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 About the author
Paul Dempsey is a master mechanic and the author of more than 20
technical books including Small Gas Engine Repair (now in its
Second Edition), and How to Repair Brigss & Stratton Engines (now
in its Fourth Edition), both available from McGraw-Hill. He has also
written more than 100 magazine and journal articles on topics
ranging from teaching techniques to maintenance management to
petroleum-related subjects.
 Contents
Foreword

1 Rudolf Diesel

2 Diesel basics
Compression ratio
Induction
Ignition and combustion
Two- and four-stroke-cycle
Power and torque
Fuel efficiency
Weight
Durability
Conventional fuels

3 Engine installation
Trucks and other motor vehicles
Stationary engines
Marine engines

4 Basic troubleshooting
Malfunctions
Tests
Air inlet system
Glow plugs
Exhaust backpressure
Engine mechanical

5 Mechanical fuel systems

 Air blast
Early common-rail
Jerk pump system
Inline pumps
Distributor pumps
Delivery valves
Injectors
Timers
Diaphragm controls
Centrifugal governors
Pneumatic governors
Unit injection
Low-pressure system
Fuel filters and water separators

6 Electronic engine management systems

Tools and resources
Analog and digital
Onboard computer
EFI systems
Sensors
Actuators
Lift pump
EMS troubleshooting
Ford 7.3L Power Stroke

7 Cylinder heads and valves

Combustion chamber types
Valve configuration
Before you begin

8 Engine mechanics
Scope of work
Diagnosis
 Rigging
Special considerations
Cleaning
Teardown
Lubrication system
Filters
Block casting
Pistons
Connecting rods
Crankshafts
Camshafts and related parts
Harmonic balancers
Crankshaft bearings
Assembly—major components

9 Air systems
Air cleaners
Turbochargers
Compressor map
VGTs
Aftercoolers
Troubleshooting

10 Electrical fundamentals
Electrons
Circuits
Electrical measurements
Ohm’s law
Direct and alternating current
Magnetism
Electromagnets
Voltage sources
Generator principles
 Direct-current motors
Storage batteries
Switches
Diodes

11 Starting and generating systems

Starting aids
Wiring
Starter circuits
Solenoids
Starter drives
Charging systems
Voltage regulation
Solid-state regulators
Batteries

12 Cooling systems
Air cooling
Liquid cooling

13 Greener diesels
Diesel emissions
Emissions controls
Diesel debacle
Biodiesel
Straight vegetable oil
Natural gas
Compressed natural gas (CNG)
LNG
Renewable natural gas (RNG)

Index
 Foreword
In a world of throwaway consumer products, diesel engines are an
exception. Industrial engines, those built by established
manufacturers such as Caterpillar, Cummins, Deutz and Daimler run
for decades with only occasional repairs. Several of these have been
used in American pickup trucks, although car makers prefer in-house
power. The Ford-designed 6.7L Power Stroke follows industrial
practice and, as a result, is in process of receiving a B10 rating,
which means that 90% of them should run for 500,000 miles
without having the cylinder heads or oil pan disturbed. Smaller
engines intended for commercial use have something of the same
durability.
The subjects covered include:
• Diesel operation (what distinguishes diesel engines from spark-
ignition engines)
• How to install stationary and marine engines
• Basic troubleshooting
• Cylinder head and engine rebuilding
• Mechanical fuel systems
• Electricity for those who are new to the subject
• Electronic fuel systems
• Turbochargers and associated air systems
• Starting and generating systems
• Air and liquid cooling systems
• Emission controls
This book is intended to supplement factory shop manuals, most
of which are written cook-book style with little or nothing by way of
explanation. Cook books are okay, if the only engine you will ever
work on is the one you have a manual for. My aim in writing was to
combine “how-to” instructions with theory. Understanding is the
best, most essential tool a mechanic can have.
The more you know the easier the work becomes and the less
money you waste on throwing parts at the problem. And should the
job appear too demanding, an understanding of what’s involved and
a familiarity of the vocabulary puts shop mechanics on notice that
they are dealing with a knowledgeable customer who will not be
taken advantage of.
That said, diesel engines are simple mechanical devices, differing
from gasoline engines only in the precision of their parts. Most
repairs can be accomplished with no more than a good set of hand
tools. Things get complicated when dealing with fuel systems.
Special tools are needed together with an appreciation of how these
systems work. You must also be aware of the hazards presented by
high-pressure fuel and the lethal voltages that are sometimes
present. But the rewards of working on these beautiful engines are
real. Not only will you save money—shop labor charges can top $150
an hour—you will have the satisfaction that comes with
accomplishment.
Paul Dempsey
Houston, TX
 1
CHAPTER

Rudolf Diesel
Rudolf Diesel was born of German parentage in Paris in 1858. His
father was a self-employed leather worker who, by all accounts,
managed to provide only a meager income for his wife and three
children. Their stay in the City of Light was punctuated by frequent
moves from one shabby flat to another. Upon the outbreak of the
Franco-Prussian War in 1870, the family became political
undesirables and was forced to emigrate to England. Work was
almost impossible to find, and in desperation, Rudolf’s parents sent
the boy to Augsburg to live with an uncle. There he was enrolled in
school.
Diesel’s natural bent was for mathematics and mechanics. He
graduated as the head of his class, and on the basis of his teachers’
recommendations and a personal interview by the Bavarian director
of education, he received a scholarship to the prestigious
Polytechnikum in Munich.
His professor of theoretical engineering was the renowned Carl
von Linde, who invented the ammonia refrigeration machine and
devised the first practical method of liquefying air. Linde was an
authority on thermodynamics and high-compression phenomena.
During one of his lectures he remarked that the steam engine had a
thermal efficiency of 6–10%; that is, one-tenth or less of the heat
energy of its fuel was used to turn the crankshaft, and the rest was
wasted. Diesel made special note of this fact. In 1879 he asked
himself whether heat could not be directly converted into mechanical
energy instead of first passing through a working fluid such as
steam.
On the final examination at the Polytechnikum, Diesel achieved
the highest honors yet attained at the school. Professor Linde
arranged a position for the young diploma engineer in Paris, where,
in few months, he was promoted to general manager of the city’s
first ice-making plant. Soon he took charge of distribution of Linde
machines over southern Europe.
By the time he was thirty, Diesel had married, fathered three
children, and was recognized throughout the European scientific
community as one of the most gifted engineers of the period. He
presented a paper at the Universal Exposition held in Paris in 1889—
the only German so honored. When he received the first of several
citations of merit from German universities, he announced wryly in
his acceptance speech: “I am an iceman. . .”
The basis of his acclaim was his preeminence in the new
technology of refrigeration, his several patents, and a certain
indefinable air about the young man that marked him as
extraordinary. He had a shy, self-deprecating humor and an absolute
passion for factuality. Diesel could be abrupt when faced with
incompetence and was described by relatives as “proud.” At the
same time, he was sympathetic to his workers and made friends
among them. It was not unusual for Diesel to wear the blue cotton
twill that was the symbol of manual labor in the machine trades.
He had been granted several patents for a method of producing
clear ice, which, because it looked like natural ice, was much in
demand by the upper classes. Professor Linde did not approve of
such frivolity, and Diesel turned to more serious concerns. He spent
several years in Paris, working on an ammonia engine, but was
defeated by the corrosive nature of this gas at pressure and high
temperatures.
The theoretical basis of this research was a paper published by
N.L.S. Carnot in 1824. Carnot set himself to the problem of
determining how much work could be accomplished by a heat
engine employing repeatable cycles. He conceived the engine drawn
in Figure 1-1. Body 1 is a boiler or other heat source that raises the
temperature of the working fluid A. The piston is at position C in the
drawing. As the air in the cylinder is heated, it expands in
correspondence to Boyle’s law. If we assume a frictionless engine,
the temperature of the air does not rise. Instead, expansion will take
place, driving the piston to D. Then A is removed, and momentum
takes the piston to E. The air column is now placed into contact with
2, which can be a radiator or cooling tank. At this point the
temperature of the air falls until it exactly matches cold surface 2.
The piston falls because cooled air occupies less volume than heated
air. Note, however, that the temperature of the air does not change.
The increase in compression as the piston falls restores heat to the
air to hold its temperature constant. At B cold body 2 is removed,
and the piston falls to A. During this phase the air gains temperature
until it is equal to the heat source 1. The piston climbs back into the
cylinder.

1-1 Carnot cycle.

 The temperature of the air, and consequently the pressure, is
higher during expansion than during compression. Because the
pressure is greater during expansion, the power produced by the
expansion is greater than that consumed by the compression. The
net result is a power output that is available for driving other
machinery.
Of course this is an “ideal” cycle. It does not take into account
mechanical friction nor transfer of heat from the air to the piston and
cylinder walls. The difference in heat between 1 and 2 is sufficient to
establish a gradient and drive the engine. It would be completely
efficient.
In 1892 and 1893 Diesel obtained patent specifications from the
German government covering his concept for a new type of
Verbrennungskraftmaschinen, or heat engine. The next step was to
build one. At the insistence of his wife, he published his ideas in a
pamphlet and was able to interest the leading Augsburg engine
builder in the idea. A few weeks later the giant Krupp concern
opened negotiations. He signed another contract with the Sulzer
Brothers of Switzerland.
The engine envisioned in the pamphlet and protected by the
patent specifications had the following characteristics:
• Compression of air prior to fuel delivery. The compression was
to be adiabatic; that is, no heat would be lost to the piston
crown or cylinder head during this process.
• Metered delivery of fuel, so compression pressures would not
be raised by combustion temperatures. The engine would
operate on a constant-pressure cycle; expanding gases would
keep precisely in step with the falling piston. This is a salient
characteristic of Carnot’s ideal gas cycle, and stands in contrast
to the Otto cycle, in which combustion pressures rise so quickly
upon spark ignition that we describe it as a constant-volume
engine.
• Adiabatic expansion.
• Instantaneous exhaust at constant volume.
 It is obvious that Diesel did not expect a working engine to attain
these specifications. Adiabatic compression and exhaust phases are,
by definition, impossible unless the engine metal is at combustion
temperature. Likewise, fuel metering cannot be so precise as to limit
combustion pressures to compression levels. Nor can a cylinder be
vented instantaneously. But these specifications are significant in
that they demonstrate an approach to invention. The rationale of the
diesel engine was to save fuel by as close an approximation to the
Carnot cycle as materials would allow. The steam, or Rankine cycle,
engine was abysmal in this regard; and the Otto four-stroke spark or
hot-tube ignition engine was only marginally better.
This approach, from the mathematically ideal to materially
practical, is exactly the reverse of the one favored by inventors of
the Edison, Westinghouse, and Kettering school. When Diesel visited
America in 1912, Thomas A. Edison explained to the young inventor
that these men worked inductively, from the existing technology,
and not deductively, from some ideal or model. Diesel felt that such
procedure was at best haphazard, even though the results of Edison
and other inventors of the inductive school were obviously among
the most important.
The first Diesel engine was a single-cylinder four-cycle design,
operated by gasoline vapor. The vapor was sprayed into the cylinder
near top dead center by means of an air compressor. The engine
was in operation in July of 1893. However, it was discovered that a
misreading of the blueprints had caused an increase in the size of
the chamber. This was corrected with a new piston, and the engine
was connected to a pressure gauge. The gauge showed
approximately 80 atmospheres before it shattered, spraying the
room with brass and glass fragments. The best output of what Diesel
called his “black mistress” was slightly more than 2 hp—not enough
power to overcome friction and compression losses. Consequently,
the engine was redesigned.
The second model was tested at the end of 1894. It featured a
variable-displacement fuel pump to match engine speed with load.
In February of the next year, the mechanic Linder noted something
remarkable. The engine had been sputtering along, driven by a belt
from the shop power plant, but Linder noticed that the driving side
of the belt was slack, indicating that the engine was putting power
into the system. For the first time, a Diesel engine ran on its own.
Careful tests—and Diesel was nothing if not careful and
methodical—showed that combustion was irregular. The next few
months were devoted to redesigning the nozzle and delivery system.
This did not help, and in what might have been a fit of desperation,
Diesel called upon Robert Bosch for an ignition magneto. Bosch
personally fitted one of his low-tension devices to the engine, but it
had little effect on the combustion problem. Progress came about by
varying the amount of air injected with the fuel, which, at this time,
was limited to kerosene or gasoline.
A third engine was built with a smaller stroke/bore ratio and fitted
with two injectors. One delivered liquid fuel, the other a mixture of
fuel and air. It was quite successful, producing 25 hp at 200 rpm.
Further modifications of the injector, piston, and lubrication system
ensued, and the engine was deemed ready for series production at
the end of 1896.
Diesel then turned his attention to his family, music, and
photography. Money began to pour in from the patent licensees and
newly organized consortiums wanting to build engines in France,
England, and Russia. The American brewer Adolphus Busch
purchased the first commercial engine, similar to the one on display
at the Budweiser plant in St. Louis today. He acquired the American
patent rights for one million marks, which at the current exchange
rate amounted to a quarter of a million dollars—more than Diesel
had hoped for.
The next stage of development centered around various fuels.
Diesel was already an expert on petroleum, having researched the
subject thoroughly in Paris in an attempt to refine it by extreme cold.
It soon became apparent that the engine could be adapted to run on
almost any hydrocarbon from gasoline to peanut oil. Scottish and
French engines routinely ran on shale oil, while those sold to the
Nobel combine in Russia operated on refinery tailings. In a search
for the ultimate fuel, Diesel attempted to utilize coal dust. As
dangerous as this fuel is in storage, he was able to use it in a test
engine.
These experiments were cut short by production problems. Not all
the licensees had the same success with the engine. In at least one
instance, a whole production run had to be recalled. The difficulty
was further complicated by a shortage of trained technicians. A small
malfunction could keep the engine idle for weeks, until the customer
lost patience and sent it back to the factory. With these
embarrassments came the question of whether the engine had been
oversold. Some believed that it needed much more development
before being put on the market. Diesel was confident that his
creation was practical—if built and serviced to specifications. But he
encouraged future development by inserting a clause in the
contracts that called for pooled research—the licensees were to
share the results of their research on Diesel engines.
Diesel’s success was marred in two ways. For one, he suffered
exhausting patent suits. The Diesel engine was not the first to
employ the principle of compression ignition; Akroyd Stuart had
patented a superficially similar design in 1890. Also, Diesel had a
weakness for speculative investments. This weakness, along with a
tendency to maintain a high level of personal consumption, cost
Rudolf Diesel millions. His American biographers, W. Robert Nitske
and Charles Morrow Wilson, estimate that the mansion in Munich
cost a million marks to construct at the turn of the century.
The inventor eventually found himself in the uncomfortable
position of living on his capital. His problem was analogous to that of
an author who is praised by the critics but who cannot seem to sell
his books. Diesel engines were making headway in stationary and
marine applications, but they were expensive to build and required
special service techniques. True mass production was out of the
question. At the same time, the inventor had become an
international celebrity, acclaimed on three continents.
Diesel returned to work. After mulling a series of projects, some
of them decidedly futuristic, he settled on an automobile engine.
Two such engines were built. The smaller, 5-hp model was put into
production, but sales were disappointing. The engine is, by nature of
its compression ratio, heavy and, in the smaller sizes, difficult to
start. (The latter phenomenon is due to the unfavorable
surface/volume ratio of the chamber as piston size is reduced. Heat
generated by compression tends to bleed off into the surrounding
metal.) A further complication was the need for compressed air to
deliver the fuel into the chamber. Add to these problems associated
with precision machine work, and the diesel auto engine seemed
impractical. While diesel trucks appeared early, it would be 1936
before Mercedes-Benz produced the first commercially successful
diesel passenger car.
Diesel worked for several months on a locomotive engine built by
the Sulzer Brothers in Switzerland. First tests were disappointing, but
by 1914 the Prussian and Saxon State Railways had a diesel in
regular service. Of course, nearly all of the world’s locomotives are
diesel-powered today.
Maritime applications came as early as 1902. Nobel converted
some of his tanker fleet to diesel power, and by 1905 the French
navy was relying on these engines for their submarines. Seven years
later, almost 400 boats and ships were propelled solely or in part by
compression engines. The chief attraction was the space saved,
which increased the cargo capacity or range.
In his frequent lectures Diesel summed up the advantages of his
invention. The first was efficiency, which was beneficial to the owner
and, by extension, to all of society. In immediate terms, efficiency
meant cost savings. In the long run, it meant conserving world
resources. Another advantage was that compression engines could
be built on any scale from the fractional horsepower to the 2400-hp
Italian Tosi of 1912. Compared to steam engines, the diesel was
compact and clean. Rudolf Diesel was very much concerned with the
question of air pollution, and mentioned it often.
But the quintessential characteristic, and the one that might
explain his devotion to his “black mistress,” was her quality. Diesel
admitted that the engines were expensive, but his goal was to build
the best, not the cheapest.
During this period Diesel turned his attention to what his
contemporaries called “the social question.” He had been poor and
had seen the effects of industrialization firsthand in France, England,
and Germany. Obviously machines were not freeing men, or at least
not the masses of men and women who had to regulate their lives
by the factory system. This paradox of greater output of goods and
intensified physical and spiritual poverty had been seized on by Karl
Marx as the key “contradiction” of the capitalistic system. Diesel
instinctively distrusted Marx because he distrusted the violence that
was implicit in “scientific socialism.” Nor could he take seriously a
theory of history whose exponent claimed it was based on absolute
principles of mathematical integrity.
He published his thoughts on the matter under the title
Solidarismus in 1903. The basic concept was that nations were more
alike than different. The divisions that characterize modern society
are artificial to the extent that they do not have an economic
rationale. To find solidarity, the mass of humanity must become part
owners in the sources of production. His formula was for every
worker to save a penny a day. Eventually these pennies would add
up to shares or part shares in business enterprises: Redistributed,
wealth and, more important, the sense of controlling one’s destiny
would be achieved without violence or rancor through the effects of
the accumulated capital of the workers.
Diesel wrote another book that was better received. Entitled Die
Enstehung des Dieselmotors, it recounted the history of his invention
and was published in the last year of his life.
For years Diesel had suffered migraine headaches, and in his last
decade, he developed gout, which at the end forced him to wear a
special oversized slipper. Combined with this was a feeling of fatigue,
a sense that his work was both done and undone, and that there
was no one to continue. Neither of his two sons showed any interest
in the engine, and he himself seemed to have lost the iron
concentration of earlier years when he had thought nothing of a 20-
hour workday. It is probable that technicians in the various plants
knew more about the current state of diesel development than he
did.
And the bills mounted. A consultant’s position, one that he would
have coveted in his youth, could only postpone the inevitable; a
certain level of indebtedness makes a salary superfluous. Whether
he was serious in his acceptance of the English-offered consultant
position is unknown. He left his wife in Frankfort in apparent good
spirits and gave her a present. It was an overnight valise, and she
was instructed not to open it for a week. When she did, she found it
contained 20,000 marks. This was, it is believed, the last of his liquid
reserves. At Antwerp he boarded the ferry to Warwick in the
company of three friends. They had a convivial supper on board and
retired to their staterooms. The next morning Rudolf Diesel could
not be found. One of the crew discovered his coat, neatly folded
under a deck rail. A few days later a pilot boat sighted a body
floating in the channel, removed a corn purse and spectacle case
from the pockets, and set the corpse adrift. The action was not
unusual or callous; seamen had, and still do have, a horror of
retrieving bodies from the sea. These items were considered by the
family to be positive identification. They accepted the death as
suicide, although the English newspapers suggested foul play at the
hands of foreign agents who did not want Diesel’s engines in British
submarines.
 2
CHAPTER

Diesel basics
At first glance, a diesel engine looks like a heavy-duty gasoline
engine, minus spark plugs and ignition wiring (Figure 2-1). Some
manufacturers build compression ignition (CI) and spark ignition (SI)
versions of the same engine. Caterpillar G3500 and G3600 SI
natural-gas fueled engines are built on diesel frames and use the
same blocks, crankshafts, heads, liners, and connecting rods.
2-1 The Yanmar 1GM10, shown with a marine transmission, provides auxiliary
power for small sailboats. The 19.4 CID unit develops 9 hp and forms the basic
module for two- and three-cylinder versions.

But there are important differences between CI and SI engines

that cut deeper than the mode of igniting the fuel.

Compression ratio
When air is compressed, collisions between molecules produce
heat that ignites the diesel fuel. The compression ratio (c/r) is the
measure of how much the air is compressed (Figure 2-2).
2-2 Compression ratio is a simple concept, but one that mathematics and pictures
express better than words.

Figure 2-3 graphs the relationship between c/r’s and thermal

efficiency, which reaffirms what every mechanic knows—high c/r’s
are a precondition for power and fuel economy.
2-3 The relationship between diesel compression ratios and thermal efficiency.

At the very minimum, a diesel engine needs a c/r of about 16:1

for cold starting. Friction, which increases more rapidly than the
power liberated by increases in compression, sets the upper limit at
about 24:1. Other inhibiting factors are the energy required for
cranking and the stresses produced by high power outputs. Diesels
with c/r’s of 16 or 17:1 sometimes benefit from a point or two of
higher compression. Starting becomes easier and less exhaust
smoke is produced. An example is the Caterpillar 3208 that has a
tendency to smoke and “wet stack,” that is, to saturate its exhaust
system with unburned fuel. These problems can be alleviated with
longer connecting rods that raise the compression ratio from 16.5:1
to 18.2:1.
 It should be noted that a compressor, in the form of a
turbocharger or supercharger, raises the effective c/r. Consequently,
these engines have c/r’s of 16 or 17:1, which are just adequate for
starting. Once the engine is running, the compressor provides
additional compression.
Gasoline engines have lower c/r’s—half or less—than CI engines.
This is because the fuel detonates when exposed to the heat and
pressure associated with higher c/r’s. Detonation is a kind of
maverick combustion that occurs after normal ignition. The
unburned fraction of the charge spontaneously explodes. This
sudden rise in pressure can be heard as a rattle or, depending upon
the natural frequency of the connecting rods, as a series of distinct
pings. Uncontrolled detonation destroys crankshaft bearings and
melts piston crowns.

Induction
Most SI engines mix air and fuel in the intake manifold by way of
one or more low-pressure (50-psi or so) injectors. A throttle valve
regulates the amount of air admitted, which is only slightly in excess
of the air needed for combustion. As the throttle opens, the injectors
remain open longer to increase fuel delivery. For a gasoline engine,
the optimum mixture is roughly 15 parts air to 1 part fuel. The air-
fuel mixture then passes into the cylinder for compression and
ignition.
In a CI engine, air undergoes compression before fuel is admitted.
Injectors open late during the compression stroke as the piston
approaches tdc. Compressing air, rather than a mix of air and fuel,
improves the thermal efficiency of diesel engines. To understand
why would require a course in thermodynamics; suffice to say that
air contains more latent heat than does a mixture of air and
vaporized fuel.
Forcing fuel into a column of highly compressed air requires high
injection pressures. These pressures range from about 6000 psi for
Another Random Scribd Document
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value. veritable and inestimable rallying-points of which
our History should be little more than a reasoned catalogue,
connected by summary of less important phenomena. Referring duly
to it, we find ourselves at the standpoint of a man who has really
wide knowledge, and who, when his general assumptions do not
interfere, has a real critical grasp. But the chief of these assumptions
is not merely that the vernaculars have not attained equality with
the classics—this, allowing for inevitable defects of perspective and
other things, would not be fatal—but that they cannot attain such
equality, much less any superiority. The point of view—to us plain
common-sense—that if Sannazar and others wrote in Latin about
Christian subjects, they should use Christian Latin, seems to Giraldus
the point of view of a kind of maniac. Without the details and
developments of Vida, he is apparently in exact accordance with that
excellent Bishop. Cicero and Virgil, not to mention others, have
achieved for literature a medium which cannot be improved upon,
and all those who adopt any other are, if not exactly wicked,
hopelessly deceived and deluded. This is the major premiss for
practically every syllogism of our critic. Where it does not come in—
between vernacular and vernacular, between Latin and Latin of the
classical type—he can judge just judgment. Where it comes in, the
more perfect his logic, the more inevitably vitiated is his conclusion.
 19. Since I wrote this, an obliging correspondent, Mr P.G. Thomas
of Liverpool, has suggested actual quotation of a passage of Bruni’s
on prose style in his De Studiis et Literis. If I do not give this it is,
first, because indulgence in quotation here is as the letting out of
waters; and, secondly, because the tractate is translated in Mr W. H.
Woodward’s well-known and excellent book on Vittorino da Feltre
(Cambridge, 1897), where other matter of interest to us will also be
found.

20. The connecting and explaining link, sometimes omitted, is to

be found in Rhetoric—the close connection of which with Logic and
Grammar is no puzzle, while the connection of poetry with it was
then an accepted fact. It is rather dangerous to say that Savonarola,
in connecting poetry with logic, was “tending towards the elimination
of the Imagination in art.” The extremely equivocal nature of the
word “Imagination” (v. vol. i. pp. 120, 165) needs constantly to be
pointed out. In the ancient sense, Imagination is as much connected
with Logic as anything else; in the modern, Savonarola probably
never even thought of it.

21. Otherwise, De Divisione et Utilitate Omnium Scientiarum. I

have read this in the Wittemberg ed. of his Philosophiæ Epitome
(1596, 8vo). The passages quoted and referred to will be found at p.
807 sq. of this.

22. Vol. i. p. 380 sq.

23. Or, “a pretty old woman that of a girl,” the position of the
epithet between the two nouns being ambiguous.

24. Geog. i. 11, 5, where he describes poetry as a rudimentary

philosophy, providing an introduction to life, and educating
pleasantly. I do not remember who first, or who successively,
pointed this out before Shaftesbury, Advice to an Author, Part I.
sect. 3, note sub fin. But Castelvetro (Op. Var., p. 83), and Opitz (v.
inf., p. 361), among others, refer to it.
 25. More especially p. 46 sq. (2nd ed.) The influence of the
Somnium Scipionis of Macrobius may also have been considerable.

26. Politian’s critical faculty shows to more advantage here than in

his attribution of the Epistles of the Pseudo-Phalaris to Lucian (see
Bentley’s immortal Dissertation). He had almost better—from the
literary point of view—have believed them genuine.

27. V. vol. i. p. 408.

28.

Aut telo, Summane, tuo traxere ruinam,

Aut trucibus nimbis aut iræ obnoxia Cauri,
Aut tacitis lenti perierunt dentibus ævi.
Dum ver tristis hyems, autumnum proferet æstas,
Dumque fluet spirans refluetque reciproca Tethys,
Dum mixta alternas capient elementa figuras,
Semper erit magni decus immortale Maronis,
Semper inexhaustis ibunt hæc flumina venis,
Semper ab his docti ducentur fontibus haustus,
Semper odoratos fundent hæc gramina flores.
—Manto, 335-337, 342-348, p. 303, ed. cit.
inf.

29. If anybody charges me with plagiarism from Mr Symonds’

“leaping,” I had rather plead guilty than quibble. The metaphor is too
obviously the right and only one, for the peculiar motion of Politian’s
verse, to any one who has an ear. I keep, however, the order of the
edition I use (that of Signor Isidoro del Lugo, Florence, 1867), not
the perhaps more logical one of Nutricia—Rusticus—Manto—Ambra,
which Mr Symonds followed and which is that of Pope, op. cit. inf.

30. My copy is the edition of Gryphius (Lugduni, 1554). Crinitus

(Ricci or Riccio) had dedicated it nearly fifty years earlier, and just
before his own death, I believe, to Cosmo Pazzi, Bishop of Arezzo,
on November 1, 1505.
 31. A fellow-citizen and contemporary printer generally appears in
biographical dictionaries under the heading “Olmucensis.” The
history of Olmütz, by W. Müller (Vienna, 1882), has not come in my
way, so I do not know whether Augustinus appears there. The
Dialogus is duly in Hain, but has not, I think, been much noticed by
literary historians.

32. I have used the Opera, 2 vols., Lugduni, 1531, 8vo. The
passages cited will be found at ii. 14 sq.

33. For Landi or Lando, see an interesting paper by Mr W. E. A.

Axon, in vol. xx. of the Transactions of the Royal Society of
Literature.

34. This, which is very amusing, opens the ed. of Berni’s Opere in
the Sonzogno collection (Milan, 1888).

35. For the Latin I use Pope’s Selecta Poemata Italorum (2 vols.,
London, 1740), i. 131-189, and the anonymous Poemata Selecta
Italorum (Oxford, 1808), 207-266; for Pitt’s Englishing, Chalmers’s
Poets, xix. 633-651. The original is Rome, 1527, 4to.

36. Prof. A. S. Cook (Boston, 1892).

37. Insignis facie ante alios, ed. Oxon., p. 215.

38. For a very interesting and characteristic view of this “invoking”

in the next generation, see Castelvetro, Op. Var., ed. cit. inf., pp. 79-
99.

39.

“Drances ... consiliis non futilis auctor,

Dives opum, pollens lingua et popularibus auris.
... Neque enim in Latio magno ore sonantem
Arma ducesque decet tam viles decidere in res.”
It is interesting to hear the watchword “Low!” so early.
 40. Some would plead for “mosaic.” But the mosaic worker works
his tiny cubes himself—he does not steal them ready made and
arranged.

41. Cf. Poet., ii. 162. Semper nutu rationis eant res.

42. Mr Spingarn’s useful chronological table gives twenty-five

books by nearly as many different authors for the seventy-three
years. Nor does this list pretend to be exhaustive; for instance, it
omits Robortello’s Longinus (1554), and the important De poetis
nostrorum temporum of Lilius Giraldus.

43. Dolce’s (1535) translation of Horace; Pazzi’s (1536) of

Aristotle; Daniello’s Poetica (1536), and Tolomei’s Versi e Regole
(1539).

44. Robortello’s ed. of Poetics (1548), and Segni’s translation

(1549); Maggi’s ed. (1550); Muzio’s Arte Poetica (1551); Giraldi
Cinthio’s Discorsi (1554).

45. Minturno’s Latin De Poeta (1559); Victorius’ Aristotle’s Poetics

(1560); Scaliger’s own Poetics (1561); the completion of Trissino
(1563); Minturno’s Italian Arte Poetica (1564), and Castelvetro’s
Poetics (1570).

46. The work of Piccolomini and Viperano.

47. That of Patrizzi, Tasso, and Denores.

48. That of Buonamici, Ingegneri, and Summo.

49. But most of this latter part had been written in 1548-49, and
all must have been before 1550, when Trissino died. Even this,
however, leaves a twenty years’ gap, which Trissino attributes to the
composition of his great (or at any rate large) poem on the Goths.

50. 2 vols., Verona, 1729.

 51. All these, with the Poetica and the translation of Dante, will be
found in the second volume of the edition cited. I take the
opportunity of correcting an injustice to Trissino which I committed
at i. 417, and which was brought to my notice by a reviewer in the
Athenæum. “Giovan- [or Giam-] battista Doria” does say, in his
dedication to the Cardinal de' Medici, that Dante wrote it in Latin,
adding, however, a clause of such singular obscurity that at first
sight one takes it as meaning that Dante himself translated the book
into Italian. For discussion of this see Rajna’s ed. of the De V. E., p. li
sq.

52. II. 95. Perhaps better “unlearned,” indotti Poeti.

53. Spingarn, p. 92.

54. Et ancor oggi si fa.

55. Spingarn, p. 102.

56. The discussion occupies nearly four quarto pages, ii. 127-130.
Trissino, of course, does not neglect Quintilian’s handling of the
subject in Inst., vi. 3, and he quotes modern as well as ancient
examples.

57. Dolce had translated the Ars Poetica of Horace into Italian the
year before.

58. Mr Spingarn has extracted from MS., and published as an

appendix to his book, an interesting review of these commentators
and others, by Leonardo Salviati, a successor of theirs in 1586, and
too famous in the Tasso controversy.

59. Maggi in his commentary. See Spingarn, p. 27.

60. V. infra, p. 71.

61. Discoveries, sub fin. (iii. 419 of Cunningham’s 3 vol. ed.)

 62. On him see also note infra, pp. 49, 50.

63. M. Breitinger (Les Unités d’Aristote avant Corneille, p. 7) says,

“ce livre n’est qu’un commentaire du Canzoniere de Pétrarque.” He
can hardly have read it; and most probably confused it with the
Spositione by Daniello which accompanies an edition of Petrarch
(Venice, 1549), and had been partially published eight years earlier.
This is a full but rather wooden commentary, chiefly interesting to
contrast with Castelvetro’s, and as showing the Italian tendency to
expatiate rather than to appreciate.

64. Fracastorii Opera, 2 vols., Lyons, 1591. The Naugerius is at i.

319-365.

65. A few of these poems of Navagero will be found in Pope’s

Selecta Poemata Italorum (Londoni, 1740); more in the Oxford
Selection (1808); most in Carmina Quinque Illustrium Poetarum
(Florence, 1552).

66. Rime Diverse (Venice, f. 68-94). The name on the title-page is

Mutio, and the spelling Muzio, which some books have, may lead to
confusions; for there appears to be another Rime Diverse of Muzio
four years earlier, which does not contain the Arte. This is in blank-
verse, agreeably written, with some general observations on Poets
and Poetry, Ancient and Modern, and practical enough. Says Mutio,
e.g.,—

La catena
Di Dante non e leggiadra, se non
Fa punto con la terza sua rima.

67. Delia Lingua Toscana. The four Books of this are rather empty
things. The first goes to show that Philosophy is necessary to the
perfect orator; the second that it is equally necessary to the perfect
poet; the third that Rhetoric is useful for writing and speaking with
eloquence; while the fourth discusses oratorical diction and its
ornaments. Few of the books cited here better justify De Quincey’s
too sweeping ban.

68. Due Dialogi dell' Inventione Poetica di Alessandro Lionardi

(Venice, 1554). No one carries the ventosa loquacitas about the
origin of laws, and virtues, and opinions, and what not, farther than
Lionardi; no one is more set on defining “the Historian,” “the Orator,”
“the Poet,” &c.; no one pays more attention to all the abstractions.
At p. 18 he has a curious catalogue, occupying the greater part of a
small quarto page, and capable of being extended to a large folio, or
many large folios, of “subjects” and “effects,” in regard to history,
enmity, discord, war, peace; in short, all the contents of the
dictionary. “Perdonatemi,,” says another interlocutor, “se interrompo
i vostri ragionamenti,” and indeed they might have gone on for ever.
But the new man has his catalogue ready, too.

69. Venice, 1562. It is very short and very general. There are
some literary touches in his Lettere (2 vols., Venice, 1562), especially
a correspondence with Cinthio on the Amadigi.

70. Della Vera Poetica, Venice, 1555.

71. His volume appears to be almost introuvable for sale; but the
British Museum has no less than three copies. I wish it would give
me one of them.

72. Especially in those to La Strega and l’Arzigoglio (Commedie di

A. Grazzini, ed. Fanfani, Florence, 1897), pp. 173 and 435. Gelli and
others do much the same.

73. The proper quotation is imitatio vitæ, speculum consuetudinis,

imago veritatis. It is given as early as by Robortello (see note
opposite). But with that intelligent operation of the communis sensus
which pedants dislike, speculum vitæ was what took the general.

74. In Prose Scelte di P. Bembo, ed. Costero (Milan, 1880), pp.

141-278.
 75. Ed. Costero, 2 vols. (Milan, 1879 and 1884).

76. Ed. Costero (Milan, 1888).

77. Robortello edited Ælian and Æschylus as well as Longinus and

Aristotle; Petrus Victorius was busied very widely with the classics.
The combined treatment of Aristotle and Horace by the former in his
Explicationes (Basle, 1555) is distinctly noteworthy. His dealings with
the Greek are almost pure commentary; those with the Roman,
though called a “Paraphrase,” are much freer. He begins with a sort
of expository lecture on the Epistola ad Pisones, introducing most of
its matter and much illustration from other authors. Then separate
short essays follow on Satire, Epigram, Comedy, Sales, and Elegy.
The heading “Sales” is especially worthy of attention as illustrating
that tormenting preoccupation of the classics on Wit, which
transmitted itself to the Renaissance, and is found in moderns as
recent as Whately. Robortello exercised much authority, and is
shown by M. Morel-Fatio in his recent edition of Lope de Vega’s Arte
Nuevo (v. infra, p. 343) to have furnished the Spanish poet with
much, if not most, of the miscellaneous erudition which he displays
to no great purpose. Robortello’s earlier editio princeps of Longinus
(ibid., 1554) is noteworthy in a different way. He was by no means
more modest than the average Renaissance scholar; on the contrary,
he is accused of special arrogance. But this opus redivivum, antea
ignotum, e tenebris in lucem editum, as he calls it, seems to have
puzzled, if not actually abashed, him. He has no introduction, no
regular commentary: only side-headings of the matter, from which,
he says, “all the method of the book, and the order of the questions
treated, and the whole rationale of the teaching,” and much else,
can be learnt. The spirit was too potent for him who had called it up.
Of other mainly classical commentators, Riccoboni (Compendium
Artis Poeticæ, 1591) is again useful, because he combines Horace
and Aristotle, and practicalises the combination, identifying the
Aristotelian or pseudo-Aristotelian (see vol. i. p. 34) “Episode” with
the first Four Acts, the Exodus with the Fifth, &c. Maggi, Segni,
Zabarella are even farther from our sphere.
 78. Let, however, the reader beware of being misled by the
occurrence of the word “Admiratio” in the side-notes of pp. 52, 53. It
is used in quite a different sense.

79. Perhaps, if this be true, the Irish got it from their French
friends of the seventeenth century, among whom, according to the
Ménagiana, poeta regius was the correct title of the King’s Fool.

80. Ut doceat, ut delectet, ut moveat. Suggested by Cicero on the

orator.

81. P. 173. Amatorio mollique sermone effeminat. See Spingarn, p.

70. It should, however, be observed that Minturno is here avowedly
expressing the censure of Aristophanes on Euripides rather than his
own opinion.

82. “Vain and amatorious.”

83. Minturno mentions neither Cinthio (v. infra) nor Pigna—

probably to avoid the appearance of direct attack; but he must have
been thinking of one or the other or both. Something the same line
was taken by Sperone Speroni.

84. See next Book, p. 369.

85. Scritti Estetici di Giambattista Giraldi Cinthio, 2 vols., Milan,

1864. (In Daelli’s Biblioteca Rara.) This edition gives extracts from
Pigna’s work, and documents respecting the quarrel.

86. To speak correctly, Seneca prefers (Agamemnon, Hercules

Furens, H. Œtæus, Medea, Troades) to compose the First Act of a
soliloquy and a chorus. This, when the chorus is not present,
becomes of course a monologue. In the Hippolytus, Octavia,
Thebais, and Thyestes, there is dialogue in the first Act. But, even of
these, the first two begin with a lyrical monologue, which is in effect
a first Scene.
 87. Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, p. 232.

88. Venice, 1554, 4to.

89. For the neat little edition of this by Karl Wotke (Berlin, 1894)
one must be thankful, and also for the careful bibliographical
introduction on recent work concerning Renaissance Literature.

90. Op. cit., pp. 62, 63, 70. Giraldus also knows Colet, Grocyn,
and others of the set.

91. “Fuere et in Britannorum idiomate et eorum vernaculo

sermone aliqui poetæ ab iis summo in pretio habiti, inter quos
Galfridus Chaucerus qui multa scripsit, et Thomas Viatus.” That he
adds “ambo insignes equites” is very pardonable.

92. Not merely northern Humanists like Reuchlin, Erasmus,

Eobanus Hessus, and Hutten, not merely Greeks from Gemistus
Pletho to Musurus and Lascaris, but foreign vernacular writers like
Ressendi, Juan de la Mena, Marot, Martial d’Auvergne receive notice.

93. The supposed date of the conversation is, as usual in such

case, thrown a good deal back.

94. He allows him (p. 18, ed. cit.) “sweetness and wit,” but says
nescio quare as to the contemporary praise of the Hermaphroditus,
and adds plumply, nec poeta bonus nec bonus orator. The simple
fact is that, if the subjects of this notorious book were decent,
nobody would see anything but quite ordinary merit in their
treatment.

95. Ed. cit., p. 25.

96. As a rough but not misleading gauge of this it may be

mentioned that Herr Wotke’s Namenregister contains for less than
100 printed pages, between four and five hundred entries, including,
besides those noticed in the text, names like those of Olympia
Morata and Bilibald Pirkheimer, Castiglione and Alciati, Conrad Celtes
and Paulus Jovius, Cardinal Perotti and Jacob Wimpheling. In fact,
hardly any one in Europe who had to do with belles lettres seems to
have been outside the cognisance, in closer or vaguer kind, of
Giraldus.
 CHAPTER III.

SCALIGER, CASTELVETRO, AND THE LATER ITALIAN

CRITICS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
JULIUS CÆSAR SCALIGER—THE ‘POETIC’—BOOK I.: ‘HISTORICUS’—BOOK II.:
‘HYLE’—BOOKS III. AND IV.: ‘IDEA’ AND ‘PARASCEVE’—BOOKS V. AND VI.:
‘CRITICUS’ AND ‘HYPERCRITICUS’—BOOK VII.: EPINOMIS—GENERAL IDEAS
ON UNITY AND THE LIKE—HIS VIRGIL-WORSHIP—HIS SOLID MERITS—
CASTELVETRO—THE OPERE VARIE—THE ‘POETICA’—ON DRAMATIC
CONDITIONS—ON THE THREE UNITIES—ON THE FREEDOM OF EPIC—HIS
ECCENTRIC ACUTENESS—EXAMPLES: HOMER’S NODDING, PROSE IN
TRAGEDY, VIRGIL, MINOR POETRY—THE MEDIUM AND END OF POETRY—
UNCOMPROMISING CHAMPIONSHIP OF DELIGHT—HIS EXCEPTIONAL
INTEREST AND IMPORTANCE—TASSO AND THE CONTROVERSIES OVER THE
‘GERUSALEMME’—TASSO’S CRITICAL WRITINGS AND POSITION—PATRIZZI:
HIS ‘POETICA’—THE ‘DECA ISTORIALE’—THE ‘DECA DISPUTATA’—THE
‘TRIMERONE’ ON TASSO—REMARKABLE POSITION OF PATRIZZI—‘SED
CONTRA MUNDUM’—THE LATEST GROUP OF SIXTEENTH-CENTURY CRITICS
—PARTENIO—VIPERANO—PICCOLOMINI—GILIO—MAZZONI—DENORES—
ZINANO—MAZZONE DA MIGLIONICO, ETC.—SUMMO.

In the remarkable little book, a notice of which concluded the last

chapter, Lilius Giraldus, as we observed, includes—for their verse-
work nominally, as became his title, but, with his usual acuteness,
obviously perceiving that their importance lay elsewhere—both of
the most famous and influential critics of the central sixteenth
Julius Cæsar century in Italy. His reference to Julius Cæsar
Scaliger. Scaliger (who was, indeed, not more than six years
younger than himself) contains some touches (such as the mention
of him by the name he took, but with the addition “qui primus
Bordonus cognomine fuit,” and the description of his book on Comic
Metres, as “arranged with such wonderful subtlety as not to be
intelligible save to a reader well versed in the subject”) which are of
doubtful friendliness, but allows the Veronese gladiator to be
apprime eruditus and capable of carmina elegantia. For us nothing
of Scaliger’s needs detailed notice except the once world-famous and
still famous Poetices Libri Septem,[97] which appeared in 1561 after
the death of Giraldus, and indeed after his own.
Scaliger was very much better qualified than Boileau to be
législateur du Parnasse in the sense in which both understood
Parnassus: or perhaps it would be better to say that without a
The Poetic. Scaliger a Boileau would have been impossible. He
had immense learning; he had absolute confidence
in his own judgment; and within limits which, if they reduce his
positive value, make him an even more complete and direct
exponent of his own particular school and creed, he had great
acuteness, an orderly and logical spirit, and a thorough command of
method. Nothing (certain inevitable postulates being granted) can be
more luminous and intelligible than the book, in which the author,
through all his thousand pages, never loses sight, nor permits his
reader to lose sight, of the subject, the process, and the goal. That
he stands forth in the preface to his son Sylvius with an air of
patronage at once paternal and pedagogic, announcing himself as
the pioneer of the subject, dismissing those who allege Varro, as
with levity ignoring the fact that neither Varro nor anybody else in
antiquity did, or could do, anything of the kind: that he blandly
sweeps away the plebs grammaticorum; that he labels the Ars
Poetica itself as teaching adeo sine ulla arte ut saturæ propius esse
videatur, Aristotle as fragmentary, Vida as optimus poeta in theatro,
claudus magister in schola—is all of it agreeably Scaligerian in
manner. But it is far from being untrue in fact. And there is a touch
of sublimity in the Quare porro opera danda est nobis, “wherefore
we must put our shoulders to the wheel,” with which he concludes.
“Let others grub money, or canvass for office, or talk about the wars
as parasite guests at dinner: we will let them alone, and simply
defend the nobility of our studies, the magnanimity and simplicity of
our purpose.” After this magnificent pose and draping, and before
commendatory verses (the main copy being by no less a person than
Etienne de La Boétie) comes a table of contents of antique clearness
and solidity, filling nearly a dozen pages, by means of which, and of
the more than sixty of index at the end, the study of the text is not a
little facilitated.
The First Book has the special title, Qui et Historicus, which it
deserves, if not exactly or exclusively in our sense of History. The
Book I.: critic begins, scholastically enough, with a
Historicus. distribution of everything into necessary, useful, or
delightful, and proceeds to apply the classification in a beneficial
manner to literary expression in general and Poetry in particular,
ending the chapter with a characteristic gibe (for Scaliger is far from
unhumorous) at the moderns who confine the appellation “Makers”
to candle-makers.[98] Then he follows the safe road by discussing the
causes (material, formal, &c.) of poetry; and indulges in a free
review (for Scaliger, to do him justice, is paratus nullius jurare in
verba) of ancient opinions. Hence he sets off to a full enumeration
and examination, not merely of the kinds of poetry, but (in
connection more especially with the drama) of the theatres and
games of the ancients. Nothing escapes the extensive view of his
observation, neither palinodes nor parodies, neither centos nor
enigmas. And he is intensive as well as extensive. He rebukes, in his
usual magisterial manner, the Græculas nugas of Plutarch, who
explains the number of the Muses by that of the letters in the name
of their mother, Mnemosyne; and as for Plato’s blame of poetry,
respiceat ipse sese quot ineptas quot spurcas fabellas inserat.[99] The
distinction of Poesis, Poema, and Poeta, which follows (and which
many grave writers, including Ben, copy), we have often met in kind
or in itself before, nor is it quite so meticulous as it looks. For
Scaliger utilises it to stop the blunder of Plutarch and others, who
make a distinction in kind between great poems and smaller ones. It
is tempting but impossible to follow him through the multitudinous,
though far from mazy, ramifications of his plan. It must be enough
to say that he leaves few items of the dictionary of his subject
untouched, and (however inclined one may be to cry “Halt and
fight!” at not a few of his definitions) formulates them with a
roundness and a touch of confident mastery which fully explain, and
to some extent justify, the practical dictatorship which he so long
enjoyed. As thus (at the opening of chap. vi. p. 27), “Tragedy, like
Comedy established in examples of human life, differs from it in
three things—the condition of the persons, the quality of the
fortunes and actions, the end. Whence it is necessary that it should
also differ in style.” And this legislative calmness is accompanied and
fortified by a profusion of erudite example, which might well awe the
disciple.
The second book, Qui et Hyle, gives us an important point at
once, in the fact that this hyle—this “material” of poetry—is frankly
Book II.: acknowledged to be verse.[100] The entire book is
Hyle. occupied, at the rate of a chapter apiece, after the
half-dozen general ones which open it, with almost every classical
metre, if not from pyrrhic to dochmiac, at least from iambic to
galliambic. A great number of interesting dicta might be extracted
from this book—as, for instance, Scaliger’s remarkable distinction of
Rhythm and Metre, as giving, the latter the more exact measure of
the line, the former its continuity and “temperament.”[101]
The third, Qui et Idea, is far longer than either of the preceding,
Books III. and is less easily describable to modern readers.
and IV.: Idea Those who have read the first volume of this book
and with some care will understand it without much
Parasceve.
difficulty, if we call it a throwing of the traditional
and technical treatment of Rhetoric into a form suitable to Poetry.
Prosopopœia and ethopœia; the bearings or “colours” of time, place,
race, sex, and the rest; the considerations of chance and manners
and fortune; lead us to our old friends the Figures. To these, giving
them the most liberal interpretation possible, so as to include fresh
kinds of poetry as well as actual turns of speech, Scaliger
complacently allows nearly a hundred out of the nearly hundred and
thirty chapters of this overgrown Book, comprising by itself nearly a
full quarter of the volume. Nor does even this devotion to Figures
satisfy him, for the Fourth Book, Qui et Parasceve (preparation),
beginning with the characters or distinctions of style, turns before
long to more Figures, and is, in fact, a sort of Part II. of the Third.
Naturally, there is no part of the book more difficult to analyse, but,
as naturally, there is none in which analysis is less required. Scaliger
luxuriates in his opportunities of sub-division and sub-definition; but
he abounds ever more and more in those examples which we have
recognised as, from the time of Hermogenes downwards, the “solace
of this sin,” and the plentifulness of which in Scaliger himself would,
even if they stood alone, go some way to atone for the absence of a
larger examination of writers as wholes. And he does not allow us to
lack even this.
Another pair of Books, the Fifth (Qui et Criticus) and the Sixth (Qui
et Hypercriticus), together constitute the pith and body of the book
Books V. and in spirit, and occupy more than a third of it in space.
VI.: Criticus It is here that Scaliger lets himself and his learning
and loose. The Fifth Book consists of a vast series of
Hypercriticus.
cross-comparisons, Homer with Virgil, Greeks with
Latins, Virgil with Greeks other than Homer, Horace and Ovid with
Greeks, Latins with other Latins, special subject-passages of the
same theme from different authors. Its sequel, the Hypercriticus,
undertakes, for the first time, an actual survey of belles lettres as
Scaliger understood them, beginning, after an odd discussion of
Plautus and Terence, with the Renaissance Humanists (many Italians
and a few Germans and French), and then receding through three
Ages (the Middle disdainfully excluded), to Catullus and Horace.
Here, of course, one may, according to taste or temperament, most
revel in, or most shudder away from, “criticism of criticism.” Here the
citation is most opulent and useful. Here, above all, the most hostile
judge must be forced to admire and acknowledge the erudition
which not merely for the first time attempts, but for the first time
completely meets the initial requirements of, a complete examination
of poetic literature on a definite and reasoned basis. But here,
inevitably, the weakness of Scaliger comes out most strongly, as well
as his strength. Not only was his judgment warped in more ways
than one by prejudice, but we are, with all the goodwill in the world,
forced before long to conclude[102] that his taste itself was radically
defective. Nor does this conclusion rest merely on his preference
(anticipated by Vida and others, and almost an article of national
faith) of Virgil to Homer. His estimate of Musæus also as far superior
to Homer, as incomparable among Greeks, as “worthy of Virgil,”
speaks this taste only too well; and the fearless good faith with
which, disdaining the “guile that lurks in generals,” he quotes line
after line as specially beautiful, delivers him into our hands, a
respectable but self-convicted victim. After this the “coldness” and
“childishness” and “unsuitability” of the Homeric epithet, the
“semper-august” character of Virgil, and innumerable other things of
the kind, disturb us not. Scaliger’s idol has spoken Scaliger’s doom in
Qui Bavium non odit—not, of course, that Hero and Leander is itself
by any means Bavian, but that it is so in comparison with Homer.
Nearly a hundred pages are given up to this main comparison of
Homer and Virgil. The others are shorter, but always result in the
same dogged maintenance of the superiority of Latins to Greeks—
that is to say, the same involuntary confession of Scaliger’s
preference of Rhetoric to Poetry. It is interesting, however, to find
him conducting his comparisons in a way in which, as in most other
cases, posterity for two centuries thronged to follow him—the
assemblage, that is to say, of passages on the same subject from
different poets.
Still less can we abstract the curious and invaluable survey of the
Hypercriticus. Not a little of it is actual review of actual
contemporaries or very recent predecessors, and review of the
ancients takes the same form, reinforced constantly by discussed
quotations. Sometimes, as in the case of Juvenal, these are
arranged into a little anthology of “jewels five words long,” strung
together with acute et hoc, illud valde festivum, and the like
appreciative interjections. His preference of Juvenal to Horace is
seasoned with a characteristic fling at Erasmus (p. 876).
Book VII.: Lastly comes an Epinomis or Codicil, which is
Epinomis. divided into two parts, and takes up some of the
special points of poetical or dramatic criticism then most interesting
—the relative importance of action and character, the parts of
tragedy, the Chorus, the metres most appropriate to the stage, and
the like, ending with a sort of “gratillity” or bonus in the shape of an
examination of a codex of Terence, which we could spare, at least in
this place. More piquant, at least, are the diatribes de negligentia aut
inscitia professorum, directed (with a show of respect) against
Erasmus once more; the occasional flights, such as “Variety is the
tirewoman of poetry”[103] (p. 906); the amusing references to mea
poemata, which in some parts of the book he has obligingly, and
once more with a fearlessness drawing nigh to rashness, exposed to
the arrows; and other things which are perhaps here all the more
numerous because the Book is an avowed Appendix, and, as it were,
omnium gatherum. They are, however, plentiful everywhere; and if it
were possible to revive the old periodical Literary Miscellanies of
commonplace-book character—a thing which will have to be done
sooner or later, if the accumulations of the last few centuries are not
to became mere Nineveh-mounds, as yet unexplored—I should like
to compose a florilegium of memorabilia out of Scaliger.
For in this great space, occupied with equal method and erudition,
it could not be but that remarkable pronouncements on the more
general questions of literary criticism, whether given obiter or in
definite reference to argued questions, should emerge. Scaliger is,
General ideas indeed, less set than most of his predecessors in
on Unity and Italian criticism, and than some at least of his
the like. successors, on these general pronouncements. “The
disinterested and philosophic treatment of æsthetic problems wholly
aside from all practical considerations,” as the tendency of Italian
criticism has been rather unguardedly characterised,[104] does not
seem to have had the first attraction for him. Yet he could not, in the
wide sweep of his net, have avoided such questions if he would;
and, with his fearless temper and eager literary interests, there is no
reason to suppose that he would have avoided them if he could. He
did not explicitly enjoin the Three Unities,[105] but he did more than
any other man had done to inculcate that unfortunate notion of
“verisimilitude”[106] from which, much more than from Aristotle, they
were deduced. Not many words need be wasted (especially as the
point will recur only too often during the volume) on the absurdity of
this wresting of Incredulus odi. The whole arrangements of the
theatre are invraisemblables, no matter whether you have electric
light or cross-shaped laths with candles on them, marquises sitting
on the stage or millionaires in stage-boxes, elaborate scenery or
directions to the audience, “Here is Thebes.” You do not murder, or
(if you can help it) make love, in real life, before a miscellaneous
audience who have paid to see you do it; in real life you do not talk
in any regular stage lingo that has hitherto been invented, whether
the outward form of it be senarii, or fourteeners, or complicated
rhymed stanzas, or doggerel, or couplet, or blank verse, or stage
prose. The sixteenth century Globe, and the twentieth century
Lyceum, are alike unlike any place in which one habitually performs
any action of life from birth, through marriage, to death. That there
is a stage verisimilitude, which it is dangerous or fatal to break, need
not be denied. But neither Scaliger nor any of his successors in
purism has proved that we are, or ought to be, any more shocked by
Æschylus when he shifts from Delphi to Athens than by Thackeray
when he transports us from Flanders to Chelsea.
We may venture indeed to suspect that Scaliger “had more wit
than to be here.” One may frequently differ with him; but he seldom
runs mad on mere theory. It is he, for instance, who, while, as we
have seen, he lays down uncompromisingly that the material of
poetry is verse, instances the Æthiopica as a perfect epic. Instead of
confusing poetry and learning, as some have done, he holds the
much more sensible position that learning is useful to a poet. He
takes the hard-and-fast ethical view of the ends both of tragedy and
of all poetry, and he believes firmly in the type. But he does not
bemuse himself, as some had done and more were to do, in the
explanation of katharsis, and the definition of the tragic hero.
His greatest and also his most pervading critical fault is that
“deification of Virgil,” whereof, though by no means the inventor, he
was the chief prophet to the best part of three centuries. Let it be
His Virgil- admitted (with every possible emphasis on the fact
worship. that it is no mere extorted admission but a genuine
and spontaneous opinion) that anybody is free to admire Virgil or
any one else as much as he likes. “She that is fair to him” is so, and
there’s an end on’t. But if any one proceed, not merely to intimate
indifference to other fair ones, but to find positive fault with them
because they are not like her, then he becomes at once uncritical:
still more so if he erect her qualities, features, style, into abstract
virtues and positive truths, all opposites to which are sin and
vileness. He may call “Simula Silene, nervosa et lignea Dorcas,” to
take two only out of the famous list in the classic place of this
matter. But he must not declare that a girl who has a straight
Grecian nose is therefore ugly, or that softness and plumpness are
not excellent things in woman. Scaliger does this. For him Virgil is, at
once, the standard of excellence and the infallible touchstone of
defect. Nay, he is actually a better Nature; a wiser but more perfect
Creation, whereby you may save yourself the trouble of outside
imitation, inasmuch as everything worth imitating is there better
done than by Nature herself. It is impossible to exaggerate or
caricature Scaliger’s Maronolatry: as the Highfliers did in the case of
Defoe’s Shortest Way, he would cheerfully accept and indorse the
most outrageous statement of it.
Grave, however, as is this fault, and seriously as it vitiates
Scaliger’s attitude as a critic, there is no doubt that it served in itself
as the backbone of that attitude, and gave it the stiffness which
enabled it to resist at once argument and time. A cause of disquiet
to some critics themselves, and a rallying-cry to most enemies of
criticism, has been constantly found in the apparently floating and
uncertain character of the completest critical orthodoxy. Longinus
himself, perhaps the best exponent of that orthodoxy, has been and
is charged with vagueness; and all those who follow him must lay
their account with the same accusation. In the last resort we often
cannot give a clear, definite, cut-and-dried reason for the faith that is
in us, and we still oftener had better not try to do so. Scaliger and
Scaligerism are in no such plight. Their Sortes Virgilianæ are ex
hypothesi decisive, and of universal application. What is found in
Virgil is good, is the best; what is different from Virgil is bad or
mediocre; what is like Virgil is good in direct proportion to the
likeness. This of itself gives confidence both to the critic and to his
disciples.
Again, Scaliger, though he has no more right to arrogate Reason
and Nature as on his side than the rest of his school, possesses, like
all of the best of them, a certain sturdy prima facie common-sense.
His solid It is this which dictates his theory of dramatic
merits. verisimilitude; this which palliates some of his
Homeric and other blasphemies. Though uncompromisingly moral,
and by no means illogical (when you have once granted his bundle
of postulates), he is not in the least metaphysical. The wayfaring
man, with tolerable intelligence and a very little trouble, can
understand him perfectly.
Still more unmixed praise can be given to him from other points of
view. To any scholar his scholarship is singularly refreshing in its
thoroughness and range; he really neglects nothing proper to his
subject, though he may define that subject with a somewhat
arbitrary hand. Agree with him or differ with him as we may, it is an
infinite comfort to be brought thus in contact and confrontation with
the actual texts—to exchange the paper symbols of “the poet,” “the
dramatist,” “the satirist” in the abstract, for sound ringing coin of
actual poetry, drama, satire, told down on the counter, and tested by
file and acid if required. The literary atlas of the Hypercriticus is, as
has been said, the first attempt at a complete thing of the kind since
Quintilian, and of necessity far more complete than his. In fact,
Scaliger taught the school opposed to him—the school which after
many a generation of desultory fighting at last worsted his own—the
way to conquer. History and Comparison—the twin lights of criticism,
the only road-makers across the abyss—are resorted to by him
fearlessly. That he loses the best of their light, and twists the road in
the wrong direction, by following Will-o'-the-wisps like his Virgil-
worship, matters in detail but not in principle. He has practically
come back to the safe way which Aristotle entered, but was
precluded from treading far enough, which Quintilian and Longinus
trod, but on which most of the ancients would not set foot. He has
not found the last secret—the secret of submitting to History and to
Comparison; he still looks upon both as instruments to be used
merely under the direction of, and in subordination to, the purposes
of a priori theory. His neglect of the vernaculars is not only wrong,
but by his time absurd. His minor prejudices (as against Erasmus)
are sometimes contemptible. His actual taste, as has been said, was
probably neither delicate nor versatile. But he has learning, logic,
lucidity within his range, laborious industry, and love of literature.
The multitude which followed him followed him partly to do evil; but
it would have been a surprise, and almost a shame, had so bold and
capable a leader lacked a multitude of followers.
As has been said, Lilius Giraldus also refers to Lodovico
Castelvetro, who at least resembled Scaliger in the characteristic
Castelvetro. Ishmaelitism of the Renaissance critic. His quarrel
with Caro, also already referred to, was unluckily,
we must not say distinguished, but marked, by unfair play on the
part of his adversary, who “delated” him to the Inquisition for
heresy; and Castelvetro had to fly the country. His most important
work appeared late, the famous edition and translation, with
commentary, of the Poetics[107] not being published till a year before
his death. “He was of his nature choleric,” says his biographer; and
he bestowed a good deal of this choler not merely upon Caro, but
upon the majestic Bembo and others. Yet Castelvetro was a very
remarkable critic, and perhaps deserved the ascription of actual
critical genius better than any man who has yet been mentioned in
this volume. It is but for chequered righteousness that his practically
certain formulation of the Three Unities can be counted to him; but,
as we shall see, he has other claims, from which it is not necessary
to write off anything.
His impartial attachment to both classical and vulgar tongues
ranks him, of itself, in a higher sphere than that of Scaliger; and a
certain impetuous, incalculable, prime-sautier genius puts him higher
still. Even contemporaries seem to have recognised this in him,
though they sometimes shook their heads over its pronouncements.
[108]
It may, indeed, sometimes seem that these pronouncements
are, if not inconsistent, difficult to connect by any central tie-beam
of critical theory. But this is almost inevitable in the case of a critic
whose work takes the form, not of regular treatises on large
subjects, nor even of connected essays on separate authors and
books, but of commentaries and adversaria, where the passage
immediately under consideration is uppermost in the writer’s mind,
and may—not illegitimately in a fashion—induce him to display a
facet of his thought which does not seem logically connected with
other facets. This peculiarity is perhaps the only excuse for the
depreciation of Dacier, who, reinforcing his native dulness with the
superciliousness of a Frenchman in the later years of Louis XIV.,
accused Castelvetro of ignorance, and even of contradiction of
Aristotle. The fact is, that Castelvetro is first of all an independent
critic, and that, though there are few less common, there are no
more valuable critical qualities than independence, even when it is
sometimes pushed to the verge of eccentricity, providing only that it
is sincere, and not ill-informed. It seems to me uncharitable, if not
flagrantly unjust, to deny Castelvetro sincerity, and either impudent
or ignorant to deny him information.
But he had also acuteness and taste. I do not know a better
example in little of the latter quality at the time than his short and
scornful description[109] of a preposterous comparison by another
critic, Bartolommeo Riccio, between the “Sparrow” of Catullus and a
pretty but commonplace poem of Navagero on a dog. One may sigh
The Opere over the ruling passion, not to say the original sin,
Varie. of critical man, on passing from this to a tangle of
recrimination and “that’s my thunder” which follows with reference
to Riccio and Pigna and Cinthio. But this passes again into a solid
discussion on the material and form of poetry, and on the office of
the Muses. Many of these animadversions are, as we should expect,
purely verbal, sometimes not beyond the powers of the
grammaticuccio, of whom Castelvetro himself not unfrequently talks
with piquant scorn. But the comfort of finding annotations on Virgil
alternating with discourses on Dante, like that of placing a quarto on
Petrarch side by side with one on Aristotle, more than atones for any
occasional hair-splitting. We are at last in the Jerusalem of general
Literature which is the mother of us all, which is free and universal;
not in this or that separatist Samaria or exclusive Hebron. The
Platonic annotations, which are numerous, are important, because
they show just the other side of Castelvetro’s talent from the merely
verbal one—almost the whole of them being devoted to the
exposition and illustration of meaning. It is a great pity that he did
not work his notes[110] on the Gorgias (which he regards expressly as
Plato’s Rhetoric) into a regular treatise of contrast and comparison
on this subject between Aristotle and Plato. But all these notes show
us the qualification of the commentator to deal with so difficult a
subject as the Poetics.
The stout post quarto, with its vignette of an exceedingly
determined-looking owl standing on a prostrate pitcher and hooting
The Poetica. Kekrika, is dedicated to Maximilian II. It is arranged
on a system equally simple and thorough. First
comes a section of the Greek Text; then a short Italian summary of
its contents; then the Italian translation; and then the spositione—
the Commentary—which may be long or short as circumstances
require. Often, on a Greek text of a few lines, it will run to as many
quarto pages, full-packed with small print. Not the least
advantageous part of this quadripartite arrangement is that the
summaries—being, though very brief, to the point—are capable of
being put together as a table of contents. This, however, but
partially applies to Castelvetro’s commentary, which is often not a
little discursive from the text. The defect was, however, supplied in
the second edition by an elaborate index specially devoted to the
Spositioni, and consisting, not of mere words or names with page
references, but of reasoned descriptions of the subjects, as thus—
"Allegrezza.

“Come nasca dalla tristitia, che si sente del male del giusto, e del
bene del malvagio.
oblica, che si prende dalla miseria, o dalla felicita altrui qual sia,”
&c. &c.

This is a great help in tackling Castelvetro’s text, the book containing

some seven hundred pages, of perhaps as many words each.
No analysis of a book of such a size, so necessarily parasitic or
satellitic on another in general run, and yet branching and winding
with such a self-willed originality of its own, is possible. One might
On Dramatic easily write a folio on Castelvetro’s quarto. Here we
conditions. can only, as in most other cases now, except those
of books or parts of books at once epoch-making in character and
moderate in bulk, give an idea of the author’s most important views
on general and particular points. It was necessary, since Castelvetro
is revolving round Aristotle, that the greater part of his treatise
should deal with the drama: and perhaps nowhere is that originality
which has been praised more visible than here, whether it lead him
wrong or right. He has undoubtedly made a step, from the
mathematical towards the æsthetic view of literature, in
conditioning, as he does, his view of the Drama by a consideration of
the stage. To literary a-priorists this is of course horrible; to those
who take the facts of literature, as they take the facts of life, it is a
welcome and reconciling discovery. The conditions of the Greek
stage were admittedly such as can never be naturally reproduced,
and therefore, however great and perfect the Greek Tragedy may be
in its own way, it cannot usurp the position of “best in all ways”; and
can still less pretend to dictate to other kinds that they shall not be
good at all in ways different from its own.
If the details of Castelvetro’s theory do not always correspond in
excellence to the sense and novelty of the general view, this is
because he adulterates his notion of stage requirements with that
unlucky “verisimilitude” misunderstood, which is the curse of all the
neo-classic critics, and which comes from neglect of the Aristotelian
preference of the probable-impossible to the improbable-possible.
On the Three The huge Mysteries of the Middle Ages, which
Unities. ranged from Heaven to Hell, which took weeks to
act, and covered millennia in their action, did at least this good to
the English and some other theatres—that they familiarised the mind
with the neglect of this verisimilitude. But Castelvetro would have
none of such neglect. His play must be adjusted, not merely in
Action, but in Space and Time, as nearly as possible to the actual
capacity of the stage, the actual duration of the performance.[111]
And so the Fatal Three, the Weird Sisters of dramatic criticism, the
vampires that sucked the blood out of nearly all European tragedy,
save in England and Spain, for three centuries, make their
appearance. They “enter the critical literature of Europe,” as Mr
Spingarn has very truly laid it down,[112] “from the time of
Castelvetro.”
 But to balance this enslaving of the Drama (in which he far
exceeds Aristotle), Castelvetro frees the Epic from Aristotelian
On the restrictions in an almost equally important manner.
freedom of From his references in the Opere Varie to Cinthio
Epic. and Pigna, it would appear that he claimed, if not
priority, an even portion with them in the consideration of the
subject of Epic Poetry. And though not agreeing with them
altogether, he certainly agrees with them in enlarging the domains of
the Epic. Poetry, he says in effect,[113] may do anything that History
can do; and, like the latter, it may deal, not only with one action of
one man, but with his life-actions, or with many actions of many
men.
With Castelvetro, however,—and it is probably the cause why
pedants like Dacier undervalue him,—both the character of his
compositions, and probably also the character of his mind, draw him
much more to independent, though by no means always or often
isolated, critical aperçus and judgments, than to theoretical
His eccentric discourses, with or without illustration. To put it
acuteness. differently, while there is usually a theory at the
back of his appreciations, the appreciation generally stands in front
of the theory. But however this may be, that quality of
“unexpectedness,” in which some æsthetic theorists have found such
a charm, belongs to him as it does to few critics. One might, for
instance, give half-a-dozen guesses to a tolerably ingenious person
without his hitting on Castelvetro’s objection to the story of
Ricciardetto and Fiordispina in the Orlando.[114] That objection is not
moral: not on the ground of what is ordinarily called decorum: not
on that of digression, on that of improbability generally, on any other
that is likely to occur. It is, if you please, that as Fiordispina was a
Mahometan, and Ricciardetto a Christian, and as Christians and
Mahometans do not believe in the same kind of Fauns and Fairies,
as, further, Fauns do not eat ladies or goddesses, whether alive or
dead, Ricciardetto’s explanation of his alleged transformation of sex
is not credible. In a modern writer this would look like an absolute
absence of humour, or like a clumsy attempt at it; and I am not
prepared to say that humour was a strong point with these Italian
critics as a rule. But Castelvetro strikes me as being by no means
exceptionally unprovided with it: and such a glaring lapse as this is
probably due to the intense seriousness with which these critical
questions, new as they were, presented themselves to him and to
his class.
They get, as was once said, “into logical coaches”; and are
perfectly content to be driven over no matter what minor precipices,
and into no matter what sloughs of despond, so long as they are not
actually thrown out. Yet Castelvetro at least is never dull. At one
time[115] he compares the “somnolent indecorum,” the
sconvenevolezza sonnachiosa, of Homer to the practice of German
innkeepers (whether observed by himself in his exile, or taken from
Erasmus, one cannot say) in putting the worst wines and viands on
the table first, and the best later. Elsewhere[116] he gives a very
curious reason against that other sconvenevolezza (this sonorous
word is a great favourite with him) which he too saw in the use of
prose for tragedy—namely, that in reciting verse the speaker
naturally raises his voice, and so makes it more audible to the
audience. He has been blamed for adopting the notion of rank being
necessary to tragic characters, but on this see ante (p. 61).
His irreverent independence in regard to Virgil is noticeable in a
critic of his time, and of course especially so if one comes to him
Examples: Homer’s straight from Scaliger. It would not be fair
nodding, prose in to represent him as a “Virgiliomastix,” but
tragedy, Virgil, minor his finer critical sense enables him to
poetry.
perceive the superiority of Homer, in
respect of whom he goes so far[117] as to say that Virgil “is not a
poet.” But this—per se, of course, excessive—had been provoked by
the extravagance of Maronolatry from Vida downwards: and
Castelvetro does not scruple to praise the Mantuan for his grasp, his
variety of phrase, and other good things. He has an extremely
sensible passage—not novel to us, but by no means a truism to his
contemporaries or to a good many poets still—on what he who
publishes miscellaneous poetry has to expect. By the publication,
says this other Messer Lodovico, of a thing which nobody asked him
for (cosa non richiesta) without any necessity, he publishes at the
same time his confidence in himself, and affirms that the thing is
good. “Which thing,” goes on Castelvetro in his pitiless critical
manner, “if it be found to be faulty (rea) and blameworthy, it
convicts him who publishes it either of malice or of folly.” Alas! for
the minor bard.
His attitude[118] to the everlastingly vexed question of the
connection of verse and poetry is very sensible, and practically
anticipates, with less reluctant circumlocution, that of Coleridge, who
in more things than one comes close to Castelvetro, and who
The medium probably knew him. He does not here contradict
and end of Aristotle by denying that verse is un-essential to
Poetry. poetry. But he insists—and points out the undoubted
truth that Aristotle’s practice, whatever his theory may do, admits
this—that Verse is a kind of inseparable accident of poetry,—that it is
the appropriate garb and uniform thereof, which cannot be
abandoned without impropriety. And he takes up this attitude still
more emphatically in regard to the closely connected, and still more
important, question of the end of Poetry. Here, as we have seen, the
Uncompromis great Master of Criticism temporised. He did not
ing doubt that this end was Delight: but in deference to
championship idols, partly of the Cavern, partly of the Market-
of Delight.
place, he yokes and hampers this end with moral
improvement, with Imitation, itself for itself, and so on. Castelvetro
is much more uncompromising. One shudders, almost as much as
one rejoices, at the audacity of a critic who in mid-sixteenth-century
calmly says, “What do beginning, middle, and end matter in a poem,
provided it delights?”[119] Nay, Castelvetro has reached a point of
view which has since been attained by very few critics, and which
some who thought they had gained this peak in Darien first may be
mildly chagrined to find occupied by him—the view that there are
different qualities of poetry, suited to delight different qualities of
persons and of mind.
How seldom this view has been taken all critics ought to know, if
they do not. Even now he who climbs the peak must lay his account
with stone-throwing from the garrisons of other points. That Burns
administers, and has a right to administer, one delight to one class
of mind, Shelley another to another; that Béranger is not to be
denied the wine of poetry because his vintage is not the vintage of
Hugo: that Longfellow, and Cowper, and George Herbert are not to
be sneered at because their delight is the delight of cheering but not
of intoxication; that Keble is not intrinsically the less a poet because
he is not Beddoes, or Charles Wesley because he is not Charles
Baudelaire—or vice versa in all the cases—these are propositions
which not every critic—which perhaps not very many critics—will
admit even in the abstract, and which in practice almost every critic
falsifies and renounces at some time or other.[120] But they are
propositions which follow fairly, and indeed inevitably, from
Castelvetro’s theory of the necessary end, Delight, and the varying
adjustment of the delighting agent to the patient’s faculty of being
delighted.
He is perhaps less sound in his absolute condemnation of
“knowledge” as material for poetry. He is right in black-marking
Fracastoro from this point of view: but he is certainly not right in
extending the black mark to Lucretius. The fact is, that even he
could not wrench himself sufficiently free from the trammels of old
time to see that in the treatment lies the faculty of delighting, and
that therefore, on his own scheme, the treatment is the poetry.
There are few writers to be dealt with in this volume—none, I
think, already dealt with—to whom it would be more satisfactory to
His devote the minutest handling than to Castelvetro.
exceptional He has been called by Mr Spingarn “revolutionary.”
interest and The term, in an American mouth, probably has no
importance.
unfavourable connotation; but waiving that
connotation altogether, I should be inclined to demur to it. Even the
Vehmgericht (if one may rely on the leading case of Vgr. v. Philipson,
reported by Sir Walter Scott) acquitted of High Treason those who
had spoken evil of it in countries where its authority was not
acknowledged, and indeed its name hardly known. Now, Castelvetro
was dealing—as we must, for his honour as well as for our
comprehension of him, remember that he dealt—with modern as
well as with ancient literature at once, and instead of adopting the
injudicious though natural separation of Minturno, or the one-sided
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