its revival was born in times singularly adapted to call forth
his extraordinary powers. Religious zeal, chivalrous love and
honour, democratic liberty, are the three most powerful
principles that have ever influenced the character of large
masses of men. Each of them singly has often excited the
greatest enthusiasm, and produced the most important changes. In
the time of Dante all the three, often in amalgamation, generally
in conflict, agitated the public mind. The preceding generation
had witnessed the wrongs and the revenge of the brave, the
accomplished, the unfortunate Emperor Frederic the Second,--a
poet in an age of schoolmen,--a philosopher in an age of monks,--
a statesman in an age of crusaders. During the whole life of the
poet, Italy was experiencing the consequences of the memorable
struggle which he had maintained against the Church. The finest
works of imagination have always been produced in times of
political convulsion, as the richest vineyards and the sweetest
flowers always grow on the soil which has been fertilised by the
fiery deluge of a volcano. To look no further than the literary
history of our own country, can we doubt that Shakspeare was in a
great measure produced by the Reformation, and Wordsworth by the
French Revolution? Poets often avoid political transactions;
they often affect to despise them. But, whether they perceive it
or not, they must be influenced by them. As long as their minds
have any point of contact with those of their fellow-men, the
electric impulse, at whatever distance it may originate, will be
circuitously communicated to them.

This will be the case even in large societies, where the division
of labour enables many speculative men to observe the face of
nature, or to analyse their own minds, at a distance from the