In
this way it still fulfilled its educative and regenerative mission. It
dwelt on the victories which Italians had won in other days over
their oppressors, and it tacitly reminded them that they were still
oppressed by foreign governments; it portrayed their own former
corruption and crimes, and so taught them the virtues which alone
could cure the ills their vices had brought upon them. Only
secondarily political, and primarily moral, it forbade the Italians to
hope to be good citizens without being good men. This was Romance in
its highest office, as Manzoni, Grossi, and D'Azeglio conceived it.
Aesthetically, the new school struggled to overthrow the classic
traditions; to liberate tragedy from the bondage of the unities, and
let it concern itself with any tragical incident of life; to give
comedy the generous scope of English and Spanish comedy; to seek
poetry in the common experiences of men and to find beauty in any
theme; to be utterly free, untrammeled, and abundant; to be in
literature what the Gothic is in architecture. It perished because
it came to look for Beauty only, and all that was good in it became
merged in Realism which looks for Truth.
These were the purposes of Romance, and the masters in whom the
Italian Romanticists had studied them were the great German and
English poets.
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