fourteen verses to Laura. Indeed if his mind had experienced no intervals of calm, he would never have been able to execute those conceptions, and still less to correct them. He would not have lived so long; or, if he had lived, it would have been in that state of disquietude and inaction, inseparable from agitated feelings. The harmony, elegance, and perfection of his poetry are the result of long labour; <but its original conceptions and pathos always sprang from the sudden inspiration of a deep and powerful passion. By an attentive perusal of all the writings of Petrarch, it may be reduced almost to a certainty-that by dwelling perpetually on the same ideas, and by allowing his mind to prey incessantly on itself, the whole train of his feelings and reflections acquired one strong character and tone; and if he was ever able to suppress them for a time, they returned to him with increased violence-that, to tranquillize this agitated state of his mind, he, in the first instance, communicated in a free and loose manner all that he thought and felt, in his correspondence with his intimate friends-that he afterwards reduced these narratives, with more order and description, into Latin verse-and that he, lastly, perfected them with a greater profusion of imagery and more art, in his Italian poetry, the composition of which at first served only, as he frequently says, "to divert and mitigate all his afflictions." IV. WE may thus understand the perfect concord which prevails in Petrarch's poetry between nature and art; between the accuracy of fact and the magic of invention; between depth and perspicuity; between devouring passion and calm meditation. In three or four verses of Italian he .often condenses the description, and concentrates the fire, which fill a page of his elegies and letters in Latin. It is precisely because the poetry of Petrarch originally sprang from his heart, that his passion never seems fictitious or cold, notwithstanding the profuse ornament of his style, or the metaphysical elevation of his thoughts. In the movement of Laura's eyes he sees a light which points out the way to heaven— Gentil mia donna, io veggio Nel mover de' vostri occhi un dolce lume Che mi mostra la via che al Ciel conduce. He exclaims "that the atmosphere becomes smiling, luminous, and serene, at her ap proach" Il Ciel di vaghe e lucide faville S'accende intorno; e in vista si rallegra "that the air which is breathed around her, is Basso desir non è ch' ivi si senta; Still he is always natural. Few lovers, indeed, could have conceived these ideas; yet the fire and the facility with which they are expressed, render them instantly familiar to the imagination of almost every reader. In the art of forming new and evident images, either of the most simple or abstract ideas, through the means of metaphor, Petrarch is as happy as he is original. To express the common-place thought, that his poetry and the beauty of Laura would be remembered after their death "I see in fancy," says he, "a silent tongue, and two fair eyes, though closed, still beaming with light, surviving`us—” Ch'io veggio nel pensier, dolce mio foco, and he has been imitated in this passage by an English poet, who combines in a great degree severity of taste, with boldness of expression: "Ev'n in our ashes live their wonted fires."-GRAY. V. IF Petrarch had not too unsparingly made use of antitheses-if he had not too frequently repeated his hyperboles-if he had not too often compared Laura to the sun-his numerous plagiarists, who, however, have never been able to imitate his beauties, would not have been so much noticed for their faults; nor would Salvator Rosa have had occasion to complain in his satires that "These metaphors had exhausted the sun."- His play upon the words Lauro and L'aura, signifying the laurel, and the air; and the conceits afforded by the transformation of Apollo's Daphne into. the immortal laurel, are still admired by some foreigners*, on the authority of one of the most celebrated critics of Italy†, who nevertheless was delighted with the Italia Liberata of Trissino, and would never allow that Tasso's Jerusalem was the work of a poet. For my own part, I feel some pity towards a * Madame de GENLIS'S Novel, Pétrarque et Laure. Still great poet, who with such extreme delicacy and ardour of mind-with a judgment so difficult, and a taste so refined-with a heated imagination, and an impassioned heart, could condescend, for the amusement of Laura and his readers, to such cold affectations. even Petrarch was bound to discharge the unfortunate duty of almost all writers, by sacrificing his own taste to that of his contemporaries. He ingrafted on his verses the agudezzas, ternuras, y conceptos of the Spanish poets, and was deservedly accused of plagiarism." We formerly possessed," says an historian of Valencia, “a famous poet named Mossen Jordi; and Petrarch, who was born a hundred years after, robbed him of his verses, and has sold them in Italian to the world as his own, of which I could convict him in many passages; however I shall content myself with quoting a few lines*:" MOSSEN JORDI. E non he pau, e no tin quim guerreig- *GASPARO SCUOLANO, Istor. Valenz. F |