[] Paradiso, cant. 16.
[c] Velli, Vita di Dante. Tiraboschi.
[d] The source from which Dante derived the scheme and general idea of his poem has been a subject of inquiry in Italy. To his original mind one might have thought the sixth Æneid would have sufficed. But besides several legendary visions of the 12th and 13th centuries, it seems probable that he derived hints from the Tesoretto of his master in philosophical studies, Brunetto Latini. Ginguené, t. ii. p. 8.
[e] There is an unpleasing proof of this quality in a letter to Boccaccio on Dante, whose merit he rather disingenuously extenuates; and whose popularity evidently stung him to the quick. De Sade, t. iii. p. 512. Yet we judge so ill of ourselves, that Petrarch chose envy as the vice from which of all others he was most free. In his dialogue with St. Augustin, he says: Quicquid libuerit, dicito; modo me non accuses invidiæ. Aug. Utinam non tibi magis superbia quam invidia nocuisset: nam hoc crimine, me judice, liber es. De Contemptu Mundi, edit. 1581, p. 342.
I have read in some modern book, but know not where to seek the passage, that Petrarch did not intend to allude to Dante in the letter to Boccaccio mentioned above, but rather to Zanobi Strata, a contemporary Florentine poet, whom, however forgotten at present, the bad taste of a party in criticism preferred to himself.—Matteo Villani mentions them together as the two great ornaments of his age. This conjecture seems probable, for some expressions are not in the least applicable to Dante. But whichever was intended, the letter equally shows the irritable humour of Petrarch.
[f] A goldsmith of Bergamo, by name Henry Capra, smitten with an enthusiastic love of letters, and of Petrarch, earnestly requested the honour of a visit from the poet. The house of this good tradesman was full of representations of his person, and of inscriptions with his name and arms. No expense had been spared in copying all his works as they appeared. He was received by Capra with a princely magnificence; lodged in a chamber hung with purple, and a splendid bed on which no one before or after him was permitted to sleep. Goldsmiths, as we may judge by this instance, were opulent persons; yet the friends of Petrarch dissuaded him from the visit, as derogatory to his own elevated station. De Sade, t. iii. p. 496.
[g] See the beautiful sonnet, Erano i capei d'oro all'aura sparsi. In a famous passage of his Confessions, he says: Corpus illud egregium morbis et crebris partubus exhaustum, multum pristini vigoris amisit. Those who maintain the virginity of Laura are forced to read perturbationibus, instead of partubus. Two manuscripts in the royal library at Paris have the contraction ptbus, which leaves the matter open to controversy. De Sade contends that "crebris" is less applicable to "perturbationibus" than to "partubus." I do not know that there is much in this; but I am clear that corpus exhaustum partubus is much the more elegant Latin expression of the two.
[] [I leave this as it stood. But my own taste has changed. I retract altogether the preference here given to the Triumphs above the Canzoni, and doubt whether the latter are superior to the Sonnets. This at least is not the opinion of Italian critics, who ought to be the most competent. 1848.]
[k] A sufficient extract from this work of Layamon has been published by Mr. Ellis, in his Specimens of Early English Poetry, vol. i. p. 61. This extract contains, he observes, no word which we are under the necessity of ascribing to a French origin.