A history of criticism and literary taste in Europe from the earliest texts to the present day. Volume 2 (of 3), From the Renaissance to the decline of eighteenth century orthodoxySaintsbury, George
History
A history of criticism and literary taste in Europe from the earliest texts to the present day. Volume 2 (of 3), From the Renaissance to the decline of eighteenth century orthodoxy
Saintsbury, George
Criticism -- History; Literature -- History and criticism; Literature, Medieval
Robortello edited Ælian and Æschylus as well as Longinus and
Aristotle; Petrus Victorius was busied very widely with the classics.
The combined treatment of Aristotle and Horace by the former in his
_Explicationes_ (Basle, 1555) is distinctly noteworthy. His dealings
with the Greek are almost pure commentary; those with the Roman,
though called a “Paraphrase,” are much freer. He begins with a sort of
expository lecture on the _Epistola ad Pisones_, introducing most of
its matter and much illustration from other authors. Then separate
short essays follow on Satire, Epigram, Comedy, _Sales_, and Elegy.
The heading “Sales” is especially worthy of attention as illustrating
that tormenting preoccupation of the classics on Wit, which
transmitted itself to the Renaissance, and is found in moderns as
recent as Whately. Robortello exercised much authority, and is shown
by M. Morel-Fatio in his recent edition of Lope de Vega’s _Arte Nuevo_
(_v. infra_, p. 343) to have furnished the Spanish poet with much, if
not most, of the miscellaneous erudition which he displays to no great
purpose. Robortello’s earlier _editio princeps_ of Longinus (ibid.,
1554) is noteworthy in a different way. He was by no means more modest
than the average Renaissance scholar; on the contrary, he is accused
of special arrogance. But this _opus redivivum, antea ignotum, e
tenebris in lucem editum_, as he calls it, seems to have puzzled, if
not actually abashed, him. He has no introduction, no regular
commentary: only side-headings of the matter, from which, he says,
“all the method of the book, and the order of the questions treated,
and the whole rationale of the teaching,” and much else, can be
learnt. The spirit was too potent for him who had called it up. Of
other mainly classical commentators, Riccoboni (_Compendium Artis
Poeticæ_, 1591) is again useful, because he combines Horace and
Aristotle, and practicalises the combination, identifying the
Aristotelian or pseudo-Aristotelian (see vol. i. p. 34) “Episode” with
the first Four Acts, the Exodus with the Fifth, &c. Maggi, Segni,
Zabarella are even farther from our sphere.
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