The paucity of his thoughts is very remarkable.It is impossible to look without amazement on a mind so fertile in combinations, yet so barren of images.His amatory poetry is wholly made up of a very few topics, disposed in so many orders, and exhibited in so many lights, that it reminds us of those arithmetical problems about permutations, which so much astonish the unlearned.The French cook, who boasted that he could make fifteen different dishes out of a nettle-top, was not a greater master of his art.
The mind of Petrarch was a kaleidoscope.At every turn it presents us with new forms, always fantastic, occasionally beautiful; and we can scarcely believe that all these varieties have been produced by the same worthless fragments of glass.The sameness of his images is, indeed, in some degree, to be attributed to the sameness of his subject.It would be unreasonable to expect perpetual variety from so many hundred compositions, all of the same length, all in the same measure, and all addressed to the same insipid and heartless coquette.Icannot but suspect also that the perverted taste, which is the blemish of his amatory verses, was to be attributed to the influence of Laura, who, probably, like most critics of her sex, preferred a gaudy to a majestic style.Be this as it may, he no sooner changes his subject than he changes his manner.When he speaks of the wrongs and degradation of Italy, devastated by foreign invaders, and but feebly defended by her pusillanimous children, the effeminate lisp of the sonnetteer is exchanged for a cry, wild, and solemn, and piercing as that which proclaimed "Sleep no more" to the bloody house of Cawdor."Italy seems not to feel her sufferings," exclaims her impassioned poet;"decrepit, sluggish, and languid, will she sleep forever? Will there be none to awake her? Oh that I had my hands twisted in her hair!"("Che suoi guai non par che senta;
Vecchia, oziosa, e lenta.
Dormira sempre, e non fia chi la svegli?
Le man l' avess' io avvolte entro e capegli."Canzone xi.)
Nor is it with less energy that he denounces against the Mahometan Babylon the vengeance of Europe and of Christ.His magnificent enumeration of the ancient exploits of the Greeks must always excite admiration, and cannot be perused without the deepest interest, at a time when the wise and good, bitterly disappointed in so many other countries, are looking with breathless anxiety towards the natal land of liberty,--the field of Marathon,--and the deadly pass where the Lion of Lacedaemon turned to bay.
("Maratona, e le mortali strette Che difese il LEON con poca gente."Canzone v.)
His poems on religious subjects also deserve the highest commendation.At the head of these must be placed the Ode to the Virgin.It is, perhaps, the finest hymn in the world.His devout veneration receives an exquisitely poetical character from the delicate perception of the sex and the loveliness of his idol, which we may easily trace throughout the whole composition.
I could dwell with pleasure on these and similar parts of the writings of Petrarch; but I must return to his amatory poetry:
to that he entrusted his fame; and to that he has principally owed it.
The prevailing defect of his best compositions on this subject is the universal brilliancy with which they are lighted up.The natural language of the passions is, indeed, often figurative and fantastic; and with none is this more the case than with that of love.Still there is a limit.The feelings should, indeed, have their ornamental garb; but, like an elegant woman, they should be neither muffled nor exposed.The drapery should be so arranged, as at once to answer the purposes of modest concealment and judicious display.The decorations should sometimes be employed to hide a defect, and sometimes to heighten a beauty; but never to conceal, much less to distort, the charms to which they are subsidiary.The love of Petrarch, on the contrary, arrays itself like a foppish savage, whose nose is bored with a golden ring, whose skin is painted with grotesque forms and dazzling colours, and whose ears are drawn down his shoulders by the weight of jewels.It is a rule, without any exception, in all kinds of composition, that the principal idea, the predominant feeling, should never be confounded with the accompanying decorations.It should generally be distinguished from them by greater simplicity of expression; as we recognise Napoleon in the pictures of his battles, amidst a crowd of embroidered coats and plumes, by his grey cloak and his hat without a feather.In the verses of Petrarch it is generally impossible to say what thought is meant to be prominent.All is equally elaborate.The chief wears the same gorgeous and degrading livery with his retinue, and obtains only his share of the indifferent stare which we bestow upon them in common.The poems have no strong lights and shades, no background, no foreground;--they are like the illuminated figures in an oriental manuscript,--plenty of rich tints and no perspective.Such are the faults of the most celebrated of these compositions.Of those which are universally acknowledged to be bad it is scarcely possible to speak with patience.Yet they have much in common with their splendid companions.They differ from them, as a Mayday procession of chimneysweepers differs from the Field of Cloth of Gold.They have the gaudiness but not the wealth.His muse belongs to that numerous class of females who have no objection to be dirty, while they can be tawdry.When his brilliant conceits are exhausted, he supplies their place with metaphysical quibbles, forced antitheses, bad puns, and execrable charades.In his fifth sonnet he may, I think, be said to have sounded the lowest chasm of the Bathos.Upon the whole, that piece may be safely pronounced to be the worst attempt at poetry, and the worst attempt at wit, in the world.
