birth, or a lawsuit, the Muses are invoked to fur- QUATUOR EQUORUM · SIGNA A·· VENETIS · BY · nish the same number of syllables, and the individ- ZANTIO CAPTA AD TEMP D MAR ARS ual triumphs blaze abroad in virgin white or party. MCCIV POSITA QUÆ HOSTILIS CUPIDITAS · A * colored placards on half the corners of the capital. MDCCIIIC ABSTULERAT · FRANC · I IMP · PACIS • The last curtesy of a favorite "prima donna" brings ORBI DATE TROPHÆUMA MDCCCXV VICTOR down a shower of these poetical tributes from those REDUXIT. upper regions, from which, in our theatres, nothing but cupids and snow-storms are accustomed to de- Nothing shall be said of the Latin, but it may be scend. There is a poetry in the very life of a Venetian, permitted to observe, that the injustice of the Venwhich, in its common course, is varied with those etians in transporting the horses from Constantinosurprises and changes so recommendable to fiction, ple was at least equal to that of the French in carout so different from the sober monotony of north- rying them to Paris, and that it would have been ern existence; amusements are raised into duties, more prudent to have avoided all allusions to either duties are softened into amusements, and every ob- robbery. An apostolic prince should, perhaps, have ject being considered as equally making a part of objected to affixing over the principal entrance of the business of life, is announced and performed a metropolitan church an inscription having a referwith the same earnest indifference and gay assidu-ence to any other triumphs than those of religion. ity. The Venetian gazette constantly closes its Nothing less than the pacification of the world can columns with the following triple advertisement. excuse such a solecism. Charade. Exposition of the most Holy Sacrament in the church of St. Theatres. St. Moses, opera. St. Benedict, a comedy of characters. When it is recollected what the Catholics believe their consecrated wafer to be, we may perhaps think it worthy of a more respectable niche than between poetry and the play-house. 4. Sparta hath many a worthier son than he. Stanza x. line 5. The answer of the mother of Brasidas to the strangers who praised the memory of her son. 5. St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood Stanza xi. line 5. 6. After many vain attempts on the part of the Italians entirely to throw off the yoke of Frederic Barbarossa, and as fruitless attempts of the emperor to make himself absolute master throughout the whole of his Cisalpine dominions, the bloody struggles of four and twenty years were happily brought to la close in the city of Venice. The articles of a treaty had been previously agreed upon between Pope Alexander III. and Barbarossa, and the forrived at Venice from Ferrara, in company with the mer having received a safe conduct, had already arambassadors of the king of Sicily and the consuls of the Lombard league. There still remained, however, many points to adjust, and for several days the peace was believed to be impracticable. At this juncture it was suddenly reported that the Emperor had arrived at Chioza, a town fifteen miles from the capital. The Venetians rose tumultuously, and inThe Lombards took the alarm, and departed towards sisted upon immediately conducting him to the city. Treviso. The Pope himself was apprehensive of some disaster if Frederic should suddenly advance upon him, but was reassured by the prudence and address of Sebastian Ziani, the Doge. Several embassies passed between Chioza and the capital, until, at last, the Emperor relaxing somewhat of his pretensions, "laid aside his leonine ferocity, and put on the mildness of the lamb."* The lion has lost nothing by his journey to the Invalides but the gospel which supported the paw that is now on a level with the other foot. The On Saturday, the 23d of July, in the year 1177, horses also are returned to the ill-chosen spot six Venetian galleys transferred Frederic, in great whence they set out, and are, as before, half hidden pomp, from Chioza to the island of Lido, a mile under the porch of St. Mark's church. from Venice. Early the next morning the Pope, Their history, after a desperate struggle, has been accompanied by the Sicilian ambassadors, and by satisfactorily explored. The decisions and doubts the envoys of Lombardy, whom he had recalled of Erizzo and Zanetti, and lastly, of the Count Le- from the main land, together with a great opold Cicognara, would have given them a Roman concourse of people, repaired from the patriextraction, and a pedigree not more ancient than archal palace to St. Mark's church, and solemnly the reign of Nero. But M. de Schlegel stepped in absolved the Emperor and his partisans from the to teach the Venetians the value of their own treas- excommunication pronounced against him. The ures, and a Greek vindicated, at last and for ever, Chancellor of the Empire, on the part of his masthe pretension of his countrymen to this noble pro- ter, renounced the anti-popes and their schismatic duction. Mr. Mustoxidi has not been left without adherents. Immediately the Doge, with a great a reply; but, as yet, he has received no answer.. It suite both of the clergy and laity, got on board the should seem that the horses are irrevocably Chian, galleys, and waiting on Frederic, rowed him in and were transferred to Constantinople by Theodo- mighty state from the Lido to the capital. The sius. Lapidary writing is a favorite play of the Emperor descended from the galley at the quay of Italians, and has conferred reputation on more than the Piazetta. The Doge, the patriarch, his bishone of their literary characters. One of the best ops and clergy, and the people of Venice with their specimens of Bodoni's typography is a respectable crosses and their standards, marched in solemn provolume of inscriptions, all written by his friend Pac- cession before him to the church of Saint Mark. ciaudi. Several were prepared for the recovered Alexander was seated before the vestibule of the horses. It is to be hoped the best was not selected, basilica, attended by his bishops and cardinals, by when the following words were ranged in gold letters above the cathedral porch. • "Quibus auditis, imperator, operante co, qui corda principum sicut vak et quando vult humiliter inclinat, leonina feritate deposita, ovinam manItal. VII. p. 229. • Sui quattro cavilli della Basilica di S. Marco in Venezia. Lettera di suetudinem induk." Romualdi Salernitani Chronicon. apud Script. Hav Andrea Mustoxidi Corcirese. Padua per Bettonie compag... 1916. Dandolo died on the first day of June, 1205, hav ing reigned thirteen years, six months, and five days, and was buried in the church of St. Sophia, . at Constantinople. Strangely enough it must sound, that the name of the rebel apothecary who received the Doge's sword, and annihilated the ancient gov ernment, in 1796-7, was Dandolo. 8. But is not Doria's menace come to pass? the satrina of Aquileja, by the archbishops and tied together, and a drawbridge or ladder let down bil. ps Lombardy, all of them in state, and from their higher yards to the walls. The Doge was clot ad in their church robes. Frederic ap- one of the first to rush into the city. Then was proache2-moved by the Holy Spirit, venerating completed, said the Venetians, the prophecy of the the Alagity in the person of Alexander, laying Erythræan sibyl. "A gathering together of the aside his imperial dignity, and throwing off his powerful shall be made amidst the waves of the mantle, de prostrated himself at full length at the Adriatic, under a blind leader; they shall beset the feet of the Pope. Alexander, with tears in his goat-they shall profane Byzantium-they shall eyes, raised him benignantly from the ground, blacken her buildings-her spoils shall be dispersed; kissed him, blessed him; and immediately the a new goat shall bleat, until they have measured Germans of the train sang, with a loud voice, We out and run over fifty-four feet, nine inches, and a praise thee, O Lord.' The Emperor then taking half."* the Pore by the right hand, led him to the church, and having received his benediction, returned to the ducal palace." The ceremony of humiliation was repeated the next day. The Pope himself, at the request of Frederic, said mass at St. Mark's. The Emperor again laid aside his imperial mantle, and, taking a wand in his hand, officiated as verger, driving the laity from the choir, and preceding the pontiff to the altar. Alexander, after reciting the gospel, preached to the people. The Emperor put himself close to the pulpit in the attitude of listening; and the pontiff, touched by this mark of his Stanza xiii. lines 3 and 4. attention, for he knew that Frederic did not underAfter the loss of the battle of Pola, and the stand a word he said, commanded the patriarch of Aquileja to translate the Latin discourse into the taking of Chioza on the 16th of August, 1379, by German tongue. The creed was then chanted. the united armament of the Genoese and Francesco Frederic made his oblation and kissed the Pope's da Carrara, Signor of Padua, the Venetians were feet, and, mass being over, led him by the hand to reduced to the utmost despair. An embassy was his white horse. He held the stirrup, and would sent to the conquerors with a blank sheet of paper, have led the horse's rein to the water side, had not praying them to prescribe what terms they pleased, the Pope accepted of the inclination for the per- Prince of Padua was inclined to listen to these proand leave to Venice only her independence. The formance, and affectionately dismissed him with his benediction. Such is the substance of the account Pola, had shouted "to Venice, to Venice, and long posals, but the Genoese, who after the victory at left by the archbishop of Salerno, who was present live St. George," determined to annihilate their at the ceremony, and whose story is confirmed by every subsequent narration. It would be not worth rival, and Peter Doria, their commander in chief, so minute a record, were it not the triumph of lib-returned this answer to the suppliants: "On God's erty as well as of superstition. The states of Lom-faith, gentlemen of Venice, ye shall have no peace bardy owed to it the confirmation of their privi- of Genoa, until we have first put a rein upon those from the Signor of Padua, nor from our commune leges; and Alexander had reason to thank the Almighty, who had enabled an infirm, unarmed old unbridled horses of yours, that are upon the porch of man, to subdue a terrible and potent sovereign.t your evangelist St. Mark. When we have bridled them, we shall keep you quiet. And this is the pleasure of us and of your commune. As for these my brothers of Genoa. that you have brought with you to give up to us, I will not have them: take them back; for, in a few days hence, I shall come and let them out of prison myself, both these and all the others."† In fact, the Genoese did advance as far as MalaThe reader will recollect the exclamation of the Highlander, Oh, for one hour of Dundee! Henry own danger and the pride of their enemies gave within five miles of the capital; but their Dandolo, when elected Doge, in 1192, was eighty-courage to the Venetians, who made prodigious ef five years of age. When he commanded the Vene-forts, and many individual sacrifices, all of them tians at the taking of Constantinople, he was con- carefully recorded by their historians. Vettor Pisequently ninety-seven years old. At this age he sani was put at the head of thirty-four galleys. The annexed the fourth and a half of the whole empire Genoese broke up from Malamocco, and retired to of Romania, for so the Roman empire was then Chioza in October; but they again threatened Vencalled, to the title and to the territories of the Ven- ice, which was reduced to extremities. At this etian Doge. The three-eighths of this empire were time, the 1st of January, 1380, arrived Carlo Zeno, preserved in the diplomas until the dukedom of Gi- who had been cruising on the Genoese coast with ovanni Dolfino, who made use of the above desig-fourteen galleys. The Venetians were now strong nation in the year 1357.§ Dandolo led the attack on Constantinople in per- on the 22d of January by a stone bullet one hunenough to besiege the Genoese. Doria was killed son: two ships, the Paradise and the Pilgrim, were dred and ninety-five pounds weight, discharged from a bombard called the Trevisan. Chioza was then closely invested: five thousand auxiliaries, Alexander preached on the first day of August, before the Emperor, he among whom were some English Condottieri, commanded by one Captain Ceccho, joined the Vene 7. Oh, for one hour of blind old Dandolo! • Ibt. p. 231. ↑ See the above tod Romuald of Salerno, In a second sermon which compared Frederic to the prodigal son, and himself to the forgiving father. mocco. • "Fiet potentium in aquis Adriaticis congregatio, creco produce, Hircum ambigent, Byzantium prophanabunt, ædificia denigrabunt; spolia dispergentur, Hircus novus balabit usque dum LIV pedes et IX pollices, et semis pramensurati discurrant." [Chronicon, ibid. pars xxxiv.] ↑ Mr. Gibbon has omitted the important a, and has written Romani instead of Romanie. Decline and Fall, cap. Ixi, note 9. But the title acquired by Dandolo runs thus in the chronicle of his namesake, the Doge Andrew Dandolo. Ducali titulo addidit, "Quartæ partis et dimidia totius imperi Romanice," And. Dand, Chrouicon, cap. iii. pars xxxvii. ap. Script. Rer. Ital. tom. xii, page 381 And the Romanie is observed in the ↑ "Alla fe di Dio, Signori Veneziani, non haverete mai pace dal Sigsubsequent acts of the Doges. Indeed the continental possessions of the nore di Padova, ne dal nostro commune di Genova, se primieramente non Greek empire in Europe were then generally known by the name of Romanin, mettemo le briglie a quelli vostri cavalli sfrenati, che sono su la Reza del and that appellation is sti3 seen in the maps of Turkey as applied to Thrace. Vostro Evangelista S. Marco. Imbrenati che gli havremo, or fareme See the continuation of Dandolo's Chronicle, ibid. page 498. Mr. stare in buona pace, E questa e la intenzione nostra, e del vostro commune. Gibbon appears not to include Dolfino, following Sanudo, who says, "il Questi miei fratelli Genevosi che havele menati con voi per domarci, non le qual titolo si uso fin al Doge Giovanni Dolfino. See Vite de' Duchi di | voglio; rimanete gli in dietro perche lo intendo da qui a pochi giorni venir. Venezia, ap. Script. Rer. Ital. tom. xxii. 530. 641. gli a riscuoter, dalle lostre prigioni, e loro e gli altri.” tians. The Genoese in their turn, prayed for con-spectacle of a whole nation loaded with recent ditions, but none were granted, until, at last, they chains. Their liveliness, their affability, and that surrendered at discretion; and, on the 24th of June, happy indifference which constitution alone can 1380, the Doge Contarini made his triumphal entry give, for philosophy aspires to it in vain, have not into Chioza. Four thousand prisoners, nineteen sunk under circumstances; but many peculiarities galleys, many smaller vessels and barks, with all of costume and manner have by degrees been lost, the ammunition and arms, and outfit of the expedi-and the nobles, with a pride common to all Italians tion, fell into the hands of the conquerors, who, who have been masters, have not been persuaded to had it not been for the inexorable answer of Doria, parade their insignificance. That splendor which would have gladly reduced their dominion to the was a proof and a portion of their power, they city of Venice. An account of these transactions would not degrade into the trappings of their subis found in a work called the War of Chioza, written jection. They retired from the space which they by Daniel Chinazzo, who was in Venice at the time. had occupied in the eyes of their fellow-citizens; their continuance of which would have been a symptom of acquiescence, and an insult to those who suffered by the common misfortune. Those who remained in the degraded capital might be said than to live in them. The reflection, "who and rather to haunt the scenes of their departed power, what enthralls," will hardly bear a comment from one who is, nationally, the friend and the ally of the conqueror. It may, however, be allowed to say thus much, that to those who wish to recover their independence, any masters must be an object of detestation; and it may be safely foretold that this unprofitable aversion will not have been corrected before Venice shall have sunk into the slime of her choked canals. 9. The "Planter of the Lion." Stanza xiv. line 3. Plant the Lion-that is, the Lion of St. Mark, the standard of the republic, which is the origin of the word Pantaloon-Piantelone, Pantaleon, Pantaloon. 10. 11. Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse! Stanxa xvi. line 3. The story is told in Plutarch's life of Nicias. 12. 13. Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as must Too oft remind her who and what enthralls. Stanza xv. lines 7 and 8. The population of Venice at the end of the seventeenth century amounted to nearly two hundred thousand souls. At the last census, taken two years ago, it was no more than about one hundred and three thousand, and it diminishes daily. The commerce and the official employments, which were to be the unexhausted source of Venetian grandeur, have both expired.† Most of the patrician mansions are deserted, and would gradually disappear, had not the government, alarmed by the demolition And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakspeare's art. of seventy-two, during the last two years, expressly Stanza xviii. line 5. forbidden this sad resource of poverty. Many rem- Venice Preserved; Mysteries of Udolpho; the nants of the Venetian nobility are now scattered Ghostseer, or Armenian; the Merchant of Venice; and confounded with the wealthier Jews upon the Othello. banks of the Brenta, whose palladian palaces have sunk, or are sinking in the general decay. Of the "gentiluomo Veneto," the name is still known, and that is all. He is but the shadow of his former self, but he is polite and kind. It surely may be pardoned to him if he is querulous. Whatever may Tannen is the plural of tanne, a species of fir pehave been the vices of the republic, and although culiar to the Alps, which only thrives in very rocky the natural term of its existence may be thought by parts, where scarcely soil sufficient for its nourishforeigners to have arrived in the due course of mor- ment can be found. On these spots it grows to a tality, only one sentiment can be expected from the greater height than any other mountain tree. Venetians themselves. At no time were the subjects of the republic so unanimous in their resolution to rally round the standard of St. Mark, as when it was for the last time unfurled; and the cowardice and the treachery of the few patricians who recommended the fatal neutrality were confined to the persons of the traitors themselves. The present race canThe above description may seem fantastical or not be thought to regret the loss of their aristocrat-tal or an Italian sky, yet it is but a literal and hardly exaggerated to those who have never seen an Orienical forms, and too despotic government; they think sufficient delineation of an August evening (the only on their vanished independence. They pine eighteenth) as contemplated in one of many rides away at the remembrance, and on this subject suspend for a moment their gay good humor. Venice along the banks of the Brenta near La Mira. But from their nature will the tannen grow 14. A single star is at her side, and reigns 15. Watering the tree which bears his lady's name With his melodious tears, he gave himself to fame. may be said in the words of the Scripture, "to die daily;" and so general and so apparent is the decline, as to become painful to a stranger, not reconciled to the sight of a whole nation expiring as it were before his eyes. So artificial a creation, having Stanza xxx. lines 8 and 9. lost that principle which called it into life and sup- Thanks to the critical acumen of a Scotchman, ported its existence. must fall to pieces at once, and we now know as little of Laura as ever.* The dissink more rapidly fit rose. The abhorrence of coveries of the Abbé de Sade, his triumphs, his slavery which drove the Venetians to the sea, has, sneers can no longer instruct or amuse. We must since their disaster, forced them to the land, where not, however, think that these memoirs are as they may be at least overlooked amongst the crowd much a romance as Belisarius or the Incas, although of dependants, and not present the humiliating • "Chronaça delia guerra di Chozac," &c. Script. Rer. Italic. tom. xv pp. 699 to 804. "Nonnullorum è nobilitate immense sunt opes, adeo ut vix estimari possint: id quod tribus è rebus oritur, parsimonia, commercio, atque riz emolumentis, quos è Repub. percipiunt, que hanc ob causam diuturna fore creditur."-Sce de Principatibus Italie, Tractatus edit. 1631. • See an Historical and Critical Essay on the Life and Character of Petrarch; and a Dissertation on an Historical Hypothesis of the Abbe de Sade the first appeared about the year 1784; the other is inserted in the fourth volume of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and both have been incorporated into a work, published under the first title b Ballantyne in 1810. † Mémoires pour la Vie di Pétrarque. we are told so by Dr. Beattie, a great name, but a land perverse, that it absorbed him quite and little authority. His "labor" has not been in mastered his heart.* The vain, notwithstanding his "love" has, like most In this case, however, he was perhaps alarmed other passions, made him ridiculous.† The hypoth- for the culpability of his wishes; for the Abbé de esis which overpowered the struggling Italians, and Sade himself, who certainly would not have been carried along less interested critics in its current, is scrupulously delicate if he could have proved his un out. We have another proof that we can be descent from Petrarch as well as Laura, is forced never sure that the paradox, the most singular, and into a stout defence of his virtuous grandmother. therefore having the most agreeable and authentic As far as relates to the poet, we have no security air, will not give place to the reestablished ancient for the innocence, except perhaps in the constancy prejudice. of his pursuit. He assures us in his epistle to posIt seems, then, first, that Laura was born, lived, terity, that, when arrived at his fortieth year, he died, and was buried, not in Avignon, but in the not only had in horror, but had lost all recollection country. The fountains of the Sorga, the thickets and image of any "irregularity." But the birth of Cabricres, may resume their pretensions, and the of his natural daughter cannot be assigned earlier exploded de la Bastie again be heard with compla- than his thirty-ninth year; and either the memory ceney. The hypothesis of the Abbé had no stronger or the morality of the poet must have failed him, props than the parchment sonnet and medal found when he forgot or was guilty of this slip. on the skeleton of the wife of Hugo de Sade, and weakest argument for the purity of this love has the manuscript note to the Virgil of Petrarch, now been drawn from the permanence of effects, which in the Ambrosial library. If these proofs were both survived the object of his passion. The reflection incontestable, the poetry was written, the medal of Mr. de la Bastie, that virtue alone is capable of composed, cast, and deposited within the space of making impressions which death cannot efface, is twelve hours: and these deliberate duties were per- one of those which everybody applauds, and everyformed round the carcass of one who died of the body finds not to be true, the moment he examines plague, and was hurried to the grave on the day of his own breast or the record of human feeling.§ her death. These documents, therefore, are too Such apothegms can do nothing for Petrarch or for decisive: they prove not the fact, but the forgery. the cause of morality, except with the very weak Either the sonnet or the Virgilian note must be a and the very young. He that has made even a falsification. The Abbé cites both as incontestably little progress beyond ignorance and pupilage cantrue; the consequent deduction is inevitable-they not be edified with anything but truth. What is are both evidently false.‡ called vindicating the honor of an individual or a Secondly, Laura was never married, and was a nation, is the most futile, tedious, aud uninstructive haughty virgin rather than that tender and prudent of all writing; although it will always meet with wife, who honored Avignon by making that town more applause than that sober criticism, which is the theatre of an honest French passion, and played attributed to the malicious desire of reducing a off for one and twenty years her little machinery of great man to the common standard of humanity. alternate favors and refusals upon the first poet It is, after all, not unlikely, that our historian was of the age. It was, indeed, rather too unfair that a right in retaining his favorite hypothetic salvo, female should be made responsible for eleven chil- which secures the author, although it scarcely saves dren upon the faith of a misinterpreted abbreviation, the honor of the still unknown mistress of Petrarch. I and the decision of a librarian. It is, however, satisfactory to think that the love of Petrarch was not platonic. The happiness which he prayed to They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died. possess but once and for a moment was surely not Stanza xxxi. line 1. of the mind, and something so very real as a marriage project, with one who has been idly Petrarch retired to Arqua immediately on his recalled a shadowy nymph, may be, perhaps, detected turn from the unsuccessful attempt to visit Urban in at least six places of his own sonnets.** The V. at Rome, in the year 1370, and, with the exceplove of Petrarch was neither platonic nor poetical; tion of his celebrated visit to Venice, in company and if in one passage of his works he calls it "amore veementeissimo ma unico ed onesto," he confesses, in a letter to a friend, that it was guilty “Par ce petit manège, cette alternative de faveurs et de rigueurs bien ménagée, une femme tendre et sage amuse, pendant vingt et un ans, le plus grand poète de son siecle, sans faire la moindre brèche à son honeur." Mém. pour la Vie de Pétrarque, Préface aux Français. The Italian editor. of the London edition of Petrarch, who has translated Lord Woodhousetee, renders the "femme tendre et sage," "raffinata civetta." Riflessioni Intorno a madonna Laura, p. 234, vol. iii. ed. 1811. 16. with Francesco Novello da Carrara, he appears to have passed the four last years of his life between previous to his death he was in a state of continual that charming solitude and Padua. For four months languor, and in the morning of July the 19th, in the year 1374, was found dead in his library chair, with his head resting upon a book. The chair is still shown among the precious relics of Arqua, which, from the uninterrupted veneration that has been attached to every thing relative to this great man from the moment of his death to the present hour have, it may be hoped, a better chance of authenticity than the Shaksperian memorials of Stratford upon Avon. Arqua (for the last syllable is accented in pronunciation, although the analogy of the English language has been observed in the verse), is twelve miles from Padua, and about three miles on the right of the high road to Rovigo, in the bosom of In a dialogue with St. Augustin, Petrarch has described Laura as having a body exhausted with repeated ptubs. The old editors read and printed perturbationibus; but Mr. Capperonier, librarian to the French king in 1762, who saw the MS. in the Paris library, made an attestation that "on lit et eu'on doit lire, partubus exhaustum." De Sade joined the names of nel cuore." Messrs. Boudot, and Bejot with Mr. Capperonier, and in the whole discussion en this ptube, showed himself a downright literary rogue. See Riflessioni, "Quella rea e perversa passione che solo tutto mi occupava e mi rognava ↑ Arion dishonesta are his words. "A questa confessione cosi sincera diede forse occasione una nuova cad &c., p. 267. Thomas Aquinas is called in to settle whether Petrarch's mis-uta ch' ei fece." Tiraboschi, Storia, § c. tom. v. lib. iv. par. li. pag. 492. tress was a chaste maid or a continent wife. "Pigmalion, quanto lodar ti dei Dell' imagine tua, se mille volte N' avesti quel ch' i' sol una vorrei.” Sonnetto 58 quando giunse a Simon l'alto concetto. ** See Rifesaloni, &c., p 291. "Il n'y a que la vertu seule qui soit capable de faire des impressione que la mort n'efface pas." M. de Bimard, Baron de la Bastic, in the Mem oires de l'Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres for 1740 and 1751. See also Riflessioni, &c., p. 295. "And if the virtue or prudence of Laura was inexorable, he enjoyed and might boast of enjoying the nymph of poetry." Decline and Fall. cap lxx. p. 827, vol. xii. oct. Perhaps the if is here meant for although. the Euganean hills. After a walk of twenty min-1 society, and was only snatched from his intended utes across a flat, well-wooded meadow, you come to sepulture in their church by a foreign death. Anoth a little blue lake, clear, but fathomless, and to the er tablet with a bust has been erected to him at foot of a succession of acclivities and hills, clothed Pavia, on account of his having passed the autumn with vineyards and orchards, rich with fir and pome- of 1368 in that city, with his son-in-law Brossano. granate trees, and every sunny fruit shrub. From The political condition which has for ages pre the banks of the lake the road winds into the hills, cluded the Italians from the criticism of the living, and the church of Arqua is soon seen between a has concentrated their attention to the illustration cleft where two ridges slope towards each other, of the dead. and nearly enclose the village. The houses are scattered at intervals on the steep sides of these summits; and that of the poet is on the edge of a little knoll overlooking two descents, and commanding a view not only of the glowing gardens in the dales immediately beneath, but of the wide demons as with our better thoughts. Satan chose The struggle is to the full as likely to be with plains, above whose low woods of mulberry and the wilderness for the temptation of our Saviour. willow, thickened into a dark mass by festoons of And our unsullied John Locke preferred the presvines, tall single cypresses, and the spires of towns ence of a child to complete solitude. 17. Or, it may be, with demons. 18. In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire; are seen in the distance, which stretches to the mouths of the Po and the shores of the Adriatic. The climate of these volcanic hills is warmer, and the vintage begins a week sooner than in the plains of Padua. Petrarch is laid, for he cannot be said to be buried, in a sarcophagus of red marble, raised Stanza xxxviii. lines 6 and 7. on four pilasters on an elevated base, and preserved from an association with meaner tombs. It stands Perhaps the couplet in which Boileau depreciates conspicuously alone, but will be soon overshadowed Tasso, may serve as well as any other specimen to by four lately planted laurels. Petrarch's fountain, justify the opinion given of the harmony of French for here every thing is Petrarch's, springs and expands itself beneath an artificial arch, a little below the church, and abounds plentifully, in the driest season, with that soft water which was the ancient verse. A Malerbe a Racan, prefere Theophile, Sat. ix. vers. 176, wealth of the Euganean hills. It would be more The biographer Serassi, out of tenderness to the attractive, were it not, in some seasons, beset with reputation either of the Italian or the French poet, hornets and wasps. No other coincidence could is eager to observe that the satirist recanted or ex assimilate the tombs of Petrarch and Archilochus. plained away this censure, and subsequently allowed The revolutions of centuries have spared these se- the author of the Jerusalem to be a "genius, subquestered valleys, and the only violence which has lime, vast, and happily born from the higher flights been offered to the ashes of Petrarch was prompted of poetry." To this we will add, that the recantanot by hate, but veneration. An attempt was made tion is far from satisfactory, when we examine the to rob the sarcophagus of its treasure, and one of whole anecdote as reported by Olivet. The senthe arms was stolen by a Forentine through a rent tence pronounced against him by Bohourst is rewhich is still visible. The injury is not forgotten, corded only to the confusion of the critic, whose but has served to identify the poet with the country palinodia the Italian makes no effort to discover, where he was born, but where he would not live. A and would not perhaps accept. As to the opposipeasant boy of Arqua being asked who Petrarch tion which the Jerusalem encountered from the was, replied, "that the people of the parsonage Cruscan academy, who degraded Tasso from ali knew all about him, but that he only knew that he was a Florentine." Mr. Forsyth was not quite correct in saying that Petrarch never returned to Tuscany after he had once quitted it when a boy. It appears he did pass through Florence on his way from Parma to Rome, and on his return in the year 1350, and remained there long enough to form some acquaintance with its most distinguished inhabitants. A Florentine gentleman, ashamed of the aversion of the poet for his native country, was eager to point out this trivial error in our accomplished traveller, whom he knew and respected for an extraordinary capacity, extensive erudition, and refined taste, joined to that engaging simplicity of manners which has been so frequently recognized as the surest, though it is certainly not an indispensable, trait of superior ge nius. Every footstep of Laura's lover has been anxiously traced and recorded. The house in which he lodged is shown in Venice. The inhabitants of Arezzo, in order to decide the ancient controversy. between their city and the neighboring Ancisa, where Petrarch was carried when seven months old, and remained until his seventh year, have designated by a long inscription the spot where their great fellow citizen was born. A tablet has been raised to him in Parma, in the chapel of St. Agatha, at the cathedral, because he was an archdeacon of that Remarks, &c. on Italy, p. 95, note, 21 edit. † D. O. M. Francisca Petrarcha Parmensi Archidiacono. competition with Ariosto, below Bojardo and Pulci, the disgrace of such opposition must also in some measure be laid to the charge of Alfonso, and the court of Ferrara. For Leonard Salviati, the principal and nearly the sole origin of this attack, was, a Parentibus præclaris genera perantiquo Africa ob carmen hac in urbe peractum regibus accio Juvenilium Juvenis senilium senex Comes Nicolaus Canonicus Cicognarus Ibique condito Dive Januariæ cruento corpore H. M. P. Suffectum Sed infra meritum Francisci sepulchro Si Parma occumberet • La Vita del Tasso, lib. iii. p. 234, tom. ii. elit. Bergamo, 1790. ↑ Histoire de l'Académie Française, depuis 1652 jusqu'à 1700, par l'Abbé d'Olivet, p. 181, edit. Amsterdam, 1730. "Mais, ensuite, venant à l'usage qu' fait de ses talens, J'aurois montre que le bon sens n'est pas toujours ce qui domine chez lui," p. 182. Boileau said he had not changed his opinion: "J'en ai si peu changé, dit-il," &c., p. 181. La Maniere de bien Penser dans les ouvrages de l'esprit, sec, dial. p. 89, edit. 1692. Philanthes is for Tasso, and says, in the outset, "de tous le beaux esprits que l'Italie a portés, le Tasse est peut-être celui qui pense le plus noblement." But Bohours seems to speak in Eudoxus, who closes with the absurd comparison: "Faites valoire le Tasse tant qu'il vous phira, ja m'en tiens pour moi à Virgile," &e. Ibid. p. 102. |