The _Discorsi_[85] of Giraldi Cinthio—famous author of _Novelle_, and now much less famous, but perhaps not much less remarkable, producer of the chief Italian horror-tragedy, the _Orbecche_—supply a very interesting supplement-contrast to Minturno, whose earlier work they preceded by but a few years, and whom they provided with a theory of Romance to protest against. [Sidenote: _Giraldi Cinthio’s_ Discorsi.] The exact date of the most interesting of them, and the question of property or plagiarism in their contents, have been the subject of one of those tedious “quarrels of authors” which are thickening upon us, but which we shall avoid as far as possible. [Sidenote: _On Romance._] Cinthio and a certain pupil of his, Giovanbattista Pigna, published in the same year (1554) books on the “Romances”—_i.e._, poems like Ariosto’s. Authorities decide in favour of the novelist, who asserts that his book was written in 1549, while each asserted that he had furnished the other with ideas; but it really does not matter. The point is, that on one of the two, and very probably on both, there had dawned the critical truth, which nobody had seen earlier, and on which Minturno himself would have pulled down “the blanket of the dark” once more if he could. Cinthio, it seems, first struck out the true line, and Pigna later developed it in still greater detail. Aristotle did not know Romance, and therefore his rules do not and cannot apply to it; while Italian literature generally is so different in circumstances from Greek that it must follow its own laws. Then Cinthio takes Ariosto and Boiardo, as Aristotle himself had taken the poets that were before him, and formulates laws from them. He does not ostracise the single-action and single-hero poem, the Aristotelian epic. But he adds the many-actioned and many-heroed poem like Ariosto’s, and the chronicle-poem of successive actions by one party, of which there are examples from Statius downward (and of which, we may add, the _Odyssey_ itself is really an example). For these two latter, which he rightly regards as both Romantic, he and Pigna (who is more specially _Ariostian_) gave rules accordingly, and Cinthio even illustrated his by a poem on Hercules. Both, but especially Pigna, despite their revolutionary tendencies in certain ways, cling to the ethical point of view, and maintain, perhaps a little hardily, that the modern romantic writers actually surpass the ancients in this respect. ----- Footnote 85: _Scritti Estetici di Giambattista Giraldi Cinthio_, 2 vols., Milan, 1864. (In Daelli’s _Biblioteca Rara_.) This edition gives extracts from Pigna’s work, and documents respecting the quarrel. -----