It is probable that none but artistic natures will ever render full justice to the poetry of the Renaissance.
Critics endowed with a less lively sensibility to beauty of outline and to harmony of form than the Italians, complain that their poetry lacks substantial qualities; nor is it except by long familiarity with the plastic arts of their contemporaries that we come to understand the ground assumed by Ariosto and Poliziano.

We then perceive that these poets were not so much unable as instinctively unwilling to go beyond a certain circle of effects.

They subordinated their work to the ideal of their age, and that ideal was one to which a painter rather than a poet might successfully aspire.

A succession of pictures, harmoniously composed and delicately toned to please the mental eye, satisfied the taste of the Italians.

But, however exquisite in design, rich in colour, and complete in execution this literary work may be, it strikes a Northern student as wanting in the highest elements of genius--sublimity of imagination, dramatic passion, energy and earnestness of purpose.