There are many works of this and the following centuries, in which a
careful imitation of the antique appears both in the hexameter and
pentameter of the meter and in the classical, often myth- ological,
character of the subject, and which yet have not anything like the same
spirit of antiquity about them. In the hexametric chronicles and other
works of Guglielmus Apuliensis and his successors (from about 1100), we
find frequent trace of a diligent study of Virgil, Ovid, Lucan,
Statius, and Claudian; but this classical form is, after all, a mere
matter of archaeology, as is the classical subject in compilers like
Vincent of Beauvais, or in the mythological and allegorical writer,
Alanus ab Insulis. The Renaissance, however, is not a fragmentary
imitation or compilation, but a new birth; and the signs of this are
visible in the poems of the unknown 'Clericus' of the twelfth century.
But the great and general enthusiasm of the Italians for Classical
antiquity did not display itself before the fourteenth century. For
this a development of civic life was required, which took place only in
Italy, and there not till then. It was needful that noble and burgher
should first learn to dwell together on equal terms, and that a social
world should arise which felt the want of culture, and had the leisure
and the means to obtain it.
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