It was Petrarch who was “the Columbus of a new spiritual atmosphere, the discoverer of modern culture.”
It was he who broke away from monkish medievalism, created the humanistic impulse, treated “man as a rational being apart from theological determination,” modernizing literature.
The “short story” writers of fiction—Edgar Poe, Guy de Maupassant and Kipling—had their teacher in Boccaccio and his novella.
Modern history traces its methods, its spirit and its form to Villani, Guicciardini, and that wonderful type of Latin genius, Machiavelli.
The whole world goes to school to the Latins!
No painter hopes to excel Correggio, Paul Veronese, Antonio Allegro, Tintoretto, Velasquez, Murillo. No sculptor expects to eclipse Niccola Pisano, Orvieto, Orcagna or Luca della Robbia.
No worker in gold, silver and bronze believes he can surpass Ghiberti, Cellini and Donatello.
Architects the world over despair of rivaling Alberti, Bramante, Giulo Romano, Palladio.
These masters were masters to their own generation, four and five hundred years ago; they have been masters ever since; they are masters still.
Wherever civilization extends its frontiers these deathless Latins are in the van—teaching what Truth and Beauty are, refining the thoughts, elevating the ideals, improving the methods, inspiring the efforts of man.