Marini school were banished from literature, and other and more
brilliant writers arose, possessed of the true national feeling. Under
Pope Pius VI, by whom he was liberally patronized, Quirico Visconti
undertook his "Pio Clementine Museum," and his "Greek and Roman
Iconography," said to be the two greatest archaeological works of all
ages.

With the rise of Napoleon, Italy was flooded with French writings, and
French translations, not always of the best, and even the French
language was used instead of the Italian. The Italian literature again
suffered a decline, and it was not until after the treaty of Vienna in
1815 that the foreign influence was again shaken off. It will thus be
seen that it was when Italian poets wrote in their own language that
their greatest and most lasting success was attained. During the
periods when a craze for imitating foreign works existed, the national
languages deteriorated. In Germany, under the Emperor Maximilian, a
crown was publicly bestowed on any poet who achieved success in Latin
verse, while no reward or emolument was given to those who wrote in
German. The religion of Humanism in Italy went to such lengths that
many seemed to lose not only their belief but also their good sense, as
they considered it vulgar to talk of the Deity in the language of the
Bible. God was spoken of in the plural--gods. The Father was Jupiter,
the Son, Apollo; and the Devil, Pluto; but these various errors had no
lasting or far-reaching influence. The Divine Comedy, the most powerful
and lifelike exponent of the thoughts and feelings of the age in which
Dante lived--an allegory, written in the form of a vision, at a time
when men believed that the things that are unseen are eternal--is the
most perfect and magnificent monument of earthly love, refined and
spiritualized, that has ever been written. It stands alone; for no man
of any country, coming after Dante, has been able to write from the
same motive, and in the same spirit, that he did. Petrarch, the next
greatest after Dante, is chiefly celebrated for his lyrical poems,
which were used as models by all the most celebrated poets of the South
of Europe. They are written in two forms, the canzone taken from the
Provencals, and the sonnet, taken from the Sicilians. Petrarch kept up
a wide correspondence with the literary men of Europe; and through his
influence a sort of literary republic arose which joined together the
literati of many different count