[255]
And how mack more keenly do we feel the parched lips of Master Adam for
those rivulets of the Casentino which run down into the Arno, "making
their channels cool and soft"! His comparisons are as fresh, as simple,
and as directly from nature as those of Homer.[256] Sometimes they show a
more subtle observation, as where he compares the stooping of Antaeus
over him to the leaning tower of Garisenda, to which the clouds, flying
in an opposite direction to its inclination, give away their motion.[257]
His suggestions of individuality, too, from attitude or speech, as in
Farinata, Sordello, or Pia,[258] give in a hint what is worth acres of
so-called character-painting. In straightforward pathos, the single and
sufficient thrust of phrase, he has no competitor. He is too sternly
touched to be effusive and tearful:
"Io non piangeva, si dentro impietrai."[259]
His is always the true coin of speech,
"Si lucida e si tonda
Che nel suo conio nulla ci s'inforsa,"
and never the highly ornamented promise to pay, token of insolvency.
No doubt it is primarily by his poetic qualities that a poet must be
judged, for it is by these, if by anything, that he is to maintain his
place in literature. And he must be judged by them absolutely, with
reference, that is, to the highest standard, and not relatively to the
fashions and opportunities of the age in which he lived.
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