THE

CABINET CYCLOPÆDIA.

CONDUCTED BY THE

REV. DIONYSIUS LARDNER, LL.D. F.R.S. L. & E.

M.R.I.A. F.R.A.S. F.L.S. F.Z.S. Hon. F.C.P.S. &c. &c.

ASSISTED BY

EMINENT LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.

EMINENT
LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN
OF ITALY, SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.

VOL. I.

LONDON:
PRINTED FOR
LONGMAN, REES, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, & LONGMAN,
PATERNOSTER-ROW;
AND JOHN TAYLOR,
UPPER GOWER STREET.

1835.

CONTENTS

[DANTE]
[PETRARCH]
[BOCCACCIO]
[LORENZO DE' MEDICI, &c.]
[BOJARDO]
[BERNI]
[ARIOSTO]
[MACHIAVELLI]

LIVES
OF
EMINENT
LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.

[DANTE ALIGHIERI]

ITALY. 1265-1321.

——"'Tis the doom
Of spirits of my order to be rack'd
In life; to wear their hearts out, and consume
Their days in endless strife, and die alone:
—Then future thousands crowd around their tomb,
And pilgrims come from climes where they have known
The name of Him,—who now is but a name;
And wasting homage o'er the sullen stone,
Spread his, by him unheard, unheeded, fame."

LORD BYRON's Prophecy of Dante, Canto I.

Among the illustrious fathers of song who, in their own land, cannot cease to exercise dominion over the minds, characters, and destinies of all posterity,—and who, beyond its frontiers, must continue to influence the taste, and help to form the genius, of those who shall exercise like authority in other countries,—Dante Alighieri is, undoubtedly, one of the most remarkable.

This poet was descended from a very ancient stock, which, according to Boccaccio, traced its lineage to the Roman house of Frangipani,—one of whose members, surnamed Eliseo, was said to have been an early settler, if not a principal founder, of the restored city of Florence, in the reign of Charlemagne, after it had lain desolate for several centuries, subsequently to its destruction by Attila the Hun. From this Eliseo sprang a family, of which Dante gives, in the fifteenth and sixteenth cantos of his "Paradiso," such information, as he thought proper; making Cacciaguida (one of its most distinguished chiefs, who fell fighting in the crusade under the emperor Conrad III.,) say, rather ambiguously, of those who went before him, that "who they were, and whence they came, it is more honest to keep silence than to tell,"—probably, however, intending no more than to disclaim vain boasting, but not by any means to disparage his progenitors, for whom, in the fifteenth canto of the "Inferno," he seems to claim the glory of having been of Roman descent, and fathers of Florence. Cacciaguida, having married a noble lady of Ferrara, gave to one of his sons by her the name of Aldighieri (afterwards softened to Alighieri), in honour of his consort. This Alighieri was the grandfather of Dante; and concerning him, Cacciaguida, in the last-mentioned canto, informs the poet, that, for some unnamed offence, his spirit has been more than a hundred years pacing round the first circle of the mountain of purgatory; adding,—

"Ben si convien, che la lunga fatica
Tu gli raccorci con l' opere tue."

"And well it would be, were his long fatigue
Shorten'd by thy good deeds."

Dante was born in the spring of the year 1265. Benvenuta da Immola calls his father a lawyer; but little more is recorded of him except that he was twice married, and left two sons and a daughter, at an early age, to the guardianship of relatives. Dante (abridged from Durante) was born of Bella, his father's second wife, of whom, during her pregnancy, Boccaccio relates a very significant dream,—on what authority he does not say, and with what truth the reader may judge for himself. She imagined herself sitting under the shade of a lofty laurel, in the midst of a green meadow, by the side of a brilliant fountain. Here she was delivered of a boy, who, in as little time as might easily happen in a dream, grew up into a man before her eyes, by feeding upon the berries that fell from the tree, and drinking of the pure stream which watered its roots. Presently he had become a shepherd; but, climbing too eagerly up the stem to gather some leaves from the laurel, with the fruit of which he had been hitherto nourished, he fell headlong to the ground, and on rising appeared no longer a man, but a magnificent peacock. It would be aggravating the offence of wasting time by quoting such a fable, were we to give the obvious interpretation. This, however, the great Boccaccio has done with most magniloquent gravity,—a task for which, of all men, he was no doubt the most competent, as it is probable that no soul living (the lady herself not excepted) besides himself was in the secret either of the vision or the moral. One point of the latter, which could not easily be guessed, may be mentioned; namely, that the spots on the peacock's tail (the hundred eyes of Argus) foreshowed the hundred cantos of the "Divina Commedia." The ingenious author of the Decameron may have borrowed the idea of this dream from Dante's own allusion to the laurel and its leaves,—the meed of poets and of princes,—in his preposterous invocation of Apollo at the commencement of the "Paradiso."

Dante himself never alludes to this notable omen, though often referring, with conscious pride, to his genius, and the circumstances by which it had been awakened and exercised. This he attributed to the benign influence of the constellation Gemini, which ruled at his nativity. In the "Paradiso," Canto XXII., mentioning his flight from the planetary system to the eighth sphere, where the fixed stars have their dwelling, he exclaims,—

"O Reader! as I hope once more to reach
That realm of holy triumph[1], for whose sake
I oft lament my sins and smite my breast,
Thou could'st not, in so brief a space, through fire
Have pass'd and pluck'd thy finger, as I saw
And was within the sign that follows Taurus.
O glorious stars! light full of highest virtue!
From whence, whate'er it be, my genius sprang,
With you arose, and set the Sire of life[2],
When first I breathed the Tuscan air. With you
My lot was cast, when grace was given to mount
The lofty wheel which guides your revolutions.
To you, devoutly, my whole soul aspires
To gather courage for the bold adventure
That draws me onward tow'rds itself."[3]

Brunetto Latini (his tutor afterwards) is reported to have foretold the boy's illustrious destiny, on due consultation with the heavenly bodies that presided at his birth. Yet, superstitious as Dante appears to have been in this respect, in the twentieth canto of the "Inferno" he punishes astrologers, and those who presume to predict events, by twisting their heads over their shoulders, and making those for ever look backward who, too daringly, had looked forward into inscrutable futurity.

"People I saw within that nether glen,
Silent, and weeping as they went, with slow
Pace, like the chaunters of our litanies.[4]
As I gazed down on them, the chin of each
Seem'd marvellously perverted from the chest,
And from the reins the visage turn'd behind:
Wherefore, since none could look before him, all
Must needs walk backward;—so it may have chanced
To some one palsy-stricken, to be wrench'd
Thus all awry; but I have never seen
Aught like it, nor believe the like hath happened.
Reader,—so help thee Heaven to gather fruit
From this strange lesson!—think within thyself
If I could keep my countenance unwet
When I beheld our image so transposed,
That the eyes wept their tears between the shoulders."[5]

Though early deprived of his father by death, Dante appears to have been well attended to by his relatives and guardians, who placed him for education under Brunetto Latini and other eminent tutors. He was by them instructed not only in polite letters, but in those liberal accomplishments which became his rank and prospects in life. In these he excelled; yet, while he delighted in horsemanship, falconry, and all the manly as well as military exercises practised by persons of distinction in those days, he was, at the same time, so diligent a scholar, that he readily made himself master of all the crude learning then in vogue. It is stated by Pelli that, while yet a boy, he entered upon his noviciate at a convent of the Minor Friars. But his mind was too active and enterprising to enslave itself to dulness in any form; and he withdrew before the term of probation was ended.

According to Boccaccio, before he could be either student, sportsman, soldier, or monk, he became a lover; and a lover thenceforward to the end of his life he appears to have remained, with a passion so pure and unearthly, that it has been gravely questioned whether his mistress were a real or an imaginary being. The former, however, happening to be quite as probable as the latter, all true youths and maidens will naturally choose to believe that which is most pleasant, and give the credence of the heart to every eulogium which the poet, throughout his works, has lavished upon his Beatrice, whatever greybeards may think of the following story:—One fine May-day, when, according to the custom of the country, parties of both sexes used to meet in family circles, and, under the roofs of common friends, rejoice on the return of the genial season, Folco Portinari, a Florentine of no mean parentage, had invited a great number of neighbours to partake of his hospitality. As it was common on such occasions for children to accompany their relatives, Dante Alighieri, then in his ninth year, had the good fortune to be present; where, mingling with many other young folks, in their afternoon sports, he singled out, with the second sight of the future poet, that one whom his verse was destined to eternise. The little lady, a year younger than himself, was Bicè (the familiar abbreviation of Beatricè), daughter of the gentleman at whose house the festivities were held. She need not be pictured here; for premature as such a fit must have been, every one who remembers a first love, at any age, will know how she looked, how she spoke, how she stepped, and how her hero felt,—growing at every instant greater and better, and braver in his own esteem, that he might become worthy of hers:—suffice it to say, from Boccaccio, that Dante, though but a boy, received her beautiful image into his heart with such fondness of affection, that, from that day, it never departed thence.

In his "Vita Nuova" (a romantic and sentimental retrospect of his youth), he has himself described his raptures and his agonies in the commencement and progress of this passion; which was not extinguished, but refined; not buried with her body, but translated with its object, (her soul,) when Beatrice died, in 1290, at the age of twenty-four years. Judging from the general tenor of his poetry, of which his mistress was at once the inspirer and the theme, it must be presumed that the lady returned his noble attachment with corresponding tenderness and delicacy; though why they were not united by marriage has never been told. He intimates, indeed, that it was long before he could learn, by any token from herself, that his faithful passion was not hopeless. As usual in cases of this kind, a most unpoetical accident has been ill-naturedly interposed, by truth or tradition, to spoil a charm almost too exquisite to be more than a charm which the breath of five words might break. On the evidence of a marriage certificate, which Time unluckily dropped in his flight, and some poring antiquary picked up a century or two afterwards, it seems as though Beatrice became the wife of a cavalier de Bardi. Dante himself, however (who pretends to no bosom-secrets too dark to be uttered), never alludes to such a blight of his prospects on this side of that threefold world which he was afterwards privileged to explore, at her spontaneous intercession, that he might be purged from every baser flame than entire affection to herself, while she gave him in the eighth heaven a heart divided only with her God. After her decease, he intimates that he was tempted to infidelity to her memory (in which she was the bride of his soul), by the appearance at a window of a lady who so much resembled his "late deceased saint," that he almost forgot her in retracing her own loveliness in the features of this new apparition. His tears flowed freely at the sight; and he felt comforted by the sympathy of the beautiful stranger in his sufferings. But when, after a little while, he found love to the living symbol growing up like a serpent among the flowers, he fled in terror from it, before the gaze which had gained such power over his senses had irrevocably fascinated him to destruction; and he bewailed, in the most humiliating terms, the frailty of his heart and the wandering of his eyes. It is, moreover, the glory of his great work that the posthumous affection of Beatrice herself is represented as having so troubled her spirit, that, even amidst the blessedness of Paradise, she devised means whereby her lover might be reclaimed from the irregularities into which he had fallen after her restraining presence had been withdrawn from him on earth, and that he might be prepared, by visions of the eternal world, for future and everlasting companionship with her in heaven.

Dante, as he grew up to manhood, and for several years afterwards, continued successfully to pursue his studies in the universities of Padua, Bologna, and Paris. In the latter city he is said to have held various theological disputations, alike creditable to his learning, eloquence, and acuteness; though, from the failure of pecuniary means, he could not remain long enough there to obtain academical honours. On the authority of Giovanni da Serraville, bishop of Fermo, it has been believed that he also visited Oxford, where, as elsewhere, his different exercises gained him,—according to the respective tastes of his admirers,—from some the praise of being a great philosopher, from others a great divine, and, from the rest, a great poet. Serraville, at the request of cardinal Saluzzo and two English bishops, (Nicholas Bubwith, of Bath, and Robert Halam, of Salisbury,) whom he met at the council of Constance, translated Dante's "Divina Commedia" into Latin prose; of which one manuscript copy only, with a commentary annexed, is known to be in existence, in the Vatican library. The extraordinary interest which the two English prelates took in Dante's poem may be regarded as indirect, though of course very indecisive, evidence of his having been personally known at our famous university, and having been honourably remembered there. It is, however, certain that, soon after his decease, the "Divina Commedia" was in high repute among the few in this country who, during the reigns of Edward III. and Richard II., in a chivalrous age, cultivated polite letters. This is apparent from the numerous imitations of passages in it by Chaucer, who was then attempting to do for England what his magnificent prototype had recently done for Italy.

Uncertain as the traditions concerning this portion of Dante's life (and indeed of every other) may be, there is no doubt that he became early and intimately acquainted with the reliques of all the Roman writers then known in Italy. Among these, Virgil, Ovid, and Statius were his favourites, and naturally so, as excelling (each according to his peculiar genius) in marvellous and beautiful narrative, to which their youthful admirer's own sublime and daring genius intuitively led him. At the same time, he not less courageously and patiently groped his way through the labyrinths of school divinity, and the dark caverns of what was then deemed philosophy, under the bewildering guidance of Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas. Full proof of the improvement which he made, both under classical and polemical tutors and prototypes, may be traced in all his compositions, prose as well as verse, from the earliest to the last: yet, that which was his own, it must be acknowledged, is ever the best; and if, in addition to a large proportion of this, there had not been a savour of originality communicated to every thing which he borrowed or had been taught, his works must have perished with those of his contemporaries, who are now either nameless, or survive only as names in the titles of unread and unreadable volumes.

During this season of seed time for the mind, we are told that, notwithstanding his indefatigable labours in the acquirement and cultivation of knowledge, he appeared so cheerful, frank, and generous in deportment and disposition, that nobody would have imagined him to be such a devotee to literature in the stillness of the closet, or the open field of college exercises. On the contrary, he passed in public for a gallant and highbred man of the world; following its customs and fashions, so far as might be deemed consistent in a person of honour, and independence,—qualities on which he sufficiently prided himself; for which, also, in after life, he dearly paid the price,—and paid it, like Aristides, by banishment.

But Beatrice dying in 1290[6], her lover is reported to have fallen into such a state of despondency, that his friends, fearing the most frightful effects upon his reason not less than upon his health, persuaded him, as a last resource, to marry. Accordingly he took to wife Madonna Gemma, of the house of Donati; one of the most powerful families of Tuscany, and unhappily one of the most turbulent where few could be called pacific. By her he had five sons and a daughter. Her husband's biographers (with few exceptions) have conspired to darken this lady's memory with the stigma of being an insufferable shrew, who rendered his life a martyrdom by domestic discomforts. Aline in the "Inferno," Canto XVI., in which one of the lost spirits, Jacopo Rusticci, says,

"La fiera moglie, più ch' altro, mi nuoce,"

"More than aught else, my furious wife annoys me,"—

has often been quoted as referring, with indirect bitterness, to his own miserable union with a firebrand of a woman: yet, in no passage throughout the whole of his long poem, does Dante cast the slightest shade upon her character; though, with the frankness of honest censure or undisguised resentment, he spares nobody else, friend or foe, in the distribution of what he deemed impartial justice. One thing is exceedingly in favour of his own amiable and affectionate nature, in the nearest connections of life: whenever he mentions children in his similes (and he mentions them often), it is always with exquisite delicacy or endearing playfulness; while, in the tenderest tones, he descants on their beauty, their innocence, their sports, and their sufferings. Mothers, too, are among the loveliest objects which he presents in those sweet interludes of real life which he delights to bring in, and does so with consummate address, to relieve the horrors of the infernal pit, the wearying pains of purgatory, and the insufferable glories of Paradise. Concerning Dante's wife it may therefore be fairly presumed, that she was less of either termagant or tormentor than has been generally imagined by his over-zealous editors. The petulance of Boccaccio and the gravity of Aretino (two of his earliest biographers) on this subject are ludicrously contrasted. The former affects to be quite shocked at the idea of the sublime and contemplative poet being forced to lead the dull household life of other men, and submit to certain petty annoyances of daily occurrence.—On these he expatiates most pathetically, as things which might have been, though he fairly acknowledges that he does not know that any of them were, the causes of long unhappiness and final separation between the parties. Aretino, on the other hand, in sober sadness (without any reference to the ill qualities of either), justifies Dante for condescending to be married, on the ground that many illustrious philosophers, including Socrates, the greatest of all, were husbands and fathers, and held offices of state, in perfect compatibility with their intellectual pursuits!

It should not be overlooked, in mitigation of her occasional asperities, that, Madonna Gemma being the near kinswoman of Corso Donati, Dante's most formidable and inveterate rival in the party feuds of Florence, some drops of the gall of political rancour may have been infused into the matrimonial cup. The poet's known and avowed passion for Beatrice, living and dead, was alone sufficient to afflict a high-minded woman with the rankling consciousness that she had not all her husband's heart. It is, moreover, no small proof of her submission to his will and pleasure, that their only daughter bore the name of his first—last—only love, if we are to believe all the protestations of his verse. Be these things as they may, it must be concluded that he was coupled with a most unpoetical yoke-mate; and she with a lord and master not easy to be ruled by her or any body else. It has been loosely stated that "the poet, not possessing the patience of Socrates, separated himself from his wife, with such vehement expressions of dislike that he never afterwards allowed her to sit down in his presence." When this happened—if it ever so happened—does not appear; nothing further seems certain, except that she did not follow her husband into exile: but Boccaccio himself acknowledges, that after that event, having secured (not without difficulty) a small portion of his effects from confiscation as her dower, she preserved herself and their little children from the wretchedness of absolute poverty, by such expedients of industry and economy as she had never before been accustomed to practise.

It has been already intimated, that, though in all the logomachies of the schools Dante was an eager and skilful disputant, yet he was left behind by none of his contemporaries in those personal accomplishments which became his station. In the mean while he cultivated with constitutional ardour and diligence those higher qualifications, which, in the sequel, enabled him to serve his country as a citizen, a soldier, and a magistrate, under circumstances that called forth all his talents, valour, firmness, wisdom, and discretion; though, judging from the issue, the latter failed him oftener than the former. Eloquent, brave, and resolute he always was; but not always wise and discreet. This, indeed, might be presumed; for in the pursuit of distinction,—instead of attaching himself to the selfish and mercenary professions which oftenest lead to wealth, power, and family aggrandisement,—he preferred those generous studies which most exalt, enrich, and adorn the mind, but yet, while they gratify the taste of their votary, rather advance him in moral and intellectual eminence than to temporal and substantial prosperity. These, therefore, were exercises calculated to awaken and display the energies and resources of a temper formed to conceive, attempt, and achieve great things, so far—and perhaps so far only—as depended on his individual exertions. In the solitary case wherein he had official authority to direct difficult public affairs he failed so irrecoverably, that, during the residue of his life, he was more a sufferer than an actor in the troubles of those hideous times.

Italy, it must be observed, was still distracted with strife, in every form that strife could assume, between the factions of the Guelfs and Ghibellines;—the former, adherents of the pope; the latter, of the emperor of Germany. These factions not only arrayed state against state, but frequently divided people of the same province, the same city, and the same family against one another, in the most violent and implacable hostility,—hostility, violent in proportion as it was irrational, and implacable in proportion as it was unnatural; being, in every instance, and on both sides, contrary to the interests of their respective communities. Lombardy, especially since the Cisalpine conquests of Charlemagne, had never ceased to be a snare to his successors. The popes, who at first had affected spiritual dominion only, after the grant of territorial possessions, by that deed of Constantine to Silvester, which, having disappeared from earth, may be found, according to the veritable testimony of Ariosto, in the moon, the receptacle of all lost things[7], gradually aspired to secular power. But all their ambition and influence failed, in the end, to spread their secular sovereignty beyond those provinces adjacent to Rome, which they yet retain by courtesy of the catholic potentates of Europe.

At the time of Dante's birth, the Guelf or papal party had recently recovered their ascendancy at Florence, after having been expatriated for several years, in consequence of their disastrous overthrow at the battle of Monte Aperto. The poet was therefore educated in Guelfic principles, and adhered to them till his banishment, when the perfidious interference of the pope with the independence of his native city, and the atrocious hostility of its citizens against himself and his friends, compelled him to take part with the imperialists.

The first public character in which we find the patriotic poet distinguishing himself was that of a soldier. In one of the petty wars that were perpetually occurring between the little irascible republics in the north of Italy, the Florentines gained a decisive victory over their neighbours of Arezzo (who had harboured the Ghibelline refugees), at the battle of Campaldino, A. D. 1289. On this occasion, Dante, who served among the cavalry, was not only exposed to imminent peril at the commencement of the action, when that body was partially routed by the impetuosity of the enemy's charge, but when the squadron had rallied again on reaching the lines of infantry, and thence returned to the attack, he fought in the first rank, and displayed such extraordinary valour, as to claim a proud share in the glory of that day. To this conflict, and the particular service in which he had been engaged, he seems to allude in Canto XXII. of the Inferno. Having mentioned the signal given by Barbariccia (serjeant of a file of demons, appointed to escort Dante and Virgil over a certain dangerous pass on their journey,)—a signal too absurd to be repeated here, either in English or Italian, he says:—

"I have seen cavalry upon their march,
Hush to the combat, rally on the field,
And sometimes seek for safety in retreat:
I have seen jousts and tournaments array'd;
Seen clouds of skirmishers sweep through your fields,
Ye Aretines! and spoilers, lay them waste;
Drum, cymbal, trumpet, beacon from tower-top,
And other strange or native things their signals;
But never, at the blast of instrument
So barbarous have witness'd horse or foot,
Or ship, by star or landmark, put in motion:
—With those ten demons thus we took our way;
Fell company! but, as the proverb saith,
At church with saints, with gluttons in the tavern."[8]

In the following year Dante was again in the field, at the siege of Caprona. To this he alludes in Canto XXI. of the Inferno, where, under convoy of the aforementioned fiends, he compares his fears lest they should break truce with him and his companion, to the apprehensions of the garrison of that fortress when they marched out on condition of being permitted to depart unmolested with their arms and property; but were so terrified, on seeing the multitude and the rage of their enemies, who cried, "Stop them! stop them! kill them! kill them!" as they passed along, that they submitted to be sent in irons, as prisoners, to Lucca, for safeguard.

"Wherefore I moved right on towards my guide,
The devils marshalling themselves before,
For much I fear'd lest they should not keep faith:
So saw I once Caprona's garrison
Come trembling forth, upon capitulation,
To find themselves among so many foes.
I crouch'd with my whole frame beside my master,
Nor could I turn mine eyes away from watching
Their physiognomy, which was not good."[9]

During this active period of his citizenship, Dante is stated to have been frequently employed on important embassies; and, among others, to the kings of Naples, Hungary, and France; in all of which his eloquence and address enabled him to acquit himself with honour and advantage to his country: but as there is no allusion in any of his works, even to the most distinguished of these, it is very questionable whether the traditions are not, in many cases, wholly unwarranted; and probably founded upon misapprehension of the verbiage and bombast of Boccaccio, in his account of the political, philosophical, and literary labours of his hero.

In the year 1300, Dante was chosen, by the suffrages of the people, chief prior of his native city; and from that era of his arrival at the highest honour to which his ambition could aspire, he himself dated all the miseries which (like the file of evil spirits above mentioned) accompanied him thenceforward to the end of his life. In one of his epistles, quoted by Aretino, he says,—"All my calamities had their origin and occasion in my unhappy priorship, of which, though I might not for my wisdom have been worthy, yet on the ground of age and fidelity was I not unworthy; ten years having elapsed since the battle of Campaldino, in which the Ghibelline party was routed and nearly exterminated; wherein, also, I proved myself no novice in arms, but experienced great perils in the various fortunes of the fight, and the highest gratification in the issue of it." Since that triumph, the Guelfs had maintained undisputed predominance in Tuscany; but the citizens of Florence split into two minor factions as bitterly opposed to each other as the Guelfs and Ghibellines.

The following circumstance (considerably varied in particulars by different narrators) has been mentioned as the origin of this schism:—Two branches of the family of Cancellieri divided the patronage of Pistoia, which was then subject to Florence, between them. The heads of these were Gulielmo and Bertaccio. In playing at snow-balls, a son of the first happened to give the son of the second a black eye. Gulielmo, knowing the savage disposition of his kinsman, immediately sent his son to offer submission for the unlucky hit. Bertaccio, eager to avail himself of a pretext for quarrelling with the rival section of his house, seized the boy, and chopped off the hand which flung the snowball, drily observing, that blows could only be compensated by blows—not with words. Another version of the story is, that the young gentlemen, quarrelling over some game, drew their swords, when one wounded the other in the face; in retribution for which, Foccacio, brother to the latter, cut off his offending cousin's hand. The father of the mutilated lad immediately called upon his friends to avenge the inhuman outrage; Bertaccio's dependants not less promptly armed themselves to maintain his cause; and a civil war was ready to break out in the heart of the city. An ancestor of the Cancellieri family having married a lady named Bianchi, in honour of her one of the parties took the denomination of Bianchi (whites), when the other, in defiance, assumed the reverse, and styled themselves Neri (blacks).

This happened during the priorship of Dante, who, with the approbation of his colleagues, summoned the leaders of the antagonist factions to repair to Florence, to prevent that extremity of violence with which they threatened not Pistoia only, but the whole commonwealth. This, as Leonardo Bruni observes, was importing the plague to the capital, instead of taking means to repress it upon the spot where it had already appeared. For it so fell out, that Florence itself was principally under the influence of two great families,—the Cerchi and the Donati,—habitually jealous of one another, and each watching for opportunity to obtain the ascendancy. When, therefore, the hostages for preserving the peace of Pistoia arrived, the Bianchi were hospitably entertained by the Cerchi, and the Neri by the Donati; the natural consequence of which was, that the people of Florence were far more annoyed by the acquisition, than those of the neighbouring city were benefited by the riddance of so troublesome a crew. What these incendiary spirits had been doing in a small place, on a small scale, they forthwith began to do on a large scale, in a large place. Jealousies, fears, and antipathies were easily awakened among the families with which the partisans respectively associated. From these, through every rank of citizens down to the lowest, the contagion spread; first seizing the youth, who were sanguine and restless, but soon infecting persons of all ages; till every man who had a mind or an arm to influence or to act, enlisted himself with one side or the other. In the course of a few months, from whisperings the discontents rose to clamours, from words to blows, and from feuds in private dwellings to battles in the streets; so that not the metropolis only, but the whole territory, became involved in unnatural contention.

While this was in process, the heads of the Neri held a meeting by night in the church of the Holy Trinity, at which a plan was suggested to induce pope Boniface VIII. to constitute Charles of Valois, (who was brother to Philip the Fair, king of France, and then commanded an army under his holiness against the emperor,) mediator of differences and reformer-general of abuses in the state. The Bianchi, having received information of this clandestine assembly, and the unpatriotic project which had been devised at it, took grievous umbrage, and went in a body, with arms in their hands, to the chief prior, with whom they remonstrated sharply upon what they deemed a privy conspiracy hatched for the purpose of expelling themselves and their friends from the city; at the same time demanding summary punishment on the offenders. The Neri, alarmed in their turn, flew likewise to arms, and assailed the prior with the same complaint and demand reversed,—namely, that their adversaries had plotted to drive them (the Neri) into exile under false pretences; and requiring that they (the Bianchi) should be sent into banishment, to preserve the public tranquillity.

The danger was imminent, and prompt decision to avert it indispensable. The prior and magistrates, therefore, by the advice of Dante their chief, who was the Cicero in this double conspiracy, though neither so politic nor so fortunate as his eloquent archetype, appealed to the people at large to support the executive government; and, having conciliated their favour, banished the principal instigators of tumult on both sides, including Corso Donati (Dante's wife's kinsman) of the Neri party, who, with his accomplices, was confined in the castle of Pieve in Perugia; while Guido Cavalcanti (Dante's own particular friend) and others of the Bianchi faction were sent to Serrazana.

This disturbance, and the severe remedy necessary to be adopted, painfully tried the best feelings of Dante, who seems to have acted on truly independent principles in the affair, though suspected at the time of favouring the Bianchi. That, indeed, was probable; for though as chief magistrate he knew no man by his colours, yet, being a genuine Florentine,—and such he remained when Florence had banished and proscribed him,—he could not but he opposed to so preposterous a scheme as that of bringing in a stranger to lord it over his native city, under pretence of assuaging the animosities of malecontents, who cared for nothing but their own personal, family, or party aggrandisement, at the expense of the common weal.

This apparent impartiality was openly arraigned, when the Bianchi exiles were permitted to come back after a short absence, while the Neri remained under proscription. Dante vindicated himself by saying, that he had attached himself to neither party; that in condemning the heads of both he had acted solely for the public safety; and at home had used his utmost endeavours to reconcile the adverse families, who had implicated all their fellow-citizens in their feuds. With respect to the return of the Bianchi, he denied that it had been allowed on his authority, his priorate having expired before that event took place; and, moreover, that their release had been rendered necessary by the premature death of Guido Cavalcanti, who had been killed by the pestilent air of Serrazana. The pope, however, eagerly availed himself of the opportunity as a plea for sending Charles of Valois to Florence, to restore tranquillity by conciliation. That prince accordingly entered the city in triumph at the head of his troops, with a solemn assurance that liberty, property, and personal safety should in no instance be violated. In consequence of this he was well received by the people; but he had no sooner seated himself in influence than he obtained the recall of the Neri, who were his partisans. Then, having secured his authority by their presence, he threw off the mask, and began to play the part of dictator within the walls, as well as throughout the adjacent territory, by causing 600 of the principal men of the Bianchi to be driven forth into exile.

At the time of this expatriation of his friends, Dante was absent, having undertaken an embassy to Rome to solicit the good offices of the pope towards pacifying his fellow-citizens without foreign interference. Boccaccio records a singular specimen at once of his self-confidence, and his disparagement of others, which, if true, betrays the most unamiable feature of his character, and throws additional light on a circumstance not otherwise well accounted for,—why, with all his admirable qualities, Dante was unhappy in domestic life, and in public life made so many and such inveterate enemies.—When his associates in the government proposed this embassy to him, he haughtily enquired,—"If I go, who will stay? If I stay, who will go?" It was fortunate for the poet that his holiness and himself, on this occasion, were unconsciously playing at cross purposes, though he was beaten in the game,—the very intervention which he had gone to deprecate taking place whilst he was on the journey. Had he been at home, it is not improbable that death, rather than banishment with the Bianchi, would have been his lot, from the exasperation of the Neri against him individually, whom they regarded as the chief agent in their disgrace and exile, as well as the patron of their rivals. It is remarkable that the pretext on which the failing party were now expelled was, that they had secretly intrigued with Pietro Ferranti, the confidant of Charles of Valois, to give him the castle of Prato, on condition that he prevailed upon his master to allow them the ascendancy under him in Florence. Charles himself countenanced the accusation, and affected high displeasure at the insulting offer, as derogatory to his immaculate purity; though the purport of it was no other than to concede to him the express object of his ambition, if he would grant to the Bianchi faction what he did grant to the perfidious Neri. A document was long preserved as the genuine letter to Ferranti, with the seals and signatures of the principal Bianchi attached, containing the traitorous proposal; but Leonardo Aretino, who had himself seen it in the public archives, declares his perfect conviction that it was a forgery.

Of participation in such baseness (had his partisans been really guilty of it), Dante must stand clearly acquitted by every one who takes his character from the matter-of-fact statements, perverted as they are, of his adversaries themselves, much more from the unimpeachable evidence of his own writings;—open, undaunted, high-spirited, and generous as a friend, he was not less violent, acrimonious, and undisguisedly vindictive as an enemy. So exasperated, however, were the Neri against him, that they demolished his dwelling, confiscated his property, and decreed a fine of 8000 lire against him, with banishment for two years; not for any crime of which he had been convicted, but under pretence of contumacy, because he did not appear to a citation which had been issued when they knew him to be absent,—absent, it might be said, on their own business (his mission to Rome), where he could not be aware of the nature of his imputed offence till he heard of the condign punishment with which it had been thus prematurely visited. In the course of a few weeks a further inculpation of Dante and his associates was promulged, under which they were condemned to perpetual exile, with the merciless provision that, if any of them thereafter fell into the hands of their persecutors, they should be burnt alive. And this execrable measure seems to have been determined upon before the exiled party had made any attempt, by force of arms, to reenter Florence.

When Dante was informed at Rome of the revolution in Florence, he hastened to Siena, where, learning the full extent of his misfortune, he was driven, it may be said, by necessity to join himself to his homeless countrymen in that neighbourhood, who were concerting (though with little of mutual confidence, and miserably inadequate means) how they might compel their fellow-citizens to receive them back. Arezzo, the city of the Aretines (with whom Dante had combated at Campaldino), afforded them an asylum, and became the headquarters of the Bianchi; who thenceforward, from being, like the Neri, Guelfs, transferred their affections, or rather their wrongs and their vengeance, to the Ghibellines; deeming the adherents of the emperor less the enemies of their country than their adversaries were. Their affairs were managed by a council of twelve, of whom Dante was one. Great numbers of malecontents from Bologna, Pistoia, and the adjacent provinces of Northern Italy, gradually flocking to their standard,—in the course of two years they were sufficiently strong to take the field with a force of cavalry and foot exceeding 10,000, under count Alessandro da Romena, and to commence active hostilities. By a bold and sudden march, they attempted to surprise Florence itself, and were so far successful that their advanced guard got possession of one of the gates; but the main body being attacked and defeated on the outside of the walls, the former gallant corps was overpowered by the garrison; and the enterprise itself, after the campaign of a few days, was abandoned altogether. Dante, according to general belief, accompanied this unfortunate expedition; and so did Pietro Petracco, the father of the celebrated Petrarca (Petrarch), who had been expelled with the Bianchi from Florence; and it is stated, that on the very night on which the army of the exiles marched against the city, Petracco's wife Eletta gave birth to the poet who was to succeed Dante as the glory of his country's literature.

After this miscarriage Dante quitted the confederacy, disgusted by the bickerings, jealousies, and bad faith of the heterogeneous and unmanageable multitude, which, common calamities had driven together, but could not cement by common interests. The poet refers to this motley and discordant crew in the latter lines of the celebrated passage, in which he represents his ancestor. Cacciaguida, as prophesying his future banishment with the miseries and mortifications which he should suffer from the ingratitude of his countrymen:—

"For thou must leave behind thee every thing
Thine heart holds dearest.—This will be the first
Shaft which the bow of exile shoots against thee:
And thou must prove how salt the bread that's eaten
At others' tables, and how hard the path
To climb and to go down a stranger's stairs:
But what shall weigh the heaviest on thy shoulders,
Will be the base and evil company
With which thy lot hath cast thee in that valley;
For every thankless, lawless, reckless wretch
Shall turn against thee:—yet confusion, soon,
Of face shall cover them, not thee, with blushes;
Their brutishness will be so manifest,
That to have stood alone will be thy glory."[10]

Del Paradiso, XVII.

To the personal humiliations of which he chewed the cud in hitter secrecy, through years of heart-breaking dependence on the precarious bounty of others, there is a striking but forced allusion at the close of the eleventh canto of the "Purgatorio." Dante enquires concerning a proud spirit bent double under a huge burden of stones, which he is condemned to carry for as many years as he had lived, till he shall he sufficiently humbled to pass muster through the flames into Paradise. This is Provenzano Salvani, who for his acts of outrageous tyranny would have been doomed to a much harder penance, but for one good deed.—A friend of his being kept prisoner by Charles of Anjou, and threatened with death unless a ransom of 10,000 golden florins were paid for his freedom, Salvani so far degraded himself as to stand (to kneel, say some,) in the public market-place of Siena, with a carpet spread on the ground before him, imploring, with the cries and importunity of a common beggar, the charitable contributions of every passenger towards raising the required sum. This he accomplished, and his friend was saved.

"'He in his height of glory,' said the other,
Casting aside all shame, spontaneously,
Stood in the market of Siena, begging;
He, to redeem his friend from infamy
And death, in Charles's dungeons, did what made him
Tremble through every vein.—No more; my speech
Is dark; thy countrymen, ere long, will do
That which will help thee to interpret it."[11]

In despair of being able to force his way, sword in hand, back to Florence, Dante next endeavoured, by supplicating the good offices of individuals connected with the government, by expostulatory addresses to the people, and even by appeals to foreign princes, to obtain a reversal of his unrighteous sentence. Disappointment, however, followed upon disappointment, till, hope deferred having made the heart sick, he grew so impatient under the sense of wrong and ignominy, that he again had recourse to the summary but perilous redress of violence;—not indeed by force which he could command, though one in a million for energy, courage, and perseverance; but a powerful auxiliary having appeared in 1308, he gave up his whole soul to the main object of his desire at this time,—the chastisement of his inexorable fellow-citizens. Henry of Luxembourg, having been raised to the throne of Germany, eagerly engaged, like his predecessors, in the delusive contest for the "Iron crown" of Italy, though "Luke's iron crown"[12] (placed red hot on the brow of an unsuccessful aspirant to that of Hungary) was hardly more painful or more certainly fatal than this, except that it was far more expeditious in putting the wearer out of torture. Dante now rose from the dust of self-abasement, openly professed himself a Ghibelline, and changed his tones of supplication into those of menace against his refractory countrymen. Henry himself denounced terrible retribution upon the Guelfs, and at the head of an army invaded the Florentine territory; from which, however, he was compelled to make an early retreat; and the magnificent flourish of drums and trumpets, with which the imperial actor entered, was followed by a dead march, that closed the scene before he had turned round upon the stage—except to hurry away. He died in 1313, poisoned, it was reported, by a consecrated wafer. To this prince Dante dedicated his political treatise, in Latin, "De Monarchia," in which he eloquently asserts the rights of the emperor in Italy against the usurpations of the pope. He has been accused of exciting Henry to abandon the siege of Brescia, and undertake that of Florence; though, from regard to his native land, he himself forebore to accompany the expedition. He had affected no such scruple when the Bianchi, like trodden worms, turned upon the parent foot which spurned them from the soil where they were bred. There must, therefore, have been some other motive than patriotism,—nobody will suspect that it was cowardice,—which restrained him from witnessing the expected humiliation of his persecutors.

Several of his biographers state, that after this consummation of his ruin,—a third decree having been passed against him at Florence,—the poet retired into France, and strove to reconcile his unsubdued spirit to his fate, or to forget both it and himself in those fashionable theological controversies, for which he was, perhaps, better qualified than either for the council-chamber or the battle-field. This, however, is doubtful, and, in fact, very improbable, when we recollect that, next to the malice of the Neri, he was indebted for his misfortunes to Charles of Valois, their patron, who was brother to Philip the Fair, king of France. Be this as it may, the remainder of Dante's life was spent in wandering from one petty court to another, in exile and poverty, accepting the means of subsistence, almost as alms, from lukewarm friends, from hospitable strangers, and even from generous adversaries. Hence we trace him, at uncertain periods, through Lombardy, Tuscany, and Romagna, as an admitted, welcomed, admired, or merely a tolerated guest, according to the liberality or caprice of his patrons for the time being. Little more can be recorded of these "evil days" and "years," of which he was compelled to say, "I have no pleasure in them," than a few questionable anecdotes of his caustic humour, and the names of some of those who showed him kindness in his affliction.

Among the latter may be honourably mentioned Busone da Gubbio, who first afforded him shelter at Arezzo, whither he himself had been banished from Florence as an incorrigible Ghibelline; but being a brother poet, he was too noble to let political prejudice (Dante was at that time a Guelf) interfere either with his compassion towards an illustrious fugitive, or his veneration for those rare talents which ought every where to have raised the unhappy possessor above contempt, though, in some instances, they seem to have exposed him to it. Yet he knew well how to resent indignity. While residing at Verona with Can' Grande de la Scala (one of his most distinguished protectors), it happened one day, according to the rude usages of those times, that the prince's jester, or some casual buffoon about the palace, was introduced at table, to divert the high-born company there with his waggeries. In this the arch fellow succeeded so egregiously, that Dante, from scorn or mortification, showed signs of chagrin, whereupon Can'Grande sarcastically asked,—"How comes it, Dante, that you, with all your learning and genius, cannot delight me and my friends half so much as this fool does with his ribaldry and grimaces?"—"Because like loves like," was the pithy retort of the poet, in the phrase of the proverb. Another story of the kind is told by Cinthio Geraldi.—On occasion of a jovial entertainment, Can' Grande, or his jester, had placed a little boy under the table, to gather all the bones that were thrown down upon the floor by the guests, and lay them about the feet of Dante. After dinner these were unexpectedly shown above board, as tokens of his feasting prowess. "You have done great things to day!" exclaimed the prince, affecting surprise at such an exhibition. "Far otherwise," returned the poet; "for if I had been a dog, (Cane, his patron's name,) I should have devoured bones and all, as it appears you have done."[13]

Other grandees, who gave the indignant wanderer an occasional asylum from the blasts of persecution, were the marchese Malespina, who, though belonging to the antagonist party, cordially entertained him in Lunigiana; the conte Guido Salvatico, of Cassentino; the signori della Faggiuolo, among the mountains of Urbino; and also the fathers of the monastery of Santa Croce di Fonte Avellana, in the district of Gubbio. In this romantic retreat, according to the Latin inscription under a marble bust of him against a wall in one of the chambers, Dante is recorded to have written a considerable portion of the "Divina Commedia." In a tower belonging to the conti Falucci, in the same territory, there is a tradition that he was often employed in the like manner. At the castle of Tulmino, the residence of the patriarch of Aquileia, a rock has been pointed out as a favourite resort of the inspired poet, while engaged in that marvellous and melancholy composition.

"There, nobly pensive, Dante sat and thought."

Marius, banished from his country, and resting upon the ruins of Carthage, may have appeared a more august and mournful object; but Dante, in exile, want, and degradation, on a lonely crag, meditating thoughts, combining images, and creating a language for both in which they should for ever speak, presents a far more sublime and touching spectacle of fallen grandeur renovating itself under decay. Marius, having "mewed his mighty youth," flew back to Rome like the eagle to his quarry, surfeited himself with vengeance, and died in a debauch of blood, leaving a name to be execrated through all generations: Dante did not return to Florence; living or dead he did not return; but his name, cast out and abhorred as it had been, stands the earliest and the greatest of a long line of Tuscan poets, rivalling the most illustrious of their country, not excepting those of even Rome and Ferrara.

Dante's last and most magnanimous patron was Guido Novello da Polenta, lord of Ravenna, who was himself a poet, and a munificent benefactor of men of letters. This nobleman was the father of Francesca di Rimini, whose fatal love has given her a place on the most splendid page of the "Divina Commedia;" no other episode being told with equal beauty and pathos: yet so brief and simple is the narrative, that, even if the circumstances were as unexceptionably pure as they are insidiously delicate, translation ought hardly to be attempted; for the labour would be fruitless. Dante himself could not have given his masterpiece in precisely corresponding terms in another language; though, had any other been his own, it need not be doubted that in it he would have found words to tell his tale as well. It is not what a poet finds a language to be, but what he makes it, that constitutes the charm, not to be imitated, of his style. This is the despair of translators, though few seem to have suspected the existence of such a secret.

The mental sufferings of the poet during his nineteen years of banishment, ending in death, oftener find utterance, through his writings, in bitter invectives and prophetic denunciations against his enemies and traducers, than in strains of lamentation; yet would his wounds bleed afresh, and the anguish of his spirit be renewed with all the tenderness of wronged but passionate attachment, at every endeared recollection of the land of his nativity;—the city where he had been cradled and had grown up—where Beatrice was born, beloved, and buried—where he had himself attained the highest honours of the state, and, in his own esteem, deserved the lasting gratitude of his fellow-citizens, instead of experiencing their implacable hatred. Haughty yet humbled, vindictive yet forgiving, it is manifest, even in his darkest moods, that his heart yearned for reconciliation; that he pined in home-sickness wherever he went, and would gladly have renounced all his wrath, and submitted to any self-denial consistent with honour, to be received back into his country. For, much as he loved the latter,—nay, madly as he loved it in his paroxysms of exasperation,—he wrapt himself up tighter in the mantle of his integrity as the storm raged more vehemently; and, as the conflict went harder against him, grasped his honour, like his sword, never to be surrendered but with life: to preserve these, he submitted to lose all beside.

Boccaccio says, that, at a certain time, some friend obtained from the Florentine government leave for Dante to return, on condition that he should remain a while in prison, then do penance at the principal church during a festival solemnity, and afterwards be exempt from further punishment for his offences against the state. As might be expected, he spurned the ignominious terms. A letter, preserved in the Laurentian library[14], seems to refer to this circumstance, which, till the modern discovery of that document, required stronger testimony than the random verbiage of Boccaccio to confirm its credibility. It is addressed to a correspondent at Florence, whom the writer styles "father." The following are extracts; the original is in Latin. Having alluded to some overtures for pardon and return, nearly corresponding with those above mentioned, he proceeds:—

"Can such a recall to his country, after fifteen years' exile, be glorious to Dante Alighieri? Has innocence, which is manifest to every one,—have toil and fatigue in perpetuated studies, merited this? Away from the man trained up in philosophy, the dastard humiliation of an earth-born heart, that, like some petty pretender to knowledge, or other base wretch, he should endure to be delivered up in chains! Away from the man who demands justice, the thought that, after having suffered wrong, he should make terms by his money with those who have injured him, as though they had done righteously!—No, father! this is not the way of return to my country for me. Yet, if you, or any body else, can find another which shall not compromise the fame and the honour of Dante, I will not be slow to take it. But if by such an one he may not return to Florence,—to Florence he will never return. What then? May I not every where behold the sun and the stars? Can I not every where under heaven meditate on the most noble and delightful truths, without first rendering myself inglorious, aye infamous, before the people and city of Florence,—and this, for fear I should want bread!"

Far different return to Florence, and far other scene in his favourite church there, had he sometimes ventured to anticipate as possible. This we learn from the opening of the twenty-fifth canto of the "Paradiso," where, even in the presence of Beatrice and St. Peter, he thus unbosoms the long-cherished hope; conscious of high desert, as well as grievous injustice, which he would nevertheless most fervently forgive, could restoration to his country be obtained on terms "consistent with the fame and honour of Dante."

"If e'er the sacred song, which heaven arid earth
Have lent a hand to frame,—which, many a year,
Hath kept me lean with thought,—o'ercome the rage
That bars re-entrance to the lovely fold,
Where, like a lamb, I slept; the foe of wolves,
Waging inveterate war against its life;
With other voice, with other fleece, will I
Return, a poet, and receive the laurel
At that baptismal font, where I was brought
Into the faith which makes souls dear to God."[15]

In the same church here alluded to (San Giovanni), at Florence, there remained till lately a stone-remembrancer of Dante, in his prosperous days, scarcely less likely than "storied urn or animated bust," to awaken that sweet and voluntary sadness by which we love to associate dead things with the memory of those who once have lived. This was no other than an ancient bench of masonry which ran along the wall,

"South of the church, east of the belfry-tower,"

on which, according to long-believed tradition, the future poet of the other world was wont to

"Sit conversing in the sultry time,"

with those,

"Who little thought that in his hand he held
The balance, and assign'd, at his good pleasure,
To each his place in the invisible world."

ROGER's Italy.

Here also, according to his own record, in rescuing a child which had fallen into the water, he accidentally broke one of the baptismal fonts,—a circumstance which seems to have been maliciously misrepresented as an act of wilful sacrilege. His stern anxiety to clear himself is characteristically indicated by the brief but dignified attestation of the real fact, in the last line of the following singular parallel between objects not otherwise likely to be brought into comparison with each other. Describing the wells in which; head-downward, simoniacal offenders (among the rest pope Nicholas III.) were tormented with flames, that glanced from heel to toe along the up-turned soles of their feet, he says,—

"The sides and bottom of that livid rock
Were scoop'd into round holes, of equal size,
Which seem'd not less nor larger than the fonts
For baptism, in my beautiful St. John's;
And one of which, not many years ago,
I broke to save a drowning child from death:
—Be this my seal to undeceive the world."[16]

Dell' Inferno, canto XIX.

Dante resided several years at Ravenna, with the noble-minded Guido da Polenta, who, of his own accord, had invited him thither, and who, to the last moment of his life, made him feel no other burden in his service than gratitude for benefits bestowed with such a grace as though the giver, and not the receiver, were laid under obligation. By him being sent on an embassy to Venice, with the government of which Guido had an unhappy dispute, Dante not only failed to accomplish a reconciliation, but was even refused an audience, and compelled to return by land for fear of the enemy's fleet, which had already commenced hostilities along the coast. He arrived at Ravenna broken-hearted with the disappointment, and died soon afterwards,—according to his epitaph, on the 14th of September, 1321, though some authorities date his demise in July preceding.

The remains of the illustrious poet were buried with a splendour honourable to his name and worthy of his patron, who himself pronounced the funeral eulogium of his departed guest. His own countrymen, who had hardened their hearts against justice and humanity, in resistance of his return amongst them while living, soon after his death became sensible of their folly, and too late repented it. Embassy on embassy, during the two succeeding centuries, failed to recover the bones of their outcast fellow-citizen from his hospitable entertainers; and Florence has less to boast of in having given him birth, than Ravenna for having given him burial. One of those fruitless negotiations was conducted under the auspices of Leo X., and more illustriously sanctioned by Michael Angelo, an enthusiastic admirer of Dante, who offered to adorn the shrine, had the desired relics been obtained. The mighty sculptor,—himself the Dante of marble, simple, severe, sublime in style, and preternatural almost from the fulness of reality condensed in his ideal forms,—in many of his works, both of the chisel and the pencil, introduced figures suggested by images of the poet, or directly embodying such. Most conspicuous among these were the statues of Leah and Rachel, from the twenty-seventh canto of the "Purgatorio," on the monument of pope Julius II. His own copy of the "Divina Commedia" was embellished down the margin with sketches from the subjects of the text; and, had it been preserved, would surely have been classed with the most precious of those books for which collectors are eager to give ten times or more their weight in gold. The fate of this volume was not less singular than its good fortune; after having been made inestimable by the hand of Michael Angelo, it was lost at sea, and thus added to the treasures of darkness one of the richest spoils that ever went down from the light.

It was the purpose of Guido da Polenta to erect a gorgeous sepulchre over the ashes of the poet; but he neither reigned nor lived to accomplish this, being soon afterwards driven from his dominions, and dying himself a banished man at Bologna. More than a hundred and fifty years later, Bernardo Bembo, father of the famous cardinal, completed Polenta's design, though upon an inferior scale; and three centuries more had elapsed, when cardinal Gonzaga raised a second and far more sumptuous monument in the same place,—Ravenna; while in Florence, to this day, there is none worthy of itself or the poet, who had been in turn "its glory and its shame." The greatest honours conferred on his memory by his native city were, the restoration to his family of his confiscated property, after a lapse of forty years, the erection of a bust crowned with laurel, at the public expense, a present from the state of ten golden florins to his daughter by the hands of Boccaccio, and the appointment of a public lecturer to expound the mysteries of the "Divina Commedia." Boccaccio was the first professor who filled this chair of poetry, philosophy, and theology. He commenced his dissertations on a Sunday, in the church of St. Stephen, but died at the end of two years, having proceeded no further than the seventeenth Canto of the "Inferno." Similar institutions were adopted in Bologna, Pisa, Venice, and other Italian towns; so that the renown of the man who had lived by sufferance, died an outlaw, and been indebted to strangers for a grave, exceeded, within two centuries, that of all his countrymen who in polite literature had gone before him, and became the load-star of all who, in any age, should follow. At Rome only the memory of the Ghibelline bard was execrated, and his writings were proscribed. His book "De Monarchia" was publicly burnt there, by order of pope John XXII., who also sent a cardinal to the successor of Guido da Polenta, to demand his bones, that they might be dealt with as those of an heretic, and the ashes scattered on the wind. How impotent is the vengeance of the great after the death of the object of their displeasure! What a refuge, especially to fame, is the grave; a sanctuary which can never be violated; for all human passions die on its threshold!

Boccaccio, the earliest of his biographers, though not the most authentic, says, that in person Dante was of middle stature; that he stooped a little from the shoulders, and was remarkable for his firm and graceful gait. He always dressed in a manner peculiarly becoming his rank and years. His visage was long, with an aquiline nose, and eyes rather full than small; his cheek-bones large, and his upper lip projecting beyond the under; his complexion was dark; his hair and beard black, thick and curled; and his countenance exhibited a confirmed expression of melancholy and thoughtfulness. Hence one day, at Verona, as he passed a gateway, where several ladies were seated, one of them exclaimed, "There goes the man who can take a walk to hell, and back again, whenever he pleases, and bring us news of every thing that is doing there." On which another, with equal sagacity, added, "That must be true; for don't you see how his beard is frizzled, and his face browned, with the heat and the smoke below!" The words, whether spoken in sport or silliness, were overheard by the poet, who, as the fair slanderers meant no malice, was quite willing that they should please themselves with their own fancies. Towards the opening of the "Purgatorio" there is an allusion to the soil which his face had contracted on his journey with Virgil through the nether world:—

"High morn had triumph'd o'er the glimmering dawn
Which fled before her, so that I discern'd
The tremble of the ocean from afar:
We walk'd along the solitary plain,
Like men retracing their erratic steps,
Who think all lost till they regain the path.
Arriving where the dew-drops with the sun
Contended, and lay thick beneath the shade,
Both hands my master delicately spread
Upon the grass:—aware of his intent,
I turn'd to him my tearful countenance,
And thence he wiped away the dusky hue,
With which the infernal air had sullied it."[17]

In his studies, Dante was so eager, earnest, and indefatigable, that his wife and family often complained of his unsocial habits. Boccaccio mentions, that once, when he was at Siena, having unexpectedly found at a shop window a book which he had not seen, but had long coveted, he placed himself on a bench before the door, at nine o'clock in the morning, and never lifted up his eyes from the volume till vespers, when he had run through the whole contents with such intense application, as to have totally disregarded the festivities of processions and music which had been passing through the streets the greater part of the day; and when questioned about what had happened even in his presence, he denied having had knowledge of any thing but what he was reading. As might be expected from his other habits, he rarely spoke, except when personally addressed, or strongly moved, and then his words were few, well chosen, weighty, and expressed in tones of voice accommodated to the subject. Yet when it was required, his eloquence brake forth with spontaneous felicity, splendour, and exuberance of diction, imagery, and thought.

Dante delighted in music. The most natural and touching incident in his "Purgatorio" is the interview between himself and his friend Casella; an eminent singer in his day, who must, notwithstanding, have been forgotten within his century, but for the extraordinary good fortune which has befallen him, to be celebrated by two of the greatest poets of their respective countries, (Dante and Milton) from whose pages his name cannot soon perish.

Choosing to excel in all the elegancies of life, as well as in gentlemanly exercises and intellectual prowess, Dante attached himself to painting not less than to music, and practised it with the pencil (not, indeed, so triumphantly as with the pen, his picture-poetry being unrivalled,) with sufficient facility and grace to make it a favourite amusement in private; and none can believe that he could amuse himself with what was worthless. His four celebrated contemporaries, Cimabue, Odorigi, Franco Bolognese, and Giotto, are all honourably mentioned by him in the eleventh canto of the "Purgatorio."

There is an interesting allusion to the employment which he loved in the "Vita Nuova:—On the day that completed the year after this lady (Beatrice) had been received among the denizens of eternal life, while I was sitting alone, and recalling her form to my remembrance, I drew an angel on a certain tablet," &c. It may be incidentally observed, that Dante's angels are often painted with unsurpassable beauty as well as inexhaustible variety of delineation throughout his poem, especially in canto IX. of the "Inferno," and cantos II. VIII. XII. XV. XVII. XXIV. of the "Purgatorio." Take six lines of one of these portraits; though the inimitable original must consume the unequal version.

"A noi venia la creatura bella,
Bianco vestita, e nella faccia, quale
Par, tremolando, mattutina stella:
Le braccia aperse, e indi aperse l'ale;
Disse; 'Venite; qui son presso i gradi,
E agevolmente ornai si sale.'"

Dell' Purgatorio, canto XII.

"That being came, all beautiful, to meet us,
Clad in white raiment, and the morning star
Appear'd to tremble in his countenance;
His arms he spread, and then he spread his wings
And cried, 'Come on, the steps are near at hand.
And here the ascent is easy.'"

Leonardo Aretino, who had seen Dante's handwriting, mentions, with no small commendation, that the letters were long; slender, and exceedingly distinct,—the characteristics of what is called in ornamental writing a fine Italian hand. The circumstance may seem small, but it is not insignificant as a finishing stroke in the portraiture of one who, though he was the first poet unquestionably, and not the last philosopher, was also one of the most accomplished gentlemen of his age.

Two of Dante's sons, Pietro and Jacopo, inherited a portion of their father's spirit, and were among the first commentators on his works,—an inestimable advantage to posterity, since the local and personal histories were familiar to them; for had these not been explained by contemporaries, many of the brief and more exquisite allusions must have been irrecoverably lost, and some of the most affecting passages remained as uninterpretable as though they had been carved on granite in hieroglyphics. For example, in the fifth canto of the "Purgatorio," the travellers meet three spirits together,—the first, Giacopo del Cassero of Fano, who had been assassinated by order of a prince of Ferrara, for having spoken ill of his highness;—the second, Buonconte, of Montefeltro, who had fallen fighting on the side of the Aretines, in the battle of Campaldino; and for whose soul a singular contention took place between a good angel and an evil one, in which the former happily prevailed;—the third shade was that of a female of rank, who, having quietly waited till the two gentlemen had told their tales, thus emphatically hinted hers:—

"Ah! when thou hast return'd to yonder world,
And art reposing from thy long, long journey,
Remember me, for I am Pia:—
* * * *
Siena gave me birth, Maremma death,
And this he knows, who, with his ring and jewel,
But newly had espoused me."[18]

This unfortunate lady was the bride of Nello della Pietra, a grandee of Siena, who, becoming jealous of her, removed his predestined victim to the putrid marshes of Maremma, where she soon drooped and died, without suspicion on her part, or intimation on his, of the hideous purpose for which she had been hurried thither; her gloomy keeper, with a dreadful eye, watching her life go out like a lamp in a charnel-vault, and after her death abandoning himself to despair.—One of Dante's sons above mentioned (Pietro) was an eminent lawyer at Verona, and enjoyed the friendship of Petrarch, who dedicated some lines to him, at Trevizi, in 1361. Jacopo is said to have been a writer of Italian verse. Of three others, almost nothing is known, except that they died young. His daughter Beatrice, so named after his first love, took the veil in the convent of St. Stefano del' Uliva, at Ravenna.

Dante was the author of two Latin treatises,—the one already noticed, "De Monarchia;" and another, "De Vulgari Eloquio," on the structure of language in general, and that of Italy in particular. But for his celebrity he is indebted solely to his productions in the latter tongue, consisting of "La Vita Nuova," a reverie of fact and fable, in prose and rhyme, referring to his youthful love;—"Canzoni[19] and Sonnets" of which his lady was the eternal theme;—"Il Convito," a critical and mystical commentary on three of his lyrics;—and the "Divina Commedia, or Vision of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise," by the glory of which its forerunners have been at once eclipsed and kept in mid-day splendour, instead of glimmering through that doubtful twilight of obscure fame among the feeble productions of contemporaries, which must have been their lot but for such fortunate alliance.

The prose of the "Vita Nuova" and the "Convito" is deemed, at this day, not only nervous and racy, but in a high degree pure and elegant Italian; while much greater praise may be unhesitatingly bestowed upon his verse. Whether employed upon the arbitrary structure of Canzoni, the love-knot form of the sonnet, or the interminable chain of terze rime, (the triple intertwisted rhyme of the "Divina Commedia," which Dante is supposed to have invented,) his language is not more antiquated to his countrymen than the English of Shakspeare is to ours. The limits of the present essay preclude further notice of his lyrics than the general remark, that they have all the stately, brief, sententious character of his heroics, with occasional strokes of natural tenderness, and not unfrequently exhibit a delicacy of thought so pure, graceful, and unaffected, that Petrarch himself has seldom reached it in his more ornate and laboured compositions.

Dante did more than either his predecessors or contemporaries had done to improve, ennoble, and refine his native idiom; indeed he was wont to speak indignantly of those who would degrade it below the Provençal, the fashionable vehicle of verse in that age of transition, when the young languages of modern Europe, begotten between the stern tongues of the north and the classic ones of the south, were growing up together, on both sides of the Alps and the Pyrenees, like children in rivalry of each other, as the nations that spoke them respectively, so often intermingled in war or in peace. At the close of canto XXVI. of the "Purgatorio," Arnauld Daniel is introduced as the master-minstrel of the age gone by, singing some lines in a "Babylonish dialect," partly Provençal and partly Catalonian; pitting infamous French against the worst kind of Spanish (according to P. P. Venturi); and these certainly present a striking contrast of barbarous dissonance with the full-toned Tuscan of the context.

Like our Spenser, Dante took many freedoms with the extant Italian, which no later writer could have used. For the sake of euphony, emphasis, or rhyme, he occasionally modified words and terminations to serve a present purpose only, and which he himself rejected elsewhere. In this he was justified: he ran through the whole compass of his native vocabulary, he tried every note of the diapason, and all that were most pure, harmonious, or energetic, he sanctioned, by employing them in his song, which gave them a voice through after ages, so that few, comparatively very few, have been entirely rejected by his most fastidious successors. It was well for the poetry of his country that he wrote his immortal work in its language; for neither Petrarch nor Boccaccio could have gone so far as they did in perfecting it, if they had not had so great a model, not to equal only but to excel. They, indeed, affected to think little of their vernacular writings, and pretended merely to amuse themselves with such compositions as every body could read. Dante himself began his poem in Latin; and if he had gone forward, the finishing stroke of the last line would have been a coup-de-grace, which it could never have survived.[20]

Of the origin of the "Divina Commedia" it would be in vain to speculate here; the author himself, probably, could not have traced the first idea. Such conceptions neither come by inspiration nor by chance:—who can recollect the moment when he began to think, yet all his thoughts have been consecutively allied to that? Many visions and allegories had appeared before Dante's; and in several of these were gross representations of the spiritual world, especially of purgatory, the reality of which, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, was urged upon credulity with extraordinary zeal and perseverance by a corrupt hierarchy. By all these rather than by one his mind might have been prepared for the work.

Seven cantos of the "Inferno" are understood to have been written before the author's banishment; it is manifest, however, that if this were the case they must have been considerably altered afterwards; indeed the whole character of the poem, however the original outline may have been followed, must have undergone a very remarkable, and (afflictive as the occasion may have been for himself) a very auspicious change, from his misfortunes. To the latter, his poem owes many of its most splendid passages, and almost all its personal interest; an interest wherein consists, if not its principal, its prevailing and preserving charm. Had the whole been composed in prosperity, amidst honours, and affluence, and learned ease, in his native city, it would no doubt have been a mighty achievement of genius; but much that enhances and endears both its moral and its fable could never have been suggested, indeed would not have existed, under happier circumstances. That moral, indeed, is often as mistaken as that fable is monstrous; but the one and the other should be judged according to the times. The poet's romantic and unearthly love to Beatrice would have wanted that sombre and terrible relief which is now given to it by the gloom of his own character, the expression of his feelings under the sense of unmerited wrongs, invectives thundered out against his persecutors, and exposures of atrocities which were every-day deeds of every-day men, in those distracted countries, of which his poem has left such fearful records.

Much unsatisfactory discussion has arisen upon the title "Divina Commedia," which Dante gave to his poem; it being presumed that he had never seen a regular drama either in letter or exhibition, as the Greek and Latin authors of that class were scarcely known in Italy till after his time. The religious spectacles, however, common in the darkest of the middle ages, consisting not of pantomime only, but of dialogue and song, may have suggested to him the designation as well as the subject of his strange adventure. Be this as it may, the character of the work is dramatic throughout, consisting of a series of scenes, which conduct to one catastrophe; for however miscellaneous or insulated they may seem in respect to each other,—in respect to the author (who is his own hero, and for whose warning, instruction, and final recovery from an evil course of life, the whole are collocated,) they all bear directly upon him, and accomplish by just gradations the purpose for which they were intended. Dante is a changed man when he emerges, from the infernal regions in the centre of the globe, upon the shore of the island of Purgatory at the Antipodes; and is further so refined by his ascent up that perilous mount, that when he reaches the terrestrial paradise at the top, he is prepared for translation from thence through the nine spheres of the celestial universe. Many of the interviews between the visiters of the invisible worlds which they explore, and the inhabitants of these, are scenes which involve all the peculiarities of stage-exhibitions,—dialogue, action, passion,—secrecy, surprise, interruption. Examples may be named. The meeting and conversations with Sordello, in the sixth and seventh cantos of the "Purgatorio," in which there are two instances of unexpected discoveries which bring out the whole beauty and grandeur of that mysterious personage's character; as a patriot, when at the mere sound of the word "Mantua" he embraces Virgil with transport, not yet knowing, nor even enquiring, any thing further about him, except that he is his countryman; and afterwards as a poet, when, Virgil disclosing his name, Sordello is overpowered with delightful astonishment, like one who suddenly beholds something wonderful before him, and, scarcely believing his own eyes for joy, exclaims, in a breath, "It is! it is not!" (Ell' è, non è.) The parties are thus introduced to each other. Dante and Virgil are considering which road they shall take, when the latter observes:—

"Yonder I see a spirit, fix'd in thought,
Alone and gazing earnestly upon us,
He will point out the readier way to take.
Tow'rds him we went—Soul of a Longobardian!
How didst thou stand aloof with haughty bearing,
And lordly eyes, slow-moving as we moved!
—He utter'd not a word, but let us pass,
On-looking like a lion from his lair:
But Virgil, drawing near, entreated him
To show the easiest path for our ascent:
Still to that meek request he answer'd not,
But of our country and our way of life
Enquired;—my courteous guide began then, 'Mantua';
Straight at the word, that spirit, erewhile so wrapt
Within himself, sprang from his place, and cried,
'O Mantuan! I'm thy countryman, Sordello;'
And one the other instantly embraced."[21]

The reserve of Sordello is generally attributed to stubbornness or pride; but is it not manifest that, on the first sight of the strangers, he had a misgiving hope (if the phrase be allowable) which he feared might deceive him, that they were countrymen of his, wherefore, absorbed in that sole idea, he disregards their question concerning the road, and directly comes to the point which he was anxious to ascertain; and this being resolved by the single word "Mantua," his soul flies forth at once to embrace the speaker?

In the tenth canto of the "Inferno," where heretics are described as being tormented in tombs of fire, the lids of which are suspended over them till the day of judgment, Dante finds Farinata d'Uberti, an illustrious commander of the Ghibellines, who, at the battle of Monte Aperto, in 1260, had so utterly defeated the Guelfs of Florence, that the city lay at the mercy of its enemies, by whom counsel was taken to raze it to the ground: but Farinata, because his bowels yearned towards his native city, stood up alone to oppose the barbarous design; and partly by menace—having drawn his sword in the midst of the assembly—and partly by persuasion, preserved the city from destruction. The interview is thus painted; but to prepare the reader for well understanding the nature of the by-play which intervenes, it is necessary to state that Cavalcante Cavalcanti, whose head appears out of an adjacent sepulchre, was the father of Guido Cavalcanti, a poet, the particular friend of Dante, and chief of the Bianchi party banished during his priorship.

"'O Tuscan! Thou, who, through this realm of fire,
Alive dost walk, thus courteously conversing
Pause, if it please thee, here. Thy dialect
Proclaims thy lineage from that noble land,
Which I, perhaps, too much have wrong'd.'
"Such sounds
Suddenly issued forth from one of those
Sepulchral caverns.—Tremblingly I crept
A little nearer to my guide, but he
Cried, 'Turn again! What would'st thou do? Behold,
'Tis Farinata that hath raised himself:
There may'st thou see him, upward from the loins.'
Already had I fix'd mine eyes on his,
Who stood, with bust and visage so erect,
As though he look'd on hell itself with scorn.
My master then, with prompt and resolute hands,
Thrust me among the charnel-vaults towards him,
Saying,—'Thy words be plain.' When I had reach'd
His tombstone-foot, he look'd at me a while
As in disdain, then loftily demanded—
'Who were thine ancestors?'
——"Eager to tell,
Nought I conceal'd, but utter'd all the truth.
Arching his brow a little, he return'd;—
'Bitter antagonists of mine, of me,
And of my party, were thy sires; but twice
I scatter'd them.'
"'If scatter'd twice,' said I,
'Once and again they came from all sides back,—
A lesson which thy friends have not well learn'd.'
"Just then a second figure, at his side,
Emerged to view; unveil'd above the chin,
And kneeling, as methought.—It look'd around
So wistfully, as though it hoped to find
Some other with me; but, that hope dispell'd,
Weeping it spake:—'If through this dungeon-gloom,
Grandeur of genius guide thy venturous way,
My son!—where is he?—and why not with thee?'
Then I to him:—"Not of myself I came;
He who awaits me yonder brought me hither,—
One whom perhaps thy Guido held in scorn.[22]
His speech and form of penance had already
Taught me his name; my words were therefore pointed.
Upstarting he exclaim'd:—"How?—said'st thou held?
Lives he not then? and doth not heaven's sweet light
Fall on his eyes?'—When I w as slow to answer,
Backward he sunk, and re-appear'd no more.
"Meanw'hile that other most majestic form,
Near which I stood, neither changed countenance,
Nor turn'd his neck, nor lean'd to either side:
'And if,' quoth he, our first debate resuming,
'They have not well that lesson learn'd, the thought
Torments me more than this infernal bed:
And yet, not fifty times her changing face,
Who here reigns sovereign, shall be re-illumined,
Ere thou shalt know how hard that lesson is.[23]
—But tell me,—so may'st thou return in peace
To the dear world above!—why are thy people
In all their acts so mad against my race?'
—'The slaughter and discomfiture,' said I,
'That turn'd the river red at Mont-Aperto,
Have caused such dire proscriptions in our temples.'
"He shook his head, deep-sighing, then rejoin'd,—
'I was not there alone; nor without cause
Engaged with others; but I was alone,
And stood in her defence with open brow,
When all our council, with one voice, decreed
That Florence should be razed from her foundation.'
"'So may thy kindred find repose, as thou
Shalt loose a knot which hath entangled me!'
Thus I adjured him:—'ye foresee what time
(If rightly I have heard) will bring to pass,
But to the present, otherwise, are blind.'
"'We see, like him who hath an evil eye,
Far distant things,' said he; 'so highest God
Enlightens us: but yet, when they approach,
Or when they are, our intellect falls short;
Nor can we know, save by report from others,
Aught of the state of man beneath the sun.
Hence may'st thou comprehend how all our knowledge
Shall cease for ever from the point that shuts
The portal of the future.'[24]
"At that moment
Compunction smote me for my recent fault,
And I cried out—'Oh! tell that fallen one,
His son is yet among the living.—Say,
That if I falter'd to reply at first
With that assurance, 'twas because my thoughts
Were harass'd by the doubt which thou hast solved.'"[25]

The reader of these lines (however inferior the translation may be), cannot have failed to perceive by what natural action and speech the paternal anxiety of Cavalcante respecting his son is indicated. On his bed of torture he hears a voice which he knows to be that of his son's friend; he starts up, looks eagerly about, as expecting to see that son; but observing the friend only, he at once interrupts the dialogue with Farinata, and in broken exclamations enquires concerning him. Dante happening to employ the past tense of a verb in reference to what his "Guido" might have done, the miserable parent instantly lays hold of that minute circumstance as an intimation of his death, and asks questions of which he dreads the answers, precisely in the manner of Macduff when he learns that his wife and children had been murdered by Macbeth. The poet hesitating to reply. Cavalcante takes the worst for granted, falls back in despair, and appears not again. Thus,

"Even from his tomb the voice of Nature cries."

Dante, however, at the close of the scene, unexpectedly recurs to his own fault with the tenderness of compunction and delicacy of respect due to an unfortunate being, whom he had unintentionally agonised with his silence, and sends a message to the old man that his son yet lives.[26] Contrasted with this trembling sensibility of a father's affection, stronger than death, and out-feeling the pains of hell, is the stern, calm, patient dignity of Farinata, who, though wounded to the quick by the retort of Dante at the moment when their discourse was broken upon, stands unmoved in mind, in look, in posture, till the interlude is ended; and then, without the slightest allusion to it, he takes up the suspended argument at the last words of his opponent, as though his thoughts had all the while been ruminating on the disgrace of his friends, the afflictions of his family, and the inextinguishable enmity of his countrymen against himself. His noble rejoinder, on Dante's reference to the carnage at Monte Aperto as the cause of his people's implacability, is above all praise. Indeed, it would be difficult to point out, in ancient or modern tragedy, a passage of more sublimity or pathos, in which so few words express so much, yet leave so much more to be imagined by any one who has "a human heart," as the whole of this scene in the original exhibits.

Dante's poem is certainly neither the greatest nor the best in the world; but it is, perhaps, the most extraordinary one which resolute intellect ever planned, or persevering talents successfully executed. It stands alone; and must be read and judged according to rules and immunities adapted to its peculiar structure, plot, and purpose, formed upon principles affording scope to the exercise of the highest powers, with little regard to precedent. If these principles, then, have intrinsic excellence, and the work be found uniformly consistent with them, fulfilling to the utmost the aims of the author, the "Divina Commedia" must be allowed to stand among the proudest trophies of original genius, challenging, encountering, and overcoming unparalleled difficulties. Though the fields of action, or rather of vision, are nominally Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise,—the Paradise, Purgatory, and Hell of Dante, with all their terrors, and splendours, and preternatural fictions, are but representations of scenes transacted on earth, and characters that lived antecedently or contemporaneously with himself. Though altogether out of the world, the whole is of the world. Men and women seem fixed in eternal torments, passing through purifying flames, or exalted to celestial beatitude; yet in all these situations they are what they were; and It is their former history, more than their present happiness, hope, or despair, which constitutes, through a hundred cantos, the interest, awakened and kept up by the successive exhibition of more than a thousand individual actors and sufferers. Of every one of these something terrible or touching is intimated or told, briefly at the utmost, but frequently by mere hints of narrative or gleams of allusion, which excite curiosity in the breast of the reader; who is surprised at the poet's forbearance, when, in the notes of commentators, he finds complex, strange, and fearful circumstances, on which a modern versifier or novelist would expend pages, treated here as ordinary events, on which it would be impertinent to dwell. These, in the author's own age, were generally understood; the bulk of the materials being gathered up during a period of restlessness and confusion among the republican states of Italy.

Hence, though the first appearance of the "Divina Commedia," in any intelligible edition, is repulsive from the multitude of notes, and the text is not seldom difficult and dark with the oracular compression of strong ideas in few and pregnant words, yet will the toil and patience of any reader he well repaid, who perseveringly proceeds but a little way, quietly referring, as occasion may require, from the obscurity of the original to the illustrations below; for when he returns from the latter to the former (as though his own eye had been refreshed with new light, the darkness having been in it, and not in the verse), what was colourless as a cloud is radiant with beauty, and what before was undefined in form becomes exquisitely precise and symmetrical, from comprehending in so small a compass so vast a variety of thought, feeling, or fact. Dante, in this respect, must be studied as an author in a dead language by a learner, or rather as one who employs a living language on forgotten themes; then will his style grow easier and clearer as the reader grows more and more acquainted with his subject, his manner, and his materials. For whatever be the corruptions of the text (which perhaps has never been sufficiently collated), the remoteness of the allusions, and our countrymen's want of that previous knowledge of almost every thing treated upon, which best prepares the mind for the perception and highest enjoyment of poetical beauty and poetical pleasure, Dante will be found, in reality, one of the most clear, minute, and accurate writers in sentiment, as he is one of the most perfectly natural and graphic painters to the life of persons, characters, and actions. His draughts have the freedom of etchings, and the sharpness of proof impressions. His poem is well worth all the pains which the most indolent reader may take to master it.

Ordinary poetry is often striking and captivating at first view, but all its merit is at once elicited; and frequently that which charmed so much at first becomes less and less affecting, less and less defined, the more it is examined, till light turns to mist, and mist to shadow in the end; whereas the highest order of poetry—that which is intellectual—the longer it is dwelt upon, the lovelier, the nobler, the more delightful it appears, and when fully understood remains imperishable in its graces and effects; repetition a thousand times does not impair it; its creations, like those of nature,—familiar, indeed, as the sun and the stars,—are never less glorious and beautiful, though daily before us. Dante's poetry (extravagant and imaginative as he often may be) is thoroughly intellectual; there is no enthusiasm of feeling, but there is much of philosophical and theological subtlety, and of course much absurdity in some of his reveries; yet his passion is always pure and unaffected, his descriptions are daylight realities, and his heroes men of flesh and blood. Probably no other work of human genius so far exceeds in its development the expectation of prejudiced or unprepared readers, as the "Divina Commedia;" or performs, in fact, so much more than it seems to promise.

Dante has created a hell, purgatory, and paradise of his own; and, being satisfied with the present world as a nursery for his personages, he has peopled his ultramundane regions with these, assigning to all their abodes "sulphureous or ambrosial," or refining those who were yet corrigible after death, according to his own pleasure, his theological views, and his moral feelings. It must be confessed that, whatever were his passions, prejudices, or failings, his attachments or antipathies, as an arbiter of fate he appears honestly to have distributed justice, to the best of his knowledge, to all whom he has cited before his tribunal, leaving in the case of every one (perhaps) a judgment unimpeachable and unappealable; so forcibly does he impress the mind with the truth and reality of the evidence of their merit or turpitude, which he produces to warrant his sentences. As a man, he is, indeed, fierce, splenetic, and indignant at times, especially in execrating his countrymen for their profligacy and injustice towards himself; yet (though there may have been primary motives less noble than the apparent ones, at the bottom of his heart, unsuspected even by himself,) his anger and his vengeance seem always directed against those who deserved to be swept from the face of the earth, as venal, treacherous, parricidal wretches. With the wonders which he beheld in his invisible world, in his complicated travels through its triple round of labyrinths;—as, in hell, wheel within wheel, diminishing downward to the centre; in purgatory, circle above circle, terminating in the garden of Eden; and, in his paradise, orb beyond orb, through the solar system to the heaven of heavens, where he "presumed, an earthly guest, and drew empyreal air;"—with these he has constructed a poem of a thousand pages, exhibiting the greatest diversity of characters, scenes, circumstances, and events, that were ever embraced in an equal compass; while all are made perfectly to harmonise and conduce to one process, carried on at every step of his pilgrimage, namely, the gradual purification of the poet himself, by the examples which he sees and the lessons which he hears; as well as by the toils he undergoes, the pains he endures, and the bliss he partakes, in his long and dreary path down into the nether regions, where there is no hope; up the steep hill, where, though there is suffering, there is no fear of ultimate release; and on his flight through the "nine-enfolded spheres," where all are as happy as they can be in their present station, yet, as they pass from stage to stage, rise in capacity and means of enjoyment to fulness of felicity in the beatific vision.

Dante was the very poet, and the "Divina Commedia" the very poem, to be expected from the influence of all existing circumstances in church and state at the time when he flourished. The poet and his age were homogeneous, and his song was as truly in season as that of the nightingale in spring; the winter of barbarism had broken up, the summer heat of refinement had not yet come on: a century earlier there would have been too much ignorance, a century later too much intelligence, to form such a theme and such a minstrel; for though Dante, in any age, must have been one of its greatest bards, yet the bard that he was he could not have been in any other than that in which he lived.

Dante, as hath already been intimated, is the hero of his own poem; and the "Divina Commedia" is the only example of an attempt triumphantly achieved, and placed beyond the reach of scorn or neglect, wherein, from beginning to end, the author discourses concerning himself individually. Had this been done in any other way than the consummately simple, delicate, and unobtrusive one which he has adopted, the whole would have been insufferable egotism, disgusting coxcombry, or oppressive dulness,—whereas this personal identity is the charm, the strength, the soul of the book: he lives, he breathes, he moves through it; his pulse beats or stands still, his eye kindles or fades, his cheek grows pale with horror, colours with shame, or burns with indignation; we hear his voice, his step, in every page; we see his shape by the flames of hell, his shadow in the land where there is no other shadow ("Purgatorio"), and his countenance gaining angelic elevation from "colloquy sublime" with glorified intelligences in the paradise above. Nor does he ever go out of his actual character;—he is, indeed, the lover from infancy of Beatrice, the aristocratic magistrate of a fierce democracy, the valiant soldier in the field of Campaldino, the fervent patriot in the feuds of Guelfs and Ghibellines, the eloquent and subtle disputant in the schools of theology; the melancholy exile, wandering from court to court, depending for bread and shelter on petty princes who knew not his worth, except as a splendid captive in their train; and, above all (though not obtrusively so), he is the poet anticipating his own assured renown, and dispensing at his will honour or infamy to others, whom he need but to name, and the sound must be heard to the end of time, and echoed from all regions of the globe. Dante, in his vision, is Dante as he lived, as he died, and as he expected to live in both worlds beyond death,—an immortal spirit in the one, an unforgotten poet in the other. Pride of birth, consciousness of genius, religious feeling almost to fanaticism, and the sense of wrongs, under which he is alternately inflamed with rage, withered with disappointment, or saddened with despair,—these are continually reminding the reader of the man as he was; stimulating his jaded hope with the bitter sweet of revenge, which he could wreak at will upon his enemies; and solacing a wounded spirit with the thought of fame in possession, which his fellow-citizens could not confiscate, and fame in reversion, of which contemporaries could not cut off the entail.

Yet while he is thus in every point an individual, he is at the same time an exemplar of the whole species; and he may emphatically say to the reader who can follow him in his journeys, receive his inspirations, and share in his troubles, anxieties, joys, and disappointments:—"Am I not a man and a brother?" Dante, though in this sense the hero of his own poem, is any thing but a hero, either in the vulgar or the chivalrous sense of the term. He is a human being, with all the faults, frailties, and imperfections of our common nature, as they really existed in himself, and as they more or less exist in every other person; nor can a less sophisticated character be found in all the volumes of prose and rhyme that have appeared since this auto-biographical poem. He assumes nothing; he conceals nothing; his fears, his ignorance, his loves, and his enmities, are all undisguisedly set forth, as though he were all the while communing with his own heart, without the cowardly apprehension of blame, or the secret desire of applause from a fellow-creature. He is always, indeed, noble, manly, and candid, but travelling continually in company of some superior intelligence,—Virgil in hell and purgatory, and Beatrice in purgatory and heaven,—he always defers to the one or the other in difficulty, doubt, or danger, and clings for protection, as well as looks up for instruction, with childlike simplicity and docility; returning with the most reverent and affectionate gratitude every token of kindness received from either.

Marvellous and incredible, it must be confessed, are many of the stories which he tells; but he tells them with the plainness and straight-forwardness of a man who is speaking the truth, and nothing else, of his own knowledge.

In the last cantos of the "Purgatorio," and throughout the "Paradiso," there is a prodigious putting forth of power to describe ineffable and eternal things; with inexhaustible prodigality of illustration, and transmutation of the same symbols, to constitute different gradations of blessedness and glory. Of these, however, there are scarcely any types except light, colour, sound, and motion, variously combined to represent spiritual beings, their forms, their occupations, and manner of discoursing; but even amongst such inexpressible, nay, unimaginable scenes and passages, the human nature which cleaves to the poet, and shows itself, under every transmigration, allied to flesh and blood, gives an interest which allegorical pictures of invisible realities can never keep up beyond the first brilliant impression. Yet the vitality and strength of the poem reside chiefly in the first and second parts; diminishing just in proportion as the author rises above the regions which exhibit the sins and sufferings of creatures like ourselves, punished with everlasting destruction in hell, or "burnt and purged away," through the penal inflictions of purgatory. It may, however, be said, with regard to the whole, that no ideal beings, ideal scenes, or ideal occurrences, in any poem or romance, have ever more perfectly personified truth and nature than those in this composition, which, though the theatre is figuratively beyond the limits of human action, is nevertheless full of such action in its most common as well as its most extraordinary forms.

There is scarcely a decorous attitude of the human frame, a look expressive of the most concealed sentiment, or a feeling of pain, pleasure, surprise, doubt, fear, agony, hope, delight, which is not described with a minuteness of discrimination alike curious and admirable; the poet himself frequently being the subject of the same, and exciting our sympathy by the lively or poignant remembrance of having ourselves done, looked, felt like him, when we were far from being ingenuous enough to acknowledge the weakness implied. There is scarcely a phenomenon in the visible heavens, the earth, the sea, and the phases of nature, which he has not presented in the most striking manner. In such instances he frequently descends to the nicest particulars, that he may realise the exact view of them which he wishes to be taken; they being necessarily illustrations of invisible and preternatural subjects. This leads to the remark, that the poem abounds with similes of the greatest variety, beauty, and elegance; often, likewise, of the most familiar, touching, or grotesque character. Among these, birds are favourite images, especially the stork and the falcon,—the two last that an English poet of the nineteenth century would think of, but which happily remind us, as often as they are seen here, of the country of the author, while they present pictures of times gone by,—the stork having long ago deserted our shores, and falconry, poetical and captivating as it is to the eye and the fancy, having been abandoned in the fashionable rage for preserves, where game are bred like poultry, and massacred by wholesale on field-days. Next to birds, children are the darlings, in the similes, of this stern, and harsh, and gloomy being, as he is often, though unjustly, represented to have been. Amidst his most dazzling, terrific, or monstrous creations, these little ones, in all their loveliness and hilarity, are introduced, to re-invigorate the tired thoughts, and cool the over-heated imagination with reminiscence of that which, in this world, may be looked upon with the least pain, and which cannot be looked upon with pleasure without our being the better for it; the love of children, and the delight of seeing them happy, being a test of every other species of kindness towards our fellow-creatures.

It is unnecessary to pursue general criticism further. Any analysis of the plot would be preposterous here; for nothing less than a progressive abstract of the whole, with examples from every stage, would be satisfactory, or indeed intelligible, to those who are not acquainted with the original, or the translation into English by the Reverend H. F. Cary, which may be said to fail in nothing except the versification—and that, perhaps, only in consequence of the writer's attention to what constitutes the chief merit of his performance, fidelity to the meaning of the text.

It was the purpose of the writer of the foregoing memoir to have concluded his strictures on the "Divina Commedia" with a series of newly-translated specimens from the same (like the foregoing ones), in the various kinds of style for which the author was distinguished, in order to give the English reader some faint idea of this poet's very peculiar manner of handling his subject, and the general cast of his mind and mode of thinking: but the limits of the present work precluding any further extension of this article, these are reserved, and may be laid before the public at some future opportunity.

[1]The heaven of heavens.

[2]The sun in the sign of the Twins.

[3]

"S' io torni mai, Lettore, a quel devoto
Trionfo, per lo quale io piango spesso
Le mie peccata, e 'l petto mi percuoto,
Tu non avresti in tanto tratto e messo
Nel fuoco il dito, in quanto io vidi 'l segno.
Che segue 'l tauro, e fui dentro da esso.
O gloriose stelle! O lume pregno
Di gran virtù, 'dal quale io riconosco
Tutto (qual che si sia) il mio ingegno;
Con voi nasceva, e s'ascendeva vosco
Quegli, ch' è padre d'ogni mortal vita,
Quand' io senti' da prima l'aer Tosco.
E poi quando mi fu grazia largita
D'entrar nell' alta ruota che vi gira,
La vostra región mi fu sortita.
A voi divotamente ora sospira
L' ánima mia, per aquistar virtute
Al passo forte che a se la tira."

[4]In religious processions on saint-days.

[5]This passage is remarkable for having been imitated by Spenser in his personification of Forgetfulness: he, however, makes the feet and face at variance, which Dante does not, reversing the aspect of the one and the motion of the other:—

"But very uncouth sight was to behold
How he did fashion his untoward pace;
For as he forward moved his footing old,
To backward still was turn'd his wrinkled face,
Unlike to men, who, ever as they trace
Both feet and face one way are wont to lead."

Færie Queene, book I. canto VIII. st. 31.

The latter clause of Dante's lines has been remembered by Milton;—

"Sight so deform, what heart of man could long
Dry-eyed behold?—Adam could not, but wept."

Paradise Lost, book XI. ver. 495.

"E vidi gente per lo vallon tondo
Venir, tacendo e lagrimando, al passo
Che fanno le letane in questo mondo.
Come 'l viso mi scese in lor più basso,
Mirabilmente apparve esser travolto
Ciascim dal mento al principio del casso:
Che dalle reni era tornato il volto,
Ed indietro venir li convenia.
Perchè 'l veder dinanzi era lor tolto.
Forse per forza gia di parlasia
Si travolse cosi alcún del tutto:
Ma io noi vidi, ne credo che sia.
Se Dio ti lasci, lettor, prender frutto
Di tua lezione, or pensa per te stesso
Com' io potea tener lo viso asciutto,
Quando la nostra imagine da presso
Vidi si torta, che 'l pianto degli occhi
Le natiche bagnava per lo fesso."

[6]According to his own intimation in the Purgatorio, canto XXXII. ver. 2., where he speaks of his "eyes" being eager to relieve themselves of their "ten years' thirst," on her spiritual appearance to him;—the date of the visions being A. D. 1300, and the descent into the lower regions represented as having been made on Good Friday, 1266 years after the death of Christ.

—Inferno, canto XXI.

[7]

"Di varii fiori ad un gran monte passa,
Ch' ebber già buono odore, or puzzan forte,
Questo era il dono (se però dir lece,)
Che Constantino al buon Silvestro fece."

Orlando Furioso, canto XXXIV.

Thus translated by Milton:—

"Then pass'd he to a flowery mountain green,
Which once smelt sweet, now stinks as odiously
This was that gift (if you the truth will have)
That Constantine to good Silvester gave."

Dante alludes, with bitterness, to the same unhappy gift, in three lines, which Milton has also translated with more faithfulness than felicity:—

"Ahi! Constantin, di quanto mal fu matre,
Non la tua conversion, ma quella dote,
Che da te prese il primo ricco patre."

—Dell' Inferno, canto XIX.

"Ah Constantine! of how much ill was cause
Not thy conversion, but those rich domains,
Which the first wealthy pope receiv'd of thee."

[8]

"I' vidi già cavalier muover campo,
E comminciare stormo, e far lor mostra,
E tal volta partir per loro scampo:
Corridor vidi per la terra vostra,
O Aretini! e vidi gir gualdane,
Ferir torneamenti, e correr giostra,
Quando con trombe, e quando con campane,
Con tamburi, e con cenni di castella,
E con cose nostrali, e con istrane:
Ne già con si diversa cennamella,
Cavalier vidi muover, ne pedoni,
Ne nave a segno di terra, o di stella.
Noi andavam con li dieci demoni;
Ah! fiera compagnia!—ma nella chiesa
Co' Santi, e in taverna co' ghiottoni."

[9]

"Perch' i' mi mossi, e a lui venni ratto:
E i diavoli si fecer tutti avanti,
Si ch' io temetti non tenesser patto.
E cosi vid' io già temer li fanti,
Ch' uscivan pattegiati di Caprona,
Veggendo se tra nemici cotanti.
I' m'accostai con tutta la persona
Lungo 'l mio duca, e non torceva gli occhi
Dalla sembianza lor, ch'era non buona."

[10]

"Tu lascerai ogni cosa diletta
Più caramente; e questo è quello strale,
Che l'arco dell' esilio pria saetta.
Tu proverai sì come sa di sale
Lo pane altrui, e com'è duro calle
Lo scendere, e 'l salir per l'altrui scale.
E quel, che più ti graverà le spalle,
Sarà la campagnia malvagia e scempia,
Con la qual tu cadrai in questa valle:
Che tutta ingrata, tutta matta ed empia
Si farà contra te: ma poco appresso
Ella, non tu, n'avrà rossa la tempia.
Di sua bestialitate il suo processo
Farà la pruova, sì ch' a te fia bello
Averti fatta parte per te stesso."

[11]

"Quando vivea più glorioso, disse,
Liberamente nel campo di Siena,
Ogni vergogna deposta, s'affisse:
Egli, per trar l'amico suo di pena,
Che sostenea nella prigion di Carlo,
Si condusse a tremar per ogni vena.
Più non dirò, e scuro so che parlo;
Ma poco tempo andià, che i tuoi vicini
Faranno sì che tu potrai chiosarlo."

[12]See Goldsmith's Traveller, towards the end.

[13]A silly practical joke, which has probably been often repeated in such parties, as it much resembles one told by Josephus respecting the young Hyrcanus. In fact, there is scarcely "a good thing" of this base class, which, on investigation, does not become apocryphal from too much evidence.

[14]See the Edinburgh Review, vol. XXX. p. 319.

[15]

"Se mai continga che 'l poema sacro,
Al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra,
Sì che m' ha fatto per più anni macro,
Vinca la crudeltà, che fuor mi serra
Del bello ovile, ov' io dormì' agnello
Nimico a' lupi, che gli danno guerra;
Con altra voce omai, con altro vello
Ritornerò poeta, ed in sul fonte
Del mio battemmo prenderò 'l capello;
Perocchè nella fede, che fa conte
L'anime a Dio."

[16]

"I' vidi per le coste, e per lo fondo,
Piena la pietra livida di fori
D'un largo tutti, e ciascuno era tondo.
Non mi parèn meno ampi, ne maggiori.
Che quei, che son nel mio bel San Giovanni,
Fatti per luogo de' battezzatori;
L'un degli quali, ancor non è molt' anni,
Rupp' io per un, che dentro v'annegava;
E questo sia suggel, ch' ogni uomo sganni."

[17]

"L'alba vinceva l'ora mattutina,
Che fuggia 'npanzi, sì che di lontang
Conobbi il tremolar della marina:
Noi andavam per lo solingo piano,
Com'uom, che torna alla smaritta strada,
Che 'nfino ad essa li pare ire in vano.
Quando noi fummo, dove la rugiada
Pugna col sole, e per essere in parte
Ove adorezza, poco si dirada,
Ambo le mani in su l'erbetta sparte
Soavemente 'l mio maestro pose;
Ond'io che fui accorto di su' arte,
Porsi ver lui le guance lagrimose;
Quivi mi fece tutto discoverto
Quel color, che l'inferno mi nascose."

[18]

"Deh, quando tu sarai tornato al mondo,
E riposato della lunga via,
* * * *
Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia:
Siena mi fé; disfecemi Maremma;
Salsi colui, che 'nnanellata pria,
Disposando m'avea con la sua gemma."

[19]Canzoni are the larger odes of the Italians, composed according to certain strict but exquisite rules; which, when rightly observed, give admirable harmony and proportion to what may be called' the architecture of the thoughts: the stanzas resembling columns of the most perfect symmetry, which may be infinitely diversified, and of considerable length, each new form constituting what may be termed a different order.

[20]Lord Byron, in his poem, "The Prophecy of Dante," (canto II.) has the following noble apostrophe, which, as it refers to the subject of the foregoing paragraph, and affords a fine English specimen of the terze rime, in which the Divina Commedia is composed, cannot be more opportunely introduced than in this place:—

"Italia! ah! to me such things, foreshown
With dim sepulchral light, bid me forget
In thine irreparable wrongs my own:
We can have but one country.—and even yet
Thou'rt mine—my bones shall be within thy breast,
My soul within thy language, which once set
With our old Roman sway in the wide West;
But I will make another tongue arise
As lofty and more sweet, in which exprest
The hero's ardour, or the lover's sighs,
Shall find alike such sounds for every theme,
That every word, as brilliant as thy skies,
Shall realise a poet's proudest dream,
And make thee Europe's nightingale of song;
So that all present speech to thine shall seem
The note of meaner birds, and every tongue
Confess its barbarism when compared with thine.
This shalt thou owe to him thou didst so wrong.
The Tuscan Bard, the banish'd Ghibelline."

[21]

"Ma vedi là un'anima, ch'a posta,
Sola soletta verso noi riguarda;
Quella ne 'nsegnerà la via più tosta
Venimmo a lei:—O anima Lombarda!
Come ti stavi altera e disdegnosa,
E nel mover degli occhi onesta e tarda!
Ella non ci diceva alcuna cosa;
Ma lasciavane gir, solo guardando
A guisa di leon, quando si posa.
Pur Virgilio si trasse a lei, pregando,
Che ne mostrasse la miglior salita;
E quella non rispose al suo dimando,
Ma di nostro paese, e della vita
Cinchiese; e 'l dolce duca incominciava,
'Mantova'—e l'ombra tutta in se romita,
Surse ver lui del luogo, ove 'pria stava,
Dicendo, 'O Mantovano! io son Sordello
Della tua terra; e l'un l'altro abbracciava."

[22]Alluding, it is supposed, to the fact that Guido had forsaken poetry for philosophy, or preferred the latter so much above the former, as to think lightly of Virgil himself in comparison with Aristotle.

[23]He foretells Dante's own expulsion from his country within fifty months.

[24]The end of time, when their tombs were to be closed up.

[25]

"'O Tosco! che per la città del foco
Vivo ten' vai così parlando onesto
Piacciati di restare in questo loco:
La tua loquela ti fa manifesto
Di quella nobil patria natio,
Alla qual forse fui troppo molesto.'
Subitamente questo suono uscìo
D'una dell' arche: pero m'accostai,
Temendo, un poco più al duco mio.
Ed ei mi disse: 'Volgiti, che fai?
Vedi là Farinata, che s' è dritto.
Dalla cintola 'n su tutto 'l vedrai.'
Jo avea già 'l mio viso nel suo fitto;
Ed ei s' ergea col petto, e con la fronte,
Come avesse lo 'nferno in gran dispitto;
E l' animose man del duca, e pronte,
Mi pinser tra le sepolture a lui;
Dicendo: 'Le parole tue sien conte.'
Tosto ch' al piè della sua tomba fui,
Guardommi un poco, e poi, quasi disdegnoso,
Mi dimandò:—'Chi fur li maggior fui?'
Jo, ch' era d' ubbidir desideroso,
Non gliel celai, ma tutto gliele apersi:
Ond' ei levò le ciglia un poco in soso:
Poi disse:—'Fieramente furo avversi
A me, e à miei primi, e à mia parte,
Sì che per due fiate gli dispersi.'
S' ei fur cacciati, e' tornar d' ogni parte,'
Risposi lui, l' una e l' altra fiata,
Ma i vostri non appresser ben quell' arte.'
Allor surse alla vista scoperchiata
Un' ombra lungo questo infino al mento;
Credo, che s' era inginocchion levata.
D' intorno mi guardò, come talento
Avesse di veder, s' altri era meco;
Ma, poi che 'l sospicciar fu tutto spento,
Piangendo disse;—'Se per questo cieco
Carcere vai per altezza d' ingegno,
Mio figlio ov' è, e perchè non è teco?'
Ed io a lui: 'Da me stesso' non vegno;
Colui, ch' attende là, per qui mi mena,
Forse cui Guido vostro ebbe a disdegno.'
Le sue parole, e' l modo della pena
M' avevan di costui già letto il nome;
Però fu la risposta così piena.
Di subito drizzato gridò;—'Come
Dicesti, egli ebbe? non viv' egli ancora?
Non fiere gli occhi suoi lo dolce lome?'
Quando s' accorse d' alcuna dimora,
Ch ' io faceva dinanzi alla risposta,
Supin ricadde, e più non parve fuora.
Ma quell' altro magnanimo, a cui posta
Restato m'era, non mutò aspetto,
Ne’ mosse collo, ne’ piegò sua costa:
'E se,' continuando al primo detto,
'Egli ban quell' arte, disse, male appresa
Ciò mi tormenta più che questo letto.
Ma non cinquanta volte fia raccesa
La faccia della donna, che qui regge,
Che tu saprai quanto quell' arte pesa.
E se tu mai nel dolce mondo regge,
Dimmi, perchè quel popol è si empio
Incontr' a' miei in ciascun sua legge?'
Ond' io a lui; 'Lo strazio e 'l grande scempio,
Che fece 'l Arbia colorata in rosso,
Tale orazion fa far nel nostro tempio.'
Poi ch' ebbe sospirando il capo scosso,
'A ciò non fu' io sol, disse, nè certo
Senza cagion sarei con gli altri mosso;
Ma fu' io sol colà, dove sofferto
Fu per ciascun di torre via Fiorenza,
Colui, che la difesi a viso aperto.'
'Deh! se riposi mai vostra semenza!'
Prega' io lui, solvetemi quel nodo
Che qui ha inviluppata mia sentenza;
E’ par, che voi vegliate, se ben odo,
Dinanzi quel, che 'l tempo seco adduce,
E nel presente tenete altro modo.'
Noi veggiam, come quei, ch' ha mala luce,
Le cose,' disse, 'che ne son lontano;
Cotaato ancor ne splende 'l sommo duce:
Quando 's appressano, o son, tutto è vano
Nostro 'ntelletto, e s' altri non ci apporta,
Nulla sapem di vostro stato umano.
Però comprender puoi, che tutta morta
Fia nostra conoscenza da quel punto,
Che del futuro fia chiusa la porta.'
Allor, come di mia colpa compunto,
Dissi; 'Or direte dunque a quel caduto,
Che 'l suo nato è coi vivi ancor congiunto;
E s' io io' dinanzi alla risposta muto,
Fat' ei saper, che 'l fei, perchè pensava
Già nell' error, che m' avete soluto."

[26]There are few instances (notwithstanding his tremendous denunciations against bodies of men, the inhabitants of whole cities or states) in which Dante forgets courtesy towards individual sufferers; and, in general, he expresses the most honourable sympathy towards his very enemies, when he finds them such. In the case of Bocca degli Abati, who, at the battle of Monte Aperto, traitorously smote off the right hand of the Florentine standard-bearer, the patriotic poet shows no mercy; but having accidentally kicked him in the face as he stood wedged up to the chin in ice, he afterwards tears the locks from the wretch's head to make him tell his name;—forgetting, by the way, that in every other case the spirits were intangible by him, though they appeared to be bodily tormented.—Dell' Inferno, XXXII. And towards the friar Alberigo de' Manfredi, who, having quarrelled with some of his brethren, under pretence of desiring to be reconciled, invited them and others to a feast, towards the conclusion of which, at the signal of the fruit being brought in, a band of hired assassins rushed upon the guests and murdered the selected victims on the spot; whence arose a saying, when a person had been stabbed, that he had been served with some of Alberigo's fruit:—towards this wretch Dante (by an ambiguous oath and promise to relieve him from a crust of tears which had been frozen like a mask over his face), having obtained his name, behaves with deliberate inhumanity, leaving him as he found him, with this cool excuse,—

"E cortesia fu lui esser villano."

"'Twas courtesy to play the knave to him."

Dell' Inferno, canto XXXIII.

[PETRARCH]

Francesco Petrarca was of Florentine extraction, and sprung from a respectable family. His progenitors had been notaries. His great grandfather has been distinguished for his integrity, benevolence, and long life: his youth had been active, his old age was serene; he died in his sleep when more than 100 years old, an age scarcely ever heard of in Italy. His father exercised the same profession as those who had gone before him; and, being held in great esteem by his fellow citizens, he had filled several public offices. When the Ghibellines were banished Florence in 1302, Petraccolo was included in the number of exiles; his property was confiscated, and he retired with his wife, Eletta Canigiani, whom he had lately married, to the town of Arezzo in Tuscany. Two years after, the Ghibelline exiles endeavoured to reinstate themselves in their native city by force of arms, but they failed in their enterprise, and were forced to retreat. The attempt took place on the night of the 20th of July, 1304; and, on returning discomfited on the morrow, Petraccolo found that during the intervening hours his wife had, after a period of great difficulty and danger, given birth to a son. The child was baptized Francesco, and the surname of di Petracco was added, as was the custom in those days, to distinguish him as the son of Petracco. Orthography, at that time, was very inexact; and the poet's ear for harmony caused him to give a more euphonious sound to his patronymic: he wrote his name Petrarca, and by this he was known during his life, and to all posterity.

When the child was seven months old his mother 1305. was permitted to return from banishment, and she established herself at a country house belonging to her husband near Ancisa, a small town fifteen miles from Florence. The infant, who, at his birth, it was supposed, would not survive, was exposed to imminent peril during this journey. In fording a rapid stream, the man who had charge of him, carried him, wrapped in his swaddling clothes, at the end of a stick; he fell from his horse, and the babe slipped from the fastenings into the water; but he was saved, for how could Petrarch die until he had seen Laura? His mother remained for seven years at Ancisa. Petraccolo meanwhile wandered from place to place, seeking to earn a subsistence, and endeavouring to forward the Ghibeline cause. He visited his wife by stealth on various occasions, and she gave birth during this period to two sons; one of whom died in infancy, and the other, Gherardo, or Gerard, was the companion and friend of Francesco for many years.

1312.
Ætat.
8.

When Petrarch was eight years of age, his parents removed to Pisa, and remained there for nearly a year; when, finding his party entirely ruined, Petraccolo resolved to emigrate to Avignon; for, the pope having fixed his residence in that city, it became a resort for the Italians, who found it advantageous to follow his court. 1313.
Ætat.
9. Petraccolo embarked with his wife and two children at Leghorn, and proceeded by sea to Marseilles. They were wrecked and exposed to great danger when not far from port; but landing at last in safety, they proceeded to Avignon. The eyes of the young Petrarch had become familiar with the stately cities of his native country: for the last year he had lived at Pisa, where the marble palaces of the Lung' Arno, and the free open squares surrounded by majestic structures, were continually before him. The squalid aspect of the ill-built streets of Avignon were in painful contrast; and thus that veneration for Italy, and contempt for transalpine countries, which exercised a great influence over his future life, was early implanted in Petrarch's heart.

The papal court, and consequent concourse of strangers, filled Avignon to overflowing, and rendered it an expensive place of residence. 1315.
Ætat.
55. Accordingly Petraccolo quitted it for Carpentras, a small rural town twelve miles distant. A Genoese named Settimo, lately arrived at Avignon with his wife and young son, had formed an intimacy with Petraccolo, and joined him in this fresh migration.

The youth of Petrarch was obscure in point of fortune, but it was attended by all the happiness that springs from family concord, and the excellent character of his parents. His father was a man of probity and talent, attentive to his son's education and improvement, and, at the same time, kind and indulgent. His mother was distinguished for the virtues that most adorn her sex; she was domestic, and affectionate in her disposition; and he had two youthful friends, in his brother Gerard and Guido Settimo, whom he tenderly loved. Add to this, he studied under Convennole, a kind-hearted man, to whom he became warmly attached. Under his care, and during several visits to Avignon, Petrarch learned as much of grammar, dialectics, and rhetoric, as suited his age, or was taught in the schools which he frequented; and how little that was, any one conversant with the learning of those times can readily divine.[27]

1319.
Ætat.
15.

At the age of fifteen Petrarch was sent to study at the university of Montpellier, then frequented by a vast concourse of students. Petraccolo intended his son to pursue the study of the law, as the profession best suited to insure his reputation and fortune; but to this pursuit Francesco was invincibly repugnant. "It was not," he tells us, in the account he wrote for the information of Posterity, "that I was not pleased with the venerable authority of the laws, full, as they doubtless are, of the spirit of ancient Rome, but because their use was depraved by the wickedness of man; and it was tedious to learn that by which I could not profit without dishonour." Petraccolo was alarmed by the dislike shown by his son for the career for which he destined him, and by the taste he displayed for literature. He made a journey to Montpellier, reproached him for his idleness, and seizing on the precious manuscripts, which the youth vainly endeavoured to hide, threw them into the fire: but the anguish and cries of Petrarch moved him to repent his severity: he snatched the remnants of Virgil and Cicero from the flames, and gave them back, bidding him find consolation in the one, and encouragement in the other, to pursue his studies.

1323.
Ætat.
19.

He was soon after sent to Bologna. The chairs of this university were filled by the ablest professors of the age; and, under them, Petrarch made considerable progress in the study of the law, moved to this exertion, doubtless, by the entreaties of his excellent father. He proved that indolence was not the cause of his aversion to this profession. His master of civil law, Cino da Pistoia, gives most honourable testimony of his industry and talents. "I quickly discovered and appreciated your genius," he says, in a letter written some time after, "and treated you rather like a beloved son than as a pupil. You returned my affection, and repaid me by observance and respect, and thus gained a reputation among the professors and students for morality and prudence. Your progress in study will never be forgotten in the university. In the space of four years you learned by heart the entire body of civil law, with as much facility as another would have acquired the romance of Launcelot and Ginevra."

1326.
Ætat.
22.

After three years spent at Bologna, Petrarch was recalled to France by the death of his father. Soon after his mother died also, and he and his brother were left entirely to their own guidance, with very slender means, and those diminished by the dishonesty of those whom their father had named as trustees to their fortune. Under these circumstances Petrarch entirely abandoned law, as it occurred to both him and his brother that the clerical profession was their best resource in a city where the priesthood reigned supreme. They resided at Avignon, and became the favourites and companions of the ecclesiastical and lay nobles who formed the papal court, to a degree which, in after-times, excited Petrarch's wonder, though the self-sufficiency and ardour of youth then blinded him to the peculiar favour with which he was regarded. His talents and accomplishments were, of course, the cause of this distinction; besides that his personal advantages were such as to prepossess every one in his favour. He was so handsome as frequently to attract observation as he passed along the streets: his complexion was between dark and fair; he had sparkling eyes, and a vivacious and pleasing expression of countenance. His person was rather elegant than robust; and he increased the gracefulness of his appearance by a sedulous attention to dress. "Do you remember," he wrote to his brother Gerard, many years after, "our white robes; and our chagrin when their studied elegance suffered the least injury, either in the disposition of their folds, or in their spotless cleanliness? do you remember our tight shoes and how we bore the tortures which they inflicted, without a murmur? and our care lest the breezes should disturb the arrangement of our hair?"

Such tastes befit the season of youth, which, always in extremes, is apt otherwise to diverge into negligence and disorder. But Petrarch could not give up his entire mind to frivolity and the pleasures of society: he sought the intercourse of the wise, and his warm and tender heart attached itself with filial or fraternal affection to his good and learned friends. Among these was John of Florence, canon of Pisa, a venerable man, devoted to learning, and passionately attached to his native country. With him Petrarch could recur to his beloved studies and antique manuscripts. Sometimes, however, the young man was seized with the spirit of despondency. During such a mood, he had one day recourse to his excellent friend, and poured out his heart in complaints. "You know," he said, "the pains I have taken to distinguish myself from the crowd, and to acquire a reputation for knowledge. You have often told me that I am responsible to God for the use I make of my talents; and your praises have spurred me on to exertion: but I know not why, even at the moment when I hoped for success in my endeavours, I find myself dispirited, and the sources of my understanding dried up. I stumble at every step; and in my despair I have recourse to you. Advise me. Shall I give up my studies? shall I enter on another career? Have pity on me, my father: raise me from the frightful condition into which I have fallen."

Petrarch shed tears as he spoke; but the old man encouraged him with sagacity and kindness. He told him that his best hopes for improvement must be founded on the discovery he had made of his ignorance. "The veil is now raised," he said, "and you perceive the darkness which was before concealed by the presumption of youth. Embark upon the sea before you: the further you advance, the more immense it will appear; but do not be deterred. Follow the course which I have counselled you to take, and be persuaded that God will not abandon you."

These words re-assured Petrarch, and gave fresh strength to his good intentions. The incident is worthy of record, as giving a lively picture of an ingenuous and ambitious mind struggling with and overcoming the toils of learning.

At this period commenced his friendship with Giacomo Colonna, who had resided at Bologna at the same time with him, and had even then been attracted by his prepossessing appearance and irreproachable conduct, though he did not seek to be acquainted with him till their return to Avignon.

The family of Colonna was the most illustrious of Rome: they had fallen under the displeasure, and incurred the interdict, of pope Boniface VIII. who confiscated their estates and drove them into exile. The head of the family was Stefano, a man of heroic and magnanimous mind. He wandered for many years a banished man in France and Germany, and a price was set on his head. On one occasion, a band of armed men, desirous of earning the ill reward attendant on delivering him up to his enemies, seized on him, and asked his name, under the belief that he would fear to acknowledge himself. He replied, "I am Stefano Colonna, a citizen of Rome;" and the mercenaries into whose hands he had fallen, struck by his majesty and resolution, set him free. On another occasion, he appeared suddenly in Italy, on a field of battle, to aid his own party against the papal forces. Being surrounded and pressed upon by his foes, one of his friends exclaimed, "O, Stefano, where is your fortress?" He placed his hand upon his heart, and with a smile replied, "Here!" This illustrious man had a family of ten children, all distinguished by their virtues and talents. The third among them was Giacomo. Petrarch describes his friend in glowing colours. "He was," he says, "generous, faithful, and true; modest, though endowed with splendid talents; handsome in person, yet of irreproachable conduct: he possessed, moreover, the gift of eloquence to an extraordinary degree; so that he held the hearts of men in his hands, and carried them along with him by force of words." Petrarch was readily ensnared in the net of his fascinations. Giacomo introduced his new friend to his brother, the cardinal Giovanni Colonna, under whose roof he subsequently spent many years, and who acted towards him, not as a master, but rather as a partial brother.[28] Petrarch records the kindness of his patrons, in the language of enthusiastic gratitude. Doubtless, they deserved the encomiums of his free spirit, a spirit to be subdued only by the power of affection. We must, however, consider them peculiarly fortunate in being able to command the society of one whose undeviating integrity, whose gentleness, and fidelity, adorned talents which have merited eternal renown. The peculiar charm of Petrarch's character is warmth of heart, and a native ingenuousness of disposition, which readily laid bare his soul to those around: there was nothing factitious, nothing put on for show, in the temper of his mind; he desired to be great and good in God's eyes, and in those of his friends, for conscience sake, and as the worthy aim of a Christian man. He did not, therefore, wish to hide his imperfections; but rather sought them out, that he might bring a remedy; and betrayed the uneasiness they occasioned, with the utmost simplicity and singleness of mind. When to this delightful frankness were added splendid talents, the charm of poetry, so highly valued in the country of the Troubadours, an affectionate and generous disposition, vivacious and engaging manners, and an attractive exterior; we cannot wonder that Petrarch was the darling of his age, the associate of its greatest men, and the man whom princes delighted to honour.

Hitherto the feelings of friendship had engrossed him: love had not yet robbed him of sleep, nor dimmed his eyes with tears; and he wondered to behold such weakness in others.[29] Now at the age of twenty-three, after the fire of mere boyhood had evaporated, he felt the power of a violent and inextinguishable passion. 1327.
Ætat.
23. At six in the morning, on the 6th of April, A. D. 1327 (he often fondly records the exact year, day, and hour), on occasion of the festival of Easter, he visited the church of Sainte Claire at Avignon, and beheld, for the first time, Laura de Sâde. She was just twenty years of age, and in the bloom of beauty,—a beauty so touching and heavenly, so irradiated by purity and smiling innocence, and so adorned by gentleness and modesty, that the first sight stamped the image in the poet's heart, never hereafter to be erased.

Laura was the daughter of Audibert de Noves, a noble and a knight: she lost her father in her early youth; and at the age of seventeen, her mother married her to Hugh de Sâde, a young noble only a few years older than his bride. She was distinguished by her rank and fortune, but more by her loveliness, her sweetness, and the untainted purity of her life and manners in the midst of a society noted for its licentiousness.[30] Now she is known as the subject of Petrarch's verses; as the woman who inspired an immortal passion, and, kindling into living fire the dormant sensibility of the poet, gave origin to the most beautiful and refined, the most passionate, and yet the most delicate, amatory poetry that exists in the world.

Petrarch beheld the loveliness and sweetness of the young beauty, and was transfixed. He sought acquaintance with her; and while the manners of the times prevented his entering her house[31], he enjoyed many opportunities of meeting her in society, and of conversing with her. He would have declared his love, but her reserve enforced silence. "She opened my breast," he writes, "and took my heart into her hand, saying, 'Speak no word of this.'" Yet the reverence inspired by her modesty and dignity was not always sufficient to restrain her lover: being alone with her, and she appearing more gracious than usual, Petrarch, on one occasion, tremblingly and fearfully confessed his passion, but she, with altered looks, replied, "I am not the person you take me for!" Her displeasure froze the very heart of the poet, so that he fled from her presence in grief and dismay.[32]

No attentions on his part could make any impression on her steady and virtuous mind. While love and youth drove him on, she remained impregnable and firm; and when she found that he still rushed wildly forward, she preferred forsaking, to following him to the precipice down which he would have hurried her. Meanwhile, as he gazed on her angelic countenance, and saw purity painted on it, his love grew as spotless as herself. Love transforms the true lover into a resemblance of the object of his passion. In a town, which was the asylum of vice, calumny never breathed a taint upon Laura's name: her actions, her words, the very expression of her countenance, and her slightest gestures were replete with a modest reserve combined with sweetness, and won the applause of all.[33]

The passion of Petrarch was purified and exalted at the same time. Laura filled him with noble aspirations, and divided him from the common herd. He felt that her influence made him superior to vulgar ambition; and rendered him wise, true, and great. She saved him in the dangerous period of youth, and gave a worthy aim to all his endeavours. The manners of his age permitted one solace; a Platonic attachment was the fashion of the day. The troubadours had each his lady to adore, to wait upon, and to celebrate in song; without its being supposed that she made him any return beyond a gracious acceptance of his devoirs, and the allowing him to make her the heroine of his verses. Petrarch endeavoured to merge the living passion of his soul into this airy and unsubstantial devotion. Laura permitted the homage: she perceived his merit, and was proud of his admiration; she felt the truth of his affection, and indulged the wish of preserving it and her own honour at the same time. Without her inflexibility, this had been a dangerous experiment: but she always kept her lover distant from her: rewarding his reserve by smiles, and repressing by frowns all the overflowings of his heart.

By her resolute severity, she incurred the danger of ceasing to be the object of his attachment, and of losing the gift of an immortal name, which he has conferred upon her. But Petrarch's constancy was proof against hopelessness and time. He had too fervent an admiration of her qualities, ever to change: he controlled the vivacity of his feelings, and they became deeper rooted. The struggle cost him his peace of mind. From the moment that love had seized upon his heart, the tenor of his life was changed. He fed upon tears, and took a fatal pleasure in complaints and sighs; his nights became sleepless, and the beloved name dwelt upon his lips during the hours of darkness. He desired death, and sought solitude, devouring there his own heart. He grew pale and thin, and the flower of youth faded before its time. The day began and closed in sorrow; the varieties of her behaviour towards him alone imparted joy or grief, he strove to flee and to forget; but her memory became, and for ever remained, the ruling law of his existence.[34]

From this time his poetic life is dated. He probably composed verses before he saw Laura; but none have been preserved except such as celebrate his passion. How soon, after seeing her, he began thus to pour forth his full heart, cannot be told; probably love, which turns the man of the most prosaic temperament into a versifier, impelled him, at its birth, to give harmonious expression to the rush of thought and feeling that it created. Latin was in use among the learned; but ladies, unskilled in a dead language, were accustomed to be sung by the Troubadours in their native Provençal dialect. Petrarch loved Italy, and all things Italian—he perceived the melody, the grace, the earnestness, which it could embody. The residence of the popes at Avignon caused it to be generally understood; and in the language of his native Florence, the poet addressed his lady, though she was born under a less favoured sky. His sonnets and canzoni obtained the applause they deserved: they became popular: and he, no doubt, hoped that the description of his misery, his admiration, his almost idolatry, would gain him favour in Laura's heart.

Petrarch had always a great predilection for travelling: the paucity of books rendered this a mode,—in his eyes, almost the only mode,—for the attainment of the knowledge for which his nature craved. The first journey he made after his return from Bologna, was to accompany Giacomo Colonna on his visit to the diocese of Lombes, of which he had lately been installed bishop. Lombes is a small town of Languedoc, not far from Thoulouse; it had been erected into a bishopric by pope John XXII., who conferred it on Giacomo Colonna, in recompence of an act of intrepid daring successfully achieved in his behalf. 1330.
Ætat.
26. It was the summer season, and the travellers proceeded through the most picturesque part of France, among the Pyrenees, to the banks of the Garonne. Besides Petrarch, the bishop was accompanied by Lello, the son of Pietro Stefani, a Roman gentleman; and a Frenchman named Louis. The friendship that Petrarch formed with both, on this occasion, continued to the end of their lives: many of his familiar letters are addressed to them under the appellations of Lælius and Socrates; for Petrarch's contempt of his own age gave him that tinge of pedantry which caused him to confer on his favourites the names of the ancients. Lello was a man of education and learning; he had long lived under the protection of the Colonna family, by the members of which he was treated as a son or brother. The transalpine birth of Louis made Petrarch call him a barbarian; but he found him cultivated and refined, endowed with a lively imagination, a gay temper, and addicted to music and poetry. In the society of these men, Petrarch passed a divine summer; it was one of those periods in his life, towards which his thoughts frequently turned in after-times with yearning and regret.[35]

On his return from Lombes, Petrarch became an inmate in the house of cardinal Colonna. He had leisure to indulge in his taste for literature: he was unwearied in the labour of discovering, collating, and copying ancient manuscripts. To him we owe the preservation of many Latin authors, which, buried in the dust of monastic libraries, and endangered by the ignorance of their monkish possessors, had been wholly lost to the world, but for the enthusiasm and industry of a few learned men, among whom Petrarch ranks pre-eminent. He thought no toil burthensome, however arduous, which drew from oblivion these monuments of former wisdom. Often he would not trust to the carelessness of copyists, but transcribed these works with his own hand. His library was lost to the world, after his death, through the culpable negligence of the republic of Venice, to which he had given it; but there still exists, in the Laurentian library of Florence, the orations of Cicero, and his letters to Atticus in Petrarch's handwriting.

His ardour for acquiring knowledge was unbounded,—the society of a single town, and the few hooks that he possessed, could not satisfy him. He believed that travelling was the best school for learning. His great desire was to visit Rome; and a journey hither was projected by him and the bishop of Lombes. Delays intervening, which prevented their immediate departure, Petrarch made the tour of France, Flanders, and Brabant: 1331.
Ætat.
27. "For which journey," he says, "whatever cause may have been alleged, the real motive was a fervent desire of extending my experience."[36] He first visited Paris, and took pleasure in satisfying himself of the truth or falsehood of the accounts he had heard of that city. His curiosity was insatiable; when the day did not suffice, he devoted the night to his enquiries. He found the city ill built and disagreeable, but he was pleased with the inhabitants; describing them, as a traveller might of the present day, as gay, and fond of society; facile and animated in conversation, and amiable in their assemblies and feasts; eager in their search after amusement, and driving away care by pleasure; prompt to discover and to ridicule the faults of others, and covering their own with a thick veil.[37]

From Paris, Petrarch continued his travels through Liege, Aix-la-Chapelle, and Cologne. In all places he searched for ancient manuscripts. At Liege he discovered two orations of Cicero, but could not find any one capable of copying them in the whole town: it was with difficulty that he procured some yellow and pale ink, with which he transcribed them himself.[38] From Cologne he turned his steps homeward, passing through Ardennes on his way to Lyons. His heart warmed at the expectation of returning to his friends; and the image of Laura took possession of his imagination. Whilst wandering alone through the wild forest, which armed men feared to traverse, no idea of danger occurred to him; love occupied all his thoughts: the form of Laura flitted among the trees; and the waving branches, and the song of birds, and the murmuring streams, made her movements and her voice present to his senses with all the liveliness of reality. Twilight closed in, and imparted a portion of dismay, till, emerging from the dark trees, he beheld the Rhone, which threaded the plains towards the native town of the lady of his love; and at sight of the familiar river, a joyous rapture took place of gloom. Two of the most graceful of his sonnets were written to describe the fantastic images that haunted him as he traversed the forest, and the kindling of his soul when, emerging from its depths, he was, as it were serenely welcomed by the delightful country and beloved river which appeared before him.[39]

At Lyons a disappointment awaited him: he met, on his arrival, a servant of the Colonna family, whom he eagerly questioned concerning his friends; and heard, to his infinite mortification, that Giacomo had departed for Italy, without waiting for his return. Deeply hurt by this apparent neglect, he wrote a letter to the bishop, full of bitter reproaches, which he enclosed to cardinal Colonna, to be forwarded to his brother; while he delayed somewhat his homeward journey, spending some weeks at Lyons. He was absent from Avignon, on this occasion, scarcely more than three months.

On his return, he found that Giacomo Colonna was not to blame; he having repaired to Rome by command of the pope, that he might pacify the discontented citizens, and quell the disturbances occasioned by the insurgent nobles. Petrarch did not immediately join his friend: he had a duty to perform towards cardinal Colonna; and the chains which Laura threw around him, made him slow to quit a city which she inhabited. 1335.
Ætat.
31. At length he embarked, and proceeded by sea to Cività Vecchia. The troubled state of the country around Rome rendered it unsafe for a solitary traveller. Petrarch took refuge in the romantic castle of Capranica, and wrote to his friends, announcing his arrival. They came instantly to welcome and escort him. Petrarch at length reached the city of his dreams. His excited imagination had painted the fallen mistress of the world in splendid colours; and, warned by his friends, he had feared disappointment. But the sight of Rome produced no such effect: he was too real a poet, not to look with awe and reverence on the mighty and beautiful remains which meet the wanderer's eye at every turn in the streets of Rome. Petrarch's admiration grew, instead of diminishing. He found the eternal city greater and more majestic in her ruins than he had before figured; and, instead of wondering how it was that she had given laws to the whole earth, he was only surprised that her supremacy had not been more speedily acknowledged.[40]

He found inexhaustible gratification in contemplating the magnificent ruins scattered around. He was accompanied in his researches by Giovanni da San Vito, brother of Stefano Colonna, who, enveloped in the exile of his family, had wandered for many years in Persia, Arabia, and Egypt. Stefano Colonna himself resided in the capital; and Petrarch found in him an image of those majestic heroes who illustrated the annals of ancient Rome.

On leaving Italy, Petrarch gratified his avidity for travel by a long journey through Spain to Cadiz, and northward, by the sea-shore, as far as the coasts of England. He went to escape from the chains which awaited him at Avignon; and, seeking a cure for the wounds which his heart had received, he endeavoured to obtain health and liberty by visiting distant countries. It is thus that he speaks of this tour in his letters. But, though he went far, he did not stay long; for, on the l6th of August of the same year, he returned to Avignon.

He came back with the same feelings; and grew more and more dissatisfied with himself, and the state of agitation and slavery to which the vicinity of Laura reduced him. The young wife was now the mother of a family, and more disinclined than ever to tarnish her good name, or to endanger her peace, by the sad vicissitudes of illicit passion. Disturbed, and struggling with himself, Petrarch sought various remedies for the ill that beset him. April 20.
1336.
Ætat.
32. Among other attempts to divert his thoughts, he made an excursion to Mont Ventoux, one of the highest mountains Europe; which, placed in a country where every other hill is much lower, commands a splendid and extensive view. There is a letter of his to his friend and spiritual director, father Dionisio Robertis, of San Sepolcro, whom he knew in Paris, giving an account of the expedition. It was a work of labour to climb the precipitous mountain; with difficulty, and after many fatiguing deviations from the right road, he reached its summit. He gazed around on the earth, spread like a map below; he fixed his eyes on the Alps, which divided him from Italy; and then, reverting to himself, he thought—"Ten years ago you quitted Bologna: how are you changed since then!" The purity of the air, and the vast prospect before him, gave subtlety and quickness to his perceptions. He reflected on the agitation of his soul, but not yet arrived in port, he felt that he ought not to let his thoughts dwell on the tempests that shook his nature. He thought of her he loved, not, as before, with hope and animation, but with a sad struggling love, for which he blushed. He would have changed his feeling to hate; but such an attempt were vain: he felt ashamed and desperate, as he repeated the verse of Ovid—

"Odero, si potero; si non, invitus amabo."

For three years this passion had reigned over him without control: he now combated it; but his struggles saddened, while they sobered him. Again he turned his eyes from his own heart to the scene around. As the sun declined, he regarded the vast expanse of the distant Mediterranean, the long chain of mountains which divides France from Spain, and the Rhone which flowed at his feet. He feasted his eyes long on this glorious spectacle, while pious emotions filled his bosom. He had taken with him (for Petrarch was never without a book) the volume of St. Augustin's Confessions: he opened it by chance, and his eyes fell on the following passage:—-"Men make journeys to visit the summits of mountains, the waves of the sea, the course of rivers, and the immensity of ocean, while they neglect their own souls." Struck by the coincidence, Petrarch turned his thoughts inward, and prayed that he might be enabled to vanquish himself. The moon shone upon their descent from the mountain (he was accompanied by his brother Gerard, whom he had selected from among his friends to join him in his excursion); and arriving at Maulaçene, a town at the foot of Mont Ventoux, Petrarch relieved his mind by pouring out his heart in a letter to Dionisio Robertis.

The immediate result of the reflections thus awakened, was his retirement to Vaucluse. When a boy, he had visited this picturesque valley and its fountain, in company with his father, mother, and brother. He had then been charmed by its beauty and seclusion: and now, weary of travelling, and resolved to fly from Laura, he took refuge in the solitude he could here command.

He bought a small house and field, removed his books, and established himself. Since then Vaucluse has been often visited for his sake; and he who was enchanted by its loneliness and beauty, has described, in letters and verses, with fond and glowing expressions, the charm that it possessed for him. The valley is narrow, as its name testifies—shut in by high and craggy hills; the river Sorgue traverses its depth; and on one side, a vast cavern in the precipitous rock presents itself, from which the fountain flows, that is the source of the river. Within the cave, the shadows are black as night; the hills are clothed by umbrageous trees, under whose shadow the tender grass, starred by innumerable flowers, offers agreeable repose. The murmur of the torrent is perennial: that, and the song of the birds, are the only sounds heard. Such was the retreat that the poet chose. He saw none but the peasants who took care of his house and tended his little farm. The only woman near was the hard-working wife of the peasant, old and withered. No sounds of music visited his ears: he heard, instead, the carolling of the birds, and the brawling waters. Often he remained in silence from morning till night, wandering among the hills while the sun was yet low; and taking refuge, during the heat of the day, in his shady garden, which, sloping down towards the Sorgue, was terminated on one side by inaccessible rocks. At night, after performing his clerical duties (for he was canon of Lombes), he rambled among the hills; often entering, at midnight, the cavern, whose gloom, even during the day, struck the soul with awe.

The peasantry about him were poor and hard-working. His food was usually black bread; and he was so abstemious, that the servant he brought with him from Avignon quitted him, unable to endure the solitude and privations of his retreat. He was then waited on by the neighbouring cottager, a fisherman, whose life had been spent among fountains and rivers, deriving his subsistence from the rocks. "To call this man faithful," says Petrarch, "is a tame expression: he was fidelity itself." Without being able to read, he revered and cherished the books his master loved; and, all rude and illiterate, his pious regard for the poet raised him almost to the rank of a friend. His wife was yet more rustic. Her skin was burned by the sun till it resembled nothing human. She was humble, faithful, and laborious; passing her life in the fields, working under the noonday sun; while the evening was dedicated to indoor labour. She never complained, nor ever showed any mark of discontent. She slept on straw: her food was the coarsest black bread; her drink water, in which she mingled a little wine, as sour as vinegar.

It was here that Petrarch hoped to subdue his passion, and to forget Laura. "Fool that I was!" he exclaims in after-life, "not to have remembered the first schoolboy lesson—that solitude is the nurse of love!" How, with his thoughts for his sole companions, preying perpetually on his own heart, could he forget her who occupied him exclusively in courts and cities? And thus he tells, in musical and thrilling accents, how, amidst woods, and hills, and murmuring waves, her image was painted on every object, and contemplated by him till he forgot himself to stone, more dead than the living rocks among which he wandered. It is almost impossible to translate Petrarch's poetry; for his subtle and delicate thoughts, when generalised, seem common-place; and his harmony and grace, which have never been equalled, are inimitable. The only translations which retain the spirit of the original, are by lady Dacre; and we extract her version of one of the canzoni, as a specimen of his style, and as affording a vivid picture of his wild melancholy life among the solitary mountains.

"From hill to hill I roam, from thought to thought,
With Love my guide; the beaten path I fly,
For there in vain the tranquil life is sought:
If 'mid the waste well forth a lonely rill,
Or deep embosom'd a low valley lie,
In its calm shade my trembling heart is still;
And there, if Love so will,
I smile, or weep, or fondly hope or fear,
While on my varying brow, that speaks the soul,
The wild emotions roll,
Now dark, now bright, as shifting skies appear;
That whosoe'er has proved the lover's state
Would say, 'He feels the flame, nor knows his future fate.'

"On mountains high, in forests drear and wide,
I find repose, and from the throng'd resort
Of man turn fearfully my eyes aside;
At each lone step thoughts ever new arise
Of her I love, who oft with cruel sport
Will mock the pangs I bear, the tears, the sighs;
Yet e'en these ills I prize,
Though bitter, sweet—nor would they were removed;
For my heart whispers me, 'Love yet has power
To grant a happier hour:
Perchance, though self-despised, thou yet art loved.'
E'en then my breast a passing sigh will heave,
Ah! when, or how, may I a hope so wild believe?

"Where shadows of high rocking pines dark wave,
I stay my footsteps; and on some rude stone,
With thought intense, her beauteous face engrave:
Roused from the trance, my bosom bathed I find
With tears, and cry, 'Ah! whither thus alone
Hast thou far wander'd? and whom left behind?'
But as with fixed mind
On this fair image I impassion'd rest,
And, viewing her, forget awhile my ills,
Love my rapt fancy fills;
In its own error sweet the soul is blest,
While all around so bright the visions glide;
O! might the cheat endure,—I ask not aught beside.

"Her form portray'd within the lucid stream
Will oft appear, or on the verdant lawn,
Or glossy beech, or fleecy cloud, will gleam
So lovely fair, that Leda's self might say,
Her Helen sinks eclipsed, as at the dawn
A star when cover'd by the solar ray:
And, as o'er wilds I stray,
Where the eye nought but savage nature meets,
There Fancy most her brightest tints employs;
But when rude truth destroys
The loved illusion of those dreamed sweets,
I sit me down on the cold rugged stone,
Less cold, less dead than I, and think and weep alone.

"Where the huge mountain rears his brow sublime,
On which no neighbouring height its shadow flings,
Led by desire intense the steep I climb;
And tracing in the boundless space each woe,
Whose sad remembrance my torn bosom wrings.
Tears, that bespeak the heart o'erfraught, will flow.
While viewing all below,
From me, I cry, what worlds of air divide
The beauteous form, still absent and still near!
Then chiding soft the tear,
I whisper, low, haply she, too, has sigh'd
That thou art far away; a thought so sweet
Awhile my labouring soul will of its burden cheat.

"Go thou, my song, beyond that Alpine bound,
Where the pure smiling heavens are most serene:
There, by a murmuring stream, may I be found,
Whose gentle airs around
Waft grateful odours from the laurel green;
Nought but my empty form roams here unblest.
There dwells my heart with her who steals it from my breast."[41]

Petrarch's Italian poetry, written either to please his lady or to relieve the overflowing of his hearty bears in every line the stamp of warm and genuine, though of refined and chivalric, passion. It has been criticised as too imaginative, and defaced by conceits: of the latter there are a few, confined to a small portion of the sonnets. They will not be admired now, yet, perhaps, they are not those of the poems which came least spontaneously from the heart. Those have experienced little of the effects of passion, of love, grief, or terror, who do not know that conceits often spring naturally from such. Shakspeare knew this; and he seldom describes the outbursts of passion unaccompanied by fanciful imagery which borders on conceit. Still more false is the notion, that passion is not, in its essence, highly imaginative. Hard and dry critics, who neither feel themselves nor sympathise in the feelings of others, alone can have made this accusation: these people, whose inactive and colourless fancy naturally suggests no new combination nor fresh tint of beauty, suppose that is a cold exercise of the mind, when

"The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven."

As they with difficulty arrive at comprehending poetic creations, they believe that they were produced by dint of hard labour and deep study. The truth is the opposite of this. To the imaginative, fanciful imagery and thoughts, whose expression seems steeped in the hues of dawn, are natural and unforced: when the mind of such is calm, their conceptions resemble those of other men; but when excited by passion, when love, or patriotism, or the influence of nature, kindles the soul, it becomes natural, nay, imperative to them to embody their thoughts, and to give "a local habitation and a name" to the emotions that possess them. The remarks of critics on the overflowings of poetic minds remind one of the traveller who expressed such wonder when, on landing at Calais, he heard little children talk French.

Petrarch, on the other hand, would deceive us, or rather deceived himself, when he alludes depreciatingly to his Italian poetry. Latin was the language of learned men: he deemed it degrading to write for the people; and, fancying that the difficulty of writing Latin was an obstacle glorious to overcome, he treated with disdain any works expressed in the vulgar tongue. Yet even while he said that these compositions were puerile, he felt in his heart the contrary. He bestowed great pains on correcting them, and giving them that polished grace for which they are remarkable. Still his reason (which in this instance, as in others, is often less to be depended upon than our intuitive convictions,) assured him that he could never hold a high place among poets till he composed a Latin poem.

While living in solitude at Vaucluse, yet ambitious that the knowledge of his name should pass beyond the confines of his narrow valley, and be heard even in Italy, he meditated some great work worthy of the genius he felt within him. He at first contemplated writing a history of Rome; from Romulus to Titus; till one day the idea of an epic poem; on the subject of his favourite hero. Scipio Africanus, struck him. He instantly commenced it with all the ardour of a first conception, and continued for some time to build up cold dull Latin hexameters. It is curious to mark how ill he succeeded: but the structure and spirit of the language he used was then totally unknown; so that, while we lament the mis-spending of his time, we cannot wonder at his failure.

He passed several years thus almost cut off from society: his books were his great resource; he was never without one in his hand. He relates in a letter, how, as a playful experiment, a friend locked up his library, intending to exclude him from it for three days; but the poet's misery caused him to restore the key on the first evening:—"And I verily believe I should have become insane," Petrarch writes, "if my mind had been longer deprived of its necessary nourishment." The friend who thus played with his passion for reading, was Philip de Cabassoles, bishop of Cavaillon. Cavaillon is a pretty but insignificant town, situated on the slope of a mountain near the Durance, twelve miles distant from Avignon, and six from Vaucluse. He became intimate with Petrarch here, and they cemented a friendship which lasted his life. Sometimes Petrarch visited Cabassoles at Cabrières, where he resided; often the bishop came to the poet's cottage. They frequently passed the livelong day together in the woods, without thinking of refreshment, or whole nights among their books, when morning often dawned upon them unawares. After two years' residence in this seclusion, Petrarch continued so pleased with it, that he wrote to Giacomo Colonna, who had endeavoured, by promises of preferment and advantage, to entice him from it, imploring him to let him remain in a position so congenial to his disposition. "You know," he says, "how false and vain are the enticements of a court; and that the men most in favour there are the fools and rogues who attain dignities and places through adulation and simony. Why, then, should you, a man of honour, desire that I should return to a court? And even if it were possible that I should obtain any thing from the munificence of the pope, the detestable vices of the court are horrible to me. When I quitted the papal residence, know that I sang the psalm 'In exitu Israel ex Ægypto.' I enjoy, in the delightful solitude of Vaucluse, a sweet and imperturbable tranquillity, and the placid and blameless leisure of study. Any spare time I may have I go to Cabrières to amuse myself. Ah! if you were permitted to take up your abode in this valley, you would assuredly be disgusted, not only with the pope and cardinals, but the whole world. I am firmly resolved never to behold the court again."

In this letter, however, he but half expresses the cause of his hatred to Avignon; for he does not allude to Laura, while it was the memory of her that not only made him fly the city in which she lived, but tremble at the mere thought of how near he still was. And while he describes the heavenly tranquillity of his seclusion, and the beauty that adorned it, he exclaims, "But the vicinity of Avignon poisons all." So deep was his fear of reviving his passion by seeing its object, that he never even visited that city for a few days. On one occasion, hearing that his friend, William da Pastrengo, had arrived there, he repaired thither instantly to see him: but, on his arrival within the precincts of the fatal walls, he felt his chains fall so heavily around him, that, resolved to cast them off at once, without tarrying an hour, without seeing his friend, the same night he returned to Vaucluse, and then wrote to excuse himself; alleging, as his motive, his desire to escape from the net of passion that enveloped him in that town. At the same time, with the contradictory impulses of a lover, he entreated the painter, Simon Memmi, a pupil of Giotto, just arrived in Provence, and in high esteem with the pope and cardinals, to execute for him a small portrait of Laura.[42] Simon consented; and was so pleased with the model thus presented him, that he frequently afterwards introduced her face into his pictures of saints and angels. Petrarch repaid his friend's complaisance by two sonnets of praise and commendation.

In the imaginary conversations which Petrarch pictures himself to have held with St. Augustin, the saint tells him that he is bound by two adamantine chains—love and glory. To free himself from the first of these he had retreated to Vaucluse, and found the attempt vain. The second passion of his soul became even more strong, allying itself to the first, for he wished Laura's lover to be renowned. This was also more successful, as, beside the honour in which he was held by all who knew him, it proved that his name was heard in distant countries, and his merit acknowledged. 1340.
Ætat.
36. He had before entertained a vague wish for the laurel crown of poetry; but it was beyond his hopes, when, on the same day, the 24th of August, 1340, while at Vaucluse, he received letters from the Roman senate, and from the chancellor of the university of Paris, inviting him to receive it. Hesitating to which city to yield the preference, he wrote to ask the advice of cardinal Colonna; and, counselled by him, as well as following his own predilection, decided in favour of Rome.

Another circumstance influenced Petrarch in this choice. Not long before, his friend Dionisio Robertis had visited him at Vaucluse on his way to the court of Robert king of Naples. From him Petrarch heard of the literary tastes and liberal disposition of this amiable monarch. He had already meditated a visit to him, and letters had been interchanged between them. The circumstance of his coronation gave him a fair excuse for paying him a visit. In the ardour of an age scarcely yet mature; he believed himself worthy of the honour conferred on him; but he tells us that he felt ashamed of relying only on his own testimony and that of the persons who invited him. Perhaps the desire of display, and of proving to the world that he was no illiterate pretender, was the stronger motive. However this might be; he made choice of the king of Naples; more illustrious in his eyes for his learning than his crown, to examine his claim to distinction, and be the judge of his deserts.[43]

1341.
Ætat.
37.

He lost no time in repairing to the court of king Robert, who received him with a warmth of friendship that excited his deepest gratitude. Hearing the object of the poet's visit, he expressed great delight, and considered the choice made of him, among all mortals, to be the judge of his merits, as glorious to himself. During the many conversations they held together, Petrarch showed the monarch the commencement of his poem on Africa. Robert, highly delighted, begged that it might be dedicated to him: the poet gladly assented, and kept his promise, though the king died before it could be fulfilled. The examination of his acquirements lasted three days, after which the king declared him worthy of the laurel, and sent an ambassador to be present on his part when the crown was conferred. April
17.
1341. Petrarch repaired to Rome for the ceremony, and was crowned in the capitol with great solemnity, in presence of all the nobles and high-born ladies of the city. "I then," writes Petrarch, "thought myself worthy of the honour: love and enthusiasm bore me on. But the laurel did not increase my knowledge, while it gave birth to envy in the hearts of many."[44]

Leaving Rome soon after his coronation, Petrarch intended to return to Avignon, but passing t through Parma he was detained by his friend Azzo Correggio, who ruled the city, governing it with incomparable wisdom and moderation. The friendship between Azzo and Petrarch had commenced at Avignon, where, for the first and only time, Petrarch had been induced to take on himself the office of a barrister, and pleaded the cause of the Correggii against their enemies the Rossi before the pope, and succeeded in obtaining a decision in their favour. This, as is mentioned, is the only occasion on which Petrarch played the advocate; and he boasts of having gained the cause for his clients without using towards their adversaries the language of derision and sarcasm.

Petrarch, meanwhile, remembering the honour he had received, was solicitous not to appear unworthy of it; and, on a day, wandering among the hills and crossing the river Ensa, he entered the wood of Selva Piana: struck by the beauty of the place, he turned his thoughts to his neglected poem of Africa; and, excited by an enthusiasm for his subject which had long been dormant, he composed that day, and on each following one, some verses. On returning to Parma he sought and found a tranquil and fit dwelling: buying the house that thus pleased him, he fixed himself at Parma, and continued to occupy himself with his poem with so much ardour, that he brought it to a conclusion with a speed that excited his own surprise.[45]

At this time Petrarch suffered the first of those losses which afterwards cast such gloomy shadows over his life, in the death, first of Thomas of Messina, and then of a dearer friend, Giacomo Colonna. Tommaso Caloria of Messina had studied with Petrarch at Bologna, and many of his letters are addressed to him. There existed a strict friendship between them, both loving and cultivating literature. His early death deeply affected the warm-hearted poet. The impression he received was so melancholy and bitter, that he desired to die also; and a fever, the consequence of his grief, made him imagine that in reality his end was approaching. To add to his disquietude, he heard of the illness of Giacomo Colonna. The bishop was at that time residing at Lombes, apart from all his family, and Petrarch was about to join him to fulfil his duties as canon. At this time he one night dreamt that he saw Giacomo Colonna, in his garden at Parma, crossing the rivulet that traversed it. He went to meet him, asking him, with surprise, whence he came? whither he was going in such haste? and wherefore unattended? The bishop replied, smiling, "Do you not remember when you visited the Garonne with me, how you disliked the thunder-storms of the Pyrenees? They now annoy me also, and I am returning to Rome." So saying he hastened on, repelling with his hand Petrarch, who was about to follow him, saying, "Remain, you must not now accompany me." As he spoke, his countenance changed, and it was overspread with the hues of death. Nearly a month after, Petrarch heard that the bishop had died during the night on which this dream had occurred. The poet was a faithful and believing son of the church of Rome, but he was not superstitious, and saw nothing supernatural in this affecting coincidence. The loss of his friend and patron grieved him deeply, and his mourning was renewed soon after by the death of Dionisio Robertis. These reiterated losses made so profound an impression, that he trembled and turned pale on receiving any letter, and feared at each instant to hear of some new disaster.

Satisfied with the tranquillity which he enjoyed at Parma, he resisted the frequent and earnest solicitations of his friends at Avignon to return among them. He did not forget Laura. Her image often occupied him. It was here we may believe that he wrote the canzone before quoted, and many sonnets, which showed with what lively and earnest thoughts he cherished the passion which had so long reigned over him. He could not write letters; but as it is a lover's dearest solace to make his mistress aware that his attachment survives time and absence, Petrarch, we may easily suppose, was glad, by the medium of his heartfelt poetry, to communicate with her who, he hoped, prized his affection, even if she did not silently return it. Still love, while far from her, did not so pertinaciously and cruelly torment, and he was unwilling to trust himself within the influence of her presence. It required a powerful motive to induce him to pass the Alps; but this occurred after no long period of time. Italy, and especially Rome, was torn by domestic faction and the lawlessness of the nobles. Petrarch saw in the secession of the popes to Avignon the cause of these disasters. His patriotic spirit kindled with indignation, that the head of the church and the world should desert the queen of cities, and inhabit an insignificant province. He had often exerted all his eloquence to induce successive popes to return to the palaces and temples of Italy. Pope Benedict XII. died at this time, and Clement VI. was elected to fill the papal chair. One of the first incidents of his reign was the arrival of an embassy from Rome, soliciting the restoration of the papal residence. Petrarch, having been already made citizen of that city, was chosen one of the deputies.[46] 1342.
Ætat.
38. He and Rienzi (who afterwards played so celebrated a part) addressed the pope. Their representations were of no avail; but Clement rewarded the poet by naming him prior of Migliarino in the diocese of Pisa.

Petrarch remained at Avignon. The sight of Laura gave fresh energy to a passion which had survived the lapse of fifteen years. She was no longer the blooming girl who had first charmed him. The cares of life had dimmed her beauty. She was the mother of many children, and had been afflicted at various times by illnesses. Her home was not happy. Her husband, without loving or appreciating her, was ill-tempered and jealous. Petrarch acknowledged that if her personal charms had been her sole attraction he had already ceased to love her. But his passion was nourished by sympathy and esteem; and above all, by that mysterious tyranny of love, which, while it exists, the mind of man seems to have no power of resisting, though in feebler minds it sometimes vanishes like a dream. Petrarch was also changed in personal appearance. His hair was sprinkled with grey, and lines of care and sorrow trenched his face. On both sides the tenderness of affection began to replace, in him the violence of passion, in her the coyness and severity she had found necessary to check his pursuit. The jealousy of her husband opposed obstacles to their seeing each other.[47] They met as they could in public walks and assemblies. Laura sang to him, and a soothing familiarity grew up between them as her fears became allayed, and he looked forward to the time when they might sit together and converse without dread. He had a confidant in a Florentine poet, Sennucio del Bene, attached to the service of cardinal Colonna, to whom many of his sonnets are addressed, now asking him for advice, now relating the slight but valued incidents of a lover's life.

He had another confidant into whose ear to pour the history of his heart. This was the public. In those days, when books were rare, reading was a luxury reserved for a few, and it was chiefly by oral communication that a poet's contemporaries became acquainted with his productions; and there was a class of men, not poets themselves, who chiefly subsisted by repeating the productions of others:—"men," writes Petrarch, "of no genius, but endowed with memory and industry. Unable to compose themselves, they recite the verses of others at the tables of the great, and receive gifts in return. They are chiefly solicitous to please their audience by novelty. How often have they importuned me with entreaties for my yet unfinished poems! Often I refused. Sometimes, moved by the poverty or worth of my applicants, I yield to their desires. The loss is small to me, the gain to them is great. Many have visited me, poor and naked, who, having obtained what they asked, returned, loaded with presents, and dressed in silk, to thank me." These were the booksellers of the middle ages. It was thus that the Italian poetry of Petrarch became known; and he, finding that it was often disfigured in repetition, took pains at last to collect and revise it. He performed the latter task with much care; and afterwards said, that though he saw a thousand faults in his other works, he had brought his Italian poetry to as great a degree of perfection as he was capable of bestowing.

He applied himself to Greek at this time under Bernardo Barlaam, a Calabrian by birth, but educated at Constantinople. He had come to Avignon as ambassador from the Greek emperor Andronicus, for the purpose of reconciling the Greek and Roman churches. They read several of the Dialogues of Plato together. The hook entitled "The Secret of Francesco Petrarca" was written at this period. This work is in the form of dialogues with St. Augustin. Petrarch, assisted by the questions and remarks of the saint, examines the state of his mind, laying bare every secret of his soul, its weaknesses and its fears, with the utmost ingenuousness. He relates the struggles of his passion for Laura, and accuses himself of that love of glory which was the spur of so many of his actions. He speaks of the constitutional melancholy of his disposition, which often rendered him gloomy and almost despairing; and he is hid by the saint to seek a remedy for his sorrows, and make atonement for his faults, by dedicating hereafter all his faculties to God.

His literary pursuits were interrupted by a public duty. His friend Robert, king of Naples, died, and was succeeded by his daughter Giovanna, married to Andrea, prince of Hungary. 1343.
Ætat.
39. The greatest dissension reigned between the royal pair; besides which, the young queen was not of an age to govern, and the pope had pretensions to supremacy during her minority. Petrarch was sent as ambassador to establish the papal claim; and he was commissioned, also, by cardinal Colonna, to obtain the release of some prisoners of rank unjustly detained at Naples.

During this mission he became attached to the party of queen Giovanna, who inherited her father's love of letters; so that afterwards, when her husband was murdered, he believed her to be innocent of all share in the crime. He was displeased, however, with the court and the gladiatorial exhibitions in fashion there. Having obtained the liberty of the prisoners, and brought his mission from the pope to a successful conclusion, he returned to Parma. This part of Italy was in a state of dreadful disturbance, arising from the wars carried on by the various lords of Parma, Verona, Ferrara, Bologna, and Padua. Petrarch, besieged, as it were, in the first-named town, was obliged to remain. He had still the house he had bought, and the books he had collected and left in Italy. He loved his cisalpine Parnassus, as he named his Italian home, in contradistinction to his transalpine Parnassus at Vaucluse; and, occupying himself with his poem of Africa, he was content to prolong his stay in his native country. 1345.
Ætat.
41. At length the roads became safe, and he returned to Avignon.

And now an event occurred which electrified Italy, and filled the papal court with astonishment and disquietude. Nicola di Rienzi, inspired by a desire to free his townsmen from the cruel tyranny of the nobles, with wonderful promptitude and energy, seized upon the government of Rome, assumed the name of tribune, and reduced all the men of rank, with Stefano Colonna at their head, to make public submission to his power. The change he produced in the state of the country was miraculous. Before, travellers scarcely ventured, though armed and in bodies, to traverse the various states: under him the roads became secure; and his emissaries, bearing merely a white wand in their hands, passed unmolested from one end of Italy to the other. Order and plenty reigned through the land. The pope and cardinals were filled with alarm; while Petrarch hailed with glowing enthusiasm the restoration of peace and empire to his beloved country. He wrote the tribune letters full of encouragement and praise. His heart swelled with delight at the prospect of the renewed glories of Rome; and such was his blind exultation, that he scarcely mourned the death of several of the most distinguished members of the Colonna family, who fell in the straggle between the nobles and Rienzi.

He desired to return to Italy to enjoy the triumph of liberty and law over oppression and licence. More and more he hated Avignon. Pope Clement VI. was a man of refinement, and a munificent prince: but he was luxurious and dissolute; so that the vices of the court, which filled the poet with immeasurable abhorrence, increased during his reign. He had offered Petrarch the dignity of bishop, and the honourable and influential post of apostolic secretary; but the poet declined to accept the proferred rank. Love of independence was strong in his heart; and he desired no wealth beyond competence, which was secured to him by the preferment he already enjoyed. He was at this time archdeacon of Parma, as well as canon of various cathedrals. He obtained with difficulty the consent of his friends to abandon Avignon for Italy. Cardinal Colonna reproached him bitterly for deserting him; and Laura saw him depart with regret. When he went to take leave of her, he found her (as he describes in several of his sonnets) surrounded by a circle of ladies. Her mien was dejected; a cloud overcast her face, whose expression seemed to say, "Who takes my faithful friend from me?" Petrarch was struck to the heart by a sad presentiment: the emotion was mutual; they both seemed to feel that they should never meet again.

Yet, restless and discontented, he would not stay. He had no ties of home. His brother Gerard had taken vows, and become a Carthusian monk: he invited Petrarch to follow his example; but the poet's love of independence prevented this, as well as every other servitude. Belonging to the Romish church, he could not marry; and though he had two children he was not attached to their mother, of whom nothing more is known except the declaration, in the letters of legitimacy obtained afterwards for her son, that she was not a married woman. Of these two children the daughter was yet an infant. The boy, now ten years of age, he had placed at Verona, under the care of Rinaldo da Villafranca.

1347.
Ætat.
43.

Leaving Avignon, Petrarch passed through Genoa, where he heard of the follies and downfall of Rienzi; instead, therefore, of proceeding to Rome, he repaired to his house at Parma.

1348.
Ætat.
44.

The fatal year now began which cast mourning and gloom over the rest of his life. It was a year fatal to the whole world. The plague, which had been extending its ravages over Asia, entered Europe. As if for an omen of the greater calamity, a disastrous earthquake occurred on the 25th of January. Petrarch was timid: he feared thunder—he dreaded the sea; and the alarming concussion of nature that shook Italy filled him with terror. The plague then extended its inroads to increase his alarm. It spread its mortal ravages far and wide: nearly one half of the population of the world became its prey. Petrarch saw thousands die around him, and he trembled for his friends: he heard that it was at Avignon, and his friend Sennucio del Bene had fallen its victim. A thousand sad presentiments haunted his mind. He recollected the altered countenance of Laura when he last saw her; he dreamed of her as dead; her pale image hovered near his couch, bidding him never expect to see her more. At last, the fatal truth reached him: he received intelligence of her death on the 19th of May. By a singular coincidence, she died on the anniversary of the day when he first saw her. She was taken ill on the 3d of April, and languished but three days. As soon as the symptoms of the plague declared themselves, she prepared to die: she made her will, which is dated on the 3d of April[48], and received the sacraments of the church. On the 6th she died, surrounded to the last by her friends and the noble ladies of Avignon, who braved the danger of infection to attend on one so lovely and so beloved. On the evening of the same day on which she died, she was interred in the chapel of the Cross which her husband had lately built in the church of the Minor Friars at Avignon. With her was buried a leaden box, fastened with wire, which enclosed a medal and a sealed parchment, on which was inscribed an Italian sonnet. If the sonnet were the composition of Petrarch, as the sense of it would intimate, although its want of merit renders it doubtful, this box must have been placed in the grave at a subsequent period.

The sensitive heart of Petrarch had often dwelt on the possibility of Laura's death. Although she was only three years his junior, he comforted himself by the reflection that as he had entered life first so he should be the first to quit it.[49] This fond hope was disapappointed: he lost her who, for more than twenty years, had continually been the object of all his thoughts: he lost her at a period when he began to hope that, while time diminished the violence of his passion, it might draw them nearer as friends. The sole melancholy consolation now afforded him was derived from the contemplation of the past. That at each hour of the day her memory might be more vividly present to his thoughts, he fixed to the binding of his copy of Virgil a record of her death, written in Latin, of which the following is a translation:—

"Laura, illustrious through her own virtues, and long celebrated by my verses, first appeared to me in my youth, in the year of our Lord 1327, on the sixth day of April, in the church of Ste. Claire, at Avignon, at the ninth hour[50] of the morning. And in the same city, during the same month of April, on the same day of the month, and at the same early hour, but in the year 1348, this light was withdrawn from the world; while I, alas! ignorant of my fate, chanced to be at Verona. The unhappy intelligence reached me through the letters of my friend Louis, at Parma, in the same year, on the morning of the nineteenth of May. Her chaste and beautiful body was deposited, on the evening of her death in the church of the Minor Friars at Avignon.[51] Her soul, as Seneca says of Africanus, I believe to have returned to the heaven whence it came. To mingle some sweetness with the bitter memory of this miserable event, I have selected this place to record it, which often meets my eyes; so that by frequent view of these words, and by due estimation of the swift passage of time, I may be reminded that nothing henceforth can please me in life, and that, my chief tie being broken, it is time that I should escape from this Babylon; and, by the grace of God, I shall find this easy, while I resolutely and boldly reflect on the vain cares of years gone by, on my futile hopes, and on their unexpected downfall."[52]

Death consecrates and deepens the sentiment with which we regard a beloved object; it is no wonder, therefore, that Petrarch, whose sensibility and warmth of feeling surpassed that of all other men, should have gone beyond himself in the poems he wrote subsequent to Laura's death. Nothing can be more tender, more instinct with the spirit of passionate melancholy, and, at the same time, more beautiful, than the sonnets and canzoni which lament her loss. It was his only consolation to recur to all the marks of affection he had ever received from her, and to believe that she regarded him with tender interest from her place of bliss in heaven. He indulged, also, in another truly catholic mode of testifying his affection, by giving large sums in charity for the sake of her soul, and causing so many masses to be said for the same purpose, that, as a priest who was his contemporary, informed his congregation, in a sermon, "they had been sufficient to withdraw her from the hands of the devil, had she been the worst woman in the world; while, on the contrary, her death was holy."[53]

The death of Laura, overwhelming as it was, was but a prelude to numerous others. Petrarch had lived among many dear friends; but the plague appeared, and their silent graves were soon all that remained to him of them. Cardinal Colonna died in the course of this same year. He was the last surviving son of the hero Stefano, who lived to become childless in his old age. Petrarch relates in a letter, that during his first visit to Rome, he was walking one evening with Stefano in the wide street that led from the Colonna palace to the Capitol, and they paused in an open place formed by the meeting of several streets. They both leant their elbows on an antique marble, and their conversation turned on the actual condition of the Colonna family: after other observations that fell from Stefano, he turned to Petrarch with tears in his eyes, saying, "With regard to the heir of my possessions, I desire and ought to leave them to my sons; but fate has ordered otherwise. By a reversal of the order of nature, which I deplore, it is I—decrepit old man as I am—who will inherit from all my children." As he spoke, grief seized upon his heart, and interrupted further speech. Now this singular prophecy was fulfilled; and Petrarch, in his letter of condolence, reminds the unhappy father of this scene. The old man, however, survived but a few months the last of his sons.

Petrarch, during the autumn, visited Giacomo da Carrara, lord of Padua, who had often invited him with a warmth and pertinacity, which he found it at length impossible to resist. Pie passed many months in that town, visiting occasionally Parma, Mantua, and Ferrara, being much favoured and beloved by the various lords of these cities. 1350.
Ætat.
46. On occasion of the jubilee, he went to Rome in pilgrimage, to avail himself of the religious indulgences afforded on that occasion. On his way through Florence, which he visited for the first time, he saw Boccaccio, with whom he had lately entered into a correspondence. Continuing his journey, he met with a serious injury from the kick of a horse on his knee, on the road near Bolsena, which occasioned him great pain, and on his arrival at Rome confined him to his bed for some days. As soon as he was able to rise, he performed his religious duties, and, with earnest prayers and good resolutions, dedicated his future life to the practices of virtue and piety.

Returning from Rome, he passed through his native town of Arezzo. The inhabitants received him with every mark of honour: they showed him the house in which he was born, which they had never permitted to be pulled down nor altered, and attended on him during his visit with zealous affection. On his arrival at Padua he was afflicted by hearing of the death of his friend and protector Giacomo da Carrara; who, but a few days before, had been assassinated by a relative. The son of Giacomo succeeded to him, and though the difference of age prevented the same intimacy of friendship, the young lord loved and honoured Petrarch as his father had done; so that he continued to reside in the city, over which the youth ruled. Sometimes he visited Venice, to which beautiful and singular town he was much attached. The doge, Andrea Dandolo, was his friend; and he exerted his influence to put an end to the destructive war carried on between Venice and Genoa, writing forcible and eloquent letters to the doge. His endeavours were without success; but the injuries which the republics mutually inflicted and received might make them afterwards repent that they had not listened to the voice of the peace-maker.

Nor was the poet's heart wholly closed against the feelings of love; nor could the image of the dead Laura possess all the empire which had been hers, cold and reserved as she was, during her life. His sonnets give evidence that passion had spread fresh nets to ensnare him, when the new object of his admiration died, and death quenched and scattered once again the fire which he was unable to resist.[54] Again, he could think only of Laura; and, on the third anniversary of her death, exclaimed, "How sweet it had been to die three years ago!" 1351.
Ætat.
47. It was on this anniversary that Boccaccio arrived at Padua, bringing the decree of the Florentine republic, which reinstated him in his paternal inheritance, together with letters inviting him to accept of a professor's chair in their new university.

Such an employment scarcely suited one, who, for the sake of freedom, had declined the highest honours of the catholic church. Petrarch testified great gratitude for the restitution of his property, but passed over their offered professorship in silence. Instead of repairing, as he had been invited, to Florence, he set out to revisit Avignon and Vaucluse. "I had resolved," he writes, "to return here no more; but my desires overcame my resolution, and, in justification of my inconstancy, I have nothing to allege but the necessity I felt for solitude. In my own country I am too well known, too much courted, too greatly praised. I am sick of adulation; and that place becomes dear to me, where I can live to myself alone, abstracted from the crowd, unannoyed by the voice of fame. Habit, which is a second nature, has rendered Vaucluse my true country." His son accompanied him on this occasion. The boy was now fourteen years of age: he was quiet and docile; but invincibly repugnant to learning, to the ne slight mortification of his father, who vainly tried, by reprehension, raillery, and sarcasm, to awaken emulation in his mind.

When Petrarch arrived at Avignon, Clement VI, was very ill, and expected to die. He asked the poet's opinion concerning his disorder; and Petrarch wrote him a letter to give him his advice with regard to the choice of a physician, entreating him to adhere to one, as affording a better prospect, where all was chance, of having his malady understood. The learned body of medical men was highly offended by this letter: they attacked the writer with acrimony; and Petrarch replied in a style of vituperation, little accordant with his usual mild manner. He was highly esteemed in the papal court, and consulted by the four cardinals, deputed to reform the government of Rome; and was again solicited to accept the place of apostolic secretary, which he again refused. "I am content," he said, in reply to his friend the cardinal Talleirand: "I desire nothing more. My health is good; labour renders me cheerful; I have every kind of book; and I have friends, whom I consider the most precious blessing of life, if they do not seek to deprive me of my liberty."

This letter was written from Vaucluse, Petrarch's heart had opened to a thousand sad and tender emotions, when he returned to the valley which had so frequently heard his laments: his sonnets on his return to Provence breathe the softest spirit of sadness and devoted love. He gladly took refuge in his former home from the vices and turbulence of Avignon. He renewed the wandering lonely life he had lived twelve years before. The old peasant still lived with his aged wife; and the poet amused himself with improvements in his garden, which an inundation of the Sorgue overwhelmed and destroyed.

On the death of Clement VI. he was succeeded by Innocent VI. He was an ignorant man; and, from Petrarch's perpetual study of Virgil (who was reputed to be an adept in the art magic), he fancied that the poet was a magician also. 1352.
Ætat.
48. Petrarch was now most anxious to return to Italy, yet still lingered at Vaucluse. He made an excursion to visit the Carthusian convent, where his brother Gerard had taken the vows. Gerard had acted an admirable and heroic part during the visitation of the plague, and survived the dangers to which he fearlessly exposed himself. Petrarch was received in his monastery with respect and affection; and, in compliance with the request of the monks, wrote his treatise "On Solitary Life."

Winter advanced, and he was most anxious to cross the Alps. He visited his old friend, the bishop of Cavaillon, at Cabrières, and was entreated by him to remain "one day more." Petrarch consented with reluctance; and on that very night such storms came on, as impeded his journey for several weeks. 1353.
Ætat.
49. At length he crossed the Alps, and arrived at Milan, on his way southward, not having determined in his own mind in what town he should fix his residence, wavering between Parma, Padua, Verona, and Venice. While in this state of indecision, the hospitable reception and earnest invitation of Giovanni Visconti, lord and bishop of Milan, induced him to remain in that city.

Louis of Baviere, emperor of Germany, had been deposed by pope John XXII., and each succeeding pontiff confirmed the interdict. Clement VI. raised Charles, the son of John of Luxembourg, king of Bohemia, to the imperial throne, imposing on him, at the same time, rigorous and disgraceful conditions with regard to his rights over Italy, forcing him into an engagement never to pass a single night at Rome, but enter it merely for the ceremony of his coronation. Charles and his father had visited Avignon in the year 1346, to arrange the stipulations.[55] Some time after, Petrarch wrote a long and eloquent letter to the emperor, imploring him to enter Italy, and to deliver it from the disasters that oppressed it. It is singular that two such lovers of their country, as Dante and Petrarch, should both have invited German emperors to take possession of it: but the emperor was then the representative of the sovereigns of the Western empire, and they believed that, crowned and reigning at Rome, that city would again become the capital of the world, and Germany sink into a mere province. For though Petrarch earnestly implores the emperor to enter Italy, various imprecations against the Germans are scattered through his poems.

1354.
Ætat.
50.

Charles did not answer the poet's letter immediately, but he entertained a profound admiration for him; and when he entered Italy, being at Mantua, he sent one of his esquires to Milan, to invite Petrarch to come to him. The poet immediately obeyed, though frost and snow rendered his journey slow and difficult. The emperor received him with the greatest kindness and distinction. Petrarch used the utmost freedom of speech in his exhortations to the emperor to deliver Italy. He made him a present of a collection of antique medals, among which was an admirable one of Augustus, saying to him, "These heroes ought to serve you as examples. The medals are dear to me: I would not part with them to any one but you. I know the lives and acts of the great men whom they represent: this knowledge is not enough for you; you ought to imitate them."

Petrarch's admonitions were vain. After a progress through Italy, and the ceremony of his coronation at Rome; after having made a mere traffic of his power and prerogatives, Charles hastened to repass the Alps, and returned to Germany, as a contemporary historian observes "with a full purse, but shorn of honour."

After the death of the bishop-lord Giovanni Visconti, Petrarch continued to reside at Milan under the protection of his nephew Galeazzo: he was sent by him at one time to Venice to negotiate a peace, and on another to Prague, on an embassy to the emperor Charles. 1355.
Ætat.
51. Afterwards he was sent to Paris to congratulate king John on his return from his imprisonment in England: he was shocked, in travelling through France, to find that it had been laid waste by fire and sword. 1360.
Ætat.
56. The invasion of the English had reduced the whole land to a frightful state of solitude; the fields were desolate, and no house was left standing, except such as were fortified. Paris presented a yet more painful spectacle; grass grew in the deserted streets; the sounds of gaiety and the silence of learning were exchanged for the tumult of soldiery and the fabrication of arms. Petrarch was well received, especially by the dauphin, Charles, who cultivated letters and loved literary men. Here, as in every other court he visited, the poet was solicited to remain; but he found the barbarism of Paris little congenial to his habits, and he hastened back to Italy.

When not employed on public affairs, Petrarch lived a life of peace and retirement at Milan. In the summer, he inhabited a country-house three miles from the city, near the Garignano, to which he gave the name of Linterno: when in the city, he dwelt in a sequestered quarter near the church of St. Ambrose. "My life," he says in a letter to the friend of his childhood, Guido Settimo, "has been uniform ever since age tamed the fervour of youth, and extinguished that fatal passion which so long tormented me; and though I often change place, my mode of spending my time is the same in all. Remember my former occupations, and you will know what my present ones are. It seems to me that you ought not only to know my acts, but even my dreams."

"Like a weary traveller, I quicken my steps as I proceed. I read and write day and night, one occupation relieving another. This is all my amusement and employment: my eyes are worn out with readings my fingers weary with holding the pen. My health is so good and robust that I scarcely feel the advance of years. My feelings are as warm as in my youth, but I control their vivacity, so that my repose is seldom disturbed by them. One thing only is the source of disquietude: I am esteemed more than I deserve, so that a vast concourse of people come to see me. Not only am I honoured and loved by the prince of this city and his court, but the whole population pays me respect: yet, living in a distant quarter of the city, the visits I receive are infrequent, and I am often left in solitude. I am unchanged in my habits as to sleep and food. I remain in bed only to sleep, for slumber appears to me to resemble death, and my bed the grave, which renders it hateful. The moment I awake I hurry to my library. Solitude and quiet are dear to me; yet I appear talkative to my friends, and make up for the silence of a year by the conversation of a day. My income is increased, I confess, but my expenditure increases with it. You know me, and that I am never richer nor poorer: the more I have, the less I desire, and abundance renders me moderate: gold passes through my fingers, but never sticks to them."

The literary work on which his busy leisure was employed, was "De Remediis utriusque Fortunæ," which he dedicated to Azzo di Coreggio. Azzo, who had formerly protected him, had been driven into exile, and, alternately a prisoner and an outcast, was reduced to a state of the heaviest adversity. Petrarch never ceased to treat him with respect; and for his comfort and consolation composed this treatise, of how to bring a remedy to the evils consequent on both prosperous and adverse fortune.

Honoured by all men, beloved by his friends, with whom he kept up a constant and affectionate correspondence, courted by monarchs, and refusing the offers made him of the highest preferment in the church, Petrarch spent his latter years in peace and independence. His chief source of care was derived from his son. The youth was at first modest and docile, but his disinclination to literature was so great, that he abhorred the very sight of books. As he grew older he became rebellious, and a separation ensued between him and his father, soon made up again on the submission of the young man and his promises of amendment. The poet's tranquillity was at last broken in upon by the wars of the Visconti, and the plague, which again ravaged Italy. It had spared Milan by a singular exemption in the year 1348, but during its second visitation it was more fatal to this city than to any other. Petrarch had to mourn the loss of many friends; and his son, who died at this time, was probably one of its victims. Petrarch records his death in his Virgil, in these words:—"He who was born for my trouble and sorrow, who while he lived was the cause of heavy care, and who dying, inflicted on me a painful wound, having enjoyed but few happy days in the course of his life, died A. D. 1361, at the age of twenty-five."[56]

1361.
Ætat.
57.

These combined causes induced Petrarch to take up his abode at Padua, of whose cathedral he was a canon. During the remainder of his life he usually spent the period of Lent there, and the summer at Pavia; which, belonging to Galeazzo Visconti, he visited as his guest. A great portion of his time also was passed at Venice: he had made the republic a present of his library, and a palace was decreed to him for its reception, in which he often resided. Andrea Dando was dead; his heart had been broken by the reverses which the republic suffered in its struggle with Genoa. Marino Faliero, who succeeded to him, had already met his fate; but the new doge, Lorenzo Celsi, was Petrarch's warm friend.

During this year he gave his daughter Francesca, who was scarcely twenty years of age, in marriage to Francesco Brossano, a Milanese gentleman. She was gentle and modest, attached to her duties, and averse to the pleasures of general society: in person she resembled her father to a singular degree. Her husband had a pleasing exterior; his physiognomy was remarkably placid, his conversation was unassuming, and his manners mild and obliging. Petrarch was much attached to his son-in-law: the new married pair inhabited his house at Venice, and the domestic union was never disturbed to the end of his life.

One of his principal friends at this period was Boccaccio. Boccaccio, in the earnestness of his admiration and the singleness of his heart, sent him a copy of Dante, transcribed by his own hand, with a letter inviting him to study a poet whose works he neglected and depreciated. Petrarch, in answer, endeavoured to exculpate himself from the charge of envying or despising the father of Italian poetry. But his very excuses betray a latent feeling of irritation; and he asks, how he could be supposed to envy a man whose highest flights were in the vulgar tongue, while such of his own poems as were composed in that language he regarded as mere pastime. The poetry of Dante and Petrarch is essentially different. There is more refinement in Petrarch, and more elegance of versification, but scarcely more grace of expression. The force, beauty, and truth, with which Dante describes the objects of nature, and the sympathetic feeling that vivifies his touches of human passion, is of a different style from the outpouring of sentiment, and earnest dwelling on the writer's own emotions, which form the soul of Petrarch's verses. The characters of the poets were also in contrast.[57] Dante was a proud, high-spirited, unyielding man: his haughty soul bent itself to God and the sense of virtue only; he loved deeply, but it was as a poet and a boy; and his after-life, spent in adversity, is tinged only with sombre colours. He possessed the essentials of a hero. Petrarch was amiable and conciliating: he was incapable of venality or baseness; on the contrary, his disposition was frank, independent, and generous; but he was vain even to weakness; and there was a touch of almost feminine softness in his nature, which was even accompanied by physical timidity of temper. His ardent affections made him, to a degree, fear his friends; he was versatile rather than vigorous in his conceptions; and it was easier for him to plan new works, than to execute one begun, and to persevere to the end.

He wrote for the learned in Latin; he was averse to communicate with the ignorant in Italian verse, yet he never made Laura the subject of poetry except in his native tongue. Even to the last he wrote of her; and one of his latest productions, chiefly in her honour, were the "Triumphs." One of these, "The Triumph of Death," is among the most perfect and beautiful of his productions. His description of Laura's death; the assemblage of her friends who came to witness her last moments, and asked what would become of them when she was gone; her own calmness and resignation; her life fading as a flame that consumes itself away, not that is violently extinguished; her countenance fair, not pale; her attitude, reposing like one fatigued, a sweet sleep closing her beautiful eyes; all is told with touching simplicity and grace. The second part relates the imagined visit of her spirit to the pillow of her bereaved lover on the night of her death. She approached him, and, sighing, gave him her hand: delight sprung up in his heart at taking the desired hand in his. "Recognise her," she said, "who abstracted you from the beaten path when your young heart first opened itself to her." Then, with a thoughtful and composed mien, she sat, and made him sit on a bank shaded by a laurel and a beech. "How should I fail to know my sweet deity!" replied the poet, weeping, and doubtful whether he spoke to one alive or dead. She comforted and exhorted him to give up those mundane thoughts which made death a pain. "To the good," she said, "death is a delivery from a dark prison. I had approached near the last moment; the flesh was weak, but my spirit ready, when I heard a low sad voice saying, 'O miserable is he who counts the days; and one appears to endure a thousand years—and who lives in vain—who wanders over earth and sea, thinking only of her—speaking only of her!' Then," continues Laura, "I turned my languid eyes, and saw the spirit who had impelled me and checked you; I recognised her aspect; for in my younger days, when I was dearest to you, she made life bitter, and death, which is seldom pleasant to mortals, sweet; so that at that sad moment I was happy, except for the compassion I felt for you."—"Ah! lady," said the poet, "tell me, I beseech you, did love never inspire you with a wish to pity my sufferings, without detracting from your own virtuous resolves? For your sweet anger and gentle indignation, and the soft peace written in your eyes, held my soul in doubt for many years." A smile brightened the lady's countenance as she hastily replied, "My heart never was, nor can be, divided from yours; but I tempered your fire with my coldness, for there was no other way of saving our young names from slander,—nor is a mother less kind because she is severe. Sometimes I said, 'He rather burns than loves, and I must watch;' but she watches ill who fears or desires. You saw my outward mien, but did not discern the inward thought. Often anger was painted on my countenance, while love warmed my heart;—but reason was never in me conquered by feeling. Then, when I saw you subdued by grief, I turned my eyes tenderly on you, and saved your life, and our honour. These were my arts, my deceits, my kind or disdainful treatment; and thus, either sad or gay, I have led you to the end, and rejoice, though weary."—"Lady," replied the poet, "this were reward for all my devotion, could I believe you."—"Never will I say whether you pleased my eyes in life," answered his visitant; "but the chains which your heart wore pleased me, as well as the name which, far and near, you have conferred on me. Your love needed moderation only; our mutual affection might be equal; but you displayed yours, I concealed mine. You were hoarse with demanding pity, while I continued silent,—for shame or fear made much suffering appear slight in my eyes. Grief is not decreased by silence, nor is it augmented by complaints; yet every veil was riven "when alone I listened to you singing, 'Dir più non osa il nostro amore.' My heart was with you, while my eyes were bent to earth. But you do not perceive," she continued, "how the hours fly, and that dawn is, from her golden bed, bringing back day to mortals. We must part—alas! If you would say more, speak briefly."—"I would know, lady," said the poet, "whether I shall soon follow you, or tarry long behind." She, already moving away, replied, "In my belief, you will remain on earth without me many years."

Thus fondly, in age, and after the many years which Laura had prophesied had gone over his head, Petrarch dwelt on the slight variations and events that checkered the history of his love. It may be remarked, also, that he grew to hold in slight esteem his Latin poetry; he could never be prevailed upon to communicate his "Africa," and begged that after his death it might be destroyed.

To the last he interested himself deeply in the political state of his country. He exceedingly exulted when, on the death of Innocent VI., pope Urban V. removed his court to Rome. At the same time that he refused the reiterated offer of the place of apostolic secretary, he asked his friends to solicit church-preferment for him—he cared not what, so that it did not demand the sacrifice of his liberty, nor include the responsibility attendant on the care of souls. It would seem that his income had become diminished at this time, for he often said that it was not in old age that he should seek to increase his means; doubtless his expenses increased on his daughter's account, and he had given up several of his canonicates to his friends, lie was a generous man, and had many dependents always about him; so that it is no wonder that he wished not to find his capacity of benefiting others inconveniently straitened.

1363.
Ætat.
59.

Boccaccio became warmly attached to Petrarch; at one time he spent the three summer months of June, July, and August, with him at Venice, in company with a Greek named Leonzio Pilato—a singular man, of a sombre, acid, and irritable disposition, but valuable to the friends as an expounder of the Greek language. Pilato left them to return to Constantinople; but his restless gloomy spirit quickly prompted him to wish to revisit Italy. He wrote Petrarch a letter, "as long and dirty," says the poet, as his own hair and beard. "This Greek," he continues, in a letter to Boccaccio, "would be useful to us in our studies, were he not an absolute savage; but I will never invite him here again. Let him go, if he will, with his mantle and ferocious manners, and inhabit the labyrinth of Crete, in which he has already spent many years." 1365.
Ætat.
61. This severity was tempered afterwards, when he heard of the death of Pilato, who was struck by lightning during a storm on board ship, while returning by sea to Italy. "This unhappy man," writes Petrarch, "died as he lived, miserably. I do not think he ever enjoyed a tranquil hour: I cannot imagine how the spirit of poetry contrived to enter his tempestuous soul."

1367.
Ætat.
63.

When Urban V. arrived at Rome, Petrarch wrote him a long letter, expressive of the transport he felt on this auspicious event. He praised his courage in having vanquished every obstacle; adding, "Permit me to praise you; I shall not be suspected of flattery, for I ask nothing except your benediction." The pope replied to this letter by an eulogium on its eloquence; declaring, at the same time, that he had the greatest desire to see and be of service to him.

But old age had advanced on Petrarch. He had for several years suffered, each autumn, the attacks of a tertian fever, probably the effect of the climate of Lombardy, where that malady is prevalent; and this tended rapidly to diminish his strength. 1369.
Ætat.
65. When Urban V. wrote to him with his own hand to reproach him for not having come to Rome, and urging his instant journey, his letter found Petrarch at Padua, recovering slowly from an attack of this kind. He was unable to mount a horse, and was obliged to defer obeying the mandate. Somewhat recovered during the following winter, he prepared for his journey, making his will, which he wrote with his own hand. April
4.
1370.
Ætat.
66. He then set out, but got no further than Ferrara; he there fell into a sort of swoon, in which he continued for thirty hours without giving any sign of life. The most violent remedies were administered, and he felt them no more than a marble statue. The report went abroad that he was dead, and the city was filled with mourning and lamentation. As soon as he was somewhat recovered, he would have proceeded on his journey, notwithstanding the representations of the physicians, who declared that he would not arrive at Rome alive: but he was too weak to get on horseback; so he was carried back to Padua in a gondola, and was received, on his unexpected arrival, with the liveliest demonstrations of joy, by Francesco da Carrara, the lord of the town, and by its inhabitants.

For the sake of tranquillity, and to recover his health, he sought a house in the country, and established himself at Arquà, a village situated north of Padua, among the Euganean hills, not far from the ancient and picturesque town of Este. The country around, presenting the vast plains of Lombardy in prospect, and the dells and acclivities of the hills in the immediate vicinity, is charming beyond description. There is a luxuriance of vegetation, a richness of produce, which belongs to Italy, while the climate affords a perpetual spring. Petrarch built a small but agreeable house at the end of the village, surrounded by vineyards and gardens.

He busied himself in this retreat by finishing a work begun three years before, which he had better have left wholly undone. It was founded on a curious incident, of which he has preserved the knowledge, and which otherwise would have sunk into oblivion. There were a set of young men at Venice, disciples of Aristotle, or rather of his Arabian translator, Averroes, who set up his philosophy as the law of the world, who despised the Christian religion, and turned the apostles and fathers of the church into ridicule: there was an open war of opinion between these men and the pious Petrarch. Four among them, in the presumption and vivacity of youth, instituted a kind of mock tribunal, at which they tried the merits of their amiable and learned countryman; and pronounced the sentence, that "Petrarch was a good sort of a man, but exceedingly ignorant." He relates this incident in his treatise, "On my own Ignorance and that of others," which he commences by pretending to be satisfied with the decision. "Be it so," he says, "I am content; let my judges be wise, while I am virtuous!" and then he goes on to prove the fallacy of their judgment by a great display of erudition.

May
7.
1371.
Ætat.
67.

He continued to get weaker, and his illnesses were violent, though transient. On one occasion he was attacked by a fever, and the physician sent to him by Francesco da Carrara, declared that he could not survive the night. The next morning he was found, apparently well, risen from his bed and occupied by his books. "This," he says, "has happened to me ten times in the course of ten years." The vital powers were thus exhausted, and it was not likely that he could live to extreme age.