Mr Spingarn’s useful chronological table gives twenty-five books by nearly as many different authors for the seventy-three years. Nor does this list pretend to be exhaustive; for instance, it omits Robortello’s _Longinus_ (1554), and the important _De poetis nostrorum temporum_ of Lilius Giraldus. Footnote 43: Dolce’s (1535) translation of Horace; Pazzi’s (1536) of Aristotle; Daniello’s _Poetica_ (1536), and Tolomei’s _Versi e Regole_ (1539). Footnote 44: Robortello’s ed. of _Poetics_ (1548), and Segni’s translation (1549); Maggi’s ed. (1550); Muzio’s _Arte Poetica_ (1551); Giraldi Cinthio’s _Discorsi_ (1554). Footnote 45: Minturno’s Latin _De Poeta_ (1559); Victorius’ Aristotle’s _Poetics_ (1560); Scaliger’s own _Poetics_ (1561); the completion of Trissino (1563); Minturno’s Italian _Arte Poetica_ (1564), and Castelvetro’s _Poetics_ (1570). Footnote 46: The work of Piccolomini and Viperano. Footnote 47: That of Patrizzi, Tasso, and Denores. Footnote 48: That of Buonamici, Ingegneri, and Summo. ----- Only two years after the appearance of Vida’s poem appeared the next critical Italian book of importance, the first instalment of Trissino’s _Poetica_. [Sidenote: _Trissino._] The first instalment—for a singular interval took place between the beginning and the completion of this work. The first four parts were, as has just been said, published in 1529, when the main stream of Italian criticism had hardly begun to flow; the two last not till 1563, two years after the publication of Scaliger’s great work, and after a full generation (in the ordinary count) of active discussion of the matters.[49] Such conditions cannot fail to affect the homogeneity of a book. But still Trissino put it forth as one book in different parts, not, as he might very well have done, and as others actually did, as two books; and we are therefore entitled, and indeed bound, with the caution just given, to treat it as a whole. The handsome quartos,[50] well printed and beautifully frontispieced and vignetted, of the standard edition of Trissino’s _Opere_, are perhaps, taking them together, rather an ornament to the shelf than a plentiful provision of furniture for the mind. The disadvantages of _versi sciolti_ have not often been shown more conspicuously than in the _Italia Liberata_, and the _Sofonisba_ has little but its earliness and regularity to plead as a set-off to the general shortcomings of the modern classical Drama. The better repute of Italian comedy would hardly have arisen from such pieces as _I Simillimi_; and the _Rime_ are most ordinary things. In our own division he is of some historical account; for it is impossible not to be grateful to the first publisher of the _De Vulgari Eloquio_, and that praise of earliness, which he has earned in more than one respect, must be extended to the first four parts of the _Poetica_. He boasts justly enough that nobody, save Dante and Antonio da Tempo, was before him, and