: except in
learned revivalisms or in loose buffooneries, the mere fleshly love of
Antiquity disappears out of literature; and equally so, though by a
slower process of gradual transformation, vanishes also the adoring, but
undisguisedly adulterous love of the troubadours and minnesingers. Into
the love Instincts of mankind have been mingled, however much diluted,
some drops of the more spiritual passion of Dante. The _puella_ of
Antiquity, the noble dame of feudal days, is succeeded in Latin
countries, in Italy, and France, and Spain, and Portugal, by the
_gloriosa donna_ imitated from. Petrarch, and imitated by Petrarch from
Dante; a long-line of shadowy figures, veiled in the veil of Madonna
Laura, ladies beloved of Lorenzo and Michael Angelo, of Ariosto, and
Tasso, and Camoens, and Cervantes, passes through the world; nay, even
the sprightly-mistress of Ronsard, half-bred pagan and troubadour has
airs of dignity and mystery which make us almost think that in this
dainty coquettish French body, of Marie or Helene or Cassandrette, there
really may be an immortal soul. But with the Renaissance--that movement
half of mediaeval democratic progress, and half of antique revivalism,
and to which in reality belongs not merely Petrarch, but Dante, and
every one of the Tuscan poets, Guinicelli, Lapo Gianni, Cavalcanti, who
broke with the feudal poetry of Provence and Sicily--with the
Renaissance, or rather with its long-drawn-out end, comes the close, for
the moment, of the really creative activity of the Latin peoples in the
domain of poetry. All the things for two centuries which Italy and
France and Spain and Portugal (which we must remember for the sake of
Camoens) continue to produce, are but developments of parts left
untouched; or refinements of extreme detail, as in the case,
particularly, of the French poets of the sixteenth century; but poetry
receives from these races nothing new or vital, no fresh ideal or
fruitful marriage of ideals. And here begins, uniting in itself all the
scattered and long-dormant powers of Northern poetry, the great and
unexpected action of England. It had slept through the singing period of
the Middle Ages, and was awakened, not by Germany or Provence, but by
Italy: Boccaccio and Petrarch spoke, and, as through dreams, England in
Chaucer's voice, made answer. Again, when the Renaissance had drawn to a
close, far on in the sixteenth century, English poetry was reawakened;
and again by Italy.