Thus the word renaissance has grown to cover a vaguer period and there has been a constant tendency to push the date of its beginning ever backward as we detect more and more the dimly dawning light amid the darkness of earlier ages. Of late writers have fallen into the way of calling Dante the morning star of the Renaissance and the period of the great poet's work the first decade of the fourteenth century has certainly the advantage of being characterized by three or four peculiarly striking events which serve to typify the tendencies of the coming age.
