It may be objected that the German painters at the beginning of the sixteenth century succeeded in representing with perfect mastery these scenes of country life, as, for instance, Albrecht Durer, in his engraving of the Prodigal Son.But it is one thing if a painter, brought up in a school of realism, introduces such scenes, and quite another thing if a poet, accustomed to an ideal or mythological framework, is driven by inward impulse into realism.Besides which, priority in point of time is here, as in the descriptions of country life, on the side of the Italian poets.
Discovery of Man To the discovery of the outward world the Renaissance added a still greater achievement, by first discerning and bringing to light the full, whole nature of man.This period, as we have seen, first gave the highest development to individuality, and then led the individual to the most zealous and thorough study of himself in all forms and under all conditions.Indeed, the development of personality is essentially involved in the recognition of it in oneself and in others.Between these two great processes our narrative has placed the influence of ancient literature because the mode of conceiving and representing both the individual and human nature in general was defined and colored by that influence.But the power of conception and representation lay in the age and in the people.
The facts which we shall quote in evidence of our thesis will be few in number.Here, if anywhere in the course of this discussion, the author is conscious that he is treading on the perilous ground of conjecture, and that what seems to him a clear, if delicate and gradual, transition in the intellectual movement of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, may not be equally plain to others.The gradual awakening of the soul of a people is a phenomenon which may produce a different impression on each spectator.Time will judge which impression is the most faithful.