Savonarola’s remarks, which are contained in his four-book tractate, _De Scientiis_,[21] are more curious than really important. Yet they derive some importance from the great name and influence of their propounder, from his position at the very watershed, so to speak, of time in Europe, if not in Italy, dividing Middle Age from Renaissance, and from the fact that they undoubtedly summarise that dubitative, if not utterly hostile, view of literature in general, and of poetry in particular, which, as we have seen,[22] was borrowed by the Fathers from the ancients, and very much intensified by the borrowers. Fra Girolamo’s attitude is a rigidly scholastic one; and to those who omit to take account of this, or do not understand it, his view must seem wholly out of focus, if not wholly obscure. Poetry is a part of Rational Philosophy; and therefore its object must be _pars entis rationis_. It differs from Rhetoric in working purely by Example, not Enthymeme. Its end is to induce men to live virtuously by decent representations; and as the soul loves harmony, it uses harmonic forms. But a poet who merely knows how to play gracefully with feet only deserves the name as an old woman deserves that of a pretty girl.[23] Still more preposterous is the habit of calling poetry “divine.” Cosmos becomes chaos, if you admit that. _Scientia autem divina est cujus objectum Deus: non illa cujus objectum exemplum._ The making of verses is only poetry _per accidens_; and as for the Heathen poets, _magnus diaboli laqueus absconditus est_ in them. He does not, he says, actually “damn” poetry; but the gist of his tractatule is that poets as a rule quite misunderstand their function, and that poetry had better keep its place, and abstain from silly, not to say blasphemous, airs. ----- Footnote 21: Otherwise, _De Divisione et Utilitate Omnium Scientiarum_. I have read this in the Wittemberg ed. of his _Philosophiæ Epitome_ (1596, 8vo). The passages quoted and referred to will be found at p. 807 _sq._ of this. Footnote 22: Vol. i. p. 380 _sq._ Footnote 23: Or, “a pretty old woman that of a girl,” the position of the epithet between the two nouns being ambiguous. -----