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diff --git a/31303.txt b/31303.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..69a4c00 --- /dev/null +++ b/31303.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4958 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Euphorion, by Vernon Lee + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. 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: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUPHORION *** + + + + +Produced by Marc D'Hooghe + + + + +EUPHORION: + +BEING STUDIES OF THE ANTIQUE AND THE MEDIAEVAL IN THE RENAISSANCE + +BY + +VERNON LEE + +_Author of "Studies of the 18th Century in Italy," "Belcaro" etc._ + + +VOL. I. + + WALTER PATER, +IN APPRECIATION OF THAT WHICH, IN EXPOUNDING THE + BEAUTIFUL THINGS OF THE PAST, HE HAS ADDED TO + THE BEAUTIFUL THINGS OF THE PRESENT. + + + +TABLE OF CONTENTS. + + +Introduction +The Sacrifice +The Italy of the Elizabethan Dramatists +The Out-Door Poetry +Symmetria Prisca + + + +INTRODUCTION. + + + _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. Mediaevalism took this Helen to wife, and their + offspring, the Euphorion of Goethe's drama, is the spirit of the + modern world._--J.A. Symonds, "Renaissance In Italy," vol. ii. p. + 54. + + +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. + +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 encyclopaedic 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. + +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. +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. + +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 +mediaeval 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. + +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 +mediaeval 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, mediaeval 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. + +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 mediaeval 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. + +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 mediaeval 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. + +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. + +Siena, _September_, 1882. + + + +THE SACRIFICE. + + + Ihr fuehrt ins Leben uns hinein; + Ihr laesst den armen schuldig werden; + Dann uebergiebt Ihr ihm der Pein, + Denn alle Schuld raecht sich auf Erden. + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +The Renaissance may be defined as being that phase in mediaeval history +in which the double influence, feudal and ecclesiastic, which had +gradually crushed the spontaneous life of the early mediaeval 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 mediaeval 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 Nuernberg, 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. + +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 Nuernberg 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. + +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 +mediaevalism. 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. + +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 Caesarism. 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. + +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 nebulae, 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 nebulae into homogeneous and compact kingdoms. + +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. + +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 Caesar 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. + +Italy was as a vast store-house, sheltered from all the dangers of +mediaeval 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 succes a 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. + +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 Caesar 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. + +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. + + + + +THE ITALY OF THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMATISTS. + + +I. + +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. + +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 Caesar and Lucrezia, in their +camp in the meadows behind Sant' Angelo. The Spaniards then came to +Italy, and the Germans: strong mediaeval 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 formulae, 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-mediaeval 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, mediaeval +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, +aesthetic, 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 mediaeval; 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. + +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 + + + Kiss the hand and cry, "sweet lady!" + Say they had been at Rome and seen the relics, + Drunk your Verdea wine, and rid at Naples-- + + +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. + +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-- + + + these wretched eminent things + Leave no more fame behind 'em, than should one + Fall in a frost, and leave his print in snow-- + + +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-- + + + O, this gloomy world! + In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness, + Doth womanish and fearful mankind live! + Let worthy minds ne'er stagger in distrust + To suffer death or shame for what is just. + + +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-- + + + O thou all-bearing earth + Which men do gape for till thou cram'st their mouths + And choak'st their throats for dust: O charme thy breast + And let me sinke into thee. Look who knocks; + Andrugio calls. But O, she's deafe and blinde. + A wretch but leane relief on earth can finde. + + +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, + + As the tann'd galley slave is with his oar. + +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 trapdoors; 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. + + +II. + +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. + +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 Duerer; 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 mediaeval Paris; as are the well-lit, clean, spacious +palaces of Michelozzo or Bramante compared with the squalid, unhealthy, +uncomfortable mediaeval castles of Duerer'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 d'Aragona 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, unromantic. 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.[1] + + +[1] The "Orlando Innamorato" of Boiardo contains, part i, 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? + + +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? + +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 mediaeval 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 Caesar 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. 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 +Caesar Borgia merely a rather audacious and not very holy action, +indicative of very brilliant powers of diplomacy, then Caesar 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 perpetrator 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 Caesar 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 Caesar +Borgia is the _nec plus ultra_ of a Renaissance villain; he takes, as +all do not, absolute pleasure in evil as such. Yet Caesar 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. Caesar 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. + +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 unutterable, 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. + +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 unsheathing 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 Duerer'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 +Duerer 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 Duerer +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 Duerer'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. + +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: + + + If any spirit breathes within this round + Uncapable of weighty passion, + Who winks and shuts his apprehension up + From common sense of what men were and are, + Who would not know what men must be: let such + Hurry amain from our black visaged shows; + We shall affright their eyes. + + +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 prayerbook or ribald novels, it was +some sugary "Aminta" or "Pastor Fido:" their own tragedies by Webster +and Shelley they could never have understood. + +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. + + + + +THE OUTDOOR POETRY. + + +The thought of winter is bleak and barren to our mind; the late year is +chary of aesthetic 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 summer'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 +aesthetic 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 +grandchildren. 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 mediaeval 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. + +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. + +There is nothing more characteristic of mediaeval 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 mediaeval 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 mediaeval +poetry, one's feeling towards spring is just similar to that of the +morbid creature in Schubert's "Muellerin," who would not stir from home +for the dreadful, dreadful greenness, which he would fain bleach with +tears, all around: + + + Ich moechte ziehn in die Welt hinaus, hinaus in die weite + Welt, + Wenn's nur so gruen, so gruen nicht war da draussen in + Wald und Feld. + + +Moreover this mediaeval 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, Provencal, 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, Provencal, 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. + +As it is in mediaeval 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, mediaeval 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 boarspear 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 mediaeval 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 mediaeval poetry; the city +only, and the castle, and the endless, all-encompassing forest. + +And to this narrowness of mediaeval notions of outdoor life, inherited +together with mediaeval 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 mediaeval 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!) flower-beds 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 e 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 mediaeval 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 mediaeval perceptions of +Nature--a limitation so important 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 mediaeval 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 aesthetic 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 aesthetic 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 mediaeval 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 aesthetic, 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 +entgoetterte 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 mediaeval 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 mediaeval 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 mediaeval 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 mediaeval poets, noble and +plebeian, French, Provencal, 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.[1] A monstrous rag doll, dressed up in +shreds of many-coloured villainy without a recognizable human feature, +dragged in 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 mediaeval 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. + + +[1] The reader may oppose to my views the existence of the--class of +poems, French, Latin, and German, of which the Provencal 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 the likely that these love +poems, in which, successfully or unsuccessfully, 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 AEvi," 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: + +Singulariter. Pluraliter. +Nom. Hic villanus. Nom. Hi maledicti. +Gen. Huius rustici. Gen. Horum tristium. +Dat. Huic tferfero (_sic_). Dat. His mendacibus. +Acc. Hunc furem. Acc. Hos nequissimos. +Voc. O latro. Voc. O pessimi. +Abl. Ab hoc depredatore. Abl. Ab his infidelibus. + +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: + + Christo fo da villan crucifio, + E stagom sempre in pioza, in vento, e in neve, + Perche havom fato cosi gran pecca. + + +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.] + + +Yet not so; I can recall one, though only one, occasion in which +mediaeval 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 crespele." 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. + + "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: + + "'Fair brother ("beau frere"--a greeting corresponding to the + modern "bon homme")! God be with thee!' + + "'God bless you!' answered the man. + + "'What dost thou here?' asked Aucassin. + + "'What is that to you?' answered the man. + + "'I ask thee from no evil motive.' + + "'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.' + + "'And how dost thou know me?' + + "'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.' + + "'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.' + + "'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.' + + "'And what are these?' + + "'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!'" + + +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 mediaeval 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--Provencals, 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." + + + +II. + +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 mediaeval 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. + +Of these Tuscan peasants we get occasional glimpses in the mediaeval +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. + +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 +Provencals 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 Provencal and +Sicilian, but even Tuscan, poetry was neglected, when the revival of +Greek and Latin letters made it impossible to rewrite the threadbare +mediaeval 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 Provencal 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 mediaeval 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 +mediaeval 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 high-flown 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 mediaeval 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 mediaeval 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 Provencal, and early Italian lyrics, I +feel that the adoption of Courtly mediaeval 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.[1] + + +[1] 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:-- + +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 piu che +argento--Donami allegrezze--Ben eo son morto--E mal colto--Se non mi dai +conforto--_Fior dell' orto_." + +Inghilfredi Siciliano: "Gesu 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." + +Jacopo da Lentino: "E di virtute tutte l' altre avanza--E somigliante a +stella e di splendore--Colla sua conta (_cf_. Provencal _coindeta_, +gentille) e gaia innamoranza--E piu bella e che rosa e che fiore--Cristo +le doni vita ed allegranza--E si la cresca in gran pregio ed onore." + +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."] + + +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-- + + + Flower of the Palm, &c., + + +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 mediaeval, 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 +aestheticism 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 beastliness 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 mediaeval 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." + +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 Vallera 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 Vallera 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. + +All this is not the poetry of the Renaissance peasant; it is the poem +made out of his reality; the songs which Vallera 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 Vallera 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 mediaeval 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 mediaeval, 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. + +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. + + + + +SYMMETRIA PRISCA. + + + Mirator veterum, discipulusque memor, + Defuit mini symmetria prisca. Peregi + Quod potui; Veniam da mihi, posteritas. + --_Lionardo da Vinci's epitaph by Platino Piatto_. + +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 mediaeval 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. + +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 Bacchantae 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." + +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, mediaeval 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 mediaeval 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 mediaeval 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? + +The art which came to maturity in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth +centuries was generated in the early mediaeval 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 mediaeval 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. + +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 mediaeval 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. + +As it was with literature, so likewise was it with art. The most purely +mediaeval 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, Niccolo, +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 mediaeval sculpture, aided by the +antique, preceded by a full half-century the appearance of mediaeval +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. + +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. + +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. Sculpture, +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. + +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. + +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 Niccolo 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 Manibus 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 +mediaeval 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. + +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 mediaeval 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 +mediaeval; 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 mediaeval, 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 mediaeval 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 mediaeval, 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, and by the pseudo-Corinthian arabesques +and capitals of a few learned architects. But all this was mere +archaeological 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 mediaeval 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 mediaeval 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 mediaeval; 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 mediaeval +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, mediaeval 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 mediaeval 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 palaestra +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 +aesthetical 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. + +Mantegna, the learned, the archaeological, 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. + +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. + +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 mediaeval? + +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 mediaeval 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. + + +II. + + +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. + +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 mediaeval 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. 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. + +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. + +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 +mediaeval 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 archangels 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. + +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 Duerer 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 Nuernberg or Basle +is narrower than Florence; but resembling it in habits, dress, religion, +above all, the main characteristic of being mediaeval; 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 portfolio 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 Duerer'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 mediaeval 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 mediaeval 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. + +No, such pagan scenes are mere burlesques, coarse mummeries, such as may +have amused Nuernberg 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 +Duerer's tattered pedlar; he leers hideously at the stirrup of Duerer'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 Duerer and his fellows, as it perverted Masaccio and Signorelli +and Mantegna, from the mediaeval worship of Death. + +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 mediaeval 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. + +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. + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Euphorion, by Vernon Lee + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUPHORION *** + +***** This file should be named 31303.txt or 31303.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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