Padua,
Jan.
5.
1372.
Ætat.
68.
"You ask me how I am," he writes to a friend: "I am tranquil, and liberated from the passions of youth. I enjoyed health for a long time—during the last two years I am grown infirm. My life has been declared to be in imminent danger, yet I am still alive. I am at present at Padua, fulfilling my duties as canon. I have quitted Venice, and rejoice to have done so, on account of the war between the republic and the lord of this city. In Venice I should have been suspected; here I am beloved. I pass a great part of my time in the country, which I always prefer to town. I read, I write, I think. I neither hate nor envy any man. During the early season of youth, I despised every one except myself—in maturer years I despised myself only—in my old age I despise almost all—and myself more than any. I fear only those whom I love, and my desires are limited to the ending my life well. I try to avoid my numerous visiters, and have a small agreeable house among the Euganean hills, where I hope to pass the rest of my days in peace—with the absent or the dead, perpetually in my thoughts. I have been invited by the pope, the emperor, and the king of France, who have often and earnestly solicited me to take up my abode at their several courts; but I have constantly refused, preferring my liberty before all things."
It is a singular circumstance that one of the last acts of Petrarch was, to read the "Decameron." Notwithstanding his intimate friendship with the author during twenty years, Boccaccio's modesty prevented his speaking of the work, and it fell into Petrarch's hands by chance. June
8.
1374.
Ætat.
70. "I have not had time," he writes to his friend, "to read the whole, so that I am not a fair judge; but it has pleased me exceedingly. Its great freedom is sufficiently excused by the age at which you wrote it, the lightness of the subject, and of the readers for whom it was destined. With many gay and laughable things, are mingled many that are serious and pious. I have read principally at the beginning and end. Your description of the state of our country during the plague, appears to me very true and very pathetic. The tale at the conclusion made so lively an impression on me that I committed it to memory, that I might sometimes relate it to my friends."
This is the story of Griselda. Petrarch translated it into Latin for the sake of those who did not understand Italian, and often read it and had it read to him. He relates, that frequently the friend who read it broke off, interrupted by tears. Among others to whom he communicated this favourite tale was our English poet Chaucer, who in his prologue to the story of Griselda says that he
"Learned it at Padowe of a worthy clerke,
Francis Petrarch."
Chaucer had been sent ambassador to Genoa just at this time.
The letter to Boccaccio accompanying the Latin translation of the story was probably the last that Petrarch ever wrote. The life of this great and good man had nearly arrived at its conclusion. On the morning of the 19th of July, 1374, he was found by his attendants in his library, his head resting on a book. As he often passed whole hours and even days in this attitude, it at first excited no peculiar attention; but the immovability of his posture at length grew alarming, and on inspection it was found that he was no more.
The intelligence of his death spread through Arquà, the Euganean hills, and Padua, and occasioned general consternation: people flocked from far and near to attend his funeral. Francesco da Carrara, with all the nobility of the city of Padua, was present. The bishop, with the chapter and clergy, performed the ceremony. The funeral oration was pronounced by Bonaventura da Peraga, of the order of the hermits of St. Augustin. The body was first interred in a chapel of the church at Arquà, dedicated to the Virgin, which Petrarch had himself built. A short time after, his son-in-law, Francesco Brossano, erected a marble monument opposite the church, and caused the body to be transferred to it; inscribing on the tomb four bad Latin verses, which it is said that Petrarch himself composed, ordering that no epitaph of greater pretension should record his death.
Petrarch directed in his will that none should weep his death. "Tears," he says, "are useless to the dead, and they injure the living:" he requested only that alms should be given to the poor, that they might pray for his soul. He continues, "Let them do what they will with my body; it imports nothing to me." He left Francesco Brossano his heir, and begs him, as his beloved son, to divide the money he should find into two parts; to keep one himself, and to give the other to the person he has mentioned to him. This is said to mean his daughter. He left several legacies to hospitals and religious houses. He bequeathed his good lute to Thomas Barbari, wherewith to sing the praises of God; and to Boccaccio he left fifty golden florins, to buy a robe lined with fur, for his winter studies; apologising at the same time for leaving so trifling a sum to so great a man.
This is a brief and imperfect sketch of Petrarch's life—drawn from the ample materials which his Latin prose works afford, and the careful researches of various biographers, particularly of the Abbé de Sâde, who ascertained, by infinite labour and perseverance, several doubtful facts concerning the persons with whom the poet's life is chiefly connected. Much more might be said of one whose history is pregnant with profound and various interest. It will be enough if these pages contain a faithful portrait, and impress the reader with a just sense, of his honest worth, his admirable genius, his high-toned feelings, and the many virtues that adorned his long career.