slated 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;