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  TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:

  Minor spelling inconsistencies have been silently corrected. Apart
  from a few corrections listed at the end of the book, original
  spelling was retained. Footnotes were sequentially numbered and
  placed at the end of each chapter.

    p. 300: in the words carpenter, majesty and merchaundise
    letters [e macron] and [u with breve] are encoded as plain
    [e and u] respectively.
    p. 303: in the words mournfully, mournfuly, royalty
    letters [u with breve], [u, a macron] are encoded as plain [u and a]
    respectively.
    p. 304: in the words Trumpington, love-sik and dangerus letters
    [i macron] and [i, u with breve] are encoded as plain [i and u]
    respectively.
    p. 321-322: superscripts are preceded by the [^] sign and enclosed in
    braces if more than one letter is in superscript.
    p. 354: in the word Pusan letters [u macron] and [s with cedilla]
    are encoded as plain [u and s] respectively.
    Ligature [oe] is encoded as oe.

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    *Columbia University*

    _STUDIES IN LITERATURE_



    |===============================================================|
    |*Columbia University*                                          |
    |                                                               |
    |STUDIES IN LITERATURE                                          |
    |                                                               |
    |                                                               |
    |                                                               |
    |=A HISTORY OF LITERARY CRITICISM IN                            |
    | THE RENAISSANCE=: With Special Reference                      |
    | to the Influence of Italy in the Formation and                |
    | Development of Modern Classicism. By JOEL                     |
    | ELIAS SPINGARN.                                               |
    |                                                               |
    |                                                               |
    |_In Press:_                                                    |
    |                                                               |
    |                                                               |
    |=ROMANCES OF ROGUERY=: An Episode in the                       |
    | Development of the Modern Novel, Part I.                      |
    | The Picaresque Novel in Spain. By FRANK                       |
    | WADLEIGH CHANDLER.                                            |
    |                                                               |
    |=SPANISH LITERATURE IN ENGLAND UNDER                           |
    | THE TUDORS=. By JOHN GARRETT                                  |
    | UNDERHILL.                                                    |
    |                                                               |
    |                                                               |
    |       *       *       *       *       *                       |
    |                                                               |
    |***_Other numbers of this series will be issued from           |
    |time to time, containing the results of literary research,     |
    |or criticism by the students or officers of                    |
    |Columbia University, or others associated with them            |
    |in study, under the authorization of the Department            |
    |of Literature_, GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY _and_                  |
    |BRANDER MATTHEWS, _Professors_.                                |
    |===============================================================|




    A HISTORY

    OF

    LITERARY CRITICISM

    IN THE RENAISSANCE

    WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE INFLUENCE OF
    ITALY IN THE FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT
    OF MODERN CLASSICISM


    BY

    JOEL ELIAS SPINGARN

    [Illustration]

    *New York*
    PUBLISHED FOR THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS BY
    THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
    LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.

    1899

    _All rights reserved_




    _COPYRIGHT_, 1899,

    BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.


    *Norwood Press*
    J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
    Norwood Mass. U.S.A.




PREFACE


THIS essay undertakes to treat the history of literary criticism in the
Renaissance. The three sections into which the essay is divided are
devoted, respectively, to Italian criticism from Dante to Tasso, to
French criticism from Du Bellay to Boileau, and to English criticism
from Ascham to Milton; but the critical activity of the sixteenth
century has been the main theme, and the earlier or later literature has
received treatment only in so far as it serves to explain the causes or
consequences of the critical development of this central period. It was
at this epoch that modern criticism began, and that the ancient ideals
of art seemed once more to sway the minds of men; so that the history of
sixteenth-century criticism must of necessity include a study of the
beginnings of critical activity in modern Europe and of the gradual
introduction of the Aristotelian canons into modern literature.

This study has been made subservient, more particularly, to two specific
purposes. While the critical activity of the period is important and
even interesting in itself, it has been here studied primarily for the
purpose of tracing the origin and causes of the classic spirit in
modern letters and of discovering the sources of the rules and theories
embodied in the neo-classic literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. How did the classic spirit arise? Whence did it come, and how
did it develop? What was the origin of the principles and precepts of
neo-classicism? These are some of the questions I have attempted to
answer in this essay; and, in answering them, I have tried to remember
that this is a history, not of critical literature, but of literary
criticism. For this reason I have given to individual books and authors
less prominence than some of them perhaps deserved, and have confined
myself almost exclusively to the origin of principles, theories, and
rules, and to the general temper of classicism. For a similar reason I
have been obliged to say little or nothing of the methods and results of
applied, or concrete, criticism.

This, then, has been the main design of the essay; but furthermore, as
is indicated in the title, I have attempted to point out the part played
by Italy in the growth of this neo-classic spirit and in the formulation
of these neo-classic principles. The influence of the Italian
Renaissance in the development of modern science, philosophy, art, and
creative literature has been for a long time the subject of much study.
It has been my more modest task to trace the indebtedness of the modern
world to Italy in the domain of literary criticism; and I trust that I
have shown the Renaissance influence to be as great in this as in the
other realms of study. The birth of modern criticism was due to the
critical activity of Italian humanism; and it is in sixteenth-century
Italy that we shall find, more or less matured, the general spirit and
even the specific principles of French classicism. The second half of
the design, then, is the history of the Italian influence in literary
criticism; and with Milton, the last of the humanists in England, the
essay naturally closes. But we shall find, I think, that the influence
of the Italian Renaissance in the domain of literary criticism was not
even then all decayed, and that Lessing and Shelley, to mention no
others, were the legitimate inheritors of the Italian tradition.

This essay was submitted to the Faculty of Philosophy, Columbia
University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy. The bibliography at the end of the essay indicates
sufficiently my obligations to preceding writers. It has been prepared
chiefly for the purpose of facilitating reference to works cited in the
text and in the foot-notes, and should be consulted for the full titles
of books therein mentioned; it makes no pretence of being a complete
bibliography of the subject. It will be seen that the history of Italian
criticism in the sixteenth century has received scarcely any attention
from modern scholars. In regard to Aristotle's _Poetics_, I have used
the text, and in general followed the interpretation, given in Professor
S. H. Butcher's _Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art_, a noble
monument of scholarship vivified by literary feeling. I