MODERN EDITIONS OF HIS LETTERS.'

5

English, in 1823, deserve the highest praise. I say nothing of the labours of Dr Beattie, who endeavoured to prove in 1810 that all we know of Laura, and much that has been written of Petrarch, are apocryphal; or of Signor Rossetti, to whom Beatrice, Laura, and Fiammetta were myths, the impersonations of what he called the "anti-Papal spirit." In truth, though the poetry addressed to these ladies is high-flown and imaginative, nothing in the history of past ages is better or more accurately known than the lives and opinions of the poets themselves and the manners of the society in which they lived. We have them before us with the stamp of a complete reality; and recent literary investigations have only rendered this certainty more absolute.

For in our own time a work of far greater importance has been accomplished in Italy, which leaves nothing to be desired, and probably little more to be discovered. One of the ablest and most indefatigable critics of Petrarch, the Cavalier Battista Baldelli, began the collection of materials at the close of the last century. Unable to complete the undertaking, he handed them over to the Abbate Antonio Meneghelli of Padua, who published in 1818 an Index to Petrarch's Letters, both printed and in manuscript; but died before he could do more. Other hands were then employed, till at length the papers were transferred to Signor Giuseppe Fracassetti, who has given to the world the most perfect edition that exists of the whole body of Petrarch's Epistles. The series was first published in Latin at Florence in 1859, with copious indexes, a corrected text, and the addition of no less than 167 unpublished letters to the collection. This Latin edition was succeeded in 1863

by an Italian translation of the whole body of Letters, made by Signor Fracassetti, accompanied by copious notes, illustrative of the circumstances under which they were written, and introducing us to all the persons to whom they were addressed. There is not in the whole history of literature, so far as I know, another instance of details so authentic and minute with reference to the life of a great writer, as those which we possess relating to Petrarch and his friends, who lived five hundred years ago. The letters of Cicero and the letters of the younger Pliny offer the nearest parallel; but Cicero leaves much to be gathered from other histories, and Pliny's life is extremely incomplete. Petrarch is his own biographer, and the annalist of that "noble and delightful company" (as he terms it) amongst whom his life was spent. From these sources Signor Fracassetti has constructed a chronological table which relates year by year every important incident of the poet's career.

These works have thrown fresh light on Petrarch and his age, and they materially lessen the difficulty of presenting a complete picture of him to the English reader. I had myself, many years ago, and long before the publication of Signor Fracassetti's editions, devoted a good deal of time to the study of Petrarch's Latin writings and philosophy; and I revert with pleasure to one of the pursuits of my youth, having always had the desire to make the man, as well as the poet, better known to my countrymen. My design has been in some measure anticipated by M. Mézières of the French Academy, whose biographical Essay on Petrarch, was published in 1868; but the existence of this interesting work was not known to me when I undertook to write this little volume.

ENGLISH VERSIONS.

7

In spite of the long popularity of the poetry of Petrarch in all parts of Europe, it cannot be said that he has been fortunate in his translators. His merit consists so much in the exquisite grace and polish of his language, that the chief beauty of his sonnets evaporates in a harsher tongue, and many a greater poet is less difficult to translate. I have endeavoured in the following pages to select those versions from different writers, which appeared best calculated to convey the impression of the original. Macgregor is, I believe, the only person who has turned the whole Canzoniere into English verse. Some elegant specimens are due to Dean Milman and Mr Merivale. But incomparably the best translations extant are those executed by the late Lady Dacre; and of these and some prose translations executed by Ugo Foscolo himself, I have gladly availed myself, as far as they extend. In a few instances I have ventured to add to them some poetical versions of my own.

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CHAPTER I.

THE MAN OF LETTERS.

THE fame of Francis Petrarch, which assigns to him the second place among the classics of Italy, and ranks him amongst the greatest poets of the world, rests mainly on the composition of about four thousand lines of Italian verse, addressed to a beautiful and virtuous lady of Provence, who was neither his wife nor his mistress, between his twenty-fourth and his fiftieth year. These sonnets, although the subject is monotonous, and the tone of them frequently affected and unreal, have had a success unexampled in literature. For five hundred years they have been read with pleasure and admiration by twenty generations. They retain to this day all their freshness and their grace. The pure and elegant language in which they are written has nothing of the archaic grandeur and severity of the style of Dante. Like that stream of the Sorgia in the valley Petrarch chose for a retreat, his Italian verse sprang pure and abounding from its source; and although the poet affected to treat these compositions as the "mere trifles of his youth" (nugellas meas vulgares), he had, perhaps unconsciously, created a language, and scattered round

A MASTER OF STYLE.

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him exquisite beauties, which retain, like the lyrical fragments of the Greek poets, a consecrated immortality. The latest and the most accomplished of the historians of Florence, Gino Capponi, says: "The poetical language of the Canzoni' followed a straight track from the Sicilians to the Bolognese, and thence to Cavalcanti, to the supreme Alighieri, and to Cino da Pistoia; but these fell short of the ultimate and inimitable perfection given to poetic diction by Francis Petrarch. In his Rime' there is never a word or mode savouring of old age, or which cannot be used without affectation at the present day." There is no similar instance in literature of a writer whose language attained perfection at the first jet, and retains an immaculate purity for five hundred years.

But this portion of the life and work of Petrarch, though by far the most familiar to posterity, was certainly that which least distinguished him in the eyes of his contemporaries and in his own. Nor is it easy to explain or account for the extraordinary position to which, in his own age, he attained. Born in the humbler ranks of life, and of a family exiled from Florence, he obtained the rudiments of education at Carpentras, in Provence, where his talents attracted the favourable notice of the chief of the great house of Colonna, then residing with the Papal Court at Avignon. To the patronage of the Colonnas he owed his whole advancement in life. He refused to pursue the study of the law; he refused to enter the Church as a priest; he despised monastic life; he refused office, though the great post of Papal Secretary was five times offered to him. In a warlike and lawless age he lived exclusively for the glory of letters. In a clerical age he