d, 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.

A strong proof of the truth of these criticisms is, that almost