104 ON THE EELATION OF ART 



ment at a time when political institutions were decaying, 

 social morality was deteriorating, and religious emotions were 

 refrigerating. There is no denying this fact ; and in con- 

 sidering the relation of the arts to ethics, it ought to be taken 

 into account. Art of a certain sort can indubitably prosper 

 under conditions which are not favourable to personal or 

 national morality. 



Yet, if we look somewhat more narrowly into the factors 

 of this problem, we shall discover that in Italy there existed 

 no casual link between moral enfeeblement and esthetic 

 vigour. On the contrary, the best work of that brilliant period 

 was accomplished during years which still retained the glow 

 of mediaeval faith and the verve of republican enthusiasm. 

 What survived of force and goodness in the nation, not the 

 insidious encroachments of vice and pusillanimity, enabled 

 painting to flourish between Giotto and Buonarroti. It was 

 the robust science and the desperate patriotism of Machiavelli, 

 not his disbelief in human excellence and his paradoxical con- 

 ception of political craft, which gave lustre to the ' Principe,' 

 the 'History of Florence,' and the 'Discourses upon Livy.' 

 A little later, Italy, debauched by luxury, degraded in her 

 own eyes by foreign conquest, numbed by the torpor of the 

 Catholic Reaction, ceased to produce even respectable pictures, 

 neglected the culture she had created for Europe, allowed her 

 printing-presses to stand idle, and drowned her literature in 

 floods of academical rhetoric. 



In addition to this, signs are not wanting in the Italian 

 art of the Renaissance period which confirm us in believing 

 that great and lasting monuments of human genius imply a 

 sterling moral temper in their makers. After all accounts 

 are reckoned, Dante remains unique among Italians, the one 

 supreme poet of his race. Boccaccio's licentiousness, which 

 leavens and gives form to Renaissance poetry and fiction, 

 condemned that voluminous literature, with the single excep- 

 tion of the ' Orlando Furioso,' to artistic mediocrity. Not 

 merely because they are immoral, but because they are not 

 really first-rate of their kind, we could afford to abandon the 

 narrative poems and novels of the Renaissance without a sigh. 



