[566] [{479}] See An Historical and Critical Essay on the Life and Character of Petrarch; and A Dissertation on an Historical Hypothesis of the Abbé de Sade. 1810. [An Italian version, entitled Riflessioni intorno a Madonna Laura, was published in 1811.]
[567] Mémoires pour la Vie de François Pétrarque, Amsterdam, 1764, 3 vols. 4to.
[568] Letter to the Duchess of Gordon, August 17, 1782. Life of Beattie, by Sir W. Forbes, ii. 102-106.
[569] Mr. Gibbon called his Memoirs "a labour of love" (see Decline and Fall, chap. lxx. note 2), and followed him with confidence and delight. The compiler of a very voluminous work must take much criticism upon trust; Mr. Gibbon has done so, though not as readily as some other authors.
[570] [{480}] The sonnet had before awakened the suspicions of Mr. Horace Walpole. See his letter to Dr. Joseph Warton, March 16, 1765.
[571] "Par ce petit manège, cette alternative de faveurs et de rigueurs bien ménagée, une femme tendre & sage amuse pendant vingt et un ans le plus grand Poète de son siècle, sans faire la moindre brêche à son honneur." Mémoires pour la Vie de Pétrarque, Préface aux Français, i. p. cxiii.
[572] In a dialogue with St. Augustin, Petrarch has described Laura as having a body exhausted with repeated ptubs. The old editors read and printed perturbationibus; but M. Capperonier, librarian to the French king in 1762, who saw the MS. in the Paris library, made an attestation that "on lit et qu'on doit lire, partubus exhaustum." De Sade joined the names of Messrs. Boudot and Béjot with M. Capperonier, and, in the whole discussion on this ptubs, showed himself a downright literary rogue. (See Riflessioni, p. lxxiv. sq.; Le Rime del Petrarca, Firenze, 1832, ii. s.f.) Thomas Aquinas is called in to settle whether Petrarch's mistress was a chaste maid or a continent wife.
"Pigmalion, quanto lodar ti dei
Dell' immagine tua, se mille volte
N' avesti quel, ch' i' sol una vorrei!"
Sonetto 50, Quando giunse a Simon l'alto concetto.
Le Rime, etc., i. 118, edit. Florence, 1832.