{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_10140/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_10140","id":"gutenberg_10140","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10140","summary":null,"tags":["Category: History - Early Modern (c. 1450-1750)","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Poetry","Criticism -- Great Britain -- History -- 16th century","Criticism -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century","English language -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- Terms and phrases","Poetry -- History and criticism","Renaissance","Rhetoric -- Terminology"],"text":"Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance\n\nA Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism\n\nBy\n\nDonald Lemen Clark, Ph.D.\nAssistant Professor of English in Columbia University\n\n1922\n\n\n\n\nTo my Father and Mother\n\n\n\n\nPreface\n\n\n\nIn this essay I undertake to trace the influence of classical rhetoric on\nthe criticisms of poetry published in England between 1553 and 1641. This\ninfluence is most readily recognized in the use by English renaissance\nwriters on literary criticism of the terminology of classical rhetoric.\nBut the rhetorical terminology in most cases carried with it rhetorical\nthinking, traces of whose influence persist in criticism of poetry to the\npresent day.\n\nThe essay is divided into two parts. Part First treats of the influence of\nrhetoric on the general theory of poetry within the period, and Part\nSecond of its influence on the renaissance formulation of the purpose of\npoetry. This division is called for not by the logic of the material, but\nby history and convenience. A third phase of the influence of rhetorical\nterminology I have already touched on in an article on _The Requirements\nof a Poet[1]_, where I have shown that historically the renaissance ideal\nof the nature and education of a poet is in part derived from classical\nrhetoric.\n\nNo writer today, who would treat of the criticism of the renaissance, can\nescape his deep indebtedness to Dr. Joel Elias Spingarn, whose _Literary\nCriticism in the Renaissance_ has so carefully traced the debt of English\ncriticism to the Italians. In going over the ground surveyed by him and by\nmany other scholars I have been able to add but slight gleanings of my\nown. In this field it is my privilege only to review and to supplement\nwhat has already been discovered. But whereas others have called attention\nto the classical and Italian sources for English critical ideas, I am\nable to show that in addition to these sources, the English critics were\nprofoundly influenced by English mediaeval traditions. That these\nmediaeval traditions derived ultimately from post-classical rhetoric and\nthat they were for the most part later discarded as less enlightened and\nless sound than the critical ideas of the Italian Aristotelians does not\nlessen their importance in the history of English literary criticism.\n\nIn so far as the text of quoted classical writers is readily accessible in\nmodern editions, I offer my readers only an English translation. For\nquotations difficult of access I add the Latin in a footnote. In the case\nof those English critics whose writings are incorporated in the\n_Elizabethan Critical Essays_ edited by Mr. Gregory Smith, or in the\n_Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century_, edited by Dr. J.E. Spingarn,\nI have made my citations to those collections in the belief that such a\npractice would add to the convenience of the reader.\n\nThe greatest pleasure that I derive from this writing is that of\nacknowledging my obligations to my friends and colleagues at Columbia\nUniversity who have so generously assisted me. Professor G.P. Krapp aided\nme by his valuable suggestions before and after writing and generously\nallowed me to use several summaries which he had made of early English\nrhetorical treatises. Professor J.B. Fletcher helped me by his friendly\nand penetrating criticism of the manuscript. I am further indebted to\nProfessor La Rue Van Hook, Dr. Mark Van Doren, Dr. S.L. Wolff, Mr. Raymond\nM. Weaver, and Dr. H.E. Mantz for various assistance, and to the Harvard\nand Columbia University Libraries for their courtesy. My greatest debt is\nto Professor Charles Sears Baldwin, whose constant inspiration,\nenlightened scholarship, and friendly encouragement made this book\npossible.\n\n\n\n\nContents\n\n\n\nPart First:  The General Theory of Rhetoric and of Poetry\n\n\nI. Introductory\n  1. The Distinction between Rhetoric and Poetic\n\nII. Classical Poetic\n  1. Aristotle\n  2. \"Longinus\"\n  3. Plutarch\n  4. Horace\n\nIII. Classical Rhetoric\n  1. Definitions\n  2. Subject Matter\n  3. Content of Classical Rhetoric\n  4. Rhetoric as Part of Poetic\n  5. Poetic as Part of Rhetoric\n\nIV. Classical Blending of Rhetoric and Poetic\n  1. The Contact of Rhetoric and Poetic in Style\n  2. The Florid Style in Rhetoric and Poetic\n  3. The False Rhetoric of the Declamation Schools\n  4. The Contamination of Poetic by False Rhetoric\n\nV. The Middle Ages\n  1. The Decay of Classical Rhetorical Tradition\n  2. Rhetoric as Aureate Language\n\nVI. Logic and Rhetoric in the English Renaissance\n  1. The Content of Classical Rhetoric Carried over into Logic\n  2. The Persistence of the Mediaeval Tradition of Rhetoric\n  3. The Recovery of Classical Rhetoric\n  4. Channels of Rhetorical Theory\n\nVII. Renaissance Poetic\n  1. The Reestablishment of the Classical Tradition\n  2. Rhetorical Elements\n\nVIII. Theories of Poetry in the English Renaissance\n  1. The Rhetorical Period of English Criticism\n  2. The Influence of Horace\n  3. The Influence of Aristotle\n  4. Manuals for Poets 5. Rhetorical Elements in Later English Classicism\n\n\n\nPart Second: The Purpose of Poetry\n\n\nI. The Classical Conception of the Purpose of Poetry\n  1. General\n  2. Moral Improvement through Precept and Example\n  3. Moral Improvement through Allegory\n  4. The Influence of Rhetoric\n\nII. Medieval Ideas of the Purpose of Poetry\n  1. Allegorical Interpretations in the Middle Ages\n  2. Allegory in Mediaeval England\n\nIII. Rhetorical Elements in Italian Renaissance Conceptions of the Purpose\n     of Poetry\n  1. The Scholastic Grouping of Poetic, Rhetoric and Logic\n  2. The Influence of the Classical Rhetorics\n\nIV. English Renaissance Ideas of the Purpose of Poetry\n  1. Allegory and Example in Rhetoric\n  2. Allegory and the Rhetorical Example in Poetic\n  3. The Displacement of Allegory by Example\n\n\nIndex of Names\n\n\n\n\n\nPart One\n\nThe General Theory of Rhetoric and of Poetry\n\n\n\n\nChapter I\n\nIntroductory\n\n\n\nBy definition the renaissance was primarily a literary and scholarly\nmovement derived from the literature of classical antiquity. Thus the\nhistorical, philosophical, pedagogical, and dramatic literatures of the\nrenaissance cannot be accurately understood except in the light of the\nGreek and Roman authors whose writings inspired them. To this general rule\nthe literary criticism of the renaissance is no exception. The\ninterpretation of the critical terms used by the literary critics of the\nEnglish renaissance must depend largely on the classical tradition. This\ntradition, as the labors of many scholars, especially Spingarn, have\nshown, reached England both directly through the publication of classical\nwritings and to an even greater degree indirectly through the commentaries\nand original treatises of Italian scholars.\n\nThe indebtedness to the Italian critics is well known and has been widely\ndiscussed. Although the present study does not hope to add to what is\nknown of the influence exerted on the literary criticism of the English\nrenaissance by the Italians, it does propose to show the English critics\nto have been more indebted than has been supposed to the mediaeval\ndevelopment of classical theory. For this relationship to be clear it will\nbe necessary to review classical literary criticism and to trace its\ndevelopment in post-classical times and in the middle ages as well as in\nthe Italian renaissance. Only by such an approach will it be possible to\nshow in what form classical theory was transmitted to the English\nrenaissance.\n\nAs the restoration of the Stuarts to the throne of England inaugurated a\nnew period in English criticism, during which English critical theories\nwere largely influenced by French criticism, this study will stop short of\nthis, restricting itself to the years between the publication of Thomas\nWilson's _Arte of Rhetorique_ in 1553 and that of Ben Jonson's _Timber_ in\n1641. Throughout this period the English medi\u00e6val tradition of classical\ntheory was highly important, losing ground but gradually as the influence\nfirst of the rhetoric newly recovered from the classics and then of\nItalian criticism produced an increasingly stronger effect on English\ncriticism. I hope to show that the English critics who formulated theories\nof poetry in the renaissance derived much of their critical terminology,\nnot directly from the rediscovered classical theories of poetry, but\nthrough various channels from classical theories and practice of rhetoric.\nThe tendency to use the terminology of rhetoric in discussing poetical\ntheory did not originate in the English renaissance, but is largely an\ninheritance from classical criticism as interpreted by the middle ages.\nBoth in England and on the continent this medi\u00e6val tradition persisted far\ninto the renaissance. Renaissance English writers on the theory of poetry\nuse to an extent hitherto unexplored the terminology of rhetoric. This\nrhetorical terminology was derived from three sources: directly to some\nextent from the classical rhetorics themselves; indirectly through the\ninfluence of classical rhetoric upon the terminology of the Italian\ncritics of poetry; and indirectly, to a considerable extent, through the\nmedi\u00e6val modifications of classical and post-classical rhetoric.\n\n\n\n1. The Distinction between Rhetoric and Poetic\n\n\nAristotle wrote two treatises on literary criticism: the _Rhetoric_ and\nthe _Poetics_. The fact that he gave separate treatment to his critical\nconsideration of oratory and of poetry is presumptive evidence that in his\nmind oratory and poetry were two things, having much in common perhaps,\nbut distinguished by fundamental differences. With less philosophical\nbasis these fundamental differences were maintained by nearly all the\nclassical literary critics. It is important, therefore, to review briefly\nwhat the classical writers meant by rhetoric and by poetic, and to trace\nthe modifications which these terms underwent in post-classical times, in\nthe middle ages, and in the renaissance, in order better to show that in\nthe literary criticism of the English renaissance the theory of poetry\ncontained many elements which historically derive from classical and\nmediaeval rhetoric.\n\nLiterature--the spoken and the written word--was divided by the classical\ncritics into philosophy, history, oratory, and poetry. Thus Aristotle, in\naddition to treating the theory of poetry and the theory of oratory in\nseparate books, asserts that even though the works of philosophy and of\nhistory were composed in verse, they would still be something different\nfrom poetry.[2] Lucian severely criticises the historians whose writings\nare like those of the poets.[3] Quintilian advises students of rhetoric\nagainst imitating the style of the historians because it is too much like\nthat of the poets.[4] Clearly these critical writers are insisting on some\nfundamental difference between the forms of communication in language--a\ndifference which they thought their contemporaries were in some danger of\nignoring.\n\nIf the number of critical writings devoted to these different forms of\ncommunication is taken as a criterion, rhetoric ranks first, poetry\nsecond, and history third. This preponderance of rhetoric may be one\nreason for the tendency of the critics who wrote on the theory of poetry\nto use much of the terminology of rhetoric, and for the ease with which a\nmodern student can formulate the classical theory of rhetoric, as compared\nwith the difficulty he has in formulating the theory of poetry.\n\nTo the Greeks and Romans rhetoric meant the theory of oratory. As a\npedagogical mechanism it endeavored to teach students to persuade an\naudience. The content of rhetoric included all that the ancients had\nlearned to be of value in persuasive public speech. It taught how to work\nup a case by drawing valid inferences from sound evidence, how to organize\nthis material in the most persuasive order, how to compose in clear and\nharmonious sentences. Thus to the Greeks and Romans rhetoric was defined\nby its function of discovering means to persuasion and was taught in the\nschools as something that every free-born man could and should learn.\n\nIn both these respects the ancients felt that poetic, the theory of\npoetry, was different from rhetoric. As the critical theorists believed\nthat the poets were inspired, they endeavored less to teach men to be\npoets than to point out the excellences which the poets had attained.\nAlthough these critics generally, with the exceptions of Aristotle and\nEratosthenes, believed the greatest value of poetry to be in the teaching\nof morality, no one of them endeavored to define poetry, as they did\nrhetoric, by its purpose. To Aristotle, and centuries later to Plutarch,\nthe distinguishing mark of poetry was imitation. Not until the\nrenaissance did critics define poetry as an art of imitation endeavoring\nto inculcate morality. Consequently in a historical study of rhetoric and\nof the theory of poetry separate treatment of their nature and of their\npurpose is not only convenient, but historical. The present discussion,\ntherefore, considers various critics' ideas of the nature of poetry in\nPart I, and then separately in Part II their ideas of its purpose. The\nobject of this division is not to make an abstract distinction between\nnature and purpose. Such a distinction cannot, of course, be made. It is\nto approach the subject first from one point of view and then from the\nother because it was in fact thus approached successively, and because\nalso the intention of the successive writers can thus be better\nunderstood.\n\nThe same essential difference between classical rhetoric and poetic\nappears in the content of classical poetic. Whereas classical rhetoric\ndeals with speeches which might be delivered to convict or acquit a\ndefendant in the law court, or to secure a certain action by the\ndeliberative assembly, or to adorn an occasion, classical poetic deals\nwith lyric, epic, and drama. It is a commonplace that classical literary\ncritics paid little attention to the lyric. It is less frequently realized\nthat they devoted almost as little space to discussion of metrics. By far\nthe greater bulk of classical treatises on poetic is devoted to\ncharacterization and to the technic of plot construction, involving as it\ndoes narrative and dramatic unity and movement as distinct from logical\nunity and movement.\n\nIt is important that the modern reader bear these facts in mind; for in\nthe nineteenth century text-books of rhetoric came to include description\nof a kind little considered by classical rhetoricians, and narrative of an\naim and scope which they excluded. Thus the modern treatise on rhetoric\ndeals not only with what the Greeks would recognize as rhetoric, but also\nwith what they would classify as poetic. Furthermore, narrative and\ndramatic technic, which the classical critics considered the most\nimportant elements in poetic, are now no longer called poetic. What the\nancients discussed in treatises on poetic, is now discussed in treatises\non the technique of the short-story, the technique of the drama, the\ntechnique of the novel, on the one hand, and in treatises on\nversification, prosody, and lyric poetry on the other. As these modern\ndevelopments were unheard of during the periods under consideration in\nthis study, and as the renaissance used the words rhetoric and poetic much\nmore in their classical senses than we do today, it must be understood\nthat throughout this study rhetoric will be used as meaning classical\nrhetoric, and poetic as meaning classical poetic.\n\nMany modern critics have found the classical distinction between rhetoric\nand poetic very suggestive. In classical times imaginative and creative\nliterature was almost universally composed in meter, with the result that\nthe metrical form was usually thought to be distinctive of poetry. The\nfact that in modern times drama as well as epic and romantic fiction is\nusually composed in prose has made some critics dissatisfied with what to\nthem seems to be an unsatisfactory criterion. On the one hand Wackernagel,\nwho believes that the function of poetry is to convey ideas in concrete\nand sensuous images and the function of prose to inform the intellect,\nasserts that prose drama and didactic poetry are inartistic.[5] He thus\nadvocates that present practise be abandoned in favor of the custom of the\nGreeks. On the other hand Newman, while granting that a metrical garb has\nin all languages been appropriated to poetry, still urges that the essence\nof poetry is fiction.[6] Likewise under the influence of Aristotle, Croce\ndifferentiates between the kinds of literature not because one is written\nin prose and the other in verse, but because one is the expression of what\nhe calls intuitive knowledge obtained through the imagination, and the\nother of conceptual knowledge obtained through the intellect.[7] Similar\nto the distinction expressed by Croce in the words imaginative and\nintellectual, is that expressed by Eastman in the words poetical and\npractical.[8] And according to Renard, Balzac distinguishes two classes of\nwriters: the writers of ideas and the writers of images.[9]\n\nIn view of these modern efforts to make a more scientific differentiation\nbetween kinds of literature than is possible on the basis of the\ntraditional distinction between prose and poetry, the present historical\nstudy of the distinction made by Aristotle and other Greek writers between\nrhetoric and poetic may be suggestive.\n\n\n\n\nChapter II\n\nClassical Poetic\n\n\n\n1. Aristotle\n\n\nA survey of what Aristotle includes in his _Poetics_, what he excludes,\nand what he ignores, will be a helpful initial step in an investigation of\nwhat he meant by poetic. Five kinds of poetry are mentioned by name in the\n_Poetics_: epic, dramatic, dithyrambic, nomic, and satiric; and lyric is\nincluded by implication as a form of epic, where the poet narrates in his\nown person.[10]\n\nThe choruses, also, are lyric. Otherwise Aristotle does not discuss lyric\npoetry. Of the other five kinds, nomic, dithyrambic, and satiric poetry\nare mentioned only as illustrative of something Aristotle wishes to say\nabout epic or drama. Aristotle's _Poetics_ discusses only epic and,\nespecially, drama. Thus of the twenty-six books into which the _Poetics_\nis conventionally divided, five are devoted to the general theory of\npoetry, three to diction, two to epic, and sixteen to drama. Although\nAristotle includes dithyrambic, nomic, satiric, and lyric poetry in his\ndiscussion, he practically ignores them.\n\nOn the other hand he specifically excludes from poetry such scientific\nworks as those of Empedocles and historical writings as those of\nHerodotus.[11] The rhetorical element in the speeches of the characters of\ndrama or epic, Aristotle calls Thought (\u03b4\u03b9\u03ac\u03bd\u03b9\u03b1). Although\nAristotle includes Thought as an element in drama, he does not discuss it\nin the _Poetics_, but refers his reader to the _Rhetoric_. Metrics, which\noccupies so large a place in modern treatises on the theory of poetry,\nAristotle likewise mentions several times, but does not discuss. A\nmetrical structure he accepts as the usual practice in poetical\ncomposition, but he rejects verse as the distinguishing mark of poetic.\nThus he refuses to classify as poetry the scientific writings which\nEmpedocles had composed in meter as well as the histories of Herodotus,\neven if he had written them in verse. On the other hand, the mimes of\nSophron and Xenarchus, although composed in prose, he considers within the\nscope of poetic.[12]\n\nIf to Aristotle, then, verse is not the characteristic quality of poetic,\nthe next step in an investigation must be to discover the criterion by\nwhich he classifies some literature as poetry and other as not poetry. The\ncharacteristic quality, according to Aristotle, which is possessed by the\nSocratic dialogs, by the Homeric epics, and by the dramas of Aeschylus,\nSophocles, and Euripides, and which classifies them together as poetic, is\nnot verse but _mimesis_, imitation.[13] Exactly what Aristotle meant by\nimitation has furnished subsequent critics with an excuse for writing many\nvolumes. The usual meaning of the word to the Greek, as to the modern,\nseems to be little more than an aping or mimicking. Aristotle himself uses\nimitate in this sense when he speaks of the delight children take in\nimitation.[14] But in establishing imitation as the criterion of poetic,\nAristotle seems to have injected something of a private, or at least a\nspecial scientific meaning into the word. As the characteristic quality of\npoetic, imitation to Aristotle evidently did not mean a literal copy.\nPlato had attacked poetry as unreal, a thrice-removed imitation of the\nonly true reality. To defend poetic against the strictures of his master\nAristotle reads more into the word than that.\n\nIn discovering what Aristotle had in mind when he speaks of imitation, the\nstudent must read from one treatise to another, for few writers of any\nperiod are so addicted to the habit of cross-reference. In the\n_Psychology_ Aristotle states that all stimuli received by the senses at\nthe moment of perception are impressed upon the mind as in wax. The images\nheld by the image-forming faculty are thus the after effect of sensation.\nThese images remain and may be recalled by the image-forming faculty. From\nthis store-house of images, or after effects of sensation, the reasoning\nfaculty derives the materials for thought as well as those for artistic\nexpression.[15] Imagination evidently has much to do with Aristotle's\nconception of the nature of poetic. Imitation, then, to him, meant a\nconscious selection and plastic mastery of the sense impressions stored as\nimages by the image-forming faculty of the author, whose writings are\naddressed to the imagination of the reader or auditor. Furthermore,\nButcher's interpretation of \"imitation of nature\" seems both sound and\nsuggestive. According to him the imitation of nature is the imitation of\nnature's ways. In this sense the act of the poet may well be called\ncreation.\n\nAs imitative arts Aristotle mentions poetry, dancing, music, and painting.\nThey differ, he says, in their medium, objects, and manner. Poetry,\ndancing, and music he classifies together because they use the similar\nmedia of rhythm, language, or harmony either singly or combined. Music,\nfor instance, uses both rhythm and harmony, dancing uses rhythm alone, and\npoetry uses language alone. Aristotle by this does not, as might seem,\nexclude rhythm and harmony from poetry. Indeed, he states explicitly that\nmost forms of poetry do use all of the media mentioned: rhythm, tune, and\nmeter. He is only insisting that imitation in unmetrical language is still\npoetry; that meter is not the characteristic element of poetic.[16] It is\nimportant to recognize that in classifying poetry with music and dancing,\nAristotle is insisting that the common element in these arts is movement.\nMovement is characteristic of poetry, as color and form are characteristic\nof painting and sculpture. Thus in discussing the plot of tragedy, which\nhe holds to be the highest and most characteristic form of poetry,\nAristotle urges the necessity of unity and magnitude, both of which he\ndefines in terms not of space relations, but of movement. For instance, to\npossess unity a plot must have a beginning, a middle and an end.\n\n  A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal\n  necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be. An\n  end, on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows some other\n  thing, either by necessity, or as a rule, but has nothing following it.\n  A middle is that which follows something as some other thing follows\n  it.[17]\n\nFurthermore, the magnitude which this dramatic movement should possess is\nalso discussed not in terms of bulk, but of length.\n\n  As, therefore, in the case of animate bodies and organisms, a certain\n  magnitude is necessary, and a magnitude which may be easily embraced in\n  one view; so in the plot, a certain length is necessary, and a length\n  which can easily be embraced by the memory.[18]\n\nIt is noteworthy that to Aristotle the characteristic movement of poetic\ndepends on the dramatic unity and progression of a dramatic action, a\nplot. In the _Rhetoric_ he shows that the arrangement of the movement of a\nspeech is governed by entirely different considerations. The unity of\nrhetoric is not dramatic, but logical. The order of the parts of a speech\nis determined not by a plot, but by the needs of presentation to an\naudience. For instance, a statement of the case is given first, and then\nthe proof is marshalled.\n\nThe objects of poetic imitation, Aristotle says, are character, emotion,\nand deed, i.e., men in action,[19] inanimate nature and the life of dumb\nanimals being subordinate to these. The manner of imitating, if poetic,\nAristotle says is either narrative or dramatic. Under the narrative manner\nhe includes lyric, where the speaker expresses himself in the first\nperson, and epic, where the speaker tells his story in the third person.\nIn the dramatic manner he says that the characters are made to live and\nmove before us.[20]\n\nAnswering Plato's charge that poetic is not real, Aristotle erects the\ndistinction between the real and the actual, claiming a reality for poetic\nwhich is not the actuality of science or of practical affairs. It is thus\nthat he distinguishes the poet from the historian: although the historian\nalso uses images, he is restricted to relating what has happened--that is,\nto fact; while the poet relates what should happen--what is possible\naccording to the law of probability or necessity. Instead of rehearsing\nfacts, the dramatist or the epic poet creates truth. We expect him to be\n\"true to life,\" and that is what is implied in Aristotle's \"imitation of\nnature.\"[21] This truth to life controls, according to Aristotle, both\nthe characterization and the action. In the first place\n\n  Poetry tends to express the universal--how a person of a certain type\n  will on occasion speak or act according to the law of probability or\n  necessity.[22]\n\nAristotle goes so far as to say that probability, not actuality, controls\nthe structure of a narrative or dramatic plot in that, \"what follows\nshould be the necessary or probable result of the preceding action,\"[23]\neven to the extent that the poet should prefer probable impossibilities to\nimprobable possibilities, for by a logical fallacy even an irrational\npremise in an action may seem probable provided that the conclusion is\nlogical and made to seem real.[24] For instance, the irrational elements\nin the Odyssey \"are presented to the imagination with such vividness and\ncoherence that the impossible becomes plausible; the fiction looks like\ntruth.\"[25] Such a result occurs only when the characters and action are\nmade real. We believe that which we see, even though we know in our hearts\nthat it is not so.\n\nHow important Aristotle feels it to be that the spectator or reader should\nsee before him the characters and situations of an epic or drama is\nevinced by his suggestion to the poet on the process of composing. The\nauthor, he says, should visualize the situations he is presenting, working\nout the appropriate gestures, for he who feels emotion is best at\ntransmitting it to an audience.[26] It is only when the poet thus\ncompletely realizes his characters and situations that the audience can be\ninduced to feel sympathetically the pity and fear which produces the\n_katharsis_, so important a result of successful tragedy. If human beings\ndid not possess that tendency to feel within themselves the emotions of\nthe people on the stage, they would be unable to experience vicariously\nthe fear animating the tragic hero. Thus tragedy, which is the type of all\npoetic, depends vitally, according to Aristotle, on imaginative\nrealization.\n\n\n\n2. \"Longinus\"\n\n\nAristotle's theory of poetry, which influenced so profoundly the criticism\nof the renaissance, was not followed by other classical treatises of the\nsame scope. In fact, very little Greek or Roman literary criticism is\nconcerned with poetical theory as compared with the keen interest of many\ncritics in oratory. Perhaps the most significant and valuable critical\ntreatise after Aristotle is that golden pamphlet _On the Sublime_\nerroneously ascribed to Longinus, which, anonymous and mutilated as it is,\nstill holds our attention by its sincerity, insight, and enthusiastic love\nfor great poetry.\n\nHowever important its contribution to classical theory of poetry, the\ntreatise is not specifically on poetic. In fact, it sets out as if to\ntreat rhetoric, and actually treats both; for it is mainly a treatise on\nstyle, which as Aristotle says in the _Poetics_[27] is in essence the same\nboth in prose and verse. Nevertheless it does distinguish between rhetoric\nand poetic and does contribute to the theory of poetry.[28]\n\n\"_Sublimitas_,\" misleadingly translated \"sublimity,\" the author defines\nas elevation and greatness of style. It springs from the faculty of\ngrasping great conceptions and from passion, both gifts of nature. It is\nassisted by art through the appropriate use of figures, noble diction, and\ndignified and spirited composition of the words into sentences. It is the\ninsistence on passion, emotion, which makes the treatise _On the Sublime_\nstand out above other classical treatises on writing. Both poets and\norators attain the sublime, says the author, but passion is more\ncharacteristic of the poets.[29]\n\nPassion moves the poet to intensity, which is attained by selection of\nthose sensory images which are significant. Thus the treatise praises the\node by Sappho which it quotes, because the poet has taken the emotions\nincident to the frenzy of love from the attendant symptoms, from\nactuality, and first selected and then closely combined those which were\nconspicuous and intense.[30] This intensity which is characteristic of the\npoet he contrasts with the amplification of the orators, which strengthens\nthe fabric of an argument by insistence and is especially \"appropriate in\nperorations and digressions, and in all passages written for the style and\nfor display, in writings of historical and scientific nature.\" Yet\nDemosthenes when moved by passion attains the sublimity of intensity and\nstrikes like lightning.[31] Both in oratory and in poetry sublimity is\nattained by image-making, as when \"moved by enthusiasm and passion, you\nseem to see the things of which you speak, and place them under the eyes\nof your hearers.\"[32] It would be difficult to phrase better the\nconditions of imaginative realization. But the author felt truly that\nthis realization was different in poetry from what it was in rhetoric. In\ncommenting on a quotation from the _Orestes_, of Euripides, he says:\n\n  There the poet saw the Furies with his own eyes, and what his\n  imagination presented he almost compelled his hearers to behold.\n\nAnd after an imaginative passage from the lost _Phaethon_, of the same\nauthor, he says:\n\n  Would you not say that the soul of the writer treads the car with the\n  driver, and shares the peril, and wears wings as the horses do?\n\nFrom this the rhetorical imagination differs in that it is at its best\nwhen it has fact for its object.[33] Longinus would seem to say that the\nrealization of poetic is untrammeled by fact, while the imagination of the\norator is bound by the actual; it is always practical.\n\nBecause the imaginative realization of poetry is characterized by passion,\nintensity, and immediacy, the author of the treatise feels with Aristotle\nthat the dramatic is the most characteristically poetic. On this basis he\njudges the _Odyssey_ to be less great than the _Iliad_. It is narrative\ninstead of dramatic; fable prevails over action; passion has degenerated\ninto character-drawing. This grouping of drama, action, and passion as the\nqualities of great poetry is significant. Bald narrative can never realize\ncharacter or situation as can the dramatic form, either in narrative or\nfor the stage, when the whole action takes place before the mind's eye\ninstead of being told.\n\nThe treatise makes this point exceedingly clear by two quotations which\nbear repeating.\n\n\"The author of the _Arimaspeia_ thinks these lines terrible:\n\n  \"Here too, is mighty marvel for our thought:\n  'Mid seas men dwell, on water, far from land:\n  Wretches they are, for sorry toil is theirs;\n  Eyes on the stars, heart on the deep they fix;\n  Oft to the gods, I ween, their hands are raised;\n  Their inward parts in evil case upheaved.\n\n\"Anyone, I think, will see that there is more embroidery than terror in it\nall. Now for Homer:\n\n  \"As when a wave by the wild wind's blore\n  Down from the clouds upon a ship doth light,\n  And the whole hulk with scattering foam is white,\n  And through the sails all tattered and forlorn\n  Roars the fell blast: the seamen with affright\n  Shake, and from death a hand-breadth they are borne.\"[34]\n\nThe first quoted passage is indeed not only \"embroidery,\" but mere talk\nabout shipwrecks, and the terrors of the deep. Homer realizes the\nsituation by sensory images; he makes the reader see the white foam, and\nhear the wind howl through the torn sails, yes, and shake with the\nfrightened sailors.\n\n\n\n3. Plutarch\n\n\nBut judgments like those of the appreciative and discerning author of the\ntreatise _On the Sublime_ are rare. Plutarch in his essay _On the Reading\nof Poets_, is much more representative of late Greek criticism. This essay\nis not a treatise on the theory of poetry, but a thoughtful discussion of\nthe place of poetry in the education of young men. Consequently the\ngreater part of the essay is devoted to the moral purpose of poetry, and\nas such will be treated in the second section of this study. Two points,\nhowever, are of importance to treat here: his theory of poetical\nimitation, and his comparison of poetry with painting.\n\nThe \"imitation\" of Plutarch was far narrower than that of Aristotle. To\nPlutarch, imitation meant a naturalistic copy of things as they are.\n\"While poetry is based on imitations ... it does not resign the likeness\nof the truth, since the charm of imitation is probability.\"[35] As a\nresult of his naturalism, Plutarch admitted as appropriate poetical\nmaterial immorality and obscenity as well as virtue, because these things\nare in life. If the copy is good, the poem is artistic and praiseworthy,\njust as a painting of a venomous spider, if a faithful representation of\nits loathsome subject, is praised for its art.\n\nPerhaps it was Plutarch's naturalistic theory of imitation in poetry which\nled him to compare poetry with painting. This he does in what he says was\na common phrase that \"poetry is vocal painting, and painting, silent\npoetry.\"[36] The false analogy, \"_ut pictura poesis_,\" establishing, as it\ndoes, a sanction in criticism for the static in drama, flourished until\nLessing exposed it in his _Laocoon_. Aristotle at the beginning had made\nclear that the essential element in drama is movement, a movement which\ncould have a beginning, a middle, and an end.\n\n\n\n4. Horace\n\n\nThe remains of Roman literary criticism are not so philosophical as are\nthe Greek. The treatise of Horace is not in Aristotle's sense a _poetic_;\nit is an _ars poetica_. _Ars_, to the Roman, meant a body of rules which a\npractitioner would find useful as a guide in composing. As a practitioner\nhimself, Horace is more interested in the craft of poetry than in its\nphilosophy or theory. He writes as a poet to young men who desire to\nbecome poets. The essence of poetry he ignores or takes for granted. He\nsays, in effect, \"Here are some practical suggestions which I have found\nof assistance.\"\n\nIn structure, also, the _ars poetica_ is not a critical analysis, but a\ntext-book. The first ninety-eight lines cover the fundamental\nconsiderations which the poet must have in mind before he starts to\ncompose. He should choose a subject he can handle; he should plan it so\nthat it be unified and coherent, and have each element in the right place;\nhe should choose words in good use, and write in an appropriate meter.\n\nThe subject of the second section is the Roman theatre. From line 99 to\nline 288, Horace devotes his attention to the rules governing the writing\nof tragedy. This is significant, again, of the classical opinion that the\nmost important poetical form is drama. Whatever differences there are\nbetween the views of Aristotle, Longinus, and Horace, they all agree in\nthat. In his treatment of characters and plot, however, Horace places his\nemphasis on character, while Aristotle had emphasized plot. Of plot Horace\nsays little, only suggesting that the poet should not begin _ab ovo_ but\nplunge at once into the midst of the action. Concerning character he says\nmuch. The language should be appropriate to the emotions supposed to be\nanimating the character who is speaking. No person in the play should be\nmade to do or say anything out of character. By the laws of decorum, for\ninstance, old men should be querulous and young boys given to sudden\nanger. The chorus, also, must be an actor and carry along the action of\nthe play instead of interrupting the play to sing. Horace further warns\nhis pupils to restrict the number of acts to the conventional five, and\nthe number of characters to the conventional three. As an episode\npresented on the stage is more vivid than if it were narrated as having\ntaken place off stage, horrors and murders should be kept off lest they\noffend.\n\nThe third section of the book is mainly concerned with revision. This is\ngood pedagogy, for advice as to how to improve sentences or verses is\nappropriate only after the sentences have been planned and written.\nBesides urging the young poet to revise and correct his manuscript\ncarefully, to put it aside nine years, and to seek the criticism of a\nsincere friend, Horace considers the value of the finished product. A poem\nwill please more people if it combines the pleasant with the profitable.\nIf a poem is not really good, it is bad. If the young poet finds that his\nwork is not of high excellence, he would do better not to publish it. A\npoem is like a picture, Horace says, in that some poems appear to better\nadvantage close up, and others at a distance. It is noteworthy that in his\n\"_ut pictura poesis_\" Horace is not pressing the analogy between the arts\nas did subsequent critics who quoted his phrase incompletely.\n\nOf the four classical discussions of the theory of poetry which are here\ntreated, that of Horace was best known throughout the middle ages and the\nearly renaissance. Just what the influence of the _Ars poetica_ was and\nwhy it was so great a favorite will be discussed in subsequent chapters.\n\n\n\n\nChapter III\n\nClassical Rhetoric\n\n\n\n1. Definitions\n\n\nThe importance of rhetoric in ancient education and public life is\nreflected in the wealth of rhetorical treatises composed by classical\norators and teachers of oratory. An understanding of classical rhetoric\ncan be gained only by a study of its purpose, subject-matter, and content.\nThe _Rhetoric_ of Aristotle has sometimes been called the first rhetoric.\nIn two senses this is not true. Aristotle's contribution to rhetorical\ntheory is not a text-book, but a philosophical treatise, a part of his\nwhole philosophical system. In the second place, even in his day there\nwere many text-books of rhetoric with which Aristotle finds fault for\ntheir incomplete and unphilosophical treatment. If the _Rhetoric ad\nAlexandrum_, at one time falsely attributed to Aristotle and incorporated\nin early editions of his works, is typical of the earliest Greek\ntext-books, the failure of the others to survive is fortunate. Aristotle's\nrhetorical theories superseded those of the early text-books, and through\nthe influence of his _Rhetoric_ and the teaching of his pupil Theophrastus\nset their seal on subsequent rhetorical theory. In practice as distinct\nfrom theory, Isocrates probably had an influence more direct and intense,\nbut briefer.\n\n\nDefinitions\n\n\"Rhetoric,\" says Aristotle, \"may be defined as a faculty of discovering\nall the possible means of persuasion in any subject.\"[37]\n\nHe compares rhetoric with medicine; for the purpose of medicine, he\nbelieves, is not \"to restore a person to perfect health but only to bring\nhim to as high a point of health as possible.\"[38] Neither medicine nor\nrhetoric can promise achievement, for in either case there is always\nsomething incalculable.\n\nAlthough Aristotle, with philosophical caution, was careful to state that\nthe function of rhetoric is not to persuade but to discover the available\nmeans of persuasion,[39] his successors were more direct, if less\naccurate. Hermagoras affirms that the purpose of rhetoric is\npersuasion,[40] and Dionysius of Halicarnassus defines rhetoric as the\nartistic mastery of persuasive speech in communal affairs.[41] But the\nanonymous author of the Latin rhetorical treatise addressed to C.\nHerennius, long believed to be the work of Cicero, qualifies this by\ndefining the purpose of rhetoric as \"so to speak as to gain the assent of\nthe audience as far as possible.\"[42] And the sum of Cicero's opinion is\nthat the office of the orator is to speak in a way adapted to win the\nassent of his audience.[43] In his definition of rhetoric Quintilian makes\na departure from the habits of his predecessors by defining rhetoric as\nthe _ars bene dicendi_, or good public speech.[44] Here the _bene_ implies\nnot only effectiveness, but moral worth; for in Quintilian's conception\nthe orator is a good man skilled in public speech, and there are times\nwhen, as in the case of Socrates, who refused to defend himself, to\npersuade would be dishonorable.[45] Quintilian's precepts, however, are\nmore in line with Aristotle than his definition. He busies himself\nthroughout twelve books in teaching his students how to use all possible\nmeans to persuasion. The consensus of classical opinion, then, agrees that\nthe purpose of rhetoric is persuasive public speaking.\n\n\n\n2. Subject Matter\n\n\nIf then the purpose of classical rhetoric was to come as near persuasion\nas it could, what was its subject matter? Aristotle, following Plato,[46]\nsays in his definition \"any subject,\" for any subject can be made\npersuasive. But this was too philosophical for his contemporaries and\nsuccessors, who saw in their own environment that in practice rhetoric was\nalmost entirely concerned with persuading a jury that certain things were\nor were not so, or persuading a deliberative assembly that this or that\nshould or should not be done. Consequently Hermagoras defines the subject\nmatter of rhetoric as \"public questions,\" Dionysius of Halicarnassus, as\n\"communal affairs,\" and the _Ad Herennium_ as \"whatever in customs or laws\nis to the public benefit.\"[47] The same influence caused Cicero in his\nyouthful _De inventione_ to classify rhetoric as part of political\nscience,[48] and in the _De oratore_ to make Antonius restrict rhetoric to\npublic and communal affairs,[49] although in another section he returns to\nAristotle's \"any subject\" as the material of rhetoric[50] as does\nQuintilian later.[51]\n\nAlthough Aristotle did state in his definition that any subject was the\nmaterial of rhetoric, in his classification of the varieties of speeches\nhe practically restricts rhetoric as did Hermagoras, Dionysius, and the\n_Ad Herennium_; for here he finds but three kinds of oratory: the\ndeliberative, the forensic, and the occasional, \u1f10\u03c0\u03b9\u03b4\u03b5\u03b9\u03ba\u03c4\u03b9\u03ba\u03cc\u03c2. Forensic\noratory he defines as that of the law court; deliberative, of the senate\nor public assembly; and occasional, of eulogy and congratulation. Perhaps\nthe most illustrative modern examples of the third would be Fourth-of-July\naddresses, funeral sermons, and appreciative articles or lectures. Aristotle\nsuggests that exaggeration is most appropriate to the style of occasional\noratory; for as the facts are taken for granted, it remains only to invest\nthem with grandeur and dignity.[52]\n\nOccasional oratory seems to have given no little concern to the classical\nrhetoricians. Since it existed to adorn an occasion, it had to be\nconsidered; but unlike the oratory of the forum or of the council chamber\nit was not primarily practical. Quintilian comments on this; for it seems\nto aim almost exclusively at gratifying its hearers,[53] in this respect\nresembling poetry, which to Quintilian, seems to have no visible aim but\npleasure.[54] Occasional speeches relied much more on style than did those\nof the law court and senate, thus meriting Aristotle's adjective\n\"literary,\" that is written to be read instead of spoken to be heard.[55]\nCicero, like Quintilian, considers these less practical, as remote from\nthe conflict of the forum, written to be read, \"to be looked at, as it\nwere, like a picture, for the sake of giving pleasure.\" Consequently he\ndeclines to classify this form of oratory separately, reducing\nAristotle's three kinds of oratory to two. It is valuable, to his mind, as\nthe wet-nurse of the young orator, who enlarges his vocabulary and learns\ncomposition from its practice.[56] Aristotle includes it in rhetoric; for\nin its field of eulogy, panegyric, felicitation, and congratulation, it\ntoo uses the available means of persuasion to prove some person or thing\npraiseworthy or the reverse.[57]\n\n\n\n3. Content of Classical Rhetoric\n\n\nClassical rhetoricians commonly divided their subject into five parts.\nThis analysis of rhetoric into _inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria_,\nand _pronuntiatio_ is to all intents and purposes universal in classical\nrhetoric and must be understood to give one a valid idea of its\ncontent.[58] _Inventio_, so often lazily mistranslated as \"invention,\" is\nthe art of exploring the material to discover all the arguments which may\nbe brought to bear in support of a proposition and in refutation of the\nopposing arguments. It includes the study of arguments and fallacies; and\nis that part of rhetoric which is closest neighbor to logic. The kinds of\nargument treated in the classical rhetoric were two: the enthymeme, or\nrhetorical syllogism; and the rhetorical induction or example. In the\npractice of rhetoric _inventio_ was thus the solidest and most important\nelement. It included all of what to-day we might call \"working up the\ncase.\" _Dispositio_ is the art of arranging the material gathered for\npresentation to an audience. Aristotle insists that the essential parts of\na speech are but two: the statement and the proof. At most it may have\nfour: the _ex ordium_, or introduction; the _narratio_, or statement of\nfacts; the _confirmatio_, or proof proper, both direct and refutative; and\nthe _peroratio_, or conclusion.[59] This is the characteristic movement of\nrhetoric, which, as is readily seen, is quite different from the plot\nmovement of poetic.[60] The parts are capable of further analysis.\nConsequently most writers of the classical period subdivide the proof\nproper into _probatio_, or affirmative proof, and _refutatio_, or\nrefutation.[61] And the _Ad Herennium_ adds a _divisio_, which defines the\nissues, between the statement of facts and the proof.[62] Cassiodorus\ndivides the speech into six parts[63] and so does Martianus Capella.[64]\nThomas Wilson (1553) offers seven.[65]\n\nThe third part of rhetoric is _elocutio_, or style, the choice and\narrangement of words in a sentence. Quintilian's treatment of style is\ntypical. Words should be chosen which are in good use, clear, elegant, and\nappropriate. The sentences should be grammatically correct, artistically\narranged, and adorned with such figures as antithesis, irony, and\nmetaphor.[66] Correctness is usually presupposed by the rhetoricians. To\nthe sound of sentences all classical treatises give an attention that\nseems amazing if we forget that in Greece and Rome all literature was\nspoken or read aloud. The sentence or period was considered more\nrhythmically than logically, and subdivided in speech into rhythmical\nparts called commas and cola. The end of the sentence was to be marked not\nby a printer's sign, but by the falling cadence of the rhythm itself.\nFurthermore, great care should be taken to avoid hiatus between words, as\nwhen the first word ends and the word following begins with a vowel. But\nthe glory of style to the classical rhetorician lay in its use of figures.\nHere rhetoric vindicated its practicality by a preoccupation with the\nimpractical; and here, as in analysis, rhetoric bore the seeds of its own\ndecay. Although Aristotle devoted relatively little space to the\nrhetorical figures, later treatises emphasized them more and more until in\npost-classical and in mediaeval rhetoric little else is discussed. The\nfigures of course had to be classified. First there were the _figurae\nverborum_, or figures of language, which sought agreeable sounds alone or\nin combination, such as antitheses, rhymes, and assonances. Then the\n_figurae sententiarum_, or figures of thought, such as rhetorical\nquestions, hints, and exclamations.[67] Quintilian classifies as tropes\nwords or phrases converted from their proper signification to another.\nAmong these are metaphor, irony, and allegory. In our day we consider as\nfigures of speech only the classical tropes, and indeed Aristotle pays\nlittle attention to the others. He says that in prose one should use only\nliteral names of things, and metaphors, or tropes[68]--which therefore are\nnot literal names but substituted names. For instance in this metaphor,\nwhich Aristotle quotes from Homer, \"The arrow flew,\"[69] \"flew\" is not the\nliteral word to express the idea. Only birds fly, reminds the practical\nperson. Max Eastman has pertinently called attention to the fact that it\nis only to rhetoric, which is a practical activity, that these figures are\nindirect expressions, or substituted names. Apostrophe is not a turning\naway in poetic, because in poetic there is no argument to turn away from.\nRather in poetic it is a turning toward the essential images of\nrealization, as metaphor in poetic is direct, not indirect, because in\npoetic a word that suggests the salient parts or qualities of things will\nalways stand out over the general names of things.[70]\n\nThe last two parts of rhetoric, _memoria_ and _pronuntiatio_, are really\nnot permanent parts of rhetoric, but only of the rhetoric of spoken\naddress. _Memoria_, the art of memory, did not mean to the Greeks and\nRomans the art of learning by heart a written speech, but rather the art\nof keeping ready for use a fund of argumentative material, together with\nthe features of the case which the speaker might be pleading. The\ndiscussion of it in the treatises is usually an exposition of the mnemonic\nsystem of visual association, the discovery of which is ascribed to\nSimonides. Cicero deliberately leaves a discussion of _memoria_ out of his\n_Orator_, because as he says, it is common to many arts;[71] and the Dutch\nscholar Vossius in the renaissance denied that it was a part of\nrhetoric.[72] _Pronuntiatio_, or delivery, has also been found hardly an\nintegral part of rhetoric. It is concerned with the use both of the voice\nand of gesture. Quintilian, for instance, records the effectiveness of\nclinging to the judge's knees, or of bringing into the court room the\nweeping child of the accused.[73] Aristotle discusses only the use of the\nvoice.[74]\n\nThus classical rhetoric was almost exclusively restricted to the\npractical oratory of persuasion. In the republics of Greece and Rome a\nmastery of rhetoric gave its possessor political power; for by persuasive\npublic speech a public man could gain a following by defending his clients\nin the law courts, and influence the destinies of the state by his\ndeliberations in the legislative assembly. As long as these republican\ninstitutions prevailed, the theory and practice of rhetoric continued to\nbe sound and practical.\n\n\n\n4. Rhetoric as Part of Poetic\n\n\nImplicit in Aristotle and throughout classical literary criticism there is\na clear-cut distinction between poetic and rhetoric. Aside from the\nmetrical form of poetic, accepted by all but Aristotle as a distinguishing\ncharacteristic, and the non-metrical form of rhetoric, the essentially\npractical nature of rhetoric marked it off to the Greeks and Romans as\nsomething quite different from poetic and infinitely more important in\neducation and public life. But however clear-cut this distinction may be\nin principle, in practical application there is rarely to be found such\nideal isolation.\n\nAristotle, for instance, carries rhetoric bodily over into poetic by\nincluding Thought, \u03b4\u03b9\u03ac\u03bd\u03bf\u03b9\u1fb0, as the third in importance of the constituent\nelements of tragedy.[75] This Thought is the intellectual element in\nconduct, and in drama is embodied not in action, but in speech.[76]\nAristotle says,\n\n  It is the faculty of saying what is possible and pertinent in given\n  circumstances. In the case of oratory, this is the function of the\n  political art and of the art of rhetoric. Concerning thought, we may\n  assume what is said in the _Rhetoric_, to which inquiry the subject more\n  properly belongs. Under thought is included every effect which has to be\n  produced by speech, the subdivisions being--proof and refutation; the\n  excitation of the feelings, such as pity, fear, anger and the like; the\n  suggestion of importance or its opposite.[77]\n\nThis is a transfer of the content of rhetoric to poetic, but poetic\nremains an art of imitation. Imaginative realization of the life of man\nwould be incomplete if the characters in a narrative or in a drama did not\nuse the same rhetorical art as do the characters of actual life. The poets\njustly carry over rhetoric when the scene demands it, and have often\nproved themselves excellent rhetoricians. Quintilian praises the\nperoration of Priam's speech begging Achilles for the body of Hector,[78]\nand Cicero gives a rhetorical analysis of the speech of the old man in the\n_Andria_ of Terence, where the arrangement is especially appropriate to\nthe character of the speaker.[79] Norden, therefore, seems to go too far\nin giving this as an example of contamination of poetic by rhetoric.[80]\nDante remains an excellent poet when he puts into the mouth of Virgil that\npersuasive speech to Cato in the first canto of the _Purgatorio_. Antony's\nspeech in _Julius Caesar_ is the best known modern example of the\nlegitimate place of rhetoric in poetic.\n\n\n\n5. Poetic as Part of Rhetoric\n\n\nJust as rhetoric is justly carried over into poetic when in the\nrealization of a character or situation a speech must be made or conduct\nrationalized, so poetic is constantly utilized by the orator. Public\nspeech would be less persuasive if the characteristic imaginative\nqualities of poetic were excluded. The ideas and propositions of rhetoric\nwould most ineffectually reach an audience if they were not made vivid.\nThat rhetoric is not thus made synonymous with poetic is due to the fact\nthat in rhetoric the images exist to illuminate the concept, while in\npoetic they are woven into the movement of the plot. Oratory, like poetry,\nis emotional, as Longinus asserts.[81] Cicero phrases the aim of the\norator as \"docere, delectare, et movere,\" to prove, to delight, to move\nemotionally.[82] The vividness and emotion, as well as the charm, of\npoetic are indispensable in attaining the ultimate aim of rhetoric--\npersuasion. The orator must be himself moved, according to Quintilian,[83]\njust as the poet, according to Aristotle.[84] That essential quality,\nindeed, of poetic, the realization of character and situation which\npresents vividly a situation or event to the mind's eye of the reader or\nhearer so that he seems to participate in the action and vicariously live\nthrough it, was incorporated into rhetoric as \u1f10\u03bd\u03ad\u03b3\u03b5\u03b9\u03b1, a figure of speech.\nThere petrified in an alien substance, this characteristic quality of\npoetic was transmitted to another age which knew of it through no other\nsource.[85] Thus a successful orator narrated with descriptive vividness\nthe circumstances, for instance, of a cruel murder, and even dramatized,\nspeaking now in the person of one actor, now of another, the situation\nwhich he was endeavoring to realize for his audience. He was thus enabled\nbetter to carry his audience with him to his ultimate goal of persuasion.\n\nBut though rhetoric might for the moment thus borrow poetic, and though\npoetic might borrow rhetoric, the two remained distinct in the large, each\nconceived as having its own movement, its composition, distinct from that\nof the other.\n\n\n\n\nChapter IV\n\nClassical Blending of Rhetoric and Poetic\n\n\n\n1. The Contact of Rhetoric and Poetic in Style\n\n\nThe coincidence of rhetoric and poetic is in style. They differ typically\nin movement or composition; they have a common ground in diction. And in\nthis common ground each influenced the other from the beginning of\nrecorded criticism. Aristotle says, for example, that the ornate style of\nthe sophists, such as Gorgias, has its origin in the poets,[86] while the\nmodern student, Norden, asserts that the poets learned from the\nsophists.[87] The evidence at least points to a very marked similarity\nbetween the styles of the sophists and of the poets in the fourth century\nB.C. This is well illustrated by the literary controversy between\nIsocrates and Alcidamas, both sophists and both students of the famous\nGorgias. Alcidamas reproaches Isocrates because his discourses, so\nelaborately worked out with polished diction, are more akin to poetry than\nto prose. Isocrates cheerfully admits the accusation, and prides himself\non the fact, affirming that his listeners take as much pleasure in his\ndiscourses as in poems.[88]\n\nThat there are characteristic differences in style between rhetoric and\npoetic Aristotle justly shows when he asserts that while metaphor is\ncommon to both, it is more essential to poetic. Consequently in the\n_Rhetoric_ he refers to the _Poetics_ for a fuller discussion of\nmetaphor.[89] At the same time he says that metaphor deserves great\nattention in prose because prose lacks other poetical adornment.\nFurthermore, epithets and compound words are appropriate to verse but not\nto prose. And though both verse and oratorical prose should be rhythmical,\na set rhythm, a meter, is appropriate only to verse.[90]\n\nA distinction between the style of poetic and of rhetoric similar to that\nof Aristotle is maintained by Cicero, but the distinction was losing its\nsharpness. In the _Orator_ he considers the orator and the poet as similar\nin style, but not identical. Formerly rhythm and meter were the\ndistinguishing marks of the poet, but the orators in his days, he says,\nmade increasing use of rhythm. Meter is a vice in an orator and should be\nshunned. The poet has greater license in compounding and inventing words.\nBoth prose and verse, he adds, may be characterized by brilliant imagery\nand headlong sweep.[91] The only essential difference between Cicero's\ntreatment of style and that of Aristotle is that whereas Aristotle had\nshown imagery to be an integral part of poetic, Cicero felt it both in\npoetic and in rhetoric to be superadded as a decoration. Whether or not\nthis difference was caused by lack of discrimination on the part of\nCicero, his position was at least in line with a tendency which in later\ncriticism received increasing development. Both the poet and the orator,\nhe says, use the same methods of ornament,[92] and the orator uses almost\nthe language of poetry.[93] And again, in a phrase which was taken up and\nrepeated for fifteen hundred years, the poets are nearest kin to the\norators.[94]\n\n\n\n2. The Florid Style in Rhetoric and in Poetic\n\n\nBut the public interest in style was increasingly comparable to that in\nathletic agility. As Socrates applauded the dancing girl who leaped\nthrough the dagger-studded hoop,[95] the popular audience of imperial Rome\nwas delighted at a clever turn of speech, a surprising rhythm, or a\nstartling comparison. Literary study of style in occasional oratory must\nhave been extensive and extravagant at a very early date, to judge by the\nrebukes of such practical speakers as Alcidamas. Moreover, such stylistic\nartifice as was practiced and taught by Gorgias, Isocrates, and other\nsophists crept into tragedy, says Norden, beginning with Agathon.[96] The\nresult was that with the poets style became as it had become with the\nsophists, an end in itself. The epideictic orators became less orators and\nmore poets, and the poets cultivated less the characteristic vividness and\nmovement of poetic than those turns of style which began in oratory.\n\nThus it was very natural that the discussions of artistic prose in the\ntreatises of the later rhetoricians should be copiously illustrated by\nquotations from the poets, and that the poets should, in turn, be\ninfluenced in the direction of further sophistical niceties by the\nrhetorical treatises on style, such as those of Demetrius and Dionysius of\nHalicarnassus, who devoted whole treatises to style alone. The obsession\nof style is well exemplified by a comparison of Dionysius and Longinus in\ntheir discussion of Sappho's literary art. Longinus praises her passion,\nand her masterful selection of images which realize it for the reader,\nwhile Dionysius, no less enthusiastic, points out that in the ode which he\nquotes there is not a single case of hiatus. Dionysius is here much the\nmore characteristic of his age, as he is in his belief that there is very\nlittle difference indeed between prose and verse. Longinus, while showing\nthe relations of rhetoric and poetic, keeps the two apart; Dionysius draws\nthem together. To Dionysius the best prose is that which resembles verse\nalthough not entirely in meter, and the best poetry that which resembles\nbeautiful prose. By this he means that the poet should use enjambment\nfreely and should vary the length and form of his clauses, so that the\nsense should not uniformly conclude with the metrical line.[97] In this\nregard he would approve of Shakespeare's later blank verse much more than\nof his earlier because it is freer and more like conversation. Thus, to\nDionysius, the diction of prose and the diction of poetry approach each\nother as a limit.\n\n\n\n3. The False Rhetoric of the Declamation School\n\n\nLater antiquity carried the mingling further in the same direction. As\ntime went on, the over-refinement and literary sophistication of the\nflorid school of oratory became more and more powerful. The puritan\nreaction of the Roman Atticists in the direction of the simplicity of\nLysias defeated itself in over emphasis and ended in establishing coldness\nand aridity as literary ideals. Such a jejune style could never hold a\nRoman audience, and Cicero in theory and in practice took as model not\nonly Demosthenes, but also Isocrates. As Roman liberty was lost under the\nCaesars, style very naturally assumed greater and greater importance.\nBornecque has shown that the strife of the forum and the genuine debates\nof the senate no longer kept tough the sinews of public speech, and the\norators sank back in lassitude on the remaining harmless but unreal\noccasional oratory and on the fictitious declamations of the schools.[98]\nIn these declamation schools under the Empire the boys debated such\nimaginary questions as this: A reward is offered to one who shall kill a\ntyrant. A. enters the palace and kills the tyrant's son, whereupon the\nfather commits suicide. Is A. entitled to the reward? In the repertory of\nLucian occurs a show piece on each side of this proposition. For two\nhundred years there had been no pirates in the Mediterranean; yet in the\ndeclamation schools pirates abounded, and questions turned upon points of\nlaw which never existed or could exist in actual society. The favorite\ncases concerned the tyranny of fathers, the debauchery of sons, the\nadultery of wives, and the rape of daughters. In the procedure of the\ndeclamation schools the boys arose and delivered their speeches with\nfrequent applause from the other students and from their parents. The\nmaster would criticise the speeches and, when the students had finished,\nwould himself deliver a speech which was supposed to outshine those of his\npupils and give promise of what he could teach them.[99]\n\nThe utter unreality and hollowness of such rhetoric could show itself no\nbetter than in contrast with the practical oratory of the law courts.\nAlbucius, a famous professor of the schools, once pleaded a case in court.\nIntending to amplify his peroration by a figure he said, \"Swear, but I\nwill prescribe the oath. Swear by the ashes of your father, which lie\nunburied. Swear by the memory of your father!\" The attorney for the other\nside, a practical man, rose--\"My client is going to swear,\" he said. \"But\nI made no proposal,\" shouted Albucius, \"I only employed a figure.\" The\ncourt sustained his opponent, whose client swore, and Albucius retired in\nshame to the more comfortable shades of the declamation schools, where\nfigures were appreciated.[100] But in spite of the ridiculous performance\nof the professors of the schools when they did come out into the sunlight,\nin spite of the protests of Tacitus who complained justly that debased\npopular taste demanded poetical adornment of the orator,[101] style\ncontinued to be loved for its own sake, extravagant figures of speech were\napplauded, and verbal cleverness and point were strained for. As Bornecque\nhas shown, the fact that the rhetoric of the declamation schools was so\nunreal, so preoccupied with imaginary cases, and so given over to\nattainment of stylistic brilliancy, in no small measure explains the loss\nin late Latin literature of the sense of structure. \"It is not\nsurprising,\" says Bornecque, \"that during the first three centuries of the\nChristian era the sense of composition seems to have disappeared from\nLatin literature.\"[102] Thus Quintilian lamented that in his day the well\nconstructed periods of Cicero appealed less to the perverted popular taste\nthan the brilliant but disjointed epigrams of Seneca.\n\n\n\n4. The Contamination of Poetic by False Rhetoric\n\n\nAs style gained this preponderence in rhetoric, it continued to increase\nits hold on poetic. While the rhetoricians were exemplifying from the\npoets their schemes and tropes, their well joined words, \"smooth, soft as\na maiden's face,\"[103] the poets on their part were assiduously practicing\nall the rhetorical devices of style. Thus the literature of the silver-age\nis rhetorical. The custom of public readings by the author encouraged\nclever writing and a declamatory manner,[104] even had the poets not\nreceived their education in the only popular institutions of higher\ninstruction--the declamation schools. The fustian which passed for poetry\nand equally well for history is well illustrated by the contempt of the\nhard-headed Lucian for those historians who were unable to distinguish\nhistory from poetry. \"What!\" he exclaims, \"bedizen history like her\nsister? As well take some mighty athlete with muscles of steel, rig him up\nwith purple drapery and meretricious ornament, rouge and powder his\ncheeks; faugh, what an object one would make of him with such\ndefilements!\"[105] But meretricious ornament was popular, and poets,\nhistorians, and orators alike scrambled to see who could most adorn his\nspeech. Quintilian's pleas for the purer taste of a former age fell on\ndeaf ears, and despite his warnings orators imitated the style of the\npoets, and the poets imitated the style of the orators.[106] Gorgias may\nor may not have learned his style from the ancient poets of Greece, but\nthe poets of the silver age learned from the tribe of Gorgias.\n\nNot only did poetry and oratory suffer from the same bad taste in\nstraining for brilliance of style, but in practice, as Bornecque has\nshown, both poetry and oratory suffered for lack of structure. The poets\npaid so much attention to style that they neglected plot construction and\nthe vivid realization of character and situation. The orators paid so much\nattention to style that they lost the art of composing sentences, and of\narranging sound arguments in such a way as to persuade an audience. In\neffect there was a tendency for the late Latin writers to ignore those\nelements of structure and movement wherein poetry and oratory most differ,\nand stress unduly the elements of style wherein they have the most in\ncommon. Indeed, so completely did any fundamental distinction between\npoetic and rhetoric become blurred that in the second century Annaeus\nFlorus was able to offer as a debatable question, \"Is Virgil an orator or\na poet?\"[107]\n\n\n\n\nChapter V\n\nThe Middle Ages\n\n\n\n1. The Decay of Classical Rhetorical Tradition\n\n\nThe seven liberal arts of mediaeval education carried the blending almost\nto the absorption of poetic by rhetoric, and the debasement of rhetoric\nitself to a consideration of style alone.\n\nAs for poetic, it had no distinct place except in the analyses of the\ngrammaticus, who from classical times had prepared boys for the schools of\nrhetoric partly by analyzing with them the style of admirable passages.\nThese passages were commonly taken from the poets, whose art was thus\nconsidered mainly as an art of words and applied to the art of the orator.\nConsequently, as a result of this tradition, poetic in the middle ages was\ncommonly grouped with grammar or with rhetoric, although Isidore includes\nit in his section on theology.[108]\n\nThe rhetorical treatises of the middle ages exhibit two phases. On the one\nhand the earlier post-classical treatises composed by Martianus Capella,\nCassiodorus, and Isidore, all inhabitants of the Mediterranean basin, are\nfairly close to the classical tradition of Quintilian. Their weakness\nconsists not in that they restricted rhetoric to style, but in that their\nwhole treatment of rhetorical theory was compact, arid, and schematic. The\nsecond phase of mediaeval rhetoric is characteristic of a geographical\nposition more remote from the center of classical culture. Thus it is in\nthe rhetorical treatises of England and Germany in the middle ages that\nrhetoric was to the greatest extent restricted to a consideration of\nstyle. Illustrative of this tendency is the fact that the only surviving\nrhetorical work by the Venerable Bede is a treatise on the rhetorical\nfigures.\n\nBut although the conventional study of rhetoric in such condensed\ntreatment as that of the sections in Martianus, Isidore, or Cassiodorus,\nwas definitely intrenched in the educational system of the seven liberal\narts, it had no vitality. In the first place these treatises gave only the\ndry husks of rhetoric, the conventional analyses, the stock definitions.\nIn the second place rhetoric was little applied. The political life of\nwestern Europe centered in the camp, not in the forum. The classical\ntradition of trial by a large jury, as the Areopagus or the Centumviri,\nhad given place to trial before the regal or manorial court. Thus rhetoric\ndried up and lost whatever reality it had possessed in imperial Rome.\n\nBut if the middle ages had no opportunity to apply rhetoric in its\nfunction of persuasion in communal affairs, they did have real need of an\nart of writing letters and of preparing lay or ecclesiastical documents,\nsuch as contracts, wills, and records, and of preaching sermons. Thus in\nthe teaching of the schools, as well as in practice, the oration gave\nplace to the epistle and dictamen. \"Dictare\" was to write letters or\nprepare documents. And the rhetorical treatise or \"_ars rhetorica_\" often\nyielded to the \"_ars prosandi_,\" or the \"_ars dictandi_.\"[109]\n\nA characteristic treatise of this sort is the _Poetria_ of the Englishman\nJohn of Garland (c. 1270). In his introductory chapter John explains that\nhe has divided the subject into seven parts:\n\n  First is explained the theory of invention; then the manner of selecting\n  material; third, the arrangement and the manner of ornamentation; next,\n  the parts of a dictamen; fifth, the faults in all kinds of composition\n  (dictandi); sixth is arranged a treatise concerning rhetorical ornament\n  as necessary in meter as in prose, namely, the figures of speech and the\n  abbreviation and amplification of the material; seventh and last are\n  subjoined examples of courtly correspondence and scholastic dictamen,\n  pleasantly composed in verse and rhythms, and in diverse meters.[110]\n\nUnder the head of invention John gives definitions, several examples of\ngood letters, a long list of proverbs under appropriate captions so that\nthe letter writer can quickly find the one to fit his context, and an\n\"elegiac, bucolic, ethic love poem\" in fifty leonine verses, accompanied\nby an inevitable allegorical interpretation.[111] Then he comes to\nselection. Tully, he admits, puts arrangement after invention, \"but,\" he\npleads, \"in writing letters and documents poetically the art of selection\nafter that of invention is useful.\"[112] For he thinks of selection only\nas the selection of words. A writer, he says, should select his words and\nimages according to the persons addressed. The court should be addressed\nin the grand style; the city, in the middle style; and the country, in the\nmean style.[113] One should arrange in three columns in a note-book the\nwords and comparisons appropriate to each style so that the material will\nbe handy when he wishes to write a letter. These principles John\nillustrates with leonine verses and ecclesiastical epistles. Under\narrangement he says that all material must be so arranged as to have a\nbeginning, a middle, and an end. Then there are nine ways to begin a poem\nand nine ways to begin a dictamen or epistle. Next he states that there\nare six parts to an oration: \"exordium, narracio, peticio, confirmacio,\nconfutacio, conclusio.\"[114] As an example of this division of the oration\ninto parts he quotes a long poem which persuades its reader to take up the\ncross. Still under the general head of arrangement John explains the ten\nways of amplifying material. The tenth, \"interpretacio,\" he illustrates by\ntelling a joke, and then amplifying it into a little comedy. \"Comedy,\" he\nsays, \"is a jocose poem beginning in sadness and ending in joy: a tragedy\nis a poem composed in the grand style beginning in joy and ending in\ngrief.\"[115] Next follow the six metrical faults, the faults of\nsalutations in letters, a classification of the different kinds of poems,\nand further talk on different styles in writing. His sixth chapter, on\nornament in meter and prose, presents what he has up to this left unsaid\nabout style. It includes a list of fifty-seven figures of speech (_colores\nverborum_) and eighteen figures of thought (_colores sententiarum_). This\nis logically followed by the ten attributes of man. The seventh and final\nchapter gives a long narrative poem of the horrific variety as an example\nof tragedy and several letters as examples of dictamen.\n\nSuch a digest shows better than any generalization a complete confusion of\npoetic and rhetoric. Poems were to be written according to the formulae of\norations; allegory throve. Infinite pains were to be expended on the\nworthless niceties of conceited metrical structure and rhetorical figures.\nGarland has neither real poetic nor real rhetoric.\n\n\n\n2. Rhetoric as Aureate Language\n\n\nAs to the late middle ages rhetoric had come to mean to all intents\nnothing more than style, it is frequently personified in picturesque\nmediaeval allegory, never as being engaged in any useful occupation, but\nas adding beauty, color, or charm to life. In the _Anticlaudianus_ of\nAlanus de Insulis, Rhetoric is represented as painting and gilding the\npole of the Chariot of Prudence.[116] In the rhymed compendium of\nuniversal knowledge which its author, Thomasin von Zirclaria, justly calls\n_Der W\u00e4lsche Gast_, for learning was indeed a foreign guest in thirteenth\ncentury Germany, rhetoric appears in a similar r\u00f4le. \"Rhetoric,\" says\nThomasin, \"clothes our speech with beautiful colors,\"[117] and he gives as\nhis authority, \"Tulljus, Quintiljan, Sid\u00f4njus,\" although Apollinaris\nSidonius seems to be the only one of the trio he had ever read.[118] This\ntheory lived to a vigorous old age. Palmieri, in his _Della Vita Civile_\n(1435), defines rhetoric as \"the theory of speaking ornamentally.\"[119]\nAnd Lydgate traces all the beauty of rhetoric to Calliope, \"that with thyn\nhony swete sugrest tongis of rethoricyens.\"[120]\n\nThe most complete example, however, of the mediaeval restriction of\nrhetoric to style, and of the absorption of poetic by rhetoric is afforded\nby Lydgate in his _Court of Sapyence._ The passages which refer to\nrhetoric are given in full because they can otherwise be consulted only\nin the Caxton edition of 1481 or in the black letter copy printed by\nWynkyn de Worde in 1510.[121]\n\n_Introductory verses._\n\n  O Clyo lady moost facundyous\n  O ravysshynge delyte of eloquence\n  O gylted goddes gaye and gloryous\n  Enspyred with the percynge influence\n  Of delycate hevenly complacence\n  Within my mouth let dystyll of thy shoures\n  And forge my tonge to gladde myn auditoures.\n\n  Myn ignoraunce whome clouded hath eclyppes\n  With thy pure bemes illumynyne all aboute\n  Thy blessyd brethe let refleyre in my lyppes\n  And with the dewe of heven thou them degoute\n  So that my mouth may blowe an encense oute\n  The redolent dulcour aromatyke\n  Of thy deputed lusty rhetoryke.\n\n\n_The section of rhetoric._\n\n  Dame Rethoryke moder of eloquence\n  Moost elegaunt moost pure and gloryous\n  With lust delyte, blysse, honour and reverence\n  Within her parlour fresshe and precyous\n  Was set a quene, whose speche delycyous\n  Her audytours gan to all Joye converte\n  Eche worde of her myght ravysshe every herte.\n\n  And many clerke had lust her for to here\n  Her speche to them was parfyte sustenance\n  Eche worde of her depured was so clere\n  And illumyned with so parfyte pleasaunce\n  That heven it was to here her beauperlaunce\n  Her termes gay as facunde soverayne\n  Catephaton in no poynt myght dystane.\n\n  She taught them the crafte of endytynge\n  Whiche vyces ben that sholde avoyded be\n  Whiche ben the coulours gay of that connynge\n  Theyr dyfference and eke theyr properte\n  Eche thynge endyte how it sholde poynted be\n  Dystynctyon she gan clare and dyscusse\n  Whiche is Coma Colym perydus.\n\n  Who so thynketh my wrytynge dull and blont\n  And wolde conceyve the colours purperate\n  Of Rethoryke, go he to tria sunt\n  And to Galfryde the poete laureate\n  To Janneus a clerke of grete estate\n  Within the fyrst parte of his gramer boke\n  Of this mater there groundely may he loke.\n\n  In Tullius also moost eloquent\n  The chosen spouse unto this lady free\n  His gylted craft and gloyre in content\n  Gay thynges I made eke, yf than lust to see\n  Go loke the Code also the dygestes thre\n  The bookes of lawe and of physyke good\n  Of ornate speche there spryngeth up the flood.\n\n  In prose and metre of all kynde ywys\n  This lady blyssed had lust for to playe\n  With her was blesens Richarde pophys\n  Farrose pystyls clere lusty fresshe and gay\n  With maters vere poetes in good array\n  Ovyde, Omer, Vyrgyll, Lucan, Orace\n  Alane, Bernarde, Prudentius and Stace.\n\nThroughout this passage rhetoric is never mentioned in any other context\nthan one of pleasure to the ear of the auditor. Of the three aims of\nrhetoric which Cicero had phrased as _docere, delectare, et movere_, only\nthe _delectare_ remains in the rhetoric of Lydgate. From his initial\ninvocation to Clio, in which he prays that his style be illuminated with\nthe aromatic sweetness of her rhetoric, to the passage in which he refers\nto his own writings for examples of ornate speech Lydgate never refers to\nthe logic or the structure of persuasive public speech. Rhetoric, in\nLydgate, is not used in its classical sense, but as being synonymous with\nornate language--style. Here and here only does Lydgate discuss any part\nof rhetoric in its classical implications. When, in his poem, he discusses\nthe craft of writing as including \"coulours gay,\" he refers to the figures\nof classical rhetoric--Cicero's \"_colores verborum_.\" And when he refers\nto the \"coma, colum, perydus,\" he is harking back to the classical\ndivisions of the rhythmical members of a sentence: the \"comma, colon, et\nperiodus.\" In the classical treatises on rhetoric this division of\n\"elocutio\" or style into two parts: (1) figures of speech and language,\nand (2) rhythmical movement of the sentence, is universal. Lydgate's\nrhetoric is thus a development of only one element of classical\nrhetoric--style.\n\nBut Lydgate's rhetoric was not only restricted to style; it was expanded\nto include the style of the poets as well as that of the prose writers, as\nthe last stanza shows. If Lydgate thought poetry to include anything more\nthan this style, he does not say so.\n\nLydgate does not present an isolated case of this meaning of rhetoric.\nThroughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in England the term\nrhetoric and its related words regularly connoted skill in diction. A\nrhetor was one who was a master of style.[122] Henryson, for instance,\ncalls rhetoric sweet, and Dunbar, ornate.[123] Chaucer admired Petrarch\nfor his \"rethorike sweete\" which illumined the poetry of Italy,[124] and\nwas himself in turn loved by Lydgate as the \"nobler rethor poete of\nbrytagne,\"[125] who is called \"floure of rethoryk in Englisshe tong,\" by\nJohn Walton.[126] According to James I both Gower and Chaucer sat on the\nsteps of rhetoric,[127] while Lyndesay includes Lydgate in the number and\nasserts that all three rang the bell of rhetoric.[128] Bokenham calls\nGower, Chaucer, and Lydgate the \"first rethoryens\";[129] and as late as\n1590, Chaucer and Lydgate are called \"The first that ever elumined our\nlanguage with flowers of rethorick eloquence.\"[130] The entire period was\nthus in substantial agreement that rhetoric was honeyed speech exhibited\nat its best in the works of the poets.\n\nThe best example of this view of rhetoric is furnished by Stephen Hawes in\nhis delectable educational allegory of the seven liberal arts which he\ncalls _The Pastime of Pleasure_ (1506). He begins, of course, with an\napology for\n\n  Thys lytle boke, opprest wyth rudenes\n  Without rethorycke or coloure crafty;\n  Nothinge I am experte in poetry\n  As the monke of Bury, floure of eloquence.[131]\n\nAnd in another place, again addressing Lydgate, he exclaims:\n\n  O mayster Lydgate, the most dulcet sprynge\n  Of famous rethoryke, wyth balade ryall.[132]\n\nThe poem records the experiences of Grande Amour, who, accompanied by two\ngreyhounds, seeks knowledge. After visiting Grammar and Logic in their\nrooms, he goes upstairs to see Dame Rhetoric. Rhetoric sits in a chamber\ngaily glorified and strewn with flowers. She is very large, finely gowned\nand garlanded with laurel. About her are mirrors and the fragrant fumes of\nincense. Grande Amour asks her to paint his tongue with the royal flowers\nof delicate odors, that he may gladden his auditors and \"moralize his\nliteral senses.\" She pretends to understand him, but when he asks her what\nrhetoric is,\n\n  Rethoryke, she sayde, was founde by reason\n  Man for to governe wel and prudently;\n  His wordes to ordre his speche to purify.[133]\n\nIt has five parts,--and so on. The introduction, however, to the\nbeflowered dwelling place of the fair lady and the request of Grande Amour\nto have his tongue perfumed are much more characteristic of the temper of\nthe age than are the professed reasons for the origin of rhetoric.\nRhetoric in their hearts they felt to be gay paint and sweet smells.\n\nHawes's five parts have the same names as the five parts of classical\nrhetoric.[134] The first part of rhetoric, he says, is \"Invencyon,\" the\nclassical _inventio_. It is derived from the \"V inward wittes,\"\ndiscernment, fantasy, imagination, judgment, and memory. Anyone, however,\nwho is familiar with the _inventio_ of classical rhetoric, concerned as it\nis with exploring subject matter, will be at a loss to see the connection\nwith Hawes. In fact the whole chapter, and the one following, are devoted\nnot to rhetoric, but to the theory of poetical composition, and\nexplanation of the allegorical conception of the end of poetry, and a\ndefense of the poets against detractors. The classical term _inventio_ is\nthus lifted over bodily, with both change and extension in meaning, from\nrhetoric to poetic.\n\nIn the chapter on Disposicion, instead of discussing the arrangement of a\nspeech, Hawes devotes most of his space to praise of the rhetoricians\nbecause they turned the guidance of the drifting barge, the world, over to\ncompetent pilots, the kings. Here, perhaps, Hawes is using the word\nrhetorician more closely than usual in its classical sense. He may even\nhave known that the fact of kingship had robbed rhetoric of its purpose.\nAt any rate, his Disposicion is like the classical _dispositio_ only in\nname, and again it is transferred from rhetoric to poetic.\n\nPronunciation (_pronuntiatio_), or delivery, of course applies to either\npoets or orators. But whereas classical writers applied it to the orator's\nuse of voice and gesture, Hawes applies it only to the poet's reading\naloud. He recommends that when a poet reads his verses, he should make his\nvoice dolorous in bewailing a woeful tragedy, and his countenance glad in\njoyful matter. It is important, however, that the reading poet be not\nboisterous or unmannered. Let him be moderate, gentle, and seemly. The\nfinal section, that on memory, comes closer to its classical sense than\ndoes any other. Here the mnemonic system of \"places,\" supposedly invented\nby Simonides, is explained obscurely. Even more obscure is its\napplicability to Hawes's subject.\n\nIt is noteworthy that the chapter on Elocution (_elocutio_),\nor style, far outweighs all the others in scope and bulk.\nOf the 108 seven-line stanzas which Hawes devotes to\nrhetoric, 20 praise the poets; 7 define rhetoric; 13 explain\n_inventio_; 12, _dispositio_; 40, _elocutio_; 8, _pronuntiatio_;\nand 8, _memoria_. \"Elocusyon,\" says Hawes, \"exorneth the mater.\"\n\n  The golden rethoryke is good refeccion\n  And to the reader ryght consolation.[135]\n\nRhetoric and style, to Hawes and his contemporaries, mean the same thing.\nBoth have to do, in Hawes's own language, with choosing aromatic words,\ndulcet speech, sweetness, delight; they are redolent of incense; they\ngleam like carbuncles in the darkness; they are painted in hard gold. But\nbeyond these picturesque generalizations there is little trace in Hawes of\nany discussion of style such as one would find in a classical treatise. A\nfew figures of speech are mentioned, but not dwelt upon. Hawes\nconsistently confines himself to poetry. Tully, the only orator mentioned,\nshares a line with Virgil. The main concern is with the devices used by\nthe poets to cloak truth under the veil of allegory. Rhetoric is an\nadjunct of the poet.\n\n       my mayster Lydgate veryfyde\n  The depured rethoryke in Englysh language;\n  To make our tongue so clerely puryfyed\n  That the vyle termes should nothing arage\n  As like a pye to chatter in a cage,\n  But for to speke with rethoryke formally.[136]\n\nIn a word, the whole traditional division of rhetoric is transferred to\npoetry, and at the same time both rhetoric and poetic are limited to the\nsingle part which they have in common--diction. The style cultivated by\nthis focus is ornamental and elaborate. If Lydgate or Hawes had believed\nthat rhetoric included more than aureate language, surely the scope of\ntheir treatises would have afforded them opportunity to correct this\nimpression. Each of them is endeavoring to present a compendium of\nuniversal knowledge according to the conventional analysis of the seven\nliberal arts. Illustrative details might be omitted, but not important\nsections of the subject matter.\n\nThe meanings of words change, and with such changes we have no quarrel. It\nis important, however, that we should know what the English middle ages\nmeant by rhetoric if we are to appreciate how powerful was the tradition\nof the middle ages and in what direction it influenced the literary\ncriticism of the English renaissance. To resume, the middle ages thought\nof poetry as being composed of two elements: a profitable subject matter\n(_doctrina_), and style (_eloquentia_). The profitable subject matter was\ntheoretically supplied by the allegory. This will be discussed in the\nsecond part of this study, as historically being a phase of critical\ndiscussions of the purpose of poetry. The English middle ages, as has been\nshown, considered style synonymous with rhetoric.\n\n\n\n\nChapter VI\n\nLogic and Rhetoric in the English Renaissance\n\n\n\n1. The Content of Classical Rhetoric Carried Over into Logic\n\n\nBut among serious people the painted and perfumed Dame Rethoryke of\nLydgate and Hawes was in disrepute. She had turned over her business in\nlife to the kings and devoted too much attention to ornament. Such a\nserious person was Rudolph Agricola, who, in his treatise on logic,\naccepted the mediaeval tradition that rhetoric was concerned only with\nsmoothness and ornament of speech and all that went toward captivating the\nears, and straightway picked up all the serious purpose and thoughtful\ncontent of classical rhetoric which mediaeval rhetoric had abandoned, to\nhand them over to logic. Consequently, in a work which he significantly\nentitles _De inventione dialectica_, he defines logic as the art of\nspeaking in a probable manner concerning any topic which can be treated in\na speech.[137] According to Agricola's scheme, rhetoric retains\n\"_elocutio_,\" style; and logic carries over \"_inventio_,\" as his title\nshows, and \"_dispositio_.\" His whole-hearted disgust with the stylistic\nextremes of rhetoric he shows by denying to oratory any aim of pleasing\nand moving. Of Cicero's threefold purpose, to teach, to please, and to\nmove, he retains only teaching as pertinent to effective public speech.\n\"Docere,\" to teach, he uses in the classical sense which includes proof as\nwell as instruction. Thus he says it has two parts: exposition and\nargument.[138] The parts of a speech he reduces to the minimum proposed by\nAristotle: the statement and the proof. Thus although Agricola admits that\nrhetoric is most beautiful, he will have none of her.\n\nFollowing this lead, Thomas Wilson, the English rhetorician and statesman,\ndefines logic and rhetoric as follows:\n\n  Logic is occupied about all matters, and doeth plainlie and nakedly set\n  forth with apt wordes the sum of things, by way of argumentation.\n  Rhetorike useth gaie painted sentences, and setteth forthe those matters\n  with freshe colours and goodly ornaments, and that at large.[139]\n\nAccording to Agricola and Wilson logic has supplanted rhetoric in finding\nall possible means of persuasion in any subject. Following Peter\nRamus,[140] Wilson finds that logic has two parts: _judicium_, \"Framyng of\nthinges aptlie together, and knittyng words for the purpose accordynglie,\"\nand _inventio_, \"Findyng out matter, and searchyng stuffe agreable to the\ncause.\"[141] Hermagoras and others had in antiquity considered _judicium_,\nor judgment, as a part of rhetoric,[142] although Quintilian thought it\nless a part of rhetoric than necessary to all parts.[143] _Inventio_, of\ncourse, has always been the most important part of rhetoric. This same\ncarrying over of the content of classical rhetoric into logic is further\nillustrated by Abraham Fraunce, who divides his _Lawiers Logic_ (1588)\ninto two parts: invention and disposition.\n\n\n\n2. The Persistence of the Mediaeval Tradition of Rhetoric\n\n\nBut while the survival of the mediaeval notion that rhetoric was concerned\nmainly with style thus gave over in the English Renaissance _inventio_ and\n_dispositio_ to logic, there naturally remained nothing of classical\nrhetoric but _elocutio_ and _pronuntiatio_. A brief survey of the English\nrhetorics of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries will show\nthat this was the case. Richard Sherry devotes an entire book to style in\nhis \"Treatise of Schemes and Tropes\" (1550).[144] He begins by defining\n\"eloquucion, the third part of Rhetoric,\" as the dressing up of thought.\nRhetoric to him had not in theory become style, but style is the only part\nwhich he finds interesting enough to treat. His schemes and tropes are of\ncourse the rhetorical figures; but let him explain them in his own artless\nway. \"A scheme is the fashion of a word, sayyng or sentence, otherwyse\nwrytten or spoken then after the vulgar and comon usage. A trope is a\nmovynge and changynge of a worde or sentence, from thyr owne significacion\ninto another which may agree with it by a similitude.\" Henry Peacham's\n_Garden of Eloquence, Conteyning the Figures of Grammer and Rhetoric_\n(1577) likewise deals only with the rhetorical figures.\n\nIn the anonymous, _The Artes of Logike and Rhetorike_ (1584),[145]\nrhetoric is denned as \"an arte of speaking finelie. It hath two parts,\ngarnishing of speach, called Eloqution, and garnishing of the manner of\nutterance, called Pronunciation.\"[146] Thus by definition rhetoric\nincludes only style and delivery. Under garnishing of speech the author\ntreats only the rhetorical figures. This restriction of style to figures\nis characteristic. The rhythm of prose upon which classical treatises on\nstyle lavished such enthusiastic pains is practically ignored in those\nEnglish treatises. The _comma, colon_, and _periodus_ which to classical\nauthors signified rhythmical units in the sentence movement had already\ncome to mean to most people only marks of punctuation.[147] Garnishing of\nutterance Fenner does not discuss at all.\n\nIn _The Arcadian Rhetorike_ (1588), Abraham Fraunce treats both.\n\"Rhetorike,\" he says, \"is an Art of Speaking. It hath two parts, Eloqution\nand Pronuntiation. Eloqution is the first part of Rhetorike, concerning\nthe ordering and trimming of speech. It hath two parts, Congruity and\nBraverie.\" Congruity (as pertaining more to grammar) he does not discuss.\n\"Braverie of speach consisteth of tropes or turnings, and in figures or\nfashionings.\"[148] The remainder of the first book deals with meter and\nverse forms, baldly of prose rhythm, epizeuxis, conceited verses, and\nvarious rhetorical figures. The second book deals with the voice and\ngestures. This rhetoric of Fraunce's, then, complements his _Lawiers\nLogike_ of the same year, the latter dealing with the finding out and\narrangement of arguments in a speech, and the former with style and\ndelivery. Rhetoric is thus concerned only with stylistic artifice in verse\nas well as in prose.\n\nThe same tradition is upheld by Charles Butler, who in his Latin school\nrhetoric (1600) defines rhetoric as the art of ornate speech and divides\nit into _elocutio_, a discussion of the tropes and figures, and\n_pronuntiatio_, the use of voice and gesture.[149] And John Barton is\nworse. In his _Art of Rhetorick_ (1634) he says:\n\n  Rhetorick is the skill of using daintie words, and comely deliverie,\n  whereby to work upon men's affections. It hath two parts, adornation and\n  action. Adornation consisteth in the sweetness of the phrase, and is\n  seen in tropes and figures.\n\nHe continues:\n\n  There are foure kinds of tropes, substitution, comprehension,\n  comparation, simulation. The affection of a trope is the quality whereby\n  it requires a second resolution. These affections are five: abuse,\n  duplication, continuation, superlocution, sublocution. A figure is an\n  affecting kind of speech without consideration had of any borrowed\n  sense. A figure is two-fold: relative and independent,\n\nand he names over in his jargon the six figures which are of each\nkind.[150] If this be rhetoric, perhaps there was justification for John\nSmith's _The Mysterie of Rhetorique Unvailed_ (1657), which continued the\nfallacious tradition by dividing rhetoric into elocution and\npronunciation.\n\nThis perversion of rhetoric which considered it as concerned only with\nstyle, or aureate language, was not restricted to the school books. The\npopular use of rhetoric as synonymous with \"fine honeyed speech,\"[151] is\nseen in a passage from _Old Fortunatus_, where it carries the modern\nconnotation of a meretricious substitute for genuine feeling, as where\nAgripyne says,\n\n  \"Methinks a soldier is the most faithful lover of all men else; for his\n  affection stands not upon compliment. His wooing is plain home spun\n  stuff; there's no outlandish thread in it, no rhetoric.\"[152]\n\n\n\n3. The Recovery of Classical Rhetoric\n\n\nA half century before Smith unveiled the mysteries of rhetoric, Bacon had\nin his _Advancement of Learning_ (1605) pointed out the fallacies of the\nrenaissance obsession with style. He briefly traces the causes of the\nrenaissance study of language and adds:\n\n  \"This grew speedily to an excesse; for men began to hunt more after\n  wordes than matter, and more after the choisenesse of the Phrase and the\n  round and cleane composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of\n  the clauses, and the varying and illustration of their workes with\n  tropes and figures, then after the weight of matter, worth of subject,\n  soundness of argument, life of invention, or depth of judgement.\"[153]\n\nSooner or later the school books had to reform. The Latin school rhetoric\nof Thomas Vicars (1621), after one has perused the treatise of his\npredecessors and contemporaries, is so conservative as to appear\nstartling. It has all the air of a novelty. Yet all he does is to return\nto the classical tradition by defining rhetoric as the art of correct or\neffective speech having five parts: _inventio_, _dispositio_, _elocutio_,\n_memoria_, and _pronuntiatio_[154]. And Thomas Farnaby, whose _Index\nRhetoricus_ appeared in six editions between 1633 and 1654, gives a fairly\nproportioned treatment of _inventio_, _dispositio_, _elocutio_, and\n_actio_. _Memoria_ he omits, following here, as elsewhere, the sound\nleadership of Vossius.\n\n\n\n4. Channels of Classical Theory\n\n\nThis perversion of rhetorical theory in the middle ages and early\nrenaissance had resulted not from mere wrong-headedness on the part of the\nrhetoricians, but from the limited knowledge of classical tradition during\nthe middle ages. Especially was this true in those parts of western\nEurope, such as England, which were remote from the Mediterranean\ncountries which better preserved the heritage of Greece and Rome.\nMoreover, the most important classical treatises on the theory of\npoetry--by Aristotle and Longinus--were almost unknown throughout the\nmiddle ages, and the rhetorical writings of Cicero and Quintilian were\nknown only in fragments.\n\nServatus Lupus (805-862), Abbot of Ferrieres and a learned man, was\nunusual in his scholarship; for he knew not only the rhetoric _Ad\nHerennium_ which was believed to be Cicero's but also the _De oratore_ and\nfragments of Quintilian.[155] The current rhetorical treatises of the\nmiddle ages were Cicero's _De inventione_, and the _Ad Herennium._ The _De\noratore_ was used but slightly, and the _Brutus_ and the _Orator_ not at\nall.[156] What little classical rhetoric there is in Stephen Hawes was\nderived from the _Ad Herennium_.\n\nThe survival and popularity of the _Ad Herennium_ during this period is\none of the most interesting phenomena of rhetorical history. Of the\nclassical treatises on rhetoric which survive to-day it undoubtedly\narouses the least interest and can contribute the least to modern\neducation or criticism. Yet it is the most characteristic Latin rhetoric\nwe possess. It is a text-book of rhetoric which was used in the Roman\nschools. In fact, Cicero's _De inventione_ is so much like it that some\nsuspect that Cicero's notes which he took in school got into circulation\nand forced the publication of his professor's lectures. Aristotle's\nphilosophy of rhetoric, Cicero's charming dialog on his profession,\nQuintilian's treatise on the teaching of rhetoric--none of these is a\ntext-book. The rhetoric _Ad Herennium_ is. It is clear and orderly in its\norganization. It defines all the technical terms which it uses, and\nillustrates its principles. As one might expect, it delights in\nover-analysis, in categories and sub-categories, the four kinds of causes,\nthe three virtues of the _narratio_. In the hands of a skilled teacher of\ncomposition, however, and with much class-room practice, it undoubtedly\nwould get rhetoric taught more effectively than would more philosophical\nor literary treatises. Thus in Guarino's school at Ferrara (1429-1460) the\n_Ad Herennium_ was regarded as the quintessence of pure Ciceronian\ndoctrine of oratory, and was made the starting point and standing\nauthority in teaching rhetoric. In more advanced classes it was\nsupplemented by the _De oratore, Orator_, and what was known of\nQuintilian.[157] The _Ciceronianus_ of Erasmus testifies that by the next\ncentury the scholarship of the renaissance had discovered that the _Ad\nHerennium_ was not from the pen of Cicero, and that the _De inventione_\nwas considered apologetically by its famous author, who wrote his _De\noratore_ to supersede the more youthful treatise.[158] But six years after\nthe publication of the _Ciceronianus_ of Erasmus, the edition of Cicero's\n_Opera_ published in Basel in 1534 still incorporates the _Ad Herennium_,\nand Thomas Wilson in England owes most of his first book and part of the\nsecond of his _Arte of Rhetorique_ to its anonymous author, whom he\nbelieved to be Cicero. For instance in his section on _Devision_ as a part\nof a speech, Wilson says, \"Tullie would not have a devision to be made,\nof, or above three partes at the moste, nor lesse then three neither, if\nneede so required.\"[159]\n\n\"Tullie\" says no such thing. Indeed, Cicero never considers _divisio_ as\none of the parts of a speech. But the _Ad Herennium_ does make _divisio_ a\npart of a speech,[160] and does require not over three parts.[161] As late\nas 1612, Thomas Heywood quotes the authority of \"Tully, in his booke _Ad\nCaium Herennium_.\"[162]\n\nThe relative importance of Cicero's rhetorical works to the middle ages is\nwell illustrated by a count of the manuscripts preserved. In the libraries\nof Europe today there exist seventy-nine manuscripts of the _De\ninventione_, eighty-three of the _Ad Herennium_, forty of the _De\noratore_, fourteen of the _Brutus_, and twenty of the _Orator._[163] Thus\nin the University of Bologna the study of rhetoric was based on the _De\ninventione_ and the _Ad Herennium_.[164] The _De inventione_ is the source\nfor Alcuin's rhetorical writings, and was the only Ciceronian rhetoric\nknown to Abelard or Dante. Brunette Latini translated seventeen chapters\nof it into Italian.[165] Although mutilated codices of the _De oratore_\nand the _Orator_ were known to Servatus Lupus and John of Salisbury,\ncomplete manuscripts of these most important works were not known previous\nto 1422.[166] The _Ad Herennium_ and the _De inventione_ were first\nprinted by Jenson at Venice in 1470. The first book printed at Angers\n(1476) was the _Ad Herennium_ under the usual mediaeval title of the\n_Rhetorica nova_. The first edition of the _De oratore_ was printed in the\nmonastery of Subaco about 1466. The _Brutus_ first appeared in Rome (1469)\nin the same year which witnessed the first edition of the Orator.[167]\nBefore its first printing the _Orator_ was used as a reference book for\nadvanced students by Guarino in his school at Ferrara.\n\nCastiglione's indebtedness to the _De oratore_ is well known, but few\nnotice that his first paragraphs are a close paraphrase of Cicero's\ndedicatory paragraphs of the _Orator._\n\nBut in England the first reference to the _Orator_ appears in Ascham's\n_Scholemaster_ (1570) one hundred years after its first printing.[168]\nThus the Ciceronian rhetoric of the middle ages was derived from the\npseudo-Ciceronian _Ad Herennium_ and from the youthful _De inventione_,\nnot from the best rhetorical treatises of Cicero as we know them.\nMoreover the mediaeval tradition persisted in England for over a hundred\nyears after it had been displaced in Italy.\n\nThe _Rhetoric_ of Aristotle was known to the middle ages only through a\nLatin translation by Hermanus Allemanus (c. 1256) of Alfarabi's\ncommentary. The Greek text was first published in the Aldine _Rhetores\nGraeci_ (1508), and was for the first time incorporated in the works of\nAristotle published in Basel, 1531. As early as 1478, however, the Latin\nversion by George of Trebizond had been published in Venice.[169] This was\nfrequently reissued in the _Opera_ of Aristotle together with the\n_Rhetorica ad Alexandrum_, long believed to be the work of Aristotle, in\nthe Latin translation by Filelfo, and the _Poetics_ in Pazzi's\ntranslation. As the true _Rhetoric_ of Aristotle, known to the renaissance\nas the _Ars rhetoricorum ad Theodecten_, was so frequently published with\nthe spurious _Rhetorica_, references to Aristotle's _Rhetoric_ in the\nsixteenth century are likely to be confusing. Thus it is difficult to tell\nwhether the _Rhetoric_ required to be read by Oxford students in the\nfifteenth century[170] is the one or the other. The surprising thing is,\nhowever, with all the editions and translations of Aristotle which were\navailable, that the _Rhetoric_ of Aristotle had so slight an influence on\nEnglish rhetorical theory.\n\nThe _De institutione oratoria_ of Quintilian was too long to be preserved\nintact. From the fourth to the seventh centuries, however, it was well\nknown and highly valued by Hilary of Poitiers, St. Jerome, and Rufinus,\nand closely followed and abridged in their rhetorical works by\nCassiodorus, Julius Victor, and Isidore of Seville. From the eighth\ncentury until Poggio discovered the complete manuscript at St. Gall in\n1416, the world knew only mutilated fragments of the text. On the basis\nof an incomplete manuscript Etienne de Rouen prepared in the twelfth\ncentury an abridgment of Quintilian, and soon after an anonymous\nenthusiast made a selection of the _Flores Quintilianei_.[171] Thus, while\nthe rhetorical works of Aristotle were practically unknown, and the\nCiceronian tradition rested on the _De inventione_ and the _Ad Herennium_,\nthe rhetorical ideas of Quintilian, as preserved in abridgments and in the\ntreatises of Cassiodorus and Isidore, passed current throughout the middle\nages. When the first edition was published by Campano in 1470, the world\nof scholars welcomed a familiar friend.\n\nOther classical critical treatises filtered into England even more slowly.\nThe _De compositione verborum_ of Dionysius of Halicarnassus received its\nfirst printing at the hands of Aldus in 1508 and was edited again by\nEstienne in 1546, and by Sturm in 1550. Yet had Ascham not been a friend\nof Sturm's, it might not have been heard of in England as early as 1570,\nwhen the _Scholemaster_ was published. Ascham says it is worthy of study,\nbut shows no great familiarity with the text.[172]\n\nThe _De sublimitate_ of pseudo-Longinus has a similar history in England.\nPublished by Robortelli in Basel in 1554, it was reissued three times,\nonce with a Latin translation, before Langhorne edited it (1636) at\nOxford. No Elizabethan writer alludes to it or seems to have been aware of\nits existence until Thomas Farnaby cites it as an authority for his _Index\nRhetoricus_ (1633). The advance of classical scholarship in England is\nindeed no better illustrated than by a comparison of Farnaby's cited\nsources with those of Thomas Wilson (1553). Wilson knew and used Cicero,\nQuintilian, Plutarch, Basil the Great, and Erasmus. Farnaby cites an\nimposing list of sources.\n\n  \"Greek: Aristotle, Hermogenes, Sopatrus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus,\n  Demetrius Phal,[173] Menander, Aristides, Apsinus, Longinus _De\n  sublimitate_, Theonus, Apthonius. Latin: Cicero, Quintilian, Martianus\n  Capella, Curio Fortunatus, Mario Victorino, Victore, Emporio, Augustino,\n  Ruffinus, Trapezuntius, P. Ramus, L. Vives, Soarez, J. C. Scaliger,\n  Sturm, Strebaeus, Kechermann, Alstedius, N. Caussinus, J. G. Voss, A.\n  Valladero.\"\n\nWhether Farnaby had read the works of these gentlemen through from cover\nto cover is another matter. He at least knew their names, and had read in\nVossius, whose footnotes would refer him to all these sources as well as\nto others, both classical and mediaeval.\n\nWith this evidence before us it is easy to understand why the traditions\nof the English middle ages persisted so long in the literary criticism of\nthe English renaissance. The theories of rhetoric and of poetry in\nmediaeval England had in the first place, because of remoteness and the\nlack of easy transportation, become farther and farther removed from such\nclassical tradition as was preserved in the Mediterranean countries. In\nthe second place, the recovery of classical criticism in the Italian\nrenaissance antedated by a hundred years the domestication of classical\ntheory in England. Not until the seventeenth century, as has been shown,\ndid rhetoric in England come again to mean what it had in classical\nantiquity. Subsequent chapters will show that classical theories of\npoetry, as published and interpreted by the Italian critics, made almost\nas slow head against English mediaeval tradition.\n\n\n\n\nChapter VII\n\nRenaissance Poetic\n\n\n\n1. The Reestablishment of the Classical Tradition\n\n\nIn concluding his authoritative study, _A History of Literary Criticism in\nthe Renaissance_, Spingarn asserts that before the sixteenth century,\n\"Poetic theory had been nourished upon the rhetorical and oratorical\ntreatises of Cicero, the moral treatises of Plutarch (especially those\nupon the reading of poets and the education of youth), the _Institutions\nOratoriae_ of Quintilian, and the _De Legendis Gentilium Libris_ of Basil\nthe Great.\"[174] With the turn of the century, he goes on to say, a great\nchange was brought about by the publication of the classical critical\nwritings, especially the _Poetics_ of Aristotle. Then the mediaeval\ncriteria of _doctrina_ and _eloquentia_ were superseded by many new ones.\n\nThe development of Aristotelian poetic in the Italian renaissance is a\nseparate inquiry, which has been made extensively, and need not be gone\ninto here. The results which bear upon the present inquiry may be\nsummarized as follows:\n\nThe recovery of Aristotle's _Poetics_ brought about a complete change in\npoetical theory, and stimulated in Italy a great body of critical writing\nand discussion, the results of which did not reach England until almost a\nhundred years later.\n\n_The Poetics_ had been known to the middle ages only through a Latin\nabridgment by Hermannus Allemanus. This was derived from a Hebrew\ntranslation from the Arabic of Averroes, who, in turn, knew only a Syriac\ntranslation of the Greek.[175] Although the _Poetics_ was not included in\nthe Aldine _Aristotle_ (1495-8), the Latin abstract by Hermannus was\nprinted with Alfarabi's commentary on the _Rhetoric_ for the first time at\nVenice (1481). Valla published a Latin translation in 1498. The Greek text\nwas first published in the Aldine _Rhetores Graeci_ (1508)[176] badly\nedited by Ducas. A Latin translation made by Pazzi in 1536 appears in the\nBasel edition of Aristotle's _Opera_ (1538) with Filelfo's version of the\n_Rhetorica ad Alexandrum_, falsely attributed to Aristotle, and George of\nTrebizond's (Trapezuntius) translation of the _Rhetoric_. Robortelli\nedited it in 1548. Segni translated it in 1549. It was edited again by\nMaggi in 1550, by Vettori in 1560, by Castelvetro in 1570, and by\nPiccolomini in 1575. It had inspired the _De Poeta_ (1559) of Minturno and\nthe _Poetics_ (1561) of Scaliger. But in England its critical theories\nwere ignored before Ascham, who cites them in the _Scholemaster_ (1570),\nand never elucidated before Sidney's _Defense of Poesie_ (c. 1583, pub.\n1595).\n\nBut with all the changes which were worked in the literary criticism of\nthe renaissance by the recovery of Aristotle's _Poetics_, renaissance\ntheories of poetry were nevertheless tinged with rhetoric. Vossler has\nsummarized renaissance theories of the nature of poetry as passing through\nthree stages: of theology, of oratory, and finally of rhetoric and\nphilology.[177] While the influence of Aristotle is most clearly seen in\nthe new emphasis on plot construction and characterization, the importance\nthe renaissance attached to style is in no small measure a survival of the\nmediaeval tradition of classical rhetoric. Moreover, as Spingarn has\npointed out, there was a tendency in the renaissance for the classical\ntheories of poetry to be accepted as rules which must be followed by those\nwho would compose poetry. If a poet followed these rules and modeled his\npoem on great poems of classical antiquity, some critics suggested, he\ncould not go far wrong. Thus one should follow the precepts of Aristotle\nfor theory, and imitate Virgil for epic and Seneca for tragedy. The\nrhetorical character of these poetical models is significant. Both are\nstylists, of a distinct literary flavor. Both recommended themselves to\nthe renaissance because they too were imitators of earlier literary\nmodels.\n\nAlthough with good taste as well as classical erudition Ascham preferred\nSophocles and Euripides to the oratorical and sententious Seneca, his view\nwas not shared by the renaissance. Scaliger, preoccupied as he was with\nstyle, found his ideal of tragedy not in the plays of the great Greeks,\nbut in the closet dramas of the declamatory Spaniard. Seneca appealed to\nthe renaissance not only on account of his verbal dexterity and point, but\nalso on account of his moral maxims or _sententiae_. In England the two\ngreatest literary critics, Sidney and Jonson, followed Scaliger in this\nhigh regard for Seneca. Sidney found only one tragedy in England,\n_Gorbuduc_, modeled as it should be on his dramas. Its speeches are\nstately, its phrases high sounding, and its moral lesson delightfully\ntaught.[178] And Jonson conceived the essentials of tragedy to be those\nelements found in Seneca: \"Truth of argument, dignity of person, gravity\nand height of elocution, fullness and frequency of sentence.\"\n\nThe middle ages conceived of poetry as being compounded of profitable\nsubject-matter and beautiful style. The English renaissance never entirely\nevacuated this position. Consequently the Aristotelian doctrine that the\nessence of poetry is imitation was either entertained simultaneously, as\nin Sidney, or interpreted to mean the same thing, as in Jonson. The\ncommoner renaissance idea of imitation is not that of Aristotle, but that\nof Plutarch, whose speaking picture so often appears in the critical\ntreatises.\n\nRobertelli thought poetic might be either in prose or in verse if it were\nan imitation; Lucian, Apuleius, and Heliodorus were to him poets.[179]\nScaliger, on the other hand, insisted that a poet makes verses. Lucan is a\npoet; Livy a historian.[180] Castelvetro probably came nearest to\nAristotle in asserting that Lucian and Boccaccio are poets though in\nprose, although verse is a more fitting garment for poetry than is\nprose.[181] Vossius anticipates Prickard's explanation of Aristotle by\ndefining poetry as the art of imitating actions in metrical language. To\nhim verse alone does not make poetry. Herodotus in verse would remain a\nhistorian; but no prose work can be poetry.[182] These are only a few\nexamples typical of the general tendency which Spingarn has so thoroughly\nstudied.\n\n\n\n2. Rhetorical Elements\n\n\nThis tendency to follow Aristotle in allowing that the vehicle of verse\nwas not characteristic of poetry tended to preclude any vital distinction\nbetween rhetoric and poetic. The renaissance had inherited from the middle\nages the belief that poetry was composed of two parts: a profitable\nsubject matter _(doctrina)_ and style (_eloquentia_). If the definition\ngoes no further, then the only difference between the poet and the orator\nlies in the Ciceronian dictum that the poet was more restricted in his use\nof meter. Consequently, when Aristotle's theory that poems could be\nwritten in either prose or verse was accepted, there remained no stylistic\ndifference at all. In fact, there is very little. But throughout the\nmiddle ages this common focus on style had led to undue consideration of\nstyle as ornament. In the renaissance this same tendency appears in\nGuevara, for instance, and in Lyly. The Euphuistic style, as Morris Croll\nhas pointed out, is more largely than was formerly supposed to be the\ncase, derived from mediaeval rhetoric.[183]\n\nIn the theoretical treatises on poetry produced on the continent there is\nfrequent use of rhetorical terms. It was to be expected that scholars\nwhose education had been largely rhetorical should carry over the\nvocabulary of rhetoric into what was on the rediscovery of the _Poetics_\npractically a new science. The rhetorical influence is readily recognized\nin Vida's preoccupation with the mechanics of poetry and in Scaliger's\nover-analysis and extensive treatment of the rhetorical figures, the high,\nlow, and mean styles, the three elements (material, form, and execution)\nof poetry. Lombardus makes poetry include oratory.[184] Maggi[185] and\nTifernas[186] echo Cicero that the poet and the orator are the nearest\nneighbors, differing only in that the poet is slightly more restricted by\nmeter. J. Pontanus insists that epideictic prose and poetry have the same\nmaterial,[187] that poets should learn from the precepts of rhetoric to\ndiscriminate in their choice of words.[188]\n\nAs an interpretation of classical doctrine this is not illegitimate; but\nPontanus runs into confusion by applying to the narrative of epic the\n_narratio_ of classical rhetoric, which meant the lawyer's statement of\nfacts. Confusing the _narratio_ of oratory with narrative, Pontanus says:\n\n  There are three virtues of a narration, brevity, probability and\n  perspicuity. The epic poet should diligently strive to attain the second\n  and third, and may learn how to do it from the masters of rhetoric.[189]\n\nThus a poet should seek in an epic the same qualities which an orator is\nsupposed by classical rhetorics to strive for in the statement of facts of\nhis speech.[190] Furthermore, says Pontanus, one can write very good\npoetry by paraphrasing orations in verse.[191] No wonder Luis Vives\ncomplained in his _De Causis Corruptarum Artium_,\n\n  The moderns confound the arts by reason of their resemblance, and of two\n  that are very much opposed to each other make a single art. They call\n  rhetoric grammar, and grammar rhetoric, because both treat of language.\n  The poet they call orator, and the orator poet, because both put\n  eloquence and harmony into their discourses.[192]\n\nFrom this brief summary, derived for the most part from the exhaustive\nstudies of Vossler and Spingarn, one may recognize some of the rhetorical\nelements in the theories of poetry current in the Italian renaissance. The\nAristotelian studies of the Italian scholars very largely accomplished the\noverthrow of the mediaeval theories of poetry and the re-establishment of\nthe sounder critical theories of classical antiquity. Their service to\nsubsequent criticism has been so great and their critical thinking on the\nwhole so sound that it may seem ungracious to call attention to a few\ncases where they were unable to shake themselves entirely free from the\nmediaeval tradition of classical rhetoric.\n\n\n\n\nChapter VIII\n\nTheories of Poetry in the English Renaissance\n\n\n\n1. The Rhetorical Period of English Criticism\n\n\nSpingarn has carefully traced the introduction of the theories of poetry\nformulated by the Italian critics into England at the end of the sixteenth\ncentury. It is the purpose of this study not to go over the ground which\nSpingarn has so admirably covered, but to point out in English renaissance\ntheories of poetry those elements which derive from the mediaeval\ntradition and from the classical rhetorics, and to trace the gradual\ndisplacements of these elements by the sounder classical tradition which\nreached England from Italy.\n\n\"The first stage of English Criticism,\" say Spingarn, \"was entirely given\nup to rhetorical study.\"[193] In his period he includes Cox and Wilson,\nthe rhetoricians, and Ascham, the scholar. Of the second period, which he\ncharacterizes as one of classification and metrical studies, he says, \"A\nlong period of rhetorical and metrical study had helped to formulate a\nrhetorical and technical conception of the poet's function.\"[194] These\ntwo periods have so much in common that they may readily be considered\ntogether.\n\nThroughout this period in England there was no abstract theorizing on the\nart of poetry. The rhetorics of Cox (1524) and Wilson (1553) were\nrhetorics and made no pretence of treating poetry. This is significant of\na direct contact with classical rhetoric. Because Cox founded his treatise\non the sound scholarship of Melanchthon, and Wilson wrote with the text of\nhis Cicero and his Quintilian open before him, neither was so completely\nunder the mediaeval influence as were most of the subsequent writers on\nrhetoric in England.\n\nAnother scholar in classical rhetoric was Roger Ascham, whose\n_Scholemaster_ (1570) contains the first reference in England to\nAristotle's _Poetics_. But except as a teacher of language and of\nliterature Ascham does not treat of poetry. Following Quintilian, he\nclassifies literature into _genres_ of poetry, history, philosophy, and\noratory, each with its appropriate subdivisions. Both Ascham and\nQuintilian are interested in literature as professors who must organize a\nfield for presentation to students; and as is frequently the case, the\nresult is apt to become arid, schematic, and lifeless. In his criticism of\nindividual poems, also, Ascham praises the authors less for creative power\nthan for adherence to certain formal tests. Watson's _Absolon_ and\nBuchanan's _Iephthe_ he considers the best tragedies of his age because\nonly they can \"abide the trew touch\" of Aristotle's precepts and\nEuripides's example. They were good because they were according to rule,\nand in imitation of good models.[195] Watson he especially praises for his\nrefusal to publish _Absolon_ because in several places an anapest was\nsubstituted for an iambus. Thus far we have the influence of classical\nrhetoric urging as an ideal for poetry formal correctness.\n\nThe rhetoric of Gascoigne, however, was not derived from the classical\ntreatises, but from the middle ages. His _Certayne Notes of Instruction_\n(1575) marks the beginning of the period of metrical studies. Now in the\nEnglish middle ages, prosody had consistently been treated as a part of\ngrammar, following the classical tradition; but in France prosody had\nregularly been discussed in treatises bearing the name of rhetoric. As\nSpingarn has shown, this tradition of the French middle ages persisted in\nthe works of Du Bellay and Ronsard, whose works in turn inspired\nGascoigne.[196]\n\nFollowing Ronsard, Gascoigne devotes a great deal of attention to what,\nborrowing the terminology of rhetoric, he calls \"invention.\" But whereas\nRonsard had meant by invention high, grand, and beautiful conceptions,\nGascoigne means \"some good and fine devise, shewing the quicke capacitie\nof a writer.\" That Gascoigne takes invention to mean a search for fancies\nis illustrated by his own example.\n\nIf I should undertake to wryte in prayse of a gentlewoman, I would neither\npraise her christal eye, nor her cherrie lippe, etc. For these things are\n_trita et obvia_. But I would either find some supernaturall cause whereby\nmy penne might walke in the superlative degree, or els I would undertake\nto answer for any imperfection that shee hath, and thereupon rayse the\nprayse of hir commendacion.[197]\n\nBy far the greater part of Gascoigne's treatise is devoted to metrics and\nto style. One can use, he says, the same figures or tropes in verse as are\nused in prose. It is noteworthy that in this treatise on making verses\nGascoigne restricts himself to externals of form and style. When he does\ndiscuss the subject-matter of poetry, instead of emphasizing the\nseriousness of content, he talks about his mistress' \"cristal eye.\"\n\nWhat has been said about Gascoigne applies almost equally well to the\n_Schort Treatise_ (1584) of James VI which was modeled on it. Like\nGascoigne's _Notes_, it is rhetorical and concerned with only the\nexternals of poetry. The treatise is almost entirely a metrical study,\nalthough the author does call attention to three special ornaments of\nverse, which are comparisons, epithets, and proverbs. The other figures of\nrhetoric which are so appropriate to poetry James says may be studied in\nDu Bellay. In both these writers, poetry is treated in the categories of\nthe middle ages. Poetry to them is composed of subject-matter and style.\nThe characteristic structure and movement of poetry is not considered at\nall.\n\n\n\n2. The Influence of Horace\n\n\nThus far there had been no fundamental criticism of poetic in England, no\nattempt to arrive at the basis of critical theory. Horace had been known\nlong before, but not until Drant's translation of the _Ars Poetica_ into\nEnglish in 1567 is its influence seen to be definite and extensive in\nEngland. One of the earliest published evidences of this influence is\nGeorge Whetstone's _Dedication to Promos and Cassandra_ (1578). The\npassage is short, but contains two very important points in the creed of\nclassicism. Whetstone inveighs against the English dramatist who \"in three\nhowers ronnes throwe the worlde, marryes, gets children, makes Children\nmen, men to conquer kingdomes, murder Monsters, and bringeth Gods from\nHeaven, and fetcheth Divels from Hel.\"[198] This is the earliest record in\nEngland of an insistence on unity of time and place. Then he urges the\nclaims of decorum in comedy. The poet should not make clowns the\ncompanions of kings, nor put wise counsels into the mouth of fools. \"For,\nto worke a comedie kindly, grave olde men should instruct, yonge men\nshould showe the imperfections of youth, Strumpets should be lascivious,\nBoyes unhappy, and Clownes should speake disorderlye.\"[199]\n\nIt is interesting that this conception of the characters in a drama should\nultimately trace back through many perversions to Aristotle's rhetorical\ntheory. There are three kinds of proof, says Aristotle in the _Rhetoric_:\nthe character of the speaker, the production of a certain disposition in\nthe audience, and the argument of the speech itself. The last kind of\nproof is derived from logic; the first two, from psychology.[200]\nConsequently, Aristotle devotes almost a third of his _Rhetoric_, the\nsecond book, to an elaborate exposition of the passions (\u03c0\u03ac\u03b8\u03b7) of men, so\nthat the orator may know how to excite or allay them according as the\nnecessities of his case demand, and a full explanation of the character (\u1926\u03b8\u03bf\u03c2)\nof men, that the speaker may know how to impress upon his audience his own\ntrustworthiness, and adapt his arguments to the character of the\nparticular audience which he is addressing. Varieties of character in an\naudience depend upon its passions, its virtues and vices, its age or\nyouth, and its position in life.[201] Aristotle's generalizations on the\ncharacter of young people and old, of the wealthy, noble and powerful,\ndisplay penetrating acumen. That flesh and blood character realizations in\ndrama or story could be attained by this method Aristotle never intended.\nHe is talking of public address. But the study of characterization as part\nof the education of an orator became fixed in the curriculum of rhetoric\nschools. The boys were supposed to study certain types of persons and then\nwrite character sketches to show their sharpness of observation.\nTheophrastus, Aristotle's favorite student and successor as head of the\nschool in Athens, wrote his _Characters_ to show how it was done, and did\nit with such ability as to elevate the school exercise to a literary\nform. These \"characters\" were epitomized in the Latin rhetorics and the\nschool exercises continued. The rhetoric _Ad Herennium_ calls them\n_notatio_,[202] Cicero, _descriptio_,[203] and Quintilian, _mores_.[204]\n\nQuintilian furthermore makes interesting comments on the use of the\ncharacter sketches by the poets. Character (Greek: \u1926\u03b8\u03bf\u03c2) in oratory, he\nsays, is similar to comedy, as the passions (\u03c0\u03ac\u03b8\u03bf\u03c2) are to tragedy.[205]\nProfessor Butcher calls attention to the early influence of the character\nsketches on the middle comedy. Here the \"humours,\" to anticipate Ben\nJonson, give names not only to the characters of the play, but to the\nplays themselves.[206] As adopted by the drama, the orator's view that\npeople of a certain age and rank are likely to behave in certain fashions\nwas perverted to the dramatical law of _decorum_, that people of certain\nage or rank must on the stage act up to this generalization of what was\ncharacteristic. This law of decorum was formulated by Horace in his _Ars\nPoetica_,[207] whence it was derived by the renaissance. Thomas Wilson,\nin his _Arte of Rhetorique_, gives a Theophrastian character sketch as an\nillustration of the figure _descriptio_.\n\n  \"As in speaking against a covetous man, thus. There is no such pinch\n  peney on live as this good fellowe is. He will not lose the paring of\n  his nailes. His haire is never rounded for sparing of money, one paire\n  of shone serveth him a twelve month, he is shod with nailes like a\n  Horse. He hath bene knowne by his coate this thirtie Winter. He spent\n  once a groate at good ale, being forced through companie, and taken\n  short at his words, whereupon he hath taken such conceipt since that\n  time, that it hath almost cost him his life.\"[208]\n\nIn 1592 Casaubon edited Theophrastus in Latin. Thereafter the character\nsketch became a literary form, as in Hall, Overbury, and Earle, instead of\nremaining merely a rhetorical exercise.[209] In the theory of the drama\nthe rhetorical method of characterization, fixed as the law of decorum,\nflourished throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In England\nfrom Whetstone on it was made much of. Thus a rhetorical tradition of\nclassical pedagogy, derived ultimately from Aristotle, and a poetical\ntradition of later classical drama, derived from Horace, coincide in the\nEnglish renaissance.\n\nIn _The Epistle Dedicatory to the Shepheards Calender_ (1579), for\ninstance, E.K. praises Spenser for \"his dewe observing of decorum everye\nwhere, in personages, in seasons, in matter, in speach.\"[210] The\narchaisms are defended in the first place, indeed, because they are\nappropriate to rustic speakers, but in the second because Cicero says that\nancient words make the style seem grave and reverend. Further praise E.K.\ngrants the author because he avoids loose sentence structure and affects\nthe oratorical period. \"Now, for the knitting of sentences, whych they\ncall the ioynts and members thereof, and for all the compasse of the\nspeach, it is round without roughness.\"[211] The \"ioynts and members\" are\nthe _cola_ and _commas_ of the oratorical prose rhythm. Stanyhurst in the\n_Dedication_ to his translation of Virgil (1582), like E. K., is concerned\nwith style rather than matter, and of course primarily with the revival\nof classical meters, a subject already so thoroughly investigated that it\nneed not be gone into here.[212] Stanyhurst's praise of Virgil is largely\nconcerned with formal and rhetorical excellences.\n\n  Our _Virgil_ dooth laboure, in telling as yt were a _Cantorburye tale_,\n  too ferret owt the secretes of _Nature_, with woordes so fitlye coucht,\n  wyth verses so smoothlye slyckte, with sentences so featlye ordered,\n  with orations so neatlie burnisht, with similitudes so aptly applyed,\n  with eeche _decorum_ so duely observed, as in truth hee hath in right\n  purchased too hym self thee name of a surpassing poet, thee fame of an\n  od oratoure, and thee admiration of a profound philosopher.[213]\n\nThus in accord with the mediseval tradition he analyzes poetry into\nprofitable subject matter and style.\n\n\n\n3. The Influence of Aristotle\n\n\nIn 1579 the Puritan attack on poetry and the stage began with Gosson's\n_School of Abuse._[214] and was answered by Lodge's _Defence of Poetry_ in\nthe same year. The attack and defense both rested on moral, not aesthetic,\nsanctions and will be discussed in a later section. It is only in Sidney's\n_Defense_ (c. 1583) and that of his follower Harington that theories of\nthe nature of poetry are included. And with Sidney the Aristotelianism of\nthe Italian renaissance makes its first appearance in English\ncriticism.[215]\n\n\"Poesie,\" writes Sidney, \"therefore is an arte of imitation, for so\nAristotle termeth it in his word _Mimesis_, that is to say, a\nrepresenting, counterfeiting, or figuring forth: to speake metaphorically,\na speaking picture.\"[216] Thus not only Aristotle's imitation enters\nEnglish criticism, but Plutarch's speaking picture as well, with all the\npower of its false analogy. That Sidney himself was not, however, carried\naway by the analogy is apparent from other passages. Aristotle,\nclassifying poetic with music and dancing as a time art with its essence\nin movement, had insisted that a poem must have a beginning, a middle, and\nan end--qualities which do not exist in space. So in the most quoted\npassage from Sidney's _Defense_, it is a \"tale forsooth,\" which draws old\nmen from the chimney corner, and children from play,[217] and \"the\nnarration\" which furnishes the groundplot of poesie.[218] Thus he\nintroduces into English criticism, as an important element of poetry, the\nessentially sound idea that the characteristic structure of poetry lies in\nits narrative and dramatic movement. Poetry cannot lie because it never\npretends to fact. He establishes this assertion on Aristotle's \"universal\nnot the particular\" as the basis of poetic. Sidney had followed Scaliger\nin classifying poets into three kinds: the theological, the philosophical,\nand the right poets. The third class, the real poets, he says, \"borrow\nnothing of what is, hath been, or shall be: but range, onely rayned with\nlearned discretion, into the divine consideration of what may be, and\nshould be.\"[219]\n\nIn considering the vehicle of poetic Sidney parts company with Scaliger\nand agrees with Castelvetro that verse is but an ornament and not the\ncharacteristic mark of poetry. The _Cyropaedia_ of Xenophon, and the\n_Theagines and Cariclea_ of Heliodorus are poems, although written in\nprose, because they feign notable images of virtues and vices, \"although\nindeed the Senate of Poets hath chosen verse as their fittest\nrayment.\"[220] Proceeding thence, he defends verse as being a far greater\naid to memory than prose, borrowing his terminology of \"rooms,\" \"places,\"\nand \"seates,\" from the mnemonic system of Simonides usually incorporated\nin the section on memory in the classical rhetorics.[221] Furthermore,\nSidney is the first in England to insist on the vividness of realization\nwhich comes from the poet's being himself moved. Discussing lyric poetry,\nSidney says:\n\n  But truely many of such writings as come under the banner of\n  unresistable love, if I were a Mistres, would never perswade mee they\n  were in love; so coldely they apply fiery speeches, as men that had\n  rather red Lovers writings, and so caught up certaine swelling\n  phrases,... then that in truth they feele those passions, which easily\n  (as I think) may be bewrayed by that same forcibleness or _Energia_ (as\n  the Greeks call it), of the writer.[222]\n\nSidney's _Energia_ came to him from the rhetorics of Aristotle and\nQuintilian via the _Poetice_ of Scaliger.[223] _Energia_, the vivifying\nquality of poetry, had at the earliest age been adopted by rhetoric to\nlend power to persuasion. Carefully preserved among the figures of\nrhetoric, it had survived the middle ages, and appears in Wilson's _Arte\nof Rhetoric_ as \"an evident declaration of a thing, as though we saw it\neven now done.\"\n\nSidney makes _energia_ an essential quality of poetic; but even with him\nit seems to have a rhetorical cast. It is especially to be used, says\nSidney, by a lover to persuade his mistress, urging her to yield while yet\nher beauty endures. This _genre_ of versified oration to one's mistress\nwas unusually popular in Elizabethan England. It may even be one reason\nfor Bacon's classification of lyric poetry as part of rhetoric.[224]\nAlthough _energia_ does belong to both poetic and rhetoric, as\npseudo-Longinus implies,[225] there seems to be here a definitely\nrhetorical conception of poetic style. Sidney, however, keeps the\nclassical distinction between rhetoric and poetic, although he was\nconscious of their contact in diction. \"Both,\" he says with Aristotle,\n\"have an affinity in this wordish consideration.\"[226] While many\nrenaissance critics interpreted this affinity as permitting rhetorical\nelaboration in poetry as well as in prose, Sidney with innate good taste\npleaded for more restraint. The diction of the writers of lyrics is even\nworse, he says, than their content.\n\n  So is that honny-flowing Matron Eloquence apparalled, or rather\n  disguised, in a Curtizan-like painted affectation: one time with so\n  farre fette words, they seem monsters, but must seem strangers to any\n  poore English man, another tyme with coursing of a Letter as if they\n  were bound to follow the method of a Dictionary; another tyme, with\n  figures and flowers extreamelie winter-starved.[227]\n\nProse writers, he adds, are as badly infected as \"versers,\" even scholars\nand preachers. That he himself was infected appears in the examples of\ninterminable \"tropes\" and \"schemes\" quoted by Fraunce in his _Arcadian\nRhetoric_ (1588) from Sidney's own _Arcadia_. But the concession of his\nown style to the habit of his age did not involve any fundamental\nconfusion of rhetoric with poetic.\n\nThus Sidney's _Defense of Poesie_, by domesticating in England the\nAristotelian theories of the Italian critics, went far in displacing\nmediaeval tradition by sounder classical criticism. To object that\nSidney's criticism contains elements which derive from the middle ages and\nfrom the classical rhetorics would be captious. It is asking too much to\nexpect that a man can shake off at once the traditional habits of thought\nwhich are part of the air he breathes. The important thing is that Sidney\ninstituted a tendency toward classicism which during the next fifty years\nestablished itself in criticism. That this classicism tended in some cases\ntoward over-emphasis does not alter the fact that English criticism\nprofited greatly by the return to classical poetical theory. It is\ninteresting, however, that Sidney's influence did not at once dislodge the\nmediaeval tradition. Although the manuals of Webbe and Puttenham do show\nclassical influence, their theories of poetry still show a notable\nresiduum of theory characteristically mediaeval.\n\n\n\n4. Manuals for Poets\n\n\nBefore William Webbe wrote his _Discourse of English Poetry_ (1586) there\nhad been no attempt in England to compose a systematic and comprehensive\nstudy of the art. The rhetorical studies of Ascham and Wilson merely\nglanced at poetry as something related to rhetoric. Gascoigne and James\nattempted no more than manuals of prosody. Lodge and Harington were\nprimarily interested in justifying poetry on moral grounds against the\nPuritan attack; and Sidney, though he goes beyond this, still keeps it as\na main object. In his _Discourse_ Webbe modestly asserts that his purpose\nin writing is primarily to stir up some one better than he to write on\nEnglish poetry so that proper criteria of judgment may be established to\ndiscern between good writers and bad, and that the poets may thereby be\naided in the right practice and orderly course of true poetry. If as much\nattention were devoted in England to poetry as to oratory, he thinks,\npoetry would be in as good state as her sister \"Rhetoricall _Eloquution_,\nas they were by byrth Twyns, by kinde the same, by original of one\ndescent.\"[228] As an example of the high degree of excellence attained by\neloquence, he cites Lyly's _Euphues_.\n\n  Whose workes surely in respecte of his singuler eloquence and brave\n  composition of apt words and sentences, let the learned examine and make\n  tryall thereof through all the partes of Rethoricke, in fitte phrases,\n  in pithy sentences, in gallant tropes, in flowing speech, in plaine\n  sence.[229]\n\nThus rhetoric is considered merely as style; and the implication seems to\nbe that the poets who would improve their style might well imitate Lyly.\nWebbe evidently means what he says in identifying poetry and rhetoric in\nstyle. He adds:\n\n  Thus it appeareth both Eloquence and Poetrie to have had their beginning\n  and original from these exercises, beeing framed in such sweete measure\n  of sentences and pleasant harmonie called \u1fe5\u03c5\u03b8\u03bc\u03cc\u03c2 which is an apt\n  composition of wordes or clauses, drawing as it were by force the hearers\n  eares even whether soever it lysteth, that _Plato_ affirmeth\n  therein to be contained \u03b3\u03bf\u03b7\u03c4\u03b5\u03af\u03b1, an inchantment, as it were to\n  persuade.[230]\n\nThe confusion thus is carried pretty far by Webbe, who makes poetry and\nrhetoric the same in style, both aiming at persuasion. Not only have\npoetic and rhetoric for him a common ground in diction, but the ideal of\ndiction is the same for both. The diction of poetry is the same as the\ndiction of oratory. The only difference to him is that poetry is in verse\nand oratory in prose.\n\n  Poetry, therefore, is where any worke is learnedly compiled in\n  measurable speech, and framed in wordes conteyning number or proportion\n  of just syllables, delighting the readers or hearers as well by the apt\n  and decent framing of wordes in equal resemblance of quantity--commonly\n  called verse, as by the skylfull handling of the matter.[231]\n\nWebbe organizes his treatise in good rhetorical fashion. First come\nseventeen pages of history, mentioning with perfunctory comment the best\nknown poets of classical antiquity and of England. The remainder of the\n_Discourse_ is devoted to the theory of poetry, which he divides into\nmatter and form. Matter, which receives nineteen pages, is the medi\u00e6val\n_doctrina_, for the whole gist of this section is that moral lessons are\nderivable from the poets. By form he means verse, making no mention of the\nfigures of speech. English rimes receive half of this space, and classical\nmeters the remainder. Webbe's fund of critical opinion is not opulent. His\ntreatise is based on traditional English opinion of the middle ages, with\nan increment of Horace, of whom he thinks so highly as to append to his\ntreatise an English translation of the \"Cannons or generall cautions of\npoetry,\" which Georgius Fabricius Chemnicensis (1560) had digested from\nthe _Ars Poetica_, and the _Epistles_.\n\nPerhaps the author of _The Arte of English Poesie_ (1589),\ngenerally supposed to be Puttenham, had in mind to be the\nsome-one-better-than-Webbe, whom that worthy tutor hoped to stir up to\nwrite a treatise for the benefit of poetry in England. At any rate,\nPuttenham is primarily concerned with teaching his contemporaries how to\nwrite verses. Like classical authors of text-books, he calls his treatise\nan \"Arte.\" Furthermore, as a courtier himself writing for courtiers,\nPuttenham does not lay down rules for the drama or the epic, but devotes\nmost of his attention to occasional verse: lyrics, elegies, epigrams, and\nsatires. His structure is significant. The first book, 58 pages in the\nArber reprint, deals with definition, purpose and subject matter of\npoetry. The poet, he says, is a maker who creates new forms out of his\ninner consciousness, and at the same time an imitator. Thus he reconciles\nAristotle and Horace.[232] Moreover, Puttenham calls attention to the\nimportance of the imagination in the composition of poetry as well as in\nwar, engineering and politics.[234] That the art of poetry is eminently\nteachable, Puttenham is entirely convinced, for he defines it as a skill\nappertaining to utterance, or as a certain order of rules prescribed by\nreason and gathered by experience.[233] It is verse, according to\nPuttenham, not imitation, which is the characteristic mark of poetry. This\nmakes poetry a nobler form, for verse is \"a manner of utterance more\neloquent and rethorical then the ordinarie prose, because it is decked and\nset out with all manner of fresh colours and figures, which maketh that it\nsooner invegleth the judgment of man.\" It is because poetry is thus so\nbeautiful, he says, that \"the Poets were also from the beginning the best\npersuaders, and their eloquence the first Rethoricke of the world.\"[235]\nRhetoric to Puttenham is beauty of speech: and because poetry is more\nbeautiful than prose, as being in this sense more rhetorical, it is better\nable to persuade. The remainder of the book explains the nature and\nhistory of the various poetical forms, as lyric, epic, tragedy, pastoral,\nand so on. The second book, _Of Proportion_, 70 pages, is a treatise on\nmetrics. The first half, like the section in Webbe, is devoted to English\nversing, dealing with stanza forms, meters, rime, and conceited figures\nsuch as anagrams and verses in the form of eggs. The second half is\ndevoted to classical meters. In his third book, _Of Ornament_, 165 pages,\nPuttenham gives an exhaustive and exhausting treatment of the figures of\nspeech. Of the 121 figures which Puttenham defines and illustrates,\nProfessor Van Hook has traced 107 to Quintilian's rhetoric[236]. Professor\nSchelling refuses to treat this third book in his _Poetic and Verse\nCriticism in the Reign of Elizabeth_, because, he says, it does not fall\nwithin the scope of his purpose, being made up of matters rhetorical, as\napplicable to prose as to verse[237]. That Puttenham did include it,\nhowever, is most significant evidence that both the author and his reading\npublic considered these adornments an essential part of poetry. As the\nladies of the court, be they ever so beautiful, should be ashamed to be\nseen without their courtly habiliments of silks, and tissues, and costly\nembroideries, even so poetry cannot be seen if any limb be left naked and\nbare and not clad in gay clothes and colors, says Puttenham.\n\n  This ornament is given to it by figures and figurative speaches, which\n  be the flowers, as it were, and colours that a Poet setteth upon his\n  language of arte, as the embroderer doth his stone and perle or\n  passements of gold upon the stuffe of a Princely garment[238].\n\nThe figures Puttenham divides according to his own scheme. First come the\nfigures _auricular_ peculiar to the poets, then the figures _sensable_\ncommon to the poets and the rhetoricians, and finally the figures\n_sententious_ appropriate to the orators alone. After he has explained the\nfirst two varieties, however, and enters on the third, Puttenham says:\n\n  Now if our presupposall be true, that the Poet is of all other the most\n  auncient Orator, as he that by good and pleasant perswasions first\n  reduced the wilde and beastly people into publicke societies and\n  civilitie of life, insinuating unto them, under fictions with sweete and\n  coloured speeches, many wholesome lessons and doctrines, then no doubt\n  there is nothing so fitte for him, as to be furnished with all the\n  figures that be _Rhetoricall_, and such as do most beautifie language\n  with eloquence and sententiousness. So as if we should intreate our\n  maker to play also the Orator, and whether it be to pleade, or to\n  praise, or to advise, that in all three cases he may utter and also\n  perswade both copiously and vehemently[239].\n\nPuttenham was writing in the same age and with the same tradition which\ndefined Rhetoric as the art of ornament in speech. The only difference\nbetween oratory and poetry lay in that the latter was composed in verse.\n\n\n\n5. Rhetorical Elements in Later English Classicism\n\n\nFrom Puttenham to Bacon no serious contributions were made to the general\ntheory of poetry. Critical attention was absorbed by controversies of\nCampion and Daniel over native and classical versification, and the\nflyting of Harvey and Nash. Harvey was a classical scholar and rhetorician\nwho knew that poetry and oratory were different things, and believed verse\nto be the mark of the first and prose of the latter[240]. He preferred the\nperiodic style of Isocrates and Ascham to the tricksy pages of\nEuphues[241]. Chapman, likewise, considered verse the mark of poetry, and\nprose of rhetoric[242].\n\nIn the _Advancement of Learning_ (1605) Bacon clears up some of the\nmisconceptions of the English renaissance by judicious borrowing from the\nItalian. He says:\n\n  Poesie is a part of Learning in measure of words for the most part\n  restrained, but in all other points extremely licensed, and doth truly\n  referre to the Imagination, which, beeing not tyed to the Lawes of\n  Matter, may at pleasure joyne that which Nature hath severed, & sever\n  that which Nature hath joyned, and so make all unlawful Matches &\n  divorses of things: It is taken in two senses in respect of Wordes or\n  Matter. In the first sense it is but a _Character_ of stile, and\n  belongeth to Arts of speeche. In the later, it is, as hath beene saide,\n  one of the principall Portions of learning, and is nothing else but\n  _Fained History_, which may be stiled as well in Prose as in Verse.[243]\n\nBacon's focus of attention on the substance of poetry is in keeping with\nhis attack on mere sophistication of style in rhetoric. Poetry as style\ndoes not interest him. Like Castelvetro and Sidney, he considers the\nvehicle of verse not essential to poetry, which, as a product of the\nimagination, he considers to be occupied with fiction. To Bacon, perhaps,\nthe imagination seems to be too much the organ of make-believe, imaging\nthings which never were on land or under the sea. Nevertheless his claim\nfor the imagination is fortunate in ruling out those theories of art which\nset up slavish fidelity to fact, under the name of imitation, as the\nessence of poetry. Bacon was not concerned with formulating a complete\ntheory of poetry, but his pithy _obiter dicta_ were influential in further\nestablishing the sounder criticism of the Italian classicists.\n\nAs Spingarn points out, Ben Jonson was first led to classicism in poetical\ntheory by the example of Sidney.[244] But during the intervening years\nthe scholars of Holland had supplanted those of Italy; and whereas Sidney\nderived his Aristotelianism from Scaliger and Minturno, Jonson derived his\neven more from Pontanus, Heinsius, and Lipsius and from the Latin\nrhetoricians, Cicero and Quintilian.\n\n  A Poet (says Jonson) is a Maker, or a fainer: His Art, an Art of\n  imitation or faining, expressing the life of man in fit measure,\n  numbers, and harmony.... Hence hee is called a _Poet_, not he which\n  writeth in measure only, but that fayneth and formeth a fable, and\n  writes things like the truth. For the Fable and Fiction is, as it were,\n  the form and Soule of any Poeticall worke or Poeme.[245]\n\nSo convinced was Jonson that the essence of poetry does not lie in verse\nbut in fiction that Drummond reports, \"he thought not Bartas a Poet, but a\nVerser, because he wrote not fiction.\"[246] Jonson was misled by the false\nanalogy of poetry and painting.\n\n  _Poetry_ and _Picture_ are Arts of a like nature, and both are busie\n  about imitation. It was excellently said of _Plutarch, Poetry_ was a\n  speaking Picture, and _Picture_ a mute _Poesie_. For they both invent,\n  fame, and devise many things.[247]\n\nThis structural and static conception of poetry is well exemplified by his\ncomparisons. Whereas Aristotle classified poetry with music and dance,\nJonson compares the epic or dramatic plot to a house. The epic is like a\npalace and so requires more space than a drama. The influence of Jonson\nwas beneficial, however, in that he did emphasize in poetry the element of\nstructure which the middle ages had largely neglected.[248] In his ideals\nof style Jonson is rhetorical. In the twelve sections of _Timber_ which he\ndevotes to rhetoric he incorporates a sound treatise on prose style,\nurging restraint and perspicuity as especial virtues. In his nine sections\non poetry he says nothing about style, except to quote Oicero to the\neffect that \"the _Poet_ is the nearest Borderer upon the Orator, and\nexpresseth all his vertues, though he be tyed more to numbers.\" It would\nseem that the section on style in oratory was meant to serve for poetry as\nwell. Jonson's own methods of comparison, as related to Drummond, would\nbear this out: \"That he wrote all his (verses) first in prose.\"[249] From\nthe same authority one may learn that \"He recommended to my reading\nQuintilian, who, he said, would tell me the faults of my Verses as if he\nlived with me,\" and \"That Quintilian's 6, 7, 8, bookes were not only to be\nread, but altogether digested,\"[250] Though Jonson makes no more\ndistinction than Petrarch, between Horace, Cicero, or Quintilian as\nauthorities on poetical style,[251] his rhetorical cast does not imply the\nstyle advocated by Webbe and Puttenham. This was the exuberant style of\nmediaeval rhetoric, whereas by temperament and scholarly training Jonson\nthrew his influence in favor of the classical rhetorical style of the best\nperiod.\n\nThe influence of Bacon in favor of the sound rhetoric of Cicero and\nQuintilian, seconded by that of Jonson, finally did away with the\nmediaeval ideal of rhetoric as being one with aureate language and\nembroidered style. The stylistic exuberance of the Elizabethans gave place\nto a more restrained and polished phrase in the reign of Charles. Bolton,\nfor instance, in his _Hypercritica_ (c. 1618) warns the historians against\nthe style of the _Arcadia_. \"Solidity and Fluency,\" he says, \"better\nbecomes the historian, then Singularity of Oratorical or Poetical\nNotions.\"[252] Henry Reynolds, in his _Mythomystes_ (c. 1633), although he\ngoes wool-gathering with mystical interpretations of poetry, yet evinces\nthe same reaction against the ornate style in terming the flowers of\nrhetoric and versification as mere accidents of poetry.[253] In his\n_Anacrisis_ (1634) the Earl of Stirling likewise urges that \"language is\nbut the Apparel of Poesy.\"[254] The \"but\" marks the difference between the\nideals of two ages. Fiction remains for him the essence of poetry, for\nfiction in prose is poetry. But he will not go the whole way with Jonson\nand deny the name of poet to one whose material is not fictitious.[255]\n\nUnfortunately, for English criticism, Milton wrote very little on the\ntheory of poetry. His casual remarks, however, show such enlightened\nscholarship and keen insight that what little he did write makes up in\nimportance what it lacks in bulk. In the Treatise _Of Education_ (1644) he\nrefers to the sublime art of poetry \"which in _Aristotle's poetics_, in\n_Horace_, and the _Italian_ commentaries of _Castelvetro, Tasso, Mazzoni_,\nand others, teaches what the laws are of a true _Epic_ poem, what of a\n_Dramatic_, what of a _Lyric_, what decorum is, which is the grand master\npeece to observe.\"[256] His rhetoric, also, he knew at first hand from the\nbest classical sources. He gives as his authorities Plato, Aristotle,\nPhalereus,[257] Cicero, Hermogenes, Longinus.[258] This is the first time\nthat an English critic mentions the treatise _On the Sublime_ in\nconnection with poetry. It can thus hardly be a coincidence that Milton,\nwhile citing the only surviving literary critic of classical antiquity who\ngave proper emphasis to the importance of passion in poetry,[259] should\nhimself be the first English critical writer to urge for passion the same\nimportance. This he does in his famous differentiation of rhetoric and\npoetic. In the educational scheme, he says, after mathematics should be\nstudied logic and rhetoric \"To which Poetry would be made subsequent or\nindeed rather precedent, as being lesse suttle and fine, but more simple,\nsensuous, and passionate.\"[260] Milton has sometimes been thought to be\nhere defining poetry, but he is only distinguishing it from rhetoric. A\ndefinition of poetry he never attempted. Meter he deemed essential to\npoetry,[261] but rime he disliked. Thus, as far as he goes, Milton\nrepresents the best in English renaissance criticism. He knew at first\nhand the best classical treatises on poetic and on rhetoric; and he\nrecognized the distinctions which the ancients had made between them.\n\nWith the English literary criticism in the second half of the Seventeenth\nCentury, when the influence of French classicism was in the ascendant,\nthis study is not concerned. In the period which has just been surveyed\nthree points are noteworthy: the character of the English critics, the\nslowness with which the classical theories penetrated English thought, and\nthe modifications which they underwent in the process. Gregory Smith calls\nattention to the influence of Sidney and Daniel in establishing \"the claim\nof English criticism as an instrument of power outside the craft of\nrhetoricians and scholars.\"[262] Of the English critical writers Ascham\nis the foremost of the scholarly type; Harvey is the only other example.\nThomas Wilson, although he wrote a rhetoric, wrote a better one in many\nways because he was not a professional rhetorician, but a man of affairs.\nGascoigne, Lodge, Spenser, were poets who incidentally wrote on the\ntechnic of their art or in defence of its value. Sidney, the poet,\ncourtier, and soldier, wrote not from the musty alcoves of libraries.\nWebbe, it is true, was a pedant, but certainly not a scholar. Puttenham\nwas a bad poet, a well-read man, and a courtier. Jonson's scholarship was\nthorough, but sweetened and ventilated by his activities as poet and\ndramatist. Bacon was a scholar, but even more a philosopher and a\nstatesman. Milton, our most scholarly poet, during most of his life could\nnot keep his mind and pen from church and national politics. Indeed,\nduring the entire English renaissance there was no professional critic.\nLiterary criticism was not a field to be tilled, but a wood to be explored\nby busy men who could find time for the exploit.\n\nThis amateur character of English critics accounts in a measure for the\nslowness with which classical and Italian renaissance critical theories\nfiltered into England; for a statesman or a soldier is less likely to be\nup-to-date on theories of poetry than is a professional critic whose\nbusiness it is to know what is written on his specialty. Another powerful\ninfluence in the same direction was the characteristic English\nconservatism which preferred the traditional paths of thought to Italian\ninnovations.\n\nThis same common-sense conservatism accounts also for the modifications of\nItalian renaissance critical theories before they were incorporated into\nthe fund of English criticism. Classical meters, slavish imitation of the\nancients, close adherence to the rules of unity and decorum never made\nmuch headway in the English renaissance. Such contaminations of poetic by\nrhetoric as are clearest seem to arise not from the new Italian influence,\nbut from the mediaeval tradition.\n\nTo sum up, classical critics had recognized two categories of literature:\na fine art, poetic; and a practical art, rhetoric. Poetic they thought\ncharacterized by narrative or dramatic structure or movement, and by\nvividness of realization, and by passion. Rhetoric was characterized by a\nlogical structure determined by the necessity of persuading an audience.\nAlthough most classical critics accepted prose as characteristic of\nrhetoric, and verse of poetry, Aristotle pointed out that the distinction\nwas far more fundamental. As these two kinds of literature had a common\nground in diction, there was a tendency from very early times for them to\nmerge. In the artistic degeneracy of late Latin literature both rhetoric\nand poetic paid less attention to structure and other elements which\ndistinguished them, and more attention to style, which they had in common.\nMoreover, under the influence of sophistical rhetoric, preoccupied with\nstyle, poetic and rhetoric practiced the same rhetorical artifices. As a\nresult Virgil might be either an orator or a poet. This was the rhetoric\nwhich the middle ages inherited. To them rhetoric was synonymous with\nstylistic beauty. Poetry was a compound of _doctrina_ and _eloquentia_, in\nother words of theology and style, in verse. In England this mediaeval\ntradition persisted into the seventeenth century, as the school rhetorics\nand the treatises on poetry show. The English renaissance poetic never\nfreed itself from this influence of mediaeval rhetoric until the middle of\nthe seventeenth century. With the recovery of classical literature and\nliterary criticism, the new theories were interpreted in the light of the\nold ideas.\n\nOn its creative side the renaissance sought to produce in the vernacular a\nliterature comparable to that of Greece or Rome. Thus literary criticism\nwas prescriptive, and the typical treatises were text-books. Rhetoric,\nwhich had long been taught, very naturally furnished the methods, the\nteachers, and in many cases the subject matter for this instruction in\npoetry. As has been shown in the preceding section of this study, the\nrenaissance theory of poetry was rhetorical in its obsession with style,\nespecially the figures of speech, in its abiding faith in the efficacy of\nrules; and in its belief that the poet, no less than the orator, is\noccupied with persuasion. This latter rhetorical view that the poet's\noffice is to persuade will be studied more fully in the following section\non \"The Purpose of Poetry.\" The traditional view is that by persuading the\nreader to adhere to the good and shun the evil the poet achieves the\nproper end of poetry--moral improvement.\n\n\n\n\n\nPart Two\n\nThe Purpose of Poetry\n\n\n\n\nChapter I\n\nThe Classical Conception of the Purpose of Poetry\n\n\n\n1. General\n\n\nTo say that poetry has a moral effect on the reader is not the same as to\nsay that moral improvement is the purpose of poetry. The following section\nof this historical study will be devoted to tracing the substitution of\nthe second assertion for the first.\n\nAs has been shown,[263] the classical critics were in substantial\nagreement with Aristotle in defining rhetoric as the faculty of\ndiscovering all possible means to persuasion. Although the consensus of\nclassical opinion agreed that poetry does have a moral effect on the\nreader, it never defined poetry as an art of discovering all means to\nmoral improvement. As will be shown, such a definition of poetry was not\nformulated previous to the renaissance. Then by combining Aristotle's\ndefinition of tragedy from the _Poetics_[264] with his definition of\nrhetoric, Lombardus defined poetic as\n\n  a faculty of finding out whatsoever is accommodated to the imitation of\n  actions, passions, customs, in rhythmical language, for the purpose of\n  correcting the vices of men and causing them to live good and happy\n  lives.[265]\n\nThe same definition, derived as Spingarn has shown from the same sources,\nwas formulated by Varchi.[266]\n\n  Poetic is a faculty which shows in what modes one may imitate certain\n  actions, passions, and customs, with rhythm, words, and harmony,\n  together or separately, for the purpose of removing the vices of men and\n  inciting them to virtue, in order that they may attain their true\n  happiness and beatitude.[267]\n\nI propose, after reviewing the classical conception of poetry as an\neducational agent, to trace briefly the rise of allegorical interpretation\nof poetry in post-classical times and in the middle ages; to exemplify the\ntendency of renaissance criticism to borrow the terminology of classical\nrhetoric when it asserted that the purpose of poetry is moral improvement;\nand finally, to study in the literary criticism of the English renaissance\nthose moral theories of poetry which derive from the middle ages, from the\nclassical rhetorics, and from the criticism of the Italian renaissance.\n\n\n\n2. Moral Improvement through Precept and Example\n\n\nThe ancients believed that great poetry produces moral improvement in the\nreader. Before the judgment seat of Dionysos, as is recorded in _The\nFrogs_ of Aristophanes, Aeschylus and Euripides engage in an interesting\nand instructive dispute. \"Come,\" says Aeschylus, \"tell me what are the\npoints for which we praise a noble poet.\" Euripides replies, \"For his\nready wit and his wise counsels and because he trains the townsfolk to be\nbetter citizens and worthier men.\"[268] Aeschylus then goes on to show\nthat he has merited well of his countrymen because he has preached the\nmilitary virtues and his dramas have been full of Ares. Euripides he\naccuses of softening the moral fibre of the Athenians by introducing on\nthe stage immoral plots and love-sick women. Such drama Aeschylus asserts\nto be immoral in its effect. \"For boys a school teacher is provided; but\nwe, the poets, are teachers of men.\"[269]\n\nThis represents the well-nigh universal Greek opinion. Poetry inspires,\nteaches, makes better men. A further example of this idea is furnished by\nTimocles. \"Our spirit,\" says one of the characters in the drama,\n\"forgetting its own sorrows in sympathizing with the misfortunes of\nothers, receives at the theatre instruction and pleasure at one\ntime.\"[270]\n\nThe real opinions of Plato are here difficult to discover. In the\n_Protagoras_, however, he puts into the mouth of that famous sophist an\nexposition of the conventional Greek opinion.\n\n  When a boy has learned his letters and is beginning to understand what\n  is written, as before he understood only what was spoken, they put into\n  his hands the works of great poets, which he reads sitting on a bench at\n  school; in these are contained many admonitions, and many tales, and\n  praises, and encomia of ancient famous men, which he is required to\n  learn by heart, in order that he may imitate them and desire to become\n  like them.[271]\n\nIt is in the _Republic_, of course, that Plato enunciates his capital\nobjections to poetry. The first objection is that poetry as an imitative\nart is three removes from truth. The divine powers, for instance, create\nthe idea of a table--the only true table. A carpenter makes a particular\ntable which is not the real, but only an appearance. A graphic artist\nmaking a picture of this appearance is only an imitator of appearances.\n\"And the tragic poet is an imitator and therefore thrice removed from the\nking and from the truth.\"[272] The second objection which Plato raises\nagainst poetry is that poetry is addressed to the passional element in\nman. The man of noble spirit and philosophy will not lament his\nmisfortunes, especially in public, while the lower orders of intellect are\nlikely to express all their feelings with greater freedom, and thus\nfurnish the poet with easier subjects for imitation. Consequently poetry\nhas the power of harming the good, for a good man will be in raptures at\nthe excellences of the poet who stirs his feelings most by representing a\nhero in an emotional condition. As a result, when he himself suffers\nsorrow or is moved by his own passions, it becomes more difficult for him\nto repress his feelings.[273] Plato thus examines the popular contention\nthat the study of poetry educates the moral character of a man, and still\nmaintaining that it should be a moral force for good, demonstrates to his\nown satisfaction that it fails to have the supposed beneficial effect\nbecause it is three removes from truth, and because it encourages\nunrestrained emotionalism in conduct. Plato's moral standard of poetry is\neven better illustrated, perhaps, by the kind of poetry which he does not\nban from his ideal commonwealth. \"We must remain firm in our conviction,\"\nhe says, \"that hymns to the gods and praises of famous men are the only\npoetry which ought to be admitted into our state.\" As his utmost\nconcession to poetry, he will admit her if her defenders can prove \"not\nonly that she is pleasant, but also useful to states and to human\nlife.\"[274] According to a later view, to be sure, Plato has been thought\nto justify pleasure of a most refined and exalted variety as an end of\nart. \"The view which identifies the pleasant and the just and the good and\nthe noble has an excellent moral and religious tendency.\"[275] In view,\nhowever, of other pronouncements, such an endeavor to father upon him the\nhedonistic theory of the purpose of art seems strained and ineffective.\n\nIt was to justify poetry against the attacks of Plato that Aristotle\nadvanced a hedonistic view of poetry and propounded his theory of\nkatharsis. Nowhere in the _Poetics_ does Aristotle explicitly state that\nthe function of poetry is to give pleasure. Indirect evidence, however, is\nplentiful. For instance, Aristotle justifies poetry as an imitative art\nbecause children learn by imitation and the pleasure in imitation is\nuniversal.[276] Furthermore, plot in tragedy is more important than\ncharacter; for in painting, a confused mass of colors gives less pleasure\nthan a chalk drawing of a portrait.[277] Beauty in any art depends in a\nmeasure on magnitude; therefore a play must not be too short.[278] Most of\nthe tragic poets of Greece derived their plots from a limited number of\nwell known stories. But Aristotle justifies Agathon for departing from\nthis custom and making both his plot and characters fictitious, for the\nplays of Agathon give none the less pleasure.[279] But not all pleasure,\nhe says, is appropriate to tragedy. In comedy we are pleased to see\nenemies walk off the stage as friends, but in tragedy the \"pleasure which\nthe poet should afford is that which comes from pity and fear through\nimitation.\"[280] Marvels, too, and wonders in poetry he justifies because\n\"the wonderful is pleasing; as may be inferred from the fact that everyone\ntells a story with additions of his own, knowing that his hearers like it.\nIt is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies\nskilfully.\"[281] And at the very end of the _Poetics_, where he is\nendeavoring to prove that tragedy is a higher art than epic, he does so by\nshowing that drama has all the epic elements, and in addition music and\nspectacle, which produce the most vivid of pleasures. Moreover the drama\nis more compact; \"for the concentrated effect is more pleasurable than one\nwhich is diluted.\"[282] Thus, in the _Poetics_, Aristotle takes a\nnon-moral attitude toward literature, although in the _Politics_[283] he\ngrants that poetry and music are eminently serviceable in conveying moral\ninstruction to young people. His mature attitude is well illustrated in\ncontrast with that of Aristophanes. Aristophanes criticises Euripides\nseverely as a perverter of Athenian morality. Aristotle mentions Euripides\nabout twenty times in the _Poetics_, and frequently criticises him\nadversely, not, however, for his evil moral influence, but because he uses\nhis choruses badly, and is faulty in character-drawing.\n\nIn answer to Plato's second objection to poetry, that it encourages\nunrestrained emotionalism, Aristotle propounded his theory of katharsis.\n\"Tragedy,\" he says, \"is an imitation of an action ... through pity and\nfear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions.\"[284] That\nAristotle had in mind an analogy with medicine is better understood from a\npassage in the _Politics_ which describes the beneficial effect of music\non patients suffering from religious ecstasy. The stimulating music\nfurnishes the patient with an outlet for the expression of his religious\nfervor. Afterwards, says Aristotle, the patients \"fall back into their\nnormal state, as if they had undergone a medical or purgative\ntreatment.\"[285] Thus the theory of katharsis seems to have the same basis\nas the modern psychological theory which encourages the expression of\nemotions in their milder form lest, if inhibited, they gather added power\nand finally burst disastrously through all restraints. Consequently,\nalthough hedonist theorists have been anxious to establish katharsis on a\npurely aesthetic foundation, it seems that the theory has inescapable\nmoral implications. To be sure, Aristotle in the same section of the\n_Politics_ says that the emotional result of katharsis is \"harmless joy,\"\nand in the _Poetics_ he says that pity and fear produce the appropriate\npleasure of tragedy. Nevertheless Aristotle is answering Plato's\nobjections to unrestrained emotionalism, and by his theory of katharsis\nendeavors to show not only that the emotional excitation of tragedy is\nharmless to the spectator, but that it is actually good for him.\n\nBut if the spectator is to derive these emotional excitations from\ntragedy, his aesthetic experience cannot be passive. Aristotle recommends\nas the ideal tragic hero a man not preeminently good nor unusually\ndepraved, but a man between these extremes; \"for pity is aroused by\nunmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of a man like\nourselves.\"[286] Evidently, then, through his imagination the spectator\nmust in a lively fashion participate in the action of the drama. Not only\nis he present at the action, even when he reads the drama, but he\nidentifies himself with the hero and vicariously experiences his emotions.\n\nBut neither the hedonism of Aristotle, nor his defense of poetry on moral\ngrounds through his theory of katharsis, is usual in Greek criticism.\nIsocrates and Xenophon adhere to the usual opinion. Isocrates believes\nthat Homer was prized by the earlier Greeks because his poems instilled a\nhatred of the barbarians, and kindled in the hearts of the readers a\ndesire to emulate the heroes who fought against Troy.[287] One might think\nthat the hatred of the barbarians was not the highest degree of morality,\nbut perhaps for the political integrity of Greece it was. That Homer\nespecially was supposed to have a moral influence is illustrated also by\nXenophon. Niceratus, in the _Symposium_, is telling the diners of what\nknowledge he is most proud. \"My father,\" he says, \"in his pains to make me\na good man, compelled me to learn the whole of Homer's poems.\"[288]\n\nStrabo in a famous passage records an exceptional hedonism in Greek\nthought and goes on to expound the conventional belief.\n\n  Eratosthenes says that the poet directs his whole attention to the\n  amusement of the mind, and not at all to its instruction. In opposition\n  to this idea, the ancients define poesy as a primitive philosophy,\n  guiding our life from infancy, and pleasantly regulating our morals, our\n  tastes, and our actions. The Stoics of our day affirm that the only wise\n  man is the poet. On this account the earliest lessons which the citizens\n  of Greece convey to their children are from the poets; certainly not for\n  the purpose of amusing their minds, but for their instruction.[289]\n\nThis same moral and educational view of poetry so permeates Plutarch's\nessay _On the Study of Poetry_ that it is difficult to quote from him\nwithout reproducing the whole treatise. The young man who is being taught\npoetry, Plutarch believes, should be made \"to indulge in pleasure merely\nas a relish, and to seek for the useful and the wholesome,\"[290] in his\nreading. Some believe that, because some of the pleasures of poetry are\npernicious, young men should not be allowed to read. This, Plutarch\nbelieves, would be every whit as foolish as to cut down the vineyards\nbecause some people are addicted to drunkenness. Young men should be\ntaught to use poetry intelligently. \"Poetry is not to be scrupulously\navoided by those who intend to be philosophers, but they are to make\npoetry a fitting school for philosophers, by forming the habit of seeking\nand gaining the profitable in the pleasant.\"[291] The profit of poetry he\nbelieves to come from two sources: maxims and examples. He praises very\nhighly such _sententiae_ as \"Virtue keeps its luster untarnished,\" and\n\"know thyself.\"[292] Indeed, the moral value of such precepts weighed so\nheavily with Plutarch that he advocated emending the poets to bring them\nin more strict accord with the ethics of the Stoic philosophy. For\ninstance:\n\n  Thus, why not change such a passage as this, \"That man is to be envied\n  who so aims as to hit his wish,\" to read, \"who so aims as to hit his\n  advantage\"? for to get and have things wrongly desired merits pity, not\n  envy.[293]\n\nBut greater than the moral value of maxims in the poets is that of\nexample. \"Philosophers employ examples from history for our correction\nand instruction, and the poets differ from them only by inventing and\npresenting fictitious narratives.\"[294] For instance, according to\nPlutarch, Homer introduces the story of Hera's vain endeavor to gain her\nends from Zeus by means of wine and the girdle of Aphrodite to show that\nsuch conduct is not only immoral, but useless. Again we may conclude that\nfrequenting women in the day time is a shame and a reproach because the\nonly man who does such a thing in the _Iliad_ is that lascivious and\nadulterous fellow Paris.[295] It is interesting that this essay of\nPlutarch's, which gives probably the most complete classical exposition of\nthe moral use of poetry, should have been well known in the renaissance\nand translated into English by Philemon Holland in 1603.\n\nThe Romans had very much the same feeling about the moral value in poetry\nas had the Greeks. The only fundamental difference lay in that the Roman\nwas less philosophical and more practical. This practical element in Roman\ncriticism is well illustrated by Horace, whose statements have sometimes\nbeen made to support opinions which Horace did not hold. Let it be noted,\nfor one thing, that Horace is talking not about the purpose of poetry, but\nabout the purpose of the poet.\n\n  Poets desire either to profit or to delight, or to tell things which are\n  at once pleasant and profitable.\n\nHis reason for favoring the third view is important.\n\n  Old men reject poems which are void of instruction; the knights neglect\n  austere poems: he who mixes the useful with the sweet wins the approval\n  of all by delighting and at the same time admonishing the reader. This\n  book makes money for the book-sellers, and passes over the sea, and\n  prolongs the reputation of the well-known author.[296]\n\nBut aside from the desirability of mingling pleasure with profit in his\npoetry in order to gain the greatest popularity, the poet does have an\neducational value in the training of youths by presenting in an attractive\nmanner examples of noble conduct which the young people may desire to\nemulate.\n\n  His lessons form the child's young lips, and wean\n  The boyish ear from words and tales unclean;\n  As years roll on, he moulds the ripening mind,\n  And makes it just and generous, sweet and kind;\n  He tells of worthy precedents, displays\n  The example of the past to after days,\n  Consoles affliction, and disease allays.[297]\n\nMoreover the consensus of conventional opinion in the Roman world was that\nthe study of the poets did succeed in moulding the moral character of the\nyouth. Apuleius, writing of a certain virtuous young man, the hero of one\nof the episodes of the _Metamorphoses_, makes the following incidental\nremark: \"The master of the house had a young son well instructed in good\nliterature, and consequently remarkable for his piety and modesty.\"[298]\n\nAlthough Lucretius may not have been assured of the moral value, he was\nso convinced of the seductive powers of poetry that he deliberately\nutilized them to make palatable the forbidding thoughts of his essay _On\nthe Nature of Things_. The long passage is worth quoting entire because\nhis comparison is borrowed so frequently by renaissance critics to\nillustrate the poetic doctrine of pleasurable profit. Lucretius says:\n\n  But as physicians, when they attempt to give bitter wormwood to\n  children, first tinge the rim round the cup with the sweet and yellow\n  liquid of honey, that the age of childhood, as yet unsuspicious, may\n  find its lips deluded, and may in the meantime drink the bitter juice of\n  the wormwood, and though deceived, may not be injured, but rather, being\n  recruited by such a process, may acquire strength; so now I, since this\n  argument seems generally too severe and forbidding to those by whom it\n  has not been handled, and since the multitude shrink back from it, was\n  desirous to set forth my chain of reasoning to thee, O Memmius, in\n  sweetly-speaking Pierian verse, and, as it were, tinge it with the honey\n  of the Muses.[299]\n\nFrom this survey of classical opinion we may conclude that the public\nlooked for two things in poetry: pleasure and profit. Eratosthenes took an\nextreme view in seeking pleasure alone. Both Aristotle and Horace\nemphasized the pleasure to be derived from poetry, although neither denied\nthat poetry is beneficial. Horace takes almost a cynical view in\nsuggesting that, as some readers seek pleasure in poetry and others\nimprovement, a poet will be more popular and make more money for the\nbook-sellers if he mingles both elements. The extreme view of the moral\nvalue of poetry was taken by the educators of youth. This view is well\nexemplified in the quotations from Aristophanes, Xenophon, Strabo, and\nespecially Plutarch. But even Plutarch, who goes so far as to suggest\nemending the poets to make their effect more moral, does not suggest that\nthe purpose of poetry is to afford moral instruction. He distinguishes;\nsome poetry is distinctly immoral and should be enjoyed only for its art.\nOther poetry is moral in its effect, and consequently should be utilized\nextensively by the school-master in educating young men. For such purposes\nno poetry was thought to be better than Homer, whose epics furnish so many\nexamples of heroic conduct.\n\n\n\n3. Moral Improvement through Allegory\n\n\nWhen the Roman arms conquered a new city, the story runs, the commander of\nthe forces took over in the name of the Emperor the gods; but before the\ngates of Jerusalem this ceremony proved ineffective. The fathers of the\nChristian church, Tatian, Hermas, Theophilus, and Tertullian, believing\nthat all the truth was contained in Christianity, utterly condemned the\nphilosophy and religion of the Greeks and consequently the poetry which,\naccording to Greek popular belief, was the inspired vehicle for its\npresentation. Furthermore, the gods of the Greeks were immoral and\nfurnished their worshippers with bad examples of conduct. Long before\nTertullian the moral philosophers of antiquity had already attacked the\npoetry of Greece and Rome on the ground of immorality. Plato in his day\ncalled the war between philosophy and poetry \"age-long.\" The ancient\nGreeks had considered Homer and Hesiod as the inspired recorders of the\nfacts of religion. They had looked to the poets for moral dogma and\nexample. Of necessity the philosophers condemned the poets for the\nimmorality of their thievish, lying, and adulterous pantheon.\n\nWhen the Christian fathers were confronted with the Syriac gospel of the\nyouth of Jesus, they called a council to declare it apochryphal. Lest\nsome devout reader should take literally the love poetry of the Canticles,\nthe fathers allegorized it as the love of Christ for his Church.\nUnfortunately for Greek religion the philosophers did not determine which\nepisodes in the histories of the gods were valid as doctrine and which\nwere fictitious. They did, however, anticipate the fathers in their\nallegorical interpretations. Socrates in the _Phaedrus_ laughs at\nallegory;[300] and Plutarch believes that the poets intended to teach a\nmoral idea by example instead of expressing a hidden meaning by allegory.\nFor him allegory involved distortion and perversion. \"For some men\n_distort_ these stories and _pervert_ them into allegories or what the men\nof old times called hidden meanings \u1f51\u03c0\u03cc\u03bd\u03bf\u03b9\u03b1\u03b9.\"[301] But allegory none the\nless flourished. Theognis of Rhegium, Anaxagoras, and Stesimbrotus of\nThasos, were assiduous and startling in their interpretations.[302] The\nGreek allegorical interpretations were of two kinds: one an explanation\nof the secrets of nature, the other the teaching of morality.[303]\nAlthough the practice was very old, the word \"allegory\" is not recorded\nbefore Cicero, who says:\n\n  When the imagery of the metaphor is sustained for a long time, the\n  nature of the style assuredly becomes changed. Consequently the Greeks\n  call this sort of thing allegory.... But he is nearer the truth who\n  calls all of these metaphors.[304]\n\nFrom Cicero on, allegory has a long history as a rhetorical figure--a\ntrope.[305] St. Augustine recommends that students of the scriptures study\nthe rhetorical figures so that they may be able to interpret the tropes in\nthe Bible, such as allegory.[306]\n\nThe result will always be the same whenever the poets are considered\ntheologians and moral teachers. They will be condemned or allegorized.\nFortunate are the poets when they are not believed. \"How much better,\"\nexclaims St. Augustine, \"are these fables of the poets\" than the false\nreligious notions of the Manichees. \"But Medea flying, although I chanted\nsometimes, yet I maintained not the truth of; and though I heard it sung,\nI believed it not: but these phantasies I thoroughly believed.\"[307] For\nit is only when one believes devoutly that Zeus procured access to Danae\nin a shower of gold, that his action gives a divine sanction to such\ntraffic in beauty on the agora or in the forum.[308] It is only when the\npoets make no pretense of recounting facts that they can escape the\nclutches of the philosophers. It was to save the poets from such attacks\nthat Aristotle asserts that poetry deals with the universal, not with the\nparticular.[309] Or, as Spingarn explains his meaning, \"Poetry has little\nregard for the actuality of specific event, but aims at the reality of an\neternal probability.\"[310]\n\n\n\n4. The Influence of Rhetoric\n\n\nThus the general consensus of classical opinion agreed that poetry has\ninescapable moral effects on those who listen or read. The moralists,\nespecially the Stoics, when confronted with traditional poetry whose\nliteral significance was immoral, leaned toward allegorical\ninterpretations which brought out a kernel of truth. The greater number,\nhowever, of Greeks and Romans in the classical period believed that poetry\nexerted the most potent influence for good when it enunciated crisp moral\nmaxims and afforded examples of heroic conduct which young people could be\ninduced to follow.\n\nIn all these respects the classical view of poetic has much in common with\nclassical rhetoric. Allegory has been shown to have had a long history as\nan extended metaphor--a rhetorical figure. Maxims are considered fully by\nAristotle as aids to persuasion in rhetoric.[311] The exemplum is\nobviously a stock means of rhetoric.\n\n\"Examples,\" says Aristotle, \"are of two kinds, one consisting in the\nallegation of historical facts, and the other in the invention of facts\nfor oneself. Invention comprises illustration on the one hand and ...\nfables on the other.\" Then he tells how Aesop defended a demagogue by the\nfable of the fox caught in the cleft of a rock. The fox was infested with\ndog-ticks which sucked his blood. A benevolent hedge-hog offered to remove\nthe ticks, but the fox declined the kind offer on the ground that his\nticks were already full of blood and had ceased to annoy him much, whereas\nif they were removed, a new colony of ticks would establish themselves and\nthus entirely drain him of blood. \"Yes, and in your case, men of Samos,\"\nsaid Aesop, \"my client will not do much further mischief--he has already\nmade his fortune--but, if you put him to death, there will come others who\nare poor and who will consume all the revenues of the state by their\nembezzlements.\"[312] \"Fables,\" continues the shrewd master of those who\nknow, \"have this advantage that, while historical parallels are hard to\nfind, it is comparatively easy to find fables.\" Quintilian, like\nAristotle, believes in the persuasive efficacy of examples. But Quintilian\nhas less faith in the probative value of fictitious examples than he has\nin those drawn from authentic history. He thinks that fables are most\neffective with a rustic and ingenuous audience, which \"captivated by their\npleasure in the story, give assent to that which pleases them.\"[313] Thus\nMenenius Agrippa reconciled the people to the senators by telling them the\nfable of the revolt of the members against the belly. And Thomas Wilson,\nin his _Arte of Rhetorique_, repeats the story, in his section on\nexamples, and ascribes to Themistocles the fox story which Aristotle tells\nof Aesop.[314]\n\nBut Aristotle, Quintilian, and Wilson are talking about rhetoric. Very\njustly they believe that if one wants to persuade an audience to a course\nof action, he must interest his audience sufficiently to hold their\nattention. As Wilson sagely remarks, \"For except men finde delite, they\nwill not long abide: delite them and winne them.\"[315] Cicero expressed in\nmemorable phrase the relationship between proof and pleasure as\ninstruments to persuasion and added a third element. He classified the\naims of an orator as \"to teach, to please, to move\" (_docere, delectare,\nmovere_). The teaching is the appeal to the intellect of the hearer by\nmeans of proof. The pleasure is afforded by a euphonious style, and by\nfables and stories. The audience is moved to action by the appeal to their\nfeelings.[316]\n\nNot until the renaissance did writers on the theory of poetry carry over\nCicero's threefold aim of the orator and make it apply to the poet.[317]\nBut already in post-classical times rhetoric had, as Seneca the father\nclearly shows, vitiated the Latin poetry of the Silver Age. Under the\nEmpire the declamation schools in Rome had a profound influence on\nliterature.[318] It could not be otherwise in a society where the school\nof rhetoric was the only temple of higher education, for which the\ngrammaticus, or elementary professor of literature, was constrained to\nprepare his students. Rhetoric was the organon of Roman education, and\ndeclamation was the aim of rhetoric. It was such an educational system\nwhich prepared Ovid and Lucan for their careers as poets and men of\nletters. Seneca the father records the brilliant declamations of Ovid as a\nschoolboy, quoting at some length his plea for a wife who threw herself\nover a cliff on hearing of the death of her husband, and calling attention\nto several passages in Ovid's poems where the poet has borrowed the clever\nsayings of his professors in the school of rhetoric.[319] Ovid makes his\ncharacters prove that they are moved by passion instead of being\npassionate in word and deed. He vitiates his emotions with his wit. This\nis characteristic of almost all the poets who attended the declamation\nschools. They talk about situations and characters instead of realizing\nthem. They write as if they were speaking to an audience. One can almost\nsee the gestures, the wait for applause after the enunciation of a noble\nplatitude. Not only historically, but also in the worst modern sense this\nis rhetoric. It is not unreasonable to conclude that such a preoccupation\nwith rhetoric, such a sustained search for all possible means of\npersuasion, should have strengthened rather than weakened the utilitarian\ntheory of poetry. The school-master endeavored to mould the characters of\nhis students by examples from heroic poetry; the teacher of rhetoric, in\nturn, taught them that to persuade an audience they must prove, please,\nand move, and that ficticious examples were about as persuasive as\nhistorical parallels and much easier to find. When the student left school\nhe continued to seek means of persuasion in canvassing votes, pleading in\nthe courts, or deliberating in the senate. If he became a poet, he did not\nforget the lessons of his youth; or if he became a teacher of literature\nor a professor of rhetoric, he perpetuated the tradition.\n\n\n\n\nChapter II\n\nMediaeval Ideas of the Purpose of Poetry\n\n\n\nWith the breaking up of the Empire the stream of classical culture was\nrestricted to a narrow channel--the Church. Opposed as it was to pagan\nmorals and theology, the church could honestly retain classical literature\nonly if it were allegorized. This explains the allegorical nature of\nmediaeval poetry and of poetical theory.\n\nFrom the beginning the learning of the Church was of pagan origin. St.\nAugustine was a professor of rhetoric and the author of a treatise on\naesthetics before he wrote the _City of God_, and his _Confessions_. In\nfact, he never quite got over being a professor of rhetoric. Clement of\nAlexandria was a product of the same rhetoric schools and an excellent\nteacher of his subject before he recognized the divine origin of\nChristianity. St. Basil was a college friend of Gregory Nazianzen and of\nJulian, later emperor and apostate, when the three studied rhetoric at\nAthens. Indeed, the most cunningly cruel decree which Julian later\npromulgated against the Christians forbade them the use of the ancient\npagan literature of Greece and Rome. This decree Basil bitterly resented.\n\"I forgo all the rest,\" he says, \"riches, birth, honor, authority, and all\nthe goods here below of which the charm vanishes like a dream; but I cling\nto oratory nor do I regret the toil, nor the journeys by land and sea,\nwhich I have undertaken to master it.\"[320]\n\nBut within the Church the lovers of Greek literature did not have it all\ntheir own way. Tatian, Hermas, Theophilus, and Tertullian savagely\nattacked profane poetry, and in defending it Basil, Athenagoras, Clement,\nand Origen were forced not unwillingly to rely more and more on the\ntraditional moralistic theory of poetry which was so familiar to them. St.\nChrysostom records that in the fourth century Homer was still taught as a\nguide to morals.[321]\n\n\n\n1. Allegorical Interpretations in the Middle Ages\n\n\nAllegorical interpretation was the main weapon of the apologists for\npoetry. The basis, indeed, of the Gnostic heresies of the second and third\ncenturies was an allegorical interpretation of the Greek poets and\nphilosophers and of the Scriptures. This soon degenerated into an\nextravagant system of speculative mysticism. Clement of Alexandria and\nOrigen rejected the extravagances, but sought to retain the mysticism of\nthe Gnostics. They reconciled Greek literature and the Scriptures by\nallegorizing both, much as today Darwin and Genesis are reconciled by\nallegorizing Genesis.[322] Thus in the declining years of the Roman Empire\nthe rhetoricians had become ecclesiastics, and the Church had adopted\npagan literature with allegorical interpretation.\n\nThis tradition dominated the middle ages; Lady Theology reigned over the\nkingdom of the seven liberal arts, and to make Homer and Virgil\ntheological it was necessary that they be interpreted allegorically. As\nVossler has shown, theology and philosophy furnished, during the middle\nages, the subject matter of poetry; they were the _utile_ of Horace. The\n_dulce_ became for them too exclusively the pleasing garment of style and\nstory.[323]\n\nThroughout the middle ages, however, many continued to look askance at\npoetry, and were skeptical as to its value. To Boethius, weeping in\nprison, came Philosophy to console him. She found him surrounded by the\nfriends of his youth, the Muses, who now were inspiring him to write\ndreary verses of complaint. But these poetical Muses Philosophy sent\npacking. \"Who has allowed,\" said she, \"these common strumpets of the\ntheatre to come near this sick man? Not only do they fail to assuage his\nsorrows, but they feed and nourish them with sweet venom. They are not\nfruitful nor profitable. They destroy the fruits of reason, for they hold\nthe hearts of men.\"[324] Here Philosophy is voicing the objections of\nPlato. The arts are attacked because they are not successfully\nutilitarian, and because they appeal to the emotions instead of to the\nreason. In a later book Boethius gives a clearer key to the objection. He\npostulates four mental faculties: sensation possessed by oysters,\nimagination possessed by higher animals, reason possessed by man,\nintelligence possessed by God. Consequently man should aspire towards God\ninstead of indulging his faculties of sensation and imagination, which he\nshares with the lower animals.[325]\n\nBut such objections as those of Boethius were usually explained away by\nallegory. When Isidore of Seville (\u2020633 or 636), for instance, was\ncompiling his book of universal knowledge, the _Etymologiae_, he\nincorporated his section on the poets in the chapter entitled _Concerning\nthe Church and the Sects_. So between a section devoted to the\n_Philosophers of the Gentiles_ and a section entitled _Concerning Sibyls_\nhe wrote concerning the poets as follows:\n\n  Sometimes, however, the poets were called theologians, because they used\n  to compose songs concerning the gods. In doing this, however, it is the\n  office of the poets to render what has actually been done in a different\n  guise with a certain beauty of covert figures.[326]\n\nThe poet, to Isidore, was the inspired bard who sings of the gods and the\neternal verities, not directly, but under the veil of a beautiful\nallegory. Among these allegorical or indirect means of expression used by\nthe poet to veil truth are fables.\n\n  The poets invent fables sometimes to give pleasure; sometimes they are\n  interpreted to explain the nature of things, sometimes to throw light on\n  the manners of men.[327]\n\nHis illustrations of a fable show that he is talking about allegory. For\ninstance, the fable of the centaur was invented to show, by the union of\nman and horse, the swiftness of human life.\n\nIt is very natural, then, that Dante should as the supreme poet of the\nmiddle ages furnish the supreme example of allegory. In the _Convivio_ (c.\n1306), Dante gives a very full and complete exposition of the proper\nmethod of interpreting a text. Any writing, he says, should be expounded\nin four senses. The first is the literal. The second is called the\nallegorical, and is the one that hides itself under the mantle of these\ntales, and is a truth hidden under beauteous fiction.[328] The reason\nthis way of hiding was devised by wise men he promises to explain in the\nfourteenth treatise, which he never wrote. The third sense, he goes on to\nsay, is the moral, as from the fact that Christ took with him but three\ndisciples when he ascended the mountain for the transfiguration we may\nunderstand that in secret things we should have but few companions. The\nfourth sense is the analogical. Here the text may be literally true, but\ncontain a spiritual significance beyond. That to Dante, however, all but\nthe literal sense naturally coalesced as the allegorical is quite clear\nfrom the close of the chapter and from the letter to Can Grande, in which\nhe discusses the interpretations of his _Commedia_. \"Although these mystic\nsenses are called by various names, they may all in general be called\nallegorical.\"[329] That the \"beauteous fiction,\" the _bella menzogna_, of\nallegory is rhetorical in origin is clear from a passage in the _Vita\nNuova_. Dante is defending his personification of Love as one walking,\nspeaking and laughing on the assumption that as a poet he is licensed to\nuse figures or rhetorical colorings. These colorings, however, must have a\ntrue but hidden significance. The rhetorical figures are a garment to\nclothe the nakedness of truth.[330]\n\n\n\n2. Allegory in Mediaeval England\n\n\nEngland as well as Italy furnished a congenial soil for allegory in the\nthirteenth century. In his _Poetria_, John of Garland[331] explains\nallegorically an \"elegiac, bucolic, ethic, love poem\" which he quotes.\n\"Under the guise of the nymph,\" he says, \"is figured forth the flesh;\nunder that of the corrupt youth, the world or the devil; under that of the\nfriend, reason.\"[332] In another illustrative poem, this time introduced\nto show the proper use of the six parts of an oration, John inserts\nbetween the \"_confirmacio_,\" and the \"_confutacio_,\" an \"_expositio\nmistica_\" in which the Trojan War is allegorized in this fashion: \"The\nfury of Eacides is the ire of Satan,\" etc.[333]\n\nAs late as 1506 Stephen Hawes's _Pastime of Pleasure_ is as mediaeval as\nthe _Romance of the Rose_.[334] In this allegory of the education and love\nadventures of Grandamour the young man sits at the feet of Dame Rethoryke\nto be instructed at great length in her art. To none other of the seven\nliberal arts, in fact, does Hawes devote so much space. In the chapter on\n_inventio_, however, the lady seems to have forgotten all about her\ntraditional past, for instead of discussing the method of finding all\npossible arguments in favor of a case, she discusses the poets, their\npurpose, and their fame.\n\nThe purpose of poetry is to her what it had been throughout the entire\nperiod of the middle ages. The poet presents truth under the guise of\nallegory.\n\n  To make of nought reason sentencious\n  Clokynge a trouthe wyth colour tenebrous.\n  For often under a fayre fayned fable\n  A trouthe appereth gretely profitable.[335]\n\nThis, says Dame Rethoryke, has the sanction of antiquity; for the old\npoets, who are famous for their wisdom and the imaginative power of their\ninvention, pronounced truth under cloudy figures. This fortified the poets\nagainst sloth.\n\n  The special treasure\n  Of new invencion, of ydleness the foo!\n\nThen she addresses herself directly to the poets to laud their virtues.\n\n  Your hole desyre was set\n  Fables to fayne to eschewe ydleness,...\n  To dysnull vyce and the vycious to blame.\n\nFurthermore she praises them for recording the honorable deeds of great\nconquerors and for furnishing the modern poets with such illustrious\nmodels of the poetic art. This praise of the poets is complementary to a\ncondemnation of the foolish public, whose limited intelligence prevents\nthem from seeing the cloaked truth of the poets. Thus the dull, rude\npeople, when they are unable to understand the moral implications of the\npoet's allegory, call the poets liars, deceivers, and flatterers. This,\nshe insists, is the fault not of the poets, but of the people. If the\npeople would take the trouble to understand these clouded truths, they\nwould praise and appreciate the moral poets.\n\nThe conclusion is not difficult. The mediaeval poets are on the defensive,\nas their brothers had been through all the past. To justify art, the\nmiddle ages had to show its usefulness not only to morals, but to\ntheology. Thus Dame Rethoryke in her talk on _inventio_, is conducting a\ndefense of poetry on the following grounds: it teaches profound truth\nunder the guise of allegory; it blames the vicious and overcomes vice; it\nis the enemy of sloth; it records the honorable deeds of great men.\n\nThe chapter on style only continues the song. It is the art, says Hawes,\nto cloak the meaning under misty figures of many colors, as the old poets\ndid, who took similitudes from beasts and birds.\n\n  And under colour of this beste, pryvely\n  The morall sense they cloake full subtyly.[336]\n\nThe poets write, he continues, under a misty cloud of covert likeness. For\ninstance, the poets feign that King Atlas bore the heavens on his\nshoulders, meaning only that he was unusually versed in high astronomy.\nLikewise the story of the centaurs only exemplifies the skill of Mylyzyus\nin breaking the wildness of the royal steeds. Pluto, Cerberus, and the\nhydra receive like explanations. The poets feign these fables, of course,\nto lead the readers out of mischief. A poet to be great must drink of the\nredolent well of poetry whence flow the four rivers of Understanding,\nClose-concluding, Novelty, and Carbuncles. These rivers are translatable\ninto: understanding of good and evil, moral purpose, novelty, rhetorical\nadornment of figures and so forth.\n\nThe poets praised--Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate--deserve their fame, he\nsays, for their morality. They cleanse our vices. They kindle our hearts\nwith love of virtue. Lydgate's _Falls of Princes_ is an especially great\npoem,\n\n  A good ensample for us to dispyse\n  This worlde, so ful of mutabilyte.[337]\n\nOther cunning poets are, however, not so praiseworthy. Instead of feigning\npleasant and covert fables, they spend their time in vanity, making\nballades of fervent love and such like tales and trifles. This, he\ninsists, is an unfruitful manner in which to spend one's efforts.\n\nThis unanimous judgment of the middle ages that the purpose of poetry is\nto teach spiritual truth and inculcate morality under the cloak of\nallegory was perpetuated far into the renaissance, especially in England,\nwhere, as has been shown, the recovery of classical culture made slow\nprogress.[338]\n\n\n\n\nChapter III\n\nRhetorical Elements in Italian Renaissance Conceptions of the Purpose of\nPoetry\n\n\nIn his study of the function of poetry in the literary criticism of the\nItalian renaissance, Spingarn has shown[339] that the characteristic\nopinions reflect the ideas of Horace in his famous line,\n\n  Aut prodesse volunt aut delectare poetae.\n\nThe purpose of poetry, they thought, was to please, to instruct, or to\ncombine pleasure and instruction. He goes further to show that with the\nnotable exceptions of Bernardo Tasso and Castelvetro, who claimed no\nfurther function for poetry than delight and delight alone, the general\nconception was ethical. \"Even when delight was admitted as an end, it was\nsimply because of its usefulness in effecting the ethical aim.[340]\" This\nchapter, resuming briefly the results of Spingarn's investigations where\nthey help the reader to understand better the situation in English\ncriticism, will bring into sharper relief than has heretofore been done\ntwo influences which affected the renaissance view not a\nlittle--scholastic philosophy and the classical rhetorics.\n\nTo St. Thomas Aquinas, logic was the art of arts, because in action we are\ndirected by reason. Thus all arts proceed from it, and rhetoric is a part\nof it.[341] The Thomistic philosophy which included rhetoric and poetic\nin logic, whereas Aristotle had classified the three arts as co\u00f6rdinate\nwithin the same category, seems, says Spingarn, \"to have been accepted by\nthe scholastic philosophers of the middle ages.\"[342] The appearance of\nthis scholastic grouping in the renaissance criticism is parallel with a\ngradual abandonment of the popular mediaeval preoccupation with allegory,\nin favor of the classical view which considered example as the best\nvehicle for moral improvement.\n\nIn the age of the Medicis, when refined courts of Italy were so greatly\ndelighted at the recovery of the least edifying literary monuments of\nclassical antiquity, allegorical interpretation had probably so often\nbecome but a cloak for licentiousness in poetry that it was becoming\ndiscredited. At any rate, Loyola rejected allegorical interpretation of\nclassical literature for the Jesuit colleges. He based moral education on\nexample, and expurgated any element which he thought might have a\npernicious effect on young people. For instance, except in the most\nadvanced class, the Dido episode was deleted from the _\u00c6neid_.[343]\n\nSavonarola rejected allegory and considered logic, rhetoric, and poetic as\nparts of philosophy. Logic proceeds by induction and syllogism, rhetoric\nby the enthymeme, and poetic by the example. Therefore the office of the\npoet is to teach by examples, to induce men to virtuous living by fitting\nrepresentations. Because our minds delight greatly in song and harmony,\nthe early poets used meter and rhythm better to incline the soul of man to\nvirtue and morality. It is impossible, however, for a person ignorant of\nlogic to be a true poet. A mere concern with rhythm and the composition of\nsentences profits nothing, for what is the use of painting and decorating\na ship if it is going to be swamped in the storm and never come to port?\nThe poets who endeavor to place their poems on a par with the Scriptures\noverlook the fact that only the sacred writings can have an allegorical,\nparabolical or spiritual meaning. Since Dante had made all these claims,\nthe inference is that Savonarola declined to accept poetry as part of\ntheology, and rejected both Dante and the popular mediaeval tradition.\nPoets, he goes on to say, use metaphors because of the weakness of their\nmaterial. If you took away the verbal ornament, you would not read the\npoets, because there would be nothing left. The theologian uses metaphor\nonly as an adornment to his solid matter. The poet who sings of love,\npraises idols, and narrates lies has a very bad effect on young men. He\nincites to lust and immorality. But poets who describe in verses moral\nactions and the deeds of brave men should not on that account be\ncondemned.[344]\n\n\n\n1. The Scholastic Grouping of Poetic, Rhetoric and Logic\n\n\nThe scholastic grouping of logic, rhetoric, and poetic which Savonarola\nderived from St. Thomas Aquinas[345] persisted for four centuries,\nrejuvenated by contact with the richer classical scholarship of the\nrenaissance. B. Lombardus, for instance, in his preface to Maggi's edition\nof Aristotle's _Poetics_ (1550), differentiates logic, rhetoric, and\npoetic by the same criteria. Logic, he says, proves by syllogism, and in\nthis is different from both rhetoric and poetic, which use enthymeme and\nexample as more appropriate to a popular audience, while poetic uses\nexample almost entirely and scarcely ever enthymeme.[346]\n\nSpingarn calls attention to a similar distinction in the _Lezione_ (1553)\nof Benedetto Varchi. Varchi says:\n\n  Just as the logician uses for his means the noblest of all instruments,\n  that is, demonstration or the demonstrative syllogism; so the\n  dialectician, the topical syllogism; and the sophist, the sophistical,\n  that is, the apparent and deceitful; the rhetorician, the enthymeme, and\n  the poet, the example, which is the least worthy of all. So the subject\n  of poetry is the feigned fable and the fabulous, and its means or\n  instrument is the example.[347]\n\nThis has its ultimate source in the _Rhetoric_ of Aristotle, who made the\nfollowing distinction between logic and rhetoric: Logic aims at\ndemonstration by the syllogism and by induction; rhetoric aims at\npersuasion by the enthymeme and the example. The enthymeme is a\nrhetorical syllogism, usually with the conclusion or either premise\nunexpressed. Moreover the premises of an enthymeme are likely to rest on\nopinion rather than on axioms. The example is a rhetorical induction,\nusually from fewer cases than are necessary to scientific induction.[348]\n\nThe same scholastic grouping of logic, rhetoric, and poetic appears in the\ntreatise _On the Nature of the Art of Poetry_ (1647) of the Dutch scholar\nVossius, who writes:\n\n  As rhetoric is called by Aristotle the counterpart of dialect and that\n  especially because it teaches the manner by which enthymemes may be\n  utilized in communal matters, without a doubt poetic is also to be\n  thought a part of logic, because it discloses the use of examples in\n  fictitious matters.... But rhetoric and poetic seek not only to prove\n  something, but also to delight; they seek not only understanding, but\n  action as well. Wherefore poetic has this in common with rhetoric; that\n  both are the servants of the state.[349]\n\nVossius thus, like Scaliger, makes poetic and rhetoric one in their end to\npromote desirable action.\n\nHow persistent is this rhetorical view of poetry is well illustrated by\nthe _Ars Rhetorica_ of the Jesuit Martin Du Cygne, first published in\n1666, and still used as a text-book in Georgetown University. He is\ndiscussing the three kinds of argument: syllogism, enthymeme, and example,\nor induction.\n\n  Induction is delightful and is appropriate to an ignorant audience\n  because of its similitudes and examples. This argument is frequently\n  used by rhetoricians and poets, especially Ovid; because it explains\n  attractively and clearly.[350]\n\nThus the grouping of poetic with rhetoric and logic naturally tended to\nmake it partake more and more of the nature of the other two. All of them\nwere taken to be occupied with proving something in an effort to make\nother people good. They differed only because they used different kinds of\nproof.\n\n\n\n2. The Influence of the Classical Rhetorics\n\n\nA more explicit influence on the renaissance belief that the function of\npoetry is to improve social morality is readily seen in the definitions of\npoetry which have already been quoted from Lombardus and Varchi, who\nformulated their definitions of poetry by combining Aristotle's definition\nof tragedy with his definition of rhetoric.[351] Another explicit\nborrowing from classical rhetoric was of Cicero's three-fold aim of the\norator: to teach, to delight, to persuade (_docere, delectare,\npermovere_).[352] Several important Italian critics carried this\nterminology over into their theories of poetry along with the purpose\nwhich has always animated rhetoric--persuasion.\n\nMaking Horace a point of departure, Daniello, in 1536, says that the\nfunction of the poet is to teach and delight, but more than that--to\npersuade. He must move his readers to share the emotions of his\ncharacters, to shun vice, and embrace virtue.[353] This extreme rhetorical\nparallel was further insisted on by Minturno (1559), who defined the duty\nof a poet as so to speak in verse as to teach, to delight, and to\nmove.[354] And as Aristotle had affirmed in his _Rhetoric_ that the\ncharacter of the speaker was one of the three essential elements in\npersuasion,[355] Minturno is constrained to make the moral character of\nthe poet an indispensable quality of his poetry. Thus he borrows Cato's\ndefinition of the orator as a \"good man skilled in public speech\" (vir\nbonus dicendi peritus) from Quintilian,[356] and defines the poet as \"a\ngood man skilled in speech and imitation\" (poeta vir bonus dicendi et\nimitandi peritus).[357]\n\nLike Minturno, Scaliger insisted that poetry must teach, move, and\ndelight.[358] It is thus the result in action which Minturno and Scaliger\nemphasize. The poet must work on the feelings of his reader so that he\nshall embrace and imitate the good, and spurn the evil. Philosophy,\noratory, and poetry have thus one end--and only one--persuasion.[359]\nWithout the \"movere,\" the incentive to action, of course poetry could not\nserve its purpose of moral improvement on which the renaissance so sternly\ninsisted. A reader might enjoy a story, play, or poem which presented\nimpeccable examples of virtue rewarded and vice punished, or which\nabounded in noble platitudes gilded with wit, and still smile and be a\nvillain. It was thus inevitable that an acceptance of the moral purpose of\npoetry should sooner or later drive any logical minded critic of poetry\ncompletely into the camp of rhetoric. There the poet would find a\ncomplete panoply of arms forged for the arousing of the feelings in an\naudience, and for stirring the springs of action. He could make his\nreaders hate sin by the same means Demosthenes made his hearers hate\nPhilip, and love any virtue by appropriating the methods of Cicero _Pro\nArchia_. According to this belief, the difference between poetic and\nrhetoric was minimized. In theory a poem or a speech might indifferently\nbe composed either in prose or in verse. Both endeavored to teach, to\nplease, and to move. Both looked toward persuasion as an object. The\nspeech used the enthymeme and the example as proofs, while the poem used\nthe example to a greater, and the enthymeme to a lesser degree. Both in\ntheory and in practice the example was regarded as being a pleasanter\nargument than the precept, as well as being more effective. This was the\nage of Ciceronianism. The school-masters of Europe had recently\nrediscovered imitation as the royal road to learning, and in their system\nof language teaching emphasized imitation of classical authors more than\nfollowing the precepts of the grammarians or of the rhetoricians. The\nepigram of Seneca, \"longum iter per praecepta, breve per exempla,\" was the\npopular catchword of the age. The example was popular.\n\nThus by the end of the sixteenth century, the Italian critics had\nformulated a logical and self-consistent theory of the purpose of poetry.\nInheritors of the allegorical theory of the middle ages, which they in\npart discarded, and discoverers of classical rhetoric which they carried\nover bodily into their theories of poetry, they passed on to France,\nGermany, and England their rhetorical theories. The purpose of poetry, as\nwell as of rhetoric, was to them persuasion--to teach, to please, to move.\nThe instrument of poetry was the rhetorical example.\n\n\n\n\nChapter IV\n\nEnglish Renaissance Ideas of the Purpose of Poetry\n\n\n\nIn England the Italian interpretations of the literary criticism of Greece\nand Rome made slow headway against the established traditions of the\nmiddle ages. In particular the vogue of allegory did not yield to the idea\nof the moral example transferred from rhetoric to poetic.\n\n\n\n1. Allegory and Example in Rhetoric\n\n\nWhen Thomas Wilson published the first edition of his _Arte of Rhetorique_\nin 1553, the corpus of Greek criticism in the Aldine _Rhetores Graeci_ had\nbeen in print forty-five years, and the commentaries of Dolce, Daniello,\nRobortelli, and Maggi were available. But Wilson wrote a very good\nrhetoric with no books before him but Quintilian, Cicero and the rhetoric\n_Ad Herennium_, which he thought to be Cicero's, Erasmus, Plutarch _De\naudiendis poetis_, and St. Basil. His treatment of poetry is quite\nnaturally, then, that of a rhetorician who had been reared in the\nmediaeval tradition of allegory.\n\nAllegory in the sense of Quintilian as a trope, an extended metaphor,\nWilson mentions only once. His instance will bear quotation:\n\n  It is evil putting strong Wine into weake vesselles, that is to say, it\n  is evil trusting some women with weightie matters. The English Proverbes\n  gathered by John Heywood, helpe well in this behalfe, the which commonly\n  are nothing els but Allegories, and darke devised sentences.[360]\n\nAllegory in its more general mediaeval sense of the kernel of moral truth\nwithin the brilliant husk of the poet's fables he discusses at greater\nlength elsewhere with full exemplification.\n\n  For by them we may talke at large and win men by persuasion, if we\n  declare beforehand that these tales were not fained of such wisemen\n  without cause.\n\nThis obvious rhetorical discussion of the use of poetical illustrations by\norators leads him to express his conviction of the moral value of poetry.\nThat poetry did have this improving effect he is quite sure.\n\n  For undoubtedly there is no one tale among all the Poetes, but under the\n  same is comprehended something that parteineth, either to the amendment\n  of maners, to the knowledge of the trueth to the setting forth of\n  Nature's work, or els the understanding of some notable thing done....\n  As Plutarch saieth: and likewise Basilius Magnus:[361] In the _Iliades_\n  are described strength, and valiantnesse of the bodie: In the _Odissea_\n  is set forth a lively paterne of the minde. The Poetes were wisemen, and\n  wished in hart the redresse of things, the which when for feare, they\n  durst not openly rebuke, they did in colours painte them out, and tolde\n  men by shadowes what they should doe in good sooth, or els because the\n  wicked were unworthy to heare the trueth, they spake so that none might\n  understand but those unto whom they please to utter their meaning.[362]\n\nWilson seems to mean not only that poetry has a moral effect, but that the\nmoral value is the main intention. He then proceeds to elucidate the story\nof Danae as signifying that women have been and will be overcome by money.\nThe story of Io's seduction by the bull shows that beauty may overcome the\nbest of women. From Icarus we should learn that every man should not\nmeddle with things above his compass, and from Midas, to avoid\ncovetousness. As a Protestant he explains St. Christopher and St. George\nin like manner allegorically.\n\nBut Wilson is a rhetorician, not a theorist of poetry; he is not concerned\nwith the moral example as the purpose of poetry. In his section on example\nas a rhetorical argument he shows how stories and fables may enliven and\nenforce a point. He illustrates by Pliny's story of the grateful dragon,\nand by Appian's story of the grateful lion, how a speaker may enlarge on\nthe duty of gratitude among men. But though he does not postulate\npleasurable instruction as the aim of poetry, he clearly implies it in his\ncomment on the use of stories in argument.\n\nNor does Roger Ascham in his _Scholemaster_, written between 1563-1568 and\npublished posthumously in 1570, concern himself with the purpose of\npoetry. His interest in poetry seems to be confined to prosody. As a\nschool-master himself he is interested in guiding grammar-school boys in\ntheir mastery of Latin prose. \"I purpose to teach a yong scholer, to go,\nnot to dance: to speake, not to sing.\"[363] That he is not blind to the\nfact that poetry does influence the character of a reader, whether that be\nits purpose or not in the mind of God, he shows by his comment on Plautus.\nThe language, Ascham says, is good and worthy of imitation; but the master\nmust choose only such passages as contain honest matter.[364] And the same\nfear of the possible evil moral influence of fiction is evinced in his\nfamous condemnation of the _Morte Darthur_ \"the whole pleasure of which\nbooke standeth in two speciall poyntes, in open mans slaughter, and bold\nbawdrye,\"[365] and in his attacks on English translations of Italian poems\nand stories. In this his position is substantially that of Savonarola,\nLoyola and Vives.[366] Nowhere does Ascham advance the claims of allegory\nas cloaking moral truth under the guise of fiction. He is too good a\nclassicist and Ciceronian. What he fears from poetry is evil example. If\nhe believed that the purpose of poetry was to teach truth by example\npleasantly, at least he does not say so. Ascham represents the advance\nguard in England against allegory. But since he was not writing on the\ntheory of poetry primarily, he did not endeavor to establish that the\nfunction of poetry is to teach by example.\n\n\n\n2. Allegory and the Rhetorical Example in Poetic\n\n\nThus far we have had to draw inferences from the asides of rhetorician and\nschool-master. But in 1575, five years after the publication of Ascham's\ntreatise, George Gascoigne, a poet, published his _Certayne Notes of\nInstruction Concerning the Making of Verse or Ryme_.[367] The title is not\nmisleading. Gascoigne is concerned with the style of poetry, not with its\nphilosophy. His only reference to either example or allegory is in a\npassage where he recommends methods of avoiding triteness in the praise of\nhis mistress.\n\n  If I should disclose my pretence in love, I would eyther make a strange\n  discourse of some intollerable passion, or finde occasion to pleade by\n  the example of some historie, or discover my disquiet in shadowes _per\n  Allegoriam_.[368]\n\nSlight as this is, it hints at the rhetoric of Ovid and the declamation\nschools. The poet is \"to pleade by example.\" He is making a speech to his\nmistress trying to prove to her his undying passion that she may grant him\nthe ultimate favor. The genre is the same that includes the _Epistles_ of\nOvid and the _Love Letters_ of Aristenetus. It is the genre of versified\nspeech-making. Wilson recommended the _Proverbs_ of Heywood as furnishing\n\"allegories\" useful in the amplification of a point in a speech. In his\n_Euphues_ Lyly did use such \"allegories\" in what his contemporaries\ngenerally considered a poem. Lyly drew examples, anecdotes, and fables\nwhich he used as Gascoigne suggested, not only from Heywood, but from the\n_Similia_ and _Adagia_, of Erasmus, and from the _Emblems_ of\nAlciati.[369]\n\nSo far the moral example is counseled or practised only as a recognized\ndevice of rhetoric. It is not transferred to poetic until George\nWhetstone's _Dedication_ to his _Promos and Cassandra_. For Whetstone\nasserts that in his comedy he has intermingled all actions \"in such sorte\nas the grave matter may instruct, and the pleasant delight ... and the\nconclusion showes the confusion of Vice and the cherising of Vertue.\"[370]\nThat the philosophy of this moral improvement resides in the extreme\napplication of poetic justice he shows as follows: \"For by the reward of\nthe good the good are encouraged in wel doinge: and with the scowrge of\nthe lewde the lewde are feared from evill attempts.\" Whetstone's\n_Dedication_ was published in 1578, one year before Gosson launched his\nattack against poetry and poets in his _School of Abuse_, which was\nanswered by Lodge and Sidney in their _Apologies_. In this controversy, in\nwhich Whetstone later took sides with the anti-stage party in his\n_Touchstone for Time_ (1584), the age-long conflict between the poets and\nthe philosophers was renewed with vigor and acrimony. But both the\nattackers and the defenders argued from the same premise, that the purpose\nof poetry was to afford pleasant moral instruction. Gosson and the\nPuritans objected that current poetry and plays failed to afford this\nmoral instruction and should consequently be condemned. Lodge, Sidney and\nthe other defenders of poetry retorted that poetry had a noble\nfunction--the teaching of morality, and that an occasional poem which did\nnot serve this purpose did not invalidate the claims of poetry as a whole.\n\nGosson writes:\n\n  The right use of auncient poetrie was to have the notable exploytes of\n  worthy captaines, the holesome councels of good fathers and vertuous\n  lives of predecessors set down in numbers, and sung to the instrument at\n  solemne feastes, that the sound of the one might draw the hearers from\n  kissing the cup too often, and the sense of the other put them in minde\n  of things past, and chaulke out the way to do the like.[371]\n\nThe benefit, according to Gosson, which poetry should produce is that of\ngood moral example. Moral doctrine, he believes accessible in the\nchurches, and against the poets he urges that the evil social environment\nof the theatre offsets the benefit to be derived even from good plays.\nWhat profits the moral lesson of such a play if after witnessing the\nperformance a man walk away with a woman whose acquaintance he has just\nmade in the theatre.[372] He may drink wine, he may play cards, he may\neven enter a brothel.\n\nIn his _Defence of Poetry_ (1579), Lodge retreats to the caverns of the\nmiddle ages to equip himself with arms. Under the influence of Campano,\nwho died in 1477, he advances allegory as the explanation which makes the\napparently light and trifling poets moral teachers of the utmost\nseriousness. Addressing Gosson he exclaims:\n\n  Did you never reade that under the persons of beastes many abuses were\n  dissiphered? Have you not reason to waye that whatsoever ether Virgil\n  did write of his gnatt or Ovid of his fley was all covertly to declare\n  abuse?... You remember not that under the person of Aeneas in Virgil the\n  practice of a dilligent captaine is described; you know not that the\n  creation is signified in the Image of Prometheus; the fall of pryde in\n  the person of Narcissus.[373]\n\nAnd he quotes Lactantius as comparing poetry with the Scriptures. If\neither are taken literally, they will seem false. We should judge by the\npoet's hidden meaning.[374] The purpose of the poets, to Lodge, was \"In\nthe way of pleasure to draw men to wisdome.\" When he defends comedy, Lodge\ndrifts away from allegory. Terence and Plautus he praises for furnishing\nexamples of virtue and vice upon the boards, thus to amend the manners of\nhis auditors. He believed that poetry did amend manners, and correct\nabuses--if properly used. But he is very quick to admit the very abuses\nwhich Gosson attacked.\n\n  I abhore those poets that savor of ribaldry: I will admit the expullcion\n  of such enormities, poetry is dispraised not for the folly that is in\n  it, but for the abuse whiche manye ill Wryters couller by it.[375] I\n  must confess with Aristotle that men are greatly delighted with\n  imitation, and that it were good to bring those things on stage that\n  were altogether tending to vertue; all this I admit and hartely wysh,\n  but you say unlesse the thinge be taken away the vice will continue. Nay\n  I say if the style were changed the practise would profit.[376]\n\nThus he defends poetry bcause it teaches morality by example and by\nallegory.\n\nWith that higher intelligence and learning which have already been\ncontrasted with the unthinking acceptance of his times[377] Sir Philip\nSidney wrote his _Apologie for Poetrie_. In this dignified and vigorous\npamphlet, written about 1583, and published in 1595, Sidney presents the\nbest and most consistent argument for the moral purpose of poetry that\nappeared in England. That the main line of his argument and his best\nmaterial is drawn from Minturno and Scaliger, as Spingarn has\ndemonstrated,[378] in no way invalidates his claim to distinction. The\npurpose of poetry is to Sidney, in the first place, to teach and\ndelight,[379] \"that fayning notable images of vertues, vices, or what els,\nwith that delightfull teaching which must be the right describing note to\nknow a poet by.\"[380] But as the end of all earthly learning is virtuous\naction, in Sidney's mind, he agrees with Minturno and Scaliger in\nborrowing from rhetoric Cicero's three-fold aim of the orator: to teach,\nto delight, to move. Sidney says that the poets \"imitate both to _delight_\nand _teach_, and delight to _move_ men to take the goodnes in hande ...\nand _teach_, to make them know that goodnes whereunto they are\nmooved.\"[381] It is incredible that he did not know this terminology as\nrhetoric. Poetry, he believes, fails if it does not persuade its reader to\nabandon evil and adopt good.\n\n  And that _mooving_ is of a higher degree than _teaching_, it may by this\n  appeare, that it is well nigh the cause of teaching. For who will be\n  taught, if he bee not mooved with desire to be taught? and what so much\n  good doth that teaching bring forth (I speak still of morall doctrine)\n  as that it mooveth one to do that which it dooth teach?[382]\n\nThe effectiveness of poetry, then, in accomplishing this moral end lies in\nits pleasantness. The poet, says Sidney, in that most famous passage which\nis too frequently quoted incompletely,\n\n  commeth to you with words sent in delightful proportion, either\n  accompanied with, or prepared for, the well inchaunting skill of\n  Musicke; and with a tale forsooth he commeth unto you, with a tale which\n  holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner. And\n  _pretending no more, doth intende the winning of the mind from\n  wickedness to vertue_: even as the childe is often brought to take most\n  wholsom things by hiding them in such other as have a pleasant\n  tast.[383]\n\nAccording to Sidney, then, it is the very purpose of poetry to win men to\nvirtue by pleasant instruction. The argument of poetry in accomplishing\nthis end is primarily the example. Sidney compares very elaborately\nphilosophy, history, and poetry in an endeavor to show that poetry is the\nmost effective instrument for forwarding virtue. In the first place poetry\nis better adapted than philosophy to win men to virtue because it\npersuades both by precepts and by examples, while philosophy persuades by\nprecepts alone. His sanction for this high opinion of the persuasive power\nof example is the rhetorical commonplace of the renaissance that the way\nis long by precept and short by example.[384] To enforce this point he\ntells the story of how Menenius Agrippa won over the people of Rome to\nsupport the Senate by telling them the story of the revolt of the members\nagainst the belly. Quintilian[385] and Wilson[386] had already told this\nstory to prove the effectiveness of the example as a rhetorical argument,\na device of the public speaker.\n\nThe main advantage which poetry possesses over history, Sidney goes on, is\nthat while the historian must stick to his facts, which too frequently are\nunedifying, the poet can and does create a world better than nature, and\npresents to his reader ideal figures of human conduct such as Pylades,\nCyrus, and \u00c6neas.[387] This is Sidney's application of Aristotle's\nassertion that history is particular and poetic universal; history records\nthings as they are and poetic as they are, worse than they are, or better.\nLest his readers might fear that the arguments of the poet might lose some\nof their persuasive force from their being fictitious, Sidney hastens to\nadd: \"For that a fayned example hath as much force to teach as a true\nexample (for as for to moove, it is cleere, sith the fayned may be tuned\nto the highest key of passion);\"[388] and here he is drawing from\nAristotle's _Rhetoric._[389] Through admiration of the noble persons of\npoetry, the reader is won to a desire for emulation. \"Who readeth _\u00c6neas_\ncarrying olde _Anchises_ on his back, that wisheth not it were his fortune\nto perfourme so excellent an acte?\"[390]\n\nAlthough Sidney believes the principal moral value of poetry to reside in\nits power to teach and move by the use of examples, he devotes at least\nhalf a page to the beneficent effect of parables and allegories. The\nparables which he uses, however, are all Christian, and the allegories are\nall the _Fables_ of \u00c6sop. From the allegorical interpretation of poetry\ncurrent in the middle ages and to a scarcely less degree among his English\ncontemporaries Sidney remains conspicuously aloof.\n\nIn answering the specific charges against poetry, that it is a waste of\ntime, the mother of lies, the nurse of abuse, and rejected by Plato,\nSidney asserts that a thing which moves men to virtue so effectively as\npoetry cannot be a waste of time; that since poetry pretends not to\nliteral truth, it cannot lie,[391] that poetry does not abuse man's wit,\nbut man's wit abuses poetry, for \"shall the abuse of a thing make the\nright use odious?\"[393] and that Plato objected not to poetry but to its\nabuse.\n\nSir John Harington[392] who published his _Brief Apologie of Poetrie_ in\n1591, four years before the publication of Sidney's _Apologie_, based much\nof his treatise on Sidney. Unfortunately, he did not digest fully the\narguments of the manuscript in his hand, and instead of a first-hand\nknowledge of Minturno and Scaliger had only the commonplaces of Plutarch.\nIn spite even of Plutarch, allegory, not moral example, is his main line\nof defence. His fundamental basis is the stock Horatian \"omne tulit\npunctum qui miscuit utile dulci,\" or as Harington paraphrases, \"for in\nverse is both goodness and sweetness, Rubarb and Sugarcandie, the pleasant\nand the profitable.\"[394] The objection that poets lie Harington meets as\nSidney does, \"But poets never affirming any for true, but presenting them\nto us as fables and imitations, cannot lye though they would.\"[395] At\nthis point Harington parts company with his master and goes back to the\nmiddle ages.\n\n  The ancient Poets have indeed wrapped as it were in their writings\n  divers and sundry meanings, which they call the senses or mysteries\n  thereof. First of all for the litteral sence (as it were the utmost\n  barke or ryne) they set downe in manner of an historie the acts and\n  notable exploits of some persons worthie memorie: then in the same\n  fiction, as a second rine and somewhat more fine, as it were nearer to\n  the pith and marrow, they place the Morall sence profitable for the\n  active life of man, approving vertuous actions and condemning the\n  contrarie. Many times also under the selfesame words they comprehend\n  some true understanding of naturall Philosophie, or sometimes of\n  politike government, and now and then of divinitie: and these same\n  sences that comprehend so excellent knowledge we call the\n  Allegorie.[396]\n\nNothing could be more specifically mediaeval. He then proceeds to explain\nthe historical, moral, and three allegorical senses of the story of\nPerseus and the Gorgon--the highest allegory being theological. Further,\nto defend the allegorical senses of poetry, which conceals a pith of\nprofit under a pleasant rind, Harington explains fully how Demosthenes,\nBishop Fisher, and the Prophet Nathan enforced their arguments by\nallegorical stories. To Harington, then, poetry is useful as an\nintroduction to Philosophy. Paraphrasing Plutarch _On the Reading of\nPoets_, he says:\n\n  So young men do like best that Philosophy that is not Philosophie, or\n  that is not delivered as Philosophie, and such are the pleasant writings\n  of learned Poets, that are the popular Philosophers and the popular\n  divines.[397]\n\n_A Discourse of English Poetrie_ (1586) by the laborious but uninspired\ntutor, William Webbe,[398] is not a defense; but interspersed among his\nremarks advocating the reformed versifying, and his arid catalog of poets,\nancient and modern, is a good deal about the moral purpose and value of\npoetry. A thoroughgoing Horatian, he cannot forbear to quote at length and\ncomment upon the \"miscere utile dulci,\" of his master. Poetry, in Webbe's\nconception, therefore, is especially effective in its \"sweete allurements\nto vertues and commodious caveates from vices.\"[399] In appraising the\nmethods of producing the moral effect, Webbe fails to share with his\ncontemporaries their high opinion of moral example and their depreciation\nof precept. Poetry, he says, contains great and profitable fruits for the\ninstruction of manners and precepts of good life[400]. And he finds much\nprofit even in the most dissolute works of Ovid and Martial because they\nabound in moral precepts. He does not, however, entirely discount the\nmoral effect of example. Ovid and Martial should be kept from young people\nwho have not yet gained sufficient judgment to distinguish between the\nbeneficial and the harmful, and Lucian should not be read at all. But he\nseems to fear the moral effect of bad example more than he applauds the\neffect of good. Thus his main reliance is upon allegory. The\n_Metamorphoses_ of Ovid, for instance,\n\n  though it consisted of fayned Fables for the most part, and poeticall\n  inventions, yet being moralized according to his meaning, and the trueth\n  of every tale beeing discovered, it is a worke of exceeding wysedome and\n  sounde judgment [and the rest of his writings] are mixed with much good\n  counsayle and profitable lessons, if they be wisely and narrowly\n  read.[401]\n\nPerhaps because he was not pledged to defend poetry against the attacks of\nthe Puritans, Webbe thus allows himself to admit \"the very summe or\ncheefest essence of poetry dyd alwayes for the most part consist in\ndelighting the readers or hearers with pleasure.\" Aside from his\nemphasizing allegory, which Plutarch had rejected, Webbe is thus closer to\nthe doctrines of Plutarch than he is to the Italians. Poetry has, he\nbelieves, a moral effect, but he does not establish this moral effect as\nits motivating purpose[402]. And again, after descanting on the\nexhortations to virtue, dehortations from vices, and praises of laudable\nthings which characterized the early poets, he defines the comical sort of\npoetry as containing \"all such _Epigrammes_, _Elegies_, and delectable\nditties, which Poets have devised respecting onely the delight\nthereof.[403]\n\nLike Webbe, the author of _The Arte of English Poesie_ (1589) ascribed to\nPuttenham,[404] believes much in the pleasure of poetry. He does not,\nhowever, advance pleasure as the purpose any more than he does profit.\nInstead of endeavoring to discover what the end or purpose of poetry may\nbe, Puttenham explains why certain forms of poetry were devised, or what\nmay be the intention of certain poets in certain poems. The passage is\nworth quoting at length. The use of poetry, says Puttenham,\n\n  is the laud, honour, & glory of the immortall gods (I speake now in\n  phrase of the Gentiles); secondly, the worthy gests of noble Princes,\n  the memoriall and registry of all great fortunes, the praise of vertue &\n  reproofe of vice, the instruction of morall doctrines, the revealing of\n  sciences naturall & other profitable Arts, the redresse of boistrous &\n  sturdie courages by perswasion, the consolation and repose of temperate\n  myndes: finally, the common solace of mankind in all his travails and\n  cares of this transitorie life; and in this last sort, being used for\n  recreation onely, may allowably beare matter not alwayes of the gravest\n  or of any great commoditie or profit, but rather in some sort vaine,\n  dissolute, or wanton, so it be not very scandalous & of evill\n  example.[405]\n\nThe poems of \"this last sort\" which Puttenham had in mind were anagrams,\nemblems, and such trifling verse especially, which, as he says, have been\nobjected to by some grave and theological heads as \"to none edification\nnor instruction, either of morall vertue or otherwise behooffull for the\ncommonwealth.\" These trifles \"have bene in all ages permitted as the\nconvenient solaces and recreations of man's wit.\"[406] But Puttenham does\nnot advocate that these poems whose only aim is recreation should be\nreleased from the restraints of accepted morality. They may be vain,\ndissolute or wanton, but not very scandalous. They should not offer evil\nexamples, nor should their matter be \"unhonest.\"\n\nNot all poetry, according to Puttenham, is given over to refreshing the\nmind by the ear's delight. Although the poet is appointed as a pleader of\nlovely causes in the ear of princely dames, young ladies, gentlewomen, and\ncourtiers,[407] none the less much poetry has a didactic purpose. Satire\nwas first invented to administer direct rebuke of evil, comedy to amend\nthe manners of common men by discipline and example, tragedy to show the\nmutability of fortune and the just punishment of God in revenge of a\nvicious and evil life, pastoral to inform moral discipline, for the\namendment of man's behavior, or to insinuate or glance at greater matters\nunder the veil of rustic persons and rude speeches.[408] Here Puttenham\npays his respects to all accepted methods of poetical instruction: in\nsatire, to precepts; in comedy and tragedy, to example; in pastoral, to\nallegory. Yet it is in historical poetry, which may indifferently be\nwholly true, wholly false, or a mixture, the moral effect of example is\nmost potent. Speaking of examples in poetry, he says, \"Right so no kinde\nof argument in all the Oratorie craft doth better perswade and more\nuniversally satisfie then example.\"[409] It is on this account that\nhistorical poetry is, next the divine, the most honorable and worthy. For\nthe historians have always been not so eager that what they wrote should\nbe true to fact as that it should be used either for example or for\npleasure.\n\n  Considering that many times it is seene a fained matter or altogether\n  fabulous, besides that it maketh more mirth than any other, works no\n  less good conclusions for example then the most true and veritable, but\n  often more, because the Poet hath the handling of them to fashion at his\n  pleasure.[410]\n\nThis conception of history as moral example is common enough. To Bud\u00e9 all\nhistory was a moral example[411] and Puttenham's inclusion of didactic\nfiction is in line with much renaissance thought, which regarded the two\nas almost interchangeable.[412]\n\nPuttenham, like Webbe, was more in accord with Horace in admitting both\nthe pleasant and profitable effects of poetry than he was with Minturno,\nScaliger, and Sidney. He grants that some poetry exists only for pleasure,\nbut he puts his emphasis on poetry as a power of persuasion[413]\naccomplishing the moral improvement of society. As late as the\n_Hypercritica_ (1618) of Bolton, history is defined as nothing else but a\nkind of philosophy using examples. Bolton enforces his view by quotation\nfrom Bede, William of Malmesbury, and Sir Thomas North.[414]\n\n\n\n3. The Displacement of Allegory by Example\n\n\nA most interesting view of the purpose of poetry was evolved in the brain\nof Francis Bacon--that baffling complexity of mediaeval tradition and\npenetrating original thought. To him the use of feigned history, as he\ndefines poetry, \"hath beene to give some shadowe of satisfaction to the\nminde of man in those points wherein the Nature of things doth deny\nit.\"[415] That is, poetry represents the world as greater, more just, and\nmore pleasant than it really is. \"So as it appeareth that _Poesie_\nserveth and conferreth to Magnanimitie, Moralitie, and to delectation.\"\nHere Bacon seems to imply that the essential pleasure of poetry is in\naffording vicarious experience through imaginative realization. Poetry\ndoes this by \"submitting the shewes of things to the desires of the\nminde.\" It truly makes a world nearer to our heart's desire. But while\nBacon derives the moral benefit of poetry from examples of conduct and\noutcomes of events more nearly just than those of actual life, when he\nanalyses poetry into its kinds, he makes a place for allegory. In this\ndivision he provides for narrative, drama, and allegory. But with\npenetration he sees what few renaissance critics had noted before--that\nallegory is of two varieties. The first variety is essentially the same as\na rhetorical example; it is an extended metaphor used as an argument to\nenforce a point and thus persuade an audience. The fables of Aesop are\nsuch allegories or examples; and they are useful because they make their\npoint more interestingly than other arguments and more clearly. The other\nsort of allegory, says Bacon, instead of illuminating the idea, obscures\nit. \"That is, when the Secrets and Misteries of Religion, Pollicy, or\nPhilosophy, are involved in Fables or Parables.\" He then gives political\nallegorical interpretations of the myths of Briareus and of the Centaur\nand suddenly adds: \"Nevertheless in many the like incounters, I doe rather\nthink that the fable was first and the exposition devised than that the\nMorall was first and thereupon the fable framed.\"[416] Bacon's final\nconclusion seems to be that, although allegorical poetry does exist,\nallegory is not essential to poetry and that the wholesale allegorizing of\nthe middle ages was far off the mark. In his suspicion that in most cases\nthe fable was first and the interpretation after, Bacon was in complete\nagreement with Rabelais in the prologue of _Gargantua_.[417] At any rate\nBacon seems to have given the _coup de grace_ to allegory in England.\n\nUnder the influence of Pico della Mirandola it was resurrected from its\ntomb by Henry Reynolds; but it was a much less moral allegory and a more\nmystical. In his _Mythomystes_ (licensed 1632) Reynolds admits, that the\nancients mingled moral instruction in their poetry, but reprehends this as\nan abuse. Prose is the proper vehicle of moral doctrine and should have\nbeen employed by Spenser. The true function of poetry, then, is to give\nsecret knowledge of the mysteries of nature to the initiated. Thus the\nstory of the rape of Proserpine signifies, when allegorically interpreted;\n\"the putrefaction and succeeding generation of the Seedes we commit to\nPluto, or the earth.\"[418] This is the most plausible example of mystical\ninterpretation to be found in the whole treatise.\n\nTo the allegorist, the fable or plot in epic or dramatic poetry was only a\nrind to cover attractively the kernel of truth. It was a means to an end,\nnot an end in itself. As the influence of Aristotle's _Poetics_ spreading\nthrough Italy, Germany, France, and England, gave the plot or fable more\nimportance, allegory lost its hold on the minds of the critics. When Ben\nJonson writes in his _Timber_ \"For the Fable and Fiction is, as it were,\nthe forme and Soule of any Poeticall worke or _Poeme_\"[419] the change had\ncome. Jonson, like Sidney, was steeped in classical criticism as\ninterpreted and spread abroad by the sixteenth-century critics of the\ncontinent. But while Sidney made a place for allegory in his scheme of\npoetry, Jonson does not so much as mention it. His idea of the teaching\npower of poetry, for to him poetry and painting both behold pleasure and\nprofit as their common object,[420] is rhetorical--depending on precept\nand example--and attaining its true aim when it moves men to action. Poesy\nis \"a dulcet and gentle _Philosophy_, which leades on and guides us by the\nhand to Action with a ravishing delight and incredible Sweetnes.\"[421]\nJonson evidently knew that he was merging oratory and poetry in their\ncommon purpose of securing persuasion; for he says:\n\n  \"The _Poet_ is the neerest Borderer upon the Orator, and expresseth all\n  his vertues, though he be tyed more to numbers, is his equal in ornament,\n  and above him in his strengths: Because in moving the minds of men, and\n  stirring of affections, in which Oratory shewes, and especially approves\n  her eminence, hee chiefly excells.\"[422]\n\nIn his dedication to _Volpone_ he says this power of persuasion which the\npoet possesses to so eminent a degree is to be applied to the moral\nwell-being of men, \"to inform men in the best reason of living.\"[423]\nHimself a writer for the theatre, Jonson is naturally more concerned with\ncomedy and tragedy than he is with any narrative forms of poetry. And to\nhim the office of the comic poet is \"to imitate justice and instruct to\nlife--or stirre up gentle affections.\"[424] In _Timber_ he iterates the\nsame praise of poetry as being no less effective than philosophy in\ninstructing men to good life, and informing their manners, but as even\nmore effective in that it persuades men to good where philosophy threatens\nand compels. In order to accomplish this beneficial effect on public\nmorals, the poet must have an exact knowledge of all virtues and vices\nwith ability to render the one loved and the other hated.[425] As a\nnatural result of this conception, so similar to Cicero's demand that the\norator must know all things and in line with Aristotle's _Rhetoric_,\nJonson concludes that the poet, like Quintilian's orator, must himself be\na good man; for how else will he be able \"to informe _yong-men_ to all\ngood disciplines, inflame _growne-men_ to all great vertues, keepe _old\nmen_ in their best and supreme state.\"[426]\n\nAside from Sidney and Jonson no English critic, however, thought through\nto the logical conclusion that in moral purpose rhetoric and poetic are\nidentical. The others continued to echo Horace, or lean toward allegory,\nor see profit in poetry from its moral example. For instance in his\npreface to his second instalment of Homer entitled _Achilles' Shield_\n(1598) Chapman dwells at length on the moral value and wisdom contained in\nthe _Iliad_,[427] and enunciates the same idea in his _Prefaces_ of\n1610-16.[428] Peacham, in his _Compleat Gentleman_ (1622), repeats the\nusual commonplaces to the effect that poetry is a dulcet philosophy, for\nthe most part lifted from Puttenham.[429] In his _Argenis_ (1621) Barclay\nreminds his reader of the children who for so many centuries had shunned\nthe cup of physic until the bitter taste had been removed by sweet syrop.\nThus also, says he, is it with the moral value of poetry disguised with\nsweet music. \"Virtues and vices I will frame, and the rewards of them\nshall suite to both\"; for it is on the moral example of poetic justice\nthat Barclay depends. The models of virtue will be followed.[430]\n\nThe Earl of Stirling, in _Anacrisis_ (1634?) acknowledges the works of the\npoets to be the chief springs of learning, \"both for Profit and Pleasure,\nshowing Things as they should be, where Histories represent them as they\nare.\" Consequently he has a high opinion of the _Cyropaedia_ of Xenophon,\nthe _Arcadia_ of Sir Philip Sidney, and other such poems, as \"affording\nmany exquisite Types of Perfection for both the Sexes.\"[431] These types\nthe reader is expected to imitate in his own conduct, guided by the moral\nprecepts with which the poet must not neglect to decorate his work.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWithin the period of this study two views were taken of the moral element\nin poetry. With the exception of Sidney and Jonson, who knew the theories\nof the Italian renaissance, the English critics believed with Horace that\npoetry was at once pleasant and profitable, and agreed with Plutarch that\npoetry, if rightly used, would be of benefit in the education of youth.\nBut there was little tendency to follow this to the conclusion of\nasserting that because poetry has a moral effect on the reader, it is the\npurpose of poetry as an art to exert this moral effect for the good of\nsociety. Most of these critics believed that the moral effect which poetry\ndid exert came through allegory. In this respect, as has been shown, they\nwere carrying on the traditions of the middle ages.\n\nThe opposing view derived ultimately from the classical rhetorics, and\nentered England through the criticism of the Italian\nscholars--particularly Minturno and Scaliger. Starting from the saying of\nHorace that poets aim to please or profit, or please and profit together,\nthese critics borrowed from rhetoric Cicero's three-fold aim of the\norator: to teach, to please, to move, and applied these three aims to the\npoet. Accordingly, to them the poet has the same aim as the\norator--persuasion. He pleases not for the sake of giving pleasure, but\nfor the sake of winning his readers so that he may better attain his real\nobject of teaching morality and moving men to action in its practice. The\nemphasis on the example as the means of attaining this end was further\nderived from scholastic philosophy which, as has been shown, classed\nlogic, rhetoric, and poetic together as instruments for attaining truth\nand improving the morality of the state. Furthermore, according to this\nscholastic view, the three arts differed only as they utilized different\nmeans to attain this end. Logic used the demonstrative syllogism and the\nscientific induction, rhetoric used the enthymeme or rhetorical syllogism\nand the example or popular induction, poetic used the example alone.\nAccording to the renaissance developments of this last view, allegory was\nemphasized less and less as the example was felt to be more appropriate.\nThus Sidney and Jonson, the outstanding classicists in English renaissance\ncriticism, exhibit to the highest degree the influence of the most\nrhetorical of Italian renaissance critics. They alone in England assert\nthat the purpose of poetry is to move men to virtuous action.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThus a study of rhetorical terminology in English renaissance theories of\npoetry throws into sharp relief the fact that all criticism of the fine\nart of literature in England in the 16th century and the first half of the\n17th century was profoundly influenced by rhetoric. This influence was\ntwo-fold. On the one hand the less scholarly critics perpetuated the\npopular traditions of rhetoric which they inherited from the middle ages.\nThese traditions of allegory and the ornate style were, as has been shown,\nin turn derived from post-classical rhetoric. On the other hand the more\nscholarly critics applied to poetry the canons of classical rhetoric which\nthey derived in part from the classics themselves and in part from the\ncritics of the Italian renaissance.\n\nIn one sense this has been a study of critical perversions. Although many\nof the critics of the English renaissance are remarkable for their wisdom\nand discerning judgments, their writings are far less valuable than those\nof Longinus and Aristotle. But Aristotle and Longinus did not allow their\ntheories of poetry to be contaminated by rhetoric. The best modern critics\nhave studied and understood the classical treatises on poetic and have\nconsequently avoided the confusion between rhetoric and poetic into which\nmany renaissance critics fell. Others have not been so fortunate. For\nthese the object-lesson of renaissance failure should serve as a warning.\n\n\n\n\nIndex\n\n\n\nAbelard\nAeschylus\nAesop\nAgathon\nAgricola, Rudolph\nAlanus de Insulis\nAlciati\nAlcidamas\nAlbucius\nAldus\nAlfarabi\nAlstedius\nAnaxagoras\nAnnaeus Florus\nAppian\nApsinus\nApthonius\nApuleius\nAristenetus\nAristophanes\nAristotle\nAristides\nAscham\nAthenagoras\nAugustine\nAverroes\n\nBacon, Francis\nBarclay, John\nBarton, John\nBasil the Great\nBede\nBokenham\nBoccaccio\nBolton, Edmund\nBornecque, Henri\nBoethius\nBrunetto Latini\nButcher, S.H.\nBuchanan, George\nBud\u00e9\nButler, Charles\n\nCan Grande\nCampano, G.\nCampion, Thomas\nCasaubon\nCassiodorus\nCastelvetro\nCastiglione\nCato\nCaussinus, N.\nChapman, G.\nChaucer\nChemnicensis, Georgius\nCicero\nClement of Alexandria\nCox, Leonard\nCroce, B.\nCroll, Morris\nCurio Fortunatus\n\nDaniel, Samuel\nDaniello\nDante\nDarwin, Charles\nDemetrius\nDemosthenes\nde Worde, Wynkyn\nDio Chrysostom\nDionysius of Halicarnassus\nDolce\nDrant, Thomas\nDrummond of Hawthornden\nDuBellay\nDucas\nDuCygne, M.\nDunbar, William\n\nEarle, John\nEastman, Max\nEmpedocles\nEmporio\nErasmus\nEratosthenes\nEstienne, Henri\nEtienne de Rouen\nEuripides\n\nFarnaby, Thomas\nFenner, Dudley\nFilelfo\nFraunce, Abraham\n\nGascoigne\nGeorge of Trebizond (Trapezuntius)\nGorgias\nGosson, Stephen\nGower\nGregory Nazianzen\nGuarino\nGuevara\n\nHall, Joseph\nHarington, John\nHarvey, Gabriel\nHawes, Stephen\nHeinsius, D.\nHenryson\nHeliodorus\nHerodotus\nHermagoras\nHermannus Allemanus\nHermogenes\nHilary of Poitiers\nHolland, P.\nHomer\nHorace\nHermas\nHesiod\nHeywood, John\n\nIsidore of Seville\nIsocrates\n\nJames I\nJames VI\nJerome\nJohn of Garland\nJohn of Salisbury\nJonson, Ben\nJulian\n\nKechermann\n\nLactantius\nLanghorne\nLipisius\nLivy\nLodge\nLombardus, B.\nLonginus\nLoyola\nLucan\nLucian\nLucretius\nLydgate, John\nLyly, John\nLyndesay, David.\nLysias\n\nMaggi\nMartial\nMartianus Capella\nMazzoni\nMelanchthon\nMenander\nMenenius Agrippa\nMilton\nMinturno\n\nNash, T.\nNewman, J.H.\nNorden, Eduard\nNorth, Sir Thomas\n\nOrigen\nOverbury, Thomas\nOvid\n\nPalmieri\nPazzi\nPeacham, Henry\nPetrarch\nPiccolomini\nPico della Mirandola\nPlato\nPlautus\nPliny\nPlutarch\nPoggio\nPontanus, Jacob\nPrickard, A. O.\nPuttenham\n\nQuintilian\n\nRabelais\nRamus, Peter\nReynolds, Henry\nRobortelli\nRonsard\nRufinus\n\nSappho\nSavonarola\nScaliger, J.C.\nSchelling, Felix\nSegni\nSeneca\nServatus Lupus\nShakespeare\nSherry, Richard\nSidney\nSidonius, Apollinaris\nSimonides\nSmith, John\nSoarez\nSocrates\nSopatrus\nSophocles\nSophron\nSpenser\nSpingarn, J.E.\nStanyhurst\nStesimbrotus of Thasos\nStrabo\nStrebaeus\nSturm, John\n\nTacitus\nTasso, B.\nTatian\nTerence\nTertullian\nTheognis of Rhegium\nTheon\nTheophilus\nTheophrastus\nThemistocles\nThomas Aquinas\nThomasin von Zirclaria\nTifernas\nTimocles\n\nValla\nValladero, A.\nVan Hook, L.\nVarchi\nVettore\nVicars, Thomas\nVictor, Julius\nVictorino, Mario\nVida\nVirgil\nVives, L.\nVossius (J.G. Voss)\nVossler, Karl\n\nWackernagel, Jacob\nWalton, John\nWatson, Thomas\nWebbe, William\nWhetstone, George\nWilliam of Malmesbury\nWilson, Thomas\n\nXenarchus\nXenophon\n\n\n\n\n\nFootnotes:\n\n\n\n[1] _Modern Philology_, Vol. XVI, No. 8, Dec., 1918.\n\n[2] _Poetics_, I, 8.\n\n[3] _Quomodo historia conscribenda sit_, 8.\n\n[4] _De institutione oratoria_, X, ii, 21.\n\n[5] _Poetik, Rhetorik, und Stilistik_ (Halle, 1886), pp. 14, 261.\n\n[6] _Poetry, with Reference to Aristotle's Poetics_, Ed. A.S. Cook\n(Boston, 1891), pp. 10-11.\n\n[7] _Estetica_ (Milano, 1902), I, II, and appendix.\n\n[8] _Enjoyment of Poetry_ (New York, 1916), p. 66.\n\n[9] Georges Renard, _La method scientifique de l'histoire litt\u00e9raire_.\n(Paris, 1900), p. 385.\n\n[10] III, 1.\n\n[11] I, 8; and IX, 2.\n\n[12] Prickard thinks Aristotle misread in this passage. According to\nPrickard, Aristotle means that poetry must be in meter, but that not all\nmeter is poetry. Aristotle's _Poetics_, p. 60. Most critics do not share\nPrickard's opinion.\n\n[13] _Ibid._, I, 6.\n\n[14] _Ibid._, IV, 2.\n\n[15] _Psychology_, ed. E. Wallace, III, 3, cf. also introd., p. 77, ff.\n\n[16] _Poetics_, I.\n\n[17] VII, 3.\n\n[18] VII, 5.\n\n[19] S.H. Butcher, _Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art_, p. 123.\nPoetics, II, 1.\n\n[20] III, 1.\n\n[21] _Ibid._, IX.\n\n[22] _Ibid._, IX, 3-4; of. XV, 6.\n\n[23] _Ibid._, X, 3.\n\n[24] _Ibid._, XXIV, 9-10.\n\n[25] Butcher, _op. cit._ p. 392.\n\n[26] _Poetics_, XVII.\n\n[27] VI, 18.\n\n[28] Longinus, _On the Sublime_, trans, by A. O. Prickard (Oxford, 1906) I\nand XXXIII. The treatise has been variously ascribed to the first and\nfourth centuries. A valuable edition of the text accompanied by\ntranslation and critical apparatus, was published by W. Rhys Roberts,\nCambridge University Press.\n\n[29] _Ibid._, VIII.\n\n[30] _Ibid._, X.\n\n[31] _Ibid._, XII.\n\n[32] _Ibid._, XV. This is almost exactly Aristotle's phrase in the\n_Rhetoric_.\n\n[33] _Ibid._\n\n[34] _Ibid_, X.\n\n[35] _De audiendis poetis_, VII, VIII.\n\n[36] III.\n\n[37] _Rhetoric_ (J. E. C. Welldon's trans., London, 1886), I, ii.\n\n[38] _Rhetoric_, I, i.\n\n[39] _Ibid._, I, i.\n\n[40] Wilkin's ed. of Cic. _De oratore_, introd. p. 56.\n\n[41] Cope, _Introduction to the Rhetoric of Aristotle_ (London, 1867), p.\n149.\n\n[42] _Ad Herennium_, I, 2. Published in the _Opera Rhetorica_ of Cicero,\nedited by W. Friedrich for Teubner (Leipzig, 1893), Vol. 1.\n\n[43] _De oratore_, I, 138.\n\n[44] _De institutione oratoria_, II, xv, 38.\n\n[45] _Ibid._, XI, i, 9-11. The \"vir bonus dicendi peritus\" is from Cato.\n\n[46] _Gorgias_, St. 453.\n\n[47] _Loci cit._\n\n[48] I, v.\n\n[49] I, 213.\n\n[50] _Op. cit._, I, 64.\n\n[51] _De inst. orat._, II, xxi, 4.\n\n[52] _Rhet._, I, ix.\n\n[53] _De inst. orat._, III, iv, 6.\n\n[54] _Ibid._, X, i, 28.\n\n[55] \u03b3\u03c1\u03b1\u03b8\u03b9\u03ba\u03ae, Rhet. III, xii.\n\n[56] _Orator_, 37-38.\n\n[57] _Rhet._, I, ix.\n\n[58] _Ad Herennium_, I, 2; Cicero, _De inventione_, I, vii. _De oratore_,\nI, 142; Quintilian, _De inst. orat._, III, iii, i.\n\n[59] Aristotle, _Rhetoric_, III, xiii-xix; Cicero, _Partit. orat._, 15.\n\n[60] See above, pp. 13-14.\n\n[61] Cicero, _De oratore_, I. 143; Quint., _De inst. orat._, III, ix.\n\n[62] I, 4. Cicero, also, _De invent._, I, xiv.\n\n[63] _Opera omnia_ (1622), p. 1028.\n\n[64] _De nuptiis_, 544-560.\n\n[65] _The Arte of Rhet._, p. 7.\n\n[66] _De inst. orat._, VIII, i, I\n\n[67] _De inst. orat._, VIII, vi, I ff.\n\n[68] _Rhetoric_, III, ii.\n\n[69] _Ibid._, III, xi.\n\n[70] _Enjoyment of Poetry_, pp. 76-78. The best classical treatments of\nstyle are to be found in Arist. _Rhet._, III; Cic., _Orat._; Quint., _De\ninst. orat._, VIII, x; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, _De comp. verb._; and\nDemetrius, _De elocutione_.\n\n[71] Sec. 54.\n\n[72] _Commentarioum Rhetoricorum libri_ IV, I, i, 3, in his _Opera_, III.\n(Amsterdam, 1697).\n\n[73] VI, 1.\n\n[74] _Rhet._, III, 1.\n\n[75] The six elements are Plot, Character, Thought, Diction, Spectacle,\nand Song. _Poetics_, VI, 7 and 16.\n\n[76] Butcher, _op. cit._, pp. 339-343.\n\n[77] _Poetics_, VI, 16, and XIX, 1-2.\n\n[78] _De inst. orat._, X, i, 46-51.\n\n[79] _De inventione_, I, xxiii, 33.\n\n[80] _Die antike kunstprosa_ (Leipzig, 1898), p. 884, note 3.\n\n[81] See above, p. 17.\n\n[82] _De optimo genere oratorum_, I, 3; _Orator_, 69; _De oratore_, II,\n28.\n\n[83] _De inst. orat._, VI, ii, 25-36.\n\n[84] _Poetics_, XVII, 2.\n\n[85] Arist. _Rhet._, III. xi; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, _De Lysia_, 7;\nQuintilian, VIII, iii, 62.\n\n[86] _Rhetoric_, III, i.\n\n[87] _Op. cit._, pp. 883-884.\n\n[88] La Rue Van Hook, \"Alcidamas _versus_ Isocrates,\" _Classical Weekly_,\nXII (Jan. 20, 1919), p. 90. Professor Van Hook here presents the only\nEnglish translation of Alcidamas, _On the Sophists_. Isocrates made his\nreply in his speech _On the Antidosis_.\n\n[89] _Rhetoric_, III, ii.\n\n[90] _Ibid._, III, viii.\n\n[91] _Orator_, 66-68.\n\n[92] _De oratore_, I, 70.\n\n[93] \"Verba prope poetarum,\" _ibid._, I, 128.\n\n[94] \"Id primum in poetis cerni licet, quibus est proxima cognatio cum\noratoribus.\" _De orat._, III, 27. cf. also I, 70.\n\n[95] Xenophon, _Banquet_, II, 11-14.\n\n[96] _Die antike kunstprosa_, pp. 75-79.\n\n[97] _De compositione verborum_, XXV-XXVI.\n\n[98] S\u00e9n\u00e8que le rheteur, _Controverses et suasoires_, ed. Henri Bornecque\n(Paris). Introduction pp. 20 ff.\n\n[99] _Ibid._\n\n[100] _Op. cit._ vol. II, p. 5.\n\n[101] _Dialogus_, 20.\n\n[102] _Op. cit._, Introd. p. 23.\n\n[103] Dionysius of Halicarnassus, _De comp. verb._, XXIII.\n\n[104] Hardie, _Lectures_, VII, p. 281.\n\n[105] _Quomodo historia conscribenda sit_, Sec. 8. Trans, of Lucian by\nH.W. Fowler and F.G. Fowler (Oxford, 4 vols., 1905).\n\n[106] Id quoque vitandum, in quo magna pars errat, ne in oratione poetas\net historicos, in illis operibus oratores aut declamatores imitandos\nputemus. _De inst. orat_, X, ii, 21.\n\n[107] Virgilius orator an poeta? quoted by Karl Vossler, _Poetische\nTheorien in der italienischen Fr\u00fchrenaissance_. (Berlin, 1900) p. 42, note\n2.\n\n[108] _Etymologiae_, II.\n\n[109] P. Abelson, _The Seven Liberal Arts_ (New York, 1906), p. 60, ff.\n\n[110] _Poetria magistri Johannis anglici de arte prosayca metrica et\nrithmica_, ed. by G. Mari, _Romanische Forschungen_ (1902), XIII, p. 883\nff.\n\n[111] _Ibid._, p. 894.\n\n[112] _Ibid._, p. 897.\n\n[113] Cf. G. L. Hendrickson, \"The Origin and Meaning of the Ancient\nCharacters of Style,\" _Am. Jour. of Phil._ (1905), xxvi, p. 249.\n\n[114] Cf. the _auctor ad Her._, I, 4, who gives them as exordium,\nnarratio, divisio, confirmatio, confutatio, conclusio.\n\n[115] _Ibid._, p. 918.\n\n[116] III, 3.\n\n[117] \"Rhetoric\u00e2, kleit unser rede mit varwe sch\u00f4ne.\" Ed. by H. R\u00fcckert,\n_Bibl. der Deutsch. Lit._, Vol. 30, 1. 8924.\n\n[118] Caius Sollius Apollinaris Sidonius (430-488) can be consulted in a\nmodern ed. by Paulus Mohr (Leipzig, 1895).\n\n[119] Doctrina dell' ornato parlare.\" Woodward, _Educ. in the Ren._ p. 75.\n\n[120] _Chron. Troy_ (1412-20), Prol. 57.\n\n[121] I am indebted to my friend Dr. Mark Van Doren for the transcript\nwhich I am here publishing.\n\n[122] _Mor. Fab._ Prol. 3. (c. 1580).\n\n[123] _Poems_, LXV, 10 (1500-20).\n\n[124] _Clerk's Prolog._ 32.\n\n[125] _Life of our Lady_ (1409-1411), (Caxton) lvii b.\n\n[126] Trans, of Boethius (1410), quoted by Skeat, _Chaucer_, II, xvii.\n\n[127] _Kingis Q._ (1423), CXCVII.\n\n[128] _Test. Papyngo_ (1530), II.\n\n[129] _Seyntys_ (1447), Roxb. 41.\n\n[130] _Serp. Devision_, c. iii b.\n\n[131] Reprinted from the ed. of 1555 for the Percy Society (London, 1845),\np. 2.\n\n[132] _Ibid._, p. 55.\n\n[133] _Ibid._, p. 28.\n\n[134] _See_ p. 27.\n\n[135] _Ibid._, p. 37.\n\n[136] _Ibid._, p. 46.\n\n[137] \"Proximum grammatice docet, quae emendate & aperte loquendi vim\ntradit: Proximum _rhetorice, quae ornatum orationis cultum que & omnes\ncapiendarum aurium illecebras invenit_. Quod reliquum igitur est videbitur\nsibi dialectice vendicare, probabliter dicere de qualibet re, quae\ndeducitur in orationem.\" _De inventione dialectica_ (Paris, 1535), II, 2.\ncf. also II, 3.\n\nCf. \"_Gram_ loquitur; _Dia_ vera docet; _Rhet_ verba colorat.\" Nicolaus de\nOrbellis (d. 1455), quoted by Sandys, p. 644.\n\n[138] _Ibid._, I, 1.\n\n[139] _Rule of Reason_ (1551), p. 5. Fraunce, _Lawiers Logike_, takes the\nsame view.\n\n[140] _Dialecticae libri duo_, A. Talaei praelectionibus illustrati\n(Paris, 1560), I, 2.\n\n[141] _Rule of Reason_, p. 3.\n\n[142] Wilkins introd. to Cic. _De orat._, p. 57.\n\n[143] _De inst. orat._, VI., v, 1-2.\n\n[144] Printed in London by John Day, without a date. The dedication is\ndated Dec. 13, 1550. The title page says it was \"written fyrst in\nLatin--by Erasmus.\"\n\n[145] Ascribed to Dudley Tenner by Foster Watson, _The English Grammar\nSchools_ (Cambridge, 1908), p. 89.\n\n[146] Chapter IX.\n\n[147] Thomas Heywood, _Apology for Actors_ (London, 1612), in _Pub. Shak.\nSoc._, Vol. III, p. 29.\n\n[148] Book I, ch. 1.\n\n[149] \"Rhetorica est ars ornate dicendi.\" _Rhetoricae libri duo quorum\nprior de tropis & figuris, posterior de voce & gestu praecepit: in usum\nscholarum postremo recogniti._ (London, 1629)\n\n[150] _The Art of Rhetorick concisely and completely handled, exemplified\nout of Holy Writ_, etc. (London, 1634)\n\n[151] Dekker and Middleton, _The Roaring Girl_, III, 3.\n\n[152] Dekker, III, 1.\n\n[153] Spingarn, _Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century_, I, 2.\n\n[154] \u03c7\u03b5\u03b9\u03c1\u03b1\u03b3\u03c9\u03b3\u03b9\u03b1 _Manductio ad Artem Rhetoricam ante paucos annos\nin privatum scholarium usum concinnata_ (London, 1621). \"Rhetorica est ars\nrecte dicendi, etc.\"\n\n[155] Norden, _op. cit._, pp. 699-703.\n\n[156] A.C. Clark, _Ciceronianism_, in _Eng. Lit. and the Classics_, ed.\nGordon (Oxford, 1912), p. 128.\n\n[157] Woodward, _Educ. in the Ren._, p. 45.\n\n[158] Erasmus, _Dialogus, cui titulus ciceronianus, sive, de optimo\ndicendi genere_, in _Opera omnia_ (Lugduni Batavorum, 1703), I. It was\ncomposed in 1528.\n\n[159] _Arte of Rhet._, p. 109.\n\n[160] I, 4. Wilson follows the analysis on p. 7.\n\n[161] I, x, 17.\n\n[162] _An Apology for Actors_, p. 29.\n\n[163] This count is based on the Cicero MSS. listed by P. Deschamps,\n_Essai bibliographique sur M. T. Ciceron_ (Paris. 1863). Appendix.\n\n[164] H. Rashdall, _Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages_ (Oxford,\n1895), I, 249.\n\n[165] J. E. Sandys, _History of Classical Scholarship_, p. 590.\n\n[166] Sandys, p. 624 _seq._\n\n[167] Deschamps, _op. cit._, pp. 59-63.\n\n[168] Arber reprint, p. 124.\n\n[169] M. Schwab, _Bibliographie d'Aristote_ (Paris, 1896).\n\n[170] Rashdall, II, 457.\n\n[171] Fierville, C. _M. F. Quintiliani de institutione oratorio, liber\nprimus_ (Paris, 1890). Introduction, xiv-xxxii. M. Fierville prints for\nthe first time the complete texts of these abridgments in an appendix.\n\n[172] Arber, p. 95.\n\n[173] The pseudo-Demetrius, author of the _De elecutione_.\n\n[174] P. 316.\n\n[175] Sandys, _History of Classical Scholarship_, pp. 541-2.\n\n[176] M. Schwab, _op. cit._\n\n[177] _Poetische Theorien in der italienischen Fr\u00fchrenaissance_ (Berlin,\n1900), p. 88.\n\n[178] _Defense_, in Smith, I, 196-197.\n\n[179] Vossius, _De artis poeticae natura_, II, 3-4.\n\n[180] _Poetics_, I, 2.\n\n[181] _Poetica_, 23, 190.\n\n[182] _De artis poeticae natura_, II, 4.\n\n[183] _Euphues_, edited by M. W. Croll and H. Clemens (New York), Introd.\niv.\n\n[184] Preface to Maggi's _Aristotle_ (1550), p. 2.\n\n[185] Prolog. _ibid._, p. 15.\n\n[186] Spingarn, p. 312.\n\n[187] Jacob Pontanus, S. J., _Poeticarum institutionum libri tres_\n(Ingolstadi, 1594), p. 36.\n\n[188] _Ibid_, p. 81.\n\n[189] \"Tres autem sunt virtutes narrationis, brevitas, perspicuitas,\nprobabilitas. Secundam & tertiam diligentissime consectabitur Epicus,\nearumque rationem a Rhetoricae magistris percepiet,\" p. 72. These three\nvirtues of a \"narratio\" are based on the analysis of the _Rhetorica ad\nAlexandrum_.\n\n[190] Arist., _Rhet._, III. 16.\n\n[191] _Op. cit_,, p. 26.\n\n[192] Spingarn, p. 313.\n\n[193] _Lit. Crit._, p. 255.\n\n[194] _Ibid._, p. 262.\n\n[195] Arber, pp. 138-141.\n\n[196] Spingarn, pp. 174, 256.\n\n[197] Smith, I, 48.\n\n[198] Smith, I, 59.\n\n[199] _Ibid._, p. 60.\n\n[200] I, 2.\n\n[201] II, 12.\n\n[202] IV, 63.\n\n[203] _Topics_, 83.\n\n[204] VI, ii, 8 _seq._ Quintilian also uses the Greek terms.\n\n[205] X, i, 46-131.\n\n[206] _Op. cit._, pp. 275-398.\n\n[207] II, 154 seq.\n\n[208] P. 187.\n\n[209] G.S. Gordon, \"Theophrastus\" in _Eng. Lit. and the Classics_, p.\n49-86.\n\n[210] Smith, I, 128\n\n[211] _Ibid._, 130-131.\n\n[212] Cf. Spingarn, pp. 298-304, for a good account of reformed versifying\nin England.\n\n[213] Smith, I, 137.\n\n[214] John Northbrooke anticipated Gosson by two years in his attack on\nthe stage, but did not include poets in his title.\n\n[215] Spingam, pp. 256-258.\n\n[216] Smith, I, 158.\n\n[217] _Ibid._, I, 172.\n\n[218] _Ibid._, I, 185.\n\n[219] _Ibid._, I, 158-159.\n\n[220] _Ibid._, I, 160.\n\n[221] I, 183.\n\n[222] I, 201.\n\n[223] Arist. _Rhet._, III, 2; Quint. VIII, iii. 62; Scaliger, iii, 25. Cf.\nante p. 33.\n\n[224] _De aug._ II, 13.\n\n[225] See pp. 18, 19.\n\n[226] I, 203.\n\n[227] I, 202.\n\n[228] Smith, I, 227-228.\n\n[229] I, 256.\n\n[230] I, 231.\n\n[231] I, 247-248.\n\n[232] I, i.\n\n[233] I, ii.\n\n[234] I, viii.\n\n[235] I, iv.\n\n[236] La Rue Van Hook, \"Greek Rhetorical Terminology in Puttenham's _The\nArte of English Poesie.\" Trans. of the Am. Phil. Ass._ (1914) XLV, 111.\nPuttenham was also familiar with the _ad Herennium_ and with _Cicero_.\n\n[237] (Philadelphia, 1891), p. 59.\n\n[238] III, i.\n\n[239] III, xix, p. 206 Arber reprint; of. also p. 230, on the figure\n_Merismus_ or the Distributor, and the remainder of the chapter.\n\n[240] Smith, II, 249, 282.\n\n[241] _Ibid_, II, 274.\n\n[242] Preface to Homer, in Spingarn, _Critical Essays of the Seventeenth\nCentury_, I, 81.\n\n[243] Spingarn, I, 5.\n\n[244] _Literary Criticism in the Seventeenth Century, Introduction_, I,\nxiii.\n\n[245] _Timber_, Sec. 128. Cf. _Pastime of Pleasure_, VIII, 29.\n\n[246] Spingarn, I, 211.\n\n[247] _Timber_, Sec. 109.\n\n[248] _Timber_, Sees. 132-133.\n\n[249] Spingarn, I, 214.\n\n[250] _Ibid._, p. 210, 213.\n\n[251] Vossler, _op. cit._, p. 48.\n\n[252] Spingarn, I, 107.\n\n[253] _Ibid._, I, 142.\n\n[254] _Ibid._, I, 182.\n\n[255] _Ibid._, I, 188, 185.\n\n[256] Spingarn, I, 206.\n\n[257] Pseudo-Demetrius, _De elocutione_.\n\n[258] The _De sublimitate_.\n\n[259] _De sublimitate_, VIII.\n\n[260] Spingarn, I, 206.\n\n[261] _Reason of Church Government_ (1641), in Spingarn, I, 194.\n\n[262] _Introd. to Eliz. Crit. Essays_, I, lxx.\n\n[263] Pp. 23-25.\n\n[264] VI, 2.\n\n[265] Poetica est facultas videndi quodcunque accommodatum est ad\nimitationem cuiusque actionis, affectionis, moris, suavi sermone, ad vitam\ncorrigendam & ad bene beateque vivendum comparata. _Praefatio_ to\n_Maggi's_ ed. of the _Poetics_ (1550), p. 9.\n\n[266] Spingarn, p. 35.\n\n[267] La poetica \u00e8 una facolt\u00e0, la quale insegna in quai modi si debba\nimitare qualunque azione, affetto e costume, con numero, sermone ed\narmonia; mescolatamente a di per s\u00e8, per remuovere gli uomini dai vizi e\naccendergli alle virt\u00f9, affine che conseguano la perfezione e beatitudine\nloro. _Lezione della poetica_ (1590) in _Opere_ (Trieste, 1859), II, 687.\n\n[268] Verses 1008-1010.\n\n[269] Verse 1055.\n\n[270] _The Women at the Feast of Bacchus_, quoted by Emile Egger,\n_L'Histoire de la Critique chez les Grecs_ (Paris, 1886), p. 74.\n\n[271] _Protagoras_, 325-326, Jowett's translation.\n\n[272] _Republic_, 596-598.\n\n[273] _Ibid._, 605-606.\n\n[274] _Ibid._, 607\n\n[275] _Laws_, 663.\n\n[276] _Poetics_, IV, 2.\n\n[277] _Ibid._, VI, 15.\n\n[278] _Ibid._, VII.\n\n[279] _Ibid._, IX, 7.\n\n[280] _Ibid._, XIII. Cf. also XXVI.\n\n[281] _Ibid._, XXIV.\n\n[282] _Ibid._, XXVI.\n\n[283] _Politics_, V, v.\n\n[284] _Poetics_, VI. (Butcher). Cf. Butcher's _Aristotle's Theory of Fine\nArt_, Chapter VI, for a full discussion of katharsis.\n\n[285] _Politics_, V, vii.\n\n[286] _Poetics_, XIII.\n\n[287] _Panegyric_, \u00a7 159.\n\n[288] _Symposium_, III, 5.\n\n[289] _Geography_, I, ii, 3. Trans, by H. C. Hamilton (Bohn ed, London,\n1854), 1, 24-25.\n\n[290] _De audiendis poetis_, trans, by F.M. Padelford under the title\n_Essays on the Study and Use of Poetry_ (New York, 1902), I. Cf. also\nJulian, _Epistle_ 42.\n\n[291] _Ibid._\n\n[292] _Ibid._ XIV. Cf. Harrington in Smith's _Eliz. Crit. Essays_, II,\n197-198.\n\n[293] _Ibid._ XII. Cf. Chemnicensis, _Canons_, LII, in Smith, I, 421.\n\n[294] _Ibid._, IV. Cf. Aristotle, _Rhetoric_, II, xx.\n\n[295] _Ibid._, III.\n\n[296]\n\n  Aut prodesse volunt, aut delectare poetae\n  Aut simul et jucunda et idonea dicere vitae\n\n         *       *       *       *       *\n\n  Centuriae seniorum agitant expertia frugis;\n  Celsi praetereunt austera poemata Rhamnes:\n  Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci,\n  Lectorem delectando, periterque monendo.\n  Hic meret aera liber Sosiis; hic et mare transit,\n  Et longum noto scriptori prorogat aevum.\n\n\n_Ad Pisonem_, 333-334, 342-346.\n\n[297] _Epistles_, II, i, 11. 126 ff. Conington's trans.\n\n[298] _Metamorphoses_, X, 2.\n\n[299] _De rerum natura_, I, 936-950.\n\n[300] _Phaedrus_. See also _Republic_, II.\n\n[301] _How to Study Poetry_, IV.\n\n[302] Cf. Cicero, _De nat. deor._ i, 15-38 ff., and Hatch, _Hibbert\nLectures_, 1888, Ch. III.\n\n[303] A. Schlemm, _De fontibus Plutarchi commentationum De aud. poet._\n(G\u00f6ttingen, 1893), pp. 32-36.\n\n[304] \"Iam cum confluxerunt plures continuae tralationes, alia plane fit\noratio; itaque genus hoc Graeci appellant \u1f00\u03bb\u03bb\u03b7\u03b3\u03bf\u03c1\u03af\u03b1\u03bd nomine recte genere\nmelius ille qui ista omnia tralationes vocat.\" _Orator_, 94. Cf. _Ad.\nAtt._ ii, 20, 3.\n\n[305] Quintilian, VIII, vi, 44. Isidore, _Etym._ I, xxxvii, 22.\n\n[306] _De doctrina christiana_ (397), III, 29, 40.\n\n[307] _Confessions_ (Watts's trans.), III. vi., Lionardo Bruni, _De\nstudiis et literis_ (1405), uses the same argument to defend poetry.\n\n[308] Terence, _Eun._ 585-589, shows a young man justifying his vices on\nthis ground.\n\n[309] _Poetics_, IX.\n\n[310] _Literary Criticism_, p. 18.\n\n[311] _Rhet._ II, xxi.\n\n[312] _Rhetoric_, II, xx. (Weldon's translation).\n\n[313] _De inst. orat._ V, xi, 6, 19.\n\n[314] Edited from the edition of 1560 by G.H. Mair (Oxford, 1909), p. 198.\n\n[315] _Ibid._, p. 3.\n\n[316] \"Docere debitum est, delectare honorarium, permovere necessarium.\"\n_De optimo genere oratorum_, I, 3. He gives the same threefold aims as \"ut\nprobet, ut delectet, ut flectet,\" in the _Orator_, 69; and in the _De\noratore_, II, 121.\n\n[317] _Vide_ pp. 136-137.\n\n[318] Cf. _ante_, I, iv.\n\n[319] _Controv._ II, 2 (10). Bornecque ed., I, 145-148.\n\n[320] Quoted by Padelford, p. 36.\n\n[321] _Orat._ xi, p. 308.\n\n[322] Padelford, _op. cit._ pp. 39-43.\n\n[323] Karl Vossler, _Poetische Theorien in der italienischen\nFr\u00fchrenaissance_ (Berlin, 1900), pp. 5, 18, 45.\n\n[324] Boethius, _De consolatione philosophiae_, Book I, prose 1. Boethius\nlived 480-524. Cf. Skeat, _Chaucer_, II, introd. xiv ff. for references to\nthe surprising number of translations in most European languages\nthroughout the Middle Ages. The most famous are, perhaps, those of \u00c6lfred,\nNotker, and Chaucer.\n\n[325] _Ibid_, Book V, prose v.\n\n[326] \"Quidam autem poetae Theologici dicti sunt, quoniam de diis carmina\nfaciebant. Officium autem poetae in eo est ut ea, quae vere gesta sunt, in\nalias species obliquis figurationibus cum decore aliquo conversa\ntransducant.\" _Etym._ VIII, vii, 9-10.\n\n[327] \"Fabulas poetae quasdam delectandi causa finxerunt, quasdam ad\nnaturam rerum, nonnullas ad mores hominum interpretati sunt.\" _Etym._ I,\nxl, 3.\n\n[328] \"Una verita ascosa sotto bella menzogna.\" II, 1.\n\n[329] _Epistle_, X, 11, 160-1. Quoted by Wicksteed, _Temple Classics_, pp.\n66-67.\n\n[330] \"Vesta di figura o di colore rettorico.\" _La Vita Nuova_, XXV.\n\n[331] See above, pp. 45-47.\n\n[332] \"Per nimpham fingitur caro, per iuvenem coruptorem mundus vel\ndyabolus, per proprium amicum ratio.\" _Poetria magistri Johannis anglici\nde arte prosayca metrica et rithmica_. Ed. by G. Mari, Romanische\nForschungen (1902) XIII, 894.\n\n[333] \"Est furor Eacides ire sathanas,\" _Ibid_, p. 913.\n\n[334] See above, pp. 51-55.\n\n[335] _Pastime of Pleasure_, p. 29.\n\n[336] _Ibid._, p. 38.\n\n[337] _Ibid._, p. 54; see further above, p. 54.\n\n[338] Cf. ante, pp. 97-99.\n\n[339] _Lit. Crit._, p. 47-59.\n\n[340] _Ibid._, p. 58.\n\n[341] I _anal._ 1a.\n\n[342] _Lit. Crit._, p. 25.\n\n[343] Andr\u00e9 Schimberg, _L'education morale dans les coll\u00e8ges de la\ncompagnie de J\u00e9sus en France_ (Paris, 1913). p. 138.\n\n[344] _Opus de divisione, ordine, ac utilitate omnium scientiarum, in\npoeticen apologeticum_. Autore fratre Hieronymo Savonarola (Venetiis,\n1542), IV, pp. 36-55. Savonarola died in 1498.\n\n[345] Cartier, \"L'Esthetique de Savonarola,\" in Didron's _Annales\nArchoelogiques_ (1847). vii, 255 ff.\n\n[346] \"Rhetorica, Poeticaque contra: quod non adeo vere ac proprie Logicae\nappellantur, neque, syllogismo fere, sed exemplo atque enthymemate,\nrationibus quasi popularibus utuntur....\" Poetic, furthermore, differs\nfrom rhetoric, \"neque usurpat enthymema fere, sed exemplum.\" Vincentius\nMadius et Bartholomaeus Lombardus. In _Aristotelis Librum de poetica\ncommunes explanationes_ (Venetiis, 1550), pp. 8-9.\n\n[347] \"Onde come il loico usa per suo mezzo il pi\u00f9 nobile strumento, ci\u00f2 \u00e8\nla dimostrazione o vero il sillogismo dimonstrativo; cosi usa il\ndialettico il sillogismo topico; il sofista il sofistico, ci\u00f2 \u00e8 apparente\ned ingannevole: il retore l'entimema, e il poeta l'esempio, il quale \u00e8 il\nmeno degno di tutti gli altri. \u00c9 adunque il subbietto della poetica il\nfavellare finto e favoloso, ed il suo mezzo o strumento l'esempio.\" _Delia\nPoetica in Generale, Lezione Una _ I, 2. _Opere_ (Trieste, 1850), II, 684.\nIn his paraphrase of this passage and in his comments, Spingarn (_Lit.\nCrit._ pp. 25-26) misunderstands both his author and his rhetoric when he\nsays, \"The subject of poetry is fiction, or invention, arrived at by means\nof that form of the syllogism known as the example. Here the enthymeme or\nexample, which Aristotle has made the instrument of rhetoric, becomes the\ninstrument of poetry.\"\n\n[348] _Rhet._ I, ii.\n\n[349] \"Nimirum arbitrantur, quemadmodum Rhetorice ab Aristotele ipso\nappellatur particula Dialecticae; idque propterea, quod doceat rationem,\nqua enthymema applicetur ad materiam civilem: ita & Poeticen esse Logices\npartem, quia aperit exempli usum in materia ficta ... at Rhetorice, &\nPoetice, non solum docere student, sed etiam delectare; nec cognitionem\ntantum spectant, sed & actionem. Quamquam vero hoc commune habet cum\nRhetorica, quod utraque sit famula Politicae.\" Gerardi Joannis Vossii, _De\nartis poeticae, natura, ac constitutions liber_, cap VII, in _Opera_\n(Amsterdam, 1697), III.\n\n[350] \"Inductio delectat, et est vulgo apta, propter similitudines et\nexempla. Hanc argumentationem frequentant Rhetores et Poetae, praesertim\nOvidius; quia venuste ac perspicue explicat argumenta.\" I, ii.\n\n[351] _Vide_, pp. 103-104.\n\n[352] _Vide_, pp. 119-120.\n\n[353] _Poetica_ (Vinegia, 1536), p. 25. Spingarn, p. 48.\n\n[354] \"Sic dicere versibus, ut doccat, ut delectet, ut moveat.\" _De\npoeta_, p. 102.\n\n[355] _Rhetoric_, I, ii.\n\n[356] XII, i, 1.\n\n[357] _De poeta_, p. 79. Vossius echoes the same idea from the same\nrhetorical source.\n\n[358] \"Sed & docendi, & movendi, & delectandi.\" _Poetice_ (1561), III,\nxcvii.\n\n[359] _Ibid._, I, i.\n\n[360] _Arte of Rhet._ p. 176.\n\n[361] These two names were frequently connected in the renaissance.\n\n[362] _Ibid_, p. 195.\n\n[363] _Arber Reprint_ (London, 1870), p. 151.\n\n[364] _Ibid._, pp. 142-143.\n\n[365] _Ibid._, p. 80.\n\n[366] _Vide_, p. 132.\n\n[367] _Vide_, pp. 77-78.\n\n[368] Smith, _Eliz. Crit. Essays_, I, 48.\n\n[369] Croll, Introd. to ed. of _Euphues_ (New York, 1916), p. vii.\n\n[370] Smith, I, 60.\n\n[371] _School of Abuse_ (Pub. of the Shak. Soc., 1841), Vol, 2, p. 15.\n\n[372] _Ibid._, pp. 20, 25, 29.\n\n[373] Smith, I, 65.\n\n[374] Smith, I, 73.\n\n[375] Smith, I, 76.\n\n[376] Smith, I, 83.\n\n[377] _Vide_, pp. 86-87.\n\n[378] _Lit. Crit. in the Ren._ 2d ed., pp. 269-274.\n\n[379] Smith, I, 158-160.\n\n[380] _Ibid._, 160.\n\n[381] _Ibid._, I, 159.\n\n[382] _Ibid._, I, 171.\n\n[383] _Ibid._, p. 172.\n\n[384] Cf. above, p. 138.\n\n[385] _De inst. orat._, V, xi, 19.\n\n[386] _Arte of Rhet._, p. 198.\n\n[387] _Ibid._, I, 157.\n\n[388] Smith, I, 169.\n\n[389] _Rhetoric_, II, xx.\n\n[390] Smith, I, 173.\n\n[391] Cf. St. Augustine, _Confessions_, III, vi.\n\n[392] Smith, I, 187. Cf. Arist. _Rhet._ I, i, and Quint. _De inst. orat._\nII, xvi, who defend rhetoric on the same ground. Sidney's \"with a sword\nthou maist kill thy Father, and with a sword thou maist defende thy Prince\nand Country\" is in Quintilian.\n\n[393] See also p. 38.\n\n[394] Smith, II, 208.\n\n[395] Smith, II, 201.\n\n[396] _Ibid._\n\n[397] _De audiendis poetis_, XIV. Plutarch believed that poetry gained\nthis end by enunciating moral and philosophical _sententiae_, not by\nallegory, which Plutarch made sport of.\n\n[398] See pp. 87-89.\n\n[399] Smith, I, 250-252.\n\n[400] Smith, I, 232.\n\n[401] Smith, I, 238-239.\n\n[402] Smith, I, 235-236.\n\n[403] Smith, I, 248-249.\n\n[404] _Vide_, pp. 89-92.\n\n[405] Smith, II, 25.\n\n[406] Smith, II, 115-116.\n\n[407] Smith, II, 160.\n\n[408] Smith, II, 32-40.\n\n[409] Smith, II, 41-42.\n\n[410] _Ibid._\n\n[411] Woodward, _Educ. in the Ren._ p. 135.\n\n[412] Krapp, _Rise of Eng. Lit. Prose_ (New York, 1915), pp. 408-409.\n\n[413] _Vide_, pp. 91-92.\n\n[414] Spingarn, _Crit. Essays of the 17th Century_, I, 98, 99.\n\n[415] Springarn, I, 6.\n\n[416] Spingarn, I, 6-8.\n\n[417] The author's prolog to the first book.\n\n[418] Spingarn, I, 170.\n\n[419] Spingarn, I, 50; for Jonson see also pp. 93-96.\n\n[420] Spingarn, I, 29.\n\n[421] _Ibid._, 51-52.\n\n[422] _Ibid._, p. 55. Cf. Cicero, _ante_ p. 37.\n\n[423] Ded. to _Volpone_, Spingarn, I. 15.\n\n[424] _Ibid._\n\n[425] Spingarn, I, 28-29.\n\n[426] Ded to _Volpone_, Spingarn, I, 12.\n\n[427] Smith, II, 306.\n\n[428] Spingarn, I, 67.\n\n[429] Spingarn, I, 117-120.\n\n[430] A.H. Tieje, _Theory of Characterization in Prose Fiction Prior to_\n1740 (Minneapolis, 1916), p. 14.\n\n[431] Spingarn, I, 186-187.","title":"Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance: A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":45705}