It contains the famous lines:
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Come deggio sperar che surga Dante Che già chi il sappia legger non si trova? E Giovanni che è morto ne fe scola. |
Not less interesting is Sacchetti's funeral Ode for Petrarch (ibid. p. 517). Both show a keen sense of the situation with respect to the decline of literature.
[130] I may refer to the [Age of the Despots], 2nd edition, [pp. 58-65], for a brief review of the circumstances under which the Nation defined itself against the Church and the Empire—the ecclesiastical and feudal or chivalrous principles—during the Wars of Investiture and Independence. In Carducci's essay Dello Svolgimento delta Letteratura nazionale will be found an eloquent and succinct exposition of the views I have attempted to express in these paragraphs.
[131] Revival of Learning.
[132] It is not quite exact, though convenient, to identify Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio severally with the religious, chivalrous and national principles of which I have been speaking. Petrarch stands midway. With Dante he shares the chivalrous, with Boccaccio the humanistic side of the national element. Though Boccaccio anticipates in his work the literature of the Renaissance, yet Petrarch was certainly not less influential as an authority in style. Ariosto represents the fusion of both sections of the national element in literature—Italian is distinguished from Tuscan.
[133] See [Age of the Despots], [chap. 2].
[134] See above, [p. 138]. All that is known about Sacchetti's life may be found in the Discourse of Monsignor Giov. Bottari, prefixed to Silvestri's edition of the Novelle.
[135] For Sacchetti's conception of a citizen's duty, proving him a son of Italy's heroic age, see the sonnet Amar la patria, in Monsignor Bottari's Discourse above mentioned.
[136] See the Sonnet Pien di quell'acqua written to Boccaccio on his entering the Certosa at Naples.