Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance · Chapter 15Chapter IV English Renaissance Ideas of the Purpose of Poetry
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In England the Italian interpretations of the literary criticism of Greece and Rome made slow headway against the established traditions of the middle ages. In particular the vogue of allegory did not yield to the idea of the moral example transferred from rhetoric to poetic.
When Thomas Wilson published the first edition of his Arte of Rhetorique in 1553, the corpus of Greek criticism in the Aldine Rhetores Graeci had been in print forty-five years, and the commentaries of Dolce, Daniello, Robortelli, and Maggi were available. But Wilson wrote a very good rhetoric with no books before him but Quintilian, Cicero and the rhetoric Ad Herennium, which he thought to be Cicero's, Erasmus, Plutarch De audiendis poetis, and St. Basil. His treatment of poetry is quite naturally, then, that of a rhetorician who had been reared in the mediaeval tradition of allegory.
Allegory in the sense of Quintilian as a trope, an extended metaphor, Wilson mentions only once. His instance will bear quotation:
It is evil putting strong Wine into weake vesselles, that is to say, it is evil trusting some women with weightie matters. The English Proverbes gathered by John Heywood, helpe well in this behalfe, the which commonly are nothing els but Allegories, and darke devised sentences.[360]
Allegory in its more general mediaeval sense of the kernel of moral truth within the brilliant husk of the poet's fables he discusses at greater length elsewhere with full exemplification.
For by them we may talke at large and win men by persuasion, if we declare beforehand that these tales were not fained of such wisemen without cause.
This obvious rhetorical discussion of the use of poetical illustrations by orators leads him to express his conviction of the moral value of poetry. That poetry did have this improving effect he is quite sure.
For undoubtedly there is no one tale among all the Poetes, but under the same is comprehended something that parteineth, either to the amendment of maners, to the knowledge of the trueth to the setting forth of Nature's work, or els the understanding of some notable thing done.... As Plutarch saieth: and likewise Basilius Magnus:[361] In the Iliades are described strength, and valiantnesse of the bodie: In the Odissea is set forth a lively paterne of the minde. The Poetes were wisemen, and wished in hart the redresse of things, the which when for feare, they durst not openly rebuke, they did in colours painte them out, and tolde men by shadowes what they should doe in good sooth, or els because the wicked were unworthy to heare the trueth, they spake so that none might understand but those unto whom they please to utter their meaning.[362]
Wilson seems to mean not only that poetry has a moral effect, but that the moral value is the main intention. He then proceeds to elucidate the story of Danae as signifying that women have been and will be overcome by money. The story of Io's seduction by the bull shows that beauty may overcome the best of women. From Icarus we should learn that every man should not meddle with things above his compass, and from Midas, to avoid covetousness. As a Protestant he explains St. Christopher and St. George in like manner allegorically.
But Wilson is a rhetorician, not a theorist of poetry; he is not concerned with the moral example as the purpose of poetry. In his section on example as a rhetorical argument he shows how stories and fables may enliven and enforce a point. He illustrates by Pliny's story of the grateful dragon, and by Appian's story of the grateful lion, how a speaker may enlarge on the duty of gratitude among men. But though he does not postulate pleasurable instruction as the aim of poetry, he clearly implies it in his comment on the use of stories in argument.
Nor does Roger Ascham in his Scholemaster, written between 1563-1568 and published posthumously in 1570, concern himself with the purpose of poetry. His interest in poetry seems to be confined to prosody. As a school-master himself he is interested in guiding grammar-school boys in their mastery of Latin prose. "I purpose to teach a yong scholer, to go, not to dance: to speake, not to sing."[363] That he is not blind to the fact that poetry does influence the character of a reader, whether that be its purpose or not in the mind of God, he shows by his comment on Plautus. The language, Ascham says, is good and worthy of imitation; but the master must choose only such passages as contain honest matter.[364] And the same fear of the possible evil moral influence of fiction is evinced in his famous condemnation of the Morte Darthur "the whole pleasure of which booke standeth in two speciall poyntes, in open mans slaughter, and bold bawdrye,"[365] and in his attacks on English translations of Italian poems and stories. In this his position is substantially that of Savonarola, Loyola and Vives.[366] Nowhere does Ascham advance the claims of allegory as cloaking moral truth under the guise of fiction. He is too good a classicist and Ciceronian. What he fears from poetry is evil example. If he believed that the purpose of poetry was to teach truth by example pleasantly, at least he does not say so. Ascham represents the advance guard in England against allegory. But since he was not writing on the theory of poetry primarily, he did not endeavor to establish that the function of poetry is to teach by example.
Thus far we have had to draw inferences from the asides of rhetorician and school-master. But in 1575, five years after the publication of Ascham's treatise, George Gascoigne, a poet, published his Certayne Notes of Instruction Concerning the Making of Verse or Ryme.[367] The title is not misleading. Gascoigne is concerned with the style of poetry, not with its philosophy. His only reference to either example or allegory is in a passage where he recommends methods of avoiding triteness in the praise of his mistress.
If I should disclose my pretence in love, I would eyther make a strange discourse of some intollerable passion, or finde occasion to pleade by the example of some historie, or discover my disquiet in shadowes per Allegoriam.[368]
Slight as this is, it hints at the rhetoric of Ovid and the declamation schools. The poet is "to pleade by example." He is making a speech to his mistress trying to prove to her his undying passion that she may grant him the ultimate favor. The genre is the same that includes the Epistles of Ovid and the Love Letters of Aristenetus. It is the genre of versified speech-making. Wilson recommended the Proverbs of Heywood as furnishing "allegories" useful in the amplification of a point in a speech. In his Euphues Lyly did use such "allegories" in what his contemporaries generally considered a poem. Lyly drew examples, anecdotes, and fables which he used as Gascoigne suggested, not only from Heywood, but from the Similia and Adagia, of Erasmus, and from the Emblems of Alciati.[369]
So far the moral example is counseled or practised only as a recognized device of rhetoric. It is not transferred to poetic until George Whetstone's Dedication to his Promos and Cassandra. For Whetstone asserts that in his comedy he has intermingled all actions "in such sorte as the grave matter may instruct, and the pleasant delight ... and the conclusion showes the confusion of Vice and the cherising of Vertue."[370] That the philosophy of this moral improvement resides in the extreme application of poetic justice he shows as follows: "For by the reward of the good the good are encouraged in wel doinge: and with the scowrge of the lewde the lewde are feared from evill attempts." Whetstone's Dedication was published in 1578, one year before Gosson launched his attack against poetry and poets in his School of Abuse, which was answered by Lodge and Sidney in their Apologies. In this controversy, in which Whetstone later took sides with the anti-stage party in his Touchstone for Time (1584), the age-long conflict between the poets and the philosophers was renewed with vigor and acrimony. But both the attackers and the defenders argued from the same premise, that the purpose of poetry was to afford pleasant moral instruction. Gosson and the Puritans objected that current poetry and plays failed to afford this moral instruction and should consequently be condemned. Lodge, Sidney and the other defenders of poetry retorted that poetry had a noble function--the teaching of morality, and that an occasional poem which did not serve this purpose did not invalidate the claims of poetry as a whole.
Gosson writes:
The right use of auncient poetrie was to have the notable exploytes of worthy captaines, the holesome councels of good fathers and vertuous lives of predecessors set down in numbers, and sung to the instrument at solemne feastes, that the sound of the one might draw the hearers from kissing the cup too often, and the sense of the other put them in minde of things past, and chaulke out the way to do the like.[371]
The benefit, according to Gosson, which poetry should produce is that of good moral example. Moral doctrine, he believes accessible in the churches, and against the poets he urges that the evil social environment of the theatre offsets the benefit to be derived even from good plays. What profits the moral lesson of such a play if after witnessing the performance a man walk away with a woman whose acquaintance he has just made in the theatre.[372] He may drink wine, he may play cards, he may even enter a brothel.
In his Defence of Poetry (1579), Lodge retreats to the caverns of the middle ages to equip himself with arms. Under the influence of Campano, who died in 1477, he advances allegory as the explanation which makes the apparently light and trifling poets moral teachers of the utmost seriousness. Addressing Gosson he exclaims:
Did you never reade that under the persons of beastes many abuses were dissiphered? Have you not reason to waye that whatsoever ether Virgil did write of his gnatt or Ovid of his fley was all covertly to declare abuse?... You remember not that under the person of Aeneas in Virgil the practice of a dilligent captaine is described; you know not that the creation is signified in the Image of Prometheus; the fall of pryde in the person of Narcissus.[373]
And he quotes Lactantius as comparing poetry with the Scriptures. If either are taken literally, they will seem false. We should judge by the poet's hidden meaning.[374] The purpose of the poets, to Lodge, was "In the way of pleasure to draw men to wisdome." When he defends comedy, Lodge drifts away from allegory. Terence and Plautus he praises for furnishing examples of virtue and vice upon the boards, thus to amend the manners of his auditors. He believed that poetry did amend manners, and correct abuses--if properly used. But he is very quick to admit the very abuses which Gosson attacked.
I abhore those poets that savor of ribaldry: I will admit the expullcion of such enormities, poetry is dispraised not for the folly that is in it, but for the abuse whiche manye ill Wryters couller by it.[375] I must confess with Aristotle that men are greatly delighted with imitation, and that it were good to bring those things on stage that were altogether tending to vertue; all this I admit and hartely wysh, but you say unlesse the thinge be taken away the vice will continue. Nay I say if the style were changed the practise would profit.[376]
Thus he defends poetry bcause it teaches morality by example and by allegory.
With that higher intelligence and learning which have already been contrasted with the unthinking acceptance of his times[377] Sir Philip Sidney wrote his Apologie for Poetrie. In this dignified and vigorous pamphlet, written about 1583, and published in 1595, Sidney presents the best and most consistent argument for the moral purpose of poetry that appeared in England. That the main line of his argument and his best material is drawn from Minturno and Scaliger, as Spingarn has demonstrated,[378] in no way invalidates his claim to distinction. The purpose of poetry is to Sidney, in the first place, to teach and delight,[379] "that fayning notable images of vertues, vices, or what els, with that delightfull teaching which must be the right describing note to know a poet by."[380] But as the end of all earthly learning is virtuous action, in Sidney's mind, he agrees with Minturno and Scaliger in borrowing from rhetoric Cicero's three-fold aim of the orator: to teach, to delight, to move. Sidney says that the poets "imitate both to delight and teach, and delight to move men to take the goodnes in hande ... and teach, to make them know that goodnes whereunto they are mooved."[381] It is incredible that he did not know this terminology as rhetoric. Poetry, he believes, fails if it does not persuade its reader to abandon evil and adopt good.
And that mooving is of a higher degree than teaching, it may by this appeare, that it is well nigh the cause of teaching. For who will be taught, if he bee not mooved with desire to be taught? and what so much good doth that teaching bring forth (I speak still of morall doctrine) as that it mooveth one to do that which it dooth teach?[382]
The effectiveness of poetry, then, in accomplishing this moral end lies in its pleasantness. The poet, says Sidney, in that most famous passage which is too frequently quoted incompletely,
commeth to you with words sent in delightful proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the well inchaunting skill of Musicke; and with a tale forsooth he commeth unto you, with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner. And pretending no more, doth intende the winning of the mind from wickedness to vertue: even as the childe is often brought to take most wholsom things by hiding them in such other as have a pleasant tast.[383]
According to Sidney, then, it is the very purpose of poetry to win men to virtue by pleasant instruction. The argument of poetry in accomplishing this end is primarily the example. Sidney compares very elaborately philosophy, history, and poetry in an endeavor to show that poetry is the most effective instrument for forwarding virtue. In the first place poetry is better adapted than philosophy to win men to virtue because it persuades both by precepts and by examples, while philosophy persuades by precepts alone. His sanction for this high opinion of the persuasive power of example is the rhetorical commonplace of the renaissance that the way is long by precept and short by example.[384] To enforce this point he tells the story of how Menenius Agrippa won over the people of Rome to support the Senate by telling them the story of the revolt of the members against the belly. Quintilian[385] and Wilson[386] had already told this story to prove the effectiveness of the example as a rhetorical argument, a device of the public speaker.
The main advantage which poetry possesses over history, Sidney goes on, is that while the historian must stick to his facts, which too frequently are unedifying, the poet can and does create a world better than nature, and presents to his reader ideal figures of human conduct such as Pylades, Cyrus, and Æneas.[387] This is Sidney's application of Aristotle's assertion that history is particular and poetic universal; history records things as they are and poetic as they are, worse than they are, or better. Lest his readers might fear that the arguments of the poet might lose some of their persuasive force from their being fictitious, Sidney hastens to add: "For that a fayned example hath as much force to teach as a true example (for as for to moove, it is cleere, sith the fayned may be tuned to the highest key of passion);"[388] and here he is drawing from Aristotle's Rhetoric.[389] Through admiration of the noble persons of poetry, the reader is won to a desire for emulation. "Who readeth Æneas carrying olde Anchises on his back, that wisheth not it were his fortune to perfourme so excellent an acte?"[390]
Although Sidney believes the principal moral value of poetry to reside in its power to teach and move by the use of examples, he devotes at least half a page to the beneficent effect of parables and allegories. The parables which he uses, however, are all Christian, and the allegories are all the Fables of Æsop. From the allegorical interpretation of poetry current in the middle ages and to a scarcely less degree among his English contemporaries Sidney remains conspicuously aloof.
In answering the specific charges against poetry, that it is a waste of time, the mother of lies, the nurse of abuse, and rejected by Plato, Sidney asserts that a thing which moves men to virtue so effectively as poetry cannot be a waste of time; that since poetry pretends not to literal truth, it cannot lie,[391] that poetry does not abuse man's wit, but man's wit abuses poetry, for "shall the abuse of a thing make the right use odious?"[393] and that Plato objected not to poetry but to its abuse.
Sir John Harington[392] who published his Brief Apologie of Poetrie in 1591, four years before the publication of Sidney's Apologie, based much of his treatise on Sidney. Unfortunately, he did not digest fully the arguments of the manuscript in his hand, and instead of a first-hand knowledge of Minturno and Scaliger had only the commonplaces of Plutarch. In spite even of Plutarch, allegory, not moral example, is his main line of defence. His fundamental basis is the stock Horatian "omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci," or as Harington paraphrases, "for in verse is both goodness and sweetness, Rubarb and Sugarcandie, the pleasant and the profitable."[394] The objection that poets lie Harington meets as Sidney does, "But poets never affirming any for true, but presenting them to us as fables and imitations, cannot lye though they would."[395] At this point Harington parts company with his master and goes back to the middle ages.
The ancient Poets have indeed wrapped as it were in their writings divers and sundry meanings, which they call the senses or mysteries thereof. First of all for the litteral sence (as it were the utmost barke or ryne) they set downe in manner of an historie the acts and notable exploits of some persons worthie memorie: then in the same fiction, as a second rine and somewhat more fine, as it were nearer to the pith and marrow, they place the Morall sence profitable for the active life of man, approving vertuous actions and condemning the contrarie. Many times also under the selfesame words they comprehend some true understanding of naturall Philosophie, or sometimes of politike government, and now and then of divinitie: and these same sences that comprehend so excellent knowledge we call the Allegorie.[396]
Nothing could be more specifically mediaeval. He then proceeds to explain the historical, moral, and three allegorical senses of the story of Perseus and the Gorgon--the highest allegory being theological. Further, to defend the allegorical senses of poetry, which conceals a pith of profit under a pleasant rind, Harington explains fully how Demosthenes, Bishop Fisher, and the Prophet Nathan enforced their arguments by allegorical stories. To Harington, then, poetry is useful as an introduction to Philosophy. Paraphrasing Plutarch On the Reading of Poets, he says:
So young men do like best that Philosophy that is not Philosophie, or that is not delivered as Philosophie, and such are the pleasant writings of learned Poets, that are the popular Philosophers and the popular divines.[397]
A Discourse of English Poetrie (1586) by the laborious but uninspired tutor, William Webbe,[398] is not a defense; but interspersed among his remarks advocating the reformed versifying, and his arid catalog of poets, ancient and modern, is a good deal about the moral purpose and value of poetry. A thoroughgoing Horatian, he cannot forbear to quote at length and comment upon the "miscere utile dulci," of his master. Poetry, in Webbe's conception, therefore, is especially effective in its "sweete allurements to vertues and commodious caveates from vices."[399] In appraising the methods of producing the moral effect, Webbe fails to share with his contemporaries their high opinion of moral example and their depreciation of precept. Poetry, he says, contains great and profitable fruits for the instruction of manners and precepts of good life[400]. And he finds much profit even in the most dissolute works of Ovid and Martial because they abound in moral precepts. He does not, however, entirely discount the moral effect of example. Ovid and Martial should be kept from young people who have not yet gained sufficient judgment to distinguish between the beneficial and the harmful, and Lucian should not be read at all. But he seems to fear the moral effect of bad example more than he applauds the effect of good. Thus his main reliance is upon allegory. The Metamorphoses of Ovid, for instance,
though it consisted of fayned Fables for the most part, and poeticall inventions, yet being moralized according to his meaning, and the trueth of every tale beeing discovered, it is a worke of exceeding wysedome and sounde judgment [and the rest of his writings] are mixed with much good counsayle and profitable lessons, if they be wisely and narrowly read.[401]
Perhaps because he was not pledged to defend poetry against the attacks of the Puritans, Webbe thus allows himself to admit "the very summe or cheefest essence of poetry dyd alwayes for the most part consist in delighting the readers or hearers with pleasure." Aside from his emphasizing allegory, which Plutarch had rejected, Webbe is thus closer to the doctrines of Plutarch than he is to the Italians. Poetry has, he believes, a moral effect, but he does not establish this moral effect as its motivating purpose[402]. And again, after descanting on the exhortations to virtue, dehortations from vices, and praises of laudable things which characterized the early poets, he defines the comical sort of poetry as containing "all such Epigrammes, Elegies, and delectable ditties, which Poets have devised respecting onely the delight thereof.[403]
Like Webbe, the author of The Arte of English Poesie (1589) ascribed to Puttenham,[404] believes much in the pleasure of poetry. He does not, however, advance pleasure as the purpose any more than he does profit. Instead of endeavoring to discover what the end or purpose of poetry may be, Puttenham explains why certain forms of poetry were devised, or what may be the intention of certain poets in certain poems. The passage is worth quoting at length. The use of poetry, says Puttenham,
is the laud, honour, & glory of the immortall gods (I speake now in phrase of the Gentiles); secondly, the worthy gests of noble Princes, the memoriall and registry of all great fortunes, the praise of vertue & reproofe of vice, the instruction of morall doctrines, the revealing of sciences naturall & other profitable Arts, the redresse of boistrous & sturdie courages by perswasion, the consolation and repose of temperate myndes: finally, the common solace of mankind in all his travails and cares of this transitorie life; and in this last sort, being used for recreation onely, may allowably beare matter not alwayes of the gravest or of any great commoditie or profit, but rather in some sort vaine, dissolute, or wanton, so it be not very scandalous & of evill example.[405]
The poems of "this last sort" which Puttenham had in mind were anagrams, emblems, and such trifling verse especially, which, as he says, have been objected to by some grave and theological heads as "to none edification nor instruction, either of morall vertue or otherwise behooffull for the commonwealth." These trifles "have bene in all ages permitted as the convenient solaces and recreations of man's wit."[406] But Puttenham does not advocate that these poems whose only aim is recreation should be released from the restraints of accepted morality. They may be vain, dissolute or wanton, but not very scandalous. They should not offer evil examples, nor should their matter be "unhonest."
Not all poetry, according to Puttenham, is given over to refreshing the mind by the ear's delight. Although the poet is appointed as a pleader of lovely causes in the ear of princely dames, young ladies, gentlewomen, and courtiers,[407] none the less much poetry has a didactic purpose. Satire was first invented to administer direct rebuke of evil, comedy to amend the manners of common men by discipline and example, tragedy to show the mutability of fortune and the just punishment of God in revenge of a vicious and evil life, pastoral to inform moral discipline, for the amendment of man's behavior, or to insinuate or glance at greater matters under the veil of rustic persons and rude speeches.[408] Here Puttenham pays his respects to all accepted methods of poetical instruction: in satire, to precepts; in comedy and tragedy, to example; in pastoral, to allegory. Yet it is in historical poetry, which may indifferently be wholly true, wholly false, or a mixture, the moral effect of example is most potent. Speaking of examples in poetry, he says, "Right so no kinde of argument in all the Oratorie craft doth better perswade and more universally satisfie then example."[409] It is on this account that historical poetry is, next the divine, the most honorable and worthy. For the historians have always been not so eager that what they wrote should be true to fact as that it should be used either for example or for pleasure.
Considering that many times it is seene a fained matter or altogether fabulous, besides that it maketh more mirth than any other, works no less good conclusions for example then the most true and veritable, but often more, because the Poet hath the handling of them to fashion at his pleasure.[410]
This conception of history as moral example is common enough. To Budé all history was a moral example[411] and Puttenham's inclusion of didactic fiction is in line with much renaissance thought, which regarded the two as almost interchangeable.[412]
Puttenham, like Webbe, was more in accord with Horace in admitting both the pleasant and profitable effects of poetry than he was with Minturno, Scaliger, and Sidney. He grants that some poetry exists only for pleasure, but he puts his emphasis on poetry as a power of persuasion[413] accomplishing the moral improvement of society. As late as the Hypercritica (1618) of Bolton, history is defined as nothing else but a kind of philosophy using examples. Bolton enforces his view by quotation from Bede, William of Malmesbury, and Sir Thomas North.[414]
A most interesting view of the purpose of poetry was evolved in the brain of Francis Bacon--that baffling complexity of mediaeval tradition and penetrating original thought. To him the use of feigned history, as he defines poetry, "hath beene to give some shadowe of satisfaction to the minde of man in those points wherein the Nature of things doth deny it."[415] That is, poetry represents the world as greater, more just, and more pleasant than it really is. "So as it appeareth that Poesie serveth and conferreth to Magnanimitie, Moralitie, and to delectation." Here Bacon seems to imply that the essential pleasure of poetry is in affording vicarious experience through imaginative realization. Poetry does this by "submitting the shewes of things to the desires of the minde." It truly makes a world nearer to our heart's desire. But while Bacon derives the moral benefit of poetry from examples of conduct and outcomes of events more nearly just than those of actual life, when he analyses poetry into its kinds, he makes a place for allegory. In this division he provides for narrative, drama, and allegory. But with penetration he sees what few renaissance critics had noted before--that allegory is of two varieties. The first variety is essentially the same as a rhetorical example; it is an extended metaphor used as an argument to enforce a point and thus persuade an audience. The fables of Aesop are such allegories or examples; and they are useful because they make their point more interestingly than other arguments and more clearly. The other sort of allegory, says Bacon, instead of illuminating the idea, obscures it. "That is, when the Secrets and Misteries of Religion, Pollicy, or Philosophy, are involved in Fables or Parables." He then gives political allegorical interpretations of the myths of Briareus and of the Centaur and suddenly adds: "Nevertheless in many the like incounters, I doe rather think that the fable was first and the exposition devised than that the Morall was first and thereupon the fable framed."[416] Bacon's final conclusion seems to be that, although allegorical poetry does exist, allegory is not essential to poetry and that the wholesale allegorizing of the middle ages was far off the mark. In his suspicion that in most cases the fable was first and the interpretation after, Bacon was in complete agreement with Rabelais in the prologue of Gargantua.[417] At any rate Bacon seems to have given the coup de grace to allegory in England.
Under the influence of Pico della Mirandola it was resurrected from its tomb by Henry Reynolds; but it was a much less moral allegory and a more mystical. In his Mythomystes (licensed 1632) Reynolds admits, that the ancients mingled moral instruction in their poetry, but reprehends this as an abuse. Prose is the proper vehicle of moral doctrine and should have been employed by Spenser. The true function of poetry, then, is to give secret knowledge of the mysteries of nature to the initiated. Thus the story of the rape of Proserpine signifies, when allegorically interpreted; "the putrefaction and succeeding generation of the Seedes we commit to Pluto, or the earth."[418] This is the most plausible example of mystical interpretation to be found in the whole treatise.
To the allegorist, the fable or plot in epic or dramatic poetry was only a rind to cover attractively the kernel of truth. It was a means to an end, not an end in itself. As the influence of Aristotle's Poetics spreading through Italy, Germany, France, and England, gave the plot or fable more importance, allegory lost its hold on the minds of the critics. When Ben Jonson writes in his Timber "For the Fable and Fiction is, as it were, the forme and Soule of any Poeticall worke or Poeme"[419] the change had come. Jonson, like Sidney, was steeped in classical criticism as interpreted and spread abroad by the sixteenth-century critics of the continent. But while Sidney made a place for allegory in his scheme of poetry, Jonson does not so much as mention it. His idea of the teaching power of poetry, for to him poetry and painting both behold pleasure and profit as their common object,[420] is rhetorical--depending on precept and example--and attaining its true aim when it moves men to action. Poesy is "a dulcet and gentle Philosophy, which leades on and guides us by the hand to Action with a ravishing delight and incredible Sweetnes."[421] Jonson evidently knew that he was merging oratory and poetry in their common purpose of securing persuasion; for he says:
"The Poet is the neerest Borderer upon the Orator, and expresseth all his vertues, though he be tyed more to numbers, is his equal in ornament, and above him in his strengths: Because in moving the minds of men, and stirring of affections, in which Oratory shewes, and especially approves her eminence, hee chiefly excells."[422]
In his dedication to Volpone he says this power of persuasion which the poet possesses to so eminent a degree is to be applied to the moral well-being of men, "to inform men in the best reason of living."[423] Himself a writer for the theatre, Jonson is naturally more concerned with comedy and tragedy than he is with any narrative forms of poetry. And to him the office of the comic poet is "to imitate justice and instruct to life--or stirre up gentle affections."[424] In Timber he iterates the same praise of poetry as being no less effective than philosophy in instructing men to good life, and informing their manners, but as even more effective in that it persuades men to good where philosophy threatens and compels. In order to accomplish this beneficial effect on public morals, the poet must have an exact knowledge of all virtues and vices with ability to render the one loved and the other hated.[425] As a natural result of this conception, so similar to Cicero's demand that the orator must know all things and in line with Aristotle's Rhetoric, Jonson concludes that the poet, like Quintilian's orator, must himself be a good man; for how else will he be able "to informe yong-men to all good disciplines, inflame growne-men to all great vertues, keepe old men in their best and supreme state."[426]
Aside from Sidney and Jonson no English critic, however, thought through to the logical conclusion that in moral purpose rhetoric and poetic are identical. The others continued to echo Horace, or lean toward allegory, or see profit in poetry from its moral example. For instance in his preface to his second instalment of Homer entitled Achilles' Shield (1598) Chapman dwells at length on the moral value and wisdom contained in the Iliad,[427] and enunciates the same idea in his Prefaces of 1610-16.[428] Peacham, in his Compleat Gentleman (1622), repeats the usual commonplaces to the effect that poetry is a dulcet philosophy, for the most part lifted from Puttenham.[429] In his Argenis (1621) Barclay reminds his reader of the children who for so many centuries had shunned the cup of physic until the bitter taste had been removed by sweet syrop. Thus also, says he, is it with the moral value of poetry disguised with sweet music. "Virtues and vices I will frame, and the rewards of them shall suite to both"; for it is on the moral example of poetic justice that Barclay depends. The models of virtue will be followed.[430]
The Earl of Stirling, in Anacrisis (1634?) acknowledges the works of the poets to be the chief springs of learning, "both for Profit and Pleasure, showing Things as they should be, where Histories represent them as they are." Consequently he has a high opinion of the Cyropaedia of Xenophon, the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney, and other such poems, as "affording many exquisite Types of Perfection for both the Sexes."[431] These types the reader is expected to imitate in his own conduct, guided by the moral precepts with which the poet must not neglect to decorate his work.
Within the period of this study two views were taken of the moral element in poetry. With the exception of Sidney and Jonson, who knew the theories of the Italian renaissance, the English critics believed with Horace that poetry was at once pleasant and profitable, and agreed with Plutarch that poetry, if rightly used, would be of benefit in the education of youth. But there was little tendency to follow this to the conclusion of asserting that because poetry has a moral effect on the reader, it is the purpose of poetry as an art to exert this moral effect for the good of society. Most of these critics believed that the moral effect which poetry did exert came through allegory. In this respect, as has been shown, they were carrying on the traditions of the middle ages.
The opposing view derived ultimately from the classical rhetorics, and entered England through the criticism of the Italian scholars--particularly Minturno and Scaliger. Starting from the saying of Horace that poets aim to please or profit, or please and profit together, these critics borrowed from rhetoric Cicero's three-fold aim of the orator: to teach, to please, to move, and applied these three aims to the poet. Accordingly, to them the poet has the same aim as the orator--persuasion. He pleases not for the sake of giving pleasure, but for the sake of winning his readers so that he may better attain his real object of teaching morality and moving men to action in its practice. The emphasis on the example as the means of attaining this end was further derived from scholastic philosophy which, as has been shown, classed logic, rhetoric, and poetic together as instruments for attaining truth and improving the morality of the state. Furthermore, according to this scholastic view, the three arts differed only as they utilized different means to attain this end. Logic used the demonstrative syllogism and the scientific induction, rhetoric used the enthymeme or rhetorical syllogism and the example or popular induction, poetic used the example alone. According to the renaissance developments of this last view, allegory was emphasized less and less as the example was felt to be more appropriate. Thus Sidney and Jonson, the outstanding classicists in English renaissance criticism, exhibit to the highest degree the influence of the most rhetorical of Italian renaissance critics. They alone in England assert that the purpose of poetry is to move men to virtuous action.
Thus a study of rhetorical terminology in English renaissance theories of poetry throws into sharp relief the fact that all criticism of the fine art of literature in England in the 16th century and the first half of the 17th century was profoundly influenced by rhetoric. This influence was two-fold. On the one hand the less scholarly critics perpetuated the popular traditions of rhetoric which they inherited from the middle ages. These traditions of allegory and the ornate style were, as has been shown, in turn derived from post-classical rhetoric. On the other hand the more scholarly critics applied to poetry the canons of classical rhetoric which they derived in part from the classics themselves and in part from the critics of the Italian renaissance.
In one sense this has been a study of critical perversions. Although many of the critics of the English renaissance are remarkable for their wisdom and discerning judgments, their writings are far less valuable than those of Longinus and Aristotle. But Aristotle and Longinus did not allow their theories of poetry to be contaminated by rhetoric. The best modern critics have studied and understood the classical treatises on poetic and have consequently avoided the confusion between rhetoric and poetic into which many renaissance critics fell. Others have not been so fortunate. For these the object-lesson of renaissance failure should serve as a warning.