on.
She'll choose not Mars, but higher place than Mars;
She will eclipse all planetary light,
And Jupiter himself will seem less bright.

I trust that I have enough to say in favour of Petrarch to satisfy his
rational admirers; but I quote this sonnet as an example of the worst
style of Petrarch's poetry. I make the English reader welcome to rate my
power of translating it at the very lowest estimation. He cannot go much
further down than myself in the scale of valuation, especially if he has
Italian enough to know that the exquisite mechanical harmony of
Petrarch's style is beyond my reach. It has been alleged that this
sonnet shows how much the mind of Petrarch had been influenced by his
Platonic studies; but if Plato had written poetry he would never have
been so extravagant.

Petrarch, on his return from Germany, had found the old Pope, John
XXII., intent on two speculations, to both of which he lent his
enthusiastic aid. One of them was a futile attempt to renew the
crusades, from which Europe had reposed for a hundred years. The other
was the transfer of the holy seat to Rome. The execution of this plan,
for which Petrarch sighed as if it were to bring about the millennium,
and which was not accomplished by another Pope without embroiling him
with his Cardinals, was nevertheless more practicable than capturing
Jerusalem. We are told by several Italian writers that the aged Pontiff,
moved by repeated entreaties from the Romans, as well as by the remorse
of his conscience, thought seriously of effecting this restoration; but
the sincerity of his intentions is made questionable by the fact that he
never fixed himself at Rome. He wrote, it is true, to Rome in 1333,
ordering his palaces and gardens to be repaired; but the troubles which
continued to agitate the city were alleged by him as too alarming for
his safety there, and he repaired to Bologna to wait for quieter times.

On both of the above subjects, namely, the insane crusades and the more
feasible restoration of the papal court to Rome, Petrarch wrote with
devoted zeal; they are both alluded to in his twenty-second sonnet.

The death of John XXII. left the Cardinals divided into two great
factions. The first was that of the French, at the head of which stood
Cardinal Taillerand, son of the beautiful Brunissende de Foix, whose
charms were supposed to have detained Pope Clement V. in France. The
Italian Cardinals, who formed the opposite faction,