evacuated this position. Consequently the Aristotelian doctrine that the
essence of poetry is imitation was either entertained simultaneously, as
in Sidney, or interpreted to mean the same thing, as in Jonson. The
commoner renaissance idea of imitation is not that of Aristotle, but that
of Plutarch, whose speaking picture so often appears in the critical
treatises.

Robertelli thought poetic might be either in prose or in verse if it were
an imitation; Lucian, Apuleius, and Heliodorus were to him poets.[179]
Scaliger, on the other hand, insisted that a poet makes verses. Lucan is a
poet; Livy a historian.[180] Castelvetro probably came nearest to
Aristotle in asserting that Lucian and Boccaccio are poets though in
prose, although verse is a more fitting garment for poetry than is
prose.[181] Vossius anticipates Prickard's explanation of Aristotle by
defining poetry as the art of imitating actions in metrical language. To
him verse alone does not make poetry. Herodotus in verse would remain a
historian; but no prose work can be poetry.[182] These are only a few
examples typical of the general tendency which Spingarn has so thoroughly
studied.



2. Rhetorical Elements


This tendency to follow Aristotle in allowing that the vehicle of verse
was not characteristic of poetry tended to preclude any vital distinction
between rhetoric and poetic. The renaissance had inherited from the middle
ages the belief that poetry was composed of two parts: a profitable
subject matter _(doctrina)_ and style (_eloquentia_). If the definition