As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake;
The centre mov’d, a circle straight succeeds;
Another still, and still another spreads;
Friend, parent, neighbor, first it will embrace;
His country next; and next, all human race.
The chief design of this work was, to exhibit the necessity of combining the uses of solitude with those of society; to show, in the strongest light, the advantages they may mutually derive from each other; to convince mankind of the danger of running into either extreme; to teach the advocate for uninterrupted society, how highly all the social virtues may be improved, and its vices easily abandoned, by habits of solitary abstraction; and the advocate for continual solitude, how much that indocility and arrogance of character which is contracted by a total absence from the world, may be corrected by the urbanity of society, and by the company and conversation of the learned and polite.
Petrarch, while in the prime of life, and amidst the happiest exertions of his extraordinary genius, quitted all the seducing charms of society, and retired from love and Avignon, to indulge his mind in literary pursuits, and to relieve his heart, from the unfortunate passion by which it was enthralled. No situation, he conceived, was so favorable for these purposes as the highly romantic and delightful solitude of Vaucluse. It was situated within view of the Mediterranean sea, in a little valley, inclosed by a semicircular barrier of rocks, on a plain as beautiful as the vale of Tempe. The rocks were high, bold, and grotesque; and the valley was divided by a river, along the banks of which were meadows and pastures of a perpetual verdure. A path on the left side of the river, led, by gentle windings, to the head of this vast amphitheatre. At the foot of the highest rock, and directly in front of the valley, was a prodigious cavern, hollowed by the hand of nature, from whence arose a spring almost as celebrated as that of Helicon. The gloom of the cavern, which was accessible when the waters were low, was tremendous. It consisted of two excavations; the one forming an arch of sixty feet high; and the other, which was within, of thirty feet. In the centre of this subterraneous rock was an oval basin, of one hundred and eight feet diameter, into which that copious stream which forms the river Sorgia rises silently, without even a jet or bubble. The depth of this basin has eluded all attempts to fathom it. In this charming retreat, while he vainly endeavored, during a period of twenty years, to forget, he enabled himself to endure the absence of his beloved Laura, and to compare, with the highest satisfaction, the pure pleasures of rural retirement with the false joys of a vicious and corrupted court, the manners and principles of which, indeed, he had always had good sense enough to discover and despise. But this solitude, with all its charms, could not at length prevent him from returning to the more splendid and busy scenes of public life. The advantages he had derived from a retreat of twenty years, would, he conceived, enable him to mix with the world without the danger of being corrupted by its vices; and after reasoning with himself for some time in this way, he suddenly abandoned the peaceful privacy of Vaucluse, and precipitated himself into the gayest and most active scenes of a luxurious city. The inhabitants of Avignon were amazed to behold the hermit of Vaucluse, the tender fugitive from love, the philosophic contemner of society, who could scarcely exist, except in the midst of romantic rocks and flowery forests, shining all at once the bright star of the fashionable hemisphere, and the choice spirit of every private and public entertainment.
We’re sadly ignorant, when we hope to find
In shades a med’cine for a troubled mind;
Wan grief will haunt us wheresoe’er we go,