The name is absent

DanteandtheRenaissance 201

vision; the first part, written by William of Lorris, is a
frail and prettily tinted allegory of the Art of Love; the
second, by John of Meung₁ surprises us frequently with the
independence and manly vigor of its thought, the vastness,
and, all things considered, the soundness of its learning, the
realism of its pictures. It enjoyed immense fame through-
out Europe; a hundred and fifty years after its publication
it was still the object of ardent controversies; it remained a
favorite until the time of Marot, in the early Renaissance.
But between John of Meung and the modern reader there
is the formidable barrier of a different language; the
“Romance of the Rose” is a document, it is not a classic.
What shall we say of “Piers Plowman,” likewise a sym-
bolical vision, and at times one of the grandest written
down by mortal man? Langland is hopelessly archaic,
as most of you must have found out. Yet he wrote
two or three generations after Dante. And even our own
sunny and lucid Chaucer, so accessible in his sane and kindly
thought, so consummate in his robust art, writing a whole
century after the Florentine, many of us, if the truth were
told, would find him more comfortable in a modernized
version, and few can claim fully to comprehend him without
a pretty copious glossary. This perennial, this miraculous
freshness of Dante’s language is, no doubt, the fruit of his
very genius. He deserved to immortalize not only his
thought, but his instrument; a reward that has been granted
in so full a measure to no other man, not even to Shakes-
peare. Certainly neither John of Meung nor Chaucer could
claim such imperial sway.

But apart from the commanding personality of Dante,
the history of the Italian language affords a key to the
problem. Its evolution was quite different from that of the
Northern tongues; it was simpler, more sluggish. Latin

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