an tongue.
The consequence is that the Italian and English literatures are
eminent for very different excellences. All that is forcible in the
dramatic presentation of life and character and action, all that is
audacious in imagination and capricious in fancy, whatever strength
style can gain from the sallies of original and untrammelled
eloquence, whatever beauty is derived from spontaneity and native
grace, belong in abundant richness to the English. On the other hand,
the Italian poets present us with masterpieces of correct and studied
diction, with carefully elaborated machinery, and with a style
maintained at a uniform level of dignified correctness. The weakness
of the English proceeds from inequality and extravagance; it is the
weakness of self-confident vigour, intolerant of rule, rejoicing in
its own exuberant resources. The weakness of the Italian is due to
timidity and moderation; it is the weakness that springs not so much
from a lack of native strength as from the over-anxious expenditure of
strength upon the attainment of finish, polish, and correctness. Hence
the two nations have everything to learn from one another. Modern
Italian poets may seek by contact with Shakspere and Milton to gain a
freedom from the trammels imposed upon them by the slavish followers
of Petrarch; while the attentive perusal of Tasso should be
recommended to all English people who have no ready access to the
masterpieces of Greek and Latin literature.

Another point of view may be gained by noticing the pre-dominant tone
of the two literatures. Whenever English poetry is really great, it
approximates to the tragic and the stately; whereas the Italians are
peculiarly felicitous in the smooth and pleasant style, which combines
pathos with amusement, and which does not trespass beyond the region
of beauty into the domain of sublimity or terror. Italian poetry is
analogous to Italian painting and Italian music: it bathes the soul in
a plenitude of charms, investing even the most solemn subjects with
loveliness. Rembrandt and Albert Duerer depict the tragedies of the
Sacred History with a serious and awful reality: Italian painters,
with a few rare but illustrious exceptions, shrink from approaching
them from any point of view but that of harmonious melancholy. Even so
the English poets stir the soul to its very depths by their profound
and earnest delineations of the stern and bitter truths of the world:
Italian poets environ all t