It was as if the statues
of Apollo and the Muses had been endowed with life and motion, and had
walked forth among their worshippers; so that earth became peopled by
the inhabitants of a diviner world. The familiar appearance and
proceedings of life became wonderful and heavenly, and a paradise was
created as out of the wrecks of Eden. And as this creation itself is
poetry, so its creators were poets; and language was the instrument
of their art: _Galeotto fu il libro, e chi lo scrisse_. The Provencal
Trouveurs, or inventors, preceded Petrarch, whose verses are as spells,
which unseal the inmost enchanted fountains of the delight which is
in the grief of love. It is impossible to feel them without becoming
a portion of that beauty which we contemplate: it were superfluous to
explain how the gentleness and the elevation of mind connected with
these sacred emotions can render men more amiable, more generous and
wise, and lift them out of the dull vapours of the little world of
self. Dante understood the secret things of love even more than
Petrarch.
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