When the minds of the learned were possessed by these absurdities to the exclusion of sound method, we cannot wonder that antiquity survived but as a strange and shadowy dream in popular imagination. Virgil, the only classic who retained distinct and living personality, passed from poet to philosopher, from philosopher to Sibyl, from Sibyl to magician, by successive stages of transmutation, as the truth about him grew more dim and the faculty to apprehend him weakened. Forming the staple of education in the schools of the grammarians, and metamorphosed by the vulgar consciousness into a wizard,[16] he waited on the extreme verge of the dark ages to take Dante by the hand, and lead him, as the type of human reason, through the realms of Hell and Purgatory.
With regard to the actual knowledge of Latin literature possessed in the Middle Ages, it may be said in brief that Virgil was continually studied, and that a certain familiarity with Ovid, Lucan, Horace, Juvenal, and Statius was never lost. Among the prose-writers, portions of Cicero were used in education; but the compilations of Boethius, Priscian, Donatus, and Cassiodorus were more widely used. In the twelfth century the study of Roman law was revived, and the scholastic habit of thought found scope for subtlety in the discussion of cases and composition of glosses. The general knowledge and intellectual sympathy required for comprehension of the genuine classics were, however, wanting; and thus it happened that their place was taken by epitomes and abstracts, and by the formal digests of the Western Empire in its decadence. This lifeless literature was better suited to the meagre intellectual conditions of the Middle Ages than the masterpieces of the Augustan and Silver periods.
Of Greek there was absolutely no tradition left.[17] When the names of Greek poets or philosophers are cited by mediæval authors, it is at second hand from Latin sources; and the Aristotelian logic of the schoolmen came through Latin translations made by Jews from Arabian MSS. Occasionally it might happen that a Western scholar acquired Greek at Constantinople or in the south of Italy, where it was spoken; but this did not imply Hellenic culture, nor did such knowledge form a part and parcel of his erudition. Greek was hardly less lost to Europe then than Sanskrit in the first half of the eighteenth century.
The meagreness of mediæval learning was, however, a less serious obstacle to culture than the habit of mind, partly engendered by Christianity and partly idiosyncratic to the new races, which prevented students from appreciating the true spirit of the classics. While mysticism and allegory ruled supreme, the clearly-defined humanity of the Greeks and Romans could not fail to be misapprehended. The little that was known of them reached students through a hazy and distorting medium. Poems like Virgil's fourth Eclogue were prized for what the author had not meant when he was writing them; while his real interests were utterly neglected. Against this mental misconception, this original obliquity of vision, this radical lie in the intellect, the restorers of learning had to fight at least as energetically as against brute ignorance and dulness. It was not enough to multiply books and to discover codices; they had to teach men how to read them, to explain their inspiration, to defend them against prejudice, to protect them from false methods of interpretation. To purge the mind of fancy and fable, to prove that poetry apart from its supposed prophetic meaning was delightful for its own sake, and that the history of the antique nations, in spite of Paganism, could be used for profit and instruction, was the first step to be taken by these pioneers of modern culture. They had, in short, to create a new mental sensibility by establishing the truth that pure literature directly contributes to the dignity and happiness of human beings. The achievement of this revolution in thought was the great performance of the Italians in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
During the dark ages Italy had in no sense enjoyed superiority of culture over the rest of Europe. On the contrary, the first abortive attempt at a revival of learning was due to Charlemagne at Aix, the second to the Emperor Frederick in Apulia and Sicily; and while the Romance nations had lost the classical tradition, it was still to some extent preserved by the Moslem dynasties. The more we study the history of mediæval learning, the more we recognise the debt of civilised humanity to the Arabs for their conservation and transmission of Greek thought in altered form to Europe. Yet, though the Italians came comparatively late into the field, their action was decisive. Neither Charlemagne nor Frederick, neither the philosophy of the Arabian sages nor the precocious literature of Provence, succeeded in effecting for the education of the modern intellect that which Dante and Petrarch performed—the one by the production of a monumental work of art in poetry, the other by the communication of a new enthusiasm for antiquity to students.
Dante does not belong in any strict sense to the history of the Revival of Learning. The 'Divine Comedy' closes the Middle Ages and preserves their spirit. It stands before the vestibule of modern literature like a solitary mountain at the entrance of a country rich in all varieties of landscape. In order to become acquainted with its grandeur, we must leave the fields and forests that we know, ascend the heights, and use ourselves to an austerer climate. In spite of this isolation, Dante's influence was powerful upon succeeding generations. The modern mind first found in him its scope, and recognised its freedom; first dared and did what placed it on a level with antiquity in art. Many ideas, moreover, destined to play an important part in the coming age, received from him their germinal expression. It may thus be truly said that Dante initiated the movement of the modern intellect in its entirety, though he did not lead the Revival considered as a separate moment in this evolution. That service was reserved for Petrarch.
There are spots upon the central watershed of Europe where, in the stillness of a summer afternoon, the traveller may listen to the murmurs of two streams—the one hurrying down to form the Rhine, the other to contribute to the Danube or the Po. Born within hearing of each other's voices, and nourished by the self-same clouds that rest upon the crags around them, they are henceforth destined to an ever-widening separation. While the one sweeps onward to the Northern seas, the other will reach the shores of Italy or Greece and mingle with the Mediterranean. To these two streamlets we might compare Dante and Petrarch, both of whom sprang from Florence, both of whom were nurtured in the learning of the schools and in the lore of chivalrous love. Yet how different was their mission! Petrarch marks the rising of that great river of intellectual energy which flowed southward to recover the culture of the ancient world. The current of Dante's genius took the contrary direction. Borne upon its mighty flood, we visit the lands and cities of the Middle Ages, floating toward infinities divined and made the heritage of human nature by the mediæval spirit.
In speaking of Petrarch here, it is necessary to concentrate attention upon his claims to be considered as the apostle of scholarship, the inaugurator of the humanistic impulse of the fifteenth century. We have nothing to do with his Italian poetry. The Rime dedicated to Madonna Laura have eclipsed the fame of the Latin epic, philosophical discourses, epistles, orations, invectives, and dissertations, which made Petrarch the Voltaire of his own age, and on which he thought his immortality would rest. Yet it is with these latter products of his genius, not with the Canzoniere, that we are now concerned; nor can it be too emphatically asserted that his originality was even more eminently displayed in the revelation of humanism to the modern world than in the verses that impressed their character upon Italian literature. To have foreseen a whole new phase of European culture, to have interpreted its spirit, and determined by his own activity the course it should pursue, is in truth a higher title to fame than the composition of even the most perfect sonnets. The artist, however, has this advantage over the pioneer of intellectual progress, that his delicate creations are indestructible, and that his work cannot be merged in that of a continuator. Therefore Petrarch lives and will live in the memory of millions as the poet of Laura, while only students know how much the world owes to his humanistic ardour.
As I cannot dispense with the word Humanism in this portion of my work, it may be well to fix the sense I shall attach to it.[18] The essence of humanism consisted in a new and vital perception of the dignity of man as a rational being apart from theological determinations, and in the