Nothing can be conceived more noble or affecting than that ceremony.The superb palaces and porticoes, by which had rolled the ivory chariots of Marius and Caesar, had long mouldered into dust.The laurelled fasces--the golden eagles--the shouting legions--the captives and the pictured cities--were indeed wanting to his victorious procession.The sceptre had passed away from Rome.But she still retained the mightier influence of an intellectual empire, and was now to confer the prouder reward of an intellectual triumph.To the man who had extended the dominion of her ancient language--who had erected the trophies of philosophy and imagination in the haunts of ignorance and ferocity--whose captives were the hearts of admiring nations enchained by the influence of his song--whose spoils were the treasures of ancient genius rescued from obscurity and decay--the Eternal City offered the just and glorious tribute of her gratitude.Amidst the ruined monuments of ancient and the infant erections of modern art, he who had restored the broken link between the two ages of human civilisation was crowned with the wreath which he had deserved from the moderns who owed to him their refinement--from the ancients who owed to him their fame.
Never was a coronation so august witnessed by Westminster or by Rheims.
When we turn from this glorious spectacle to the private chamber of the poet,--when we contemplate the struggle of passion and virtue,--the eye dimmed, the cheek furrowed, by the tears of sinful and hopeless desire,--when we reflect on the whole history of his attachment, from the gay fantasy of his youth to the lingering despair of his age, pity and affection mingle with our admiration.Even after death had placed the last seal on his misery, we see him devoting to the cause of the human mind all the strength and energy which love and sorrow had spared.He lived the apostle of literature;--he fell its martyr:--he was found dead with his head reclined on a book.
Those who have studied the life and writings of Petrarch with attention, will perhaps be inclined to make some deductions from this panegyric.It cannot be denied that his merits were disfigured by a most unpleasant affectation.His zeal for literature communicated a tinge of pedantry to all his feelings and opinions.His love was the love of a sonnetteer:--his patriotism was the patriotism of an antiquarian.The interest with which we contemplate the works, and study the history, of those who, in former ages, have occupied our country, arises from the associations which connect them with the community in which are comprised all the objects of our affection and our hope.In the mind of Petrarch these feelings were reversed.He loved Italy, because it abounded with the monuments of the ancient masters of the world.His native city--the fair and glorious Florence--the modern Athens, then in all the bloom and strength of its youth, could not obtain, from the most distinguished of its citizens, any portion of that passionate homage which he paid to the decrepitude of Rome.These and many other blemishes, though they must in candour be acknowledged, can but in a very slight degree diminish the glory of his career.For my own part, I look upon it with so much fondness and pleasure that I feel reluctant to turn from it to the consideration of his works, which I by no means contemplate with equal admiration.
Nevertheless, I think highly of the poetical powers of Petrarch.
He did not possess, indeed, the art of strongly presenting sensible objects to the imagination;--and this is the more remarkable, because the talent of which I speak is that which peculiarly distinguishes the Italian poets.In the Divine Comedy it is displayed in its highest perfection.It characterises almost every celebrated poem in the language.Perhaps this is to be attributed to the circumstance, that painting and sculpture had attained a high degree of excellence in Italy before poetry had been extensively cultivated.Men were debarred from books, but accustomed from childhood to contemplate the admirable works of art, which, even in the thirteenth century, Italy began to produce.Hence their imaginations received so strong a bias that, even in their writings, a taste for graphic delineation is discernible.The progress of things in England has been in all respects different.The consequence is, that English historical pictures are poems on canvas; while Italian poems are pictures painted to the mind by means of words.Of this national characteristic the writings of Petrarch are almost totally destitute.His sonnets indeed, from their subject and nature, and his Latin Poems, from the restraints which always shackle one who writes in a dead language, cannot fairly be received in evidence.But his Triumphs absolutely required the exercise of this talent, and exhibit no indications of it.
Genius, however, he certainly possessed, and genius of a high order.His ardent, tender, and magnificent turn of thought, his brilliant fancy, his command of expression, at once forcible and elegant, must be acknowledged.Nature meant him for the prince of lyric writers.But by one fatal present she deprived her other gifts of half their value.He would have been a much greater poet had he been a less clever man.His ingenuity was the bane of his mind.He abandoned the noble and natural style, in which he might have excelled, for the conceits which he produced with a facility at once admirable and disgusting.His muse, like the Roman lady in Livy, was tempted by gaudy ornaments to betray the fastnesses of her strength, and, like her, was crushed beneath the glittering bribes which had seduced her.
