Dante
has remained the first of Italian poets, as he was one of the earliest.
Chaucer, who wrote when our language was transforming itself from
Anglo-Saxon into English, has still lovers who are willing for his sake
to master what is to them almost a foreign tongue, and yet other lovers
who ask for new translations of his works into our modern idiom; while
Shakespeare, who wrote almost as soon as that transformation had been
accomplished, is universally reckoned one of the greatest of world
poets. There have, indeed, been true poets at almost all stages of the
world's history, but the pre-eminence of such masters as these can
hardly be questioned, and if we looked to poetry alone for a type of the
arts, we should almost be forced to conclude that art is the reverse of
progressive. We should think of it as gushing forth in full splendor
when the world is ready for it, and as unable ever again to rise to the
level of its fount.
The art of architecture is later in its beginning than that of poetry,
for it can exist only when men have learned to build solidly and
permanently. A nomad may be a poet, but he cannot be an architect; a
herdsman might have written the Book of Job, but the great builders are
dwellers in cities. But since men first learned to build they have never
quite forgotten how to do so.
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