It sounds almost ludicrous
when an otherwise competent observer considers Clement VII to be of a
melancholy temperament, but defers his judgement to that of the
physicians, who declare the Pope of a sanguine-choleric nature; or when
we read that the same Gaston de Foix, the victor of Ravenna, whom
Giorgione painted and Bambaia carved, and whom all the historians
describe, had the saturnine temperament. No doubt those who use these
expressions mean something by them; but the terms in which they tell us
their meaning are strangely out of date in the Italy of the sixteenth
century.
As examples of the free delineation of the human spirit, we shall first
speak of the great poets of the fourteenth century.
If we were to collect the pearls from the courtly and knightly poetry
of all the countries of the West during the two preceding centuries, we
should have a mass of wonderful divinations and single pictures of the
inward life, which at first sight would seem to rival the poetry of the
Italians. Leaving lyrical poetry out of account, Godfrey of Strassburg
gives us, in 'Tristram and Isolt,' a representation of human passion,
some features of which are immortal. But these pearls lie scattered in
the ocean of artificial convention, and they are altogether something
very different from a complete objective picture of the inward man and
his spiritual wealth.
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