"[7] The records of few other cities
contain a decree so magnificent as this.
It would be strange, indeed, if the youthful book of one so sensitive
to external influences as Dante did not give evidence of sympathy with
such pervading emotion. And so apparent is this,--that one may say that
only at such a period, when strength of sentiment was finding vent in
all manner of free expression, was such a book possible. Confidence,
frankness, directness in the rendering of personal feeling are rare,
except in conditions of society when the emotional spirit is stronger
than the critical. The secret of the active power of the arts at this
time was the conscious or unconscious resort of those who practised
them to the springs of Nature, from which the streams of all true Art
proceed. Dante was the first of the moderns to seek Poetry at the same
fountain, and to free her from the chains of conventionality which had
long bound her. In this he shows his close relation to his times. It is
his fidelity to Nature which has made him a leader for all successive
generations. The "Vita Nuova" was the beginning of a new school of
poetry and of prose as completely as Giotto's O was the beginning of a
new school of painting.
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