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20-33. Davenant's condemnation of supernatural machinery foreshadows the attitude of the school of Boileau (cf. the Art Poétique, iii. 193, and Dryden's comment on the passage, in Essays, ed. Ker, i. 32, and note). The French critics of the later Renaissance had urged the substitution of Christian for heathen machinery in tragedy and the epic (cf. Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, Art Poétique, ed. Pellissier, 1885, pp. xcii-xcvi).

PAGE 6. 10. Cf. i. 34. 21.

PAGE 9. 7. Davenant's conclusions in regard to the proper theme and characters for the epic appear to be in agreement with Tasso's, in his Discorsi del Poema Eroico, then recently rendered into French by Jean Baudoin (Traité du Poëme épique de T. Tasso, 1638). The preference for a Christian theme and Christian characters (9. 7-10. 28): 'Oltre a ciò chi vuol formare l'idea d'un perfetto Cavaliere, non so per qual cagione gli nieghi questa lode di pietà e di religione: laonde preporrei di gran lunga la persona di Carlo e di Artù a quella di Teseo e di Giasone. Ultimamente, dovendo il poeta aver molto riguardo al giovamento, molto meglio accenderà l'animo de' nostri cavalieri coll' esempio de' fedeli che degli infideli... Dee dunque l'argomento del poema epico esser derivato da vera istoria, e non da falsa religione' (Tasso, Opere, ed. Rosini, 1823, xii. 45 sq.). The preference for a former age and a distant century (10.29-11.33): 'Non debbono le cose presenti, o quelle che sono passate di poco tempo, esser soggetto del poema eroico,' etc. (ibid. xii. 47 sq.).

PAGE 19. II sq. Cf. i. 210. 8-12, and the discussions of the stanza form in Drayton's preface to Englands Heroicall Epistles, 1630, and Dryden's preface to Annus Mirabilis, 1666.

PAGE 28. 25. Two Colleagues, i. e. Cowley and Waller, whose commendatory verses on Gondibert follow this preface in the original.

PAGE 49. 32. Menenius Agrippa. Livy, ii. 32.

PAGE 50. 5. Cf. note on i. 118. 6-9.

PAGE 52. 3. Plato, Rep. iii. 398.

17 sq. The Scholler of Plato..

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an absolute Monarch over

Arts. Cf. Scaliger, Poet. vii. 2. 1: 'Aristoteles imperator noster, omnium bonarum artium dictator perpetuus.'

THOMAS HOBBES (1588-1679)

Hobbes's reply to Davenant has been reprinted from the 1651 edition of Gondibert (cf. supra, p. 331).

PAGE 56. 4. The first collection of the Quatrains of Gui du Faur, seigneur de Pibrac, appeared in 1574; they were translated into English by Sylvester and into German by Opitz.

PAGE 57. 23 sq. On these figures, cf. Gregory Smith, Eliz. Crit. Essays, ii. 95, and note.

PAGE 64. 20. For the history of 'admiration' as a critical term, cf. Gregory Smith, i. 392 (note on i. 177).

23-7. On Hobbes's theory of laughter, see his Human Nature, 1650, ix. 13.

32. It will be observed that here (and infra, 68. 31) Hobbes does not agree with Davenant in the acceptance of technical terms from 'any Science, as well mechanicall as liberall ' (supra, 26. 1). The latter is in agreement with the theory and practice of the Pléiade, and is followed by Dryden in the preface to the Annus Mirabilis. Hobbes's argument is that of the more purely classical school in its preference for general terms, and Dryden, in his later utterances, accepts this point of view (cf. Ker's Dryden, i. p. xxxiii). Rymer illustrates the growing mania for abstract terms (e. g. infra, 181. 1, 2); and Dennis commends Boileau for poetically speaking of himself as forty, though really forty-six, for 'poetry admits of no odd Numbers above Nine' (Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, 1693, p. 50, n.). This theory of numbers persisted into the nineteenth century: cf. Gustave Flaubert, Correspondance, ii. 258.

PAGE 72. 34. Lucan, Phars. i. 128.

PAGE 73. 16. Quintilian, Inst. x. I. 90.

PAGE 75. 14. Scaliger, Poet. v. 3: 'Non si ipse Iupiter poeta fuit, melius loquatur.'

19. This epigram, wrongly ascribed to Antipater of Sidon or Antipater of Thessalonica, is found in the Planudean Anthology (Anth. Graeca, ed. Jacobs, ii. 714; app. Plan. no. 293).

PAGE 76. 11. John Ogilby (1600-1676): his translation of Homer (Iliad, 1660, Odyssey, 1665) was ridiculed by Dryden and Pope.

ABRAHAM COWLEY (1618-1667)

PAGE 77. 4. The Iron Age, i. e. The Foure Ages of England, or the Iron Age, with other select poems, 1648.

PAGE 80. 23 sq. An early locus in English of that phase of criticism, initiated by Longinus, which is concerned with the relation between literature and its milieu.

PAGE 81. 1-27. Cowley is echoing Ovid, Trist. i. 1. 39 sq.; cf. Guarini, Pastor Fido, iv. 1, and Dryden, Works, ed. ScottSaintsbury, xi. 121.

14. Ovid, Met. xv. 871.

PAGE 82. 13. Horace, Epist. i. I. 45.

19. Ibid. i. 11. 9.

22. Donne, The Will (Poems, ed. E. K. Chambers, i. 61): 'And all your graces no more use shall have

Than a sun-dial in a grave.'

29. Martial, viii. 69.

PAGE 83. 30. This passage (to 84. 25) was omitted in all the editions after the Restoration.

PAGE 85. 8. Virgil, Georg. iii. 244.

II. Théodore de Bèze published a volume of Latin verse in his youth (Juvenilia, 1548), which he attempted later to suppress.

18. Virgil, Ecl. iii. 89.

PAGE 86. 9. Dionysius Halicarnassus, De Vet. Script. Censura, ii. 8.

26. Horace, A. P. 240 sq.

PAGE 88. 2 sq. Cf. supra, note to 5. 20-33. The religious epic had again become popular in France when Cowley was writing (e. g. Saint-Amant, Moyse sauvé, 1653; Godeau, Saint Paul, 1654). Vauquelin (Art Poétique, 1605) and Godeau (Discours de la Poésie Chrestienne, 1635) had urged the use of scriptural themes; and Desmarets de Saint Sorlin was soon to start a running fire of argument (Clovis, 1657; Les Délices de l'Esprit, 1658; La Comparaison de la Poësie françoise avec la grecque et la latine, 1670; Défense du Poëme héroïque, 1674).

30 sq. Lying is Essential to good Poetry. Renaissance criticism commences with a refutation of this conventional

charge (Boccaccio, Genealogia degli Dei, trad. Betussi, 1547, p. 257 sq., 'che i poeti non sono bugiardi'), and for many generations the critics continued to have their fling at it (e.g. Sidney, Defence, in Gregory Smith, i. 183 sq.).

PAGE 90. II. Francis Quarles, A Feast of Wormes, 1620, Job Militant, 1624, &c.

12. Thomas Heywood, The Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels, 1635.

RICHARD FLECKNOE (d. 1678?)

The Short Discourse of the English Stage has been reprinted from Love's Kingdom, A Pastoral Trage-Comedy: Not as it was Acted at the Theatre near Lincolns-Inn, but as it was written, and since corrected, By Richard Flecknoe. With a short Treatise of the English Stage, &c., by the same Author (London: Printed by R. Wood for the Author, 1664).

PAGE 91. 7. De Porta, i. e. Giambattista della Porta (1535–1615): his comedy of La Sorella was the basis of Middleton's No Wit, No Help like a Woman's and of Rotrou's La Sœur, and his Astrologo was reproduced in Tomkis' Albumazar.

PAGE 93. 17. Cf. i. 182. 13, and note.

PAGE 96. 25 sq. The Italians were the masters of stage machinery in this age, and their technical works were in advance of all others (e. g. N. Sabbattini, Pratica di fabricar scene e machine ne' teatri, 2nd ed., Ravenna, 1638); but the French had been paying no small attention to the subject (e.g. J. de la Mesnardière, Poétique, 1640, ch. xi, and d'Aubignac, Pratique du théâtre, 1657, bk. ii. ch. 13). There was no contemporary equivalent for these in English.

SIR ROBERT HOWARD (1626-1698)

PAGE 97. 22. Henry Herringman, the publisher of Howard's plays.

PAGE 101. 6. Horace, A. P. 272-3.

8 sq. Howard here answers Dryden's defence of rhyming plays in the dedicatory epistle of the Rival Ladies, 1664. PAGE 102. 32. Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery (1621-1679).

PAGE 106. 12. Howard's arguments against rhyming plays are taken up by Crites, and refuted by Neander, in Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy, 1668; and it has therefore been assumed that Howard himself is the original of Crites, though in all other respects their points of view are antipodal. Howard now proceeds to answer Neander's arguments.

19. Lucan, Pharsalia, i. 12 (cf. Ker's Dryden, i. 119).
30. Don Quixote, pt. ii. ch. 47.

31 sq. This is Molière's argument, in La Critique de l'École des Femmes, 1663, sc. vi: 'Car enfin, si les pièces qui sont selon les règles ne plaisent pas et que celles qui plaisent ne soient pas selon les règles, il faudroit de nécessité que les règles eussent été mal faites. Moquons-nous donc de cette chicane où ils veulent assujettir le goût du public, et ne consultons dans une comédie que l'effet qu'elle fait sur nous,' &c.

PAGE 108. I sq. Cf. Dryden, Essays, ed. Ker, i. 104, 105, and Dryden's answer, ibid. 117.

6. Shutting a door. Cf. ibid. i. 117, and supra, 102. 26, 27. 7. Seneca, Hippolytus, 863.

30. For the origin of the dramatic unities, see my Lit. Crit. in the Ren. pp. 89-101, 290-92 (cf. also the references cited by Gregory Smith, Eliz. Crit. Essays, i. 399, and Ebner, Gesch. der dram. Einheiten in Italien, pp. 1-5); for their later history, see D. Nichol Smith, Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare, p. 322, and L. Morandi, Voltaire contro Shakespeare, Baretti contro Voltaire, ed. 1884, pp. 86-122. Dryden's position is summed up by Ker, op. cit., i. p. xxxix sq.

PAGE 111. 9. Dryden's answer to this preface, A Defence of an Essay of Dramatic Poesy, was prefixed to the second edition of his Indian Emperor, 1668. Sir Robert's brother, Edward Howard, in the preface to the Usurper, 1668, had mildly argued against rhyming plays, and later, in the preface to the Women's Conquest, 1671, took up the cudgels for his brother with more vigour. It was to Edward Howard that Richard Flecknoe addressed his Letter in reply to Dryden's Defence (cf. Pepys, Diary, Sept. 20, 1668).

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