The growth and influence of rationalism in Italian criticism may be best observed by the gradual effect which its development had on the element of Aristotelianism. In other words, rationalism changed the point of view according to which the Aristotelian canons were regarded in the Italian Renaissance. The earlier Italian critics accepted their rules and precepts on the authority of Aristotle alone. Thus Trissino, at the beginning of the fifth section of his _Poetica_, finished in 1549, although begun about twenty years before, says, "I shall not depart from the rules and precepts of the ancients, and especially Aristotle."[289] Somewhat later, in 1553, Varchi says, "Reason _and_ Aristotle are my _two_ guides."[290] Here the element of the reason first asserts itself, but there is no intimation that the Aristotelian canons are in themselves reasonable. The critic has two guides, the individual reason and the Aristotelian rules, and each of these two guides is to serve wherever the other is found wanting. This same point of view is found a decade later in Tasso, who says that the defenders of the unity of the epic poem have made "a shield of the authority of Aristotle, nor do they lack the arms afforded by the reason;"[291] and similarly, in 1583, Sir Philip Sidney says that the unity of time is demanded "both by Aristotle's precept and common reason."[292] Here both Tasso and Sidney, while contending that the particular law under discussion is in itself reasonable, speak of Aristotle's _Poetics_ and the reason as separate and distinct authorities, and fail to show that Aristotle himself based all his precepts upon the reason. In Denores, a few years later, the development is carried one stage farther in the direction of the ultimate classical attitude, as when he speaks of "reason and Aristotle's _Poetics_, which is indeed founded on naught save reason."[293] This is as far as Italian criticism ever went. It was the function of neo-classicism in France, as will be seen, to show that such a phrase as "reason _and_ Aristotle" is a contradiction in itself, that the Aristotelian canons and the reason are ultimately reducible to the same thing, and that not only what is in Aristotle will be found reasonable, but all that reason dictates for literary observance will be found in Aristotle.