No.II.PETRARCH.
(April 1824.)
Et vos, o lauri, carpam, et te, proxima myrte, Sic positae quoniam suaves miscetis odores.Virgil.
It would not be easy to name a writer whose celebrity, when both its extent and its duration are taken into the account, can be considered as equal to that of Petrarch.Four centuries and a half have elapsed since his death.Yet still the inhabitants of every nation throughout the western world are as familiar with his character and his adventures as with the most illustrious names, and the most recent anecdotes, of their own literary history.This is indeed a rare distinction.His detractors must acknowledge that it could not have been acquired by a poet destitute of merit.His admirers will scarcely maintain that the unassisted merit of Petrarch could have raised him to that eminence which has not yet been attained by Shakspeare, Milton, or Dante,--that eminence, of which perhaps no modern writer, excepting himself and Cervantes, has long retained possession,--an European reputation.
It is not difficult to discover some of the causes to which this great man has owed a celebrity, which I cannot but think disproportioned to his real claims on the admiration of mankind.
In the first place, he is an egotist.Egotism in conversation is universally abhorred.Lovers, and, I believe, lovers alone, pardon it in each other.No services, no talents, no powers of pleasing, render it endurable.Gratitude, admiration, interest, fear, scarcely prevent those who are condemned to listen to it from indicating their disgust and fatigue.The childless uncle, the powerful patron can scarcely extort this compliance.We leave the inside of the mail in a storm, and mount the box, rather than hear the history of our companion.The chaplain bites his lips in the presence of the archbishop.The midshipman yawns at the table of the First Lord.Yet, from whatever cause, this practice, the pest of conversation, gives to writing a zest which nothing else can impart.Rousseau made the boldest experiment of this kind; and it fully succeeded.In our own time Lord Byron, by a series of attempts of the same nature, made himself the object of general interest and admiration.
Wordsworth wrote with egotism more intense, but less obvious; and he has been rewarded with a sect of worshippers, comparatively small in number, but far more enthusiastic in their devotion.It is needless to multiply instances.Even now all the walks of literature are infested with mendicants for fame, who attempt to excite our interest by exhibiting all the distortions of their intellects, and stripping the covering from all the putrid sores of their feelings.Nor are there wanting many who push their imitation of the beggars whom they resemble a step further, and who find it easier to extort a pittance from the spectator, by simulating deformity and debility from which they are exempt, than by such honest labour as their health and strength enable them to perform.In the meantime the credulous public pities and pampers a nuisance which requires only the treadmill and the whip.This art, often successful when employed by dunces, gives irresistible fascination to works which possess intrinsic merit.
We are always desirous to know something of the character and situation of those whose writings we have perused with pleasure.
The passages in which Milton has alluded to his own circumstances are perhaps read more frequently, and with more interest, than any other lines in his poems.It is amusing to observe with what labour critics have attempted to glean from the poems of Homer, some hints as to his situation and feelings.According to one hypothesis, he intended to describe himself under the name of Demodocus.Others maintain that he was the identical Phemius whose life Ulysses spared.This propensity of the human mind explains, I think, in a great degree, the extensive popularity of a poet whose works are little else than the expression of his personal feelings.
In the second place, Petrarch was not only an egotist, but an amatory egotist.The hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows, which he described, were derived from the passion which of all passions exerts the widest influence, and which of all passions borrows most from the imagination.He had also another immense advantage.He was the first eminent amatory poet who appeared after the great convulsion which had changed, not only the political, but the moral, state of the world.The Greeks, who, in their public institutions and their literary tastes, were diametrically opposed to the oriental nations, bore a considerable resemblance to those nations in their domestic habits.Like them, they despised the intellects and immured the persons of their women; and it was among the least of the frightful evils to which this pernicious system gave birth, that all the accomplishments of mind, and all the fascinations of manner, which, in a highly cultivated age, will generally be necessary to attach men to their female associates, were monopolised by the Phrynes and the Lamais.The indispensable ingredients of honourable and chivalrous love were nowhere to be found united.The matrons and their daughters confined in the harem,--insipid, uneducated, ignorant of all but the mechanical arts, scarcely seen till they were married,--could rarely excite interest; afterwards their brilliant rivals, half Graces, half Harpies, elegant and informed, but fickle and rapacious, could never inspire respect.