method of historical survey and argumentative inquiry, to have at last unbarred the very gates of the true path. But he does not proceed far along it; and astonishingly sound as well as original as are many of his conclusions, he hardly attempts to apply them to modern poetry, except in the Trimerone, where he is too much entangled in the special quibbles and squabbles of the controversy to which it belongs. All the rest—even interesting people like Minturno—sometimes peep over the wall, yet confine their actual walk within it.
Between all the schools, and from among the welter of the individuals, there arises, in the mysterious way in which such things do arise, and which defies all but shallow and superficial explanation, a sort of general critical creed, every particular article of which would probably have been signed by no two particular persons—perhaps by no one—but which is ready to become, and in the next century does become, orthodox and accepted as a whole. And this creed runs somewhat as follows:—
On the higher and more abstract questions of poetry (which are by no means to be neglected) Aristotle is the guide; but the meaning of Aristotle is not always self-evident even so far as it goes, and it sometimes requires supplementing. Poetry is the imitation of nature: but this imitation may be carried on either by copying nature as it is or by inventing things which do not actually exist, and have never actually existed, but which conduct themselves according to the laws of nature and reason. The poet is not a public nuisance, but quite the contrary. He must, however, both delight and instruct.
As for the Kinds of poetry, they are not mere working classifications of the practice of poets, but have technically constituting definitions from which they might be independently developed, and according to which they ought to be composed. The general laws of Tragedy are given by Aristotle; but it is necessary to extend his prescription of Unity so as to enjoin three species—of Action, Time, and Place. Tragedy must be written in verse, which, though not exactly the constituting form of poetry generally, is almost or quite inseparable from it. The illegitimacy of prose in Comedy is less positive. Certain extensions of the rules of the older Epic may be admitted, so as to constitute a new Epic or Heroic Poem; but it is questionable whether this may have the full liberty of Romance, and it is subject to Unity, though not to the dramatic Unity. Other Kinds are inferior to these.