[1313] Crescimbeni, Storia della Volgar Poesia, ii. 295-309.
Dispute of Caro and Castelvetro. 23. Meantime a multitude of new versifiers, chiefly close copyists of the style of Petrarch, lay open to the malice of their competitors, and the strictness of these self-chosen judges of song. A critical controversy that sprung up about 1558 between two men of letters, very prominent in their age, Annibal Caro and Ludovico Castelvetro, is celebrated in the annals of Italian literature. The former had published a canzone in praise of the king of France, beginning—
Venite all’ombra de’ gran gigli d’oro.
Castelvetro made some sharp animadversions on this ode, which seems really to deserve a good deal of censure, being in bad taste, turgid, and foolish. Caro replied with the bitterness natural to a wounded poet. In this there might be nothing unpardonable, and even his abusive language might be extenuated at least by many precedents in literary story; but it is imputed to Caro that he excited the Inquisition against his suspected adversary. Castelvetro had been of the celebrated academy of Modena, whose alleged inclination to Protestantism had proved, several years before, the cause of its dissolution, and of the persecution which some of its members suffered. Castelvetro, though he had avoided censure at that time, was now denounced about 1560, when the persecution was hottest, to the Inquisition at Rome. He obeyed its summons, but soon found it prudent to make his escape, and reached Chiavenna in the Grison dominions. He lived several years afterwards in safe quarters, but seems never to have made an open profession of the reformed faith.[1314]
[1314] Muratori, Vita del Castelvetro, 1727. Crescimbeni, ii. 431. Tiraboschi, x. 31. Ginguéné, vii. 365. Corniani,vi. 61.
Castelvetro on Aristotle’s Poetics. 24. Castelvetro himself is one of the most considerable among the Italian critics; but his taste is often lost in subtlety, and his fastidious temper seems to have sought nothing so much as occasion for censure. His greatest work is a commentary upon the Poetics of Aristotle; and it may justly claim respect, not only as the earliest exposition of the theory of criticism, but for its acuteness, erudition, and independence of reasoning, which disclaims the Stagyrite as a master, though the diffuseness usual in that age, and the microscopic subtlety of the writer’s mind may render its perusal tedious. Twining, one of the best critics on the Poetics, has said, in speaking of the commentaries of Castelvetro and of a later Italian, Beni, that “their prolixity, their scholastic and trifling subtlety, their useless tediousness of logical analysis, their microscopic detection of difficulties invisible to the naked eye of common sense, and their waste of confutation upon objections made only by themselves, and made on purpose to be confuted—all this, it must be owned, is disgusting and repulsive. It may sufficiently release a commentator from the duty of reading their works throughout, but not from that of examining and consulting them; for in both these writers, but more especially in Beni, there are many remarks equally acute and solid; many difficulties will be seen clearly stated, and sometimes successfully removed; many things usefully illustrated and clearly explained; and if their freedom of censure is now and then disgraced by a little disposition to cavil, this becomes almost a virtue when compared with the servile and implicit admiration of Dacier.”[1315]
[1315] Twining’s Aristotle’s Poetics, preface, p. 13.
Severity of Castelvetro’s criticism. 25. Castelvetro in his censorious humour did not spare the greatest shades that repose in the laurel groves of Parnassus, nor even those whom national pride had elevated to a level with them. Homer is less blamed than any other; but frequent shafts are levelled at Virgil, and not always unjustly, if poetry of real genius could ever bear the extremity of critical rigour, in which a monotonous and frigid mediocrity has generally found refuge.[1316] In Dante he finds fault with the pedantry that has filled his poem with terms of science, unintelligible and unpleasing to ignorant men, for whom poems are chiefly designed.[1317] Ariosto he charges with plagiarism, laying unnecessary stress on his borrowing some stories, as that of Zerbino, from older books; and even objects to his introduction of false names of kings, since we may as well invent new mountains and rivers, as violate the known truths of history.[1318] This punctilious cavil is very characteristic of Castelvetro. Yet he sometimes reaches a strain of philosophical analysis, and can by no means be placed in the ranks of criticism below La Harpe, to whom, by his attention to verbal minuteness, as well as by the acrimony and self-confidence of his character, he may in some measure be compared.
[1316] One of his censures falls on the minute particularity of the prophecy of Anchises in the sixth Æneid; peccando Virgilio nella convenevolezza della profetia, la quale non suole condescendere a nomi proprj, ne a cose tanto chiare e particolari, ma, tacendo i nomi, suole manifestare le persone, e le loro azioni con figure di parlare alquanto oscure, si come si vede nelle profetie della scrittura sacra e nell’Alessandra di Licophrone, p. 219 (edit. 1576). This is not unjust in itself; but Castelvetro wanted the candour to own, or comprehensiveness to perceive, that a prophecy of the Roman history, couched in allegories, would have had much less effect on Roman readers.
[1317] Rendendola massimamente per questa via difficile ad intendere e meno piacente a uomini idioti, per gli quali principalmente si fanno i poemi, p. 597. But the comedy of Dante was about as much written for gl’idioti, as the Principia of Newton.