a long time before the beginning of the sixteenth century the Poetics had been entirely neglected. Not only do the critical ideas of this period show no indication of Aristotelian influence, but during the sixteenth century itself there seems to have been a well-defined impression that the Poetics had been recovered only after centuries of oblivion. Thus, Bernardo Segni, who translated the Poetics into Italian in 1549, speaks of it as "abandoned and neglected for a long time";[29] and Bernardo Tasso, some ten years later, refers to it as "buried for so long a time in the obscure shadows of ignorance."[30]

It was then as a new work of Aristotle that the Latin translation by Giorgio Valla, published at Venice in 1498, must have appeared to Valla's contemporaries. Though hardly successful as a work of scholarship, this translation, and the Greek text of the Poetics published in the Aldine Rhetores Græci in 1508, had considerable influence on dramatic literature, but scarcely any immediate influence on literary criticism. Somewhat later, in 1536, Alessandro de' Pazzi published a revised Latin version, accompanied by the original; and from this time, the influence of the Aristotelian canons becomes manifest in critical literature. In 1548, Robortelli produced the first critical edition of the Poetics, with a Latin translation and a learned commentary, and in the very next year the first Italian translation was given to the world by Bernardo Segni. From that day to this the editions and translations of the Poetics have increased beyond number, and there is hardly a single passage in Aristotle's treatise which has not been discussed by innumerable commentators and critics.

It was in Aristotle's Poetics that the Renaissance was to find, if not a complete, at least a rational justification of poetry, and an answer to every one of the Platonic and mediæval objections to imaginative literature. As to the assertion that poetry diverges from actual reality, Aristotle[31] contended that there is to be found in poetry a higher reality than that of mere commonplace fact, that poetry deals not with particulars, but with universals, and that it aims at describing not what has been, but what might have been or ought to be. In other words, poetry has little regard for the actuality of the specific event, but aims at the reality of an eternal probability. It matters not whether Achilles or Æneas did this thing, or that thing, which Homer or Virgil ascribes to either, but if Achilles or Æneas was such a man as the poet describes, he must necessarily act as Homer or Virgil has made him do. It is needless to say that Aristotle is here simply distinguishing between ideal truth and actual fact, and in asserting that it is the function of poetry to imitate only ideal truth he laid the foundations, not only of an answer to mediæval objections, but also of modern æsthetic criticism.

Beyond this, poetry is justified on the grounds of morality, for while not having a distinctly moral aim, it is essentially moral, because it is this ideal representation of life, and an idealized version of human life must necessarily present it in its moral aspects. Aristotle distinctly combats the traditional Greek conception of the didactic function of poetry; but it is evident that he insists fundamentally that literature must be moral, for he sternly rebukes Euripides several times on grounds that are moral, rather than purely æsthetic. In answer to the objection that poetry, instead of calming, stirs and excites our meanest passions, that it "waters and cherishes those emotions which ought to wither with drought, and constitutes them our rulers, when they ought to be our subjects,"[32] Aristotle taught those in the Renaissance who were able to understand him, that poetry, and especially dramatic poetry, does not indeed starve the emotions, but excites them only to allay and to regulate them, and in this æsthetic process purifies and ennobles them.[33] In pointing out these things he has justified the utility of poetry, regarding it as more serious and philosophic than history, because it universalizes mere fact, and imitates life in its noblest aspects.

These arguments were incorporated into Renaissance criticism; they were emphasized, as we shall see, over and over again, and they formed the basis of the justification of poetry in modern critical literature. At the same time, this purely æsthetic conception of art did not prevail by itself in the sixteenth century, even in those for whom Aristotle meant most, and who best understood his meaning; the Horatian elements, also, as found in the early humanists, were elaborated and discussed. In the Poetica of Daniello (1536), these Horatian elements form the basis for a defence of poetry[34] that has many marked resemblances to various passages in Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesy. After referring to the antiquity and nobility of poetry, and affirming that no other art is nobler or more ancient, Daniello shows that all things known to man, all the secrets of God and nature, are described by the poets in musical numbers and with exquisite ornament. He furthermore asserts, in the manner of Horace, that the poets were the inventors of the arts of life; and in answer to the objection that it was the philosophers who in reality did these things, he shows that while instruction is more proper to the philosopher than to the poet, poets teach too, in many more ways, and far more pleasantly, than any philosopher can. They hide their useful teachings under various fictions and fabulous veils, as the physician covers bitter medicine with a sweet coating. The style of the philosopher is dry and obscure, without any force or beauty by itself; and the delightful instruction of poetry is far more effective than the abstract and harsh teachings of philosophy. Poetry, indeed, was the only form of philosophy that primitive men had, and Plato, while regarding himself as an enemy of poets, was really a great poet himself, for he expresses all his ideas in a wondrously harmonious rhythm, and with great splendor of words and images. This defence of Daniello's is interesting, as anticipating the general form of such apologies throughout the sixteenth century.

Similarly, Minturno in his De Poeta (1559), elaborates the Horatian suggestions for a defence of poetry. He begins by pointing out the broad inclusiveness of poetry, which may be said to comprehend in itself every form of human learning, and by showing that no form of learning can be found before the first poets, and that no nation, however barbarous, has ever been averse to poetry.