emembering the innumerable impressions of
joyous and healthy life with which it has filled us; recalling the
bright and thoughtless rhymes of Lorenzo dei Medici, of Politian, of
Bern!, and of Ariosto; the sweet and tender poetry of Bembo and Vittoria
Colonna and Tasso; the bluff sensuality of novelists like Bandello and
Masuccio, the Aristophanesque laughter of the comedy of Bibbiena and of
Beolco; seeing in our mind's eye the stately sweet matrons and noble
senators of Titian, the virginal saints and madonnas of Raphael, the
joyous angels of Correggio;--recapitulating rapidly all our impressions
of this splendid time of exuberant vitality, of this strong and serene
Renaissance, we answer without hesitation, and with only a smile of
contempt at our credulous ancestors--no. The Italy of the Renaissance
was, of all things that have ever existed or ever could exist, the most
utterly unlike the nightmare visions of men such as Webster and Ford,
Marston and Tourneur. The only Elizabethan drama which really represents
the Italy of the Renaissance is the comedy of Shakespeare, of Beaumont
and Fletcher, and of Ben Jonson and Massinger: to the Renaissance belong
those clear and sunny figures, the Portias, Antonios, Gratianos, Violas,
Petruchios, Bellarios, and Almiras; their faces do we see on the
canvases of Titian and the frescoes of Raphael; they are the real
children of the Italian Renaissance. These frightful Brachianos and
Annabellas and Ferdinands and Corombonas and Vindicis and Pieros of the
"White Devil," of the "Duchess of Malfy," of the "Revenger's Tragedy,"
and of "Antonio and Mellida," are mere fantastic horrors, as false as
the Counts Udolpho, the Spalatros, the Zastrozzis, and all their
grotesquely ghastly pseudo-Italian brethren of eighty years ago.

And, indeed, the Italy of the Renaissance, as represented in its
literature and its art, is the very negation of Elizabethan horrors. Of
all the mystery, the colossal horror and terror of our dramatists, there
is not the faintest trace in the intellectual productions of the Italian
Renaissance. The art is absolutely stainless: no scenes of horror, no
frightful martyrdoms, as with the Germans under Albrecht Duerer; no
abominable butcheries, as with the Bolognese of the seventeenth century;
no macerated saints and tattered assassins, as with the Spaniards; no
mystery, no contortion, no horrors: vigorous and serene beauty, pure and
cheerful life, real or ideal, on wall o