am an exoteric--utterly unable to explain
the mysteries of this new poetical faith. I only know that it is a
faith, which except a man do keep pure and undefiled, without doubt he
shall be called a blockhead. I cannot, however, refrain from asking what
is the particular virtue which belongs to fourteen as distinguished from
all other numbers. Does it arise from its being a multiple of seven? Has
this principle any reference to the sabbatical ordinance? Or is it
to the order of rhymes that these singular properties are attached?
Unhappily the sonnets of Shakspeare differ as much in this respect from
those of Petrarch, as from a Spenserian or an octave stanza. Away with
this unmeaning jargon! We have pulled down the old regime of criticism.
I trust that we shall never tolerate the equally pedantic and irrational
despotism, which some of the revolutionary leaders would erect upon its
ruins. We have not dethroned Aristotle and Bossu for this.

These sonnet-fanciers would do well to reflect that, though the style of
Petrarch may not suit the standard of perfection which they have chosen,
they lie under great obligations to these very poems,--that, but for
Petrarch the measure, concerning which they legislate so judiciously,
would probably never have attracted notice; and that to him they owe the
pleasure of admiring, and the glory of composing, pieces, which seem
to have been produced by Master Slender, with the assistance of his man
Simple.

I cannot conclude these remarks without making a few observations on the
Latin writings of Petrarch. It appears that, both by himself and by his
contemporaries, these were far more highly valued than his compositions
in the vernacular language. Posterity, the supreme court of literary
appeal, has not only reversed the judgment, but, according to its
general practice, reversed it with costs, and condemned the unfortunate
works to pay, not only for their own inferiority, but also for the
injustice of those who had given them an unmerited preference. And
it must be owned that, without making large allowances for the
circumstances under which they were produced, we cannot pronounce a very
favourable judgment. They must be considered as exotics, transplanted to
a foreign climate, and reared in an unfavourable situation; and it would
be unreasonable to expect from them the health and the vigour which
we find in the indigenous plants around them, or which they might
themselves have possessed