This book, as dates given and to be given show, was published subsequently to the appearance of Scaliger’s _Poetic_, and may have been to some extent influenced by it; but I do not think that Minturno, who mentions Trissino and Bembo and Tolomei, ever refers to it, and he does not give one the idea of a man who would conceal debts. [Sidenote: _The_ Arte Poetica.] In fact, his work upon the same subject had been completed earlier. In this he has necessarily to go over some of the same ground; but, as noted above, he repeats very little. He starts with a general definition of poetry as an imitation of various manners and persons in various modes, either with words or with harmonies or with “times” separately, or with all these things together, or with part of them. Other ternaries follow, as matter, instrument, and mode; manners, affections, and deeds; suprahuman, human, and infrahuman; personages; words, music, and “times”; epic, scenic, and melic; prose, verse, and mixed narrative. These distinctions are put forth in an orderly manner, but succinctly and without the discussion which is a feature of the general parts of the _De Poeta_, Minturno evidently thinking that he has sufficiently cleared the ground in that work. After some further exposition of forms, &c., the handling is more specially directed to Epic (_i.e._, narrative generally), and its parts and conditions are expounded, still with a certain swiftness, but at greater length than before. And once more the treatment concentrates itself—this time upon Romance. The origin of the name and thing is lightly touched, and then the great question is broached,[83] “Is Romance poetry?” Minturno will not refuse it the name; but he cannot admit that it is the same kind of poetry as that of which Aristotle and Horace have spoken. The contrarieties of Romance and Heroic poetry are then carefully examined; and while much praise is given to Ariosto, some fault is found with him, and the mantle of the _Odyssey_ is especially refused him. In fact, Minturno holds generally that the Romance is a defective _form_ of poetry, ennobled by the excellence of some of its writers—a sort of middle position which is very noteworthy. But he hardens his heart against the irresistible historical and inductive argument which the defenders of the Romance had already discovered, and will have it that the laws of poetry are antecedent to poetic production (p. 32). And for his main style of narrative poetry he returns to Epic or “Heroic” proper, and discusses it on the old lines of Plot, Character, Manners, Passions or Affections, &c., always with modern examples from the great Italian poets. He also makes the very important, but very disastrous, suggestion that the Christian religion provides all the necessary “machinery” of Heroic,—a suggestion which was elaborately followed out by Tasso and by Milton and by many a lesser man, and which Dryden had thought of following, though he luckily did not.[84] -----