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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Euphorion + Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the + Renaissance - Vol. I + +Author: Vernon Lee + +Release Date: February 17, 2010 [EBook #31303] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUPHORION *** + + + + +Produced by Marc D'Hooghe + + + + + +</pre> + + +<h1>EUPHORION:</h1> + +<h2>BEING STUDIES OF THE ANTIQUE AND THE MEDIÆVAL IN THE RENAISSANCE</h2> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>VERNON LEE</h2> + +<h3><i>Author of "Studies of the 18th Century in Italy," "Belcaro" etc.</i></h3> + + +<h3>VOL. I.</h3> + +<h4>WALTER PATER,</h4> +<h4>IN APPRECIATION OF THAT WHICH, IN EXPOUNDING THE</h4> +<h4>BEAUTIFUL THINGS OF THE PAST, HE HAS ADDED TO</h4> +<h4>THE BEAUTIFUL THINGS OF THE PRESENT.</h4> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3>TABLE OF CONTENTS.</h3> + + +<p class="center"><a href="#INTRODUCTION">Introduction</a></p> +<p class="center"><a href="#THE_SACRIFICE">The Sacrifice</a></p> +<p class="center"><a href="#THE_ITALY_OF_THE_ELIZABETHAN_DRAMATISTS">The Italy of the Elizabethan Dramatists</a></p> +<p class="center"><a href="#THE_OUTDOOR_POETRY"></a>The Outdoor Poetry</p> +<p class="center"><a href="#SYMMETRIA_PRISCA">Symmetria Prisca</a></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2><a name="INTRODUCTION" id="INTRODUCTION"></a>INTRODUCTION.</h2> + +<p><i>Faustus is therefore a parable of the impotent yearnings of the Middle Ages—its +passionate aspiration, its conscience-stricken desire, its fettered curiosity amid the +tramping limits of imperfect knowledge and irrational dogmatism. The indestructible +beauty of Greek art,—whereof Helen was an emblem, became, through the +discovery of classic poetry and sculpture, the possession of the modern world. +Mediævalism took this Helen to wife, and their offspring, the Euphorion of +Goethe's drama, is the spirit of the modern world.</i>—J.A. Symonds, "Renaissance +In Italy," vol. ii. p. 54.</p> + +<p>Euphorion is the name given by Goethe to the +marvellous child born of the mystic marriage of Faust +and Helena. Who Faust is, and who Helena, we all +know. Faust, of whom no man can remember the +youth or childhood, seems to have come into the +world by some evil spell, already old and with the +faintness of body and of mind which are the heritage +of age; and every additional year of mysterious study +and abortive effort has made him more vacillating of +step and uncertain of sight, but only more hungry of +soul. Postponed and repressed by reclusion from the +world, and desperate tension over insoluble problems; +diverted into the channels of mere thought and vision; +there boils within him the energy, the passion, of +retarded youth: its appetites and curiosities, which, +cramped by the intolerant will, and foiled by many a +sudden palsy of limb and mind, torment him with +mad visions of unreal worlds, mock him with dreams +of superhuman powers, from which he awakes in +impotent and apathetic anguish. But these often- +withstood and often-baffled cravings are not those +merely of scholar or wizard, they are those of soldier +and poet and monk, of the mere man: lawless desires +which he seeks to divert, but fails, from the things of +the flesh and of the world to the things of the reason; +supersensuous desires for the beautiful and intangible, +which he strives to crush, but in vain, with the cynical +scepticism of science, which derides the things it cannot +grasp. In this strange Faustus, made up of so many +and conflicting instincts; in this old man with ever- +budding and ever-nipped feelings of youthfulness, +muddling the hard-won secrets of nature in search +after impossibilities; in him so all-sided, and yet so +wilfully narrowed, so restlessly active, yet so often palsied +and apathetic; in this Faustus, who has laboured +so much and succeeded in so little, feeling himself at +the end, when he has summed up all his studies, as +foolish as before—which of us has not learned to +recognize the impersonated Middle Ages? And +Helena, we know her also, she is the spirit of Antiquity. +Personified, but we dare scarcely say, embodied; +for she is a ghost raised by the spells of +Faustus, a simulacrum of a thing long dead; yet with +such continuing semblance of life, nay, with all life's +real powers, that she seems the real, vital, living one, +and Faustus yonder, thing as he is of the present, +little better than a spectre. Yet Helena has been +ages before Faust ever was; nay, by an awful mystery +like those which involve the birth of Pagan gods, +she whom he has evoked to be the mother of his only +son has given, centuries before, somewhat of her life +to make this self-same Faust. A strange mystery of +Fate's necromancy this, and with strange anomalies. +For opposite this living, decrepit Faust, Helena, the +long dead, is young; and she is all that which Faust +is not. Knowing much less than he, who has plunged +his thoughts like his scalpel into all the mysteries of +life and death, she yet knows much more, can tell +him of the objects and aims of men and things; nay, +with little more than the unconscious faithfulness to +instinct of the clean-limbed, placid brute, she can +give peace to his tormented conscience; and, while +he has suffered and struggled and lashed himself for +every seeming baseness of desire, and loathed himself +for every imagined microscopic soiling, she has +walked through good and evil, letting the vileness of +sin trickle off her unhidden soul, so quietly and +majestically that all thought of evil vanishes; and +the self-tormenting wretch, with macerated flesh hidden +beneath the heavy garments of mysticism and +philosophy, suddenly feels, in the presence of her unabashed +nakedness, that he, like herself, is chaste.</p> + +<p>Such are the parents, Faustus and Helena; we know +them; but who is this son Euphorion? To me it +seems as if there could be but one answer—the Renaissance. +Goethe indeed has told us (though, with his +rejuvenation of Faustus, unknown to the old German +legend and to our Marlowe, in how bungling a manner!) +the tale of that mystic marriage; but Goethe could +not tell us rightly, even had he attempted, the real +name of its offspring. For even so short a time ago, +the Middle Ages were only beginning to be more +than a mere historical expression, Antiquity was being +only then critically discovered; and the Renaissance, +but vaguely seen and quite unformulated by the +first men, Gibbon and Roscoe, who perceived it at +all, was still virtually unknown. To Goethe, therefore, +it might easily have seemed as if the antique +Helena had only just been evoked, and as if of her +union with the worn-out century of his birth, a real +Euphorion, the age in which ourselves are living, +might have been born. But, at the distance of additional +time, and from the undreamed-of height upon +which recent historical science has enabled us to stand, +we can easily see that in this he would have been +mistaken. Not only is our modern culture no child of +Faustus and Helena, but it is the complex descendant, +strangely featured by atavism from various sides, of +many and various civilizations; and the eighteenth +century, so far from being a Faustus evoking as his +bride the long dead Helen of Antiquity, was in itself a +curiously varied grandchild or great-grandchild of such +a marriage, its every moral feature, its every intellectual +movement proclaiming how much of its being was inherited +from Antiquity. No allegory, I well know, +and least of all no historical allegory, can ever be +strained to fit quite tight—the lives of individuals and +those of centuries, their modes of intermixture, genesis, +and inheritance are far different; but if an allegory is +to possess any meaning at all, we must surely apply it +wherever it will fit most easily and completely; and +the beautiful allegory prepared by the tradition of the +sixteenth century for the elaborating genius of Goethe, +can have a real meaning only if we explain Faust as representing +the Middle Ages, Helena as Antiquity, and +Euphorion as that child of the Middle Ages, taking +life and reality from them, but born of and curiously +nurtured by the spirit of Antiquity, to which significant +accident has given the name of Renaissance. +After Euphorion I have therefore christened this +book; and this not from any irrational conceit of +knowing more (when I am fully aware that I know +infinitely less) than other writers about the life and +character of this wonderful child of Helena and Faustus, +but merely because it is more particularly as the offspring +of this miraculous marriage, and with reference +to the harmonies and anomalies which therefrom +resulted, that Euphorion has exercised my thoughts. +The Renaissance has interested and interests me, not +merely for what it is, but even more for what it sprang +from, and for the manner in which the many things +inherited from both Middle Ages and Renaissance, the +tendencies and necessities inherent in every special +civilization, acted and reacted upon each other, united +in concord or antagonism; forming, like the gases of +the chemist, new things, sometimes like and sometimes +unlike themselves and each other; producing now +some unknown substance of excellence and utility, at +other times some baneful element, known but too well +elsewhere, but unexpected here. But not the watching +of the often tragic meeting of these great fatalities +of inherited spirit and habit only: for equally fascinating +almost has been the watching of the elaboration +by this double-natured period of things of little +weight, mere trifles of artistic material bequeathed to +it by one or by the other of its spiritual parents. The +charm for me—a charm sometimes pleasurable, but +sometimes also painful, like the imperious necessity +which we sometimes feel to see again and examine, +seemingly uselessly, some horrible evil—the charm, I +mean the involuntary compulsion of attention, has +often been as great in following the vicissitudes of a +mere artistic item, like the Carolingian stories or the +bucolic element, as it has been in looking on at the +dissolution of moral and social elements. And in +this, that I have tried to understand only where my +curiosity was awakened, tried to reconstruct only +where my fancy was taken; in short, studied of this +Renaissance civilization only as much or as little as I +cared, depends all the incompleteness and irrelevancy +and unsatisfactoriness of this book, and depends also +whatever addition to knowledge or pleasure it may +afford; Were I desirous of giving a complete, clear +notion of the very complex civilization of the Renaissance, +a kind of encyclopædic atlas of that period, +where (by a double power which history alone possesses) +you could see at once the whole extent and +shape of this historical territory, and at the same time, +with all its bosses of mountain and furrows of valley, +the exact composition of all its various earths and +waters, the exact actual colour and shape of all its +different vegetations, not to speak of its big towns +and dotting villages;—were I desirous of doing this, I +should not merely be attempting a work completely +beyond my faculties, but a work moreover already +carried out with all the perfection due to specially +adapted gifts, to infinite patience and ingenuity, occasionally +amounting almost to genius. Such is not +at all within my wishes, as it assuredly would be +totally without my powers.</p> + +<p>But besides such marvels of historic mapping +as I have described, where every one can find at +a glance whatever he may be looking for, and get +the whole topography, geological and botanical, +of an historic tract at his fingers' ends, there are +yet other kinds of work which may be done. For a +period in history is like a more or less extended real +landscape: it has, if you will, actual, chemically defined +colours in this and that, if you consider this and +that separate and unaffected by any kind of visual +medium; and measurable distances also between this +point and the other, if you look down upon it as from +a balloon. But, like a real landscape, it may also be +seen from different points of view, and under different +lights; then, according as you stand, the features of +the scene will group themselves—this ridge will disappear +behind that, this valley will open out before you, +that other will be closed. Similarly, according to the +light wherein the landscape is seen, the relative scale +of colours and tints of objects, due to pervading light +and to distances—what painters call the values—will +alter: the scene will possess one or two predominant +effects, it will produce also one or, at most, two +or three (in which case co-ordinated) impressions. +The art which deals with impressions, which tries to +seize the real relative values of colours and tints at a +given moment, is what you call new-fangled: its doctrines +and works are still subject to the reproach of +charlatanry. Yet it is the only truly realistic art, and +it only, by giving you a thing as it appears at a given +moment, gives it you as it really ever is; all the rest +is the result of cunning abstraction, and representing +the scene as it is always, represents it (by striking an +average) as it never is at all. I do not pretend that +in questions of history we can proceed upon the +principles of modern landscape painting: we do not +know what were the elevations which made perspective, +what were the effects of light which created +scales of tints, in that far distant country of the past; +and it is safer certainly, and doubtless much more +useful, to strike an average, and represent the past as +seen neither from here nor from there, neither in this +light nor that, and let each man imagine his historical +perspective and colour value to the best of his powers. +Yet it is nevertheless certain that the past, to the people +who were in it, was not a miraculous map or other +marvellous diagram constructed on the principle of +getting at the actual qualities of things by analysis; +that it must have been, to its inhabitants, but a series +of constantly varied perspectives and constantly varied +schemes of colour, according to the position of each +individual, and the light in which that individual +viewed it. To attempt to reconstruct those various +perspective-making heights, to rearrange those various +value-determining lights, would be to the last degree +disastrous; we should have valleys where there existed +mountains, and brilliant warm schemes of colour where +there may have been all harmonies of pale and neutral +tints. Still the perspective and colour valuation of +individual minds there must have been; and since it +is not given to us to reproduce those of the near +spectator in a region which we can never enter, we +may yet sometimes console ourselves for the too +melancholy abstractness and averageness of scientific +representations, by painting that distant historic +country as distant indeed, but as its far-off hill ranges +and shimmering plains really appear in their combination +of form and colour, from the height of an individual +interest of our own, and beneath the light of +our individual character. We see only very little at +a time, and that little is not what it appeared to the +men of the past; but we see at least, if not the same +things, yet in the same manner in which they saw, as +we see from the standpoints of personal interest and +in the light of personal temper. Scientifically we +doubtless lose; but is the past to be treated only +scientifically? and can it not give us, and do we not +owe it, something more than a mere understanding of +why and how? Is it a thing so utterly dead as to be +fit only for the scalpel and the microscope? +Surely not so. The past can give us, and should +give us, not merely ideas, but emotions: healthy +pleasure which may make us more light of spirit, +and pain which may make us more earnest of mind; +the one, it seems to me, as necessary for our individual +worthiness as is the other. For to each of us, +as we watch the past, as we lie passive and let it slowly +circulate around us, there must come sights which, in +their reality or in their train of associations, and to +the mind of each differently, must gladden as with a +sense of beauty, or put us all into a sullen moral ache. +I should hate to be misunderstood in this more, perhaps, +than in anything else in the world. I speak not +of any dramatic emotion, of such egotistic, half-artistic +pleasure as some may get from the alternation of +cheerfulness and terror, from the excitement caused +by evil from which we are as safely separated as are +those who look on from the enfuriate bulls in an arena. +To such, history, and the history especially of the Renaissance, +has been made to pander up but too much.</p> + +<p>The pain I speak of is the pain which must come to +every morally sentient creature with the contemplation +of some one of the horrible tangles of evil, of the +still fouler intermeshing of evil with good, which +history brings up ever and anon. Evil which is past, +it is true, but of which the worst evil almost of all, the +fact of its having been, can never be past, must ever +remain present; and our trouble and indignation at +which is holy, our pain is healthy: holy and healthy, +because every vibration of such pain as that makes our +moral fibre more sensitive; because every immunity +from such sensation deadens our higher nature: holy +and healthy also because, just as no image of pleasurable +things can pass before us without gathering about it +other images of some beauty which have long lain by +in each individual mind, so also no thought of great +injustice of man or of accident, of signal whitewashing +of evil or befouling of good, but must, in striking into +our soul, put in motion there the salutary thought +of some injustice or lying legitimation or insidious +pollution, smaller indeed perhaps, but perhaps also +nearer to ourselves.</p> + +<p>Be not therefore too hard upon me if in what I +have written of the Renaissance, there is too little +attempt to make matters scientifically complete, and +too much giving way to personal and perhaps sometimes +irrelevant impressions of pleasure and of pain; +if I have followed up those pleasurable and painful +impressions rather more than sought to discover the +exact geography of the historical tract which gave +them. Consider, moreover, that this very cause of deficiency +may have been also the cause of my having +succeeded in achieving anything at all. Personal impression +has led me, perhaps, sometimes away from +the direct road; but had it not beckoned me to follow, +I should most likely have simply not stirred. Pleasant +impression and painful, as I have said; and sometimes +the painful has been more efficacious than the other. +I do not know whether the interest which I have +always taken in the old squabble of real and ideal +has enabled me to make at all clearer the different +characteristics of painting and sculpture in Renaissance +portraiture, the relation of the art of Raphael to the +art of Velasquez and the art of Whistler. I can +scarcely judge whether the pleasure which I owe to +the crowding together, the moving about in my fancy, +of the heroes and wizards and hippogriffs of the old +tales of Oberon and Ogier; the association with the +knights and ladies of Boiardo and Ariosto, of this or +that figure out of a fresco of Pinturicchio, or a picture +by Dosso, has made it easier or more difficult for +me to sum up the history of mediæval romance in +Renaissance Italy; nor whether the recollection of +certain Tuscan farms, the well-known scent of the +sun-dried fennel and mint under the vine-trellis, the +droning song of the contadino ploughing or pruning +unseen in the valley, the snatches of peasants' rhymes, +the outlines of peasants' faces—things all these of this +our own time, of yesterday or to-day; whether all +this, running in my mind like so many scribbly illustrations +and annotations along the margin of Lorenzo +dei Medici's poems, has made my studies of rustic +poetry more clear or more confused. But this much I +know as a certainty, that never should I have tried +to unravel the causes of the Renaissance's horrible +anomaly of improvement and degradation, had not that +anomaly returned and returned to make me wretched +with its loathsome mixture of good and evil; its detestable +alternative of endurance of vile solidarities in +the souls of our intellectual forefathers, or of unjust +turning away from the men and the times whose moral +degradation paid the price of our moral dignity. I +also have the further certainty of its having been this +long-endured moral sickening at the sight of this +moral anomaly, which enabled me to realize the +feelings of such of our nobler Elizabethan playwrights +as sought to epitomize in single tales of horror the +strange impressions left by the accomplished and +infamous Italy of their day; and which made it possible +for me to express perhaps some of the trouble which +filled the mind of Webster and of Tourneur merely by +expressing the trouble which filled my own.</p> + +<p>The following studies are not samples, fragments at +which one tries one's hand, of some large and methodical +scheme of work. They are mere impressions +developed by means of study: not merely currents of +thought and feeling which I have singled out from +the multifold life of the Renaissance; but currents of +thought and feeling in myself, which have found and +swept along with them certain items of Renaissance +lore. For the Renaissance has been to me, in the +small measure in which it has been anything, not so +much a series of studies as a series of impressions. I +have not mastered the history and literature of the +Renaissance (first-hand or second-hand, perfectly or +imperfectly), abstract and exact, and then sought out +the places and things which could make that abstraction +somewhat more concrete in my mind; I have +seen the concrete things, and what I might call the +concrete realities of thought and feeling left behind by +the Renaissance, and then tried to obtain from books +some notion of the original shape and manner of wearing +these relics, rags and tatters of a past civilization. +For Italy, beggared and maimed (by her own unthrift, +by the rapacity of others, by the order of Fate) +at the beginning of the sixteenth century, was never +able to weave for herself a new, a modern civilization, as +did the nations who had shattered her looms on which +such woofs are made, and carried off her earnings with +which such things may be bought; and she had, +accordingly, to go through life in the old garments, +still half mediæval in shape, which had been fashioned +for her during the Renaissance: apparel of the best +that could then be made, beautiful and strong in many +ways, so beautiful and strong indeed as to impose on +people for a good long time, and make French, and +Germans, and Spaniards, and English believe (comparing +these brilliant tissues with the homespun they +were providing for themselves) that it must be all +brand new, and of the very latest fashion. But the +garments left to Italy by those latest Middle Ages +which we call Renaissance, were not eternal: wear and +tear, new occupations, and the rough usage of other +nations, rent them most sorely; their utter neglect +by the long seventeenth century, their hasty patchings +up (with bits of odd stuff and all manner of coloured +thread and string, so that a harlequin's jacket could +not look queerer) by the happy-go-lucky practicalness +of the eighteenth century and the Revolution, reduced +them thoroughly to rags; and with these rags of Renaissance +civilization, Italy may still be seen to drape +herself. Not perhaps in the great centres, where the +garments of modern civilization, economical, unpicturesque, +intended to be worn but a short time, have +been imported from other countries; but yet in many +places. Yes, you may still see those rags of the +Renaissance as plainly as you see the tattered linen +fluttering from the twisted iron hooks (made for the +display of precious brocades and carpets on pageant +days) which still remain in the stained whitewash, the +seams of battered bricks of the solid old escutcheoned +palaces; see them sometimes displayed like the worm- +eaten squares of discoloured embroidery which the +curiosity dealers take out of their musty oak presses; +and sometimes dragging about mere useless and befouled +odds and ends, like the torn shreds which lie +among the decaying kitchen refuse, the broken tiles +and plaster, the nameless filth and ooze which attracts +the flies under every black archway, in every steep +bricked lane descending precipitously between the +high old houses. Old palaces, almost strongholds, +and which are still inhabited by those too poor to pull +them down and build some plastered bandbox instead; +poems and prose tales written or told five +hundred years ago, edited and re-edited by printers +to whom there come no modern poems or prose tales +worth editing instead; half-pagan, mediæval priest +lore, believed in by men and women who have not +been given anything to believe instead; easy-going, +all-permitting fifteenth century scepticism, not yet +replaced by the scientific and socialistic disbelief which +is puritanic and iconoclastic; sly and savage habits of +vengeance still doing service among the lower classes +instead of the orderly chicanery of modern justice; +—these are the things, and a hundred others besides, +concrete and spiritual, things too magnificent, too +sordid, too irregular, too nauseous, too beautiful, and, +above all, too utterly unpractical and old-fashioned for +our times, which I call the rags of the Renaissance, +and with which Italy still ekes out her scanty apparel +of modern thoughts and things.</p> + +<p>It is living among such things, turn by turn delighted +by their beauty and offended by their foulness, that +one acquires the habit of spending a part only of +one's intellectual and moral life in the present, and +the rest in the past. Impressions are not derived from +description, and thoughts are not suggested by books. +The juxtaposition of concrete objects invites the +making of a theory as the jutting out of two branches +invites the spinning of a spider's web. You find +everywhere your facts without opening a book. The +explanation which I have tried to give of the exact +manner in which mediæval art was influenced by the +remains of antiquity, came like a flash during a rainy +morning in the Pisan Campo Santo; the working out +and testing of that explanation in its details was a +matter of going from one church or gallery to the +other, a reference or two to Vasari for some date or +fact being the only necessary reading; and should +any one at this moment ask me for substantiation of +that theory, instead of opening books I would take +that person to this Sienese Cathedral, and there bid +him compare the griffins and arabesques, the delicate +figure and foliage ornaments carved in wood and +marble by the latter Middle Ages, with the griffins +and arabesques, the boldly bossed horsemen, the exquisite +fruit garlands of a certain antique altar stone +which the builders of the church used as a base to a +pillar, and which must have been a never-ceasing- +object of study to every draughtsman and stoneworker in Siena.</p> + +<p>Nor are such everywhere-scattered facts ready for +working into theoretic shape, the most which Italy +still affords to make the study of the Renaissance an +almost involuntary habit. In certain places where +only decay has altered things from what they were +four centuries ago, Perugia, Orvieto, S. Gimignano, in +the older quarters of Florence, Venice, and Verona, +but nowhere I think so much as in this city of Siena +(as purely mediæval as the suits of rusted armour +which its townsfolk patch up and bury themselves in +during their August pageants), we are subjected to +receive impressions of the past so startlingly lifelike +as to get quite interwoven with our impressions of the +present; and from that moment the past must share, +in a measure, some of the everyday thoughts which +we give to the present. In such a city as this, the +sudden withdrawal, by sacristan or beggar-crone, of +the curtain from before an altar-piece is many a time +much more than the mere displaying of a picture: it +is the sudden bringing us face to face with the real +life of the Renaissance. We have ourselves, perhaps +not an hour before, sauntered through squares and +dawdled beneath porticos like those which we see +filled with the red-robed and plumed citizens and +patricians, the Jews and ruffians whom Pinturicchio's +parti-coloured men-at-arms are dispersing to make +room for the followers of Aeneas Sylvius; or clambered +up rough lanes, hedged in between oak woods and +oliveyards, which we might almost swear were the +very ones through which are winding Sodoma's cavalcades +of gallantly dressed gentlemen, with their hawks +and hounds, and negro jesters and apes and beautiful +pages, cantering along on shortnecked little horses +with silver bits and scarlet trappings, on the pretence +of being the Kings from the East, carrying gold and +myrrh to the infant Christ. It seems as if all were +astoundingly real, as if, by some magic, we were +actually going to mix in the life of the past. But it +is in reality but a mere delusion, a deceit like those +dioramas which we have all been into as children, and +where, by paying your shilling, you were suddenly +introduced into an oasis of the desert, or into a recent +battle-field: things which surprised us, real palm +trunks and Arabian water jars, or real fascines and +cannon balls, lying about for us to touch; roads opening +on all sides into this simulated desert, through this +simulated battle-field. So also with these seeming +realities of Renaissance life. We can touch the things +scattered on the foreground, can handle the weapons, +the furniture, the books and musical instruments; we +can see, or think we see, most plainly the streets and +paths, the faces and movements of that Renaissance +world; but when we try to penetrate into it, we +shall find that there is but a slip of solid ground +beneath us, that all around us is but canvas and +painted wall, perspectived and lit up by our fancy; +and that when we try to approach to touch one of those +seemingly so real men and women, our eyes find only +daubs of paint, our hands meet only flat and chilly +stucco. Turn we to our books, and seek therein the +spell whereby to make this simulacrum real; and I +think the plaster will still remain plaster, the stones +still remain stone. Out of the Renaissance, out of the +Middle Ages, we must never hope to evoke any spectres +which can talk with us and we with them; nothing +of the kind of those dim but familiar ghosts, often +grotesque rather than heroic, who come to us from +out of the books, the daubed portraits of times nearer +our own, and sit opposite us, making us laugh, and +also cry, with humdrum stories and humdrum woes so +very like our own. No; such ghosts the Renaissance +has not left behind it. From out of it there come to +us no familiars. They are all faces—those which meet +us in the pages of chronicles and in the frames of +pictures: they are painted records of the past—we may +understand them by scanning well their features, but +they cannot understand, they cannot perceive us. +Such, when all is said, are my impressions of the +Renaissance. The moral atmosphere of those days is +as impossible for us to breathe as would be the physical +atmosphere of the moon: could we, for a moment, +penetrate into it, we should die of asphyxia. Say what +we may against both Protestant reformation and +Catholic reaction, these two began to make an atmosphere +(pure or foul) different from that of the Middle +Ages and the Renaissance, an atmosphere in which +lived creatures like ourselves, into which ourselves +might penetrate.</p> + +<p>A crotchet this, perhaps, of my own; but it is my +feeling, nevertheless. The Renaissance is, I say again, +no period out of which we must try and evoke ghostly +companions. Let us not waste our strength in seeking +to do so; but be satisfied if it teaches us strange +truths, scientific and practical; if its brilliant and +solemn personalities, its bright and majestic art can +give us pleasure; if its evils and wrongs, its inevitable +degradation, can move us to pity and to indignation.</p> + +<p>Siena, +September, 1882.</p> + + + +<h2><a name="THE_SACRIFICE" id="THE_SACRIFICE"></a>THE SACRIFICE.</h2> + + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ihr führt ins Leben uns hinein;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ihr lässt den armen schuldig werden;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Dann übergiebt Ihr ihm der Pein,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Denn alle Schuld rächt sich auf Erden.</span><br /></p> + + +<p>At the end of the fifteenth century, Italy was the +centre of European civilization: while the other +nations were still plunged in a feudal barbarism which +seems almost as far removed from all our sympathies +as is the condition of some American or Polynesian +savages, the Italians appear to us as possessing habits +of thought, a mode of life, political, social, and literary +institutions, not unlike those of to-day; as men +whom we can thoroughly understand, whose ideas +and aims, whose general views, resemble our own in +that main, indefinable characteristic of being modern. +They had shaken off the morbid monastic ways of +feeling, they had thrown aside the crooked scholastic +modes of thinking, they had trampled under foot the +feudal institutions of the Middle Ages; no symbolical +mists made them see things vague, strange, and distorted; +their intellectual atmosphere was as clear as +our own, and, if they saw less than we do, what they +did see appeared to them in its true shape and proportions. +Almost for the first time since the ruin of +antique civilization, they could show well-organized, +well-defined States; artistically disciplined armies; +rationally devised laws; scientifically conducted agriculture; +and widely extended, intelligently undertaken +commerce. For the first time, also, they showed +regularly built, healthy, and commodious towns; well- +drained fields; and, more important than all, hundreds +of miles of country owned not by feudal lords, but by +citizens; cultivated not by serfs, but by free peasants. +While in the rest of Europe men were floundering +among the stagnant ideas and crumbling institutions +of the effete Middle Ages, with but a vague half- +consciousness of their own nature, the Italians +walked calmly through a life as well arranged as their +great towns, bold, inquisitive, and sceptical: modern +administrators, modern soldiers, modern politicians, +modern financiers, scholars, and thinkers. Towards +the end of the fifteenth century, Italy seemed to have +obtained the philosophic, literary, and artistic inheritance +of Greece; the administrative, legal, and military +inheritance of Rome, increased threefold by her own +strong, original, essentially modern activities. +Yet, at that very time, and almost in proportion as +all these advantages developed, the moral vitality of +the Italians was rapidly decreasing, and a horrible +moral gangrene beginning to spread: liberty was +extinguished; public good faith seemed to be dying +out; even private morality flickered ominously; every +free State became subject to a despot, always unscrupulous +and often infamous; warfare became a mere +pretext for the rapine and extortions of mercenaries; +diplomacy grew to be a mere swindle; the humanists +inoculated literature with the filthiest refuse cast up +by antiquity; nay, even civic and family ties were +loosened; assassinations and fratricides began to +abound, and all law, human and divine, to be set at +defiance.</p> + +<p>The nations who came into contact with the +Italians opened their eyes with astonishment, with +mingled admiration and terror; and we, people of the +nineteenth century, are filled with the same feeling, +only much stronger and more defined, as we watch +the strange ebullition of the Renaissance, seething +with good and evil, as we contemplate the enigmatic +picture drawn by the puzzled historian, the picture of +a people moving on towards civilization and towards +chaos. Our first feeling is perplexity; our second +feeling, anger; we do not at first know whether we +ought to believe in such an anomaly; when once we +do believe in it, we are indignant at its existence. +We accuse these Italians of the Renaissance of having +wilfully and shamefully perverted their own powers, +of having wantonly corrupted their own civilization, +of having cynically destroyed their own national existence, +of having boldly called down the vengeance of +Heaven; we lament and we accuse, naturally enough, +but perhaps not justly.</p> + +<p>Let us ask ourselves what the Renaissance really +was, and what was its use; how it was produced, and +how it necessarily ended. Let us try to understand +its inherent nature, and the nature of what surrounded +it, which, taken together, constitute its inevitable fate; +let us seek the explanation of that strange, anomalous +civilization, of that life in death, and death in life. +The Renaissance, inasmuch as it is something +which we can define, and not a mere vague name for +a certain epoch, is not a period, but a condition; and +if we apply the word to any period in particular, it is +because in it that condition was peculiarly marked.</p> + +<p>The Renaissance may be defined as being that phase +in mediæval history in which the double influence, +feudal and ecclesiastic, which had gradually crushed +the spontaneous life of the early mediæval revival, and +reduced all to a dead, sterile mass, was neutralized by +the existence of democratic and secular communities; +that phase in which, while there existed not yet any +large nations, or any definite national feeling, there +existed free towns and civic democracies. In this +sense the Renaissance began to exist with the earliest +mediæval revival, but its peculiar mission could be +carried out only when that general revival had come +to an end. In this sense, also, the Renaissance did not +exist all over Italy, and it existed outside Italy; but +in Italy it was far more universal than elsewhere: +there it was the rule, elsewhere the exception. There +was no Renaissance in Savoy, nor in Naples, nor even +in Rome; but north of the Alps there was Renaissance +only in individual towns like Nürnberg, Augsburg, +Bruges, Ghent, &c. In the North the Renaissance +is dotted about amidst the stagnant Middle +Ages; in Italy the Middle Ages intersect and interrupt +the Renaissance here and there: the consequence +was that in the North the Renaissance was crushed +by the Middle Ages, whereas in Italy the Middle +Ages were crushed by the Renaissance. Wherever +there was a free town, without direct dependence on +feudal or ecclesiastical institutions, governed by its +own citizens, subsisting by its own industry and commerce; +wherever the burghers built walls, slung +chains across their streets, and raised their own cathedral; +wherever, be it in Germany, in Flanders, or in +England, there was a suspension of the deadly influences +of the later Middle Ages; there, to greater +or less extent, was the Renaissance.</p> + +<p>But in the North this rudimentary Renaissance was +never suffered to spread beyond the walls of single +towns; it was hemmed in on all sides by feudal and +ecclesiastical institutions, which restrained it within +definite limits. The free towns of Germany were +mostly dependent upon their bishops or archbishops; +the more politically important cities of Flanders were +under the suzerainty of a feudal family; they were +subject to constant vexations from their suzerains, +and their very existence was endangered by an +attempt at independence; Liege was well-nigh destroyed +by the supporters of her bishop, and Ghent +was ruined by the revenge of the Duke of Burgundy. +In these northern cities, therefore, the commonwealth +was restricted to a sort of mercantile corporation— +powerful within the town, but powerless without it; +while outside the town reigned feudalism, with its +robber nobles, free companies, and bands of outlawed +peasants, from whom the merchant princes of Bruges +and Nürnberg could scarcely protect their wares. To +this political feebleness and narrowness corresponded +an intellectual weakness and pettiness: the burghers +were mere self-ruling tradesfolk; their interests did +not extend far beyond their shops and their houses; +literature was cramped in guilds, and reflection and +imagination were confined within the narrow limits of +town life. Everything was on a small scale; the +Renaissance was moderate and inefficient, running +no great dangers and achieving no great conquests. +There was not enough action to produce reaction; +and, while the Italian free States were ground down +by foreign tyrannies, the German and Flemish cities +insensibly merged into the vast empire of the House +of Austria. While also the Italians of the sixteenth +century rushed into moral and religious confusion, +which only Jesuitism could discipline, the Germans of +the same time quietly and comfortably adopted the +Reformation.</p> + +<p>The main cause of this difference, the main explanation +of the fact that while in the North the Renaissance +was cramped and enfeebled, in Italy it carried +everything before it, lies in the circumstance that +feudalism never took deep root in Italy. The conquered +Latin race was enfeebled, it is true, but it was +far more civilized than the conquering Teutonic peoples; +the Barbarians came down, not on to a previous layer +of Barbarians, but on to a deep layer of civilized men; +the nomads of the North found in Italy a people +weakened and corrupt, but with a long and inextinguishable +habit of independence, of order, of industry. +The country had been cultivated for centuries, the +Barbarians could not turn it into a desert; the inhabitants +had been organized as citizens for a thousand +years, the Barbarians could not reorganize them feudally. +The Barbarians who settled in Italy, especially the +latest of them, the Lombards, were not only in a +minority, but at an immense disadvantage. They +founded kingdoms and dukedoms, where German was +spoken and German laws were enacted; but whenever +they tried to communicate with their Italian subjects, +they found themselves forced to adopt the Latin language, +manners, and laws; their domination became +real only in proportion as it ceased to be Teutonic, +and the Barbarian element was swallowed up by what +remained of Roman civilization. Little by little these +Lombard monarchies, without roots in the soil, and +surrounded by hostile influences, died out, and there +remained of the invaders only a certain number of +nobles, those whose descendants were to bear the +originally German names of Gherardesca, Rolandinghi, +Soffredinghi, Lambertazzi, Guidi, and whose suzerains +were the Bavarian and Swabian dukes and marquises +of Tuscan. Meanwhile the Latin element revived; +towns were rebuilt; a new Latin language was formed; +and the burghers of these young communities gradually +wrested franchises and privileges from the weak Teutonic +rulers, who required Italian agriculture, industry, +and commerce, without which they and their feudal +retainers would have starved. Feudalism became +speedily limited to the hilly country; the plain +became the property of the cities which it surrounded; +the nobles turned into mere robber chieftains, then into +mercenary soldiers, and finally, as the towns gained +importance, they gradually descended into the cities +and begged admission into the guilds of artizans and +tradesfolk. Thus they grew into citizens and Italians; +but for a long time they kept hankering after feudalism, +and looking towards the German emperors who +claimed the inheritance of the Lombard kings. The +struggle between Guelphs and Ghibellines, between +the German feudal element and the Latin civic one, +ended in the complete annihilation of the former in +all the north and centre of Italy. The nobles sank +definitely into merchants, and those who persisted in +keeping their castles were speedily ousted by the +commissaries of the free towns. Such is the history +of feudalism in Italy—the history of Barbarian minority +engulphed in Latin civilization; of Teutonic counts +and dukes turned into robber nobles, hunted into the +hills by the townsfolk, and finally seeking admission +into the guilds of wool-spinners or money-changers; +and in it is the main explanation of the fact that the +Italian republics, instead of remaining restricted within +their city walls like those of the North, spread over +whole provinces, and became real politically organized +States. And in such States having a free political, +military, and commercial life, uncramped by ecclesiastic +or feudal influence, in them alone could the great +revival of human intelligence and character thoroughly +succeed. The commune was the only species of free +government possible during the Middle Ages, the only +form which could resist that utterly prostrating action +of later mediævalism. Feudalism stamped out civilization; +monasticism warped it; in the open country +it was burnt, trampled on, and uprooted; in the cloister +it withered and shrank and perished; only within the +walls of a city, protected from the storm without, and +yet in the fresh atmosphere of life, could it develope, +flourish, and bear fruit.</p> + +<p>But this system of the free town contained in itself, +as does every other institution, the seed of death— +contained it in that expanding element which developes, +ripens, rots, and finally dissolves all living organisms. +A little town is formed in the midst of some feudal +state, as Pisa, Florence, Lucca, and Bologna were +formed in the dominions of the lords of Tuscany; +the elders govern it; it is protected from without; it +obtains privileges from its suzerain, always glad to +oppose anything to his vassals, and who, unlike them, +is too far removed in the feudal scale to injure the +commune, which is under his supreme jurisdiction but +not in his land. The town can thus develope regularly, +governing itself, taxing itself, defending itself +against encroaching neighbours; it gradually extends +beyond its own walls, liberates its peasantry, extends +its commerce, extinguishes feudalism, beats back its +suzerain or buys privileges from him; in short, lives +the vigorous young life of the early Italian commonwealths. +But now the danger begins. The original +system of government, where every head of a family +is a power in the State, where every man helps to +govern, without representation or substitution, could +exist only as long as the commune remained small +enough for the individual to be in proportion with it; +as long as the State remained small enough for all its +citizens to assemble in the market-place and vote, +for every man to know every detail of the administration, +every inch of the land. When the limits +were extended, the burgher had to deal with towns +and villages and men and things which he did not +know, and which he probably hated, as every small +community hated its neighbour; witness the horrible +war, lasting centuries, between the two little towns of +Dinant and Bouvines on the Meuse. Still more was +this the case with an important city: the subjugated +town was hated all the more for being a rival centre; +the burghers of Florence, inspired only by their narrow +town interest, treated Pisa according to its dictates, +that is, tried to stamp it out. Thence the victorious +communes came to be surrounded by conquered communes, +which they dared not trust with any degree of +power; and which, instead of being so many allies in +case of invasion, were merely focuses of revolt, or at +best inert impediments. Similarly, when the communes +enlarged, and found it indispensable to delegate +special men, who could attend to political matters more +thoroughly than the other citizens, they were constantly +falling under the tyranny of their captains, of the people, +of their gonfalonieri, and of all other heads of the State; +or else, as in Florence, they were frightened by this +continual danger into a system of perpetual interference +with the executive, which was thus rendered well- +nigh helpless. To this rule Venice forms the only +exception, on account of her exceptional position and +history: the earliest burghers turning into an intensely +conservative and civic aristocracy, while everywhere +else the feudal nobles turned into petty burghers, entirely +subversive of communal interests. Venice had +the yet greater safeguard of being protected both from +her victorious enemies and her own victorious generals; +who, however powerful on the mainland, could not +seriously endanger the city itself, which thus remained +a centre of reorganization in time of disaster. In this +Venice was entirely unique, as she was unique in the +duration of her institutions and independence. In the +other towns of Italy, where there existed no naturally +governing family or class, where every citizen had an +equal share in government, and there existed no distinction +save that of wealth and influence, there was a +constant tendency to the illegitimate preponderance +of every man or every family that rose above the average; +and in a democratic, mercantile State, not a day +passed without some such elevation. In a systematic, +consolidated State, where the power is in the hands of +a hereditary sovereign or aristocracy, a rich merchant +remains a rich merchant, a victorious general remains +a victorious general, an eloquent orator remains an +eloquent orator; but in a shapeless, flunctuating +democracy like those of Italy, the man who has influence +over his fellow-citizens, whether by his money, +his soldiers, or his eloquence, necessarily becomes the +head of the State; everything is free and unoccupied, +only a little superior strength is required to push into +it. Cosimo de' Medici has many clients, many correspondents, +many debtors; he can bind people by +pecuniary obligations: he becomes prince. Sforza +has a victorious army, whom he can either hound on +to the city or restrain into a protection of its interests: +he becomes prince. Savonarola has eloquence that +makes the virtuous start up and the wicked tremble: +he becomes prince. The history of the Italian commonwealths +shows us but one thing: the people, the +only legal possessors of political power, giving it over +to their bankers (Medici, Pepoli); to their generals +(Della Torre, Visconti, Scaligeri); to their monkish +reformers (Fra Bussolaro, Fra Giovanni da Vincenza, +Savonarola). Here then we have the occasional but +inevitable usurpers, who either momentarily or finally +disorganize the State. But this is not all. In such +a State every family hate, every mercantile hostility, +means a corresponding political division. The guilds +are sure to be rivals, the larger wishing to exclude the +smaller from government: the lower working classes +(the ciompi of Florence) wish to upset the guilds completely; +the once feudal nobles wish to get back military power; +the burghers wish entirely to extirpate +the feudal nobles; the older families wish to limit the +Government, the newer prefer democracy and Cæsarism. +Add to this the complications of private interests, the +personal jealousies and aversions, the private warfare, +inevitable in a town where legal justice is not always +to be had, while forcible retaliation is always within +reach; and the result is constant party spirit, insults, +scuffles, conspiracies: the feudal nobles build towers +in the streets, the burghers pull them down; the lower +artizans set fire to the warehouses of the guilds, the +magistrates take part in the contest; blood is spilt, +magistrates are beheaded or thrown out of windows, +a foreign State is entreated to interfere, and a number +of citizens are banished by the victorious party. This +latter result creates a new and terrible danger for the +State, in the persons of so many exiles, ready to do +anything, to join with any one, in order to return to the +city and drive out their enemies in their turn. The end +of such constant upheavings is that the whole population +is disarmed, no party suffering its rival to have any +means of offence or defence. Moreover, as industry and +commerce develope, the citizens become unwilling to +fight, while on the other hand the invention of firearms, +subverting the whole system of warfare, renders special +military training more and more necessary. In the +days of the Lombard League, of Campaldino and +Montaperti, the citizens could fight, hand to hand, +round their carroccio or banner, without much discipline +being required; but when it came to fortifying +towns against cannon, to drilling bodies of heavily +armed cavalry, acting by the mere dexterity of their +movements; when war became a science and an art, +then the citizen had necessarily to be left out, and +adventurers and poor nobles had to form armies of +mercenaries, making warfare their sole profession. +This system of mercenary troops, so bitterly inveighed +against by Machiavelli (who, of course, entirely overlooked +its inevitable origin and viewed it as a voluntarily +incurred pest), added yet another and, perhaps, +the very worst danger to civil liberty. It gave enormous, +irresistible power to adventurers unscrupulous +by nature and lawless by education, the sole object of +whose career it became to obtain possession of States; +by no means a difficult enterprise, considering that +they and their fellows were the sole possessors of +military force in the country. At the same time, this +system of mercenaries perfected the condition of utter +defencelessness in which the gradual subjection of +rival cities, the violent party spirit, and the general +disarming of the burghers, had placed the great Italian +cities. For these troops, being wholly indifferent as +to the cause for which they were fighting, turned war +into the merest game of dodges—half-a-dozen men +being killed at a great battle like that of Anghiari +—and they at the same time protracted campaigns +beyond every limit, without any decisive action taking +place. The result of all these inevitable causes of ruin, +was that most of the commonwealths fell into the +hands of despots; while those that did not were paralyzed +by interior factions, by a number of rebellious +subject towns, and by generals who, even if they did +not absolutely betray their employers, never efficiently +served them.</p> + +<p>Such a condition of civic disorder lasted throughout +the Middle Ages, until the end of the fifteenth +century, without any further evils arising from it. +The Italians made endless wars with each other, +conquered each other, changed their government +without end, fell into the power of tyrants; but +throughout these changes their civilization developed +unimpeded; because, although one of the centres of +national life might be momentarily crushed, the others +remained in activity, and infused vitality even into +the feeble one, which would otherwise have perished. +All these ups and downs seemed but to stir the life +in the country: and no vital danger appeared to +threaten it; nor did any, so long as the surrounding +countries—France, Germany, and Spain—remained +mere vast feudal nebulæ, formless, weightless, immovable. +The Italians feared nothing from them; +they would call down the King of France or the +Emperor of Germany without a moment's hesitation, +because they knew that the king could not bring +France, nor the emperor bring Germany, but only a +few miserable, hungry retainers with him; but Florence +would watch the growth of the petty State of the +Scaligers, and Venice look with terror at the Duke of +Milan, because they knew that there there was concentrated +life, and an organization which could be +wielded as perfectly as a sword by the head of the +State. In the last decade of the fifteenth century +the Italians called in the French to put down their +private enemies: Lodovico of Milan called down +Charles VIII. to rid him of his nephew and of the +Venetians; the Venetians to rid them of Lodovico: +the Medici to establish them firmly in Florence; the +party of freedom to drive out the Medici. Each State +intended to use the French to serve their purpose, and +then to send back Charles VIII. with a little money +and a great deal of derision, as they had done with +kings and emperors of earlier days. But Italian politicians +suddenly discovered that they had made a +fatal mistake; that they had reckoned in ignorance, +and that instead of an army they had called down a +nation: for during the interval since their last appeal +to foreign interference, that great movement had +taken place which had consolidated the heterogeneous +feudal nebulæ into homogeneous and compact +kingdoms.</p> + +<p>Single small States, relying upon mercenary troops, +could not for a moment resist the shock of such +an agglomeration of soldiery as that of the French, +and of their successors the Spaniards and Germans. +Sismondi asks indignantly, Why did the Italians not +form a federation as soon as the strangers appeared? +He might as well ask, Why did the commonwealths +not turn into a modern monarchy? The habit of +security from abroad and of jealousy within; the +essential nature of a number of rival trading centres, +made such a thing not only impossible of execution, +but for a while impossible of conception; confederacies +had become possible only when Burlamacchi was +decapitated by the imperialists; popular resistance +had become a reality only when Feruccio was massacred +by the Spaniards; a change of national institutions +was feasible only when all national institutions +had been destroyed; when the Italians, having recognized +the irresistible force of their adversaries, had +ceased to form independent States and larger and +smaller guilds; when all the characteristics of Italian +civilization had been destroyed; when, in short, it was +too late to do anything save theorize with Machiavelli +and Guicciardini as to what ought to have been done. +We must not hastily accuse the volition of the Italians +of the Renaissance; they may have been egotistic and +timid, but had they been (as some most certainly +were) heroic and self-sacrificing to the utmost degree, +they could not have averted the catastrophe. The +nature of their civilization prevented not only their +averting the peril, but even their conceiving its existence; +the very nature of their political forms necessitated +such a dissolution of them. The commune +grows from within; it is a little speck which gradually +extends its circumference, and the further this may be +from the original centre, the less do its parts coalesce. +The modern monarchy grows from external pressure, +and towards the centre; it is a huge mass consolidating +into a hard, distinct shape. Thence it follows +that the more the commonwealth developes, the +weaker it grows, because its tendency is to spread +and fall to pieces; whereas the more the monarchy +developes, the stronger it becomes, because it fills up +towards the centre, and becomes more vigorously +knit together. The city ceases to be a city when +extended over hundreds of miles; the nation becomes +all the more a nation for being compressed towards a +central point.</p> + +<p>The entire political collapse of Italy in the sixteenth +century was not only inevitable, from the essential +nature of the civilization of the Renaissance, but it +was also indispensable in order that this civilization +might fulfil its mission. Civilization cannot spread +so long as it is contained within a national mould, +and only a vanquished nation can civilize its victors. +The Greece of Pericles could not Hellenize Rome, +but the Greece of the weak successors of Alexander +could; the Rome of Cæsar did not Romanize the +Teutonic races as did the Rome of Theodosius; no +amount of colonizing among the vanquished can ever +produce the effect of a victorious army, of a whole +nation, suddenly finding itself in the midst of the +superior civilization of a conquered people. Michelet +may well call the campaign of Charles VIII. the discovery +of Italy. His imaginative mind seized at once +the vast importance of this descent of the French into +Italy, which other historians have been too prone +to view in the same light as any other invasion. It +is from this moment that dates the modernisation, +if we may so express ourselves, of the North. The +barbarous soldiers of Gaston de Foix, of Frundsberg, +and of Gonsalvo, were the unconscious bearers of the +seeds of the ages of Elizabeth, of Louis XIV, and of +Goethe. These stupid and rapacious ruffians, while +they wantonly destroyed the works of Italian civilization, +rendered possible the existence of a Montaigne, +a Shakespeare, and a Cervantes.</p> + +<p>Italy was as a vast store-house, sheltered from all the +dangers of mediæval destruction; in which, while all +other nations were blindly and fiercely working out +their national existence, the inheritance of Antiquity +and the produce of the earliest modern civilization +had been peaceably garnered up. When the store-house +was full, its gates had to be torn open and its +riches plundered and disseminated by the intellectual +starvelings of the North; thus only could the rest of +mankind feed on these riches, regain and develope +their mental life.</p> + +<p>What were those intellectual riches of the Renaissance? +What was that strong intellectual food which +revived the energies and enriched the blood of the +Barbarians of the sixteenth century? The Renaissance +possessed the germs of every modern thing, and +much that was far more than a mere germ: it possessed +the habit of equality before the law, of civic organization, +of industry and commerce developed to immense +and superb proportions. It possessed science, literature, +and art; above all, that which at once produced +and was produced by all these—thorough perception +of what exists, thorough consciousness of our own +freedom and powers: self-cognizance. In Italy there +was intellectual light, enabling men to see and +judge all around them, enabling them to act wittingly +and deliberately. In this lies the immense +greatness of the Renaissance; to this are due all its +achievements in literature and science, and, above all, +in art: that, for the first time since the dissolution of +antique civilization, men were free agents, both in +thought and in deed; that there was an end of that +palsying slavery of the Middle Ages, slavery of body +and of mind, slavery to stultified ideas and effete +forms, which made men endure every degree of evil +and believe every degree of absurdity. For the first +time since Antiquity, man walks free of all political +and intellectual trammels, erect, conscious of his own +thoughts, master of his own actions; ready to seek +for truth across the ocean like Columbus, or across the +heavens like Copernicus; to seek it in criticism and +analysis like Machiavelli or Guicciardini, boldly to +reproduce it in its highest, widest sense like Michael +Angelo and Raphael.</p> + +<p>The men of the Renaissance had to pay a heavy +price for this intellectual freedom and self-cognizance +which they not only enjoyed themselves, but transmitted +to the rest of the world; the price was the loss +of all moral standard, of all fixed public feeling. They +had thrown aside all accepted rules and criteria, they +had cast away all faith in traditional institutions, they +had destroyed, and could not yet rebuild. In their +instinctive and universal disbelief in all that had been +taught them, they lost all respect for opinion, for rule, +for what had been called right and wrong. Could it +be otherwise? Had they not discovered that what +had been called right had often been unnatural, and +what had been called wrong often natural? Moral +teachings, remonstrances, and judgments belonged to +that dogmatism from which they had broken loose; +to those schools and churches where the foolish and +the unnatural had been taught and worshipped; to +those priests and monks who themselves most shamefully +violated their teachings. To profess morality +was to be a hypocrite; to reprobate others was to be +narrow-minded. There was so much error mixed up +with truth that truth had to share the discredit of error; +so many innocent things had been denounced as sins +that sinful ones at length ceased to be reprobated; +people had so often found themselves sympathizing +with supposed criminals, that they soon lost their +horror of real ones. Damnation came to be disassociated +from moral indignation: it was the retribution, +not of the unnatural and immoral, but of the unlawful; +and unlawful with respect to a law made without +reference to reason and instinct. As reason and +instinct were thus set at defiance, but could not be +silenced, the law was soon acquiesced in without being +morally supported; thus, little by little, moral feeling +became warped. This was already the case in Dante's +day. Farinata is condemned to the most horrible +punishment, which to Dante seems just, because in +accordance with an accepted code; yet Dante cannot +but admire him and cannot really hate him, for there +is nothing in him to hate; he is a criminal and yet +respected—fatal combination! Dante punishes Francesca, +Pier delle Vigne, and Brunetto Latini, but he +shows no personal horror of them; in the one case +his moral instinct refrains from censuring the comparatively +innocent, in the other it has ceased to +revolt from the really infamous. Where Dante does +feel real indignation, is most often in cases unprovided +for by the religious codes, as with those low, +grovelling, timid natures (the very same with whom +Machiavelli, the admirer of great villains, fairly loses +patience), those creatures whom Dante personally +despises, whom he punishes with filthy devices of his +own, whom he passes by with words such as he never +addresses to Semiramis, Brutus, or Capaneus. This +toleration of vice, while acquiescing in its legal punishment, +increased in proportion to the development +of individual judgment, and did not cease till all the +theories of the lawful and unlawful had been so completely +demolished as to permit of their being rebuilt +on solid bases.</p> + +<p>This work of demolition had not yet ceased in the +beginning of the sixteenth century; and the moral +confusion due to it was increased by various causes +dependent on political and other circumstances. The +despots in whose hands it was the inevitable fate of +the various commonwealths to fall, were by their very +position immoral in all their dealings: violent, fraudulent, +suspicious, and, from their life of constant unnatural +tension of the feelings, prone to every species +of depravity; while, on the other hand, in the feudal +parts of Italy—which had merely received a superficial +Renaissance varnish imported from other places with +painters and humanists—in Naples, Rome, and the +greater part of Umbria and the Marches, the upper +classes had got into that monstrous condition which +seems to have been the inevitable final product of +feudalism, and which, while it gave France her +Armagnacs, her Foix, and her Retz, gave Italy their +counterparts in her hideously depraved princelets, the +Malatestas, Varanos, Vitelli, and Baglioni. Both these +classes of men, despots and feudal nobles, had a wide +field for their ambition among the necessarily dissolved +civic institutions; and their easy success contributed +to confirm the general tendency of the day to say with +Commines, "Qui a le succès à l'honneur," and to +confound these two words and ideas. Nor was this +yet all: the men of the Renaissance discovered the +antique world, and in their wild, blind enthusiasm, in +their ardent, insatiable thirst for its literature, swallowed +it eagerly, dregs and all, till they were drunk +and poisoned.</p> + +<p>These are the main causes of the immorality of the +Renaissance: first, the general disbelief in all accepted +doctrines, due to the falseness and unnaturalness of +those hitherto prevalent; secondly, the success of unscrupulous +talent in a condition of political disorder; +thirdly, the wholesale and unjudging enthusiasm for +all that remained of Antiquity, good or bad. These +three great causes, united in a general intellectual +ebullition, are the explanation of the worst feature of +the Renaissance: not the wickedness of numberless +single individuals, but the universal toleration of it by +the people at large. Men like Sigismondo Malatesta, +Sixtus IV., Alexander VI., and Cæsar Borgia might +be passed over as exceptions, as monstrous aberrations +which cannot affect our judgment of their time +and nation; but the general indifference towards +their vices shown by their contemporaries and +countrymen is a conclusive and terrible proof of the +moral chaos of the Renaissance. It is just the +presence of so much instinctive simplicity and virtue, +of childlike devotion to great objects, of patriarchal +simplicity of manners, of all that is loveable in the +books of men like Vespasiano da Bisticci and Leon +Battista Albert; of so much that seems like the +realization of the idyllic home and merchant life of +Schiller's "Song of the Bell," by the side of all the +hideous lawlessness and vice of the despots and +humanists; that makes the Renaissance so drearily +painful a spectacle. The presence of the good does +not console us for that of the evil, because it neither +mitigates nor even shrinks from it; we merely lose +our pleasure in the good nature and simplicity of +Aeneas Sylvius when we see his cool admiration for +a man of fraud and violence like Sforza; we begin +to mistrust the purity and integrity of the upright +Guarino da Verona when we hear his lenient judgment +of the infamous Beccadelli; we require of the +virtuous that they should not only be incapable of +vice, but abhorrent of it; and this is what even the +best men of the Renaissance rarely were.</p> + +<p>Such a state of moral chaos there has constantly +been when an old effete mode of thought required +to be destroyed. Such work is always attended, in +greater or less degree, by this subversion of all recognized +authority, this indifference to evil, this bold +tasting of the forbidden. In the eighteenth century +France plays the same part that was played in the +fifteenth by Italy: again we meet the rebellion against +all that has been consecrated by time and belief, the +toleration of evil, the praise of the abominable, in the +midst of the search for the good. These two have +been the great fever epochs of modern history; fever +necessary for a subsequent steady growth. Both gave +back truth to man, and man to nature, at the expense +of temporary moral uncertainty and ruthless destruction. +The Renaissance reinstated the individual +in his human dignity, as a thinking, feeling, and +acting being; the Eighteenth Century reconstructed +society as a homogeneous free existence; both at the +expense of individual degradation and social disorder. +Both were moments of ebullition in which horrible +things rose to the surface, but after which what remained +was purer than it had ever been before. + +This is no plea for the immorality of the Renaissance: +evil is none the less evil for being inevitable +and necessary; but it is nevertheless well that we +should understand its necessity. It certainly is a +terrible admission, but one which must be made, that +evil is part of the mechanism for producing good; and +had the arrangement of the universe been entrusted +to us, benevolent and equitable people of an enlightened +age, there would doubtless have been invented +some system of evolution and progression differing +from the one which includes such machinery as hurricanes +and pestilences, carnage and misery, superstition +and license, Renaissance and Eighteenth +Century. But unfortunately Nature was organized in +a less charitable and intelligent fashion; and, among +other evils required for the final attainment of good, +we find that of whole generations of men being condemned +to moral uncertainty and error in order that +other generations may enjoy knowledge peacefully +and guiltlessly. Let us remember this, and let us be +more generous towards the men who were wicked +that we might be enlightened. Above all, let us bear +in mind, in judging the Renaissance, that the sacrifice +which it represents could be useful only in so far as it +was complete and irretrievable. Let us remember that +the communal system of government, on whose development +the Renaissance mainly depended, inevitably +perished in proportion as it developed; that the +absolute subjugation of Italy by Barbarous nations +was requisite to the dissemination of the civilization +thus obtained; that the Italians were politically annihilated +before they had time to recover a normal +condition, and were given up crushed and broken +spirited, to be taught righteousness by Spaniards and +Jesuits. That, in short, while the morality of the +Italians was sacrificed to obtain the knowledge on +which modern society depends, the political existence +of Italy was sacrificed to the diffusion of that knowledge, +and that the nation was not only doomed to +immorality, but doomed also to the inability to reform. +Perhaps, if we think of all this, and weigh the tremendous +sacrifice to which we owe our present intellectual +advantages, we may still feel sad, but sad +rather with remorse than with indignation, in contemplating +the condition of Italy in the first years of the +sixteenth century; in looking down from our calm, +safe, scientific position, on the murder of the Italian +Renaissance: great and noble at heart, cut off pitilessly +at its prime; denied even an hour to repent and +amend; hurried off before the tribunal of posterity, +suddenly, unexpectedly, and still bearing its weight +of unexpiated, unrecognized guilt.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="THE_ITALY_OF_THE_ELIZABETHAN_DRAMATISTS" id="THE_ITALY_OF_THE_ELIZABETHAN_DRAMATISTS"></a>THE ITALY OF THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMATISTS.</h2> + + +<h3>I.</h3> + +<p>The chroniclers of the last years of the fifteenth +century have recorded how the soldiery of Charles +VIII. of France amused the tedious leisure of their +sullen and suspicious occupation of Rome, by erecting +in the camp a stage of planks, and performing thereon +a rude mystery-play. The play thus improvised +by a handful of troopers before this motley invading +army: before the feudal cavalry of Burgundy, strange +steel monsters, half bird, half reptile, with steel beaked +and winged helmets and claw-like steel shoes, and +jointed steel corselet and rustling steel mail coat; +before the infantry of Gascony, rapid and rapacious +with their tattered doublets and rag-bound feet; before +the over-fed, immensely plumed, and slashed and +furbelowed giants of Switzerland, and the starved, +half-naked savages of Brittany and the Marches— +before this multifaced, many-speeched army, gathered +from the rich cities of the North and the devastated +fields of the South, and the wilds and rocks of the +West and the East, alike in nothing save in its wonder +and dread and delight and horror at this strange +invaded Italy—the play performed for the entertainment +of this encamped army was no ordinary play. +No clerkly allegorical morality; no mouthing and +capering market-place farce; no history of Joseph +and his brethren, of the birth of the Saviour, or of the +temptations of St. Anthony. It was the half-allegorical, +half-dramatic representation of the reigning +Borgia pope and his children; it was the rude and +hesitating moulding into dramatic shape of those +terrible rumours of simony and poison, of lust and of +violence, of mysterious death and abominable love, +which had met the invaders as they had first set their +feet in Italy; which had become louder and clearer +with every onward step through the peninsula, and +now circulated around them, with frightful distinctness, +in the very capital of Christ's vicar on earth. +This blundering mystery-play of the French troopers +is the earliest imaginative fruit of that first terrified +and fascinated glimpse of the men of the barbarous +North at the strange Italy of the Renaissance; it is +the first manifestation of that strong tragic impulse +due to the sudden sight, by rude and imaginative +young nations, of the splendid and triumphant wickedness +of Italy.</p> + +<p>The French saw, wondered, shuddered, and played +upon their camp stage the tragedy of the Borgias. +But the French remained in Italy, became familiar +with its ways, and soon merely shrugged their +shoulders and smiled where they had once stared +in horror. They served under the flags of Sforzas, +Borgias, Baglionis, and Vitellis, by the side of the +bravos of Naples and Umbria; they saw their princes +wed the daughters of evil-famed Italian sovereigns, +and their princes' children, their own Valois and +Guises, develope into puny, ambiguous, and ominous +Medicis and Gonzagas, surrounded by Italian minions +and poison distillers, and buffoons and money- +lenders. The French of the sixteenth century, during +their long Neapolitan and Lombard wars and negotiations, +and time to learn all that Italy could teach; +to become refined, subtle, indifferent, and cynical: +bastard Italians, with the bastard Italian art of +Goujon and Philibert Delorme, and the bastard +Italian poetry of Du Bellay and Ronsard. The +French of the sixteenth century therefore translated +Machiavel and Ariosto and Bandello; but they never +again attempted such another play as that which they +had improvised while listening to the tales of Alexander +VI. and Cæsar and Lucrezia, in their camp in +the meadows behind Sant' Angelo. The Spaniards +then came to Italy, and the Germans: strong mediæval +nations, like the French, with the creative power of +the Middle Ages still in them, refreshed by the long +rest of the dull fifteenth century. But Spaniards and +Germans came as mere greedy and besotten and +savage mercenaries: the scum of their countries, careless +of Italian sights and deeds, thinking only of +torturing for hidden treasure, or swilling southern +wines; and they returned to Spain and to Germany, +to persecutions of Moriscos and plundering of abbeys, +as savage and as dull as they had arrived. A smattering +of Italian literature, art, and manners was carried +back to Spain and Germany by Spanish and German +princes and governors, to be transmitted to a few +courtiers and humanists; but the imagination of the +lower classes of Spain and of Germany, absorbed in +the Quixotic Catholicism of Loyola and the biblical +contemplation of Luther, never came into fertilizing +contact with the decaying Italy of the Renaissance. +The mystery-play of the soldiers of Charles VIII. +seemed destined to remain an isolated and abortive +attempt. But it was not so. The invasions had +exhausted themselves; the political organization of +Italy was definitely broken up; its material wealth +was exhausted; the French, Germans, and Spaniards +had come and gone, and returned and gone again; +they had left nothing to annex or to pillage; when, +about the middle of the sixteenth century, the country +began to be overrun by a new horde of barbarians: +the English. The English came neither as invaders +nor as marauders; they were peaceable students and +rich noblemen, who, so far from trying to extort +money or annex territory, rather profited the ruined +Italians by the work which they did and the money +which they squandered. Yet these quiet and profitable +travellers, before whom the Italians might safely +display their remaining wealth, were in reality as +covetous of the possessions of Italy and as resolute to +return home enriched as any tattered Gascon men- +at-arms or gluttonous Swiss or grinding Spaniards. +They were, one and all, consciously and unconsciously, +dragged to Italy by the irresistible instinct that Italy +possessed that which they required; by the greed of +intellectual gain. That which they thus instinctively +knew that Italy possessed, that which they must +obtain, was a mode of thought, a habit of form; +philosophy, art, civilization: all the materials for intellectual +manipulation. For, in the sixteenth century, +on awakening from its long evil sleep, haunted by the +nightmare of civil war, of the fifteenth century, the +English mind had started up in the vigour of well- +nigh mature youth, fed up and rested by the long +inactivity in which it had slept through its period of +assimilation and growth. It had awakened at the +first touch of foreign influence, and had grown with +every fresh contact with the outer world: with the +first glance at Plato and Xenophon suddenly opened +by Erasmus and Colet, at the Bible suddenly opened +by Cranmer; it had grown with its sob of indignation +at the sight of the burning faggots surrounding the +martyrs, with its joyous heart-throbs at the sight of +the seas and islands of the New World; it had grown +with the sudden passionate strain of every nerve and +every muscle when the galleys of Philip had been +sighted in the Channel. And when it had paused, +taken breath, and looked calmly around it, after the +tumult of all these sights and sounds and actions, the +English mind, in the time of Elizabeth, had found itself +of a sudden full-grown and blossomed out into superb +manhood, with burning activities and indefatigable +powers. But it had found itself without materials for +work. Of the scholastic philosophy and the chivalric +poetry of the Middle Ages there remained but little +that could be utilized: the few bungled formulas, the +few half-obsolete rhymes still remaining, were as unintelligible, +in their spirit of feudalism and monasticism +and mysticism, as were the Angevin English and the +monkish Latin in which they were written to these +men of the sixteenth century. All the intellectual +wealth of England remained to be created; but it +could not be created out of nothing. Spenser, Shakespeare, +and Bacon could not be produced out of the +half-effete and scattered fragments of Chaucer, of +Scotus, and of Wycliffe. The materials on which +English genius was to work must be sought abroad, +and abroad they could be found only in Italy. For +in the demolished Italy of the sixteenth century lay +the whole intellectual wealth of the world: the great +legacy of Antiquity, the great work of the Middle +Ages had been stored up, and had been increased +threefold, and sorted and classified by the Renaissance; +and now that the national edifice had been +dismantled and dilapidated, and the national activity +was languishing, it all lay in confusion, awaiting only +the hand of those who would carry it away and use +it once more. To Italy therefore Englishmen of +thought and fancy were dragged by an impulse of +adventure and greed as irresistible as that which +dragged to Antwerp and the Hanse ports, to India +and America, the seekers for gold and for soil. To +Italy they flocked and through Italy they rambled, +prying greedily into each cranny and mound of the +half-broken civilization, upturning with avid curiosity +all the rubbish and filth; seeking with aching eyes +and itching fingers for the precious fragments of +intellectual splendour; lingering with fascinated +glance over the broken remnants and deep, mysterious +gulfs of a crumbling and devastated civilization. +And then, impatient of their intoxicating and tantalizing +search, suddenly grown desperate, they clutched +and stored away everything, and returned home +tattered, soiled, bedecked with gold and with tinsel, +laden with an immense uncouth burden of jewels, +and broken wealth, and refuse and ordure, with +pseudo-antique philosophy, with half-mediæval Dantesque +and Petrarchesque poetry, with Renaissance +science, with humanistic pedantry and obscenity, with +euphuistic conceits and casuistic quibble, with art, +politics, metaphysics—civilization embedded in all +manner of rubbish and abomination, soiled with all +manner of ominous stains. All this did they carry +home and throw helter-skelter into the new-kindled +fire of English intellectual life, mingling with it many +a humble-seeming Northern alloy; cleaning and compounding, +casting into shapes, mediæval and English, +this strange Corinthian brass made of all these heterogeneous +remnants, classical, Italian, Saxon, and Christian. +A strange Corinthian brass indeed; and as +various in tint, in weight, and in tone, in manifold +varieties of mixture, as were the moulds into which it +was cast: the white and delicate silver settling down +in the gracious poetic moulds of Sidney and Spenser; +the glittering gold, which can buy and increase, in +the splendid, heavy mould of Bacon's prose; and the +copper, the iron, the silver and gold in wondrous +mixture, with wondrous iridescences of colour and +wondrous scale of tone, all poured into the manifold +moulds, fantastic and beautiful and grand, of Shakespeare. +And as long as all this dross and ore and +filth brought from the ruins of Italy was thus mingling +in the heat of English genius, while it was yet +but imperfectly fused, while already its purest and +best compounded portion was being poured in Shakespeare's +mould, and when already there remained only +a seething residue; as long as there remained aught +of the glowing fire and the molten mass, some of it +all, of the pure metal bubbling up, of the scum frothing +round, nay, of the very used-up dregs, was ever +and anon being ladled out—gold, dross, filth, all indiscriminately +—and cast into shapes severe, graceful, or +uncouth. And this somewhat, thus pilfered from +what was to make, or was making, or had made, the +works of Shakespeare; this base and noble, still unfused +or already exhausted alloy, became the strange +heterogeneous works of the Elizabethan dramatists: +of Webster, of Ford, of Tourneur, of Ben Jonson, of +Beaumont and Fletcher, and of their minor brethren; +from the splendid ore of Marlowe, only half molten +and half freed from dross, down to the shining metal, +smooth and silvery as only tinsel can be, of Massinger. +In all the works of our Elizabethans, we see not +only the assimilated intellectual wealth of Italy, but +we see the deep impression, the indelible picture in +the memory, of Italy itself; the positive, unallegorical, +essentially secular mode of thought; the unascetic, +æsthetic, eminently human mode of feeling; the artistic +desire of clear and harmonious form; the innumerable +tendencies and habits which sever the Elizabethans +so completely from the Middle Ages, and bring them +so near at once to ourselves and to the ancients, +making them at once antique and modern, in opposition +to mediæval; these essential characters and the +vast bulk of absolute scientific fact and formula, of +philosophic opinion, of artistic shape, of humanistic +learning, are only one-half of the debt of our sixteenth +century to the Italy of the Renaissance. The delicate +form of the Italian sonnet, as copied by Sidney from +Bembo and Molza and Costanzo, contained within it +the exotic and exquisite ideal passion of the "Vita +Nuova" and Petrarch. With the bright, undulating +stanza Spenser received from Ariosto and Tasso +the richly coloured spirit of the Italian descriptive +epic. With the splendid involutions of Machiavelli's +and Guicciardini's prose Bacon learned their cool and +disimpassioned philosophy. From the reading of +Politian and Lorenzo dei Medici, from the sight of +the Psyche of Raphael, the Europa of Veronese, the +Ariadne of Tintoret, men like Greene and Dorset +learned that revival of a more luscious and pictorial +antique which was brought to perfection in Shakespeare's +"Venus and Adonis" and Marlowe's "Sestiad." +From the Platonists and Epicureans of Renaissance +Italy our greatest dramatists learned that cheerful +and serious love of life, that solemn and manly facing +of death, that sense of the finiteness of man, the +inexhaustibleness of nature, which shines out in such +grand, paganism, with such Olympian serenity, as of +the bent brows and smiling lips of an antique Zeus, +in Shakespeare, in Marlowe, in Beaumont and +Fletcher, even in the sad and savage Webster. But +with the abstract, with the imbibed modes of thought +and feeling, with the imitated forms, the Elizabethans +brought back from Italy the concrete, the individual, +the personal. They filled their works with Italian +things: from the whole plot of a play borrowed from +an Italian novel, to the mere passing allusion to an +Italian habit, or the mere quotation of an Italian +word; from the full-length picture of the actions of +Italian men and women, down to the mere sketch, +in two or three words, of a bit of Italian garden or +a group of Italian figures; nay, to the innumerable +scraps of tiny detail, grotesque, graceful, or richly +coloured, which they stuffed into all their works: allusions +to the buffoons of the mask comedy, to the high- +voiced singers, to the dress of the Venetian merchants, +to the step of a dance; to the pomegranate in the +garden or the cypress on the hillside; mere names of +Italian things: the lavolta and corranto dances, the +Traglietto ferry, the Rialto bridge; countless little +touches, trifling to us, but which brought home to the +audience at the Globe or at Blackfriars that wonderful +Italy which every man of the day had travelled through +at least in spirit, and had loved at least in imagination. +And of this wonderful Italy the Englishmen of the +days of Elizabeth and of James knew yet another +side; were familiar, whether travelled or untravelled, +with yet other things besides the buffoons and singers +and dancers, the scholars and learned ladies, the +pomegranates, and cypresses and roses and nightingales; +were fascinated by something besides the green +lagoons, the clear summer nights, the soft spring +evenings of which we feel as it were the fascination +in the words of Jessica and Portia and Juliet. The +English knew and were haunted by the crimes of +Italy: the terrible and brilliant, the mysterious and +shadowy crimes of lust and of blood which, in their +most gigantic union and monstrous enthronement on +the throne of the vicar of Christ, had in the first +terrified glimpse awakened the tragic impulse in the +soldiers of Charles VIII.</p> + +<p>We can imagine the innumerable English travellers +who went to Italy greedy for life and knowledge or +merely obeying a fashion of the day—travellers forced +into far closer contact with the natives than the men +of the time of Walpole and of Beckford, who were met +by French-speaking hosts and lacqueys and officials +—travellers also thirsting to imbibe the very spirit +of the country as the travellers of the seventeenth and +eighteenth centuries never thirsted; we can imagine +these Englishmen possessed by the morbid passion for +the stories of abominable and unpunished crime— +crime of the learned, the refined, the splendid parts of +society—with which the Italy of the deeply corrupted +sixteenth century was permeated. We can imagine +how the prosaic merchants' clerks from London; the +perfumed dandies, trying on Italian clothes, rehearsing +Italian steps and collecting Italian oaths, the Faulcon- +bridges of Shakespeare and Mr. Gingleboys of Beaumont +and Fletcher, sent to Italy to be able gracefully to</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Kiss the hand and cry, "sweet lady!"</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Say they had been at Rome and seen the relics,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Drunk your Verdea wine, and rid at Naples—</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>how all these privileged creatures ferreted about for +monstrous crimes with which to horrify their stay-at- +home countrymen; how the rich young lords, returning +home with mincing steps and high-pitched lisp, surrounded +by a train of parti-coloured, dialect-jabbering +Venetian clowns, deft and sinister Neapolitan fencing +masters, silver-voiced singing boys decoyed from some +church, and cynical humanists escaped from the faggot +or the gallows, were expected to bring home, together +with the newest pastoral dramas, lewd novels, +Platonic philosophy and madrigals set in complicated +counterpoint; stories of hideous wickedness, of the +murders and rapes and poisonings committed by the +dukes and duchesses, the nobles and senators, in +whose palaces they had so lately supped and danced. +The crimes of Italy fascinated Englishmen of genius +with a fascination even more potent than that which +they exercised over the vulgar imagination of mere +foppish and swashbuckler lovers of the scandalous +and the sensational: they fascinated with the attraction +of tragic grandeur, of psychological strangeness, +of moral monstrosity, a generation in whom the +passionate imagination of the playwright was curiously +blent with the metaphysical analysis of the philosopher +and the ethical judgment of the Puritan. To these +men, ardent and serious even in their profligacy; imaginative +and passionate even in their Puritanism, all +sucking avidly at this newly found Italian civilization; +the wickedness of Italy was more than morbidly +attractive or morbidly appalling: it was imaginatively +and psychologically fascinating. Whether they were +as part of the action or as allusions, as in Webster's +two great plays, in which there occurs poisoning by +means of the leaves of a book, poisoning by the poisoned +lips of a picture, poisoning by a helmet, poisoning +by the pommel of a saddle; crimes were multiplied +by means of subordinate plots and unnecessary incidents, +like the double vengeance of Richardetto and +of Hippolita in Ford's "Giovanni and Annabella," +where both characters are absolutely unnecessary to +the main story of the horrible love of the hero and +heroine; like the murders of Levidulcia and Sebastian +in Tourneur's "Atheist's Tragedy," and the completely +unnecessary though extremely pathetic death +of young Marcello in Webster's "White Devil;" until +the plays were brought to a close by the gradual extermination +of all the principal performers, and only +a few confidants and dummies remained to bury the +corpses which strewed the stage. Imaginary monsters +were fashioned out of half-a-dozen Neapolitan and +Milanese princes, by Ford, by Beaumont and Fletcher, +by Middleton, by Marston, even by the light and +graceful Philip Massinger: mythical villains, Ferdinands, +Lodowicks, and Fernezes, who yet fell short of +the frightful realities of men like Sigismondo Malatesta, +Alexander VI., and Pier Luigi Farnese; nay, +more typical monsters, with no name save their vices, +Lussuriosos, Gelosos, Ambitiosos, and Vindicis, like +those drawn by the strong and savage hand of Cyril +Tourneur.</p> + +<p>Nothing which the English stage could display +seemed to the minds of English playwrights and the +public to give an adequate picture of the abominations +of Italy; much as they heaped up horrors and combined +them with artistic skill, much as they forced into +sight, there yet remained an abyss of evil which the +English tongue refused to mention, but which weighed +upon the English mind; and which, unspoken, nay +(and it is the glory of the Elizabethan dramatists +excepting Ford), unhinted, yet remained as an incubus +in the consciousness of the playwrights and the public, +was in their thoughts when they wrote and heard such +savage misanthropic outbursts as those of Tourneur +and of Marston. The sense of the rottenness of the +country whence they were obtaining their intellectual +nourishment, haunted with a sort of sickening fascination +the imaginative and psychological minds of the +late sixteenth century, of the men who had had time +to outgrow the first cynical plunge of the rebellious +immature intellects of the contemporaries of Greene, +Peele, and Marlowe into that dissolved civilization. +And of the great men who were thus enthralled by +Italy and Italian evil, only Shakespeare and Massinger +maintain or regain their serenity and hopefulness of +spirit, resist the incubus of horror: Shakespeare from +the immense scope of his vision, which permitted him +to pass over the base and frightful parts of human +nature and see its purer and higher sides; Massinger +from the very superficiality of his insight and the narrowness +of his sympathies, which prevented his ever +thoroughly realizing the very horrors he had himself +invented. But on the minds less elastic than that of +Shakespeare, and less superficial than that of Massinger, +the Italian evil weighed like a nightmare. +With an infinitely powerful and passionate imagination, +and an exquisitely subtle faculty of mental analysis; +only lately freed from the dogma of the Middle +Ages; unsettled in their philosophy; inclined by wholesale +classical reading to a sort of negative atheism, a +fatalistic and half-melancholy mixture of epicurism +and stoicism; yet keenly alive, from study of the +Bible and of religious controversies, to all questions of +right and wrong; thus highly wrought and deeply +perplexed, the minds of the Elizabethan poets were +impressed by the wickedness of Italy as by the horrible +deeds of one whom we are accustomed to venerate as +our guide, whom we cannot but love as our benefactor, +whom we cannot but admire as our superior: it was a +sense of frightful anomaly, of putrescence in beauty +and splendour, of death in life and life in death, which +made the English psychologist-poets savage and +sombre, cynical and wrathful and hopeless. The influence +is the same on all, and the difference of attitude +is slight, and due to individual characters; but the +gloom is the same in each of them. In Webster— +no mere grisly inventor of Radcliffian horrors, as +we are apt to think of the greatest of our dramatists +after Shakespeare—in the noble and tender +nature of Webster the sense is one of ineffable sadness, +unmarred by cynicism, but unbrightened by hope. +The villains, even if successful till death overtake +them, are mere hideous phantoms—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 9em;">these wretched eminent things</span><br /> +Leave no more fame behind 'em, than should one<br /> +Fall in a frost, and leave his print in snow—<br /> +</p> + +<p>the victims of tortured conscience, or, worse still, the +owners of petrified hearts; there is nothing to envy in +them. But none the better is it for the good: if Ferdinands, +Bosolas, Brachianos, and Flaminios perish +miserably, it is only after having done to death the +tender and brave Duchess, the gentle Antonio, the +chivalric Marcello; there is virtue on earth, but there +is no justice in heaven. The half-pagan, half-puritanic +feeling of Webster bursts out in the dying speech of +the villain Bosola—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">O, this gloomy world!</span><br /> +In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness,<br /> +Doth womanish and fearful mankind live!<br /> +Let worthy minds ne'er stagger in distrust<br /> +To suffer death or shame for what is just.<br /> +</p> + +<p>Of real justice in this life or compensation in another, +there is no thought: Webster, though a Puritan in +spirit, is no Christian in faith. On Ford the influence +is different; although equal, perhaps, in genius to +Webster, surpassing him even in intense tragic passion, +he was far below Webster, and, indeed, far below all +his generation, in moral fibre. The sight of evil +fascinates him; his conscience staggers, his sympathies +are bedraggled in foulness; in the chaos of good and +evil he loses his reckoning, and recognizes the superiority +only of strength of passion, of passion for good +or evil: the incestuous Giovanni, daring his enemies +like a wild beast at bay and cheating them of their +revenge by himself murdering the object of his horrible +passion, is as heroic in the eyes of Ford as the magnanimous +Princess of Sparta, bearing with unflinching +spirit the succession of misfortunes poured down upon +her, and leading off the dance while messenger succeeds +messenger of evil; till, free from her duties as a +queen, she sinks down dead. Cyril Tourneur and +John Marston are far more incomplete in genius than +either Webster or Ford, although Tourneur sometimes +obtains a lurid and ghastly tragic intensity which +more than equals Ford when at his best; and Marston, +in the midst of crabbedness and dulness, sometimes +has touches of pathos and Michelangelesque foreshortenings +of metaphor worthy of Webster. But +Tourneur and Marston have neither the constant +sympathy with oppressed virtue of the author of the +"Duchess of Malfy," nor the blind fury of passion of +the poet of "Giovanni and Annabella;" they look on +grim and hopeless spectators at the world of fatalistic +and insane wickedness which they have created, in +which their heroes and heroines and villains are slowly +entangled in inextricable evil. The men and women +of Tourneur and Marston are scarcely men and women +at all: they are mere vague spectres, showing their +grisly wounds and moaning out their miserable fate. +There is around them a thick and clammy moral +darkness, dispelled only by the ghastly flashes of lurid +virtue of maniacs like Tourneur's Vindici and Hippolito; +a crypt-like moral stillness, haunted by strange +evil murmurs, broken only by the hysterical sobs and +laughs of Marston's Antonios and Pandulphos. At +the most there issues out of the blood-reeking depth +a mighty yell of pain, a tremendous imprecation not +only at sinful man but at unsympathizing nature, like +that of Marston's old Doge, dethroned, hunted down, +crying aloud into the grey dawn-mists of the desolate +marsh by the lagoon—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;">O thou all-bearing earth</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Which men do gape for till thou cram'st their mouths</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And choak'st their throats for dust: O charme thy breast</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And let me sinke into thee. Look who knocks;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Andrugio calls. But O, she's deafe and blinde.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A wretch but leane relief on earth can finde.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The tragic sense, the sense of utter blank evil, is +stronger in all these Elizabethan painters of Italian +crime than perhaps in any other tragic writers. There +is, in the great and sinister pictures of Webster, of +Ford, of Tourneur, and of Marston, no spot of light, +no distant bright horizon. There is no loving suffering, +resigned to suffer and to pardon, like that of +Desdemona, whose dying lips forgive the beloved who +kills from too great love; no consoling affection like +Cordelia's, in whose gentle embrace the poor bruised +soul may sink into rest; no passionate union in death +with the beloved, like the union of Romeo and Juliet; +nothing but implacable cruelty, violent death received +with agonized protest, or at best as the only release +from unmitigated misery with which the wretch has +become familiar,</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">As the tann'd galley slave is with his oar.<br /></span> +</p> + +<p>Neither is there in these plays that solemn sense of +heavenly justice, of the fatality hanging over a house +which will be broken when guilt shall have been +expiated, which lends a sort of serene background of +eternal justice to the terrible tales of Thebes and +Argos. There is for these men no fatality save the +evil nature of man, no justice save the doubling of +crime, no compensation save revenge: there is for +Webster and Ford and Tourneur and Marston no +heaven above, wrathful but placable; there are no +Gods revengeful but just: there is nothing but this +blood-stained and corpse-strewn earth, defiled by lust- +burnt and death-hungering men, felling each other +down and trampling on one another blindly in the +eternal darkness which surrounds them. The world +of these great poets is not the open world with its light +and its air, its purifying storms and lightnings: it is +the darkened Italian palace, with its wrought-iron bars +preventing escape; its embroidered carpets muffling +the foot steps; its hidden, suddenly yawning trap- +doors; its arras-hangings concealing masked ruffians; +its garlands of poisoned flowers; its long suites of untenanted +darkened rooms, through which the wretch +is pursued by the half-crazed murderer; while below, +in the cloistered court, the clanking armour and stamping +horses, and above, in the carved and gilded hall, +the viols and lutes and cornets make a cheery triumphant +concert, and drown the cries of the victim.</p> + + +<h3>II.</h3> + +<p>Such is the Italy of the Renaissance as we see it +in the works of our tragic playwrights: a country of +mysterious horror, the sinister reputation of which +lasted two hundred years; lasted triumphantly throughout +the light and finikin eighteenth century, and found +its latest expression in the grim and ghastly romances +of the school of Ann Radcliff, romances which are but +the last puny and grotesque descendants of the great +stock of Italian tragedies, born of the first terror- +stricken meeting of the England of Elizabeth with +the Italy of the late Renaissance. Is the impression +received by the Elizabethan playwrights a correct +impression? Was Italy in the sixteenth century +that land of horrors? Reviewing in our memory the +literature and art of the Italian Renaissance, remembering +the innumerable impressions of joyous and healthy +life with which it has filled us; recalling the bright +and thoughtless rhymes of Lorenzo dei Medici, of +Politian, of Bern, and of Ariosto; the sweet and +tender poetry of Bembo and Vittoria Colonna and +Tasso; the bluff sensuality of novelists like Bandello +and Masuccio, the Aristophanesque laughter of the +comedy of Bibbiena and of Beolco; seeing in our +mind's eye the stately sweet matrons and noble +senators of Titian, the virginal saints and madonnas +of Raphael, the joyous angels of Correggio;—recapitulating +rapidly all our impressions of this splendid time +of exuberant vitality, of this strong and serene Renaissance, +we answer without hesitation, and with only +a smile of contempt at our credulous ancestors—no. +The Italy of the Renaissance was, of all things that +have ever existed or ever could exist, the most utterly +unlike the nightmare visions of men such as Webster +and Ford, Marston and Tourneur. The only Elizabethan +drama which really represents the Italy of the +Renaissance is the comedy of Shakespeare, of Beaumont +and Fletcher, and of Ben Jonson and Massinger: +to the Renaissance belong those clear and sunny figures, +the Portias, Antonios, Gratianos, Violas, Petruchios, +Bellarios, and Almiras; their faces do we see on the +canvases of Titian and the frescoes of Raphael; they +are the real children of the Italian Renaissance. +These frightful Brachianos and Annabellas and Ferdinands +and Corombonas and Vindicis and Pieros of +the "White Devil," of the "Duchess of Malfy," of the +"Revenger's Tragedy," and of "Antonio and Mellida," +are mere fantastic horrors, as false as the Counts +Udolpho, the Spalatros, the Zastrozzis, and all their +grotesquely ghastly pseudo-Italian brethren of eighty +years ago.</p> + +<p>And, indeed, the Italy of the Renaissance, as represented +in its literature and its art, is the very negation +of Elizabethan horrors. Of all the mystery, the +colossal horror and terror of our dramatists, there is +not the faintest trace in the intellectual productions +of the Italian Renaissance. The art is absolutely +stainless: no scenes of horror, no frightful martyrdoms, +as with the Germans under Albrecht Dürer; no +abominable butcheries, as with the Bolognese of the +seventeenth century; no macerated saints and tattered +assassins, as with the Spaniards; no mystery, no contortion, +no horrors: vigorous and serene beauty, pure +and cheerful life, real or ideal, on wall or canvas, in +bronze or in marble. The literature is analogous to +the art, only less perfect, more tainted with the weakness +of humanity, less ideal, more real. It is essentially +human, in the largest sense of the word; or if it cease, +in creatures like Aretine, to be humanly clean, it +becomes merely satyr-like, swinish, hircose. But it is +never savage in lust or violence; it is quite free from +the element of ferocity. It is essentially light and +quiet and well regulated, sane and reasonable, never +staggering or blinded by excess: it is full of intelligent +discrimination, of intelligent leniency, of well-bred +reserved sympathy; it is civilized as are the wide well- +paved streets of Ferrara compared with the tortuous +black alleys of mediæval Paris; as are the well-lit, +clean, spacious palaces of Michelozzo or Bramante +compared with the squalid, unhealthy, uncomfortable +mediæval castles of Dürer's etchings. It is indeed a +trifle too civilized; too civilized to produce every kind +of artistic fruit; it is—and here comes the crushing +difference between the Italian Renaissance and our +Elizabethans' pictures of it—it is, this beautiful rich +literature of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, +completely deficient in every tragic element; it has +intuition neither for tragic event nor for tragic character; +it affords not a single tragic page in its poems +and novels; it is incapable, after the most laborious +and conscientious study of Euripides and Seneca, +utterly and miserably incapable of producing a single +real tragedy, anything which is not a sugary pastoral +or a pompous rhetorical exercise. The epic poets of +the Italian Renaissance, Pulci, Boiardo, Berni, and +Ariosto, even the stately and sentimental Tasso, are +no epic poets at all. They are mere light and amusing +gossips, some of them absolute buffoons. Their adventures +over hill and dale are mere riding parties; +their fights mere festival tournaments, their enchantments +mere pageant wonders. Events like the death +of Hector, the slaughter of Penelope's suitors, the +festive massacre of Chriemhilt, the horrible deceit of +Alfonso the Chaste sending Bernardo del Carpio his +father's corpse on horseback—things like these never +enter their minds. When tragic events do by some +accident come into their narration, they cease to be +tragic; they are frittered away into mere pretty conceits +like the death of Isabella and the sacrifice of +Olympia in the "Orlando Furioso;" or melted down +into vague pathos, like the burning of Olindo and +Sofronia, and the death of Clorinda by the sentimental +Tasso. Neither poet, the one with his cheerfulness, +the other with his mild melancholy, brings home, +conceives the horror of the situation; the one treats +the tragic in the spirit almost of burlesque, the other +entirely in the spirit of elegy. So, again, with the +novel writers: these professional retailers of anecdotes +will pick up any subject to fill their volumes. In +default of pleasant stories of filthy intrigue or lewd +jest, men like Cinthio and Bandello will gabble off +occasionally some tragic story, picked out of a history +book or recently heard from a gossip: the stories of +Harmodius and Aristogeiton, of Disdemona and the +Moorish Captain, of Romeo Montecchio and Giulietta +Cappelletti, of the Cardinal dAragona and the +Duchess of Amalfi, of unknown grotesque Persian +Sophis and Turkish Bassas—stories of murder, massacre, +rape, incest, anything and everything, prattled +off, with a few words of vapid compassion and stale +moralizing, in the serene, cheerful, chatty manner in +which they recount their Decameronian escapades or +Rabelaisian repartees. As it is with tragic action, so +is it with tragic character. The literature of the country +which suggested to our Elizabethans their colossal villains, +can display only a few conventional monsters, fire- +eating, swashbuckler Rodomonts and Sultan Malechs, +strutting and puffing like the grotesque villains of +puppet-shows; Aladins and Ismenos, enchanters and +ogres fit to be put into Don Quixote's library: mere +conventional rag puppets, doubtless valued as such +and no more by the shrewd contemporaries of Ariosto +and Tasso. The inhabitants of Tasso's world of +romance are pale chivalric unrealities, lifeless as +Spenser's half-allegoric knights and ladies; those of +Pulci's Ardenne forests and Cathay deserts are buffoons +such as Florentine shopmen may have trapped out +for their amusement in rusty armour and garlands of +sausages. The only lifelike heroes and heroines are +those of Ariosto. And they are most untragic, un- +romantic. The men are occasionally small scoundrels, +but unintentionally on the part of the author. They +show no deep moral cancers or plague-spots; they +display cheerfully all the petty dishonour and small +lusts which the Renaissance regarded as mere flesh and +blood characteristics. So also Ariosto's ladies: the +charming, bright women, coquettish or Amazonian, +are frail and fickle to the degree which was permissible +to a court lady, who should be neither prudish nor +coquettish; doing unchaste things and listening to +unchaste words simply, gracefully, without prurience +or horror; perfectly well-bred, gentili, as Ariosto calls +them; prudent also, according to the notions of the +day, in limiting their imprudence. The adventure of +Fiordispina with Ricciardetto would have branded an +English serving-wench as a harlot; the behaviour of +Roger towards the lady he has just rescued from the +sea-monster would have blushingly been attributed by +Spenser to one of his satyrs; but these were escapades +quite within Ariosto's notions of what was permitted +to a gentil cavaliero and a nobil donzella; and if +Fiordispina and Roger are not like Florimell and Sir +Calidore, still less do they in the faintest degree +resemble Tourneur and Marston's Levidulcias and +Isabellas and Lussuriosos. And with the exception +perhaps, of this heroine and this hero, we cannot find +any very great harm in Ariosto's ladies and gentlemen: +we may, indeed, feel indignant when we think +that they replace the chaste and noble impossibilities +of earlier romance, the Rolands and Percivals, the +Beatrices and Lauras of the past; when we consider +that they represent for Ariosto, not the bespattered +but the spotless, not the real but the ideal. All this +may awaken in us contempt and disgust; but if we +consider these figures in themselves as realities, and +compare them with the evil figures of our drama, we +find that they are mere venial sinners—light, fickle, +amorous, fibbing—very human in their faults; human, +trifling, mild, not at all monstrous, like all the art +products of the Renaissance.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The "Orlando Innamorato" of Boiardo contains, parti, canto +8, a story too horrible and grotesque for me to narrate, of a +monster born of Marchino and his murdered sister-in-law, which +forms a strange exception to my rule, even as does, for instance, +Matteo di Giovanni's massacre of the Innocents. Can this +story have been suggested, a ghastly nightmare, by the frightful +tale of Sigismondo Malatesta and the beautiful Borbona, which +was current in Boiardo's day?</p></div> + + +<p>A serene and spotless art, a literature often impure +but always cheerful, rational, civilized—this is what +the Italian Renaissance displays when we seek in it for +spirits at all akin to Webster or Lope de Vega, to Holbein +or Ribera. To find the tragic we must wait for +the Bolognese painters of the seventeenth century, for +Metastasio and Alfieri in the eighteenth; it is useless +seeking it in this serene and joyous Renaissance. +Where, then, in the midst of these spotless virgins, +these noble saints, these brilliant pseudo-chivalric +joustings and revels, these sweet and sonneteering +pastorals, these scurrilous adventures and loose +buffooneries; where in this Italian Renaissance are +the horrors which fascinated so strangely our English +playwrights: the fratricides and incests, the frightful +crimes of lust and blood which haunted and half +crazed the genius of Tourneur and Marston? Where +in this brilliant and courteous and humane and civilized +nation are the gigantic villains whose terrible +features were drawn with such superb awfulness of +touch by Webster and Ford? Where in this Renaissance +of Italian literature, so cheerful and light +of conscience, is the foul and savage Renaissance of +English tragedy? Does the art of Italy tell an impossible, +universal lie? or is the art of England the +victim of an impossible, universal hallucination?</p> + +<p>Neither; for art can neither tell lies nor be the +victim of hallucination. The horror exists, and the +light-heartedness exists; the unhealthiness and the +healthiness. For as, in that weird story by Nathaniel +Hawthorne, the daughter of the Paduan wizard is +nurtured on the sap and fruit and the emanations of +poisonous plants, till they become her natural sustenance, +and she thrives and is strong and lovely; while +the youth, bred in the ordinary pure air and nourished +on ordinary wholesome food, faints and staggers as +soon as he breathes the fatal odours of the poison +garden, and sinks down convulsed and crazed at the +first touch of his mistress' blooming but death-breathing +lips; so also the Italians, steeped in the sin of +their country, seeing it daily and hourly, remained +intellectually healthy and serene; while the English, +coming from a purer moral atmosphere, were seized +with strange moral sickness of horror at what they +had seen and could not forget. And the nation +which was chaste and true wrote tales of incest and +treachery, while the nation which was foul and false +wrote poetry of shepherds and knights-errant. +The monstrous immorality of the Italian Renaissance, +as I have elsewhere shown in greater detail, +was, like the immorality of any other historical period, +not a formal rebellion against God, but a natural +result of the evolution of the modern world. The +Italy of the Renaissance was one of the many victims +which inevitable moral sequence dooms to be evil in +order that others may learn to be good: it was a +sacrifice which consisted in a sin, a sacrifice requiring +frightful expiation on the part of the victim. For +Italy was subjected, during well-nigh two centuries, to +a slow process of moral destruction; a process whose +various factors—political disorganization, religious indifference, +scientific scepticism, wholesale enthusiasm +for the antique, breaking-up of mediæval standards +and excessive growth of industry, commerce, and +speculative thought at the expense of warlike and +religious habits—were at the same time factors in the +great advent of modern civilization, of which Italy +was the pioneer and the victim; a process whose +result was, in Italy, insensibly and inevitably to reduce +to chaos the moral and political organization of the +nation; at once rendering men completely unable to +discriminate between good and evil, and enabling a +certain proportion of them to sin with complete impunity: +creating on the one hand moral indifference, +and on the other social irresponsibility. Civilization +had kept pace with demoralization; the faculty of +reasoning over cause and effect had developed at +the expense of the faculty of judging of actions. The +Italians of the Renaissance, little by little, could judge +only of the adaptation of means to given ends; +whether means or ends were legitimate or illegitimate +they soon became unable to perceive and even unable +to ask. Success was the criterion of all action, and +power was its limits. Active and furious national +wickedness there was not: there was mere moral +inertia on the part of the people. The Italians of the +Renaissance neither resisted evil nor rebelled against +virtue; they were indifferent to both, and a little +pressure sufficed to determine them to either. In the +governed classes, where the law was equal between +men, and industry and commerce kept up healthy +activity, the pressure was towards good. The artizans +and merchants lived decent lives, endowed hospitals, +listened to edifying sermons, and were even moved +(for a few moments) by men like San Bernardino or +Savonarola. In the governing classes, where all right +lay in force, where the necessity of self-defence induced +treachery and violence, and irresponsibility +produced excess, the pressure was towards evil. The +princelets and prelates and mercenery generals indulged +in every sensuality, turned treachery into a +science and violence into an instrument; and sometimes +let themselves be intoxicated into mad lust and +ferocity, as their subjects were occasionally intoxicated +with mad austerity and mysticism; but the +excesses of mad vice, like the excesses of mad virtue, +lasted only a short time, or lasted only in individual +saints or blood-maniacs; and the men of the Renaissance +speedily regained their level of indifferent +righteousness and of indifferent sinfulness. Righteousness +and sinfulness both passive, without power of +aggression or resistance, and consequently in strange +and dreadful peace with each other. The wicked +men did not dislike virtue, nor the good men vice: +the villain could admire a saint, and the saint could +condone a villain. The prudery of righteousness was +as unknown as the cynicism of evil; the good man, +like Guarino da Verona, would not shrink from the +foul man; the foul man, like Beccadelli, would not +despise the pure man. The ideally righteous citizen +of Agnolo Pandolfini does not interfere with the +ideally unrighteous prince of Machiavelli: each has +his own position and conduct; and who can say +whether, if the positions were exchanged, the conduct +might not be exchanged also? In such a condition +of things as this, evil ceases to appear monstrous; it +is explained, endured, condoned. The stately philosophical +historians, so stoically grand, and the +prattling local chroniclers, so highly coloured and so +gentle and graceful; Guicciardini and Machiavelli +and Valori and Segni, on the one hand—Corio, Allegretti, +Matarazzo, Infessura, on the other; all these, +from whom we learn the real existence of immorality +far more universal and abominable than our dramatists +venture to show, relate quietly, calmly, with +analytical frigidness or gossiping levity, the things +which we often shrink from repeating, and sometimes +recoil from believing. Great statesmanlike historians +and humble chattering chroniclers are alike unaffected +by what goes on around them: they collect anecdotes +and generalize events without the fumes of evil, among +which they seek for materials in the dark places of +national or local history, ever going to their imagination, +ever making their heart sicken and faint, and +their fancy stagger and reel. The life of these +righteous, or at least, not actively sinning men, may +be hampered, worried, embittered, or even broken by +the villainy of their fellow-men; but, except in some +visionary monk, life can never be poisoned by the +mere knowledge of evil. Their town maybe betrayed +to the enemy, their daughters may be dishonoured or +poisoned, their sons massacred; they may, in their old +age, be cast starving on the world, or imprisoned or +broken by torture; and they will complain and be +fierce in diatribe: the fiercest diatribe written against +any Pope of the Renaissance being, perhaps, that of +Platina against Paul II., who was a saint compared +with his successors Sixtus and Alexander, because +the writer of the diatribe and his friends were maltreated +by this pope. When personally touched, the +Italians of the Renaissance will brook no villainy—the +poniard quickly despatches sovereigns like Galeazzo +Maria Sforza; but when the villainy remains +abstract, injures neither themselves nor their immediate +surroundings, it awakens no horror, and the +man who commits it is by no means regarded as a +fiend. The great criminals of the Renaissance— +traitors and murderers like Lodovico Sforza, incestuous +parricides like Gianpaolo Baglioni, committers +of every iniquity under heaven like Cæsar Borgia— +move through the scene of Renaissance history, as +shown by its writers great and small, quietly, serenely, +triumphantly; with gracious and magnanimous bearing; +applauded, admired, or at least endured. On +their passage no man, historian or chronicler, unless +the agent of a hostile political faction, rises up, confronts +them and says, "This man is a devil." +And devils these men were not: the judgment of +their contemporaries, morally completely perverted, +was probably psychologically correct; they misjudged +the deeds, but rarely, perhaps, misjudged the man. +To us moderns, as to our English ancestors of the +sixteenth century, this is scarcely conceivable. A man +who does devilish deeds is necessarily a devil; and +the evil Italian princes of the Renaissance, the Borgias, +Sforzas, Baglionis, Malatestas, and Riarios appear, +through the mist of horrified imagination, so many +uncouth and gigantic monsters, nightmare shapes, less +like human beings than like the grand and frightful +angels of evil who gather round Milton's Satan in the +infernal council. Such they appear to us. But if we +once succeed in calmly looking at them, seeing them +not in the lurid lights and shadows of our fancy, but +in the daylight of contemporary reality, we shall little +by little be forced to confess (and the confession is +horrible) that most of these men are neither abnormal +nor gigantic. Their times were monstrous, not they. +They were not, that is clear, at variance with the moral +atmosphere which surrounded them; and they were +the direct result of the social and political condition.</p> + +<p>This may seem no answer; for although we know the +causes of monster births, they are monstrous none the +less. What we mean is not that the existence of men +capable of committing such actions was normal; we +mean that the men who committed them, the conditions +being what they were, were not necessarily +men of exceptional character. The level of immorality +was so high that a man need be no giant to reach +up into the very seventh heaven of iniquity. When +to massacre at a banquet a number of enemies enticed +by overtures of peace was considered in Cæsar Borgia +merely a rather audacious and not very holy action, +indicative of very brilliant powers of diplomacy, then +Cæsar Borgia required, to commit such an action, +little more than a brilliant diplomatic endowment, +unhampered by scruples and timidity; when a brave, +and gracious prince like Gianpaolo Baglioni could +murder his kinsmen and commit incest with his +sister without being considered less gracious and +magnanimous, then Gianpaolo Baglioni might indeed +be but an Indifferent villain; when treachery, lust, +and bloodshed, although objected to in theory, were +condoned In practice, and were regarded as venial +sins, those who indulged in them might be in fact +scarcely more than venial sinners. In short, where a +fiendish action might be committed without the per- +petrator being considered a fiend, there was no need +of his being one. And, indeed, the great villains of +the Renaissance never take up the attitude of fiends; +one or two, like certain Visconti or Aragonese, were +madmen, but the others were more or less normal +human beings. There was no barrier between them +and evil; they slipped into it, remained in it, became +accustomed to it; but a vicious determination to be +wicked, a feeling of the fiend within one, like that of +Shakespeare's Richard, or a gradual, conscious irresistible +absorption into recognized iniquity like Macbeth's, +there was not. The mere sense of absolute power +and impunity, together with the complete silence of +the conscience of the public at large, can make a man +do strange things. If Cæsar Borgia be free to practise +his archery upon hares and deer, why should he not +practise it upon these prisoners? Who will blame +him? Who can prevent him? If he had for his +mistress every woman he might single out from +among his captives, why not his sister? If he have +the force to carry out a plan, why should a man stand +in his way? The complete facility in the commission +of all actions quickly brings such a man to the limits +of the legitimate: there is no universal cry to tell him +where those limits are, no universal arm to pull him +back. He pooh-poohs, pushes them a little further, +and does the iniquity. Nothing prevents his gratifying +his ambition, his avarice, and his lust, so he +gratifies them. Soon, seeking for further gratification, +he has to cut new paths in villainy: he has not been +restrained by man, who is silent; he is soon restrained +no longer by nature, whose only voice is in man's +conscience. Pleasure in wanton cruelty takes the +same course: he prefers to throw javelins at men and +women to throwing javelins at bulls or bears, even as +he prefers throwing javelins at bulls or bears rather +than at targets; the excitement is greater; the instinct +is that of the soldiers of Spain and of France, who +invariably preferred shooting at a valuable fresco like +Sodoma's Christ, at Siena, or Lo Spagna's Madonna, +at Spoleto, to practising against a mere worthless +piece of wood. Such a man as Cæsar Borgia is the +nec plus ultra of a Renaissance villain; he takes, as +all do not, absolute pleasure in evil as such. Yet +Cæsar Borgia is not a fiend nor a maniac. He can +restrain himself whenever circumstances or policy +require it; he can be a wise administrator, a just +judge. His portraits show no degraded criminal; he +is, indeed, a criminal in action, but not necessarily a +criminal in constitution, this fiendish man who did +not seem a fiend to Machiavel. We are astonished at +the strange anomaly in the tastes and deeds of these +Renaissance villains; we are amazed before their +portraits. These men, who, in the frightful light of +their own misdeeds, appear to us as complete demons +or complete madmen, have yet much that is amiable +and much that is sane; they stickle at no abominable +lust, yet they are no bestial sybarites; they are brave, +sober, frugal, enduring like any puritan; they are +treacherous, rapacious, cruel, utterly indifferent to the +sufferings of their enemies, yet they are gentle in +manner, passionately fond of letters and art, superb +in their works of public utility, and not incapable of +genuinely admiring men of pure life like Bernardino +or Savonarola: they are often, strange to say, like the +frightful Baglionis of Perugia, passionately admired +and loved by their countrymen. The bodily portraits +of these men, painted by the sternly realistic art of the +fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, are even more +confusing to our ideas than their moral portraits drawn +by historians and chroniclers. Cæsar Borgia, with his +long fine features and noble head, is a gracious and +refined prince; there is, perhaps, a certain duplicity in +the well-cut lips; the beard, worn full and peaked in +Spanish fashion, forms a sort of mask to the lower +part of the face, but what we see is noble and intellectual. +Sigismondo Malatesta has on his medals a head +whose scowl has afforded opportunity for various fine +descriptions of a blood maniac; but the head, thus +found so expressive, of this monster, is infinitely +more human than the head on the medals of Lionello +d'Este, one of the most mild and cultivated of +the decently behaved Ferrarese princes. The very +flower of precocious iniquity, the young Baglionis, +Vitellis, and Orsinis, grouped round Signorelli's +preaching Antichrist at Orvieto, are, in their gallantly +trimmed jerkins and jewelled caps, the veriest assemblage +of harmless young dandies, pretty and insipid; +we can scarcely believe that these mild beardless +striplings, tight-waisted and well-curled like girls of +sixteen, are the terrible Umbrian brigand condottieri +—Gianpaolos, Simonettos, Vitellozzos, and Astorres— +whose abominable deeds fill the pages of the chronicles +of Matarazzo, of Frolliere, of Monaldeschi. Nowhere +among the portraits of Renaissance monsters do we +meet with anything like those Roman emperors, +whose frightful effigies, tumid, toad-like Vitelliuses +or rage-convulsed Caracallas, fill all our museums +in marble or bronze or loathsome purple porphyry; +such types as these are as foreign to the reality of the +Italian Renaissance as are the Brachianos and Lussuriosos, +the Pieros and Corombonas, to the Italian +fiction of the sixteenth century.</p> + +<p>Nor must such anomalies between the type of the +men and their deeds, between their abominable +crimes and their high qualities, be merely made a +subject for grandiloquent disquisition. The man of +the Renaissance, as we have said, had no need to be +a monster to do monstrous things; a crime did not +necessitate such a moral rebellion as requires complete +unity of nature, unmixed wickedness; it did not +precipitate a man for ever into a moral abyss where +no good could ever enter. Seeing no barrier between +the legitimate and the illegitimate, he could alternate +almost unconsciously between them. He was never +shut out from evil, and never shut out from good; +the judgment of men did not dress him in a convict's +jacket which made evil his only companion; it did +not lock him up in a moral dungeon where no ray +of righteousness could enter; he was not condemned, +like the branded harlot, to hopeless infamy. He need +be bad only as much and as long as he chose. Hence, +on the part of the evil-doer of the Renaissance, no +necessity either for violent rebellion or for sincere +repentance; hence the absence of all characters such +as the tragic writer seeks, developed by moral struggle, +warped by the triumph of vice, or consciously soiled +in virtue. What a "Revenger's Tragedy" might not +Cyril Tourneur have made, had he known all the +details, of the story of Alessandro de' Medici's death! +What a Vindici he would have made of the murderer +Lorenzino; with what a strange lurid grandeur he +would have surrounded the plottings of the pander +Brutus. But Lorenzino de' Medici had none of the +feeling of Tourneur's Vindici; there was in him +none of the ghastly spirit of self-immolation of the +hero of Tourneur in his attendance upon the foul +creature whom he leads to his death. Lorenzino had +the usual Brutus mania of his day, but unmixed with +horror. To be the pander and jester of the Duke +was no pain to his nature; there was probably no +sense of debasement in the knowledge either of his +employer or of his employment. To fasten on Alexander, +to pretend to be his devoted slave and server +of his lust, this piece of loathsome acting, merely +enhanced, by the ingenuity it required, the attraction +of what to Lorenzino was an act of heroism. His +ambition was to be a Brutus; that he had bespattered +the part probably never occurred to him. The indifference +to good and evil permitted the men of the +Renaissance to mix the two without any moral sickness, +as it permitted them to alternate them without +a moral struggle. Such is the wickedness of the +Renaissance: not a superhuman fury of lust and +cruelty, like Victor Hugo's Lucrezia Borgia; but an +indifferent, a characterless creature like the Lucrezia +Borgia of history: passive to surrounding influences, +blind to good and evil, infamous in the infamous +Rome, among her father and brother's courtesans +and cut-throats; grave and gracious! in the grave and +gracious Ferrara, among the Platonic poets and pacific +courtiers of the court of the Estensi. Thus, in the +complete prose and colourlessness of reality, has the +evil of the Renaissance been understood and represented +only by one man, and transmitted to us in one +pale and delicate psychological masterpiece far more +loathsome than any elaborately hideous monster +painting by Marston or Tourneur. The man who +thus conceived the horrors of the Italian Renaissance +in the spirit in which they were committed is Ford. +In his great play he has caught the very tone of the +Italian Renaissance: the abominableness of the play +consisting not in the coarse slaughter scenes added +merely to please the cockpit of an English theatre, +but in the superficial innocence of tone; in its making +evil lose its appearance of evil, even as it did to the +men of the Renaissance. Giovanni and Annabella +make love as if they were Romeo and Juliet: there +is scarcely any struggle, and no remorse; they weep +and pay compliments and sigh and melt in true +Aminta style. There is in the love of the brother +and sister neither the ferocious heat of tragic lust, +nor the awful shudder of unnatural evil; they are +lukewarm, neither good nor bad. Their abominable +love is in their own eyes a mere weakness of the +flesh; there is no sense of revolt against man and +nature and God; they are neither dragged on by +irresistible demoniac force nor held back by the grip +of conscience; they slip and slide, even like Francesca +and Paolo. They pay each other sweet and mawkish +compliments. The ferocious lust of Francesco Cenci +is moral compared with the way in which the "trim +youth" Giovanni praises Annabella's beauty; the +blushing, bride-like way in which Annabella, "white in +her soul," acknowledges her long love. The atrociousness +of all this is, that if you strike out a word +or two the scene may be read with perfect moral +satisfaction, with the impression that this is really +"sacred love." For in these scenes Ford wrote with +a sweetness and innocence truly diabolical, not a +shiver of horror passing through him—serene, unconscious; +handling the filthy without sense of its being +unclean, to the extent, the incredible extent, of +making Giovanni and Annabella swear on their +mother's ashes eternal fidelity in incest: horror of +horrors, to which no Walpurgis Night abomination +could ever approach, this taking as witness of the un-utterable, +not an obscene Beelzebub with abominable +words and rites, but the very holiest of holies. If ever +Englishman approached the temper of the Italian +Renaissance, it was not Tourneur, nor Shelley with his +cleansing hell fires of tragic horror, but this sweet and +gentle Ford. If ever an artistic picture approached +the reality of such a man as Gianpaolo Baglioni, the +incestuous murderer whom the Frolliere chronicler, +enthusiastic like Matarazzo, admires, for "his most +beautiful person, his benign and amiable manner and +lordly bearing," it is certainly not the elaborately +villainous Francesco Cenci of Shelley, boasting like +another Satan of his enormous wickedness, exhausting +in his picture of himself the rhetoric of horror, committing +his final enormity merely to complete the +crown of atrocities in which he glories; it is no such +tragic impossibility of moral hideousness as this; it +is the Giovanni of Ford, the pearl of virtuous and +studious youths, the spotless, the brave, who, after a +moment's reasoning, tramples on a vulgar prejudice— +"Shall a peevish sound, a customary form from man +to man, of brother and of sister, be a bar 'twixt my +eternal happiness and me?" who sins with a clear conscience, +defies the world, and dies, bravely, proudly, +the "sacred name" of Annabella on his lips, like a +chivalrous hero. The pious, pure Germany of Luther +will give the world the tragic type of the science- +damned Faustus; the devout and savage Spain of +Cervantes will give the tragic type of Don Juan, +damned for mockery of man and of death and of +heaven; the Puritan England of Milton will give the +most sublimely tragic type of all, the awful figure of +him who says, "Evil, be thou my good." What tragic +type can this evil Italy of Renaissance give to the +world? None: or at most this miserable, morbid, +compassionated Giovanni: whom Ford would have +us admire, and whom we can only despise.</p> + +<p>The blindness to evil which constitutes the criminality +of the Renaissance is so great as to give a +certain air of innocence. For the men of that time +were wicked solely from a complete sophistication +of ideas, a complete melting away (owing to slowly +operating political and intellectual tendencies) of all +moral barriers. They walked through the paths of +wickedness with the serenity with which they would +have trod the ways of righteousness; seeing no +boundary, exercising their psychic limbs equally in the +open and permitted spaces and in the forbidden. They +plucked the fruit of evil without a glance behind +them, without a desperate setting of their teeth; +plucked it openly, calmly, as they would have plucked +the blackberries in the hedge; bit into it, ate it, with +perfect ease and serenity, saying their prayers before +and after, as if it were their natural daily bread mentioned +in the Lord's Prayer; no grimace or unseemly +leer the while; no moral indigestion or nightmare +(except very rarely) in consequence. Hence the +serenity of their literature and art. These men and +women of the Italian Renaissance have, in their +portraits, a very pleasing nobility of aspect: serene, +thoughtful, healthy, benign. Titian's courtesans are +our archetypes of dignified womanhood; we might +fancy Portia or Isabella with such calm, florid beauty, +so wholly unmeretricious and uncankered. The +humanists and priests who lie outstretched on the +acanthus-leaved and flower-garlanded sarcophagi by +Desiderio and Rossellino are the very flowers of +refined and gentle men of study; the youths in Botticelli's +"Adoration of The Magi," for instance, are the +ideal of Boiardo's chivalry, Rinaldos and Orlandos +every one; the corseleted generals of the Renaissance, +so calm and stern and frank, the Bartolomeo Colleoni +of Verrocchio, the Gattamelata by Giorgione (or +Giorgione's pupil), look fit to take up the banner of +the crusade: that Gattamelata in the Uffizi gallery +especially looks like a sort of military Milton: give +him a pair of wings and he becomes at once Signorelli's +archangel, clothed in heavenly steel and un- +sheathing the flaming sword of God. Compare with +these types Holbein's courtiers of Henry VIII.; what +scrofulous hogs! Compare Sanchez Coello's Philip +II. and Don Carlos; what monomaniacs. Compare +even Dürer's magnificent head of Willibald Pirkheimer: +how the swine nature is blended with the thinker. +And the swine will be subdued, the thinker will +triumph. Why? Just because there is a contest— +because the thinker-Willibald is conscious of the +swine-Willibald. In this coarse, brutal, deeply stained +Germany of the time of Luther, affording Dürer and +Holbein, alas! how many besotten and bestial types, +there will arise a great conflict: the obscene leering +Death—Death-in-Life as he really is—will skulk +everywhere, even as in the prints of the day, hideous +and powerful, trying, with hog's snout, to drive Christ +Himself out of limbo; but he is known, seen, dreaded. +The armed knight of Dürer turns away from his +grimacings, and urges on his steel-covered horse. He +visits even the best, even Luther in the Wartburg; +but the good men open their Bibles, cry "Vade retro!" +and throw their inkstands at him, showing themselves +terrified and ruffled after the combat. And these +Germans of Luther's are disgustingly fond of blood +and horrors: they like to see the blood spirt from the +decapitated trunk, to watch its last contortions; they +hammer with a will (in Dürer's "Passion") the nails +of the cross, they peel off strips of skin in the flagellation. +But then they can master all that; they can be +pure, charitable; they have gentleness for the hare +and the rabbit, like Luther; they kneel piously before +the cross-bearing stag, like Saint Hubert. Not so the +Italians. They rarely or never paint horrors, or death, +or abominations. Their flagellated Christ, their arrow- +riddled Sebastian, never writhe or howl with pain; +indeed, they suffer none. Judith, in Mantegna's print, +puts the head of Holophernes into her bag with the +serenity of a muse; and the head is quite clean, +without loathsome drippings or torn depending strings +of muscle; unconvulsed, a sort of plaster cast. The +tragedy of Christ, the tragedy of Judith; the physical +agency shadowing the moral agony; the awfulness of +victim and criminal—the whole tragic meaning was +unknown to the light and cheerful contemporaries of +Ariosto, the cold and cynical contemporaries of +Machiavelli.</p> + +<p>The tragic passion and imagination which, in the +noble and grotesque immaturity of the Middle Ages, +had murmured confusedly in the popular legends +which gave to Ezzelin the Fiend as a father, and +Death and Sin as adversaries at dice; which had +stammered awkwardly but grandly in the school +Latin of Mussato's tragedy of "Eccerinis;" which had +wept and stormed and imprecated and laughed for +horror in the infinite tragedy—pathetic, grand, and +grotesque, like all great tragedy—of Dante; this +tragic passion and imagination, this sense of the +horrible and the terrible, had been forfeited by the +Italy of the Renaissance, lost with its sense of right +and wrong. The Italian Renaissance, supreme in the +arts which require a subtle and strong perception of +the excellence of mere lines and colours and lights +and shadows, which demand unflinching judgment of +material qualities; was condemned to inferiority in the +art which requires subtle and strong perception of the +excellence of human emotion and action; in the art +which demands unflinching judgment of moral motives. +The tragic spirit is the offspring of the conscience of +a people. The sense of the imaginative grandeur of +evil may perhaps be a forerunner of demoralization; +but such a sense of wonder and awe, such an imaginative +fascination of the grandly, superhumanly wicked +such a necessity to magnify a villain into a demon +with archangelic splendour of power of evil, can exist +only in minds pure and strong, braced up to virtue, +virgin of evil, with a certain childlike power of wonder; +minds to whom it appears that to be wicked requires +a powerful rebellion; minds accustomed to nature and +nature's plainness, to whom the unnatural can be no +subject of sophistication and cynicism, but only of +wonder. While, in Italy, Giraldi Cinthio prattles off +to a gay party of ladies and gentlemen stories of +murder and lust as frightful as those of "Titus' Andronicus," +of "Giovanni and Annabella," and of the +"Revenger's Tragedy," in the intelligent, bantering +tone in which he tells his Decameronian tales; +in England, Marston, in his superb prologue to the +second part of "Antonio and Mellida," doubts +whether all his audience can rise to the conception of +the terrible passions he wishes to display:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">If any spirit breathes within this round</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Uncapable of weighty passion,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Who winks and shuts his apprehension up</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">From common sense of what men were and are,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Who would not know what men must be: let such</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Hurry amain from our black visaged shows;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">We shall affright their eyes.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The great criminals of Italy were unconscious of being +criminals; the nation was unconscious of being sinful. +Bembo's sonnets were the fit reading for Lucrezia +Borgia; pastorals by Guarini the dramatic amusements +of Rannuccio Farnesi; if Vittoria Accoramboni and +Francesco Cenci read anything besides their prayer- +book or ribald novels, it was some sugary "Aminta" or +"Pastor Fido:" their own tragedies by Webster and +Shelley they could never have understood.</p> + +<p>And thus the Italians of the Renaissance walked +placidly through the evil which surrounded them; for +them, artists and poets, the sky was always blue and +the sun always bright, and their art and their poetry +were serene. But the Englishmen of the sixteenth +century were astonished and fascinated by the evil of +Italy: the dark pools of horror, the dabs of infamy +which had met them ever and anon in the brilliant +southern cities, haunted them like nightmare, bespattered +for them the clear blue sky, and danced, +black and horrible spots, before the face of the sun. +The remembrance of Italian wickedness weighed on +them like an incubus, clung to them with a frightful +fascination. While the foulest criminals of Italy discussed +the platonic vapidnesses of Bembo's sonnets, +and wept at the sweet and languid lamentations of +Guarini's shepherds and nymphs; the strong Englishmen +of the time of Shakespeare, the men whose +children were to unsheathe under Cromwell the sword +of righteousness, listened awe-stricken and fascinated +with horror to the gloomy and convulsed, the grand +and frightful plays of Webster and of Tourneur. And +the sin of the Renaissance, which the art of Italy could +neither pourtray nor perceive; appeared on the stage +decked in superb and awful garb by the tragic imagination +of Elizabethan England.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="THE_OUTDOOR_POETRY" id="THE_OUTDOOR_POETRY"></a>THE OUTDOOR POETRY.</h2> + + +<p>The thought of winter is bleak and barren to our +mind; the late year is chary of æsthetic as of all +other food. In the country it does not bring ugliness; +but it terribly reduces and simplifies things, +depriving them of two-thirds of their beauty. In +sweeping away the last yellow leaves, the last crimson +clouds, and in bleaching the last green grass, it +effaces a whole wealth of colour. It deprives us still +more by actually diminishing the number of forms: +for what summer had left rich, various, complex, +winter reduces to blank uniformity. There is a whole +world of lovely things, shapes and tints, effects of +light, colour, and perspective in a wood, as long as it +is capriciously divided into a thousand nooks and +crannies by projecting boughs, bushes, hedges, and +hanging leaves; and this winter clears away and +reduces to a Haussmanized simplicity of plan. There +is a smaller world, yet one quite big enough for a sum- +mer's day, in any hay field, among the barren oats, the +moon-daisies, the seeded grasses, the sorrel, the buttercups, +all making at a distance a wonderful blent effect +of luminous brown and lilac and russet foamed with +white; and forming, when you look close into it, +an unlimited forest of delicately separate stems and +bloom and seed; every plant detaching itself daintily +from an undefinable background of things like itself. +This winter turns into a rusty brown and green expanse, +or into a bog, or a field of frozen upturned +clods. The very trees, stripped of their leaves, look +as if prepared for diagrams of the abstraction tree. +Everything, in short, is reduced most philosophically +to its absolutely ultimate elements; and beauty is got +rid of almost as completely as by a metaphysical +definition. This æsthetic barrenness of winter is most +of all felt in southern climates, to which it brings +none of the harsh glitter and glamour of snow and +ice; but leaves the frozen earth and leafless trees +merely bare, without the crisp sheen of snow, the glint +and glimmer of frost and icicles, forming for the +denuded rigging of branches a fantastic system of +ropes and folded sails. In the South, therefore, unless +you go where winter never comes, and autumn merely +merges into a lengthened spring, winter is more than +ever negative, dreary, barren to our fancy. Yet even +this southern winter gives one things, very lovely +things: things which one scarcely notices perhaps, +yet which would baffle the most skilled painter to +imitate, the most skilled poet to describe. Thus, +for instance, there is a peculiar kind of morning by no +means uncommon in Tuscany in what is completely +winter, not a remnant of autumn or a beginning of +spring. It is cold, but windless; the sky full of sun, the +earth full of mist. Sun and mist uniting into a pale +luminousness in which all things lose body, become +mere outline; bodiless hills taking shape where they +touch the sky with their curve; clear line of irregular +houses, of projecting ilex roundings and pointed +cypresses marking the separation between hill and +sky, the one scarcely more solid, corporeal than the +other; the hill almost as blue as the sky, the sky +almost as vaporous as the hill; the tangible often +more ghostlike than the intangible. But the sun +has smitten the higher hills, and the vapours have +partially rolled down, in a scarcely visible fold, to +their feet; and the high hill, not yet rock or earth, +swells up into the sky as something real, but fluid and +of infinite elasticity. All in front the plain is white +with mist; or pinkish grey with the unseen agglomeration +of bare tree boughs and trunks, of sere field; +till, nearer us, the trees become more visible, the +short vinebearing elms in the fields, interlacing their +branches compressed by distance, the clumps of poplars, +so scant and far between from nearly, so serried +and compact from afar; and between them an occasional +flush, a tawny vapour of the orange twigged +osiers; and then, still nearer, the expanse of sere +field, of mottled, crushed-together, yellowed grass and +grey brown leaves; things of the summer which +winter is burying to make room for spring. Along +the reaches of the river the clumps of leafless poplars +are grey against the pale, palest blue sky; grey but +with a warmth of delicate brown, almost of rosiness. +Grey also the shingle in the river bed; the river itself +either (if after rain) pale brown, streaked with pale +blue sky reflections; or (after a drought), low, grey, +luminous throughout its surface, you might think, +were it not that the metallic sheen, the vacillating +sparkles of where the sun, smiting down, frets it into +a shifting mass of scintillating facets, gives you the +impression that this other luminousness of silvery +water must be dull and dead. And, looking up the +river, it gradually disappears, its place marked only, +against the all-pervading pale blue haze, by the +brownish grey spectre of the furthest poplar clumps. +This, I have said, is an effect which winter produces, +nay, even a southern winter, with those comparatively +few and slight elements at its disposal. +We see it, notice it, and enjoy its delicate loveliness; +but while so doing we do not think, or we forget, that +the habit of noticing, nay, the power of perceiving +such effects as this, is one of those habits and powers +which we possess, so to speak, only since yesterday. +The possibility of reproducing in painting effects like +this one; or, more truthfully, the wish to reproduce +them, is scarcely as old as our own century; it is, +perhaps, the latest born of all our artistic wishes and +possibilities. But the possibility of any visible effect +being perceived and reproduced by the painter, usually +precedes—at least where any kind of pictorial art +already exists—the perception of such effects by those +who are not painters, and the attempt to reproduce +them by means of words. We do not care to admit +that our grandfathers were too unlike ourselves, lest +ourselves should be found too unlike our grand- +children. We hold to the metaphysic fiction of man +having always been the same, and only his circumstances +having changed; not admitting that the very +change of circumstances implies something new in the +man who altered them; and similarly we shrink from +the thought of the many things which we used never +to notice, and which it has required a class of men +endowed with special powers of vision to find out, +copy, and teach us to see and appreciate. Yet there +is scarcely one of us who has not a debt towards some +painter or writer for first directing his attention to +objects or effects which may have abounded around +him, but unnoticed or confused with others. The +painters, as I have said, the men who see more keenly +and who study what they have seen, naturally come +first; nor does the poet usually describe what his +contemporary painter attempts not to paint. An exception +might, perhaps, require to be made for Dante, +who would seem to have seen and described many +things left quite untouched by Giotto, and even by +Raphael; but in estimating Dante we must be careful +to distinguish the few touches which really belong to +him, from the great mass of colour and detail which we +have unconsciously added thereto, borrowing from our +own experience and from innumerable pictures and +poems which, at the moment, we may not in the least +remember; and having done so, we shall be led to +believe that those words which suggest to us so clear +and coloured a vision of scenes often complex and uncommon, +presented to his own mind only a comparatively +simple and incomplete idea: the atmospheric +effects, requiring a more modern painter than Turner, +which we read between the lines of the "Inferno" and +the "Purgatorio," most probably existed as little for +Dante as they did for Giotto; the poet seeing and +describing in reality only salient forms of earth and +rock, monotonous in tint and deficient in air, like those +in the backgrounds of mediæval Tuscan frescoes and +panels. Be this as it may, the fact grows daily on me +that men have not at all times seen in the same degree +the nature which has always equally surrounded them; +and that during some periods they have, for explicable +reasons, seen less not only than their successors, but +also than their predecessors; and seen that little in a +manner conventional in proportion to its monotony. +There are things about which certain historic epochs +are strangely silent; so much so, indeed, that the +breaking of the silence impresses us almost as the +more than human breaking of a spell; and that silence +Is the result of a grievous wrong, of a moral disease +which half closes the eyes of the fancy, or of a moral +poison which presents to those sorely aching eyes +only a glimmer amid darkness. And it is as the most +singular instance of such conditions that I should wish +to study, in themselves, their causes and effects, the +great differences existing between the ancients and +ourselves on the one hand, and the men of the genuine +Middle Ages on the other, in the degree of interest +taken respectively by each in external nature, the +seasons and that rural life which seems to bring us +into closest contact with them both.</p> + +<p>There is, of course, a considerable difference between +the manner in which the country, its aspects and occupations, +are treated by the poets of Antiquity and +by those of our own day; in the mode of enjoying +them of an ancient who had read Theocritus and +Virgil and Tibullus, and a modern whose mind is unconsciously +full of the influence of Wordsworth or +Shelley or Ruskin. But it is a mere difference of mode; +and is not greater, I think, than the difference between +the descriptions in the "Allegro," and the descriptions +in "Men and Women;" than the difference between +the love of our Elizabethans for the minuter details of +the country, the flowers by the stream, the birds in the +bushes, the ferrets, frogs, lizards, and similar small +creatures; and the pleasure of our own contemporaries +in the larger, more shifting, and perplexing forms and +colours of cloud, sunlight, earth, and rock. The description +of effects such as these latter ones, nay, the +attention and appreciation given to them, are things +of our own century, even as is the power and desire of +painting them. Landscape, in the sense of our artists +of to-day, is a very recent thing; so recent that even +in the works of Turner, who was perhaps the earliest +landscape painter in the modern sense, we are forced +to separate from the real rendering of real effects, a +great deal in which the tints of sky and sea are +arranged and distributed as a mere vast conventional +piece of decoration. Nor could it be otherwise. For, +in poetry as in painting, landscape could become a +separate and substantive art only when the interest in +the mere ins and outs of human adventure, in the +mere structure and movement of human limbs, had +considerably diminished. There is room, in epic or +drama, only for such little scraps of description as will +make clearer, without checking, the human action; as +there is place, in a fresco of a miracle, or a little picture +of carousing and singing bacchantes and Venetian +dandies, only for such little bits of laurel grove, or dim +plain, or blue alpine crags, as can be introduced in +the gaps between head and head, or figure and figure. +Thus, therefore, a great difference must exist +between what would be felt and written about the +country and the seasons by an ancient, by a man of +the sixteenth century, or by a contemporary of our +own: a difference, however, solely of mode; for we +feel sure that of the three men each would find something +to delight himself and wherewith to delight +others among the elm-bounded English meadows, the +fiat cornfields of central France, the vine and olive +yards of Italy—wherever, in short, he might find himself +face to face and, so to speak, hand in hand with +Nature. But about the man of the Middle Ages +(unless, perhaps, in Italy, where the whole Middle +Ages were merely an earlier Renaissance) we could +have no such assurance; nay, we might be persuaded +that, however great his genius, be he even a Gottfried +von Strassburg, or a Walther von der Vogelweide, or +the unknown Frenchman who has left us "Aucassin +et Nicolette," he would bring back impressions only +of two things, authorized and consecrated by the +poetic routine of his contemporaries—of spring and +of the woods.</p> + +<p>There is nothing more characteristic of mediæval +poetry than this limitation. Of autumn, of winter; +of the standing corn, the ripening fruit of summer; of +all these things so dear to the ancients and to all men +of modern times, the Middle Ages seem to know +nothing. The autumn harvests, the mists and wondrous +autumnal transfiguration of the humblest tree, +or bracken, or bush; the white and glittering splendour +of winter, and its cosy life by hearth or stove; the +drowsiness of summer, its suddenly inspired wish for +shade and dew and water, all this left them stolid. +To move them was required the feeling of spring, the +strongest, most complete and stirring impression which, +in our temperate climates, can be given by Nature. +The whole pleasurableness of warm air, clear moist +sky, the surprise of the shimmer of pale green, of the +yellowing blossom on tree tops, the first flicker of +faint shadow where all has been uniform, colourless, +shadeless; the replacing of the long silence by the +endless twitter and trill of birds, endless in its way as +is the sea, twitter and trill on every side, depths and +depths of it, of every degree of distance and faintness, +a sea of bird song; and along with this the sense of +infinite renovation to all the earth and to man's own +heart. Of all Nature's effects this one alone goes +sparkling to the head; and it alone finds a response +in mediæval poetry. Spring, spring, endless spring— +for three long centuries throughout the world a dreary +green monotony of spring all over France, Provence, +Italy, Spain, Germany, England; spring, spring, +nothing but spring even in the mysterious countries +governed by the Grail King, by the Fairy Morgana, +by Queen Proserpine, by Prester John; nay, in the +new Jerusalem, in the kingdom of Heaven itself, +nothing but spring; till one longs for a bare twig, for +a yellow leaf, for a frozen gutter, as for a draught of +water in the desert. The green fields and meadows +enamelled with painted flowers, how one detests +them! how one would rejoice to see them well +sprinkled with frost or burnt up to brown in the dry +days! the birds, the birds which warble through every +sonnet, canzone, sirventes, glosa, dance lay, roundelay, +virelay, rondel, ballade, and whatsoever else it may +be called,—how one wishes them silent for ever, or +their twitter, the tarantarantandei of the eternal +German nightingale especially, drowned by a good +howling wind J After any persistent study of mediæval +poetry, one's feeling towards spring is just similar +to that of the morbid creature in Schubert's "Müllerin," +who would not stir from home for the dreadful, +dreadful greenness, which he would fain bleach with +tears, all around:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ich möchte ziehn in die Welt hinaus, hinaus in die weite<br /> +Welt,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Wenn's nur so grün, so grün nicht wär da draussen in<br /> +Wald und Feld.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Moreover this mediæval spring is the spring neither +of the shepherd, nor of the farmer, nor of any man to +whom spring brings work and anxiety and hope of +gain; it is a mere vague spring of gentle-folk, or at +all events of well-to-do burgesses, taking their pleasure +on the lawns of castle parks, or the green holiday +places close to the city, much as we see them in the +first part of "Faust;" a sweet but monotonous charm +of grass, beneath green lime tree, or in the South the +elm or plane; under which are seated the poet and the +fiddler, playing and singing for the young women, +their hair woven with chaplets of fresh flowers, +dancing upon the sward. And poet after poet, Provençal, +Italian, and German, Nithart and Ulrich, and +even the austere singer of the Holy Grail, Wolfram, +pouring out verse after verse of the songs in praise +of spring, which they make even as girls wind their +garlands: songs of quaint and graceful ever-changing +rythm, now slowly circling, now bounding along, now +stamping out the measure like the feet of the dancers, +now winding and turning as wind and twine their +arms in the long-linked mazes; while the few and +ever-repeated ideas, the old, stale platitudes of praise +of woman, love pains, joys of dancing, pleasure of +spring (spring, always spring, eternal, everlasting +spring) seem languidly to follow the life and movement +of the mere metre. Poets, these German, Provençal, +French, and early Italian lyrists, essentially (if +we venture to speak heresy) not of ideas or emotions, +but of metre, of rythm and rhyme; with just the +minimum of necessary thought, perpetually presented +afresh just as the words, often and often repeated and +broken up and new combined, of a piece of music— +poetry which is in truth a sort of music, dance or +dirge or hymn music as the case may be, more than +anything else.</p> + +<p>As it is in mediæval poetry with the seasons, so it +is likewise with the country and its occupations: as +there is only spring, so there is only the forest. Of +the forest, mediæval poetry has indeed much to say; +more perhaps, and more familiar with its pleasures, +than Antiquity. There is the memorable forest where +the heroes of the Nibelungen go to hunt, followed +by their waggons of provisions and wine; where +Siegfried overpowers the bear, and returns to his +laughing comrades with the huge thing chained to his +saddle; where, in that clear space which we see so +distinctly, a lawn on to which the blue black firs are +encroaching, Siegfried stoops to drink of the spring +beneath the lime tree, and Hagen drives his boar- +spear straight through the Nibelung's back. There is +the thick wood, all a golden haze through the young +green, and with an atmosphere of birds' song, where +King Mark discovers Tristram and Iseult in the cave, +the deceitful sword between them, as Gottfried von +Strassburg relates with wonderful luscious charm. +The forest, also, more bleak and austere, where the +four outlawed sons of Aymon live upon roots and wild +animals, where they build their castle by the Meuse. +Further, and most lovely of all, the forest in which +Nicolette makes herself a hut of branches, bracken, +and flowers, through which the stars peep down on +her whiteness as she dreams of her Lord Aucassin. +The forest where Huon meets Oberon; and Guy de +Lusignan, the good snake-lady; and Parzival finds on +the snow the feathers and the drops of blood which +throw him into his long day-dream; and Owen discovers +the tomb of Merlin; the forest, in short, which +extends its interminable glades and serried masses of +trunks and arches of green from one end to the other +of mediæval poetry. It is very beautiful, this forest +of the Middle Ages; but it is monotonous, melancholy; +and has a terrible eeriness in its endlessness. For +there is nothing else. There are no meadows where +the cows lie lazily, no fields where the red and purple +kerchiefs of the reapers overtop the high corn; no +orchards, no hayfields; nothing like those hill slopes +where the wild herbs encroach upon the vines, and the +goats of Corydon and Damoetas require to be kept +from mischief; where, a little lower down, the Athenian +shopkeeper of Aristophanes goes daily to look +whether yesterday's hard figs may not have ripened, +or the vine wreaths pruned last week grown too lushly. +Nor anything of the sort of those Umbrian meadows, +where Virgil himself will stop and watch the white +bullocks splashing slowly into the shallow, sedgy +Clitumnus; still less like those hamlets in the cornfields +through which Propertius would stroll, following +the jolting osier waggon, or the procession with +garlands and lights to Pales or to the ochre-stained +garden god. Nothing of all this: there are no cultivated +spots in mediæval poetry; the city only, and +the castle, and the endless, all-encompassing forest +And to this narrowness of mediæval notions of outdoor +life, inherited together with mediæval subjects +by the poets even of the sixteenth century, must be +referred the curious difference existing between the romance +poets of antiquity, like Homer in the Odyssey, +and the romance poets—Boiardo, Ariosto, Tasso, +Spenser, Camoens—of modern times, in the matter of +—how shall I express it?—the ideal life, the fortunate +realms, the "Kennaqwhere." In Homer, in all the +ancients, the ideal country is merely a more delightful +reality; and its inhabitants happier everyday men and +women; in the poetry sprung from the Middle Ages it +is always a fairy-land constructed by mechanicians and +architects. For, as we have seen, the Middle Ages +could bequeath to the sixteenth century no ideal of +peaceful outdoor enjoyment. Hence, in the poetry +of the sixteenth century, still permeated by mediæval +traditions, an appalling artificiality of delightfulness. +Fallerina, Alcina, Armida, Acrasia, all imitated from +the original Calypso, are not strong and splendid +god-women, living among the fields and orchards, +but dainty ladies hidden in elaborate gardens, all +bedizened with fashionable architecture: regular +palaces, pleasaunces, with uncomfortable edifices, +artificial waterfalls, labyrinths, rare and monstrous +plants, parrots, apes, giraffes; childish splendours of +gardening and engineering and menageries, which we +meet already in "Ogier the Dane" and "Huon of Bordeaux," +and which later poets epitomized out of the +endless descriptions of Colonna's "Hypnerotomachia +Poliphili," the still more frightful inventories of the +Amadis romances. They are, each of them, a kind +of anticipated Marly, Versailles, Prince Elector's Friedrichsruhe +or Nymphenburg, with clipped cypresses +and yews, doubtless, and (O Pales and Pan!) flowerbeds +filled with coloured plaster and spas, and cascades +spirting out (thanks to fifty invisible pumps) +under your feet and over your head. All the +vineyards and cornfields have been swept away to +make these solemn terraces and water-works; all the +cottages which, with their little wooden shrine, their +humble enclosure of sunflowers and rosemary and fruit +trees, their buzzing hives and barking dogs, were loved +and sung even by town rakes like Catullus and smart +coffeehouse wits like Horace; all these have been swept +away to be replaced by the carefully constructed +(? wire) bowers, the aviaries, the porticoes, the frightful +circular edifice (tondo è il ricco edificio), a masterpiece +of Palladian stucco work, in which Armida and Rinaldo, +Acrasia and her Knight, drearily disport themselves. +What has become of Calypso's island? of the orchards +of Alcinous? What would the noble knights and ladies +of Ariosto and Spenser think of them? What would +they say, these romantic, dainty creatures, were they +to meet Nausicaa with the washed linen piled on her +waggon? Alas! they would take her for a laundress. +For it is the terrible aristocratic idleness of the Middle +Ages, their dreary delicacy, which hampers Boiardo, +Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, even in the midst of their +most unblushing plagiarisms from Antiquity: their +heroes and heroines have been brought up, surrounded +by equerries and duennas, elegant, useless things, or +at best (the knights at least) good only for aristocratic +warfare. Plough or prune! defile the knightly hands! +wash or cook, ply the loom like Nausicaa, Calypso, or +Penelope! The mere thought sends them very nearly +into a faint. No: the ladies of mediæval romance +must sit quiet, idle; at most they may sing to the +lute; and if they work with their hands, it must be +some dreary, strictly useless, piece of fancy work; they +are hot-house plants, all these dainty folk. +Had they no eyes, then, these poets of the Middle +Ages, that they could see, among all the things of +Nature, only those few which had been seen by their +predecessors? At first one feels tempted to think so, +till the recollection of many vivid touches in spring +and forest descriptions persuades one that, enormous +as was the sway of tradition among these men, they +were not all of them, nor always, repeating mere conventional +platitudes. This singular limitation in the +mediæval perceptions of Nature—a limitation so im- +portant as almost to make it appear as if the Middle +Ages had not perceived Nature at all—is most frequently +attributed to the prevalence of asceticism, +which, according to some critics, made all mediæval +men into so many repetitions of Bernard of Clairvaux, +of whom it is written that, being asked his opinion of +Lake Leman, he answered with surprise that, during +his journey from Geneva to the Rhone Valley, he had +remarked no lake whatever, so absorbed had he been +in spiritual meditations. But the predominance of +asceticism has been grossly exaggerated. It was a +state of moral tension which could not exist uninterruptedly, +and could exist only in the classes for whom +poetry was not written. The mischief done by asceticism +was the warping of the moral nature of men, not +of their æsthetic feelings; it had no influence upon +the vast numbers, the men and women who relished +the profane and obscene fleshliness and buffoonery of +stage plays and fabliaux, and those who favoured the +delicate and exquisite immoralities of Courtly poetry. +Indeed, the presence of whole classes of writings, of +which such things as Boccaccio's Tales, "The Wife of +Bath," and Villon's "Ballades," on the one hand, and +the songs of the troubadours, the poem of Gottfried, +and the romance or rather novel of "Flamenca," are +respectively but the most conspicuous examples, ought +to prove only too clearly that the Middle Ages, for all +their asceticism, were both as gross and as æsthetic in +sensualism as antiquity had been before them. We +must, therefore, seek elsewhere than in asceticism, +necessarily limited, and excluding the poetry-reading +public, for an explanation of this peculiarity of mediæval +poetry. And we shall find it, I think, in that which +during the Middle Ages could, because it was an all- +regulating social condition, really create universal +habits of thought and feeling, namely, feudalism. A +moral condition like asceticism must leave unbiassed +all such minds as are incapable of feeling it; but a +social institution like feudalism walls in the life of +every individual, and forces his intellectual movements +into given paths; nor is there any escape, excepting +in places where, as in Italy and in the free towns of +the North, the feudal conditions are wholly or partially +unknown. To feudalism, therefore, would I ascribe +this, which appears at first so purely æsthetic, as +opposed to social, a characteristic of the Middle Ages. +Ever since Schiller, in his "Gods of Greece," spoke for +the first time of undivinized Nature [die entgötterte +Natur], it has been the fashion among certain critics +to fall foul of Christianity for having robbed the fields +and woods of their gods, and reduced to mere manured +clods the things which had been held sacred by antiquity. +Desecrated in those long mediæval centuries +Nature may truly have been, but not by the holy +water of Christian priests. Desecrated because out of +the fields and meadows was driven a divinity greater +than Pales or Vertumnus or mighty Pan, the divinity +called Man. For in the terrible times when civilization +was at its lowest, the things of the world had been +newly allotted; and by this new allotment, man—the +man who thinks and loves and hopes and strives, man +who fights and sings—was shut out from the fields +and meadows, forbidden the labour, nay, almost the +sight, of the earth; and to the tending of kine, and +sowing of crops, to all those occupations which antiquity +had associated with piety and righteousness, +had deemed worthy of the gods themselves, was +assigned, or rather condemned, a creature whom +every advancing year untaught to think or love, or +hope, or fight, or strive; but taught most utterly to +suffer and to despair. For a man it is difficult to call +him, this mediæval serf, this lump of earth detached +from the field and wrought into a semblance of manhood, +merely that the soil of which it is part should +be delved and sown, and then manured with its carcass +or its blood; nor as a man did the Middle Ages conceive +it. The serf was not even allowed human progenitors: +his foul breed had originated in an obscene +miracle; his stupidity and ferocity were as those of +the beasts; his cunning was demoniac; he was born +under God's curse; no words could paint his wickedness, +no persecutions could exceed his deserts; the +whole world turned pale at his crime, for he it was, he +and not any human creature, who had nailed Christ +upon the cross. Like the hunger and sores of a fox +or a wolf, his hunger and his sores are forgotten, never +noticed. Were it not that legal and ecclesiastical +narratives of trials (not of feudal lords for crushing +and contaminating their peasants, but of peasants for +spitting out and trampling on the consecrated wafer) +give us a large amount of pedantically stated detail; +tell us how misery begat vice, and filth and starvation +united families in complicated meshes of incest, taught +them depopulation as a virtue and a necessity; and +how the despair of any joy in nature, of any mercy +from God, hounded men and women into the unspeakable +orgies, the obscene parodies, of devil worship; +were it not for these horrible shreds of judicial evidence +(as of tatters of clothes or blood-clotted hairs on the +shoes of a murderer) we should know little or nothing +of the life of the men and women who, in mediæval +France and Germany, did the work which had been +taught by Hesiod and Virgil. About all these +tragedies the literature of the Middle Ages, ready to +show us town vice and town horror, dens of prostitution +and creaking, overweighted gibbets, as in Villon's +poems, utters not a word. All that we can hear is +the many-throated yell of mediæval poets, noble and +plebeian, French, Proven gal, and German, against the +brutishness, the cunning, the cruelty, the hideousness, +the heresy of the serf, whose name becomes synonymous +with every baseness; which, in mock grammatical +style, is declined into every epithet of wickedness; +whose punishment is prayed for from the God whom +he outrages by his very existence; a hideous clamour +of indecent jibe, of brutal vituperation, of senseless +accusation, of every form of words which furious hatred +can assume, whose echoes reached even countries like +Tuscany, where serfdom was well nigh unknown, and +have reached even to us in the scraps of epigram still +bandied about by the townsfolk against the peasants, +nay, by the peasants against themselves.<a name="FNanchor_1_2" id="FNanchor_1_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_2" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> A monstrous</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_2" id="Footnote_1_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_2"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The reader may oppose to my views the existence of the +—class of poems, French, Latin, and German, of which the Provençal + +Pastourela is the original type, and which represent the +courting, by the poet, who is, of course, a knight, of a beautiful +country-girl, who is shown us as feeding her sheep or spinning +with her distaff. But these poems are, to the best of my knowledge, +all of a single pattern, and extremely insincere and artificial +in tone, that I feel inclined to class them with the pastorals +—Dresden china idylls by men who had never looked a live +peasant in the face—of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, +-as distant descendants from the pastoral poetry of antiquity, of +which the chivalric poets may have got some indirect notions +as they did of the antique epics. It is moreover extremely +rag doll, dressed up in shreds of many-coloured villainy +without a recognizable human feature, dragged in the +likely that these love poems, in which, successfully or unsuccess- +fully, the poet usually offers a bribe to the woman of low degree, +conceal beneath the conventional pastoral trappings the intrigues +of minnesingers and troubadours with women of the small +artizan or village proprietor class. The real peasant woman— +the female of the villain—could scarcely have been above the +notice of the noblemen's servants; and, in countries where the +seigneurial rights were in vigour, would scarcely have been +offered presents and fine words. As regards the innumerable +poems against the peasantry, I may refer the reader to an +extremely curious publication of "Carmina Medii Ævi," recently +made by Sig. Francesco Novati, and which contains, besides a +selection of specimens, a list of references on the subject of +poems "De Natura Rusticorum." One of the satirical declensions +runs as follows: +</p> + +<table summary="latin declension"><tr><td>Singulariter.</td> <td>Pluraliter.</td></tr> +<tr><td>Nom. Hic villanus. </td> <td>Nom. Hi maledicti.</td></tr> +<tr><td>Gen. Huius rustici.</td> <td>Gen. Horum tristium.</td></tr> +<tr><td>Dat. Huic tferfero (sic). </td> <td>Dat. His mendacibus.</td></tr> +<tr><td>Acc. Hunc furem.</td> <td>Acc. Hos nequissimos.</td></tr> +<tr><td>Voc. O latro. </td> <td>Voc. O pessimi.</td></tr> +<tr><td>Abl. Ab hoc depredatore.</td> <td>Abl. Ab his infidelibus.</td></tr></table> + +<p> +The accusation of heresy and of crucifying Christ is evidently +due to the devil-worship prevalent among the serfs, and is thus, +alluded to in a north Italian poem, probably borrowed from the +French: +</p> +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Christo fo da villan crucifiò,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">E stagom sempre in pioza, in vento, e in neve,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Perchè havom fato cosi gran peccà.</span><br /> +</p> +<p> +This feeling is exactly analogous to that existing nowadays in +semi-barbarous countries against the Jews. The idle hated the +industrious, and hated them all the more when their industry +brought them any profit.</p></div> + +<p>mud, pilloried with unspeakable ordure, paraded in +mock triumph like a King of Fools, and burnt in the +market-place like Antichrist, such is the image which +mediæval poetry has left us of the creature who was +once the pious rustic, the innocent god-beloved +husbandman, on whose threshold justice stopped a +while when she fled from the towns of Antiquity. +Yet not so; I can recall one, though only one, +occasion in which mediæval literature shows us the +serf. The place is surely the most unexpected, the +charming thirteenth century tale of "Aucassin et +Nicolette." In his beautiful essay upon that story, Mr. +Pater has deliberately omitted this episode, which is +indeed like a spot of blood-stained mud upon some +perfect tissue of silver flowers on silver ground. It is +a piece of cruellest realism, because quite quiet and +unforced, in the midst of a kind of fairy-land idyl of +almost childish love, the love of the beautiful son of +the lord of Beaucaire for a beautiful Saracen slave +girl. For, although Aucassin and Nicolette are often +separated, and always disconsolate—she in her wonderfully +frescoed vaulted room, he in his town prison— +there is always surrounding them a sort of fairy land +of trees and flowers, a constant song of birds; +although they wander through the woods and tear +their delicate skin, and catch their hair in brambles +and briars, we have always the sense of the daisies +bending beneath their tread, of the green leaves rustling +aside from their heads covered with hair— +"blond et menu crespelé." Their very hardships are +lovely, like the hut of flowering branches and grapes, +which Nicolette builds for herself, and through whose +fissures the moonlight shines and the little stars +twinkle: so much so, that when they weep, these two +beautiful and dainty creatures, we listen as if to singing, +and with no more sense of grief than at some +pathetic little snatch of melody. And in the midst +of this idyl of lovely things; in the midst of all these +delicate patternings, whose minuteness and faint tint +merge into one vague pleasurable impression; stands +out, unintentionally placed there by the author, little +aware of its terrible tragic realism, the episode which +I am going to translate.</p> + +<p>"Thus Aucassin wandered all day through the +forest, without hearing any news of his sweet love; +and when he saw that dusk was spreading, he began +bitterly to weep. As he was riding along an old road, +where weeds and grass grew thick and high, he +suddenly saw before him, in the middle of this road, a +man such as I am going to describe to you. He was +tall, ugly; nay, hideous quite marvellously. His face +was blacker than smoked meat, and so wide, that +there was a good palm's distance between his eyes; +his cheeks were huge, his nostrils also, with a very big +flat nose; thick lips as red as embers, and long teeth +yellow and smoke colour. He wore leathern shoes +and gaiters, kept up with string at the knees; on his +back was a parti-coloured coat. He was leaning +upon a stout bludgeon. Aucassin was startled and +fearful, and said:</p> + +<p>"'Fair brother ("beau frère"—a greeting corresponding +to the modern "bon homme") 'God be with +thee!'</p> +<p>"'God bless you!' answered the man.</p> +<p>"'What dost thou here?' asked Aucassin.</p> +<p>"'What is that to you?' answered the man.</p> +<p>"'I ask thee from no evil motive.'</p> +<p>"'Then tell me why,' said the man, 'you yourself +are weeping with such grief? Truly, were I a rich +man like you, nothing in the world should make me +weep.'</p> +<p>"'And how dost thou know me?'</p> +<p>"'I know you to be Aucassin, the son of the Count; +and if you will tell me why you weep, I will tell you +why I am here.'</p> +<p>"'I will tell thee willingly,' answered Aucassin. +'This morning I came to hunt in the forest; I had +a white leveret, the fairest in the world; I have lost +him—that is why I am weeping.'</p> +<p>"'What!' cried the man;' it is for a stinking hound +that you waste the tears of your body? Woe to +those who shall pity you; you, the richest man of +this country. If your father wanted fifteen or twenty +white leverets, he could get them. I am weeping and +mourning for more serious matters.'</p> +<p>"'And what are these?'</p> +<p>"'I will tell you. I was hired to a rich farmer to +drive his plough, dragged by four bullocks. Three +days ago, I lost a red bullock, the best of the four. I +left the plough, and sought the red bullock on all +sides, but could not find him. For three days I have +neither eaten nor drunk, and have been wandering +thus. I have been afraid of going to the town, +where they would put me in jail, because I have not +wherewith to pay for the bullock. All I possess are +the clothes on my back. I have a mother; and the +poor woman had nothing more valuable than me; +since she had only an old smock wherewith to cover +her poor old limbs. They have torn the smock off +her back, and now she has to lie on the straw. It is +about her that I am afflicted more than about myself, +because, as to me, I may get some money some day +or other, and as to the red bullock, he may be paid +for when he may. And I should never weep for such +a trifle as that. Ah! woe betide those who shall +make sorrow with you!'"</p> + +<p>Inserted merely to give occasion to show Aucassin's +good heart in paying the twenty sols for the man's red +bullock; perhaps for no reason at all, but certainly +with no idea of making the lover's misery seem +by comparison trifling—there are, nevertheless, few +things in literature more striking than the meeting in +the wood of the daintily nurtured boy, weeping over +the girl whom he loves with almost childish love of +the fancy; and of that ragged, tattered, hideous serf, +at whose very aspect the Bel Aucassin stops in awe +and terror. And the attitude is grand of this unfortunate +creature, who neither begs nor threatens, +scarcely complains, and not at all for himself; but +merely tells his sordid misfortune with calm resignation, +as if used to such everyday miseries, roused to +indignation only at the sight of the tears which the +fine-bred youth is shedding. We feel the dreadful +solemnity of the man's words; of the reproach thus +thrown by the long-suffering serf, accustomed to misfortunes +as the lean ox is to blows, to that delicate +thing weeping for his lady love, for the lady of his +fancy. It is the one occasion upon which that delicate +and fantastic mediæval love poetry, that fanciful, +wistful stripling King Love of the Middle Ages, in +which he keeps high court, and through which he rides +in triumphal procession; that King Love laughing +and fainting by turns with all his dapper artificiality +of woes; is confronted with the sordid reality, the +tragic impersonation of all the dumb miseries, the +lives and loves, crushed and defiled unnoticed, of the +peasantry of those days. Yes, while they sing— +Provençals, minnesingers, Sicilians, sing of their +earthly lady and of their paramour in heaven—the +hideous peasant, whose naked granny is starving on +the straw, looks on with dull and tearless eyes; crying +out to posterity, as the serf cries to Aucassin: +"Woe to those who shall sorrow at the tears of such +as these."</p> + + +<h3>II.</h3> + + +<p>But meanwhile, during those centuries which lie +between the dark ages and modern times, the Middle +Ages (inasmuch as they mean not a mere chronological +period, but a definite social and mental condition) +fortunately did not exist everywhere. Had they existed, +it is almost impossible to understand how they +would ever throughout Europe have come to an end; +for as the favourite proverb of Catharine of Siena has +it, one dead man cannot bury another dead man; and +the Middle Ages, after this tedious dying of the fifteenth +century, required to be shovelled into the tomb, +nay, rather, given the final stroke, by the Renaissance. +This that we foolishly call—giving a quite incorrect +notion of sudden and miraculous birth—the Renaissance, +and limit to the time of the revival of Greek humanities, +really existed, as I have repeatedly suggested +wherever, during the mediæval centuries, the civilization +of which the twelfth and thirteenth centuries +were big was not, by the pressure of feudalism and +monasticism, made to be abortive or stillborn. Low +as was Italy at the very close of the dark ages, and +much as she borrowed for a long while from the more +precocious northern nations, especially France and +Provence; Italy had, nevertheless, an enormous advantage +in the fact that her populations were not +divided into victor and vanquished, and that the old +Latin institutions of town and country were never +replaced, except in certain northern and southern +districts, by feudal arrangements. The very first +thing which strikes us in the obscure Italian commonwealths +of early times, is that in these resuscitated +relics of Roman or Etruscan towns there is no feeling +of feudal superiority and inferiority; that there is no +lord, and consequently no serf. Nor is this the case +merely within the city walls. The never sufficiently +appreciated difference between the Italian free burghs +and those of Germany, Flanders, and Provence, is +that the citizens depend only in the remotest and most +purely fictitious way upon any kind of suzerain; and +moreover that the country, instead of belonging to +feudal nobles, belong every day more and more completely +to the burghers. The peasant is not a serf, but +one of three things—a hired labourer, a possessor of +property, or a farmer, liable to no taxes, paying no +rent, and only sharing with the proprietor the produce +of the land. By this latter system, existing, then as +now, throughout Tuscany, the peasantry was an independent +and well-to-do class. The land owned by +one man (who, in the commonwealths, was usually a +shopkeeper or manufacturer in the town) was divided +into farms small enough to be cultivated—vines, +olives, corn, and fruit—by one family of peasants, +helped perhaps by a paid labourer. The thriftier and +less scrupulous peasants could, in good seasons, put +by sufficient profit from their share of the produce to +suffice after some years, and with the addition of what +the women might make by washing, spinning, weaving, +plaiting straw hats (an accomplishment greatly +insisted upon by Lorenzo dei Medici), and so forth, +to purchase some small strip of land of their own. +Hence, a class of farmers at once living on another +man's land and sharing its produce with him, and +cultivating and paying taxes upon land belonging to +themselves.</p> + +<p>Of these Tuscan peasants we get occasional glimpses +in the mediæval Italian novelists—a well-to-do set of +people, in constant communication with the town +where they sell their corn, oil, vegetables, and wine, +and easily getting confused with the lower class of +artizans with whom they doubtless largely intermarried. +These peasants whom we see in tidy kilted tunics and +leathern gaiters, driving their barrel-laden bullock +carts, or riding their mules up to the red city gates in +many a Florentine and Sienese painting of the fourteenth +and fifteenth centuries, were in many respects +better off than the small artizans of the city, heaped +up in squalid houses, and oppressed by the greater +and smaller guilds. Agnolo Pandolfini, teaching +thrift to his sons in Alberti's charming treatise on +"The Government of the Family," frequently groans +over the insolence, the astuteness of the peasantry; +and indeed seems to consider that it is impossible +to cope with them—a conclusion which would have +greatly astounded the bailiffs of the feudal proprietors +in the Two Sicilies and beyond the Alps. Indeed it +is impossible to conceive a stranger contrast than that +between the northern peasant, the starved and stunted +serf, whom Holbein drew, driving his lean horses +across the hard furrow, with compassionate Death +helping along the plough, and the Tuscan farmer, +as shown us by Lorenzo dei Medici—the young fellow +who, while not above minding his cows or hoeing up +his field, goes into Florence once a week, offers his +sweetheart presents of coral necklaces, silk staylaces, +and paint for her cheeks and eyelashes; who promises, +to please her, to have his hair frizzled (as only the +youths of the Renaissance knew how to be frizzled +and fuzzed) by the barber, and even dimly hints that +some day he may appear in silken jerkin and tight +hose, like a well-to-do burgess. No greater contrast +perhaps, unless indeed we should compare his sweetheart, +Lorenzo's beautiful Nenciozza, with her box +full of jewels, her Sunday garb of damask kirtle and +gold-worked bodice, her almost queenly ways towards +her adorers, with the wretched creature, not a woman, +but a mere female animal, cowering among her starving +children in her mud cottage, and looking forward, +in dull lethargy, after the morning full of outrages at +the castle, to the night, the night on the heath, lit with +mysterious flickers, to the horrible joys of the sacrifice +which the oppressed brings to the dethroned, the +serf to Satan; when, in short, we compare the peasant +woman described by Lorenzo with the female serf +resuscitated by the genius of Michelet; nay, more +poignant still, with that mother in the "Dance of Death," +seated on the mud flood of the broken-roofed, dismantled +hovel, stewing something on a fire of twigs, +and stretching out vain arms to her poor tattered baby- +boy, whom, with the good-humoured tripping step of +an old nurse, the kindly skeleton is leading away out +of this cruel world.</p> + +<p>Such were the conditions of the peasantry of the +great Italian commonwealths. They were, as much +as the northern serfs were the reverse, creatures +pleasant to deal with, pleasant to watch. +The upper classes, on the other hand, differed quite +as much from the upper classes of feudal countries. +They were, be it remembered, men of business, constantly +in contact with the working classes; Albizis, +Strozzis, Pandolfinis, Guinigis, Tolomeis, no matter +what their name, these men who built palaces and +churches which outdid the magnificence of northern +princes, and who might, at any moment, be sent +ambassadors from Florence, Lucca, or Siena, to the +French or English kings, to the Emperor or the Pope, +spent a large portion of their days at their office desk, +among the bales of their warehouses, behind the +counter of their shops; they wore the same dress, had +the same habits, spoke the same dialect, as the weavers +and dyers, the carriers and porters whom they employed, +and whose sons might, by talent and industry, +amass a fortune, build palaces, and go ambassadors to +kings in their turn. When, therefore, these merchant +nobles turned to the country for rest and relief from +their cares, it was not to the country as it existed for +the feudal noble of the North. Boar and stag hunts +had no attraction for quiet men of business; forests +stocked with wild beasts where vineyard and cornfield +might have extended, would have seemed to them the +very height of wastefulness, discomfort, and ugliness. +Pacific and businesslike, they merely transferred to +the country the habits of thought and of life which +had arisen in the city. Not for them any imitation +of the feudal castle, turreted and moated, cut up into +dark irregular rooms and yards, filled with noisy retainers +and stinking hounds. On some gentle hillside +a well-planned palace, its rooms spacious and lofty, +and sparely windowed for coolness in summer; with +a neat cloistered court in the centre, ventilating the +whole house, and affording a cool place, full of scent +of flowers and sound of fountains for the burning +afternoons; a belvedere tower also, on which to seek +a breeze on stifling nights, when the very stars seem +faint for heat, and the dim plumy heads of cypress +and poplar are motionless against the misty blue sky. +In front a broad terrace, whence to look down towards +the beloved city, a vague fog of roofs in the distance; +on the side and behind, elaborate garden walks walled +with high walls of box and oak and laurel, in which +stand statues in green niches; gardens with little +channels to bring water, even during droughts, to the +myrtles, the roses, the stocks and clove pinks, over +which bend with blossoms brilliant against the pale +blue sky the rose-flowered oleander, the scarlet- +flowered pomegranate; also aviaries and cages full of +odd and harmless creatures, ferrets, guinea pigs, porcupines, +squirrels, and monkeys; arbours where wife, +daughters, and daughters-in-law may sew and make +music; and neat lawns where the young men may +play at quoits, football, or swordsticks and bucklers; +and then, sweeping all round the house and gardens +and terraces an undulating expanse of field and +orchard, smoke-tinted with olive, bright green in spring +with budding crops, russet in autumn with sere vines; +and from which, in the burning noon, rises the incessant +sawing noise of the cicalas, and ever and anon +the high, nasal, melancholy chant of the peasant, lying +in the shade of barn door or fig tree till the sun shall +sink and he can return to his labour. If the house in +town, with its spacious store-rooms, its carved chapel, +and painted banqueting hall, large enough to hold +sons' children and brothers' wives and grandchildren, +and a whole host of poor relatives, whom the wise +father (as Pandolfini teaches) employs rather than +strangers for his clerks and overseers—if this town +house was the pride of the Italian burgess; the villa, +with its farms and orchards, was the real joy, the +holiday paradise of the over-worked man. To read in +the cool house, with cicala's buzz and fountain plash +all round, the Greek and Latin authors; to discuss +them with learned men; to watch the games of the +youths and the children, this was the reward for years +of labour and intelligence; but sweeter than all this +(how we feel it in Agnolo Pandolfini's speeches!) were +those occupations which the city could not give: the +buying and selling of plants, grain, and kine, the +meddling with new grafted trees, the mending of +spaliers, the straightening of fences, the going round +(with the self-importance and impatience of a cockney) +to see what flowers had opened, what fruit had ripened +over-night; to walk through the oliveyards, among +the vines; to pry into stable, pig-stye, and roosting- +place, taking up handfuls of drying grain, breaking +twigs of olives, to see how things were doing; and to +have long conversations with the peasants, shrewd +enough to affect earnest attention when the master +was pleased to vent his town-acquired knowledge of +agriculture and gardening. Sweet also, doubtless, for +younger folk, or such perhaps as were fonder of +teaching new lute tunes to the girls than of examining +into cabbages, and who read Dante and Boccaccio +more frequently than Cicero or Sallust; though sweet +perhaps only as a vague concomitant of their lazy +pleasures, to listen to those songs of the peasantry +rising from the fields below, while lying perhaps on +one's back in the shaded grass, watching the pigeons +whirring about the belvedere tower. Vaguely pleasant +this also, doubtless; but for a long while only vaguely. +For, during more than two centuries, the burgesses of +Italy were held enthralled by the Courtly poets of +other countries; listening to, and reading, at first, +only Provençals and Sicilians, or Italians, like Sordello, +pretending to be of Provence or Sicily; and +even later, enduring in their own poets, their own +Guittones, Cavalcantis, Cinos, Guinicellis, nay even in +Dante and Petrarch's lyrics, only the repetition (however +vivified by genius) of the old common-places of +Courtly love, and artificial spring, of the poetry of +feudal nations. But the time came when not only +Provençal and Sicilian, but even Tuscan, poetry was +neglected, when the revival of Greek and Latin letters +made it impossible to rewrite the threadbare mediæval +prettinesses, or even to write in earnest in the modern +tongue, so stiff and thin (as it seemed) and like some +grotesque painted saint, when compared with the +splendidly fleshed antique languages, turning and +twining in graceful or solemn involutions, as of a +Pyrrhic or a maidens' dance. And it was during this +period, from Petrarch to Politian, that, as philologists +have now proved beyond dispute, the once fashionable +chivalric romance, and the poetry of Provençal and +Sicilian school, cast off by the upper classes, was +gradually picked up by the lower and especially by +the rural classes. Vagabond ballad-singers and story- +tellers—creatures who wander from house to house, +mending broken pottery, collecting rags or selling +small pedlar's wares—were the old clothesmen who +carried about these bits of tarnished poetic finery. +The people of the town, constantly in presence of the +upper classes, and therefore sooner or later aware of +what was or was not in fashion, did not care long for +the sentimental daintiness of mediæval poetry; besides, +satire and scurrility are as inevitable in a town +as are dogs in gutters and cats on roofs; and the +townsfolk soon set their own buffoonish or satirical +ideas to whatever remained of the music of mediæval +poetry: already early in the fifteenth century the +sonnet had become for the Florentine artizans a mere +scurrilous epigram. It was different in the country. +The peasant, at least the Tuscan peasant, is eminently +idealistic and romantic in his literary tastes; it may +be that he has not the intellectual life required for any +utterances or forms of his own, and that he consequently +accepts poetry as a ready-made ornament, +something pretty and exotic, which is valued in proportion +to its prettiness and rarity. Be the reason +whatever it may, certain it is that nothing can be too +artificial or high-flown to please the Italian peasantry: +its tales are all of kings; princesses, fairies, knights, +winged horses, marvellous jewels, and so forth; its +songs are almost without exception about love, constancy, +moon, stars, flowers. Such things have not +been degraded by familiarity and parody as in the +town; they retain for the country folk the vague +charm (like that of music, automatic and independent +of thorough comprehension) of belonging to a +sphere of the marvellous; hence they are repeated and +repeated with almost religious servility, as any one +may observe who will listen to the stories and verses +told and sung even nowadays in the Tuscan country, +or who will glance over the splendid collections of +folklore made in the last twenty years. Such things, +must suffer alteration from people who can neither +read nor write, and who cannot be expected to +remember very clearly details which, in many cases, +must have for them only the vaguest meaning. The +stories split in process of telling and re-telling, and +are completed with bits of other stories; details are +forgotten and have to be replaced; the same happens +with poetry: songs easily get jumbled together, their +meaning is partially obliterated, and has to be restored +or, again, an attempt is made by bold men to adapt +some seemingly adaptable old song to a new occasion +an old love ditty seems fit to sing to a new sweetheart +—names, circumstances, and details require arranging +for this purpose; and hence more alterations. Now, +however much a peasant may enjoy the confused +splendours of Court life and of Courtly love, he cannot, +with the best will in the world, restore their details or +colouring if they happen to become obliterated. If +he chance to forget that when the princess first met +the wizard she was riding forth on a snow-white jennet +with a falcon on her glove, there is nothing to prevent +his describing her as walking through the meadow in +charge of a flock of geese; and similarly, should he +happen to forget that the Courtly lover compares the +skin of his mistress to ivory and her eyes to Cupid's +torches, he is quite capable of filling up the gap by +saying that the girl is as white as a turnip and as +bright-eyed as a ferret. As with details of description +and metaphors, so also with the emotional and social +parts of the business. The peasant has not been +brought up in the idea that the way to gain a woman's +affection is to stick her glove on a helmet and perform +deeds of prowess closely resembling those of Don +Quixote in the Sierra Morena; so he attempts to +ingratiate himself by offering her presents of strawberries, +figs, buttons, hooks-and-eyes, and similar +desirable things. Again, were the peasant to pay +attentions to a married woman, he would merely get +(what noble husbands were too well bred to dream of) +a sound horsewhipping, or perhaps even a sharp knife +thrust in his stomach; so that he takes good care to +address his love songs only to marriageable young +women. In this way, without any deliberate attempt +.at originality, the old Courtly poetry becomes, when +once removed to the country, thoroughly patched and +seamed with rustic ideas, feelings, and images; while +never ceasing to be, in its general stuff and shape, of +a kind such as only professional poets of the upper +classes can produce. The Sicilian lyrics collected by +Signor Pitre, still more the Tuscan poems of Tigri's +charming volume, are, therefore, a curious mixture of +highflown sentiment, dainty imagery, and most artistic +arrangements of metre and diction (especially in the +rispetto, where metrical involution is accompanied by +logical involution of the most refined mediæval sort), +with hopes and complaints such as only a farmer could +frame, with similes and descriptions such as only the +business of the field, vineyard, and dairy could suggest. +A mixture, but not a jumble. For as in this slow +process of assimilation and alteration only that was +remembered by the peasant which the peasant could +understand and sympathize with; and only that was +welded into the once Courtly poetry which was sufficiently +refined to please the people who delighted in +the exotic refinement—as, in short, everything came +about perfectly simply and unconsciously, there +resulted what in good sooth may be considered as a +perfectly substantive and independent form of art, +with beauties and refinements of its own. And, +indeed, it appears to me that one might say, without +too much paradox, that in these peasant songs only +does the poetry of minnesingers and troubadours, +become thoroughly enjoyable; that only when the +conventionality of feeling and imagery is corrected by +the freshness, the straightforwardness, nay, even the +grotesqueness of rural likings, dislikings, and comparisons, +can the dainty beauty of mediæval Courtly +poetry ever really satisfy our wishes. Comparing +together Tigri's collection of Tuscan folk poetry with +any similar anthology that might be made of middle- +high German and Provençal, and early Italian lyrics, +I feel that the adoption of Courtly mediæval poetry +by the Italian peasantry of the Renaissance can be +compared more significantly than at first seemed with +the adoption of a once fashionable garb by country +folk. The peasant pulled about this Courtly lyrism, +oppressively tight in its conventional fit and starched +with elaborate rhetorical embroideries; turned it inside +out, twisted a bit here, a bit there, ripped open seam +after seam, patched and repatched with stuffs and +stitches of its own; and then wore the whole thing as +it had never been intended to be worn; until this +cast-off poetic apparel, stretched on the freer moral +limbs of natural folk, faded and stained by weather +and earth into new and richer tints, had lost all its +original fashionable stiffness, and crudeness of colour, +and niminy-piminy fit, and had acquired instead I +know not what grace of unexpectedness, picturesqueness, +and ease.<a name="FNanchor_1_3" id="FNanchor_1_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_3" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_3" id="Footnote_1_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_3"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Any one who is sceptical of the Courtly derivation of the +Italian popular song may, besides consulting the admirable +book of Prof. d'Ancona, compare with the contents of Tigri's +famous "Canti popolari Toscani," the following scraps of +Sicilian and early Italian lyrics:—</p> +<p>The Emperor Frederick II. writes: "Rosa di maggio— +Colorita e fresca—Occhi hai fini—E non rifini—Di gioie dare— +Lo tuo parlare—La gente innamora—Castella ed altura." +Jacopo Pugliesi says of his lady: "Chiarita in viso più che +argento—Donami allegrezze—Ben eo son morto—E mal colto— +Se non mi dai conforto—<i>Fior dell' orto</i>."</p> +<p>Inghilfredi Siciliano: "Gesù Cristo ideolla in paradiso— +E poi la fece angelo incarnando—Gioia aggio preso di giglio +novello—E vago, che sormonta ogni ricchezza—Sua dottrina +m' affrezza—Cosi mi coglie e olezza—Come pantera le bestie +selvagge."</p> +<p>Jacopo da Lentino: "E di virtute tutte 1' altre avanza—E +somigliante a stella è di splendore—Colla sua conta (<i>cf</i>. Provençal +<i>coindeta</i>, gentille) e gaia innamoranza—E più bella è +che rosa e che fiore—Cristo le doni vita ed allegranza—E sì la +cresca in gran pregio ed onore."</p> +<p>I must finish off what might be a much longer collection +with a charming little scrap, quite in rispetto tone, by +Guinicelli: "Vedut 'ho la lucente stella diana—Ch' appare anzi +che 'l giorno renda albore—Ch' a preso forma di figura umana— +Sovr' ogni altra mi par che dia splendore—Viso di neve colorato +in grana—Occhi lucenti, gai e pien d'amore—Non credo che +nel mondo sia cristiana—Si piena di beltate e di valore."</p></div> + + +<p>Well; for many a year did the song of the peasants +rise up from the fields and oliveyards unnoticed by +the good townsfolk taking their holiday at the Tuscan +villa; but one day, somewhere in the third quarter +of the fifteenth century, the long-drawn chant of the +rispetto, telling perhaps how the singer's sweetheart +was beautiful as the star Diana, so beautiful as a baby +that the Pope christened her with his own hands; the +quavering nasal cadence of the stornello saying by +chance—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Flower of the Palm, &c.,<br /> +</span></p> + +<p>did at last waken the attention of one lettered man, +a man of curious and somewhat misshapen body and +mind, of features satyr-like in ugliness, yet moody +and mystical in their very earthiness; a man essentially +of the senses, yet imperfect in them, without +taste or smell, and, over and above, with a marvellously +supple intellect; weak and coarse and idealistic; and +at once feebly the slave of his times, and so boldly, +spontaneously innovating as to be quite unconscious +of innovation: the mixed nature, or rather the nature +in many heterogeneous bits, of the man of letters who +is artistic almost to the point of being an actor, natural +in every style because morally connected with no +style at all. The man was Lorenzo di Piero dei Medici, +for whom posterity has exclusively reserved the civic +title of all his family and similar town despots, calling +him the Magnificent. It is the fashion at present to +give Lorenzo only the leavings, as it were, of our +admiration for the weaker, less original, nay, considerably +enervate, humanistic exquisite Politian; and +this absurd injustice appears to me to show that the +very essence and excellence of Lorenzo is not nowadays +perceived. The Renaissance produced several +versatile and charming poets; and, in the midst of +classic imitation, one or two, of whom one is certainly +Boiardo, of real freshness and raciness. But of this +new element in the Renaissance, this element which +is neither imitation of antiquity nor revival of mediæval, +which is original, vital, fruitful, in short, modern, +Lorenzo is the most versatile example. He is new, +Renaissance, modern; not merely in this or that +quality, he is so all round. And this in the first place +because he is so completely the man of impressions; +the man not uttering wonderful things, nor elaborating +exquisite ones, but artistically embodying with +marvellous versatility whatever strikes his fancy and +feeling—fancy and feeling which are as new as the +untouched sculptor's clay. And this extraordinary +temper of art for art's sake, or rather effect for effect +and form's sake, was possible in that day only in +a man equally without strong passions, and without +strong convictions. He is naturally attracted most by +what is most opposed to the academic, Virgilian, +Horatian, or Petrarchesque æstheticism of his contemporaries; +he is essentially a realist, and all the effects, +which he produces, all the beauty, charm, or beastliness +of his work, corresponds to beauty, charm, or beastli- +ness in the reality of things. If Lorenzo writes at one +moment carnival songs of ribald dirtiness, at the +next hymns full of holy solemnity; it is, I think, +merely because this versatile artist takes pleasure in +trying whether his face may not be painted into grinning +drunkenness, and then elongated and whitened +into ascetic gentleness. Instead of seeking, like most +of his contemporaries, to be Greek, Roman, or mediæval +by turns, he preferred trying on all the various +tricks of thought and feeling which he remarked +among his unlettered townsfolk. His realism naturally +drew him towards the classes where realism can deal +with the real; and not the affected, the self-conscious, +the deliberately attempted. Hence those wonderful +little poems, the carnival songs of the gold-thread +spinners, of the pastry-cooks, of the shoemakers, +which give us so completely, so gracefully, the whole +appearance, work, manner, gesture of the people; +give them to us with ease and rapidity so perfect, that +we scarcely know how they are given; that we almost +forget verses and song, and actually see the pulling, +twisting, and cutting of the gold-threads; that we see +and hear the shoemaker's hands smoothing down the +leather of the shoe in his hand, to convince his customers +of its pliability; that we see and smell the +dear little pale yellow pasties nestling in the neat +white baskets, after having stood by and watched the +dough being kneaded, chopped, and floured over, the +iron plates heated in the oven, the soft, half-baked +paste twisted and bent; nay, we feel almost as if we +had eaten of them, those excellent things which seem +such big mouthfuls but are squeezed and crunched at +one go like nothing at all. Hence, I mean from +this love of watching effects and reproducing them, +originated also the masterpiece of Lorenzo dei Medici, +the Nencia da Barberino.</p> + +<p>This poem, of some fifty octaves, is the result of +those Tuscan peasant songs, of which I have told you +the curious Courtly descent, at last having struck the +fancy of a real poet. It is, what Lorenzo's masterpiece +necessarily must be, in the highest degree a modern +performance; as modern as a picture by Bastien +Lepage; as an opera, founded upon local music, by +Bizet. For it is not by any manner of means a +pastoral, a piece of conventional poetic decoration, +with just a little realistic detail, more of the mere +conventional or more of the realistic dominating +according as it is a pastoral by Theocritus, or a pastoral +by Quinault or Metastasio. It is the very reverse of +this: it is the attempt to obtain a large and complete, +detailed and balanced impression by the cunning +arrangement of a number of small effects which the +artist has watched in reality; it is the making into a +kind of little idyl, something half narrative, half drama, +with distinct figures and accessories and background, +of a whole lot of little fragments imitated from the +peasant poetry, and set in thin, delicate rims of +imitation no longer of the peasant's songs, but of the +peasant's thoughts and speech; a perfect piece of +impressionist art, marred only in rare places by an +attempt (inevitable in those days) to force the drawing +and colour into caricature. The construction, which +appears to be nowhere, is in reality a masterpiece; +for, without knowing it, you are shown the actors, the +background, the ups and downs of temper, the variation +of the seasons; above all you are shown the heroine +through the medium of the praises, the complaints, +the narratives of the past, the imaginings of the +future, of the hero, whose incoherent rhapsodizing +constitutes the whole poem. He, Vallera, is a well- +to-do young farmer; she, Nencia, is the daughter of +peasant folk of the castellated village of Barberino in +the Mugello; he is madly in love, but shy, and (to all +appearance) awkward, so that we feel convinced that +of all these speeches in praise of his Nenciozza, in +blame of his indifference, highly poetic flights and most +practical adjurations to see all the advantages of a +good match, the young woman hears few or none; +Vallera is talking not to her, but at her, or rather, +he is rehearsing to himself all the things which he +cannot squeeze out in her presence. It is the long +day-dream, poetic, prosaic, practical, and imaginative, +of a love-sick Italian peasant lad, to whom his +sweetheart is at once an ideal thing of beauty, a +goddess at whose shrine songs must be sung and +wreaths twined; and a very substantial lass, who +cannot be indifferent to sixpenny presents, and whom +he cannot conceive as not ultimately becoming the +sharer of his cottage, the cooker of his soup, the +mender of his linen, the mother of his brats—a dream +in which image is effaced by image, and one thought +is expelled, unfinished, by another. She is to him +like the Fairy Morgana, the fairy who kept so much +of chivalry in her enchanted island; she is like the +evening star when above his cottage it slowly pierces +the soft blue sky with its white brilliancy; she is purer +than the water in the well, and sweeter than the +malmsey wine, and whiter than the miller's flour; but +her heart is as hard as a pebble, and she loves driving +to distraction a whole lot of youths who dangle behind +her, captives of those heart-thievish eyes of hers. But +she is also a most excellent housewife, can stand any +amount of hard field labour, and makes lots of money +by weaving beautiful woollen stuff. To see her going, +to church of a morning, she is a little pearl! her +bodice is of damask, and her petticoat of bright, +colour, and she kneels down carefully where she may +be seen, being so smart. And then, when she dances! +—a born dancer, bouncing like a little goat, and +twirling more than a mill-wheel; and when she has +finished she makes you such a curtsey; no citizen's +wife in Florence can curtsey as she does. It was in +April that he first fell in love. She was picking salad +in the garden; he begged her for a little, and she sent +him about his business. las, alas! ever since then +his peace has been gone; he cannot sleep, he can only +think of her, and follow her about; he has become quite +good-for-nothing as to his field work,—yet he hears all +the people around laughing and saying, "Of course +Valléra will get her." Only she will pay no heed to +him. She is finer to look at than the Pope, whiter than +the whitest wood core: she is more delectable than are +the young figs to the earwigs, more beautiful than the +turnip flower, sweeter than honey. He is more in love +with her than the moth is in love with the lamp; she loves +to see him perishing for her. If he could cut himself +in two without too much pain, he would, just to let +her see that he carries her in his heart. No; he would +cut out his heart, and when she has touched it with +that slender hand of hers, it would cry out, "Nencia, +Nencia bella." But, after all, he is not to be despised: +he is an excellent labourer, most learned in buying +—and selling pigs, he can play the bagpipe beautifully; +he is rich, is willing to go to any expense to please +her, nay, even to pay the barber double that his hair +may be nice and fuzzy from the crimping irons; and +if only he were to get himself tight hose and a silk +jerkin, he would be as good as any Florentine burgess. +But she will not listen; or, rather, she listens and laughs. +Yes, she sits up in bed at night and laughs herself to +death at the mere thought of him, that is all he gets. +But he knows what it is! There is a fellow who will +keep sneaking about her; if Valléra only catch him +near his cottage, won't he give him a taste of his long +new knife! nay, rip him up and throw his bowels, like +those of a pig, to dry on a roof! He is sorry—perhaps +he bores her—God bless you, Nencia!—he had better +go and look after his sheep.</p> + +<p>All this is not the poetry of th Renaissance +peasant; it is the poem made out of his reality; the +songs which Valléra sang in the fields about his Nencia +we must seek in the volume of Tigri; those rispetti and +stornelli of to-day are the rispetti and stornelli of four +centuries ago; they are much more beautiful and poetic +than any of Lorenzo's work; but Lorenzo has given us +not merely a peasant's love-song; he has given us a +peasant's thoughts, actions, hopes, fears; he has given +us the peasant himself, his house, his fields, and his +sweetheart, as they exist even now. For Lorenzo is +gone, and, greater than he, the paladins and ladies of +Boiardo and Ariosto, have followed the saints and +virgins of Dante into the limbo of fair unrealities; and +the very Greek and Roman heroes of a hundred years +ago, the very knights and covenanters of forty years +since, have joined them; but Valléra exists still, and still +in the flesh exists his Nenciozza. Everything changes, +except the country and the peasant. For, in the long +farms of Southern Tuscany, with double row of blackened +balcony all tapestried with heavy ingots of Indian +corn, and spread out among the olives of the hillside, up +which twists the rough bullock road protected by its vine +trellis; and in the little farms, with queer hood-shaped +double roofs (as if to pull over the face of the house +when it blows hard), and pigeon towers which show +that some day they must have been fortified, all about +Florence; farms which I pass every day, with their +sere trees all round, their rough gardens of bright +dahlias and chrysanthemums draggled by the autumn +rains—in these there are, do not doubt it, still +Nencias: magnificent creatures, fit models for Amazons, +only just a trifle too full-blown and matronly; but +with real Amazonian limbs, firm and delicate, under +their red and purple striped print frocks; creatures +with heads set on necks like towers or columns, necks +firm in broad, well-fleshed chest as branches in a tree's +trunk; great penthouses of reddish yellow or lustreless +black crimped hair over the forehead; the forehead, +like the cheeks, furrowed a good deal—perhaps we +dainty people might say, faded and wrinkled by work +in the burning sun and the wind; women whom you +see shovelling bread into the heated ovens, or plashing +in winter with bare arms in half-frozen streams, or +digging up a turnip field in the drizzle; or on a +Sunday, standing listless by their door, surrounded +by rolling and squalling brats, and who, when they +slowly look up at the passer-by, show us, on those +monumental faces of theirs, a strange smile, a light +of bright eyes and white teeth; a smile which to us +sophisticated townspeople is as puzzling as certain +sudden looks in some comely animal, but which yet +makes us understand instinctively that we have before +us a Nencia; and that the husband yonder, though he +now swears at his wife, and perhaps occasionally beats +her, has nevertheless, in his day, dreamed, argued, +raged, and sung to himself just like Lorenzo's Vallera. +The "Nencia da Barberino" is certainly Lorenzo dei +Medici's masterpiece: it is completely and satisfactorily +worked out. Yet we may strain possibilities to +the point of supposing (which, however, I cannot for a +moment suppose) that this "Nencia" is a kind of fluke; +that by an accident a beautiful and seemingly appreciative +poem has resulted where the author, a mediæval +realist of a superior Villon sort, had intended only a +piece of utter grotesqueness. But important as is the +"Nencia," Lorenzo has left behind him another poem, +greatly inferior in completeness, but which settles +beyond power of doubt that in him the Renaissance +was not merely no longer mediæval, but most intensely +modern. This poem is the "Ambra." It is simply an +allegorical narrative of the inundation, by the river +Ombrone, of a portion, called Ambra, of the great +Medicean villa of Poggio a Caiano. Lorenzo's object +was evidently to write a semi-Ovidian poem, of a kind +common in his day, and common almost up to our +own: a river-god, bearded, crown of reeds, urn, general +dampness and uproariousness of temper, all quite correct; +and a nymph, whom he pursues, who prays to the +Virgin huntress to save her from his love, and who, +just in the nick of time, is metamorphosed into a +mossy stone, dimly showing her former woman's +shape; the style of thing, charming, graceful, insipid, +of which every one can remember a dozen instances, +and which immediately brings up to the mind a vision +of grand-ducal gardens, where, among the clipped ilexes +and the cypress trunks, great lumbering water-gods +and long-limbed nymphs splash, petrified and covered +with melancholy ooze and yellow lichen, among the +stagnant grotto waters. In some respects, therefore, +there is in the "Ambra" somewhat more artificial, +more barrocco than that early Renaissance of Politian +and Pontano would warrant. There also several bits, +half graceful, half awkward, pedantic, constrained, +childish, delightful, like the sedge-crowned rivers +telling each other anecdotes of the ways and customs +of their respective countries, and especially the charming +dance of zephyr with the flowers on the lawns of +Cyprus, which must immediately suggest pictures by +Piero di Cosimo and by Botticelli. So far, therefore, +there is plenty to enjoy, but nothing to astonish, in +the "Ambra." But the Magnificent Lorenzo has had +the extraordinary whim of beginning his allegory with +a description, twenty-one stanzas long, of the season +of floods. A description, full of infinitely delicate +minute detail: of the plants which have kept their +foliage while the others are bare—the prickly juniper, +the myrtle and bay; of the flocks of cranes printing the +sky with their queer shapes, of the fish under the ice, +and the eagle circling slowly round the ponds—little +things which affect us mixed up as they are with +all manner of stiff classic allusions, very much as do +the carefully painted daisies and clover among the +embossed and gilded unrealities of certain old pictures. +From these rather finikin details, Lorenzo passes, +however, to details which are a good deal more than +details, things little noticed until almost recently: the +varying effect of the olives on the hillside—a grey, +green mass, a silver ripple, according as the wind stirs +them; the golden appearance of the serene summer +air, and so forth; details no longer, in short, but +essentially, however minute, effects. And then, +suddenly leaving such things behind, he rushes into +the midst of a real picture, a picture which you might +call almost impressionistic, of the growth of rivers +and the floods. The floods are a grand sight; more +than a sight—a grand performance, a drama; sometimes, +God knows, a tragedy. Last night, under a +warm, hazy sky, through whose buff-tinted clouds +the big moon crept in and out, the mountain stream +was vaguely visible—a dark riband in its wide shingly +bed, when the moon was hidden; a narrow, shallow, +broken stream, sheets of brilliant metallic sheen, and +showers of sparkling facets, when the moon was out; +a mere drowsy murmur mixing with the creaking and +rustling of dry reeds in the warm, wet wind. Thus +in the evening. Look down from your window next +morning. A tremendous rushing mass of waters, thick, +turbid, reddish, with ominous steel-like lustre where +its coppery surface reflects the moist blue sky, now +fills the whole bed, shaking its short fringe of foam, +tossing the spray as it swirls round each still projecting +stone, angrily tugging at the reeds and alders which +flop their draggled green upon its surface; eddying +faster and faster, encircling each higher rock or sandbank, +covering it at last with its foaming red mass. +Meanwhile, the sky is covered in with vaporous grey +clouds, which enshroud the hills; the clear runnels, +dash over the green banks, spirt through the walls, +break their way across the roads; the little mountain +torrents, dry all summer, descend, raging rivers, red +with the hill soil; and with every gust of warm wind +the river rises higher and rushes along tremendously +impetuous. Down in the plain it eats angrily at the +soft banks, and breaks its muddy waters, fringed on +the surface with a sort of ominous grime of broken +wood and earth, higher and higher against the pierheads +of the bridges; shaking them to split their +masonry, while crowds of men and women look on, +staring at the rising water, at the planks, tables, beams, +cottage thatches, nay, whole trees, which it hurls at +the bridge piers. And then, perhaps, the terrible, +soft, balmy flood-wind persisting, there comes suddenly +the catastrophe; the embankment, shaken by the +resistless current, cracks, fissures gives way; and the +river rushes into the city, as it has already rushed into +the fields, to spread in constantly rising, melancholy +livid pools, throughout the streets and squares. +This Lorenzo saw, and, wonderful to say, in this +soiled and seething river, in these torn and crumbling +banks, in all the dreadfulness of these things, he saw +a beauty and a grandeur. But he saw not merely the +struggle of the waters and of the land; he—the +heartless man who laid his hand even upon the saved- +up money of orphan girls in order to keep up the +splendour of his house and of his bank—saw the misfortunes +of the peasantry; the mill, the cottage by the +riverside, invaded by the flood; the doors burst open by +the tremendous rushing stream, the stables and garners +filled with the thick and oozy waters; the poor +creatures, yesterday prosperous, clinging to the roof, +watching their sheep and cows, their hay, and straw, +and flour, the hemp bleached in the summer, the +linen spun and woven in the long winter, their +furniture and chattels, their labour and their hope +whirled along by the foaming river.</p> + +<p>Thus by this versatile Lorenzo dei Medici, this +flippant, egotistic artist and despot, has at last been +broken the long spell of the Middle Ages. The +Renaissance has sung no longer of knights and of +spring, but of peasants and of autumn. An immoral +and humanistic time, an immoral and humanistic +man, have had at length a heart for the simpler, ruder +less favoured classes of mankind; an eye for the +bolder, grander, more solemn sights of Nature: modern +times have begun, modern sympathies, modern art are +in full swing.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="SYMMETRIA_PRISCA" id="SYMMETRIA_PRISCA"></a>SYMMETRIA PRISCA.</h2> + + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Mirator veterum, discipulusque memor,<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Defuit mini symmetria prisca. Peregi<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Quod potui; Veniam da mihi, posteritas.<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">—<i>Lionardo da Vinci's epitaph by Platino Piatto.</i><br /></span></p> + + +<p>Into the holy enclosure which had received the +precious shiploads of earth from Calvary, the Pisans +of the thirteenth century carried the fragments of +ancient sculpture brought from Rome and from +Greece; and in the Gothic cloister enclosing the +green sward and dark cypresses of the graveyard of +Pisa, the art of the Middle Ages came for the first +time face to face with the art of Antiquity. There, +among pagan sarcophagi turned into Christian tombs, +with heraldic devices chiselled on their arabesques +and vizored helmets surmounting their garlands, the +great unsigned artist of the fourteenth century, +Orcagna of Florence, or Lorenzetti of Siena, painted +the typical masterpiece of mediæval art, the great +fresco of the Triumph of Death. With wonderful +realization of character and situation he painted the +prosperous of the world, the dapper youths and +damsels seated with dogs and falcons beneath the +orchard trees, amusing themselves with Decameronian +tales and sound of lute and psaltery, unconscious of +the colossal scythe wielded by the gigantic dishevelled +Death, and which, in a second, will descend and mow +them to the ground; while the crowd of beggars, +ragged, maimed, paralyzed, leprous, grovelling on +their withered limbs, see and implore Death, and cry +stretching forth their arms, their stumps, and their +crutches. Further on, three kings in long embroidered +robes and gold-trimmed shovel caps, Lewis the +Emperor, Uguccione of Pisa, and Castruccio of Lucca, +with their retinue of ladies and squires, and hounds +and hawks, are riding quietly through a wood. Suddenly +their horses stop, draw back; the Emperor's +bay stretches out his long neck sniffing the air; the +kings strain forward to see, one holding his nose for +the stench of death which meets him; and before +them are three open coffins, in which lie, in three +loathsome stages of corruption, from blue and bloated +putrescence to well-nigh fleshless decay, three crowned +corpses. This is the triumph of Death; the grim and +horrible jest of the Middle Ages: equality in decay; +kings, emperors, ladies, knights, beggars, and cripples, +this is what we all come to be, stinking corpses; +Death, our lord, our only just and lasting sovereign, +reigns impartially over all.</p> + +<p>But opposite, all along the sides of the painted +cloister, the Amazons are wrestling with the youths +on the stone of the sarcophagi; the chariots are dashing +forward, the Tritons are splashing in the marble +waves; the Bacchantæ are striking their timbrels in +their dance with the satyrs; the birds are pecking at +the grapes, the goats are nibbling at the vines; all is +life, strong and splendid in its marble eternity. And +the mutilated Venus smiles towards the broken +Hermes; the stalwart Hercules, resting against his +club, looks on quietly, a smile beneath his beard; and +the gods murmur to each other, as they stand in the +cloister filled with earth from Calvary, where hundreds +of men lie rotting beneath the cypresses, "Death will +not triumph for ever; our day will come."</p> + +<p>We have all seen them opposite to each other, these +two arts, the art born of Antiquity and the art born +of the Middle Ages; but whether this meeting was +friendly or hostile or merely indifferent, is a question +of constant dispute. To some, mediæval art has +appeared being led, Dante-like, by a magician Virgil +through the mysteries of nature up to a Christian +Beatrice, who alone can guide it to the kingdom of +heaven; others have seen mediæval art, like some +strong, chaste Sir Guyon turning away resolutely from +the treacherous sorceress of Antiquity, and pursuing +solitarily the road to the true and the good; for some +the antique has been an impure goddess Venus, +seducing and corrupting the Christian artist; the +antique has been for others a glorious Helen, an unattainable +perfection, ever pursued by the mediæval +craftsman, but seized by him only as a phantom. +Magician or witch, voluptuous, destroying Venus or +cold and ungrasped Helen, what was the antique to +the art born of the Middle Ages and developed during +the Renaissance? Was the relation between them +that of tuition, cool and abstract; or of fruitful love; +or of deluding and damning example?</p> + +<p>The art which came to maturity in the late fifteenth +and early sixteenth centuries was generated in the +early mediæval revival. The seeds may, indeed, have +come down from Antiquity, but they remained for +nearly a thousand years hidden in the withered, rotting +remains of former vegetation; and it was not +till that vegetation had completely decomposed and +become part of the soil, it was not till putrefaction +had turned into germination, that artistic organism +timidly reappeared. The new art-germ developed +with the new civilization which surrounded it. Manufacture +and commerce reappeared: the artizans and +merchants formed into communities; the communities +grew into towns, the towns into cities; in the +city arose the cathedral; the Lombard or Byzantine +mouldings and traceries of the cathedral gave birth to +figure-sculpture; its mosaics gave birth to painting; +every forward movement of the civilization unfolded +as it were a new form or detail of the art, until, when +mediæval civilization was reaching its moment of +consolidation, when the cathedrals of Lucca and Pisa +stood completed, when Niccolo and Giovanni Pisano +had sculptured their pulpits and sepulchres; painting, +in the hands of Cimabue and Duccio, of Giotto and +of Guido da Siena, freed itself from the tradition of +the mosaicists as sculpture had freed itself from the +practice of the stone-masons, and stood forth an independent +and organic art.</p> + +<p>Thus painting was born of a new civilization, and +grew by its own vital force; a thing of the Middle +Ages, original and spontaneous. But contemporaneous +with the mediæval revival was the resuscitation +of Antiquity; in proportion as the new civilization +developed, the old civilization was exhumed; real +Latin began to be studied only when real Italian +began to be written; Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio +were at once the founders of modern literature and +the exponents of the literature of antiquity; the +strong young present was to profit by the experience +of the past.</p> + +<p>As it was with literature, so likewise was it with +art. The most purely mediæval sculpture, the sculpture +which has, as it were, just detached itself from +the capitals and porches of the cathedral, is the direct +pupil of the antique; and the three great Gothic +sculptors, Niccoló, Giovanni, and Andrea of Pisa, learn +from fragments of Greek and Roman sculpture how +to model the figure of the Redeemer and how to +chisel the robe of the Virgin. This spontaneous +mediæval sculpture, aided by the antique, preceded +by a full half-century the appearance of mediæval +painting; and it was from the study of the works of +the Pisan sculptors that Cimabue and Giotto learned +to depart from the mummified monstrosities of the +hieratic, Byzantine and Roman style of Giunta and +Berlinghieri. Thus, through the sculpture of the +Pisans the painting of the school of Giotto received +at second-hand the teachings of Antiquity. Sculpture +had created painting; painting now belonged to the +painters. In the hands of Giotto it developed within +a few years into an art which seemed almost mature, +an art dealing victoriously with its materials, triumphantly +solving its problems, executing as if by +miracle all that was demanded of it. But Giottesque +art appeared perfect merely because it was limited; +it did all that was required of it, because that which +was required was little; it was not asked to reproduce +the real nor to represent the beautiful; it was +asked merely to suggest a character, a situation, a +story.</p> + +<p>The artistic development of a nation has its exact +parallel in the artistic development of an individual. +The child uses his pencil to tell a story, satisfied with +balls and sticks as body, head, and legs; provided he +and his friends can associate with them the ideas in +their minds. The youth sets himself to copy what he +sees, to reproduce forms and effects, without any aim +beyond the mere pleasure of copying. The mature +artist strives to obtain forms and effects of which he +approves, he seeks for beauty. In the life of Italian +painting the generation of men who flourished at the +beginning of the sixteenth century are the mature +artists; the men of the fifteenth century are the inexperienced +youths; the Giottesques are the children— +children Titanic and seraph-like, but children nevertheless; +and, like all children, learning more perhaps +in their few years than can the youth and the man +learn in a lifetime.</p> + +<p>Like the child, the Giottesque painter wished to +show a situation or express a story, and for this +purpose the absolute realization of objects was unnecessary. +Giottesque art is not incorrect art, it is +generalized art; it is an art of mere outline. The +Giottesques could draw with great accuracy the hand: +the form of the fingers, the bend of the limb, they +could give to perfection its whole gesture and movement, +they could produce a correct and spirited outline, +but within this correct outline marked off in dark paint +there is but a vague, uniform mass of pale colour; the +body of the hand is missing, and there remains only its +ghost, visible indeed, but unsubstantial, without weight +or warmth, eluding the grasp. The difference between +this spectre hand of the Giottesques, and the sinewy, +muscular hand which can shake and crush of Masaccio +and Signorelli; or the soft hand with throbbing pulse +and warm pressure of Perugino and Bellini,—this +difference is typical of the difference between the art +of the fourteenth century and the art of the fifteenth +century: the first suggests, the second realizes; the +one gives impalpable outlines, the other gives tangible +bodies. The Giottesque cares for the figure only +inasmuch as it displays an action; he reduces it to a +semblance, a phantom, to the mere exponent of an +idea; the man of the Renaissance cares for the figure +inasmuch as it is a living organism, he gives it +substance and weight, he makes it stand out as an +animate reality. Thence, despite its early triumphs, +the Giottesque style, by its inherent nature, forbade +any progress; it reached its limits at once, and the +followers of Giotto look almost as if they were his +predecessors, for the simple reason that, being unable +to advance, they were forced to retrograde. The +limited amount of artistic realization required to +present to the mind of the spectator a situation or +an allegory, had been obtained by Giotto himself, and +bequeathed by him to his followers; who, finding it +more than sufficient for their purposes, and having no +incentive to further acquisition in the love of form +and reality for their own sake, worked on with their +master's materials, composing and recomposing, but +adding nothing of their own. Giotto had observed +Nature with passionate interest, because, although its +representation was only a means to an end, it was a +means which required to be mastered; and as such +became in itself a sort of secondary aim; but the +followers of Giotto merely utilized his observations +of Nature, and in so doing gradually conventionalized +and debased these second-hand observations. Giotto's +forms are wilfully incomplete, because they aim at +mere suggestion, but they are not conventional: they +are diagrams, not symbols, and thence it is that Giotto +seems nearer to the Renaissance than do his latest +followers, not excepting even Orcagna. Painting, +which had made the most prodigious strides from +Giunta to Cimabue, and from Cimabue to Giotto, had +got enclosed within a vicious circle, in which it moved +for nearly a century neither backwards nor forwards: +painters were satisfied with suggestion; and as long +as they were satisfied, no progress was possible. +From this Giottesque treadmill, painting was released +by the intervention of another art. The painters were +hopelessly mediocre; their art was snatched from them +by the sculptors. Orcagna himself, perhaps the only +Giottesque who gave painting an onward push, had +modelled and cast one of the bronze gates of the +Florence baptistery; the generation of artists who +arose at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and +who opened the period of the Renaissance, were +sculptors or pupils of sculptors. When we see these +vigorous lovers of nature, these heroic searchers after +truth, suddenly pushing aside the decrepit Giottesque +allegory-mongers, we ask ourselves in astonishment +whence they have arisen, and how those broken-down +artists of effete art could have begotten such a generation +of giants. Whence do they come? Certainly +not from the studios of the Giottesques. No, they issue +out of the workshops of the stone-mason, of the +goldsmith, of the worker in bronze, of the sculptor. +Vasari has preserved the tradition that Masolino and +Paolo Uccello were apprentices of Ghiberti; he has +remarked that their greatest contemporary, Masaccio, +"trod in the steps of Brunelleschi and of Donatello." +Pollaiolo and Verrocchio we know to have been equally +excellent as painters and as workers in bronze. Sculp- +ture, at once more naturalistic and more constantly +under the influence of the antique, had for the second +time laboured for painting. Itself a subordinate art, +without much vitality, without deep roots in the civilization, +sculpture was destined to remain the unsuccessful +pupil of the antique, and the unsuccessful +rival of painting; but sculpture had for its mission to +prepare the road for painting and to prepare painting +for antique influence; and the noblest work of Ghiberti +and Donatello was Masaccio, as the most lasting glory- +to the Pisani had been Giotto.</p> + +<p>With Masaccio began the study of nature for its +own sake, the desire of reproducing external objects, +without any regard to their significance as symbols, +or as parts of a story; the passionate wish to arrive +at absolute realization. The merely suggestive outline +art of the Giottesques had come to an end; the +suggestion became a matter of indifference, the realization +became a paramount interest; the story was +forgotten in the telling, the religious thought was +lost in the search for the artistic form. The Giottesques +had used debased conventionalism to represent +action with wonderful narrative and logical power; +the artists of the early Renaissance became unskilful +narrators and foolish allegorists almost in proportion +as they became skilful draughtsmen and colourists; +the saints had become to Masaccio merely so many +lay figures on to which to cast drapery; for Fra Filippo +the Madonna was a mere peasant model; for Filippino +Lippi and for Ghirlandajo, a miracle meant merely an +opportunity of congregating a number of admirable +portrait figures in the dress of the day; the Baptism +for Verrocchio had significance only as a study of +muscular legs and arms; and the sacrifice of Noah +had no importance for Uccello save as a grand opportunity +for foreshortenings. In the hands of the +Giottesques, interested in the subject and indifferent +to the representation, painting had remained stationary +for eighty years; for eighty years did it develope in +the hands of the men of the fifteenth century, indifferent +to the subject and passionately interested in +the representation. The unity, the appearance of +comparative perfection of the art had disappeared +with the limits within which the Giottesques had +been satisfied to move; instead of the intelligible +and solemn conventionalism of the Giottesques, we +see only disorder, half-understood ideas and abortive +attempts, confusion which reminds us of those enigmatic +sheets on which Leonardo or Michael Angelo +scrawled out their ideas—drawings within drawings, +plans of buildings scratched over Madonna heads, +single flowers upside down next to flayed arms, calculations, +monsters, sonnets; a very chaos of thoughts +and of shapes, in which the plan of the artist is +inextricably lost, which mean everything and nothing, +but out of whose unintelligible network of lines and +curves have issued masterpieces, and which only the +foolish or the would-be philosophical would exchange +for some intelligible, hopelessly finished and finite +illustration out of a Bible or a book of travels. +Anatomy, perspective, colour, drapery, effects of +light, of water, of shadow, forms of trees and flowers, +converging lines of architecture, all this at once absorbed +and distracted the attention of the artists of +the early Renaissance; and while they studied, copied, +and calculated, another thought began to haunt them, +another eager desire began to pursue them: by the side +of Nature, the manifold, the baffling, the bewildering, +there rose up before them another divinity, another +sphinx, mysterious in its very simplicity and serenity +—the Antique.</p> + +<p>The exhumation of the antique had, as we have +seen, been contemporaneous with the birth of painting; +nay, the study of the remains of antique sculpture +had, in contributing to form Niccold Pisano, indirectly +helped to form Giotto; the very painter of the Triumph +of Death had inserted into his terrible fresco two- +winged genii, upholding a scroll, copied without any +alteration from some coarse Roman sarcophagus, in +which they may have sustained the usual Dis Maniibus +Sacrum. There had been, on the part of both sculptors +and painters, a constant study of the antique; but during +the Giottesque period this study had been limited to +technicalities, and had in no way affected the conception +of art. The mediæval artists, surrounded by +physical deformities, and seeing sanctity in sickness +and dirt, little accustomed to observe the human figure, +were incapable, both as men and as artists, of at all +entering into the spirit of antique art. They could +not perceive the superior beauty of the antique; they +could recognize only its superior science and its +superior handicraft, and these alone they studied to +obtain.</p> + +<p>Giovanni Pisano sculpturing the unfleshed, caried +carcases of the devils who leer, writhe, crunch, and +tear on the outside of Orvieto Cathedral; and the +Giottesques painting those terrible green, macerated +Christs, hanging livid and broken from the cross, +which abound in Tuscany and Umbria; the artists +who produced these loathsome and lugubrious works +were indubitably students of the antique; but they +had learned from it not a love for beautiful form and +noble drapery, but merely the general shape of the +limbs and the general fall of the garments: the +anatomical science and technical processes of Antiquity +were being used to produce the most intensely +un-antique, the most intensely mediæval works. Thus +matters stood in the time of Giotto. His followers, +who studied only arrangement, probably consulted +the antique as little as they consulted nature; but +the contemporary sculptors were brought by the very +constitution of their art into close contact both with +Nature and with the antique; they studied both with +determination, and handed over the results of their +labours to the sculptor-taught painters of the fifteenth +century.</p> + +<p>Here, then, were the two great factors in the art of +the Renaissance—the study of nature, and the study +of the Antique: both understand slowly, imperfectly; +the one counteracting the effect of the other; the +study of nature now scaring away all antique influence, +the study of the antique now distorting all imitation +of nature; rival forces confusing the artist and marring +the work, until, when each could receive its due, the +one corrected the other, and they combined, producing +by this marriage of the living reality with the dead +but immortal beauty, the great art of Michael Angelo, +of Raphael, and of Titian: double, like its origin, +antique and modern, real and ideal.</p> + +<p>The study of the antique is thus placed opposite +to the study of nature, the comprehension of the +works of Antiquity is the momentary antagonist of +the comprehension of the works of nature. And this +may seem strange, when we consider that antique art +was itself due to perfect comprehension of nature. +But the contradiction is easily explained. The study +of nature, as it was carried on in the Renaissance, +comprised the study of effects which had remained +unnoticed by Antiquity; and the study of the statue, +--colourless, without light, shade, or perspective, hampered, +and was hampered by, the study of colour, of +light and shade, of perspective, and of all that a generation +of painters would seek to learn from nature. +Nor was this all; the influence of the civilization of +the Renaissance, of a civilization directly issued from +the Middle Ages, was entirely at variance with the +influence of antique civilization through the medium +of ancient art; the Middle Ages and Antiquity, +Christianity and Paganism, were even more opposed +to each other than could be the statue and the easel +picture, the fresco and the bas-relief.</p> + +<p>First, then, we have the hostility between painting +--and sculpture, between the modus operandi of the +modern and the modus operandi of the ancient art. +Antique art is, in the first place, purely linear art, +¦colourless, tintless, without light and shade; next, it +is essentially the art of the isolated figure, without +background, grouping, or perspective. As linear art +it could directly affect only that branch of painting +which was itself linear; and as art of the isolated +figure it was ever being contradicted by the constantly +developing arts of perspective and landscape. The +antique never directly influenced the Venetians, not +from reasons of geography and culture, but from +the fact that Venetian painting, founded from the +earliest times upon a system of colour, could not be +affected by antique sculpture, based upon a system of +modelled, colourless form; the men who saw form only +through the medium of colour could not learn much +from purely linear form; hence it is that even after a +certain amount of antique imitation had passed into +Venetian painting, through the medium of Mantegna, +the Venetian painters display comparatively little +antique influence. In Bellini, Carpaccio, Cima, and +other early masters, the features, forms, and dress are +mainly modern and Venetian; and Giorgione, Titian, +and even the eclectic Tintoret, were more interested +in the bright lights of a steel breastplate than in the +shape of a limb; and preferred in their hearts a shot +brocade of the sixteenth century to the finest drapery +ever modelled by an ancient.</p> + +<p>The antique influence was naturally strongest +among the Tuscan schools; because the Tuscan +schools were essentially schools of drawing, and the +draughtsman recognized in antique sculpture the highest +perfection of that linear form which was his own +domain. Yet while the antique appealed most to the +linear schools, even in these it could strongly influence +only the purely linear part; it is strong in the drawings +and weak in the paintings. As long as the +artists had only the pencil or pen, they could reproduce +much of the linear perfection of the antique; +they were, so to speak, alone with it; but as soon as +they brought in colour, perspective, and scenery, the +linear perfection was lost in attempts at something +new; the antique was put to flight by the modern. +Botticelli's crayon study for his Venus is almost +antique; his tempera picture of Venus, with the pale +blue scaly sea, the laurel grove, the flower-embroidered +garments, the wisps of tawny hair, is comparatively +mediæval; Pinturicchio's sketch of Pans and satyrs +contrasts strangely with his frescoes in the library of +Siena; Mantegna himself, supernaturally antique in +his engravings, becomes comparatively trivial and +modern in his oil-paintings. Do what they might, +draw from the antique and calculate its proportions, +the artists of the Renaissance found themselves baffled +as soon as they attempted to apply the result of then +linear studies to coloured pictures; as soon as they +tried to make the antique unite with the modern, one +of the two elements was sure to succumb. In Botticelli, +draughtsman and student though he was, the +modern, the mediæval, that part of the art which had +arisen in the Middle Ages, invariably had the upper +hand; his Venus, despite her forms studied from the +antique and her gesture imitated from some earlier +discovered copy of the Medicean Venus, has the woe- +begone prudery of a Madonna or of an abbess; she +shivers physically and morally in her unaccustomed +nakedness, and the goddess of Spring, who comes +skipping up from beneath the laurel copse, does well +to prepare her a mantle, for in the pallid tempera +colour, against the dismal background of rippled sea, +this mediæval Venus, at once indecent and prudish, is +no very pleasing sight. In the Allegory of Spring in +the Academy of Florence, we again have the antique; +goddesses and nymphs whose clinging garments the +gentle Sandro Botticelli has assuredly studied from +some old statue of Agrippina or Faustina; but what +strange livid tints are there beneath those draperies, +what eccentric gestures are those of the nymphs, what +a green, ghostlike light illumines this garden of +Venus Are these goddesses and nymphs immortal +women such as the ancients conceived, or are they not +rather fantastic fairies or nixen, Titanias and Undines, +incorporeal daughters of dew and gossamer and mist? +In Sandro Botticelli the teachings of the statue are +forgotten or distorted when the artist takes up his +palette and brushes; in his greater contemporary, +Andrea Mantegna, the ever-present antique chills and +arrests the vitality of the modern. Mantegna, the +pupil of the ancient marbles of Squarcione's workshop +even more than the pupil of Donatello, studies for his +paintings not from nature, but from sculpture; his +figures are seen in strange projection and foreshortening, +like figures in a high relief seen from below; +despite his mastery of perspective, they seem hewn +out of the background; despite the rich colours which +he displays in his Veronese altar-piece, they look like +painted marbles, with their hard clots of stonelike +hair and beard, with their vacant glance and their +wonderful draperies, clinging and weighty like the +wet draperies of ancient sculpture. They are beautiful +petrifactions, or vivified statues; Mantegna's masterpiece, +the sepia "Judith" in Florence, is like an exquisite, +pathetically lovely Eurydice, who has stepped +unconscious and lifeless out of a Praxitelian bas-relief. +And there are stranger works than even the Judith; +strange statuesque fancies, like the fight of Marine +Monsters and the Bacchanal among Mantegna's engravings. +The group of three wondrous creatures, at +once men, fish, and gods, is as grand and even more +fantastic than Leonardo's Battle of the Standard: a +Triton, sturdy and muscular, with sea-weed beard and +hair, wheels round his finned horse, preparing to strike +his adversary with a bunch of fish which he brandishes +above him; on him is rushing, careering on an +osseous sea-horse, a strange, lank, sinewy being, fury +stretching every tendon, his long-clawed feet striking +into the flanks of his steed, his sharp, reed-crowned +head turned fiercely, with clenched teeth, on his opponent, +and stretching forth a truncheon, ready to run +down his enemy as a ship runs down another; and +further off a young Triton, with clotted hair and +heavy eyes, seems ready to sink wounded below the +rippling wavelets, with the massive head and marble +agony of the dying Alexander; enigmatic figures, +grand and grotesque, lean, haggard, vehement, and +yet, in the midst of violence and monstrosity, unaccountably +antique.. The other print, called the +Bacchanal, has no background: half a dozen male +figures stand separate and naked as in a bas-relief. +Some are leaning against a vine-wreathed tub; a +satyr, with acanthus-leaves growing wondrously out of +him, half man, half plant, is emptying a cup; a heavy +Silenus is prone upon the ground; a faun, seated +upon the vat, is supporting in his arms a beautiful +sinking youth; another youth, grand, muscular, and +grave as a statue, stands on the further side. Is this +really a bacchanal? Yes, for there is the paunchy +Silenus, there are the fauns, there the vat and vine- +wreaths and drinking-horns. And yet it cannot be a +bacchanal. Compare with it one of Rubens's orgies, +where the overgrown, rubicund men and women and +fauns tumble about in tumultuous, riotous intoxication: +that is a bacchanal; they have been drinking, +those magnificent brutes, there is wine firing their +blood and weighing down their heads. But here all +is different, in this so-called Bacchanal of Mantegna. +This heavy Silenus is supine like a mass of marble; +these fauns are shy and mute; these youths are grave +and sombre; there is no wine in the cups, there are +no lees in the vat, there is no life in these magnificent +colossal forms; there is no blood in their grandly +bent lips, no light in their wide-opened eyes; it is not +the drowsiness of intoxication which is weighing +down the youth sustained by the faun; it is no grapejuice +which gives that strange, vague glance. No; +they have drunk, but not of any mortal drink; the +grapes are grown in Persephone's garden, the vat contains +no fruits that have ripened beneath our sun. +These strange, mute, solemn revellers have drunk of +Lethe, and they are growing cold with the cold of +death and of marble; they are the ghosts of the dead +ones of antiquity, revisiting the artist of the Renaissance, +who paints them, thinking he is painting life, +while that which he paints is in reality death. +This anomaly, this unsatisfactory character of the +works of both Botticelli and Mantegna, is mainly +technical; the antique is frustrated in Botticelli, not +so much by the Christian, the mediæval, the modern +mode of feeling, as by the new methods and aims of +the new art which disconcert the methods and aims of +the old art; and that which arrests Mantegna in his +development as a painter is not the spirit of Paganism +deadening the spirit of Christianity, but the laws of +sculpture hampering painting. But this technical +contest between two arts, the one not yet fully developed, +the other not yet fully understood, is as nothing +compared with the contest between the two civilizations, +the antique and the modern; between the +habits and tendencies of the contemporaries of the +artists of the Renaissance and of the artists themselves, +and the habits and tendencies of the antique +artists and their contemporaries. We are apt to think +of the Renaissance as of a period closely resembling +antiquity, misled by the inevitable similarity between +southern and democratic countries of whatever age; +misled still less pardonably by the Ciceronian pedantries +and pseudo-antique obscenities of a few humanists, +nd by the pseudo-Corinthian arabesques and +capitals of a few learned architects. But all this was +mere archæological finery borrowed by a civilization +in itself entirely unlike that of ancient Greece. +The Renaissance, let us remember, was merely the +flowering time of that great mediæval movement +which had germinated early in the twelfth century; it +was merely a more advanced stage of the civilization +which had produced Dante and Giotto, of the civilization +which was destined to produce Luther and Rabelais. +The fifteenth century was merely the continuation +of the fourteenth century, as the fourteenth had +been of the thirteenth; there had been growth and +improvement; development of the more modern, +diminishing of the more mediæval elements; but, +despite growth and the changes due to growth, the +Renaissance was part and parcel of the Middle Ages. +The life, thought, aspirations, and habits were mediæval; +opposed to the open-air life, the physical training +and the materialistic religion of Antiquity. The +surroundings of Masaccio and of Signorelli, nay, even +of Raphael, were very different from those of Phidias +or Praxiteles. Let us think what were the daily and +hourly impressions given by the Renaissance to its +artists. Large towns, in which thousands of human +beings were crowded together, in narrow, gloomy +streets, with but a strip of blue visible between the +projecting roofs; and in these cities an incessant +commercial activity, with no relief save festivals at the +churches, brawls at the taverns, and carnival buffooneries. +Men and women pale and meagre for want of +air, and light, and movement; undeveloped, untrained +bodies, warped by constant work at the loom or at +the desk, at best with the lumpish freedom of the +soldier and the vulgar nimbleness of the prentice. +And these men and women dressed in the dress of +the Middle Ages, gorgeous perhaps in colour, but +heavy, miserable, grotesque, nay, sometimes ludicrous +in form; citizens in lumpish robes and long-tailed +caps; ladies in stiff and foldless brocade hoops and +stomachers; artizans in striped and close-adhering +hose and egg-shaped padded jerkin; soldiers in lumbering +armour-plates, ill-fitted over ill-fitting leather, +a shapeless shell of iron, bulging out and angular, in +which the body was buried as successfully as in the +robes of the magistrates. Thus we see the men and +women of the Renaissance in the works of all its +painters: heavy in Ghirlandajo, vulgarly jaunty in +Filippino, preposterously starched and prim in Mantegna, +ludicrously undignified in Signorelli; while +mediæval stiffness, awkwardness, and absurdity reach +their acme perhaps in the little boys, companions of +the Medici children, introduced into Benozzo Gozzoli's +Building of Babel. These are the prosperous townsfolk, +among whom the Renaissance artist is but too +glad to seek for models; but besides these there are +lamentable sights, mediæval beyond words, at every +street corner: dwarfs and cripples, maimed and +diseased beggars of all degrees of loathsomeness, +lepers and epileptics, and infinite numbers of monks, +brown, grey, and black, in sack-shaped frocks and +pointed hoods, with shaven crown and cropped beard, +emaciated with penance or bloated with gluttony. +And all this the painter sees, daily, hourly; it is his +standard of humanity, and as such finds its way into +every picture. It is the living; but opposite it arises +the dead. Let us turn aside from the crowd of the +mediæval city, and look at what the workmen have +just laid bare, or what the merchant has just brought +from Rome or from Greece. Look at this: it is +corroded by oxides, battered by ill-usage, stained with +earth: it is not a group, not even a whole statue, it +has neither head nor arms remaining; it is a mere +broken fragment of antique sculpture,—a naked body +with a fold or two of drapery; it is not by Phidias +nor by Praxiteles, it may not even be Greek; it may +be some cheap copy, made for a garden or a bath, in +the days of Hadrian. But to the artist of the fifteenth +century it is the revelation of a whole world, a world +in itself. We can scarcely realize all this; but let us +look and reflect, and even we may feel as must have +felt the man of the Renaissance in the presence of +that mutilated, stained, battered torso. He sees in +that broken stump a grandeur of outline, a magnificence +of osseous structure, a breadth of muscle and +sinew, a smooth, firm covering of flesh, such as he +would vainly seek in any of his living models; he +sees a delicate and infinite variety of indentures, of +projections, of creases following the bend of every +limb; he sees, where the surface still exists intact, an +elasticity of skin, a buoyancy of hidden life such as all +the colours of his palette are unable to imitate; and +in this piece of drapery, negligently gathered over the +hips or rolled upon the arm, he sees a magnificent +alternation of large folds and small plaits, of straight +lines, and broken lines, and curves. He sees all this; +but he sees more: the broken torso is, as we have +said, not merely a world in itself, but the revelation +of a world. It is the revelation of antique civilization, +of the palæstra and the stadium, of the sanctification +of the body, of the apotheosis of man, of the religion +of life and nature and joy; revealed to the man of the +Middle Ages, who has hitherto seen in the untrained, +diseased, despised body but a deformed piece of baseness, +which his priests tell him belongs to the worms +and to Satan; who has been taught that the monk +living in solitude and celibacy, filthy, sick, worn out +with fastings and bleeding with flagellation, is the +nearest approach to divinity; who has seen Divinity +itself, pale, emaciated, joyless, hanging bleeding from +the cross; and who is for ever reminded that the +kingdom of this Godhead is not of this world. +What passes in the mind of that artist? What +surprise, what dawning doubts, what sickening fears, +what longings and what remorse are not the fruit of +this sight of Antiquity? Is he to yield or to resist? +Is he to forget the saints and Christ, and give himself +over to Satan and to Antiquity? Only one man boldly +answered, Yes. Mantegna abjured his faith, abjured +the Middle Ages, abjured all that belonged to his +time; and in so doing cast away from him the living +art and became the lover, the worshipper of shadows. +And only one man turned completely aside from the +antique as from the demon, and that man was a saint, +Fra Angelico da Fiesole. And with the antique, Fra +Angelico rejected all the other artistic influences and +aims of his time, the time not of Giotto or of Orcagna, +but of Masaccio and Uccello, of Pollaiolo and Donatello. +For the mild, meek, angelic monk dreaded the life of +his days; dreaded to leave the cloister where the sunshine +was tempered and the noise reduced to a mere +faint hum, and where the flower-beds were tidy and +prim; dreaded to soil or rumple his spotless white +robe and his shining black cowl; a spiritual sybarite, +shrinking from the sight of the crowd seething in the +streets, shrinking from the idea of stripping the rags +off the beggar in order to see his tanned and gnarled +limbs; shuddering at the thought of seeking for +muscles in the dead, cut-open body; fearful of every +whiff of life that might mingle with the incense atmosphere +of his chapel, of every cry of human passion +which might break through the well-ordered sweetness +of his chants. No; the Renaissance did not exist for +him who lived in a world of diaphanous form, colour +and character, unsubstantial and unruffled; dreaming +feebly and sweetly of transparent-cheeked Madonnas +with no limbs beneath their robes; of smooth-faced +saints with well-combed beard and placid, vacant +gaze, seated in well-ordered masses, holy with the +purity of inanity; of divine dolls with pallid flaxen +locks, floating between heaven and earth, playing +upon lute and viol and psaltery; raised to faint +visions of angels and blessed, moving noiseless, feelingless, +meaningless, across the flowerets of Paradise; +of assemblies of saints seated, arrayed in pure pink, +and blue and lilac, in an atmosphere of liquid gold, in +glory. And thus Fra Angelico worked on, content +with the dearly purchased science of his masters, +placid, beatic, effeminate, in an æsthetical paradise of +his own, a paradise of sloth and sweetness, a paradise +for weak souls, weak hearts, and weak eyes; patiently +repeating the same fleshless angels, the same boneless +saints, the same bloodless virgins; happy in smoothing +the unmixed, unshaded tints of the sky, and earth, +and dresses; laying on the gold of the fretted skies, +and of the iridescent wings, embroidering robes, instruments +of music, halos, flowers, with threads of +gold.... Sweet, simple artist saint, reducing art to +—something akin to the delicate pearl and silk embroidery +of pious nuns, to the exquisite sweetmeat cookery +of pious monks; a something too delicately gorgeous, +too deliciously insipid for human wear or human food; +no, the Renaissance does not exist for thee, either in +its study of the existing reality, or in its study of +antique beauty.</p> + +<p>Mantegna, the learned, the archæological, the pagan, +who renounces his times and his faith; and Angelico, +the monk, the saint, who shuts and bolts his monastery +doors and sprinkles holy water in the face of the +antique; the two extremes, are both exceptions. The +innumerable artists of the Renaissance remained in +hesitation; tried to court both the antique and the +modern, to unite the Pagan and the Christian—some, +like Ghirlandajo, in cold indifference to all but mere +artistic science, encrusting marble bacchanals into the +walls of the Virgin's paternal house, bringing together, +unthinkingly, antique-draped women carrying baskets, +and noble Strozzi and Ruccellai ladies with gloved +hands folded over their gold brocaded skirts; others, +with cheerful and childlike pleasure in both antique +and modern, like Benozzo, crowding together half- +naked youths and nymphs treading the grapes and +scaling the trellise with Florentine magnificos in +plaited skirts and starched collars, among the pines, +and porticos, the sprawling children, barking dogs, +peacocks sunning themselves, and partridges picking +up grain, of his Pisan frescoes; yet others using the +antique as mere pageant shows, allegorical mummeries, +destined to amuse some Duke of Ferrara or Marquis +of Mantua, together with the hurdle races of Jews, +hags, and riderless donkeys.</p> + +<p>Thus little by little the antique amalgamates with +the modern; the art born of the Middle Ages absorbs +the art born of Paganism; but how slowly, and with +what fantastic and ludicrous results at first; as when +the anatomical sculptor Pollaiolo gives scenes of naked +Roman prize-fighters as martyrdoms of St. Sebastian; +or when the pious Perugino (pious at least with his +brush) dresses up his sleek, hectic, beardless archangels +as Roman warriors, and makes them stand, straddling +beatically on thin little dapper legs, wistfully gazing +from beneath their wondrously ornamented helmets +on the walls of the Cambio at Perugia; when he +masquerades meditative fathers of the Church as +Socrates and haggard anchorites as Numa Pompilius; +most ludicrous of all, when he attires in scantiest of +--clinging antique drapery his mild and pensive Madonnas, +and, with daintily pointed toes, places them +to throne bashfully on allegorical chariots as Venus +or Diana.</p> + +<p>Long is the period of amalgamation, and small are +the results throughout that long early Renaissance. +Mantegna, Piero della Francesca, Melozzo, Ghirlandajo, +Filippino, Botticelli, Verrocchio, have none +of them shown us the perfect fusion of the two elements +whose union is to give us Michael Angelo, Raphael, +and all the great perfect artists of the early sixteenth +century; the two elements are for ever ill-combined +and hostile to each other; the modern vulgarizes the +antique, the antique paralyzes the modern. And +meanwhile the fifteenth century, the century of study, +of conflict, and of confusion, is rapidly drawing to a +close; eight or ten more years, and it will be gone. +Is the new century to find the antique still dead and +the modern still mediæval?</p> + +<p>The antique and the modern had met for the first +time and as irreconcilable enemies in the cloisters of +Pisa; and the modern had triumphed in the great +mediæval fresco of the Triumph of Death.. By a +strange coincidence, by a sublime jest of accident, the +antique and the modern were destined to meet again, +and this time indissolubly united, in a painting representing +the Resurrection. Yes, Signorelli's fresco in +Orvieto Cathedral is indeed a resurrection, the resurrection +of human beauty after the long death-slumber +of the Middle Ages. And the artist would seem to +have been dimly conscious of the great allegory he +was painting. Here and there are strewn skulls; +skeletons stand leering by, as if in remembrance of +the ghastly past, and as a token of former death; but +magnificent youths are breaking through the crust of +the earth, emerging, taking shape and flesh; arising, +strong and proud, ready to go forth at the bidding of +the Titanic angels who announce from on high with +trumpet blast and waving banners, that the death of +the world has come to an end, and that humanity +has arisen once more in the youth and beauty of +Antiquity.</p> + +<p>Signorelli's frescoes at Orvieto, at once the "latest +works of the fifteenth century, and the latest works +of an old man nurtured in the traditions of Benozzo +Gozzoli and of Piero della Francesca, mark the beginning +of the maturity and perfection of Italian art. +From them Michael Angelo learns what he could not +be taught even by his master Ghirlandajo, the grand +and cold realist. He learns; and what he has learned +at Orvieto he teaches with doubled force in Rome; +and the ceiling of the Sixtine Chapel, the superb and +heroic nudities, the majestic draperies, the reappearance +in the modern art of painting of the spirit and hand +of Phidias, give a new impulse and hasten on perfection. +When the doors of the chapel are at length +opened, Raphael forgets Perugino; Fra Bartolomeo +forgets Botticelli; Sodoma forgets Leonardo; the +narrower hesitating styles of the fifteenth century are +abandoned, as the great example is disseminated +throughout Italy; and even the tumult of angels in +glory which the Lombard Correggio is to paint in +far-off Parma, and the daringly simple Bacchus and +Ariadne with which Tintoret will decorate the Ducal +Palace more than fifty years later—all that is great +and bold, all that is a re-incarnation of the spirit of +Antiquity, all that marks the culmination of Renaissance +art, seems due to the impulse of Michael Angelo, +and, through him, to the example of Signorelli. From +the celestial horseman and bounding avenging angels +of Raphael's Heliodorus, to the St. Sebastian of +Sodoma, with exquisite limbs and head, rich with +tendril-like locks, delicate against the brown Umbrian +sunset; from the Madonna of Andrea del Sarto seated, +with the head and drapery of a Niobe, by the sack of +flour in the Annunziata cloister, to the voluptuous +goddess, with purple mantle half concealing her body +of golden white, who leans against the sculptured +fountain in Titian's Sacred and Profane Love, with the +greenish blue sky and hazy light of evening behind +her; from the most extreme examples of the most +extreme schools of Lombardy and Venetia, to the +most intense examples of the remotest schools of +Tuscany and Umbria; throughout the art of the early +sixteenth century, of those thirty years which were the +years of perfection, we see, more or less marked, but +always distinct, the union of the living art born of the +Middle Ages with the dead art left by Antiquity, a +union producing life and perfection, producing the +great art of the Renaissance.</p> + +<p>This much is clear and easy of definition; but what +is neither clearly understood nor easily defined is the +nature of this union, the manner in which the antique +and the modern did thus amalgamate. It is easy to +speak of a vague union of spirit, of the antique idea +having permeated the modern; but all this explains +but little: art is not a metaphysical figment, and all its +phases and revolutions are concrete, and, so to speak, +physically explicable and definable. The union of +the antique with the modern meant simply the absorption +by the art of the Renaissance of elements of +civilization necessary for its perfection, but not existing +in the medieval civilization of the fifteenth century; +of elements of civilization which gave what the civilization +of the fifteenth century—which could give +colour, perspective, grouping, and landscape—could +never have afforded: the nude, drapery, and gesture. +The naked human body, which the Greeks had +trained, studied, and idolized, did not exist in the +fifteenth century; in its stead there was only the undressed +body, ill-developed, untrained, pinched, and +distorted by the garments only just cast off; cramped +and bent by sedentary occupations, livid with the +plague-spots of the Middle Ages, scarred by the whipmarks +of asceticism. This stripped body, unseen and +unfit to be seen, unaccustomed to the air and to the +eyes of others, shivered and cowered for cold and for +shame. The Giottesques ignored its very existence, +conceiving humanity as a bodiless creature, with face +and hands to express emotion, and just enough malformed +legs and feet to be either standing or moving; +further, beneath the garments, there was nothing. +The realists of the fifteenth century tore off the clothes +and drew the ugly thing beneath; and bought the +corpses from the lazar-houses, and stole them from +the gallows; in order to see how bone fitted into bone, +and muscle was stretched over muscle. They learned +to perfection the anatomy of the human frame, but +they could not learn its beauty; they became even +reconciled to the ugliness they were accustomed to +see; and, with their minds full of antique examples, +Verrocchio, Donatello, Pollaiolo, and Ghirlandajo, the +greatest anatomists of the fifteenth century, imitated +their coarse and ill-made living models when they +imagined that they were imitating antique marbles. +So much for the nude. Drapery, as the ancients +understood it in the delicate plaits of Greek chiton and +tunic, in the grand folds of Roman toga, the fifteenth +century could not show; it knew only the stiff, scanty +raiment of the active classes; the shapeless masses of +lined cloth of the merchants and magistrates; the +prudish and ostentatious starched dress of the women; +and the coarse, lumpish garb of the monks. +The artist of the fifteenth century knew drapery +only as an exotic, an exotic with whose representation +the habit of seeing mediæval costume was for ever +interfering; on the stripped, unseemly, indecent body +he places, with the stiffness of artificiality, drapery +such as he has never seen upon any living creature; +the result is awkwardness and rigidity. And what +attitude, what gesture, can he expect from this stripped +and artificially draped model? None, for the model +scarce knows how to stand in so unaccustomed a condition +of body. The artist must seek for attitude and +gesture among his townsfolk, and among them he can +find only trivial, awkward, often vulgar movement.</p> + +<p>They have never been taught how to stand or to move +with grace and dignity; the artist must study attitude +and gesture in the market-place or the bull-baiting +ground, where Ghirlandajo found his jauntily strutting +idlers, and Verrocchio his brutally staggering prize- +fighters. Between the constrained attitudinizing of +Byzantine and Giottesque tradition, and the imitation +of the movements of clodhoppers and ragamuffins, +the realist of the fifteenth century would wander hopelessly +were it not for the antique. Genius and science +are of no avail; the position of Christ in baptism in +the paintings of Verrocchio and Ghirlandajo is mean +and servile; the movements of the "Thunder-stricken" +in Signorelli's lunettes is an inconceivable mixture of the +brutish, the melodramatic, and the comic; the magnificently +drawn youth at the door of the prison in Filippino's +Liberation of St. Peter is gradually going to sleep +and collapsing in a fashion which is truly ignoble. +And the same applies to sculptured figures or to +figures standing isolated like statues; no Greek would +have ventured upon the swaggering position, with +legs apart and elbows out, of Donatello's St. George, +or Perugino's St. Michael; and a young Athenian +who should have assumed the attitude of Verrocchio's +David, with tripping legs and hand clapped on his +hip, would have been sent to sit in a corner as a saucy +little ragamuffin.</p> + +<p>Coarse nude, stiff drapery, vulgar attitude, was all +that the fifteenth century could offer to its artists; +but Antiquity could offer more and very different +things: the naked body developed by the most +artistic training, drapery the most natural and refined, +and attitude and gesture regulated by an education +the most careful and artistic; and all these things +Antiquity did give to the artists of the Renaissance. +They did not copy antique statues as living naked men +and women, but they corrected the faults of their +living models by the example of the statues; they did +not copy antique stone draperies in coloured pictures, +but they arranged the robes on their models with the +antique folds well in their memory; they did not give +the gestures of statues to living figures, but they made +the living figures move in accordance with those +principles of harmony which they had found exemplified +in the statues.</p> + +<p>They did not imitate the antique, they studied +it; they obtained through the fragments of antique +sculpture a glimpse into the life of antiquity, and that +glimpse served to correct the vulgarism and distortion +of the mediæval life of the fifteenth century. In the +perfection of Italian painting, the union of antique +and modern being consummated, it is perhaps difficult +to disentangle what really is antique from what is +modern; but in the earlier times, when the two elements +were still separate, we can see them opposite each +other and compare them in the works of the greatest +artists. Wherever, in the paintings of the early Renaissance, +there is realism, marked by the costume of +the times, there is ugliness of form and vulgarity of +movement; where there is idealism, marked by imitation +of the antique, the nude, and drapery, there is +beauty and dignity. We need only compare Filippino's +Scene before the Proconsul with his Raising of +the King's Son in the Brancacci Chapel; the grand +attitude and draperies of Ghirlandajo's Zachariah +with the vulgar dress and movements of the Florentine +citizens surrounding him; Benozzo Gozzoli's noble +naked figure of Noah with his ungainly, hideously +dressed figure of Cosimo de' Medici; Mantegna's +exquisite Judith with his preposterous Marquis of +Mantua; in short, all the purely realistic with all the +purely idealistic painting of the fifteenth century. We +may give one last instance. In Signorelli's Orvieto +frescoes there is a figure of a young man, with aquiline +features, long crisp hair and strongly developed throat, +which reappears unmistakably in all the compositions, +and in some of them twice and thrice in various positions. +His naked figure is magnificent, his attitudes +splendid, his thrown-back head superb, whether he be +slowly and painfully emerging from the earth, staggered +and gasping with his newly infused life, or sinking +oppressed on the ground, broken and crushed by the +sound of the trumpet of judgment; or whether he be +moving forward with ineffable longing towards the +angel about to award him the crown of the blessed; +in all these positions he is heroically beautiful. We +meet him again, unmistakable, but how different, in the +realistic group of the "Thunder-stricken"—the long, +lank youth, with spindle-shanks and egg-shaped body, +bounding forward, with most grotesque strides, over +the uncouth heap of dead bodies, ungainly masses +with soles and nostrils uppermost, lying in beast-like +confusion. This youth, with something of a harlequin +in his jumps and his ridiculous thin legs and preposterous +round body, is evidently the model for the +naked demi-gods of the Resurrection and the Paradise: +he is the handsome boy as the fifteenth century +gave him to Signorelli; opposite, he is the living +youth of the fifteenth century idealized by the study +of ancient sculpture; just as the "Thunder-stricken" +may be some scene of street massacre such as Signorelli +might have witnessed at Cortona or Perugia; while +the agonies of the "Hell" are the grouped and superb +agonies taught by the antique; just as the two arch-angels +of the "Hell," in their armour of Baglioni's +heavy cavalry, may represent the modern element, +and the same archangels, naked, with magnificent flying +draperies, blowing the trumpets of the Resurrection, +may show the antique element in Renaissance art. +The antique influence was not, indeed, equally +strong throughout Italy; it was strongest in the +Tuscan school, which, seeking for perfection of linear +form, found that perfection in the antique; it was +weakest in the Lombard and Venetian schools, which +sought for what the antique could not give, light and +shade and colour; the antique was most efficacious +where it was most indispensable, and it was more +necessary to a Tuscan, strong only with his charcoal +or pencil, than to Leonardo da Vinci, who could make +an imperfect figure, beckoning mysteriously from out +of the gloom, more fascinating than the finest drawn +Florentine Madonna, and could surround an insignificant +childish head with the wondrous sheen and +ripple of hair, as with an aureole of poetry; it was +also less necessary to Giorgione and Titian, who +could hide coarse limbs beneath their draperies of +precious ruby, and transfigure, by the liquid gold of +their palettes, a peasant woman into a goddess. But +even the Lombards, even the Venetians, required the +antique influence. They could not perhaps have +obtained it direct like the Tuscans: the colourists +and masters of light and shade might never have +understood the blank lines and faint shadows of the +marble; but they received the antique influence, strong +but modified by the medium through which it had +passed, from Mantegna; and the relentless self-sacrifice +to Antiquity, the self-paralyzation of the great +artist, was not without its use: from Venetian Padua, +Mantegna influenced the Bellini and Giorgione; from +Lombard Mantua, he influenced Leonardo; and Mantegna's +influence was that of the antique.</p> + +<p>What would have been the art of the Renaissance +without the antique? The speculation is vain, for +the antique had influenced it, had been goading it on +ever since the earliest times; it had been present at +its birth, it had affected Giotto through Niccolo Pisano, +and Masaccio through Ghiberti; the antique influence +cannot be conceived as absent in the history of Italian +painting. So far, as a study of the impossible, the +speculation respecting the fate of Renaissance art had +it not been influenced by the antique would be childishly +useless. But lest we forget that this antique +influence did exist, lest, grown ungrateful and blind, +we refuse it its immense share in producing Michael +Angelo, Raphael, and Titian, we may do well to turn +to an art born and bred like Italian art, in the Middle +Ages; like it, full of strength and power of self- +development, but which, unlike Italian art, was not +influenced by the antique. This art is the great +German art of the early sixteenth century; the art +of Martin Schongauer, of Aldegrever, of Altdorfer, of +Wohlgemuth, of Kranach, of Albrecht Durer and +Hans Holbein, whom they resemble as Pinturicchio +and Lo Spagna resemble Perugino, as Palma and +Paris Bordone resemble Titian. This is an art born +in a civilization less perfect indeed than that of Italy, +narrower, as Nürnberg or Basle is narrower than +Florence; but resembling it in habits, dress, religion, +above all, the main characteristic of being mediæval; +and its masters, as great as their Italian contemporaries +in all the technicalities of the art, and In +absolute honesty of endeavour, may show what the +Italian art of the sixteenth century might have been +without the antique. Let us therefore open a port- +folio of those wonderful minute yet grand engravings +of the old Germans. They are for the most part +Scriptural scenes or allegories, quite analogous to +those of the Italians, but purely realistic, conscious +of no world beyond that of an Imperial City of the +year 1520. Here we have the whole turn-out, male +and female, of a German free-town, in the shape of +scenes from the lives of the Virgin and saints; here +are short fat burghers, with enormous blotchy, bloated +faces and little eyes set in fat, their huge stomachs +protruding from under their jackets; here are blear- +eyed ladies, tall, thin, wrinkled though not old, with +figures like hungry harpies, stalking about in high +headgears and stiff gowns, or sitting by the side of +lean and stunted pages, singing (with dolorous voice) +to lutes; or promenading under trees with long- +shanked, high-shouldered gentlemen, with vacant +sickly face and long scraggy hair and beard, their +bony elbows sticking out of their slashed doublets. +These courtly figures culminate in Dürer's magnificent +plate of the wild man of the woods kissing the +hideous, leering Jezebel in her brocade and jewels. +These aristocratic women are terrible; prudish, malicious, +licentious, never modest because they are +always ugly. Even the poor Madonnas, seated in +front of village hovels or windmills, smile the smile +of starved, sickly sempstresses. It is a stunted, +poverty-stricken, plague-sick society, this mediæval +society of burghers and burghers' wives; the air +seems bad and heavy, and the light wanting physically +and morally, in these old free-towns; there is +intellectual sickness as well as bodily in those musty +gabled houses; the mediæval spirit blights what +revival of healthiness may exist in these commonwealths. +And feudalism is outside the gates. There +are the brutal, leering men-at-arms, in slashed, puffed +doublets and heavy armour, face and dress as unhuman +as possible, standing grimacing at the blood +spirting from John the Baptist's decapitated trunk, +as in Kranach's horrible print, while gaping spectators +fill the castle-yard; there are the castles high on +rocks amidst woods, with miserable villages below, +where the Prodigal Son wallows among the swine, +and the tattered boors tumble about in drunkenness, +or rest wearied on their spades. There are the Middle +Ages in full force. But had these Germans of the +days of Luther really no thought beyond their own +times and their own country? Had they really no +knowledge of the antique? Not so; they had heard +from their learned men, from Willibald Pirkheimer +and Ulrich von Hutten, that the world had once been +peopled with naked gods and goddesses. Nay, the +very year perhaps that Raphael handed to his engraver, +Marc Antonio, his magnificent drawing of the +Judgment of Paris, Lukas Kranach bethought him to +represent the story of the good Knight Paris giving +the apple to the Lady Venus. So Kranach took up +his steady pencil and sharp chisel, and in strong, clear, +minute lines of black and white showed us the scene. +There, on Mount Ida, with a castellated rock in the +distance, the charger of Paris browses beneath some +stunted larches; the Trojan knight's helmet, with its +monstrous beak and plume, lies on the ground; and +near it reclines Paris himself, lazy, in complete armour, +with frizzled fashionable beard. To him, all wrinkled +and grinning with brutal lust, comes another bearded +knight, with wings to his vizored helmet, Sir Mercury, +leading the three goddesses, short, fat-cheeked German +wenches, housemaids stripped of their clothes, +stupid, brazen, indifferent. And Paris is evidently +prepared with his choice: he awards the apple to the +fattest, for among a half-starved, plague-stricken people +like this, the chosen of gods and men must needs +be the fattest.</p> + +<p>No, such pagan scenes are mere burlesques, coarse +mummeries, such as may have amused Nürnberg and +Augsburg during Shrovetide, when drunken louts +figured as Bacchus and sang drinking songs by Hans +Sachs. There is no reality in all this; there is no +belief in pagan gods. If we would see the haunting +divinity of the German Renaissance, we shall find +him prying and prowling in nearly every scene of real +life; him, the ever present, the king of the Middle +Ages, whose triumph we have seen on the cloister +wall at Pisa, the Lord Death. His fleshless face peers +from behind a bush at Zatzinger's stunted, fever- +stricken lady and imbecile gentleman; he sits grinning +on a tree in Orso Grafs allegory, while the cynical +knights, with haggard, sensual faces, crack dirty jokes +with the fat, brutish woman squatted below; he puts +his hand into the basket of Dürer's tattered pedlar; +he leers hideously at the stirrup of Dürer's armed and +stalwart knight. No gods of youth and nature, no +Hercules, no Hermes, no Venus, have invaded his +German territories, as they invaded even his own +palace, the burial-ground at Pisa; the antique has +not perverted Dürer and his fellows, as it perverted +Masaccio and Signorelli and Mantegna, from the +mediæval worship of Death.</p> + +<p>The Italians had seen the antique and had let themselves +be seduced by it, despite their civilization and +their religion. Let us only rejoice thereat. There +are indeed some, and among them the great English +critic who is irrefutable when he is a poet, and irrational +when he becomes a philosopher;—there are +some who tell us that in its union with antique art, +the art of the followers of Giotto embraced death, and +rotted away ever after. There are others, more moderate +but less logical, who would teach us that in uniting +with the antique, the mediæval art of the fifteenth +century purified and sanctified the beautiful but evil +child of Paganism; that the goddess of Scopas and +the athlete of Polyclete were raised to a higher sphere +when Raphael changed the one into a Madonna, and +Michael Angelo metamorphosed the other into a +prophet. But both schools of criticism are wrong. +Every civilization has its inherent evil; Antiquity had +its inherent evils, as the Middle Ages had theirs; Antiquity +may have bequeathed to the Renaissance the +bad with the good, as the Middle Ages had bequeathed +to the Renaissance the good with the bad. But the +art of Antiquity was not the evil, it was the good of +Antiquity; it was born of its strength and its purity +only, and it was the incarnation of its noblest qualities. +It could not be purified, because it was spotless; it +could not be sanctified, because it was holy. It could +gain nothing from the art of the Middle Ages, alternately +strong in brutal reality, and languid in mystic +inanity; the men of the Renaissance could, if they +influenced it at all, influence the antique only for evil; +they belonged to an inferior artistic civilization, and +if we conscientiously seek for the spiritual improvements +brought by them into antique types, we shall +see that they consist in spoiling their perfect proportions; +in making necks longer and muscles more prominent; +in rendering more or less flaccid, or meagre +or coarse, the grand and delicate forms of antique +art. And when we have examined into this purified +art of the Renaissance, when we have compared coolly +and equitably, we may perhaps confess that, while +the Renaissance added immense wealth of beauty in +colour, perspective, and grouping, it took away something +of the perfection of simple lines and modest +light and shade of the antique; we may admit to ourselves +that the grandest saint by Raphael is meagre +and stunted; and the noblest Virgin by Titian is overblown +and sensual by the side of the demi-gods and +amazons of antique sculpture.</p> + +<p>The antique perfected the art of the Renaissance, +it did not corrupt it. The art of the Renaissance fell +indeed into shameful degradation soon after the period +of its triumphant union with the antique; and +Raphael's grand gods and goddesses, his exquisite +Eros and radiant Psyche of the Farnesina, are indeed +succeeded but too soon by the Olympus of Giulio +Romano, an Olympus of harlots and acrobats, who +smirk and mouth and wriggle and sprawl ignobly on +the walls and ceilings of the dismantled palace which +crumbles away among the stunted willows, the stagnant +pools, and rank grass of the marshes of Mantua. +But this is no more the fault of Antiquity than it is +the fault of the Middle Ages; it is the fault of that +great principle of life and of change which makes all +things organic, be they physical or intellectual, germinate, +grow, attain maturity, and then fade, wither, +and rot. The dead art of Antiquity could never have +brought the art of the Renaissance to an untimely +end; the art of the Renaissance decayed because it +was mature, and died because it had lived.</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Euphorion, by Vernon Lee + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUPHORION *** + +***** This file should be named 31303-h.htm or 31303-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/3/0/31303/ + +Produced by Marc D'Hooghe + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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