"And, says the anatomic art,
The stomach's very near the heart;"
as Peter Pindar also maintains. Some also, with an accuracy worthy Moubrays treatise on domestic fowls, have informed us that the hens near the fountain of Vaucluse are peculiarly prolific in fine eggs, and so on. For my own part, I may as well honestly confess that I am more partial to the memory of Petrarch as a philosopher, a patriot, and reviver of ancient learning, than as the Werter of Troubadours, though in the latter capacity he has stood unrivalled for five hundred years. I must own, also, that the hermitage whither he retired to stifle his rebellious passion for the wife of another, however melancholy and impressive the ideas may be which it would of itself excite, is poisoned, in my mind, by the pestilent frivolities with which the mawkish of all ages have defaced its sombre features, in violation of truth and sound feeling. What syllables of dolour the forgotten Della-Cruscan school may have yelled out on the subject, is not worth ascertaining, and probably recollected by few or none. The French, who with all their ingenuity, are not very apt at comprehending the madness of contemplative minds, have caricatured the shade of poor Petrarch most woefully, and[35] the Abbé Delille (peace to his ashes!) has teazed the innocent trees of Vaucluse with embarrassing questions, fitter for the mouths of Susanna's elders. Under such blighting influence, the stern rocks of Vaucluse are transformed into a sentimental tea-garden, the high-minded and melancholy Petrarch into a more ingenious Piercie Shafton, and the virtuous Laura, who probably never saw the place, into a starched Gloriana of the old school, paraded and gallanted round it with all due form. It is, perhaps, a judgment on Petrarch's adulterous Platonism, that it has laid him open to impertinences like these, which would torture his sensitive ghost almost as keenly as oblivion itself, and which very strongly remind one of Punch's intrusion at a tragedy. Such ideas cannot be engrafted on the [36]Nonwenwerder, or the[36]Pena de los Enamorados, spots on which a simple and obscure legend has thrown an interest which Vaucluse cannot really possess, though embellished by every thing which poetry can do for it.
It were to be wished, that the shade of Petrarch could return to his former haunts, to frighten away frivolous visitors, and read a lesson to the thinking. Instead of rejoicing at the posthumous fame which his poetical talents have earned, he would probably dwell on the insufficiency of the highest mental endowments without conduct and self-command. He would also probably describe his passion as fostered by the pedantic and high-flown gallantry of the age, and the applauses bestowed on his verses; as increasing and strengthening, after the marriage of Laura had rendered it criminal, without any purpose which his better conscience dared avow, till his eyes at length opened themselves too late to its culpable nature. His mind, of that high-wrought and desponding tone which often characterizes extraordinary genius, and too sincere to trifle with impunity, struggled then fruitlessly against a fatality formerly imagined, but become real; and the flower of his life was passed amid illusions and conflicts, in alternate self-deception and self-reproach, in wild and beautiful visions from which he awoke to sickness of heart and weariness of himself and all things, like the victim of a powerful opiate. Compromising weakly between his passion and his conscience, he would say, he secluded himself at Vaucluse from a society which had become dangerous to him, and by the verses which he composed as a vent to his feelings, fixed the illusion too deep to be eradicated by lapse of time, or the indifference of Laura. Such voluntary mental martyrdom resembles the punishment inflicted by some tyrant of history on his prisoners, whom he commanded to embrace his Apega, a beautiful automaton so constructed as to plunge a concealed dagger into their hearts.
The better feelings of Petrarch's readers will dwell with the least alloy on the period after the death of Laura, when he contemplated her as beyond the reach of human ties, affections, or jealousies, and sought only to rescue from oblivion the virtues and purity which had strengthened and refined his passion, while they rendered it hopeless. There is a beautiful passage in Campbell which appears exactly written to express his state of mind at this time, and the retrospective glance which he must have often cast on his past life.
"And yet, methinks, when wisdom shall assuage
The griefs and passions of our greener age,
Though dull the close of life, and far away,
Each flower that hailed the dawning of our day,
Yet o'er her lovely hopes that once were dear,
The time-taught spirit, pensive, not severe,
With milder griefs her aged eye shall fill,
And weep their falsehood, though she love them still!"
The private memorandum,[37] written in the manuscript Virgil, of this extraordinary man, which is shown in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, may be considered as expressing his most undisguised feelings, as excited by an event which dissolves trifling attachments, while it gives permanence to those of a genuine nature. It was probably intended for no eye but his own. I annex as literal a translation as possible, and from the beauty and ease of their latinity, have been tempted to precede it with the original words.
"Laura, propriis virtutibus illustris, et meis longum celebrata carminibus, primum oculis meis apparuit sub primum adolescentiæ meæ tempus, anno Domini 1327, die 6 mensis Aprilis, in ecclesiâ sanctæ Claræ Avinioni, horâ matutinâ. Et in eâdem civitate, eodem mense Aprilis, eodem die 6, eâdem horâ primâ, anno autem Domini 1348, ab hac luce lux illa subtracta est, cum ego forte Veronæ essem, heu fati mei nescius! Rumor autem infelix, per literas Ludovici mei, me Parmæ reperit, anno eodem, mense Maii, die mane.
"Corpus illud castissimum ac pulcherrimum in loco Fratrum Minorum repositum est ipsâ die mortis ad vesperam. Animam quidem ejus, ut de Africano ait Seneca, in coelum, unde erat, rediisse, mihi persuadeo.
"Hæc autem, ad acerbam rei memoriam, amarâ quâdam dulcedine scribere visum est; hoc potissimum loco, qui sæpe sub oculis meis redit, ut cogitem nihil esse debere quod amplius mihi placeat in hac vitâ, et effracto majori laqueo, tempus esse de Babylone fugiendi, crebrâ horum inspectione, ac fugacissimæ ætatis æstimatione, commonear. Quod, præviâ Dei gratiâ, facile erit, præteriti temporis curas supervacuas, spes inanes, et inexpectatos exitus acriter ac viriliter cogitanti."