ave observed that I have
almost invariably traced the origin deep into that fruitful cosmopolitan
chaos, due to the mingling of all that was still unused of the remains
of Antiquity with all that was untouched of the intellectual and moral
riches of the barbarous nations, to which we give the name of Middle
Ages; and that I have, as invariably, followed the development of these
precious forms, and their definitive efflorescence and fruit-bearing,
into that particular country where certain mediaeval conditions had
ceased to exist, namely Italy. In other words, it has seemed to me that
the things which I have studied were originally produced during the
Middle Ages, and consequently in the mediaeval countries, France,
Germany, Provence; but did not attain maturity except in that portion of
the Middle Ages which is mediaeval no longer, but already more than half
modern, the Renaissance, which began in Italy not with the establishment
of despotisms and the coming of Greek humanists, but with the
independence of the free towns and with the revival of Roman tradition.

Why so? Because, it appears to me, after watching the lines of my
thought converging to this point, because, with a few exceptions, the
Middle Ages were rich in great beginnings (indeed a good half of all
that makes up our present civilization seems to issue from them): but
they were poor in complete achievements; full of the seeds of modern
institutions, arts, thoughts, and feelings, they yet show us but rarely
the complete growth of any one of them: a fruitful Nile flood, but which
must cease to drown and to wash away, which must subside before the
germs that it has brought can shoot forth and mature. The sense of this
comes home to me most powerfully whenever I think of mediaeval poetry and
mediaeval painting.

The songs of the troubadours and minnesingers, what are they to our
feelings? They are pleasant, even occasionally beautiful, but they are
empty, lamentably empty, charming arrangements of words; poetry which
fills our mind or touches our heart comes only with the Tuscan lyrists
of the thirteenth century. The same applies to mediaeval narrative-verse:
it is, with one or two exceptions or half exceptions, such as "The
Chanson de Roland" and Gottfried's "Tristan und Isolde," decidedly
wearisome; a thing to study, but scarcely a thing to delight in. I do
not mean to say that the old legends of Wales and Scandinavia,
subsequently embodied by the French an