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 discourses, with or without illustration. [Sidenote: _His eccentric acuteness._] To put it 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. ----- Footnote 114: _Poet. d’Arist._, pp. 585, 586. ----- 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). ----- Footnote 115: Ibid., p. 576. Footnote 116: Ibid., p. 23.