repeated by me here, are to be regarded merely as common usage, and not as inviolable laws which must serve under all circumstances."[275] But this was not the general conception of the Renaissance. Muzio, for example, specifically says:-- "Queste legge ch' io scrivo e questi esempi Sian, lettore, al tuo dir perpetua norma;" and in another place he speaks of a precept he has given, as "vera, ferma, e inevitabil legge."[276] Scaliger goes still further than this; for, according to him, even the classics themselves are to be judged by these standards and rules. "It seems to me," says Scaliger, "that we ought not to refer everything back to Homer, just as though he were the norm, but Homer himself should be referred to the norm."[277] In the modern classical period somewhat later, these rules were found to be based on reason:-- "These rules of old, discovered not devised, Are nature still, but nature methodized."[278] But during the Renaissance they were accepted _ex cathedra_ from classical literature. The formulation of a fixed body of critical rules was not the only result of the Aristotelian influence. One of the most important of these results, as has appeared, was the rational justification of imaginative literature. With the introduction of Aristotle's _Poetics_ into modern Europe the Renaissance was first able to formulate a systematic theory of poetry; and it is therefore to the rediscovery of the _Poetics_ that we may be said to owe the foundation of modern criticism. It was on the side of Aristotelianism that Italian criticism had its influence on European letters; and that this influence was deep and widespread, our study of the critical literatures of France and England will in part show. The critics with whom we have been dealing are not merely dead provincial names; they influenced, for two whole centuries, not only France and England, but Spain, Portugal, and Germany as well. Literary criticism, in any real sense, did not begin in Spain until the very end of the sixteenth century, and the critical works that then appeared were wholly based on those of the Italians. Rengifo's _Arte Poetica Espanola_ (1592), in so far as it deals with the theory of poetry, is based on Aristotle, Scaliger, and various Italian authorities, according to the author's own acknowledgment. Pinciano's _Philosophia Antigua Poetica_ (1596) is based on the same authorities. Similarly, Cascales, in his _Tablas Poeticas_ (1616), gives as his authorities Minturno, Giraldi Cintio, Maggi, Riccoboni, Castelvetro, Robortelli, and his own countryman Pinciano. The sources of these and all other works written at this period are Italian; and the following passage from the _Egemplar Poetico_, written about 1606 by the Spanish poet Juan de la Cueva, is a good illustration, not only of the general influence of the Italians on Spanish criticism, but of the high reverence in which the individual Italian critics were held by Spanish men of letters:--