Putting aside, for the moment, such rather later and much more important works as the _Discorsi_ of Giraldi Cinthio, the _De Poetis Nostrorum Temporum_ of his half-namesake Lilius Giraldus, and the two capital treatises of Minturno, one of which appeared after Trissino’s book, we may give a few words to two Italian tractates, the _Versi e Regole della Nuova Poesia Toscana_of Claudio Tolomei (1539) and Muzio’s or Mutio’s Italian verse _Arte Poetica_, which was published with some other work in 1551.[66] [Sidenote: _Formalists: Mutio. Tolomei and classical metres._] The last is noteworthy as an early example of the vernacular critical poem—a kind suggested by Horace, and illustrated later by Boileau and Pope, but certainly more honoured by its practitioners than in itself. Yet it would not be just to deny Mutio a high if rather vague conception of poetry, and, in particular, a most salutary conviction that the poet must _dis_realise his subjects. Tolomei’s book, on the other hand, challenges attention as probably the beginning of that pestilent heresy of “classical metres” which, arising in Italy, and tainting France but slightly (as was natural considering the almost unquantified character of the modern French language), fastened with virulence upon England, affected some of our best wits, and was within measurable distance of doing serious harm. The plague was so much at its worst with us that the chapter on Elizabethan Criticism will be the proper place for its discussion. But though Ascham himself thought it no plague at all, it was certainly one of the very worst of these “Italianations” to which he objected so violently; and Tolomei was its first prophet in the country of its origin. ----- Footnote 66: _Rime Diverse_ (Venice, f. 68-94). The name on the title-page is Mu_t_io, and the spelling Mu_z_io, which some books have, may lead to confusions; for there appears to be another _Rime Diverse_ of Muzio four years earlier, which does not contain the _Arte_. This is in blank-verse, agreeably written, with some general observations on Poets and Poetry, Ancient and Modern, and practical enough. Says Mutio, _e.g._,— La catena Di Dante non e leggiadra, se non Fa punto con la terza sua rima. -----