he apostle of literature;--he fell its martyr:--he was found
dead with his head reclined on a book.

Those who have studied the life and writings of Petrarch with attention,
will perhaps be inclined to make some deductions from this panegyric.
It cannot be denied that his merits were disfigured by a most unpleasant
affectation. His zeal for literature communicated a tinge of pedantry
to all his feelings and opinions. His love was the love of a
sonnetteer:--his patriotism was the patriotism of an antiquarian. The
interest with which we contemplate the works, and study the history, of
those who, in former ages, have occupied our country, arises from
the associations which connect them with the community in which are
comprised all the objects of our affection and our hope. In the mind
of Petrarch these feelings were reversed. He loved Italy, because it
abounded with the monuments of the ancient masters of the world. His
native city--the fair and glorious Florence--the modern Athens, then in
all the bloom and strength of its youth, could not obtain, from the most
distinguished of its citizens, any portion of that passionate homage
which he paid to the decrepitude of Rome. These and many other
blemishes, though they must in candour be acknowledged, can but in a
very slight degree diminish the glory of his career. For my own part, I
look upon it with so much fondness and pleasure that I feel reluctant
to turn from it to the consideration of his works, which I by no means
contemplate with equal admiration.

Nevertheless, I think highly of the poetical powers of Petrarch. He did
not possess, indeed, the art of strongly presenting sensible objects to
the imagination;--and this is the more remarkable, because the talent of
which I speak is that which peculiarly distinguishes the Italian poets.
In the Divine Comedy it is displayed in its highest perfection. It
characterises almost every celebrated poem in the language. Perhaps this
is to be attributed to the circumstance, that painting and sculpture
had attained a high degree of excellence in Italy before poetry had been
extensively cultivated. Men were debarred from books, but accustomed
from childhood to contemplate the admirable works of art, which, even in
the thirteenth century, Italy began to produce. Hence their imaginations
received so strong a bias that, even in their writings, a taste for
graphic delineation is discernible. The progress of things in England
has been in