The impossibility of upholding the theory of ornament was first noticed during the decadence of Italian literature in the seventeenth century, when literary production became but a play of empty forms, and the convenient, long violated in practice, was abandoned and forgotten even in theory, and came to be looked on as a limit arbitrarily imposed on the fundamental principle of ornamentation. The opponents of that style loaded with conceits which is known as "secentismo" from its prevalence in the seventeenth century (Matteo Pellegrini, Orsi and others) felt the viciousness of the literary production of their day; they were aware that decadence was due to the fact that literature was no longer the serious expression of a content; but they were embarrassed by the reasoning of the champions of bad taste, who were able to demonstrate that the whole business conformed in every particular with the literary theory of ornament, the common ground of both parties. In vain did the former appeal to the "convenient," the "moderate," the "avoidance of affectation," to ornament as "condiment, not food," and all the other weapons which had sufficed in times when healthy literary production and sound æsthetic taste had automatically corrected faulty theory: the other party replied, there was no reason to be sparing in use of ornament when it lay in masses ready to hand, or to avoid an ostentatious display of wit when one had an inexhaustible supply.[27]

The same reaction against the abuse of ornament, against "Spanish and Italian conceits" (whose supporters had been Gracian in Spain and Tesauro in Italy), took place in France. "... Laissez à l'Italie De tous ces faux brillants l'éclatante folie"; "Ce que l'on conçoit bien s'énonce clairement. Et les mots, pour le dire, arrivent aisément."[28] Among the sharpest critics of conceits was the Jesuit Bouhours, already quoted, author of the Manière de bien penser dans les œuvres d'esprit. The rhetorical forms were the subject of warm controversy. Orsi, on national grounds the opponent of Bouhours (1703), asserted that all the ornamental devices of wit rested on a middle term and could be reduced to a rhetorical syllogism, and that wit consists of a truth which appears false or a falsehood which appears true.[29] If this controversy produced no great scientific result at the time, at least it prepared the mind for greater liberty; and, as we have remarked elsewhere,[30] it may have influenced Vico, who, in framing his new concept of poetical imagination, recognized that it necessitated a wholesale reconstruction of the theory of rhetoric and the conclusion that its figures and tropes are not "caprices of pleasure" but "necessities of the human mind."[31]

We find the theory of rhetorical ornament jealously kept intact by Baumgarten and Meier, while in France it was as vigorously assailed by César Chesneau du Marsais, who published in 1730 a treatise on Tropes (the seventh part of his General Grammar)[32] wherein he develops, on the subject of metaphor, the observation already made by Montaigne: indeed he was perhaps inspired by Montaigne, although he does not mention his name. Du Marsais remarks that it is said that figures are modes of speech and turns of expression removed from the ordinary and common; which is an empty phrase, as good as saying "the figured differs from the non-figured and figures are figures and not non-figures." On the other hand it is wholly untrue that figures are removed from ordinary speech, for "nothing is more natural, ordinary and common than figures: more figures of speech are used in the town square on a market-day than in many days of academical discussion"; and no speech, however short, can be composed entirely of non-figurative expressions. And Du Marsais gives instances of quite obvious and spontaneous expressions in which Rhetoric cannot refuse to recognize the figures of apostrophe, congeries, interrogation, ellipsis, prosopopœia: "The apostles were persecuted and suffered their persecutions with patience. What can be more natural than the description given by St. Paul? Maledicimur et benedicimus; persecutionem patimur et sustinemus; blasphemamur et obsecramus. Yet the apostle makes use of a fine figure of antithesis; cursing is the opposite to blessing; persecution to endurance; blasphemy to prayer." But further, the very language of the figure is figured, since it is a metaphor.—But after such acute observations, Du Marsais ends by himself becoming confused and defines figures as "manners of speech differing from others in a particular modification by which it is possible to reduce each one to a species apart, and give a more lively, noble or pleasing effect than can be gained by a manner of speech expressing the same content of thought without such particular modification."[33]

But the psychological interpretation of figures of speech, the first stage towards their æsthetic criticism, was not allowed to drop here. In his Elements of Criticism, Home says that he had long questioned whether that part of Rhetoric concerning figures might not be reduced to rational principles, and had finally discovered that figures consist in the passional element;[34] he set himself therefore to analyse prosopopœia, apostrophe and hyperbole in the light of the passional faculty. From Du Marsais and Home is derived everything of value in the Lectures on Rhetoric and belles lettres of Hugh Blair, professor at Edinburgh University from 1759 onwards;[35] published in book form, these lectures had an immense vogue in all the schools of Europe including those of Italy, and replaced advantageously, by their "reason and good sense," works of a much cruder type. Blair defined figures in general as "language suggested by imagination or passion."[36] Similar ideas were promulgated in France by Marmontel in his Elements of Literature.[37] In Italy Cesarotti was contrasting the logical element or "cypher-terms" of language with the rhetorical element or "figure-terms," and rational eloquence with imaginative eloquence.[38] Beccaria, though a shrewd psychological analyst, held to the view of literary style as "accessory ideas or feelings added to the principal in any discourse"; that is, he failed to free himself from the distinction between the intellectual form intended for the expression of the principal ideas, and the literary form, modifying the first by the addition of accessory ideas.[39] In Germany an effort was made by Herder to interpret tropes and metaphors as Vico had done, that is to say as essential to primitive language and poetry.

Romanticism was the ruin of the theory of ornament, and caused it practically to be thrown on the scrap-heap, but it cannot be said to have gone under for good or to have been superseded by a new and accurately stated theory. The chief philosophers of Æsthetic (not only Kant, who as we know remained in bondage to the mechanical and ornamental theory; not only Herder, whose knowledge of art seems to have been confined to a little music and a great deal of rhetoric; but such romantic philosophers as Schelling, Solger and Hegel) still retained the sections devoted to metaphor, trope and allegory for tradition's sake, without severe scrutiny. Italian Romanticism with Manzoni at its head destroyed the belief in beautiful and elegant words, and dealt a blow at Rhetoric: but was it killed by the stroke? Apparently not, judging by the concessions unconsciously made by the scholastic treatise-writer Ruggero Bonghi, whose Critical Letters assert the existence of two styles or forms, which at bottom are nothing else than the plain and the ornate.[40] German schools of philology have pretty generally accepted the stylistic theory of Gröber, who divides style into logical (objective) and affective (subjective):[41] an ancient error masked by terminology borrowed from the psychological philosophy in fashion at modern universities. In the same spirit a recent writer rechristens the rhetorical doctrine of tropes and figures by the title "Doctrine of the Forms of Æsthetic Apperception," and divides them into the four categories (the ancient wealth of categories reduced to a paltry four!) of personification, metaphor, antithesis, and symbol.[42] Biese has devoted an entire book to metaphor; but one searches it in vain for a serious æsthetic analysis of this category.[43]

The best scientific criticism of the theory of ornament is found scattered throughout the writings of De Sanctis, who when lecturing on rhetoric preached what he called anti-rhetoric.[44] But even here the criticism is not conducted from a strictly systematic point of view. It seems to us that the true criticism should be deduced negatively from the very nature of æsthetic activity, which does not lend itself to partition; there is no such thing as activity type a or type b, nor can the same concept be expressed now in one way, now in another. Such is the only way of abolishing the double monster of bare form which is, no one knows how, deprived of imagination, and ornate form which contains, no one knows how, an addition on the side of imagination.[45]

II

HISTORY OF THE ARTISTIC AND LITERARY KINDS

The theory of artistic and literary kinds and of the laws or rules proper to each separate kind has almost always followed the fortunes of the rhetorical theory.

Traces of the threefold division into epic, lyric and dramatic are found in Plato; and Aristophanes gives an example of criticism according to the canon of the kinds, particularly that of tragedy.[1] But the most conspicuous theoretical treatment of the kinds bequeathed us by antiquity is precisely the doctrine of Tragedy which forms a large part of the Aristotelian fragment known as the Poetics. Aristotle defines such a composition as an imitation of a serious and complete action, having size, in language adorned in accordance with the requirements of the different parts, its exposition to be by action and not by narration, and using pity or terror as means to free or purify us from these same passions;[2] he gives minute details as to the six parts of which it is composed, especially the plot and the tragic character. It has been often said, ever since the days of Vincenzo Maggio in the sixteenth century, that Aristotle treated of the nature of poetry, or particular forms of poetry, without claiming to give precepts. But Piccolomini answered that "all these things and other similar ones are shown or asserted with no other purpose but that we may see in what way their precepts and laws must be obeyed and carried out," just as, to make a hammer or saw, one begins by describing the parts of which they are composed.[3] The error of which we take Aristotle as representative lies in transmuting abstractions and empirical partitions into rational concepts: this was almost inevitable at the beginnings of æsthetic reflexion, and the Sanskrit theory of poetry employed the same method independently when, for example, it defines and legislates for ten principal and eighteen secondary styles of drama; forty-eight varieties of hero; and we know not how many kinds of heroines.[4]

After Aristotle, the theory of poetic kinds does not seem to have been completely or elaborately developed in antiquity. The Middle Ages may be said to have expressed the doctrine in treatises of the kind known as "rhythmic arts" or "methods of composition." When the Aristotelian fragment was first noticed, it is curious to see the way in which the paraphrase of Averroes distorted the theory of kinds. Averroes conceives tragedy as the art of praise, comedy as that of blame, which amounts to identifying the former with panegyric, the latter with satire; and he believes the peripeteia to be the same thing as antithesis, or the artifice of beginning the description of a thing by describing its opposite.[5] This distortion demonstrates afresh the merely historical character of these kinds and their unintelligibility by the methods of pure logic to a thinker living in times and under customs different from those of the Hellenic world. The Renaissance seized upon Aristotle's text, partly expounded it, partly distorted it and partly thought it out afresh, and thus succeeded in establishing a long list of kinds and sub-kinds rigidly defined and subjected to inexorable laws. Controversy now began over the correct understanding of the unities of epic or dramatic poetry; over the moral quality and social standing proper to the characters in this kind of poem and in that; over the nature of the plot, and whether it includes passions and thoughts, and whether lyrics should or should not be received as true poetry; whether the material of tragedy should be historical; whether the dialogue of comedy may be in prose; whether a happy ending may be allowed in tragedy; whether the tragic character may be a perfect gentleman; what kind and number of episodes is admissible in the poem, and how they should be incorporated in the main plot; and so on. Great anguish was caused by the mysterious rule of catharsis found in black and white in Aristotle's text, and Segni naïvely predicted that tragic poetry would be revived in its perfect spectacular entirety for the sake of experiencing the effect spoken of by Aristotle, that "purgation" which causes "the birth of tranquillity in the soul and of freedom of all perturbation."[6]

Amongst the many undertakings brought to a glorious end by the critics and treatise-writers of the sixteenth century, the best known is the establishment of the three unities of time, place and action. One cannot indeed see why they are called unities, for in strictness they could at most be spoken of as shortness of time, straitness of space and limitation of tragic subjects to a certain class of action. It is well known that Aristotle prescribed unity of action only, and reminded his hearers that theatrical custom alone imposed on the action a time-limit of one day. On this last point the critics of the sixteenth century accorded six, eight, or twelve hours according to individual taste or humour: some of them (amongst them Segni) allowed twenty-four hours, including the night as particularly propitious to assassinations and the other acts of violence which usually form the plot of tragedies; others extended the limit to thirty-six or forty-eight hours. The last, and most curious, unity, that of place, was slowly developed by Castelvetro, Riccoboni and Scaliger until the Frenchman Jean de la Taille joined it as a third to the existing two in 1572, and in 1598 Angelo Ingegneri finally formulated it more explicitly.

The Italian treatises were widely read and regarded as authoritative all over Europe, and awakened the first effort towards a learned theory of poetry in France, Spain. England and Germany. A good representative of his class is Julius Cæsar Scaliger, who has been considered, with some exaggeration, as the true founder of French pseudo-classicism or neo-classicism; as one who (it has been said) "laid the first stone of the classical Bastille." But if he was neither the first nor the only one, he certainly helped greatly to reduce "to a system of doctrines the principal consequences of the sovranty of Reason in works of literature," with his minute distinctions and classifications of kinds, the insurmountable barriers he erected between them, and his distrust of free inspiration and imagination.[7] Scaliger numbers among his descendants (beside Daniel Heinsius) d'Aubignac, Rapin, Dacier and other tyrants of French literature and drama: Boileau turned the rules of neo-classicism into neat verses.

It has been noticed that Lessing entered the same field; his opposition to the French rules (which was an opposition of rule to rule, in which he had been forestalled by Italian writers, for example by Calepio in 1732) is anything but radical. Lessing maintained that Corneille and other authors had misinterpreted Aristotle, to whose laws even the Shakespearian drama could be shown to conform;[8] but on the other hand he strongly opposed the abolition of all rules and those who shouted "genius, genius," placing genius above the law and saying that genius makes the law. For the very reason that genius is law, replied Lessing, laws have their value and can be determined: negation of them would entail the confinement of genius to its first trial flights, making example or practice useless.[9]

But the "kinds" and their "limits" could be maintained for centuries solely by means of infinitely subtle interpretations, analogical extensions and more or less concealed compromises. The Italian Renaissance critics, while working at their Poetics in the style of Aristotle, found themselves confronted with chivalric poetry, and had to make the best of it; this they did by assigning it to a kind of poem not foreseen by antiquity (Giraldi Cintio).[10] Here and there indeed a rigorist was heard protesting that romances were in no way different from heroic poetry, and were only "badly written heroics" (Salviati). And since it was impossible to deny a place in Italian literature to Dante's poem, Iacopo Mazzoni, in his Defence of Dante, overhauled once more the categories of Poetics in order to find a niche for the sacred poem.[11] Farces made their appearance at this time, and Cecchi (1585) declares "Farce is a third novelty, occupying a place between tragedy and comedy ..."[12] The Pastor fido of Guarini was published, neither tragedy nor comedy, but tragicomedy; and discovering no heading among the kinds deduced from moral or civil philosophy suitable for the intruder, Jason de Nores proceeded to rule it out of existence; Guarini made a valiant defence and claimed special protection for his beloved Pastor under a third, or mixed, style, representative of real life.[13] Another rigorist, Fioretti (Udeno Nisieli) proclaimed the poem "a poetic monster, so huge and deformed that centaurs, hippogriffs and chimæras are comparatively graceful and charming ..., fit to bring a blush to the cheek of the muse, a disgrace to poetry, a mixture of ingredients in themselves discordant, inimical and incompatible";[14] but will this bluster drive the delicious Pastor fido from the hands of lovers of poetry? The same thing occurred in the case of Marino's Adone, described by Chapelain as "a poem of peace" for want of a better definition, though other supporters called it "a new form of epic poem";[15] and the same thing happened again in the case of the comedy of art and musical drama. Corneille, who had called down a furious tempest from Scudéry and the Academicians on the head of his Cid, remarked in his discourse on Tragedy, though basing his position on that of Aristotle, that there was necessity for "quelque modération, quelque favorable interprétation,... pour n'être pas obligés de condamner beaucoup de poèmes, que nous avons vu réussir sur nos théâtres." "Il est aisé de nous accommoder avec Aristote..."[16] he says in another place: a piece of literary hypocrisy which startles by its verbal resemblance to "les accommodements avec le Ciel" of the Tartuffian ethics. The following century saw the accepted kinds augmented by "bourgeois tragedy" and pathetic comedy, nicknamed "lachrymose" by its enemies; de Chassiron[17] attacked, and Diderot, Gellert and Lessing[18] defended the new arrival. In this way the schematism of the kinds continued to suffer violence and to cut a very poor figure; nevertheless, in spite of adversity, it made every effort to retain power even at the sacrifice of dignity: just as an absolute king turns constitutional by force of circumstance, and chooses the lesser evil of squaring his divine right with the will of the nation.

This retention of power would have been more difficult had any success attended the attempts at rebellion against all laws, against law in general, which broke out in varying degrees at the end of the sixteenth century. Pietro Aretino made mock of the most sacred precepts: in a prologue to one of his comedies he remarks derisively, "If you see more than five characters on the stage at once, do not laugh; for chains which would fasten water-mills to the river could not hold the fools of to-day."[19]

A philosopher, Giordano Bruno, entered the lists against the "regulators of poetry": rules, said he, are derived from poetry: "there are as many genera and species of true rules as there are genera and species of true poets"; such an individualization of kinds dealt them a deathblow. "How then" (asks the interlocutory opponent) "shall veritable poets be recognized?" "By their singing of verse" (answers Bruno); "of that which, being sung, either delights or instructs, or delights and instructs at the same time."[20] In much the same way Guarini defended his Pastor fido in 1588, declaring "the world is the judge of poets; against its sentence there is no appeal."[21]

Amongst European countries, Spain was perhaps the sturdiest in her resistance to the pedantic theories of the writers of treatises; Spain was the land of freedom in criticism from Vives to Feijóo, from the sixteenth to the middle of the eighteenth century when decadence of the old Spanish spirit allowed Luzán, with others, to introduce neo-classical poetry of Italian and French origin.[22] That rules must change with the times and with actual conditions; that modern literature demands modern poetics; that work carried out contrary to established rule does not signify that it is contrary to all rule or unwilling to submit itself to a higher law; that nature should give, not receive, laws; that the laws of the three unities are as ridiculous as it would be to forbid a painter to paint a large landscape in a small picture; that the pleasure, taste, approbation of readers and spectators are the deciding element in the long run; that notwithstanding the laws of counterpoint, the ear is the true judge of music; these affirmations and many like them are frequent in Spanish criticism of the period. One critic, Francisco de la Barreda (1622), went so far as to compassionate the strong wits of Italy bound by fear and cowardice (temerosos y acobardados) to rules that hampered them on every side;[23] he may have been thinking of Tasso, a memorable case of such degradation. Lope de Vega wavered between neglect of rules in practice, and obsequious acceptance of them in theory, alleging in excuse for his conduct that he was forced to yield to the demands of the public who paid money to see his plays; he said, "when I write my comedies, I lock and double-lock the door against the precept-mongers, that they may not rise up and bear witness against me"; "Art (that is, Poetics) speaks truth which is contradicted by the vulgar ignorant"; "may the rules forgive us when we are induced to violate them."[24] But a contemporary admirer of Lope's work writes of him that "en muchas partes de sus escritos dice que el no guardar el arte antiguo lo hace por conformarse con el gusto de la plebe ... dicelo por su natural modestia, y porqué no atribuya la malicia ignorante à arrogancia lo que es politica perfeccion."[25]

Giambattista Marino also protested "I assert that I have a more thorough knowledge of the rules than have all the pedants in the world; but the only true rule is to know how to break the rules at the right place and time, and to conform with the custom and taste of the day."[26] The drama of Spain, the comedy of art, and other literary novelties of the seventeenth century caused Minturno, Castelvetro and other rigid treatise-writers of the preceding century to be looked at with contemptuous pity as "antiquaries"; this may be seen in Andrea Perucci (1699), the theorist of improvised comedy.[27] Pallavicino criticized the writers on "the disciplines of beautiful speech" on the ground that they "generally base their precepts on observing by experience what things in writers give pleasure, rather than pointing out what would naturally conform to the particular affections and instincts implanted by the Creator in the souls of men."[28]

A note of distrust towards the fixed kinds may be heard in the Discorso sull' Endimione (1691), wherein Gravina severely blames the "ambitious and miserly precepts" of rhetoricians, and makes the penetrating comment: "No work can see the fight without finding itself confronted by a tribunal of critics specially convened to examine it, and questioned firstly as to its name and nature. Next begins the action which lawyers call prejudicial, and controversy arises as to its status, whether it is a poem, a romance, a tragedy, a comedy, or another of the prescribed kinds. And if the said work have ignored the slightest precept ... they decree forthwith its exile and perpetual banishment. And yet, however they recast and expand their aphorisms, they will never be able to include all the different kinds that can be freshly created by the varied and ceaseless motion of human wit. For this reason I cannot see why we should not free ourselves from this insolent curb on the soaring grandeur of our imaginations, and allow them to follow an open road amongst those immeasurable spaces they are fitted to explore." He remarks on the work of Guidi which forms the subject of his discourse, "I know not whether it be tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy, or anything else invented by rhetoricians. It is a representation of the loves of Endymion and Diana. If those terms have sufficient breadth of extension, they will comprehend this work; if they have not, let another be framed (a power which may be granted to any one in so unimportant a matter); if no such term can be invented, let us not, for want of a word, deprive ourselves of a thing so beautiful."[29] These remarks have quite a modern ring, but Gravina can hardly have thought out their implications very deeply, for later on he wrote a special treatise on the rules of the tragic kind.[30] Antonio Conti too declared at times his antagonism towards the rules, but he referred to the Aristotelian rules only.[31]