those Ciceronians whom Erasmus derides. It is easy to make light of such work, but it is better and more important to remember what it was that the humanists achieved in this way. One of our poets has described Dante's immortal poem as "The first words Italy had said"; and if Dante was the first who found a voice for Italian literature, medieval Latin had altogether failed to preserve the clearness or beauty of classical expression. When Petrarch's contemporaries compared themselves with their Roman predecessors, they felt that they were inarticulate. To write their ancestral tongue with clearness, in the first place, and then with some measure of grace or beauty,—this became to them an object of ardent desire. Gradually, and by painful efforts, they attained it. And thereby they bequeathed to Europe a tradition which the middle ages had lost,—namely, that prose, in whatever language it may be written, should aim at those qualities which the best classical models exhibit. This is the permanently valuable result of the humanistic Latin prose-writing.
As to their copious Latin verse, if there is not much of it which deserves to live, unquestionably it served to cultivate in many men a genuine poetical gift; it was the vehicle of much graceful fancy and much fine perception; and it conduced to a closer study of the best Latin poets. In force and spontaneity, though not in delicacy or finish, Politian is the most remarkable of the Renaissance versifiers. He was only forty when he died in
