ertheless, he has displayed many of the higher excellencies of his
master; and his works may justly inspire us with a hope that the Italian
language will long flourish under a new literary dynasty, or rather
under the legitimate line, which has at length been restored to a throne
long occupied by specious usurpers.

The man to whom the literature of his country owes its origin and
its revival was born in times singularly adapted to call forth his
extraordinary powers. Religious zeal, chivalrous love and honour,
democratic liberty, are the three most powerful principles that have
ever influenced the character of large masses of men. Each of them
singly has often excited the greatest enthusiasm, and produced the
most important changes. In the time of Dante all the three, often in
amalgamation, generally in conflict, agitated the public mind. The
preceding generation had witnessed the wrongs and the revenge of the
brave, the accomplished, the unfortunate Emperor Frederic the Second,--a
poet in an age of schoolmen,--a philosopher in an age of monks,--a
statesman in an age of crusaders. During the whole life of the poet,
Italy was experiencing the consequences of the memorable struggle which
he had maintained against the Church. The finest works of imagination
have always been produced in times of political convulsion, as the
richest vineyards and the sweetest flowers always grow on the soil which
has been fertilised by the fiery deluge of a volcano. To look no
further than the literary history of our own country, can we doubt
that Shakspeare was in a great measure produced by the Reformation,
and Wordsworth by the French Revolution? Poets often avoid political
transactions; they often affect to despise them. But, whether they
perceive it or not, they must be influenced by them. As long as their
minds have any point of contact with those of their fellow-men, the
electric impulse, at whatever distance it may originate, will be
circuitously communicated to them.

This will be the case even in large societies, where the division of
labour enables many speculative men to observe the face of nature, or
to analyse their own minds, at a distance from the seat of political
transactions. In the little republic of which Dante was a member the
state of things was very different. These small communities are most
unmercifully abused by most of our modern professors of the science
of government. In such states, they tell us, factions are