After these details no man will deny that John Hunter possessed high genius, and that he employed his talents nobly. He was indeed of a family of genius: his younger brother was cut off early, but not until he had given promise of eminence. Dr. Hunter was, in our opinion, equal in talents to John, the subject of this memoir, though his mind received early a different bias. And in the next generation the celebrated Dr. Baillie, nephew to these brothers, contributed largely to the improvement of pathology, and afforded an instance of the most active benevolence joined to a plainness of manner most becoming in a physician. Joanna Baillie, his sister, still lives, honoured and esteemed, and will survive in her works as one of our most remarkable female writers.
The portrait from which the annexed engraving is made was painted at the suggestion of the celebrated engraver Sharpe, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and was among his last works. There could not indeed be a more picturesque head, nor one better suited to the burin. The original picture is in the College of Surgeons. It exhibits more mildness than we see in the engraving of Sharpe.
Surgeons’ Hall in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
Engraved by Robt. Hart.
PETRARCH.
From a Print by Raffaelle Morghen,
after a Picture by Tofanelli.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street, & Pall Mall East.
PETRARCH.
Francesco Petrarca, whose real name is said to have been Petracco, was born at Arezzo, in Tuscany, July 20, 1304. His father was a notary at Florence, who had been employed in the service of the state; but in the civil strife excited by Corso Donati, chief of the faction of the Neri, he, with the rest of the Bianchi, including Dante, whose friend he is recorded to have been, was banished from the Republic in 1302. When the death of the Emperor Henry VII. deprived the exiles of all hope of return, Petracco took his family to Avignon, at that period the seat of the Pontifical Court. The boy Francesco then saw for the first time scenes and objects, with which his destiny was irrevocably connected; and he has left on record the impression which at ten years of age the fountain and wild solitude of Vaucluse had made upon his imagination. He was sent to study the canon law at the University of Montpellier, where he remained four years, devoting his time to Cicero, Virgil, and the Provençal writers, much more than to the doctors of jurisprudence. From Montpellier he went to Bologna; and formed an acquaintance with the celebrated Cino da Pistoia, from whom, although distinguished no less as a jurist than as a poet, Petrarch learned more poetry than law. On his father’s death, which occurred when he was about twenty years old, he returned to Avignon. His mother died soon after; and the moderate patrimony which he inherited was so much diminished by the dishonesty of his guardians, that at the age of twenty-two, he found himself without fortune or profession, and with no resource, but that of entering the church.
Avignon was then the chosen abode of fashion, luxury, and vice. Petrarch mingled in its gay society, without yielding to its corruptions, or withdrawing himself from the philosophical studies which interested him above all other pursuits. A great conformity of tastes, and a common superiority to the low objects of ambition with which they were surrounded, made him the friend of Jacopo Colonna, afterwards Bishop of Lombez. This prelate introduced Petrarch to his brother, the Cardinal Colonna, who resided at Avignon; and in whose palace, in 1331, the poet acquired the friendship of old Stefano Colonna, the illustrious head of that family, and drew from his discourse a stronger love of Italy, of freedom, and of glory. But his affectionate, enthusiastic temper was not to be exhausted even by these objects: soon, without ever being entirely diverted from the interest of friendship or patriotism, he became the vassal of that long and illustrious passion to which he owes the immortality of his name. April 6, 1327, on Easter Monday, in the church of the Nuns of Santa Clara, Petrarch, being then twenty-three years of age, saw for the first time, and loved at sight, Laura de Noves, the bride of Hugo de Sade, a young patrician of Avignon. From this time his life was passed in wandering from place to place, sometimes at the several courts of Italian princes; sometimes in solitary seclusion at Vaucluse; often at Avignon itself, where from the lofty rock on which stands the old Pontifical Palace, he could see Laura walking in the gardens below, which with all the adjacent part of the town belonged to the family of de Sade.