striking of all his compositions, which with great pathos and sweetness describes his feelings, when he flung himself down on her humble grave, to weep over the recollection of their past happiness :

Io fu' in sull' alto e in sul beato monte,
Ove adorai baciando il santo sasso,
E caddi in su quella pietra, oimè lasso!
Ove l'onestrà pose la sua fronte;
E ch' ella chiuse d' ogni virtù il fonte

Quel giorno che di morte acerbo passo
Fece la donna dello mio cor,-lasso!-
Già piena tutta d' adornezze conte.
Quivi chiamai a questa guisa Amore:

"Dolee mio Dio, fa che quinci mi traggia
La morte a se, che qui giace il mio cor!"
Ma poi che non m' intese il mio signore,
Mi disparti, pur chiamando, Selvaggia!
L'alpe passai, con voce di dolore.

6

The circumstance in the last stanza, "I rose up and went on my way, and passed the mountain summit, crying aloud Selvaggia!' in accents of despair," has a strong reality about it, and no doubt was real. Her death took place about 1316.

In the history of Italian poetry, Selvaggia is distinguished as the "bel numer' una,"-" the fair number one"-of the four celebrated women of that century-The others were Dante's Beatrice, Petrarch's Laura, and Boccaccio's Fiammetta.

Every one who reads and admires Petrarch, will remember his beautiful Sonnet on the Death of Cino, beginning "Piangete Donne."

Perchè l' nostro amoroso messer Cino
Novellamente s'è da noi partito.

In the venerable Cathedral at Pistoia, there is an ancient half-effaced bas-relief, representing Cino, surrounded by his disciples, to whom he is explaining the code of civil law; a little behind stands the figure of a female veiled, in a pensive attitude, which is supposed to represent Ricciarda de' Selvaggi.

All these are alluded to by Petrarch in the Trionfo d'Amore.

Ecco Selvaggia,

Ecco Cin da Pistoja: Guitton d'Arezzo;
Ecco i due Guidi che già furo in prezzo.

The two Guidi are, Guido Guizzinello, and Guido Cavalcanti. Guitone was a famous monk, who is said to have invented the present form of the sonnet to him also is attributed the discovery of counterpoint, and the present system of musical notation.

Of Conti's mistress nothing is known, but that she had the most beautiful hand in the world, whence the volume of poems written by her lover in her praise, is entitled, La Bella Mano, the fair hand. Conti lived some years later than Petrarch. I mention him merely to fill up the list of those ancient minor poets of Italy, whose names and loves are still celebrated.

CHAPTER VI.

LAURA.

THERE are some who doubt the reality of Petrarch's love, because it is expressed in numbers; and others, refining on this doubt, profess even to question whether his Laura ever existed, except in the imagination and poetry of her lover. The first objection could only be made by the most prosaic of commentators-some true "black-letter dog," *—who had dustified and mystified his faculties among old parchments. The most real and most fervent passion that ever fell under my own knowledge, was revealed in verse, and very exquisite verse too, and has inspired many an effusion, full of beauty, fancy, and poetry; but it has not, therefore, been counted less sincere; and Heaven forbid it should prove less lasting than if it had been told in the homeliest prose, and had never inspired one beautiful idea or one rapturous verse!

To study Petrarch in his own works, and in his own delightful language; to follow him line by line through all the vicissitudes and contradictions of passion; to listen to his self-reproaches, his terrors, his regrets, his conflicts; to dwell on his exquisite delineations of individual character and peculiar beauty, his simple touches of profound pathos and

*See Pursuits of Literature.

melancholy tenderness;-and then believe all to be mere invention,—the coinage of the brain,—a tissue of visionary fancies, in which the heart had no share; to confound him with the cold metaphysical rhymesters of a later age,-seems to argue not only a strange want of judgment, but an extraordinary obtuseness of feeling.*

The faults of taste of which Petrarch has been accused over and over again, by those who seem to have studied him as Voltaire studied Shakspeare, -his concetti-his fanciful adoration of the laurel, as the emblem of Laura-his playing on the words Laura, L'aura, and Lauro, his freezing flames and burning ice,-I abandon to critics, and let them make the best of them, as defects in what were else perfection.

These were the fashion of the day: a great genius may outrun his times, but not without bearing about him some ineffaceable impressions of the manners and characters of the age in which he lived. He is too witty-"Il a trop d'esprit," to be sincere, say the critics," he has a conceit left him in his misery, a miserable conceit;" but we

* In a private letter of Petrarch to the Bishop of Lombes, occurs the following passage-(the Bishop, it appears, had rallied him on the subject of his attachment.) "Would to God that my Laura were indeed but an imaginary person, and my passion for her but sport!-Alas! it is rather a madness!-hard would it have been, and painful, to feign so long a time--and what extravagance to play such a farce in the world! No! we may counterfeit the action and voice of a sick man, but not the paleness and wasted looks of the sufferer; and how often have you wit nessed both in me." Sade, vol. i. p. 281.

know-at least I know-how in the very extremity of passion the soul can mock at itself-how the fancy can, with a bitter and exaggerated gayety, sport with the heart! These are faults of composition in the writer, and admitted to be such; but they prove nothing against the man, the poet, or the lover. The reproach of monotony, I confess I never could understand. It is rather matter of astonishment, how, in a collection of nearly four hundred poems, all, with one or two exceptions, turning upon the same subject and sentiment, the poet has poured forth such an endless and redundant variety, both of thought and feeling-how from the wide universe, the changeful face of all beautiful nature, the treasures of antique learning, and, above all, from his own overflowing heart, he has drawn those lovely pictures, allusions, situations, sentiments, and reflections, which have, indeed, been stolen, borrowed, imitated, worn threadbare by succeeding poets, but in him were the fresh and spontaneous effusions of profound feeling and luxuriant fancy. Schlegel very justly observes, that the impression of monotony may arise from our considering at one view, and bound up in one volume, a long series of poems, which were written in the course of many years, at different times and on different occasions. Laura herself, he avers, would certainly have been ennuyée to death with her own praises, if she had been obliged to read over, at one sitting, all the verses which her lover composed on her charms; and I agree with him.