The very earliest regular criticism, as in Vida and the first books of Trissino, is either strictly grammatical and formal or else tends to expatiate further in the Horatian path of rather desultory practical hints for composition, these latter usually tending towards a more or less slavish “Follow the ancients.” But, from the time of Daniello onwards, more abstract views and questionings, especially in the direction of a sort of Eirenicon between Aristotle and Plato, begin to engage the attention of critics, sometimes as a prelude to study of formal Poetics, sometimes to the exclusion of this. The most thoroughgoing as well as about the ablest example of this latter kind is probably the _Naugerius_ of Fracastoro, where this distinguished physician and physicist, himself a skilled versifier and even something of a poet, scarcely touches poets and poetry in the concrete more than he might in a dialogue on physics or metaphysics, and is entirely occupied with questions of the extremest “metapoetic,” or metacriticism. This kind of discussion, which is prominent in the whole body of critics from Daniello to Summo, is, with its extensions in the direction of the Theory of the Drama, the Theory of the Heroic Poem, &c., no doubt the most characteristic, and perhaps even the constitutive, feature of Italian criticism. It seems to have been that which most attracted foreign scholars, and stirred them up to emulation; it is very rarely omitted altogether by anybody, save the merest grammarians. In fact, it so impressed itself, during this period, upon the imagination, the memory, the intellectual habit, not merely of Italy but of Europe, that to this day critics who neglect it are looked at askance by many, if not by most, of their fellows. Questions, however, more practical than these, yet not of quite such extreme practicality as the mere questions of grammar and dialect, of metric and composition, did actually occupy the Italians. About the middle of the century the lucubrations of Cinthio and Pigna on the question of the Romances and their relation to Epic and to the Aristotelian system, opened up the most promising prospect by far that had ever yet been disclosed to criticism. Had these inquiries been followed up—had they been extended from the Romance to the _novella_, which had already become such a feature of Italian vernacular literature—had Italy provided something not less vigorous, but more polished, than the English Interlude and romantic mystery of the _Mary Magdalene_ type, or the French _farce_ and _sotie_, so that a similar investigation might have been further extended to drama—there is no saying what might not have been achieved. But this was not permitted.