Page:Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 - Volume 2.djvu/208

 produced no great works. Since the fall of the republic of Florence, poetry and eloquence, which ought to have waited on the changes and advancement of civilisation, and to have harmonised with the thoughts and manners of the country, failed to do so. Italian painting left no path untried so to arrive at perfection, and sought originality by a thousand different roads; while poets were afraid of novelty. This is not strange. The creations of genius and the inventions of the imagination are derived from, and depend on, the moral culture of the intellect, and this culture was shackled. After the sixteenth century Italy never enjoyed political liberty, and the intellect of the country was unable to develope itself with freedom. On this account the Italians ceased to contemplate man and nature in an original manner: they were imitators of the ancients, and in the sequel, imitators of imitators, their literature even became influenced by that of the French. No attempt was made to enlarge its limits or to renovate its spirit; for such an attempt, from political reasons, would have been dangerous. Governments who are not strengthened by public opinion, always shackle the free exercise of the intellectual faculties. Writers both in prose and verse, thus grew to aim at grace of diction and beauty of imagery, unsustained by