essential principle in the _Defence of Poesy_ which cannot be traced back to some Italian treatise on the poetic art. The age of which Sidney is the chief representative is therefore the first period of the influence of Italian critics. The fourth stage of English criticism, of which Ben Jonson is, as it were, the presiding genius, occupies the first half of the seventeenth century. The period that preceded it was in general romantic in its tendencies; that of Jonson leaned toward a strict though never servile classicism. Sidney's contemporaries had studied the general theory of poetry, not for the purpose of enunciating rules or dogmas of criticism, but chiefly in order to defend the poetic art, and to understand its fundamental principles. The spirit of the age was the spirit, let us say, of Fracastoro; that of Jonson was, in a moderate form, the spirit of Scaliger or Castelvetro. With Jonson the study of the art of poetry became an inseparable guide to creation; and it is this element of self-conscious art, guided by the rules of criticism, which distinguishes him from his predecessors. The age which he represents is therefore the second period of the influence of Italian criticism; and the same influence also is to be seen in such critical poems as Suckling's _Session of the Poets_, and the _Great Assises holden in Parnassus_, ascribed to Wither, both of which may be traced back to the class of critical poetry of which Boccalini's _Ragguagli di Parnaso_ is the type.[441] The fifth period, which covers the second half of the seventeenth century, is characterized by the introduction of French influence, and begins with Davenant's letter to Hobbes, and Hobbes's answer, both prefixed to the epic of _Gondibert_ (1651). These letters, written while Davenant and Hobbes were at Paris, display many of the characteristic features of the new influence,--the rationalistic spirit, the stringent classicism, the restriction of art to the imitation of nature, with the further limitation of nature to the life of the city and the court, and the confinement of the imagination to what is called "wit." This specialized sense of the word "wit" is characteristic of the new age, of which Dryden, in part the disciple of Davenant, is the leading figure. The Elizabethans used the term in the general sense of the understanding,--wit, the mental faculty, as opposed to will, the faculty of volition. With the neo-classicists it was used sometimes to represent, in a limited sense, the imagination,[442] more often, however, to designate what we should call fancy,[443] or even mere propriety of poetic expression;[444] but whatever its particular use, it was always regarded as of the essence of poetic art.