and Virgil had hair while they were yet young. grey ** He had even in his youth a venerable air, of which he was by no means proud : he was then uneasy if a curl of his hair was deranged; he dressed himself in the richest clothes, and he condemned his feet to the most cruel sufferings by the tightness of his shoes.† It is doubtful if any of the portraits of Petrarch which still remain were painted during his lifetime. However that may be, it is impossible to trace in them, either the elevation of his mind, the fire of his imagination, or the pensive melancholy of his soul: but nobody has before ventured to dress him out in a little hat with feathers, or in a short mantle, and in all the gallant habiliments of a Provençal Troubadour, as he appears in the description of Madame de Genlis, and even in the prints of Mrs. Dobson's more sober work. Petrarch, having been educated at the court of the pope, from his earliest youth, had recourse to the priest's habit, and continued to wear it to the hour of his death. Besides, Madame de Genlis gives her hero those qualities chiefly which she fancies she herself has in common with him. She confesses candidly, 'd'avoir renfermé dans son ouvrage ses propres opinions, son imagination, son âme toute entière. Inférieure,' she says, 'en tout à Pétrarque par les talens, je me suis cependant trouvée toujours en harmonie avec lui par le caractère, la manière de voir, de sentir; par le goût de l'étude, de la solitude et des arts, et par l'usage habituel et singulier qu'il a fait de sa vive imagination pour se consoler, ou pour son bonheur. Ainsi j'ai dû peindre avec vérité les scènes idéales qui composent une si grande partie de son histoire; aussi n'ai-je rien écrit avec autant d'intérêt, de plaisir et de facilité.'-(Ep. dedic.) This parallel, perhaps accurate in other respects, is not so in one essential point; for the imagination of Petrarch, so far from conducing to his happiness, rendered him perfectly miserable, in the belief that a weariness and disgust of every thing were naturally inherent in his soul.' The object of this historical novel is, to insinuate that the more vehement passions are consistent with the purest virtue; and that it is possible to give a loose to the imagination, without leading the mind to a morbid sensibility and to a desire of sensual indulgence. The example of the lover of Laura has for five centuries been adduced in support of this opinion. But, if Petrarch has contrived to throw a beautiful veil over the figure of love, which the Grecian and Roman poets always represented naked, that veil is so transparent, that we can still recognize the same form. On this part of the subject we cannot do better, perhaps, than refer the reader to a former Article in this Number, in which the origin and nature of + Petr. Variarum Epist. 28. Epis. ad Posteros. love, as it was conceived in the Platonic school, is professedly discussed; contenting curselves here with succinctly offering a few observations on the love of Petrarch-on his poetry, so easy to admire, but so difficult to understand;-and on his mind and character, which will be more easily and accurately ascertained by the attentive examination of his own writings, than by the accounts of his biographers. Amongst the curiosities of the library of Trivulzi of Milan, there must still be two copies, bearing the date 1372, of a work written by a Dominican, in which is the following anecdote:Francis Petrarch, who is still living, had a spiritual mistress, to whom he owes all his glory, and since her death he has spent so much in charities to the church for masses, that if she had lived as a profligate woman, they would have redeemed her from the hands of the devil, but it is said that she died devout.' Thus philosophy and religion conspired with the chivalrous manners of the times to flatter and embellish the most irresistible of all human propensities. A facility in yielding to love was the least equivocal mark of a benevolent mind; constancy, disinterestedness, and submission to the sex, were the most certain pledges of military valour and of heroism: beautiful poetry was no proof of the genius of the poet, but of the force of the passion by which he was inspired. Beauty, rank, the domestic virtues, had no merit, except as they were celebrated by the adoration of a lover and the passion of a poet. In the time of Petrarch, Agnese de Navarre, Comtesse de Foix, wrote some love verses to Guillaume de Machaut, a French poet. He became jealous, and she sent her own confessor to him to complain of the injustice of his suspicions, and to swear that she was still faithful. She required also of her lover to write and to publish in verse the history of their loves, and she preserved at the same time, in the eyes of her husband and of the world, the character of a virtuous princess. The reputation, and perhaps the virtues of the fair sex, were protected by the Cours d'Amour,' which were held for two ages throughout all France. They were at once the schools and the tribunals where the prizes were decreed to the best poets and the most faithful lovers,-where problems of gallantry were solved,-where proceedings were instituted, and individuals condemned. There the ladies officiated as judges, and from them there was no appeal. In spite of the ridicule which must attach to such an institution, vanity and fashion made these tribunals (over which princesses sometimes presided, and in which husbands were not permitted to complain of the indifference of their wives) to be sought after and feared. The Comtesse de Champagne, daughter of Louis le Jeune, decided in her tribunal, ' en amour tout est grace; et dans le mari age age tout est nécessité; par conséquent l'amour ne peut pas exister entre gens mariés.' The queen, to whom an appeal was made against such decisions, replied, A Dieu ne plaise que nous soyons assez osées pour contredire les décisions de la Comtesse de Cham It was in the midst of France, and of these customs, it was with a disposition virtuous, but restless and impatient for celebrity,—with an imagination disgusted with the actual condition of the world, and occupied in the conception of an imaginary happiness, that Petrarch, at the age of twenty-five, became enamoured of Laura, who had then hardly completed her nineteenth year. It is not difficult to mark the progress, and to describe the nature of his passion, if we examine all the circumstances which prompted the various pieces of poetry which he addressed to Laura; especially as Petrarch was careful in observing the order of time, and in arranging them according to the occasions which gave them birth; with the exception of five or six, necessary to complete the history of his feelings, which he has placed at the beginning of his collection, although they were composed in his old age. Mr. Campbell's observation, that the nature of Cowper's works makes us identify the poet and the man who wrote only for the developement of his own earnest feelings,' is equally applicable to Petrarch. The collection of his verses on Laura affords the progressive interest of a novel to the few, who, by the perusal of his Latin writings, are acquainted with the circumstances of his love: but many of these circumstances are so trifling in themselves, that they would hardly arrest the attention of a reader warmed by the ardour of his sentiments, by the variety of his images, the elevation of his conceptions, and the sweetness of his versification. Petrarch in his youth mistrusted his own talents, was disgusted with the world, and with the trouble necessary to be taken in order to live with as little evil as possible, and felt himself so dismayed by the uncertainty and insufficiency of all human knowledge, that he was on the point of abandoning letters for ever, and asked the advice of a friend more advanced in years :- Shall I quit study? shall I enter into another course? Have pity on me, my father!' -Now, if we remark that a few months after the date of this letter he became in love with Laura, we can believe him more readily when he says in his verses, That in her he hoped to have found happiness on earth! that she was the motive and object of all his studies; that he coveted glory only as it might secure her * The Della Crusca Academy quotes a manuscript, dated 1408, bearing the title of Libro d'Amore, where a great many of these decisions are to be found registered. esteem; esteem; that she alone had taught him to desire life, and to lift his thoughts towards heaven; and that if his passion for her had once been guilty and devouring flame, it had since become a light to enlighten and to purify his soul, to fix his mind, and to harmonize those faculties which would otherwise have been a prey to perturbation.' It is stated in a memorandum still existing, and evidently written in the hand of Petrarch, that Laura was buried in the church of the Cordeliers, at Avignon. On opening, in 1533, a tomb in this church, there were found amongst some decayed bones in the burial place of the Sade family, a medal of bronze, and a parchment with some verses, indicating that the remains were those of the object of Petrarch's affection. Two centuries afterwards the Abbé de Sade, on examining the archives of his house, published and illustrated a series of old wills and contracts, which also lead to the conclusion that the remains found in the tomb were those of Laura; that she was the daughter of Audibert de Noves, and that she was married in her eighteenth year to Hugh de Sade. Petrarch became acquainted with her two years after her marriage. But whatever we may have gained in truth we have lost in illusion-an illusion which an ingenious author has endeavoured to revive, but in vain. We will not insist on the authority of ancient documents, since he rejects them as forgeries of the sixteenth century; but the same arguments, the same grammatical disquisitions, the same quotations from Petrarch, which the author of a Critical and Historical Essay on the Life and Character of Petrarch' published in Edinburgh, 1812, adduces to persuade us that Laura was unmarried, lead to the very conclusion that she was a wife, and the mother of several children. The knot of the question consists in an abbreviation to be found in some manuscripts of a Latin work by Petrarch, in which he says of Laura, Corpus ejus crebris PTBS exhaustum.' If this abbreviation might be interpreted by the word perturbationibus, as this learned Scotchman would have it, we might imagine that the constitution of Laura had sunk under perpetual affliction, and that Petrarch does not merit the imputation of having sighed for the wife of another. But unfortunately the more direct interpretation of PTBS is partubus, and the words crebris, corpus, exhaustum combine more logically with it to express that her constitution was exhausted by frequent childbearing. The terms mulier and famina, by which her lover continually desig * In his dialogues with St. Augustin, a book in which he has poured out all his feelings, and which he entitled De Secreto Conflictu Curarum Surarum, he confesses that he was more ardent in his desire of the laurel crown, ou account of its affinity to the name of Laura.-Op. t. i. p. 403. Ed. Basil. 1581. nates nates her in Latin, instead of virgo and puella, and those of donna and madonna in Italian, signify more properly a married than an unmarried woman. It must be confessed that donna is also a general term, and that, being derived from domina, it is used in poetry as an appellation of respect; but when it is opposed to giovine, or vergine, or donzella, it signifies strictly a married woman; and no person has yet remarked a line of the poet, in which he says of Laura, 'La bella giovinetta ch' ora è donna.'-Part. i. canz. 6 15. At first Petrarch saw in Laura only the most beautiful of women; one whom he was destined to love, and who animated and ennobled his talents. He next discovered in her the form and the virtue of an angel; and that he might raise her above every earthly idea, he never explicitly mentions that she was the wife of another man. At last, however, he felt and confessed' that she was a woman-the only one who had ever appeared a woman in his eyes;' that he was burning with envy, jealousy and love;' that he had prepared the illusion for himself,' and that the fairest portion of his life was consumed in a horrible and shameful passion.' The desires of an earthly love, which escape him in expressions and lines which are not ordinarily observed, because Petrarch is generally read with a partial prepossession, are so plain, that we cannot allow ourselves to quote them. 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 following sonnet (which, if it does not surpass, does not yield to the original) might serve well for a painter to represent Petrarch and Laura at the moment that he is taking leave of her for a long time. 'A tender paleness stealing o'er her cheek, Veil'd her sweet smile as 'twere a passing cloud, That in my eyes my full soul strove to speak: Communion hold in Heav'n; so beam'd serene VOL. XXIV. NO. XLVIII. M M away ?'-Lady Dacre. Im |