than any other lines in his poems. It is amusing to observe with what
labour critics have attempted to glean from the poems of Homer, some
hints as to his situation and feelings. According to one hypothesis,
he intended to describe himself under the name of Demodocus. Others
maintain that he was the identical Phemius whose life Ulysses spared.
This propensity of the human mind explains, I think, in a great degree,
the extensive popularity of a poet whose works are little else than the
expression of his personal feelings.

In the second place, Petrarch was not only an egotist, but an amatory
egotist. The hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows, which he described,
were derived from the passion which of all passions exerts the widest
influence, and which of all passions borrows most from the imagination.
He had also another immense advantage. He was the first eminent amatory
poet who appeared after the great convulsion which had changed, not only
the political, but the moral, state of the world. The Greeks, who, in
their public institutions and their literary tastes, were diametrically
opposed to the oriental nations, bore a considerable resemblance to
those nations in their domestic habits. Like them, they despised the
intellects and immured the persons of their women; and it was among the
least of the frightful evils to which this pernicious system gave
birth, that all the accomplishments of mind, and all the fascinations of
manner, which, in a highly cultivated age, will generally be necessary
to attach men to their female associates, were monopolised by the
Phrynes and the Lamais. The indispensable ingredients of honourable and
chivalrous love were nowhere to be found united. The matrons and their
daughters confined in the harem,--insipid, uneducated, ignorant of all
but the mechanical arts, scarcely seen till they were married,--could
rarely excite interest; afterwards their brilliant rivals, half Graces,
half Harpies, elegant and informed, but fickle and rapacious, could
never inspire respect.

The state of society in Rome was, in this point, far happier; and
the Latin literature partook of the superiority. The Roman poets have
decidedly surpassed those of Greece in the delineation of the passion of
love. There is no subject which they have treated with so much success.
Ovid, Catullus, Tibullus, Horace, and Propertius, in spite of all their
faults, must be allowed to rank high in this department of the art. To
these