COMPARED WITH DANTE.

15

forget its concerns, but retired for wider compass of eyesight, that he might comprehend and see in just proportions and relations; knowing, above all, that he who hath not made himself master of his own mind must look beyond it only to be deceived."

It is remarkable that Petrarch, though gifted with genius and power of mind far below that of Dante, exercised a much wider influence over his own age, and enjoyed a greater popularity, than the illustrious Florentine, whom all later times acknowledge as supreme. He had, in truth, nothing of that objective faculty which engraves upon the mind in ineffaceable lines the mystic vision of the terrible and the sublime. As the ages roll on, Dante loses nothing of his power over the imagination and thought of mankind: meanwhile, it is only the extreme beauty and melody of his language that keep Petrarch's poetry alive. But in their own times it was otherwise. The fourteenth century failed to comprehend its greatest poet. Boccaccio seems to be the first who understood his superlative eminence. Petrarch spoke to them in more familiar tones. He was a man of the world, mingling in all the society of his age. Dante was an exile and a solitary, who spake as one that came from beyond the grave; but what he spake was for all time.

THE most pleasing form of biography is that in which a man retraces the events of his own life and the incidents that have formed his character, more especially in his earlier years, of which no other record might exist. Petrarch has left us such a record in his "Epistle to Posterity," written, it is believed, in the year 1370, when he had completed the sixty-sixth year of his age. I shall therefore select this document as the first specimen of his narrative powers, for it places the whole of his earlier career at once before the reader; though it passes over, in significant silence, many important incidents and transactions to which I shall have occasion to revert. is some doubt as to the date of this composition; for, although it breaks off abruptly at his forty-seventh year, there are expressions in it which prove that it was written at a much later period. For instance, it was not till 1367 that Pope Urban V. returned to Rome, but came back to Avignon in 1370—a fact referred to in the letter. Indeed this reference shows what was uppermost in the poet's mind whilst he was writing it.

There

EPISTLE TO POSTERITY."

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FRANCIS PETRARCH-TO POSTERITY-GREETING.

"Perhaps, future reader, you may have heard somewhat about me, doubtful though it may be whether a name so humble and obscure as mine is likely to travel far in point either of time or space. Perhaps, even, you may wish to know what sort of man I was, or what was the fate of my works, and of those in particular whose reputation may have reached you, or whose name, however faintly, you may have heard.

"As to the first point, indeed, men's opinions will differ; for nearly every one speaks pretty much, not as truth but as inclination urges : there are no bounds either to eulogy or to blame. One of the human family like yourself, I was but a child of earth and mortal; of an origin neither particularly illustrious nor humble, my family, as Augustus Cæsar says of himself, was ancient. Nature gave me neither a bad nor an immodest disposition, had not the contagion of social intercourse injured it. Youth deceived me; manhood carried me away; but old age corrected me, and by experience taught me thoroughly that truth which I had long before studied, namely, that youth and pleasure are vanities. Of a truth the Fashioner of every age and time suffers poor mortals, who are puffed up about nothing, at times to go astray, that they may realise, though late, the remembrance of their sins.

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My body, when I was a young man, was not remarkable for strength, but had acquired considerable dexterity. I do not pride myself on any excellence of form, beyond such as might be pleasing to a man of greener years. My complexion was lively, half-way between fair and dusk. My eyes were sparkling, and for a long time my sight was extremely keen, until it failed me unexpectedly when past my sixtieth year; so that I was forced, much against the grain, to have recourse to spectacles. Old age came at last upon a body which had never known what illness was, and besieged it with the accustomed array of diseases.

"I was born of honourable parents of the city of Florence. F.C.-IV.

B

Their fortune was scanty, and, to tell the truth, verging towards poverty; but they were exiles from their country. I was born in exile at Arezzo, on Monday, July 20, 1304. Riches I held in sovereign contempt, not because I did not wish to have them, but because I hated the labour and anxiety which are the inseparable companions of wealth. I cared not for abundance of sumptuous repasts; on the contrary, with humble fare and common food I led a more enjoyable life than all the successors of Apicius, with their most exquisite dishes. Banquets, as they are called-or rather eating entertainments, inimical alike to modesty and good manners— have always been displeasing to me. I have counted it an irksome and a useless thing to invite others to such gatherings, and no less so to be invited by others. But to associate with my friends has been so agreeable to me, that I have held nothing more grateful than their arrival, nor have ever willingly broken bread without a companion. Nothing displeased me more than show, not only because it is bad and contrary to humility, but because it is irksome and an enemy of repose. In youth I felt the pains of love, vehement in the extreme, but constant to one object and honourable; and I should have felt them longer had not death -bitter, indeed, but useful—extinguished the flame as it was beginning to subside. As for the looser indulgences of appetite, would indeed that I could say I was a stranger to them altogether; but if I should so say, I should lie. This I can safely affirm, that although I was hurried away to them by the fervour of my age and temperament, their vileness I have always inwardly execrated. Soon, indeed, as I approached my fortieth year, while I still retained sufficient ardour and vigour, I repelled these weaknesses entirely from my thoughts and my remembrance, as if I had never known them. And this I count among my earliest happy recollections, thanking God, who has freed me, while yet my powers were unimpaired and strong, from this so vile and always hateful servitude.

"But I pass on to other matters. I was conscious of pride in others, but not in myself; and insignificant as I might be

"EPISTLE TO POSTERITY."

19

in reality, I was always more insignificant in my own estimation. My irritable temper often injured myself, but it never injured others. Honourable and trusty friendships I keenly sought and cultivated-I fearlessly boast, that so far as I know, I speak the truth. Although easily provoked, I was ready to forget offences, and mindful of kind actions. I was favoured with the familiar intercourse of princes and kings, and with the friendships of the great to an extent that excited the envy of others. But it is the penalty of men who grow old, that they have to deplore the death of their friends. The most illustrious sovereigns of my own times loved and honoured me-why, I can hardly say; it is for them, not me, to explain but as I lived with some of them on the same terms on which they lived with me, I suffered not at all from the eminence of their rank, but rather derived from it great benefits. Yet many of those whom I dearly loved, I avoided: so great was my innate love of liberty, that I studiously shunned any one whose very name might seem to restrict my freedom.

"My mind was rather well balanced than acute; adapted to every good and wholesome study, but especially prone to philosophy and poetry. And yet even this I neglected, as time went on, through the pleasure I took in sacred literature. I felt a hidden sweetness in that subject, which at times I had despised; and I reserved poetry as a mere accomplishment. I devoted myself singly, amid a multitude of subjects, to the knowledge of antiquity; since the age in which I lived was almost distasteful to me-so much so, that, had it not been for the love of those who were very dear to me, I should always have wished to have been born at any other time, and to forget the present, ever struggling to engraft myself upon the past. Accordingly I delighted in historians-not, however, being in any way the less offended at their contradictions, but following, when in doubt, that path which verisimilitude or the authority due to the writer pointed out.

"As a speaker, some have said I was clear and powerful; but, as it seemed to myself, weak and obscure. Nor indeed in ordinary conversation with my friends or acquaintances