We see this in their literature. It is probable that none but artistic
natures will ever render full justice to the poetry of the Renaissance.
Critics endowed with a less lively sensibility to beauty of outline and to
harmony of form than the Italians, complain that their poetry lacks
substantial qualities; nor is it except by long familiarity with the
plastic arts of their contemporaries that we come to understand the ground
assumed by Ariosto and Poliziano. We then perceive that these poets were
not so much unable as instinctively unwilling to go beyond a certain
circle of effects. They subordinated their work to the ideal of their age,
and that ideal was one to which a painter rather than a poet might
successfully aspire. A succession of pictures, harmoniously composed and
delicately toned to please the mental eye, satisfied the taste of the
Italians. But, however exquisite in design, rich in colour, and complete
in execution this literary work may be, it strikes a Northern student as
wanting in the highest elements of genius--sublimity of imagination,
dramatic passion, energy and earnestness of purpose. In like manner, he
finds it hard to appreciate those didactic compositions on trifling or
prosaic themes, which delighted the Italians for the very reason that
their workmanship surpassed their matter. These defects, as we judge them,
are still more apparent in the graver branches of literature. In an essay
or a treatise we do not so much care for well-balanced disposition of
parts or beautifully rounded periods, though elegance may be thought
essential to classic masterpieces, as for weighty matter and trenchant
observations. Having the latter, we can dispense at need with the former.
The Italians of the Renaissance, under the sway of the fine arts, sought
after form, and satisfied themselves with rhetoric. Therefore we condemn
their moral disquisitions and their criticisms as the flimsy playthings of
intellectual voluptuaries. Yet the right way of doing justice to these
stylistic trifles is to regard them as products of an all-embracing genius