The influence of Scaliger's Poetics on the French dramatic criticism of this period has generally been overestimated. Scaliger's influence in France was not inconsiderable during the sixteenth century, but it was not until the very end of the century that he held the dictatorial position afterward accorded to him. No edition of his Poetics was ever published at Paris. The first edition appeared at Lyons, and subsequent editions appeared at Heidelberg and Leyden. It was in Germany, in Spain, and in England that his influence was first felt; and it was largely through the Dutch scholars, Heinsius and Vossius, that his influence was carried into France in the next century. It is a mistake to say that he had any primary influence on the formulation and acceptance of the unities of time and place in French literature; there is in his Poetics, as has been seen, no such definite and formal statement of the unities as may be found in Castelvetro, in Jean de la Taille, in Sir Philip Sidney, or in Chapelain. At the same time, while Scaliger's Poetics did not assume during the sixteenth century the dictatorial supremacy it attained during the seventeenth, and while the particular views enunciated in its pages had no direct influence on the current of sixteenth-century ideas, it certainly had an indirect influence on the general tendency of the critical activity of the French Renaissance. This indirect influence manifests itself in the gradual Latinization of culture during the second half of the sixteenth century, and, as will be seen later, in the emphasis on the Aristotelian canons in French dramatic criticism. Scaliger was a personal friend of several members of the Pléiade, and there is every reason to believe that he wielded considerable, even if merely indirect, influence on the development of that great literary movement.
The last expression of the poetic theories of the Pléiade is to be found in the didactic poem of Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, L'Art Poétique françois, où l'on peut remarquer la perfection et le défaut des anciennes et des modernes poésies. This poem, though not published until 1605, was begun in 1574 at the command of Henry III., and, augmented by successive additions, was not yet complete by 1590. Vauquelin makes the following explicit acknowledgment of his indebtedness to the critical writers that preceded him:—
"Pour ce ensuivant les pas du fils de Nicomache [i.e. Aristotle], Du harpeur de Calabre [i.e. Horace], et tout ce que remache Vide et Minturne aprés, j'ay cet œuvre apresté."[331]
Aristotle, Horace, Vida, and Minturno are thus his acknowledged models and sources. Nearly the whole of Horace's Ars Poetica he has translated and embodied in his poem; and he has borrowed from Vida a considerable number of images and metaphors.[332] His indebtedness to Aristotle and to Minturno brings up several intricate questions. It has been said that Vauquelin simply mentioned Minturno in order to put himself under the protection of a respectable Italian authority.[333] On the contrary, exclusive of Horace, Ronsard, and Du Bellay, the whole of whose critical discussions he has almost incorporated into his poem, Minturno is his chief authority, his model, and his guide. In fact, it was probably from Minturno that he derived his entire knowledge of the Aristotelian canons; it is not Aristotle, but Minturno's conception of Aristotle, that Vauquelin has adhered to. Many points in his poem are explained by this fact; here only one can be mentioned. Vauquelin's account, in the second canto of his Art Poétique, of the origin of the drama from the songs at the altar of Bacchus at the time of the vintage, is undoubtedly derived from Minturno.[334] It may have been observed that during the Renaissance there were two distinct conceptions of the origin of poetry. One, which might be called ethical, was derived from Horace, according to whom the poet was originally a lawgiver, or divine prophet; and this conception persists in modern literature from Poliziano to Shelley. The other, or scientific conception, was especially applied to the drama, and was based on Aristotle's remarks on the origin of tragedy; this attempt to discover some scientific explanation for poetic phenomena may be found in the more rationalistic of Renaissance critics, such as Scaliger and Viperano. Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, the disciple of Ronsard and the last exponent of the critical doctrines of the Pléiade, thus represents the incorporation of the body of Italian ideas into French criticism.
With Vauquelin de la Fresnaye and De Laudun Daigaliers (1598) the history of French criticism during the sixteenth century is at an end. The critical activity of this period, as has already been remarked, is of a far more practical character than that of Italy. Literary criticism in France was created by the exigencies of a great literary movement; and throughout the century it never lost its connection with this movement, or failed to serve it in some practical way. The poetic criticism was carried on by poets, whose desire it was to further a cause, to defend their own works, or to justify their own views. The dramatic criticism was for the most part carried on by dramatists, sometimes even in the prefaces of their plays. In the sixteenth century, as ever since, the interrelation of the creative and the critical faculties in France was marked and definite. But there was, one might almost say, little critical theorizing in the French Renaissance. Excepting, of course, Scaliger, there was even nothing of the deification of Aristotle found in Italian criticism. To take notice of a minute but significant detail, there was no attempt to explain Aristotle's doctrine of katharsis, the source of infinite controversy in Italy. There was no detailed and consistent discussion of the theory of the epic poem. All these things may be found in seventeenth-century France; but their home was sixteenth-century Italy.
FOOT-NOTES:
[310] Essais, i. 36.
[311] On these early works, see Langlois, De Artibus Rhetoricæ Rhythmicæ, Parisiis, 1890.
[312] Tiraboschi, vii. 350.