The sun will be obscured, so dense a cloud
Of spirits from adjacent stars will crowd
To gaze upon her beauty infinite.
Say that she fixes on a lower sphere,
Beneath the glorious sun, her beauty soon
Will dim the splendour of inferior stars--
Of Mars, of Venus, Mercury, and the Moon.
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