eem to
justify the hope that a worthy future awaits it.

Under Italian influence an interesting dramatic growth attained to some
vitality in the Dalmatian lands about the beginning of the 16th century,
where the religious drama, whose days were passing away in Italy, found
favour with a people with a scant popular literature of its own. At
Ragusa Italian literary influence had been spread by the followers of
Petrarch from the later years of the 15th century; here several
Servo-Croatian writers produced religious plays in the manner of the
Italian _rappresentazioni_; and a gifted poet, Martin Drzic, composed,
besides religious plays and farces, a species of pastoral which enjoyed
much favour.

(c) _Spain._

Spain is the only country of modern Europe which shares with England the
honour of having achieved, at a relatively early date, the creation of a
genuinely national form of the regular drama. So proper to Spain was the
form of the drama which she produced and perfected, that to it the term
_romantic_ has been specifically applied, though so restricted a use of
the epithet is clearly unjustifiable. The influences which from the
Romance peoples--in whom Christian and Germanic elements mingled with
the legacy of Roman law, learning and culture--spread to the Germanic
nations were represented with the most signal force and fulness in the
institutions of chivalry,--to which, in the words of Scott, "it was
peculiar to blend military valour with the strongest passions which
actuate the human mind, the feelings of devotion and those of love."
These feelings, in their combined operation upon the national character,
and in their reflection in the national literature, were not confined to
Spain; but nowhere did they so long or so late continue to animate the
moral life of a nation.

Outward causes contributed to this result. For centuries after the
crusades had become a mere memory, Spain was a battle-ground between the
Cross and the Crescent. And it was just at the time when the Renaissance
was establishing new starting-points for the literary progress of
Europe, that Christian Spain rose to the height of Catholic as well as
national self-consciousness by the expulsion of the Moors and the
conquest of the New World. From their rulers or rivals of so many
centuries the Spaniards derived that rich, if not very varied, glow of
colour which became permanently distinctive of their national life, and
more especially of its lit