otherwise musically impressed on us, by fervid accom

†

paniments of lute or guitar. "Little," says Foscolo, as the Sonetti and Canzoni may appear to our modern composers of operas to be susceptible of music, it is not on that account the less true that these terms are derived from Suono and Canto, and that poets often added notes of music to their stanzas. In the manuscripts, which are still preserved at Florence, of Franco Sachetti and other contemporaries of Petrarch,* the following note is to be found at the head of some of their sonnets: 'Intonatum per Francum : — Scriptor dedit sonum.' The system of Italian music by counterpoint had been created three centuries before their age by Guido d' Arezzo; and it is only in our days that it has been refined and complicated by the followers of the German school. Poetry was not then in Italy the mere caput mortuum of music; and the human voice, instead of being a subordinate accessory to the orchestra, filled the most prominent part, and was accompanied by inanimate instruments only so far as was necessary to support it, and to regulate its modifications. The words might then strike the ear with less astonishment than the tunes, but they spoke more forcibly to the heart, and more usefully to the mind. Petrarch poured forth his

*It may be thought strange to see an Italian writing the poet's name in this old English way, and an Englishman writing it like an Italian; but Foscolo's spelling was the polite concession of a guest to the country which he had made his home; and it is high time to follow the example of Roscoe and others in writing the word correctly. We no longer say Boccace instead of Boccaccio. Why should we deteriorate the name of his friend?

† "Sung or chanted by Franco; the writer gave the air." Franco was not Sacchetti, but a celebrated singer of the time.

verses to the sound of his lute, which he bequeathed in his will to a friend; and his voice was sweet, flexible, and of great compass. All the love-poetry of his predecessors, except that of Cino, wants sweetness of numbers; but the sweetness of Petrarch is enlivened with a variety, á rapidity, and a glow, which no Italian lyric has ever possessed in an equal degree."

And again, in a passage which must have seemed very remarkable to such readers as had been in the habit of considering a sonnet a trifle, Foscolo gives us the following "literal translation of a succession of memorandums" at the head of one of the sonnets that were thus "intoned :

“'I began this,' says Petrarch, 'by the impulse of the Lord - Domino jubente-10th September, at the dawn of day, after my morning prayers.'

"I must make these two verses over again, singing them and I must transpose them.

cantando ;

o'clock, A. M., 19th October.'

3

"I like this- -hoc placet. 30th October, 10 o'clock in the morning.'

"No: this does not please me. 20th December, in the evening.'

"And in the midst of his corrections," continues Foscolo, "he writes, on laying down his pen, 'I shall return to this again; I am called to supper.'

666 'February 18th. Towards noon. This is now well : however, look at it again — vide tamen adhuc.'

"Sometimes he notes the town where he happens to be: :—‘1364, Veneris Mane, 19 Jan. dum invitus Patavii ferior?' It might seem rather a curious than useful

*

* "Friday Morning. — While idling against my will in Padua.”

remark, that it was generally on Friday that he occupied himself with the painful labor of correction, did we not also know that it was to him a day of fast and penitence.* "When any thought occurred to him, he noted it in the midst of his verses, thus:

""Consider this.-I had some thoughts of transposing these lines, and of making the first verse the last, but I have not done so for the sake of harmony. The first would then be more sonorous, and the last less so, which is against rule; for the end should be more harmonious than the beginning.'

"Sometimes he says: "The commencement is good, but it is not pathetic enough.' In some places he suggests to himself to repeat the same words rather than the same ideas. In others he judges it better not to multiply the ideas, but to amplify them with other expressions. Every verse is turned in several different ways; above each phrase and each word he frequently places equivalent expressions, in order to examine them again; and it requires a profound knowledge of Italian to perceive, that, after such perplexing scruples, he always adopts those words which combine at once most harmony, elegance, and energy."†

Petrarca's lyric poems, which are chiefly sonnets to the amount of more than three hundred, were written during the course of thirty-two years; so that he had plenty of

* Did he call this "idling"? or was he speaking only of his stay in Padua altogether?

† Ugo Foscolo, Essays on Petrarch, (1823,) p. 90 and p. 57. Foscolo was wrong, in common with all the world, in attributing the invention of counterpoint to Guittone d'Arezzo; as the reader may see in the Biographie Universelle des Musiciens by the most learned of musical critics, M. Fetis.

time before him, though he was otherwise an industrious writer and voluminous correspondent. But he would let a sonnet lie polishing at leisure in his mind for months together, like a pebble on the sea-shore.

Cannot others, no less busy, have their sonnet polishing too? The cigar will not hinder it; and the doctor will not quarrel with it, as he does sometimes with the cigar.

IV.

OF THE OTHER PRINCIPAL SONNET-WRITERS OF ITALY.

OR a considerable time after the death of Petrarca, few sonnets but his own appear to have been heard from the lutes of poets. Emulation of them was thought so hopeless, that imitation itself became daunted. Literary ambition, too, at that period was turned into new directions by the novels of Petrarca's friend Boccaccio, by the increasing discoveries of ancient classics, by the substitution of the Greek language itself for transferences of its authors through Arabic and Latin versions, and lastly, by the disturbed condition of Italy in Church and State, the rise of petty sovereignties, and the downfall of republics. It was not till near a century from the time of Petrarca's being in flower with his sonnets, that the first regular crop of imitations of them made its appearance in those of a Roman gentleman of the name of Giusto de' Conti, who collected them under the title of "The Beautiful Hand," La Bella Mano.

I would fain have discovered some merit in this earliest and not least enthusiastic imitator of the great sonnetteer; but I can only mention and dismiss him, as the type of all the poet's imitators; who, whatever