Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/401

 burghers of the Commune, seeing few but enemies beyond their walls, viewed the scenery of the country with much the same feelings as those of the old Greek town-republics. But, in spite of confining men's interest within the city walls at first, the towns of Europe were destined to expand directly and indirectly our modern sentiments of Nature. Their commerce, bringing back knowledge of new climates, animals, vegetation, gave currency to new ideas, new contrasts, of Nature; and the various types of character developed within their walls diversified the human standpoints from which Nature might be perceived. The soul of the free burgher, filled with new sights and sounds, was soon capable of adding much to the songs of feudalism. At the court of the monarch burgher and feudal elements could find a quiet union. Here, then, we might have expected to find a true poetry of Nature springing up. But the Latin and Greek Renaissances were to make our European poetry of Nature an exotic cared of courts before it became a home-growth of democratic taste.

The fantastic geography of the Divina Commedia has too little to do with the world of Nature to admit truthful and sympathetic pictures of her forms. The individualism of Dante's town-born muse leaves as few signs of Nature's handiwork as the town-drama of Athens. Here and there we meet descriptive touches—"il tremolar di marina," "la divina foresta spessa e viva;" but even in the pine-forests on the shore of Chiassi we hear echoes from Vergil—

If we turn to Petrarch expecting to find natural de-