We may be very
sure that the most gifted and highly developed nation then existing in
the world did not renounce the language such as the Italian out of mere
folly and without knowing what they were doing. It must have been a
weighty reason which led them to do so.
This cause was the devotion to antiquity. Like all ardent and genuine
devotion it necessarily prompted men to imitation. At other times and
among other nations we find many isolated attempts of the same kind.
But only in Italy were the two chief conditions present which were
needful for the continuance and development of neo-Latin poetry: a
general interest in the subject among the instructed classes, and a
partial re-awakening of the old Italian genius among the poets
themselves--the wondrous echo of a far-off strain. The best of what is
produced under these conditions is not imitation, but free production.
If we decline to tolerate any borrowed forms in art, if we either set
no value on antiquity at all, or attribute to it some magical and
unapproachable virtue, or if we will pardon no slips in poets who were
forced, for instance, to guess or to discover a multitude of syllabic
quantities, then we had better let this class of literature alone. Its
best works were not created in order to defy criticism, but to give
pleasure to the poet and to thousands of his contemporaries.
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