204 Dante Sexcentenary Lectures
has evolved as little since the days of Dante as French since
the days of Corneille.
These linguistic considerations, however, do not fully ac-
count for the alleged Renaissance element in Dante. His
language is modern; but if John of Meung had used clas-
sical French, he would still appear remote. We must ap-
proach the question from another side.
The Renaissance, in its widest sense, is a European move-
ment the origins of which are not to be sought exclusively
in Italy. Had the peninsula been closed to “the Barbarians,”
it is fairly obvious that the Western mind would have none
the less experienced a sudden leap forward in the early
sixteenth century. Invention and discoveries were fast al-
tering the face of the medieval world. Neither gunpowder
nor the printing press came from Italy; Copernicus was a
Prussian Pole, although he did study at Bologna and Rome;
the daring Spanish and Portuguese adventurers would un-
doubtedly have discovered the new Indies, even though no
Genoese had opened the way. To denote this tremendous
movement of expansion the word Renaissance is inadequate;
for never before, even at the heyday of Greece or Rome,
had man’s horizon been so suddenly enlarged; never had it
been tinged with the fabulous glow of such intellectual and
material Eldorados, lying unconquered just below the verge.
With this vast revolution in human experience, Dante, of
course, had nothing to do. Enthusiasts claim that he saw
the Southern Cross with the eyes of faith, before any Eu-
ropean had consciously crossed the equator and returned
to tell the tale. They see in his quaint little Saga of
Ulysses’ last voyage, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, an an-
ticipation of the great Iberian epic of adventure. All this
is fanciful. Even if we should accept with fullest credit