poetry," which Georgius Fabricius Chemnicensis (1560) had digested from
the _Ars Poetica_, and the _Epistles_.
Perhaps the author of _The Arte of English Poesie_ (1589),
generally supposed to be Puttenham, had in mind to be the
some-one-better-than-Webbe, whom that worthy tutor hoped to stir up to
write a treatise for the benefit of poetry in England. At any rate,
Puttenham is primarily concerned with teaching his contemporaries how to
write verses. Like classical authors of text-books, he calls his treatise
an "Arte." Furthermore, as a courtier himself writing for courtiers,
Puttenham does not lay down rules for the drama or the epic, but devotes
most of his attention to occasional verse: lyrics, elegies, epigrams, and
satires. His structure is significant. The first book, 58 pages in the
Arber reprint, deals with definition, purpose and subject matter of
poetry. The poet, he says, is a maker who creates new forms out of his
inner consciousness, and at the same time an imitator. Thus he reconciles
Aristotle and Horace.[232] Moreover, Puttenham calls attention to the
importance of the imagination in the composition of poetry as well as in
war, engineering and politics.[234] That the art of poetry is eminently
teachable, Puttenham is entirely convinced, for he defines it as a skill
appertaining to utterance, or as a certain order of rules prescribed by
reason and gathered by experience.[233] It is verse, according to
Puttenham, not imitation, which is the characteristic mark of poetry. This
makes poetry a nobler form, for verse is "a manner of utterance more
eloquent and rethorical then the ordinarie prose, because it is decked and
set out with all manner of fresh colours and figures, which maketh that it
sooner invegleth the judgment of man." It is because poetry is thus so
beautiful, he says, that "the Poets were also from the beginning the best
persuaders, and their eloquence the first Rethoricke of the world."[235]
Rhetoric to Puttenham is beauty of speech: and because poetry is more
beautiful than prose, as being in this sense more rhetorical, it is better
able to persuade. The remainder of the book explains the nature and
history of the various poetical forms, as lyric, epic, tragedy, pastoral,
and so on. The second book, _Of Proportion_, 70 pages, is a treatise on
metrics. The first half, like the section in Webbe, is devoted to English
versing, dealing with stanza forms, meters, rime, and conceited figures
such as anagrams and verses in the form of eggs. The second half is
devoted to classical meters. In his third book, _Of Ornament_, 165 pages,
Puttenham gives an exhaustive and exhausting treatment of the figures of
speech. Of the 121 figures which Puttenham defines and illustrates,
Professor Van Hook has traced 107 to Quintilian's rhetoric[236]. Professor
Schelling refuses to treat this third book in his _Poetic and Verse
Criticism in the Reign of Elizabeth_, because, he says, it does not fall
within the scope of his purpose, being made up of matters rhetorical, as
applicable to prose as to verse[237]. That Puttenham did include it,
however, is most significant evidence that both the author and his reading
public considered these adornments an essential part of poetry. As the
ladies of the court, be they ever so beautiful, should be ashamed to be
seen without their courtly habiliments of silks, and tissues, and costly
embroideries, even so poetry cannot be seen if any limb be left naked and
bare and not clad in gay clothes and colors, says Puttenham.
This ornament is given to it by figures and figurative speaches, which
be the flowers, as it were, and colours that a Poet setteth upon his
language of arte, as the embroderer doth his stone and perle or
passements of gold upon the stuffe of a Princely garment[238].
The figures Puttenham divides according to his own scheme. First come the
figures _auricular_ peculiar to the poets, then the figures _sensable_