, there was
a real unity, and that it was only very slowly indeed that the
self-conscious nationalities of the modern world were formed out of the
welter of the confused races and tribes of Europe: indeed, in some parts
of Europe this development was not reached till the nineteenth century
and in south-eastern Europe it is only coming to-day.

* * * * *

European art still transcends nationality; in its essence it is
differentiated by the personality of the artist, not by the distinction
of nationality. This may seem at first sight a paradox, for you may be
inclined to say that surely the modern national literatures are in many
ways different, you will say that there is surely some great difference
between Dutch and Italian painting, some great contrast between English
and French poetry. Many people used to speak, perhaps some do still, of
the warm and passionate and romantic south, and of the cold and
ungracious and passionless north. But this is merely a delusion. Dante
is not more imaginative or passionate than Shakespeare.

What is it then which has produced this impression? The answer to the
question and the best evidence of the unity of European art will perhaps
be found in examining some of the great movements in its history, since
the time when the civilization of the Middle Ages reached its highest
point in the thirteenth century.

With the fourteenth century we come to the beginning of a movement which
culminated in the greatest literature of the modern world, in the drama
of England and Spain. But its beginnings are at first sight strangely
different from its fulfilment, and it is almost impossible therefore to
find any phrase or term under which we can justly represent it. The
first great master of the new world was Dante, but not the Dante of the
exquisite sentiment but artificial form of the _Vita Nuova_, but the
great imaginative realist of the _Divine Comedy_, the artist who could
portray the passion and pain of Francesca and her lover, and with equal
power the masterful figure of Farinata, whose dauntless soul not hell
itself could quell; who could pass from the vivid drama of the fierce
contemporary life of Italy to the infinite peace of those to whom 'la
sua voluntade e nostra pace'. For indeed it is this which places Dante
among the supreme poets of the world, that there is no aspect of the
reality of human life and experience which is strange to him, and which
the