Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/11



"," says Jowett, writing to John Addington Symonds (August 4, 1890), "that you are happy in having unlocked so much of Italian literature, certainly the greatest in the world after Greek, Latin, English. To have interpreted one such literature and made it accessible to English-speaking people seems to me a sufficient result of a life."

It seems, however, peculiarly appropriate that a history of Italian literature should follow and should precede other and parallel histories. Symonds himself had long before pointed out that no man, at least in a single work of moderate compass, can fully deserve the credit of having unlocked Italian literature. The study of Italian letters, he had reminded us, cannot be profitably pursued by itself. The literature of Italy requires to be constantly considered in connection with other literatures, both those from which it is itself derived, and those which it has deeply influenced. It is more intimately affiliated to antiquity than any other European literature, and may indeed be regarded as a continuation or revival of the Latin. Its advent was long and unaccountably delayed—it is the youngest of all the chief European literatures; but when at length it did appear, its form, already classical, dispensed it from an infancy