-St. Benedict, a comedy of characters. and amidst all these circumstances it was easy to confess the character of this wonderful harmony. "It suits perfectly well with an idle, solitary mariner, When it is recollected what the Catholics believe lying at length in his vessel at rest on one of these their consecrated wafer to be, we may perhaps hink it canals, waiting for his company, or for a fare, the tire-worthy of a more respectable niche than between oeuy someness of which situation is somewhat alleviated by and the play-house. the songs and poetical stories he has in memory. He often raises his voice as loud as he can, which extends itself to a vast distance over the tranquil mirror, and as all is still around, he is, as it were, in a solitude in the midst of a large and populous town. Here is no rattling of carriages, no noise of foot passengers; a silent gon-gers who praised the memory of her son. dola glides now and then by him, of which the splashings of the oars are scarcely to be heard. "At a distance he hears another, perhaps utterly unknown to him. Melody and verse immediately attach the two strangers: he becomes the responsive echo to Sparta hath many a worthier son than he. Stanza x. line 5. The answer of the mother of Brasidas to the stran 5. St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood Stanza xi, line 5. The lion has lost nothing by his journey to the Inva the former, and exerts himself to be heard as he had lides but the gospel which supported the paw that is heard the other. By a tacit convention they alternate verse for verse; though the song should last the whole night through, they entertain themselves without fatigue: the hearers, who are passing between the two, take part in the amusement. now on a level with the other foot. The horses also and are, as before, half hidden under the porch of St. are returned to the ill-chosen spot whence they set out, Mark's church. "This vocal performance sounds best at a great dis- satisfactorily explored. The decisions and doubts of Their history, after a desperate struggle, has been tance, and is then inexpressibly charming, as it only Erizzo and Zanetti, and lastly, of the Count Leopold fulfils its design in the sentiment of remoteness. plaintive but not dismal in its sound, and at times it is and a pedigree not more ancient than the reign of Nero. It is Cicognara, would have given them a Roman extraction, scarcely possible to refrain from tears. My companion, But M. de Schlegel stepped in to teach the Venetians who otherwise was not a very delicately organized the value of their own treasures, and a Greek vindi person, said quite unexpectedly: e singolare come quel cated, at last and for ever, the pretension of his coun anto intenerisce, e molto più quando lo cantano meglio. Tasso to these and similar tunes. slands that divides the Adriatic from the Lagouns,*ceived no answer. "I was told that the women of Libo, the long row of trymen to this noble production. Mr. Mustoxidi has not been left without a reply; but, as yet, he has reIt should seem that the horses are particularly the women of the extreme districts of Ma- irrevocably Chian, and were transferred to Constar. lamocco and Palestrina, sing in like manner the works of tinople by Theodosius. Lapidary writing is a favourite more than one of their literary characters. One of the play of the Italians, and has conferred reputation on best specimens of Bodoni's typography is a respectable volume of inscriptions, all written by his friend Pacci. audi. Several were prepared for the recovered horses. following words were ranged in gold letters above the It is to be hoped the best was not selected, when the cathedral porch. "They have the custom, when their husbands are fishing out at sea, to sit along the shore in the evenings and vociferate these songs, and continue to do so with great violence, till each of them can distinguish the responses of her own husband at a distance, "t Does a QUATUOR EQUORUM SIGNA A' VENETIS BY POSITA QUÆ HOSTILIS CUPIDITAS A MDCCHIC The love of music and of poetry distinguishes all classes of Venetians, even amongst the tuneful sons of Italy. The city itself can occasionally furnish respectable audiences for two and even three opera-houses at a time; and there are few events in private life that do ZANTIO CAPTA AD TEMPD MAR AR'S MCCIV' not call forth a printed and circulated sonnet. physician or a lawyer take his degree, or a clergyman preach his maiden sermon, has a surgeon performed an TROPHÆUM A MDCCCXV VICTOR REDUXIT. operation, would a harlequin announce his departure or Nothing shall be said of the Latin, but it may be his benefit, are you to be congratulated on a marriage, permitted to observe, that the injustice of the Venetians or a birth, or a lawsuit, the Moses are invoked to furnish in transporting the horses from Constantinople was at the same number of syllables, and the individual least equal to that of the French in carrying them to triumphs blaze abroad in virgin white or party-coloured Paris, and that it would have been more prudent to placards on half the corners of the capital. The last have avoided all allusions to either robbery. An apos. courtesy of a favourite "prima donna" brings down a tolic prince should, perhaps, have objected to affixing shower of these poetical tributes from those upper re- over the principal entrance of a metropolitan church an gions, from which, in our theatres, nothing but cupids inscription having a reference to any other triumphs and snow-storms are accustomed to descend. There than those of religion. Nothing less than the pacifica. is a poetry in the very life of a Venetian, which, in its tion of the world can excuse such a solecism. common course, is varied with those surprises and changes so recommendable to fiction, but so different from the sober monotony of northern existence; amusements are raised into duties, duties are softened into amusements, and every object being considered as equally making a part of the business of life, is announced and performed with the same earnest indifference and gay assiduity. The Venetian gazette constantly closes its columns with the following triple adver tisement. Charade. 6. The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns- Stanza xii, lines 1 and 2. After many vain efforts 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 a close in the city of Venice, The articles of a treaty had been previously Exposition of the most Holy Sacrament in the church agreed upon between Pope Alexander III. and Baiba. 7. Oh, for one hour of blind old Dandolo! uncture it was suddenly reported that the Emperor had arrived at Chioza, a town fifteen miles from the capital The Venetians rose tumultuously, and insisted upon immediately conducting him to the city. The Lombards ook the alarm, and departed towards Treviso. 1 he Pone himself was apprehensive of some disaster if The reader will recollect the exclamation of the Frederic should suddenly advance upon him, but was highlander, Oh for one hour of Dundee! Henry Danreassured by the prudence and address of Sebastian dolo, when elected Doge, in 1192, was eighty-five years Ziani, the Doge. Several embassies passed between of age. When he commanded the Venetians at the Chioza and the capital, until, at last, the Emperor retaking of Constantinople, he was consequently ninety. laxing somewhat of his pretensions, "laid aside his seven years old. At this age he annexed the fourth leonine ferocity, and put on the mildness of the lamb," and a half of the whole empire of Romania,* for so the On Saturday the 23d of July, in the year 1177, six Roman empire was then called, to the title and to the Venetian galleys transferred Frederic, in great pomp, this empire were preserved in the diplomas until the territories of the Venetian Doge. The three-eighths of from Chioza to the island of Lido, a mile from Venice. dukedom of Giovanni Dolfino, who made use of the Early the next morning the Pope, accompanied by the Sicilian ambassadors, and by the envoys of Lombardy, above designation in the year 1357.† whom he had recalled from the main land, together with two ships, the Paradise and the Pilgrim, were tied toDandolo led the attack on Constantinople in person: a great concourse of people, repaired from the patriar 8. But is not Doria's menace come to pass? . chal palace to St. Mark's church, and solemnly absolved gether, and a drawbridge or ladder let down from their the Emperor and his partisans from the excommunica-higher yards to the walls. The Doge was one of the tion pronounced against him. The Chancellor of the first to rush into the city. Then was completed, said Empire, on the part of his master, renounced the anti-"A gathering together of the powerful shall be made the Venetians, the prophecy of the Erythraan sibyl. popes and their schismatic adherents. Immediately the Doge, with a great suite both of the clergy and laity, amidst the waves of the Adriatic, under a blind leader; got on board the galleys, and waiting on Frederic, rowed they shall beset the goat-they shall profane Byzantium him in mighty state from the Lido to the capital. The they shall blacken her buildings-her spoils shall be Emperor descended from the galley at the quay of the dispersed; a new goat shall bleat until they have meaPiazzetta. The Doge, the patriarch, his bishops and sured out and run over fifty-four feet, nine inches, and a clergy, and the people of Venice with their crosses and half."‡ their standards, marched in solemn procession before Dandolo died on the first day of June, 1205, having him to the church of Saint Mark. Alexander was seated reigned thirteen years, six months, and five days, and before the vestibule of the basilica, attended by his was buried in the church of St. Sophia, at Constanti bishops and cardinals, by the patriarch of Aquileja, by nople. Strangely enough it must sound, that the name the archbishops and bishops of Lombardy, all of them of the rebel apothecary who received the Doge's sword, in state, and clothed in their church robes. Frederic and annihilated the ancient government, in 1796–7, was approached-"moved by the Holy Spirit, venerating Dandolo. the Almighty in the person of Alexander, laying aside his imperial dignity, and throwing off his mantle, he prostrated himself at full length at the feet of the Pope. Alexander, with tears in his eyes, raised him benigStanza xiii. lines 3 and 4 nantly from the ground, kissed him, blessed him; and After the loss of the battle of Pola, and the taking immediately the Germans of the train sang, with a loud Chioza on the 16th of August, 1379, by the united voice, We praise thee, O Lord.' The Emperor then armament of the Genoese and Francesco da Carrara, taking the Pope by the right hand, led him to the Signor of Padua, the Venetians were reduced to the church, and having received his benediction, returned utmost despair. An embassy was sent to the conquerors to the ducal palace." The ceremony of humiliation with a blank sheet of paper, praying them to prescribe was repeated the next day. The Pope himself, at the what terms they pleased, and leave to Venice only her request of Frederic, said mass at St. Mark's. The Em- independence. The Prince of Padua was inclined to peror again laid aside his imperial mantle, and, taking listen to these proposals, but the Genoese, who after a wand in his hand, officiated as verger, driving the the victory at Pola, had shouted "to Venice, to Venice, laity from the choir, and preceding the pontiff to the and long live St. George," determined to annihilate their altar. Alexander, after reciting the gospel, preached to rival, and Peter Doria, their commander in chief, rethe people. The Emperor put himself close to the turned this answer to the suppliants: "On God's faith, pulpit in the attitude of listening; and the pontiff, gentlemen of Venice, ye shall have no peace from the touched by this mark of his attention, for he knew that Signor of Padua, nor from our commune of Genoa, until Frederic did not understand a word he said, commanded we have first put a rein upon those unbridled horses of the patriarch of Aquileja to translate the Latin discourse yours, that are upon the porch of your evangelist St. into the German tongue. The creed was then chanted. Mark. When we have bridled them, we shall keep you Frederic made his oblation and kissed the Pope's feet, quiet. And this is the pleasure of us and of your com. and, mass being over, led him by the hand to his white mune. As for these my brothers of Genoa, that you norse. He held the stirrup, and would have led the have brought with you to give up to us, I will not have horse's rein to the water side, had not the Pope ac- them: take them back; for, in a few days hence, I shall cepted of the inclination for the performance, and affec- come and let them out of prison myself, both these and tionately dismissed him with his benediction. Such is all the others." In fact, the Genoese did advance as the substance of the account left by the archbishop of Salerno, who was present at the ceremony, and whose story is confirmed by every subsequent narration. It would be not worth so minute a record, were it not the triumph of liberty as well as of superstition. The states of Lombardy owed to it the confirmation of their privi-ap, Script, Rer. Ital tom. xii, page 331. And the Romanie is observed leges; and Alexander had reason to thank the Almighty, who had enabled an infirm, unarmed old man, to subdue a terrible and potent sovereign. Mr. Gibbon has omitted the important a, and has written Romani end of Romaine Decline and Fall, cap. Izi, note 9. But the title acquired by Dandolo runs thus in the chronicle of his namesake, the Doge Andrew Dandolo. Ducali titulo addidit," totius imperii Romania." And. Dand. Chronicon, cap, iii, pare xxvii. Quarta partis et dimidi in the subsequent acts of the Doges. Indeed the continental possessione of the Greck empire in Europe were then generally known by the naine of Romania, and that appellation is still seen in the maps of Turkey a applied to Thrace. See the continuation of Dandolo's Chronicle, ibid. page 49. Mr. Gibbon appears not to include Dolfino, following Sanudo, whe says," il qual titolo si uso fin al Doge Giovanni Dolfino," See Vite de' Duchi di Venezia, ap. Script. Rer. Ital. tom. xxii. 530, 641. Hircum ambigent, Byzantium prophanabunt, adificia denigrabunti 1 Fiet potentium in aquis Adriaticis congregatio, caco produce, spolia dispergentur, Hircus novus batabit usque dum i.IV pedes et IX pollices, et semis pramensurati discurrant." [Chronicon, ibid. pars xxxiv.] S" Alla fe di Dio, Signori Veneziani, non haverete mai pace dal Sig. nore di Padoua, ne dal nostro commune di Geneva, se primieramente non meltemo le briglie a quelli vostri cavalli sfrenati, che sono su la far as Malamocco, within five miles of the capital; but and too despotic government; they think only on their their own danger and the pride of their enemies gave vanished independence. They pine away at the re courage to the Venetians, who made prodigious efforts, membrance, and on this subject suspend for a moment and many individual sacrifices, all of them carefully re- their gay good humour. Venice may be said in the corded by their historians. Vettor Pisani was put at words of the Scripture, "to die daily" and so general the head of thirty-four galleys. The Genoese broke up and so apparent is the decline, as to become painful to from Malamocco, and retired to Chioza in October; a stranger, not reconciled to the sight of a whole nation but they again threatened Venice, which was reduced expiring as it were before his eyes. So artificial a to extremities. At this time, the 1st of January, 1380, creation, having lost that principle which called it into arrived Carlo Zeno, who had been cruising on the life and supported its existence, must fall to pieces at Genoese coast with fourteen galleys. The Venetians once, and sink more rapidly than it rose. The abhor were now strong enough to besiege the Genoese. Doria rence of slavery which drove the Venetians to the sea, was killed on the 22d of January by a stone bullet 195 has, since their disaster, forced them to the land, where pounds weight, discharged from a bombard called the they may be at least overlooked amongst the crowd of Trevisan. Chioza was then closely invested: 5000 dependents, and not present the humiliating spectacle auxiliaries, among whom were some English Condot- of a whole nation loaded with recent chains. Their tieri, commanded by one Captain Ceccho, joined the liveliness, their affability, and that happy indifference Venetians. The Genoese, in their turn, prayed for which constitution alone can give, for philosophy aspires conditions, but none were granted, until, at last, they to it in vain, have not sunk under circumstances; but surrendered at discretion; and, on the 24th of June, many peculiarities of costume and manner have by 1380, the Doge Contarini made his triumphal entry into degrees been lost, and the nobles, with a pride common Chioza. Four thousand prisoners, nineteen galleys, to all Italians who have been masters, have not been many smaller vessels and barks, with all the ammuni- persuaded to parade their insignificance. That splention and arms, and outfit of the expedition, fell into the dour which was a proof and a portion of their power, hands of the conquerors, who, had it not been for the they would not degrade into the trappings of their subinexorable answer of Doria, would have gladly reduced jection. They retired from the space which they had their dominion to the city of Venice. An account of occupied in the eyes of their fellow-citizens; their tnese transactions is found in a work called the War continuance in which would have been a symptom of of Chioza, written by Daniel Chinazzo, who was in Venice at the time.* acquiescence, and an insult to those who suffered by the common misfortune. Those who remained in the degraded capital might be said rather to haunt the scenes of their departed power, than to live in them. The reflection, "who and what enthrals," will hardly bear a the ally of the conqueror. It may, however, be allowed comment from one who is, nationally, the friend and 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. 11. Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse. Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as must Too oft remind her who and what enthrals. 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 of seventy-two, during the last two years, seer, or Armenian; the Merchant of Venice; Othello. And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakspeare's art. 13. But from their nature will the tannen grow expressly forbidden this sad resource of poverty. Many remnants of the Venetian nobility are now scattered and confounded with the wealthier Jews upon the 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 to the Alps, which only thrives in very rocky parts, but the shadow of his former self, but he is polite and where scarcely soil sufficient for its nourishment can be kind. It surely may be pardoned to him if he is queru-found. On these spots it grows to a greater height lous. Whatever may have been the vices of the repub-than any other mountain tree. lic, and although the natural term of its existence may be thought by foreigners to have arrived in the due course of mortality, only one sentiment can be expected from the 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 cannot be thought to regret the loss of their aristocratical forms, Tannen is the plural of tanne, a species of fir peculiar 14. A single star is at her side, and reigns With her o'er half the lovely heaven. The above description may seem fantastical or ex aggerated to those who have never seen an Oriental ot an Italian sky, yet it is but a literal and hardly sufficient delineation of an August evening (the eighteenth) as contemplated in one of many rides along the banks of the Brenta near La Mira. 15. Watering the tree which bears his lady's name With his melodious tears, he gave himself to fame Stanza xxx, lines 8 and 9. Thanks to the critical acumen of a Scotchman, we now know as little of Laura as ever.* The discoveries of the Abbé de Sade, his triumphs, his sneers, can no • See an Historical and Critical Essay on the Life and Character o onger instruct or amuse.* We must not, however, In this case, however, he was perhaps alarmed for think that these memoirs are as much a romance as the culpability of his wishes; for the Abbé de Sade Belisarius or the Incas, although we are told so by Dr. himself, who certainly would not have been scrupulously Beattie, a great name, but a little authority. His delicate if he could have proved his descent from Pe labour" has not been in vain, notwithstanding his trarch as well as Laura, is forced into a stout defence love" has, like most other passions, made him ridicu- of his virtuous grandmother. As far as relates to the lous. The hypothesis which overpowered the strug-poet, we have no security for the innocence, except gling Italians, and carried along less interested critics perhaps in the constancy of his pursuit. He assures us in its current, is run out, We have another proof that in his epistle to posterity, that, when arrived at his for we can be never sure that the paradox, the most singular, tieth year, he not only had in horror, but had lost all and therefore having the most agreeable and authentic recollection and image of any "irregularity." But the air, will not give place to the re-established ancient birth of his natural daughter cannot be assigned earlier prejudice. than his thirty-ninth year; and either the memory or It seems, then, first, that Laura was born, lived, died, the morality of the poet must have failed him, when he and was buried, not in Avignon, but in the country. forgot or was guilty of this slip. The weakest argu The fountains of the Sorga, the thickets of Cabrieres, ment for the purity of this love has been drawn from the may resume their pretensions, and the exploded de la permanence of effects, which survived the object of his Bustie again be heard with complacency. The hypo- passion. The reflection of Mr. de la Bastie, that virtue thesis of the Abbé had no stronger props than the alone is capable of making impressions which death parchment sonnet and medal found on the skeleton of cannot efface, is one of those which every body ap the wife of Hugo de Sade, and the manuscript note to plauds, and every body finds not to be true, the moment the Virgil of Petrarch, now in the Ambrosian library. he examines his own breast or the records of human If these proofs were both incontestable, the poetry was feeling. Such apophthegms can do nothing for Pe written, the medal composed, cast, and deposited trarch or for the cause of morality, except with the very within the space of twelve hours: and these deliberate weak and the very young. He that has made even a duties were performed round the carcass of one who little progress beyond ignorance and pupilage cannot be died of the plague, and was hurried to the grave on the day of her death. These documents, therefore, are too decisive: they prove not the fact, but the forgery. Either the sonnet or the Virgilian note must be a falsification. The Abbé cites both as incontestably true; the consequent deduction is inevitable-they are both evidently false.§ edified with any thing but truth. What is called vindi- Secondly, Laura was never married, and was a naughty virgin rather than that tender and prudent wife who honoured Avignon by making that town the theatre of an honest French passion, and played off for one and twenty years her little machinery of alternate favours and refusals upon the first poet of the age. It was, They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died. indeed, rather too unfair that a female should be made Stanza xxxi, line 1. responsible for eleven children upon the faith of a mis- Petrarch retired to Arquà immediately on his return interpreted abbreviation, and the decision of a librarian. T from the unsuccessful attempt to visit Urban V. at It is, however, satisfactory to think that the love of Rome, in the year 1370, and, with the exception of his Petrarch was not platonic. The happiness which he celebrated visit to Venice, in company with Francesco prayed to possess but once and for a moment was surely Novello da Carrara, he appears to have passed the four not of the mind,** and something so very real as a last years of his life between that charming solitude and marriage project, with one who has been idly called a Padua. For four months previous to his death he was shadowy nymph, may be, perhaps, detected in at least six in a state of continual languor, and in the morning o places of his own sonnets. †† The love of Petrarch was neither platonic nor poetical; 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 and perverse, that it absorbed him quite and mastered his heart. II Petrarch; and a Dissertation on an Historical Hypothesis of the Abbé de Sade: the first appeared about the year 1781; 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, by Ballantyne in 1810. M4moires pour la Vie di Pétrarque. † Life of Beattie, by Sir W. Forbes, t. ll. p. 106. Mr. Gibbon called his Memoirs a labour of love," (See Decline nl Fall, cap. xx. note 1.) and followed him with confidence and delight. The compiler of a very voluminous work must take much criticism upon trust; Mr. Gibbon has done so, though not as readily as some other authors. The sonnet had before awakened the suspicions of Mr. Horace Wal pole. See his letter to Wharton in 1763. 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 Arquà, which, from the uninterrupted veneration that has been attached to every thing relative to this great nian 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. Arquà (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 the Euganean hills. After a walk of twenty minutes across a flat well-wooded meadow, you come to a little blue lake, clear, but fathomless, and to the foot of a succession of acclivities and hills, clothed with vineyards and orchards, rich with fir and pome granate trees, and every sunny fruit shrub. From the banks of the lake the road winds into the hills, and the church of Arquà is soon seen between a cleft where two ridges slope towards each other, and nearly enclose the village. The houses are scattered at intervals on In a dial gue with St. Agustin, Petrarch has described Laura as the steep sides of these summits; and that of the poet having a body exhausted with repeated ptubs. The old editors read and is on the edge of a little knoll overlooking two descents, 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 qu'on doit lire, partubus exhaustum." De Sade joined The names of Messi. Boudot and Bejot with Mr. Capperonier, and in the whole discussion on this ptubs, showed himself a downright literary ogue. See Riflessioni, &c. p. 257. Thomas Aquinas is called in to settle whether Petrarch's mistress was a chaste maid or a continent wife. **"Pigmalion, quanto lodar ti dei Par ce petit manège, cette alternative de faveurs et de rigueurs bien menage, une femme tendre et sage amuse, pendant vingt et un ans, le plus grand po te de son siècle, sans faire la moindre brèche à son hon. Min. pour la Vie de Pátrarque, Préface aux François. The italian editor of the London edition of Petrarch, who has translated Lord Woodhonselee, renders the "femme tendre et sage," rafinata civetta " Riflessioni intorno a madonna Laura, p. 234, vol. iii ed. 1811. neur," Dell' imagine tua, se mille volte Bonetto 58 quando giunse a Simon l'alto concetto. 1 See Ridessioni, &c. p. 291. • Arion dishonesta are his words. "A questa confessione cosi sincera diede forse occasione una nuova caduta ch' ei fece." Tiraboschi, Storia, c. tom. v. lib. iv, par, il. pag. 492. "Il n'y a que la vertu seule qui soit capable de faire de impres sions que la mort n'efface pas. M. de Limard, Baron de a Bastie, in the Memoires de l'Académie 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. 327. vol. xii. oct. Perhaps the if is here meant for although 17. Or, it may be, with demons. Stanza xxxiv. line 1. The struggle is to the full as likely to be with demons as with our better thoughts. Satan chose the wilder. ness for the temptation of our Saviour. And our unsullied John Locke preferred the presence of a child to complete solitude. 18. In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire; and commanding a view not only of the glowing gardens the criticism of the living, has concentrated then atten in the dales immediately beneath, but of the wide plains, tion to the illustration of the dead. above whose low woods of mulberry and willow, thickened into a dark mass by festoons of vines, tall single cypresses, and the spires of towns, 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 on four pilasters on an elevated base, and preserved from an association with meaner tombs. It stands conspicuously alone, but will be soon overshadowed by four lately planted laurels. Petrarch's Fountain, for here every thing is Petrarch's, springs Stanza xxxviii. lines 6 and 7. and expands itself beneath an artificial arch, a little below the church, and abounds plentifully, in the driest Perhaps the couplet in which Boileau depreciates season, with that soft water which was the ancient Tasso, may serve as well as any other specimen to wealth of the Euganean hills. It would be more attrac-justify the opinion given of the harmony of French verse. tiva, were it not, in some seasons, beset with hornets and wasps. No other coincidence could assimilate the tombs of Petrarch and Archilochus. The revolutions of centuries have spared these sequestered valleys, and the only violence which has been affered to the ashes of Petrarch was prompted, not by hate, but veneration. An attempt was made to rob the sarcophagus of its tres sure, and one of the arms was stolen by a Fiorentine through a rent which is still visible. The injury is not forgotten, but has served to identify the poet with the country where he was born, but where he would not live. A peasant boy of Arquà being asked who Petrarch was, replied, "that the people of the parsonage knew all about him, but that he only knew that he was a Florentine." A Malerbe à Racan, préfère Théophile, Et le clinquan: du Tasse à tout l'or de Virgile. The biographer Serassi,* out of tenderness to the reputation either of the Italian or the French poet, is eager to observe that the satirist recanted or explained away this censure, and subsequently allowed the author of the Jerusalem to be a "genius, sublime, vast, and happily born for the higher flights of poetry." To this we will add, that the recantation is far from satisfactory, when we examine the whole anecdote as reported by Olivet. The sentence pronounced against him by Bohours is recorded only to the confusion of the critic whose palinodia the Italian makes no effort to discover and would not perhaps accept. As to the opposition which the Jerusalem encountered from the Cruscan academy, who degraded Tasso from all competition with Ariosto, below Bojardo and Pulci, the disgrace of such opposition must also in some measure be laid to 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 the charge of Alfonso, and the court of Ferrara. For enough to form some acquaintance with its most distin- Leonard Salviati, the principal and nearly the sole guished inhabitants. A Florentine gentleman, ashamed origin of this attack, was, there can be no doubt,§ inof the aversion of the poet for his native country, was fluenced by a hope to acquire the favour of the House eager to point out this trivial error in our accomplished of Este: an object which he thought attainable by traveller, whom he knew and respected for an extraor- exalting the reputation of a native poet at the expense of dinary capacity, extensive erudition, and refined taste, a rival, then a prisoner of state. The hopes and efforts joined to that engaging simplicity of manners which has of Salviati must serve to show the cotemporary opinion been so frequently recognised as the surest, though it is as to the nature of the poet's imprisonment; and will certainly not an indispensable, trait of superior genius. fill up the measure of our indignation at the tyrant Every footstep of Laura's lover has been anxiously jailer. In fact, the antagonist of Tasso was not distraced and recorded. The house in which he lodged is appointed in the reception given to his criticism; he shown in Venice. The inhabitants of Arezzo, in order was called to the court of Ferrara, where having endeato decide the ancient controversy between their city and voured to heighten his claims to favour, by panegyrics the neighbouring Ancisa, where Petrarch was carried on the family of his sovereign, he was in turn when seven months old, and remained until his seventh abandoned, and expired in neglected poverty. The year, have designated by a long inscription the spot opposition of the Cruscans was brought to a close in six where their great fellow-citizen was born. A tablet years after the commencement of the controversy; and has been raised to him at Parma, in the chapel of St. if the academy owed its first renown to having almost Agatha, at the cathedral, because he was archdeacon opened with such a parodox,** it is probable that, on of that society, and was only snatched from his intended the other hand, the care of his reputation alleviated sepulture in their church by a foreign death. Another rather than aggravated the imprisonment of the injured tablet with a bust has been erected to him at Pavia, on account of his having passed the autumn of 1368 in that city, with his son-in-law Brossano. The political condiuon which has for ages precluded the Italians from poet. The defence of his father and of himself, for both were involved in the censure of Salviati, found employment for many of his solitary hours, and the captive could have been but little embarrassed to reply to ac La Vita del Tasso, lib. iii. p. 284. tom. ii. edit. Bergamo, 1790. + Histoire de l'Académie Françoise, depuis 1652 Jusqu' 1700, par l'albe d'Olivet, p. 181, edit. Amsterdam, 1730. "Mais, ensuite, venant a l'usage qu'il a fait de ses talens, J'aurois montré 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 manière de bien penser dans les ouvrages de l'esprit, sec. dial. p 89, édit. 1692 Philanthes is for Tasso, and says, in the outset, " de tous les beaux esprits que l'Italie a portés, le Tasse est peut-être celui cui pense le plus noblement." But Bohours seems to speak in Eudoxos, who closes with, the absurd comparison: "Faites valoire le Tasse tani qu'il vous plaira, je m'en tiens pour moi à Virgile," &c. Ibid. p. 10. § La Vita, c. fib. iii. p. 90, tom. ii. The English reader may see an account of the opposition of the Crusea to Tasso, in Dr. Black, Life, & e cap. xvii. vol. ii. For further, and, it is hoped, decisive proof, that Tasso was neither more nor less that a prisoner of state, reader is referred to His torical Illustrations of the IVth Canto of Childe Harold," pag. 5 and following. Orazioni funebri... delle lodi di Don Luigi Cardinal d'Este... delle lodi di Donno Alfonso d'Este. See La Vita lib.i. p. 117. It was founded in 1582, and the Cruscan answer to Pellegrino' Caraffa or epica poesia was published in 1594. |