while the emperors of Germany were able to penetrate into Italy. by the passes of the Tyrol, and the leaders of the Ghibelline faction were thus enabled to preserve their preponderance in Lombardy. Venice herself, notwithstanding the democratic constitution which she had enjoyed for nine centuries, having grown rich by commerce, began to govern herself aristocratically; but being surrounded by the sea, she was exempted from the necessity of confiding her armies to a single patrician, who, while he defended her from foreign invasion, would have subjected her to the domestic yoke of a military dictatorship-a dictatorship, which, during the lifetime of Petrarch, was rendered perpetual and hereditary in all the northern states of Italy. The other countries of Europe were exhausted by the crusades, which had just ceased; the wild and enterprising fanaticism of religion had dwindled into a gloomy and suspicious superstition; and being no longer able to pour forth armies for the purpose of spreading it in Syria, it was deemed necessary to maintain its authority and influence in Italy, by the dark and mysterious means of the 'Holy Inquisition.' Several of the popes who filled the chair of Rome about this period, had been originally monks of the cruel order of St. Dominic, the founder of that accursed tribunal; and those who succeeded during the next sixty years, were prelates of France, corrupted by the luxury of their country. The terror which had been spread by the monks was followed by the sale of Indulgences and the celebration of the Jubilees, instituted about this time by Boniface VIII. As the church was no longer able to employ the riches which it derived from these sources, in political projects, the sovereign pontiffs became more avaricious and less ambitious; and, instead of dispensing kingdoms, employed the benefices of the church to maintain a splendid and luxurious court at Avignon, and to enrich their relations in France. The nations, though disturbed, were not in a condition to accomplish revolutions. States were aggrandized more by cunning than by force, and their rulers became less violent and more treacherous. The hardy crimes of the barbarous ages which had gone by, gave place by degrees to the insidious vices of civilization. The cultivation of classical literature had improved the general taste, and added to the stores of erudition; but it had at the same time enervated the boldness and originality of natural talent; and those who might have been inimitable writers in their own language, were satisfied to consume their lives in becoming the pedantic imitators of the Latins. Such are the concise annals of Italy, during the half century from the death of Dante to the death of Petrarch.

Although no one has yet equalled the ode which Petrarch ad

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dressed to the princes of Italy, when they were about to spill their blood for the aggrandizement of foreign powers,

'Italia mia, benchè il parlar sia indarno'-P. 1. canz. 16. all the Italian poets, for five centuries, have considered it their bounden duty to write on the same subject, and to oppose their lamentations and imprecations to the more efficacious strength of arrayed armies. They have not imitated with so much boldness Petrarch's invectives against the popes, which, while they have rendered him infamous amongst the French Roman Catholics, two centuries afterwards raised his credit and authority amongst the Protestants. The father of Petrarch, though a Ghibellin, had taken refuge at Avignon, in the hopes of providing for his children in the church; but Petrarch continued during his whole life to complain and lament that he had no country but the land of his exile the new Babylon, where the ministers of God were held in captivity.' Cecile de Commenge, Vicomtesse de Turenne, secretly bartered her charms to Clement VI. by selling to the pub lic his temporal benefits and spiritual indulgences. Other popes have probably been even more profane than he was, but no one ever had a mistress so avaricious and so shameless. 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. All that is related of the two Babylons-that of Syria and that of Egypt-all that is said of the four labyrinths; of Avernus, of Tartarus, is nothing in comparison to this hell of Avignon ;* priests bending beneath the weight of years, dancing with their naked adulteresses round the altar, and Belzebub in the midst, exhibiting to them in mirrors their lascivious forms.'+ This also is one of the innumerable passages which are to be found in the most private correspondence of Petrarch, and translated at the same time in his Italian verses;

'Per le camere tue fanciulle, e vecchi,

Vanno trescando; e Belzebub in mezzo

Co' mantici, col foco, e con gli specchi.'-P. 1. son. 105. Petrarch first entered the house of the Cardinal Colonna as bis chaplain, but he was soon considered as an independent friend, so much so, that Stefano Colonna, the head of the family of the greatest power at Rome, and of the greatest influence at Avignon, regarded him as his own son. His influence over the great is one of the most extraordinary and inexplicable traits of his character. Epist. sine tit. 10.

Spectat hæc Satan ridens, atque impari tripudio delectatus, interque decrepitos et puellas nudas arbiter sedens, stupet plus illos agere quam se hortari ; ac ne quis rebus torpor obrepat, ipse interim et seniles lumbos stimulis incitat et cæcum peregrinis follibus ignem ciet.'

In

In all his writings, not a single expression of servility is to be found; and if he ever eulogizes the powerful, it is in reply to the praises which they had conferred on him. Often, and while he was still a young man, he addressed severe remonstrances and advice to his benefactors, persons venerable from their station and their years. His veracity was inflexible, and not to be shaken even by his vanity. Although we may perceive every moment that he was gratified at possessing illustrious friends, all the actions of his life attest, what he himself asserts, that if the great desired his society, they must accommodate themselves to his humour; and that he always had a sovereign contempt for riches.' The princes of Italy spontaneously procured for him ecclesiastical benefices, and sought his opinions on political subjects. He did not consider himself unequal to afford them advice, but rather than stoop to the wishes and purposes of a court, he was always ready to resign his preferment. He would never take holy orders, that he might not be in a condition to accept bishoprics; and he refused the office of apostolical secretary, under both Clement VI. and Innocent VI.* In a bull, by which the first of these popes conferred on him an additional benefice, it is expressly declared, that Petrarch had not solicited it; and the poet did not therefore consider that any obligation was imposed on him by these benefits, to restrain the vehemence of his pen. He was always more ready to confer than to accept favours; and Boccaccio was amongst those friends who experienced the effects of his liberality. When 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 professional rhymers and singers. He always lived moderately, but as his fortune increased, he augmented the number of servants and transcribers, whom he always took with him on his journeys; and he kept more horses to carry his books. These books he left to the senate of Venice, and he was the founder of the library of St. Marc.

Although he possessed a house in almost every country where he had an ecclesiastical benefice, he seemed to have none, and to be ever regretting his hermitage of Vaucluse. He lived there, with few interruptions, ten years during Laura's lifetime, and he often returned there after her death. The last time he resided there two years, and there he wrote his Letter to Posterity, which concludes with these words:-'I am again in France, not to see what I have already seen a thousand times, but to dissipate weariness and disquietude, as invalids seek to do, by change of place.' On every suspicion of troubles, of war, or of epidemical disease, he endea+ Senil. lib. i. ep. 5.

*Senil. lib. i. ep. 2.-lib. xii. ep. 8.

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vours to justify his wandering life. It is not to avoid death that I thus wander on the earth, but to seek if there be any corner in which tranquillity may be found.' His aversion to medicine, which he exposes with less apathy than Montagne, and with less ridicule than Molière, but with more vehemence and a fuller conviction than either of them, is a sufficient proof that he had no pusillanimous attachment to life; but whilst he aspired to heaven, he was not indifferent to this world. While he complained that men ran after him, he could not be ignorant, that, by perpetually leaving a country and returning to it, he must occasion regret and excite curiosity; and that the only means which an author can take that he may not be troubled by others, is to say very little of himself. The letters which Petrarch wrote when he was on his travels as a young man, deserve to be placed amongst those of the earliest and most enlightened travellers of Europe; and we still reap the benefit of the medals and the classics which he discovered in the convents of France and Germany. But as he advanced in life, he became more wrapped in the contemplation of himself. On comparing the actual condition of mankind, with the perfection to which he aspired, he considered them unworthy of his study; but he must still have attached some importance to the human race, for, had he been capable of really despising them, he would not have experienced that constant necessity to change his abode; to immure himself in solitude; to complain of the folly and ignorance of society, and of the ties by which nature has bound us all to life.

The death of Laura and of the friends of his youth-the shameful defeat of Cola di Rienzo-the height of corruption in the church-and the plague which desolated the south of Europeall concurred to overwhelm him with affliction in the course of a few months. From that time his meditations on eternity wholly occupied his thoughts; and prompted him to pursue a plan of wisdom, which was unsuited to his restless soul. He conceivedthat to cure all his miseries he must study them night and day -that to pursue steadily, and to accomplish effectually this project, he must renounce all other desires-and that the only means of arriving at a total oblivion of life, was to reflect perpetually on death.* The power of executing his resolutions was not equal to his ardour in planning them, and his faculties were exhausted by conflicting impulses. After he had accustomed himself to look on death without dread, it again appeared to him under fearful forms. He tells us, that he was sometimes seized with sudden lethargy, which rendered him absolutely insensible, and for the

* De Secret. Confi. coll. 1.

space

space of thirty hours his body appeared like a corpse.' When he revived, he testified that he had experienced neither terror nor pain. But, by his intemperate meditation on death, as a Christian and as a philosopher, he provoked nature to withdraw from him. the boon which she wished to accord to him-of dying in peace. I lay myself in my bed as in my shroud-suddenly I start up in a frenzy-I speak to myself-I dissolve in tears, so as to make those weep who witness my condition.'* Whatever he saw or heard in these accessions of grief, occasioned him the torments of hell,'-by degrees he found delight in nourishing his sorrows, and the pride of grief seduced him to entertain the world with his weaknesses, his virtues, and his system of perfection.

The

A celebrity, which perhaps no other author ever enjoyed in an equal degree with Petrarch during his lifetime, made him fancy that all mankind were occupied with his private concerns. most distinguished men of every country were his correspondents; and he soon learned, that nothing is more important, and at the same time more embarrassing, than to preserve a great reputation.' To the frankness and imprudence of his opinions, he sometimes adds a pedantic affectation and a false modesty which tarnish the candour of his letters. Whilst he calls himself a simple individual of the human flock,' he often compares himself indirectly to the greatest characters in history, and he cannot inform us of the antiquity of his family without borrowing the words of Augustus.† He availed himself of his great reputation to satisfy the necessity which he experienced of saying every thing he thought and felt; and to maintain it, he stooped to the most vehement declamations against the enemies whom he had provoked. His patriotism, and his hereditary attachmeut to the party of the Ghibellins, inspired him with some respect for the military dictators of the towns of Lombardy; and it was precisely in the fourteenth century, that tyrannical governments began to teach their successors in Italy the lesson of retaining men of letters in their pay to deceive the world. The veneration which these despots pretended to entertain for Petrarch, and perhaps also the terror of their bloody vengeance, tempted him to give flattery for flattery. But his soul could not rest steadily on its centre; it was impelled by any sudden impulse from one extremity or the other, and he would shun, as the very abysses of infamy and danger, the very palaces where he had just before hoped to revive moderation and justice.

M. Sismondi is mistaken when he relates, that Petrarch, in his political career, never ceased to be a troubadour; and that all the

* De Secret Confi. col. 2.

Vestro de grege unus: fui autem mortalis_homuncio, nec magnæ admodum, sed nee Lilis originis; familia (ut de se uit Augustus Cæsar) antiqua. Epist. ad Post.

tyrants