s slightly altered in itself, and
speaks in the mouth of a poet greater in his weakest moments than the
whole generation from Ciullo to Guittone in their strongest. This
spirit, showing itself in the finer and more masculine form in Dante
himself, in the more feminine and weaker in Petrarch, not merely gives
us sublime or exquisite poetry in the fourteenth century, but in the
sixteenth contributes very largely to launch, on fresh careers of
achievement, the whole poetry of France and of England. But it is fair
to acknowledge its presence in Dante's predecessors, and at the same
time to confess that they themselves do not seem to have learned it
from any one, or at least from any single master or group of masters.
The Provencal poets deify passion, and concentrate themselves wholly
upon it; but it is seldom, indeed, that we find the "metaphysical"
touch in the Provencals proper. And it is this--this blending of love
and religion, of scholasticism and _minnedienst_ (to borrow a word
wanted in other languages than that in which it exists)--that is
attributed by the partisans of the East to Arabian influence, or at
least to Arabian contact. Some stress has been laid on the testimony
of Ibn Zobeir about the end of the twelfth century, and consequently
not long before even the latest date assigned to Ciullo, that Alcamo
itself was entirely Mussulman in belief.

[Footnote 191: The text with comment, stanza by stanza, is to be found
in the book cited above.]

[Sidenote: _Love-lyric in different European countries._]

On these points it is not possible to decide: the point on which to
lay the finger for our present purpose is that the contribution of
Italy at this time was, on the one hand, the further refinement of the
Provencal attention to form, and the production of one capital
instrument of European poetry--the sonnet; on the other, the
conveyance, by means of this instrument and others, of a further, and
in one way almost final, variation of the poetic expression of love.
It is of the first importance to note the characteristics, in
different nations at nearly the same time, of this rise of lyrical
love-poetry. We find it in Northern and Southern France, probably at
about the same time; in Germany and Italy somewhat later, and almost
certainly in a state of pupilship to the French. All, in different
ways, display a curious and delightful metrical variety, as if the
poet were trying to express the eternal novelty, combin