The moral character of Petrarch was formed of dispositions peculiarly calculated for a poet. An enthusiast in the emotions of love and friendship, of glory, of patriotism, of religion, he gave the rein to all their impulses; and there is not perhaps a page in his Italian writing which does not bear the trace of one or other of these affections. By far the most predominant, and that which has given the greatest celebrity to his name, is his passion for Laura. Twenty years of unrequited and almost unaspiring love were lightened by song; and the attachment, which, having long survived the beauty of its object,[g] seems to have at one time nearly passed from the heart to the fancy, was changed to an intenser feeling, and to a sort of celestial adoration, by her death. Laura, before the time of Petrarch's first accidental meeting with her, was united in marriage with another; a fact which, besides some more particular evidence, appears to me deducible from the whole tenor of his poetry.[h] Such a passion is undoubtedly not capable of a moral defence; nor would I seek its palliation so much in the prevalent manners of his age, by which however the conduct of even good men is generally not a little influenced, as in the infirmity of Petrarch's character, which induced him both to obey and to justify the emotions of his heart. The lady too, whose virtue and prudence we are not to question, seems to have tempered the light and shadow of her countenance so as to preserve her admirer from despair, and consequently to prolong his sufferings and servitude.
The general excellences of Petrarch, are his command over the music of his native language, his correctness of style, scarcely two or three words that he has used having been rejected by later writers, his exquisite elegance of diction, improved by the perpetual study of Virgil; but, far above all, that tone of pure and melancholy sentiment which has something in it unearthly, and forms a strong contrast to the amatory poems of antiquity. Most of these are either licentious or uninteresting; and those of Catullus, a man endowed by nature with deep and serious sensibility, and a poet, in my opinion, of greater and more varied genius than Petrarch, are contaminated above all the rest with the most degrading grossness. Of this there is not a single instance in the poet of Vaucluse; and his strains, diffused and admired as they have been, may have conferred a benefit that criticism cannot estimate, in giving elevation and refinement to the imaginations of youth. The great defect of Petrarch was his want of strong original conception, which prevented him from throwing off the affected and overstrained manner of the Provençal troubadours, and of the earlier Italian poets. Among his poems the Triumphs are perhaps superior to the Odes, as the latter are to the Sonnets; and of the latter, those written subsequently to the death of Laura are in general the best. But that constrained and laborious measure cannot equal the graceful flow of the canzone, or the vigorous compression of the terza rima. The Triumphs have also a claim to superiority, as the only poetical composition of Petrarch that extends to any considerable length. They are in some degree perhaps an imitation of the dramatic Mysteries, and form at least the earliest specimens of a kind of poetry not uncommon in later times, wherein real and allegorical personages are intermingled in a masque or scenic representation.[]
English language.
None of the principal modern languages was so late in its formation, or in its application to the purposes of literature, as the English. This arose, as is well known, out of the Saxon branch of the Great Teutonic stock spoken in England till after the Conquest. From this mother dialect our English differs less in respect of etymology, than of syntax, idiom, and flexion. In so gradual a transition as probably took place, and one so sparingly marked by any existing evidence, we cannot well assign a definite origin to our present language. The question of identity is almost as perplexing in languages as in individuals. But, in the reign of Henry II., a version of Wace's poem of Brut, by one Layamon, a priest of Ernly-upon-Severn, exhibits as it were the chrysalis of the English language, in a very corrupt modification of the Anglo-Saxon.[k] Very soon afterwards the new formation was better developed; and some metrical pieces, referred by critics to the earlier part of the thirteenth century, differ but little from our legitimate grammar.[m] About the beginning of Edward I.'s reign, Robert, a monk of Gloucester, composed a metrical chronicle from the history of Geoffrey of Monmouth, which he continued to his own time. This work, with a similar chronicle of Robert Manning, a monk of Brunne (Bourne) in Lincolnshire, nearly thirty years later, stand at the head of our English poetry. The romance of Sir Tristrem, ascribed to Thomas of Erceldoune, surnamed the Rhymer, a Scottish minstrel, has recently laid claim to somewhat higher antiquity.[n] In the fourteenth century a great number of metrical romances were translated from the French. It requires no small portion of indulgence to speak favourably of any of these early English productions. A poetical line may no doubt occasionally be found; but in general the narration is as heavy and prolix as the versification is unmusical.[o] The first English writer who can be read with approbation is William Langland, the author of Piers Plowman's Vision, a severe satire upon the clergy. Though his measure is more uncouth than that of his predecessors, there is real energy in his conceptions, which he caught not from the chimeras of knight-errantry, but the actual manners and opinions of his time.
Cause of its slow progress.
The very slow progress of the English language, as an instrument of literature, is chiefly to be ascribed to the effects of the Norman conquest, in degrading the native inhabitants and transferring all power and riches to foreigners. The barons, without perhaps one exception, and a large proportion of the gentry, were of French descent, and preserved among themselves the speech of their fathers. This continued much longer than we should naturally have expected; even after the loss of Normandy had snapped the thread of French connexions, and they began to pride themselves in the name of Englishmen, and in the inheritance of traditionary English privileges. Robert of Gloucester has a remarkable passage, which proves that in his time, somewhere about 1290, the superior ranks continued to use the French language.[p] Ralph Higden, about the early part of Edward III.'s reign, though his expressions do not go the same length, asserts, that "gentlemen's children are taught to speak French, from the time they are rocked in their cradle; and uplandish (country) or inferior men will liken themselves to gentlemen, and learn with great business for to speak French, for to be the more told of." Notwithstanding, however, this predominance of French among the higher class, I do not think that some modern critics are warranted in concluding that they were in general ignorant of the English tongue. Men living upon their estates among their tenantry, whom they welcomed in their halls, and whose assistance they were perpetually needing in war and civil frays, would hardly have permitted such a barrier to obstruct their intercourse. For we cannot, at the utmost, presume that French was so well known to the English commonalty in the thirteenth century as English is at present to the same class in Wales and the Scottish Highlands. It may be remarked also, that the institution of trial by jury must have rendered a knowledge of English almost indispensable to those who administered justice. There is a proclamation of Edward I. in Rymer, where he endeavours to excite his subjects against the king of France by imputing to him the intention of conquering the country and abolishing the English language (linguam delere Anglicanam), and this is frequently repeated in the proclamations of Edward III.[q] In his time, or perhaps a little before, the native language had become more familiar than French in common use, even with the court and nobility. Hence the numerous translations of metrical romances, which are chiefly referred to his reign. An important change was effected in 1362 by a statute, which enacts that all pleas in courts of justice shall be pleaded, debated, and judged in English. But Latin was by this act to be employed in drawing the record; for there seems to have still continued a sort of prejudice against the use of English as a written language. The earliest English instrument known to exist is said to bear the date of 1343.[r] And there are but few entries in our own tongue upon the rolls of parliament before the reign of Henry VI., after whose accession its use becomes very common.[] Sir John Mandevile, about 1356, may pass for the father of English prose, no original work being so ancient as his Travels. But the translation of the Bible and other writings by Wicliffe, nearly thirty years afterwards, taught us the copiousness and energy of which our native dialect was capable; and it was employed in the fifteenth century by two writers of distinguished merit, Bishop Pecock and Sir John Fortescue.
Chaucer.
But the principal ornament of our English literature was Geoffrey Chaucer, who, with Dante and Petrarch, fills up the triumvirate of great poets in the middle ages. Chaucer was born in 1328, and his life extended to the last year of the fourteenth century. That rude and ignorant generation was not likely to feel the admiration of native genius as warmly as the compatriots of Petrarch; but he enjoyed the favour of Edward III., and still more conspicuously of John duke of Lancaster; his fortunes were far more prosperous than have usually been the lot of poets; and a reputation was established beyond competition in his lifetime, from which no succeeding generation has withheld its sanction. I cannot, in my own taste, go completely along with the eulogies that some have bestowed upon Chaucer, who seems to me to have wanted grandeur, where he is original, both in conception and in language. But in vivacity of imagination and ease of expression, he is above all poets of the middle time, and comparable perhaps to the greatest of those who have followed. He invented, or rather introduced from France, and employed with facility the regular iambic couplet; and though it was not to be expected that he should perceive the capacities latent in that measure, his versification, to which he accommodated a very licentious and arbitrary pronunciation, is uniform and harmonious.[t] It is chiefly, indeed, as a comic poet, and a minute observer of manners and circumstances, that Chaucer excels. In serious and moral poetry he is frequently languid and diffuse; but he springs like Antæus from the earth, when his subject changes to coarse satire, or merry narrative. Among his more elevated compositions, the Knight's Tale is abundantly sufficient to immortalize Chaucer, since it would be difficult to find any where a story better conducted, or told with more animation and strength of fancy. The second place may be given to his Troilus and Creseide, a beautiful and interesting poem, though enfeebled by expansion. But perhaps the most eminent, or at any rate the most characteristic testimony to his genius will be found in the prologue to his Canterbury Tales; a work entirely and exclusively his own, which can seldom be said of his poetry, and the vivid delineations of which perhaps very few writers but Shakspeare could have equalled. As the first original English poet, if we except Langland, as the inventor of our most approved measure, as an improver, though with too much innovation, of our language, and as a faithful witness to the manners of his age, Chaucer would deserve our reverence, if he had not also intrinsic claims for excellences, which do not depend upon any collateral considerations.
Revival of ancient learning.
In the twelfth century;