sometimes deal with not-good things. ----- Footnote 78: Let, however, the reader beware of being misled by the occurrence of the _word_ “Admiratio” in the side-notes of pp. 52, 53. It is used in quite a different sense. ----- The Second begins with one of the demonstrations (which to us seem otiose, but which were very important, not merely to the ideas of the age, but as bulwarks against the Puritan and Utilitarian objections of all times) that the poets, especially Homer and Virgil, are masters, whether necessarily or not, of all the liberal arts and of philosophy as well. When we remember the Philistine anti-poetics of Locke much more than a century after Minturno’s time—nay, the still existing, if lurking, idea that “great poet” must be (as somebody asserts that it is or was in Irish slang) synonym for “utter fool”[79]—we shall not bear too hardly on our author. But this discussion, in its turn, is bid to “come up higher.” What is to be the _Institutio Poetæ_? What is he to do and learn that he may in turn (p. 102) “delight, teach, _transport_.”[80] ----- Footnote 79: Perhaps, if this be true, the Irish got it from their French friends of the seventeenth century, among whom, according to the _Ménagiana_, _poeta regius_ was the correct title of the King’s Fool. Footnote 80: Ut doceat, ut delectet, ut moveat. Suggested by Cicero on the orator. ----- In all cases the admiration of the reader or hearer (p. 104) must follow. But it will be obtained not quite in the same way as by the orator, and with a difference in the different kinds of poetry. The parts of a poem, too, are dealt with in a more or less Aristotelian manner, but with large additions and substitutions, in view of the greater range of literature that Minturno has before him, and of the desire specially to bring in Virgil, of whom our critic, though not quite such a fanatical partisan as Vida and Scaliger, is a hearty admirer (see for instance p. 135). All the “parts” have more or less attention in this book, both with reference to the different “kinds,” especially epic and “heroic,” and also with regard to those general principles of poetry which Minturno never forgets. The Third Book of nearly 100 pages is directly devoted to tragedy; and Minturno pursues in reference to this the same plan of following, but with a certain independence and a great deal of expatiation, in Aristotelian footsteps. He still lays great stress on Admiration; and it is really curious that in thus forestalling, no doubt, Corneille’s teaching, he has by anticipation hit at Racine and the _doucereux_ in a phrase[81] which has been fairly guessed to have supplied Milton with a famous one[82] of his own. He does not pay so much attention to the _crux_ of the _katharsis_ (on which most of these critics necessarily dwell more or less) in this treatise as in the _Arte_ (_v. infra_). ----- Footnote 81: