INTRODUCTION. THE REVIVAL OF LETTERS. IT
is
usual to
date
revival of letters
the
from the
time of Petrarch in Italy (1304-74) and Chaucer in
England (1328-1400), and to find the chief impulse which the movement received from without, in the dispersal of
Greek scholars over Europe
of Constantinople by the Turks in birth of the
a process
1453.
The new
mind of Western and Northern Europe was
similar
intellectual
at the taking
to
which
that
history of every
is
repeated in
man who
the
questions and
life and opinion midst of which he has grown up. The mind of Europe was oppressed with a burden of pedantry of form
throws aside the conventionalities of in the
and dogmatism in theology, ritual, philosophy, grammar, and rhetoric. Looking straight at things things of sense and of thought, contemplating those questions which every thoughtful for himself, in a direct
medium
man
has ultimately to answer
way and no longer through the
of mere phrases and formulae, constituted the
essence of the revival.
was
The
regeneration of the
human
almost every department of intellectual and moral activity. It is a mistake however to think spirit
felt in
A