FOOTNOTES:
[29] Madame Deshoulières speaks "avec connaissance de fait," and even points out the very spot in which Laura, "de l'amoureux Petrarque adoucit le martyre."—Another French lady, who piqued herself on being a descendant of the family of Laura, was extremely affronted and scandalised when the Chevalier Ramsay asserted that Petrarch's passion was purely poetical and platonic, and regarded it heresy to suppose that Laura could have been "ungrateful,"—such was her idea of feminine gratitude!—(Spence's Anecdotes.) Then comes another French woman, with the most anti-poetical soul that God ever placed within the form of a woman—"Le fade personage que votre Petrarque! que sa Laure était sotte et precieuse! que la Cour d'Amour était fastidieuse!" &c. exclaims the acute, amusing, profligate, heartless Madame du Deffand. It must be allowed that Petrarch and Laura would have been extremely desplaçes in the Court of the Regent,—the only Court of Love with which Madame du Deffand was acquainted, and which assuredly was not fastidieuse.
[30] From the Dialogues with St. Augustin, as quoted in the "Pieces Justificatives," and by Ginguené (Hist. Litt. vol. iii. notes.) These imaginary dialogues are a series of Confessions not intended for publication by Petrarch, but now printed with his prose works.
[31] Sonnet 39.
[32] Ballata 5.
[33] Petrarch withdrew to Vaucluse in 1337, and spent three years in entire solitude. He commenced his journey to Rome in 1341, about fourteen years after his first interview with Laura.
[34] Petrarch asks her whether it was "pain to die?" she replies in those fine lines which have been quoted a thousand times:
La Morte è fin d' una prigion oscura
Agli animi gentili; agli altri è noia,
Ch' hanno posto nel fango ogni lor cura.
Ma non si ruppe almen ogni vel quando
Sola i tuoi detti, te presente accolsi
"Dir più non osa il nostro amor," cantando.
(The song here alluded to is not preserved in Petrarch's works, and the expression "il nostro amore," is very remarkable.)
[36] This sounds at first pedantic; but it must be remembered that at this very time Petrarch was studying Seneca, and writing a Latin poem on the history of Scipio: thus the ideas were fresh in his mind.
[37] The hypothesis I have assumed relative to Laura's character, her married state, and the authenticity of the MS. note in the Virgil, have not been lightly adopted, but from deep conviction and patient examination: but this is not the place to set arguments and authorities in array—Ginguené and Gibbon against Lord Byron and Fraser Tytler. I am surprised at the ground Lord Byron has taken on the question. As for his characteristic sneer on the assertion of M. de Bastie, who had said truly and beautifully—"qu'il n'y a que la vertu seule qui soit capable de faire des impressions que la mort n'efface pas," I disdain, in my feminine character, to reply to it; I will therefore borrow the eloquence of a more powerful pen:—"The love of a man like Petrarch, would have been less in character, if it had been less ideal. For the purposes of inspiration, a single interview was quite sufficient. The smile which sank into his heart the first time he ever beheld Laura, played round her lips ever after: the look with which her eyes first met his, never passed away. The image of his mistress still haunted his mind, and was recalled by every object in nature. Even death could not dissolve the fine illusion; for that which exists in the imagination is alone imperishable. As our feelings become more ideal, the impression of the moment indeed becomes less violent; but the effect is more general and permanent. The blow is felt only by reflection; it is the rebound that is fatal. We are not here standing up for this kind of Platonic attachment, but only endeavouring to explain the way in which the passions very commonly operate in minds accustomed to draw their strongest interests from constant contemplation."—Edinburgh Review.