PETRARCH THE AUTHOR 



his passion, is quite another matter. His sonnets and 

 canzoni taken in too large doses leave an impression of 

 linked sweetness long drawn out, and the subtle psy- 

 chology grows wearisome. With him, it is more difficult 



^V ^^.^ than in the case of Dante to take seriously the agony 

 '^ he suffers, except possibly as a symptom of melancholia. 

 " Et io son un di quel che '1 pianger giova," is his cry; 

 and the poems are full of idle tears. There is no use in 

 trying to disguise the fact that these perpetual tears are 

 tiresome and hurt the man in our esteem, the more so 

 since he too often shows serious lack of taste when speak- 

 ing of them. On one occasion, for example, he makes 

 Laura say: " The sad waves of tears with which you 

 are never satiated, together with the breeze of sighs, 

 pass through the great space between earth and heaven 

 and disturb my peace." Elsewhere he tells us that 

 Laura caused to flow from his eyes such a river that not 

 only were bridges, fords, oars, and sails unable to cross 

 it, but even wings and plumes, a river deep and broad, 

 with so distant a shore that he could hardly reach it 

 with his thoughts. Again, asking Laura, now in Heaven 

 by God's side, to bring it about that he may soon join 

 her, he exclaims : " Regard my pure love and pure faith, 

 wherefore I have shed so many tears and so much ink^ 

 These examples are very far from exhausting the in- 

 stances of bad taste and far-fetched conceit in his po- 

 ems. In addition to anguished sighs, sometimes violent 

 enough to cause forests to rock, there is the frequent — 

 even morbid — pla3dng upon the word Laura. It is not 



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