When Rome rose against the tyranny of the noble houses, Colonna and Orsini, and when Cola di Rienzi proclaimed himself the Tribune of the People, Petrarch's imagination took fire, and he hailed the deliverer in prose and verse. Cardinal Colonna was deeply offended at his taking the part of one whom he regarded as a rebel and a traitor. This diversity of opinion seems to have induced him to leave the Papal Court, and for some years he resided in various towns of Italy. He was in Parma, where he had just received a valuable benefice attached to the Cathedral, when he heard of the death of his beloved Laura. The blow was terrible, and he long refused to be comforted. But if he lost his love, he gained a friend, for in the year of Jubilee, 1350, on his way to Rome, he made the acquaintance of Boccaccio at Florence. This was his first visit to the Tuscan city, and the Florentines offered to restore his father's confiscated property, on condition that he should lecture at their newly-founded University. But this he refused, and nothing came of the offer. For many years he lived in Milan, the favoured guest of the Visconti. There is a pretty story of Galleazzo Visconti telling his little son in jest, at a brilliant entertainment he was giving, to find out the wisest man present, and to bring him forward. The child looked at the assembled company, and then went up to Petrarch and led him to his father, to the admiration of all beholders. "So clearly," says Schopenhauer, who quotes the anecdote, "does Nature stamp the greatness of the mind on the countenance, that even a child can perceive it."
Petrarch was sent by the Visconti to Prague, as envoy to the Emperor Charles IV, and afterwards in the same capacity to King John of France. He subsequently resided in Padua and Venice, and in 1370 he retired to the village of Arqua, in the Euganean mountains, where he was destined to pass the remainder of his days. He was found on the morning of the 18th of July, 1374, dead in his library, with his head resting on a book.
The host of imitators who, without a spark of Petrarch's genius, mimicked his mannerisms for centuries, produced at last the inevitable reaction, and of recent years many censors have insisted on his faults, while ignoring his beauties. But Petrarch was assuredly one of the greatest lyric poets that ever lived. The melody of his sonnets and the splendour of his odes are unrivalled in the literature of his country, nor did any Italian lyrist rise to an equal height until in the Nineteenth Century Leopardi combined inspiration no less ardent with a style more natural, simple and direct. Petrarch is one of those poets who present nothing to their readers in a sharp and graphic style, but everything involved in a rich haze of trope and metaphor. From this tendency, it cannot be denied, he becomes occasionally artificial and forced, but he is far more frequently soul-stirring and magnificent. Unlike Dante, whose chief inspirers were hatred and indignation, he is prompted by love and reverence: love for his country and for Laura, and reverence for all that is noble and heroic. His sublime ode, Spirto gentil, addressed to Rienzi, rouses the spirit like a trumpet, even after the lapse of so many centuries. How noble is the invocation to the heroes of ancient Rome: "O grandi Scipioni! O fedel Bruto!" And the conclusion is superb:
"Sopra il monte Tarpeo, Canzon, vedrai,
Un cavalier[1] ch' Italia tutta onora,
Pensoso più d'altrui che di sè stesso.
Digli: Un che non ti vide ancor da presso,
Se non come per fama uom s'innamora,
Dice che Roma ogni ora,
Con gli occhi di dolor bagnati e molli
Ti chier mercè da tutti sette i colli."
Magnificent is the Ode to Italy, Italia Mia, and even superior, if possible, is the poem addressed to Giacomo Colonna in favour of another Crusade. Marvellous in their delicate beauty are the Odes addressed to Laura, In quella parte dov' Amor mi sprona, and, Di pensier in pensier, di monte in monte. But to enumerate the poems in which extraordinary beauties are to be found would be to enumerate nearly the whole collection. The tenderness and fire, the melody and richness of his style are equalled by no poet in any language unless it be by Tennyson in his finest lyric effusions, especially in the In Memoriam.
That Petrarch brought the Sonnet to the highest point of perfection is universally allowed, and to those readers who wish to enter into the details of the subject, I can recommend The Sonnet, its origin and history, by Charles Tomlinson.
Dante was altogether a man of the Middle Ages, dwelling upon the past, and scarcely bestowing a thought upon the future; but Petrarch was in many respects surprisingly modern, and both in his Latin Prose and in his Italian Verse we can find many passages instinct with the fire of hope and the belief in progress.
[1] Rienzi.