DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61902#0014
vi IN TROD UCTION.
venuto Cellini, with the Pegasus of his genius put in toy
harness and yoked to toy chariots of gold and silver ; and
a school of painters who died slowly out after the great
Buonarotti ; but except effete dukes and Renaissance Cu-
pids entangled in chains of roses, and a people without
life and hope—nothing more.
We do not pretend, however, to follow out, even by
secondary means, all the lines of the story which is con-
centrated into epic force and distinctness by the limited
space in which it is enacted. But the great figure of the
poet which stands near the beginning of the most articu-
late and important period of Florentine history, and the
equally remarkable preacher, who holds a similar position
toward its end, gives a certain historical and epical form
to the narrative ; and it is scarcely possible to indicate
them distinctly without embracing much of the general
tenor of the larger tale. In both lives the central interest
is in the struggle which we find going on violently in
Dante’s time, and which, greatly changed, yet the same,
reaches a kind of climax in Savonarola’s—a struggle
which kept on raging with more or less force through the
two intervening centuries, never wholly extinguished,
changing in form, but scarcely in character, from one
generation to another. It is not within our range to
search into the very beginnings of the city for the begin-
ning of the quarrel. It is enough to find it in full force,
in absolute height of unreason, in the end of the thirteenth
century; a quarrel which we have not even the satisfaction
of being able to regard as a struggle between good and
evil, the natural conflict of opposing principles. There
is no doubt a certain formal meaning attached by the his-
torian to the titles Guelf and Ghibelline, words which
have wearied the mind of the world ever since, as they
distracted it in the day of their power; and we suppose
there can be no doubt that the feudal party, the nobles
venuto Cellini, with the Pegasus of his genius put in toy
harness and yoked to toy chariots of gold and silver ; and
a school of painters who died slowly out after the great
Buonarotti ; but except effete dukes and Renaissance Cu-
pids entangled in chains of roses, and a people without
life and hope—nothing more.
We do not pretend, however, to follow out, even by
secondary means, all the lines of the story which is con-
centrated into epic force and distinctness by the limited
space in which it is enacted. But the great figure of the
poet which stands near the beginning of the most articu-
late and important period of Florentine history, and the
equally remarkable preacher, who holds a similar position
toward its end, gives a certain historical and epical form
to the narrative ; and it is scarcely possible to indicate
them distinctly without embracing much of the general
tenor of the larger tale. In both lives the central interest
is in the struggle which we find going on violently in
Dante’s time, and which, greatly changed, yet the same,
reaches a kind of climax in Savonarola’s—a struggle
which kept on raging with more or less force through the
two intervening centuries, never wholly extinguished,
changing in form, but scarcely in character, from one
generation to another. It is not within our range to
search into the very beginnings of the city for the begin-
ning of the quarrel. It is enough to find it in full force,
in absolute height of unreason, in the end of the thirteenth
century; a quarrel which we have not even the satisfaction
of being able to regard as a struggle between good and
evil, the natural conflict of opposing principles. There
is no doubt a certain formal meaning attached by the his-
torian to the titles Guelf and Ghibelline, words which
have wearied the mind of the world ever since, as they
distracted it in the day of their power; and we suppose
there can be no doubt that the feudal party, the nobles