To the writing of this not inconsiderable _corpus_ of criticism Tasso brought, besides his own genius and the interesting association of his creative power, really wide reading, and, as has been said, an indefatigable interest in the subject. [Sidenote: _and position._] He exercised a good deal of influence in the time to come—both Milton and Dryden, for instance (the latter again and again), refer to his critical work. Yet it may perhaps be said without presumption that this criticism is rather more interesting to a student of Tasso, or to one who wishes to obtain at famous hands some knowledge of the Italian sixteenth century _ethos_ in this kind without going any further, than to the student of criticism itself. Tasso is very fairly representative of it in its combination of Plato and Aristotle, in its anxiety to get general notions of poetry and poetic kinds, in its respect for the ancients, in its ethical turn. But he is rather more representative than original or distinct; and his criticism is not perhaps improved by the very natural fact that sometimes avowedly, and probably in most cases really, it is less a disinterested consideration of Poetry in general than an apologetic of the poetry of Torquato Tasso. And as that poetry itself, beautiful as it often is, is notoriously something of a compromise between the Romantic and the Classical, so the criticism which is connected with it is compromising and compromised likewise. Tasso has many interesting observations, intelligent _aperçus_, just remarks: he is a link, and a very early link, in the apostolic succession of those who have held and taught the great doctrine that poetry makes the familiar unfamiliar, the accustomed strange and new.[124] But he has not shaken himself free enough to gain the standpoint of his friendly antagonist Patrizzi, and to recognise, even imperfectly, that the secret of poetry is treatment _poeticamente_, and that only the historic method unfettered by rules will tell you what _poeticamente_ has been and is, even thus leaving unknown what it will be. ----- Footnote 124: For instance in the opening of the first _Discorsi_ (f. 2, _verso_): _Variamente tessendolo, di commune proprio, e di vecchio novo il facevano_. -----