fortune, that one reader out of ten may divine our meaning. A great deal has been said, a great deal of which might have been spared, about the calamities of authors, and the unhappiness of the literary temperament. There is little subject for wonder in these things; a mind employed upon itself, is at best engaged in an unnatural occupation. Our intellects were given us to work with, not upon; and if thinking men will meddle with their own sharp tools, they must expect wounds in consequence. But the fretfulness attendant on a sedentary and uncertain profession-uncertain, not so much with respect to emolu-ment as to self-satisfaction-ought not to be confounded with the sorrows peculiar to the noble and eminent spirit. The petulant spleen of a poor essayist, or the querulous egotism of such a fellow as are not to be mentioned in the same breath with the lofty and baffled yearnings and the soulbreathed complaints of a Byron or a Petrarch. Minds of a superior temper, who either naturally lack imagination, or suffer that faculty to languish in disuse, become universally wretched and diseased. The eye of genius is unfortunately possessed of that microscopic power, that magnifies every object on which it fixes into the revolting. In order to the enjoyment of agreeable sensations, it must be kept aloof from the surface of things, and allowed to rest but upon variety and expanse. To produce this salutary effect is the province of imagination, which, stored with fresh associations and ideas, as soon as one scene falls, is ever ready to interpose another; nor permits that vacuity of vision or thought, whence the mind turns in irksomeness to prey upon itself. And as there is nothing more corrosive to the empty stomach than its own digestive juices, so nothing is more fretting, more corrosive to the mind, than its own thoughts unemployed, and thence turned upon itself. In the body, however, this state, being accompanied with pain, is "seldom allowed to occur; whereas in spirit, this self-gnawing, this egotism, is like opium, and when once tasted, becomes as indispensable as it is pernicious. The craving for it is not such as takes its full enjoyment, and is satisfied. It is insatiably adhesive, and will stick to the mind through all its changing moods and tempers. It becomes wedded to one for better and for worse-will feed on sorrow or on joy-on the bitter or the sweet; and so does it at length subdue the mind, that it becomes mingled with its every sentiment and passion, however contrary, and forms the most prominent feature in all. Let us look at the love, the friendship, the patriotism, that froth from these unhappy mortals, and the same self is still seen floating on the surface. To a mind thus absorbed, nothing can be more insipid than the flights of imagination which before delighted it. It refuses alike either to seek or be presented with variety; modifications of self are the only changes it desires. It no longer loves to go abroad into all space with Milton or Spenser, but loves to brood with the Confessions of Rousseau, and the poetical monologues of Byron. It has become domesticated and settled down in a circumscribed sphere, so narrow, that every object is in actual contact with itself. Instead of being refined by its frequent contemplations, its own bodily and corrupted nature becomes imparted to the ideal world, with which it is closely connected. Its very visions are tainted with earth, and the celestial 'atmosphere, that is wont to hallow men's hopes and yearnings, is withdrawn. Reality it has long turned from as insipid; and now that even its ideal world has been deprived of every charm, there is nothing left to it but repining, and an everlasting fret. In the progress of mental deterioration which we have described, it may be observed, that those who have, from over-excitement, become incapable of relishing or exercising Imagination, take up with Fancy as a substitute. Their scene is limited to the narrow circle around them-the personages of their visionary drama are confined to themselves, or shadows of themselves; and to stray beyond the feelings of their own individual natures would be impossible. In such a captivity of thought, it would be vain to look for Imagination, whose property is to people and create, while Fancy but adorns, the materials afforded to it. Minds in the state we speak of, acquire a set of stock-materials, their self, their one loved passion; and it is sufficient for them, if Fancy adorus these with new crotchets, and twists them into new shapes. But Imagina, with the most vigorous spurring, they tion is a determined radical, that is liked not a course of above twenty never contented with paring or amend- lines; yet, to vaunt their bottom, as ing, but at once subverts the old stand- the author of Crib's Memorial would ings, and builds up its fabrics anew. say, both essayed long poems, mightily Fancy is a sweet, domestic companion, admired at the time, and laid on the that will sit for ever by the fire-side, shelf since-most notable pieces of and busy itself in discovering castles patch-work. The Italian's most dull, and physiognomies in the embers. But for who but a man of Byron's hairImagination is a gay, young bachelor, brained taste would think of reading too proud to drudge for the hypochone or translating the Africa ? And as to driacal poet—the quick sprite soon the Englishman, his seam-stitch is the abandons the mental valetudinarian to neatest on the poetical sampler. Both his younger brother. He too were in love-Petrarch with one “ Orders his wings, and flies off to the name, and Moore with twenty. Both west." had been at the tables of the great, Petrarch became a poet of fancy by had given advice where it was not this process ; and let us see-the asked, and were hugely quizzed on the writer of the above line, Thomas occasion-perhaps more. For both. Moore, is a poet of fancy, without the affected politics, and wrote poetry on aid of any process whatsoever. These the strength of it, with this difference, two bards have displayed the same that Petrarch's political odes are not order of talent in the exercise of the only the finest pieces he ever wrote, same faculties; but with this differ- but perhaps the finest bursts of poetry ence, that the Italian was born with in the Italian language; whereas, the higher powers, and originally possess letters of Mr Phelim O'Whatd'yecall-' ed the capability of cherishing and ex- um, in the Fudge Family, are about erting the creative power of intellect; the weakest verses in which political but his vanity, his distempered egot- resentment was ever expressed. Both, ism, and most likely his licentious ha- in fine, were patriotic, and praised bits of thought, nipped within him al- their countries upon all occasions; but most every germ of real genius. On as to living there, both begged to be exthe contrary, we know of no poet, of cused. We could follow the comparithis or of any other nation, who has son much farther in enumerating the so made the most of his small powers merits of both, which, in truth, are as Thomas Moore. He was never many; but where's the use of praising either sad or distempered, nor was he Thomas Moore? The world reads and ever visited by any of those hallucina- admires bim—and we give vent to our tions that destroy or mislead genius. spleen (occasioned by those dull Loves His industry, good taste, and good of the Angels) in mere gaiétè de cæur. health, have done wonders for him, not So from the poet let us pass to the to forget also the good taste of the age, poet's critic. which pointed out to Mr Moore's fan- . Mr Foscolo begins his Essay with a cy the stars, and the flowers, and va- very learned dissertation upon the Cerious other pretty objects in nature ; lestial and Terrestrial Venus, on which whereas the ignorance and pedantry, important point we agree with our of poor Petrarch's time sent his muse uncle Toby, “who knew,” he said, grovelling for puns and hard rhymes, “ that the ancients had two religions, for scholastic and philosophical con- but thought that one love might have ceits. Both the poetical wights were served them extremely well.” And learned, both not a little proud of uni. certainly the hypothesis of the two ting such opposite pursuits as erudi. Venuses is quite Shandean, an epithet tion and the muse; and both concocte in many other cases as well as this, ed no small part of their poetry from altogether synonymous with the auremote and strange volumes. Both, thor's favourite term-platonic. Whewe believe, began their verses at the ther Petrarch worshipped both these wrong end, and licked, like bears, their Goddesses in the person of Laura, is poetical children into some sort of one of the points which the author shape. Both had a common-place of the Essay learnedly discusses ; and . theme, out of which they were inca- he quotes many warm expressions, and pable of either rhyme or reason. Both might have quoted many more, to muses were so short-winded, that even prove that the terrestrial was not lost up sight of by him. But whatever may with Dante, in 1902 He retired to have been the poet's sentiments with Arezzo ; and there, the very night in regard to Laura, he was otherwise by which his father, with the rest of the no means so immaculate as his verses Ghibellines, were making their attack would imply. His two natural chil. upon Florence, was Francesco di Pedren we need not mention ; but his tracco, afterwards, to please himself, accurate knowledge of the state of af- Petrarca, born, it being the 19th or fairs in Rome and Avignon displays 20th of July, 1304. Since the French quite the connoisseur.-" Cum in Pope, Clement the Fifth, had fixed the magna Roma duo fuerint lenones, in Apostolic seat at Avignon, all the disparva Avignone sunt undecim.” And contented Italians betook themselves the miraculous effect which he de- thither, among the rest Petrarch's fascribes the Jubilee to have had ther-hence the poet's residence in, on him, at a time when he might and love for, that town. “Prosper well have placed the same to the ac- and the fables of Æsop," says P., count of his years, is convincing.- “were the only Latin books then read “ Post Jubilæum sic me, adhuc viri- at schools ; I forsook them for Cicero. dem, pestis ille deseruit, ut incompa- From fourteen to eighteen years of rabiliter magis odio mihi sit quam age, he studied law at Avignon, and fuerit voluptati.” was thence removed to the university As to Laura, we think Madame De- of Bologna, pinguis Bononiæ, for the shouliere's rhyme a lady's exaggera- same purpose. Here, as the story goes, tion; and Mr Foscolo's calling her “a his father visited him one day, and heartless prude,” we think a poet's dit- burned all his classic books, which octo. Laura, like all ladies, was some- cupied too much of his time. The pawhat of a coquette ; and, like most la- rents of the poet died in 1325-6, and dies, was proof against any temptations soon after both Petrarch and his brothat a shame-faced and weak-nerved ther assumed the tonsure and the clesonnetteer could offer. But the reader rical garb. At Avignon he formed a who wishes to know more about these friendship with the Colonna family, said loves, may consult the three dull especially with James, Bishop of Coquartos of De Sades, Mr Foscolo's lombes ; and here, as is well known, amụsing volume, (that is, if they don't he saw and became attached to Laura. take in the Quarterly, where the same The friendship between Petrarch and essay appeared long ago, strangely out young Colonna, affords a curious picof place-Love in the Quarterly !!) or ture of the times, and of the favourite the second Capitolo of Petrarch's Tri- studies of the age; Petrarch liked St umph of Death, where the whole his- Augustin, James Colonna preferred tory is detailed in a poetic dialogue be- Jerom, * and these were their points of tween the lover and his mistress's conversational difference, just as we ghost. become admirers of Byron in preferMr Foscolo has written on the ence to Scott or Wordsworth; or of Love, the Poetry, and the Character Scott in preference to Wordsworth or of Petrarch ; why did he not write Byron. That the 6th of April, 1327, the Life? It would have been much was the day of his first beholding Laumore acceptable. De Sades is too ra, he informs us in accurate rhyme. bulky and too dull; and as to a Life In 1333, he set out upon his travels, of Petrarch, with the name of Dobson driven, it is said, by his hopeless pasin the title-page, it would betray a sion; his farthest point was Cologne; most Gothic taste in nomenclature to but that part of his travels which had attempt it. Petrarch and Dobson, most influence upon him, was his visit what a junction ! Now Petrarch and to Tholouse, where he studied the Foscolo would sound well, Ugo Fos- Provençal poets, and became acquaintcolo too; the name would sell the book. ed with those who were yet living. In We must supply this deficiency to our 1336 he went to Rome by sea, and readers, at least by letting them know found some difficulty in entering the the date of the poet's birth and death. city, from the civil wars that raged be Petracco, a notary, and the father of tween the Colonnas and the Orsini ; the poet, was banished from Florence owing to the same cause, he soon re * Precisely the same difference in taste existed between Luther and Erasmus. turned, and established himself at Vaucluse. Except the time which he devoted to poetry, Petrarch's active hours were employed in canvassing for the poetic crown, which he wished to receive at the Capitol. This aim of his pedantic ambition he at length, and with some trouble, obtained, through Robert, King of Naples, by whom the poet was ostentatiously examined, previous to his departure for Rome and coronation there. Of this farce, Petrarch observes, "that had he been older, he would not have sought the honour." He has also recorded the trouble he took to obtain it :-"Ad quam adipiscendum quanto cum labore perveneris, tecum ipse recogitans, perhorrescis." The year after his coronation the poet spent at Parma, with the Princes of the house of Correggio, employed upon his Africa. This retreat he was obliged to quit, being appointed by the Romans one of their ambassadors to Clement the Sixth, the newly-elected Pope, in order to persuade his holiness to restore the Papal government to its ancient seat. Petrarch regretted much leaving Parma; and in one of his letters he expresses this regret with a most ludicrous affectation of woe, not unusual to him :"I must cross the trident of the Alps," (the Trent) writes he, "the Lakes of Germany, the Danube, and the Rhine, near their very sources," (to go from Parma to Avignon.) "Alas!" continues he, ૬ we must submit to fate, and support the yoke with Christian patience." Poor fellow! how grievously he was to be pitied. He went to Naples on another mission in 1343, and there was greatly shocked to see the ancient gladiators' combats renewed in the place of the Carbonara-ludum Carbonarii, it is called in the Pope's prohibition which followed. The year after, Petrarch spent wandering about between France and Italy, which gave occasion for Doge Dandolo's dry answer to his exhortations of peace. "My friend, explain how it is, that a man, to whom God has given the eloquence and the wisdom to instruct others, is always changing his place of resi dence?" In 1348, when at Verona, he heard of Laura's death ;* and from that date the whole strain of his writings is completely changed. In 1350 we find him at Padua, and afterwards at the Jubilee. It would be impossible to give an account in our short limits of Petrarch's connections with Rienzi, or with the Emperor Charles the Fourth, which would involve us in a long detail of the political history of Italy during that period. In 1362, he retired to Venice, where his friend Boccaccio joined him. In 1370, prevented by his declining years, from indulging his continual propensities to travel and change, he fixed his abode at Argua, a village of the Euganean hills about four leagues from Padua. He quitted his retreat once, that he might accompany young Carnura to Venice, and was found lifeless in his chamber, leaning over an open volume, on the 18th of July, 1374. Of the Latin works of Petrarch, Mr Coleridge has threatened us with a notice; if he fail to fulfil his promise, we know not who will compensate Petrarch's ghost, or the world. Mr Foscolo touches lightly on the subject; and though we have Ginguené at hand, it is better to plead ignorance of the bulky folio. We were tempted by the account of his Secret, or Dialogues with St Augustin, but gave up the dull prose in despair. It may be said of these works altogether, perhaps, as De Sades says of one of the poet's letters of consolation:- "Ceft lettre est três philosophique, elle dût être fort admiré alors, et elle n'apprendroit rien à present à quiconque auroit un peu lu." The commendations of the biographer are like those which the good dame in the Monastery pays to Sir Piercy Shafton,-" a very nice man, indeed; I wonder when he'll go." But if the essayist passes slightly over the Latin productions of Petrarch, he makes this up by an ample account even of the mechanical labour which the poet employed upon his lighter verse:— "The pleasure of living his youth over again, of meeting Laura in every To the numerous documents in De Sades respecting Laura's death, identity, and grave, may be added what Mr Mathews heard upon his travels, and preserved in his Diary of an Invalid : "A fellow passenger tells me that he saw the body of the mistress of Petrarch exposed to the most brutal indignities in the streets of Avignon. It had been embalmed, and was found in a mummy state, of a dark brown colour." P. 383. line, of examining the history of his own heart; and perhaps the consciousness, which, after all, rarely misleads authors respecting the best of their works, induced the poet in his old age to give to his love-verses a perfection which has never been attained by any other Italian writer, and which, he thinks, "he could not himself have carried farther." If the manuscripts did not still exist, it would be impossible to imagine or believe the unwearied pains he has bestowed on the correction of his verses. They are curious monuments, although they afford little aid in exploring by what secret workings the long and laborious meditation of Petrarch has spread over his poetry all the natural charms of sudden and irresistible inspiration. The following is a literal transla tion of a succession of memorandums in Latin, at the head of one of his sonnets:- "I began this by the impulse of the Lord, (Domino jubente) 10th September, at the dawn of day, after, my morning prayers." I must make these two verses over again, singing them, (cantando) and I must transpose them; three o'clock, A. M. 19th October," &c. "Sometimes he says, "The commencement is good, but it is not pathetic enough." In some places he suggests to himself to repeat the same words rather than the same ideas. In others he judges it better not to multiply the ideas, but to amplify them with other expressions. Every verse is turned in several different ways; above each phrase, and each word, he frequently places equivalent expressions, in order to examine them again; and it requires a profound knowledge of Italian to perceive, that after such perplexing scruples, he always adopts those words which combine at once most harmony, elegance, and energy.” P. 58. We believe this, and must take it for granted; for without this merit, hidden as it is from the penetration of a stranger, it would be impossible to account for the extraordinary judg ment and eulogies of Muratori and Tassoni. So far are our ideas different from these critics, that we really can see nothing super-excellent in the "tre sorelle," or three canzons so called; nor does there appear to us any thing wonderful or fine in the following sonnet, said by both critics, and considered by most Italians, to be the finest sonnet in Petrarch :— "Levommi il mio pensiero in parte, ov'era Quella, ch'io cerco, e non ritrovo in ter ra: Ivi fra lor, che'l terzo cerchio serra, La rividi più bella, e meno altera. Per man mi prese, e disse: In questa spera Sarai ancor meco, se'l desir non erra: I' son colei, che ti diè tanta guerra, Mio ben non cape in intelletto umano: E compie' mia giornata innanzi sera; Te solo aspetto; e quel, che tanto amasti, E laggiuso è rimaso, il mio bel velo. Deh perchè tacque, ed allargò la mano ? Ch'al suon de' detti si pietosi e casti Poco mancò ch'io non rimasi in cielo.", There have been volumes written on the 18th, 19th, and 20th Canzoni, the Tre Sorelle, or Three Sisters, in and many passages of singular beauty, which no doubt there is much grace, especially the penultimate stanza of sion:the 20th, and its Dantesque conclu "Nè pensassi d'altrui, nè di me stesso; E'l batter gli occhi miei non fosse spesso." But when we read the judgment passed by Muratori on the fourth stanza of the eighteenth-" Stanza bellissima, stanza incomparabile," &c. after ha ving run it over, and found nothing in it remarkable, it is vexatious. We have had petty and verbal criticisms in our literature, but none of them so impertinent and nonsensical as those of Italian commentators. But, as foreigners to the language, we should be diffident of our taste, and shall simply mark our favourites; first, in the Love poetry-Sonnet 89, to Senuccio, imitated happily by Chaucer, in his Troilus and Cressida. The celebrated canzon 27," Chiare, freschi," &c. often translated, but never so elegantly as by the kindred muse of Lady Dacre: "If so I must my destiny fulfil, And Love to close these weeping eyes be doom'd' By Heaven's mysterious will, My poor remains may lie, Smooth the dread passage to eternity! No grave so still, so green, In which mine o'er-toil'd frame may rest from mortal woe! |