Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/366

346 of his tyranny in the schools than with any inkling of newer methods in science. He tested the Iliad by the rules of the "heroic poem" and found it wanting, which did not suggest to him any doubt of the rules, but was explained by the assertion that Homer was a rude natural genius who wrote wonderful verses for his time. For Tassoni was, also like Johnson, sceptical of the superiority of early to more cultivated ages, and devoted one whole book to the defence of the moderns.

In the Considerazioni sopra le Rime del Petrarca (1609), Tassoni disclaimed any prejudice against "il Petrarca Re di Melici"; but he was impatient of the imitators of that poet who said he could not err, and accordingly submitted his work to a minute and not always respectful examination, somewhat in the style of Malherbe's notes on Desportes, but much more discriminating, and with a great deal of caustic humour, interesting elucidation, and quotation from Provencal poets. This candid treatment of Petrarch provoked a literary warfare which thoroughly roused Tassoni's bile, and it was primarily to avenge himself on his foes, and in the second place to attack still another idol, the epics written in imitation of Tasso's Gerusalemme, that he composed the Secchia Rapita, which, after circulating for some years in manuscript, was published at Paris in 1622. A political motive has been ascribed to the work, but without probability.

The idea of describing a war between two Italian