the renaissance attached to style is in no small measure a survival of the
mediaeval tradition of classical rhetoric. Moreover, as Spingarn has
pointed out, there was a tendency in the renaissance for the classical
theories of poetry to be accepted as rules which must be followed by those
who would compose poetry. If a poet followed these rules and modeled his
poem on great poems of classical antiquity, some critics suggested, he
could not go far wrong. Thus one should follow the precepts of Aristotle
for theory, and imitate Virgil for epic and Seneca for tragedy. The
rhetorical character of these poetical models is significant. Both are
stylists, of a distinct literary flavor. Both recommended themselves to
the renaissance because they too were imitators of earlier literary
models.

Although with good taste as well as classical erudition Ascham preferred
Sophocles and Euripides to the oratorical and sententious Seneca, his view
was not shared by the renaissance. Scaliger, preoccupied as he was with
style, found his ideal of tragedy not in the plays of the great Greeks,
but in the closet dramas of the declamatory Spaniard. Seneca appealed to
the renaissance not only on account of his verbal dexterity and point, but
also on account of his moral maxims or _sententiae_. In England the two
greatest literary critics, Sidney and Jonson, followed Scaliger in this
high regard for Seneca. Sidney found only one tragedy in England,
_Gorbuduc_, modeled as it should be on his dramas. Its speeches are
stately, its phrases high sounding, and its moral lesson delightfully
taught.[178] And Jonson conceived the essentials of tragedy to be those
elements found in Seneca: "Truth of argument, dignity of person, gravity
and height of elocution, fullness and frequency of sentence."

The middle ages conceived of poetry as being compounded of profitable
subject-matter and beautiful style. The English renaissance never entirely