illustrious in the same way, they would both produce the same results; but tragic actions move horror and compassion, while epic actions as a rule do not and need not arouse these emotions. The tragic action consists in the unexpected change of fortune, and in the grandeur of the events carrying with them horror and pity; but the epic action is founded upon undertakings of lofty martial virtue, upon deeds of courtesy, piety, generosity, none of which is proper to tragedy. Hence the characters in epic poetry and in tragedy, though both of the same regal and supreme rank, differ in that the tragic hero is neither perfectly good nor entirely bad, as Aristotle says, while the epic hero must have the very height of virtue, such as Æneas, the type of piety, Amadis, the type of loyalty, Achilles, of martial virtue, and Ulysses, of prudence.

Having formulated these theories of heroic poetry in his youth, Tasso set out to carry them into practice, and his famous Gerusalemme Liberata was the result. This poem, almost immediately after its publication, started a violent controversy, which raged for many years, and which may be regarded as the legitimate outcome of the earlier dispute in connection with the romanzi.1 The Gerusalemme was in fact the centre of critical activity during the latter part of the century. Shortly after its publication, Camillo Pellegrino published a dialogue, en

1 Accounts of this famous controversy will be found in Tiraboschi, Canello, Serassi, etc.; but the latest and most complete is that given in the twentieth chapter of Solerti's monumental Vita di Torquato Tasso, Torino, 1895.

titled Il Caraffa (1583), in which the Gerusalemme is compared with the Orlando Furioso, much to the advantage of the former. Pellegrino finds fault with Ariosto on account of the lack of unity of his poem, the immoral manners imitated, and various imperfections of style and language; and in all of these things, unity, morality, and style, he finds Tasso's poem perfect. This was naturally the signal for a heated and long-continued controversy. The Accademia della Crusca had been founded at Florence, in 1582, and it seems that the members of the new society felt hurt at some sarcastic remarks regarding Florence in one of Tasso's dialogues. Accordingly, the head of the academy, Lionardo Salviati, in a dialogue entitled L' Infarinato, wrote an ardent defence of Ariosto; and an acrid and undignified dispute between Tasso and Salviati was begun.1 Tasso answered the Accademia della Crusca in his Apologia; and at the beginning of the next century, Paolo Beni, the commentator on Aristotle's Poetics, published his Comparazione di Omero, Virgilio, e Torquato, in which Tasso is rated above Homer, Virgil, and Ariosto, not only in dignity, in beauty of style, and in unity of fable, but in every other quality that may be said to constitute perfection in poetry. Before dismissing this whole matter, it should be pointed out that the defenders of Aristotle had absolutely abandoned the position of Giraldi and Pigna, that the romanzi

1 Nearly all the important documents of the Tasso controversy are reprinted in Rosini's edition of Tasso, Opere, vols. xviii.-xxiii.

constitute a genre by themselves, and are therefore not subject to Aristotle's law of unity. The question as Giraldi had stated it was this: Does every poem need to have unity? The question as discussed in the Tasso controversy had changed to this form: What is unity? It was taken for granted by both sides in the controversy that every poem must have organic unity; and the authority of Aristotle, in epic as in dramatic poetry, was henceforth supreme. It was to the authority of Aristotle that Tasso's opponents appealed; and Salviati, merely for the purpose of undermining Tasso's pretensions, wrote an extended commentary on the Poetics, which still lies in Ms. at Florence, and which has been made use of in the present essay.1

1 The question of unity was also raised in another controversy of the second half of the sixteenth century. A passage in Varchi's Ercolano (1570), rating Dante above Homer, started a controversy on the Divine Comedy. The most important outcome of this dispute was Mazzoni's Difesa di Dante (1573), in which a whole new theory of poetry is expounded in order to defend the great Tuscan poet.

CHAPTER V

THE GROWTH OF THE CLASSIC SPIRIT IN ITALIAN

CRITICISM

THE growth of classicism in Renaissance criticism was due to three causes, humanism, or the imitation of the classics, Aristotelianism, or the influence of Aristotle's Poetics, and rationalism, or the authority of the reason, the result of the growth of the modern spirit in the arts and sciences. These three causes are at the bottom of Italian classicism, as well as of French classicism during the seventeenth century.

I. Humanism

The progress of humanism may be distinguished by an arbitrary but more or less practical division. into four periods. The first period was characterized by the discovery and accumulation of classical literature, and the second period was given up to the arrangement and translation of the works thus discovered. The third period is marked by the formation of academies, in which the classics were studied and humanized, and which as a result produced a special cult of learning. The fourth and last period is marked by the decline of pure erudi

tion, and the beginning of æsthetic and stylistic scholarship. The practical result of the revival of learning and the progress of humanism was thus the study and imitation of the classics. To this imitation of classical literature all that humanism gave to the modern world may be ultimately traced. The problem before us, then, is this: What was the result of this imitation of the classics, in so far as it regards the literary criticism of the Renaissance?

In the first place, the imitation of the classics resulted in the study and cult of external form. Elegance, polish, clearness of design, became objects of study for themselves; and as a result we have the formation of æsthetic taste, and the growth of a classic purism, to which many of the literary tendencies of the Renaissance may be traced.' Under Leo X. and throughout the first half of the sixteenth century, the intricacies of style and versification were carefully studied. Vida was the first to lay down laws of imitative harmony; 3 Bembo, and after him Dolce and others, studied the poetic effect of different sounds, and the onomatopoeic value of the various vowels and consonants; Claudio Tolomei attempted to introduce classical metres into the vernacular; Trissino published subtle and systematic researches in Tuscan

4

1 Symonds, ii. 161, based on Voigt.

2 Cf. Woodward, p. 210 sq.

5

Hallam, Lit. of Europe, i. 8. 1. Cf. Pope, i. 182: “Omnia sed numeris vocum concordibus aptant," etc.

4 Bembo, Le Prose, 1525; Dolce, Osservationi, 1550, lib. iv.; etc.

5 Versi e Regole de la Nuova Poesia Toscana, 1539.