A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance Part 24

Similar tendencies may be observed in the writers that follow Ascham.

Harvey's strictures on the _Faerie Queene_ were inspired by two influences. As a humanist, he looked back with contempt on mediaeval literature in general, its superst.i.tions, its fairy lore, and the like.

As a cla.s.sicist in art, he preferred the regular, or cla.s.sic, form of the epic to the romantic, or irregular form; and his strictures may be compared in this respect with those of Bembo on the _Orlando_ or those of Salviati on the _Gerusalemme_. So Harington attempts to make the _Orlando_ chime with the laws of Aristotle, and Sidney attempts to force these laws on the English drama. So also Sidney declares that genius, without "art, imitation, and exercise," is as nothing, and censures his contemporaries for neglecting "artificial rules and imitative patterns."[557] So Webbe attempts to find a fixed standard or criterion by which to judge good and bad poets, and translates Fabricius's summary of the rules of Horace as a guide for English poetry.[558]

English criticism, therefore, may be said to exhibit cla.s.sical tendencies from its very beginning. But it is none the less true that before Ben Jonson there was no systematic attempt to force, as it were, the cla.s.sic ideal on English literature. In Spain, as has been seen, Juan de la Cueva declared that poetry should be cla.s.sical and imitative, while the drama should be romantic and original. Sidney, on the contrary, sought to make the drama cla.s.sical, while allowing freedom of imagination and originality of form to the non-dramatic poet. Ben Jonson was the first complete and consistent English cla.s.sicist; and his cla.s.sicism differs from that of the succeeding age rather in degree than in kind.

Bacon's a.s.sertion that poetry is restrained in the measure of words, but in all other points extremely licensed,[559] is characteristic of the Elizabethan point of view. The early critics allowed extreme license in the choice and treatment of material, while insisting on strict regularity of expression. Thus Sidney may advocate the use of cla.s.sical metres, but this does not prevent him from celebrating the freedom of genius and the soaring heights of the imagination. There is nothing of these things in Ben Jonson. He, too, celebrates the n.o.bility and power of poetry, and the dignity of the poet's office; but nowhere does he speak of the freedom of the imagination or the force of genius.

Literature for him was not an expression of personality, not a creation of the imagination, but an image of life, a picture of the world. In other words, he effected what may be called an objectification of the literary ideal.

In the second place, this image of life can be created only by conscious effort on the part of the artist. For the creation of great poetry, genius, exercise, imitation, and study are all necessary, but to these art must be added to make them perfect, for only art can lead to perfection.[560] It is this insistence on art as a distinct element, almost as an end in itself, that distinguishes Jonson from his predecessors; and nowhere is his ideal of art expressed as pithily as in the address to the reader prefixed to the _Alchemist_ (1612):--

"In Poetry, especially in Plays, ... the concupiscence of dances and of antics so reigneth, as to run away from nature, and be afraid of her, is the only point of art that tickles the spectators. But how out of purpose, and place, do I name art?

When the professors are grown so obstinate contemners of it, and presumers on their own naturals, as they are deriders of all diligence that way, and, by simple mocking at the terms, when they understand not the things, think to get off wittily with their ignorance. Nay, they are esteemed the more learned, and sufficient for this, by the many, through their excellent vice of judgment. For they commend writers as they do fencers or wrestlers; who, if they come in robustiously, and put for it with a great deal of violence, are received for the braver fellows; when many times their own rudeness is the cause of their disgrace, and a little touch of their adversary gives all that boisterous force the foil. I deny not but that these men, who always seek to do more than enough, may some time happen on some thing that is good and great; but very seldom; and when it comes it doth not recompense the rest of their ill.... But I give thee warning, that there is a great difference between those that, to gain the opinion of copy [_i.e._ copiousness], utter all they can, however unfitly; and those that use election and a mean[561] [_i.e._ selection and moderation]. For it is only the disease of the unskilful to think rude things greater than polished; or scattered more numerous than composed."[562]

Literature, then, aims at presenting an image of life through the medium of art; and the guide to art, according to Jonson, is to be found in the rules of criticism. Thus, for example, success in comedy is to be attained

"By observation of those comic laws Which I, your master, first did teach the age;"[563]

and elsewhere, it will be remembered, Jonson boasts that he had swerved from no "needful law." But though art can find a never-failing guide and monitor in the rules of criticism, he does not believe in mere servile adherence to the practice or theory of cla.s.sical literature. The ancients are to be regarded as guides, not commanders.[564] In short, the English mind was not yet prepared to accept the neo-cla.s.sic ideal in all its consequences; and absolute subservience to ancient authority came only with the introduction of the French influence.

This is, perhaps, best indicated by the history of Aristotle's influence in English criticism from Ascham to Milton. The first reference to the _Poetics_ in England is to be found in Ascham's _Scholemaster_.[565]

There we are told that Ascham, Cheke, and Watson had many pleasant talks together at Cambridge, comparing the poetic precepts of Aristotle and Horace with the examples of Euripides, Sophocles, and Seneca. In Sidney's _Defence of Poesy_, Aristotle is cited several times; and in the drama, his authority is regarded by Sidney as almost on a par with that of the "common reason."[566] Harington was not satisfied until he had proved that the _Orlando_ agrees substantially with Aristotle's requirements. Jonson wrote a commentary on Horace's _Ars Poetica_, with elucidations from Aristotle, in which

"All the old Venusine [_i.e._ Horace], in poetry, And lighted by the Stagyrite [_i.e._ Aristotle], could spy, Was there made English;"[567]

but the ma.n.u.script was unfortunately destroyed by fire in 1623. Yet Jonson was aware how ridiculous it is to make any author a dictator.[568] His admiration for Aristotle was great; but he acknowledges that the Aristotelian rules are useless without natural talent, and that a poet's liberty cannot be bound within the narrow limits prescribed by grammarians and philosophers.[569] At the same time, he points out that Aristotle was the first critic, and the first of all men to teach the poet how to write. The Aristotelian authority is not to be contemned, since Aristotle did not invent his rules, but, taking the best things from nature and the poets, converted them into a complete and consistent code of art. Milton, also, had a sincere admiration for "that sublime art which [is taught] in Aristotle's _Poetics_, in Horace, and the Italian commentaries of Castelvetro, Ta.s.so, Mazzoni, and others."[570] But despite all this, the English independence of spirit never failed; and before the French influence we can find no such thing in English criticism as the literary dictators.h.i.+p of Aristotle.[571]

To conclude, then, it would seem that by the middle of the sixteenth century there had grown up in Italy an almost complete body of poetic rules and theories. This critical system pa.s.sed into France, England, Spain, Germany, Portugal, and Holland; so that by the beginning of the seventeenth century there was a common body of Renaissance doctrine throughout western Europe. Each country, however, gave this system a national cast of its own; but the form which it received in France ultimately triumphed, and modern cla.s.sicism therefore represents the supremacy of the French phase, or version, of Renaissance Aristotelianism. A number of modern writers, among them Lessing and Sh.e.l.ley, have returned more or less to the original Italian form. This is represented, in Elizabethan criticism, by Sidney; Ben Jonson represents a transitional phase, and Dryden and Pope the final form of French cla.s.sicism.

FOOT-NOTES:

[536] Morley, _English Writers_, ix. 187.

[537] Haslewood, ii. 197.

[538] _Ibid._ ii. 217.

[539] Jonson, _Works_, iii. 470. _Cf._ Gascoigne's comments on _enjambement_, in Haslewood, ii. 11.

[540] Haslewood, ii. 205.

[541] _Scholemaster_, p. 73.

[542] _Ibid._ p. 145 _sq._

[543] _Cf._ Haslewood, ii. p. xxii. The treatises of Gascoigne (1575) and King James VI. (1584) contain no reference to quant.i.tative verse.

[544] _Cf._ Pulci, _Morgante Maggiore_, xxv. 117.

[545] Haslewood, ii. 280.

[546] Haslewood, ii. 5.

[547] R. Ellis, _Poems and Fragments of Catullus translated in the original metres_, London, 1871, p. xiv. _sq._

[548] Stanyhurst, p. 11 _sq._

[549] Haslewood, ii. 69.

[550] Puttenham, p. 126 _sq._

[551] _Defence_, p. 55.

[552] Haslewood, ii. 167.

[553] Haslewood, ii. 186.

[554] _Cf._ Ellis, _op. cit._, p. xvi.

[555] _Scholemaster_, p. 93.

[556] _Ibid._ pp. 118, 121.

[557] _Defence_, p. 46.

[558] Haslewood, ii. 19, 85 _sq._

[559] _Works_, vi. 202.

[560] _Discoveries_, p. 78.

[561] _Cf._ Scaliger, _Poet._ v. 3, where the highest virtue of a poet is said to be _electio et sui fastidium_; and vi. 4, where it is said that the "life of all excellence lies in measure."

[562] _Works_, ii. 3; _cf._ _Discoveries_, pp. 22-27.

[563] _Works_, iii. 297.

[564] _Discoveries_, p. 7.

[565] _Scholemaster_, p. 139.

[566] _Defence_, p. 48.

[567] _Works_, iii. 321; _cf._ i. 335, iii. 487.

[568] _Discoveries_, p. 66.

[569] _Ibid._ p. 78 _sq._