In what harmony are there expressed the pride of the man and the poet, the irony with which he treats his own enjoyments, the most delicate satire, and the deepest goodwill!
When this impulse to the highest individual development was combined with a powerful and varied nature, which had mastered all the elements of the culture of the age, then arose the 'all-sided man'--'l'uomo universale'--who belonged to Italy alone.Men there were of encyclopedic knowledge _, in many countries during the Middle Ages, for this knowledge was confined within narrow limits; and even in the twelfth century there were universal artists, but the problems of architecture were comparatively simple and uniform, and in sculpture and painting the matter was of more importance than the form.But in Italy at the time of the Renaissance, we find artists who in every branch created new and perfect works, and who also made the greatest impression as men.Others, outside the arts they practiced, were masters of a vast circle of spiritual interests.
Dante, who, even in his lifetime, was called by some a poet, by others a philosopher, by others a theologian, pours forth in all his writings a stream of personal force by which the reader, apart from the interest of the subject, feels himself carried away.What power of will must the steady, unbroken elaboration of the _Divine Comedy _have required! And if we look at the matter of the poem, we find that in the whole spiritual or physical world there is hardly an important subject which the poet has not fathomed, and on which his utterances --often only a few words--are not the most weighty of his time.For the visual arts he is of the first importance, and this for better reasons than the few references to contemporary artists--he soon became himself the source of inspiration.