ABSTRACT
Hitherto the epic in modern Europe had been written in Latin, as befitted so solemn a purpose. The new epics came closer to Virgil; for their authors lauded the destiny and achievements of their own countries, tracing the ancestry of their heroes back, to the classical past. Italian poetry of the sixteenth century was chiefly lyrical; and Tasso was most perfectly successful in his lyrical love poetry, which is, closely related to that of Giambattista Marino who gave his name to the new mannerism which infected Italian poetry. Germany was preconditioned by its Lutheran inheritance to the writing of religious poetry. The end of the seventeenth century saw Italy and Spain in eclipse, and the adumbration of a new classical style in France based on a unity of construction, which had been violated by the dramatists of England and Spain, and by all the schools of Baroque poets who had put decoration and detail before directness of statement.
