Cic. To whom then are the rules of Aristotle useful?
Tans. To him who, unlike Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, and others, could not sing without the rules of Aristotle, and who, having no Muse of his own, would coquette with that of Homer."[308]
A similar antagonism to Aristotle and a similar literary individualism are to be found in a much later work by Benedetto Fioretti, who under the pseudonym of Udeno Nisieli published the five volumes of his Proginnasmi Poetici between 1620 and 1639.[309] Just before the close of the sixteenth century, however, the Poetics had obtained an ardent defender against such attacks in the person of Francesco Buonamici, in his Discorsi Poetici; and three years later, in 1600, Faustino Summo published a similar defence of Aristotle. The attacks on Aristotle's literary dictatorship were of little avail; it was hardly necessary even to defend him. For two centuries to come he was to reign supreme on the continent of Europe; and in Italy this supremacy was hardly disturbed until the days of Goldoni and Metastasio.
FOOT-NOTES:
[298] De Sanctis, ii. 193 sq.
[299] Cf. Bosanquet, Hist. of Æsthetic, p. 152 sq.
[300] Cf. Foffano, p. 151 sq.
[301] Symonds, ii. 470.
[302] Baillet, iii. 70.