The Renaissance

The subjects of the following studies are taken from the history of theRenaissance, and touch what I think are the chief points in thatcomplex, many-sided movement. I have explained in the first of them whatI understand by the word, giving it a much wider scope than wasintended by those who originally used it to denote only that revival ofclassical antiquity in the fifteenth century which was but one of manyresults of a general excitement and enlightening of the human mind, ofwhich the great aim and achievements of what, as Christian art, is oftenfalsely opposed to the Renaissance, were another result. This outbreakof the human spirit may be traced far into the middle age itself, withits qualities already clearly pronounced, the care for physical beauty,the worship of the body, the breaking down of those limits which thereligious system of the middle age imposed on the heart and theimagination. I have taken as an example of this movement, this earlierRenaissance within the middle age itself, and as an expression of itsqualities, two little compositions in early French; not because theyconstitute the best possible expression of them, but because they helpthe unity of my series, inasmuch as the Renaissance ends also in France,in French poetry, in a phase of which the writings of Joachim du Bellayare in many ways the most perfect illustration; the Renaissance thusputting forth in France an aftermath, a wonderful later growth, theproducts of which have to the full that subtle and delicate sweetnesswhich belongs to a refined and comely decadence; just as its earliestphases have the freshness which belongs to all periods of growth in art,the charm of ascesis, of the austere and serious girding of the loins inyouth.