many specimens of a noble genius, and of a benevolent heart? In the Letter which Petrarch addressed, a few months before his death, to Posterity, as his last legacy, and as the ultimate result of his long studies, he declares, that he never found a philosophical system which was satisfactory to him; and scarcely an historical fact, on the truth of which he could depend; and thus concludes: "To philosophise is to love wisdom; and true wisdom is Jesus Christ." XVII. By this strong sense of religion, all his passions were kept in a constant struggle, and, gaining force from action, it served only to irritate them, and to disturb the faculties of his mind, which were vehement rather than vigorous. The most ordinary actions, the most indifferent occurrences, were sufficient to fix him in a train of meditation upon eternity. Having, when yet in his youth, felt himself exhausted, and out of breath, before he could reach the top of a mountain, which he was attempting to climb, he wrote to a friend—“ I compared the state of my soul, which desires to gain Heaven, but walks not in the way to it, to that of my body, which had so many difficulties in attaining the top of the mountain, notwithstanding the curiosity which prompted me to attempt it. These reflections inspired me with more strength and courage. If, said I, I have undergone so much labour and fatigue, that my body may be nearer to Heaven, what ought I not to do, and suffer, that my soul also may arrive there*?"-The death of Laura, and of many friends of his youth, particularly all the Colonnas, of whom the Cardinal died of a broken heart-the shameful defeat of Cola di Rienzo-the civil wars in Italy-the consummate height of corruption in the Church -the plague, which desolated the south of Europe-and the invasion of Naples by the Hungarians—all concurred, in the course of the same year, to overwhelm him with affliction, in the vigour of his manhood†. In a letter, written at that period, he exclaims: "What! Can it be true, as so many philosophers have conjectured, that the Deity concerns not himself with the affairs of mortals? Yes, Great Creator! thou dost take thought for man; but how unsearchable are thy dispensations! for what purpose are human calamities? In vain would a finite intellect investigate their Yet these calamities are extreme; I causes. * Famil. Lib. 4. Ep. 1. Famil. Lib. 8. Ep. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. see them, I suffer them: I know that I have already lived two years too long*." XVIII. HENCE, from reflecting upon the mournful events which so closely preceded and followed the loss of the woman from whom alone he had long expected his happiness, his hopes were wholly turned to a future existence. Pursuing a plan of wisdom, which was unsuited to his restless mind, he conceived-"That, to cure all his miseries, he must study them night and day-that to accomplish this project effectually, he must renounce all other desires-and that the only means of arriving at a total forgetfulness of life, was to reflect perpetually on death." The power of executing his resolutions was not equal to his ardour in planning them, and his faculties were exhausted by conflicting impulses. After he had accustomed himself to look on death without dread, it again appeared to him under fearful forms. He was seized with sudden lethargies, which rendered him absolutely insensible; and for the space of thirty hours, his body appeared like a corpset. * Famil. Lib. 8. Ep. 7.—an. 1349. + De Secret. Confl. coll. 1. Senil. Lib. 3. Ep. 7.-Lib. 9. Ep. 2.-Lib. 13. Ep. 9.— Lib. 15. Ep. 14.-Lib. 11. Ep. ult. When he revived, he testified, that he had experienced neither terror nor pain. But, by. his intemperate meditation on eternity as a christian and as a philosopher, he provoked Nature to withhold the boon, which she had designed for him, of dying in peace. "I lay myself in my bed as in my shroud-suddenly I start up in a frenzy-I speak to myself—I dissolve in tears, so as to make those weep who witness my condition *."-Whatever he saw or heard in these paroxysms of grief, made him experience "the torments of hell." By degrees he found delight in nourishing his sorrows, and resigned himself during the rest of his life to those reveries which beset ardent minds, and make them ever regret the past, and ever repent; ever grow weary of the present, and either hope or fear too much from the future. Four years before his death, Petrarch built a new house at Arqua, near Padua; and on the twentieth day of July, 1374, the eve of the seventieth anniversary of his birth, he was found dead in his library, with his head resting on a book. * De Secret. Confl. coll. 2. |