"De los primeros tiene Horacio el puesto, En numeros y estilo soberano, Qual en su Arte al mundo es manifesto. Escaligero [_i.e._ Scaliger] hace el paso llano Con general ensenamiento y guia, Lo mismo el docto Cintio [_i.e._ Giraldi Cintio] y Biperano.[279] Maranta[280] es egemplar de la Poesia, Vida el norte, Pontano[281] el ornamento, La luz Minturno qual el sol del dia.... Acuden todos a colmar sus vasos Al oceano sacro de Stagira [_i.e._ Aristotle], Donde se afirman los dudosos pasos, Se eterniza la trompa y tierna lira."[282] The influence of the Italians was equally great in Germany. From Fabricius to Opitz, the critical ideas of Germany were almost all borrowed, directly or indirectly, from Italian sources. Fabricius in his _De Re Poetica_ (1584) acknowledges his indebtedness to Minturno, Partenio, Pontanus, and others, but above all to Scaliger; and most of the critical ideas by which Opitz renovated modern German literature go back to Italian sources, through Scaliger, Ronsard, and Daniel Heinsius. No better illustration of the influence of the Italian critics upon European letters could be afforded than that given by Opitz's _Buch von der deutschen Poeterei_.[283] The influence of Italian criticism on the critical literature of France and England will be more or less treated in the remaining portions of this essay. It may be noted here, however, that in the critical writings of Lessing there is represented the climax of the Italian tradition in European letters, especially on the side of Aristotelianism. Shelley represents a similar culmination of the Italian tradition in England. His indebtedness to Sidney and Milton, who represent the Italian influence in the Elizabethan age, and especially to Tasso, whom he continually cites, is very marked. The debt of modern literature to Italian criticism is therefore not slight. In the half century between Vida and Castelvetro, Italian criticism formulated three things: a theory of poetry, a rigid form for the epic, and a rigid form for the drama. These rigid forms for drama and epic governed the creative imagination of Europe for two centuries, and then passed away. But while modern aesthetics for over a century has studied the processes of art, the theory of poetry, as enunciated by the Italians of the sixteenth century, has not diminished in value, but has continued to pervade the finer minds of men from that time to this. III. _Rationalism_