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f Italian works of imagination on the same class ofcomposition in England^^ shows perhaps more promisethan any of his other writings, . said : ** Petrarchappears to me a corollary from Dante; the samespirit in a different mould of individual character,and that a weaker mould ; yet better adapted, by thecircumstances of its position, to diffuse the greatthought which possessed them both, and to call intoexbtence so great a number of inferior recipients ofit, as might affect insensibly, but surely, the course ofgeneral feeling. Petrarch was far from apprehendingeither his own situation, or that of mankind, withanything like the clear vision of Dante whom heaffected to undervalue, idly striving against that destinywhich ordained their co-operation." Or again : • • •*' it was not in scattered sonnets that the whole mag-nificence of that idea could be manifested, whichrepresents love as at once the base, the pyramidalpoint of the entire universe, and teaches us to regardthe earthly union of souls, not as a thing accidental,transitory, and dependent on the condition of humansociety, but with far higher import, as the best andthe appointed symbol of our relations with God, andthrough them of his own ineffable essence. In the ^ Delivered in Trinity College (Cambridge) Chapel,Dec. i6, 1 83 1.
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