Pinciano, was physician to Charles V., and it was therefore written, in all probability, many years before it appeared from the press. The title is rather quaint, Philosophia Antigua Poetica, and it is written in the form of letters. Pinciano is the first who discovered the Poetics of Aristotle, which he had diligently studied, to be a fragment of a larger work, as is now generally admitted. "Whenever Lopez Pinciano," says Bouterwek, "abandons Aristotle, his notions respecting the different poetic styles are as confused as those of his contemporaries; and only a few of his notions and distinctions can be deemed of importance at the present day. But his name is deserving of honourable remembrance, for he was the first writer of modern times who endeavoured to establish a philosophic art of poetry; and, with all his veneration for Aristotle, he was the first scholar who ventured to think for himself, and to go somewhat farther than his master.”* The Art of Poetry, by Juan de la Cueva, is a poem of the didactic class, containing some information as to the history of Spanish verse. The other critical treatises which appeared in Spain about this time seem to be of little importance; but we know by the writings of Cervantes, that the poets of the age of Philip were, as usual, followed by the animal for whose natural prey they are designed, the sharp-toothed and keen-scented critic.

French

criticism.

31. France produced very few books of the same class. The Institutiones Oratoriæ of Omer Talon is an treatises of elementary and short treatise of rhetoric. Baillet and Goujet give some praise to the Art of Poetry by Pelletier, published in 1555. § The treatise of Henry Stephens, on the Conformity of the French Language with the Greek, is said to contain very good observations. But it must be (for I do not recollect to have seen it) rather a book of grammar than of superior criticism. The Rhetorique Française of Fouquelin (1555) seems to be little else than a summary of rhetorical figures. That of Courcelles, in

* Hist. of Span. Lit. p. 323.

Pelletier had previously rendered Ho

+ It is printed entire in the eighth race's Art of Poetry into French verse, volume of Parnaso Español.

Gilbert, Maîtres de l'Eloquence,

id. 66.

Baillet, iii. 353.
Gibert, p. 184.

1557, is not much better.* than to poetry. From the number of versifiers in France, and the popularity of Ronsard and his school, we might have expected a larger harvest of critics. Pasquier, in his valuable miscellany, Les Recherches de la France, has devoted a few pages to this subject, but not on an extensive or systematic plan; nor can the two Bibliothèques Françaises, by La Croix du Maine and Verdier, both published in 1584, though they contain a great deal of information as to the literature of France, with some critical estimates of books, be reckoned in the class to which we are now adverting.

All these relate rather to prose

Wilson's Art

rique.

32. Thomas Wilson, afterwards secretary of state, and much employed under Elizabeth, is the author of an "Art of Rhetorique," dated in the preface January, of Rheto1553. The rules in this treatise are chiefly from Aristotle, with the help of Cicero and Quintilian, but his examples and illustrations are modern. Warton says that it is the first system of criticism in our language.† But in common use of the word it is no criticism at all, any more than the treatise of Cicero de Oratore; it is what it professes to be, a system of rhetoric in the ancient manner; and, in this sense, it had been preceded by the work of Leonard Cox, which has been mentioned in another place. Wilson was a man of considerable learning, and his Art of Rhetorique is by no means without merit. He deserves praise for censuring the pedantry of learned phrases, or, as he calls them, "strange inkhorn terms," advising men "to speak as is commonly received;" and he censures also what was not less pedantic, the introduction of a French or Italian idiom, which the travelled English affected in order to show their politeness, as the scholars did the former to prove their erudition. Wilson had before published an Art of Logic.

Webbe.

33. The first English criticism, properly speaking, that I find, is a short tract by Gascoyne, doubtless the poet Gascoyne; of that name, published in 1575; "Certain Notes of Instruction concerning the making of Verse or Rhyme in English." It consists only of ten pages, but the observations are judicious. Gascoyne recommends that the sentence should,

*Gibert, p. 366. VOL. II.

P

↑ Hist. of Engl. Poetry, iv. 157.

as far as possible, be finished at the close of two lines in the couplet measure.* Webbe, author of a "Discourse of English Poetry" (1586), is copious in comparison with Gascoyne, though he stretches but to seventy pages. His taste is better shown in his praise of Spenser for the Shepherd's Kalendar, than of Gabriel Harvey for his "reformation of our English verse;" that is, by forcing it into uncouth Latin measures, which Webbe has himself most unhappily attempted.

Puttenham's

34. A superior writer to Webbe was George Puttenham, whose "Art of English Poesie," published in 1589, Art of Poesie. is a small quarto of 258 pages in three books. It is in many parts very well written, in a measured prose, rather elaborate and diffuse. He quotes occasionally a little Greek. Among the contemporary English poets, Puttenham extols "for eclogue and pastoral poetry Sir Philip Sidney and Master Chaloner, and that other gentleman who wrote the late Shepherd's Kalendar. For ditty and amorous ode I find Sir Walter Rawleigh's vein most lofty, insolent, [probably uncommon?] and passionate; Master Edward Dyer for elegy most sweet, solemn, and of high conceit; Gascon [Gascoyne] for a good metre and for a plentiful vein; Phaer and Golding for a learned and well-connected verse, specially in translation, clear, and very faithfully answering their author's intent. Others have also written with much facility, but more commendably perhaps, if they had not written so much nor so popularly. But last in recital and first in degree is the queen our sovereign lady, whose learned, delicate, noble muse easily surmounteth all the rest that have written before her time or since, for sense, sweetness, and subtilty, be it in ode, elegy, epigram, or any other kind of poem, heroic or lyric, wherein it shall please her majesty to employ her pen, even by so much odds as her own excellent estate and degree exceedeth all the rest of her most humble vassals." On this it may be remarked, that the only specimen of Elizabeth's poetry which, as far as I know, remains, is pro

Gascoyne, with all the other early English critics, was republished in a collection by Mr. Haslewood in two volumes, 1811 and 1815.

† Puttenham, p. 51. of Haslewood's edition, or in Censura Literaria, i.

348.

Poesy.

digiously bad. In some passages of Puttenham, we find an approach to the higher province of philosophical criticism. 35. These treatises of Webbe and Puttenham may have been preceded in order of writing, though not of Sidney's publication, by the performance of a more illustrious Defence of author, Sir Philip Sidney. His Defence of Poesy was not published till 1595. The Defence of Poesy has already been reckoned among the polite writings of the Elizabethan age, to which class it rather belongs than to that of criticism; for Sidney rarely comes to any literary censure, and is still farther removed from any profound philosophy. His sense is good, but not ingenious, and the declamatory

tone weakens its effect.

SECT. III. ON WORKS OF FICTION.

Novels and Romances in Italy and Spain - Sidney's Arcadia.

Bandello;

36. THE novels of Bandello, three parts of which were published in 1554, and a fourth in 1573, are perhaps Novels of the best known and the most admired in that species of composition after those of Boccaccio. They have been censured as licentious, but are far less so than any of preceding times, and the reflections are usually of a moral cast. These, however, as well as the speeches, are very tedious. There is not a little predilection in Bandello for sanguinary stories. Ginguéné praises these novels for just sentiments, adherence to probability, and choice of interesting subjects. In these respects, we often find a superiority in the older novels above those of the nineteenth century, the golden age, as it is generally thought, of fictitious story. But, in the management of these subjects, the Italian and Spanish novelists show little skill; they are worse cooks of better meat; they exert no power over the emotions beyond what the intrinsic nature of the events related must produce; they sometimes describe well, but with no great imagination; they have no strong conception of character, no deep acquaintance

Ellis's Specimens, ii. 162.

with mankind, not often much humour, no vivacity and spirit of dialogue.

of Cinthio;

37. The Hecatomithi, or Hundred Tales, of Giraldi Cinthio have become known in England by the recourse that Shakspeare has had to them in two instances, Cymbeline and Measure for Measure, for the subjects of his plays. Cinthio has also borrowed from himself in his own tragedies. He is still more fond of dark tales of blood than Bandello. He seems consequently to have pos sessed an unfortunate influence over the stage; and to him, as well as his brethren of the Italian novel, we trace those scenes of improbable and disgusting horror, from which, though the native taste and gentleness of Shakspeare for the most part disdained such helps, we recoil in almost all the other tragedians of the old English school. Of the remaining Italian novelists that belong to this period, it is enough to mention Erizzo, better known as one of the founders of medallic science. His Sei Giornate contain thirty-six novels, called Avvenimenti. They are written with intolerable prolixity, but in a pure and even elevated tone of morality. This character does not apply to the novels of Lasca.

of the

Queen of

Navarre.

38. The French novels, ascribed to Margaret Queen of Navarre, and first published in 1558, with the title "Histoire des Amans fortunés," are principally taken from the Italian collections or from the fabliaux of the trouveurs. Though free in language, they are written in a much less licentious spirit than many of the former, but breathe throughout that anxiety to exhibit the clergy, especially the regulars, in an odious or ridiculous light, which the principles of their illustrious authoress might lead us to expect. Belleforest translated, perhaps with some variation, the novels of Bandello into French.*

Spanish

romances

39. Few probably will now dispute, that the Italian novel, a picture of real life, and sometimes of true circumstances, is perused with less weariness than the Spanish romance, the alternative then offered to the lovers of easy reading. But this had very numerous admirers in that generation, nor was the taste confined to Spain. The

of chivalry.

* Bouterwek, v. 286., mentions by the sixteenth century: I do not know name several other French novelists of any thing of them.