The subject of the Ninth Book is less important and more purely antiquarian, but interesting enough. It discusses the question whether ancient poetry necessarily involved “harmony” and “rhythm,” and what these terms exactly mean—dancing and gestic accompaniment being considered as well as music. Patrizzi decides, sensibly enough on the historical comparison, that all these things, though old and not unsuitable companions of poetry, are in no sense formative or constitutive parts of Poetry itself.[133] ----- Footnote 133: _Deca Disputata_, p. 192. ----- The title-question of the Tenth Book is, “Whether the modes of Imitation are three?” He discusses this generally, and specially in regard to narrative and dramatic delivery of the poetic matter, and then passes in an appendix (which, however, he declares to be part of the book) to the _Trimerone_ of reply to Tasso. [Sidenote: _The_ Trimerone _on Tasso_.] This is a necessarily rather obscure summary, with some quotations, of a fuller controversy between the two, complicated by glances at the other literature of the _Gerusalemme_ quarrel, especially at the work of Camillo Pellegrino.[134] To disentangle the spool, and wind it in expository form, is out of the question here. Fortunately the piece concludes with a tabular statement[135] of forty-three opposition theses to Pellegrino and Tasso. A good many of these turn on rather “pot-and-kettle” recriminations between Homerists and Ariostians; but the general principles of comparative criticism are fairly observed in them, and there is no acerbity of language. In fact, although on some of the points of the controversy Patrizzi took the Della Cruscan side, it does not seem to have interrupted his friendship with Tasso, who attended his lectures,[136] and whose funeral he attended. ----- Footnote 134: Who had been _pars non minima_ in the exaltation of Tasso and depreciation of Ariosto. See Spingarn, pp. 122, 123; and Serassi, _Vita di Tasso_ (Rome, 1785), pp. 331-348. Footnote 135: _Deca Disputata_, pp. 246-249. Footnote 136: This was long after the publication of the _Trimerone_ (1586), and when Patrizzi had been translated from Ferrara to a newly founded chair of Platonic Philosophy at Rome, _V._ Serassi, _op. cit._, p. 475. -----