So great is the charm of
elegance, so unreal is the larger part of what is written!
Certainly I do not mean to say that a work of art should be looked at by
the light of the artist's biography, or measured by our standard of his
character. Nor do I reckon what was genuine in Petrarch--his love of
letters, his refinement, his skill in the superficial graces of language,
that rhetorical art by which the music of words supplants their meaning,
and the verse moulds the thought instead of being plastic to it--after
any such fashion. I have no ambition for that character of _valet de
chambre_ which is said to disenchant the most heroic figures into mere
every-day personages, for it implies a mean soul no less than a servile
condition. But we have a right to demand a certain amount of reality,
however small, in the emotion of a man who makes it his business to
endeavor at exciting our own. We have a privilege of nature to shiver
before a painted flame, how cunningly soever the colors be laid on. Yet
our love of minute biographical detail, our desire to make ourselves
spies upon the men of the past, seems so much of an instinct in us, that
we must look for the spring of it in human nature, and that somewhat
deeper than mere curiosity or love of gossip.
Pages:
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525