While Dante was a supreme singer among the poets of a great song time, it was only natural, in the light of what we know about the literary product of the rest of this century, that he should have put into epic form the supreme product of his genius. With the great national epics in every country of Europe--the Cid, the Arthur Legends, and the Nibelungen, at the beginning of this century, and the epical poems of the Meistersingers during its first half, it is not surprising, but on the contrary rather what might have been confidently looked for, that there should have arisen a great national epic in Italy before the end of the century. The Gothic art movement spread through all these countries, and so did the wind of the spirit of esthetic accomplishment which blew the flame of national literature in each country into a mighty blaze, that not only was {304} never to be extinguished, but was to be a beacon light in the realm of national literatures forever after. We have already said a word of the well-known contemporary admiration for the poet but it should be realized that due appreciation of Dante continued in Italy during all the time when Italian art and literature was at its highest. It dwindled only at periods of decadence and lack of taste. Cornelius' law with regard to Dante's influence on art is very well known, Italian art according to him, has been strong and vigorous just in proportion as it has worked under Dante's influence, while it became weak and sensuous as that influence declined. This has held true from the very beginning and has been as true for literature as for art. When the Italians became interested in trivialities and gave themselves up to weak imitations of the classics, or to pastoral poetry that was not a real expression of feeling but a passing fancy of literary folk, then Dante was for a time in obscurity. Even at the height of the Renaissance, however, when Greek was at the acme of its interest and the classics occupied so much attention that Dante might be expected to be eclipsed, the great thinkers and critics of the time still worshipped at the shrine of their great master of Italian verse. The best proof of this is to be found in Michael Angelo's famous sonnets in praise of Dante, the second of which would seem to exhaust all that can be said in praise of a brother poet.