two different ways a document of the very highest
value, even before its intrinsic worth is considered at
all. In the first place, there is the importance of
date, which gives us in it the first critical treatise on
the literary use of the vernacular, at exactly the point
when the various vernaculars of Europe had finished,
more or less, their first stage. Secondly, there is the
importance of authorship, in that we have, as is hardly
anywhere else the case, the greatest creative writer,
not merely of one literature but of a whole period
of the European world, betaking himself to criticism.
If Shakespeare had written the Discoveries instead of
Ben Jonson, the only possible analogue would have
been supplied. Even Homer could not have given us
a third, for he could hardly have had the literature to
work upon. -- I am prepared to claim for it, not
merely the position of the most important critical
document between Longinus and the seventeenth cen-
tury at least, but one of intrinsic importance on a line
with that of the very greatest critical documents of
all history. -- That the book has remained so long un-
known, and that even after its belated publication it
attracted little attention, and has for the most part
been misunderstood, or not understood at all, is no
doubt in part connected with the fact of its extraordi-
nary precocity. On the very threshold of modern
literature, Dante anticipates and follows out methods
which have not been reached by all, or by many, who
have had the advantage of access to the mighty cham-
bers whereof the house has since been built and is
still a-building."

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