Excerpt from Shakespeare and the Italian Renaissance

Italy set out on her modern career with advantages which she shared with no other part of Europe. Civilization in liberal meas ure illumined the land while mists of barbarism enveloped the rest of Europe.

The intellect of ancient Italy was largely fertilized by forces older and more lucent than those of her own breeding: by the thought and style of Greece. But the native land of Vergil and Catullus, of Cicero and Tacitus, insured herself near years ago against a denial at any era of her literary genius or power. The country which harboured the Republic and Empire of Rome, the country which was the nursery of Roman law and the birth place of Latin Christianity, claimed in the fifth century of our era a civilized and a civilizing tradition, which Attila and his Huns, with other scourges of kindred race, vowed to perdition in vain. The successes and failures of the Gothic warlords of the fifth century in their assaults on Italy graphically illustrate the virtual futility of relying on brute violence to annihilate the fruit of man's intellect and spirit.

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