The _Poetica_ of Jason Denores[150] is remarkable from one point of view for its thoroughgoing and “charcoal-burner” Aristotelianism, from another for the extraordinary and meticulous precision of its typographical arrangements. How many sizes and kinds of type there are in Jason’s book I am [Sidenote: _Denores._] not enough of an expert in printing to attempt to say exactly: and the arrangement of his page is as precious as the selection of his type. Sometimes his text overflows the opened sheet, with decent margins indeed but according to ordinary proportions; at others (and by no means always because he requires side-notes) it is contracted to a canal down the centre, with banks broader than itself. It is, however, when Denores comes to the tabular arrangement and subdivision of statement and argument, in which nearly all these writers delight, that he becomes most eccentric. As many divisions, so many parallel columns; under no circumstances will his rigid equity give one section the advantage of appearing on the _recto_ of a leaf while the others are banished to the _verso_. This is all very well when the divisions are two or three or even four. But when, as sometimes happens, there are six or even eight, the cross-reading of the parallel columns is at once tempting and conducive to madness. As each column is but some half-inch broad, almost every word longer than a monosyllable has to be broken into, and as only a single _em_ of space is allowed between the columns, there is a strong temptation to “follow the line.” By doing this you get such bewilderments as “gue do-diEdip-di Laio, ttappas-menosia ra il Poe mu tio lipo, per,” &c., a moderate dose of which should suffice to drive a person of some imagination, and excessive nerves, to Bedlam. Read straight, however, Denores is much more sedative, not to say soporific, than exciting: and his dealings with Tragedy, the Heroic Poem, and Comedy have scarcely any other interest than as symptoms of that determination towards unqualified, if not wholly unadulterated, Aristotelianism which has been remarked upon. ----- Footnote 150: Padua, 1588. Denores (whose name is often separated into “de Nores”) was, like Patrizzi, a Professor of Philosophy, and, like Piccolomini, very polymathic and polygraphic. He had a year earlier published a _Discourse_ (which I have not) on the Philosophical Principles of poetical kinds, and had very much earlier still, in 1553, commented the _Epistola ad Pisones_. His son Pietro was an affectionate and attentive disciple of Tasso’s in his last days at Rome. -----