e; 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
unh