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The manifesto of this minor Areopagus was the Reulis and cautelis to be observit and eschewit in Scottis Poesie,[1] and its sources and contents require first attention in a review of their work. "Sindrie hes written of it [the art of poetry] in English," says James vaguely, in the preface; but his indebtedness to Gascoigne's excellent Notes of Instruction (1575) is obvious on every page. The King and his guide in the art simply appropriated from the English treatise, after the fashion of border reivers, making adroit and somewhat disingenuous changes in order and phrasing, and adding or omitting as their tastes and the peculiarities of Scottish prosody suggested. On the other hand, the debt to French criticism is surprisingly slight, and confined to observations which are among the commonplaces of criticism early and late. Thus in his discussion of invention, and of art vs. nature (Preface and Chapter VII) James is closer to Horace[2] than to Ronsard; and in this and other matters he may owe something to the Uranie of Du Bartas, his translation of which is in the same volume with the Reulis. As a matter of fact, the Defense of Du Bellay and the Abrege de l'Art poetique of Ronsard give scant attention to elementary matters of metrical technique, and it is with these that James is chiefly concerned.
When James warns poets to avoid matters of the commonweal, which "are to grave materis for a Poet to mell in," he is doubtless speaking from his experiences with the verse satirists of the Kirk party in Scotland. In other divergences from Gascoigne, the influence of Montgomerie is generally conspicuous. While Gascoigne would not have a poet "hunt the letter to death," James would use alliteration freely, and quotes in illustration a line from Montgomerie's highly alliterative Flyting. His recognition of proverbs, also, as one of the three special ornaments of
- ↑ The best edition is in Elizabethan Critical Essays, Vol. I, pp. 208-225. Professor Smith's notes indicate with sufficient fullness the debt to English and French criticism.
- ↑ Cf. De Arte Poetica: "Præstantissima est in omni arte, natura, et poetam non tarn fieri, quam nasci sermone eruditorum dicitur."
