IV. With the patronage of the princes of Ferrara, history associates the poetry of Ariosto and Tasso, though as a matter of fact the _Orlando Furioso_ seems to have been written before Ariosto entered the ducal service. But even if that and the _Gerusalemme_ be wholly credited to the principle of monarchism, it only needs to weigh the two works against those which were brought forth in the atmosphere of the free cities in order to see how little mere princely pay can avail for power and originality in literature where the princely rule thwarts the great instincts of personality. Ariosto and Tasso are charming melodists; and as such they have had an influence on European literature; but they have waned in distinction age by age, while earlier and later names have waxed. And all the while, what is delightful in them is clearly enough the outcome of the still manifold Italian culture in which they grew, though it may be that the influence of a court would do more to foster sheer melody than would the storm and stress of the life of a Republic. Sismondi (_Républiques italiennes_, iv, 416-18), admits the encouragement given to men of letters by despots like Can' Grande, and the frequent presence of poets at the courts. But he rightly insists that the faculty of imagination itself visibly dwindled when intellectual freedom was gone. It is interesting to note how Montaigne, writing within a century of the production of the _Orlando Furioso_, is struck by its want of sustained imaginative flight in comparison with Virgil (_Essais_, B. ii, 10; éd. Firmin-Didot, vol. i, p. 432). Compare the estimate of Cantù, _Storia degli Italiani_, cap. 142, ed. pop. x, 180-86. In fine, we can rightly say with Mr. Symonds himself that the history of the Renaissance is not the history of arts, or of sciences, or even of nations. It is the history of the attainment of self-conscious freedom by the human spirit manifested in the European races.[593] And _this_ process, surely, was not accomplished at the courts of the despots. Nor can it well be disputed, finally, that the Spanish domination was the visible and final check to intellectual progress on the side of imaginative literature, at a time when there was every prospect of a great development of Italian drama. "It was the Inquisitors and Spaniards who cowed the Italian spirit."[594]