AN ESSAY ON THE POETRY OF PETRARCH. NON HO SE NON QUEST' UNA VIA DA CELARE IL MIO ANGOSCIOSO PIANTO. I. THE vision of the spirit of Laura was written, as appears by the expressions at the close of it, when Petrarch was far advanced in years. He revised it four months before his death, and inserted it as an episode in a moral poem which he called the TRIONFI-a series of allegorical visions on the powers of Love, Chastity, Death, Talents, Fame, Time, and Eternity. Several Provençal poems written before his time, and the Dream, the Flower and the Leaf, and the House of Fame, of his contemporary Chaucer, are of the same description*. * POPE's remark on the House of Fame. 66 Perhaps the models of them may be traced in the visions which the monks preached in imitation of those of Ezekiel and St. John's Revelation. The last canto of the Trionfi is called Della Divinità, and begins, Since, then, I behold nothing certain beneath the heavens, I Took fearfully around me, and ask myself, in what then canst thou trust? I answered, IN GOD."-It concludes with Laura: "If he who beheld her on earth was blessed, what shall he not be on beholding her again in heaven!" Se fu beato chi la vide in terra, Or che fia dunque a rivederla in Cielo! He considered this work as a great undertaking; and he gave it up from the fear that he would be unable to finish it*. He betook to it again, however: he perceived that he had failed; but he persevered nevertheless, and left it so disfigured with various readings, that to complete a copy after his death, it was necessary to supply much by conjecture. It is only when he is speaking of Laura in this poem, that his heart communicates its fire to his genius, which had languished more under the disgust of life than the burthen of years. He * Magnum opus inceperam in eo genere, sed ætatem respiciens, substiti.—Ad Joh. Bocac. Sen. Lib. v. Ep. 2. records his melancholy feelings on the margins of his manuscript: "The more I reflect on what I am, the more I feel ashamed of this work: It is no longer myself, it is another who writes."-He was born to create with anxiety, and to dissipate in despair, the illusions which were necessary to his repose, and he was thus often tempted to destroy even the lyric poetry which he had addressed to Laurat. He does not even mention it in his LETTER TO POSTERITY, though, if it had not been for this very poetry, the other literary merits of this great man would not have been remembered with so much gratitude. To his intimate friends, he expresses himself ashamed of having devoted his talents to the amusement of ballad-singers, and lovers,―lamenting that his verses had been too generally dispersed to be recalled; and complaining that they had sometimes been partially disfigured, and sometimes entirely forged by professional singers, who took great merit to themselves for collecting them. He * Dum quid sum cogito, pudet hæc scribere—scribo enim non tanquam ego, sed quasi alius.—This memorandum was copied by the Archbishop Beccadelli from the autograph copy then in possession of Cardinal Bembo. † Famil. Lib. 8. Ep. 1.-Senil. Lib. 5. Ep. 3. Senil. Lib. 13. Epist. 4. |