IDEA OF LAW IX POETIJY 717 



incorrect. At no time was it true, in the broad sense of the word, that 

 English artists " despised foreign laws " : on the contrary, one of the 

 most noticeable features in the history, alike of English painting and 

 of English poetry, has been the influence exercised on the course of 

 our artistic development by foreign models. Of the careful study 

 bestowed from the middle of the last century by our painters on the 

 work of the Italian, Dutch, and French masters, I need say nothing. 

 Confining my attention to the history of poetry with which Pope is 

 dealing, it will be sufficient to disprove his assertion by reference, in 

 the infancy of our poetry, to the work of Chaucer, who not only trans- 

 lated the Roman de la 'Rose, but derived much of his philosophy of 

 life from that poem; who also in his House of Fame constantly kept 

 in view TJie Divine Comedy of Dante; and who drew the scheme of 

 The C it aid-bury 2" ales from the Decameron of Boccaccio. After Chau- 

 cer we pass on to the practice of Wyatt,' Surrey, and their followers 

 imitated from Petrarch; after that, on the one hand, to the poetry 

 of Mi lion, so profoundly influenced by the Italian writers, both in 

 Latin and vernacular verse, and, on the other, to Beaumont and 

 Fletcher, who, under ihe influence of the style and structure of the 

 Spanish play, altered the whole tradition of the English romantic 

 drama. 



!] vcii if we examine Pope's history within the limits to which he 

 intended to confine it. it cannot be said that the English, as a nation, 

 ever set themselves deliberately to oppose the authority of the sup- 

 posed Aristotelian " rules.'' On the contrary, the first elaborate trea- 

 tise of criticism in the English language, Sir Philip Sidney's Apologie 

 for Poetry, is confessedly grounded upon them. Half a century before 

 Corneille, Sidney had advocated with ardour the principle of the 

 1'nities, as expounded by the critics of Ftaly : and he censured Spenser 

 for using dialect in his >'Ar/)//r/v/'.y Calendar, on the ground that the 

 experiment was an innovation on classical example. Ben Jonson. in 

 the next generation, constantly sneers at his contemporaries for their 

 barbarous neglect of the F'jiities. Dryden, though he never ventures to 

 deviate 1 from the practice of the English stage into the paths of 

 critical orthodoxy, always speaks with superstitions reverence of the 

 authority of French critical law. And. if any further proof were re- 

 quired to indicate the gathering volume of opinion in this direction, 

 it would be furnished by the drift of thought in Pope' 

 Crih'cixm, and by Addison's dramatic criticisms in the 

 which vividlv reflect the movement of ta-te in the reign of Queen 

 Anne. 



In any case, supposing it had been true that the English had defied 

 the critical tradition of the Humanists, passed on to France from 

 Italy, this would not have proved them to be uncivilized. For, in 

 the first place, the laws in question were not the laws of Aristotle. The 



