The progress of humanism may be distinguished by an arbitrary but more or less practical division into four periods. The first period was characterized by the discovery and accumulation of classical literature, and the second period was given up to the arrangement and translation of the works thus discovered. The third period is marked by the formation of academies, in which the classics were studied and humanized, and which as a result produced a special cult of learning. The fourth and last period is marked by the decline of pure erudition, and the beginning of æsthetic and stylistic scholarship.[239] The practical result of the revival of learning and the progress of humanism was thus the study and imitation of the classics. To this imitation of classical literature all that humanism gave to the modern world may be ultimately traced. The problem before us, then, is this: What was the result of this imitation of the classics, in so far as it regards the literary criticism of the Renaissance?
In the first place, the imitation of the classics resulted in the study and cult of external form. Elegance, polish, clearness of design, became objects of study for themselves; and as a result we have the formation of æsthetic taste, and the growth of a classic purism, to which many of the literary tendencies of the Renaissance may be traced.[240] Under Leo X. and throughout the first half of the sixteenth century, the intricacies of style and versification were carefully studied. Vida was the first to lay down laws of imitative harmony;[241] Bembo, and after him Dolce and others, studied the poetic effect of different sounds, and the onomatopœic value of the various vowels and consonants;[242] Claudio Tolomei attempted to introduce classical metres into the vernacular;[243] Trissino published subtle and systematic researches in Tuscan language and versification.[244] Later, the rhetorical treatises of Cavalcanti (1565), Lionardi (1554), and Partenio (1560), and the more practical manuals of Fanucci (1533), Equicola (1541), and Ruscelli (1559), all testify to the tremendous impulse which the imitation of the classics had given to the study of form both in classical and vernacular literatures.
In Vida's Ars Poetica there are abundant evidences of the rhetorical and especially the puristic tendencies of modern classicism. The mechanical conception of poetic expression, in which imagination, sensibility, and passion are subjected to the elaborate and intricate precepts of art, is everywhere found in Vida's poem. Like Horace, Vida insists on long preparation for the composition of poetry, and warns the poet against the indulgence of his first impulses. He suggests as a preparation for the composition of poetry, that the poet should prepare a list of phrases and images for use whenever occasion may demand.[245] He impresses upon the poet the necessity of euphemistic expressions in introducing the subject of his poem; for example, the name of Ulysses should not be mentioned, but he should be referred to as one who has seen many men and many cities, who has suffered shipwreck on the return from Troy, and the like.[246] In such mechanical precepts as these, the rhetoric of seventeenth-century classicism is anticipated. Its restraint, its purity, its mechanical side, are everywhere visible in Vida. A little later, in Daniello, we find similar puristic tendencies. He requires the severe separation of genres, decorum and propriety of characterization, and the exclusion of everything disagreeable from the stage. In Partenio's Della Imitatione Poetica (1560), the poet is expressly forbidden the employment of the ordinary words in daily use,[247] and elegance of form is especially demanded. Partenio regards form as of superior importance to subject or idea; for those who hear or read poetry care more for beauty of diction than for character or even thought.[248]
It is on merely rhetorical grounds that Partenio distinguishes excellent from mediocre poetry. The good poet, unlike the bad one, is able to give splendor and dignity to the most trivial idea by means of adornments of diction and disposition. This conception seems to have particularly appealed to the Renaissance; and Tasso gives expression to a similar notion when he calls it the poet's noblest function "to make of old concepts new ones, to make of vulgar concepts noble ones, and to make common concepts his own."[249] In a higher and more ideal sense, poetry, according to Shelley, "makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar."[250]
It is in keeping with this rhetorical ideal of classicism that Scaliger makes electio et sui fastidium the highest virtues of the poet.[251] All that is merely popular (plebeium) in thought and expression is to be minutely avoided; for only that which proceeds from solid erudition is proper to art. The basis of artistic creation is imitation and judgment; for every artist is at bottom somewhat of an echo.[252] Grace, decorum, elegance, splendor are the chief excellences of poetry and the life of all excellence lies in measure, that is, moderation and proportion. It is in the spirit of this classical purism that Scaliger minutely distinguishes the various rhetorical and grammatical figures, and carefully estimates their proper place and function in poetry. His analysis and systematization of the figures were immediately accepted by the scholars and grammarians of his time, and have played a large part in French education ever since. Another consequence of Scaliger's dogmatic teaching, the Latinization of culture, can only be referred to here in passing.[253]
A second result of the imitation of the classics was the paganization of Renaissance culture. Classic art is at bottom pagan, and the Renaissance sacrificed everything in order to appear classical.[254] Not only did Christian literature seem contemptible when compared with classic literature, but the mere treatment of Christian themes offered numerous difficulties in itself. Thus Muzio declares that the ancient fables are the best poetic materials, since they permit the introduction of the deities into poetry, and a poem, being something divine, should not dispense with the association of divinity.[255] To bring the God of Israel into poetry, to represent him, as it were, in the flesh, discoursing and arguing with men, was sacrilege; and to give the events of poetic narrative divine authoritativeness, the pagan deities became necessities of Renaissance poetry. Savonarola, in the fifteenth century, and the Council of Trent, in the sixteenth, reacted against the paganization of literature, but in vain. Despite the Council of Trent, despite Tasso and Du Bartas, the pagan gods held sway over Parnassus until the very end of the classical period; and in the seventeenth century, as will be seen, Boileau expressly discourages the treatment of Christian themes, and insists that the ancient pagan fables alone must form the basis of neo-classical art.
A third result of the imitation of the classics was the development of applied, or concrete, criticism. If the foundations of literature, if the formation of style, can result only from a close and judicious imitation of classical literature, this problem confronts us: Which classical authors are we to imitate? An answer to this question involves the application of concrete criticism. A reason must be given for one's preferences; in other words, they must be justified on principle. The literary controversies of the humanists, the disputes on the subject of imitation, of Ciceronianism, and what not, all tended in this direction. The judgment of authors was dependent more or less on individual impressions. But the longer these controversies continued, the nearer was the approach to a literary criticism, justified by appeals to general principles, which became more and more fixed and determined; so that the growth of principles, or criteria of judgment in matters of literature, is in reality coterminous with the history of the growth of classicism.[256]
But one of the most important consequences of the imitation of the classics was that this imitation became a dogma of criticism, and radically changed the relations of art and nature in so far as they touch letters and literary criticism. The imitation of the classics became, in a word, the basis of literary creation. Vida, for example, affirms that the poet must imitate classical literature, for only by such imitation is perfection attainable in modern poetry. In fact, this notion is carried to such an extreme that the highest originality becomes for Vida merely the ingenious translation of passages from the classic poets:—
"Haud minor est adeo virtus, si te audit Apollo,
Inventa Argivûm in patriam convertere vocem,
Quam si tute aliquid intactum inveneris ante."[257]
Muzio, echoing Horace, urges the poet to study the classics by day and by night; and Scaliger, as has been seen, makes all literary creation depend ultimately on judicious imitation: "Nemo est qui non aliquid de Echo." As a result, imitation gradually acquired a specialized and almost esoteric meaning, and became in this sense the starting-point of all the educational theories of the later humanists. The doctrine of imitation set forth by John Sturm, the Strasburg humanist, was particularly influential.[258] According to Sturm, imitation is not the servile copying of words and phrases; it is "a vehement and artistic application of mind," which judiciously uses and transfigures all that it imitates. Sturm's theory of imitation is not entirely original, but comes through Agricola and Melanchthon from Quintilian.[259] Quintilian had said that the greater part of art consists in imitation; but for the humanists imitation became the chief and almost the only element of literary creation, since the literature of their own time seemed so vastly inferior to that of the ancients.