and on the rhetorical descriptions of the various characteristics of men in the second book of Aristotle's _Rhetoric_. The explanation of the Renaissance conception of _decorum_ may start from either of two points of view. In the first place, it is to be noted that Horace, and after him the critics of the Renaissance, set about to transpose to the domain of poetry the tentative distinctions of character formulated by Aristotle, in the _Rhetoric_, simply for the purposes of rhetorical exposition. These distinctions, it must be repeated, were rhetorical and not aesthetic, and they are therefore not alluded to by Aristotle in the _Poetics_. The result of the attempt to transpose them to the domain of poetry led to a hardening and crystallization of character in the classic drama. But the aesthetic misconception implied by such an attempt is only too obvious. In such a system poetry is held accountable, not to the ideal truth of human life, but to certain arbitrary, or at best merely empirical, formulae of rhetorical theory. The Renaissance was in this merely doing for character what was being done for all the other elements of art. Every such element, when once discriminated and definitely formulated, became fixed as a necessary and inviolable substitute for the reality which had thus been analyzed. But we may look at the principle of _decorum_ from another point of view. A much deeper question--the question of social distinctions--is here involved. The observance of _decorum_ necessitated the maintenance of the social distinctions which formed the basis of Renaissance life and of Renaissance literature. It was this same tendency which caused the tragedy of classicism to exclude all but characters of the highest rank. Speaking of narrative poetry, Muzio (1551), while allowing kings to mingle with the masses, considers it absolutely improper for one of the people, even for a moment, to assume the sceptre.[171] Accordingly, men as distinguished by the accidents of rank, profession, country, and not as distinguished by that only which art should take cognizance of, character, became the subjects of the literature of classicism; and in so far as this is true, that literature loses something of the profundity and the universality of the highest art.