There is not enough sentiment to dilute the condiments which are employed to season it.

The repast which he sets before us resembles the Spanish entertainment in Dryden's "Mock Astrologer", at which the relish of all the dishes and sauces was overpowered by the common flavour of spice.
Fish,--flesh,--fowl,--everything at table tasted of nothing but red pepper.
The writings of Petrarch may indeed suffer undeservedly from one cause to which I must allude.

His imitators have so much familiarised the ear of Italy and of Europe to the favourite topics of amorous flattery and lamentation, that we can scarcely think them original when we find them in the first author; and, even when our understandings have convinced us that they were new to him, they are still old to us.

This has been the fate of many of the finest passages of the most eminent writers.

It is melancholy to trace a noble thought from stage to stage of its profanation; to see it transferred from the first illustrious wearer to his lacqueys, turned, and turned again, and at last hung on a scarecrow.
Petrarch has really suffered much from this cause.