obtained by a plagiarist. The continued imitation of twentyfive centuries has left Homer as it found him. If every simile and every turn of Dante had been copied ten thousand times, the Divine Comedy would have retained all its freshness. It was easy for the porter in Farquhar to pass for Beau Clincher, by borrowing his lace and his pulvilio. It would have been more difficult to enact Sir Harry Wildair.

Before I quit this subject I must defend Petrarch from one accusation, which is in the present day frequently brought against him. His sonnets are pronounced by a large sect of critics not to possess certain qualities which they maintain to be indispensable to sonnets, with as much confidence, and as much reason, as their prototypes of old insisted on the unities of the drama. I 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 in their native soil. He has but very imperfectly imitated the style of the Latin authors, and has not compensated for the deficiency by enriching the ancient language with the graces of modern poetry. The splendour and ingenuity which we admire, even when we condemn it, in his Italian works, is almost totally wanting; and only illuminates with rare and occasional glimpses the dreary obscurity of the Africa. The eclogues have more animation, but they can only be called poems by courtesy. They have nothing in common with his writings in his native language, except the eternal pun about Laura and Daphne. None of these works would have placed him on a level with Vida or Buchanan. Yet when we compare him with those who preceded him; when we consider that he went on the forlornhope of literature; that he was the first who perceived, and the first who attempted to revive, the finer elegancies of the ancient language of the world, we shall perhaps think more highly of him than of those who could never have surpassed his beauties if they had not inherited them.

He has aspired to emulate the philosophical eloquence of Cicero, as well as the poetical majesty of Virgil. His essay on the Remedies of Good and Evil Fortune is a singular work in a colloquial form, and a most scholastic style. It seems to be framed upon the model of the Tusculan Questions,-with what success those who have read it may easily determine. It consists of a series of dialogues; in each of these a person is introduced who has experienced some happy or some adverse event: he gravely states his case, and a reasoner, or rather Reason personified, confutes him; a task not very difficult, since the disciple defends his position only by pertinaciously repeating it, in almost the same words, at the end of every argument of his antagonist. In this manner Petrarch solves an immense variety of cases. Indeed, I doubt whether it would be possible to name any pleasure or any calamity which does not find a place in this dissertation. He gives excellent advice to a man who is in expectation of discovering the philosopher's stone ;-to another, who has formed a fine aviary;to a third, who is delighted with the tricks of a favourite

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monkey. His lectures to the unfortunate are equally singular. He seems to imagine that a precedent in point is a sufficient consolation for every form of suffering. "Our town is taken," says one complainant;" "So was Troy," replies his comforter. My wife has eloped," says another." If it has happened to you once, it happened to Menelaus twice." One poor fellow is in great distress at having discovered that his wife's son is none of his. "It is hard," says he, "that I should have had the expense of bringing up one who is indifferent to me." "You are a man," returns his monitor, quoting the famous line of Terence," and nothing that belongs to any other man ought to be indifferent to you." The physical calamities of life are not omitted; and there is in particular a disquisition on the advantages of having the itch, which, if not convincing, is certainly very amusing.

The invectives on an unfortunate physician, or rather upon the medical science, have more spirit. Petrarch was thoroughly in earnest on this subject. And the bitterness of his feelings occasionally produces, in the midst of his classical and scholastic pedantry, a sentence worthy of the second Philippic. Swift himself might have envied the chapter on the causes of the paleness of physicians.

Of his Latin works the Epistles are the most generally known and admired. As compositions they are certainly superior to his essays. But their excellence is only comparative. From so large a collection of letters, written by so eminent a man, during so varied and eventful a life, we should have expected a complete and spirited view of the literature, the manners, and the politics of the age. A traveller-a poet-a scholar-a lover-a courtier-a recluse-he might have perpetuated in an imperishable record, the form and pressure of the age and body of the time. Those who read his correspondence, in the hope of finding such information as this, will be utterly disappointed. It contains nothing characteristic of the period or of the individual. It is a series, not of letters, but of themes; and, as it is not generally known, might be very safely employed at public schools as a magazine of commonplaces. Whether he write on politics to the Emperor and the Doge, or send advice and consolation to a private friend, every line is crowded with examples and quotations, and sounds big with Anaxagoras and Scipio. Such was the interest excited by the character of Petrarch, and such the admiration which was felt for his epistolary style, that it was with difficulty that his letters reached the place of their destination. The poet describes, with pretended regret and real complacency, the importunity of the curious, who often opened, and some

times stole, these favourite compositions. It is a remarkable fact that, of all his epistles, the least affected are those which are addressed to the dead and the unborn. Nothing can be more absurd than his whim of composing grave letters of expostulation and commendation to Cicero and Seneca; yet these strange performances are written in a far more natural manner than his communications to his living correspondents. But of all his Latin works the preference must be given to the Epistle to Posterity; a simple, noble, and pathetic composition, most honourable both to his taste and his heart. If we can make allowance for some of the affected humility of an author, we shall perhaps think that no literary man has left a more pleasing memorial of himself.

In conclusion, we may pronounce that the works of Petrarch were below both his genius and his celebrity; and that the circumstances under which he wrote were as adverse to the development of his powers, as they were favourable to the extension of his fame. T. M.

SONNET.

To A. T. ON HER BIRTH-DAY.

No costly offerings on thy day of birth

Are poured around thee by the festive crowd;
But Love can give a simple floweret worth,
Above the cold oblations of the proud!
Thou wilt not hear the gratulations loud

Of many voices, but thy cheerful hearth

Shall witness many a heartfelt wish avowed,

And echo gaily with the heart's own mirth.

And, of the voices that shall wish thee blest,
(Still blest with him whose fate is linked in thine,)

And pray that ever in thy gentle breast

The light of holiest happiness may shine,

With all that heaven can promise, earth give best,

None, Ada, can be more sincere than mine.

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THE LONG PARLIAMENT.

It is a strange thing in a country like England, where the inhabitants owe so little, comparatively speaking, to the gifts of Nature, and so much to the blessings of religious and political Institutions, that the sources of its wealth, the truth of its history, the spirit and the letter of its government, should be so imperfectly understood. The character of the people and the feelings of individuals are indeed unconsciously formed by the quiet agency of known and undisputed maxims; and many of those who defend the errors of ignorance in argument, are seen amongst the first to declaim against others who venture to draw the logical consequences of practical injustice from their own premises. This is one of the last and greatest achievements of true liberty, when it inspires the heart of its habitual worshipper with a strength sufficient to correct the weakness and the prejudices of his head. "Le. culte de tous les sentimens élevés et purs est tellement consolidé en Angleterre par les institutions politiques et religieuses, que les speculations de l'esprit tournent autour de ces imposantes colonnes sans jamais les ébranler*." It is to this noble "inconséquence de separer les resultats des principes" that England, as a nation, has once and again been indebted for her actual redemption from the imminent effects of the absurdities which have at intervals disgraced and infatuated her councils. We have, in fact, been preserved in spite of ourselves.

But error is evil in itself, and it is so luxuriant in its growth, and so insidious in its attacks, that it is by no means safe, if it were honourable, to rely on indefinite feelings for defeating its consequences. If errors in faith are dangerous to religion, errors in politics are no less dangerous to liberty; and it is impossible to rectify either the one or the other, so long as the fundamental principles of both are unknown, and the tenor of their history misunderstood. It is a curious anomaly that, in this country, where the records of national transactions are, beyond compare, the richest and most authentic of any in Europe, the people in general should be so little fixed in their judgment of the true nature of all the great crises of our history. The very abundance of materials may perhaps tend to distract some minds but; it is more commonly the case that the supposed difficulty of extracting * De Staël,

VOL. II. PART II.

2 B