Nothing better serves to demonstrate that the Renaissance did not pass beyond the confines of ancient æsthetic thought than the fact that notwithstanding the renewed acquaintance with the thought of Aristotle, the pedagogic theory of art not only persisted and triumphed, but was transplanted bodily into the text of Aristotle, where its interpreters read it with a certainty that we have to make efforts to achieve. Certainly, a Robortelli (1548) or a Castelvetro (1570) stopped short at the simple, purely hedonistic solution, giving simple pleasure as the end of art: poetry, says Castelvetro, "was discovered solely for the purpose of delighting and of recreating ... the souls of the rude multitude and of the common people."[18] And here and there some were able to free themselves from both the pleasure theory and that of the didactic end; but the majority, such as Segni, Maggi, Vettori,[19] were for the _docere delectando._ Scaliger (1561) declared that mimesis or imitation was "_finis medius ad illum ultimum qui est docendi cum delectatione,_" and believing himself to be altogether in agreement with Aristotle as to this, he continued, "_docet affectus poeta per actiones, ut bonos amplectamur atque imitemur ad agendum, malos aspernemur ad abstinendum._"[20] Piccolomini (1575) observed that "It must not be thought that so many excellent poets and artists, ancient and modern, would have devoted such care and diligence to this most noble study, had they not known and believed that in so doing they were aiding human life," and if "they had not thought that we were to be instructed, directed, and well established by it."[21] The "truth preserved in soft verses, which attracts and persuades the most reluctant" (Tasso),[22] with the comparison from Lucretius attached, is the conception that even Campanella repeats. Poetry is for him "_Rhetorica quaedam figurata, quasi magica, quae exempla ministrat ad suadendum bonum et dissuadendum malum delectabiliter iis qui simplici verum et bonum audire nolunt, aut non possunt aut nesciunt._"[23] Thus returned the comparison of poetry with oratory; according to Segni they only differ because the first occupies a more lofty situation: "for since imitation representing itself in act by means of poetry, in mighty, chosen words, in metaphors, images, and indeed the whole of figured speech, which is to be found more in poetry than in the art of oratory, the metrical qualities that are also required in verse, the subjects of which it treats, which have something of the great and delightful, make it appear most beautiful and worthy of being held all the greater marvel."[24] "Three most noble arts" (wrote Tassoni in 1620, and he repeated common opinion), "History, Poetics, and Oratory, come under the heading of Politics and depend upon it; the first of these has reference to the instruction of princes and gentlemen, the second of the people, the third of those who give counsel in public