No More Learning

He loved to have a friend now and then beside him, to whom he might say
how sweet is solitude. Even his deepest retirement in the "shut-up
valley" was occasionally visited by dear friends, with whom his
discourse was so interesting that they wandered in the woods so long and
so far, that the servant could not find them to announce that their
dinner was ready. In his rapturous praise of living alone, our poet,
therefore, says more than he sincerely meant; he liked retirement, to be
sure, but then it was with somebody within reach of him, like the young
lady in Miss Porter's novel, who was fond of solitude, and walked much
in Hyde Park by herself, with her footman behind her.

His treatise, "De Otio Religiosorum," was written in 1353, after an
agreeable visit to his brother, who was a monk. It is a commendation of
the monastic life. He may be found, I dare say, to exaggerate the
blessing of that mode of life which, in proportion to our increasing
activity and intelligence, has sunk in the estimation of Protestant
society, so that we compare the whole monkish fraternity with the drones
in a hive, an ignavum pecus, whom the other bees are right in expelling.

Though I shall never pretend to be the translator of Petrarch, I recoil
not, after writing his Life, from giving a sincere account of the
impression which his poetry produces on my mind. I have studied the
Italian language with assiduity, though perhaps at a later period of my
life than enables the ear to be _perfectly_ sensitive to its harmony,
for it is in youth, nay, almost in childhood alone, that the melody and
felicitous expressions of any tongue can touch our deepest sensibility;
but still I have studied it with pains--I believe I can thoroughly
appreciate Dante; I can perceive much in Petrarch that is elevated and
tender; and I approach the subject unconscious of the slightest
splenetic prejudice.

I demur to calling him the first of modern poets who refined and
dignified the language of love. Dante had certainly set him the example.
It is true that, compared with his brothers of classical antiquity in
love-poetry, he appears like an Abel of purity offering innocent incense
at the side of so many Cains making their carnal sacrifices. Tibullus
alone anticipates his tenderness. At the same time, while Petrarch is
purer than those classical lovers, he is never so natural as they
sometimes are when their passages are least objectionable, and the
sun-bursts of his real, manly, and natural human love seem to me often
to come to us straggling through the clouds of Platonism.

I will not expatiate on the _concetti_ that may be objected to in many
of his sonnets, for they are so often in such close connection with
exquisitely fine thoughts, that, in tearing away the weed, we might be
in danger of snapping the flower.

I feel little inclined, besides, to dwell on Petrarch's faults with that
feline dilation of vision which sees in the dark what would escape other
eyes in daylight, for, if I could make out the strongest critical case
against him, I should still have to answer this question, "How comes it
that Petrarch's poetry, in spite of all these faults, has been the
favourite of the world for nearly five hundred years?
"

So strong a regard for Petrarch is rooted in the mind of Italy, that his
renown has grown up like an oak which has reached maturity amidst the
storms of ages, and fears not decay from revolving centuries. One of the
high charms of his poetical language is its pure and melting melody, a
charm untransferable to any more northern tongue.

No conformation of words will charm the ear unless they bring silent
thoughts of corresponding sweetness to the mind; nor could the most
sonorous, vapid verses be changed into poetry if they were set to the
music of the Spheres. It is scarcely necessary to say that Petrarch has
intellectual graces of thought and spiritual felicities of diction,
without which his tactics in the mere march of words would be a
worthless skill.

The love of Petrarch was misplaced, but its utterance was at once so
fervid and delicate, and its enthusiasm so enduring, that the purest
minds feel justified in abstracting from their consideration the
unhappiness of the attachment, and attending only to its devout
fidelity. Among his deepest admirers we shall find women of virtue above
suspicion, who are willing to forget his Laura being married, or to
forgive the circumstance for the eloquence of his courtship and the
unwavering faith of his affection. Nor is this predilection for Petrarch
the result of female vanity and the mere love of homage. No; it is a
wise instinctive consciousness in women that the offer of love to them,
without enthusiasm, refinement, and _constancy_, is of no value at all.
Without these qualities in their wooers, they are the slaves of the
stronger sex. It is no wonder, therefore, that they are grateful to
Petrarch for holding up the perfect image of a lover, and that they
regard him as a friend to that passion, on the delicacy and constancy of
which the happiness, the most hallowed ties, and the very continuance of
the species depend.

In modern Italian criticism there are two schools of taste, whose
respective partizans may be called the Petrarchists and the Danteists.
The latter allege that Petrarch's amatory poetry, from its platonic and
mystic character, was best suited to the age of cloisters, of dreaming
voluptuaries, and of men living under tyrannical Governments, whose
thoughts and feelings were oppressed and disguised. The genius of Dante,
on the other hand, they say, appeals to all that is bold and natural in
the human breast, and they trace the grand revival of his popularity in
our own times to the re-awakened spirit of liberty. On this side of the
question the most eminent Italian scholars and poets are certainly
ranged. The most gifted man of that country with whom I was ever
personally acquainted, Ugo Foscolo, was a vehement Danteist. Yet his
copious memory was well stored with many a sonnet of Petrarch, which he
could repeat by heart; and with all his Danteism, he infused the deepest
tones of admiration into his recitation of the Petrarchan sonnets.