580 and I had a venerable air, which I was by no means very proud of." PETRARCH, FRANCIS. perity of Rome, he knelt before the throne, and received from the senator a laurel crown, with the more precious declaration,-This is the reward of merit.' The people shouted Long life to the capitol and the poet!' A sonnet in praise of Rome was accepted as the effusion of genius and gratitude; and after the whole procession had visited the Vatican, the profane wreath was suspended before the shrine of St. Peter. In the diploma which was presented to Petrarch, the title and prerogatives of poet-laureate are revived in the capitol, after the lapse of 1300 years; and he receives the perpetual privilege of wearing at his choice a crown of laurel, ivy, or myrtle, of assuming the poetic habit, and of teaching, disputing, interpreting, and composing, in all places whatsoever, and on all subjects of literature. The grant was ratified by the authority of the senate and people, and the character of citizen was the recompence of his affection for the Roman name." The appearance of Petrarch, when arrayed for his triumph in the capitol, is carefully delineated in the subjoined sketch, copied from an illuminated copy of his own works. After Petrarch had been crowned at Rome, his income increased with his reputation. King Robert of Naples then appointed him his chaplain, with the privilege of not attending at court. He returned to Vaucluse, and the holy see actually forced its patronage upon a writer whose celebrity and independence of character had rendered him truly formidable. He would never take holy orders, that he might not be in a condition to accept a bishopric, and refused the office of apostolical secretary under three popes. In a bull by which Clement VI. conferred on him an additional benefice, it is expressly declared "that neither Petrarch nor any of his friends had solicited it;" and the poet did not, therefore, consider that any obligation was imposed on him, by these liberalities, to restrain the vehemence of his pen. In his Latin eclogues he introduces the shades of the pastors of the church, reproaching each other with their crimes, and consoling themselves by prophesying those of their reigning successor. The holy see was considered by Petrarch as "the school of errors, the temple of heresy, the manufactory of treasons, and the hell of living men." The church was "an impudent prostitute, supported by the opulence of her fornicators." He calls Avignon "the drain of all vices, whence the smell rose to pollute even the throne of the Almighty;" and adds that Cecile de Commenge, Vicomtesse de Turenne, secretly bartered her charms to Clement VI. for the power of selling to the public his temporal favours and spiritual indulgences. Never did luxury and licentiousness prevail so publicly and so ostentatiously in the pontifical palace. Petrarch shuddered at it, and he describes it in a way to make his readers shudder. At the period of the subsequent reformation his invectives against the court of Avignon rendered Petrarch infamous amongst the French catholics: but, in a semi-civilized age, a great poet is radiant with divinity; and in the fourteenth century the executioner would not place his hand on a head which had been hallowed by the laurel. Innocent VI. believed that Petrarch was a magician, but he dared not bring him to the stake and notwithstanding the poet called him "a suspicious and indolent bear, whose coarseness caused the luxury and the easiness of his predecessor to be forgiven," yet he endeavoured to soothe him by honours and attentions; whilst the cardinals of the greatest influence could not induce him to kiss his foot. To indulge in the necessity which he experienced of saying every thing he thought and felt, Petrarch availed himself of a celebrity which no author, during his life, ever enjoyed in an equal degree. Still he was unhappy even on that account: "This laurel," says he, "without adding any thing to my knowledge, has increased my own discontent and the envy of others." Petrarch's person, if we may trust to his biographers, "was so striking with beauties as to attract universal admiration." They represent him "with large and manly features, eyes full of fire, a blooming complexion, and a countenance that bespoke all the genius and fancy that shone forth in his works." Arquà was long the residence of Petrarch; indeed Possibly Petrarch was not over-vain of his exterior it was there he died. It is twelve miles from Padua, endowments, though it does not appear that mo- and about three miles on the right of the high road desty had ever interfered with his self-appreciation. to Rovigo, in the bosom of the Euganean hills. After "Without being uncommonly handsome," says he, a walk of twenty minutes across a flat well-wooded in the "Letter to Posterity," "my person had some- meadow, you come to a little blue lake, clear, but thing agreeable in it in my youth. My complexion fathomless, and to the foot of a succession of accliwas a clear and lively brown; my eyes were ani-vities and hills, clothed with vineyards and orchards, mated; my hair had grown gray before twenty-five, rich with fir and pomegranate trees, and every sunny and I consoled myself for a defect which I shared in fruit shrub. From the banks of the lake the road common with many of the great men of antiquity--winds into the hills, and the church of Arquà is soon for Cæsar and Virgil were gray-headed in youth; seen between a cleft where two ridges slope towards PETRARCH, FRANCIS. each other, and nearly inclose the village. The houses are scattered at intervals on the steep sides of these summits; and that of the poet is on the edge of a little knoll overlooking two descents, and commanding a view not only of the glowing gardens in the dales immediately beneath, but of the wide plains, above whose low woods of mulberry and willow thickened into a dark mass by festoons of vines, tall single cypresses, and the spires of towns, are seen in the distance, which stretches to the mouths of the Po and the shores of the Adriatic. The climate of these volcanic hills is warmer, and the vintage begins a week sooner than in the plains of Padua. The principal front of his charming villa is given beneath. Every footstep of Laura's lover has been anxiously traced and recorded. The house in which he lodged is shown in Venice. The inhabitants of Arezzo, in order to decide the ancient controversy between their city and the neighbouring Ancisa, where Petrarch was carried when seven months old, and remained until his seventh year, have designated by a long inscription the spot where their great fellow-citizen was born. Petrarch at this period paid peculiar attention to the study of the Latin tongue; and the following beautiful passage from "The Africa," which originally appeared in Latin, will strongly remind our readers of the Mantuan poet Virgil. The passage describes the death of Mago: "THE Carthaginian rose-and when he found The increasing anguish of his mortal wound, With death! And, thou! worse than this night of woe Of heaven his owlet vision dares to bend A gorgeous palace? Vain and empty prize! My dearest brother, ah! remember me, "He said, and now, its mortal bondage riven, His spirit fled, and from its higher heaven Of space look'd down where Rome and Carthage lay, 581 His country's woes, his brother's, and his own." Petrarch's love of literary fame, and his ill-concealed jealousy of criticism, is strongly exhibited in the following letter to a distinguished dignitary of the church, who had long been his patron: "Reverend and most dignified prelate, James Colonna, my very honoured lord,-It is delightful to me to receive such an undoubted proof of your affectionate regard for me, as appears from the displeasure you feel in hearing my compositions criticised by some poor wretched ignorant creature; for you would not take so warm an interest in what concerns my honour if you did not love me sincerely. Know then, for your comfort, that I feel no more disturbed with the shrill tones of those chirping crickets than the moon does at the loud baying of a furious widemouthed mastiff. If I really had any intention to imitate the first verse of the Provençal poet, Arnaldo Danielo, Drez et raison es que je cante de Amour,' it was only to imitate it in part, because an imitation of the whole did not suit my purpose; and for that very reason I made use of his own proper words; but only so far as was necessary for my purpose. If these poor wretches could conceive the difference between an imitation and an absolute plagiarism, they would not hold such idle and extravagant language as they now do. But my comfort is in the words of Cicero, Vera laus fit à laudato viro.' Conceive, therefore, my dear and excellent friend, if these idle chatterings can give me uneasiness for a single moment. It is a matter of real concern to me to learn from your letter that our worthy and admirable friend Messer Bernardo is tormented with his old complaint. So excellent a man ought not, if such were the will of heaven, to suffer any grievance whatever. Remember me kindly to him, and assure him of the pain I feel on his account. I beg you also to make an apology on my part to the reverend cardinal John, your brother, for not having endeavoured to find the book he pointed out to me. The reason for the omission was this in the very short time I passed with the most serene king Robert, I was never for a single moment my own master; and when I proposed returning to Rome, I had not sufficient time left to take leave of any of friends. Be so good, in my name, most respectfully to salute your excellent and honoured father, Messer Stephen Colonna, and continue as usual to exhilarate your old friend Francis with Farewell. your delightful letters. my "From inclination as well as duty, Naples, 8th Calends of April, 1341." 582 PETRARCH, FRANCIS. every minute the sacred building to fall and bury us in its ruins. "It would be much too long to recount all the horrors of that infernal night; and although the truth very far exceeds all power of description, yet I fear to be thought guilty of exaggeration when I exclaim, What deluges of water! what wind! what what fearful tremblings of the earth! what vehement commotion in the sea! what shrieks of amazed and distracted multitudes! The long night seemed extended by magic art to twice its actual duration; and when morning came, its approach was announced to us rather by the clock than by any corresponding light in the firmament. The priests robed themselves for the celebration of mass, while we, not having courage to lift our faces to heaven, remained stretched on the ground in prayer and supplication. Though day had broke, it was still as dark as night. The multitudes in the upper part of the city had begun to disperse; but towards the sea-shore the noise seemed to increase, and the clattering of horses was heard in the street below. What this could mean it was impossible to ascertain; but, madebold by despair, I at last mounted on horseback myself, resolved to see, even though I should perish. In 1343 Petrarch was for some time a resident at Naples, and while there witnessed a storm, which he describes as the most fearful and interesting visitation of Providence he ever beheld. He says that "it was indeed one general commotion of the Mediterranean and Adriatic; but I will call it the Neapolitan tempest, because it found me, against my will, in the port of Naples; and, since the eagerness of the cou-thunder! what terrible rumbling in the heavens! rier to depart leaves me not time enough to record it fully, I beg you will be assured that no man ever beheld the elements of earth and water in more fearful conspiracy. This visitation from heaven was foretold several days before its occurrence, by the bishop of a little neighbouring island, who rested his prediction on certain astronomical calculations; but, as it rarely happens that prophets penetrate the whole truth of any future event, so he unluckily announced as the completion of the catastrophe, that a terrible earthquake would ensue, by which Naples itself would be destroyed on the 25th of November.' This advertisement obtained so much credit that the greater part of the inhabitants actually gave up every other consideration to the grand concerns of religion, imploring the mercy of God, and his forgiveness of their past offences, as if the following day were infallibly to be their last. On the other hand, many laughed at the idle prediction, observing how little "Great God! who ever heard of such things as faith was due to astrologers, the more especially as I then beheld? The oldest seamen declared that only a few days had passed since the last earthquake. the like was never before witnessed. In the midst of In the midst of these apprehensions and encourage- the port were seen an infinite number of poor wretches ments (of which the former however predominated) scattered about on the sea, and struggling to gain I retired, on the evening of the 24th, just before sun- the shore, who, by the violence and fury of the waves, set, to my apartment, and in my way thither met were battered about till they looked like so many almost all the females of the city (in whom the sense eggs dashed to pieces on the beach. The whole of shame had been swallowed up by that of danger) space was filled with drowned and half-drowned bare-footed and with hair dishevelled, crowding to bodies-some with their sculls fractured-others the churches, with their babes in their arms, crying with broken arms or legs-others with their bowels and imploring God for mercy. As night came on, gushing out: and the screams of men and women the sky was more than usually serene. My servants who lived near the beach were no less terrific than went to bed immediately after supper. For my own the uproar of the elements. The very sands, on part, I proposed to stay up and watch the setting of which, the day before, you walked in ease and safety, the moon, at that time (I think) in her first quarter. were become more dangerous than the faro of MesThe window which looks to the west was left open, sina or the whirlpool of Charybdis. A thousand or and I saw her as about midnight she hid herself be- more of the Neapolitan nobility came to the shore hind St. Martin's mount, her face much darkened, on horseback, as if to solemnize the funeral oband partially covered by clouds. I then closed the sequies of their country; and when I found myself window, and stretched myself on my bed, where, after among them I began to be of better cheer, seeing lying for some time awake, I was just falling asleep that, if I were doomed to perish, I should die with when I was roused by the noise of an earthquake. the honour of knighthood. Soon the dreadful ruThe casement was burst open, the light which I mour came to our ears that the ground on which always keep burning in my chamber was extinguished, we trod had been undermined by the sea and was and the whole house shook to its very foundations. beginning to open. We fled precipitately, and saved In this state, between sleeping and waking, and as- ourselves; but the speetacle we then beheld was the sailed by the terror of impending destruction, I ran most terrible ever witnessed by mortal eye-the heato the cloisters of the monastery in which I reside, vens so commingled! the sea so implacably turbuand where we groped about in the dark (having only lent! the waves mountain-high-and in colour neithe glimmering of one dull lamp to direct us) to re-ther black nor blue, as in more ordinary tempests, ceive and administer whatever consolation was in our power. Here we were shortly met by the abbot-a very pious man—with his monks in procession, who, terrified by the tempest, were bearing the holy cross and reliques of saints, and preceded by lighted torches, with devout prayers and exclamations, in their way to the church to sing matins to the Virgin. This having inspired me with courage, I accompanied them to the church, where we all with one accord threw ourselves prostrate on the ground, and did nothing else but with loud uplifted voices implore the divine mercy and forgiveness, expecting but perfectly white, like hills of snow, rolling over the whole expanse from Capri to Naples. "The young queen, bare-footed, and attended by a numerous train of females, went to visit the churches dedicated to the blessed Virgin. No vessel in the harbour was capable of resisting the violence of the gale; and three galleys which had arrived from Cyprus, and were to depart that morning, were seen by sympathizing thousands to go down without a soul being saved. Three other large ships, which had anchored in the port, struck against each other, and sunk, and all on board perished." "Of all the vessels PETRARCH, FRANCIS. one only escaped, on board of which were no less than | sort of hermitage, and continued to compose whole Fran, Petrau scarcely an historical fact, on the truth of which he could depend; and thus concludes-"To philosophise is to love wisdom; and true wisdom is Jesus Christ." 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 Through the whole of his life Petrarch cherished purpose are so many watchful nights and weary days, -so many specimens of a noble genius, and of a bethe habits of strict temperance, to which he had been accustomed from his very infancy: he seldom ate more nevolent heart? In the letter which Petrarch adthan one meal a day; he disliked wine, lived chiefly dressed, a few months before his death, to posterity upon vegetables, and often during the seasons of de- as his last legacy, and as the ultimate result of his votion and on fasting-days, bread and water consti- long studies, he declares that he never found a phituted the whole of his dinner. As his fortune in-losophical system which was satisfactory to him; and creased, 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. The lessons of early adversity, which harden selfish 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 dispositions, had taught the generous heart of Petrarch Marc. He requested, and received by way of remu- to feel for the sufferings of others; and shunningneration, a mansion in Venice. Possessing a house like all men, who are merely busied with their own in almost every country where he had an ecclesiasti- feelings and intellectual faculties-" the exertion necal benefice, Petrarch lived as if he had no home, and cessary for the acquirement and preservation of riches," was ever regretting his hermitage of Vaucluse. He he was led in the fearlessness of youth to spend for had resided there, with few interruptions, ten years the benefit of others nearly all of the scanty inheritbestowed one part as a dowry on his sister, who marduring Laura's life-time, and he often returned there ance he derived from parents who died in exile. He after her death. In speaking of this abode he says,"I had resolved to return here no more, but my ried at Florence, and gave up the other to two deservdesire overcame my resolution; and, in justifica- ing friends, who were in indigent circumstances. He In his only treasures, to his old master, that he might tion of my inconstancy, I have nothing to allege lent even some classic manuscripts, which he called but the necessity which I feel for solitude. my own country I am too well known, too much pledge them; in this manner Cicero's books, "De courted, too greatly praised. I am sick of adulation; Gloria," were irrecoverably lost. If his presents were and that place becomes dear to me, where I can live declined, he attached some verses to them which comto myself alone, abstracted from the crowd, and un-pelled his friends to accept them; and he distributed annoyed by the trumpet of Fame. Habit, which is his Italian poetry as alms amongst rhymesters and second nature, has rendered Vaucluse my true coun- ballad-singers. As he advanced in years, the " try." The last time he resided at it two years, and vereign contempt for riches," which he continued to he says,-" I am again in France, not to see what I profess, was more apparent than real, especially tohave already seen a thousand times, but to dissipate wards the end of his career, yet he never forgot those weariness and disquietude, as invalids seek to do, by who looked to him for aid, which he always bestowed change of place. Thus I have no place to remain in, with kindness. Among the many legacies of his last none to go to: I am weary of life; and whatever testament he left to one of his friends his lute, that he path I take, I find it strewed with flints and thorns. might sing the praises of the Almighty-to a domestic In good truth the spot which I seek has no existence a sum of money, intreating him not to lose it at play upon earth: would that the time were come when I as usual-to his amanuensis, a silver goblet, recommight depart in search of a world far different from mending him to fill it with water in preference to this wherein I feel so unhappy-unhappy, perhaps, wine-and to Boccaccio a winter pelisse, for his nocfrom my own fault; perhaps from that of mankind; turnal studies. Nor did he wait till death had comor it may be only the fault of the age in which I am pelled him to be liberal. "In good truth," he writes swering that you are my debtor in money. destined to live; or it may be the 'fault of no one to Boccaccio, "I know not what you mean by anstill I am unhappy." I were able to enrich you!-but for two friends like Wherever he went, he converted his abode into a 80 Oh! if 584 PETRARCH, FRANCIS. ourselves, who possess but one soul, one house is sufficient." when he was old and infirm; and such was his anxiety for their correctness that he often submitted to the drudgery of a transcriber. He found the Latin language, "Not verdant then With foliage, but of dusky hue: not light Petrarch's philanthropy frequently exhibited itself in the most democratic way. He speaks in the same terms of the peasant and his wife who waited on him at Vaucluse, as he uses when recording the good qualities of his powerful friends:-"He was my counsellor, The boughs and tapering, but with knares deform'd And matted thick: fruits there were none, but thorns." and the keeper of all my most secret designs; and I should have lamented his loss still more grievously Yet under his toils it revived with a freshness which had I not been warned by his advanced age that I made him to be looked upon as having brought back could not expect long to retain possession of such a the Augustan age-a merit, however, which the companion. In him I have lost a confidential ser- united and incessant exertions of six generations of vant, or, rather, a father, in whose bosom I had de- learned men, from his time to those of Leo X., have posited my sorrows for these fifteen years past; and scarcely attained. Those whose claim to the title of his humble cottage was to me as a temple. He cul- accomplished scholars rest on elegancies painfully tivated for me a few acres of indifferent land. He gleaned from the classics, are not justified in sneerknew not how to read, yet he was also the guardian ing at the latinity of Petrarch. It seems that in of my library. With anxious eye he watched over modelling his style upon the Romans, he was unmy most rare and ancient copies, which, by long use, willing to neglect entirely the fathers of the church, he could distinguish from those that were more mo- whose phraseology was more appropriate to his subdern, or of which I myself was the author. When-jects; and the public affairs being at that period ever I consigned a volume to his custody, he was transacted in Latin, he could not always reject many transported with joy; he pressed it to his bosom with of those expressions which, although originating sighs; with great reverence he repeated the author's from barbarous ages, had been sanctioned by the name; and seemed as if he had received an accession adoption of all the universities, and were the more of learning and happiness from the sight and touch intelligible to his readers. In sacrificing purity he of a book. His wife's face was scorched by the sun, gained freedom, fluency, and warmth; and his prose, and her body attenuated by labour; but she had a though not a model for imitation, is beyond the soul of the most candid and generous nature. Under reach of imitators, because it is original and his the burning heat of the dog-star, in the midst of snow and of rain, she was found from morning till evening in the fields, whilst even a greater part of the night was given to work than repose. Her bed was of straw; her food was black bread, frequently full of sand; and her drink was water, mixed with vinegar; yet she never appeared weary or afflicted; never showed any desire of a more easy life; nor was even heard to complain of the cruelty of destiny and of mankind." Petrarch spent the last four years of his life at the beautiful mountain village of Arquà, about twelve miles from Padua; and here he died suddenly, in all probability of apoplexy, on the 19th of July, 1374, having just completed his seventieth year. He was found that morning in his library, with his head resting on a book. own. In Latin poetry Petrarch could not be successful while its natural beauties were so slightly felt, that he himself, in his youth, was guilty of writing hexameters in rhyme. The pronunciation, from which all the metrical systems of the ancients sprang, had already experienced so great a change that he was often obliged to guess, and not always happily, at the quantity of syllables. Had he possessed the highest poetical powers which nature ever granted to a mortal, he could not have been, in a dead language, a more than ordinary poet. The magical combination of harmony, splendour, freshness, energy, spirit, pathos, and grace in describing every object of creation, however insignificant-every obscure and fleeting idea, and all the commonest feelings of the heart, is effected only by words; but it can never be effected unless the poet masters his diction so absolutely as to re-cast it into a language of his own creation; and this is, perhaps, the grand advantage by which the early poets have outstripped all their successors. But the more the laws of a language become unalterable, the more is genius cramped by fetters; and if voluntarily chosen, it deserves no sympathy. Petrarch, however, submitted to them as the only means of commanding the admiration of Europe; and he obtained it. The important object of Petrarch's study and ambition during his life was to dissipate the darkness which, during the middle ages, had enveloped the literature of the ancients. But what genius and ardour could have been equal to the magnitude of this undertaking? He has so far succeeded, however, in clearing the road to the study of antiquity as to acquire the title, which he still justly retains, of the restorer of classical learning. "Are you not ashamed," wrote he to the Romans, "that the wrecks of your ancient grandeur, spared by the inundation "The Vision of the Spirit of Laura" was written, of the barbarians, are daily sold by your miscalcu- as appears by expressions at the close of it, when lating avarice to foreigners? And that Rome is no Petrarch was far advanced in years. He revised it where less known and less loved than in Rome?" four months before his death, and inserted it as an Nor did the enthusiasm of Petrarch for ancient monu- episode in a moral poem which he called "The ments prevent him from describing them with the taste Trionfi," a series of allegorical visions on the power of a critic. He set the first example of collecting me- of love, chastity, death, talents, fame, time, and dals as the best guides through the labyrinth of chro- eternity. Several Provençal poems written before nologies and genealogies of dynasties which had dis- his time, and "The Dream," "The Flower and the appeared from the world. We still reap the benefit of Leaf," and "The House of Fame," of his contemthose manuscripts which he indefatigably sought porary Chaucer, are of the same description. Perafter in every corner of Europe, and multiplied with-haps the models of them may be traced in the vision out sparing money when he was poor, or labour which the monks preached in imitation of those of |