196 Dante Sexcentenary Lectures
call and fulfil his prophecies; he himself was conscious that
there had been no emperor in his exalted meaning of the
term for many generations. The Veltro,1 the hound which
was to save Italy, is still puzzling all commentators. When
an emperor, Charles V, appeared again in his might, it was
only to seal the decadence of Italy. “It seems to be a law
of intellectual development,” says John Addington Sym-
onds, “that the highest works of art can only be achieved
when the forces which produced them are already doomed
and in the act of disappearance. Those who would com-
prehend the spirit of Italy upon the point of transition from
the Middle Ages must study the lDivine Comedy’ ; those
who would contemplate the genius of the Renaissance, con-
summated and conscious of its aim, upon the very verge of
transmutation and eventual ruin, must turn to the ‘Orlando
Furioso.* ”2 “Une rose d’automne est plus qu’une autre
exquise,” runs the poignant line of the grim old Huguenot
d’Aubigne; Dante is the splendid autumnal rose of an epoch,
full-blown, and the very last.
Between periods in civilization there frequently lies an
interregnum; but the retrospective character of Dante is
emphasized by the fact that he stood so very near the actual
beginning of the Renaissance. To quote Symonds again—
for where could we find a more delightful guide to Italian
culture?—“Of two brooks in the Alps, within earshot of
each other, one may flow into the Rhine, the other into the
Danube.”3 Thus Dante and Petrarch. Petrarch was sev-
1 “Inferno,” I, ɪoɪ-ɪɪ ɪ.
2 J. A. Symonds, “Italian Literature,” II, 3. G. Carducci expresses the
same thought: “Ora Dante, cotn’è natura de’ poeti veramente grandi di rap-
prasentare e Conehiudere un gran passato, Dante fu l,Omero di cotesto me-
mento di civiltà” (“Dello Svolgimento della Letteratura Nazionale," Discorso
Terzo, V).
3 J. A. Symonds, “The Revival of Learning.”