Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/14

viii in the very first rank of genius and achievement—Aquinas, Dante, Columbus, Leonardo, Michael Angelo,Raphael, Titian, Galileo, Napoleon—only one should have been a man of letters. The reader, therefore, who may deem the field of Italian literature infertile in comparison with the opulence of England or France, must remember that it expresses a smaller proportion of the country's benefaction to humanity. Yet Jowett is perfectly justified in claiming for the Italian a front place among the literatures of the world, but only on condition that its great representatives shall be weighed rather than counted.

The comparative—though only comparative—paucity of authors in Italy is so far favourable to the historian working on a small scale, that it allows a more expansive treatment of the greatest men, and at the same time the inclusion of minor writers not always of high distinction, but indispensable to the continuity of the narrative. This is essential in a book which does not profess to be a string of biographies, but a biography of Italian Literature herself regarded as a single entity revealed through a succession of personages, the less gifted among whom may be true embodiments of her spirit for the time being. Many remarkable manifestations of the national intellect are, nevertheless, necessarily excluded. Writers in dialect are omitted, unless when acknowledged classics like Meli or Belli. Academies and universities are but slightly mentioned. Theologians, jurists, and men of science have been passed over, except in so far as they may also have been men of letters. There is, in fact, no figure among them like Luther, who, though not inspired by the love of letters as such, so embodied the national spirit and