thousands, has opened wide the eyes of England. | am overjoyed in declaring to my townsmen, that Consequently, there are religious men who resort the recent demeanour of these prelates, refractory from all quarters to the persecuted mother they and mutinous as it has been (in other matters) to had so long abandoned. God at last has made the government of their patron the king, has ultihis enemies perform his work and the English mately (by joining the malcontents in abolishprelates, not indeed on the stool of repentance, ing the favourite farce of religious freedom, and in as would befit them, but thrust by the scorner forbidding roast meat and country air on the into his uneasy chair, are mending with scarlet sabbath) filled up my subscription for the bell of silk, and seaming with threads of gold, the copes San Vivaldo. and dalmatics of their worthy predecessors. I Salve Regina Coeli ! London, June 17th, 1837. PRETE DOMENICO GRIGI HEADS OF CONFESSION; A MONTHFUL. Printed and published Superiorum Licentia. March 14. Being ill at ease, I cried, "Diavolo! | one way, will take it another; never at a fault. I wish that creaking shutter was at thy bedroom, Manifold proof; poor sinner! instead of mine, old fellow!" Assuntina would have composed me, showing me how wrong it was. Perverse; and would not acknowledge my sinfulness to her. I said she had nothing to do with it; which vexed her. March 23. Reproved Assuntina, and called her ragazzaccia! for asking of Messer Piero Pimperna half the evening's milk of his goat. Very wrong in me; it being impossible she should have known that Messer Piero owed me four lire since .. I forget when. March 31. It blowing tramontana, I was ruffled suspected a feather in the minestra: said the rice was as black as a coal. Sad falsehood! made Assuntina cry.. Saracenic doings. Recapitulation. Shameful all this month: I did not believe such bad humour was in me. April 2. Thought uncharitably of Fra Biagio. The Frate took my hand, asking me to confess, reminding me that I had not confessed since the 3rd of March, although I was so sick and tribulated I could hardly stir. Peevish; said, "Confess yourself: I won't: I am not minded: you will find those not far off who.." and then I dipped my head under the coverlet, and saw my error. April 6. Whispers of Satanasso; pretty clear! A sprinkling of vernal thoughts, much too advanced for the season. About three hours before sunset, Francesco came. Forgot my prayers; woke at midnight; recollected, and did not say them. Might have told him: never occurred that, being a Canonico, he could absolve me: now gone again these three days, this being the fourteenth. Must unload ere heavier-laden, Gra Reflection. The devil, if he can not have his walk | tiæ plena! have mercy upon me! THE TRANSLATOR'S REMARKS ON THE ALLEGED JEALOUSY OF BOCCACCIO AND PETRARCA. AMONG the most heinous crimes that can be be brought to light by cordage and windlass. committed against society, is the temerati crímen amici, and no other so loosens the bonds by which it is held together. Once and only once in my life, I heard it defended by a person of intellect and integrity. It was the argument of a friendly man, who would have invalidated the fact: it was the solicitude of a prompt and dexterous man, holding up his hat to cover the shame of genius. I have indeed had evidence of some who saw nothing extraordinary or amiss in these filchings and twitchings; but there are persons whose thermometer stands higher by many degrees at other points than at honour. There are insects on the shoals and sands of literature, shrimps which must be half-boiled before they redden; and there are blushes (no doubt) in certain men, of which the precious vein lies so deep that it could hardly Meanwhile their wrathfulness shows itself at once by a plashy and puffy superficies, with an exuberance of coarse rough stuff upon it, and is ready to soak our shoes with its puddle at the first pressure. "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour" is a commandment which the literary cast down from over their communion-table, to nail against the doors of the commonalty, with a fist and forefinger pointing at it. Although the depreciation of any work is dishonest, the attempt is more infamous when committed against a friend. The calumniator on such occasions may in some measure err from ignorance, or from inadequate information, but nothing can excuse him if he speaks contemptuously. It is impossible to believe that such writers as Boccaccio and Petrarca could be widely erroneous in each other's merits: no less incredible is it that, if they did err at all, they would openly avow a disparaging ness and solicitude to say everything that could gratify his friend; with what ingenuity are those faults not palliated but excused (his own expression) which must nevertheless have appeared very grievous ones to the purity of Petrarca. But why did not Boccaccio send him his Decame Here was the termination of Petrarca's literary opinion. This baseness was reserved for days life: he closed it with the last words of this letter; when the study opens into the market-place, which are, "Adieu, my friends! adieu my corwhen letters are commodities, and authors chap-respondence." Soon afterward he was found dead men. Yet even upon their stalls, where an antique in his library, with his arm leaning on a book. vase would stand little chance with a noticeable In the whole of this composition, what a carefulpiece of blue-and-white crockery, and shepherds and sailors and sunflowers in its circumference, it might be heartily and honestly derided; but less probably by the fellow-villager of the vendor, with whom he had been playing at quoits every day of his life. When an ill-natured story is once launched upon the world, there are many who | ron long before? Because there never was a more are careful that it shall not soon founder. Thus the idle and inconsiderate rumour, which has floated through ages, about the mutual jealousy of Boccaccio and Petrarca, finds at this day a mooring in all quarters. Never were two men so perfectly formed for friendship; never were two who fulfilled so completely that happy destination. True it is, the studious and exact Petrarca had not elaborated so entirely to his own satisfaction his poem, Africa, as to submit it yet to the inspection of Boccaccio, to whom unquestionably he would have been delighted to show it the moment he had finished it. He died, and left it incomplete. We have, it must be acknowledged, the authority of Petrarca himself, that he never had read the Decameron through, even to the last year of his life, when he had been intimate with Boccaccio four-and-twenty. How easy would it have been for him to dissemble this fact! how certainly would any man have dissembled it who doubted of his own heart or of his friend's! I must request the liberty of adducing his whole letter, as already translated. "I have only run over your Decameron, and therefore I am not capable of forming a true judgment of its merit: but upon the whole it has given me a great deal of pleasure. The freedoms in it are excusable; from having been written in youth, from the subjects it treats of, and from the persons for whom it was designed. Among a great number of gay and witty jokes, there are however many grave and serious sentiments. I did as most people do: I paid most attention to the beginning and the end. Your description of the people in the Plague is very true and pathetic and the touching story of Griseldis has been ever since laid up in my memory, that I may relate it in my conversations with my friends. A friend of mine at Padua, a man of wit and knowledge, undertook to read it aloud; but he had scarcely got through half of it, when his tears prevented him going on. He attempted it a second time; but his sobs and sighs obliged him to desist. Another of my friends determined on the same venture; and, having read it from beginning to end, without the least alteration of voice or gesture, he said, on returning the book, "It must be owned this is an affecting history, and I should have wept could I have believed it true; but there never was and never will be a woman like Griseldis.' perfect gentleman, a man more fearful of giving offence, a man more sensitive to the delicacy of friendship, or more deferential to sanctity of character. He knew that the lover of Laura could not amuse his hours with mischievous or idle passions; he knew that he rose at midnight to repeat his matins, and never intermitted them. On what succeeding hour could he venture to seize? with what countenance could he charge it with the levities of the world? Perhaps the Recluse of Arqua, the visitor of old Certaldo, read at last the Decameron, only that he might be able the better to defend it. And how admirably has the final stroke of his indefatigable pen effected the purpose! Is this the jealous rival? Boccaccio received the last testimony of unaltered friendship in the month of October, 1373, a few days after the writer's death. December was not over when they met in heaven and never were two gentler spirits united there. The character of Petrarca shows itself in almost every one of his various works. Unsuspicious, generous, ardent in study, in liberty, in love, with a self-complacence which in less men would be vanity, but arising in him from the general admiration of a noble presence, from his place in the interior of a heart which no other could approach or merit, and from the homage of all who held the principalities of Learning in every part of Europe. Boccaccio is only reflected in full from a larger mass of compositions: yet one letter is quite sufficient to display the beauty and purity of his mind. It was written from Venice, when finding there not Petrarca whom he expected to find, but Petrarca's daughter, he describes to the father her modesty, grace, and cordiality in his reception. The imagination can form to itself nothing more lovely than this picture of the gentle Ermissenda: and Boccaccio's delicacy and gratitude are equally affecting. No wonder that Petrarca, in his will, bequeathed to his friend a sum the quintuple in amount of that which he bequeathed to his only brother, whom however he loved tenderly. Such had been, long before their acquaintance, the celebrity of Petrarca, such the honours conferred on him wherever he resided or appeared, that he never thought of equality or rivalry. And such was Boccaccio's reverential modesty, that, to the very close of his life, he called Petrarca his master. Immeasurable as was his own superiority, he no more thought himself the equal of Petrarca, than | Yet he believed his genius was immeasurably inDante (in whom the superiority was almost as ferior to Alighieri's; and it would have surprised great) thought himself Virgil's. These, I believe, and pained him to find himself preferred to his are the only instances on record, where poets friend Petrarca; which indeed did not happen in have been very tenaciously erroneous in the esti- his lifetime. So difficult is it to shake the tenure mate of their own inferiority. The same obser- of long possession, or to believe that a living man vation can not be made so confidently on the de- is as valuable as an old statue, that for five hun cisions of contemporary critics. Indeed the ba- dred years together the critics held Virgil far lance in which works of the highest merit are above his obsequious but high-souled scholar, who weighed, vibrates long before it is finally adjusted. now has at least the honour of standing alone, if Even the most judicious men have formed inju- not first. Milton and Homer may be placed todicious opinions on the living and the recently gether on the continent Homer will be seen deceased. Bacon and Hooker could not estimate at the right hand; in England, Milton. Supreme, Shakspeare, nor could Taylor and Barrow give above all, immeasurably supreme, stands ShakMilton his just award. Cowley and Dryden were speare. I do not think Dante is any more the preferred to both, by a great majority of the equal of Homer than Hercules is the equal of learned. Many, although they believe they dis- Apollo. Though Hercules may display more cover in a contemporary the qualities which ele- muscles, yet Apollo is the powerfuller without vate him above the rest, yet hesitate to acknow- any display of them at all. Both together are just ledge it; part, because they are fearful of censure equivalent to Milton, shorn of his Sonnets, and of for singularity; part, because they differ from him his Allegro and Penseroso; the most delightful in politics or religion; and part, because they de- of what (wanting a better name) we call lyrical light in hiding, like dogs and foxes, what they poems. But in the contemplation of these procan at any time surreptitiously draw out for their digies we must not lose the company we entered sullen solitary repast. Such persons have little with. Two contemporaries so powerful in interestdelight in the glory of our country, and would ing our best affections, as Giovanni and Francesco, hear with disapprobation and moroseness it has never existed before or since. Petrarca was hoproduced four men so pre-eminently great, that no noured and beloved by all conditions. He collated name, modern or ancient, excepting Homer, can with the student and investigator, he planted with stand very near the lowest these are, Shakspeare, the husbandman, he was the counsellor of kings, Bacon, Milton, and Newton. Beneath the least of the reprover of pontiffs, and the pacificator of these (if anyone can tell which is least) are Dante nations. Boccaccio, who never had occasion to and Aristoteles; who are unquestionably the next.* sigh for solitude, never sighed in it: there was Out of Greece and England, Dante is the only his station, there his studies, there his happiness. man of the first order; such he is, with all his In the vivacity and versatility of imagination, in imperfections. Less ardent and energetic, but the narrative, in the descriptive, in the playful, in having no less at command the depths of thought the pathetic, the world never saw his equal, until and treasures of fancy, beyond him in variety, the sunrise of our Shakspeare. Ariosto and animation, and interest, beyond him in touches Spenser may stand at no great distance from him of nature and truth of character, is Boccaccio. in the shadowy and unsubstantial; but multiform Man was utterly unknown to them. The human heart, through all its foldings, vibrates to Boccaccio. * We can speak only of those whose works are extant. Democritus and Anaxagoras were perhaps the greatest in discovery and invention. |