href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@41924@[email protected]#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[4] Surely the physical qualities of a race change with the changes in their thought and feeling. The beauty of Tasso is more feminine and melancholy than that of Ariosto, in whom the liberal genius of the Renaissance was yet alive. Among the scowling swordsmen of the seventeenth century you cannot find a face like Giorgione's Gattamelata;[5] the nobles who bear themselves so proudly on the canvases of Vandyck at Genoa lack the urbanity of Raphael's Castiglione; Moroni's black-robed students are more pinched and withered than the Pico of the Uffizzi. It will not do to strain such points. It is enough to suggest them. What remains, however, for certain is that the Italians of the fifteenth century—and among these must be included those who lived through the first half of the sixteenth—had physical force and character corresponding to their robust individuality. Until quite late in the Renaissance so much survived of feudal customs even in Italy that riding, the handling of the lance and sword, and all athletic exercises formed a part of education no less indispensable than mental training. Great cities had open places set apart for tournaments and games; in Tuscan burghs the palio was run on feast days, and May mornings saw the prentice lads of Florence tilting beneath the smiles of girls who danced at nightfall on the square of Santa Trinità. Bloody battles in the streets were frequent. The least provocation caused a man to draw his dagger. Combats a steccato chiuso were among the pastimes to which a Pope might lend his countenance. Skill in swordsmanship was therefore a necessity. For the rest, we learn from Castiglione that the perfect gentleman was bound to be an accomplished dancer, a bold rider, a skilled wrestler, a swift runner, to shoot well at the mark, to hurl the javelin and the quoit with grace, and to play at tennis and pallone. In addition he ought to affect some one athletic exercise in such perfection as to beat professors of the same on their own ground. Cesare Borgia took pride in felling an ox at a single blow, and exhibited his marksman's cunning by shooting condemned criminals in a courtyard of the Vatican.

That such men should have devoted their energies to intellectual culture at a time when English nobles could barely read or write, and when the chivalry of France regarded learning with disdain, was a proof of their rich natural endowments. Nor was the determination of the race to scholarship in any sense an accident. Throughout the length and breadth of Italy, memories of ancient greatness spurred her children on to emulation. Ghosts of Roman patriots and poets seemed hovering round their graves, and calling on posterity to give them life again. If we cannot bring back Greece and Rome, at least let us make Florence a second Athens, and restore the Muses to Ausonian vales. That was the cry. It was while gazing on the ruins of Rome that Villani felt impelled to write his chronicle. Pavia honoured Boethius like a saint. Mantua struck coins with the head of Virgil, and Naples pointed out his tomb. Padua boasted of Livy, and Como of the Plinies. 'Sulmona,' cried Boccaccio, 'mourns because she holds not Ovid's dust; and Parma is glad that Cassius rests within her walls.' Such reverence for the great men of antiquity endured throughout the Middle Ages, creating myths that swayed the fancy, and forming in the popular consciousness a presentiment of the approaching age. There is something pathetic in the survival of old Roman titles, in the freak of the legend-making imagination that gave to Orlando the style of Roman senator, in the outburst of enthusiasm for Rienzi when he called himself Tribunus Populi Romani. With the Renaissance itself this affection for the past became a passion. Pius II. amnestied the people of Arpino because they were fellow-citizens of Cicero. Alfonso of Naples received as a most precious gift from Venice a bone supposed to be the leg of Livy. All the patricians of Italy invented classical pedigrees; and even Paul II., because he was called Barbo, claimed descent from the Ahenobarbi. Such instances might be multiplied indefinitely. It is, however, more to the purpose here to notice that in Italy this adoration of the antique world was common to all classes; not students alone, but the people at large regarded the dead grandeur of the classic age as their especial heritage. To resuscitate that buried glory, and to reunite themselves with the past, was the earnest aim of the Italians as a nation. A conviction prevailed that the modern world could never be so radiant as the old. This found its expression in the saying that Rome's chief ornaments were her ruins; in the belief that Julia's corpse, discovered in the Appian Way, surpassed all living maidens; in Matarazzo's observation that Astorre Baglioni's body was worthy of an ancient Roman. In their admiration for antiquity, scholars were blind to the specific glories of the modern genius. Lionardo Bruni, for example, exclaimed that 'the ancient Greeks by far excelled us Italians in humanity and gentleness of heart.' Yet what Greek poem can be compared for tenderness with Dante's 'Vita Nuova,' with the 'Canzoniere' of Petrarch, or with the tale of Griselda in Boccaccio? Gentilezza di cuore was the most characteristic product of chivalry, and the fourth Æneid is the only classic masterpiece of pure romantic pathos. This humility of discipleship was not, however, strong enough to check emulation. On the contrary, the yearning towards antiquity acted like a potent stimulus on personal endeavour, generating an acute desire for fame, a burning aspiration to be numbered with the mighty men of old. When Virgil introduced Dante to the company of Homer and his peers, the rank of sesto tra cotanto senno rewarded him for all his labour in the rhyme that made him thin through half a lifetime. Petrarch, who exceeded Dante in the thirst for literary honour, turned from the men of his generation to converse in long epistles with the buried saints of Latin culture. For men of less ambition it was enough to feel that they could raise their souls through study to communion with the stately spirits of antiquity, passing like Machiavelli from trivial affairs into their closet, where they donned their reading robes and shook hands across the centuries with Cicero or Livy. It was the universal object of the humanists to gain a consciousness of self distinguished from the vulgar herd, and to achieve this by joining the great company of bards and sages, whose glory could not perish.

Whoever felt within himself the stirring of the spirit under any form, sought earnestly for fame; and in this way a new social atmosphere, unknown to the nations of the Middle Ages, was formed in Italy. A large and liberal acceptance, recognising ability of all kinds, irrespective of rank or piety or martial prowess, displaced the narrower judgments of the Church and feudalism. Giotto, the peasant's son, ranked higher in esteem than Cimabue, the Florentine citizen, because his work of art was worthier. Petrarch had his place in no official capacity, but as an honoured equal, at the marriage feasts of princes. Poliziano corresponded with kings, promising immortality as a more than regal favour. Pomponius Lætus could afford to repel the advances of the Sanseverini, feeling that erudition ranked him higher than his princely kinsmen. It was not wealth or policy alone that raised the Medici among the Despots so far above the Baglioni of Perugia or the Petrucci of Siena. They