he might raise her above every earthly idea, he never explicitly mentions that she was bound to partake the bed of another. At last, however, he felt and confessed "that she was a woman; that he doated upon her form; that she was the only one who had ever appeared a woman in his eyes;"

“Chiare, fresche, dolci acque

Ove le belle membra

Pose colei che sola a me par Donna;'*

and he was burning" with envy, jealousy, and love."

"D'amor, di gelosia, d'invidia ardendo."+

The illusions of a pure passion are succeeded by the desires of an impatient love, which escape, in expressions and lines too plain to be quoted, and which are not ordinarily observed, because Petrarch is traditionally read with sentimental prepossession. He was admitted but rarely into the house of Laura, and not till several years after their first meeting. "I grow old," says he, "and she grows old: I begin to despond; and yet it appears to me that time wears away slowly, till we may be permitted to be together without the fear that we should be lost." The description of the valley of Vaucluse, to which Petrarch has given immortal interest, is extremely amusing:

The house of Petrarch has disappeared; nor can his frequent descriptions help antiquarians to discover the site of his gardens; but the valley of Vaucluse is one of those works of nature which five centuries have been unable to disturb. On leaving Avignon the eye of the traveller reposes on an expanse of beautiful meadow, till he arrives on a plain varied by numerous vineyards. At a short distance the hills begin to ascend, covered with trees, which are reflected on the Sorga, the waters of which are so limpid, their course so rapid, and their sounds so soft, that the poet describes them truly when he says, "that they are liquid crystal, the murmurs of which mingle with the songs of birds to fill the air with harmony. Its banks are covered with aquatic plants; and in those places where the falls or the rapidity of the current prevent their being distinguished, it seems to roll over a bed of green marble. Nearer the source, the soil is sterile; and as the channel grows narrow, the waves break against the rocks, and roll in a torrent of foam and spray, glittering with the reflection of the prismatic colours. On advancing still farther up the river, the traveller finds himself inclosed in a semicircular recess, formed by rocks inaccessible on the right, and abrupt and precipitous on the left, rising into obelisks, pyramids, and every fantastic shape; and from the midst of them a thousand rivulets descend. The valley is terminated by a mountain, perpendicularly scarped from the top to the bottom, and through a natural porch of concentric arches he enters a vast cavern, the silence and darkness of which are interrupted only by the murmuring and the sparkling of the waters in a basin which forms the principal source of the Sorga. This basin, the depth of which has never yet been fathomed, overflows in the spring, and it then sends forth its waters with such an impetuosity as to force them through a fissure in the top of the cavern, at an elevation of nearly a hundred feet on the mountain, whence

* Ye waters clear and fresh, to whose bright wave

She all her beauties gave,―

Sole of her sex in my impassion'd mind!

With love, with jealousy, and envy burning.

they gradually precipitate themselves from height to height in cascades, sometimes showing, and sometimes concealing in their foam, the huge masses of rock which they hurry along. The roar of the torrents never ceases during the long rains, while it seems as if the rocks themselves were dissolved away, and the thunder re-echoed from cavern to cavern. The awful solemnity of this spectacle is varied by the rays of the sun, which toward evening particularly refracts and reflects its various tints on the cascades. After the dog-days the rocks become arid and black, the basin resumes its level, and the valley returns to a profound stillness.”

We shall make no apology for the copiousness of our extracts, because we feel that we shall do our readers and the author the more justice by giving as much of the words of the latter as possible.

'Petrarch was in Italy when the plague, which in 1348 laid Europe waste, snatched away some of his dearest friends, and appalled him with the presage of a still greater calamity. Formerly," says he, "when I quitted Laura, I saw her often in my dreams. It was a heavenly vision which consoled me, but now it affrights me. I think I hear her saydost thou remember the evening when, forced to quit thee, I left thee bathed in tears? I then foresaw-but I could not-would not tell thee. I tell thee now, and thou mayest believe me-thou wilt see me no more on this earth :"

"Non sperar di vedermi in terra mai.” Two months afterwards Laura died, in her fortieth year, and Petrarch wrote in a copy of Virgil this memorandum: "It was in the early days of my youth, on the 6th of April, in the morning, and in the year 1327, that Laura, distinguished by her own virtues, and celebrated in my verses, first blessed my eyes in the church of Santa Clara, at Avignon; and it was in the same city, on the 6th of the very same month of April, at the very same hour in the morning, in the year 1348, that this bright luminary was withdrawn from our sight, when I was at Verona, alas ! ignorant of my calamity. The remains of her chaste and beautiful body were de posited in the church of the Cordeliers, on the evening of the same day. To preserve the afflicting remembrance, I have taken a bitter pleasure in recording it particularly in this book which is most frequently before my eyes, in order that nothing in this world may have any farther attraction for me; that this great attachment to life being dissolved, I may, by frequent reflection, and a proper estimation of our transitory existence, be admonished that it is high time for me to think of quitting this earthly Babylon, which I trust it will not be difficult for me, with a strong and manly courage, to accomplish.'

II. In the Essay on the Poetry of Petrarch we think the author furnishes evidence that Petrarch's love, whatever it might have been at its commencement, had become soon a mere play-thing, and rather a subject for the display of his poetical talent-rather a thing which he affected when he chose, as Master Stephen has it, to look 'pensive and gentlemanlike,' than a condition of mind which could savour of passion. We say nothing of his illegitimate children; but no lover such as Petrarch announced himself to be could polish and labour his verse in the manuer disclosed by the following extract:

"The pleasure of living his youth over again, of meeting Laura in every line, of examining the history of his own heart; and perhaps the consciousness which, after all, rarely misleads anthors respecting the best of their works, induced the poet in his old age to give to his love-verses a

perfection which has never been attained by any other Italian writer, and which he thinks "he could not himself have carried farther." If the manuscript did not still exist, it would be impossible to imagine or be lieve the unwearied pains he has bestowed on the correction of his verses. They are curious monuments, although they afford little aid in exploring by what secret workings the long and laborious meditation of Petrarch has spread over his poetry all the natural charms of sudden and irresistible inspiration.

The following is a literal translation of a succession of memorandums in Latin, at the head of one of his sonnets:-" I began this by the im pulse of the Lord (Domino jubente), 10th September, at the dawn of day, after my morning prayers."

"I must make these two verses over again, singing them (cantando), and I must transpose them; 3 o'clock, A. M. 19th of October."

"I like this (hoc placet), 30th October, 10 o'clock in the morning.' "No; this does not please me. 20th December in the evening". And in the midst of his corrections he writes, on laying down his pen, "I shall return to this again; I am called to supper.'

February 18th, towards noon; this is now well; however, look at it again (vide tamen adhuc)."

Sometimes he notes the town where he happens to be" 1364, Veneris mane, 19 Jan. dum invitus Patavii ferior."-It might seem rather a curious than useful remark, that it was generally on Friday that he occupied himself with the painful labour of correction, did we not also know that it was to him a day of fast and penitence.

In his opinion, expressed in another place, the author does his judgment credit, in spite of his fondness for Petrarch, by the following criticism on his poetry :—

"

If Petrarch had not too unsparingly made use of antitheses-if he had not too frequently repeated his hyperboles-if he had not too often compared Laura to the sun-his numerous plagiarists, who, however, have never been able to imitate his beauties, would not have been so much noticed for their faults; nor would Salvator Rosa have had occasion to complain in his satires that “ These metaphors had exhausted the sun. His play upon the words Lauro and L'aura, signifying the laurel and the air; and the conceits afforded by the transformation of Apollo's Daphne into the immortal laurel, are still admired by some foreigners, on the authority of one of the most celebrated critics of Italy, who nevertheless was delighted with the Italia Liberata of Trissino, and would never allow that Tasso's Jerusalem was the work of a poet. For my own part, I feel some pity towards a great poet who, with such extreme delicacy and ardour of mind-with a judgment so difficult, and a taste so refined with a heated imagination, and an impassioned heart-could condescend, for the amusement of Laura and his readers, to such cold affectations. Still even Petrarch was bound to discharge the unfortunate duty of almost all writers, by sacrificing his own taste to that of his contemporaries. He ingrafted on his verses the agudezzas, ternuras, ý conceptos of the Spanish poets, and was deservedly accused of plagiarism."We formerly passed," says an historian of Valencia, a famous poet named Mossen Jordi; and Petrarch, who was born a hundred years after, robbed him of his verses, and has sold them in Italian to the world as his own, of which I could convict him in many passages."

Petrarch's obligations to the poetry of the Troubadours has been often alleged against him; but, in truth, they are much more indebted to him for having canonised, in his Trionfi, some names, which, but for him, would never have been remembered. He only took from them so much as the perusal of their works would of necessity leave hanging to the idea's of any studious man.

III. The Essay on the Character of Petrarch is the most original and the most satisfactory in the volume. It contains many particulars never before known, and which are eloquently related. M. Sismondi, in his History of the Italian Republics, has handled the character of the poet rather severely. Signor Foscolo thus replies to his objections:

"That Petrarch, in his political career, never ceased to be a Troubadour-that all the tyrants of Italy, by flattering his vanity, obtained from him, in return, a base adulation-that he sometimes committed actions contrary to his principles, and to his duty as a citizen of Florence, and as a Guelph"-are the statements of a modern historian, whose devotion to liberty sometimes encroaches on his reverence for truth. Petrarch was born an exile; his father was buried in a foreign land, proscribed by the Guelphs; nor did their sons restore to Petrarch his right of citizenship until he was near fifty years old; nor his confiscated patrimony, until after the plague had laid waste Florence, when, for the purpose of attracting a greater number of foreigners, they intended to establish a University there under his direction. He loaded them with thanks and praises, in a long letter which he wrote from Padua, and returned immediately to Vaucluse. His hereditary attachment to the party of the Ghibelines inspired him with more respect for the military dictators of the towns of Lombardy. The veneration which they pretended to entertain for Petrarch, and perhaps also the terror of their bloody vengeance, tempted him to give flattery for flattery. They spontaneously procured for him ecclesiastical benefices in their dominions, and sought his opinion upon political subjects. He did not consider himself unequal to afford them advice; but his soul could not rest steadily on its centre; it was impelled, by any sudden impulse, from one extreme to the other; and he would fly, as the abysses of infamy and danger, the very palaces where he had just before hoped to revive justice. Whenever there appeared the least opportunity or chance of re-establishing in Rome the seat of the Western Empire, he made the interests of all princes secondary to this illusive scheme, which he cherished to his latest breath. It is when he writes to his friends, to the popes and cardinals, to the emperors, and to the Italian people, upon this subject, that Petrarch displays the magnanimity of a noble soul, and the finest specimens of a genius which, though turned to poetry by love, seems to have been more particularly designed by nature to form a powerful orator.'

The picture which the author draws of Petrarch is a favorable one, but the features are true; his only fault, if it be one, is, that he has softened down the disagreeable points. His coldness and selfishness are ingeniously accounted for, ore xcused, and an attempt is made at refuta tion of them, by showing that he was sometimes generous.

The lessons of early adversity, which harden selfish dispositions, had taught the generous heart of Petrarch to feel for the sufferings of others; and shunning-like all men who are merely busied with their own feelings and intellectual faculties the exertion necessary for the acquire,

ment and preservation of riches," he was led, in the fearlessness of youth, to spend for the benefit of others nearly all of the scanty inheritance he derived from parents who died in exile. He bestowed one part as a dowry on his sister, who married at Florence, and gave up the other to two deserving friends who were in indigent circumstances. He lent even some classic manuscripts, which he called his only treasures, to his old master, that he might pawn them; in this manner Cicero's books DE GLORIA were irrecoverably lost. If his presents were declined, he attached some verses to them, which compelled his friends to accept them; and he distributed his Italian poetry as alms amongst rhymesters and ballad-singers. As he advanced in years, the "sovereign contempt for riches," which he continued to profess, was more apparent than real, especially towards the end of his career: yet he never forgot those who looked to him for aid, which he always bestowed with kindness. Among the many legacies of his testament he left to one of his friends his lute, that he might sing the praises of the Almighty-to a domestic a sum of money, intreating him not to lose it at play as usual-to his amanuensis a silver goblet, recommending him to fill it with water in preference to wine and to Boccacio a winter pelisse, for his nocturnal studies. Nor did he wait till death had compelled him to be liberal-" In good truth," he writes to Boccacio, "I know not what you mean by answering, that you are my debtor in money! Oh! if I were able to enrich you!-but for two friends like ourselves, who possess but one soul, one house is sufficient." He led a life of anxiety and labour; his habits were those of the strictest temperance, which when he became rich did not alter.

As his fortune increased, he augmented the number of his servants and transcribers; these he always took with him on his journeys, and kept more horses to carry his books. Twelve years before his death, he gave his rich collection of ancient manuscripts to the Venetian Senate, and thus became the founder of the library of Saint Marc. He requested, and received, by way of remuneration, a mansion in Venice. The only fault which he contracted from the possession of wealth was the custom of boasting too much about the good use be made of it.'

The following particulars are so interesting, and probably so new to many readers, that we insert them with pleasure :—

'Wherever he went, he took up his abode in a sort of hermitage, and continued to compose whole volumes, still exclaiming that he was only losing his time, but that he must do something to forget_himself"Whether I am being shaved or having my hair cut, whether I am riding on horseback or taking my meals, I either read myself or get some one to read to me. On the table where I dine, and by the side of my bed, I have all the materials for writing; and, when I awake in the dark, I write, although I am unable to read the next morning what I have written." During the latter years of his life he always slept with a lighted lamp near him, and rose exactly at midnight. "Like a wearied traveller, I quicken my pace in proportion as I approach the end of my journey. I read and write night and day: it is my only resource. My eyes are heavy with watching, my hand is wearied with writing, and my heart is worn with care. I desire to be known to posterity; if I cannot succeed, I may be known to my own age, or at least to my friends. It would have satisfied me to have known myself; but in that I shall never succeed.” What does a life thus spent avail? To what purpose are so many VOL. 1. March, 1823. Br. Mag.

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