xlii 



RISE AND PROGRESS 



of trade and manufactures, by the growing pros- 

 perity which these engendered, the Italian people 

 began to feel its own strength and to seek a vent 

 for it in fresh directions. The voice of a few 

 poets was heard in the accents of their country : 

 even prose was here and there essayed. It 

 seemed possible that the scattered powers and 

 harmonies of the language might be condensed, 

 in process of time, into true force and rhythm ; 

 when at once, a single individual, borne up by 

 the consciousness of irresistible genius, 



" At one slight bound high over-leap'd all bound," 



and raised his native tongue to an eminence un- 

 approached by any contemporary form of speech. 

 DANTE * produced the first great work of modern 

 literature ; and instantly made classical the ming- 

 led nerve and melody of the Tuscan dialect. 



A portion of the multifarious studies, whose 

 fruits are manifested in the various and astonish- 

 ing knowledge of this mighty poet, was prosecuted 

 at Paris ; and there he became acquainted with 

 the sort of mould, in which the allegorizing spirit 

 of his age might be embodied. But the hints as 

 to externals, there or elsewhere acquired by him ; 

 the tone of elevation and true art, with which his 

 knowledge of the Latin ancients endowed him ; 

 the deep tinge of scriptural sentiment that imbued 

 his soul, breaking out in more than the typical 

 features of his poem ; all these things, allowing 

 them their utmost influence, still leave him per- 

 fectly original. The Divine Comedy is worthy 

 of that strange and compound title, derived from 

 the author's modesty on the one hand and the 

 admiration of his countrymen on the other; 

 since, though not dramatic, in the common sense 

 of the word, it is equally foreign to the rest of 

 the regular divisions of poesy, and defies us to 

 class as well as to imitate it. It is not a mere 

 vision : it is not a mere allegory. The actual, 

 the visionary, and the symbolical, are blent into 

 an unparalleled alliance. Who, indeed, shall 

 endeavour to define and class an hundred cantos 

 of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, that give 

 shape and local habitation to the unseen, and 

 soar above every other monument of human in- 

 genuity in the horrors and the splendours they 

 unfold ? Who shall reduce to one category that 

 amazing mixture of high and low, of tragical and 

 ludicrous, of touching and terrific, of the love 

 lighted up in the breast of Dante by his immor- 

 talized Beatrix, and the madness that was all his 

 own ? What a sensation must have been caused, 

 in those days, by his learning ; by his religious 

 feeling, meriting to be so termed, when it is 



A. D. 12C5 1321. 



obliquely revealed, though too apt, in its more 

 direct assertion, to run into fierce fanaticism ; 

 by his audacious satire ; by his stern partisan- 

 ship, wielding infernal fires for the punishment 

 of political enemies ; by the lurid grandeur of a 

 style, whose light and darkness were equally 

 exciting ! The fourteenth century, at the opening 

 of which the Divine Comedy was written, had not 

 ended before academical lectures were instituted 

 for its elucidation; and Boccacio himself did 

 not disdain to be so employed. Hence, though 

 Dante had no genuine followers in poetry ; though 

 he did not remain at all times the especial favourite 

 of the Italians ; the impression he made upon their 

 language has been profound and lasting. 



Dante burst upon the world with the sudden- 

 ness and the pomp of a volcano. In the bosom 

 of PETRARCH f burned a gentler flame. He 

 caught and continued, in his own tongue, the 

 spirit of the love-poets of Provenge ; but with a 

 far higher genius, which has cast an undying halo 

 round the memory of Laura and the fountain of 

 Vaucluse. He has all the tenderness of the 

 troubadours, dashed indeed with much of their 

 affectation, yet more intellectually conceived 

 and uttered with more skill in composition. To 

 the Italian language, even after the muse of 

 Dante, he was a signal benefactor. His soft 

 and delicious harmonies gave it a more pure and 

 consistent polish ; the polish of Cicero and Vir- 

 gil, chosen objects of his worship ; the polish of 

 those classical ancients, whom he first actively 

 awakened from the sleep of ages, with an en- 

 thusiasm for every thing beautiful and noble in 

 antiquity, which he laboured to diffuse over 

 Europe, and whose effects were speedily felt in 

 his native land. How must that enthusiasm have 

 filled and controlled the mind of Petrarch, when 

 it caused him to blush for his Italian poetry, and 

 to rest his pretensions to renown upon a Latin 

 epic ! But, though the university of Paris and the 

 senate of Rome crowned him for his Africa, it is 

 the vernacular verse, which he despised, that has 

 won him a crown from posterity. The one is 

 known only for the sake of Petrarch : Petrarch 

 himself is known and honoured for the other. 



We cannot marvel that the greatness of two 

 such poets as Dante and Petrarch overshadowed 

 the souls of men, and oppressed the vigour of 

 Italian song for more than one generation. 

 Dante was too lofty to be the founder of a school. 

 Not less few than vain were the attempts to fol- 

 low him. Petrarch, though even those who, with 

 the candid and elegant Sismondi, J most severely 



t A. D. 13041374. 

 ' la litterature du Midi de 1'Eurcpe. 



