"Lascia 'l vero a l' historia, e ne' tuoi versi
Sotto i nomi privati a l' universo
Mostra che fare e che non far si debbia."
In keeping with this idealized conception of art, Muzio asserts that everything obscene or immoral must be excluded from poetry; and this puristic notion of art is everywhere emphasized in Renaissance criticism. It was the verisimile, as has been said, that the writers of this period especially insisted upon. Poetry must have the appearance of truth, that is, it must be probable; for unless the reader believes what he reads, his spirit cannot be moved by the poem.[59] This anticipates Boileau's famous line:—
"L'esprit n'est point ému de ce qu'il ne croit pas."[60]
But beyond and above the verisimile, the poet must pay special regard to the ethical element (il lodevole e l'onesto). A poet of the sixteenth century, Palingenius, says that there are three qualities required of every poem:—
"Atqui scire opus est, triplex genus esse bonorum,
Utile, delectans, majusque ambobus honestum."[61]
Poetry, then, is an ideal representation of life; but should it be still further limited, and made an imitation of only human life? In other words, are the actions of men the only possible themes of poetry, or may it deal, as in the Georgics and the De Rerum Natura, with the various facts of external nature and of science, which are only indirectly connected with human life? May poetry treat of the life of the world as well as of the life of men; and if only of the latter, is it to be restricted to the actions of men, or may it also depict their passions, emotions, and character? In short, how far may external nature on the one hand, and the internal working of the human soul on the other hand, be regarded as the subject-matter of poetry? Aristotle says that poetry deals with the actions of men, but he uses the word "actions" in a larger sense than many of the Renaissance critics appear to have believed. His real meaning is thus explained by a modern writer:—
"Everything that expresses the mental life, that reveals a rational personality, will fall within this larger sense of action.... The phrase is virtually an equivalent for ἤθη (character), πάθη (emotion), πράξεις (action).... The common original from which all the arts draw is human life,—its mental processes, its spiritual movements, its outward acts issuing from deeper sources; in a word, all that constitutes the inward and essential activity of the soul. On this principle landscape and animals are not ranked among the objects of æsthetic imitation. The whole universe is not conceived of as the raw material of art. Aristotle's theory is in agreement with the practice of the Greek poets and artists of the classical period, who introduce the external world only so far as it forms a background of action, and enters as an emotional element into man's life and heightens the human interest."[62]
Aristotle distinctly says that "even if a treatise on medicine or natural philosophy be brought out in verse, the name of poet is by custom given to the author; and yet Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common except the material; the former, therefore, is properly styled poet, the latter, physicist rather than poet."[63]
The Aristotelian doctrine was variously conceived during the Renaissance. Fracastoro, for example, asserts that the imitation of human life alone is not of itself a test of poetry, for such a test would exclude Empedocles and Lucretius; it would make Virgil a poet in the Æneid, and not a poet in the Georgics. All matters are proper material for the poet, as Horace says, if they are treated poetically; and although the imitation of men and women may seem to be of higher importance for us who are men and women, the imitation of human life is no more the poet's end than the imitation of anything else.[64] This portion of Fracastoro's argument may be called apologetic, for the imitation of human actions as a test of poetry would exclude most of his own poems,[65] such as his famous De Morbo Gallico (1529), written before the influence of Aristotle was felt in anything but the mere external forms of creative literature. For Fracastoro, all things poetically treated become poetry, and Aristotle himself[66] says that everything becomes pleasant when correctly imitated. So that not the mere composition of verse, but the Platonic rapture, the delight in the true and essential beauty of things, is for Fracastoro the test of poetic power.
Varchi, on the other hand, is more in accord with Aristotle, in conceiving of "action," the subject-matter of poetry, as including the passions and habits of mind as well as the merely external actions of mankind. By passions Varchi means those mental perturbations which impel us to an action at any particular time (πάθη); while by manners, or habits of mind, he means those mental qualities which distinguish one man or one class of men from another (ἤθη). The exclusion of the emotional or introspective side of human life would leave all lyric and, in fact, all subjective verse out of the realms of poetry; and it was therefore essential, in an age in which Petrarch was worshipped, that the subjective side of poetry should receive its justification.[67] There is also in Varchi a most interesting comparison between the arts of poetry and painting.[68] The basis of his distinction is Horace's ut pictura poesis, doubtless founded on the parallel of Simonides preserved for us by Plutarch; and this distinction, which regarded painting as silent poetry, and poetry as painting in language, may be considered almost the keynote of Renaissance criticism, continuing even up to the time of Lessing.