A strong proof of the truth of these criticisms is, that almost all the sonnets produce exactly the same effect on the mind of the reader.They relate to all the various moods of a lover, from joy to despair:--yet they are perused, as far as my experience and observation have gone, with exactly the same feeling.The fact is, that in none of them are the passion and the ingenuity mixed in just proportions.There is not enough sentiment to dilute the condiments which are employed to season it.The repast which he sets before us resembles the Spanish entertainment in Dryden's "Mock Astrologer", at which the relish of all the dishes and sauces was overpowered by the common flavour of spice.Fish,--flesh,--fowl,--everything at table tasted of nothing but red pepper.
The writings of Petrarch may indeed suffer undeservedly from one cause to which I must allude.His imitators have so much familiarised the ear of Italy and of Europe to the favourite topics of amorous flattery and lamentation, that we can scarcely think them original when we find them in the first author; and, even when our understandings have convinced us that they were new to him, they are still old to us.This has been the fate of many of the finest passages of the most eminent writers.It is melancholy to trace a noble thought from stage to stage of its profanation; to see it transferred from the first illustrious wearer to his lacqueys, turned, and turned again, and at last hung on a scarecrow.Petrarch has really suffered much from this cause.Yet that he should have so suffered is a sufficient proof that his excellences were not of the highest order.A line may be stolen; but the pervading spirit of a great poet is not to be surreptitiously obtained by a plagiarist.The continued imitation of twenty-five centuries has left Homer as it found him.If every simile and every turn of Dante had been copied ten thousand times, the Divine Comedy would have retained all its freshness.It was easy for the porter in Farquhar to pass for Beau Clincher, by borrowing his lace and his pulvilio.It would have been more difficult to enact Sir Harry Wildair.
Before I quit this subject I must defend Petrarch from one accusation which is in the present day frequently brought against him.His sonnets are pronounced by a large sect of critics not to possess certain qualities which they maintain to be indispensable to sonnets, with as much confidence, and as much reason, as their prototypes of old insisted on the unities of the drama.I am an exoteric--utterly unable to explain the mysteries of this new poetical faith.I only know that it is a faith, which except a man do keep pure and undefiled, without doubt he shall be called a blockhead.I cannot, however, refrain from asking what is the particular virtue which belongs to fourteen as distinguished from all other numbers.Does it arise from its being a multiple of seven? Has this principle any reference to the sabbatical ordinance? Or is it to the order of rhymes that these singular properties are attached? Unhappily the sonnets of Shakspeare differ as much in this respect from those of Petrarch, as from a Spenserian or an octave stanza.Away with this unmeaning jargon! We have pulled down the old regime of criticism.I trust that we shall never tolerate the equally pedantic and irrational despotism, which some of the revolutionary leaders would erect upon its ruins.We have not dethroned Aristotle and Bossu for this.
These sonnet-fanciers would do well to reflect that, though the style of Petrarch may not suit the standard of perfection which they have chosen, they lie under great obligations to these very poems,--that, but for Petrarch the measure, concerning which they legislate so judiciously, would probably never have attracted notice; and that to him they owe the pleasure of admiring, and the glory of composing, pieces, which seem to have been produced by Master Slender, with the assistance of his man Simple.
I cannot conclude these remarks without making a few observations on the Latin writings of Petrarch.It appears that, both by himself and by his contemporaries, these were far more highly valued than his compositions in the vernacular language.
Posterity, the supreme court of literary appeal, has not only reversed the judgment, but, according to its general practice, reversed it with costs, and condemned the unfortunate works to pay, not only for their own inferiority, but also for the injustice of those who had given them an unmerited preference.
And it must be owned that, without making large allowances for the circumstances under which they were produced, we cannot pronounce a very favourable judgment.They must be considered as exotics, transplanted to a foreign climate, and reared in an unfavourable situation; and it would be unreasonable to expect from them the health and the vigour which we find in the indigenous plants around them, or which they might themselves have possessed in their native soil.He has but very imperfectly imitated the style of the Latin authors, and has not compensated for the deficiency by enriching the ancient language with the graces of modern poetry.The splendour and ingenuity, which we admire, even when we condemn it, in his Italian works, is almost totally wanting, and only illuminates with rare and occasional glimpses the dreary obscurity of the African.The eclogues have more animation; but they can only be called poems by courtesy.
