SOURCE: "The Middle Ages and the Renaissance," in The Poetics of Aristotle in England, Yale University Press, 1930, pp. 8-35.

[In the following essay, Herrick traces the influence of Aristotle's Poetics on English literature from Roger Bacon's (c. 1214-1294) mention of the treatise in his works through the possible influence of Aristotle's ideas on Shakespeare.]

The first Englishman to mention Aristotle's Poetics was Roger Bacon (c. 1214-1294). Like most of his learned contemporaries, Bacon pursued philosophical and scientific studies as means to the greater study of theology. While his primary aim, then, was neither philosophical, scientific (in our sense of the word), nor literary, he fully realized the need for an adequate understanding of the ancient languages and literatures, since they alone, he believed, could furnish the proper tools for more exalted labors.¹ He was convinced that up to his own day Boethius alone, in the West, had fully understood both Greek and Latin.² The chief reason for the prevailing ignorance of Bacon's day was the difficulty of obtaining the classical writings, not only in the long-neglected Greek, but in Latin as well. Robert Grosseteste (c. 1175-1253), Franciscan scholar and Bishop of Lincoln, had invited Greek teachers to England, and encouraged the study of Aristotle; but himself made little progress in Greek literature.³ Aristotle's reputation had gone far ahead of his writings. Bacon tells us that there was little opportunity to study the great philosopher:

Aristotle, as Tully says in the Topics, was known to very few.… In fact, slowly has any thing of Aristotle's philosophy come into use among the Latins, because his Natural Philosophy and his Metaphysics, with the commentaries of Averroes and others, have been translated in our own times, and forbidden at Paris before the year A.D. 1237 on account of the eternity of the world and of time, on account of the book on the divination of dreams, which is the third book about sleeping and waking, and on account of many other things erroneously translated. Furthermore, his logical works have been slowly received and read; for the blessed Edmund, Archbishop of Canterbury, first read the book of Elenchi in my time, and I have seen Master Hugo who first read the book of Posteriors [Posterior Analytics], and I have examined the work. So there were but few, considering the multitude of Latins, who were of any account in Aristotle's philosophy; nay, very few indeed, and almost none up to this year of our Lord 1292, which shall be fully and conclusively shown in the following chapters. Still later was the Ethics of Aristotle made known, and only lately read by the masters, and then rarely. All the rest of Aristotle's philosophy, in a thousand volumes, in which he treated all the sciences, has not yet been translated or made known to the Latins. Therefore almost nothing worthy is known of the philosophy of Aristotle, and so far there have been but three who have been able truly to judge about the few books already translated.⁴

Bacon probably was one of the three competent judges.

Bacon repeatedly complains of the poor Latin translations of Aristotle's writings, most of them prepared from Arabic texts of Moorish scholars; chief among these, Avicenna and Averroes were largely responsible for reviving the Aristotelian doctrines. Latin translations of Arabic versions, which were more than likely adapted from a Syriac version of the Greek text, were naturally unsatisfactory. Take, for example, the work of Hermannus Alemannus, who journeyed to Spain about the middle of the thirteenth century, and at Toledo in 1256 turned the Arabic version of the Rhetoric into Latin.⁵ The Rhetoric he did complete. The Poetics was too much for him; for this he rested content with translating the Arabic commentary of Averroes. Since the German scholar apparently knew little Arabic, and the Arabic version itself was bad enough, this Aristotelis Poetria of Hermannus was too wretched to be of any real influence. Bacon dismisses it with contempt.⁶

There is another mention of the Poetics in Bacon, a specific reference in his Greek Grammar, where he notes that Aristotle, in his books on the art of poetry, says that syllables and conjunctions are parts of speech, but parts in themselves non-significant. The reference may be traced to Poetics, ch. 20, but Bacon takes it from Boethius' Commentary on Aristotle's De Interpretatione.⁷

The learned friar was not specially interested in either rhetoric or poetry, and like most mediweval scholars, he regarded them as parts of logic and moral philosophy.⁸ Nevertheless he speaks of the need for good translations of those parts of Aristotle's logical works (Rhetoric and Poetics?) that Hermannus Alemannus has so miserably garbled.⁹ Very wisely, therefore, Bacon would have none of the Arabic-Latin translations. He maintained that the efforts of Hermannus Alemannus and William the Fleming, another contemporary student of Aristotle, were worse than useless.¹⁰ In fact, could he have had his way, all the current Latin versions of Aristotle, since their influence was merely to create error and multiply ignorance, would have been burnt.¹¹

It is, indeed, hardly possible to exaggerate the ineffectiveness of these Latin versions of the Arabic Aristotle; the Poetics, at least, was practically worthless. A medieval scholar, even a Moor, might arrive at some definite conception of what Aristotle was discussing in the Rhetoric; but to such a reader the criticism of Greek drama and epic poetry in the Poetics would have been all but incomprehensible. Even the most notable scholars in the thirteenth century showed no more than a perfunctory acquaintance with the two treatises. Roger Bacon, however, was not the only man to recognize the shortcomings of the Arabic-Latin texts. Thomas Aquinas fostered the first mediaeval. Latin translation of Aristotle direct from the Greek. Some time before 1273 he invited William of Brabant to turn all the Aristotelian writings into Latin. Further, William accepted the invitation, and set to work, translating, among others, the Rhetoric;¹² but before he attempted the Poetics his industry failed him, or he may not have been able to lay hand on the Greek text. Perhaps it is just as well, for this William of Brabant was none other than William the Fleming whose scholarship Bacon so heartily condemned. On the other hand, William must have done something with the Rhetoric. Dante evidently was acquainted with a fairly accurate translation,¹³ and probably used the one prepared under the direction of Thomas Aquinas.

We now begin to find a few traces of traditional Aristotelian criticism among the English writers, though the Latin translation of the Arabic commentary on the Poetics might just as well have been burnt by Roger Bacon.

Richard de Bury (1287-1345) coupled Aristotle's doctrine of pleasure as activity with the 'profit and delight' of Horace in the Ars Poetica, a practice that hundreds later were to follow; but his Aristotelian concept was not derived from the Poetics.¹⁴ The morally-philosophic sense was prevalent enough, the aesthetic still dormant.

Chaucer picked up a mediæval definition of tragedy, which probably goes back ultimately to Aristotle, though it is common property in the Middle Ages. For example, one of the glosses in Chaucer's translation of Boethius (Book 2, Prose 2) runs as follows: 'Tragedie is to seyn, a ditee of a prosperitee for a tyme, that endeth in wrecchednesse.' There is a similar statement in the Monk's Prologue:

Tragedie is to seyn a certayn storie,
As olde bokes maken us memorie,
Of him that stood in greet prosperitee
And is y-fallen out of heigh degree
Into miserie, and endeth wrecchedly.¹⁵

Chaucer could not read Greek; but could he have seen one of the mediæval Latin versions of the Poetics? Probably not. It is extremely doubtful if even the Clerk of Oxenford, with all his passion for Aristotle's books, could have secured a copy of the Poetics. It is even more doubtful that his logically trained faculties could have appreciated the book, had he secured it. He might possibly have known of the Rhetoric; the catalogue of Oriel College Library lists a commentary on this treatise in 1375,¹⁶ and Ranulf Higden, who died nine years before, mentions Aristotle's Dialogue on Poets and his Tractate on Rhetoric.¹⁷ But the Poetics is missing.

Not until near the end of the fifteenth century did the Greek text of the Poetics come to light in Italy; in 1483 Politian owned a manuscript of the work.¹⁸ Printing soon followed. Giorgio Valla brought out an Italian version in 1498; and ten years later appeared the Aldine editio princeps of the Greek text, the Poetics being included along with the Rhetoric in the well-known Rhetores Graeci.

Even before this time Englishmen were going to Italy to learn Greek, some of them under Politian himself. The study of the classical languages and literatures, for which Roger Bacon long ago had pleaded, was now firmly established, and the great revival of ancient learning slowly but surely made itself felt not only on the Continent but also in England, there fostered by distinguished scholars such as John Colet, William Graye, Thomas Linacre, William Grocyn, and Bishop Latimer. Perhaps both Linacre and Latimer took part in producing the great Aldine Aristotle in 1495-8.¹⁹ To-day the only perfect set of this famous edition is the one Linacre formerly used.²⁰ Unfortunately, however, the Aldine Aristotle, for some reason, omitted the Poetics, and we have no evidence that Linacre read Politian's manuscript. In fact, it seems unlikely that the projected plan for a Latin translation of Aristotle, by Grocyn, Linacre, and Latimer, took account of the treatise; apparently the only work actually produced was Linacre's translation of the Meteorologica.²¹

Englishmen had now taken the first steps. They were rapidly becoming familiar with the great body of classical literature. As early as 1499 Erasmus had noted the remarkable progress of Englishmen in ancient learning. Writing to his friend Robert Fisher in Italy, he enthusiastically exclaims:

I have met with so much kindness and so much learning, not hackneyed and trivial, but deep, accurate, ancient Latin and Greek, that but for the curiosity of seeing it, I do not now so much care for Italy. When I hear my Colet, I seem to be listening to Plato himself. In Grocyn, who does not marvel at such a perfect round of learning? What can be more acute, profound, and delicate than the judgment of Linacre? What has Nature created more sweet, more happy, than the genius of Thomas More? I need not go through the list. It is marvelous how general and abundant is the harvest of ancient learning in this country, to which you ought all the sooner to return.²²

The study of ancient criticism was bound to follow. If Englishmen did not pick up the Poetics abroad, we may be sure that some of the distinguished foreign visitors soon brought it to their attention. Erasmus took part in editing the first 'complete' Greek text of Aristotle, which was printed at Basel in 1531, and included both the Rhetoric and Poetics, but he betrayed no particular interest in either of them.²³ It was otherwise, however, with the Spanish humanist Vives, who lived in England from 1523 to 1528, lecturing at Oxford, and serving as tutor to Princess Mary. During his stay he made many warm friends among the English scholars, including Sir Thomas More, who had the highest regard for this Spaniard. We can readily imagine that Vives, outside the lecture-room, exerted a very considerable influence upon the intellectual life at More's hospitable house. And Vives knew something about the Poetics.²⁴ We cannot be sure that he ever introduced the doctrines of Aristotle on poetry into familiar conversations with his English fellows, but we shall see that just such doctrines were soon to form the topic for conversation at Cambridge.

Erasmus' praise to Fisher, enthusiastic and rhetorical as it was, did not exaggerate the progress of England in the New Learning. Roger Ascham went to Cambridge about 1530. In 1542-3 he writes from the University:

Aristotle and Plato are now read by the boys in the original language, but that has been done among us at St. John's for the last five years. Sophocles and Euripides are now more familiar to us than Plautus was when you were here. Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon are more read now than Livy was then. They talk now as much of Demosthenes as they did of Cicero at that time. There are more copies of Isocrates to be met with now than there were of Terence then. Yet we do not treat the Latin writers with contempt, but we cherish the best of them who flourished in the golden age of their literature.

It was Cheke who gave the first impulse towards bringing about this state of things; he twice read through Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, and Herodotus at a public lecture, and that too without taking any fee. He meant to do the same for all the Greek poets, historians, orators, and philosophers, if ill luck had not stood in the way of such a great advancement of learning. For when Cheke wished to enlarge his course of usefulness in the cause of learning by bringing back the true and ancient pronunciation of Greek, lo, the right reverend the bishop of Winchester, yielding to the requests of certain envious men, issued a decree to forbid the use of this new mode, and thus not only stopped the new pronunciation in spite of the remonstrances of almost all the university, but almost wholly extinguished all the zeal for learning which had been kindled up among us.²⁵

Ascham tells us that at his first coming to Cambridge it was the custom to read the precepts of Aristotle without illustrating them from other authors, but that Cheke, Thomas Smith, Walter Haddon, John Watson, and others, had reformed the bad practice. For example:

When Mr. Watson in St. John's College at Cambridge wrote his excellent tragedy of Absalon, Mr. Cheke, he, and I, for that part of true imitation, had many pleasant talks together in comparing the precepts of Aristotle and Horace de Arte Poetica with the examples of Euripides, Sophocles, and Seneca. Few men in writing of tragedies in our days have shot at this mark. Some in England, more in France, Germany, and Italy, also have written tragedies in our time, of the which not one, I am sure, is able to abide the true touch of Aristotle's precepts and Euripides' examples, save only two that ever I saw, Mr. Watson's Absalon and Georgius Buchananus' Jepthe.²⁶

Watson's Absalon is lost, and Buchanan's Jepthah hardly bears out Ascham's statement, at least for the precepts of Aristotle; the examples of Euripides and Seneca are clearly present. Nor does Buchanan afford definite evidence that he has studied the Poetics.²⁷ Sir John Cheke, however, is a more substantial witness. The famous controversy between Cheke and Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, over the new pronunciation of Greek at Cambridge took place during the summer of 1542.²⁸ In one of his letters to Gardiner, Cheke definitely refers to the remarks on the length of [o] and [ō] in Aristotle's chapters on diction in the Poetics.²⁹ As far as I can discover, there is no reference to the Poetics in Gardiner, or in Thomas Smith, who allied himself with Cheke in the battle. In fact, but for Ascham's account of the Aristotelian conversations at St. John's, we might reasonably doubt Cheke's knowledge of the Poetics; perhaps he picked up this reference in the work of some Continental grammarian. There are similar references in Theodore Beza,³⁰ Adolphus Mekerchus³¹ (a contemporary scholar in Holland), in Stephanus,³² and numerous allusions in Peter Ramus.³³ All these scholars, however, wrote later than Cheke, and Mekerchus avowedly follows the Englishman. Cheke might have found the reference in Aldus Manutius, who is supposed to have discussed the pronunciation of Greek vowels in a lost work called Fragmenta.³⁴ In view of Ascham's testimony and of other evidence that scholars, both on the Continent and in England, were deeply interested in Greek literature, we are fairly safe in saying that the Poetics was known at Cambridge by 1542, if not before.

Cheke's reference to Aristotle's brief remarks on diction, with no mention of the more important principles of poetic composition, is natural enough. English scholars in the early part of the sixteenth century were still in a preliminary stage of the revival of Greek; they had to learn to read the language before they could venture upon criticism. The friendly debates over dramatic style that Ascham recalls at Cambridge must have owed somewhat more to the familiar Ars Poetica of Horace than to the 'precepts of Aristotle.' The modern assimilation of the Poetics has been a long process.

Very likely both Cheke and Ascham were indebted to their German friend, Johann Sturm, for an interest in Aristotle's critical treatises. Ascham openly acknowledges his debt in the Preface to the Schoolmaster:

Yet, nevertheless, I myself spending gladly that little that I got at home by good Sir John Cheke, and that that I borrowed abroad of my friend Sturmius, beside somewhat that was left me in reversion by my old masters Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, I have at last patched it up as I could, and as you see.³⁵

From Sturm also—and possibly from Cheke—Ascham took his view of dramatic imitation: 'The whole doctrine of comedies and tragedies is a perfect imitation, or fair lively painted picture of the life of every degree of man.'³⁶ Here Ascham follows Horace and Plato rather than Aristotle, for he adds: 'Of this imitation writeth Plato at large in 3 de Rep., but it doth not much belong at this time to our purpose.'³⁷ Though a glimpse of the Aristotelian concept of imitation was here given to English readers, Ascham's real notion was rather that of copying or emulation. The same notion was characteristic of Sturm, who, while he referred to the Poetics, even mentioning the six Aristotelian parts of an imitative work,³⁸ clearly regarded imitation as emulation.³⁹

The same influence appeared about this time in another English work, A Rich Storehouse or Treasurie for Nobilitye and Gentlemen (1570), translated from Sturm's Nobilitas Literata by one 'T. B. Gent.'⁴⁰ There is in the book frequent mention of Plato and Aristotle, and of imitation …; but here again is meant emulation, a copying of the patterns of the ancients.

As to dates of publication, the Schoolmaster was not published until 1570, two years after the author's death, while Cheke's letters were published fifteen years before Ascham's book. In 1554, an exile on his way to Italy, Cheke stopped for a time at Basel. There he lent the seven letters of the linguistic dispute to Caelius Secundus Curio, a scholar who took it upon himself to publish them at Basel, and did so in the following year, 1555. Therefore, until further evidence is brought forward, we shall have to say that 1555 marks the first reference to Aristotle's Poetics by an Englishman after the dubious allusion of Roger Bacon in the thirteenth century. Ascham still holds the honor of making the first reference in English to the Poetics.

Not long after Cheke and Ascham the allusions became more numerous, though the foreign scholars residing in England still furnished most of them. Thus Martin Bucer, the German Reformer who taught for a time at Cambridge, quoted Aristotle's … (reversals of fortune or of intent) in De Honestis Ludis,⁴¹ a part of his De Regno Christi which he presented in manuscript to Edward VI as a New-Year's gift in 1551; the work was not published until 1557, when it appeared at Basel. In 1576 Robert Peterson translated Giovanni della Casa's Galateo, which contains an intelligent expression of the Aristotelian tragic catharsis:

Men have many times more need to weep than to laugh. And for that cause, he said, these doleful tales which we call tragedies were devised at first, that when they were played in the theatres (as at that time they were wont) they might draw forth tears out of their eyes that had need to spend them. And so they were by their weeping healed of their infirmity.⁴²

The quotation is of particular interest since it furnishes one of the earliest anticipations of the 'modern pathological theory' of the catharsis,⁴³ and apparently is the first allusion to it in England.

There is a passage in the Mirror for Magistrates (1578), that treasure-house of tragedies, which may owe something to Aristotle:

'Surely,' said one of the company, 'this lady hath done much to move the hearers to pity her, and hath very well knit up her tragedy according to the beginning, but I marvel much where she learned all this poetry touched in her tale, for in her days learning was not common, but a rare thing, namely in women.' 'Yes,' quod Master Ferrers, 'that might she very well learn of the Duke her husband, who was a prince so excellently learned, as the like of his degree was nowhere to be found; and not only so, but was also a patron to poets and orators, much like as Maecenas was in the time of Augustus Caesar. This Duke was founder of the Divinity-School in Oxford, whereas he caused Aristotle's works to be translated out of Greek into Latin.'⁴⁴

There is no reason to suppose that the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester knew any thing about the Poetics, but perhaps the poet Ferrers did.

All three of the foregoing references—if the last be a real reference—bear upon plot, according to Aristotle the most important element in poetic composition. By the middle of the sixteenth century the Italian critics were laboring with classical structure, but the scanty allusions to Greek poetical theory in England were hardly more than echoes from the Continent. We do not expect, after all, to find many doctrines of Aristotle in the writings of romantic Tudor poets and playwrights; the school-masters were the men most seriously concerned with the New Learning.

We have seen that the masters of St. John's College applied the critical precepts of Horace and Aristotle to the ancient dramas and to contemporary imitations; but, though such practice was common enough on the Continent, it was rare in England. The deciphering of the classical texts was a slow process. As we saw in the case of Sir John Cheke, most of the English scholars had to begin with the study of grammar. Poetics in sixteenth-century England, both for the classical and the native English literature, was an evolution from the technicalities of pronunciation and grammar to versification, to figures of speech (long popular in rhetoric), and only gradually to literary criticism comparable to that contained in Aristotle's treatise. Sir John Cheke was the pioneer, and Roger Ascham his worthy successor. But with Ascham's death in 1568 many of the Cambridge traditions died. It seems that the work was not more than well-begun when the younger followers lost interest in it.

Gabriel Harvey, who went up to Cambridge some time before 1565, wrote to his friend Edmund Spenser in 1580, complaining of the growing neglect of the classics. 'Aristotle,' he says, 'is much named, but little read.'⁴⁵ Harvey himself was no Cheke, although, according to his own account, he became renowned beyond all precedent as a Lecturer on rhetoric.⁴⁶ In the lectures we find him using the conventional authorities of the Renaissance, Cicero and Quintilian,'⁴⁷ without definite reference either to the Rhetoric or the Poetics. He knew something about Aristotle's theory, but apparently was content to take Peter Ramus' word that all of it was too impractical, too philosophical, for modern use. Like Ramus, Harvey was mainly interested in style and delivery, and his supreme authority was Cicero. 'I produce my folly to make you wiser. I worshiped M. T. as the God of Latinity, and would rather have been a Ciceronian than a saint."⁴⁸

In poetical matters. Harvey was mainly concerned with style and versification. There is sound sense in his letters to Spenser on English verse, but no definite sign of Aristotle. His neglect of the Poetics is strange when we consider his delight in displaying erudition. All his writings, both English and Latin, swarm with classical allusions and quotations in which Aristotle often appears—though never the Poetics. We should expect Harvey to know something about the treatise, however, since he aimed to know everything. In his Marginalia he does specifically mention the Poetics, when, in going over George Gascoigne's Certayne Notes of Instruction concerning the Making of Verse or Ryme in English (1575), he makes the following comment:

His aptest partition had been into precepts of Invention, Elocution, and the several rules of both, to be sorted and marshaled in their proper places. He doth prettily well, but might easily have done much better, both in the one and in the other, especially by the direction of Horace's and Aristotle's Ars Poetica.⁴⁹

If he knew the Poetics, why did he not himself make more use of it?

Harvey would have us believe, then, that Gascoigne, also a Cambridge man, neglected Aristotle, and doubtless Harvey was right. Although Gascoigne was a staunch advocate of his native English language and versification, and although modern scholars have shown that he was not so well-versed in classical literature as was once supposed—his Euripidean Jocasta owes nothing to Euripides, but is based on an Italian version—he could not escape the growing influence of classical criticism and practice. For example, he believed in decorum, and did not approve of mingling serious and comic matter in the same poem.⁵⁰ Gascoigne's friend, George Whetstone, was even more insistent upon decorum, objecting to the English playwrights' disregard of the Unity of Time, and their indiscreet mingling of clowns and kings in the same play.⁵¹ Thus we see classical criticism, or an Italian version of it, penetrating the writings of men chiefly interested in their own native literature.

So far we have been mainly concerned with Cambridge, where the study of the Poetics doubtless began, but we may be sure that all this while Oxford, the stronghold of the 'Old Aristotle,' was not idle. It was at Oxford, let us recall, that Vives lectured. The chief interest in the critical treatises of Aristotle, however, seems to have turned to the Rhetoric rather than the Poetics, for Oxford was still more devoted to logic than to poetry.

Before 1552,⁵² we find John Jewel, the Bishop, a most distinguished scholar in his day, referring to Aristotle's work on rhetoric,⁵³ in no very complimentary terms, to be sure, but showing that he knew something about it. John Reynolds (1549-1607), another man of prodigious learning and strict morality, lectured on the three books of the Rhetoric.⁵⁴ One may still examine his copy of the work (Morel's edition, Paris, 1562) in the Bodleian Library. The book is interleaved with the most copious notes, liberally sprinkled with references to Cicero and Quintilian, all written in a beautifully clear hand. As yet we have no evidence that any Oxonian labored over the Poetics as carefully as did Reynolds over the Rhetoric. Apart from a vague allusion in a Latin address (Oratio in Laudem Poeticae) we have no reason to suppose that even the great Reynolds studied the Poetics.⁵⁵ Probably the Christian piety which did not permit him to condone such immoral productions as 'stage-playes,'⁵⁶ would not have permitted him to condone Aristotle's emphasis upon the drama.

Thomas Lodge (1558-1625), also an Oxford man, was well-acquainted with many of Aristotle's writings, the logical works, the Ethics and the Politics, and many of the books on natural science. His Defence of Poetry (1579) is far removed from Aristotle, yet he has picked up at least one familiar doctrine: 'But (of truth) I must confess with Aristotle that men are greatly delighted with imitation.'⁵⁷ When he adds, however, that 'it were good to bring those things on stage that were altogether tending to virtue,' we see that, as usual, the Horatian influence is much the more important.

The fiery Giordano Bruno, coming to Oxford in 1583, startled orthodox scholars by attacking the sacred Aristotle. His battle was waged in the main against the 'scientific' writings, but even the Poetics did not escape him. In the Eroici Furori, printed at London in 1585, and dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney, Bruno delivers one of the first unfavorable comments on the 'rules of Aristotle':

CICADA. To whom, then, are the rules of Aristotle useful?

TANSILLO. To him, who unlike Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, and others, could not sing without the rules of Aristotle, and who, having no Muse of his own, would coquette with that of Homer.⁵⁸

The passage shows the influence of those Renaissance commentators on the Poetics who were the real formulators of the 'rules.' It also leads us to infer that the 'rules' were firmly enough established in England for Bruno to think it worth while to attack them.

Sir Philip Sidney, as an Oxford man, had consequently read some of Aristotle at an early age. In 1574 he wrote to his tutor, Hubert Languet, of his desire to master Greek so that he might read Aristotle in the original; the current translations struck him as inadequate.⁵⁹ At the time, he particularly wished to read the Politics, though in a subsequent letter he speaks of the Ethics as the 'beginning and foundation of all his [Aristotle's] work.'⁶⁰ In another letter he definitely referred to the Rhetoric.⁶¹

In addition to his first-hand acquaintance with Aristotle, Sidney, in his foreign travels, evidently had seen the commentaries, on the Poetics, of the leading Italian critics, Scaliger, Minturno, and probably Castelvetro. Therefore his Defence of Poesie, or An Apologie for Poetrie, probably written before 1583, but not published until 1595, became a typical Renaissance blend of Aristotle and Horace, with a good measure of Plato thrown in. The aim of poetry, to Sidney, was didactic; the ideal poet was more of a popular philosopher than an artist. His conception of poetic criticism, however, was the most marked advance towards the classical, and towards Aristotle, that any Englishman had yet made. Sidney was fairly well acquainted with Greek literature—with Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Plato, and Xenophon, among others; and, with the aid of the Italians, he managed to grasp the outstanding features of Aristotle's theory of poetry. Horace was conjoined, of course.

In the Defence of Poesie, after the customary Renaissance eulogy of poets and their creations, Sidney offers the notion that poetry is an idealization of Nature; like all other art, it is an imitation:

Poesy, therefore, is an art of imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in the word Mimesis, that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth: to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture, with this end, to teach and delight.⁶²

Here we have a good Horatian view of the early passages in the Poetics. We may be sure, however, that Sidney has Aristotle chiefly in mind when he speaks of poetical imitation as having the 'most conveniency to nature of all other; insomuch that, as Aristotle saith, those things which in themselves are horrible, as cruel battles, unnatural monsters, are made in poetical imitation delightful.'⁶³

In discussing poetry and history, Sidney goes even beyond Aristotle,⁶⁴ making out poetry to be superior not only to history but to philosophy as well:

Truly, Aristotle himself, in his discourse of Poesy, plainly determineth this question, saying that Poetry is Philosophoteron and Spoudaioteron, that is to say, it is more philosophical and more studiously serious than History. His reason is because Poesy dealeth with Katholou, that is to say, with the universal consideration; and the History with Kathekaston, the particular, 'Now,' saith he, 'the universal weighs what is fit to be said or done, either in likelihood or necessity (which the Poesy considereth in his imposed names), and the particular only marketh whether Alcibiades did, or suffered, this or that.' Thus far Aristotle; which reason of his (as all his) is most full of reason.⁶⁵

The best, the 'right,' poets, 'to imitate, borrow nothing of what is, hath been, or shall be; but range, only reined with learned discretion, into the divine consideration of what may be and should be.'⁶⁶

Sidney's brief remarks on the drama are of peculiar interest to the student of Aristotle, for the Defence of Poesie marked the beginning of dramatic criticism in England. This beginning was essentially Aristotelian, and we shall find that for many years dramatic criticism continued to be so.

With the aid of the Italian commentators, Sidney managed to grasp many of the leading doctrines of the Poetics; but he could not fully comprehend the most fundamental principle, namely, that every good poem must form an organic whole. The common Renaissance interpretation of poetic unity was mechanical, not artistic in the true Greek sense; it seldom went much beyond the decorum that forbade indiscriminate mingling of clowns and kings and violations of the 'Unities' of Time and Place. As a result, Sidney had no definite idea of the most important classical unity, Unity of Action. In the Defence of Poesie, he condemns his native English drama as crude and ill-formed. The only English play, he says, that observes the rules either of 'honest civility' or 'skilful poetry' is Gorboduc (the first notable neo-classical tragedy in English), and even it is not without serious flaws:

Notwithstanding as it is full of stately speeches and well-sounding phrases, climbing to the height of Seneca his style, and as full of notable morality, which it doth most delightfully teach, and so obtain the very end of poesy; yet in truth it is very defectious in the circumstances, which grieves me, because it might not remain as an exact model of all tragedies. For it is faulty both in place and time, the two necessary companions of all corporeal actions. For where the stage should always represent but one place, and the uttermost time presupposed in it should be, both by Aristotle's precept and common reason, but one day; there is both many days and places inartificially imagined.⁶⁷

Sidney does not favor the native variety of comedy that 'naughty playmakers and stage-keepers have justly made odious':

Only thus much now is to be said, that the comedy is an imitation of the common errors of our life, which he representeth in the most ridiculous and scornful sort that may be; so as it is impossible that any beholder can be content to be such a one.⁶⁸

The writers of comedy must beware of striving only to arouse laughter, for the 'great fault even in that point of laughter, and forbidden plainly by Aristotle, is that they stir laughter in sinful things, which are rather execrable than ridiculous, or in miserable, which are rather to be pitied than scorned.'⁶⁹ Comedy, even at its best, as in the plays of Plautus and Terence, though a worthy creation, is inferior to nobler tragedy:

So that the right use of comedy will, I think, by nobody be blamed, and much less of the high and excellent tragedy, that openeth the greatest wounds, and showeth forth ulcers that are covered with tissue; that maketh kings fear to be tyrants, and tyrants manifest their tyrannical humors; that with stirring the effects of admiration and commiseration teacheth the uncertainty of this world, and upon how weak foundations gilden roofs are builded.… But how much it can move, Plutarch yieldeth a notable testimony of the abominable tyrant Alexander Pheraeus, from whose eyes a tragedy, well made and represented, drew forth abundance of tears, who without all pity had murdered infinite numbers, and some of his own blood; so as he that was not ashamed to make matters for tragedies, yet could not resist the sweet violence of a tragedy. ⁷⁰

The influence, direct or indirect, of Aristotle is obvious; here Sidney has some notion of a tragic catharsis, the moving of pity and fear, the tears that are brought forth by the 'sweet violence of a tragedy.' Sidney's interpretation, however, is not so much 'pathological' as moral: the proper effect of a tragedy is purification of the spectator's emotions. In his conception of tragedy, a noteworthy element that does not go back to Aristotle, though it soon was to be associated with Aristotelian doctrine, is the idea of 'admiration' as one of the emotions properly aroused. The Italian Minturno added 'admiration' to the 'teaching and delight' of poetry,⁷¹ and Sidney also has some such notion; but apparently he took 'well-raised admiration' to be a tragic emotion as well: 'The tragedies of Buchanan do justly bring forth a divine admiration.'⁷² Sidney almost anticipated the seventeenth century when 'admiration' was raised to the level of Aristotle's 'pity' and 'fear.'

On the relative merits of tragedy and the epic poem, Sidney follows the Italians, and falls into the conventional Renaissance encomium of heroic poetry:

But if anything be already said in the defense of sweet poetry, all concurreth to the maintaining the heroical, which is not only a kind, but the best and most accomplished kind, of poetry; for as the image of each action stirreth and instructeth the mind, so the lofty image of such worthies most inflameth the mind with desire to be worthy, and informs with counsel how to be worthy.⁷³

Thus the Defence of Poesie stands out as an epitome of literary criticism in the Renaissance,⁷⁴ and the beginning in England of that Aristotelian criticism which, with varying fortunes, has persisted to the present day. The schoolmasters of early Tudor times established the study of classical literature; Sidney and his followers established a classical criticism.

In the philosophical conception of poetic art no other Elizabethan critic can compare with Sidney. The others are still worrying over rhetorical figures of speech, and quarreling about rhyme and versification; or else they are content to repeat what Sidney has already said. The problems of rhyme and versification are highly important features in the history of native English criticism, and the efforts of Gascoigne, Spenser, and Harvey materially aid the development of English poetry; but as far as Aristotelian theory goes the Defence of Poesie stands almost alone. When Sidney says, 'Aristotle writes the Art of Poesy,'⁷⁵ one hesitates to doubt his first-hand knowledge of the treatise. With the other Elizabethan apologists and defenders of poetry, however, the evidence usually points to second-hand information, or worse.

William Webbe's Discourse of English Poetrie (1586) abounds in Horatian maxims and Renaissance conventions, and there are a few dubious allusions to the Poetics. The vague remark that Aristotle reports no important poets in Greece before Homer has some foundation in chapter 4 of the Poetics.⁷⁶ Likewise, Webbe's statement that, according to Aristotle, good versification came in with Homer, may be traced to chapter 24 of the Poetics.⁷⁷ Nor can we unhesitatingly dismiss Webbe's comparison of Homer and Empedocles: 'Aristotle sayth of Empedocles that in his judgment he was only a natural philosopher, no poet at all, nor that he was like unto Homer in any thing but his metre or number of feet, that is, that he wrote in verse.'⁷⁸ Webbe's phrasing is clumsy, but the quotation is undeniably close to a passage in the Poetics. If Webbe were not a consistently unoriginal person, one might be tempted to give him the benefit of the doubt and credit him with first-hand knowledge. In any case, however, a reading of the Discourse of English Poetrie readily shows that the author failed to grasp a single one of the important principles in Aristotle's treatise.

The Arte of English Poesie (1589), by Puttenham, is a significant book in early English criticism, but not a guide-book for the student of Aristotle. Puttenham's theories of poetic imitation are entirely conventional, and more mediæval than classical. He, too, was primarily concerned with the rhetorical elements in poetry, and, with external form and versification. Perhaps it is worth noting, however, that Puttenham traced the popular decorum of the Latin writers to the Greek [to prepon], the phrase in the Poetics.⁷⁹

Sir John Harington was closer to the Italian critics, and consequently to Aristotle. In the Briefe Apologie of Poetrie prefixed to his translation (1591) of the Orlando Furioso, Harington argues for the 'rules' of poetic composition. He undertakes to justify Ariosto's art by Aristotle's precepts:

Briefly, Aristotle and the best censurers of poesy would have the Epopeia, that is the heroical poem, should ground on some history, and take some short time in the same to beautify with his poetry. So doth mine author take the story of K. Charles the Great, and doth not exceed a year or thereabout in his whole work. Secondly, they hold that nothing should be feigned utterly incredible. And sure Ariosto neither in his enchantments exceedeth credit (for who knows how strong the illusions of the devil are?), neither in the miracles that Atolfo by the power of St. John is feigned to do, since the Church holdeth that prophets both alive and dead have done mighty great miracles. Thirdly, they would have an heroical poem (as well as a tragedy) to be full of Peripetia, which I interpret an agnition of some unlooked-for fortune either good or bad, and a sudden change thereof. Of this what store there be the reader shall quickly find.⁸⁰

To his own satisfaction, at least, Harington succeeds in proving that the Orlando Furioso conforms to the classical laws of epic poetry: 'As for Aristotle's rules, I take it he [Ariosto] hath followed them very strictly.' ⁸¹

Harington's understanding of 'Aristotle's rules' is fairly typical of the Elizabethan critic; he seldom tries to discriminate between Horace and Aristotle, and usually trusts to the Italian critics for his knowledge of the latter. Poetic art, says Harington, is 'but an imitation (as Aristotle calleth it), and therefore [the poets] are allowed to feign what they list …—may lie, if they list, cum privelegio.'⁸² Tragedy is free from the taint of scurrility and lewdness, since it represents 'only the cruel and lawless proceedings of princes, moving nothing but pity or detestation.'⁸³ Always didactic, Harington consistently prefers the Virgilian epic poem to tragedy.

At the close of the sixteenth century Aristotle was in the air. Many of the commentators were as absurd as Harington, but the literary men were growing familiar with the neo-classical theories that passed as Aristotelian. The puzzle of the tragic catharsis, and the problem of the dramatic unities on the modern stage, doubtless furnished rich material for the evening debates in London taverns, and occasionally a reflected light from Aristotle appeared in the plays and other poems of the time.

Spenser, educated at Cambridge, and familiar with the Politics and Ethics,⁸⁴ apparently accepted from some source Aristotle's notion of 'pity and fear.' In the Ruines of Time we read:

Much was I troubled in my heavie spright,
At sight of these sad spectacles forepast,
That all my senses were bereaved quight,
And I in minde remained sore agast,
Distraught twixt feare and pitie.⁸⁵

Robert Yarington, an obscure Elizabethan playwright, probably had a similar notion. In his Two Lamentable Tragedies (1601), he writes:

I see your sorrows flow up to the brim,
And overflow your cheeks with brinish tears,
But though this sight bring surfeit to the eye,
Delight your ears with pleasing harmony,
That ears may countercheck your eyes, and
 say,
'Why shed your tears, this deed is but a
 play.'⁸⁶

According to Charles Lamb, the 'whole theory of the reason of our delight in tragic representations, which has cost so many elaborate chapters of criticism, is condensed in these four last lines—Aristotle quintessentialized.'⁸⁷ Possibly so. But we must confess that the rest of the tragedy scarcely conforms to Aristotle's precepts.

The great playwright of the sixteenth century is perhaps more renowned for breaking than for following any alien rules of the drama. Yet Shakespeare would have been the last man to rebel against established traditions, if the traditions were useful. The Elizabethan debt to classical Roman drama, to Seneca, Plautus, and Terence, appears in Shakespeare as well as in less-inspired contempȯraries. Shakespeare also knew the 'rules.' He was well-acquainted with the formal distinctions that orthodox criticism made between tragedy, comedy, history, and pastoral. He knew that the critics preferred the play with 'scene undividable' (thus preserving the precious 'Unity of Time') to the 'poem unlimited,'⁸⁸ and although he had little use for such barren formalities, he occasionally apologized for his violation of the established 'rules.'

Thus the Chorus in Henry V (Act 2) refers to the neglect of 'Unity of Place':

Linger your patience on; and well digest
The abuse of distance while we force a play.

In the Winter's Tale (Act 4) the Chorus speaks of violating the 'Unity of Time':

            Impute it not a crime
To me or my swift passage, that I slide
O'er sixteen years, and leave the growth
 untried
Of that wide gap; since it is in my power
To o'erthrow laws, and in one self-born hour
To plant and o'erwhelm custom.

And finally, the Chorus in Henry V (Act 5) asks allowance for the general disregard of all the Unities:

I humbly pray them to admit the excuse
Of time, of numbers, and due course of
 things,
Which cannot, in their huge and proper life
Be here presented.

As an instance of more constructive dramatic criticism one could cite the well-known speech of Hamlet to the players. If we take Hamlet's theories as serious expressions of the author, we see that Shakespeare thought of the drama as a representative imitation of nature: the purpose of playing 'was and is, to hold, as 't were, the mirror up to nature.'⁸⁹ There may be a trace of Aristotelian theory in King be may a trace Aristotelian of theory King in Richard's lament (Richard II 5.1.44-8):

Tell thou the lamentable tale of me,
And send the hearers weeping to their beds;
For why, the senseless brands will sympathize
The heavy accent of thy moving tongue,
And in compassion weep the fire out.

But we must not here attempt to deduce Shakespeare's principles of dramatic composition. That he was alive to current dramatic theories, however, particularly after the year 1598, when he became acquainted with Ben Jonson, is evident. Further, he was perfectly able, and, upon at least one occasion, willing, to construct a play that conformed to the all-important 'Unities'—witness the Tempest. On the other hand, who can say that even the Tempest is Shakespeare's concession to the 'rules'? Ben Jonson, from whom Shakespeare may well have learned of the 'rules,' would probably have said that any regularity in Shakespeare's plays was pure accident.

              I tell him he needs Greek;
I'll talk of rules and Aristotle with him,
And if his tongue's at home he'll say to that:
'I have your word that Aristotle knows,
And you mine that I don't know Aristotle.'
He's all at odds with all the unities,
And what's yet worse, it does n't seem to
 matter;
He treads along through Time's old wilderness
As if the tramp of all the centuries
Had left no roads—and there are none for
 him;
He doesn't see them, even with those eyes—
And that's a pity, or I say it is.⁹⁰

At the close of the century the 'rules' of Aristotle, as formulated by the Italians, arrived in England to take almost undisputed possession of the critical field, and to make serious inroads upon creative literature. Even in liberty-loving England, Aristotle the critic was destined to become almost as formidable an authority for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as 'the Philosopher' was for the Middle Ages. The great romantic literature of the Elizabethans was just forming when Sir Philip Sidney laid the foundations of English literary criticism with essentially classical and Aristotelian materials. For nearly two centuries English criticism was to remain classical and Aristotelian. We must bear in mind, however, that from the first these English interpretations of Aristotle's theories were hopelessly adulterated with Horatian maxims and Continental scholarship, first with Italian, then with Dutch, and finally, and most influental of all, with French. We may agree with Robinson's Ben Jonson, and regard it as unfortunate that Shakespeare, for one, could not have studied the Poetics at first hand, without the accretions and inflammations from men of less insight than either Aristotle or Shakespeare.

Notes

¹ Bacon's humanistic attitude is in strong contrast with that of Giraldus Cambrensis (c. 1146-1220) who, though he bemoans the decay of learning in England, regrets the importation of Aristotle's logical treatises from Spain; for he believes they will tend to foster heresy. See Giraldus, Opera, ed. by J. S. Brewer, London, 1861-91, 4. 9-10.

² See Bacon, in Opera Inedita, ed. by J. S. Brewer, London, 1859, pp. 33, 472.

³ See Bacon, in Opera Inedita, p. 33. Grosseteste is said to have prepared a commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics. See F. S. Stevenson, Robert Grosseteste, London, 1899, p. 248.

⁴ Bacon, Compendium Studii Theologiae, ed. by Rashdall, Aberdeen, 1911, pp. 33-4.

⁵ See Jourdain, Recherches Critiques sur l'Age et l'Origine des Traductions Latines d'Aristote, pp. 57, 149-52.

⁶ See Bacon, Opus Majus, ed. by Bridges, Oxford, 1897, 1. 101: 'Sic docuit Aristoteles in libro suo de poetico argumento, quem non ausus fuit interpres Hermannus transferre in Latinum propter metrorum difficultatem, quam non intellexit, ut ipse dicit in prologo commentarii Averrois super illum librum.' Cf. Bacon, Opera Inedita, pp. 471-2.

⁷ See The Greek Grammar of Roger Bacon, ed. by Nolan and Hirsch, Cambridge, 1902, p. 28: 'Unde Aristoteles, in libris de arte poetica, partes locucionis dicit esse sillabas et coniuncciones, sed sillabe in quantum huius nihil significant; coniuncciones vero non per se significant.'

Cf. Boethius, Commentarii 2. 6: 'Unde etiam ipse quoque Aristoteles in libris quos de poetica scripsit locutionis partes esse syllabas vel etiam coniunctiones tradidit, quarum syllabae in eo quod sunt syllabae nihil omnino significant, conjunctiones vero consignificare quidem possunt, per se vero nihil designant.'

⁸ See Émile Charles, Roger Bacon, Paris, 1861, p. 122, note.

⁹ See Bacon, Opus Majus 1. 101; Opera Inedita, pp. 266, 307 ff.

¹⁰ See Bacon, Opera Inedita, p. 469.

¹¹Ibid.

¹² See Jourdain, p. 71.

¹³ See Dante, Convivio, trans. by Jackson, Oxford, 1909, p. 154. Cf. Dante, Epistle 10, ed. and trans. by Toynbee, Oxford, 1920.

¹⁴ See The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury, ed. and trans. by E. C. Thomas, London, 1888, p. 221.

¹⁵ Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, B 3163-7. Cf. Poetics 7. 1451^a 11-15.

Chaucer's definition is commonplace, but in the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women (A 511-14) he presents a puzzle to the critics:

Wel hath she quit me myn affeccioun
That I have to hir flour, the dayesye!
No wonder is thogh love hir stellifye,
As telleth Agaton, for hir goodnesse!

It looks as if here we had a reference to Agathon's tragedy, Antheus, or 'The Flower,' and the only known source for such a reference is Aristotle's Poetics 9.1451⁶21. Skeat (Works of Chaucer 3. xxxiii) has noted the problem. See John W. Hales, Chaucer's 'Agaton,' in Modern Language Quarterly I (1897). 5-8; George Lyman Kittredge, Chaucer's Lollius, in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 28 (1917). 75.

¹⁶ 'Sententie super libros Rhetoricorum Aristotelis secundo folio omnia per Cobildik precio.' 'Cobildik' apparently was the donor of the work. See Collectanea (First Series), ed. by Fletcher (Oxford Historical Society), 1885, p. 70.

¹⁷ See Polychronicon Ranulfi Higden, ed. by Babington and Lumby, London, 1865-86, 3. 360.

¹⁸ Lane Cooper, The Poetics of Aristotle, its Meaning and Influence, p. 100.

¹⁹ See P. S. Allen, Linacre and Latimer in Italy, in the English Historical Review 18 (1903). 514-17.

²⁰ See Thomas F. Dibdin, An Introduction to the Greek and Latin Classics (4th ed.), London, 1827, I. 313.

²¹ See Thomas More, Opera Omnia, Frankfort-on-Main, 1689, p. 298; Bale, Index Britanniae Scriptorum, ed. by Poole, Oxford, 1902, p. 126, s.v. 'Grocin.'

²² Erasmus, Epistles, trans. by Francis M. Nichols, London, 1901, I. 226.

²³ Erasmus merely mentions the two treatises in a letter; see Epistle 1159 in his Opera Omnia, Leyden, 1703.

²⁴ Vives, Opera, Basel 1555, I. 146: 'In theatris ad publicam exhilarationem exprimebatur hominum vita, velut tabella quadam vel speculo, quae res vehementer delectat propter imitationem sicut Aristoteles ait in Arte Poetica. Quippe imitatione, inquit, omnes capiuntur mirifice, et est homo animal maxime imitationi natum, et ea quae in natura sua nollemus cemere, expressa et assimulata nos detinent.' Cf. Poetics 4.1448 b 4-24.

²⁵ Ascham, Works, ed. by Giles, London, 1864-5, I. xxxvii.

²⁶ Ascham, Schoolmaster, in Works 3.240-1; also in Gregory Smith, Elizabethan Critical Essays 1.23-4. Cf. Francis Meres, Palladis Tamia (1598), in Gregory Smith 2.322.

²⁷ Of the men Ascham mentions, only Cheke and Walter Haddon show any acquaintance with Aristotelian theory. Haddon says that Ascham had introduced him to the Rhetoric. See his letter to Johann Sturm (December 6, 1566) in Lucubrationes passim Collectae et Editae, London, 1567, pp. 347-8.

²⁸ See Herrick, Sir John Cheke and Aristotle's Poetics, in The Classical Weekly 18 (1925). 134-5.

²⁹ Cheke, De Pronuntiatione Graecae, Basel, 1555, p. 122; also in Syvert Havercamp, Sylloge Scriptorum, Leyden, 1736-40, 2.286. Cf. Poetics 21.1458^a 10-15.

³⁰ See Havercamp 1.333; cf. 1.306.

³¹Ibid. 1.110.

³²Ibid. 1.459; cf. 1.391.

³³ See Ramus, Scholae in Liberales Artes, Basel, 1578, Book 2 of the Scholarum Grammaticarum Libri XX.

³⁴ See Bywater, Erasmian Pronunciation of Greek and its Precursors, Oxford, 1908.

It is perhaps worth noting that both Gardiner and Smith refer to Aristotle's remarks on diction in De Interpretatione (Havercamp 2.323, 483-4), just as Boethius, and after him Roger Bacon, did. The linguistic remarks in Plato's Cratylus and Aristotle's De Interpretatione and Poetics have often been associated. Perhaps Richard Mulcaster has the collocation in mind when he says that it is not necessary to prove his statements on the properties of words by Plato's Cratylus or Aristotle. (See his Elementarie, London, 1582, p. 168). It is impossible to determine who is mainly responsible for this association.

³⁵ Ascham, Works 3.84.

³⁶ Ascham, Works 3.213; in Gregory Smith 1.7.

³⁷Ibid.

³⁸ See Commentarii in Artem Poeticam Horatii Confecti ex Schelis Jo. Sturmii, Strasburg, 1576.

³⁹ See Ioannis Sturmii de Imitatione Oratoria Libri Tres, Strasburg, 1574.

⁴⁰ 'T. B. Gent,' the author of the Rich Storehouse, is identified in the Dictionary of National Biography as Thomas Blundeville (fl. 1561).

⁴¹ See Bucer, Scripta Anglicana, Basel, 1577, p. 144.

⁴² Peterson, Galateo, ed. by H. J. Reid, 1892, p. 31.

⁴³ See Bywater, Milton and the Aristotelian Definition of Tragedy, in Journal of Philology 27 (1901). 274.

⁴⁴Mirror for Magistrates, ed. by Joseph Haslewood, London, 1815, 2.126.

⁴⁵ Harvey, Works, ed. by Grosart, 1884, 1.69.

⁴⁶Ibid. I. xiii.

⁴⁷ See Harvey's Rhetor, London, 1577, and his Ciceronianus, London, 1577.

⁴⁸ Harvey, Works I. xvii (quoted by Morley). Cf. the Ciceronianus, pp. 18-19, 28. Cicero was worshiped by nearly all the English men of letters in Harvey's day. Walter Haddon (Poemata, London, 1567, p. 67) writes:

In Marcum Tullium Ciceronem

O Deus, o splendens Romanae gloria gentis,
Virtutis. specimen, vitae praeceptor honestae.
O Cicero doctos inter doctissimus omnes,
Cur tua, temporibus nostris, non iuncta
  fuerunt?

⁴⁹ Harvey, Marginalia, ed. by G. C. Moore Smith, Straford, 1913, p. 168.

⁵⁰ See Gascoigne, in Gregory Smith 1.48

⁵¹ See Whetstone, Dedication of Promos and Cassandra, in Gregory Smith 1.59.

⁵² See Thomas Fowler, History of Corpus Chisti College, Oxford, 1893, p. 95.

⁵³ See Jewel, Works, Cambridge, 1850, 4.1286.

⁵⁴ See Anthony à Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, (2nd ed.), London, 1721, 1.339.

⁵⁵ See Reynolds, Orationes Duodecim, London, 1619, p. 248.

⁵⁶ See Reynolds, The Overthrow of Stage-Play es, 1599.

⁵⁷ Lodge, in Gregory Smith 1.83.

⁵⁸ Bruno, Heroic Enthusiasts, trans. by L. Williams, London, 1887, 1.39; cf. 1.37-8.

⁵⁹ See Sidney, Works, ed. by Albert Feuillerat, Cambridge, 1922-3, 3.84.

⁶⁰Ibid. 3.124.

⁶¹Ibid. 1.118. John Hoskins, in his Figures of Rhetoric, says that Sidney translated the two first books of Aristotle's Rhetoric. See The Life of Sir Philip Sidney, by Malcolm William Wallace, Cambridge, 1915, p. 327.

⁶² Sidney, Works 3.9; Gregory Smith 1.158.

⁶³ Sidney, Works 3.20; Gregory Smith 1.173. Cf. Poetics 1448^b 8-12.

⁶⁴ See Spingam, Literary Criticism in the Renaissance, p. 273.

The notion that poetry is superior to philosophy was common in England after Sidney's day. In 1674 we find Thomas Rymer, for example, attributing to Aristotle the statement that 'Tragedy more conduces to the instruction of mankind than even Philosophy itself See Spingam, Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century 2.164.

⁶⁵ Sidney, Works 3.16; Gregory Smith 1.167. Cf. Poetics 1451^a 36-8, 1451^b 1-11.

⁶⁶ Sidney, Works 3.10; Gregory Smith 1.159.

⁶⁷ Sidney, Works 3.38; Gregory Smith 1.196-7.

⁶⁸ Sidney, Works 3.23; Gregory Smith 1.176-7.

⁶⁹ Sidney, Works 3.41; Gregory Smith 1.200. Cf. Poetics 1449^a 32-7.

⁷⁰ Sidney, Works 3.23-4; Gregory Smith 1.177-8.

⁷¹ See Minturno, De Poeta, Venice, 1559, p. 106: 'Illud autem ne te praetereat uelim, sic poetis esse dicendum, ut siue doceant, siue oblectent, siue moueant, haec singula statim admiratio legentis, audientisue consequatur.' Also p. 180: 'Uerum enim eiusmodi hoc rerum genus esse plane intelliget, qui huius poetate munus esse animaduertet, in admirationem adducere auditorem. Admiranda uero esse, quae uel afferunt miserationem, uel terrorem incutiunt.'

Cf. Scaliger, Poetices 3.96.

⁷² Sidney, Works 3.41; Gregory Smith 1.201.

⁷³ Sidney, Works 3.25; Gregory Smith 1.179.

⁷⁴ See Spingam, Literary Criticism in the Renaissance, p. 268.

⁷⁵ Sidney, Works 3.35; Gregory Smith 1.192.

⁷⁶ See Webbe, in Gregory Smith 1.235.

⁷⁷Ibid. 1.248.

Aristotle's remarks on early poetic composition were fairly well known to English critics in Elizabethan times. Samuel Daniel, in his Defence of Rhyme (1603?), speaks of Aristotle's theory that poetic composition arises naturally and spontaneously; see Daniel, in Gregory Smith 2.360. John Florio's translation of Montaigne in 1603 contains a passage that is usually referred to chapter 24 of the Poetics: 'His words [Homer's] (according to Aristotle) are the only words that have motion and action; they are the only substantial words.' See Essays, Book 2, ch. 36. It is much more likely that Montaigne has in mind the Rhetoric 1411^b 32.

⁷⁸ Webbe, in Gregory Smith 1.236.

Cf. Poetics 1447^b 17-20. (Bywater's translation): 'Homer and Empedocles, however, have really nothing in common apart from their metre; so that, if the one is to be called a poet, the other should be termed a physicist rather than a poet.'

⁷⁹ See Puttenham, in Gregory Smith 2.174. Cf. Poetics 1455^a 25. Puttenham may have taken the phrase from Cicero's Orator (ch. 21): 'The Greeks call this [prepon], we call it decorum.'

⁸⁰ Harington, in Gregory Smith 2.216.

⁸¹ Harington, in Gregory Smith 2.216.

⁸²Ibid. 2.200-1.

⁸³Ibid. 2.209.

⁸⁴ See W. F. De Moss, The Influence of Aristotle's Politics and Ethics on Spenser, Chicago, 1918.

⁸⁵ Spenser, Ruines of Time 575-9.

⁸⁶ See Two Lamentable Tragedies, in Tudor Facsimile Texts, 1913.

⁸⁷ Lamb, Works, ed. by MacDonald, London, 1903, 9.100, note.

⁸⁸ See Hamlet 2.2.401-7.

⁸⁹ See Hamlet 3.2.20-4. Hamlet's advice on acting, and his insistence on restraint, offer a striking parallel to Aristotle's criticism of excessive gesture (Poetics 1461 ^b29-35, 1462^a1-4).

⁹⁰ Edwin Arlington Robinson, Ben Jonson entertains a Man from Stratford.