One of the first results of the dictatorship of Aristotle was to give modern literature a body of inviolable rules for the drama and the epic; that is, the dramatic and heroic poets were restricted to a certain fixed form, and to certain fixed characters. Classical poetry was of course the ideal of the Renaissance, and Aristotle had analyzed the methods which these works had employed. The inference seems to have been that by following these rules a literature of equal importance could be created. These formulæ were at the bottom of classical literature, and rules which had created such literatures as those of Greece and Rome could hardly be disregarded. As a result, these rules came to be considered more and more as essentials, and finally, almost as the very tests of literature; and it was in consequence of their acceptance as poetic laws that the modern classical drama and epic arose. The first modern tragedies and the first modern epics were hardly more than such attempts at putting the Aristotelian rules into practice. The cult of form during the Renaissance had produced a reaction against the formlessness and invertebrate character of mediæval literature. The literature of the Middle Ages was infinitely inferior to that of the ancients; mediæval literature lacked form and structure, classical literature had a regular and definite form. Form then came to be regarded as the essential difference between the perfect literatures of Greece and Rome, and the imperfect and vulgar literature of the Middle Ages; and the deduction from this was that, to be classical, the poet must observe the form and structure of the classics. Minturno indeed says that "the precepts given of old by the ancient masters, and now repeated by me here, are to be regarded merely as common usage, and not as inviolable laws which must serve under all circumstances."[275] But this was not the general conception of the Renaissance. Muzio, for example, specifically says:—
"Queste legge ch' io scrivo e questi esempi
Sian, lettore, al tuo dir perpetua norma;"
and in another place he speaks of a precept he has given, as "vera, ferma, e inevitabil legge."[276] Scaliger goes still further than this; for, according to him, even the classics themselves are to be judged by these standards and rules. "It seems to me," says Scaliger, "that we ought not to refer everything back to Homer, just as though he were the norm, but Homer himself should be referred to the norm."[277] In the modern classical period somewhat later, these rules were found to be based on reason:—
"These rules of old, discovered not devised,
Are nature still, but nature methodized."[278]
But during the Renaissance they were accepted ex cathedra from classical literature.
The formulation of a fixed body of critical rules was not the only result of the Aristotelian influence. One of the most important of these results, as has appeared, was the rational justification of imaginative literature. With the introduction of Aristotle's Poetics into modern Europe the Renaissance was first able to formulate a systematic theory of poetry; and it is therefore to the rediscovery of the Poetics that we may be said to owe the foundation of modern criticism. It was on the side of Aristotelianism that Italian criticism had its influence on European letters; and that this influence was deep and widespread, our study of the critical literatures of France and England will in part show. The critics with whom we have been dealing are not merely dead provincial names; they influenced, for two whole centuries, not only France and England, but Spain, Portugal, and Germany as well.
Literary criticism, in any real sense, did not begin in Spain until the very end of the sixteenth century, and the critical works that then appeared were wholly based on those of the Italians. Rengifo's Arte Poética Española (1592), in so far as it deals with the theory of poetry, is based on Aristotle, Scaliger, and various Italian authorities, according to the author's own acknowledgment. Pinciano's Philosophia Antigua Poética (1596) is based on the same authorities. Similarly, Cascales, in his Tablas Poéticas (1616), gives as his authorities Minturno, Giraldi Cintio, Maggi, Riccoboni, Castelvetro, Robortelli, and his own countryman Pinciano. The sources of these and all other works written at this period are Italian; and the following passage from the Egemplar Poético, written about 1606 by the Spanish poet Juan de la Cueva, is a good illustration, not only of the general influence of the Italians on Spanish criticism, but of the high reverence in which the individual Italian critics were held by Spanish men of letters:—
"De los primeros tiene Horacio el puesto,
En numeros y estilo soberano,
Qual en su Arte al mundo es manifesto.
Escaligero [i.e. Scaliger] hace el paso llano
Con general enseñamiento y guia,
Lo mismo el docto Cintio [i.e. Giraldi Cintio] y Biperano.[279]
Maranta[280] es egemplar de la Poesia,
Vida el norte, Pontano[281] el ornamento,
La luz Minturno qual el sol del dia....
Acuden todos a colmar sus vasos
Al oceano sacro de Stagira [i.e. Aristotle],
Donde se afirman los dudosos pasos,
Se eterniza la trompa y tierna lira."[282]
The influence of the Italians was equally great in Germany. From Fabricius to Opitz, the critical ideas of Germany were almost all borrowed, directly or indirectly, from Italian sources. Fabricius in his De Re Poetica (1584) acknowledges his indebtedness to Minturno, Partenio, Pontanus, and others, but above all to Scaliger; and most of the critical ideas by which Opitz renovated modern German literature go back to Italian sources, through Scaliger, Ronsard, and Daniel Heinsius. No better illustration of the influence of the Italian critics upon European letters could be afforded than that given by Opitz's Buch von der deutschen Poeterei.[283]
The influence of Italian criticism on the critical literature of France and England will be more or less treated in the remaining portions of this essay. It may be noted here, however, that in the critical writings of Lessing there is represented the climax of the Italian tradition in European letters, especially on the side of Aristotelianism. Shelley represents a similar culmination of the Italian tradition in England. His indebtedness to Sidney and Milton, who represent the Italian influence in the Elizabethan age, and especially to Tasso, whom he continually cites, is very marked. The debt of modern literature to Italian criticism is therefore not slight. In the half century between Vida and Castelvetro, Italian criticism formulated three things: a theory of poetry, a rigid form for the epic, and a rigid form for the drama. These rigid forms for drama and epic governed the creative imagination of Europe for two centuries, and then passed away. But while modern æsthetics for over a century has studied the processes of art, the theory of poetry, as enunciated by the Italians of the sixteenth century, has not diminished in value, but has continued to pervade the finer minds of men from that time to this.