al and spiritual
purposes, one great confederation, bound to a joint action and working
to a common result[74]." And the truth of this becomes more and more
indisputable, the longer we study European history, whether it be from
the side of Politics, of Religion, or of Art. Landmann ascribes euphuism
to Spain, Symonds ascribes it to Italy, and an equally good case might
be made out in favour of France. There is truth in all these hypotheses,
but each misses the true significance of the matter, which is that
euphuism must have come, and would have come, without any question of
borrowing.

[73] _id._, p. 404.

[74] _Essays in Criticism_, I. p. 39.

The date 1453 is usually taken as a convenient starting point for the
Renaissance, though the movement was already at work in Italy, for that
was the year of Byzantium's fall and of the diffusion of the classics
over Europe. But, for the countries outside Italy, I think that the date
1493 is almost as important. Hitherto the new learning had been in a
great measure confined to Italy, but with the invasion of Charles VIII.,
which commences a long period of French and Spanish occupation of
Italian soil, the Renaissance, especially on its artistic side, began to
find its way into the neighbouring states, and through them into
England. It is the old story, so familiar to sociologists, of a lower
civilization falling under the spell of the culture exhibited by a more
advanced subject population, of a conqueror worshipping the gods of the
conquered. It is the story of the conquest of Greece by Rome, of the
conquest of Rome by the Germans. But the interesting point to notice is
that, when the "barbarian" Frenchman descended from the Alps upon the
fair plains of Lombardy, the Italian Renaissance was already showing
signs of decadence. It was in the age of the Petrarchisti, of Aretino,
of Doni, and of Marini that Europe awoke to the full consciousness of
the wonders of Italian literature. Thus it was that those beyond the
Alps drank of water already tainted. That France, Spain, and England
should be attracted by the affectations of Italy, rather than by what
was best in her literature, was only to be expected. "It was easier to
catch the trick of an Aretino, and a Marini, than to emulate the style
of a Tasso or a Castiglione": and besides they were themselves inventing
similar extravagances independently of Italy. The purely formal ideal of
Art had in Spain already found expressio