[1323] Corniani,vi. 204. The Italian literature would supply several more works on criticism, rhetoric, and grammar. Upon all these subjects it was much richer, at this time, than the French or English.
Pinciano’s Art of Poetry. 30. Bouterwek has made us acquainted with a treatise in Spanish on the art of poetry, which he regards as the earliest of its kind in modern literature. It could not be so according to the date of its publication, which is in 1596; but the author, Alonzo Lopez Pinciano was physician to Charles V., and it was therefore written, in all probability, many years before it appeared from the press. The title is rather quaint, Philosophia Antigua Poetica, and it is written in the form of letters. Pinciano is the first who discovered the Poetics of Aristotle, which he had diligently studied, to be a fragment of a larger work, as is now generally admitted. “Whenever Lopez Pinciano,” says Bouterwek, “abandons Aristotle, his notions respecting the different poetic styles are as confused as those of his contemporaries; and only a few of his notions and distinctions can be deemed of importance at the present day. But his name is deserving of honourable remembrance, for he was the first writer of modern times who endeavoured to establish a philosophic art of poetry; and, with all his veneration for Aristotle, he was the first scholar who ventured to think for himself, and to go somewhat farther than his master.”[1324] The Art of Poetry, by Juan de la Cueva, is a poem of the didactic class, containing some information as to the history of Spanish verse.[1325] The other critical treatises which appeared in Spain about this time seem to be of little importance; but we know by the writings of Cervantes, that the poets of the age of Philip were, as usual, followed by the animal for whose natural prey they are designed, the sharp-toothed and keen-scented critic.
[1324] Hist. of Sp. Lit., p. 323.
[1325] It is printed entire in the eighth volume of Parnaso Español.
French treatises of criticism. 31. France produced very few books of the same class. The Institutiones Oratoriæ of Omer Talon is an elementary and short treatise of rhetoric.[1326] Baillet and Goujet gave some praise to the Art of Poetry by Pelletier, published in 1555.[1327] The treatise of Henry Stephens, on the Conformity of the French Language with the Greek, is said to contain very good observations.[1328] But it must be (for I do not recollect to have seen it) rather a book of grammar than of superior criticism. The Rhetorique Française of Fouquelin (1555) seems to be little else than a summary of rhetorical figures.[1329] That of Courcelles, in 1557, is not much better.[1330] All these relate rather to prose than to poetry. From the number of versifiers in France, and the popularity of Ronsard and his school, we might have expected a larger harvest of critics. Pasquier, in his valuable miscellany, Les Recherches de la France, has devoted a few pages to this subject, but not on an extensive or systematic plan; nor can the two Bibliothéques Françaises, by La Croix du Maine and Verdier, both published in 1584, though they contain a great deal of information as to the literature of France, with some critical estimates of books, be reckoned in the class to which we are now adverting. In this department of literature, without doing a great deal, we had perhaps rather the advantage over our neighbours.
[1326] Gibert, Baillet, printed in Jugemens des Savans, viii. 181.
[1327] Baillet, iii. 351. Goujet, iii. 97. Pelletier had previously rendered Horace’s Art of Poetry into French verse, id. 66.
[1328] Baillet, iii. 353.
[1329] Gibert, p. 184.
[1330] Id. p. 366.