of the poet. Boileau, on the contrary, showed that the ancients were simply imitating nature itself in the closest and keenest manner, and that by imitating the classics the poet was not imitating a second and different nature, but was being shown in the surest way how to imitate the real and only nature. This final reconciliation of the imitation of nature and the imitation of the classics was Boileau's highest contribution to the literary criticism of the neo-classical period. II. _Aristotelianism_ The influence of Aristotle's _Poetics_ is first visible in the dramatic literature of the early sixteenth century. Trissino's _Sofonisba_ (1515), usually accounted the first regular modern tragedy, Rucellai's _Rosmunda_ (1516), and innumerable other tragedies of this period, were in reality little more than mere attempts at putting the Aristotelian theory of tragedy into practice. The Aristotelian influence is evident in many of the prefaces of these plays, and in a few contemporary works of scholarship, such as the _Antiquae Lectiones_ (1516) of Caelius Rhodiginus, whom Scaliger called _omnium doctissimus praeceptor noster_. At the same time, the _Poetics_ did not immediately play an important part in the critical literature of Italy. From the time of Petrarch, Aristotle, identified in the minds of the humanists with the mediaeval scholasticism so obnoxious to them, had lost somewhat of his supremacy; and the strong Platonic tendencies of the Renaissance had further contributed to lower the prestige of Aristotelianism among the humanists. At no time of the Renaissance, however, did Aristotle lack ardent defenders, and Filelfo, for example, wrote in 1439, "To defend Aristotle and the truth seems to me one and the same thing."[265] In the domain of philosophy the influence of Aristotle was temporarily sustained by the liberal Peripateticism of Pomponazzi; and numerous others, among them Scaliger himself, continued the traditions of a modernized Aristotelianism. From this time, however, Aristotle's position as the supreme philosopher was challenged more and more; and he was regarded by the advanced thinkers of the Renaissance as the representative of the mediaeval obscurantism that opposed the progress of modern scientific investigation.