good pedagogy, for advice as to how to improve sentences or verses is
appropriate only after the sentences have been planned and written.
Besides urging the young poet to revise and correct his manuscript
carefully, to put it aside nine years, and to seek the criticism of a
sincere friend, Horace considers the value of the finished product. A poem
will please more people if it combines the pleasant with the profitable.
If a poem is not really good, it is bad. If the young poet finds that his
work is not of high excellence, he would do better not to publish it. A
poem is like a picture, Horace says, in that some poems appear to better
advantage close up, and others at a distance. It is noteworthy that in his
"_ut pictura poesis_" Horace is not pressing the analogy between the arts
as did subsequent critics who quoted his phrase incompletely.

Of the four classical discussions of the theory of poetry which are here
treated, that of Horace was best known throughout the middle ages and the
early renaissance. Just what the influence of the _Ars poetica_ was and
why it was so great a favorite will be discussed in subsequent chapters.




Chapter III

Classical Rhetoric



1. Definitions