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THE RENAISSANCE

MACMILLAN AND CO., LimitedLONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA

MELIiOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANYNEW YORK . BOSTON CHICAGO

DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.TORONTO

THE RENAISSANCESTUDIES IN ART AND POETRY

BY

WALTER PATER

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITEDST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1912

Copyright

First Edition 1873Second Edition 1877Third Edition 18SS

Fourth Edition 1893; Reprinted \%aa, 1900Edition de Luxe 1900

Fifth Edition 1901 ; Reprinted 1902, 1904, 1906, 1907Library Edition 1910. Reprinted 1910, 1912

LOAN STACK

DEDICATION

TO

C. L. S,

February 1873

C634I

M/0

PREFACE

Many attempts have been made by writers onart and poetry to define beauty in the abstract, toexpress it in the most general terms, to find some

universal formula for it. The value of theseattempts has most often been in the suggestiveand penetrating things said by the way. Suchdiscussions help us very little to enjoy what hasbeen well done in art or poetry, to discriminatebetween what is more and what is less excellentin them, or to use words like beauty, excellence,art, poetry, with a more precise meaning thanthey would otherwise have. Beauty, like allother qualities presented to human experience, isrelative ; and the definition of it becomes un-meaning and useless in proportion to its abstract-ness. To define beauty, not in the most abstractbut in the most concrete terms possible, tofind not its universal formula, but the formulawhich expresses most adequately this or that

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THE RENAISSANCEspecial manifestation of it, is the aim of the truestudent of aesthetics.

" To see the object as in itself it really is,""has been justly said to be the aim of all truecriticism whatever ; and in aesthetic criticism thefirst step towards seeing one's object as it really is,is to know one's own impression as it really is,to discriminate it, to realise it distinctly. Theobjects with which aesthetic criticism deals

music, poetry, artistic and accomplished forms ofhuman lifeare indeed receptacles of so manypowers or forces : they possess, like the productsof nature, so many virtues or qualities. What isthis song or picture, this engaging personalitypresented in life or in a book, to me? Whateffect does it really produce on me ? Does itgive me pleasure ? and if so, what sort or degreeof pleasure ? How is my nature modified by itspresence, and under its influence ? The answersto these questions are the original facts withwhich the aesthetic critic has to do ; and, as inthe study of light, of morals, of number, one mustrealise such primary data for one's self, or notat all. And he who experiences these impressionsstrongly, and drives directly at the discriminationand analysis of them, has no need to troublehimself with the abstract question what beautyis in itself, or what its exact relation to truth or

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PREFACE

experiencemetaphysical questions, as unprofit-able as metaphysical questions elsev/here. Hemay pass them all by as being, answerable ornot, of no interest to him.

The aesthetic critic, then, regards all theobjects with which he has to do, all works of art,and the fairer forms of nature and human life, aspowers or forces producing pleasurable sensations,each of a more or less peculiar or unique kind.This influence he feels, and wishes to explain,by analysing and reducing it to its elements. Tohim, the picture, the landscape, the engagingpersonality in life or in a book. La Gioconda, thehills of Carrara, Pico of Mirandola, are valuablefor their virtues, as we say, in speaking of a herb,a wine, a gem ; for the property each has oiaffecting one with a special, a unique, impressionof pleasure. Our education becomes completein proportion as our susceptibility to these im-pressions increases in depth and variety. Andthe function of the aesthetic critic is to distinguish,

to analyse, and separate from its adjuncts, thevirtue by which a picture, a landscape, a fairpersonality in life or in a book, produces this

special impression of beauty or pleasure, to in-dicate what the source of that impression is, andunder what conditions it is experienced. Hisend is reached when he has disengaged that

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THE RENAISSANCEvirtue, and noted it, as a chemist notes somenatural element, for himself and others ; and

the rule for those who would reach this end isstated with great exactness in the words of arecent critic of Sainte-Beuve :

De se borner aconnaitre de pres les belles choses, et a sen nourrir

en exquis amateurs, en humanistes accomplis.

What is important, then, is not that the criticshould possess a correct abstract definition of

beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind oftemperament, the power of being deeply movedby the presence of beautiful objects. He willremember always that beauty exists in manyforms. To him all periods, types, schools oftaste, are in themselves equal. In all ages there

have been some excellent workmen, and someexcellent work done. The question he asks isalways :In whom did the stir, the genius, thesentiment of the period find itself? where wasthe receptacle of its refinement, its elevation, its

taste ? " The ages are all equal," says WilliamBlake, " but genius is always above its age."

Often it will require great nicety to disengage

this virtue from the commoner elements withwhich it may be found in combination. Fewartists, not Goethe or Byron even, work quitecleanly, casting off all dibris, and leaving us only

what the heat of their imagination has whollyX

PREFACE

fused and transformed. Take, for instance, thewritings of Wordsworth. The heat of hisgenius, entering into the substance of his work,has crystalHsed a part, but only a part, of it ; andin that great mass of verse there is much whichmight well be forgotten. But scattered up anddown it, sometimes fusing and transforming entirecompositions, like the Stanzas on Resolution andIndependence^ or the Ode on the Recollections ofChildhood, sometimes, as if at random, depositinga fine crystal here or there, in a matter it does

not wholly search through and transmute, wetrace the action of his unique, incommunicablefaculty, that strange, mystical sense of a life in

natural things, and of man's life as a part ofnature, drawing strength and colour and characterfrom local influences, from the hills and streams,and from natural sights and sounds. Well ! thatis the virtue, the active principle in Wordsworth'spoetry ; and then the function of the critic ofWordsworth is to follow up that active principle,to disengage it, to mark the degree in which itpenetrates his verse.

The subjects of the following studies are takenfrom the history of the Renaissance, and touchwhat I think the chief points in that complex,many-sided movement. I have explained in thefirst of them what I understand by the word,

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giving it a much wider scope than was intendedby those who originally used it to denotethat revival of classical antiquity in the fifteenth

century which was only one of many results ofa general excitement and enlightening of the

human mind, but of which the great aim andachievements of what, as Christian art, is often

falsely opposed to the Renaissance, were another

result. This outbreak of the human spirit maybe traced far into the middle age itself, with itsmotives already clearly pronounced, the care for

physical beauty, the worship of the body, thebreaking down of those limits which the religioussystem of the middle age imposed on the heartand the imagination. I have taken as an exampleof this movement, this earlier Renaissance withinthe middle age itself, and as an expression of itsqualities, two little compositions in early French ;not because they constitute the best possible

expression of them, but because they help theunity of my series, inasmuch as the Renaissanceends also in France, in French poetry, in a phaseof which the writings of Joachim du Bellay arein many ways the most perfect illustration. TheRenaissance, in truth, put forth in France an after-

math, a wonderful later growth, the products ofwhich have to the full that subtle and delicatesweetness which belongs to a refined and comely

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decadence, just as its earliest phases have thefreshness which belongs to all periods of growthin art, the charm of ascesis^ of the austere andserious girding of the loins in youth.

But it is in Italy, in the fifteenth century, that

the interest of the Renaissance mainly lies,inthat solemn fifteenth century which can hardlybe studied too much, not merely for its positiveresults in the things of the intellect and theimagination, its concrete works of art, its specialand prominent personalities, with their profoundaesthetic charm, but for its general spirit andcharacter, for the ethical qualities of which it isa consummate type.

The various forms of intellectual activitywhich together make up the culture of an age,move for the most part from different starting-points, and by unconnected roads. As productsof the same generation they partake indeed of acommon character, and unconsciously illustrateeach other ; but of the producers themselves, eachgroup is solitary, gaining what advantage or dis-advantage there may be in intellectual isolation.Art and poetry, philosophy and the religious life,and that other life of refined pleasure and actionin the conspicuous places of the world, are each ofthem confined to its own circle of ideas, and thosewho prosecute either of them are generally little

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curious of the thoughts of others. There come,however, from time to time, eras of more favour-

able conditions, in which the thoughts of mendraw nearer together than is their wont, and themany interests of the intellectual world combinein one complete type of general culture. Thefifteenth century in Italy is one of these happier

eras, and what is sometimes said of the age ofPericles is true of that of Lorenzo :it is an age

productive in personalities, many-sided, central-

ised, complete. Here, artists and philosophers

and those whom the action of the world haselevated and made keen, do not live in isolation,but breathe a common air, and catch light and

heat from each other's thoughts. There is aspirit of general elevation and enlightenment

in which all alike communicate. The unityof this spirit gives unity to all the various

products of the Renaissance ; and it is to thisintimate alliance with mind, this participation inthe best thoughts which that age produced, thatthe art of Italy in the fifteenth century owes

much of its grave dignity and influence.I have added an essay on Winckelmann, as not

incongruous with the studies which precede it,because Winckelmann, coming in the eighteenthcentury, really belongs in spirit to an earlier age.

By his enthusiasm for the things of the intellectxiv

PREFACE

and the imagination for their own sake, by hisHellenism, his life -long struggle to attain tothe Greek spirit, he is in sympathy with thehumanists of a previous century. He is the lastfruit of the Renaissance, and explains in a strik-ing way its motive and tendencies.

1873-

XV

CONTENTS

TWO EARLY FRENCH STORIESPICO DELLA MIRANDOLA

SANDRO BOTTICELLI .

LUCA DELLA ROBBIA .

THE POETRY OF MICHELANGELO

LEONARDO DA VINCI .

THE SCHOOL OF GIORGIONE

JOACHIM DU BELLAY

WINCKELMANN

CONCLUSION

Tet shall ye he as the ivings of a dove.

TWO EARLY FRENCH STORIES

The history of the Renaissance ends in France,and carries us away from Italy to the beautifulcities of the country of the Loire. But it wasin France also, in a very important sense, thatthe Renaissance had begun. French writers,who are fond of connecting the creations ofItalian genius with a French origin, who tell ushow Saint Francis of Assisi took not his name only,but all those notions of chivalry and romantic lovewhich so deeply penetrated his thoughts, from aFrench source, how Boccaccio borrowed the out-lines of his stories from the old French fabliaux^and how Dante himself expressly connects theorigin of the art of miniature-painting with thecity of Paris, have often dwelt on this notion ofa Renaissance in the end of the twelfth and thebeginning of the thirteenth century, a Renais-sance within the limits of the middle age itselfa brilliant, but in part abortive effort to do forhuman life and the human mind what was after-wards done in the fifteenth. The word Renais-sance^ indeed, is now generally used to denote not

B I Si

THE RENAISSANCEmerely the revival of classical antiquity whichtook place in the fifteenth century, and to whichthe word was first applied, but a whole complexmovement, of which that revival of classicalantiquity was but one element or symptom. Forus the Renaissance is the name of a many-sidedbut yet united movement, in which the love ofthe things of the intellect and the imaginationfor their own sake, the desire for a more liberaland comely way of conceiving life, makethemselves felt, urging those who experiencethis desire to search out first one and thenanother means of intellectual or imaginativeenjoyment, and directing them not only to thediscovery of old and forgotten sources of thisenjoyment, but to the divination of fresh sourcesthereofnew experiences, new subjects of poetry,new forms of art. Of such feeling there was agreat outbreak in the end of the twelfth and thebeginning of the following century. Here andthere, under rare and happy conditions, in Pointedarchitecture, in the doctrines of romantic love, inthe poetry of Provence, the rude strength of themiddle age turns to sweetness ; and the taste forsweetness generated there becomes the seed of theclassical revival in it, prompting it constantly toseek after the springs of perfect sweetness in theHellenic world. And coming after a long periodin which this instinct had been crushed, thattrue " dark age," in which so many sourcesof intellectual and imaginative enjoyment had

TWO EARLY FRENCH STORIESactually disappeared, this outbreak is rightlycalled a -Renaissance, a revival.

Theories which bring into connexion witheach other modes of thought and feeling, periodsof taste, forms of art and poetry, which the narrow-ness of men's minds constantly tends to oppose toeach other, have a great stimulus for the intellect,and are almost always worth understanding. Itis so with this theory of a Renaissance withinthe middle age, which seeks to establish a con-tinuity between the most characteristic work ofthat period, the sculpture of Chartres, thewindows of Le Mans, and the work of the laterRenaissance, the work ofJean Cousin and GermainPilon, thus healing that rupture between themiddle age and the Renaissance which has sooften been exaggerated. But it is not so muchthe ecclesiastical art of the middle age, itssculpture and paintingwork certainly done ina great measure for pleasure's sake, in whicheven a secular, a rebellious spirit often betraysitselfbut rather its profane poetry, the poetryof Provence, and the magnificent after-growthof that poetry in Italy and France, which thoseFrench writers have in view when they speakof this medieval Renaissance. In that poetry,earthly passion, with its intimacy, its freedom,its variety the liberty of the heart makesitself felt ; and the name of Abelard, thegreat scholar and the great lover, connects theexpression of this liberty of heart with the free

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THE RENAISSANCEplay of human intelligence around all subjectspresented to it, with the liberty of the intellect,as that age understood it.

Every one knows the legend of Abelard, alegend hardly less passionate, certainly not lesscharacteristic of the middle age, than the legendof Tannhauser ; how the famous and comely clerk,in whom Wisdom herself, self-possessed, pleasant,and discreet, seemed to sit enthroned, came to livein the house of a canon of the church of Notre-Dame, where dwelt a girl, Heloise, believed tobe the old priest's orphan niece ; how the oldpriest had testified his love for her by giving heran education then unrivalled, so that rumourasserted that, through the knowledge oflanguages,enabling her to penetrate into the mysteries ofthe older world, she had become a sorceress, likethe Celtic druidesses ; and how as Abelard andHeloise sat together at home there, to refine a littlefurther on the nature of abstract ideas, " Lovemade himself of the party with them." You con-ceive the temptations of the scholar, who, in suchdreamy tranquillity, amid the bright and busyspectacle ofthe " Island," lived in a world of some-thing like shadows ; and that for one who knew sowell how to assign its exact value to every abstractthought, those restraints which lie on the con-sciences ofother men had been relaxed. It appearsthat he composed many verses in the vulgar tongue

:

already the young men sang them on the quay be-low the house. Those songs, says M. de Remusat,

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TWO EARLY FRENCH STORIESwere probably in the taste of the Trouveres^ " ofwhom he was one of the first in date, or, so tospeak, the predecessor." It is the same spiritwhich has moulded the famous " letters," writtenin the quaint Latin of the middle age.

At the foot of that early Gothic tower, whichthe next generation raised to grace the precinctsof Abelard's school, on the " Mountain of SaintGenevieve," the historian Michelet sees inthought " a terrible assembly ; not the hearers ofAbelard alone, fifty bishops, twenty cardinals,two popes, the whole body of scholastic philo-sophy ; not only the learned Heloi'se, the teach-ing of languages, and the Renaissance ; butArnold of Bresciathat is to say, the revolution."And so from the rooms of this shadowy houseby the Seine side we see that spirit going abroad,with its qualities already well defined, its intimacy,its languid sweetness, its rebellion, its subtle skillin dividing the elements of human passion, itscare for physical beauty, its worship of the body,which penetrated the early literature of Italy,and finds an echo even in Dante.

That Abelard is not mentioned in the DivineComedy may appear a singular omission to thereader of Dante, who seems to have inwoven intothe texture of his work whatever had impressedhim as either effective in colour or spirituallysignificant among the recorded incidents of actuallife. Nowhere in his great poem do we find thename, nor so much as an allusion to the story of

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THE RENAISSANCEone who had left so deep a mark on thephilosophy of which Dante was an eager student,of whom in the Latin Quarter^ and from the lipsof scholar or teacher in the University of Paris,during his sojourn among them, he can hardlyhave failed to hear. We can only suppose thathe had indeed considered the story and the man,and abstained from passing judgment as to hisplace in the scheme of " eternal justice."

In the famous legend of Tannhauser, theerring knight makes his way to Rome, to seekabsolution at the centre of Christian religion." So soon," thought and said the Pope, " as thestaff in his hand should bud and blossom, sosoon might the soul of Tannhauser be saved, andno sooner " ; and it came to pass not long afterthat the dry wood of a staff which the Pope hadcarried in his hand was covered with leaves andflowers. So, in the cloister of Godstow, apetrified tree was shown of which the nuns toldthat the fair Rosamond, who had died amongthem, had declared that, the tree being thenalive and green, it would be changed into stoneat the hour of her salvation. When Abelarddied, like Tannhauser, he was on his way toRome. What might have happened had hereached his journey's end is uncertain ; and it isin this uncertain twilight that his relation to thegeneral beliefs of his age has always remained.In this, as in other things, he prefigures thecharacter of the Renaissance, that movement in

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TWO EARLY FRENCH STORIESwhich, in various ways, the human mind winsfor itself a new kingdom of feeHng and sensationand thought, not opposed to but only beyondand independent of the spiritual system thenactually realised. The opposition into whichAbelard is thrown, which gives its colour to hiscareer, which breaks his soul to pieces, is a noless subtle opposition than that between themerely professional, official, hireling ministers ofthat system, with their ignorant worship ofsystem for its own sake, and the true child oflight, the humanist, with reason and heart andsenses quick, while theirs were almost dead.He reaches out towards, he attains, modes ofideal living, beyond the prescribed limits of thatsystem, though in essential germ, it may be,contained within it. As always happens, the ad-herents of the poorer and narrower culture hadno sympathy with, because no understanding of,a culture richer and more ample than their own.After the discovery of wheat they would still liveupon acorns

apres Pinvention du ble ils voulaientencore vivre du gland ; and would hear of noservice to the higher needs of humanity withinstruments not of their forging.

But the human spirit, bold through thoseneeds, was too strong for them. Abelard andHeloise write their letters letters with awonderful outpouring of soul in medievalLatin ; and Abelard, though he composes songsin the vulgar tongue, writes also in Latin those

THE RENAISSANCEtreatises in which he tries to find a ground ofreality below the abstractions of philosophy, asone bent on trying all things by their congruitywith human experience, who had felt the handof Heloise, and looked into her eyes, and testedthe resources of humanity in her great andenergetic nature. Yet it is only a little later,early in the thirteenth century, that French proseromance begins ; and in one of the prettyvolumes of the Bibliotheque Elzevirienne some ofthe most striking fragments of it may be found,edited with much intelligence. In one of thesethirteenth-century stories, Li Amitiez de Ami etAmile^ that free play of human affection, of theclaims of which Abelard's story is an assertion,makes itself felt in the incidents of a greatfriendship, a friendship pure and generous,pushed to a sort of passionate exaltation, andmore than faithful unto death. Such comrade-ship, though instances of it are to be foundeverywhere, is still especially a classical motive

;

Chaucer expressing the sentiment of it so stronglyin an antique tale, that one knows not whetherthe love of both Palamon and Arcite for Emelya,or of those two for each other, is the chiefersubject of the Knight's Tale

He cast his eyen upon Emelya^And therewithal he hleynte and cried^ ah /As that he stongen were unto the herte.

What reader does not refer something of the8

TWO EARLY FRENCH STORIESbitterness of that cry to the spoiling, alreadyforeseen, of the fair friendship, which had madethe prison of the two lads sweet hitherto withits daily offices ?

The friendship of Amis and Amile is deepenedby the romantic circumstance of an entirepersonal resemblance between the two heroes,through which they pass for each other again andagain, and thereby into many strange adventures

;

that curious interest of the Doppeigdnger^ whichbegins among the stars with the Dioscuri, beingentwined in and out through all the incidents ofthe story, like an outward token of the inwardsimilitude of their souls. With this, again, isconnected, like a second reflection of that inwardsimilitude, the conceit of two marvellouslybeautiful cups, also exactly like each other

children's cups, of wood, but adorned with goldand precious stones. These two cups, which bytheir resemblance help to bring the friendstogether at critical moments, were given to themby the Pope, when he baptized them at Rome,whither the parents had taken them for thatpurpose, in gratitude for their birth. They crossand recross very strangely in the narrative, servingthe two heroes almost like living things, and withthat well-known effect of a beautiful object, keptconstantly before the eye in a story or poem, ofkeeping sensation well awake, and giving acertain air of refinement to all the scenes intowhich it enters. That sense of fate, which

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THE RENAISSANCEhangs so much of the shaping of human life ontrivial objects, like Othello's strawberry handker-chief, is thereby heightened, while witness isborne to the enjoyment of beautiful handiworkby primitive people, their simple wonder at it,so that they give it an oddly significant placeamong the factors of a human history.

Amis and Amile, then, are true to theircomradeship through all trials ; and in the end itcomes to pass that at a moment of great needAmis takes the place of Amile in a tournamentfor life or death. " After this it happened that aleprosy fell upon Amis, so that his wife wouldnot approach him, and wrought to strangle him.He departed therefore from his home, and at lastprayed his servants to carry him to the house ofAmile " ; and it is in what follows that thecurious strength of the piece shows itself :

" His servants, willing to do as he commanded,carried him to the place where Amile was * andthey began to sound their rattles before the courtof Amile's house, as lepers are accustomed to do.And when Amile heard the noise he commandedone of his servants to carry meat and bread to thesick man, and the cup which was given to himat Rome filled with good wine. And when theservant had done as he was commanded, he re-turned and said. Sir, if I had not thy cup in myhand, I should believe that the cup which thesick man has was thine, for they are alike, the

10

TWO EARLY FRENCH STORIESone to the other, in height and fashion. AndAmile said, Go quickly and bring him to me.And when Amis stood before his comrade Amiledemanded of him who he was, and how he hadgotten that cup. I am of Briquain le Chastel,answered Amis, and the cup was given to me bythe Bishop of Rome, who baptized me. Andwhen Amile heard that, he knew that it was hiscomrade Amis, who had delivered him fromdeath, and won for him the daughter of theKing of France to be his wife. And straightwayhe fell upon him, and began weeping greatly,and kissed him. And when his wife heard that,she ran out with her hair in disarray, weepingand distressed exceedingly, for she rememberedthat it was he who had slain the false Ardres.And thereupon they placed him in a fair bed,and said to him, Abide with us until God's willbe accomplished in thee, for all we have is atthy service. So he and the two servants abodewith them.

" And it came to pass one night, when Amisand Amile lay in one chamber without othercompanions, that God sent His angel Raphael toAmis, who said to him. Amis, art thou asleep ?And he, supposing that Amile had called him,answered and said, I am not asleep, fair comrade !And the angel said to him, Thou hast answeredwell, for thou art the comrade of the heavenlycitizens. I am Raphael, the angel of our Lord,and am come to tell thee how thou mayest be

1

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THE RENAISSANCEhealed ; for thy prayers are heard. Thou shaltbid Amile, thy comrade, that he slay his twochildren and wash thee in their blood, and sothy body shall be made whole. And Amis saidto him. Let not this thing be, that my comradeshould become a murderer for my sake. Butthe angel said, It is convenient that he do this.And thereupon the angel departed.

" And Amile also, as if in sleep, heard thosewords ; and he awoke and said. Who is it, mycomrade, that hath spoken with thee ? AndAmis answered, No man ; only I have prayed toour Lord, as I am accustomed. And Amilesaid. Not so ! but some one hath spoken withthee. Then he arose and went to the door ofthe chamber ; and finding it shut he said. Tellme, my brother, who it was said those words tothee to-night. And Amis began to weep greatly,and told him that it was Raphael, the angel ofthe Lord, who had said to him. Amis, our Lordcommands thee that thou bid Amile slay his twochildren, and wash thee in their blood, and sothou shalt be healed of thy leprosy. And Amilewas greatly disturbed at those words, and said, Iwould have given to thee my man-servants andmy maid-servants and all my goods, and thoufeignest that an angel hath spoken to thee that Ishould slay my two children. And immediatelyAmis began to weep, and said, I know that Ihave spoken to thee a terrible thing, but con-strained thereto ; I pray thee cast me not away

12

TWO EARLY FRENCH STORIESfrom the shelter of thy house. And Amileanswered that what he had covenanted with him,that he would perform, unto the hour of hisdeath : But I conjure thee, said he, by the faithwhich there is between me and thee, and by ourcomradeship, and by the baptism we receivedtogether at Rome, that thou tell me whether itwas man or angel said that to thee. And Amisanswered again. So truly as an angel hath spokento me this night, so may God deliver me frommy infirmity !

" Then Amile began to weep in secret, andthought within himself : If this man was readyto die before the king for me, shall I not forhim slay my children ? Shall I not keep faithwith him who was faithful to me even untodeath .? And Amile tarried no longer, but departedto the chamber of his wife, and bade her go hearthe Sacred Office. And he took a sword, andwent to the bed where the children were lying,and found them asleep. And he lay down overthem and began to weep bitterly and said, Hathany man yet heard of a father who of his own willslew his children ? Alas, my children ! I am nolonger your father, but your cruel murderer.

" And the children awoke at the tears of theirfather, which fell upon them ; and they lookedup into his face and began to laugh. And asthey were of the age of about three years, hesaid. Your laughing will be turned into tears,for your innocent blood must now be shed,

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THE RENAISSANCEand therewith he cut off their heads. Then helaid them back in the bed, and put the headsupon the bodies, and covered them as thoughthey slept : and with the blood which he hadtaken he washed his comrade, and said. LordJesus Christ ! who hast commanded men tokeep faith on earth, and didst heal the leper byThy word ! cleanse now my comrade, for whoselove I have shed the blood of my children.

"Then Amis was cleansed of his leprosy.And Amile clothed his companion in his bestrobes ; and as they went to the church to givethanks, the bells, by the will of God, rang oftheir own accord. And when the people of thecity heard that, they ran together to see themarvel. And the wife of Amile, when shesaw Amis and Amile coming, asked which ofthe twain was her husband, and said, I knowwell the vesture of them both, but I know notwhich of them is Amile. And Amile said to her,I am Amile, and my companion is Amis, who ishealed of his sickness. And she was full ofwonder, and desired to know in what manner hewas healed. Give thanks to our Lord, answeredAmile, but trouble not thyself as to the mannerof the healing.

" Now neither the father nor the mother hadyet entered where the children were ; but thefather sighed heavily, because they were dead,and the mother asked for them, that they mightrejoice together ; but Amile said, Dame ! let

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TWO EARLY FRENCH STORIESthe children sleep. And it was already the hourof Tierce. And going in alone to the childrento weep over them, he found them at play in thebed ; only, in the place of the sword-cuts abouttheir throats was as it were a thread of crimson.And he took them in his arms and carried themto his wife and said, Rejoice greatly, for thychildren whom I had slain by the commandmentof the angel are alive, and by their blood is Amishealed."

There, as I said, is the strength of the oldFrench story. For the Renaissance has not onlythe sweetness which it derives from the classicalworld, but also that curious strength of whichthere are great resources in the true middle age.And as I have illustrated the early strength ofthe Renaissance by the story of Amis and Amile,a story which comes from the North, in whicha certain racy Teutonic flavour is perceptible,so I shall illustrate that other element, its earlysweetness, a languid excess of sweetness even, byanother story printed in the same volume of theBibliotheque Elzevirienne^ and of about the samedate, a story which comes, characteristically, fromthe South, and connects itself with the literatureof Provence.

The central love -poetry of Provence, thepoetry of the Tenson and the Aubade, of Bernardde Ventadour and Pierre Vidal, is poetry for thefew, for the elect and peculiar people of the

15

THE RENAISSANCEkingdom of sentiment. But below this intenserpoetry there was probably a wide range of litera-ture, less serious and elevated, reaching, by light-ness of form and comparative homeliness ofinterest, an audience which the concentratedpassion of those higher lyrics left untouched.This literature has long since perished, or livesonly in later French or Italian versions. Onesuch version, the only representative of its species,M. Fauriel thought he detected in the story ofAucassin and Nicolette, written in the French ofthe latter half of the thirteenth century, andpreserved in a unique manuscript, in the nationallibrary of Paris ; and there were reasons whichmade him divine for it a still more ancientancestry, traces in it of an Arabian origin, as ina leaf lost out of some early Arabian Nights?The little book loses none of its interest throughthe criticism which finds in it only a traditionalsubject, handed on by one people to another ; forafter passing thus from hand to hand, its outlineis still clear, its surface untarnished ; and, likemany other stories, books, literary and artisticconceptions of the middle age, it has come to

^ Recently, Aucassin and Nicoktte has been edited and translatedinto English, with much graceful scholarship, by Mr. F. W.Bourdillon. Still more recently we have had a translation apoet's translation from the ingenious and versatile pen of Mr.Andrew Lang. The reader should consult also the chapter on"The Out-door Poetry," in Vernon Lee's most interesting Eupho-rion ; being Studies of the Antique and Mediaval in the Renaissance,a work abounding in knowledge and insight on the subjects ofwhich it treats.

i6

TWO EARLY FRENCH STORIEShave in this way a sort of personal history,almost as full of risk and adventure as that of itsown heroes. The writer himself calls the piecea cantefabky a tale told in prose, but with itsincidents and sentiment helped forward by songs,inserted at irregular intervals. In the junctionsof the story itself there are signs of roughnessand want of skill, which make one suspect thatthe prose was only put together to connect aseries of songsa series of songs so moving andattractive that people wished to heighten anddignify their effect by a regular framework orsetting. Yet the songs themselves are of thesimplest kind, not rhymed even, but only im-perfectly assonant, stanzas of twenty or thirtylines apiece, all ending with a similar vowelsound. And here, as elsewhere in that earlypoetry, much of the interest lies in the spectacleof the formation of a new artistic sense. A novelart is arising, the music of rhymed poetry, andin the songs of Aucassin and Nicolette, whichseem always on the point of passing into truerhyme, but which halt somehow, and can neverquite take flight, you see people just growingaware of the elements of a new music in theirpossession, and anticipating how pleasant suchmusic might become.

The piece was probably intended to be recitedby a company of trained performers, many ofwhom, at least for the lesser parts, were probablychildren. The songs are introduced by the rubric,

c 17

THE RENAISSANCEOr se cante {ici on chante) ; and each division ofprose by the rubric, Or dient et content et fabloknt{ici on conte) . The musical notes of a portion ofthe songs have been preserved ; and some of thedetails are so descriptive that they suggested toM. Fauriel the notion that the words had been ac-companied throughout by dramatic action. Thatmixture of simplicity and refinement w^hich he w^assurprised to find in a composition of the thirteenthcentury, is shown sometimes in the turn given tosome passing expression or remark ; thus, " theCount de Garins was old and frail, his time wasover

"

Li quens Garins de Beaucaire estoit vix etfrales ; si avoit son tans trespass}. And then, allis so realised ! One sees the ancient forest, withits disused roads grown deep with grass, and theplace where seven roads meet

u a forkeut set

cemin qui s^en vont par le pais ; we hear the light-hearted country people calling each other bytheir rustic names, and putting forward, as theirspokesman, one among them who is moreeloquent and ready than the rest// un qui plusfu enparles des autres ; for the little book has itsburlesque element also, so that one hears thefaint, far-ofF laughter still. Rough as it is, thepiece certainly possesses this high quality ofpoetry, that it aims at a purely artistic effect. Itssubject is a great sorrow, yet it claims to be athing of joy and refreshment, to be entertainednot for its matter only, but chiefly for its manner

,

it is cortoisy it tells us, et bien assis,

i8

TWO EARLY FRENCH STORIESFor the student of manners, and of the old

French language and literature, it has muchinterest of a purely antiquarian order. To sayof an ancient literary composition that it has anantiquarian interest, often means that it has nodistinct aesthetic interest for the reader of to-day.Antiquarianism, by a purely historical effort, byputting its object in perspective, and setting thereader in a certain point of view, from whichwhat gave pleasure to the past is pleasurable forhim also, may often add greatly to the charm wereceive from ancient literature. But the firstcondition of such aid must be a real, direct,aesthetic charm in the thing itself. Unless it hasthat charm, unless some purely artistic qualitywent to its original making, no merely antiquarianeffort can ever give it an aesthetic value, or makeit a proper subject of esthetic criticism. Thisquality, wherever it exists, it is always pleasantto define, and discriminate from the sort ofborrowed interest which an old play, or an oldstory, may very likely acquire through a trueantiquarianism. The story of Aucassin andNicolette has something of this quality.Aucassin, the only son of Count Garins ofBeaucaire, is passionately in love with Nicolette,a beautiful girl of unknown parentage, boughtof the Saracens, whom his father will not permithim to marry. The story turns on the adven-tures of these two lovers, until at the end of thepiece their mutual fidelity is rewarded. These

19

THE RENAISSANCEadventures are of the simplest sort, adventureswhich seem to be chosen for the happy occasionthey afford of keeping the eye of the fancy,perhaps the outward eye, fixed on pleasantobjects, a garden, a ruined tower, the little hutof flowers which Nicolette constructs in theforest whither she escapes from her enemies,as a token to Aucassin that she has passed thatway. All the charm of the piece is in itsdetails, in a turn of peculiar lightness and gracegiven to the situations and traits of sentiment,especially in its quaint fragments of early Frenchprose.

All through it one feels the influence of thatfaint air of overwrought delicacy, almost ofwantonness, which was so strong a characteristicof the poetry of the Troubadours. The Trou-badours themselves were often men of great rank ;they wrote for an exclusive audience, people ofmuch leisure and great refinement, and theycame to value a type of personal beauty whichhas in it but little of the influence of the openair and sunshine. There is a languid Easterndeliciousness in the very scenery of the story,the full-blown roses, the chamber painted in somemysterious manner where Nicolette is imprisoned,the cool brown marble, the almost namelesscolours, the odour of plucked grass and flowers.Nicolette herself well becomes this scenery, andis the best illustration of the quality I mean

the beautiful, weird, foreign girl, whom the20

TWO EARLY FRENCH STORIESshepherds take for a fay, who has the knowledgeof simples, the healing and beautifying qualitiesof leaves and flowers, whose skilful touch healsAucassin's sprained shoulder, so that he suddenlyleaps from the ground ; the mere sight of whosewhite flesh, as she passed the place where he lay,healed a pilgrim stricken with sore disease, sothat he rose up, and returned to his own country.With this girl Aucassin is so deeply in love thathe forgets all knightly duties. At last Nicoletteis shut up to get her out of his way, andperhaps the prettiest passage in the whole pieceis the fragment of prose which describes herescape :

" Aucassin was put in prison, as you haveheard, and Nicolette remained shut up in herchamber. It was summer-time, in the month ofMay, when the days are warm and long andclear, and the nights coy and serene.

" One night Nicolette, lying on her bed, sawthe moon shine clear through the little window,and heard the nightingale sing in the garden,and then came the memory of Aucassin, whomshe so much loved. She thought of the CountGarins of Beaucaire, who mortally hated her,and, to be rid of her, might at any momentcause her to be burned or drowned. She per-ceived that the old woman who kept hercompany was asleep ; she rose and put on thefairest gown she had ; she took the bed-clothes

21

THE RENAISSANCEand the towels, and knotted them together likea cord, as far as they would go. Then she tiedthe end to a pillar of the window, and let herselfslip down quite softly into the garden, and passedstraight across it, to reach the town.

" Her hair was yellow in small curls, hersmiling eyes blue-green, her face clear and feat,the little lips very red, the teeth small and white ;and the daisies which she crushed in passing,holding her skirt high behind and before, lookeddark against her feet ; the girl was so white !

" She came to the garden-gate and opened it,and walked through the streets of Beaucaire,keeping on the dark side of the way to be out ofthe light of the moon, which shone quietly inthe sky. She walked as fast as she could, untilshe came to the tower where Aucassin was. Thetower was set about with pillars, here and there.She pressed herself against one of the pillars,wrapped herself closely in her mantle, and puttingher face to a chink of the tower, which was oldand ruined, she heard Aucassin crying bitterlywithin, and when she had listened awhile shebegan to speak."

But scattered up and down through thislighter matter, always tinged with humour andoften passing into burlesque, which makes upthe general substance of the piece, there aremorsels of a different quality, touches of someintenser sentiment, coming it would seem from

22

TWO EARLY FRENCH STORIESthe profound and energetic spirit of the Proven9alpoetry itself, to which the inspiration of the bookhas been referred. Let me gather up thesemorsels of deeper colour, these expressions of theideal intensity of love, the motive which reallyunites together the fragments of the little com-position. Dante, the perfect flower of ideal love,has recorded how the tyranny of that " Lord ofterrible aspect " became actually physical, blind-ing his senses, and suspending his bodily forces.In this, Dante is but the central expression andtype of experiences known well enough to theinitiated, in that passionate age. Aucassinrepresents this ideal intensity of passion

Aucassin^ li biax^ It b/ons,Li gentix^ li amorous ;

the slim, tall, debonair, dansellon^ as the singerscall him, with his curled yellow hair, and eyesof njair, who faints with love, as Dante fainted,who rides all day through the forest in searchof Nicolette, while the thorns tear his flesh, sothat one might have traced him by the bloodupon the grass, and who weeps at eventidebecause he has not found her, who has themalady of his love, and neglects all knightlyduties. Once he is induced to put himself at thehead of his people, that they, seeing him beforethem, might have more heart to defend them-selves ; then a song relates how the sweet, gravefigure goes forth to battle, in dainty, tight-laced

23

THE RENAISSANCEarmour. It is the very image of the Proven9allove-god, no longer a child, but grown to pensiveyouth, as Pierre Vidal met him, riding on a whitehorse, fair as the morning, his vestment em-broidered with flowers. He rode on throughthe gates into the open plain beyond. But ashe went, that great malady of his love came uponhim. The bridle fell from his hands ; and likeone who sleeps walking, he was carried on intothe midst of his enemies, and heard them talk-ing together how they might most convenientlykill him.

One of the strongest characteristics of thatoutbreak of the reason and the imagination, ofthat assertion of the liberty of the heart, in themiddle age, which I have termed a medievalRenaissance, was its antinomianism, its spirit ofrebellion and revolt against the moral and religiousideas of the time. In their search after thepleasures of the senses and the imagination, intheir care for beauty, in their worship of thebody, people were impelled beyond the boundsof the Christian ideal ; and their love becamesometimes a strange idolatry, a strange rivalreligion. It was the return of that ancientVenus, not dead, but only hidden for a time inthe caves of the Venusberg, of those old pagangods still going to and fro on the earth, under allsorts of disguises. And this element in themiddle age, for the most part ignored by thosewriters who have treated it pre-eminently as the

24

TWO EARLY FRENCH STORIES" Age of Faith "this rebellious and antinomianelement, the recognition of which has made thedelineation of the middle age by the writers ofthe Romantic school in France, by Victor Hugofor instance in Notre-Dame de Paris^ so suggestiveand exciting is found alike in the history ofAbelard and the legend of Tannhauser. Moreand more, as we come to mark changes anddistinctions of temper in what is often in oneall-embracing confusion called the middle age,that rebellion, that sinister claim for liberty ofheart and thought, comes to the surface. TheAlbigensian movement, connected so strangelywith the history of Proven9al poetry, is deeplytinged with it. A touch of it makes the Fran-ciscan order, with its poetry, its mysticism, its" illumination," from the point of view ofreligious authority, justly suspect. It influencesthe thoughts of those obscure prophetical writers,like Joachim of Flora, strange dreamers in aworld of flowery rhetoric of that third and finaldispensation of a " spirit of freedom," in whichlaw shall have passed away. Of this spiritAucassin and Nicoktte contains perhaps the mostfamous expression : it is the answer Aucassingives when he is threatened with the pains ofhell, if he makes Nicolette his mistress. Acreature wholly of affection and the senses, hesees on the way to paradise only a feeble andworn-out company of aged priests, "clingingday and night to the chapel altars," barefoot or

25

THE RENAISSANCEin patched sandals. With or even withoutNicoktte, " his sweet mistress whom he somuch loves," he, for his part, is ready to start onthe way to hell, along with " the good scholars,"as he says, and the actors, and the fine horsemendead in battle, and the men of fashion,^ and" the fair courteous ladies who had two or threechevaliers apiece beside their own true lords,"all gay with music, in their gold, and silver, andbeautiful furs" the vair and the grey."

But in the House Beautiful the saints too havetheir place ; and the student of the Renaissancehas this advantage over the student of the eman-cipation of the human mind in the Reformation,or the French Revolution, that in tracing thefootsteps of humanity to higher levels, he isnot beset at every turn by the inflexibilities andantagonisms of some well-recognised controversy,with rigidly defined opposites, exhausting theintelligence and limiting one's sympathies. Theopposition of the professional defenders of a meresystem to that more sincere and generous play ofthe forces of human mind and character, whichI have noted as the secret of Abelard's struggle,is indeed always powerful. But the incompati-bility with one another of souls really " fair " isnot essential ; and within the enchanted regionof the Renaissance, one needs not be for ever on

^ Parage, peerage :which came to signify all that ambitiousyouth affected most on the outside of life, in that old world of theTroubadours, with whom this term is of frequent recurrence.

26

TWO EARLY FRENCH STORIESone's guard. Here there are no fixed parties, noexclusions : all breathes of that unity of culturein which " whatsoever things are comely " arereconciled, for the elevation and adorning of ourspirits. And just in proportion as those whotook part in the Renaissance become centrallyrepresentative of it, just so much the more is thiscondition realised in them. The wicked popes,and the loveless tyrants, who from time to timebecame its patrons, or mere speculators in itsfortunes, lend themselves easily to disputations,and, from this side or that, the spirit of controversylays just hold upon them. But the painter of theLast Supper^ with his kindred, lives in a landwhere controversy has no breathing-place. Theyrefuse to be classified. In the story of Aucassinand Nicolette^ in the literature which it represents,the note of defiance, of the opposition of onesystem to another, is sometimes harsh. Let meconclude then with a morsel from Amis and Amile^in which the harmony of human interests is stillentire. For the story of the great traditionalfriendship, in which, as I said, the liberty of theheart makes itself felt, seems, as we have it, tohave been written by a monk

La vie des saintsmartyrs Amis et Amile. It was not till the endof the seventeenth century that their nameswere finally excluded from the martyrology ;and their story ends with this monkish miracleof earthly comradeship, more than faithful untodeath :

21

THE RENAISSANCE" For, as God had united them in their lives

in one accord, so they were not divided in theirdeath, falling together side by side, with a hostof other brave men, in battle for King Charlesat Mortara, so called from that great slaughter.And the bishops gave counsel to the king andqueen that they should bury the dead, and builda church in that place ; and their counsel pleasedthe king greatly. And there were built twochurches, the one by commandment of the kingin honour of Saint Oseige, and the other bycommandment of the queen in honour of SaintPeter.

" And the king caused the two chests ofstone to be brought in the which the bodies ofAmis and Amile lay ; and Amile was carriedto the church of Saint Peter, and Amis to thechurch of Saint Oseige ; and the other corpseswere buried, some in one place and some inthe other. But lo ! next morning, the bodyof Amile in his coffin was found lying in thechurch of Saint Oseige, beside the coffin ofAmis his comrade. Behold then this won-drous amity, which by death could not bedissevered !

" This miracle God did, who gave to Hisdisciples power to remove mountains. And byreason of this miracle the king and queen re-mained in that place for a space of thirty days,and performed the offices of the dead who wereslain, and honoured the said churches with great

28

TWO EARLY FRENCH STORIESgifts. And the bishop ordained many clerks toserve in the church of Saint Oseige, and com-manded them that they should guard duly, withgreat devotion, the bodies of the two companions,Amis and Amile."

1872.

29

PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA

No account of the Renaissance can be completewithout some notice of the attempt made bycertain Italian scholars of the fifteenth centuryto reconcile Christianity with the religion ofancient Greece. To reconcile forms of sentimentwhich at first sight seem incompatible, to adjustthe various products of the human mind to oneanother in one many-sided type of intellectualculture, to give humanity, for heart and imagina-tion to feed upon, as much as it could possiblyreceive, belonged to the generous instincts ofthat age. An earlier and simpler generationhad seen in the gods of Greece so many malig-nant spirits, the defeated but still living centresof the religion of darkness, struggling, not alwaysin vain, against the kingdom of light. Little bylittle, as the natural charm of pagan story re-asserted itself over minds emerging out ofbarbarism, the religious significance which hadonce belonged to it was lost sight of, and itcame to be regarded as the subject of a purelyartistic or poetical treatment. But it was in-evitable that from time to time minds should

30

PICO DELLA MIRANDOLAarise, deeply enough impressed by its beauty andpower to ask themselves whether the religion ofGreece was indeed a rival of the religion ofChrist ; for the older gods had rehabilitatedthemselves, and men's allegiance was divided.And the fifteenth century was an impassionedage, so ardent and serious in its pursuit of artthat it consecrated everything with which arthad to do as a religious object. The restoredGreek literature had made it familiar, at leastin Plato, with a style of expression concerningthe earlier gods, which had about it somethingof the warmth and unction of a Christian hymn.It was too familiar with such language to regardmythology as a mere story ; and it was tooserious to play with a religion.

" Let me briefly remind the reader "saysHeine, in the Gods in Exile, an essay full of thatstrange blending of sentiment which is charac-teristic of the traditions of the middle age con-cerning the pagan religions" how the gods ofthe older world, at the time of the definitetriumph of Christianity, that is, in the thirdcentury, fell into painful embarrassments, whichgreatly resembled certain tragical situations oftheir earlier life. They now found themselvesbeset by the same troublesome necessities towhich they had once before been exposed duringthe primitive ages, in that revolutionary epochwhen the Titans broke out of the custodyof Orcus, and, piling Pelion on Ossa, scaled

31

THE RENAISSANCEOlympus. Unfortunate gods ! They had thento take flight ignominiously, and hide themselvesamong us here on earth, under all sorts of dis-guises. The larger number betook themselvesto Egypt, where for greater security they assumedthe forms of animals, as is generally known.Just in the same way, they had to take flightagain, and seek entertainment in remote hiding-places, when those iconoclastic zealots, the blackbrood of monks, broke down all the temples,and pursued the gods with fire and curses.Many of these unfortunate emigrants, nowentirely deprived of shelter and ambrosia, mustneeds take to vulgar handicrafts, as a means ofearning their bread. Under these circumstances,many whose sacred groves had been confiscated,let themselves out for hire as wood-cutters inGermany, and were forced to drink beer insteadof nectar. Apollo seems to have been contentto take service under graziers, and as he hadonce kept the cows of Admetus, so he lived nowas a shepherd in Lower Austria. Here, how-ever, having become suspected on account of hisbeautiful singing, he was recognised by a learnedmonk as one of the old pagan gods, and handedover to the spiritual tribunal. On the rack heconfessed that he was the god Apollo ; andbefore his execution he begged that he mightbe suffered to play once more upon the lyre, andto sing a song. And he played so touchingly,and sang with such magic, and was withal so

32

PICO DELLA MIRANDOLAbeautiful in form and feature, that all the womenwept, and many of them were so deeply im-pressed that they shortly afterwards fell sick-Some time afterwards the people wished todrag him from the grave again, that a stakemight be driven through his body, in the beliefthat he had been a vampire, and that the sickwomen would by this means recover. But theyfound the grave empty."

The Renaissance of the fifteenth century was,in many things, great rather by what it designedthan by what it achieved. Much which itaspired to do, and did but imperfectly or mis-takenly, was accomplished in what is called theeclaircissement of the eighteenth century, or in ourown generation ; and what really belongs to therevival of the fifteenth century is but the leadinginstinct, the curiosity, the initiatory idea. It isso with this very question of the reconciliationof the religion of antiquity with the religiqn ofChrist. A modern scholar occupied by thisproblem might observe that all religions may beregarded as natural products, that, at least intheir origin, their growth, and decay, they havecommon laws, and are not to be isolated from theother movements of the human mind in theperiods in which they respectively prevailed ; thatthey arise spontaneously out of the human mind,as expressions of the varying phases of its sentimentconcerning the unseen world ; that every intel-lectual product must be judged from the point of

D 33

THE RENAISSANCEview of the age and the people in which it wasproduced. He might go on to observe that eachhas contributed something to the developmentof the religious sense, and ranging them as somany stages in the gradual education of thehuman mind, justify the existence of each. Thebasis of the reconciliation of the religions of theworld would thus be the inexhaustible activityand creativeness of the human mind itself, inwhich all religions alike have their root, and inwhich all alike are reconciled

;just as the fancies

of childhood and the thoughts of old age meet andare laid to rest, in the experience of the individual.

Far different was the method followed by thescholars of the fifteenth century. They lackedthe very rudiments of the historic sense, which,by an imaginative act, throws itself back intoa world unlike one's own, and estimates everyintellectual creation in its connexion with theage from which it proceeded. They had no ideaof development, of the differences of ages, of theprocess by which our race has been " educated."In their attempts to reconcile the religions of theworld, they were thus thrown back upon thequicksand of allegorical interpretation. Thereligions of the world were to be reconciled, notas successive stages in a regular development of thereligious sense, but as subsisting side by side, andsubstantially in agreement with one another. Andhere the first necessity was to misrepresent thelanguage, the conceptions, the sentiments, it was

34

PICO DELLA MIRANDOLAproposed to compare and reconcile. Plato andHomer must be made to speak, agreeably toMoses. Set side by side, the mere surfacescould never unite in any harmony of design.Therefore one must go below the surface, andbring up the supposed secondary, or still moreremote meaning, that diviner signification heldin reserve, in recessu diviiiius aliquid^ latent in some

stray touch of Homer, or figure of speech in thebooks of Moses.

And yet as a curiosity of the human mind, a" madhouse-cell," if you will, into which we maypeep for a moment, and see it at work weavingstrange fancies, the allegorical interpretation ofthe fifteenth century has its interest. With itsstrange web of imagery, its quaint conceits, itsunexpected combinations and subtle moralising,it is an element in the local colour of a great age.It illustrates also the faith of that age in alloracles, its desire to hear all voices, its generousbelief that nothing which had ever interested thehuman mind could wholly lose its vitality. Itis the counterpart, though certainly the feeblercounterpart, of that practical truce and recon-ciliation of the gods of Greece with the Christianreligion, which is seen in the art of the time.And it is for his share in this work, and becausehis own story is a sort of analogue or visibleequivalent to the expression of this purpose inhis writings, that something of a general intereststill belongs to the name of Pico della Mirandola,

35

THE RENAISSANCEwhose life, written by his nephew Francis, seemedworthy, for some touch of sweetness in it, to betranslated out of the original Latin by Sir ThomasMore, that great lover of Italian culture, amongwhose works the life of Pico, Earl of Mirandola^and a great lord of Italy ^ as he calls him, may stillbe read, in its quaint, antiquated English.

Marsilio Ficino has told us how Pico cameto Florence. It was the very daysome dayprobably in the year 1482on which Ficino hadfinished his famous translation of Plato into Latin,the work to which he had been dedicated fromchildhood by Cosmo de' Medici, in furtheranceof his desire to resuscitate the knowledge of Platoamong his fellow-citizens. Florence indeed, asM. Renan has pointed out, had always had anaffinity for the mystic and dreamy philosophy ofPlato, while the colder and more practical philo-sophy of Aristotle had flourished in Padua, andother cities of the north ; and the Florentines,though they knew perhaps very little about him,had had the name of the great idealist often ontheir lips. To increase this knowledge, Cosmohad founded the Platonic academy, with periodi-cal discussions at the Villa Careggi. The fallof Constantinople in 1453, and the council in1438 for the reconciliation of the Greek andLatin Churches, had brought to Florence manya needy Greek scholar. And now the work wascompleted, the door of the mystical temple layopen to all who could construe Latin, and the

36

PICO DELLA MIRANDOLAscholar rested from his labour ; when there wasintroduced Into his study, where a lamp burnedcontinually before the bust of Plato, as other

men burned lamps before their favourite saints, ayoung man fresh from a journey, " of feature andshape seemly and beauteous, of stature goodlyand high, of flesh tender and soft, his visagelovely and fair, his colour white, intermingledwith comely reds, his eyes grey, and quick of look,his teeth white and even, his hair yellow andabundant," and trimmed with more than theusual artifice of the time.

It is thus that Sir Thomas More translates thewords of the biographer of Pico, who, even in out-ward form and appearance, seems an image of thatinward harmony and completeness, of which heis so perfect an example. The word mystic hasbeen usually derived from a Greek word whichsignifies to shut, as if one shut one's lips broodingon what cannot be uttered ; but the Platoniststhemselves derive it rather from the act of shuttingthe eyes, that one may see the more, inwardly.Perhaps the eyes of the mystic Ficino, now longpast the midway of life, had come to be thus half-closed ; but when a young man, not unlike thearchangel Raphael, as the Florentines of that agedepicted him in his wonderful walk with Tobit,or Mercury, as he might have appeared in a paint-ing by Sandro Botticelli or Piero di Cosimo,entered his chamber, he seems to have thoughtthere was something not wholly earthly about

37

THE RENAISSANCEhim ; at least, he ever afterwards believed thatit was not without the co-operation of the starsthat the stranger had arrived on that day. Forit happened that they fell into a conversation,deeper and more intimate than men usually fallinto at first sight. During this conversationFicino formed the design of devoting his remain-ing years to the translation of Plotinus, that newPlato, in whom the mystical element in thePlatonic philosophy had been worked out to theutmost limit of vision and ecstasy ; and it is indedicating this translation to Lorenzo de' Medicithat Ficino has recorded these incidents.

It was after many wanderings, wanderings ofthe intellect as well as physical journeys, thatPico came to rest at Florence. Born in 1403,he was then about twenty years old. He wascalled Giovanni at baptism, Pico, like all hisancestors, from Picus, nephew of the EmperorConstantine, from whom they claimed to bedescended, and Mirandola from the place ofhis birth, a little town afterwards part of theduchy of Modena, of which small territoryhis family had long been the feudal lords.Pico was the youngest of the family, and hismother, delighting in his wonderful memory,sent him at the age of fourteen to the famousschool of law at Bologna. From the first,indeed, she seems to have had some presenti-ment of his future fame, for, with a faith inomens characteristic of her time, she believed

38

PICO DELLA MIRANDOLAthat a strange circumstance had happened atthe time of Pico's birththe appearance of acircular flame which suddenly vanished away,on the wall of the chamber where she lay.He remained two years at Bologna ; and then,with an inexhaustible, unrivalled thirst forknowledge, the strange, confused, uncritical learn-ing of that age, passed through the principalschools of Italy and France, penetrating, as hethought, into the secrets of all ancient philoso-phies, and many Eastern languages. And withthis flood of erudition came the generous hope, sooften disabused, of reconciling the philosopherswith one another, and all alike with the Church.At last he came to Rome. There, like someknight-errant of philosophy, he offered to defendnine hundred bold paradoxes, drawn from themost opposite sources, against all comers. Butthe pontifical court was led to suspect theorthodoxy of some of these propositions, andeven the reading of the book which containedthem was forbidden by the Pope. It was notuntil 1493 ^^^^ Pico was finally absolved, by abrief of Alexander the Sixth. Ten years beforethat date he had arrived at Florence ; an earlyinstance of those who, after following the vainhope of an impossible reconciliation from systemto system, have at last fallen back unsatisfied onthe simplicities of their childhood's belief.

The oration which Pico composed for theopening of this philosophical tournament still

39

THE RENAISSANCEremains ; its subject is the dignity of humannature, the greatness of man. In common withnearly all medieval speculation, much of Pico'swriting has this for its drift ; and in commonalso with it, Pico's theory of that dignity isfounded on a misconception of the place in natureboth of the earth and of man. For Pico theearth is the centre of the universe : and aroundit, as a fixed and motionless point, the sun andmoon and stars revolve, like diligent servants orministers. And in the midst of all is placedman, nodus et vinculum mundiy the bond or copulaof the world, and the *' interpreter of nature":that famous expression of Bacon's really belongsto Pico. Tritum est in scholis^ he says, esse hominemminorem mundum^ in quo mixtum ex elementis corpuset spiritus coelestts et plantarum anima vegetalis etbrutorum sensus et ratio et angelica mens et Deisimilitudo conspicitur

:

" It is a commonplace ofthe schools that man is a little world, in whichwe may discern a body mingled of earthyelements, and ethereal breath, and the vegetablelife of plants, and the senses of the lower animals,and reason, and the intelligence of angels, anda likeness to God."A commonplace of the schools ! But perhaps

it had some new significance and authority, whenmen heard one like Pico reiterate it ; and, falseas its basis was, the theory had its use. For thishigh dignity of man, thus bringing the dust underhis feet into sensible communion with the

40

PICO DELLA MIRANDOLAthoughts and affections of the angels, was supposedto belong to him, not as renewed by a religioussystem, but by his own natural right. The pro-clamation of it was a counterpoise to the increas-ing tendency of medieval religion to depreciateman's nature, to sacrifice this or that element init, to make it ashamed of itself, to keep the degrad-ing or painful accidents of it always in view. Ithelped man onward to that reassertion of himself,that rehabilitation of human nature, the body,the senses, the heart, the intelligence, which theRenaissance fulfils. And yet to read a page of oneof Pico's forgotten books is like a glance into oneof those ancient sepulchres, upon which the wan-derer in classical lands has sometimes stumbled,with the old disused ornaments and furniture ofa world wholly unlike ours still fresh in them.That whole conception of nature is so differentfrom our own. For Pico the world is a limitedplace, bounded by actual crystal walls, and amaterial firmament ; it is like a painted toy, likethat map or system of the world, held, as a greattarget or shield, in the hands of the creative Logos,by whom the Father made all things, in one ofthe earlier frescoes of the Campo Santo at Pisa.How different from this childish dream is ourown conception of nature, with its unlimitedspace, its innumerable suns, and the earth but amote in the beam ; how different the strangenew awe, or superstition, with which it fills ourminds I " The silence of those infinite spaces,"

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THE RENAISSANCEsays Pascal, contemplating a starlight night, " thesilence of those infinite spaces terrifies me " :

Le silence kernel de ces espaces infinis nie^raie.He was already almost wearied out when he

came to Florence. He had loved much andbeen beloved by women, " wandering over thecrooked hills of delicious pleasure " ; but theirreign over him was over, and long beforeSavonarola's famous " bonfire of vanities," hehad destroyed those love-songs in the vulgartongue, which would have been so great a reliefto us, after the scholastic prolixity of his Latinwritings. It was in another spirit that he com-posed a Platonic commentary, the only work ofhis in Italian which has come down to us, onthe " Song of Divine Love "

secondo la mente ed

opinione dei Platonici" according to the mindand opinion of the Platonists," by his friendHieronymo Beniveni, in which, with an am-bitious array of every sort of learning, and aprofusion of imagery borrowed indifferentlyfrom the astrologers, the Cabala, and Homer,and Scripture, and Dionysius the Areopagite, heattempts to define the stages by which the soulpasses from the earthly to the unseen beauty.A change indeed had passed over him, as if thechilling touch of the abstract and disembodiedbeauty Platonists profess to long for werealready upon him. Some sense of this, perhaps,coupled with that over-brightness which in thepopular imagination always betokens an early

42

PICO DELLA MIRANDOLAdeath, made Camilla Rucellai, one of thoseprophetic women whom the preaching ofSavonarola had raised up in Florence, declare,seeing him for the first time, that he woulddepart in the time of lilies

prematurely, thatis, like the field -flowers which are witheredby the scorching sun almost as soon asthey are sprung up. He now wrote downthose thoughts on the religious life which SirThomas More turned into English, and whichanother English translator thought worthy tobe added to the books of the Imitation. " It isnot hard to know God, provided one will notforce oneself to define Him " :has been thoughta great saying of Joubert's. " Love God," Picowrites to Angelo Politian, " we rather may,than either know Him, or by speech utter Him.And yet had men liefer by knowledge never findthat which they seek, than by love possess thatthing, which also without love were in vainfound."

Yet he who had this fine touch for spiritualthings did notand in this is the enduringinterest of his storyeven after his conversion,forget the old gods. He is one of the lastwho seriously and sincerely entertained theclaim on men's faith of the pagan religions ;he is anxious to ascertain the true significanceof the obscurest legend, the lightest traditionconcerning them. With many thoughts andmany influences which led him in that direc-

43

THE RENAISSANCEtion, he did not become a monk ; only hebecame gentle and patient in disputation ; re-taining " somewhat of the old plenty, in daintyviand and silver vessel," he gave over the greaterpart of his property to his friend, the mysticalpoet Beniveni, to be spent by him in v^^orks ofcharity, chiefly in the sweet charity of pro-viding marriage-dowries for the peasant girls ofFlorence. His end came in 1494, when, amidthe prayers and sacraments of Savonarola, hedied of fever, on the very day on which Charlesthe Eighth entered Florence, the seventeenth ofNovember, yet in the time of liliesthe lilies ofthe shield of France, as the people now said, re-membering Camilla's prophecy. He was buriedin the conventual church of Saint Mark, in thehood and white frock of the Dominican order.

It is because the life of Pico, thus lyingdown to rest in the Dominican habit, yet amidthoughts of the older gods, himself like one ofthose comely divinities, reconciled indeed to thenew religion, but still with a tenderness for theearlier life, and desirous literally to " bind theages each to each by natural piety" it isbecause this life is so perfect a parallel to theattempt made in his writings to reconcileChristianity with the ideas of paganism, thatPico, in spite of the scholastic character ofthose writings, is really interesting. Thus, inthe Heptaplus, or Discourse on the Seven Days oft/ie Creation^ he endeavours to reconcile the

44

PICO DELLA MIRANDOLAaccounts which pagan philosophy had givenof the origin of the world with the accountgiven in the books of Mosesthe Timceus ofPlato with the book of Genesis. The Heptapluiis dedicated to Lorenzo the Magnificent, whoseinterest, the preface tells us, in the secretwisdom of Moses is well known. If Mosesseems in his writings simple and even popular,rather than either a philosopher or a theologian,that is because it was an institution with theancient philosophers, either not to speak ofdivine things at all, or to speak of them dis-semblingly : hence their doctrines were calledmysteries. Taught by them, Pythagoras be-came so great a " master of silence," and wrotealmost nothing, thus hiding the words of Godin his heart, and speaking wisdom only amongthe perfect. In explaining the harmony be-tween Plato and Moses, Pico lays hold on everysort of figure and analogy, on the double mean-ings of words, the symbols of the Jewish ritual,the secondary meanings of obscure stories in thelater Greek mythologists. Everywhere there isan unbroken system of correspondences. Everyobject in the terrestrial world is an analogue, asymbol or counterpart, of some higher reality inthe starry heavens, and this again of some law ofthe angelic life in the world beyond the stars.There is the element of fire in the materialworld ; the sun is the fire of heaven ; and inthe super- celestial world there is the fire of

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THE RENAISSANCE

the seraphic intelligence. " But behold howthey differ ! The elementary fire burns, theheavenly fire vivifies, the super- celestial fireloves." In this way, every natural object,every combination of natural fi^rces, every acci-dent in the lives of men, is filled with highermeanings. Omens, prophecies, supernatural co-incidences, accompany Pico himself all throughlife. There are oracles in every tree and moun-tain-top, and a significance in every accidentalcombination of the events of life.

This constant tendency to symbolism andimagery gives Pico's work a figured style, bywhich it has some real resemblance to Plato's,and he differs from other mystical writers of histime by a genuine desire to know his authoritiesat first hand. He reads Plato in Greek, Moses inHebrew, and by this his work really belongs tothe higher culture. Above all, we have a con-stant sense in reading him, that his thoughts,however little their positive value may be, areconnected with springs beneath them of deep andpassionate emotion ; and when he explains thegrades or steps by which the soul passes from thelove of a physical object to the love of unseenbeauty, and unfolds the analogies between thisprocess and other movements upw^ard of humanthought, there is a glow and vehemence in hiswords which remind one of the manner in whichhis own brief existence flamed itself away.

I said that the Renaissance of the fifteenth46

PICO DELLA MIRANDOLAcentury was, in many things, great rather bywhat it designed or aspired to do, than by whatit actually achieved. It remained for a later ageto conceive the true method of effecting ascientific reconciliation of Christian sentimentwith the imagery, the legends, the theories aboutthe world, of pagan poetry and philosophy. Forthat age the only possible reconciliation was animaginative one, and resulted from the efforts ofartists, trained in Christian schools, to handlepagan subjects ; and of this artistic reconciliationwork like Pico's was but the feebler counterpart.Whatever philosophers had to say on one side orthe other, whether they were successful or notin their attempts to reconcile the old to the new,and to justify the expenditure of so much careand thought on the dreams of a dead faith, theimagery of the Greek religion, the direct charmof its story, were by artists valued and cultivatedfor their own sake. Hence a new sort ofmythology, with a tone and qualities of its own.When the ship-load of sacred earth from the soilof Jerusalem was mingled with the common clayin the Campo Santo at Pisa, a new flower grew upfrom it, unlike any flower men had seen before,the anemone with its concentric rings of strangelyblended colour, still to be found by those whosearch long enough for it, in the long grass ofthe Maremma. Just such a strange flower wasthat mythology of the Italian Renaissance, whichgrew up from the mixture of two traditions, two

47

THE RENAISSANCEsentiments, the sacred and the profane. Classicalstory was regarded as so much imaginativematerial to be received and assimilated. It didnot come into men's minds to ask curiously ofscience, concerning the origin of such story,its primary form and import, its meaning forthose who projected it. The thing sank intotheir minds, to issue forth again with all thetangle about it of medieval sentiment andideas. In the Doni Madonna in the Tribune ofthe JJffizii, Michelangelo actually brings the paganreligion, and with it the unveiled human form,the sleepy-looking fauns of a Dionysiac revel, intothe presence of the Madonna, as simpler paintershad introduced there other products of theearth, birds or flowers, while he has given to thatMadonna herself much of the uncouth energy ofthe older and more primitive " Mighty Mother."

This picturesque union of contrasts, belongingproperly to the art of the close of the fifteenthcentury, pervades, in Pico della Mirandola, anactual person, and that is why the figure ofPico is so attractive. He will not let onego ; he wins one on, in spite of one's self, toturn again to the pages of his forgotten books,although we know already that the actual solutionproposed in them will satisfy us as little asperhaps it satisfied him. It is said that in hiseagerness for mysterious learning he once paida great sum for a collection of cabalistic manu-scripts, which turned out to be forgeries ; and

48

PICO DELLA MIRANDOLAthe story might well stand as a parable of all heever seemed to gain in the way of actual know-ledge. He had sought knowledge, and passedfrom system to system, and hazarded much ; butless for the sake of positive knowledge thanbecause he believed there was a spirit of orderand beauty in knowledge, which would comedown and unite what men's ignorance haddivided, and renew what time had made dim.And so, while his actual work has passed away,yet his own qualities are still active, and him-self remains, as one alive in the grave, caesiiset vigilibus oculis, as his biographer describes him,and with that sanguine, clear skin, decenti ruboreinterspersa^ as with the light of morning upon it

;

and he has a true place in that group of greatItalians who fill the end of the fifteenth centurywith their names, he is a true humanist. Forthe essence of humanism is that belief of whichhe seems never to have doubted, that nothingwhich has ever interested living men and womencan wholly lose its vitalityno language theyhave spoken, nor oracle beside which they havehushed their voices, no dream which has oncebeen entertained by actual human minds, nothingabout which they have ever been passionate, orexpended time and zeal.

1871.

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SANDRO BOTTICELLI

In Leonardo's treatise on painting only one con-temporary is mentioned by name SandroBotticelli. This pre-eminence may be due tochance only, but to some will rather appear aresult of deliberate judgment ; for people havebegun to find out the charm of Botticelli's work,and his name, little known in the last century, isquietly becoming important. In the middle ofthe fifteenth century he had already anticipatedmuch of that meditative subtlety, which is some-times supposed peculiar to the great imaginativeworkmen of its close. Leaving the simplereligion which had occupied the followers ofGiotto for a century, and the simple naturalismwhich had grown out of it, a thing of birds andflowers only, he sought inspiration in what tohim were works of the modern world, thewritings of Dante and Boccaccio, and in newreadings of his own of classical stories : or, if hepainted religious incidents, painted them with anunder -current of original sentiment, whichtouches you as the real matter of the picturethrough the veil of its ostensible subject. What

50

SANDRO BOTTICELLIis the peculiar sensation, what is the peculiarquality of pleasure, which his work has the pro-perty of exciting in us, and which we cannot getelsewhere ? For this, especially when he has tospeak of a comparatively unknown artist, is alwaysthe chief question which a critic has to answer.

In an age when the lives of artists werefull of adventure, his life is almost colourless.Criticism indeed has cleared away much of thegossip which Vasari accumulated, has touchedthe legend of Lippo and Lucrezia, and rehabili-tated the character of Andrea del Castagno. Butin Botticelli's case there is no legend to dissipate.He did not even go by his true name : Sandrois a nickname, and his true name is Filipepi,Botticelli being only the name of the goldsmithwho first taught him art. Only two thingshappened to him, two things which he sharedwith other artists :he was invited to Rome topaint in the Sistine Chapel, and he fell in laterlife under the influence of Savonarola, passingapparently almost out of men's sight in a sort ofreligious melancholy, which lasted till his deathin 1 51 5, according to the received date. Vasarisays that he plunged into the study of Dante,and even wrote a comment on the Divine Comedy.But it seems strange that he should have lived oninactive so long ; and one almost wishes thatsome document might come to light, which,fixing the date of his death earlier, might relieveone, in thinking of him, of his dejected old age.

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THE RENAISSANCEHe is before all things a poetical painter,

blending the charm of story and sentiment, themedium of the art of poetry, with the charm ofline and colour, the medium of abstract painting.So he becomes the illustrator of Dante. In afew rare examples of the edition of 1481, theblank spaces, left at the beginning of every cantofor the hand of the illuminator, have been filled,as far as the nineteenth canto of the Inferno^with impressions of engraved plates, seeminglyby way of experiment, for in the copy in theBodleian Library, one of the three impressions itcontains has been printed upside down, and muchawry, in the midst of the luxurious printed page.Giotto, and the followers of Giotto, with theiralmost childish religious aim, had not learned toput that weight of meaning into outward things,light, colour, everyday gesture, which the poetryof the 'Divine Comedy involves, and before thefifteenth century Dante could hardly have foundan illustrator. Botticelli's illustrations are

crowded with incident, blending, with a naivecarelessness of pictorial propriety, three phasesof the same scene into one plate. Thegrotesques, so often a stumbling-block topainters, who forget that the words of a poet,which only feebly present an image to themind, must be lowered in key Vv^hen translatedinto visible form, make one regret that he hasnot rather chosen for illustration the moresubdued imagery of the Purgatorio. Yet in the

52

SANDRO BOTTICELLIscene of those who " go down quick into hell,"there is an inventive force about the fire takinghold on the upturned soles of the feet, whichproves that the design is no mere translation ofDante's words, but a true painter's vision ; whilethe scene of the Centaurs wins one at once, for,forgetful of the actual circumstances of theirappearance, Botticelli has gone off with delighton the thought of the Centaurs themselves,bright, small creatures of the woodland, witharch baby faces and mignon forms, drawing tinybows.

Botticelli lived in a generation of naturalists,and he might have been a mere naturalist amongthem. There are traces enough in his work ofthat alert sense of outward things, which, in thepictures of that period, fills the lawns withdelicate living creatures, and the hillsides withpools of water, and the pools of water withflowering reeds. But this was not enough forhim ; he is a visionary painter, and in his vision-ariness he resembles Dante. Giotto, the triedcompanion of Dante, Masaccio, Ghirlandajoeven, do but transcribe, with more or lessrefining, the outward image ; they are dramatic,not visionary painters ; they are almost impassivespectators of the action before them. But thegenius of which Botticelli is the type usurps thedata before it as the exponent of ideas, moods,visions of its own ; in this interest it plays fastand loose with those data, rejecting some and

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THE RENAISSANCEisolating others, and always combining themanew. To him, as to Dante, the scene, thecolour, the outward image or gesture, comeswith all its incisive and importunate reality ; butawakes in him, moreover, by some subtle lawof his own structure, a mood which it awakes inno one else, of which it is the double or repeti-tion, and which it clothes, that all may share it,with visible circumstance.

But he is far enough from accepting theconventional orthodoxy of Dante which, refer-ring all human action to the simple formula ofpurgatory, heaven and hell, leaves an insolubleelement of prose in the depths of Dante's poetry.One picture of his, with the portrait of thedonor, Matteo Palmieri, below, had the creditor discredit of attracting some shadow of ecclesi-astical censure. This Matteo Palmieri, (twodim figures move under that name in contem-porary history,) was the reputed author of apoem, still unedited, La Citta Divina^ whichrepresented the human race as an incarnationof those angels who, in the revolt of Lucifer,were neither for Jehovah nor for His enemies,a fantasy of that earlier Alexandrian philosophyabout which the Florentine intellect in thatcentury was so curious. Botticelli's picture mayhave been only one of those familiar composi-tions in which religious reverie has recorded itsimpressions of the various forms of beatifiedexistence

Glorias, as they were called, like that54

SANDRO BOTTICELLIin which Giotto painted the portrait of Dante

;

but somehow it was suspected of embodying ina picture the wayward dream of Palmieri, andthe chapel where it hung was closed. Artists soentire as Botticelli are usually careless aboutphilosophical theories, even when the philo-sopher is a Florentine of the fifteenth century,and his work a poem in ter'za rima. But Botti-celli, who wrote a commentary on Dante, andbecame the disciple of Savonarola, may well havelet such theories come and go across him. Trueor false, the story interprets much of the peculiarsentiment with which he infuses his profane andsacred persons, comely, and in a certain sense likeangels, but with a sense of displacement or lossabout themthe wistfulness of exiles, consciousof a passion and energy greater than any knownissue of them explains, which runs through allhis varied work with a sentiment of ineffablemelancholy.

So just what Dante scorns as unworthy alikeof heaven and hell, Botticelli accepts, that middleworld in which men take no side in great con-flicts, and decide no great causes, and make greatrefusals. He thus sets for himself the limitswithin which art, undis