DANTE.

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A. D. 1265-1321.

RISE OF MODERN POETRY.


The first great genius who aroused his country from the torpor of the
Middle Ages was a poet. Poetry, then, was the first influence which
elevated the human mind amid the miseries of a gloomy period, if we may
except the schools of philosophy which flourished in the rising
universities. But poetry probably preceded all other forms of culture in
Europe, even as it preceded philosophy and art in Greece. The gay
Provencal singers were harbingers of Dante, even as unknown poets
prepared the way for Homer. And as Homer was the creator of Grecian
literature, so Dante, by his immortal comedy, gave the first great
impulse to Italian thought. Hence poets are great benefactors, and we
will not let them die in our memories or hearts. We crown them, when
alive, with laurels and praises; and when they die, we erect monuments
to their honor. They are dear to us, since their writings give
perpetual pleasure, and appeal to our loftiest sentiments. They appeal
not merely to consecrated ideas and feelings, but they strive to conform
to the principles of immortal art. Every great poet is as much an artist
as the sculptor or the painter; and art survives learning itself. Varro,
the most learned of the Romans, is forgotten, when Virgil is familiar to
every school-boy. Cicero himself would not have been immortal, if his
essays and orations had not conformed to the principles of art. Even an
historian who would live must be an artist, like Voltaire or Macaulay. A