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Voi ch' ascoltate in rime sparse il suono
Di quei sospiri ond' io nudriva il core
In sul mio primo giovenile errore

every century. It is a curious autobiographical sketch, related with ingenuous candour, dwelling more upon the motives which influenced his actions than upon the actions themselves, and describing with unaffected simplicity his abilities, his feelings, and even his personal ap

pearance.

Quand' era in parte altr' uom da quel ch' i' sono; Del vario stile in ch' io piango e ragiono Fra le vane speranze e 'l van dolore, Ove sia chi per prova intenda amore, The fame of Petrarch was at its height Spero trova pietà, non che perdono. at the time of his death. It declined in Ma ben veggi' or si come al popol tutto Favola fui gran tempo: onde sovente the fifteenth century. The accomplished Di me medesmo meco mi vergogno: Latin and Greek scholars which this age E del mio vaneggiar vergogna è 'l frutto El pentirsi e 'l conoscer chiaramente produced set themselves the task of comChe quanto piace al mondo è breve sogno. mentating upon the works of Petrarch. (Le Rime di Francesco Petrarca, Sonn. i. Part I.) They despised his Latin style, and thus PERHAPS the attempt to compress so the depreciation of his works in that laninteresting a subject as the life and guage may have helped to involve the writings of Petrarch into a brief notice famous Canzoniere in a similar fate. of a few pages may at first sight seem "The fourteenth century," observes Crespresumptuous; more especially when we cimbeni, "we have rightly called an evil consider that for the last five centuries century, on account of the cruel maiming there has been no lack of biographies of of the Italian language by the critics of so remarkable a man. It would add an- that time." The third order of biograother page to this essay merely to men-phers was headed by Lorenzo de' Medici, tion their names, and it would take many and to it Vellutello, Gesualdo, and Becca to enter into any details respecting them. delli also belonged. The coldness and Still, as the writer is more or less indebt- indifference of the preceding century ed for information to their labours, it is were now exchanged for the greatest enonly right to mention, as briefly as possi-thusiasm. Editions of Petrarch were ble, some of the most celebrated biogra- multiplied, Academies formed for the purphers of Petrarch. The Abbé de Sade pose of explaining his works, and the divides them into five classes: - those critics of this age would acknowledge no who were his contemporaries and began defect in him nor any excellence to exist to write before or immediately after his in a style different from his. But at the death. The first of these, and the earli- beginning of the seventeenth century the est known, is Domenico Aretino. He fame of the poet was again destined to was invited to Padua, by Francesco da receive a rude shock. It was at the Carrara, at the time when Petrarch, hav- hands of a certain Giovanni Battista Maing attained his seventieth year, was rina, who, while his own writings were living there. Domenico, notwithstanding filled with fantastical allegories and exthe direct encouragement which he re- travagant metaphors, cast ridicule upon ceived from the poet himself, has only left the simple natural beauties of the poetry us a short sketch of his life. Coluccio of Petrarch. Unfortunately he had only Salutati and Pietro Paolo Vergerio also too many followers. Petrarch was dewrote their biographies at this time, but spised and neglected, his works ceased to their enthusiasm for the great genius who be printed, and were scarcely read, while had just ceased to exist led them to fill his biographers dwindled down to a very up their pages with vague and indiscrim- small number, although Filippo Tomasini inate praise, neglecting to investigate published his "Petrarcha Redivivus," and closely his life and history. They con- Tassoni critical remarks and observatented themselves with merely copying tions upon his poems. The historians of Petrarch's own "Epistle to Posterity," the eighteenth century-the age when which source of information has been the history, and especially the history of litnatural refuge of all his biographers in erature, was well written may be placed

in the fifth and last class. Among these | stances of his country at the time of his are Muratori and, to mention no other birth.

names, the Abbé de Sade. His book, The Italian Republics, which had for a bearing the modest title of "Mémoires long period of years been a prey to the pour la Vie de Pétrarque," has ever since violence of faction and the horrors of anits publication in 1764 been the inex- archy, now sought to unite the discordant haustible reservoir whence the greater wills of their citizens and to defend thempart of the information of subsequent bi- selves from the attacks of their enemies. ographers has been drawn. The value of Some thought the welfare of the State this work is especially enhanced by one was best provided for by giving full pow circumstance, viz. that of the author hav- er to some one powerful individual, who, ing finally decided the question concern- uniting his own forces with the collected ing the family and history of Laura, as to strength of the "Comune," would have which he has succeeded in bringing for- sufficient power at once to repress facward such satisfactory proofs that there tions within and repel hostilities from scarcely remains room for any further without. These chiefs were always chodoubt upon the subject. This is admitted sen, either by force of arms or by the by Tiraboschi,* while, to justify his coun- vote of the citizens, out of the most illustrymen for not having made the discovery trious families, and by degrees they obbefore, he ascribes the success of the tained complete possession of the cities Abbé to the free access which, as a de- which had elected them. Thus, at the scendant, he had to all the archives of the beginning of the fourteenth century the House of Sade; that is to say, of Laura's Visconti ruled over turbulent Milan, the husband. Many writers also, not only of Scaligeri governed Verona, the Carraresi his own nation, such as Tiraboschi, Maf-Padua, the Estensi Ferrara, the Bonacosfei, Bardelli, Alfieri, and Professor Mar- si Mantua, &c. &c. The Medici had not sand of Padua - who collected a "Biblioteca Petrarchesca," consisting of 900 volumes illustrative of his history - but of other nations besides have since written upon Petrarch, and the subject has been fully treated by Ginguéné in his "Histoire Littéraire de l'Italie."

The very fact of so much information having been gathered together concerning him is almost enough to discourage from the study of Petrarch those who have not much leisure time at their disposal. The design, therefore, of this essay is not to add to the number of biographies which already exist, but to endeavour to call attention to the more remarkable events of his life, to the critical nature of the times in which he lived, and to the two-fold influence, political and literary, which he exercised over his country.

Before we consider the peculiar aspect presented by the romantic side of Petrarch's existence, it is well to cast a brief glance over the times and circum

Preface to vol. v. of "Storia della Litteratura Italiana."

yet begun to rule over Florence, which was, in common with many other of the Italian cities, torn in pieces by the feuds of the Bianchi and Neri.

Meanwhile the Pontiffs, unmoved, beheld from afar the discords and tumults by which Italy was agitated. Bertrand the Goth, Archbishop of Bourdeaux, had, chiefly through the influence of Philip IV. of France, been elected Pope under the name of Clement V.; and the new Pontiff, out of gratitude to the French king, transferred the Papal See and Court to Avignon, to the detriment both of Rome and Italy. "Thus," says Muratori,* "did the Apostolical See pass into France, and remain there seventy years in captivity, like the captivity of Babylon, because of its slavish subservience to the whims of the kings of France."

At the beginning, then, of a century which augured most unfavourably for the future of his country, Petrarch was born "at Arezzo, July 20, 1304, on Monday, at the dawn of day, of honest parents, Florentines by birth, although exiles from

* Ann. d'Italia, ann. 1305.

their native city, of moderate fortunes, one of Virgil, which he allowed him to inclined, to speak the truth, to poverty." keep. So Petrarch himself describes the fact in his Epistle to Posterity." His father, called Petraccolo on account of the smallness of his stature, and his mother, "Eletta Canigiani," had been banished from Florence in 1302. It was the year also of Dante's exile, and together with him they had retired to Arezzo, whence on July 20, 1304, Petraccolo and Dante, with the other exiled Bianchi, made a night at tack upon Florence, hoping to re-enter | had been so much marred and depraved their native city by force. Thus the circumstances of Petrarch's birth are in accordance with the condition of his country and times, while they offer a curious contrast to the functions of a peacemaker universally assigned to him during the later years of his life. His early years were passed first at Incisa, in the Val d'Arno. Thence his parents moved to Pisa, where his father anxiously awaited the arrival of Henry VII., Emperor of Germany (the "Arrigo," for whom Dante prepares such an exalted throne in his "Paradiso" *), to restore the Ghibelline party at Florence. But the hope of his party being crushed by the death of this prince, he fled to the Papal Court at Avignon, which soon became the refuge for exiled Italians.

In 1326, the sudden death of his father summoned Petrarch from Bologna to Avignon, and at the age of twenty-two he found himself at liberty to abandon those legal studies which had always been so distasteful to him. He is notwithstanding anxious to explain that the antiquity of the laws, their authority and force, had not been without attraction for him; "yet," he adds, "their application

by the worldliness of mankind, that it distressed him to learn them because he would have scorned to make a dishonest use of them, and an honest use it would have been very difficult to make, as his integrity would have been attributed to ignorance.” * The death of Petrarch's father was succeeded in a few months by that of his mother. She died at the early age of thirty-eight, and the fact is curiously preserved from oblivion by the number of verses which Petrarch wrote in honour of her memory, corresponding exactly with the number of her years. And now Petrarch was to begin his life in Avignon.

"Beside the banks of that river perpetually swept by the winds of heaven I spent my childhood, under the yoke of During his father's lifetime Petrarch parental authority, and all my youth subwas compelled, sorely against the grain, ject to another yoke, that of my own pasto study the law, which in those times sions," † he tells us himself, and the dewas considered the only road to honours scription of the river is borne out by the and preferment. These studies were old proverb: “Avenio ventosa, sine venpursued at Carpentras, at Montpellier to venenosa, cum vento fastidiosa." The University, and finally at Bologna, then lofty walls of this curious city, which, the great school of canon law. His prog-built by Clement VI., the fourth Avignonress, however, in this branch of learning ese Pope, frown over the left bank of the was materially hindered by his early en- Rhone; the early Romanesque architecthusiasm for the classics. His father was ture of its small but very peculiar church; at first proud of his son's proficiency in and the tombs of its various Popes, still this line, and encouraged his classical attract the traveller who loves to have the taste; but when he discovered how much past recalled to him, and to linger over it interfered with his more important le- the outward expression of its history. It gal studies, he threw into the fire all the is a strange fact that Petrarch was never copies of the classics which Petrarch possessed, till at length, moved by the tears and entreaties of his son, he withdrew from the flames one copy of Cicero and

Par. xxx. 135.

able to tear himself for any length of time from a place which is nevertheless the object of his detestation.

Epist. ad Post. ↑ Ibid.